When a disaster strikes the first resources to run out will be food and fuel. If you are properly prepared at home you wont need too much fuel unless the given disaster is an evacuation type situation. You typical "tin hat" survivalist will tell you that they will chose one of their 60 guns and head out hunting and foraging. While those skills are invaluable everyone else will have the same idea. Wildlife populations will be decimated at a pretty fast rate. As a survivalist you need to know how to produce you own food and with winter around the corner now is the time to start gearing up for spring. Every person on this plant needs to eat. Learn how to garden and start a simple garden so that you can hone your skills. It doesn't matter if you live on a 700 acre ranch of a small metropolitan apartment with a 4ft balcony; you can produce some, and in some cases all, of your own food. Start simple. Try growing some tomatoes in a window. If you fail figure out why you failed and correct it. It you succeed you should try some other vegetables.
There are so many options when it comes to gardening methods that I cannot possibly hit them all in one post. This is going to be a small series of articles but to give credit where credit is due I want to mention Jack Spirko of The Survival Podcast. Jack's show is probably the best gardening resource available. I also learned alot from my parents since they always had a good sized garden when I was growing up. If you check out The Survival Podcast be sure to hit them up on facebook from the main TSP page and let them know that Zombie Splatter sent you. Maybe he will give me a shout out with his horde's of listeners listening. Anyways, I am rambling. Back to producing you own food. People also needs protein to survive. This can be a little tricky since alot of us, including myself, are forced to live within city ordinances. If you have land and do not have to worry about following the code laid down by "the man" you need to at least have a few chickens running around. Free egg production is just one of the countless number of benefits chickens can bring to your efforts. I will have to do and entire post on chickens. Rabbits are also great since their meat is great for you and they reproduce very rapidly.
Ok, I want to start a small garden. What should I do first?
First you need to decided what you want to grow. But before you can do that you need to know what hardiness zone your are in. Look at the map to figure it out:
Now that you know what you want to grow need to decide if you want a traditional (tilled up rows) garden, if you want a container garden, a raised bed garden, or if you want to do something really cool like aquaponics. I will discuss each one of these in separate individual posts. Stay tuned to ZS for the coming articles because when the zombies have you trapped behind you barricades you will need to eat some of the rabbits and beans right out of your back yard. I am making a series out of this.
