If you are serious about learning survival skills and other “heritage” skills, I’m gonna recommend
https://www.foxfire.org/shop/category/books/
I’ve had the full set of books for about 30 years now, and they are a great read.
If it’s just small game then I think an inexpensive air rifle would be perfect for such a scenario. The ammo is cheap and plentiful, you don’t have gunpowder residue to worry about, and they are relatively quiet.
Don’t feel bad. If things got really, really bad and there was a total breakdown of civilization, very few people would be safe and secure no matter how skilled and prepared they are. It would be a crapshoot, you would eventually run out of luck. As for ammo, I won’t say how much I have because it always sounds sinister to a lot of people. But I wouldn’t run out and it would probably be one of the most coveted trading items, so why not stockpile it?
MREs are ok but they are not cheap, per meal. I would stock up on large bags of beans and rice, and cans of spam and vegetables, much cheaper and better tasting. MREs are for soliders and Marines in the field who have to pack light and cannot get a to a stove.
I’ve read several credible articles that say if all the country boys hunted game, the wildlife stocks would be depleted pretty soon.. Even if some nuclear holocaust reduced the human population, the 350 million of us today have crowded out a lot of animals.
I admit, I have a weakness for fantasizing and mentally planning for a real apocalypse. But I don’t do much about it. I know it would not end well for any of us. I’m more of a hurricane/no power/grocery stores closed 30 days kind of prepper. I just cannot understand why people 3 days into an emergency have to line up at the Wal-Mart for 8 hours for some grub.
Really? How often are you in a place where after three days people are out of food, or nearly out?
If I can’t get food within three days, I’m probably boned, trying to catch insects for protein.
Often. That was a staple on the local news, the sheer mass of people standing around the stores, somehow surprised that they would need groceries that would be hard to get after a storm.
We’ve survived another year under our Lord Trump, Antifa, and wet climate change. Hurricane season has come and gone.My heart goes out to Paradise, CA and the others affected by wildfires, there’s not much one can do to prepare for that.
Deer season is here. Went out and killed a couple of wild hogs yesterday. The ultimate target practice; after you hit the first pig, the rest go wild and run in erratic circles, so getting a second kill before they run into the woods is tough. I’ve only managed to get a second kill a few times.
Dressed out, seasoned, made into sausage and port roast, and into the freezer.
No wild boar in my area, and thank goodness because they’re an non-native introduced species which tends towards destruction, but I do kind of regret not having opportunity to go out and bring home the bacon, so to speak.
That sounds delicious. Where do you live where there are wild hogs?
There are feral hogs in every state! They need killin’, too, because they do a lot of environmental damage and kill a lot of small animals.
Texas Gulf Coast, in the region between Freeport and Matagorda.
I bet it tastes really good, not being factory raised and all. Plus healthier?
The taste depends a lot on the seasoning and preparation, but yeah, it’s great for tamales, sausage and slow cooker pork roast. This last pigs had a surprising amount of fat for a wild boar. Healthier, I don’t really know. Wild pigs eat anything they can find, whereas farm raised hogs get detailed supplemental feed (corn, soybean meal) in addition to pasture food. Factory farmed pigs are on the low end of the spectrum, but since factory farms are operating on scale, the meat is attractively priced.
During our latest secret society meeting at our secret underground bunker, the Z-Team and I were discussing the pros/cons of MREs and other stored food supplies.
“MREs are 'specially engineered to last years, supply nutrition, and work in SHTF situations.”
“Yeah, but they’re damned expensive.”
“So? MRE’s can withstand parachute drops of 1200 feet.”
“…”
My proposal is to keep a few large caches of food supplies that are simply cans and sealed dry food goods in a few (2~5) storage totes.
Simply fill the containers with canned food, such as
Spam.
Ready-to-eat canned meats, fruits, vegetables.
Protein or fruit bars.
Dry cereal or granola.
Peanut butter.
Dried fruit.
Canned juices.
Non-perishable pasteurized milk.
