Self-Reliance: Can Preppers Really Feed Themselves?

Car Emergency Kit: Setup and Content Details

 Car kt content

I was recently asked to show my Car survival kit.
This gave me the chance to go through everything I keep there and sort a few things out.
Its amazing how in what it seems to be no time food and meds expire, batteries go bad, water bottles get used up and the spare clothes no longer fit the kids!

I even managed to misplace and lose some of the stuff along the way. No doubt brought out to be used at some point only to be left God knows where.
Your Car survival/emergency Kit works as a system, of which your actual vehicle is the foundation. I believe that your daily driver is your “first responder” when there’s an emergency so it’s much more important to have that vehicle ready than to have a loaded up off-road truck at home while driving a compact sedan with just a spare tyre and little else for emergencies.

The car must be very reliable, well serviced, large enough yet practical enough. Have 4x4 or AWD. Not necessarily an off road truck, but capable of dealing with some snow, mud or doing some light off roading if the situation requires it.

In my case I believe the Honda CRV balances these very well. Being diesel it also means I get considerably more miles per gallon of fuel. It’s also safer in case of an accident, diesel stores better than gas and diesel cars have roughly twice as much torque compared to similar cylinder engines.
I would also like to point out that both the vehicle and kit depend on the specific location, climatic conditions and family group. Living in the middle of nowhere in Alaska probably means your daily driver needs to be a 4x4 truck, in cold climates the spare clothes would be more winter oriented or if you have a baby in the family you’ll need a baby bag.
I used the list from my book “Bugging Out and Relocating” as a guide to make sure I was covering the important points.
Here’s the list:

• First Aid Kit
• Food (I'll be including some of the long term rations)

SOS Food Labs, Inc. Rations EMERGENCY 3 Day/ 72 Hour Package with 5 Year Shelf Life $8.95

• Clothes and footwear
• Water
• Flashlight and spare batteries
• AM/FM radio
• Tool Kit
• Fire extinguisher
• Duct Tape
• Spare Tire, Lug Wrench and Jack
• Jumper Cables
• 50 Feet of 550 Paracord
• Tow Strap
• Lighter
• Work Gloves
• Map
• Compass
• Hand Sanitizer
• Wet Wipes
• Sunblock
• Bug Repellent
• Toilet Paper
• Cell phone with charger
• Shovel (managed to lose my shovel, so I bought a folding E-tool to replace it)

Gerber E-Tool Folding Spade, Serrated Edge $44

• Ice Scrapper
• Tire inflator
• Emergency Flat Tire Repair
• Blankets or sleeping bags
• Reflective vest
• Reflective triangle or road flares

I also included a Cold Steel Kukri machete and keep a can of Sabre Red OC spray on the driver's door storage compartment for quick access.
FerFAL
Fernando “FerFAL” Aguirre is the author of “The Modern Survival Manual: Surviving the Economic Collapse” and “Bugging Out and Relocating: When Staying is not an Option”

$100,000 in "preps"… and having to evacuate and leave it all behind.

I was reading about this in a forum. The guy lives in South Carolina, spent a lot of his money over the years prepping his home yet when evacuating because of Irma all he actually ended up putting to use was the gas (and vehicle). He mentioned that he felt he failed at prepping because he didn’t build his house of reinforced concrete.

I don’t know all the details of this particular case, or even if it’s true at all, but I do understand what it means to put all your eggs in one basket and see it disappear right in front of you. I’ve never suffering such a thing myself, but I get emails often enough, mostly from people that lost everything due to fire or floods. Sometimes it personal financial or family disasters (divorce).
My point is, yes, your home is important. It’s your shelter, it’s your castle. It may even be what puts food on the table, at times literally speaking. And this is indeed a great asset. To produce at least some of your food, to have a workshop for projects, to run a business. I get it.
I also get it that SHTF and worst case scenarios are precisely about what isn’t convenient and what’s uncomfortable to even think of. Loosing it all to a flood, yup, that’s not the kind of thing anyone looks forward too. Yet thousands have gone through just that these last few days. For others it was fires. For someone else, in some other parts of the world, it was war or social unrest.

