5 items every prepper should consider for emergencies Alright guys, today I want to give you five items every prepper should have, and these are not the typical rice and beans or the flashlight everyone talks about. These are real tools that give you an advantage in a crisis. First is a gas siphon pump. Most people forget how fast gas stations run out during any disaster. If the power is down, the pumps are dead. A siphon pump lets you pull fuel from abandoned equipment, cars,, lawnmowers, generators, anything that has fuel in it. You stay mobile, you keep your generator running, and you are not stuck hoping a gas station magically opens back up. Next is a bulletproof jacket. Yes, they make these. Level 3A jackets that look like normal clothing. I talked about this inside Prepper Academy. You get quiet protection without drawing attention. In a real crisis you do not want to look tactical. You want to blend in and still be protected from handgun threats. These jackets are perfect for that. Third is sandbags. Preppers forget about these. Sandbags give you an instant barrier around doors, windows, and weak areas of your house if things get dangerous. They slow down incoming fire and give you a fighting position if the neighborhood goes bad. And they are also useful for floods. If a water main breaks or a storm hits, sandbags keep water out of your home. They even help with embers and small debris during a fire. They are cheap, easy to store flat, and you can fill them in minutes. Fourth is a good countertop water filter. Not a basic kitchen filter, I mean a real gravity fed system that can take outdoor water, lake water, rainwater, and make it safe to drink. The one I use filters the equivalent of sixty eight thousand plastic water bottles. In a crisis, clean water is everything. If you can filter your own, you have a massive advantage over everyone else standing in line for bottled water. For the fifth item, Get a handheld thermal camera or binoculars. This is one of the most underrated tools in prepping. You can detect people or animals in the dark, see heat signatures through smoke, locate intruders hiding behind bushes, and even check your house for heat loss in winter. In a post crisis environment, being able to see what others cannot is a huge edge. Maybe you guys don't agree with me but I think for tactical purposes at night, its so valuable. These five items might not be on every prepper checklist, but they give you mobility, protection, water security, and home defense, That is the level you want to be operating at. #SafetyProducts

10 Powdered Prepping & Survival Foods To Stockpile Ten powdered foods everyone should stock up on right now. These are lightweight, long lasting, and give you real calories and real nutrition during an emergency. Store these in airtight containers or mylar bags with oxygen absorbers and they will last for years, some even decades. Number one is whey protein. This gives you quick protein in any situation. If the stores close and meat disappears, this becomes one of the easiest ways to hit your daily protein and stay strong. It takes very little space and lasts a long time. Number two is corn starch. This is a thickener and a base ingredient. You can stretch soups, stews, and sauces with it. In a long emergency, stretching your food is a life saver. Number three is baking soda. This is a must have because it handles cooking, cleaning, deodorizing, and even basic hygiene. One container can be used hundreds of different ways. Number four is powdered skim milk. This gives you calcium, protein, and fats when fresh milk is impossible to find. It lasts for years if stored correctly and you can use it in baking or drink it straight. Number five is powdered eggs. Real eggs are one of the first foods to disappear. Powdered eggs let you cook breakfast, fry rice, bake bread, and still get high quality protein without refrigeration. Number six is peanut butter powder. It gives you protein and healthy fats and you can add it to shakes, oatmeal, or baking. This is one of the most calorie dense powders you can store. Number seven is cocoa powder. It boosts morale, it gives you antioxidants, and you can use it in drinks, desserts, and baking. During long emergencies, morale foods matter more than people think. Number eight is powdered butter. Fat is the hardest thing to store long term. Powdered butter gives you the ability to cook, fry, and add calories to meals when fresh butter is long gone. Number nine is the Augason Farms pancake mix. This stuff has a ten year shelf life and you only need water. This gives you carbs and calories instantly. It is cheap, easy to store, and extremely useful. Number ten is cinnamon. It improves taste, helps preserve foods, and gives you flavor when everything else tastes bland. You can add it to oats, rice pudding, baked goods, and drinks. These powdered foods are compact, cheap, and last for years. If you add them to your prepper pantry now, you will have calories, protein, fats, and flavor even in the worst emergencies. Stock up while everything is still available.

Have you heard of the “African unicorn”? Okapis have tongues long enough to wash their eyelids. The 6-foot-tall, roughly 500-pound, famously shy okapi (Okapia johnstoni) can only be found in the wild in the Ituri tropical rainforests of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Its biology features some amazing adaptations: A unique strip pattern on its rump helps the mammal blend in with shade cast by the rainforest canopy, and its fur is coated in a natural oil that repels moisture, something that rainforests obviously provide in abundance. What’s more, the okapi’s large ears can detect even the slightest disturbance, and okapi mothers communicate with their young in frequencies beyond human hearing. However, perhaps the okapi’s most useful evolutionary trait is its tongue. Stretching some 12 to 14 inches, it’s long enough to swat flies, clean the okapi’s ears, and even clean its eyelids. The tongue is also prehensile, meaning it can grasp and strip leaves from branches. This is immensely useful, as okapis can eat up to 60 pounds of food every day. Although okapis live an isolated existence and look like a cross between a zebra and a deer, their tongues give away their genetic lineage. Okapis are the only living relatives of the giraffe, which explains the animal’s nicknames, including forest giraffe, Congolese giraffe, and zebra giraffe. Like okapis, giraffes also sport blue-hued prehensile tongues, and scientists estimate that the two species shared a common ancestry some 11 million to 12 million years ago. Today, unfortunately, okapis live under threat from deforestation, mining, armed militant groups, and hunting. Thankfully, groups like the Okapi Conservation Project are hard at work preserving the habitat of this “Congolese unicorn” for generations to come. Rough length (in inches) of the average human tongue 3 Inches. Weight (in pounds) of a blue whale’s tongue 8,000 Estimated number of okapis living in the Okapi Wildlife Reserve 3,500 Number of stomachs okapis have 4 Until 1901, Western scientists thought the okapi was a mythical creature. For a mammal that can weigh hundreds of pounds, the scientific discovery of the okapi seems startlingly late. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, Western scientists heard about an “African unicorn” that some Congolese Indigenous peoples called o’api. However, because okapis live in hard-to-reach rainforests and are famously shy, experts dismissed the animal as simply a myth, a cryptid similar to the yeti of the Himalayas or the Sasquatch of the Pacific Northwest. However, in 1900, British explorer Sir Harry Johnston sent the first hide samples to the Zoological Society of London, and the okapi “myth” transformed into reality. Although finally “found” (at least by Western scientists; local tribes likely knew of the animal for millennia), traces of the okapi’s once-mythical status can still be seen — the creature serves as a mascot of sorts for the International Society of Cryptozoology. Because if the “African unicorn” is real, what else might science turn up next?