5 Secret Ways to Prep in Urban Environments

Prepping in an urban environment is in most ways much the same as it is in suburban and rural environments, as I and other authors on this site have written of in the past. But urban preppers face quite a few challenges that their brethren in less populated areas will not, at least not with any frequency.

The teeming hordes of people that populate the great cities of men conceal predators to rival any that roam the seas, savannahs or forests elsewhere on earth. The deadliest, most cunning one of all: your fellow man.

Prepping in the concrete jungle must feature a greater focus on appearing as something other than what you are, which is someone ready to survive, ready to fight, a potential threat to these would-be apex predators.

You cannot look like food, nor can you look like someone worth looking into, a potential treasure chest of loot and gear for some other opportunist. In this article, I’ll tell you how to blend in and keep your preps a secret from the mob all around you in an urban area.

The Sea of Humanity

It is striking for outsiders who did not grow up in or have lived in cities for a long duration: the sheer number of people who inhabit them! While entirely normal to city slickers, the constantly moving, heaving mass of people, everywhere, all the time, has quite an effect on outsiders. At times claustrophobic tumultuous, it reminds one of rushing rapids, of a swarming beehive, or the frenzy of static on an old TV tuned to a dead channel. Easy to get lost in, also easy to hide in.

For the native, though, the mass has a pulse, a rhythm all its own. So acclimatized by time and experience, most city dwellers have instincts about the crowd around them that could give their hunting rural kin pause. A street smart resident of the urban jungle can often detect and point out those who are on the prowl- the bangers, the crooks, the highwaymen, the pickpockets- to anyone who would care to see them.

That’s the point of this article: while most denizens of the city are as decent as anyone else, there is simply a much greater preponderance of criminals, many of them hardened and professional, who inhabit the city right alongside you. After all, predators are always where the food is.
It is these bad actors who you must be truly cautious of, and they are the ones I hope to help inoculate you against.

Beneath the Sea, Monsters

I cannot stress enough how important it is to stay off the radar of these scumbags. While they may be scumbags, may even be truly evil, many of them will be professionals. Capable. Skilled. They will be far better at issuing violence than you are. Tougher. They will be used to getting what they want when they need it.

Avoiding a mugging or an educational beating from knowingly or unknowingly disrespecting them is one thing, staying off their scopes as a “person of interest” is another. If you get chalked up, even quietly, passively, as someone worth keeping an eye on, or turn into a red pin on a map or address list as a gear and/or weapons cache, you have problems.

Furthermore, you need not think overt displays of competence or even weapons is anything but posturing to these people. They aren’t afraid of your gun. They aren’t afraid of your knife. They know what your thin blue line patch is all about. They know “Molon Labe” and “III%er” means “get gun here.” You are only fooling yourself if you think overt displays are going to keep you safe.

The solution? Go no-profile. Yourself, your vehicle, your home. You must make misdirection and concealment your priority for security before, during and after a SHTF event, especially. If you don’t want to be taken as food, don’t look like food.

The following list of recommendations will go a long way to keeping you off the scopes of your city’s alpha predators.

1. Become the Gray Man

While I ordinarily detest this overused term since it was mutated into shorthand for “discount, khaki-clad Jason Bourne,” the concept is 100% applicable here.

Since our adversaries are constantly scanning, discerning and assessing passersby and people who catch their attention as to their suitability for becoming victims, if you blend into the background with all the other “passes,” you win.

You should not mistake the notion for actually dressing drab. That is a simpleton’s understanding. Becoming the gray man is about being another face in the crowd, a part of the background, a single note in the symphony, without a voice, without a countenance. Beneath notice.

Going “gray” has several components. You must understand the rhythm of a place to belong there. The way people walk, talk and act. What they typically wear and at what times of day. Things like that. If you just dress as blandly, or as “low-profile” as possible with your coyote 5.11’s and gray button down shirt, you’ll just stick out. You don’t want to be among the zebras, you want to be a zebra.

Your bearing has a lot to do with this: appear too soft, you’ll get picked for an “interview.” Too hard, a tune-up, and then a mugging. You want to be in the middle, someone who is present, but just going with the flow.

The same wisdom applies to your vehicle, your luggage and your social media profile (if you use your real name). Efface and erase all traces of you being a gun-toting, knife-wielding prepper. No manufacturer’s labels, no statements of support, no camo, no none of it. Just a person. That’s it. Show “support” in other ways.

2) If you can carry, carry. Always.

The chances that you’ll need to use force in defense of self or someone else rises exponentially in a city (across most domains) due to the greater prevalence of crime and the sheer amount of humanity surrounding you.

Unfortunately, many of this nation’s largest metropolises, even in conservative states, will restrict your right to bear arms of all kinds to a greater or lesser degree, with our “crown jewel” cities of New York, Chicago and San Francisco being the worst of the offenders.

The point is, no matter where you live there will be some kind of weapon you can carry to improve your chances of getting out of a scrum alive and hopefully uninjured. If you can carry a gun, definitely carry that. If you can carry a knife, carry whatever kind works best for you and fits within the architecture of your state and local laws.

One drastically undervalued tool legal nearly everywhere is pepper spray. Pepper spray is a ranged, less-lethal tool that packs on hell of a wallop and ha a rightly deserved reputation as draining the fight right out of most belligerents.

It never fails that right about now a contingent of nerds will make their case that pepper spray can’t be counted on and can fail and blah blah blah.

Yeah? Okay, name me one single weapon that you can carry with your own two hands that doesn’t have a chance of failure, guns included. I’ll wait…

Thought so. Fact is nothing else can do what pepper spray can: a ranged, non-lethal, multi-shot self defense weapon with a high success rate that can go everywhere.

I’ll take that all day and twice on Sundays. You are far more likely to need non-lethal force than lethal force in defense and you really want something between bad language and your pistol or knife. Plan accordingly.

No matter what your chosen tools are, conceal them! If you even dream of open carrying in an urban environment you had better wake up and send me an email apologizing, but this goes to “innocent” tells like holster loops and knife clips on pockets, even the head of a flashlight sticking up out of your pocket can tip your hand as an “action dude.” Not a look you want.

3. Use Concealments in Home

If you have a flat, a condo or one of the lucky and likely wealthy few to own an actual house inside a bustling city you’ll want to take pains to conceal your most valuable preps inside. This can be accomplished through a variety of means, and is another subject I have written on extensively here.

It doesn’t matter if you know who is coming into your home, they are total strangers or they are anyone else besides someone you trust utterly: your preps are no one’s business but yours!

Sure, you might trust your friend and his wife implicitly, but do you trust all of her family members? All of his friends? All of their friends? If the answer is no, keep it all under wraps. What someone does not know they cannot divulge, even accidentally.

If you, after all that you have seen and heard on the news and personally, still believe that that info will not somehow make it back to the wrong people and be collected, earmarked, sifted and collated, you are dreadfully naïve. Loose lips sink ships. Gossip traded gets you invaded.

This can be much easier said than done if you are serious about laying in the appropriate amount of equipment and supplies to survive an urban catastrophe.

Aside from the obvious things like dedicating a spare room for stores, or even an out of the way closet, you can make use of space under beds, beneath floorboards and beneath large furniture for comparatively sneaky storage. Be sure to check out my other articles for a whole lot more info on clever concealments in the home.

4. Create and Emplace Mini-Caches

Living in the city makes some trusty prepper techniques like burying or hiding caches in out of the way places take on entirely new difficulties. You cannot simply go dig up a patch of dirt in the woods and bury a sealed container.

You surely won’t be able to do it unobserved unless you are going into seriously dilapidated areas. Heck, you probably won’t be able to find a patch of grass that isn’t in a park in some cities!

You’ll need to do what all successful creatures do in times of challenge and adapt to your environment. This could take the form of renting a tiny storage unit (if you can afford it) or even a long term locker and keeping a small cache of gear and provisions inside that you can access if caught out away from home and in need of resupply.

A get-home bag, a bag-of-doom, or even some spare ammo, meds, food and clothing can make a big difference if things go pear-shaped the worst possible time.

Depending on the cost and expense as well as the accessibility of such places you may be able to afford only one, or you could afford a small handful to serve your own personal prepper ATMs.

