Polar Pure is Available Again!

Back in January, 2010, I posted a review of one of my favorite water purification methods: Polar Pure Water Disinfectant.  You can read the article for all the details of why I like this iodine purification method so much, and how I've tested it in a wide variety of environments, including jungle rivers in Central America with no ill effects:

http://www.bugoutsurvival.com/2010/01/gear-review-polar-pure-water.html

But then, suddenly Polar Pure was taken off the market in 2011 by the DEA because of illegal drug manufacturers allegedly using the pure iodine crystals that come in the bottle for making crystal meth.  This put a small family business on indefinite hold and took a great product for the bug out bag off the market.

I still had some older bottles on hand when the ban went into effect, and since Polar Pure has a long shelf life I wasn't too worried, but I could no longer recommend it for others since finding it was a challenge.  But just today I was sorting my gear for an upcoming motorcycle trip out West, where I expect to be camping in the backcountry as I explore remote forest service and BLM roads off pavement.  Looking at my old bottles of Polar Pure, I decided go online to check on the latest status and was delighted to find that it is back on the market and for sale at Amazon for the same price as before the ban.  I'll order a couple of fresh bottles immediately, as this is one of the best water purification options I know of when you have to travel light.  Even if you own and prefer filtration systems, it doesn't  hurt to have a bottle of Polar Pure in the bug out bag.  It's lightweight, can last for years, and only costs $15.

Foreword by Jim Cobb

My friend and fellow Ulysses Press author, Jim Cobb, best known for his excellent site: Survival Weekly and his bestselling Prepper's Home Defense has written the foreword to The Prepper's Workbook.  I'm posting it here to give you a little better idea of the intent and purpose of this book and how it should be used:

Foreword
I first became acquainted with Scott Williams by reading Bug Out: The Complete Plan for Escaping a Catastrophic Disaster Before It’s Too Late. This was the first of his books I’d read and to say I was impressed is a dramatic understatement. Here was a guy who’d truly been there and done that. Not only did he have practical experience, he was able to communicate his knowledge effectively. His writing style was easy to follow and a pleasure to the eyes and mind.

Time and again in subsequent books, Scott has shown he is no armchair prepper. His knowledge and skills have been hard-won by doing rather than just reading a few books and regurgitating the same information someone else came up with and never tested in the real world.

I’d hazard a guess and say that well over 90 percent of preppers are list makers. We make lists of bug-out bag contents, food pantry supplies (both what we have on hand and what we need to acquire), wish lists of the gear we’d love to buy once we get that bonus from work, to-do lists for chores and projects. The list of lists goes on and on, doesn’t it?

That said, many preppers, even the ones who have been around a while, are probably missing a thing or two (or more) on those lists. Maybe they forgot about them, maybe they never heard of them before. No matter the case, more than one prepper has agonized over whether they’ve accounted for everything. When the balloon goes up, or the grid goes down, is the worst possible time to realize you forgot something.

The beauty of The Prepper’s Workbook is they’ve done the remembering for you. With easy-to-understand forms and checklists, all you need to do is fill in the blanks. Granted, that might be oversimplifying things just a tad as prepping in general involves (or should involve) a lot more doing than reading. The point is, follow the proverbial bouncing ball and, by the end, you should be fairly well set should disaster strike.

I know many preppers who are avid readers and they often lament a creased cover or a dog-eared page as they want to keep the books looking as nice as they can. This book, however, is made to be beaten up, written in, marked up with highlighters. If at the end of the day it looks like a five-year-old college textbook, with all sorts of notes in the margins, then you’ve used the book correctly.

Every prepper has a different plan for what to do in a crisis and how to go about getting things done. That’s as it should be as we each face unique circumstances and challenges. There is no one single game plan that will work for everyone. That is where The Prepper’s Workbook will really help, as it allows for customization to suit your individual needs, strengths and weaknesses. By following the instructions and filling out the forms, you will be able to create a survival plan that is unique and perfectly suited for you and your family.

