Survivalist Skills: Foods That Keep Forever

Add these food items to your stockpile now! They will outlive you. You can always supplement with foraging, hunting, or fishing, but these stock piles ensure you will have food for years to come.

• Rice (Easy to keep. Feeds everyone you know!)
• Honey (Never expires!)
• Dried fruit (cranberries, raisins)
• Peanut Butter (Lots of calories! Keeps for years.)
• Canned fish (Tuna can be stored for years)
• Maple syrup
• Dried beans
• Dried pasta
• Jello mix
• vinegar
• salt/spices
• liquor 
• Dry herbs

This is a starter list, but it's not all the stuff you should be getting. Don't forget other important items like batteries, blankets, medicine, and ammunition! The truth is, most people don't have these types of reserves. If you want to start your own stock pile it can be overwhelming at first, it can get expensive. That is if you don't know the tricks. I've found a really great book on how to get started on your stock pile pantry. It's a great read, and it'll help get you on the right track! You can see the site here.

Survivalist Skills: Battery Reconditioning - Never need new batteries again!

Okay, so you've got a sweet solar set up. You've got a battery bank. It's powering everything awesome! But, what happens when those batteries go bad? What if you can't get more batteries? Those things don't last forever. You would be without power. Not quite! Battery reconditioning can save your batteries.


Why should you recondition a battery?

While recharging a battery will give you some juice, reconditioning restores the full capacity of the battery! You can do this to almost every kind of battery. Being able to do this would be an amazingly valuable prepper skill. Besides, that you could even recondition extra batteries to sell or barter! Nobody knows how to do this. They just get a new one,

Lead acid batteries are the easiest to recondition, so keep this in mind if you're stock piling. You should also read the manufacturers notes, and familiarize yourself with safety warnings. It's not difficult, but it can be dangerous. You are working with battery acid. So, be careful

The reaction of lead plates immersed in sulfuric acid generates electricity in automotive lead-acid batteries. However, this sulfate reaction also produces, along with electricity, lead sulfate.

When a healthy battery is recharged, this lead sulfate is converted back to lead and sulfuric acid.

But in tired battery, the lead sulfate changes to a crystalline form that coats the battery’s lead plates reducing its capacity. This process is known as sulfation. It is a common occurrence in lead-acid batteries and a major reason for their failure.

The good news is that you can often reverse sulfation utilizing a specialized high-current, pulse that effectively breaks down the crystalline lead sulfate and turns it back into lead and sulfuric acid, thus cleaning the lead plates and restoring charge capacity.

How to benefit from this?

Throw a post on craigslist or check the curb for dead batteries! These are of no use to people who don't know how to save them so they can be had very cheap or even free. You can stock pile them for yourself or sell them for quick cash, even trade for stuff you need.

If you'd like to learn how to do this there's a great guide for it. You'll be able to learn a valuable new prepared-ness skill, make some extra cash, and save your battery banks when they go bad! All you'll need is some household items and a few minutes of time to get a dead battery back on track. It's a great resource. Check it out here.

Survivalist Skills: How To Kill Your Power Bills And Live Off Grid

Power companies have this country by the balls. The bills go up every month, and they just expect us to sit there and take it. No. Here's a few ways for you to fight back against power companies, and take back your money.

Step 1: Reduce Dependency

The fact is people are using more power than ever before. When my grandma built her house in the 70's it did even have an air conditioner. She also paid for it almost entirely herself. (She took a very small loan from her father) Now, that sort of thing is unheard of. (Because if you could do that banks couldn't keep you trapped in a cycle of debt. They don't want that!) Our first step is to reduce our dependency on electricity. That means being more efficient. Use your air conditioner less (or not at all, invest in a few cheaper to run fans),  don't burn all the lights, turn stuff off, use less appliances. Adjust your water heater. (probably second after air conditioner)

Step 2: Take Yourself Off Grid

Off grid living isn't for everyone, but there's lots of ways to do it. You can invest in solar or hydrogen power without a huge investment. Keep in mind, that what we talked about in step 1 is very important for this to work. People have upped their power consumption so much that they have no choice, but to be under the power company's thumb! You don't have to do that. It's easy now to set up a few solar panels and batteries on a camper or even a small cabin. You can run a small freezer/fridge, lights, ect. Keep in mind some states do not allow off grid living! Steer clear of them.

Step 3: Create Alternate power

What kind of power you should create depends on where you live. There's lots of options for preppers to choose from now. For a solar set up, you'll need panels, batteries, and a charge controller at least. From there you can just plug your gadgets into it for power. If you want the power to run through your house itself there's also a gadget for that which is pretty cool. It plugs your planels into a wall outlet to reduce your power bill!

If you'd like to see a super valuable course on how to free yourself from government power I can recommend Power Out Prepper. It will guide you step by step on how to build not just solar, but a huge variety of power options! It's insane, and super valuable if you want to generate your own power. Even if you don't know anything about electricity you can learn how to do it yourself. Take a look here to see how if you're serious about it.

Survivalist Skills: The Lost Art Of Farming and Agriculture

Humans have been farming for thousands of years. We developed this skill to protect us against food shortages. However, this amazing piece of humanity has been lost to most of the western world. A staggeringly small amount of people know how to grow their own food. I feel like this is an essential skill for any prepper. It doesn't matter if you can fish. It doesn't matter if you can hunt. It doesn't matter if your store room is full to the brim. Eventually, you might find it more difficult to catch anything. You might hit a dry spell in your hunting. Your food storage will run dry. Then what will you do? Farming is the answer that humans found.