Even if you keep a GHB or complete BOB in your vehicle or with you, don’t neglect this crucial step in a city; they have a way of swallowing things up, and you may not, in the end, have time to even get home before you need to make tracks for the land beyond the city limits.

5. Know the Secret Highways

You cannot rely on traditional ways in and out of cities if things get really bad. In the event that something bad enough happens to send masses of people fleeing the very first thing that will happen is all roads, highways and interstates will become utterly snarled. It can be difficult to even move about on foot there will be so much motorized and pedestrian traffic.

For this reason you’ll need alternate routes out of the worst of the congestion when the time comes to bug-out. How you accomplish this is up to you. It could be a foot route out of town cutting across and through buildings.

It might be maintenance tunnels or sewers or subways. It could be a down payment on a private helicopter ride with the promise of more with a no-questions-asked private pilot.

History furnishes us plenty of examples of cities tearing themselves apart when pushed past the tipping point. You’ll need to be long gone by the time that happens and an unconventional exit plan is perhaps how you’ll do it. Whatever you come up with, make it two; don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

Conclusion

Prepping successfully in the city is best done under the cover of secrecy; there are too many potential negative outcomes that arise from you being made as a prepper, survivalist, or just a well-heeled and well-stocked person. Bad guys gather actionable intel and sit on it just like we do. Make sure you are putting in the work to stay out of their ledgers.

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Prepping for Non-Preppers

You may have stockpiled all of the preps your family will need to last five years, have mastered a copious amount of survival skills, and live off the grid in a remote area – but are you prepped for accommodating friends, family and non-preppers into your post-apocalyptic life?

Turning away a complete stranger is one thing, but shunning someone you know, well that’s an entirely different proposition indeed. If you have not pondered this heart wrenching question, a massive hole exists in your survival plan.

As a Prepper, You Need to Make Some Tough Decisions

We all have the same amount of time and opportunity to prep. Trying to educate others now before it is too late is important to a lot of us. One of my best prepping gal pals, Survivor Jane, is rather fond of saying, “We are all in this together.”

Trying to educate others now before it is too late is important to a lot of us. One of my best prepping gal pals, Survivor Jane, is rather fond of saying, “We are all in this together.”

But, even sweet Jane will be willing and able to turn away folks who wind up on her doorstep after a doomsday disaster strikes. We all need to possess that type of resolve if we want to live … if we want our families to live.

I grew up country, and was a rather self-reliant woman – as most folks are who grow up outside of the concrete jungle. But, I did not go all in on prepping or really know a lot about what that meant, until after our region lost power during a heat wave and drought for over a week eight years ago.

My husband, Bobby, had been a prepper for years – decades really. But it took living through the short term tri-state area power outage and the utter incompetence of FEMA’s response to get me to become a true prepping partner.

But, before I committed to being a devoted and active prepper with my husband, I made him promise – swear actually, one thing…

If we were going to live a prepper lifestyle and launch what ended up being a 3-year search for the perfect spot for our survival homestead, he had to commit to turning away EVERYONE who came begging at our doorstep, no matter who they were, if they did not bring value to our (then) little prepping tribe of two.

Being a writer, I created some very emotional and graphic scenarios of the unprepared finding their way to our home. I wanted each scenario to be even more emotion tugging than the last to drive my point home.

The scenario that caused my beloved strong, skilled, dedicated, determined, and yet big-hearted man to pause was this one:

“A young woman with a baby shows up clearly in great need of food, nearing dehydration, and crying as she begged for our help.”

I needed to know if he could turn her away. Ultimately, on his own, he said that he would.

Am I a cruel and heartless witch of a woman? Nope. I am an intelligent mother who now has five grandchildren, and four more coming into the family officially very soon.

Giving away a little bit of food to this woman would not sustain her life very long, but giving away that same little bit of food to every woman, elderly man, teenager, 30-something man with a child, whatever, would eventually dwindle our preps to the point to where the bellies of our adult children and grandchildren, would go empty.

That, my fellow preppers, is a situation I simply will not allow, no matter how much it breaks my heart to turn my back on a fellow human being in need.

Some preppers plan to practice Christian charity during a long-term disaster. Being raised in a Christian household, having taught both Sunday school and vacation Bible school, my heart tugs me in the same direction.

But (yes, again there is a but) doing so will result in the same dire straits I laid out above AND make you vulnerable to attackers who will, without a doubt, hear about the free food, water, and medicine available at 1305 Stupid Preppers Drive, Any Rural Route, Any State, USA.

Bobby and I, like other preppers, discussed leaving boxes of items by the road or planting extra growing plots in the same area. All that act would accomplish would be alleviating the face-to-face emotional discussion with the unprepared and still announce to the world that food is available at… see address above.

Instead of wringing my hands about turning other folks away who have not taken advantage of their opportunity to prep during a SHTF event, I work relentlessly to increase self-reliance awareness, and teach survival homesteading skills to not only people that I care about or who live near me, but all comers.

Doing so is my act of Chrisstian charity, one that will not cause harm to our children, grandchildren, or members or our prepping tribe who invest both time and money making sure they can survive if the world suddenly goes pear shaped.

Now, all that being said, I would possibly agree to letting some friends, neighbors, relatives, or even strangers (it is a small rural county, so strangers are unlikely) in if they offered value to our survival homestead, and stockpile extra items in case such a situation presents itself during a long-term disaster or the societal rebuilding phase which will follow.

What People You Should Consider Letting Into Your Prepper Retreat

If a person either fills a void or greatly improves on a vital prepping category, you should consider allowing them to join you to ride out the apocalypse. But, doing so could put your family at great risk if you do not know the individual personally.

Your carefully cultivated OPSEC plan could go up in smoke in mere hours if the person you let in was merely a scout for marauders or was part of a larger group – even if they were decent people, who would converge on your homesteading survival retreat.

Weigh the pros and cons of even considering, or perhaps even speaking with anyone you do not know incredibly carefully. What you choose to say or do could place yourself and your loved ones in grave danger.

Top 10 Types of People Who Could Add Value to Your Prepper Retreat

1. Medical Professionals – Medical prepping is the most difficult of a prepper’s survival plan. Doctors, nurses, orderlies, pharmacists, veterinarians, EMTs, military medics, and students in the medical profession could be worth sharing your space and food with during a disaster.
2. Firefighters – Firefighters typically have some type of medical training, obviously know how to help prevent and put out fires (a huge plus when calling 911 will no longer be an option), and are physically fit and brave individuals.
3. Law Enforcement Officers – These brave men and women of good characters are trained to not only be expert marksmen, but to make a life or death decision in a split section – with the preservation of their life and those around them a top priority to factor into the equation.
4. Military Members and Veterans – Again, you would be adding an individual with extensive weapons training capable of making a life or death decision rapidly, to your prepping group. He or she, regardless of age, would be a wealth of knowledge when it comes to perimeter defense, attack planning, hand-to-hand combat, covert communications, etc.
5. Hunters – In our small county, most everyone hunts – but some are far better at it than others. If your prepping tribe could use an extra accomplished hunter, especially if you are an older prepper, allowing in someone you can vouch for from a character perspective, who also can help put more food on the table – especially if they can also butcher what they harvest from the woods, they too may be worth considering adding to your group. A hunter, be they prefer to go into the woods with a firearm or a bow, can also help defend your retreat and have already proven they can handle the blood, gore, and emotions involved with taking a life. If the person is a bowhunter, they will hopefully also known how to make their own arrows.
6. Trappers – Being able to trap small game to help supply protein to the prepper retreat to prevent food stores from running low or when large game has been overly taxed and more difficult to locate, would be beneficial to daily life on the prepper retreat during a long-term disaster.
7. Gunsmiths or Reloaders – All preppers should possess some gun repair and reloading skills. It would be extremely odd for a gunsmith or a reloader not also know how to shoot firearms well and possess plenty of their own – an added bonus.
8. Mechanics – If you are prepping in a city (please move) in the suburbs (again, please move) in a small town or on small acreage, a mechanic will likely not be of supreme value. But, if you live in a rural area and have acreage, keeping farm and ATV equipment in good working order can help keep the survival homesteading retreat sustainable and the most self-reliant it can be for far longer. During the societal rebuilding stage, having a mechanic at your retreat increases your bartering opportunities.
9. Carpenters or Engineers – Thinking long term during a mega disaster, having a carpenter and – or an engineer in your group to complement the skills members already possess, could be advantageous. Being able to repair, enhance, or build structures on the property to prevent decay and make space for births both in the home and in the barn, might be useful – but only if you know the character of the person, and if they also have a modicum of other skills that can contribute to daily chores.
10. Gardeners – A prepper must know how to grow, harvest, and preserve their own food. But, if you know the person is an expert gardener and is of good character, their ability to help work the growing plot, detect plant disease quickly, and know how to naturally mix herbicides and fertilizers from materials you have on hand – not store bought, they might be enough of an asset to consider allowing them into your group.

