WHATS LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT
To get through life with a minimum of discomfort and stress we manage to pull so much wool over our eyes and tell ourselves so many untruths ( that we actually believe ) that in the end it is amazing that we can function in the real world at all. One of those little white lies we tell ourselves is about love. And we believe it with all our hearts. It ranks right up there with the check being in the mail and the nice men from the government being here to help you. I mean, don’t get me wrong. Self directed falsehoods are a necessity. If we didn’t fool ourselves into thinking our jobs did actually contain a hint of purpose we would go both crazy and postal. And if we didn’t convince ourselves that we were in love we would never stick around long enough to raise the kids ( or, for us older couples, we wouldn’t refrain from throwing the really irritating individual out the third story window ). I think I am in love most of the time, but occasionally I take a moment to consider the reality behind the whole concept.
*
It is okay to live by your own propaganda, as long as deep down you truly don’t really honestly believe it. You get up in the morning at an ungodly hour and mechanically get ready for the day. You can’t stop and think to yourself how pointless the whole endeavor is, how much you are stealing from customers or how much harm you are doing to the environment or how you are helping addicts get their legal stimulants. You can’t tell yourself that ten years after you’re dead no one will care. You carry on as if it is all a much grander experiment than it actually is. But in the end, at the end of the day, don’t let yourself believe it so much that you brag to your friends over martinis about great you are. Chances are that 95% of us are wasting the oxygen we are breathing. Just keep your sense of perspective.
*
The same with love. Love is both a self taught untruth to make ourselves feel good about uncontrollable biology and self delusion to make ourselves feel good about using other people for our own needs. DNA, unfortunately in some aspects, has infected us with a virus to reproduce in order to ensure its own survival. In the great scheme of things it all boils down to our DNA directing our entire lives for its own deranged pleasure and continuity. Little bastard. We are all slaves to it. Males are programmed to impregnate anything walking by in a skirt. Society has laid down a lot of ground rules to while acknowledging this also trying to control it down to a dull roaring level. Females are programmed to nurture and provide a stable environment for offspring. Lately that has been perverted by the State but soon society will once again realize its importance.
*
After the Welfare State has given its last foul breath and expired, either through a lack of petroleum or, hopefully since it would be a lot more fun, after howling mobs have drug all the lawyers and politicians to the guillotine and divorced them from their reptilian brains, you are going to see a lot of changes in the love department. It will become a lot less romantic and a lot more practical. It will be rare to see childhood sweethearts marry and stay together sixty to seventy five years. Instead, you are going to see extended families living together. Polygamy. Arranged marriages. Child brides. Mail order brides. Mothers dying in childbirth immediately replaced by another wife. All of these institutions that pretty much died out during the reign of the Big Daddy Government era are going to make a come back.
*
Polygamy is screamed down by Femi-Nazis as somehow un-pure and exploitive of women when in fact it makes sense under certain conditions. If a male has the means of supporting more than one wife and there is a surplus of unwed women then the females have an escape from starving. Or single widows with children can get their children taken care of. We take single mothers on welfare for granted while historically the government never took care of those people. Society had to do so by constructing new rules. Arranged marriages bypassed the romantic notion of love and looked at the reality. A man that could provide was needed for a families daughters who could only survive off the families charity. The sooner a groom was found for her the better so they would have one less mouth to eat a limited amount of food. Back then it was natural to marry off a twelve or thirteen year old. They could bear children and thus were eligible to be a wife and mother. Teenagers were unknown, just younger adults.
*
When a wife died in childbirth and there were already children in the family it made sense to get remarried ASAP to once again provide a mother to the children. Mourning periods were by necessity brief. As was lack of romance when ordering a bride. If your area was short on females you needed to bring one in. It didn’t matter if you loved her, just that she had ability. Sorry, kids, we are shielded and spoiled in this modern era. Come a collapse a lot of comfortable notions are going to be challenged. Including the concept of love. Brace yourself for it.
END
if you want to see true love, buy my books www.bisonpress.com , then you'll know I really love you.
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
bike
PEDAL POWER
I’m sure it has been quite a time since I last whined and moaned at you to get with the program and have a bicycle. And not only have one in good working order but to actually use it. Spring isn’t that far away if you are too much of a chicken to take your bike out into the snow. Not that we get much snow here, but when we do I find it kind of fun to take out the old two wheeler on the back streets. In one inch of snow most of the cars without studded tires are slipping and sliding as I go whizzing by, grinning like a fool that at least one day out of the year I can beat them to their destination. And if I do start to slid I put it in four wheel drive by putting my feet down. What can I say, I’m easily amused.
*
Look, I know gas didn’t stay over three bucks a gallon as I had guessed. Nor has one of our cities been nuked. But just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean one day I won’t be right. If you stay in smaller cities you can usually get anywhere around town on a bike with a minimum of discomfort. When gas prices do jump again you just need to hop on your bicycle and do most of your errands or commuting on your bike. Use the car once a week for picking up heavy supplies. I realize some of you live in the suburbs and a bike is impractical. When I lived in Oklahoma the entire state hadn’t even heard of sidewalks yet. It was dangerous to bike there. The roads didn’t even have shoulders. But then, gas was $1 a gallon in the mid 90’s. You didn’t need to bike anywhere. Now if Baby Jesus himself smiles down on you, you might see gas at a shade under two bucks a gallon for a half a day before it goes back up. Two dollar gas is as rare as a nickel candy bar.
*
So some of you are screwed when it comes to a bike being practical. You should have one anyway. You can’t go to work on one but you can use it locally on the weekend. Buy the thing now, ride it as much as possible and learn the basic mechanics. One day, perhaps soon, you may not have a choice and you will be forced to use one for transportation regardless of how impractical it is. As impractical as living on a wheat diet or carrying your water from a stream or digging an outhouse. Saving major money by doing without a car is only one reason to embrace a bike. Number one, if you are a tree-hugging Commie I-Gore worshipping granola eating flaming liberal puke the absolute best thing you can do for the environment is to do without a car. Number two, if you ever, for any reason, must bug out of town the best way to do it is on a bike. You won’t tire yourself out and you can go long distances each day, and you can move around clogged and stalled automotive roads.
*
If a hurricane is coming, if a distant target upwind just got nuked, if a plague has broken out, the best way to get the heck out of Dodge is to mount up and to start pedaling. The roads will instantly be crowded with cars and a short distance from the start cars will run out of gas and start becoming immovable roadblocks. Tempers will flare and the idiots will start fighting each other. The gas stations on the freeway will soon run out of gas and stay that way for days. The hotels will be overbooked and grocery stores will start to run out of food. You might, if lucky, get ten miles an hour. On the other hand, if you hopped on your trusty steed and started pedaling at a modest pace of ten miles an hour ( trying harder you can get 15 mph, a pro in shape perhaps 20 mph- you can easily do ten unless you are really old and/or crippled ). Perhaps at some points you might slow a bit due to the need to work around an obstacle but for the most part you can get quite a distance from the city quickly without breaking much of a sweat.
*
If you are in reasonable shape. If it is the first time back on a bike since you were twelve years old you are in trouble. Riding a bike now is the same as shooting your gun now. So you will be ready when the need arises. I’m not even talking about being in great shape, just reasonably. Lose a little weight, cut back on the cigarettes, stop eating bacon, eggs and hash browns every breakfast, etc. Even if you don’t do any of that, at least force yourself on the bike regularly. Don’t kill yourself doing it, start slow. But keep at it. You might need a beer and a cigarette after each ride but at least you are getting your body used to it. I used to run for an hour and then go home and get drunk and smoke. Sometimes even cigs. But I was also in my early twenties. Edging closer to my mid forties I find it easier to not abuse my body as much anymore. So if any of you ladies want to get me drunk and take advantage of me, it will only take about half a beer anymore.
*
Spending less than a hundred bucks on a bicycle now will do several things for you. Insurance against being unable to drive an auto. Insurance that you can quickly leave town regardless of how busy the Interstate is. Get you into better shape. Teach you a new skill ( bike mechanic ) and give you the ability to really cut back on your budget if forced to ( repo the car and suddenly save $500 a month from payments, insurance and gas ). So if you love your car too much, fine. Just get and practice with the bike as an insurance policy. I’ve been walking for about three months now and I really do miss my bike. This weekend I’m going to get it back on the road ( should cost about $20 ) and go joy riding since it is forecast to get over 45 degrees. It will serve me right if I need to rebuild my biking muscles, since I’ve been a little slacker. I’ll practice what I preach, you go down to Wal-Mart and start riding.
*
A coaster brake bike ( no gears, step back on pedals to brake ) is the best for reduced maintenance and less mechanical skill. Plus less spare parts are needed. A starter bike of that type is about $85 ( prices have gone up with steel shortages ). Get a bottle of Green Slime to help the tires stay inflated. The only spare parts you will need is a chain and tubes. Yes, eventually the bearing will grind down and will need to be replaced but no bike will escape that. Cheaper to just replace the bike then unless you can do the labor yourself. Good riding!
END
perhaps if you do get some blood flowing to your brain by excercising on your bike you will realize you need to buy my books right friggin now! www.bisonpress.com
I’m sure it has been quite a time since I last whined and moaned at you to get with the program and have a bicycle. And not only have one in good working order but to actually use it. Spring isn’t that far away if you are too much of a chicken to take your bike out into the snow. Not that we get much snow here, but when we do I find it kind of fun to take out the old two wheeler on the back streets. In one inch of snow most of the cars without studded tires are slipping and sliding as I go whizzing by, grinning like a fool that at least one day out of the year I can beat them to their destination. And if I do start to slid I put it in four wheel drive by putting my feet down. What can I say, I’m easily amused.
*
Look, I know gas didn’t stay over three bucks a gallon as I had guessed. Nor has one of our cities been nuked. But just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean one day I won’t be right. If you stay in smaller cities you can usually get anywhere around town on a bike with a minimum of discomfort. When gas prices do jump again you just need to hop on your bicycle and do most of your errands or commuting on your bike. Use the car once a week for picking up heavy supplies. I realize some of you live in the suburbs and a bike is impractical. When I lived in Oklahoma the entire state hadn’t even heard of sidewalks yet. It was dangerous to bike there. The roads didn’t even have shoulders. But then, gas was $1 a gallon in the mid 90’s. You didn’t need to bike anywhere. Now if Baby Jesus himself smiles down on you, you might see gas at a shade under two bucks a gallon for a half a day before it goes back up. Two dollar gas is as rare as a nickel candy bar.
*
So some of you are screwed when it comes to a bike being practical. You should have one anyway. You can’t go to work on one but you can use it locally on the weekend. Buy the thing now, ride it as much as possible and learn the basic mechanics. One day, perhaps soon, you may not have a choice and you will be forced to use one for transportation regardless of how impractical it is. As impractical as living on a wheat diet or carrying your water from a stream or digging an outhouse. Saving major money by doing without a car is only one reason to embrace a bike. Number one, if you are a tree-hugging Commie I-Gore worshipping granola eating flaming liberal puke the absolute best thing you can do for the environment is to do without a car. Number two, if you ever, for any reason, must bug out of town the best way to do it is on a bike. You won’t tire yourself out and you can go long distances each day, and you can move around clogged and stalled automotive roads.
*
If a hurricane is coming, if a distant target upwind just got nuked, if a plague has broken out, the best way to get the heck out of Dodge is to mount up and to start pedaling. The roads will instantly be crowded with cars and a short distance from the start cars will run out of gas and start becoming immovable roadblocks. Tempers will flare and the idiots will start fighting each other. The gas stations on the freeway will soon run out of gas and stay that way for days. The hotels will be overbooked and grocery stores will start to run out of food. You might, if lucky, get ten miles an hour. On the other hand, if you hopped on your trusty steed and started pedaling at a modest pace of ten miles an hour ( trying harder you can get 15 mph, a pro in shape perhaps 20 mph- you can easily do ten unless you are really old and/or crippled ). Perhaps at some points you might slow a bit due to the need to work around an obstacle but for the most part you can get quite a distance from the city quickly without breaking much of a sweat.
*
If you are in reasonable shape. If it is the first time back on a bike since you were twelve years old you are in trouble. Riding a bike now is the same as shooting your gun now. So you will be ready when the need arises. I’m not even talking about being in great shape, just reasonably. Lose a little weight, cut back on the cigarettes, stop eating bacon, eggs and hash browns every breakfast, etc. Even if you don’t do any of that, at least force yourself on the bike regularly. Don’t kill yourself doing it, start slow. But keep at it. You might need a beer and a cigarette after each ride but at least you are getting your body used to it. I used to run for an hour and then go home and get drunk and smoke. Sometimes even cigs. But I was also in my early twenties. Edging closer to my mid forties I find it easier to not abuse my body as much anymore. So if any of you ladies want to get me drunk and take advantage of me, it will only take about half a beer anymore.
*
Spending less than a hundred bucks on a bicycle now will do several things for you. Insurance against being unable to drive an auto. Insurance that you can quickly leave town regardless of how busy the Interstate is. Get you into better shape. Teach you a new skill ( bike mechanic ) and give you the ability to really cut back on your budget if forced to ( repo the car and suddenly save $500 a month from payments, insurance and gas ). So if you love your car too much, fine. Just get and practice with the bike as an insurance policy. I’ve been walking for about three months now and I really do miss my bike. This weekend I’m going to get it back on the road ( should cost about $20 ) and go joy riding since it is forecast to get over 45 degrees. It will serve me right if I need to rebuild my biking muscles, since I’ve been a little slacker. I’ll practice what I preach, you go down to Wal-Mart and start riding.
*
A coaster brake bike ( no gears, step back on pedals to brake ) is the best for reduced maintenance and less mechanical skill. Plus less spare parts are needed. A starter bike of that type is about $85 ( prices have gone up with steel shortages ). Get a bottle of Green Slime to help the tires stay inflated. The only spare parts you will need is a chain and tubes. Yes, eventually the bearing will grind down and will need to be replaced but no bike will escape that. Cheaper to just replace the bike then unless you can do the labor yourself. Good riding!
END
perhaps if you do get some blood flowing to your brain by excercising on your bike you will realize you need to buy my books right friggin now! www.bisonpress.com
Monday, January 29, 2007
tax return
TAX RETURN INVESTMENT
Well, it’s about that time of year again. Those of us that made too much money are dreading tax return time since they are going to owe some money. Us serfs on the other hand usually make so little that we can get most of our Fed income taxes back. On principle I hate loaning the government money interest free under coercion but my fear of owing money and somehow magically extracting extra money out of my butt is such that I go ahead and let them withhold more than they need to. Better to have Uncle Sammy owe you than the other way around.
*
So if you are part of the group that is going to see money coming back chances are that you have already spent it. The sports freaks already know how big of a flat screen TV that can afford. The computer geeks already know how many inches of neon tubing they can afford in their new desktop case. The gamers expect the PlayStation 3 consoles to be in by the time their checks are deposited and they already have a wish list of games to go with it. Me and you on the other hand get to have no fun whatsoever. We have chosen the responsible path and as such are forced to “invest” the money. Well, we are still wasting it really. If our investment pays off we are probably going to die anyway. The cosmic rulers are going to choose the best equipped survivalists and have fun by having weird and strange tragic events befall them, just for their own amusement.
*
But still, we struggle ahead in spite of the odds against us and are busy thinking of ways to invest our own money that is being generously returned to us. More ammunition? More wheat? More silver bullion? Another surplus rifle ( yesterday Big 5 sporting goods advertised a $75 M-N rifle )? Here I wanted to stop you. It is all well and good to be able to want to increase your survival supplies. Bully for you. I am all for it. However. Stop and think for a moment. Are you investing wisely? A ten dollar item you can buy any payday. A twenty dollar item the same. Some of us might not even have a problem coming up with an extra hundred bucks on a whim. Some of you never see an extra dime and will take this opportunity to buy all the many and varied small expense items they have been missing. Buckets of wheat. Boxes of ammo. LED lamps. Rechargeable batteries. Some higher price items such as a Zip stove. This is your only opportunity to buy your supplies until next year.
*
But if you are one that can spend about $100 a month on supplies than you want to focus on the higher dollar items that you can only buy now. Such as generators or PV panels or a getaway vehicle ( used of course ) or a travel trailer or land. Perhaps a chest freezer full of beef before the prices go up. I mean, don’t waste the investment. I for one see no need for a generator. I have back up lanterns for light as well as two trickle charged 12v batteries in my trailer plus plenty of propane. If my power goes out my only inconvenience really is lack of the Internet. I have plenty of spare paperback books for entertainment to replace that. But if you have $300 worth of meat in the freezer a generator looks like a much better investment. I know I need to eventually buy the PV panels. Before the prices go up and before I can move out to the boonies. But right now they are not necessary as I have a solar recharger for the smaller batteries.
*
And this assumes you wouldn’t be better off just paying down debt. Sure, if you have twenty grand in credit card debt and receive a $600 refund check it makes more sense to invest in beans and bullets. But that same amount would do a lot of damage to a three thousand dollar credit card debt. For those of you renting, consider buying that crappy lot of land sold on E-Bay. A $1,000 trailer lot in the middle of the swamp down south near a town with twenty percent unemployment is not the place you want to live now but in the future if you are unemployed and have nothing to lose it might gain some charm. You can garden and fish and stay warm in the winter without heat ( after which you can dodge malarial mosquitoes and tornados ) for about the same cost as two months rent of your fancy apartment in the city.
*
Consider Craig’s List, an Internet classified ad service. I don’t know if it is nationwide, but is head and shoulders above your local newspaper. I gave away my old trailer through them and it was spoken for hours later- and that was advertising off the Reno location for Carson City thirty miles away. Looking for another trailer after I got done living in the Hippy Bread Van I noticed quite a selection of very cheap trailers, listed by location and having pictures. I’m talking like $500 trailers while the local newspaper lists only $3,000 plus units. Do you need a trailer? If it is to be used as an escape pod, why not. You are making an investment here. The only sure thing is gold and that is not an investment but purchasing power savings. Any thing else is a gamble.
*
A lot of junk land you may never see, a trailer you may never live in. A generator you may never use. A freezer full of meat that might be more expensive than what they are selling six months from now. It is all a gamble. But wouldn’t it be nice to invest at least some of your tax return and sleep a little easier at night?
END
Feel better about your wasted life- send me some of your tax return so it goes to a better cause. www.bisonpress.com for books or just send cash for the hell of it through PayPal or through the mail. All contact information is on my web page. Trust me, it will be going me which is the best investment.
Well, it’s about that time of year again. Those of us that made too much money are dreading tax return time since they are going to owe some money. Us serfs on the other hand usually make so little that we can get most of our Fed income taxes back. On principle I hate loaning the government money interest free under coercion but my fear of owing money and somehow magically extracting extra money out of my butt is such that I go ahead and let them withhold more than they need to. Better to have Uncle Sammy owe you than the other way around.
