http://neithercorp.us/npress/?p=710

This post on final survival prep from Neithercorp Press has lots of good information for getting ready NOW before anything happens. Not just good information in the blog posts, but lots of good tips and ideas in the comments too.

Beans, rice, peanut butter, flour, vitamin/mineral tablets, and dry milk are all recommended to stock up on for your food stores. They keep well, fairly nutritious, and not very expensive. Buy one or two extra bags of rice or beans each grocery trip and soon you’ll have a nice stock saved up for Emergencies.

Also learn what edible plants and weeds grow in your area. If you don’t have time to stock up enough food stores, a few good books on identifying edibles will be a life saver!

Hi! I just added Pole Shift Prep to the resource list on the right. Lots of good, useful information there – this guys has been working on planning longer than I have. 

I know my updates here are rare, I try to add things as I come across good ideas or think of stuff. Life keeps me busy, but busyness shouldn’t get in the way of getting ready.

Thanks to my readers and visitors, I love helpful comments! (but not spam, thanks!)

A lot of knitters and crocheters have a stash of yarn for future projects saved in their homes. Unfortunately, much of it is possibly 100% acrylic.

I know acrylic is durable, can be soft, and comes in millions of colors and weights. However it does not work as well for cold and wet weather like natural fibers. Acrylic clothing will hold in heat, since plastic is an insulator, but it does not breathe well and will leave you cold and damp after the clothing is full of sweat. Wool and Alpaca are both great insulators that “breathe” and wool is known for keeping warm even when soaking wet. (Wool is also naturally flame resistant!)

I’m not saying throw out all your acrylic yarn, but if that is all you have I’d recommend sorting through it and selling your least favorite of the bunch. With the money from selling your old yarn buy some wool or alpaca yarn (or un-spun fiber if you spin). It doesn’t have to be 100% wool, 50% or 25% is fine too. Your acrylic yarn you have left can be doubled up with your wool/alpaca yarn giving your items strength and durability from the acrylic and the warmth, breath-ability, and fire-retardance of wool. Items like socks, gloves & mittens, elbows on sleeves, and knees of pant-legs can really benefit from being reinforced this way.

While searching today for inexpensive tents or shelters to have ready after the Pole Shift I found an interesting & useful website.

http://hexayurt.com/

They are very cheap (depending on the materials you choose to use), easy to set up, reportedly wind resistant, and transportable. You could build a folding one for quick set up or just transport and store your pre-cut materials at your safe location. I’m still working on getting my group together, but we may make one or more of these to have ready rather than spend that much on store-bought camping tents.

Events seem to be speeding up… The Earth Changes and The Pole Shift Ning is updated daily by the participants & is great for keeping up with whats going down!

If for some reason you can’t make big preparations, at least study.

Take some time to learn some survival skills, basic gardening, and first aid. Hit the library, take classes, and search the internet while we still have such resources available. The natural disasters around the world are trying to clue us in that we don’t have much time left.

I may have to go this route myself short of winning the lottery. Feel free to comment with your own ideas and suggestions. Now that I’ve recovered my password here maybe I can update it more often.

http://www.survivalblog.com/2009/05/letter_re_an_expedient_manual.html

Over on Survival Blog I came across this short letter describing how to make a washer out of a 5-gallon bucket with lid and a plunger. Good to know! Hand-washing laundry is a pain, especially for those of us who grew up with washers and dryers.

Also there are articles on Home-made laundry detergent and home made soap (part 1, part 2, part 3). Knowing how to make soap will be a big help and also a barter item later.

SURVIVING IN THE AFTERMATH – ADVICE TO GET YOUR PREPARATIONS STARTED

Words cannot convey the gravity of the situation that waits should you survive the Pole Shift. It is easy to say “complete devastation” but when you think about it, can you really fathom what that means? For the majority, we would suspect not. Even the best description that we could provide you with will not prepare you for the immense shock you will experience.

The purpose of this post is to get you to think about survival in the aftermath. The information here is the bare minimum essentials that you need to consider…

More at http://poleshift.ning.com/forum/topics/surviving-in-the-aftermath

Very good and useful tips in this Article over on the Earth Changes and Pole Shift blog.

As most people who have wool items know, Moths love to eat wool. Protecting your wool clothing and other items is important, you may really need all those wool blankets come winter, only to find holey moth-eaten rags.

I came across this idea for “nitrogen packing” grain using airtight containers and Dry Ice, which i think will work for storing wool too. Moths can’t breathe without oxygen, just like us!

Wool is bulky, so you may want to use clean, air-tight-sealable 55 gallon drums. Put your blankets or clothing in then add your dry ice. You may want to set it on a plastic plate to avoid freeze-damaging your top items. Put the lid on loosely and wait for the evaporating Dry Ice to displace all the oxygen. Then quickly seal your container before the oxygen has a chance to get back in.

This is also good for Knitters and Spinners who want to preserve and protect some of their long-term yarn and wool stash.

You’re gonna need to build some permanent housing once you’ve chosen a location. Can’t leave the kids out in the cold!

Earthbag home building is labor intensive, but not difficult, and doesn’t require a lot of expensive equipment. At most you’s need bags, Sand bags or poly feed bags, shovels, buckets, a couple tampers to pack the bags down, and maybe some barbed wire to lay between the layers to prevent slipping. Easy enough to stash some where and the rest of the materials can be “dug up”.

You may also want an Earthbag building book or two, sealed in plastic, to help figure out construction.

Knitting is somewhat popular now, but it will be a necessity later when clothes are no longer available from the shops. Any yarn shop will be happy to help you choose some basic tools to learn with and even help you get started.

Most knitters end up stashing yarn whether they are preparing for the end of civilization or not, so no worries there. Large (like the ginormous ones) ziplock bags are recommended for storing your stash so it will survive AND be easy to load into your bug-out vehicle.

Wool and Alpaca yarns are recommended for their warmth even when wet, with the alpaca being the less allergenic of the two. Synthetics are ok, but go for the wool if you can. Cotton should only be used for summer as it does not hold heat when wet. Good for summer but bad for winter.

If you keep a few sheep or angora goats you’ll have a supply of fiber for making more yarn. An alpaca would be nice, but they are big and may be hard to keep fed.