improv bleach,salt,gatorade

IMPROVISED BLEACH, SALT, GATORADE
I know I have covered improvised bleach before. I have included it here for the new guys. Also salt, a cheaper form than brand name cartons of table salt. And Gatorade, or to avoid evil lawyers sending cease and desist letters, an oral hydration fluid. You never know when you are going to be exploding out of both ends with no doctor around, nor an operating corner convenience store to supply you with either the fluid or with over the counter anti-diarrhea pink medicine. You will need to re-hydrate or face serious medical problems.
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Bleach is salt water electrolyzed. After sitting on the shelf for a year it loses half its strength. After two years it is pretty much useless. When you have a grocery store that prices everything but perishables or Wednesday newspaper insert loss leader items outrageously high ( on the west coast this includes Safeway and Albertsons ) the items are not going to turn over quickly. Or, even if the store selling the item has lots of foot traffic, you could have a lackadaisical minimum wage earning ear, naval and genital pierced long haired hippy that fails to rotate the old items from back to front and then in a store stripping emergency you end up with the back items that are out of date. After two years your bleach can revert back to salt water. Yes, stockpile bleach at all times. But only one or two gallons that are your day to day use items. One gallon open and in use, the other back stock. As soon as one runs out, open the other and go buy another one. Check the dates and buy the freshest possible. And don’t buy any with additives such as fragrances.
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To avoid out of date bleach ( primarily as a water treatment, so everyone should stock this, even if you have a water filter ), stockpile dry swimming pool bleach. This is called pool shock treatment, a highly concentrated form of bleach to kill all nasties in the swimming pool. The Yuppies children must not be subjected to any alien life forms in the swimming water. To even think of sending their spawn to the local swimming hole is beyond contemplation. Far better to spend twenty thousand dollars on a concrete hole and fill it with water for use three months out of the year. Which is not a bad deal for us survivalists as we can buy the bleach cheaply. For under twenty bucks you can purify literally tens of thousands of gallons of water. What you want to buy is pool shock that contains 65% calcium hypochlorite. Make sure it has no algaecides or fungicides.
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To make homemade bleach, take a heaping teaspoon of the pool shock powder and add to two gallons of water. Do this outside because of the fumes. A pound of powder makes 165 gallons of bleach. Once made, assume the same limited shelf life of store bought bleach. Now, take your newly created liquid bleach and add two tablespoons to a gallon of water to purify it. Let stand covered about thirty minutes. Beware other types of ingredients in the pool powder. You don’t want to use tri-chlorite or di-chlorite or instance. And you need to store the powder away from moisture, sealed up well.
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Now to salt. Every time you go to Wal-Mart ( I know you aren’t going to any other grocery store, even the wholesale type that are huge rip-off Yuppie shearing stations ) it is all very well, fine and dandy to pick up three containers of salt for a buck ( about five pounds ). After all, you will need a stockpile of iodized salt. This is necessary for health. But it is also a terrible way to stockpile large quantities of salt, say for preserving food. For that there is only one way to buy economically from normal retail outlets. Buy water softener salt in forty pound bags. Just make sure you get one that is listed having sodium chloride. You do not want potassium chloride ( thanks to Jim in HI for that one- okay, and to be fair to www.survivalblog.com ). A bag of softener costs three bucks or so. About one quarter to one third what it would cost to buy it in a 26 ounce cardboard tube.
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Now to homemade Gatorade. When you stroll on down to the local river for a drink of water and all manner of mammals are crapping in the water upstream, you can become sick and get diarrhea. You could easily become dangerously dehydrated and need to replace fluids. Make yourself an oral hydration drink by taking four cups of water and adding three tablespoons of sugar and one quarter teaspoon of salt. So even if you have a stockpile of honey, say from pre-Y2K when prices were reasonable, stockpile table sugar for uses such as this.
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rennet and bell curve top

RENNET AND BELL CURVE TOP
Today I was walking home from work ( walking to get some kind of exercise in my mostly stationary existence ) and suddenly an evil plan hatched from my person. I was grumbling to myself about how rough I had it trying to come up with another idea for an article and how instead I just wanted to beat the dead horse of Peak Oil until the old nag was reanimated and gave forth yet another pitiful yet fully audible nay or other hoofed mammal type sound. Yet, because I had been thoroughly chastised for repackaging the old standby topics and continuing to write about the same old crap ( charges which ring true to be honest ) I had resolved to present better types of articles. It might be old information, but at least I hadn’t covered it several times already. I was supposed to be a good boy. Which of course is no fun, or very amusing. You can’t put on a good rant over tofu production like you can political shenanigans.
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So, this evil voice which was a totally new experience to me I swear, said, hey, it’s your friggin blog, why don’t you have your cake and eat it too? Give them both types of articles every day. And thus it shall be. Not that you get twice the writing, silly. Oh, no. That would not do at all. But I am going to write a rant, a musing or a redundant thought whenever I don’t fill all the space on an instructional article. I don’t want to go self-sufficiency, per se, just useful post collapse skills rather than just preps and predictions. I know I kind of wore those out. However, you will have to suffer through my kind of article since I shall post it in the front. Then at the second half will be the how-to stuff. You are forced to read through my putrid swill before you can read the gem of an idea. HA! You can’t escape my brainwashing unless you stop reading, and you can’t do that! I’ve got you where I want you now.
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On Thursday, my second favorite web site www.urbansurvival.com had a link to a graph of total global liquid fuel production. And here is what it showed. An almost flat peak from 2005 after rising the years previous. To you it might mean demand is flattening due to prices rising. To me it means we have hit the global peak oil bell curve top and will coast along at flat production before we scream plummeting down the other side at a high rate of speed. Yes, rising prices are due to inflation. Total production has not yet fallen to where the rising prices are due to shortages. This will happen soon, and when it does you will look fondly back on gas prices only doubling in six years. We are in for a crap storm and nothing will save us except the honing beacon in Roswell New Mexico summoning the mothership of peace loving benign advanced alien races who will show us the secret of room temperature fusion ( they tried once before in Utah but the oil companies had the CIA to compromise all the verification experiments- hopefully they will give us another chance ). Remember, oil is water and food and heat for us all. Good luck surviving without it.
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Homemade rennet is not as hard as those bastards at corporate headquarters are trying to make us believe in their desperate attempt to profit off of your purchase of a $4.97 bottle of the factory made stuff. At butchering time, get the stomach of a calf. Scrub it well with salt, both inside and out. Tack it to a wooden frame to dry in the sun for a day or two. Now cut the dried stomach into one half inch squares. Put the pieces into a large jar and pack with salt ( to preserve ). Before use, soak the piece for about a half hour and then wash thoroughly. If you immerse the pieces in a jar with alcohol as a preservative then no pre-soaking is required. As simple as that.
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You might live in an area without milk, at least for now. But given the importance of dairy to get protein in a meat scarce diet I can’t believe it will be very long before all areas that become self-sufficient in food will have milk cows in abundance. Have some means of producing cheese as a milk preservative. You might even consider stocking up on store bought rennet to use as a barter item until the natural type can be used.
END
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haul water

HAULING WATER
Some areas you live in, the only water worries you have are if you have a big enough container to catch your rain runoff. Other areas, you have plenty of water but it needs to be filtered, such as if you live quite close to a stream or river or lake. A few of us need not only worry about getting water back to our home, then we must purify it. I have already covered the extra cheap filter option where you use a Berky replacement filter and two plastic poly buckets and make your own $50 drip filter unit. Now let’s talk about the need to haul water.
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I would love to live in the South. Cheap living, no real worries about winter heating and both farming and fishing are abundant enough to ease concerns of future food shortages. Unfortunately, the place is relatively crowded. Not only might you have to fight for your homestead in the holler, there will be race tensions that most likely will escalate come any kind of economic slowdown. The southwest will have problems with Mexico, coming real soon as they are running out of oil rapidly. The northeast is Yankeeland. It might be productive in farming and hydropower potential but it is butt chilling cold in winter and it is God-awful crowded. That leaves the West. Which outside of areas with water is a barren dry wasteland. There is a reason why it is hardly settled. You need water to live and productive farmland is real nifty also. The West outside of certain areas is good for little outside of herding and mining. The watered fertile areas are too crowded. So while easterners take water for granted, out west it is behind most of our problems and politics.
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I knew from the beginning by staying out here and buying any kind of affordable land I would need to haul water. A well is easily $20 a foot and may or may not work. Then if it does you need solar panels and such. Why spend $15,000 for a well on a chunk of land costing $3k and a living in a trailer that cost less than that? You can easily live on three gallons of water a day. One to drink, one to bathe with and one for cooking and cleaning. See my article of showering in the Bison collection ( or save your money and figure out for yourself how easy it is by using a new weed pressure sprayer ). You can easily haul that on a bicycle with some on your bike handlebar basket, some on a rear basket and some in a backpack. No need even to get a bike trailer if you don’t want to.
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While things are normal you can haul in the car a much bigger amount at one time. But you need to plan around for when gas is too dear or unavailable. Get a good working bike and have spare tires and parts. You want to put off as long as possible the day when you must haul water on foot. For long term hauling I would recommend two or three liter soda bottles, washed and holding water ( seven drops of bleach added in a two liter bottle ). Replace once a year. The reason is that they are tough and will last a long time. You can raid the dump to pick up free ones and they are easy to handle. Also, more little ones are better than a few big ones, in case of theft or damage. By all means have a few extra larger ones for daily car hauling, but affordable ones use less durable plastics. You might also consider a thirty or fifty five gallon plastic barrel at the homestead for an emergency stash. For that I would use the oxygenizing agent instead of bleach. Water will stay good for five years on that stuff.
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You may wish to have a giant container in the back of your truck, or even a towed unit to have plenty of water and to be able to avoid rationing. It certainly is less than a well by a long shot. Just make sure you can cut back if needed. You could check out a bottled water company, perhaps they have cheap five gallon units of that tough plastic ( you need a cap though ). And, come time to haul, you are going to need a security plan. You can’t come back fully loaded with water and expect to be vigilant and speedy on the defensive. You are going to need a security detail pedaling along besides you. Plan for that. They might backpack an extra gallon, but don’t load them down with much more.
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Living next to a waterway might be better than staying at home. My plan, should I be forced to stay at my present location long enough that the collapse comes, is to drive to a watered location with my supplies. Good for a few years of eating wheat and huddling around a campfire in wool blankets cursing myself for leaving Florida. Hey, this is all Better Than Nothing and Best Alternative That’s Affordable. Nothing is a perfect plan. This is food for thought, hopefully. We all take the water taps for granted. Perfect your back up plan for when ( not if ) they fail.
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sprouts and press

