Urban survival has its own set of challenges- 12 Urban Survival Mistakes You Need to Avoid

Urban survival has its own set of challenges. You have limited space to stockpile or grow your own food, nosy neighbors, gangs, burglars and all kinds of people who will not hesitate to hurt you for some cash, a gun or even a loaf of bread.

Today I want to talk to you about some of the biggest survival mistakes urban preppers make. The good news is that most of them are very easy to fix and don’t cost you a penny. I don’t like spending too much money (primarily because I don’t have it) so, in time, I learned to hunt for the things that are the cheap and useful.

#1. Talking too loud inside your own home

Urban walls have more ears than suburban or rural ones, that’s for sure. Right when you’re telling your spouse to get a few extra cans of pink salmon (one of the canned foods with the longest shelf life, by the way), your neighbor happens to pass by and hears everything. Your cover is blown.

You should be extra weary when talking inside your own home and that goes double post-collapse. In fact, if no one knew you’re inside your apartment after it hits, that would be ideal. You’ll need to whisper, you might even need to tiptoe and you’re definitely gonna want to take your crying baby in the most soundproof room of the house.

#2. Not stockpiling water when it happens

As soon as you hear that something’s wrong… that a blackout, a hurricane or any kind of disaster is threatening your city, as long as you’re not bugging out, one of the first things you should do is turn on the bathtub and kitchen sink faucets to gather as much water as humanly possible before it runs out.

You will need the extra water for cooking, washing up, doing laundry, cleaning wounds etc… without having to leave your apartment and expose yourself to what’s happening outside.

#3. Not having any means of purifying water

If you’re bugging in, who knows what kind of water you’ll be forced to drink. Maybe it’s from the snow that paralyzed the entire city. Maybe it’s from a pond or a pool nearby. Heck, even the tap water you stockpiled might get contaminated in time.

You need to have at least a couple of ways to purify it… A LifeStraw or a black Berkey water filter should do the trick but you’ll also want to think about boiling it if you can.

#4 Bragging about your preps

Hunger is a dangerous decision maker. It will turn society upside down and the ones who have food into victims.

Your best option is NOT to defend your food / supplies. But to conceal them.

And this would be too late if 2 weeks ago you bragged about your preps to one of your neighbor while chit-chatting.

#5. Not focusing on your skills

When you live in a tiny apartment, you’re gonna have to compensate your lack of stockpiles with skills. Knowing where to find food and water, escaping a riot or being a very good driver are just a few of the things you need to master.

#6. Bugging out too late

When I was only 4, I survived the Romanian revolution of 1989. My dad was deployed in one of the countries’ hotspots). My mom didn’t think twice: we and our close neighbors quickly bugged out to a low key location nearby until it was safe to come back. Fortunately, nothing happened to our apartment but… it could have… and that’s enough reason to abandon it.

Recent events in Ukraine and the Middle East are showing us how entire families are trapped inside cities and end up dead simply because they didn’t bug out when they were supposed to. The question you really need to ask yourself is this: is my home more important than my life?

#7. Being out of shape

Since the chances of an urban bug-in are significantly less than suburban or rural bug-ins, city dwellers need to be in shape if they’re going to avoid riots and thugs and get out of their cities. While rural preppers have at least 2-3 firearms, a fortified home and food to last them a few years, city dwellers have none of that and they are forced to compensate by improving their skills.

Get into shape just a little bit by practicing the so-called functional fitness, were you focus not just on strength but also on stamina, endurance, flexibility and explosiveness. With all the gyms in your city, surely you can find time between your job and your family to work out a couple of times a week. If not, you can still train at home with nothing more than your bodyweight and a pair of dumbbells. Plus, a lot of this “functional fitness” requires you to walk, run, swim or do other aerobic and anaerobic activities you might enjoy.

#8. Neglecting your pets

pet saving

You would think pets are irrelevant when disaster strikes because you’ll have more important things to worry about. Not necessarily true.

First, it’s hard to abandon a 5 years old companion. Second, a dog (for example) may save your life.

And pets are going to bring you a lot of joy post-collapse when you won’t have smartphones and the Internet.  They’re also going to play a crucial role by helping family members who are in shock or traumatized.

I’m not saying you need a one year stockpile of dog food but a mini bug out bag is not hard to assemble. It’s the least you can do to guarantee that Lucky is going to make it to protect you from bad guys and give you early warning systems of impending dangers.

#9. Not knowing how to escape a riot

To make matters worse, a lot of people stick around and watch the fighting, like it’s a wrestling game or something. They never think they can end up in the middle of the action in seconds. You need be able to escape if you’re caught in the middle of a riot, to be able to find shelter if getting home is impossible, what to do if you’re hit by tear gas and much, much more.

At the very least, you should never stand out from the crowd. Move in the same direction as the rioters, stay close to the walls and hide in the shadows of buildings if it’s night time. If everyone’s running, you need to run too. If everyone’s moving at a slow pace, you need to do the same. If someone’s picking on you asking for money, it’s probably best to comply.

#10. Not having a bug out location

I hope that by now is clear that, when disaster strikes, you’ll probably be on the move. But going to your aunt in another city might prove just as dangerous. Events such as the Ferguson riots and the Baltimore unrest showed us that anger can spread from city to city quicker than wildfire.

What you need a bug-out location either in a really small town or in the wilderness, preferably less than 100 miles away so you can still get to it on foot if you’re gonna have to abandon your vehicle on the way there.

Tip: consider the train tracks for bugging out. Few people are gonna think of using them and they might just take you right to your BOL.

#11. Not knowing your city by heart (and the SHORTCUTS)

traffic jam katrina

New Orleans – just a few hours before Katrina – everybody headed for the highway. (Picture)

Houston – just a few hour before Rita – everybody headed for the highway.

In almost any disaster, a lot of people will head for the highway. Inevitably this will lead to traffic congestion. You don’t want to be trapped between cars. So one of the things that you should have in mind is to be there first, before heal breaks loose. Knowing the streets and especially the not very well known SHORTCUTS will give you a plus!

Tip: In New Orleans – Motorists were able to flee the city in a matter of minutes.

#12. Not having enough fuel in your tank

Well, if you get caught in a traffic jam while trying to leave the city, you’ll need a lot more fuel than usually. In the picture from Katrina (above) you can see cars on the side of the road. Well that’s what happens if you make this mistake.

