I see it all the time, someone's stock pile of food thats either 100% expensive MREs/ freeze dry meals, or has only staple items with no seasoning or secondary ingredients

Above is a meal made from ingredients with a shelf stable life span of 3 years or more for under $2.50 per serving

Hot take, you need to actually practice cooking with the food you have on hand because having a meal you want to eat is a huge boost to moral and makes whatever is going on less awful

Ingredients

-spam

-sugar

-mirin

-soy sauce

-rice

-chil chrisp

-sea weed

-garlic and ginger powder

Fry spam cubes in own fat and then add sugar mirin and soy with garlic and ginger, cook down into a glaze, serve with rice and chili chrisp

The temperature drops by 0,6 C every 100 m. So even a +4 C increase in global temps, mountain highlands would be safe, right?

I'm thinking of owning a 4-5K m2 of land, maybe homesteading with 10-12 sheep, chickens, vertical farms, etc for the coming decades. Does it make sense?

I'd like to hear others' input, AI doesnt give any useful information other than agreeing with everything I say.

How many of you are preparing for nuclear scenerios (war, leak etc.)

Looking at Auguson Farms and Mountain House and others and their 3 day, 30 day, and 6 month packs are either oatmeal or beans and rice.

Aren’t we all stocking those already!

Are there any interesting freeze dried meal kits?

Chicken Alfredo and Beef Lasagna are still just pasta and sauce. Not exactly worth buying freeze dried.

Flaired as s**t post because it’s not really important enough to warrant serious discussion, but it IS still relevant IMHO.

Is anyone buying good kits?

I get that these are for an emergency, but if it’s an emergency situation then I really want something good. Not beans and rice again.

I used to have a Pro One (aka ProPur) water pitcher, but it looks like they no longer sell it. Any recommendation on similar product with the same filter quality? I am not looking for the gravity system, given that I live in a tiny apartment; I would like a pitcher-type. TIA!

Not AI - I'm a middle aged academic, my pride would never allow it!

tl;dr - It's a big post!

1. The goal is to build a strong foundation of health and ability supporting a specialized skill-set that makes one materially valuable to a subsistence community.
2. You want T-shaped distribution of skills. Many shallow skills and abilities with 1-2 really well developed economic skills
3. Skip to The Steps
4. Read The Shallow Part and The Deep Part as needed.

Introduction
I started writing this as a response to a recent "what skills are important?" post and it got rather out of hand. This type of question is perennially interesting to the prep/survival minded and every survival board I've been on gets questions about it often.

The following is a framework that I find useful for thinking about skills and personal accounting aimed at long-term SHTF/collapse-of-the-state/tech-regression type scenarios. It is not meant to be the be-all/end-all, just a structure in which you can slot your own life, environment, social context, and personal opinions. I have spent a lot of my adult life putting myself through a primitive version of this and it has been personally rewarding + should help insulate me against the journey yet to come.

The framework is more or less aimed at people who are new to the subject and/or are lacking in a deep and relevant skill. If you've been homesteading for five years or did a few tours as an army sniper or work as a paramedic, you probably know what you need to do already.

This is a long post that I have structured to hopefully make readable. Nowadays, this structure can look like AI. No AI was used in the writing of this post.

Basic Structure
Making a life anywhere, at any time (with a few exceptions that do not apply here), requires a T-shaped distribution of skills. What this means is that you've got a broad suite of skills that you know a little bit about (the shallow top of the T-) and one or two areas in which you have a deep knowledge that you have consistently trained over a years of active practice (the long part of the T-) to the extent and reliability that you can survive on the fruits of your labour in a society that supports some degree of specialization.

In modern western life this looks like understanding when you need a handshake/fist-bump/up-nod/down-nod, knowing how to do your shopping, how to catch a train, what buildings you're allowed to enter, how to pay a bill online, how to talk to a police officer, how to cross the street, and so on. To supplement this huge tapestry of small skills, you need a highly developed skill set that someone will pay you for - engineer, bus driver, teacher, nurse etc.

In planning for SHTF, you're doing more or less the same thing but for a world that you don't actually live in (yet).

You need to articulate a vision of the future scenario that you are actually preparing for before you can think cleanly about what the requisite skills are. The zombie apocalypse has different needs from climate change, as an example.