*
So if you are part of the group that is going to see money coming back chances are that you have already spent it. The sports freaks already know how big of a flat screen TV that can afford. The computer geeks already know how many inches of neon tubing they can afford in their new desktop case. The gamers expect the PlayStation 3 consoles to be in by the time their checks are deposited and they already have a wish list of games to go with it. Me and you on the other hand get to have no fun whatsoever. We have chosen the responsible path and as such are forced to “invest” the money. Well, we are still wasting it really. If our investment pays off we are probably going to die anyway. The cosmic rulers are going to choose the best equipped survivalists and have fun by having weird and strange tragic events befall them, just for their own amusement.
*
But still, we struggle ahead in spite of the odds against us and are busy thinking of ways to invest our own money that is being generously returned to us. More ammunition? More wheat? More silver bullion? Another surplus rifle ( yesterday Big 5 sporting goods advertised a $75 M-N rifle )? Here I wanted to stop you. It is all well and good to be able to want to increase your survival supplies. Bully for you. I am all for it. However. Stop and think for a moment. Are you investing wisely? A ten dollar item you can buy any payday. A twenty dollar item the same. Some of us might not even have a problem coming up with an extra hundred bucks on a whim. Some of you never see an extra dime and will take this opportunity to buy all the many and varied small expense items they have been missing. Buckets of wheat. Boxes of ammo. LED lamps. Rechargeable batteries. Some higher price items such as a Zip stove. This is your only opportunity to buy your supplies until next year.
*
But if you are one that can spend about $100 a month on supplies than you want to focus on the higher dollar items that you can only buy now. Such as generators or PV panels or a getaway vehicle ( used of course ) or a travel trailer or land. Perhaps a chest freezer full of beef before the prices go up. I mean, don’t waste the investment. I for one see no need for a generator. I have back up lanterns for light as well as two trickle charged 12v batteries in my trailer plus plenty of propane. If my power goes out my only inconvenience really is lack of the Internet. I have plenty of spare paperback books for entertainment to replace that. But if you have $300 worth of meat in the freezer a generator looks like a much better investment. I know I need to eventually buy the PV panels. Before the prices go up and before I can move out to the boonies. But right now they are not necessary as I have a solar recharger for the smaller batteries.
*
And this assumes you wouldn’t be better off just paying down debt. Sure, if you have twenty grand in credit card debt and receive a $600 refund check it makes more sense to invest in beans and bullets. But that same amount would do a lot of damage to a three thousand dollar credit card debt. For those of you renting, consider buying that crappy lot of land sold on E-Bay. A $1,000 trailer lot in the middle of the swamp down south near a town with twenty percent unemployment is not the place you want to live now but in the future if you are unemployed and have nothing to lose it might gain some charm. You can garden and fish and stay warm in the winter without heat ( after which you can dodge malarial mosquitoes and tornados ) for about the same cost as two months rent of your fancy apartment in the city.
*
Consider Craig’s List, an Internet classified ad service. I don’t know if it is nationwide, but is head and shoulders above your local newspaper. I gave away my old trailer through them and it was spoken for hours later- and that was advertising off the Reno location for Carson City thirty miles away. Looking for another trailer after I got done living in the Hippy Bread Van I noticed quite a selection of very cheap trailers, listed by location and having pictures. I’m talking like $500 trailers while the local newspaper lists only $3,000 plus units. Do you need a trailer? If it is to be used as an escape pod, why not. You are making an investment here. The only sure thing is gold and that is not an investment but purchasing power savings. Any thing else is a gamble.
*
A lot of junk land you may never see, a trailer you may never live in. A generator you may never use. A freezer full of meat that might be more expensive than what they are selling six months from now. It is all a gamble. But wouldn’t it be nice to invest at least some of your tax return and sleep a little easier at night?
END
Feel better about your wasted life- send me some of your tax return so it goes to a better cause. www.bisonpress.com for books or just send cash for the hell of it through PayPal or through the mail. All contact information is on my web page. Trust me, it will be going me which is the best investment.
Saturday, January 27, 2007
can foods
CANNED FOODS
Yesterday I write an astonishingly brilliant piece on substitutes for whole wheat kernels. Today I go shopping at Wal-Mart and find that they have raised the price of dry beans by about ten percent from last week. Oh the humanity! Here I am thinking my waste products don’t contain even a hint of odor and the bastards try to make a liar out of me. I wonder if the head suit in charge of the food section at Wally World reads my blog? What do you think the odds are? Doesn’t he realize that I’m trying to drum up business for him? Here is a store that tries to counteract the price inflation the government causes and so every little two bit tinhorn power hungry civil servant ( with help from college professors, lawyers, Union members and other assorted Communists ) lines up to trash talk the only place around giving poor folks a break on prices at every opportunity. But all you prissy Yuppie SUV driving snobs only shop at Target and Trader Joes and since you make sooooo much money you can wipe your butt with it and throw it down the porcelain LazyBoy and try to close down those Wal-Mart’s so that we are forced to sell our grandmothers into white prostitution to be able to buy groceries.
*
So I am one of the few voices in the wilderness telling you that Wal-Mart is one of the few organizations that actually help the poor and then they go ahead and pull this kind of stunt, jacking up the price of a product I’m trying to sell for them. Hell, I’m not even bitching about them drastically cutting back on the number of cashiers or reducing the amount of goods on the shelves. I can understand. I’ll wait a bit longer to check out. I can buy multiples of my desired items in case they are out of stock next week. I can work with them here so they can continue to make enough profit to support the multitudes of family members somehow remotely related to Sam Walton. I’m sure the second cousin of the first house maid that cleaned Sam’s house is in on the action. I am not arguing about that. You scratch my back, I scratch yours. No free lunch. I get it.
*
So despite this injustice, even though they appear to be conspiring against me, I quickly switch mental gears and try to think of a new strategy to beat the latest price sodomy. It is now cheaper to buy a one pound can of refried beans than it is to buy one pound of dry pinto beans. The fools!!! Hahaha! I have out foxed the evil ones yet again. Okay, I know cooking up a pot of beans produces more than a pound after water is soaked in. And lard is added. But if you consider that you have no cooking fuel needs and that the beans come in their own storage container, it still makes sense economically to switch from dry goods to canned goods.
*
Look at fruit. Those types that can be canned are much cheaper and anymore, with today’s crappy tasting produce, taste better than fresh. I used to be totally opposed to canned foods. I prefer fresh foods. Because I prefer to process my own foods to buy food cheaper and to get better nutrition. It is too dangerous to rely on prepared foods. You get into the habit and your health and wallet suffer. But with today’s food costs rising because of inflation ( caused by the government ) and higher oil costs ( caused by government military involvement ) and higher government caused taxes and regulations and wasteful agricultural practices encouraged by government, we sometimes have to cut corners. Yes, it’s true, the government is actually trying to kill us by raising the costs of food. So stay away from processed foods if possible and try to deny the extra income to the foul greedy bastards. But if processed food is cheaper while at the same time being as nutritious, it is silly not to get the cost savings.
*
The key phrase being if that food is as nutritious, or pretty darn close. I will gladly eat canned pineapple or peaches rather than the fresh produce. Granted, you don’t want the can sitting around for three years degrading the vitamin content. But recently canned fruits contain better tasting fruit that was ripened in the field and immediately canned. The fresh produce is picked way too early and almost rots in front of your eyes in the brief span between not ripe enough and good enough to eat. To get your needed fresh foods with enzymes I eat fresh potatoes and green salads. Always on the cheap side compared to most other produce. Beans and meats from the can won’t degrade their nutrients. It is just another storage system. I don’t like the meats as they contain nitrates but you can always can your own to avoid that. And can your own butter. It is too pricey to buy it through the mail.
*
Canned foods are a proven storage system that because of incredible volume is sold dirt cheap. Perhaps more storage in cans should replace some of our dried storage.
END
Yesterday I write an astonishingly brilliant piece on substitutes for whole wheat kernels. Today I go shopping at Wal-Mart and find that they have raised the price of dry beans by about ten percent from last week. Oh the humanity! Here I am thinking my waste products don’t contain even a hint of odor and the bastards try to make a liar out of me. I wonder if the head suit in charge of the food section at Wally World reads my blog? What do you think the odds are? Doesn’t he realize that I’m trying to drum up business for him? Here is a store that tries to counteract the price inflation the government causes and so every little two bit tinhorn power hungry civil servant ( with help from college professors, lawyers, Union members and other assorted Communists ) lines up to trash talk the only place around giving poor folks a break on prices at every opportunity. But all you prissy Yuppie SUV driving snobs only shop at Target and Trader Joes and since you make sooooo much money you can wipe your butt with it and throw it down the porcelain LazyBoy and try to close down those Wal-Mart’s so that we are forced to sell our grandmothers into white prostitution to be able to buy groceries.
*
So I am one of the few voices in the wilderness telling you that Wal-Mart is one of the few organizations that actually help the poor and then they go ahead and pull this kind of stunt, jacking up the price of a product I’m trying to sell for them. Hell, I’m not even bitching about them drastically cutting back on the number of cashiers or reducing the amount of goods on the shelves. I can understand. I’ll wait a bit longer to check out. I can buy multiples of my desired items in case they are out of stock next week. I can work with them here so they can continue to make enough profit to support the multitudes of family members somehow remotely related to Sam Walton. I’m sure the second cousin of the first house maid that cleaned Sam’s house is in on the action. I am not arguing about that. You scratch my back, I scratch yours. No free lunch. I get it.
*
So despite this injustice, even though they appear to be conspiring against me, I quickly switch mental gears and try to think of a new strategy to beat the latest price sodomy. It is now cheaper to buy a one pound can of refried beans than it is to buy one pound of dry pinto beans. The fools!!! Hahaha! I have out foxed the evil ones yet again. Okay, I know cooking up a pot of beans produces more than a pound after water is soaked in. And lard is added. But if you consider that you have no cooking fuel needs and that the beans come in their own storage container, it still makes sense economically to switch from dry goods to canned goods.
*
Look at fruit. Those types that can be canned are much cheaper and anymore, with today’s crappy tasting produce, taste better than fresh. I used to be totally opposed to canned foods. I prefer fresh foods. Because I prefer to process my own foods to buy food cheaper and to get better nutrition. It is too dangerous to rely on prepared foods. You get into the habit and your health and wallet suffer. But with today’s food costs rising because of inflation ( caused by the government ) and higher oil costs ( caused by government military involvement ) and higher government caused taxes and regulations and wasteful agricultural practices encouraged by government, we sometimes have to cut corners. Yes, it’s true, the government is actually trying to kill us by raising the costs of food. So stay away from processed foods if possible and try to deny the extra income to the foul greedy bastards. But if processed food is cheaper while at the same time being as nutritious, it is silly not to get the cost savings.
*
The key phrase being if that food is as nutritious, or pretty darn close. I will gladly eat canned pineapple or peaches rather than the fresh produce. Granted, you don’t want the can sitting around for three years degrading the vitamin content. But recently canned fruits contain better tasting fruit that was ripened in the field and immediately canned. The fresh produce is picked way too early and almost rots in front of your eyes in the brief span between not ripe enough and good enough to eat. To get your needed fresh foods with enzymes I eat fresh potatoes and green salads. Always on the cheap side compared to most other produce. Beans and meats from the can won’t degrade their nutrients. It is just another storage system. I don’t like the meats as they contain nitrates but you can always can your own to avoid that. And can your own butter. It is too pricey to buy it through the mail.
*
Canned foods are a proven storage system that because of incredible volume is sold dirt cheap. Perhaps more storage in cans should replace some of our dried storage.
END
Friday, January 26, 2007
beyond wheat
DOING WITHOUT WHEAT KERNALS
Several events recently got me to thinking about alternatives to wheat kernels. The first was a post somewhere on the Internet saying that Surplus N Survival didn’t have the generic grain grinder anymore. I went on over to their web site and took a look around but couldn’t find anything. Not that this in itself would be unusual since navigating their site has always been a pain in the butt. But two of us makes a trend. Suddenly it is going to cost twice as much for a grain grinder, unless they start carrying it again. The second was the fact that it is winter. Normally in warmer weather I will trek on down to where my Hippie Bread Van is in storage, fire it up and take it for a spin to keep the tires from rotting or the battery from dying. Usually I do that every other month. Of course in winter sometimes it doesn’t happen that often. So if I don’t get out I can’t buy any more wheat ( I refuse to take a taxi ).
*
A third event was slow in coming. I have at least fifteen hundred pounds of wheat. Not near enough, to be sure. I have seven other people to feed so right now we will all live six months and then die a horrible death as we sit glaring at one another thinking how worthless they all were and how we alone should have gotten more wheat to live longer. Ah, the price of family. But storage has always been a problem and that is about as much as I can have about now. The cheapest storage unit in town is $50 a month and while I could afford it I just can’t see spending the equivalent of five years worth of food in storage fees every year. Far better to wait after I’m settled and can buy a permanent storage facility. So while I don’t want to store anymore wheat, I can’t NOT buy storage food. It eats at me unless I am stockpiling. Heck, I don’t even care if it is going to be thrown away in a few years, as long as I have the extra now.
*
So I’ve started buying rice, beans and white flour. I can tuck these away in the back of cupboards and under small storage areas. The last trailer I had I had almost a years supply of storage food under the two seats of the kitchen table ( in an RV the table folds down and forms a second bed- for those uptight Yuppie rabble that are too good for tin houses ) comprised of white flour and rice along with a few canned meats from sales. I don’t have quite as much space in my newest trailer but I am sure I can almost duplicate the last effort. And by the way, after two and a half years the rice and flour in original packages had no infestation. Of course that might have been because it was so friggin cold in the trailer.
*
So my number one problem is solved, the lack of transportation to pick up wheat. Last year a new Super Wal-Mart opened less than a mile down the road from me so I can walk down and do my grocery shopping. Every week I can buy more storage food and the only drawback is the extra weight as I am trying to lug it all home. I still have my bicycle but got tired of putting money into it, especially now that my new job is one third the distance of the old. Walking just seems easier now. Of course I know most of you have already embraced the Doctrine Of Jim and stopped driving a car. At least most of the time. I keep mine as a getaway vehicle. It already paid for itself when I lived in it for five months from the rent savings ( although the cost in stress is another matter ).
*
I also can start to build up my stash of beans. I know I preach wheat only. That is only because a supply of wheat is better than nothing if you are really poor. It is an incomplete protein but still the best of the commonly available grains. It stores forever so it is a one time purchase. However, I know beans are really needed with wheat if you can afford it. I need to build up my stash which is only about 75 pounds ( and those are really old storage and of unknown nutritional value ). Every week I buy a pound of beans and a pound of rice. On the sixth week I buy a five pound sack of white flour. $1 a week. I am in no hurry. Both so I can find storage space and so I can just keep it going as to not get lazy and stop hoarding. If you have little storage food you will of course want to buy more every week.
*
If you go this route you will forego the need for a wheat grinder. I would still have some wheat kernels for sprouting, but there is no need to grind those. If the cheapest grain grinder out there is now $50, then your costs are the same. $80 for 400 pounds of wheat and $50 for the grinder verses $130 for 400 pounds of flour/rice/beans. If you evenly divide the amount of those three you get the following. Flour is 20 cents a pound. Rice is 40 cants and beans are 50 cents. The average cost is about a buck for three pounds if it is a mix of one pound each item. Now, the catch is that these foods will not last forever like the whole wheat kernels will. I would wait no longer than three years to rotate the stock. At the end of two years, start getting rid of the oldest items, replacing them each week. By three years the last of the first years batch is rotated. That way you do it weekly or monthly instead of yearly. Unless you want to come up with the whole amount of $130 each time.
*
I have usually put forth a lot of effort to procure wheat kernels. One time the nearest feed store was a forty mile round trip. Another was 120. Perhaps, while it is the best answer for me ( at least for my core of storage food ), it might not be for you. Yes, with Wal-Mart foods you must rotate your food to avoid spoilage. But it is a variety of foods, it is much closer than the feed store, and it only costs $9 a month to continuously rotate a years worth of food. That is cheaper than an Internet connection or a case of Budweiser beer. You can eat some of it and donate the rest to charity. Your storage container cost is the same but those can be reused. Even if you like the idea of wheat kernels and have already bought a few cheap grinders ( you did buy them when they were $25 after shipping last year when I told you, right? ) these foods will provide variety and are cheap enough to slip under the spouses radar. Fifty cent a pound beans bought in a two pound sack are alright, but not a twenty cent a pound fifty pound sack of wheat. If you are still in fear of the spouses reaction to your preps.
*
That’s enough wisdom for today. I don’t want to hurt myself. Buy my crap!! www.bisonpress.com
Several events recently got me to thinking about alternatives to wheat kernels. The first was a post somewhere on the Internet saying that Surplus N Survival didn’t have the generic grain grinder anymore. I went on over to their web site and took a look around but couldn’t find anything. Not that this in itself would be unusual since navigating their site has always been a pain in the butt. But two of us makes a trend. Suddenly it is going to cost twice as much for a grain grinder, unless they start carrying it again. The second was the fact that it is winter. Normally in warmer weather I will trek on down to where my Hippie Bread Van is in storage, fire it up and take it for a spin to keep the tires from rotting or the battery from dying. Usually I do that every other month. Of course in winter sometimes it doesn’t happen that often. So if I don’t get out I can’t buy any more wheat ( I refuse to take a taxi ).
*
A third event was slow in coming. I have at least fifteen hundred pounds of wheat. Not near enough, to be sure. I have seven other people to feed so right now we will all live six months and then die a horrible death as we sit glaring at one another thinking how worthless they all were and how we alone should have gotten more wheat to live longer. Ah, the price of family. But storage has always been a problem and that is about as much as I can have about now. The cheapest storage unit in town is $50 a month and while I could afford it I just can’t see spending the equivalent of five years worth of food in storage fees every year. Far better to wait after I’m settled and can buy a permanent storage facility. So while I don’t want to store anymore wheat, I can’t NOT buy storage food. It eats at me unless I am stockpiling. Heck, I don’t even care if it is going to be thrown away in a few years, as long as I have the extra now.
*
So I’ve started buying rice, beans and white flour. I can tuck these away in the back of cupboards and under small storage areas. The last trailer I had I had almost a years supply of storage food under the two seats of the kitchen table ( in an RV the table folds down and forms a second bed- for those uptight Yuppie rabble that are too good for tin houses ) comprised of white flour and rice along with a few canned meats from sales. I don’t have quite as much space in my newest trailer but I am sure I can almost duplicate the last effort. And by the way, after two and a half years the rice and flour in original packages had no infestation. Of course that might have been because it was so friggin cold in the trailer.
*
So my number one problem is solved, the lack of transportation to pick up wheat. Last year a new Super Wal-Mart opened less than a mile down the road from me so I can walk down and do my grocery shopping. Every week I can buy more storage food and the only drawback is the extra weight as I am trying to lug it all home. I still have my bicycle but got tired of putting money into it, especially now that my new job is one third the distance of the old. Walking just seems easier now. Of course I know most of you have already embraced the Doctrine Of Jim and stopped driving a car. At least most of the time. I keep mine as a getaway vehicle. It already paid for itself when I lived in it for five months from the rent savings ( although the cost in stress is another matter ).
