The Survival Weekly Dispatch - Volume 10, Issue 25

Hoping for better luck this time around....

Jun 21, 2023

Hey everyone, thanks for checking out the newsletter this week. Not gonna lie, it has been a rough week around here. Not a lot of work got done, as I’ve been in a fair amount of pain and discomfort. This should hit your inbox around 7AM Central on Wednesday. I’m headed back into surgery around 11:30AM Central the same day. Fingers crossed that this time everything goes off without a hitch and I’ll finally be on the road to recovery for real.

I did manage to get a handful of submissions edited for Backwoods Survival Guide 24. I also worked a fair amount on a couple of articles for Knives Illustrated. But that’s about as far as I could get, which is far below my normal work output. Here’s hoping I can get back to where I need to be soon.

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If you collect Prepper Survival Guide magazine, here’s a great opportunity to snag on a few of the earliest issues. Bestselling novelist Brian Keene contributed articles to those issues and he has a few copies available on his site. Great price, too, at $5.99 each. Just go here and scroll down the page a bit.

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Backwoods Home magazine has a great article here on the importance of mutual survival and preparedness.

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While I realize we’re well into June and months away from hoodie weather, I cannot recommend this particular one highly enough. He only has a handful of them left, though, so you’ll want to jump on it before they’re gone. The hoodie is soft, warm, and incredibly comfortable. One of the best ones I’ve ever owned. And that’s coming from a guy who pretty much lives in hoodies from September through March or so.

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I wrote this a couple of years ago, though I’ve since edited it after getting a little feedback from readers. Either way, I still think it is absolutely true.

"Let’s be frank. Pride makes us stupid. It causes us to make poor decisions, ones based on emotion rather than intellect, bravado instead of logic. Make no mistake, there’s a world of difference between confidence and cockiness. Confidence is knowing you can get the job done right the first time. Cockiness is telling everyone you can and hoping nobody proves you wrong."

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As you work on your food storage plans, don’t overlook the importance of a few things that might not have much in the way of nutrition, but will be welcome boosts to morale. There is absolutely nothing wrong with adding some junk food and similar items to the mix. I’m not suggesting that they should take the place of actual healthy food, of course. But during an extended emergency, they could provide a welcome respite from dehydrated vittles.

Here are a few suggestions, just to get you thinking.

· Chocolate bars

· Hard candy

· M&Ms

· Popcorn

· Soda

· Drink mixes (like Kool-Aid)

· Chips

Comfort food is called that for a reason. It provides, well, comfort during times of stress. For me, one anti-stress meal I turn to from time to time is simply instant mashed potatoes with thick brown gravy. There’s about nil that’s truly healthy in a bowl of it, but it tastes pretty good. Nacho cheese flavor Doritos is another favorite snack.

The point here is to identify a few things that you could squirrel away for a rainy day and bust out as a surprise for the family when things are getting rough.

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I’m saddened to report that I was unable to make it to a hike over the weekend. This is the first time I’ve missed in over 340 weeks in a row. While it was bound to happen at some point, I’m still deeply disappointed. But, there was just no way I was going to make it any distance at all without how I was feeling. Here’s a pic from a previous hike.

Survival Tip – Homemade MREs

For those not familiar with the term, MRE stands for Meal, Ready to Eat, and refers to a military ration that’s become fairly popular among preppers and survivalists. Where dehydrated and freeze-dried foods require the addition of water to prepare, an MRE is, as the name indicates, ready to eat right out of the package. That said, the palatability is usually increased by heating, made easy by the inclusion of a small heater in the MRE.

Technically, military MREs are illegal to sell to civilians. However, many of the MRE manufacturers have taken to doing civilian versions they can sell on the open market.

The standard civilian MRE will have a number of components, including:

Entrée
Cracker or bread, usually with some sort of spread
Side dish
Dessert
Candy
Utensil pack
Condiments
Heater

The downsides of MREs are the price and the weight, both of which are relatively high. They aren’t bad options, but you won’t want to carry a bunch of them around with you in your pack.

Here’s a great video from Wendell Adams covering a couple of different ways to put together a homemade MRE. Now, to be fair there are components here that do require some sort of preparation, such as boiling water to cook noodles. But you can easily substitute for options that don’t need that step.

I don’t look at these sorts of meal kits as being for backpacking. Think instead of emergency evacuation scenarios, where you have to flee home or work with nothing more than your emergency pack. Having a couple of these full meal kits stashed away in your bag means you don’t need to stop and buy food along the way.

A few pointers as you consider what to put into your own homemade MREs.

Always toss in a plastic fork, spoon, and knife. You can get these free at fast food joints when you buy food. Or pick up a small box of mixed utensils at the store. This way, you don’t need to worry about finding something to eat with once you open the meal.
Stick with foods you know you like. This isn’t a time for experimentation. If you want to try new foods, check them out before you decide to buy them for your kits.
Vacuum sealing is best, but you can probably get by with good quality Ziploc bags and pressing as much air out as possible. Either way, I wouldn’t store these sorts of kits for more than a year before rotating out the contents.
If you can afford it, consider adding a few dollars in cash to each meal kit. If you land at a motel, you can use the cash to buy beverages, snacks, whatever.

These can be fun to assemble, once you get into the swing of it. There’s no need to go overboard and put together dozens of them. Just two or three per evacuation kit should be plenty.

Prepper Survival Guide and Backwoods Survival Guide

For those new to my little corner of the Internet, I am the Editor in Chief for both Prepper Survival Guide and Backwoods Survival Guide magazines. Here are the covers for the current issues that are available in stores right now.