Post by woodyz on Oct 8, 2015 12:52:34 GMT -7
The Beginners Guide To Selecting, Stockpiling And Defending A Survival Retreat Part One
September 30, 2015 by L Michael Rusin
In order to survive a catastrophe of monumental proportions you will have to have a place to get to where you can ride out the storm in safety. If it is near a city, or a sizable town, or any closer than ten miles from a major well-traveled artery such as an Interstate highway, and a major waterway such as the Mississippi River the chances of it being taken over by someone other than yourself is likely.
It should be no more than three hours of driving to from where you live. It must be large enough to grow your own food, and steps should have been taken well before the disaster occurs as to what to do to get it livable and defensible. The first and most important thing to do is to make the purchase or at least be in the process of purchasing the land. A deed in hand is better regardless of what happens later than to be a squatter on land that belongs to someone else.
Put it in the name of a gun club or some such entity to account for the occasional gunfire that may be heard by a passerby. Choose your retreat carefully, you’ll need an adequate water supply on the land, and if it is a sizable stream or artesian water source that would be best of all worlds. You’ll also need an adequate wood supply if it looks like the stay there will be longer than a few months.
Clearing fields of fire is always a good idea. Modern day rifles can reach out and take out an “unfriendly” at a thousand yards with some practice, especially a rifle with a good scope. Put up a few towers where a sentry from your group can see in every direction. The “A” camps of Special Forces Troopers did it in Vietnam and it works to keep sappers and other intruders from penetrating and overpowering your retreat. The higher up the observer is the better the view.
You will need to plant fruit and nut trees in an area reserved for that important essential and plot out several areas where farm animals can graze and where wheat and vegetables can be grown. Fence it off if you can. Think in terms of “everything you do to your retreat could be permanent.” You may well be spending the rest of your life there, and field crop rotations are very important to maintain your land at peak performance.
If anyone in your group has the expertise, bring in a few hives of Italian honey bees and keep them out there under or near the trees. They are self-sufficient and provide a delicacy called honey which is not only good for eating but for putting on wounds. It will help any break in the skin to heal quickly. Honey is the only natural food that never spoils. Your little helpers can be bought through the mail and will be delivered to you by return mail.
You should have more than one water supply. One of those should be very close to the main structure of your retreat. Once you have your retreat purchased and or in your group’s ownership, the stocking should begin.
You will need:
• Long shelf life medicines.
• Many bags of various seeds.
• Ammo.
• Food.
• Tools
• Electrical generating devises.
• Lots of warm clothing.
• Bedding.
• A trundle sewing machine.
• Condiments for your food.
Your group will need lots of dishes, utensils, knives and sharpening devises that will keep your knives and axes at peak cutting performance, and don’t forget the pots and pans. A hand wheat grinder.
Of course there are many more things but there are many books out there that will help you gather what you need.
If you don’t have a survival library start building one now.
A wood or coal burning stove would be an important addition. Store a ton of coal nearby.
If a steady supply of electricity is available or you have made provisions to have it available, you’re way ahead of the game.
If not, there are root cellars that can be dug and a food cooler can be made from a wood frame, with canvas and dripping water to cool things. The preservation of food will be a critical factor because you don’t want to get sick from spoiled foodstuffs and you won’t want to waste anything either.
If possible, the entry from any road to your property should be camouflaged. Put bushes at the turn off and hide your road. Place barriers such as brush piles and logs to hide access. Tire spikes are also good when placed strategically. Somewhere near the entry should be a hidden bunker that can be manned by a couple of people from the group that will have two way radios. It will be important for all members of your group to be in constant contact with one another once the need arises.
The preservation and safety of your retreat is the most important element you can concentrate on. The road leading to your property should have a devise that will collapse at your discretion through some means such as a collapsible bridge, leaving entry impassable from the road by ordinary vehicles if it was discovered by looters or marauding groups.
It might be very advisable to cut access off and you will want to do it quickly. This is done by putting hinges on supporting posts that have heavy duty pins inserted in each one and are removable, and then these posts are connected to a 3/8” wire cable that can be connected to a car or pickup. Once the pins are removed a tug is applied to the cable and down it comes.
If you understand how to do it, make a map marking where you have placed your anti-personnel deterrents. Do it as you are placing them. It is preferable you do this with a GPS to insure accuracy in the placement of each. Make sure all avenues giving anyone access to your main structures are secured. There are many ways to do this. I may tell you how to do this in another piece if there is an interest.
If anyone is sneaking up on your group at any time and they are uninvited, you have to believe they are up to no good and you will have to deal with them harshly. Not always, because there are no absolutes but compassion will take a back seat to preservation of your group. That will be a decision you will have to grapple with later. Personal decisions have no guide other than what you will do when that time is on you.