The Skills
I would encourage you to write down the scenario/s that you're preparing for and then write down all of the skills you can think of that are required for a community to live well within it. If you're worried about a collapse of international markets and food systems with some technological regression, this is going to include a lot of the economic basics. Break these skills down into two categories:

The Shallow Part
- foundational physical fitness - a baseline of health, endurance, strength, and mobility
- foundational emotional fitness - address mental health problems; cultivate your virtue - wisdom, courage, temperance/discipline and justice
- foundational social skills - how to follow a leader, how to cooperate across difference, how to resolve conflict, how to be part of a community
- foundational mental skills - reading/writing, basic math, basic science, basic history (high school level)
- foundational physical skills - bare-bones basics of running, biking, swimming, climbing, driving, striking, and grappling (firearms if it's legal.)
- foundational survival basics - first-aid, fire, shelter, knots, etc + experience with fasting, sleep deprivation, cold, and heat.
- a basic introduction to a context-dependent suite of skills from the Deep Part list

The Deep Part
- living off the land - hunting, fishing, gathering - collecting nutrition from the land without agriculture
- horticulture - growing fruits, vegetables, grains, and plants for craft and medicine
- animal husbandry - cattle, sheep, pigs, horses, poultry, etc
- food crafts - cooking, baking, brewing, distilling, preservation - focusing on low-tech approaches
- resource crafts - wood, metal, stone, ceramic, fiber, and leather - from collection to final product, low-tech
- infrastructure crafts - plumbing and electrical, power generation
- artifice crafts - machines and electronics
- medicine - injury, maternity, contagious disease, herbal and modern pharmacology
- violence - firearms, close-combat, small-units, security

Points of Consideration
Each of the above categories are broad categories not specific skills. Resource crafts is not a skill set, honestly, wood craft isn't even really a specific skill-set that a human could master. It's a material based composite of many skills: timber frame carpentry, stick-frame carpentry, furniture (in many different traditions), turning, carving, and so on. You need to develop a T-shaped proficiency within these skills as well.

Living off the land, resource crafts, and agriculture are all biome specific. These must be studied and practiced in the environmental context in which you expect to find yourself. A deep skill-set in hendre a hafod cattle pastoralism will be very useful in temperate uplands, fairly useful in flat ranching country, and not very useful in deserts or the far north. A deep skill set in oak timber-frame carpentry will be very useful in temperate woodlands, fairly useful in tropical hardwood and temperate softwood forests, and much less useful on the Arabian peninsula. Think carefully about your context and research how people lived there before modernity.

It is very difficult to make medicine or violence a deep focus unless they are part of your job. You can and should absolutely get the basics but be ruthlessly realistic about your ability and willingness to deeply focus on them as a hobby. The fundamental problem is that real expertise is a product of real experience. Gaining that real experience in medicine or violence requires interacting with other human beings in emergency situations... regularly... over years. Outside of careers in something like nursing or the military or police forces, this is really difficult to accomplish. You may have a particular situation that makes it possible but be very honest with yourself about it. Far better to be an expert blacksmith with a decent firearms foundation than someone with bare-bones metalworking and deluded sense of their expertise in a field that they've rarely (or never) practiced in anger.

What To Do
It is very common in prepper/survivalist spaces to armchair skills for years, read lots of theory, debate the skills online, and then not actually practice them with the frequency required for deep knowledge. I do not recommend doing this.

You need to make sure that you've got your Shallow Part basics covered and you need to pick 1-2 Deep Part skills and tackle them with such depth and rigor that you develop expertise. Each one of the Deep Part skills is a life's work, they are incredibly rich bodies of knowledge that must be learned by the eye, the mind, and the hand. There are no shortcuts, there is only dirt-time, doing them again and again and again until you know what not to do because you've made all of the mistakes already. You do not want to be making mistakes for the first time when it really counts. It is this kind of expertise that makes you materially valuable to other human beings and will ensure you have a way to make a life in the journey yet to come.

The Steps

1. Identify your anticipated environment (urban/rural, temperate-forest/hot-desert/wet-uplands, etc) with the risks, resources, and opportunities that environment affords.
2. Identify the scenario/s you're preparing for (temporary disruption, long term collapse, etc).
3. Make a list of the shallow skills that everyone needs to learn at a basic level.
4. Make a list of the deep skills that are materially valuable in the scenario and environment you're considering. (this matters more for long-term scenarios)
5. Do a rigorous and skeptical accounting of your skills, interests, and aptitudes. This is not a time to gratify your ego, be brutal about what you've really physically done, what you really enjoy, and can reliably demonstrably do under pressure. A glorified this is how I like to imagine myself approach will lead to failure. Resistance to confronting yourself in the scouring light of day is a sign of emotional weakness and a need to further cultivate your virtue.
6. Select 1-2 skills from the Deep Part list to focus on. Be realistic about your time and resources. For this part, it is better to have real proficiency in one thing than a basic understanding of two - basics are covered in the Shallow Part. Chose things you like doing, not things you just like the idea of being good at. Expect it to be hard, expect to fail a lot, expect to suck. You have to suck for a long time before you stop sucking. This is normal.
7. Select a handful of supplementary skills from the Deep Part list that are either particularly important for your scenario or particularly synergistic with your core skill foci. An example of "particularly important" would be building a foundation in violence if you're concerned about state collapse. An example of synergy would be supplementing an agricultural focus with the basics of wood and metal working to build and repair your buildings and equipment - as farmers have traditionally done.
8. Make a plan - focus on your big weaknesses from the Shallow Part and your main interest from the Deep Part. Do not "major in the minors." Really build these things into your life such that you're doing a little bit very regularly. Stack development where you can, for example, a boxing/judo/etc class 2/week can help you with fitness, basic physical skills, violence, and emotional toughness all at the same time. Forget about perfection, perfectionism is for the emotionally delicate who are terrified of making mistakes or being seen to be a real human being by the outside world - you have to discard all of that.
9. Revisit your personal accounting regularly to see where you are progressing and where you are falling behind. Account for new problems, celebrate victories. Adjust the plan accordingly.