Well, those were my tips. I could have added a lot more to the list but I decided to stick to those that I believe to be important. If you’re interested in more tips, check out this article I wrote on my blog a while back.

11 Things You Need to Have Ready for when the Power Grid Fails- Many have talked about the loss of the grid as returning us to living like the 1800s, but it’s not… it’s worse

It finally happens and you hear it… or rather, you don’t hear it. You don’t hear anything at all. Everything just seems so quiet. Must have been how things were, before all the cars and machinery entered our lives. Things just seem to have come to a stop, like the power grid went out. Oh wait, the power grid did go out. Now, what do we do?

The loss of the grid, whether through an EMP attack, terrorism or cyberwarfare is the nightmare scenario – everything we depend on coming to a complete stop. If ever there was a difficult survival scenario for us to face, this is it. Modern society is so dependent on electrical power to operate, that the loss of the grid would leave most people at a loss for what to do.

Many have talked about the loss of the grid as returning us to living like the 1800s, but it’s not… it’s worse. At least our ancestors who lived back in the 1800s knew how to do without all the things that we’ll be doing without. We won’t. We will have to depend on ourselves and our own resourcefulness for the most basic of necessities. Things that our infrastructure now provide for us, will no longer exist, unless we can reproduce them ourselves. That’s just what we’ll have to do if we want to survive.

So, here’s my “top ten” list of things we will need to have ready, so that we can meet our own needs, when society no longer can meet them for us.

#1. The first thing we’d better concern ourselves with is heating our homes. Of all the things that could kill us in a grid-down scenario, the fastest and easiest killer is hypothermia. Without electricity, it doesn’t matter what source of heating we’re used to using… it will be out. We’ll need something else.

For most of us, this means heating with wood; using a fireplace or wood-burning stove. Of the two, the wood-burning stove will provide us with the most heat. It’s also easier to install. But the big question is fuel. How much firewood do you have? Where can you get more? How can you haul it home?


#2. Without electricity, we won’t have a municipal water system, with fresh, clean water delivered right to our homes. While it might run for a day or two, until the gas for the generator is used up and the water in the tanks runs out; but that’s about it. After that, we’re either going to have to haul water from a nearby river or lake, or we’re going to have to harvest it from rainwater or a well.

No matter how much water you have stockpiled, you can be sure it’s not enough. Even a swimming pool full of water will only last so long. You’re going to need more than that. So it’s best to be ready to harvest your water right from nature, preferably on your own property.


#3. In a post-disaster world, you’ll have to assume that all water is suspect. That means drinking only water that you have purified. While you can use unpurified water for a lot of things, you can’t ingest it in any way. That means purifying enough water for drinking, cooking and washing the dishes at a minimum.

Most people count on filtration for water purification. There’s nothing wrong with that. There are a number of excellent water filters on the market. But what are you going to do, when you run out of filters? You’ll need something else, in addition to that filtration system, to make sure that you can continue to have clean water to drink.


#4. Most of us cook over either electric or gas stoves. Even so, the gas stoves depend on electricity as well. While most gas pumping stations generate their own electricity to run their pumps, chances are that they will shut down as well. Even if they don’t shut down automatically from the loss of electric power, they will probably be shut down by the operators, as a safety measure.

This will mean that we are left without our most common method of cooking food. The most likely replacement, once again, will be wood, with people turning to barbecue grills or fire pits to cook in. Another option is using solar power for cooking, with some sort of solar oven.


#5. The beginning of prepping for most people is to build a stockpile of food. That’s something that just never seems to end. No matter how much you have, there’s always a desire to reach the next level, increasing your preparedness just a little bit more.

Don’t forget to have some off-site caches of food as well, in case you are forced to abandon your home. you never know what might cause you to need to bug out and you might not be able to take it all with you.

Of course, food isn’t the only thing you need to stockpile, it’s just the most obvious. You’re going to need everything from fuel to sewing needles. So, even if you start with food, be ready to expand your thinking, adding everything else you’re going to need.


#6. No matter how big your food stockpile is, it will eventually run out. That’s why many preppers are turning to grow their own food at home. even if you have a huge stockpile to use, growing your own will allow you to extend that stockpile out, surviving longer.

In the case of some of those disastrous causes of the grid going down, there’s a good chance that it will take over a decade to bring things back online again. With that being the case, it’s unlikely that your food stockpile will be enough, no matter how big it is. Whether or not you survive will depend a lot on your ability to grow enough food to meet your needs.


#7. If you’re going to be growing all that food, you’re going to need to preserve it as well. Food preservation probably started with our ancestors trying to survive the most common disaster of all… Old Man Winter. Without the ability to hunt or gather, the only food that those ancestors had to keep them alive through the winter was whatever they had harvested and dried.

Today, we have a number of food preservation techniques available to choose from. But you’d better learn how to do those, as well as stockpiling the necessary supplies. Don’t skimp on the salt, as that is needed for just about every method of preserving food.


#8. One of the trickier areas we have to be ready to take care of is our own health. While doctors and other health care professionals won’t just disappear, there will be severe shortages of the supplies they use. If you don’t have your own, you might just be out of luck.

But don’t just depend on having those supplies, you’d better have a pretty good idea of how to use them, as well. Without electrical power, you won’t be able to just go to the corner station and fill up your car’s tank. So you might not be able to get to wherever any doctors are anyway. In that case, critical things, like first-aid will become of prime importance.


#9. While waste disposal isn’t a glamorous part of survival, it is a necessary one. Human waste is one of the ways that disease travels around. Without the ability to quarantine it or dispose of it, your body’s own waste could become one of the most toxic things you deal with. Digging an outhouse isn’t all that high tech a solution, but it’s one that takes time, muscle and tools. It’s nice to have some lime on hand as well.

Of course, that’s not the only kind of waste you’re going to be dealing with, just the most dangerous. What about packaging from the food and other supplies you’ll be using? You’ll need to have some way of dealing with that too, in order to keep it from taking over and showing everyone how well you’re stocked. Even if that means nothing more than burning it, you will still have to deal with the cans and the ashes from that fire.


#10. Lighting isn’t as much a need as it is a convenience. You could just do everything during daylight and then go to sleep when the sun goes down. However, we are accustomed to having more hours in the day to use, because of lighting our homes. Having some way of doing that, after the power goes out, will give you more usable time for your many survival tasks.

I’m a firm believer in flashlights, but I also recognize their limitations. Once your battery supply runs out, those fancy tactical flashlights and headlamps won’t do you the least bit of good. You’ll need to revert to something simpler, like candles and oil lamps. Do you have any way of making more oil?