Fill out the worksheets, run through the checklists, complete the projects. Take your time and do everything the way it should be done—no cheating! Be honest with yourself and recognize where your plan is lacking, then work toward improving on that weakness.

Even if the worst never comes to pass and you never have the opportunity to truly put your plans to the test, you’ll rest easier at night knowing that if the world begins to fall apart in the morning, you’re ready for it.

—Jim Cobb
Author of Prepper’s Home Defense and

The Prepper’s Complete Book of Disaster Readiness 

Prepper's Workbook Update

I just posted this update on my main website, www.scottbwilliams.com and I'm reposting here for Bug Out Survival readers who may not see it on that site.  I know many of you have been waiting on this book for a long time, and I apologize for the delay in updating here, but I wanted to wait until I knew for sure when this would be available.  Scott Finazzo and I have been working closely with our Ulysses Press editor to develop this project into the most useful book it could be.  Changes midstream have delayed finalizing it, but now it is all done and is off to production with a new cover design to go with all the new content.

The updated cover design for The Prepper's Workbook:

Along with the new cover shown above, the final revisions and most of the interior design work is now complete on the new and updated version of the The Prepper's Workbook, co-authored with Scott Finazzo.  It is now in the production stage and though the new release date listed on Amazon is March 18, my editor says that it should be available to ship by mid-February.  I know that a lot of readers have pre-ordered the book since it was first listed on various online sites last year, and I know it is frustrating to wait so long, but the final version of this book will be much more useful than what I had originally envisioned.  Rather than a book of mostly checklists, The Prepper's Workbook is a complete interactive planning tool to help you prepare your home and family for any disaster, whether of natural causes or manmade.  You don't have to have any background in preparedness to use this book, and the focus is on the ordinary family who wants stay safe and be self-sufficient in a short or long-term disaster.  In other words, you don't have to be expecting the collapse of civilization to benefit from this book.

A lot of the focus is on accessing what you currently have and do not have that you might need in the aftermath of a disaster, and the worksheets and activities will help you acquire, organize and store these items.  You will learn how to prepare your home for sheltering in place and how to plan an evacuation, as well as how to determine whether it is best to stay or go.  There are sections on specific types of disasters and how to plan for them, as well as sections on first aid, home and personal defense, and the most important survival skills you need to acquire and master.   Along with all the information we provide in the book, there are just as many fill-in-the-blank pages and worksheets that will require you to put the "work" in the workbook.  When you are finished with these tasks, you will have a unique and perfectly-tailored reference book with all your critical preparedness information compiled in one readily-accesible and handy location. This, we hope, is what will make this book so uniquely useful among a flood of books covering the topics of disaster survival and preparedness.

Two New Books for 2013

I've been holding off on posting the details of my forthcoming books due to some changes in the order of publication and the publication dates.  Before The Pulse was published last summer, I had worked out a contract with my publisher to do another non-fiction project under the title: The Prepper's Workbook.  I was also eager to get started on the sequel to The Pulse, as that novel was written with a larger story in mind and plans for at least one sequel from the beginning. 

Instead of giving me the go-ahead immediately on the sequel, however, my publisher suggested an entirely different novel set in the scenario of The Pulse - the same grid- collapse event caused by a solar flare - but with a different storyline and different characters.  Most of the characters in the new novel (which will also likely be followed with one or more sequels) are young adults or teenagers, so the book is targeted to both young adult and adult readers.  The Darkness After will be an action-filled adventure story with a somewhat faster pace than The Pulse.  Here is the cover image:

 I am still in the middle of writing this one now, but have also worked out a contract with my publisher to do the sequel to The Pulse later this year, after the June publication of The Darkness After.  In addition, I will be completing The Prepper's Workbook later this spring, and the new publication date for it is set for sometime in September.  The other change regarding that book is that I will now be working on it with my friend and fellow-adventurer, Scott Finazzo.  The cover for the book should be updated soon to show both of us as coauthors.