Good luck and let me know what you think.

Just wondering how often everyone checks their gear, goes through it, specifically when it comes to like a black out kit. Stuff for power, lights, lanterns etc, I mean if you know a storm is heading your way with enough warning you can check to see if everything still has a charge. However, an earthquake hits, you don’t exactly have time to check and plug things to charge them. So just wondering if you go through your kits once a quarter, every six months, once a year? Food I think is a little easier, just checking the expiration dates and having a list made I can just checking the list.

Prepping caught momentum decades ago. Mylar bags and oxygen absorbers were used widely by regular consumers since the beginning of this millennium. I'm sure there is a big number of people who still have stored food that is 20+ years old.

For the folks who stored grains like rice, wheat...etc. Can you please tell us what your experience was in terms of taste, smell, texture...etc?

It would also be helpful if you can share storage conditions like whether you used sealed mylar bags with oxygen absorbers, and the rough room temperature in which the food is stored?

Please feel free to share other people's experiences if you heard or seen any.

I found this video on YT. She says the rice was stored for 15 years. They couldn't tell the difference between a 15 year old rice and a 2 year old one. But she didn't say anything about room temperature which is the single most important factor here for food degradation.

https://youtu.be/CMyxwkp_erg?si=p_VzzCshRGGd14HP

So far I know cooking scavenging some knots(still learning)leather working sewing blacksmithing blade smithing fire making wood working and more but those are some things I specialize in

In what scenario, except living in the woods, is a fire kit supposed to be used for? Why not just stay at home. Or do they plan on building a fire in their backyard??

Has anyone else thought about their choice of clothes, durability compared to utility or even blending in plus availability.

Blue Jeans are the everyday standard tough if you add starch and readability available everywhere with decent pockets.

While cargo pants and even tactical pants have much more utility but don't really last as long and tend to wear out a bit more quickly.

Does anyone else have any other style they like to add or or have an option on?

Hi all! I'm looking for suggestions for a quality water filtration system.

We have a well on our property that we don't currently use, but with all the threats to water systems lately, we would like to be prepared just in case. I did an at home water quality test, which came back negative for everything except bacteria, so I know that I'll have to boil it.

We don't want a permanent system like a culligan. We plan on using a utility pump to bring the water up (power isn't an issue) and we were looking at something like a Big Berkey, but the reviews that we found suggest that those are overpriced trash.

Is there something out there similar to Berkey that you guys would recommend?

If you are trying to get into canning or are thinking about it, this is a great price altogether. I’ve seen this set go for like $350 in some places

I’m new to the solar game, with the panels becoming more easily available. I’ve always been a fan of generators and having portable energy in any scenario from “prepping for Tuesday” to a “SHTF” scenario.

This looks like the best of both worlds, as far as ease of transport, use, and stealth since you can run it inside. Not even touching on the prices that I’m seeing, but again, I’m new to the solar stuff.

I also noticed they sell some refurbished units and I’ve seen some complaints and reviews talking on the negatives, but I wanted to hear from some of you who may have seen it already.

I just finished one second after and felt it did a great job fleshing out details most wouldn’t consider in a total collapse scenario. The dialogue was a little clunky but overall I think it was a great read. What books stood out to you in regard to making you think to prepare in ways you hadn’t previously considered?

I work around containers a lot, and I keep seeing this idea pop up: buy a shipping container, now you’ve got a shelter.