#11. With everything listed above, chances are that you’re eventually going to attract the attention of those people who aren’t prepared. When that happens, you can count on them knocking on your door, asking you for help. Whether or not you help them is up to you, but the reality is that you can’t feed the world.

Turning people away is only a temporary solution. They’ll be back, trying again. If you keep refusing help to them, they’ll eventually come prepared to take it; and take your life as well, if that’s what’s necessary to get what you have. You’ve got to be ready for that eventuality, just like everything else.

Home defense is more than just buying guns and ammo. You’ve got to make your home defensible, essentially turning it into a fortress, preferably without doing so in an obvious way. You’ll also need a defensive plan, that you’ve practiced so that you know what to do when the time comes.

That’s my list, and it’s really just the basics. I can think of a lot of other things I’d add, like the ability to make and repair your own tools. But those aren’t the basic needs; they’re more like additional useful skills for long-term survival and rebuilding society. What would you add to this list?

Americans will soon be forced into a guerrilla war of survival – Can America win against the globalist occupation forces?

How many of you believe that this country is plunging head-first into a state of revolution? How many of you believe that a planned currency collapse coupled with the implementation of a brutal martial law and gun confiscation will be the trigger events which will incite the coming revolution? In addition, nonsense climate change policies designed to bring America and most Americans to their knees will occur under a Democratic Party leadership. The Democrats are aligned with the UN troops in our country under the Kigali Principles of UN Peacekeeper intervention (ie invasion of the United States). As I have demonstrated, Nancy Pelosi and Beto O’Rourke are aligned with former Mexican President Nieto who took $100 million to leave the Sinaloa cartel alone. In part, I blame the deaths of these 9 American citizens on Pelosi, Eric “Fast and Furious” Holder and Obama. It was their open border, let-the-drugs-flow policies that led to these deaths. These horrific murders are just the beginning of what is coming to both sides of the border. What else can we expect than when we witness Pelosi and O’Rourke hanging out with Nieto?

The exit of California from the Union would devastate our economy and agricultural production. Key Democrats are aligned with this movement. Senators Kamala Harris and Feinstein and Governor, Gavin Newsome, are aligned with the Communist Chinese on a number of fronts. Many Democrats and even some Republicans are being blackmailed by the Epstein operation. I could go on, but the readers know where this is leading. We are a nation that has forsaken its rule of law just like Nazi Germany did in 1932. Adam Schiff is holding Soviet-style hearings with secret witnesses, hearsay evidence and outright liars. This is your judicial future America should the Democrats takeover. We would be witnessing the Obama administration on steroids.

Being a coach and former athlete, I know the feeling of a once-inferior opponent rising up to defeat my team. I know the feeling of underestimating an opponent. I have done that with the Democrats. The Kentucky Governor’s race is proof of what I am saying along with the fact that Texas is turning “blue”. We are all faced with the possibility that the Democrats could be running the country in the next several months. These are Democrats in name only. These individuals are Communists and I am not exaggerating when I say that many are demonically possessed and serve Satan. Then there are radicalized Democrats like AOC and Omar. They run their Congressional offices like a makeshift terrorist organization. They crawled out from underneath the rock we call the “Justice Democrats”. There is nothing that these people will not do to solidify their power. And I have just had the “aha moment” of my life when I have come to the final realization that they and their fellow servants of Satan could be running this country in a few months.

Many of us in the alternative media believe that this is the likely scenario that will very soon turn this country into the most dangerous country on the face of the earth. It might behoove us to look a little closer at the nature of revolution in order to predict where all of this is likely headed. In the present political climate, I see no way to stem the tide of unthinkable brutality and violence which seems imminent. It is in this mindset that I set about to research the topic of revolution and this series of articles reflects the results of the research. And as a result of past and common patterns of revolution, it appears as if a clear picture is beginning to emerge.

We already are in a civil war. The last thing to happen in a civil war is the piling up of bodies. And America, make no mistake about it, the enemy controls the media, the military industrial complex, the stock market and the banks. Guerrilla war will be the only viable form of resistance.

Four Levels of Warfare

Most military strategists identify four levels of conflict; (1) nuclear war is the trump card of all conflict; (2) conventional warfare; (3) guerrilla warfare; and, (4) terrorism.

It is safe to say that if our country does indeed descend into revolution, nuclear war will not come into play, for if it did, there would be nothing to rule over in the aftermath.

The United States has witnessed civil war of a conventional nature In the 1860’s as two mighty armies of that era locked horns in what proved to be the conflict in which America suffered her greatest loss of life. In the Civil War, both sides had equivalent weaponry and as a result employed conventional tactics. However, given the disparity of technology and resources between the people the globalist controlled forces of the new Democratically controlled government, a conventional war would prove to be a disaster for the rebel forces. If key elements of the military were to break away and support the people, perhaps a conventional war would unfold. However, it is not likely that the upcoming civil war will be conventional as it is not probable that the military will bifurcate and turn in on itself. The likely mode of the revolutionary war conflict facing the people of the United States is that it will consist of either guerrilla warfare or terrorism.

Guerrilla Warfare Or Terrorism?

Terrorism is the least preferred option by any insurgent group. With terrorism, there is absolutely no hope of final victory because territory is never occupied. For that reason, nobody aspires to engage in terrorism if they have a viable alternative and the American people do have a choice given how well armed we are. However, terrorism arising out a defeated guerrilla force is a distinct possibility as it would represent American guerrilla’s fallback position should they be defeated. Subsequently, does the MIAC Report which labeled Libertarians, Constitutionalists, Second Amendment Supporters, Ron Paul Supporters, Veterans and now Christians as domestic terrorists, make a little more sense as to why DHS made these bold proclamations? The DHS of the Obama years understood and demonstrated their understanding of these facts and has also prepared for what I just wrote about in the previous paragraph. Hillary was to be 2016 recipient of Obama’s work, but Donald Trump happened.

The Veterans Administration estimates that there are approximately 21.5 million veterans living in the United States. We also live in a country with over 300 million privately owned guns. These combined factors point clearly to a guerrilla war being the preferred and necessary mode of combat which will likely be visited upon this country.

What Is Guerrilla Warfare?

Guerrilla warfare, for most of human history, is not new. Tribal war, which traditionally pits one guerrilla force against another, is the oldest form of warfare. The new “conventional” form of warfare, which pits guerrillas against “conventional” forces, is more recent as it first arose in Mesopotamia 5,000 years ago.

