Prepper Folks

National Preparedness Month | Preparing for an Earthquake

2014-09-01T16:49:00.000-07:00

September is National Preparedness Month. Prepper Folks wants you to be prepared. Not everyone can do everything, but there are many things that you can do to get ready. You can't know when an emergency is going to happen so it is time to get prepared now.

In the first of our series, we want to help you get prepared for an earthquake.

What: An earthquake is the sudden, rapid shaking of the earth, caused by the breaking and shifting of subterranean rock as it releases strain that has accumulated over a long time. Initial mild shaking may strengthen and become extremely violent within seconds. Additional earthquakes, called aftershocks, may occur for hours, days, or even months. Most are smaller than the initial earthquake but larger magnitude aftershocks also occur.

Food Price Watch | World Bank sounds alarm warning of food riots because of rising global food prices

2014-05-30T05:22:00.000-07:00

World food prices rose in the first quarter of the year for the first time since their all-time high in August 2012, driven by rising demand in China, drought in the United States and unrest in Ukraine.

WASHINGTON: World food prices rose in the first quarter of the year for the first time since their all-time high in August 2012, driven by rising demand in China, drought in the United States and unrest in Ukraine.

"Food price shocks can both spark and exacerbate conflict and political instability, and it is vital to promote policies that work to mitigate these effects," the report warned.

Be Prepared

2013-11-16T12:39:00.002-08:00

In the information age we live in, we can never seem to get anything fast enough. We demand instant satisfaction and answers to our questions. And things like air conditioning and automatic washers that were once extravagant luxuries are now taken for granted. Even the food we prepare is usually out of a box (or a drive through window). We can never seem to get too much convenience and most of our needs are virtually at our fingertips

...(when is the last time you actually stood up to turn on the TV?).

Creating an Emergency Evacuation Plan

2013-11-16T12:32:00.004-08:00

Creating an evacuation plan is an important step your family should take toward emergency preparedness. If a disaster requiring evacuation strikes your household, you and your family members will need to know where to safely meet. It’s also a good idea to decide on a safe meeting place inside your home should a disaster not requiring evacuation strike. Once your plan is constructed, practice it at least four times a year. Make sure you frequently remind family members, especially small children, of your emergency evacuation plan.

Use the following tips as guidelines for creating a safe, efficient emergency evacuation plan:

Why Store Food?

2013-11-16T11:31:00.000-08:00

Does it seem like everyone is making a big deal about storing food? For many, the issue may seem hardly worth addressing. After all, we live in a country known for being the “land of plenty.” It is sometimes hard to imagine that one day we could find ourselves in a situation that would require us to rely upon the food we have stored in order to provide for our families.

Determining every possible reason to have food storage is an impossible task; however, one need only take a look around our volatile planet to sample some of the many disasters of our time.

In the spirit of optimism, more likely reasons to store food may be the least obvious. We never know when unplanned interruptions of life may befall us such as the unexpected loss of income due to a layoff or injury.

Helpful Food Storage Tips

2013-11-16T11:18:00.002-08:00

•Be Practical. Store the food you eat and eat the food you store. It doesn’t make sense to buy food storage that your family isn’t accustomed to eating. Many items, such as wheat, flour, oats, and dried milk are needed to sustain life and are already included in many of the foods that we enjoy each day. Become familiar with recipes that include ingredients contained within your food storage. This will not only enable you to become familiar with the preparation of foods within your food storage, it will also allow you to rotate your food in a timely manner.

Are you Ready? Living a Life of Preparedness

2013-11-16T10:34:00.003-08:00

•Get a Kit.
An emergency kit includes the basics for survival: fresh water, food, clean air, and warmth. You should have enough supplies to survive for at least three days.

•Make a Plan.
Make plans with your family and friends in case you're not together during an emergency. Discuss how you'll contact each other, where you'll meet, and what you'll do in different situations.

•Be Informed.Being prepared means staying informed. Check all types of media – Web sites, newspapers, radio, TV, mobile and land phones – for global, national and local information. During an emergency, your local Emergency Management or Emergency Services office will give you information on such things as open shelters and evacuation orders.

