Super Easy Survival Bread

Like all things survival you need to LIVE IT day to day, not just stick it in a closet and hope you never have to use it! If you’re storing wheat and all hell breaks loose….what do you do? Bake bread of course! But do you know how?

If you are new to baking your own bread it can seem like a daunting task but it really isn’t.  You don’t need yeast, sugar, baking soda, or really anything but flour and water. Everything else is optional. Here’s a basic recipe to get you started.

Super Easy Survival Bread (SESB)

1 cup of fine whole wheat flour (buy from store or grind your own)
2 tbsp. of olive oil (optional, also regular vegetable oil works too)
1 tsp. salt (optional, add more or less to taste)
1/2 cup of water

Mix all the ingredients in a bowl and scoop it togther into a ball. Lightly dust a cookie sheet, rock, or other flat surface with flour. Pour the dough ball out and knead for 5 mins. Roll out to about 1/8″ thin and bake at 350F for 20 mins.

Powers out? No oven? Put it in a dutch oven instead and cook it over a fire. No dutch oven? Throw it on a heated flat rock – or even in the ashes if you don’t mind some grit and charcoal flavoring - and flip it a couple of times till lightly brown and firm.

This will serve about 3-4 people if eaten as a side with a meal, or make about 2 sandwiches. The below nutritional info is for the entire loaf.

Nutritional info without olive oil

Nutritional info with olive oil

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How To Begin Prepping – Part 1

Basic Beginnings – The Basic 24 Kit

Wilderness First Aid Training

Going into the winderness with a big sharp knife, firestarting tools, a gun, and pleny of ammo so you can play with sharp sticks, fire, and other neato things without the skills to use them is almost asking for an accident. Make sure you a first aid kit with you and the skills to use it. When journeying into the wilderness it’s important to carry a first aid kit along with the knowledge to use it. It’s always a wise investment to take a first aid course, and you can even find free course in your community.

Here’s a few tips for a wilderness first aid emergency…..

First, check if the casualty is in any danger, or will put you into a dangerous position by helping them. Avoid moving a casualty with unknown injuries, unless there is a greater danger in leaving the casualty where he or she is. If necessary, make the area safe, but put your own safety first. Do not move anyone with a suspected neck or spinal injury, unless difficulties in breathing make this necessary.

1. Check breathing

Check that the airway is open and the casualty is breathing. A person who is unconscious has no control over their muscles, therefore, their tongue is the single most common cause of an airway obstruction. The airway can be cleared by simply using the head-tilt/chin-lift technique, see the figure. This action pulls the tongue away from the air passage in the throat.

The Recovery position

Place an unconscious but breathing person in the recovery position- Place the casualty on his or her side, with their uppermost leg at a right angle to the body. Once again, do not move anyone with a suspected neck or spinal injury. Support the head by the hand of the uppermost arm. Tilt the head back to ensure that the airway is clear.

2. Bleeding

Stop any bleeding. All types of external bleeding, such as open wounds, are treated in the same way- Squeeze together the sides of the wound. Apply direct pressure to the wound with your fingers, or preferably a sterile dressing. In an emergency, an article of clean clothing will do. Lie the casualty down and lift the wounded part above the level of the heart. This slows the bleeding. Bandage the wound firmly but take care not to cut off the circulation to the area. If you suspect that an injury may have caused internal bleeding, the most important thing you can do is to prevent shock from occurring. Urgent medical attention is necessary.

3. Shock

Shock is a condition of general body weakness, and is present in all cases of accidents, to a varying degree. The shocked casualty may feel weak, faint, giddy, anxious or restless. Keep the casualty warm and quiet and give all the reassurance you can.

Wilderness first aid kit

Do not forget to bring your own Wilderness First Aid Kit. Make sure you know what your kit contains and how to use the materials for effective first aid. A good idea is to add an easy-to-read basic first aid instruction book.

Please keep in mind that the information presented here are only general guidelines. There’s no way I could ever possibly cover everything in this article. My intention here is to get your mind thinking and headed in the right direction.

For real medical training TAKE A WILDERNESS FIRST RESPONDER COURSE!!!! Also, please consult a physician, or take a first aid class at a minimum before attempting any of this.

Raising Rabbits For Tough Times

In the late 1930s, the Great Depression was in full swing. Many families raised rabbits in pens in their backyards to supplement the backyard garden or meager grocery budget. They would gather grass or spent vegetables to feed their rabbits. As we can learn from our parents and Grandparents, rabbits can be a good source of protein for your family during tough times. They multiply quickly, don’t need much space, don’t eat much food, produce excellent manure, and are easy to handle and butcher.