The good news for future American freedom fighters is that guerrilla war has been getting more successful since 1945, but unfortunately guerrilla fighters still lose most of the time. An analysis of past conflicts featuring guerrilla war, reveals that only 25% of guerrilla forces, out of 443 such conflicts since 1775, were successful. The government prevailed almost 64% of the time with the remainder of the conflicts ended in a stalemate. Conversely, since the end of WWII, the percentage of success for guerrilla forces has indeed gone up to 39.6%. Yet that still means that government forces have continued to prevail 51% of the time. When the American people engage in a guerrilla war in the upcoming years, the people have less than a 40% chance of success.

Length of Guerrilla Wars

Guerrilla wars are rarely short and as a result do not favor the American culture and our collective psyche of instant gratification. When Americans flip the switch on the wall, we expect the light to come on. Will Americans set aside their entitlements as well as their entrenched soft lifestyle and rise to the occasion? Only time will tell.

The Vietnamese culture with an external locus of control predominating the people where the group is more important than the individual is the perfect mindset for guerrilla fighters. This could prove to be the American rebels biggest challenge because guerrilla warfare is not something that one does like driving over a speed bump. It is a way of life, a very hard way of life filled with misery, extreme sacrifice and unspeakable losses.

For my money, the best guerrilla fighters in the modern era were the Viet Cong in which Vietnamese people were involved in some form of guerrilla war from 1942-1975. After the Americans invaded Vietnam, the forces in the north had a saying, “born in the north, to die in the south.” There were nearly two generations of Vietnamese people in which war was an unavoidable part of life. What General Westmoreland and LBJ failed to recognize was that in order to defeat and totally subdue the Vietnamese people, the Americans would have had to have engaged in unspeakable genocide because despite the fact that the US won every single battle of the war, the Vietnamese rebels were never going to give up. Do we Americans have that same tenacity to persevere like the Vietnamese?

Prior to WWII, guerrilla wars lasted an average of seven years. Following WWII, guerrilla conflicts lasted an average of 10 years. Will Americans embrace the tenets and sacrifices of guerrilla war and can it ever become a way of life? I believe that conditions would have to be unspeakably horrendous for America to embrace a conflict under these conditions. I think that things would have to be so bad, so completely genocidal, that fighting and dying would be the only viable alternative for America in order to embrace guerrilla warfare as a way of life. What I am saying here is that we are a very soft people.

How Close Are We to the Inevitable Conflict?

Successful guerrilla leaders such as Lawrence of Arabia, Mao, Castro and Giap all concur that there are three phases of any guerrilla war. However, before the phases can unfold there are two preconditions which must be met.

The first condition which is a prerequisite for guerrilla war, is based upon the fact that there has to be a decisive battle for the belief systems of the people as a whole. The globalists have invested billions of dollars in order to dominate the mainstream media. On the other side is the alternative media. Both sides are vying for control of the belief systems of the country.

There are two very distinct ideologies playing out today in the court of public opinion. On one hand, the future rebels are adept at exposing the loss of national sovereignty and civil liberties every chance they get. Conversely, the globalist dominated media is spending billions of dollars to convince the masses that there is no such thing as a conspiracy theory and despite some governmental incompetence, the government loves and protects its people. And the globalists are being somewhat effective. Have you ever noticed that when you are describing a globalist inspired conspiracy such as what happened at Benghazi, and no matter how well documented your position is, that your audience frequently responds with “you must be one of these conspiracy theorists.” Our facts are rarely attacked because they are accurate, but the idea of the existence of any kind of conspiracy is what is challenged. This kind of programming coming from the media is brilliant and effective. Who is winning this war of words? The jury is still out, but the unmistakable conclusion is that the ideological battle lines for the upcoming conflict have clearly been drawn. One might argue that social media censorship will eventually beat down the alt media.

The globalists sell the sheep on the notion that we have to control you to protect you (from a threat of our creation), and the other side is saying “we will take our chances, give us freedom.”

The second precondition which must be met prior to descending into guerrilla war consists of both sides engaging in an arms race. In response to the Obama administration’s threat of seizing our guns for the false flag events of the Aurora Batman massacre and Sandy Hook, Americans went on a gun-buying frenzy which continues to this day. DHS has engaged in their own arms buildup as they have purchased 2.2 billion rounds of ammunition to go with 2700 new armored personnel carriers and that is not all. The federal government has invested in 730,000 drones, super soldier robots and intelligence gathering techniques which are mind-blowing. As an aside, Snowden’s public revelations related to the extent of the NSA’s illegal surveillance activities contained nothing that most of us in the alternative media did not already know. It is my belief that Ed Snowden knows a lot more than has been reported related to the reasons underlying the NSA spying and the media is refusing to report on it.

In summary, the American people and their government have engaged in an arms race very similar in nature to two rival countries preparing to go to war.

Conclusion

The preconditions for armed conflict and the likelihood that the conflict will be guerrilla is very likely. In Part Two of this series, an analysis of the commonalities between past guerrilla conflicts (e.g. Giap, Mao, Castro, etc.) will be offered. Emerging from the discussion in the next part in this series is the discovery of the fact that there three overlapping phases to guerrilla war and it will be a shocking surprise to all of us as to how far along this country is in relation to these three phases. All that is needed is the right trigger event and that will be discussed in the next part as well.

How Much Cash Should You Have If the Grid Goes Down? It Is The Final Backup Plan For A Lot Of Us In The Case Of A Disaster

It is the final backup plan for a lot of us in the case of a disaster. A generous supply of cold hard cash to buy our way out of trouble, pick up as many last-minute supplies as possible or to acquire resources that are unavailable to anyone with a credit card in a world where the electricity is out and the internet is down. We frequently talk about having cash for emergencies, but how much cash should you have if the grid goes down? What will you be able to purchase with your doomsday supply and how long would it last in the first place?

One of our readers made a recommendation the other day to have between $500 and $1000 in cash for your bug out bag and at the time it prompted me to consider again if this amount makes sense. In my personal preparedness plans I have a supply of cash but I am always trying to figure out if what I have is enough or too much. Will it even matter when TEOTWAWKI comes and how can I best use the cash I have to survive?

Why do you need to have cash on hand?