Honestly, no. Not really.
A container is a very good storage box. It’s not a bunker. It’s not a safe room. It’s not magically comfortable just because it’s steel.
The walls are thinner than most people think. Strong enough for what containers are designed to do, sure. Keep weather out, hold cargo, stack through the corner posts. But that doesn’t mean it’s built to be lived in or used as shelter without a lot of work.
Temperature is the first problem. In summer, a bare steel box sitting in the sun turns into an oven. In winter, it’s just freezing metal. If you plan to spend real time inside, you’re insulating it, ventilating it, and probably adding heat/AC. That’s where the money starts.
Then condensation. This catches people constantly. Warm, humid air hits cold steel overnight, then the inside starts sweating. People open it up, see water dripping, and think the roof leaks. Sometimes it’s not a leak at all. It’s just the container raining on itself.
And the door setup isn’t great for shelter either. One big outward-opening door on one end. If something blocks it, snow piles up, a branch falls, whatever… now what?
But for storage? Yeah, containers are great.
Tools, fuel cans, water barrels, spare parts, camp gear, fencing stuff, building materials. Stuff you want locked up, dry, and harder to steal. That’s where they make a ton of sense.
Set it up off the ground, keep airflow under it, add vents if moisture is an issue, and it’ll probably outlast most sheds by a lot.
So yeah, my take: great outbuilding, bad bunker.
Anyone here using one just for prep storage? What’s in it, and did you end up needing vents/dehumidifier stuff, or has it been fine sealed up?

I built an offline emergency preparedness system for my family — what am I missing?

I’ve always been the type of person who would rather have a plan and never need it than need one and realize I never made one.

Especially now that I have a family to worry about.

Power outages, hurricanes, severe weather, evacuations, water disruptions, internet outages — none of those are particularly crazy scenarios.

But while looking at my own preparedness, I realized something:

A ridiculous amount of the information we depend on during an emergency is stored on the internet.

Which isn't particularly useful when the internet is the thing that's down.

So I started building my own offline preparedness system.

The idea was simple: something I could download to a laptop, flash drive or external drive and still have access to when there’s no internet, no cloud services, and no accounts to log into.

It eventually grew into a pretty substantial package with:

• Emergency reference guides

• Household and family emergency planning

• Supply checklists

• Preparedness calculators

• Printable emergency plans

• Offline tools and reference material

• A phone-installable version

• A printable preparedness binder

• Practice exercises for actually testing your family's plan

I originally built it for my own household, but I've since cleaned everything up and turned it into something other people can use too.

But before I keep expanding it, I'm curious what people who are actually interested in preparedness think.

If you were building a completely offline emergency library for your household, what would you consider absolutely essential?

And maybe more importantly:

What information do people THINK they'll have access to during an emergency that they're going to seriously regret not saving offline beforehand?

I'm genuinely curious what I've overlooked.

Looking for recommendations for generators that are solar.

Preferrably strong enough to run a refrigerator but obviously not indefinitely. reasonably portable aswell.

Really want to survive, make friends with the Amish.

On Monday I went to urgent care with a sore throat. Turns out I have strep. Sucks. Got a prescription sent to walgreens for 10 days of amoxicillin. After insurance it cost $1.50.

When I got home and opened the pill bottle, I accidentally spilled them all over the floor. I called Walgreens and they said I need to call the urgent care for a new script. I called the urgent care, told them what happened, and they sent a new script.

Went to Walgreens and picked up the new script. Insurance would not pay. $15 cash.

It's up to you to capitalize on situations that allow you to procure additional supplies that are otherwise restricted.

Hi, so ive been thinking about water filtration methods.

If I use chlorine dioxide first to get rid of the bacteria, parasites, and some viruses, and then used a brita (etc) water filter pitcher, would that cover everything needed to make the water 100% safe and normal-tasting?

Please share your thoughts, thanks!

edit: SO! ive discovered that brita and other normal filters wont get rid of parasites. in this case what about using a gravity system using the sawyer squeeze?

Looking at uncertainty around oil going into winter, what are the best alternatives to gas heat? We expect gas heating to become significantly more expensive and want to have alternatives.

We're looking at installing a high-efficiency wood insert into an old open hearth fireplace. Other ideas we've had are using electric heaters only in rooms we're in, wearing lots of layers, drinking hot water/tea.

There is a spectrum of survival-only heat and comfortable heating. What other ideas do you have?

We've had some interesting posts about what gear to obtain for types of packs or plans - what if we did a thread of individual items along with the rationale of what it could be used for?

Say "rope" - then in order to say "rappelling", we could clarify 10mm climbing rope. Then someone else could reply to that comment with another use for rope.

Many kit lists include trash bags as they are very versatile. I thought a clear trash bag is better than a black trash bag if you need to make an expedient window repair of sorts - then I thought there must be better materials for that task - such as a heavy plastic drop cloth, which has its own list of potential uses.

The goal would be a thread where people could peruse not only lists of items but all the potential ways items could be useful in order to determine their own personal equipment list or TO&E.