car sales decline

CAR SALES DECLINE
You can’t turn on a news talk radio station without listening to babble about the current Idiot Of The Week, the Right And Honorable Senator from Idaho, bathroom sex scandal. First off, YUK!! I don’t even want to know what this guy might have been up to in a public restroom. Second, is this all they can come up with to distract us from the economic meltdown? The last Idiot of The Week, the Darling Of Sports Fanatics, lets kill dogs that lost me a bet ’cause I don’t make a friggin nuff money playing pro ball. At least that was marginally entertaining since this guy is stupid enough to make it interesting. But gay sex is just gross, and old guy gay sex is enough to turn anyone’s stomach. Beef for dinner was a very cheap cut, probably from the same region the Senator wants to caress, but I still want to keep it down.
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After the Rush Clone, Ditto-Head crowd got done micro-(anal)yzing the Idiot Of The Week there was a small break for national news. Car sales this year are down some. As in ten to twenty percent. Not that it means market analysts are going to start jumping out windows ( can you jump out of modern skyscraper windows or are they sealed for climate control? ) in panic as they lose everything, but it is a big screaming yellow highlight to our sick economy and credit crunch. And where were the highest declines in sales? Anyone, anyone? Florida and California. Not only because those are the largest markets ( combined about twenty percent of the nation ) but because those are the worst as far as the housing bubble. Where the values of homes are dropping fastest. No more home equity loans to buy the new super duper SUV to replace any model that gets any kind of fuel efficiency but screams out to the crowd how un-hip you are ( even Toyota hybrids are seem as being only for weenies ).
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I know, I rag on SUV’s a lot. I agree they are better tanks for protecting your Soccer Mom wife and the gaggle of spawn. I’m not even really all that concerned with the bad gas mileage. We all like our beater rusted functional as heck pick-up trucks. My main beef is that the darn things are as expensive as a house used to be twenty years ago. You are almost duplicating your mortgage payment buying one of the things. They are the epitome of poor financial decisions and over the top lifestyles. And the things were the only way Detroit made a profit! They lost money on every fuel efficient car they sold ( and those aren’t cheap either ).
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A while ago the domestic car makers threw out the little talked about ultimatum, if Union workers didn’t make concessions on perks, the companies would move overseas. Wow! Look at that handwriting on the wall, would you. When the Big Three move the factories over to China, all they have to say is they tried to warn the Unions, but they wouldn’t listen. That means no matter what the workers give up as far as health care or pensions, the corporations can claim it wasn’t enough. I know the Unions got greedy for awhile, but anymore their wages and bennies don’t make them rich as much as just surviving past the poverty level with inflation moving as it has.
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This bit of news is not earth shattering. Not a first step of the coming calamity. That comes from elsewhere ( I think we have started the Derivatives Meltdown, but what do I know? ). This does tell you how bad the credit situation is. When even the Japanese car sales are down 7% to 10%, folks are getting a lot less credit than is normal. And credit freely flowing is what has kept the economy going for a long time. Keep an eye on the Yen. The lower it goes, the worse the credit market. As in, the Yen Carry Trade is breaking down. And on that note, interesting speculation out there that the $4 billion put bet I just talked about might be insider information on the Yen Carry being eliminated by the Bank Of Japan raising interest rates ( BOJ sold big chunks of debt at 1%, traders used that to get 4% returns on US debt-Japan keeps exports going, US keeps selling debt ).
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Another interesting piece of the puzzle in the economic collapse. Have very little money in the bank, and precious metals if possible after you get food and ammo.
END
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coughing chickens

COUGHING CHICKENS
From the same people that urged you to seal up your home in plastic and duct tape ( official policy until someone figured out you might need to breath ), dire warnings of coughing chickens were issued. Everyone started to cast a wary eye toward their chicken coop, global health officials went into panic mode, highly placed government officials made a killing on their stock portfolio as worthless medicines were stockpiled and in the end Avian Bird Flu didn’t really amount to much of anything. Every time two peasants die after molesting chickens warning are once again given, but this Disaster Of The Week never pans out. My limited reading of this has scientists discrediting the official line that a mass pandemic can mutate from chickens to humans. Granted, they could be wrong, or Internet Urban Legends in the Y2K vein, but what we have seen so far leads me to forego panic.
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We really should fear other forms of disease. Especially now that falling food reserves, global warming, Peak Oil, drought and ethanol programs might lead to food shortages and malnutrition ( to say nothing of hyper-inflation leading to the economic problems of food procurement ). Disease and lack of food go hand in hand. Sure, Bird Flu could mutate and peck us in the butt. But I would be more worried about the Black Death. Some feel that the disease, while also spread by fleas, could have been spread by tainted meat ( Mad Cow Disease? ). And the airborne type requires only humans to spread. Then we have to worry about our disintegrating infrastructure and water borne disease. Should we touch on man-made disease?
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I’m not totally convinced that AIDS wasn’t a laboratory product. The math of its spread seems to indicate multiply starting points, not just a African monkey biting some bushman ( speaking of molesting animals… ). If you were a top government leader or Intelligence Spook, why not test out a new and groovy disease on people you hate, like homo’s. You can’t tell me it’s not at least possible. Governments exterminate disagreeable groups all the time. And while you are at it, why not decimate a whole continent that used to be a Communist stronghold. Now the reason is they have plenty of oil. We are all concerned about smallpox being reintroduced from a lab, so why not other diseases? Global de-population is not a goal anyone is really hiding too hard. Wait for serious resource depletion and just wait and see what creeps out of a lab.
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And we are not immune. The government couldn’t even start up a fleet of buses to evacuate New Orleans. They won’t halt any serious disease. Especially not if it harms ethnic groups first. With the Fascists we have in power I wouldn’t be surprised if there are quite a few closet racists in power who would love to see “the mud people” wiped out ( and no comments on racism please, I’m not advocated this view ). Look at the idiot in charge of the Brown Shirts ( Fatherland Security ), that Skeletor looking weirdo that might be the next AG ( God help us ) who commented nothing bad was happening at the stadium/holding pen. He looks like he stepped out of Hitler’s bunker.
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This is one of the reasons I’m in favor of relocating to rural depopulated areas. Massive population surrounding you mean the odds go up of your being infected. It is going to be hard enough stockpiling all needed supplies to avoid going into town. The more neighbors you have, the better the odds are one will cough a lung cookie your way that is a breeding ground of death. Of course, then you have the problem of being isolated and vulnerable. But at least you will be disease free as the Zombie Bikers slaughter you.
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your spouse is a dumbass