SPROUTS AND IMPROVISED PRESS
Back when the commies were first taking over mass media, the government and college campuses the preparedness industry was moving beyond rich fat guys having contractors build fallout shelters with plastic bushes hiding air intake pipes ( which a subsequent nuclear blast would melt, leaving the tell-tale vent for wasteland wandering zombies to find and they would moan and scratch on the door and the occupants would laugh mirthfully at the pitiful actions of said undead dudes until one stumbled and fell and impaled him/herself on the pipe and the trapped family would then suffocate ) into a more mainstream movement where Mormon housewives and salesmen could sell hundreds of thousands of copies of how-to books. But at the time the art of sprouting seeds was pretty much a new fangled Yankee invention that no one covered. Heck, back then only NASA had solar panels. We’ve come a long way, baby.
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Sprouting seeds is one of those things I haven’t really covered, belonging to that category of “yawn, boring” stuff like making soap or mounting a scope, stuff even us morons should be able to figure out ourselves without written instruction. But, this being a daily blog and me not always having the newest, freshest, hum-dingyness mostest bestest idea to present, today you get sprouting seeds. I’ll throw in an improvised cheese/tofu press so you all don’t get all huffy and throw a fit and all go over to some other survival site and buy their books and write love letters to that author and send him books in the mail and tell all your friends what a manly man he is and how you wish you were just like him and have a cute wife with moderate to huge garbanzos that he didn’t have to buy and he was about to sign a book deal with Paladin Press and he even didn’t have dandruff or a receding hairline. The things I do.
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You can sprout just about any grain or legume. But test it out first. Be a bummer to find out a Frankenseed from GiantMegaEvilAgraCorp was designed not to sprout. Wash them, the floaters are most likely sterile. Feed them to the dog or mother in law ( or just grind it up and eat it ). You don’t need a lot of seed. A tablespoon of alfalfa seeds will get you thirty square inches of sprouted material. A half cup will get you a friggin quart or more. You need some vitamins, not a garden salad. A small amount of sprouts are a very nutritious package. The best veggie there is, in fact, nutrition wise. Soak overnight in three times the amount of water, minimum. In the morning, pour off the water ( drink or cook with it ), rinse the seeds, place in a moist but not wet container. The standard is to use a Mason jar with screen or cheesecloth over the mouth, held in place by a rubber band or the ring. This way, you rinse and place upside down and the seeds don’t get mold with too much water. Rinse and drain at least twice a day. Keep out of light. Keep warm.
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The whole process will last three to six days, depending on the type of seed being used. Alfalfa, peas and soybeans should have a two to three inch long sprout before you harvest it. Grain, no longer than its kernel. Lentils, one inch. Mung beans, three to four inches. Eat the whole thing, hull and sprout. Taste like moldy dirt. Perfect for having fresh very nutritious food in your storage program. If available, say before the apocalypse, if you puree the sprouts in some tomato juice in a blender you can start out your day with the best energy drink available. And you avoid chewing the foul little bastards.
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How, most of you, being poor white trailer trash living in a thirty year old mobile home in the deep South with two coon dogs, a single shot shotgun that was passed down by your grand pappy, laundry on the line and a mostly toothless old lady that chews tobacco ( well, okay, we all wish anyway ) instead of being a retired public school teacher sucking off the public teat and so thus able to afford ten acres and a cow, will most likely never need to know how to make your own cheese. But the knowledge won’t be wasted, as you can perhaps make your own out of store bought or storage instant, or even make your own tofu ( yuck ). I have seen plans for fancy ones made from junk. A sturdy frame is built in the shape of a square, the bottom having a platform. The top of the square has a automobile jack up against the bottom pressing into the can with the cheese slop. The hydraulic jack keeps the pressure on the curds, which is increased over time. To me that seems a bit much. Perhaps left to those with too much time on their hands and a frustrated tinker unable to invent a better mousetrap.
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A better way is just to put weight on top of the deal and let gravity do the work, instead of a Chinese auto parts maker. Take your container, drill or poke many holes in the bottom. Say, an old bleach bottle cleaned with the top cut off. Put your curds in cheesecloth and place in the container. Place a two pound coffee can in the top of the bottle, filled with water. After two hours, increase the weight by adding something on top of the can, then leave for twenty hours more. The jack method is the same, one increase in pressure after two hours, then leave for twenty. And have you seen what they want for a regular press? Over a hundred bucks for the screw down kind made of wood. Just make your own. Original container with bottom drainage. Anything on top of that which will fit inside the first container. Weigh it down. In two hours increase the weight. At the end you have hard cheese. I would have included a rennet recipe but I need to save something for another time.
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cache

CACHE
With Hillary about to be crowned as Queen Commie For Life, now might be a good time to reconsider caching guns and ammo. You don’t seriously think the Arab dude has a chance, do you? Either he is a spoiler, or the powers that be want him elected so they put Hillary up against him. My guess is spoiler. As bad as Hillary is, I can’t imagine an Arab half breed having any chance at all. And don’t think I am donning the white robes here, had Colin Powel run I might have voted for him myself ( after seeing where he stood on gun control of course ). The guy actually only put his head up his butt on cold winter days, unlike most other politicos that leave it there at all times since they swear it does not stink.
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Caching of course got all popular when the last Clinton was in power. At the time I was working a gas station at night and got to know all of the night shift cops ( Podunk town in Oklahoma ). They were a bunch of pretty cool dudes, they even tried to recruit me into the local Guard unit of MI types but I was not going to serve under that commander in chief, thank you very much ). The commander of the shift even got around to telling me ( after he felt comfortable with me after a few years ) that he had bought three AK’s when they were dirt cheap and he had them buried under a big metal electrical tower at his dads place. Things are pretty bad when cops don’t trust the President. And, no, none of them would ever touch a donut even though we threw them out every night.
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I would not only stash guns and ammo, but reloading equipment as well. Even only one hundred rounds reloadable ammo and a Lee loader with a thousand primers and a pound or two of powder will carry you a long way with a bolt action. The reloading supplies will be about $75 for the first thousand rounds and $50 thereafter. To coat guns, you can use Outers Metal Seal. It comes in aerosol cans for fast application. If you want a better level of protection use Cosmoline or even motor grease or Vaseline ( a buck or two at the dollar store should be all you need ). Clean the gun first, then apply coating without getting your fingerprints on the metal ( sweat helps it rust ). For reloading dies, make sure to pack the inside with grease also.
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Cover the greased gun in as heavy of plastic as possible. You can draw the air out by hand, by vacuum sealer or by tub emersion. Place the bag in the water, the top well above the water line. The part under water will have the air pushed out by the water pressure. Then, dumbass, wait for the plastic to dry before placing in the cache. Now get your cache container, most commonly a PVC pipe. The lonely guy at Lowe’s will be so glad to see business during the housing bust he would never think bad of you and assume you were guilty of anti-social behavior. But just in case use cash only. For all we know there is a new bureau in charge of tracking pipe sales to investigate cache constructors ( the unemployed Union works have got to do something besides all going into airline security or nursing ).
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Take your PVC pipe, the correct size for your need ( separate items both to avoid chemical reactions such as powder with gun grease, and to avoid putting all your eggs in one basket ). Place some oxygen absorbers in. You can flush the pipe of air but seems redundant if you sealed the plastic bag properly and didn’t poke holes in it for a moments entertaining distraction ( look, Luke, it burns pretty! ). Put glue around the opening and place the cap on. Any moron can work with PVC. I have, as have recent immigrants from southern type nations.
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Try to put your container on higher ground if possible. Also, some gravel or smaller rocks under it will help shed water. Don’t bury it so shallow that some Sierra Type will start digging a cat hole to deposit their brains in and uncover it. Spoiled urban Yuppie types would turn in the evil machine of death. And for goodness sake know where you buried it. Three paces from a tree doesn’t help after a wildfire. I would most likely bury mine horizontally if a rifle. Otherwise going straight down needs more than just a pick and shovel. Avoid busy areas. You most likely will not have a perfect metal camouflage area such as an old firing range or junkyard ( firing range will be dug up as metal prices soar ). You could make your own range that few others will discover, like a one time weekend shoot with a lot of rimfire cases. That might throw off metal detectors. A remote location that no one thinks to look at should be better than a metal cover though. Don’t rely 100% on a GPS reading, have written instructions with map and compass as a back-up. Don’t coat ammo with grease ( I know it sounds retarded to even mention it, but there’s always one in every group ).
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You can get all crazy and really make the whole process complicated, but this ain’t rocket science. Coat all metal, wrap in heavy plastic, seal, place in pipe, bury, remember location. And sit back and wait for the confiscations to begin ( and leave one or two at home to protect yourself and allow them to steal- after buying twenty three guns in ten years that won’t believe you sold ALL of them ).
END
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improvised knife sharpener

