I have finaly got almost all my ifak items thou i am missing last part, the case. I am looking fot any recomendation for case that yhould fit all thr items in the picture. I will also apreciate any packing advice if you know any. Also for anyone asking i have training for all of thrse items.Thank you.

With the relentless heat this year, scattered outages, and rising electricity bills, I finally decided it was time to get some backup power.

I live in Michigan, and the power outage near us during the recent heatwave was the final push I needed to start preparing for future outages.

Picked up a Delta Pro Ultra with an extra battery (1 inverter + 2 batteries total). Since we already have 6 solar panels at home, it feels good knowing we have some backup power in place now. Turns out, they’re already generating more than enough to fully charge the batteries, with surplus to spare. Might consider adding another battery pack down the road.

Dang MRE prices are on the rise! $192/case or $16 individually.

I’ve been stocking lemonade and different kool-aid mixes to have on hand to make decent drinks

To add I do stock coffee for bartering as we don’t drink coffee here, and tea which we do drink but besides that I’m sure most people are going to get tired of water for sure

What items are u guys preparing as far as drink wise?

I see a lot of posts on here from people who mention (rightly) that prices keep going up and prepping is getting more costly. Being prepared is still worth the cost because the cost of being unprepared is so high. But what is the end game for Prepping?

For many it is simply rotating stock and having a year or five on hand. I salute you all! But what if the disaster is much more widespread? What if it takes longer to heal as a society? What if society is basically gone?

Homesteading is simply living the prep lifestyle 24/7. It is no longer storing for disaster . . . it is eating what you grow/harvest/slaughter. Prepping can run out of supplies, then what?

Homesteading is the natural evolution of prepping IMO.

I welcome your thoughts but mostly just wanted to toss this out since I have been seeing so many folks talking about rising prices affecting their ability to prep.

My mother in law lives with us and uses a portable oxygen concentrator a few hours a day. It is not 24 hours, but when she needs it she needs it. After a three hour outage last winter I realised we had no plan for her concentrator if the grid went down for longer. So I ran a proper test two weeks ago and the numbers are worth sharing.

The concentrator is a Philips SimplyGo Mini, set to pulse flow at setting 2. At that setting it draws about 45 W. I ran it from a Jackery SolarVault 3 Pro with the base 2.5 kWh battery. I let it run for about 20 hours and the battery was still at 64 percent when I ended the test. That is way more than enough for a full night plus the next morning, and the battery can recharge from the balcony panels when the sun comes up.

The important thing I did not think about before the test was the power cord. The concentrator has a AC adapter with a brick in the middle, and the brick gets warm. I had it sitting on a carpeted floor and it was uncomfortably hot after two hours. I moved it to a tile surface and the temperature dropped. That is the kind of detail that does not matter in normal use but matters a lot when you are running it continuously off a battery.

We also tested a backup plan. If the concentrator failed or the battery ran out, we have a spare oxygen tank with about 4 hours of continuous flow. That gives us enough time to get to a hospital or a neighbour with power. The battery is the primary plan, the tank is the backup, and the car charger for the concentrator is the backup to the backup.

I would not claim this setup is suitable for a 24 hour medical device. The concentrator we have is intermittent use, not life support. If you have a continuous flow concentrator or a ventilator, the power draw is higher and you need to test with your specific device. The 45 W number is for our specific model at our specific setting.

Looking for recommendations for several books you have come across that have great information on living/survival should the Internet and computers crash long term.

Beautiful, functional, and most importantly, it can run on AA batteries.

Thermal regulation is extremely important to me.

Just curious what others have growing right now as I’m working on edible and medicinal perennials. Our winter harvests are fairly small but we don’t have much room to grow indoors. 6b with a very Mediterranean climate, PNW. My lot gets pretty much full sun all day and I’m working on growing my trees to provide shade for understory plants. My sorrel absolutely burnt even in the shade last year so I’m pretty stuck with sun loving plants or putting 70%+ shade netting out in the summers.

What do you find easy to grow? Anything you’d add?

