15 Reasons You Should Stockpile Honey

Honey is another great staple to store for survival and emergency planning. There are 15 uses for honey:

1. Skin moisturizer
2. Antiseptic
3. Acne Removal
4. Energy Booster
5. Immune System Booster
6. Enhances Vitamin A
7. Improves Blood Flow
8. Helps Sore Throats
9. Colon Damage Prevention
10. Parasite Remover
11. Burn Remedy
12. Antibacterial Solution
13. Relaxant
14. Helps prevent Cancer and Heart Disease
15. Treat Diabetic Ulcers

Read more details on 15 Uses for Honey and find out how to use it for each of the 15 suggestions above. Mix it with other ingredients, drink it, lather it on your skin -- find out how to use it in this article.

Weapons: Defending your Home, Food & Family with Light Carbine or Rifle

As promised in my last blog post on defending your home, food and family, here's #2 of my suggestions for your must-have weapons.

A light carbine or rifle

SKS

There are hundreds of firearms in this category and many of them are excellent. So I will simply tell you what I like and you can make up your own mind.

The SKS. If money is hard to come by and for a lot of us it is then you can't beat the SKS. It's not the best rifle in the world but you can get one for around $100 bucks. That's an incredible price for a good solid rifle. And it has the added benefit of the availability of cheap ammo. You can get crates of the stuff for a few hundred bucks.

VZ58

The VZ58. I am a big fan of the VZ58. It's a great rifle and you can get one at a great price. There are a few different models and I won't go into that here but you should be able to pick up one for $500 to $800. It's a much better rifle than the SKS but as it fires the same ammo so you can afford lots of it. 

One other thing to point out about the VZ and the SKS is how tough they are. They are old school weapons made from steel and wood. They can take a lot of abuse and keep on going.

Beretta CX4 Storm

Beretta CX4 Storm. 

Now this little gun is totally different from the SKS and VZ. It's a modern design made with a lot of plastic parts and it fires pistol ammo. But I really like mine. It's light and handy with no recoil to speak of and it would be a fantastic weapon for defending your apartment or suburban house. The pistol caliber ammo is also suitable for hunting small game like rabbits and you could drop a dear or other large animal if you had to. Not that I would recommend it for large animals. 

One drawback is that it is an expensive little gun. At around $1000 to $1200 it's not something everyone can afford. But it's a great little gun.  Another nice feature worth mentioning is that if you are a fan of Beretta pistols you can get one that takes the same mags as the Storm. That can be really handy.

AR 15

The AR 15 family of firearms. A person could write an entire book on the AR 15.  All I will say is that it is an excellent firearm. It has lower recoil and is more accurate than the SKS and VZ58. On the down side it's a little more prone to breaking and it's requires a bit more maintenance. The ammunition is more expensive but it's available just about everywhere. It is also more expensive at around $1000 to $1200.

As I said before there are lots of great carbines and rifles. The AK 47 family. The FN FAL family. The Ruger Mini 14. The M14 family of rifles. The list goes on forever. I am actually a big fan of my M1 carbine and would have listed it but for the fact that the .30 carbine ammo is getting a little harder to find.

Next up will be #3 - the handgun

Weapons for Defence: 12 Gauge Pump Action Shotgun

As promised in my last blog post on defending your home, food and family, here's the start of my suggestions for your must-have weapons.

The 12 gauge pump action shotgun

Probably the most versatile and effective weapon ever invented. The 12 gauge pump can do more jobs than any other firearm. With a simple switch of the shells you load into it the shotgun can go from a bird or rabbit hunting gun to a devastating buck shot or slug gun. In fact the only thing a shotgun can't do is long-range shooting. 100 yards is about the most any of us can get out of a smooth bore shotgun. However In 99% of situations 100 yards is more than adequate to get the job done.

Another advantage of the 12 gauge shotgun is the availability of the ammunition. You can get it everywhere. Almost every farmer has a 12 gauge and a box or two of shells and if the store sells ammo you can bet they have shells. The 12 gauge can be a little bit hard on the shoulder if you are not experienced with it so you will have to practice with it. You can't just purchase one and stick it in your closet and expect to be proficient with it. But with a few hours practice you will be amazed at how good you can get.

Stay tuned for #2 - the light carbine or rifle

Defending Your Family, Food and Property in an Emergency Situation

Weapons. It's a sad fact of life that we sometimes need to resort to violence to protect ourselves and our property. With this fact in mind you need to think about having weapons to defend your perimeter from intruders. The most effective weapons are of course firearms but for those of you who can't get or don't want a firearm think about what else you can have on hand to defend yourself with. Things like.....

A baseball bat. A sword. A bow and arrow or crossbow. A flare gun. An axe. A big knife. A simple flame thrower ( I can show you how to make a simple one in just a few minutes ) Use your brains and imagination.

Firearms are the best weapons of course and I recommend that every one who is serious about survival should have at least one. What kind of firearm you choose to get is up to you. Everyone will tell you something different when it comes to what gun is best.

For now let me share with you the three most important types of firearms you should have in your arsenal:

1. The 12 gauge pump action shotgun
2. A light carbine or rifle
3. A handgun

I will explain each of these weapon choices in detail (pros and cons) in my next blog post, and I'll post photos so you can see what I'm talking about

Defending What You Have in an Emergency Situation

Defending what you have

So you are going to a lot of work to make sure you have all the supplies you need to weather the coming storm. Now it's time to start thinking about how you will defend what you have.

No one can tell you how to defend your place as only you know your unique circumstances. But there are a few general things that everyone needs to think about.