IMPROVISED KNIFE SHARPENER
Never being one to pass up someone else’s idea, I have stolen yet another subject from the latest issue of Backwoods Home Magazine. Using a coffee mug to sharpen a knife. Now, before you boo and hiss at me and log on to www.SurvivalBlog and spend ten thousand dollars on freeze dried foods and $125 for a bucket full of instant potatoes and soups that you could get at Wal-Mart for $29, let’s be fair and admit that there is almost nothing new under the sun. We slice and dice and put a new package on old ideas but more often than not someone has already had the same idea before. I am presenting information to those readers too damn tight to buy their own copy of various publications ( which means most of you ). Remember, if you copy it, it’s plagiarism. If you use the same idea, it’s research.
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To get your free ceramic knife sharpener, find some coffee cup being thrown away because of a chipped lip or broken handle. Flip the cup over. Around the bottom edge is the unglazed portion of the cup, left that way since the cup sat on the rack in the oven. The article goes into detail on how to provide a new edge on your knife to increase its edge. If you take a knife and place the edge on the unglazed ring holding the knife vertical, then move the knife towards the cup half way down you have a 45 decree angle. Go down halfway between that point and the cup and you now have almost a 20 degree angle. Make tiny circles over and over again, half an inch at a time all down the blade. Flip and repeat. Continue until the second coming of Jesus because it is going to take you forever to go from the original 45 degree edge to a 20 degree one. Yes, it will be sharper, and hold that edge as long as you continue to sharpen it at the same angle.
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Or, you can just keep the same 45 degree edge. You are using this technique in the event that your nifty super duper factory made knife sharpener gets all paranoid that you are going to barter it and goes running away in fear, making whimpering sounds and sobbing that it must get free. Kind of like your socks do, one at a time. Come the melt-down of civilization you might break, lose or barter your factory sharpener, but there will be oodles and gobs of busted coffee cups out there ( assuming you don’t make any unglazed pottery yourself, or can’t afford another persons ). Now I am sure that half of you are going to comment about how much better you can get an edge on a blade by doing this or that, or buying this or that product. This is a field expedient knife sharpener, as it were. Better than nothing and far from perfect.
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I prefer my knives cheap and numerous. Stainless steel might make a slightly dull blade but they are out there in vast numbers and they are dirt cheap. If I buy a quality blade I have to worry about losing it and being unable to replace it, as we have discussed before. I hope this helps at least easing your mind about not having a sharpener due to finances. Or allowing you to cease purchases of further sharpening items. If nothing else it can be a nifty trick to pass along to amaze your friends ( Yuppie ones, anyway- I don’t know how common this knowledge is amongst the rural folk ) and influence your enemies.
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I am only writing one page today. I hope this is not a trend, but I am starting a new habit of writing this at home as I said the other day. Perhaps when I get more comfortable with it I’ll be right back up to the standard page and a quarter to page and a half minimum. Also, whoever you were, thank you for sending me a cool looking book about a catastrophe called Solar Flare by Larry Burkett. It looks interesting. Lastly, have you been to Wal-Mart recently? A generic bag of flour just went up 15%!! Yikes.

can meat

CANNING MEAT
Sometimes I just can’t help myself. Sometimes I just feel so superior to everyone else that I pinch myself to make sure it is not a dream. Well, okay, it happens almost every day. Hey, I’m not real pretty, so I make up for it by being right all the time. And by being special. For instance, you’re reading my blog. I’m not reading yours! So there, take that! Just because you chose to live a rich and satisfying life with a real career and a trophy wife and little rugrats scampering around your feet screaming about how they love you and how you really just HAVE to buy them ice cream this very second or they will POSITIVELY die, rather than skulking around corners with your paranoid radar humming at an audible pitch and try to fire off as many rants as possible before the thought police zap you in the gonads with a taser and imprison you in a super secret subterranean level at Alcatraz Island where the tour guides are really the first level of security, like I do, well, that does not mean you are special. I am.
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And to prove it to you I will now share my secret that I just can’t bear to keep to myself anymore. What the heck, I tell you everything else, how the cats conspire against me and how I just know the wife is having an affair with the milkman, which I can prove because we never have any milk which can only mean they try to get rid of the evidence that he was here. I got a free pressure cooker!! See, I told you I was friggin special. I have wanted one of those bad boys forever and a day and I now I have one without spending a dime. They are like, almost as much as a sports car, so I know I saved a bundle. I was being my nice and charming regular self, hanging around the thrift store instead of doing any work at the food bank, insulting the boss and complaining as much as possible. I guess one of them figured the only way to get some peace and quiet was to give me something so super duper so I would run away and hide it like a chipmunk with a nut. And I did exactly that.
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So here comes an article in the newest Backwoods Home Magazine by Jackie Clay on how to can meat. Now, while I am not religious, this can only mean that a grateful and benevolent western deity is looking out for me. Not a minion of Lucifer or some strange Indian ( dot, not feather ) god that shoots lightning bolts out of her butt if you eat meat, but a caring god that loves me and feels my trials and tribulations have only strengthened me and not only gives me a free presser cooker but might, if I’m good and say my prayers after I brush my teeth, also smite the evil bitch ex-wife out of the sky on national TV.
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Now, first off, Jackie is really helpful and always gives neat advice about food preservation and other self sufficiency topics. But here I almost vomited blood and plucked out my eyeballs. Half the dang article is safety advice about checking the pressure valve and having an agriculture extension office check to see that your canner works properly ( yeh, they have nothing better to do ) and making sure the thing doesn’t blow up and hovering over the pressure gauge every second of 90 friggin minutes to make sure the pressure is correct, and feeling up every jar to make sure they are sealed, and not using a water bath to can like your grandma did 130 years ago and lived until a ripe old age of over a hundred until a cloud of radioactive gas killed her and her sheep but instead use an actual pressure canner and blah friggin blah. Oh my gracious! Jackie, you don’t own enough wealth to interest a lawyer ( or do you? Dibs on any gold coins or H&K 91’s we find after rioting and storming her place! ) so stop being so damn cautious. If the idiots who somehow managed to subscribe to the magazine killed themselves not following your advice properly odds are good their kin can’t read and the connection can’t be made back to you. Myself, I ain’t telling you how to can food, read the friggin book by a pro. I’m just passing on what Jackie said. So any of you lawyers can call her, not me. She owns more, honest.
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The whole reason we are canning here instead of drying is because the leaner cuts cost more and the marbled fat meats can’t be dried. You can still buy a brisket for under $2 a pound at Wal-Mart. But you still want to trim as much fat as possible. It improves the taste and reduces the fat that can get under the lid and spoil the proper seal. Put a little fat into a pan and brown your meat chunks. This will shrink the meat, add flavor and pre-heat the meat to help in canning. While this is going on place your lids in simmering water and start your canner water heating. Ladle the meat chunks into the jars leaving an inch at the top. Put water in the browning pan, boil and then fill all your jars with the boiling broth. Again, leave the liquid an inch from the top. Quickly wipe the rim of each jar and place a hot lid on each, then screw down with rings and place in the canner. Put the canner top on and follow instructions per your canning book. The basics are you let the water heat enough to forcibly eject steam in a continuous stream and then start the minutes count for processing, in my case 75 minutes for pints of beef and at 13 pounds of pressure due to my elevation. Let the canner cool, then take out the cans to cool on a towel. Beware any draft as the cans could crack or lose a seal. The liquid inside should still be boiling and the lids will make lots of noise. Wait until the jar is cool to the touch or you might unseal the lid ( touchy little bastards aren’t they ). If you can pop down the lid and it pops back up it is not sealed, the lid should be slightly sunken and tight. Reprocess immediately the bad jars, or at least put the offending ingredients in the fridge. Then eat soon.
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I look forward to canning some of my own meat. I can’t stand the store bought crap due to the nitrates they add. And while I have a propane fridge if it is winter that gets shut off to conserve the propane for heating ( you can’t use the outdoors as a freezer here in the winter as it is not unknown for it to get forty or fifty with the sun out during the day ). I don’t have a heck of a lot of room, but it will be a good skill to learn ( and rewarding with nummy dead animal flesh ). There is a whole lot more to the article, other meats are covered. But I just wanted to share the basics with you.
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fake coffee

Before we begin today, allow me to address the vicious and rude attacks from my last article on our boy, Cho. Some people acted like I was the one that set him up. Now, first of all, I had fun writing the article. It was something different. It would have been better if I had included more of a smorgasbord of choices as to why the attacks had been orchestrated but I ran out of time. No one bothered saying if they liked the fiction aspect, just that I failed to stick to subject. My loyal fan base jumped to my defense ( thanks, guys ) but several stick-in-the-muds decided to quit reading my blog since I didn’t write about brewing herbal tea or constructing a home made radiation meter. Cheese And Crackers! No one has a sense of fun anymore? I was trying to make light of governmental conspiracy theories. However, the rats jumping ship got me to thinking that yes, at times, I might stray a bit too far. What I am going to try to do ( no guarantee of success of course ) is write at night, at home, rather than at lunch at work. Perhaps with more reference material at hand I won’t always be scrambling for a subject matter. Or perhaps my wife that has a hard time keeping her friggin mouth shut will put a halt to that real quick. The one disadvantage of a trailer is the inability to lock yourself in a room to get some work done. If I can pull this off it will also mean I can write some fiction ( at the lunch hour ). Time will tell.
*
FAKE COFFEE
We all go running around making fun of other people. We’ll stop in the mustard isle and grab a jar of Grey Poopon mustard and start talking in a fake French voice, “Ha Ha, I surrender. Don’t make me take a bath”. Or worse racial slurs, or at least from you bastards that have yet to surrender to the politically correct legions of doom and promise to love everybody equally, even the misunderstood people mislabeled as criminals that just had a hard childhood and they shouldn’t be blamed for trying to kill us, and give up your yucky guns and hug your neighbor and sing with Bono about feeding Africa, or some damn thing. I would never make fun of people that have been discriminated against by the evil White Dudes In Charge, especially not Nappy Headed Ho’s. But you insensitive bastards would.
*
And you would make jokes about Towel Heads. But is that really fair? Not only did Arabs give us the zero, which all those Roman guys couldn’t figure out since they were too busy shaving down coins and going to the vomit room, but, much, much more importantly, they gave us coffee. Now, as I have said before, tea is a putrid swill from mop buckets that no one but Communists drink since they haven’t figured out how to exploit Third World peasants ( come on, how hard can it be ). Real civilized folks drink coffee, so it seems we have no choice but to accept Arabs and make fun of British guys instead. Sorry. You guys had your chance to drink coffee and you blew it. If coffee is the elixir of gods, then tea is their bath water.
*
But the major problem with coffee is that we don’t grow it here. We have to export it here from snotty South American dudes that resent us just because we send in heavily armed Marines with bad attitudes every time the peasant revolt for living wages instead of allowing our multi-national companies to steal the land, labor and resources. What a misguided bunch! So, if there ever is a disruption in trade with these guys, like perhaps after we send in a nuclear tipped note of disapproval over Venezuela not selling us oil at below market prices for hyper-inflated dollars, we need to be prepared for coffee shortages. One of the first and most important things you need to do after buying a bolt action rifle with two thousand rounds, four hundred pounds of wheat per person, a Corona grain mill and a water filter from Berky is to stockpile a butt load of coffee. Do not delay here. Coffee can only go up in price as the dollar is taking a skinny dip in a cesspool. I got all my coffee stockpile ( three years worth if you use one 33 oz can a month- diluted, but still caffeine ) when coffee was easy to find at $3 a can. Now, the cheapest can is almost $4 at Wally World. Buy it at that price instead of waiting for it to go up to $5 a can. Inflation is your friend with a mortgage verses rent ( if the price was reasonable, needless to say ), not when it comes to almost any other cost. Including non-perishables.
*
The second thing is to learn how to make fake coffee. There are several different ways to do this. Chicory is the best known. It is better to use it as an enhancer, but it will also work as a substitute. The chicory plant resembles a dandelion as far as the leaves, just wider and darker. Ragged blue flowers will be at the stem joints. Get a picture before hand, obviously. Dig up the plant and take the roots. Cut them in narrow strips after peeling them. Roast for four hours in an oven at 250 degrees. Then grind. All of these recipes are from the book Down Home Ways. I guess the author grew up in a house where the kitchen was always producing heat.
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Chick-pea coffee is garbanzo bean coffee. Roast garbanzo beans at 500 degrees for a half hour. Then grind. Sunflower seeds can be used. Crush them with a rolling pin. Put in water. The hulls will float. Take those and brown in a skillet. Then grind. Dandelion roots. Wash, then peel the roots. Roast at 300 for four hours. Grind. And you can always just use wheat kernels, but that should be your food, not your drink. If you start to use these substitutes right away to stretch out your coffee supply, if the Gods smile down on you, you might make it through until a time where imports start up again. Being without coffee is the true survivalist crisis. All else save nuclear fallout pales in importance. Spend $4 a shopping trip. In a few months you should have a years supply stored up. Just like all other supplies. Start out one at a time at regular intervals. Before long you have more than you think you will ever need. Then, always use the oldest but replace it immediately. Don’t use up your stash.
END
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two for you, one for me

