Bug Out Bag / Prepper Setup / Survival-based UL kit and philosophy

"Using yourself as an example still won't cut it as far as addressing people that live in real poverty.
I could use myself too and make an even better point for you, as I make little, work an insane number of hours ( my 40 hour job, 10 or so hours a week for my landlord and another 25 or so sewing and knitting. Plus I cook our meals, clean etc) and so rarely eat out that it seems silly. I don't owe money, don't live beyond my means, eat healthy home cooked meals etc. I could be the poster child ( …) for what you are saying and I used to say the same here on BPL. Now I think there are just too many variables and we are privileged bunch and to go around saying that "everyone" is able to save, is borderline insulting."

Kat,

In the context of this thread we are talking about people that make "preparations" for certain disasters.

If a person has no time or money to put into "preps" then there is not much of a point in discussing different ways or prepping is there.

It would be like me opening up a topic on a car forum asking if i should buy a koenigsegg or a Bugati Veyron, i don't have the finances to buy either

My suggestion is that instead of folks stock piling MRE's, ammunition, guns, toilet paper etc it would be better to save that money (money they would have spent on preps) and have some financial security behind them, as i feel it's far more likely these days for families to suffer financially rather than solar flares.

The other point i was trying to make is that, there are very few people on this planet that haven't gone through tough times, be it financially, health wise or emotionally, yet to my knowledge no one has yet died as a direct result of a solar flare.
So i'm of the opinion that it's better to deal with the real problems we are facing today rather than some made up possible scenario.

In your case, when i was in a similar situation i trained and moved careers as i could see light at the end of the tunnel in the path i was taking.
I managed to claw my way up the ladder in this new career and after a few years was able to earn enough and pair down my expenses enough to save a little.

I would argue that by retraining this was more valuable as a "prep" than any amount of stock piled items.

"Regarding all points above, save staying fit and possibly eating healthy: On a minimum wage job? In today's outsourced-at-the-top-insourced-at-the-bottom labor market? Really?

Might you sketch us out a rough plan for accomplishing this? If so, you could well be a legitimate candidate to be our next Secretary of Labor. Assuming the D's don't screw things up even worse and hand the White House to the R's."

Personally i take responsibility for my own actions and find that blaming others for my misfortunes is a waste of time and effort.
If i am not earning enough to provide for my family i will do something about it, i certainly won't wait around for some "financial climate" or whatever nonsense they spout these days to make things sound better.
Be that changing jobs, moving areas or even moving country, it really doesn't matter ALL that matters is that i can take care of my family, AGAIN i see that as MY responsibility not a government.
That's my choice and has absolutely NOTHING to do with any sort of politics.

"In your case, when i was in a similar situation i trained and moved careers as i could see light at the end of the tunnel in the path i was taking.
I managed to claw my way up the ladder in this new career and after a few years was able to earn enough and pair down my expenses enough to save a little."

In my case? You were in a similar situation? See the light at the end of the tunnel?
What does that mean? Are you talking about me? Because there is no tunnel here. Sorry to hear about yours though. I don't remember complaining nor asking for any help. Your post is downright insulting now.

Time to move on.

Regarding the link on the Trishield vs Dyneema. That is Dyneema Grid. Nothing is stronger than full Dyneema or Spectra for backpacking fabric.

Sounds like a lot of paranoia going on here, not philosophy. Having been through several major earthquakes, we are prepared. Really just need a few days food and water.

Also have a solar powered camper in the drive way with 100 gals of freshwater in it. But the real purpose is to go camping several times a month when not backpacking.

I've seen too much Sci-Fi channel to want to be the guy that says "Don't be ridiculous, there's no such thing as vampire flying squirrels" because he always gets it first. So while I agree that some folks may take the prepping thing too far, not prepping at all seems a little unrealistic too.

We have evolved into a just-in-time food delivery system. My grocery store is now stocked daily by trucks coming from distribution centers 500 miles away in Salt Lake City. I have grown fond of eating and the potential for disruption concerns me. How people live in big cities and not be the least bit paranoid is beyond me.

