Preparedness is a lifestyle and a state-of-mind. You never know what disaster or emergency will befall you, it could be something you cannot possibly prepare for, for me and my family the times we have had to use our bug-out-bags were not related to national emergencies, but to family and local emergencies. I’m not saying not to prepare, I’m saying to prepare in ways you may not have ever thought to do, and these tips I have learned over the years could help someone else. These are not so much extrinsic items for survival, but intrinsic necessities.

When you have children, how you structure your family unit and your parenting skills can either keep you all alive or be the reason none of your family survives. So if you are a parent, I have a series of questions for you to ask yourself. How would you and your family answer these questions?

QUESTION #1. Do you have a picky or finicky eater? I’m not talking about allergies, I’m talking about pickiness. My youngest grandson has a good friend who won’t eat fruit, cheese, pizza, cake or ice cream or anything normally served at a kid’s birthday party. Not because he is allergic, just because he is finicky. While he is best friends with my grandson, there is no asking him over or inviting him to parties, because he is finicky to the point of being rude. He is the product of over indulgent and even neglectful parenting skills. These parents are not preparing him for the future in an unpredictable world. A child who is a finicky eater becomes a dead child in emergency situations. If you don’t want to see your children starve to death, teach them to eat anything that is put in front of them by loving, caring parents. Don’t allow them to become so very selfish as to be picky and finicky all the time. Now I am not talking about real allergies. Allergies are real medical conditions to be dealt with through planning, food storage and professional medical care. I have a real food allergy to shell fish and sea foods. If I eat French fries cooked in the same oil with shrimp, it can put me in the hospital. I carry an epi-pen, and have one packed in our emergency bug-out bag. My whole family knows and helps me deal with my food allergies. However; an allergy is different from pickiness, like not eating strawberries because you don’t like the seeds or birthday cake because it might make you fat or pizza because it is the wrong type. Teach your children that within reason, they need to eat what is put before them and be thankful for it, some day it might just save their life.

QUESTION #2. How many times to you have to tell your children to do something? Do you ask two, three or four times? The average these days is asking about four times. What if you only had time to tell your children once?  Hearing and listening are two different sides to this issue. How many hours a day do your children or grandchildren have earplugs on? What if they could not hear you, or did not listen to you when you called for them in an emergency situation? Do you realize in a disaster situation, it could cost your child his/her life if they failed to listen or respond at a critical time? My own son hated it because I required that he respond to me the first time I spoke to him. I was not being mean in teaching him that mom would not tell him twice. I was trying to teach him an important element to being ‘ready’. This generation has iPhones, iPods and headsets on all the time. I believe it is critical to teach children to be obedient from an early age. Little children don’t need strict lessons, they only need gentle guidance, and then they grow up right. If you wait till a child is older to teach them, good luck, the learning curve is over. Don’t let this lesson come as a surprise; prepare them now by teaching them to be obedient the first time. Just today as I finish this article, there is a G2 magnetic storm and an S2 solar radiation storm. My daughter called me on her cell phone a few moments ago, it cut in and out so badly I could not hear her, I suspect due to these atmospheric storms, but I did listen to what I did hear, so I got the message. If the time ever came when there were no cell phones, iphones, ipads, ipods working, our children and grandchildren would be lost. So I encourage parents, especially parents of teenagers, to have your children put their electronic devices down for a few moments each day and teach them obedience and to respond to your first asking, not the third or fourth.  It just may save their lives some day.

QUESTION #3. When you ask your children for details about a party or event or school project, do you ever get the response, “I don’t know”. Teach yourself and your children to be observant of details. If your children are younger, this can be a good game to play in the car to prepare them, with questions like ‘what color was the last car that passed us’ or ‘what color dress did the lady have on at the filling station’. My children loved this game when they were real young. Teaching them to be observant can help them reestablish contact if they ever become separated from you. Being observant to details is not inborn in all of us, just in the technical-minded. But, I am convinced that we can all learn to be observant to details. Any police officer who has ever worked a crime with ten witnesses and no details will tell you how important it is to teach people (children) to be observant of details. I witnessed two men stuffing a lady in the trunk years ago in what was a kidnapping crime. As I gave the police officers my statement, one made the comment that I was “no help” because I did not have details. I had become emotional as I witnessed the event and in my emotions, I failed to pick up any details that would help the police find the assailants. All these years later I still carry the burden of that event in my heart, and if that lady did not survive, it was my fault for not thinking clear enough to gather details that would help find her alive. Teach your children to be observant of details all around them.

QUESTION #4. Did you ever stand in line at the grocery store and realize how very loud the world has become? Background music and noise, people talking on their cell phones (some as loud as they seem to be able), beeping from the scanner, creaking from a bad wheel on the shopping cart, rattling of paper and plastic, etc, etc.  Silence seems to be a thing of the past. Many religious societies use silence as a structuring agent, they say that when you stop using one sense, it somehow seems to heighten all the others. No one teaches the value of silence anymore. Teach your children the importance of silence. In the early 1960s, I watched a documentary about a man who had survived the Holocaust and I regret that I do not remember his name. He owed his survival to silence. He had been hidden in the floorboards of his neighbors’ home and had to stay in a coffin sized area, in silence 23 hours a day. He said sometimes he was in there 24/7. His documentary struck me so intensely; I remembered it all my life. Because of that documentary, and much to the dismay of my children, I taught my children to be silent and to sit still, one hour at a time. I was a chatterer, so are my children and grandchildren, so this has not been easy, and quite possibly the hardest lesson they had to learn. It is a lesson parents today need to teach their children, even one hour at a time, ‘silence is golden’. Others might remember another more current television show that relates to silence was a M*A*S*H* episode where a bus load of people needed to be quiet to avoid the enemy, and a Korean lady held her hand across the mouth of her crying child until the child died. It was a show with a tremendous message for any parent in a life-death situation. I would pray that never happened to anyone, and realize it was about a baby whom cannot be taught, but older children can be taught. Teach your children the importance of silence, complete silence, no shuffling, no wiggling or tapping during silent time.  

QUESTION #5. Does it ever seem you and your children’s lives are spinning out of control? Balancing your inside life to the outside life can be complex. Parents and children today have so very many distractions, schools activities, getting the grades, extracurricular activities, church activities, friends, Scouts, etc. It seems like everyone everywhere is running around like chicken with their heads cut off, especially if you have school age children. Take an evening and list your family priorities, include prepping for the future. Make another list of every activity and organization everyone in your family is associated with, and what benefit they derive from it. The world is changing fast, if you don’t do this as a family once a year or at least once every couple of years, you are going to find out your probably out of touch with your family goals and priorities. Perhaps five years ago prepping wasn’t on your family list of priorities, now it is, have you made changes? Have the courage to stop the things that aren’t working for you and your children, whatever it is. Clubs, organizations, activities that worked in the past, but not now might have to be cut in order for your family to realign themselves to new ones. One person cuts here, someone else cuts there and it will work for everyone. A family that has not readjusted and reassessed their family goals every two years, is behind and not current.
QUESTION #6. Can your family keep calm? Learning to keep calm in the face of crisis is a difficult emotional challenge, but is a skill that must be developed if you plan to get your children and yourself out of disaster alive. If parents are anxious or upset, the children will be twice as upset. Myself, I turn to the Bible, you turn to whatever gives you peace and comfort. Most religions teach hope, so if you are a religious person, turn to that hope. In a national emergency a Christian or Jew may turn to Psalm 46: 1-3  ”God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea. Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, Though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof.” Pick what is important to you and your family and prepare them ahead of time for any upcoming crisis. For six generations now, our family has stood on Psalm 91, by the dying wish of my great grandmother who pinned a note on her children as she lay dying, committing them to the care of angels. Giving your family faith and hope in normal times, gives them calm courage in desperate times. Pray ahead, don’t wait and let your prayers get ‘behind’ and you will be surprised at the calmness your children will display. Be honest with older children about crisis situations, they have a way of knowing anyway. 

QUESTION #7. Have you sat down with your children lately and ask them, who they are? Do your children know? Their answer might surprise you. Some say the only way to know who we are is to do an extensive genealogy. True, that will give you and your children insights into yourself, but it will not tell them their personal values. That is something kids (and adults) need to learn for themselves. I firmly believe the high school and college kids that get into trouble with drinking and drugs do so because they are trying to figure out just who they are. If they are taught family values as younger children their image of themselves will grow strong with their age. A self-identify gives a child security and courage. Hopefully, if bad times do come, your child will know themselves well enough to handle difficult situations, and have confidence to make snap decisions. Hesitation can kill, a person who knows themselves has the confidence needed to respond appropriately and quickly in any situation. You can’t hand a child self-image on a platter. It has been learned early and formed all through a lifetime. Ask your child what their values are, what their friends values are and who they identify themselves to be. Ask yourself too.

Answers to these seven questions teach your children acceptance, obedience, observance, mastery of self and emotions, prioritization, courage and faith.  If you can answer most of these questions with a ‘yes-done’ you are in good shape for any future emergency or disaster. If not, I strongly recommend you consider implementing some of this immediately. Any of these preparations can be made fun for children. They may not necessarily need these skills as a child, but they will retain them for life if you teach them while they are young. Preparations need not all be physical, the physical can disappear. Parental responsibility is not just caring for the children’s physical needs; it is caring for their mental, emotional and spiritual needs too. I encourage you to do some unseen preps soon.

