EMAP Emergency Preparedness Training

Faraday Myths Busted
Today we posted a short video on the Mylar bag as a Faraday Bag on youtube.
https://youtu.be/_9qzy3cp9uo
Most standard Mylar bags are not inherently conductive. Most are made from biaxially oriented polyethylene terephthalate (BoPET) polyester film, which is an excellent electrical insulator. HOWEVER, many Mylar bags are metallized meaning they have a thin layer of aluminum vapor-deposited or laminated onto the polyester surface.

This aluminum layer is what gives Mylar bags their shiny appearance and their ability to block light, oxygen, and moisture. While the aluminum layer is conductive, it is very thin and not continuous in all areas, so the bag as a whole does not act as a continuous Faraday cage.

Your bag must be at least IEEEE 299 2006 certified to be effective. IEEE 299-2006 is a standard for measuring the effectiveness of electromagnetic shielding enclosures across a wide frequency range.

We have seen many so called Mil-spec bags that are not! Buyer be ware. We recommend The Dri-Shield 3400 Series Moisture Barrier Bag (formally a 3M product)
https://staticcontrol.descoindustries.com/SCSCatalog/ESD-Bags/Moisture-Barrier-Bags/Foil-High-Barrier/Dri-Shield-3400-Series/

SCS - Dri-Shield® 3400 Series Moisture Barrier Bags - Foil

I want to address the importance of being part of a group and getting one started.

Over the years, I’ve come to appreciate just how crucial it is to be prepared for emergencies, whether they’re natural disasters or unexpected events. You never know when a storm might hit or if you could find yourself in a situation where help isn’t immediately available. When a community knows how to respond, the impact of these situations can be significantly lessened.

Think about it; when disaster strikes, how comforting would it be to know that your neighbors are trained and ready to lend a hand? Having a group of people who understand the basics of emergency response can create a sense of safety and unity in the neighborhood.

Preparedness isn’t just an individual concern; it’s a collective responsibility. It fosters stronger relationships and builds trust, making it easier to face tough times together. I truly believe that every neighborhood should have a preparedness group to get everyone on the same page.

If you want more information on starting a group message us.

UPDATES:
We are having to reproduce the ITEHIL RO water purifier test video due to cameraman error. For the June assembly we are covering Faraday Cages and EMP information. There are many youtube videos out there and many are just click bait to get views. In a continuing effort to serve our community we are preparing to dive deeper into the Popcorn Tin and Microwave Faraday Cage debate.

Our goal will be to debunk the myths and provide accurate information as to allow you to make educated choices.

Prepper sites and survival blogs often promote microwaves as cheap fallback Faraday cages, which suits an audience seeking low cost solutions, while physics forums and technical writeups stress limitations and nuance; both angles are truthful but serve different implicit goals—either practical reassurance or technical rigor—so readers should weigh the promotional tone of preparedness sites against experimental reports and physics explanations.

As you know we do not sell products and have no monetary gain from our research. Our goal is to help other to be better prepared and lessen the burden to others.

Young Preppers need old school preppers
I owe my grandmother a note of thanks. Growing up she told me of how things were during the Depression. As I reflected a few years back I realized that a lot of modern day preppers are planning to fail. Today nobody knows how to do anything anymore.

My grandmother talked about being a young mother with a small child living in rural Kentucky when the depression hit. They survived because they knew things modern people have forgotten. A whole way of living that built resilience into every single day; not survival tricks, not expensive gear but knowledge.

Perhaps you have heard of The Foxfire books. In the late 1960's, Eliot Wigginton and his students created the magazine "Foxfire" in an effort to record and preserve the traditional folk culture of the Southern Appalachians. They were turned into a book compilation of Foxfire material which includes log cabin building, hog dressing, snake lore, mountain crafts and food, and "other affairs of plain living.". All filled with skills one might need to possess to start over.

Most of what gets sold as preparedness today is focused on expensive gear. What our grandparents did was the opposite. It was skill-focused, cheap, and unbreakable. They didn’t prepare for hard times; they simply lived in a way that made hard times survivable.

I’m not saying throw away your cell phone and churn your own butter. What I am saying is that the people who survived the worst economic collapse in American history did it without the things modern preppers fixate on. No solar panels. No water filters that cost three hundred dollars. No tactical gear. No bug-out bags. They had something better. They had knowledge that lived in their hands and heads.

Lets look at the Great Depression
The 1930s were brutal; unemployment was 25% nationally. In some cities, it was closer to 50%. Around 9,000 banks failed between 1930 and 1933. Roughly nine million savings accounts vanished overnight. The Dust Bowl displaced 2.5 million people across the Great Plains. Soup kitchens stretched for blocks in major cities. People who had money and lost it committed su***de because they could not cope with being broke. Children went to school in shoes stuffed with newspaper because the soles were gone.

That’s the hard truth not a folksy adventure. It was a decade long emergency that broke a lot of people and shaped the rest for the rest of their lives. The reason their methods matter is because they worked under those conditions. Not under TickTok or YouTube conditions. Not under weekend warrior suburban-blackout-weekend conditions. They worked under real, sustained, soul-grinding pressure.

Back in 1930 ninety percent of American farms had no electricity and only ten percent of rural homes had power. Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal contained The Rural Electrification Act of 1936 provided federal loans for the installation of electrical distribution systems to serve rural areas. However many rural areas didn't get reliable grid power until after World War II. Fewer and fewer people have lived without the power grid. They didn't think of themselves as off grid; they didn't have words for it. It was just life as they knew it and did what they had to do to get through it.

Their lives were built around the assumption that no outsiders were coming to help. No emergency services outside of the Marshall, Sheriff or volunteer fire department could be called on. There was no FEMA!

Today modern preppers tend to think older people are a burden or risk in an emergency. Instead they rely on buying gear and gadgets to replace the grid until it returns. Our ancestors built lives that never needed the grid. The difference if enormous in one is a temporary fix and the other is solid foundation to build on.