Fall/winter: squash, pumpkin, collards, kale, persimmons, potatoes

Spring: asparagus, peas, turnips, trillium, willow, pine, blueberries, cherries

Summer: apples, pears, Asian pears, plums, toothache, strawberries, goose berries, figs, sunflowers, tomatoes, peppers, sumac, onions, garlic, rhubarb, raspberries, blackberries, lettuce (which we harvest almost all year except in deep winter)

All year long: sage, lavender, rosemary, self heal, and I grow mushrooms (lions mane, oyster, chestnut) that I can’t forage (bolete, morel, and both chicken and hen of the woods).

i know zones have been shifting northward. i’m new to gardening and would like to figure out what produce best fits my region :) i’m assuming the current USDA map out there hasn’t factored in the climate change shift?

also with the super el niño reaching its peak intensity in november.. im guessing a warmer than usual winter. anyone doing anything specific with their garden in anticipation?

i wanted to try growing lettuce/spinach/arugula in the fall, but if it gets too hot they can bolt and then it’s a waste.

Hey y’all! I got the stuff to do my own food vault, and I’m pretty stoked about it. What are some recipes you have TRIED and LIKED? Yes I can google them, but I am looking for suggestions based on things you and your family actually liked eating. Thank you!!!

I’m sure someone has mentioned at some point in the past, but any local restaurant that uses Sysco and serves pickle spears probably has an abundance of 5 gallon food-safe buckets they’d love to get rid of.

Go ask your local spot to save you a few if you need free food-safe storage containers. Check for scratches and cracks, bleach, dry out completely, and bob’s your uncle. If you want to get fancy you can get food-safe twist-on lids.

I use them for all kinds of things, drill some holes in the bottom for drainage and grow crops, use them as a disposable mixing bucket, etc. The main thing that’s nice about them is that they are food grade unlike buying a typical Lowe’s or Home Depot bucket.

My local Lowe’s carries food grade buckets but they are $8 a pop. If you need more than one, that adds up quick!

I now live in an older apartment complex in Florida with thick brick buildings. Also, there are incredible old trees on the property as well as younger ones making for overall great visuals and a calming feeling coming home. However, as you can imagine, this means that I don't have great cell phone recception inside. Due to this, I plan on purchasing a battery backup for the wifi equipment and possibly one television to watch the news and weather when the power goes out. My main thought for this is hurricanes and continuing to be informed.

Does anyone know if the signal will continue to come in through the coaxial without power to make this work?

Also, does anyone have any other suggestions to ensure communication with emergency personnel and family if something major happens?

As always, stay safe, stay prepared, and stay informed.

Never had a drone before and I’m looking for recommendations on starter drones, don’t need anything super fancy. I just want something that I’d be able to fly up a couple hundred feet, take a look around and fly back down.
There are so many options out there and I’ve seen a couple for less than $50, I don’t know if those are good deals or a waste of money.

Been getting into prepping/survival content and I'm a bit tired of the same big-name sites showing up in every 'top 10 blogs' list. Are there any smaller, lesser-known bloggers or creators you personally follow who do

About the third time I've had to use it. Comes in handy at the beach and camping. Pressure pump at the well went out so this will do for tonight.

Hey everyone, I'm putting together a home backup system and wanted to run my parts list by people who've actually done this before. I've done basic electrical work: installed a subpanel and wired a workshop. I've never built a battery system before, so I'm trying to do this safely. 

We're in central Texas. The grid here is... let's just say I have trust issues after the 2021 freeze. I want to run the fridge, chest freezer, router, a few lights, and the gas furnace blower. No AC, no electric oven, no water heater. Just the basics.

Here's what I'm looking at:

Inverter: Victron MultiPlus II 48/3000. 3000VA continuous, can surge to 6000W. Seems like the sweet spot.

Battery: Two Vatrer 51.2V 100Ah server rack batteries. That's about 10.2kWh total. Includes WiFi and communication, which makes it easier to monitor system status and battery data. They are also ETL certified and built to meet UL standards, which was an important factor for me when choosing a home backup battery.

I've been reading DIY Solar Forum discussions and have seen several people running similar setups long-term. From what I've read, a fridge pulls roughly 1.5kWh/day, a chest freezer around 0.8kWh/day, and the furnace blower varies a lot, but I'm estimating around 1-2kWh/day depending on runtime. So 10kWh should give me 2-3 days of essentials without solar, maybe more if I'm conservative.

Transfer switch: Reliance 10-circuit manual. I know the MultiPlus has an internal transfer switch, but I also want a separate physical way to isolate the backup circuits during maintenance. 

