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?
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?
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
This is the first post on my new blog. I’m just getting this new blog going, so stay tuned for more. Subscribe below to get notified when I post new updates.
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.
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