I’m not ready for chemical warfare. I read something recently that scared me straight. I live in the Pacific Northwest, where the biggest issue, and the one that everyone’s been focused on since this New Yorker Magazine article came out, is earthquakes. When “the big one” hits our area, according to experts, that 72-hour kit the Red Cross recommends will be nowhere near enough for anyone. The state of Oregon published a Resilience Plan for what the state would do in the aftermath of a big earthquake and those results were scary….Electricity is expected to be out for 3 to 6 months along the coast. Drinking water and sewer is expected to be out for 1 to 3 years along the coast. So, yes, that 72-hour kit will be needed, but you’ll have a long way to go from there. But that’s not what I started writing this post to talk about today.

Most of the emergency preparedness material that gets talked about in my area is about earthquakes, but I recently attended an emergency preparedness fair organized by the city where I live. It was a small fair, just a few tables, and pretty much all of what was there I already knew about. But I picked up a publication from Homeland Security that put a new threat into perspective…chemical warfare. This publication, simply called “Preparing Makes Sense. Get Ready Now.” is available as a downloadable PDF. There’s a section about terrorist attacks that might send tiny microscopic “junk” into the air. For example, an explosion that might make air unsuitable to breathe, or a biological attack that might release germs. I know in the back of my mind that these scenarios are possible, but I didn’t really let them in to my conscious before reading this pamphlet. The opening lines say, “Terrorists are working to obtain biological, chemical, nuclear and radiological weapons, and the threat of an attack is very real.” Great. Just what I wanted to start getting worried about on my lunch hour.

Here’s what Homeland Security recommends:
Use dense-weave cotton material to cover your nose and mouth as you breathe. Make sure the material or mask fits snugly so the air you breathe goes through the mask and not around it. Material that might work for this would be a few layers of t-shirt fabric, a handkerchief or a towel. You still need to be able to breathe through it. Obviously, get a mask if you can. And make sure you have a mask that is sized to fit your children.

Have heavyweight garbage bags or plastic sheeting and duct tape and scissors in your kit, and use this to tape off windows, doors and air vents. Precut them and label them so you can apply them quickly in the event that the air is unsafe to breathe.

Look out for public health reports of a wave of unusual sicknesses, as biological warfare might not be immediately apparent.

Signs of a chemical attack might include numerous dead fish or birds, and people coughing, having trouble breathing, or suffering from watery eyes. And we’re not just talking about allergy season. If you think the problem is in the building you’re in, go outside. Vice versa, if the problem is out on the street, stay put and put that plastic sheeting that you precut and labeled to work.

In the event of a radiation bomb or nuclear explosion, try to put distance between yourself and the focus of the event. Shield yourself if you can. Minimize exposure.

I admit that I’m unprepared for things like this to happen, and I’m guessing that lots of other folks are too. If you have already prepared yourself for these events let us know in the comments how you did it. Are gas masks part of your emergency supply kit?

 

If you’re anything like me, you probably enjoy having your phone around when you’re hiking or camping. I like mine for taking pictures and checking in with my family by text and checking my email if I happen to be in an area with cell service. I don’t want to have to worry about running out of battery or lugging around an extra device for charging. The solar panel chargers are great and they work, but sometimes I want to keep my packing light and simple.

This backpack does that by charging my devices right from the backpack. That’s right, a backpack that charges devices! It’s available in black, pink and gray, light blue and gray, tropical blue, gray, and white and black, it’s even fairly water proof. It’s a stylish and useful pack for a day bag and I really liked the fact that BirkSun gives you a money back refund if you’re not happy with the bag after 50 days.

The bags are TSA approved (nice for plane travel) and charge devices as fast as a wall outlet. The website says that every 3 minutes the solar panels are in sunlight they will generate 1% smartphone battery power. From wall outlets, the battery inside the back will be recharged 1% every minute. Too bad, but the bags can’t recharge laptops. however, if I just want to take a photo or check the time or whatever, my laptop being charged is not my biggest concern. Take this bag to the beach or to a festival, on a hike or just walking around campus, and never worry about whether there’s an outlet at hand or not. Wish I would have had this when I went to a big music festival and had to plan my day around what bands I didn’t mind missing so that I could hang out in the technology tent and get an outlet!

