“The only two good words that can be said for a hurricane are that it gives sufficient warning of its approach and that it blows from one point of the compass at a time.” – Gertrude Atherton.Hurricane season was quite active when it started this year, but it is now in a sort of pause. That’s an opportunity for those who live in areas affected by hurricanes or the surrounding regions bordering these areas to review their plans and adequately prepare. Last year had a record 30 Atlantic storms. Fourteen of those were hurricanes. Though the current season is taking a little breather, August looks to resume activities. The Saharan Air Layer is currently suppressing tropical storm activity, but as this fades in August and a forecasted high-pressure system establishes over the northeastern United States, a steady stream of tropical storms and hurricanes could barrel in directly to the United States. Instead of bending away from the U.S. and skirting the coastline as years before, the conditions are perfect for these to hit populated areas directly. Even if that doesn’t happen, we have seen the devastating effects of hurricanes over the last two decades. The damage to structures and the displaced people can stretch for hundreds of miles inland, away from the coastal regions. High winds, rain, flooding, power outages, road closures, and more could happen far from the shoreline and spill over into communities hundreds of miles away. The time to prepare for a hurricane is long before they even name the hurricane– before it even appears on any map or forecast. In this blog, I’ll review some of the basics of hurricane and extreme storm preparedness, but I’ll also provide a couple of hacks that can help you weather the storm better.KNOW YOUR ZONEIf this season is your first season of hurricanes because you moved to a hurricane zone, there are a few things you absolutely must know to get up to speed. Know the location of shelters in your area. Mark more than one safe evacuation location on a map. Know your evacuation routes—elevation matters. You may think that the fastest route out of town is a certain way, but if it’s not an elevated route, it may be flooded. Mark more than one safe route to a safer location. If you may need special evacuation assistance or someone in your family may need assistance, ask local officials if there is a registry to assist in the event of an outage or flood. Your first zone is your home, so make sure you know how to shut off electricity, gas, and water in the event of catastrophic damage. Secure everything around your house that could blow away. In the days leading up to the hurricane potentially making landfall, clear all branches or dead trees around your home that could likely be snapped in the wind. Sustained winds of between 74 and 157 miles per hour or stronger are highly probable even if you are not directly in the hurricane’s path. Board up windows with 5/8ths inch plywood if you are in a coastal region.Make sure your vehicles are gassed up. Even if you plan on weathering the storm in your home, you need to have a plan to get out of the disaster zone. Know where you will go, and keep that as your backup plan. In the period leading up to, during, and right after a disaster, food, water, and fuel will force many to desperate measures. Make sure to factor in your security with all your preparations. Consider the safety of your home zone, but also consider how safe the evacuation routes may or may not be. Know the areas prone to flooding, and know how to get out if you have to. If you decide to evacuate or are ordered to do so, don’t delay. Shut off the power, gas, and water to your home. Stay ahead of the masses of people who will evacuate. Hurricanes can cause significant damage for a hundred miles inland, but they are confined to a geographical path. You can get outside of that path if you act quickly. Make sure everyone in your family can connect with a family or friend far outside the disaster zone. In this way, if you are separated, you will be able to reconnect.If you are in your home when the storm hits, make sure that you are in a low, interior room. Go to a safe area, such as an interior room, closet, or downstairs bathroom. Never go outside the protection of your home or shelter before there is confirmation that the storm has passed the area. Stay away from windows, skylights, and glass doors. Never go outside the protection of your home or shelter before there is confirmation that the storm has passed the area. The eye of the storm could create a temporary and deceptive lull, with high winds still approaching.WATERYour at-home kit must contain a minimum of a 3-day supply of water. That’s roughly 1 gallon per person, per day. I highly encourage people to have more water than that on hand. A bathtub emergency Waterbob, even liners, can allow you to fill the bathtub with around fifty to eighty gallons of emergency water. You should also know how to turn off the water flow to your water heater and have the tools necessary to tap this reserve of 20 to 60 gallons of water. Though it is likely completely safe to drink, it’s also at the right temperature to develop a bacterium known as legionella after a disaster. You may want to filter it or purify it if you feel it may have been tainted. Fortunately, with hurricanes, we can see them coming, so there is time to fill your water reserves. Even collapsible water containers can allow you to top up your water supply quickly. If you have to evacuate, competition for resources will be high. The water that surrounds you may be contaminated with chemicals or other waste materials. Having a personal filtration straw will be invaluable. Finally, freeze some water bottles in your refrigerator’s freezer and crank your refrigerator and freezer to its coldest setting. When the power goes out, the ice will keep your food colder for longer. As the ice melts, you will have clean water to drink.All that said, every hurricane that hits results in people scrambling for cases of water. In extreme cases, people are sickened by drinking compromised water or dehydrated while sitting in floodwaters. With modern forecasting, we see the disaster of a hurricane days before it ever strikes. While others adopt a wait-and-see approach that leads to desperation later, secure your essential water resources right now–long before a tropical storm even appears on the maps.FOODWith your water secured, you also need to have on hand enough non-perishable food that does not require cooking. Most hurricanes have a long build-up, a period of destruction, an aftermath, and a recovery. In some cases, like Katrina, the destruction can be so bad that much of the area is rendered uninhabitable, and the recovery effort is significantly delayed. While the Federal Emergency Management Agency recommends 72-hours of non-perishable food that does not require cooking, I think that’s the absolute minimum you should have. You would be better served to have at least two week’s worth of food on hand. A camping stove, rocket stove, or Kelly Kettle will allow you to purify water and cook small meals. The Kelly Kettle and the Minuteman rocket stoves will use just small amounts of biomass to boil or cook efficiently.Without electricity or a cold source, food stored in refrigerators and freezers can become unsafe. Bacteria in food grow rapidly at temperatures between 40 and 140 degrees Fahrenheit, and if these foods are consumed, you can become very sick. You will want to raid your refrigerator and plan on eating or cooking what is in there in the early part of the disaster. Also, consider stocking up on ready-to-eat canned meats, fruits, and vegetables. Freeze-dried foods will take up very little space but will provide you loads of nutrient diversity. Protein bars, powdered milk, and dried cereals will give you a feeling of fullness. You should consider two types of food: food that you can store in your home for surviving the aftermath of the hurricane and food you will need to take with you if you are forced to evacuate. If you are forced to evacuate, make sure you have at least 72-hours worth of food with you.MAKE A KITWith your water and food secured, you also need to make a kit. The basics for your kit are a battery-powered flashlight and radio and extra batteries, a first aid kit, and a minimum of a seven-day supply of any medicines you need to take regularly. Also, put a whistle, a dust mask, gloves, personal sanitation, hygiene items, a multi-tool, and maps of your area in your kit. Make copies of all necessary documents and identification cards and put them in a zip lock bag in your backpack. All of these items should be ready to go in your bug-out bag. I have several videos on what to include in your bag, and I will link to them in the comments below. Consult those videos for what you will need if the hurricane recovery doesn’t happen. Your kit should allow you to be self-sustaining for up to a week after any disaster. RETURNING HOMEIf you have evacuated, return home only when it is safe to do so. Do not go through floodwaters to get to your home, as pollution and bacteria levels will be very high. Also, floodwaters can be deceptive, they may look shallow and slow-moving, but they can be deep, hide objects beneath them, and be very treacherous. Watch for downed power lines on your route home and when you arrive back at your house. Check for frayed wires around your home. Check your gas and electric connections before turning the power back on to avoid electrocution or explosions. Do not enter your home if water is still surrounding your home. Don’t eat food that has gone unrefrigerated. Don’t eat food from your garden if floodwaters have seeped into your soil. Consider boiling your water for a few days, even if no specific boil order has been issued. Typically, the deaths experienced during these types of disasters occur in the aftermath, not during the event itself. Be very careful during this period.CONCLUSIONIf there’s anything good about a hurricane, it is that you can see them approaching long before they show up at your door. Even knowing that many people fail to prepare until the very last moment. This leads to panic and desperation and can make a passing storm into a lasting disaster. If you live in any coastal region, prepare for the most likely disaster of a hurricane or tropical storm. Don’t be caught off guard. You will find that the preps you do put in place will get you through a host of other disasters, as well.What do you think? What’s the one lesson you learned when you survived a hurricane? What do you wish you would have known? As always, please stay safe out there.
In this blog, we’re going to take you through, step-by-step, showing you how to make beef jerky. We’ll cover the steps, the recipe, and all of the items you’ll need on hand. Nobody has ever been able to eat a whole cow in one sitting but to survive, it’s essential to preserve as much of the meat as possible for consumption.
It seems like everyone I know has their own jerky recipe, but Shawn assures me his is the ultimate jerky recipe. You don’t need a fancy dehydrator to make it.
WHAT YOU NEED I’ll address optional ingredients in a moment, but Siracha is a great fermented pepper sauce to use for this. For my recipe, you will need two or more pounds of beef (I used top round and flank steak), a bowl to marinate the meat, a measuring cup, 3/4 cup soy sauce, one tablespoon Worcestershire sauce, one teaspoon smoked paprika, one tablespoon brown sugar, one teaspoon or more ground pepper, one teaspoon garlic powder, one teaspoon onion powder, one teaspoon liquid smoke.
Optional other ingredients include toasted sesame oil, hot pepper flakes or hot pepper powder, 1/4 cup pineapple juice, two teaspoons ginger, Siracha sauce to taste. If you have a particular preference in taste, feel free to add an optional ingredient. I will add some sesame oil, pineapple juice, and chili paste to mine at the end of the basic recipe to make mine just a little more Pacific Island style.
THE QUICK RECIPE
Trim the fat off the meat and reserve it for other purposes like making tallow, which I cover in another blog. Cut the meat against the grain into 1/2 inch to 1/4 inch slices depending upon the thickness. You don’t want the meat so thick it will be hard to dry the center.
Place in bowl.
Add 3/4 cup soy sauce, one tablespoon Worcestershire sauce, one teaspoon smoked paprika, one tablespoon brown sugar, about one teaspoon ground pepper, one teaspoon garlic powder, one teaspoon onion powder, one teaspoon liquid smoke.
Add any additional ingredients of your choice but remember, a little goes a long way. Some flavors will intensify with drying.
Let marinate for 30 minutes. All of that liquid will get sucked into the meat.
Stir again with hands
Place jerky strips on dehydrator trays or parchment paper on cookie sheets.
Put meat in an oven or dehydrator.
Use the lowest setting on your oven or the recommended dehydrator settings.
Test your jerky for moisture and taste every few hours for doneness. There should be no liquid moisture coming out of your jerky when you bend it at a 90-degree angle. If it cracks or breaks, it is overdone. Remove it immediately. It’s still edible but will be on the crunchier side. The dehydration process will take between 4 and 12 hours, depending upon the dehydration method you are using and the thickness of your cuts.
That’s the basic recipe. Now here is everything else you need to know to be successful at it…
THE MEAT You can use any cut of meat if you practice proper safety measures, but using pork or chicken requires special safety measures too lengthy for me to address here. Chicken, for instance, needs to be cooked or smoked before drying to prevent salmonella. Pork must be treated to avoid Trichinosis. I have even had rattlesnake and alligator jerky. If you do meat other than beef or bison, which is the easiest, read up on it to address the safety concerns. Venison makes an incredible, gamey but lean jerky, but urban preppers can’t always get their hands on affordable venison. I use beef for this jerky because almost everyone can find a cheap piece of beef. You can use multiple different cuts of beef, from prime rib to flank steak. I prefer flank steak. The key to cutting the meat is to trim the fat then cut the meat against the grain. This breaks down the stringy tendrils and helps to make your jerky not so chewy. If you’d like to know more about trimming the fat, consult my video on creating tallow. There I demonstrate trimming the fat on several different cuts of meat. My preferred cut for jerky is flank steak like you would use for a good carne asada. Which was once a cheap cut of meat that nobody ate, as were most barbeque meats. Somewhere along the way, people realized how good it was when properly marinated and prepared, and the price went up accordingly.
A super lean cut of meat is considered by many to be the most favorable for jerky. Beef eye of round, bottom round, and top round are all excellent cuts of meat to convert to jerky. I shop around for the best-looking cut of meat at the most affordable price. Because you’ll be taking all the moisture out of it and flavoring it, the most expensive cut of meat or the cheapest cut of meat, it won’t matter. Typically, the only things that separate the two are the amount of work your butcher has to do and the amount of fat on the cut. As long as you cut the meat against the grain and into strips, your meat will be fine.
THE MARINADE The second part of ultimate jerky is the marinade. You will want a little salt in your marinade, like soy sauce, as this will provide an extra preservative quality. If you don’t want to use soy sauce or are allergic to soy, you can create a brine of 2 cups water and 2 Tbsp salt. This will be high enough to dull bacteria growth during the dehydration process and increase the shelf-life of your jerky.
When it comes to the marinade, however, the sky is the limit. I have seen all kinds of recipes, including chili paste, cracked pepper, teriyaki, Worcestershire sauce, smoked paprika, mango juice, liquid hickory smoke, brown sugar, honey, chili pepper flakes, and a thousand other things you can only imagine. There are so many recipes. The addition of a bit of juice provides flavor and lends some citric acid to tenderize and preserve the meat. I keep this recipe simple, straightforward, and easy to reproduce and pass down as your own or enhance however you would like.
THE WHOLE RECIPE
Cut the meat against the grain into 1/4 inch strips. Start by determining the grain. That’s going to be the direction the lines flow in the meat. You will cut against these lines. My preferred sharp knife for this is what is called a boning knife. This is particularly useful if, as the name implies, you need to free a bone from the meat with the knife. Depending upon the sharpness of the knife and the toughness of the meat, you may want to use a slicing knife or a Santoku. Don’t use a serrated knife, as you want to avoid ripping the fibers. The cleaner the cut, the better. If there is a little fat on the meat, it isn’t a concern. The fat puts some people off on the jerky, but there are whole cultures that turn the fat into jerky separately. A little fat isn’t bad, but some people are put off by it. Fat in your jerky will decrease shelf-life; however, I have never made even a large batch of jerky that lasted more than a week or two.
When all the slices are cut, place them in a bowl. Add 3/4 cup soy sauce, one tablespoon Worcestershire sauce, one teaspoon smoked paprika, one tablespoon brown sugar, one teaspoon ground pepper, one teaspoon garlic powder, one teaspoon onion powder, one teaspoon liquid smoke. Add any additional ingredients of your choice but remember, a little goes a long way. Some flavors will intensify with drying. Let marinate for 30 minutes.
Stir again with hands and place jerky strips on dehydrator trays or parchment paper on cookie sheets. Use the lowest setting on your oven or the recommended dehydrator settings. Test your jerky for moisture and taste every few hours for doneness. There should be no liquid moisture coming out of your jerky when you bend it at a 90-degree angle. If it cracks or breaks, it is overdone. Remove it immediately. The dehydration process will take between 4 and 12 hours, depending upon the dehydration method you are using and the thickness of your cuts. I was most satisfied with my simple countertop dehydrator. The oven version was a little too dry in places, and a little more uneven overall.
You can store your jerky in a zip lock baggy, jar, or vacuum-sealed bag. Obviously, the more moisture and oxygen you keep away from it, the longer it will last. When properly stored in a vacuum-sealed package in a cool, dark spot, beef jerky can last up to 2 years maybe longer. Mine never lasts more than a few days because I devour it.