TWO FOR YOU, ONE FOR ME
Ah, taxes. It’s that time of year, where all the lazy slackers are desperately trying to figure out how much they owe five minutes til midnight. Some of us just loan the government our money at no interest and get it back as soon as possible. The April filers are just trying to avoid paying as long as possible. However, despite the painful amount of money that the IRS is going to squeeze out of your soul, you don’t have to sweat it. The government is not going to go broke waiting for you to pay your taxes after an extension. After all, you are paying them every day.
*
A reader forwarded an article to me, I’m not sure where it came from. But it jibed with numbers I have come across before so I’m sure their as close as it can get. For obvious reasons, the government is not really too keen on letting you know just how much money it steals out of every economic transaction. When the Boston Tea Party was over ten percent taxation, it would not do to inform the serfs that they pay more than that on every pack of gum or newspaper they buy. If you add it all up, the indirect taxes, the direct income tax, the inflation tax and the stolen productivity tax, the litigation costs and the regulation tax, you are lucky if you don’t pay 75% total in taxes. A Medieval serf only paid a third. Now, granted, this is a bit off of the survival subject. Hey, I’m having a slow week here. I did well last week with all the reader submitted suggestions and this week I got nothing.
*
Every business in this country has indirect taxes it passes on to the consumer. The property taxes on its building, the income taxes and OSHA regulation costs of putting up that building, the income taxes and unemployment taxes and Social Security taxes and insurance to guard against scheming lawyers. The cost of equipment that is a majority of taxes. Add in all these taxes at every step of the way supplying the business with goods or services. On the average, any product you buy has all told about 50% indirect taxes in any price to the consumer. So, every good or service you buy is half taxes. But you only take home three quarters of your check to begin with. You make a hundred bucks. You bring home $75. Almost $40 is indirect taxes. Now subtract inflation and productivity gains that are never passed on to you. If you are lucky you retain $25 in purchasing power.
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If you add in all hidden costs, the tax on pizza is 38%. Remember, these are best guess estimates. If the government ever required a true accounting, each agency involved would submit numbers using a different accounting system based on different fiscal years and then argue over the meaning of “is”. Don’t worry, it will never happen. A six pack of beer is 43%. Hard liquor is 72%. Soda is 35%. Based on the location, cigarettes can be as high as 75%. Electricity is a bargain at 26%. Air flights are 40%. Hotels 43%. A meal eaten out is 28%. Bread is 27%. Tires are 36%. A motor vehicle is 45%. Gas is 54%. A firearm is 46% and a phone call 50%.
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Now obviously all of these figures added up and averaged are below 50%. But the biggest costs are half, such as a car and house ( which is above half recently if not historically- low interest jacking up prices was government policy ). Even if you don’t smoke or drink they will get you in shelter and transportation. So if 75% of your costs are over fifty percent taxes it brings up the average cost. Your personal costs might be lower, but I would wager not by much. If anything these figures might be too low. Government figures underreport inflation and litigation costs are uncertain. But even if you live right and the Gods smile down upon you and you retain fifty percent of your labors, you are still getting royally screwed.
*
I have a co-worker with a paid for house, a paid for car and eats at work for a buck ( his major meal of the day, our homeless kitchen serves a meal just for employees early ). He is smug in the knowledge that inflation doesn’t touch him. Of course, I don’t have the heart to tell him that his taxes are half of his paycheck. Inflation is only ten percent of his problems. So, if government was to disappear tomorrow ( and the economy continued to function miraculously ) you could retain the exact same lifestyle you have today by only working ten hours a week. I hope the government services you receive are well worth the true cost you are paying.
END
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cho's choice

CHO’S CHANCY CHOICE
“Ah, Patrick, you are a good friend. I have been so lonely for my own country, my family. You are one of the few to show me a kindness. I thank you for this. Every day it seems I have a harder and harder time of it, being away from everyone I know. Class work seems to be a secondary consideration, what with the other problems weighing down on me”. “Hey, no problem there, good buddy. I’m here to help. Listen, I know a friendly doctor. He won’t sell to addicts or trash like that, but he has a sympathetic ear if you are a bit down and need a little help getting out of your funk, to focus on studies. I used to be depressed, myself. A little medication will smooth things out, put everything back into proper perspective. Plus, it really helped me when I was in a low place, to be a little more creative in my writing. Don’t get me wrong, you have good stuff, but it might purge your demons to put them down on paper, you know.”
*
“You mean, to put my moments of depression and frustration and violence into a story?” “Exactly. You know, like focusing your bad energy away from you. Get rid of the bad stuff.” “I think I see, thank you. A mild anti-depressant and an acting out in my writing, to make me feel much more positive.” “Exactly. Don’t worry, I’ll call my doctor and even go down there with you. Before you know it, you’ll be grooving in your school work. Get straight A’s, make the family proud. You’re just helping yourself out of a bad place, bro.” “What would I do without your friendship, Patrick?”
*
“Patrick, I can’t see that this medicine is working. I am getting more depressed, I feel worse!” “Dang, Cho, maybe you need a stronger dose. Or, what about something else? Is anyone messing with you? The medicine could be working, but if someone is mucking with your head, you know. How can you get better if people are screwing with you, man? Is it Shelly? Are you guys having problems?” “To be frank, she has ended our relationship. I believe she feels I will amount to nothing, even as I study so hard. Can’t she see I am helping myself and at the same time helping her, our future?” “Cho, most American girls are pretty mean. And if they have money, they act like you are scum. Don’t worry, man. You’ll find another gal, one that appreciates you. Just try to avoid the rich kids, nothing but grief.”
*
“Doc, I need you to up the dose for me. This is taking too long. This kid is all down with no violence. He whines all friggin day to me and I can’t get him feeling angry. Can you mix something else in there to kind of give him a push?” “Don’t worry, I have just the thing that will fix your friend up.”
*
“Patrick, Patrick! I can’t believe the way people are treating me. It is very disturbing. I can feel their looks of contempt. They hate me! And they are talking about me behind my back. I know this! What is going on?” “Cho, bro. Those lousy bastards are talking about you. I had one guy, didn’t know I was your friend, call you a gook, slant eye. Said your dad was a GI and your mom was a whore! I was shocked. Don’t they know, man?” “Patrick, I am deeply offended! I can’t take this much longer!” “Hey, I got an idea. We can scare the crap out of one of them, then the rest won’t mess with you.” “How would we do that?” “I’ll help. It’s no big deal. We just get a toy gun, act like we are going to kill him. No one gets hurt, but we scare the crap out of him! And it will make a good piece to write a story about. Sure, he’ll be embarrassed, probably piss himself, but he deserves it, talking bad about you, buddy” “Okay, tell me how we can do this”.
*
“Patrick, what is going on? You said these would be toy guns! You actually shot that teacher! Patrick, I know real gunfire and blood! What are you doing?” “Cho, ol’ buddy, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the truth at first. But these people are real pigs. They deserve to be hurt. You are way too passive, man. You got to stand up and fight when you are hurt!” “Patrick, I didn’t even know that teacher! Why are doing this?” “Cho, you are really irritating. I try to help, all you do is complain. Are you going to stand up and fight, or not?” “I won’t do this Patrick! It is wrong.” “Sorry to hear it.” Cho, the violent loner, the single gunman just committed suicide.
*
“Patrick, good of you to come. I wanted to celebrate your first successful mission. You should have a promising future with us if your next mission is as brilliant. Tell me, how was our profile? Did the subject turn at your promptings easily enough?” “Well, Sir. To tell you the truth, He was never violent enough. Much too passive, never really got out of his depression.” “Well of course, young man. We never gave him the full anti-depressant. We had to find out how well you played the game with minimal help.” “Wouldn’t that have compromised the mission, Sir?” “No, not really. This was a moderate priority. We don’t care much of the public reaction, or what the results were. We were breaking you in and keeping the general unrest at its peak. Now, come time for the election, well, let’s just say the fireworks will be much bigger.” “Ah, Sir, do you mean to tell me I wasted thirty two people for no good reason?” “It is all for a very good reason, Patrick. We don’t wander about with no direction. We don’t respond to events like the FBI or ATF, we create events to push in the direction we want to go. If you want, blame it on the American public. They are so desensitized to violence from TV that we must keep raising the bar, so to speak. But even beyond that, think of the good you did today. In the prime of their youth, in their most formidable years, another few thousand citizens are rendered docile with fear. They will pose no obstacle to our future desires, our plans for a better nation. Yes, you see?”
*
“But, Sir, what is the big picture here, if you don’t mind my asking. I want to help my country, that is why I volunteered. But, it would ease my mind knowing that every casualty was not pointless. You know?” “Patrick, we are playing the three dimensional chess game, such as you see on the Star Trek show. Every move we make serves multiple purposes, connects more dots if you will. We don’t just shoot up a campus to train you. We condition the public. We lay the groundwork for more sensible gun laws. Even, if you want to get harsh, help to depopulate a crowded country. Do you think the coming food shortages are going to go away with wishful thinking? The shortages of oil and uranium? We must preempt this somewhat. Lay the groundwork. A population paralyzed with fear will not fight back but willingly go to their maker. We can’t fight a Civil War here. Heck, we can’t even fight one in Iraq!” Grin and a chuckle. “Do you see boy? We must train the populace to meekly follow orders. Come another disaster, we need people to go to the camps. If there is not enough food to go around, well, at least we have a centralized point to collect the dead. It is just triage. No one likes the reality, but if we can’t keep them all alive we can hope to save the most productive. In the meantime harsh measures are called for to train everyone out of the old ways. Only by working together can we hope to survive as a country. Some are just being good soldiers and dieing early. They just don’t know they are doing their duty.” “I think I understand, Sir.” “Good, so you’ll understand you have done your duty. Thank you”. It was a shame, but any potential leaks had to be eliminated. Patrick would have understood, if there roles were reversed.
END
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alabi ike

