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- Prepped & Ready Weekly, Issue #24
Prepped & Ready Weekly, Issue #24
Three of this week's six guides turned out to be about damp, not cold.
Logan Pierce
October 29, 2026
In partnership with
Six new guides this week, and three of them turned out to be about the same thing. Not cold. Damp. Wet clothes, damp bedding, moist air in a sealed coop. Get the water out of the equation and most of winter stops being dangerous.
Here is what is new on the site, plus one calendar reminder that costs you about 10 minutes on Sunday.
3 quick things this week
Hypothermia does not wait for winter. The CDC says it can set in at temperatures above 40 degrees if you are chilled by rain, sweat, or cold water. Dry is the goal, not thick.
Frostbite in a chicken coop comes from damp air, not cold air. Sealing the coop up tight to be kind builds the exact conditions you were trying to prevent.
Water expands about 9 percent when it freezes. Anything outside holding water needs a plan before your first hard freeze date, not after it.
This week: the clocks change Sunday
Daylight saving time ends this Sunday, November 1. It is the easiest recurring prep reminder on the calendar, and it takes about 10 minutes. Fresh batteries in the smoke and carbon monoxide alarms. Fresh batteries in the flashlights and headlamps. A quick look at the first aid kit while you have the drawer open.
If you have rain barrels, a tank, or hoses outside, add them to the same pass. Much of the country is now inside a few weeks of its first hard freeze.
Bug-Out Bag Clothing and Shelter: How to Stay Dry and Warm Without Overpacking
Most of us pack a bag for cold. The CDC's warning is about something else. You can slide into hypothermia at temperatures well above 40 degrees if you are wet. Rain counts. Sweat counts. A creek crossing counts.
That changes what belongs in the bag. It matters less how thick your jacket is and more whether you can get completely dry when the day goes sideways, and whether the thing underneath your sleeping bag is doing its job. One of those two is where most packs quietly fail.
We walk through the layer system, what a tarp setup actually needs to handle rain and wind, and the gear that is not worth the weight it costs you.
First Aid Kit Maintenance: What Expires, What to Check, and How Often
There is a date printed on the outside of most store bought first aid kits. The American Red Cross says that date tells you when the first item inside expires, not the last one. Everything after it is on you to check.
Twenty minutes, once a year, and you know what is actually in there. We put the Red Cross shelf life numbers in one place, from the 5 year items down to the ones that quietly give out in about 2.
There is also a storage question most people get wrong, and it has nothing to do with dates. If your kit lives in a bathroom cabinet or a hot car, start with that part.
Introducing Fair Game from Vanity Fair
Join Mark Guiducci for a series of wide-ranging conversations with cultural leaders from the worlds of Hollywood, Politics, Style, Silicon Valley, and beyond.
On every episode, Vanity Fair pulls back the curtain on how some of the most interesting and powerful minds in our society work – and where they see us going. On Fair Game from Vanity Fair, no subject is off limits.
How to Build a Winter Chicken Coop: Ventilation, Bedding, and the Heat Lamp Question
Chickens handle cold better than most people expect. What they do not handle is their own breath with nowhere to go.
Poultry Extension puts frostbite down to cold, poorly ventilated coops with damp bedding, and a flock throws off a surprising amount of moisture through breathing, droppings, and spilled water. Close everything up to keep them warm and you build the problem you were trying to avoid.
Inside: how much ventilation and space a bird actually needs, how deep the bedding should go, how to keep the water from freezing, and the honest answer on heat lamps, where the extension sources genuinely disagree with each other.
Rainwater Storage Tank Installation: The Pad, the Overflow, and the 12,400-Pound Problem
A full 1,500 gallon tank weighs about 12,400 pounds. That is a number worth reading twice before you pick a spot for one.
Most tank failures are not really tank failures. They are base failures, and they tend to show up after a heavy rain, when the ground underneath has shifted a half inch and nobody noticed. The Texas Water Development Board is specific about what that pad has to be able to carry, and about when to stop guessing and ask an engineer.
If you are putting a tank in, or you have one and have never looked hard at what it is standing on, read this before the ground freezes. First flush sizing, screening, overflow routing, and the winterizing step almost everyone skips.
Coastal Evacuation: How to Find Your Zone and Leave Before the Water Does the Deciding
Six inches of fast moving water can knock an adult off their feet. Twelve inches can carry away most cars. Those are National Weather Service numbers, and they are the reason the decision has to be made well before the water reaches the street.
The part that surprises people is how short the drive usually is. The Weather Service says plainly that you do not need to travel hundreds of miles. You need to get out of the surge zone, and that is often a matter of tens of miles inland, not a cross country trip.
Your zone is drawn locally, by your county or parish, from storm surge modeling. Here is how to look yours up this week, while nothing is happening and the website is not crawling.
Campfire Cooking Techniques: How to Cook on Coals Instead of Flames
Flames are for making coals. Coals are for cooking. Nearly every charred outside, raw inside campfire dinner traces back to getting that backwards.
Once you are cooking over a coal bed you can read the heat with your hand, move it where you want it, and get food that comes out the way you meant it to. The Dutch oven part is close to arithmetic, and Michigan State University Extension has a briquette rule that takes the guessing out of it.
Foil packets, flat rocks, planking, ash roasting, and the USDA temperatures that still apply out in the open. Also one kind of rock you should never put near a fire.
One small thing that pays for itself all winter: a complete dry set of clothes you never touch. Not the spare hoodie in the car. The one that stays sealed in the bag until the day you are soaked.
Worth a watch
If the first aid kit story has you opening boxes this weekend, Dr. Bones and Nurse Amy (Doom and Bloom) have spent years going through medical kit contents piece by piece. Joe Alton is a retired physician and Amy Alton is a nurse practitioner and midwife, which is rarer in this corner of the internet than it should be. Good company while you sort through what expired.
Before you go
That is Issue #24. If somebody forwarded this to you and you want it in your own inbox twice a week, calm and sourced and free, you can subscribe here.
Spend the 10 minutes on Sunday. It is the cheapest prep on the list.
You never know, but you can always be ready.
Logan