The importance of keeping a curriculum in your plans

In a TEOTWAWKI community, the lifestyle would be more or less the traditional one known to all communities in all times, cultures, and epochs: survival maintenance. Work never ends because, in a traditional community, work is life. Gardening techniques, clothing styles, earthenware, cuisine, tools, art, tapestries, house construction, and all the rest are not ‘pretty things’ at all but artifacts that emerge from survival. They are pretty things when we see them as a Goth’s furry booties in a museum or an Algonquin head wrap in a roadside souvenir shop. Likewise, education is practical, a lesson with a purpose and not as a diversion, and the learning that does not further community welfare is a dangerous one. All effort either contributes to the community welfare or works against it. Learning programs are no different.

Even if cataclysmic events pass after a short time - say, five to ten years only - and we are able to re-enter the society we left with its food stores and water treatment facilities, that is a gap of time that needs to be filled diligently and productively. Children should emerge in a better frame of mind and worldview than if they had been left in the pre-cataclysmic modern public school system. Would your TEOTWAWKI school program do that? This is what the prepper-survivalist strives for: coming out of difficulty stronger, wiser, and looking upon challenges, however fearsome, with the same look that Aristotle described on a ‘great man’: one who looks upon life the way an athlete looks upon a race.

The vital points of learning are in stories. Here are suggestions for designing an approach without electricity for any digital materials, cassettes, or videos. From the descriptions of TEOTWAWKI life that I have seen, it is difficult to imagine that your energy sources would be wisely spent on dvd or cd players, even for educational purposes. It’s likely going to be purposely selected tales and sing-alongs by campfire and candlelight from day one. A family or community must decide for themselves what is moral, good, bad, etc, in terms of reading material and because of the personal nature of that, I do not prescribe materials by name.

Reading the opening chapter of James Wesley, Rawles’ How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It, it is difficult to imagine that there will be much time for school learning concerns, at least in the beginning. In a real TEOTWAWKI scenario (is there any other kind?), most preppers and their children would find it difficult to focus on bookish pursuits. But eventually, if and when things settle down and preparations have paid off well enough that a small community can emerge and stabilize, life will have to go on and part of that maintenance is in the schooling of the young. It is what gives the idea that there is a future to work towards at all, for it would be equally difficult psychologically to go on with things if you and your family/community had the attitude that there would be no future.

Right thinking requires selecting right examples

If we accept that learning must be geared towards practical survival, and if we accept that stories can transmit good examples and ideals necessary to survival (fortitude, perseverance, self-restraint, charity, respect towards authority, etc), then we may infer that the selection of stories is crucial to preparing children to survive, which in turn helps us to survive.

The one in charge of learning (in the home or for a small community school) will have to act as censor in the selection of stories for telling or reading. Let’s not forget that the word comes from the Latin ‘cencere’, which meant to give an opinion or assessment, to appraise. From the late-medieval period on it was used in ecclesiastical terms as ‘censor’ to mean a corrector or editor in the sense that what was printed was accurate and the stamp of approval was the word ‘imprimatur’ - (fit) to be printed. The TEOTWAWKI teacher will have to know what is ‘fit reading’. One of the disasters of modern education is the idea that children can be the creators of their own learning. Shall we allow them to create their own means of survival? We have been taught by mainline media to fear the word censor, but consider how often we as parents do this in practice: we censor what children eat, we censor the time they may be home or in bed by, we censor the language they may use towards their siblings, and so on. If we are willing to admit that a child’s outlook, temperament, and inclination are shaped in great measure by what is seen in the films and in print, then it follows that these things need censoring.

You have a limited amount of time to prepare the mindset of kids, to prepare by the age of ten or twelve in what Aristotle called ‘khreston ethos’ or a fitting outlook, what C.S. Lewis called ‘just sentiments’ - the frame of mind that is conducive to working when cold and wet, learning for tomorrow ‘just because it’s what we do’, accepting correction with humility, acquiring a fledgling sense of decorum, duty, and the like. Learning is not complete by this age but the basis upon which more advanced learning can take place is laid here. The mind at this age is the concrete slab foundation of the house and it had better be strong. If this is true generally in the comfy environment that we have at the moment, how much more true will it be in a perilous environment where the survival of everyone is contingent upon what notions are put into our children’s imaginations?

Stories - the foundation of community

Stories, as education, were never for diversion. Today, myths are considered to be fanciful stories for entertainment from a naïve past, but in fact they served as educational lessons to their original societies. ‘Little Red Riding-Hood’ was a tale to warn small children not to venture into the woods because in early-medieval times, that’s where roving Celtic bandits lived - and kidnapped children that drifted too far afield. This is how a little Romano-Briton boy ended up an Irish shepherd for fifteen years; he later became known as Saint Patrick. The genealogies of many traditions are thought of as being overly-attentive to family trees but in a traditional community, genealogies are historical time-lines. With the Internet, parents have great access to all manner of stories new and old to collect, print, and even use now without any TEOTWAWKI. Parables, proverbs, fables, and legends (including adventure tales) transmit lessons about survival-conduct, wise decision making, and right perspective. Right-perspective is not about your ideological preference or your favorite -ism; it’s about survival within your retreat.

The material of a prepper’s home school or community school might be in pictures or words but it’s what the stories are about that counts. Many societies of more primitive peoples without a written language are known for their generosity and peaceful way of life, and don’t forget that at the time of Nazi Germany, Germans were the most literate nation in the world. Even at the most practical level, such as the Bushmen of Africa, there is an ‘oral literature’ without which they would have difficulty making sense of the world around them and their place in it. Consider collecting a list of stories (tales, books, etc) classified under value-headings, ex: about family life, community life, work ethic, and personal responsibility. The goal is moral living generally, for all the camping supplies and solar panels and chlorine tablets and jerked beef and heirloom seeds come to nothing if strife, dissent, and selfishness reign in your retreat compound. Daily stories help in some measure (depending on how well they are integrated with other tasks in the day) to keep order. It would be difficult to teach children to participate in a tight community structure while feeding them some random assortment of disconnected stories that go against communal living. When it comes to tight community living, where every person young, old, and in between is a vital cog in the daily operation of things, moral stories are as important as clean water and defense. If you see nothing in common between the traditional stories of the Tlingit in Alaska, the Sanskrit parables of the ancient Indo-European Aryans, the myths of the ancient Greeks, and the tales of medieval Slavs, then know that it is their survival as communities.

Written word, spoken word

Wars and disruptions in The Grid can be temporary. However, if a TEOTWAWKI scenario happens, it would likely endure for many years because the very nature of TEOTWAWKI is big, not small. After fifteen years of travel, living and working on four continents, it is my impression that the Amish in the United States have the most balanced or holistic system of education: letters and stories that enforce the social ethos. There is a similar community in Europe (and some other countries, including the US) called Bruderhof with many parallels in approach but they are not as numerous. A number of small eco-communities (often downplayed as ‘communes’ by the western technocratic media) have grown in Russia and in Germany, but because of their nature and principles, they are not on the internet. They all value stories and art as part of the mechanism of community health. Should there be second and third-generation TEOTWAWKI communities, and should they lose most writing skills, they would still stand stronger than others as long as they carry with them the necessary Moral ABCs to survive.

Don’t let reading dominate. Use voice. In your curriculum, include many oral response/ performance activities that follow stories. Having kids read aloud helps with communication skills generally, can remove some speech impediments, assists memory, and also encourages self-confidence. Have them identify connections with previous stories. Ask how they are related and how they are different. You might also combine a spoken story with art/drawing activities. Traditionally, music is also combined with stories, especially for younger kids. Music in many societies is the means to teaching correct grammar because children internalize rhythm more easily than rules. The use of songs has long been known to work well in foreign language acquisition. Rhyme in music and poems is also a natural feature of language learning because it is an analytical activity. Incidentally, many traditional (non- or semi-literate) communities that I have seen in my travels have rich musical traditions without instruments. Voice and melody are the important elements.

For those who would develop writing in the curriculum, there is no great rocket science to making comprehension/response activities into learning pedagogies. Anything read or listened to has the basic pattern:
-Comprehension
-Elicit the moral/lesson of it
-Connect or integrate it with previous stories or real-life experiences (physical, emotional, ethical, creative, etc.)
This process doesn’t change much in terms of essentials all the way up to college work, only in depth and complexity. For example, the standard parts of an analytical college essay are:
-Summary of the main ideas (What the facts are, what the deal is)
-Interpretation (What they mean, how to look at it)
-Proposal (What we should do next, new ideas)
And at the higher level of formal research projects, it becomes:
-Review of the literature
-Research methods and analysis of the data
-Results and applications
Create a similar template for any story at any age level.

Children and especially adolescents should be encouraged to contribute materials for the library such as writing original short stories and reflections, writing down their experiences, noting humorous episodes from their days, and - importantly - reading each other’s stories or telling them dramatically. Humor will be a vital component in TEOTWAWKI society. Kids should be encouraged to draw scenes of hope and joy wherever their imaginations can find it. Book-making (for what they write and draw) is another basic and rewarding skill that can be worked into the whole process. Ink-making, carving out a quill, paper making can also be part of the curriculum because these things might in fact be needed.

Select your library now. Even if you don’t have children, some in your community might. Your library collection should not be too big. If each family in a community had a small library, it would make for a sufficient sharing system all put together. The library should also be portable. Having a community does not guarantee that its members will have the luxury of remaining in one place settled down. You might need to go nomadic. This lifestyle should also be somewhere in your selected stories so children can relate to it should the need arise. There are plenty of stories from nomadic cultures that help young and old alike to comprehend the life of traveling.