YOUR SPOUSE IS A DUMBASS
We all know that we are the smart ones in the marriage. And we can prove it. We all have a long mental list of all the really, really stupid crap that they have done over the years. And anything we might, perhaps, maybe did that was less than bright was not our fault at all but that of our partner. They caused it. Now, having said that, we survivalists have the ultimate reason that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that our spouse is as totally brain dead as you can legally be and not be forced into a institution where frontal lobotomies and electro-shock are the only means of stopping you from drooling down your shirt front to such an extent that you are in grave danger of dehydration. We logically and with great care and prior study educate our spouse as to why exactly they are such an extreme dumbass for not believing the end of the world is going to happen tomorrow.
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Imagine that! Who would have thought that wouldn’t work? We even show then graphs! That alone is all the proof anyone could possibly need. And yet you are ridiculed and mocked and your spouse will pull his shirt over his head and make clucking noises as his pot belly hangs over his whitey-tightey waistband and jiggles to and fro, running around in circles and laughing at your most recent reporting of further proof of eminent doom while you read the morning paper. Outrageous! For one thing, the kids could walk in and see this hideous sight and be scared for life, and for another, they are showing what a complete moron they are.
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Well, if you are worried about the economy collapsing and wish to live in a trailer rent free in the middle of a Louisiana swamp, or need to boost the solar gain in the south facing home walls by tearing a hole in the walls and installing triple glazed insulated glass, or want to cash in the 401 (k) to buy two tons of wheat and store it in a metal shipping container buried in the back yard, you can’t do any of these things without the cooperation of the spouse. So what do you do? My solution, not really recommended, was to break up with my ex-wife. She actually left me, but when we tried to get back together one of my stipulations was that I be allowed to prep for Y2K. She quickly backed out of that one which made it easy to leave later on. Even though I was extremely generous financially with her ( please Baby Jesus, may her soul rot for all eternity, amen ) when I left, that was quickly repaid with treachery. Sorry, but, yes, it does actually always have to be about me.
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The two best motivators have always been fear and greed. Obviously the fear of civilization ending is not enough of a fear factor. So, you must get them to fear something else. Change your behavior, with the fear of more, unless life styles are changed. And of course add in greed, a potential reward if the desired behavior is achieved. I can’t tell you what, each couples dynamics are different. But we all know how to push buttons. We all do it, don’t try to act superior. Marriage is always a power struggle. You need to play for keeps, especially with something as important as prepping for survival. My years long struggle wasn’t graceful or easy but I finally stumbled into what works for my current wife. I absolved her from the responsibility of working to help pay the bills. Before, she worked ( although never steady ) and was thus entitled to help in deciding the major decisions. Once I agreed to be the sole bread winner, I was then able to make all financial decisions. Where to live, what to live in, what to invest in, how much to prep, how much to save, etc. It worked for me due to my paranoia and it worked for her due to her laziness. It was a win-win situation.
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I don’t know what will work in your case, but if you can minimize the threats and maximize the brides in the end everyone will be happy.
END
www.bisonpress.com for books and gear-check out the gear page for new items, a solar battery charger and some wool clothing.

rumor control

RUMOR CONTROL
Well, rumor control is once again sounding the alert. I love a good conspiracy theory as much as the next guy. I jumped on the Iran Oil Bourse story. I’m all for theories about central banks pulling strings behind the scenes. But those made sense. They are plausible. The latest one just doesn’t seem to ring true. Put options are being placed calling for a market drop from one third to one half by the third week of September. I think Sept. 21 if I am not mistaken. If wrong, a billion is lost. If right, anywhere from two to four billion is going to be made. Depending on what article you are reading.
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This goes back to the pre-9/11 attack put options on the airlines that would be hijacked. It is now urban legend. They even used a similar theme in the latest James Bond movie. The question that keeps popping into my mind is, why was so little money being made? If you are a terrorist group, sure, it’s a lot of money. But if you are a Central Bank, it ain’t nothing. If it was a terrorist group, why wasn’t there cooperation from government officials to pinpoint the source of those bets? And if the government was behind the attacks ( my vote ), who would benefit from such a bet? A few hundred million? Come on! You make more money profiting off of the poppy trade if you are, say, the CIA using drugs to fund its black ops.
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Even at four billion, who would make the bet? The Chinese government would lose more than that if they tanked the US dollar by selling enough T-Bills to crash the market. How does an insider with knowledge of an upcoming event become the only one to profit off of this bet? Do they have an office drawing to determine who gets to increase his personal fortune? Okay, Ben, you’re not eligible. Let the other guys draw from the hat. I can see a conspiracy theory like the VP getting greased palms from Halliburton for landing them the rebuilding contract, it fits in with the theory of the economy getting defense money to keep us out of a Depression. They don’t care if Cheney gets a kick back, they care that the economy doesn’t tank so the banks keep making billions. And it isn’t the banks. They make a half a trillion a year in interest. Four billion is walking around money.
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This smells like one of the many conspiracy theories thrown out there to muddy the waters. Plant enough BS stories and people also disbelieve that JFK was assassinated because he talked about taking the job of printing currency away from the Federal Reserve Bank, a group of private bankers that bought the whole country in 1913 for the price of a few Congress Critters. He might have just been jawboning for reelection brownie points, but you don’t even THINK about stopping the Fed. The point is, not all conspiracy theories are BS. A lot are, and a lot at least touch on the truth. We don’t know details, and we don’t know which tales are true or false, at least for sure. But enough have make enough sense that we can at least say, sure, there most likely is something to that.
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I don’t think there is anything to this one. Show me who realistically benefits and I can change my mind, but for now I think if we see a market crash it is not on anyone’s schedule. At least not to where we are forewarned. This one is too pat, without enough “who benefits?” behind it. Not saying the market won’t tank, just that it seems like this is the wrong warning.
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covered wagons headed west

COVERED WAGONS HEADED WEST
Those unfortunate souls trapped in the hellhole of southern California might occasionally see more than three hundred feet from their location ( assuming a strong El Nino ) as the pea soup thick smog clears and see…more housing developments. But, believe it or not, there used to be citrus groves out there. Enough that many poor farmers from the Dust Bowl loaded up all of there household goods on a rickety Model A and moved there during the Great Depression. Picking fruit was a good enough reason to move half way across the country. No wonder we all embraced socialism and ceded our freedoms to the federal government. Free to pick fruit, or an economic slave on an assembly line or in the office? What a choice for folks bent over and violated by the central banker caused economic Depression.
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Of course most of us have no idea about being poor. Even those down to their last dime and homeless won’t starve with the private and public resources now available. Try going long periods of time without adequate food nor any hope and you can foresee how the masses will be led into a willing police state at constant war with rationing and 24 hour hot lines for narcing on your neighbors for unpatriotic thoughts ( such as freedom or selling gold or having a firearm for defense ). But since this is a prepper/survivalist site we are always thinking of ways to minimize coming hard times. I was just reading an article over at TimeBomb 2000 about the western states having such low unemployment that serious staffing problems are showing up.
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Back in the late ’80s I moved to Wyoming on a whim with $175 and a bus ticket. One months rent in a converted hotel was $150. The local McDonalds had a waiting list for jobs. The total help wanted section for Cheyenne, a town of around fifty thousand, was one newspaper column. I was lucky to get a job waiting tables ( some nights the income tax based on gross sales was almost as much as my meager tips ). Now, any area off the coasts, the mountainous west, with either a mining industry or a large retirement population doesn’t have enough people to staff its service jobs ( read-former minimum wage monkey spanker jobs ). The mines pay well enough to siphon off all the good people. And in areas that were colonized by Yuppie Geriatric Kalifornia Pukes the retirees drove up the cost of living through real estate purchases and the local kids moved away after High School, leaving a shortage of workers to bow and scrape to the diaper wearing, Viagra popping, bald and deaf denture sporting population.
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Now, in the future we will only see a Chinese owned mine, its workers earning far less than now as unemployment approached African levels such as 80% and they grovel for a job buying only gruel and a shack. But for now, consider the prospects of moving west. If you are in a job area that is only surviving because of government spending ( such as the Rust Belt where the new growth industry-actually the only industry- is health care ), it might be a good idea to move to an area where both husband and wife together are earning fifteen to twenty dollars an hour. And since you sold your big screen TV and sport boat and bought a travel trailer, rent is cheap. As the economy crashes due to the coming Boomer Retirement Wave then you pack up your house and move to the next likely employment area ( assuming there is one- if not at least you are not homeless so you can squat on public land ).
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I know most of you don’t want to live in an RV. Too cramped. But the security of always having a paid for dwelling is alluring. And mobility, while not as practical in the future due to Peak Oil, can help you escape a poverty stricken area come the time. Buy now, as homeowners unload extra stuff to meet the mortgage. If my area with its high cost of living can produce used RV’s under a grand for sale, your area surely has them as cheap. Pay cash, fix if up a bit, stuff the family in and move. About the only way a SUV is of any use. Yes, you can live in one with a family. The kids will be begging to find a job after school to escape its confines. Pay a mortgage for thirty years ( if you don’t lose your job and it forecloses ) and the kids stay in their room and play video games. Move into an RV and they become productive members of society. Then take half their paycheck and convert it into prep supplies. You can live like kings with all this disposable income.
END
www.bisonpress.com for books and gear

guest article

GUEST ARTICLE
Jim, Been reading your blog lately, and while I can't talk the wife into being quite as frugal as you are, I am finding ideas that can be implemented.....just in case.