ALIBI IKE
With a certain sense of justifiable pride, my dad would always recount to me his adventures on his uncles Nevada ranch. Back when Sparks was nothing more than a railroad settlement rather than a suburb of Reno. Since he could always come up with an excuse for any misadventure, he was soon named Alibi Ike. Every time I hear implausible BS I automatically think to myself, Alibi Ike. And I am more and more thinking that name fits the news media. It used to be that the media was an apologists organ for the Communist Party, USA ( misnamed the Democratic Party ). They still are, the boot licking toadies, but even more embarrassing is the fact that they are starting to help out the Fascist Party, USA ( in a fit of misunderstanding, referred to as the Republican Party ). Perhaps it is unwittingly. Perhaps they can see the concentration camp writing on the wall and are desperately currying favor.
*
Almost every day as I read the paper ( I wouldn’t actually pay for the fish wrappers, but we get the local rag at work and I can read it on company time ). And almost every day it is either waving the red flag of the Bolsheviks or making excuses for the ruling elites. They have become Alibi Ike’s. Always rushing into print an excuse to cover the Powers That Be in their power grab/latest screw job of the Constitution. With lawyers, I think I can say it is morally proper to kill them all. Same with politicians. But with newspapers, it is hard to justify that kind of response. We don’t have to pay to read their slanderous Red spewing garbage after all. But it still chaps my butt to see them loose out in public spreading their lies. But we can vote with our wallets. Don’t support them or their advertisers, if possible.
*
The best excuses are with oil. They always have an excuse as to why gasoline or heating oil is increasing in price. They never blame inflation or Peak Oil ( like Y2K, they will only jump on the bandwagon at the eleventh hour ). It’s always the weather. You can’t go wrong blaming Mother Nature, she doesn’t respond in the editorials. Don’t blame the oil companies for telling Bush to invade Iraq and create a shortage. Don’t point out that foreign nations are going to raise the price as the dollar plunges in value. Don’t let us know that the rate of well placement is increasing even as the rate of extraction is steady.
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Exclusion is always a good tool. If you don’t cover a story everyone will ignore it. For instance, China refusing to accumulate more of our debt was whitewashed over. It got one or two paragraphs carefully worded. In contrast, the Virginia college shooting gets several pages in each section of the paper. But never is it mentioned that the campus was a de-armed zone, a politically correct oasis where in their happy fantasy land amidst the ivory towers, all was peaceful and happy and sugar plumes danced in the air. Until the big bad wolf came along with a few 9mm handguns. How unsupportive of the shooter to not have semi-automatic carbines the media could harp on and call for immediate national confiscation since they can’t be inconvenienced by waiting for Hillary to get in power.
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Happy spin is used to describe idiotic boondoggles that defy logic. The local National Guard complex is closed down. In its place across town is a brand new complex. It includes the state emergency response headquarters. This is where overpaid fat balding guys generate paperwork in relation to emergency responses. It serves no purpose other than to create more state workers and suck up Federal FEMA funds. Or 9/11 funds. The fence alone on this twenty acre complex was three million dollars. And it isn’t even solid, it is stamped sheet metal and only seven feet high. I can’t imagine what the buildings to house vehicles that aren’t ever there cost ( the vehicles are in Iraq ). The local Boys And Girls club is opening a new building at over $3 million. The Senior Center is doubling its housing and the city has a new bus service. All taxpayer subsidized to stimulate the economy. The bus line spends $19 to each one dollar fare it collects. These huge government outlays are covered by the newspaper as akin to the second coming of Christ. In their view, it is all just and good and necessary.
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God, how I hate the bastards in the media. They are so helpful leading us along the road to enslavement. Don’t buy from them. Just get your news on the Internet. And let your local businesses know you won’t be patronizing them as long as they subsidize the local PRAVDA rag. Lets see if we can run these bastards out of business. Of course, if that is too high profile for you, just start a local web page or blog and wage a stealth campaign against them. Perhaps in the end their love of money will corrupt them against the Commies. Use those worthless paper dollars against them.
END
A generous reader e-mailed me with a request that I include a certain book in the affiliate book page, Gardening With Guineas. He was planning on buying it and wanted me to get the credit for the sale. He also suggested I see if anyone else wanted to do something similar. So, if you email me ( jimd303@netzero.com ) and request a survival related book I can put it on the page and then you can click on it and buy it and I’ll get paid by Amazon ( or, just mention it on this blogs comment page ). Sure, you’ll wait a day or so while I respond to your mail and post the link. That means you can’t impulse buy it ( perhaps a good thing? ). But then others can see what you think is a good idea of what to buy. I know on www.SurvivalBlog.com there has been talk about using guineas as “watchdogs”. I didn’t know they had a book on them. Also, I included the links to the Foxfire books, but only the first six volumes. I thought the other ones sucked, and I bought all twelve of them. Thanks, Jim.

level of regression

LEVEL OF REGRESSION
I personally have my doubts about the validity of man made global warming. If we are experiencing global warming it is an act of nature ( I phrase it this way in light of the possibility of a warming tripping us into an Ice Age ). Man can alter his environment, yes, but it takes Mother Nature to really change things in a hurry. Ask Al Gore, the tree molesting Commie why it was warmer seven hundred years ago than it is now.
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What I have little trouble believing is the threat of Peak Oil. Yes, I know I was wrong about Y2K. I’m sure that you will forever be taunting me about it, skipping in circles around me and chanting in a hurtful manner and destroying my fragile ego to the point I am physiologically damaged and much seek counseling. Hey, it sounded like a very plausible threat. Perhaps Peak Oil will be the same where I am wrong and nothing happens. Perhaps, after all, oil generation is a mineral process and the organic compounds occurring are a result of contamination being picked up from other sources. I would love to be wrong. I would shrug my shoulders, stick my tongue out at you and refuse to listen to any complaints about your relocation or changes of lifestyle that resulted from listening to my advice. Hey, you don’t know me from Adam. I could be a low level CIA operative charged with sowing discord amongst the self-sufficiency crowd. While you are busy buying solar panels and hooking up hot water collectors and selling your SUV the FEMA boys could be beaming impotency causing microwave beams into your testicles while you sleep so you can’t procreate and teach your spawn to be independent.
*
So, since I believe in Peak Oil, it follows that the chaos and economic devastation caused by oil becoming both scarce and expensive will result in a Depression and our society could fail ( come to think of it, I could be a deep undercover Chinese intelligence operative attempting to plant the seed of helplessness and despair- Die Capitalist Running Dogs!! ). Since oil is incorporated into every aspect of our lives right now, it follows that the absence of oil will cause us to enter into a period of regression, technologically and perhaps socially. So, how far will we regress to?
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There is going to be a massive die off, back to the numbers sustainable from solar power ( read, mostly an agriculture economy ). A lot of activities may be unsustainable, such as computer microchip manufacture. Certainly current farming practices. Large scale enterprises such as weapons building, nuclear power plants, Interstate road building or maintenance. The grid will become a regional affair rather than national. If it survives at all. But the important thing to remember is that what oil does is free manual labor to be turned to intellectual labor. There is a widespread attempt at trying to turn us all into brain workers. Not that it works. Oil does all of our manual labor and the surplus population stays busy working in the entertainment or leisure industry. If you aren’t born with brains it is going to be hard to teach you much of anything.
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Lack of oil is just going to turn us all into manual laborers again. If you are intelligent, you will find a way to earn a living thinking rather than lifting or digging. But most of the population are just plain stupid. That is why 80% are sheep. There is a 10% ruling elite and a 10% group that wants to avoid being sheeple but can’t join the rulers. They cause all of the trouble. They are too smart for their own good. When the oil runs out we will regress to a certain point. But only as far as the tools we use to do everything. We won’t be using many power tools. It will be back to muscle and animal labor to power most things. In a lot of ways things will be better. Using French Intensive Gardening methods are far superior to conventional farming methods of mono-cropping. Earth sheltered buildings with solar heating are better than staying warm with middle eastern oil or natural gas. It is just that it will all be harder work to get those kinds of things prepared. No using roto-tillers or tractors.
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Transportation will be by horse again. Any ethanol powered vehicle will belong to the rich or the military and there won’t be a lot of them. It might be feasible to grow your own bio-diesel, but tractors are too expensive without a cheap global trading system. Anything not local will be very expensive due to transportation costs. And there won’t be easy bank financing available to buy the tractor anyway. Fuel won’t be the problem, it will be the breakdown of the trading and transportation system.
*
Militarily, it might be hard to duplicate the current level of production. Will modern smokeless powder still be produced? How about cartridges and primers? I can’t envision falling below the level of the 1890’s with the Mauser and such rifles with dynamite and even machine guns. But even if our manufacturing industry is too far gone to salvage, we will never fall below the flintlock level. We will still have hydropower, still have germ theory for medicine ( although all drugs will be herbal ). The bottleneck will be trade, not lack of knowledge. There seems to me little reason we can’t stay in a 19th century mode of existence ( but with better techniques for many things such as medicine ). This is along the Kurt Saxon line of thinking, I take no points for originality here. If we keep a rudimentary level of trade and education alive there is little reason to think we will be living in the Stone Age again.
END
Before my usual pitiful unsightly daily begging for sales, I want to thank DW from MN for his kind note and his cash donation. The rest of you, buy my crap at www.bisonpress.com