So at Costco, Sam's Club or Wal-mart:

3-50 lb bags of rice @$19.00
2-25 lb bags of flour @ 7.50
4- 20 oz McCormick gravy mix @ 10.00
2-25 lb pinto beans @ 12.00

Toss in some boxes of mashed potatoes, oatmeal and canned meats and vegetable. So for a hundred and fifty bucks you could hold out fine for a month or so pretty easy. Most of the stuff keeps fine for years. Please don't be that guy.

Umm, *everyone* (who is anyone) knows that vampire flying squirrels are real, and a real threat. (rolls eyes at the inanity of humanity)

More seriously, best also be packing some good multi vitamin/mineral complexes or the like, because most the above food (minus canned veggies) is pretty lacking in nutrition. Becoming malnourished won't help ones long term chance of survival much.

Changing it up a little helps, like for example brown rice and lentils vs white rice and pinto beans. More expensive though.

I have decided that my BOB will include basic woodcraft tools for building fires and shelters. I have a saw capable of cutting fire and shelter-size branches/logs, and need to choose a chopping/splitting tool to complement it.

I have been looking around on line, and have narrowed my choices to a hatchet or a machete. They both weigh about 18 oz, and they both cost about $30. The hatchet has an 15" handle and 3.5" blade face, the machete is 28" long with a 22" blade.

So, considering comparable weights and prices, and multiple use options including possible self defense, I've been leaning towards the machete vs. the hatchet.

What do others think?

No slight was intended. Frankly, I don't spend much time considering exotic reasons to prep due to the abundance of more pedestrian ones. For example, those of us that are shooters got to witness the panic buying, hoarding and profiteering of ammo that took place earlier this year. Were people shooting more? Nope.

Just everybody had to buy every bit of ammo off the shelf whether they needed it or not. Kind of like the Tickle Me Elmo deal. People would show up at the store at opening to buy it all. Then they would sell it online for twice what they paid for it or more. You could buy ammo but you had to pay scalper prices. So now six months latter .22 ammo is starting to make it back onto store shelves.

Now I can do fine without .22 ammo for six months, but it would be different if it came to food.

PS, yes I need to toss some vitamins in the preps. Also needs more fat sources, maybe shelf stable margarine?

I've used both and have hacked down small trees to clear fields of fire for a machine gun with just a machete in Panama. My machete has been retired to the garage but I've seen them break. I doubt that it'd be as good as a hatchet over the long haul so I'd probably go with the hatchet over the machete for use in North America.

Since you're primarily looking for something to split wood with, an ESEE 5 might be worth consideration too.

David and Justin,

You've both touched on what we're doing for our house. We're still in the planning stages but are making our first run to Costco tomorrow. The plan is to buy high calorie foods in bulk and also to purchase a few bottles of multivitamins to make sure we're getting the micronutrients we need.

One of my concerns is making sure we have all of our amino acids covered. I've thought about caning some beef and chicken but it seems that I could buy something from GNC to cover this? The upside to this is that if we have to evacuate for some reason, it'd be easier to transport dry goods than mason jars full of meat. Logic check?

Hi David G.

Purely defensively, weaponry wise, i would go with the machete. In a more serious, long term collapse scenario, there are going to be A LOT of gone feral, starving dogs around, and personally i would rather much more face larger animals with a longer bladed weapon than a wee hatchet.

The Cold Steel "Katana" machete is less a machete (but can be used that way), but decent quality (but inexpensive) blade weapon. Plus, i can throw it like a spear pretty well. The tanto point is really strong and penetrating.

But yeah, a hatchet will be better making stuff and more all purpose.

There are different options Ian. Personally, i'm going with a lot of goat milk powder, pretty nutritionally dense, easy to digest, and fairly light weight and easily kept long term.

You can also go with dried whey, but it will have less calories/fat than the goat milk powder.

I don't recommend cow milk powder because of how hard to digest it is. When a food is hard to digest, it takes more energy than is helpful from your body to try to break it down.

Whey on the other hand, is all the good stuff in cow milk, without any or very little of, the bad stuff like the gluey casein proteins or lactose. Some wheys have more lactose than others, but for someone who can't drink cows milk without getting noticeably mucous'y, i can drink goat's milk without a problem. Yet, they both have lactose–the difference is that the goat milk proteins are much smaller and more easily broke down than the cow casein proteins.

It's the casein proteins that make the "curds" in that old nursery rhyme about little miss muffet, all the rest is the nice, nutritious and easily digested whey.

