For more than three decades, Republicans won every statewide race in Texas. Tuesday night, that streak cracked wide open.
Democrats led or won several of the state’s biggest contests, and one race that rarely makes national headlines could matter more to rural Texans than most: the race for agriculture commissioner.
Where the Race Stands
Democrat Clayton Tucker, a Lampasas rancher, declared victory over Republican Nate Sheets on election night, according to The Texas Tribune. If the result holds, Tucker would be the first Democrat to lead the Texas Department of Agriculture since Jim Hightower left office in 1991.
Early Wednesday tallies showed Tucker with about 51% of the vote to roughly 47% for Sheets, with more than 90% of the expected vote counted. The Associated Press had not called the race as of those reports, so the final result is still pending.
The ag race was part of a broader shift. KUT and other Texas outlets reported Democratic wins in the races for U.S. Senate and governor, though several down-ballot contests remained too close to call overnight.
Why This Office Matters More Than You Think
Most people couldn’t name their state agriculture commissioner. But the office touches daily life in rural Texas in ways few others do.
According to the Tribune, the department oversees a $1.8 billion budget. It provides financial assistance to farmers and ranchers, infrastructure grants for rural communities, and aid for rural hospitals.
The agency also regulates cattle, grain, plants, pesticides, hemp, and organic operations. It runs the National School Lunch Program in Texas public schools, provides disaster relief to farmers, and checks that grocery store scales and price scanners are accurate.
It’s also home to the State Office of Rural Health and the AgriStress Helpline, which offers mental health support to farmworkers and rural families. For homesteaders and small producers, that makes the commissioner one of the most consequential officials in Austin.
What Each Candidate Promised
Both candidates campaigned on food quality and on the strain data centers put on rural land and water, though they offered different approaches. Here’s what each said they would do, based on the Tribune’s candidate guide.
Tucker, secretary of the Texas Farmers Union, campaigned on preserving family farms, lowering food costs, and removing chemicals from food. He has said he wants to make industrial hemp available for farmers to grow, rebuild agricultural co-ops, help young farmers get started, and challenge large agricultural companies he describes as monopolies.
Tucker also focused heavily on data centers. The commissioner has no direct authority over them, but he pledged to work with lawmakers to reduce their impact on land, water, energy, and farm production.
Sheets, founder of Nature Nate’s Honey and now a West Texas rancher, campaigned on helping farmers produce clean and healthy food, including in school lunches. He called for data center companies to invest in water and agriculture funds and to lose preferential tax breaks.
Sheets also proposed cutting transportation costs for farmers, boosting rural jobs, giving the state more power to investigate agroterrorism, requiring E-Verify for employment, and creating a marketplace connecting consumers directly with local producers.
What Homesteaders Should Watch
Whoever takes office in January will walk into a tough stretch for agriculture. Texas producers have faced years of drought, rising costs, tariffs, and the loss of farmland to development.
For small producers and homesteaders, a few areas are worth following closely. Hemp rules, disaster relief programs, rural development grants, and any changes to how the state supports local food sales could all shift under new leadership.
Data center policy is another one to watch. While the commissioner can’t approve or block projects, the office has a public platform to push the Legislature on water and land use, which matters if you rely on a well or live near a proposed site.
Your Food Security Shouldn’t Depend on Who Wins
Elections change priorities, budgets, and programs. They don’t change the basic math of feeding your family when supply chains break down.
The most resilient households grow some of their own food, preserve it, and know local producers by name. A good stock of heirloom vegetable seeds lets you save seed year after year, and a pressure canner turns a summer garden into a shelf-stable pantry.
Get to know the ranchers, farmers market vendors, and co-ops in your area now. Whatever happens in Austin, those relationships are the food system you can actually count on.
The Bottom Line
If Tucker’s lead holds, Texas agriculture policy is headed for its biggest leadership change in more than a decade. Watch for the official call, then for the new commissioner’s first moves on hemp, rural grants, and disaster aid.
In the meantime, keep building the kind of food independence that no election can take away.
Your home is your fortress, and it is your first and most important line of defense against anyone who intends to do you harm.
In the current world, locked doors and perhaps a home security system is more than enough to deter most burglars. However, disaster breeds desperation, and once the SHTF, many people will be willing to work a lot harder to enter a home if they think there is anything worth stealing inside.