*
I also can start to build up my stash of beans. I know I preach wheat only. That is only because a supply of wheat is better than nothing if you are really poor. It is an incomplete protein but still the best of the commonly available grains. It stores forever so it is a one time purchase. However, I know beans are really needed with wheat if you can afford it. I need to build up my stash which is only about 75 pounds ( and those are really old storage and of unknown nutritional value ). Every week I buy a pound of beans and a pound of rice. On the sixth week I buy a five pound sack of white flour. $1 a week. I am in no hurry. Both so I can find storage space and so I can just keep it going as to not get lazy and stop hoarding. If you have little storage food you will of course want to buy more every week.
*
If you go this route you will forego the need for a wheat grinder. I would still have some wheat kernels for sprouting, but there is no need to grind those. If the cheapest grain grinder out there is now $50, then your costs are the same. $80 for 400 pounds of wheat and $50 for the grinder verses $130 for 400 pounds of flour/rice/beans. If you evenly divide the amount of those three you get the following. Flour is 20 cents a pound. Rice is 40 cants and beans are 50 cents. The average cost is about a buck for three pounds if it is a mix of one pound each item. Now, the catch is that these foods will not last forever like the whole wheat kernels will. I would wait no longer than three years to rotate the stock. At the end of two years, start getting rid of the oldest items, replacing them each week. By three years the last of the first years batch is rotated. That way you do it weekly or monthly instead of yearly. Unless you want to come up with the whole amount of $130 each time.
*
I have usually put forth a lot of effort to procure wheat kernels. One time the nearest feed store was a forty mile round trip. Another was 120. Perhaps, while it is the best answer for me ( at least for my core of storage food ), it might not be for you. Yes, with Wal-Mart foods you must rotate your food to avoid spoilage. But it is a variety of foods, it is much closer than the feed store, and it only costs $9 a month to continuously rotate a years worth of food. That is cheaper than an Internet connection or a case of Budweiser beer. You can eat some of it and donate the rest to charity. Your storage container cost is the same but those can be reused. Even if you like the idea of wheat kernels and have already bought a few cheap grinders ( you did buy them when they were $25 after shipping last year when I told you, right? ) these foods will provide variety and are cheap enough to slip under the spouses radar. Fifty cent a pound beans bought in a two pound sack are alright, but not a twenty cent a pound fifty pound sack of wheat. If you are still in fear of the spouses reaction to your preps.
*
That’s enough wisdom for today. I don’t want to hurt myself. Buy my crap!! www.bisonpress.com
Thursday, January 25, 2007
rome
RISE AND FALL OF ROME
Theories about the rise and fall of Rome are like sphincters- everybody has one and they usually stink. However, it should go without saying that once I latch on to a theory that I like the rest of you should all embrace it as The Last Word From On High. It will make your life much easier and simplify my writing by requiring no documentation when I venture an opinion. That might be too much to hope for but I’ll try it anyway and hope for the best.
*
The rise and fall of Rome closely parallels the warming and cooling of Europe. Just as the Egyptian empire based its strength on the waters of the Nile giving it crops when all others faced a drier climate ( not that it always worked but that is another tale ), Rome’s success was based on a favorable climate that produced grain surpluses. Granted, Rome had a superior military model and an excellent road system and also suffered infighting and inflation. But underlying all that was the fact that wheat surpluses fed the urban areas and the army. Without a surplus to feed the army new land couldn’t be defeated and planted with yet more crops worked by the new slaves. But all the new land and slaves were pretty much worthless unless the weather cooperated.
*
Is it a coincidence that the Mediterranean climate started to advance northward as Rome started to gain power? Was it another coincidence that Rome started experiencing major problems as the weather started cooling and getting wetter? Wheat is a crop that doesn’t like excessive water. Prior to Rome Northern Europe planted millet as a staple food. Rome was based on wheat. As Europe started to warm and farther expansion of wheat planting became feasible, it is natural that Rome started to expand. After several hundred years of living large the weather started to change back to “normal”. Which coincided with the Asian herders being forced west as their traditional grasslands started drying up. This helped put more pressure militarily on Rome and the bribing of the herders not to attack only helped bankrupt them faster. But debased silver is only a sad side note of Imperial decline when the primary problem is that changing weather patterns started decreasing the wheat available to feed everybody.
*
During its heyday, Rome experienced none of the normal famine problems due to droughts or seasonal changes of weather. The area it controlled and the surpluses generated were so great that a failed crop in one area was compensated with trade. Just as is the case today, just on a larger scale. It was only when yearly fluctuations gave way to a more permanent weather change that problems started. The system of forcing excess planting to pay taxes led to surpluses to feed everyone in normal times. When your crop planting areas shrink yearly there is no surplus, then not enough for decreased consumption. The whole system failed.
*
Could it happen to us? Will the end of the American Empire be tied to the next ice age? I would say no, if our basic social fabric hadn’t been eroded by generations of welfare. No one will sacrifice for the common good any more, a condition encouraged by the central government to control us. Which will backfire on them in the near future as the last of the oil will be gleefully used to joyride to the shopping mall and no one will give up their car to see that our great grandchildren are fed. Unfortunately we will fall with the government. It would be quite an easy matter to live comfortable through the end of the oil age. If everyone wasn’t so focused on wallowing in excess wealth and luxury. The end is nigh, and we are all partying like there will be no tomorrow. Which now there won’t be for most of us since we consumed all of our non-renewable resources.
*
We now have a global network of trade to feed us no matter what local weather disruptions occur. But we are using up the fuel that makes that trade possible with pretty trinkets, mindless entertainments and financial manipulations contributing to nothing but a rearrangement of the Titanic deck chairs. Today we substitute oil for grain as far as a safety net to see ourselves through bad harvests. As long as there is oil we should see adequate crops to feed us. Baring something far out of the ordinary. Just keep in mind that if the might of Rome hinged on changing weather patterns, we too will easily be affected under future changes if we don’t have our oil to shield us.
END
I don't have the energy to beg you to buy my books at www.bisonpress.com today. you're lucky.
Theories about the rise and fall of Rome are like sphincters- everybody has one and they usually stink. However, it should go without saying that once I latch on to a theory that I like the rest of you should all embrace it as The Last Word From On High. It will make your life much easier and simplify my writing by requiring no documentation when I venture an opinion. That might be too much to hope for but I’ll try it anyway and hope for the best.
*
The rise and fall of Rome closely parallels the warming and cooling of Europe. Just as the Egyptian empire based its strength on the waters of the Nile giving it crops when all others faced a drier climate ( not that it always worked but that is another tale ), Rome’s success was based on a favorable climate that produced grain surpluses. Granted, Rome had a superior military model and an excellent road system and also suffered infighting and inflation. But underlying all that was the fact that wheat surpluses fed the urban areas and the army. Without a surplus to feed the army new land couldn’t be defeated and planted with yet more crops worked by the new slaves. But all the new land and slaves were pretty much worthless unless the weather cooperated.
*
Is it a coincidence that the Mediterranean climate started to advance northward as Rome started to gain power? Was it another coincidence that Rome started experiencing major problems as the weather started cooling and getting wetter? Wheat is a crop that doesn’t like excessive water. Prior to Rome Northern Europe planted millet as a staple food. Rome was based on wheat. As Europe started to warm and farther expansion of wheat planting became feasible, it is natural that Rome started to expand. After several hundred years of living large the weather started to change back to “normal”. Which coincided with the Asian herders being forced west as their traditional grasslands started drying up. This helped put more pressure militarily on Rome and the bribing of the herders not to attack only helped bankrupt them faster. But debased silver is only a sad side note of Imperial decline when the primary problem is that changing weather patterns started decreasing the wheat available to feed everybody.
*
During its heyday, Rome experienced none of the normal famine problems due to droughts or seasonal changes of weather. The area it controlled and the surpluses generated were so great that a failed crop in one area was compensated with trade. Just as is the case today, just on a larger scale. It was only when yearly fluctuations gave way to a more permanent weather change that problems started. The system of forcing excess planting to pay taxes led to surpluses to feed everyone in normal times. When your crop planting areas shrink yearly there is no surplus, then not enough for decreased consumption. The whole system failed.
*
Could it happen to us? Will the end of the American Empire be tied to the next ice age? I would say no, if our basic social fabric hadn’t been eroded by generations of welfare. No one will sacrifice for the common good any more, a condition encouraged by the central government to control us. Which will backfire on them in the near future as the last of the oil will be gleefully used to joyride to the shopping mall and no one will give up their car to see that our great grandchildren are fed. Unfortunately we will fall with the government. It would be quite an easy matter to live comfortable through the end of the oil age. If everyone wasn’t so focused on wallowing in excess wealth and luxury. The end is nigh, and we are all partying like there will be no tomorrow. Which now there won’t be for most of us since we consumed all of our non-renewable resources.
*
We now have a global network of trade to feed us no matter what local weather disruptions occur. But we are using up the fuel that makes that trade possible with pretty trinkets, mindless entertainments and financial manipulations contributing to nothing but a rearrangement of the Titanic deck chairs. Today we substitute oil for grain as far as a safety net to see ourselves through bad harvests. As long as there is oil we should see adequate crops to feed us. Baring something far out of the ordinary. Just keep in mind that if the might of Rome hinged on changing weather patterns, we too will easily be affected under future changes if we don’t have our oil to shield us.
END
I don't have the energy to beg you to buy my books at www.bisonpress.com today. you're lucky.
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
thrift store
THRIFT STORE STOCKPILING
I can hear you already. Thrift store stockpiling is a no-brainer and why in the name of all that is holy are you subjecting us to this madness. Well, first of all, I need to take this opportunity to tell you in no uncertain terms that if you fail to buy my books at www.bisonpress.com bad juju will haunt you for the rest of your days and you will look back and beseech your all mighty deity to give you better wisdom in the next life. And second of all I encountered a random blog yesterday on the Internet that planted a little seed of paranoia in my already overwhelmed grey matter that if squeezed would spurt forth a vomiting stream of fright and despair. That is something you don’t want to see. The point was this- we are all basing our frugal lifestyle on the assumption that thrift store supplies won’t dry up.
*
Okay, that one kind of hurt. This is something I didn’t consider much. I mean, sure, it might have occurred to me as a glancing blow. A whisper of a thought I immediately lost as the cat jumped up on my lap, lost her balance as her abnormally fat thighs threw her off balance and she dug in with her claws to save her from falling a whole two feet since obviously the obese feline forgot cats can land on their feet. Or I was driving in traffic and the village idiot ( we really do have two here in town- they both have three wheel bicycles they pedal around doing about one and a half miles an hour with their heads cocked to one side with a constant stream of drool cascading down their contorted faces ) causes a car to stop suddenly and a chain reaction starts and I slam on my brakes by lifting my butt out of my seat and standing on the damn thing and hurtling curses at both the fact that I am working for a non-profit organization that can’t really afford preventive maintenance on this hunk of crap Ford with 150,000 miles on it that acts up more than an inflamed hemorrhoid and also society in general that allows the Special Educated out into the general populace instead of making them stay at home or in a dim, dank institutionalized dungeon somewhere.
*
As soon as the economy really starts to take a nosedive ( not some lame recession where some company goes out of business so they can screw over the workers who had a retirement program with them and send the jobs over to China and rename the company from Joe Bobs Machine Tools to Most Honorable Happy Shiny Tool Company and keep the white boy from Yale as the CEO and give him ten million bucks a year while the peasants in the factory earn twenty five cents a day but they really don’t care since rice is five cents a pound and they write scornful hateful letters back home laughing at Grandpa Chin for still shoveling pig crap at the farm when he could be working fourteen hours a day with one bathroom break assembling computer boards by hand ) and people start losing their homes to the bank and their wives get laid off and they are trying to sell fruit at a street corner but the city sends a SWAT team to arrest them for operating a business without a permit, why then there just won’t be a darn thing left at the thrift store for you to buy, will there?
*
The only reason there are thrift stores bursting at the seams with near new items is that Wal-Mart sells cloths so cheap that most people can afford to throw their clothes away at the slightest greedy whim. Oh, my butt looks soooo big, I’d better buy another fashion that doesn’t show my belly fat bulging over the tops of my jeans so I can try to get a guy to live with me long enough so I can get pregnant and get on welfare. You have so many clothes being donated that the excess that is not deemed rack worthy is sold as scrap by the bundle/semi-truck load full. This is great for us frugal types. Slacks at $2, shirts at $1. Sweaters at $3. Jackets at $4. You can buy new retail shoes, underwear and socks every year for under $30 and get the rest from a thrift store for an average of $1.50-$3.00 a garment. Clothes are so cheap this way you don’t even need to budget for them.
*
And of course you can get lots of other nifty stuff at the thrift store such as furniture and kitchen ware and books and games. If you religiously visit most of the thrift stores in your town every week after a short period of time you could stock your entire house for pennies on the dollar. But this is all a symptom of our throw away, oil subsidized economy. It will not last forever. Get as much as you possibly can now. Buy all the slacks and shirts and sweaters and shoes that you can. Yes, it is a bunch of junk taking up room. But few of us can grow our own cotton and weave our own clothes. Come hard times, what you stockpile is the only thing there will be for you to wear. Few of us can gain the skills we need to be self sufficient. Stockpiling is what works the best for us. Stockpile all your clothes now. It can be done very cheap. Heck, there is even one store in town that posts a calendar of the coming sales ( say, one half off ladies clothing Thursday the 12th ). See if you can’t get the inside scoop from an employee about these kinds of sales to save even more than normal.
*
Happy hunting.
END
I can hear you already. Thrift store stockpiling is a no-brainer and why in the name of all that is holy are you subjecting us to this madness. Well, first of all, I need to take this opportunity to tell you in no uncertain terms that if you fail to buy my books at www.bisonpress.com bad juju will haunt you for the rest of your days and you will look back and beseech your all mighty deity to give you better wisdom in the next life. And second of all I encountered a random blog yesterday on the Internet that planted a little seed of paranoia in my already overwhelmed grey matter that if squeezed would spurt forth a vomiting stream of fright and despair. That is something you don’t want to see. The point was this- we are all basing our frugal lifestyle on the assumption that thrift store supplies won’t dry up.
*
Okay, that one kind of hurt. This is something I didn’t consider much. I mean, sure, it might have occurred to me as a glancing blow. A whisper of a thought I immediately lost as the cat jumped up on my lap, lost her balance as her abnormally fat thighs threw her off balance and she dug in with her claws to save her from falling a whole two feet since obviously the obese feline forgot cats can land on their feet. Or I was driving in traffic and the village idiot ( we really do have two here in town- they both have three wheel bicycles they pedal around doing about one and a half miles an hour with their heads cocked to one side with a constant stream of drool cascading down their contorted faces ) causes a car to stop suddenly and a chain reaction starts and I slam on my brakes by lifting my butt out of my seat and standing on the damn thing and hurtling curses at both the fact that I am working for a non-profit organization that can’t really afford preventive maintenance on this hunk of crap Ford with 150,000 miles on it that acts up more than an inflamed hemorrhoid and also society in general that allows the Special Educated out into the general populace instead of making them stay at home or in a dim, dank institutionalized dungeon somewhere.
*
As soon as the economy really starts to take a nosedive ( not some lame recession where some company goes out of business so they can screw over the workers who had a retirement program with them and send the jobs over to China and rename the company from Joe Bobs Machine Tools to Most Honorable Happy Shiny Tool Company and keep the white boy from Yale as the CEO and give him ten million bucks a year while the peasants in the factory earn twenty five cents a day but they really don’t care since rice is five cents a pound and they write scornful hateful letters back home laughing at Grandpa Chin for still shoveling pig crap at the farm when he could be working fourteen hours a day with one bathroom break assembling computer boards by hand ) and people start losing their homes to the bank and their wives get laid off and they are trying to sell fruit at a street corner but the city sends a SWAT team to arrest them for operating a business without a permit, why then there just won’t be a darn thing left at the thrift store for you to buy, will there?
*
The only reason there are thrift stores bursting at the seams with near new items is that Wal-Mart sells cloths so cheap that most people can afford to throw their clothes away at the slightest greedy whim. Oh, my butt looks soooo big, I’d better buy another fashion that doesn’t show my belly fat bulging over the tops of my jeans so I can try to get a guy to live with me long enough so I can get pregnant and get on welfare. You have so many clothes being donated that the excess that is not deemed rack worthy is sold as scrap by the bundle/semi-truck load full. This is great for us frugal types. Slacks at $2, shirts at $1. Sweaters at $3. Jackets at $4. You can buy new retail shoes, underwear and socks every year for under $30 and get the rest from a thrift store for an average of $1.50-$3.00 a garment. Clothes are so cheap this way you don’t even need to budget for them.
*
And of course you can get lots of other nifty stuff at the thrift store such as furniture and kitchen ware and books and games. If you religiously visit most of the thrift stores in your town every week after a short period of time you could stock your entire house for pennies on the dollar. But this is all a symptom of our throw away, oil subsidized economy. It will not last forever. Get as much as you possibly can now. Buy all the slacks and shirts and sweaters and shoes that you can. Yes, it is a bunch of junk taking up room. But few of us can grow our own cotton and weave our own clothes. Come hard times, what you stockpile is the only thing there will be for you to wear. Few of us can gain the skills we need to be self sufficient. Stockpiling is what works the best for us. Stockpile all your clothes now. It can be done very cheap. Heck, there is even one store in town that posts a calendar of the coming sales ( say, one half off ladies clothing Thursday the 12th ). See if you can’t get the inside scoop from an employee about these kinds of sales to save even more than normal.
*
Happy hunting.
END
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
junk van
JUNK VAN SHELTER
A week or so ago I ran the article on the solar or underground shack as a way of cheaply insuring against a sudden Peak Oil crash. In case energy became unavailable and solar gain or underground insulation were all you had to keep you warm. Well, as I was driving around helping to waste the last of the earths irreplaceable oil thinking about the Apocalypse since my job takes even less thinking than I am capable of, I got to thinking that as cheap as it would be to build a 10x10 foot shack with concrete slab and south facing windows it was still possibly beyond the financial reach of most of us. Well, it might be doable financially but it is a low enough priority that it would never get done.
*
So I was wondering how one could suddenly adapt if things went south quickly. We are all hoping for a long slow decline, but who knows what tomorrow will bring. One possibility that is rather scary is the derivatives melt-down. A company misplacing a bet and losing a billion here or there is one thing but if multiple insolvencies occurred simultaneously the sheer size of that market ( ten to twenty times the size of the global gross economy ) would overwhelm the economy and could bring a sudden Global Economic Super Depression. At that point you are unemployed, credit cards are worthless, paper currency is no longer excepted, the store shelves only hold enough food for a few days for everyone and without a stable economy food is not grown for exporting outside the immediate area. Plus gas and oil stay in the ground. It is suddenly Y2K and nothing works and you are on your own.
