Saturday, March 29, 2014

10 Simple First Aid Skills

Everyone should have some basic first aid knowledge as you never know when disaster will strike and YOU will be the one needing to dispatch first aid to someone in need.  Here's 10 simple skills to brush up on:

  1. How to call 911.  Even small children can learn this valuable skill.
  2. How to build a well-stocked first aid kit.  Check this kit regularly to make sure supplies haven't been pilfered.  Also be sure to add any items that you use regularly (extra prescription meds, glucose tabs, Epi-Pen, etc).
  3. How to perform the Heimlich Maneuver.  You never know when you will be enjoying a nice meal out and the person next to you starts choking.  Know how to handle this kind of situation.
  4. How to perform CPR.  Another vital, life-saving skill to know.
  5. How to use an AED.  While CPR is good, for someone whose heart has stopped, having an AED on hand and the skills necessary to use it can truly be a lifesaver.
  6. How to stop bleeding.  All bleeding stops...eventually.  Or so the saying goes.  You want to make this process as fast and efficient as possible by knowing a few simple skills for stopping bleeding quickly.
  7. How to treat for shock.  When someone goes into shock, know what to do to help them out.
  8. Treat environmental emergencies.  Whether it is hypothermia, heat stroke, or altitude sickness, you want to learn how to deal with these common environmental illnesses.
  9. Treat common medical problems.  There are a number of medical maladies that are pretty common in this day and age.  Know how to treat the following problems: low blood sugar (diabetes issue),  allergic reaction, and dehydration.
  10. How to treat common illnesses at home.  Grandma's treatment for many illnesses included copious amounts of chicken soup and a variety of herbal teas.  There are many simple medical issues that can usually be treated at home with a bit of knowledge.
Remember, if in doubt or if the situation is serious, don't hesitate to call 911 for help or additional information.

Saturday, March 22, 2014

10 Bug Out Options

Bugging out is a pretty hot topic.  There are BOBs (bug out bags), BOVs (bug out vehicles), BOLs (bug out locations), BOCs (bug out cabins), et al.  Many people think that "bugging out" doesn't happen until TS hits TF and society crumbles into a flaming heap but the necessity to bug out, and the various bug out equipment/supplies/etc will actually come into play much sooner than TEOTWAWKI.

It may be something small (like a wild fire heading your way), medium (like a chemical spill that empties your town) or bigger (like Hurricane Katrina bearing down on your city) but these are all occasions when bugging out is a good idea (or better than a good idea, legally mandated).  Where will you go if you need to clear out of your home and possibly your city on a moment's notice?  Here's ten options:

  1. A community shelter.  These are set up when there is a disaster in your area that displaces more than a few home's worth of people.  A fire, for example, might displace a few families at which time the Red Cross usually shelters them in hotels but when there is displacement of A LOT of people, shelters that can house up to a hundred or more people are generally set up.  Community shelters are also set up when people can not shelter themselves due to the severity of the problem (ie: a tornado shelter for folks living in mobile homes, a warming shelter when the power is out for a whole community, etc).  On a scale of "wonderful places to bug out to" these rate pretty low.  But they are better than nothing.
  2. Nearby neighbors, friends, and family.  If the problem that sent you fleeing from your home is limited in area (a small wild fire or flooding in low lying areas for example), one of your better bug out options may be with nearby neighbors, friends, or family.  This is generally good for the short term and leaves you close enough to your home so you can do/help with your own recovery, make further arrangements, etc.  Not a bad place to bug out to depending on the situation (you need to get along well with these people and the fewer people bugging out the better as bringing a family of two to stay is usually easier than bringing in a family of eight).
  3. Hotels and motels.  Whenever there is a disaster, a common place for people to bug out to is either nearby or further away hotels or motels.  This gives you more autonomy and privacy than staying with friends or family but can also get expensive quickly.  Some of these places will give you better rates if you intend to stay for a longer period of time or if they know you have been in a disaster.
  4. Family and friends further afield.  If the disaster is big enough, you may not be able to stay near to your home and may be forced to travel further away to seek shelter.  Staying with family or friends who live further away from you is a good option.  This is often a cheaper option (they may allow you to stay for free for at least a certain period of time) but the issue may be how to get there if roads and other transportation options are down.
  5. Boat or RV.  Nothing like sheltering in your own "home away from home".  If you have a boat or RV, along with a full gas tank, and the roads aren't too badly damaged, traffic isn't massively backed up, and/or access to useful waterways is available, this may be one of your best options.  You will be mobile so you can relocate at a moment's notice and you will have privacy plus many of the comforts of home.  Obviously this is higher up on the scale of expensive bug out options.
  6. Camping.  For a short-term bug out, camping may be an option.  Obviously you need the gear/food/fore planning to do this.  Some of the negatives to bugging out in this manner are that, depending on the disaster, many other people may have the same idea so crowding at your intended camp spot may be an issue, security may be an issue (people may not be so nice is extreme situations), the weather can be an issue, and overall, camping due to circumstances instead of by choice can be downright unpleasant (plus you will need to source/create your own food, water, shelter, latrine, etc).
  7. Squat.  Living in a squat can be either better or less better than camping but not by much.  If your area is demolished but there are still buildings standing, these places look like good enough places to shelter for many.  Again, safety and security will be issues (either with law enforcement or other residents), as will basic living resources (water, food, hygiene) but if the choice comes down to sleeping in a cardboard box or in a perfectly useful vacant building I'd probably pick the vacant building.
  8. Bug out cabin or second home.  The image is ideal...you need to leave your home in a hurry due to disaster or other reasons and you have a perfectly good second home or cabin waiting for you.  The three problems you may have with this set up are #1 the expense (it is expensive to pay for two complete houses, utilities, etc), #2 security when you aren't there (your second home may look like a good target for others either to squat in or to loot with or without you there), and #3 getting there (how will you get there during a disaster?). 
  9. Another country.  In an extreme bug out situation, high-tailing it to another country may be an option.  Note that this would make you a REFUGEE which is an overall unpleasant experience by all accounts.  But extreme times require extreme measures so if this is one of your bug out options, you need to be ready by having a passport, the means to get there and set yourself up for your stay, and a plan for what to do next.
  10. On the move.  Slightly better or slightly worse than being a refugee--depending on the situation--would be a roaming refugee.  Sure it is possible to grab your BOB or your bike and just keep on moving from place to place camping one night, couchsurfing another etc. until you come up with a better plan but this is yet another situation where your safety and security could be at risk not to mention the fact that you will still need to be able to provide the basics like food and water for yourself.

Thursday, March 20, 2014

How to Stick With a Goal and Reach It

We've been inundated with guests for the past couple of weeks but now our house is blessedly silent (not that I don't like having guests but it can be a bit much when our guest rooms are booked solid for weeks on end).  Oddly enough the refrain we heard most from all of these guests was "I wish we could retire like you guys did".  At which point I silently calculate one couples $400k+ income per year and another guy's $120k+ income per year and his multi-million dollar net worth and have a difficult time keeping a straight face.

So this is how to retire early (or take that trip around the world you've always wanted or build that bug out cabin you've always wanted, etc).