Different Types of Food Storage

2013-11-16T10:34:00.000-08:00

www.christinemarie.thrivelife.com

The term food storage is used very loosely in the emergency preparedness industry. Depending on the person who is sharing the information it could be anything from a bucket of beans to the canned goods you buy at your grocery store. So what are your options? What is going to work best for you? Below are the some popular options available to help best suit your needs for your emergency food supply.

The Challenges and Pleasures of Homesteading

2013-11-14T18:37:00.000-08:00

One of the best things that you can do in any undertaking is to see what others have done. You can learn from their successes and from their mistakes. Most people are happy to help someone to avoid the mistakes that they have made.

It is with this in mind that we present the article below from Mother Earth News. This article is a series of experiences and advice from some Facebook friends of Mother Earth News that have bought land and started to homestead. Reading through them, I would say that the most important thing to consider is your water source. Water is necessary to keep you alive and for sanitation. Make sure that you have a source of clean, potable water for drinking. Water that is not generally potable, such as collected rainwater, may be fine for irrigation and cleaning. Remember that treating water or buying water can become expensive.

Legal Considerations in Buying Land

2013-11-13T19:36:00.004-08:00

I was intrigued by this article because it talks about buying land with a partner which is what we are planning on doing. It talks about a partnership which has a legal meaning and any partnership agreement is going to have legal implications and obligations. We have mostly talked about the other option which is to go together to purchase property with the goal of splitting the property after the sale. This can be simpler but remember to make an equitable split. One partner should not be left with all of the road frontage, all of the water, etc. In our case, one partner is a single man and the other is a family. This makes the idea of partnership difficult, but should ease the split of the land since the two parties needs are very different. It also helps that we get along very well and are like-minded. This will make the sharing of resources an enjoyable thing rather than a point of constant contention.

Give Me Land Lots of Land

2013-11-12T19:28:00.000-08:00

If you are going to homestead, the first thing you need is land. You really don't need a lot of land, but you need to be realistic about what you are you can do with a small plot. Even a small plot of land will grow a very nice garden for vegetables and herbs. A few chickens do not require a lot of room. However, cattle and other grazing animals require much more acreage.

So lets say that you have decided how much land you want and how much you can afford. You are ready to look for land. Do you know what to look for? Do you know if your land will have water? Do you know what an easement is?

Plants To Use In Aquaponics

2013-11-11T10:41:00.001-08:00

The other big part of aquaponics is growing plants. This is where you’ll be able to put your green thumb to use. I’ve stressed it time and time again throughout this book; aquaponics gives you the freshest healthiest organic vegetables you can get. A Canadian researcher by the name of Dr. Nick Savidov proved that aquaponics gives greater production than hydroponics.

The debate between aquaponics and soil based farming has been debated back and forth but many studies have shown that aquaponics is as good if not better than gardening with soil.

Types Of Fish For Aquaponics

2013-11-11T10:32:00.002-08:00

- Barramundi: You will find many people growing barramundi during the spring and winter as they’re more prone to the warm weather. Using barramundi in your aquaponic system will give you a very clean fresh taste. They are a very popular choice and are really easy to harvest.

- Catfish: You’ve probably made a practice of buying catfish from the grocery store or from restaurants but you haven’t had great catfish until you’ve grown your own organic catfish in your aquaponic system. There are several types of different catfish available but one of the most popular types used in aquaponics is the channel catfish. People like catfish because they grow faster than other species of fish and give you a great bang for your buck!

Benefits Of Aquaponics

2013-11-11T10:28:00.002-08:00

Now that you have an understanding of how Aquaponics works, you can probably guess some of the many benefits of such a great system. However, there may be some benefits that you overlooked or never even thought about. The primary reasons people set up this organic sustainable food production method are:

To improve health (100% organic food)
To save money
To help the environment

In addition to those benefits, aquaponics is also extremely easy to set up. Because it requires such little space and doesn’t require a lot of maintenance, it’s possible to set up your system in a very limited space, hence the popular trend of “backyard aquaponics”.

