My first step...revisited often but probably not often enough

Like many have mentioned, my awakening and beginning to try to take care of my family was fraught with fits and starts. With no real direction I was taking in ALL the advice I could get, including a bunch of sideways left-field crap that had less to do with prepping and more to do with "buy my crap".

Step one, as mentioned in another thread, is to have a plan. As ridiculous as that sounds, it's where I have to start now. Without a plan (steps to follow in case of "the incident") it very quickly devolves into:
"OMG, flashlights, we need to have flashlights, there needs to be at least one in every room! Lowes and Home Depot both have the super ultra mega pack of micro 3xAAA flashlights on sale, 96 flashlights for $18! I'm buying two! Heck, the batteries are more than that! Speaking of batteries, we need to go to Costco and get 30 lbs of batteries. No, we need SO MANY that we aren't counting them anymore, we are WEIGHING them! While we're there, buy up all the water in bottles that they have...yes, I know that's going to be like 9 pallets but get a move on!" and on and on and on.

Yeah, flashlights are important. So are water and batteries and guns and ammo and food (canned, dehydrated, freeze-dried, powdered, vacuum packed and sealed in buckets and bags) and seeds and bleach (or Cal Hypo) and...STOP!

Why? Why are you prepping? I don't mean "I have to protect and provide for my family", I mean the latter half of that sentence. "I have to protect and provide for my family in case of <THE THING YOU ARE PLANNING FOR>."

Step one is the plan. The plan for the thing, the incident, the event...or plural. Things I'm planning to take care of myself through include, and I have to keep reminding myself of this since bagged pinto beans, bullets and band-aids is only going to get me so far (and these are mostly in order but I reserve the right to change things up):

• Run of the mill inconvenience including:
  • Hurricane (we're pretty far inland but it happened during Hugo)
    
  • Power Outage
  • Water Main break
  • Natural Gas shortage/outage
  • Gasoline shortage/outage
• Short term area issues (usually longer lasting than above)
  
  • Flooding and the associated damage
  • Fire and the associated damage (infrastructure)
  • Long term power/water/electrical outage (3-10 days)
• Long term area or regional issues
  
  • Large scale infrastructure failure (not EOTW)
    
  • Diesel shortage/driver work stoppage
  • Civil Unrest
• Personal SHTF
  • Job loss
  • Major illness
  • Death of a nuclear family member

There are things I am not planning for because I really don't have the ability to plan to the depth necessary nor the means to "get out of harms way". I don't have a BOL but if I had to head to family in another state I "should" be able to do so and not arrive empty handed.

• Long term martial law
• Yellowstone
• EMP

I just don't have the super long term ability to be fully self-sufficient in some of those cases and depending on how bad it is, I don't know that I want to have the rebuild of society resting on my shoulders. I like camping...I don't like it that much.

So, knowing what I'm trying to prepare for, what am I doing and what do I end up recommitting myself to?

Food storage. I'm not in the Alaskan outback and I'm not in a position where I absolutely must have 5-9 months of food on hand by September 1 or I'm gonna DIE, but I do have anywhere from 2-3 months of food set back.

• Grains (primal goes out the window if I'm relying solely on food storage)
• Canned and bagged meat
• Canned vegetables/fruits
• Spices
• Dried gravy/sauce/broth

Water...you can literally never have enough of it.

• Bottled - flats of individual bottles
• Gallons
• Bulk (15 gal) barrels
• Filters (plural)
• No, I actually don't have any bleach or CH

Fire/heat

• Matches (stick, books, lighters, long "candle" lighters)
• Flint and steel, yes actual flint and steel (@Bear is the MAN!) - plural
  
• Ferro rods (plural)
• Batteries and steel wool
• Friction (last freakin' resort!)
  
