test post

test post

------------------------------------------
Join the APN Forum at www.AmericanPreppersNetwork.net
Visit the Virginia Forum at www.VirginiaPreppersNetwork.net

The Record Heat Waves

With the record heat waves and drought across the nation, the American Preppers Network hopes that you have been prepared.  Disasters of any type can and do happen anywhere, at anytime, and without warning.  We are now witnessing and will continue to witness a prime example of how one disaster can cause a chain reaction leading to other disasters.  Here are some potential disasters to be aware of as a result of the drought and heat waves.


1) Water shortages.  Water is the number 1 most important necessity to survival.  The average human can only survive 3 days without water, and even less in a heat wave.  I hope you've stored some.  If the water system shuts down or does not have enough, you could turn on the tap only to have a few drips.  If you run into a situation where there is not enough municipal water supply to your home, start looking for other sources of stored water.

• Your hot water tank may have 30 - 50 gallons of water stored. 
• The top supply tank to your toilette is typically clean water that you can use.
• Your plumbing in your house could have a few gallons.  Open a higher faucet in your house as in a shower, sink, or upstairs source to relieve pressure, then open a lower outside faucet to retrieve water from your plumbing system.

Don't short change yourself on water!  Make sure you have plenty for personal consumption.  If you stop sweating, that means you are dehydrated!   

Got Water?

2) Heat.  Heat poses many risks, including but not limited to:

• Heat Stroke.  Watch family members closely, especially the elderly, watch for slurred speech and disorientation.  When in doubt, call for help.  Time lost is brain lost.  Never leave pets or children in a vehicle, and keep them out of the direct sun.  Drink lots of water.
• Fire.  Fires are much more common in the heat.  Things dry out and become more flammable.  Keep dry brush and trash picked up.  Do not store fuel in or around your house, and keep well ventilated in a cool area out of the sun.  Keep grass cut short, especially if your city is rationing water and not allowing watering of lawns.  Do not store any flammables in the direct sun or in your attic.  
• Vehicle breakdowns. Avoid driving unless it's absolutely necessary, or drive at nite. Check your fluid levels and make sure your oil and coolant are topped off.  Bring extra oil and coolant with you in case you need it.  DO NOT top off your fuel tank!  Make sure your tires are property inflated and not over or under inflated.  Bring extra water with you in case you do break down.  Drive with the A/C off when going uphill.  Watch your vehicles tempature when climbing grades.  If your car starts to overheat when going uphill, pull over at a safe location to let it cool.  Check to make sure your thermostat is working before you make your trip.

3) Blackouts.   The nations grids are maxed out.  With everyone using A/C, expect rolling blackouts.  If you are in a blackout, you can wrap sleeping bags around your refrigerator or freezer to help insulate it.  To conserve power, only use what you absolutely need.  Keep lights turned off and keep your A/C set to the warmest temperature that you can safely stand.  Do you have a generator?  Be prepared to use it.  Do you have plenty of non-perishable food stored?  If there is an extended blackout, you may need it.  Stores and gas stations will be shut down in a blackout.  Do you have an emergency battery powered radio and flashlights?

4) Food Prices   Expect food prices to increase.  Especially meat.  Many ranchers are butchering all of there livestock as there is not enough food and water to care for them, this means shortages in the future.  Produce crops are drying up. Prices of corn, wheat and other grains will increase.  Even produce grown in unaffected areas may increase in price as well due to demand.  If the blackouts are too severe, stores, gas stations and truck stops may close down temporarily disrupting the supply chain and preventing food from making it to the stores.

Stay safe during this heat wave and dought.  This is a serious and potentially devastating national disaster.


If you have tips, ideas, news, videos or pictures that you wish to share regarding this heat wave you can submit your article to americanprepper@yahoo.com.  If your article is chosen we will post it on your states preppers network blog.  Top articles will get posted on APN.  The top article of the week will win a free flashlantern valued at $49.95 (made in the USA).  Articles must be submitted before 7/29.

