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Hopefully things would never come to this, but the Church of the Latter Day saints believe in storing food for emergencies. Preferably for a year, there’s several reasons why they do it both scripture based and a general teaching to be not too reliant on others in times of need.

Of course, not everyone lives next door to a family of Latter Day Saints, and it’s a bit rude to assume they’re going to share all that stockpiled food with you. So, if you’re thinking of starting to stock up a bit visiting a few LDS websites is a good place to start. Ok – lets get on with that food calculation..

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Lets be honest, while generator power is all well and good it’s hardly a silent, cheap long term power source. There’s the constant throb of the Generator, the maintenance, the fuel supply, and of course in a disaster situation anyone near by will know that you have a generator that’s calling out to be stolen.

Here’s where solar power comes in, it’s totally silent, and it’s practically maintenance free but the problem with general usage solar power is the panels aren’t usually up to the task of powering much more than the odd light bulb, and you need a constant supply of bright weather.

One of the problems with typical solar / battery systems is that they’re incredibly heavy, or need lots of floor space (like the powercube) or they’re dog-ugly like the Harvester. There’s a new product on the market that changes all that. Called the The Solar Stik™ Breeze. The Concept for the Solar Stik was born out of a need for marine based power on boats that had no room for large scale solar arrays, it was then a natural progression to adapt the Solar Stik to land based use, and more recently add wind power to the configuration so that power generation can continue through the night.
Once the system is set up, power drawn from wind / sun is fed into a battery bank. The entire system is designed to be portable and easily transported. Additionally, multiple units can be connected together if needed for particularly demanding sites. The panels come with a 25 year warranty. Unlike you average generator which typically comes with a 1-3 year warranty. Here’s the YouTube promo..

At around $8,000 the starting price for the Stik is slightly more expensive than other solar devices in this bracket, however they don’t feature the newer technology found within these panels that provide improved power generation.

Visit the product site here for further information.

We’re going to be doing more in-depth shelter guides in future, but this is just a quick overview of basic choices out there. If you live in the land of the free, there are plenty of contractors happy to offer advice and take your money for digging a large hole, reinforcing it with concrete, and kitting it out with filtration units and a self contained toilet, most of these are in kit form, then we get into serious money. Here’s a quick overview…

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Magic Moonbeams are invisible, or as they’re more commonly known – radiation, so how do you visualise this wonderful invisible world. There’s all sorts of devices that can tell you what’s going on around you.

Dosimeters, radiation detectors, Geiger counters and general devices that go clickety click are easily available online. There’s also army surplus, or you can even make your own. Some of the commercial ones are extremely sensitive, able to pick up normal everyday levels of background radiation. Other more personal items such as dosimeters are designed to measure your day-day exposure to radioactivity and provide a warning when you may be encountering harmful levels. The typical radiation detector that you might be familiar with from movies is the CDV-700 it’s from the cold war era, and can detect alpha, beta, and gamma radiation.

A wide selection of geiger counters are available from www.anythingradioactive.com with the majority under £100 of course there’s also an Ebay search. If you’re feeling more adventurous there are guides online too.

There are all sorts of water purification systems out there, but there’s few that can purify properly without the need for purification tablets, or waiting around for sediment to settle.

The Lifesave bottle designed by British inventor Michael Prichard is a big breakthrough in portable filtration. It won the soldier Technology 2007 award and also won best in test of bushcraft and survival skills magazine. It’s has a unique filter that removes 99.9999% of all bacteria, viruses, cysts, parasites, and fungi from the water supply. It’s 15 nanometres filter can cut out almost all viruses which are generally around 25 nanometres.

Not content with sitting back Michael Prichard has continued to improve on the device, adding the lifesaver hydrocarry to the product range. This is basically a rucksack mounted shoulder tube, and integrated dualpump combination to let soldiers quickly filter water without having to remove the device from their backpack.

For larger scale delivery of filtered water, they are also working on larger water containers for family’s. There is even a seawater version due out soon which should be an essential addition to every sailors toolkit. We hope that the costs of these bottle will come down enough so that they can be distributed to relief centres in 3rd world countries. So many lives could be saved if victims of hurricane, flood, and tsunami disasters had access to these kinds of devices.

The lifesaver bottle currently retails for £116.95 inc VAT, it can be bought online, and shipped internationally directly from www.lifesaversystems.com

If you’re planning on taking to somewhat more remote areas of the post apocalyptic countryside , you could upgrade your current city runabout with a slightly more robust mode of transport. There are a number of sites that specialise in import military vehicles or army surplus. You’ve probably stockpiled plenty of fuel already so why not put it to good use in some of the choices below.

Witham Specialist Vehicles Ltd has a variety of ex army kit for sale. The 1986 Saxon 4×4 APC is a mere snip at around £25,000.

image source: Witham Specialist Vehicles Ltd

If you fancy something a little more high profile there’s www.tanksforsale.co.uk. They’re offering all manner of import military vehicles, as well as tanks…

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