(Continued from Part 1.)
3. WOODSTOVE
Currently, only 1.7% of American homes heat with wood with an additional 7.7% use it for their secondary source of heat. That leaves 90% of Americans without a sustainable way to heat their homes if the SHTF. Don’t be one of those 90% if you want to survive your first post-SHTF winter.
Based on those numbers, for most preppers heat will be the second most difficult thing (after water) to prepare for on a long-term sustainable basis. And because it’s so difficult, it’ll be the most neglected topic among their prepping priorities. Don’t ignore it! For those who already have a woodstove, prepping will be easier: extra door-gasket cord and chimney pipe, and perhaps a backup woodstove. (Chainsaws will be covered separately.)
Other than using a woodstove or fireplace to heat with wood or coal, I’m not aware of a practical way for most of us to heat a TEOTWAWKI home for the long term. If the SHTF in December and heating is an immediate must-have, those who heat with propane or heating oil should have enough in their storage tanks to get along for a while, but see item #6 below on cooking stoves. Like any storage tank (water, vehicle gas tanks, etc) a good habit to form right now is never letting the propane or heating-oil tank get below 50%. If the feces hit the fan you’ll at least have that much to keep you warm while getting Plan B in place.
Those who heat with electricity or natural gas will be out of luck as soon as the grid goes down. What then?
Serious TEOTWAWKI preppers who don’t currently heat with wood have a few prepping options. Option one is to go all the way and install a woodstove in the near future, either DIY or hired out. DIY isn’t overly difficult for those with building skills. By installing one ahead of time you’ll be able to do a realistic prep test on the stove to see what tweaks need to be made, as well as figure out the basics like how to deal with the ashes, how and where to store firewood, how many cords you’ll need each year, etc. Oftentimes when buying a woodstove, people try to save money by getting a less-expensive one, only to find out it’s too small and inadequate to heat their house during the coldest periods. Woodstove manufacturers indicate how many square feet a stove will heat but it’s best to get a larger woodstove than indicated, at least half again as large as they recommend.
The second option is to install everything except the woodstove itself so if the time comes, the woodstove can be brought out of storage, then put in place and the stovepipe connected to the pre-constructed chimney.
The third option is to buy a woodstove plus all the necessary tools and materials, stack them in the garage, and then install it if the SHTF. While not the best way, it’ll be far better than no woodstove at all. The main problem with this approach is that most of us tend to be missing one or five pieces of hardware before we finish a project so we have to make another trip (or three) to the hardware store. Of course, that will be an issue when there aren’t hardware stores in Teotwawkiville. Do we have the necessary reciprocating saw to cut through the roof or wall? Another problem with this approach is the time of year when the grid goes down. If in the winter, or in rainy weather, the chimney installation will be much more difficult and dangerous if the roof is wet or snow-covered. Even in good weather, the steeper the roof is, the more difficult the installation will be and the greater the chance you’ll be injured at a time when there are no longer hospitals. For many preppers however, this third approach is the most practical when other considerations are taken into account.
More than one of the older houses I’ve seen, including my grandmother’s, had a woodstove or wood cook stove at one time. The chimney was still in place as evidenced by what looks like a metal paper plate covering the hole where the stovepipe connected to the masonry chimney. If you have one of these, it’s probably worth checking out to see how clear the chimney is and if it’s still usable.
While I’m no expert on DIY bio-gas, from what research I’ve done it’s possible to make enough to keep a kitchen stove working to some degree but nowhere near enough to be able to heat a house.
Another of today’s habits we’ll have to break is keeping our house too warm. We’ll have to conserve firewood in any way that we can. One of the better conservation methods is to close off rooms that don’t need heat during the day, and not much at night. This would include things like bedrooms and bathrooms. Something as simple as wearing a hat indoors works wonders for keeping us warm. I have a military-style watch cap that’s not too big and bulky that gets the job done. If a baseball cap is all you have, that works too.
