Surplus Oceanic Crew Quarter Containers

I've seen schematics/floor plans of something like these, but not a detailed view inside. Asking price is $30K for the pair - while these aren't posh, if you think about what it would cost to build something like these new, it's a pretty good deal.

Since they're much tougher than your average shipping container, they would fare better underground if you were trying to build some variety of doomsday bunker. One of the operations that specializes in bunkers/storm shelters could almost certainly help with burial and constructing some access tunnels/hatches.

Even above ground...one would need a plasma torch to get into them.

Wouldn't need too much work to get 'em ready to operate. Fresh coat o' paint on the outside, some maintenance on the outside and you'd be good to go.

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• A large lodge with kitchen
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At a cool million, the cost of entry isn't cheap, but, let's face it, a million bucks isn't what it used to be. It is a great deal for an established turnkey business, world class vacation destination and ready-made retreat--a superb investment. With multiple cabins already in place, it'd also make an ideal option for a group or extended family.

No complaining because it is out of your price range. Window shop, enjoy and start saving those pennies.

Give a welcome to Plantation Marketing Group and make sure to check out all the property details at SocialStormRetreat.com!

From the Archives: The Doorstep Problem

TEOTWAWKI Blog now has over 1000 posts, since our beginning back in 2007 - that's a lot of reading, about a broad array of apocalyptic topics. You can navigate through old posts using the search function, post labels, navigating by month or by using the navigation buttons above.

Inspired by the drama on last night's episode of the Walking Dead, here's an old-but-goody from the archives talking about the dilemma of friends & family showing up on your doorstep after troubles have hit. I've gone through and added a bit here and there to help get across some of the points - so we'll call this a director's cut.

"If the world ends, I'm coming to your place!"

We've probably all heard some variation of the above before. Family and friends who plan to show up on your doorstep when the stuff splatters on the fan. I like to call this the "doorstep problem."

In some ways, I suppose having this problem is a compliment--family/friends recognize that we're prepared, they aren't, and they'll need to rely on you in a bad situation. But really, how to respond to this? Let them use up your limited supplies, eat you out of house and home? Turn them away?

Well, we're all about being prepared before trouble hits, so the doorstep problem something we need to think through and prepare before hard times. If TSHTF and your lazy, unprepared extended family member X shows up on your doorstep, you should have your course of action thought through and prepared beforehand.

The way I see it, there are three possible strategies for address the doorstep problem: leave them hanging, plan to support them or convert them to the survivalist way.

Cabin Fever

Last year, Dave Canterbury spent a good portion of the winter in a yurt. This time around, looks like he's upgrading to a small cabin. The above video shows the initial tour of the place and runs through some of the features of the cabin. It's not big - single room with a loft, with enough room for some beds, table, gun rack and wood stove.

Dave runs through the cost for the cabin - $4.6k for the cabin kit, plus an estimated $4k for the stuff on the interior - wood stove, furnishings, etc. Though $4k does seem a bit high for the furnishings shown...probably all of the interior wood had to be purchased as well. Plus several days to assemble. So around $9K, more or less, plus a few days of work. That's not bad. You could certainly do it for less without the cabin kit and using/processing raw materials from your land.

Long term, my plan is to buy a plot of land up in the mountains somewhere and build a mostly off-the-grid cabin. It probably would not be a full time residence, at least not initially. If there's an existing cabin that fits the needs and budget, then that's great, but I may end up getting raw land and then building something down the road, so Dave's little cabin got the gears churning.

Dave's cabin is probably a bit small for what I'd like for long term living. A little more elbow room and a basic bathroom would be nice - composting toilet, probably. I'd build the cabin over a root cellar/basement for added storage. Plenty of space for stored food. And a cellar would be easier to fortify for secure storage when we weren't on-site.

A well, pump, water catchment system and cistern would handle the water needs; a spring, stream, etc. on the land would be a good backup. A basic solar or windmill system for lighting, a 12V fridge, comms and some perimeter security stuff. Eventually, we'd add some buried fuels tanks.

Down the road, as the family grows older and expands, we'd probably build an additional cabin or two to allow family and friends to have their own space. An outbuilding for tools and toys. At some point, we'd move to the land full time, and then probably add a hen house and maybe a small barn.

Anyways, nothing too fancy - cozy, simple and functional. A ways down the road, but always interesting to see what others are doing, learn and plan.

