The Cost of Free Money

Here is a fascinating history from early 17th century Russia, featuring somebody who apparently returned from the dead and a coup to take control of the country. This the story of Prince Dmitri. Lanny Cotton, who wrote the below for a podcast originally, explains. Ivan the Terrible. By Hans Weigel. Today, I would like to tell you a story. A story about a sinister conspiracy, a lost and noble prince, an evil tyrant, and a war over the soul of an empire. Or, more likely, a story about a crazed conspiracy theory, a deceitful imposter, an unfortunate monarch, and a chaotic civil war which brought death and destruction to said empire. Along the way we’ll play knife games with the boys, mutilate a poor, innocent church bell, and perform history’s first and only reverse sled-by shooting. I hope you enjoy the ride.PART ONEOur story begins with Ivan the Terrible, the first Tsar of Russia. Ivan is himself a fascinating figure, but here our story concerns itself with what happened after his death. Oh, and a side note: the epithet “the Terrible” is somewhat misleading. The Russian word “grozny” is translated into “terrible” in the sense of something “inspiring terror”, rather than being of low quality. It wasn’t a pleasant nickname, but it wasn’t an insult either, and it suited the paranoid Tsar who had thousands of his subjects murdered on the slightest provocations. Ivan’s first wife was a woman named Anastasia Romanovna, who he chose out of a lineup of a few hundred other eligible maidens. It seems that Anastasia and Ivan got along fairly well, and she managed to keep his more violent tendencies at bay. The couple had six children, four of which would die in infancy. This left Ivan with an heir and a spare, Prince Ivan Ivanovich and Prince Feodor. In the summer of 1560, Anastasia died of a sudden illness. Ivan was convinced that his beloved wife was poisoned and began a purge against the boyars, the Russian nobility, having many noblemen tortured and executed. Was this pure paranoia? In 2001, Anastasia’s body was examined by Russian scientists, who discovered a high buildup of mercury in her bones, a sign that the Tsar’s wife may have actually been poisoned. Ivan took at least five more wives after Anastasia, though there are later reports of another two which historians doubt. Technically, this was illegal under the rules of the Russian Orthodox Church, which only permitted three marriages in a lifetime. Ivan was Tsar, though, and didn’t have to care about the rules. The next two wives, Maria and Marfa, also died suddenly, kicking off another couple rounds of purges. The two after that, both named Anna, eventually bored their imperial husband and found themselves shipped off to nunneries. The sixth and final of Ivan’s canonical wives was named Maria Nagaya. Ivan and Maria didn’t get along well, and she almost got nunneried like the Annas, but then she got pregnant. Maria gave birth on October 19, 1582 to little Prince Dmitri, Ivan’s third son.So let’s talk about the sons. First is Prince Ivan Ivanovich. This Ivan seems to have been a good heir, intelligent and capable, and he might have made a good Tsar. But we’ll never know, because on November 15th, 1581, the two Ivans got into a heated argument which ended in the Tsar striking his son and heir with his scepter. The blow broke the prince’s skull and sent him into a coma. Four days later he died without waking up. This left Feodor as heir, which was problematic because Feodor was kind of useless. Feodor was weak and sickly since childhood, and while personally nice he never showed interest in rulership, preferring to spend his days in prayer and meditation. Some historians believe he may have suffered from some sort of learning disorder, in particular placing him somewhere on the autism spectrum, though we’ll never know for sure. When Ivan died in March of 1584, Feodor was crowned Tsar. However, Feodor didn’t actually reign. The responsibilities of government were turned over to a council of boyars, led by a man named Boris Godunov. The Godunov family was not powerful or influential, Boris had only gotten into the Muscovite court because his father-in-law was the head of the oprichnina, Ivan the Terrible’s infamous secret police.  