I'm screwed!

[lovemachine]

So I have got to get started preparing. Seriously, if anything was to happen, my wife and I are screwed! I don't have anything stocked.
Help me out guys.

On a budget, what's the best way to get started? What are the essentials that I need to concentrate on?
Right now, I only have $100 to start. I can add to that a little bit each week, but that's all I have for right now. I'd like to get to the point where I'm good for a month.

My house is small, and has electric baseboard heaters. I'm in trouble if the power goes out. Everything is electric.

What would you recommend for me to do/get. Think of me as your pet project. convert me to be a survivalist like you guys. I want to do this, and I'm ready to get started.

 

[eldirector]

My wife and I have only barely started as well. We feel WAY behind, but are heads and shoulders beyond our neighbors.

Get a copy of "Do It Yourself Emergency Preparedness" by Arlene R. Hoag. Its a good read.

Keep track of what you eat, and start buying 1 extra each time you shop. You need a gallon of water per day, per person. So, stack a few cases in the garage, drink them, and rotate in new ones.

I'm generator shopping, too. Even looking at a nice wood-burning stove/insert for my old fireplace.

There are TONS of easy things to do that will help a LOT in an emergency. Most just take a little time, and very little cash.

BTW: INGO has been a fantastic resource for this kind of stuff! Thanks, guys and gals!

 

[irishfan]

You need to decide if you are wanting to get by for a week or two this winter or start prepping for long term. A $100 is easy for getting by a week or two and I would go about it differently than if I were starting for long term.

I will go with a week or two:

I bought a used kerosene heater for $20 and live in a small house which it will heat. Second, canned food on sale should be another $25 worth. Two cases of water on sale and a few 6 packs of Ramen. If you have a propane grill then I would get a new tank and that should do you for $100. The little stuff you will have already if you have a home you live in for a while.

IF you were wanting to start preparing for long term then I would go a completely different route.

 

[Eddie]

Start with the budget. Figure out how much you can afford to devote to prepping out of your household budget. It does no good lose your home and car while you prepare for some potential disaster.

Once you know how much you can afford to set aside, start setting it aside. A little cash laying around won't kill you. Begin researching. Read posts on here and everywhere else you can find them about prepping. Form your own opinions as to what you need.

Make a list of goals and prioritize them. Don't impulse buy. Take your time to shop around. Start small. Get what you need for three days and then build up to a week.

Take your time. Slowly expand your capabilities bit by bit. Spend your spare time learning and updating your list of goals. Don't get frantic and again, don't impulse buy.

It will take time but you will be far better prepared if you take it slow and stay within your means.

 

[grunt soldier]

with 100 dollars to start off with you can get semi prepared no problem. go to sams club or costco buy a couple big bags of rice and beans. i think 10lb bag of beans are 10 bucks and the 25 lb bags of rice are like 10 also. buy 5 cases of water (4 bucks a piece). so right now 2 25 lbs rice bags 2 10 lbs bean bags 5 cases of water and your at 60 dollars give or take. you still have 40 bucks left. depending on what type of canned foods you like and already eat look at kroger and marsh for the 10 for 10 sales on good soups and stuff. also costco and sams do 12 cans of vegetables for 8 dollars. use the 40 bucks accordingly on those canned items you already eat and like. now your semi ready as food and water are the most important parts.

then every month as much as you can add to it. buy a couple extra cans of food and a case of ramen noodles ect. also add to your ammo storage and preps in that area. also since your only electric heat i would look at a stove (something cheap at first they can be made of 55 gallon drums with kits of the net or if you have some extra money a decent one) and get the stainless chimney pipes (not positive what its called flu?) and the fireproof backer board and worst case scenario you can set up the backer board, run the pipe out the window, and have heat.

try not to feel to overwhelmed the zombie hoard probably won't be here anytime soon but natural disasters can occur anytime. do what you can as you can. once your all set up just remember to rotate your old stock with new and you will be miles ahead of the folks waiting for the gubment to come save them

 

[Expat]

Good advice already and I won't just repeat it. Just ask yourself, if you are without power for a week what do I need? heat obviously is going to be big in the winter so kerosene or propane is the most likely methods unless you have a woodburner of some sort. Buy what you eat now, just get a back log. Watch for sale items. In the fall a lot of canned veggies will get down to .25-.30 a can. Hard to can for that price.

 

[shibumiseeker]

Start with the budget. Figure out how much you can afford to devote to prepping out of your household budget. It does no good lose your home and car while you prepare for some potential disaster.