CONCLUSION The sodium and the dehydration preserve the meat and give jerky its unique texture and flavor. Knowing how to make a batch of jerky is critical to preserving meat after a disaster. If you don’t have electricity, you can repurpose window screens and rely upon the sun, but you will want to keep the flies off the meat with the addition of a little smoke-producing fire. Your survival depends on having a stable high protein food source, and beef jerky has 9 grams of protein per ounce along with salts and fats. Knowing how to make jerky will enhance your survival skills. As I said, it seems like everyone has a recipe for jerky, so feel free to post yours in the comments below or tell me how your batch turned out based on my recipe. Even if you never need jerky in a survival situation, that homemade batch of jerky will win some new friends on the hiking trails. So, make a batch today and enjoy. Here’s that recipe again:
City Prepping’s Ultimate Jerky Recipe 1 tsp liquid smoke 1 tsp onion powder 1 tsp garlic powder 1 tsp ground pepper 1 Tbsp Brown Sugar 1 tsp smoked paprika 1 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce 3/4 cup soy sauce Bowl to marinate the meat 2 pounds beef (top round flank steak)
The state of Utah has been busy preparing videos with great information: Family Disaster Plans, Water Storage Information, and a ton of good stuff. Be Ready Utah. Here are some episodes about cooking without utilities:
In fact, go to YouTube and search for Be Ready Utah and you’ll find all their episodes there.
ALL of the plants in your yard should be mulched. In fact, in Texas, during the summer, the Scouts make money by going door to door and charging people to mulch their plants and trees during the summer. Mulch suppresses weeds, holds in moisture, feeds the worms and good insects, and makes the yard look good.
How can you adapt your food storage for special dietary needs? Here are some ideas: Adapting Food Storage
SHORT TERM FOCUS: Cinnamon
When you consider how exotic cinnamon is, and how valuable it was thousands of years ago, we are lucky that it is so readily available. If you buy it in the bulk section at Winco, it is really reasonable. I have 2-3 quart jars of cinnamon in my storage.
You may ask, “Do I NEED that much cinnamon?” Answer: Probably not, BUT, I find myself using it for cinnamon toast, and using it when I dehydrate apples – in addition to cooking with it. Apple pie, cinnamon rolls, snickerdoodles, Mmmm.
72-HOUR KIT FOCUS: Washrag & Trial-size Soap
Have you ever stayed in a motel? Have you wondered what you can do with those little soaps and shampoos? Your 72-hour kit is a great place for them. I cut a washrag in 1/2, put it in a sandwich bag, included a mini motel bar of soap, and put one in each kit. Plain old soap and water is a really good way to kill germs on a cut or scrape. It may sting a little, but if you are in an outdoor situation, it’s better than fighting an infection. After COVID, we should all know the value of washing with soap and water.
MISC FOCUS: Insect Repellant
This is not on the list this month, but it is something you should have. When Craig and I were in Indiana, we happened to notice a lot of people carrying chairs and blankets and heading to a local park. Naturally curious, we followed them and found out they were setting up for a “movie in the park”. As the families laid down their blankets, the moms had the kids stand with their arms out and gave them a good spray with insect repellent. We looked at each other and wondered if “this was a thing?” Needless to say, the bugs were HUGE, flying around in the air while all the kids (and dads too) sang to Frozen!!! We bought some the very next day and never got out of the car without spraying ourselves. Bottom line – if during the Zombie Apocalypse you have to spend any time outside, you may want something to ward off the mosquitoes. This is a good time, it’s on sale.
If you find yourself in a sporting goods store, they have very small bottles of insect spray. I have one in each of my 72-hour kits.
FOOD STORAGE RECIPES
Spiced Nuts
I like this recipe because it turns nuts into a really delicious treat. I used to make it for the kids’ teachers and give it to them at Christmas or Teacher Appreciation Week.
1 c. sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
6 TB milk
Cook this to soft ball stage. If you have never cooked candy, you can use a candy thermometer. 235˚ is the softball stage. If you take a little spoon full (like 1/2 teaspoon) and drop it into a small cup of cold water, you can push it together with your fingers to make a little ball. When you take that ball out of the water, it will slowly lose its shape and turn into a pool of mushy goo on the counter. That’s what you want. If it stays in a ball shape, it is no longer a “soft” ball stage.
When you get to soft ball stage, remove from heat and add
1 tsp vanilla
Pour-over
2-3 c. nuts and coat well. Spread on wax paper or tin foil to cool. Break apart.
Apple Crisp
4 c. sliced apples
If you like sliced apple stuff, you totally need one of these: Apple Peeler, Stainless Steel Apple Corer Slicer Peeler, Durable Heavy Duty Die Cast Magnesium Alloy. I never knew they existed until I saw one at my daughter’s house. How did I ever live without one of these?
Put apples in a buttered baking dish.
Topping:
3/4 c. brown sugar
1/2 c. flour
1/2 c. oats
1/3 c. soft butter
3/4 tsp cinnamon
3/4 tsp nutmeg (optional)
Mix and put over apples. Bake 375˚ for 40 min.
Coffee Cake
1 egg
1/2 c. sugar
1/2 c. milk
2 TB vegetable oil
Combine
1 c. flour
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
Add and mix. Pour into a greased 8X8 pan.
Topping:
1/4 c. brown sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1 TB flour
1 TB melted butter
1/2 c. chopped nuts
(Sometimes I double this. Who doesn’t like extra topping???)
Spread over dough
Bake 375˚ for 20-25 minutes.
We are finishing the 4th month of our goal to be sufficiently prepared by next April – even if that is only a 3 month supply. Three months was what it took for our stores to be stocked after COVID. And that is the minimum!!!! Please, I’m urging you, Please be prepared. Don’t let your family be hungry. Don’t worry about grinding the wheat, or cooking without fuel. Others can help with that. BUT, if food is a scarcity, you cannot ask others to sacrifice for you. It is not their job to prepare on your behalf. It is YOUR responsibility to do that.
Rant over. Carry on.
Knowing how a disaster unfolds allows you the opportunity to prepare for it. We can examine prior economic crashes in our country, but circumstances, policies, and means change over time, so they don’t give us a crystal clear picture of the future. There are too many unknown unknowns. We can examine the economic collapses of other nations in the present and the past, but foreign countries often have different morals, values, traditions, and means of fiscal operation. Though a 100% accurate picture can’t ever be achieved, when we examine other fiscal collapses and see how they unfold, we can often glean patterns and commonalities between them. That can provide us with a clear enough understanding of what we should prepare for.This will be a 2 part blog. Part 1 will cover what you can expect when an economy crashes, and Part 2 will cover what you can do to prepare. There are everyday things that occur when an economy collapses. Not all of these things may directly reach your community, but you will feel their impact nonetheless. You may not suffer from a lack of farmworkers, for instance, but your store will be less stocked. Your community, cul de sac, or rural route neighbors may band together after your nation’s economic collapse, or they may turn on you altogether. The outcome of that will be determined mainly by your preparations today. All economies falter at some point, and sometimes those economies collapse entirely. Here are the signs to look for…CIVIL UNRESTSouth Africa right now gives us a glimpse into how rapidly chaos can be unleashed in a once stable society. The unrest began on July 8 when former President Jacob Zuma started serving a 15-month prison sentence for contempt of court. Supporters in his home province of KwaZulu-Natal set up roadblocks on major highways and burned about 20 trucks. After one week of chaos, the casualties included: 161 shopping malls, 11 large distribution warehouses, 8 factories, 161 liquor stores, 30 schools, 1400 auto bank machines, hundreds of thousands of tons of crops lost to fire, and about 90,000 micro and small businesses that may never recover. Seizing upon the breakdown of security forces and stoked by partisan ideologies and self-interest, mobs ransacked food, clothing, liquor, and electronics. Mobs attacked warehouses of major retailers and factories and set them ablaze to get the contents inside. The unrest was primarily limited to the KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng provinces, accounting for nearly 50% of South Africa’s GDP.South Africa is very different than many nations. Income inequality is much higher. According to South African government statistics, unemployment is more than 32%, and it is above 64% for those under the age of 35. More than half of the country’s 60 million people live in poverty, and more than 20% are food insecure. Still, it would be wise to note these precursors: high unemployment, income inequality, rising poverty levels, and more, as these are the kindling for civil unrest.Civil unrest can spin out of control in hours, last for days, and has a chilling effect on recovery efforts as foreign investors seek safer countries for their investments. If you aren’t caught up in the violence or a victim of the violence, your ability to shop for anything you need ends with large-scale unrest. Gas stations and stores close, distribution channels are halted or disrupted, and businesses in and around affected areas shut down entirely and go in asset protection mode.Looting mobs function from two perspectives: desperate need or greed. Whichever they do operate from, the results are the same. They put you on lockdown, high alert, and require you to be self-sustaining and self-sufficient. Crime increases exponentially along with high unemployment and civil unrest. The regular first-responder services you depend on like police, fire, and health services cease to function and neither contain the violence nor put out the fires.UNEMPLOYMENTFrom a macroeconomic perspective, each one-point increase in the unemployment rate results in an estimated 37,000 deaths. According to the economist Gregory Mankiw, 3,300 more people are sent to state prisons. There are 920 more suicides, 650 more homicides, and 4,000 more people are admitted to state mental institutions. The stress of unemployment, increased drug and alcohol abuse, and the huddling together of people in more concentrated domestic living arrangements creates the kindling necessary for minor altercations to combust into larger fires quickly. During the great depression, unemployment hit almost 25%. By Mankiw’s calculations, a 25% unemployment rate in today’s society would equate to roughly 925,000 deaths and 51 million people unemployed.As we witnessed from the lockdowns, other service sectors are impacted. When there is no paycheck coming in, people turn to preparing their food or going hungry. Restaurants hire fewer workers. The travel and leisure sectors of the economy implode. Businesses scale back operations as product sales slump due to rising costs and demand. Companies adjust to the equilibrium price and the equilibrium quantity based upon the fluctuations in demand and price. When output drops, layoffs are inevitable. During a national financial collapse, lower aggregate demand means that firms reduce production and sell fewer units. So, unemployment rates can ripple across industries and jump by tens of points in just a few days. Unemployment rates can cause a skyrocketing demand in one area and a zeroing out of demand in another. Runs on some products with service demands bottoming out can result in dramatic oscillations in prices. It’s happened before, and it will be one of the first signs that we are in the early stages of a collapse.COST INCREASES As mentioned, businesses scale back operations as product sales slump due to rising costs and demand. Companies adjust to the equilibrium price and the equilibrium quantity based upon the fluctuations in demand and price. Runs on some products with service demands bottoming out can result in dramatic oscillations in prices. In a stable economy, many prices are said to be sticky. That is to say that they make minor, sluggish adjustments in response to supply or demand factors. However, in a faltering economy, prices can rapidly increase on some products while staying the same or sticking on everything else. The cost of one product may hold steady even while another product increases dramatically and the currency is worth less. As the money decreases in value further, eventually, all prices rise. Farmers and manufacturers find that they can neither sell their product at higher prices nor afford to bring it to market. During the Great Depression, factories closed at specific periods, and farmers let their crops rot in the field rather than give it away for free. The price of toilet paper or staple foods could shoot up overnight.You will see this in your wallet. Prices for staple goods will rise. Sales to attract customers will become more common, but they won’t actually reduce the price. You will start to see people panic, and the inventory of some categories of consumables will dwindle.HOMELESSNESSAmerica already has a homeless problem. We see the homeless in pictures, huddled together in makeshift tent and tarp cities, and there are homeless people that we don’t see who couch surf or sleep in their cars. As the economy collapses and unemployment skyrockets, there will be evictions. Local, State, and Federal efforts to curtail or stave off those eviction numbers will be too late for many and not lasting enough for others.Already there is no state, county, or city in the country where a full-time, minimum-wage worker working 40 hours a week can afford a two-bedroom rental, a report from the National Low Income Housing Coalition showed. A full-time minimum-wage worker can afford a one-bedroom rental in only 7% of all US counties — 218 counties out of more than 3,000 nationwide.People will move in with families and friends in some cases. This will strain community resources when a three-bedroom house now houses a dozen or more people. Owning land is the only insulation against homelessness, but most people are not in a position to do this. Only 37% of people own a home without a mortgage, and having a mortgage is not ownership when you no longer have the means to pay it.Government programs that halt evictions or support homeowners or renters can only last a few months into a nation’s economic collapse. When the country’s credit line evaporates, the first things to go will be programs that support people. The occurrences of squatting will increase. Some buildings and homes will be largely vacant at the same time tent cities will spring up near public water resources. Legal, legitimate enforcement of evictions for non-payment will also stop, so many will be living in their homes or apartments without paying rent or mortgage. Sherriff’s departments will be elsewhere deployed to protect assets and the further unraveling of infrastructure. Despite many staying in their homes or apartments, homelessness will increase. Large-scale migrations are probable as people seek out resources and work.You will know when homelessness will be a problem in a few months by the number of programs established to try and keep people in their homes and apartments. All of those programs have an expiration date, and they merely attempt to stretch out the process of systemic failure to lessen the critical blow.FOOD SHORTAGESThe onset of the Great Depression after 1929 left many U.S. farmers in financial ruin as prices dropped along with the dollar’s value, and they were left with vast surpluses of stock. In California alone in 1932, farmers unable to shift their stock lost nearly 3 million watermelons and left 22.4 million pounds of tomatoes to rot in the field. Unemployment and poverty soared. Even with a growing hunger crisis, farmers could not afford to bring their harvests to market, and the people could not afford the sticky or increasing prices. So, it isn’t necessarily that the production of food decreases. It is more that people can no longer afford the food produced, and it becomes not worth it to force the product to market because of rising costs.Shortages or rumored shortages in any food group will cause runs on the stores. This will drop inventory levels and lead to additional deficiencies of a substitute or alternate food. A run on beans may lead to a run on rice, leading to a run on flour, sugar, cooking oil, or some other staple product. There is seldom a run on just one product. It’s more of a wave of runs that drop inventory levels and spike prices as price gouging and hoarding behaviors occur.Your ability to find and purchase anything at the store will halt, at least for the near term. Though you may have money in the bank labeled and set aside for emergencies, it will be of little use to you. Any garden plants, fruit, or nut trees on your property or balcony will eventually be targeted if hunger levels rise too much. Your supplies may also be targeted, so it’s always essential to have your prepping supplies distributed in different places in your house and kept a well-guarded secret. Assumably, anyone who has seen your jars and cans is a trusted friend or family member that you have let into your house at some point. If that is the case, you may want to consider assisting them to strengthen your security. Even if you don’t, they’re less likely to turn on you or sell you out than a total stranger will. With food shortages come looting, theft, and raiding.Highly publicized runs on stores precede food shortages. By the time you hear of the run on rice, you will probably be too late to get any. Still, it is an indicator of a wave of runs about to occur, and it’s the precursor to a more significant collapse in the food supply system. UTILITY FAILURESFires, illegal hijacking of power and water, and the inability to perform maintenance and repair will lead to wide-scale utility failures. When the power stops, so do the water and natural gas pumping stations. When the power stops, so does the trucking supply chain. Gas can’t be had, and deliveries can’t be made. If you’re running a noisy generator, you can expect every person in proximity to be peeking over your fence wondering if you have fuel or how they might ask you to plugin for a bit. At least one person is likely thinking of how they might take your power resource of a generator for themselves.People will be desperate for food and water within the first week of an extended outage. You should be able to stay indoors for at least two weeks of an extended outage. If you live in a multiunit housing structure, you should be vigilant against potential accidental fires from neighbors being careless. You should also expect that they may come to your door seeking help. If you live in the suburbs or exurbs, you can expect neighbors might be wanting to pool resources. If you live in a rural setting, you can expect people to leave more populated areas and come your way to set up camp or simply pass through.While the entire nation’s power grid might not fail, the failure of even one part of it will force millions of people into a frantic search for clean water and food. This will be exponentially larger if any natural disaster strikes during the same period. You will know when you are on the cusp of more extensive and extended outages when the utility failures begin to happen with greater regularity. When they are also compounded with failures resulting from natural disasters, a little push is all it will take before things fall over the edge.CURRENCYExpect that the relative value of currency declines. Money in the bank is worth far less than goods, services, and skills. If you know how to hunt, fish, sew, repair, and so forth, those skills will be worth far more than currency. Rising costs will result in paper currency not being worth the paper it is printed on, quite literally. Cash is not king in a fallen kingdom.History has many well-documented examples of people with a wheelbarrow full of worthless currency. Goods and services will increase in value. Most people’s emergency plan amounts to money set aside in a hidden place in their home or, even worse, in a bank account. In a bank or electronic account, the funds will be non-withdrawable. Even that stack of bills in your home will be of little value when the cost of food and water spikes to all-time highs.While precious metals and jewels may assist you in a recovery phase, an ounce of gold or even a diamond doesn’t hold much value to a starving and desperate person. They might rob you of it for later, but they will have the same difficulty trading it for goods. Finally, with the stores all closed and deliveries suspended indefinitely, you wouldn’t have anywhere to spend money during an economic collapse anyways. It might as well be under your mattress, as it will have little real value in a massive economic collapse. Even during the recovery phase, it could be replaced by a new currency backed by a new government. It may retain a fraction of its value if any.You will know currency devaluation is on the horizon when banks or governments try to slow the withdrawal rate while prices are rising. You will know most obviously when people won’t take your money in exchange for essentials like food, water, or fuel.A WORSE RECOVERYAfter every economic collapse, some form of recovery comes. The government that emerges may look nothing like what you know now, and often they are more authoritarian and nationalistic, but some new form of government will emerge. Nations rise, and nations fall. Then they rise again. Their second iteration is never as grand as their first, and there is neither a guarantee that things will return to normal nor is there an assurance that things will be better. The calls for peace and a cessation of the mobs can lead to nationalistic, militaristic, or even totalitarian rules. In some areas, an almost feudalistic power emerges. Crime lords and warlords, and community leaders arm themselves and call the shots. They are not organized beyond their boundaries. Afghanistan is an example of the period after a collapse. Tribal lords rule within their borders, but there is no overarching national-level cohesive control.In a post-recovery era in the U.S. where government, police, and military lose total control of some areas, expect citizens to band together in their makeshift militias. Laws on the books are largely ignored out of ignorance of them. Rights and protections are relinquished. That isn’t to say that they won’t one day return, but you shouldn’t expect them to be fully restored even in the recovery phase of a nation’s collapse.CONCLUSIONFortunately for us, history paints a clear image of what the economic collapse of a nation looks like. It breaks in very specific ways. As dismal and hopeless as currency collapse, unemployment, homelessness, and the rest of the aspects of a nation’s economic collapse may be, there are ways you can survive and even thrive comparatively to others. Likewise, the tales of how people survive and what they did to make it through provide us with a clear path to follow to enhance our own ability to survive. Prepping for a non-natural disaster is slightly different than prepping for natural disasters. There is much more community-building work involved, which I will touch upon in the next video in this two-part series. In part two of this series on surviving a nation’s economic collapse, I will tell you solutions you can plug in today to make a difference in the future. I’ll give you practical advice on what you can do to survive and possibly even emerge from the collapse stronger and more self-sufficient.Subscribe to this channel for that video, and please let us know if you have ever survived a nation’s economic collapse. What did you do to survive?As always, please stay safe out there.
