You and Your Feet (Again)

Seven and a half years ago I wrote a post about taking care of your feet. Nothing has changed in that time; you're still likely to be relying on your feet for transportation after TSHTF. 

Back then, I wrote about a friend who had a minor wound on his foot get seriously infected. That wound is still a problem today. More recently, I've been working with a homeless vet for the last two weeks, trying to get him into a job and a place to live. He's living in conditions that most of us wouldn't have a clue about how to handle: no car, no income, nowhere to sleep, living hand-to-mouth off of the kindness of strangers. 

We get a few panhandlers at our local truck stop, but this guy wasn't begging, just looking for a way out of his crappy situation, so I'm doing what I can to give him a hand up rather than a handout. I have a good line on a job and am trying to arrange an interview with a place that has temporary housing for employees.

I gave him a tent and sleeping bag, and got him set up in a nearby park that charges $5 a night for tents. This gives him access to running water and bathrooms, and he now has a place to sleep where he can stretch out rather than trying to sleep in a chair at the truck stop. 

One of the problems he ran into was his feet. Being in a public place, he wasn't able to take off his boots for most of two weeks. He didn't have a change of socks or extra shoes, and bathing was limited to a sponge bath in the restroom sink. I got him a collection of toiletries so he could clean up at the park, along with some clean clothes and socks, but he'd already done some damage to his feet: edema (swelling due to fluid retention) of his lower legs was pretty bad, but being able to sleep laying down was reducing it. 

Today he contacted me to let me know his feet were getting worse. He took off his socks and found that flies had laid eggs in the open sores while he slept. That's right, he had maggots living in the skin of his feet. Maggots only eat dead flesh, so he was on his way to developing a serious infection that could cost him a foot. I made a few calls and got him a ride to the hospital, where the Emergency Room folks will get him patched up for free (it's a small, church-based hospital), but I'm out of town for work all week and can't check on him until Friday. I'll write an update this weekend after I get a chance to get more details, but it's looking like he'll be unable to work for a few weeks. 

Taking care of your feet is not optional. Read the post from the past for details, but you need to keep your feet in good shape if you want to be able to move without crutches or a wheelchair. Clean and dry feet are the main goals, with attention to blisters and treatment as soon as possible. Without access to modern medicine, failure to care for your feet will kill you as surely as catching a bullet.

Book Review: The Lost Superfoods

While wandering a bunch of prepper sites I saw an ad for a book called The Lost Superfoods. The ad mentioned that it had a recipe for the emergency ration crackers used by the US government in the 1960s when they stocked the fallout shelters around the country. Since I have an interest in most things from the Cold War era, having served in the military back then, I spent the $27.00 and had a copy delivered.

This is a review, so don't expect me to copy the entire book; I'll give an overview and my opinions on the quality and quantity of information in it.

https://amzn.to/3Hb3tpM

The first chapter covers the emergency rations that were stockpiled to feed people in fallout shelters in the event of a nuclear war with the USSR. This was a short-lived program, but thousands of shelters were stocked and ready. The rations were a thick cracker, sort of a hardtack crossed with a graham cracker, with hard candies to provide extra calories. Less than 1000 calories per person, per day, for two weeks was enough to keep people alive in a shelter where there was little chance of strenuous activity. All of the original rations were recalled in the 1970s, but I've seen a few examples that were not sent back and they were inedible by the 1990s; 30 years was just too long for a cracker to survive. The recipe and baking is pretty simple, because most survival foods are simple. If I get the time this fall I may test this one and see if my limited kitchen skills can pull it off.

Other chapters cover various ways to store meat and fish for long periods. Going back to the recipes used by sailors and explorers hundreds of years ago, long before refrigeration was available, the authors present each in a chapter with clear instructions and plenty of color pictures to help you get it right. (Spoiler: preserving meats uses a lot of salt.) Some of the items are a bit odd, but that makes them fit into the category of "forgotten" foods. Jerky, pemmican, biltong, home-made Spam, bully beef, potted meat, and bacalao (salted cod) are covered in sufficient detail to get you started on storing animal protein.

Canning several different things is covered fairly well, and I liked the chapter on canning butter. It's been a long time since I last used a pressure cooker, but I know several families that put up a lot of food in them every year. Fruits and vegetables are staples when canning food, and this book covers the basics. There are plenty of recipe books for canning fruits and vegetables and the information doesn't get old, so look in used book stores and garage sales for grandma's old cookbooks.

About a third of the book is general prepper knowledge, things like how to grow your own yeast, what to do with the food in your freezer if the power goes out, and how to use Mylar bags and oxygen absorbers to store food.  Good general information, but only lightly related to "lost superfoods".

In my opinion, this is a good book to have on the shelf. The price isn't horrible for the amount of information presented, and the color photos and clear descriptions are rare in prepper books. You can buy the book at Amazon for $27.00 (shipping is extra). 

Nature Abhors a Vacuum

 Aristotle wrote it down, but others probably noticed it before him: the natural order of things doesn't allow empty spaces to remain empty for very long -- something will fill the void.

For preppers, this is a necessary part of our planning. When something goes missing, we need to think about what will fill its place. This covers more than just physical things, however; organizations and ideas are also subject to the rules of nature. Here are some examples.

Money

There is a lot of chatter about the US dollar losing its place in the world economy. People have relied on the dollar as a foundation for commerce since the end of WW2, but recent events are eroding the confidence that people had. Something will replace it, maybe several somethings; there are other currencies in use around the world and something will become the new standard. It may fall back to hard currency like gold and silver, or it could be a different fiat currency backed by nothing but promises, but something will take its place.

For preppers, barter and exchange of services will likely be at least short-term replacements for any currency failures. These also have the advantage of being difficult to tax and regulate, so they're popular among the more fringe elements of the prepper-sphere.