Feodor was at this time 27 years old, though it was clear that he would never make a good Tsar, and that his regency would be in effect perpetual. And since Feodor didn’t have any children of his own, the technically illegitimate Dmitri stood to inherit the empire. This meant that he could pose a threat to Boris’ regency, should he grow up to be a better ruler than his half-brother. Shortly after Ivan’s death and Feodor’s ascension to the throne, Boris had the sixteen month old Dmitri and his mother Maria sent off to the town of Uglich on the Volga River. The young prince seemed to have suffered from epileptic seizures, but other than that was healthy. His hobbies are said to have included watching cows be slaughtered and beating chickens to death with sticks, which maybe aren’t the most wholesome activities for an eight year old, but who am I to say? He also seemed to have enjoyed a game which consisted of throwing a marlinspike into the ground. What happened next isn’t quite clear. On May 15th, 1591, the eight year old Dmitri was found dead of a neck wound. There are two theories about what happened. The official story, published soon after, was that Dmitri had a seizure while playing the game and ended up falling onto his marlinspike. This was the conclusion of an inquiry led by a boyar by the name of Vasily Shuisky. Remember that name. But the other theory was much sexier. This theory stated that Boris Godunov, the tsar in all but name, had murdered the rightful heir in order to seize the throne for himself. His death was rather convenient for the regent. Incidentally, Maria Nagaya was sent to a nunnery after all, once her son was dead.The church bell rang to signal the death of the prince. Can you imagine which of the two theories the people of Uglich believed first? That’s right, as soon as the bell rang they knew that their beloved prince had been murdered by the cruel tyrant in Moscow. And so they rioted, led by Boris’ political enemies. The citizens of Uglich did usual riot stuff, murdered tax collectors, burned buildings, stole stuff, the whole thing. Soldiers from Moscow soon arrived to put down the rioting, and many of those who took part were exiled to Siberia. One of these exiles was the bell which had begun the riot by announcing the prince’s death. In addition to being exiled, the bell had its “tongue” removed and was whipped through the streets. In 1892, three hundred years after its heinous crime, the bell was pardoned by Tsar Alexander III and allowed to return to Uglich. It was even given a new tongue. So Dmitri is dead. But his story isn’t over, it’s just beginning. Because in the years after his death, a third theory emerged. This theory stated that the prince was not, in fact, dead. He had been replaced by another poor child who died in his place, and was spirited away from Uglich just before the regent’s agents arrived to carry out their scheme. Tsar Feodor died in February of 1598, less than seven years after his brother. The incompetent tsar had only one child, a daughter who died in childhood four years earlier. Without a clear heir, Boris Godunov declared himself Tsar, breaking a dynastic line that had ruled Russia, according to legend, since the Viking chief Rurik of Novgorod seven hundred years earlier. Things went bad for Tsar Boris pretty quickly. The rumors of his role in the prince’s death had not gone away in the intervening years, if anything they had just spread further. The older and wealthier boyars, those that had survived Ivan’s purges at least, resented Boris for his low birth, which meant from the beginning he was surrounded by potential enemies. During Boris’ tenure as imperial regent he had strengthened the power of the aristocracy at the expense of the peasants, in 1592 ending the traditional practice of serfs being able to move freely for the two weeks surrounding St. George’s Day. Without this privilege serfs were effectively made a part of the land itself, to be bought and sold with the land they worked. This would long outlive Boris and remained law until the 19th century. This was done in a desperate attempt to reverse the economic downturn which plagued Russia during the regency. So Boris was unpopular with both the nobility and the peasantry. This would only get worse, because of events taking place on the other side of the planet, in Peru.PART TWOIn February of 1600, the volcano Huaynaputina, in modern day Peru, erupted. The eruption spewed thousands of tons of ash and debris into the atmosphere, where it partially blocked sunlight across the planet for years to come. Russia was among the hardest hit. 1601 was cold and wet, bad news for agriculture. Winter came early that year, ruining harvests across the empire. Food became scarce, prices skyrocketed, and the imperial treasury was stretched to breaking point. The result was perhaps the harshest famine in Russian history. It’s impossible to put an exact number on the death toll, but historians believe that about one third of the entire Russian population died during the next ten years, from starvation or disease or violence. The situation had spiraled far out of control, and the Tsar was powerless