Indigenous people of North America, trappers, and early settlers all owe their lives to pemmican. It’s a dense, high-protein, high-energy food that can be stored easily on a stable temperature shelf for an incredible five years. It has the right mix of fats, proteins, and calories to keep you going long into the aftermath of any disaster or for many miles down any trail.
There are hundreds of variants to this ancient food, but most are generally a mix of meat, berries, and fats.
WHAT YOU NEED
For this recipe, you simply need about 3 to 5 pounds of lean beef, 2 cups worth of dehydrated berries, salt, water, and tallow. You can either obtain your tallow from the store or render your own, as I show you how to do in another post. You will also need a dehydrator or oven with a low setting and a food processor, or else you will have to powder both your dried meats and berries manually. A cookie sheet, wax paper, and a bowl and spatula are everything you will need.
For this recipe, I am using beef because living in the suburbs doesn’t allow me to use and eat elk, moose, bison, caribou, seal, deer, or other meats. If you have access to any of those meats, your pemmican will taste even better, in my opinion. Generally, everyone has access to beef, so we’ll use it here for our basic recipe. If you want to make your beef taste a little gamier, it is common practice to add organ meat to it. This will also significantly boost the nutritional quality of the food.
STEP-BY-STEP
Dehydrate berries, so you have at least two cups of them. You will powder them before adding them in, so they can be as dry as you want. I’m using the berries in season right now, blackberries, raspberries, and blueberries. The type of berry can vary significantly from recipe to recipe. You could include cranberries, raisins, dried apples or other fruits, chokecherries, western juneberry, mulberries, or whatever local indigenous berry or fruit you have available to you.
For the beef, slice it against the grain as you would for jerky, into strips — 1/4 to one inch depending on the thinness of your starting meat.
I then add it to a 3% salt brine. To make that add two tablespoons of sea salt or kosher salt to one quart of water. If you need to make more brine, just follow this same ratio. If your brine is over 3%, that’s fine. It doesn’t have to be exact. Soaking the sliced meat in the 3% brine for a minimum of 15 minutes and up to one hour helps pull out some of the water from the meat, aid in the preservation process, and expedite the dehydration process. The salt will also help to inhibit bacterial growth. I will dry the meat with the fat on it and remove the fat after it has dried. It’s just easier for me to do it that way with this small batch, but you usually will trim all the fat off the meat and start with the leanest possible meat.
Dehydrate the meat in your dehydrator, smoker, or oven at its lowest setting. If it were jerky, we would pull it when the jerky was chewy but not brittle. For pemmican, though, we want it so we can powder it down to thin fibers, so keep dehydrating it until it easily breaks apart.
You can weigh your finished, dried meat. But it doesn’t matter precisely how much meat you start with. Generally speaking, five pounds of meat will render down to about a pound when completely dried. I weigh it to better understand the meat-to-fat ratios for you here. I have 8.7 ounces of meat, with maybe a little over an ounce of powdered berries, my total finished pemmican was about a pound, so there is at least 7 ounces of tallow in there. So, generally speaking, you’ll have 60% meat and berries to 40% added liquid fat. It will depend on your ability to shape it, which I’ll address in a moment.
Trim any fat off the meat and powder the meat. Powder the berries separately. You can use a food processor, but I find my Vitamix is the most effective at this because of blade contact and blade speed. If you were in the wild, you have to do this by smashing the meat between rocks until the fibers grind down to a powder. It’s a more labor-intensive process. You could also use a mortar and pestle, but this will take much longer and will be more laborious.
Melt your tallow over very low heat and add. Your dried mixture will soak it all up, so keep adding it in until it holds a shape like a dough when squeezed together. The tallow acts as a preservative and will allow you to shape the pemmican and bind it to retain its form.
Add your powdered berries to the powdered meat and mix it well. Slowly add in about one ounce at a time of the tallow, allowing it to soak thoroughly into your mix. When your mix takes on a doughy consistency that easily holds its squeezed form, you have added the correct amount of tallow. There aren’t accurate measurements I can provide you for this recipe because the amount of tallow you need to begin to bind your pemmican will depend on the dryness of all your ingredients, the type of meat you are using, and the other ingredients you’re putting in the pemmican. You want to add enough fat into it that you can press and shape it down into your pan, cookie sheet, or roll it into balls.
Either shape it into 1-inch meatball rounds or spread it on some wax paper in a small pan as I do here.
Place in the refrigerator for 15-30 minutes. This will allow the tallow to harden up the pemmican.
Turn out onto a cutting board and cut into bars. That’s it. You can vacuum seal it for a long shelf-life, store it in your refrigerator or freezer, or just keep it in a mason jar in a cool, dry area of your kitchen. I wrap mine individually in wax paper and then freeze them all. In this way, I can grab a couple and throw them in my pack when I need to get out the door quickly.
Take some on your next hike or camp out and see just why this is considered the ultimate energy food. Enjoy!
ABOUT PEMMICAN & VARIATIONS
Pemmican, this ancient food, is the perfect super-food for preppers or anyone on keto, carnivore, or paleo diets. At room temperature, pemmican can generally last from one to five years, but there are many stories of pemmican stored in cool cellars being safely consumed after a decade or more. If vacuum sealed, it may remain edible after more than a century. In the days of the pioneers, it was packed tightly into rawhide bags that could weigh almost one hundred pounds when stuffed. This helped to protect the food when so tightly packed in a large mass void of circulating air. The same is true if you were to can it in a pressurized water bath. How you store it and your primary ingredients are the most influential over the shelf-life. Most people today commonly store their pemmican in the refrigerator or the freezer. Fats will turn rancid over time, and this is primarily because they will oxidize with the air. In its solid form, fat has been used as a preservative for centuries. The nice thing about fat as a preservative is that your nose will tell you if your pemmican is no longer safe to eat. Rancid meat has a tangy, putrid odor.
Adding nuts and other ingredients can also impact shelf-life. This is also because of the oxidation of their oils. If you intend to make pemmican to eat over a year’s time, put in whatever suits your taste. If you want to store it for an extended period, use high-quality game meat, the cleanest tallow you can find, and only berries. This will give you the most extended shelf-life without sacrificing any flavors.
Nutritionally, pemmican has everything you need to keep you moving during times of high energy expenditure. Depending upon your ingredient mix, the average nutritional value for 1 ounce is around 130 calories, less than one carbohydrate, 11 grams of high-energy fat, and 7 grams of protein. It’s 80% fat and 20% protein for the basic recipe.
Pemmican was typically eaten raw, though the taste and consistency may be too challenging for many, or cooked. It has a taste similar to beef jerky but with much more flavor. Because of the liquid fat content, it can quickly start as a base in stews or a starter in your cast iron pan. Add a Mirepoix (meer . pwaa), as the French trappers probably did, a mixture of two parts onion to one part each carrot and celery. The Italians call this a Soffritto with the addition of garlic as well. In reality, you can add to your heated pemmican potatoes, wild leeks, mushrooms, seaweed, dandelions, bamboo, prickly pear cactus, fiddleheads, broadleaf plantain, cattails, beans, or whatever else you forage for or pick up along your trail. You could even add additional meat. Use it as a base.
Take this basic recipe and the earlier post on tallow, and make your first simple batch of pemmican. Learn the skill now and build upon it to develop your own recipe that best suits your palette. Let me know in the comments below how it turned out and what method worked best for you.
* I brought three green peppers into the house from the garden. After a day or two, I thought I’d better cut them in half, rinse them, and put them in baggies in the fridge. When I cut open the last pepper, there were two LIVE earwigs inside. It was super gross.
* If you haven’t fed your garden yet this summer, it’s time. Use a good fertilizer (this is my preferred organic brand Tomato, Vegetable & Herb Fertilizer. Pretty sure you can get it at Lowe’s or Home Depot. Put it on everything but NOT the beans or peas. Beans and peas actually produce nitrogen, and if you give them more, they can burn the plant. A little compost if you want, but that’s it. I think I also gave my beans some bone meal. Be sure you get one with the smallest first number as possible (that’s the nitrogen number) This one is 3-15-0 Lots of phosphorous Down to Earth Organic Bone Meal Fertilizer 3-15-0, 5 lb.
* When it’s hot, plants will either drop their flowers or not make flowers. It’s pretty consistently over 90 degrees now. I find that my full-size tomatoes have stopped producing tomatoes, but my grape tomato plants are still going full-on! I’m still getting beans, cucumbers (although they have slowed), zucchini (although they have also slowed), and lettuce (although they are being eaten by invisible critters somehow. Earwigs again????)
* I had to spray for aphids last week for the first time this summer. I’m STILL spraying for powdery mildew. I alternate between a peroxide mix and a store-bought OMRI fungicide. AND, I cut off a lot of leaves. Sigh. Some kind of something is still eating the lettuce. Really!!!! Gardening is a giant guessing game of water, insects, critters, and weather. I’m the first to admit it is cheaper and easier to buy at the store. But what do you do when the store shelves are empty (and we know how fast THAT can happen)? For me…. gardening is practicing, spraying, and praying. LOL
LONG TERM FOCUS: Onions
Take it from me, you do NOT want to make your own dehydrated onions. Unless you do it outside, you will stink up your whole house. Your clothes will smell like onion, your sheets will smell like onion, your hair will smell. I may have learned this the hard way. Cheaper and easier to buy them already dehydrated.
SHORT TERM FOCUS: Vanilla
I decided a while back to make my own vanilla. Costco had a 16 oz. bottle of real vanilla for $25 and I thought it was outrageous. I bought the vanilla beans, the vodka, and resurrected an old bottle from the trash. When I added up the cost, it was the same! I mean, it’s kinda cool to know how to do that, but why? So, I was curious about the difference between imitation vanilla and real vanilla. Here’s what I found out. Pure Vanilla Extract vs. Imitation Vanilla Flavor | Better Homes & Gardens
According to Better Homes and Gardens, you CANNOT tell the difference in baked goods: cookies, cakes, brownies. Don’t waste your money on real vanilla for these items. You CAN taste the difference in low-heat sweets, puddings, pastry creams, and icings, no-bake treats, simmered sauces, custards, and frozen desserts. Now you know.
72-HOUR KIT FOCUS: Knife
This is one of the best sellers on Amazon. Mossy Oak Survival Hunting Knife with Sheath, 15-inch Fixed Blade Tactical Bowie Knife with Sharpener & Fire Starter for Camping, Outdoor,
Bushcraft. I like that it comes with a sharpener AND a flint stick for making fires.
I actually have two buckets – one for washing, one for rinsing. They are stored in the garage, with the plunger, and a couple of boxes of soap.
FOOD STORAGE RECIPES
All of today’s recipes use dehydrated onions (or fresh, of course) They are recipes I copied years ago, so I wish I could give credit, but that information is long since gone.
Unstuffed Cabbage
1 TB oil
1 1/2 – 2 lbs ground beef
1 onion, chopped fine
Brown together until beef and onion are cooked.
1 clove garlic minced. Add and cook 1 min more.
1 small cabbage, sliced thin.
1 can diced tomatoes
1 can tomato sauce
1 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
1/2 c. water
Simmer with a lid for about 15-20 minutes.
Add 1 c. water and
3/4 c. rice
Simmer another 20 minutes until rice is done.
Meatball & Tortellini Soup
32 oz. beef broth
1 can Cannellini beans, not drained
1 can Italian diced tomatoes – not drained If I don’t have the Italian tomatoes, I just use regular diced tomatoes and add 1 tsp Italian seasoning
2-3 cloves garlic minced
2 stalks celery diced
1 onion diced (or 1/4 c. dehydrated onion)
1/2 TB Italian seasoning
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1 lb. frozen meatballs
(and I always add carrots….well because I LIKE carrots and I like the color it adds to the dish)
Cook in a crockpot 6- hours on low.
Add 1/2 – 1 bag frozen tortellini. Let cook another 30-40 minutes.
My crock pot is small, so I just eyeball the meatballs and tortellini.
I have a couple of recipes for “restaurant” bread that they bring to you hot with a plate of oil and vinegar. THAT bread tastes really good with this meal.
Claudine’s Baked Beans
I CAN give credit for this one to Claudine Taylor. She included it in a Relief Society cookbook that we did years ago. I still make it at least once a summer.
Our nation’s power infrastructure is rapidly aging, and many of the components and systems are operating well past their expected life cycle. Recent power infrastructure problems like seen in Texas and the rolling blackout issues seen annually in California and on the West Coast are increasingly becoming the norm. At one time, being able to be independent of the power grid was an excellent option, but having a way to power your home when the grid goes down is increasingly becoming a necessity.