How Aquaponics Works

2013-11-11T10:22:00.002-08:00

As you know, aquaponics combines farming plants and fish symbiotically. Before you can understand how aquaponics works, it’s important to realize why it’s so essential. By combining aquaculture and hydroponics, it removes a lot of (if not all) the issues with the two separate methods.

One of the major issues with aquaculture is that when cultivating fish or other sea animals, large amounts of effluents (wastewater) is produced since it is a closed system. This matter is dangerous and toxic for the fish to live in. The result is polluted water and fish that isn’t safe to eat. So as a result you have to constantly change out the water every day which means wasted water. The water you’re disposing of might be harmful to the fish but it is beneficial for other purposes as you’ll find out.

What Is Aquaponics

2013-11-11T10:17:00.001-08:00

Aquaponics is a combination of two different food cultivation methods.

- Hydroponics: A sustainable method of growing plants in water without soil. Instead, it utilizes mineral nutrient solutions and water.

- Aquaculture: This is essentially aqua farming. It is the practice of cultivating animals that live in water such as fish and mollusks under your control.

Hey Folks, Expect Higher Food Prices in 2013

2013-01-01T17:19:00.002-08:00

SOURCE: USDA's Bob Ellison

A USDA economist says Americans will be paying more at the grocery store in 2013.

"Inflation's going to pick up in 2013 over what we have seen in 2012. So we are looking ahead at a year of above normal food price inflation," says economist Ricky Volpe of USDA's Economic Research Service.

Volpe says to expect food price inflation of 3% to 4% in 2013. He says the drought affecting two-thirds of the nation is partly to blame.

"The major impact of the drought in the Midwest, higher corn prices leads to higher feed prices, leads to higher animal prices, and higher prices for all animal products," Volpe says.

He adds that consumers will see especially higher prices for beef.

"We are still faced with historically low inventory for cattle in the U.S.," Volpe says. "So we still have supply that's low relative to demand. We have strong inflation; that's not going anywhere, and the drought is only exacerbating that."

Egg and dairy prices will also be higher as drought drives up feed costs.

"So we have these higher feed prices translating into higher milk prices, which especially in the coming months and the first quarter of 2013 we expect to see this translate into a hike in overall dairy prices," Volpe says. "As the impacts of higher corn prices and higher feed prices translate throughout much of the year, we’re looking at egg prices to go up another 3% to 4% in 2013."

Fresh produce prices, which stayed low in 2012, are also expected to rise in 2013.

Better Buy in Bulk Now Folks....

http://www.christinemarie.shelfreliance.com

The Real Situation - Will the US Face Blackouts as Electricity Generation Suffers in Drought?

2012-09-11T15:52:00.000-07:00

Well, its official - the US government has acknowledged that the US is in the worst drought in over 50 years, since December 1956, when about 58% of the contiguous US was in moderate to extreme drought.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration National Climatic Data Center's "State of the Climate Drought July 2012" report:

Based on the Palmer Drought Index, severe to extreme drought affected about 38% of the contiguous United States as of the end of July 2012, an increase of about 5% from last month... About 57% of the contiguous US fell in the moderate to extreme drought categories (based on the Palmer Drought Index) at the end of July... According to the weekly US Drought Monitor, about 63% of the contiguous US (about 53% of the US including Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico) was classified as experiencing moderate to exceptional (D1-D4) drought at the end of July.

Much business writing on the effects of the drought have focused on its agricultural aspects. To give one example, the hottest, driest summer since 1936 scorching the Midwest has diminished projected corn and soybean crop yields in the US for a third straight year to their lowest levels in nine years. Accordingly, the price of a bushel of corn has jumped 62% since June 15 and soybeans gained 32% in the same period.

But as consumers fret about the inevitable rise in food prices to come, the drought is unveiling another, darker threat to the American lifestyle, as it is now threatening US electricity supplies.

Why?