Homemade cans of food on shelves.

What To Stockpile for Your SHTF Guests

Everyone in our survival tribe has necessary items stockpiled here and living quarters – along with what they will be bringing with them when they bugout to our location. When they show up, even if the opportunity to go home and load up their planned bugout gear is nixed, these folks will not do without.

If (when, really) an unprepared person shows up on your doorstep, they will come with nothing – or at most, a few things stuffed in a backpack. They will need things and a place to sleep.

Planning on stockpiling and growing extra food to help feed those you take in is the most important step you can take if considering allowing anyone other than your family or group members live at your home or retreat during a disaster.

Factoring some more detailed gear and designated living space into your survival plan is highly recommended.

7 Things To Prepare or Stockpile for the Unprepared

1. Living Quarters – Designate a space in your home or on your property to turn into simple living space for add-on group members. This can be as simple as blow-up mattresses, and a space left for them to be used in a living room or basement, wood stockpiled to frame in a porch for living space, second hand campers, tents, or garage space that can be used to house people. Do not forget to factor a heat source and sanitation into the living quarters preparations.
2. Bedding – Purchase extra sheets, pillows, blankets, or sleeping bags to use as bedding for the new additions. Hitting yard sales, church rummage sales, flea markets, seasonal store clearance sales, and the Goodwill are excellent places to pick up bedding items for a nominal cost.
3. Outerwear – If the SHTF during the middle of summer, it is unlikely that any of the displaced non-preppers will have a winter coat or even fall or spring jackets. You can shop at the places noted above for outerwear, hats, gloves, and scarves in a variety of sizes.
4. Footwear – Boots and shoes will wear out a lot more quickly during a long-term disaster when more manual labor is necessary on a daily basis. Hit the bargain places already noted to score footwear for all seasons in both adult and child sizes (if you are lucky enough to take in a doctor, his or her whole family will likely be a part of the bargain) extra laces, and sole inserts.
5. Clothing – The season the person arrives in during the doomsday disaster scenario is likely the only one they will be dressed or have clothing in their backpack to address. Cheap second hand clothing can be purchased and stockpiled alongside your other preps. You might be surprised how often you can find T-shirts, socks, underwear, and bras at the Dollar Tree and at yard sales for far less than $1 each.
6. Personal Hygiene Items – When adding to your stockpiles of tampons, sanitary napkins, razors, soap, toilet paper, etc., begin purchasing a little extra to share with the new members of your prepping tribe. Poor hygiene can spread disease, and being exposed to more germs, bacteria, and illness is not something you want during a doomsday disaster.
7. Cleaning Supplies – The more people living in one place, especially a confined space, the more cleaning that will need to take place. As noted above, preventing the growth of bacteria and germs and preventing illness should remain a top priority of your prepping plan.

Preparing for Those You’e Already Courting Into the Prepping Lifestyle

Do you have unprepared folks in your life you care about and just can’t seem to get to hear what you have been trying to tell them about the need to be self-reliant our go full scale prepper? We do.

I know it can feel like beating your head against the wall when literally trying to get them to save their own lives and offering to help them do just that. This small group of people in our orbit have been given a small binder labeled “When The SHTF And You Wish You Would Have Listened”.

I am planning for these few families to show up at our home and want to take them in. I know what skills they already possess and would vouch for their upstanding character to anybody who asked. The difference between folks like these in our lives and those we know less about, is we can prepare better for their anticipated arrival.

Your favorite cousin who is resisting becoming a prepper in spite of your best efforts will surely have an epiphany when society changes overnight.

Because you obviously know your cousin well, you can not only stockpile to suit what they will need and know specifically where they will fit into your survival plan, you can give them a binder for them to review and adhere to before rapidly fleeing to your home and being welcome in … after hearing “I told you so”, of course.

Among basic prepping advice given to these select few in the binder, just in case they cannot make it to us, is a list of what to bring. In the panic that will happen immediately after the SHTF, you cannot expect an unprepared, no matter how skilled or intelligent, to think clearly enough to know what they should bring with them before fleeing in your direction.

Basically, this is a bugout list for the unprepared to ensure they bring some essential items with them to defray the burden they will be on your survival group and stockpiles.

Bugout List for the Unprepared

• Medicine – All prescription medications and over the counter medications in their home.
• Food – As much food that can be packed and transported without spoiling when not placed in a cooler (it will take up too much space) as possible.
• Spices – All the spices in their cabinet. Some will be medicinal and others can help add flavor to bland survival meals and stews or soups that are made in stockpiles are being stretched to cover meals during a long-term disaster.
• First aid Supplies – Bandaids, peroxide, rubbing alcohol, witch Hazel, burn cream, etc.
• Clothing – Seven days’ worth of clothing for all seasons.
• Footwear – Preferably for all seasons, as many winter and work boots that they own.
• Socks – all they own if possible.
• Gloves – winter and work gloves.
• Outerwear – Coats and jackets for all seasons, as much as they own if it will fit.
• Weapons – every firearm, bow, ammo, arrows, gun repair and reloading supplies, knives, and machetes.
• Wild Game Gear – All hunting accessories, fishing gear, and trapping gear that can be transported.
• Personal Hygiene Items – Feminine needs, razors, shampoo, soap, etc.
• Photo Albums – Pack family photos that are sentimental because you will likely not be coming back or the home will likely be ransacked if you do.
• Essential Documents – Pack birth certificates, child custody papers, mortgage papers, insurance documents, vaccination records, medical records – any paperwork that can show allergies, existing conditions etc. that can help with your care or the care of your children in an emergency, bank statements, etc.
• Fine Jewelry – Bring any fine jewelry, gold, silver, or gems that are of value and could be used for bartering.
• Bedding – Any sleeping bags, blankets, sheets, pillows, or air mattresses you need.
• Comfort Items – Toys for children, sentimental items or a few books for adults, etc. These should be kept to one bag per person or one bag per child with a tote filled with items all of the children in the family can enjoy for morale boosters: games, puzzles, books, etc.
• Camping Gear – Any tent, lanterns, propane cooking stove, solar lights, etc.
• Gardening – Seeds, gardening gloves, watering cans, growing aids, etc.
• Fuel – Any generator and cans of fuel that can be transported.

This list is long, but the folks in our area drive pickup trucks and SUVs, and typically also have some type of trailer that can be pulled. Items not added to the list include ATVs and livestock, those items are definitely important to bring, but when time is of the essence, I viewed the other items on this last as being the most important to fulfill the daily needs of the unprepared late comers.

Yes, more ATVs and livestock would be beneficial, and you may want to include them on a lists you make, but our survival homestead can exist without more of these items while our stockpiles and finances would be less taxed by the folks we hope to welcome into the fold bringing as many of the supplies and gear they will need with them.

I do not advocate taking in strangers or even friends and long lost relatives you have. I only hope that considering turning away those you know and don’t know alike, considering how to get the unprepared you want in your group to arrive geared up and ready to contribute a part of your survival plan.

Discussing and then agreeing on a finite list of the types of people you would consider letting into your group and how that decision would be made should be considered now and not after the SHTF.

Simply assuming you and the other family members will agree on whether or not someone should be admitted to the group paves the way for heated debates and divisiveness when you can ill afford such a fracture in your prepping family.

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A Miniature Radio Telescope in Every Backyard

You probably wouldn’t expect to see somebody making astronomical observations during a cloudy day in the center of a dense urban area, but that’s exactly what was happening at the recent 2019 Philadelphia Mini Maker Faire. Professor James Aguirre of the University of Pennsylvania was there demonstrating the particularly compact Mini Radio Telescope (MRT) project built around an old DirecTV satellite dish and a smattering of low-cost components, giving visitors a view of the sky in a way most had never seen before.

