How to Survive a Blackout: Critical Skills from an Ex-Amish Expert

SPEAKER_01 0:39

In this day and age, we've all come to rely on technology and electricity, and perhaps sometimes have taken these things for granted. But what happens if the power grid goes down? Perhaps we've almost lost some of the skills that we once had as a people to understand survival and what that may look like without the modern tools that we've had. Well, one man who's looked extensively into this is Eddie Schwarzentrüber, primarily because he grew up in the Amish community. Now Eddie ran away from the Amish community, and he decided to go into modern life and leave behind that traditional way of life and the religion that they actually have, which some consider almost cultish. Eddie went into society, began to use modern technology. But after a while, this new digital life left him feeling empty. And without returning to the religious element, he decided to live with his family in a self-sufficient way using the skills that he had learned growing up. Now I thought it would be great to have Eddie on because on the conversation of blackouts, these skills and this experience are invaluable. You're listening to Rise Radio. Thank you so much for being here today and really appreciate you giving your time to speak with us because I think you have a lot of insight that is invaluable to us. So thank you, Eddie. Thank you for having me. I appreciate that. Just a caveat to begin this discussion. You're not advocating the Amish religion, are you? We're simply talking about the practical advice that you've learnt from that way of life.

SPEAKER_00 2:54

That is correct. I don't advocate the religion specifically. I do advocate sort of the lifestyle and the practical skills that come with that.

SPEAKER_01 3:06

So in this time, which in some ways is more unstable these days, what do you think has been a value that you've learned from growing up in the Amish community? I mean, you've mentioned to me before that there was a power cut in the street near you, and just the general public didn't know what to do in that situation.

SPEAKER_00 3:30

Correct. I think the most valuable thing we learned growing up Amish in my sect of Amish is if everything collapse, the Amish would where I come from would barely notice because it it's not a part of their lifestyle. Nothing is a part of their lifestyle. So I think practical people out here would call it survival skills. In the Amish, it's just a way of life. We didn't know what a pharmacy is, what like stuff that people really depend on these days, and we never had any of it. And because of that, we know how to survive without it. We know how to survive without power, we know how to survive without running water, all that stuff. So essentially, in today's society, if the electrical grid would collapse, say most people would panic, and most people would not know how to continue their life or how to survive without it.

SPEAKER_01 4:41

And we'll get on to some of those practical steps that you describe in your book just shortly, if that's okay. Do you think that one of the main risks and dangers in today's society is that people are so reliant on these things and they just haven't had any experience not having them, and that the panic that could set in in people would expose them to more vulnerabilities?

SPEAKER_00 5:06

Correct. So one of the reasons I actually wrote the book was when I came home one night and the whole neighborhood had lost power, and I realized what a state of panic these people were. And the power had been off for four hours. To a lot of people, that's unimaginable. Like they have no idea how to preserve any food. Like their food in their fridge is gonna start going bad. And one of the reasons I wrote the book, because I I always thought, well, it wouldn't affect me, I would be fine. I wouldn't have to worry about any, I know how to survive out in the woods if I have to. But let's say there's 300 million people and there's only 10,000 people that know how to survive. I always thought I would be safe because I would I know how to survive without any of this. The problem is if nobody else knows how to survive, or very few people know how to survive, I don't think I'm gonna be safe because they're all going to want to know where the people are that do know how to survive. And it's yeah, I don't want to be way outnumbered like that. I think it'd be very, very valuable for people at a minimum just to learn some stuff. Because I I genuinely believe our whole infrastructure in the United States is very, very fragile, and I don't trust it personally myself.

SPEAKER_01 6:48

So yeah, and I think that people the same here in the UK, that after so many decades of being used to the life we've had, we maybe rely on it a bit too much, where we think there's nothing that could affect that in such a way. But actually it's quite vulnerable in some ways, isn't it? The the power grid, not to create fear from that, but but there is vulnerabilities.

SPEAKER_00 7:14

Yeah, yeah, very much so. I mean, for example, when the power went out in my neighborhood when I used to live in town, it was a perfectly good evening. It was just something had happened. So many people rely on what we've been sold as conveniences, and in a lot of ways they are convenient until they're not, because they're not working. So everything in our everyday lives these days is connected to something that is outside of our control. And the more we can bring back our day-to-day life and the more we control of our day-to-day life, the less we'll be affected when something happens.

