Colonial Williamsburg, Snowmaggedon and Sat Phones

Well, I just returned from Williamsburg, VA and brought back a lot of great information for the prepper community. I highly recommend a trip down to Colonial Williamsburg to see how life was in the 18th century before all the advents of modern technology. I've added YouTube links to some of the colonial trades shops below.

As destiny would have it, I returned to one of the largest snow storms in the region. we so far have more than 21 inches and Pennsylvania has declared a disaster emergency! Good thing we are all prepared, right?

YouTube Links:

Blacksmith: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgRieFmubM0

Kitchen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u19htrDefrY

Printing Press, Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5u9O9ruGXg0

Printing Press, Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTz9yFOuoyQ

Music, Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0b9gqDmlEs

Music, Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZA4hlobVvo

Music, Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbZcV58TSPo

Firearms: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wlPB5FExwI

Transportation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0B5sR2FyjEU

Weaving, Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLcj0vZhonU

Weaving, Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ix-4ua57I4I

Sewing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3uAj6gHlQU

While on the trip, and in order to keep me grounded in the 21st century, I also got to try out the Globalstar sat phone, which if you can manage to make your calls and/or upload your data within their several windows of up time for the day, it is an amazing deal!

$35 a month for unlimited calls within the 'home' area. That's cheaper than most comparable cell phone plans! But hurry, this deal (called the evolution plan) is only available until they get their new set of satellites up at the end of the year. (only 10 of 40 are currently functional)

Also, I learned that Globalstar works through, what they call, gateways on the ground, so if the entire electric grid falls, so does their service. (There is another company called, Iridium, which is much more reliable and expensive that claims to work directly sat phone to sat phone without any assistance with ground stations.

I should also mention another company that is not fully operational as of yet, but has great promise, called TerreStar. They have recently sent up the largest commercial satellite and have a contract with AT&T. The cool thing about them, is their device looks and works like a regular cell phone/PDA until it goes out of range and then seamlessly transitions to satellite!

Stay Tuned...