Who is David Morris? Since 2008, “Survival Dave” has taught more than 10,000 people how to survive long term breakdowns in civil order in urban areas—without having to run away to a fully stocked rural retreat. His students range from lifelong Spec-Ops operators & paramedics to newlyweds & retirees just waking up to preparedness. They all share a common desire to “be the solution” when disasters happen rather than depending on government to save the day. He is the creator of the SurviveInPlace.com Urban Survival Course, the author of the Urban Survival Guide, and his Urban Survival Playing Cards were recently featured on Glenn Beck’s Christmas Special as a “must have” gift for 2010. You can read more on preparing for urban survival at SecretsOfUrbanSurvival.com. Email this author
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Entering and Exiting A Safe Room During a Chemical or Biological Event
In today's Survival Cheat Sheet that comes from module 6 of the FastestWayToPrepare.com course, we're going to talk about security using highly effective methods of deception, defense, and destruction. And we will go into recommended advanced training, regardless of whether you want to train locally or travel to major training facilities. One of the most effective means of surviving a conflict is to not get attacked in the first place. To not get attacked, you want to avoid being targeted. And a fundamental way to avoid being targeted is to deflect attention using deception. Deflecting attention requires being aware of your current surroundings and then blending in. This concept is sometimes called, "becoming the grey man." You must compare yourself to what the average person around you looks like by evaluating such items as your car, clothes, toys, and even something as basic as how you dispose of trash. (Your trash can be a crystal ball into your current financial/prepping situation) After deception, we've got defense. After solid locks and secure windows (or sometimes before solid locks and secure windows) you want a good early warning system. A good example of this would be a dog, or some type of sensor alarm or motion detector security system. To be clear, most dogs are "watch" dogs and not "guard" dogs and it's best to expect no more from them than to bark at intruders as they're "watching" them do their thing. If you plan on your dog defending you from attackers, you may be sorely disappointed, but if you plan on your dog giving you a few seconds advanced warning and possibly deterring an intruder, your plans will be much more in line with reality and you have the opportunity to be pleasantly surprised when your dog actually goes kinetic on an attacker. Even something as basic as an improvised alarm system made up of a clothespin, 9-Volt battery, a light or buzzer, some string and trash (yes...I show you how to make this in the course) will effectively give you a few seconds extra warning and/or scare off an intruder. If your dog/alarm doesn't deter the bad guy, you want to have other obstacles in place to make them rethink their decision to attack you or your home. Methods such as long lock/hinge screws that go into the header of a door frame, reflective window film so outsiders cannot see in your home, security film to prevent breaking in through windows, motion lights, doorstops, Katy bars, thorny landscaping, etc. will all work to deter criminals. In FastestWayToPrepare.com, I will reveal my two favorite ways that are simple, quick, and cost-effective to securing your home. Again, your primary tool is going to be to keep yourself from looking like a target in the first place. Or, you at least want to look like less of a target than your neighbors. Why? Because, simply put, any bad guy who's properly motivated can take an armored truck, dump truck, or even a heavy duty pickup and crash through the walls of your house. If that doesn't work, they can use chemical irritants/poisons to get you out, or launch Molotov cocktails at your house from a safe distance. Ultimately you need to make yourself appear as the most un-desirable target to looters and robbers and avoid physical interaction if at all possible. If an attacker is not deterred and is bound and determined to attack you or your home, you must know how to fight dirty to quickly and effectively take attackers to a non-functional state before they can hurt you. This includes learning the most vulnerable parts of the human body, like the eyes, ears, vegus nerve, solar plexus, knee, pinky finger, etc. and how to quickly and dispassionately manipulate them, if necessary. In the FastestWayToPrepare.com course I'll cover recommended resources, as well as covering local training versus traveling for high-level training. Each has their pros and cons and this guide will help you navigate to make sure that you are getting training to best match your needs. I hope you found these cheat sheets useful. Most people see enough quality content in the free cheat sheets that I've sent out to you to understand what a bargain the whole FastestWayToPrepare.com course is. To get started right now, head on over to FastestWayToPrepare.com _______________________________________ Here's your fourth Survival Cheat Sheet, sponsored by the FastestWayToPrepare.com Ultra-Fast Preparedness Course. In today's cheat sheet, we'll cover: * How to have simple, secure radio handsets for communicating with friends and family... Without breaking