Leaders

Many people desire leaders, and big projects require them. Here in America we have a tradition of being more self-directed than many cultures, and my time in the military taught me the differences between our way of fighting and most other countries. The loss of a leader is less of an issue for the US military, because someone will step up and take control of the situation; that's the way we were trained. The armies of many other nations teach blind obedience to their leaders, and the loss of those leaders leads to troops that are lost and ineffective.

Politics is similar in that we have layers of control, and the loss of a leader is rarely a total disaster. We've had Presidents assassinated without the system falling apart, because someone filled the position in an orderly fashion. We have a written plan for who takes over next; it's one of the basic parts of our form of government. Compare that to the times a dictator dies in office and the chaos that ensues.

Try to make arrangements within your team/tribe/family to cover the loss of leaders, because it will keep things going in trying times.

Conflict

Times of peace are aberrations in human history; our natural order involves conflict on some level or other. Look at history and you'll see that there is always a war or dispute of some sort going on somewhere, and this isn't going to change. The end of WW1 led to the conditions that started WW2, and at the end of that we got the Korean conflict and Viet Nam along with a Cold War that lasted until it was time to start wars back up in the Middle East. Going further back in history shows the same trend, with constant conflict somewhere is the default setting.

Looking at it from a more personal level, how often does a bully retire after breaking a victim? They don't, they just start looking for the next one. They have to have conflict in their lives to feel alive. The same goes for the drama queens that are found in any group of people; they need to stir the pot and create conflict as much as they need to breathe.

Preppers should be aware that conflict is part of life and try to learn methods for dealing with it. De-escalation works on small conflicts, but force may be required to settle larger ones. Shut down or shut out the drama queens for your own mental health and the well-being of all in your tribe.

Recreational Chemistry

The use of various compounds to alter reality is at least as old as humanity, and there are documented reports of other animals knowingly using naturally occurring drugs to get drunk or high, so it's not unique to humans. The “Temperance” movement of a century ago thought they could ban alcohol, but all they did was create a black market and a very wealthy bunch of organized criminals. The “War on Drugs” is having a similar lack of effect on the amount of drugs available to those who seek them, and has fueled a synthetic drug industry that is producing some scary concoctions. I have contacts who have worked for the DEA and Coast Guard and some of the stories they've told me about the smuggling trade are impressive. If the profit margin is high enough, people will find a way around any law or border because their customers will find a way to feed their addictions.

Know your people and their personal addictions. Like most human traits, addictions come in various shapes and sizes and some people handle them better than others. Alcoholism runs in my family, so I keep a close eye on my personal consumption. I've seen how it can affect a family and don't want to make those same mistakes. I've also known drug addicts of all sorts over the years; some of them lost their lives to the drugs, while others were able to be functional members of society while still being hooked to heroin or meth. The loss of supply will make addicts to anything do strange things to feed that need, so at least be aware of your peoples' vulnerabilities.

Being a prepper is more than just stocking up on beans, bullets, and band-aids. We have to plan for the long term, and find ways to keep going even though everything around us is falling apart.

Food as Barter

Growing food is always a good thing: if you grow more than you can eat or store, you can barter or gift the surplus. I've mentioned that when I was growing up my family grew lots of tomatoes, while the neighbor to the north grew sweetcorn along the edge of his corn field, and others grew cucumbers, peppers, onions, or something else. We all traded freely, since we were friends as well as neighbors. Mom and Dad always had chickens for fresh eggs and the surplus were taken to church every Sunday for anyone who wanted them to take home. 

Food as a barter item is nothing new, and when TSHTF it will probably come back into use. World supply lines are already under stress, causing localized shortages of some items, and prices for what is available are climbing fast; if our economy takes a serious dive, or we get involved in another war, things will get even harder to find at the supermarket. Having a secondary source of the basics would qualify as a good prepping idea.

Not all of us are going to have the room to set up a garden large enough to sustain our family, but even a few window planters or a vertical garden made of PVC pipe can grow enough to help. If you have neighbors or tribe that can grow food, maybe you should look at growing the herbs and spices that make meals more enjoyable. There are many options that aren't exactly food but would make good barter items.

Sugar

Modern people are addicted to sugar as a result of marketing strategies developed after WW2. Think about how much sugary crap the average person consumes daily and you'll see that having a supply of sweetener to trade could be worth its weight in gold.

Sugar comes from two main sources: cane and beets. Sugar cane is a tropical plant that is easy to grow if you have the climate; sugar beets will grow in much colder climates, and once harvested can be left on the ground, frozen, until they're processed. Sugar cane is a perennial grass similar to bamboo that regrows from the roots every year; sugar beets have to be planted from seed every year. Sugar cane is grown in Florida, Louisiana, and Texas; sugar beets are grown in North Dakota and Minnesota, where they'll stay frozen after harvest and can be processed over the winter.

High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) is a cheap sugar replacement that takes some chemistry and equipment to produce. Having spent several years working in a plant that produced it by the railcar load, I know how it's made and don't think many preppers would be able to make it on a small scale. 

Spices

Black pepper is a tropical plant, but Cayenne and various other peppers can be used as replacements. With the modern American palate being accustomed to spicy food, peppers are a low-maintenance plant that could be used as a barter item.

Garlic and onions are root crops that take up little room to grow and are easy to store. Most of the other spices like curry, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves are all native to small areas of the world and don't grow well in other areas, hence the trade routes of ancient times. If you can produce enough to trade, there will be a market if our current system fails.

Herbs

The list of herbs used to season and enhance the flavors of food is too long for me to list here. Mints and herbs are easy to grow in a space even as small as a single pot for use in the kitchen. Growing and storing a few varieties of seasoning for trade purposes wouldn't take much room or time.

Caffeine

Somewhere around 85% of Americans start their day with a caffeinated drink of some sort. Be it coffee, tea, soda, or energy drink, caffeine is an addiction that has its claws in a lot of people. 

