SCP Survival

Best Survival Gear and Supplies

Low-Rent Indoor Hydroponics

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Growing Indoors with Hydroponics
This particular tank has been going for about 5 months (and recently cut back for a batch of pesto)

A lot of gardeners have told me that they’d like to try indoor hydroponics, but don’t have the hundreds or thousands of dollars required for they initial setup. If you’d just like to ‘get your feet wet’ (pun intended) you can probably get started with less than a $20 investment (especially if you have abandoned aquarium equipment laying around)

Hydroponics Parts List:

  • a cheap aquarium air pump and tubing (I had this in a closet, collecting dust)
  • a large-ish airstone – mine was $2.95 at a chain pet store
  • a container ( I was given a 1.5 gallon hex aquarium as a gift, years ago – too small for fish)
  • A plastic net bag – the kind onions and potatoes are sold in at grocery stores
  • A pack of plastic “wiffle” plastic practice golfballs from a megamart (think mine were $2.18)
  • some polyethylene cord (Dollar Store special)
  • (optional) some lava rock (the kind sold for gas grills – very light weight – about $3 a big bag as I remember)
  • fertilizer (organic compost tea would be great)
  • plants (start out w/herbs or lettuce or spinach, not tomatoes, cool as that may sound)
  • water
  • Duck tape

If you don’t have access to an old aquarium tank, don’t worry.  A small plastic bucket or small office-type trashcan will probably work even better.  I like to check the air flow, but the less light that hits the fertilized water, the fewer problems you will have with unwanted algae in the water. Pick a container that you can easily stick your onion bag inside. Pick something about 9-10 inch diameter and around a foot tall.

If you so choose, thread some of the poly cord through the net bag as reinforcement. This is mostly a hangover from earlier attempts to use pea gravel as a growing medium, but backup never hurts.

Place your airstone into empty tank, finagle and tape down the air tubing to keep it ‘right-side up’ (this can bite you later if you don’t)

Place your onion bag into tank, with a couple inches overlap on the outside of the tank. Tape around it to hold the bag in place (Note: I removed outer tape wrap layer so pic would be more self-explanatory). Leave an inch or 2 free space above the airstone to let bubbles spread.

Set the tank someplace warm with good light. (I use a shelf with a clamp-lamp and a daylight CFL bulb) Pour in your bag of wiffle golf balls – this is your growing medium. Very light weight, full of holes to allow air flow. Plug in the air pump, fill “most of the way” with water and your choice of fertilizer.

Let it run without plants a day or 2, just to drive off and chlorine, etc. as needed, where you are. If you can’t find wiffle practice golfballs, check your closest Dollar Store for the funny-looking hard pink plastic hair curlers. I used these once in a koi-pond as biofilter-medium instead of $30/lb “BioBalls” and they ought to work here too. All they do is support the roots and stems.

Being lazy, as I said, I plant sweet basil, because I can get it pre-started in hydroponic medium from a local organic hydroponic farm at my favorite supermarket. (rich yuppies DO have their uses..) To use other plants, start with a “2-inch pot size” plant, with good root systems, and gently wash off ALL the soil from the roots. PLEASE do this outside, not in your kitchen sink, or I promise, you will regret it while snaking and plunging the drainpipes. Shove the roots down inside the golfballs by hand.  If the plant tends to be too floppy or too ‘floaty” just stick in a lava rock or 2 to brace up the structure.

Operating instructions:

  • Keep the airpump running all the time – you dont want the roots to ‘drown’.
  • Don’t worry as water evaporates- let it get down to about 50% full before refilling with water – free air for the roots.
  • Don’t over-fertilize- if you start seeing green algae, use a LOT less for the next month.
  • If you use artificial light, make sure your plants get 6-8 hours a day of dark time, or they will turn yellow.
  • Trim the leaves and make pesto, if you grow basil – it grows like a ‘bat outta..”

p.s. if you haven’t heard of it, you should check out “aquaponics“, which incorporates fish into a hydroponic system.