3b. CORDLESS CHAINSAW
Some lists have firewood as a top-10 item without discussing how and where to get firewood in the first place. Calling someone to deliver a few cords before the SHTF isn’t sustainable afterwards so a saw of some sort will be needed.
While our ancestors used two-handled crosscut saws (“misery whips”), single-handled bucksaws, and axes to cut firewood, they were heating small cabins, not the larger homes we have today. If it’s the only option, hand tools will have to do. I’ve seen many old-time two-man crosscut saws at auctions but most are bought up to be used as home decorations so if they show up at an auction, expect to pay a good price.
A cord of firewood (a stack 4’ x 4’ x 8’) won’t last long in some areas. The farther north and the higher the altitude, the more you’ll need.
With my first chainsaw, I quickly discovered they’re wonderful machines but more difficult to keep purring than a four-stroke lawnmower engine. When I’m at estate auctions and see the person owned five chainsaws, I suspect they discovered the same thing.
I have a cordless chainsaw on my 2026 post-Christmas shopping list so I’m no expert on them, but many online reviews indicate they’ve come a long way and are worthwhile. Based on those reviews, and the non-sustainability of gasoline-powered chainsaws, I’d recommend a cordless chainsaw as a post-SHTF necessity. It would need to be chargeable using the portable power station mentioned below, or with a 100-watt solar panel and a vehicle battery. Cordless chainsaws have the added benefit of being quiet at a time when we’re not wanting to draw attention from outsiders. We’ll also want at least one extra battery to be sure we can keep cutting all day once we start.
Whether our chainsaw is gas-powered or electric, among other things we’ll need extra chains and the means to sharpen them. Some chains are a much higher quality than others so pay a little extra to get the best. One of my local auto parts stores sells heavy-duty chain by the inch. I take my old chain in, they count the links and make me another chain. Because they’re pricey ($25 each), I buy two at a time and keep the dull ones together until I can sharpen a bunch at the same time. I currently have six chains which still isn’t a comfortable amount if the SHTF tomorrow. Chainsaw chains are another ultra-important item where the “four is one and one is none” rule applies.
Some readers will be pooh-poohing the idea of cordless chainsaws as soon as they see the heading to this section. As with many other prepping topics, we can’t get stuck in normalcy bias and fail to consider what is sustainable for a long time, or where we need to modernize our thinking. Gas-powered chainsaws definitely won’t work for the long term for most preppers. The argument that cordless batteries won’t keep accepting a charge forever is true, but irrelevant when compared to the certainty that majority of us aren’t going to have enough gasoline to run a chainsaw for the long term. It’s easy to keep a cordless chainsaw working for five years or more, not so easy for a gasoline-powered saw.
In closing on this topic of heating, be sure to get serious about having a way to heat your home if the SHTF. A woodstove will work forever as long as we have trees on our property or nearby. Any kind of wood from pallets to pine trees to abandoned barns will work. I suspect after the SHTF we’ll no longer toss brush into the burn pile, even the smallest branches can be cut into firewood and every twig will be valuable for tinder if nothing else. In Teotwawkiville, even things like car tires and non-reusable food wrappers can be burned for heat.
In discussions about what percentage of the population would die in a long-term grid-down event, I lean towards the high end of the scale. Some of those with enough food and water and their multi-tool won’t make it past the first winter because they failed to have an adequate home-heating system.
4. GUNS AND AMMO, TACTICAL AND FIREARMS TRAINING
While the majority of serious preppers already have firearms, and others have them on their to-buy list, have we mentally prepared and asked ourselves how far we’re willing to go when using them? Some rovers will be convinced to move on if we fire warning shots. But what about those who don’t? Guns and ammo are listed fourth here because no matter how much food, water, and firewood we have, if we’re unable to defend them from our unprepared neighbors and rovers, all of our prepping will have been for naught. And there’s no question whatsoever that in a TEOTWAWKI scenario we’ll have to defend it all with deadly force at some point. Some of the unprepared will run out of food in a week or two, while others won’t have a totally bare pantry until maybe the end of the first 30 days. Some will accept their fate and slowly starve to death, too decent to take it from someone by force. Those scoundrels down the road however, will come and ask for food and won’t hesitate to take it by force, first physical force, then deadly force, if we refuse. Most people asking for food will be somewhere in the middle, hesitating at first, then getting desperate enough to try to take our food by force rather than watch their families starve to death.