I also read survivalblog.com and have to agree with you sometimes. If I tried to do what Mr. Rawles advocated, I would have to give up everything else in life just to afford half of what he says. I'm not exactly poor, but lower middle class is probably a good description.

So.... sitting here trying to figure out the middle ground between complete bankruptcy and total frugality. I think I have begun to hit upon a plan that charts a decent middle course....

I began by first breaking down what would be my "needs" not including food... that is a topic all its own. Here is what I came up with: Heating, Cooking, Cooling, Light, Refrigeration, Sanitation (hot water) and Defense. Then I listed possible fuel/non-fuel sources of accomplishing these. In no particular order: Kerosene, Propane, Solar, Geothermal, Wood, Candles, Clothing/Blankets.
I choose to leave off Defense for now.
Next I did a comparison of abilities vs. costs. What I created was a list like this:
$=cheap to implement $$$$=very expensive to implement.
Kerosene: Heat - Yes - $-$$$ Cooling - No Refrigeration - Yes - $$$$ Light - Yes - $$-$$$ Cooking - Yes - $-$$ Sanitation - Yes - $-$$$
Propane: Heat - Yes - $$-$$$ Cooling - No Refrigeration - Yes - $$$$ Light - Yes - $-$$$ Cooking - Yes - $-$$ Sanitation - Yes - $-$$$
Wood: Heat - Yes - $$-$$$ Cooling - No Refrigeration - No Light - Minimal Cooking - Yes - $-$$$ Sanitation - Yes - $-$$$
Solar: Heat - Some - $$-$$$ Cooling - Some - $$-$$$ Refrigeration - Yes -$$$ Light - Yes - $-$$$ Cooking - Yes - $-$$$ Sanitation - Yes - $-$$$
Geothermal: (this would be the underground pipe mentioned elsewhere in this blog) Heat - Some - $-$$ Cooling - Some - $-$$ Refrigeration - Some - $-$$ Light - No Cooking - No Sanitation - No
Candles: Heat - Some - $ Cooling - No Refrigeration - No Light - Yes - $ Cooking - Minimal Sanitation - No
Clothing/Blankets: Heat - Some - $-$$ Cooling - No Refrigeration - No Light - No Cooking - No Sanitation - No
It would appear that Solar gives us the most possible uses for a single energy source, and you don't have to acquire new supplies. However, Solar can be sporadic and/or seasonal. SO we would need to supplement it. It is also limited in the amount of Heat and Cooling it can accomplish.

Thus I think I have come up with a mix that would allow us to accomplish the most we can, have some redundancy and while not being as frugal as some would like, hopefully won't break the bank either.

Heat: Add as much as we can in passive solar to our home to start with. Whether this is solar vent heaters, solar mass accumulators, etc. Then we want our backup. Either Kerosene or Propane can be our backup, but Kerosene appliances are a little cheaper (unless you find some RV appliances used)... and I am more familiar with it, so that is what I will stick with. If you are knowledgable and/or currently invested in Propane, go for it.
If we add a 10-wick Butterfly stove from www.stpaulmercantile.com for $35,we can use it for small room heating and add to our cooking abilities at the same time. (10 wick stove allows us to use cotton mops to make replacement wicks...don't get one that requires a special wick) Of course, clothes and blankets make their special entries here.

Cooling: If we install at least 100' of underground pipe that terminates inside the home, we can generate some cooling effect during hot spells. This same system can also be tied into our refrigeration...
Refrigeration: As in cooling, using geothermal effects is step one. Then we need to make an ice creator as in the book "Sunshine to Dollars". Used once every couple of days, we should be able to conserve battery power.

Lights: You yourself have mentioned the benifits of LED. If we have our solar power generation system in place (panel, controller, batteries and inverter) we can run LED lights a LOOOONG time on that. A CFL for occasional use would allow brighter illumination when needed. As a redundant though not often used backup, I suggest candles. Kerosene lamps are much brighter, but you might need to conserve the fuel during long periods of bad weather.

Cooking: When the sun is shining, use a solar oven. When it is not, use a microwave. I'm sure some folks are going, "HUH?"... think about this. A 700 watt microwave (an old manual model only, with the twist timer, NOT a digital display) will run for at most 10 minutes. If you have 24 amp/hours to spare, and you don't want to discharge past 12 amp/hours, 10 minutes of use will burn up about 1 amp/hour from your reserve. Most times you will only use 2-3 minutes of time. At 10 minutes a day for 2 meals, you should have no trouble going 2 days and still have power for your lights before you will want to drop back to using the kerosene heater. If you have something that needs a long cook time, and the sun is hiding, you can use kerosene and it will double as a heat addition to the home.

Hot water: Passive solar. Best way to go. No need to get fancy, do a little research and learn how to make one. If you have to, use kerosene to heat up a small amount.
I did not mention wood, but basically it can heat, cook and heat water. If you already have a wood stove installed, great. If you have a fireplace, get an insert. If you don't have either, it is going to cost to get one installed safely and correctly... unless you are prepping for end of the world, you may as well pass.
Is this "frugal" living or "frugal" prepping? Probably not to some. I admit that some of them have initial costs that might be tough to cover. But for someone who has a little more than "dirt poor" to start with, it is doable. What I like is not relying on a single source for the more important aspects of survival living.
I suggest you look at this and take away what works for you. Perhaps your own situation will dictate a different approach.
Sincerely,
TMM
END
I think someone sent me this link, sorry I can't remember who. A inexpensive do it yourself water well ( total cost for a 85 foot well under $400 for example ) http://www.fdungan.com/well.htm

wheat prices rising

WHEAT PRICES RISING
Wheat prices are about double over the last year. A bushel is now priced at seven and a half bucks, futures price. This can of course fluctuate. But the general price has continuously gone up. Even a downward fluctuation will reverse itself quickly and continue upward. Month after month the price is up. A lot of this is due to bad weather in key exporting areas. In general, global supply smoothes out local crop failures. But long term it also means we are as dependant on imported food as we are on imported oil. In the last seven years all prices have risen due to currency inflation, energy prices primarily. And energy effects almost all prices. Weather problems just push certain prices higher than inflation would warrant.
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Inflation will only get worse, as there is little other choice for our economy to function. The current banking problems also cause huge credit increases. Hyperinflation will be the end result as there is no other way to pay the bills. And the current global warming makes crop failures more certain. Prices will go up, the only question being by how much and how fast. The ethanol program raises the cost of all other grains as most corn is earmarked for that program. If this isn’t a “perfect storm” for food prices continually rising in price I don’t know what is. We haven’t even factored in Peak Oil. The energy price increases are mostly due to increased global demand and general inflation. No matter how you look at it, food prices should outpace inflation.
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Now is the time to buy your grain and beans. Not later, not next year, not in three months. Now. We already covered the ammunition price increases long ago. If you hadn’t already bought your primary supply you are paying double what you should have. The price of wheat will in the near future emulate that. Increased price and decreased supply. Food isn’t exactly like metal. You can put more acreage under cultivation, whereas finding new ore deposits isn’t so easy. But there are also constraints on more crops being grown. The credit crunch alone will see less investment in equipment and land. Not to speak of the tax disincentives and the lowering of the water table in many regions. Not impossible. We shouldn’t see starvation level lack of food production. But before incentives are offered consumers will see greatly increased costs. Since food is not factored into the official inflation figures, and since “substitution ability” is the mantra at the Fed, it would take a bit of suffering for much of anything being done.
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I’m not screaming about the sky falling here. I am merely saying that first we had ammunition being driven beyond the ability of frugal preppers to acquire in sufficient quantity and now we are seeing a similar price move in grains. You won’t do without but you will be forced to get less than you need or want. Unemployment is on the move up. As is inflation. The economy will be suffering as corporations panic even more as profit margins are lowered. A death by a thousand cuts is moving along swiftly. Just as you should have bought ammo before now back when prices started to rise, just as you should have bought imported gear such as a Berky water filter as the price of the British Pound started to go up, so should you buy your grain before prices move any farther.
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As with precious metals, a dip in prices are an excuse to buy extra. Not an excuse not to have bought long ago when prices were reasonable. Even if wheat prices later fall, tangibles on hand are priceless.
END
stay tuned Sunday for a guest article.
a loyal minion sent this link, bike trailer plans
http://bikecart.pedalpeople.com/plans.html
and of course
www.bisonpress.com for books and gear

