

Tuesday, April 7, 2015

A Shopping List from Grid Down

Here's the link.

Add this to your personal matrix, folks.  If you live in the DC Metro, you were probably wishing you had this gear ready to go - just in case.  Don't be the guy wishing you had it when darkness comes to your town...



  1. Hey Kerodin,


    I gotta add something that I am looking at getting for myself and it goes along the lines of a CB radio but better and that's a 10 meter radio.
    I am looking at 10 meter radio's because of the transmit/range/reception and the ability to go portable (in a vehicle)
    I also have to admit that it would be cool to just sit down and talk to people all over the country depending on atmospherics etc.
    The prices of 10 meter radio's are very, very attractive compared to many other transceivers I've seen out there.
    I don't know if this would be a viable option for others but I thought I would throw my two cents in worth.

  2. Everything on his list will be insanely valuable, post-SHTF...
    But the knowledge to make use of it all is one of the two most valuable commodities in the world when the wheels come off of society -

    Can you clean, debride, and suture a serious wound? Do you maintain a stock of the materials to do so?

    Can you perform detailed maintenance on an AR15, AK-47, Ruger 10/22, 1911, and Glock - including diagnosing and resolving issues such as persistent misfeeds, internittent F2Fs, and other common problems? And do you have trays of spare parts, particularly wear items such as firing pins/strikers, and spring kits?

    Can you diagnose a simple component failure, such as a bad voltage regulator, on a PC motherboard or similarly complex integrated system, such as an alarm panel, CCTV controller, or solar charger/pump controller?

    Could you identify a suitable replacement component on a spare board, desolder it, and solder it onto the board you are trying to revive?
    Do you have the tools and materials to do so on hand? (i.e. desoldering braid, electronic grade flux, etc., various wattages of soldering iron, various tips for the irons, etc.)

    These, and a hundred other hands-on skills are going to be absolutely essential once SHTF, and you cannot be the expert in all of them. This is just one reason why Tribe is absolutely necessary to your continued survival.

    Lone wolves will have no one to bury them, when they are overwhelmed by the circumstances of a post-SHTF world. This is not intended as an offense - just look at the mortality rate among trappers, indian traders, and other lone frontiersmen in the 1600~1800 timeframe, and understand that there are an order of magnitude more survival skills to know now, than there were in the frontier days.

    The ideal survival group has between 16 and 48 fully capable adults (depending upon the number of children and other dependents to be supported, and the circumstances of geography, weather, and the quality and quantity of arable land in your AO).

    Trust and knowledge are the two lynchpins of your survival, even above whatever 'stuff' you have stockpiled. Trust and knowledge require a different kind of investment - your time and effort to build them. Make that investment now, while time is still on your side. Find other who are doing the same thing. Build tribe today, while it is easy; for tomorrow it will be much harder...


  3. I should add that list is not a traditional TEOTWAWKI/"bugout" list. It's something else...