SPEAKER_01 8:06

Okay, so let's run a scenario. If there was an emergency that happened today, what would you do in the first 24 hours? What are the first things that you would look to if that kind of scenario unfolded?

SPEAKER_00 8:24

I'm pretty prepared. So, and most people don't realize this, but you don't need a big backyard, you don't need a farm, you don't need you can utilize small spaces and grow tremendous amounts of food and nourishing foods. These are not foods that are full of chemicals, etc. But you can you utilize small spaces and grow tremendous amounts of food and you don't need to live out in the country. That's what most people think of when they think of a self-sustaining life, which isn't necessarily true. If an emergency happens, all I'm looking is to make sure my rotation of gardening keeps going, make sure taking care of that, because that will ultimately take care of me and my family. Personally, for myself, I would be looking at seeds for gardening, and I would be looking at any kind of vegetables. I would be growing zucchini. We use zucchini so many different ways. We use them a lot for remedies as well. You need you need stuff to reproduce and to sustain. If I would only have what's in my fridge, the first thing I would do personally is I would use some of my basic trap skills and hunting skills to bring meat home because that keeps you alive for a long time. You can trap and hunt. I don't know how it is in the UK, but in the US, there's endless places to do that. If I would not have any sort of way to preserve food, I would probably dig a hole just to preserve food. Because if you take down a little bit, you you have some straw or anything like that. You can preserve food for a long time in the ground. So say you go hunting and you you get some stuff to last you, you can preserve it sort of like a mini root cellar or a fridge in the backyard. Because otherwise you can't keep any food.

SPEAKER_01 10:40

Yes, this is what I've seen a picture of in relation to your book. You so to do that, you you build or you dig down uh like maybe six foot, is it, and then you create a like makeshift cellar. Could you tell us a bit about that? That's a very ingenious idea.

SPEAKER_00 11:00

Yeah, uh you don't even have to dig down that deep, depending on what area you're in, or even if you dig a like a two foot by two foot by four foot hole, dig down and then dig uh vertically underneath that, horizontally on the side a little bit, you got a really nice cool space to do that, and then just can some food that will also preserve for a long time. Like if you have meat, you can can it. There's a number of different ways to do it. The most common ways that we use, I guess, is in a pressure cooker. But I realize most people don't have a pressure cooker and quart jars, but if you have a shovel, you can dig a what I would call an Amish fridge, or some people call a root cellar, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 11:52

And then you would also need to get water. Of course, that's one of the main factors in a crisis, is is having water to drink. You describe how you can take water from thin air. Could you explain how the Amish do that?

SPEAKER_00 12:08

Yes, so that is very easy to do. That is one of the more simple things. You just build a box, like a four-foot by four foot box, doesn't have to be four foot by four foot, but any size box, and you put a piece of glass, it can be plexiglass, it can be glass, regular glass, you put it on top of the box at an angle, and then uh we would put like cut a piece of PVC pipe, or you can take anything round on the bottom. If you paint the inside black, you have to sit it out in the sun, you get all the heat coming through the glass, and that creates the condensation. The glass creates the condensation, so that's perfectly good drinking water. Wow. And the glass is on an angle, so the condensation runs down the glass and comes out on the side. You can make two gallons of water with a really small box in a day, and it's good drinking water.

SPEAKER_01 13:13

So so that water would be clean? Yes. Yeah. Yeah, we uh used to drink it all the time. You don't need to add any chemicals to it to clean it or anything.

SPEAKER_00 13:24

No. No. I uh I would drink that that water over tap water any day.

SPEAKER_01 13:30

So that's that's really interesting. And so you wouldn't recommend rainwater. This is better than rainwater.

SPEAKER_00 13:36

It's better than rainwater, yes.

SPEAKER_01 13:39

It's clean, clean water, so you you also mentioned in your book about when you've got a crisis, you've got to do things very carefully, of course. Some of these methods are actually you've you've got an underground greenhouse as well. So some of these methods are quite discreet ways for the sake of safety, aren't they, as well? Yes.