Because virtually all power plants, whether they are nuclear, coal, or natural gas-fired, are completely dependent on water for cooling. Hydroelectric plants require continuous water flow to operate their turbines. Given the drought, many facilities are overheating and utilities are shutting them down or running their plants at lower capacity. Few Americans know (or up to this point have cared) that the country's power plants account for about half of all the water used in the United States. For every gallon of residential water used in the average US household, five times more is used to provide that home with electricity via hydropower turbines and fossil fuel power plants, roughly 40,000 gallons each month.

Michael Webber, associate director of the Center for International Energy and Environmental Policy at the University of Texas at Austin, is under no such illusions, stating that the summer's record high heat and drought have worked together to overtax the nation's electrical grid, adding that families use more water to power their homes than they use from their tap. Webber said, "In summer you often get a double whammy. People want their air-conditioning and drought gets worse. You have more demand for electricity and less water available to produce it. That is what we are seeing in the Midwest right now, power plants on the edge."

In July US nuclear-power production hit its lowest seasonal levels in nine years as drought and heat forced nuclear power plants from Ohio to Vermont to slow output. Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman David McIntyre explained, "Heat is the main issue, because if the river is getting warmer the water going into the plant is warmer and makes it harder to cool. If the water gets too warm, you have to dial back production." "That's for reactor safety, and also to regulate the temperature of discharge water, which affects aquatic life."

Nuclear is the thirstiest power source. According to the National Energy Technology Laboratory ("NETL") in Morgantown, West Virginia, the average NPP that generates 12.2 million megawatt hours of electricity requires far more water to cool its turbines than other power plants. NPPs need 2725 liters of water per megawatt hour for cooling. Coal or natural gas plants need, on average, only 1890 and 719 liters respectively to produce the same amount of energy.

And oh, the National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center in its August 16 "U.S. Seasonal Drought Outlook" wrote:

The Drought Outlook valid through the end of November 2012 indicates drought conditions will remain essentially unchanged in large sections of the central Mississippi Valley, the central and southwestern Great Plains, most of the High Plains, the central Rockies, the Great Basin, and parts of the Far West...

The lack of rain and the incessant heat, has also increased the need for irrigation water for farming, meaning increasing competition between the agricultural and power generation sectors for the same shrinking water "pool."

But, every cloud has a silver lining. California's Pacific Gas & Electric Co. (PCG) utility, commonly known as PG&E, that provides natural gas and electricity to most of the northern two-thirds of California (from Bakersfield almost to the Oregon border) is on the case. PG&E has informed its customers that its "Diablo Canyon (nuclear) Power Plant, the largest source of generation in the utility's service area, is cooled by ocean water, not by rivers that could dry up."

Never mind the fact that by the time the Diablo Canyon NPP was completed in 1973, engineers discovered that it was several miles away from the Hosgri seismic fault, which had a 7.1 magnitude earthquake on 4 November 1927.

But ocean water as a coolant is not necessarily the answer either.

On August 12 Dominion Resources' (D) Millstone NPP, situated on Connecticut's Niantic Bay on Long Island Sound, was forced to shut down one of two reactor units because seawater used to cool down the plant was too warm, averaging 1.7 degrees above the NRC limit of 75 degrees Fahrenheit. The Millstone NPP, which provides half of all power used in Connecticut and 12% in New England, was only restarted 12 days later.

The federal government is hardly known for its scaremongering tactics, but it would seem that Mother Nature is forcing Americans to belatedly consider making some lifestyle changes, as the choice seems to be devolving into energy conservation, turning down the air conditioner, and digging deeper into the wallet for food costs.

It might also be time for serious national discussion about renewable energy, including wind and solar.

If the sun stops shining, all bets are off.

This article was written by John C.K. Daly of Oilprice.com.

Read more: http://www.minyanville.com/sectors/energy/articles/pcg-d-pg2526e-dominion-resources-energy/9/11/2012/id/43907#ixzz26CjSMcDE

The Real Situation - Baking the Breadbasket: Persistent Drought in the Heartland

2012-09-11T11:07:00.002-07:00

I saw this today and wanted to pass it on to our readers just how serious the situation is. Dire....