Though I have not posted anything about the forthcoming Prepper's Workbook, I'm sure many of my readers have found the listing on Amazon, which still incorrectly shows the publication date as tomorrow, January 15.  I apologize for the confusion that may have caused, but I was expecting my publisher to change the book details to reflect the new publication date before now.  At any rate, if you have pre-ordered the book as many people do on Amazon, it will still be shipped as soon as it is released.  I will post more details on both of the projects soon:

An Interview with Dr. Prepper

I had another interesting discussion on Blog Talk Radio last night: this time with James Talmage Stevens, AKA "Dr. Prepper".  I was scheduled to talk with him for the first hour of last night's episode of his Dr Prepper CPR show, but we had such a good conversation we ended up going the two full hours.

Dr. Prepper has been writing about preparedness since 1974, and certainly has a lot of insight on the topic.  This is the second time I've been a guest on one of his shows, and thankfully, we had a better connection this time so the audio is much better.  Although the focus of the interview was my newest book: Bug Out Vehicles and Shelters, we covered a lot of ground that went beyond just bugging out.

If you missed the show, you can listen to it here:

Listen to internet radio with Preparedness Radio on Blog Talk Radio

A Review of The Prepper's Pocket Guide

I spend a lot of time here talking about my own books, of course, which is part of the reason I started this blog - as a platform upon which to expand on the material covered in those books and to connect with readers.  When I first conceived the idea of my first Bug Out book in 2009, I knew that interest was growing in all aspects of survival topics and I was surprised to see how many new survival books were appearing on bookstore shelves.  Now, two and half years later, this trend has not only continued but has gained tremendous momentum as the survival and prepping community's appetite for this kind of information seems insatiable.  This interest is no longer limited to a small segment of the population, however, but has really started to become mainstream in the last year or so, and for obvious reasons.  

Some of the newer books coming out on the topic are aimed squarely at those mainstream readers who may just now be beginning to realize they need to take a few steps in the direction of disaster and emergency prepardness, as well as address concerns caused by the new economic reality.  My own publisher, Ulysses Press of Berkeley, California, has recently released just such a book: The Prepper's Pocket Guide, by Bernie Carr, and it has been a bestseller from the start.  

I’ve been following the author’s Apartment Prepper blog since she began posting and have enjoyed reading her thoughts on the topic of prepardness from the perspective of an urban apartment dweller rather than the typical wilderness survival guru or retreat survivalist living in an isolated bunker in the middle of nowhere.  She relates to many readers who may not be interested in that kind of hard-core survival by describing her own journey that began with a growing feeling of insecurity in an uncertain world and how she started taking the steps to address her concerns for herself and her family.  I am pleased to see that journey lead to this excellent book that I think will benefit her blog readers and many, many more people who may not have given this topic serious thought because of misconceptions they may have about preppers.  

She dispels many common myths about prepping right in the beginning, such as:   

Prepping is Expensive

Prepping Takes Too Much Time

You Need a Lot of Space for Storage

You Need a Farm or Retreat Location

Prepping Will Turn Me Into One of Those Crackpots Living in a Cabin in the Woods, Dressed in Military Gear and Threatening People with Explosives. 

I really like the format of this book because it is just what the title says it is: a pocket guide packed with useful information that spans just about every aspect of survival and disaster planning.  Each of the 101 tips is solidly researched and clearly presented in a way that is easy to read and easy to understand.  While no pocket guide can go into great depth in any one subject area, the value of this book is that it introduces readers to ideas and concepts they may never have considered, opening the door to further research and reading on the topics they want to know more about.  Some of the major sections include: Financial Readiness, Water Needs, Food Supplies and Personal Health and Safety. 

As the author of this blog and two books on the subject of bugging out, I could especially appreciate Chapter Eight: When You Have to Get Out.  The tips in this section introduce those new to prepping to the concept of bugging out and manage to distill the essential elements of it in a few short pages while still covering the important points like what to pack in a bug-out bag, transportation, safety, exit routes, communication and navigation. 

Whether you plan to bug-in, bug-out or just want to learn more about what this “prepping” movement is all about, I highly recommend ThePrepper’s Pocket Guide as a handy reference and a permanent addition to your library. This little book also makes a great gift for $12.95, if like all of us, you have friends and family that cannot understand what this "prepping" stuff is all about and are looking for the perfect book to help them out. 

