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• Noise, light, and litter discipline

Security—General List

• Locks, intrusion detection/alarm systems, exterior obstacles: fences, gates (five-eighths-inch diameter or larger), locking road cables, rosebush plantings, “decorative” ponds (moats), ballistic protection (personal and residential), anti-vehicular ditches/berms, anti-vehicular concrete “planter boxes,” razor wire, etc.

• Starlight electronic light-amplification scopes are critical tools for retreat security. A starlight scope (or goggles, or a monocular) amplifies low ambient light by up to 100,000 times, turning nighttime darkness into daylight—albeit a green and fuzzy view.

• Range cards and sector sketches. If you live in the boonies, piece together nine of the USGS 15-minute maps, with your retreat property on the center map. Mount that map on an oversize map board. Draw in the property lines and owner names of all of your surrounding neighbors’ parcels in at least a five-mile radius. Get boundary line and current owner name info from your county recorder’s office. Study and memorize both the terrain and the neighbors’ names. Make a phone number/e-mail list that corresponds to all of the names marked on the map, plus city and county office contact numbers for quick reference, and tack it up right next to the map board.

Security—Firearms List (For details, see Chapter 11.)

• Guns, ammunition

• Web gear

• Eye and ear protection

• Cleaning equipment, carrying cases, scopes, magazines, spare parts, gunsmithing tools, targets and target frames, etc.

• Each rifle and pistol should have at least six top-quality (original military contract or original manufacturer) full-capacity spare magazines.

Communications/Monitoring List (For details, see Chapter 9.)

• When selecting radios, buy only models that will run on twelve-volt DC power or rechargeable nickel-metal hydride battery packs (which can be recharged from your retreat’s twelve-VDC power system without having to use an inverter).

• As a secondary purchasing goal, buy spare radios of each type if you can afford them. Keep your spares in sealed metal boxes to protect them from EMP.

• If you live in a far-inland region, I recommend buying two or more twelve-VDC marine band radios. These frequencies will probably not be monitored in your region, leaving you an essentially private band to use.

Tools List

• Gardening tools

• Auto-mechanics tools

• Welding equipment and supplies

• Bolt cutters—the indispensable “universal key”

• Woodworking tools

• Gunsmithing tools

• Emphasis on hand-powered tools

• Hand-crank or treadle-powered grinding wheel

• Plenty of extra work gloves in earth-tone colors

Sundries List

• Systematically list the things that you use on a regular basis, or that you might need if the local hardware store were ever to disappear: wire of various gauges, duct tape, reinforced strapping tape, chain, nails, nuts and bolts, weather stripping, abrasives, twine, white glue, cyanoacrylate glue, etc.

Survival-Bookshelf List (For details, see Appendix B.)

• You should probably have nearly every book on my blog’s Bookshelf page.

Barter and Charity List (For details, see Chapter 13.)

For your barter list, acquire primarily items that are durable, nonperishable, and either in small packages or easily divisible. Concentrate on the items that other people are likely to overlook or have in short supply.

• Ammunition

• Feminine-hygiene supplies

• Salt. Buy lots of cattle blocks and one-pound canisters of iodized table salt.

• Two-cycle engine oil

• Gas stabilizer

• Diesel antibacterial additive

• Fifty-pound sacks of lime for use in outhouses

• One-ounce bottles of military-rifle-bore cleaner and Break-Free (or similar) lubricant

• Waterproof duffel bags in earth-tone colors (white-water-rafting “dry bags”)

• Thermal socks

• Semi-waterproof matches from military rations

• Military web gear. Lots of folks will suddenly need pistol belts, holsters, magazine pouches,