With Whom Do You Share Information About Your Preps?

Are you prepared?

Do you have water stored? How do you plan to get water in an emergency?
Do you have a stockpile of medicine at your house?

If someone approached you and asked those questions, how would you respond?

"Just what are you up to?"
How do you deal with your own Gladys Kravitz?

Hubby Dear was asked these very questions recently. The lady is one of those people who will come to see him for a specific reason and spend the next 45 minutes talking about weather, the state of her daughter's uterus, the price of corn, and everything BUT the reason for her visit. She has asked him preparedness-related questions before, but this time she was persistent. She had been watching Doomsday Preppers and it filled her with burning questions including whether her well would still work if Texas was suddenly pushed up to where Canada is today. (Yes, she was really scared about that!)

Hubby Dear remained very general, telling the lady that, yes, we are prepared for basic emergencies like ice storms but we don't have a stockpile of medicine. Both of these are true statements (for the moment - the stockpile of medicine will be forthcoming!), but he certainly could have divulged more information had he chosen to do so. It is possible that this lady and her family could be potential prepper allies, but we simply don't know them well enough to gauge their intentions. Could it be that they were sizing up a potential target for looting post-SHTF? Could it be that I am overly paranoid? ;)

How would you respond to something like this? Do you let your freak flag fly? Or do you keep your prepping secret for OPSEC's sake?

Sun Oven, Part I: First Impressions

Welcome to the first installment of my series on the Global Sun Oven. First, my disclaimer. The Global Sun Oven Company sent me a Sun Oven to try. I'm not getting paid for this; I just get the fun of experimenting with the Sun Oven for length of time before I have to give it back. All opinions you'll read during this series are genuine and based on my personal experiences.

With that out of the way, let's get started.

The Box. Gee, I wonder what's inside?

My FedEx guy was chuckling and making snide comments as he delivered my package. Hey, guy, don't knock it before you try it! We'll see who's laughing when I'm eating freshly baked bread during a power outage! I've written before about how preparedness companies should ship their products in plain, unmarked boxes to help preserve their customers' privacy. A Sun Oven box doesn't give off the "crazy survivalist" vibes that some companies' boxes would, but still. Help preserve my OPSEC, Global Sun Oven, and I'll love you for it.

The moment I opened the box my nose was flooded with a strong chemical smell that nearly singed my nose hairs. Sorry for the ugly image but that's truly what it felt like. When I was doing some research on the Sun Oven prior to receiving it, I found several customers complaining that the Sun Oven lent a chemical taste to their food. My Sun Oven was packaged with explicit instructions on how to pre-clean it prior to use. I'll follow those instructions carefully and see what happens.

Out of the box and ready to go

The Sun Oven is very easy to put together.  It is already assembled and all you have to do is pop up the reflectors and put it in a sunny location. Done!  I appreciate the handy carrying handle and strap to hold reflectors in place during storage and transport. Even with my current handicaps, I had no problems lifting it and carrying it around.

The oven itself seems pretty sturdy. Reflectors are a bit bendy (we'll have to see how well they hold up to our legendary country winds), so if there's a weak spot, it's there. The case is plastic with wood surrounding the door. The door is made of tempered glass and it is attached to the body with sturdy metal hinges. The inside of the cooking box is made of anodized aluminum and it appears to be the source of the chemical odor. According to the company, the box has a food grade powder coating, so perhaps that's the culprit. I sure hope the pre-cleaning regimen works!

In position. The reflectors still have their protective coating

The reflectors come shipped with a protective coating that you have to remove. Hubby Dear and I had a hard time peeling it off and some of it clung stubbornly underneath the rivets. He and I are notoriously un-handy, though, so you would probably find it a breeze.

Looking inside the cooking box

Here's a shot of the inside of the Sun Oven. You'll see there is a thermometer included so that you can monitor the internal temperature. There is also an automatic leveling tray so that your food stays safely contained in its cooking vessel, no matter what angle you set your Sun Oven at.

The leveling leg

Speaking of angles, depending on the season and the time of day, you might find it necessary to angle the Sun Oven in order to capture the maximum amount of sunlight. There is a built-in leveling leg that makes this easy to do, even for me.

The Sun Oven comes with an owners manual, CD, and a cooking pot

My shipment also included an owners manual, pot, and a CD. The pot is pretty small for my family of six,  but you can stack pots inside the Sun Oven to cook more food at once. Apparently you can use any dark-colored or glass cooking vessel (NOT shiny aluminum or stainless steel and thinner pots are better), but I appreciated having a pot included with the Sun Oven.  The CD includes a copy of Wendy DeWitt's very helpful food storage plan, the owner's manual, two short instructional videos and a recipe and cooking tips document.