• Too many kinds of tinder to mention

Electricity

• Batteries (AA/AAA/C/D)
  
• Deel Cycle Batteries (retired from a UPS after 3 years of being topped off and never used)
• Chargers to go from one to the other to the next
• No solar...I suck
• No, I actually don't have a generator...I suck even worse

Cooking

• Propane - also can be used for heat (Big Buddy is AWESOME!) - 1lb and 15lb plus a refill adapter for the 1lb.
  
• Propane stove (dual burner, used multiple times a year to keep in good shape)
• Coleman "Dual Fuel" single burner (gasoline and kerosene)
• Charcoal
• Working on a fire pit

Lighting

• Flashlights...yeah, lots of flashlights and headlamps and billy-clubs (3-4 D-cell Mag Lights)
  
• Propane lanterns
• Solar lantern (LuminAID...pretty cool actually)
• No, I have no hurricane lanterns or oil lanterns...more suck

Garden

• It changes throughout the year but we're getting the hang of what can grow when and how to increase yield.

All of that is for bugging in. We have minimal bug out bags for the family but we don't go through them as often as we should/need to. Kids have ALL grown out of the spares they have in the bags. Those have 72 hours of food, water, changes of clothes, some candy for comfort and the older ones have knives and fire starting implements.

Not mentioned above is security/protection. I have it but I'm not going into detail. I also have to be very careful when thinking about it because I can spiral really quickly into "Guns, guns, Guns, GUNS! Need more guns, more ammo, something in every car...plus a backup in every car...plus a backup for the backup, hidden under the spare tire in the car! Reloading...I have NO TIME but I have GOT to get into reloading. I need three metric tons of smokeless powder and the commensurate amount of brass, bullets, primers and raw lead to cast my own! WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE IF I CAN'T DEFEND THE HOMESTEAD BY TOMORROW!"

You think I'm kidding? I'm not. So, I have...enough. Sufficient to keep on keeping on in my mind and we'll leave it at that. No, I probably don't have a fraction of what some other folks here have but it's sufficient.

What do I hope to be able to plan for and what am I at least thinking about? EMP, CRAY CRAY civil unrest and or "The End Of America" as it were. I'm aware, I'm thinking of how I can leverage what I have, where and what I would do, but I'm not yet able to prepare so I'm not stressing about it.

I'm also not worried about Yellowstone. If it goes or the New Madrid decides to split the majority of North America in half...not a thing I can do to prepare for that so it has simply GOT to be water off a ducks back.

 

Excellent topic. This is about the same scenario I went through after I drank the Kool Aid. Finally sat down and got sane and typed up a list of what could realistically happen in our area. Next step was to break the list down into simple steps. Finally, I wrote down what it would take to handle each thing. Amazing how that simplified thing.

Also, I started stockpiling canned goods, especially the things we really go through. Got enough for quite a while. I look at the prices today in the stores and realize I've saved more by buying in bulk back when that most folks make investing in the stock market...and darn sure more than the returns in t-bills.

Thanks.

Kajun

 

You make a really good point and use of preps does not require a full-blown, seal the house, take all of your vacation days emergency either. Last month we ended up having a fair amount of dental work done and rather than put it on a credit card or even dip into savings, we paid for it out of the budget (okay, two rounds of budget but still) and used food storage that was approaching "end of shelf life".

Nothing was really all that close (at least several months) but it stretched the reduced grocery budget by a far margin and we are putting things back now that we're through the worst of it and replenishing a little here and there. By next month we should be back to where we were if not a little better.

The preps, as I mentioned in a previous thread, were there and kept potential difficulty from even reaching inconvenience levels.

 

Excellent @DarkLight, I found myself laughing but also nodding. I am proud to say after a few years I finally stopped collecting dryer lint, I think I have enough. I could probably make a nice pillow.

 

Nice post Darklight made me laugh... I've done the same thing

 

I just saw these and was wondering if they were any good. I like that it wouldn't take up much room plus it is solar.

Amazon.com : LuminAID Solar Inflatable Light, Version 1 : Camping Lights And Lanterns : Sports & Outdoors

 

@Motomom34 -we got v2 I think. It's square with a handle and collapses flat. I'm on the phone right now but I'll post a link when I'm at the computer.