  • Step 1.  Decide what your big goal is.  If you don't have a goal to focus on or have a variety of "I would like to do/haves" in mind you will be too unfocused to accomplish anything of significance.
  • Step 2.  Get out of debt ASAP.  You can do SO MUCH MORE when you aren't dragged down by the weight of debt (ie: imagine your life if you had no credit card payments, no car payments, no house payments, etc).
  • Step 3.  Be ready to give up stuff.  And it really is stuff that keeps you from reaching many goals.  If you must have the latest sports car, eat out every night, have a huge house with an equally huge house payment, or you keep yourself running on the treadmill of life (carting your kids to five separate activities each week or appointing yourself oversee-er of your dysfunctional family to the point that you can't even leave them for a week-long vacation for fear that someone will end up in jail/in court/in other versions of trouble) then you will not get off the hamster-wheel of "normal" life to do something decidedly abnormal (like achieving a kick-ass goal).
  • Step 4.  Be ready to stop being "normal".  As Dave Ramsey says, "normal" is broke and in debt.  Normal is also doing what everyone else is doing and to veer away from such things is (negatively) interpreted as being abnormal (and we all want to fit with the status quo right?  Uh, no). 
  • Step 5.  Think strategically about how you can reach your goal.  For example, we wanted to retire early.  Now there is no way we could reach our goal when we were living in an expensive area (Seattle), had a huge house (and a huge house payment), had new leased cars sitting in the driveway, and had credit card debt.  There was also a growing business to consider, the kids to consider, and a necessary income that was needed during our goal-reaching phase.  The totally radical answer to reach our goal quickly was simple (and simply insane according to some people at the time): we sold our assets (house, business), paid off our debts, returned the cars at the end of the lease period keeping one older paid off car, saw that the kids were situated (easy since they were all adults and gainfully employed), and learned to live (very) frugally on a small military pension.
  • Step 6.  Face the fear and march through it.  Some of the insomnia-inducing fears we considered: will we end up homeless (we did, it wasn't so bad), what will our friends think (initially that we were crazy but we left to travel for about a year before officially settling down and retiring; we didn't see them so their censure ended up being a mute point), can we reduce our income to an eighth of what it originally was and still survive (yes, with ease it turns out), and what if something catastrophic happens (the catastrophe in question was rather nebulous but doing something so radical tends to bring the worst "what-ifs" to mind). 
  • Step 7.  Have a fall-back plan.  This was rather simple and not well thought out but we did have a lot of friends and family who would open their homes to us should we literally end up "living in a cardboard box" homeless.  We had a good-sized emergency fund so worst case scenario we would be able to rent an apartment and "start over" if needed.  We also had a small yet consistent income (a pension, income from some freelance work) which meant we wouldn't end up with absolutely no money to sustain us.
  • Step 8.  Let your goal evolve.  Our goal, in theory, was to retire early.  Along the way we decided to travel for a bit since another goal had been to travel in a more extended fashion than what a few weeks a year allowed.  After months of "hanging out" and traveling from here to there, extended travel kind of lost its luster.  At that point we just happened to be in Las Vegas for the WSOP and some friends mentioned that houses were a steal in the city (this was shortly after the housing market bottomed out, hitting Las Vegas harder than most other cities).  Again, a bit of strategic planning allowed us to come to the conclusion that we could buy a house and by living frugally would not have to work, thus meeting the goal of retiring early.  Goal achieved!
  • Step 9.  Realize that you might reach your goal and find that there were some unintended consequences.  Don't get me wrong, retiring early is nice.  What we hadn't anticipated is that when you are retired and have absolutely nothing to do, you may become bored very quickly.  Becoming un-bored generally requires an expenditure of money (a quick trip to Europe, a fancy restaurant meal, or tickets to the newest big show on the Strip).  Again, by going into strategic thinking mode answers to the problem can be found (ie: enjoy free or low cost activities, work a single short-term gig to acquire the money needed for a larger purchase like a big trip, think about dipping your toes back into business, etc.).
  • Step 10.  Realize that you can always go back to "the way things used to be" (although why anyone would want to do that I have no idea).  Should this goal have crashed and burned, hopping back on the hamster wheel of "normal" life was an option: find a place to live, get jobs, rack up the credit cards again, lease a new sports car, etc (although why anyone would want to do that I have no idea).
That's kind of the tldr; of goal achievement.  To see how others have done similar, life-altering goal achievement projects, check out these links:

Thursday, March 6, 2014

Stockpile These Foods

When it comes to stockpiling food for an emergency, you want to make sure that you get the best bang for your buck when it comes to purchasing this food.  Here's where you want to put your money in order to reap the most nutrients:

Top 10 foods with the most protein

  1. Meat (beef, pork, chicken, etc)
  2. Fish (tuna, salmon, etc)
  3. Cheese
  4. Tofu
  5. Beans
  6. Eggs
  7. Dairy (milk, yogurt)
  8. Nuts (almonds, peanuts, etc)
  9. Seeds (pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, etc)
  10. Spirulina

Top 10 foods with the most fat

  1. Animal fat (beef tallow, lard, etc)
  2. Fish oil (cod liver oil, herring oil, etc)
  3. Oil (olive, corn, peanut, etc)
  4. Butter/margarine
  5. Cheese
  6. Nuts/nut butter
  7. Fatty fish
  8. Dark chocolate
  9. Dried coconut
  10. Avacado

Top 10 foods with the most carbohydrates

  1. Sugar
  2. Grains and cereals (rice, oats, etc)
  3. Dried fruit
  4. Crackers, potato chips
  5. Flour (cakes, cookies, bread, etc)
  6. Jams and jellies
  7. Potatoes
  8. Soda
  9. Pasta
  10. Starchy fruit and vegetables (bananas, apples, etc)


Tuesday, March 4, 2014

20 Things to Know About Your Neighborhood

How well do you know the place that you live?

