To help with this, I have a couple books that are very detailed and show step by step how to process multiple types of game. My favorite one is Basic Butchering of Livestock & Game by John Mettler.  I also really like Deerskins Into Buckskins by Matt Richards, this book has excellent instructions on brain, soap and egg tanning.

To help me make sure I’m up to speed with processing animals, I’ve decided to do it from home for a while.  We just did a pig in our garage a few weeks ago and we’ve got two elk tags for this season.  I plan to process both of those here in the garage.  To get ready for that, I’ve been reading both these books.  I’ve also been watching instructional videos on Youtube.

The biggest issue I hear people mention about home processing is the amount of time and energy it takes to process.  I totally agree!  While watching videos on processing deer and elk, I came across these three videos which show the entire process being done VERY quickly and was quite impressed by them!

If you are squeamish at all about blood and guts – don’t watch these videos!  They show people skinning, gutting and cutting up deer – extremely quickly.  I wish I had this kind of skill!

Skinning and Gutting:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Skinning (a different method):

Click here to view the embedded video.

Deboning:

Click here to view the embedded video.

This book also stood out to me, because I often wonder *how* my family managed to get enough food to live.  My mom’s side of the family was that oft-discussed “hearty pioneer stock”.  However I have noticed that while many farmed to live, I have a long history of blacksmiths and military.  There is no hiding that this must be because I inherited a really lousy black-thumb, they took up other trades because of this family curse. I’m one of those people who has to work really hard to make part of his garden succeed.  I enjoy blaming my heritage on this, as it cannot be some failing of my own, right?  So I felt driven to read this book, and find out how they managed to live, despite my inability to grow enough of the right foods in the wasteland of Utah.

Quick Summary:

Audience: Frustrated gardeners, those looking for more season to grow, people who feel they need to change their gardening to be more useful.

Target Location: The author speaks heavily about his experiences in the mountain west/high desert regions (specifically Utah valley). Skills discussed will make farming there much easier, and everywhere else is just easy :)

Mormons Only? No, not even close. This is mentioned specifically because of the historical hardships they encountered when arriving in Utah, and attempting to farm in what was considered a barren land. The author relies on some old family journals for historical information to help understand why certain farming techniques work, and why we shouldnt’ have forgotten them.

The Full Review:

Forgotten Skills is an encouraging read, introducing people of the mountain west to the fact that they can grow food year-round, even in our crazy climate.  The author relies heavily on pioneer journals (mostly from his family) in order to reference specific practices for growing and preserving food that are completely foreign to most people today.  Granted, experienced readers of this blog might be familiar with many specific concepts, such as: non-hybrid seeds, canning, etc; the author goes into extra depth about how these practices were used to simply stay alive in not so distant years.  Beyond some more recently popular topics, there is great encouragement into practices that can be used by people with even small yards to produce and store food year-round by simply changing certain practices in your gardening.

This book in not designed however as a be-all reference. At only 145 pages, with many great photos, you wont’ find a book that teaches every single thing you need to be independent.  However it introduces a good number of important practices, provides basic reasoning as to why it was an important skill, and provides some modern usage examples. It makes sure you know enough about what the skill is, and gives you what you need to find more information if you want. Example: After a great discussion about seed hybridization practices, and their effects, he also spends time explaining how seed banks work and how you can participate in one to get useful seeds in your garden.

Major Topics:

Here is a list of some of the major topics covered that should get the interest of our readers:

• Seeds
• Extending the harvest
• Perennial food plants
• Trees
• Cellaring
• Long Keeping Foods
• Early Veggies
• Pioneer Yeast
• Modern Ideas the Pioneers Would Have Appreciated
• Eggs
• Chickens
• Forgotten Recipes

We will be selecting one winner at random from those who comment on the review post that will be published next week. Complete details on how to enter to win will be included in the review post.

In the meantime, check out this DVD preview.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I first heard about square foot gardening a few years ago from a friend who swore by it. Looking at his garden, I could see why: he had a bounty of chiles and tomatoes to make any salsa enthusiast drool. At the time, I was unaware that there was a book involved; I thought that it was only a fad. Turns out there’s a little more to it than that.