Check out the BirkSun bags and get one for your gear lover for $130, $170, or $200, depending on the style you get.

Image courtesy of Birksun.com

We were shipped the NDUR 9-Piece Cookware Mess Kit with Kettle, distributed exclusively through Proforce Equipment, and intended to take it camping. We didn’t get to take it on a trip but we did put it to the test cooking all of our meals at home over the course of a weekend in it, as if we were camping. The result? We liked this kit and can feel comfortable recommending it for a backpacking kit, camping kit, bug-out bag or emergency at home cooking kit.

The only thing that keeps me from stopping short of saying that this is a “survival kit” is the tea kettle. I personally loved the tea kettle and the two cups it came with, but if I really am in a survival situation, having a cute little teapot with a lid and two little cups won’t matter much. The company also makes a 6-piece cookware essentials kit that doesn’t include the tea kettle and cups which might be more of a bug-out cooking kit than this one is.

The NDuR 9 piece cookware mess kit is made of hard anodized aluminum. The descriptions says it is easy to clean and I found that to be true. I cooked eggs in it for my breakfast both mornings, including a sunny side up egg that I flipped with a spatula as well as scrambled eggs that I scrambled in the pan. I used a little oil in the cooking and while some of the eggs stuck, it did clean up very easily. The handles get hot in normal use on a burner, so I imagine that if these were used over a fire the handles would get burnt up pretty quickly. The webpage does say to keep the handles out of the path of direct flame, but if you’re trying to cook over an open fire I imagine that would be hard to do. It does come with a gripper that can be easily hooked on to the side of any of the pots or cups to protect your hands from heat. everything except the drying pan/plate/lid comes with handles that fold away.img_3405

One thing I cooked was a combination of brown sugar and butter to make a desert. I stirred the butter and sugar with a fork, and I expected the fork to scratch the surface of the pot but it didn’t. After the butter and sugar cools off, it became a hard sticky lump. I expected this to be difficult to clean off, but it wasn’t. I had to scrub a little bit but this did not mar the surface in any way. I typically do not like drinking out of metal cups because of the heat transfer, and these did get hot, but they are made of the same easy clean material as the rest of the kit so I feel good about their durability.

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The food in the pots did seem to heat up quickly. I warmed up water for coffee and soup for lunch. I made a grilled cheese sandwich and it heated up evenly and quickly. That’s a key part of cooking on these…the heat does go through quickly so it’s not cookware that you can leave unattended. One nice thing about it is that everything nests inside of itself. When combined together, the pots have a strap that holds them together and they also easily slide inside a mesh bag. The tea kettle does not nest all the way inside the pots but the strap keeps everything from being wobbly. If you really wanted this to be a survival kit, simply remove the tea pot and that would give you other space inside the inner pot where you could stuff some other gear. I hate to tell you to leave out the tea pot though, as that was the nicest part of the whole kit. But when we’re talking about survival, the creature comforts will quickly go by the wayside.

The large pot holds 1.8 liters. The smaller pot holds 1.4 liters. The large frying pan is 7.5 inches and the smaller frying pan, which doubles as a plate, is also 7.5 inches. The kettle holds .8 liters and the two cups hold 5 ounces each. The gripper can be used on all pots, pans and cups. Altogether, the kit weighs 31 ounces and when nested together fits into a space only 7.6 x 5 inches. I also liked that the handles on the kettle and on the kettle lid were sturdy and remained upright without flopping over.

The kit retails on Proforce Equipment’s website for $69.00.

We have two opinions about gift giving during the holidays. One side is that we love to give gifts because we really do try to pick out things that our friends and family wil appreciate. The other side is that picking out gifts people will really like that don’t cost a fortune and aren’t a waste of space is actually hard to do! We get stressed out trying to please everyone and stay in budget. One thing that makes this easy is when we find gifts that we know people will love that also help give back, to charity or a special cause, in some way.

That’s why we were so pleased to find these Tactical Christmas Stockings that support our national parks. The stockings are available in 9 colors, first of all, from red and black to camo to blue or black. And, it’s not just a stocking. These gifts come full of gear packed inside. The website doesn’t tell us what’s in them (I with it did, or at least gave a sample stocking), but overall it looks like a very cool idea. The reviews of the stocking hint at what’s inside, including a multi-tool. It’s not just one or two cheesy little things, but real items that you can use while camping and hiking.