A Strong Defensive Perimeter

You need a strong perimeter. No matter how big or how small your perimeter is you must make it as secure as possible. Now perhaps your perimeter is only the walls of your apartment. Maybe it's the walls or yard of your home in suburbia. Or it's the fence around your 100 acres in the country.
The principle is still the same. You want to make it as secure as you possibly can to keep the bad guys out and you and your stuff safe.

Secure Doors & Windows

With that in mind start thinking about what you can do to strengthen your perimeter now and what you can do when the Zombies hit the fan. Look at your doors. Look at your windows. Look at your fence. What can you do to secure them. Extra locks? Bars on the windows? Some barbwire on your fence.

What can you have on hand to make them even more secure in an emergency? Big chains and padlocks? Heavy furniture pushed up against the doors and windows? Plywood to nail over the windows? Boards with nails in them to slow down attackers? There are hundreds of things you can do.

Do What You Can NOW, Not After the Crisis Hits

But you must start to plan it now. You won't be able to run to the store and get what you need in the middle of a disaster. And you may be too stressed out to think as clearly about what you need to do during a disaster.

And don't forget, you are planning what you can quickly do to strengthen your perimeter until you can fortify your dwelling even more or better. This is your Quick Plan for Defense.

Make Your Emergency Defense Plan

So make your plan and discuss it with others who will be there with you. Make sure everyone knows exactly what their job is to secure your shelter and your food stores.

We'll talk about weapons in my next blog post.

Making a Manual Pump for a Drilled Well for Water

 Do you know what this is? It's an essential part of our essential survival preparation.

We have a drilled well, so in any non-power emergency, we won't have running water. It would take a very long time to try to lower a tiny container and draw water up so I'll be building a manual pump.

I'll also have what I need on hand to build more than one in case one breaks.

We plan on 3 months at our home but if a crisis lasts longer or looks like it's long term from Day One, we have a GOOD plan (GOOD=Get Out of Dodge) and won't need a manual pump for a well.

Since you need to Prepare for the Worst and have multiple backup plans, that's exactly what we have.

This is part of our short-term (3 months or less) Survival Plan.

Planning Meals During an Emergency Survival Situation

So you've started stockpiling food - grains, beans, water, salt and other items. But have you planned meals? It doesn't do much good to simply store foods when you don't have a plan for cooking and eating.

What if I store lots of flour but then realized that i haven't thought much about what to do with that flour. I've got beans but nothing to put with them. Or I've got a food item that I could cook with electricity but it never occurred to me to figure out how or if I could cook it during a crisis when power may be out. What if I want to make tortillas and suddenly realize I haven't got an ingredient I need.

That's why we have a meal plan. My wife has planned meals for every day of the aftermath of any catastrophic incident (flood, earthquake, viral outbreak, EMP, tornado, ice storms, economic collapse, etc)

Planning what we will eat every day for breakfast, lunch, supper and snacks allows us to buy exactly what we need to prepare those meals. Here is my wife's plan, but the quantities will vary depending how many of our community make it to our agreed-on safety place, and how much food we have managed to store there ahead of time.

The list below has quantities for one adult assuming we are rationing food, and that most of our canned goods are gone. It is our basic meal plan which we hope to supplement either with larger quantities or other nutritious foods:

Our Basic Weekly Meals

Breakfast: 1 c. oatmeal, 1/2 tsp. honey, 1 slice irish soda bread, 1 cup of tea or coffee
Snack: 1 c. corn mush, 1/2 tsp. honey
Lunch: 1 cup soup broth with pasta and some dehydrated vegetables or fresh vegetables if available, 1 cornmeal dumpling
Snack: 1 c. corn mush, 1/2 tsp honey, 1 cup pine needle tea
Supper: 1 c. beans, 1 c. rice, 3 tortillas

This provides approximately 2300 calories per person per day. My wife is in charge of making sure we all purchase enough of each ingredient to make these foods.

Pine Needle tea will be available throughout each day in unlimited quantities as it prevents scurvy and is an excellent source of Vitamin C.

We also have planned special meals and treats. This will provide some variety in tastes and also be a small morale booster. It is important to plan and store such food items.

Our Special Meals:
1 night each week will be Kraft Dinner. We buy it on sale when it's 33cents per box.
1 night each month will be tuna with pasta for a tuna casserole (while our cans of tuna last)
1 night each month will be rice cooked in broth (a flavoured bouillon cube) with some of the dried vegetables my wife has been making with her dehydrator
1 night each week there will be a dessert of some kind

Friday night special: this will be a shot of liquor for each adult and chocolate milk for the children (using powdered milk)

Sunday afternoon will incorporate a short break time with one candy per person and some games or reading time.

Depending on the time of year we hope to be able to add apples from trees, rhubarb, fruit from wild bushes and vegetables from the gardens to supplement our diet.

We will also add foods found in the wild and any animals we can hunt or fish we can catch. And of course we have to have a method of cooking these foods for a large group. I'll talk more about that in another blog post.

Record Heat Wave Affects Millions Without Power

It's been a week of record high temperatures in much of N. America. Millions are without power after storms knocked out power from Georgia to Missouri to New York.

Imagine yourself in this situation. Power is out and doesn't look like it's going to be restored for a week or more. Are you prepared? Can you manage and be self-sufficient during this time? Or will you be one of those who has to go to a community shelter and depend on handouts?

If you're new to thinking about being prepared, or if you've been a prepper for awhile but want more tips and suggestions for food storage, defense, bug-out plans, bug-out bags,  food preparation during a survival situation, please read our articles on Zombie Apocalypse Survivor Blog.  Topics are on the right.

Don't be someone who has to sleep in a crowded shelter because you haven't got a survival plan or any food stored.