Sign in or 
Share this
White76Knight's Survival Plan - Page Three
| White76Knight's Survival Plan | ||
| Page One: Bugging In and Bugging Out | Page Two: Digging In for Awhile | Page Three: Living in the Aftermath |
| Page Two B: Fortifying The Citadel | Page Two C: The Curtain Wall |
Page Note:
Many of the images on this page are "clickable", with links that can provide a larger version of the image itself, further information on how the pictured item is supposed to work, or information on where it should be obtained. Should you have any questions, however, or if anything doesn't make sense as written, feel free to browse these links before you ask, to see if that information makes the situation any clearer. Now, on with the show...
Section D: Living
How would I communicate with the outside world, or will I go the hermit route? By any form of CB, Ham, FRS and/or GMRS radio that I can get my hands on either before or after the SHTF! Cel phones and internet could also be used, at least for as long as such services still continue to work.
How am I planning to get food or water? If I ever have a Fortified BOL (and even if I don't for that matter), I plan to begin long term stockpiling of both shelf stable foods and preserving supplies for perishable foods. This stockpile can include many things like MREs, Assorted Canned Foods, Sugar, Salt, Peanut Butter, Powdered Milk, Mac & Cheese, Yeast, Shortening, Dry Grains, Beans and Pastas, along with a few over the counter medications like Aspirin, Multi Vitamins, Etc. My intention is to store enough of such materials to last at least eighteen months, thereby allowing those in my group that much time to begin acquiring food from other sources. All this stockpiled food should be stored in The Bunker, discussed in further detail in my Fortifying The Castle page, thus keeping it both in a place of safety and a place where we are not isolated from it should our defenses fall and force us to retreat to our fallback position. This stockpiling should also be supplemented with scavenging, hunting and fishing. It has been suggested elsewhere on this forum that any attempts at the hunter/gatherer ways of life will be impractical at best, if not outright doomed to failure at worst, because a steady or reliable supply of food could not be guaranteed if living off the land. I respectfully disagree with this assessment. While, admittedly, it will not be feasible to feed a larger community of several hundred by foraging or hunting/trapping wild game, smaller groups could easily survive this way, at least where I'm from.
I live in a Province where wild fish and game live in abundance, and generations of my own family have successfully harvested moose and bear year after year. If we keep in mind that almost 1,000 caribou and 30,000 moose licenses are issued annually in this province, in addition to an equal or perhaps greater number of small game and black bear licenses, I see no reason to believe that survivors should be any less successful after the SHTF than these hunters are today. Furthermore, given that there will be nowhere near such a great number of people competing for available game (with most of the local population either dead or Zed), and that most regulations such as Wildlife Management Areas, restrictions on the type and number of traps, firearms and ammunition that are permissible, etc would be out the window, I would think that any small community of survivors will find that wild meat for the table is even easier to acquire After the Fall than it is now.
In addition to wild game, there is also a wide variety of edible plant life found here that could be harvested by survivor groups in great quantities. Plants may be a little trickier, as the unskilled gatherer may not be able to distinguish between edible and useless (or even toxic) varieties of this wild growth. With an eye toward overcoming these difficulties, I am currently attempting to learn all I can about local edible and medicinal plant types so that, in the event of any survival situation, I will be knowledgeable enough to know what I can use and what to avoid. Once I am confident enough in the skill to do so, I will share this knowledge with my family and any others that I expect to include in my survivor group. (Addendum - Actually, unless you are a certified expert, or are very thoroughly experienced, in not just plants in general, but in the specific plants of the specific region where you happen to be located (or where your BOL is located), it might actually be a better idea to stay away from plants until you have the opportunity to learn more!
Here's the facts:
- ALL fur bearing mammals are safe to eat, and will provide you with nutrients and calories.
- ALL 6 legged insects are safe to eat (at least in this province), and will provide you with nutrients and calories.
- Almost all freshwater fish and almost all birds are safe to eat, and will provide you with nutrients and calories.
however:
- MOST plants are nutritionally useless at best and can harm you, make you sick or poison you at worst. There are a few plants that are, in fact, excellent sources of nutrition, but unless you have taken the time in advance to learn what these specific types of plants are, you may be taking a big chance. Even the edible ones aren't necessarily edible all year long, there are some plants that will feed you in the spring but poison you in the fall or vice versa. Further, some plants will feed you if you eat the stems and poison you if you eat the flowers, or vice versa.