Traditional societies that have survived so long in natural TEOTWAWKI conditions - in Australia, Central Asia, South America, North America, Siberia, and many others right up to our day all share one thing in common with regard to the young: educating youth through stories that impart the values and character necessary to not only survival but constructive outlook and moral self-worth. It will be good for preppers to study something about existing communal groups that integrate traditional stories with living,. For example: kibbutz settlements, Amish communities, Eskimo reservations, monasteries, and other indigenous cultures around the world, both settled and nomadic, to glean information.  In such communities, things are not done frivolously. What works is kept, what doesn’t work is discarded.

This is the course of literature. What we list as ‘pretty things’ are just artifacts of survival taken out of their survival context. Real literature is that which promotes survival. It can become pretty afterwards for future generations to look back on when they are in the position of enjoying the accomplishments that their forebearers (re)built.

James:
We homeschool our three children and all of them have never been to a public or private school.
I would like to add to the homeschool article.  It is possible to educate younger children for minimal amounts of money, but when they get older there are things to keep in mind.  Colleges have entrance requirements.  They require high school students to have completed certain classes such as advanced math and science subjects. Two foreign language classes are also required. My oldest is planning to start dual enrollment next school year.  She just had to take the SAT at a cost of $50.  She may need to retake it depending on her scores - for applying for scholarships.  Also there is drivers education which is available now for homeschoolers at a cost of $60-to-$100, if I remember correctly.

Part of the beauty of dual enrollments is gaining both high school and college credits for the same class.  We are hoping one of those will be chemistry, saving us a lot of money in lab costs.  We did buy a used microscope this past year for her advanced biology course.  And there was also the dissection kit at around $40.
We do purchase used books.  This last year a friend let me borrow some of her books for one of my kids.  In two years when her younger child need them, I will let her borrow some of mine.
College costs are very scary these days.  Please pray for us as we have three kids, one of those seriously desires to go to veterinary school.  I know God can make a way.  He can make a way for you, too, if you desire to homeschool. Thanks, - Sisterpastor

CPT Rawles - 
I am pleased to see good advice being given about homeschooling.  I wanted to make a point to the community that I often make in person.  I am a public school teacher in one of the "best" jurisdictions in the country in terms of test scores and minority success.  Yet despite that, we are still what any reasonably educated person would consider a disaster of sloth and ignorance.

I strongly encourage all the readers of SurvivalBlog to find alternatives for their kids besides public schools.  As hard working as most of the teachers are, the place is an irretrievable cesspool of low morals, the celebration of ignorance and complacency, and generally soul-sucking.  To supplement my income (and my sanity) I "guest lecture" for a number of homeschool networks when I am not at the public school.  Without exception, the homeschooled students are more alert, inquisitive, literate, logical, and capable.  I wish this wasn't the case because I put so much effort into my public school kids but the damage has been done by the time they get to me in high school - like a malnourished child who will be stunted for life despite great nutrition as an adult.  My child will never set foot in an American public school and I routinely urge parents of my students to do the same (drawing the ire of my administration and co-workers for some reason).  

Public education being "free" is not an excuse to put your kids in there.  As I tell the more bright public school students when they complain about the pace or their classmates "Public school is free and you get what you pay for." - Jeff T.

JWR,
Kathryn T.'s entry, Homeschool for Less Than $30 a Year, was quite good. I would only add that, when purchasing used curriculum or books, a "sniff test" is highly advised. Simply open the book and take a sniff; you will easily detect any musty smells or odd odors. I failed to do this one year and ended up buying textbooks owned by a smoker. They reeked every time they were opened, and we didn't study that subject that particular year until I was able to replace it. No money saved there.
 
Save yourself (and your lesson plans) the trouble. Sniff before you buy! - Home's Cool Mom

It’s that time again.  Spring, you say?  No, it’s curriculum sale time!  Every spring, homeschooling support groups used book sales and homeschool conventions sprout like tulips.  March, April, and May are the season for planning and obtaining next year’s curricula.

If you have considered homeschooling as an educational alternative for your children or would like to stockpile educational materials for potential hard times ahead (whether or not you homeschool currently), now is the time to be looking.  Homeschooling does not need to be expensive to be effective.  In fact, it is possible to home educate well for under $30 per year, per child.

First, it is important to understand the basics of homeschooling and homeschooling philosophies.  To familiarize yourself with how to approach home education, you can get books from the library, such as The Well-Trained Mind by Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Wise or Homeschooling Year by Year by Rebecca Rupp, Ph.D.

You may also want to consider attending a homeschooling convention, which often yields the best value for your time and money.  The most popular ones are listed on the Great Homeschool Conventions web site.  One of the largest is the Cincinnati (Ohio) Homeschool Convention which is April 19th – 21st this year.  It is centrally located and draws hundreds of vendors, speakers, and participants.

However, you can also attend smaller ones near your home.  Ask at the public library or Google “homeschool conventions” and your state.  Homeschool conventions typically cost $10 - $60 in admission, but you can attend for free if you volunteer.  Contact the organizers well in advance.  Volunteers are usually asked to check in participants or do other relatively simple tasks for several hours in exchange for free admission to the conference.  You can also apply for a scholarship from the convention hosts.  Some organizers will extend free admission and give curricula vouchers to low-income participants.  An unemployed friend received $100 in curricula vouchers at a convention last weekend because she applied for assistance.

Once you familiarize yourself with homeschooling and the various educational approaches (eclectic, classical, Charlotte Mason, etc.), you will want to begin accumulating curricula.  If money is tight or you are stockpiling for potential future use, focus on the 3Rs—reading, writing, and arithmetic.  Start with math, as that is usually the easiest subject to purchase.
There are tons of math programs available, but one of the most common, complete, and serviceable is Saxon Math.  You can pick up a used Saxon Math textbook for as little as 99 cents on eBay.  The book does not need to be a recent edition, as mathematics does not change that often, but should be in decent condition with little to no writing inside.  If you are not adept at math yourself, you will also need to purchase an answer key, which will cost about $5 used.  Saxon Math has an unusual numbering system.  For instance, Saxon 6/5 means that it is for an “advanced fifth grader or an average sixth grader.”  It has been my observation that you should go with the second number.  The first 30 lessons are typically review from the previous year, and learning is incremental, so it should not be too hard for even an average fifth grader.  Thus, Saxon 6/5 is for fifth graders.
For older students, you may want to consider books from the Key To series (Key To Decimals, Key to Fractions, Key to Algebra, Key to Geometry, etc.).  These books are excellent, inexpensive ($3 each), and self-teaching.

Next, contemplate writing.  I recommend buying some lined notebooks ($1 each or less during the back to school sales) and a box of pencils ($2).  Use the notebooks to have your child write journals, stories, letters, and essay assignments.  Guide them through proper punctuation, capitalization, and grammar, as well as good writing practices (e.g., outlining and the five-paragraph essay).  If you need help with these skills, pick up a used copy of Writer’s Inc. or a similar edition from this company ($5).  The materials from Andrew Pudewa's Excellence in Writing are wonderful, but much more costly.  If your children are elementary-school aged, you may want a copy of the appropriate grade level of Handwriting without Tears (about $5) as well.

For additional grammar help, consider Easy Grammar or Daily Grams.  These are expensive new (about $25), but can be picked up cheaply or free (if some pages are missing) at homeschool used book sales.  Even if the book has many pages ripped out, they are still useful because Daily Grams gives 180 days worth of grammar lessons.  Each day the lesson covers capitalization, punctuation, parts of speech, spelling, sentence combining, and other skills.  Many families begin a book and use only the first 15 or 20 days because they get too busy or use other resources, leaving the remaining pages blank.  Don’t overlook these, as you can find them inexpensively.  I find there is little difference between a fifth grade Daily Grams book and an eighth grade book.  The concepts are the same, just repeated in different ways.

For spelling, you can print out grade-appropriate spelling lists for free from the Internet (plan ahead for a grid-down situation).   Or, you can purchase a spelling program.  Spelling Power is an all-inclusive spelling program that has spelling lists and games for K-12  grades in one book.  It is relatively expensive, even used ($20-50), but you would not need to buy any other spelling programs which makes it good for stockpiling.  If spelling is difficult for your child, I recommend All About Spelling and Phonetic Zoo, but these programs are also more costly.  SpellingCity.com is great for reviewing spelling words for free if you still have Internet access.

To teach an elementary child to read, consider using Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons by Siegfried Englemann (about $10 used), Bob Books by Bobby Lynn Maslen (about $7 used), and Pathway Readers ($2 used).  If the public library is available, select some age-appropriate books and have your student begin reading aloud to you every day.  Our favorites included the Frog and Toad books and others by Arnold Lobel.  Another favorite resource for learning to read and write is Explode the Code.  These simple black-and-white line drawn workbooks cost about $5 new, but can often be found cheaply at homeschool used book sales.

In my ten years of home educating, I have taught two children to read.  While it may seem as though teaching the younger grades is easier than teaching the older ones, the opposite is actually true.  Once a child can read, he can teach himself.  Reading is the foundation for every academic skill.  Being able to read well is crucial.  It is important children have reading material that is skill appropriate and interesting to them.  Be patient.  With daily instruction, it will take between two and seven years for a child to learn to read fluently (120 words per minute).
With any remaining funds, stockpile a home library of age-appropriate picture and chapter books.  This is wise, even if you currently have a wonderful public library nearby.  To find good books, look for reading lists, such as the one available from Sonlight Curriculum or Ambleside Online.  Books that have received a Newberry Award or Honor are usually good bets.  Then, troll through public library used book sales with a list.  Used books there typically cost 50 cents to $2 each.  I also recommend joining PaperbackSwap.com where you can trade your old books for credits to “purchase” new ones.
Another curriculum to consider, either for reading suggestions or for outright purchase, is The Robinson Curriculum.  While it costs almost $200 (and does not include math books), it covers 12 years worth of educational materials on CD-ROM, making it less than $16 per year.