 

@Motomom34 - Here's the one we just got (and yes, the link is a monkey referral):
Amazon.com : LuminAID PackLite 12 Inflatable Solar Lantern : Sports & Outdoors

 

Well, I was going to store one with my guns.................then I read that it's only waterproof to a meter......Oh well.

 

Stick them in freezer baggies, and drop them over the side with enough ammo to keep them down.Aarrrggg!!

 

You are right, what do YOU expect to happen? Short term I have gone through several of the ones you listed. I still like a flashlight in every room.

One thing you did not mention is the gov't just coming in and telling you they are taking your land for some highrise apartment or other group that pays more rent, ot they just want to. Don't laugh it HAS happened. Happened in several areas around here and MOST of that land is still bare. So one thing you might look into is getting a colloidal title. This is like the Spanish Land Grants - "this land belongs to you and your decedents - FOREVER". The problem was, that is a TITLE OF (LAND) OWNERSHIP. So the gov't came in, took the title and gave them a COLOR of title (now the gov't owns it, not you).

Do YOU own "your" land/house/property? You do? Really? Try not paying the yearly rent (aka: property tax) and a bunch of thugs with guns come along and take it away from you. While you sitting are on the curb, explain to me how you own this again....

So the COLOR of title you have only allows you to use the property as long as the gov't, which owns it, allows you to. If you have a colloidal (patent) title YOU own the land and the gov't can not tax it or take it because they not longer own it!

I heard about this many, many, many years ago when the local radio station had a "weird news" show. Odd balls, nuts, flakes, you name it. One guy was the land patent title guy. The interviewer was pretty excited about this. "CAN this be done?" Absolutely! "Is it LEGAL?" Absolutely! "Is it IN the law?" Absolutely! "Is it easy?" Absolutely NOT! They don't want the sheeple to find out they are getting screwed, the land they "own" is the gov'ts' and they pay yearly rent to use it (just like your car, and RIGHT TO TRAVEL is in the Constitution too! The what? WHAT "CON" are you talking about? It's a CON! Get him!) and the sheeple can ACTUALLY OWN the land and the gov't has no say over it! "Do you still have fire dept/police protection?" In most parts of the country, YES. If you need to buy the fire dept protection, then you still need to pay for that, but you still get po-lice protection (excluding areas where you don't get any any way, such as NYC, LA, DC, Chicago, Detroit, etc.) and all your other rights (HAHAHAHAHA! I'm sure he threw in that you have ANY rights as a joke). "Can you sell your property?" SURE! YOU OWN IT! Some people don't like to buy land if the gov't doesn't own it, the banks will often not loan money for it because they can't steal it, but other people LOOK for land they can actually USE and not worry about local/county zoning, because the gov't DOES NOT OWN IT! YOU OWN IT!

(REMEMBER! You CAN POST your property - now - with a notice that any gov't thug needs permission to enter your land/house and it WILL stand up in court if worded properly.)

There are places that will do this for a small amount (one group I know of and associate with does this for "around" $500-$1000 depending on what they have to do, and will go to court to back it up. So far they won every time the criminal class tried to block it) but that is usually a tiny part of your yearly gov't rent.

As far as TEOTWAWKI is concerned, I don't care what happens, nuclear war/winter, famine, drought, eCONomic collapse, invasion, ice age (30 years ago that was the mantra of the "earth change" religion, now it is the "global warming" religion), the END is ALWAYS the same. So plan for that.

 

In the west... alloidal title is almost impossible because of how the land was purchased from another country and how it was conveyed to the railroad and the states, then to individuals.

