Noob's guide to fast SHTF preparedness on the cheep.

This little article will attempt to explain quick and dirty survival from the ground up. While I will be focusing more to people who live in the city and need their gear together right away, this can scale for country folks as well.

So the first thing you need to understand is that we as humans need three things.

1.Rations
2.Protection
3.Shelter

It may seem that I am using terms that are very vague and overlap, but everything a hardcore survivalist does can be classified in one of these three areas.

Now the second thing you need to decide before you even begin preparing, this is point three, shelter. Do you hunker down or get out of dodge? Your preparedness hinges on your disaster plan. I have seen some people who have the resources to plan for both, but since most people do not have the funds to do such a thing, I would advise that you plan carefully and pick only one real SHTF plan.

Once you have your SHTF plan of action, prepare, getting together anything you can afford/justify getting to help with your disaster plan. Please understand that if you have a job worth doing, its worth doing right, don't have an evacuation plan and hunker down plan that are both half finished when the time comes. Pick a plan of action and stick with your guns.

Lets quickly talk about protection, a baseball bat is protection, a gas mask is protection, a roof over your head protects you from the weather.
protect yourself and be ready to protect yourself. if you do not have a gun, get one, if you have one, clean it. Right now the chances of you finding a gun and affordable ammo are almost nonexistent, you may have to settle for less than the best. If you still need a gun, you may have missed the boat, ammo prices through the roof and shortages of many common calibers mean that target shooting may be impossible.

Be ready to protect yourself from the elements, perhaps from looters, a deadbolt or metal grating may be just as effective as a loaded gun.


Now the last thing I will discuss is rations. Water is a ration, food is a ration, vitamins are rations. To ration is to simply divvy something up into portions of equal size.

I will discuss water first. The average adult should have 2 liters of water as an average a day. Go to the local supermarket and look at the bottles of soda, now imagine that you will consume one each day, every day, as long as the tap isn't giving you clean water. You soon realize that for 4 adults, you will be using 28 pop bottles worth of water a week. A good solution is to have water on hand, and the ability to purify in the future. If water service is temporary disrupted then you have clean water on hand for the short term, the ability to make your own potable(clean) water over the long haul. In my case I am using 2 liter soda bottles because they are easy to store, stack easy, and are easy to move around. You could use anything, milk jugs, drums, the sky is the limit but think things through and make your own decision about what suits your need.

Now one more thing about water, sanitation! You will want to clean things, and flush toilets to keep germs and disease under control, especially with some of the possible issues in the future being biological. You can flush toilets with dirty water.(water in the tank behind the toilet gives you a single flush but can be refilled.)
if you have a source of water around like a lake, stream, even ocean, be ready to use it to flush and rinse. Perhaps you can collect rainwater since you don't have to filter water that goes in the commode. Would 5 gallon buckets be helpful in this need? Again, think things out and make logical decisions to fit your own needs, not what some survival website says.

At this point you are about to throw money at the most expensive part of this game, food.
Fortunately, you can cut corners to be ready for trouble and slowly build up to a better supply.

part 2 below

Lets talk about food, food is our source of energy, like gas for a car, but also our source of nutrition. A human can survive or ramen noodles and Mountain Dew for only so long before things begin to get messed up, after a longer diet of junk, things begin to fail.

You will most likely not have access to the most healthy foods if infrastructure is messed up so plan accordingly. I want to stress vitamin supplements, you can prolong the need to eat healthy by using the junk to feel full, and supplements to provide nourishment. A good source of supplements for survivalist needs will be wholesale outlets such as Sam's and Costco. Once you have your supplements, be ready to rotate them, using them up(You should be taking vitamin supplements everyday anyway.) and buying fresh every once in a while.

Now while this may seem out of place, I suggest picking up some bulk toilet paper while you are shopping wholesale, its cheep, and may be worth more than gold ounce per ounce if people begin to run out.

Food should be whatever you can afford. Because this guide is meant to be cheap and dirty we will cover a very basic pantry. Buy 5 gallon buckets in a food grade form. It may require hunting down online, but the cost will save you space and time later. Buy flour, in bulk at wholesale price. Get plain oatmeal, basic grain based foods, minute rice is a good choice. Take your bulk foods, put in 5 gallon buckets, label, you are basically done.

I will take the preparing buckets of food a step further if you have the willingness to step up to the plate. Take silica packets ( you find these in new shoes and electronics) and put them in the microwave a few seconds to kill germs, then toss one into each bucket. Any moisture in your buckets will not be a threat. Another great suggestion is to hot glue your buckets shut to keep them water tight.

Foods in plastic and glass containers are good to go for storage in most cases, but putting them in boxes or bins can help organize.

