Zombie Prep Tip Of The Day: Clean Your Car

This is not my car: my car has more baseball bats and ducttape.

I am seriously considering taking a picture of my car right now and showing what a HORRIBLE example I am setting.  This is one that I really need to adhere to, but I don’t know that I ever will.

Messy cars make you less likely to be able to transport your friends and family in an emergency.  Look at your car and ask yourself: can every member of my household fit themselves and maybe one emergency bag in this?  If the answer is no, then you are not ready for an emergency.

If you have to pause to take 5 to 10 minutes to sweep a bunch of crap out of your car, then that tornado has caught your messy self.  The zombies will be chewing on you pretty fast as well.

While you may think that you will have time to empty the junk from your trunk (ha!), especially if you have help, those are still minutes wasted that you could be using to run the heck away.

Clean your car and then see if you have everything necessary for a survival situation neatly packed in a bag in the trunk.

This should give you a minor edge in a zombie apocalypse situation, as well as making your car less disgusting for a friend or prospective hottie to want to get into.

Zombie Prep Tip Of The Day: Booze

This vodka looks AWESOME, is expensive as hell, and tastes like shit. Just sayin’…

I figure that you will like this one: stockpile booze.

Seriously.  Go for boozes that don’t have sugar in them, so that if you ABSOLUTELY have to, you can use them to clean wounds or tools that you are going to use in wounds.  You want to be sure that your alcohol is more than 60 proof.  Do not stockpile wines or sugary drinks for this purpose.

See, the best part about alcohol is that it will keep forever!  If you have a good cabinet of liquor, it isn’t going to go bad, as long as it is stored properly.

Ok, I lied, the REAL best part is that it is good for a LOT of things.

• Trading with other survivors
• Killing pain
• Falling asleep in a high stress environment
• Getting drunk…

And many more.  It doesn’t have to be expensive stuff.  When zombies attack and you want booze, you are going to want strength and quantity over quality.

Please look forward to a future article on the subject of drinking and the apocalypse.

Zombie Prep Tip Of the Day: Food Is Everywhere

You can eat just about anything.  With the previous article being about the inadvisability of eating humans, I have decided to point out a few more places where you can find wild edibles.

Wildcrafting.Net seems fairly useful, though their older page had pizza adds plastered all over it, which made me hungry.

Girl Meets Bug is all about edible bugs and is pretty cool, actually.  Not for the weak of stomach.

Here is a neat thing about the stick/box trap for rabbits. Not just for cartoons!

Here is one about skinning and cooking rabbits. And in fact, this site is really informative about all kinds of food in the wild!

Here is a wikihow about catching squirrels.

And one about skinning and cooking squirrels.

Just be sure to do your homework.  Do some research on animals in your area, and how to make simple snares for them.

Zombie Prep Tip Of The Day: Carabiners

A lot of people use carabiners as key-chains, and thus companies sell cheap versions that will not support weight.  Rather than getting a 1 dollar carabiner for your keys, spend the extra money and get one that is capable of carrying weight.  Pick up a few and attach them to your keys and backpacks.  If you get ones that are guaranteed to hold weight, you can use them in a number of survival situations.

They can be used to support your weight if you have to climb a tree and set up a rope sling.  You can use them to support your gear from a tree if you are spending the night in a hammock.  You can use them to carry more weight on your backpack.

Pretty much you can use them for anything else you can think of that may need a heavyweight connecter.

You might as well spend a few extra dollars for a keychain that will last a lot longer, and can come in handy if you need to be in a survival situation.

Zombie Prep Tip Of The Day: CPR

You may need to know how to do CPR during some sort of emergency.  While I really can’t recommend enough going and taking an official class, you can at least look up the latest guidelines.  Believe it or not, they DO CHANGE!  Recently, it has been changed so that it goes Compression-Airway-Breaths instead of Airway-Breaths-Compression, for a lot of technical reasons.

All that aside, I love how, in various places on the internet, it suggests 100 BPM compressions, and lets you know that it is about the same beat as “Stayin’ Alive” or “Another One Bites The Dust”.  How about that?

Zombie Prep Tip Of The Day: Buy Mason Jars

Mason Jars, or Ball Jars, are wonderful things to own.  You can keep all sorts of little things in them, like paperclips or M+Ms, and you can use them to store food as well.  You can get a flat of 12 of these lovelies for close to a dollar a jar at a lot of the larger stores, and if you see them on sale in craft stores, I would recommend picking up a few.

If you don’t plan on canning your own food in day-to-day life, you can use them for knick-nacks, or even decorations!  They are versatile little storage devices, and if it ever comes to pass that you have to start storing your own food, or drying your own herbs (be it that you are short on cash, or that zombies happen), you will have these jars hanging around for use.

Check out this site for the source of the photo and some interesting things to do with Mason Jars.

Zombie Prep Tip Of The Day: Dry Herbs

If you already have a window plant, like the one in the previous Zombie Prep Tip, try to dry some of its leaves and store them for later.

You can learn to dry fruits and veggies as well, and such things, if stored properly, can last for YEARS.

If you are looking at the possibility of no electricity, and fewer storage options than we have in our electronic comfort age, this is a wonderful thing to learn!

Give it a shot.  Go get some fresh herbs or fruits, and dehydrate them for later consumption.

Not to mention, dried apples and bananas make a really tasty and healthy snack.

Zombie Prep Tip Of The Day: Window Gardening

It doesn’t hurt to try to make yourself a little herb/veggie garden.  If you live in an apartment, try a window-box, or even just grow herbs in pots on your window ledge in your kitchen.  It is a cheap and good way to practice fending for yourself, in case you eventually have to grow your own food.

You would be amazed how delicious fresh basil tastes!  We had a plant in our house for a while, but too many people used the leaves too often, and we ate it to death.  Make sure that, if you like how your little window plants go, you grow multiple of them and don’t pluck them to death!

Zombie Prep Tip Of The Day: Seeds

Go buy some seeds for veggies and the like.  A lot of seeds can be kept in the packets for a long time before you need to plant them, and as long as you keep them dry, some seeds can be kept for years.  Do a little research on the type of seed that you are keeping, so that you know if and when you should replace them.

If you can keep a variety of seeds for different foods, do so.  You may not be used to eating pumpkin, except in pies, but things from the squash family are filled with yummy goodies that are good for you and good tasting.  They are also very hardy when it comes to slightly inclement weather.

Zombie Prep Tip Of The Day: Go Move a Thing

Go move something heavy.  Re-arrange your living room, or your bed room or something.  In my household, we switched rooms around once every other year or so, so that no one was always in the same room of the house.  It meant that every now and then, EVERY corner of the rooms got cleaned (f*ck YOU spiders!), people got to feel like they had a brand-new place to live, and that I have been moving my furniture by myself since I was five.

Do you know how long it takes a five year old to move a bed twice her size?

It means that you will find ways to move things by yourself that you would originally assume were too heavy or bulky.  If you have to blockade up a room, this is a useful skill.  It is not only good practice, but you will finally vacuum behind that china cabinet, much to the dismay of the colony of mice.