I picked up All New Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew last year towards the end of the growing season. After careful consideration, I have broken the emphasis of this book into four main points:

• They all said I was crazy.
• But I’m not crazy.
• You can be like me.
• Let me show you how!

This has been troubling for me, largely because these are the same main points found in various self-help books, most of which seem to be geared more towards selling books than helping the people that buy them. But in Mel’s defense, there does seem to be a logical reason for this.

Gardening and farming is steeped in millenia of tradition. Things have been done much the same way that they have always been done. The problem is that while technology advances, many gardeners cling to old, proven habits, unwilling to believe that something better could exist. And so when an efficiency expert shows them such improvements, he gets snubbed. The writing style in this book is clearly designed to convince people to give Mel’s methods a try, so that they can prove to themselves that it really does work.

As I read through this book, I considered the logic very carefully. The aforementioned bullet points were such red flags for me, I was certain I would find more. I have not. Once you get past the self-promotion and look at the actual details, square foot gardening seems pretty sound. The techniques seem well-thought out, and well-tested by the author. The biggest flaw, as far as I’m concerned, was that so much time was spent trying to convince the reader how much fun everything is, and how the rest of the world is crazy, but not the square foot gardener. It got annoying fast, and was the biggest reason why it took me so long to finish reading it.

Without spoiling the rest of the book for you, a few of the concepts described are:

• No More Tilling: Since you never walk on the soil that the plants grow in, it never gets compacted, and so needs no tilling.
• More Efficient Growing Area: Instructions on seed packets are designed with walking space in mind. The nature of the square foot garden changes the walkway rules, and allows for plants to be grown more closely together.
• Mel’s Mix: Even James Dyson doesn’t talk about his vacuum as much as Mel talks about this growing soil. But annoying as it is reading that over and over, it does seem like a decent mix. But I have yet to test it myself.

Once you cut out all the fluff, you are still left with valuable information. There are growing charts and detailed descriptions of common plants, and information on how to best grow them. There are building plans for the gardens, and for accessories for the gardens. Yesterday I threw out all of my old tomato cages from last year, in favor of the trellisses described in the book. Even if I did nothing else the book suggests, I will be using those.

If you are planning to put together a garden in your back yard, I highly recommend you pick up a copy of this book. I don’t know that you should follow every instruction to the letter, but you should at least consider it. I suspect that at the very least you will pick up some excellent tips, and perhaps you really will go all out and put together a square foot garden just like Mel says.

If you have toyed with the idea of a garden in the yard, but haven’t committed to anything yet, it is still worth a look. Go to the library and check it out, or find a friend who’s already bought a copy. Give it a read. You may not go with a full 4×4 garden, but maybe you’ll decide to put a 1×2 garden on your porch. But don’t expect it to win any writing awards. I suspect that if you took out all the fluff, the book would be somewhere around 25-50% smaller, but the remaining information does seem to be good. Give it a shot.

Square Foot Gardening Book

All New Square Foot Gardening Cookbook: Taking the Harvest to the Table

Square Foot Gardening Grids, Set of 2

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!

Patriots

For this review we are trying something a little different. Nearly all the authors on this site have read this novel, often in several editions so several of us will be offering our thoughts on this most recent edition.

Ekim

In certain groups, one of the most widely read books (#6 on Amazon’s overall book rankings at its release) is James Wesley Rawles “Patriots: A Novel of Survival in the Coming Collapse”.  Rawles’ long term interest in preparedness has become a way of life for him and offers him some unique insights into survivalism. Further, he is a former Army Intelligence officer and the author of one of the most popular survival blogs on the web, survivalblog.com. Most of the authors on our blog own and have read Patriots and highly recommend it. Until recently, I had not read it and didn’t think I needed to.

Some time ago I read the screenplay offered on Rawles’s web site and thought myself pretty well informed about the plot and information in Patriots. Since I thought I pretty much knew what the book was about it wasn’t high on my list of books to purchase and/or read, at least not while so many other wanted and needed preps still need to be completed. Fortunately, while visiting a neighbor recently I saw the book sitting on his bookshelf and took the opportunity to borrow it. After a few chapters I realized the story being told, while related, was very different from that of the screenplay. Amazon offers the book for a hair over $10 so I ordered a copy and returned my neighbor’s book as soon as I had received mine in the mail.