Long Term Survival: Shelter

If your home or retreat is compromised in a long term collapse scenario, what are your options for shelter? A poncho shelter is only going to work for so long, and a cheap family tent is probably not going to make it through more than a storm or two. If it's a week or so in the summer, no big deal - but what if weeks turn into months and on into years?

The best option is to have friends or family with backup locations of their own, that are equally viable for long term survival. So, say your place gets destroyed in the initial event, but Uncle Bob's farm is a hundred miles away, and has plenty of extra room, water and food, too. Then you just need to get yourself to Uncle Bob's place and you're good to go. 

Even if you don't have a circle of like-minded survivalist type friends/family in the region, it's good to know have an idea of where you could turn for a safe place to sleep and regroup, even if just for a short while. We have friends who lost their home in a tornado a few years back, and they ended up living with some family friends for a few weeks while they located a new place to live and regrouped from the devastation caused by the storm. It never hurts to have these conversations beforehand - and if you're the prepared party, extending an invite to trusted but potentially less prepare parties can be wise.

Something useful from Doomsday Preppers

I haven't watched any of the new season of Doomsday Preppers, but they had a marathon last week so I Tivo'd a few and watched them over the week. Mostly the same as last season...

BUT, I did see one idea that I thought was worth stealing/sharing. It's a method for attaching plywood to hardened windows on a suburban home, seen in episode 3. Frickin' genius, if you ask me...

The whole episode is currently up on YouTube, and the segment I'm talking about appears at about 5:40 into the video. Click here to watch it.

Quick description: the window is opened, and a long bolt fed in through a hole in the pre-cut plywood and then through a 2x4 cross brace on the interior of the home. Tightened the bolt down and you're good to go. They're using 3/4 inch plywood and, in Doomsday Preppers style, spend some time trying to smash through it. Not bullet proof, but it will certainly slow someone from getting into a home and provide concealment, too.

Here's a few pictures to give you an idea of how it works in case the YouTube link goes down:

Pre-cut plywood, hole, bolt passed through.

Open window, bolt on the other side, horizontal cross brace moved into place. 

Tighten down the bolt and move onto the next window.

They claim to be able to do the entire first floor of the house in 30 minutes, which isn't too shabby.



Normally, I've seen plywood attached with screws around the edges into the studs - which is not only going to leave holes all around all of your windows, but is going to take a while to install on your house. Here's a picture to give you an idea:

The "Doomsday Preppers method" is going to be much faster, doesn't require permanent alteration/damage to your home, and should be more secure, too.



Certainly, 3/4 inch plywood is not bullet proof and a determined attacker could get through given enough time. BUT, much better than a bare window against an angry mob or zombie hordes. Should also do a pretty good job of keeping any light inside your home.

I'm pretty sure you would lose more heat via the plywood over a modern window, and that's a trade off that would need to be worthwhile.

But, in general, a really solid way to harden up the average suburban home fairly quickly and fairly inexpensively, without altering the home in any way. Something we'll be doing when we settle somewhere a bit more permanent.

Anyone seen/done this before? Thoughts, experiences? Let me know!

Random Thoughts: Alaskan Homesteader Shows

I've been enjoying a couple of the Alaska shows on Discovery over the past while - Alaska: The Last Frontier and Yukon Men. While the families featured on these shows obviously have the help of some outside resupply and resources, they are living largely self sufficient homesteader lifestyles. And they've been doing it for a long while, so they've got some expertise in the matter. Enjoyable shows, and certainly a few things to take notice of for us trapped in suburbia types.

All of the men have a rifle slung over their shoulder or within arms reach at all times. Bolt action hunting rifles are most common - .30-06s and .300 Win Mags have been mentioned, but a couple of the guys on Yukon Men have AR-15s, which they use in the dead of Alaskan winter without problem. Shotguns used for hunting birds and nothing else. Handguns are few and far between - an old .22 revolver for dispatching trapped animals is about all I can remember seeing.

Don't remember seeing anything in the way of high-end knives, and certainly nothing bigger than maybe 4 or 5 inches, despite lots of caribou and bear skinning going around.