Before disaster strikes, it’s important to have a plan in place for how to fortify your home in order to protect against burglars and looters. In this article, we’ll look at 13 things that you can do to fortify your home before all hell breaks loose.
Points of entry are obviously the weakest links in a home’s security and therefore must be thoroughly fortified. The unfortunate reality is that a single knob lock is not enough to deter a determined intruder for more than a couple of minutes.
A strike or two to the doorknob with a hammer is all it takes to render this type of lock useless. Knob locks can also easily and quietly be picked using something as simple as a knife.
To ensure that your doors are secure, you will want to equip them with deadbolts, reinforce the hinges with longer screws, reinforce the jamb with longer screws, and reinforce the strike plate with longer screws.
Windows may not be designed to be a point of entry, but they are arguably an even weaker link in your home’s security than your doors since windows can easily be broken.
One solution for fortifying the windows in your home is to install metal security bars. If you’re worried about making your home look like a prison, you’ll be happy to know that many window security bars come in decorative designs that won’t ruin the aesthetics of your home.
Another option is to cover your windows with security film. This transparent film prevents windows from shattering when they are struck. Keep in mind that glass doors present the same security issues as windows and must also be reinforced in the same manner if you really want to fortify your home.
3. Install An Alarm System
In many instances, the sound of an alarm going off is enough to scare away would-be intruders. In an SHTF scenario, though, the sound of an alarm by itself is probably not going to be enough of a deterrent.
With that said, alarm systems serve a second, even more critical function: alerting the occupants of the home when someone tries to break in.
Many people mistakenly assume that they will be able to hear an intruder breaking in even if they are sound asleep. While this might be true in some instances such as an intruder trying to kick down your front door, there are many instances where intruders are able to break in without making much noise at all. If you are even somewhat of a sound sleeper, the problem is even more exaggerated.
With an alarm system installed, you can ensure that any break-in attempt will be met with piercing noise that alerts everyone in the house. This can provide you with the precious seconds you need to arm yourself and address the threat.
There are plenty of home security systems, such as SimpliSafe, that have a battery backup and will continue working even during an extended power outage.
4. Block Off Your Chimney
Few people ever consider their chimney as they plan to fortify their home. However, if an intruder is desperate enough, entering a home via the chimney isn’t out of the question. It’s no doubt a risky and somewhat tricky maneuver, but shimmying down a chimney is possible if the chimney is large enough and the intruder is small enough. To prevent this from happening, you may want to consider blocking off your chimney.
There are several different products on the market designed to close off the top of a chimney, many of which are able to secure the chimney while still allowing smoke to escape.
5. Secure Your Garage Door
In most cases, intruders won’t be able to access your home through your garage since they have to get through both the garage door and the door into the house.
With that said, it is still essential to secure your garage if you plan on storing any supplies or valuable items in it. Even if you leave your garage empty, securing your garage door still provides an extra layer of defense for your home.
There a number of products you can purchase to fortify your garage door and make it impossible to force open from the outside. These products include things such as lock kits, door stops, and fortification bars that you can attach to your garage door.
Windows may be the weakest point in a home from a security standpoint, but they do take some effort to enter. Suffice it to say that it isn’t all that easy to break a window, hoist yourself up onto the ledge, and climb inside when there is a cactus or a thorny rose bush planted beneath the window.
This method of fortifying your windows certainly isn’t fool-proof and should be combined with window security measures such as bars or security film. However, planting things such as cacti or other thorny plants underneath your windows can make life that much more difficult for an intruder who plans to enter your home through a window.
Putting a fence around your property provides you with an outer layer of defense that an intruder must conquer before he is ever able to reach your home. Most privacy fences are relatively easy to scale, though, so you will need to be selective about the type of fence that you choose.
There are several different qualities that a good security fence should exhibit. First and most importantly, a good security fence needs to be difficult to climb. This means you will want to choose a fence that is at least eight feet tall, has few if any horizontal rails, and is spiked or pointed at the top.
A good security fence also needs to be difficult to bypass. This means securing your fence to the ground with concrete and equipping it with a padlocked gate. Lastly, you will want to choose a fence that you are able to see through in order to prevent intruders from being able to hide behind it.