You want to know the time when you will need cash the most? It will be when you can’t get to it. How many of you right now have no cash at all in your wallets or purses? I used to be the same way. I never had cash and relied on the ready availability of cash machines or most often the ability to pay for virtually everything with a debit card. How convenient is it to never have to make change or worry if you have enough cash when with the swipe of a card your bank account funds are at your disposal. This is a great technological advance, but the problem is that this requires two things to be functioning. First, the card readers and ATM machines require electricity. If the electricity is out, neither of these two machines works. The second thing is a network connection. If the network is down, even with electricity the transaction won’t work and you can’t pay for goods or get cash from your bank.

In a disaster, one of the first casualties is electricity. This doesn’t have to be due to some cosmic solar flare that has rendered the grid useless, it could be as destructive and common as a fire, flood, earthquake, tornado or winter storm. It could also be from simple vandalism or perhaps terrorism. A major fiber optic cable was cut in Arizona back in February leaving businesses without the ability to accept payments. When the electricity is out, you aren’t going to be able to access your cash via the normal means so having a supply on hand is going to be a huge advantage for you in the right circumstances.

Even if there is no natural disaster, you are still at the mercy of your bank. What if your bank closes or there is a bank holiday declared because of some economic crisis. In any of these situations, if you are dependent on access to money that is controlled by either technology or physical limitations like a bank office it is wise to have a backup plan should either of those two conditions prevent you from getting cash.

What is cash good for in a crisis?

I think there are two levels to consider when it comes to keeping cash on hand. There is the bug out scenario mentioned above where you would have some “walking around money” to take care of relatively minor needs like food, a hotel or gas. The second is for a longer or more widespread unavailability of funds. Let’s say the economy tanks and the price of everything skyrockets but stores are still open for business. Your bank is one of the casualties, but you had a few thousand dollars of cash stored away that you could use to purchase food, gas and necessary preparedness items for your family. In this scenario, the government is still backing the fiat currency and vendors are still accepting it as a form of payment. For this scenario having a few thousand dollars makes sense.

But what if we have an extreme event where the currency is devalued and is essentially worthless? Your thousands of dollars might only buy you a loaf of bread. Don’t believe it can happen? It did to the Weimar Republic after WWI so it can happen again. That isn’t to say it will, but you should balance how much money you have squirreled away under your mattress with supplies you can purchase now that will last and keep you alive during that same event. My goal is to make sure I have the basics I need to survive at home for several months to a year without needing to spend any cash. This way, if the money is worthless, I still have what my family needs to survive.

If we have a regional disaster where you can bug out to a safer location, your cash should serve you well. Of course if you are in a safer location, assuming electricity was working your access to bank funds should still be working. If this is truly the end of the world as we know it, how long will that cash you have be worth anything?

It is surprisingly simple to disrupt all credit and debit transactions. Do you have cash instead?
It is surprisingly simple to disrupt all credit and debit transactions. Do you have cash instead?

How much cash do you need?

So the million dollar question is how much cash should you have if the grid goes down? I always try to plan for the worst case scenario. My rationale is that if I am prepared for the end of the world as we know it, I should be just as prepared for any lesser disaster or crisis I may be faced with. The way I see it is if we do have a disaster, you aren’t going to be using that cash most likely to pay your mortgage, student loans, rent, or your credit card bills. Cash will go to life saving supplies and this will need to be used in the earliest hours of any crisis before all of the goods are gone or the cash is worthless. Once people realize for example that the government has been temporarily destroyed, they aren’t going to want to take your $500 for a tank of gas. They are going to want guns, food or bullets.

I also don’t see you using your cash to buy passage to another country, but that’s just me. I know there is a historical precedent for that, but I am not planning on that being something I realistically attempt with my family. I am also not planning on bribing any officials with cash either. My cash is for last-minute necessities and then it is back into the hopefully safe confines of my home to plan the next steps. For that I have only a couple of thousand dollars in cash stored away. I figure if I need more than that I didn’t plan well. Also, I would rather spend my money on supplies like long-term storable food and equipment than having a large horde of cash. With that amount, I figure I can make one last run if needed or be able to weather any short-term emergency when I can’t access cash.

What is the best place to hide cash in your home?

I wrote a post awhile back titled, How to hide your money where the bankers won’t find it that had lots of good ideas for reasonably safe places you could store cash. As I said in that article, you do have risks involved with keeping cash in your house, but I think you have just the same, if not worse risks relying on banks to keep your money safe and give it back when you want it. There are a million places to hide cash, but you can get tricky and buy a fake shaving cream safe to store several hundred dollars in there. Just be careful you don’t throw that away. There are other options like wall clocks with a hidden compartment inside that might be less prone to getting tossed in the trash. Your imagination is really all that is needed for a good hiding place, but I would caution you that you don’t store cash in too many places or you could forget where you hid it. This happened to me when I had hidden some cash behind an item that I ended up giving to my daughter because I thought I didn’t need it anymore. Imagine my surprise when she came into the living room and said, “Dad, I found an envelope with a lot of money in it”. I gave her a twenty for a reward…

What about you? How much cash do you think you need to have on hand and what do you plan on spending it on if the grid goes down?

5 Ways to Build a Cheap Emergency Shelter

When your roof is leaking and your feet go through the floor boards, it may seem clear enough that your home won’t stand up to a hurricane or some other large scale disaster. On the other side of the equation, even if your home is newer, or you rent an apartment, that doesn’t mean you should rely exclusively on your current home during a major crisis.(Here are 23 survival uses for honey that you didn’t know about.)

Regardless of your current living situation, there are many times and places where an external shelter located on your property or near your home will be of more use than expected. Here are some ways you can build an emergency shelter on a limited budget.

Preparedness Hacks: Once a nuke is heading your way, you might think that there isn’t much left to do, but you would be wrong!

Because we will show you America’s natural nuclear bunkers that are also EMP proof. When the sirens start wailing, all you need to do is pick the closest one to your home, where you can take cover before it hits.

