The Survival Weekly Dispatch - Volume 11, Issue 5
I can't believe it's almost February already....
Hey everyone, I appreciate you checking out the newsletter this week. Thankfully, the bitter cold weather finally broke and we’ve been enjoying temps in the mid- to upper-30s the last few days. Most of the snow and ice is gone, though I’m sure we’ll get one or two more rounds of it before spring finally hits for real. The downside is we’ve hit that stretch of January where blue sky is nothing but a memory. It’s been overcast and gloomy for days on end.
On the work front, I turned in all of the articles for Backwoods Survival Guide 29 and we’ve started in on the content for Prepper Survival Guide 23. On top of that, I’ve been working my way through some of the stacks of books I’ve picked up in the last year or so. As I finish them, I’ve been posting reviews on Facebook.
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Prepper Tip -- I wish I could remember where I read this analogy, but it goes something like this. Spending a ton of money on firearms, ammunition, and accessories, but never training with them, is like spending a ton of money on lumber and tools, then planning to build a house even though you’ve never even used a hammer before.
The same holds true with just about any area of endeavor, of course. Whether we’re talking about self-defense, carpentry, food preservation, scratch cooking, heck even just simply hiking, the more you do it, the better you’ll be at it. Conversely, you can’t expect to do it well if you’ve never done it before.
Investing in books and gear is great, no doubt about it. But reading those books isn’t enough. Carefully curating stacks of gear isn’t enough. Watching endless videos isn’t enough. You need to put in the dirt time, so to speak. That’s the only way you’re going to learn, refine, and retain the skills.
Make concrete plans soon to start investing in yourself. One of my goals this year is to work hard on building up my own knowledge and skill base. To that end, I’ve been getting through some of the FEMA certification courses. There’s actually some pretty good info to be found in them, from what I’ve seen thus far.
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A couple of days ago, the power went out just as I starting to make breakfast for my wife and I. It wasn’t just us, either. I hopped on social media and found that a good part of our town was out of power. Now, we have plenty of alternate means of cooking, including camp stoves and the grills out on the patio. But we already had the Jackery solar generator in the house, so I grabbed that and did a little rearranging on the kitchen counter.
Normally, I wouldn’t have bothered with the air fryer, as it takes a lot of juice to run. But the power had blipped out halfway through cooking the frozen potatoes in it, so I plugged it in to finish them off.
Yes, we have an electric stove/oven. Unfortunately, running a gas line so we could use a gas stove just isn’t feasible in our house. So, we made our peace with that and we’ve made sure we have plenty of other options available to us, just in case.
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Someone asked me the other day what kind of candles I recommend for emergency use. Here’s what I told him.
Candles are sort of a fourth-tier option, in my opinion. They’re cheap and easy to source, but I’m not fond of open flames in an emergency, if they can be avoided. My suggestions:
1) Flashlights, LED headlamps, and electric lanterns – they’re safe and reliable. Keep them charged and most of them last quite a while.
2) Solar landscape lights – these aren’t a bad option for ambient light in a room. Easy enough to keep them outside until you need them.
3) Oil lamps – I love hurricane lamps, but there is a small risk because you’re dealing with a flame, though it is at least contained behind glass. If it gets knocked over, things could get ugly. Plus, you need to make sure you have plenty of fuel socked away.
4) Candles – I know prices vary wildly around the country, but my local Goodwill has tapers for less than a buck each. I prefer pillars rather than tapers, as they seem to last longer.
Something to consider – how much light do you really NEED during a power outage? Most of us could probably get by with very little, all things considered.
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Some of you probably remember the Survivalist series written by Jerry and Sharon Ahern. It began in 1981 and the original run lasted for 29 books. It was later restarted and another seven or so books were published. I finally completed my collection of the originals. Here’s a photo of them, minus #26 which was obtained the day after I snapped this picture.
These books had a huge impact on me when I was growing up. It isn’t a stretch to say that they had a direct influence on the career I enjoy today.
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Our hike this week was a bit more urban than our usual haunts. With all of the melting snow and ice, we didn’t want to have to fight for footing every step of the way, so we opted for a walk through a riverside park about a half hour away. We ended up walking from one end of the park to the other, then crossing a bridge and walking the same distance on the other side of the river, then crossing back. The ice on the river looked pretty cool, as you can see here (photo courtesy of my wife).
Survival Tip – Tea Light Cooking
After seeing this meme shared countless times, and disparaging it more than once, I decided to put my money where my mouth is, so to speak.
My wife dug out an old muffin tin that we’d used in the past to melt and mold wax. That way, no worries if the tea lights were to spill a little wax during this experiment.
I discovered quickly that the pot of water, when placed directly on the muffin tin, extinguishes the tea lights. There’s little to no air getting to the candles that way. After some head scratching and then some scrounging in the garage, I came upon my set of hole saw bits. They worked perfectly to raise the pot of water up enough to allow air flow and keep the tea lights burning.
I added two cups of room temperature water to the pot, then placed it over the lit tea lights, as shown. A lid was placed on the pot, to help speed things along. The ambient temperature in the room was 68°F.
At ten minutes in, there were the tiniest of bubbles forming at the bottom of the pan, and plenty of condensation forming on the underside of the lid. A fair bit of steam billowed out when I opened the lid to peek inside.
At the 20-minute mark, I checked the temperature of the water with a candy thermometer. It registered about 160°F. I replaced the lid and let it go for another 15 minutes. At the 35-minute mark, I removed the lid and checked again. Still 160°F. At that point, I considered the experiment concluded.
Water boils at 212°F at sea level. I’m about 925 feet above sea level, which in the grand scheme of things is pretty negligible. So, we ended up about 50°F shy of boiling.
Conclusions:
This tea light cooktop, for lack of a better term, will definitely heat water, but you aren’t boiling anything. I think it might work okay for thin condensed soups, but I don’t know that it would work well for heating thicker soups and stews. Coffee would be lukewarm, though, compared to how most people normally prepare it (~200°F).
Several sources indicate that water is pasteurized, and thus considered disinfected, at 149°F. If you were going to rely on this method to heat water for that purpose, I’d recommend using a candy thermometer or something to ensure you reach that temperature. One of the reasons why we bring water to a boil for disinfection is because it’s definitive without the need for a thermometer.
There are far better and more efficient ways to heat water. If this is all you had to work with, so be it. But as preppers, we should strive to avoid being in that position.
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