Urban Survival Planning - Growing Your Own Food

Growing your own food. Our ancestors, or at least their neighbors, did it. Doesn’t sound too hard, does it? After all, most of us are planning on being able to grow our own food and most of us stock plenty of non-hybrid seeds to achieve that goal. I sure have a good stock of non-hybrid seeds. Plus I always buy a pack or two other vegetable seeds when I am in the local hardware store. Been doing that for so long, I now have a large ammunition can full of hybrid seeds packages. I plan to use the hybrid seeds first and especially at locations that I may have to vacate (Bug Out from) so I won’t waste the seed generating capability of the non-hybrids. I can also use the hybrid seeds as barter material.

Many people I talk to are basing their stockpile of food, e.g.. dehydrated – vacuum packed – canned goods,....on what they feel is a necessary 6 months supply. Their reasoning is that, worst case, food supplies will dry up in the fall – too late to plant, so they only need six months supply to get them through to where they can grow their own food in the spring.

I have two comments to that:

1. Growing food is not as easy as you think. I would not base my existence and my family’s survival on being able to grow all the food I need.

2. Growing food is so important, and if successful, allows you to save at least some of your stockpiled food, that starting to grow food need to be immediately when a collapse hits, if not starting now. You need to be able to preserve your crops as well, through canning and dehydration.

Starting now allows you to do a rehearsal for when you really need it to survive. And the simple fact is that growing some of our own food is enjoyable and rewarding. Note: I have had some people tell me “I ain’t no farmer! I’ll barter with someone for the food they grow”. I say okay and good luck. I’m thinking in the back of my head,……if you’re hungry enough to eat another person, I think you’d be hungry enough to grow your own food.

Being prepared to start growing food immediately when a collapse hits means you need the ability to erect and grow crops out of a green house as in many places the growing seasons may even be a short 3 months. On my immediate purchase list when indicators are strong that a collapse is imminent, are materials to build a green house. It would be great to have an acre crisis garden under glass, but the simple reality is that this is just not affordable without multiple survival families putting up the funding and effort. But what is possible is a small enough green house that you can afford to build or purchase and maintain.

Probably a lot of you have heard about Northern Tool and Equipment with all their excellent deals on solar panels, wind generators, fuel storage units and such. Northern Tool also offers a wide variety of greenhouse kits. I am now looking at buying one these kits and either erecting it now, or building it when the time makes it necessary.

Much like the novel “One Second After” where the people started much too late in planning for a continued food supply…..don’t get caught like this. It is obviously much better to be ahead of the curve, especially where you you help other people and keep them from becoming a burden on you.

Northern Tool advertises this hobby greenhouse as having a strong aluminum frame that supports UV-stabilized twin-wall polycarbonate panels. These 4mm-thick walls provide excellent heat retention and create even, diffused light that your plants will love. The corrosion-resistant aluminum frame is easily assembled and stays sturdy thanks to bolt-together connections. This kit includes a galvanized base kit to anchor the greenhouse to a concrete or wood foundation. With an adjustable roof vent and sliding door provide it provides ventilation.

There are many other models to choose from. The fact remains if you buy a greenhouse kit or build your own, this will come in handy unless you have many years of stocked food in your supply.

Survival Preparation: Medical Skills - Continuous Chest Compression CPR

UrbanSurvivalSkills.com has been asked to devote more posts to Survival Preparation across the medical skills and material spectrum. I think people realize that in a worst case collapse scenario, the ability to access a competent wide variety of medical care will be greater reduced or non-existent unless we provide it ourselves.

In a perfect pre-collapse world, all members of your survival group would have a robust amount of medical training, with certifications or not, and may include up to EMT-Paramedic training. It may be possiblle for you to recruit a Medical Doctor, specialist or not, into your survival group.

Do you know where Doctors, Nurses, Veternarians, Dentists and other medical professionals live in your vicinity? If not, then maybe that would be a good idea to know where they live. And while you may not want to knock on their door and ask them to be a part of your survival group now, after the life changing events of a collapse this may be a much more viable concept. Certainly you could barter for their services.

Even if medical professionals and their services were available to your survival group after a collapse, it would be not only a great idea but an essential requirements that members of your survival group possess base line, first response medical training at a minimum.

The ability for all your survival group members to be capable in CPR is a basic skill. Guidance and procedures for CPR change from time to time. Continuous Chest Compression CPR, developed at the University of Arizona College of Medicine, is a hands-only CPR method that doubles a person’s chance of surviving cardiac arrest. It’s easy and does not require mouth-to-mouth contact, making it more easy to learn and more likely that it would be employed when needed.

Survival Preparation - Getting Others to Prepare for the Collapse

I was listening to Glenn Beck this morning and a caller was asking for advice about his wife whose beliefs about the coming collapse were described as “ostrich like” – meaning she was putting her head in the sand. The caller said that when he mentioned to his wife about buying additional food or maybe buying some precious metals she would freak out.