"From scorching July heat to well-below-average summer rainfall, NOAA’s Deke Arndt, Chief of the Climate Monitoring Branch at the National Climatic Data Center, recaps summer climate conditions across the United States". Watch the video:

The SURreal Situation: Now the DHS warns of zombie apocalypse

2012-09-08T13:49:00.000-07:00

The Department of Homeland Security has recently issued a zombie alert, warning citizens to be prepared for a zombie outbreak. This marks the DHS as the latest to try and make disaster planning fun by adding zombies to the mix. As has been said before, if you’re prepared for a zombie apocalypse, you’re prepared for anything.

Last year the Center for Disease Control used the same tactic. Today their site includes an instructional zombie survival blog and several promotional comics and posters.

“I worry we try the same thing every year and I didn’t know how many people we were actually engaging,” said Dave Daigle of the CDC to the The Los Angeles Times. “Let’s face it, preparedness and public health are not exactly sexy topics.”

http://www.examiner.com/article/dhs-warns-of-zombie-apocalypse

The Real Situation: Food Stamps: Fat Times For Food Companies, Recipients in $72B Program

2012-09-08T10:29:00.003-07:00

Who's getting fat off food stamps?

A record number of Americans—46.7 million, or nearly 1 in 7--now uses the food stamp program, according to the Department of Agriculture. The annual cost of SNAP (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, as the food stamp program is officially known) hit $72 billion last year, up from $30 billion four years earlier.

SNAP's swelling size and cost have earned it fresh scrutiny from critics, who say SNAP is making two different constituencies fat—big corporations and the poor—the first, figuratively; the second, literally.

Many health advocates, concerned by Americans' increasing obesity, argue that food stamp purchases should be disallowed for items high in salt or fat or sugar—candy, say, or fatty meats, potato chips and soda. Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City, who has a particular antipathy to sweet drinks, has urged the Department of Agriculture to exclude sodas from food stamp eligibility.

Makers of these maligned products, meantime, have lobbied Congress and state governments to prevent their products' exclusion from SNAP eligibility, arguing that consumers ought to be free in the grocery store to buy pretty much whatever they want. The National Confectioners Association, for example, argues on its website that excluding candy from SNAP would prevent parents from enjoying the freedom to give children "an occasional treat" on "Halloween, Hannukah, [or] Easter."

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/food-stamps-making-food-companies-fat/story?id=17166643

The Real Situation | Extreme Weather Means Extreme Food Prices Worldwide, Aid Agency Warns

2012-09-08T09:49:00.000-07:00

Reducing greenhouse gases and saving the polar bears tend to dominate discussions on climate change. But to the booming world population, one climate change issue may be even more pressing – hunger.

A new report by a leading international relief agency warns that climate change will increase the risk of large spikes in global food prices in the future, and lead to more hungry people in the world. That's because extreme weather like droughts, floods and heat waves are predicted to become much more frequent as the planet heats up.

"Our planet is boiling and if we don't act now, hunger will increase for millions of people on our planet," says Heather Coleman, climate change policy adviser for Oxfam America, which released the report today.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2012/09/06/160622571/extreme-weather-means-extreme-food-prices-worldwide-aid-agency-warns

Also Related >>>

Global Drought Causes Major Worries

Hurricane Isaac may have inundated the parishes of Louisiana, but for thousands of American farmers, it was a blessing, a reprieve from the most torrid summer on record.

In much of North America, July was the hottest month since such a record was first taken. Crop yields have fallen sharply; thousands of livestock have been lost.

The Midwest has suffered its worst drought in 56 years, and the International Grains Council has cut its forecast for the U.S. maize harvest by 25 million tons.

2012-09-07T20:41:00.011-07:00

Why 2013 will be a year of crisis

(CNN) -- Prediction: 2013 will be a year of serious global crisis. That crisis is predictable, and in fact has already begun. It will inescapably confront the next president of the United States. Yet this emerging crisis got not a mention at the Republican National Convention in Tampa. We'll see if the Democrats do better.