Now that I've become familiar with the Sun Oven,the only thing left to do is start using it! I hope to clean it tomorrow and cook something with it, weather permitting.

Stay tuned for Part II: the Sun Oven takes over where my mini-van left off. Can sun-baked cookies compete with oven-baked ones?  

My Thoughts on TLC's "Livin' For the Apocalypse"

I DVRed the one hour special "Livin' For the Apocalypse" on TLC after reading about it on Survival Blog. Just as Rawles predicted, this show definitely tried to show preppers and survivalists as loonies. The show was short on helpful information and long on sensationalism. Most of us don't "live for the apocalypse", we just live. Here's a snippet:



The show profiled four different families with different methods of preparedness. Compared to NatGeo's "Doomsday Preppers", the producers of this show had even less regard for their participants' privacy. Full names and locations were shown with abandon. Even when the participants expressed a desire to maintain OPSEC, the producers showed items that would easily allow anyone to find out just who they are and where they live. For example, "Survival Doc" made a point about how he wouldn't reveal his real name. That was pretty much blown out of the water when the cameras caught his chiropractic licenses and an information board in his office that showed his full name and the name of his chiropractic establishment. Oh, and by the way, his chiropractic office is located in his home. OPSEC totally blown.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed seeing the preps that Peggy Layton, author of numerous food storage cookbooks, has. The ubiquitous McClung family (in the clip above) with their tilapia pool was profiled. Again. I have seen them on three different survival-related TV shows in the last six months. And contrary to what Mrs. McClung stated, you do NOT have to be a professional to can meat. All you have to do is have a pressure canner and follow some simple instructions. I just felt sorry for the last pair, a transgendered woman and her friend. I'm not going to say much about them other than to say that I think the producers should be ashamed of their extremely unflattering portrayal. They are a pretty unusual couple, but the editing did them no favors.

I don't think Hollywood is going to be knocking at my door and asking to take a look at my preps anytime soon, but if they did, you can bet I would say no. I think the potential educational value of a TV show on preppers is far outweighed by the OPSEC concerns. I'll stick with my blog, thank you very much!

In case you missed it, here's the listings for the next time "Livin' for the Apocalypse" will be shown. I didn't find it posted on YouTube yet, but I'm sure it will get there at some point.


Did you catch "Livin' for the Apocalypse"? What's your opinion on the show?

The Day I Let My Freak Flag Fly: How Lack of Internet Cost Me OPSEC

Nothing says, "Hello, I'm a kook" to the average Joe like a prepper's storeroom

As I mentioned a bit ago, we've been having problems with our Internet service. We don't have a lot of selection in Internet providers. When we moved here, our choices were dial-up, satellite, or Canopy broadbrand. We chose the latter option and it has worked OK for the most part. It was really slow and frequently went down for 2-3 days at a time after a spell of bad weather.

Our Internet was down for nearly two solid weeks in January and that was the last straw. Something had to change. Hubby Dear did a little research and found that WiMax was now available to us through a local cable company. It would be much faster and surely more reliable, so we jumped right on it.

Here's the only problem: To hook up our new Internet, the service techs would have to work in my storage room. OPSEC would be out the window.

OPSEC, for those newbies out there like me, is short for Operations Security. You don't want to share information about your preps, food storage, etc. with just anyone. Some people will think you're a bit strange. Others will freak out and inform Homeland Security that there's another nut like Ted Kaczynski on the loose. Still others will quietly store your preparedness in their memory and if SHTF, they'll show up at your house.  

I've worked carefully to maintain OPSEC but now it was going to be destroyed. I wondered if I should I cover the mountain of buckets and Shelf Reliance unit with blankets. Hubby Dear thought that would make it obvious that we were hiding something.

We decided that I should just act friendly and think up something nonchalant to say to the techs if they asked about my preps. Here are some of the options I came up with:

Internet Guy: "What's up with all the food?"

Me: (Gesturing to my shrieking offspring) "I run a daycare. These darn kids sure eat a lot."

or

Me: "I'm a hoarder. You should see my closets!"

or my favorite:

Me: "You don't get a body this rockin' unless you have a lot of food on-hand at all times."

I finally decided that if they asked about the contents of the storage room that I would just laugh and say that I was worried about inflation and the price of food.