The Kilcher family on Alaska: The Last Frontier live a more classic homesteading lifestyle, raising lifestock, growing some crops, and using hunting and fishing to supplement their food supplies. The families on Yukon Men are primarily hunters, fishers and trappers - not much in the way of live stock, fields or gardens have been shown. I'm guessing this is largely due to location - the Kilchers live near good pasture land for cattle, and the village in Yukon Men is right on the Yukon River. The Kilcher families seems to be less on the edge of survival and worried about their next meal, but there are certainly other circumstances that probably play into that. But, the farming lifestyle won out over the hunter/gatherer a long while ago, so I suppose that makes plenty of sense, too.

The families on both shows all rely heavily on wood stoves for heating, but also on fuel to power tractors, snow machines, chainsaws and boats. A few of the families on Yukon Men have trained dog teams, who are used with varying degrees of success. Without fuel, they'd all have a pretty rought time getting by.

All have a generally rough time surviving in the wilds, despite having years of experience, really low population density, and the natural resources of Alaska at hand--lots of trees, lots of big fish and lots of big and small game. Despite our obviously milder climate, many areas in the continental U.S. have much less abundant natural resources, and population densities many orders of magnitude gear.

Some helpful perspective at the challenges involved, perhaps. Certainly not something that's easy to do, or that one can just walk into unprepared and hope to fare very well!

Sawyer PointOne Squeeze Water Filteration System

A Sawyer PointOne Squeeze filter and 1L bag, ready to pack!

I've got to thank some of my readers for referring me to Sawyer's new line of water filters, which leverage revolutionary technology from dialysis machines to bring incredible water filtration capabilities. All of Sawyer's filters comes with a million gallon guarantee--at a gallon a day, that's 2739 YEARS worth of service. Essentially, these filters aren't going to wear out during your lifetime.

To top that off, these filters are MORE effective at removing bad stuff than almost anything else on the market - the PointOne filters are so named because they filter down to an absolute .1 microns--almost all other filters only do .2 microns--dramatically exceeding EPA requirements.

It's going to be very tough for competition products, especially considering the price point of Sawyer's products--the PointOne Squeeze, for example, is available for just over $50 on Amazon.

The Squeeze is the lightest weight version of Sawyer's PointOne filters, perfect for compact kits and lightweight get home units. Total weight with one of the included platypus-like filtration bags is 3 ounces. And, despite its small size, the Squeeze is still good for a guaranteed million gallons of service.

Biogas for Fuel

Check out this post over at John Robb's Resilient Communities, on the virtues of DIY Biogas Digesters. Think of Bartertown's pig waste power plant and you've got the idea--waste goes in and methane and a "fertilizer slurry" comes out. Basically septic a tank on steroids.

Build cost under a thousand in materials + labor, and supplies around 20 hours of cooking fuel or 5 hours of electricity, per day. The system will function indefinitely as long as there's waste coming in--totally sustainable. Effort is also minimal, freeing up labor to focus on other tasks.

Very cool. Sure, it's not as sleek and high tech as solar panels, and there's the collection and hauling around buckets of waste and associated unpleasantness, but it's cheap, sustainable and it works.

More details at Resilient Communities >

Lightweight Cook Kit

Here's my lightweight cooking kit, which consists of:

- 28 ounce Snowpeak Titanium pot and lid
- Sea to Summit Alpha Light long spoon
- Pop can alcohol stove
- Hardware cloth pot stand

Whole kit weighs less than 10 ounces and has some solid versatility. The alcohol stove will run off a variety of fuels and gets water boiling pretty quickly. The hardware cloth pot stand isn't a must have, but it's useful and enables me to cook over twigs, fuel tablets, and so on, in addition to the pop can stove.

The Snowpeak pot nests fairly well under a standard Nalgene-style bottle, with the lid riding nested under the pot. I'm not a titanium junkie, but it's a nice pot and lid, sturdy and lightweight. I would like measurement markings on the sides, though. Came in a set (the Mini Solo), which included a smaller pot and a fairly nice mesh bag. Pricey, but I got mine with an REI member discount.

Went with a spoon over a spork because I couldn't find a long handled spork--the long handle is useful for eating out of food packages, mixing, etc. Does its job.

I need to get together a windscreen, looking at some heavy duty foil for that role.

Stealth vs. Open Defense in a TEOTWAWKI Scenario

The Two Strategies
At a high level, there are two different strategies that one can take when trying to survive aggressors when TEOTWAWKI rolls around.
 