  1. What are the natural water sources in your neighborhood?
  2. What does your neighborhood look like on Google Earth?
  3. How many evacuation routes are there from your neighborhood?
  4. What are the (natural, commercial) food sources in your neighborhood?
  5. Who are your neighbors?
  6. Do you regularly check the crime map for your neighborhood?
  7. What is the economic data for your neighborhood (average house price, average income, percentage of rentals, etc)?
  8. What types of public transportation is available in your neighborhood?
  9. Do you regularly walk around your neighborhood during the day?
  10. Do you occasionally walk around your neighborhood at night?
  11. What are the hazards (both natural and man-made) in your neighborhood?
  12. What resources are in your neighborhood (ie: police sub-station, library, pharmacy, etc)?
  13. What is your neighborhood/community disaster plan?
  14. Does your neighborhood have a neighborhood watch program?
  15. Do you know the people who work in your neighborhood (mailman, gardeners, etc)?
  16. Do your kids have safe homes they can go to in your neighborhood if you aren't home?
  17. Where is your family's meeting spot in your neighborhood in case they need to evacuate your home?
  18. Do you regularly check the sex offender list for your neighborhood?
  19. What are your neighborhood/community news sources and do you regularly monitor these (newspapers, blogs, Twitter feeds, etc)?
  20. Do you ever work with your neighbors for common goals (neighborhood garage sales, neighborhood barbecues, community sports teams, etc)?

Monday, March 3, 2014

20 Inexpensive Ways to Safeguard Your Home

Protecting your home and property is a given.  You want the things that you buy and the home that you live in to be safe and secure which has made home security a multi-million dollar industry what with home alarm companies, home protection camera systems, and even private security guards/security companies.  Here's some simple, inexpensive ways to safeguard your home.

  1. Choose a reasonably safe place to live.  If you are moving to a new house or apartment, do a bit of sleuthing around and figure out which neighborhoods are safer than others (start here).
  2. Put up a "beware of dog" sign.  You don't need an actual dog as the sign itself can be a deterrent.
  3. If you like and want a pet, choose a dog.  I know that there are dog people and there are cat people but dogs make a better guard/alarm system for your home than a cat.
  4. Buy new locks (or re-key your current locks) if it has been a while since this was done, especially if you have lost track of who has keys for your place.
  5. See if your neighborhood has a neighborhood watch program.  If such a program is available in your area, join up.  If it is not available, start one.
  6. Get to know your neighbors.  Ask them to call you and report anything unusual they see happening at your home and offer to do the same for them.
  7. Make sure basic repairs are made ASAP, especially if it impacts your home security.  Make sure all window and door locks are secure.  Make sure the garage door is secure.  Make sure outbuildings can be locked down tight.  Replace outdoor light bulbs as soon as you notice them burned out.
  8. Landscape for safety.  Make sure your doors and windows are visible and not hidden by overgrown bushes and shrubs.  Plant roses or other spiky/thorny bushes beneath windows.
  9. Light up for safety.  Install motion detector outdoor lights around your property.  Add flood lights at various places around your property if needed.  Make sure you can light up all of the property around your home with the flick of a switch from inside of your home.
  10. Hold regular home lock down drills in which your family locks down your home as quickly as possible. 
  11. Before you leave your home or go to bed at night make a sweep of your home to make sure all doors are locked, necessary exterior lights are turned on, all windows are closed and locked, the stove is turned off, nightlights are turned on, etc.
  12. See if your local $1 store or hardware store offers cheap window and door alarms.  These are basically two plastic pieces that attach to the door and the frame or two parts of a window.  There is a battery which creates an electrical current and if the pieces are jarred or moved a shrill alarm is set off.
  13. Set up a fake video security system around the exterior of your home (this is the cheap option and is a slight deterrent).
  14. Set up a real, wireless video security system around the interior and exterior of your home (this is more expensive).  Many of these systems can be monitored via computer or smartphone.
  15. Don't make it easy for burglars/intruders to enter your home (make sure they can't enter through a dog door, can't pull out a window AC unit and enter than way, that you don't leave your garage door open unless you are actively coming or going in this area, that you don't leave your front or back door unlocked--both while you are at home or while you are gone, that you don't "hide" a key outside in case you get locked out, etc).
  16. Don't do stupid stuff (like posting your vacation plans on Twitter or Facebook, never changing your alarm system code if you do have an alarm system, leaving a stack expensive looking stuff at the curb on garbage day like a MacBook box, an iPhone box, a box from your new 60" TV, etc).
  17. Hide your valuables when you leave your home (ie: stick your MacBook air under the sofa when you leave the house instead of leaving it on the table where it can be seen through a window; if you do have a safe, don't just stick it in your bedroom closet, hide it in the attic under a blanket of fiberglass insulation, etc).
  18. Keep your wallet, cell phone, and car keys on your nightstand instead of sitting by the front door or on the kitchen table where someone can see these items through a window or door.
  19. Be aware of who you let into your home.  Your home can be "cased" for a future burglary by your teenage kid's friends, door to door salespeople, etc.
  20. Make it look like someone is always home (don't allow mail or newspapers to pile up, keep the radio or TV on when you leave to make it sound like someone is home, use timers on your interior lights to make it look like someone is home/awake at various times during the day and night, etc).