unibomber shack and underwear

UNIBOMBER SHACK, UNMENTIONABLES AND AMAZON BOOKS
Today rather than wax eloquently upon one subject for your enlightenment and entertainment I shall cover two subjects in lesser detail. Mainly because I don’t think I can stretch one out the entire normal length. Also, I shall thrill and titillate you about my newest business brain fart. Understandably you can’t wait to get started, so here goes.
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A cheap and relatively easy way to build a small shack is to use “starplates”, metal connectors that turn twenty five equal lengths of 2x2’s or 2x4’s into an almost dome shape. One person can easily connect the frame in a few hours. The standard eight foot length lumber will build a ten by ten foot shack. Enough for a small mattress or hide-a-bed, a table for cooking and cleaning and shelves for your items. Plus a wood burning stove. What more do you need? After you move in, with the money you save on rent you can build more of the domes and connect them. One for storage, one as a greenhouse. At present lower lumber wages ( due to the over building of home super stores and the glut of houses ) the frame lumber is about the same as the starplates, $65. So, at $65 for the connectors and $65 for the lumber, your shell costs you $130 ( and I didn’t even need a calculator or paper napkin for that one ).
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You can spend another $60 or so on plywood, but I would just cover with tarpaper or cardboard, then chicken wire and ferro-cement the whole outside. Fireproof and only a few bucks in material. Insulate the inside and stucco. With used furniture and a used woodstove and perhaps even some used material such as Styrofoam panels from a Rent-To-Own or other electronics stores for the insulation you might get lucky and get the whole thing for around $500. As cheap as a used cab-over camper with almost twice the room. Not as confining as a trailer, and set up as you like. It’s small but easy to heat and dirt cheap to build. With an attached dome frame covered in plastic for growing season or winter heat you can have a cheap greenhouse. When you get married, in order to avoid the spouse, attach another dome room for a few hundred bucks.
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For the floor you can go as cheap as some pallets and a piece of carpet. Or, a platform of 2x4’s on a few concrete posts covered in plywood can be under $100. Or, a small concrete slab. The small batches you mix yourself with some rebar and sand is not all that expensive. Insulate under the concrete with Styrofoam sheets if you plan on a south facing glass door for passive solar heat ( tip o the beenie hat for that tip from a reader ). Most of you out there with trophy wives ( or wanna be trophy wives that think a wedding ring makes them prettier ) can’t do this because the Yuppied One won’t except lowered living standards. Disguise this as a guest house or a vacation cabin.
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Starplates are available from www.StrombergsChickens.com
You too can be as smart as a college professor and build a comfortable shack for very little money. Just try to skip the bombing part. Although, in Ted’s defense, it was a friendly that narced him out, not his own stupidity that got him caught. An inspiration to show the rest of us how easy it is to elude the Fed’s.
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Now, let’s talk about unmentionables. Chonies. Skivvies. Underwear. If you are as cheap as me, you might want to go commando and do without underwear. Not a good idea. The whole idea behind underwear is to keep your outerwear sanitary. Wear the things and change them often. I tend to wear them out past the point of decency. My underwear starts to get holes in the back side and the whole fabric is separating from the elastic. I get my monies worth out of them. As I do my pants. I wait until the fabric is so thin you can see the color of my underwear. Or the pockets have holes in them. Or the zipper finally breaks. And then I agonize over the three bucks it costs to buy another pair at the thrift store. While at the same time I’m paying big bucks to store my old beat up van ( the insurance against homelessness ).
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My socks become so thin and holy before I replace them it is a wonder I don’t get blisters on my feet before I change my socks. When I finally do get around to replacing my socks and underwear, it is a wonder I can even use the foul remnants for rags. Which after a long time brings me to my point ( you didn’t think I had one? ). It is fine and dandy to over wear your welcome with your under garments. Wear them until they are useless. However, it is a good idea to stock up on several years worth. Don’t do like me and only buy a new set after you have totally worn out the old ones. We are totally dependent on our underwear from China. Come Peak Oil or a trade war or a dollar collapse, underwear will shoot up in price, if any is available. And you need it, just as you need extra pairs of shoes. Seven pairs of underwear and six pairs of socks for men are a total of about ten bucks at Wal-Mart. Stock up now.
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Can a reader give further details on storage? Is it a good or bad idea to store them in their plastic packages? Should you use moth balls?
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Last up is Amazon Books. Okay, let’s say you think I am the cats meow. The next best thing to sliced bread. That you can’t live without your daily fix of the Bison. That if you weren’t such a homophobe you would love me ( don’t worry there, big fellow, I don’t float that way ). Hug me and kiss me and even slip me the tongue if no one was looking. You want to send me all of your paycheck. But, while you love my daily blog, you either hate my books or have already bought them. How to support my site and ensure that Bison is printed daily, as long as the sky is blue and the bison dot the prairie, forever and ever, amen. Let’s be realistic here. I love you all, I love writing, I love helping out others of like mind. But I need a little love thrown back my way. As in spending cash. The goal all along was to do this full time as my gainful employment.
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So, in order for you to help support the site, I am starting yet another get-unwealthy-quick scheme. I have started a page off my main web site for you to order Amazon books using me as an affiliate. Which means I get 4-6% of any book you order. As long as you use the link off of my web page I get credit for the sale. So, click the link of the book on my web page, put it in your shopping cart, then go back to my page if you want another one, etc. I have almost fifty books listed, all but one I either own or have owned and read. I am not just splashing up anything survival related. I have bought them all myself. The solar cooking book I haven’t owned. The rest I have. Some are worse than others. Some are priceless. But I think I covered most of the field ( I did slip in a Libertarian novel, sorry- I couldn’t help it ). If I missed anything, let me know so I can consider adding it. Some I left off, such as Pulling Through by Dean Ing. A used one was going for $65. I bought mine under ten bucks. The Foxfire series I didn’t find. I’ll try those at a later time.
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As an added bonus to you, I will be paid in Amazon gift certificate, so all profits get plowed back into research, which benefits both of us. Go to my web site at www.bisonpress.com and scroll to the bottom. I have the link there for the Amazon books. They don’t cost extra to buy through me, and it will help support my efforts. Also, if you want to, check out my other blog, No Gay Movies for video reviews. The link is right above the Amazon one.
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useless eaters

USELESS EATERS
At the end of the Petroleum Age, the sad fact is that most of us are useless eaters. And especially in this country, where Information Manipulation has overtaken manufacturing, almost all economic activity is far removed from survival and instead geared towards maximizing the profit of a few elite groups ( bankers, government types, lawyers ). If you are curious as to why resource extraction is continuing despite the long term cost, that is why. The rich will stay that way regardless of cost, the poor will enjoy the crumbs left over. So both groups will endorse stripping the soil and pumping all the oil and paving over the last field. Even China, with thousands of years of maintaining their farmland through intelligent husbandry, are not immune to this, to a degree.
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I am a useless eater, and chances are that you are one also. If you can’t contribute to the survival of a group without petroleum inputs, you are a worthless eater. Politicians are worse than us but they think they are superior so they will kill the rest of us off in order to survive and their justification will be that we are useless eaters. That justification will not be so hard to make once the oil stops pumping and the weather helps a massive crop failure several years in a row. Yes, you will need all of your fancy weapons to kill off your share of useless eaters. But you had better have a stockpile of grain to go along with all that hardware. You need to plan on massive crop failures.
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Right now, in this society, we are able to survive through near worthless economic activity since the petroleum surplus is doing all of the work that needs to be done. Oil is the equivalent of slaves to the citizens of Rome. When the slaves run out a huge city will be unable to feed itself. However, after the mass die-off, after traditional roles are resumed, there may not be enough people to do everything by hand again. This was a major point in the book “Dies The Fire”. So the line blurs between useless eaters needing to die off and manual labor needed after we restart an agriculture society. Plus, society will always have useless eaters, in the form of children and old people. So we need to be careful how many do actually die off.
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Right now, masses of unemployed youth are a danger to society. Post collapse they are a labor pool, for salvage projects, work on farms and soldiers in the military. There is going to be a lot of old cars good for its contents of metal and wiring and tires. Metal from building that must be abandoned due to their dependence on electricity to be habitable. And wood and insulation. Asphalt and concrete are going to need to be torn up to reclaim farming areas. Water diversion projects after underground irrigation is no longer feasible. And even if tractors are run off of ethanol there is still going to be a need for a lot of human labor to replace most of the old petroleum inputs allowing a farm to be productive. And militaries are going to bloom again as warfare is decentralized from the nation state. Plenty of call for soldiers and an arms industry.
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It is kind of hard to plan on any of this as a lone individual. One person can’t keep enough of the population alive in order to have enough helping hands after society has been transformed. Just don’t be too willing to call for too many folks to be allowed to die off if it is possible. Depending on the time of year, it might be possible to try to direct a project such as getting people to mass plant something like potatoes. Or lay up jerked supplies of meat if a herd is handy. Of raid the nearby grain silo. It just might be to everyone’s benefit if you and others try to keep as many alive as possible for future prosperities sake.
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Young ones are a liability, but only for a short time. They learn very quick and can help out to a certain degree while learning. Old people are a liability now, but after they assume their traditional roles as living in a three generation family unit they will teach the grandchildren and supervise them and be a treasure trove of information that only age and wisdom and experience can accumulate. Young women are breeders, but even after child rearing age they can help as the wise old grandma. The nuclear family is an anomaly, a freak show of the Petroleum Age. Old people are supposed to live in the same house as the parents and infants and be an invaluable resource. Young parents on their own today are nearly worthless and need guidance. Old people should not be abandoned. Luckily, like more traditional ideas such as life time marriages and patriarchal order and apprentices in cottage trades, three generation households will emerge again as the norm.
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Again, very few of us have the skills to survive in a post petroleum society. So lets try not to be too harsh when it comes to other useless eaters. The gal on welfare with three kids is still a valuable breeder. Retired grandpa on Social Security sitting around watching Wheel Of Fortune and Jeopardy is still a valuable source of ideas, even if he was raised as a supervisor in a desk job. He recalls how things used to be done old school and has an idea of how the old skills were applied. A government worker might have no survival skills but even if they are out of shape they might serve as an organizer or superintendent. Remember the astronomer in Lucifer’s Hammer. His only skill was sitting still for hours and watching stars, so they made him a lookout at a guard post. Lawyers and politicians and bankers should just be shot on sight unless they can show a necessary skill such as chemistry or medical practice. Of course, they will fail that so we can happily shoot them after torturing them a bit. Bankers keep a low profile, but lawyers and politicians ( even city councilmen ) are a dime a dozen.
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Dig below the surface. There might be more than meets the eye. If not, take a page from the Yugoslavian conflict. To save ammunition, blunt instruments such as sledge hammers were used to kill the civilian population.
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optics

