Prepping for others.

Just like many other preppers I know, I have friends and family that have absolutely NOTHING set aside for that proverbial 'rainy day', or rainy decade, we are all sure is on the horizon. I have tried cajoling and even offering to go with them and assist them if/when they ever want to set aside some supplies, but all to no avail. This is what led me to pondering the possibility of simply setting aside a bare-bones stockpile specifically for them. I tried to come up with all the pro's and con's, the cheapest cost for the largest gain (because like so many others, I am broke and money is largely unavailable.) and the best way to employ the preps.

Ill go through my thought process:
1) Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day...
If I get them a couple 20lb bags of red beans and rice; they wont realize the value and may simply throw the container away if it gets in the way, use it for non-emergency food and let it spoil, give it away, or (if SHTF) trade it for a couple steaks and some beer.

2) A fool and their Preps
They may offer to feed everyone and their brother and run themselves out of supplies in a quarter of the time. This one actually scares me the most because they may decide to come back to me thinking I owed it to them because they are family and they know I have provisions... and they might tell everyone else the same story and they would ALL come for free refills.

3) A preppers home is their castle
If I allow them to simply join me and my family, in spite of their total lack of training or comprehension of the gravity of the matter, it could lead to an even MORE uncomfortable and dangerous problem when they turn out to be intolerable pigs and belligerent sheep-people that rebel and risk your Op-Sec.

 4) The rats in the Pantry
History has shown us that the government will simply seize the assets of groups and individuals when they want them. It happened to the Liberty Dollar people, and if SHTF it would happen to anyone that had supplies the govt wanted.  Commonly, the authorities will offer bribes and rewards to people for turning in neighbors for "HOARDING" food or supplies. When a person is hungry, and you are not giving them free unlimited handouts, they will gladly take the govt's offer of a free bag of canned food for information leading to a successful raid of one of those horrible 'preppers' that hog so much food.

I came to the conclusion that, instead of just prepping for someone that wont prep for themselves, you are safer to simply keep your own supplies quiet and try like hell to get them interested in being the ant instead of the grasshopper.

I'd like to hear the input of other people too.

  

Antibiotics without a prescription - Good for stocking up.

Necessary Disclaimer: I'm not a doctor, don't attempt to assume you are one either (unless you are). Get real advice from a doctor before you do something that might be stupid.

The following was taken from HERE






These products can be ordered from calvetsupply without a prescription. What follows is a bit lengthy, but worth the read IMO.


No antibiotic is effective against every type of microbe. Certain ones will kill aerobic bacteria, others are used for anaerobic bacteria, still others are effective against resistant strains, and certain people are allergic to or intolerant of various antibiotics. The following are all generics, running about $10 for about a month’s treatment.

• Amoxicillin is the old standby for most respiratory infections (probably most of which are viral and don’t even require antibiotics). It is excellent for strep throat and some strains of pneumococcal bacteria. It is also safe for children and pregnant women. It is well-tolerated, causing little stomach distress or diarrhea. The drawbacks are that some people are truly allergic, and many bacteria have developed resistance to amoxicillin (especially staph) through overuse among both humans and animals. Anyone truly allergic to amoxicillin should substitute erythromycin or another antibiotic.
•Cephalexin works on most of the same bacteria as amoxicillin, plus is stronger against Staph aureus, which mostly causes skin infections. It rarely works against MRSA (resistant staph), however. It is also well-tolerated in children and is safe in pregnant women, causing few side-effects. Like any antibiotic, it carries the risk of allergy. People who develop anaphylaxis (a life-threatening allergy) with amoxicillin probably should not take cephalexin, as there is a good 10% cross-reactivity between the two. If I had to choose between stockpiling amoxicillin or cephalexin, I would choose cephalexin. The combination drug, amoxicillin-clavulanate (Augmentin), is as strong against staph, but more expensive and harder on the stomach.
•Ciprofloxacin is useful for anthrax (which I’ve never seen), urinary tract and prostate infections (which are very common), and many forms of pneumonia and bronchitis. One of the more important and selective uses of ciprofloxacin is in combination with metronidazole for diverticulitis. This potentially life-threatening infection usually (or at least often) requires two antibiotics to resolve. (Levaquin and Avelox are a bit stronger than ciprofloxacin and could be substituted for this, but are much more expensive.) Ciprofloxacin is not used in women or children unless the benefit clearly outweighs the risk, although the risk of joint damage (seen in animals) appears minimal. Taking ciprofloxacin by mouth is nearly as effective as taking by IV.
•Doxycycline is useful in penicillin/amoxicillin-allergic adults for respiratory infections and some urinary/prostate infections. It is avoided in children and pregnant women unless the benefit clearly outweighs the risk (of permanent tooth discoloration in children under the age of . Doxycycline is sometimes effective against penicillin-resistant bacteria. If I were limited to either doxycycline or erythromycin, I would choose erythromycin for stockpile.
•Erythromycin is useful for most of the same infections amoxicillin is used for, and thus can be substituted in penicillin-allergic patients. However, erythromycin tends to cause the intestine to contract, often causing cramps or diarrhea. (This property is sometimes used to help patients with conditions that impair intestinal motility.) It can be safely used in children and pregnant women.
•Metronidazole is an unusual antibiotic used for very specific infections. It is aimed primarily at anaerobic bacteria, primarily those found in the intestine. It is also used for certain STDs, including trichomonas. As mentioned above, it is very useful in combination with ciprofloxacin (or SMZ-TMP, below) for diverticulitis. It is the only inexpensive antibiotic effective for Clostridium difficile (c. diff, or antibiotic-related) colitis. It is also effective against certain amoeba. This drug is not used in children unless the benefit clearly outweighs the risk.
•SMZ-TMP is a combination drug of sulfamethoxazole and trimethoprim. The latter antibiotic is used mainly for urinary infections. The sulfa component is effective against many respiratory bacteria and most urinary pathogens, although ciprofloxacin is somewhat stronger. The main reason to stockpile SMZ-TMP is due to its effectiveness against resistant staph (MRSA).
Of course, only the most understanding fellow-prepper physician is likely to prescribe all these in quantity. The list can be narrowed a bit, by dropping doxycycline (since erythromycin covers most microbes that doxycycline would kill, and can be used in young children) and amoxicillin (because cephalexin covers most amoxicillin-sensitive bacteria and has the benefit of effectiveness against staph aureus).