On one hand, you can lay low and try to remain unnoticed/hidden, or at least be so elusive that an aggressor can't mount a direct attack against you. You operate from concealment and have, generally, a run/hide mentality when trouble runs around. If you engage the enemy, it's going to be using sniper or guerrilla tactics; you won't survive a standup fight. But mostly, you hunker down, stay hidden and survive.

On the other hand, you can maintain an open defensive posture, where you directly confront aggressors. In this case, you would have things like open patrols, check points and other obvious defensive measures. Your organization would have ability to project obvious power and control within your area of operations, allowing you to maintain some level of law/order. When trouble comes around, you stand up and fight.

These two different strategies go back to the natural instincts of fight versus flight--sometimes, it makes sense to stand and fight, other times it makes sense to run and hide. You can see these play out in conflicts today and throughout history--the U.S. against insurgents/Al Queda, the DEA against drug smugglers, Anne Frank and the Nazis and so on.

Open Defense
This is the defensive posture we'd all like to take -- no one wants to live in secrecy and in constant fear of attack or discovery. You want to stand up for yourself, your family and what is yours. Unfortunately, it takes a good amount of power to be able to live this way. You've got to be strong enough to scare away potential attackers and defeat any who are brave enough to test their luck. That means that you need manpower and firepower.

A small survival group is not going to be able to take this stance--you'd need a larger group--a neighborhood or a small town, most likely. The community would form some kind of neighborhood watch or town militia for mutual defense, probably with the aid of intact law enforcement or military personnel. With the bodies and some fire power, a community could defend their homes and maintain order.

In survival fiction, the towns in One Second After and the neighborhood in Lights Out take an open defense posture. The town in Jericho does, too.

In a collapse scenario, I think this would be the response of most communities. When a larger community breaks down (nation, state, city, etc.), it's a somewhat natural transition to fall back onto a more immediate community--the people next door and across the street. There's huge advantages to community--it's civilization and safety. A sustainable community would provide the best quality of life, post-TEOTWAWKI--but it would have to be sustainable. That means things like local water, food, probably some kind of fuel, and decent people who don't already hate each other.

Problems come when things like food and water run out, internal strife tears the community apart, the community runs into an aggressor they can't contend with, or if disaster renders the community unlivable. How fast that will happen is going to vary wildly based on your location.

The Stealth Approach
If you can't beat aggressors in a stand-up fight, then it's run and hide or become subject to the aggressor's will. In general, this survival strategy means, surprise, a lot of hiding out and going unnoticed. If fighting must be done, it's using sniper and guerrilla tactics. If movement must be done, its probably at night or at least in thick cover and well camouflaged. If your hide site is located and threatened by a superior force, then you bug out to somewhere safe, maybe with a sniper or guerrilla attack to slow the baddies down and allow you some breathing room. You get the picture.

This kind of existence is difficult to sustain long term. Survival is hard enough without having to worry about doing everything in secrecy. For example, how do you farm or raise a vegetable garden in secrecy? How do you cook or keep from freezing to death without drawing attention? How do you deal with waste? Now compound these problems with multiple families. Very difficult.

Living way out in the hinter-boonies would offer some advantages, but in a collapse scenario, every remote farmhouse or cabin will have a good number of visitors looking for a place to hole up or scavenge. If there's a road, people will find it. And yes, you can make a house look abandoned or burnt out, but desperate and curious people will still check it out. Crowds certainly will be smaller way out in the middle of nowhere, but your chances of having backup from neighbors/the community are also going to be lower. If your group can't deal with whoever comes knocking, then you've got a problem.

A real hide site is going to be, well, really difficult for anyone to find. Hard to access and hidden. In a rural setting, a remote and well-camouflaged camp that's not accessible by road; maybe a cave or excavated hide. In a more populated setting, a concealed bunker or hidden safe room. Spider holes and hideouts, that kind of thing.

As mentioned, a hide is going to be very difficult to sustain long term, so it will probably need to be a temporary situation. You will need to emerge and resupply eventually, whether that is through pre positioned caches, barter, hunting/gathering, farming or relocating to another area entirely.

In survival fiction, the man and his son in The Road generally follow a stealthy approach to survival, avoiding contact and hiding when trouble comes around. They have it best when they find the concealed and well-stocked underground bunker. In Patriots, the Group adopts this strategy when confronted by the evil U.N./black helicopter invaders and retreat to their wilderness hide and begin their guerrilla war. In the Survivalist series, John Rourke's concealed retreat/cave complex is an elaborate and well-stocked hide.

