There is a lot of stuff on the internet about what to do when the SHTF. This article is for what you should be doing now that will be of great benefit when a disaster strikes.
Gardening
I am not talking about planting your tulips here. If you live in a small house and have a bit of a backyard, you really need to think about having a small vegetable garden. Nothing extravagant, but a few tomato plants will give you plenty of pasta sauce, sandwich toppings, and salad filler for very little expenditure on your part. In addition to tomato’s, cucumbers can not only make your salads better, but with a little vinegar, you can make pickles to last all year. I would also suggest different types of peppers, maybe some leafy greens, and some fruits that you can preserve. These will help keep your food supplies up when the SHTF, and keep your grocery bills down now.
fishing / hunting / trapping
If you live in an urban or suburban area, the hunting or trapping may not be the easiest thing to do. However, you can always spend some quality time at the shooting range, and take a hunting trip every once in a while. Shooting an animal isn’t difficult, but cleaning it is a skill that takes some practice.
No mater where you live, chances are you live close to a water source that you can fish in. fishing is one of the easiest ways to get meat to live on in an emergency situation, and keep your grocery bill down in your day to day life. Fish is great for you, easy to clean, and relatively easy to catch.
Carpentry
Everyone should have some basic woodworking tools around, and the ability to use them. It is a skill mankind has had for thousands of years, and if you don’t know at least basic carpentry skills, you should be ashamed of yourself.
Metallurgy
There are a lot of tutorials online for making a small backyard forge. This is a great skill to have. In non emergency situations, you can melt down your beer and soda cans into easily transportable ingots for recycling, and in emergency situations, you can custom fabricate parts, make blades, clasps, hinges, pins, and all sorts of other useful metallic parts.
Distillation
There are plenty of home distillation kits you can buy, and also tutorials online on how to make them (if you don’t feel like buying). Besides being able to make alcohol for cleaning, drinking, and barter, distillation is a great process to know for making purified water. Proper distillation techniques can purify any water, and desalinate seawater. So if you live close to an ocean, you will always have drinkable water.
What other skills do you think people should learn that will not only come in handy when the SHTF, but is also a great skill to have for everyday life? Let us know in the comments below!