the bank * Trauma techniques from combat medics, disaster first responders, and third world missionary doctors that work whether you have the right supplies are not * Medical alternatives for when an ambulance, ER or pharmacies aren't an option Whether calling for help or basic communication, ideal communications after a crisis should be affordable, secure, easy to operate, have great range, long battery life, must be durable, quality microphone and speakers and utilize uncrowded frequencies, unlike the Motorola and similar "family" radios that seem to have people on every channel, no matter where you are. Here's one of the tips...there is a technology called "frequency hopping spread spectrum" or FHSS, that is much more secure than normal radios. What the radios do is pick out 10, 20, or 50 different frequencies and then cycle through them in a given order. The number of frequencies that the radios use and the amount of time spent on each frequency determines how secure your communication is. You can go to a sporting goods store and buy a set of TriSquare FHSS radios for $80, but I don't recommend it. They're good, and you'll be happy with them, but they've got some shortcomings too. You can also order a $600 set of Motorola radios...and this is a great option for many and I FULLY recommend this route, but it's pretty pricy. As an alternative, you can also buy old Nextel Motorola "Direct Talk" phones that have most of the same circuitry as their $600 counterparts for $10-$30 apiece. I go into detail on this in the course, but this is a KILLER communication option that we use on a regular basis. We have at least 2 of these in every GO bag, 72 hour kit, and vehicle. Improvised Medical and Trauma Management Improvised medical and trauma management is a very serious topic to me and something that I'm passionate about sharing only the best information on. If there's one thing that you take from this module it will be the absolute necessity for improvisation in a survival situation and why it is so important. To start with, I want to explain the difference between "trauma" and "medical." The short explanation is that traumas are physical events that happen due to external forces on the body and medical issues happen inside the body. It gets tricky, though...a headache due to dehydration is a medical issue, but a headache due to running into a tree is a trauma issue. Trauma care is an area where I STRONGLY suggest that you get as much advanced training as you possibly can. After you've gotten training, I would also suggest that you volunteer as much as possible with first responders who are better trained and more experienced. Clean, sterile, step-by-step instructions get a little more complicated when it's a life or death situation, your patient is uncooperative, when you're dealing with large amounts of bodily fluids for the first time, or when you're working on a young child. With that in mind, I don't want to get too bogged down on trauma and want to give you a few quick takeaways: 1. The traditional mnemonic used to stop bleeding is R.E.D. (rest, elevation, direct pressure.) In reality, I'd suggest, D, D, more D, and then E & R. If someone is bleeding out, don't worry about hurting them by squeezing them too hard. 2. If I were to have just 1 all-purpose trauma item, it would be duct tape. You can use it to make bandages, secure splints, pull traction, make improvised butterfly bandages, sling an arm, secure a sling to the body, dress a wound, secure a pressure dressing, and more. Incidentally, duct tape is almost tied in my book with a triangle bandage. The reason I didn't list the triangle bandage as the #1 item is because you can use a bandana, scarf, shirt, sweatshirt, sheet, or even duct tape as a triangle bandage. 3. Honey is a great all-purpose item to have around. In addition to being great for low blood sugar, it is also a solid item to have around for packing wounds or covering sores when other treatments aren't available. Mix it with iodine or betadine, and you've roughly got "Sugardine" which has been used for thousands of years by veterinarians to pack wounds on large animals. I cover several more must-have items, how to use them, and where to get advanced training in the FastestWayToPrepare.com course. 5 stupid-simple tricks to massively strengthen your immune system When you're sick, it's hard to make forward progress. In a survival situation, it's just plain hard to survive when you're sick. That's why I want to tell you 5 quick tips for improving your immune system: 1. Get DAILY exposure to sunlight. Vitamin D3 is your body's immune system rock star and the easiest way to get it is directly from the sun. 2. Get enough sleep. Your immune system can't run at 100% if your body doesn't get the rest it needs. If you need coffee or exercise to wake up in the morning, chances are good that you're not getting enough sleep. 