Episode: 816
Title: HPR0816: Modern Survivalism part 1 
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0816/hpr0816.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-08 02:59:28

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Hello and welcome to another episode of Hacker Public Radio.
I'm your host for this series, Tracy Holtz, otherwise known as Holster.
That's how most do you guys know me by that.
I'm going to start a series here that I was talking a few people at the Ohio Linux Fast
which was great by the way.
That I start talking a couple things I do and they says, Maine, you really need to talk
about that.
I'm a podcast about that.
So Hacker Public Radio, I knew is the place to be.
So this is a series here that's near and dear to me.
So shall I quit rambling tell you what the series is going to be on?
Well, it's actually on modern survivalism.
And no, before you go off somewhere and say, oh, here comes another crack pot.
This is not the survivalism you're thinking it is.
This is not the survivalism that the news and all the shows on Discovery Channel watch
you to see showing your little kids put the gas mask on and all that stuff.
This is not that.
This is modern survivalism.
And what is modern survival?
Basically in a little definition that is best as I can do it, modern survivalism is doing
everything you can and learning everything you can to make your life better now.
And if it helps up five, 10 years from now, even better.
While at the same time, lessening your dependencies on different type of programs, whether private
programs or government programs, that's basically modern survivalism.
Making your life better now.
And if you make your life better now, it'll definitely make your life better in the future.
And again, I want to say this is not a tinfoil-wearing nut job, you know, living out in the mountains
with the stockpile of guns, you know, this is modern survivalism.
And then actually the news and the program shows really don't show this side of modern survivalism.
They show the two people putting gas masks on their kids and everything like that, which is a crying shame
because most people I know are modern survivalists.
They just don't know it.
You know, there's a whole bunch of things that can go on in modern survivalism.
You know, it can go on and on.
You can be a modern survivalist and living in apartment in the middle of New York City.
It is that broad of a topic.
And to tell you about how modern survival that this should get you mad, what I'm going to tell you right here,
about government programs, here is what's happening right now as we speak, right now.
Here's how stupid it is.
High fructose corn syrup, HCS.
It's made from corn, mostly from corn, okay.
Now the government gives subsidies to farmers to grow corn, which in turn artificially makes the corn prices of the high fructose corn syrup lower.
So it comes a food industry and you know, big corporations and everything like that, which is fine.
I got nothing against big corporations.
I got a company.
I do the same thing.
I look for the cheapest price to what I need to do as long as it's the same quality.
Well, obviously the high fructose corn syrup is going to be a lot cheaper.
Why?
Because it's artificially lowered in price because of the government.
So they use high fructose corn syrup and a lot of their products.
So now the government wants to turn around and tax these corporations because high fructose corn syrup isn't good for you.
That just makes your head spin.
If they would just stop it at the beginning, they wouldn't have to worry about that.
So like I said, I can go on and rant about stuff like that, but I'm not going to just get my blood boiling about stuff like that about how stupid the government can be in all their programs and everything like that.
I'm going to give you just a top down look at what are different stuff we'll be talking about in this series as we go here.
And then we'll go into one kind of a basic one right away in this episode too.
Some of this stuff you'll be hearing about coming up here is about modern survival and what it is is you try to be debt free.
You know, you try to depend on yourself.
You grow as much food as you can for yourself.
You learn basic skills.
You store some food.
You learn about what an everyday carry is.
And this will be a series within this series called keeping the bounty.
If you have a garden or you go to a farmer's market and they got green beans on sale and you get 20 pounds, you're not going to eat 20 pounds before they go bad.
So what I'm going to call that mini series is called keeping the bounty.
Basically how to can food, how to dehydrate food, how to freeze food.
Another thing is how to make a lot of the stuff around the house.
You need yourself to save a lot of money.
Like right now, we make our own liquid laundry detergent and you're like, what?
Why?
Because I can make 10 gallons of it for less than $2.
That's how inexpensive if you make yourself and it works just as good.
I've showed three of my friends this and they all do it now.
So it's not just some nut job, you know, out there trying to penny, pinch every penny.
I just think it's smarter.
And one of the ones I'll be getting into pretty quick, not today is why you should grow your own herbs, you know, or herbs.
It depends on what you're at in the country, if you call it herbs or herbs.
So I call it herbs.
So if you call it herb, sorry, you're going to have to deal with it.
So that's some of the topics and we'll go into some of the others later.
Now with the exception of something with the technology wasn't there.