Aside from the fact that you have to trust what’s inside is going to be cool, the stocking itself seems high quality, made of heavy duty nylon with MOLLE webbing straps. It’s got clips so it can be loaded with your own gear and fastened to your pack, or stashed inside your car trunk for emergencies. By “your,” of course, I mean the people you’re going to give it to, unless you decide to get one for yourself! Choose your tactical Christmas stocking for only $33.

The teardrop style of camping trailers is a vintage look that is always in style. Combine a cool, old-fashioned trailer with seriously rugged features and we’re hooked. The TerraDrop Trailer by Oregon Trail’R is the perfect combination of real and rugged that we just can’t wait to try out in the backcountry.

The TerraDrop trailer is off-road capable, allowing it to be pulled by any vehicle anywhere you want it to go. Off-road suspension, all-terrain tires and a multi-axis couple make it sturdy as all get out, so you’ll want to do just that…get out! A large variety of upgrades and options from cabinetry to curtains make the TerraDrop uniquely customizeable.

Teardrop trailers have many advantages, including the fact that they are easily towed by most cars, meaning you don’t have to have a specialized vehicle for this. Keep your teardrop stocked and you’re ready to roll whenever the urge hits. Purchase the TerraDrop trailer for $15,000.

Price updated November 2, 2016: After this post published, Oregon Trail’R contacted us to let us know that they had recently updated TerraDrop’s base model configurations to include additional options that raised the starting price.

Let’s face it, we’re not all gardeners. Some of us have green thumbs and some of us don’t. I personally am in the camp of the person who wants to have a green thumb but it doesn’t come naturally. I didn’t grow up in a household that gardened, unfortunately, and my mother only grows flowers. Which are nice, but in general, you can’t eat ’em.

So when I wanted to get a garden going at my own home, I had to do a lot of research. I was surprised at some of the basic things about gardening that I didn’t know. For instance, the difference between determinate and indeterminate tomatoes. The first few years of my gardening I never paid attention to the tags that came with the garden starts I bought, so I was always surprised with the mixed results I got.

Determinate vs Indeterminate Tomatoes

To explain that difference, determinate tomatoes are often called “bush” tomatoes because they grow to about 3 or 4 feet high. This is the type to plant if you are into canning, drying or freezing because the plant produces the entire crop within a one to two week period. These types don’t need cages or staking, although it is fine to use it. This is also an easy to care for plant because you shouldn’t remove the suckers from these types of tomato plants. Because they are compact and more “bushy” these are a good type of plant for a container. Most hybrid tomatoes and early varieties are determinates, because commercial growers like the ability to harvest all at once.

Indeterminate tomatoes are often called “vine” tomatoes and these grow to about 6 feet tall. The last time I tried to grow an indeterminate tomato in one of those flimsy little tomato cages, the cage darn near broke in half. These plants will produce crops all season long, until it gets too cold. They like the suckers removed, because it helps them focus their energy on the fruit-setting. Because these plants grow so large, they are not a good choice for containers. Most heirloom varieties are indeterminate tomatoes.

There are some semi-determinate tomatoes, that as you might guess have characteristics in between the two types. Now, about hybrids….

Why You Should Only Save Heirloom Seeds

Choosing seeds for the garden, particularly for the survival garden, is different than just selecting seeds based on growing a nice looking vegetable. You can choose from three varieties of seeds: open-pollinated, hybrid, and heirloom seed varieties. Each of these seed types has something to offer, but for the survival garden, you should choose heirlooms, and here’s why.

Many of the seeds that are commercially available are from hybrid plants. Hybrids are plants that have had the parent plants chosen because of some qualities that the grower wants to pass on in the next generation of plants. Seeds saved from hybrid plants will not be true to type, meaning they are genetically not going to produce you the same type of plant you saved it from. The genetics of what plants result from your seeds will not be predictable. Farmers who grow hybrid plants have to buy new seeds each year because the artificial pollination results in seeds that will either not produce the type of plant you were expecting or may nor product a plant at all.

