How sad it is to have come to this…
July 2, 2009
Making Soap
July 2, 2009
Here is another one of those important topics that I just haven’t seen to much on. Making soap is going to be a critical part of everyone’s life after a major emergency unless you have stored lots of it. Keeping clean, as you know, is important not only for morale but for general sanitary conditions. Disease and Death follow an unclean population and they know no boundaries and are not prejudice to age, sex, religion, race or anything else. Your 2 month old child will get sick just like granny or your spouse if you don’t keep clean and keep up some basic sanitary conditions.
I won’t write out all the steps to making the soap because I found several good links about it and I prefer to share those instead of just regurgitating what has already been said.
New Knife: Cold Steel Bushman
June 30, 2009
I was recently looking for a good 7 to 8 inch knife that was good for general protection, survival and bushcraft type skills. I originally was thinking about getting a Kabar due to the reputation it has but after doing some research I decided instead of buying one $50 dollar Kabar I could get 2 $20 dollar Bushmans that were better fitted to my needs and stronger from what I’ve seen.
After opening the box I pulled the knife from the sheath and proceeded to start shaving hairs off my arm. I stopped quickly but still ended up with a funny looking bare patch on my arm. The High Carbon Steel blade can get a very fine edge so you must be careful. Being made of carbon steel means it CAN rust so keep it dry and slightly oiled and you should be fine.
The sheath is really cheap feeling and I’m looking at getting a custom leather one made for it.
The handle feels good and holds well but my mind can’t grasp the fact that my hand won’t slip forward to the blade and so I’m still very cautious with it. The hollow handle is tapered from butt to blade with the wide end being at the handle. This creates a feeling like your hand will slip forward toward the blade but I haven’t had that happen and I’ve never heard anyone say it happen to them either. I’ve tried wrapping the handle in paracord which did improve the feel but the wrap keeps coming undone so I have to find something else to do instead or break down and use the 100mph tape to hold the paracord in place.
I thought the hollow handle would be good for storing some survival type stuff but I’m not sure there is a good way to secure the contents so I haven’t put anything in it yet. Some people have used wine corks to plug the handle but I’m still not convinced it would hold well enough to stake my life on. I’d rather have the stuff in my pocket where I know it’s secure.
I haven’t used the knife as a spear but the hollow handle was also intended to accept a cut branch or wooden pole so the knife could be used as a spear. I’ll include a link below to some video’s showing this.
Overall I’m impressed with the feel, strength and cost of this knife. I’ll be ordering more for my collection of Bug Out Bags and Get Home Bags. If you are looking for a good and inexpensive 7″ knife then you can’t beat this knife in my opinion. It’s price is $19.50 at Olympic Camping Gear or $20.50 at Amazon.com at the time of this writing so you really can’t go wrong here.
Get it from Olympic Camping Gear (cheapest price I’ve seen – please mention EverydayPrepper sent you)
http://www.coldsteel.com/survival.html
http://knifetests.com/page3.html (watch the videos and be impressed)
http://knifetests.com/page10.html (spear demo)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xq1EFWVV3C0 (marketing video)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwdJhWixYg4 (some other guys review)
More work around the house
June 28, 2009
Well to go along with the other things I’ve been doing around the house here are a few more new additions to our house. The first is our new pantry (minus the doors) and the second is our new back room medicine cabinet.
Please don’t email and comment about how bad some of this food is to store because this is just our normal grab and eat food and some things (like the pop tarts) are just there because my wife got them on coupon day as a treat for us.
These two projects are just our 1st line of storage that represent what “others” see when they come in our house not necessarily all of what we really have.
Anyway the idea here is that if you have any projects to do around the house you need to get them done now instead of later. Later there might not be a chance and you’ll just have to do without.
Book Review: Things Fall Apart
June 25, 2009
Today I thought I would post a book review on the fiction book by Fred Heiser called Things fall apart: A novel of survival and honor.
Normally it takes me a 2 weeks or more to finish a book but this book caught my attention and held it all the way through so I finished it in just 3 nights. It was right up my alley being an end of the world fiction and it also scored extra points for being about an EMP blast.
The story follows 2 main characters and a cast of smaller characters. State Senator Tom McArthur finds himself separated from his family by hundreds of miles, gangs, refugees and corrupt government officials after the most horrific attack this country has ever seen. His task is to get to his family before anyone else does.
His wife Lynn a strong willed stubborn woman finds herself alone with 3 children but she is definitely not helpless. Her task is to survive the aftermath of this event while still living in a subdivision in the city.
Together they embark on a heroic journey to save those who are willing to help themselves and escape the impending doom that is surely to follow the initial EMP blast. With a handfull of supporting characters the book is very entertaining and can even teach you some things about what to do and what not to do in the event of such an event.
Pros:
- The story was well thought out.
- The style of witting was entertaining to me.
- The main characters are developed well and you do get attached to them.
- The main characters and supporting cast are “real”. They have weakness and flaws just like a real person does.
- Not to much bad language
- No sex scenes. There were some innuendos that are pg-13 though.
Cons:
- Some of the supporting characters are less filled out and they are harder to connect with but the story isn’t focused on them so it doesn’t pull away from the book to much.
- At least one of the characters stories never gets completed which leads me to believe the author may write another book and bring him back. If he isn’t brought back I would be disappointed to not get closure.