*
You have a bookshelf full of grandiose plans but few are off of the drawing board. The grass is still in the yard instead of a garden. The housing slump has yet to see construction supplies decrease so you hadn’t gotten around to a greenhouse or a solar oven. You kept putting off ordering another three hundred rounds of ammo or getting another four hundred pounds of wheat. And your house still hasn’t been paid off. Perhaps you can still live in there awhile before the authorities repo it ( a gamble, perhaps they will have better things to do such as still enough food to eat ). And of course as these things are always planned awkwardly, it is the middle of winter and there is no way to heat your house more than a few weeks with the wood you have on hand.
*
Or, there has been a EMP attack or terrorist nuke detonated and fire gets out of control ( with the shutdown of electric pumped water ) and threatens to burn your house so you leave with your food supplies. Or you are worried about fallout so leave. Or a natural disaster wipes out your home and the FedGov can’t be expected to shelter you for some time ( not that you would want them to ). Or you just want to flee the cities and the crowds. Set up shop in a remote section and go from there. A backyard solar shack is not going to do you any good for those scenario’s and if it hadn’t even been built yet you are still without shelter. So how about this. Have ( or get after the fact ) a crappy old junker van that was free or nearly so. If you want to get fancy you can insulate the inside. If not, you can still use it in a passable fashion as a solar shelter.
*
Face the front window towards the south for daily solar gain. At night have an insulated cover for it. Even several layer of fabric under a plastic tarp will work. During the day place two liter plastic bottles filled with water in the widow dashboard. Most will be black anyway, or line with flat black painted sheet metal to really capture the heat. Have the bottles filled with a bit of antifreeze if possible. I think if placed vertical to the window you should be able to fill the dash with about a dozen bottles. As soon as the sun goes down, insulate the window and bring the bottles into the back of the van in the living area. Place a few in the bed to get your sheets and blankets toasty warm. The others can radiate their heat into the van. You will not be able to strip down naked on these, I am sure. But any heat is better than none. And it is all free as junk, perhaps even the van. Or darn cheap.
*
I don’t know if black painted bricks lined up in the window would work better. Obviously if you use this plan after things fall apart you use what you can find. I think a van is best just because of the room in the back. You are going to be cramped enough as it is without going to a station wagon or a car. Or how about a pick-up with a cheap cab-over camper on it. The camper won’t heat up as well as the van during the day and be much larger to heat at night but it would give you more room. But a regular van is best I think. They are all over the place and available cheap. They heat easy. You can build a bed on top of buckets of wheat and still have a bit more room to move around in. You might even be able to berm one with earth and retain more heat ( I would imagine you could add a bit to the roof without fear of weight if it was shallow enough ).
*
This might make sense if you use the van now as a vehicle to get to work or haul stuff for money. Then it pays for itself rather than just being another added cost. Something to think about.
END
have you bought all my books, sent me lots of money through PayPal and sent cash to my address posted on my web site? Why not? I'm debasing myself here, so do your part. www.bisonpress.com
A week or so ago I ran the article on the solar or underground shack as a way of cheaply insuring against a sudden Peak Oil crash. In case energy became unavailable and solar gain or underground insulation were all you had to keep you warm. Well, as I was driving around helping to waste the last of the earths irreplaceable oil thinking about the Apocalypse since my job takes even less thinking than I am capable of, I got to thinking that as cheap as it would be to build a 10x10 foot shack with concrete slab and south facing windows it was still possibly beyond the financial reach of most of us. Well, it might be doable financially but it is a low enough priority that it would never get done.
*
So I was wondering how one could suddenly adapt if things went south quickly. We are all hoping for a long slow decline, but who knows what tomorrow will bring. One possibility that is rather scary is the derivatives melt-down. A company misplacing a bet and losing a billion here or there is one thing but if multiple insolvencies occurred simultaneously the sheer size of that market ( ten to twenty times the size of the global gross economy ) would overwhelm the economy and could bring a sudden Global Economic Super Depression. At that point you are unemployed, credit cards are worthless, paper currency is no longer excepted, the store shelves only hold enough food for a few days for everyone and without a stable economy food is not grown for exporting outside the immediate area. Plus gas and oil stay in the ground. It is suddenly Y2K and nothing works and you are on your own.
*
You have a bookshelf full of grandiose plans but few are off of the drawing board. The grass is still in the yard instead of a garden. The housing slump has yet to see construction supplies decrease so you hadn’t gotten around to a greenhouse or a solar oven. You kept putting off ordering another three hundred rounds of ammo or getting another four hundred pounds of wheat. And your house still hasn’t been paid off. Perhaps you can still live in there awhile before the authorities repo it ( a gamble, perhaps they will have better things to do such as still enough food to eat ). And of course as these things are always planned awkwardly, it is the middle of winter and there is no way to heat your house more than a few weeks with the wood you have on hand.
*
Or, there has been a EMP attack or terrorist nuke detonated and fire gets out of control ( with the shutdown of electric pumped water ) and threatens to burn your house so you leave with your food supplies. Or you are worried about fallout so leave. Or a natural disaster wipes out your home and the FedGov can’t be expected to shelter you for some time ( not that you would want them to ). Or you just want to flee the cities and the crowds. Set up shop in a remote section and go from there. A backyard solar shack is not going to do you any good for those scenario’s and if it hadn’t even been built yet you are still without shelter. So how about this. Have ( or get after the fact ) a crappy old junker van that was free or nearly so. If you want to get fancy you can insulate the inside. If not, you can still use it in a passable fashion as a solar shelter.
*
Face the front window towards the south for daily solar gain. At night have an insulated cover for it. Even several layer of fabric under a plastic tarp will work. During the day place two liter plastic bottles filled with water in the widow dashboard. Most will be black anyway, or line with flat black painted sheet metal to really capture the heat. Have the bottles filled with a bit of antifreeze if possible. I think if placed vertical to the window you should be able to fill the dash with about a dozen bottles. As soon as the sun goes down, insulate the window and bring the bottles into the back of the van in the living area. Place a few in the bed to get your sheets and blankets toasty warm. The others can radiate their heat into the van. You will not be able to strip down naked on these, I am sure. But any heat is better than none. And it is all free as junk, perhaps even the van. Or darn cheap.
*
I don’t know if black painted bricks lined up in the window would work better. Obviously if you use this plan after things fall apart you use what you can find. I think a van is best just because of the room in the back. You are going to be cramped enough as it is without going to a station wagon or a car. Or how about a pick-up with a cheap cab-over camper on it. The camper won’t heat up as well as the van during the day and be much larger to heat at night but it would give you more room. But a regular van is best I think. They are all over the place and available cheap. They heat easy. You can build a bed on top of buckets of wheat and still have a bit more room to move around in. You might even be able to berm one with earth and retain more heat ( I would imagine you could add a bit to the roof without fear of weight if it was shallow enough ).
*
This might make sense if you use the van now as a vehicle to get to work or haul stuff for money. Then it pays for itself rather than just being another added cost. Something to think about.
END
have you bought all my books, sent me lots of money through PayPal and sent cash to my address posted on my web site? Why not? I'm debasing myself here, so do your part. www.bisonpress.com
Monday, January 22, 2007
long term plan
Before we begin today, a note on www.sportsmansguide.com since they have some great deals right now. First, either tops or bottoms long johns for only a buck! Item number ax7m-115032x( or 1x for the bottoms ). They still have 303 British on sale, $33 for 200 rounds surplus corrosive. Item ax7m-99432. And A four pack of LED flashlights for $25, item number bx7x1-116103. I can vouch for the ammo as I ordered that. The other I can't. This is not a paid advertisement. If you all order and let them know it was me that told them maybie it could be one day :)
LONG TERM PLANNING
Being a survivalist sucks. The only enjoyment we get out of it is the satisfaction of knowing most of the morons are going to get their comeuppance after the collapse. But on the down side we must constantly worry. Stockpile, learn new skills, then don’t worry- so say some. I say, if you ain’t stressing you don’t have enough imagination to realize everything that could go wrong. Now, as if worrying about what future calamity waits in store isn’t enough for most of us I want you to worry about things far into the future. Why should you only plan for your survival and that of your children when you can stress about the fate of your great, great grandchildren.
*
Most people can’t even seem to plan their own retirement. They seem to think the oil will be plentiful enough to see the welfare state through into their golden years. Idiots!! Oh, sure, it is going to be sweet if it does but it is rather silly to bet your life on it. I don’t think the bulk of survivalists and anarchists have this problem as they see through the curtain in this land of Oz. Most governments can’t plan past the next four to six years past the next election cycle. Most small business owners plan to the point where their kids take over the business. Even the fabled Asian long term planners have only a limited number of years they plan for. All of these people are slackers. You need to really look a long way into the future to achieve any kind of security.
*
The North Atlantic temperature conveyor belt shuts off on a regular basis. The salt water in the ocean is diluted to a point where the warm tropical water is no longer carried into the Atlantic and as a result the eastern North American continent and Europe see a plunge in temperature. At the same time this effects monsoons and the rainy seasons in areas near the southeast Asian areas. El Nino is dampened or made more extreme. All the areas of the globe are affected by changing weather patterns. And that is just the oceans salt water content being diluted with fresh water from global warming ( either from glaciers or from the ice caps ). We also have the earths orbit, solar radiation from the sun and underwater volcano’s to contend with. Or major volcano’s on land that spew enough ash into the atmosphere to ruin several years worth of crops from sudden drops in summer temperatures.
*
The point is this. Weather can suddenly shift on us and our ability to grow enough crops to feed ourselves can be seriously altered. It is not enough to live in a fertile area and to have the organic techniques needed to be self sufficient in food productions. One day your fertile fields could be either a desert or have depleted soil. Farming is not the perfect answer to survival. It is actually rather dangerous to assume otherwise. Many times throughout history practiced skilled farmers were forced out of their land through changing weather patterns ( global in scale, not just a bad harvest here or their ). To assume we will avoid that fate is as bad as assuming the oil will never run out.
*
So, what is better than farming? Nomadic herding is an answer in otherwise barren lands but it suffers from the problem of a stagnant society. Without a merchant class to achieve technological advancement through the greed of the profit motive you have a herder/warrior class that will never advance. The lifestyle is great for immediately after a collapse, but long term you will be eradicated by superior tools and technology. Think the rifle welding tribesmen against machine-guns. Herders have the advantage of mobility to escape weather change but at a cost. Farmers take a risk by anchoring in one spot but gain a superior society in the long run through food surpluses feeding a non-agrarian scientific class.
*
If you have a strong central government to use forced labor to construct public works projects you can escape minor emergencies unharmed. The only problem comes with those “thousand year events”. You then lack any flexibility to deal with that problem. An entrenched elite will never vote against their self interests even if it will save the society they belong to in the long run. All civilizations throughout history have faced this same problem and failed as a result. So what do you do? Try to farm and survive all but major weather changes. Or become a nomad to enable you to move to an unaffected area. Both have advantages and disadvantages. You can’t make the correct choice because you never know what will happen first, severe weather changes or being over-run by superior technology.
*
The overwhelming urge for every survivalist is going to be to rule his/her clan with a strong will guided by wisdom. And it will work- at least during your rule. After that, sooner or later, an idiot will take over and all your hard work will be wasted. You can be a king or an elected president. It is all the same. Eventually those achieving power directly or indirectly ( as through business bribing the government ) will step into the same mistakes always made and bring your society to ruin. We can all agree that Jefferson is now turning in his grave at present day America. You can’t run a stable society long term. It eventually degenerates. So forget about ruling your land. You will do a great job and protect you and yours and perhaps the next generation. After that your efforts will get hijacked and ruined by greed and idiocy.
*
The only social organization that might have a better change of surviving long term is one without government. An anarchist society can innovate through the free market unhindered by taxation or regulation and individuals can achieve more independence through having no safety net from a government ( that works great until it fails in spectacular fashion ). This is of course no guarantee of security. But it can’t do any worse than the same old tried and failed governance approach. Government always takes root because of short term benefits. Perhaps we should try to look beyond that at the costs incurred later.
END
Order my books or my feeling will be hurt. www.bisonpress.com
LONG TERM PLANNING
Being a survivalist sucks. The only enjoyment we get out of it is the satisfaction of knowing most of the morons are going to get their comeuppance after the collapse. But on the down side we must constantly worry. Stockpile, learn new skills, then don’t worry- so say some. I say, if you ain’t stressing you don’t have enough imagination to realize everything that could go wrong. Now, as if worrying about what future calamity waits in store isn’t enough for most of us I want you to worry about things far into the future. Why should you only plan for your survival and that of your children when you can stress about the fate of your great, great grandchildren.
*
Most people can’t even seem to plan their own retirement. They seem to think the oil will be plentiful enough to see the welfare state through into their golden years. Idiots!! Oh, sure, it is going to be sweet if it does but it is rather silly to bet your life on it. I don’t think the bulk of survivalists and anarchists have this problem as they see through the curtain in this land of Oz. Most governments can’t plan past the next four to six years past the next election cycle. Most small business owners plan to the point where their kids take over the business. Even the fabled Asian long term planners have only a limited number of years they plan for. All of these people are slackers. You need to really look a long way into the future to achieve any kind of security.
*
The North Atlantic temperature conveyor belt shuts off on a regular basis. The salt water in the ocean is diluted to a point where the warm tropical water is no longer carried into the Atlantic and as a result the eastern North American continent and Europe see a plunge in temperature. At the same time this effects monsoons and the rainy seasons in areas near the southeast Asian areas. El Nino is dampened or made more extreme. All the areas of the globe are affected by changing weather patterns. And that is just the oceans salt water content being diluted with fresh water from global warming ( either from glaciers or from the ice caps ). We also have the earths orbit, solar radiation from the sun and underwater volcano’s to contend with. Or major volcano’s on land that spew enough ash into the atmosphere to ruin several years worth of crops from sudden drops in summer temperatures.
*
The point is this. Weather can suddenly shift on us and our ability to grow enough crops to feed ourselves can be seriously altered. It is not enough to live in a fertile area and to have the organic techniques needed to be self sufficient in food productions. One day your fertile fields could be either a desert or have depleted soil. Farming is not the perfect answer to survival. It is actually rather dangerous to assume otherwise. Many times throughout history practiced skilled farmers were forced out of their land through changing weather patterns ( global in scale, not just a bad harvest here or their ). To assume we will avoid that fate is as bad as assuming the oil will never run out.
*
So, what is better than farming? Nomadic herding is an answer in otherwise barren lands but it suffers from the problem of a stagnant society. Without a merchant class to achieve technological advancement through the greed of the profit motive you have a herder/warrior class that will never advance. The lifestyle is great for immediately after a collapse, but long term you will be eradicated by superior tools and technology. Think the rifle welding tribesmen against machine-guns. Herders have the advantage of mobility to escape weather change but at a cost. Farmers take a risk by anchoring in one spot but gain a superior society in the long run through food surpluses feeding a non-agrarian scientific class.
*
If you have a strong central government to use forced labor to construct public works projects you can escape minor emergencies unharmed. The only problem comes with those “thousand year events”. You then lack any flexibility to deal with that problem. An entrenched elite will never vote against their self interests even if it will save the society they belong to in the long run. All civilizations throughout history have faced this same problem and failed as a result. So what do you do? Try to farm and survive all but major weather changes. Or become a nomad to enable you to move to an unaffected area. Both have advantages and disadvantages. You can’t make the correct choice because you never know what will happen first, severe weather changes or being over-run by superior technology.
*
The overwhelming urge for every survivalist is going to be to rule his/her clan with a strong will guided by wisdom. And it will work- at least during your rule. After that, sooner or later, an idiot will take over and all your hard work will be wasted. You can be a king or an elected president. It is all the same. Eventually those achieving power directly or indirectly ( as through business bribing the government ) will step into the same mistakes always made and bring your society to ruin. We can all agree that Jefferson is now turning in his grave at present day America. You can’t run a stable society long term. It eventually degenerates. So forget about ruling your land. You will do a great job and protect you and yours and perhaps the next generation. After that your efforts will get hijacked and ruined by greed and idiocy.
*
The only social organization that might have a better change of surviving long term is one without government. An anarchist society can innovate through the free market unhindered by taxation or regulation and individuals can achieve more independence through having no safety net from a government ( that works great until it fails in spectacular fashion ). This is of course no guarantee of security. But it can’t do any worse than the same old tried and failed governance approach. Government always takes root because of short term benefits. Perhaps we should try to look beyond that at the costs incurred later.
END
Order my books or my feeling will be hurt. www.bisonpress.com
Saturday, January 20, 2007
sand filter
SLOW SAND FILTERS
Remember a few weeks ago when I told you about the sale at Amazon on the book “Peak Oil Survival”? $2.99 and a heck of a deal. Did you get your copy? Chock full of nifty items of expedient and improvised methods of water purification, heating, cooking, etc. Even at full price of $12.95 ( most likely around $10 at Amazon ) it is a great resource. Web sites abound that teach the same thing but this is all condensed and presented in paper form. Just what you want after GridCrash. Most likely you didn’t get your copy. To get free postage you have to buy $25 worth of books from them and with postage of $3.50 the book is less of a bargain. So you put off buying it. Okay. Do not fear.
*
I will be shamelessly using it to research articles and giving you the information. Then you take your 70 page notebook you got at Wal-Mart’s back to school sale for a whole ten cents and carefully sharpen your pencil stub with your Boy Scout knife ( is it me or is it just crazy that a manual rotary pencil sharpener is more expensive than a battery powered one? ) and write down the pertinent details so you won’t forget when the power goes down. Or you can spend fifty cents printing out each of my articles ( printer cost factored in with ink cost as well as paper ) which really is just plain silly since I usually take a three sentence idea and turn it into a page and a half of rambling which makes perfect sense for electronic newsletters as it provides entertainment value but almost no sense when it comes to killing trees to present an idea. It is cheaper just to buy this darn book. Peak Oil Survival by Aric McBay.
*
Today’s topic is the slow sand filter. You can find the information online, where McBay got his information.
www.refugeecamp.org/learnmore/water/slow_sand_filter.htm
You need a container full of sand. The container should have at least 26 inches of sand in it. Use a mesh screen to get a uniform size. Take your suitably tall container and make a hole at the bottom of the container. Get a perforated drainpipe ( perforated part in the barrel only ) with the end going in the barrel plugged. Around the pipe place small stones and seal the pipe exit in the barrel, with caulking or preferably marine epoxy. Now put your sand in the barrel. A flat stone on the top of the sand will allow the water to be poured in without disrupting the sand. Also, the stone is needed to allow the top of the sand to grow a beneficial microbe.
*
This type of filter works because of a biological microbe named schmutzdecke. It grows on top of the sand and its job is to eat organisms in the water. It can take up to two weeks to form so any water before that is not fit to drink. Also, to keep ol’ Schmutzy alive you need to keep the water level above the sand at all times. For this reason it makes sense to have a flow control on your drain pipe. Then at night sleeping you don’t have to worry about the water draining away and killing your little friend. If you don’t have a spigot, attach a flexible hose on the drainpipe and raise the hose above the top of the water level to stop its flow.
