Prepper’s Survival Hacks

50 DIY Projects for Lifesaving Gear, Gadgets, and Kits by Jim Cobb.

In this straight-talking, no-fluff, practical guide Prepper’s Survival Hacks (Amazon), Jim Cobb outlines 50 DIY projects that you can do to become more prepared. Cobb chose topics that would help you to survive a variety of disasters, including how to find or create food to making candles or lanterns.

This slim book is packed with lots of ideas to create small storage spaces to house hooks for fishing or pills, to making your own homemade bola! I definitely want to try that one out. The instructions are sound and easy to follow.

Prepper’s Survival Hacks Is Organized Into Categories:

• Water acquisition and filtering – You’ll learn the trick is to know where to get it and to make sure you have filter devices available so you can drink it safely. Then how to make several kinds of filter devices.
• Food acquisition – You’ll learn how these simple projects will help you grow or otherwise obtain food. There are ideas like pocket fishing kits, making your own MRE’s and it also has a great selection for ideas to grow food. From seed tape to making your own mini greenhouses, to knowing which foods you can keep growing after you’ve used them.
• Cooking food may be difficult in the aftermath of a disaster when electricity may be disrupted. Jim suggests several ideas for making getting hot food in your belly. Get a refresher on making a buddy burner (remember that from your scouting days?), a brick rocket stove and a mini alcohol stove.
• Fire is perhaps one of the moist important areas of survival. It’s hard to disinfect water, heat hot food or stay warm without it. Learn how to make fire starters, build a fire kit and what kind of fire to build for quick results.
• The Lighting projects will allow you to conserve the battery life in your flashlight so it is available when you truly need it.
• Survival kits at their most basic level are an assemblage of items that will meet basic needs during a crisis. You’ll learn how to set one up and what to pack in it to make it specialized to your needs.
• The miscellaneous chapter has a collection of things you can make at home to fill out your preparedness plans. You’ll find instructions for things like making a bucket clothes washer, how to make a bucket mousetrap, and what documents to put on your preparedness flash drive.

Cobb begins each chapter with a blurb about why this topic is important to surviving. Then he has the topic, a write-up about what it is or why he thinks it’s important or not, and then how to do it yourself. All the projects can be DIY’d for very little money.

Who Will Enjoy This Book?

This book is for everyone, not just beginners, but for more experienced preppers too. Preparedness junkies aren’t the only ones who can benefit from the ideas in Jim’s book, these projects are also good for those who enjoy camping and getting in touch with the wild side of life.

This book is all about doing it yourself which is what preparedness should be about. Cobb gives a good final thoughts section which had me chuckling, “you run the risk of becoming so enamored with repurposing and recycling that family members may think you’ve become a hoarder”. Too true Jim, too true!

If you make all 50 of the suggested projects in Prepper’s Survival Hacks: 50 DIY Projects for Lifesaving Gear, Gadgets, and Kits, or even a few from every category, you would truly be prepared for any disaster that you might face.

About the author: Jim Cobb is the author of several books focused on disaster readiness, such as Prepper’s Long-Term Survival Guide, Countdown to Preparedness (review), Prepper’s Financial Guide (review), and the #1 Amazon bestselling Prepper’s Home Defense. He has been a student of survivalism for about 30 years and is the owner of www.SurvivalWeekly.com a popular disaster readiness resource.  Jim and his family reside in the upper Midwest and he is currently working on several more books.

There are affiliate links in this post. I received a review copy of this book in exchange for my review. The opinions are entirely my own.