How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It

by James Wesley, Rawles

  Clear vinyl bags (often marked “V” or with recycle code “3”) are almost always food grade. Low-density polyethylene (LDPE or recycle code “4”) in film form—typically used in grocery bags and trash bags—is usually food grade, but some varieties have strange additives or coatings. To be sure, see the manufacturer’s packaging for details. If the package is marked “FDA approved,” “USDA approved,” or “food safe,” then the bags are food grade. Most Mylar is food grade, but, again, beware of odd coatings. Most Mylar bucket liners—such as those sold by Nitro-Pak—are food grade. The latter is my top choice for extending the longevity of stored grains and legumes.

  Next, place a small chunk of dry ice on top of the grain, inside the liner bag. I usually use a piece that is about as big as my thumb. As the dry ice “melts” (sublimates) it will fill the bucket with CO2, displacing the oxygen. (Insects can’t breathe CO 2! ) Keep a watchful eye on the dry ice. Once it has sublimated to the diameter of a nickel and not any thicker than one eighth of an inch, seal the bag with a wire twist tie. On top of the sealed bag, place a two-ounce bag of silica-gel desiccant (also available from from Nitro-Pak). Then immediately seal the bucket, securing the lid with firm strikes from a rubber mallet. This will seat the lid and compress the O-ring.

  WARNING: If you don’t wait until the dry ice has almost completely sublimated before you seal the bucket, then dangerous pressure could develop and you will have a “dry-ice bomb” on your hands. You must wait until the dry-ice chunk has sublimated to the diameter of a nickel no thicker than one eighth of an inch.

  Once you open each bucket of storage food, you will probably want to replace the standard “pound-on” lid with a Gamma Seal lid. The end result: Very dry food in a sealed, oxygen-free environment, safe from mice. This method will triple or quadruple the shelf life of rice and beans, and make whole-grain wheat last literally for decades.

  Home Canning

  This is a subject that would take a book to explain in detail, but a couple of good references will suffice: The first is The Encyclopedia of Country Living, by Carla Emery, published by Sasquatch Books. Be sure to get the ninth or later edition.

  The second book on canning that I recommend is Keeping the Harvest, by Nancy Chioffi and Gretchen Mead, from Storey Publishing.

  Learning to Cook and Bake with Your Storage Food

  One oft-overlooked aspect of food storage is how to cook and bake with the foods that you’ve stored. Three books on this subject that I strongly recommend buying are: Cookin’ with Home Storage, by Vicki Tate, Making the Best of Basics by James Talmage Stevens, and The Encyclopedia of Country Living.

  Family Food Security Against Confiscation and Theft

  I’m sometimes asked about the risk of government confiscation of storage food and supplies by executive order or under martial law. There is a slim but nonetheless real threat of storage-food confiscation in the United States. It is one of the many reasons why I emphasize operational security (OPSEC). If you are concerned about the prospect of martial law, then I recommend that you buy the majority of your storage food with cash, without generating a paper trail. You should pick it up in person. There are several food-storage vendors advertising on SurvivalBlog who are located throughout the country. Many of these are mom-and-pop operations that will make cash sales. With these small vendors, you don’t even need to mention your name.

  While keeping circumspect is important, don’t become so preoccupied with secrecy that you cease being charitable. The two goals need not be mutually exclusive. You can maintain OPSEC if you dispense charity through your local church. My advice: Give, and give generously (both now and in turbulent times), but be prepared to give from arm’s length. I recommend that you make arrangements in advance for your church elders to act as intermediaries for post-WTSHTF charity. Be sure to get their promise to maintain your anonymity.

  Concealing Storage Food

  Several of my consulting clients have asked me about concealing storage food from burglars, in unoccupied retreat homes. Some of them have asked if I suggest burying food. I do not recommend burying food unless you buy very heavy-duty containers with watertight seals. There is too much risk of moisture intrusion or destruction by vermin.

