What I learned from 5 years off-grid in the woods with no running water, no grid electricity, no cell signal, etc. I left a $60,000 per year job in 2012 and moved onto 3 acres of steep hillside in about the most remote spot in the county. The nearest gas station was 5 miles away, the nearest town was a 45 minute drive. I arrived at the property in early March with a gas guzzling 3/4 ton pickup, loaded down with hand tools and enough food and water to last about a week. I was nearly broke and my only firearm was a youth model 410 single shot shotgun and about 40 rounds of ammo including 10 slugs. Later on I was given a partially completed 45 cal flintlock pistol kit that I had to finish building. But more on that later. Here it is in no particular order;
(1) When it gets dark, you literally cannot see your hand in front of your face.
(2) Weather is much more of a factor than most people can possibly imagine. Everything you do is dictated by the weather. I had a hand crank radio with AM/FM and weather band from day 1, but the crank broke the first week. I was so desperate for weather reports that I scavenged some solar landscape lights and made my own solar charger to charge up the radio.
(3) There is no feeling like that feeling when you get up at daylight and discover bear tracks or mountain lion tracks all around your campsite while you were sleeping and you never knew the animal was there! It made me more determined to get the cabin built ASAP!
(4) If you get up and get outside before sunrise, you can take the heat of the day a lot better.
(5) It’s nearly impossible for 1 person to defend their bugout location. You can’t see in all directions at once, you have to sleep sometime, and you have to leave the place unattended to hunt, fish or do odd jobs.
(6) No matter how deep into the woods you go, a thief will eventually find you. Maybe a hunter or hiker stumbles upon you. They go home, tell their friends, a thief gets word of your existence, they start watching and waiting for a opportunity to clean you out. Happened to me twice in 5 years.
(7) Water is more important than food. You can go days or perhaps even weeks without eating. But you’ll only last hours without water.
(8) Being totally alone with no way to call for help forces changes in behavior. You take fewer risks, your actions are more deliberate, you are much more cautious than you would be if you had a partner who could render aid or go for help.
(9) Collecting rain water. Sometimes it tastes just as good as Fiji bottled water, sometimes it’s so bitter you can hardly stand to drink it (acid rain I’m told). And you never know which one you’re gonna get from one rain to the next. I had a 55 gal food grade barrel and a 35 gal water tank salvaged from a junked travel trailer, plus enough plastic jugs to store another 110 gallons. Having enough rain was never a problem, storage capacity was a different story altogether. Between cooking & drinking I consumed 1 gallon of water per day. Then another 1.5 gallons for cleaning and hygiene. A half gallon to soap up and scrub, a half gallon to rinse off, a half gallon to wash & rinse my cook set. From a single inch of rain I could store up 200 gallons of water, enough to supply my needs for 3-4 months. In 5 years I was only out of water twice, both times it was due to laziness on my part.
(10) Firearms: As stated before, I started out with just a 410 single shot shotgun. It was a good squirrel gun and also good for Turkey and grouse. I only ever saw one pheasant the entire 5 years and I walked right up on it. Shot it from about 10’ away. I didn’t hunt deer the first year because I didn’t know how to store the meat. One thing I was desperate for was a pistol. Often the shotgun was loaded with #4 shot, not much of a defense against bear or mountain lion. The flintlock pistol was surprisingly accurate even out to 50 yards. But there was always that lingering doubt about whether it would fire when needed most. I saved up about $300 but used pistols in the area were overpriced and worn out. One guy tried to sell me a .38 that had been shot so many times it was essentially a smooth bore with only the faintest hint of rifling in the barrel. The shotgun & flintlock pistol got me thru the first 18 months. Then I ordered a 36 cal cap & ball revolver for $239 shipped. I loved that pistol because I could load every other chamber with birdshot for snakes and the other chambers with conical or round ball. I salvaged my own lead from batteries & wheel weights and had a bullet mold. I made my own bullets and black powder. The only thing I had to purchase were the caps and I bought at least 100 per month until I had over 1,000 stockpiled.
