One of the biggest unknowns that we as preppers face is what will happen if/when some sort of event occurs that disrupts our modern society and its smooth functioning. To put it in more specific terms, what will happen if something means the supermarkets run out of food, water no longer comes out of the […]

A key consideration when evaluating the suitability of a shotgun for any particular purpose is to understand its range. Unlike rifles and pistols, where range is a simple concept (closer is better, further away is worse), shotguns have three different ‘zones’ with three different sets of considerations applying.  Few people understand this.  Let’s explain these […]

We wrote an article, ‘Five Prepper Lessons from the St Louis Rioting and Looting‘ on Tuesday of this week, after the first two nights of unrest following the police killing of a youth in Ferguson, a suburb of St Louis. The first night of looting was relatively uncontained, while the second night saw a massive […]

This is the first of a series of short articles about things in our lives we take for granted but which we need to consider in our preparing. Today’s topic is the telephone.  Not that fancy smart phone you have in your pocket, and not the multi-station cordless system you have at home, either. We’re […]

Today marked a watershed moment in our privacy.  A new commercial satellite was launched with four times better than before imaging capabilities, further reducing our privacy. There was a time when getting privacy in our retreat was an easy and simple concept.  Choose a location away from the main roads, and you knew that as […]

Many people add a root cellar to their retreat.  This is good, but if you are not careful with what you store in your root cellar, the gases (notably ethylene) given off by some stored fruit and vegetables may interfere with the longevity of other stored fruit and vegetable items. In addition, some items give […]

A white police officer in Ferguson, MO (a suburb of St Louis) shot a black youth on Saturday 9 August.  On Sunday, during the day, there were some protests by members of the local community and a vigil. What happened next was unfortunate, but also educational to us as preppers, and it behooves us to […]

As realistic preppers, we know that we don’t always get unfiltered ‘real’ news and sometimes there are ‘policy issues’ that intrude on how news is shaped and reported. This is particularly true of enormous potentially world-changing events.  While your local newspaper can be relied upon to be first to break the story if a local […]

Water is the third of the survival essentials.  Air is first, shelter is second, and food is fourth, and you’re probably familiar with sayings like ‘you can go without air for three minutes, shelter for three hours, water for three days and food for three weeks’. Actually, we’d not like to have to prove any […]