When it comes to the problems of power production in this country, you’ll hear a lot of different competing views as to what is the root cause of the problem. Anyone pushing a single answer as the panacea to the problem is trying to sell you something. On this channel, I try to convey being prepared. People who seek to blame this government party or a way of thinking are really not offering nor achieving a solution of any kind for themselves. Alarmists and blamers are more content to chew the food than swallow it. I tend to look at this issue from a pragmatic perspective. The nation’s power grid is under an ever increasing load as more people consume at greater levels, it’s aging, there’s some real complications that have cropped up in the last few years we’ll cover momentarily, and it simply has not and will not keep up with the demand in the coming years unless something significant changes, and I’m not holding my breath for this to happen. For me, the time to act is now and I’m personally implementing approaches in my personal house to deal with the inevitable which I’ll cover in this video.
When the power goes out in your region for an extended period for any reason: wildfires, mismanagement, sagging lines, high winds, or whatever, will you be prepared? So, while the arguments rage on and on, I prefer to examine the problem and work towards a solution for myself and my family. I think that’s really what the prepper’s mindset should be. In this video, I’ll examine the current power production systems so you can understand what to expect, teach you how to evaluate your power needs, and then plug in a solution to survive a prolonged outage even through extreme weather. It’s not a matter of if the power grid will go down; it’s whether you are prepared when it does. So let’s jump in…
AGING SYSTEMS & INEVITABLE FAILURESLake Mead’s levels have dropped, and that impairs Hoover Dam’s ability to produce hydroelectric power. One of the largest hydropower plants in the United States is producing 33% less energy due to the drought strangling the Western U.S. At the same time, record high temperatures are creating greater consumer demand for cooling needs.
High winds and brutally dry conditions will very likely spark a fire season we likely have never seen before. Rolling blackouts are inevitable as an aging electrical grid is forced to transform itself to keep pace with demand and an environment it wasn’t built to withstand. It’s not changing fast enough. Nobody has dialed it in yet if there is a solution of a mix of renewable energy and traditional fossil fuel-based energy production. People will debate that forever, but the important thing is that you are prepping due to the obvious early warning signs of these systems failing.
Under ideal conditions, transformers and circuit breakers are expected to operate for 30 to 40 years. 70% of power transformers are 25 years of age or older, 60% of circuit breakers are 30 years or older. Under ideal conditions and with proper maintenance, a transmission line can last up to 100 years. 70% of transmission lines are 25 years or older, but transmission lines weren’t built and erected to withstand prolonged periods of high heat, freezing cold, wildfires, or sustained high winds. Our systems and infrastructures were designed and built in previous decades to work in periods without extreme weather. The current prolonged high and low temperatures, higher winds, droughts, and consumer demand are stretching those systems well beyond the blueprint of their maximum capacity design.
The grid is spread so thin and tight, running at maximum capacity, and a failure anywhere could borrow from power generated elsewhere, creating a disequilibrium. Outages and rolling blackouts will become more frequent and will have a broader scope. The nation’s electric power grid is getting older and older. Its lines are sagging, and the turbines are getting worn. The system failing in larger and more significant ways is inevitable.
HYDROELECTRICHydropower accounts for 52 percent of the nation’s renewable electricity generation and 7 percent of total electricity generation. Hydroelectric 7.3%, geothermal .4%, solar 4.6%, and wind energy 8.4% have kept the grid supplemented, combining for 21% of the annual U.S. energy production. This has allowed us to meet rising demands, but these forms of energy production aren’t without their problems. Hydroelectric is most likely to take a hit this year. Lake Mead which powers the Hoover Dam has declined to its lowest level since the reservoir was filled in the 1930s following the construction of the Hoover Dam. The reservoir near Las Vegas, Nevada, holds water for cities, farms, and tribal lands in Arizona, Nevada, California, and Mexico. Years of unrelenting drought and high temperatures are shrinking the flow into the lake, contributing to the significant mismatch between the demands for water and diminishing supply. If it drops another 170 feet, Lake Mead will be a dead pool, and no more water will flow through it from Lake Mead. That may seem like a long way still to go, but levels have already dropped 145 feet since the year 2000, and long before it gets classified as a “Dead Pool,” Hoover Dam would have to go offline. If it goes offline, so too does 4 billion kilowatt-hours of hydroelectric power servicing 1.3 million people. If the predicted El Nina pattern drenches the Northwest and leaves the Southwest dry, as it is being forecasted to do later this year, Lake Mead’s water levels will continue to decline.
It’s not just a problem there. The Oroville Lake serving the dam of the same name is predicted to drop below operational levels next month. When it goes offline, so does the 819 megawatts of electricity, immediately impacting 800,000 homes. Folsom Lake is the driest it’s been in springtime since the epic drought of 1977. Water levels are so low that temporary pumps probably will be installed to help move water out of the stricken reservoir. Folsom Dam feeds into the system almost 200 megawatts. Oroville, Folsom, Shasta, the Yuba River, the Stanislaus River, the San Joaquin River, waterways, and reserves throughout the state are approaching historic lows. Typically, the grid relies on hydropower for about 14% of its overall supply. But this year, the state is facing significantly lower-than-normal hydro conditions. Even if the dams don’t go offline, lower levels equal lower pressure which equals lower power production. So, what does all this mean?
As it gets hotter, longer, and more parched, demand for energy increases at the same time production decreases by up to 14% in the state of California alone. Add to this the droughts decreasing or ceasing hydroelectric production in Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, and the other Western States, and the shortfall can’t be made up by simply borrowing electricity from another state. The drought conditions are much bigger than just the Golden State this time around. If you are out east, sitting in your home, and it is currently raining, it would be easy to dismiss the problems of the western states. You should consider that the largess of the United States’ Gross Domestic Product and agriculture comes significantly from these states. As crops fail from lack of water, the food on your store shelves will dwindle as well.
SOLARThere’s no shortage of sunlight in the west, but solar only makes up just under 5% of infrastructure production. Still, it’s an efficient method of energy production for the individual homeowner and has kept grid demands stable over the last decade or more. The average home in the U.S. uses 10,400 kWh of electricity per year. To be completely self-sufficient, a homeowner would need 28 to 34 250-watt solar panels to meet with their current power usage. Most homeowners don’t have that kind of roof space. This production versus consumption problem aside, most solar panel setups won’t work when the grid goes down because they aren’t configured with a battery backup tied to a power management system. A traditional solar power system shuts down when the power goes down to prevent any power from back-feeding to the grid, which could be dangerous for utility linemen working on repairing grid failures. If you already have solar, you should be looking into home battery solutions. If you don’t have solar, you should only consider systems with some form of home battery solution. I will be releasing a video soon on a system that I am implementing that will replenish itself when the grid is down and will keep me running seamlessly when the power goes out. While the initial upfront cost may be a deterrent, many states and federal programs offer rebates and tax credits along with financing. With the rising cost of power in my area, my solar setup pays for itself in about 5 years.
Solar can be part of your solution, even when your budget is tight. A sunoven solar cooker or thermal cooker will allow you to cook and purify water when the power goes down. A typical 1000 to 1500 kWh solar generator can be had for a little over 1000 dollars, and it will greatly increase your capabilities and sustainability. So, while others debate solar as a renewable energy in the broad picture of things, you should leverage your piece of the sun to improve your prepping and ultimate survival.
CALCULATE YOUR SOLUTIONWhen the grid goes down with little hope that it will come back up in the immediate future, you are either at the mercy of the fates, or you’ve thoughtfully calculated and plugged in a solution for yourself. No amount of debate and no strongly held opinion will save you. A good starting point is to use an online consumption calculator like one I will link to in the comments below, or simply write out an inventory of every electricity using light, appliance, or anything plugged into the house’s electrical system. Is the stove electric? Is the water heater electric, or does it rely on an electric starter? Do an inventory of every room. After you’ve done your walk-through and a first pass at documenting your whole consumption, go to your breaker box and shut everything off.
Now, go back into your house and sit down and assess what is going to go wrong. Obviously, your food in the freezer and refrigerator will start warming and eventually go bad. Do you have the means to cook? When there’s no electricity to run gas pumps, there will be no food deliveries or gas for your generator. When the natural gas stops flowing because of pumping stations, will you be able to cool or heat your home? Depending upon the season, how warm or cold is your house going to get with no power? Do you have medicines that need to be refrigerated? When the municipal water stops flowing because the pumps aren’t working, how will you maintain a supply of water? No water also means no flushing of toilets. How much water would you need if the electricity is out for a week or two or three? Realize that though you are engaged in an exercise to determine your consumption needs, not one of your neighbors is likewise engaged. How desperate and underprepared will they be? Factor that in if your emergency plan is to run a noisy generator.
Once you understand how you are consuming electricity and how the lack of electricity will unravel, contemplate what your energy needs are to get by. Consider everything on your list is powerless. What’s the most important thing? Light? Cooking? Heating or cooling? Communications and information? What’s your plan for each? Turn to the same list and determine what you absolutely must have, and begin to sketch out a plan to accommodate losing those things. I have a friend who lives in a suburban tract in Southern California. He has a large stack of firewood and kindling. It isn’t because it gets particularly cold here. It’s because when the power goes down, he has prepared himself to be able to use his fireplace, firepit, and thermal cooker to cook or to boil water. Even his wood mulch is a resource.
When devising your solution, factor in the environment, food, water, and security. You need to be able to keep cool or hot, at least one room of your home, and you need to seal that room off from other rooms of your home. If you live in a non-humid environment, a small evaporative cooler may draw little electricity but may be able to lower your temperature by a few critical degrees. Likewise, if it’s winter when the power goes out, and here I am talking to all those Texas folks, what’s your heating plan? What’s your plan to stay warm? Maintaining a survivable environment without gas or electricity is a significant part of surviving an extended outage. Modern houses aren’t built to maintain comfortable temperatures when the sun is blazing without HVAC.
Another consideration is your food plan. What will you be able to prepare? If you plan to pull out the camping stove, great, but how long will those canisters of propane last? If your goal is to BBQ all that meat in your freezer before it goes bad, great, but do you have the propane or charcoal you need right now if that were the case, and how will you deal with the hungry neighbors your delicious BBQ will attract? What’s your plan when the refrigerator and stove are useless to you? Do you have a solar cooker or thermal cooker in your prepping supplies, but you’ve never used them? What makes you think you’ll be able to use them well once the grid goes down?
Ensure you have food supplies enough to last you at least a week, if not three or more. Make sure you can process and prepare that food without externally provided power. With food comes human waste. Can you safely remove human waste from your living environment? What’s your plan for the trash, too, when that service stops?
Water is a topic I harp on a great deal on this channel, and that’s because it’s the most important prep you should have. You can’t live 72 hours without water. It’s also the easiest for someone new to prepping to get control of their supplies. Whether that’s a 55-gallon barrel and pump stashed in your garage or a stack of Waterbricks or a LifeStraw and a stream or pond, you have to make sure you have water security. Even using water to cool a rag and place it on your pulse points or forehead can keep you from overheating when the AC and the fans aren’t working. I also advise people to fill their bathtubs, sinks, and every container they can find at the first sign of an emergency or disaster. This will keep you from having to draw off your supplies and will get water to you before pumping stations run out of their backup power. The back tank of your toilet has fresh water in it, and you can draw 40 or so gallons of water out of your water heater if you’ve looked at how to do that before the internet went down. A simple hand pump can extract water from where it sits in your irrigation lines if the water ceases to flow to your house. Also, freeze some water bottles in your freezer. It may take a marginal amount of extra electricity and make your freezer work just a bit harder, but when the power goes out, your food will last longer, and you will have cold water to drink. Finally, have the means to purify or boil dirty water. The longer you can stretch your supply of stored water, the better off you will be.
Don’t forget the security of what you have. Though you are taking the time to address your food, water, waste, and environmental needs, I guarantee that your friends and neighbors are not doing the same. Keep shades and curtains drawn closed. Avoid running gas generators, cooking fragrant foods, or anything that would indicate you have food, water, or electricity. Have a plan for when others show up at your door that is a little more elaborate than reaching for a firearm.
A short-term solution is a gas generator, but they have OPSEC issues and will eventually run out of fuel. Even a small one can keep critical items running like your refrigerator. An even better option here is a solar generator and battery. Whole-home batteries with solar or generators attached are reasonable medium-range solutions. Cutting electrical usage to the bare survival minimum can stretch these systems out for even more extended periods of time. This is where the assessment of your survival consumption needs will be helpful to you. Have backup LED lighting, cooking, heating, and cooling options all ready to plug into your system.
CONCLUSION
At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter who was right or what you believe the problems are or were; the problems still persist. While no large-scale solution or compromising equilibrium may ever be achieved, the problems will persist. Our grid is sagging under the weight of age and use, and the extreme weather that was never calculated into its design could be the final straw that will lead to its collapse. As a prepper, you should give less attention to the screaming debaters and instead prep as though your future life’s security depends upon it because it does. Let the others debate the causes and solutions while you methodically work towards a solution for yourself. Let the alarmists and politicians argue back and forth while you plug in each piece of your unique solution. Prepare for extremes of hot and cold and continued failings of the power infrastructure. It will get much worse before any large-scale solution is found.
What are you doing today as a result of the fragile power system you are witnessing fail? What’s your tip or solution for those new to prepping for when the lights go out for an extended period?
As always, please stay safe out there.
* Last year I posted about a remedy for bites: mosquito bites, bee stings, ant bites, tick bites. It uses charcoal to “draw out” the poison. I kept it in the refrigerator and used it all last year. I finally threw it away a few weeks ago. And wouldn’t you know it, I got a half dozen bites just last week and have suffered this whole time. Ugh. My granddaughter who is staying with us got a huge bite yesterday and I decided it was time to make more.
Bite Remedy: Psyllium Husk Powder 1 part psyllium, 3 parts charcoal, and just enough water to make a soft jelly. Roll it out or press it between two sheets of plastic wrap. Keep it in the fridge. When you need some, just cut off a little square with the scissors, and cover it with a bandaid. The charcoal draws out the poison, the coolness calms the itch.
* As you rotate your food, eventually you will probably have to throw something away. It’s okay. Think of it as insurance. You “re-buy” insurance every month even though you don’t get to use it. So, you throw something away. Buy more and try to get it rotated this time.
Along those lines, I found this great article about what to do with rancid oil. I’ve copied the text and have included it below.
LONG TERM FOCUS: Onions
I just don’t buy fresh onions anymore. I exclusively use dehydrated onions. You can buy dehydrated onions at the grocery store and try them out. This jar has onions I purchased from the Church of Jesus Christ store. Anyone is welcome to purchase from that site, but you have to buy food in cases, which is 6 #10 cans at a time, which is A LOT of onions. I filled the jar you see here to keep in my kitchen, then filled more jars to empty the can, then sealed the jars and put them under the bed. When you are ready to use the onions, simply put about 1/4 c into a small cup of water. If I’m in a hurry, I heat the water for 1 min in the microwave. It seems to help them plump up faster. The picture of them in my hand is after 30 minutes in water. 1 TB dehydrated onions = 2 TB chopped onions. You simply can’t dice fresh onions this small. They look and taste like onions. No tears, no chopping. It’s the greatest invention EVER!
SHORT TERM FOCUS: Oil & Shortening
I tried storing as much shortening as I thought I would need in a year. The problem was I don’t use it often enough to rotate the storage. For example, in an empty-store emergency, I’d probably use shortening to grease all my pans. I don’t do that now because I use spray-on stuff like everyone else. In fact, I’ve used shortening for a lot of things that call for “oil”. I just melted it a little and used it instead. Because I ended up throwing it away, now I only have 1 open (I use it for biscuits mostly – and a few cookie recipes) and 1 on the shelf. I make my chocolate chip cookies with butter. But in an emergency, I might use shortening (I did it this way for YEARS anyway).