Open-pollinated plants produce fruit when some pollination happens from natural sources such as bugs or wind. These plants can easily cross pollinate, which can cause a great variety of resulting fruit, particularly among things that cross-pollinate easily, like squash. If pollen is shared among different varieties, as in a small garden plot, your seeds will not be true to type. Again, this means that seeds you save from these plants will not produce the same type of plant you saved them from.

Heirloom varieties are seeds that were passed down because they were particularly good at what they do, whether growing in a particular area, producing an abundance, being cold tolerant, bug tolerant, drought tolerant, or some other good quality. Gardeners saved these seeds because they were reliable and good tasting. Heirloom seeds will give you the same type of plant as the parent plant. In some cases, particularly squash, in order to avoid open cross pollination, you should grow the plants in separate areas.

And here’s another tip….we don’t recommend buying survival seed packages, even though the advertisements can make these deals sound too good to pass up. Thousands of seeds for hardly any money and all that. The reason we don’t recommend this is because the varieties are chosen for you. There are numerous different garden “zones” based on weather and some varieties will not grow in zones other than the ones they are well suited for. Varieties that grow well in Florida will not grow well in Oregon. Your best bet is to get in touch with a nursery that is close to you and get a list of varieties that are tested and proven to do well in your growing area. Buy those, because they’ll be more likely to perform wherever you are. Also, selecting your own seeds means you can get the seeds that you and your family will actually want to eat. If no one likes radishes, even though these are super easy to grow, do you really want 1,000 radish seeds?

Think about it . . .  if you’re in a real survival situation, are you going to be using up your magnesium firestarter and gel kindling right off the bat, or will you save that and get your hands on a Bic lighter or a hundred? It’s going to take a while for the world to run out of matches and lighters, I’m guessing, so you might want to stock up on lighters and save the survival gear for when you really need it.

But, you’re thinking, lighters get wet. They can get lost. They can break. That’s all true, which is why you need to get a lighter that’s better than the others in the pack. Try the Klipp Glo Lighter from Ultimate Survival Technologies. This lighter works when wet. This lighter glows in the dark. This lighter comes with a built-in carabiner. It provides a turbo flame fueled by butane that lights up to 30,000 times. So. There you go. Purchase the Klipp Glo Lighter for $20.

September is Emergency Preparedness Month, where agencies try to get the word out about families and individuals being more prepared to handle social emergencies and natural disasters. We at Shadowfox would like to join in the chorus and encourage you to do something this month to make yourself and your loved ones more prepared.

Just one thing will move you a step closer to self-reliance. That could be as simple as buying a canner and jars, so you’re more able to preserve your own food. Or it could be a major step such as buying a generator. Wherever you are in your prepping, take one step closer and you’ll sleep better.

To help, we’ve compiled a list of our own resources along with websites where you can get more information. What’s the one step you will take this month?

1. Download an App or Sign Up For Texts
The Red Cross has a page of downloadable apps that cover various emergency and survival scenarios, such as first aid or earthquakes. Depending on where you are, you may want to get the tornado app, the hurricane app, or the general emergency app that covers more than 35 different alerts.

2. Make a Kit or Make Your Kit Better
The Red Cross suggests having a kit with a 3-day supply on hand for emergencies. We know, however, that if there is a major earthquake event in the Pacific Northwest, services will be unavailable for possibly months at a time. If you don’t have a kit, start by making a 72-hour kit. If you already have a 3-day kit, add a day to it for each person in your household (and your pets!).

3. Become Trained As a First Responder
Experts have said that if a real SHTF emergency goes down, policemen and ambulance drivers may not be available because they’ll be trying to help their own family. If there’s a severe natural disaster, ambulances and fire trucks may not be able to drive down the street or cross bridges, or if they can, they may have too many emergencies to respond to to help you with your emergency. Moderately sized cities of a couple hundred people may only have a handful of ambulances–definitely not enough to cover a city-wide emergency. Train yourself to help yourself and your neighbors, because you may be the only person who can.

4. Make a Plan
Talk to your family and neighbors to come up with a plan for what you will do if an emergency goes down while you’re at work, at school or out of town. The Red Cross has information on making a plan.

5. Figure Out How You Will Communicate
This Shadowfox article offers five realistic ways that you might have to try to communicate in an emergency. Communicating by walkie talkie might work, but only if you actually have walkie talkies, so go ahead and get them. Maybe now’s the time to get your Ham radio license.