3. Burn clean fuel in your body. If you want your body to perform like a high-end sports car, then feed it clean fuel. 4. Wash your hands. Often. Statistics vary, but 40-80% of people don't wash their hands after using the restroom. While most urine comes out sterile, fecal matter does not, and people who don't wash their hands open doors, use water fountains, shake hands, use pens to sign credit card slips, etc. 5. Don't touch your face. Several viruses and bacterial infections get helped along in their journey by people touching their noses and eyes throughout the day. Simply having viruses and bacteria on your hands won't normally get you sick--it's where you put those hands that causes the problem. Of course, there are more than 5 strategies to strengthen your immune system, but these are fast, free, and something that you can implement immediately, and that's what I'm all about--helping you get prepared as fast as humanly possible. I hope you've enjoyed this cheat sheet. It's a sneak peak of the fourth module of the FastestWayToPrepare.com course. Most people are convinced of the value of the course after this short sneak peak. If that's you, then I encourage you to head on over to FastestWayToPrepare.com and get signed up right now so that you can get immediate access to all 6 modules and the bonuses. ______________________________________ * How in a single 30 minute trip to a big box store, like Costco or Sams, you can have fast, yummy, affordable food for 6 weeks * A trick for storing water. When it comes to planning for food storage most people find themselves suffering from a lack of time, money, and space. People fret over the "perfect" food storage, but it's much more important that emergency food storage be done and in place than perfect. Perfect may never happen, but I'm going to show you a stopgap that only requires... * 30 minutes in the store * 3 plastic stackable bins * and costs only $2 per person per day (plus I'll show you have to do it with $0 out of pocket cost). The absolute simplest way to get this done is to grab a cart as you walk into the store, go grab 3 plastic bins, head over to the canned food aisles, and start loading the bins with one of every "type" of food in the canned food aisles that you eat. Canned veggies, canned tuna/chicken, beans, potatoes, rice, instant breakfast, maple syrup, honey, etc. When you're done, head over to the dried fruit, candy, and sports bar section and add a box or two of Cliff bars or something similar. This is obviously NOT a pretty plan or a perfect plan, but it IS a plan that you can get done incredibly fast so that you have SOMETHING in place today. If a disaster hits tomorrow, having this plan executed and in place will feed your family a heck of a lot better than a "perfect" plan that you haven't pulled the trigger on yet. If you decide that you don't like some of the food that you bought, replace it with food that you do like and take the food that you don't like to your church or local food bank. I lay out a much more refined version of this plan in the FastestWayToPrepare.com course that takes carbs, fats, and protein ratios into account, as well as vitamins, minerals, and calories. It doesn't take much longer to execute the refined plan, but it does take longer to lay it out and explain it. As a note, this plan costs a tiny fraction of what you'd spend for dehydrated or freeze dried foods, AND you can pick this food up on the way home from work. Besides that, it won't raise nearly as many eyebrows to buy a bunch of food at Costco or another big box store than to have big boxes delivered to you that are marked up all over the outside with "emergency" or "survival." So you can see there is no longer an excuse to not have an emergency food supply on hand. Now let's talk about some nutritional assumptions that you need to properly calculate the amount of food to get for your family for 6 weeks.... * 1200 - 1500 calories needed per day per person (this plan provides 1,800) * protein requirements are 50 - 150 g/ day * aim for 70,000 calories per person * be sure to include vitamins, spices, and condiments Remember stress burns calories so you must control your stress. (I cover this in a LOT more detail in the course) If you're under the kind of stress that burns 4000 calories per day and you're not used to it, it's very likely that you won't sleep well, digest food efficiently, OR live very long. In other words, don't worry about storing up 4,000 calories per day. Your situation may be a little different, but we have the food that we use most often in our kitchen, and bulk food in another room. What we do is prepare our meals with the food that's in the kitchen, go "shopping" in our bulk food storage to replace it, and replenish our food storage the next time we go to the store. This system works for a number of reasons including: * limiting food spoilage by rotating your stock * easy, making food storage accessible for anyone * no special equipment * scalable * when you've got "extras" of items that you normally use, you don't have to make as many "emergency" trips to the store when you run out of things. * Done TODAY! You'll also want to make sure that you get vitamins, supplements, enzymes, and probiotics. This is important because if you are forced to switch from fresh foods to primarily shelf-stable/processed foods in a disaster situation, it may upset your digestion and not provide the nutrients your body needs to stay healthy unless you also use enzymes and probiotics. You also need to consider water. Humans can go longer without food than they can without water and two people will require a minimum of 42 gallons to survive 6 weeks. Some easy solutions are rain capture barrels that you can get on craigslist for $20. Another option is to line your bathtub with plastic sheeting and fill with water. (you CAN buy a "Water Bob" but simply lining the tub with plastic sheeting or even just covering the drain hole with plastic sheeting/trash