Use Both
It would be narrow-minded to only think through one strategy or the other. An open, community or large group-based approach to defense and security is going to be preferential for most of us, but it may or may not work out. The back-up plan in that case would be a stealthy approach--if the community is done for, you bug out to somewhere safe and hunker down until things blow over.

In more common prepper terms, if your local neighborhood/community is a viable option, then an open, community based approach may make sense. If that fails, then you still have the opportunity to bug out and hide. Consider and plan for either possibility and I think you'll be better off.

Review: Holding Your Ground - Preparing for Defense if it All Falls Apart

The best stocked home or retreat won't do you any good if a band of thugs can take it from you on day #2 of TEOTWAWKI. Holding Your Ground: Preparing for Defense if it All Falls Apart aims to help you keep your refuge, preps and your loved ones safe.

Holding Your Ground takes a broad approach to looking at retreat defense - it's a high level view of a multitude of topics--things like concealment, visibility, exterior and interior firing positions, perimeter security, early warning systems and so on.Unfortunately, Holding's broad approach is also its main shortcoming.

Instead of focusing solely on defending a retreat, it reaches into other areas--a bug out bag packing list, a chapter on firearm recommendations, and so on--and doesn't provide the depth of coverage on the issue at hand, defending a retreat. A lot of this information comes across as little more than filler--generally sub-par and not really on topic. A newer prepper would probably find much of this information useful, but a seasoned prepper will skim over it or pick out flaws or points of disagreement (you will have a few).

The actual content focused on retreat defense is hit-or-miss. For example, Holding does a great job of explaining how to reduce visibility and establish angles/overlapping fields of fire. In general, the maps/diagrams are excellent and do a great job of visually explaining the author's point.

On the other hand, there is no discussion of securing your actual home/retreat--nothing on doors, windows, home construction, security systems, etc. The big revelation for setting up fighting positions? Sandbags. The book also entirely skips over observation posts, which I found odd. A definite omission.

Holding Your Ground incorporates an Excel spreadsheet to help you assess your group's "defense rating"; the spreadsheet is a little confusing to fill out and the copy that I downloaded wasn't 100% functional (one of the cells that was supposed to auto-calculate didn't work). Really, you'd have to be pretty out of it to need a spreadsheet to tell you if you have a defensible position--I'd hope we'd be able to assess our strengths and weaknesses without Microsoft's help. It is an amusing exercise, though.

Would I recommend Holding Your Ground? It's around a 3 out of 5--some good stuff, but missed opportunities, too. I would really have liked to see a more thorough, in-depth discussion of the topic. Cut down on the filler and add in content on securing a home against intrusion (doors, windows, alarm systems), fighting fires, observation posts, building fighting positions, hides and caches, post-TEOTWAWKI fortifications and so on.

If you're starting out, looking for something to read and have the cash to spare, you'll get more out of Holding. If you're a more seasoned prepper, I'd read through the various military field manuals on the subject that are available for free on the Web first, do some other background research/reading and then, if you're interested, pick up the Kindle version of Holding.

Prepper Press, publishers of Holding Your Ground, provided TEOTWAWKI Blog with a copy of the book for review.

Pick up Holding Your Ground on Amazon >

Dave Canterbury is living in a yurt

If you haven't been following Dave Canterbury's YouTube channel lately, you should be. Amongst other things, he's decided to spend the winter (or at least a few weeks) living in a yurt. He's been posting up several videos per day - I think he's been pretty bored in the yurt. Anyways, he's posted up a lot of interesting and educational stuff, and it's all free on YouTube.

Dave is known for his wilderness survival skills, but he definitely also looks at things with a prepper mentality. Part of his reasoning behind the yurt would be using it as a semi-permanent shelter in a bug out situation. While I would probably go with another design than the yurt - it looked to be fairly complicated to set up - I think the idea has merit. With a yurt/tent and wood stove, you can survive in relative comfort and have the ability to relocate your "home" if needed. It ain't the Ritz Carlton, but a set up like this is within reach for many of us, versus a full-scale bug out compound. With the right location, water nearby, a few concealed fighting/observation positions, minimal solar set up and some good food stores, livestock and garden and you could do pretty well. A lot better than a debris hut or the dream bug out fortress that you're 30 years away from being able to afford.