How To Store Flour Long Term (4 quick tips)

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Flour is a food “staple”, and has been since the beginning of time. It makes an appearance on virtually every survival food list in existence.

Even so, very few people know these interesting and helpful kitchen tips on storing flour:

Flour Storage Tip #1: Use Potatoes To Reverse or “Save” Flour Going Rancid

You go to use your pre-ground flour and discover it has a slight “off” smell, or you tried it and it made your baked product taste “funny”. What do this mean? It usually means the flour has gone rancid, which grain does fairly quickly once it’s ground.

Can you save it?

Well, according to this tip, peel a raw potato and cut it in half; place the potato halves in the flour and keep it in the refrigerator or a cool pantry or basement overnight. Next morning, compost the potato halves and use the flour. I have not tried this, so, I’ll be anxious to know whether it works, but, picked it up from an LDS prep site, so, it probably does!

Flour Storage Tip #2: Use Bay Leaves To Keep Bugs Away

Tuck a dried bay leaf into flour before storing away and it will keep “critters” out (this is a time-tested method of keeping pre-ground flour bug-free).

Flour Storage Tip #3: Store at a Temperature of 75 Degrees or Less

Did you know that canned flour (#10 cans for long-term storage) may or may not last as long as you are told? If kept in a cool, dark place below 75 deg. F, it can last up to 10 years, as I understand it – we’re talking about pre-ground flour here – unground grain, properly stored, can last up to 30 years.

For every 10 degrees above 75 deg. F, however, the pre-ground, canned  flour loses strength and begins to deteriorate much more rapidly. You can easily cut shelf-life in half by storing your flour over 75 deg. F; even a short period of time over this temp will reduce shelf life.

Flour Storage Tip #4: Keep Your Flour in Mylar Bags (not paper sacks from the store)

Pre-ground flour in paper bags such as you buy off shelf should IMMEDIATELY be placed in mylar bags with OA’s (Oxygen Absorbers) and properly marked, then rotated in use according to expiration date, of course. They STILL need to be stored in a cool, dark place for longest life, even packed in mylars with OAs. Pre-ground flour can also be stored in freezers, which add about six (6) months to storage life.

Food Storage for Beginners with Little Money

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There are multiple ways to build food storage. There is the long term, store it in a closet for years, for the “what if” scenario. There are emergency meals that store long term which are “just add water”, but expensive per calorie.

Then there is the “pantry building” way which is simply buying 2 or 3 of everything you get when you go to the supermarket. If you normally buy a package of spaghetti noodles and a jar of Ragu, buy several of each, keep them in the cupboard. By buying 5 of everything you normally buy (excluding perishables like lettuce) you have a month’s worth of food in a week.

Every time you buy something you already have, put the new stuff in the back and use the older stuff first. Keep adding a little all the time – like a piggy bank.

Things like canned soup, vegetables and fruit, ketchup, mustard and BBQ sauce, pickles, olives and sauerkraut last a lot longer than the “best by date” and it’s easy to catch sales. Cream of chicken or mushroom soup makes a nice sauce for white beans and rice. BBQ sauce adds zest to red beans.  A jar of salsa adds zing to pinto beans and rice, together or separate.

Get a couple dozen packets of dry gravy, sloppy joe, spaghetti, taco mixes. Tomato soup can be used with dry spaghetti, sloppy joe and taco mix as a substitute for tomato sauce. Bacon bits, granulated garlic and dry minced onions make nice additions to a variety of dishes.

Peanut butter is a great source of protein and keeps quite a while. Canned stew and chili should have a place on the shelf. I, personally, find Spam disgusting, but it lasts decades because of the nitrates. There’s canned chicken, tuna and salmon. Jerky lasts longer in the freezer than on the shelf, heads up, rehydrated it is nasty.

Some other cheap and easy items are oatmeal, cream of wheat, rice, dry beans, barley or split peas for soup in 1 or 2 pound bags, mac & cheese, ramen noodles, rice-a-roni, instant potatoes, pasta noodles, bisquick and stove top stuffing. Other than the stuffing, these things last well beyond the “best by” date. If space is an issue, keep them in a Rubbermaid tote.