SPEAKER_00 14:00

Yep. Yeah, everything in the book, like I said, when I was growing up, it was sort of annoying to me because I thought it's harder work than everybody else is doing. But later on I realized how important it is.

SPEAKER_01 14:18

Yeah, absolutely. And the advice is invaluable. And I know that the book that you've written has been so well received, you can even see it online on Amazon. It's just, you know, people really appreciate the tips and the life hacks and the advice. So you mentioned earlier that you don't need a big space to have that kind of food security, and you don't need a big garden. Like, how would you deal with this if you're in a smaller place like an apartment or you don't really have a lot of room in your garden?

SPEAKER_00 14:51

I would try and do it with raised beds, probably, unless you have like really, really good soil. If you have some small raised beds, you can basically put the best soil in it. You know, you can buy soil and put it in. And ideally you have one with uh plastic over it or sort of a little greenhouse over it. So you can be producing sort of year-round, like through the winter time, depending what climate you're in. I would certainly uh do raise beds.

SPEAKER_01 15:27

Because you can actually grow some vital plants from your windowsill, can't you? Because I know that spinach and various things like that grow quite well uh even in the winter.

SPEAKER_00 15:40

Absolutely. If you have some sun that hits the window, it's even much better for a lot of those plants. But you can set plants in the in the windows, like pot plants, that works as well.

SPEAKER_01 15:55

And some of those plants they carry a lot of vitamins, like quite essential nutrients that that your body needs.

SPEAKER_00 16:03

Correct. I mean, most vegetable plants carry uh vital nutrients. And also some of the things I would if a crisis hits, like you can go out to parks or public places. I'm thinking of people that live in the city and forage stuff, you can find amazing medicinal plants and all these different things uh that are growing out in parks in different places like this that are just there. You wanna take precautions because there's also harmful plants out there. But if you have some sort of guidance, I would certainly Yeah, there's some medicinal plants in case if you get sick or there's there's a plant for almost any sickness that we get. We just don't utilize it in most cases.

SPEAKER_01 17:04

That's interesting because I was gonna ask you actually, you mentioned something called the Amish painkiller, and of course, painkillers are very important, especially if there was limited access to medicinal painkillers from the pharmacy. How do you make an Amish painkiller?

SPEAKER_00 17:24

So Amish painkillers are I have something that is called like Amish Antibiotic. It's so simple, it's basically garlic, onion, some ginger root, horseradish root, peppers. I think there's some butterfly weed in it. I have what's another one? Amish amoxicillin I have in the book. I don't have the book in front of me, and I don't want to give people information that is not correct because all this stuff was done through a doctor, so we're not hurting people or or anything like that. But yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:03

Yeah, and that's a good point you mentioned. This uh podcast conversation isn't medical advice, but we I just find it very interesting that you can actually create painkillers via these means. And have you tried that yourself with the correct full uh recipe that you have in the book? Have you tried that yourself uh and and it has killed your pain?

SPEAKER_00 18:27

Oh yeah. Yeah, I I I have all of them in the house. The painkillers, the maxicillin, parasite flush in there as well, cough drops. There's like a mustard mustard plaster that we always use whenever we got a cold or like a sinus. But I I've had a great, great results, not just now, but as a kid growing up. If we have a headache or we have something. First of all, my mom always told us if we have a headache, it's a byproduct of something else, we're probably dehydrated or didn't drink enough water, etc. But painkiller, yeah, that certainly has helped me over the years.

SPEAKER_01 19:17

I know that onions do have an antibacterial property anyway, because don't some people use them and they put them in a room and it helps absorb some of the impurities in the in the room, like if they have the flu and things like that.

SPEAKER_00 19:32

Before I go to bed, I'll put onions on in my socks and put my socks on. They will pull stuff right out of your feet, like bad toxins out of your feet. It has helped me in huge ways if I have a chest cold.

SPEAKER_01 19:51

So we talked about getting food in a crisis. Could you share with us some of the traps that you have laid before? Because I know that you can rig up traps like for rabbits, for example, where you have I think you have a loop of rope or string on the floor, and then you put the bait, and then that the loop goes round them and catches the rabbit.

