Survival

A prepper reveals what she keeps in her pantry — and what you should have, too

Deborah D. Moore knows a thing or two about prepping her pantry for an extended period of time, having lived most of her life as a “prepper” before there was even a word to describe “prepping.” “When I was a newlywed, just 19 years old, we lived in Detroit,” explained Moore, the author of “A Prepper’s Cookbook,” in an interview with Fox News. “I heard there was a snow storm coming and we were to stay off the roads … I checked my cupboards and we had a half loaf of bread and two cans of soup.” As Moore told Fox News, she drove to a nearby market to pick up supplies, only to find chaos and enormous check-out lines. “I vowed that day to never have less than a week of food on hand at all times,” she said. “That was 50 years ago.” Shortly after that first wake-up call, Moore explained that she began tending a garden, and took up canning and preserving as a way to store her jams and produce. Since that time, she’s become something of an expert on the types of items everyone should have on hand, as well as in their “working” pantry (i.e., short-term pantry) and “retreat” pantry (long-term). So before you make another run to the grocery store, allow Moore to share a few of her top tips for buying and storing foods for an ideal pantry, as well as ultimately cooking those foods for a family dinner. “Everyone has a working pantry; it’s called a cupboard,” says Moore. “Once a person realizes the convenience of having food on hand, they graduate to a closet. I now have a room.” As Moore explained, the first things to think about keeping in a “working” pantry are the foods most commonly consumed within the house. “A person starts with what they like to eat,” she said. “’Store what you eat; Eat what you store.’ I coined that phrase over 30 years ago, and it still holds true.” That said, there are several items almost every pantry would benefit from having. In Moore’s opinion, that includes “flour, sugar, salt, yeast, cooking oil, and dry pasta,” the latter of which she calls the “most versatile” food in her pantry. (“It’s cheap and it stores VERY well,” she said.) “There should be foods ready to eat without cooking like beans, canned meats and fish, soup,” she added “A variety is essential to not getting bored. Add herbs and spices, cheese, jarred garlic, olives, pickles.” “The biggest difference is the amount and the method of storage,” explained Moore of her retreat — or long-term — pantry. “As an example, in the working pantry one might keep a 5-pound bag of potatoes; in the retreat pantry it would be a couple of boxes of potato flakes or dehydrated slices — shelf-stable food.” When allocating for a retreat pantry, Moore again explained that it’s best to start with preferred foods, but only if those are shelf-stable, and won’t be expiring for a very, very long time. To calculate what should be included, Moore recommended planning out a one-week menu, and then multiplying that by however many weeks one plans on “retreating.” “When I lived off-grid for seven years, we wintered in,” she explained. “I needed to have ALL my food supplies on my shelf no later than November 1. It took planning and it took keeping track of what we actually used.” In addition to kitchen supplies such as aluminum foil, plastic bags, paper plates, can opener, etc., Moore insisted people stock comfort foods, as long as those too are shelf-stable. “There’s nothing that says normal to me like Jell-O and fruit cocktail!” she said. “And popcorn.” And as a pet-owner, Moore urged anyone planning a pantry to remember that their furry friends will need plenty of supplies too. “Please, do not forget your pets,” she said. “My cat has his own storage space.” When it comes to crowd-pleasing recipes, Moore has more than a few ideas — which is why she shares over 100 of them in her new cookbook. But while she says pasta dishes and soups are the easiest for novice chefs, she says one of her favorite easy meals is “Chicken in a Nest,” which comes together in a flash. Click here to read the recipe, and more:

Some great info here!  Thanks Deborah!!  You can get her “A Prepper’s Cookbook” on amazon.com in paperback.  In addition, here are a couple food storage sites we recommend:          🙂

https://www.wisefoodstorage.com/

https://mypatriotsupply.com/

 

