The crackle and pop of a good campfire is one of the best things about staying in the woods overnight. When a fire is in full bloom and the flames radiate up charred logs and lick off into the night sky, you can stare at it for hours. It’s about the best setting for comradery you can find. Fire making is a basic skill, but like most skills, it can be … [Read more...]
20 Trees Every Prepper Should Be Familiar With (And Why)
Growing your own food and medicine will vastly improve your chances of surviving a long-term disaster. Cultivating fruit trees is just one small way to enhance the food sources at your prepper retreat or bug in location. There are a multitude of trees that are chock full of nutrients like Vitamin C and ingredients for natural remedies that can treat … [Read more...]
9 Improvised Hunting Weapons for Fish and Game in the Wild
We always assume we’ll have a rifle when hunting, but in a survival situation, we may be lucky to have a pocket knife. A rifle is the standard, contemporary tool or weapon for almost any hunting situation. It’s a highly sophisticated weapon customized with scopes and by caliber for a variety of game species and sizes. But hunting without a rifle is a whole … [Read more...]
8 Basic Survival Skills to Teach Your Children
As parents, we want to protect our children from harm. It’s in our DNA. So we diligently prepare for possible emergencies, and we educate ourselves on how to survive them. Teaching your children to rely on you is a good thing, but we can’t possibly be with them at all times. Would your kids know what to do if they were on their own in a survival … [Read more...]
10 Lost Skills We Can Learn From The Amish
The Amish (about 300,000 of them) quietly live among us throughout the United States. They do not live on the grid, not in a conventional manner of speaking, at least. American Amish communities function from a power grid far superior to our antiquated electrical system - “God’s Grid.” We preppers can learn a whole lot from the Amish and their off-grid … [Read more...]
How to Skin, Butcher, and Cook Wild Game
Are you one of the many preppers who plan on bugging out to the woods after the SHTF? I've heard many people say they plan on doing this (both in person and online), and most of them think they will hunt for food while they're at it. This always makes me cringe. First of all, if everyone is bugging out to the woods at the same time, there's not going to … [Read more...]
How to Read a Map and Contour Lines
Countless times, I've recommended buying detailed paper maps of your local area and all the areas along the path to your bug out location. During a major disaster, satellites might be down and GPS might not be working. If that happens, you need to know how to find your way with paper maps. They will be especially important if you need to take a different … [Read more...]
9 Street Survival Skills for the Concrete Jungle
Major cities may still only take up a small portion of the land mass in the United States, but they are nevertheless home to over 80% of the population. With this being the case, the odds of being caught in the concrete jungle when disaster strikes are quite high. Of course, the survival skills necessary to navigate a city during a disaster – whether it’s … [Read more...]
9 Most Overlooked (But Important) Survival Skills
There are many different survival skills that could prove invaluable in a disaster scenario. Some of these skills--such as marksmanship or the ability to preserve food--receive a lot of attention, while others often fly under the radar. Nevertheless, these skills are each incredibly valuable in their own right, and some of them may prove just as important … [Read more...]
7 Essential Knots You Need To Know
How many knots do you know (other than the shoelace knot)? Probably not many. But believe it or not, knots can be very useful. They can be used for boating, construction, and various DIY projects. This video covers seven essential knots that will allow you to use cordage however you need. The knots covered include: Square Knot Clove Hitch Sheet … [Read more...]
5 Most Important Survival Skills To Have After SHTF
If you could only learn five survival skills, which ones would you learn? That's the question I'm going to answer in this article. It's a tricky question, though, because it depends on the scenario. For example, surviving in the wilderness requires a different set of skills than surviving in an urban area after an EMP (although there is a lot of … [Read more...]
The 26 Best Snares for Survival: Land, Air, Sea
The ability to turn the woods around you, and maybe some cordage, into a trap that can actually feed you is near mythical. I think a lot of preppers have an idea about how this process works but I don’t think many are well practiced. For one thing, it’s kind of ugly to take the life of another creature and by snare it can be ugly. Still, building this things … [Read more...]
How to Open a Padlock with a Coke Can
Locks are a tough subject. Even in prepping there's this idea of quiet nobility that we hear when people talk about breaking into a structure or home. You know, it's ok for us to shoot our neighbors dead and send our family away when resources get too tight, but God forbid you consider using some lock picking skills to get ahead in the game. This is an … [Read more...]
8 Basic Skills You Need To Master Before The SHTF
You don't have to be an expert at every survival skill to survive a disaster--very few people have mastered all the skills. However, there are a handful of skills that everyone will need in a true SHTF scenario, especially if they're on their own. In this article from Modern Survival Online, Ryan explains what he thinks are the 8 most important survival … [Read more...]
Want To Disappear From The Grid? Here’s What You Need To Know
You might be thinking, "Why disappear?" There has long been speculation that the government is playing more of a role in our lives than ever. What we learned about the NSA and the inherent spying in the name freedom is that we are compromised. All Americans are compromised by the digital footprints they have created. Could it be time to erase that … [Read more...]
12 Rare Skills That Will Come In Handy When SHTF
If you’re at all familiar with the world of prepping for natural disasters or other life-changing, cataclysmic events, you may have made some simple provisions of your own. You’ve decided that having a bug out bag is a good idea; you’ve stocked up on nonperishable items in your pantry; you have a plan for where to go and what to do when the SHTF. But at some … [Read more...]
Camouflage and Concealment: The Art of Staying Hidden
In a post-SHTF world, the last thing you want to do is draw attention to yourself. Hungry, desperate people will be everywhere, so if you're wearing nice clean clothes and carrying a bag full of supplies, then you may as well paint a target on your chest. To reduce your chances of being attacked, you should wear clothes that help you blend in. That way … [Read more...]