After my place was burglarized, I bought a beautiful S&W .38 special model M36-1 “Chief Special” with a 3.5” barrel. I wore that gun so often that I felt naked without it. Some people made fun of me for packing a 5 shot J-frame .38 and I had to put up with remarks like, “That’s a lady’s gun, lol”. But I loved that pistol and I could drive nails with it at 20’. I eventually replaced it with a Ruger EC9s when I learned the 9mm is a superior round.
Then I started piecing together my first AR. I couldn’t afford to buy one ready to shoot. So I ordered parts and kits and still had to buy sights, mags and ammo. I ended up with a decent AR for about $420 that shoots .223 and 5.56 ammo.
As time went on I added a $1200 Springfield 1911 in .45 ACP. Then a slew of 9mm, Ruger Security-9, S&W M&P 9 Shield, Taurus G2C, all new. Then from time to time I’d come across a good deal on a quality used pistol that I just couldn’t pass up. Every gun went where I went. I was determined that if my place got robbed again, they wouldn’t get a single gun. They might get some ammo but none of my guns.
(11) Food prep: I started with no refrigeration, then salvaged a total of 3 RV type propane powered refrigerators. I never had enough solar power to run even one of them on DC. Having a propane fridge was a big step up. But it’s a tiny fridge. So I got into pressure canning meat. And then into hunting larger game like Turkey and Deer. Never got a bead on any Elk. Saw their sign from time to time but never got one in my sights. I did get a bear once. I didn’t shoot it but I was told I could have all the meat I wanted from it. I cut one of the hams off and took it home. Just so I could say I’d tried bear meat. I dabbled in dehydrating but mostly just making powdered eggs which I then vacuum sealed in glass jars. They keep a very long time that way.
Gardening & gathering: During my time in the woods I happened upon several sources of fruits and nuts. Walnut trees, mulberry trees, Chestnut trees, Maple trees for collecting sap. I even found a June Apple tree once in the woods and took some branches from it to make a start on my place. Blackberries are everywhere in the woods and I even stumbled across a huge raspberry patch at a abandoned homestead and took a few plants back to my place. I kept notes about the locations of Walnut trees and would go back to each one when the nuts started dropping. Same with mulberry trees, I’d keep track of them also. Because my property was mostly steep hillside, My gardening space was limited to a plot 16’x24’. And it was very poor soil with gravel mixed in. I ringed it with cement blocks 2 rows high and started filling it with compost. Making compost was easy. I did the 18 day method and kept several piles going at once to fill the garden plot 16” deep in one season. Then I started doing the victory gardens from WWII plans and planting fall crops and growing potatoes separately from the garden plot in stacked used tires. For such a small space to work with, I was able to produce a lot of vegetables.
Chickens: I could write a book on chickens and still barely touch on the subject. So I won’t even try here. Suffice it to say I settled on Dominique’s for both meat and eggs, 7 hens and a rooster was overkill for just one person. But I had the space and plenty of forage and scraps. I never had to buy feed and I enjoyed having them around. I let them out during the day (if I was there) and locked them up tight at night. The eggs are medium, not large, so I’d sell 15 and call it a dozen. Never any trouble selling eggs. One thing I will note about chickens, they are not a MRE on 2 feet. What I mean is, some people have the idea that you can just kill and butcher a chicken whenever you want chicken, that you can omit canning or freezing the meat, no storage needed. Well it doesn’t work that way. Chickens have to be butchered at a fairly young age, 12 to not more than 16 weeks for fryers and not over 21 weeks for stewing. Beyond 5 months of age the meat just gets tougher and tougher with each passing day. Butcher a year old rooster and you can chew the same piece of meat all day long, lol. Because the meat will be as tough as a Goodyear tire. I raised two batches of chicks for meat each year and canned them up in pint jars. I pulled the meat from the bones, packed it in the jars and topped it off with broth. That was my method, there are a thousand others.