According to Amazon.com, Patriots is

Part novel, part survivalist-handbook, Patriots tells of a small group of friends facing every American’s worst nightmare—the total collapse of society. The stock market plummets and hyperinflation cripples commerce and then a seemingly isolated financial crisis passes the tipping point when an unprepared government fails to act. Practically overnight, the fragile institutions of democracy fall apart and every American is forced to survive on their own.

Evading mobs of desperate, out-of-control citizens who have turned Chicago into a wasteland of looting and mayhem, this novel’s protagonists make their way to a shared secure ranch in the wilds of northern Idaho. Here the survival-driven group fends off vicious attacks from the outside and eventually assists in restoring order to the country. The compelling, fast-paced action-adventure novel has readers jotting notes and referencing the book’s impressive index for informative survivalist tips on everything from setting up a secure shelter to treating traumatic flesh wounds.

Without giving any specifics of the plot away here are some of my thoughts on the novel.

Style

Rawles’s style may not be to everyone’s liking. While the overall story is excellent, Rawles delights in providing a detailed back story for each protagonist, often told as in the first person in a long and drawn out manner that borders on being tedious. Further, the story is also interrupted on a semi-frequent basis with in depth explanations of why the group or a character chose a particular piece of equipment. While this is informative it often detracts from what would otherwise be a fast paced, action packed yarn.

I don’t mean this as a criticism of the novel and I think this was a part of Rawles’s overall concept for the novel; Survival Encyclopedia masquerading as entertaining fiction. While Rawles may have garnered a wider audience and higher sales by removing this information, his intended audience for Patriots is immeasurably appreciative of its inclusion.

Information

Having informed you of the wealth of useful information in Patriots, I also feel I must warn you that most of the information on specific equipment and some procedures is a bit dated. I get the feeling that Patriots is a constant work in progress for Rawles that is currently in its 6th incarnation. This latest version was updated to include information on the recent Presidential election and bailouts along with a useful index. Left unedited though were some of the specific equipment that the protagonists use. For example, the specific computer equipment used by one of the characters is mentioned in quite some detail, but the equipment mentioned is no where near top of the line as implied, even by last year’s standards. Also, some of the radio equipment used by the group is long out of production. This is mentioned in the narrative for some specific equipment but not in others.

I think that the take away with regards to the specific equipment recommendations and especially the details on medical procedures and tactical exercises is that you should NEVER base your decisions on what you have read in ONE book or resource. Instead this and any other reference needs to be viewed as the just one stop in your search for information. Patriots is a great starting point for those without in depth prior professional experience with the many subjects broached within the story. But remember, true mastery will always require hands on experience.

While I am positive that Rawles would not condone it during a TEOTWAWKI scenario as described in the novel, someone out there may think that Patriots provides them with a field manual for addressing a gunshot wound in the absence of any other resource. That may seem far fetched but we use the resources we have when dealing with an emergency.

Summary

I found that Patriots was a very entertaining novel to read. More importantly it got me to thinking about some scenarios and preps that I hadn’t devoted much attention to in the past. It also spurred me to do some more research and seek out some specific and in some cases specialized training to allow me to feel more prepared for a number of scenarios that may someday cross my path.

If you haven’t read it yet, you can purchase your own copy through Amazon here: Patriots: A Novel of Survival in the Coming Collapse If you have read it and would like to offer a comment or your own review, we welcome your input.

Connor

I’m always on the look out for good preparedness-focused evangelizing material. I’ve found that doomsday-scenario novels are often a good method of opening a person’s eyes and getting them to think about the “what if”. The TV show Jericho has been a great method for me to encourage those who enjoy watching TV to think about what life would be like in a TEOTWAWKI setting.

