Survival Survey: What survival gear would you buy with an extra $500?
I’ve been browsing through the enormous selection of survival and emergency supplies and resources at Amazon and have filled up quite a few pages in my Amazon store with some good choices.
Imagine that you have an extra $500 to further your preparations for the future. How would you spend it? Use the prices at Amazon as a guide, since they tend to be fairly competitive, and you can get as many items as you like as long as you don’t spend more than $500. So, what would you get?
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I'd probably get a Berkley water filter (since water, the most important thing for survival, is my "shortcoming" as far as my supplies go). Then I'd probably spend the rest on some large pails of food (mostly wheat).
PS. We currently live in a small mobile home. Therefore, our "survival" supplies are limited to the space that we have. There are things that I will definitely invest in later (such as a wood stove, big water barrels, etc.) but those are things that we don't have room for now and/or can't go in our current home.
Water is a shortcoming of mine as well. A high quality water filter is near the top of my wish list, though.
For $500 I would purchase at least 1 rain barrel with spigot ($100 at Blaines Fleet Farm) (or a 55 gallon garbage container), and a Coleman camp stove plus as much fuel as the remains would purchase. We're looking at a major snow storm in the midwest this week and if the electricity goes out – we're set with the exception of being able to cook.
With all the talk of food storage, water is overlooked much of the time. Locally, I have a source that sells used 55 gallon water drums (once stored things like soy sauce), and I can get them for $20 each. The spigot on the one you mention is a really nice feature, though. Stay warm this week!!
Mature (or close) fruit trees to plant in the yard. I've heard that it's really hard to grow good fruit trees from seeds and this would let us get fruit soon, even though we don't have any mature trees now. And I'm sure it would be more than $20 a tree to buy a mature one and get it delivered and safely planted.
LifeSaver or BigBerkey water filter, some solar recharging station, big buddy propane heater, and more stuff for the wife's car kit like another portable Eton hand crank radio with charger
Great site by the way. Thanks for being a readable female voice in an area full of intense males.
I just got (and I do mean JUST – delivered about an hour ago) two of the "Everlite Solar Charged Headlamp" with the optional "Everlite USB Converter". They're going in our car bags. This is a solar charged headlamp and if you use the cable, you can recharge USB chargeable things – like a phone. We will, of course, need a cable to connect to the phone added in, but this way I feel safe that we will have light and a working iPhone (with a full suite of survival apps on it, of course). If they seem to work well, I may add in a pair of USB rechargeable AA batteries. You might want to consider those for your car kits because it's about $55 for a headlamp and cable on amazon.com. (Or less, on eBay.)
I also got two solar powered lanterns from eBay. (Yeah, I did a search on solar powered toys during the recent blizzards.)
a woodstove would be my first priority due to the fact that my short term heat is a kero heater(23,000 btu) right now..i have 3 solar recharge 12 LED lanterns a set of 12 solar recharge path lights for use indoors 2 duel fuel coleman lanterns 1 old style barn oil lamp and a fancy indoor oil lamp..2 coleman liquid stoves 1 gal of fuel 1 coleman propane stove about 6 small bottles and a 20lb bottle as well..water is taken care of with 2 55 gal barrels(former soy sauce) and a 250 gal water bag..i have a briefcase size construction site solar panels to recharge most everything including battery power tools.. there is about 12 plastic crates(rubbermaid) in different sizes filled and inventoried from my Y2K days..and for loriN (or a 55 gallon garbage container), please dont do that..trash cans even new are not food grade plastic and they will leach nasties into your water.. my water barrels will be tied into the rain gutter down spouts..only problem i have is winter here in WV trying to find a place to keep water that wont freeze
Can you bury your water barrels that are tied to gutter spouts to keep them from freezing? You'd have to have a way to pump the water out, though.
Boy, Liz, you're asking the wrong person. Living in Phoenix I'm afraid that freezing is something we rarely ever have to worry about! Maybe another reader can help you out with that one.
sure its possible to bury them but im not in the mood to dig a 4 ft verticle hole here since we are renting..but yes it would work if you wanted to do that at your house..im not sure but i think the top would have to be at least 6 inches below the surface to be below the frost line..