Feel free to copy and repost this article in it's entirety.  Credit source as AmericanPreppersNetwork.com

Here are some free helpful pdf files to download

Fire and Heat Waves
- ARC - Are You Ready - Fire

- ARC - Are You Ready - Heat Wave

- ARC - Are You Ready - Wildfires

- Fact Sheet: Fires

- Fact Sheet: Fire Safe

- WildFires

Water
- ARC - Food and Water in Emergency

- Emergency Disinfection of Drinking Water 

- How To Make A Solar Still (Plastic Cover)

- Purification Of Water On A Small Scale 

- Simple Solar Still For The Production Of Distilled Water

- Slow Sand Filters

- Water Purification

- Water Treatment

Fire Safety 

- Fighting Fire 

- Fire Safety

Get More Free Downloads here:
http://preppers.info/Free_Downloads.html

Buttering my bread in a time of crisis

Buttering my bread in a time of crisis

By Shenandoah

So here we are..I have stored up a few hundred pounds so far of wheat and
learning how to bake bread (and looking for an old fashion wood stove) but
how about good ol fashion butter on a slice of bread and some home jam
just to make the world feel right again.

Our dependence on refrigeration has kept us from learning how to store
foods without it. Here is a great little morsel in learning how to store
butter without the need for refrigeration.

First off, you are going to need Mason or Ball type canning jars or some
tight sealing containers. I have decided on the ½ pint wide mouth jar for
this project. These little jars are great for either jams or butter. The
advantage is small containers for once you open up any sealed container in
an off the grid situation, the clock starts ticking for how long it will
stay good. Also, smaller containers provide insurance from product loss
due to a broken seal or cracked glass.

Now you might be wondering if butter is something you need to store? The
answer is YES!!! In a “back to basics” diet in a post TEOTWAWKI world we
will all be finding ourselves eating foods with a greatly reduced amount
of fats. Yes, we will all look a lot better, and obesity will not be a
problem, we will soon find that our bodies do require a small quantity of
fats. Butter can supply essential fats in small quantities on a daily
basis. Lards can be rendered from animal fats but wild game like deer
have little fat on them to begin with.

Butter, when properly canned and stored enjoys a reportedly long life span
of three to five years plus before going rancid.

There are two ways to can butter. The first is using a pressure cooker
and the second is canning without the pressure cooker.

If you can with a pressure cooker the life span should store indefinitely.
Although canned butter has not been practiced all that long but over 6
years has been established in commercial canned butter.

A quick method that I use is this. I melt the butter in a large pot and
bring it to a boil. At the same time I prepare my jars by first washing
them and then place them into the oven at 300 degrees to make sure they
are completely sanitized.

Next I carefully pour the butter into the jars making sure not to get any
on the rims and then seal with the lid (waiting in boiling water to
sanitize and soften the seal) and then screw down the band.

The lids will go plink plink just like they do out of a pressure cooker as
the vacuum inside the jars happens with cooling.

To pressure cook these jars you do all the steps as above but rather than
letting the jars cool on the counter you would place them into the
pressure cooker and go through a proper cycle. If you use these ½ pint
jars and the liquid is already hot then it should not take long.

I skip the pressure canning side of this for two reasons. First is that
you have boiled the butter and really sanitized the jars and lids so these
are going to be pretty free of contamination. Secondly, butter is one of
those things God gave us that does not grow bacteria all that well and
lastly if you use salted butter as I do the salt gives it an added level
of protection.

Either way pressure cooker or not you will need to allow these to cool and
shaking them often to reduce separation. I would recommend putting them
into the refrigerator after they have cooled enough to hold in your hand
so they will solidify quicker and again continue the shaking. As soon as
they have cooled they will have the familiar yellow solid butter look.

Store this butter in the coolest place as you would all of your canned
goods for maximum shelf life….and enjoy!

Again, the steps are.