to stop it. What popular support he had dissolved. In the superstitious 17th century, this famine was taken as a sign of God’s wrath. A low-born had schemed his way to the throne by murdering Dmitri, the rightful heir, and possibly the pious Feodor as well. But if the tyrant was overthrown, who would replace him? Remember that third theory I mentioned? Well, in 1603 Dmitri returned from the dead. We still don’t know who exactly this man was, but he was about the same age and looked fairly similar to the dead prince, only a decade older. He first emerged in Poland, under the protection of a powerful Ukrainian nobleman by the name of Adam Vishnevetskii. Poland was the main rival of the Russian Empire, a powerful kingdom to the west. Unlike Russia, Poland had a weak ruler and a powerful aristocracy. The Sejm, the Polish parliament, could veto any of the king’s decisions. Unlike just about every other monarchy in Europe, the Polish monarchy was non-hereditary. When the King died, the next king was elected by the Sejm. The Polish nobility saw the weakness of Russia and supported Dmitri in order to further destabilize their mortal enemies. In October of 1604, Dmitri crossed the border at the front of a Polish army. Boris was unable to organize an effective defense. The Russian army was scattered and mostly under the control of local magnates, many of whom opposed the Godunov regime. The food shortages had hit the army hard, desertion was rampant as hungry soldiers left their posts to become bandits or just return home to protect their families. As word of Dmitri’s return spread across Russia, the peasantry rose in support of their true Tsar, the long-lost prince. Boris waged a war of propaganda against the Pretender, claiming to have “discovered” that his true name was Grigory Otrepev and that he was a disgraced former monk. Boris’ health continued to decline amidst famine and civil war, and in April of 1605 he suddenly died. He was succeeded by his son, the sixteen year old Feodor. Feodor II didn’t last long. Two months into his reign, the teenage Tsar was overthrown and assassinated by Dmitri’s supporters in Moscow. Dmitri himself showed up a few weeks later to enter the city, and was proclaimed Tsar Dmitri I. His “mother”, Maria Nagaya, was brought back from the nunnery and publicly acknowledged him as her lost son. For all intents and purposes, this rando was now the son of Ivan the Terrible and the true Tsar. The evidence? Trust me bro.Almost immediately Dmitri messed it up. His alliance with the hated Poles caught up to the Pretender, and rumors spread that he was a secret Catholic, bent on subverting the holy Orthodoxy and twisting Russia towards damnable Catholic heresy. Oh, and remember that name I told you to remember earlier? I’m sure you do, intelligent and wise listener. Vasily Shuisky, the man who had led the inquiry which concluded that Dmitri had died in an accident, changed his story once Dmitri arrived in Moscow. Now he backed Dmitri’s version of the story, admitting that he lied in his initial report due to pressure from Godunov. But Vasily personally hated the new Tsar. And his once messianic reputation among the peasantry began to fade as conditions failed to improve in the countryside. Not only that, but tensions began to grow between the citizens of Moscow and the new Polish arrivals, soldiers and noblemen supported by Dmitri. This situation was not eased when Dmitri announced his plan to marry a Polish woman, the daughter of one of the noblemen who supported his invasion. On the morning of May 17th, 1606, a week after the wedding and a year after his ascension to the throne, an angry mob stormed the palace. Dmitri tried to flee by jumping out a window and running along the rooftops to safety, but he slipped and fell, breaking his leg. The assassins found the Tsar in the alleyway and killed him, presumably telling him to stay dead this time. Dmitri’s body was stripped naked and dragged through the city, while Vasily Shuisky proclaimed him as a heretic and an imposter. His body was publicly displayed in Red Square for three days, before being loaded into a cannon and fired in the direction of Poland. Two days later, Vasily Shuisky proclaimed himself Tsar Vasily IV, ending the reign of False Dmitri… the First. That’s right, we’re not done yet.PART THREEWord of the coup spread through Russia, triggering a new wave of unrest and resentment. While the sheen had started to fade from the Pretender, he was still fairly popular in the provinces. Vasily worked out a pretty clever way to discount the legend of Dmitri’s survival. He sent agents to Uglich to dig up the prince’s body, and these agents “discovered” that the body was miraculously