Best prepper finds online this week

As I mentioned last week, I come across several interesting prepper or survival articles and products as I’m researching articles or ideas for the book I’m writing. This is another post of some of the best ones.

This is for the week of 10May2014 – 18May 2014. Ok, that’s 8 days but I work an 8-day workweek lately.

SAS Survival Handbook, Revised Edition: For Any Climate, in Any Situation

This is one of the best books out there for learning survival. Obviously, you’ll learn more by going to an outdoor survival class but this will definitely get you started.

The reason I included this one is because the kindle version is pretty much half off but the paperback is only about eleven bucks so you’d probably be better off getting it first. Wouldn’t hurt to have a digital copy though.

Bee biodiversity boosts crop yields

A study by NC state has shown that having a variety of bees in an area makes a lot more fruit per acre of land.

Quote:

“We wanted to understand the functional role of diversity,” says Dr. Hannah Burrack, an associate professor of entomology at NC State and co-author of a paper on the research. “And we found that there is a quantifiable benefit of having a lot of different types of bees pollinating a crop.”

Watch this video:

As I mentioned last week, the decline in the bee population is one of them most critical things we face. If you don’t believe me, read Fruitless Fall: The Collapse of the Honey Bee and the Coming Agricultural Crisis, which was written in 2009 about it. Things have gotten worse, just like the book said.

Living Well: 15 Secrets to Dutch Oven Cooking

Great post that goes through the basics of cooking with a dutch oven. Even has a couple of recipes. I’d like to get one of these sometime.

Quote:

Cooking in a Dutch oven is one of life’s pleasures, I think. It’s hard to duplicate the feeling of cooking outdoors in a big, cast-iron pot over hot coals. It’s hard to duplicate that flavor too — a cross between cooking over a fire and using a slow cooker. I love it (if that wasn’t already obvious). 🙂

I’m seriously considering getting this 8 qt one. It has really great reviews and has the flat top needed to put coals on it.
I figured I’d go the extra mile and find a couple books for you since we’re talking about dutch ovens: Black Pot For Beginners: Sure-Fire Methods to Get a Great Dutch Oven Dish Every Time, and this one that has a lot of recipes: Easy Campfire Cooking: 200+ Family Fun Recipes for Cooking Over Coals and In the Flames with a Dutch Oven, Foil Packets, and More!. Both are highly recommended.

It’s Time to Eat Insects

I’ve eaten insects in several countries over the years, and not only in a survival or deployed situation. Pound for pound, it has a TON of protein. 100g of crickets has about 69g of protein. Just remember that if you’re in a survival situation that you need to make sure you have a good water supply before you start eating a lot of protein.

Just FYI: the link to the book The Insect Cookbook: Food for a Sustainable Planet (Arts and Traditions of the Table: Perspectives on Culinary History) doesn’t work but my link does ;), although I’d suggest getting a copy of Edible: An Adventure into the World of Eating Insects and the Last Great Hope to Save the Planet instead or even Let’s Eat Bugs!: A Thought- Provoking Introduction to Edible Insects for Adventurous Teens and Adults (2nd Edition). They’re rated much higher.

You know how I love TED. Here’s a video on eating bugs as a sustainable substitute. Not gonna give up my ribeye though.

 6 Secrets To Urban Gardening With No Yard

Nice quick article on gardening if you don’t have a garden.

Quote:

Sometimes you can grow “up” to maximize your gardening space. Typically it’s your horizontal space that is limited. Try building a vertical garden instead. You can utilize taller containers, share plants in large containers, or train a climber to go up a wall or fence. Window boxes or other mounted containers can also help with maximizing your space. Building your own trellis boxes is an easy weekend project for those who truly want to maximize their space and make their space look beautiful at the same time.

This one caught my eye because I’m still in the planning stages of doing my own vertical garden, if you remember from my article Eat healthier by becoming your own grocery store. I live in the arid desert so I’m being a bit more careful, and there’s not a lot out there specifically for desert climates.

Whether you buy vertical garden or aquaponic setups but if you do your research, you can build them yourself. I think this is one of the biggest things you could do to support your food supply

Walking Shelter

A tent that you pull out of your sneakers. Don’t get this. I’ll laugh at you.

Weird. Just weird.

How to Make a Survival Fish Trap

Trapping is a great thing. It not only works fairly well if you do it in the right place and set it up correctly, it continues to hunt for you while you do other things like set up your camp. The problem with some traps is that once it’s set, it no longer hunts for you.

A fish trap is great because you can keep  catching fish after fish with it.

It works on the same concept as a minnow trap but for larger fish and only works in shallow water.

Pole Shift Survival Information

This site has a CRAPTON of survival-related free survival pdf’s. About 4,000 of them. A lot of them are redundant and a lot of them just plain suck, but there are some gems in there.

Three Quick Lessons from the California Fires

An interesting post about someone having to deal with the current fires out in California and what he learned about being prepared (or not).

Quote:

It’s easy to sit around and be disgruntled about misuse of funds and government corruption. It’s also easy to be skeptical about police and military organizations. Until something like this comes our way, and then it becomes hard to not understand the power and hope of community.

I agree with him about the Doom Porn thing. Too many people are focused on the end of civilization and don’t prepare for much more likely scenarios. Take a gander at his other articles. I think we’ll be seeing more from this guy.

This image is from a very nice article from the Art of Manliness called

How to Build a Small Game Survival Snare

It’s a good article about building snares.

That’s it for this week. Please post below if you find any interesting prepper or survival things on the web and I’ll see about adding them to an article next week..