Rabbits are one animal that most anyone can start raising right now, and keeping them with worms adds a double punch to your preps. A rabbit-worm combo cage give you several advantages. Not only does it mean less cage cleaning, but  it makes a complete ecosystem. The rabbits feed the worms, the worms feed the garden, and the garden feeds the rabbits. You can be built a rabbit-worm cage out of inexpensive wood or even pvp pipe.

Two great books to buy and read before buying any rabbits is “Raising Rabbits the Modern Way” by Ann Kanable and Barnyard in Your Backyard by Gail Damerow.

 Building The Cages & Care

A generously sized rabbit pen is two feet square. The rabbit hutch should be positioned at least 3 foot above the ground and use  ½ inch wire mesh floor so rabbit droppings can fall through easily but their legs cannot get stuck.  You will need at least two pens. One for the male rabbit (buck) and one for the female (doe) and her babies as adult rabbits are extremely territorial and will kill each other in defense of their territory. If you live in the south make sure you place your cages in a shady spot in the back yard. They can stand cold temperatures fairly well, but will die quikly trapped in a cage in the hot sun on a summer day.

Underneath your small rabbit hutchs build an inexpensive wood frame worm bed about 12 inches deep. Add bedding material to the bed: Good bedding can be any combination of carbon: shredded paper products, decomposing leaves, hay, straw, peat moss etc. Start with a 3 to 4 inch layer on the bottom for your worm bed. Moisten the bedding with water and let your rabbits do their thing until the surface is covered with 1 to 2 inches layer of rabbit manure.

Mix the rabbit manure and bedding material together and wet it down thoroughly. Also note that the worms cannot eat dry, piled-up rabbit manure. Maintain moisture levels so that you can squeeze one to two drops of water out of a handful of bedding. Be sure to keep your rabbits dry when wetting down the beds or they could get sick.

Breedin’, Feedin’, And Eatin’

Rabbits are very fast and heavy breeders. A doe can produce five to six (five being more common) litters a year. An average litter is seven to eight bunnies. Expect 35-40 rabbits per doe per year. Butcher the bunnies at eight weeks old, after that the food-to-meat ratio drops and the meat gets tougher.

Most people feed rabbits commercial pellets as they are convenient and fairly inexpensive to feed. But in tough times you will have to raise your rabbits on forage alone. Remember the rabbit-worm-garden ecosystem I was talking about eariler? The problem is, today’s rabbits have been bred to thrive on a pellet diet. You’ll have to grow or forage a few extras for your rabbits to make up for this - weeds, green twigs cut from safe trees, garden refuse, grains and hay are all good for your herd.

Remember that a diet of rabbit meat alone will cause diarrhea, due to its leanness. Be sure to balance your diet with fresh vegetables, chickens, or other sources of fats and nutrients to avoid “rabbit starvation” (also known as protein poisoning), which can cause death in less than a week. Also eating excessive protein forces your body to use more water than usual, which can lead to dehydration. Make sure you have plenty of water and fats avaliable if you choose to make rabbit one of your survival meats.

Related Post: Butchering Homegrown Rabbits For Meat

How To Build A Stockpile For Only $2.75 A Day

As the global economy continues to tumble, many people across this great country are just now seeing the light and beginning to prepare. For many of these newcomers the question of where to begin is ever present, as well as how to afford all these new expenses. The very reason most newcomers want to prepare (economical troubles) make it difficult to buy the equipment necessary to be prepared, a catch 22. The solution is to start small, as small as $2.75 a day.

$2.75 can’t do much…in fact it’s hard to even buy a cup of coffee for $2.75 now! So how can you buy expensive gear and equipment for so little? Save it! You would be suprised how fast it adds up, and before you know it you can have a nice wad of cash to spend on your preps…with only $2.75 a day.

Let’s assume you save just $2.75 a day, or less than $20 a week. In a year you will have over $1,000 to put into your preps! $1,003.75 to be exact. So what can you do with your newly saved $1,000?

Here are my recommendations

Water ($50)– Minimum 1 gallon per-day

• Store it in bulk – gallons of spring/drinking water are easy to buy, but at $1.00 per gallon they can be expensive.
• Buy several 55 gallon plastic drums off craigslist (about $15 each) and fill them up. Don’t forget a hand pump too ($10)!
• Save soft drink containers, rinse them out and fill with tap water (less than $.05 a gallon), add 3-4 drops of unscented bleach  and mark them with the date.

Food ($350)– 1,500 calories per day

• Purchase in quantity what you normally eat. A good idea would be to sit down with a notepad and pen and meal plan for two weeks.
• Remember that there may be no electricity so all food items in the meal plan have to come from the pantry, don’t forget a manual can opener too.
• Next – take that 2 week meal plan and make a list of all items and use that as your shopping list. If you are able to buy 2 of everything listed – that would be a one month supply.
• Do not forget cooking oil (essential fats) that you may need to complete your meal. Don’t forget about spices and other condiments.
• Ramen soup, rice, lintils, and beans are cheap and easy bulk foods.
• Powered milk, honey, and salt should also be on the list.
• Wheat is great, but is harder to find and requires a mill.
• Consider shelf life (aim for at least 1 year out).
•  Buy store brands and buy on sale to maximize your available funds.

