Homemade DIY Vegetable Oil Lamps

If you have an old fashioned oil lamp, the kind that doesn’t use kerosene or petroleum-based lamp oil, then you’re in luck! You can stock up on two preps in one bottle, saving space and money. So what is this miracal prepper item? Vegetable oil! Vegetable oil works great as a fuel, is needed for cooking and frying, and also provides your body with essential fats and oils. Even used frying oil burns without odor and without smudging. Instead of throwing away your used frying oil, save it for your oil lamps!

If you don’t have a true oil lamp you can make one from materials around your house. It only takes about 15 minutes and cost nothing.

For a “lamp” you could use nearly any small glass or metal container, old tuna cans work great for this! Just bend down the lid, lay your wick in, fill ‘er up and you’re done! For a wick you can use a string from an old mop, an shoelace, a tightly rolled up piece of paper, a porous stick,  a strip of cotton underwear, jute string, or even burlap. Just experiment to see what works.

If your container needs a wick-holder (some won’t, like a tuna can with the lid bent down) improvise  a piece of wire wound around a nail. Its job is to hold the wick up out of the oil. You’ll need to find a way to make it easily adjustable — as the wick burns down, you need to keep feeding a little more, and ideally there would be a way to do this without putting out the light. You can hold the coil with a pair of pliers and push the wick up with a toothpick.

The only down side is vegetable oil won’t work in a kerosene or petro-based lantern. In my expierence the oil would burn for a few minutes, but then the wick would burn down and smolder with thick black smoke. What’s going on is the oil is too thick to draw up these wicks fast enough to keep feeding the flame. They are made for  thinner, more fluid oils.

Even a small improvised oil lamp burns at least an hour before the wick needs to be adjusted again. I made mine from unused items sitting around the house, all you have to do is put on your thinking cap and go scavaging. I always threw out my used frying oil but not any more! It’s good to know that we can have some light if we run out of candles and kerosene.

September Is National Preparedness Month!

“A Time to Remember. A Time to Prepare,” Encourages Americans to Take Simple Steps to Prepare for Emergencies

September is an exciting time for me. It’s National Preparedness Month! That may not seem like a lot to you but more people will get into prepping this month than any other. That’s really exciting news to me! I love to see people prepping and I love to teach what I know to new preppers. You can join me in teaching survival skills this month by hosting events, sharing my blog, promoting volunteer programs and sharing emergency preparedness information. You can help ensure that your community is prepared for emergencies.

It seems the natural disasters are affecting more and more people throughout the world. From devastating earthquakes and their resulting tsunamis to volcano eruptions, floods and other emergencies, it is important to have a game plan of preparedness. Make sure you take this chance to reach out to your neighbors and friends during National Preparedness Month in order to increase the chances that they will survive and thrive. Just remember that everyone won’t understand

We have unfortunately learned the lessons of unorganized response to disasters. And we have also learned what it’s like if everyone knows you prep. During a SHTF moment people will show up on your doorstep if you advertise you prepare. So how do you keep OPSEC and find neighbors who you can trust? Throw block parties to get your neighbors over, drinking, and talking and just listen. Those that seem like they might be preppers are worthy of further exploration. Don’t discuss it directly just yet.

Invite them camping, hiking, hunting, fishing. See how prepared they are for that. See how good they are at it. If they are preppers, chances are they’ll be game. use your judgment, think before you speak and don’t say anything you’ll regret if they told someone else.

Enjoy National Preparedness Month. Check your preps, find prepper friends, and share your knowledge with those you trust.

Top 5 Antibiotics for SHTF

Here’s a video by ThePatriotNurse discussing five useful antibiotics for humans in a post-societal collapse scenario. This is a very informative video with some serious must-know information including how to buy and store antibiotics. Don’t miss this one!

 

 

Welcome To BeSurvival.com

 Welcome to BeSurvival.com! I’m Sergeant Survival and I’m here to whip you sissy little keyboard commando’s into shape! Ten-hut!

Ok, we’re not really that serious around here. My name might be Sergeant Survival but I’m no drill instructor. In fact I’m here to help you learn how to survive from the ground up, not beat you into the ground. I think you’ll find this place free of BS and full of real practical advice that you can use come hell or high water.

Whether you’re prepping for a natural disaster or you’re packing your bags for TEOTWAWKI (The End Of The World As We Know It for you lay type folks) you will find the information on BeSurvival useful. That’s because I don’t want you to just read about survival and then forget about it, I want you to eat, sleep, and breathe it….I want you to BE SURVIVAL! Make it part of your life, part of how you think. For only then can you be truly prepared.