Thanks to the project’s extensive online documentation, anyone with a spare satellite dish and a couple hundred dollars in support hardware can build their very own personal radio telescope that’s capable of observing objects in the sky no matter what the time of day or weather conditions are. Even if you’re not interested in peering into deep space from the comfort of your own home, the MRT offers a framework for building an automatic pan-and-tilt directional antenna platform that could be used for picking up signals from orbiting satellites.

With the slow collapse of satellite television in the United States these dishes are often free for the taking, and a fairly common sight on the sidewalk come garbage day. Perhaps there’s even one (or three) sitting on your own roof as you read this, waiting for a new lease on life in the Netflix Era.

Whether it’s to satisfy your own curiosity or because you want to follow in Professor Aguirre’s footsteps and use it as a tool for STEM outreach, projects like MRT make it easier than ever to build a functional DIY radio telescope.

Point and Shoot

The MRT, and really any radio telescope project like this, is essentially made up of two separate systems: one that provides the motorized aiming of the dish, and the receiver that actually captures the signals. Either system could work independently of the other, but when combined with the appropriate software “glue”, they allow the user to map the sky in radio frequencies.

Obviously, the electronics and mechanical components required to pan an antenna across the sky aren’t terribly complex. If you wanted to keep things really simple and were content with moving in a single axis, you could even do it with a “barn door” tracker. What’s really kicked off the recent explosion of DIY radio telescopes is the RTL-SDR project and the era of low-cost Software Defined Radios (SDRs) it’s inspired.

Unsurprisingly, the MRT also uses an RTL-SDR receiver for processing signals from the Low-Noise Block (LNB) in the dish. Professor Aguirre says that since they are still using the stock DirecTV LNB, the telescope is fairly limited in what it can actually “see”. But it’s good enough to image the sun or pick up satellites in orbit, which is sufficient for the purposes of demonstrating the basic operating principles of a radio telescope.

To move the satellite dish, the MRT is using an Arduino connected to a trio of Big Easy Drivers from Sparkfun. These are in turn connected to the stepper motors in the antenna mount, which are sufficiently geared so they can move the dish around without the need for a counterweight. This makes it an excellent candidate for enclosure inside a dome, which would allow for all-weather observations.

Both the RTL-SDR receiver and the Arduino are connected to a Raspberry Pi, which runs the software for the telescope and provides the interface for the user. The MRT GitHub repository contains all of the various tools and programs created for the project, mostly written in Python, which should provide a useful reference even if you’re not interested in duplicating the telescope’s overall design.

Wandering Through the Sky

When we visited Professor Aguirre, he was attempting to use the MRT to find the Sun. You’d think that a simple enough task in the middle of the afternoon, but thanks to an unbroken layer of steel-gray clouds hanging low in the October sky, Sol was absolutely nowhere to be found with our meager human senses.

Geostationary satellites as seen by the MRT

As the dish made its slow robotic pans across the sky, we spoke with the Professor about the telescope and the various revisions it went through over the years. Eventually the display lit up, showing a representation of an unusually strong signal, clearly the MRT was hearing something out there. After brief scrutiny, the Professor announced that we hadn’t found the sun; instead, the telescope most likely crossed paths with a geostationary satellite.

It was this raconteur style of discovery that kept visitors to the Mini Radio Telescope enthralled. Nobody expected this hacked together contraption of consumer-grade hardware to discover a new exoplanet or help solve some long-pondered mystery of the cosmos while sitting in a Philadelphia parking lot.

But it was more than capable of pointing out objects tens of thousands of kilometers away while our own eyes couldn’t even figure out where the Sun was. It reaffirmed in a very real way that something was out there, and students both young and old couldn’t help but be fascinated by it.

via Radio Hacks – Hackaday https://ift.tt/2MGiIwp

The Top 5 Multi-Caliber Guns and Who They Are For

Imagine a scenario where you are low on ammunition. You used the last of your supply some time ago and despite your searching high and low for more, you have come up with nada. A gun without ammo is little better than a clumsy club, or an intimidation tool at best. You know you won’t be able to do what you need to do without ammo. Things are looking bleak.

Or they would be, if your gun was not multi-caliber capable. Since it is, you found another cartridge that your gun will take with little or no modification, so with a quick reload and maybe an adjustment or two you are back in business.

An adaptable gun in turn makes you more adaptable to your circumstances, allowing you to make better use of sometimes scare supplies of ammo or simply tailor your ballistic solution to the problem at hand.

In this article, we’ll be looking at the unique advantages provided to preppers by multi-caliber firearms, as well as considerations for selecting and employing them.

Multi-Caliber Guns

A multi-caliber gun is simply one that is able to accept a variety of cartridges with little or nothing in the way of modification, or if it is one that requires substantial parts swaps at least makes the process easy and quick at the user level.

Multi-caliber guns can run the gamut from handguns all the way up to rifles and even a few shotguns. Some guns are inherently able by design to chamber multiple distinct calibers, one common and certainly well known example being your run of the mill .357 Magnum revolver in whatever model it is encountered, all of them by nature being able to chamber the shorter, weaker .38 Special.

Some guns can accommodate a second or even third cartridge by simply changing a few parts, like the barrel and magazine, or in the case of revolvers the barrel and cylinder.

Magnum Research’s enormous Desert Eagle magnum autoloaders are one infamous example, with the frames and slides of those hefty guns able to accept multiple calibers with nothing more than rapid barrel and magazine switch.

Dan Wesson revolvers famously had easy to change barrel assemblies that facilitated caliber switches in certain models.

Break-action shotguns of certain make, like Browning’s Lightning over-unders were often sold as a set with multiple chamberings and barrel lengths. Today one of the most famous multi-caliber firearms is the ubiquitous AR-15 platform, which can chamber such a wide assortment of rounds that some manufacturers have started marking the lower receiver “Multi” or “Multi Cal.”

This is no specialization: your box stock 5.56mm AR-15 from most makers can, with as little as a change of the barrel and magazine, chamber an entirely new cartridge, the most famous and popular of these in the modern era being the .300 Blackout conversion.

Some guns can use alternate rounds effortlessly, load and go, while others take a little more work. But all of them offer the shooter a broader pool of available ammunition to draw from, as well as a different tool to solve different problems.

Why Go with a Multi-Caliber Gun?

It does not take much in the way of imagination to think of a scenario where a multi-caliber gun would be of use to a prepper, either during a SHTF incident or in kinder times.

The most common perk of a multi-caliber gun is coming up with an alternate ammo supply if your primary is exhausted. .357 Magnum users who have run out of full-house magnum loads will be thankful they can get cheaper .38 Special and keep on trucking.

A user of the same gun may appreciate dialing down the power if they are loaning the gun to a less-skilled relative or friend. Or they may simply get more from high-volume practice sessions or training by shooting the far milder .38 Special before confirming their skills with the .357 and carrying it loaded accordingly.

A multi-caliber rifle ala the AR can give you a tremendous amount of flexibility with a minimum amount of fuss, allowing you to go all the way from a .22 LR up through intermediate .270 and .30 caliber rounds before topping out at positively stomping .450’s. All easily accomplished with an upper receiver and magazine switch.

While most will have no call for this amount of variety, the flexibility opens up some attractive tactical possibilities, giving you the option to go from an all-around capable 5.56mm carbine to a deadly-quiet short barreled .300 Blk by swapping out an upper and magazine.

A couple of pins, a fresh mag, and you have reduced your signature to almost nothing. Another example using the same setup would be a 5.56mm to 6.5mm or 6.8mm conversion configured as a precision rifle to extend your range and afford more power.

In the case of the latter, an optic can be pre-attached and zeroed on the barreled upper receiver, and barring some significant damage to the lower will be expected to maintain that zero when detached from the lower receiver.

Compared to toting multiple rifles for different purposes, this eases logistical concerns and saves weight. Always worthy of consideration for any prepper, but especially those on the move or with limited cargo room.

Is Multi-Caliber Capability Worth Sacrificing For?