 Light ($30) – Your light in shining darkness

• Pick up a few quality hand crank LED flashlights. [LED will give you long bulb life & super long batttery life]
• Buy a bunch of candles at the dollar store or local discount store, as well as some matches and lighters
• Pick up a hand crank LED lantern, oil lamp, or propane lantern. Your choice. Make sure your propane lantern can be supported without a 1lb bottle (you will be using an adapter hose instead). A simple metal hook, special stand or propane “tree” works well.
• Get extra alkaline batteries for your old flashlights if needed.

 Medical/First Aid ($20)– Don’t forget the band-aids

• Make sure you are up to date on all prescriptions.
• Get a decent first aid kit – usually around $5.00 to $10.00 .
• Pick up extra supplies like band-aids, burn ointment, diarrhea medicine, pain killers, triple antibiotic, cold medicine, etc.

Household Supplies ($60)- For cleaning and sanitation

• Basic’s here. Dish soap, toilet paper, a few basic cleaning supplies, bleach.
• Get toiltries such as deodorant, shampoo, soap, hand sanitizer, shaving creme, and razors.

Self-Defense ($250)– Just as important as your supplies

• Think self defence and hunting when it comes to guns. 12 gauge shotgun and a .22 rifle.
• Check out the used gun selection at your local pawn and gun shops. Gun shows are a great place to shop too.
• You should be able to pick up used 12 gauged shotgun as well as some shells for around $150.
• Try to find a decent rimfire like the Ruger 10/22 along with a brick of ammunition for the other $100.
• Alternativly you can also spend your extra $100 on 12 gauge ammo and accessories.

Fuel ($90)– Extra gas & propane

• 10 gallons of gas + sta-bil treatment  is running around $35.00 at the moment.
• Getting a 20-lb propane tank filled costs around $15.00.
• Buy an extra 20lb propane tank if you can.
• Buy a 20lb to 1lb adapter hose. They can be had for $15.

Heating & Cooking ($150) -  Indoor & outdoor flame

• Buy an indoor-safe propane heater for warmth.
• Get a propane stove burner for cooking.
• Buy a camp grill if you have access to small twigs and leaves to help save your precious fuel.
• Blankets, blankets…….and more blankets. Emergency space blankets too!
• Stock up on gloves and thermal underwear.
• Already have a propane heater? Get more fuel.

Well – that’s our $1,000.00 dollars. Start saving your $2.75 a day and soon you’ll have your very own stockpile to fall back on during tough times.

Remember you can adjust this list to fit your situation. If you already has a gun, then spend that money somewhere else. If you live in the desert, buy more water and less heaters. You get the picture, the same goes for every other category.

So how would YOU spend $1000 in preps? Any thoughts? Comment below and help others.

How To Disappear And Live Under The Radar

Police State got you down? Does the thought of Martial Law keep you up at night?  Well, it should! We live in a world where we are being constantly watched and monitored. Ever wondered what would it take to wipe the slate clean and live a life free of big brother? Security expert Aton Edwards answered just that as he goes on an amazing journey off the grid and under the radar in his show ”Track Me If You Can’. The show focused on ways to avoid being tracked by “big brother” or anyone else who may be looking for you.

Please Note: The video below goes down often. If it’s not working CLICK HERE to automatically search for it on YouTube (opens new window).

Track Me If You Can

Track Me If You Can is a must-watch for anyone interested in protecting their privacy. He covers some of excellent tips and gives alot of necessary information. Here’s a run down:

• There are 30 million plus surveillance cameras on the US, one camera for every ten americans.
• The average American is in 200 databases.
• Putting a plan in motion to keep you from being tracked is a good idea if you want to devise a new life for yourself
• Plan 3 months ahead of time
• Right before you leave, change your appearance significantly (if you have hair, shave your head, if you have blond hair, change it to black, get glasses, etc.).
• Before you leave, terminate all of your accounts (email, bank accounts, credit cards, etc).
• Don’t terminate your social network sites as you can use these sites to provide disinformation.
• Before you leave, delete all of your computer files and get rid of your computer’s hard drive (first boil the hard drive then smash it with a hammer and finally run a Degausser/electromagnetic wand over the drive to obliterate all information it may contain).
• Get rid of all of your personal items like photos, trophies, mementos, etc. that could tie you to your old life.
• Shred all of your personal info and credit cards/bank statements/etc., next take the shredded material and spread it around in a bunch of trash bags and leave the bags at various dumpsters around the city, or burn it.
• Get rid of your cell phone as these can be easily used to track your location either through a computer software program or through triangulation.
• Wipe all of your info from your cell phone then leave it at a train or bus station so that someone else will pick it up and start using it, thus providing a source of disinformation for those searching for you.
• Break your normal patterns (what you eat, where you frequent, how you shop, the kind of work you do, etc).
• Ditch your car and find a substitute that is not your personality.
• Completely change your lifestyle (ie: if you are currently a corporate lawyer, become a night janitor then dress and behave appropriately).
• If you do take your car get rid of the toll pass which can track your movements through the RFID chip in the pass.
• Stay away from interstate highways.
• Get rid of the GPS device which came with your car. Ditto for the OnStar system which can be activated remotely and allow others to listen in on your conversations.
• Make sure your tires don’t have RFID chips in them. Some tires have these chips and they can link to your VIN number and the purchase location of the tires.
• Go to non-chain restaurants.
• Pay for everything with cash.
• When you are out in public disguise yourself (at least wear a hat and sunglasses).
• Avoid frequenting your usual places (for example, if you are a vegetarian your meal preference can be found through your prior airline meal request and then you may be easier to locate if you frequent vegetarian restaurants).
• Get your food to go from restaurants so you don’t leave DNA on the plates/utensils/glasses which can be read with an easily purchased BPac machine which analyzes your biometrics.
• Stay in small motels and pay with cash.
• Use alcohol wipes to remove fingerprints.
• Use a Multi Sweep Hidden Camera & Bug Detector to check for hidden bugs/cameras/etc.
• Cover the peephole so people can’t see into your room.
• Sleep in your sleeping bag so you won’t leave DNA behind on the hotel bedding.
• Buy a pre-paid cell phone which you only use for outgoing calls (be sure to turn off the caller ID). Replace the pre-paid phone frequently, about every 2 weeks.
• When you are not using the cell phone, remove the battery so it can’t be turned on remotely or used to track you.
• Be careful when speaking in cars or near windows. The NSA has a bounce laser monitoring system which can pick up sound waves on glass and record what you are saying.
• At night you can avoid being seen on cameras that use infrared light by fashioning a cap with LED lights on the front of it which makes a “halo” and shields your face from the cameras.
• To determine the best place to resettle, choose a mid-sized city in a not overly cold place. Big cities and small towns are not good places for anonymity.
• To change your identity don’t just assume the identity of someone else (this is way more difficult–and illegal–than it used to be), instead petition the court to change your name legally to a new–and common–name.
• Apply for a driver’s license under your new name.
• Most driver’s licenses and passports have RFID chips in them. Block people from reading these RFID chips by carrying them in a wallet lined with aluminum foil.
• To get back online, use a new laptop.
• Always use a hard wire to your laptop and turn off the wi-fi which is easily hacked.
• Put a cover over your web cam such as a band-aid or electrical tape as these can be turned on remotely like your cell phone.
• Install anti-key logger software on your computer.
• Also, install software that will reroute your ip address so your location can’t be determined via your computer.
• Be aware of the ECHELON program in the US which monitors phone and computer transmissions for keywords and messages.
• At the grocery store, change your shopping habits and never use store club cards.
• Be aware that nearly all food packaging now contain RFID tags. To be sure these aren’t used for tracking (unlikely now but possibly more likely in the future) repackage food once you purchase it and get rid of the store packaging.
• To find work, get a night job that is different that your previous job, such as a janitor. This will limit your contact with people.
• Change jobs often.
• Create a “back story” for your new identity and practice it. If you base your lies on the truth but change the details a bit, your story will be easier to remember and more believable.
• Open a bank account, preferably at a small, local bank.
• Be aware of video surveillance cameras which are everywhere.
• Never contact people from your past.
• The narrator noted that every year, changing your identity gets harder.
• The police now consider common activities suspicious such as bird watching, sketching or painting, or taking photographs in public.
• There are 70 FUSION centers in the US which coordinate surveillance and other information.
• Airlines sometimes use locator chips on your bags so be aware of this. You can also use these tagged bags for disinformation purposes (ie: leaving them in places to throw people off your trail).
• Technology is now available to identify you by the way you walk (change the way you walk), your facial measurements and biometrics (use a disguise, and especially sunglasses), and even your response to images.
• It will be 7 to 10 years before your old identity drops off of old databases.
• Guard against complacency.
• The less you interface with technology, the better off you will be.