Now to justify buying a ton of food, rotate it. Use your survival foods and replace anything you take, if done at all you will never have expired food on hand.

On the note of storing food and water, you don't need a bunker to store this, it may just be a dedicated part of your pantry reserved for survival food.


This concludes the noob guide, I stress that you make your own call on how to proceed and not just take a random guide on the internet for fact.
With a little planning you may be helping yourself if bad times come, allowing you to be able to help others.

If you think this guide makes any sense I highly suggest that you read more in depth guides and detailed tutorials on the topics I have barely brushed on here.
This guide is intended for the noob who is just starting, or needs to get started preparing for bad times. I fear time may be running out for people to prepare, and even a can of beans stashed under one's bed may be useful.

Starred and flagged

There's alot of survival tips here on ATS, but i think one important point to stress is to measure your average day-to-day requirements, and adjust based on that... some people may use alot more water in their average day than others, and if using rule-of-thumb, would under-stock on it, and so on...

Sum up what you use an an average day, and then try to build your rationing system based on that, and wether you plan on exerting yourself. (I.E a desk-driver wouldn't use alot of rations in day-to-day life, because there's little for him to use his energy on, compared to, say, a construction worker; therefore, if both would planned for the same number of days of rationing, the office worker might run out sooner because he didn't factor in physical effort in a crisis, like shelter construction, long distance walking and so on, and the energy cost of that.)

I hope that made sense... just my thoughts on the subject...

There is always the list of things one needs and escape plans. The first is easy to obtain. The second one "Plans" need to be flexleib, we don't know when or how the "SHTF" is gonna go down.

One very important item>> Health. Quit smoking cigs, start walking. Think "get in shape" because you can not out run someone, or climb to high ground , or swim to saftey if your a couch potato. I watch people drive 2 blocks to get a bag of grocries.

Most folks can't walk a mile.....trail of tears.

Once again I will state firmly. DO NOT STORE WATER IN MILK JUGS. I would think that this has been discussed enough here, but I guess not. Milk jugs will contain bacteria from the milk that cannot be be removed. It will cause the water to go bad. The last thing you need is a bad source of water that you depend on in a SHTF scenario.

Also rain water is an excellent source of potable water, as are your toilet tanks. [where the water is stored to flush. Use gray water to flush, and save the rain water to drink.

respectfully

reluctantpawn

Good post. There are two things I would like to expand on.

Water and proper storage of food.

Water:

In a shtf situation, you will probably need more than the minimum recommendation. Obviously you need it to drink but don't forget most if not all of the foods people store for long term will need quite a bit of water to prepare. You will also have to clean yourself, your utensils, pots, etc… This all requires clean water.

Dehydrated, freeze dried, and things like rice, beans, ramen noodles, macaroni, and various things to make with all that flour and grains will require decent amounts of water. Unless you have a large space to store 55 gallon drums you will only be able to store a few weeks of water in bottles.

What I did was store some water in bottles but also bought a Katadyn filter/purifier. It comes with a .3 micron filter and a ceramic pre-filter. There is also a carbon stage to remove some chemicals. It's a little pricey at 70-90 dollars depending where you find it but it's only about 6" high and weighs less than a pound. One cartridge is supposed to filter about 500 gallons so I think it's worth the price.

Store some plain bleach and you could add a few drops to any water you feel is possibly contaminated. A one gallon bottle of bleach will disinfect hundreds if not thousands of gallons. It only takes a few drops per quart.

Dry food storage:

Certain dried foods can become contaminated with bugs even if they are sealed in a container. Things like dried pasta, flour, grains, etc... are notorious for having weevils in them. It's unavoidable. When you buy them the little critters may already be there, or at least their eggs will be. I've heard to freeze these items for a few days then let them thaw and dry (condensation may form) before storage to kill the eggs. This is what I've been doing and so far so good. They wont hurt you, you can just eat them if you like but I think most would rather not.

I also vacuum seal anything not in a can. Pasta, beans, rice, etc… Removing the air will help the foods to last longer. Air and moisture is your enemy. You can also divide the food into individual portions so you don’t need to open your entire supply of an item and expose it to possible contamination / spoilage. Any dried food in a package or bag, like drink mixes, lipton pasta sides, etc.. I poke a pinhole in the bag then vacuum seal the whole thing. It sucks the air out of the original package and seals it better.


I know the OP intended this for a person just starting out on the cheap, but I feel the water filter and vacuum sealer are well worth the price if you can manage to get them.

Starred and Flagged

I think it's a great idea for some of the more seasoned survivalists here to break it down barney style. Help those who don't understand all the survival techniques.