That is a question with many variables, and the answer depends mostly on your objectives and personal preferences. Some multi-cal guns don’t “cost” you anything since they can innately chamber an alternate round, good examples being the .357 Magnum mentioned above, but also .44 Magnum and its smaller .44 Special cousin, as well as the .327 Federal Magnum being able to chamber three alternate and smaller .32 rounds, though all of them are pretty rare today.

If you are already relying on or plan to rely on a double-action .357 as your defensive handgun, this is a no-brainer and indeed this capability is free and comes with no additional downsides except the warning to watch your chambers for lead buildup if shooting a steady diet of .38 Special.

For someone keeping a brace of handguns available for family or survival group usage, revolvers make excellent “handouts” to those who are not as well-trained or as practiced as shooters.

Turning down the power level from .357 Magnum, which ranges from brisk to violent, to a more sedate and manageable but still effective .38 Special is an excellent capability for a “mixed skills group” to have.

You could even keep some truly powder-puff loads available (like .38 wadcutters) for grandma and grandpa to make use of if needed. The most efficient and dedicated shooters may scoff at sacrificing so much raw effectiveness at the altar of convenience and adaptability, but remember there are good people out there who will need your help, and you may not have any time whatsoever to bring them up to speed on a more complex or difficult to shoot gun.

Moving up a peg on the conversion difficulty scale is a handgun that might need minimal modification to chamber a new cartridge. One such arrangement that comes to mind is a revolver that is convertible from .22 LR to .22 Magnum.

You may scoff at the idea of a .22 LR being a dedicated survival gun, but I have written about the concept several times and think it has tremendous merit. I especially like the idea of being able to “punch up” with the .22 WMR for easier hunting of more serious game.

You can do a lot with a .22 LR, if you are good, but the most hot-rodded .22 LR load is nowhere close to the performance of a .22 Magnum and don’t kid yourself that it is.

Not all will have need of this capability, but for those who do, a spare cylinder, small box of (still light and tiny) ammunition and a miniature red dot makes for a low-cost, low-weight hunting rig. Worth including if you plan to be out a while, if you ask me.

A similar outcome can be achieved for semi-auto users with a Glock 20 in 10mm Auto converted down to .40 S&W with nothing more than a barrel change.

Yes, the .40 S&W will load and feed normally from Glock 20 magazines (As an aside, my own testing with such a configuration using a high quality KKM barrel was surprisingly reliable, even when the oversized magazines were loaded with .40 in a deliberately haphazard way).

The 10mm Auto is generally considered “overkill” and inefficient for self-defense use against humans, but when stoked with top-end rounds is highly capable as a hunting round.

For those who would like a viable hunting arm in addition to one more or less optimal for defense, this is a similar multi-cal arrangement to a .22 LR/.22 Mag in a revolver: minimal parts for a major performance gain.

Other options like caliber swapping an AR may be worth it if you prepare for a specific application that it can better fill compared to lugging another gun around, but AR caliber changes have varying levels of hardware commitment.

On the low end, you can simply switch the barrel and (ideally) the magazine out on for a .300 Blackout conversion, but this will require a dedicated bench setup to achieve.

Most users seeking to swap AR calibers do so with an entire, complete and dedicated upper receiver assembly for the purpose. While smaller and lighter than a second rifle, these items weigh several pounds before you tally the weight of ammo.

For someone hunkered down at home, not such a big deal. If you have to go mobile in a vehicle, you will be paying attention to all the cubic inches and pounds you are consuming from the vehicles internal and external cargo capacity.

If you are bugging out by foot, you will really be paying attention to every ounce added to your pack, at least you will if you know what is good for you. An entirely separate AR upper will gobble up quite a bit of room in your BOB.

Even then, it could make good sense if your BOL is a wide-open space that would be best serviced by a rifle with superior glass, range and power, compared to one optimized for short-range self-defense. Alternately, keeping your long-range upper and ammo pre-cached at your BOL waiting to hop on to your rifle you are carrying is another viable method.

Keep in mind, as you raise the level of material investment for a caliber swap, it gets expensive in cash, weight, and space. A complete upper receiver is less expensive than a commensurate quality complete rifle, but that cost is most of the cost of that complete rifle.

A quality spare barrel for a semi-auto is a significant fraction of the cost of a complete pistol. And so on and so on. Ammo too is no free lunch: any alternate ammunition that you carry “just in case” is weight and space not devoted toward your primary ammo.

Considering that there are guns in every class which are so good all around that they make specialized setups more or less irrelevant under most conditions, you should carefully assess the likelihood that you will need the capability a multi-caliber gun can offer you if it will require committing to toting extra parts around.

The 5 Best Multi-Caliber Guns for Preppers

Smith & Wesson 686, .357 Magnum, 4” bbl

My appreciation for S&W’s workhorse large frame .357 is well known. If you need a damn tough revolver that still shoots like a dream, look no further.

This essential multi-caliber wheelgun covers all the bases we want for a self-defense handgun while offering all the perks of secondary ammo selection we discussed earlier: reliable, durable, weather resistant, adequate caliber and easy to shoot well with just a little practice.

This is one multi-cal choice that will pay dividends before and during a SHTF event. .38 Specials are significantly cheaper than full-house .357 Mag, and allow you train cheaper and longer.

Aside from its hefty weight deducting half a point, this is the only thing keeping this from being the perfect gun to hand off to the less experienced shooters in your group, and it makes for a fine hunting arm capable of taking medium game when loaded with potent .357’s, to say nothing of its efficacy (and excellent historical record) against humans.

A new classic and a favorite.

the Ruger Redhawk

Ruger Redhawk, .44 Magnum, 4” or 5.5” bbl.

For preppers who want portable firepower capable of bagging big game while still having some viability as a defensive arm, Ruger’s Redhawk is a good choice.

Certainly rugged enough to survive the End Times, this beefy wheelgun can be loaded down with .44 Specials (a highly potent self-defense round) when carried in anticipation of human predators, or stoked with the perennially stompy .44 Magnum for harvesting larger game at extended distances.

You can get better performance for both applications but especially for hunting by adding a compact optical base and an MRDS.

Big bore handguns typically fill the niche of specialist weapons for preppers, but this is one configuration that can work just fine as a defensive piece if, and it’s a big if, if you can afford to find, buy and store plenty of .44 Special ammo.

Not the most common round any more, and expensive. That makes this one setup that is a great choice for reloaders.

Smith & Wesson Model 48, .22 Magnum

.22 Mag/.22 LR convertible revolvers are by no means rare today, but the problem is you’ll find most of them in the single-action category. Sure, that’s cool if you are wandering the Mojave with your big iron on your hip, but savvy preppers will want something capable of immediate follow-up shots for self-defense.

This model is a vintage one that you’ll need to search for, but if you are lucky enough to have one they can be converted to .22 LR by pulling one screw and swapping the cylinder.

Ideal for hunting small and even soft-skinned medium game with a well placed magnum, these are classic S&W through and through. High-quality, dependable and accurate.

If you were in love with the idea of a .22 Mag/.22 LR combo gun and cannot find one of these gems (or don’t want to shell out the coin), you might consider a Ruger Single-Six convertible instead. It is single action, and hardly ideal for defense, but still brings many of the same advantages to the table.

Glock 20, 10mm Auto

This is a sleeper combo and game-getter for semi-auto fans in the same way that the Redhawk is for wheelgun lovers up above. By dropping in a purpose-made .40 S&W conversion barrel, nothing more, you can convert your big 10mm into its smaller child cartridge, the .40 S&W.

10mm haters out there are already snickering to themselves that they are the same thing, but 10mm disciples know they are not.

The modern state of the 10mm round, resurgence and all, still sees it largely neutered in most factory ammo loadings. Loads near the top of the performance spectrum bring it to within a good toss of the .41 Magnum, though that cult classic proper magnum still has a significant edge over even the hottest 10mm.

Nonetheless, a 10mm with appropriate projectile is capable of taking most animals on the North American continent with aplomb. Compared to a similar revolver, you will be packing in 15 badass pills in a quickly replaceable magazine. That is worth some comfort when after dangerous quarry.

As a .40, the Glock 20 frame is oversized, thick and slightly cumbersome, though the newest generations and SF models alleviate the worst of this.