This is one more reason why in my opinion urban preppers won’t have a prayer if TEOTWAWKI comes to pass. No matter how well-equipped you are, a small group of hungry locals with the tactical skills of Oprah can get you to step outside of your house one way or another. As soon as you do, your survival concerns will be over as you board the bus to the Pearly Gates. The smaller your building lot is, the less defensible your house will be. Again, the most important thing on your TEOTWAWKI prepping list, if you really think TEOTWAWKI is a possibility, is to get some real estate or a bug-out location elsewhere. When preparing for a short-term natural or man-made disaster, urban preppers can do just as well as rural preppers as long as they stick to the prepping basics. But not for TEOTWAWKI.
While looking for top-10 lists, I saw a comment on one prepper website that said, “I’ll let you do all the prepping and then I’ll come and take yours.” It’s a very enlightening statement about prepping. The comment got no up votes, 42 down votes, and lots of angry replies. These preppers were completely oblivious to reality. It should have gotten 42 up votes with positive comments saying, “Thanks for the reminder, I had better do something about that!” Prepare for it! I’m guessing had a comment like “then I’ll come and take yours” been posted on SurvivalBlog, it would have received a resounding reply from many readers, “Bring it on baby!”
Decide way ahead of time how far you’re willing to go to defend all the supplies you’ve put together to survive that first year. We can’t wait until we have someone in our sights before deciding whether to pull the trigger or not.
Do the math on how long your food will last if you can’t defend it, or if too many neighbors and relatives show up at your front door. A year’s food supply for one person becomes a 6-month supply for two, a 90-day supply for four, 60-day supply for six, and a 30-day supply for 12 people. The only way to avoid this situation is to get them to store their own food before the SHTF, a highly unlikely proposition, or to store enough for you and them. If not, your options for surviving Year One are the kind you won’t be able to follow through on without a lot of soul searching first.
As mentioned in my previous article, The Three Stages of TEOTWAWKI, cannibalism will be a certainty in a long-term grid-down situation. There are countless examples throughout history where people, mostly decent ones, have turned to cannibalism when faced with certain starvation. If you don’t want to end up in someone’s stew pot, guns, ammo, and tactical training are the only way to keep you and your family off the menu. If the feces hit the fan and all you have is the complete Dirty Harry DVD series, your Henry lever-action 22, and a few 500-round boxes of ammo, it’ll be better than nothing. As they say, the first rule of a gunfight is to have a gun. The second rule is, the best fight is the one you’re not in.
What it takes to be able to pull the trigger when the time comes is well summarized in the best article I’ve seen on the topic was in SurvivalBlog. It was written by a Marine who served in Fallujah during the Iraq War: Killing, Dying, and Death (Part 1, Part 2) by E.M.. To summarize just two paragraphs on how many of his fellow Marines, despite hundreds of hours of training and simulations with live fire, still couldn’t pull the trigger when the time came, much to the dismay of their fellow Marines who were depending on it. E.M. asks the reader, “What were these Marines lacking? In my opinion, acceptance of death and mental training.” His advice is to constantly train mentally, to picture in our minds what we’ll do when the time comes, until it becomes muscle memory and we can switch to autopilot when we have to. “Just make a choice, and make it fast, aggressive, and violent. Hesitation will get you killed. Having already lived through similar scenarios in your mind will help your autopilot work how you taught it to work.”
(To be continued tomorrow, in Part 3.)
Read the full article here