bag and duct taping it down will work at a fraction of the cost.) There are many more advanced and creative ways for water storage, including how to properly treat water while it's in storage inside the second module of the FastestWayToPrepare.com . Welcome to your Free Survival Cheat Sheets...a bare-bones, fast-n-dirty, get 'er done selection of punch list items from the full FastestWayToPrepare.com Ultra-Fast Preparedness Course. Right now, I'm going to give you a quick summary of the first module of the complete course. Keep in mind that this is a fraction of the depth and quantity that you'll receive in the full course. For the most part all threats fall into one of three categories... * Natural (i.e. Wildfires, hurricanes, earthquakes, etc.) * Man-made (i.e. Attacks on infrastructure like financial markets, the electrical grid, travel, etc.) * or an economic disaster (i.e. value of dollar going down, hyperinflation, or a breakdown in fractional or electronic banking) (I cover my complete personal detailed list in the course) Each of these disasters can cause breakdowns in power, water, sewer, communication, commerce, food supplies, medical supplies, and fuel supplies, leaving people hungry, thirsty, tired, hot/cold, and scared, resulting in desperate people doing desperate things. There are some exceptions, but for the most part, it doesn't matter which of these you prepare for. As long as you follow the fundamentals of preparedness, a solid plan that works well for one disaster will work well for most disasters. This is why we must be prepared. Every person must choose whether they want to take the steps necessary to be part of the solution after a disaster or settle for being a helpless victim who is part of the problem and makes things worse for others. When disaster strikes, it's important to know there are two parts, the actual disaster and people's reaction to the disaster, especially yours. Focus only on what you can control and block everything else out while staying positive. Three of the specific techniques that disaster first responders use to decrease incidences of post-traumatic stress disorders by more than 80% are prayer, EFT/Tapping, and post-critical incident stress management interviews that force the brain to organize thoughts and feelings to a point where they can be expressed verbally or on paper. These may seem hokey to some, but the fact is that they've worked in THOUSANDS of applications after almost every major critical incident in the US in the last 20 years. They've worked for me and there's an 80+% chance they'll work for you...and they can mean the difference between one or more people in your family/group being fully functional and being "out of it" in a survival situation. This is vital, and I cover the techniques in more depth in the full FastestWayToPrepare.com course. _____________________________________ What a crazy time we live in It only takes a few seconds of looking at the headlines to see why intelligent people are preparing for difficult times ahead. But, we've all got people in our lives who refuse to admit that the need to prepare is real. . . and urgent. So, this week, we're going to give you the ammo you need to convince friends and loved ones that the time to prepare is now, and that there may not be a lot of time left to keep delaying. I'm also going to share a free resource with you that you and your friends can use to get prepared FAST. Learn more now by going to: http://survivethecomingcollapse.com/2001/its-coming-wake-up-and-get-ready/ Know anyone who needs to see this? Please forward it on. If you're open about your preps, please feel free to share the link on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media and "like" us on Facebook. (If not, I get it :) Stay safe and God bless, David Morris SurviveInPlace.com FastestWayToPrepare.com UrbanSurvivalPlayingCards.com SurviveTheComingCollapse.com Facebook.com/SurvivalDave < Follow me on Facebook and Twitter as a backup to email and for priority notification! Twitter.com/SurvivalDave |
Time For An Annual Prepper Checkup—Do You Have What It Takes To Survive? Part Two; Food
Welcome to this week’s Survive The Coming Collapse newsletter, brought to you by Free Survival Cheat Sheets.com, a set of quick, actionable, and free preparedness and survival tips and tricks from the The Fastest Way To Prepare course. - David Survival Diva here with a continuation of the annual checkup series, this one all about food; something we can’t live without! The type of food you put aside should, at least in part, be based upon your living conditions and your lifestyle. Lets take a look at the different choices, starting with MREs. MREs & Dehydrated/ Freeze-Dried Foods Do you live in a dense population where cooking odors are likely to attract looters or desperate neighbors? Do you believe it’s likely your location will experience lawlessness, forcing you to relocate? Do you hate cooking or do you suffer from physical limitations that would make cooking traditional meals difficult? If your answer is yes to any one of these questions, then MREs, or dehydrated and freeze-dried foods are a possible solution for your situation. MREs vary in nutrition, cost, and convenience. Although MREs are prepared to be eaten directly from a foil pouch, many manufacturers include a heating device, so double check before purchasing. There are Civilian and Military MREs and the differences between the