SPEAKER_00 20:17

Is is that the type of thing you would use for a trap, or do you have any other means to to catch your Yeah, personally I have traps that are more modern that I would use, but those are ways like if you don't have a trap and you need to if you're out in the woods and you have to catch something. Yeah, it's basically some sticks of wood and twine or whatever else you have that you can use sort of as a rope. I apologize if I'm like I I have a hard time explaining some of this stuff in the English language because I'm not really used to the English language, but That's fine. Basically, yes, if you have some sticks and rope, you can create a trap that will successfully catch a rabbit or like a little fox or any other type of small animals that are out there.

SPEAKER_01 21:22

For someone like me who's never done that kind of game hunting or anything like that, it may be quite daunting just to think of even where you begin, like in terms of once you've caught the rabbit, for example, you would what then have to skin the animal and then you know get the meat off of it.

SPEAKER_00 21:44

Yeah, that's from where I'm from, that's the easy part. The hard part is actually catching the rabbit.

SPEAKER_01 21:49

Right.

SPEAKER_00 21:49

But yeah, you hang it up. There's a famous saying there's 200 different ways to skin a rabbit, and you have quite a bit of meat there.

SPEAKER_01 21:59

You can't obviously eat the impure parts, you have to get rid of those, and then just leave yourself with the edible meat.

SPEAKER_00 22:08

Correct, yep. Yep, you can eat you can eat in most animals, you can eat the heart, you can eat the lungs, not raw, but we saved everything when I was growing up. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 22:21

And then you put it in your underground fridge?

SPEAKER_00 22:23

Yeah, put it in the underground fridge. If you want to preserve it over a longer period of time, like a whole pig for a family of four, they're never gonna be able to eat all the meat in time of just keeping it like. in the fridge uh one whole pig will last you like four months or more depending on the size of the pig. But you can then can that food with a mason jar. You have a mason jar with a lid on it, put it in a like boiling water. You have to be a l know somewhat what you're doing, otherwise cans can explode or a can can explode and that could be dangerous with hot water flying, but we always have put a whole bunch of cans into hot water and one by one you're you'll hear click, click, click, click, and you just remember how many cans. If you have 12 cans, once you hear it click 12 times, you know all 12 cans have been sealed. That meat will stay good for that doesn't have to go in the fridge. You don't want to have it in the sun store it in a dry place. That meat will stay good for two years. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 23:43

Yeah and it sounds like you could have enough to help a neighbor out as well. Oh absolutely absolutely yeah yeah so for someone like myself who is very new to this type of thing and I'm sure many listening haven't really done this type of thing before not really thought much about it if you were to hunt the animal like you said and then you've hung it up and you've prepared the meat, got rid of the spoiled guts and things like that, what would you then do? Would you build a fire and then maybe get like cook an edible part of the meat over the fire and you know to to prepare the the food to eat for the family?

SPEAKER_00 24:31

Yeah I would start a fire find something to put on the fire. If you don't have anything else you can find a stone or something cook the meat. When I was younger I would go on on camping trips and catch like small animals and stuff.

SPEAKER_01 24:51

All you need is a fire and take a piece of the meat and heat it up over the fire until it's cooked through and would would you have something to make the fire like flint or sti or sticks or is that something maybe to think of ahead of time like have a load of matches stored yeah so ideally have uh some matches and I would have some wooden matches that are in a cup that is waterproof.

SPEAKER_00 25:24

So then you can carry I'm saying when I was going camping or if I want a challenge yeah I can take a stick and I can rub it on a rock until the end is pointed and then you find another piece of wood that is somewhat solid and you put the stick stick the stick into solid piece of wood. If you take a rock and just rub the solid piece of wood rub like a little dent into it and then stick your pointed piece of wood in that piece of wood and put your hands together on the piece of wood and just rub it back and forth or like turn it back and forth. I don't know if you know sort of what I'm saying or explaining rub it back and forth for long enough it'll heat up and slowly start burning. You spin the wood back and forth and back and forth and if it's in the fall and you have some dry leaves it's fairly easy to get a fire started. If it's in the spring and everything's wet then you kind of want to find some really small sticks and stuff to lay around it and then stick your pointed piece of wood through that so the heat has something small to get started on. And as it starts then you can start adding bigger and bigger branches to get the wood started.

SPEAKER_01 26:48

And and you can with that meat you can do all sorts of things can't you can make soup you can make various different meals.