Wiring: 2/0 copper for battery cables, 6 AWG for AC side. Class T fuse mounted as close to the battery positive terminal as possible. 

My questions:

1. Is 10kWh enough for what I'm describing? The numbers look ok on paper but real life is never that clean.

2. The rack batteries, do I need ventilation or can they just sit in the garage? Summers here hit 100°F. Spec sheet says operating temp up to 140°F but I'm not sure I buy that.

3. Should I add solar now or can that wait? Panels are cheap but I'd need to run conduit through the attic and I'm already spending enough on this.

4. Anything obvious I'm missing? Transfer switch sizing, fuse placement, grounding?

Appreciate any advice. I've been reading this sub for weeks and figured it was time to actually post.

Last night my and my husband’s (both 27M) world was rocked. Bear with me Reddit as this might be kinda long and sorry in advance for phone formatting. Around 9pm we discovered that the apartment right above ours was entirely on fire. We are the second floor of three. We still don’t know what caused it but it spread quick because we went from hearing a few thuds upstairs to seeing a window frame on fire falling down before our very eyes and people on the street yelling to get out of the apartment.

Luckily we were of the mind to immediately spring into action. We managed to wrangle our cats into their carriers and luckily had enough time to grab important documents before evacuating. At the end of it all, we were very lucky. The apartment that was on fire directly above us was part of a new addition added to our older apartment building so we had the roof of our building plus all the new foundation and flooring, etc from the new build. At the end we only received minimal water damage from the firefighters.

But all this luck is what has been weighing on me. It’s only by luck that things weren’t worse and I know in my mind that if they had been worse we would have been eternally fucked. It was late enough that my husband and I could have been in bed already. That window that was on fire could have easily crashed through my kitchen window and set my wooden dining table on fire. Our apartment does not have a fire extinguisher so we easily could have caught fire as well.

We also have three cats and only two carriers. We barely even had the second one if I didn’t remember we had set it outside on our balcony to air it out because our cat had peed in it. It’s not the best carrier either so we were planning on throwing it out eventually and it’s so lucky we hadn’t yet. But we had to shove two cats into one carrier which is not ideal. If we only had the one carrier I had no idea what we would have done. It would have killed me if anything happened to our babies.

One thing that I thank my husband for thinking on his feet and getting our important documents. We are both immigrants to the country we live in and not having these documents would have been very troublesome. But it made me think of not having things ready in an emergency. We had no go bag.

When we evacuated, I was in a dirty shirt and shorts, no underwear, socks, or shoes since I didn’t think to change from my house slippers into shoes during our haste. We didn’t have any water, any cat food, or litter. We were at the mercy of the community to give us water, litter, and food, which we were lucky enough to receive.

Now after the fact, after we have been able to come home and settle, I feel a sort of change in my brain. I know some of the things that I need to get but I’m not what more could be added to this list and this is where I ask for your help in being more prepared.

I know I need the following:

Three cat carriers
A home fire extinguisher & fire blanket
First aid kit
A go bag with the following:

Change of clothes
Water bottle
Cat food and litter
Copies of important documents
Flash light?
Power bank? Chargers?
Blankets?

I will say that we live in Sweden and luckily it is summer so it’s never very dark right now but had this happened in winter that would be a different story. It would be very dark and cold. All I know is that I am feeling like one of the luckiest men alive to still have my family and home completely intact. I do not want to take this for granted. I need to be prepared to save my family in case of any kind of disaster, say fire, flood, tornado, earthquake, anything.

I did a little maintenance on my BOB today, and unpacked the clothes i keep in there (3 sets containing T-Shirts, undies and socks each; to have some replacements if the clothes i have on me are wet or "unusable for some reason")

While the rest of the BOB-stuff was fine, the clothes ...well they had a certain degree of stank in it - best guess: they cought humidity. I kept the clothing in a zip-lock-bag.

So the question is: how to longterm-store clothing in a BOB?

Would vacuuming (got a kitchen-vacuumer) be a good way? (if yes - some additions recommended to prevent the clothes getting too much humidity out of the air/developing smells no one wants aso? I mean - the Ts wouldn't do any good if i couldn't wear them for them being smelly before i wore them?)

I've been following the war fairly closely since the invasion. At the time I thought it was crazy to see tank movements on snapchat map, now I still think it's insane how OSINT and everyone in the general public having cameras connected to the internet makes it easy to see though propaganda and narratives pushed by traditional media.