My top five antibiotics would therefore be:

•Cephalexin
•Ciprofloxacin
•Erythromycin
•Metronidazole
•SMZ-TMP
Of these, SMZ-TMP and ciprofloxacin have the most duplicate coverage, as do cephalexin and erythromycin. Since the intolerance of erythromycin is much higher than is allergy to cephalexin, I would favor cephalexin. Ciprofloxacin is stronger for intra-abdominal infections than SMZ-TMP, and is less likely to develop resistance. Although its use in children is a bit of a concern due to the question of joint pain (although this is rare), I would favor ciprofloxacin over than SMZ-TMP, even though SMZ-TMP is effective against MRSA. However, when the use of antibiotics is severely curtailed, antibiotic resistance will also decrease, and therefore MRSA will become less of a concern.

Therefore, my top three antibiotics to stockpile would be:

•Cephalexin
•Ciprofloxacin
•Metronidazole
Using these three alone or in combination would cover around 90% of the infections physicians commonly encounter, as well as several less-likely threats (including anthrax and C. diff).

Remember, there are more people, there is less food. They produced less, they lost more to flooding, fires, frosts and other problems.

If there is something I need to tell you about this, then you have not been paying attention. Think about your family, about your loved ones... Make some preparations. Learn where to find food where people wont look, learn to hunt, fish, and grow your own.

Ill keep trying to post lessons on these things, but ultimately, it comes down to you and how serious you are about protecting the ones you care for.

Make lye at home.

  Make lye at home for your soap making needs.

Make lye at home is perfect for making homemade liquid soap and shampoo. It isn't difficult, although if you have access to commercial lye, you may prefer to use that instead. This is because commercial lye will give you consistency in your lye soap recipes. The problem with making lye from wood ash, although it is a simple process, the end result can be that your lye water is either too strong, or too weak. Either way, it will spoil your batch of homemade soap. Having said that, none of our ancestors had access to commercial lye and they made soap just fine. We will also give you a couple of tests to do that will take a lot of the guess work out of the process, making sure that your lye is of the right strength.

MAKE LYE: INGREDIENTS

The ingredients for making lye are wood ash and water. Preferably rain water, as it is soft, although tap water will work just as well. The ash should come from hardwoods as soft woods are too resinous to mix with fat. Hickory, sugar maple, ash, beech and buckeye wood are the best producers of lye.

MAKE LYE: EQUIPMENT

Traditionally, to make lye, people used wooden buckets or casks lined with straw and small rocks. Now, not everyone has access to these things, so I am going to show you how you can make lye just as easily in an old nappy bucket or something similar.

Take your old plastic nappy bucket and drill a neat round hole, about an inch off the bottom on one side of the bucket. It shouldn't be very big, about the diameter of a small iron nail - about 1/8th of an inch. Make sure that the size of the hole is the same size of the nail that you will use to stop up the hole when needed.

