This Week's Prep

Did some cleaning out of my cellar. I am in need of doing quite a bit more of this, in order to fit all the prep I have in mind.

Added to my food inventory. This included some canned goods and liquor (barter item, sterilizing agent, and poor man's anesthetic. Plus, who wants to go through the apocalypse sober? If I'm surrounded in my bunker by mutant vampires like Heston in The Omega Man, you can better believe that like him, between bursts of gunfire, I'm going to have a martini or two). I also added some spices (my salt and sugar supplies are growing). I have enough bread flour and peanut butter to last at least 6 months.

I also added to my ammunition, and now have enough 12 gauge ammo that turkey hunting becomes an inevitability.

Also added to my silver hoard, and now have 43 oz. I am considering buying a kit to do my own handloading of ammunition. I figure with the silver supply, I can make a few dozen silver bullets if things turn lycanthropic.

I also rotated some of my stored fuel, putting older stuff (with Sta-bil added, of course) in my gas tank and buying some new gas.

Added some ponchos to my bug-out bag.

I continue to research retreat land; my eventual bugout location will probably be in Northern Vermont, where the wife has family. My own home, though I am doing what I can to make it viable, is in too high a population density area to last for long before I am burned out by Mad Max style biker gangs. Put simply, it would be a simple matter of tossing a Molotov cocktail from the street to my roof to burn me out; my house is pleasant enough for ordinary life, but tactically indefensible against a determined attack. My house also has all kinds of blind spots and dead space; I'd never try to defend in place -- more likely if a gang approaches, I'd just simply beat feet and try to make it to Vermont. Looking at a map, Maine is to me the ultimate New England bugout location -- all that empty land owned by timber companies who would be no more powerful than ghosts after something like an EMP attack. Think of the hunting. Land up there is (by Massachusetts standards) dirt cheap, too. But for now, the plan is Vermont.