Candy is Dandy

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So you have a bunch of preps, you can survive for months on end, you have water food, ways to cook your food, you my friend are set!

This is a prep that I put into the category of preps that you would never think about, and if you have kids, they will love you for this one! What is this magic prep you ask?

CANDY!

“Candy is nature’s way of making up for Mondays.” ~Unknown Author

Yes that is right candy is prep, specifically hard candy. Remember prepping is more than just bare bones survival, the goal is to keep life worth living and having a creature comfort like hard candy can be a real psychological boot to the mind and the soul. If you have children this can be a wonderful treat to raise spirits and restore a little piece of normalcy to their lives, in a time that might be full of uncertainty and stress.

“Anyone who uses the phrase ‘easy as taking candy from a baby’ has never tried taking candy from a baby.” Unknown Author

Another use for candy is for an energy boost when you don’t have time to eat at the moment like while you are hiking. It is not necessarily the best choice, it would always be preferable to have a fresh piece of fruit or nuts and berries something that will give you more complex nutrition and a longer energy boost. Let’s be practical about it though, you are not always going to have access to those other food sources all the time, and in times like these a piece or two of  candy popped into your mouth can be a Godsend when you need it.

“As long as you’re in the food business, why not make sweets?” ― Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl

I get mixed bags of hard candy, then vacuum seal them to keep them away from moisture. Smashed up butterscotch candy is great in breakfast muffins or pancakes for a change up on the flavor profile. Cinnamon candies mixed with applesauce are great, even dropping a peppermint candy into a cup of tea can brighten it up.

So there you are a fun prep for hard times.

 

Keep up the good work

 

Jeff

Can you take it? No really, can you?

Starved prisoners, nearly dead from hunger, pose in concentration camp in Ebensee, Austria. The camp was reputedly used for "scientific" experiments. It was liberated by the 80th Division. Deutsch: Unterernährte Gefangene, fast tot vor Hunger, weil Essen knapp war, posieren im Konzentrationslager Ebensee, Österreich. Das Lager wurde angeblich für "wissenschaftliche" Experimente verwendet. Es wurde von der 80. Division befreit. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We are all preppers here, we are all in one way or another trying to ready ourselves for “whatever may come”. We have food, we have supplies, first aid, and water, and we have studied, planned and prepared ourselves. But are we really ready?

Are we ready to REALLY deal with real life if everything goes south? What do I mean by “dealing” with it? Well, beyond the stuff you have prepped, I am talking about three separate categories physical, mental, and emotional.  

Physical – Are you prepared to haul loads of water to use in your home, chop fire wood, and harvest your garden, walk everywhere you might need to go? The physical aspects of emergencies can be very taxing, during the attack on the Twin Towers on 9/11/01 there were people that were not able to make it out of the building simply because they were not in good enough shape to make it down the stairs, let me say that again, they were not in shape enough to MAKE IT DOWN STAIRS. Yes there were other factors, yes we are talking about hundreds of flights of stairs, and no I am not trying to be insensitive to the families that lost members. I am simply making the point that in life or death situations your physical conditioning could determine whether you and your family live or die.

Mental – Hopefully at this point you are starting to consider things past just having enough food and stuff on hand. Considering what might happened in an economic collapse the choices you might need to make, are you prepared to make them? Will you stay where you are, will you leave and go somewhere else, if you are leaving when will you go? At what point will you ration food, will you start at the beginning to make it last as long as possible, or will you wait until you have next to nothing left to eat? To what lengths are you willing to go to protect your family, your possessions, you home? Are you willing to abandon your position in order to save lives, will you wound, maim, or kill to keep your loved ones safe?

Emotional – Upon seeing death, most people will have a visceral reaction they cry, throw up, avert their eyes, get angry, or go into shock. All of these are perfectly human reactions and none of them are right or wrong and given the right circumstances they are perfectly acceptable. What happens when these reactions conflict with your survival, are you able to put them aside to keep moving and deal with them later? What about your ethics, will you abandon your own sense of right and wrong in order to accomplish what you need to accomplish? Will you be able to keep your moral and religious beliefs in the midst of protracted anarchy, or will you just become part of the mob? Can you “keep it together” for your kids, try to shield them from the horrors that might be going on around you?

I know that these are uncomfortable questions to ask, things that we tend to not want to talk about it, yet in my opinion you must. History has shown us the human beings have a tremendous ability to adapt to their conditions to overcome circumstances to survive ghastly horrors. Prisoners of war have withstood incredible physical punishment and torture. Jews placed in concentration camps in Germany and Poland during WWII survived things unthinkable and have triumphed by outliving their captors. Being a Christian I know that my faith and my God will get me through, not always the way that I think it will happen but through none the less.

Personally I sit and think there through, I run scenarios in my mind and try to frankly asses what I would do how I will react, in short I try to prepare for what may come.

How do you ready yourself?

 

Jeff

Lessons learned from my father or “Hi Have you met BOB?”

Bug Out Bag - currently (Photo credit: Steven Vance)

My father met my mother after he got out of the Marine Corps at the end of WWII they were soon married and living in a small apartment complex while my father went to college to attain a degree in psychology with a minor in sociology. One night they were awoken by the cry of fire and they jumped out of bed rushed out of the building and watched as the fire department of Colorado Springs Colorado put out the aforementioned conflagration.  Fortunately their pastor and his wife, who live a few blocks away, were able to put them up for the night and give them clothes to wear until they were able to get back into their place and get their cloths. They were fortunate they did not lose anything important they only had to clean the smoke smell out of their clothes.

What a sweet story Jeff, I am so glad that your parents were unharmed and were able to go on to produce a fine man such as yourself,  but what does that have to do with anything and who is this Bob you’re talking about?

Bob is an acronym that stands for Bug Out Bag or Bail Out Bag, the term B.O.B. is used within the prepper community. The basic idea of a B.O.B. is a backpack packed and ready to go placed in a convenient area so that you could literally just pick it up and go at a moment’s notice. My backpack is set up as if I was going camping, it has 7days worth of food, clothes, sleeping bag, tarps (instead of tents), lightweight cooking gear, bible, money, flashlights, and other miscellaneous doodads and hoo-ha’s. I also have a smaller version for my son, with changes of clothes game etc.

How far will your B.O.B. be going? There are many in these communities that think that they will be grabbing their B.O.B., head for the hills and never look back. Or their B.O.B. is getting them to their country retreat locations (more on this in later posts). I look at it in a slightly different way, I am less concerned with having to permanently leave my home and becoming Grizzly Adams, I look at it in the light of my parent’s experience. Having something to grab on the way out of a burning building or earthquake that will give me a few essentials that I will need like shoes a jacket etc. Imagine standing outside of your home in your pajamas with your family, cold no shoes, as you watch all of your stuff go up in flames. Now imagine that there is no one there to help you out…..I prefer to be ready with my friend Bob.