This post is an advertisement for a new business that I am building.  If you’re interested in Survival Training, especially Urban Survival, please read through this and see if you’re interested. The goal of my new company is to work with Survival Schools and Survival Experts to provide new ways for top-notch expert training to get to those of us who can’t quite afford the premium prices. I welcome any feedback on this idea/business plan as well.
As a bonus to our Prepper Network readers and friends, use the code “prepper” to get 10% off the class!
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18 FEB 2010
INFORMATION MEMORANDUM
FOR IMMEDIATE DISTRIBUTION – TIME SENSITIVE
SPECIAL NOTICE FROM THE SURVIVAL TRAINING CENTER (WWW.SURVIVALTRAININGCENTER.COM)
DISTRIBUTION LIMITED TO STUDS, SPECIALISTS AND A SELECT FEW INSANE DUDES
CLASS DATES: 25 FEB 2010 – 27 FEB 2010
(more…)

Coupon Code: prepxmas
How are your Sanitation Preps? Do you have a bucket toilet lid sitting around? Or one of those portable toilets? That’s what I had until recently. A few weeks ago I learned about a set of sanitation products that, when used together, provide preppers with a toilet solution that equals no mess, low smell and biodegrades all your waste for you! Through a set of fortuitous events, I was in a position to arrange a group buy of 25% off all of their products and offer it to all preppers for Christmas.
Their system is called the GottaGo Toilet system. It’s basically a cardboard disposable (after about 100 uses) emergency toilet that uses biodegradable bags and a microbial sand. Once you’ve filled up a bag you can dig a hole and bury the bag – yes, bury it – within 30 – 90 days it will be completely broken down. You can also burn your toilet once you’re done with it. Basically you can go on a family campout and have everyone use this toilet system and not have to carry any of it home to dispose of it. (more…)
Everyone knows times are not good and although we’re told they’re getting better – they clearly seem to be getting worse. I’ve recently had an experience that has severely highlighted financial preparedness for me, I’d like to share the lessons I’ve learned in the hope that others can avoid my current situation – allow me to give you some background:
The company I’ve been working for was financially stable – strong even – several months ago. We weren’t worried about the economic crunch and were certain we’d move through it. My wife and I had a financial reserve that we were actively growing, but not aggressively. Certainly not as aggressively as we could have been. In fact, we had become fairly complacent in adding to it. While our long term food storage was fully stocked, we live off our 3 month supply and rotate through it – replenishing monthly or so.
Last night a few prepper friends and I went to the midnight opening show of the new survival/TEOTWAWKI movie 2012. I wasn’t sure what to expect as I had already heard that they had blown it or that it was really bad. But I figured even a bad movie can be enjoyed (through mocking) if you’ve got a group of friends with you!
2012 really has very little to do with survival. You won’t walk out of it with ideas or inspiration of things to add to your preps. In fact, the scenario that the movie presents is pretty much total un-survivable destruction regardless of who or where you are. It is however a bit about surviving based on your wits with 20 gallons of luck!

Dried corn ready to be parched
Corn – You can boil it, toast it, roast it, parch it, eat it raw, grill it, steam it, stew it, cream it, grind it, feed humans or animals with it. Â You can eat it fresh, freeze it, can it, Â dry it, drink it or burn it in your vehicle. Â It’s a diverse food that can serve a prepper well if they know what to do with it.
Parched corn was eaten regularly by American Indians warriors and hunters as an extremely lightweight, high energy trail food long before European explorers showed up and was a typical food or treat for the pioneers as well. Â It is the original “trail snack” and can also be ground up for stews or soups.
A couple days ago we inadvertently advertised that it was Book Bomb day for Rawles new book How to survive the End of the Word as We Know it.  It is actually today .  Sorry about that – we got some wires crossed!
James Wesley Rawles, Author of the renowned survivalblog, as well as the novel Patriots (which we reviewed here before) has a new book coming out shortly. It’s been available for pre-order for a little bit now, but everybody was requested to wait until today (9/25/09) to actually place pre-orders. This makes a big difference to companies such as amazon, which use the purchase velocity in their rankings.
From JWR today:
Today is “Book Bomb” Day for my new book, “How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It: Tactics, Techniques, and Technologies for Uncertain Times”. My goal for the Book Bomb is a surge of orders is that will drive the book’s Amazon sales rank into the top 50, overall. (When I last checked, it was at #160.) Many thanks for waiting to order until today!!
Here’s a link to order How to survive the End of the Word as We Know it from Amazon – order today and help show that Prepping is cool!
I’m writing this in response to a blog post by a liberal blogger that appears to live in Oregon and calls Barney Frank her hero!
She recently blogged that:
“Preppers Scare the Crap Out of Me”
In a post which is loaded with prejudice, falsehoods, slander and other good stuff.   I’m writing this response for a couple reasons.  First, to try to explore the thoughts and mindset of those who are dead-set against being prepared for hard times.  Second, to look at some of the falsehoods presented in her post.  Third, to rant a bit about crazy people who believe that everything is peachy in the world.