two can be very confusing. Actually, just the varying differences between competing civilian MRE manufacturers can make your head spin. Here’s what to watch out for; If they are private label, double-check their shelf life before purchasing, because it may be shorter than the average 5, 10, 20, 25 year shelf life claimed by MRE manufacturers (each manufacturer gives the shelf life of their MREs under optimal storage conditions, typically 50 – 55 degree storage, away from moisture and direct sunlight--which drops drastically to 3 years for MREs stored in 80 degrees or when MREs are exposed to freezing conditions). This is one of the many reasons why it’s so important to rotate GO Bag/72 hour kit items in your car. (David’s note: Repeated studies, including ones done by the US Army, have shown that properly sealed non-”food storage” foods can last for decades longer than the expiration date. They’ve also shown that “food storage” foods can become nutritionally inert within 3-5 years if exposed to large fluctuations in temperature–like what you’d find in a car trunk, garage, or attic. What you end up with may look and taste like food, but it’s not going to fuel your body much better than putting some “spread” on a shingle. That’s why it’s SO important to monitor the temperature of your food storage and rotate any food that’s exposed to high temperatures often.) Read more... ___________________________________________ Back-Up is a Stinky Subject Should the electrical grid crash, so goes municipal water. And if municipal water goes down, plan on more than just water outages—which is bad enough—but that fact is, unless you are on a septic system, it’s possible you will experience sewage back-up to bathtubs and possibly sinks and toilets due to pump outages whose sole purpose is to redirect sewage to treatment plants. At the very least, expect for drainage from sinks, bathtubs and toilets to be a problem. The best-case scenario is one where your home sits high enough for gravity to work it’s magic, avoiding backup into your home. The only way to know for sure is to check with your municipal water supplier to see if your piece of real estate has the uphill advantage, or not. Even those with a septic system can experience problems during grid-down when depending upon a pump for below-grade levels to the home. A generator can handle the problem–as long as there is plentiful fuel to run them, or in the case of solar panels, enough daylight. When in doubt, add a camp toilet on your list. They cost around $15 for a no-frills model (basically a bucket with a seat and a folding lid). Their contents must be transferred outdoors, ideally into a hole dug into the ground for obvious sanitary reasons. David goes into more detail on both backflow valves for your sewer and long term backyard human waste disposal in his FastestWayToPrepare.com course. _______________________________________ Welcome to your 5th Survival Cheat Sheet and a sneak peak of module 5 of the FastestWayToPrepare.com Ultra-Fast preparedness Course. Today, we'll touch on some if the topics that get covered in depth in module 5, including: The psychology for survival and how to prevent post-traumatic stress disorder. These are two huge topics that are very-very important and can mean the difference between life and death more than any one single item or even the survival skills that you have. When most people think about surviving disasters, they think about food, water, shelter, fire, self defense, etc. Those things ARE important, but if you lose your head in a crisis situation, your chances of survival go down the drain. The great part about this module is that you will be able to take immediate action and use it in the future without much practice and just knowing a few basics. In a crisis situation there is a rule of threes, meaning you can survive without... * Food for three weeks * Water for three days * Air for 3 min. * A clear head for only 3 seconds How can not having a clear head hurt you? You can, quite literally, die of fright. You can have a heart attack, get so pumped up that you have an aneurism, or you can go into a comatose state of shock. You can also simply freeze at the wrong time...when faced with a lethal threat, when a car, boulder, wall, tree, etc. are coming at you, when exposed to extremely cold water, seeing a stranger or loved one die or seriously injured, losing your home or possessions, or other shocks to the system. It is vitally important that you are able to keep a strong, stable, and positive mental outlook on any crisis situation. Your mental state will determine roughly 80% of your chances of survival. Here are 2 quick tips for managing extreme stress: 1. Combat breathing--in a high stress situation, instead of hyperventilating, take a breath in over a 4 count, hold it for a 4 count, and exhale through pursed lips for a 4 count. With practice, this can immediately lower your pulse enough to get rid of tunnel vision and allow you to complete tasks that require fine motor skills. 