OPTICS STOCKPILE
It’s not like ground glass is a huge mystery. Telescopes and eye glasses have been around for a long time, hundreds of years before the Industrial Revolution. Unfortunately, as with almost everything else, it will take some time after a total post oil collapse to restart a cottage level industry. You need to have sufficient supplies stocked up beforehand. It could take a mere few years after the population numbers have stabilized back to their pre-petroleum figures. Or it could take generations upon generations. It is hard to tell without knowing which calamity will befall us.
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Look at Easter Island. An island society that starved itself to death by deforesting their island. When they noticed half the trees were gone, did they slow down using them, or did the competition heat up for the various factions to get the last of that resource? Our oil supply is at least half gone, if not more. Rather than using the last of the easily extracted oil to begin a crash program to become much more fuel efficient and energy independent, everyone seems to be ramping up their consumption with SUV’s driving from McMansions in the far flung suburbs. Having reached a point of affluence never before achieved, even as the very foundations of it all are rotted and falling apart, almost no one is going to admit there is a point where it will all end. The surge you see of buying both survival information and supplies is merely a few tenths of a percentage point of the population waking up and responding. Instead of one tenth of one percent of people preparing, you now have one fifth of a percent. At its panicked zenith you might see it go as high as a half of one percent
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The less people prepared for the end of the world, the less that will survive and the less that will hold the skills needed to continue life in anything other than a primitive fashion. When at least five out of six people will die ( assuming pre-industrial population figures supported by a solar powered global economy ), you can bet the odds are that few skills survive. So while it might be a simple process to build, say, wooden barrels, it might be a skill that needs to be rediscovered. Same with glass making, shoe making and everything else. The good news is guns and smokeless powder making shouldn’t take too long to be revived as most survivalists ( if those prepping now actually survive- we are just helping the odds, not making a sure bet ) have some knowledge in these areas, in general. Plus, war making will get top priority in any new market that emerges.
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Expect most primitive trades that are now dormant to experience a delay. Have enough supplies in storage to get you through this period. It could be awhile, but what else can you do? If you posses few skills yourself, at least try to stockpile the books with such information. But, to the task at hand. Stockpiling optics. The three main things you need to get are eyeglasses, binoculars and scopes. At the very least eyeglasses, as it is a bit hard to see anything at all, let alone long distance. Scopes will allow you to hit something outside of two hundred yards ( three at the very least ), and even up the odds if you aren’t even a great shot inside that distance. And binoculars, while not critical, can be really handy to have in confined spaces where it is not practical to use a mounted scope.
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If you are lucky your eyeglasses are going to stay in one prescription. Or close enough. In ten years I have gone to the eye guy three times. My prescription has hardly budged. My eyesight doesn’t get any worse over time. That means I can use an old pair of glasses and see just fine. I could even do without then altogether except by having them I avoid headaches when I try to see any amount of distance. If you are really lucky, you will only need reading glasses and can stock up from the dollar store. Really unlucky and your eyes get bad enough that all previous pairs are nearly worthless. Talk to your doctor, he could calculate your eyes deterioration and perhaps prescribe another few, stronger pairs. I can’t imagine that it would be as difficult to stock up on glasses as it is with prescription drugs.
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I have been wearing the last pair of glasses for ten years now. They are held together with duct tape and the lenses are scratched all to hell. But like an pair of shoes, they are broken in and comfortable. Every time I get a job that has insurance I get a pair of glasses. Since medical insurance has gotten so dang expensive lately, it hardly happens anymore. But when I got it I got a new pair of glasses and kept wearing the old ones. So I have two good pairs in storage. If I can get them to last as long as the ones I wear now I could have enough eye glasses until my retirement. If you don’t have any extras, find the best deal ( such as two pairs for $99 ) and go spend the money. Don’t be like the guy in the Twilight Zone that cracked his glasses on the steps of the library after a nuclear war.
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Glasses, scopes, each should be at a minimum of three pairs. Two is better than nothing, but strive for three. One to use and two in storage. Scopes are as low as thirty bucks. They are fragile and can break easily, and you should always have iron sites as backups, but to shoot at any distance you need a scope. And shooting at a distance is preferable to being shot at up close and personal. Binoculars are not mandatory but if possible they are a good thing to have. Again, about thirty bucks for a entry level pair. I would be hard pressed to own more than one pair, as the rifle scope can serve as a back-up. Don’t forget about the Lions program for used eyeglasses, perhaps you can get a free pair if you are poor ( most readers here are ). And scopes and binocs at garage sales. Try to avoid spending too much on a scope, or a pair of glasses for that matter. They are fragile, replaceable items, easily broken. Buy multiple inexpensive items rather than a single expensive one.
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Another Thank You to the reader that suggested this article. The rest of you, just buy my crap. www.bisonpress.com

super nafta

SUPER NAFTA?
We all quake and shudder, look over our shoulder, peer around corners and keep the night light burning brightly in fear of the Next Great Conspiracy that will herd us into concentration camps with Mark Of The Beast identification numbers. The one easy way to tell if someone is talking about a conspiracy is if they use capital letters. Oklahoma City Bomb Set Up By ATF. Twin Towers Used As A Reason To Invade Middle East. Roswell Crash Gives US The Microchip. And now the newest, Super NAFTA. Look, I love a great conspiracy theory just like the next guy. Perhaps more. What better way to increase my heart rate and send me running to the nearest Wal-Mart for rimfire ammunition and flour and beans? But you really have to admit that most of them are pure BS. The post office can’t deliver a letter across the state in less than a week ( and that is after another rate increase ) and we are to believe that even less efficient organizations can secretly plant plastic explosives on the interior of a building ( to be honest I do believe the OKC bombing was a government plot- it is just hard to believe the idiots could have pulled it off ) without anyone finding out.
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Back when I was still sending out a newsletter by mail ( back when stamps were 20 cents ) one of my readers sent a video tape of a guy preaching about The Next Greatest Conspiracy Theory. It had the usual Black Helicopters, Foreign Troops Being Trained In The States, Secret Communications On The Back Of Road Signs kind of thing. I’m not sure if there was chemical jet trails or not, but there was something about gang members being recruited by the government to become its shock troops. Fifteen years ago, and I’m still waiting. No one is in a FEMA “concentration camp” yet. And why would a merger of three sovereign nations be in anyone’s interest other than some corporations? Granted, I haven’t studied this prediction in any depth ( although I first thought Peak Oil was silly ), but unless I am misunderstanding something, Canada and Mexico and the US will merge into one country. Am I wrong? Is it just a free trade kind of thing?
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All three countries merging would make little sense. We would inherit all of Mexico’s poverty problems, Canada would lose control of its natural resources, even Mexico would be effected as more Mexicans working here would depress wages even more and the cost of living down south would increase. How could anyone’s interests be served, other than a few mega corporations. If the US needs the oil ( we might be able to better extract what is left in Mexico since they are so corrupt and inefficient ) why take over Mexico’s oil? By accepting immigrants now in exchange for easy accessible oil, we avoid the investment and upkeep expense. I can see how corporations would benefit, easier resources to exploit on our end and a bigger bribe to Mexican elites. But from a national standpoint I can’t see anyone benefiting.
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If this is just a freer trade arrangement, well, then we are all pretty much screwing the pooch. Without any protections at all of native manufacturing or services, most of the rest of our private sector jobs could disappear. If you think China and India pose a threat to wages, consider what free trade with Mexico will mean. As oil becomes dear it will become more cost prohibitive to ship goods over from China. But Mexico is merely a hop, skip and a jump away. The only reason China was able to successfully steal production from Mexico in the first place was because of super cheap oil. If that stops, expect more factory work from Mexico. But wages in Mexico will just get worse as our increasing unemployment will drive down wages here, thus driving them down in Mexico also. This will be doing little good for the average Mexican peasant. Or the American one. Factories will move out of Canada and increase their unemployment. One imagines they can go work in an increasingly dangerous tar oil field. Or flooded uranium mine. American corporations will love to see decreasing wages. I don’t expect any of us will.
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So what can you do about this, should it come to pass? There is really only one thing ( which you will have to do regardless of if Super NAFTA is a reality or not ) and that is to reduce your cost of living. Look, Chinese labor depresses our wages already. If oil runs out to stop their imports, our economy will be in the toilet. If Super NAFTA passes wages will fall. No matter what comes to pass, your wages ( in real, inflation adjusted terms ) are going to fall. There is very little you can do about this other than to make sure you can survive on less money. This means learning to live frugal. It means trying to start a part time self employed business on the side. It means trying to cut down on your debt. It means cutting back on the middle class lifestyle. If anyone asked me ( although I know they won’t ) I would tell them to get rid of their car and take the savings and pay off all their debt. Sell the house if possible and buy a used trailer or build a shack on a cheap lot of land. At the very least have a vehicle you can live out of and a place to park it for when you lose your job ( a used cab-over trailer and used older gas guzzling pick-up truck can be had for under $1500 with a bit of looking ).
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The next economic downturn is not to be like the 1970’s. There are much fewer jobs to be had. And more competition for them just with the Mexicans we already have in the country. We are no different than the Europeans allowing immigrant workers to take over the country. But in their case it was a bunch of Arabs. Suckers!! We have been able to co-exist with Mexican citizens since before Texas was a country. We can do it again. I have nothing against them, they are harder workers than we are and have better family values. I am only speaking in general terms and macro-economics. Suffice it to say, while the government might successfully pit us against Mexicans so to deflect the blame, only big business and government are going to prosper from any changes about to take place.
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Oh what fun. Today’s article and that of the Press Gangs two days ago were from the suggestions of a reader. Thanks, dude. I hope I helped somewhat. If not, feel free to write and seek clarification. Jimd303@netzero.com
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enjoy, it gets worse