And everything we're going to talk about is not like some whack jobs, something we're doing.
This is stuff our grandparents and our great grandparents did.
Some of our parents did this.
My parents did this.
I did it growing up because of my parents did it.
So this is stuff that everybody used to do.
If you go back 50, 100 years, almost every family in America would do the same stuff as we're doing now.
Not just in America, you know, Canada, most of Europe and stuff like that too.
But so this isn't some crazy stuff you do this.
This is just common sense stuff to make your life better.
We're going to get into the first kind of topic, kind of a big overview of one, which is probably the most important one that I think it is, is storing food.
Okay. Now this isn't storing food like you're going to get five years of MREs and storming your basement or storming your garage or something like that.
You know, you're going to go to the local store and sams and you're going to go get 500 pounds of beans and 500 pounds of rice and say, I'm set.
I don't have to worry anymore.
No, there's a lot more to it than that.
And if you go out and just buy 500 pounds of beans and rice, you're going to have issues in a matter of what you do.
So this is just real, real basic about storing your own food.
And first of all, you like, well, I don't have to store my own food.
I don't have to worry.
You know, even if you don't think an apocalypse is coming, you know, whether a meteorite, you know, economy crashing or anything where you can't get your food.
And if you don't think, oh, that'll never happen.
Right now, if the truckers would stop because of fuel or they can't get fuel or fuel is too expensive, anything in the stores right now is it.
Look at the hurricane.
They had a couple of weeks go up in New England.
They kind of knew that it might hit.
It might not hit.
And all the store shelves were empty within the day.
You know, so realistically, the only thing people really have in the stores and the, you know, in the stockpiles and the back warehouses and the distributing points is probably one to six days max.
And the people are trying to get that food dramatically less.
So if something major would happen where they can't distribute the food, everybody's so well, you know, you just need to do it.
And like I said, I'm not talking about storing 500 pounds of beans.
You know, you have to do what you like.
And one of the big reasons to store food is, which is a lot of people are listed this right now is, what if you lose a job?
You know, you go to work tomorrow and your boss says, I'm sorry, tough times, whatever, we're going somewhere else, we're doing something else, we're closing your department, but you don't have a job.
Well, you start looking for a job.
If you had one to two months of food stored up, that's one less bill you have to worry about.
You can go home and say, OK, I don't have to buy food.
We can use that and you're good to go.
So you got to think of more than just a poplux coming up while you store food.
Like I said, you just don't get rice and beans.
What the biggest thing you want to do is you store only what you eat.
OK, that's important.
I'm going to say it again, you store only what you eat.
If you like rice and beans, well, store rice and beans, if you don't like beans, don't store beans.
If you like rice, store rice, if you don't like wheat, don't store wheat.
You like spaghetti, stocks spaghetti.
So that is a very important key is only to store what you eat and nothing else.
Because if you're not going to eat it or your kids won't eat it or anything like that,
there's no sense in storing it.
Because then you can do what's called rotation in your pantry or your storage closet,
your cabinet, or if you don't have a room, just a couple of big blue bins from Walmart
that you get for 5, 10 bucks.
But when you store food, you can start by storing little stuff you know you'll eat right away.
So like if you like spaghetti, every time you go to the grocery store,
buy one or two things extra of spaghetti noodles and one or two things extra,
a pasta sauce and always check the dates.
I'll say that again, this is important.
I'm going to repeat some of the stuff because it's important to check the dates.
And you guys know about the fresh stuff and the bit dates is in the back.
So if you need to back, don't be afraid to reach in the back and look at the back date.
If you're at Sam's or Costco or store like that,
if you go to the palette below the one that it's on or behind it,
sometimes that has a month, two, three, four, even a year better date than the one out front.
So always check the dates.
So you can just go every time you go shopping by one or two extra things,
a spaghetti you're not going to eat.
Well, if you do that every time, you know, five, six months without doing much,
you're going to have, you know, 15, 20 packs of spaghetti and 15, 20 things of spaghetti sauce.
That's a lot of meals you can use right there.
So that's basically what that is.
But the first thing you want to do is everything you eat right on a notebook,
on a notepad in your kitchen or you're going to use your smartphone,
write it on your smartphone or your blog or whatever you want.
When we really started storing food a few years ago,
I used Google Docs because it was with me everywhere.
So, you know, that's it.
But you do whatever you need.
Write down everything you eat in your family eats.
I'm not saying McDonald's and this isn't for calorie counting or so.
You shouldn't eat that.