Include on your reading lists history books, such as A History of US by Joy Hakim, and science books, such as Abeka, Apologia, Usborne, or the Let’s-Read-and-Find-Out-Science series for younger kids.  You may want to obtain books about economics and government, too, such as Whatever Happened to Penny Candy? and Whatever Happened to Justice? by Richard Maybury. 
If you have high schoolers or will soon, you might want to purchase literature anthologies, such as The Norton Anthology of American Literature, to gain the maximum coverage for your dollar.  If your children read an entire anthology and discussed and wrote about the contents, they would have a more thorough literature education than 80 percent of the United States.  I just got an anthology on PaperbackSwap for $3.79. (I purchased a book credit.)

Home education can be much richer with the addition of art, music, foreign language, and other extras, but the most important subjects to cover are the 3Rs, and those can be addressed for $30 per year, per child.  A child who has received a solid foundation in the 3Rs can learn any other subject if necessary.  When you are planning ahead, these are the most logical materials to stockpile.  Whether you homeschool now or think you may choose to or be forced to in the future, it is prudent to stockpile books—atlases, encyclopedia sets, novels, nonfiction books, classics, plays, dictionaries, thesauruses, textbooks, workbooks, blank notebooks, and other tomes.  You never know when you may need to educate or entertain your children for a week, a month, or more with the resources in your home.  It’s best to be prepared.

My wife and I are preppers primarily for our children.  Though we have lived rich, full lives, they are not yet even adolescents.  If what we are prepping for happens, it will be this generation that will rebuild this nation to greatness.  We want them to be equipped intellectually and spiritually.  We want them to understand the influences of the Greeks, Romans and British that helped our Founding Fathers craft the greatest nation this planet has known.  I refuse to entrust America to those that do not understand these truths or those that are not up to the task.

When asked what school our kids attend, I used to say that “We homeschool our children.”  Now I more accurately say, “my wife homeschools our children and I wholeheartedly support it.”  By the time my workday is done, the kids are done.  No homework – that’s one of the great blessings of homeschooling.  They become proficient in subjects and then they move on (unless they are reviewing, of course).

But we are not simply lazy by not wanting to help our kids with homework in the evenings.  We had our oldest in a great Christian private school for 2 years.  Then we moved her home because we believed (and believe it even more fervently now) that homeschooling was simply the best educational opportunity for our children. 

For the first two years at home, my wife used the “K-12” curriculum.  It was good.  The following year went from good to the best.  That year, a friend introduced us to the Classical Education model.  The Classical Education model has been used for most of human history and yet, I hadn’t even been aware of it.  Modern education is outcome based.  I am a product of outcome based education (I figure that will excuse any grammar errors that are contained herein).  

The advantages of a classical education are many.  More than anything, it teaches and equips students for a lifetime of learning.  Our kids are part of Classical Conversations, a nationwide homeschool community started by Leigh Bortins in 1996.  The students meet once per week as a group for 24 weeks throughout the school year.  Classical Conversations provides a curriculum and a forum for accountability and interaction with other students that are experiencing the same rich educational opportunity.   The mission statement of Classical Conversations is for students "to know God and to make Him known."

Modern Education vs. Classical Education
Modern education places the student in the center of a wheel with each subject forming the spokes of a wheel feeding information (segregated into separate unrelated subjects) to the child.  Most private Christian schools add a spoke of the wheel called Religion or Theology.  The other subjects in that Christian school might incorporate a couple of Bible verses here or there but the curriculum is not integrated with our Creator.  A classical education places God at the center of the wheel with all the subjects pointing to Him and from Him.  All the subjects are also integrated with each other (i.e., pointing to each other).  How can created beings study history, science or math and not focus on the Creator of this universe, these people and His place throughout history and the events of mankind?

Here is some additional insights from the Classical Conversations web site.

Classical Conversations combines classical learning and a Biblical world view.
Classical Conversations’ programs model the three stages of classical learning—grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric. Using age appropriate methods, children are taught the tools for studying any subject. Grammar stage is for ages 2-12. Grammar is imparting knowledge through memorizing of facts, facts and more facts: history, science, English grammar, poems, geography, Latin, math, books of the Bible, anything that parents know and wish to impart to their children. The tools of memorization are repeating the information and or action, over and over through reading it out loud to your child over and over, asking your child to repeat it, singing the information, drawing maps, and games like Jeopardy. The Dialectic Stage, ages 12-15 is taking all of the knowledge (facts) a child has learned plus new information and processing it in their minds to gain understanding. The Rhetoric Stage, ages 15-19, have gained a mastery of information and understanding. They take the information and demonstrate it to others through various methods.

The Classical model emphasizes mastery of facts during the early years. This gives students a foundation on which to build later learning and a solid framework where ideas can be categorized and compared as students mature. (For more information on the classical education model, read Dorothy Sayers’ 1948 essay The Lost Tools of Learning.)

Classical Conversations is set up in a three cycle format, and every three years the information repeats. So if a family joins when their child is in Kindergarten, the child will get the same base information twice through their sixth grade year. Parents are free to take the base information presented in Classical and expand on it in anyway they feel so led. Every Classical Conversation's community in the country does the same cycle each year. This year is Cycle 3.

Cycle 3 consists of:

History: American History, Presidents, Preamble and the Bill of Rights

History timeline (cards are available through Veritas Press. (Classical Conversations is creating their own History timeline cards which should be on the market, very soon),

Geography: American Geography ,

Science: Human body and Chemistry,

Math facts.

Latin: John 1:1-7.

Grammar: Verbs/irregular verbs, sentence parts, clauses, Sentence structures and patterns.

Cycle 1 (next year) consists of:

History: Ancient, Medieval and early modern

History timeline

Geography: Middle East, Asia, Africa and South America

Science: Biology, Geology, weather.

Math facts

Latin: Noun Cases through 5th declension

Grammar: Prepositions, Linking verbs

Cycle 2 consists of:

History: Medieval history through Free elections in South Africa, European

History timeline

Geography: South America and Caribbean

Science: Ecology and physics.

Math facts

Latin: Verb conjugations

Grammar: pronouns, eight parts of speech, adverbs, four kinds of sentences

As I said, my wife is doing all the work here.  I’m largely an observer (with the never-ending desire to get more involved) and I must say I’m truly blown away by the amount of information our four kids are learning and what a rich experience this is for them.  Oh how I wish I had this opportunity when I was young.  My wife is also learning amazing new things as she shares this journey with them.   I am unspeakably proud of my wife and our children.  

The Classical Conversations program is nearly doubling in size every year and I am not surprised.  It is a fantastic model.  It is very challenging and my wife and I are looking forward to our oldest (12) to enter the Challenge Program (7-12 grade).  We recently attended a parents meeting for this next phase and I left there so excited for our kids!  They will learn Latin, debate skills, try a mock murder case in 8th grade, utilize the Socratic method to solve problems in groups and critique their peers in a safe and encouraging environment.  Seventh graders will be able to draw the world map (freehand) and label every country and major geographic features (over 400 items!)  By 11th and 12th grade the students lead most of the discussions throughout their daily session.  My mind wonders what college or employer wouldn’t desperately want these students after this rigorous training. 

The Most Coveted T-shirt in 5th Grade
Classical Conversations has an annual “contest” in the Foundations program (K-6 grade) where students test for “Memory Master”.  For successful completion, the winners get a T-shirt.  I believe it is fitting that the “prize” is something that will either fall apart, sit in the back of the drawer or be outgrown in a couple years since the true “prize” is mastery of the task at hand which will serve them for a lifetime.  They will learn firsthand the amazing capacity of their brains and have the confidence to face great challenges in the years to come.

Memory Master is reciting from memory, before the school director.  It amounts to over 1,000 pieces of unique information, with all the work learned during the course of one year.  The bulk of the information changes every year while some items are constant, such as the timeline of human history (containing over 160 events) and math facts.  Examples of the material that needs to be committed to memory :

Science: What is an element?  “An element is a basic chemical substance defined by its atomic number and atomic mass.”  (this is considered 1 of the 1,000 pieces of information referenced above)
History: Tell me about Pearl Harbor.  “On December 7, 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, causing the U.S. to join the Allies in World War II.”
Geography: Trails.  “Cumberland Road, Santa Fe Trail, Mormon Trail, Gila Trail, Old Spanish Trail, California Trail, Oregon Trail”
Grammar: Independent Clause.  “An independent clause expresses a complete thought like a sentence.”
Math: The Commutative Law.  “The Commutative Law for addition: a+b = b+a.  The Commutative Law for multiplication: a x b = b x a.”
Latin: Latin Nouns.  “vita /life; lux/light; homo/hominum nomen/name” (they are learning John 1:1-7 in Latin and English this year)

The material must be recited in four different levels of testing with the final round allowing for no mistakes.  The last year when our three older kids were testing for Memory Master was quite an anxious time since I knew how hard they had each worked on the material – and then it all comes down to a performance test (which I believe is great preparation for future tests in life, in school and by employers, etc.).

A final reason to consider homeschooling is the multiple advantages offered for preppers.