work ethic & dictatorship

DICTATORSHIP AND OUR WORK ETHIC
The bad news is, we might see a coming American dictatorship. The good news is, it might be run like the Post Office. Now, don’t get me wrong. Most of the rank and file of the postal workers do a great job. There is great pressure to wring out a lot of work from each person. Like a lot of military personnel, in most cases a pension is hard won and deserved. But most institutions foster a poor work ethic. The organization as a whole doesn’t foster a great work ethic. It is almost like good work is an accident that happens in spite of the reward system, the results of individual effort and not from the way the organization is set up. So, despite individual effort, as a whole the work being done is substandard. Your letter carrier might do a great job but the price of stamps goes up and your packages arrive mangled at a latter date than previously could be expected. A lot of valiant single effort is canceled out by inherent inefficiency of the organization as a whole.
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Which is what I mean by a poor work ethic. Workers are overworked and abused by management that is rewarded in a perverse manner. Perhaps a better analogy would be that the coming dictatorship will be run as poorly as the Federalized airport security workers. And that would be a good thing. If our coming petty tyrants worked as hard as their historic counterpart the Nazi’s, we would be in big trouble. The system the Germans had in effect also hampered efficiency, but they also had a better work ethic to counteract it. The simple fact of the matter is that luxury and easy living do retard hard work. As individuals we might do a good job, but when the whole system discourages it standards as a whole slip.
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As a society as a whole we have grown pretty soft and lazy. We might strive to work hard, and by present day standards we might actually accomplish that. But as a whole our efforts are weaker than they could be. So, standards are low, and the entire reward system is weak. Added together you get lower standards and output. The coming Jack Booted Thugs will not try as hard as Cossacks or Brown Shirts. They have less of an incentive. They are used to forty hour work weeks and two weeks a year vacations. Plus dental and medical. They will go about stomping on kittens and plundering the unarmed and then have a beer and go home. Few will put extra effort in when it is required to crushing dissent. And then you need to add lack of personal conviction on top of soft living.
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The on-the-street beat cops that will be effectively Federalized are by most accounts believers in the Constitution. They may not even view current laws as wise. Once the velvet glove comes off of the mailed fist you can count on quite a few of them performing at a minimal level as their only method of protest. The lot of most cops is one of doing out of love of what they do. They are out there to protect and serve. Unfortunately they are being used to protect the government from its own folly and to enforce unjust laws. When our current façade of abiding by the Constitution is stripped away a lot of them will not be happy. They can’t quit, perhaps. The need for job security will be much stronger when the economy goes south. You can’t blame them for staying put and making the best of a bad situation. The Fed cops, of course, are another story entirely.
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This effect of inefficient draconian enforcement will not make your job of survival any safer, but perhaps it will be a little easier. If you avoid the false target of cops and soldiers and instead focus on their administrators and managers or suppliers you might keep their sympathies. Yes, easier said than done. Who said life to come will be easier?
END
To answer a question- yes, the upcoming Chicken Little's will have added material. But not my booklets which will be sold seperately for a buck or two. The CLM will have non-copyright material added such as the Jap night combat manual. Still about two weeks away from publishing the next booklet.
www.bisonpress.com for all my brilliance in one spot

zip stove

ZIP STOVE
While certain unnamed sites celebrate the wonders of having huge propane tanks to continue the Yuppie lifestyle far after the Apocalypse has made fuel deliveries a distant memory, necessitating a large arsenal of semi-auto rifles and vast stockpiles of ever more expensive ammunition to protect the fuel from Zombie Bikers, I feel that there is a clear need to assume immediate replacement with more primitive methods of cooking and even heating. I am simply going on the assumption that wood will be a better fuel to plan for. Without the need for hundreds of gallons ( if not thousands ) of propane and its tank, I can cheaply and easily stockpile the equipment needed on a budget. With a $15 stove I can cook my food. This is the camping stove for sale at my affiliate Amazon page, www.bisonpress.com/amazonproducts.html .
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I have chosen to go one step further and bought a Zip Stove ( now called the Sierra Stove ). Since I already have a couple of solar battery chargers to recharge my batteries for all of my LED lights, I can also use that battery to power the Zip Stove. Thus for no additional cost outside the more expensive unit I can have a stove that uses a fan to turn bits of combustible material into a controlled furnace. The Zip stove can generate up to 18,000 BTU’s of heat. The claim is that it is comparable to a natural gas/propane stove top already used in ones kitchen. The claim might be a bit of hype, but it should be close enough for post-collapse work. While the simpler, non powered stove does away with the need for batteries and replacement motors, the advantages of the Zip is that it will burn anything, including wet wood once started. And you can use it to nicely warm yourself if needed.
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The stove uses a design that pre-heats the air before it hits the combustion chamber, making it efficient and powerful. It is a bit of an investment at $65 after shipping costs, and $7 each for replacement motors ( get as many as you can ). But since a propane camp stove is $20 and the five gallon tank is $25, your propane equipment cost, before any fuel is factored in, is not that much less. In just a few dozen hours of use, the Zip stove will pay for itself. Any location has fuel, be it cow chips, dry grass or brush. And that fuel will always be available, unlike propane. Eventually your last motor will fail and the last rechargeable battery will die, but then it is an easy transition to a fan-less fire. Less efficient but still using the same fuel.
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Stick with propane if your world-view only takes into account preparing for short term disruptions. Chances are you already have a few tanks for the BBQ. I have twenty gallons of propane myself, plus dozens of the disposable one pound tanks. But I always assume the end of the world/total collapse are just around the corner and am glad I invested in the Zip stove. One stove and five replacement motors cost me a few cents under a hundred dollars. I can always burn the greasy wood bushes littering the high desert here. Peace of mind. The company is located online at www.zzstove.com .
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The stove includes the hook up of one AA battery, good for about six hours of run time. You can buy a D battery hook up to extend that to 35 hours, but I see that as unneeded as I have the bulk of my LED’s in AA size batteries. One major thing to be careful of is that you hook up the battery the right way. Reverse the battery and you burn out the motor. Think about it, it might be your only future stove/heater.
END
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survival key ring