Oil is another great commodity to store. I read that during WWII, the only thing more in want than oil was bullets. I have 1 -2 large oil bottles in storage, and at least 1/2 dozen smaller bottles of EVOO (extra-virgin olive oil). EVOO is my preferred frying choice so I use it a lot. You can use vegetable oil (coconut oil, grapeseed, etc) as a base for making healing salves, or for dry skin issues. Here is an article that tells you 40 uses for vegetable oil. 40 Easy And Surprising Ways To Use Vegetable Oil Around The House
72-HOUR KIT FOCUS: Food
Both my backpacks have a small kit like this one: MalloMe Camping Cookware Mess Kit Gear. Frankly, I think I just found them one day at Winco when I was shopping. I like this because there are 10 pieces, including a cup, a pot, a pan, a wooden stir spoon, a bag, and a few other things. You don’t need anything this fancy. You may want to just tuck some paper plates and plastic forks in your backpack. Do what works for you. OR, maybe you are only going to have finger foods (beef jerky, fruit roll-ups, granola bars, etc.) At a minimum, you should have something to carry water.
MISC FOCUS: Dish Detergent
I’m surprised how often I go through a bottle of dish detergent. And I have a dishwasher!!! I think I’ll do an experiment and write the date that I first use a bottle, and see how long it lasts. Since I just opened one this morning, this will work out well. I’ll let you know the results. But, I don’t usually buy the Dawn brand. If you look online, you will find SO many other uses for Dawn. Is Dawn really THAT different from other brands, I couldn’t find any specific research indicating it is. If you know, please share.
Anyway, Dawn can be used for:
** making bubbles Bubble Solutions
** cleaning messes out of hair
** cleaning windows, 3 drops Dawn in a gallon of water
** Sidewalk de-icer. Mix 1 tsp of Dawn, 1 TB rubbing alcohol, and 1/2 gallon of warm water and pour over walkways. They won’t refreeze.
** Multi-purpose cleaner. A drop of Dawn in 8 oz. water will clean tile and no-wax floors, bathroom, and kitchen counters and sinks, woodwork like baseboards, and shelves. (On wood, make sure you dry as you go)
** One drop Dawn in a spray bottle of water, and spray on plants to kill aphids, spider mites, and mealybugs.
** Wash poison ivy areas on the skin to keep it from spreading.
** For driveway oil stains, first sprinkle kitty litter to absorb excess oil, then use a scrub broom and a solution of Dawn and warm water.
** Use to bathe dogs. It kills fleas on contact
** Rub a drop of Dawn on eyeglass lenses and wipe clean. It will prevent them from fogging. (Now I learn this? It would have been helpful during the mask-wearing pandemic!!)
** Soak greasy tools before putting them away to remove oil and grime.
** Pretreat clothes for lipstick, grease, butter, oil, pen ink, etc. Apply Dawn and scrub with a small brush or toothbrush.
** Apply to sliding glass doors, doorknobs, hinges as a non-toxic lubricant
** Ant repellant. Spray countertops, cupboards, any other areas where you see ants with a solution of Dawn and water. Wipe dry.
** Safe enough to use as a facial cleanser for oily skin. (They use it on baby birds, right?)
** You can use Dawn in your dishwasher. Put 3 drops of liquid Dawn in the soap slot and fill the rest of the way with baking soda. Dishes will be squeaky clean
** You can clean cuts with Dawn. 1 drop-in several cups of water to rinse wounds. It is similar to using an iodine-based medical cleaner to remove bacteria.
** Armpit stains: 1 part Dawn, 2 parts hydrogen peroxide. Let it sit for an hour or more. If the stain is stubborn, add baking soda and scrub.
** Carpet cleaner refill: 1/4 c white vinegar, 1 TB hydrogen peroxide, 1 TB Dawn dish soap, fill with warm water.
** Jewelry cleaner: 7 parts hot water, 1 part ammonia, a small squirt of Dawn. Use an old toothbrush to scrub your jewelry.
Maybe I’ll get some and try it and see if it is worth the extra cost.
FOOD STORAGE RECIPES
Snickerdoodles
1 c. shortening
1 1/2 c. sugar
Cream together
2 eggs – add and mix
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp cream of tartar
1/2 tsp salt
Add and mix
2 3/4 c. flour – add and mix
Refrigerate for 30 min. Roll in 1″ balls and roll in a cinnamon-sugar mix. (I don’t measure this. Just start with the sugar and add cinnamon until it’s what you want)
Place on parchment
Bake 375˚ 8-10 minutes
Pie Crusts
Single crust – 1 1/2 c. flour, 1/2 tsp salt. Cut in 1/2 c. shortening. Add 4-5 TB water, just enough until you can make a squeeze ball of dough and it sticks together.
Chocolate Crinkles (Coooookies!)
1/2 c. shortening
1 2/3 c. sugar
2 tsp vanilla
Cream together
2 eggs
2 1-oz squares of melted chocolate
(you can substitute 6 TB cocoa and add 2 more TB shortening)
Add eggs and chocolate and mix
2 c. flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
Mix dry ingredients and add alternately with
1/3 c. milk
1/2 c. chopped walnuts – optional
Roll in 1″ balls and dip in powdered sugar.
Bake 350˚ for 15 minutes.
Never-Fail Biscuits
2 c. flour
4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp. cream of tartar
1/2 tsp salt
1 TB sugar
Mix together
1/2 c. shortening – cut in
1/2 c. milk
If you have never made biscuits, you might want to watch a video – or ask your grandma how to “cut in” and then how to roll out and make the biscuits.
Bake 450˚ 10-15 minutes.
I pretty much bake EVERYTHING on parchment. It saves having to grease the cookie sheets (which causes them to get blackened with the hot grease)
It’s interesting – my perspective – as I buy groceries. I see full shelves and KNOW that they can empty in just a day or two. Our food supply is precarious. NOW it the time, while the shelves are full again, to stock up. Get something this week. Our challenge is for 6 months – 1 year by next April. Totally do-able. Little bits at a time.
When the natural action of various lactic acid bacterias have their way with any vegetable matter, the result is a preserved and somewhat sour fermented product. From pickles to cabbage to turnips, every culture has harnessed this fermenting force and applied it to preserve their food without the need for refrigeration.
I’ll walk you through the basics of fermenting Sauerkraut. Sauerkraut has a distinctive flavor and a long shelf life and can keep for several months without the need for refrigeration or pasteurization. As a bonus, it has been proven to have several health benefits.
Here is what you’ll need: Cabbage of your choice, optional spices like dill, caraway, or fennel seeds, Kosher salt or some other type of additive-free salt, a jar with a lid, paper towel and rubber band, or a fermenting jar fitted with an airlock, rocks or weights for keeping your cabbage submerged in the brine, a zip lock baggy if you plan on using the rocks, but I find out through this process you can skip the baggie, and a knife for cutting the cabbage.
Here’s the quick recipe:
Always wash your hands first. Then wash your vegetables, even if you grew them yourself.
Cut the cabbage of your choice (green, savoy, napa, or red) in half. Core it. Reserve a few whole leaves for topping the mixture in the jar.
Slice it into ¼ to ⅛ inch strips.
Add 1 ½ tablespoon of Kosher or natural sea salt if you plan on eating it in the near term. Add two tablespoons of salt if you plan to preserve it for longer.
Optionally add ¼ teaspoon caraway or fennel seeds or both.
Work with your hands until you’ve worked as much of the liquid out of the cabbage as you can, and the cabbage is mushy. When you think you have mushed it up enough, mush it some more. Squeeze it up and free the juices. This salty juice is the brine, and you will need enough to completely submerge the cabbage in the jar.
Put the cabbage in a jar or crock and place one of the whole leaves over the top.
Press it down and add all the liquid brine until it is covered.
Poke a few holes in the top leaf to vent the gas that will build up.
Place your weight on top of the leaf and make sure you have a good half-inch to inch of brine and at least one-inch headspace of air in your jar.
If you need to make, more brine dissolve one teaspoon of salt in 2 cups of water and top it off. All your vegetable matter must be below the brine through the entire fermentation process.
Affix the lid loosely, burping lid, or fermentation airlock atop your jar.
Now, place it in a cool spot in your kitchen and wait two to three weeks.
Then, test your sauerkraut. When it is to your liking, remove the wait, seal the jar and refrigerate. It’s that simple. Now here’s the science behind what you just did and everything that could go wrong, so you’ll want to watch to the end for that.
Lactic Fermented Sauerkraut
There are just a few types of pickling. Pickling is the use of either salt, vinegar, or both to preserve vegetable matter. One method is with hot vinegar and salt. Another way is through multiple super salty baths and vinegar soaks. Another way involves packing the vegetables in salt then later a brine. The combinations are pretty basic and have been tested in kitchens throughout the world for centuries. They either use acetic acid or lactic acid methods or a combination of both. Most people have gravitated towards the method of lactic acid fermentation used in classic sauerkraut because it harnesses the natural process of fermentation. It retains the probiotic and nutritional qualities of the food.
In an over-processed food supply, lactic fermentations provide our bodies with the natural probiotics, enzymes, and easily accessible nutrients that nature intended us to have. Lactic acid fermentation is a metabolic process of anaerobic fermentation by which glucose or other six-carbon sugars are converted into cellular energy and the metabolite lactate, which is the lactic acid in solution. And that is just fancy talk for channeling a particular decomposing quality of food to preserve it and make the nutrients more accessible, particularly vitamins C and K. It is also low in calories and high in calcium and magnesium. It is an excellent source of dietary fiber, folate, iron, potassium, copper, and manganese. Not only does fermentation help enhance food preservation, but eating fermented foods can also boost the number of beneficial bacteria, probiotics, and bowel flora found in your gut which has been proven to boost immunity and improve overall health and weight loss. Cooking or heating food destroys these natural probiotics.
Brine
There’s much discussion about the perfect brine and the perfect salt to use. Sauerkraut just needs a 2% brine which isn’t very salty. That’s going to be about .66 ounces of salt or 5 teaspoons. I use two tablespoons to round-up, and because I tend to give my sauerkraut a light rinse before using. Some say that this washes off some of the probiotics, and it probably does, but you still get a healthy dose, and it’s more palatable to others. For this recipe, I suggest 1 ½ tablespoon salt if you plan to eat it within the next few months and two full tablespoons if you plan on keeping it for a while longer than that.
Salt
As for the salt, you want a natural salt that dissolves completely and is free of chemical additives like iodine or anti-caking chemicals. If you want to see a debate more passionate than the ones you see on political forums, ask the question of what salts to use on a pickling or canning group. You’ll get answers that range from “just use table salt because it doesn’t matter” to “use sea salt” or “use kosher salt” or “only use canning and pickling salt.” As simple as I can explain, you want to use pure salt without additives like iodine or anti-caking agents. Could you use table salt if that is all you had? Sure, but it may leave some cloudiness in your ferment. I know people who swear by Himalayan salt, but it can leave some solid minerals that won’t dissolve properly. I sometimes use a mix of Kosher and Himalayan, but because the granule size is different, I need to weigh it rather than spooning it out. In a grid-down situation, you might be able to use a salt lick for livestock, but there are probably some impurities and chemical additives in those. I would have to be desperate to go that route, and I would probably try and dilute and reprocess those non-food grade salts to remove impurities. Just don’t do that if it’s not a crisis situation. Get some good salt with no measurable impurities. You could harvest salt from ocean water for cleaner salt, or you could buy nice sea salt. I will link to a few salt options in the description below. The selection of salt is up to you. I recommend Kosher, Sea, or Himalayan salts. These are going to be the freest from impurities.
What Can Go Wrong?
The things that can go wrong occur because your food is above the brine, exposed to air, or too hot. If you see mold or fuzzy mold on the surface, some people scoop that off and continue. I throw it out. I would rather waste a little food in times of abundance than take a chance on some gastrointestinal distress. If something smells or tastes moldy or unappetizing, trust your senses and toss the batch. You may see some natural yeast rafts forming on the top of the water. If that scum is white and a bit “fluffy,” then it’s likely to be Kahm yeast. That’s a colony of different species of yeasts. While Kahm yeast isn’t harmful, it can indicate that there is a problem with your ferment. Kahm yeast is safe to eat as long as there are no molds present and the ferment tests at a pH of 4 or lower. Kahm yeast, however, can cause a disagreeable flavor or aroma. Kahm yeast is not a type of mold but rather an aerobic yeast that forms when the sugar is used up, and the PH of the ferment drops because of the lactic acid formation. It tends to develop more often on open-air ferments, when the temperature is too warm, or in a low salt brine.
You can tell the difference between yeast and mold. Mold will be the blue or other colored furry spots floating in the mixture. That would be something to worry about. If your food all remains submerged in the brine, everything should be fine. Make sure your fermenting product remains in a temperature stable and cool temperature environment. Ensure your brine’s salt percentage is
Saurkraut
above 2% for sauerkraut and 3% for other foods. I will link to a brine calculator in the comments below. Weighing your salt will always be more exact, but err on the side of slightly saltier if measuring by the spoonful. Finally, make sure that you use a closed fermenting system like an airlock or burping lid. With each of those measures, the chances of yeast or mold taking hold, even anaerobic varieties, are minimized. If you only use a tightened-down lid and ring, make sure to burp it daily to vent off the gas.
Sometimes it can get so active it bubbles over. If it does, you may need to take some out and pour more brine, and put your weights down better. I have started fermenting so much that I finally broke down and purchased some fermentation weights. I’ll link to those in the comments below. I like them very much. Before that, I would boil a good smooth rock in salt water for ten minutes and use that. That’s probably not the best method, but it’s probably what our ancestors did. I tried putting the rock in a ziplock baggy, but I found this method acted as a wick and constantly brought brine to the surface. Keep it in the brine and cover it. If it is not airtight and you use a paper towel and rubber band or a loose lid, expect that you might see some Kahm yeast on the top.
If you want to process your sauerkraut for really long storage. Make it this way but with a 3% or higher brine. Then can it with a heated water bath. You will lose most of the probiotics, but it will have an incredible shelf-life in your pantry. The heat will dumb the fermentation process and pasteurize your product. This is similar to what you’d get in the stores if you also added a shot or two of vinegar.
Sauerkraut is by far the easiest and most hands-on foray into the world of fermented foods. It has been similarly made for thousands of years. Just salt and cabbage, really, is all you need. I will pickle peppers, green tomatoes, and even purslane in a future segment, so look for that. In the meantime, learn this simple recipe and skill. Try it at least once and tuck it away for when you ever need it.
Learn how to make it, and let me know in the comments below how it went. Do you have a different recipe? If it’s not a family secret, share it with us in the comments. If you’d like me to make something else in my prepping kitchen, garden, or yard, let me know in the comments below. I try to read many of the comments to bring you fresh ideas and new skills. So, make some sauerkraut today and bring your prepping knowledge to a whole new level. Keep building your skills in the prepping kitchen…
Heatwaves, droughts not seen in centuries, crop failures, hunger, mass migrations, rising sea levels, wildfires, floods, storm surges, mudslides, and over 16,000 new animals added to the endangered species list; there is no refuting that the Earth is undergoing a dramatic period of change that will render some areas unlivable. Hundreds are dead from the recent Pacific Northwest heatwave, one of the dueling heatwaves scorching North America. Deserts will bloom, and grasslands will turn to dust. At the most conservative of estimates, sea levels will rise almost a foot in the next 30 years. That will have a devastating impact far beyond coastal regions. Oceans will wash further and further onto land, and storm surges will bring an abundance of rain suddenly to sun-scorched and soil-compacted lands. It may sound like the plot of an action thriller movie, and for some, it may play out that way. We don’t always see how extensive this environmental change is because it’s not always viewable out our windows. Many will dismiss the freak once in a lifetime storm that hits their hometown as just that, once in a lifetime. They’re only slightly more perplexed the following year when it happens again. Then, when it happens for the third year in a row, they have to choose between clinging to their beliefs or accepting that a more significant ecological threat confronts them. By then, they are behind the curve on getting prepared.Humans are very good at psychologically distancing themselves from things that matter in the future but not now. The myths that it won’t affect you and there’s nothing you can do will eventually give way to the accelerating reality of more heatwaves, floods, fires, storms, and more. Can you prep for Earth’s environmental change that will affect you but will more dramatically affect your children and their children?