There's only one native North American plant that contains caffeine: Yaupon, a variety of holly native to northern Florida and southern Georgia. The leaves make a smooth tea that is richer in caffeine than Asian teas.

We have some cold-hardy tea plants that will grow in colder regions, I'll cover them in a separate article along with how they are processed.

Arabica coffee can be grown in a greenhouse in the USA, but it takes a lot of care and processing to make into something fit to drink.

Tobacco

This one is controversial; I've mentioned growing tobacco before and gotten negative feedback. Feeding this addiction is not supporting a healthy lifestyle, but if a grown adult chooses to partake of it, that's their choice. It's a powerful addiction; I've been hooked on it since I was about 18 years old. I've quit several times, but keep coming back to it. 

I switched from smoking to vaping a few years back to reduce the health effects, but I know it's not good for me. My brain is now wired to expect the nicotine and life is not pleasant without it. This makes it a valuable trade item, but I know nothing about its cultivation and processing.

The nicotine in tobacco has other uses, mainly as a pesticide. It's a powerful poison, so painting a light coating on seeds or stems will kill most insects that touch it. Since I work with pesticides for a living, I'm aware of how dangerous it can be. 

If you find yourself in a community, no matter how small, sometimes specializing in producing one thing can open up lines of barter with others for the things you can't make yourself. This is one of the basics of civilization and shouldn't be lost, no matter how bad things get.

Growing Zones

Winter is over, so it's time to get into the fields and gardens and start growing things. 

I've been seeing a lot of interest in growing food as a result of increases in food prices and reductions in availability in stores. The reasons for inflated prices and shortages are varied and get into the arena of politics, which we don't enter. This is not a blog that places blame; we're here to help people get through tough times no matter who or what is the cause. Believe what you want and blame whomever you want, the methods of surviving bad times are the same.

History

When food is being rationed, and it can happen again, being able and willing to grow at least some of your own can make life more bearable and might open up lines of barter with neighbors. 

Growing your own food isn't anything new. As little as 80 years ago "victory gardens" were encouraged during WW2 in order to free up food production for the soldiers, sailors, and marines fighting overseas, and they were common practice for everyone who had the space. If you look back more than 100 years, growing your own food was essential for anyone living outside of cities. Go back even further, or look at other areas of the world, and you'll see that growing food is a personal responsibility that we've seemingly grown beyond. This reliance on industrial food production is an aberration in human history, a temporary pause in the way things normally work. It can change rapidly, and history shows that is has happened before. 

Does the Irish potato blight ring a bell? A system of tenant-farmers with no control over what they planted led to a monoculture agricultural scheme (nothing but potatoes, which meant high profits for the landowners) ripe for a plant disease outbreak. Millions starved, or were forced to move in order to stay alive.

Early settlers in North America ran into the same issue with tobacco: the profit margin was so great that they grew tobacco rather than food and ended up starving in early Virginia history*.  The prevailing land grant system didn't help matters, and ended up being one of the causes of chattel slavery in US history.

Even today, a crop failure can mean the loss of everything to a farmer. It only takes one bad year to wipe out savings and force the sale of the land they rely on to make a living. The "500 year" floods that we've seen three times in the last 20 years have pushed many families off of land that has been in their families for generations. Reports of farmers on food stamps are real, even if they are hard to believe.

Grow Your Own

Growing your own food can be a major part of your everyday preps if you have the space. Land is nice to own, and I'd rather tend a garden than mow grass. If you made the mistake of buying into a HOA-controlled area, you may have limits on how big your garden can be and where it can be placed, so check your by-laws. 

The next step is to find out what will grow in your area. The USDA has produced a "Hardiness Zone" map that most seed and plant sellers will use to determine is a specific variety is suitable for your location. Even though it's called a "Hardiness" map, it also serves as a good representation of the growing seasons for each region. Here's the map, courtesy of the USDA so it's in the public domain:

As you can see from the legend, each zone is designated by the minimum low temperature for each location. I'm in the middle of Zone 5, which means that it will get down to -10 to -20 °F in the dead of winter. This limits what perennial plants will survive a normal winter to the more hardy plants. I can forget about the bananas and papaya, at least if I want to grow them outdoors. 

Seed sellers will also use this map for annual plants, usually printing a range of zones that a specific variety is suitable to grow in. If I see "suitable for zones 4-7", I can be reasonably certain that I will have good results in zone 5.

Find your zone and memorize it. You'll need it when you go shopping for seeds and plants.

* The last paragraph mentions lack of food because it was more profitable to grow tobacco. 

Is Prepping in the Cards?

I apologize for the lack of content lately. Life has been kicking me from several directions at once, and my free time to write has been one of the casualties. Most of my online activities were the first things cut in order to make time for more important things like sleep and family. I care about my online friends and our readers, but I'd be a poor example if I didn't take care of myself and my family first.

I've been playing around with a set of "survival" cards for a few days. These are thin steel cards with various useful tools punched or cut into them. Amazon has several different sets, so I bought a few to test out. 

Here are my thoughts and observations on these cards in general:

• They're all made of thin 304 stainless (aka 18-8 stainless), which is a medium-grade steel. This means that the steel will bend and hold its new shape rather than try to spring back. Commonly used to make dinnerware and corrosion-resistant tools, 304 stainless will rust and pit eventually.
• These are either precision stamped or laser cut, so don't expect sharp edges on any of the knives. The hooks and arrowheads will be sharp enough to do the job, but the knife edges will be flat. 
• The knives are small and the metal is thin. Best suited for skinning game or cutting up wild fruits, they'll get the job done but it will take longer than a good camp knife. 
• In fact, everything is small. Viewed on a normal monitor, most of the pictures below are close to half size. These cards are sized to fit in a pocket or wallet, so they're only about 3 inches wide and 4 inches long.
• All of the sets have the same problem; how do you store the tools once you've taken them off of the card? Two sets come with a felt "wallet" with a single snap closure, but I don't see how they'd hold the tiny tools through any rough terrain. Finding fish hooks loose in the bottom of a pack is not a good time, and it usually happens in the dark. 304 stainless is only slightly magnetic, and I did find one version that shipped with a flat magnetic card to hold the pieces.