Anywhoo, watching this 3 day Special Military Operation for the last 4 years has been interesting, because It's pretty much SHTF for millions of people, it's got everything a prepper wants - Economic collapse, that red dawn fantasy, an underdog story, the threat of nuclear weapons. I think these are core ideas that go beyond your country getting invaded, I'm a generalist, I think if you're pretty well covered for a couple months "suspension of service" you're good to go most of the time. Here's what I've noticed and I'm wondering if anyone else sees lessons learned

This is a long one so here is the TL;DR up front.

• Flexibility in long term planning and openness to emigrating is a much better investment than stocking and planning for long term self sustainment.
• Starlink is probably the best and most robust coms backup plan in 99% of situations.
• The most dangerous threat is the one you've normalized. Map your local infrastructure, audit your information diet across all sides, and practice the uncomfortable skill of being wrong about your team.

1- Bug out Vs Bug in.

the main lesson here is SHTF can happen and the rest of the world will move on. Say for example, you live in the 72nd largest city in Ukraine, Pokrovsk. Pokrovsk was under attack by the russians for about two years before being captured recently.

Many folks who come across this sub have this goal/fantasy that they would live in the city where they work, and would be able to go out to the farm/bunker/compound when things get tough and ride out the shit. How this plays out in Pokrovsk - you just spent 2 years in your compound in the woods, but now that the front line has moved on beyond the base - your city is in ruins, also you're in Russian territory now, a big "now what" moment as you realize you have no job, a gap in your resume, also you're still in a war zone. This is a generational financial blunder. It doesn't even have to be a war to find parallels - A lot of people left New Orleans after Katina and never came back. Sometimes you've just got to move and move on.

You know what Ukrainians are doing really well? The ones that fled to South Florida and are opening successful businesses. For the price of your hardened shelter just out side of Provo, you could easily fund a meaningful fresh start in a different country. The world is very big. Just because your economy is collapsing/being bombed/ washed away, it does not mean the whole world is. This does not have to be about war. A disaster could make your current home unlivable or uninsurable for the foreseeable future, it doesn't have to be a war.

I started working on this long post before the situation in Crimea had completely gone to SHTF, but it's the same.

Lesson learned: Flexibility in long term planning and openness to emigrating is a much better investment than stocking and planning for long term self sustainment.

2- Comms Plans

I am a ham radio operator for the love of the game. I was a Ham before I was a prepper, and while I get why people think Ham radio is the only way to go, and the last thing to keep working when SHTF, Watching how coms have been run in Ukrane has shifted my mindset completely.

CivDiv has some great vlogs about his time as a drone operator on the front. A lot of this shit, Airstrikes, reconnaissance, coordination, is being done by kids in a hole in the ground with an Eco Flow and a starlink via discord, WhatsApp, and telegram. Preston Stewart has show this to be true recently as well. The Russians were operating the same way until Elon turned off their starlink, which I think was one of the things that kicked off the recent events that has Russia on the back foot.

This is a bonus lesson learned on this point, on the front, these guys are running a generator for a couple hours a day to charge the eco flow, and running on battery the rest of the time. I have solar panels, but they are incredibly fussy, I think if you can make a hybrid approach with a generator and battery bank, that's probably the best way to keep things running during a prolonged blackout if you don't have a whole home system.

As long as you're on the same team as the US government, starlink is going to keep working for you, and is going to be cheaper and easier than any other radio system. I am never going to get my mom to get on HF and make a contact with me 200 miles away. But she usually can connect to Wi-Fi, and use WhatsApp, so that's become the best C in Pace.

Lesson learned: Star link is probably the best and most robust coms backup plan in 99% of situations.

3 & 4 - Situational awareness and being a boiled frog

This one is kind of a winding narrative, but stick with me.

As part of the Ukraine war being my special interest, I have a unique Instagram account whose algorithm is almost entirely in Russian. Now, I don't speak these languages, but modern technology has made translation incredibly easy.
I would group most of the high level posts I see into three groups:

1. Russian Propaganda
2. Western Propaganda,

3. Russians who still have Instagram

   While some are humorous, nothing groundbreaking is in the post/reel itself. Lots of new recruits in the Russian military doing the same dumb shit American recruits would do. I feel bad for the girlfriends/wives posing the goodbye reels as their man gets on a bus somewhere, knowing from my side that 1,000+ Russians are dying every day, and the odds are I've liked at least one dead guy's reel.