Pasture Raised Chickens Isn’t For The Birds

Feeding chickens solely on pasture can be tricky, but isn’t impossible. Chickens can find their own feed, but each chicken needs a considerable amount of room.  Chickens can’t eat what isn’t there, and the more chickens you have the less food there is for each chicken. You have to match the number chickens to your pasture size or they will die from poor health and starvation.

How It Was Done In The Old Days

In the old days people didn’t feed their hens at all. Much of the hen’s diet was provided by poor sanitation. People would throw their garbage out on the streets or around the outside of the house. The cows would spill grain. Manure was all over the place and was full of free lunch - maggots. Even with all this extra food the number of hens that could be kept healthy without supplemental feeding of grains was limited.

A farmer of the 1800′s might have kept a dozen hens and a rooster through the winter. The following spring the hens would hatch a brood of chicks, giving the farmer about 72 chicks plus the original hens and rooster made for 85 birds total. After the chicks had hatched the old rooster would be sold or eaten. Most of the young chickens and their mothers would be harvested in the fall. One new rooster and twelve young hens would be kept through the following winter, completing the cycle. By having 85 chickens during the summer and only 13 during the lean months of winter, the amount of grain needed for the chickens would be minimal.

This Always Meant Manlnutrition

A flock of 13 chickens could survive the winter on a small handful of grain, usually spilled by the farmer when feeding the cows. Add to that a bit of hay and whatever else they could find and they could get by. They would not be healthy, but they would live to see another summer. This winter diet would be nutritionally poor in vitamins and proteins. Because of this lean diet the hens would lay no eggs during the winter, but they would recover once spring started and the grass turned green again, and the cycle could repeat.

The More Chickens, The More Malnutrition

 I’ve heard people say that you can only support 1-2 free range hens per acre, and others say they keep a dozen in a 10×10 coop. I think it depends on how much time you are willing to put into your chickens. If you’re willing to move them daily in a chicken tractor and buy (or grow) them a supplimental feed, then there’s no reason you can’t have a decent size flock.

Chickens are picky eaters as well. As your chickens begin to overpopulate your farm they first eat up the supply of high-calorie feeds such as seeds, then they move on to the supply of high-protein feeds such as bugs and clover. Finally, they exaust all the high-vitamin feeds such as green grass.  It’s nearly impossible to tell what stage your forage is in, except for the last stages, when all the green plants disappear.

It Always Pays Off To Provide a Supplemental Diet

The increased production of eggs and larger hens always pays for the increased feed. The feed diet should be adjusted to reflect what the chickens can find as they forage. You can usually leave out vitamins (if they have greens) and proteins (if they have plenty of bugs or clover). In general, for the sustainable homesteader, grain may be all they need supplemented for the summer.

But enough dry summer days in a row browns the grass and makes it useless to the chickens, so this method has its risks. Also in the winter there will be no greens and very little bugs for them so they will need more suplemental grain. A store bought grain really works best here, but during a SHTF situation you may not have that luxery, so do what you can get to get them more grain. This is not ideal, and you may have to harvest a few cickens to make it work, but the bottom line is the flock will make it to the next spring.

If we can’t see what our chickens are eating it’s hard to determin what nutrients they are getting. Many of the things hens eat are so tiny that we can’t see them – tiny seeds, bugs, and worms. Fortunately for the homesteader, hens prefer fresh, natural feeds to processed chicken feed. They will eat their fill on natural foods before going to the store-bought feed whenever they have the chance. This makes it pretty easy to feed your chickens correctly, just follow the golden rule….

Offer your chickens as much chicken feed or homegrown grain as they want, and then let them eat however much pasture they want.

This will help to maximize production and save as much grain for the cows as possible. During hard times you can still get some eggs out of your flock without hurting your hens but you won’t get very many. Don’t plan your meals around fat chickens, plan them for the lean days and be happy with the excess during the summer.

5 Most Likely Real-Life Contagions

In the movie “Contagion,” a cast of Hollywood elites contend with a global pandemic. When a fictional virus goes airborne, kills quickly and spreads globally, you have a good movie. When it happens in real life you have a global pandemic like no other. Unfortunantly the movie Contagion hits close to home. The human race is always just a couple of mutations away from apocalypse.

Here are the top five pathogens that are most similar to the fictional disease in “Contagion.”

Influenza

In 1918 a strain of influenza killed millions, and the 2009 H1N1 outbreak brought brought fears that  that influenza had yet again turnd into a deadly pandemic. And because the flu mutates in animals and can jump to humans, epidemiologists could never rid humans of influenza through vaccination campaigns, said Dr. Tomas Aragon, director of the University of California, Berkeley, Center for Infectious Disease and Emergency Readiness.  Swine flu and bird flu both mutated inside animals and then spread to humans.