Thought I'd pass along a heads up to those of you who don't subscribe to Dave's YouTube channel or check it very often. As of writing, he's up to Journal of the Yurt #28, which is about the spices that he packs in his long term kit.

Prior to his Yurt adventures, Dave did another interesting series of videos on field reloading/improvised loads for the 12 gauge shotgun. Good stuff to watch, even if it's just for educational purposes. I've embedded a couple of my favorites from both series after the jump.

You've got to appreciate how Dave has stayed true to his roots after the success he's had with Dual Survival on Discovery. Massive thumbs up and thanks to him for continuing to do what he's doing.

Securing Your Home: Firing Positions

A reinforced firing position. Bring on the mutant zombie bikers!

In a TEOTWAWKI situation, you may need to fortify and repel attackers. This may seem like an out-there, action hero kind of fantasy, and to an extent perhaps it is. However, we're talking about an end of the world scenario, where law and order no longer exist, and those with easily compromised morals will almost certainly turn to looting, robbery, rape and murder to get what they want.

We've talked through toughening your doors and windows, and if done properly, these measures will slow down any would be intruders. However, these measures will do little/nothing to stop incoming gun fire.

The typical modern home is not especially resistant to bullets. I'm sure you've all seen ballistics tests with drywall, studs, etc. Bullets whiz right through. Conventional drywall homes provide concealment, not cover--an assailant can't see you directly, but the structure does nothing to stop incoming rounds. If a mob of armed brigands are attacking your home or retreat, you want something more considerable than some plaster and wood to hide behind and return fire. With some thought and work, you can prepare a firing position inside a conventional structure that provides both concealment and cover.

A loophole.

The U.S. military has considerable experience with this problem - hardening up firing positions for urban operations. And they've published some excellent - free, public domain - material that the survivor can leverage in their planning efforts. The images and information from the post were drawn from FM 3-06, Urban Operations. A quick Google search will turn up this valuable manual in several formats.

A note that, if able, you should not limit your group's defensive positions to one structure. Listening/Observation Posts (LP/OPs), forward points and fallback/rally points could all be a part of your plan. These could be similar urban-style firing positions or more conventional foxholes and sniper belly hides (well concealed, of course!). If you can help it, you do not want to engage a hostile force from the same structure where your children and other non-combatants are living/sleeping. And you want as many options as you can have in case a fight breaks out!

Locating Firing Positions
There are three basic placement options for firing positions in a structure - windows, loopholes and rooftop. Of these, the loophole (a small hole knocked in the side of the building) offers the best concealment. If your firing position will be from a window, locate it back inside the room and shoot from a kneeling, sitting or prone position, if possible - you want to avoid silhouetting. The rooftop will offer you the highest elevation and  best view of the surrounding area, but generally offers the least measure of concealment.

Reinforcing Firing Positions
As mentioned, walls offer lousy protection against incoming fire. The standard method for reinforcement is good old sandbags. Sandbags are multifunctional and are a really great tool for fortifying, building and reinforcing - stock up on them. If necessary, you can improvise sand bags from things like plastic grocery bags, pillow cases, big ziplocks, buckets, boxes, medium sized garbage bags and so on.

Another household option would be boxes of old books, stacks of old newspaper or piles of phone books. Packed, dense paper is a surprisingly decent bullet stopper, at least for pistol and lighter rifle loads. Anyone has seen the episode of Mythbusters where they use phone books to armor a car? Here's a Box O' Truth on bullets vs paper subject. On another note, a well packed book case can make decent cover or a backstop for those thinking about inside the home defense.

Really, you want a thick barrier of bullet slowing stuff between you and attackers - steel plates, concrete blocks, stones, bulk bags of food, etc. Whatever you've got or can find, use it.

Windows can mean flying, broken glass all over the firing position that you will be crawling around, so you will probably want bust out the windows if fighting looks certain. If windows are broken out, you will want to barricade them, either with scavenged materials or with plywood hurricane shutters prepared beforehand. If your windows have good security film, then there's no reason to bust 'em out.

Make sure that your firing position is camouflaged and blends in - a single hole in the side of the building may stand out, but several holes might not. One window open, all others closed; you get the picture. Use furniture, junk, whatever to help with additional concealment. Don't make loopholes any bigger than they need to be.

Finally, if explosives or building collapse are a potential, a sturdy piece of furniture and a layer of sandbags overhead can offer a measure of protection.

Got any thoughts or tips about setting up firing positions in the average home? Comment away!

