Some Of My Basic Survival Reference Books
February 13, 2012, Submitted by: Lauren (Mrs. MSB) Tweet
Today I thought I would share just a few of my survival books. My books are a little different than Ken’s as they pertain to household matters such as cooking, gardening, sewing, quilting etc. Ken’s pertain to alternative energy, survival methods, firearms and tools! 
Generally speaking, what Ken and I have learned, and the new things we try, are done by first hand experimenting. The old ‘trial and error’ method (A method of reaching a correct solution or satisfactory result by trying out various means or theories until error is sufficiently reduced or eliminated) seems to be the best method for us. But many books make great references for a project you are working on and they are also great for giving you some new ideas.
The Country Living Encyclopedia, written by Carla Emery, is a large book covering a lot of topics related to country living and farming. There is a lot of general information, as well as personal anecdotes and recipes. It’s a great reference! It is said to be the most complete source of information available about growing, processing, cooking, and preserving homegrown foods from the garden, orchard, field, or barnyard and filled with practical, step-by-step advice on basic self-sufficiency skills such as how to cultivate a garden, buy land, bake bread, raise farm animals, make sausage, milk a goat, grow herbs, churn butter, build a chicken coop, cook on a wood stove, and much, much more.
Back to Basics: A Complete Guide to Traditional Skills, Third Edition
This book goes into more detail and seems to cover a wide variety of topics and contains lots of demonstrative photos or drawings. Back to Basics can help to teach you how to braid your own rug, cook with wood or build your own log cabin! It also covers different sources of energy. herb gardens, livestock, soap making and candle making to name just a few. The hundreds of projects, step-by-step sequences, photographs, charts, and illustrations in Back to Basics will help you dye your own wool with plant pigments, graft trees, raise chickens, craft a hutch table with hand tools, and make treats such as blueberry peach jam and cheddar cheese.
The Backyard Homestead
This book is a great back yard garden/mini farm book. Even if you’re not ready for complete self-sufficiency, in today’s economic climate, it just makes sense to try to produce some of your own food. And this book is a great way to get your feet wet. Put your backyard to work!
Here are some other books on homesteading and self sufficiency that I love to reference.
Made from Scratch
The Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live It
Self-Sufficiency: A Complete Guide
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Might I add The Foxfire Book?
Ah, sorry but that falls under ‘Ken’s’ books!
Thanks for the suggestion!
Lauren
Yes, I have many of the set of Foxfire books
Firefox survival books
I sure like that Country Living Encyclopedia. People sure have forgotten about the joy of books as they feel that they can just look it up on the internet. What about when the net crashes for any reason? People without these wonderful books are going to sure feel lost aren’t they?
I have a suggestion in regards to the discussion section that there might be an archives of this maybe to the past 30 or so comments. I personally saw someone wanting to comment back to me, but I came back later and could not find where it came from. Now that more people are thankfully commenting, IF someone comments on a previous page’s article you will not know if you visit the site later in the day because it has disappeared. Ten comments in the discussion section is becoming not enough anymore, which is real good.
Just a thought.
@Bi, I’ll see what solutions I can find for comment tool, or tweaks that I may be able to make which may provide better comments interaction. Good suggestion.
@BI and All; Yeah, I agree with the premise of the net going down and I do try to print out as much as I can find as well as buy the books I consider necessary and valuable but I could burn 10 printers to the ground, spend $10,000.00 on books in two weeks and go broke in the process if I had hard copies of everything. Hey! How about this? Here’s a question; what are the 10 (pick a number 10, 15 25 etc.) best survival REFERENCE books? I know this isn’t the “question” post but this is the “reference post”. Survive well. Enjoy.
Hello all. It is me, the former off-the grid-guy with a few of my personal favorites:
Wilderness canoeing by Cliff Jacobson
(Probably more for Ken) this book talks about canoe travel hints and surviving on extended trips north of the Arctic Circle in the summer. A good resource from an older guy who has been leading extended back country trips for decades. He freely shares his opinions about what works and what does not work.
The Joy of Cooking
by Rombauer et all (for Lauren) Much better than Betty Crocker and it has some recipes for wild game. (lots of hints to make it palatable + what NOT to do)
For all you people who expect the SHTF scenario: The Art of War
by Sun Tzu. Short of Nuclear or Biologcal war, To prepare for war you must study it. this book is now required reading at many military colleges now in addition to some business schools. ( In Japan, Business IS war on a different playing field with different weapons)
If I had to choose only one reloading manual for my home bench, It would be the Speer Reloading Manual # 14
(Currently on edition # 14) I also reference the Hornady reloading manual frequently too. Both give enough advice within the covers to get one started on metallic cartridge reloading.
I am currently a subscriber to Backwoods Home magazine. The recipes are good and the advice on canning and preserving has been time-tested.
I wait for this one to go on sale but The Wall Street Journal is some of the best reporting this side of the New York Times. I also like to listen to the BBC since they do a better job at covering foreign news and they have an interesting slant on activities within the US. ( I am sorry but I don’t care for reading People or the mags that talk endlessly about celebrities in rehab, etc.)