SURVIVAL KEY RING
There are a few compact survival kits out there. Besides the “classic” crap-in-a-Rambo-knife there was recently an offering for one worn around the neck. I only skimmed over it, not really interested. Perhaps it is worth while ( unlike the razor blade, fish hook and matches in the knife type ). I think there is even a flat device the size of a credit card that has a few tools in it. I am not interested in any of these. I am only comfortable carrying a few items, my everyday pocket items. I don’t like jewelry so I don’t wear anything around my neck. I wear a watch, my wedding ring, carry a wallet and a pocket knife. My set of keys has a silver coin attached to the key ring. That is it. I am not comfortable wearing any other crap.
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So my idea here is not to get into a contest to see who can design the smallest survival kit. After a certain point it is just “survivalist soft-porn”. It makes your nipples tingle and serves no other purpose. It becomes just like today’s cell phones or Japanese motors. Unless you are five feet tall with delicate girly hands you can’t comfortable do anything with it. I don’t blame the Japanese, after generations of eating bunny food, rice and fish they really breed themselves to small size. But what is the excuse from the cell phone makers? They know they are selling to Americans. We shove growth hormones down our kids gullets from birth and the girls enter puberty at ten and the boys start eying the basketball hoop at preschool. Not only do we have a lot of incredibly fat bastards and tall gangly pukes running around, they have big hands. The current size of cell phone is ridiculously under sized.
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A few weeks back I felt at peace with the universe and very generous, so I bought the old ball and chain one of those Bic lighters with a carrying case. She kept complaining about the crap lighters I bought for her at the dollar store. They break too easy. So I got the mini Bic lighter. You push a button and the top flips up so you can use the lighter. It came with two lighters and was under $3. At the check out counter at Wally World. Well, I wasn’t satisfied with it as it came issued. I got a dog chock chain from the dollar store and put the Bic holder on a key ring and put the key ring on the chain. Then I took the LED flashlight ( two AA battery length ) we had hanging around and attached that. I started giggling like a flamer along a fence line as I envisioned what else I could attach to this growing monstrosity. A pocket knife went on it. I started to cut one end off my plastic and ceramic fillet knife sharpener ( $1.17 at China Mart ) to attach that but I was vetoed from further additions. Spoil sport.
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After all those items attached to the same end that bad boy was quite heavy. You could swing it around and pop someone a good whack. The main purpose starting out was to keep the lighter from becoming lost. Then it became a mace. Now I think it makes a decent survival kit. This is carried in a purse unattached. With guys it would be a little hard to carry this around. Unless you had a huge pocket such as with BDU’s it would be uncomfortable, cause unwanted attention ( excuse me, are you happy to see me or is that a seven inch LED flashlight in your pocket? ) and tear out the pocket liner in no time. Although for hunting trips or other excursions into the wilds it might make a useful back-up assortment ( attach to a belt loop ). And of course after TEOTWAWKI while on patrol. Just food for thought. You’ll think of other items I’m sure.
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If you are thinking about buying any of the Chicken Little Magazine E-books, hold off for a bit. I am going to be offering them as 100 blog issues instead of just one months worth. I'll let you know when they are ready. For my other wonderful e-books, go to www.bisonpress.com

olduvai theory

OLDUVAI THEORY
The Olduvai Theory has been around for awhile and you can find a lot of information by running a Google search for it. In essence it states that if one takes per capita energy use, Peak Oil was in 1979. The Age Of Oil can effectively be said to last from 1930 to 2030, one hundred years with 1979 being the peak use of oil based energy half way thru. Right now we are all sneering at each other and calling each other damn liars and passing notes in class speculating which one of us is the biggest slut or who has an incurable venereal disease, thinking we all know the answer as to when Peak Oil is going to occur. Some of us say if happened two years ago, others that Saudi Arabia will gush oil for another twenty years at twice the current production and by then we will all be flying our cars running on bio-diesel. But if the Olduvai Theory is correct than Peak Oil is no where near as important as Peak Oil Use Per Person and we are already in slow decline because of it.
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Which might also mean that those Evil Bungholes In Charge have had a lot of time to get used to the idea and now, even as I type yet another improbable conspiracy theory for your enjoyment and education, their sinister plan of world domination is well under way. I am not saying that it is, just that it could. Perhaps some bright boy did the math a few decades back and saw that population numbers were far out pacing oil production and that we would populate the earth a lot quicker than the next batch of dead plants could turn into oil. The only reason none of this occurred to most of us is that we were living in the forest and only saw trees. Oil is a natural resource and subject to being depleted.
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My point being, we wonder what The Powers That Be are going to do about Peak Oil. We speculate about Designer Diseases that will wipe out population so that the survivors will end up with a bigger oil supply. But what if this problem was seen some time back and the “plan” has already been implemented. It is not as if the need to control oil was ever a questionable need for power. World War Two was essentially about oil. Yes, also about international banker control, but energy is the fundamental building block of wealth. The entire Industrial World was prodded into fighting, singing patriotic songs and fighting under different colored flags, while the energy supply was fought over and the bankers ended up in control. Oil has always been the prize. It is vast wealth in concentrated form. The fact that losers working the fast food slop shops could be over paid even as that smallest of the cogs in the large machine to encourage growth and quell revolution is a testament to how much wealth is represented- there was a vast surplus to waste on the population.
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That day has already ended and we are caught in the down slope. You think the Eighties was the turn around time, but it was just the same plan in action. Every human on earth was forced into the money economy, controlled by the bankers, and we will soon see our demise from that same economy. Hollowing out the American Industrial machine was a great way to control the largest country on the globe. China is effectively no longer self sufficient and is controlled by money. India is getting a slow intravenous drip through a few high speed fiber optic lines as a way to keep her alive and more dependant on money. The American Economy is nothing but debt and financial/entertainment. We consume all the crap everyone else makes. And so it goes, everyone jerked hither and yon by money. The Third World is already forced out of the oil economy, buying our controllers time before the oil dries up. The US consumer is next.
END
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bike trailer

BICYCLE TRAILER
As most of you might be tired of hearing, I think we should all sell our cars and use bicycles for our transportation. If you must have a vehicle, for instance if you live in the country, at least drive a lot less if possible. Most of you are most likely stuck in the suburbs and have no choice- you must drive to work and there is no way around it. You can’t sell your house and move as you would then be “upside down” in home equity, so you can’t get closer to work. You are hostage to the car and suburbs. So most of you will ignore this advice. However, even you should listen, as one day after even car-pooling gets too expensive or you lose your job but are still stuck in the burbs, you might have no other choice but to pedal for transportation.
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I think your best bet is a beach cruiser type bike, the coaster brake single gear bike. Far less maintenance and items to break or replace. Although, the cheap mountain bike types are all over the place and would have a surplus of used parts/frames. Regardless of the bike type, the one thing you should not do without is a bike trailer. With a trailer you will find that 95% of all car trips are unnecessary at least as far as cargo hauling is concerned. And as far as people hauling, get the fat lazy bastards their own damn bike. If their heart explodes from moving their flab, Darwinistic selection. Survival of the fittest. We have plenty of people around. If Junior dies, just go down to the ghetto and adopt a crack baby. If the ball and chain is older than dirt and sickly, throw him/her in the trailer to cart off to the doctor.
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You can buy a cheap bike trailer for about $80 at Wal-Mart or through my Amazon links page www.bisonpress.com/amazonproducts.html . I would be leery of them only because the max hauling weight is 100 pounds and the floor is fabric which will rip and tear in time. Better than nothing, but far better to go down to the local Mom and Pop hardware store and talk to the guys there about which parts to buy for the axle and wheels. Mount to a wood frame with wood sides ( wood is great for us all thumb no talent types-even we can throw something together ). Place a plastic tub inside if desired ( better yet, make a long trailer that take several tubs ). Google “homemade bike trailers” to get an idea for a tow hitch from your bike frame to the trailer. This should be cheaper than a store bought trailer and last longer and carry more weight.
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If you are really lazy and only need to haul small loads, you can jerry rig junk to be used as trailers. A used golf caddy on wheels. A shopping bag hauler. Even a red wagon tied to a wooden dowel which is lashed to the frame. The wheels won’t last long, but it is an option for cheap trash pickers. Heck, you could get the bike and trailer free from the trash at the same trip. The point is, no matter what your budget is, get a bike and trailer, as it might be your only transport very soon. Even before the oil runs out, internal needs of exploding populations will see oil exporting nations cease to send us oil, no matter what the price of oil runs up to. The rulers will vote for internal peace over profits if it keeps them from ending up hanging from a lamp post. You can take that to the bank where it will earn a much handsomer return than your rapidly depleting paper dollars.
END
Here we go again- I’m burning out and getting weary. I’m going to try the one page ( or shorter ) article again. And again, try to write some booklets instead. I can’t say it will work. Let me try. Be patient. It could change back in a day or two, or it might work this time. The other alternative was to quit altogether, but I don’t want to do that. Let’s wait and see. Big hugs, little kisses to you all, Jim
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frugal illumination