2. Another trick to combat stress-induced tunnel vision is to "throw" your vision. Basically, you want to quickly shift your eyes from looking high left to low right, then high right to low left--in an "x" pattern. This will quickly open up your vision in high stress/high pulse rate situations and when done in conjunction with combat breathing, can get your field of vision almost back to where it is normally. Three more quick keys to survival psychology: * Positive/realistic mental attitude - Focus on what you CAN do and be thankful * Focus on SMART Goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Tangible) * Get enough sleep. If you are missing any one of these, especially sleep, then you are already at a disadvantage. People who say, "I'll sleep when I'm dead" are well intentioned, but just don't fully appreciate how vital sleep is to every critical system in the body. Sleep, especially in America, is a very underrated necessity to human survival. That is why there is such a rampant market of energy boosting products, pills, and drinks. In reality, they are all poor short-term substitutes for sleep. A recent study made a comparison between intoxication from alcohol and reaction time without sleep. The results were... * 24 hours without sleep = .08% blood-alcohol content (legally drunk) * 2 - 3 weeks with six hours per night = .08% blood-alcohol content (legally drunk) (Think about that if you find yourself being treated by a doctor or nurse who is on the end of a double shift.) Sleep deprivation will definitely affect your judgment, ability to react, ability to heal, recover, and fight off illness, and the overall security of your family. It is time to give sleep the credit is due and inside the Fastest Way To Prepare I will show you how to master this skill of sleep and controlling your surrounding environment to enhance your downtime. We'll cover other tips for peak survival psychology in the course, including how to reduce your chances of getting PTSD by 80% or more...both immediately after a traumatic event and long term. I touched on three of the key ingredients the other day...prayer, EFT/Tapping, and post-critical incident debriefings. This is too deep of a subject to cover in the cheat sheets, but I do cover them in the FastestWayToPrepare.com course. One other thing that I want to touch on today in this sample lesson is stress inoculation. In short, the more uncomfortable or stressful situations that you're exposed to when you're not in a survival situation, the bigger your comfort zone will be and the easier it will be to continue to be effective in a disaster/survival situation. As an example, if you're used to camping, a day or two or more without utilities in your house won't be nearly as big of a deal as if you need to keep your air temperature between 69 and 73 degrees at all times. I go over more simple strategies in the course that will help you become more resilient, regardless of how fragile or bulletproof you consider yourself to be. I hope you've enjoyed your 5th survival cheat sheet, which was a sneak peak of the fifth module of the FastestWayToPrepare.com course. Most people are convinced of the value of the course after this short sneak peak. If that's you, then I encourage you to head on over to FastestWayToPrepare.com and get signed up right now so that you can get immediate access to all 6 modules and the bonuses. __________________________________________ Welcome to day 3 of your Survival Cheat Sheets. Today we are going to cover scalable, quality systems for power, heat, and light that are both affordable and easy enough to start using TODAY...not 6, 12, or 24 months from now. I will even show you a simple trick to turn your extra beans and rice into useable electricity. We are a power hungry society and we use power for everything, but when the grid goes down, you have two options... * Use less * Or make more ...and off the grid power can cost a lot of money Your main power options are... * A Conventional Generator * Solar / wind * or human power Generators are an immediate solution to a problem that can catch most people off guard. Generators can be purchased today and used right away. Some things to consider when purchasing a generator are size and demand as compared to the price and cost of fuel. Larger generators will power a lot of gear, but are heavy and hard to move, cost a lot of money, and suck down a lot of gas. My recommendation is to have a smaller generator that uses very little gas and operates essential items that you need in your home and run bigger items, if necessary off of a properly sized battery bank and inverter that gets recharged from the generator. I go into more detail in the FastestWayToPrepare.com course, but I specifically recommend the Yamaha EF2000iS in either the gasoline configuration or the propane/natural gas/gasoline configuration from USCarb.com. One thing to consider if you're going to use a generator is getting a carbon monoxide detector. Since you are running a fuel-burning generator in your home it is important to know the levels of carbon monoxide at all times to keep your family safe. How important is this? A recent study of post-hurricane carbon monoxide emergency room visits in the Southeast US found that the majority of cases were caused by running generators in garages to power game systems to keep kids occupied. There are so many things wrong with this that I'll just share the anecdote for now and strongly suggest that you get at least one carbon monoxide detector. Another suggestion is to add batteries--big batteries--if your budget allows. Without batteries you will be in a use-it or lose-it type of situation with your generator. By adding a battery(s) into your system you can store the power that you create. Batteries will allow you to run your generator during the loudest parts of the day