This is not a conversion the factory would approve of, but my own testing along with other interested parties in the concept has shown me everything I need to know about the reliability and viability of the .40 in this platform. No new mags, or springs, required. Just the barrel.

Another cool combo for those who fancy taking larger game with their handguns, and far more suitable for defense against people (in either chambering) than a big .44 revolver.

AR-15, 5.56mm (nominal)

With the AR, the sky is the limit, almost, on caliber conversions. You can take your box stock 5.56 mm AR all the way down to a 9mm, even a .22 LR is you want to. You could take it up to a .450 Bushmaster or .458 SOCOM for major performance against big critters or major obstructions. You are limited only by your budget and space allowances.

Depending on your desired conversion and own plans, you might be able to get by with a barrel, bolt, and magazine, or some combination thereof. Anyone who does not want to wrench on their guns will simply have a complete upper receiver ready to drop on, load and roll out with.

While this level of modularity is appealing, and even a bit dizzying, it is not all sunshine and rainbows on the wonderful world of AR caliber conversions.

Some swaps are more logistically viable than others, needing only, effectively a new barrel to effect, but these come with their own perils. The .300 Blackout is one such excellent special purpose cartridge that comes to mind.

Plainly states, the .300 Blackout is 100% capable of chambering and firing in a stock 5.56mm rifle. But just because it can fire does not mean the .30 caliber bullet can fit down the tiny .22 caliber barrel.

The result is a spectacular and dangerous kaboom of the highest order. These are catastrophic events that utterly destroy a rifle and seriously imperil the shooter.

If you are planning to “cross-pollinate” these two calibers, you must have rigid and strict controls in place to completely eliminate the chances that any .300 rounds could find their way into a 5.56mm gun. Easier said than done when these cartridges are designed to share magazines…

Even with these warts, the ability to so wildly alter the performance characteristics of a rifle without committing to the bulk of a separate gun is something worth thinking about, at least for some preppers.

Conclusion

Multi-caliber guns can solve problems in ways that other guns cannot, all for a minimal expenditure of funds or space. While not every situation calls for the capability and not every prepper will have need of them, multi-caliber guns do make sense so long as you can still fulfill your objectives with their default chambering.

Just like having a multi-tool or Swiss Army knife can take the place of a larger, heavier toolbox, these multi-caliber guns can take the place of an armory in the right circumstances.

via Modern Survival Online https://ift.tt/2BqUsb4

Turn your old-school CRT into a YouTube media player

Ever wish you could enjoy modern conveniences like YouTube in a retro world of CRTs and late 20th century graphics?

[Johannes Spreitzer] happened to find an old VIENNASTAR CRT (cathode-ray tube television) made by the Austrian brand Kapsh at a flea market. The CRT dates back to 1977 and uses just RF input, making it useless as a modern television set since most TV stations nowadays broadcast primarily in digital.

However, HDMI-to-RF transmitters do exist, making it possible to convert HDMI signals to RF or coaxial cable output to replace an antenna signal. What [Spreitzer] did next was to plug in a Chromcast and essentially convert the CRT into an old-school monitor. You can see some of the trippy graphics in the video below – the video samples shown fit the retro aesthetic, but I’m sure there’s video combinations that would seem pretty out of place.

HDMI-to-RF adapters are pretty easy to pick up at a hardware store, and they allow you to project videos onto specific channels on a CRT. Needless to say, they don’t work the other way around, although since there are still televisions that only pick up RF broadcasts, coaxial to HDMI adapters do exist.

via Radio Hacks – Hackaday https://ift.tt/2BFn3cV

Hiking for Preppers – Survival Fitness Training Series

If you can walk, then you definitely can hike; and we’ve done a lot of walking so far, right? Hiking is simply taking walking to the next level. And that next level may be… a forest… a national or a county park or even just going up on the hills near your home.

Before you attempt to go hiking, you should be comfortable with walking long distances and you should also give your legs proper workouts. Check the weight training section on all the exercises you can do. As always, check with your physician if you have or think you have knee or any other issues that could prevent you from hiking.

Benefits of Hiking

This probably goes without saying but, besides the benefits of getting you in shape and ready for Doomsday, hiking helps with blood sugar, lowers the risk of heart disease, improves blood pressure and even boosts bone density. There are obvious mental benefits to this as well, such as lowering stress, boosting your mood and making you forget your daily problems.

If you’re wondering about the muscle involved, here’s a quick list, keeping in mind there are lots of other smaller, secondary muscle that are not listed: quadriceps, glues, hamstrings, abdominal obliques, calves and your thighs.

Hiking Gear

Now, I don’t know if you’re planning on going up in the mountains or if you’re just looking to explore the forest near your home but you’re gonna want proper hiking equipment (which you probably already have as part of your bug out plan).

The first thing I want to discuss are your clothes. You’ll need to dress warm and protect yourself from wind. I’m assuming your trip won’t take more than a day so you’ll only need the clothes you have on you plus whatever you have in your bug out bag which, of course, you’re going to take with you.

The clothes you’re going to wear largely depend on the season in which you’re, the temperatures outside and whether or not you’re going to spend the night in the middle of nature.

Ok, let’s talk a little bit about your hiking boots. By now you should already have a pair of hiking boots attached to your bug-out bag, ready to be taken with your backpack in case of emergency.

But don’t expect new boots to get you through an escape; you need to break into them first, get used to them and notice if they make you feel uncomfortable or give you blisters.

With hiking boots, you really get what you pay for. Of course, you want to save money but getting something cheap is not the way to do it; getting them on sale is. The ideal boots should be lightweight, durable, water resistant and provide you with good ankle support.

Getting Ready to Hike

There’s no reason you can’t make hiking a fun experience, in addition to the fitness benefits. Bring as many friends as you want and make sure the person who’s the slowest will set the pace. The last thing you want is to get into fights which could potentially get some people (especially kids) upset and render your effort useless.

Even better, you can make these hikes part of your survival drills. For example, if your bug-out location is within walking distance from you, you can hike towards it Friday evening, spend Saturday and Sunday there, living off grid, then hike back Sunday afternoon.

Needless to say, your bug-out bag should come with you. You need to find out exactly how many miles you can walk with that thing on your back. In most cases, you might not even make it through the first mile.

Plus, you need to make sure you have enough food and water. Water is extremely important to keep yourself hydrated during this sustained effort. Feel free to make changes to your backpack by removing unnecessary items to make it lighter.

Think about it… if you’re not fit enough and you take your entire BOB hiking, what will you do when you won’t be able to carry it anymore in a real SHTF situation?

You can’t just abandon it on the side of the road. Better to take only what’s necessary (particularly food, water and clothing) and increase the weight the next time you do this.

Here’s a full list of important things to carry with you when hiking:

• water
• food
• clothes and rain gear (wet clothes can lead to hypothermia even when it’s not that cold outside!)
• bandana
• hat
• sunscreen
• first aid kit
• way to make fire
• maps, a compass and GPS
• personal water filter
• whistle
• flashlight + extra batteries
• cell phone + extra cell phone battery
• signaling mirror
• insect repellent
• an emergency phone number plus your IDs (or copies of them) in case something happens
• solar cell phone charger
• …and anything else you think might be necessary.

The short list above is mostly suitable for short hikes and assumes you won’t sleep in the woods.

And let’s not forget trekking poles (also known as hiking poles). You can buy them or, if you’re skilled with your survival knife, or you can make your own from a couple of sticks (though bamboo works best). If you’re not sure you can make it and if the terrain is rough, a couple of hiking poles are going to make a world of difference.

Now, I understand you may need to adjust your bug-out bag for your hike but – hey – the more you move around your items, the better you’ll familiarize yourself with them, right?

Now… I mentioned you should have maps with you, in addition to a GPS. One thing a lot of people don’t do is study those maps. It’s not just because you might get lost but you also want to know how much you’ll walk so you can plan accordingly. Remember, your second hike should either be longer or be done in a shorter amount of time.

You’ll also want to keep a schedule. Mark checkpoints on the map and establish the departure time and the arrival time in each of those checkpoints. Don’t be afraid to leave markings on your map, that’s what a true hiker does.

