Prep Weekend Ahead

Two big prep things for this weekend. First, I'm going to the range to do a little shotgun practice with the Remington 870. It's been quite a few years since I've practiced with a shotgun; I picked up the Remington this spring and this is my first opportunity to use it.

The second, I'm installing a rain barrel to have as an emergency water supply. I've got a Platypus for filtration of it, and along with a little chlorine bleach, it should give me a reserve of water for the summer months. If nothing else, it gives me water for my gardening.

Going to try to pick up some more silver coins today, too. As I outlined earlier, my preferred coins are Canadian Maples, but if my coin dealer is out, I'll pick up some American Eagles. Silver reserves are at 33 oz. currently; I'm going to try to expand this in the coming year.

I'm also thinking long and hard about canned goods. Looking at the shelves in my supermarket, I've figured out that canned goods are good for about 18 months to two years. Assuming very aggressive planting of food and hunting, the 18 month cushion might be sufficient to get a crop in the ground (which reminds me, I'll also want some seeds). To me, the problem with storing a large amount of food is one of data management -- knowing what you have and when it expires. You know the freezer full of meat is going to go bad quickly if the grid comes down. But keeping accurate tabs on all those rusting cans in the cellar is another matter. I'm going to build a spreadsheet to manage it.

In addition, while thoughts turn from firearms and water to food, I'm thinking about buying a pressure cooker/canner. I make my own tomato sauce, and usually store it im mason jars in the freezer, which is OK for now. But if the grid goes down, I'll want to store stuff warm. This means heat and pressure treating the food using a pressure canner. You can't simply heat treat it -- botulism microbes can survive high heat. You need to treat with both. So a canner becomes an essential item, along with a supply of mason jars and lids. And, naturally, a reference book on how to preserve various types of food using canning.

The problem with survivalism is that there's always a next thing, or another thing. Once you secure some firearms and a water supply, you worry about food. And then heat. And then medicine. And so on. The problem is, you need to be able to do all kinds of things that were common a hundred years ago, but are rare skills today. And the basic problems of food supply require a daunting amount of knowledge, if no one is specialized.

I have, for instance, two very useful old-time skills. I can brew beer and I can bake bread. It suggests a simple postapocalyptic role for me. However, with no one in New England (to speak of) growing barley or wheat, the skill is fully a year off until it becomes usable, assuming someone gets a crop of wheat in the ground in the spring after the crash. So I have to survive long enough for those baking and brewing skills to come into play. Which means I need to be a farmer and a hunter, as well. And a guy skilled in firearms.

Survivalism is, in a sense, a problem of self. What can I do, and what do I have? I think a true man is one whom you can drop in the woods with nothing, and in a few years he has recreated his entire culture -- or, at least, that of his great-grandparents. Who of us can do it? If you cannot, the problem then becomes one of learning a lot of old ways. Of becoming useful.

This is a large part of what fascinates me about it.