Monthly Archives: May 2015

A Time For Travel: The Christmas Project

A Time for Travel ~ The Christmas Project is the first book in the series and is about four cousins who invent a time travel machine over Christmas vacation. They set the time for 200 years in the past and set the location for the Marble Arch Caves in Northern Ireland. That is not where they end up! Follow Brooklyn, Caleb, Genevieve, and Kennedy as they explore the castles and caves of ancient Ireland on their grand adventures. What will they do once they get there and their time travel machine doesn’t work? Will they find the leprechauns, dragons, fairies and unicorns they are looking for? Will they get home?

Farmer’s Daughter

Food and water are 2 topics near and dear to my heart as it to most others as well. Low moisture food is relatively easy to store. It is so easy in some respects that you can call the Farmer’s Daughter and order it. ; ]

Recently at a show I ran into a guy that deals in long-term storage foods and Berkey water filters. I have crossed paths with him before and have found him to be helpful on topics within his business AND things in general too.

One of the food lines that he carries is certified gluten free. I have a few friends who are gluten intolerant so this would be good for them to have on hand.

For more information contact

Brett Robinson
Farmer’s Daughter LLC
307-840-3354
BrettLRobinson@yahoo.com

Ps at the time that I decided to do this and wrote it, Brett had not a clue of my intentions to make this post.

cross ref http://www.preparesurvivethrive.us/to-start-a-food-storage-program/

Bites

Bites are easier to prevent than to treat.

Dog bites will be the example even though all mammal bites can be treated the same – basically. The first concern is to control any bleeding. It is important to know if this was a provoked biting or unprovoked. If you are in someone else’s yard when you do not belong there and the dog bites you this is considered a provoked attack because the animal is doing its job and protecting their territory. If on the other hand you are sitting on a park bench and there is nobody within 20 feet of you and you don’t have any food out and the dog sneaks up on you from behind and bites you it is most likely an UN-provoked attack and is of more concern. In all cases wash out the bite area with a LOT of clean water and use soap too. Dress the wound [s]; Band-Aids come in many sizes from the common small size clear up to 4 x 4 inches.

Find out from the victim and bystanders and the owner if available, how the dog was acting before AND after the incident. If the dog was acting ‘normal’ both before and for 10 days after the bite it is most likely ok to not worry [too much] about rabies. On the other hand if the animal was acting strangely in that it is normally a night time creature such as a skunk and it bit you at high noon in your front yard, it is way more concerning because it is not normal. If the dog is foaming at the mouth when it bites you this is not a good sign. As I type this, the image of Jeff Foxworthy popped into my head with his routine of ‘IF you ______, you might be a Red Neck. YouknowwhatImean,VERN?

In semi normal situations report ALL animal bites to animal control for follow-up. IF the animal can be confined without it biting more people, do so. If you must kill the animal to prevent further attacks DO NOT damage the head as the brain is the part that is inspected / tested for rabies. You may have to get the ‘rabies shots’ which is not fun, I have had them before myself and have given the shots more times than I can remember over the years. This is not something to fool around with. As far as I know there are less than ten people to survive contracting rabies… ever. The last one that I have heard of was in the last ten years in Wisconsin, she had been put into a coma during treatment and the patient has recovered and is now in college. The worst animal bites that I have cared for from an infection point of view are human bites.

www.preparesurvivethrive.us

Driving plan 1

For your next trip OR as the start to your evacuation planning you have to know how much fuel you will need if you are driving. How far will you be traveling? [Break this down into days or legs with planned rest stops.]

To estimate this you will need to know what your current gas mileage is. You should be tracking your mileage anyway along with the oil and other fluids used in your vehicle.

Every time that you get fuel, log it into your travel records along with your odometer reading. Then divide the miles traveled by amount of fuel used = miles per gallon.

Example I drove 350 miles and used 21 gallons = 16.7 miles per gallon.

Take the projected total miles you plan to travel and divide that figure by your current mileage, the result will be the projected number of gallons fuel you may consume for the trip. ADD 10% for variance and safety aka fudge factor.

To keep things simple enough so that even I can understand it.

My current vehicle gets 10 miles to the gallon of gas in town [actually it is closer to 17 miles to the gallon but that is harder to do the math]. The miles per gallon –mpg- that we get out on the highway is 20 [actually we get closer to 23 mpg].

Total projected round trip miles is 2,000. So the problem is set up as,

Total projected trip miles / mpg
=_____ fuel amount needed.

We always plan for the worse mileage so that we can take side trips if we see or hear about fun stuff while we are gallivanting about.

How far do you plan to cover during each day or leg of your trip?

