Any fellow survivalists utilize their truck?

I keep a lot of stuff in my truck ready for whatever but this guy takes it to a whole new level!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qvPZ5q6rLM

 

Hope it works out for ya! Post pics when you're done.

Fink

 

FOOD FOOD FOOD. Please try all the food you pack. Improper preparation of some of the freeze dried foods can lead to their own problems. Not to mention bubble gut. Don't want that diarrhea - dehydration.

Constantly tend it too. Make sure the dates are still within expiration standards. Or if you put a can of tuna in there. it isn't going to bake

 

I attended two "wilderness skills" courses in college. One was an anthropology course that I just sat in on as a couple of my friends were in it. The anthropologist who taught it showed how hunter-gather societies performed tasks like knapping flint for knives, crafting bows, making fire with a bow drill, digging grubs and snaring birds and rats for protein and recognizing the signs of underground water. He added to this some more modern issues like how to dig and properly locate wells and latrines and how to use locally-obtainable materials (sand, charcoal, boiling, etc.) to purify water. The final exam was a long weekend field trip where the students brought nothing with them but a knife and tarp (and clean water because the water in the area is pretty well polluted from farming runoff). After a couple of nights, the students were pretty ecstatic when someone caught a fat rat.

The other course, that I officially took only because I needed a PE credit (like my six-year Army service prior to that wasn't enough PT) was "taught" (and I use the term loosely) by a female PE instructor whose idea of "survival" was spending a single night at a park with about five thousand dollars worth of gear, including electric lights and a fridge plugged into a generator. It wasn't total waste though, I spent the field trip helping a cute girl catch snakes for her herpetology course.

Anyone who has been in Boy Scouts should know quite a bit about wilderness survival already. I helped teach a wilderness skills course when I was TDY at a Boy Scout camp in the army and had a hoot doing it. I suppose that, once again, it depends on the instructor but this camp was staffed by mostly by TDY Army personnel and headed by a retired command sergeant major so those scouts got some pretty good training. Essentially, they went through a short version of Army Basic Training (including rifle training, which I also helped teach, along with my first-aid and basic search and rescue courses) and loved every minute of it. I also went through an Army desert survival course but that had a bit different goal, that of evading the enemy and staying alive long enough to get rescued or back to your unit.

This brings up a point that many "bug-out bag survivalists" don't seem to consider. By survival do you mean that you want to stay alive until you can get back to civilization or until someone can find and rescue you? Or, do you intend to just settle down and live while adapting to your new circumstances. The skills you can use overlap somewhat but the two scenarios entail having quite different paradigms.

 

Depends on the flavor of shit that hits the fan.

If a volcano pops, that will require a different response than if Russian bears are pouring over the ridge dropping ordnance. We all have our fantasy situation, but the reality is that whatever happens, we won't be 100% prepared for it. We will make due with what we have, and be better off than 95% of the population. Let's hope that's good enough.

As to the archery stuff... I just spent ten days in the woods with a modern compound bow and had many botched opportunities to get some groceries. (hit a tree limb, made too much noise and spooked the elk, etc). If I had even a .22 pistol I would have been able to punch my tag the first day. The effective range of a modern bow is about 50 yards with an exceptional archer. With my old recurve shooting hand made cedar arrows it's about half that. It's a very bad choice for any SHTF scenario, but a fun thing to know.

 

I differ in opinion a bit about bows. Sure, it would be nice to have a rifle but eventually the ammo is going to run out. In fact, it sort of already has around here, I've not been able to find a .22 round for sale within 50 miles of here for over a year. There are very few places in the US where you can't scrounge up something to make a bow, a bowstring and some arrows.

Maybe your problem is with compound bows, which I've found are actually less accurate than traditional bows. The reason for this is that they require a much more precise release. I could hit bottle caps with my old recurve at fifteen yards and tennis balls at twenty five. I then jumped on the "modern" bandwagon and bought a compound, with which I was lucky to hit pie plates. Howard Hill, the eminent archer of the 20th century, noted this when he said that he wasn't good enough to hunt with a recurve (which is harder to shoot accurately than a longbow).

When I hear how survivalists are stocking up for SHTF day I tend to think of the French partisans and how the OSS provided some of them with cheap, stamped-out, single-shot .45s that were terrible guns in all respects but with which they could obtain a fine example of German firearms craftsmanship by simply shooting a German and then taking his gun.

 

LOL YES.

 

I am equally as accurate with my recurve that was hand made on the Yakima indian reservation in 1972 as I am with my fancy compound...out to 25 yards. The compound will outshoot the recurve from 25 yds out to 80 yds, the furthest I practice at. The reason I switched is because I had a minor incident with a 400 lb black bear and had to shoot defensively. No time to choose the right shot, rushed, etc and it took me a couple of hours and 5 arrows (one of them used twice!) to get the damn thing killed. The 55 lb recurve just didn't have the energy to get into the vitals at awkward angles. It got the job done, but wasn't pretty. A single .22lr behind the ear would have ended it much faster. When I run out of 22, I will use my bows. That may take several lifetimes. Invest in lead gentleman.

 

You could always make your own flintlock musket. There is a great video (if the link below doesn't show search for "colonial gunsmith" to find it) of a guy building one from nothing much more than a lump of smelted ore, a log and a rock. Saltpeter can be obtained from urine and charcoal is readily available. Sulfur might be harder to come by unless you live near someplace like Yellowstone.

smelting iron ore

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6uFAv9L734

making the rifle

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lui6uNPcRPA

 

Not much food in his pouch. Looks like he plans to bug out for 3 days and then expect the world to be fine after that

 

well his youtube user name is buginin so i assume hes just trying to get back home to bug in?

