Living Well Without Electricity or Weapons; Learning Real Survival Skills

This is a SURVIVAL thread that DOESN"T INCLUDE WEAPONS or ELECTRICITY; please stay on topic.

There's the possibility that CME's or WMDs could take out electricity in the future all over the world, and for the masses to survive people will have to learn real survival skills that don't include weapons or electricity.

There are times when Mother Nature takes out our electricity (Snow and Ice Storms, Volcanic Eruptions, Earthquakes, Tsunami's, Hurricanes, Typhoons, Floods, Dam Breaks, Landslides, etc..) and we have to do without electricity in order to survive, and it can become a struggle for survival if it lasts for days, weeks, months and sometimes years.

During these historical periods of people having to survive without electricity we DON"T hear about people using weapons to survive, but we do hear that people with weapons loot and kill others.

Once this mental picture hits you as being correct, you can see what others ALREADY think of people with weapons during times of survival; they are thought of as looters, robbers and possible killers. People with weapons won't last very long if they don't have any other survival skills that will help others in their and your time of need.

So... this thread is about developing and learning survival skills that will help you and others survive long term as well as short term periods of desperation. There are all kinds of people all over the world that are thinking in this similar manner.

Thanks to YouTube, YT has become the largest video source of learning new skills for survival or otherwise. I hope you'll all join in and give others good pointers on how to survive without electricity or weapons.

I'll start off by introducing some things that maybe none of you have thought about.

If there's no electricity most vehicles will be of little use except bicycles and certain motor bikes. Here's an interesting low cost motor bike that is tons of fun and should survive CME's because it doesn't have a battery.

www.youtube.com... .0...0.0...1ac.1._1RB_pVReuc

I just bought a 2007 Baja Warrior at auction for $240 that was in mint shape, and I see many more on Craigslist for about that price. This little motorcycle can get you to and from places at about 20 miles per hour and a tank of gas (half a gallon) lasts more than a day of fun riding. This is the kind of motor bike that everyone can repair with little or no skills at a very low cost. I weigh around 225, and am close to 6 foot tall and this bike is fun; it sits low and the tires are fat and wide.

There's no battery on this bike that you have to buy every year; it only has a lawn mower type engine in which all you have to do is push the on switch on, and turn the gas on, and put the choke on, and give the lawn mower cord a pull and the engine fires right up. The draw back of this bike is that it isn't street legal, its for fun out in mud, snow, sand dunes and beach areas. But... if the electricity does go out all over the Earth one of these days due to a CME, my other electronic vehicles won't be running, but this one will; and my other vehicles will have enough gas in their tanks to keep this one running for weeks, if not months.

www.youtube.com... 1j1j3j3j0j1j1.12.0...0.0...1ac.1.mOgBm4ig4OI

Here is another method of preparing for the future, it called gorilla food grafting. IT is illegal, but its interesting in its concept.

www.youtube.com... 5j6j3j6j3j0j1.24.0...0.0...1ac.1.P2tocF2Q6AY

Basically people go around and graft fruit buds or limbs onto trees that aren't fruit bearers. These buds and limbs from fruit trees that are grafted onto non fruit bearing trees later produce from from those grafts from fruit trees.

www.youtube.com...

Interesting about the fruit tree grafting onto other trees ... going to have to give that one a try... s&f for new info that wasnt aware of ...

Cast Iron Barrel Wood Stove Kit

tsc.tractorsupply.com...#?w=barrel+wood+stove&sliredirect=1

Here's a barrel wood stove kit that you can put together yourself. The one barrel kit is large enough to heat up any garage or home, just make sure you have the space needed between it and your walls; keep it to code in your area.

www.youtube.com... j7j6j0j1j7-1.18.0...0.0...1ac.1.Pf50xITlhF0

The "two barrel" kit is to heat huge areas, like very large green houses in the winter. Don't use a two barrel kit for your garage or home, it will get so hot that it will crack your windows.

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The one barrel kit is around $30-$40 and the "metal" barrel can be found for around $10- $20 and sometimes free. Make sure you cut the hole out in the lid of the barrel instead of the bottom, otherwise you will have serious troubles when cutting.

If you want to paint your barrel a pretty color, you will have to get spray cans from an automotive store that has very high temperature paints in cans for engines, otherwise your regular paint will be gone the first time you put your stove to work.

The heat that comes off of one barrel alone is tremendous. It can keep a 30' x 50' garage very warm with very little wood. Just make sure you pipe all the fumes out doors, or you will die otherwise; its just like any other stove.

Wood for the stove can be cheap, or expensive.

Even outdoors the heat generated from the one barrel stove can be felt out to a distance of around 15-20 feet in the cold winter. Its fun just putting one of these barrel kits together, and a person could make money just building, painting and selling them to others.

