If the calamity happens and you are able to go outside, you have a great advantage...if you have basic survival skills. Guns are fine, but when you run out of ammo to hunt your game you are largely...um... Out of luck. I would not think about trying to raid stores as others will have beaten you to it and will probably kill to defend their stash. A real survivor is not dependent on leftovers from the supermarket. Get a bow. A real bow, not a compound bow that is going to give you trouble in the long run. You need a bow that you have the capability of making a new string for. If you don’t have a bow I suggest you at the very least keep a few good knives on hand and a sharpening stone. Then you can carve a bow and arrows and set traps. Now if you don’t have a knife, you will have to make one. This will require a lot of work. You can use wood, bone is preferable to wood so if you have a trophy deer on your wall that you bought in a garage sale I suggest you break it apart and snag that jawbone. You will need a good rock to shape and sharpen it. If you are in an area with rock such as obsidian or flint, you can make a great knife! You could break a mirror, but it would not be stable enough to do any heavy duty work. Good in a pinch maybe. It would be easier though to think in advance and have a few good knives on hand. You can find them very cheap on eBay or at flea markets. I’ve picked up great hunting and skinning knives for less than 3 bucks so don’t give me the “I am too poor to buy these things spiel” I live on SSI. Get over it!

Now, those last paragraphs were to show you the progression of regressing your thinking to a primitive state in order to survive. You will have to do this with every aspect of your life in a major survival event. This is why I am now going to concentrate on things you can do in advance to increase your chances of survival no matter where you live.

Do you like house plants? Lose your decorative plumes and grow house plants that are edible and/or medicinal. Aloe Vera comes to mind. Easy to grow, edible and medicinal. They go into a state of hibernation in cold and low light so they will be very fresh for a very long time. Kale will do the same and both are beautiful and will require no water during their hibernation. THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX.

Get a food dehydrator! Make an appointment to dehydrate something every day. Use a vacuum sealer to store. This food will keep almost indefinitely! Be sure to jerk meat with your dehydrator and vacuum seal it as well. A food dehydrator can be purchased for as little as 30 dollars. It will be one of the best purchases you will ever make. If you can’t afford the 30 bucks for a dehydrator, take a couple of screens off of your windows and dry in the sun. Use your oven on a low temp. THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX. If you can’t afford the vacuum sealer, don’t have any Tupperware, then go to restaurants and they will give you gallon jugs for free. Store your food in these. Use a little cover of plastic film when you screw on the lid to the jar. This will help to seal it so that there will be little chance of infestation. Drip a little hot wax on the lids as well. Canned food is great but takes up a lot of room. You’d do better to store water and dehydrated food. You will have 10x the amount of food you would have if you go strictly with canned goods. Dehydrating is the way to go! If you have fresh food you want to save, but no refrigerator, what do you do? More than likely if the event is something global...it’s going to be pretty cold outside. Place your food in a tarp and hang it from a tree limb so animals can’t pilfer it. If you really want to keep the animals away, paint the rope and tarp/sack with a cayenne powder paste. I guarantee, the animals won’t even try to snag your goods after the first bout with cayenne paste! That may sound cruel, but remember, you are trying to keep your family alive. In reality, I’d shoot whatever animal went for my goods and make it a nice stew, but ya gotta sleep sometime...LOL so the cayenne works wonders against all kinds of threats, always have a large cache of cayenne powder on hand. If you are poor...cayenne seeds are $1.50 a pouch. You can grow a formidable garden of cayenne inside or outside for $1.50. Cayenne works very well against intruders of all kinds, animal or human. Blow some cayenne in someone's eyes or nose and they won’t hang around long. Sprinkle it on your garden plants and the rabbits won’t touch them.

Remember, in a supervolcano all the plant life goes bye-bye. BUT...the roots will keep for a very long time. Have shovels and dig for plant roots...that is, after it’s safe to go outside. If you have aquariums, remember...algae IS edible! THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX.

