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This week we are sending out the “Most Popular of 2015” for the Prepping 101 column, and I was thinking how odd it is that the most popular of this series has always been anything to do with guns. Granted, this is GunsAmerica, so the choir is a bunch of gun nuts like me. But [...]

We will be taking a break from the normal schedule here at GunsAmerica until the week before SHOT Show in January, so I thought it would be nice to share with you some of the subjects and products that I am working on for the coming year. If you haven’t read this column all along [...]

I try to take nothing for granted. For some people it is probably a no brainer to have a couple hurricane kerosene lanterns on hand, and I’m sure a lot of you have at least one Coleman white gas lantern with mantles. But did you know that both of both of those will work with much more common fuels, and have you thought about whether you should store some extra wicks and mantles? How long does fuel last? How cheap can you get extra lanterns, and what is the best choice for fuel conservation? There are also some really good and cheap LED options for survival lighting these days as well. So for this week we take a opportunity to consider a few inexpensive approaches to light. There is a pretty good chance you will want to see at night once the lights go out. And you may feel confident that you have a plan for emergency lighting, but what will you do when the lights go out for good?

If you are a regular reader of this column you know that my subjects here of late have been extremely thick, and expensive. I try to be aware of just how much I am loading on, so I decided that this week is a good time to devolve into a bit of prepping theory again. I went to two movies this week, The Martian, and Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials. Between the two, it was as if Hollywood put on a clinic for what survival post-collapse is all about.

Thermoelectric generators are not a new technology. “TEG” power was discovered in 1821, but I have to admit, it is new to me. I recently discovered three consumer products that create electricity from direct heat, and all three of them have survival applications. One of them is the best bugout or camp stove I have ever encountered, and I would take it one step further and say that it is the best bugout cooking solution I have ever encountered, period. A second is made for generating electricity while you cook your dinner, and I had marginal success with it. The third is made for a high level of direct heat electricity production, and you can drive it from your rocket stove, a camp stove, and they have models from 10 watts up to 100 watts that use waste heat from your wood stove.

As many of my regular readers know by now, this column is about actually surviving a complete collapse of our infrastructure. Headlines titled “Bug Out Bags” and “Which Gun is Best for SHTF” get a lot of clicks, but compared to food, water, shelter, and keeping warm in the winter, they are virtually immaterial. Those who survive are going to be those who sat tight and waited for everyone else to kill each other. If you live in the northern climes, it is coming to be that time of year again where you’ll have to consider keeping warm in the winter, without city gas, or an oil or propane delivery. I have covered a simple and cheap woodstove, a military heater that burns home heating oil and gasoline without a pump, and even a cookstove that would also heat your home. If you live where firewood is plentiful and you don’t have worry about people shooting you for taking wood off their land, a woodstove can be a long term solution, but if not, you probably should think about the sun.

Yet another brutal winter has a lot of people thinking about heating their homes when the power goes out. Even a few days without heat can be deadly, let alone the potential damages to your home from frozen water pipes and expanding ice. Imagine a whole winter without heat! Could you survive it? How would you survive it is the better question. Because if you live in the country, it is easy to just own an emergency wood stove, and keep a cord of wood covered in the back yard. That will keep you warm enough, and keep your pipes from freezing. But what if you live in an urban setting, or even a suburban area where you don’t have a lot of land to store wood?

I have been sitting on a story since Media Day at the Range back in January on the day before the 2014 SHOT Show. It is a very simple GPS driven topography map interface for smartphones and tablets. Who doesn’t have one of those these days right? But outside of a very small percentage of hunters that hunt public lands with topo maps, I didn’t think many people would be interested in our gun world. One detail about these cards, though, makes them extremely relevant for long term survival. They don’t require a network connection to use the GPS or the data. Once you download the app, all you need is the micro-SD card with the data. At $69.99 without private land data and $99.99 with that data, these are a really cheap way to keep right at your fingertips a complete set of topo maps for your entire state. Right now the cards are available for all Android devices and the Ipad, and we were able to fondle the first generation of IPhone charger cases at SHOT Show, though they have yet to be released.

It boggles my mind when someone proudly exclaims that they are free from worry should a disaster strike, because “I’ve got a generator!” That’s great for a hurricane or a blizzard, but what are you going to do if there is a real collapse and your fuel runs out? Did you, in fact, just waste [...]