What will you do when your matches get wet?

So fire, duh. Very important, and I don't know about you but I haven't gotten friction fires down. So until that day I rely on modern tools. So of course I carry lighters and matches and the like, along with a firesteel. A very neat tool I'm sure you've seen Bear Grylles use, and his knife is where I got the idea for modifying my knife.

This flint is kept on my keys at all time, it can get wet and still produce a spark that's over 2000 degrees. Unfortunately the striker that it came with was junk, too small, and digs into your hand every time you used it. So I generally use my knife as a striker. The Bear Grylles knife has a surface on the back specifically for this purpose. So instead of buying a new knife, I just modified the one I have. Three seconds with a grinder and I have a perfect striker surface.

Solar Cooking

In a survival situation or apocalyptic scenario, it doesn't make any sense to waste energy gathering wood when its warm out. So how can you cook your food without this enormous energy waste? Make yourself a solar cooker.

Solar cookers are generally made with a reflective material that reflects sunlight onto a dark colored cooking vessel. They can range from simple to incredibly complex. In this I'll lay out three very simple types, two of which are really easy to build at home.

The first is by far the easiest and most common type. It basically consists of a cardboard box lined with tin foil or mylar. Take a square cardboard box, and cut one along a corner from top to bottom. Line the entire inside of the box with tin foil. I use spray adhesive, but any glue you have will work. Angle the flaps at the top and front slightly inward, but not so much as to block light. Trim out the spaces on the bottom so that the lower flaps can be angled slightly upward. Make another flat piece to put the opened box on top of. Put a black crockpot in the center and face it south. Depending on cloud cover and temperature you can fully cook a chicken in about five hours. By periodically turning the box towards the sun throughout the day you can increase its efficiency.

The second type is a little more involved but very doable. First you need a satellite dish. Any size will work, the bigger it is, the faster it works. Just keep in mind that even a small dish can start a fire. For the reflective material you can use tin foil but Mylar is much better on curved surfaces. Cut your reflective material (in this case Mylar) into thin triangles. Spray the dish with adhesive and smoothly apply the Mylar, rubbing out air bubbles as you go. Spray the backs of the strips just before you apply them to ensure a smoother surface. Find the distance that the reflected sunlight is focused and place the pot at the focal point. This cooker boiled a pot of water in about a half hour.

If you want to tackle a large project, a water parabola is really neat. The basic design is a clear plastic sheet suspended above the cooking area, filled with water creating a parabola. Start by finding the heaviest clear plastic available. Cut a round hole in a piece of plywood and attach the sheet to the top, giving it a bit of slack. Build a frame to suspend it about 6-10 feet in the air and fill it with water. The weight of the water pulls down on the plastic forming a parabolic lens. Now find the focal point and make a table that is the proper height. Obviously don't use anything flammable. If you build it big enough you can fry an egg in seconds.

Using these and similar methods you can cook your food, pasteurize water, and even start a fire.

Here's a cool video from Green power science

Shoelaces

Just a quick one, I can build a shelter with my shoelaces. Swap out your shoelaces with 550 cord. Not only will they last forever, but broken down you have 5 times the length of cordage to work with. 550 cord has several smaller strands inside a larger one, all together they can hold 550 pounds. (Hence the name) Its also commonly called paracord. With this resource you can fish, build a shelter or set snares. Could really be a lifesaver. I get mine through cheaperthandirt.com

It's not a purse, It's a "Survival Attache"

For years I was always saying, "If I could carry a purse I would". So why not? A messenger bag is perfectly acceptable nowadays as long as you're prepared for the occasional ribbing in the shop over it. I finally decided that I needed a bag about six months after I got my handgun license.

Now obviously my carry is on my person at all times, but reloads can be stored in my bag quite nicely. This combined with having a bottle of water on hand makes it a necessity for me now. Having all this extra room to carry things has made me feel way more at ease in almost any situation. Simply having pain killers and Benadryl on me puts my mind at ease, being that I have a bad ankle and a mushroom allergy.

The specifics of the kit are really up to you. The way I thought about it was as if I would be stuck in a room with no food or water for 24 hours. What medications might I need? How much water can I conceivably carry before it becomes a hindrance to daily activities? How bored would I get? Everybody has different needs in these areas so I won't get too specific on my kit, just a general picture.

First and foremost is water. As I mentioned in a previous post I love my Platypus flexible bottle. Holds one liter and weighs almost nothing. For food all I generally carry is a bag of peanuts and a small Ziploc of quinoa. I try to have a granola bar for some carbs but I tend to eat them fairly regularly so they're not a constant. A multi-tool, Mini Maglite and my survival bandanna can all be quite handy as well. Ammo is a big one for me in my selection of this bag. It has five pockets for handgun magazines and three for my rifle. (I don"t carry ammo for my rifle normally, and usually only have two magazines with me) My handgun light and pepper spray round out the self defense stuff.  My survival tin is also included. (Detailed in a previous post) For non-essential stuff I carry a journal, (for blog ideas mostly) my iPod, and charger. Various pens, a usb for my phone, and lip balm.

Survival Eyewear

So I must admit that for the last several months I have been down to one pair of glasses. This is really against what preparedness is all about. So for my birthday a friend got me a pair of Wiley X PT-3 sunglasses. These glasses feature removable lenses that can be swapped out for clear or amber lenses. In addition to that, I ordered a prescription insert that clips above the nosepiece behind the safety rated lens. 


Overall a pretty rugged design, they are comfortable as well as functional. They ride a little higher than I'm used to from a pair of sunglasses, but when I sighted down my rifle I figured out why. The spacing below the lenses provide clearance for a good cheek weld on a buttstock. So I know that they will be great at the range, and that space reduces fogging as well while hiking or during any other physical activity. I am very much looking forward to wearing a darkened lens again, as I have gone without contacts for awhile and don't have dark prescription glasses. I'm hoping they will be good on the motorcycle as well, unfortunately it's been a bit cold to try it out. I did stick my head out the window while driving last night and the results seem promising.


My only complaint would be that it's kind of a pain to swap out the lenses, and it cannot be done quickly. For the most part I will probably be using the amber lenses in a day to day sense, so it will only be a minor annoyance. In a survival situation it would be strictly clear lenses I'm sure. While I was at it I figured I should probably have another backup, so I ordered an emergency backup pair of regular eyeglasses as well. Went to Greateyeglasses.com and got a decent pair for under 20 bucks delivered. You can't beat that, especially since they didn't even call to verify my prescription.

A cautionary tale...

The End.

Spruce tea mead 2

So just a quick update on the mead. It was done a mere 20 days after the the first post, and it's all gone due to the fact that it was very good. This has by far been the fastest mead I have ever brewed. My first thought was that the smaller quantity facilitated the process. Now I'm thinking it was the many vitamins found in the spruce tea. I brewed two half gallon batches at the same time, one with spruce and one with plain water. The regular one took an added two weeks, so it must be that spruce is excellent yeast food.

In short, this mead is great. It has amazing amount of flavor even considering the lower alcohol content. It would be on the sweet side by many opinions, but that's how I prefer it. It could probably go another day or two and dry out further. It has an almost minty smell to it, with juniper like spruce notes. After racking in the fridge for two days it cleared out considerably. Many of the spruce notes fell to the back and it was left with a clean, dry finish with a distinct medicinal quality. I am currently brewing another gallon today, with a heavier dose of spruce, hopefully the flavor will come out a bit more.