You need to plan for what’s likely, but you also need to think about those worst case scenarios. A worst case scenario isn’t bugging in in your retreat just in time, full of supplies, in some idyllic location along with your best buds (who also happen to be Navy SEALS, all of them) and all of them married to hot models that are also brain surgeons and homesteaders (wait, isn’t the divorce rate among military kinda high?) and everyone happens to get along just perfect without personal interests getting in the way of the finely tuned harmony of the survival retreat. Oh, you also beat the UN which happened to invade your county for some reason.
Seriously. SHTF is about when things DON’T go as planned. When that you’d rather not even think of ends up happening. Losing your farm sucks? Many have gone through just that these last few days alone.

This needs to be planned for. As I say in the cover of my second book “Bugging Out and Relocating”. You need to know “what to do when staying is not an option”.
FerFAL

Fernando “FerFAL” Aguirre is the author of “The Modern Survival Manual: Surviving the Economic Collapse” and “Bugging Out and Relocating: When Staying is not an Option”

Seal Team Six E&E kit: cash, Copenhagen and cigarettes

Sure they have some great gear, and small survival tin kits with a lot of useful tools (and of course the training to go along with it) but I think it’s interesting that Robert O'Neill mentions CASH as the first thing that comes to mind if he ever has to make his way home on his own after a mission. What does he do when he gets a call right before getting in a plane to go God knows where? Hit the ATM for as much cash as he can and buys some tobacco.

“I know I’m going to jump somewhere but I don’t know where I’m going to end up. And I can buy my way home with money, or somewhere else I can barter with tobacco…plus I love tobacco”.

Folks that have never been to 3^rd world countries just don’t understand the power of a 20, 50, let alone 100 USD bill. With absurd conversion rates in most of the third world, a 50 dollar bill is in parts of the world more money than the average person there will see in the same place in his entire life. You can buy shelter, food, you can buy transportation or even loyalty. 

Cash is king indeed.

FerFAL

 Fernando “FerFAL” Aguirre is the author of “The Modern Survival Manual: Surviving the Economic Collapse” and “Bugging Out and Relocating: When Staying is not an Option”

Buenos Aires more expensive than New York, London and Paris

Anonymous Anonymous said...

    Hey Derrick, I'm a North American who's been living in Buenos Aires for 5 years now, and I've stayed for exactly the reasons you mentioned. I won't lie, the last year has been rough with insane inflation, but even now, I have a nice apartment to myself in Capital and get by on a fraction of $5000 USD/month (no offense Fernando, don't mean to contradict you -- also, I'm pretty frugal). My burn rate is about $1500/month, and I live quite comfortably. I'd say go for it. Good luck getting your residency though -- they hate us yanquis in Migrations! If you have any questions, feel free to drop me a mail at jeroextran (at) hotmail (dot) com. Best of luck! Chris

Oh don’t worry. If I was single, lived in a small place, sure. The thing is, Argentina is expensive, especially Buenos Aires.

If you find an affordable place to live, go frugal as you say then sure. But if you need a bigger place for a family, if you want maybe a house in a safe, upper class neighbourhood, rather than an apartment, you want to have a car, have good medical care and send your kids to a good school (which therefore needs to be private, 500 to 1000 USD each for a good one) then the price is very different.

Groceries, food, toiletries and electronics in Buenos Aires are significantly more expensive than New York, London and Paris.

Buenos Aires un 8% más caro que Nueva York, un 24% más que en París, un 63% más que en Londres y un 68% más que en Madrid.

 I buy Argentine products in Spain, made in Argentina, such as yerba matte and cookies, that are sold cheaper in Spain than in Argentina where they are made. Makes no sense? Of course it doesn’t. Its not just the terrible inflation, but also the speculation. The same company that is happy enough selling abroad at 10 knows it can get away with charging 15 locally and they do so. Why? Simple. The European Union bargains a good price and gets it, while locally in Argentina no one protects the consumer and they get robbed, plain and simple. There’s no explanation, no logic for most products available to be cheaper in Spain than in Argentina which not only is the country in which its is made, it happens to be at the other end of the world.

Oh, and don’t worry about Migrations. Its not that they hate you, all public sector workers in Argentina hate life in general and are awful at their job. Its not personal.

FerFAL

 
Fernando “FerFAL” Aguirre is the author of “The Modern Survival Manual: Surviving the Economic Collapse” and “Bugging Out and Relocating: When Staying is not an Option”