The folks over at eartheasy have kindly put up a couple of LifeStraws for a give away today.  How sweet is that?

What’s a LifeStraw you ask?  Check it out:

The LifeStraw personal water filter, a “Best Invention of the Year” (Time magazine) winner, enables users to drink water safely from contaminated water sources. LifeStraw is ideal for homeowners during emergencies such as local flooding which can contaminate drinking water supplies. LifeStraw is also ideal for campers and hikers who may be drinking from rivers or lakes and are unsure of the water safety. Because LifeStraw is lightweight and compact, it is also great for travelers who do not want to rely on the quality of local water.

If you haven’t heard of these awesome little rigs you’ve got to go their site and check them out.  Basically it’s a small water filter thalifestraw-personal-water-filtert allows you clean water as you go.  It’s small, it’s light weight, and for the utility of them they’re pretty inexpensive.

What do you have to do to win one?

Here me out:

Once again I want to ask your opinion on something.  In the interest of spreading the good prepping word and keeping in touch with all you awesome readers out there I’m going to start an email list soon.  However, I want to avoid the big pop up that you get on some sites when you visit them.  You know the type… you land there and start reading and all of a sudden there’s this annoying pop up offering some kind of freebie if you’ll just sign up on their email list.  Some are annoying and some are done quite well.  I’ve signed up on several email lists such as Leon Pantenburg’s site suvivalcommonsense.com.  He’s got a great site and his newsletter is excellent.

This is the kind of thing I’d like to emulate.  When I set it up I’m going to try and do it in an as non-annoying manner as possible; however, if you show up some day and see something like that just know that I’m working on getting it squared away.

My question to you is this:  what else can I do to make the site more attractive to new readers?  Better navigation?  More pictures?  More videos?  Would you like to see different content in addition to what we’re already doing?  I’ve already got some ideas on putting together a budget bug-out bag, DIY stuff for it, and things like that.  What else can I do?

Leave a site upgrade suggestion below and you will be entered into the drawing for one of these awesome little LifeStraws.  There are two of these bad boys up for grabs.

Questions?  Comments?

Sound off below!

-Jarhead Survivor

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Coming Soon…

by Jarhead Survivor on May 18, 2013

Some of you might have seen a post I just put up about What to Expect After TEOTWAWKI.  Unfortunately it was barely a draft.  I was in a coffee shop with my kindle writing a post and the software I was using posted it instead of saving it as a draft.

Oops!

Anyway, stay tuned for a version that I hope will make more sense!!

Thanks.

-Jarhead Survivor

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One of the cool things about owning this blog is that occasionally people will send me really awesome stuff to try out.  One of the latest items was sent to me by Safeguard Armor.  They wanted me to try out their Stealth Body Armor with a Threat Level II configuration, meaning that it will stop a 9 mm or .357 round.

stealth-white_2_3

 

Check out the chart below for the stats:

 

newlevel-11

newlevel-iiia

It will also stop  a knife stab.  How sweet is that?  The whole chart is on their Stealth page, so check it out and see what they have to offer.

What can I tell you about this vest?  First of all it’s way more comfortable than the old style flak jacket I used to wear back in the 80′s.  That thing was heavy and nearly killed me on various forced marches – especially in hot weather climates like Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the southern U.S.

I wore the Stealth around for awhile and found it quite comfortable in cooler temperatures.  To be honest I hate anything on me in hot weather and this vest wouldn’t be any different; however, it would be a lot more comfortable than a flak jacket or some of the heavier armor they offer.  I was able to do pulls, push ups, and other forms of exercise without it slowing me down too much.  You definitely notice the difference, but this vest is light enough that you can still do hard physical activity without getting exhausted.

Is it really stealthy?  If you wear it under a sweatshirt or loose coat it’s unnoticeable.  Put it on under a t-shirt or something like that and people will be able to see it.

Can I Shoot You?

When I told a friend about it he said, “Cool!  Hey, can I shoot you?  That would be a great test for the blog.”  Now, I love writing for SHTF Blog and I’m crazy about all you folks out there reading this, but Dude!  Seriously?  Lean over her so I can smack you.  No.  You can’t shoot me.