It's a simple equation... if it walks, crawls, swims or flies, the odds are in your favor that it's not only safe to eat it, but that it will provide you with the nutrition and energy your body needs. If it sits there like... well... like a plant, then odds are against you both for your own physical safety, and for nutritional content. It's just not worth the gamble unless you are absolutely sure! Now, none of this is to say that we should never eat wild plants, quite the contrary; I believe that the proper identification and gathering of this edible wild plant life will be crucial to any survivor, as there are essential vitamins and minerals found in plants that are difficult to find anywhere else. What I'm saying is that everyone who is serious about survival should endeavor to learn as much as they are able not just about plants, but about the specific plants of the specific region in which they happen to be located (or where their BOL is located, or wherever).
As I mentioned before, I am currently seeking out this training so that, in the event of an emergency, I can, in fact, be absolutely sure. Unless and until I (or somebody else in my group) has that training, only the most obvious and easily identifiable wild plants that we already KNOW to be edible will be collected for food purposes.)
But I digress. In any case...
We must remember that hunter/gatherer cultures have existed, and even thrived, at one time or another, in just about every location in the world that has ever been capable of sustaining human life, and even a few places that we mightn't think would be capable. Remember also that, in a few cases, these cultures continue to exist to this day. Now we all know they're not as common as they used to be, but that fact should in no way be taken as failure on the part of their hunting/gathering way of life. In many cases, such cultures have only disappeared as a result of warfare with another culture, or because they were gradually absorbed into other cultures, or even because they themselves eventually took up the practice of agriculture, and moved away from the hunter/gatherer way of life as their own population became too large to support with their traditional methods.
All of that aside, though, if the Z-Poc lasts long enough, or if the population in my group becomes large enough, I can also undertake agricultural farming. To that end, any selected site for my fort will include enough open acreage to use for Grain and Vegetable Crops, and eventually some acreage for Fruit and Nut Orchards. According to the materials that I've read, it takes about three acres of cropland to feed one single person, but that presupposes an all vegetarian diet. You can probably do just fine with two acres or less* if these food crops are also being supplemented with dairy products, or by meats and wild plants (provided by the previously mentioned hunting, fishing and gathering).
*(UPDATE: According to additional research that I have done concerning this issue, presupposing availability of other foodstuffs such as meat, fish, etc, an entire family of four could be kept supplied with staple vegetables, having both enough to eat and enough left over to put by for the winter, in as little as 2,500 square feet of garden. Please note that this figure is for an entire FAMILY OF FOUR and you would still need only a small fraction of the acreage required for just ONE PERSON eating the all vegetarian diet. The human animal was meant to eat meat, folks, no matter what all the tree huggers would have us think. LOL)
I will also include a large Agricultural Greenhouse on the roof of my compound to serve as an early season starter for crops. There is also a short list of crops that I should like to grow that might otherwise be disinclined to thrive in such climate conditions as are found in this province; the greenhouse would provide a more favorable environment to plant small amounts of these as well. As was mentioned in Section C, this greenhouse can also do double duty as a Solar Chimney in the summer, and if the temperature in the greenhouse should get too high in the winter, any residual heat can also be redirected via blowers and ducts to the Thermal Mass Storage Bin in the Basement.
The addition of a large sized fish tank and a network of pipes would allow the simple greenhouse to shift from agriculture to aquaponics as shown here. In such systems water from the fish tank would be circulated around the planter beds, and all leftover food or fish poop serves to fertilize the plants, while the plants in turn serve as a very effective filter to provide clean water for the fish. Once the fish have grown to a harvesting size, they could be replaced with smaller fish from an outdoor pond as discussed below.In any case, the manure of any and all animal livestock that I decide to maintain would be fed into a Methane Digester Tank, along with a percentage of vegetable waste matter such as fallen leaves or yard clippings, that will harness natural processes of bacterial decay to produce Methane Gas. Such Methane could be used, depending on
the quantity that is available, as a source of heating and cooking fuel, maybe even as a means of heating the aquaponics greenhouse in the wintertime. The sludge that accumulates in the bottom of the Digester Tank must periodically be pumped out, but it can also be reused, as it makes an excellent source of fertilizer for any crops. Food scraps, seaweed and any other suitable components that happen to be available to me will also be exploited for use as fertilizer. Farming is not a thing in which I have a high amount of experience; I do know the basics, but I also know that it takes a lot more than the basics to run successful farming operations. With this in mind, I have been attempting to research and learn more about this valued field of study. In a perfect world, of course, I would prefer to include an actual farmer or two, or at least somebody who had done a great deal of general gardening, among my survival group but, at least for the present, there is no-one in my group who fits the description. 
