Simple Things To Do

Following on from Daveiron's excellent post, there are many things people can do to be prepared.

We all know food is used as a tool and stocking up with dried goods is a vital part of guaranteeing your food supplies, but also learning to cook is just as essential, particularly learning to cook what you have. Many methods of cooking exist and the oldest is the barbecue and simply making a quality barbecue will allow you to cook as well as boil water, if you cover an outside area you can cook meals outside without being the elements and if the proverbial hits the fan then you can still have hot meals.

Heat is another essential and if your property has a fireplace then ensuring you have a log grate or similar and unblocking and cleaning your chimney means you can collect wood and at least you can have some heat, collecting wood is relatively easy and if you collect a little at a time and cut it into logs and dry it means you have fire and heat, you can do toast in front of the fire and it also provides some light, it even makes the wife/husband look nicer.
However, not everyone has an open fire so buying a cheap camping cooker ensures you can cook inside and if you can afford the camp kitchen type cooker means you also have a grill, so you can cook inside and this cooker provides heat to heat your home, with your cooker you need to stock up on gas and collecting old gas bottles means many garages let you swap them for full bottles with no questions asked, so collect old empties and exchange them for full bottles means you have a gas supply, try to buy two regulators and keep one as a spare and get a length of gas pipe and clips.

Water is another essential and we all have access to water, collecting rainfall can be done in many ways and collecting from streams and rivers is also possible but collect it from the fast flowing parts as this is cleaner; learn how to make a water filter and run some water through this to fully clean it means you can filter your water you collect, but you need teo containers, one to collect the water and another to store your cleaned and filtered water.
To make a water filter you take a 2 litre plastic pop bottle and cut the bottom off, turn it upside down and place some cotton cloth in the bottom and add charcoal to about one quarter high, add another quarter height of sand, then add another quarter high of fine gravel and this leaves you another quarter for water; run several lots of water through your filter until it runs clear and you have filtered water, you need to kill the algae and you light your wood burner and bring it to the boil and hold it at boiling for 10 minutes before cooling and putting it into your water storage container. Make several water filters and you can filter lots of water at once.

Electricity is another niceity and you can produce your own and you can store it, getting leisure batteries means you have a 12 volt supply and if you buy several leisure batteries over time you can have your own battery bank, I have 4X 250 amp hour leisure batteries and an internal 12 volt system with LED back up lights I built myself, if you have a smart charger it will maintain a battery pack at full charge for eternity or until a battery fails. With just one leisure battery you can run a couple of LED lights and use very little power, if you get a couple of LED tactical torches these have a focusing beam which adjusts from a long range spot to a wide angle beam and you can buy a cheap 12v charger to recharge them and you can also get wind up torches aand lanterns which you simply wind up and they give about 20-60 minutes of light for a 1 minute wind, so infinate light.
To charge your battery you have options, I chose a wind turbine and I made it from an old model motor, a pair of bike wheels, and old half round guttering, the bike wheels had a metal sfaft welded between them and guttering was cut to fit between the wheels, the bottom wheel drives a belt to drive the motor pulley and this gives 15V at a maximum of 12 amps output, the ket to these type of systems is the regulator as this controls the voltage and controlling it to 12 volts is crucial to a lighting system, but for battery charging it requires up to 14.5 volts to charge, so getting a good flexible voltage regulator with the capability to run a 12 volt system and charge a storage battery is essential.
Having a generator is fine to a point but petrol goes stale with age, diesel can be stored for much longer and are much more efficient and expensive, but this is fine until the electricity goes off and the garage cannot pump fuel and your generator is little more than scrap metal.

Electricity can be generated from water and if you have a higher water supply and a lower water supply you can run a pipe into a small home made turbine to turn a small DC motor and generate your own electricity, but the same rules apply to the voltage regulator as above.

This is just scratching the surface of what you can do and many possible home made systems are around to help you survive but the key is being prepared.

Generating your own food supply is crucial and if you are a gardener it helps, if not you can grow some basic foods in small spaces, containers, or simply salad species, but we all know that they target food supplies during the winter months and if you can extend your salad growing for longer into the Autumn then you have some fresh foods.
Winter staples are always worth growing as they take you through the winter and having some food growing is essential as some crops cah be grown all year round now and carrots are one example, having a small greenhouse means you can extend your salad growing season as well as growing some semi hardy crops later into the season so choices abound.

Preserving foods is another crucial thing to consider, freezing is an option as is bottling, canning, and drying and powdering and it all comes down to your resources; I have a large pond or small lake with feeder springs and I have installed a dam and two electricity water turbines amd I don't care if the electricity dies as I have constant mains electricity. Therefore I freeze and make up stew packs, as crops are picked they are frozen and seperated out into individual bags and as more crops are picked and frozen they are added to the bags to make up stew packs, you can do the same thing using bottling if you have no electricity, but it you have a back up power supply which is reliable and say a wind turbine you can run a 12 volt fridge/freezer and connect a leisure battery inline. It may eventually discharge your battery but if you have two batteries you can run a 12V fridge off one while charging the other.