No Matter Where You Live
Chicago seems far enough removed from the coastal threats of oceans rising, but it is engaged in a similar struggle. It doesn’t sit in the path of hurricanes, and it doesn’t suffer from wildfires like in the west; however, there’s no drought there, as the last five years have been wetter than any decade on record. Areas along the banks of Lake Michigan have frequently flooded; however, increased evaporation has also caused the water levels to drop significantly. There’s an oscillating pattern of extremely high and low levels. As bad as flooding is, the evaporation rates threaten to lower Lake Michigan levels so much that they would cease to flow into the Chicago River. The river would backflow into the lake. The river carries in freshwater to the city and carries off wastewater.Chicago is just one example. The Pacific Northwest is ill-equipped to handle hot weather. The houses are built to withstand cold and rain, not heat. Most older homes don’t have any form of air conditioning. It is of little surprise that 100s died in this last heatwave. And, this previous heatwave will have a devastating and lasting effect on wildlife and plant life. Native plants are flowering too early, and old-growth trees are dying off. If the heatwaves persist or occur with increasing regularity, the whole ecology of an area can be altered. This is particularly difficult for farmers who grow crops ideal for a specific climate. When that climate is too extreme, crops fail or produce lower yields. This has a rippling effect across the food supply chain and leads to significant shortages anywhere that crop is used or eaten. Those ripples extend out to you wherever you may be, and in whatever safe corner of the Earth you are. I’ll explore this and how our narrow range of variations is a recipe for disaster with this extreme weather a little later in this video, but it’s essential to understand how far-ranging these weather patterns are.
Heat Everywhere
In February, a jet stream of Sahara dust brought a winter heatwave to Europe. Historic temperatures and droughts are scorching the entire western states of the U.S. The Arctic circle, including Russia, Canada, Greenland, and the United States, hit records of 31.9 degrees Celsius, 89.4 degrees Fahrenheit. In June, heatwaves were experienced across the Great Plains and Canadian prairies. Death Valley, CA, recorded a record-breaking 128 degrees Fahrenheit, 53.3 degrees celsius. From the Pacific Northwest through Mexico and the Southwestern United States, even Nova Scotia and the East Coast of the United States are suffering from dueling heat waves.Ice melting and greater evaporation lead to more significant moisture in the air, leading to more incredible storms when the rain does come. When the rain comes to parched, dried, and compacted land, it doesn’t stay put. So, both more significant storms and flood surges are possible for many. The current heat-induced drought creates another problem for many, and that is wildfires. Colorado had the three largest fires in the state’s history last year. California suffered from multiple wildfires. More European countries suffered from large forest fires in 2018 than ever before, and Sweden experienced the worst fire season in reporting history. Canada is fighting more than 180 wildfires right now, and most homes and structures in the village of Lytton were destroyed after a fast-moving fire suddenly tore through the community, forcing more than 1,000 people to flee. Some of these fires are sparked by downed powerlines; some are manmade, some are induced by lightning strikes. The causes vary, but the conditions, the dry tinder, and scorching temperatures that create the perfect fuel for the wildfires have been building for years. This current heatwave may seem new because we feel the effects so acutely right now, but it has been ongoing. It stretches across several years and shows no accurate indication of letting up anytime soon. The wildfire that devastated the Western Canadian village of Lytton, Canada, in July was preceded by a heatwave in June, which had exceeded the all-time high temperatures ever recorded in Canada.While the northern hemisphere burns, the southern hemisphere freezes. Parts of Europe suffered through both record heatwaves and a cold wave in February. February brought a coldwave to the central regions of most of North America as well. Unseasonably cold weather resulted in heavy snow to widespread areas of China, even the Middle East, as they experienced their winter. Is a brutally cold winter next up for the Northern hemisphere, and will it bring new record cold or record snowfall and much-needed precipitation? If the heat and drought suddenly reverse in Fall, as they may very well do, the western and southern United States should be bracing for monsoon conditions. Over the last several years, there has been a significant weakening of the Polar Vortex, unleashing blasts of freezing cold air into the U.S. This has destabilized the jet stream and caused it to slow. The result is these patterns of extreme heat just sitting in place for an extended period. They slow, even stall in place. If the heat waves don’t reverse and persist even slightly through the northern hemispheres winter months, we will see mild temperatures intermittent with freezing temperatures with little moisture. This will lead to a cold but dry winter. Next year’s heatwaves and drought will be exponentially more extreme.
Infrastructure Failures
Lake Mead’s levels have dropped, and that impairs Hoover Dam’s ability to produce hydroelectric power. One of the largest hydropower plants in the United States is producing 33% less energy due to the drought strangling the Western U.S. At the same time, record high temperatures are creating greater consumer demand for cooling needs. It’s not just the one energy producer, though. The Oroville dam’s water levels may get so low this Summer that the power plant there will have to go offline completely.High winds and brutally dry conditions spark wildfires, and rolling blackouts as an aging electrical grid is forced to transform itself to keep pace with a rapidly changing climate. These problems did not exist to this extent 40 years ago, and demand was much lower then. We witnessed the effect of extreme cold weather in Texas this year as electricity producers went offline. Freezing pipes resulted in widescale failures in the water delivery system. Gas stations were depleted and unable to be replenished, which left many without fuel for generators.Extreme weather events often exceed infrastructure capacities and design standards and initiate infrastructure hardware and institutional failures, which can cascade to service outages. Why would a company invest in winterizing power plants against the significant cold for an extended period? So, we have the Texas power failure. Heat and demand can cause powerlines to sag and can result in blackouts. Higher than average and persistent winds can force power companies to shut down to prevent possible wildfires. Infrastructure systems are increasingly interdependent upon each other. When the power goes out, so do the pumps for fuel, municipal water, and sewers.The bottom line is extreme weather, oscillations of temperatures from highs to lows, and irregular patterns all can directly lead to interdependent infrastructure failures. These minor and major grid-down situations have a cascading effect across supply and food chains.
Monoculture: The Downfall of the Food Supply During Weather Extremes
Food shortages are just one looming disaster that environmental change will bring. Monoculture is the agricultural practice of growing a single crop, plant, or livestock species, variety, or breed in a field or farming system at a time. Polyculture is where more than one crop or livestock species are grown in the same space. The term monoculture also extends out to genetic monocultures. When failures occur along a genetic monoculture, whole cultures are affected. The exclusive use of one variety of potatoes in Ireland led to the Great Famine of 1845-1849 and led to one of the greatest mass exoduses from a single island in history. You may not remember the Gros Michel cultivar of banana. It was favored before the 1950s for its taste and tiny seeds, but it was also planted asexually through cuttings. It had a singular genetic marker that left it vulnerable to a fungal disease that wiped out production and force growers to adopt the Cavendish. The Cavendish is also a clone of previous plants, so it is susceptible to a single similar blight.Potatoes and bananas are just two examples. The same monoculture that leads to high yields but weakened genetics has been seen in livestock as well. Focusing heavily on one genetic trait has come at the expense of other characteristics. Resistance to disease, mothering instincts, even fertility is sometimes diminished in favor of bulk, leanness, or fat. Thirty years ago, in the early 1990s, this was realized when Holstein calves were notably growing slower, and some were dying before they were six months old. They were found to be homozygous, having the same genetic sequence for a gene that caused leukocyte adhesion deficiency– a recessive disorder causing immunodeficiency. Once diagnosed, the same genetic defect was found in an estimated 600,000 cattle worldwide and was tracked to a single bull that was widely used in the industry. Right now, the global consumption of chicken is at 137 million chickens per day. Global consumption of eggs in developed nations ranges between 200 and 320 eggs per person per year. There is a lot of potential for failure in a monoculture poultry and egg industry.The loss of biodiversity and feed diversity leaves livestock susceptible to various ailments, both genetic and external. Rising temperatures and species migrations have led to an accelerated spread of infectious diseases. Modern, high-yield chicken, cattle, and hog production create the potential for widescale failures. When the commercial hybrid CornishX chicken comes down with a case of avian flu or the heat is so extreme they can’t be cooled in their massive facilities, what then? Can the chicken industry pivot to a heartier chicken of the more than 500 species out there? If an outbreak occurs amidst the handful of egg-laying varieties on farms with populations of hundreds of thousands of them, can the industry just shift to a heartier variety? Probably not. In both cases, the flow of chicken or eggs to your stores would evaporate overnight.These singular strains of plants and animals create excellent yields when things are stable but are more susceptible to blight or disease when weather patterns alter significantly for long periods. Most of the world’s biggest crops: soy, corn, wheat, oats, potatoes, barley, and more all come from singular genetic lines or a few variations of the hundreds available in the wild because of their specific ability to grow in a particular, stable climate. When those crops fail, feed crops fail. The result is fewer nutrients, lowered immunities, and a higher chance of cascading collapses in our food supply.
What Can You Do?
Let’s be honest. One person, one country, even a few countries banding together, likely isn’t enough to alter the trajectory of weather extremes. Though you could move off-grid and live a self-sufficient lifestyle, which would be ideal, most lack the resources to do so. What you can do is to develop your independence from these systems that absolutely will fail and to harden yourself off from the extreme weather patterns that will occur with greater frequency. Here are five short term survival needs you can address today:WaterGet your personal water storage to a level that will sustain you for a minimum of 3-days. The ideal would be a minimum of 3-weeks, and that should be your goal. You will need at least 1 gallon of water per person per day for emergencies. 1/2 a gallon for drinking, 1/4 gallon for cooking, and 1/4 gallon for washing. That would be 21 gallons or so per person for 21 days. That will get you through the bulk of disasters you face. You can quickly and compactly store this amount of water along a wall with one 10-pack of Waterbricks like those available at the Cityprepping.com site. I’ll put a link in the section below. https://www.cityprepping.com/products/waterbrick-3-5-gallon-blue-10-pack/FoodFood is the next essential to building your security amidst disasters. Most people don’t have enough in their refrigerator and cupboards to sustain them even a few days. Food has to be your next prep beyond water. Have enough non-perishable and long shelf-life food on hand to feed you at least one 1-month, and preferably 3-months. Your goal is to be constantly pushing the timeframe further back. When you are at a year or more, you’re prepped with food to last you through almost all the significant disasters you could face. Be aware that long-shelf-life food is often dehydrated or freeze-dried and will increase the amount of water needed for cooking. Beyond this, and especially if the disaster continues, learn to grow something to supplement and extend your supplies. If that’s a patio garden or a backyard garden, great. If it’s sprouts or mushrooms on the countertop of your kitchen, great. If it’s learning to forage and knowing where plants grow in your area, that’s great too. I guarantee you after a disaster, most people won’t be harvesting purslane, dandelion, and broadleaf plantain out of your lawn, but both will give you an abundance of vital nutrients. Make sure you have the food you need to survive for an extended period of time. PowerWith your water and food needs addressed, you should have enough energy to meet your minimal needs. Charging smart devices, light sources, heaters, refrigerated coolers, fans, and other small devices. This can be achieved through power supplies, large and small. If you only need small devices charged, a solar panel or a small solar battery may suffice. A more powerful solar generator is more expensive, but it will provide you with a broader range of uses and higher power levels. Have some form of power backup, whether that is solar, wind, gas, or propane. I’ll be doing a video shortly about getting a whole-home battery backup system installed.ShelterEither insulate your whole structure or select areas of it you can retreat to that will maintain comfortable temperatures for the longest amount of time. I have other videos on surviving cold weather by quickly altering and insulating a room, so you will want to take a look at that. Also, look at long-term solutions. Is there an internal room of your house that can be insulated further, heated, or cooled easily? If so, can you establish it as part of your extreme weather survival plan? Can you quickly convert it to your operation center? Conversely, if you live in an area that has any recorded history of flood, fire, or inclement weather, study up on those occurrences. It is worth understanding what the worst was in your area in the past. Areas that have flooded can flood again at the same or higher levels. The Great Dustbowl can happen again. Understand how those people sheltered, coped, and survived if you live in the same zone. Know your evacuation routes and be prepared to bug out. You can’t stay in your home if it’s on fire or underwater. Make shelter part of your survival plan.Health & SanitationI have some other blogs on this topic, as I do for most of the things discussed here, but your health and sanitation needs are critical after a disaster. Beyond having the medicines and aid supplies you need after a disaster, you have to be able to dispose of human waste safely. Make sure to have a large 5-gallon bucket and 100s of trash bags on hand.
Conclusion
Many disasters can befall you. There are the “very likely” and the “unlikely but possible” varieties. You have to move extreme and prolonged weather into the probable category. There isn’t any more time for debate, and we don’t have to know the reasons behind it to plug in our own solution set. Even if your area remains stable and temperate, when other regions suffer, it sends a ripple through our food supply and jeopardizes our critical interdependent infrastructure. This results in more and greater disasters. So insulating yourself from heatwaves and extreme, prolonged weather by addressing the five short-term survival needs will increase your odds of survival.How has the weather affected you? What is your plan to deal with the fallout should things continue or worsen? What’s your forecast? As always, please stay safe out there.
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If this season is your first season of hurricanes because you moved to a hurricane zone, there are a few things you absolutely must know to get up to speed. Know the location of shelters in your area. Mark more than one safe evacuation location on a map. Know your evacuation routes—elevation matters. You may think that the fastest route out of town is a certain way, but if it’s not an elevated route, it may be flooded. Mark more than one safe route to a safer location. If you may need special evacuation assistance or someone in your family may need assistance, ask local officials if there is a registry to assist in the event of an outage or flood. Your first zone is your home, so make sure you know how to shut off electricity, gas, and water in the event of catastrophic damage. Secure everything around your house that could blow away. In the days leading up to the hurricane potentially making landfall, clear all branches or dead trees around your home that could likely be snapped in the wind. Sustained winds of between 74 and 157 miles per hour or stronger are highly probable even if you are not directly in the hurricane’s path. Board up windows with 5/8ths inch plywood if you are in a coastal region.
Make sure your vehicles are gassed up. Even if you plan on weathering the storm in your home, you need to have a plan to get out of the disaster zone. Know where you will go, and keep that as your backup plan. In the period leading up to, during, and right after a disaster, food, water, and fuel will force many to desperate measures. Make sure to factor in your security with all your preparations. Consider the safety of your home zone, but also consider how safe the evacuation routes may or may not be. Know the areas prone to flooding, and know how to get out if you have to. If you decide to evacuate or are ordered to do so, don’t delay. Shut off the power, gas, and water to your home. Stay ahead of the masses of people who will evacuate. Hurricanes can cause significant damage for a hundred miles inland, but they are confined to a geographical path. You can get outside of that path if you act quickly. Make sure everyone in your family can connect with a family or friend far outside the disaster zone. In this way, if you are separated, you will be able to reconnect.
If you are in your home when the storm hits, make sure that you are in a low, interior room. Go to a safe area, such as an interior room, closet, or downstairs bathroom. Never go outside the protection of your home or shelter before there is confirmation that the storm has passed the area. Stay away from windows, skylights, and glass doors. Never go outside the protection of your home or shelter before there is confirmation that the storm has passed the area. The eye of the storm could create a temporary and deceptive lull, with high winds still approaching.