ENJOY, IT GETS WORSE
There has been a story going around for quite some time. A man gets a college loan from the government, uses electricity subsidized by the taxpayer, drives on county roads, gets help with advice for his crops at the local USDA office, receives money not to plant, etc. He is then quoted as complaining about how government has gotten too big and taxes are too high. It is funny because while that account is fictional it pretty well sums up peoples attitudes. They want it all without cost. Or like all the idiots from California that sell their house that cost them $50,000 for $500,000, move to another western state and jack up the real estate prices and then complain when their once country area turns into a suburb.
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People are now starting to have to pay a more realistic cost for decades of near free gifts. The cost of gasoline has always been subsidized, since the seventies when we longer pumped most of our own oil. The military costs of securing cheap oil were never factored in directly. Cheap grain costs are mainly due to taxpayer subsidized crop practices from the government. True, taxpayer money has been used to increase the cost of crops by limiting the supply, but the general practice has been to make money in quantity. If MegaAgCorp plants a million acres and lets an equal amount lay fallow to get government money, the price of grain is still darn low. And encouraging corporations to crowd out the small land holders allowed prices to fall at the expense of decentralization.
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In the last seven years the cost of almost everything has doubled. Some, such as Chinese goods only increase with commodity prices. Some items such as college education and health care cost can go up as much as 20% a year. But overall, prices have doubled. Housing because of increased credit and artificially low interest rates from the Federal government. Automotives due to increased costs. Oil because of scarcity from Katrina and Iraqi oil off the market. A lot of items just because the government is increasing the money supply. But as bad as it has been, it is fixing to get a heck of a lot worse.
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Oil has started to run out. New oil wells are sprouting up everywhere but even with the increased production overall we are flat on the amount pumped out of the ground. All of the worlds super sized oil fields are old, worn out and can only decline. They have already started to decline. From five to fifteen percent, all the majors declined last year. Mexico, North Sea, Russia and Saudi Arabia. Remember that Peak Production is the bell curve. Slowing, flat, then sharp decline. Most of the oil price increase in the last few years has been due to inflation and infrastructure damage. We have yet to see a true oil cost increase due to scarcity. Expect to see it soon.
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The cost of corn doubled in the last year. And that was only to replace the chemical compound to reduce pollution in the gas with ethanol. Imagine if we tried to actually replace some oil we burn as gas with burning ethanol. The current fleet of vehicles using a 85/15 gasoline/ethanol mix is too small to really effect prices much. If we tried to switch over to more than a handful of vehicles clustered around ethanol plants the price of corn would skyrocket. And so would meat and dairy and anything with sweetener in it. And you wonder why Hershey is moving some production down to Mexico where sugar prices are much lower. And why beef jumped in price recently. It will only get worse.
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Then there is the matter of China announcing that she will no longer buy our debt. She has enough. We can go screw ourselves, is the hidden message. If Japan stops buying our paper we will have few nations left to buy our junk bonds. What is the solution? You can’t raise interest rates too high or the real estate market will really be in trouble. As always, the solution will be to inflate the money supply. In years past this was mostly credit simulated by lowering interest rates. That confined the cost inflation to the housing market. Now the governments only solution is going to be to inflate the money supply itself. You will see inflation hit every sector, a lot quicker. And more than single digits. Right now and for the last several years the entire globe has inflated their money through easy credit. Inflation rates ( the true amount, not the government massaged figures ) ran 10% here in the US to up to 20% in China. We can of course discount basket cases in Africa inflating at 1,000% a year.
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If we were seeing a true rate of inflation at ten percent, it will only go up from there since the government must replace foreign debt purchasing with more inflation. I can easily see inflation going to 20%. They might report a seven percent figure if gas is $6 a gallon and everyone is panicking, but right now the official numbers are one third the true rate. Expect that to continue.
So, altogether we are going to see skyrocketing oil prices due to shortages. Soaring food prices due to corn to ethanol programs and overall inflation due to the government being unable to get their money from any other source. We haven’t even seen the government deficit caused by the Baby Boomers retiring yet! Expect all prices to jump, and very soon.
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Now is the time to square yourself away with prep items, before you can no longer afford them. Three years ago wheat was $15 retail for one hundred pounds. It is now $22. Carbine ammo ( non-reloadable, corrosive ) used to be $100 per thousand rounds. Now it is almost $200. Plastic poly buckets have doubled in price. Prep items are going up faster than regular inflation. Gee, I wonder why. Get yours now while the getting is good. Inflation is going to get worse, and faster than normal. And this time it will only help pay off your mortgage in cheaper dollars if you can keep your job. You have been warned. Population is exploding, we are running out of energy and resources. Prepare now for the coming fight for the remaining food and oil.
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the tax man, press gangs and draft enforcers

TAXES PRESS GANGS AND DRAFT ENFORCERS
If you are unable to secure an area after the collapse, to keep people out, you are going to have to face any organization claiming to be the legitimate government claiming rights to your property and your body. After a wide scale collapse you are going to face gangs of thieves engaged in criminal activity and then you will face gangs running protection rackets. These will call themselves a government, but in essence it is still a criminal wanting to dictate how you live and how much you can keep from the fruits of your labor after they get done picking your pocket.
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One can argue that governments are necessary for protection, that it is necessary to surrender some personal freedoms for an increase in security. I won’t argue with you about it, as most of you will refuse to take it to its logical conclusion and recognize that no government is really truly capable of protecting its citizens and that each individual should be a sovereign entity. I will just talk about the cost of submitting to government. Right now, government bribes the populace to comply with its wishes and its theft. In the future, after a collapse, raw undisguised force will be used. And history will be raided for all kinds of juicy helpful ways of increasing power. Such as raiding your home and taking what they desire ( Redcoats force billeted, Northern forces taking crops and livestock on their way through ). Press gangs collecting, by force, able bodied men to serve in the military ( British navel practice at times ). Draft enforcers, checking homes to make sure no male of draft age was around ( Civil War, Vietnam ). There will even be the taking of females for military prostitutes, possibly ( Japanese forcing Korean women into that role in WWII ).
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They will dress it up and call it pretty names. Taxes. Protecting your country. Whatever. You just need to make up your mind before hand whether you want to submit or not. Right now most of us just go along with all the unconstitutional crap because it is implemented slowly and we have time to figure out the way to minimize the impact. After a collapse it will be a choice of dying right away by refusing or dying later from the effects. Join the draft and perhaps survive, or refuse and die right away. Pay fifty percent of your crop and starve in six months, or refuse and die right away. Gee, what a wonderful choice. Choose now, but be honest with yourself and your situation. If you are a small farmer surrounded by population, you are tied to the land and can’t resist to well. If you live in the hills with a few like minded neighbors you could easily defend yourself. Such as when very few government revenue agents went into the mountains to seize illegal stills. The locals knew they were coming and spread the alarm. And the difficult agents might disappear for good in that wild country with few passable roads.
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One situation we might face before a collapse is your children ( or you if you are young enough ) being drafted. I know my boy probably didn’t listen, but I have tried to warn him about the dangers of the military. I got out in time to avoid Desert Storm. He won’t be so lucky as we seem to want to stay in the middle east until the oil is gone. I warned him about depleted uranium rounds and how he could really get screwed up even if never injured. And I told him if he decides not to go in the military but they start a draft he come see me and I would try to hide him. How, I’m not really sure other than to find a spot somewhere in the middle of the desert, or the Sierra mountains. Sure, if we are invaded it is a different story. The crooks in charge want to hurt us to get rich, but they are our crooks. We choose to let them stay in charge. Foreign devils are another matter. Than we should all fight ( although I’m going to become a guerrilla since I can keep myself alive better than the army can and I will be more effective ) regardless of desire.
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This all comes down to a choice. Do you want to go to a concentration camp or do you want to die in the Warsaw Uprising? You might survive the camps. Chances are you won’t survive fighting back. But if enough fight back, there won’t be others trying to run your children’s lives. It is a terrible choice to make, but something should tell us we might not have a say in whether we can avoid that choice. The world is full of bad people who will kill you to survive. Actually, that is not a bad survival trait for a species to have. The weak will help the strong to survive. So choose. Weak and possibly live. Or fight back and possibly die. If you are forced into the military you will die from enemy munitions or disease or lack of medical care. If you are forced into prostitution you could get AIDS and die. That is why I think I would try to fight instead of going to prison. The AIDS rate there is thirty percent officially, so most likely higher in reality. If a gang of cons holds me down and has their perverted way with me my chances of dying in five years are fifty fifty. Isn’t it better be try to stay out of jail?
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Isolation from most people is a good way to avoid these things. Having a few trusted neighbors ( it only works if you are all self-sufficient so one doesn’t get bribed to turn you in ). Being mobile rather than stationary ( easier in the west with few areas to farm so you survive by herding, caches, or robbery ). Being semi-autonomous in your area. Perhaps with a combination of military force and bribery in the form of nominal taxes. But you need to have this thought out before hand. When a gun is pointed at you and you must comply is the wrong time to think you should resist. Hope this helps with food for thought.
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I want to say Thank You to AAP in LV, NV for sending me the magazines, and JFS in VA for the book. You guys are alright in my book. May your generosity be repaid ( just not by me :) ). For those that support me by buying my e-books, also, thanks. A level of financial support keeps me interested enough to continue grinding it out every day. For those of you too poor, don’t sweat it. I’ve been there myself. Although an e-mail now and then with an article idea would be swell. At the very least, spread the word of the site and I’ll be happy. Cheers.