Patriots has become one of the books that I recommend to others, due to the simple fact that it is so “meaty” in terms of information and survivalist action. That being said, the material is rather dense and so I currently recommend One Second After first; if the individual liked that book and is interested in more, then I feed them this book.

As has been said, Patriots is more like a manual than novel; you will want to read it with a pen and paper at your side to take notes and add items to your list of preps to buy. While the items discussed may not be pertinent to your situation or mesh well with your personal preferences, the sheer magnitude of items covered in the book will cause you to think of things you otherwise hadn’t. For the average prepper, it’s well worth the investment of time and money to gain valuable perspective on a host of circumstances we may one day be confronted with.

Jayce

For the person reading this book for the literary experience, I’m sorry, but you will be let down.  The book is a bit scattered in nature, with long aside’s exploring the depths of side characters you won’t see for a long time, if ever, again.  Details abound on what would seem to be inane details to most people, making the story a little harder to read for those simply looking for a good story.

What this provides though is a much more entertaining way to read about Rawles suggestions on several best practices.  Of course Patriots is a story of a “Worst Case” example (several actually) in the preparedness world, and shouldn’t be approached as a “This is exactly what people think will happen”.  Instead, the reader should read this first as a story, and take notes about the concerns that it raises in your mind, as to what you actually feel are valid things you should verify in your preparedness portfolio.  You should come out of this book with a nice list of “what if’s”, and at least one suggested solution to many of them.

One of my biggest gripes has been voiced before, and it is in the nature of the main characters.  All are successful individuals, none with children, who have an amazing amount of resources to dedicate to their preparations.  Many times while reading it I would comment along the lines of, “Try that with kids”.  The information was still extremely useful, and it did just serve to make me think more, but it would have been nice to have that angle in the story.  With that said, it does a great job of emphasizing the importance of preparations in the “hero’s” lives, and the difference that knowledge and physical items played in their success as compared to other people.

Phil

Patriots was one of my favorite reads in the last couple years, as Connor mentioned, it is meatier and heavier than One Second After and I now recommend One Second before Patriots as well (for prep mentality newbies).  The story line of Patriots is fantastic in that it provides a realistic scenario and then follows the journey of several small groups of people dealing with the scenario.  Eventually, most of the small groups meet up with everyone else and become a larger group.  They then go on to battle for Liberty and Freedom.

This book presents a lot of moral dilemmas – for instance, what do you do with those who have turned to cannibalism?  What do you do with those who rob, kill and destroy while taking advantage of the crisis situation?  What do you do with those who are starving and come by your way peacefully?  If you are starving, do you take things that you stumble across?  And so on.  Fortunately, being a Christian, I agree with most of the moral resolutions in the book – others may not.

As a survival manual, I made several pages of notes while reading Patriots and used them to incorporate into my preps as much as I could.  However, many of the things in this book demonstrate a level of preparedness that many of us cannot attain very easily.  For example, they had a nice cabin on a big ranch in Idaho.  They had retrofitted the cabin with steel doors and windows and fortified everything.  Right now, I can’t even afford to buy land with a cabin, much less to fortify it.  This book does a fantastic job of describing how a group of friends can/should ban together to help take care of each other.  Strength in numbers will be essential in a SHTF scenario and to accomplish that properly requires a lot of pre-planning.  The pre-planning is covered fairly well in this book and provides a lot of ideas.

In all, this book will likely help open your eyes to at least one area of preparedness that you haven’t yet considered. I strongly recommend it as both a good survivalist read and as a survival manual.  This is one of those books that you’ll want to read every couple years.

Patriots

James Wesley Rawles. Ulysses Press 2009, Paperback, 384 pages, $9.33

One Second After

Newt Gingrich (Foreword). Forge Books 2009, Hardcover, 352 pages, $13.99

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.

Some areas of interest from the book:

EMP Protection and Readiness

Connor has written a post about EMP protection via old microwaves and I’m now planning a future post that covers EMP in depth.  This book helps you realize just how devastating an EMP attack is – and how fairly easy and likely it is.  An EMP attack will knock out pretty much all power and all electronic devices – this includes cars with electronics – that are not adequately protected.  This effectively puts us about 500 years back in civilization – not only do we no longer have any modern advances but most modern day Americans don’t know how to live without them.  The vast majority of people have NO IDEA how to set up a system that will generate electricity, how to survive by gathering from the environment, or how to get water besides from their tap.