FRUGAL ILLUMINATION
I would have titled this one “yet more on the LED lighting system, something like the third or forth article, because today my brain refuses to work properly and I got absolutely nothing to write about, not that you care you unfeeling demanding bastard” but that was too long to fit on one line. The Fed bank shaved a half percent off of the rate it charges banks to borrow money so now the market is all touchy feely and full of piss and vinegar and thinks nothing could possibly ever go wrong again and so everyone is going out again and buying derivative policies with more created credit. So there is little excitement right now to report, economics wise. I can’t think of anything else frugal related. My post-apocalypse thinking cap is not working. And I have a really bad attitude since it is Friday and the day can’t possibly go any slower. So LED lighting it is going to have to be. The long abused readers can sift through this and hope I throw a nugget of wisdom their way and the new readers, the few suckers I have yet to offend and so foolishly continue to tune in every day, can bask in the glory that is my perpetual undying wisdom.
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As everyone else is not in the best of moods since we are a Empire in decline and our work ethic frankly just sucks, I had very little in the way of stale food donated at work today. The grocery store workers scan through a few items, pick out the old crap that will outlast the second coming since it has enough preservatives in them to kill a healthy horse but which has an expiration code to make it look like it was fresh at one time, throw it in a basket for me and go back to other make-work that doesn’t involve squinting at four font lettering. I was starting to get really bored, having no where to drive to, when a rare flash of brilliance hit me like a forty year old Cadillac driven up on to the sidewalk by a ninety year old semi-blind geriatric. I hurriedly jumped into the Jimmobile and went down to Wal-Mart to buy a pre-paid phone card for the company cell phone. We use the one that expires every forty five days so even with plenty of minutes you must refresh the card or they cancel your account. Of course, it is only about seven bucks a month that way, perfect for a emergency-only phone.
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Once there, I figured that a short walk-around on my way to the cell phone section would not be out of line. I swung by the electronics, RV, flashlight and camping section. My regular Look At The New Toys Weekly inspection. And let me just tell you, non Wal-Mart shoppers that think they are holier than thou even though every retailer sells 90% of their crap that is from China, since the last time I wrote about this subject there is a lot better variety to pick from now. Before you pretty much had a LED on a headband, a small six inch tall lantern LED or a few one battery flashlights to pick from in the under $15 range. Now you have a much better selection that provides more convenient light. Perhaps the quality of light is still no match for florescent or propane, but there is no free lunch. You can get very bright lights in hand held flashlights than use several batteries. But the light is not true white but a slight blue light. The area illuminated will never be as good. You just need to adjust by being satisfied with specifically illuminated areas rather than total rooms being lit up.
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The cost of one fifteen watt solar panel, one RV 12v battery, one florescent light and a few replacement bulbs is over $200. For less than that price, $100 to $150, you can get several solar powered battery chargers ( the small paperback book sizes ), dozens of rechargeable AA and D batteries, at least a dozen LED lights, with absolutely no bulbs needed. The bulb on a LED is rated for ten years of continuous use, as in day in and day out and never any rest for the wicked. You might as well call them good for a lifetime. The only worry would be multi-generational use or EMP damage ( which might not even happen with them ). Again, yes, the brightness of the light is less. But so is the price, and they last a lot longer.
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Over in the area between the tools and the paint you will find an isle with light bulbs. There are three packs of LED lights as well as single packs. Don’t quote me but I think they were $12 each or three for $20. Screw to the ceiling, put in the two AA batteries and you have overhead lighting. Multiple LED’s per lamp mean it should put out a fair amount of light. Over in the RV section was a similar lamp, but a long bar designed to look like a small florescent light. $12 for one. In the camping section there is a wide selection. You could get a wind up light that was under $10. It provides light, powers a radio and charges a cell phone. Something like three minutes of winding for an hour of power. Under ten bucks!! Sure, it won’t last forever, something will break on it. But a great, cheap resource to have for emergency, short term power outages. There was a ten dollar 500 hour lantern. At five hours a night it was rated to last three and a half months on one set of batteries. Soft light, enough to get around the campground without stumbling over your equipment and enough illumination to go off into the woods to dig a cat hole to do your business in. And enough light to shine off of the eyes of a predator, so take the TP and a 357.
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There were plenty of flashlights with multiply bulbs in them, for good light. And cheaper than ever. Quite affordable. Before they were all over twenty bucks except for the tiny one battery ones for $6. Those, while handy due to the size, give out a really weak light. One battery and one bulb. Now there are plenty more units to pick from with multiply bulbs and batteries for much stronger lights, and under ten bucks or close enough. I would urge you all to buy one every payday until you have a good supply of emergency lights for the whole house. Lanterns, flashlights and overheads. Buy at least two solar chargers for them and a good pile of rechargeable batteries. It is a lot easier to just stick with one size such as AA, but you do limit your options that way. But they do recharge quickly, like in three hours of bright sunshine.
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The chargers are $25 from www.beprepared.com and when available on sale they are $13 from www.surplusnsurvival.com . You need more than one in case of breakage or theft. Do a Google search for rechargeable batteries. Expect about $2 for AA and three or four for D in small batches. Buy more than you think you need. They are rated for a thousand recharges, but expect only 500, and that is if you discharge totally each time prior to charging. They say they are memory proof ( memory is when you partially discharge and the battery only recharges partially ), but really they are only memory resistant. Make sure and discharge totally. If you are worried about EMP attack, place your lights in old socks or towels ( to keep off the metal ) inside a sealed cookie tin.
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That should about cover frugal illumination. Cheaper, allowing for more lights for the same money, with longer lasting batteries, portable, with no bulbs to change. The only drawback is a weaker light.
END
Thanks to Selene of Ohio for her contribution to the cause. The rest of you, buy something at www.bisonpress.com