1. Bring the butter to a low boil, stirring often.
2. Place the washed jars in the oven at 300 degrees for 20 Min.
3. Place the lids in boiling water to be ready to use.
4. Ladle the butter into the jars through a funnel leaving ½ to ¾
inch headroom.
5. Place the lids on the jars and the bands tightly.
6. Shake frequently as the butter cools to avoid settling and
separation.
7. Enjoy!

Shenandoah

------------------------------------------
Editors note:  Many people have been canning butter for years without any problems.  Even I have  known people who can butter and swear by their methods.  However, there are many who feel that it is an unsafe practice.  Do the research and educate yourself before attempting any home canning method that you are unfamiliar with.  Here is a link regarding the warnings of canning butter: http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/questions/FAQ_canning.html#33
------------------------------------------

------------------------------------------
Join the APN Forum at www.AmericanPreppersNetwork.net
Visit the Virginia Forum at www.VirginiaPreppersNetwork.net

Virginia Preppers Roll Call - All Preppers Please Check In

The American Preppers Network is conducting a network-wide roll call.  Whether you are a member or not please check in and let us know what you are doing to prepare.

This is a good opportunity to network with other preppers near you.

Virginia Preppers, to respond to the roll call please follow this link:
 http://americanpreppersnetwork.net/viewtopic.php?f=455&t=9288

• Reply to the Roll Call and let us know what you have been doing to prepare.

If you are not yet a member of the forum you can register here for free:
http://americanpreppersnetwork.net/ucp.php?mode=register

A Man, a Vacuum Sealer and a Year of Food

A Man, a vacuum sealer and a year of food

If you’re like me, understanding the times we live in are just about
impossible! Getting a grasp on our current situation feels more like
treading water on a stormy sea and gasping for air when one can. In that
situation the one thing that makes the difference is a life vest to keep
you afloat.

OK, that said to frame what I want to talk about. I live in a small city
of around 20K people. I live around farms but they don’t grow anything
but hay and corn to feel horses and cattle. We owned a small restaurant
here in the Shenandoah Valley and I quickly learned that I had to make
sure that my produce was stocked to match shipments being trucked in from
California and Mexico! You see, almost a complete absence of commercial
greenhouses around Virginia and the sad part is I do live in what is
considered to be farm country.

We know that the “Just in Time” supply model has become the standard for
industry suppliers including food distributors. When I was a kid, I
worked in a grocery store and the back wall was stacked to the rafters
with boxes of canned goods. Now the new stores are just designed to have
a receiving staging area. All that is ordered is enough to “front” the
shelves. No longer are full cases ordered but at times restocking is just
one at a time so the shelves are now the stock room…in a real crisis we
all know just how fast the grocery stores will be emptied.

What is one to do?

Food supply:
Food is relatively cheap right now so this is the best time to start
stocking up for your own supply that can carry you through the first
year…you, your children, and their children if they are grown. One can
purchase 50 pounds of wheat for around 40 cents per pound so you can see
that one can quickly you can build up serious stock, but don’t forget to
buy a grinder!

What kinds of foods you need to inventory are the ones that seal up nicely
and have inherent long term storage built into them. Seeds by design,
when kept whole, like wheat, corn, oats, rice and beans (for example) have
excellent storage capability built right in so it makes sense to major on
these types of foods. I have managed to put away quite a few buckets of
food of these types and a whole lot more to go but here is what I do but
there are lots of ways to get the job done.

I like to put up food in smaller vacuum bags. There are really nice
commercial vacuum machines that run around $350 and up but that was not in
my budget so I spent about $30 on a Foodsaver brand (or whatever) sealer.
Although this will only draw around a 10 to 15 inches of vacuum I add two
items into the bag just before sealing. One is an oxygen absorber and the
other a moisture absorber. Between these two I figure I am getting just
about all the moisture and oxygen out of the bag and as the air we breathe
is about 80% Nitrogen that leaves my future food bathed in an inert gas
that is excellent for long term storage. Even if you had buggies that you
could not see in with your grains, they simply cannot live without oxygen.