Once you know how much you can afford to set aside, start setting it aside. A little cash laying around won't kill you. Begin researching. Read posts on here and everywhere else you can find them about prepping. Form your own opinions as to what you need.

Make a list of goals and prioritize them. Don't impulse buy. Take your time to shop around. Start small. Get what you need for three days and then build up to a week.

Take your time. Slowly expand your capabilities bit by bit. Spend your spare time learning and updating your list of goals. Don't get frantic and again, don't impulse buy.

It will take time but you will be far better prepared if you take it slow and stay within your means.

Quoted for Truth.

Start with the 3s. Basic supplies for 3 days, then shoot for 3 weeks, then shoot for 3 months.


Don't run right out and spend your cash on stuff, you're more likely to just waste it in the long run.

Your best strategy is to buy a little extra of ANYTHING you consume on a regular basis, be it food, batteries, fuel, whatever. Build your stock levels and store what you use and use what you store.

Here's some of my getting started advice I've compiled over time:

Preps:
If you are "freaking out" then you have already failed. Seriously. Stop, take a few deep breaths, then sit down and make a plan.

To truly stock several months worth of food takes storage space and strategy. The best strategy is to store what you eat and eat what you store. Anything else and you will be wasting money and food.

Take a look at what you eat on a daily basis and figure out what of that is perishable and what of that is storable. Then figure out how much you eat a day and how much space and cost it takes to store a week, or a month or a year's worth of that. Then go out and start buying more of those items each time you shop. Stick around here, read some of the recommended readings, and figure out how long some items will store and what items have a shorter shelf life. Canned goods like soups and stews take a LOT of space to store any significant amount, but they will last for many years. Rice and beans don't take that much space and will store for decades.

100 bottles of water, assuming you are talking about the half-liter bottles, is about 2 weeks of water. Stick around here and learn how to purify water, it's much easier to store purification supplies than bottles of water.

Food shortages in the US in the next few years are seriously unlikely for those who have money. The US is a net food exporter by quite a lot. Panic is anti-survival. The best reason to store supplies is to be able to take advantage of cost savings buying in bulk, to have food in case of job loss, and to have the ability to make short term problems (blizzard, hurricane, etc) no problem. If each and every person had 3 to 6 months worth of supplies on hand then most "disasters" would be relatively minor events.

Water Storage
Shibumi's Survivalist Water Storage Primer:

People just starting out go through a lot of effort to figure out how to store water and keep it drinkable. They make it a lot more work and a lot more expensive than it needs to be. They try to sterilize it before storage and spend endless time debating the best methods.

IT DOESN'T NEED TO BE THAT COMPLICATED!

Really simple: Figure out how much water you need for your drinking (not cooking, not washing, DRINKING) needs per person per day for a week or so. In Indiana that'll be 1/2-1 gallon per person per day (washing and cooking water will be on top of that) for about a week. Then buy as many 5 gallon containers as you need to fill that requirement. Or use 2 liter pop bottles that have been rinsed. Fill them from your regular water source. Store them in a dark location. Rotate that water out every six months or so. That takes care of drinking water. You can treat it before storage if you want, but if you are rotating it out regularly and storing it properly you don't need to.

Now figure bulk storage, however much you want to store for however long you plan on needing water. Figure 1-2 gallons of water per person per day. Fill that up (whether it's a pallet of 5 gallon containers or larger tanks, whatever), don't bother treating it. Then if SHTF, you can treat/filter the water you actually DRINK. You don't need to bother treating it if it used for cooking or washing.

That's it. It's that simple. Always remember you have 30-80 gallons of fresh water in your water heater. Figuring out how to drain it before SHTF is a good prep idea

 

[shibumiseeker]

As far as heat goes, get a 5k btu kerosene heater and 5-10 gallons of kerosene. And a Carbon Monixide detector. And a few extra wicks. Cost: $200. The 5k btu jobs burn about a gallon of kero every 12-14 hours. Use it to keep a small part of the house warm in the event of power failure, close off other parts of the house and if you are on a municipal water supply either learn how to shut you water off at the meter/supply and drain your lines, or leave a thin stream (pencil lead size) running from the furthest faucet when it gets really cold.

You don't need to keep the bedroom at 75f, pile on enough blankets and you can sleep quite comfy. Dress in layers and keep active to stay warm. No matter how you are dressed, you will get cold doing nothing but sitting. Move around from time to time.


Eventually you may want a generator, but one that will power an all electric house is going to be expensive and require a lot of fuel storage. if it's winter, stick perishables in a cooler and put it outside or in a cold portion of the house. In summer run a small generator a couple hours in the morning and a couple hours in the evening to keep the fridge cold and charge batteries for stuff.