There are a number of metal security fences that fit all of these qualifications while still being decorative enough to not stand out in an urban neighborhood.
8. Fortify Your Walls
Very few break-ins involve busting through the wall of a home. However, if someone decides to open fire on your home, drywall and wooden studs are not going to do much to stop bullets from shredding through your walls.
The bad news is that the only way to really fortify your walls is to have walls that are made of stone or brick on the outside. If you live in a stone or brick house already, you don’t have to worry too much about your walls being a weak point. If you don’t have stone or brick walls, though, you’ll need to have a plan in place in the event that someone decides to open fire on your house.
One of the simplest yet most effective ways to deter intruders is to make them feel like they’re being watched, and nothing does that better than a bright spotlight. Criminals prefer to work in the shadows where they won’t be seen. Motion-activated outdoor lights eliminate those shadows and force would-be intruders to think twice before approaching your home.
Place motion-sensor lights near all possible points of entry, especially back doors, side windows, and garage areas. Solar-powered options are great for off-grid readiness, and you can even find models with battery backups in case the power goes out.
Lighting by itself won’t stop an intruder, but it will make them a lot more nervous, and sometimes that’s enough to send them looking for an easier target.
10. Use Security Cameras
In a full collapse scenario, you may not be able to count on law enforcement to respond to security camera footage, but that doesn’t mean the cameras are useless.
Visible security cameras (even cheap or fake ones) serve as a powerful psychological deterrent. Intruders are far more likely to avoid a home that looks like it's being monitored. Better yet, real security cameras can provide early warning if they are paired with a motion sensor and app notification system.
If you can’t afford a full camera setup, grab a few realistic dummy cameras and place them near common entry points. They won’t catch anyone on film, and some burglars might recognize that they're fake, but many won't, and that will be enough to stop them from trying to break in.
11. Remove Potential Climbing Aids
Your home may be well-secured at ground level, but have you ever looked around your yard for things that could help someone climb?
Items like stacked firewood, trash bins, trellises, sheds, and even decorative latticework can all act as ladders for a determined intruder. A tall fence won’t help much if there’s a step stool sitting right next to it.
Walk the perimeter of your home and identify anything an intruder could use to reach higher windows, balconies, or the roof. Either remove those items or secure them in a way that makes them unusable. This is especially important for homes with second-story windows that are otherwise hard to reach.
12. Secure Your Attic Access
Most people don’t think about the attic as a vulnerability, but in certain homes, especially two-story ones, it absolutely can be. Some homes have attic access points in the garage, outside the main living area, or even with cheap panel doors that can easily be kicked in from inside the house.
If someone does manage to get into your attic from the outside (say, via a neighboring structure or a tree), they could potentially drop down into your home unnoticed.
To prevent this, secure any attic entry points with locks or reinforced panels. If your attic access is in the garage, consider installing a lockable cover or even moving the access indoors if possible. It’s not a common attack route, but all it takes is one determined intruder to exploit it.
13. Keep a Low Profile
All the reinforced doors and security bars in the world won’t do you much good if you’re advertising that your home is worth breaking into. In an SHTF scenario, desperate people will be looking for the homes that seem to have the most to offer, and you don’t want yours to be one of them.
This starts long before disaster strikes. Break down the boxes from big purchases like TVs, generators, and bulk food orders before putting them out with the trash. Don’t post photos of your stockpile or your gear on social media, and be careful about how much you share with friends and coworkers.
Once the power goes out, keeping a low profile becomes even more important. If your house is the only one on the block with lights on, a humming generator, and the smell of cooking food drifting out the windows, you’re going to draw attention. Hang blackout curtains, run any generators sparingly, and try to make your home look just as dark and hungry as everyone else’s.
The goal is to make would-be looters walk right past your house without giving it a second thought.
14. Get to Know Your Neighbors
One family can only keep watch for so many hours a day. Eventually, you have to sleep, and that’s when your home is most vulnerable. This is why one of the best ways to fortify your home is to make sure you’re not defending it alone.
Take the time to get to know the people who live around you now, while things are still normal. You’ll quickly figure out who is trustworthy, who has useful skills, and who might be willing to work together if things go south. You don’t have to tell them about your preps. Simply being on good terms is enough to build a foundation.