EMP is something that CAN be protected from, it’s just a matter of preparation.  There are definitely some things that would be very handy to have protected.  Finally, it was interesting to me that pretty much nobody in the book really realized at first what was happening.  I’ve been aware of EMP strikes for some time and would like to think I would have realized what was going on – but then, I’m a bit different from most people.

Community Survival

In the book they focus mostly on community survival.  It takes place in a town that is in the mountains – which does not apply to most people.  It was interesting to read how the town leadership came together and what they tried (or did not try) to do.  The book addresses the die off rates of those dependent on medications (after a month most people are out), overweight and out of shape, and old or infirm.  It talks a lot about the ethics and morality of triage in a community and dealing with determining who gets the remaining food.

Leadership

Who becomes a community leader in such a crisis?  In the book, much of the town control is turned over to the emergency coordinator (FEMA?) and the mayor takes second seat.  I’m not sure that we really elect our leaders based on how well they will respond to an emergency.  What I got out of the book in this sense is that the best solution may be to band with a smaller community, such as your neighborhood, and have the leaders be based on their experience and skills in surviving the situation.  Of course, that leader and group would fall under the purview of the town leaders but for some of us in bigger areas, town leadership has very little effect over us in such a situation.

Good Vs. Bad Communities

In the book they are basically in a “good” community – lead by people who actually believe in morals and values.  They are up against a “bad” community which is lead by fat-cat bureaucrats who are worried about their own survival over that of the community.  Additionally, the “good” community was concerned about the welfare of other communities and interested in banding together for the greater good while the “bad” communities saw the other communities as a place to dump citizens they didn’t want to support or as a protective shield.  This again leads me to the conclusion that localized leadership is important and cooperating with the town leadership as a smaller group could be a key to success.

Accessibility of Meat and other Rations

Areas were quickly hunted out in the book – and they lived in the mountains.  The book addresses the fact that most farming operations have been shunned out of existence in large community areas.  As a consequence of that, domesticated meat animals are in poor supply whereas in the outcast farming communities they are abundant.  However, supporting the large amount of animals would become impossible without constant deliveries of feed and would result in animals going to waste – a conundrum of our modern society.  Thinking about this has lead me to consider how to band together with the local farmers in my area (I live in one of those farming communities) and make plans for how to manage in a situation like this.

Epidemics

The book does a great job of hammering home the medical realities of a situation like this.  Huge amounts of people die off due to disease and infection.  Outsiders, especially those from other countries who were stranded at airports, bring in exotic diseases to which we have no pre-built defense and very few  drugs for.  Rampant death brings its own disease and exposure as well which can lead to problems.  On top of all this, general hygiene will be significantly different as people will likely rarely be able to bathe.

Roving Refugees

This is a big risk for smaller towns, especially rural communities.  As conditions will be exponetially worse in big cities as they are in small towns, refugees will be flooding out of the large cities and inevitably head towards small towns.  Dealing with an influx of refugees brings a great moral dilemna – do you allow your own community to suffer and greatly deplete the available food resources in order to keep the refugees allive?  Or do you forcibly control the refugee population and move them out without allowing them access to your food?

Immediate Need of Resource Gathering

The book points out many potential resources that are overlooked in the begining – the biggest being trucks on the road that are full of food – much of it perishable.  In an EMP type scenario, trucks will be littering the freeway and will either be raided by the population or will hopefully be harvested for rationing.  For preppers who are already stocked with most things need there isn’t as much immediate panic, but on day one supplies will be taken and hoarded – hopefully by those who will be wise and fair stewards of it.

Long Term Survival – Food Reproduction

The book covers everyone eventually tearing out their lawns and building “Victory Gardens”, they also cover stock management a bit.  The key takeaway here in my mind was that everyone needs to have a good stock of seeds and should already be planting a garden large enough to provide for themselves.  Many people will die in the time it takes for a harvest to roll around.