The Bug Out Vehicle (BOV) is an essential part of every preppers inventory. Â It is the means by which, should we find ourselves in a SHTF scenario, you will get you and your family to safety. Â It should be able to not only provide reliable transportation for the family, but to haul all the gear you plan to take with you. Â Alternatively it can also provide shelter, depending on your needs and how you see yourself bugging out.

“When Thunder Roars, Go Indoors!”
National Lightning Safety Awareness Week 21-27 June 2009
This week is National Lightning Safety week so let’s take a few minutes to talk about lightning and how it affects preppers. There isn’t much you can do to prep for lightning to hit you, if that happens you better be right with God. But what about lightning hitting near you – your home, your neighborhood, etc. The biggest impact of a lightning strike for us is usually the power being out. It turns out that there are plenty of things you can do to try to encourage lightning to not hit you.
There are an estimated 25 million cloud-to-ground lightning flashes each year in the U.S.  So far in 2009, there have been 15 fatalities due to lightning. On average, there are 400 people hit by lightning each year, resulting in about 80 deaths.
I’ve just finished reading One Second After
by William R. Forstchen – I received it two days ago – I couldn’t put it down. This is an excellent book that I fully recommend every Survivalist/Prepper/Anyone Else read. Seriously, this book is one of those that will help to open people’s eyes to just how fragile we are and just how stinkin’ hard it is going to be to survive TEOTWAWKI.
The book is based on an EMP event and most of the things in it are pretty close to all the research I’ve seen on EMPs. The survival story is quite well researched and explored as well. The book covers the time period from when an EMP event occurs to one year later and includes several of the same type of survival scenarios we read in Patriots. The great thing about this book is that it makes you think broadly about survival and just how prepared you really are for it. Reading it made me think of some areas where I can improve my preps but also made me feel that I was well prepared in several areas. The saddest part of this book is the realization of just how bad it will be for the wholly unprepared, which is a large majority of our population.
This is the seventh installment of the Evacuation Preparedness Kit Series. The first post, on Evac Prep Basics is here, and the second post, which introduces the Evac Prep Master List is here. The third post, and the first post on the list review is here. This post will cover Combat Readiness.
Contrary to the belief of some, being a Prepper is NOT synonymous with being well armed and ready to protect yourself and your preps in a violent situation. However, this article is specifically about being prepared to defend yourself, your family and your preps if it comes down to it.
History shows us that when things go bad we can expect riots, looters, roving gangs of marauders and plenty of random acts of armed violence. We have witnessed this just this week with the riots in Iran that ended in violence. Or we can look at the looting during Hurricane Katrina, rioting and looting during the L.A. Rodney King riots, the French riots (pictured above) and several others.

This is the sixth installment of the Evacuation Preparedness Kit Series. The first post, on Evac Prep Basics is here, and the second post, which introduces the Evac Prep Master List is here. The third post, and the first post on the list review is here. This post will cover 72 Hour Kit management.
It seems that every time I inventory my preps I find things that are missing. It’s usually something like that one time when my wife needed to send a couple water bottles to school and the easiest thing to grab was a couple out of a 72 Hour Kit, then we forgot to replace it. Or you needed some batteries, or a flashlight, or whatever. When something can’t be found, it’s hard to not say “Oh, there’s one in the preps somewhere”.  Every time it happens there is always good intent to replace the removed item right away – and invariably it is forgotten about.