Now in a trapped survival situation what will grow in low heat/light ? MUSHROOMS. Ok so they are not chock full of vitamins but they will fill your belly. Buy some mushroom kits to keep on hand. If you are poor, go into the woods and find a dead poplar tree covered with poppel-jacks aka oyster mushrooms. Put it in your basement, partially tented to keep the spoor on that log. You’ll be getting tons of mushrooms, some the size of dinner plates. FOR FREE. (Keep the log moist ) If no calamity strikes, you can sell them for 18 bucks a pound. If one strikes, you will be eating what the rich once paid a hell of a lot of money for. If you are a desert dweller, apply what I have said to your native cacti & such. They keep for a long time and will go dormant and stay fresh. Don’t depend on the outside. Keep some inside as you may not be able to go outside for awhile.

DUCT TAPE. COLLECT IT! Rolls of ARTIFICIAL SINEW. COLLECT THEM! PLASTIC SHEET ROLLS. COLLECT THEM! HEIRLOOM SEEDS. COLLECT THEM! (and keep them tightly sealed) Purchase WATER PURIFICATION SYSTEMS. STOCK UP ON MEDS. Think of your most base survival needs and prepare to take care of them.

Make your dwelling as airtight as possible. There are several ways to do this. Caulk, foam, cement, mud, all kinds of things. Purchase one a week and seal off your home if you live around volcanic areas in particular. If there is a large ash fall out, you may want to purchase a 25 ft. pipe that you can vent fresh air into your home with. Insert a series of screens and perhaps a HEPA filter into the pipe. Run it from the outside of your home, to the inside of your home, sealing off the area around the pipes entry.  Place a dome on the outside top portion of the pipe to prevent ash/snow from clogging it. Surround the dome with a screen. An air vent does not have to be large. 1 or 2 inches wide is plenty. Make sure you have a long wire to use as a cleaning snake.

If you live too close to a volcanic area...sorry, can’t help you. The heat will get you. I suppose if you dug a VERY deep basement/tunnel you might...might...escape the initial heat blast. If you live in an area that might be prone to tsunami, purchase a self inflating boat of some kind. Other than that, all I can suggest is building a small house on steel (preferably titanium LOL) stilts so that water/debris flow will not be a problem. You might want to make that house pretty high too. In either volcanic or tsunami prone areas, you are better off simply moving before the fact. For flood prone areas that will eventually dry, the stilt house thing is really a very practical idea. Let your kids use it for a fun fort in the meantime. It doesn't have to be huge, just a place big enough for you to hang for a few weeks. Store some supplies and a self inflatable boat in there.

HEAT. Particularly in the event of a supervolcano this will be quite the necessity even if you live in what was once a warm area. Put in a wood burning stove. You can get small stoves for 120 bucks plus a little piping. Make sure it is installed properly. If you happened to find yourself in a pinch, remember it needs to be on and backed by a non-flammable surface such as brick or stone. It must have a pipe leading to the outside so cut a hole in your wall or roof, line it with non-flammable material, insert pipe.

If you can’t afford a woodstove, there are endless fields of plowed up cobblestone on farms. I know you have seen them sitting there year after year. Go to the farmer and they will usually give them to you for free. Load them up and take them home. Buy some good cement mix and go to town. Build your own fireplace/woodstove. They really are not that difficult.

Start stocking up on wood...NOW. In most eastern states you can collect dead wood just driving down the road anywhere. Throw it in your trunk. Save your newspapers for starting fires. Save your cardboard.  If you live in the plains, there are many attempts at wind breaks that failed...go gather them up. Other than that, think everything from cow chips to grass bundles. (Make damn sure your chimney works! These items will be smoky!) I am doubting if the farmers will object to you wanting to clean out their stalls and pasture for them. Clean your chimney more often if you are burning Pine, or plains items.

Learn how to build a fire from scratch! After having learned that, stock up on lighters and matches. (Keep them sealed and dry!) If you live in the desert...other than rapidly dying small plant matter I can’t help you much.

