Our leaders are quietly working extremely long hours on each and every element of our Noodplan. Clearly, it is not possible to do everything at once, and some things must come before others. Therefore, we all wait anxiously for the next development, the next piece of encouraging news, and the next area of preparation for anarchy to be covered. It cannot come soon enough. Furthermore, over the recent period we have been blessed with a growth in membership, including many English speakers who have a heart for our Lord’s will in this country. And so the burden on our leaders is even greater, as they strive to provide the support and encouragement for which right-hearted people yearn as our state lets go of its responsibilities in practically every sphere. With that in mind, Suidlanders leadership and management are working to provide more advice, more varied advice, and more advanced advice – to those who are interested in it – to more and more people.
Over the forthcoming period you will find a treasure trove of new links, articles, books, and so on, on this website and on our .org website – the one intended for our international audience. And Cleve Cheney’s SA Prepper Magazine is second-to-none when it comes to a professional analysis of every niche of preparation. We believe that our people will shortly have no shortage of information on what to do to get themselves and their families ready for a time when electricity doesn’t work, fuel pumps have stopped, water reservoirs cannot be re-filled, and Woolworths’ trucks are not making deliveries.
Traditionally, the consensus amongst “professional” survivalists and preppers is that the three most important items of preparation for leaving home in a civil emergency are fuel, water (including filters and purifying tablets), and licensed firearms. Everything else comes after those three.
Then come things like an emergency bag which will allow you to remain more-or-less self-sustaining for an extended period of time. That of course excludes food, because an emergency bag can only carry enough food for a few days, perhaps a week or two at the utmost. Food aside, a good emergency bag of between 12 and 20kgs’ mass will possess (things like) the tent, sleeping bag poncho, water filter, water purification tables, knives, basic cooking utensils, basic fire-making utensils, rugged clothing and tough shoes, First Aid kit,
compass, maps, torch, hand-saw, and other items, which will keep you on the go for – potentially – a very long time.
But then we must look a bit further afield towards the longer term, and the topic of preparing becomes more complicated and opinions tends to disperse away from one another. What is agreed though, is that people must eat. There are two means of obtaining food, namely stocking up on it and producing it.
Before we go on, I wish to emphasise that this topic is not cut-and-dried. “The answer” has not yet been found. The experts disagree here and there. Our Suidlanders website has an excellent list of basic food preparations. The purpose of what follows is not to get into an argument, it is to create a continuous thread from the beginning of the article to the end, allowing people to learn how to think about this topic.
If we talk about stocking up on food, there are many things to consider: what about storing it? Weevils? How can I carry enough in my car? Clearly, it is imperative that each person give thought to
1. What carrying capacity they have in their car and/or trailer and/or caravan.
2. How many people will be in their car
3. How much space will be left over after a few canisters (say 75l) of fuel.
But, unfortunately, by the time that the novice Suidlander has confronted each of the above questions she is invariably overwhelmed. It can seem very daunting, especially if the budget is limited. But it is not so daunting in reality, as those people who have successfully done the basics will tell you every time.
Permit me to tell you from personal experience that for the first year of preparation, with little-to-no disposable income, I was discouraged about preparing and I got nowhere; in fact, I didn’t really try because it wasn’t worth trying (in my mind). Then a couple of things happened to me which allowed me to believe that it was worth making a teeny-tiny effort each month. Within four months I had gone from having almost no preparations to having emergency bags for 5 people, fuel for 1000 kms, and food for 5 people for a month. There was some luck (read blessing) involved, but it mostly came down to “just getting on with it”. If I remember correctly, I began with 9 cans of tuna i.e. R108, and 2l of sunflower oil i.e. R23 on special at Pick’n’Pay. Oh, and I think that I also bought one of those small packets of salt for R3, 99c in the first month. Then I was introduced to Martin Weebosch, so in the following month I bought two of his backpacks for around about 1/5th the cost of the equivalent quality at Cape Union Mart. I asked a very good friend if I could have a couple of small survival items which they no longer used and they happily gave them to me in return for a favour I did them some time ago; and then, out of the blue, someone offered me a few pieces of camping gear which they had replaced with shinier ones.
In that spirit, I urge you to consider the following. With just one single Simba Chips carton you can store enough food to be in the top 20% or 30% of refugees in a time of crisis as far as nutrition goes. And you can build it up at the rate of R150 p.m. in just a few months.
5 x 2kg packets of rice
2 kgs of salt
6 litres of oil
3 boxes of Jungle Oats
30 cans of tuna
20 packets of soup
48 stock cubes
96 Rooibos tea bags i.e. 2 boxes of 48
2 large bottles of Bovril
2 large bottles of Marmite
could allow 4 people to survive for a month or longer. That amount of food might seem a bit little to you, but you will survive and be healthy. What’s more, it might be double or even treble what those around you have. Remember that the vast majority of our people, that is to say of our nation, who panic during a period of anarchy and who decide that there is safety in numbers and who suddenly choose to depend upon the Suidlanders Emergency Plan, will have next-to-nothing.