Understand the Building Needs for Different Crisis Scenarios

Before you decide to try and build the cheapest emergency shelter possible, it is important to know which kind of emergencies you expect to get through while residing in the shelter. Have a look at some of the most common scenarios and how they may or may not change your building plans:

  • The best shelter for surviving a nuclear crisis will be one located underground. Just make sure that earth covers the top of the shelter as well as all around it. Underground shelters will also be the best for tornadoes.
  • Since water from hurricanes can sink deep into the ground, you may be in more danger underground than above. A shelter that will survive a hurricane must be able to withstand heavy winds and rain. Look into shelters that have rounded or dome like shapes as they will offer less resistance to the wind. This, in turn, means that it will be harder for the wind to pick up the shelter and destroy it.
  • Gas, disease, and similar attacks require a shelter that is as waterproof and air proof as possible. While it does not matter if the shelter is above ground or below, you will need to be able to filter the air and enrich it with oxygen. Ideally, shelters for these kinds of emergencies plus nuclear crisis should also include a decontamination area. If you go outside, it will be very important to have a place where you can remove your clothes and remove debris and other possible pollutants from your skin before entering the shelter.

Cheap Materials For Building Shelters Near Your Home

Chances are, you will be surprised how natural materials or ones you consider to be “junk” can be repurposed into making a durable emergency shelter. Here are some materials that you more than likely have on hand right now, can find abandoned with little effort, or can build up in a fairly short amount of time.

As you consider these items, remember that building a viable shelter isn’t just about the materials, it is about how you assemble and support them.

  • Old tires – old tires can be cut into any number of shapes that can be used to cover holes or build a waterproof layer. They can also provide flexibility to the shelter that may be of use during earthquakes, or when building an unusual design.
  • Plastic water bottles – of all the possible materials for building an emergency shelter, this one is the most overlooked, yet the most valuable. In fact, today, people are building full scale homes using plastic water bottles filled with dirt, sand, or water. They have excellent insulative properties and lend just enough support to other materials that would be difficult, if not impossible to turn into a permanent shelter.
  • Metal food cans – as with tires, you can use tin cans for covering different areas, as well as for strength. Do not forget that you can always cut these cans open, lay the flat, and then fold them into strips. This can make them useful for supporting different parts of the shelter as well as holding parts together. Metal food cans are also very useful for making solar heaters that can provide warmth for your shelter and hot water.
  • Canvas bags – when filled with sand or soil, the canvas bags are some of the most useful things you can use for building an emergency shelter. They are easy to stack up, and can provide a good bit of protection from the elements. They are also the best building material to shield from bullets.

Cost Cutting Without Losing Quality

When you are on a very tight budget, even a few extra dollars can be hard to eke out of your budget. For example, even though smaller sized water bottles may work well for an emergency shelter, there is no getting around the fact that buying water by the gallon is cheaper.

It does not pay to buy larger bottles in order to try and save money because your emergency shelter will not be as sturdy or reliable. This is just one area where cost cutting would create more problems than it solves.

On the other hand, there are some other places where you can safely cut costs without losing the benefits you want most from the shelter:

  • Try to build a smaller shelter or break it up into smaller modules. If you build the shelter in add-on modules, you may also improve the overall strength of the shelter, plus extend the cost of building the shelter over a longer period of time.
  • Canvass the local area to see if others have useful trash that they are willing to give you. You can also check out sites where high volumes of tires and other waste tend to collect with little or no attention from others. Abandoned lots, and other areas may be a good place to find items that can be repurposed for your shelter at no cost.
  • Look in second hand and thrift stores for canvas items that you can sew into bags for making sand bags.
  • Take a careful survey of natural materials. Even if you can’t find a beach or plenty of sand, do not overlook the soil in your back yard for filling plastic bottles or canvas bags.
  • Keep an eye on local public auctions. You never know when useful building materials may become available from one or more locations.

Where to Hide the Shelter

Hiding your shelter can be difficult for any number of reasons. To begin, people are bound to notice that you are doing something unusual. While keeping your building tasks out of plain sight will help with this problem, there are some others to consider.

Never overlook the possibility of electronic surveillance means during the building process and after the shelter is built and stocked with supplies. In fact, before you even buy or begin saving materials to make the shelter, you should make sure you know what kind of methods may be used to locate the shelter.

From there you can amend the design and then figure out the best location for hiding it. Here are some basic rules for making your shelter easier to hide:

  • Keep the shelter small or have a series of small shelters spread out so that no single site gains attention.
  • Make sure the shelter is properly disguised based on the surrounding terrain
  • Study how time of day, lighting effects, and weather patterns may reveal the existence of the shelter
  • Have multiple access points so that you can get from any area on the property to the shelter without being seen or observed
  • Use “hiding in plain view” with caution. You can use different shapes or several other methods to ensure people see the structure, but either don’t recognize what it is, or place no importance on it. As with any other kind of disguise, the shelter should blend in and look so normal it is forgotten. If you decide to go in the opposite direction, the shelter should look so strange it will be ignored as a point of blocking out irrelevant information.

During a SHTF situation, pain could become an annoyance for some, but unbearable for others.

If doctors are scarce and medicine becomes even scarcer, this one little weed, found all over North America and similar to morphine, could be a saving grace.

Best Ways to Get to the Shelter in an Emergency

When disaster strikes, there is nothing worse than knowing safety is just a few feet away, yet you have no way to get there. In this case, if your house is no longer safe, you must still have a way to get to your emergency shelter and the supplies that will get you through the disaster. Here are some possible ways you can use to get to the shelter:

  • Make use of underground tunnels. Even if you have only a crawlway under your house, it will be worth your while to dig an underground tunnel that comes up in your emergency bunker. It does not matter if the shelter is above ground or below. If possible, you should make it your business to have access to the crawlway in each room on the downstairs level of your home. You should tunnel access points throughout the yard. At the very least, if you find a way to get outside, you can still use these entry and exit points to get to your shelter.
  • If your shelter is above ground, you may want to try accessing it directly instead of using an underground tunnel. This must be done so with caution so that no one sees where you are going or notices any kind of foot traffic leading to the shelter. When using above ground travel methods, do not forget to take advantage of trees or other objects that create blind spots. There are many ways to get from Point A to Point B without being seen if you know how to place objects around your yard, and then use them for cover in a time of need.
  • Tall trees in your yard and rope can also be used to move from limb to limb until you reach an appropriate access point.

Dugout Shelters

When it comes to saving money on an emergency effort, dugout shelters offer some of your best options. That being said, underground bunkers or shelters can be extremely dangerous if they aren’t built correctly or something else causes you to become trapped below ground.

You should have at least one underground shelter on your property so that you can use it if the situation calls for it.

Today, there are many different designs of dugout shelters to choose from. You can build something simple as a one room underground cavity braced with wooden beams. Alternatively, you can tunnel and go to different depths to create multiple rooms and structures.

As long as the soil in this area perks well and is solid, you should be able to build a fairly good shelter.