A box of instant milk stores well for several years in a recyclable plastic bottle once opened.

Saltines last longer than bread, but not much past the “best by” date. Tortillas can substitute for bread and take little space in the freezer.

Save the freezer for things that can’t be kept for an extended period any other way. Grated cheese in a re-closable bag lasts months in the freezer. Buy meat in the family size or party pack and freeze it in smaller bags. ALWAYS keep the freezer full, any space should be filled with a bottle of water. It doesn’t have to work as hard when it’s full, so it costs less to run and if the power goes out it will stay cold longer.

Have you ever tried sprouting? That’s a great way to put fresh “greens” in your diet without going to the grocery store or having a garden.

Get some ‘feel good’ things, too, like jello and hard candy. Pudding doesn’t turn out very well with instant milk, but works ok with canned milk. If you want to get things like cake, muffin or brownie mixes, a can of dehydrated whole eggs is a wise move. You can store eggs for over a year in the freezer: beat a dozen eggs, pour them in an ice tray, when they are frozen put them in a ziplock freezer bag. Just take out what you need, let it thaw covered in the refrigerator, fry it for scrambled eggs or use it in a recipe.

Christmas time popcorn tins work really well for 25 pounds of sugar or flour and are rodent proof if that is an issue for you.

Coffee, tea, Tang, kool-aid, Country Time Lemonade: I always keep Country Time on hand because I never know when my sister-in-law is going to show up with a bottle of vodka. Gotta love that girl!

Baking soda for cooking, but can also be used for brushing teeth, an antacid, cleaning the bathroom and a hundred other things. Baking powder, yeast, brown sugar and shortening are also some things you might want to have on hand if you like to bake some things from scratch.

Salt, do yourself a favor and buy it in the big bag, it’ll last a decade without any fancy packaging as long as you keep it dry. With pre-made and fast food, we really don’t realize how much salt we eat and need. It’s cheap and the most basic seasoning in the world.

Add extra cooking oil while you’re at it. In a pinch, it can be used as a substitute for butter or margarine in mac & cheese, etc.  Whatever you do, don’t forget to have jugs of water stashed in case your services are down.

Variety is important, but if you find your “pantry” has some things you don’t normally eat, commit yourself to eating one of those less favorite items once a week until it’s gone. OR every couple of months you can have an “eat from the pantry” week where you avoid the grocery store completely and eat only what you have on hand.

NOT going to the store for a week or two will really let you see what you need to stock up on or what you will potentially be doing without–Make a list during this week. This method works well for soap, toothpaste and toilet paper, too. Once the pantry is stocked, you can replace what you use as it goes on sale, whenever you shop for fresh vegetables and meat.  Eating for a year from the pantry is easily doable if you have a solid survival food list to work from. If you prefer to buy prepackaged prepper food for long term storage for use years down the road, there are definitely some positives to that route as well.

Prepper Acronyms and Terminology

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B.O.B. – Bug Out Bag, sometimes referred to as a “Get Home Bag” (GHB) – more accepted by those resistant to the idea of a need for prepping!

B.O.L. – Bug Out Location

CME – Coronal Mass Ejection – Solar Flare, emits radiation, hits earth’s atmosphere

EDC – Every Day Carry (of a firearm)

ELE – Extinction Level Event

EMP – Electro Magnetic Pulse

GRID DOWN:  all electric power is out in a widespread area; the “grid” is not working (the means of transferring electrical power from station-to-station/site-to-site)

HEMP – High Altitude EMP – nuclear detonation in earth’s atmosphere 50 to 200     miles above Earth’s surface

IMHO – In My Humble Opinion

MRE – Meal, Ready To Eat

MSM – Main Stream Media

NINJA – No Income, No Job or Assets

OpSec: Operational Security; why you must be able to keep your mouth shut and choose words carefully based on audience (when you do speak), if you are going to be a prepper!