Preppers, once mocked, say they were ready for coronavirus crisis

Across the U.S., “preppers” have been planning for an event like the coronavirus pandemic for years. Now, as a run on toilet paper and necessary supplies have created vast lines and panic in our nation’s supermarkets and stores, some are able to sit back and relax — while being humble enough to avoid saying “I told you so.” “We’re not laughing. We’re not saying ‘I told you so,’ when people are out there fighting over toilet paper and hand sanitizers,” said Ohio resident Paul Buescher. Buescher shares a farm with 32 other members of a group in Ohio. It’s packed with enough canned and dehydrated food and water to last for years. As the coronavirus continues to spread, he says people call him all day long asking for advice. Penny Richards, a postal carrier, has continued to “prep” after a tornado impacted her area nine years ago and killed dozens of people. “The apocalypse is not a thing that’s going to happen,” she said, according to AL.com. “But if you think about being prepared for the zombie apocalypse, you’re probably going to be prepared for the coronavirus.” Preppers don’t always describe themselves as the doomsday type. Some hunker down because of their distrust of the government, others by fear of disasters or disease. Darron Taylor — a prepper on a Keto diet from Alabama who grows his own food — has stayed vigilant because of what he calls “the three D’s of life: death, disease and disaster.” He even has a channel on YouTube titled “Mayhem Country Living,” which teaches prepping, survival skills, growing and preparing foods, or simply live-chatting with his audience. “I have not shot a zombie ever in my life,” he told the website. “Birds are real, they aren’t drones… and then there are no lizard people that I’ve met, but I have eaten three times a day, every day, for 51 years.” The coronavirus has also triggered a massive spike in firearms and ammunition sales, which could be attributed to the public being reactive to the virus — a stark contrast when compared to the approach by preppers. “Families are social distancing and stocking up on food and supplies at home.” Robyn Sandoval, 45, executive director of the Austin-based “A Girl & A Gun Women’s Shooting League,” told Fox News. “The outbreak is creating a lot of anxiety in our communities. Families who have prepared at home want to be equipped to protect themselves from any looters or violence.” Christoper Price, who owns a preppers store in Alabama says some people have blamed preppers for panic buying when in reality, he said, their methodical approach has afforded them the luxury of not needing to. “There are people out there blaming preppers for panic buying, that’s totally wrong,” he told AL.com. “You can’t start prepping right now, it’s too late.” Others, like James Charles, the leader of the New York City Preppers Network, have been sharing their survival knowledge to people online when it comes to being prepared for a situation like COVID-19. “I tell people all the time, ‘Don’t be nervous; this is not the time to panic,’” he said in an interview, according to the New York Times. “This is why we get ready. This is our wheelhouse.”

For more on prepping from “Mayhem Country Living,” click on the text above….and stay safe out there.

Norway to spend $12.7M in upgrades to ‘doomsday’ seed vault

Does Norway know something we don’t? The Scandinavian country announced Monday that it is going to spend about $12.7 million to upgrade its “doomsday” seed vault that is the world’s largest repository built to safeguard against wars or natural disasters wiping out global food crops. The Verge reported that the upgrades will focus on a new concrete tunnel and “emergency power and refrigerated units and other electrical equipment that emeits heat through the tunnel.” The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a gene bank built underground on an isolated island in a permafrost zone some 620 miles from the North Pole, was opened in 2008 as a master backup to the world’s other seed banks, in case their deposits are lost. The latest specimens sent to the bank, located on the Svalbard archipelago between mainland Norway and the North Pole, included more than 15,000 reconstituted samples from an international research center that focuses on improving agriculture in dry zones. They were the first to retrieve seeds from the vault in 2015 before returning new ones after multiplying and reconstituting them. The specimens consisted of seed samples for some of the world’s most vital food sources like potato, sorghum, rice, barley, chickpea, lentil and wheat. The agency borrowed the seeds three years ago because it could not access its gene bank of 141,000 specimens in the war-torn Syrian city of Aleppo, and so was unable to regenerate and distribute them to breeders and researchers. Fifty thousand samples were deposited last year from seed collections in Benin, India, Pakistan, Lebanon, Morocco, Netherlands, the U.S., Mexico, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Belarus and Britain. It brought the total deposits in the snow-covered vault — with a capacity of 4.5 million — to 940,000.