Another thing you need to do is obtain necessary passes in advance, you don’t want to miss your first trip for such a silly reason.

Last but not least, check the weather. Better to have perfect weather on your first hike to make sure everything works according to plan. After that, I’m sure you’ll be tempted to do it regardless of weather conditions.

The Actual Hike

The question isn’t “How long should the hike be?” but, rather, “How many brakes are you going to take?” The key to a successful first hike is to take breaks and not fall into the trap of thinking it’s too easy. I bet you won’t be saying that after an hour and a half. Take breaks, stay hydrated and what your step!

You’ll first want to start with even terrain just to “get your feet wet”, then advance to paths that have uneven terrain that will give your legs quite the workout, improving your overall stability.

One thing you don’t want to do is overestimate how much you can hike. As I said, give it a trial run first on the easiest trail you can find and THEN move to something harder.

What to Do After the Hike

Just like after any other intensive workout, you should give your body a nice stretch. This really helps decreasing the chances of injury. You can do it when you get home or right after you end your hike, up to you, just don’t do it after taking a long break or even sleeping if you want the full benefits!

Is Urban Hiking Possible?

OK, so maybe you don’t have a buddy to accompany you in the woods and you don’t want to look silly walking around town with your bug out bag. What can you do?

Easy. Just get a smaller backpack, fill it with water, juice, your laptop etc. and start walking. No one will ever suspect you’re actually in the middle of your survival fitness workout and should anyone want to know what’s inside your bag, you’ll have no problem taking out your laptop.

Another thing you can do is grab an empty backpack, walk to the supermarket, and return on foot, with all the groceries behind your back.

Long Distance Hiking

Naturally, going on longer and longer hikes is mandatory if you want to improve you physical fitness. Of course, the longer the hike, the better prepared you must be, and I’m not talking about packing more gear or a tent. I’m also talking about your physical condition as a 3 day hike is enough to wear out most preppers.

It is important to note that some professional hikers (not all of them) prefer to also do weight training to become better hikers. The other hikers don’t’ really care about this because, for them, the pleasure of hiking itself is enough.

Where does that leave us? Well, as we’re about to discuss later on, strength/weight training is an important part of survival fitness so you’re gonna have to do it. Keep in mind we’re not just hiking, we’re also looking to become faster and better at it so we’re fully prepared when SHTF.

Also, keep in mind that you don’t know how long you’re gonna have to spend in those woods. Even if you have a bug-out location out in the wilderness, you’re still going to have to work your ass off every day to procure food, either by hunting, fishing or farming, so endurance training and stamina should not be taken lightly.

Hiking With Your Family

Here’s an idea: why not plan a hiking trip with your family? It’s going to be fun but the one thing I suggest you do is make sure no one packs any junk food. This way, should any of you feel carb cravings while up there, you’ll have no choice. I can almost guarantee each of you will lost at least 3-4 pounds by the following Monday.

Hiking inside Your Home

If you don’t have hills or mountains where you live and if your farmland is flat, you can easily simulate hiking inside your home by stepping up and down a box. To make it harder, you can hold two dumbbells in your arms (this will also give your wrists a good workout) or simply use a taller box.

To do the exercise, exhale as you’re raising yourself up on the bench or box and inhale as you get down from it.

The key to gaining maximum benefit is to use the heel of the foot that’s already on the bench to raise yourself up.

So, are you ready for your first hike?

via Modern Survival Online https://ift.tt/31pcK6R

Fast Video Covers Coax Velocity Factor

We once saw an interview test for C programmers that showed a structure with a few integer, floating point, and pointer fields. The question: How big is this structure? The correct answer was either “It depends,” or “sizeof(struct x).” The same could be said of the question “What is the speed of light?” The flip answer is 186,282 miles per second, or 299,792,458 metres per second. However, a better answer is “It depends on what it is traveling in.” [KB9VBR] discusses how different transmission lines have different velocity factors and what that means when making RF measurements. A cable with a 0.6 velocity factor sees radio signals move at 60% of that 186,282 number.

This might seem like pedantry, but the velocity factor makes a difference because it changes the actual measurements of such things as dipole legs and coax stubs. The guys make a makeshift time domain reflectometer using a signal generator and an oscilloscope.

Working with more manageable imperial units than miles per second, they compute the speed of light is also 11.78 inches per nanosecond. Using that number and their scope, they can use the time a pulse takes to travel its length to compare the cable’s length to the measurement. A 25 foot piece of coax read out as 24.96 feet. A commercial instrument read out 24.87 feet. Pretty good. A time domain reflectometer can also find problems in coax and also tell you about where the problem is.

Keep in mind that these guys are ham radio operators and probably not physicists. So for example, when he casually says that electrons and subatomic particles travel at the speed of light, you might want to fact check that. However, from the radio perspective they know what they are talking about. For the record, we aren’t physicists either, but we are pretty sure anything with mass  such as an electron can’t quite get up to light speed.

The key to building a good time-domain reflectometer by the way lies in fast rise times on the signal injection. We’ve seen quite a few designs over time. If you think the speed of light measurement is part of the “round Earth conspiracy” feel free to make your own measurements.

via Radio Hacks – Hackaday https://ift.tt/2nD5RkD

5 Ways to Secure Your Preps From Intruders

So your hard work and vigilance paid off; you sacrificed, scrimped, saved and religiously laid in supplies and stored provision ample enough to see you through a crisis that you hoped would never happen, but lo and behold it has. Mercifully you and your family survived. Your house is intact. You should be okay, after a while.

Your basement and storeroom are bursting with stashes of food and water. You are full and happy, where others are hungry and hungrier by the day. You have lights and power thanks to your generator. Not many other buildings in town do.

You are warm and wearing clean clothes. Your wife still has prescription meds she needs. The kids even have enough batteries to run their toys. Life isn’t exactly good in the wake of the disaster, but your life is still chugging along better than most.

But people start to notice. You see the resentment in their eyes. You help as many as you can but eventually the handouts start to accumulate and you clamp off the charity.

You notice a few people milling around in the distance near the end of your street. Then a car slow-rolls by. The same car the next day. You fear the worst. What will you do if the criminal or the desperate come for what you have?

In this article we’ll explain precisely what you should do before, during and after a crisis to protect you preps from intruders.

Need is the Ultimate Motivator

Need knows no limits. It cares not for boundaries of culture. It effortlessly bypasses social standards and niceties. Over time, pressing need will erode manners and even virtues.

Need will make an upstanding man into little more than an animal. Need can turn friend into foe, and set blood family against each other in a frenzy of instinctive consumption.

Need is far removed from mere want. Want can be tamed by all kinds of things. Tamed by fear, tamed by discipline. Want can be driven off. Need cannot.

Real needs are things you truly cannot do without. Air to breathe. Water to quench thirst. Food to quiet the growling stomach. Medicine, when seriously ill or diseased. If you deny real need long enough, you die. This is a law of nature, and reality. Full stop. The end.

You and everyone you know and everyone you don’t are subject to the same needs more or less. Historically, this has always created tension, strife and confrontation when the “haves” hold what the “have-nots” need… and don’t have.

These poor wretches may be victims of circumstance, bad luck, poor or no planning, or something else. While not inherently bad or even nominally criminal, they probably have people counting on them the same as you.

You have doubtlessly heard that desperate people do uncharacteristic and equally desperate things. That makes them a possible danger. You cannot blind yourself to the possibility that these suffering folks may kill you to get at what you have, or what they think you have.

You might have more than enough supplies to enable you to be charitable in these instances, but how long will your supplies hold at that rate? Now double it. Or quadruple it. It does not take much imagination to see where such a chain of events will eventually lead. Never forget, if you feed it once, it will follow you forever…

You may not need to resort to force if you take measures to keep hidden what you have worked so hard to accumulate.

The Lawless and the Depraved

There is an entire other class of person who might seek to help themselves to what you own. These people are your box-stock criminals of various stripes, given new licentious impulse and freedom thanks to the confusion, chaos and lack of law enforcement oversight. Brigands and cutthroats will take to mayhem and wholesale robbery like a duck to water in such times.

Then there are the sickos, psychos and sadists. People who have been looking for an opportunity to dispense with their excuse of a civilized life. People that really just want to have a good time, and their outlet of choice is carnage.