MAKE LYE: THE PROCESS

Using cold wood ash, take a spade and carefully place the ash into the stopped-up bucket. Make sure that what you are placing in the bucket is the fine, white ash, as opposed to any charcoal bits. This you don't need. Make sure that the ash is well compacted in the bucket.

Boil water half of the capacity of the bucket and pour gently over the ashes. As soon as the water makes contact with the ash it will start hissing and bubbling. This is perfectly normal. You may find at this stage that the water is just sitting on top of the ash, without it appearing to do anything. Just leave it, without disturbing it, and come back later to see when you can add the rest of the water.

Once you have used all the water elevate the bucket so that you are able to place a glass or plastic container under the hole that you previously drilled and stopped up with a nail. Place your receiving container under the hole and remove the nail. Do not expect lye water to come out of here. This could take hours, if not days.

Once you have enough lye water use the nail to stop up the hole. Take the lye water to the kitchen and boil carefully. Take care at this stage as the lye is caustic and if it splashes onto your skin and into your eyes it will burn. You will need ot wear gloves and safety glasses at this point. Once you have heated up your lye water take it back to your bucket and carefully pour it back over the ashes in the bucket. This helps strengthen the lye.

Wait for the lye to emerge once again.

MAKE LYE: TESTS FOR STRENGTH:

To make lye and be successful at soap making your lye has to be at the right strength. Now there are 2 ways in which this can be done, both of which indirectly involve chickens. If you live on a farm and keep chickens, then this test is fine for you. If not, then you can use the second test.

Test 1

This is a simple test. Take a chicken feather and place it in the lye. If the feather dissolves, the lye is strong enough and you can use it for your soap. If not, you will have to re-boil the lye water when it emerges and repeat the process until your chicken feathers dissolve.

Test 2

This test involves using a fresh egg in a shell. Take the egg and place it in the cold lye water. If it sinks, your lye is not strong enough and you will have to repeat the process until it does. If the egg floats with just a little of the lye water above it, then the strength is just right. If the egg floats too high, almost on top of the lye water, then the strength is too strong. You can compensate by adding a little bit of fresh water to the lye water and try again.

With the first test, I would still back this up with the "egg floating" test, just to make sure that my lye water was not too strong.

MAKE LYE: THE FINAL PROCESS

When you buy commercial lye it is in the form of crystals. When you make lye at home you will want your lye to be in crystals too. This is very easy to do. Take your lye water and place it in the sun until the water has evaporated. What you are left with are your lye crystals that you can use quite happily in your soap making recipes.

In the end your homemade lye is softer on the skin. It is potassium hydroxide as opposed to sodium hydroxide. When following soap recipes make sure that you use the right type of hydroxide, as although both are lye, they cannot usually be used in place of the other in certain recipes. The potassium hydroxide molecules are larger than the sodium hydroxide molecules. It is this size difference that enables the potassium hydroxide to maintain a liquid state. Potassium hydroxide is normally used to make liquid soaps. However, you can make a hard soap by adding common salt at the end of the boiling process. If you want to add salt to harden your bars of soap, weigh out the water you are going to mix your lye with. Before you add the lye, add ½ tsp. of salt per pound of oil/rendered fat in your recipe. Stir well to make sure that all of the salt is dissolved. Add your lye to the salted water, making your lye solution, and resume your normal soap making procedure. Both types of hydroxide, however, are extremely corrosive and must be handled and stored with care.

Visit our Making Soap page for more information on how to make soap at home. You will also find Soap Recipes for the three main types of soaps; hand-milled soaps where you do not have to use raw lye, cold process and hot process soaps.

Make your own Smoke Bombs

In a Bug Out scenario there are dozens of things that can go wrong and a dozen more reasons why you may need to obscure an area or disorient others... The videos posted here are great and show how to easily make your own heavy smoke grenades.

What I am not going to post publicly are the ways these simple smoke grenades can be converted into irritant or blister agent weapons to disperse angry and dangerous crowds that may have become a threat during your bug-out. If you look online though, you can probably discover some of the naturally available roadside plants that can be processed down and concentrated to cause blistering and bleeding of the mucous membranes in the eyes, nose, throat, mouth, etc... of anyone that encounters the smoke cloud. If your home is assaulted by a mob of people during a riot or if your car is being assaulted during a bug out... even common smoke can be an asset. A choking cloud of blister inducing smoke is just the next step. But you will have to look THAT up yourself.