The crisis originates in this summer's extreme weather. Almost 80% of the continental United States experienced drought conditions. Russia and Australia experienced drought as well.

The drought has ruined key crops. The corn harvest is expected to drop to the lowest level since 1995. In just July, prices for corn and wheat jumped about 25% each, prices for soybeans about 17%.

These higher grain prices will flow through to higher food prices. For consumers in developed countries, higher food prices are a burden -- but in almost all cases, a manageable burden.

Americans spend only about 10% of their after-tax incomes on food of all kinds, including restaurant meals and prepackaged foods. Surveys for Gallup find that the typical American family is spending one-third less on food today, adjusting for inflation, than in 1969.

But step outside the developed world, and the price of food suddenly becomes the single most important fact of human economic life. In poor countries, people typically spend half their incomes on food -- and by "food," they mean first and foremost bread.

When grain prices spiked in 2007-2008, bread riots shook 30 countries across the developing world, from Haiti to Bangladesh, according to the Financial Times. A drought in Russia in 2010 forced suspension of Russian grain exports that year and set in motion the so-called Arab spring.

Since the days of Gamal Abdel Nasser, the Egyptian government has provided subsidized bread to the population. A disk of round flat bread costs about a penny. In the later 2000s, however, the Mubarak government found it could not keep pace with surging grain costs. As Egypt's population doubled from 20 million in 1950 to 40 million in 1980 and now more than 80 million, Egypt has gained first place as the world's largest wheat importer. The price rises of 2007-2010 exceeded the Mubarak government's resources. Cheap bread vanished from the stores. Discontent gathered. In the August 18 issue of the British magazine The Spectator, John R. Bradley, an Arabic-speaking journalist long resident in Egypt, described what happened next:

"The conversations of tiny groups of Cairo's English-speaking elites, and their Western drinking companions, were a world apart from talk among the Egyptian masses. ... The main hope of those who poured into Tahrir Square was shared by the revolutionaries in Tunisia: that sudden and radical change would miraculously mean affordable food."

Midwest drought to hit home with higher food prices

2012-08-30T05:43:00.001-07:00

The government expects food prices to climb 3 to 4 percent next year because of higher meat prices.

By Melissa Allison

Seattle Times business reporter

Costco Wholesale already is paying more for chicken.

It hasn't passed the increase on to customers yet, but the federal government says consumers will pay 3 to 4 percent more for food next year — largely a result of the drought in the Midwest, which has decimated a corn crop used to feed chickens, pigs and cows.

"Pork will be next. Beef can take longer," said Jeff Lyons, Costco's senior vice president of fresh foods.

The worst drought in decades is expected to reverberate in the meat-consuming public's pocketbook, as fewer animals and more expensive feed crops rock the economics of the cattle, pork and poultry industries.

Many are bracing for higher prices, but how high they will go remains unknown while the drought and its impact, along with other food-price variables, play out.
Chicken suppliers have tried to pass along their entire 7 percent cost increase, but Issaquah-based Costco agreed to pay only part of it.

"They're trying to get healthy all at once," Lyons said, "and we said, 'We can help you right now and then see what takes place. The corn is not even in the barn yet.' "

If the government curbs its plans for ethanol production, for example, there will be more corn to feed livestock, he and others said. And if the corn harvest in Latin America is strong, corn prices could drop — sending chicken and pork down as well.

A longer-term problem could be the cattle supply.
Their numbers are already low from years of ranchers getting out of the business and a lingering drought in Texas and Oklahoma. The past 15 years have seen a 10 percent drop in the number of cattle and calves — to 97.8 million animals, the lowest in decades.

With the price of feed skyrocketing, ranchers are selling cows earlier than they wanted to avoid pouring more money into them — and increasing the supply of cattle takes longer than it does for chickens or pigs.

Ranchers also are selling heifers for slaughter. Rebuilding the supply of mother cows will take even longer than simply raising new calves.
The short-term result is a glut of fresh beef, which sent prices down this summer.

Read More Here >>> http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2019022883_foodprices30.html

2012-08-30T04:54:00.002-07:00