When disaster strikes, a group of neighbors can take turns keeping watch, share information about suspicious activity, and even block off access to the street if things get bad enough. Looters are far less likely to target a neighborhood where people are clearly watching out for one another.
A fortified home is good, but a fortified neighborhood is even better.
15. Keep Firearms Accessible
In many cases, the best defense is a good offense. While all of the tips discussed in the previous sections will make it very difficult for an intruder to enter your home, there is no way to make an ordinary house impossible to break into unless you have an enormous amount of money to spend and don’t mind your home looking like a prison.
Fortifying your home may be enough to convince most intruders to try for an easier target, but it isn’t going to stop someone who is hell-bent on entering your home. Given the right tools and enough time, a determined intruder will eventually be able to break into your home no matter how well fortified it might be.
When and if this happens, you will either have to hide away or meet the threat head-on. In both cases, it is essential that you are armed. Hiding away in a locked bathroom in the hopes that the intruder will simply steal all of your stuff and leave is both a risky gamble and a good way to lose everything you own.
Even if you do decide to hide once an intruder enters your home, you’ll still want to have a firearm on you in case they enter your hiding place. Of course, trying to confront an intruder without a firearm is an even more deadly risk.
Once you have fortified your home, make sure that you keep at least one firearm that is loaded and easily accessible. It may be your last line of defense, but a firearm is also the only defense capable of stopping an intruder who is willing to do whatever it takes to get inside your home.
As I said, if a criminal is determined enough, he will find a way into your home. However, there are other things you can do to make it more difficult for him. For example, you could get a dog (or dogs), a decoy safe so your most valuable things don't get stolen, or you could build a safe room so you can at least keep your family from harm.
A prepper’s equipment rarely attracts much attention when it works exactly as expected. Ammunition poses a particular challenge, though: its condition and performance aren’t always fully visible during an ordinary equipment check. A cartridge can look perfectly normal while leaving unanswered questions about how it will function after months or years in storage.
That makes ammunition reliability an important consideration when building and maintaining an emergency supply. Price, bullet design, caliber, and range performance each provide part of the picture, but none tells the whole story.
For preppers, the larger question is simple: Can you depend on the ammunition you have stored when replacing it may no longer be easy?
What Reliability Means in an Emergency
Reliability should be one of the first considerations when selecting ammunition for emergency preparedness. It means considering firearm function and ammunition performance separately, then storing and periodically inspecting your supply so that problems are more likely to be discovered before an emergency.
Neither a recognizable brand name nor a standout range test substitutes for that process.
A failure to fire or feed can turn otherwise functional equipment into a problem at exactly the wrong time. In an emergency, there may also be no convenient opportunity to purchase another box of ammunition or replace questionable cartridges.
The relevant reliability standard is therefore repeatable function rather than an impressive result from a small number of rounds.
Compatibility matters as well. Different firearms can behave differently with the same ammunition, particularly when bullet shapes, cartridge dimensions, magazines, and firearm designs vary.
Preppers should also think beyond what happens at the range. Ammunition kept for emergencies may remain stored considerably longer than ammunition purchased for routine shooting. Heat, moisture, repeated handling, and poor storage conditions can all become concerns over time.
A sensible preparedness plan therefore includes proper storage, periodic inspection, and stock rotation rather than simply buying ammunition and forgetting about it.
Choosing Ammunition for a Preparedness Stockpile
A preparedness stockpile needs a standard beyond price or brand preference. Ammunition should be appropriate for the firearms you own and sufficiently dependable that you aren’t discovering compatibility problems after an emergency has already begun.
This is particularly important when consolidating a preparedness collection around a small number of commonly available calibers. Standardization can simplify storage, inventory, and replacement while reducing the number of different cartridges that need to be kept on hand.
Reliability also involves the firearm itself. Ammunition, magazines, and firearm maintenance all contribute to dependable operation, so a malfunction shouldn’t automatically be blamed on the cartridge.
Why Simple Firearms Have Long Appealed to Preppers
Revolvers have long appealed to some preparedness-minded gun owners partly because their operation avoids the magazine-fed cycling sequence of a semi-automatic pistol. Their advantage isn’t that ammunition failures become impossible. Rather, the firearm presents a different set of reliability considerations.
Historically, that simplicity helped make revolvers attractive wherever straightforward operation and long-term dependability were priorities.