 

[shibumiseeker]

And the best advice I can give to anyone learning how to prepare for problems, and the cheapest to do, is to learn everything you can. Many skills can be practiced and picked up for free or cheap. And GET SOME BASIC EMERGENCY MEDICAL TRAINING. That will carry you through more problems than just about any other you can get. Eddie posted it well, but it bears repeating.

Stay away from doom and gloom sites, surviving hard times is about maintaining a can-do attitude. "We're all going to die!" is counterproductive.
Here's another I've put together:
Being a real survivalist is not about living off the land, or storing lots of stuff or having lots of toys or whatnot.

Real survivalism is a MINDSET and an ATTITUDE and the DRIVE. It's about having flexibility to adapt to changing conditions, especially when those conditions are antithetical to continued survival.

Emergency response in a major disaster is not simply a matter of having food and water and tents and generators and rescue dogs. It has to do with organization, management, communications, and most important of all trained people. Most of them volunteers, since nobody can afford to pay for a full-time staff of all those you need to have ready in an emergency. And face it, do we really want to pay taxes so the government will take care of it all?

That's where you come in: Get trained. As much as you can.

There is some emergency services organization that covers your area, regardless of where you live. Your local town has offices for governmental ones. Most have some type of volunteer program (CERT is common). There are NGOs (Non Governmental Organizations) everywhere. Red Cross and the Salvation Army are among the most prevalent, but there are many others. If you volunteer, you will probably get trained. For free or low cost.

First of all, you'll probably get trained on what you need for you and your family: what do you need to survive the first 72 hours following a disaster? How much water, what type of food, etc, you need, in the event of a total failure of utilities and other factors we rely on?

Then there are the skills you need to help other people. Sometimes this might relate to first aid, or structural assessment of buildings after an earthquake or how to recognize dangerous situations like gas leaks and powerline down, etc. However, there are many necessary skills that are not quite so physical. Much of emergency response beyond the first few hours, believe it or not, has to do with paperwork. Who is safe? Who needs care? Do families need to be reunited? Documentation of all of this is a huge effort, which goes on long after the bottles of water and hot meals have been distributed.

Then there are management skills to coordinate all of the other skills. An awful lot of "charity" gets wasted because some people get too much help, and others don't get enough. Someone needs to oversee the efforts.

Training in all of this is available. In an emergency, having trained people is probably more important than having stockpiles of stuff no one knows how to use or distribute. Trained people are much better at improvising what they need, they are much better at coordinating their efforts. As Sun Tzu said; training is a force multiplier.

Some folks whose disaster or emergency training has been job related complain that training is too expensive if the company is not paying for it. Well, that’s simply not true. There are individuals and companies out there who do charge enormous amounts to train people, but there’s a huge amount of very high quality training available for free or next to nothing. You just have to seek it out. You make it a part of your life curriculum (CV).

Get trained. Volunteer. You'll get a wealth of experience that will help you plan for all kinds of events, not just for major disasters, but for the minor incidents that plague us throughout life. You'll be able to keep yourself and those near to you safer. You'll be able to make a difference to others, reducing suffering and possibly saving lives. If and when something major happens, you will be a part of the infrastructure necessary for the response to be effective. You'll be part of the solution, rather than part of the problem.

I've spent my entire life since age 14 in emergency services, SAR, and disaster preparation and response. The absolute biggest problems we have in major disaster response is not dealing with the casualties. It's the logistical issues of how to deal with the uninjured helpless. It gets in the way and CAUSES THE PROBLEM TO BE MANY TIMES WORSE THAN IT NEEDS TO BE. I yell that last point because it's the one I see each and every time.

 

[The Bubba Effect]

Check out SurvivalBlog.com
I think it is the best preparedness website. It's got quite a bit of everything, from food storage to diy power systems to whatever you are into.


My suggestion for an easy first step is to start storing drinking water. Rinse out, fill and store empty 2 liter bottles with water. If something disrupts your water supply, that will hurt you quick. It's cheap and easy to store water and vital.

 

[gemlit-eyed]

Water

Many older homes have wells on site they may have been closed to switch over to city water but they are still there. Mine is under an add on that was done before I bought. Is there a problem with reactivating this resourse by instaling a hand pump. Decorative and usefull. I just think that would be a good idea.

 

[shibumiseeker]

Many older homes have wells on site they may have been closed to switch over to city water but they are still there. Mine is under an add on that was done before I bought. Is there a problem with reactivating this resourse by instaling a hand pump. Decorative and usefull. I just think that would be a good idea.