Poll: Millennials lack basic survival skills

Not only are millennials self-absorbed, unmotivated, entitled workaholics—according to experts, anyway—but they may also be inept survivalists. A new poll, conducted by the London Boat Show, reveals that today’s young people lack basic outdoor skills possessed by older generations, The Express reports. Only a third of respondents knew how to naturally ignite a fire, and 44 percent had never been camping before. Moreover, half of the young adults surveyed were unable to tie a survival knot, less than a third had ever caught their own fish, and 40 percent of young people surveyed reported having never swum in open water. “Despite the rise of TV shows such as “I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here” and “Bear Grylls: Born Survivor,” young people lack basic survival skills,” said a spokesperson for the London Boat Show. Increased reliance on technology might be to blame for the lack of knowledge, the results suggest.

Gee..  Ya think?

Election Chaos Fears Have Preppers Stockpiling Survival Food

In case of an election night Doomsday, preppers are running up sales of emergency survival food. While sales for “long term food” typically see an increase around natural disasters and elections, “this is more intense than what we saw in 2012,” said Keith Bansemer, VP of marketing for My Patriot Supply, a manufacturer and seller of survival food. During the previous election his company saw sales double. This time it’s triple. “We have everyone we can on the phones,” he said. “We are overwhelmed.” Purchases at other long term food supply companies are up as well. Emergency preparedness online store TheEpicenter reports a 6 percent uptick in year over year sales. Another company, Legacy Foods, predicts they’ll see a 1-2 week spike in sales after the election — if Hillary Clinton wins, said owner Phil Cox. The meals, sold by the plastic bucket or tote bin, are typically dehydrated or freeze-dried food in sealed military-grade Mylar packs. Menu items include pasta primavera, Hawaiian Style Sweet n’ Sour, cheesy broccoli and rice soup, orange energy drink mix and chocolate pudding. They’re sold in bundles based on how long they’ll feed you. For $2,000 spent at Legacy Foods, you could eat three square meals a day for an entire year. That’s 1,080 servings. TheEpicenter has a 14-day supply kit for $235 that’s recently been “selling really well,” said owner Bryan Nelson. The most popular entry-level seller at My Patriot Supply is a 3-month supply for $497. It comes a in nondescript gray slim line totes bin designed to be easy to stack in the back of a closet or slip under your bed. Big name retailers are in on the game. Costco sells a 1-month supply of 390 servings in plastic gallon buckets for $114.99. Wal-Mart has a bucket deal, too. What’s feeding this new urgency? Survivalist consumers says they’re preparing for post-election unrest that could involve everything from massive riots, to power grid outages, to the total collapse of the financial system where a can of food becomes currency. And it’s not just guys digging a hole on their farm and filling it with MRE’s who are driving sales, companies say, but schoolteachers, moms, and successful financial planners. Nor is it limited to just rural areas.

Indeed..  To read the rest of this article, click on the text above.