SPEAKER_00 26:55

Oh yeah you can make soup sandwiches stew you can make I mean if you're out in the wild you can forage to eat whistle meat berries and there's so many different teas like mint teas that are just amazing when I you go camping and I don't have anything I will find some mint tea typically camp somewhere around some water heat up the water put the tea in and that's all you need to make some really good tea like we have right by our house we have peppermint and spearmint tea really small patches but I keep it watered so I have cold ice tea in the house all the time and it's really good for us to drink. It doesn't just taste good it's also good for us and there are two like really small patches and I can make two to three carts every week from each patch and they never they're like they grow so fast they never run out.

SPEAKER_01 28:06

You can make uh nettle tea as well I've I've seen that mentioned before like you know stingy nettles I don't know what their official name is but I don't have the leaves in my backyard we had have them at the home farm where my mom lives they are um I know she always made them when we had a source road oh okay yeah also I'm thinking you've got your food you've got your water and thank you for sharing those methods that you've mentioned what about lighting and things would you just use candles or are there other better lighting methods that you would use as a community? Like in the community we use uh kerosene lamps oh right okay so if we didn't have kerosene then we had candles and a lot of those we made ourselves so if you had a blackout now would is that what you would use for better lighting I would use candles yeah and for warmth is that just a case of an open fire or other methods of heating when it's when it gets cold and you don't have access to heating?

SPEAKER_00 29:17

The only way really to heat the house is with a wood burning stove or a fireplace so you can have like an open fireplace but I I'm using a wood burning stove. And you can heat the water with that can't you if you need to wash correct so you heat the water you heat like to take a bath use it for making coffee everything right you use it for heating the food to make dinner. Can you use rainwater for bathing uh is that clean enough correct yeah yeah I like rainwater for bathing watering plants washing dishes all those sort of things you can uh use rainwater for if you're in a situation without any water coming out of your faucet I would use all the rainwater for stuff like washing dishes taking a bath etc and then make my drinking water with a box the box that I described earlier.

SPEAKER_01 30:27

And if you're near fast flowing water that's even better isn't it because you can use that for many of these things.

SPEAKER_00 30:33

Yep yeah if you're I mean ideally on our home farm the Amish farm there's a spring so that water's been there since the 1980s it is so fresh it's really good to drink it's just a spring in the side of the hill and that's always where we've gotten our water from so it's enough water for all the animals and for everybody in the house. So if you're lucky enough to be close by a spring that is a big bonus.

SPEAKER_01 31:07

A friend of mine was actually the workmen were digging in her garden and they came across an old well that was has been there for 200 years. So that's a a good thing isn't it? Yes yeah yeah if the well's already duck you'll be able to get a lot of water out of that so just as we draw to the close in our discussion and uh thank you for coming on today it's been really helpful and insightful and we'll let people know how to find your book in just a second. What's it been like for you to come out of growing up in that environment into the modern world we have today has it been quite a shock to see how society runs in that way yeah it was a huge shock to me first when I left and found out about all the technology and at first I thought it was very useful and then I realized I sort of got addicted to it where the technology was not helpful to me.

SPEAKER_00 32:12

And then like I said earlier when I came home and the whole neighborhood was in a crisis because the fire power had been out for four hours and there was even a lady that was in a power chair an elderly lady and she was living by herself and she couldn't get up out of the chair because it was a power chair she survived but she was having some health challenges that was one of them and then I was in Texas ironically when this is in 2019 I think when the big ice storm was down there and enormous sort of panic because it was it got cold and there was an ice storm and a lot of power went down and then it's a southern climate where it stays warm people weren't really prepared that's where I first started sort of started opening my eyes to what could really happen if I seen what happens in a really small area when the power goes out. So then you start imagining what would happen if half of the country's power would go out or the whole country's power would go out. And that can be quite worrisome to think about because it would be devastating for a lot of people I'd also grow in really tired of really the fast pace of life that I was living in today I I'm not part of the religion. I do live the lifestyle a lot as far as staying self-sufficient and what I would call sustainable living which just means being able to not rely on anybody outside of myself to be able to support and survive with my family for an unlimited amount of time however long it would potentially take if power what power would never come back on. I know I would be okay and seeing how many people that wouldn't be okay that really sort of I would say almost scared me.

