The latest projections for 2026 show that millions of Americans live in places where the risk of major natural disasters is rising. Hurricanes are growing stronger more quickly in the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico, wildfire seasons are spreading across western states, and severe storms keep hitting large areas of the central US. At […]
The post 2026 Natural Disaster Map. Is Your Area on the List? appeared first on Ask a Prepper.
Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
Disappearing into the wilderness for a week is a great way to learn and practice survival skills, but for many of those skills, it's not really essential. Your garage, porch, or backyard can be the perfect training ground. It’s controlled, convenient, and forgiving, which is great when you're still a newbie.
Below are ten survival skills you can teach yourself at home. A few are fun weekend projects, some are surprisingly practical, and all of them build confidence fast.
Rookie survivalists tend to take knots for granted. Big mistake. Knowing the right knot for the right situation can be a literal lifesaver. Plus, it can actually be pretty fun once you start to get good at it.
There are knots for tying flat straps together, joining two ropes of different widths, securing buckets or barrels, shortening a rope without cutting it, and so much more. I suggest starting with these five knots.
Most people learn best by watching and doing, so check out this excellent site. It includes pictures, animations, videos, and written instructions for every kind of knot you can imagine.
The slingshot is a highly underrated tool. While you can buy a ready-made one, you can also make your own, assuming you have access to rubber tubing.
Medical rubber tubing is perfect, but you can also use heavy gauge rubber bands, exercise bands, or even bicycle innertubes, cut to size.
For ammo, you can use steel ball bearings, steel nuts, or stones. There are many instructions on how to build a slingshot, but I would start here.
Once you’ve made your weapon, set up a target in the yard and practice, practice, practice. Don’t forget to wear eye protection.
If you’ve ever imagined being lost in the wilderness without a cutting tool, you’ve probably thought about how you might fashion a tool out of stone, just like our ancestors once did. It takes a good bit of practice, but if you’ve got some native stone and a little time on your hand, it’s definitely worth a try.
There are excellent instructions online, but I would start with this article, which covers stone knives, hammers, hatchets, arrowheads, spears and more.
However, make sure you wear eye protection and gloves. It is very easy to cut yourself severely on a fresh flake of stone, so don’t underestimate your stone-age cutting surfaces.
No matter what your backyard looks like, you can use it as a staging ground for creating potable water from thin air. The classic water drawing method is the solar still, which requires a 6’ by 6’ sheet of plastic, a cup, and a hole in the earth.
Experimenting with this technique will help you understand just how much water you can create in a day. However, if you have plenty of water that just needs to be purified, you can also experiment with a different sort of solar still.
This DIY system will allow you to convert any water into clean, pure drinking water.
Being able to make a fire in any circumstances, wet or dry, is a vital survival skill. Striking flint with steel is a classic method that unsurprisingly takes a lot of practice to get right.
The same goes for starting a fire with friction, which is a lot of work and not guaranteed if you don’t have dry kindling. If you have sunshine and a magnifying glass or another such lens, you can make a fire by light of day, but this won’t help you at night or on an overcast afternoon.
There are many other ways to start a fire, some of which are kind of weird. I recommend starting by learning how to start a fire with a fire plow.
Knowing and finding wild food sources is an essential survival skill. There are a lot of weeds and common plants that are edible, such as nettles and dandelion greens.
Additionally, there is a wide range of forageable foods probably right inside your neighborhood including nuts and weeds. This simple online guide to seasonal foraging is an easy place to start, but there are many books out there that can help you find your way into the wonderful world of foraging.
Many insects are edible as well, and it’s worth knowing how to identify and prepare them, just in case.
Remember building leaf forts as a kid? This is like the grownup version of that, only with the understanding that if you were lost in the wilderness, a shelter is often the only thing standing between you and hypothermia, which can be deadly.
Of course, building an appropriate shelter is not only fun, it’s fairly easy, too. Here's a basic guide on how to build a shelter from natural materials. But the most straightforward online guide is designed for a group known for their preparedness: the boy scouts.
No set of survival skills is complete without a basic grasp of emergency first aid. If you don’t know how to perform CPR, you can easily learn online, and then practice it until you know the steps by heart.
This article has some great tips on how to set a broken bone, treat a blister, and more. Of course, you should also know how to use wild plants to treat injuries, bites, and skin irritation.
In a survival scenario, food is one of your top priorities. Learning how to set a snare can provide you with small game for relatively little expended effort. Here are some other ways to make a trap.
Of course, you'll have to head out into the wild to test them, but learn what you can in your backyard first.
A sharp knife (and a sharp hatchet/axe) is one of those “boring” skills that turns out to be a huge deal in real life. Dull blades are slower, more frustrating, and ironically more dangerous because they tend to slip when you force them.