undecomposed. In Russian Orthodoxy, if a body fails to decay that means that the soul of its former inhabitant has ascended to Heaven and been made a saint. So the eight year old princeling who enjoyed torturing farmyard animals had been worthy of sainthood. He could not be on Earth, he had ascended to Heaven, and Vasily had proof. The prince’s coffin was taken from Uglich to Moscow in a grand procession. The coffin, however, was closed. It did smell nice, apparently. The sainted prince was taken to Archangel Cathedral in Moscow where his coffin was displayed for several days, until even incense could no longer cover up the smell. Then the body was quietly buried. The trick didn’t work. A new rumor emerged in Moscow. Not only did Dmitri survive the first assassination, he also survived the second one. The body dragged through the streets of Moscow and displayed in Red Square was another imposter, and the true Dmitri had escaped once more. The unrest that began with the assassination of Dmitri had by this time escalated into full scale rebellion in western and southern Russia. But these rebels didn’t have a claimant to the throne, so even if they overthrew the government in Moscow they would still struggle to find a Tsar. Into this scene comes a traveling beggar claiming to be Andrei Nagoy, a cousin of Prince/Tsar Dmitri, who claimed to have secret information on his cousin’s whereabouts. His true identity is still unknown, though tradition holds that he was either a priest’s servant banished after sleeping with the priest’s wife, or a Jew who had converted to Christianity to escape persecution. Either way, he was captured by the rebels in July of 1607 in order to reveal Dmitri’s whereabouts. Under threat of torture, this man revealed himself to be the missing prince, escaped from Moscow as he had with Uglich, returned once again to take his rightful throne. Upon this shocking declaration, the rebels pledged their allegiance to their Tsar once more, and suddenly the beggar had an army of thousands at his back. But this Tsar would never make it to Moscow. Like the first false Dmitri, Dmitri number two’s army had a large contingent of foreign mercenaries, largely Polish. But this Dmitri didn’t get along quite as well with the Polish nobility, which meant he lacked the funding to pay those mercenaries. Dmitri II made progress in his campaign northeast, but met with heavy resistance along the way, and his army was hemorrhaging men due to desertion from lack of pay. He received the endorsement of the first False Dmitri’s Polish wife, who recognized the pretender as her lost husband. In 1609, King Sigismund of Poland personally intervened in Russia, officially declaring war on the Moscow government and laying siege to the strategic city of Smolensk. His goal was to place his son, Vladislav, on the Russian throne, effectively making it his vassal. This was a complete disaster for Dmitri. His Polish soldiers preferred to fight on the side of their king rather than a Russian pretender, and those nobles that had supported Dmitri defected to the Polish side, declaring Vladislav the new Tsar instead of the pretender. Another faction defected from both sides. These were those patriotic boyars who opposed the Polish invasion on principle, and saw both Vladislav and Dmitri as foreign interlopers. Back in Moscow, the pro-Polish faction staged a coup against Tsar Vasily in July of 1610, forcing him to become a monk while they established a council of Seven Boyars, turning over control of the capital to the Polish army in September. False Dmitri II didn’t outlast his nemesis for long, though. Pushed back and weakened, Dmitri lashed out at his inner circle. On forged evidence he had one of his bodyguards, Peter Usanov, whipped and fired in December of 1610. The former bodyguard then went out and got drunk with his friends, wandering around the city. Then he stumbled upon his former boss on a sleighride, and being drunk and pissed off, pulled out his pistol and shot Dmitri to death. This is the end of False Dmitri II. Two down, one to go.It’s a cliche at this point that Russia is not a good place to invade, and by 1612 the war had started to go the other way. The Patriotic boyars, led by Dmitri Pozharsky, consolidated their power in what part of Russia remained free and negotiated an alliance with Sweden, then a major military power on the rise in central Europe. Incidentally, the king of Sweden was the uncle of the King of Poland. The Polish soldiers in Moscow were now essentially under siege, much of the city was controlled by rebels and their forces outside the city walls were constantly being raided.It’s about this time that Dmitri returns from the dead for the