Top 50 Survival Blogs: A Useful List

I recently received an email from Bryan at http://www.survivaltop50.com/ notifying me of an interesting list he has compiled of the Top 50 Survival Blogs he has uncovered from around the web.  The list can be viewed by clicking the link above or this banner, a small version of which I have placed permanently in the sidebar at the bottom of this page:

 

Needless to say, I was pleased to learn that Bug Out Survival made the list, even though I haven't been around as long as many of the more well-known bloggers established in this subject area.  Survival Top 50 ranks blogs based on things like their Google page rank, Alexa ranking, and Yahoo Inlinks.  Since these things change all the time, a particular blog's rank on this list will fluctuate.  Bug Out Survival was ranked at No. 27 today.  Of course, that most popular survival blog of all, JWR's Survival Blog, is right up there at No. 1, followed closely by The Survivalist Blog. Check out the list for yourself and see how many of your favorite blogs are there.  Most of those in my blog list on this page are included, but through this list I have also discovered some new ones I didn't know about, and maybe you will too.

Here is what Bryan has to say about how the blogs on this list are chosen and how they are ranked:

For Readers
These are the top 50 blogs in the survival niche. By keeping their blogs up to date with news, ideas, and fresh and valuable content they provide you with the very best survival information. Share this list with everyone you know who is interested in learning survival.

For Advertisers
The top 50 survival bloggers are some of the most influential in the survival niche. Getting your name and product in front of these survival bloggers and their audiences can bring increased awareness of your company and bring additional sales. If these guys don’t know who you are then you need to let them know!

For Bloggers
These are your friends. These are people as dedicated to learning and sharing information about survival as you are. The SurvivalTop50 lets you quickly see how your blog ranks compared to your peers. Oh yeah, and we hope the SurvivalTop50 sends you tons of traffic!

How are the survival blogs ranked?
The entire ranking is objective and for fun. The real goal of SurvivalTop50 is to bring exposure to great survival bloggers. However to make them rank we show Feedburner for fun and doesn’t affect rank, and then alexa, yahoo, and google each get 10 points towards a total of 30. The better your blog does in the eyes of google, yahoo, and alexa, the better you will rank here.

Anyone Willing to Demonstrate Skills/Retreat Location Planning for a TV Show?

I've done several interviews over the phone lately, both with print journalists and television producers working on stories related to survivalist in general and SHTF prepping - both from the bugging-out and bugging-in perspective.  There's an unprecedented interest in these subjects, as readers here obviously know.

One of the more interesting phone calls I got was from a producer in California who is working on a show for one of the major cable television channels.  (These people find me through the hard work of the publicist at Ulysses Press - thanks Karma!  That's one of the benefits of having a book published through an outfit that really knows what they're doing when it comes to marketing and publicity.)

Back to this specific show:  this particular producer is interesting in going on location with a film crew to see how a skilled and knowledgeable group of preppers selects a location to bug-out (or bug-in) to, and would to interview said survivalists for the purpose of showing this interesting and growing segment of current American culture.  Anyone participating in the project will remain anonymous and any retreat/hide-out  locations will not be revealed on the show in a way that will compromise security.  Naturally, many of the prospects he has spoken with are hesitant, but I think it would be interesting as well as informative to less knowledgeable viewers.  I was assured that anyone portrayed on this show will not be cast in any negative light or made-out to be weirdo survivalist freaks.  That's not the point of this at all - unlike something the typical news media producer might attempt.

Being more of a lone wolf who tends to do my own thing on my own time, I'm not part of any network or group of preppers, even of the bug-out variety.  But the producer of this show is very much interested in bringing me in on it as well, if we can find an interesting place with a few good folks who don't mind showing what they've done to prep.  It doesn't matter where you're located, so long as it's in the U.S. Lower 48.