30 Piece Wallet Tool

This is a single card with 30 different tools for $14. It's not the cheapest set per piece, but it has a good selection of tools. The saw and knife are more substantial than most of the others, making them easier to work with. This kit came in a gift box with a thin flexible magnetic sheet; toss the carboard box and use the magnet to hold the pieces after you've removed them from the frame.

https://amzn.to/3OKWQxG

Buspoll 22 in 1 Card

This is a set of three identical cards, perfect for testing with one and storing the other two in a bag or pack. This cost $14 for the set of three cards, so about $4.67 per card. It has basic tools for fishing and trapping, but no knife. What they call a harpoon, we call a "gig"; gigging frogs and snakes for food is similar to fishing, and the tools will work for fish as well. 

https://amzn.to/375d6J2

4 Piece Survival Tool

This has four different cards with a good mix of pieces. The set costs $9.19, and it comes with a cheap felt carrying case. The fork is a nice addition, and the variety of saws is going to require some testing to see how well they work. 

https://amzn.to/3Kts74W

The Big Collection

This set has six different cards, 124 different tools, and a coil of fishing line with a plastic "reel" to store it on. 

With a total of 60 fish hooks, 3 knives, 8 saws, 16 sewing needles, and a bunch of other toys, this set will keep you supplied for longer than the other sets. The cost was $14, the same as some of the smaller sets.

https://amzn.to/3EYcbGM

I may try some of the fish hooks this summer to see how well they hold up; my normal hooks are made of better steel, and I'm afraid these might bend too easily. More testing is always a good thing.

I'd place all of these tools in the "Gilligan's Island" category of preps: there are better alternatives to all of the tools on these cards, but what these offer is better than trying to make your own out of rocks and twigs. 

Should You Buy Gold?

With the current set of economic upheavals, we're seeing the “BUY GOLD!” ads, and ads disguised as information, in a lot of the prepper-sphere. There are always a few such ads -- investing in precious metals as a hedge against inflation can be a good strategy -- but whenever the world starts to tilt a bit off-center, the metals merchants ramp up their advertising. Let's go over some basics about precious metals.

Gold is, and has been, a form of money for millennia. As a fairly rare metal that doesn't tarnish or rust, it is easy to store and work with. Being soft and dense for a metal, gold is well suited for ornamental use. For the first half of the existence of the USA, our paper money was backed by gold and was very stable. Other than the small percentage used for making jewelry and artwork, all of the gold that is mined is still in circulation, even if it is sitting in a vault somewhere. Large transfers of gold rarely involve physically moving it; the custodians just change the name on the paperwork that tracks who owns it. Gold is currently (Q1 2022) selling for around $2000/oz on the spot market, making it a very compact way to store fairly large sums of money.

Silver is a slightly different story. Since it is used in several industries, silver actually gets consumed over time. Being the best conductor of electricity we have, some gets used up in the creation of electronic devices. Old-school photography used to use tons of silver in the chemicals used to produce film, to the point that “mining” old x-ray sheets was a profitable way to get silver. Some US coins minted before 1965 (dimes and quarters mostly) were actually made of silver and are now collectible. Well-worn or “circulated” silver coins are called “junk silver”, and bags of them pop up for sale on occasion. Silver prices are floating around $25.00/oz right now, making it more suitable for use in small transactions.

Other rare metals like Platinum and Palladium are a specialty market; they have industrial uses and are not common enough to use as currency. Copper and Nickel have been used as money in the past when they were fairly hard to get, but modern mining techniques have made them too common.

Buying precious metals is your choice, but I can't recommend basing your preps on them. Here are my reasons for being less enthusiastic about gold and silver than the salesmen are:

• You can't eat gold. Basic preps are water, food, and shelter, and gold is none of these. It may let you purchase the basics, but only if there is a seller that wants gold/silver.
• Counterfeiting coins has existed for as long as coins has. Ever wonder why dimes and quarters have ridges around their edges? Their purpose is to show if someone has shaved the coins to harvest a bit off of the edges. Foreign coinage and miniature bars may have official markings, but there is a level of trust involved every time they change hands.
• Gold is compact, which makes it easy to store, but also makes it easier to steal or lose.
• Gold is too compact for everyday purchases. How are you going to “make change” for a $10 meal if all you have are coins worth $2000 each? Divisible coins like the Spanish dollar, made up of eight “Reales” (the “pieces of eight” of pirate lore) were one solution, but we don't have anything like that in circulation.
• Governments have outlawed the private possession of gold in the past and can do it again.
• Being a physical commodity, metals are finite. Unless you have won the lottery, you won't be able to store enough to carry you through a long-term crisis. Preppers need to be able to produce something or provide a service that others are willing to trade for in able to survive long- term.

Personally, I don't store gold or silver, preferring to stockpile things that are of immediate use and easier to trade. Given a time machine, I would like to go back and put more of my retirement savings into gold, but that is nothing more than 20/20 hindsight. None of us know exactly what the future will bring, so we just have to plan and prepare as best we can and figure out ways to get through the surprises that life is going to throw at us.

Keeping Records

Reading and writing are two things which separate humans from animals, giving us ways to record information and relay it to others, or refer back to it  ourselves, at a future date. Keeping records is a two-edged sword for preppers: it helps us keep track of things, but is also a potential security risk if those records fall into the wrong hands. For example, having a map of all of your cache sites might make it easier for you to find them, but if a thief were to find it, that map would lead them to your carefully hidden supplies.

(Use the search box in the upper left corner and search for “OPSEC” if you want more articles that cover Operational Security and some things that need to be kept secret.) 