High energy foods.
Then use the food from one of the containers as everyday stores. When the container is empty, buy supplies and fill it back up, move it to the end, and start pulling supplies from the next container. This way you would use them gradually so they don’t get old and keep an emergency supply at the same time. This would be way cheapers than MREs, and tastier, and you would always have a fresh supply of grub in case of hurricane, power grid failure, or alien invasion.
Don’t forget to include a can opener.
Wouldn’t it be easier to just learn to eat people?
Whadaya mean, “learn”?
Neal I missed the last time you bumped this. How well did the hogs keep? It looks like you were grinding your own sausages, were you curing them as well? I’ve not been hunting in years but the spot that I did go to has deer, wild turkeys and the occasional wild boar. It wouldn’t have dawned on me that wild boar would be worth hunting, to be honest. I thought wild boar ran the highest percentage of brucellosis, but then again, even deer carry that. I just wouldn’t know how to address that for making sausages, unless those are sausages later fully cooked.
hey Skipper, I smoke them with an electric smoker and chips. After I grind the meat, I mix seasoning and prague powder through it. Afterwards, even though it is smoked, I cook it before serving it, I like a dry texture to my sausage.
I went out deer hunting this morning, no hogs. The last 4 times I’ve gone across the place I have not seen a thing, but I have come across wallows so I know they’re around.
We’d seen signs of them too and a few hunters had spotted them. As mentioned, I’d just never considered hunting them. Seems like a win if you can use that much off of them.
Now turkeys … we’ve all seen them and they are bastards if you get too close. Deer here in NC look like scrub deer compared to where you are, most likely. It’s too hot and food for them probably isn’t as plentiful. The one bonus here is that deer can be baited.
Ahoy! So, with the Wuhan virus in the news and a lot of uncertainty about how fast it spreads, how long it incubates, etc. one thing the folks in a lot of Chinese cities are now experiencing is quarantine. Makes sense, it’s necessary to slow/stop the spread of the disease, right? But that makes it really tough when the shops and markets are not getting regular shipments of food and supplies. The people go to a shop and have to fight like hell for a can of beans.
Right: except for the preppers. You have to imagine there are a lot of families who kept a 2 week supply of food; probably a lot of people did this as a routine, not necessarily as “prepping”. They can go through the next few days without leaving their home, avoiding the risk of crowds, both disease and crime/crowd aggression.
No one really knows yet if this virus will be a major catastrophe. One Chinese Wuhan resident using a vpn make this point: “It is completely hopeless in China. Millions of people left Wuhan in the days leading up to the lockdown to return home for CNY. If symptoms weren’t showing up yet, they’re scattered across China right now, slowly developing their symptoms as time goes on. There’s only been a lockdown for four days, but the disease can incubate for two weeks.”
Considering the situation, it may be dangerous to leave the house for a month. Having prepped basic supplies and food for a few weeks would be amazingly helpful in this crisis.
Had a long conversation with my SO about this, essentially, unless you are already in a place where you are not near anyone, there is nothing you could prepare for in the case of (example only,) a deadly virus that killed everyone, ala The Stand. How do you prepare for having your own water supply, water table, air to breathe, enough stocked food to outlive not just the infected, but also the virus itself which could easily have other carriers? You have to hope and pray for a quick treatment that is effective on the virus.
It’s something to think about as the plot of a movie, but there would be no way to outrun it, outlive it, out survive it, etc. Your absolute BEST bet is to live close to multiple places for treatment.
This is my opinion only, but I don’t see the point of trying to prepare for a virus outbreak, nuclear exchange, etc. With the virus as an example, unless the time from infection to death were less than 24 hours, there’s no way you would know who did or did not carry it. There no way to time when it’s come and gone near you. There is no way to know for sure when you think it is actually run its course. Your ability to live, life expectancy through the event and quality of life afterward are going to be so poor that living might actually be more of a hell than not. If I had kids, I’d try to keep them safe, but it would be so much harder than just stockpiling a few things to get it done.