Protect your people, your cache’s, your main compound, your food and water and access to all of it. If someone happens along after society has collapsed, there will be no law, only you and your group against all others. Hard decisions will eventually have to be made. Make sure you have a leader who can make those types of decisions.
Don’t depend on some armchair warrior who spouts how tough he is at a tavern over a few beers to make those decisions. Know who that person is and what that person’s background is. Choose carefully, your life and the lives of your group may depend on it.
The Beginners Guide To Selecting, Stockpiling And Defending A Survival Retreat Part Two
October 5, 2015 by L Michael Rusin
Once you have your retreat purchased you can begin the serious work of getting it ready to receive you and your hand-picked group. Everyone needs a place to live, sleep, eat and relax. All members of your group will need a place to be alone or completely by themselves for a period of time. I learned that lesson when I took off on my forty-one foot sailboat many years ago and headed for the South Pacific. Take my word for it, everyone needs to have a place where they can be completely alone.
You must have adequate sanitary services for everyone. It should not be very close to your main retreat drinking water supply and close enough if during your rainy season or the winter snows that getting there won’t be a chore. It needs to be well ventilated for obvious reasons. There should be a kerosene lamp located in there as well or at least a candle.
I have always maintained that when you are setting up your retreat initially all buildings should be camouflaged when looking down at them from the air. Ideally, if there is time, you should build an underground structure as your main living area and as a gathering/meeting area.
They are climate controlled naturally year around, and are difficult to see from above. You always want to draw the least amount of attention on your retreat and your group. I cannot overemphasize to anyone who is a serious survivalist your retreat is the last stop and it will be your ultimate safety if and when the free trade and commerce stops around you for any reason. How bad things will get in the event of a national disaster such as an economic collapse can only be imagined, but all anyone has to do is look back on history to get a good idea.
The Watts riots in California were tantamount to mass insurrection and anarchy. The police stood by and watched. The firemen were sniped at, when it was all done and over few if any went to jail for what they did. The fires raged consuming everything in its path. Shop and store owners who armed themselves survived the melee; those who walked away lost everything.
Entire neighborhoods were leveled to the ground and looting was unbelievably brisk and thorough. I know there are those who find that savagery on a scale not imagined in today’s time of relative order will argue that it won’t be that way, and I say remember the police in New Orleans when Katrina leveled the city; what did they do? They left town and people were on their own. Later, they wanted their jobs back.
Violence driven by mobs is a terrible thing to see and to experience firsthand. There are never any preconditions or avenues of safety to seek refuge. Once you are caught up in it its every person for themselves. People get trampled to death, they are beaten, knifed and shot and the vilest acts that can be perpetrated on human beings by other human beings is unimaginable. The cruelty and the savagery is totally beyond what the average person can conceive. Be warned, a safe and hidden retreat is your only safety net and how you put it together will be the telling of your story later on when the dust settles.
The less inviting you can make your retreat the better chances it will have of providing you and yours safe refuge. You will not survive several hundred people attacking you for your food, your water, medicine, weapons and your women. They will strip everything off the beaten paths several miles from main highways and waterways in every direction like Army Ants. You will be killed or maimed for your shoes and especially your arms and food. The better you can prepare your retreat and to hide it from those possibilities the better off you will be.
Every activity anyone in your group does once the collapse occurs will have to be monitored by another member of your group. If you toil the fields, someone will have to be armed and must be alert to any trouble. If you have to travel for water, someone will have to be on guard. All members of your group will be armed 24/7s if they hope to survive. If the occasion occurs that extreme violence must be perpetrated against a fellow human being, it must be done without hesitation by that member of your group guarding the rest of you or they will probably die.
Think about what it must have been like to the pioneer farmer on the frontier in the US who was constantly prepared for either an Indian attack on their farmstead or bad men just passing by and wanting whatever it is that the farmer had. His food stocks, animals, and women were easy pickings for several armed men going from here to there. Usually, the farmer didn’t have much of a chance unless he was close to the house when the attacks occurred. If he was out and away in the fields, the children and women were raped, killed or carried away.
Put it in perspective; you have struggled to stock up your retreat, you have done without to be better prepared. Stocking and putting together a retreat is a massive job that is usually done by people who are committed and dedicated to insuring they and theirs will survive. There are many who will live off the struggles of others and will take what you have because they are either too lazy or don’t have the imagination to do what you have done to get prepared. The jails and prisons are jammed pack with those kinds. Is allowing those ilk to come along, seeing what you have and later taking it from you is what you have sacrificed to put together just because you want to be a humanitarian? In the situations I am discussing here, nice guys finish dead.
www.thesurvivalistblog.net/guide-to-selecting-stockpiling-and-defending-a-survival-retreat/
September 30, 2015 by L Michael Rusin
In order to survive a catastrophe of monumental proportions you will have to have a place to get to where you can ride out the storm in safety. If it is near a city, or a sizable town, or any closer than ten miles from a major well-traveled artery such as an Interstate highway, and a major waterway such as the Mississippi River the chances of it being taken over by someone other than yourself is likely.