6. Evaluate Your Water Sources
From hidden water sources you never thought of to gathering water from the roof of your house in a pinch, water is one of the necessities you will have to plan for if you can no longer get water from the tap.

7. Prep Your Car
Most of us probably feel that if we’re at home in the event of an emergency we’ll be doing ok . . .  after all, that’s where our food, clothes and tools are. But if we’re at work or at the movies when something goes down we will have only what’s in our car, and we may need to spend a night in our vehicle until it’s safe to move out. Prepare your vehicle for emergencies with basic car repair tools and an emergency kit that is always in your car. Keep a good pair of walking shoes in your vehicle. Sometimes I wear heels to work, but I keep a trusty pair of cowboy boots in my car so I never have to walk in my “fancy” shoes.

8. Consider Survival Essentials
There’s a basic 10 list of items that survivalists recommend people have. This includes basics such as a knife, lighting source, and firestarter. Evaluate what you have against our expert’s list of 10 essentials plus more that you can include to go beyond just the basics.

9. Protect Your Home
If the power goes out, so will your alarm system, your lighting, your stove and your ability to charge your phones. Be prepared by thinking through how you will protect your home in a power outage.

10. Be Aware, Be Vigilant
The most important thing that you can do is be aware and be vigilant. Always take stock of your surroundings and know, for instance, where exits are if you’re in a building, or what roads to avoid if you don’t want to cross over bridges. Be vigilant in making sure that you always have things nearby that can protect you and your loved ones if you need to.

Advanced Bush Craft: An Expert Field Guide to the Art of Wilderness Survival by Dave Canterbury, published by Adams Media.

Maybe you grew up in a household of people who hunted and fished, owned a variety of weapons and prepped for disasters. Maybe you were in the military and learned how to survive on limited resources. If neither of these things is true for you, like it was for me, it’s likely that everything you learned about survival came from watching videos and reading books.

There are a lot of resources out there for survival, and this book, written by Dave Canterbury, is one to consider if you’re ready to learn more about making do when you either can’t or don’t want to rely on store-bought stuff. Canterbury also wrote the book “Bushcraft 101” which was on the New York Times Bestselling list.

The first part of the book is about building your kit. Canterbury walks through the categories of things you need and thinking about when you might need them. For instance, naturally you will take more things if you are going out on a long trip, but the short day trips are good times to practice doing things like carving a throwing stick. Canterbury relied on a lot of tools in “Bushcraft 101,” but this new book focuses on the few tools you really need to make other things you will need along the way.

A lot of attention is paid to fire making, particularly the bow and drill method. After reading this section, anyone should be able to gather the materials to start a fire, and if you can’t, there’s always the option of just packing along a magnifying glass if it’s sunny.

Canterbury is from Ohio, and many of his resources are focused on the East Coast. For instance, did you know that eastern pine needles have more vitamin C than a fresh orange? They’re also good for vitamin A, so these would make a nutritious tea. But as a person who lives on the West Coast, that doesn’t help me, and Canterbury doesn’t list western species that may be similar.

The chapter on knot making leads into basketry and weaving. He provides instructions for making a “woodland loom” using a sapling, lashings and crossbars. This set-up lets you make large-scale items like sleeping mats or shelter coverings. He devotes several pages to different weaving techniques. This isn’t likely a skill that people are particularly concerned about if they’re just going out for the weekend, but as Canterbury says in the introduction of the book, this book is designed for what you will need to know to be prepared for a lengthy stay in the wilderness.

I particularly enjoyed the sections about sheltering and trapping, but in both I found evidence that perhaps this book is not quite as “advanced” as some readers might be expecting. For instance, in the sheltering section a half-page diagram is included on driving tent stakes in at an angle rather than straight down. The trapping section starts out with statements that understanding animal behavior including what they eat, where they live and where they travel is key to successfully being able to hunt animals. Those two things seem like common sense, so as long as readers go into this book understanding they are not getting 100% advanced, previously unrevealed knowledge and take these tidbits as gentle reminders, they’re likely to enjoy this book.