David A., shelf stable margarine could work, but though it's more expensive, i would recommend extra virgin coconut oil. Costco sells a large tub of it for quite reasonable compared to most other places.

Very stable, high quality fat and definitely healthier than most margarines, which tend to add a lot of soy oil and other lesser quality oils. Besides being super stable, EVCO is easier to digest than most other fats.

I really am a lazy prepper and don't know much about nutrition. Part of being lazy means I don't want to fuss with rotating stock. I just want cheap food with a long shelf life because I have every intention of ignoring it until I pitch it out unused in 10 or 20 years.

There are canned meats available, spam, tuna, chicken and beef. I don't know long they are good for, I would guess 5 years or more. You can find canned corned beef that is relatively expensive but lasts much longer. Of course there is freeze dried meat which is also expensive but is claimed to be good for 25 years. If you do buy freeze dried stuff wait to find it on sale somewhere.

I suppose you could live on something like Ensure so something like that might make a great supplement.

I can see how this prepping thing could become another time consuming and expensive hobby. I don't need another hobby…just want to bridge the gap until food is back in the grocery store and cold milk is in the fridge.

ETA: I'll check out the coconut oil and goats milk/whey,thanks!

del

Thankfully it wasn't as bad as it could have been.

" i would recommend extra virgin coconut oil. Costco sells a large tub of it for quite reasonable compared to most other places.

I checked this product out at Costco the other day. I love that there was over 20,000 calories in the tub but it only had a two year shelf life. Looks like a good product to keep on hand for every day use but not for long term storage.

Anywho…. I spent about $60 at Costco which purchased enough calories to feed my family of four for 17 days. The diet would be dreadfully boring but I'll add more to it in due time.

This is a great video created by the LDS and I found it to be very informative for food storage:

If stored properly, it will last longer than two years. Its one of the most stable healthy oils out there. Nowadays, food manufacturers put pretty short good to dates on food. Heck, at the group home that I work at, we recently had to throw out some gallons of water because it was past date. I looked at the made date, it was only a year or so before the best by date…

Stored properly means vacuumed packed with moisture and oxygen absorbers. Would have to portion the oil in at least a few different bags.

If you routinely use something and it has a 2 year shelf life, then always have as much as you normally use in 2 years. When your supply is reduced by an amount that a new container is, buy a new one, just make sure and rotate stock.

You can store things like grain or fat in the freezer. It will last a lot longer. Of course there are emergency situations where you'll lose power, but then you just take it out and start using it.

"If stored properly, it will last longer than two years. Its one of the most stable healthy oils out there. Stored properly means vacuumed packed with moisture and oxygen absorbers. Would have to portion the oil in at least a few different bags."

The video I posted a link to is well worth watching. According to the guest speaker (who seems credible to me), items like Crisco which used to have an indefinite shelf life no longer does due to the new packaging. She suggested storing it in bell jars and vacuum sealing them. I suppose the same thing would apply to the coconut oil.

She also mentioned that canning your own meat will give it a 10+ year shelf life vs the <5 year shelf life of store bought canned meat.

Sounds like one of the better items for long term storage and versatility are wheat berries. Apparently this is one of those items that can be stored in buckets (with mylar bags, o2 absorbers, etc) in the garage or attic as it's fine in extreme heat/cold. Again, her words not mine but some casual googling seems to support her claims.

"If you routinely use something and it has a 2 year shelf life, then always have as much as you normally use in 2 years."

True. I'm more interested in items with a 10+ year shelf life where i can buy 30 days worth of food, store it and forget it. I figure if we have a real disaster, we could easily find another two weeks to a month's worth of meals by being creative with what we have on the shelves. Crisco isn't something that we ever use and I've never tried coconut so I'll probably pick one up to see if it's something I'd actually use or not. If we do then obviously we could do as you suggested and keep enough on hand to cover us for X months but not so much that it's expiring before it's used.

Crisco? Is that real food? You must be joking : )

Yeah, it's convenient to put some emergency food away and forget about it for 10 years.

But if you're rotating through a couple years of some staples like flour, oatmeal, beans,… and then a disaster happens, you won't starve for a number of months

Maybe you can also have some 10 year shelf life stuff, this is just one component of your system