WATER. Stock up on bottled water. A VERY GOOD plan would be to have a well with a hand pump that is INSIDE your home. If you can’t do this, then water will be a most precious resource. If you can access nature, have water purification tablets, boil and distill your water. If you can’t access nature, then you have to THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX. Have waterproof tarps and/or sheet metal on hand. You will be needing to collect dew. The easiest way particularly in a trapped situation would be to have them in place, in a funnel shape, leading to a pipe that will run the dew/rain into your house. If it is really cold just attach the pipe to your makeshift woodstove and it will heat the pipe sufficiently to melt the snow/frost for you...just make sure your catch system is away from the main stove unit. Use an elbow joint to angle your pipe. You’ll be wanting metal pipe...lol, not plastic. Be sure that your pipe can rotate so you can move the bend away from the stove for plain dew/rain. That way you will have minimal evaporation.

If you are planning to build a house any time soon, or even buy one, don’t buy unless it has a basement. I can’t stress this enough. You will also fare better if your home is made of brick or stone. Do some kind of non-flammable roof. Supervolcano ash can travel quite far and still be quite hot I would imagine.

LIGHT. Buy a lot of candles, or get some wax & wicks and make your own. Always recycle the used candle wax. Lanterns and oil are good too. You can purchase crank lights as well as radios for very little cost... Check out eBay. Crank lights need nothing to function but your hands. Before the volcano hits and blots out the sun...be prepared for other disasters. Here is a favorite trick of mine for light. They make solar walk-way stakes that you can usually get for about 20 bucks a pair. I put those in garden pots so they are mobile. Plant some Johnny jump-ups or something pretty in them for your porch or walk. In a storm that takes the power out for weeks or even years, these wonderful little lights will absorb sunlight all day, bring them inside at dark and you will have light for 8 to 12 hours! No fuel needed! They make flashlights, radios and many other cheap and efficient crank/solar devices. I got the best radio I have ever had for 9 bucks from an online camping store close-out sale. I have purchased some great and very bright flashlights for 6 bucks on eBay. Get solar battery chargers too. Your neighbors will wonder why you are living so well! When the tornados ripped through upper MI and the power was out for two weeks, I was the ONLY person/family that was not running to the red cross tent 10 miles away. (Uh, never mind that militia dude...he did pretty well too...lol )

HAND TOOLS. HAVE THEM! Hit the flea markets. Make sure you have pots and pans that can be placed on a woodstove or into a fire.

PHOBIAS. GET OVER THEM! You may have to eat a few meal worms with your rice after awhile. Think of it as extra protein. Spiders. Don’t worry, most of them will be eating each other in a supervolcano event., For a different form of disaster you WANT spiders! Don’t kill them unless they are poisonous. Learn your spiders because the good ones will eliminate a lot of your post-flood problems! Bats are good too especially after flooding! If you don’t want a raging case of West Niles I suggest you let the bats live in your belfry...so to speak. Snakes...EAT THEM. In a survival situation your own phobias could kill you faster than anything else. Teach your children not to be afraid of these creatures! If you don’t you might have your little girl jumping around so much when she see a pest that she knocks over your oil lantern and there goes your shelter, not to mention your family. TEACH YOUR KIDS!

AMUSEMENT. Is this really a survival topic ? YES. Imagine being trapped in your basement for two to five years. Have family games stocked up. Scrabble, Monopoly, whatever. Writing and drawing supplies. BOOKS. I guarantee if you are holed up for a couple of years even a Harlequin romance novel will be a blessing! (shudder, but true) Once again, flea markets. Buy books by the box! You won’t care what they are about after awhile and the cool thing is...if you really hate them you can throw them onto the fire with no guilt! They will either amuse you, keep you warm, or both! Get a used treadmill from the Salvation army. Keep calm and cater to your sanity.

Bathroom facilities? I have two words for you. CHAMBER POT. Deal with it. In a non- supervolcano event, learn to make an outhouse.

Now there are many things I have not mentioned here such as hand sewing supplies, vitamins, fire extinguishers both chemical and natural... I could go on here, but the purpose of this article is to teach you how to think for yourself. To think on a more primal level. To make useless things into useful things. To understand that your survival depends on what you ARE NOT attached to, so I would begin to dissolve any sentimental attachments to objects NOW. Look at everything for what it COULD become.