There are other types of records that don't require secrecy and just make your life easier and safer. Electronic records are open to easily hidden deletion or alteration, and they require electricity to use. I like to keep things simple; pencils last longer than pens and work in the cold, but most inks will outlast the graphite markings a pencil makes, so it's a personal choice and I use both as needed. 

Records require media; I prefer pencil/pen and paper for most of my records, and have supplies of both set aside. Hitting the stores well after the start of school season and in the spring after schools let out is a good way to find sales, and buying in bulk and at estate auctions are other ways to keep costs down. Not everything has to be in a hand-crafted, artisanal journal, but keeping good notes somewhat organized will help.

Here are a few examples of the types of records I keep:

Seedlings

When I start a garden, I start some of my plants from seeds. These are planted in starter trays inside the house before winter is fully over in order to have seedlings ready to transplant as soon as the threat of frost is gone (mid to late April around here). Since a lot of plants look similar as seedlings, I note what is planted in each cell of the starter tray on a simple “map” drawn on a piece of paper. If I have too many starter trays to keep track of easily, I'll mark the trays with an identifying number and use the same number on the map.

https://amzn.to/3Kntxie

I try to keep track of information such as what plant it is, where the seed came from, when it was started, and any other details that can help me decide if I need to make changes next year. Some brands of seeds aren't worth buying, but the only way to find that out is by keeping records of germination rates and the general health of the plants. Commercially grown hybrids won't breed true, so their seeds aren't as useful as heirloom seeds, which is important to know when you've got a fairly large garden and want to keep growing the good stuff year after year.

Reloading

A few of us have written about reloading over the years. It's a good way to get the most bang for your buck, being cheaper than buying factory ammo, and it allows you to “tune” loads to your specific weapons, all of which means more practice time and better accuracy. This is a rabbit hole of a hobby -- you can get lost in the amount of data available -- but one that is common among preppers.

At the basic or beginner level of reloading, there are things you have to keep track of for safety: powder and primer selection, bullet weight, bullet material, and brass brand are all basics that influence your final product. Getting a little more advanced, you'll be recording overall length of finished cartridges, lot numbers of powder/primers/brass, and test velocities/group size. Going whole-hog into precision reloading will mean testing and recording lots of information about each piece of brass and each projectile, aiming for as much consistency as possible in every round of each lot.

https://amzn.to/3uiFhgc

Feeding a self-defense pistol will require less accuracy than feeding a long-range hunting rifle, but you do need to keep track of which components you used in order to weed out bad combinations or bad lots of components. Both need to go bang when you pull the trigger, but the pistol's use requires more attention to reliability than accuracy. 

Practice ammo is generally the least restrictive type to reload, but still needs to be kept track of. Look online for examples and you can tailor your log book to the information you need, making your own log book if you can't afford a pre-printed one.

Vehicle Maintenance

I keep a log book in the glove box of any vehicle I buy for at least a few years. The first few months I'll log fuel and mileage to see if it is performing as expected; after that I keep track of all of the things I have to fix or replace. At some point the vehicle will start to cost me more than the benefits it provides, and having a log of how much money I've dumped into it makes that decision a bit easier to make. My memory is good, but it does have limits, and tracking tires and oil changes is a lot easier when you write them down. Trying to track my wife's car as well as my own makes having a log book a necessity. 

For this I just use a cheap notebook with a few dozen pages. The first page will have the make, model, engine model, VIN, and other specific data on it. This makes trips to the parts store much quicker since they're going to ask for that information to find me the right parts.

Things Not Recorded

• Locations of caches. I know where they are, as do a few trusted people.
• Serial numbers of “paperless” firearms. I do buy guns from private sellers that have no government papers.
• Information on anything that might be illegal, or could become illegal in the near future.
• Combinations to safes and lock boxes. I have encoded methods of keeping track of the ones I can't change to numbers that I can easily remember. Passwords are the same.

Records don't have to be a four-drawer filing cabinet, and keeping log books near where they're used is simple and efficient. Keep the records you want and need, try to set aside a few blank books or binder for keeping records after TSHTF, and use common sense with what you record for posterity.

Update and Welcome

First, an update on last week's post about shovels. I was asked a few questions about specific types of shovels, and rather than belabor a point I'll just post a link to an excellent website that I found while looking for references. The Shovel Zone should be able to answer all of your questions; the only thing I wish they had were more pictures for the various designs. Forestry Suppliers has a good catalog of shovels and other outdoor equipment; I'm not affiliated with them in any way, but have browsed their wares for many years.

With all of the uncertainty and turmoil in the world today, there are a lot of people waking up to the idea of prepping. If you're new here, welcome to BCP: we're a non-political, mostly sane group of folks that try to get realistic information out to the people who need and want it. You won't see articles about bunkers and vehicles that cost more than most people make in a year, we don't have flashy ads on our site, and we're all volunteers. Most of our writing comes from personal experience rather than repeating what we've read on other sources, our product reviews are based on things we've purchased with our own money, and we're not afraid to tell you if something isn't worth buying. 

We've been around since 2014, so most of us are starting our ninth year of writing for this blog, and there's a search box in the upper left-hand corner that can take you to our older posts. One of the nice things about being simple is that the information rarely gets old; some things are so basic that they will always be there.

The reasons people prepare are varied, so their preps will vary. Here are a few of the more common ones:

Food prices are going up and availability is going down, so it makes sense to buy and store what you can as a hedge against inflation and shortages. Growing your own food in whatever quantity you can is starting to look pretty darn good to a lot of people; even something as simple as a window garden that produces a few tomatoes or peppers will help stretch the food budget with very little input. We're not at the stage of eating the animals in zoos yet, but it has happened elsewhere and we're not immune to the causes of shortages.

Wars and rumors of wars are spreading. War is never good for anyone other than those selling arms; it disrupts so many aspects of life that the impact spreads to other places and makes life harder for everyone, and the larger the participant in a war, the larger the impact. We live in an interconnected world so what happens thousands of miles away will cause changes in our lives, and there's not much we can do other than prepare for it.