WATER
Your at-home kit must contain a minimum of a 3-day supply of water. That’s roughly 1 gallon per person, per day. I highly encourage people to have more water than that on hand. A bathtub emergency Waterbob, even liners, can allow you to fill the bathtub with around fifty to eighty gallons of emergency water. You should also know how to turn off the water flow to your water heater and have the tools necessary to tap this reserve of 20 to 60 gallons of water. Though it is likely completely safe to drink, it’s also at the right temperature to develop a bacterium known as legionella after a disaster. You may want to filter it or purify it if you feel it may have been tainted. Fortunately, with hurricanes, we can see them coming, so there is time to fill your water reserves. Even collapsible water containers can allow you to top up your water supply quickly. If you have to evacuate, competition for resources will be high. The water that surrounds you may be contaminated with chemicals or other waste materials. Having a personal filtration straw will be invaluable. Finally, freeze some water bottles in your refrigerator’s freezer and crank your refrigerator and freezer to its coldest setting. When the power goes out, the ice will keep your food colder for longer. As the ice melts, you will have clean water to drink.
All that said, every hurricane that hits results in people scrambling for cases of water. In extreme cases, people are sickened by drinking compromised water or dehydrated while sitting in floodwaters. With modern forecasting, we see the disaster of a hurricane days before it ever strikes. While others adopt a wait-and-see approach that leads to desperation later, secure your essential water resources right now–long before a tropical storm even appears on the maps.
FOOD
With your water secured, you also need to have on hand enough non-perishable food that does not require cooking. Most hurricanes have a long build-up, a period of destruction, an aftermath, and a recovery. In some cases, like Katrina, the destruction can be so bad that much of the area is rendered uninhabitable, and the recovery effort is significantly delayed. While the Federal Emergency Management Agency recommends 72-hours of non-perishable food that does not require cooking, I think that’s the absolute minimum you should have. You would be better served to have at least two week’s worth of food on hand. A camping stove, rocket stove, or Kelly Kettle will allow you to purify water and cook small meals. The Kelly Kettle and the Minuteman rocket stoves will use just small amounts of biomass to boil or cook efficiently.
Without electricity or a cold source, food stored in refrigerators and freezers can become unsafe. Bacteria in food grow rapidly at temperatures between 40 and 140 degrees Fahrenheit, and if these foods are consumed, you can become very sick. You will want to raid your refrigerator and plan on eating or cooking what is in there in the early part of the disaster. Also, consider stocking up on ready-to-eat canned meats, fruits, and vegetables. Freeze-dried foods will take up very little space but will provide you loads of nutrient diversity. Protein bars, powdered milk, and dried cereals will give you a feeling of fullness. You should consider two types of food: food that you can store in your home for surviving the aftermath of the hurricane and food you will need to take with you if you are forced to evacuate. If you are forced to evacuate, make sure you have at least 72-hours worth of food with you.
MAKE A KIT
With your water and food secured, you also need to make a kit. The basics for your kit are a battery-powered flashlight and radio and extra batteries, a first aid kit, and a minimum of a seven-day supply of any medicines you need to take regularly. Also, put a whistle, a dust mask, gloves, personal sanitation, hygiene items, a multi-tool, and maps of your area in your kit. Make copies of all necessary documents and identification cards and put them in a zip lock bag in your backpack. All of these items should be ready to go in your bug-out bag. I have several videos on what to include in your bag, and I will link to them in the comments below. Consult those videos for what you will need if the hurricane recovery doesn’t happen. Your kit should allow you to be self-sustaining for up to a week after any disaster.
RETURNING HOME
If you have evacuated, return home only when it is safe to do so. Do not go through floodwaters to get to your home, as pollution and bacteria levels will be very high. Also, floodwaters can be deceptive, they may look shallow and slow-moving, but they can be deep, hide objects beneath them, and be very treacherous. Watch for downed power lines on your route home and when you arrive back at your house. Check for frayed wires around your home. Check your gas and electric connections before turning the power back on to avoid electrocution or explosions. Do not enter your home if water is still surrounding your home. Don’t eat food that has gone unrefrigerated. Don’t eat food from your garden if floodwaters have seeped into your soil. Consider boiling your water for a few days, even if no specific boil order has been issued. Typically, the deaths experienced during these types of disasters occur in the aftermath, not during the event itself. Be very careful during this period.
CONCLUSION
If there’s anything good about a hurricane, it is that you can see them approaching long before they show up at your door. Even knowing that many people fail to prepare until the very last moment. This leads to panic and desperation and can make a passing storm into a lasting disaster. If you live in any coastal region, prepare for the most likely disaster of a hurricane or tropical storm. Don’t be caught off guard. You will find that the preps you do put in place will get you through a host of other disasters, as well.
What do you think? What’s the one lesson you learned when you survived a hurricane? What do you wish you would have known?
As always, please stay safe out there. 
In this blog, we’re going to take you through, step-by-step, showing you how to make beef jerky. We’ll cover the steps, the recipe, and all of the items you’ll need on hand. Nobody has ever been able to eat a whole cow in one sitting but to survive, it’s essential to preserve as much of the meat as possible for consumption.
preference in taste, feel free to add an optional ingredient. I will add some sesame oil, pineapple juice, and chili paste to mine at the end of the basic recipe to make mine just a little more Pacific Island style.
You can use any cut of meat if you practice proper safety measures, but using pork or chicken requires special safety measures too lengthy for me to address here. Chicken, for instance, needs to be cooked or smoked before drying to prevent salmonella. Pork must be treated to avoid Trichinosis. I have even had rattlesnake and alligator jerky. If you do meat other than beef or bison, which is the easiest, read up on it to address the safety concerns. Venison makes an incredible, gamey but lean jerky, but urban preppers can’t always get their hands on affordable venison. I use beef for this jerky because almost everyone can find a cheap piece of beef. You can use multiple different cuts of beef, from prime rib to flank steak. I prefer flank steak. The key to cutting the meat is to trim the fat then cut the meat against the grain. This breaks down the stringy tendrils and helps to make your jerky not so chewy. If you’d like to know more about trimming the fat, consult my video on creating tallow. There I demonstrate trimming the fat on several different cuts of meat. My preferred cut for jerky is flank steak like you would use for a good carne asada. Which was once a cheap cut of meat that nobody ate, as were most barbeque meats. Somewhere along the way, people realized how good it was when properly marinated and prepared, and the price went up accordingly.
Hi Everyone,
When you consider how exotic cinnamon is, and how valuable it was thousands of years ago, we are lucky that it is so readily available. If you buy it in the bulk section at Winco, it is really reasonable. I have 2-3 quart jars of cinnamon in my storage.
park. Naturally curious, we followed them and found out they were setting up for a “movie in the park”. As the families laid down their blankets, the moms had the kids stand with their arms out and gave them a good spray with insect repellent. We looked at each other and wondered if “this was a thing?” Needless to say, the bugs were HUGE, flying around in the air while all the kids (and dads too) sang to Frozen!!! We bought some the very next day and never got out of the car without spraying ourselves. Bottom line – if during the Zombie Apocalypse you have to spend any time outside, you may want something to ward off the mosquitoes. This is a good time, it’s on sale.
South Africa right now gives us a glimpse into how rapidly chaos can be unleashed in a once stable society. The unrest began on July 8 when former President Jacob Zuma started serving a 15-month prison sentence for contempt of court. Supporters in his home province of KwaZulu-Natal set up roadblocks on major highways and burned about 20 trucks. 
From a macroeconomic perspective, each one-point increase in the unemployment rate results in an estimated 37,000 deaths. According to the economist Gregory Mankiw, 3,300 more people are sent to state prisons. There are 920 more suicides, 650 more homicides, and 4,000 more people are admitted to state mental institutions. The stress of unemployment, increased drug and alcohol abuse, and the huddling together of people in more concentrated domestic living arrangements creates the kindling necessary for minor altercations to combust into larger fires quickly. During the great depression, unemployment hit almost 25%. By Mankiw’s calculations, a 25% unemployment rate in today’s society would equate to roughly 925,000 deaths and 51 million people unemployed.
As mentioned, businesses scale back operations as product sales slump due to rising costs and demand. Companies adjust to the equilibrium price and the equilibrium quantity based upon the fluctuations in demand and price. Runs on some products with service demands bottoming out can result in dramatic oscillations in prices. In a stable economy, many prices are said to be sticky. That is to say that they make minor, sluggish adjustments in response to supply or demand factors. However, in a faltering economy, prices can rapidly increase on some products while staying the same or sticking on everything else. 
America already has a homeless problem. We see the homeless in pictures, huddled together in makeshift tent and tarp cities, and there are homeless people that we don’t see who couch surf or sleep in their cars. As the economy collapses and unemployment skyrockets, there will be evictions. Local, State, and Federal efforts to curtail or stave off those eviction numbers will be too late for many and not lasting enough for others.
The onset of the Great Depression after 1929 left many U.S. farmers in financial ruin as prices dropped along with the dollar’s value, and they were left with vast surpluses of stock. In California alone in 1932, farmers unable to shift their stock lost nearly 3 million watermelons and left 22.4 million pounds of tomatoes to rot in the field. Unemployment and poverty soared. Even with a growing hunger crisis, farmers could not afford to bring their harvests to market, and the people could not afford the sticky or increasing prices. So, it isn’t necessarily that the production of food decreases. It is more that people can no longer afford the food produced, and it becomes not worth it to force the product to market because of rising costs.
Fires, illegal hijacking of power and water, and the inability to perform maintenance and repair will lead to wide-scale utility failures. When the power stops, so do the water and natural gas pumping stations. When the power stops, so does the trucking supply chain. Gas can’t be had, and deliveries can’t be made. If you’re running a noisy generator, you can expect every person in proximity to be peeking over your fence wondering if you have fuel or how they might ask you to plugin for a bit. At least one person is likely thinking of how they might take your power resource of a generator for themselves.
Expect that the relative value of currency declines. Money in the bank is worth far less than goods, services, and skills. If you know how to hunt, fish, sew, repair, and so forth, those skills will be worth far more than currency. Rising costs will result in paper currency not being worth the paper it is printed on, quite literally. Cash is not king in a fallen kingdom.
After every economic collapse, some form of recovery comes. The government that emerges may look nothing like what you know now, and often they are more authoritarian and nationalistic, but some new form of government will emerge. Nations rise, and nations fall. Then they rise again. Their second iteration is never as grand as their first, and there is neither a guarantee that things will return to normal nor is there an assurance that things will be better. The calls for peace and a cessation of the mobs can lead to nationalistic, militaristic, or even totalitarian rules. In some areas, an almost feudalistic power emerges. Crime lords and warlords, and community leaders arm themselves and call the shots. They are not organized beyond their boundaries. Afghanistan is an example of the period after a collapse. Tribal lords rule within their borders, but there is no overarching national-level cohesive control.
y settlers all owe their lives to pemmican. It’s a dense, high-protein, high-energy food that can be stored easily on a stable temperature shelf for an incredible five years. It has the right mix of fats, proteins, and calories to keep you going long into the aftermath of any disaster or for many miles down any trail.
You could include cranberries, raisins, dried apples or other fruits, chokecherries, western juneberry, mulberries, or whatever local indigenous berry or fruit you have available to you.
It’s just easier for me to do it that way with this small batch, but you usually will trim all the fat off the meat and start with the leanest possible meat.
Either shape it into 1-inch meatball rounds or spread it on some wax paper in a small pan as I do here.
a preservative for centuries. The nice thing about fat as a preservative is that your nose will tell you if your pemmican is no longer safe to eat. Rancid meat has a tangy, putrid odor.
part each carrot and celery. The Italians call this a Soffritto with the addition of garlic as well. In reality, you can add to your heated pemmican potatoes, wild leeks, mushrooms, seaweed, dandelions, bamboo, prickly pear cactus, fiddleheads, broadleaf plantain, cattails, beans, or whatever else you forage for or pick up along your trail. You could even add additional meat. Use it as a base.
Take it from me, you do NOT want to make your own dehydrated onions. Unless you do it outside, you will stink up your whole house. Your clothes will smell like onion, your sheets will smell like onion, your hair will smell. I may have learned this the hard way. Cheaper and easier to buy them already dehydrated.
Lake Mead’s levels have dropped, and that impairs Hoover Dam’s ability to produce hydroelectric power. One of the largest hydropower plants in the United States is producing 33% less energy due to the drought strangling the Western U.S. At the same time, record high temperatures are creating greater consumer demand for cooling needs.
High winds and brutally dry conditions will very likely spark a fire season we likely have never seen before. Rolling blackouts are inevitable as an aging electrical grid is forced to transform itself to keep pace with demand and an environment it wasn’t built to withstand. It’s not changing fast enough. Nobody has dialed it in yet if there is a solution of a mix of renewable energy and traditional fossil fuel-based energy production. People will debate that forever, but the important thing is that you are prepping due to the obvious early warning signs of these systems failing.
Under ideal conditions, transformers and circuit breakers are expected to operate for 30 to 40 years. 70% of power transformers are 25 years of age or older, 60% of circuit breakers are 30 years or older. Under ideal conditions and with proper maintenance, a transmission line can last up to 100 years. 70% of transmission lines are 25 years or older, but transmission lines weren’t built and erected to withstand prolonged periods of high heat, freezing cold, wildfires, or sustained high winds. Our systems and infrastructures were designed and built in previous decades to work in periods without extreme weather. The current prolonged high and low temperatures, higher winds, droughts, and consumer demand are stretching those systems well beyond the blueprint of their maximum capacity design.
The grid is spread so thin and tight, running at maximum capacity, and a failure anywhere could borrow from power generated elsewhere, creating a disequilibrium. Outages and rolling blackouts will become more frequent and will have a broader scope. The nation’s electric power grid is getting older and older. Its lines are sagging, and the turbines are getting worn. The system failing in larger and more significant ways is inevitable.
HYDROELECTRIC
Hydropower accounts for 52 percent of the nation’s renewable electricity generation and 7 percent of total electricity generation. Hydroelectric 7.3%, geothermal .4%, solar 4.6%, and wind energy 8.4% have kept the grid supplemented, combining for 21% of the annual U.S. energy production. This has allowed us to meet rising demands, but these forms of energy production aren’t without their problems. Hydroelectric is most likely to take a hit this year. Lake Mead which powers the Hoover Dam has declined to its lowest level since the reservoir was filled in the 1930s following the construction of the Hoover Dam. The reservoir near Las Vegas, Nevada, holds water for cities, farms, and tribal lands in Arizona, Nevada, California, and Mexico. Years of unrelenting drought and high temperatures are shrinking the flow into the lake, contributing to the significant mismatch between the demands for water and diminishing supply. If it drops another 170 feet, Lake Mead will be a dead pool, and no more water will flow through it from Lake Mead. That may seem like a long way still to go, but levels have already dropped 145 feet since the year 2000, and long before it gets classified as a “Dead Pool,” Hoover Dam would have to go offline. If it goes offline, so too does 4 billion kilowatt-hours of hydroelectric power servicing 1.3 million people. If the predicted El Nina pattern drenches the Northwest and leaves the Southwest dry, as it is being forecasted to do later this year, Lake Mead’s water levels will continue to decline.
It’s not just a problem there. The Oroville Lake serving the dam of the same name is predicted to drop below operational levels next month. When it goes offline, so does the 819 megawatts of electricity, immediately impacting 800,000 homes. Folsom Lake is the driest it’s been in springtime since the epic drought of 1977. Water levels are so low that temporary pumps probably will be installed to help move water out of the stricken reservoir. Folsom Dam feeds into the system almost 200 megawatts. Oroville, Folsom, Shasta, the Yuba River, the Stanislaus River, the San Joaquin River, waterways, and reserves throughout the state are approaching historic lows. Typically, the grid relies on hydropower for about 14% of its overall supply. But this year, the state is facing significantly lower-than-normal hydro conditions. Even if the dams don’t go offline, lower levels equal lower pressure which equals lower power production. So, what does all this mean?