It is unfortunate that our society is so absorbed with “pretty”.  Lawns and decorative trees are a complete waste.  If all trees were fruit bearing, things would be drastically different in a TEOTWAWKI situation.  Lawns, while useful for certain activities are generally a waste of time, resources and space.  Imagine how well a TEOTWAWKI situation would go if everyone had gardens instead of lawns, fruit instead of decorative trees and a domestic meat animal or two and some egg laying chickens in their backyard.  Our pride, envy and self-absorbed obsession with pretty yards will likely ultimately be the death of us.

Clothing

This is another highly personal selection category.  The main thing to consider is that you have NO idea what type of situation you’re preparing for.  I suggest packing two separate crates for clothing.  The first should be  regular/warm weather clothes with the second containing winter clothes.  This way you won’t have to carry or dig through all the winter clothes unnecessarily.

Consider that during an evacuation you will likely be outside a lot, be doing much manual labor, could be schlepping through the woods, and may be doing industrial type cleanup.  You will want to have good sturdy clothes with you!  Also consider and prepare for different inclement weather.  It could be rainy, windy, sweltering hot, or freezing cold.

Also take your footwear into serious consideration.  You’ll need sturdy boots for clean-up and hiking and tennis shoes for around camp to give your feet a break from the boots.  You’ll also want to make sure you can keep your feet dry as much as possible.  I never met a camper who thought they had too many socks!

Cleaning Clothes

You’ll also want to make sure you have a method for washing out your clothes – especially if you end up outside a lot or doing disaster clean-up.  This is another area that you’ll want to pay careful attention to and make sure you Know Before You Go how to wash your clothes!  There are several techniques for doing this including using a scrub/washboard for cleaning hard dirt/stains, a plunger washer (plunger, 5 gallon bucket, water, laundry soap) for cleaning/rinsing and a clothes line and clothes pins for drying.

Bug Out and EDC Clothes

In a bug out situation, you can’t assume that you will have suitable clothes on when you bug out.  You should have at least 2, preferably more, changes of clothes in your BOB.  You’ll want to add and remove winter clothing considerations as the seasons change.  Gloves are always a critical component of a good BOB.

For EDC consideration, many serious preppers wouldn’t be caught wearing clothes that weren’t suitable for survival.  I personally only wear cargo or BDU style pants (in nice business dress colors), shirts which can conceal a firearm, sturdy boots and carry gloves and a beanie in my EDC bag.  Serious preppers are Ready for Anything Day in and Day out.  If this isn’t describing you, you may want to consider whether your accustomed daily attire is very fitting for an emergency situation and assess whether you want/need to make any changes.

Fuel

There are many, many techniques and tools for starting and maintaining fire – and to survive you MUST have this ability for heating yourself, cooking food and generating light.  I have been working on a post that covers many areas of fire starting, look for it soon.  Here, we will just briefly touch on several ways to start fire (create a flame) that you may include in your evacuation kit – remember, redundancy is your friend:

• BlastMatch
  or similar magnesium/flint combination
• Matches (waterproof)
• Lighter
• Magnifying Glass
• Steel Wool/9 volt battery

The type of fuel you pack in your Evacuation Kit will depend on what type of stove you have.  Make sure that you pack enough fuel to cook and heat for several days.  You may also be using battery powered light sources – if so you may consider stocking rechargeable batteries, a solar battery charger and solar panels.  We’ll have a post soon on this particular topic as well.

Fuel and EDC/BOB

Whereas in your Evacuation Kit you can pack a lot of fuel, your BOB and EDC kits will have much less to none.  For your Bug Out Bag, I suggest getting a compact backpacking stove and keeping the stove and one can of fuel in your BOB.  I also keep a Blast Match (pictured above), 2 lighters, matches and a flint/steel set in my BOB.

For EDC, I keep a BlastMatch and a lighter in my EDC Bag.  If you’re on the run with only your EDC and you need to cook or need heat, a fire is probably your best bet.  It would be wise to obtain the training and experience needed to be able to survive with just a fire.