third, and final, time in the border city of Pskov. We don’t know a lot about this guy, just that he showed up in Pskov and said he was Dmitri. His support outside that city was limited to a handful of rebels sitting outside Moscow and harassing random Poles. The first False Dmitri was a big deal, the second was an occasion, but the third was just redundant. And besides, this Dmitri lacked the charisma of the first and the timing of the second and quickly wore out his welcome. He was overthrown by his subjects and turned over to Moscow, where he was executed in May of 1612. And so ends the time of the False Dmitris. Finally, on October 27th, 1612, Prozharsky retook Moscow from the Polish occupation force. The anniversary is still celebrated as National Unity Day. With the last pretender defeated and the capital liberated, the boyars assembled a grand council to decide, once and for all, who was going to be Tsar. They settled on the sixteen year old Michael Romanov, the son of the Patriarch of Moscow and the great-nephew of Anastasia Romanovna, Ivan the Terrible’s beloved first wife. Despite his young age, Michael managed to hold onto power until his death thirty-two years later, kicked the Poles out of Russia, and established a dynasty which would rule Russia until the Russian Revolution in 1917. The period between the death of Feodor I and the ascension of Michael I is known in Russia as the “Time of Troubles”. In fifteen years over one third of the population of Russia had died, the empire had been torn apart by famine and civil war, and central authority had completely collapsed. The Empire that arose from this chaos was more authoritarian than the one that had fallen. The vast majority of the population were serfs, in effect slaves tied to the land. After fifteen years of chaos the nobility accepted Tsarist autocracy as a restoration of proper order. The Tsar became a quasi-religious figure, chosen by God to guide Russia and prevent a second Time of Troubles. The legacy of this autocratic turn still lingers in Russia to this day. Find that piece of interest? If so, join us for free by clicking here.  ReferencesThe main source here is A Short History of Russia’s First Civil War: The Time of Troubles and the Founding of the Romanov Dynasty by Chester S.L. Dunning, if you want to know more go read it. It's a good book.

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In my travels, I often hear folks that are new to prepping express surprise. Surprise at how much work it is! I know most folks have the idea that you can get a case of MREs, a few jugs of water, and a survival radio and call yourself ready, but being truly prepared is a little more… complicated. A big component of the difficulty is actually the logistics of it: human beings have needs, what we call survival necessities, for sustained existence over time. Consumables are naturally some of the most important, with food and water being high on the list. Without enough water or calories every day, you are doomed. Amassing a large enough stash of food, water, and other gear can be a huge undertaking, something that takes a lot of money and time. But if you’re unprepared or started too late and trouble is just on the horizon, you’ll have to act fast. Luckily, with the right approach, it’s possible to build a one-month survival stockpile in just 24 hours. Keep reading and I’ll tell you how. Just the Basics If you’ve spent any amount of time reading about prepping, you probably have noticed that there’s always something else to prepare for. Some threat you overlooked, some scenario you’ve never thought of. In a way, it’s easy to get sucked into a spiral of doomsday prophecy: you can never call it good enough, never let yourself rest on what you’ve already prepared for! That’s a philosophical conversation we will put aside for now, but it can help to focus us for our current mission. We are not trying to get ready for every niche event that might possibly occur. We are just trying to take care of the basics, and do so as quickly as we can. You don’t have to get ready for a nuclear war or a zombie apocalypse; for now, just get prepared for a long wait without clean water, a stable food supply, or reliable sources for fuel. Those things are always, and I do mean always, valuable no matter what situation you’re facing. You can take care of the other stuff later. Move Fast One thing to keep in mind: if you woke up today and the sun is shining, but you have a weight pressing down on you that you need to get ready for tough times ahead, rejoice: Follow the plan I’m about to share with you and within one day you’ll be better prepared than 95% of the population. However, if you are reading this because