SPEAKER_01 34:35

So from your vantage point would you say that despite the conveniences and some of the benefits that have come with technology you think we've also as a society lost a lot at the same time that we maybe had a hundred years ago Yeah I think we've lost in the name of convenience we've lost most of our most important experiences what it means to be human in my opinion life skills. We're supposed to be self-sufficient that's how all of our ancestry lived we're supposed to have human connection that's increasingly being taken away from us in again in the name of like oh we're more connected than ever we're uh out here it's I don't know how to say everybody's just kind of a an acquaintance they're sort of I don't think society's going in a positive direction yeah and I'm also thinking people listening to this when they're wherever they're living across the world it is good to try and have in their local community those that trust and connection with their neighbors because that that can be invaluable in a time of need to be able to support each other.

SPEAKER_00 36:00

Yeah very helpful if you know your neighbor and they know some survival skills yeah you will go much further than that versus if you're by yourself and trying to figure it out by yourself. I think of back in the community like whenever something happened or as far as a lot of the stuff we did we always prepared all our meat in the wintertime because it's much easier to do in the Norse where we live it gets cold so you're never worrying about the meat getting too warm for an extended period of time like the neighborhood comes together and helps one person butcher and put all their meat in casings and smoke it in the smokehouse one day the next day you go to the neighbors next day you go so I really miss that aspect of it.

SPEAKER_01 36:59

Here's the other thing that helps survive that most people I'm sure don't have and it's maybe not very practicable but for most people but we always put up ice so you can bury ice in the ground with your fridge and put straw around it or if you have a little really well insulated shed and you fill it up that can work as a fridge as well that ice will stay all summer long and if you just have a small door to set your stuff in it'll stay refrigerated all the time and it's not connected to power obviously because the only thing in there is ice so in the wintertime one day we fill one one person's ice house we cut it off the pond there's a pond of water and we cut chunks of ice off there in the winter time when it's cold and frozen and this is why you wrote your book isn't it The Amish Ways to give people some of that advice and insights into the practical skills you learned when you were living in that community and also now in terms of being self-sufficient could you just explain what your book is and how people can get hold of it the reason I wrote the book is I I felt like a lot of the skills I learned growing up and that was taught by my grandfather my dad was lost.

SPEAKER_00 38:35

It's not being used much anymore but I do believe that they're invaluable skills that everybody should know not everybody is going to be what you would call a prepper or sort of self-sufficient like myself but I think the least you can do is have a physical copy of a book whether it's my book or any other book that suits you the best have a physical copy of a book of very practical skills of foraging food if you have to do that medicinal plants etc and how to preserve food everybody should at least have a physical copy because the other thing people don't think if if there's absolutely no power you're not going to be able to go on your phone and look up this stuff.

SPEAKER_01 39:32

So you should have a physical copy that has like a step-by-step guide as to how to do a lot of this stuff so that if it happens everybody else is going to be in a panic but if you have a guide as to how to survive it will give you some kind of ease knowing that you just follow these steps and you'll be able to survive thank you and as I said it's been very well received on Amazon I see 4.7 stars with thousands of reviews so very very helpful yeah very good and is Amazon the best place to get it you can certainly buy it on Amazon it has been a popular book on Amazon so because of that a lot of people duplicate it so now there's a bunch of if you type in the Amish waste you'll find different copies on there that is a good place to get it you can get it on Amazon or you can get at the the Amishways.com you can buy it as well and also the Amishways.com this book I also did in a course so you were able to buy that on the Amish waste academy it's called the Amish waste academy so essentially every step in this book every remedy every like how to make uh Amish painkillers how to make poor man's steak all the Amish uh recipes there is a video for every one of those of me making it and showing you how to make it that's the Amish ways as well the Amishways.com thanks Eddie and I I really think that there'll be a number of people that their life could be saved by this advice so really appreciate you putting your expertise and knowledge of these practical skills out there. Thank you so much for joining us today on Rise Radio podcast and I encourage people to go to the link in the description of this podcast where I'll link Eddie's work and his book.

SPEAKER_00 41:45

Thank you Eddie take care thank you I appreciate you having me