Emergency Lighting Basics

If all the lights go out the darkness in your home does not have to be daunting. Of course the simplest type of emergency lighting is a candle. Just be sure that wherever you keep candles, the match sticks and propane and lighter is nearby.

You can also make your own emergency candies out of cooking oil.  Take a piece of string and allow the one end to rest in the oil and the other end to hang over the dry end. The more strings you have in the oil the more light you will have. This is not the safest type of emergency light but it is a way of making one if you run out of candles or have nothing else available.

To double the light emitted by the candles you can place a mirror opposite the lit candle. In fact you can do this with any energy source including a flashlight.

If you have a fireplace it can be the ideal source of light. One newspaper log can burn for one hour and produce the same amount of heat as a wood log. Both wood and newspaper logs can be had quite cheaply.

Many people can use their solar powered garden lights as emergency lighting as well. They do a good job of lighting a small area and the good news is that they need only about eight hours of light outdoors to charge up again.

A tried and true option is the standard oil lamp.  Buy the ones that use lamp oil as opposed to kerosene as they will burn cleaner and emit less smoke and oil small.  You can also buy liquid fuel oil lamps that burn from sixty to one hundred hours. However these do not emit much more light than a little dinner candle.

Light sticks are also a standard emergency lighting item to have on hand. Originally they were used to decorate outdoor nighttime events. Now they can be used to as a low lighting option in an emergency. The light is often a bit green and quite low but they burn for about eight to twelve hours.

An emergency flashlight is always a necessity. Get a big one that holds two batteries. Usually two AAA batteries will run a flashlight continuously for about six hours.  You can also buy shake flashlights which operate when you shake them, squeeze flashlights and flashlights that can be activated with solar power or through your car with a USB cell phone charger.

Survival
,

Dehydrating Foods for An Emergency

If you have a food dehydrator you can preserve all kinds of fruits, vegetable and meats. This can go a long way towards feeding you if you have no heat, water or electricity. There are a couple of ways to dry out food. You can use an electric dehydrator, a commercially made non-electric dehydrator or you can leave food out in the sun.

Many people say the electric dehydrators, like an Exacalber, work best. These dehydrators have shelves on which you place sliced food.  This type of drying process keeps the bugs off food and makes sure that the end product has a little moisture in it as possible. The ultimate dried emergency food is 99.9% moisture-free. For storage purposes the moisture content must be as low as possible.

The reason that dehydrated food makes sense is that it does take up so little space.  Food dries very flat and you can store it in layers in any cupboard.

You can dry all meats and fishes including chicken, pork, salmon, trout, shrimp, tuna and tilapia.  You can also dry any type of vegetable or fruit with delicious results. If properly packaged without air than the shelf life of this type of food can be up to 25 years.

One treat to make is home-made fruit leather. You make a mash in a blender of fruits you have on hand such as pineapple or citrus fruits and then you roll the mash out in a fruit dehydrator. The end result tastes like fruit roll-ups.

There are very few rules when it comes to drying food. Try to slice it uniformly and keep it in batches so it is all ready at the same time.  It is a good idea not to dry and use produce that is rotting or has bad bruises. Do not cut out moldy parts of fruits. Just do not use them.

Be sure to use screens and protect food during the drying processed. Tomatoes can be dried by slicing them very thin and if you like you can season them with salt and pepper before you dry them. Corn can easily be dried by cutting it off the cob and leaving it in the sun to dry.

Storage is usually in freezer bags but you can also put them in to big glass bottles that have oxygen absorbers added to them so that the food cannot absorb water from the air and go bad.

 

 

Survival