Simply surviving a catastrophe or collapse is not enough. You need to consider what happens after everything has fallen apart and starts coming back together again. You need to start considering how you will support yourself and your family if your job is no longer there and government benefits like food stamps or unemployment insurance disappear. Even if civilization doesn’t collapse, we all know that jobs, investments, benefits, savings, and businesses can vanish in the blink of an eye in today’s economy. Almost anybody can be left with no salary or no income at almost
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Over the last few years, being a survivalist or prepper has become a much more mainstream and accepted by American culture. The stereotype of the paranoid man sitting in his basement surrounded by his gun collection and wearing his aluminum-foil helmet isn’t what people think of—at least not first, anyway. In a situation such as a natural disaster, the government and entities like the police, firefighters, and paramedics are going to be busy around the clock. When these brave men and women can’t come to your aid, you’ll need to be prepared. That’s where a
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Your pantry is stocked with food and water, as well as seeds for a garden. You’ve got your bug-out bags packed and ready.  You have your protection taken care of.  You’ve got a way to keep warm or cool.  You have ample first aid supplies and personal care products. What more could you need if a situation arose that forced you to use all of your preps? Think about it. Whatever the situation, whether you are in your home with no power, on the road with streamlined preps, or out in nature braving the elements,
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Are you itching to get out of the city and live off the land? Are you tired of the filth and hopelessness of city and suburban living? If so, you’re not alone. The off-the-grid lifestyle was once characterized by loners, extremists, and outsiders, people marginalized by mainstream society. Today, people going off the grid are not quite so off kilter. We don’t want to be isolated from other people. We simply want a better life for ourselves and our families. We want to be self-sufficient and live in a community of like-minded people. If this
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In this series, we’ve covered the importance of having a well-stocked pack with an excellent knife and fire options, but there are just a few more items for your pack that may mean the difference between enjoying the woods and coming home discouraged. Water Supplies There is no shortage of products to buy in terms of extracting water from the environment and making it potable (drinkable).  Depending on your budget, these can range from less than a dollar to several hundred dollars. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, boiling your water will
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Going off the grid is a major move, but one that few people regret later. If you are itching to get out of the city or suburbs to the safety and beauty of a plot of land to call your own, you have a big decision to make: where to move. The United States is a great place to live if you want to make this kind of transition. Our huge country is still full of wild places, small towns, and rural areas where you can make a new and more rewarding life for yourself
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As I wrote in my previous article, it is possible live in a more self-sufficient and sustainable way without spending much money. You will require some basic skills and resources, but it is possible to pick up necessary skills without shelling out a lot of money or subjecting yourself to a standardized curriculum. Today we’ll
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When I was invited to write an article for people who wanted to prepare but felt unable to because of limited budgets, I was perplexed. Why, I wondered, would people assume that preparation was expensive? So far my forays into self-reliance and sustainability have cost very little and have enabled me to need less money
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When storing for survival situations, there are certain foods that keep the best and certain foods that must be in your pantry no matter what. Really, a little of everything should be in your survivalist panty; however, before you start stockpiling willy-nilly, there are some rules to follow in order to make your food store is well balanced and able to last you and your family through any type of emergency survival situation. Step One Building your survival pantry is a little like building a pyramid: you start broad and work your way up. Step
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In the past, my emergency food storage consisted of several hundred pounds of wheat and rice, along with other staples, canned goods, and oils. Then I had to live on it for several months. I discovered that, among other things, storing only wheat and rice as staple grains posed a few problems. First, wheat is a fairly harsh grain and many people have allergies to it, a fact I didn’t realize until we were eating whole-wheat bread several times per day. Additionally, a diet consisting of mostly wheat quickly becomes monotonous. As an adult, I
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