Prepping for Doomsday: Bunkers, Panic Rooms, and Going Off the Grid

The apocalypse has become big business. And it’s getting bigger every day. In the ’50s, homeowners fearing Communist attacks built bunkers in their backyards and basements, hung up a few “God Bless Our Bomb Shelter” signs and called it a Cold War. But today, Americans en masse are again preparing for the worst—and Communists are just about the only thing not on their list. What is? Terrorist attacks, a total economic collapse, perhaps even zombie invasions. Or maybe just a complete societal breakdown after this November’s scorched-Earth presidential election. But this is not your Uncle Travis’ guns-and-canned-foods-militia vision of Armageddon preparedness. While the fears of survivalists and so-called preppers are modernizing, so too are their ideas and methods of refuge. The business of disaster readiness is getting higher tech, higher priced, and way more geographically diverse, with state-of-the-art underground shelters tricked out with greenhouses, gyms, and decontamination units in the boondocks and the latest in plush panic rooms in city penthouses. Welcome to the brave (and for some, highly profitable) new world of paranoia. “There’s a lot of uneasiness in society. You see it in politics. You see it in the economy. The world is changing really, really quickly and not always for the better,” says Richard Duarte, author of “Surviving Doomsday: A Guide for Surviving an Urban Disaster.” Prepping “gives them a certain comfort that at least they’ve got some sort of preparations to … take care of their family if things start falling apart all around them,” he says. If the booming sales of panic rooms are any indication, more and more city dwellers these days are obsessively worrying about everything from home invasions to terror attacks. And they’re backing up those worries with cold, hard cash. Sales of safe (aka panic) rooms, where families can safely lock themselves away from most threats, are up 30% over the same time last year at Gaffco Ballistics, a Londonderry, VT–based installer which does much of its business in New York City, according to CEO Tom Gaffney. That’s driven in part by the terrorist attacks in San Bernardino, CA, and Paris, he says. Most of his safe rooms are actually fortified master bedrooms, with ballistic fiberglass–reinforced walls, a Kevlar-lined door that is purported to resist both bullets and sledgehammers, and bullet-proof windows—as well as a high-end alarm system that is designed to withstand burglars, rioters, and more. He also turns home theaters into radiation-proof rooms where residents can watch the latest Hollywood blockbusters while World War III rages on outside. The rooms range from $250,000 to $1.5 million. (No one said paranoia came cheap.) People are “just more aware” of potential threats, says Gaffney of his clients, many of whom don’t consider themselves preppers. “It’s a growth market.” That paranoia has also been fueling business at construction company and safe room installer GoNavco Corp., a Troy, NY–based safe room installer. Owner Joe Navarra began installing panic rooms several years ago after requests began pouring in. Now this burgeoning portion of his business is up about 50% over the same time last year. His no-frills chambers start at $20,000, although most are in the $50,000 range. They’re typically installed in the closets or bathrooms of master bedrooms. Panic rooms aren’t just relegated to the biggest cities and the biggest disasters. Author Duarte has several spaces in his suburban home outside of Miami that could serve as safe rooms with fortified walls and doors. “You’re never going to stop a determined attacker” with his homemade safe rooms, says Duarte, who says he became a prepper after Hurricane Andrew destroyed his home in 1992. “But you can slow them down to give you enough time to call the police or figure out how to defend yourself.” Of course, for some survivalists, cities will never feel safe. These are the folks who need to go far off the grid. But even this age-old concept is getting a makeover, and a business plan.

To read the rest of this fascinating article on the business behind prepping, click on the text above. 🙂

Panicked Elite Buying Bomb-Proof Luxury Survival Bunkers to Escape Civil Unrest, Disasters

Panicked members of the elite are buying luxury bomb-proof underground survival bunkers because they fear mass civil unrest might be on the horizon. The company behind the construction of the sprawling complexes, Vivos, says the facilities are for the “protection of high net worth individuals” in the event of apocalyptic-style scenarios during which “millions will perish or worse yet, struggle to survive as victims”. “Where will you go when pandemonium strikes?” asks a promo for the luxury shelters. The biggest facility, called Europa One, is located in Germany and is “one of the most fortified and massive underground survival shelters on Earth, deep below a limestone mountain” and is “safely secured from the general public, behind sealed and secured walls, gates and blast doors”. Journalist Lynn Parramore said she also visited another site in Indiana which is a former Cold War communications facility. “Built during the Cold War to withstand a 20 megaton blast, within just a few miles, this impervious underground complex accommodates up to 80 people, for a minimum of one year of fully autonomous survival, without needing to return to the surface,” states a promo for the bunker on the Vivos website. The main selling point is the location of the facility, which is a “safe distance away from the New Madrid fault line” and therefore a good hideaway to escape a “tsunami-type event”. “You go underground and it feels like you’re in a very nice hotel,” said Parramore. “This is for wealthy people who are concerned about various disaster scenarios, but a common theme among them is a fear of civil unrest, a fear of an uprising from the 99%,” she added. Units in some of the underground shelters, which also come with a year’s supply of food and water, start at around $35,000 dollars but the largest ones sell for upwards of $3 million dollars. “There is no assurance that our race will continue, therefore it is our responsibility to do everything we can to survive,” warns the Vivos website, which invites elitists to contact them for further information that is on a “need to know” basis only. As we reported last week, millionaires are fleeing Chicago and other major cities due to concerns over racial tensions and rising crime rates. “About 3,000 individuals with net assets of $1 million or more,” left Chicago in just the last year alone according to the Chicago Tribune. Paris and Rome are also seeing a mass exodus of millionaires, while wealthy elites are also installing panic rooms in their big city apartments due to fears over potential civil unrest and skyrocketing crime. Land and remote homes in places like New Zealand are also popular with the global 1%, with realtors citing the threat of worldwide financial instability and domestic disorder as motivating factors behind the purchases.

To see the Vivos promo video, click on the text above.