Crime is becoming increasingly more violent. Humans are not nice animals in general; rather, we are greedy, prone to violence, and very tribal. Various religions and philosophers have tried to blunt these traits over the millennia, but each new generation has to learn these lessons or they will revert to the basic animal that resides in all of us. I'm old, so I've seen the changes in what is taught and allowed in American society over the last half century or so, and it hasn't always been for the better.

I mentioned inflation up above, and the USA is currently seeing rates of inflation higher than any in the last 40 years. When your income is going to lose value fairly quickly, it's a good thing to buy and store essentials as soon as you can because they'll cost more in the future. If the inflation is temporary, you might be able to store enough to be more comfortable; if it sticks around for more than a year or reaches the level of hyper-inflation, life becomes a day-to-day struggle.

Feel free to reach out to us with questions through our social media links on the right side of the page. I'm not on Facebook, but we do have a group over there. MeWe is less censorious and doesn't have all of the ads, so we have a group there as well. If you use Discord, I've put up a server there and can provide an invite upon request.

Please remember that we're volunteers and have lives of our own with jobs and families, so we may not be able to respond immediately. Thanks for joining us, and welcome to prepping. 

More About Shovels & Spades

After seeing David's post about shovels, I thought I'd add my two cents worth of shovel knowledge. I've done a fair amount of dirt work over the years, and I agree that spades are for digging and shovels are for moving material. For most jobs, the types of spades and shovels David listed are sufficient, but I've known some of them by different names.

For Moving Things

What David calls a spading fork is a tool we've always called a potato fork. These are very handy when harvesting potatoes or other root crops since the tines do less damage to the tubers and allow dirt to fall through them as you lift the roots out of the soil. Larger versions with round tines and more of a shovel shape are called manure forks, and you can guess what their function is from the name. 

a manure fork

The most common type of shovel around here is the grain scoop. Made of aluminum or plastic to eliminate the possibility of sparks, every farmer will have at least a few around. Sparks and grain storage are a bad combination; look up dust explosions if you need some nightmare fuel. These are often used as snow shovels in the winter, since most snow weighs less than an equivalent volume of corn or beans and you're likely to have one already. They are sturdy, light, and easy to find in most farm supply stores.

a grain scoop

When picking a shovel for a job, try to size it for the material you're moving. Grain weighs around 45 pounds per cubic foot, water weighs around 62, dirt is around 75-80, and concrete/rock is about 140-150. Trying to lift a grain scoop full of gravel is no fun, so get a smaller shovel to save wear and tear on your back. If you're moving lighter material like grass seed or ashes, grab a bigger shovel to make it move faster.

For Digging

The round-nose spade is more commonly used to break soil or start digging. The point helps you push it into the soil just like a knife point helps you puncture a box or animal hide. The curved edge also slices through roots better than a straight edge, something to consider when working around woody plants and trees.

Flat-nosed spades are helpful for smoothing off or squaring up a hole. Working around any structure under the soil is easier when you use a flat-nose spade to keep the vertical surfaces clean and neat. They're also useful for making temporary steps or stairs to climb out of a hole.

Tile spades are another common type of spade, used to dig post holes and narrow trenches to bury pipes or cables. The round tip and deep blade let you make small, deep holes while the rounded profile keeps the hole roughly the same shape as the post you're trying to set. Keeping the hole close to the same size as the post makes the post sturdier and cuts down on the amount of work you have to do. 

a tile spade

There is a variant of the tile spade used for digging really deep holes. It has a handle measured in feet instead of inches, and it's used with a separate tool called a spoon which removes the dirt from the hole after the spade has loosened it. The spoon has a blade turned at an angle to let you scoop up loose dirt from the bottom of a hole.

a spoon shovel

Post hole diggers and augers have replaced these tools, except at extremely remote locations where you can't get power equipment to the job site. When setting posts and poles, you need to have at least 1/3 of the post in the ground for proper support, so a twenty-foot flag pole is going to need a seven-foot deep hole. 

Special jobs require special tools, so you may run into shovels with odd shapes or sizes. I know a lot of farmers keep shovels with broken handles around for use when cleaning the mud out of equipment, because they're easier to use in tight spaces such as between or behind tires on large tractors. 

Having the knowledge of what the right tool is for a job is almost as important as having that tool available. Have both, and you'll save yourself a lot of trouble. 

The Agricultural Extension Office

Last week I mentioned local Agricultural Extension Offices as a source of information about renting land to garden on, but that's not all they're good for: most states with a significant agricultural market will have some form of Extension Office to assist farmers and gardeners, one of the few uses of our tax dollars that can directly benefit us.

A little history first, since I like to explain where things come from. Back in 1862, Congress passed the Morrill Act that established land-grant colleges and universities to promote better opportunities in the areas of agriculture and the mechanical arts. The politics get a bit sticky since this was right at the start of the Civil War, and it was one of the federal vs. state control issues that brought about that conflict. Basically, the 1862 Act sold off federal land and granted the proceeds to the states to fund the creation of public colleges and universities. Each state received 30,000 acres per federal Senator and Congressman from that state, with the Confederate states being exempted until after the war. 69 public colleges and universities were founded this way, creating an alternative to private schools. After the war in 1890, a further Act established colleges and universities for the newly-freed black population (things were still segregated), and in 1994 it was expanded further to create advanced schools for native Americans. A list of all such colleges can be found on Wikipedia.

Land-grant colleges exist to teach agricultural best practices and other things, so they're a source of information and assistance that we're already paying for. Most of them have some form of Agricultural Extension Office system with offices scattered about the state; ours is at the county level with a physical office in every county. With over 150 years of study and research in their archives, they are a great resource for information about your local soils, crops, pests, and animals. If you find an unidentified bug eating all of your plants, taking a specimen to the local office (in a jar, please) is a good way to find out what it is and how to eliminate it.