As for dairy products, my research has indicated that a single goat should provide all the milk that my family of five should drink on a daily basis (with some to spare in fact). Two goats could do the same, but with enough left over to process into butter, cheese and so forth. I own several books that detail the process involved, and to this end, should I ever decide to acquire livestock, I would attempt to gain practical experience under the tutelage of local farmers. Goats will be better than cows (unless I end up with a large number of survivors, thereby requiring a greater volume of milk, and even then, it might be better to just get more goats than to switch to cows) as a goat will nourish itself wholly on natural forage, without need for a complex mixture of grain feeds as needed by cows for top milk production, thereby requiring still more cropland. Even milking goats, which would need some grains, still require much less of it than even relatively small dairy cows (2-4 lbs of grain, plus around 3-5 lbs of good quality hay daily for a goat as compared to 10 lbs of grain and approximately 50 lbs of hay for every single dairy cow). Besides, say I had two goats but one got sick and died, I would still have one goat. But if, on the other hand, I had one cow and IT got sick and died, I'd have bupkis. This too is something to think about. As a milking goat needs to be bred each season in order to continue producing milk, a few male goats should be retained for this purpose. Any resultant surplus of male offspring would be butchered for meat, as would all those older female goats whose milk or breeding production had declined.
For eggs, I would maintain a small flock of ducks rather than chickens. Several breeds of duck lay just as many eggs yearly as chickens, or nearly so, and like goats, these can nourish themselves on wild forage (an acre of range will feed 20 ducks) without the added requirement of grain feed that laying chickens will require. Further, drakes (male ducks) will not make as much zombie attracting noise as roosters would. As with goats, a few drakes can be retained for breeding purpose. All resultant surplus of male offspring would be butchered for meat, as would all those older female ducks whose production has declined.
With the purpose of butchering for meat in mind, if I keep any livestock at all, it will probably only be something simple and small like rabbits, mainly because they don't take up much space and they breed like... well... rabbits. If I decided to go this route, two or three bucks and half a dozen does for breeding, would do the trick. I'd have hutches for the bucks and does, and pens for all of their offspring, and I would keep any matings documented and offspring separated by lineage. This would allow for future pairings of offspring to be bred after the original existing breeding pairs become infertile due to age or illness, without risk of genetic mutations caused by inbreeding. I could then dedicate as much of my cropland as needed to the growing of alfalfa and timothy hay to feed the colony of rabbits, although if my cropland is at a premium, I will also endeavor to minimize such uses of otherwise productive acreage by supplementing the rabbits food with fresh grass clippings, vegetable tops and cast off produce (such as root vegetables, apples, pears and fruit tree leaves). Shown here is a rabbit hutch sold commercially, but one could easily make similar structures. A small pond, either natural or man-made, could also be maintained for the purpose of breeding fish. This will provide another source of food. Locating this fish pond either at the top or bottom of my waterfall (see Section D) should also ensure that fresh water was always circulating for the fish. Along with the pond, several barrels could be dedicated to breeding earth worms by filling them with worms and dirt, using scraps of foliage and food to feed the worms that will thereafter be used to feed the fish. Small fish such as live Guppies and minnows could also be added into the pool to see if they survive as a secondary food supply for the larger fish.
As mentioned previously, a secondary tank inside the greenhouse on the roof, smaller than the outdoor pond but still fairly large, could be connected by pipes to the planter beds to allow use of aquaponics. A worm barrel or two can be included in the greenhouse to feed these fish, rather than having to carry food all the way up to the roof for them.
Food Storage, Preparation and Cooking
Okay, now that we have all this food, we will require some means to store, prepare and cook it. Here too, I have been able to develop a multiple part system to accomplish these goals. The first obstacle to feeding any larger group is, of course, the procurement of sufficient food. The safe storage and preservation of such food, however, shall certainly come a very close second. It does a group no good to work hard in providing themselves with fresh meat, vegetables and other foodstuffs, only to see all their hard work come to nothing if their food supply rots or spoils before they even get the chance to eat any of it.
