wide scale preparations scenario

[sylvie]

Most recently, I have begun searching for a semi distant secondary or "bug out" location. I will be storing preps there, and it will be close enough that we all can get there easily, even without motorized transportation.

We have had to consider where to go in case of disaster for many years, being in close proximity to a nuclear power plant. For various reasons, a safe location changes. We now have a number of them.

I like your idea of non motorized, but we would have to beat it out of here like a race car driver and hope for the best. The evacuation routes they provided us will be very congested and chaotic, so knowing back roads is useful. I look at the power lines leaving the nuclear plant as a straight clear shot out of here and have an off road 4x4 that might handle it. Have topography maps of the areas, too.

I like your entire post, actually; it is well reasoned.
Could you explain how to cook without smoke or aroma?

 

[modern_pioneer]

Sure FD and Jus yuns can come too, I am running out of room now.

Camo pink? no way, we already need to paint the the thing flat black. About as pretty of a color choice you might have, remember we've been put in a survival mode, might be green/blue. Well guess what you wear inside the house doesn't matter.

So who can cook large meals out of whatever we have on hand? I can cook pretty decent but not everything.

I know the fellow that owns this, he gets a greenish/brownish colored fuel from the well and burns it in his diesel motors with to many problems. He does filter the stuff.

He might barter with us on some fuel, as well there is a natural gas well that they pump some gas out of every week next to my property line.

Lots of deer to harvest here as well as ground hogs.

 

[Ldychef2k]

Actually, I just asked someone on a prepper form. They had some kind of equation they did, and I opted for 160 watts. Sorry I can't tell you more about the formula. Math was involved, which is my greatest weakness. Aside from Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.

Anyway, there are sites which can tell you how much power each device requires daily. I just don't understand them.....

I have been saving for a significant solar generator, and am almost there. This will be primarily for fridge and freezer, perhaps a light or two.

How do you figure out how much power you would need? I would need to run the well pump, the fridge & an electric heater.......

 

[Wifezilla]

So who can cook large meals out of whatever we have on hand?

Me

That whole limited budget thing we have been on for the last 23 years taught me some MAD skills

Today's breakfast...
Pork sausage
Mushrooms
onions
hard boiled quail eggs (from my quail)
spices (like homegrown sage)

Cook up the sausage
Caramelize the onions and then add mushrooms
Mix with the browned sausage
Add the hard boiled quail eggs and cook covered until the quail eggs are nice and warm
Delicious!

 

[Ldychef2k]

Could you explain how to cook without smoke or aroma?

Primarily with a rocket stove. They get hot very fast, and are so hot that they burn up the smoke in the first minute or two. A tightly closed container with a glass lid has provided me with speed of cooking and no discernible aroma until the lid is lifted, which I do indoors.

Also, solar with a completely sealed cooking vessel. I made a portable solar cooker with a car windshield reflector.

Someone recently also posted a Dakota fire hole, which I am itching to try soon. It seems to be an easily camoflaged cooking pit that also is smokeless, if I understand it correctly.

 

[Wifezilla]

Yeah that pit fire looks very interesting. It would be a total pain where I am, but not everyone has to worry about winds shifting every few seconds like me. Those mountains really make things interesting.

 

[old fashioned]

WHAT!! no pink?!?? Then I'll settle for the black camo and wear my rose colored glasses.


On Our Own---yes I've noticed the "turn around" in others too, like I mentioned in previous post about "things coming together". Which included not just DH, but others too.
In fact, last week our neighbor, who was a truck driver now schooling for a chef came over talking about the movie Food Inc he'd seen in class and all the horrors of the food industry and how "it makes a person want to get some land and grow all your own". I jumped up and shouted "YES! HALLELUJAH! Just what I've been thinking for years". I was glad DH finally heard it from someone else and not just me. Mind you before this, the neighbors are nice and great friends, but didn't have a CLUE or a care and were more takers than givers. There are changes a-brewing.

As for cooking skills, I can do okay with making meals stretch to feed more. My mother was the queen of making a meal out of near nothing and that is something I keep working on.

Whatever supplies and skills we have now, I know is not enough and need more. Seems like enough is never enough!

 

[onmyown44]

I am very fortunate to live quite a ways from the closest town. I also have a pond full of fish and a artesian well. One of the major improvements I have been working on is planting many things that are edible. we have 6 blueberrie bushes, 2 apple trees, many rasberrie and blackberrie bushes, rhubarb, leeks. Plan on adding some pear trees, cherry trees and plum this year also some nut trees. We also have a large garden that we can from. We have the pantry full of carrots, peas, beans. We also have spaghetti sauce and deer meat on the shelf as well. We also raise our own chickens. Plan on building a spring house when the weather breaks and between my son and I we have quite an armory on hand if needed.

 

[hwillm1977]

Okay- We live on a lake and even in the summer the water is still pretty cold.

I was thinking if we have no electricity we could take all of our meat and fridge stuff and put it in a cooler or even just a garbage bag and lower it with a rope into water. I wonder how cold that would keep the meat??

Keeping things cold is what really worries me, I really want to invest in a solar panel powered freezer. I think that would be one of the most imnportant things to have.

When I was a kid we didn't own a refridgerator... we had a cold box that was essentially a wooden box in the kitchen, insulated, that a spring came up from underground, flowed around the box, and kept the box at fridge temperature... although we did eventually have a fridge, that's how we kept a lot of stuff cool for years, no power necessary (although a spring on your property is necessary... lol )

 

[xpc]

we have 6 blueberrie bushes, 2 apple trees, many rasberrie and blackberrie bushes, rhubarb, leeks. Plan on adding some pear trees, cherry trees and plum this year also some nut trees.

I have never had fruit trees and will have to look into getting some, they can't be much harder to take care of as a vegetable garden.