For Preppers, homeschooling offers the following advantages:

1. Provide your kids with an unapologetic Christian world view that allows for a foundational understanding of the greatness of America (the America of our Founding Fathers) in addition to the critical influences of ancient Greek, Roman and later European cultures
2. Homeschool wherever you live which offers the opportunity to move to your retreat location now  – or the opportunity to spend part of the year in more than one location.  I like to joke that our kids go to one of the most exclusive private schools in the country (not a joke, I guess.  I wouldn’t want them anywhere else).
3. The cost/value of a homeschool education beats any private school education
4. You can shape the curriculum to include or exclude whatever you want (subject to any restrictions that your state may impose) such as gardening, cooking, homesteading skills, etc. while you may choose to exclude environmentalism and multiculturalism.
5. A guaranty of consistent, loving instructors that know your children better than any other teacher on earth could know them.
6. Most children are directing their own schedule and instruction in 6th or 7th grade – which frees up the parent to focus on the critical years for younger students (reading and math fundamentals – so they can be independent in 6th grade) or frees up large blocks of the day when the youngest child achieves largely independent coursework.
7. Homeschooling is highly adaptable for children with special needs.  In the words of one of the Classical Conversations Challenge Instructors (8th grade), every child is a gift from God and not a societal castaway destined to sit in a corner of a classroom with a “special” teacher.

And I’m sure I’m missing some others that your great readers might want to add.

I can’t recommend a Classical homeschooling education enough and it has been one of the greatest blessings for our family.   I expect it will have a generational impact on this country and an eternal impact for God’s Kingdom.

Many people remember the book Walden as the story of a hermit living in a hut who survived on twigs and berries in the Concord, Massachusetts woods. Its author, Henry David Thoreau, was no hermit, but a survivalist and philosopher who personified the best of American values of self-reliance, simplicity, love of the land, individualism and defense of personal liberty against governmental overreaching.
He lived simply on Walden Pond from 1845-1847 without a GPS, iPod, iPhone, laptop or wi-fi.. Long before we developed a dependence on electronic devices, Thoreau defined some first principles for personal autonomy and survival. We find them in Walden, his gift of essential life strategies that we ought to re-learn before stuffing our G.O.O.D. bags and thinking that we have prepared ourselves to meet the Black Swans ahead. He would warn us today that we must not bet our lives on electronic survival devices because others control them and can jam them by the flick of a switch.

Thoreau's EDC bag
This article lifts up seven of Thoreau's survival principles that we can rely upon; that each of us can own at no cost, and which no government or terrorist can destruct. Think of these principles as the fabric of an indestructible carry bag large enough to stuff with all our plans and tools for personal survival.
Many surprises await us in the 2000s. This we know, but none of us knows the timing. Thus, we create short-term and long-term survival strategies. Thoreau's principles are an overarching everyday strategy, holding that a life worth living depends upon remaining free and independent, living as autonomous men and women alert and able to confront, ignore, or go around obstacles in our way. The best survival strategy is to be always ready, but live well always.

The individual versus the world
"Simplify, simplify," Thoreau repeated, and be certain that you have the essentials for life--food, shelter, fuel and clothing--under your control. Thoreau's sojourn in Walden woods lasted two years, two months and two days in the cabin he built himself. It was no coincidence that his move-in date was the fourth of July. Thoreau explained, "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

Writing four hours a day on the shore of Walden Pond, he pondered how an individual could maintain his autonomy against a mighty government, powerful business interests and a growing trend to materialism. Just as in 1845, our politicians continue to grab power by making thousands of promises. What they deliver is trillion dollar debts and more promises. It is said that each of us now owns $2 million of government debt. (Have you budgeted for that?) In a cozy relationship with politicians, business spends billions coaxing us to buy things we do not need, that rarely perform as advertised and that often drag us under a pile of debt. Thoreau saw a way for an individual to get around these growing influences, and he spelled it out in Walden.

What's essential; what's not
To emphasize his points, he often wrote in extremes. For example, Thoreau defined anything non-essential to life as a "luxury." While he succumbed to a few luxuries himself, Thoreau spent within his means by deciding his own balance of essentials and luxuries and then earned just enough to sustain it. He called this living "deliberately", and it was the centerpiece of his life strategy. If he lived deliberately, he would not get into debt and therefore, not become enslaved by work to pay it off. Debt is more than dollars and cents because it represents the amount of life we must trade in work to pay it off. Time is money, and Thoreau became rich by acquiring it.

Thoreau enjoyed the work he did, but tried to work as little as possible. He believed that society had it all wrong about the role of work in life and said so in his Harvard graduation speech. People sat up in their seats as he declared that they had things backwards and that they should work just one day a week and have the other six to do what was important to them. This was no utopian dream. It is how he actually lived. Incidentally, I verified this with the Institute at Walden Woods.

Personal responsibility to do what's right
Thoreau believed that each of us has an intuitive sense of morality, what is right and wrong. He held that we have a personal responsibility to uphold higher moral laws when they come into conflict with manufactured laws. Consequently, he had a personal theory of "nullification" of government law when it conflicted with moral law. He maintained that no government has any "pure right over my person or property but what I concede to it.” Thus he was philosophically consistent that as a good neighbor, he would train with the Concord militia because he chose to. However, he chose not to pay a tax to a government waging an unjust war in Mexico, and that cost him a night in jail.

Thoreau's arrest inspired his world-famous essay Civil Disobedience where he proclaimed, "I heartily accept the motto, — 'That government is best which governs least'; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically." Many people mistakenly limit Thoreau's thinking to passive resistance. He railed against the government's hanging of John Brown who raided the arsenal at Harper's Ferry to arm slaves. Violence is not the preferred way to protest government policies, but as a last resort, Thoreau agreed with President Thomas Jefferson who wrote, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

TEOTWAWKI
Today few of us could replicate Thoreau's life in a 10 x 15 foot cabin a mile from his closest neighbor. What we can do whether we live in New York City, Los Angeles, or in between is to think of Walden as a state of mind.

Walden's principles and maxims are as relevant in 2012 as in 1853. In fact, times were remarkably similar to our world today. Global competition was common. Better quality German pencils nearly drove the Thoreau family pencil business under. The Panic of 1837 was as severe as our financial downturn today. A real estate bubble burst due to sub-prime lending, and real estate prices plummeted. Families lost jobs, spending power, and risked their savings as half the banks in America folded within weeks. The federal government, whose policies touched off the contagion, was growing in power and would continue piling on public debt. Even then, the U.S. government depended upon foreign countries to finance its operations.

As the nation entered the industrial revolution, Walden was Thoreau’s challenge to a society forgetting cultural values and practices of the first Americans such as self- reliance, thrift, and the importance of the family. Fortunately, those practices are coming back into style, as survivalists worldwide look to authentic sources such as Survival Blog to re-learn skills our consumer culture has forgotten. These tried and true skills together with the seven critical Thoreau principles taken from my book Walden Today combine to make us better prepared every day.

Thoreau’s Choices to Live Deliberately:

1. Be true to yourself.
In 1837, Thoreau was one of the first to identify societal pressure as the underlying motivation that drove people to consume more than they could pay for. As we know, Thoreau resisted pressure to conform; his brain thrummed to the beat of what he called a "different drummer.” He wrote, “No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof.” He urged us to think for ourselves-- to believe nothing told us by church bureaucracy, government or acquaintances without first checking it out and deciding for ourselves. Nor had he any confidence in advice from his elders: “Age is no better, hardly so well, qualified for an instructor as youth, for it has not profited so much as it has lost. One may almost doubt if the wisest man has learned anything of absolute value by living.”
In life, we alone have the job of choosing what to believe, and how to act upon what we determine. Any lifestyle or work, no matter how humble or unconventional is a success--as long as it works for you. Thoreau adds, “The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind...Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of others?” In other words, Thoreau exhorts us to question society’s
norms because the herd may understand an issue exactly backwards, often due to the influence of media. There are no do-overs in life, so do not waste time living up to someone else's expectations.

2. Network to grow and thrive.
Thoreau had friends with diverse interests, and he networked well among them. His friends included some of America's best thinkers including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Bronson and Louisa May Alcott, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Walt Whitman. Thoreau tested his ideas and stood his own ground against these thoughtful minds.

Thoreau’s relationship with Emerson brought him paid work as a tutor, handyman, lecturer, schoolteacher, and more. His friends sent him referrals in his surveying business because of his reputation for honesty and competence--attributes which never go out of demand. His love of nature connected him with famous Harvard botanist Louis Agassiz for whom he collected botanical specimens never before catalogued.
Networking is also the source of our family's small business success. Former business associates provide almost all our new opportunities, while our church family remains a key source of Christian fellowship and education for our children.

3. Life is short, so enjoy it by living simply to stay free.
To live simply, Thoreau acquired the things that are “necessary to life.” He avoided most “luxuries,” those things that he perceived as constricting his freedom because of debt required to acquire them or the effort required to maintain them. He worried that collecting "stuff" would make him "a tool of his tools." He thought it foolish to keep up with the proverbial Joneses. Doing so would distract him from his more
important activities and goals. In the bargain he remained autonomous by exchanging as little life as possible for possessions.

4. Become self-reliant: do it yourself.
The Thoreau family’s main source of income was the manufacture of lead pencils. Their product quality slipped over time and by the 1840s there were four pencil manufacturers within a few miles of the Thoreau factory. In a crowded market, and with an inferior product, the outlook for Thoreau pencils was grim. Young Henry came to the family’s rescue. Harvard never taught him chemistry, engineering, operations management or marketing—expertise that would be necessary for the Thoreaus to regain their market position. He learned all these disciplines on his own, and thought outside the box to create the country's highest quality pencils. His innovations included a line of pencils new to the world numbered 1, 2, 3 and 4 for hardness—including the iconic #2 pencil we use today.
With so many resources available, we can learn to become a do-it-yourselfer at almost anything. Just painting your own home, for example, is a great way to save money, gain self-reliance, and involve the whole family in a satisfying accomplishment no matter their age or intellectual disadvantage. Even young children or the elderly can carry cool water to refresh family painters just as the first Americans did. A do-it-yourself attitude is not so common anymore in America. However, with the millions of weekly hits on practical skills articles and videos on the Web, and the rising cost of tradesmen, self-reliance is definitely coming back.