Most North American households rely almost exclusively on conventional refrigeration to ensure that all their food will stay fresh during the days or weeks between the grocery store and the table. Sustainable refrigeration, though, is not likely to be available Post Z-Day. We must turn an eye, therefore, to our forefathers. How did they preserve and store food before refrigeration was even invented, much less commonplace. Aside from leaving it on the hoof, most meats may be kept from spoiling by being canned, pickled, dried, salted, etc. A favorite method of mine, however, is to have meats smoked. Smoking is a useful preservation tool, in combination with other techniques, most commonly drying or salt-curing. In some cases, particularly in climates without much hot sunshine, smoking is simply the unavoidable side effect of drying over a fire. For some long-smoked foods, the cold smoking and drying time also serve to render the interior of food inhospitable to bacterial life, while the smoking gives its vulnerable exterior surfaces an extra layer of protection. Some heavily-salted, long-smoked foods can keep without refrigeration for weeks or months.
My kitchen, equipped with wood burning cooking ranges, such as the model pictured to the right, will be located on the ground level. This will allow rising heat from the kitchen to warm those floors above. On the second floor, and directly above the kitchen, would be an insulated room about the size of a walk-in closet, with an airtight exterior grade door. A simple arrangement of chimneys will connect two of my wood burning ranges to this room so that smoke from the existing cooking fire, which is otherwise wasted, could be redirected to this smoke room to treat meats and other foods. Two different chimneys shall be used for the purpose, a short chimney that goes straight up from the cooking range to the smoke room can provide a means for hot smoking foods; while a long chimney, from a range on the other end of the kitchen, will allow smoke enough time to cool and provide a method of cold smoking, with dampers to regulate which is used at any given time.
A standard chimney, passing from the smoke room through and running up along the exterior walls to normal chimney height, can then vent the smoke from the room to the outside.
As mentioned in Section C, a simple boiler tank, attached to the rear of the wood burning cook stove shown here, would be used to provide boiling hot water for the purpose of washing dishes, right in the kitchen where it would be required.
For those foods that do need to be kept cool, my intent is to include a combination root cellar and springhouse just off the kitchen. To assist in the maintaining of properly cool temperatures, it will also have a sunken floor, around four feet below ground level. Springhouses were small buildings used for refrigeration, once commonly found out in rural areas before use of electric refrigeration became more commonplace. It was often a tiny one to two-room building constructed around the source of a spring, and used the spring water to maintain constant cool temperatures inside the springhouse through the year. In a setting where no natural spring is available, another source of natural running water, such as a small creek or diverted portion of larger streams, could also be used. In my case, a suitably installed intake pipe will be used to tap water from the stream to the springhouse. Water coming to this springhouse through such a pipe will first be deposited in the settling basin where any dirt or debris can settle to the bottom. Water from this basin will then go from an overflow pipe into the trough that circles the room before exiting through a drainage pipe to be reintroduced to the river. The overflow pipe is also the tap location for the feeder pipe that is used to supply the rain cisterns as discussed in the Potable Water section that follows hereafter.The main use of the spring house is for the long-term storage of foods that would otherwise spoil, such as meat, fruit or dairy products. Particularly susceptible foods can be stored in large earthenware crocks or glass jars to be placed directly in the trough where the water will keep it coolest. If still further cooling proves to be necessary, the floor of the springhouse can be covered with blocks of ice, gathered through the winter and packed in sawdust. Ice blocks such as these were used for generations, with great success, to cool the fish sheds in the province of Newfoundland until their catch could be sold to the buyers. If it worked for them, it will work for us.
Potable Water
Water should be stockpiled as well, but I will be sure to choose a site to build my BOL that also includes an available river, lake or stream nearby to supplement this. Wells can be drilled to provide adequate Drinking Water via manually operated pumps as our primary long-term source of potable drinking water, but to conserve well water Underground Rain Cisterns, fed by my forts eaves-troughs, will also be included. Pipes could be installed to feed the cisterns from the river, lake or stream, to be used as a back-up during those periods when rainfall alone is insufficient to do so. All water that has not been stockpiled in advance will, of course, be purified prior to drinking, most likely in a homemade first stage Pre-Filter containing sand/charcoal like the one that has been pictured below:
After it is passed through the aforementioned pre-filter, water may be treated in a second stage using either chlorine or iodine in the appropriate amounts and I've also come up with an automated way to add the just right amount of chlorine or iodine into a barrel full of water at a time, then automatically flush the water on to the next stage. It is based on the measured one ounce shot dispensers that you find on the liquor bottles in bars, which is combined with a modified flush mechanism out of a standard toilet (using a new clean toilet mechanism from the hardware store, of course, not one that's actually been used in a toilet. Eww, LOL).The water is then passed through a third stage, a Big Berkey style Water Filter made from a kit like these, which also removes chlorine. After the three steps are completed, all filtered water will be further treated by distilling (boiling and condensation) in a fourth stage. The four stage process is probably massive overkill, but why take any chances when medical treatment and supplies will likely be very scarce?