and "run silent, run deep" on battery power at night. There are a number of batteries--from lithium ion for your cell phone to deep cycle lead acid for appliances--many are great choices but some of them can be very expensive. One type that I specifically suggest getting to get stuff in place is a T-105 type 6-volt deep cycle battery. They look similar to a car battery but are completely different on the inside and are made to run electrical appliances much longer than a car battery. They're most commonly used to power golf cart batteries. Check out the FastestWayToPrepare.com course and see my evaluation of different kinds of batteries as well as a recommendation for the most cost-effective, best-performing battery as a result of testing. If you decide to add batteries into your system and you will also need an inverter. Inverters will change DC power which is stored in the batteries into AC power which can be used by your home appliances. It's important to understand that most inverters are what's called "modified sine wave" inverters and will cause many electronic devices to "hum" and/or overheat. A "pure sine wave" inverter will solve this problem, but they're more expensive. You've probably heard a lot about backup solar power and wind power. While these are great alternatives you need to know that properly sized ones are very expensive and they take a lot of time to set up. So if you have the budget and the time then you may want to consider solar and wind. The little solar backup units that emergency supply stores are selling are not good for much besides powering a laptop and a radio. Both the batteries and solar panels are undersized to do much of anything for more than a few minutes to a couple hours. For an off-the-shelf solution, you're better off buying the biggest consumer grade Uninterruptable Power Supply (UPS) system you can find at Best Buy, opening it up, and having an electrician add additional batteries in parallel. As a note, in most systems, these will be the same batteries that most home alarm systems use for backup power. And remember, you'll also want to start planning in advance for ways that you can reduce your overall power usage in a survival situation. If you don't know where to start, I encourage you to head on over to FastestWayToPrepare.com and get signed up right now so that you can get immediate access to all 6 modules and the bonuses. On this section alone, the full module has almost 10 TIMES more content, going into detail on what we discussed here as well as covering other topics. I hope you're finding this information valuable and I look forward to seeing you tomorrow with the next cheat sheet. _____________________________________ Preserving Your Identity Another very important topic is being able to prove your identity after disaster. In an electronic world with paperless statements, do you have the ability to pay for items if there's no power for ATMs or identify yourself and what you own if you don't have your wallet/purse? Do you have backups in place to prove that you have health insurance, critical prescriptions, or the results of past medical exams? Will you be able to prove who your relatives are so you can pick them up from school or visit them in a hospital? Will you be able to prove where you live so that you can get through potential roadblocks? The FastestWayToPrepare.com course will walk you through how to, in as little as 30 minutes, gather crucial documents and take a few specific steps to preserve your identity and wealth through any disaster. Here's a quick peek: Some items to have copies of (digital and/or physical) in case of disaster... * Driver's license * mortgage note/deed to property * bank account numbers and balances * car registration * insurance paperwork * passport * any investment documentation * As many medical documents as you have Make digital copies for thumb drives and physical copies to place in a safe, secure spot like at a relative's house, a safety deposit box, an attic or crawlspace. In the course, I'll cover the best tools to use to get this done...even if you don't have a scanner or know what a thumb drive is. Remember to encrypt the digital copies to protect your sensitive information. A good resource for encrypting your data is SafeHouseSoftware.com. I'd suggest getting that right now. If you've got any problems with it, I've got a short video in my FastestWayToPrepare.com course that will walk you, step by step, through the process of using this software. I'll also introduce you to an incredible thumbdrive that was made with a Department of Defense contract that has military grade encryption and other super-spy features to protect your data. It even has a couple of self-destruct features. I hope you've enjoyed this sneak peak of the first module of the FastestWayToPrepare.com course. Most people are convinced of the value of the course after this short sneak peak. If that's you, then I encourage you to head on over to FastestWayToPrepare.com and get signed up right now so that you can get immediate access to all 6 modules and the bonuses. In tomorrow's cheat sheet, I'm going to tell you a strategy for how to build up a 40 day supply of yummy food that you'll want to eat in a single 30 minute trip to a big box store, as well as a ridiculously simple alternative to spendy bathtub liners and that you can use to turn any bathtub, shower, or sink into an emergency water storage vessel. |