Book Giveaway Winners and Top Ten Skills

Thanks to all who participated in this latest book giveaway for a chance to win a free copy of The Darkness After.  

I received some excellent submissions from those who participated by sending in their personal list of what they consider the Top Ten Essential Skills that any prepper/survivalist should possess or attempt to master.

As you would expect, there was a lot of overlap in these lists, as most of us can agree on at least five of the top ten essential skills, especially: finding and purifying water, fire making, shelter making, navigation and food gathering (including foraging, fishing and hunting).  Other commonly mentioned skills included the use of firearms for hunting and personal defense, knowledge of first aid, use of camouflage and stealth and hand to hand combat skills.

One of the lists submitted had an interesting and probably overlooked skill set that most people should pay more attention to: mechanical skill to maintain gear, firearms and mode of travel.  People who like to work on things as a hobby or have jobs that require mechanical skills may be all set in this department, but in today's society, fewer people do their own repairs or use their hands at work.  If you are among them, you can begin by doing small, routine maintenance jobs on your home, vehicle and other items.  As you gain proficiency in this, your confidence in your ability to keep everything you need going after the SHTF will be much greater.

As stated in the last post announcing the book giveaway, the five winners were chosen at random by a drawing, not based on the quality or content of their Top Ten List.  To those who didn't win, I still appreciate your participation and contribution.  As Scott Finazzo and I put the finishing touches on The Prepper's Workbook, these lists will be taken into consideration as we complete the final section of the book, and you may see one of your ideas published there.

So, here are the five winners of a copy of The Darkness After:

J.  Miller of Chesapeake, VA
J.  Guerra, of McAllen, TX
H. Coulter, of Prentiss, MS
T.  Cleveland, of Savanna, GA
D. Baldwin, of Ft. Collins, CO

The winners have also been notified by email and the books will be sent out today.

Demonstrating the Green Sapling Tripod Cooking Method

I've posted here before about one of my favorite methods of cooking or boiling water using an open fire - the simple green sapling tripod support.  This was also described and illustrated in my book, Bug Out.  

Since I find the method so useful in that it allows you to carry nothing but one simple metal pot in the bug-out bag, I thought I would give you a better look at it in this video below.  I plan to do more video demonstrations of various techniques and reviews of gear in the future, and will soon have some better equipment for this.  If you can overlook the poor video quality of this footage, perhaps you can still benefit from the method. When I get set up with a better camera, I'll probably shoot this again in more favorable lighting and replace it here. This was done on a creek bank here in south Mississippi.

This method of cooking is well worth trying on your next overnight stay in the woods.  I've been using it for over 20 years myself, since first seeing it done by some native coconut growers in a remote coastal area of the Dominican Republic.  And although I say that one pot is all you need for the bug out bag, it also works as well when you're better equipped with skillets, coffee pot, etc.  I've cooked many hundreds of pancakes this way and it's easy to regulate the heat by adjusting the amount of fuel you feed into the small fire.

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.

Cooking On A Green Sapling Tripod

The Green Sapling Tripod:  An easy way to boil water without a stove:

Most backpackers and other wilderness travelers think they have to have a camp stove for cooking meals in the wilds. Such stoves are offered in a dazzling array of styles, sizes and prices. New stoves are always on the market, promising better performance and advanced technology. Stoves do have their place in the wild for recreational camping and can contribute to your enjoyment of the trip, but they are certainly not necessary in most environments, where you can easily build a fire to do your cooking. Most cooking done on camping trips with fancy, high-tech stoves involves nothing more complex than boiling water to add to freeze dried foods. Some campers, however, like to cook rice, pasta or other foods that require keeping the water boiling for a period of time. This can be done with a fire just as well as you can do it with a stove, provided you know a simple technique for setting up a pot over the flames.

Forget about the Western movies you’ve seen with complex, counter-weighted branches leaning out over a big roaring fire, supporting a kettle suspended from its bail over the flames. It’s a romantic picture, but not practical or easy to set up. All you need is a small metal cooking pot of stainless steel, and it does not even have to have a bail or even a handle. One point I make in my book in the chapter on gear selection is that if I had to chose between a metal pot and a metal knife to take into the wilderness, I'd take the pot.  The reason is simple.  You can not easily make a pot capable of holding boiling water from materials found in nature, but you can make cutting blades from simple shards of flint, bone or even found glass.  A cooking pot that you can boil water in will allow you to utilize all sorts of edible plant parts that can be prepared in no other way but by boiling.  And of course, it can be used to purify questionable water. 

The key to successfully using open flames to boil water is to set up the pot so it is secure and will remain so throughout the cooking. The method I prefer is the one I learned from some jungle natives in the mountains of the Dominican Republic, and it works great:

Use a machete or hatchet to cut a small green branch or sapling about one to two inches in diameter and about three feet long. Cut this length of green wood into three equal lengths, and sharpen one end of each to make stakes. The other end that is not sharpened should be cut straight across, so that there is a flat surface on it. What you will do is drive these three stakes into the ground to form a tripod, upon which your pot will rest. The stakes must be driven at an angle, so that the bases will be farther out than the tops, just like a camera tripod. Do this by driving one stake first and checking the height by holding the pot on it. You want to have several inches of open space under the pot for fuel wood. Use the pot as a gauge to determine where to set the other two stakes and then drive them down to the same height as the first. If you don’t have a hammer or the back of an axe or hatchet to drive stakes, use a rock or lump of solid wood.