and a vid of how well they work

SWORD RATING DEFINITIONS

1. Base Level. Be aware. No Warnings issued. This doesn't mean that everything is ok, just that either we dont know about it, or have not been able to post a change yet.
2. Social Unrest. Elevated Activity.  Keep your eyes on the news and on local tensions etc... Trouble may be brewing, but it is not yet seen as a real Danger. 
3. Active Threat. Caution Advised.  Sources have indicated that there are, at least, pockets of aggression that may pose a danger. This is beyond the normal dangers of day-to-day living. This usually comes from police reports, scanner activity, a disasterous event or some other occurance. SWORD overseer and some admin members have connections in the LEO and / or intelligence community and often receive advanced warning of events. 
4. PREPARE FOR BUG-OUT. Whatever the reason is, a bug-out / bug-in situation is brewing. Information usually accompanies this rating along with areas known to be affected. BOL info and the needs of members may be discussed. 
5. EMERGENCY SITUATION. A bug-out or bug-in advisory has been issued for affected areas. Communication with Overseer or other admin may be difficult or impossible and the secondary command staff may be activated. Alpha BOL may be activated depending on the situation. 
6. SHTF SITUATION. Either a situation has escalated to a full blown dangerous event, or there has been a sudden disasterous development. Communication via this forum may be impossible, try to stay in contact with other SWORD members and share information. Hopefully you have paid attention to our Fallback/meet-up locations and have a plan for your family. 

WTF - ALL HELL HAS BROKEN LOOSE.  Try to stay together, work as a team and try to contact SWORD PRIME and/or fall back to a designated a safe fallback point. SWORD leadership will try to make contact and organize a response ASAP. 

Wild Edibles - Foraging - Dandilion

I really like this channel because they are accurate, they show everything clearly and even give any pertinent warnings.

Dandelions are more nutritious than spinach and broccoli. All parts of the plant are edible, and the leaves are high in potassium, iron and calcium. The plant has a deep taproot that can be anywhere from 6 inches to 3 feet long, according to the University of Wisconsin Extension Service. Dandelions have the most flavor before the first flowers appear, when the plants are tender and young. Dandelion roots have a turniplike flavor and are best dug up in early spring when prepared as a vegetable.

Step 1

Dig up dandelions in early spring using a spade. Keep the taproot of each plant intact.

Step 2

Pull the greenery from the plants. You can eat the leaves of the plants, either uncooked like salad greens or stewed separately from the roots in boiling water.

Step 3

Rinse each dandelion root under cold water, removing all dirt. Check to make sure each root is free of insects.

Step 4

Peel the outer skin from each taproot using your fingers or a paring knife. The skin is bitter tasting.

Step 5

Cover the roots with water in a pan, and bring them to a boil on the stove. Reduce the heat and simmer the roots. Test doneness by stabbing one or two roots with a fork. When the fork easily goes into the taproots, they are ready.

Step 6

Drain the water from the dandelion roots, rinse them with warm water and serve. Season the roots as you would carrots.

JKD

Gutting and Skinning a rabbit

This is actually the clearest and best video I have ever found on this topic. You can follow the cooking and serving tips too if you want to, he really knows what he is doing. Personally, I prefer to roast the rabbit over the fire instead of poaching it, but his method allows for 100% safety. A 2 hr hard boil will kill anything.

With Rabbits, always check the liver for yellow spots/tularemia, and be wary of parasites in the skin/body. Mostly rare problems but it is better to be safe than sorry. Wear gloves if you have them just to be on the safe side. If you want to take an added safety precaution, gut the rabbit while it is submerged in the water. Tularemia can be spread by breathing in infected particulate. If tularemia has infested rabbits in your area, clean any rabbits killed in a basin of water and check the liver for spots before skinning. If the liver shows signs of disease, throw away water and rabbit, sterilize the basin, refill it and move on to the next rabbit.

JKD

Make a survival deadfall trap

How to make a deadfall trap

The deadfall trap works on the principle that when the bait is taken a weight falls on the prey. This live animal trap can be made to any size. Warning! It can be dangerous for humans. Setting a large version of this trap is risky and difficult to do on your own.

Trigger

An often-shown trap is the figure-four trap. It's very effective, but it needs some practice to make. You are unlikely to get it right first time. Your intention should be to create a stable trap, but with a trigger that will cause the trap to collapse, even to the slightest touch.

A horizontal bait bar is balanced at appropriate angles to an upright with a locking bar, which supports a heavy weight pivoting around the tip of the upright, see the figure above. As a weight, use a heavy log or rock.

Another variation of the trigger mechanism is shown to the right. It's very simple and no tools are required. Use two long sticks and one short stick. Make sure the contact point of the weight is close to the main support stick. Experiment with configuration.