Food Prep/Eating/Cleanup

I strongly recommend that you buy or build a good Chuck Box to keep all of your camping kitchen supplies in.  I will be following this series up with a full pictorial post and plans on how to build your own Chuck Box.  Not only does it serve to hold all your kitchen gear for your Evac Kit, but it helps keep it clean, organized and accessible.  Camping kitchen gear is famous for being lost, filthy or broken.

From experience, I suggest you pack more silverware and dishes than you think you need (not just one per person).  Make sure that you have a wash and a rinse basin along with sponges, a scouring pad and dish soap.   For you Evac Kit I would pack everything on our Master List for the kitchen.

BOB/EDC Food Preps

In your BOB you’ll want to pack a compact cooking set – the most important things are a pan to boil water in and a frying type pan.  With those two pans you can cook almost anything over a fire.  A wide metal plate, deep metal bowl, a metal mug and a spork type utensil are, in my experience, the best personal outdoor eating gear.  Mostly because they don’t take up much room, you can pack stuff inside them easily and when using them, you can put them over the fire to heat or boil their contents.  I keep a scouring pad with them as well for quick and easy cleaning.

For EDC, a spork and the previously mentioned Hydration Bladder and Straw Filter along with the assumed Pocket Knife will allow you to eat (it may not be the most convienent way to eat, but it’s convienent to carry).  Survival and Foraging skills will help you learn good methods for eathing without containers.

Books

The list has only a few books listed.  A proper emergency and survival book list would have to be it’s own never-ending list.  I’ve attempted to put some examples of categories of books that you might find useful in your Evacuation Kit, you’ll need to choose your favorites that you’ll want as both a reference and as reading material to pass potentially boring time.

I will say however that, if you’re religious, having your scriptures with you can help calm things and provide you with fine reading while you wait out the emergency.  I personally carry a very small set of scriptures in my EDC bag.

Personal Items

Some quick comments about this category:

• Toilet paper is something you really don’t want to be without.  Pack what you think you’re going to need, then add a roll or two.  Keep a roll in your BOB and at least some in your EDC.
• Tampons have their obvious uses, but they also make a great blood absorber.  If you’re in a situation where there’s a heavily bleeding wound, you can stuff a tampon in there to clot it off.
• Extra Glasses – if you missed it, here’s our post about getting quality, inexpensive glasses online.
• Contacts – if you wear contacts and if you don’t have a spare pair in your kit, make sure you put a spare contact case and some saline in there.  Chances are you’ll be wearing them when you bug out and will need to take them out.
• Hand Sanitizer – here’s our post on how to make your own hand sanitizer

Most of these items I keep in both my Evacuation Kit and my BOB, but other than TP, contact supplies, hand sanitizer and glasses, I don’t keep any of them in my EDC.

Basic Tool Kit

The tools listed will allow you to accomplish most of the common types of jobs you might run into in an evacuation.  I suggest putting together a toolbox that is specifically for your Evac Kit and loading it with tools NOT from your workbench, hopefully they’ll still be in there when it’s time to go.  Anything on the tool list that you feel you should take but don’t have doubles of, add to your “Don’t Forget List” and grab them on your way out. If you have a BOV, you can pre-load it with the hand tools like shovel and pick.

There are a few things on this list that make sense in a BOB and possibly in your EDC kit  – duct tape, Multitool, Hatchet, crow bar, wire cutters and a saw.  There may be others that make sense to you.  I keep duct tape in my EDC kit as well as a small crow bar.  I also have several of these tools in my Vehicle Kit.

Defense/Hunting

You may want some/none/all of the items in this category depending on your comfort levels and personal beliefs.  In an extended evacuation scenario, it may become necessary for you to provide food for you family by hunting.  It may also become necessary (witness New Orleans) to defend yourself from those who mean you harm.

Firearms

You’ll notice that the list includes all types of firearms: Rifles, shotguns and pistols.  If you don’t know much about guns but would like an introduction to what types of firearms you might need for different scenarios, you can read this Introduction to Firearms that I wrote a while ago.  Although you probably know what you’ll want to take (if you’re a gun owner), you may consider putting together a “Don’t Forget List” for firearms.  Be sure to grab as many magazines and ammunition as you feel you need and don’t forget your gun cleaning kit.