*
You should have that hose anyway, since you will need to initially fill the barrel from the bottom up. The feed water is placed at a higher level than your filter barrel and fed into the drain pipe. This allows the sand to remain free of air bubbles that slow the flow of the water. Also, when the schmutzdecke layer gets too thick you will see a severe slow down in the water flow. To clean drain the level of water down to just below the top of the sand and scrape off the layer of scum. Refill from the bottom. Now wait another two weeks for the microbe to form again. A pain in the butt? Sure. But a long lasting filter. Usable over and over again. Not subject to the need to buy a replacement filter from England. And a good producer, about four to eight inches of water an hour if the flow is not hindered. If you used a thirty gallon plastic barrel you would see several gallons of water an hour. Have several so there is no disruption in water output during the microbe re-growth period. *
I like solar distillation units myself, and it makes sense out here in the desert. But it is helpful to know about alternate methods such as the slow sand filter. The more choices we have for every necessity, the better our chances for survival. Having a lone factory made filter for all your water needs is a recipe for disaster. Having just one gun, no matter that it is the neatest, fanciest, prettiest Mattel Plastic Gun is a recipe for disaster. Or all your gear in one spot. Etcetera. Diversify. Learn new tricks even if you are an old dog.
END
A note on my earlier article on tooth care. If finding a source for silver wire is an impossibility and you want a more permanent source of equipment to get food out of your teeth than wooden toothpicks, Wal-Mart has a dental kit in the toothpaste section that contains a dental pick. Under five bucks.
No more guest articles to post on Sunday, so you are on your own tomorrow. So this is your last chance before Monday to buy my books!!!! www.bisonpress.com
Remember a few weeks ago when I told you about the sale at Amazon on the book “Peak Oil Survival”? $2.99 and a heck of a deal. Did you get your copy? Chock full of nifty items of expedient and improvised methods of water purification, heating, cooking, etc. Even at full price of $12.95 ( most likely around $10 at Amazon ) it is a great resource. Web sites abound that teach the same thing but this is all condensed and presented in paper form. Just what you want after GridCrash. Most likely you didn’t get your copy. To get free postage you have to buy $25 worth of books from them and with postage of $3.50 the book is less of a bargain. So you put off buying it. Okay. Do not fear.
*
I will be shamelessly using it to research articles and giving you the information. Then you take your 70 page notebook you got at Wal-Mart’s back to school sale for a whole ten cents and carefully sharpen your pencil stub with your Boy Scout knife ( is it me or is it just crazy that a manual rotary pencil sharpener is more expensive than a battery powered one? ) and write down the pertinent details so you won’t forget when the power goes down. Or you can spend fifty cents printing out each of my articles ( printer cost factored in with ink cost as well as paper ) which really is just plain silly since I usually take a three sentence idea and turn it into a page and a half of rambling which makes perfect sense for electronic newsletters as it provides entertainment value but almost no sense when it comes to killing trees to present an idea. It is cheaper just to buy this darn book. Peak Oil Survival by Aric McBay.
*
Today’s topic is the slow sand filter. You can find the information online, where McBay got his information.
www.refugeecamp.org/learnmore/water/slow_sand_filter.htm
You need a container full of sand. The container should have at least 26 inches of sand in it. Use a mesh screen to get a uniform size. Take your suitably tall container and make a hole at the bottom of the container. Get a perforated drainpipe ( perforated part in the barrel only ) with the end going in the barrel plugged. Around the pipe place small stones and seal the pipe exit in the barrel, with caulking or preferably marine epoxy. Now put your sand in the barrel. A flat stone on the top of the sand will allow the water to be poured in without disrupting the sand. Also, the stone is needed to allow the top of the sand to grow a beneficial microbe.
*
This type of filter works because of a biological microbe named schmutzdecke. It grows on top of the sand and its job is to eat organisms in the water. It can take up to two weeks to form so any water before that is not fit to drink. Also, to keep ol’ Schmutzy alive you need to keep the water level above the sand at all times. For this reason it makes sense to have a flow control on your drain pipe. Then at night sleeping you don’t have to worry about the water draining away and killing your little friend. If you don’t have a spigot, attach a flexible hose on the drainpipe and raise the hose above the top of the water level to stop its flow.
*
You should have that hose anyway, since you will need to initially fill the barrel from the bottom up. The feed water is placed at a higher level than your filter barrel and fed into the drain pipe. This allows the sand to remain free of air bubbles that slow the flow of the water. Also, when the schmutzdecke layer gets too thick you will see a severe slow down in the water flow. To clean drain the level of water down to just below the top of the sand and scrape off the layer of scum. Refill from the bottom. Now wait another two weeks for the microbe to form again. A pain in the butt? Sure. But a long lasting filter. Usable over and over again. Not subject to the need to buy a replacement filter from England. And a good producer, about four to eight inches of water an hour if the flow is not hindered. If you used a thirty gallon plastic barrel you would see several gallons of water an hour. Have several so there is no disruption in water output during the microbe re-growth period. *
I like solar distillation units myself, and it makes sense out here in the desert. But it is helpful to know about alternate methods such as the slow sand filter. The more choices we have for every necessity, the better our chances for survival. Having a lone factory made filter for all your water needs is a recipe for disaster. Having just one gun, no matter that it is the neatest, fanciest, prettiest Mattel Plastic Gun is a recipe for disaster. Or all your gear in one spot. Etcetera. Diversify. Learn new tricks even if you are an old dog.
END
A note on my earlier article on tooth care. If finding a source for silver wire is an impossibility and you want a more permanent source of equipment to get food out of your teeth than wooden toothpicks, Wal-Mart has a dental kit in the toothpaste section that contains a dental pick. Under five bucks.
No more guest articles to post on Sunday, so you are on your own tomorrow. So this is your last chance before Monday to buy my books!!!! www.bisonpress.com
Friday, January 19, 2007
ethanol
ETHANOL IDIOCY
The electronic newsletter Whisky & Gunpowder is almost always a great read. They are my preferred source for Peak Oil news. And they are free. The last few issues gave a really good overview of ethanol. After reading that and after opening up the newspaper this morning and seeing the insane price for corn I felt it might be worth touching on this topic. I can’t do it as good as the above publication, but I am giving you your monies worth anyway.
*
In general in recent times wheat has always sold for about half again as much as corn. This morning the commodity price on corn was about $4.75 ( up about a buck due to the recent droughts ). And corn was hot on its heels at about $4.25. It should have been at least a buck less. But NOOOOO. The FedGov has decreed that ethanol should replace the former chemical used to reduce emissions ( after, one can only imagine, a healthy campaign contribution from BigAg businesses ). That raised the price a bit since there was not enough current capacity when the law was signed. But now our fearless leaders must have promised ADM and other big farm corporations more money to convert more than is actually needed for gas additive. Someone is trying to sell us a pipedream about energy independence with ethanol. Yes, farmers could become energy independent with ethanol ( at least to run their own machines- the artificial fertilizer from natural gas is another story ) but this nation will never be able to replace the gasoline it currently uses with ethanol.
*
Brazil took thirty years to achieve energy independence. And it only did so because they get two or three sugar cane crops a year. With natural watering from rain and a closed fertility cycle. And only 12% of the car fleet of the US. We, on the other hand, have never even started until now to be motor fuel independent. We only get one crop of corn a year and it yields a lot less ethanol than sugar cane does. And it takes energy to pump the water needed for that crop. And artificial fertilizers. And a lot more cars to power. If all the planned future ethanol plants are built and all the corn diverted to them and a lot more soil planted in corn, even after all that ( as if even one would take place, let alone all ) we would still only be able to reduce our gasoline usage by about 3%. Granted, come a Depression no one could afford to drive and that amount of ethanol plus our existing oil reserves would allow us to stop importing oil. Like any of us would care at that point. Our cold and dark flimsy built gum and glue structure out in the suburbs would be our prison as we couldn’t get into town to work ( if there was any ) or shop ( if supplies were available ).
*
We could achieve a lot more energy savings at a much reduced cost just by conserving. But it won’t happen until forced by economic nightmarish conditions. No one will give up their cars until forced to. Nor can many people afford to give up their cars as public transportation is a joke and everything is far away and scattered to the wind. Cars are almost a necessity for a lot of people. It is nothing to be fifteen miles away from work. Most people don’t think twice about it. Because, after all, in American Fantasy Land we will never run out of oil nor ever get laid off of a job that is critical if we hope to continue paying on our quarter of a million dollar house. Unfortunately, there is about nothing that can be done without a mass movement. We don’t have the financial ability to change the layout of our entire nation that would enable us to give up the automobile.
*
So, while any kind of renewable resource is better than none ( we will ignore the costs of petroleum inputs to grow the corn, for now ), ethanol is a drop in the bucket. And its cost will be depleting our soil faster as the unrelenting pressure is for more and more corn as our oil wells dry up. And short term, the cost of meat and dairy will skyrocket if the cost of corn keeps rising. If I had a deep freeze I would fill it with meat and butter right now. I used to have a small chest freezer in my living room ( where else do you put it in a thirty five foot travel trailer? ) but that was my last trailer. The current one is smaller and I can’t fit one in. A shame, as if things continue I would imagine beef will rise significantly. Look what prices did after all those fat bastards went on the high protein diet. Due to drought and strange weather and corn being jacked up in price meat and dairy will go up in price. Right now butter, generic, in Wal-Mart is $1.86 a pound. I will go on record guessing it will see $3 a pound by the end of the year if corn demand stays steady. Not that you win anything if I am wrong. But you can call me an idiot if you wish.
*
Food prices are going to raise. Obviously. Inflation alone will raise prices 10% annually. And don’t think oil at fifty bucks is going to stick around much longer. And we will have increasingly bad weather to effect crops. Here my main concern is soaring corn prices directly raising the meat/dairy prices. I hope I’m wrong. So, to get somewhat back on topic. Ethanol is a corporate welfare program. The only thing it might accomplish is to help fuel our military motor fleet. And if continued your protein costs will skyrocket. To sum it all up. Until tomorrow.
END
buy my books at www.bisonpress.com
The electronic newsletter Whisky & Gunpowder is almost always a great read. They are my preferred source for Peak Oil news. And they are free. The last few issues gave a really good overview of ethanol. After reading that and after opening up the newspaper this morning and seeing the insane price for corn I felt it might be worth touching on this topic. I can’t do it as good as the above publication, but I am giving you your monies worth anyway.
*
In general in recent times wheat has always sold for about half again as much as corn. This morning the commodity price on corn was about $4.75 ( up about a buck due to the recent droughts ). And corn was hot on its heels at about $4.25. It should have been at least a buck less. But NOOOOO. The FedGov has decreed that ethanol should replace the former chemical used to reduce emissions ( after, one can only imagine, a healthy campaign contribution from BigAg businesses ). That raised the price a bit since there was not enough current capacity when the law was signed. But now our fearless leaders must have promised ADM and other big farm corporations more money to convert more than is actually needed for gas additive. Someone is trying to sell us a pipedream about energy independence with ethanol. Yes, farmers could become energy independent with ethanol ( at least to run their own machines- the artificial fertilizer from natural gas is another story ) but this nation will never be able to replace the gasoline it currently uses with ethanol.
*
Brazil took thirty years to achieve energy independence. And it only did so because they get two or three sugar cane crops a year. With natural watering from rain and a closed fertility cycle. And only 12% of the car fleet of the US. We, on the other hand, have never even started until now to be motor fuel independent. We only get one crop of corn a year and it yields a lot less ethanol than sugar cane does. And it takes energy to pump the water needed for that crop. And artificial fertilizers. And a lot more cars to power. If all the planned future ethanol plants are built and all the corn diverted to them and a lot more soil planted in corn, even after all that ( as if even one would take place, let alone all ) we would still only be able to reduce our gasoline usage by about 3%. Granted, come a Depression no one could afford to drive and that amount of ethanol plus our existing oil reserves would allow us to stop importing oil. Like any of us would care at that point. Our cold and dark flimsy built gum and glue structure out in the suburbs would be our prison as we couldn’t get into town to work ( if there was any ) or shop ( if supplies were available ).
*
We could achieve a lot more energy savings at a much reduced cost just by conserving. But it won’t happen until forced by economic nightmarish conditions. No one will give up their cars until forced to. Nor can many people afford to give up their cars as public transportation is a joke and everything is far away and scattered to the wind. Cars are almost a necessity for a lot of people. It is nothing to be fifteen miles away from work. Most people don’t think twice about it. Because, after all, in American Fantasy Land we will never run out of oil nor ever get laid off of a job that is critical if we hope to continue paying on our quarter of a million dollar house. Unfortunately, there is about nothing that can be done without a mass movement. We don’t have the financial ability to change the layout of our entire nation that would enable us to give up the automobile.
*
So, while any kind of renewable resource is better than none ( we will ignore the costs of petroleum inputs to grow the corn, for now ), ethanol is a drop in the bucket. And its cost will be depleting our soil faster as the unrelenting pressure is for more and more corn as our oil wells dry up. And short term, the cost of meat and dairy will skyrocket if the cost of corn keeps rising. If I had a deep freeze I would fill it with meat and butter right now. I used to have a small chest freezer in my living room ( where else do you put it in a thirty five foot travel trailer? ) but that was my last trailer. The current one is smaller and I can’t fit one in. A shame, as if things continue I would imagine beef will rise significantly. Look what prices did after all those fat bastards went on the high protein diet. Due to drought and strange weather and corn being jacked up in price meat and dairy will go up in price. Right now butter, generic, in Wal-Mart is $1.86 a pound. I will go on record guessing it will see $3 a pound by the end of the year if corn demand stays steady. Not that you win anything if I am wrong. But you can call me an idiot if you wish.
*
Food prices are going to raise. Obviously. Inflation alone will raise prices 10% annually. And don’t think oil at fifty bucks is going to stick around much longer. And we will have increasingly bad weather to effect crops. Here my main concern is soaring corn prices directly raising the meat/dairy prices. I hope I’m wrong. So, to get somewhat back on topic. Ethanol is a corporate welfare program. The only thing it might accomplish is to help fuel our military motor fleet. And if continued your protein costs will skyrocket. To sum it all up. Until tomorrow.
END
buy my books at www.bisonpress.com
Thursday, January 18, 2007
puppet masters
Before we start today, let me just make a statement. My wife says no one can figure out my sense of humor until they get to know me better. I can’t really see it, being as how I know I am a friggin regular laugh riot. But seeing as how she has been right at least once before I am going to conclude she might be right. Well, here is your official notice. Almost anything I write you can take as humorous. I might hate Commies, but I try to keep my sense of humor when complaining about them. Heck, you might as well enjoy life just in case you only get one. There is no reason to get too upset about much of anything. I bring this up in case anyone thinks I am being too harsh on them ( for instance, if you are on geriatric welfare ). Relax, I might be serious about prepping but I intend to have fun doing it.
********
PUPPETMASTERS
Let’s have some fun today and really get paranoid and talk about a government controlled die-off. This is ultra-paranoid, super delusional stuff, but interesting to contemplate. Not that the government will necessarily cause a mass die-off but that they know it is coming and plan to ride their cash cow down into the flames. The rich bankers and corporate elites and government rulers know we are going to see a collapse and want to stay warm, fed and pampered as the rest of the country suffers. This in itself is not paranoid. It’s just how those in power have always acted. So let’s get started.
*
The last two hundred years have been unlike any in history. For the first time mankind in general has been able to foil nature and protect itself against famine and harsh weather. The mass of people have seen luxury even denied kings of old. Even ancient Rome that allowed the citizens of the capital city to live on free bread and circuses as a result of slave and plundered land surpluses didn’t come close to the average living standard of a citizen of today’s First World nation. And it is all because of coal and oil. We mined millions of years of concentrated solar energy to feed us to gluttony, to keep us in constant year round climate controlled environment and allowed us to traverse to the ends of the earth on a whim. And we over populated the earth to a tragic extent. Without oil none of it would have been possible.
*
All that is ending soon as oil starts to run out. And the huge populations that were once cause for celebration so massive industrialized wars could be fought now are going to become a liability. Without massive inputs of cheap oil a lot of the globes population can’t be fed. Forget about the personal automobile. Not being able to use it would be tragic for our current economy, true, but the government could work around that with forced relocations and nationalizing jobs to turn them into make work telecommuting jobs. Or confiscate railroad right of ways to replace semi’s with rail cars. The government controls so much of the economy now through Fascist controls it wouldn’t be much of a stretch. It is mostly about enough oil to feed everyone.
*
Is five million barrels a day enough to feed 300 million people? That is what we produce ourselves and I would imagine that quite a bit of that is going to be needed for the military, both direct usage and running the industry for the military. I think the military will be used both to steal remaining oil stocks from other nations and to keep the citizens in line. The best way to stretch out our secure oil is to kill off a lot of the population. Either through tailored diseases ( AIDS might have been a pilot program ) or using us up as cannon fodder in wars. Or dieing off in forced work gangs on collective farms. Or a combination of all of those and perhaps a few I can’t think of.
*
The ethanol program is without a doubt a government handout to big ag corporations. But in the future it might be intended as a substitute for our declining oil reserves. It would be an industry already in place in case our foreign supplies were cut off and we needed it for the military. Right now it just forces dairy and meat prices up. In the future it might mean grain out of our mouths. Because in the future there won’t be enough to go around. The rich and the rulers will eat well. And live in comfort. Then the military will be well supplied, both to steal others resources and to keep the domestic population from rebelling. After that whatever is left over is going to be allotted to the general population. Whether you will be last in line for a rationed food item isn’t something you really want to gamble on. Take precautions now.
*
Look, our society is 100% dependant on oil to survive. Not just for luxuries but for our very survival. And it is starting to run out. It can only end badly. But those in power are going to be the last to suffer. Our government is going to control every aspect of the economy. Every thing will be rationed and everybody will be told what to do. And we will all suffer as a result. The nations farms and ranches are centrally owned by corporations. They will cooperate with government control to retain their privilege and profit, along the lines of the German economy under the Nazis. Those retaining their weapons will strike back at a un-Constitutional government but will they be able to feed themselves while they are fighting? Will there be farmers outside of the governments control that could feed them? Who needs gun control when you can control the food distribution? The major global oil fields are already seeing massive depletion, up to 10% a year. We are closer than you think.
*
The government might not kill anyone off deliberately. Just by neglect. Not only should you not expect them to save you but you should expect them to try to kill you. Anything else is too risky. You thought neglect during Katrina was bad when at least 3,000 were killed, wait until 300 million are in the crosshairs. Yes, the government and corporate leaders need workers. But no where near as many as are around now. I would expect at least half of our population is under the gun. The old, especially. They are resource depleting and worthless, in the eyes of our rulers at least. Expect brown-outs and power outages lasting long periods of time. Expect soaring food prices. And that is just before widespread government controls ration everything. Something to look forward to.