When the dreaded day arrived, the techs were extremely professional. They quickly went about their work and did not mention the 800 lb gorilla in the room. I didn't have to say a thing. I was kind of disappointed.

Obviously, I need to be prepared in case something like this happens again. Not only does the Internet connection run through there, but our main water shut-off valve is also in that storage room. We have had to have the water line into our house replaced twice since we lived here (remind me to tell you about that story sometime) and the workmen spent a lot of time in that room doing the repair. 

The Solution (Sort of):

We're going to have a garage sale/massive donation of baby clothes and toys this spring (sniff...), so I'll be able to clean out the area underneath the stairs. I plan to put as many of the buckets as I can in there. To me, the buckets are the most obvious evidence of the unusual amount of food we have stored. Once stashed underneath the stairs, I could easily cover up that area with some of the usual debris found in most people's storage areas. I'm not sure what to do with the rest of it.

How's your OPSEC? Are your preps hidden from casual view?

Why the Fed-Ex man hates my guts

My order of wheat from Emergency Essentials came yesterday.

My herd of children are usually the ones who let me know when someone pulls into the driveway. Who needs a dog when you have four kids?  This time they were busy wreaking havoc elsewhere so I was the one who saw the Fed-Ex man arrive.

Under normal circumstances, I engage in polite chit-chat with the delivery person and sign for my deliveries. This time, however, I was a bit nervous and remained out of sight while the delivery guy brought up the boxes.

Why did I skulk around in my own house? Because I knew the delivery man would soon be hurting. Indeed, by the time he had gotten all of my boxes off his truck and onto the porch, his face was beet red and he was limping. I think my delivery weighed over 225 pounds and the temperature of 105 degrees didn't help matters either.

I'm pretty sure the Fed Ex guy will remember me and he probably noticed the very prominent lettering on these boxes as he cursed their weight. It may also have reminded him of the many other similar deliveries he's brought over the past few months.

That adds up to a breach in OPSEC. OPSEC stands for operational security, which basically means prevention of leaks of information that could be used by others to harm you. The Fed-Ex man is aware that The Harried Homemaker Acres has had several large deliveries from preparedness companies. This is not ideal since I'm trying to keep our preps on the down-low.

I have many more prepping purchases I need to get over the next few months. What should I do to both maintain OPSEC and keep the Fed-Ex man from needing to apply for worker's comp? Ideally, I would purchase things in small amounts with cash from several local stores, transport them myself, and discreetly bring them into my home. That's not easy for a person who lives in a preparedness wasteland. I'm just going to have to continue to do what I've been doing and hope for the best.

I implore companies that specialize in preparedness supplies to remove the prominent lettering from their packaging. Help your customers gather their preparedness materials discreetly. 

Woohoo! Dave Ramsey says I'm right!

Hubby Dear and I have been going back and forth a lot on the subject of prepping. Honestly, it has descended into flat-out fights several times. Hubby Dear and I are the kind of couple that usually make people sick because we're so lovey-dovey even after over a decade of marriage, so that is very unusual. It was after one of those fights that I got all steamed up and emailed Dave Ramsey. Little did I know that I would quickly get a reply from Dave's producer, Lara Johnson, and actually talk with the man himself live on national radio.

In case you do not know who Dave Ramsey is, he is THE financial guru. His slogan says it all: "Debt is dumb, cash is king, and the paid-off home mortgage has taken the place of the BMW as the status symbol of choice". We have been following the Baby Steps as set out in his best-selling book, The Total Money Makeover, for over a year. I knew if anyone could solve this problem Hubby Dear and I have, it would be Dave.

When we put our problem before Dave, he was impressed to hear how much debt we had paid off in the last year. Lee told Dave that he didn't want to spend money on prepping until we paid off the remainder of our debt. Dave Ramsey told Lee that it would be fine to set a budget for prepping as long as we stick to it. Dave noted that preparedness obviously must be something important to me since I was willing to call in to a national radio show!

After he stated his opinion on our question, Dave asked me why I felt the need to, in his words, "store up a bunch of food in the basement". I briefly explained my reasons for prepping. Dave said he wasn't worried about ever having trouble feeding his kids, but said what did he know - he stocked up on certain kinds of ammo when Obama came into office.

Overall, I was very satisfied with the call, even though Dave isn't a prepper. Hubby Dear and I are finally on the same page with our budget and I get to spend money on prepping.



* By the way, they said our location as Kansas City. I'm proud that I was quick witted enough to give a phony location. I didn't break OPSEC! ;)