(12) I did a lot of trading. Walmart was 1.5 hours away, round trip. And I absolutely hated going to town. I wasn’t in a SHTF situation but I tried to mimic one as much as possible. Most of the people I did odd jobs for were seniors on fixed incomes. Sometimes I’d trade labor for things I needed instead of the money to buy it. I once did weedating for a elderly woman who never had to give me a dime. Instead she let me use her garden spot to grow a stand of corn. And she had a small apple orchard of 16-20 trees. The trees hadn’t been pruned in probably decades and weren’t producing like they should. So I started tending it for free, learning as I went. I ended up with a bed level truckload of apples. More than I could use or put up. So I kept some, sold some and traded some. Anything I couldn’t produce myself on my homestead, I’d trade for if I could. Buying it from a store was a last resort.
(13) Relationships: Not the romantic kind but the “help each other” kind. As my reputation for being a good worker grew, more jobs came along. People trusted me, people who hadn’t trusted anyone in years. Some didn’t even need to hire me, they were just happy to have a honest person to talk to. It was a refreshing change in a area plagued with drugs and junkies looking to take advantage of them. They couldn’t reach me at home because of no cell signal. But every time I left the cabin my voicemail inbox would be full of messages. One widow called me to her home to replace every lightbulb. She had lamps in almost every room because she simply could not change the bulbs in her ceilings and had no family or friends in good enough health to change the bulbs for her. One by one they’d gone out and her only option was to order a lamp from Amazon to solve the problem. She was tickled to death to have all new bulbs in her kitchen again. She kept me there a full 8 hours at $12.50 an hour and all I did was change a dozen or so light bulbs and washed the glass covers and put them back on. Every time I tried to leave, she’d strike up another conversation. Finally I told her I only wanted $25 for my time and that I needed to go. She wouldn’t hear of it. She handed me a $100 bill and scolded me for asking less. If those people have no one now, I can only imagine their situation in SHTF.
Other relationship, developing hunting buddies. It gave me access to more hunting locations. People like to hunt as a sport or hobby. I did it for the meat. With no other meat production on the homestead, I had to hunt to get variety. Making friends with people that like to hunt and own large tracts of land was a no brainer. They let me hunt whenever I wanted, even gave me a key to the gate.
Helping other homesteaders. I had one guy who raised a few hogs. He’d raise about 6 each year. He had siblings up in Indiana and they paid his feed bill to raise them a hog and butcher it. Then they’d come down each Winter to get their meat and haul it back home. They paid for enough feed that he could raise 1 hog for himself for every hog he raised for them. If they wanted 3 hogs, they paid to feed 6. It was a fair deal for everyone involved. But getting up in age himself, he’d get me to help butcher all 6 and give me one as payment. Well, that was my supply of pork for the entire year! We’d start before daylight and work til after dark, everything going to his siblings had to be wrapped in butcher’s paper and labeled, his meat as well. But since I was canning all of mine it just went into coolers to take home.
(14) Summation: Surviving SHTF/WROL alone is going to be nearly impossible. In fact, anything less than a well stocked bombproof bunker with 7 years worth of food and water is probably a death sentence without at least one partner. You might get by for a while alone. But at some point the deck will be stacked against you. Being robbed twice taught me that your home/bugout location cannot be left unattended even for a minute. If you have to venture out for any reason, there simply has to be someone left behind to defend it. I wouldn’t even be comfortable with 2 people, I’d want at minimum 6 and preferably 8. All well armed and ready to react to any situation. I know that more partners means more mouths to feed and complicates going undetected. But you are not going to go undetected anyway. Look at history, during the Civil War, troops raided absolutely everything. The checked every square inch of a property, even using metal rods to probe the ground looking for any signs something might be buried/hidden. There are different strategies for every scenario. Ask 100 people and get 100 different answers. About the only thing most agree on is you can’t do it alone.