During the process of planning to build a dugout shelter, do not overlook digging deeper into bedrock. This is very important if the soil is very shallow and there is no other way to dig down deep enough. While it may cost a bit more to dig through the bedrock, reaching this level can open up opportunities to increase the stability of the shelter.

Dugout shelters can also be useful when it comes to saving on other parts of stocking and maintaining the shelter. For example, while you are choosing a location for the shelter, you should make sure you know about how underground water moves around and through your property.

Depending on the area, you may be fortunate enough to find an underground stream with clean water nearby, or some point where you can easily access the water table. Since clean water is necessary for both short and long term survival, being able to harness an underground source in your emergency shelter will be a huge advantage.

Experts predict that an EMP strike that wipes out electricity across the nation would ultimately lead to the demise of up to 90% of the population. However, this figure begs an important question: if we were able to live thousands of years without even the concept of electricity, why would we suddenly all die without it?

Fortified Living Brush Shelter

When combined with a secondary underground shelter, you will find that most of your emergency needs will be met more easily than if you built just one emergency shelter from some other material.

Typically, you will find that making shelters covered with still living trees, or bushes will also cost less than using other kinds of materials. These shelters have a number of other advantages that you might want to consider:

  • As you may be aware, homeless people are often drawn to derelict buildings or ones that seem to be abandoned. These very same people, however, aren’t likely to dig into a bunch of bushes covered in poison ivy or something else that looks equally unpleasant. By the time you factor in people that fear contact with insects in shrubs, you can have some peace of mind knowing that a living brush shelter will be overlooked.
  • Today, some preppers believe our society is likely to collapse at any moment. Others may think we have some time yet. Regardless of where you are on this continuum, there is a good chance that, as a homeowner, you are also paying property tax. Unlike recognizable shelter, you are likely to find that the tax assessor isn’t going to recognize a bunch of shrubs as living space let alone a building. Therefore, you won’t have to worry about a tax hike, securing permits, or other problems that can come up when building a more conventional bunker.
  • Living brush shelters can also hide plants that can be consumed for food and medicinal needs.

Sandbag and Concrete Shelters

As noted earlier, sandbag shelters are remarkably durable and can withstand many different kinds of attacks. No matter whether you are concerned about bullets or keeping out rioters, the walls of a sandbag shelter can keep just about anything out. In fact, even if you decide to build some other kind of shelter, fortifying it with sandbags will be to your advantage.

Insofar as cost, if you live near beach or have some other access point to free sand, it will cost you almost nothing to build this shelter type.

Using Plastic Bottles and Other Recyclable Materials

There is no question that a growing number of people believe some kind of major disaster is looming. At the same time, actively engaging in prepper activities and taking concrete steps can be both expensive and time consuming.

From this perspective, it is more than likely many people know they need to put building an emergency shelter as a top priority. However, like being trapped in a nightmare, it may be impossible to start working towards this goal.

Once you find yourself in a catastrophic situation, it is a good idea to make sure you know how to build a shelter from what others see as junk. While others are busy fighting and killing over more obviously useful resources, you can obtain things like used plastic bottles and turn them into a viable shelter.

In their simplest form, all you need to do is fill the bottles with dirt or water, and then use mud to seal the bottles together to form walls and ceilings.

At the very least, if you don’t feel drawn to building some other kind of shelter you can try this one as the basis for a greenhouse or part of a gazebo. The important thing is to know how to build walls using this construction material so that you can make use of it in a time of need when you have no choice but to make building an emergency shelter your top priority.

Sustainable Mobile or Knock Down Shelters

Aside from buying a tent that you can put in your yard for emergency shelter, it is also possible to build wall units that are collapsible and can be moved around with relative ease. For these shelters, look at different kinds of polymers or other lightweight materials.

If you need a larger shelter with a bit more substance than a tent, designing a knock down shelter may be a good option for you. When combined with brush piles or other natural disguises, the mobile nature of this shelter can provide some unexpected advantages.

That being said, do not forget that your supplies and stockpile will most likely need to be housed somewhere else. No matter how fast you can disassemble, pack, and move the main shelter, it is never a good idea to have to waste time on items inside can cannot simply be folded up and put away.

If you own a car, this is one of the easiest and cheapest things to turn into a place that you can turn to for emergency shelter. Just make sure that you give some thought to maintaining your privacy and preventing people from realizing that you are living in the vehicle.

Emergency shelters that will last form months to years can be built at a low cost if you focus on some creative or unusual options. You can also go with more conventional underground bunker designs and add fortifications as your budget allows.

Regardless of the first shelter type that you choose, it is also important to be ready to build a second one so that you can address as many emergency needs as possible without spending a fortune on just one design.

How To Turn Your Q-Hut Into An EMP-shielded Home (For most people, it would be a considerable waste of resources to erect a building that did not serve its intended purpose.”)

Can a Quonset Hut be turned into an EMP-shielded home? With this reader question, the devil is in the details. If you are ready to face them, grab a napkin, sharpen a pencil and then go rent a crane: you have work to do!

First let’s see what it takes to shield something from EMP and how a Quonset Hut is constructed to determine if this building could provide a cost effective solution to EMP under the right circumstances.

I imagine that the reason that leads to this question is something along the lines of: “Quonset Huts have a steel skin, and steel is a conductor, so they must provide some shielding against EMP. Almost 200,000 of the buildings were manufactured for WWII, some are still in use by the military to this day and many others are still knocking around as surplus, so maybe this could be an inexpensive way to build a shielded home or retreat or some sort.

But the subject of EMP is complex, and a building is a major investment. For most people, it would be a considerable waste of resources to erect a building that did not serve its intended purpose.”

The (Very) Basics of How to Shield Against EMP

As you may recall from an elementary physics class (or a diligent 2-seconds of research on your “Inter-web Thingy,”) Faraday cages can be used to shield vulnerable microelectronics from EMP.

For some, but certainly not all, of our readers, that fact and perhaps how to improvise a Faraday cage from a metal trash can (or similar conductive vessel with a tight fitting lid) is about the deep end of the pool when it comes to the depth of their knowledge this particular subject.

Now, that is not a bad thing. Where that not the case, us folks toward the nerdier end of the scale might be doing something other than writing about EMP survival, so I’m good with that.

But society’s ever-decreasing attention span being what it is, that is to whom I orient this type of article, so those of you who are “Walter White-level intelligence”, and beyond, you will have to bear that in mind (or break down and buy the book.)