Allow me to emphasise that the Suidlanders’ list is probably a better one than mine, but I am deliberately using a list which is sensible enough and which permits me to illustrate the point of this conversation in a coherent manner.
Then, if you want to do so, and still without spending much money, going to much trouble, or carrying much supplies, you could augment your one month’s worth of food supplies with
20 cans of tomato and onion mix
30 cans of mixed vegetables
A 5 kg bag of mielie meal
10 x 500g packets of pasta
10 x 1l cartons of long-life milk
30 packets of freeze-dried vegetables
30 cans of bully beef
And all of a sudden you are looking at 3 months’ worth of food for a family of four.
NOTE: I have not described the re-packaging of the above items. That’s because I do not specially package any of my food stocks. That is not the best way of doing things, I know; but I find packaging a pain in the neck, so I spend my energy elsewhere on my own fortes, and instead of packaging I simply circulate all of my food stores through a box which is ready to go at all times. It’s easy and it works well enough for items whose sell-by dates are months, even years, into the future.
Now, assuming that you are able to see the simple feasibility of storing a couple of canisters of lawn-mower fuel, water tablets, a couple of emergency bags, and a couple of cartons of food, all of which will immediately set you amongst the upper percentiles of refugees when it comes to preparedness, let’s look a bit into the future.
There are umpteen things we could talk about. We could begin by saying that long-term, and short-term for that matter, communication is crucial, so it is a matter of priority to buy a 27Mhz radio between yourself and three or four friends who might expect to travel together. We could demonstrate the feasibility of buying a second-hand Venter trailer between three families, permitting them to carry enough materiel for self-sustenance to see them well into the first months, maybe years, of anarchy. It would not be out of place to suggest that it is of primary importance to chat about the best books which one can download legally and for free from the internet; I am talking about books which cover every topic of surviving during a time of anarchy; how easy it is to print them in black-and-white on recycled paper and staple them, and plonk them in your Simba Chips carton on top of the rice and oil. We could even discuss the urgency, ease, and affordability of doing a St John’s Ambulance or Red Cross First Aid course. So, the following choice is arbitrary i.e. just a matter of opinion. I’d like to chat about seeds.
I am not an expert on seeds, so I must acknowledge that the little bit, and it is just a little bit, that I know has been taught to me by Mark Roach of Organic.
Seeds http://www.organicseeds.co.za. The first thing to know, regardless of whether you end up going rigidly by this advice or not, is that most modern commercial seeds are first generation (F1) hybrid seeds. Simply put, this means that you cannot save your own seeds from these plants in order to plant them again the next season, as they will not produce plants with identical qualities to the parent plant. In order to be able to save your own seeds and to be self-sustainable, you need to look for open-pollinated (non-commercial hybrid) seeds to plant. For a more complete explanation on the differences between hybrid, open pollinated and heirloom seeds, go to this webpage: http://www.organicseed.co.za/content/6-what-are-heirloom-seeds This is one way in which the big seed companies make their money i.e. by preventing farmers from being able to use their own seeds to plant each successive crop; the farmers have to go back to the seed companies every year to purchase more F1 seed to ensure that their crops grow true! In response to that, a number of people have opened businesses which trade in what are known as heirloom seeds i.e. older open-pollinated varieties that have withstood the test of time, which are a legacy or an heirloom handed down to us by previous generations, and which are of God-given nature. It is clear to the reader, I am sure, that heirloom seeds are the superior solution to the problem which we believe that we are going to face.
One of our “simple realities”, as a pragmatic former client of mine always puts it, is that we must be prepared to feed ourselves after our pre-packed food has run out. It’s not a nice thing to think about, but it is a very simple reality. We must have seeds to sow for food “down the line”. They won’t sprout overnight, and it is likely that we shall experience times of lack in-between. But, like our imperfect food stocking, a reasonable job can be done and it is not as difficult as it might seem prior to getting started.
As I described to you, I am not a seed fundi. Having introduced the topic and its basics, I recommend that you take a look at Organic Seeds and have a chat with someone who knows exactly what they are talking about. Also, please take a look at this helpful website http://howtosaveseeds.com/index.php which approaches the challenge from a different angle. I am sure that within a month or two you, too, will be thinking about buying a starter pack – or four – of seeds to go with your basic preparations.
I sincerely hope that this article has been useful in the sense that it has touched briefly on the basics of preparing, gone a (very) little bit more deeply into emergency bags, argued successfully to encourage people to prepare food to take with them in their vehicles, and then branched into just one of the more advanced features of preparing for anarchy. In future, perhaps we will get an opportunity to talk about legal 27MHz CB radio ownership, different simple methods of filtering water, and First Aid.
I pray before Almighty God that you will be blessed with the one preparation which will count in the end – a deepening and strengthening of faith which permits you to love our Lord with all of your heart, all of your mind, and all of your strength, so that you may serve His will as He has commanded and as it has been written down for us.
Frederick von Strassenhausen.