The way I figure it, the charcoal/sand filters will extend the useful life of the Berkey filters, as the Berkey's should not clog up as quickly if most larger contaminants have already been removed from the water. Chlorine or iodine will kill off almost any creepy crawly microorganisms in the water that have made it through the pre-filters. The Berkey filters are mainly intended to treat for taste and odor of the water, and boiling in the last stage will kill anything that somehow made it through the first three stages alive.
If only intended for washing or other household uses, water would probably be tapped from the system after it passes through one of the first stage charcoal/sand pre-filter units as described above. After it is used for such purposes the water can be re-filtered and recycled. Also known as Gray Water, this is waste water that has been used for washing or other household chores, but does not contain any human waste. As long as no toxic soaps or cleaners have been used, this gray water needs only simple treatment before being reused in the garden.
Gray water systems are best if: a) they are simple to build and to maintain and b) concentrated bleach, grease, solvents or other chemicals are kept out of the water. Irrigation water may be filtered the same way that mother nature does it best, by passing it through a wetland. Artificially constructed wetlands (also called reed beds) treat this gray water by filtering it through layers of plants, soil and rocks. Nutrients in this waste water will feed the plants, and plants put oxygen in the water, helping to clean it further. Reed beds also grow plants that we can later harvest for other use, such as cat tails or bamboo, replacing stagnant water with a beautiful garden. The artificial wetland, as shown here, will essentially consist of a simple pit dug in the ground and lined with plastic or cement. It will then be filled with stones and coarse sand in which locally available wetland plants can be grown, with a layer of mulch over the top, intended to prevent mosquitoes from breeding in the water.
In addition to all of these household systems described here, which will be included in any Fortified BOL that I build in preparation for the coming of a disaster (like Z-Day), I will also try to acquire one or more of these portable water purification systems, pictured here, for myself and any other person in my survivor group: These filtration units will be for use during the rare times that we are away from our stockpiled water, and must rely on another source (during supply runs and so forth).
Clothing
It is well and good to discuss stockpiling food, water or other supplies, but a commodity that is often overlooked is the very clothes on our backs. We all talk about laying in supplies of food and water (preferably enough to last a bazillion years) and ammunition (preferably enough to hold off the entire Soviet army), but we often forget about clothing. This is not to say that we fail to realize that clothing will be needed, or how important it will be, but many of us lose sight of that fact that clothing is a non-perishable item, and that could be stored in advance every bit as easily as our coveted shelf stable food supplies.
Look at it like this, how long can most clothing actually last? I don't know about you, but I wear clothing every day that I've owned for years and years. Providing that it's decently made and that you didn't do too much to destroy it before it's natural service life, fabrics will last a long, long time. Moreover, if every member of your family (or other members of your survival group) was to each provide several outfits of clothing, with youngsters clothing selected in sizes they will grow into and wear later on rather than what they are wearing right now, you can vacuum seal clothing, and put it in storage, and it will last damn near forever. To that end, adequate supplies of clothes in several assorted styles and sizes will be stockpiled. Any existing articles of clothing should be sewn, patched or otherwise repaired, then handed down as needed until they are no longer salvageable for further use before stockpiled clothing is unsealed. Once the stockpiled clothing is opened it too should be sewn, patched or otherwise repaired, and handed down as needed until it is no longer salvageable. To extend the useful life of clothing still further, and eventually to provide new clothing, any game animals taken and any butchered livestock should be skinned for leather or furs, these materials to be used as patches in the early days, and made into new clothing altogether as time goes on.
.
| White76Knight's Survival Plan | ||
| Page One: Bugging In and Bugging Out | Page Two: Digging In for Awhile | Page Three: Living in the Aftermath |
| Page Two B: Fortifying The Citadel | Page Two C: The Curtain Wall |
White76Knight |
Latest page update: made by White76Knight
, Apr 20 2012, 2:43 PM EDT
(about this update
About This Update
Added some links
- White76Knight
view changes - complete history) |
|
Keyword tags:
Personal Survival Plan
More Info: links to this page
|
There are no threads for this page.
Be the first to start a new thread.