there is an actual, tangible disaster about to occur, maybe a huge hurricane, riot, or something else, you’ve got to move fast and be smart: There will be thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of other people just like you out there scrambling to get what they need before someone else gets to it. In this latter scenario, it is going to be ugly and your success is anything but certain. Do your best, and consider that this exact scenario is why preppers constantly preach that folks get ready before trouble arrives. Where to Shop Keep things simple. You can get all of the following items at grocery stores, big box club stores, hardware stores, and similar retailers that are in your town right now or very nearby. Spend a day, maybe two, shopping and you can get everything that you and your family will need to survive for a month in just about 24 hours’ worth of actual work. I’ll tell you more about the exact survival requirements in the relevant sections below… five large rainwater tanks Water Requirement: 1 gallon per person per day; covers drinking, cooking, and basic hygiene. What to Get: water storage drums or other containers. Where to Get It: hardware store or farm supply store. Water is, of course, one of the most critical survival necessities. Any person can only go a few days without any water, and rest assured you will be totally incapacitated well before death comes for you. What even seasoned preppers sometimes underestimate is that you’ll need more water when you are working hard and perspiring in a hot environment, and you’ll also need some for basic hygiene and food prep. Accordingly, a good guideline is that you should have one gallon of water per person in your family, and that’s per day. That means a 30-day supply of water for a family of four is approximately 120 gallons. That is a colossal amount of bottled water, and though you should definitely have a few cases on hand, it’s not practical to get and store that much in just 24 hours. A better solution is to get large water storage drums or other containers that you can fill up. Your local hardware store or farm supply store should have portable water storage drums that will hold about 50 gallons. Get three of those and you are covered for the month with a little extra to spare, either as a hedge or water enough to take care of the family pet. Don’t forget the necessary hardware to seal up the drums if needed and pump water out of it. Another item you should look out for, one that you can get at outdoor stores and some department stores, is a bathtub basin. Basically, this is a large water storage bag that you set in a bathtub and fill up from the tap, capable of holding dozens of gallons on demand. cans of peanut butter on pantry shelves Food Requirement: approx. 2,000 calories per person, per day. What to Get: shelf-stable, easy-to-prepare or ready-to-eat foods that are high in calories. Where to Get It: grocery store, big box club store. Food is also a survival necessity, but compared to water, folks somewhat under-prioritize it because you can go for weeks on end without any food before you starve. But just like water, your mental and physical condition will be severely degraded long before you starve to death. Accordingly, regular intake of calories will keep your body strong and your mind sharp, two major assets in any survival scenario. As a rough guideline, plan on a person needing about 2,000 calories a day (60,000 per person, per month), but this assumes only a modest level of activity. If you are working hard day in and day out or are stressed, you will need more calories. The thing with stockpiling is that it takes up a lot of room, especially if it is canned. Raw, bulk calories will keep you alive but it takes a toll on your psyche, and a lack of needed vitamins and minerals will degrade your health over time. A varied diet is always a good thing, even in a survival situation. Plus, we are on a tight deadline here, so we need to make do with what is readily available. Head to your local grocery store or big box club store like Costco or Sam’s Club. The first thing you should get is several great big jars of peanut butter. Just two tablespoons of peanut butter will have anywhere from 190 to 230 calories, with lots of fat and protein and plenty of minerals to boot. Love it, like it, or hate it, it is an awesome, shelf-stable, and ready-to-eat survival food. Look at the serving size info on the back of the package, calculate the total calories in the container, and then divide that by the calorie needs of your family per day to see how far a single container will get you. But you don’t want to get just peanut butter. Like I said, a varied diet is a good