END
********
PUPPETMASTERS
Let’s have some fun today and really get paranoid and talk about a government controlled die-off. This is ultra-paranoid, super delusional stuff, but interesting to contemplate. Not that the government will necessarily cause a mass die-off but that they know it is coming and plan to ride their cash cow down into the flames. The rich bankers and corporate elites and government rulers know we are going to see a collapse and want to stay warm, fed and pampered as the rest of the country suffers. This in itself is not paranoid. It’s just how those in power have always acted. So let’s get started.
*
The last two hundred years have been unlike any in history. For the first time mankind in general has been able to foil nature and protect itself against famine and harsh weather. The mass of people have seen luxury even denied kings of old. Even ancient Rome that allowed the citizens of the capital city to live on free bread and circuses as a result of slave and plundered land surpluses didn’t come close to the average living standard of a citizen of today’s First World nation. And it is all because of coal and oil. We mined millions of years of concentrated solar energy to feed us to gluttony, to keep us in constant year round climate controlled environment and allowed us to traverse to the ends of the earth on a whim. And we over populated the earth to a tragic extent. Without oil none of it would have been possible.
*
All that is ending soon as oil starts to run out. And the huge populations that were once cause for celebration so massive industrialized wars could be fought now are going to become a liability. Without massive inputs of cheap oil a lot of the globes population can’t be fed. Forget about the personal automobile. Not being able to use it would be tragic for our current economy, true, but the government could work around that with forced relocations and nationalizing jobs to turn them into make work telecommuting jobs. Or confiscate railroad right of ways to replace semi’s with rail cars. The government controls so much of the economy now through Fascist controls it wouldn’t be much of a stretch. It is mostly about enough oil to feed everyone.
*
Is five million barrels a day enough to feed 300 million people? That is what we produce ourselves and I would imagine that quite a bit of that is going to be needed for the military, both direct usage and running the industry for the military. I think the military will be used both to steal remaining oil stocks from other nations and to keep the citizens in line. The best way to stretch out our secure oil is to kill off a lot of the population. Either through tailored diseases ( AIDS might have been a pilot program ) or using us up as cannon fodder in wars. Or dieing off in forced work gangs on collective farms. Or a combination of all of those and perhaps a few I can’t think of.
*
The ethanol program is without a doubt a government handout to big ag corporations. But in the future it might be intended as a substitute for our declining oil reserves. It would be an industry already in place in case our foreign supplies were cut off and we needed it for the military. Right now it just forces dairy and meat prices up. In the future it might mean grain out of our mouths. Because in the future there won’t be enough to go around. The rich and the rulers will eat well. And live in comfort. Then the military will be well supplied, both to steal others resources and to keep the domestic population from rebelling. After that whatever is left over is going to be allotted to the general population. Whether you will be last in line for a rationed food item isn’t something you really want to gamble on. Take precautions now.
*
Look, our society is 100% dependant on oil to survive. Not just for luxuries but for our very survival. And it is starting to run out. It can only end badly. But those in power are going to be the last to suffer. Our government is going to control every aspect of the economy. Every thing will be rationed and everybody will be told what to do. And we will all suffer as a result. The nations farms and ranches are centrally owned by corporations. They will cooperate with government control to retain their privilege and profit, along the lines of the German economy under the Nazis. Those retaining their weapons will strike back at a un-Constitutional government but will they be able to feed themselves while they are fighting? Will there be farmers outside of the governments control that could feed them? Who needs gun control when you can control the food distribution? The major global oil fields are already seeing massive depletion, up to 10% a year. We are closer than you think.
*
The government might not kill anyone off deliberately. Just by neglect. Not only should you not expect them to save you but you should expect them to try to kill you. Anything else is too risky. You thought neglect during Katrina was bad when at least 3,000 were killed, wait until 300 million are in the crosshairs. Yes, the government and corporate leaders need workers. But no where near as many as are around now. I would expect at least half of our population is under the gun. The old, especially. They are resource depleting and worthless, in the eyes of our rulers at least. Expect brown-outs and power outages lasting long periods of time. Expect soaring food prices. And that is just before widespread government controls ration everything. Something to look forward to.
END
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
lessons past
PAST LESSONS
After a particularly flush time financially after I deposited my Christmas bonus of $100, I couldn’t wait any longer to buy more books from Amazon as the funds were eating a hole in my pocket faster than a dose of salt through a goose. I bought several books at $2.99 each at their end of year clearance, but those were of little account. Other than the Peak Oil Survival book that I told you all about but you most likely ignored since you have secretly been slinking over to the www.survivalblog.com web site and getting advice on how to blow a months wages on night vision gear or two way radios with double secret encryption, they were mostly just financial and political books which I can leave for awhile until I get around to. But the one book I was very excited to get even at about $10 was the one on how weather has effected civilization throughout the ages, The Long Summer. I was hooked from the first few pages and it is at times such as this when work rudely interrupts my reading time that I curse all of you for not sending me at least five percent of every paycheck you earn so I could lay around the house all the time and surf online and read library books and perhaps, maybe, if you are lucky, return a small bit of the wisdom I gain almost daily to you in my writing. But NOOOOOOO! You selfish swine won’t do it.
*
Anyway, I’m sure I will be ripping off that book a few more times so don’t even bother buying it yourself. After just a short introduction I already feel educated enough to lecture you on history, weather, archeology, ice core rings and logistics. Back about 3,000 BC in southern Mesopotamia there was a settlement that came to be Ur, at one time a mega-city ( for its time ) of about five thousand folks. Back in the beginning small villages settled on the river and dug small irrigation ditches that were de-silted by hand. The land was fertile and there was plenty of wood and water. Well, people being what they are times were good so they fornicated like bunny rabbits and popped out lots of little Ur-ites. Oh, gee, look, Ma, plenty of whatever it is we eat perhaps dates or some damn thing like goat cheese, lets increase our family so one of the ungrateful snot noses will support us in our old age after too much goat cheese clogs up our intestines and we lose control of our bowels and must be hosed off regularly. It was a great idea and pretty soon you had lots of villages and lots of people living off a bounty. But then weather patterns shifted and the rains came later and all at once. Over time the logical answer was to increase the size of the irrigation works to where it was no longer feasible to maintain on a personal basis. The city thus increased in importance as more organization was needed to sustain the irrigation system. The old method of using water from the river all season was replaced by the “lots of water all at once captured by massive man made works”.
*
Over time most of the population moved to the city. Only ten percent lived by the old method. And it wasn’t a bad idea. The church even kept stores of grain for the inevitable food shortages. A city full of survivalists/preppers. Even if they talked funny and ate goat cheese and didn’t have any AR-15’s or AK’s, you still have got to love them. And then that “once in ten life times” event happened. A distant volcano of massive size erupted and the fine particles lifted up into the atmosphere and agriculture was disrupted for many years. Not just a failed crop or two but many. Even relying on the stored food and the small farmers outside the immediate city area was not enough to feed everyone. A lot moved away, a lot starved. A lot were most likely relieved that they didn’t have to eat goat cheese anymore after they ate the goats.
*
And ( drum roll please ), the lesson here is that, one, being an agrarian society will not necessarily protect you from starving to death. And two, the weather is unpredictable and will turn around and bit you on the butt quicker than you can say “Al Gore is my hero and if only evil capitalists would die off and we could go back to tilling the soil by hand for the Communist Collective all would be just hunky dorey and we would all live happily ever after and all hold hands under a rainbow and give each other big wet sloppy kisses, even the ugly kids and the smelly foreigners.” The book will go on to expand on the theme of complex systems avoiding small regular problems but being more susceptible to unexpected disruptions. But for now just keep in mind that as an industrial/information society that uses global trade to avoid localized disruptions such as Midwest draughts and New Orleans being underwater is far from perfect.
*
There are only a certain number of winners under the current system. Most Third World nations routinely experience famine. First World nations are the only ones relatively immune to this, at least for the last two hundred years or so. As long as the coal and petroleum last. As soon as that supply slumps low enough we will experience a natural disaster and be unable to steal what we need militarily. And then it is all over. Complex systems always fail in the end. They just last longer beforehand.
END
Buy my books now to avoid that depressing feeling like you've lost out on an oppertunity of a lifetime. www.bisonpress.com
After a particularly flush time financially after I deposited my Christmas bonus of $100, I couldn’t wait any longer to buy more books from Amazon as the funds were eating a hole in my pocket faster than a dose of salt through a goose. I bought several books at $2.99 each at their end of year clearance, but those were of little account. Other than the Peak Oil Survival book that I told you all about but you most likely ignored since you have secretly been slinking over to the www.survivalblog.com web site and getting advice on how to blow a months wages on night vision gear or two way radios with double secret encryption, they were mostly just financial and political books which I can leave for awhile until I get around to. But the one book I was very excited to get even at about $10 was the one on how weather has effected civilization throughout the ages, The Long Summer. I was hooked from the first few pages and it is at times such as this when work rudely interrupts my reading time that I curse all of you for not sending me at least five percent of every paycheck you earn so I could lay around the house all the time and surf online and read library books and perhaps, maybe, if you are lucky, return a small bit of the wisdom I gain almost daily to you in my writing. But NOOOOOOO! You selfish swine won’t do it.
*
Anyway, I’m sure I will be ripping off that book a few more times so don’t even bother buying it yourself. After just a short introduction I already feel educated enough to lecture you on history, weather, archeology, ice core rings and logistics. Back about 3,000 BC in southern Mesopotamia there was a settlement that came to be Ur, at one time a mega-city ( for its time ) of about five thousand folks. Back in the beginning small villages settled on the river and dug small irrigation ditches that were de-silted by hand. The land was fertile and there was plenty of wood and water. Well, people being what they are times were good so they fornicated like bunny rabbits and popped out lots of little Ur-ites. Oh, gee, look, Ma, plenty of whatever it is we eat perhaps dates or some damn thing like goat cheese, lets increase our family so one of the ungrateful snot noses will support us in our old age after too much goat cheese clogs up our intestines and we lose control of our bowels and must be hosed off regularly. It was a great idea and pretty soon you had lots of villages and lots of people living off a bounty. But then weather patterns shifted and the rains came later and all at once. Over time the logical answer was to increase the size of the irrigation works to where it was no longer feasible to maintain on a personal basis. The city thus increased in importance as more organization was needed to sustain the irrigation system. The old method of using water from the river all season was replaced by the “lots of water all at once captured by massive man made works”.
*
Over time most of the population moved to the city. Only ten percent lived by the old method. And it wasn’t a bad idea. The church even kept stores of grain for the inevitable food shortages. A city full of survivalists/preppers. Even if they talked funny and ate goat cheese and didn’t have any AR-15’s or AK’s, you still have got to love them. And then that “once in ten life times” event happened. A distant volcano of massive size erupted and the fine particles lifted up into the atmosphere and agriculture was disrupted for many years. Not just a failed crop or two but many. Even relying on the stored food and the small farmers outside the immediate city area was not enough to feed everyone. A lot moved away, a lot starved. A lot were most likely relieved that they didn’t have to eat goat cheese anymore after they ate the goats.
*
And ( drum roll please ), the lesson here is that, one, being an agrarian society will not necessarily protect you from starving to death. And two, the weather is unpredictable and will turn around and bit you on the butt quicker than you can say “Al Gore is my hero and if only evil capitalists would die off and we could go back to tilling the soil by hand for the Communist Collective all would be just hunky dorey and we would all live happily ever after and all hold hands under a rainbow and give each other big wet sloppy kisses, even the ugly kids and the smelly foreigners.” The book will go on to expand on the theme of complex systems avoiding small regular problems but being more susceptible to unexpected disruptions. But for now just keep in mind that as an industrial/information society that uses global trade to avoid localized disruptions such as Midwest draughts and New Orleans being underwater is far from perfect.
*
There are only a certain number of winners under the current system. Most Third World nations routinely experience famine. First World nations are the only ones relatively immune to this, at least for the last two hundred years or so. As long as the coal and petroleum last. As soon as that supply slumps low enough we will experience a natural disaster and be unable to steal what we need militarily. And then it is all over. Complex systems always fail in the end. They just last longer beforehand.
END
Buy my books now to avoid that depressing feeling like you've lost out on an oppertunity of a lifetime. www.bisonpress.com
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
escape pod
ESCAPE POD
Last week after my article on pellet stoves, a nasty comment was made wondering if perhaps I was abandoning my frugal principles since I was recommending such an expensive item. I thought I had made clear in the article I was suggesting it as a cheaper alternative to conventional heat ( in some instances ), and also exploring alternatives to the expensive stoves. But that is okay, I forgive you your confusion. I will never give up my frugal lifestyle, let’s just make that clear. Number one, I’m too lazy to make a lot of money. But even if I fell into a fortune I would invest it all in gold and firearms before I lived an opulent lifestyle of driving a car everyday and living in a regular house.
*
However, I realize that most of you have a very high opinion of yourselves and think you deserve central heat and air, a car for transport and a conventional house. Fine, you have to live with it, not me. I might get up to a trailer that is thirty five to forty degrees and walk to work in seven degree weather, but by gum my ex-wife gets to live in the lifestyle she thinks she is entitled to. And, to be honest, I couldn’t stand the thought of house and car payments for most of the rest of my life. Heck, I thought houses were overpriced at $75,000. Okay, honestly, there is nothing wrong with wanting to live a middle class existence. Just because it isn’t for me doesn’t mean its not right for most people. But you do need an escape pod.
*
In case Peak Oil hits us hard. In case we enter an economic collapse. In case a major natural disaster hits us. Think about how you are going to live without heating oil, natural gas, gasoline, coal or nuclear or hydro power. I tend to assume once the power goes out other than in an localized minor emergency, it is going to stay out. No, pellet stoves are not a great long term emergency heat source, just a “nothing collapses, petroleum product prices keep rising in price” preferred method. Here, let’s focus on keeping warm and cool after the grid goes down for good. We have already been exposed to this kind of thinking at least twice before. The late 1970’s and pre-Y2K. Folks in the Midwest and Seattle ( and to some extent California during the power privatization meltdown ) recently got a taste. Instead of buying a pellet stove ( assuming you are not able to fabricate a home made system ) how about putting less money into a far more stable system? Such as a passive solar gain shack. Or, if security conscious, an underground shack.
*
Each system allows you to survive without additional fuel inputs. Or at least far fewer inputs than a conventional shelter. And the small size makes it affordable for almost anyone. I am talking about a shack about ten foot by ten foot. Or a similarly small sized underground room. Not only do you spend very little money wise but you allow the space to be heated with very little fuel. In the future when everyone is fighting for the available wood as it is the only source of heating and cooking, this could help reduce your exposure to the brutal outside world. You might even stay comfortable with no added fuel. It might get down to fifty inside, but comfort is all relative. If it is five degrees outside, fifty might be enough. Especially if you have stockpiled enough warm clothing ( most folks don’t other than those working outdoors ).
*
A solar shack, perhaps ten by ten, is going to be relatively cheap to construct and accomplished easily even by novices. Pour a cement slab ( you can even use a wheel barrow and bags of cement ) and build a stick built cabin. I would double insulate if possible. The south side has a sliding glass door for solar exposure. Use an overhang for summer shading. And have an insulated curtain or insulated shutters to cover the window after the sun goes down. If you are trying to escape the zoning police and just building a storage shed ( wink, nudge ) you may need to conceal the window anyway. In that case a light weight false wall will cover the window both from the tax man and from allowing accumulated heat to escape. The sun enters the window and heats the concrete slab. Insulate the window at night to keep the heat radiating from the slab from escaping. If you can add a stove without the chimney giving you away you can have a supplemental heat source for when the sun is hiding. Otherwise, a short term solution would be a small propane heater and a big tank.
*
This shack is not to store all your crap in. Nor provide shelter for twenty people. It is a cheap insurance policy in case the power goes out for long periods of time. You aren’t constructing an alternate energy castle in the country. You are providing a small escape pod in your back yard in case our Oil Age ends badly. It is enough for some seating, a bed, a small toilet and a cooking area. You can buy a used Hide-A-Bed sofa to really save space. Or construct a mattress over a storage area. Or cover three walls with shelves. You can be fancy, or totally cheap. A shower could be a galvanized tub with a shower curtain around it and a portable camping shower bag over it. The toilet can be a composting sawdust in a bucket crapper. The stove can be a Zip stove. The sink a plastic tub and the drain a buried PVC pipe filled with gravel.
*
An underground shelter could be some cement filled blocks and some thick wood beams overhead for a roof. Or a buried metal cargo container. It is a bit beyond what I want to tackle right now, or advise about, but there is plenty of information free for the Google effort. The good thing about underground is tornado insurance, secrecy and constant year round temperature ( for the most part ). If a small modest effort, it is affordable. Think primitive camping, not full of all wanted creature comforts.
END
Last week after my article on pellet stoves, a nasty comment was made wondering if perhaps I was abandoning my frugal principles since I was recommending such an expensive item. I thought I had made clear in the article I was suggesting it as a cheaper alternative to conventional heat ( in some instances ), and also exploring alternatives to the expensive stoves. But that is okay, I forgive you your confusion. I will never give up my frugal lifestyle, let’s just make that clear. Number one, I’m too lazy to make a lot of money. But even if I fell into a fortune I would invest it all in gold and firearms before I lived an opulent lifestyle of driving a car everyday and living in a regular house.
*
However, I realize that most of you have a very high opinion of yourselves and think you deserve central heat and air, a car for transport and a conventional house. Fine, you have to live with it, not me. I might get up to a trailer that is thirty five to forty degrees and walk to work in seven degree weather, but by gum my ex-wife gets to live in the lifestyle she thinks she is entitled to. And, to be honest, I couldn’t stand the thought of house and car payments for most of the rest of my life. Heck, I thought houses were overpriced at $75,000. Okay, honestly, there is nothing wrong with wanting to live a middle class existence. Just because it isn’t for me doesn’t mean its not right for most people. But you do need an escape pod.
*
In case Peak Oil hits us hard. In case we enter an economic collapse. In case a major natural disaster hits us. Think about how you are going to live without heating oil, natural gas, gasoline, coal or nuclear or hydro power. I tend to assume once the power goes out other than in an localized minor emergency, it is going to stay out. No, pellet stoves are not a great long term emergency heat source, just a “nothing collapses, petroleum product prices keep rising in price” preferred method. Here, let’s focus on keeping warm and cool after the grid goes down for good. We have already been exposed to this kind of thinking at least twice before. The late 1970’s and pre-Y2K. Folks in the Midwest and Seattle ( and to some extent California during the power privatization meltdown ) recently got a taste. Instead of buying a pellet stove ( assuming you are not able to fabricate a home made system ) how about putting less money into a far more stable system? Such as a passive solar gain shack. Or, if security conscious, an underground shack.
*
Each system allows you to survive without additional fuel inputs. Or at least far fewer inputs than a conventional shelter. And the small size makes it affordable for almost anyone. I am talking about a shack about ten foot by ten foot. Or a similarly small sized underground room. Not only do you spend very little money wise but you allow the space to be heated with very little fuel. In the future when everyone is fighting for the available wood as it is the only source of heating and cooking, this could help reduce your exposure to the brutal outside world. You might even stay comfortable with no added fuel. It might get down to fifty inside, but comfort is all relative. If it is five degrees outside, fifty might be enough. Especially if you have stockpiled enough warm clothing ( most folks don’t other than those working outdoors ).
