Prep in a bucket

I saw this post over on Hotel 23 and thought it was pretty clever.

Survival Bucket as the author notes, is not a new idea, but he was helping a friend and provided some photos to help. Another commenter posted a link for a Costco Bucket , now I won't pass judgment on the contents of the Costco bucket but I will raise some caution about the quality of the goods since you can't get your hands on them to actually see them. I like the original authors idea of building your own.

Either way, preps are preps.

CQ CQ CQ NJ CQ CQ W4DMH CALLING CQ QRZ

OK now I have done it in true DX fashion for all you HAM'S out there.
I know others that read this will be real confused now but I would really like to hear from you HAM'S out there so I figured I would write in a language you would understand. We need to get HAM'S involved here so we can try to get a net going to help with off the grid communication among the prepper networks. I know there are many Ham's already involved in the prepper network and many more that read so please come forward and help us with getting this going. Now that all the people that read this (that are not HAM'S) are confused let me add one more slang that only the HAM'S will understand.

73 de W4DMH

PS Please email wvsantaclaus@aol.com so we can get to work on this.
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God Bless all from the Wild and Wonderful West Virginia
Santa

Survival Seed Vault

I received my first survival seed vault today. I have plans to buy 3 more over the next year, all to be stored in my root cellar for, you know, whenever.

Needless to say I have a few co-workers that think I'm nuts. But as I told them, "When you get tired of the looting and the riots, when you grow hungry waiting for your precious government to bring you food and water, I'll be all alone listening to the birds chirp while I tend to my garden. And NO, you can't get my address..........but you CAN start reading survival blogs if you want to survive.

Organization 101 : A database

Ok, after some looking around and asking other prepper types what they do in order to keep supplies straight I found one topic I can address right away. And that's a database. Now, if you aren't familiar with building a database, this could be a problem. But if you have a general knowledge of using one, then you are in luck because you can start by using a pre-built template. MicroSoft offers a Home Inventory template that you can start with.

I used it to make a single entry, without editing any of the fields:


Noting that any of these fields are easily modified to what ever you want, you can see the utility of using a database for inventory control. this template is for office 2007, for templates on earlier versions, Use this Access 2000 Template.

I will get busy entering my data and try to keep a log of the progress for later posts. In the mean time I have noticed that others have done databases as well and would like to hear from them about how it works, mainly on the maintenance and addition of items. Now the question: Is one database enough? Or will I need one for food as well as one for inventory?

I'm finding out that acquiring preps, storing preps, and using preps are all very different issues.

Organization = Success

In trying to come up with things to talk about that are new, or fresh and not just another re-hash of how to build a BOB, I came up with organization. I got this because I was cleaning up the garage and I found a small box that contained small prep items. A couple pocket reflecting mirrors, emergency water filtration devices, 3 space blankets and two army ammo pouches among the items. I remembered these were an attempt to gather specific items to make small emergency survival kits that could easily be carried and contain a wealth of survival items. Well, I made those kits, but these were items that were initially bought, lost/misplaced in the garage, and re-bought.

I figured this is a common issue with most of us as we collect and gather our prep materials. Do you keep a check list? How about a database? A card file? or do you just rely on your memory? I find it amazing that the fastest way to find something is to buy a replacement for it.

Check lists are pretty good for starting your prepping, but I am not so sure about them as a way to catalog and maintain your supplies. A database would be slick, but in the PAW you are not likely to have a consistent power source so using your computer may be sketchy after the collapse, but before PAW it looks like a sound Idea.

A card file would be a nice manual method but would take some more than ordinary filing skills to maintain. But thinking about it may make some sense for me, I will just need to figure out a system that isn't overly complicated.

I hope to make a few more posts towards this end as I research it more thoroughly.

What do you use?