It should be no more than three hours of driving to from where you live. It must be large enough to grow your own food, and steps should have been taken well before the disaster occurs as to what to do to get it livable and defensible. The first and most important thing to do is to make the purchase or at least be in the process of purchasing the land. A deed in hand is better regardless of what happens later than to be a squatter on land that belongs to someone else.
Put it in the name of a gun club or some such entity to account for the occasional gunfire that may be heard by a passerby. Choose your retreat carefully, you’ll need an adequate water supply on the land, and if it is a sizable stream or artesian water source that would be best of all worlds. You’ll also need an adequate wood supply if it looks like the stay there will be longer than a few months.
Clearing fields of fire is always a good idea. Modern day rifles can reach out and take out an “unfriendly” at a thousand yards with some practice, especially a rifle with a good scope. Put up a few towers where a sentry from your group can see in every direction. The “A” camps of Special Forces Troopers did it in Vietnam and it works to keep sappers and other intruders from penetrating and overpowering your retreat. The higher up the observer is the better the view.
You will need to plant fruit and nut trees in an area reserved for that important essential and plot out several areas where farm animals can graze and where wheat and vegetables can be grown. Fence it off if you can. Think in terms of “everything you do to your retreat could be permanent.” You may well be spending the rest of your life there, and field crop rotations are very important to maintain your land at peak performance.
If anyone in your group has the expertise, bring in a few hives of Italian honey bees and keep them out there under or near the trees. They are self-sufficient and provide a delicacy called honey which is not only good for eating but for putting on wounds. It will help any break in the skin to heal quickly. Honey is the only natural food that never spoils. Your little helpers can be bought through the mail and will be delivered to you by return mail.
You should have more than one water supply. One of those should be very close to the main structure of your retreat. Once you have your retreat purchased and or in your group’s ownership, the stocking should begin.
You will need:
• Long shelf life medicines.
• Many bags of various seeds.
• Ammo.
• Food.
• Tools
• Electrical generating devises.
• Lots of warm clothing.
• Bedding.
• A trundle sewing machine.
• Condiments for your food.
Your group will need lots of dishes, utensils, knives and sharpening devises that will keep your knives and axes at peak cutting performance, and don’t forget the pots and pans. A hand wheat grinder.
Of course there are many more things but there are many books out there that will help you gather what you need.
If you don’t have a survival library start building one now.
A wood or coal burning stove would be an important addition. Store a ton of coal nearby.
If a steady supply of electricity is available or you have made provisions to have it available, you’re way ahead of the game.
If not, there are root cellars that can be dug and a food cooler can be made from a wood frame, with canvas and dripping water to cool things. The preservation of food will be a critical factor because you don’t want to get sick from spoiled foodstuffs and you won’t want to waste anything either.
If possible, the entry from any road to your property should be camouflaged. Put bushes at the turn off and hide your road. Place barriers such as brush piles and logs to hide access. Tire spikes are also good when placed strategically. Somewhere near the entry should be a hidden bunker that can be manned by a couple of people from the group that will have two way radios. It will be important for all members of your group to be in constant contact with one another once the need arises.
The preservation and safety of your retreat is the most important element you can concentrate on. The road leading to your property should have a devise that will collapse at your discretion through some means such as a collapsible bridge, leaving entry impassable from the road by ordinary vehicles if it was discovered by looters or marauding groups.
It might be very advisable to cut access off and you will want to do it quickly. This is done by putting hinges on supporting posts that have heavy duty pins inserted in each one and are removable, and then these posts are connected to a 3/8” wire cable that can be connected to a car or pickup. Once the pins are removed a tug is applied to the cable and down it comes.
If you understand how to do it, make a map marking where you have placed your anti-personnel deterrents. Do it as you are placing them. It is preferable you do this with a GPS to insure accuracy in the placement of each. Make sure all avenues giving anyone access to your main structures are secured. There are many ways to do this. I may tell you how to do this in another piece if there is an interest.
If anyone is sneaking up on your group at any time and they are uninvited, you have to believe they are up to no good and you will have to deal with them harshly. Not always, because there are no absolutes but compassion will take a back seat to preservation of your group. That will be a decision you will have to grapple with later. Personal decisions have no guide other than what you will do when that time is on you.