As it gets hotter, longer, and more parched, demand for energy increases at the same time production decreases by up to 14% in the state of California alone. Add to this the droughts decreasing or ceasing hydroelectric production in Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, and the other Western States, and the shortfall can’t be made up by simply borrowing electricity from another state. The drought conditions are much bigger than just the Golden State this time around. If you are out east, sitting in your home, and it is currently raining, it would be easy to dismiss the problems of the western states. You should consider that the largess of the United States’ Gross Domestic Product and agriculture comes significantly from these states. As crops fail from lack of water, the food on your store shelves will dwindle as well.
SOLAR
There’s no shortage of sunlight in the west, but solar only makes up just under 5% of infrastructure production. Still, it’s an efficient method of energy production for the individual homeowner and has kept grid demands stable over the last decade or more. The average home in the U.S. uses 10,400 kWh of electricity per year. To be completely self-sufficient, a homeowner would need 28 to 34 250-watt solar panels to meet with their current power usage. Most homeowners don’t have that kind of roof space. This production versus consumption problem aside, most solar panel setups won’t work when the grid goes down because they aren’t configured with a battery backup tied to a power management system. A traditional solar power system shuts down when the power goes down to prevent any power from back-feeding to the grid, which could be dangerous for utility linemen working on repairing grid failures. If you already have solar, you should be looking into home battery solutions. If you don’t have solar, you should only consider systems with some form of home battery solution. I will be releasing a video soon on a system that I am implementing that will replenish itself when the grid is down and will keep me running seamlessly when the power goes out. While the initial upfront cost may be a deterrent, many states and federal programs offer rebates and tax credits along with financing. With the rising cost of power in my area, my solar setup pays for itself in about 5 years.
Solar can be part of your solution, even when your budget is tight. A sunoven solar cooker or thermal cooker will allow you to cook and purify water when the power goes down. A typical 1000 to 1500 kWh solar generator can be had for a little over 1000 dollars, and it will greatly increase your capabilities and sustainability. So, while others debate solar as a renewable energy in the broad picture of things, you should leverage your piece of the sun to improve your prepping and ultimate survival.
CALCULATE YOUR SOLUTION
When the grid goes down with little hope that it will come back up in the immediate future, you are either at the mercy of the fates, or you’ve thoughtfully calculated and plugged in a solution for yourself. No amount of debate and no strongly held opinion will save you. A good starting point is to use an online consumption calculator like one I will link to in the comments below, or simply write out an inventory of every electricity using light, appliance, or anything plugged into the house’s electrical system. Is the stove electric? Is the water heater electric, or does it rely on an electric starter? Do an inventory of every room. After you’ve done your walk-through and a first pass at documenting your whole consumption, go to your breaker box and shut everything off.
Now, go back into your house and sit down and assess what is going to go wrong. Obviously, your food in the freezer and refrigerator will start warming and eventually go bad. Do you have the means to cook? When there’s no electricity to run gas pumps, there will be no food deliveries or gas for your generator. When the natural gas stops flowing because of pumping stations, will you be able to cool or heat your home? Depending upon the season, how warm or cold is your house going to get with no power? Do you have medicines that need to be refrigerated? When the municipal water stops flowing because the pumps aren’t working, how will you maintain a supply of water? No water also means no flushing of toilets. How much water would you need if the electricity is out for a week or two or three? Realize that though you are engaged in an exercise to determine your consumption needs, not one of your neighbors is likewise engaged. How desperate and underprepared will they be? Factor that in if your emergency plan is to run a noisy generator.
Once you understand how you are consuming electricity and how the lack of electricity will unravel, contemplate what your energy needs are to get by. Consider everything on your list is powerless. What’s the most important thing? Light? Cooking? Heating or cooling? Communications and information? What’s your plan for each? Turn to the same list and determine what you absolutely must have, and begin to sketch out a plan to accommodate losing those things. I have a friend who lives in a suburban tract in Southern California. He has a large stack of firewood and kindling. It isn’t because it gets particularly cold here. It’s because when the power goes down, he has prepared himself to be able to use his fireplace, firepit, and thermal cooker to cook or to boil water. Even his wood mulch is a resource.
When devising your solution, factor in the environment, food, water, and security. You need to be able to keep cool or hot, at least one room of your home, and you need to seal that room off from other rooms of your home. If you live in a non-humid environment, a small evaporative cooler may draw little electricity but may be able to lower your temperature by a few critical degrees. Likewise, if it’s winter when the power goes out, and here I am talking to all those Texas folks, what’s your heating plan? What’s your plan to stay warm? Maintaining a survivable environment without gas or electricity is a significant part of surviving an extended outage. Modern houses aren’t built to maintain comfortable temperatures when the sun is blazing without HVAC.
Another consideration is your food plan. What will you be able to prepare? If you plan to pull out the camping stove, great, but how long will those canisters of propane last? If your goal is to BBQ all that meat in your freezer before it goes bad, great, but do you have the propane or charcoal you need right now if that were the case, and how will you deal with the hungry neighbors your delicious BBQ will attract? What’s your plan when the refrigerator and stove are useless to you? Do you have a solar cooker or thermal cooker in your prepping supplies, but you’ve never used them? What makes you think you’ll be able to use them well once the grid goes down?
Ensure you have food supplies enough to last you at least a week, if not three or more. Make sure you can process and prepare that food without externally provided power. With food comes human waste. Can you safely remove human waste from your living environment? What’s your plan for the trash, too, when that service stops?
Water is a topic I harp on a great deal on this channel, and that’s because it’s the most important prep you should have. You can’t live 72 hours without water. It’s also the easiest for someone new to prepping to get control of their supplies. Whether that’s a 55-gallon barrel and pump stashed in your garage or a stack of Waterbricks or a LifeStraw and a stream or pond, you have to make sure you have water security. Even using water to cool a rag and place it on your pulse points or forehead can keep you from overheating when the AC and the fans aren’t working. I also advise people to fill their bathtubs, sinks, and every container they can find at the first sign of an emergency or disaster. This will keep you from having to draw off your supplies and will get water to you before pumping stations run out of their backup power. The back tank of your toilet has fresh water in it, and you can draw 40 or so gallons of water out of your water heater if you’ve looked at how to do that before the internet went down. A simple hand pump can extract water from where it sits in your irrigation lines if the water ceases to flow to your house. Also, freeze some water bottles in your freezer. It may take a marginal amount of extra electricity and make your freezer work just a bit harder, but when the power goes out, your food will last longer, and you will have cold water to drink. Finally, have the means to purify or boil dirty water. The longer you can stretch your supply of stored water, the better off you will be.
Don’t forget the security of what you have. Though you are taking the time to address your food, water, waste, and environmental needs, I guarantee that your friends and neighbors are not doing the same. Keep shades and curtains drawn closed. Avoid running gas generators, cooking fragrant foods, or anything that would indicate you have food, water, or electricity. Have a plan for when others show up at your door that is a little more elaborate than reaching for a firearm.
A short-term solution is a gas generator, but they have OPSEC issues and will eventually run out of fuel. Even a small one can keep critical items running like your refrigerator. An even better option here is a solar generator and battery. Whole-home batteries with solar or generators attached are reasonable medium-range solutions. Cutting electrical usage to the bare survival minimum can stretch these systems out for even more extended periods of time. This is where the assessment of your survival consumption needs will be helpful to you. Have backup LED lighting, cooking, heating, and cooling options all ready to plug into your system.
CONCLUSION
At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter who was right or what you believe the problems are or were; the problems still persist. While no large-scale solution or compromising equilibrium may ever be achieved, the problems will persist. Our grid is sagging under the weight of age and use, and the extreme weather that was never calculated into its design could be the final straw that will lead to its collapse. As a prepper, you should give less attention to the screaming debaters and instead prep as though your future life’s security depends upon it because it does. Let the others debate the causes and solutions while you methodically work towards a solution for yourself. Let the alarmists and politicians argue back and forth while you plug in each piece of your unique solution. Prepare for extremes of hot and cold and continued failings of the power infrastructure. It will get much worse before any large-scale solution is found.
What are you doing today as a result of the fragile power system you are witnessing fail? What’s your tip or solution for those new to prepping for when the lights go out for an extended period?
As always, please stay safe out there. 
When the natural action of various lactic acid bacterias have their way with any vegetable matter, the result is a preserved and somewhat sour fermented product. From pickles to cabbage to turnips, every culture has harnessed this fermenting force and applied it to preserve their food without the need for refrigeration.
There are just a few types of pickling. Pickling is the use of either salt, vinegar, or both to preserve vegetable matter. One method is with hot vinegar and salt. Another way is through multiple super salty baths and vinegar soaks. Another way involves packing the vegetables in salt then later a brine. The combinations are pretty basic and have been tested in kitchens throughout the world for centuries. They either use acetic acid or lactic acid methods or a combination of both. Most people have gravitated towards the method of lactic acid fermentation used in classic sauerkraut because it harnesses the natural process of fermentation. It retains the probiotic and nutritional qualities of the food.
Himalayan salt, but it can leave some solid minerals that won’t dissolve properly. I sometimes use a mix of Kosher and Himalayan, but because the granule size is different, I need to weigh it rather than spooning it out. In a grid-down situation, you might be able to use a salt lick for livestock, but there are probably some impurities and chemical additives in those. I would have to be desperate to go that route, and I would probably try and dilute and reprocess those non-food grade salts to remove impurities. Just don’t do that if it’s not a crisis situation. Get some good salt with no measurable impurities. You could harvest salt from ocean water for cleaner salt, or you could buy nice sea salt. I will link to a few salt options in the description below. The selection of salt is up to you. I recommend Kosher, Sea, or Himalayan salts. These are going to be the freest from impurities.
Sauerkraut is by far the easiest and most hands-on foray into the world of fermented foods. It has been similarly made for thousands of years. Just salt and cabbage, really, is all you need. I will pickle peppers, green tomatoes, and even purslane in a future segment, so look for that. In the meantime, learn this simple recipe and skill. Try it at least once and tuck it away for when you ever need it.
Chicago seems far enough removed from the coastal threats of oceans rising, but it is engaged in a similar struggle. It doesn’t sit in the path of hurricanes, and it doesn’t suffer from wildfires like in the west; however, there’s no drought there, as the last five years have been wetter than any decade on record. Areas along the banks of Lake Michigan have frequently flooded; however, increased evaporation has also caused the water levels to drop significantly. There’s an oscillating pattern of extremely high and low levels. As bad as flooding is, the evaporation rates threaten to lower Lake Michigan levels so much that they would cease to flow into the Chicago River. The river would backflow into the lake. The river carries in freshwater to the city and carries off wastewater.
In February, a jet stream of Sahara dust brought a winter heatwave to Europe. Historic temperatures and droughts are scorching the entire western states of the U.S. The Arctic circle, including Russia, Canada, Greenland, and the United States, hit records of 31.9 degrees Celsius, 89.4 degrees Fahrenheit. In June, heatwaves were experienced across the Great Plains and Canadian prairies. Death Valley, CA, recorded a record-breaking 128 degrees Fahrenheit, 53.3 degrees celsius. From the Pacific Northwest through Mexico and the Southwestern United States, even Nova Scotia and the East Coast of the United States are suffering from dueling heat waves.
Lake Mead’s levels have dropped, and that impairs Hoover Dam’s ability to produce hydroelectric power. One of the largest hydropower plants in the United States is producing 33% less energy due to the drought strangling the Western U.S. At the same time, record high temperatures are creating greater consumer demand for cooling needs. It’s not just the one energy producer, though. The Oroville dam’s water levels may get so low this Summer that the power plant there will have to go offline completely.
Food shortages are just one looming disaster that environmental change will bring. Monoculture is the agricultural practice of growing a single crop, plant, or livestock species, variety, or breed in a field or farming system at a time. Polyculture is where more than one crop or livestock species are grown in the same space. The term monoculture also extends out to genetic monocultures. When failures occur along a genetic monoculture, whole cultures are affected. The exclusive use of one variety of potatoes in Ireland led to the Great Famine of 1845-1849 and led to one of the greatest mass exoduses from a single island in history. You may not remember the Gros Michel cultivar of banana. It was favored before the 1950s for its taste and tiny seeds, but it was also planted asexually through cuttings. It had a singular genetic marker that left it vulnerable to a fungal disease that wiped out production and force growers to adopt the Cavendish. The Cavendish is also a clone of previous plants, so it is susceptible to a single similar blight.
Let’s be honest. One person, one country, even a few countries banding together, likely isn’t enough to alter the trajectory of weather extremes. Though you could move off-grid and live a self-sufficient lifestyle, which would be ideal, most lack the resources to do so. What you can do is to develop your independence from these systems that absolutely will fail and to harden yourself off from the extreme weather patterns that will occur with greater frequency. Here are five short term survival needs you can address today:
Get your personal water storage to a level that will sustain you for a minimum of 3-days. The ideal would be a minimum of 3-weeks, and that should be your goal. You will need at least 1 gallon of water per person per day for emergencies. 1/2 a gallon for drinking, 1/4 gallon for cooking, and 1/4 gallon for washing. That would be 21 gallons or so per person for 21 days. That will get you through the bulk of disasters you face. You can quickly and compactly store this amount of water along a wall with one 10-pack of Waterbricks like those available at the Cityprepping.com site. I’ll put a link in the section below. 
Food is the next essential to building your security amidst disasters. Most people don’t have enough in their refrigerator and cupboards to sustain them even a few days. Food has to be your next prep beyond water. Have enough non-perishable and long shelf-life food on hand to feed you at least one 1-month, and preferably 3-months. Your goal is to be constantly pushing the timeframe further back. When you are at a year or more, you’re prepped with food to last you through almost all the significant disasters you could face. Be aware that long-shelf-life food is often dehydrated or freeze-dried and will increase the amount of water needed for cooking. Beyond this, and especially if the disaster continues, learn to grow something to supplement and extend your supplies. If that’s a patio garden or a backyard garden, great. If it’s sprouts or mushrooms on the countertop of your kitchen, great. If it’s learning to forage and knowing where plants grow in your area, that’s great too. I guarantee you after a disaster, most people won’t be harvesting purslane, dandelion, and broadleaf plantain out of your lawn, but both will give you an abundance of vital nutrients. Make sure you have the food you need to survive for an extended period of time. 
With your water and food needs addressed, you should have enough energy to meet your minimal needs. Charging smart devices, light sources, heaters, refrigerated coolers, fans, and other small devices. This can be achieved through power supplies, large and small. If you only need small devices charged, a solar panel or a small solar battery may suffice. A more powerful solar generator is more expensive, but it will provide you with a broader range of uses and higher power levels. Have some form of power backup, whether that is solar, wind, gas, or propane. I’ll be doing a video shortly about getting a whole-home battery backup system installed.
Either insulate your whole structure or select areas of it you can retreat to that will maintain comfortable temperatures for the longest amount of time. I have other videos on surviving cold weather by quickly altering and insulating a room, so you will want to take a look at that. Also, look at long-term solutions. Is there an internal room of your house that can be insulated further, heated, or cooled easily? If so, can you establish it as part of your extreme weather survival plan? Can you quickly convert it to your operation center? 
I have some other blogs on this topic, as I do for most of the things discussed here, but your health and sanitation needs are critical after a disaster. Beyond having the medicines and aid supplies you need after a disaster, you have to be able to dispose of human waste safely. Make sure to have a large 5-gallon bucket and 100s of trash bags on hand.