5. Adapt to changes in life by continually learning and trying new ideas.
Thoreau's ideal was to remain autonomous and earn just enough to support himself.
Surveying and pencil making were his primary income sources; however he was flexible and humble enough to earn his living even by menial work. He wrote to a fellow graduate, “I am a Schoolmaster— a Private Tutor, a Surveyor--a Gardener, a Farmer—a Painter, I mean a House Painter, a Carpenter, a Mason, a Day-Laborer, a Pencil-Maker, a Glass-paper Maker, a Writer, and sometimes a Poetaster [an unskilled poet].” He was also a consultant, lecturer and book author.

When he moved into his Walden home, Thoreau hoped to earn income by farming the field behind his house. He learned quickly that the time required to tend acres of beans consumed too much of his free time. He changed his gardening plan for the next year to grow food only for himself. Ever pragmatic, Thoreau looked to earn more and work less as a self-taught surveyor. In the bargain, surveying gave him two full seasons and many interim weeks off for leisure. His advice to us is to learn continuously all our lives and stay alert to new income opportunities to guard our independence.

6. Take advantage of the conveniences and opportunities of the age.
The train and telegraph were technologies that fascinated Thoreau. I think he would have loved our Internet to bring him the cultural riches of the world. I am equally sure he would never have wasted hours surfing the net, texting, or checking his email every five minutes. He chose to be poor in terms of money, but poor is a relative term. What is scraping by to one person, can be a life of plenty to another. Thoreau found countless
opportunities for cultural enrichment, personal growth, and entertainment available at no cost to him. He explored the Merrimac River by canoe, attended lectures at the Lyceum, participated in Emerson’s discussion groups, climbed Mt. Katahdin and walked for hours in the woods each day enjoying the beauty of nature and being outdoors.

America still has vast tracts of public lands for our use, and the electronic age provides us with innumerable opportunities—also at little or no cost—for education, culture, entertainment and earning a living. Each of us has access the same information as a college professor. We can watch sporting events free and see better than those in $500 seats in the stadium. We can savor the world's most breathtaking scenery and treasures from our homes and hear beautiful music in Surround Sound. In Thoreau's day, the average person never heard a symphony orchestra. To do so would have been a considerable expense to travel for days to hear one of the few symphonies in America. We can learn practical skills and economic analysis from expert bloggers around the world and be as informed as any reporter on the planet can. Today there is no reason for anyone, regardless of income, to be bored if they use the virtually free conveniences of our age for entertainment and learning once reserved for only the wealthy.

7. Work Deliberately.
Thoreau lived and worked "deliberately." He emphasized, “I make my own time. I make my own terms.” This is the key to freedom and independence. Controlling his time and terms, he would never lock himself in to a job that enslaved him with long hours, stress, and fear of losing the job. As a delightful side benefit, he would never have to bite his tongue when speaking to management, work for jerks or go to work every day if he could do the week’s work in a single day. When you work for yourself, you will never hear the words, "you're fired."

In 2012 with employment uncertainty in almost every field, many people hedge their bets by starting their own business on the side as they work their primary job. A well- employed client of ours bought a franchise business for his wife, and she is growing it to guarantee that the family will have income and independence no matter what happens to their primary source of income. Gaston Glock was a factory manager when he started a side business in his garage. In addition to planning for income redundancy, we advise friends to have savings stashed away to live for six months to a year. This is not easy to do. However, we have found that there are many things to cut back on if your primary goal is to remain free and independent.

Living "deliberately" belongs in every EDC bag.
Thoreau made his EDC bag from the principles of deliberate living. They guide my family today as in 1994 when we began to adopt them. Each of us must rely on his own effort to survive and truly live. The central decision--or non-decision is to "live deliberately" or not to. If you are reading this blog, you likely have made your decision already.

JWR Adds: Wayne M. Thomas is the Editor of Walden Today

From all appearances we are a typical family in our white trash, low rent neighborhood in the suburbs. Normal for our family of 9 has been living the last twenty-odd years on much more love than money. Scraping by, scrounging, bartering, repairing and repurposing things constantly in order to keep the home fires burning, gas in the tank, peanut butter and jelly on the table. Good times were relishing the pure gold of fat laughing babies, silly kids, and slow paced days when everyone was reasonably content at the same time.
What even our blatant survivalist solar panel/gun collecting/FedEx-bringing-cases-of- MREs- neighbor doesn’t even know is…

Ten years ago we found a parcel of raw land for sale in Central Oregon, in a heavily forested area of lodge pole pine trees, and purchased it at 100 dollars a month on a 10 year land sale contract. Near, but not on, a major highway that could be accessed by six routes from our hometown. Untamed, untouched, unimproved, 200 long miles away, worth every kid whimper and dog sick hour to get us there to pure freedom. The off-grid land is totally secluded, with a nearby canal that supplies sand and recreation, and at the business end, sports an artesian well with fresh drinking water. A place where seven kids and any size dog could run and play and scream and bark as loud as they wanted, without fear of the neighbors complaining or threatening our loud but harmless tribe of six daughters and one very active son.

Over the next few summers our little campground gained a driveway (Each tree pulled out with the truck and a chain or cut down and the roots painstakingly dug up with a discount-store shovel. We gathered huge pumice rocks and mortared them together into an outdoor oven. Handmade log benches ring the fire pit, and a distant forest neighbor sold us a tiny (18 ft.)  Travel trailer for $250. Garage sales and off-price surplus stores made it possible to outfit our camp on a free-school-lunch-eligible salary.
 Though summer was the busy season for his boat repair job, my husband joined us on the weekends and used a small chainsaw to cut a supply of 12 and 14 ft. poles that kept the kids and I busy making tipis and a very interesting outdoor kitchen shelter. This all happened mostly before I discovered the internet, so I patterned things after what I had seen on Gilligan’s Island and read about in The Mother Earth News back in the 1970s. It was a labor of love and a comedy of errors, but all ours.

Sadly, my husband passed away five years ago and with him the security of having a mechanic and someone to teach the kids more about hunting, fishing and driving. Lessons that began when they were small have prompted a competition between us to gather information and test our survival skills in real life scenarios on many occasions. The world has become a place where even a self-absorbed teenage girl can see the future need for a safe sustainable place away from the city. During our trips to the property, we have become familiar with the lay of the land, exploring all the forest service and BLM roads and trails with in a 20 mile radius. We know the locations of the nearest hiking/ATV/snowmobile trails, truck stops, restrooms, outhouses, creeks, lakes, wells, wetlands, ranches,  orchards, trailers, campgrounds, cabins, farms, hunting blinds, country stores, boat landings, public dumpsites, quarries, sawmills, railroad sidings, caves, ghost towns, mining camps and resorts. Escape routes and secure hiding places are entered in our handheld GPS. A mental list is forming of places we may be able to barter our winter salad greens and summer vegetable crops.

Driving into the mountains on our spring and summer vacations has not always been easy. One year an early snowstorm delayed us a week before I could dig the car out enough to get us back to school and work. The master cylinder in our old truck went out one trip while I was driving with 4 of the kids over the Cascade mountain pass, leaving me with no brakes in the middle of nowhere, (no cell phone signal). I coasted to the nearest town, not taking a breath, and thankfully we lived to tell the tale. Reliable, safe transport will always be our biggest hurdle if we need to get to our location in a hurry. We are also all aware of the route from the nearest Amtrak station within a day’s walk of the property. Aside from car repair issues, we have overcome many of the obstacles to living off the grid.
We have discovered that the batteries in our cheap solar garden lights can power our FRS radios and GPS. A bouquet of solar lights in a vase makes a perfect off-grid reading lamp. Our 1,000 watt Honda generator is used only for recharging 18 volt tool batteries and while that is happening, we can enjoy a DVD, crank up some tunes or play on the computer. For emergency backup we have a small inverter I can use with the car battery.
 
To amuse ourselves without wattage, along with reading, we use the bounty of branches and small trees to carve walking sticks, make log benches, small chairs and plant stands, and log furniture for dolls. We have discovered volcanic pumice rocks carve easily into self-watering planters, ashtrays and candle lanterns. These are used as gifts and/or for Saturday market sales whenever we have a good selection.
For heat we have a tiny wood stove in one of the tipis. We have always been able to keep warm even when night temps have been below freezing. The tipi frame is covered with chicken wire and stucco (ferro cement). Everyone sleeps with a down comforter. Washable duvet covers make everything easier to keep clean. These were purchased for a few dollars each at a Goodwill Outlet store, where clothing and most merchandise is sold by weight.
 
We have mastered the art of baking awesome biscuits, cupcakes and muffins at high altitude with a solar oven made of Mylar emergency blankets and an old storm window. Yeast bread gets baked (occasionally, as it’s a day-long task) in the outdoor stone oven, after a fire has been built in it. The sun tea jar is always brewing with a tea ball full of home grown Stevia leaves for sweetening. We can covertly cook baked beans and soups in a fire pit underground, and hot rocks cook foil wrapped chicken in our backpack while we work or explore. We also have a couple of propane backpack stoves and the adapter fitting to enable us to re-fill the small green canisters from a larger 20 pound cylinder.