No, this is to find out what you eat.
Most people have probably five to 10 things they make all the time.
Then they got five to 10 things they make once in a while and five to 10 more things
they make once in a blue moon.
So this is just to remind yourself of what you want and what you eat.
And so, and look at those items.
And then what you want to do is start picking up a couple of those items extra
every time you go to the store.
So if you go there to the store and you really like spaghetti,
like we were talking about, and that spaghetti sauce you like is on sale,
well, this is where you stock up and get a nice big supply.
Instead of buying one or two extra, you buy a lot more.
But look at the expiration date.
If you only eat one spaghetti sauce a week and they expire two months and you buy 20,
well, that's just stupid.
You know that.
So, but most stuff will have a long a year, year and a half expiration date.
Well, you can say, well, heck, let me buy 30 of them right now and just put them
in the bottom of a basket, put them in the back of my pantry.
And you have a nice big supply.
Well, then every time you use it, you actually saved money because you're getting it
when it was on sale.
And you do that to everything kind of on your list.
And you do that for six months a year.
You're going to have a pantry full of food you're going to eat.
Now, and this isn't food you just sit there and look at, oh, I can't touch it.
No, this is food you use.
Okay, so you want to make spaghetti, take the oldest date and the oldest spaghetti there.
And you know, spaghetti I'll last like till dirt's clean again.
You know, as long as you keep it from getting too moist or too humid, you know, no matter
what the package says, you'll get five, six, eight years out of it without even worrying
about it, you know, unless you have bug problems or bad humidity problem or moisture problems
or something like that.
But you use the items you buy.
So when you want spaghetti, go grab it from that supply.
Next time you go shopping, grab one or two more, replace what you have.
So that's why you write down everything you know and you eat.
So you know what you need to buy, what you need to store.
Couple of mistakes, like I said, you see people do all the time, as they'll go out and they'll
get two years of supply of MREs, they'll sit in the garage for five years and they won't
touch them.
Then they'll open one up and they decide if they totally think it's disgusting and they
won't eat it, well, you just basically wasted your money.
So on another thing you see people do is they'll go by 200 pounds of beans and 200 pounds
of rice and they don't like rice and beans.
Well that's a waste.
They'll go out and they'll buy 500 pounds of whole, you know, red wheat.
Well, that's fine.
If you use it, if you don't use it, it's a waste of money.
If you don't know how to cook dried beans or cook rice, you're going to have problems.
If you don't know what to do with the whole wheat, you're going to have problems.
So no matter what you store, you have to use it to practice and then just grab some
make it, make different variants or something like that.
And what I'll do at the end of this, I'll give two quick recipes.
What I do is some of the food storage stuff I have that's really easy to make and it's
really, really good too.
But like whole wheat, people go out and they buy a couple big bags, although they'll go
to, you know, down to, we got like sprouts around here store, whole foods or something
like that.
And they'll go by 20, 40, 50 pound bag of whole red wheat.
Well, they don't know what to do with it.
Well, if you've never cooked with whole wheat or done used whole wheat, it's not like
going to buy flour, you know, you can have it then what you can do if you need it.
You need to know what you're going to do with it at the beginning.
That's why you do everything now with your food storage in case you lose a job.
You don't have to worry about, oh, I don't know what to do.
It's just one more thing to learn how to cook with whole wheat.
Well, if you have whole wheat, you want to make bread, you don't have a meal.
That doesn't do any good.
What are you going to do?
How are you going to mill it?
So you can be as simple as getting a nice big electric mill or a simple little hand
crake mill like I have now.
My neighbors have a big electrical mill because that's all we pretty much buy now is whole
red wheat.
You know, when I need, I use hers all the time.
But if our power goes out, you know, where there's, I hate to say it, like a pandemic,
which I don't want to get a tinfoil hat on.
We haven't had a pandemic in a long time and I don't want to say we're overdue, but
I wouldn't shock me if one would happen else in the government so I was okay, no one's
leaving their house for four days.
Well, you know, that's fine.
That's another reason to store food, but that's a whole another topic you can go down.
But, you know, if you can't get anywhere, I can't get to my neighbors to get that or
I don't want them at waste at the time.
I got a little hand when I bought for like 40, 50 bucks that, you know, I can do it and
every now and then I'll just grind some by hand to make sure, you know, that I can do
it and much rather use electrical one, but basically you have to grind it to get to your,
you know, to get make your wheat, you know, your flour, excuse me.