Semi-automatic pistols provide different advantages, including greater magazine capacity and faster reloading. They also make compatibility among ammunition, magazines, and the firearm an important consideration.
For preppers, there isn’t necessarily one universally correct choice. The more useful question is whether the firearm and ammunition combination you intend to depend on has demonstrated consistent operation before it becomes part of your emergency supplies.
Defensive Ammunition and Performance
Modern defensive ammunition commonly includes jacketed hollow-point loads, particularly in popular handgun calibers such as 9mm. Evaluating this ammunition involves two separate questions: whether the cartridges function reliably in a particular firearm and whether the projectile provides the intended performance.
Testing standards such as the FBI protocol can provide useful information about projectile performance under controlled conditions, including tests involving clothing and other intermediate barriers.
However, favorable projectile testing doesn’t establish that a particular load will function equally well in every firearm.
Established defensive loads such as Speer Gold Dot, Federal HST Ammo, and Winchester Ranger T-Series have been designed with performance through varying conditions in mind. For preparedness purposes, though, published performance data should complement rather than replace firsthand knowledge of how ammunition behaves with the firearm in which it will be used.
What Happens When Stored Ammunition Deteriorates
Ammunition is often stored for long periods, which makes storage conditions an important part of preparedness.
Modern ammunition can remain usable for many years when properly stored, but that doesn’t mean every cartridge in a stockpile should automatically be assumed reliable forever. Moisture, corrosion, physical damage, extreme temperatures, and repeated handling can introduce uncertainty.
A preparedness stockpile should therefore be treated as usable inventory rather than a collection that is sealed away and ignored indefinitely.
Older ammunition can be periodically inspected and rotated into appropriate range use while newer ammunition replaces it in the reserve. This approach helps maintain familiarity with the ammunition while preventing a stockpile from consisting entirely of cartridges that haven’t been examined in years.
Storage Is Part of Ammunition Reliability
Where and how ammunition is stored matters almost as much as what is purchased.
A cool, dry, and relatively stable environment is preferable to locations exposed to significant moisture or temperature swings. Ammunition containers should also protect cartridges from unnecessary exposure and physical damage.
Organization matters too.
Clearly identifying caliber and other relevant ammunition information can prevent confusion when multiple firearms or cartridge types are stored together. Keeping track of purchases and rotating older stock first can make a large ammunition reserve easier to manage.
The objective isn’t to create an unnecessarily complicated inventory system. It is to know what you have, where it is, and whether its condition has changed.
Reliability Matters More When Resupply Isn’t Guaranteed
Under ordinary circumstances, questionable ammunition can be replaced. During an extended emergency, natural disaster, supply disruption, or other crisis, that assumption may no longer hold.
That changes the value of reliability.
A box of ammunition that doesn’t work properly isn’t merely an inconvenience when the nearest replacement may be unavailable. The same principle applies to magazines, firearm maintenance supplies, and other equipment that becomes harder to replace once normal supply chains are interrupted.
Preparedness is partly about identifying those dependencies before they become problems.
That doesn’t necessarily mean accumulating the largest possible quantity of ammunition. A smaller, well-maintained supply that has been stored properly and is known to work with the firearms on hand may be more useful than a much larger collection of unknown condition and compatibility.
Dependable Ammunition Is Part of Being Prepared
Ammunition reliability isn’t a promise that every emergency will unfold predictably. It is one part of reducing avoidable uncertainty.
For preppers, that means thinking beyond caliber and quantity. Ammunition should be compatible with the firearms it is intended for, stored under suitable conditions, periodically inspected, and managed as part of the broader preparedness inventory.
When normal access to stores, replacement equipment, and supply chains can’t be taken for granted, knowing that your existing supplies have been properly maintained becomes considerably more important.
The best time to discover a problem with stored ammunition is long before you actually need to depend on it.
I can walk into a grocery store today and still find a cooler full of beef, with steaks and roasts stacked where they have always been. Nothing about that display looks like a shortage, which is exactly why cattle numbers are so easy to ignore. The shelves show what is available today. They do not […]
A practical, mom-to-mom guide to building a 72-hour kit for every member of your family, with real-world tips from people who've used theirs and cold-weather upgrades for winter storm season.
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