*
A solar shack, perhaps ten by ten, is going to be relatively cheap to construct and accomplished easily even by novices. Pour a cement slab ( you can even use a wheel barrow and bags of cement ) and build a stick built cabin. I would double insulate if possible. The south side has a sliding glass door for solar exposure. Use an overhang for summer shading. And have an insulated curtain or insulated shutters to cover the window after the sun goes down. If you are trying to escape the zoning police and just building a storage shed ( wink, nudge ) you may need to conceal the window anyway. In that case a light weight false wall will cover the window both from the tax man and from allowing accumulated heat to escape. The sun enters the window and heats the concrete slab. Insulate the window at night to keep the heat radiating from the slab from escaping. If you can add a stove without the chimney giving you away you can have a supplemental heat source for when the sun is hiding. Otherwise, a short term solution would be a small propane heater and a big tank.
*
This shack is not to store all your crap in. Nor provide shelter for twenty people. It is a cheap insurance policy in case the power goes out for long periods of time. You aren’t constructing an alternate energy castle in the country. You are providing a small escape pod in your back yard in case our Oil Age ends badly. It is enough for some seating, a bed, a small toilet and a cooking area. You can buy a used Hide-A-Bed sofa to really save space. Or construct a mattress over a storage area. Or cover three walls with shelves. You can be fancy, or totally cheap. A shower could be a galvanized tub with a shower curtain around it and a portable camping shower bag over it. The toilet can be a composting sawdust in a bucket crapper. The stove can be a Zip stove. The sink a plastic tub and the drain a buried PVC pipe filled with gravel.
*
An underground shelter could be some cement filled blocks and some thick wood beams overhead for a roof. Or a buried metal cargo container. It is a bit beyond what I want to tackle right now, or advise about, but there is plenty of information free for the Google effort. The good thing about underground is tornado insurance, secrecy and constant year round temperature ( for the most part ). If a small modest effort, it is affordable. Think primitive camping, not full of all wanted creature comforts.
END
Monday, January 15, 2007
best laid plans
THE BEST LAID PLANS OF MICE AND MEN
Preparing used to be pretty simple. You built a bomb shelter to survive a Soviet nuclear strike and called it good. Any lesser event was then easily manageable. There was little thought of economic collapse before the 1970’s. Even a global cooling trend turning into an ice age was manageable just by living in your underground shelter. Despite some John Bircher Society rhetoric or a slight scare under Nixon after price and wage controls, or a needed additional caution after the ghettos went up in flames, by and large the main and only worry was Slavic hoards attacking. What a simple a peaceful time that was in hindsight. Today we have to worry about our government turning either Communist or Fascist. Global Warming looks very real ( although remember the warning about everything looking like a nail when you are a hammer- it was friggin below zero here the other day, unheard of here and a big raspberry towards I Gore and his traveling monkey show ).
*
Peal Oil is no longer a theory put forth in an academic journal by an obscure figure but playing out before our very eyes. Our economic lunch can be eaten at any time by either the Japanese or the Chinese. Although the Asian Bird Flu kills less people than rabies there has been a widespread traveling of diseases formally only worried about by European colonists exploring the interior of Africa. And the population increases globally, with most urban areas blooming in numbers just means that diseases will spread easier than before. It looks like we are at the end of Empire ( although of course one could easily conclude it started after Vietnam and going off the gold standard ). More countries than ever before have nuclear weapons and might very well start using them to fight over the remaining oil and water.
*
We are pulled in twenty different directions when it comes to what disaster to prepare for. You can be an idiot like me and try to prepare for all of them, but lack of finances merely means each potential disaster receives less attention than it needs. In example, only one water filter and some LED lights for utility failure. Only stored wheat for famine ( grand total for beans is 75-100 pounds ). Two thousand rounds of ammo for social breakdown or rebellion. A few handfuls of silver coins for economic collapse. See what I mean? I might cover more events but in too shallow of a manner. But, and here finally is the point to this darn thing, no matter what event you prepare for, you will get blindsided by another unforeseen disaster happening. Bummer, I know, but the odds are good that no one will “enjoy” the disaster they plan for.
*
If you man your country retreat to avoid crowds of refugees, instead of screaming hoards escaping the cities by eating your bullet riddled corpse you might see Peak Oil where it becomes too expensive to buy gas to commute back and forth to your retreat to get supplies or earn a living. If you live close to town to avoid a car the cities will burn and you will be killed by a mob.
*
If you go into debt to buy a productive farm with good soil and abundant rainfall you might see a good size volcano erupt which blots out the sun and renders your ability to raise food worthless. But if you just stored food thinking the changing weather patterns would make future crop growing too difficult you would starve after your supplies ran out since the economy had collapsed. But if you stayed and raised crops you could become a target for looters. What could possibly be the right answer in a case like that?
*
If you moved south to avoid freezing because of Peak Oil that started about a year ago or Peak Natural Gas that started about five years ago, then the ice caps will melt and you get flooded out by sea level rising. Or, tropical diseases would start to show up farther north and kill you. Or lack of winter frost would not kill off fleas and you would get bubonic plague.
*
You could move to a small town to avoid both crowds and crime. But then in the next economic collapse the town could lose its economic base, dry up and blow away. A lot of small towns are only surviving because of one company being in business. Take that away and it all falls apart. Or, the Social Security checks stop coming in and the town sees no revenue coming in. Or if the Feds either legalize drugs or see a drop in funding to combat them drug money dries up. Almost every town in America has seen this cycle before. The western towns died after the mines played out. The South after the clothing mills went overseas. The auto industry area slowly chocking on the ineptitude of its two companies as they hemorrhage money.
*
You could devote your life to making enough money to live the next economic downturn in style. Unless the Derivatives market blows up and all paper assets nose dive. Or after another civil war erupts here and the winners could declare your assets nationalized. You could leave the US altogether ( tempting except of national gun laws elsewhere ) before its economy collapses or it becomes a dictatorship ( if it isn’t already ). But then you are still at the mercy of the local rulers. The only reason you escape harassment might be a low profile. But sooner or later someone will rob you. Legally or illegally. What’s the difference in the long run? And if you live in another country receiving a pension check, someday you might be cut off financially and really be screwed.
*
So, either try to prepare for everything, or just pretend everything will go according to plan. Your plan. Prepare too shallow, or too deep with everything riding on that gamble. By preparing too shallow you are betting on a short term event. Either way seems to be a poor gamble. But the sad part is that those that don’t do something will be much worse off. We are still screwed, just not as quick. What a warm fuzzy feeling.
END
more of my brilliant writing www.bisonpress.com
Preparing used to be pretty simple. You built a bomb shelter to survive a Soviet nuclear strike and called it good. Any lesser event was then easily manageable. There was little thought of economic collapse before the 1970’s. Even a global cooling trend turning into an ice age was manageable just by living in your underground shelter. Despite some John Bircher Society rhetoric or a slight scare under Nixon after price and wage controls, or a needed additional caution after the ghettos went up in flames, by and large the main and only worry was Slavic hoards attacking. What a simple a peaceful time that was in hindsight. Today we have to worry about our government turning either Communist or Fascist. Global Warming looks very real ( although remember the warning about everything looking like a nail when you are a hammer- it was friggin below zero here the other day, unheard of here and a big raspberry towards I Gore and his traveling monkey show ).
*
Peal Oil is no longer a theory put forth in an academic journal by an obscure figure but playing out before our very eyes. Our economic lunch can be eaten at any time by either the Japanese or the Chinese. Although the Asian Bird Flu kills less people than rabies there has been a widespread traveling of diseases formally only worried about by European colonists exploring the interior of Africa. And the population increases globally, with most urban areas blooming in numbers just means that diseases will spread easier than before. It looks like we are at the end of Empire ( although of course one could easily conclude it started after Vietnam and going off the gold standard ). More countries than ever before have nuclear weapons and might very well start using them to fight over the remaining oil and water.
*
We are pulled in twenty different directions when it comes to what disaster to prepare for. You can be an idiot like me and try to prepare for all of them, but lack of finances merely means each potential disaster receives less attention than it needs. In example, only one water filter and some LED lights for utility failure. Only stored wheat for famine ( grand total for beans is 75-100 pounds ). Two thousand rounds of ammo for social breakdown or rebellion. A few handfuls of silver coins for economic collapse. See what I mean? I might cover more events but in too shallow of a manner. But, and here finally is the point to this darn thing, no matter what event you prepare for, you will get blindsided by another unforeseen disaster happening. Bummer, I know, but the odds are good that no one will “enjoy” the disaster they plan for.
*
If you man your country retreat to avoid crowds of refugees, instead of screaming hoards escaping the cities by eating your bullet riddled corpse you might see Peak Oil where it becomes too expensive to buy gas to commute back and forth to your retreat to get supplies or earn a living. If you live close to town to avoid a car the cities will burn and you will be killed by a mob.
*
If you go into debt to buy a productive farm with good soil and abundant rainfall you might see a good size volcano erupt which blots out the sun and renders your ability to raise food worthless. But if you just stored food thinking the changing weather patterns would make future crop growing too difficult you would starve after your supplies ran out since the economy had collapsed. But if you stayed and raised crops you could become a target for looters. What could possibly be the right answer in a case like that?
*
If you moved south to avoid freezing because of Peak Oil that started about a year ago or Peak Natural Gas that started about five years ago, then the ice caps will melt and you get flooded out by sea level rising. Or, tropical diseases would start to show up farther north and kill you. Or lack of winter frost would not kill off fleas and you would get bubonic plague.
*
You could move to a small town to avoid both crowds and crime. But then in the next economic collapse the town could lose its economic base, dry up and blow away. A lot of small towns are only surviving because of one company being in business. Take that away and it all falls apart. Or, the Social Security checks stop coming in and the town sees no revenue coming in. Or if the Feds either legalize drugs or see a drop in funding to combat them drug money dries up. Almost every town in America has seen this cycle before. The western towns died after the mines played out. The South after the clothing mills went overseas. The auto industry area slowly chocking on the ineptitude of its two companies as they hemorrhage money.
*
You could devote your life to making enough money to live the next economic downturn in style. Unless the Derivatives market blows up and all paper assets nose dive. Or after another civil war erupts here and the winners could declare your assets nationalized. You could leave the US altogether ( tempting except of national gun laws elsewhere ) before its economy collapses or it becomes a dictatorship ( if it isn’t already ). But then you are still at the mercy of the local rulers. The only reason you escape harassment might be a low profile. But sooner or later someone will rob you. Legally or illegally. What’s the difference in the long run? And if you live in another country receiving a pension check, someday you might be cut off financially and really be screwed.
*
So, either try to prepare for everything, or just pretend everything will go according to plan. Your plan. Prepare too shallow, or too deep with everything riding on that gamble. By preparing too shallow you are betting on a short term event. Either way seems to be a poor gamble. But the sad part is that those that don’t do something will be much worse off. We are still screwed, just not as quick. What a warm fuzzy feeling.
END
more of my brilliant writing www.bisonpress.com
Sunday, January 14, 2007
guest article
article submitted by reader. You might have seen this before, but it's still good stuff. No more articles to go, so someone submit one if you got 'em. Hope you enjoy, see you tomorrow.
Survival Dollars
A while back Jim talked about setting the priorities of survival investing. All of the things he wrote about work well for some folks. Truth of the matter is that there are some families that have total disagreements about survival and preparedness. A single thin dime spent on preparedness items causes fights in the family and more added stress than any of us need.
Over the years I have spent a fair amount of time trying to figure out various ways to earn extra money to purchase the needed survival items I wanted without causing a fight with my spouse. I feel fortunate to have found several that work well for me, and may work for you as well. Frankly, I hope by sharing some of these that Jim will compile them in one column and we can all learn more ways to earn survival dollars.
Ground rules for myself were that working a part time job was out. I hated working my normal 40 hour week and being committed to having to be at a certain spot at a certain time five or six days a week. Over the years I have worked part time jobs to pay off bills that got away and it always take longer to save that money than planned and family life suffers. Any extra income I earn is done on my own terms with me setting the limits. I like to control my own life.
Before I begin I must add one thought. If you need to own a vehicle that vehicle needs to be a pickup truck. It will allow you to earn extra dollars several ways and make life easier. It should be the number one choice vehicle of survivalist.
As I write this I have just completed two days of doing one of the easiest ways to make extra money I know. A friend and I cleaned out a closing business of scrap metal and in four trips so far we have grossed just under $300. By the time we finish the place my guess is that we will net over $400.
Most medium and large towns have a scrap dealer that will pay for old metal items. I will not take a lot of time to explain to you the need to sort metal from ferrous and non-ferrous and all the fine points that being a scraper entails. If you are not familiar with scraping metal talk to someone that is and they can help you. The thing that I want you to know is this; metal sold equals cash. In all the years I have sold scrap I have never been handed a check, only dollars. That extra few hundred dollars that you can get for scrap can mean the difference between buying an old Turkish Mauser, a nicer Mauser, or an even nicer semi-auto.
I must add here also, Jim and I do not agree whole-heartedly with each other about survival investments. I am not a hard-core survivalist waiting for TEOTWAWKI. In my life I have needed to survive snowstorms and power outages a lot of times. I find those little two-five day ordeals a good test of my preparedness. I am willing to think a little more optimistic about the future than most survivalist. I am willing to invest money to make money.
One investment I made was to buy some vending machines. I sell gum and candy out of several locations and can net an extra $30-50 every few months. My investment in machines was around $300 and costs run around a hundred a year. The machines have already paid for themselves and I do end up with net profit every year. Again, the machines pay me in cash not checks. Purchasing silver and gold coins is nice when some of the money to buy them comes from a coin shop.
At one time my partner and I sold trading cards out of vending machines and made a couple hundred dollars a month. It tied up two Saturday mornings a month and was not like work. We made good friends while we ran that business and were able to make some contacts that helped us buy other items for survival at cost. Vending machines might not work for you, but start to think of other things that might work for you. We tried setting up at flea markets, but didn’t feel it was worth it for the time involved. I do however know other survivalist that set up and make a good extra income. Look at it this way. Flea markets tie you up for a whole Saturday or weekend. You have to pay for table rent and more than likely you will end up buying some food and drinks, either at the market or to bring in with you. A vending machine ties up money but not time. Placed in say an all night donut shop they work for you 24 hours a day. At some point they pay for themselves and you pull pure profit. If you believe that the SHTF soon then they are not for you. If, like me, you are slightly more optimistic about the future they might work out.
One fellow I know shared several ideas with me. One that I found interesting and might try is the following. During the winter trapping season he and his wife pick up every road kill raccoon and fox they find. (They buy a trappers license to make sure they don’t get in trouble with the DNR.) Last year their fur check was over $700. There is a company that will pay you for squirrel tails too. It is possible to make money off of road kill animals. Again, it is not for everyone, but it does help some folks get extra income.
One item that my partner found a few years ago that worked well for him was selling used sports equipment. He would go to the local parks and ball diamonds every morning and check for left behind gear. Gloves, bats, balls, and shoes were sold at a resale shop and he made over a thousand dollars during the two summers he did this. The secret was to make sure that he got there early in the morning and since he got off work at 4 AM it was easy to do. His best find was a $200 blazer with the receipt still stapled to the outer bag.
One last thing you can try is writing for extra money. I have been able to take some ideas and write articles that have sold for a payment. Some places pay in check, others in subscriptions, and some pay nothing, like The Bisonblog. Still I get to work at my own pace and do something I enjoy.
Survival is many things to many people. I am lucky that I have my place in the woods and a few other things that will make my life easier if trouble happens. I can go for a week without power or I can convert some quick cash by selling some copper scrap I have saved for the right time. None of these things came easily, they came because I took chances and I worked at securing a few extra survival dollars.
Maybe you have other ideas for extra income that you didn’t read here or something here is a modified version of what you do. Let Jim know and maybe he will share those ideas with the rest of us and we can all increase our survival dollars.
Survival Dollars
A while back Jim talked about setting the priorities of survival investing. All of the things he wrote about work well for some folks. Truth of the matter is that there are some families that have total disagreements about survival and preparedness. A single thin dime spent on preparedness items causes fights in the family and more added stress than any of us need.
Over the years I have spent a fair amount of time trying to figure out various ways to earn extra money to purchase the needed survival items I wanted without causing a fight with my spouse. I feel fortunate to have found several that work well for me, and may work for you as well. Frankly, I hope by sharing some of these that Jim will compile them in one column and we can all learn more ways to earn survival dollars.
Ground rules for myself were that working a part time job was out. I hated working my normal 40 hour week and being committed to having to be at a certain spot at a certain time five or six days a week. Over the years I have worked part time jobs to pay off bills that got away and it always take longer to save that money than planned and family life suffers. Any extra income I earn is done on my own terms with me setting the limits. I like to control my own life.
Before I begin I must add one thought. If you need to own a vehicle that vehicle needs to be a pickup truck. It will allow you to earn extra dollars several ways and make life easier. It should be the number one choice vehicle of survivalist.
As I write this I have just completed two days of doing one of the easiest ways to make extra money I know. A friend and I cleaned out a closing business of scrap metal and in four trips so far we have grossed just under $300. By the time we finish the place my guess is that we will net over $400.
Most medium and large towns have a scrap dealer that will pay for old metal items. I will not take a lot of time to explain to you the need to sort metal from ferrous and non-ferrous and all the fine points that being a scraper entails. If you are not familiar with scraping metal talk to someone that is and they can help you. The thing that I want you to know is this; metal sold equals cash. In all the years I have sold scrap I have never been handed a check, only dollars. That extra few hundred dollars that you can get for scrap can mean the difference between buying an old Turkish Mauser, a nicer Mauser, or an even nicer semi-auto.
I must add here also, Jim and I do not agree whole-heartedly with each other about survival investments. I am not a hard-core survivalist waiting for TEOTWAWKI. In my life I have needed to survive snowstorms and power outages a lot of times. I find those little two-five day ordeals a good test of my preparedness. I am willing to think a little more optimistic about the future than most survivalist. I am willing to invest money to make money.
One investment I made was to buy some vending machines. I sell gum and candy out of several locations and can net an extra $30-50 every few months. My investment in machines was around $300 and costs run around a hundred a year. The machines have already paid for themselves and I do end up with net profit every year. Again, the machines pay me in cash not checks. Purchasing silver and gold coins is nice when some of the money to buy them comes from a coin shop.