If you are inclined to prepare for a possible defensive situation, the other defensive items on this list will be useful for you.  I personally include my Battle Vest as part of my 72 Hour Kit and have it pre-packed so I can grab it on the run.

Click here for our next segment continuing the category review.  If you have anything to add about these categories, please do so in the comments!

The plane sunk from below their feet into the depths of the deep blue abyss. Three naval airmen now find themselves floating alone in endless waves and ocean expanse. This is a gripping true story of their grueling adventure adrift at sea for 34 days in a rubber raft not much bigger than a bathtub.

Preparedness lessons learned from this book include:

• No matter how bad it may get, it will never be as bad as these guys had it.
• Resourcefulness – From next to nothing to absolutely nothing, they made use of their resources of tools, supplies, knowledge and experience.
• Interesting study on the effects of dehydration and starvation.
• Sometimes miracles only happen once we’ve arrived at the limits of Hades.

I read this book recently as a bedtime story for my 9 and 6 year old boys. It’s a quick, easy read that mixes adventure with preparedness lessons. The Raft had enough suspense, adventure, guns, sharks, storms and peril to keep my kids’ attention and wanting for “just one more chapter” each night. My wife was even hooked in for the last half of the book and kept joining us nightly until the end.

Don’t expect to come away from this book with a list of, “I’m going to do this, and this and this” as practical examples from this book. Instead you’ll come away with a stronger conviction that no matter how bad it gets, if God wants me to survive, I’ll stay alive and thrive. This is a story of courage and the indomitable human spirit that we should all acquire so that we can thrive through any challenge that the future might hold.

This is one of those “can’t put it down” adventure books that pulls you in from the start and won’t let you go until you reach The End. To read the first few chapters or pages online so that you can get hooked, go to Google Books ». And of course it’s available via Amazon: The Raft

So, I thought I would start a new book review feature where I would recommend a good book on prepping and discuss it quickly. I’ll also talk about what I’m currently reading and fill you in on what I’m planning to read next.

First, I’d like to introduce you to my prep bookshelf so we have a decent visual to work with here:

Top Shelf: (Left) Military Survival and Training Manuals and Boy Scout Manuals (Right) Several Cookbooks, especially wheat and bread

Second Shelf: Mostly gardening, some livestock

Third Shelf: The tall books, lots of livestock, gardening, tools, etc. Several Pioneer Skills Encyclopedias

Fourth Shelf: More Livestock, other general survival manuals

There are a lot of books not currently on the bookshelf that should be – each shelf is usually full. Most of the missing books are either on my desk, in my room, or one of my kids is reading it :)

If you’re interested in Military manuals, one of the easiest places to find them is in Military Surplus stores like Uncle Sam’s in Orem. These are great instructor based manuals that provide excellent information on topics that are difficult to get experience in – like Sniping methods and tactics.

I have a lot of livestock books – Cows, Horses, Chickens, Goats, Rabbits, Sheep, etc. A lot of times these books focus on a particular area like Raising, Breeding, Training, etc. If you’re looking for one, make sure it covers the area you’re interested in. I buy up every Country/Pioneer Skills book I find. There are several encyclopedia type books out there on country skills that are excellent.

I have a lot of Gardening books as well – different ones focus on fruits, vegetables and herbs. I constantly find them useful as references. I also have several books that cover skilled work like electrical wiring, plumbing, etc. Several on ‘shop’ methods and wood working as well.

My bookshelf isn’t just for books on things I consider myself a quasi-expert in, it also has many books that I think will be most useful in a TEOTWAWKI situation – ones that will provide answers to questions we haven’t needed or thought to ask yet.

Right now I’m starting a book called Rising Storm by Jessica Draper. It’s about end of days and the opening of the Seventh Seal – my father recommended it and said he really enjoyed it. I’ll be reporting on that soon, in the mean time I’ll start putting up some review of other books.

Do you have any book recommendations for me or others? Do you have a collection of prep books, what is your favorite? Let us know in the comments.