frugal survivalist digest version 8 of 10

FRUGAL SURVIVALIST DIGEST VERSION 8

 

SHELTER

Shelter is really the least of your worries prepping.  Food is first because while you can improvise defense ( by, say, for instance, not being around other people at the very least ) you need calories every day.  You might last a month before all your extra fat is gone and you start cannibalizing yourself, but long before then the lack of calories will be having negative effects which will impact your survival.  Any survival plan relying mostly on trapping, hunting and edible foraging is not a very good plan at all ( all of the above are a supplement to stored calories, not a replacement ).  And while you can improvise defense you can’t always count on that being successful, so arming yourself is not the worst idea around.  Food first, then arming yourself ( no, Tactical Tommy, you don’t need semi-auto weapons.  They are not the magical talisman you believe ).  Water doesn’t need all that much in the way of preparation ( something I wish I knew prior to spending $200 on a brand name camping filter pre-Y2K ) and all the other crap like fancy camping gear and down sleeping bags and gold and silver are just expensive consumer items you can do without.  They don’t relate to survival as much as they do to status symbols.

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And don’t get me started with the thirty year mortgage suburban home with a bug-out vehicle in the driveway with a plan to flee to a concrete bunker atop a mountain out in the boonies.  I’m certainly no fan of town or city bugging-in, but neither am I one of unaffordable country retreats ( I advocate a small city near junk land-near as in a days walk optimally ).  Shelter is way overdone in most folks minds.  Why, you would think that without banks and a grid, our forefathers lived in mud huts and were covered in lice.  You can live in a shelter that cost one months rent, on a piece of land that cost only several months wages, if you would embrace a meager amount of roughing it.  And prepping shelter is even easier.  Then, you just build with the residue of our failing civilization, akin to the survivors of Rome using paving stones for foundations.  Only this time you’ll have far more refuse to use.  Retreaters THINK they are escaping the cities populations but their weak spot is their unnatural lust for automobiles which require roads which are a pretty good map for barbarian hordes to follow.

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And they spend $150k for that?  Shelter should cost you nothing, given scavenging, or at most $100 for a mattock pick, a shovel, a saw and a roll of thick plastic.  You don’t need an expensive retreat when you can walk off the road a small ways ( near water, of course, although not too close ) and build your dug-out shelter where you desire ( yes, it is a bit more complicated than that, given the need to escape and hide during about a month for the die-off, but only in detail ).  For those old and weak survivalists who are going to die soon anyway, here are some ideas for ready made shelter so as not to break out in a sweat.

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VEHICLE

Cars and trucks and delivery vehicles will be all over the place.  They are a bit difficult to hide other than if you plan on mostly burying one as a form of dug-out, but they are better than nothing.  And the end shelter for most poor misguided souls who bug out because they will never get to their destination due to TSA goons, gridlock, no transportation of gasoline and other factors. 

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TENT

A tent isn’t very good protection against wildlife, but at least it gets you off the roads and beaten path.  In my opinion they are good for getting away from insects and not much else ( and not for very long as they are poorly made ).  But with a wool sweater and cap, a $20 wool blanket ( buy them at Sportsman’s Guide online-make sure they weigh a minimum of three pounds or they are near worthless ) and if really cold a $40 ( at Amazon ) synthetic down comforter, they are probably the go-to option for most poor folks.  Just make sure you can transition over to a local materials shelter before the tent becomes worthless from use.  Yes, you’ll probably have to pre-cache food to make this viable.  Just don’t pre-manufacture any shelter.  I’ve heard of asswhore volunteers for the park service and other Federale agencies confiscating and wreaking any supplies they find.  Bury well.

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LOCAL MATERIALS ( not for the old and weak )

Research whatever shelter your local decimated Native American tribe used for shelter, and duplicate that.  That roll of plastic might really make a difference in performance as well as other old timey manufactured materials such as lime.  Stucco walls and floors eliminate infestations more unfinished materials allow.  And a word on that old favorite hippie shelter, yurts and tepees.  They were for nomads following the meat herds.  They aren’t necessarily the best for a sedentary camp.  Usually the best shelters outside swamps are earth sheltered, in part or in whole.  Study the Indigs-you don’t need reinforced concrete.

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RV

Having lived way too many winters in the high mountain desert in an RV, I’ve lost most of my previous enthusiasm for recreational vehicle living.  They are a great turn key solution if you add an enclosed porch at the entrance, so as to heat with solar and heat/cook with wood.  But unless you got a good deal financially and have a good place to go with it ( just prior to being a bug-out, if you know you can time it correctly ), I’d instead recommend building a shack yourself on your own land ( junk land, the cheap stuff on E-Bay or through county tax sales-stuff nobody else wants-but that is part of your larger financial collapse preps rather than the focus of this book which is bare bones prep supplies ).

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