What's Important to You In Your Survival Setup?

Where I'm from preparedness is a big thing, and there is always an active effort in our communities to make sure everyone is disaster ready. Food storage is a big thing here as well.

I've recently picked up a client in the work that I do, who happens to be a big organizer of these community preparedness programs, so I've been thinking of this stuff lately.

Today I was thinking about what's important to me when thinking about what to have prepared in case SHTF. I was thinking I should have something I can sketch and draw on, to keep my mind and creative urges something to escape into. Maybe a photo box, something I can store important photos of the ones I loved in case I wasn't able to see or communicate with them. I figure these 2 things alone could have a huge impact on my moral if ever needed.

I also started thinking what else. Aside from basic survival gear, what else would be important to me. As an avid smoker of marijuana, I realized I may want to store some seeds, Life without my precious bud would be pretty lame, plus there's tons of other uses of the plant that would be very helpful.

Fishing gear, totally gotta make sure I can fish. If I had to choose 1 pole/reel I would go with a medium bait reel, I think it would best for its range of use. I don't have much hunting experience, but I can fish, so I think this would be a must.



So those are some of the things I know would be a must, and I will be adding all of em to my survival kit. What about you? I'd love to hear some ideas from others, maybe find some more brilliant ideas. Please do share.

Considering weapons, I found an easy way to make a bow & arrow, also cheap.

Home Depot Materials :

2 bunch of bamboo sticks. Usualy they have them by the garden stuff area, since are used to hold straight plants when growing. They are long about 6 ft. (might want to cut a piece to make them shorter), and there are about 4 or 5 on each bunch in a plastic sleeve. Also need some duct tape, ty raps and any strong string.
For the arrows, they also have wooden sticks, perfect material for arrows.

All these materials will cost you around 25 bucks, maybe less.

Instructions :

Take one stick, cut it in about 16 in. pieces. Get the rest together, put a ty rap in the middle to hold them. Put the small pieces in the middle and attach them with more ty raps at proportional distances. Continue with more ty raps every 5 to 10 inches, consider putting double ty raps. Then wrap your bow with the duck tape between the ty raps, about 3 times around each time.

When you put the string, consider starting with lower tension and gradually increase it to give your bow a chance to shape. It won't take more than a day the hole project.

Last week I tried it at my backyard, considering that, I can tell it's enough to hunt an small animal or for self defense.

An OP that reads my mind. Great.

I have a long list of what's important on my list so here's a few.

Alcohol - bartering and coping and medical uses. I'm gathering both rubbing and consumption types.
Tobacco - another excellent (in my view) bartering item as well as for personal use.
Antique hand tools - I have quite a collection of them from Sickles to hand drills. Most are 50 years old or older.
Lubricants - Yep it's odd, but the main focus of survivors will be to attempt to keep as much modern life going as possible. Without lubrication most mechanical tools and devices will wear out.

Edit to add: Chocolate and Coca - again, bartering and consumption.

yeast to make beer etc..., plenty of seeds like you stated and also plenty of packets of rizla.
Fishing would definatly be more enjoyable than hunting if your stoned and i would maybe think of investing in some kind of animal trap to try and catch foxes,cats,badgers etc.. for a bit of meat to go with your delicious mirror carp or pike.

Guns, ammo, more guns, more ammo.

I refuse to be that unarmed guy in the post-apocalyptic movies being chased down and murdered for a tin of sardines.

reply to post by billxam


I think Guns/Ammo, Alcohol, Tobacco, Marijuana and possibly some medals would go a long way for bartering when there is no longer a monetary system left. So these are things that I would see as being very important to have if you can store away large quantities in a very safe place.

I feel a misleading perception of survival techniques. It's not about keeping our standards of living, so some items must not be considered in first order. Don't expect to continue your regular habits or routines. Survival is more like adapt youself to an hostile evironment in order to prevail, until the conditions become more propitious to restablish a normal life.

In my opinion, if you decide to stay at home, defensive strategy is a must. If you decide to move, speed and discretion are the key.

Actually, I think the best bartering tool would actually be guns and ammo. Stock up on cheap $100 shotguns and $50 handguns, and a lot of 12 gauge ammo. Assuming you have a place to store all of it, because carrying around 20+ guns would get a bit uncomfortable and exhausting.

I know if the world was suddenly thrown into Mad Max or Jericho chaos, the one thing I'd want is a gun, and a lot of people don't have them.

Also, if the "Mad Max" scenario went on for years, ammo would be in extremely high demand as people who didn't stockpile a lot would run out rather quickly. .22LR, 9MM, and 12 gauge ammo are probably the most popular and inexpensive.

reply to post by Lighterside


State of mind......has to be top...

I don't want to think of surviving as bad.....for me it's just a way to keep on living...