Back when we were much younger we would split the driving between 2 or 3 adults and we would cover 1,200 miles in a day [24 hours] so that we would have more time at our destination.

Realistically if you are going to see stuff along the way and be a tourist don’t expect to cover more than about 300 miles a day IF that. And plan way stations along your route.

As an example one year a friend from our military days was visiting from ‘back east’. At the end of his visit I took him to the state capitol to catch the Amtrak train home.

The drive was planned to take 2.5 hours with a planned detour of 4 hours to a park along the way. The park is a natural rock bridge that had been carved over the centuries by a large creek.

The park portion had several hiking trails and there were those standing BBQ cook areas with picnic tables that were comfortable for the lunch we had packed.

The site was / is very beautiful and has a rich history as an oasis for the local American Indians. One of the pluses is that it is well protected from the wind. Some of the other features included more than enough fresh water for the tribe and their animals. There are several apple trees which are reputed to have been planted by the Indians. Game such as fish, deer, rabbits and birds are plentiful. I didn’t have time to search very hard but there were many edible plants such as Purslane, plantain, cattails, milkweed and burdock.

I can really see why the Indians would tarry there and perhaps even a good place to settle in the general area.

Round trip was about 400 miles and took less than a tank of gas. Total time away from home was under 12 hours

That was a brief example of a travel journal entry.

www.preparesurvivethrive.us

Range COMMS

A group that I deal with is setting up a shooting range west of town. At the actual firing line area cell phone connections are spotty at best being down in the valley. The range is less than 2 miles from the center of town [300 people] and there is a small hill couple of hundred feet tall in between. Putting a land line in is not an option at this time. When the range is open we will have a ‘staff’ member [RSO] running the show. There will be several people available in town to listen to the radio and have access to the phones in case of emergency. — Later on when we get buildings out there we will need to set up a security system.

Looking forward to hearing your discussions on this.

Thanks

Rich

Discussion points for the range communications systems.
Ideally a cell tower would be put in so that everyone could use their own cell phones. The cell companies do have available trailer mounted nodes that they can deploy in disaster situations like after tornados. Realistically the cell companies cannot be expected to set up a dedicated system expansion just for us.
Land lines can be run to the firing line / future clubhouse. The most expensive part would be trenching to the service head point and the wire is the next most expensive part. The other stuff will not be cheap though. The site location[s] would need to be WELL thought out. We would have to measure the actual distance involved as a first step. I think that we would need 2 weather proof and lockable call boxes to provide good coverage. The first call box from the road would be at the top of the ridge and the 2nd would be down in the valley at the middle of the firing line.

Just for completeness we will discuss a satellite phone. On the up side for this system is that as long as it has power and clear line of sight to the satellites out in space the phones will work nicely. On the down side the last time that I checked into these phones the most economical ones that I could find ran around $3,000.00 for the unit and then $5.00 a minute for airtime. I doubt that most of us want to spend that much.

Radio communications are most likely the best and most economical area to look at. The all-around best choice in this section is to see if the Sherriff will loan the club a few hand held or vehicle mounted VHF radios for use during range times. The biggest advantage to this route is that we would have a direct link to the dispatcher if we needed EMS or help from law enforcement without having to relay info.
The rest of the discussion on radios all require at least 2 people to be ‘on duty’ when the range is open. The RSO actually on the range and then someone else with either a land line or cell phone signal to relay info when help is needed. Any radio system that we go with other than the Sherriff’s will need several support bases set up. This is to ensure that at least one of them would not be in the bathroom when the RSO calls for help.

11 meter [CB] radios do not need a license to operate AND may provide good communications from the range to the relay person without a repeater. We would have to set it up and actually test it to see if it will work [as we will have to do with ANY radio system that we go with. A side benefit of this system is that the truckers driving the interstate would be able to hear and maybe help although this is NOT something to be counted on. Mobile units can be had for under $100.00 each and the base set ups for under $300.00.

2, 6 and 10 meter radios require each person to have licenses to operate but they would work without needing a repeater just like the 11 meter.

FRS / GMRS do not have the real range to deal with the situation. The advertised ranges of 20 to 40 miles are only under perfect line of sight conditions.

The MURS radio system [with a repeater] would work well for this situation AND the biggest plus for this system is that when we are ready to, we can put in an alarm system to any buildings and gates which would not have a monitoring fee as it will transmit to all of us who have the radios.
What are your thoughts setting up communications systems?

www.PrepareSurviveThive.us

cross ref http://www.preparesurvivethrive.us/cb-radio/

and

http://www.preparesurvivethrive.us/comms-part-1/