At one time my partner and I sold trading cards out of vending machines and made a couple hundred dollars a month. It tied up two Saturday mornings a month and was not like work. We made good friends while we ran that business and were able to make some contacts that helped us buy other items for survival at cost. Vending machines might not work for you, but start to think of other things that might work for you. We tried setting up at flea markets, but didn’t feel it was worth it for the time involved. I do however know other survivalist that set up and make a good extra income. Look at it this way. Flea markets tie you up for a whole Saturday or weekend. You have to pay for table rent and more than likely you will end up buying some food and drinks, either at the market or to bring in with you. A vending machine ties up money but not time. Placed in say an all night donut shop they work for you 24 hours a day. At some point they pay for themselves and you pull pure profit. If you believe that the SHTF soon then they are not for you. If, like me, you are slightly more optimistic about the future they might work out.
One fellow I know shared several ideas with me. One that I found interesting and might try is the following. During the winter trapping season he and his wife pick up every road kill raccoon and fox they find. (They buy a trappers license to make sure they don’t get in trouble with the DNR.) Last year their fur check was over $700. There is a company that will pay you for squirrel tails too. It is possible to make money off of road kill animals. Again, it is not for everyone, but it does help some folks get extra income.
One item that my partner found a few years ago that worked well for him was selling used sports equipment. He would go to the local parks and ball diamonds every morning and check for left behind gear. Gloves, bats, balls, and shoes were sold at a resale shop and he made over a thousand dollars during the two summers he did this. The secret was to make sure that he got there early in the morning and since he got off work at 4 AM it was easy to do. His best find was a $200 blazer with the receipt still stapled to the outer bag.
One last thing you can try is writing for extra money. I have been able to take some ideas and write articles that have sold for a payment. Some places pay in check, others in subscriptions, and some pay nothing, like The Bisonblog. Still I get to work at my own pace and do something I enjoy.
Survival is many things to many people. I am lucky that I have my place in the woods and a few other things that will make my life easier if trouble happens. I can go for a week without power or I can convert some quick cash by selling some copper scrap I have saved for the right time. None of these things came easily, they came because I took chances and I worked at securing a few extra survival dollars.
Maybe you have other ideas for extra income that you didn’t read here or something here is a modified version of what you do. Let Jim know and maybe he will share those ideas with the rest of us and we can all increase our survival dollars.
Saturday, January 13, 2007
refugees in your home
GOVERNMENT APPOINTED HOUSING
If today the New Madrid earthquake struck again or Yellowstone blew or the ice caps suddenly reached a tripping point and melted quickly and sea levels rose several feet a year instead of fractions of an inch, tens if not scores of millions of people would be suddenly homeless. As soon as that happened, if the Federal government survived largely intact, refugee camps would start opening. But as that would not even make a dent in the homeless population and so the logical immediate reaction of the government would be to appoint private homes as emergency shelters. You can fill up every sports stadium, every military base barracks, buy every surplus trailer for sale but the government is so inept that all of this would take too long.
*
As soon as an emergency hit, the Feds would wait around a couple of days, hemming and hawing and in general confused about how to do their job of protecting its citizens. Then they will move in and bungle rescue efforts and get in the way of locals who know what they are doing. Regulations will be consulted as people die waiting to be rescued and lawsuits will be directed against anyone disregarding them in favor of action. After about a week as the weak and old have died off the Feds will move in and proclaim themselves hero’s as they split up families and herd everyone into makeshift shelters such as school gyms. In another week as more people die off and infectious diseases spread the president will declare national martial law and start directing those in spared areas to help shelter their fellow citizens.
*
The odds are good that you will be appointed a former drug dealer with a felony record and a poor attitude. Without being able to stay up all night you will shortly be robbed of all your valuables thus leaving you with no wealth to survive the economic crash that follows. You can expect no compensation from the government and if you don’t feed your charges they will go down to the local city hall and complain to the local liaison that they are being mistreated and that whitey ( that’s you ) is oppressing him and he demands his Twinkies and sirloin steak. If local rationing has started because of said economic collapse you can expect this to be no excuse. Since you were working a job instead of being on welfare it is assumed you have a bucketful of cash hidden and a fully stocked larder. If you don’t feed your oppressed minority forced guest you will be arrested and forfeit your house to the complainant.
*
It could be by lottery that your house is picked. Or property tax records for house size. Or by drivers license to seek out older home owners ( presumably the children have moved out ). The government might be totally incompetent when it comes to helping those in a disaster area but they will quickly demonstrate an aptitude for seeking out privately owned housing for the refugees. How it is done is an unknown. But expect the worst, that you will be picked for this dubious honor. And if you own any guns? Afraid of armed resistance, the government will use the excuse that since the family moving into a lot of homes will have children it is only fair to ensure their safety that you turn in your guns. You will never see them again but will receive a receipt that promises to pay you compensation in “New Dollars”. Sometime after the emergency passes.
*
The economy implodes, you lose your job, yet you are forced to provide room and board to a criminal punk. After they steal your guns or you die trying to resist them. And it will do little good to resist since the first act of the government after the disaster was not to help the people but to reinstate the draft and form home guards working under local sheriffs to enforce the new martial law. Your best strategy immediately following reports of millions being homeless in the effected area is to leave your house. Go to a family member and bring your food supplies. Then their house is overloaded and they can get an exemption to being forced to board a refugee. Another idea is to pack up the travel trailer and go camping for awhile. If the disaster is big enough and the economy implodes you would most likely lose your house to the bank anyway. You might as well leave it.
*
If your house is paid for and well insulated and has a good garden to help feed you than instead of abandoning it have a list of people you can invite over to live with you. Since you have alternate energy and stored food they will abandon their darkened cold home and move in with you. Now you have a full house and should escape forced borders. You have trustworthy roommates. You keep your guns and have enough people for guarding the house 24/7 so that even if the government can’t force people on you, you still have a group of people that can survive together.
*
This might be slightly exaggerated fear. Perhaps nothing like it will pass. But this or something similar to it such as widespread power outages or EMP attack or economic Depression will find you still living in the city and so it makes sense to have a group of people you can trust. Let them move in and feed them and they will help keep you alive.
END
your last chance to buy my survival books before we get one day closer to the collapse www.bisonpress.com
If today the New Madrid earthquake struck again or Yellowstone blew or the ice caps suddenly reached a tripping point and melted quickly and sea levels rose several feet a year instead of fractions of an inch, tens if not scores of millions of people would be suddenly homeless. As soon as that happened, if the Federal government survived largely intact, refugee camps would start opening. But as that would not even make a dent in the homeless population and so the logical immediate reaction of the government would be to appoint private homes as emergency shelters. You can fill up every sports stadium, every military base barracks, buy every surplus trailer for sale but the government is so inept that all of this would take too long.
*
As soon as an emergency hit, the Feds would wait around a couple of days, hemming and hawing and in general confused about how to do their job of protecting its citizens. Then they will move in and bungle rescue efforts and get in the way of locals who know what they are doing. Regulations will be consulted as people die waiting to be rescued and lawsuits will be directed against anyone disregarding them in favor of action. After about a week as the weak and old have died off the Feds will move in and proclaim themselves hero’s as they split up families and herd everyone into makeshift shelters such as school gyms. In another week as more people die off and infectious diseases spread the president will declare national martial law and start directing those in spared areas to help shelter their fellow citizens.
*
The odds are good that you will be appointed a former drug dealer with a felony record and a poor attitude. Without being able to stay up all night you will shortly be robbed of all your valuables thus leaving you with no wealth to survive the economic crash that follows. You can expect no compensation from the government and if you don’t feed your charges they will go down to the local city hall and complain to the local liaison that they are being mistreated and that whitey ( that’s you ) is oppressing him and he demands his Twinkies and sirloin steak. If local rationing has started because of said economic collapse you can expect this to be no excuse. Since you were working a job instead of being on welfare it is assumed you have a bucketful of cash hidden and a fully stocked larder. If you don’t feed your oppressed minority forced guest you will be arrested and forfeit your house to the complainant.
*
It could be by lottery that your house is picked. Or property tax records for house size. Or by drivers license to seek out older home owners ( presumably the children have moved out ). The government might be totally incompetent when it comes to helping those in a disaster area but they will quickly demonstrate an aptitude for seeking out privately owned housing for the refugees. How it is done is an unknown. But expect the worst, that you will be picked for this dubious honor. And if you own any guns? Afraid of armed resistance, the government will use the excuse that since the family moving into a lot of homes will have children it is only fair to ensure their safety that you turn in your guns. You will never see them again but will receive a receipt that promises to pay you compensation in “New Dollars”. Sometime after the emergency passes.
*
The economy implodes, you lose your job, yet you are forced to provide room and board to a criminal punk. After they steal your guns or you die trying to resist them. And it will do little good to resist since the first act of the government after the disaster was not to help the people but to reinstate the draft and form home guards working under local sheriffs to enforce the new martial law. Your best strategy immediately following reports of millions being homeless in the effected area is to leave your house. Go to a family member and bring your food supplies. Then their house is overloaded and they can get an exemption to being forced to board a refugee. Another idea is to pack up the travel trailer and go camping for awhile. If the disaster is big enough and the economy implodes you would most likely lose your house to the bank anyway. You might as well leave it.
*
If your house is paid for and well insulated and has a good garden to help feed you than instead of abandoning it have a list of people you can invite over to live with you. Since you have alternate energy and stored food they will abandon their darkened cold home and move in with you. Now you have a full house and should escape forced borders. You have trustworthy roommates. You keep your guns and have enough people for guarding the house 24/7 so that even if the government can’t force people on you, you still have a group of people that can survive together.
*
This might be slightly exaggerated fear. Perhaps nothing like it will pass. But this or something similar to it such as widespread power outages or EMP attack or economic Depression will find you still living in the city and so it makes sense to have a group of people you can trust. Let them move in and feed them and they will help keep you alive.
END
your last chance to buy my survival books before we get one day closer to the collapse www.bisonpress.com
Friday, January 12, 2007
metro distance
METRO AREA SAFE ZONE
Metro areas have usually gotten a bum rap from survivalists, and with good reason. Metro areas became targets for Soviet missiles during the Cold War, large riots are not known to take place in small towns and crime rates are usually worse in the big city. Unfortunately a lot of us are forced to live in or at least near large metropolitan areas for our jobs. I encourage minimum wage job living standards but most folks have families that for some strange reason don’t think they can survive on wages under $50,000 a year, let alone below $15,000. And even I am not fully embracing that standard. I earn $7 an hour and can survive nicely on it but I am not living in a small town in the middle of no where like I could be. Earning minimum wage and having a good employment record ensures you can live anywhere there is not excessive unemployment. Yet I continue to live in a town of 60,000 which is about 59,000 too many for comfort. Darn family members who won’t move.
*
So in order to earn a decent middle class income you are living in or near a death trap. Hoards of mouth breathing inbred idiots daily make your life difficult or impossible. And in most states you can’t shoot idiots ( lawmakers are just smart enough to know they are morons ). But suppose for whatever reason you can now move away from this future death trap. You can get a transfer at work, or you just won the Lottery, or you spilled hot double decaf mocha cappuccino in your crotch and Starbucks is paying you a hundred grand to not show pictures of your blackened genitals on the Internet. Or you slapped your forehead with a heavy hammer and exclaimed in surprise, “ I am an idiot and Jim was right all along and I shall now do everything he says and sell my car and get out of debt and burn my house for the insurance settlement and live in a travel trailer in the small town of Podunk, Wyoming and live on wheat gruel as I await the Apocalypse.”
*
So how far is far enough to escape the metro areas and the hordes of refugees they will vomit forth come any kind of collapse of society, natural disaster or terror attack using medical grade hazardous waste which would kill maybe 4% in thirty years from cancer but everybody panics anyway and everyone heads for the exits and SUV’s are flipping over as twenty people cling to the luggage rack on top trying to escape the fate of glowing in the dark. Or even a more orderly mass exodus from coastal areas slowly but surely being drowned by global warming. Or oil depletion making commuting more costly and so people head towards areas that by all rights should have remained rural but had a new previously unknown attraction to suddenly attract new immigrants.
*
It is going to be almost impossible to accurately predict the best places to live. In twenty or thirty years if nothing goes wrong and no collapse occurs, who is to say your once remote spot is going to stay that way. Who would have thought rural areas in the South would have become retirement communities even a few years ago. Who could have predicted that California would still be poisoning all western states decade after decade by its escapees bringing real estate sale money in to ruin the poor working folks in small towns and bring in their vile socialist preaching’s to change once livable areas from Constitutional abiding to Communist Peoples Republics? Nevada just passed a smoking ban almost everywhere except on casino gaming areas. Divorces are now expensive and far from quick. And there are now speed limits. Well, okay, the speed limit being enacted might not have been the fault of California immigrants but almost every other ill this state has suffered in the last fifteen or twenty years is.
*
If you can import a job with you pick the smallest most remote town you can find out in the middle of no where. With a history of no growth and no employment. Otherwise, if you depend on a job, any town you feel comfortable in ( crime rate, politics, etc. ) will do that is not right next door to a metro area. I don’t think distance is as important as once thought. Look, if I was living 300 miles away from everybody except a small town of 100 people, don’t you think those one hundred would be a threat to you if you were going to be a target of theft? Unless you live by yourself with no neighbors far from everyone you are going to become a target. Living in downtown Chicago will give you 30,000 immediate neighbors to fight off and is not a good idea. But living ten miles from a town of several dozen that itself is two hundred miles from anyone else still gives you plenty of hostile competition for your food supplies.
*
You can’t predict what people are going to do in an emergency. Will traffic bog down and run out of gas just 50-100 miles out of the city? Will enough warning be sounded beforehand? More importantly, will people listen to the warnings? People can walk twenty miles a day, but for how long without food? It just takes one person to get through as a refugee that can kill you. Even on foot someone with just a backpack worth of food can make it three hundred miles out of the city. Not many, but a few. There are no safe distances, really. And unless you don’t own a car and thus don’t need a driveway there is no way to prevent someone from finding you. Any distance away from the masses of people will be a buffer. Even fifty miles away, if not on the direct path of a major road should be enough distance to disperse a good number of people away from you just by the simple fact that not everyone will agree on what area seems most likely to hold food supplies.
*
The closer to a city you are the more desperate folks you will encounter. True. But even three hundred miles away you will still have some people show up. The lone individual in the middle of the boonies is always going to be a target. Even if you and two or three neighbors team up, you will be much safer than going it alone. Prepare to feed a small number of people that help protect you. That is much more important than how far away from a large metro area you are. Not right next door is important, but after that I don’t think there is a magic number of miles that will protect you.
END
pearls of wisdom, cheap! www.bisonpress.com
Metro areas have usually gotten a bum rap from survivalists, and with good reason. Metro areas became targets for Soviet missiles during the Cold War, large riots are not known to take place in small towns and crime rates are usually worse in the big city. Unfortunately a lot of us are forced to live in or at least near large metropolitan areas for our jobs. I encourage minimum wage job living standards but most folks have families that for some strange reason don’t think they can survive on wages under $50,000 a year, let alone below $15,000. And even I am not fully embracing that standard. I earn $7 an hour and can survive nicely on it but I am not living in a small town in the middle of no where like I could be. Earning minimum wage and having a good employment record ensures you can live anywhere there is not excessive unemployment. Yet I continue to live in a town of 60,000 which is about 59,000 too many for comfort. Darn family members who won’t move.
*
So in order to earn a decent middle class income you are living in or near a death trap. Hoards of mouth breathing inbred idiots daily make your life difficult or impossible. And in most states you can’t shoot idiots ( lawmakers are just smart enough to know they are morons ). But suppose for whatever reason you can now move away from this future death trap. You can get a transfer at work, or you just won the Lottery, or you spilled hot double decaf mocha cappuccino in your crotch and Starbucks is paying you a hundred grand to not show pictures of your blackened genitals on the Internet. Or you slapped your forehead with a heavy hammer and exclaimed in surprise, “ I am an idiot and Jim was right all along and I shall now do everything he says and sell my car and get out of debt and burn my house for the insurance settlement and live in a travel trailer in the small town of Podunk, Wyoming and live on wheat gruel as I await the Apocalypse.”
*
So how far is far enough to escape the metro areas and the hordes of refugees they will vomit forth come any kind of collapse of society, natural disaster or terror attack using medical grade hazardous waste which would kill maybe 4% in thirty years from cancer but everybody panics anyway and everyone heads for the exits and SUV’s are flipping over as twenty people cling to the luggage rack on top trying to escape the fate of glowing in the dark. Or even a more orderly mass exodus from coastal areas slowly but surely being drowned by global warming. Or oil depletion making commuting more costly and so people head towards areas that by all rights should have remained rural but had a new previously unknown attraction to suddenly attract new immigrants.
*
It is going to be almost impossible to accurately predict the best places to live. In twenty or thirty years if nothing goes wrong and no collapse occurs, who is to say your once remote spot is going to stay that way. Who would have thought rural areas in the South would have become retirement communities even a few years ago. Who could have predicted that California would still be poisoning all western states decade after decade by its escapees bringing real estate sale money in to ruin the poor working folks in small towns and bring in their vile socialist preaching’s to change once livable areas from Constitutional abiding to Communist Peoples Republics? Nevada just passed a smoking ban almost everywhere except on casino gaming areas. Divorces are now expensive and far from quick. And there are now speed limits. Well, okay, the speed limit being enacted might not have been the fault of California immigrants but almost every other ill this state has suffered in the last fifteen or twenty years is.
*
If you can import a job with you pick the smallest most remote town you can find out in the middle of no where. With a history of no growth and no employment. Otherwise, if you depend on a job, any town you feel comfortable in ( crime rate, politics, etc. ) will do that is not right next door to a metro area. I don’t think distance is as important as once thought. Look, if I was living 300 miles away from everybody except a small town of 100 people, don’t you think those one hundred would be a threat to you if you were going to be a target of theft? Unless you live by yourself with no neighbors far from everyone you are going to become a target. Living in downtown Chicago will give you 30,000 immediate neighbors to fight off and is not a good idea. But living ten miles from a town of several dozen that itself is two hundred miles from anyone else still gives you plenty of hostile competition for your food supplies.
*
You can’t predict what people are going to do in an emergency. Will traffic bog down and run out of gas just 50-100 miles out of the city? Will enough warning be sounded beforehand? More importantly, will people listen to the warnings? People can walk twenty miles a day, but for how long without food? It just takes one person to get through as a refugee that can kill you. Even on foot someone with just a backpack worth of food can make it three hundred miles out of the city. Not many, but a few. There are no safe distances, really. And unless you don’t own a car and thus don’t need a driveway there is no way to prevent someone from finding you. Any distance away from the masses of people will be a buffer. Even fifty miles away, if not on the direct path of a major road should be enough distance to disperse a good number of people away from you just by the simple fact that not everyone will agree on what area seems most likely to hold food supplies.
*
The closer to a city you are the more desperate folks you will encounter. True. But even three hundred miles away you will still have some people show up. The lone individual in the middle of the boonies is always going to be a target. Even if you and two or three neighbors team up, you will be much safer than going it alone. Prepare to feed a small number of people that help protect you. That is much more important than how far away from a large metro area you are. Not right next door is important, but after that I don’t think there is a magic number of miles that will protect you.
END
pearls of wisdom, cheap! www.bisonpress.com
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