The good news is you can learn blade maintenance entirely at home. Start with a cheap knife you don’t mind scratching up, then work your way up to the tools you actually rely on. You can use a whetstone, a guided sharpening system, or even sandpaper on a flat surface in a pinch.
Here's a step by step guide.
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The post 10 DIY Survival Skills You Can Teach Yourself appeared first on Urban Survival Site.
If we have a war: What Skills Will Homemakers Need? In an era of global uncertainty, more families are asking a question that once seemed reserved for history books: what happens to everyday life if war comes home? Whether it’s a large-scale conflict, supply chain collapse, or a prolonged national emergency, homemakers sit at the center of family survival.
The skills that once defined self-sufficient households, and that modernity allowed us to forget, may become essential again. This post explores the practical skills every homemaker should consider developing now, before they’re needed.
Throughout history, wartime survival at home has depended less on soldiers and more on the people managing homes. During World War II, homemakers rationed food, grew victory gardens, preserved harvests, and kept families functioning under extreme scarcity. That knowledge didn’t disappear because it was unnecessary; it disappeared because it was convenient to outsource it.
Today, the average household relies on grocery stores, utility companies, and online shopping for nearly everything. A serious conflict that disrupts supply chains, utilities, or transportation infrastructure would expose just how thin that margin of self-sufficiency really is.
Developing these skills now isn’t about fear; it’s about capability.
One of the most critical wartime homemaking skills is the ability to produce calories on your own land or in your own space. Even a small backyard garden can significantly supplement a family’s diet. Homemakers should learn:
Fresh food doesn’t last, and during wartime, access to grocery stores can become unpredictable or impossible. Knowing how to extend the life of food is a foundational skill. This includes water bath canning and pressure canning for fruits, vegetables, and meats, as well as dehydrating and freeze-drying produce for long-term storage. Fermenting foods like sauerkraut, kimchi, and pickles not only preserves them but also adds probiotic nutrition. Homemakers should also understand root cellaring, how to store root vegetables, apples, and other produce in cool, dark, humid conditions without any electricity.
Knowing how to cook without a fully stocked grocery store, a microwave, or even a conventional oven is more valuable than it sounds. Skills like baking bread from basic ingredients, cooking over an open fire or wood stove, and stretching small amounts of protein and fat into nutritious meals are all worth developing.
Municipal water systems can fail during conflict or an infrastructure attack. Homemakers who understand how to collect rainwater, locate natural water sources, and purify water through boiling, filtration, or chemical treatment can protect their families from waterborne illness, one of the leading causes of death in wartime civilian populations.
During wartime, hospitals become overwhelmed and medical supplies run short. Homemakers with solid first aid skills become critical caregivers within their households and communities. Areas to study include:
Sanitation breakdown is one of the fastest routes to a disease outbreak. Understanding how to manage human waste safely, make soap from rendered fat and lye, and maintain basic hygiene without running water can prevent the spread of illness in a household or community.
Fast fashion assumes an endless supply chain. In wartime, clothing must last, be repaired, and be repurposed rather than replaced. Homemakers who can sew by hand or machine are invaluable. Skills that matter most include darning socks, patching worn fabric, altering clothing as children grow, and constructing simple garments from basic patterns. Knowing how to repurpose worn-out clothing into rags, quilts, or other household items also reduces waste.
Hand-producing warm clothing, blankets, and socks becomes important when the retail supply is interrupted. These skills are also mentally grounding; a meaningful occupation during long periods of uncertainty and stress.
Wartime economies can destabilize currency, cause inflation, or shift communities toward barter systems. Homemakers who understand how to track resources, prioritize spending, and negotiate in trade are better positioned to keep families stable. In a barter economy, items like seeds, preserved food, alcohol, medicine, and fuel can be as important as money.
Fuel becomes scarce and expensive during extended conflict. Understanding how to insulate a home effectively, use a wood stove safely, manage a kerosene heater, and reduce energy consumption throughout the household can mean the difference between comfort and hardship.
Protecting the household becomes a more active concern in unstable times. This doesn’t necessarily mean weapons; it means understanding how to assess risk, fortify entry points, build relationships with neighbors for mutual aid, and decide when to shelter in place versus when to relocate.
No household can survive in complete isolation during a prolonged crisis. Homemakers who have invested in community relationships before a crisis occurs, knowing their neighbors, sharing skills, participating in local resilience groups, are far better prepared than those who rely entirely on independence. Wartime history repeatedly shows that communities that cooperate survive at much higher rates than those that don’t.
Knowing how to communicate when digital infrastructure is disrupted matters more than most people realize. Learning to use a ham radio, establishing code words or meeting points with family members, and keeping physical maps and contact lists are practical steps any homemaker can take.
Children who understand how to contribute to household survival grow into resilient adults. Teaching children to garden, cook, sew, and manage basic emergencies gives them agency in crisis situations and reduces the overall burden on primary caregivers.