A Faraday cage provides EMP shielding by creating a conductive skin around what you are trying to protect. Imagine that this conductive skin helps conduct some of the flow of energy around a protected envelope, like a river flowing around a sand bar. This is a bit of an oversimplification, but I think it is an effective analogy for most people.

The idea is that most of river goes around the sand bar. You end up with a lot less intensity of water flow inside the sand bar than outside because the amount of flow that penetrates the sand bar is reduced by the (shielding effect of the) sand bar. The bulk of the flow of water is “conducted” around the sand bar like the conductive skin of a Faraday cage conducts electricity around the occupant of the cage.

Another way to say this is that the Faraday cage attenuates (or reduces) the intensity of the field strength of the EMP that is able to penetrate the shielding provided by the cage.

Back to the sand bar analogy, the shielding provided by the conductive skin of the Faraday cage is the difference in EM flow outside and inside the cage. So the cage does not completely stop or shut out the EMP, it just “turns down the volume” to point that it doesn’t “blow the speakers” (so to speak) of electronics protected by the cage. The volume of sound, EMP wave flow or sound wave flow is lower or quieter inside the cage than outside it.

This protective skin needs to have the following properties:

1. It must completely encapsulate whatever you are trying to protect. Depending of the frequency range of energy you are protecting against, the skin can be a cage or a mesh. But for our application, openings as small as a quarter inch could allow EMP inside, compromising the protected space. So mesh would have to be roughly 20 openings per inch or finer. If you are trying to shield a multisided space such as a cube, all six side would have to be shielded. I often see people forget about the floor! EMP is not like rain, you cannot just drape a space blanket over the object and call it good.

2. The flow of electrons through the skin must be unimpeded. If you join two or more sheets of conductive material to form the conductive skin, the seams where they mate must be free of non-conductive paint or any other insulation. I see people make this mistake a lot with metal ammo cans. They fail to remove the paint where the lid fits onto the box and remove the rubber gasket. Gaskets are still helpful, but they need to be conductive gaskets as opposed to the non-conductive rubber gaskets that come in the cans.

3. Any insufficiently shielded wires or other conductors penetrating the skin compromise its integrity.

4. The conductive skin must have a non-conductive layer gap of air between the skin and whatever you are protecting. If the object touches the skin or is too close to it, the electromagnetic energy can be conducted from the skin into what you are trying to protect.

5. The conductive material must provide sufficient electromagnetic shielding (measured in decibels) to protect against EMP. The thicker the conductive material, the more shielding it will provide. To shield against the field strength of an EMP generated by a nuclear weapon detonated high in the earth’s atmosphere, directly above your location, would require approximately 73dB of shielding. If the weapon was detonated hundreds of miles away, this number will be lower.

Just keep in mind that the relationship of shielding thickness to the number of dB of shielding it provides is logarithmic, so doubling the shielding layer thickness does not double the dB of shielding.This means that if you buy a Faraday bag that provides 40dB of shielding, and you put your bag inside another 40dB you don’t end up with 80dB of shielding. You would end up with less than 50dB of shielding at that level.

And to protect against a super-EMP weapon (a nuclear weapon optimized to yield the maximum amount of energy released in the form of EMP as opposed to light or heat) this number would have to be much higher. You would not be talking Mylar bags, aluminized bags or tinfoil anymore, you would need a shielding material more along the lines of an aluminum pressure cooker for that.

quonset

How Does the Quonset Hut Stack Up As a Faraday Cage?

Once assembled, a Quonset Hut is essentially a semicircular cross-section of corrugated, of galvanized steel that can be moved by crane and set on a concrete slab or wooden floor. Steel is a conductor, so won’t that offer some electromagnetic protection?

If you have been paying attention, you may already know the answer. IF the steel sections have been properly joined THEN you have a start.

Notice that the answer is conditional and that even then, a Quonset Hut can only be viewed as possible place to start or source of raw material in the form of steel. Even if the integrity of the building’s steel skin is maintained, you would still have some major issues to deal with in order to turn it into an EMP-shielded structure.

Here is what it would take to turn a “Q-Hut” into an EMP-shielded stronghold:

  • Any sealant, lacquer, paint or other non-conductive material between the seams of steel sections, any holes or gaps a quarter of an inch or larger will compromise the free flow of electrons through the shielded “skin” of the structure so they would have to be stripped and replaced with conductive product.
  • Any holes or gaps a quarter of an inch or larger will compromise the shielded envelope, including any windows, doors and the entire floor would not be shielded by “upside down steel half pipe” formed by the steel portion of the Quonset Hut. All these areas would need to be covered with material that meets our shielding requirement of greater than 73dB (for a normal nuclear weapon used to initiate Compton Scattering, generating a nuclear high-altitude EMP, not a super-EMP weapon.) As mentioned, 20OPI or smaller mesh could be used for the windows and to encapsulate any solar panels you add. To add solar panels to the project, please refer to my past articles on the subject starting here: How to Protect Your Solar Gear from EMP (Part 1)
  • No unshielded long conductors such as electrical wiring should be attached to the building without first being shielded, shunted through EM-shielded gaskets, fitted with fast switching (less than a millisecond) surge protection with power handling in the same range as lighting protection circuits. They should also be properly grounded.
  • The conductive skin should be separated from the building interior by a gap or suitable non-conductor. A non-conductive spray-on bed lining material or any other non-conductive material could be used for this purpose, just do not forget the floor!

There you go! If this does sound like a fun project, let me know, I just might squeeze you into my consulting schedule so I can see how it turns out, so shoot me an email.

Better yet, leave your comments below. Either way, I enjoy reading them, and have even been known to respond to reader questions and comments from time to time.

Introduce Yourself (Example Post)

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.

Why do this?

  • Because it gives new readers context. What are you about? Why should they read your blog?
  • Because it will help you focus you own ideas about your blog and what you’d like to do with it.

The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.

To help you get started, here are a few questions:

  • Why are you blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal?
  • What topics do you think you’ll write about?
  • Who would you love to connect with via your blog?
  • If you blog successfully throughout the next year, what would you hope to have accomplished?

You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.

Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.

When you’re ready to publish, give your post three to five tags that describe your blog’s focus — writing, photography, fiction, parenting, food, cars, movies, sports, whatever. These tags will help others who care about your topics find you in the Reader. Make sure one of the tags is “zerotohero,” so other new bloggers can find you, too.