The comments section is where it's interesting. There are always a lot of pro Ukrainian comments, but so many people are just clueless as to what is happening. Drones are flying though Moscow and there is a very obvious fire happening in the central refinery, and the the comments are still, "what is happening? why would you post this? How could this happen?" I get that they see a different media representation of the situation, but it's interesting to watch in real time people wake up to reality. Things they couldn't imagine being a problem are now a problem and they're pooping their pants.

I have watched the types of targets that have been chosen across Russia, Ukraine, and the middle east, and I've had a good look around to see what type of critical infrastructure I may have in my back yard. If nothing else it's a really cool exercise in understanding how the world around us works and how much we rely on random people doing a good job and following policy and procedures to prevent Catastrophe on a daily bases. A lot of people doing sketchy shit safely For example, did you know the Florida East Coast Railway runs an LNG powered fleet? If one of these is compromised, the evacuation radius is a mile. The "Life threatening adverse health effects/death" circle is several blocks in every direction. I live in on the border of "serious irreversible health effects" and "Notable but reversable discomfort" in terms of distance from the track.

Likewise, do you know how your gas gets to your tank? Crimea is currently more or less out of gasoline at the moment, because it was mostly coming in via truck, and the trucks and bridges have become regular targets in Ukraine's medium range strike campaign. More recently, the sea of Azov has been cut off for resupply as well. Crime aint got no gas in it, or if you do find gas, it's the equivalent of $20/gallon. It's a fun night on google earth figuring out where your local storage and distribution points are, and how natural or man made disasters could impact the critical supply chain.

Third prong here, are you able to spot propaganda from your government, even if they are on your "team?" ( I am not trying to air grievances, this is for illustration only, these apply to both teams) I think it's important to keep tabs on your "Woke Leftist Mob" friends as it is to keep tabs on your rightwing "literally fascist" friends. Not everyone is good at discerning bullshit but people are generally good at seeing things. People are afraid of the FEMA camps until the FEMA camps were on your team locking up people you don't like. People on your team are protestors, people on their team are rioters. "Everything is going according to plan" or "The plan is rapidly falling apart, or there was clearly no plan" depending on who came up with the plan. Both things can be true in each of these cases, but I think one of the most important skills is understanding nuance and empathy, as well as critical thinking when presented with a wide array of choices.

Lesson learned: The most dangerous threat is the one you've normalized. Map your local infrastructure, audit your information diet across all sides, and practice the uncomfortable skill of being wrong about your team.

Love to hear your thought and feelings in the comments.

Because the marketing department sure doesn't think you do...

• https://www.reddit.com/r/prepping/comments/1uw41pw/anker_solix_s2000_on_fridge_duty_for_about_a_week/ - 1 month old account, talks about their fridge
• https://www.reddit.com/r/prepping/comments/1urrxyt/anker_solix_s2000_charged_up_and_ready_to_go/ - 2 month old account, talks about their fridge
• https://www.reddit.com/r/prepping/comments/1uqsanc/i_realized_my_outage_prep_focused_on_the_wrong/ - 11 month old account, talks about their fridge

Outside this sub:

• https://www.reddit.com/r/DIY/comments/1uhuful/planning_to_set_up_anker_solix_s2000_as_a/ - 2 month old account, talks about their fridge
• https://www.reddit.com/r/SolarDIY/comments/1uovbvv/ran_a_24_hour_killawatt_test_on_anker_s2000_with/ - 3 month old account, talks about their fridge

It wouldn't be so bad if they all didn't explicitly mention how they can power their refridgerator, or how they're excited to power their fridge in each post.

Find your own, do a search for "site:reddit.com Anker Solix S2000 fridge" and watch the fridge-posts roll in

I am so happy with it..! I've had a kill-a-watt on the fridge since setting it up and the idle draw between compressor cycles is 5-6W, most stations do 15-20W+ which just eats the battery overnight for no reason. We had an outage Tuesday morning and I only knew because the microwave clock was blinking. Fridge was perfect. I had the router plugged in too and the cameras stayed up the whole time. The app logged the outage at 4:47am for 20 minutes and I was asleep for all of it.

My fridge is a 25 cu ft GE and the kitchen runs mid to upper 70s if anyone wants to compare!