Agriculture is nothing new, but many people are ignorant of it. Now people just buy groceries. They accept whatever price big businesses tell them to pay. They accept poor quality food, because they don't know they have other options. Preppers know better, so here's how a farm can help you.

How much space do I need for farming?

Even if you only have a standard size backyard, you can still learn the basic principals of farming. You can even grow a sizable amount of food there. Of course, the more space, the more options you have, but all is not lost if you don't! Keep in mind that nosey neighbors might not like your activities. (People are weird like that!) Try to be discreet. Or the government could come knocking and poking their nose in your plans.

How can I protect my farm from animals and looters?

As for the animals there are lots of options like scarecrows or even small electric fencing that can defend your vegetables. People are more difficult. It's easy to get rid of them if you're there, but if you're not home it's open season on your food! Try to plant your plot somewhere not easily seen from the road, or I even grow plants in buckets on my porch. (Helps keep racoons away. They're less brave that close to the house.)

Fertilizer

The best fertilizer I've gotten so far is from fish. You can use scraps or even buy straight fish poop from a store to use for your plants. If you've got a fish tank, even better! Just filter the water out when you change it, and dump that in there. It works great for producing big, healthy fruit and veggies! No need for any other fancy junk from the store. Raising your own fish gives and endless supply.

What should I grow?

Keep in mind that growing seasons rotate. Especially in cold climates. If you don't have the ability to grow in doors during winter, make sure to grow stuff that stores well! You can easily can a winter's worth of beans, fruit, carrots, potatoes, and more. If you have freezer space you can also save many things in there if you don't care for the canned versions. My list is carrots, potatoes, onions, celery, berries, tomatoes, and peppers (great flavoring!)

Remember, don't let anything go to waste! Save your vegetable scraps. You can use those as animal feed if you're raising animals for meat or for compost. There's of course more to farming. Much more than I could cover in one blog post. If you want to really get in deep with farming I can recommend a book that will teach you everything. It utilizes permaculture to really help you get the best yield from small spaces, it teaches long forgotten techniques that any prepper would find extremely valuable. If you're serious about farming your own food, you can see what it has to offer here.

Survivalist Skills - How To Use Aquaponics To Grow Fish And Vegetables For Your Table

A lot of preppers are great hunters or anglers, but that's not enough! Do you always manage to find prey? My guess is no. There are most likely many days where you get nothing for your hard work. That's just how it goes as a hunter gatherer, which is why human beings learned the art of agriculture. It takes work, but it's not hard and you can do it too. If your hunting ground runs a little dry how nice would it be to know you can grow your own fresh vegetables and fish? Instead of going hungry, because of a bad hunt now you can still keep healthy and strong.

Survivalist Skills: Aquaponics 101 for preppers

What is aquaponics? Aquaponics is a system in which fish and plants are grown together. The fish fertilize the plants, and the plants clean the water for the fish. Fish fertilizer is some of the best nutrients you can get for growing any kind of plant! That means that not only do you get fat, tasty fish to use as back up protein, but you also get delicious vegetables of all kinds. The concept of aquaponics is easy, people often complicate this with all manner of pumps and automated equipment. If you'd like to go this route it's not very hard to set up. It can even run on solar power to use your pumps. Honestly though, you could even just keep fish in a large outdoor swimming pool and water plants from the tank and get the same result.

You can use many types of fish, but I'd say the best are tilapia or catfish. Tilapia are fast growing fish, they breed readily, and you can get a nice amount of meat from them. Catfish have the added benefit of being surface breathers. Which means you could technically farm them without an airpump. Some people have claimed to stock them in barrels! They are extremely hardy and good eating in my opinion.

Different aquaponics setups

There's a couple different setups for aquaponics. Which one is best depends on what you want to grow. You could use a 'floating bed' method. This means that a large piece of foam floats on top of the water. You cut holes in the top for net pots. You then put your vegetables in these, and they grow on top of the water collecting nutrients. Pros, super easy set up. Great for leafy veggies like lettuce or celery. Cons: You can't grow root vegetables like carrots or potatoes that will rot in the water.

You can also use the growbed method. This method uses beds filled with clay beads, but you could use something else absorbent too. The water from the tank goes into the grow bed and flows back into the tank when the fish are done with it. Pros: Can grow almost any veggies. Cons: more difficult setup, but not by much.

Many people make these set ups out of large industrial plastic containers. You could use almost anything that holds water, and is large enough for the amount of fish you want to grow. Keep in mind that fish that are stocked too high could product too much waste, and you'll have a lot of die off. Once you get the hang of it, aquaponics is a great way to explode your ability to grow food. Your food cellar will thank you once you stock pile it with freshly canned vegetables and if your ability to store meat goes out the window you know you still have the power to provide for yourself. With a little instruction, I believe anybody can learn to do this. So, I'd like to recommend an aquaponics program to you. It's called Backyard Liberty, it's all about giving the power back to the people. The power to grow our own food, and be secure. This course is by preppers for preppers, and it will show you how to fight back, and take control of your food production again! Please do yourself a favor and check it out here if you'd like to take back your food.