  Here are a few alternative solutions for hiding modest quantities of food that I can recommend, only one of which requires the assistance of an amateur carpenter:

  • Buy a used queen-size “hide-a-bed” couch. Remove and discard the entire bed frame internals and mattress. Build a framework of two-by-twos and cut a piece of three-quarter-inch plywood to support the seat cushions.

  • Hide a single row of canned foods (small cans, such as soup and tuna cans) behind books on bookshelves.

  • Buy a few used four-drawer vertical file cabinets. Burglars usually bypass these. Put innocuous-sounding labels in the label holders in bold printing, such as “2007 Tax Records” and “2005 Invoices.” If you pack them efficiently, file cabinets can hold a remarkable quantity of canned goods and retort-packaged bricks. They are also mouse-proof if you place them on a smooth and level floor.

  • One outdoor solution is to find a used, out-of-commission chest freezer. Cut off the power cord. Cover any internal vents with sheet metal. Paint the exterior with flat brown enamel spray paint. Cut or buy a cord of firewood and stack it around and on top of the chest freezer. The same technique can be used if you have a hay barn—use either hay or straw bales. Or you could buy a few hundred used bricks and make it look like a pile of used bricks. And you would of course paint the chest freezer in flat green, flat tan, or flat brick red, respectively.

  • Another outdoor solution is to buy an older, used pop-up camping trailer. For some reason, burglars tend to ignore these, whereas they will often break in to traditional hard-wall camping trailers. Pop-up trailers have a remarkable amount of room inside, especially if you remove the seat cushions and mattress pads. If you pay very little for the trailer, you can even go whole hog and rip out the interior cabinets, sink, etc.

  • If you have a basement or storage room, you can also use hide-in-plain-sight (HIPS) techniques. One of my favorites is to obtain a lot of used, sturdy cardboard boxes with slip-top lids—such as the type used to ship reams of copier paper. Label them in prominent Magic Marker with things like “Baby Clothes,” “Infant Toys,” “National Geographic Magazines,” and so forth. Fill those boxes with your storage foods (in vermin-proof containers). Pile all of those boxes up against a wall. Then add a layer of camouflage boxes, containing actual worthless junk. If a burglar opens one of these, he will most likely not dig down to the successive layers of boxes.

  ~ Use your imagination. Craigslist (craigslist.com) and Freecycle (freecycle.org) can probably provide you all the storage containers and camouflage items that you need, for very little money. Many of the items that you’ll need can be found “free for the hauling.”

  When planning your concealment strategies, keep in mind that a burglar is a man in a hurry. In most cases, he won’t take the time to go through everything.

  The Best Way to Stock Up on Food at the Eleventh Hour

  Waiting until the eleventh hour to stock up on canned and bulk foods is not recommended, but if your circumstances necessitate it, then consider it a calculated risk. Don’t hesitate once you see the first warning signs. You have only one day to shop before the hordes descend and strip the stores clean. However, instead of making these purchases at a supermarket, I recommend buying at a membership warehouse store (such as Costco or Sam’s Club). Buy a store-membership card and scope out the store in detail, well in advance.

  The case lots that big-box stores sell, combined with the large flat cargo carts that they provide, make large-volume procurement much more efficient than shopping at a typical grocery store with individual cans and small boxes piled into a standard shopping cart. One of the Costco cargo carts—piled up with case lots—can carry the equivalent of about eight full grocery carts. You can buy a lot of food in a very short period of ti
me, and get better prices to boot, at a place like Costco. Items like jerky, batteries, and bottled water will sell out first, so make those your first stops. With proper planning, you could buy everything in less than two hours.