 

X2. I think he's titled it a Bug Out Vehicle in semi-error; I'd say he plans on using it as either a Get Home Vehicle, or possibly he has a well-stocked Bug Out Location that he'd be using the vehicle to get there with.

 

What I wonder is where all you people in the cities plan to bug out to? There is a reason why cities are located where they are and why nobody lives on land in most of the West. Also, just what do people think that they are going to accomplish with all those hunting rifles and fishing gear? The plains aren't filled with millions of bison anymore and even when they were they only could support small bands of nomadic hunters. The same goes for the rivers. In the West, the rivers don't really have much in them until the salmon run. Again, one reason that there weren't millions of Indians in vast civilizations over there when Europeans started settling the area. In the Midwest and East, the fish in many major rivers are toxic. Most other areas rely on stocking to replenish harvestable fisheries.

Do any of your "bug-out bags" contain crop seeds? How about a couple of pounds of sodium hypochlorite powder or a jar of iodine crystals?

Also, how many of you have read any history? If you want to be prepared for "SHTF," then study on what has happened in the past when "S" really did "HTF."

 

SHTF vs. TEOTWAWKI.

For me, SHTF is a short term or regional event. This can be anything from a major storm knocking out power substations in a region to a terrorist attack in a metro area. This is where a get-home or bug-out bag comes into play. In these cases, I look at it in term of "what do I need to survive for the next week". Things like first aid, water, food stuffs, environmental clothing (winter boots, gloves, etc.) and a handgun for personal protection. After a week, if the situation is worsening, then it becomes a condition whereby the long-term survival of me and my family trump others. Crappy to say but it's the truth.

TEOTWAWKI is a national or global collapse of society. This is the situation that you consider survival as no chance of support. This is the point where seeds are important. However, planting crops also makes you sedentary to that location. Assuming the event isn't an asteroid or other planet killer, planting crops means that you are fixed to that location, dependent on that location and have to defend that location.

If you have a plot of land in the middle of nowhere with good forest and water resources, this may be okay. However, that location would also make it ideal for someone else to take. If you have crops and your location is overwhelmed by people and forced to leave, do you lose everything? If the crop is lost to disease or insects, what is your back-up plan.

Bottom line is that there is no correct answer. You can stock years of food and supplies in your home and have them wiped out in a single fire or attack. You can disperse your resources (better idea) but you now need a means to travel from one point to another and traveling makes you vulnerable. You may have the ideal location in a far off area but if you cannot get there, it's useless or worse, someone else gets there first.

The bigger question is "When"? If its a regional SHTF, does the event really require you to bug out? Will the initial panic get you caught up in the masses also fleeing? What if you wait too long and can no longer leave? The logistics of "when" and "how" concern me more than the "what to bring".

 

Most people aren't carrying around crop seeds or pounds of water purifiers in their bugout bags. The point of a bugout bag is for temporary use, for those preparing for SHTF it's typically to get to a well-stocked BOL. People who are the really SERIOUS preppers have these things, and have studied skills necessary for a non-mechanized society as a just in case.

However, there's a distinct difference between survivalism geared towards living out of your truck for a few weeks and trying to survive the collapse of all society as we know it. I may be mistaken, but a lot of the folks in this thread seem more geared towards the former than the latter. There's exceptions, obviously, but the main focus seems to be on being able to survive whatever happens while you're out in the wild, or escaping from a natural disaster, riots, etc. for a few weeks rather than surviving world collapse and rebuilding their own societies in the wilderness.

For instance, the gear that I carry in my truck is focused specifically on letting me get back to my house from wherever I happen to be. As such, it's minimal, lightweight, and nondescript. There's enough in it for several day's of living uncomfortably, and not much else. At my house I have several month's worth of food and water, ways of obtaining fresh water, various heat and light sources, medical supplies, seeds, fishing/hunting gear, etc. It's enough to feed me, the GF, and the pets/livestock for probably six months, maybe more if we stretched it or got lucky hunting/fishing. But I'm not keeping enough on hand to rebuild my own little world if we have a TEOTWAWKI situation.

I'm not trying to throw a bunch of crap around, just trying to illustrate that just because people on here are prepped for the "worst case scenario" doesn't mean that we're all trying to survive the "ABSOLUTE WORST CASE SCENARIO IMAGINABLE"

 

I don't see him as intense, I see him as very knowledgeable. and well trained. I understand what he is talking about because I've lived in the world of very bad situations escalating very quickly, and it is not fun.

I've been attacked twice and needed my firearm both times to save my life. I'm still here and grateful that I am. In a separate incident my wife was attacked and harmed. We both testified before the State Legislature to get concealed carry passed in the state we live in. I could have died very easily and I just wanted the right to defend myself. We decided to do something about it. We helped to get the law passed so we could carry a firearm. So glad no one has ever tried to kill you--but I am making an assumption which is never the best thing to do. I went through extensive training at considerable cost. I too am very aware of what is going around me. To me this is survival training as well as how to start a fire, and how to tie a knot. I understand my outlook may be a little different but my survival training has kept me alive. I utilize my truck fairly well but I utilize my mind much better. Be safe

 

Bad luck or are you transporting lots of cash around of something? Glad you saw the elephant and lived, more than once!

 

Oh no, no cash, just had to do some traveling to call on hospitals in very difficult parts of town, and help set up some churches in areas that were really in need of help. So some of the folks that live in those areas are very good and well trained at what they do, I mean very good! You just have to be mentally prepared at all times. I was, I saw it unfolding so the element of astonishment moved from their side to my side. No double 007 kind of stuff just awareness, reviewing situations in my mind ahead of time, and survival training. Oh and a whole bunch of help from above. So I'm grateful.

 

Definitely, awareness is huge, and training helps - mental training is paramount, first. Lapse in judgment claims a lot of lives.

Glad you shared here bro. Stay safe.