- I only listed 2 main characters but theoretically there were 3. The third didn’t get played into the story that much so I was somewhat disappointed by that. He’s listed on the back cover of the book but doesn’t get much paper time, what’s up with that?
- Horrible editing. There were so many typos and editing mistakes I really wonder if the author had anyone read this book before he published it himself. The story is still good and understandable but be prepared for a lot of mistakes. OK you’re now thinking like 20 or so mistakes right? NO no no, think higher, there were 20 in the first 2 chapters alone easy. If the author reads this (yeah right) please email me and I’ll edit the book for a very small fee of a few free books (of the 2nd edition of course).
Conclusion: Despite the typos and some other flaws this was a really good book. I think it served the genre well and I’m glad to have a copy on my bookself. Buy it from Amazon.com or add it to your wish list to buy soon.
Moving forward
June 25, 2009
After reading the few comments and emails I received from folks that read the blog I’ve decided to keep the blog open and continue posting like I have been. The one change that will be taking place is that I’m going to limit the number of post per week to 2 or 3.
On another note this is the 113th post to this site so yeah for me! There have been 25,595 views and 183 comments for 113 posts with 32 categories. My busiest day was Sep. 9 2008 with 717 views due to a cross post on SurvivalBlog.com. Current average per day viewing is about 80 with peaks up to 150 and lows down to 50.
New Direction?
June 23, 2009
What to do, What to do?!?
My next post will mark the one hundred and thirteenth post of this site which to me is a significant number (long story), so I find myself at a fork in the road. I’m getting on average 80 visits a day and that’s all well and good but I’m not providing as much down and dirty “this is how you do it” survival type information as I had planned originally.
My semi-personal / semi-informational post are all well and good for some people and it’s entertaining to see what others are doing but is that what I should continue to do? Is it what y’all want to keep reading or is it just another blog that has only nuggets of good every once and awhile and you just put up with the rest? Would you like for me to post more “how-to” info, more gear and book reviews or just shut down this blog and submit articles to someone else’s blog when I have something to write about?
There are just so many survival blogs popping up now and finding information is getting easier and easier but finding something to post about is getting harder and harder because I really don’t like to just repost something that several people have already done a post on. It just gets old to read the same post over and over again going through the prepper community so let me hear from y’all what you want.
Just a note, I personally stay out of posting about government stuff for several reasons but mostly because so many people are already ranting about it I don’t feel it’s that helpful to hear yet one more person ranting about the same Associated Press article. So please don’t suggest this, it’s already over done.
Please comment or email (everydayprepper@gmail.com) with any words of advice or anything you would like to see.
Making Charcoal
June 23, 2009
I ran across some links on making Charcoal and thought I would throw them out for y’all to check out.
If you’re wondering why you might need to make charcoal here are some reasons:
- Cooking (charcoal grill)
- Heating
- Medicinal
- Blacksmiths Forge
I’m sure there are some other cleaver uses for it but those are the ones I could come up with off the top of my head. Here are the links so enjoy.
CPR Training – Part 2
June 22, 2009
Tonight was the CPR Training class and it was very good. I was disappointed at the lack of response to a Free CPR Training class but it worked out well for both of us who showed up. The class was pretty laid back and unstressful. We watched a video of how to preform CPR on Adults, Children and Infants and also watch some information on AED usage.
Before the class began the instructor (who did an excellent job) asked why I was interested in learning about CPR and I mentioned this blog and what it was about. After the class the subject came up again and she got the URL to this site and hopefully she’ll be browsing through pretty soon.
All in all the class reinforced everything I have read and watched already plus it gave me some first hand experience practicing on the CPR dummies and AED. I definitely recommend checking out a training class near you.
Burn out day
June 20, 2009
Today was another “fun” day of work that earned me some more points with the wife. I’ve been busy around my house these last few weekends fixing, building and cleaning anything and everything that has been put off.
Today was burn the bush piles day. Until about 2 weeks ago I had a huge growth of bushes inside of that red line (click to enlarge). I hired one of the teens from church to come over and cut it down but decided I would burn it myself. My reasoning for hiring it done was because my allergies would have killed me if I would have done it myself.
So today I took the big pile and split it into 3 piles and burned it down. This effectively killed all the grass in the area that didn’t get mowed before and I was also able to clear my fence line so we can get the new privacy fence built on that side of the yard. Our neighbor has a lot of dogs (about 8 or 9) and my wife is afraid our son or her will get bit one of these days so that’s the motive to get this fence put up. It will also allow me to partition my yard off into sections (using the old chain fence) so we can get the dog (for my son) and chickens (for me).
My plans right now are to build a 30×20 foot raised bed garden over the area in red (it doesn’t look that big does it? It was a big bush) for next year’s garden. If all works out this will be much bigger than our previous garden. This year we have a plot over at my dad’s place so there isn’t really all that much for us todo other than pick up stuff every now and then when they call. Since they are retired they pretty much handle it all and never tell us what’s going on. I like the free food but want the experience of growing the food also so I’ll have to do it in my backyard again next year.
I’m sure the chickens will get a coop by the garden somewhere I’m just not sure where yet. More pictures will come as I get things in order. These projects are of course long term so I’ll switch back to some short term projects pretty soon.
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