So, and cooking with whole flour is different than cooking with white flour and the whole
wheat flour you buy in the store is actually mixed with white flour.
So when you have whole flour, it's different than the whole wheat flour you get in the store.
And when you, when you don't want to grind up 50 pounds at a time because once you crack
it open, it starts to go bad.
So you need to probably what you use in two to four weeks and grind that up and throw
it in the tub or in throw it in your fridge.
Otherwise, that will keep it from going rancid.
But once you start cooking with whole wheat, the flavor is so much better than anything
else, you know, it takes a little more practice to make like bread if you want to make bread
out of or even a bread machine, you know, I don't think I've made bread by hand and needed
it in years, I mean, I don't, I can't remember the last time I did it, but I use my bread
machine.
It's not like, you know, regular flour and stuff, you just throw everything in and mix
it.
It's a little different because it's denser, it's harder, so you have to basically give
it a little more time to rise and stuff like that.
So it's a little different.
That's why you want to do what you need to now.
So in stress times come for whatever reasons.
One less thing you have to worry about.
Okay.
We'll conclude this with like I was telling you about a couple quick recipes with some
food storage stuff and I'll give these periodically, even if we don't do an episode on food
storage or something.
I think of a good recipe you can use with, you know, with your food storage slide.
These are regular recipes.
These are ones we make all the time.
And both, besides being really good, both of these are very inexpensive.
So you're actually saving money.
The first is just, is you can use it as a savory or a sweet dish or you can use this
any way you want.
You'll kind of see it or just basically it's a homemade tortilla.
But I usually make this as a dessert.
So basically for everyone you want to make, you want a quarter cup of your milled whole
wheat flour.
Okay.
So like this with regular flour, I would at least use whole wheat flour from the store
if you want to try this just because it's got a lot more flavor.
So but get a quarter cup for everyone you want to make.
I usually make four, you know, I'll make two at a time and I'll keep a couple for the
next day.
But so I usually get a cup.
Put that in a bowl, do a pinch of salt, pinch of sugar and very little water.
Start off with, you know, if you use a cup, probably three, four tablespoons max and mix
it.
That's a bad thing about a tablespoon of water at a time or half a tablespoon of time until
the dough just starts coming together.
Once it comes together, just knead it for about 15, 20 seconds until you get a ball of
dough.
Not sticky dough, if it's really, really, really sticky add some more flour.
You know, until you get a nice dough consistent, mix it for about 10 seconds.
And then if you make like a cup, so there's four, cut it in four parts, roll them up
the little balls and just let them sit for about five or ten minutes, just to help some
of the flour absorb some of that moisture in there a little bit.
Then what you want to do is get a pan out and I do this actually directly on the stove.
I don't get a pan out.
I got one of those stoves that like, you know, the smooth top stoves or the stove just lights
up and everything like that and you can do the same thing with a gas stove or anything
like that.
I don't know about the coil stoves.
That might work, but I don't know.
So basically just take your each of your little balls you made before and roll them out
so they're like a tortilla, you know, you probably want about an eighth of an inch.
And when you roll them out, if you don't have a rolling pin, don't go by one for this.
If you don't have a rolling pin, easier yet, go down to my yards, you know, go to Home
Depot, go to Lowe's, you know, go to the Ace Hardware, go to the Lake where they have
the wooden dowels and get like an inch, inch and a half wooden dowel and get like a two
foot section, cut it at like six inches and you'll have like an 18 inch one and a six inch
one.
And you have two rolling pins about the best you can do.
The only advice I can get is after you cut it, sand down the edges so they're not like
splinter sticking out or something like that.
So and you got some of the best rolling pins you'll have, but like I was saying, just roll
them out so you get like a tortilla and the sides can be rough and everything like that.
That's fine.
You don't have to be perfect, but just make sure they're evenly thickness.
Now get the pan nice and warm, not super hot, not, I'd probably say about medium heat.
Do not put any butter or pan like the pan spray inside the pan.
Don't do it.
Like I said, I do this directly on the stove, I don't use a pan, but whatever, it doesn't
matter.
First, yes, before you start talking, but basically put it on the heat after you rolled
it out, put one on and leave it sit for, oh, depending on what your temperature is and
how are you doing it, one to four minutes.
When you pick it up and you just start seeing it turn brown or brown or flip it over and
do it for about the same amount of time.
And when that's done, just take it off the heat, put it to the side and immediately after
you take it off the heat, spread just a very, very, very, very little bit of butter on
it, just barely any, maybe just take a stick of butter and rub it on top of it.
