Normal People Preparing for TEOTWAWKI – Making Your Home into a Castle

I’ve written a good deal about TEOTWAWKI.  We’ve had a discussion on TEOTWAWKI vs. Bugging out 1 and 2.   After that, I covered Finding and Storing Water During TEOTWAWKI and Food Systems to Put Into Place for TEOTWAWKI.  I’ve discussed Sanitation Systems and Survival Medical Systems.  I’ve also asked the question, “Are TEOTWAWKI and Comfort Incompatible?”  Today, we’re going to tackle our home and how we can prepare it now in case we ever end up living through the end of the world as we know it.

Housing

A Little Background

There are many different types of preparedness.  I don’t know about you, but when I first started reading about preparedness, my first focus was short-term.  Being prepared for a spring or winter power outage was high on my priority list.   I wanted to have a way to cook food, to filter water, provide my family with light, and have some extra food stashed for emergencies such as a job loss.

But as my knowledge, understanding, and skills grew, so did my desire to prepare for bigger events.  I started to understand more of what SHTF really meant – not just what the acronym meant, but what a situation like that would mean.  Then I got to experience it first hand with the Ferguson Riots.

Then I went further and wanted to understand what it would take to truly survive a TEOTWAWKI situation.  But by the time I started preparing for “the end of the world” (though definitely hope I never have to actually live it),  I realized that I had a whole bunch of stuff.  Conventional preparedness wisdom that I had read to that point said that when the end of the world hits, we bug out.  But as we discussed in a previous blog post, I think we should stay put until we can’t.

I’ve read a lot of Selco’s writing.  For those of you who don’t know Selco, he is a survivor of the Balkan War, and he lived through TEOTWAWKI for years.  One of the things that he mentions is that people need to stay put as long as possible.  Beyond that, he says that we will need to depend on the people around us and that being isolated isn’t good.

So you’re probably wondering what in the world that has to do with housing.  Well, I’m glad you asked.

TEOTWAWKI Housing 

When we end up in a TEOTWAWKI situation, we will want to stay put as LONG as possible!  Home is where we have prepared.  It’s where we have our gardens and keep our food storage.  Home is where we have water storage.  It’s where we have prepared for sanitation systems.  Why in the world would we want to leave when this is where we have our preparedness supplies?

This is also where our neighbors live.  If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know that we’ve talked about working on building relationships with these people so that if we end up at the end of the world, we have people we can depend on and who can depend on us.

So because we plan to stay place as long as possible, we have some housing considerations that we want to think about now.

Housing Supplies

Because Lowe’s, Home Depot, or True Value won’t be around at the end of the world, we need to have items on hand NOW to take care of building and repairs.

If you plan on building an outhouse at the end of the world, whatcha going to build it out of?  Decide on a design and location for the outhouse NOW and get the supplies that you’ll need to build it now.

Murphy’s law states that anything that CAN go wrong, WILL go wrong.  Because of that, we need to have extra home repair items in stock.  Make sure that you stock nails, screws of multiple types and sizes, nuts, bolts, L brackets, staple gun and staples.  Check to make sure that you have extra wood in various sizes including 2×4’s 1×4’s 1×2’s, 1×1’s and even plywood sheets.  Do you already keep electrical tape, caulking, PVC of varying sizes, epoxy, t-squares, wire caps, tarps, duct tape, ladders, wood saw, pipe saw, screwdrivers, wrenches of various sizes, plastic sheeting, hammer, and lath strips.

Getting Your Home Ready

TEOTWAWKI and Heating Your Home

So what kinds of things do we do now to get our homes ready?  Let’s start with heating.  How are you going to heat your house at the end of the world?  Do you have one or more fireplaces?  Do you have a woodburning stove?  If you don’t have either of those, you need to start thinking about how you’re going to heat your house if you don’t have electricity.

We’ve purchased a Big Buddy Heater to heat our home – at least short-term – if we can’t use our fireplace.  Big Buddy Heaters use propane tanks and turn the propane into usable heat for your family.  You will want to have a carbon monoxide detector in place just in case.  Since most carbon monoxide detectors are battery-operated, it should be fine even if you don’t have electricity.

Something else to keep in mind though.  Unless you have a well-defended community to rally around you during the end of the world, you may not be able to use your fireplace or wood-burning stove during the day.  The smoke could be seen for miles around.  Make sure that you take that into consideration.

On a similar note, you will need firewood if you are going to use a fireplace or a wood-burning stove, you need firewood.  Make sure you keep a great deal of it on hand.  If you missed it, we talked about 15 Places to Find Free Firewood on Monday.

Personal Heaters

While fireplaces, woodburning stoves, and Big Buddy Heaters will heat rooms, sometimes you need something that will keep you warm.  Yes, we should always have things like wool socks, mittens, sweaters, hats, and under layer insulated long underwear on hand.  There are other things that we can do as well.  Hot water bottles can be laid at our feet during cold nights.  Rice hot packs can be used as foot warmers.  If you had electricity, you’d just pop it into the microwave for 60-90 seconds, but what if we don’t have electricity.  You can put them right outside the fireplace if you have a fire going in one. The fire will heat the rice hot pack throughout the evening.  Then family members can take it to bed with them when they go.

If it’s really cold, your family can sleep in their beds with sleeping bags and regular covers.  When you buy bedding, always choose real cotton quilts and bedspreads.  They are amazingly warm!  Another option is buying sheepskin rugs for your beds during the wintertime for comfort and warmth.