Fevers, aches, sore throats, cough and fatigue are signs of the flu. But the big danger is pneumonia, which can be deadly if a strain is particularly virulent. “Right now all the subtypes live in wild birds, and they’re mutating, and when they come to the human population, we’re not immune.” Aragon said.

SARS

If it was not for swift international actions, including closing schools, quarantining sick people and issuing travel advisories, SARS would have been a real life global pandemic. When the virus that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) struck in 2003, it showed how a deadly pandemic may hit the globe. That year there were an estimated 8,000 cases and 750 deaths, according to the CDC and the National Institutes of Health.

The SARS virus is a virulent mutation of a virus in the coronavirus family — viruses in this family also cause the common cold and are very hard to treat. “It was so pathogenic, that almost everybody who became infected became ill,” Aragon said of the 2003 SARS outbreak in East Asia.

SARS symptoms include fever, headache and cough, and often quickly turned to pneumonia. SARS had a 9 to 12 percent death rate among people who were diagnosed, according to the NIH. And in people older than 65, the death rate was more than 50 percent!

SARS spreads through airborne droplets much like the flu, but much remains unknown about its origins. The virus could mutate again in animal hosts and jump back to humans. “SARS, even though it’s disappeared, could return at any time,” said Dr. Ali S. Khan, director of the CDC’s Office of Public Health Preparedness.

Anthrax

Anthrax is generally under control in naturem but could turn into deadly outbreaks if used as a bioterrorism weapon. “Anthrax is most concerning,” said Aragon, of potential bioterrorism threats.

Anthrax bacteria (Bacillus anthracis) can infect humans in three ways, and each route of transmission leads to different symptoms, ranging from an itchy sore on the skin to breathing problems, fever, shock, and death.

In 2001, 22 people became ill after breathing in anthrax spores sent through the mail. Inhaling anthrax can lead to a deadly infection. Once anthrax spores germinate, they release toxic substances that cause internal bleeding, swelling and can kill tissue, according to the NIH. The CDC estimates 75 percent of people who contract anthrax by inhaling spores will die, even with medical care.

Tuberculosis

Some pathogens cause trouble not so much because they kill quickly, but because they can’t be killed easily. “Another infection that’s widespread in the world, and we are holding it at bay, is tuberculosis, or TB,” said Dr. William Schaffner, former board member of the IDSA.

Many believe that TB has been under control since the mid 1800′s, but the truth is TB kills about 2 million people every year (and climbing), making it one of the world’s deadliest infectious diseases, according to the World Health Organization.

Spread through airborne droplets, TB can survive in a person for years, slowly spreading to others throughout a community without any signs to the carrier. Symptoms include a chronic cough, severe weight loss and night sweats.

With drug-resistant forms of TB becoming more and more of a problem, doctors warn that they will no longer be able to control a disease that afflicted much of the world before the development of antibiotics and that TB may quickly become a pandemic again.

Ebola

The Ebola virus might not kill as many people each year as TB, but it is still one of the deadliest pathogens. The most virulent strains of Ebola kill 25 to 90 percent of people they infect.

All four strains of the Ebola virus known to infect humans are spread through contact with blood, tissue or bodily fluids. Ebola silently incubates in a person for days, after which the carrier may suffer a sudden fever and headache, according to the CDC. Joint and muscle aches, sore throat and weakness usually give way to diarrhea, vomiting and severe stomach pain. The virus breaks down the clotting factor in your blood so that your blood becomes thin like water and you end up bleeding internally and externally until you eventually die from blood loss or dehydration.

Things You Can Do To Be More Self-Sufficient

We are now three to five generations removed from the rural life that helped make America great. We have migrated to big cities and left our self-sustained lives behind. These mega-cities have caused our general well-being to decline, with suicide rates increasing across the world. Crowded conditions and economic problems have led to rampant crime, pollution, and a dog-eat-dog mentality.

You will find that most of these tips will save you money and some will even save you time.  The closer you get to true self-sufficiency you will save more and more money. Many find that the money saved alows them to cut down on overtime or even quit work altogether, allowing them to truely be free from the system and to become a homesteader. Saving money comes hand in hand with self-sufficiency and homesteading. Your labor is much cheaper than someone else’s and the money you save from gas and utility bills will go a long way towards paying down debts or buying more equipment for your homestead.

Here’s a list of 52 things you can do to become more self-sufficient. You would be one busy beaver, but you could even try doing one a week and in a year you will be closer to self-sufficiency than you ever thought possible. I recommend you learn the basics of your current project before moving on to the next.