Cooling Post TEOTWAWKI

Maintaining your core temperature isn't just a matter of comfort, it's a matter of survival. In my previous post on Heating Post TEOTWAWKI, I discussed ways to keep your house warm after a collapse. On the other end of the spectrum, we have cooling - how to keep from dying from the heat. This is a very real danger, as we see regularly during summer power outages. Without the grid down and the air conditioning gone, people overheat and die.

If you have robust enough backup power, you could keep the air co running off the grid, but air conditioning is a major power hog - just check your electricity bills during the summer months! That scope of sustainable backup power may be out of reach for most, so we will look into other methods.

First up is good ol' air flow. On a large scale, you want to take advantage of any breezes or cooling winds; open up you windows and doors - a seeming no brainer. Simple electrical fans require also much less electricity than air conditioners and can be viable on a modest solar system. This 12V fan is well reviewed for that purpose. On a smaller scale, old fashioned hand fans can be a help and require only a waving hand. 

Next up is minimizing your exposure to the sun's radiating heat. It's cooler in the shade. I know - another earth shaking revelation. Draw your blinds, cover the windows and keep 'em closed during the day! Similarly, rooms with fewer windows or in more central parts of the house - those with less direct sunlight exposure - will be cooler. Less obvious is re-arranging your schedule - start working in the still cool early morning and take a break/siesta during the hot afternoon. 

Thermal mass is another ally to keep in mind - this is the reason why marble or tile floors are so cold in the early mornings and one of the reasons your basement is always cooler than the rest of the house. Thermal masses exchange heat slowly - they are slower to heat and slower to cool, but once hot or cold, they stay that way longer. So, the cold concrete floor of your basement or the tile floor in your bathroom may be a powerful ally in cooling things down.

Hot air rises, cool air sinks - the lower you can get in your home/retreat, the better. The ground floor (or basement) will be cooler than the upstairs, and sleeping on the floor will be cooler than sleeping in bed. Get low, my friends.

For no electricity-involved, evaporative cooling is going to be an ace up your sleeve. This is the basic principle that your body's sweat mechanism works on - water cools as it evaporates. Evaporative cooling is also what makes the swamp cooler and the groovy zeer pot fridge work. Wet towels, wet bandannas, wet clothes - all these can cool you massively. A damp bed sheet strung over your sleeping area is a pretty good bet. 

There are also several pump-powered water misters on the market that should do a good job; the MistyMate Cool Camper is $40 shipped and is intended for misting a small shelter, and there are smaller, personal models available. You could rig up something similar from components from the local hardware store.

Unfortunately, if you live in an area of high humidity, evaporative cooling may not be of much help - there will be little evaporation into the already saturated air. You'll also need water, which may be in short supply post-collapse. 

Combine several of these together for best effect. Shade, air flow, evaporative cooling and ice-cold brewskie from your portable fridge/freezer. The BEST run down of keeping cool (and maintaining temperature in general) comes from Cody Lundin, in his book When All Hell Breaks Loose. Cody goes into all of the above, and more, in much more depth and detail than I can hope to cover in a blog post. Check it out.

Securing Your Home: Windows

Ornamental but very functional security bars.

Continuing our securing your home series, we'll take a look at an obvious weakness in most any non-bunker building. Windows. Windows provide two security concerns - first, visibility into your home, and second, a possible entrance into your home.

The first concern can be taken care of with curtains/blinds. In normal times, your basic home window coverings will work--and make sure to draw them, especially at night. A lit room at night stands out like a beacon to the dark outside work; your every move is visible, while you can't see a darned thing outside. Shut the blinds and pull the curtains.

After TEOTWAWKI, you will want to beef up your window coverings, especially if you have light sources inside. Maintaining a low profile is of prime consideration in any emergency, so avoid being lit up like a Christmas tree for every would-be looter or brigand sniper. Limit light use to a small portion of the house, and cover those windows with heavy blackout curtains.

For the second concern - people gaining entry via windows - the ideal would be a windowless bunker - or maybe a bunker with narrow, castle-style firing ports. You probably can't pull that off though and will have to settle for a boring regular home. So you will have some sort of windows, and you'll need to harden those.

I've got several good solutions for you. Interested? Click the link below!

Securing Your Home: Doors

Image via Gizmodo.

