A Good Book Review

Enforcing Home - Another Excellent Chapter in the Survivalist Series

I have wrote before about how well written and realistic A. American's Survivalist series was and the latest, book #6 called "Enforcing Home" is no exception. This latest book continues to find Morgan, his military partners improving their situation while faced with threats from armed bandits and the Department of Homeland Security.

While survivalist books by A. American, Joe Nobody, James Wesley Rawles and others are novels since the collapse hasn't happened yet,.....yet,.....you can still learn something. You can see problem sets and ask yourself how you would solve it, what decision you would make. Another way to learn are the survival tips that the authors spread among the story line.

Without giving too much up for those of you who haven't read the book yet, I had five major takeaways from a learning or reinforcement stand point:

Growing food occupied all the characters and/or their separate survival groups. The most successful people in the story line was a couple who had a collapse preexisting green hose and were adept at growing much of their own food supply. S o in a perfect world the survivalist would have a green house, possibly some cleared land for a spring-summer garden, a good supply of non-hybrid seeds, a water source and the skill to grow vegetables.

Feed chickens was the second point. In the story Morgan's group had chickens which gave them a healthy supply of eggs. A way to feed those chickens was described where a bucket with holes was hung up above the chicken coop and a dead animal carcass was put into the bucket. Flies would leave their eggs in the carcass and when they would hatch the maggots would fall out the bottom of buckets onto the ground for the chickens to eat. I never heard of that before.

Preserving eggs. Something I have heard before and reinforced in memory was the technique of coating eggs with mineral oil to preserve them. Having a supply of mineral oil on hand for other things is smart as well. Treats constipation, can be used for burning in oil lamp, even lubing weapons in a pinch.

Prepared for contact with disease ridden people. This is something I had wrote about before, about having personal protection gear and a plan on how to approach, handle or interface with people possibly infected with bad communicable diseases. In that perfect world again, a smart and well prepared survivalist would have a stockpile of antibiotics to treat some of treatable diseases, the knowledge of treatment plans, a stock of personal protective gear, and a plan on what to do with diseased infected suspected contacts or people that have been exposed within your own group.

If you are a prepper and have not yet read the Home novels from A. American (the "A" stands for Angry by the way) then you can pick up series through Amazon.

Prepare for Zombie Apocalypse? No. Prepare for National Crisis? Yes.

Preparedness is becoming more and more mainstream. However, some people will get spooked should you really lay on the Prepper routine.  Instead, print this article and hand it to them.    Tell them that Glenn Beck recently hosted Justin Wheeler on his nationally syndicated The Glenn Beck Program Tuesday December 1st to discuss a preparedness plan should a national crisis unfold.

Wheeler, the brother of Beck’s chief of content, recently asked his family members in an email to do these things: fill the car with gas and check the oil, withdraw $500 cash from an ATM and buy one case of bottled water and some canned food.

“Probably nothing, but run this as an exercise tonight if at all possible — tomorrow, early, if you can’t get that done — and, above all things, remember, remain calm, be at peace. We’re Americans. We’ll always win because we believe and defend liberty and freedom, so no worries,” Wheeler wrote at the end of the email.

Wheeler told Beck that preparedness is part of his “heritage” and that, as a child who grew up in the 1970's, he remembers going through nuclear preparedness drills in school and having food storage at his childhood home.

“As I increased my education level, an increased level of preparedness just became a rational response,” Wheeler said. “I think it is a very rational response. Very much the same way that if a weatherman said, ‘Hey, it’s going to rain,’ you would walk out of the house with an umbrella and no one would think twice about that.”

According to Wheeler, the reason people have difficulty preparing for economic crisis is because, as a whole, the U.S. has not experienced that level of instability since the Great Depression in the 1930's.

So Wheeler created a list of supplies necessary to cope for 30 days amid major national instability:

 

1. 30-day food supply

2. Five days water and water purification filters to last one year

3. Vehicle toolkit

4. Hatchet or machete

5. Shovel and sledgehammer

6. 50-foot extension cord

7. Arctic-rated sleeping bags

8. Eight-person tent

9. Flashlights and batteries for the vehicle

10. AM/FM weather radio

11. Three wool blankets

12. Winter coats

13. One tin cloth coat

14. 18 toilet paper rolls

15. Ranch clothes

16. Five gallons of gasoline

Wheeler said he devised this list when he decided he wanted his family to be prepared for “more than just an earthquake.”

“All the experts will say, ‘You probably don’t want to be in a major city in a disaster scenario,’” Wheeler told Beck. “So we want to be one of the first on the road, and that means being able to pack up, get ready to go, and go rapidly.”

Wheeler added that it is important to have a plan as an entire family so everyone can meet up in a pre-determined area. Additionally, he said it is crucial to have out-of-state contacts, should the phone lines go down.

Wow!  Someone finally talks about a P L A N.  A predetermined met up area is a contingency linkup in any other language.  Have a contingency plan.  Employ the two man rule for everything and if a group leaves the main group have a plan:  Where you are going.  What you are doing.  When you will be back.  What to do if you don't come back.  It's only common sense.  

[Source: Glenn Beck Show]

~Urban Man

Survival Food Procurement- US Army Style

Here is a US Army video that shows how to procure food in a survival situation. Learning wilderness survival skills is very important should you ever have to bug out of an urban area, or for some other unforeseen reasons.

~Urban Man

Survival Stress- How to Cope

When in an urban survival scenario, many overlook the many possibilities of having to deal with stress. Not knowing how to deal with stress can mean the difference between life or death.

Weather you are in an urban survival crisis or a wilderness survival scenario, here is video produced in 1961 by the US Air Force that deals with survival stress. The information is 33 years old, but the information is still true and valid to this day.

Watch, learn and enjoy a movie from the retro era.  

~Urban Man