RELATIVES: (never use names when posting/discussing in “online or stranger groups”

DD – Dear Daughter; if you have more than one, it’s DD1, DD2, etc., according to birth order (oldest is DD1)

DF – Dear Father, or just “DAD”

DH – Dear Husband; if you have more than one, don’t tell us.

DM – Dear Mother, or just “MOM”

DS –  Dear Son (DS1, etc., if you have more than one)

DW – Dear Wife; if you have more than one, you’re probably a dead man.

DIL – Daughter-in-Law

MIL – Mother-in-Law

FIL – Father-in-Law

SIL – Son-in-Law

SD – Stepdaughter; SD1, etc. (if more than one)

SS – Stepson (SS1, etc., if more than one)

SF – Solar Flare

SHEEPLE – Those who blindly think nothing will happen to them and the government will provide; those who follow the world and think preppers are nuts.

SHTF – Sh*t Hits The Fan (I prefer “Stuff”)

SIP – Shelter in Place

SOP – Standard Operating Procedure

TDL – “The D@&! Liar” – one of the references to our current leadership

TEOTWAWKI – The End of the World As We Know It

TFH – Tin Foil Hat; someone who is a “conspiracy theorist”; taken from the cartoonish notion of a person wearing a homemade aluminum foil “hat” to ward off harmful “rays”.

WROL – Without Rule Of Law

YOYO – You’re On Your Own

ZOMBIE – The clueless masses of sheeplike humanity who are blindly following their “leader”, when SHTF and the Zombies get hungry, thirsty, etc., they’re coming for what you have! This is why OpSec (Operational Security) must be Priority # 1 – ALWAYS, NO EXCEPTIONS!

How To Measure The Week’s Progress

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Health includes not just our physical body but also our psychological selves, our social set up, and our spiritual selves. All three of these directly impact on our body’s functioning, our hormonal systems and our immune system.

This is an exercise to help you become aware of what you do well from a psycho-social-spiritual health perspective. – This is just as important as knowing what you need to change, in order for you to get better or to improve your overall stress levels. You must be aware of something before you can act on it – so scientifically gather the data for your self care experiment.  Use the form below the instructions as your template for gathering your data.

For each aspect that you have done well give yourselves a tick.  Every now and then you will recognize something that you would prefer to have handled differently.  That is great, give yourselves a plus sign (+) to indicate this.

Physical

Are you getting sufficient sleep, rest (including blob out time – see the note below for the definition of blob out time), relaxing time.

Is your diet balanced and appropriate?  Sufficient fruit, vegetables, protein and water, and reduced processed food.

Are you getting daily appropriate exercise? Is it sufficient?

Are you seeing your GP/health professional as needed and getting the advice you need?

Are you taking required medications?

Are you managing your temperature requirements appropriately? Not too cold, too hot?

Any other physical requirements – dust, mould, allergens etc?

Are you doing too much?

Self acceptance

Are you accepting yourself: who you are, where you are, how you are, why you are the way you are?

Give a tick for each occasion you value yourself.

Are you staying away from self judgment? (Evaluation is judgment if you feel bad about it.)

Values and principles, time management, priority and boundary setting

What is important to you?

Did you make decisions about your time management in relation to your values?

Did you set priorities in relation to your values?

Did you set appropriate boundaries so that others are not able to invade yours constantly?

Relationships

Give yourself a tick for each affirming relationship you have had today.

What are your relationships like with your partner, family, work colleagues, social contacts?

Unfinished business

Give yourself a tick for any personal work you do on anything that hangs over you, drains your energy or causes a strong emotional response, eg: relationship issues, poor self esteem, abuse issues, over-commitment, anger, etc

Fun, enjoyment, humor

Give yourself a tick for anything that you enjoyed, encouraged relaxation or made you laugh.

Creativity

Give yourself a tick for any activity which is expressive of you.  This includes craft, art (in the widest sense), music, home redecorations, gardening, cooking and many hobbies.