I found the book to be a somewhat frustrating combination of useful knowledge along with things that seemed like they took up unnecessary space. For instance, almost a whole page diagramming the shapes of different axe heads and a chart on when to look for berries to eat. Again, the wild foods and trees are focused on what is in the Eastern woodlands, like blueberries, which don’t grow wild on the West Coast. And I think most people know that strawberries ripen in summertime. What would help me most is some drawings showing some other edible wild foods that can be found everywhere and how to shape a stone into a useful cutting edge. I don’t really care if it is a Kentucky axe or a Southern Kentucky axe, or a Virginia axe or a regular Wisconsin as long as I can make a useful cutting edge from what materials I have around me.

Given the amount of space he took up with firestarting, I would have liked a few more diagrams and information about making arrows. As I read the book I began to get more frustrated that there wasn’t more of what I wanted to know about while so much space was taken up by things that seemed like they belonged in a reference book. The chapters on metalsmithing and boat building felt more complete. There’s even a recipe for squirrel stew, so once you make your throwing stick from chapter 3 and your fire from chapter four, you’re all set to focus on building the log cabin from chapter 5 with a recipe in hand for the first meal you’ll make in your new hand-constructed shelter. I truly enjoyed the chapter of appendices providing information on things like navigating using shadows and star positioning and with some practice using the star positioning system he explains, I know I’ll be able to tell what direction I’m heading in as long as I can see the sky.

Overall, the book is about survival in the sense that you are getting deeper skills than what you might normally get into, like preserving acorns for flour. It’s not a book about meeting immediate needs so much as it is about planning, gathering materials and crafting tools for long-term use if you truly can’t purchase things from a store. Even though it’s not all what I consider advanced knowledge, you will definitely learn something from this book. Purchase “Advanced Bush Craft: An Expert Field Guide to the Art of Wilderness Survival” by Dave Canterbury from Amazon.

 

When we travel, we are usually keenly aware of the possibility of getting ripped off. Many of us look like tourists, although we may try hard to fit in, we’re the ones oohing and awing of the architecture and food of a place that the locals get to see everyday. We may choose to stay in hotels with in-room safes to keep our valuables. We may choose cross-body bags or keep our wallets in zipped-up pockets so we can wander around and worry less about pickpockets.

Even if we’re just doing something normal and everyday such as walking across down or on our college campus, we have to be aware of the possibility that we may be victimized. In a crowded city environment, someone could come up and attempt to slash through a backpack on our backs and we wouldn’t even see it coming. That’s where the TrustBag, a secure theft proof bag, comes in.

The TrustBag looks like a regular gym bag, with a strap and a cinch top, but look more closely and you’ll see it is a revolutionary material made from the same material as bulletproof vests that can’t be cut or slashed, so no more worries about someone walking up behind you and emptying your bag’s contents when you can’t see them coming. The bag is theft resistant, because the top cinches with its own combination lock, which also allows you to lock it to something, such as a table when you’re sitting at Oktoberfest in Munchen. The bag’s super soft material could be stuffed full of shirts and used as a pillow.

Inside the TrustBag is a water-resistant lining, so no more worries about rain pouring down from the London sky, or your bag falling into a puddle with your iPhone inside. Even the zipper is 100% waterproof. There’s more than water to worry about though, isn’t there? In today’s world, digital data also needs protection. Digital data from credit cards and other items people commonly carry in their wallets can be easily scanned with RFID. The TrustBag comes with an inner bag made out of RFID-blocking material, so your data is safe.

The combination lock is available in two options. The Abus combination lock is aluminium with an anodized coating. The lock comes in different colors and opens with a three-digit code which can be set to something you create. The Master Lock option is made out of hardened steel and opens easily.

To make this all even better, the TrustBag is 100% vegan and latex-free.

My only complaint is that the bag seems on the small side. At only 15.75 inches (40 centimeters) it’s a bit small for someone like myself who likes to take everything along with me. But when thinking about the function of the bag, the small size makes sense because you don’t necessarily need to lock up your valuables along with bags of granola snacks or your hair ties and mascara. This bag is intended for the things you really want to keep safe, such as your electronic gadgets, passports and other identification, money, hotel keys, and the like. Still, I’d like to see it a tad bigger or maybe with the option of a larger size.

The TrustBag is available for purchase from TrustBag’s site for $189.