Prepper Handbook Blog: March 2020

Friday, March 27, 2020

Dual Purpose Items

When selecting what to put in our backpack, we should look for items with more than one use. For example:

A poncho can be used as tent, tarp, solar still, and when worn, keeps you warm, dry and covers your hands so you can be holding a pistol and no one realizes it. The real point here is that a poncho has four (4) uses, for about 2 pounds of weight. That said, you can only use it for one use at a time. So lets look at some other items with multiple uses.
A mesh hammock can be slept in, a net for catching food, and a bag for carrying things, or securing them high and away from animals (bear bag).
Paracord can be used for building shelter, hanging your hammock or bear bag, setting up your poncho as a tent, it can have the individual filaments used to make a fish net, or as fishing line. It can be used as a bow string, shoe laces, bow drill to start fire, snare traps, and sewing. Paracord can be used for so many end uses that we could never list them all. Mason line, #18 or #36 tarred, twisted line are good additions and alternatives to paracord.
Military Survival Shovels have multiple uses, axe, saw, entrenching, hoe, etc. depending on the model you choose.
Safety Pins are small, but serve many uses.
A Leatherman Multi-Tool serves many functions and is great for Every Day Carry.
A metal water bottle can be used for cooking, boiling water as well as carrying it. Avoid insulated bottles and those with plastic on the bottle. Plastic on the cap is okay.

The more purposes an item has, the more valuable it becomes. What other valuable Dual Purpose items can you suggest?

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Chickweed & Hackberries

Edibility Test

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Sunday, March 22, 2020

The best Prepper disinfectant is one that would works well, has a long shelf life, is affordable to stockpile and more importantly, can be made at home.

Hydrogen Peroxide (3%) is a great disinfectant, but has an unopened shelf life of 1-3 years. But once you open the bottle, the peak effectiveness is just over 30 days, and about 6 months maximum useful activity.

Chlorine Bleach with approximately 6% of sodium hypochlorite (NaOCl) is a great disinfectant and good for treating water, but is only fully functional for 6 months, but becomes about 20% less effective as each year goes by. Mixed with water at a 1:9 ratio (10% bleach) remains effective only for about 24 hours.

Last but not least is Alcohol. Unopened, rubbing alcohol (isopropyl) has shelf life of 2-3 years. Note you can NOT drink this.

Distilled alcohol (ethanol), typically has a shelf life of 3 years, with pure ethanol lasting even longer and it also has 45 other uses, AND, you can make drinking alcohol at home by distilling a fermented grain mash made from sugar, water and yeast.

It can also be used in food and pharma applications, like cooking additives or cough medicines. Four ounces of whiskey, an ounce of soothing honey and two ounces of citrus juice (vitamin C) or Elder Berry juice, is a common home made "NyQuil" type of cold remedy, that soothes sore throats, disinfects & helps you sleep and heal.

This means that a 190 Proof drinking alcohol like Everclear, the Best Prepper Disinfectant. Ideally, we should practice our Prepper skills, but we should be aware that there are laws that regulate this and insure we do not get arrested as moonshiners.

This would be especially good to remember during a Pandemic.

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Saturday, March 14, 2020

Prepper Santitizer

When you need to sanitize or disinfect surfaces against unhealthy germs, there are a few time tested & proven methods.

The first is chlorine bleach. Concentrations vary from 9 to 47 parts of water to 1 part of bleach depending on the bleach used (low cost versions are weaker).

For a strong disinfectant, my family adds 2-1/4 cup of water to 1/4 cups of regular bleach with 6% Sodium Hypochlorite, which is adding 9 parts of water to 1 part bleach.

If you are using Performance Bleach (8% Sodium Hypochlorite), it is suggested that you add 1/2 cup of bleach to a 1 gallon jug and then fill it up with water (31:1 ratio)

Regular bleach (without additives) can also be used to disinfect water, making it safe for drinking. Which leads us into our next method of sanitizing.

Our second method is hot water. Obviously boiling items in water disinfects them, but washing your hands in hot water does the same, and should not be forgotten.

Our third method is alcohol which can be made using a still and has many other uses. Click here to see 45 uses for alcohol. You can make alcohol by distilling a fermented mash made from sugar and yeast.

This would be good to remember during a Pandemic.

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Understanding Pandemics

Understanding the numbers is important. The first to know about is the R - nought (R0) which tells us how contagious it is. Basically, it indicates how many other people an infected person is likely to infect. Greater than 1 means the number of infected is likely to grow.

For example, the common Flu is around 1.3, the Coronavirus (COVID-19) based on early data is 1.4 to 3.9, which is likely inflated due to unreported mild cases. The common Measles is 12-18.

Values of R0 of well-known infectious diseases
Disease	Transmission	R0
Measles	Airborne	12–18
Diphtheria	Saliva	6–7
Smallpox	Airborne droplet	5–7
Polio	Fecal–oral route	5–7
Rubella	Airborne droplet	5–7
Mumps	Airborne droplet	4–7
Pertussis	Airborne droplet	5.5
HIV/AIDS	Sexual contact	2–5
SARS	Airborne droplet	2–5
COVID-19 (early data)	Airborne droplet	1.4–3.9
Influenza	Airborne droplet	1.3–3
Ebola	Body fluids	1.5–2.5
MERS	Airborne droplet	0.3–0.8

Second, is the deaths per 100,000 people. Because the number of deaths is generally a small, fraction of a percentage, they are measured on a 100,000 scale.

The CDC estimates that so far this season there have been at least 36 million flu illnesses, 370,000 hospitalizations and 22,000 deaths from flu: but possibly as many as 55,000, with a mid point of 38,500. How does this compare to to the COVID-19?

Makes you wonder, why the panic over the Coronavirus (COVID-19). The unknown risk from a new variety is a reason to be cautious, but it seems the irresponsible mainstream media is not reporting the whole story, i.e. comparing it against the common flu, to put it in perspective, which is causing unnecessary panic, with stores being overwhelmed and fights breaking out for supplies.

ADVICE:

Stock up on supplies ahead of time.

This is why we are Preppers in the first place.

Visit our Blog often to learn how you can be better prepared.

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Pandemic Preparations

Printable Materials for Promoting Good Health Habits: Flu.gov U.S Department of Health and Human Service American Red Cross Center for Disease Control and Prevention - Influenza/Flu WHO Pandemic preparedness

http://www.ready.gov/pandemic

Recent updates on the flu can be found at:

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-estimates.htm

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