For hygiene, we decided (after trying several options) five-gallon bucket toilets with cheap snap on seats are easier to maintain than the expensive flushable chemical camping toilets; as long as you have a supply of peat moss, saw dust, pine needles, sand or soil to bury waste in the bucket. For washing up, two milk jugs of warm water make a quick easy shower, one for washing, one for rinsing. We leave a line of filled jugs to warm on the sunny side of the gravel floor shower hut, or simmer a few minutes in the big pot while the dish washing water is warming. A fancier shower can be enjoyed with an air pump type garden sprayer tank. We have one handy for guests.   Obviously, you will want to use one that has not ever had any chemicals, fertilizer or pesticides in it.
 
During the school year in suburbia I teach indoor gardening classes, the kids attend school and in our spare time we do our research. We experiment with new Survival Log recipes (a high calorie/protein packed candy/cereal dough we invented made with storage foods that have a hundred delicious variations. (See my master recipe below). We plan new experiments and projects, plant seedlings, dehydrate foods and pack useful items that will be taken on our next trip. I read SurvivalBlog faithfully now and take notes from all the wonderful knowledge shared. We watch Survivor Man type man shows and laugh until we cry as they dramatize the obvious and almost die of hypothermia each day. If we are lucky we pick up a few useful hints that will be tried until true. We wrestle with our conscience whether or not to buy real rabbit fur hats and mittens, because someday our summer at the campground could last into the snowy days of winter. We decided the rabbits would be honored to save us from hypothermia.
 We have practiced and studied and experimented and now have the campground well supplied with caches of food, a well hidden root cellar/panic room, durable clothing, weapons, survival tools and gardening, medical and veterinary supplies.  Instead of being scared of an uncertain future we are continuing to prepare.

For now, my daughters (now high school and college girls) wear camouflage just for fashion. Not many people outside our family know that each and every one of them can make their own snowshoes, siphon gas, transform volcanic rock into a hydroponic garden, repair a bike, bake bread, shoot a wild turkey, sprout a salad, make a duct tape hammock, milk a goat, service a generator, purify water three different ways, catch fish with a bed sheet, navigate by the sun, disable an intruder, and start a fire 14 ways without a match.
Their Dad would have been so proud…

Addenda: Survival Logs Recipe
1 cup peanut, almond, cashew or other “nut butter”
1/2 to 3/4 cup honey, corn syrup, maple syrup, or homemade sugar syrup
2-3 cups crushed corn flakes, granola, crispy rice cereal, cookie, dry bread, pretzel, cracker or cake crumbs
Optional flavorings—dried milk powder, chopped dried fruits, sunflower seeds, chocolate chips, gumdrops, m&ms, candy sprinkles, chopped nuts, coconut

1 .In a saucepan, heat syrup to boiling, remove from heat.
2. Add nut butter, stir until melted and blend well.
3. Stir in enough cereal or crumbs to form a stiff dry dough
4. Knead in optional flavorings; form into candy bar size logs.
5. Roll in additional crumbs, coconut or sprinkles as desired. Wrap individually in wax paper or foil for travel or hiking food. Makes 10 logs.

I am a father of three and have one on the way. My oldest is now almost 20 years old. One thing I have learned over the years as a father is not to underestimate children and young adults.

I am pretty blunt and a straightforward guy, if anyone gets anything from what I share it is this….if you love your children then do not shelter them, prepare them!
Let’s tackle the big one first, children and gun’s. When my oldest was around four years of age he had a rare opportunity for someone so young, he got to see first-hand what guns do. We were elk hunting and a friend of the family had the good fortune to take a bull elk very close to the cabin. We had just sent our friend on his way after breakfast and not even four minutes out the door we heard the shot. We came right away to see if help was needed and arrived at the downed bull just as our friend did. We got to watch as this magnificent animal drew its last few breaths of life.  At this point in his life my son had seen guns being fired and he had also seen the animals we harvested and had even seen us butcher them, but at this moment you could see the understanding click behind this child’s eyes, even at age four he got the connection between guns and what they could do. I knew right there and then I would never have issues with him being safe with guns.

Eight years later a couple of friends and I were asked to take a large group of “Gun Virgins” to a rock quarry and  give them an introduction to guns and let them try to do some shooting. It was interesting to see the reaction to some in the group when I arrived at the quarry with my twelve year old son. I learned something that day and so did they. See even though these people had an interest in shooting guns they had still been brainwashed by pop culture and lack of education from their own parents about guns. They were taught that guns were evil and wanting to shoot them was practically a sin that they as adults had a right to partake in even though it is basically wrong, like pornography, alcohol, or adultery. Not all them thought this way but it was disturbing learn that some did. To them shooting a gun was something they would like to experience but never would involve a “child” because a child automatically did not know as much as an adult and could not possibly know all the evils of guns as they did as an adult. I was beside myself at the thought and was reminded of the experience of the Elk and I decided right then and there who was going to conduct the review of basics in gun safety for the group of 20 plus people before they got to shoot! My two friends that knew my son and myself thought that this was a great idea, but there was much grumbling from the group of the idea of being taught by a twelve year old. I pointed out that I trusted my son more than any adult I knew on this earth, because I knew what he was taught and what he wasn’t first hand. There is no room for pride in gun safety, even if the president of the NRA himself was there that day and he did something wrong I would call him on it and so would my son (of course we would do so respectfully). By the time my son was done and they were given the okay to shoot they were starting to understand also. To my son guns were not evil and wanting to shoot them was just plain fun, nothing to feel guilty about. He also demonstrated that he knew they could be dangerous and that he was taught how to properly handle them and he was teaching them.

I could go on about how guns are not evil but that would digress my own point which is that they are not unlike any other tool, they have a use and a function, and the biggest factor in safety of any tool is knowledge of how the tool works and should be properly used. Your kids probably know more than you do about how to use your computer or DVD player, and most likely no one showed them how to use these things. They can figure out how to load and use a gun on their own, you can’t rely on keeping children safe from the dangers of guns by keeping them away from guns, they need to learn and you need to be involved in that learning so you know what they know. Heaven forbid that my life or the life of my wife would someday depend on our children knowing how to properly use a gun, but if that they day ever comes we are as prepared as we can be.
I met an elderly man one day that told me that in Physical Education when he was a young school boy they could sign up for a segment to learn things like knife safety. As a father the thought made me smile as I had just learned from my youngest son that it was mandatory that he learn dancing in PE, could you imagine if I went to the school board and asked them to replace dancing with knife safety! The same thought also saddened me, to think that our society has gotten to the point that knife safety would never ever be considered for topic related to our schools again. Let the children learn how to put a condom on but heaven forbid they learn how to properly handle the most basic of tools in human history. Look on any emergency preparedness list and you will most likely find a knife near the top of the list. It is the most basics of tools and yes it can be dangerous if handled improperly so why not start learning to use one when you are young. Earlier I stated that knowledge is safety but so is experience. I have been carrying a pocket knife for as long as I can remember. My knife gets used almost every day, and yes even the most experienced knife user may cut themselves every once in a while, but the fact that I have never seriously cut myself as an adult I attribute to the fact that as a child I was taught to properly handle a knife and was allowed to carry and use one every day.

During the summer months my children usually carry their knives. But during the school year since they cannot carry even a little gentlemen’s blade in their pocket during school without fear of being expelled they end up forgetting it even on the weekends when not in school. This gets explained to me often by my children as I always ask where their knife is when they ask to borrow mine. This bothers me because being prepared means more than knowing how to use your tools but having them available when you need them. This is one of the reasons I keep asking “where is your knife?” even though I know and understand the answer, so maybe they will remember to keep it with them when not at school.  As a side note my fourteen year old daughter seems to remember more often than the boys to carry her knife, I think this is because she likes to shock people when there is a rope or something to be cut and she is the one that produces the right tool for the job!

I believe that our society is doing a disservice to our up and coming generations, by teaching them that they do not have to think for themselves and that if they just follow simple rules like do not touch knives and do not touch guns they will be magically be safe. We are also creating an environment where parents are afraid to teach their children certain things. I was sitting at the table with my father and my four year old grand niece, my father had a package that he needed to be cut open, and he handed it to me and asked me to open it. When I took out my knife to do so, my grand niece looked like she was going to have a heart attack. She looks at my father and states “your kid has a knife” as she pointed at me accusingly. You never have seen the old man so confused. It was really cute the way she referred to her Great Uncle as “your kid” but really disturbing that she was already brainwashed into believing that knives are evil weapons. She is a smart four year old, so I asked her what else was I supposed to use to open the package. I got two rounds of the answer “knives are naughty and bad” before she gave it some thought. She finally got the message that they are not naughty and they are not bad but can be dangerous and therefore she is not to touch one until her parents are ready to teach her how to properly use it. Both her parents are hard working ranchers and use knives every day. The answer of “knives are naughty and bad” came from her less than one year experience at pre-school.  I thought about this the other day at my work when a similar situation came up when a Design Engineer asked me if I had something to open up a blister package with. I pulled out my pocket knife and handed it to him. Should have seen the look on his face it scared him to death. Now here is a grown man who you know has had to have used knives in the kitchen before but was scared to death of the one I pulled from my pocket. All because he probably was never taught how to properly use one and was probably brainwashed as a child that “knives are naughty and bad”.