Identifying weeds and invasive animals are also part of their job. Many of them publish hard-copy identification guides for local pests along with other books, maps, and documents that can help you grow food. Hardcopy is my preferred method of storing information, since it doesn't rely on electricity and can't be remotely altered or deleted.

Iowa was the first state to accept the land-grant college system, but Kansas was the first to establish one. Iowa State University is not known for its sports teams, but is well-known for graduating veterinarians and agricultural managers. They run our state Extension services, and the web page gives you a clue as to how much that covers. Expanding local markets and encouraging local production of foods is a part of their focus right now, so if you're looking to grow food in quantity, they have helpful information and they will share it with out-of-staters. Here's an example of what they offer just to commercial vegetable producers. This can become a rabbit-hole of research, so set yourself limits before diving in.

Reach out to your local Extension Office and see what they have to offer. It's going to vary by state and personnel, so I can't guarantee a good response, but you should be able to get something useful out of them.

Gardening Space

Spring is fast approaching, and many of us are thinking about gardening as the days get longer. As I write this in early March, many of the local farmers are fine-tuning their field equipment and gearing up for planting. Local gardeners are raking the leaves and winter debris off of their plots and getting the tillers ready for when the frost is out and they can start another season of growing food and flowers.

Growing your own food can be a good way to supplement or replace what is available in the stores, and it doesn't rely on a stressed supply chain that has recently left some shelves bare or with limited choices. Controlling your own food supply is always a good idea for preppers, and working in the dirt with your own hands to produce it will reinforce an appreciation for the food you eat. Most of us take food for granted in our daily lives, and missing a meal is unusual unless we're fasting for one reason or another. Gardening can also be a relaxing way to take time off from daily stress and enjoy a bit of nature.

However, problems arise when we don't have easy access to a suitable piece of land to grow food on. Apartment dwellers, renters that can't tear up a yard, prisoners to Home Owners Associations (HOAs) with strict rules about the appearance of properties, owners of lots too small to provide room, and those who live in arid or rocky regions unsuitable to gardening can't easily grow their own food. There are options like hydroponics and vertical gardening that can grow small amounts of food, but if you're looking to replace a large portion of what you normally buy, you're going to need to find a plot of dirt.

Land is expensive. Good quality farmland around me is currently selling for $12-15,000 per acre, and it usually comes in parcels that are too large for a simple garden. Since an acre of land is 43,560 square feet and a large garden is about 1,000 square feet (20' x 50'), it doesn't make sense to be looking at land just for a garden. Farmland is broken down roughly by the square mile (a “section”) that is further divided into quarters of 160 acres each. Each quarter-section is then divided into four, 40-acre plots for most cases. Geography and waterways will always complicate where lines are drawn, but this is the “standard” way land is divided in rural areas. At $15,000 per acre, that 40 acre plot is $600,000, and a quarter-section is close to $2.5 million. We have a lot of “paper millionaires” around here --farmers that are “worth” several million because of their land, but their annual income is closer to a factory worker than a stock broker.

Since most of us don't need and can't afford a farm-sized plot of land, we have to look at other options if we want to have a garden. Friends and family are my first choice; if you know someone with extra space; it wouldn't hurt to ask about renting or using some of it for your garden. If that doesn't work for you, there are other ways to find garden space:

• Shared Earth is a service for matching land owners and renters for gardening. Type in your address and it will find available space near you. I had a few problems with their website, but the concept is solid.
• Yard-Yum has a decent webpage. Their FAQ states that a 20' x 20' (400 sq ft) garden plot rents for $30-100 per year depending on area and amenities; raised beds and paved paths generally cost more.
• Your local extension office. Most states have an agricultural extension service run by one of the state universities, and they exist to help farmers and gardeners. The amount of information they can provide varies by state, but since it's your tax dollars that have paid for it, you should look into what they offer.
• Online services like Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist are another option for finding local space for rent. Your local area may have other online markets, look around.

Most garden landlords will want rent in cash, but some are willing to accept a portion of your crop as payment (share-cropping is the old term). Contracts vary by location and owner, so make sure you read and understand what you're signing up for:

• Expect clauses that cover chemical use, since the person growing organic foods in the plot next to you may not want your over-spray.
• I've not heard of anyone requiring a deposit like a house rental, but I wouldn't be surprised to see it.
• Check for the availability of a compost pile for organic debris and a dumpster for trash. Waste has to go somewhere.
• Hours of availability will vary. Weekends and daylight hours should be open, but don't be upset if a landlord doesn't want people wandering around his property in the middle of the night.

Good luck growing this year! Fresh food always tastes better, and producing your own makes you a little less dependent on others.

Software vs. Paper Maps

A major part of my job for the last seven years has been driving a medium-heavy truck (10-25 tons) to rural destinations, and I have had to rely on maps and apps to get me through areas that I'm not familiar with. A good portion of the area I cover is where I grew up, so I know a lot of the roads, but things change over the years and my coverage area has spread to include the neighboring counties. 

No route survives the day without change, but I have to try.

• My home county is about 700 square miles in size, with dozens of rivers and streams, which means hundreds of bridges. Bridges have weight limits, something that doesn't affect you if driving a car but can close off a route for anything bigger. I have seen a few that are so limited that a loaded pickup would not be safe to drive across.
• We have a couple of railroads that pass through as well. Railroad crossings aren't much of a problem, but the underpasses can be old and low. During the flooding we experienced twice in the last 10 years, hundreds of truck and RV drivers found a 12' clearance underpass on a detour route for the Interstate highway. That route was blocked by a stuck vehicle at least twice a day in spite of the nine warning signs leading up to the underpass. The pile of AC units stripped off of the tops of RV's and campers kept the local scavengers busy hauling them to the scrapyards.
• We get ice and snow up here. Paved roads get cleared fairly fast and well, but gravel roads can be a challenge. Some of the hills are impassable for a few days after a good snowstorm, because it takes time to get plows out into the rural areas.
• About 30 years ago the smaller counties ran into financial difficulties, and one of the cost-saving measures they instituted was “abandoning” roads that did not have an occupied home on them. A lot of shortcuts that I once used to get from point A to point B are now “Class B maintenance” or “Minimum maintenance roads”, commonly called an MMR. Minimum maintenance means no gravel, and they're the last to get the ruts bladed out. These are true dirt roads in very hilly country that has a couple hundred feet of soil on top of the bedrock.
• Rural addresses have an E911 (Enhanced 911) house number plate on the road near the entrance. This is to help emergency responders find houses when needed, but it makes my life a bit easier.