So if any of you reading this are not afraid of the camera and would like to share some knowledge with larger segment of the broader public, please contact me and let me know what you've got.  I feel like this is a worthwhile project and if I didn't believe knowledge was for sharing, I wouldn't be writing here at all.

Go to the contact page or just email me directly.

An Obsession with Checklists

I've been making detailed checklists since I first began taking simple, overnight canoe trips on nearby creeks and rivers.  The list-making habit has served me well, especially when these trips expanded to hiking, sea kayaking and sailing trips that lasted for weeks and in some cases, months.  Most how-to books on various types of wilderness travel include gear and supply lists of varying degrees of detail, as do many of the recent books on prepping for survival.

When I first got serious about wilderness travel and especially backpacking, one book that had a good example of such a checklist in the appendix was Colin Fletcher's The Complete Walker (now in it's 4th edition).  Fletcher has done extensive, long-distance solo hikes such as the ones he wrote about in his narratives: The Thousand-Mile Summer, and The Man Who Walked Through Time: The Story of the First Trip Afoot Through the Grand Canyon.  In The Complete Walker, he did a great job of breaking down the essential equipment for such endeavors into easy to understand categories.

Many items are universal and carried by almost everyone, but the details of these items are highly individual, and every experienced outdoorsman has preferences on the types and the manufacture of everything from backpacks to fire starters, boots, knives, hats, firearms and on and on. But you have to start somewhere, and that's what I did years ago after first reading The Complete Walker.  Working from Fletcher's lists, I crafted my own personalized wilderness checklist and after every trip added items I wished I'd brought along or deleted those I found unnecessary.  I created sub-lists or completely separate lists for each means of travel, whether on foot, by canoe or by sea kayak.  At first I did these by hand, then later on a word processor so that I could easily print a fresh copy and check it off as I loaded my pack or dry bags.

When I started sailing, the lists became ever more extensive, as the greater capacity of a larger boat meant more provisions, more essential equipment, more complexity of systems and more things to break or otherwise fail.  And of course, each voyage generated a brand new "to-do" list for repairs or improvements to the vessel before heading out again.

Today's prepper, whether planning to bug-out or bug-in has it easier when it comes to finding checklists.  There are many excellent books on the subject that include a variety of lists, such James Wesley Rawles' How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It: Tactics, Techniques, and Technologies for Uncertain Times. Online survival-related forums are full of member posts that include personal checklists, and many blogs on the subject include these as well.  Although people often debate the validity of published lists and criticize some for leaving this or that out or bringing something that may seem unnecessary, such debate is as pointless as arguing over which is the best handgun for self-defense or which rifle is best for hunting.  The answer is whichever is best for the user, related to their particular experience and situation.

Naturally my new book on the subject of bugging out would not be complete without some sort of checklist in the appendix.  I put one in with some hesitation and with a disclaimer that it is what I consider the minimum essentials to take if I had to bug-out on foot with nothing but what I could carry on my back.  I don't expect it to ever come to that, but it's a good exercise to make such a list and and an even better one to load up such a pack and go try to live out of it for a few days to see what it's like.  (See this basic list from the Bug Out Checklist button in the navigation bar).

Since my book addresses not only bugging out on foot, but also utilizing such transportation as full-sized motor vehicles, ATVs, dual-sport motorcycles, bicycles, canoes, kayaks, larger boats, and even horses and pack animals, it would not be practical to include complete checklists for every means of travel.  There are also other game-changing factors, such as climate, terrain, season of the year, and whether you are traveling alone or with your family or other group.  As a result, I've decided to stick with the basics and then add sub-lists of "extras" or "nice-to-haves" that I would include if I had a way of carrying it besides on my back.  There is also the option of caching supplies and equipment if you have done your advance scouting and have a plan about where you will go - whether in some uninhabited wilderness or on you own private retreat land. 

I'm always interested in knowing what other folks consider essential in their checklists of gear, and just about every time I've taken a trip with someone else, whether in the woods, mountains or on the high seas, I've come away with some new insight that leads to yet another modification of the old checklist.  These lists have become a way of life and I have no doubt that they will constantly evolve for as long as I am able to go outside.