There are Spanish land grants in the sw USA that alloidal title is possible. ... anyone who would tell you they can get you an alloidal title for $500 to $1000 has no idea what they are doing or they are lying. This type of title can take up to 10 years to get ... I could say more but I won't

 

ghrit Ogre Administrator Founding Member
That would be "allodial" title. Meaning you are occupying it and prepared to defend it. I would love to talk to someone that has been thru this process of getting an allodial title issued.
https://www.1215.org/lawnotes/work-in-progress/landpatent/landpatent-propertytax.txt

Absolutely right. I couldn't get it spelled right and the spell checker would not accept any thing I wrote, so I said "close enough". You do need a clear title to the land and so on. Yes, it can be done and has stood up, here anyway, but you need to know what you are doing. It took me hundreds of hours (probably thousands actually) to learn how to fight the credit card companies and banks once I got screwed over that first time, which actually didn't cost me anything, except as mentioned hours and hours of reading, checking and learning so they didn't pull that one again. Thank God I had a friend at a group who spend many thousands of hours researching this and gave me a huge amount of help or I'd still be doing it! Since then I have been to court quite a few times and never lost yet, and that is simple to do compared to what my friend does. Once you learn what you are doing, it is mostly filing papers, and while it might take time, it is well worth it to see some criminal bankster/lawyer's face when you walk into court and say "Your Honor, that claim is a lie and I can prove it!" AND make it stick.

Same with land titles, it may take time, but it mostly filing the right papers in the right places and then filing the proper responses as the fools fight you. I don't know how to do it and it would take me ten years to try. However I have threatened banksters and they backed down since they knew I knew the law/truth and didn't want to get hauled into court and have their corruption exposed. More than one public "servant" has been backed down or chewed out by a higher up for attempting to stop a legal procedure I was doing and risking getting the scum sued and being forced to explain to a judge why they were blocking me and ignoring the law. And yes, that includes getting one lawyer disbarred for stupidity, and I almost got another one disbarred but the scum shut up and I was in no condition to egg him on.

Or I could roll over and take it as everyone seems to think is for the best. Because fighting evil takes time, so why bother? Why bother getting a land patent title if it is a little work? Why bother learning the law when some bankster claims you owe them money (OK, FRN, which is not money, so why worry about it?) when you have the bill marked "PAID IN FULL" in your hand and wants to take your house. Fighting evil and standing up for your rights is never easy, but if no one does it, evil wins.

 

Gads...I can only imagine the complexity of that in the Florida Parishes of the Louisiana Purchase...but then the US government did purchase the property from the French, who had acquired parts of it from Spain....

Anyhow, back to the main topic...
First step...was determining what I was preparing for.
Second step was getting the wife involved, and then determining what WE were preparing for...
After that it evolved into more of a lifestyle than a fad...having food and water on hand, medical and defensive equipment (and the knowledge to use them effectively), alternate power, assorted skills.
A long list could follow, but there's no need. Each family is going to have different needs to respond to a wide variety of possible scenarios. The key is to think things through before buying the most expensive knic-knack when a 12 oz ball peen hammer will do the exact same thing

 

If you have more knowledge of this and what is involved and how much it will cost and why I would love to hear it.

 

Well there is always the law library and various books that cover all that if you want to know exactly what the law reads. You are not the first person to mention all that, and it is not my area of expertise. Maybe Ganado could chime in, she seems to know all about it.

Before property or income taxes we still had schools, roads, fire departments, sheriffs/cops, etc. and the most free country on earth (compared to everyone else at least), so there must have been a way.

 

Well there you go! Why won't that work now? I always wondered why we have to have the Feds pay for our local schools, bridges, roads, etc. Why can't/don't the city/counties pay for them? How did they build them before? My guess is the local city/county or whatever local citizens who used them paid for them, or someone built them themselves with out gov't money (several local examples) to make money for themselves. If you didn't want to pay to use the ferry/bridge/road, you didn't. Still lots of toll bridges/roads around the state. My guess as why no one does that now is the Feds steal (OOPS! TAX!) the sheeple so much now the city/county can't extort any more money out of them and have to ask the Feds for the money back. But that is my guess and only based on what I see. Of course there were no freeways/interstates as we know them now before the 1950s either, which are a huge help in traveling, but that is INTERstate, state to state, and not local roads.