doomsday shopping list

DOOMSDAY SHOPPING LIST
Today I got tired of waiting in between classical music ( I like the stuff, but in small doses such as during a Looney Tunes cartoon or a copter attack on a Cong village ) for snatches of highly biased news from National Pravda Radio so I turned the radio station to the AM spectrum and by accident picked up Rush Limbaugh. Now, I like trash talking Liberals, Communists and Democrats as much as the next guy but Rush turned to the dark side of Fascism to do it. He never met a Republican he didn’t like so much he would kiss their butts as they were wiping it with the Constitution. I remembered why I stopped listening to him about fifteen years ago. Besides the fact I usually work during the day and I don’t have three hours to listen to the radio, I also got tired of his opinion being so discolored by his love for a political party that hasn’t held true to its roots for decades. He was talking about how the Democrats used the current market dip as an excuse to push their liberal agenda. Excuse me! A market dip? More than likely this is the start of a market meltdown and the only thing Rush is concerned with is how his rich buddies on Wall Street might get a bad name from the commies. How out of touch is this guy?
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I know, you know, and Ross Perot knows that the economy is difficult to predict with anything other than a very broad brush. We can only call the macro moves, the general direction ( eventually, down ). But I think this is more than a small dip of activity. This could be the beginning of the derivative market meltdown. Or not. But who cares? Our job is to prepare to survive, not to write $200 a year newsletter we sell to the suckers buying paper assets. I am just going along like the end has already started. If I’m wrong, you bought prep items before inflation raised the price. If I’m right you bought them when they were still available. I think now is a great time to start getting all those little items you never seem to get around to. We are all so busy buying cans of ammunition and burying steel containers of wheat kernels. No time to buy toothpaste or thermal underwear.
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Assume that by the start of winter we will see a huge downtrend in the economy. You might see your wages cut in half as the spouse loses their job. Or your credit card interest goes up. Or a lot of retail outlets start closing down and it gets harder to find everyday items. Or we invade Iran and oil doubles in price. Ask yourself, what are the common everyday items, or needed specialty goods I keep putting off buying? For instance, any kind of disruption may well see power being cut out, at least for a time. You don’t have the cash to go buy a small refrigerator and solar panel to make a solar ice box. But could you come up with enough to buy the two ceramic pots to make an evaporation cooler? The one with wet sand in between the two pots as outlined in an earlier article. If you lose heat this winter, do you have enough thermal underwear and wool sweaters, caps, gloves? Much cheaper than buying a cord of wood.
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No one ever has enough toilet paper. Telephone books are free for the taking in many different locations. Stock up on them. Store inside to avoid insect infestation. Perhaps under the couch. Assume trouble with washing clothes. Not only would it be a good idea to get extra underwear and socks to go longer between washings, but plan now on how to wash them by hand. If nothing else, a poly bucket with lid ( with a hole in the middle ) and a toilet plunger. Buy a new one, they are only a few bucks. Stock up on the cheapest detergent you can find. Do you have enough rope for a clothes line? Wooden clothes pins are still available in the dollar stores. You might as well buy it from China while the cargo ships are still running.
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Instead of stocking up on toothpaste which may or may not be contaminated by Chinese communists, get baking soda. A few twenty five cent boxes will last a long time. Toothbrushes are five or six for a buck. Dental floss can last a long time if you re-use a strand until it starts falling apart between your teeth. I don’t know why people get grossed out about it, it contains your own germs. If still squeamish, clean with your fingers under hot water each time. For a better shower than a whores bath with a pan of water and a washcloth ( when the only hot water available is from heating on the stovetop ) get a new one handed small weed sprayer. Fill with hot water, spray, lather, spray. One half gallon per person gets you nicely clean. Double if long hair.
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If clothes washing is not a concern, substitute paper napkins with cloth ones. Each person keeps the same one, perhaps with a named ring to keep track. Wash with the regular laundry. Stock up on bar soap. Yes, you can make your own when you must. But the store bought kind will be nice while it lasts. Odds are you make your own and the lye irritates your eyes in a very uncomfortable way. Disposable razors are great, much better than a straight razor. If you can buy them cheaply. Stocking up now is better than a scratchy irritating beard later. The Razor Saver from Lehman’s gives you ten times the use from each blade. Substitute deodorant with cologne. A small spray under your pits will keep you presentable all day. Get it at the dollar store, the largest bottle you can find. None of us smell like petunias during a hot and humid summer day so take pity on your fellow man and mask your foul stench. Besides, as jobs get scarce and you go to an interview, body odor will be enough to keep you from getting hired.
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Have you replaced all of your regular flashlights with LED’s yet? Why not? Batteries will either need to be hoarded or not recharged as often and a LED sips power instead of guzzling it like a Roman Catholic priest guzzles wine before he goes to have a few special prayers with the youngest choir boy. And the bulbs are for all practical purposes “forever”. LED lights are not as good of a source of illumination as most other types, be they kerosene or propane or whatever, but they last a lot longer on less. Do you have more than one knife? If not, at least buy a few cheap ones. Better than nothing if your expensive one breaks. Do you have enough beans to go along with your wheat? Enough white flour to stretch out the wheat kernels? Enough rice to give your diet some variety?
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Enough bottled water? How about some rolls of plastic to cover your windows in case they get broken. Some black plastic to increase the heat in your south facing windows come winter. How about trash bags? I only use grocery store plastic bags as trash bags myself. Once those run out, what would I do for sanitary trash disposal? Tin foil to help build solar ovens. I could go on and on, but the basic point is, there are dozens of items, mostly from the dollar store, you use everyday that might disappear or get much more expensive that you can easily afford, no matter how low your income. Some, such as LED flashlights or wool socks or thermals are a major investment on our limited budgets. But they are much cheaper than the alternatives ( such as wood heat or a supply of propane ). Brainstorm a list of all the stuff you always use everyday and create a stockpile. Think of Zimbabwe where a roll of toilet paper is currently going for Z$200,000. And I imagine electricity is a luxury.
END
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dastardly designed depression