Those are the conditions I have to deal with, so I use my experience and several aids to plot a route every morning.

Online Maps

The more remote you go, the fewer modern conveniences you can rely on. We still have areas with no cell phone coverage, and I've been in a few steep areas where I lost GPS signals. 

There are a few other online mapping services, but Garmin, Apple, Mapquest, and Google Maps are the four that most people use. Garmin is a subscription service that I've never been fond of, as their devices age out too fast and they charge too much for updates.

I don't own any Apple devices so I have very limited experience with their app, but Apple maps was the butt of a lot of jokes when they first launched due to their horrible accuracy and routing. Idiots are still blindly following their GPS app instructions into lakes and rivers, so not everything has been fixed.

I've used Mapquest and Google Maps a lot over the years. My dispatcher uses Mapquest to try to get my deliveries in the same general area because he doesn't know my county very well; it's a good start, a general grouping of locations that need to be visited that day. Once I start driving I use Google maps on my phone to get detailed routing. Both services work well on Federal and State highways, but they fail on county roads. Once you leave the paved roads, their usefulness drops by at least 50% due to the following:

• MMR's are shown as actual roads on both, so unless you have a 4WD vehicle and like to get muddy, you'll have to find another route.
• Neither service acknowledges weight-limited bridges or low underpasses. I am training Google to show railroad crossings because I have to stop at all of them.
• Road construction outside of metropolitan areas won't show up.
• New roads and closed bridges can take a year to be added to their databanks. New houses can take longer.
• Street addresses are only about 80% accurate outside of towns.

Paper Maps

In order to fill in where the apps fail, I have maps: good, old-fashioned, paper maps. A trip to the county courthouse got me a map of all of the bridges (with their weight limits) for $5.00; the county address booklet showing every house and its E911 number was $20.00. 

If I'm hauling to fields instead of houses, I have a plat book that shows field boundaries and owners (another $20.00). We also have large laminated maps on the wall at the shop (up to $100.00 each) that are easier to use when planning a long route, since the plat book and E911 booklet are broken down by one township per page. 

I also have my personal collection of maps at home, mostly topographic maps of everything within 40 miles of home. There are plenty of places online where you can get maps; one of our authors covered some in this article. 

If you're planning on traveling outside your home territory, get paper maps and learn how to read them. They work when the power is out, and they don't require a GPS signal. Keep them updated at least every two years, as things do change, even out in the hinterlands.

We've covered map reading before; it's a dying art that require hands-on training to become really proficient. The age of electronics has tried to make paper maps obsolete, but batteries die and somebody else is in charge of the data you're receiving. Google and Apple have both been caught deleting data from peoples' devices over the years, so they are not 100% trustworthy.

If you're traveling locally, do so often. Keep yourself up to date on changes around you, as that evacuation route you planned five years ago may not be usable today.

Not being able to get there is as bad as getting lost.

Magical Thinking

I've switched jobs again. It seems like every year the company finds another problem that they think I can deal with; the most recent change is due to staff shortages caused by an aging workforce and the various societal issues we're all dealing with. We're not alone; there are “help wanted” signs everywhere, and finding people willing to work is getting harder. My new job is mostly delivering propane to customers, and it has made me aware of just how bad the “magical thinking” has gotten in our world.

Magical thinking is when people choose to be ignorant of how things work, just so long as they work. One former co-worker described it as “You don't have to know how the TV works as long as it turns on when you press the switch”. Unfortunately, our jobs required us to repair the “TV” that he was referring to, so he had a lot to learn.

There is a running joke about “First-world problems”, and I'm sure you've seen a few memes or cartoons that mention the concept: problems that most of the world doesn't have to deal with because they're too busy trying to stay alive and put food on the table. Those of us in the “first-world” have life easy and have the luxury of complaining when non-essential services fail or we are inconvenienced by the lack of what most of the world would consider a luxury. Magical thinking is a big part of those “first-world problems”.

I've run into customers that can't read an analog gauge on their propane tank. We're talking a 1.5 inch diameter dial with an arrow that points from 5-95%, not rocket science. This is in Iowa, where temperatures drop below zero every winter and most rural houses use propane as a source of heat, either as a primary source or as backup heat. Magical thinking tells them that the propane just appears in the tank and the heater just runs when they turn it on, so they don't think about it beyond that.

Magical thinking is:

• Not caring what happens when you flush the toilet. It just “goes away”... until it doesn't. Then it becomes an emergency for someone else to fix.
• Not knowing, or caring, where your food/fuel/water comes from.
• Thinking that you will always be able to buy a replacement for something that wears out of breaks.
• Thinking that everything works now, so it will always work.
• Trusting others to make decisions that will have a major impact on your life.

I've fought against magical thinking for most of my life. I'm a curious person; I like to learn new things, and I like to teach others things that are new to them. I've been staff at a couple of military schools, a Cub Scout leader for a decade, a safety and compliance trainer at three companies, and done a bunch of impromptu teaching as the opportunities arise. Knowing how and why things work is part of my being a prepper, because it gives me the insight to see potential problems and look for ways to work around them.

 Unexpected problems are easier to deal with if you can find a way to make things work... but that requires knowing how they're supposed to work in the first place.