Sunday, March 2, 2014

Survival Food: 10 Things

Most of the time I am not a "sky is falling" type of person.  There are times, however, when a little warning is a good thing.  So today's warning will be about food.  Or the possible lack thereof in the coming year.

If you haven't heard about the massive drought in California, well, you probably should have.  And since California is where a lot of food is grown that feeds the people of the United States, this is something to worry about.  Add to that the fact that food prices keep rising.  The price of meat, for example, has risen exponentially over the past couple of years ($8 for a single chicken??? Some years back I was paying 39 cents a pound for chicken!).  Here are 10 things to consider about the current food situation:

  1. Start a food garden.  Even if all you have is a window sill where you can grow herbs, being able to produce any sort of food for yourself is liberating.  Planting a flower pot of lettuce and a couple of tomato plants is even better.  Obviously I don't expect that many people will have the space/inclination to grow the majority of their produce but growing a few things is better than nothing.
  2. Fill up your freezer.  Whenever I find loss leaders or sale meat, I always plan for the future and buy as much as we can reasonably consume within a year or so.  Needless to say, the freezer is full of meat and vegetables.
  3. Ditto for your pantry.  While there are a lot of sale items at the grocery store that we simply don't buy no matter how low the price (processed anything basically), there are times, such as when stores have case lot sales and such, that we make a haul and fill the pantry with canned soup/vegetables/fish/etc.
  4. Hit up the $1 store and 99 cent store.  There are some items in these stores that you can find cheaper elsewhere but there are usually plenty of items that are a bargain for $1 and deserve to be bought in bulk.
  5. Canning, freezing, dehydrating, smoking, etc.  Buy a giant, cheap, box of something and experiment.  A friend delivered a huge box of bananas that he got on sale for a couple of bucks and said "what can you do with these?"  What we did: canned banana baby food.  Froze most of the bananas for smoothies and banana bread.  You don't want to spend a fortune on something to experiment with but you can often find cheap items that are worth trying to process for your future food needs.  FWIW smoked fish is tasty and has along shelf life.  Also, canning and jelly making isn't as hard as it seems.
  6. Learn how to procure your own food.  Hunting and fishing are fun hobbies which also provide you with a lot of protein for little more than the cost of a license and a bit of your time once you have the necessary equipment and knowledge.
  7. Learn how to forage.  Have you ever eaten a cattail?  These plants are prolific in some areas and were once a staple food for many Indian tribes in the Pacific Northwest.  There are literally dozens and dozens of edibles that grow wild that can be had for just the effort needed to gather them (warning: know what it is you are harvesting, take a class to learn if necessary and/or go with someone who knows what they are doing until you know what you are doing).
  8. Procure seasonally.  Old timers probably remember that food used to be seasonal.  There was no such thing as a watermelon in January or a fresh tomato in February.  You can still flow with the seasons, however, and get dirt cheap prices on food just by buying or harvesting when items are in season (wild berries in late summer, mushrooms in the fall, smelt when they are running, super cheap watermelon at the grocery store in summer, etc).
  9. Buy grains in bulk.  Dried grains (oats, rice, wheat, etc) tend to have a long shelf life, are easy to store, are cheap to buy (ie: a bag of dried beans are much cheaper than the same amount of beans in canned form), and are endlessly useful.
  10. When you do buy/grow/harvest food items to last for a long time (unlike just buying enough groceries to tide you over for a week), learn how to safely and effectively store them for the duration (the LDS folks are genius at this, info here) so you don't waste your time, money, and most importantly the food.