  Old Storage Food

  Some folks write me who put in supplies twenty years ago, or even inherited preparations from relatives, asking if those supplies are still any good. Some items, such as salt, will store for centuries as long as they are not contaminated by the rust or decay of their containers. If stored dry, hard red winter wheat still retains 98 percent of its nutritive value after twenty years. Ditto for sugar and honey. Most dehydrated foods, however, such as rice, beans, TVP, and the ubiquitous thirty-year shelf-life nitrogen-packed stroganoff, will have lost too much nutritive value to be useful after twenty years, even if they were nitrogen packed. They might still be palatable, but unless you are dieting, what is the use of eating them if they have lost 90 percent of their nutritive value?

  If in doubt, throw it out. Ideally, you should continuously rotate your storage food to avoid such waste.

  One tidbit of trivia: Some wheat was found in an Egyptian pharaoh’s tomb. A small fraction of it still sprouted after 2,600 years. If you have any older canned gardening seeds, try them out. The sprouting yields will be low, but there could be some marginal utility there. Just don’t expend too much effort tilling and tending those rows in your garden!

  6

  FUEL AND HOME POWER

  The Coming Energy Crisis: Hubbert Peak or Not—Be Prepared!

  There has been a lot of ink spilled in recent years debating the Hubbert Peak (“Peak Oil”) theory. I am a believer in global oil depletion, but I think those in the Peak Oil crowd are about twenty to twenty-five years too early in their predictions.

  We cannot depend on the slow-moving bureaucracies of national governments to rescue us from the coming energy crisis. Even if we in the First World overcome the problem, the Second World and the Third World—with less money available for massive crash programs and probably with a more short-term perspective—will likely be plunged into a second Dark Ages. At the minimum that means famines, monumental migrations, huge economic dislocations, and world wars, all likely sometime later in this century. And even if our generation muddles through, we should make preparations on behalf of our children and grandchildren.

  The Fragility of the U.S. Power Grid

  The depletion of oil reserves will be a long-term problem, but we may also find ourselves facing a more immediate concern in the dissolution of the U.S. power grid.

  I often refer to the national power grids (there are actually three: eastern and western, and Texas) as the linchpins of our modern societal infrastructure. Any interruption for more than a few weeks could precipitate a societal collapse. So much of what we rely on for our modern way of life depends on grid power. The telephone networks have backup generators, but those have only a limited fuel supply. Even the supply of piped natural gas is dependent on the grid, since grid electricity powers the compressor stations that pressurize the natural-gas pipelines. I am of the firm opinion that existing supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) software implementations represent a great vulnerability. The new-generation Web-enabled SCADA systems only compound the problem. (Terrorists don’t even need to go on-site to inject a computer virus and foul up the power and water utilities’ switching and valve hardware. They can do it remotely.)

  In a grid-down world, you’ll need fuel to heat your home. Depending on the norm for where you live, this could be stacks of cordwood, coal, or an extra-large propane tank. You’ll also need electricity. You can use liquid fuels for lighting, but you’ll need some way to charge batteries for your crucial electronics, such as communications equipment and night-vision gear. This chapter will describe your options for all of these, starting with batteries and battery charging.

  The Importance of Stocking Up on Batteries

  I have been corresponding with an infantry soldier (E-6) in Iraq named Ray whom I met through AnySoldier.com. In our e-mails, one of the things Ray mentioned that stuck with me is that one of the crucial logistics for modern armies is spare batteries. He described how they go through hundreds of them, for radios, tactical flashlights, sensors, laser target illuminators and designators, and night-vision gear/thermal sights. As I look ahead to potential hard times in this country, I think that we should learn a lesson from the Iraq experience: Never run out of batteries.

  Without batteries, we would soon be back to nineteenth-century technology and tactics. Since modern tactical electronics are “force multipliers,” the lack of them would reduce the effectiveness of our defensive measures. Making up for that loss would necessitate having a lot more manpower. And providing more manpower requires more retreat floor space and more food. That additional food means more land under cultivation, and more land under cultivation means a larger perimeter to defend, and so forth. You can see where this logic leads: Instead of owning a little two-family, twenty-acre, low-profile retreat, you’d need ten to twelve armed and trained adults and perhaps forty to one hundred acres, depending on rainfall and soil fertility. Being the local lord of the manor is not conducive to keeping a low profile.