And then cook the other ones.
And after they're all done, just take some honey, spread some honey over it, cut it like
a pie wedge, you know, with a pizza cutter, and you got a really, really good, easy, inexpensive
dessert.
So when you can do the same thing, take it, put apples on it if you want to make these
tortillas for, you know, your own roll ups, you know, like enchiladas, whatever, go for
it, you know, that's for that.
So that's a really easy one there.
And the other one is one I make, seems to be Sunday's quite a bit, but it is really,
really easy to make.
And this is a way to take those dried beans.
And I usually use pinto beans because they're prevalent ever in their real inexpensive
and I like them.
Well, this is where you can take dried beans without being soaked from when they're dried
to eating them in like 64, 65 minutes, start to finish.
And that's including prep time.
So here's all you do.
You need a pressure cooker with this.
And contrary to what people tell you, if you got a canning pressure cooker, you can
use that for cooking also.
But I'll get into the canning later.
I got a canning one, but I also have one of those little inexpensive 30, 40 dollar
little ones that are, you know, about gallon, gallon and a half size, just little pressure
cookers, you know, without the weights, just clamp them and turn them and cook.
That's what I usually use for that, just the little cheap one.
But what you do inside the pressure cooker is just put a seven cups water, five beef
bullion cubes, one pound of dried pinto beans.
Now these aren't soaked, but if you use dried beans, spread them out.
Look for rocks, okay?
Sometimes there's a little rocks, there's little dried pieces of dirt that are exact size
of beans that slip through.
So check it out, give them a quick rinse because they're dried.
So the manufacturer doesn't rinse them so they don't get moisture on them again.
So just give them a quick rinse, they're not soaked, just rinsed off.
Put them in the seven cups of water and the five bullion cubes.
Then I use a quarter cup of dried onions.
You don't have dried onions, get a medium onion, cut it up, throw it in.
And here's where growing your own herbs helps.
I like thyme, just go get a couple sprigs of thyme, grab it and throw it in.
You don't have to use thyme, but I do, I just like the earthiness flavor it gives it.
Then here's where you use one to two cups of meat.
You don't have to use meat here if you don't like it.
But what I usually do is when I make a big ham, and I think ham tastes the best with
this.
You know when you make one of those big ham, well, after you're done eating the ham, take
some of the ham and portions about a cup or two portions.
And I always seal them up, that can pack them through them in the freezer or put them
in a ziplock bag, you zip them up and throw them in the freezer so they're ready.
I put this ham in completely frozen, I take it literally out of the freezer, open it
up, put it in the pressure cooker on the stove.
If you do that, close the pressure cooker up, bring it up to pressure, however your
pressure cooker works, and cook it for 60 minutes.
That's it.
After it's done, do try not to do the quick release of the pressure cookers.
You'll know what I'm talking about.
Basically, there's a way of letting it come down to temperature on its own and there's
a quick.
You can do the quick, but usually your food's a little better, if you just take it off
the heat, 10 minutes later, you're good to go.
That's all there is to making it.
It's really, really good.
The only thing if you use time after you open it up, I keep the time, I keep the, I just
throw the whole stalks and everything in with the time.
I fish out the stems and stuff like that at the time, but if you take, you know, the
leaves, little leaves off the time, you don't have to do anything.
And then after it's done cooking, what I do is I will put it on some rice or put it
on some mashed potatoes and you got yourself a really, really, really good dinner.
So like I said, there's just a couple ideas and we're first talking about some basic food
storage and why you should store some food.
Again, this isn't tinfoil wearing hat nut job out there.
If you think I am, well, I'm not.
So, but that's it for this episode.
We will get to the next episode.
I hope you liked this episode.
Again, this is Tracy Holtz or otherwise known as Holster and some of the forms.
And if you want to contact me about any of this, go to the Hacker Public Radio website.
I'm not even going to give you my email address here.
I want you to go to their website.
They do a lot of work on that website.
They do a lot.
I want you to go to their website, go to the correspondence, you'll see my link with
my email in there by the time this is out.
So go there if you want to email me for you on a special topic or if you have a recipe
you want to give and you can tell me about it and I'll try it and we'll throw it on
here.
I swear by it and I know you, well, then I'll just put it on here without trying it first.
So, that's it.
I hope you guys enjoyed this and any topics you want me to cover, you want me to cover more
in depth, make sure you let me know.
Again, have a great day.
Thank you.
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