TEOTWAWKI and Lighting Your Home

There are so many options for lighting your home!  Now you do need to remember that you don’t want people to see light inside your house, so while you may need to light your house, you also need your house to LOOK DARK.

While our oil lamps are our go-to lighting source during a power outage NOW, eventually we will run out of lamp oil.  So besides the light from lamps or light from the fire, what other ways are there to light your house?  Make your own olive oil lamp.  Eventually, just like lamp oil, the olive oil will eventually run out.

So let’s talk about sustainable lighting options.  Luci lights are solar-powered inflatable lanterns!  I love them!  We have a couple of them.  At $20 they are so affordable!  Just set it outside during the day, and bring it in at night!  You’ll have a reliable source of light for a long time.  Another sustainable lighting option is solar powered yard lights.  The advantage of that is that you can disburse the yard lights into different rooms if you want to so people can have individual lights.

TEOTWAWKI and Cooking

Even without a woodburning cookstove, you can still cook effectively for your family.  Something to take into consideration.  If you plan on using your gas grill, or camping cookstove, you need to realize that it isn’t safe to cook with those inside and it’s too dangerous to cook with them outside.  If you’re living in TEOTWAWKI, you don’t want to broadcast that you’re home, that you have food, or that you have resources with which to cook.

When we talked about not using your fireplace or woodburning stove during the day, this includes not using it for cooking, but I have an answer for that!  One of my favorite tools that I have is called a Saratoga Jack Thermal Cooker.  Using this, you could cook a big batch of soup during the night and put it in the thermal cooker and it will stay warm (or even cook more) all day long.

Another effective way of cooking day or night is a butane cooker.  It’s simple to use.  Like the Buddy Heater, I’d recommend keeping a carbon monoxide detector around.  Honestly, we’ve NEVER had a problem with either of ours, but I’d personally rather be safe than sorry.

If you have a garage attached to your house perhaps at night, if you have need to bake, a Coleman Camp Oven is a very inexpensive way to turn your Coleman Camp Stove into an oven.  Thanks to Maureen who pointed this one out to me!  Another way to bake indoors safely is to make your own HERC oven.  A HERC Oven is an oven which uses tealight candles to bake food.  Does it work?  Yes!!  My husband made one for me using these instructions, and I must say, it works like a charm!

Something else to consider is a solar oven.  I have this one, and I’m not all that thrilled with it.  Here in central Illinois even on moderate says in the 40’s and 50’s it doesn’t cook particularly well.  The Sun Oven – which gets great reviews –  is much more expensive, but seems to be a better oven overall.

TEOTWAWKI and Cooling Your Home

Since we’re talking about the end of the world as we know it, the assumption is that we won’t have power.  No power means no air conditioning, no ceiling fans, no box or stand fans, and no fun!  But there are ways that we can go about keeping ourselves as cool as possible.

Start by living as low as possible.

By that, I mean your ‘daily living’ should be done – as much as possible in the lowest livable floor of your house.  If you have a basement, use that space in your home as your living and sleeping space whenever possible.  If you don’t have a basement, use your first story.  Heat rises, and the easiest way to stay cooler is to go as low in your house as you can.

Take Vitamin C.

Seriously!  Studies have shown that even as little as 200 mg of vitamin C helps your body to adapt to both hot and cold temperatures much more easily!  Vitamin C taken when the air temperature gets hot allows your body to stay cooler because as you sweat, eventually (believe it or not) your sweat glands get fatigued.  Taking vitamin C delays this fatigue!  This allows your sweat glands to work better and more efficiently.    Vitamin C has also been shown to mitigate prickly heat – a rash which is caused by heat and excessive sweat getting trapped next to the skin.  How COOL is that?

Buy a Buckwheat pillow. 

Buckwheat is structured in such a way that it allows air to flow much more freely through it.  More airflow means a cooler pillow!

Battery Powered Fans are a must!

We have purchased two battery-powered fans specifically for this purpose.  They aren’t large, and they do require D cell batteries, but sometimes, you just need a little comfort that only a fan can provide.

You need one Frogg Togg Cooling Towel for every member of your family! 

I’ve had people tell me just to get a dish towel and wet it and put it around your neck.  I’ve used a Frogg Togg and a dish towel just isn’t the same!  Why?  Because when you get a Frogg Togg wet, the temperature of the material will get 30 degrees cooler in seconds!  This, in turn, helps cool your body off.  You NEED these!

If in doubt, drink peppermint tea.

Peppermint has a cooling effect, whether it’s peppermint extract, peppermint essential oil or peppermint iced tea!  Peppermint grows so quickly and so large that you don’t have to worry about people thinking that you’re growing something useful.  It’s bushy and easily harvested!  Peppermint iced tea is as simple as washing off the leaves and kneading the clean leaves in water.  What a great, fast and easy way to cool yourself off even if the world is collapsing around you.

What About You?

Do you have any other tips and tricks that will help you run your home if everything falls apart?  I’d love to hear!  Please share them in the comments so that we can all be better prepared.

Together let’s Love, Learn, Practice, and Overcome

There are links in this post.  Some of the links may be affiliate links.  Some of the links may not be.  My promise to you is that I will only recommend the most economical version of the best quality of items to serve you. These are the items that I have bought for my own family.  You can feel free to use my affiliate links, of which I will get a small amount in compensation, or you can choose to search out your products on your own.