  I’ve resolved never to let my family run out of batteries, even if the “problem” lasts for a decade. For my mobile power system, I started with a small, five-watt solar photovoltaic panel from Northern Tool and Equipment (northerntool.com), which I rigged to charge batteries using an “automobile” (twelve-volt DC) charging tray. The tray looks like a regular home charger, but it has a twelve-volt input power cable with a cigarette-lighter plug. This gives me direct DC-to-DC charging, without an energy-hogging inverter in the middle of the equation.

  Try to get rechargeable batteries for as many devices as possible. Compatibility with rechargeables should be a key determining factor when selecting any electrical or electronic equipment. My favorite source for batteries via mail order is All Battery.com. They have great prices and a huge selection. If space permits, you should store all of your small batteries in a sealed bag (to prevent condensation) in the back of your refrigerator. This will extend their life.

  Batteries for Long-Term Storage

  If stored “wet,” typical automobile and deep-cycle batteries will sulfate to the point that they won’t hold a charge after eight or nine years. The way to avoid this is to store batteries “dry,” sans battery acid. Some of the larger battery distributors, including Interstate Batteries, will indeed provide truly dry batteries on special order. You need to be sure that you are getting batteries than have never been filled with electrolyte. And of course you will also need to procure some carboys of battery acid. Many of the “dry-charged” lead acid batteries sold have actually been filled, charged, and then drained. Though they will not degrade nearly as quickly as wet batteries, they will not store as well as the harder-to-find never-filled batteries.

  If you do things right, with enough cash you could potentially buy yourself a thirty-plus-year supply of spare batteries for your vehicles and for your alternative home power system. They would also be an awesome barter item.

  For Want of a Battery: The Importance of Photovoltaic Systems

  Without those battery-powered items you’ll be at huge disadvantage. So with that in mind, you should invest in a small photovoltaic solar panel for battery charging, and a boatload of nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) batteries. If you can afford to, buy a triple or quadruple set for each piece of gear that takes batteries. Even if you don’t use them all yourself, the extra batteries will be ideal to keep on hand for barter and charity. The NiMH low self-discharge (LSD) is currently the most reliable rechargeable battery on the market.

  If you cannot afford a large battery bank of deep-cycle batteries, then at least buy a “jump pack” twelve-volt DC gel-cell unit. These are available with either 110 VAC (U.S./Canada) or 220 VAC (UK) utility power charging cords. You can then plug in a twelve-VDC “smart” battery-charging tray using a DC power cord
with cigarette-lighter plug. This is far more efficient than using an AC inverter and then a DC transformer (like those in most home battery chargers). That way you are just changing one DC voltage to another DC voltage, instead of a DC-inverted-to-AC-and-transformed-back-to-DC proposition, which is very inefficient.

  Unless a standard connector is already installed, you would have to wire a cigarette-lighter-type plug onto the lead wires from the photovoltaic panel. These are available from any electronics-supply store, such as Radio Shack. Typically with DC wiring the red or white wire is positive, and that would go to the “tip” terminal on the lighter plug. (Note: Be sure to double-check the polarity with a volt-ohm meter before plugging it in!) The cigarette-lighter plugs and jacks are ubiquitous, but if you are handy with a soldering iron, I recommend switching to Anderson Powerpole connectors. These are compact, genderless connectors that do not pop apart unexpectedly—as cigarette lighter plugs are prone to do. One nice thing about jump packs is that they have a built-in charge controller. (A charge controller is a bit of circuitry that prevents overcharging a battery.) If you upgrade to larger-capacity storage—such as a standard car battery—either add a charge controller to the circuit or be very careful about checking voltage regularly during charging so that you don’t “cook” your battery.