@ Ted K. Study and understand war for all those preparing for SHTF. I cannot emphanize to ALL of those preparing to understand one of the most trying and difficult aspects of surviving, and that is WAR. So many people omit the possibility of a global war in their planning, as they are planned for everything else. I watched that National Geographic show, and plan to also watch it tonight, and these people are well prepared EXCEPT for an event that has plagued the planet for all time, WAR. People can survive an all out nuclear war, but they must read and become knowledgeable before it actually happens. The human species has not progressed spiritually at all to avoid a global war and I feel it is only a matter of time before the missiles are aloft.
I feel one of the most important items one can have is fallout meter to know if you are getting fried inside out after a nuclear war and whether to stay inside and how far inside you need to. The homemade Kearny Fallout Meter is not too difficult to make with household items around your place and they work. Have you ever tried to make one? I can imagine with your hands on experience with so much it would be a piece of cake for you. I wonder if Ken has ever tried to make one. This might be an interesting future post that Ken could do in a video or something, showing the people out there how to easily build a KFM for everyone to have for use after fallout hits from a nuclear war or even a nuclear accident.
Always nice to see your comments.
To Be Informed:
I’m not sure if I can realistically prepare for Nuclear War. Being of Japanese Ancestry, WW 2 was my family’s civil war. One branch of my family tree was removed when the first A-bomb was dropped. Those that survived were not able to have children. My father was a young engineer who worked on something in New Mexico during the war. My surviving aunts and uncles were in internment camps during the war.
Nuclear war in our family was all about luck and location. We don’t talk about it much and we are not sure if we can be prepared for it. The Nagasaki survivors I met refered to those killed instantly as “the lucky ones”. Talking to Nuclear survivors and going through photo albums of people who were killed instantly is quite sobering.
As for biological warfare, since I am on the front lines of healthcare, I will probably be among the first taken out by the weaponized micro-organism if released in the general populace. Until that time, I intend to try enjoying my time on this earth. Survive well.
@ Ted K. In regards to nuclear war, many of the good people that visit this site will not even see blasts, maybe the mushroom clouds, but will have the effects of the fallout. I personally get upset that the nice people on this site are not ready for the fallout even from a nuclear accident. Survival from fallout is something that I feel everyone should try to read up on. I go back to the movie “Testament” in which a town is not hit but goes through the poisoning radiation from the fallout as a mother, Jane Alexander, tries to keep her family alive with no one understanding about fallout. Instead of keeping people as far away from the outside, providing enough mass between them and the radiation as possible until it decays enough to safely go outside.
Proper shielding and enough time can be the difference between radiation sickness and not. People in most survival situations are usually going to be hunkered down anyway, why not with enough shielding that they are also protected from fallout. Another movie, “When the Wind Blows”, is a cartoon from England in which a couple that went through the “Blitz” in England when Germany was raging an air bombardment against them. Their nostalgic remembrance of how after the bombings during the night how everything was brought back to a more normal state during the morning. Towards the end of the movie the characters like those in the Testament movie became very ill from radiation disease.
This cartoon was also about what I am attempting to bring to light to people, that people don’t have to go through getting sick and dying from radiation sickness. It does not have to be a nuclear war either, a terrible nuclear accident can occur as many nuclear power plants are quite close to the New Madrid fault zone in the midwest as we have all seen what an earthquake or tsunami can do. I do realize that there are many painful experiences from nuclear war to many, ugly gut wretching feelings, but it is survivable.
As a culture in the United States people use to have drills all the time for air raids. There were civil defense shelters for people to go to so they could at least have a chance to survive the initial blast, and fallout shelters to avoid radiation. People were prepared and ready for not just nuclear war but other disasters. What happened to this country? A fallout shelter is not only a fallout shelter but also a storm shelter against mega tornadoes. This is what I miss so much, people being prepared, but also people wanting and thinking about disaster preparedness. I look at countries like Switzerland and Israel that take keeping their citizens safe as possible as wonderful models for the whole world.
You know what Ted, I am probably more upset about the lacking of concern that the United States government has for the people that they allowed the civil defense of this country to die. That the government doesn’t even encourage preparation for its citizens. Even Russia and China have very good civil defense and what about the U.S.? Depressing.
I feel that we have to worry most about a global plague naturally occurring in the hot humid filthy petri dish of the favelas of India or Bangladesh and people should be ready for this. Then I feel nuclear war because people have not learned not to fight over stupid and not so stupid issues. Like this article that Lauren wrote, I feel that we should all have as many survival skills to most or all of the survival situations that can rationally occur. This is why I ask everyone to familiarize themselves with nuclear war or at least fallout so no one on this blog ever has to go through radiation sickness like so many people have suffered from in Japan from war and that awful nuclear accident.
Thank for sharing these painful episodes, I do understand the way you feel. I still feel though that everyone should read up on fallout so they can better prepare just in case. As I have said before, I like everyone on this blog and would hate to see anyone not ready for fallout for any reason.
Ted, you stay well and always survive well. Your comments are always interesting.