The stakes should be solidly set in the ground and spaced just so they support the edge of your cooking pot. If they are evenly spaced, this set-up should be rock-steady and it will be difficult to turn the pot over. Even heavy pots full of water and food can be securely supported this way.

Now it’s time to build the fire and get on with the cooking. The key here is not to think in terms of a big, roaring campfire. If you want that, you can have that later in a separate place after dinner. What you need to cook with this green wood tripod is just a supply of pencil-sized, dry twigs. Build these up under the pot and ignite them using some leaves or other flammable material. These small twigs will burn hotter and faster than larger pieces of wood. They will also burn up quickly, so if you are cooking something like rice you will need an adequate supply of these twigs to keep feeding into the little fire under the tripod. A fire set up like this can have your water boiling as fast or faster than most backpackers can unpack and set up a modern stove. You don’t have to worry about the tripod catching on fire. That’s why you used green wood to make it. The green wood will usually last more than an hour, depending on the thickness and species of the branch or sapling, before it starts to dry out and ignite. Usually, one such set up built when you make camp will last for cooking dinner, making evening hot chocolate, morning coffee and cooking breakfast before the tripod starts to burn up. This set up will work for skillets as well as for pots, so you can make morning pancakes or fry bread if you prefer.

In a real bug-out situation, there is no place in your pack for a camp stove, much less the fuel to run it.  For any sort of wilderness living experience lasting more than a few days, cooking with fire is the only practical alternative.

The author boiling water for coffee. 

Fire in Rain

Fire can be the difference between life and death in the most dire circumstances, and in less serious circumstances at the very least - the difference between comfort and misery, or eating and going hungry.  In the wilderness, fire is light and life, and a welcome guest at any camp.

This is a photo I took in the Alaskan wilderness not far from Sitka. 

Southeast Alaska is good example of a place where the ability to build a fire in the rain is essential.  These forested islands are perpetually wet with either rain or fog.

Fires have fallen out of favor with recreational campers these days, mainly due to the advent of a wide variety of compact camp stoves. Modern campers often forget, however that a fire can mean the difference in life or death in a survival situation. In freezing cold conditions, the ability to build a fire can save you from certain hypothermia if you are caught out in the wilds without adequate clothing or shelter to stay warm. This is especially true if you have fallen into a stream or otherwise gotten wet and have no way to dry your clothes without the heat of a fire.

Building a fire in truly adverse conditions, such as falling snow or rain, might seem impossible to today’s urbanized outdoors enthusiasts. But native peoples and frontier travelers always depended on fire for everyday cooking and warmth, so they had to become proficient in building them, despite whatever bad weather Mother Nature threw their way. You can build a fire in such conditions too, as long as you have an understanding of how to do it and practice often in better conditions. Many people dismiss fire building as a no-brainer – just get some wood and light it with a match. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Real backwoods experts know that fire building is an art and a craft and their ability to rapidly build fires that burn hotter and brighter and more reliably bears this truth out.

Rainy weather is perhaps the greatest challenge to the fire builder. All fires depend on fuel in the form of combustible material, and in the woods, this usually means dry leaves, twigs, branches and other chunks of wood. If it’s raining out, how do you find dry wood?

It’s really quite easy if you know where to look. Not every piece of wood in the forest gets soaked in a rainstorm. The easily-gathered dead branches you find lying around on the ground that work well in fair weather will be wet however, so you must look elsewhere.

Standing trees are much less likely to absorb water than those lying on the forest floor. Often you can find dry dead branches near the bottoms of pine and spruce trees, as these are shielded from falling rain by the dense needles on the living branches. The outer bark of even these limbs may be wet, however, so you will need a knife to cut it away and reach the dry wood inside. Building a fire in the rain will be much easier if you have a large knife, or preferably, a machete or an axe. The frontiersmen of days gone by never ventured into the wilds without an axe, and this was one of the reasons. A sharp cutting tool will give you the ability to split large pieces of wet wood to get at the dry interior, or even to cut down small standing dead trees that can then be split into usable sized pieces of fuel.

Even better than wood that is merely dry on the inside is the wood you can sometimes find in old stumps that are full of concentrated pine resin. Called “lighter knots” or “fat lighter” by country folk, this resin rich wood will burn with a hot and bright flame even in the rain, if you first cut it into little pieces of kindling to light it. You can identify such fat lighter by the smell and color of the wood when you cut into it. It will smell like pine pitch or tar and is bright yellow or orange inside, often oozing sap. This wood is also much heavier than regular dry wood. It can be found in any forest where there are conifers such as pine, spruce, fir or cedar.

Once you find a source of ignitable fuel, try to locate your fire somewhere so that it is at least partially sheltered from more falling rain. Although fat lighter will burn in direct rain, you will have to build a really large fire and keep the fuel coming to keep it alive in a downpour. If you can get under some dense trees or a rock overhang, you can keep your fire going much easier once you locate a source of dry wood. Don’t give up on a fire just because it’s raining. Remember there is always dry wood somewhere in a forest, but it may take a little effort and a sharp blade to get to it.