Protect your people, your cache’s, your main compound, your food and water and access to all of it. If someone happens along after society has collapsed, there will be no law, only you and your group against all others. Hard decisions will eventually have to be made. Make sure you have a leader who can make those types of decisions.
Don’t depend on some armchair warrior who spouts how tough he is at a tavern over a few beers to make those decisions. Know who that person is and what that person’s background is. Choose carefully, your life and the lives of your group may depend on it.
The Beginners Guide To Selecting, Stockpiling And Defending A Survival Retreat Part Two
October 5, 2015 by L Michael Rusin
Once you have your retreat purchased you can begin the serious work of getting it ready to receive you and your hand-picked group. Everyone needs a place to live, sleep, eat and relax. All members of your group will need a place to be alone or completely by themselves for a period of time. I learned that lesson when I took off on my forty-one foot sailboat many years ago and headed for the South Pacific. Take my word for it, everyone needs to have a place where they can be completely alone.
You must have adequate sanitary services for everyone. It should not be very close to your main retreat drinking water supply and close enough if during your rainy season or the winter snows that getting there won’t be a chore. It needs to be well ventilated for obvious reasons. There should be a kerosene lamp located in there as well or at least a candle.
I have always maintained that when you are setting up your retreat initially all buildings should be camouflaged when looking down at them from the air. Ideally, if there is time, you should build an underground structure as your main living area and as a gathering/meeting area.
They are climate controlled naturally year around, and are difficult to see from above. You always want to draw the least amount of attention on your retreat and your group. I cannot overemphasize to anyone who is a serious survivalist your retreat is the last stop and it will be your ultimate safety if and when the free trade and commerce stops around you for any reason. How bad things will get in the event of a national disaster such as an economic collapse can only be imagined, but all anyone has to do is look back on history to get a good idea.
The Watts riots in California were tantamount to mass insurrection and anarchy. The police stood by and watched. The firemen were sniped at, when it was all done and over few if any went to jail for what they did. The fires raged consuming everything in its path. Shop and store owners who armed themselves survived the melee; those who walked away lost everything.
Entire neighborhoods were leveled to the ground and looting was unbelievably brisk and thorough. I know there are those who find that savagery on a scale not imagined in today’s time of relative order will argue that it won’t be that way, and I say remember the police in New Orleans when Katrina leveled the city; what did they do? They left town and people were on their own. Later, they wanted their jobs back.
Violence driven by mobs is a terrible thing to see and to experience firsthand. There are never any preconditions or avenues of safety to seek refuge. Once you are caught up in it its every person for themselves. People get trampled to death, they are beaten, knifed and shot and the vilest acts that can be perpetrated on human beings by other human beings is unimaginable. The cruelty and the savagery is totally beyond what the average person can conceive. Be warned, a safe and hidden retreat is your only safety net and how you put it together will be the telling of your story later on when the dust settles.
The less inviting you can make your retreat the better chances it will have of providing you and yours safe refuge. You will not survive several hundred people attacking you for your food, your water, medicine, weapons and your women. They will strip everything off the beaten paths several miles from main highways and waterways in every direction like Army Ants. You will be killed or maimed for your shoes and especially your arms and food. The better you can prepare your retreat and to hide it from those possibilities the better off you will be.
Every activity anyone in your group does once the collapse occurs will have to be monitored by another member of your group. If you toil the fields, someone will have to be armed and must be alert to any trouble. If you have to travel for water, someone will have to be on guard. All members of your group will be armed 24/7s if they hope to survive. If the occasion occurs that extreme violence must be perpetrated against a fellow human being, it must be done without hesitation by that member of your group guarding the rest of you or they will probably die.
Think about what it must have been like to the pioneer farmer on the frontier in the US who was constantly prepared for either an Indian attack on their farmstead or bad men just passing by and wanting whatever it is that the farmer had. His food stocks, animals, and women were easy pickings for several armed men going from here to there. Usually, the farmer didn’t have much of a chance unless he was close to the house when the attacks occurred. If he was out and away in the fields, the children and women were raped, killed or carried away.
Put it in perspective; you have struggled to stock up your retreat, you have done without to be better prepared. Stocking and putting together a retreat is a massive job that is usually done by people who are committed and dedicated to insuring they and theirs will survive. There are many who will live off the struggles of others and will take what you have because they are either too lazy or don’t have the imagination to do what you have done to get prepared. The jails and prisons are jammed pack with those kinds. Is allowing those ilk to come along, seeing what you have and later taking it from you is what you have sacrificed to put together just because you want to be a humanitarian? In the situations I am discussing here, nice guys finish dead.
www.thesurvivalistblog.net/guide-to-selecting-stockpiling-and-defending-a-survival-retreat/