Saturday, March 1, 2014

10 Things You Need for a Weather Emergency

It's been a pretty wild winter what with massive snow storms and now heavy rains and flooding (example here).  What is consistent among all of these weather emergencies is the necessity to be prepared in advance of such occurrences.  Here's what you need:

  1. A bug out bag.  You never know when the sheriff will show up on your doorstep and inform you that everyone needs to evacuate ASAP due to flooding, a wild fire, avalanche hazard, etc.
  2. A bug out plan.  Should you need to leave in a hurry due to the aforementioned weather emergencies, what is your plan?  Where will you go?  How will you get there?  Do you have the cash to sustain you while you are gone?  Can you work remotely?
  3. Forewarning.  Generally you will want to keep an ear on your local news, receive updates from NOAA on your phone, have a weather radio, etc. so you will know ahead of time if a tornado or hurricane is headed your way.  This will give you enough notice so that you can take precautions/evacuate ahead of any disaster.
  4. Foreknowledge.  No matter where you are--whether you are at home or on vacation--you need to study up ahead of time and be knowledgeable about the sort of weather-related disasters that are common to your area.  You need to know what to expect and how to prepare and how to, pardon the pun, weather the storm.
  5. Mitigation efforts.  Now that you know what to expect, say, when a tornado is heading your way, you should also be ready to mitigate the impact of any sort of weather emergency.  For tornadoes and hurricanes you may want to keep plywood and screws on hand so you can board up windows if necessary, for areas prone to flooding you may want to have sandbags on hand, etc.
  6. Back-ups.  No matter the emergency you want to have alternative sources of food, water, and shelter available in the event that your utilities are taken out by the storm.
  7. Clothing.  You also want to dress appropriately for the weather.  Sometimes the difference between being uncomfortable and having a severe case of frostbite if you are stuck out in the snow is a hat and gloves.  Be sure you have appropriate clothing for any weather eventuality.  Also have appropriate shoes (this could mean heavy winter boots or water shoes depending on your circumstances).
  8. A disaster plan.  An overall disaster plan encompasses many things that may be useful during a weather emergency such as a communications plan so worried relatives will be able to find out what happened to you, knowledge of your kid's school's disaster plan so you can incorporate this into your own planning, the ability for the family to lock down the house in minutes or escape from the house in the same amount of time, etc.
  9. The ability to help others.  Many disasters--including the planning, response, and recovery thereof--may require more than just you.  Working with your immediately family is the first step in working with others to survive a weather emergency, checking on elderly or infirm neighbors before, during, and after the emergency is a nice thing to do, and being able to work with your neighbors--whether making sandbags or boarding up windows--is another ability to have.
  10. Recovery.  After the weather emergency has passed, you will then be in recovery mode.  This encompasses everything from the ability to clean up after the fact (this could be a small or overwhelming job depending on if a bit of water got into the basement or the roof of your house collapsed under the snow) to the information necessary to file insurance claims or seek community or federal resources to fix up whatever was destroyed during the weather disaster.
tldr; the most common emergency you will face on a regular basis is a weather emergency.  Prepare ahead of time!