On castles of old, the front gate was often the "soft spot"--the easiest place to breach. Modern homes aren't built with siege defense in mind (sadly), but doors are still the most common point of entry for thieves and intruders--something like 85% of forcible entries occur through the front door. 

How to secure your doors? The photo above, a security door from a company in Bogota, Colombia, is a pretty good "best case". It's armored, bullet proof, steel cored, with a vault-style locking mechanism and a steel frame. It will even stand up to power tools and mild explosives. Pretty awesome, and if you can afford it, I'd say go for it. There are several domestic companies that produce similar doors; I'd contact a reputable locksmith or security door company and go from there.

However, this high-end, vault-like door is probably a bit much for the average home--we want to look at the principles at work here and see what we can do for less. Click the link below for more.

Alone in the Wilderness

Dick Proennekke's solitary Alaskan back country existence is fascinating and inspiring. Simple tools, skill and patience at work. This excerpt from Alone in the Wilderness shows him at the beginning of his existence out in the wilderness, building his cabin by hand. He lived--not just survived--in this cabin in the Alaskan bush until the age of 82, when he returned to spend his final years in civilization. His cabin is still stands, much as he left it, watched and maintained by the park service.

Securing your Home: What to look for in a home

This is a good start.

Securing or fortifying the average home is a topic of interest to many out there, especially those with the primary plan of bugging in. If you're going to ride out a disaster in your home, you'd like it to be as secure as possible, right?

Unfortunately, most modern American homes are built with "curb appeal" and cost cutting in mind, not security. Lots of windows, multiple entrances, packed in close to other homes and so on. Security potential is one of the primary things to look at when shopping for a place to rent/buy. Some homes are honestly never going to be very "secure" - your efforts may be better placed elsewhere.

So, the first step is to look for a fairly secure home to start off with. Unless you can live in a castle like the one pictured above or maybe some kind of concrete bunker, you will probably have to make some compromises. That's life.

Here are some basic things to look for in the construction of the home:

• Construction methods: Is the house built of brick, stucco, etc.? Sturdier is better, less susceptible to fire is better, etc.
• Entrances: How many are there? Can they be hardened? Fewer is better.
• Windows: Especially ground-level windows. How many are there? Can they be hardened or secured? Think storm shutters, burglar bars, etc. 
• Walls/fences: If they exist, can you do anything to further secure them? If they don't exist, can you build them, or do HOA/neighborhood rules forbid it? 
• Visibility: Concealment works both ways - a side door, not visible from the street, is a perfect place for a burglar to work. You'll need to decide on the level of privacy vs. visibility you want.
• Lot size: a bigger lot means more stand-off space between you, neighbors and potential intruders. There are a variety of advantages here, but basically space is a delay and obstacle that potential intruders need to overcome, especially when combined with motion sensing lights, dogs, etc.
• Floor Plan: An especially important consideration to families with children. Where are the bedrooms located? Is there a place to develop a central fall back/safe room?
• Location An obvious one, but probably the most important. Somewhere that's generally safe, friendly and quiet before trouble hits is a good idea. Your neighbors can be a huge asset or a big liability in hard times, so choose wisely.

These are some of the basics that I look for when assessing a home's security. Things like reinforcing doors and installing security systems can be added after the fact, but a house with lousy construction, too many windows, too many doors, a small lot, HOA laws that forbid a fence, and an odd floor plan can't really be changed. These are looking at the overall "canvas" that you have to work with.

If you're building something, you can design something to your specifications that avoids many of the problems with modern homes (too many windows, spread out floor plan, etc.). If you're shopping around for a purchase or rental, keep these in mind.

I will go into further detail on each one of these bullet points in future posts, as well as ideas for battening down the hatches and hardening your home up when TEOTWAWKI rolls in. Keep an eye out!

Heating Post-TEOTWAWKI

While this isn't exactly the coldest time of year, this came up in the question thread below, so I thought I'd give it a go.

Freezing to death is no fun. But what do you do when the magical modern grid goes down and heat is no longer available at the flip of a thermostat?

Man kept from freezing to death for millenia through good ol' fire, and it is your best bet to get through the apocalypse. The hearth, fireplace or wood stove used to be the centerpiece of every home. Generally, homes were much smaller in the old days, so that they could be heated by the single fire. We have giant homes with central heating these days, although we do have the advantage of generally better insulation than in the old times.

So, how can we use good ol' fire to keep from freezing solid? Click below to find out.