IF your electricity goes out for a long period of time in the winter, this cheap but well built barrel stove could save your life.

Old Fashioned Pitcher Pump and Well Points For Putting In Your Own Shallow Water Well

If you live in an area where the water isn't very deep, then maybe you might want to put in a well all by yourself by driving a Well Point into the ground and then putting an Old Fashioned Pitcher Pump on it. IF your electricity goes out, you'll still have water. In the old days some of these Old Fashioned Pitcher Pumps were in the houses and others were outside.

Harbor Freight has these Old Fashioned Pitcher Pumps, and they cost around $22 and sometimes they are around $17 or so when on sale.

www.harborfreight.com...

Lots of lumber yards have Well Points in which you can drive your own well into the ground if your water is not very deep down.

www.google.com...=en&tbo=d&sclient=psy-ab&q=well+points&oq=well+points&gs_l=serp.2...86399.100476.0.100520.40.29.6.0.0.12.512.6352.0j1j3j8j4j2 .18.0.les%3B..0.0...1c.1.F-phrcdxYJw&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&fp=bb4ade3441768232&bpcl=38093640&biw=1366&bih=589

Here are videos of how to put in your own well:

www.youtube.com... .2731.3j0j4j1j1j1.10.0...0.0...1ac.1.RFgvowPqK2g

Here are videos of Old Fashioned Water Pumps in action:

www.youtube.com...

Yes, you can live well without electricity.

Solar Dehydrator To Preserve Foods

Here is one of the best ways to prepare some serious supplies of food for times of survival in the future.

www.youtube.com... 0.0...1ac.1.A5kbGYMSjoM

Some of these solar dehydrators are massive and can process lots of food at once. Its a cheap way to dehydrate tons of food that can be preserved for very long periods of time, with the spices and additives that you want to give to each food before you dehydrate it.

Electrical dehydrators cost a fortune to dehydrate foods, but solar cookers basically cost nothing once you have them built; and they can be very cheap to build.

Dehydrated foods that you have stored can and will save your life if you have enough of it stored away for the amount of time needed.

Don't start processing a lot of food at once in a solar dehydrator, at least not until you think you have it mastered. Always use a thermometer, and always have a clock or watch and write down how long you processed certain foods in your solar cooker that were prepared to your liking; this saves mistakes later. You'll basically create your own solar cooking cook book, which you possibly could sell later on, as well as your food.

Develop your skills now.

Yes, you can live well without electricity.

Start a Fire With a Bottle of Water

Sometimes you find yourself without a way to start a fire, but usually there are plastic bottles of water somewhere to be had, or just go out and fill up an empty water bottle with water in order to use it as a magnifying glass.

Here's a cool video on how to focus the light from the sun through the water bottles onto paper, the young man in the vid uses black paper because it obsorbs light and heat better, while white paper reflects light and heat to some extent.

www.youtube.com...

One of the most important survival skills is learning to identify wild foods. The most nutritious and plentiful foods in the world are probably growing in your front yard. the more wild foods you learn about the more you see that we are surrounded by food. its strange that the most nutritious foods are also the most abundant. some basics are: Dandelion(greens,flowers,roots,) Lambsquarters(wild Quinoa), Pigweed(Wild amaranth) Chickweed, Plantain, Clover, even grass can be chewed the juice sucked out and the pulp spit out. then there are trees like: Pecans, Walnuts, Hickory nuts, Acorns from oaks, pine needles contain huge amounts of Vit C and other nutrients. Just take some fresh needles and make a very tasty tea. When colonists were coming over here on ships and went months without any Vit C so that they started dying from scurvy(Vit C deficiency) they went to the natives and begged for some kind of medicine. One of the natives just reached up above the mans head and plucked some pine needles from the tree he was standing under and after the men started making pine needle tea their scurvy miraculously was cured. This is knowledge every person should have. when you know enough starvation becomes impossible. theres a good site about wild foods called-www.eattheweeds.com/ also some very good books i would recommend are written by authors like Euell Gibbons, Samuel Thayer and some others i cant think of right now but you need to be doing your own research anyway. Also, start a garden.

reply to post by RussianScientists

I remember reading about this in gardening books when I was a kid (I'm now in my upper 50s, I can't believe grafting may now be illegal; is there anything that IS still legal? (I remember reading about people being poisoned after eating "fruit" from plants grafted on to root stock from certain plant species, such as ones from the Nightshade family; perhaps that is the reason for the illegality.)
The concept is fascinating, however. Here's a related item: Have you ever tried to root a cutting from a tree that can't be propagated in this manner? Here's a cool way to fool Mother Nature, without GM or anything like that: Wrap some soil in foil or plastic on a branch while it's growing on the tree. Water as needed,until roots form. Then cut the new plant right off the tree and put in the ground or container. Now, treat it as any other transplant!