1. Plant your own vegetable garden.
2. Change your own oil on your car or truck.
3. Cut your own firewood.
4. Collect and use rain water instead of municiple or well water.
5. Supplement your house’s heating system with solar heating panels.
6. Supplement your hot water needs with a solar water heater.
7. Mulch your garden with local organic mulch instead of store bought products.
8. Raise your own rabbits with worm beds underneath.
9. Use home-made compost and free manure to enrich your garden’s soil.
10. Grow non-hybrid vegetables and save the seeds for next year’s planting.
11. Grow potatoes and save the fingerlings for next years planting.
12. Use biointensive gardening techniques to grow lots of vegetables in small places.
13. Build a greenhouse to extend your growing season.
14. Build a root cellar (above or below ground) to store your harvest.
15. Start a small orchard for a variety of fruits.
16. Learn how to preserve food by canning.
17. Raise bees to help pollination and for honey.
18. Raise chickens for meat and eggs.
19. Raise sheep for wool and meat.
20. Raise goats or a dairy cow for dairy products.
21. Preserve vegetables by sun drying them.
22. Spin wool into yarn for making clothes.
23. Make your own furniture out of tree branches.
24. Preserve vegetables by freezing them.
25. Grow herbs for cooking and medicinal purposes.
26. Use edible wild plants to supplement one’s diet (Find a guide for your area first!).
27. Use containers to grow vegetables in small places.
28. Use chicken manure (composted) to help fertilize your garden.
29. Use, use and reuse as much as possible before throwing away.
30. Conserve electricity whenever possible.
31. Tune-up your own car or truck.
32. Sharpen your own tools.
33. Build your own home or shed.
34. Grow grapes for preserves or raisins or make your own wine.
35. Build a pond and raise fish for food.
36. Use solar and wind power to supplement your energy needs.
37. Learn how to use a welder.
38. Use clothes lines to dry clothes instead of a mechanical dryer.
39. Grow grains to feed your own livestock.
40. Grow alfalfa to return nitrogen to the soil.
41. Use a generator for emergency and supplemental power.
42. Dig or drive your own well.
43. Bake your own bread.
44. Do your own plumbing.
45. Do your own electrical work.
46. Run a small business from your home.
47. Barter goods and services with your neighbors.
48. Use a push mower instead of a gas or electric mower, or let the goats handle it.
49. Use a bicycle (whenever possible) instead of a motorized vehicle.
50. Make vegetables a large part of your diet.
51. Make your own syrup from Maple trees as a sugar substitute.
52. Supplement your diet by hunting game.

Monsanto Connected To Over 200,000 Suicides In India

“Control oil and you control nations; control food and you control the people.” – Henry Kissinger

Over 200,000 farmers in India have committed suicide in the last decade, driven to despair by the trap they ultimately found themselves in once they were in the grip of Monsanto. And since many suicides go unreported out of shame or unnoticed, actual rates could be even higher than those reported. Over 1,500 farmers in an Indian committed mass suicide to try to drive attention to what’s going on in their country, but they were sadly ignored by the media. One dead man’s Brother said, “He was strangled by these magic seeds. They sell us the seeds, saying they will not need expensive pesticides but they do. We have to buy the same seeds from the same company every year. It is killing us. Please tell the world what is happening here.”

Global powers have literally robbed India of its self-reliance and self-sustenance in the name of “ending poverty” by thrusting upon them a system of monopolized agriculture controlled by companies like Monsanto.

Indian farmers are being scammed by multi-national bio giant corporations such as MONSANTO and BAYER as they adopted GM crops based on deceitful claims that GM crops would improve yields and essentially save the world. These are absolutely baseless claims! In fact Bayer CropScience contaminated a third of the US rice supply with transgenic rice in 2006, and in May of this year (2011) U.S. Farmers made an Alert that rice crop yeild fell 80 % due to Bayer’s glufosinate and Monsanto’s glyphosate.

InfoLinks:
- Bullying of farmers: http://www.examiner.com/sunset-district-libertarian-in-san-francisco/corporat…
- Infiltration of anti-GMO groups: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/297701#ixzz1HDZcVpoj
- Bribery: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4153635.stm (Indonesia) http://www.ethicalinvesting.com/monsanto/news/10009.htm (Canada)
- Destruction of soil, air quality, groundwater contamination, deforestation: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A4664…
- Birth defects caused by Monsanto chemicals: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/07/roundup-birth-defects-herbicide-regu…
- Farmer suicides in India: http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/indias-hidden-climate…

Surviving A Super Solar Storm. Prepare Now.

Nasa is warning that the world could face massive widespread blackouts, travel problems and damage to our power grids beginning in 2012-2013. Coming solar storms could cause a devastating blow to our power grid, causing trillions of dollars in damage that could take up to a decade to repair.

Three years ago The National Academy of Sciences warned that a powerful solar storm could cause “twenty times more economic damage than Hurricane Katrina”. They went on to say that the solar activity could completely knock out power grids, GPS navigation, banking and financial systems, air travel, & radio communications.  Everyday items such as cell phones, computers and other personal electronic devices will also be damaged.