idea… You should get easy-to-prepare staples like rice, dried beans, oats, pasta, instant potatoes, and various canned meats, fruits, and veggies to round things out, along with shelf-stable snacks like Pop-Tarts that the family enjoys. Keeping morale up is important too! If you’ve been paying attention, you will have noticed that several of those items like the instant potatoes, pasta, rice, and beans will require boiling water to prepare. That’s part of the reason we are stockpiling so much! However, that water won’t help if you can’t boil it, and under the circumstances, it’s smart to have a propane or charcoal grill, fire pit, or some other off-grid method of boiling water ready to go with enough fuel for the duration of the crisis. With a little luck, you won’t need it and you can just bunker down at home and use your kitchen as normal, but don’t count on it. hygiene items on pantry shelves: shampoo, shower gel, mouthwash, toothpaste, moisturizing cream, lip balm, deodorant sticks Sanitation Requirement: a safe way to store and dispose of human waste for the duration of the crisis. What to Get: 5-gallon buckets with lids, camping toilet seat, heavy-duty trash bags, bleach, kitty litter, baby wipes. Where to Get It: hardware store, camping and outdoor store, department store. This is a crucial facet of survival that few beginners remember and almost nobody wants to talk about. That’s because it’s really gross. Nonetheless, we’ve got to do it. Sanitation is a huge concern in every kind of survival scenario: Your average adult will produce over a pound of feces a day and 40 to 50 fluid ounces of urine. Happily, we don’t have to deal with any of it when our toilets and sewer systems are working normally. Unhappily, you can’t count on either during a long-term survival scenario. If you don’t have a safe way to store and dispose of that waste, you and your family will be living in hell in no time, and the stage will be set for pestilence. Outbreaks of disease associated with human waste are especially devastating and will be made worse by a lack of readily available medical care. As a bulwark against this outcome, we can use primitive but effective means in the form of 5-gallon buckets, with lids, and heavy-duty contractor bags. Using the bags as a liner and the bucket as an improvised toilet, you can do your business more or less as you always have and then safely contain the waste for later disposal. If you can’t find a Snap-On camp toilet seat for the bucket to make things more comfortable and familiar, you can improvise a toilet seat from two planks of smooth, scrap wood. Other items to get for the purpose include kitty litter to absorb moisture and odor in the toilet, bleach for keeping things sanitized and killing germs, and baby wipes for keeping yourself clean. Hopefully, you won’t need any of this stuff, especially if you have a septic system, but hope is not a strategy for survival. Medical Requirement: supplies and meds for treating basic injuries and ailments; any prescribed meds needed by you or family. What to Get: bandages, gauze, antiseptic, first-aid tape, OTC meds, prescription meds Where to Get It: drugstore, department store, pharmacy. Injury and illness go hand in hand with disasters of all kinds. You might escape serious injury but still have to contend with cuts, bruises, and sickness. You need to be prepared for these eventualities. When making one of your stops, stock up on rolled gauze and gauze pads, antiseptic spray or liquid, first-aid tape, adhesive bandages, and a battery of over-the-counter medications for treating pain, fever, diarrhea, nausea, and other conditions. Something that might be tricky to get under the circumstances but vital all the same is any prescription medicine that you or a family member needs for ongoing treatment. This could be anything from antibiotics to heart medication. If you have time and opportunity, put in a call to your family doctor and have them fast-track the prescription over to the pharmacist. Be sure to explain why you want it… If your doctor is unreachable or you’re in a serious hurry, head to the pharmacy and plead your case to the pharmacist. You’ve got better chances of getting an emergency supply if you’ve picked up from that pharmacy before. Keep in mind that some medications have their own storage requirements, maybe refrigeration as is the case with insulin or something else. Tools and Support Requirement: basic equipment to help you deal with damage and loss of services. What to Get: see below Where to Get It: hardware store, department store, camping/outdoor store. A big part of prepping is having the right kind of gear and tools on hand to help you cope with damage and