I am not advocating that it is blindly okay to go give your children knives or let them shoot guns. Just like I do not think there is something magical about the age eighteen or twenty-one that all of a sudden enables a person to know how to handle guns or knives I also do not think there is a certain age to start children. You are their parents if you work with them (and that is the key, to work with them) you will find out how much responsibility they can handle and understanding they can absorb.  I think you will learn if you challenge them they will surprise you, my four year old grand niece understood the why knives are dangerous when I explained it to her but not all four year olds would. But she is safer now because someone took the time to explain it to her. She will grow up better able to handle a knife than that Design Engineer. One of the things I have learned as a father is that all children are different. My oldest son started shooting when he was five, my youngest when he was eleven. It wasn’t that one was more mature than the other at five it was that he was mature in different ways. Kids respond to being given responsibility, the key is to challenge them but only put on them what they can handle. I have only written of Guns and Knives so far but I testify that letting my children learn responsibility in areas that society has deemed adult only has had many positive side effects. In many ways my children are better suited than many adults I know to tackle what life throws at them, and it is not just father’s pride that makes me say that. I have had many experiences where my children were willing and able to tackle learning new things that seem to intimidate many adults.

When the world comes crashing down, I would rather rely on my own children than most adults that I know.  And they are still very happy and well adjusted children none the less! This is because I love them and therefore have prepared them by teaching them all that I know.

I still remember the conversation.  I was a freshman in high school, but I had the idea of  taking auto mechanics during summer school.  Dad told me that he would always pay for me to take a class because in the end, knowledge can never be taken away from you.  I didn’t take the class. I can’t remember why.  But his statement and philosophy has stayed with me forever.  Although it sounds cheesy, I consider myself a lifelong learner.  So, when I entered the world of prepping, I combined my love of learning with what I know of technology and learned a lot fast.

Information is growing at exponential rates ( see - http://www.emc.com/leadership/digital-universe/expanding-digital-universe.htm).  Lucky for us, that the exponential growth of digital media, includes information that is greatly valuable to preppers.  It used to be that you would have to take a class, buy a book or find someone with knowledge of a skill to learn and grow yourself in the arena of the “lost arts.”  But that is not the case anymore.  Turn on your laptop, get an internet connection and you are well on your way to learning the knowledge behind valuable skills to get you through any crisis that might be headed your way.

Blogs & Readers

There are so many great blogs out in the blogosphere.  And because so many good blogs are linked to each other, in no time, you can have a serious amount of prepping, survival, bushcraft, and homesteading blogs bookmarked in your browser. 

So, the unknowing prepper will start to visit each of these blogs on a regular basis to check for new content and information that will help in the quest to self-sufficiency.  However, traveling from blog to blog on a regular basis will get tiring and old, especially if you don’t find any new articles. The tendency after a while might be to start skipping out on checking your favorite blogs.  But then, you might miss out on some great information.  This is where blog readers come in.

A blog reader or RSS reader, captures the RSS feed from a blog.  The reader then displays every blog or RSS feed in one convenient place.  Blogs that have been updated or shown to be updated show all in one place and allows you to quickly browse through the new topics and select the articles that are truly of interest to you.

There are many readers out there.  But my favorite right now is Google Reader.  It is easy to use and you can get your feeds anywhere you have an internet connection, including your mobile phone.  Check out this link to see a quick video that explains Google Reader - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSPZ2Uu_X3Y .  And, you can visit this link for a short how-to-video on how to use Google Reader - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ltttw5yORv8  NOTE: Google Reader has just been updated.  The video describes the old Google Reader.  However, the new Google Reader functions the same.

If you don’t like Google products, there is a free piece of software that I used before Google.  It is a stand-alone reader that downloads to your desktop.  It is a little dated and doesn’t have all the bells and whistles, but it will keep your anonymity.  The program is called Bottom Feeder. There are also others.  A quick search will point you in the right direction.

I created two videos on blogs for a teacher staff development a while back that might be beneficial on searching for and understanding blogs as well.  Part 1 - http://www.screencast.com/users/tsepulveda/folders/Jing/media/ed7d0e6d-6c1d-4daf-9e6b-d9007e76df8d 

Part 2 - http://www.screencast.com/users/tsepulveda/folders/Jing/media/ee4313ff-3966-4eb8-8538-5ce2ebbc3922

YouTube

I have to admit, there are times I feel like a prepping noob.  But for me, this next technology is a no-brainer!  YouTube is a great place to get informed on specific skills for prepping.  For instance, I didn’t grow up hunting and fishing with my dad, so I don’t even know the first place to start when it comes to skinning an animal or gutting a fish.  But I can see it on Youtube!  I can see it over and over and even ask the author or uploader of the video a question.  The great thing is that many of the people who upload videos to Youtube have the heart of a teacher and choose to do so to help others along.

One video that was very helpful to me was how to use a mylar bag for food storage.  Now, I know that this skill is basic common knowledge for most, but I had never done it.  I easily found articles and even pictures on how to do it, but it wasn’t the same as seeing someone do it right in front of my eyes.  I felt comfortable that I wouldn’t make huge mistakes when my bags finally came in….And I didn’t.

Once you find a great prepping video, take some time to click on the uploader’s name and checkout their “channel.”  They might have a ton of other videos that will help you in your prepping.  For an example, check out Southern Prepper's channel.

Twitter

Some of you might be wondering, “why in the world is Twitter included here!”  Most of you would be right to think this.  I don’t necessarily care to read 140 characters worth of someone telling me their every move.  “I’m at the store #groceries.”  “I’m in the #dairy section.”  “I’m checking out #plastic bags.”  That’s not what Twitter is about.

Twitter is about sharing articles, blogs and other information that you might not have otherwise seen.  For example, let’s say that I’m following @prepperwebsite.  The Prepper Website posts a link to an article on a new blog that I have never heard of before.  The article is great and I realize that the other posts on this blog are very valuable too.  I might add that blog to my Google Reader.

Other information that might be shared might be news that is not being run by the mainstream media.  It is a way of communication that has reshaped how people communicate. 

Another thing you might want to do is to follow a trend or a search word.  Many people who use Twitter include hashtags to their tweets.  A hashtag is a way to set-off a certain term or idea on Twitter.  So if I post something about prepping, I might include the hash tag #prepper in my tweet. 

Go try it!  Go to www.twitter.com and type in #preppertalk in the search box. Try #preparedness, #foodstorage and #survival too!  Try anything that you are interested in.  For something to show up in Google’s search engine takes a few days.  However, the search results in Twitter are real time and you can find new information quickly. 

A word of warning - When you use Twitter in this way, it can be addictive.  You can find yourself searching, linking and reading so much information that you lose track of what you were there for.

Check out this video I did on using Twitter for Lifelong Learning.

Podcasts

Lastly, I will touch on podcasts.  Podcasts are audio posts.  When someone creates a podcast, they upload it for anyone on the internet to listen to.  Most of the time, you can go directly to someone’s web site and listen to the podcast.  However, that means that you have to be at your computer, or at least close to it.  But just like there are blog readers, there are podcast catchers. 

Podcast catchers work exactly the same way as blog readers do.  You have to find the RSS feed and put it in your podcast catcher.  After you do that, the podcast is downloaded directly to your hard drive where you can put it on your Ipod or mp3 player.  Now if you have an Ipod and Itunes, this is a pretty easy setup.  You just have to search for podcasts in your desired field of interest. The podcast will be “placed” or “sync’d” with your Ipod when you connect it.  If you have an mp3 player, it is a matter of going to the download folder and transferring it to your mp3 player, usually a drag and drop feature as most mp3 players are recognized as another portable drive on your computer.

To see an example video of a podcast catcher in action, click here - http://www.screencast.com/t/YWVhODNl .

To download “Juice,” the podcast catcher, go here: http://juicereceiver.sourceforge.net/

To search for podcasts, you can visit - http://www.podcastalley.com/index.php .

Recently, I have left my mp3 player behind for podcasts and just use my smart phone.  I recently upgrade to an android phone and downloaded the App “Beyond Pod.”  I search for my favorite survival podcasts and listen to them on the way to work through my car stereo system.  It is so convenient.

In Closing

To maximize your prepping efforts, you need to be informed.  Information is powerful.  Information is necessary.  And today, information is abundant.  You just need to know where to look. 

One last word, there is a difference between book knowledge and knowledge that is based on experience.  After you find the information that you are searching for, you have to put it into practice.  For instance, all the knowledge of gardening or skinning a rabbit doesn’t mean anything until you get your hands dirty…believe me, I know!

One last last word, a natural outflow of my learning has been my new web site.  I started http://www.prepperwebsite.com two months ago and the response has been great.  I read every article, listen to every podcast and watch every video I link.  I also monitor every web site I link through Google Reader.  The site is a great place to get a varied amount of prepping information in one place.

Mr. Rawles,
Thank you for your blog site. Sorry to add to the "snowball" burden but when building a library make sure the paper used is not acid-based or in a few years it will all turn to dust. Use alkaline paper or "Archival" paper only. This will make the information available for many generations. See the Wikipedia article discussing the matter.

Numerous companies sell their alkaline and archival paper on-line and it is available in larger office stores. Also a chemical test pen is available that will test whether a given sheet of paper is acid or alkaline is available.

I have no connection with any manufacturer or seller of these items. Given the invasion of chinese counterfeit products it might be prudent to use this pen to check papers that purport to be alkaline/archival, just to be sure.

Also. If the papers are to be stored in plastic protectors make sure the plastic is polypropylene. Some plastics emit chemicals that break down paper fibers quickly, leaving nothing but fragments after a few years. The basic rule is if you can smell it, it will destroy the paper. Polypropylene is odorless and harmless to paper. Also many office supply stores sell archival-quality protectors labeled as such.

And Mr. Rawles. The prepper movement is maturing. Instead of people attempting to gather all this information individually and on their own you should start a prepper version of Wikipedia or something similar and make it available for download. It is always the details that kill, and it would be a shame for so many otherwise survivable individuals to fail simply because they are missing a small bit of information that could have been available. - GMAN