Psychological stability during wartime depends heavily on structure. Homemakers play a central role in maintaining household routines that signal normalcy to children and other family members, consistent with mealtimes, bedtimes, shared tasks, and moments of rest or creativity. Understanding basic stress management, recognizing trauma responses, and knowing how to support grieving family members are skills that are often undervalued but profoundly important.
Knowing how to filter credible information from rumor, keep updated on developing situations, and make calm, rational decisions under pressure is a skill in itself. Homemakers who can stay levelheaded and think clearly in crisis become anchors for everyone around them.
The best time to develop these skills is before they are needed. A few practical starting points:
Start one garden bed this season, even if it’s just a container of tomatoes and herbs. Take a basic first aid or wilderness medicine course. Learn one food preservation method, canning or dehydrating, and work through several batches before you need to rely on it. Practice cooking from a fully stocked pantry rather than a fully stocked grocery store. Connect with neighbors and talk openly about preparedness.
None of these steps requires assuming the worst. They simply expand what you are capable of, and that capability has value in everyday life, not only in crisis.
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Homemaking has always been survival work. In periods of stability, that fact becomes easy to forget. In periods of uncertainty, it becomes impossible to ignore. The homemakers who kept families alive through the hardest chapters of the twentieth century did so with skills, community, and creativity that we can still learn and practice today.
Building these capabilities isn’t pessimistic. It’s one of the most practical and empowering things a person can do for their family and for the people around them. May God bless this world, Linda
Copyright Images: Making Bread Dough AdobeStock_274131752 By New Africa, Homemade Bread AdobeStock_418087349 By anaumenko
The post If We Have a War: What Skills Will Homemakers Need? appeared first on Food Storage Moms.
I love just about every kind of jam and preserves there are. On toast, on English muffins, stirred into oatmeal, or even topping a tasty pork chop, it’s just one of life’s simple but great pleasures. But you know what kind of jam I hadn’t tried until recently? Pine cone jam! I know it might ... Read more
How to Make Pine Cone Jam from Young, Tender Pinecones can be read in full at New Life On A Homestead- Be sure to check it out!
Today, it’s all about “How to make bread in a thermal cooker”. I have to thank Cheryl T. for this suggestion. I watched a class by Cindy Miller on how to make bread this way, but I never took the time to do it at that time. Cheryl T. shared her tips on how she made it. She used a Wonder Oven.
A thermal cooker is a great item to have when the power goes out. You can bake or cook in this sweet gem. Please don’t put frozen food items in a thermal cooker; it will not work.
You may ask what a Wonder Oven is. It’s sometimes called a Wonder Box, as well. It’s made with fabric, similar to a bean bag chair. But it’s not a chair; it’s a pillow within another pillow on top where the fabric sections are filled with Small Beads (Polystyrene) or something similar.
It also keeps food hot or cold. My friend, Jamie, over at Prepared Housewives, has a great post on how to make a Wonder Oven.
In case you missed this post, How To Use A Thermal Cooker
Anyway, I’ve had thermal cookers for years, literally. I first heard about them from Amy and Jack Loveless, who make Saratoga Jack’s Thermal Cookers. Mine were in my storage unit, so I brought this one to show you how to use them. Tayama Stainless Steel Thermal Cooker, Black,7 Qt. This thermal cooker is very similar to my other ones.
It’s stainless steel and heavy-duty. The smaller thermal cookers are too small, in my opinion. The 7-quart is the best size for how I use them.
I quote Wikipedia, “A thermal cooker is a cooking device that uses thermal insulation to retain heat and cook food without the continuous use of fuel or another heat source. It is a modern implementation of a hay box, which uses hay or straw to insulate a cooking pot.”
Please remember that it’s unsafe to “bake” or “can” in mason jars in a conventional oven. This method is baking bread without a flame or electricity. This is a slow cooker that doesn’t require external power.
You need to bring the contents to a boil for at least four full minutes, then place the inner pot of the thermal cooker with the lid inside the Wonder Oven, or in my case, the Thermal Cooker. It will “bake” for about 4 hours in either of these.
Remember that it won’t have a crust because it doesn’t have air to dry the outside of the loaf. This is a bonus for those family members who don’t like the crust on their sandwiches.
You can use a Butane Stove to bring the contents to a boil for 4 minutes, then place them, with the lid, into either the Wonder Oven or the Thermal Cooker. This cooking solution is perfect if we lose power for days or weeks. Butane Stove (griddle included) and Butane Fuel. Don’t be caught without them. If you have another way to cook when the power goes out, that’s awesome. Please use this stove outside. I use mine inside for the 4 minutes next to an open window.
It’s a slow cooker that uses very little fuel to get started. The water is boiled for 4 minutes and then poured into the outside pan. Close the lid, and it will bake or cook your food.