What I love about stuff like this is that its not just survival its complete off the grid living....I'm glad to see many of the survival threads making it to the front page.

And mind you I think there is a difference between "survival" and outdoor living....good post mate.

In a situation where the power grid has gone down, your primary goal should be to find an alternative method to get power. Do you know why? For refrigeration. That's why.

Without the electrical grid, crops will still grow. Animals will reproduce. Life will go on. However, without refrigeration, you cannot store large quantities of food indefinately. You would be forced to rely on whatever food you could can or smoke. Yet smoked meat will still spoil. And to can food, you need a large amount of jars on hand.

Dairy products would be gone. Non-canned fruits and vegetables would rot too fast. The only logical answer for long term survival is to keep a frige and large freezer operational. Alternatively, if possible in your area, to keep an ice house.

In the short term, when fossil fuels are still available, you can generate power by hooking a lawn mower or weed whacker engine to a car alternator. The alternator would then be hooked to a car battery to keep it charged. The battery would then be hooked to an inverter to run appliances.

When gasoline is no longer available, you will need to switch to alternate methods. Such as the use of a gasifier, solar panels, a micro hydro setup, wind power, etc. However, keep in mind that wind generators are highly intermittent and not reliable.

"Mission of Mercy" FREE DENTAL

The "Mission of Mercy" is a Free Dental Clinic, and lots of states have the Mission of Mercy. All you have to do is to show up and get free dental work done, and they do give out free pain killers also. So check on your state and see if there is any "Mission of Mercy" in your state so that you can get free dental, or tell your neighbors if they need it.

Here is the one in Oklahoma coming up on February 1st and 2nd in Lawton, Oklahoma at the Great Plains Coliseum:

www.okmom.org...

Many states have the "Mission of Mercy", it is totally free, there is no charge and you can drive from any state to any other state and get FREE DENTAL. Read their literature and see what all they do for free. IF you go to one of these, you should plan on getting there very early, because they do stop people from coming in after a certain time, because they can only see so many people in a day.

Don't get their late, because you probably will be met at the door by guards and they will tell you the place is full up and no more people are being let in. When I say get there early, I'm telling you to get their by midnight or 2AM before the doors open at 7AM and get in line, because the line will be long already; many people get their the night before and stand in line starting around 8-10 pm the night before in order to get in.

IF you have children that need dental care, your children are moved to First in line, and you as well; just show them your child and they will put you in the front of the line. These people take pride in taking care of children FIRST.

So plug in "Mission of Mercy" and your states name, or a nearby state's name and free dental and see if any are coming up.

Refrigerate Foods In Clay Pots In Hot Weather When Your Without Electricity




Heres a simple way to keep foods cool during hot weather when you don't have electricity:

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Unrefrigerated Shelf Life
Carrots 4 days
Egg Plant 2 days
Guava 2 days
Meat Less than one day
Okra 4 days
Tomatos 2-4 days

Days refrigerated with Zeer Pot
Carrots 20 days
Egg Plant 21 days
Guava 20 days
Meat about 14 days
Okra 17 days
Tomatoes 20 days

Clay pots with a very limited capacity that you need to refill with water twice a day. Pots which are open to the environment, meaning there is little to no protection from insects and animals getting to your produce.

Additionally, a zeer pot only drops the temperature by about 10-degrees fahrenheit. So if it's 80-degrees outside, the pot is only going to be cooling at about 70-degrees.

The minimum safe temperature for storing food is 40-degrees or less. Anything above that allows for the rapid growth of harmful bacterias.

With that in mind, use a zeer pot at your own discretion. Personally, I'm somewhat against dying of dysentery.

reply to post by allenidaho


Actually well built zeer pots have around a 30 - 50 degree drop in temperature depending on their surface area. Large vaults have been made in certain countries that are larger than most refrigerators.

IF you want to survive a long period without electricity, then you'll have to keep certain foods cool, and this method is better than any other method.

Here are are some very good videos on getting your food "cold".

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Produce Methane / Biogas Gas For Cooking, Heating and For Creating Electricity

Producing methane is extremely simple, its so simple that most third world countries use methane or biogas quite extensively. In the old days, here in the USA, before we had electricity, methane was taken from the sewers in all of the cities that had sewers and the gas was pumped into corner street lamps for night time lighting and into homes for gas lamps and cooking.

Here is a video on the basic process in animation.
www.youtube.com...

Here is a guy that shows the real thing.
www.youtube.com...

Here are videos of the commercial processing of biogas:
www.youtube.com... 800.115849.0.116385.10.9.0.0.0.0.585.2016.2j1j2j2j0j1.8.0...0.0...1ac.1.HOvdwt3jXvY