Future and dreams

Give yourself a tick for time spent with hope, desires and plans for anything that makes you feel more complete, more whole, more enjoyment, anything you look forward to.

Note: Blob out time is time when you just stop.  You give yourself permission to do nothing.  You are not watching TV, reading, thinking, reflecting, planning, or even listening to the radio.  This is stop time, non functioning time.  You might choose to have a cup of tea or coffee and a small snack.  You might choose to have some relaxing music in the background but it’s not the time to be listening or doing. Any TV watching is general relaxation time and this is in addition to blob out time.

Warning

STOP, STOP.  Now before you go and read on, “thinking, yeah, yeah, that’s a bit basic, I know all that stuff”.  Stop, and think, “Am I really acknowledging to myself all those things that I’m doing right?”

Mostly we spend time bemoaning the things we can’t do, thinking about what we would like to do and blaming ourselves for not being able to do more, or other people for not understanding that we can’t do more.

So… stop… and go through the exercise.  Give yourself a pat on the back for EVERYTHING you are doing right – well at least a tick. The experience as we did this exercise weekly was that it took about ten to twelve weeks to ingrain the concept of developing awareness into our everyday thinking.

We have to start (or continue if you already have this insight) recognizing EVERY positive we can.  Life is difficult enough with a health condition or when stressed without making it more difficult by “forgetting” all the things we are doing right.

“When Technology Fails” Book Review

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So, I pulled out my copy of “When Technology Fails” by Matthew Stein. It’s a large book, not one that will fit in a pocket, certainly, and somewhat heavy, even for a “paperback”, with 493 pages of print. What Stein really means is, “when SHTF”!

I haven’t pulled this book out in a while, so, it was interesting to flip through it for my notes. I’m one of those people who likes to mark my books as I read: notes in margins, highlight a few things, that sort of thing.

What struck me as I went back through this book is that I did not have the same response to it as the first time I read through it. Perhaps that is because I have learned a great deal since I first picked up this book so that now, much of it seems well, sort of “primary”. But I do not want to give you the wrong impression; it does, indeed, have useful information in it.

I came to the conclusion that this book, “When Technology Fails” is a good starting point for beginning preppers.  It covers just about every area of thought one might need to consider in meeting every conceivable need when SHTF. The problem is, for the most part, it only touches on most of the subjects, and some information you might do well to research further.

I would not, for example, put much stock in the “training” available for medical and emergency health care. Having served as a volunteer for many, many years with the world’s largest disaster relief agency, including teaching First Aid and CPR at various levels, I did not find the information all that useful, even though it purportedly was taken from the ARC book (what little is there).

Take the class, folks. It’s a hands-on thing, for sure. All you need is one person to take the class, get the book, and teach the others, if it comes to that. There are also some great DIY ways to make saline solution. But much of what you learn is best learned “in live practice”, not from a book. The book is a reference, not a teacher.

There are many illustrations, but they are all low-budget drawings, IMHO. I don’t think they will do anyone much good, but they are better than nothing.

The one exception to the limited information, in my opinion, is WATER. Stein does an excellent job of telling you most of what you’ll need to know about water, storing it, treating it, threats to it and how to handle each threat…even those “unusual” places to find water in an emergency situation; I actually bought separate books just for that information!  So I highly recommend reading the section on water.

One thing I DO really appreciate about this book is that it contains many valuable references for contact; you can spend a lot of time trying to pull this information together, where to go for what information, who to contact to learn more about XYZ subject…but Stein has made that easy. I also like that he includes Joel Salatin, a Christian and possibly THE authority on whole food eating, and well as other individuals who have proven that they know exactly what they are talking about and are qualified to teach.

The real value in this book, in my opinion, is that it raises the right questions. You won’t find all the answers here, but, if you don’t know what questions to ask, how can you possibly find the answers? This is a good resource for those new or young at prepping, or even just a quick review for seasoned preppers, in my opinion.

For more timeless survival wisdom and ideas, check out these survival guides and PDF downloads.