Your ePreparedness Binder – Saving Stuff from the Internet for SHTF!

The internet is filled with preparedness info.  Some of it is good and some of it is bad, or not accurate.  And some of it you want to keep forever…or at least for when the SHTF.

The internet has made it so convenient to share information.  You might wonder what you ever did before Google and your favorite preparedness website.  Knowing how valuable the information on preparedness websites are to preppers, could there ever be a time when you don’t have access to the internet?

The ever so popular topic of an EMP or CME comes up often.  We don’t know for sure what would happen, but many plan on instantly being transported to the Dark Ages.  Then there is the possibility of terrorists taking down our grid.  Some can also forsee the government shutting down access to big portions of the internet.

Many preppers have decided to create their own Preparedness Binders packed with important information that is relevant to their family and situation in case they can’t ever get to the internet or have to bug out.  This is a good idea.

The downside to putting together binders of information is that you can quickly fill-up book shelves of binders.  What if you could put a whole library in the space of a DVD case?  Recently, I wrote, A Preparedness Use for Old Hard Drives. Expand Your Digital Library & Resources!  Today, I’m going to show you how to fill that hard drive up with preparedness related ebooks, pdf’s and even videos!

What You Need to Get Started

In reality, all you need is your computer.  Anything that you want, you could save to your hard drive.  But we all like redundancy…two is one…you know.  So, you could use a flash drive.  Flash drives have come along way.  A decent sized flash drive is pretty inexpensive.  For example, a 64 gig flash drive runs less that $22.  But you can fill up 64 gigs pretty quickly, especially if you are downloading video.  I have many flash drives.  But for my ePreparedness Binder, I prefer repurposing an old hard drive and placing it in an enclosure.  For $20 I can now download over 500 gigs of preparedness content!

You will also need two pieces of software, a pdf reader and a media player.  Because I don’t want to depend on being connected to the internet and I want something that won’t take up a lot of space, I like Portable Apps.  The two Portable Apps that I have chosen are:

• Foxit Reader – For PDF’s
• VLC – For videos

The pics below is a screenshot of downloading VLC.

Just click on the green “Download Now” button.  It will download an installer with an extension of .paf.  Drag and drop the installer file to your ePreparedness Binder drive and click on it.

Unlike other installers, this installer doesn’t have to go out to the internet.  Everything the program needs is compressed into the installer.  Once the installer finishes, it will place a folder on your drive with the app.

Finding Preparedness Content You Want to Keep – Print – eBooks, PDF’s and Articles

There really is a ton of stuff on preparedness websites.  I will provide you with a few resources below.

The Preparedness Review – TPR is put out twice a year.  It is a pdf filled with articles by preparedness bloggers.  TPR has great content, so you will want to download this free resource for sure!

The FREE Tag on Prepper Website – Whenever I find a free resource that is valuable to the Preparedness Community, I link to it on Prepper Website.  You will find a ton of articles packed with information on how to download free prepper content.

For starters, here are a few from the tag page and Prepper Website:

• 196 Neat Free Survival Downloads
• Free Manuals on First Aid and Prepping
• Jubilee 101
• Pathways to Abundance

Websites that Let You Save Their Articles – There are many preparedness websites that will allow you to save their articles to your computer as a pdf.  For example, one website that allows you to do this is Dr. Bones and Nurse Amy’s Doom and Bloom Website.  See the pics below.

This is the bottom of Dr. Bones and Nurse Amy’s article, The Medicinal Garden. Notice the link that says “Print Post.”  When you click on the link, you will see this…

At this point, you could print it out, email it or convert it to a pdf.  To save it to your computer, you want to save it as a pdf.  After you click on the pdf link, you see this…

You will click on the “Download Your PDF” link and a save file box will open.  Then, you just need to know where you computer saves your internet downloads, usually in your download folder.

Other Preparedness websites that allow you to save their articles as PDF are:

• Backdoor Survival
• Home Ready Home
• Food Storage Moms
• Mom With A Prep
• The Survival Mom
• Food Storage & Survival
• Common Sense Homesteading
• Prepared Housewives

The above websites PDF save feature might be a little different than the one mentioned above, but they will all work the same way, allowing you to save their content as a PDF on your own hard drive.

Finding Preparedness Content You Want to Keep – Videos

We are a very visual society.  Many of us learn by “seeing.”  This is why Youtube is so popular!  The cool thing for preppers is that you can download the videos that you think you might want to reference later, just in case….  Here’s how to do it.

Find a Youtube video that you want to save.  For my example, I’m using Dr. Bones and Nurse Amy’s Suturing video.  (Yes, I’m a fan boy!)

You want to find the url of the video.  Many will just choose the url in the browser, but I like to use the link url.  Just scroll down a little and click on “share.”

You want to copy this url.  Then, you are going to go to the website, Safefrom.net.

Paste the Youtube url in the cell and click on the download link.  You will then see this.

Notice that the video will show up to the left.  You should then click on the “More” link to the right.  You want to click on the “More” link to show other options.

You will want to choose the FLV version.  It won’t be as clean and crisp as the MP4 version, but it will be a lot smaller and take up less room on your hard drive space.  Once you click on the FLV link, you should get a download or save as opportunity.

Save it to your computer/hard drive.  If you don’t set downloads to go directly to your ePreparedness Binder hard drive, you will have to drag and drop it to the appropriate drive/folder.  Depending on how big the file is, it might take a few minutes to download.

You can then go to the folder and open up your portable VLC software and test run the file to make sure it downloaded correctly.  Here is an example.

It’s really that simple!

If you want to see a Youtube video to show you how to use Savefrom.net to download Youtube videos, check out this one below. 😉

How Can I Use My ePreparedness Binder If The Grid Goes Down?

This is a very good question.  However, if the grid goes down, you are going to have more problems than trying to bring up that Youtube video on (fill-in-the-blank).  But this is what I have going on.

I have an old Windows XP Netbook.  Microsoft stopped supporting Windows XP, so I’m kind of stuck.  I can run Puppy Linux on it and I thought about installing Windows 7, but I knew it would run like a turtle!

Instead, I decided to put it up in a safe place…that is secure even from “the big one.”  If I needed it, I could just bring it out, along with my spare hard drive, that was secure with it, and access my files.

My netbook with spare laptop hard drive enclosure.

I have a battery backup and solar panels to recharge the netbook.  Netbooks draw less power than a laptop.  This video talks a little bit about other solutions for your laptop and being off-grid.

I think everyone should have a battery backup.  However, you want to make sure you build your system correctly.  If you don’t have experience with building a battery backup, let me suggest spending a little money on Steven Harris’ Mobile Battery Video.  It will save you money in the long run.

If you would rather purchase a ready-made system, you might be interested in buying a Goal Zero system.  You will have to buy the battery pack and the panel to charge it.

Conclusion

In the end, hard drives, laptops, batteries and solar panels all break down eventually.  They are mechanical and well, nothing lasts forever.  I have backups of my backups for my important stuff.  However, you might always want to keep a hard copy of those things that just can’t ever be replaced!

This article first appeared on Ed That Matters.

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