decisively deal with emergent problems. I can, and have, written at length about this subject, producing huge lists of must-have gear that every prepper should own. You could spend 24 hours gathering just those tools, and we don’t have that kind of time considering we need a lot of other things. The following represents, to me, the most crucial items to have for facing a wide variety of situations. The good news is these are available almost anywhere and for not much money. You should be able to snag these at one of the stops you are already making for the supplies above. Flashlights In almost all situations the power will go out. Whether it’s after sunset or in the bowels of a large building, you’ll need flashlights to see. Get a good, sturdy variety that has multiple output settings so you can conserve power based on your needs. Make sure you get tons of extra batteries. Headlamps A headlamp offers you a redundant backup to a flashlight, but more importantly, hands-free lighting. Compared to a flashlight, it doesn’t need to be as bright or have as long a range, but you should strive to get one with multiple output modes and, ideally, one that has battery commonality with your flashlights. Emergency Radio Emergency radios, sometimes called weather radios, are typically crank-powered small radio sets that can tune into government and NOAA alert bands. Even if the internet goes down, even if the power is out, even if your smartphone is lost, dead, or broken, you can get updates on what’s happening in your area using one of these. Dust Masks Major disasters like tornadoes, hurricanes, industrial accidents, rioting, earthquakes, and more will invariably put lots of debris and dust into the air. You don’t want to breathe this stuff. Get a large multi-pack of high-efficiency dust masks or, if you want to spring for them, half-face respirators with filters. Gloves Chances are you’ll be dealing with wreckage and dangerous stuff for the duration of the crisis. Protect your hands. Get at least one set of gloves for each adult in your family, and preferably a set for everyone. Heavy-duty cotton or leather work gloves are ideal. Consider the lightweight mechanics-style gloves if you want something with better dexterity. Emergency Blankets These are the lightweight, gold or silver foil blankets you see people wrapped up in at the scene of an accident or in the aftermath of a disaster when first responders arrive. That’s because they work: emergency blankets can reflect up to 90% of your lost body heat back at your body, keeping you dramatically warmer. Inexpensive and highly compact, keep about a dozen of these on hand. Ponchos Basic, pullover-style rain ponchos might be rudimentary, but they can work wonders for keeping you and yours dry if you’re forced to be outside or evacuate in bad weather. Even if you plan on staying put, you might have cause to go outside during a downpour. If you’ve already got good rain gear for everyone in the family, you can skip these. Tarps Every seasoned prepper knows that tarps are a true ace-in-the-hole survival item. You can use tarps to quickly craft an emergency shelter, cover a hole in a leaky roof, as a ground cover, rain catcher, and a whole lot more. I suggest you get the completely waterproof plastic or rubberized style versus canvas. Duct Tape Another unsung but supremely useful item to have in your survival toolbox. Duct tape is perfect for quick and crafty improvisations or repairs, sealing up windows against smoke or gas, and countless other uses. Get at least three big rolls of high-quality tape and put them away only for emergency use – don’t raid the rolls when you need it for a project at home! Gas Cans Last but certainly not least, it’s a good idea to keep fuel on hand. At a minimum, I would have at least 10 extra gallons of fuel for your daily driver vehicle. This can be tricky because you both need to store it safely to reduce the massive fire hazard it represents, and also because the fuel needs to be rotated regularly; it doesn’t last forever and will go bad! Keep in mind you might not be the only person that desperately needs this; it could be a family member, friend, or neighbor. 30-Day Ready! And with all of that, you’ve got everything you and your family need to survive for a whole month. Make no mistake, you’ll be roughing it, and it will definitely feel like it, but the supplies and gear you have gathered will make all the difference in your outcomes. Another thing to consider: these supplies will form an excellent core for your future preparations… The post How to Build a One-Month Survival Stockpile in 24 Hours! appeared first on Survival Sullivan.

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