Another bonus is that it will keep your food cold when needed. For instance, if you’re going to a family reunion or the park and want to take your favorite salad, make it the night before, place it in the inner pot with the lid, and store it in the refrigerator.
In the morning, place the inner pot into the outside pot and close the lid. It will insulate the contents and keep your salad cold for a few hours. As I mentioned, it works with hot or cold food.
I quote from Penn State Extension: “Oven Canning is highly hazardous. The oven canning method involves placing jars in an oven and heating them. Product temperatures never exceed the boiling point in oven canning because the jars are not covered. Therefore, it is unsafe to use for low-acid products (e.g., meats, most vegetables) that require temperatures above 212°F.
Oven canning is not recommended. The glass jars are not designed to withstand the intense dry heat and may shatter in the oven. The danger of breakage and burns while removing them from the oven is also a concern.
Also, and most importantly, heat transfer into the jars is much slower through the air in an oven than through water in a water bath or through pressurized steam in a pressurized steam canner. The recommended recipes have been scientifically tested using a water bath or pressure canner and should be followed precisely as written.
Otherwise, there is a heightened risk of spoilage or worse, survival of Clostridium botulinum spores, the source of deadly botulism poisoning.”
These are the pieces included in a thermal cooker. It has an outside unit with two inside pans and one lid. You can use both inside pans or just one, like I did today. I used the larger inside pan with the lid today.
I made my favorite bread dough. You can make whatever bread recipes work for you. I made three jars of bread and two regular loaves.
Knead the dough and let your bread rise. You can mix your bread in a bowl or use your mixer. It’s the same bread recipe I use now when baking in my oven. You can try your bread recipe, or I have some of my recipes below that you might want to try for a change.
A helpful tip is always to cut your dough with a scraper or knife. Please don’t stretch or pull your dough. The recipe I used was my two-one-pound loaves option. I made two regular, smaller loaves, then divided the dough into three sections to put into the jars. I filled the jars about 1/3 full.
You don’t need to let them rise again. You may ask why. In my first batch, I filled the jars halfway up and covered them with plastic wrap.
Yes, they rose to the top, but the lids popped off when I boiled the water for four full minutes. I had to discard the dough and start over. This is why we practice when we aren’t in the middle of a disaster.
Be sure to spray vegetable oil on the inside of your jars before placing your bread dough in them so the small loaves will slide out more easily.
These are filled about 1/3 full, and I put the lids and rings on them. I didn’t let the dough rise again. These are ready for the thermal cooker pan.
I learned that you need a trivet in the thermal cooker, much like in water-bath canning. Fill the water 1/2 way up the side of the jars in the thermal cooker pan. Bring the water to a full rolling boil for 4 minutes. A Butane Stove would bring water to a rolling boil if your stovetop isn’t available. Butane Stove
Hopefully, you can see the steam from the jars as I place the boiling pot of water with the jars in the thermal cooker. You quickly put the pan with the lid inside the thermal cooker. Close the outside cover/lid on the thermal cooker.
Here is the thermal cooker with the jars baking inside. I let the thermal cooker sit on the countertop for four hours.
You’ll need canning tongs to lift the jars out of the steaming water in the Thermal Cooker. Let the jars cool a bit on a rack, cutting board, or oven mitts, and then the loaves of bread will slip out. You can slice the small loaves and eat this warm bread with butter and jam. You can also make some small sandwiches. Life is so good!
This was a cartwheel moment for me. No, I couldn’t do a cartwheel, but I would if I possibly could. LOL! I love making this bread!
Mark and I have two of the 7-liter Saratoga Jack units and one of the 5.5-liter models. The latch on the 5.5 Liter unit is a challenge for me. It’s hard for me to open and close. I have one of the original 7-liter units and one of the new, more heavy-duty models they have now. They’re great units if you can find one, but the one I purchased for this article is cheaper and still works great. I would recommend either style.
You’ve heard me before recommend having a butane stove with extra fuel canisters in your preparedness stash. I gave all four of my daughters one for Christmas years ago. Here’s the deal: you need a way to boil water for drinking to maintain your proper hydration, washing dishes, washing clothes, maintaining personal hygiene, or fixing a hot meal after a disaster when the power goes out. This unit is perfect for bringing the pot to a rolling boil for 4 minutes, and I know because I’ve done it. Please remember to never put an oversized pan on these little butane stoves. I have used 4- and 6-quart saucepans; they’re fine. They don’t hang over the grill part of the stove.
No, you cannot; it will not reach a safe temperature while it bakes frozen food items.
I hope you enjoyed my post on how to make bread in a thermal cooker! There is nothing better than the smell of homemade bread! It’s incredible how many different ways we can make bread these days. Please try different methods to make your bread so you can bake it in a conventional oven, a thermal cooker, a bread machine, or a Dutch oven. May God bless this world, Linda
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