No real problem if the water table is still high enough. In most urban areas the aquifer has dropped over the last century as more land gets paved over.

 

[gemlit-eyed]

Water

I thought about that but also fewer people are on the wells now too. I am thinking those water levels may be better in some places. I was more concerned some Gov. regulation might get in the way.

 

[malern28us]

Many older homes have wells on site they may have been closed to switch over to city water but they are still there. Mine is under an add on that was done before I bought. Is there a problem with reactivating this resourse by instaling a hand pump. Decorative and usefull. I just think that would be a good idea.

Have you priced a hand pump recently?

 

[gemlit-eyed]

Googled it, shalow well $47. Deeper wells $287

 

[ThrottleJockey]

go to sams club or costco buy a couple big bags of rice and beans

This while popular advice is NOT good advice. Stock what you use and use what you stock. If you don't cook/eat rice and beans then don't stockpile them. If you don't use what you stockpile, rotation becomes a BIG problem.

 

[SemperFiUSMC]

My wife and I have only barely started as well. We feel WAY behind, but are heads and shoulders beyond our neighbors.

Get a copy of "Do It Yourself Emergency Preparedness" by Arlene R. Hoag. Its a good read.

Keep track of what you eat, and start buying 1 extra each time you shop. You need a gallon of water per day, per person. So, stack a few cases in the garage, drink them, and rotate in new ones.

I'm generator shopping, too. Even looking at a nice wood-burning stove/insert for my old fireplace.

There are TONS of easy things to do that will help a LOT in an emergency. Most just take a little time, and very little cash.

BTW: INGO has been a fantastic resource for this kind of stuff! Thanks, guys and gals!

Not the priorities I would go after.

Forget about what you eat today. Assume you won't have refrigeration, so things like butter and milk may not be available to cook with. Think about what you need to eat tomorrow. Powdered / dehydrated stuff like mashed potatos, rice a roni, etc. Canned stuff like Spagetti-Os, fruit, canned meats. Freeze-dried stuff like Mountain House. The dehydrated stuff is great if you have water. Canned stuff if you don't. Freeze-dried if you need to carry food in a ruck. All my SHTF foods can be reconstituted or cooked with water as the only added ingredient. You want stuff that doesn't suck, and that has a long shelf life. It's better if you can rotate it, but it's more important IMHO to have food you can use than cooking ingredients you can't.

Water is necessary, but you have 50 - 80 gallons of water in your hot water heater right now. You also have a couple of gallons of water in the tank of each of your toilets. Get a couple cases of drinking water that you can transport if you need, otherwise you have plenty of water right where you're at. I keep 2 cases of water in each vehicle in case of an emergency.

Generators are good for a couple day power outage. That's all. you can't live on one long term. The wood burning stove or insert is a great idea. I can set up a couple small hooches in the back yard complete with wood burning warmer and -50 sleeping bags in case it gets really cold. Learn how to live without electricity. The Amish do it when the parson's gone.

Most likely, I'm going to jump in my car, go get groped by the TSA, and head someplace that doesn't suck. I'll pick up the pieces when I get back.

 

[lovemachine]

Thanks for all the advice guys!

Woodburning stoves were mentioned. How much are they? Where can you get them? And how do you install them? My house is brick, and I can't imagine how I'd go about using one...

 

[Stschil]

This while popular advice is NOT good advice. Stock what you use and use what you stock. If you don't cook/eat rice and beans then don't stockpile them. If you don't use what you stockpile, rotation becomes a BIG problem.

Also, watch the expirations dates on the cans, especially if you are buying sale items. Keep them rotated and use on a FIFO basis.

DO NOT buy dented cans, not matter how cheap, for storage. Dents can cause minute air leaks and premature spoilage of the contents.


I agree the Suvialblog.com website is a great source of info. (who ever posted the link) Rawles has is schtuff together.

 

[Stschil]

Thanks for all the advice guys!

Woodburning stoves were mentioned. How much are they? Where can you get them? And how do you install them? My house is brick, and I can't imagine how I'd go about using one...

I recently bought a Volzgang "Defender" wood stove, supposed to heat up to 2200 sq ft. Still In the process of installing it. So far, I've got less than $1500 invested. Stove cost $600 on sale from Menards. I've purchased stone for the hearth and walls. But (and mine is huge), I had block walls and a slab floor to work with, so no additional materials needed to provide r-factor heat resistance for combustables. Also, the house I bought had an existing, viable chimney, so I didn't have to purchase materials to install that either.