My grand dad told me "great depression survivor"
"some ppl just barely live, to survive, while others, survive..to prosper and live"


ETA...lots like this thread www.abovetopsecret.com...

Basics go a long ways..........

reply to post by Doc Holiday


Gave you an star. That's right. A good exercise is take a look to the broken items you are about to throw away, open them up and see the elements one by one, think in what can they be used.

I'm not sure if this will add anything at all but one of my back up plans at the moment is to have cheap mountain bikes for everyone in my family.. complete with panniers and basic camping kit.. (there are some nice plans out on the net for DIY dynamos to charge what you need as you go.. torches.. usb gadgets etc) and between 5 of us we can carry just about all we need.

(however I have to admit all the stuff I've got so far is second user. but it works for me as a back up)

Where I live I have no choice but the head out to sea or over the hills.. The road system here is so rubbish that in any incident they'll be jammed with traffic so the only real solution that works for me is to use push bikes to make it into the high woods and the ancient dew ponds.

(my preferred path is to head out into blue water so at the top of my list is a stocked blue water cat)

Love, Friendship and happiness, nothing else really matters.

To get rid of all the greeders. Then all peoples can live a happy life instead of one with someone always in your back pocket. A life where there are no greeders pushing your head in the toilet. Can this be possible, sure. thru public hanging and torture of the greeders held in a special celebration to honor the people who care for one another. The main important tule for this is a proper media outlet to spread the word around, so that the greeder cannot get away. I believe, i will have a rope in my bag.

As I understand the OP, the question is what, other than guns and food and tools for scavenging, etc., matters to you.....

Well, first off, I have begun to enjoy preparations so much that they themselves feed me. I absolutely love gardening with my children, and so I get joy and peace from something I would be doing "for a living" in a SHTF scenario.

Likewise hunting. Archery season is 5 months away, yet I still daydream about it every day.

What else is there? I pack a small Bible, which for me is a particularly enjoyable read by firelight. Also some playing cards and a chess set. No one ever plays card games any more (except for Texas Hold 'em), and it's too bad---a great way to while away the hours while waiting for the pot to boil or when you are snowed in. And they take up almost no room in your gear.

Then come pocket books; I prefer the classics. I'm sure there's nothing like reading the Decameron (itself set in a survival situation) while the world around you is wiped out by a plague. Or the "Book of Five Rings" as you flee into the woods to escape UN "peacekeeping" forces.

Whittling is a good use of time as well. The old men in my home town (too old to have fought in WWII) used to carve magical things out of a two by four: links of chain from a single wooden block, or a wooden ball inside it's own wooden cage.

Pre-industrial living has a different sense of time, and one of the toughest adjustments will be that your minutes are often not particularly valuable. Once you have threshed all the corn, then you're done for the day, even if it is only an hour after lunch. Likewise, if it takes 18 minutes for a pot to boil over a wood-fire, then you've got time for some reading or whittling or a game of solitaire.

Most folks will find that a shocking sensation, to be FREE for the first time in your adult life. No alarm clock, boss, no time clock, no rush hour. No evening news, no TV or maybe even radio, and after the dishes are washed, nothing required of you before bedtime. And once the food is put away for the winter, nothing required of you until spring but hauling firewood and drawing water, cooking and cleaning.

That is the way most humans throughout history have lived; OURS is the insane generation that decided that "the clock is ticking," and that if we run fast enough, that we can catch up with it.

Get ready for a new mode of life, where people tell time, not with a wristwatch or a smart-phone......

...... but with a calendar

A gun with strap,a bullet proof vest, ammo and holders, water containers, shelter a tent or whatever you find warm not wet, magnify glass to capture sun to start fires, a knoweledge of plants and things to help you when you are sick or ailing, fishing equip, a pry bar, rope, a lightweight pan or pans for cooking or boiling water to drink, iodine or med kit, two knives, one small one large, a swiss army knife with fork spoon, a thick foam pad if needed to sleep on, a couple of glass jars that you can vacumn seal and store extra food for later, 2 sets of proper winter cloths that you can wash, some cloths basics only cause you have to carry, a gopher trap you can almost always rely on for a quick meal when in a bind, a wire saw never know if you need to build a shelter or cut metal, a hatchet, 3 compasses and keep them away from one another and away from steel or magnets, a flashlight that you shake or wind up NO batteries, and if you get lucky you may find a horse to carry all your belongings so a farm is a good place to go, cause they may have a well for water, but this place is not a good place to stay for long periods of time for others will be thinking the same thing. Unless you have a destination to go, it is wise to stay near a good water source even if you have to dig one yourself. You are now ready for the big bad outdoors, the only thing you need now is to keep your brain functioning at max awareness. Keep safe and happy hunting.