How can you prepare for such a worldwide catastrophy? There’s not much you can do about the electrical companies power grid (although they are preparing the best they can), but you can prepare your home and family for a super solar storm.

Power
Right now, think of everything in your home that requires electricity. Like our use of water (your well pump, or if you are on city water your water company uses electricty to run their pumps and operate their valves), our dependency upon electricity is staggering. If possible every home emergency plan should include a properly protected solar power system. Even then as a backup (or as a second option) consider stockpiling propane to heat, cook, and cool with. Propane will be the new electricity after a solar storm, but without the infrastructer to keep it flowing your supplies will be limited to what you can store. Having sustainable hardwoods on your property is the only guaranteed source of power you can depend on long term.  

Water Storage
Water is an extremely important commodity, as you use it every day for everything from cooking, drinking, bathing and sanitation. You may be surprised by the amount of water required to perform everyday tasks. Take a look at the average daily water usage for some common activities:

• Brushing teeth = 1 gallon
• Washing hands = 1 quart
• Taking a bath = 35-40 gallons
• Taking a shower = 5 gallons per minute
• Laundry = 19-45 gallons
• Washing dishes = 10-15 gallons

Amazing, isn’t it? Post-electricity such wasteful use of water can not exist unless you have an endless supply (lake, river, etc) on hand. If you have no sustainable source of water avaliable, do you have enough clean water stored for your entire family? I recommend you invest in a heavy-duty water barrel made of polyethylene. You can purchase barrels that store 15-55 gallons of water. Store these containers in a dark and cool area, add some bleach (1 teaspoon per 5 gallons), and rotate your water storage every few months for freshness.

Food Storage
Food equals life so it makes sense to store food. Every family has different nutrition and dietary needs, so you may be struggling with finding the right food for your family. Only you know what your family needs, and you are responsible for meeting those needs, especially when a disaster, financial crisis or family emergency occurs. Collect items for your food storage supply now! You could purchase an entire year supply at once, or you could begin gradually to build your emergency preparedness supply by purchasing a few number 10 cans of freeze-dried or dehydrated food a week or month and picking up a few extra cans of food each time you visit the grocery store. I prefer the later option. You can buy an entire years worth of food for $5/week over 52 weeks for one person.

Choose foods your family will eat, and prepare meals from that food storage. Not only will you know what items to buy more of, you will also know how to cook with freeze-dried foods and dehydrated foods.

Communication
Communication is crucial during a time of disaster, but since phones and radios primarily rely on electricity, this first link to help and information is often unavailable. In your emergency preparedness supply, you should have a Crank Or Solar Powered Radio/Flashlight on hand, or extra batteries for the one you currently have. You may even consider purchasing several Quality, Long-Range Walkie-Talkies and giving one to each family member. An off grid CB Radio Base Station is also a great way to communicate to others.

Taking survival and emergency preparedness classes is also an excellent idea, and it would be a great family activity. We recommend you and your family participate in a ham radio certification course. Ham radio, or amateur radio, may take a while to learn how to operate, and you must have a license, but during an emergency, this can be one of the only ways to get help.

Build a Faraday Cage
All these neat gadgets won’t do you any good if they get fried too. A Faraday cage is an enclosure of conducting material that blocks out external static electric fields. If the conductor is thick enough, and the holes are smaller than the incoming electromagnetic radiation’s wavelength, then that radiation won’t be able to pass through. This is the reason why phones don’t work in some buildings and lifts, why microwaves don’t cook you when you stand in front of them.

You can make yourself a Faraday cage fairly easy. I’ve included a video below  that explains the process. Make sure you ground it properly and store all your precious electronic equipment inside it.

Money And Currency
Almost all modern banking is conducted electronically. While banks have vaults full of ingots and other valuables, your cash actually exists in a database, albeit one that’s backed up in multiple locations across the world, so that a disaster that’s confined to a local area can’t cause too many problems that won’t be resolved by a swift restoration of a backup.

However, that policy doesn’t work for global events. If that database, along with all its backups, gets wiped by a particularly nasty solar flare, then so does your money. Get it out of the bank, and in a safer, more physical place instead. Bury it in the garden, hide it in your roof, or stuff it under the mattress. Just get it out of  the electronic database and into cold hard cash.

EMP-Proof Vehicle

This is a double edged sword. Have a running vehicle can be a real blessing in a major SHTF situation, however having the ONLY running vehicle in town is like pointing a big red target on your back. If you do choose to keep a vehicle running (a great idea to at least have) then you will need an older vehicle, preferably a diesel. Look for a vehicle before electronic ignitions with a point system. Keep a backup starter, alternator, and solenoid in your Faraday cage and know how to put them on.

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