Many things can run off batteries and with a decent solar charger you can recharge rechargeable batteries so swapping to rechargeable batteries is a viable option for camping lanterns and torches, I make echargeable lights using rechargeable batteries and LED's and fit them into large glass jars, but remember to kep your rechargeable batteries charged. If you are the only one with lights on you will attract attention and potentially become the target for thieves who may assume you have a generator and a fuel supply, you need to be aware of this as a hungry person soon becomes a thief.

Keeping essentials such as your food and treated water inside your home becomes an essential and you need to ensure your home is secure, start storing these essentials outside in garages or sheds makes them a target for thieves, while they are robbing you they also see what else you have and remember thieves talk.

Stocking up can be done by most people and if you buy a little extra each week and put it away it soon mounts up, as you use things you need to replace them to keep a rotation system going to prevent foods going out of date and many items can be put straight into an air tight containerand stored. Sugar, flour, salt, coffee, tea bags, dried milk powder are all examples of things which can be stored.

Syrup is merely sugar and water, brine is simply salt and water so you have the basic ingredients to preserve many foods while flour allows you to make bread; charcuterie is the art of preserving meats using salt to dry and preserve the meat so learning how to do it is worthwhile and you have the salt to do it with.
Bottling veg is beneficial as while peas and carrots are a popular mix you can take it further and add more veg and put it into a larger jar so you have enough for the family for one meal, if you bottle it in brine you have the liquid to cook it in so saving your precious drinking water. If you have a family of four you can prepare 21 bottles of mixed veg it means you have veg ready done for 21 meals so let those scrambling for food in supermarkets do it and panic buy while you laugh at them.

I personally have all my freezers full and I have enough home grown veg to last me 2 years if needed.

We need to go further than food, water, and power as if we need timber for our fires we need certain things, a chainsaw without fuel is scrap metal and the E10 petrol doesn't last for more than about 1 month and I bet nobody has asked why? if you cannot store it you cannot use your car, generators, or chainsaw and other petrol powered tools and basically they are isolating you.

This means we all need tools, hand tools to be exact and this means cutting wood by hand to fuel your fire, log burner, or cooking stove and for larger branches this means a good quality bow saw as cheap items are worse than useless and your decent quality saw needs a stock of good blades which need regular oiling to prevent them rusting. You also need a good axe to split the cut wood, a heavy axe for splitting larger cut branches and a hand axe for sticks or kindling to start your fire. In addition to this you may find scrap wooden pallets and this means a couple of good hand saws to cut the boards along with a good crow bar and a couple of smaller pry bars means you can prise the boards from the pallet and use them and you also need a good 2lb ball pein hammer to split larger logs. You also need a method of splitting them and I find a 2" brick bolster is better, cheaper, and more durable than wood chisels.
You also need to maintain your axe heads in a sharp condition and a couple of good steel files does this; if you are cutting wood you get sawdust and saving this is a must, this means a brush and shovel and containers or bags to store the sawdust in as sawdust and shavings make an excellent bed for a fire and smoulder for a long time so don't waste it.

You will also need a good set of hand tools and spanners, sockets, pliers and screwdrivers are a must as you will have to repair items you break, having a good set of screwdrivers means most screwing jobs can be undertaken but I would expand the range to include electrical screwdrivers of the type which illuminate if power is detected and they are small enough for typical electrical screws. General pliers ae useful but a pair of side cutting pliers and water pump pliers give you more scope to work.

Many people forget knives and a good set of Stanley knives are cheap so buy 2 and ensure you have a couple of packs of blades as you may find you have to cut plastic pipes and these are ideal; they are a very useful and versatile tool for many cutting jobs, and if you can afford one, a good machette as these cut thinner wood and brush with a single swipe.

Having a good set of screws and rawplugs means you can repair items such as household fittings and if you can cut wood you can make wooden dowels and knock them into enlarged holes in domestic fittings where the hole has becone enlarged.

Most people have household shredders and most people throw away these shreddings but if you have lots of it along with sawdust and a couple of buckets, or an even larger dustbin you throw the paper shreddings into the bin, add about the same amount of sawdust and simply add water and leave for about a week do it breaks the paper fibres down. Stir well and obtain a large diameter pipe around 6" diameter, cut a couple of wooden discs so they fit inside the pipe, put your mixture into the pipe and insert a disc, fill up more and insert the second wooden disc and put a wooden block on top and compress the mixture. This can be done with in two ways, if you have a steel frame you can use a small hydraulic jack to compress it, but do this slowly to allow the water to escape; or, you can put wooden packers onto the top wooden circle with a couple of wooden wedges and gently knock them together to force the mixture down and compress it to remove the water; hey presto you have made fire logs for your fire.
This works with most paper and cardboard and you simply tear it up into pieces and leave cardboard for about 2-3 weeks to allow the water to break down the fibres; knock the wooden logs out of the mould and dry for a few days and instant logs for your fire.

If you have a willow tree, or access to willow trees and a pair of secarteurs you snip the willow whips off, place in a line and tie a couple of the whips around them to form a bundle you can carry, take them fome and cut them into lengths with your sharp hand axe and you have instant fuel as willow burns as wet wood. Similarly; if you have hedging and hand shears you cut the hedging and chop the cuttings up and you have fuel, fuel you or someone else has grown.

There are many things you can do with hand tools and if you have no power you have no power tools.