In January of 2021 I committed to some New Year’s resolutions: spend 15 minutes per day learning Spanish, workout 3 times per week, shoot my bow 3 times per week, read 73 books, and stay off tobacco. This is my progress so far in the year.
Survival Cooking: Charcoal Grills
Today I’m going to talk about using your charcoal grill for survival cooking. It’s not a conventional “prepper” item, and most of the prepper literature prefers to talk about dedicated wilderness/survival stoves. Those definitely have their advantages, but the lowly grill is often overlooked. In my opinion it is one of the best “entry level” survival cooking items you can own.
Long-Term Storage of Eggs
One of the benefits of living in the country is the ability to have chickens. Our chickens are prodigious layers and we have a seemingly never-ending supply of eggs. This is a huge part of our preparedness strategy: as long as we have healthy birds, we have plenty of eggs to eat, plenty to give away, and plenty to trade, and eggs even supplement our dog food. But things happen. One day we may not have chickens, so we discovered a method of long-term storage of eggs, no refrigeration required.
Prepping Others: The Handout Fire Kit
A couple weeks ago I wrote about small, handout first-aid kits. I made them for our hiking friends who have not made their own preparedness efforts. Both of these individuals are great people, they just don’t know where to start. More recently, I decided to build them each a handout fire kit. The handout fire kit is a small, relatively lightweight, fairly inexpensive kit full of really good tools. Let’s take a look at mine.
2021 Goal Progress: May
In January of 2021 I committed to some New Year’s resolutions: spend 15 minutes per day learning Spanish, workout 3 times per week, shoot my bow 3 times per week, read 73 books, and stay off tobacco. This is my progress so far in the year.
The Basic First Aid Kit
I’m guilty of getting a little too in-the-weeds sometimes. I like to explore topics to a point of near-expertise and where possible gain some actual experience in those topics. First aid is one such topic. I’ve written several articles on first aid kits and thought I would take a moment today to add a sanity-check to the mix. Today I’m going to veer away from sexy, expensive tools and talk explore the basic first aid kit.
Self Defense for EMS Professionals
By the very nature of the job Emergency Medical Services (EMS) personnel are exposed to dangerous situations. Emergencies are fluid, fast-moving affairs and they often happen in sketchy places. Patients are sometimes combative due to the call itself (assaults, domestic violence), or being drunk or high. EMS crews are asked to go into “bad” neighborhoods, walk into strange houses, and be left alone with a person they just met. There’s a lot that can go wrong. Today I’m going to explore some options for self-defense for EMS professionals.
Why You Should Become an EMT
I was MIA for most of last week. I was doing clinicals – 12-hour shifts in an ambulance – for my EMT class, which didn’t leave me much bandwidth for anything else. While I was riding around in an ambulance I had a lot of time to reflect on a recent reader question: Would you consider penning [an] article regarding your EMT course? That’s something I’d be interested in pursuing…
Comprehensive: How to Build a Fire
There are few skills that are as universal as building a fire. From remote Afghani villagers who have never seen a cell phone to the most Gucci’d-out backpackers, the fundamentals of building a fire don’t change much. It comes as a surprise to me when I encounter individuals who can’t build a fire…even though I encounter them with some regularity. This post is going to take a very deep dive (13,000 words and 70+ photos) into how to build a fire.
Know a Knot! The Water/Tape Knot
Welcome back to Know-a-Knot! It has been a while since we’ve looked at a new knot but I’ve received emails from a couple of you asking for the series to continue. Today we’re going to talk about an interesting joining knot: the water or tape knot.