On eBay I found out you could order six gallon (food grade) Mylar bags
with a huge oxygen absorber for just over a Dollar. At Home Depot they
have nice orange, five gallon buckets with rubber gasket in the lids for
under $5.00. So I place the Mylar bag into the bucket, then put the
smaller bags say quart sized and perhaps one or two ½ gallon sixed vacuum
sealed bags into the Mylar bag along with the large oxygen absorber and
with practice you can seal the large Mylar bag with your vacuum sealer and
remove the oxygen from that larger Mylar bag. To do this after loading
the Mylar Bag take a small board (or any nicely flat and sturdy object)
and fold the Mylar over the board and take the wife’s nice iron (a lot of
guys might consider getting a used iron from the thrift store) and seal it
up except for enough space to stick a small vacuum hose into your bag.

I purchased a Mason jar sealer that attaches to my vacuum sealer and
nicely seals up canning jars with dry packed stuff like bulk spices. It
has a PVC hose that connects to the vacuum sealer. I take that hose and
stick it into the Mylar bag and then finish sealing the Mylar bag with the
iron right up to the hose. With a little pinch I then get a seal so I can
now pull a vacuum inside the Mylar bag as well providing your food with
triple sealed storage, bucket, Mylar and small vacuum bag. You have just
created five gallons of food for the future for around $5.00, plus the
food cost, for a small fraction of the “emergency” foods you can buy over
the Internet. When it comes to bulk wheat you might want to forgo the
individual bags and put it right into the six gallon Mylar bag and seal it
up properly. You can get a lot more food into each bucket that way and
that is important when space is critical. These smaller bags then need
protection from everything from rodents to accidental tears and punctures.
One can purchase 55 gallon Mylar bags if you are seriously sheltering
in…and space is critical.

This kind of food storage is critical if we do have a TEOTWAWKI (we all
know that stands for The End Of The World As We Know It, right?) event.
Most of what I read about looks more like a slow and painful death of the
Dollar through contortions of hyper inflation/stagflation and deflation.
In my really stupid years I once drank a whole bottle of Tequila and that
is a lot what we will have when a financial system is completely out of
control, our coming financial collapse is going to be like that on an
experiential level…complete loss of voluntary control, and it is going to
be messy.

This food you can easily set aside can help you make it through the first
year of your life should the unthinkable happen and you have to become
self sufficient overnight. Google phrases like “food storage per person”
and see what the calculations look like. It might take thousands of
pounds of food for a medium size family but this can be done. I looked
for a local semi-independent supermarket that orders food in bulk and then
breaks that down into smaller bags for retail and asked if I could add
bulk orders onto their regular weekly shipments. They said yes and now I
order 50 or so pounds of bulk foods from wheat to beans and I also get a
10% to 15% discount rather than buying off the shelf. Best of all is no
shipping charges! You can also order off the Internet but you will have
to pay for Mr. UPS to come deliver it typically doubling the cost of the
food.

This week I just ordered another 50 Lbs of Raw Sugar as Sugar prices are
expected to be sharply on the rise due to crop failures and Wall Street
commodity investors. Items like sugars and honey have practically
unlimited shelf life and if you package them as I described you will
eliminate caking due to moisture. You will get some packing together,
especially with raw sugar, due to the compacting typical with the
vacuuming but it busts apart easily.

Adding in a nice variety of freeze dried foods for flavor and simplicity
gives you a great selection so that meals can be different and interesting
in a crisis situation. The only thing I can imagine worse than eating the
same thing day after day is eating nothing day after day.

To start taking advantage of your new supplies, start making prepared
meals out of them now. Think of a meal you would typically make. In my
house Black Beans & Rice are a typical dinner. Beans typically need to be
soaked overnight before cooking and that is so easy to forget. Try this
idea for quick emergency or not so emergency meals. Take a canning jar
and fill it with the beans like Black Beans. Add in spices along with
garlic & onion or what you might typically use and then fill the jar with
boiling water and seal it just as you would when canning with a hot lid.
Place your jars into a pressure cooker and pasteurize the contents. When
you open it back up you will have a bean dinner already seasoned and ready
to heat up and serve.

