People have been making and using soap for nearly 5,000 years, and possibly much longer than that. At around 3,000 B.C. enterprising Babylonians, Mesopotamians, and Egyptians began making simple soaps to use for sanitizing cooking implements. These days, we rely on soaps to clean just about everything…our cooking utensils, our clothes, and, of course, ourselves. For most of those 5,000 years, people made their own soap. So if you are thinking about homemade soap of your own, you are in good company, at least historically! It is a simple process, with lots of ways to
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While you can survive without food for a few days, the body will grow more and more lethargic as the days march on.  The longer you wait to feed yourself, the harder it is going to be to gather food.  Soon you will not have any energy and starvation begins.  Dying of starvation is a terrible way to go, and even going hungry will give way to other health problems.  If you go too long without food, you will quickly find that your body ceases to work correctly and the simplest tasks become difficult.  How
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It has been said that knowledge is power, and that applies to any area in life. Of course, it is important to arm and prepare, but it is even more important to constantly learn new aspects of survival. Some of these arts and sciences have been lost in the last century, as modern life has caused humanity to know more how to use a smartphone rather than how to build a fire. It is easy to gloss over these skills like an old memory, when you can simply pop at TV dinner in the microwave
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There are only a few things that the body needs in order to survive.  Your body needs water, food, shelter/clothing, and defense.  Other than that, everything else is luxury.  But in a survival scenario, wouldn’t you want more than that? Survival depends upon more than just your ability to gather food or collect clean water.  Your survival, and that of your family and friends, also depends on your frame of mind.  One might argue that morale is the most crucial survival element of them all.  Without the will to survive, you will not gather resources
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When attempting to prepare for the most comprehensive plan, the psychology of being prepared is about being open minded and understanding risk.

Knowing what situational awareness is and how to use it to assess changing risks is also important as you implement an action plan based on the thoughts (psychology) of the situation. The basis for the psychology of preparedness also includes knowing where you stand in addition to which risks you face.

I have always been a prepper; it’s in my blood.  I have also always been a gunsmith; I think I inherited those genes via a generational skip from my grandfather. But above all, I have always been a lover of the psychology of decisions.  I am fascinated by the driving force behind decisions based on stress and morals/ethics.  For me, the idea of emergency and disaster preparedness is a no-brainer—something we should already be doing and always looking to improve.  But many of my contemporaries, family, friends, and readers don’t feel the same way.  I
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There’s a massive trend in the survivalist community that says that buying guns is the most important thing you can possibly do.  Unfortunately, Hollywood may have something to do with that reasoning.  While prudently arming yourself is important, the most crucial factor of survival is acquiring the basics.  If you can’t find water, food, shelter,
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The most important thing you need to consider before you even buy your first match is what do you want to do in the event of a regional or national catastrophe?

To break this down simply, the answer to this massive question boils down to two possible options. You can either stay in your home or in someone else’s home in your local community, or you can evacuate. This decision will influence 95 percent of the gear that you will be buying, down to the types of knives that you will need.

Introduction:  The Descent into Chaos It is extremely easy to come home after work, open the door, sit on the couch, and flip on the TV.  In this life, your only worries are fixing the sink and who’s going to win tonight’s football game.  Of course, you know that there are bad things happening in
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If you have followed any of my writing, or know me at all, you know me to be a relatively hard-core survivalist. But as things often go during certain stressful situations, I was recently caught off guard. Fortunately, the situation remained a minor one, and it turned out to be just a blip on the radar of normal life. A few months ago in San Diego, California, my beautiful home for my entire life, the grid went black. Ordinarily a situation like this would be a good proving ground for your inner survivalist; however this
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