Prepping for the day the SHTF

By Ken Benton

Bad times may be coming. We all know that, right? But what are we doing about it to prepare? What can we do? We are not talking about localized natural disasters, which are temporary situations and relatively easy to recover from. These bad times, which may very well loom on the horizon as we speak, could render all the money in our bank accounts worthless. When the trucks stop rolling, there is no more food. Even if you have some stored up, how long will it last?
The cities figure to become a pretty ugly place after a severe SHTF event. They will be unsafe, and crowds are extremely bad for survival situations. Rural homesteaders who know how to produce their own food and live self-sufficiently may suddenly find they are the new upper class in whatever is left of society.
 
This book is for you city slickers who want to establish a reasonably secure bug-out and survival plan for your family now, while the grid is still up. When the S does HTF, you will have a place to go live and a way to get there, quickly and safely. It involves investing some of your soon-to-be-worthless dollars in a plot of rural land out in the sticks, and then getting it ready for homesteading in a manner that will not attract squatters. 
 
Allow Ken Benton to show you how to prepare a proper survival retreat. He will walk you through the steps of finding land, establishing a fresh water source, preparing for cabin-building, establishing temporary shelter, getting a head start on food production, stocking up on essentials, and protecting it all from both the elements and the eyes of anyone passing by. Ken will help you prep for bug-out day, and provide important tips for travelling after a SHTF event – giving you the best chance of arriving at your retreat intact. He will teach you how to then live off the land and be a happy, secure, rural survivor in a post-apocalyptic society.
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Andy Kasch
• Release date: Sep 20, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393565024

Book preview

Prepping for

the day the

SHTF

A complete bug-out and survival plan for life after doomsday.

Ken Benton

© 2013-2019 Andrew Kasch

All Rights Reserved.  No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means, including scanning, photocopying, or otherwise without prior written permission of the copyright holder.

Disclaimer and Terms of Use: The Author and Publisher have strived to be as accurate and complete as possible in the creation of this book, notwithstanding the fact that he does not warrant or represent at any time that the contents within are accurate. While all attempts have been made to verify information provided in this publication, the Author and Publisher assume no responsibility for errors, omissions, or contrary interpretation of the subject matter herein. Any perceived slights of specific persons, peoples, or organizations are unintentional.  This book is not intended for use as a source of legal, business, accounting, medical, or financial advice. All readers are advised to seek services of competent professionals in the legal, business, accounting, medical, and finance fields. Pursue the contents of this book at your own risk.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Survival Plan Outline

Locating Suitable Land

Putting Up a Practical Structure

Drilling a Groundwater Well

Preparing your Ground for Mini-Farming

What to Store and How to Store It

The Bug-Out Plan

Surviving Your First Year Off the Grid

Homesteading 101

Building a Worthwhile Future

A Word from the Author

Introduction

The thought has recently entered the minds of many westerners that society as we know it could suddenly collapse. Before the financial sector meltdown of 2008, it seemed to most of us that only the wackier folks were seriously entertaining these kinds of ideas. You know who I’m talking about; the paranoid types who are worried about fighting the battle of Armageddon from their backyard, and who are burying enough canned food and ammunition to supply their own militia. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

My, how times have quickly changed. In the last five years, the prepper movement has simply exploded. Prepping is no longer considered kooky – in fact, it has become downright fashionable. In 2011, network news reporters conservatively estimated that the number of preppers in the USA had grown to over three million. Today, websites that use the acronym SHTF and names like survival forum are purchasing more bandwidth to accommodate a tsunami of new visitors. There is even a cable TV show called Doomsday Preppers now. It’s enough to make even a blissfully-blind city-slicker take notice and start thinking.

What do you think about all this? Is it just a fad? Are we witnessing nothing more than a natural overreaction to a historically-sharp economic down-cycle, coincidentally followed by an unprecedented onslaught of devastating natural disasters? Is everything really going to be okay after all?

What could really happen, anyway?

Glad you asked! Here are the major SHTF candidates:

• Real economic collapse. Not like that little hiccup in 2008 through 2010. If you haven’t seen photographs from pre-Nazi Germany of people with wheelbarrows full of money trying to buy a loaf of bread, Google it. You can’t eat money, folks. You also can’t live purely on credit, continuing to borrow more and more from future generations to pay for your every whim – but that is exactly how western governments currently operate. Those unborn future generations are not going to roll over forever and just accept the debt bondage they will be born into. This is how revolutions start, and how currencies become worthless.

• Natural disasters. Severe natural disasters have the very real potential to stop trucking traffic. When the trucks stop rolling, store shelves become empty very quickly – usually from looting – and there will be no more food delivered until normal trucking resumes. In such a situation, confidence that normalcy will soon return may prove to be wishful thinking. Don’t think a disaster on a national scale would be unprecedented, either. The New Madrid earthquakes in December 1811 were so massive in scale they were felt from Iowa to South Carolina and from Louisiana to Pennsylvania. Entire forests fell. It is frightening to ponder what kind of damage a quake like that might do today.

• Viruses. Every year it seems we hear about a new virus discovered that has the potential to run rampant through human society and wipe out hundreds of millions of people. Many scientists are telling us it is only a matter of time before such a nightmare scenario actually plays out. This would not be an unprecedented event! The flu pandemic of 1918 is believed to have killed around 75 million people worldwide, roughly 2% of the world’s population. It would be a good idea to get away from public places when you first hear about such an outbreak.

• Nuclear War. We have gotten a little complacent about this threat, haven’t we? It may be sobering to realize the nukes are all still there, ready to fly in a moment’s notice, and world governments are just as politically uncooperative as ever. It only takes one crazy leader getting control of one small nuclear-power country to set off a chain reaction of events (think Arch-Duke Ferdinand in World War I) that will literally blow up like a string of firecrackers. Say,