In addition to canning veggies you can also can meats and butter but you
have to do some reading on that temperature you need to reach for 100%
food safety.

If a TEOTWAWKI hits in winter then you might not need a full year’s supply
till you have food coming in from the garden but you have to have seeds
and good soil…more about that next time.

Bruce


------------------------------------------
Join the APN Forum at www.AmericanPreppersNetwork.net
Visit the Virginia Forum at www.VirginiaPreppersNetwork.net

FREE Fire Rescue TV Vehicle Decal for First Responders

Drop by the Virginia Fire Chiefs Mid Atlantic Expo this weekend, February 24-27, 2011 at the Virginia Beach VA Convention Center and stop by our booth and pick up a FREE vehicle decal. You can also REGISTER on our website, www.firerescuetv.com and we will send you one for FREE!


------------------------------------------
Join the APN Forum at www.AmericanPreppersNetwork.net
Visit the Virginia Forum at www.VirginiaPreppersNetwork.net

A few thoughts on gun control…..

I don’t often talk a tremendous amount about politics or common political “talking points”. Gun control is one issue that I certainly have opinions on and you may or not agree with me.

The recent shootings in Arizona have spurred talk on gun control all across the country. Often when a mass shooting gets a lot of press – “gun control” will be mentioned as something that could have prevented what occurred and what should be put in place to prevent future occurrences.

Let me start off by stating for the record – I support the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution. Period. I believe that our forefathers placed the right to bear arms into the Constitution for a reason – and it was not for the creation of out military and police forces.

“A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

The Minute Man statue - Concord, Mass.

Knowing the history of how the United States came to be I firmly believe that the above statement refers to the ability of the people to possess firearms – not just the government.

The mass shooting in Arizona was a tragedy for all involved and their families. It is an unfortunately reality that there are sick, crazy, malicious and evil people in this world with an intent that is no better than they are. The argument that decent, law-abiding citizens should have their rights effected due to those that are not decent, law-abiding citizens is unjust, unfair and against our Constitutional rights. Whether it be the Virginia Tech massacre or the Arizona shooting – those physco’s that perpetrated these acts would do so regardless of any law.

The bottom line is that gun control laws only effect those that will obey them – law abiding citizens. Criminals are termed that for a reason – they break the law. How many drug dealers and gang-bangers are purchasing their firearms at local gun shops following laws?

Now – here is where I may stir a response from you. Some gun control and regualtion is responsible and I feel required. I have no problem with a background check. I have no problem with a 24-hour waiting period. I do not have a problem with certain age requirements. I do not have a problem with any Dick or Harry walking into their local gun shop and NOT walking out with a fully automatic M60 machine gun. There has to be some common sense involved in gun regulations. This problem is - what is common sense to me may be different than to you. The other problem is most that are in favor of gun control is that if you give them an inch – they will take a mile. What I mean by this is every regulation, every law is one step towards their eventual desired goal – the banning of guns altogether. Not all gun control advocates want this – but a very large majority.

Being able to defend myself, my family, and my property goes beyond “God given” – it is built into the genetic make up of the human species to protect that which is nurtured and cared for. For some political group, “cause” or politician to suggest that I am not allowed to possess a pistol that can shoot 17 shots or a semi-automatic rifle because I can affix a bayonet to it is not just pathetic – it is idiotic.

There are 40,000 people killed every year in automobile accidents. 40,000!! I don’t hear anyone suggesting cars should be banned. Hmmmmm…….

One final thought. What if someone with a Concealed Weapons Permit was present at Virginia Tech or in Arizona for either one of those shootings?

Rourke modernsurvivalonline.com

------------------------------------------
Join the APN Forum at www.AmericanPreppersNetwork.net
Visit the Virginia Forum at www.VirginiaPreppersNetwork.net