But here’s a video of a guy who did shoot the vest – over a log, not on his body – and what he discovered.  He actually abuses the hell of the vest and it doesn’t let any of the bullets through.  He also takes a knife to it and it stops the knife attack as well.  He pretty much takes the vest apart and it’s quite interesting to see the “chain mail” underneath that helps stop the knife.

One thing I noticed is that when I poked the armor with my finger I could feel it, so I imagine if you’re shot or stabbed it’s still going to hurt quite a bit.  Which is a lot better than being dead of course.  I just wanted to point out that just because you’re wearing armor don’t think you can walk around getting in fights and not feel any pain if someone tries to do you in.

Over all it’s a nice piece of gear to have as part of my preps.  I don’t expect to ever get into a fire fight, but if the balloon goes up and things get ugly I at least have a slight edge wearing this vest.  And any edge is better than nothing at all right?

Questions?  Comments?

Sound off below!

-Jarhead Survivor

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Avoiding Death by Garden

May 16, 2013

Have any of you read Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma?  Parts of it have been drifting through my head this week as I plant seeds, for food that I may sell at market. Knowing that my family will eat the garden output is usually plenty of stress, but somehow knowing that I may sell that produce [...]

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Firearms and BOBs

May 15, 2013

Hey everyone! For today’s article, I was hoping some of you could help share some ideas on the concept of weaponizing Bug-Out-Bags. I have a system of doing this (which I will share) but it’s kind of klunky, and some thoughts to streamline it would be appreciated. Maybe some of you will see my system [...]

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Survival Crop – Carrots

May 14, 2013

Commenter Marc asked about germinating carrots last week. I find carrots to be tricky  most years because of their finicky germinating. They are slow and uneven in their germination and it can be tricky to keep an eye on them for the 3 weeks it can take for them to sprout. The main  problem seems [...]

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How To Use An Emergency Azimuth – Orienteering 101

May 13, 2013

An “emergency azimuth” is a term I’ve coined for when you get lost on your map, meaning you know generally where you are, but you’ve gone off course enough that you’re not going to find the specific destination you were looking for.  The emergency azimuth is a straight magnetic direction that will get you back [...]

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Happy Mother’s Day!

May 12, 2013

To all you women out there holding the family together, giving selflessly of yourselves, and for the million other things you do to keep the world running we at SHTF Blog say, “Happy Mother’s Day and thanks for all you do!” -Jarhead -Calamity -Road Warrior

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Ten Items You Should Have In Your Pack for Hiking Season This Summer

May 10, 2013

First – the winner of the firesteel is…. drum roll please! Wen!!  (Chosen randomly.)  Here’s her comment for identification: Fire steels! Being fairly new at prepping, I’ve kind of overlooked what to do about starting a fire & I suppose our “strike anywhere” matches and the few lighters we have will sooner or later run [...]

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Feeding a Baby Out of the Garden

May 9, 2013

As you might suspect, I feed my babies as much as possible from garden produce.  Preferably my own, but I do have a couple growers near me I trust and buy from. Sweet potatoes in particular I have not yet tried my hand at growing, but I feed large quantities of them to the babies. [...]

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Firearms Maintenance when SHTF

May 8, 2013

I’ve seen a few comments and gotten a few emails concerning maintenance regimens with firearms, and since theoretically your survival SHTF firearms could take a real beating when things go downhill, it only makes sense that it be foremost in mind for the prepper. Whether the firearm you have is a single shot .22 or [...]

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What’s Growing?

May 7, 2013

It’s been an extremely cold spring here in NW Iowa.  Our last frost date is April 27th, but we had snow a couple of times in the first week of May this year.  That’s cold.  But, it’s important to keep in mind what those last frost and first frost dates REALLY mean.  The Last Frost [...]

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Orienteering Update

May 5, 2013

An easy one today folks.  I just want to point out that on the right pane I’ve created a link to my orienteering series.  Eventually I’m going to put it along the top and make a few other changes as well to make the site a little more “informational friendly.” I’ll pretty it up in [...]

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