Your arsonists, vandals and outright murdered occupy this bleak category, and they will, at long last, be able to act on their impulses without fear of institutional reprisal.

You cannot rely on police to protect you in the best of times, though their operative presence always helps to suppress criminality, and now you’ll be truly on your own until the current situation gets better.

Are you prepared to defend your preps and indeed your very lives from people who are, in all probability, far better acquainted with violence than you are?

You had better be. You will need the right techniques, the right tools and the skills to use them if you are to stand a chance of hanging on to what’s yours.

Protect What is Yours

Protecting your preps from those who would take them, whoever they are and for whatever reason, will be of major importance in the wake of a SHTF event. It makes no sense to invest so much time, effort and materiel into surviving a disaster if you are going to let some scumbag or needy Jonny come along and swipe it.

You can protect your invaluable stash through a variety of methods, both active and passive. Passive means will stymie attempts to locate your stash or prevent ne’er-do-wells from even knowing you have it while active measures will involve considerable risk to their own hides if they want the prize.

For a cohesive, multi-layered defense, you’ll need to use both. Passive efforts to reduce the chances of an attempt on your goodies while reducing the chances you’ll need to use active measures, and of course active ones to show the bad guys what for when push comes to shove.

In the following sections, we’ll discuss active and passive measures you can employ to protect your stash.

1) Lock and Key

One of the most straightforward ways to defend you stash is to lock it up, either all together or spread out across multiple secure storage rooms or containers.

How large your stash is and what exactly you are trying to secure will dictate what options you have available to you.

In the case of food, water and other supplies you can help protect them whether you are home or not by hardening the door, door frame, hinges and locksets you have going to your storeroom. If you have a smaller stash, a heavy duty container bolted down to the floor might be the ticket.

Things like guns and tools will obviously require more substantial protection. Investing in a proper safe and installing it according to the manufacturer’s recommended guidelines will go a long way toward flummoxing your would be prep-thieves.

Probably the ultimate setup in secure storage is the construction or addition of an actual safe room, and I don’t mean the run-and-hide kind of safe room. I mean a vault.

It sounds beyond the reach of most people, but it is really not too taxing or difficult to do, and may be more affordable than you think.

By bulking up walls, floor and ceiling with concrete or composite sheets that will resist attempts at breaching them and installing a proper vault door on a special frame, you can create a huge walk in safe that can keep all, or at least most of your preps safe and sound in one place.

But do keep in mind, any fortified container or structure can be breached if enough force is brought to bear or given enough time. Physical defenses like this only buy you time to respond, or ideally will encourage the attackers to give up for fear of reprisal or discovery.

2) Keep it Secret, Keep it Safe

Just like the One Ring, if no one knows about it no one will get to it except by blind bad luck. Well, your bad luck, I suppose it would be their good luck! At any rate, this is one defense you need to enact now and one that requires the most discipline.

First… SHUT! UP! Stop telling people all about your prepping ways, your food, your water, your guns, etc. etc. It is no one’s business but your own.

I get it, you want to share the good news and encourage other people to do the same, but you’d be sickened to know how far your name and reputation (along with other specifics) can travel playing Telephone.

Especially in the Info Age, where it is all too easy to make use of open source intelligence for planning purposes, you don’t want your name up on some would-be raider’s board in red sharpie with a matching pin on a map…

Second, take care to conceal pertinent preps and things like stickers, logos, etc. that will tip off others as that you are a “gun” or “survivor” guy. Trust me; the wrong people take notes on stuff like this.

Get all of that off your car, keep it off your clothes, etc. Lots of folks talk about being the gray man, but no one really wants to act like him, instead being content to wear some prepackaged identity and “support the brand!”

Lastly, take great care when buying and installing big-ticket preps like generators, or bringing home large shipments of anything from food to ammo. Things like that attract attention from neighbors and delivery people alike.

Keeping up with all of the above takes discipline, but it is something you must do if you want to remain off the radar when the balloon goes up.

3) Out of Sight, Out of Mind

You should make an effort to conceal your preps. And I don’t mean hide them under the bed or in the back of the pantry. I mean hide them from people who might potentially be looking for them.

I am talking about hidden room, secret compartment, buried in the yard kind of hiding. This works especially well if you leave a sacrificial “hidden” stash that is easily discovered to make your invaders believe they found what was being kept from them.

This can take a fair bit of work. Constructing secret rooms that stand up to more than casual inspection takes a fair bit of knowhow and more primitive methods like burying your stash, while effective, take a serious toll on your back when hiding and retrieving, and can also ruin your preps if not meticulously stored and preserved.

Something else you might try is “plain sight” hides, keeping valuables in entirely conventional but unexpected locations so that intruders never think to even look for them there. This works well for discrete items like guns, cash and other small, high-value things but obviously not so good for bulk items like food and water.

4) The Great Bamboozle

An advanced trick, but one that all magicians know works too well; misdirection and sleight of hand. If you have time and opportunity, you can setup in the wake of a disaster a scene of ruin where you keep your supplies.

A spill, a fire, a leak, anything that will “ruin” your stash so any would-be thief who sees it gives up and goes to look for greener goods. In reality, you are only using a small portion of set aside for the purpose materials to perpetrate the illusion of loss or destruction.

This could even take the form of the old empty shelves deception, where you have presented a storage solution someone looking for your supplies would expect to see- shelves, barrels, a safe, etc.- and have it left in an obviously empty or otherwise expended capacity; left behind detritus, packaging, etc.

Done well with a high degree of fidelity, this visual decoy will be highly convincing. In the meantime, your real supplies are hidden safely away elsewhere.

5) Over My Dead Body

The only active method of prep defense you’ll be able to rely on is exactly what you are thinking: manned, armed defense. Get ready to repel raiders! If you are going to protect what is yours, the perimeter, as it were, must be manned and you must be ready to tell your would-be robbers “no!” in the only universal language there is: force.

You can consider any home invasion scenario, especially one occurring in the aftermath of major SHTF event, to be a lethal threat. Most jurisdictions do.

Disclaimer: It is solely up to you to know, understand and adhere to your state and local laws regarding the use of force in self-defense. Consult an attorney as part of your preparations­­­­­.

A lethal threat means you can respond with lethal force in kind in defense of life, not property, an important distinction.

Your most valuable weapon in a SHTF scenario will be your gun, whatever kind and variety you have chosen. Only guns afford you the ability to maintain distance from your attackers while projecting accurate lethal force of your own in a rapid manner, keeping you out of arm’s reach and hopefully beyond the reach of any melee weapons they are packing.

Their ability to process multiple baddies as fast as you can pull the trigger means you have better odds than taking on two or even three or more intruders armed with a knife or club.

Another good option is trusty pepper spray. Yep, bet on it. High quality, high-test pepper spray is ounce for spicy ounce one of the most important non-lethal defensive weapons you can buy, affording you both reach and a strong chance of knocking the fight right out of someone.

Somewhere around 90% of folks who get spicy treats in their face give up their malicious activity in short order.

Consider that you will have problems you need solved that don’t warrant the level of force a gun or knife brings to bear and you will begin to see the value of pepper spray.

What if you were facing down a fit and aggressive but unarmed man, or a mob of smaller but no less aggressive teenagers? Will you take your chances going to fists and feet? What, call the cops? Ain’t no cavalry coming, bub. A better solution is to give them The Solution: soak them one and all with pepper spray!

A jumbo “riot” model of pepper spray will afford you drastically more shots and reach than the tiny cans that are commonly sold for civilian carry on a key ring or riding in a purse or pocket.

You can even use those larger units that spray a fine mist or fog to “season” an area prior to the advance of your assailants. Moving into the cloud will quickly begin to degrade their ability to fight.

No matter which tools you choose, they will do precious little good without the skill and tactics to employ them to best effect against thinking adversaries.

The best way to acquire both is through training! Seek out, now, the best training you can afford with your chosen tools. Yes, even pepper spray.

Conclusion

You must take greater steps and invest more effort now to keep secure what you have worked so hard for later in the aftermath of a SHTF event. With the right combination of active and passive methods, you’ll hang on to what you need to keep you and yours alive.

via Modern Survival Online https://ift.tt/31888SF