What's Going into The Second Edition? Not a Million Dollar Cabin, That's for Sure.

While I've been working on illustrations for a solar panel installation, and trying to power through the side effects of my FluMist, I've stumbled into something of a side quest that's helping me outline even more what I'm trying to do with the second edition of my illustrated guide.

Less than 72 hours to go on the Kickstarter.

It's doing not bad...

What's my goal? It's the opposite of what I wrote about the other day, embodied in the off-grid homestead project run by Martin Johnson–the dude who almost burned down his house with a bad battery setup. I've been seeing his videos for years now. But today I did something of a deep dive.

Whew, boy...

From putting a chicken coop next to their drinking water source, to screwing up the foundation of their house, to installing a roof that almost flew off during a storm, to turning a $20,000 luxury greenhouse into a biohazard of moldy dead plants, to installing disastrous indoor plumbing, this channel should be called "How Not to Homestead."

And they spent $1 million on this fire trap.

Yes, I feel a little bit bad about beating up on someone. It's not very nice, nor is it very positive. On the other hand, the Johnson couple spent years telling a story of an average American family trying to build a homestead with a modest, realistic budget. They were presenting themselves as teachers, figuring things out as they went, much the same way I'm trying to do. Except they were doing it with a massive safety net of corporate sponsorships and ad revenue. They lived in a completely different world from us. After all, nobody is going to bail us out if we screw up and contaminate our drinking water.

These channels sell a narrative that "anyone can do it" that drives their corporate sponsorships. But not everyone can afford to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on trial and error.

Even as he was winding down his channel, Johnson was still posting videos trying to teach retired seniors how to implement his "business model," building a homestead while treating their social security checks and pensions as passive income streams to get homesteading projects off the ground, essentially assuring them that ad income and sponsorships would follow.

I've sat here, flumistified by it all.

There will be no sponsored luxury greenhouses in the second edition of Survival Illustrated. There will also be no giant kitchen island that opens up into an underground bunker. (Yeah, that's real.) As cool as it looks, this is not in our budget and it's not going to help us. I apologize in advance.

Here's what I am going for:

• An extended list of plant profiles. We need to cover different varieties of bush beans, pole beans, tomatoes, kale, and squash. The first edition covers a lot of plants, but it's still not enough.
• More on solar and battery installations. Maybe you can't install a full system by yourself, maybe you'll hire a professional, but it's still worth knowing how solar gets installed on a roof. Knowledge is power.
• More on other types of backup power. Even if I don't use gas generators, etc, I'm willing to research them.
• More on water filters. We recently learned a lot more about filters, including the Outback gravity system. That's going into the guide.
• More on passive heating and cooling systems.
• More detail on fixing bicycles.
• More on emergency communications.
• A new cover and upgraded artwork.
• Ham radio.

Perhaps one of my greatest fears is that I turn into a Johnson, sucking up money and offering illusions of survival and self-reliance in return. I don't think that's going to happen. Fingers crossed.

I'm not interested in building a million-dollar fantasy cabin in the woods and cosplaying homesteader with a safety net. I'm trying to find the simplest, safest solutions for helping us survive where we are, in the suburbs, in downtown apartments, with what we've got, without access to sawmills and industrial lumber splitters. I'm trying to create instructions and to make them available without all the fluff of a passive income operation.

So, tell me what you want to see in the next edition.

I want to know.