The caller also asked Glenn Beck how he can get his wife to see the need to prepare. Glenn said something to the effect that “how can anyone not see what’s coming?” – a rhetorical question to be sure. He then further asked the caller if his wife had any friends that saw the future the way the caller did. When the caller replied yes, Glenn then suggested he get the friends to help get the wife to see the aspect of “preparing for the worst, hoping for the best”.

When your wife or family doesn’t want to listen to your perspective on Survival prepping, this is called “There is No Expert in the Village” syndrome. Where because of the simple fact you are so close to your family and friends, they think you cannot possibly know much more than them. It doesn’t help your credibility for them to have seen you crap faced drunk on occasion (come on that’s a joke).

But what is not a joke is that if your family and friends do not prepare they will be a burden on you come collapse time. Plus if you cannot get your immediate family to see the need to prepare, even just a little, then it could even lead to a break up of the family unit. I have a friend who follows what I say,....he bought an M-4 carbine and his wife freaked out. They are currently separated and heading for divorce court where I’m sure the wife will paint her soon to be ex-husband as a Survivalist Loon.

If you have a wife or even close family members who are in the "denying the coming collapse camp", then you need to be in a careful hurry to get them to see the light. Short papers or conversations on facts, and short videos may work the best. This is called “Dripping”. Sometimes if make take five, ten, maybe 20 drips for your intended audience to say “tell me more”. This may seem like a chore, but it is absolutely critical that you get the immediate family on board and build a survival team with your close family, close friends and even neighbors.

I recently got a close friend of mine not only interested in prepping but on a frenzied pace to prepare. All I did was call him up and say “Hey buddy, I know you go camping often, can you use a case of MRE’s that will expire in 6 months?” He replied “Heck yes, I would love a case of MRE's. Why are you giving them up?” I told him “I bought a bunch more long term food and am trying to make room.” He asked “Why are you buying a bunch of food?” and I simply said “mainly for insurance, but lately I’ve been thinking I’m going to need it.” He asked why and I went into some financial factors indicating a coming collapse,.....then I said, “on a lesser extent preparing for bad things such as terrorist nuclear events or pandemics is a good idea also.”

So I drop the MRE’s off and have lunch with this friend of mine where he proceded to ask me a laundry list of questions pertaining to survival prep....stocking food, building Bug Out Bags, buying cold weather gear, developing power supplies during a infrastructure collapse, etc. He had did some research on his own and he was prompted by “fear of loss or fear of being left behind” by me NOT trying to convince him. I then let him in on the fact that this website was mine - he was floored which even add fuel to his prep fire. The good news is that my friend is more than an avid gun collector,...he has a Class III license, owning some belt fed weapons, and many others. So he doesn’t have to prepare for that aspect. And in fact, part of my strategy on getting him focused on survival preparation was that he can be a big asset, as I can to him, when the collapse comes.

So if you’re having problems getting people to listen to you may try the short survival prep drips,...remember that there is no expert in the village,…use the fear of loss/being left behind concept. Some recent facts that can help are posted on the fuel price signs at your local gas station! with no reduction in price on the horizon; commodities such as Gold, Corn, Cotton and Sugar up 60%, 78%, 43% and 164% respectively in the last 12 months; Food stamp recipients up 35%; number of people in poverty up to 43.6 million an increase of almost 10%; and most importantly the National debt up 32% to a level that cannot be fixed – yes we are heading for at least an economic collapse.

Good luck, prepare well and preach preparedness to the extent you are willing to compromise your OPSEC.

Urban Survival - Fuel Emergencies: Making Gas From Wood

For some of you more technical or mechanically sound individuals, it is apparently possible to build a Biomass Gasifier Unit that can provide fuel for internal combustion engines for use in a Petroleum Emergency.

This technology is not recent. Fuel gas produced by the reduction of coal and peat (from Peat moss) was used for heating as early as 1840 in Europe . Although not common, nor widely used, it was familiar technology. During World War II, due to gas shortages for the war effort, these gas generators were much more common and even common to Korea into the 1950’s.

All internal combustion engines run off of vapor not liquid. All liquid fuels are vaporized before they enter the combustion chamber. The purpose of a gasifier is to transform solid fuels into a gaseous form to keep the engines free of particles. So think energy converter and filter.

FEMA,…yes the infamous FEMA, produces many publications, and one of the more interesting documents was a 90 page report entitled “Construction of a Simplified Wood Gas Generator for Fueling Internal Combustion Engines in a Petroleum Emergency”,..whew!,…that’s a mouthful even for a recently de-classified document.

The entire document is available here, and it may be a good idea to print a copy and put in your 3 ring binder of other Survival and Collapse information. You do have a 3 ring binder of good Survival information, don’t you?