New Year’s Day is right around the corner. This time a year brings out two types of people: those making resolutions and those who poo-poo making resolutions. I happen to be a fan of making New Year’s Resolutions. I might get some grief but, hey – I kept mine. Today I’ll share some of the things that have helped me make resolutions that are possible to stick to for an entire year.
Tips for Using Sparking Fire-Starters
Sparking fire-starters are a mainstay of wilderness survival kits. They are rugged, waterproof, and have the potential to light thousands of fires. They aren’t terribly expensive and you can find one of just about any size or form-factor from keychain-sized models to large, purpose-built versions. For all their virtues, lighting a fire with them can be tougher than you might think. Today I will offer a few hard-won tips for using sparking fire-starters.
Wilderness Survival Books, Part II
Welcome to Part II of my favorite wilderness survival books. In Part I I covered a mindset book, a how-to, and a survival story. This post will follow that same format. Unlike Part I this post will not have a bad example to share…but I will share a bonus book at the end and it’s one of the most fun books in this genre.
Food Preparedness on $20 a Paycheck
For a long time I’ve been telling friends, family, and readers how easy and inexpensive preparedness can be. I recently got curious about what a reasonable dollar amount – say $20 a paycheck – could actually do for one’s preparedness. I decided to find out, first-hand, and report the results to you. I’m pretty excited and consider this little experiment a success!
Helikon Essentials Kitbag and My Minimal Survival Kit
I recently wrote about the contents of a theoretical minimalist survival kit. I love the concept of such a kit: the bare minimum stuff you’d want to survive in the wilderness, so I decided to put one together. I’ve walked with it several times now and here’s what I have to report.
Wilderness Survival Books, Part I
I have recently been down a rabbit hole of reading survival-related books. The wilderness survival class I taught a couple weeks ago prompted this reading track and I’m so glad it did. It got me back into a couple books that I have long loved, and introduced me to a few new ones. Here are my favorite wilderness survival books.
The Bare Minimum Survival Kit
Survival kits come in all shapes and sizes, from the junk contained in the handles of those 80s “survival knives” (if you’re old enough to remember them definitely check out that video…or even if you’re not) to Altoids-tin kits to backpacks full of stuff. My last article on wilderness survival covered a very strong survival kit. Today I am going to discuss the bare minimum “stuff” I would want in the woods.
Long-Term Preparedness Heating and Cooling
Heating and cooling in the absence of “the grid” is a subject that seems to get addressed only rarely in preparedness literature. Most of the recommendations are short-term in nature, anyway. This posts is going to cover the most important parts of my long-term heating and cooling system, in hopes that you can learn something and make yourself more resilient on what I feel is an overlooked topic.
Wilderness Survival Basics
I was recently asked to teach a wilderness survival class. Though not specifically in my lane of expertise, I jumped at the chance. No guidance was provided other than “wilderness survival basics” and I was given a three-hour block. This article is what I decided to teach. I am making the full content available here to my readers, and to serve as a resource for my students afterward.
The Instructor’s Burden
Lately I have been seriously thinking about the instructor’s burden: the duty an instructor of life-and-death topics has to his or her students.