Notes from Peter Schiff Speaking in Utah

Last night, Peter Schiff spoke to an audience of about 250 people here in Utah.  The event was put on by the local Campaign For Liberty.  As always, he had some extremely interesting things to say and I was very glad I was able to go listen to him, it was a very informative night.

I took notes the entire time – he spoke for over 2 hours – and tried to get down the things I thought were important, educational and/or revelatory as quickly and as accurately as I could.  For this post, I’m going to basically paste in my notes and add some contextual commentary to some of them. Continue reading “Notes from Peter Schiff Speaking in Utah”

The 5-gun challenge

FPS by Zweroboi, on Flickr

A theme that is seeing increased activity on many of our friends blogs is that of the 5-gun challenge. What does that mean? Well it’s a way of answering the common question of “What gun should I buy?”  Chances are you’re one of two types of readers at this point; either you are already familiar with firearms, and you will want to read this simply to debate the opinions. Or, you are to some degree unfamiliar with firearms and will hopefully find this post very informative.

If you’ve ever been in a conversation with a firearms enthusiast, you’ll know that each person has their own strong opinions, so it’s always nice to get everybody’s input and reasoning behind their decisions.  This being a multi-author blog, this post will allow several of our authors to explain their choices for 5 guns, and give their reasoning behind each.  Please check out each page to get the full list of recommendations.

Continue reading “The 5-gun challenge”

Book Review: What’s Wrong With My Plant?

The other day I picked up a new gardening book from the hardware store. Its cover wasn’t cluttered with photographs like so many other gardening and home improvement books; in fact, the only photo on the cover was of an obviously-distressed leaf. The rest of the cover was largely devoted to the full title of the book: What’s Wrong With My Plant? (And How Do I Fix It?): A Visual Guide to Easy Diagnosis and Organic Remedies, by David Deardorff and Kathryn Wadsworth. This was actually the first thing that caught my eye. I don’t like when books try to glam themselves up in an attempt to conceal the vapid content inside. This book looked like it was ready to get down to business, and so I picked it up and started leafing through it. It didn’t take me long to decide to buy it. Continue reading “Book Review: What’s Wrong With My Plant?”

Feeling the Shakes? Here’s a Brief Earthquake Review

In the past few days, there have been a few earthquakes just west of Lehi. As this page shows, we’ve had three small earthquakes (2.5-2.8) in the past three days. Events such as these provide us a great reminder of the need to be prepared. If the earthquake were much larger, would you know what to do? What immediate action should you take?

The following is some information which may prove useful for your review, in preparing for a future earthquake that affects us at a substantial level.

First, as a summary of the situation here in Utah living along the Wasatch Fault, this 10 minute video by the Utah Geological Survey is a great starting point.

One question you might have is whether this succession of small earthquakes is indicative of a larger one in the near future. Here’s one answer on that:

Continue reading “Feeling the Shakes? Here’s a Brief Earthquake Review”

Starting a Fire with Steel Wool

Continuing my Heat and Light Series, today we’re going to look at an alternative way to start a fire – with Steel Wool and Batteries.  Like I’ve said in previous posts in this series, this is probably something that every old Boy Scout and every long time Prepper already knows.  The point of this series is to get back to basics and cover things that new Preppers will need to get up to speed on – and to remind some of you about the skills and knowledge you have that you may have forgotten.  :) Continue reading “Starting a Fire with Steel Wool”

Bee Keeping Classes in Utah County, Early 2011

Beginning Beekeeper’s Class

Bee Keeping is fun and relatively inexpensive.

Maple Mountain Bee Company is hosting another round of bee keeping classes over the next couple months. As you may recall, Bryan Esquivel of Maple Mountain Bees authored a guest post for us in the past about how he got started in bee keeping. You can find the article here.

These are free classes, held in Bryan’s home. If you have any questions on the schedule, please contact Bryan using the contact information below.

Continue reading “Bee Keeping Classes in Utah County, Early 2011”

Hypothermia – Signs and Symptoms and Treatment

More about Winter Vehicle Preparedness Info.

To With more than half the country being inundated by massive snow and ice storms and much of the rest of the country having below freezing temperatures, people are at a very high risk for Hypothermia.  Knowing what Hypothermia is and how to treat it not only prepares you to help yourself but most importantly, to help others.  I’ve consulted several resources to try to put together a very comprehensive overview of Hypothermia.  Those resources include the Mayo Clinic, my EMT Training Manuals, the CDC Guidelines for Hypothermia and the State of Alaska Cold Injuries Guidelines (Alaska knows more about Hypothermia than anybody, their standards are what we use here for Search and Rescue). Continue reading “Hypothermia – Signs and Symptoms and Treatment”

How to Make an Emergency Stove from Common Materials

The next installment in our Heat and Light series is Making a simple Emergency Stove from Household Materials.  This stove is capable of boiling water in less than 10 minutes and is very easy to use and re-use.  The materials required to make it can commonly be found in the home and should be stored in your preps.  Required are: Paraffin Wax, cardboard and a couple tin cans. Continue reading “How to Make an Emergency Stove from Common Materials”