DASTARDLY DESIGNED DEPRESSION
Dastardly designed depressions are diabolically dangerous and will deliberately doom decades of democracy. Which is good as we are not supposed to be a democracy but a Constitutional Republic, but I could not put that into a sentence containing mostly words starting in D. Please take a look at yesterdays post if you have forgotten. As I said, I know we are all going to die a horrible elongated death at the hands of evil zombie hoards. Eventually. One day the economy will totally collapse and we will all be doomed and civilization will be set back generations as all of our oil dries up. I just have no idea when it will happen or what tourist type destinations we will stop at along the way. We know it will happen but the timing and the path there are unknown. But for now I want to play a fun game. Called, What If.
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What If…the current economic troubles over the sub prime mortgage market are part of a deliberate design to scale back our economy so as to help us survive global resources running out as our population explodes. Not that The Powers That Be care one whit about us as individuals but they realize that it benefits them if we are kept breathing. Don’t immediately dismiss this as the wild jabbering of a lunatic until you hear me out. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that the Evil Banking Cartel that rules us and the fascist pigs in office and the corporates are actually aware of the coming troubles. And as they have no intention of giving up their power and wealth and everything that those things bring, they are going to do what it takes to survive and thrive. We tend to think of those in charge as some really stupid bastards, but what if the idiocy we see around us is deliberate on their parts?
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The bankers effectively took power in 1913 as the Federal Reserve Bank was created. They wasted no time in making sure that we got involved in World War One. Not necessarily to make obscene profits, which they did, but to safeguard the investments already made by the banks. After the war the Fed goosed the economy with plenty of credit. The first problem was the farm commodity deflation, then later came the entire economic explosion as too much credit created a Wall Street bubble. The Fed destroyed those banks that refused to play by its rules and made a killing repossessing everything in sight. Their crippled little puppet FDR devalued the currency by 40% and confiscated everyone’s gold so that a fiat currency could take over a gold backed one. The global economic superpower and mightiest industrial superpower was now a pale shadow of its former self.
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Hitler probably had help getting into power, or maybe not. Perhaps it was a natural for Germany to go with the only guy with enough evil to get them going again the only way possible, through a total war economy. But Hitler was never the major enemy the bankers wanted. The Pacific was the prize we coveted and Japan won the prize as Enemy Of The Week Poster Boy. We would have attacked her if she hadn’t responded to our embargos. Our country needed a war to get out of the Depression. The Depression was a grand prize for the bankers, but the natural progression was for a total wartime economy. Everyone got re-employed and the factories started producing again.
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These are the same people in power today. The same ones that will kill millions of enemy civilians ( fire bombing in Germany and Japan ) and hundreds of thousands of our own, to stay in power and to make big bucks. I’m sorry if I offend your sensibilities, but the war was never about defending our country or saving the world for ( or was it from? ) democracy. It was about power and profit and greed and control. It was noble that many made sacrifices, but unfortunately they died for the wrong cause. In effect, the bankers murdered them. The bankers of today are just as capable of atrocities as their grandfathers. And they will not hesitate to do what is necessary. They will keep the majority of us alive, perhaps ( don’t bet the farm on it ), only because the nation with the population will have a better change militarily than those where famine and pestilence are rampant.
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They start out by scaling back our insane growth. You can’t keep Suburbia Nation alive as the oil starts running out. And you can’t feed a population scattered over three thousand miles with semi-trucks as the oil stick level drops. A great way to start re-clustering people is to kill the mortgage market. Make their mortgages too expensive. In time the government agrees to trade in your adjustable rate for a lower fixed one. But there is a catch. You must move closer to the urban core, to a repo home. Others are free to stay in the burbs, paying higher mortgages and insane prices for gas ( until they give the house back to the bank ). They will cite environmental concerns, or oil independence concerns, or both. As the economy melts down, more government make work jobs are offered. In the private sector to avoid benefits and retirement, but existing only because of government spending as is the case in the medical field today. But they will only be available near the urban core. Then generous welfare benefits will be offered. But housing will only be available near the urban core. And food distribution centers. The point is to easily control the population and to drastically cut back on fuel use.
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Eventually the military will get a lot more recruits, if only because the job market is non-existent. They can stay local, border patrol and riot control. Herding dissidents into concentration camps. Or we could go global and try to steal more oil. The good thing about the local Gestapo route is there is no need to try to sustain a long supply chain and use up a lot of higher power ordinance that our lack of oil or factories has a hard time producing. The bankers don’t need a total war this time, just a total government control of the economy. We won’t be turning Communist. The bankers and big business will still make obscene profits. But the government will direct the economy for the benefit of those private sector entities. The important part about the Second World War was not that we had to keep building new stuff as we blew up the old ones, but that the government ordered and paid for production.
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With little oil or industrial output a war on that scale is not possible. So the government will create demand in service and information industries. They take little more than wages and electricity ( we have plenty of printing presses and coal ). And the bankers will get just as rich. They are going for quantity instead of quality this time around. A little off the top everywhere. They can keep their game going a lot longer this way. Currently we are simply using too much energy to enrich the bankers. If our life styles are seriously curtailed and we are herded together to use less energy the dwindling supplies will last a lot longer. For us to merely focus on the government and the coming dictatorship we miss who benefits. Of course the politicians do, but only with personal power. That is chump change. The bankers benefit off of everyone else’s theft. The politicians and the corporate lackeys are there to enrich the bankers. After JFK, only the stupid ones failed to get the message. I hope you have.
END
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frugal water filter

FRUGAL WATER FILTER
I know what you are saying. You are saying to yourself, sure, you saved me thousands and thousands of dollars so far. Hundreds saved by buying a bolt action rifle instead of a semi-automatic carbine. Hundreds of dollars saved buying stripper clips instead of magazines. Hundreds by getting wheat from the local feed store instead of through a mail order company. Four hundred saved by using two poly buckets with twist off lids in a rocking chair instead of the commercial James Washer clothes washing machine. Two hundred more by using a thirty dollar mop bucket instead of a commercial clothes wringer. A thousand by building a ice maker and ice box instead of buying a propane refer. Three hundred dollars saved by not using a Berky water filter but instead using one of its filter elements and putting it inside a poly bucket for a total cost of $50. But now you want to know what I have done for you lately. It was all fine and dandy before when I showed you how to drastically reduce your preparedness expenses, but since you devote time every day to reading my drivel you want still more ways to reduce your expenses.
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I don’t claim to have had any original ideas here ( except for the James Washer substitute ). But I do think that I at least provide a service by taking obscure ideas and giving them a wider audience. Being the only spot that focuses on frugal preparedness. I can’t do it every day, but every once in awhile I come across another wonderfully frugal idea I present to you. Even if it is old hat to you, someone else here is slapping their forehead in wonderment that they hadn’t heard of such a splendid way of saving money. So today we have a Super Duper Frugal Water Filter. As cheap as it can possibly get. Any cheaper and you would be charged with stealing it. Credit is given to Survival Acres Blog for a link to an article that had a link in the comments section for this device.
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The Rabbit filter ( http://www.ide-cambodia.org/download/CWP%20Instructions%20-%20English.pdf ). Don’t ask me how it got its name. There are two complicated gadgets you need to get. A ceramic pot and a bucket to set it in. Get yourself a ceramic pot, not glazed and without a hole on the bottom. One with a slopping side, tapering down from the top. Now get a bucket or jug or some kind of container that the top lip of the ceramic pot rests on top of. You want the ceramic pot to hang in the bucket with plenty of room at the bottom of the bucket for the water to collect. The water at the bottom is forced through the clay by the weight of the water on top of it, getting filtered. Same principle as the expensive ceramic filters our $300 water filters use except here the clay does not have silver in it to cut down on nasties growing. But if you don’t use the pot once it gets a crack in it and wash it with clean water religiously this should not be a big problem. Substitute elbow grease for money.
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If you keep pouring water into the pot as the level goes down you will put more pressure on the water, forcing it through the ceramic layer quicker. If you have a spigot at the bottom bucket you can continuously get the filtering process going. When the water starts to slow, it is time to clean the unit. Get clean water and a brush and clean the ceramic. Do not use soap. You use the soap on the bottom bucket. If you want to assure yourself of an absolutely clean unit, clean on a regular basis before the water flow starts slowing. Also, before you use the unit for the first time, fill the ceramic pot and let the water flow through three times, discarding the water. This eliminates all nasty tasting residue from the pot. If the original water you are using has debris, place a cloth over the top of the unit or have another container you can leave the water in where the solids settle to the bottom over a period of time. Simple, cheap, easily replaceable. Have a lid for the whole thing if mosquito’s are a problem.
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On to other concerns. The imploding global financial markets. Please note I am writing this at lunch time on Tuesday. I will post it Wednesday morning around six A.M. Some of you living on the east coast will not see it until the markets close that day. So the markets will see a lot of activity between when I write this and when you read it. That shouldn’t matter too much. I don’t have any clue when the markets will do anything. I do know that half a trillion bucks in credit were offered in a few days to banks to stem the panic over one bank shutting down one fund worth only four billion dollars. The loans were, I believe, at one percent. So, after years of pumping too much credit into the system where everyone and his brother borrowed much more than was fiscally prudent, the banks injected more credit to solve the problem.
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Just as an alcoholic must drink more than is good for him to shut off the pain of not having enough booze in his system, the banks and financial sector need more credit to avoid feeling any pain. They consume more and more until that day they are walking along, all peaceful like, gazing at the pretty sky and joyfully listening to the birds sing and admiring the weather and they stumble and fall down dead, emitting a foul odor as their bowels release and grossing out all the passer-bys who most definitely will not be offering any assistance now that this corpse has his butt sticking up into the air with a large wet brown spot that flies are already starting to settle down on and licking up greedily and mentioning to the other flies what a wonderful gourmet dinner this is turning out to be and aren’t they glad they didn’t stop to eat the entrails of that squirrel that was just run over?
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The economy could be in a nose dive. This could be all she wrote. They could be just fine after more liquidity is put into the system. We could go along fine for many more years. Or, it could just be a taste of things to come as this fall a lot of sub prime mortgages ( the sector that started this panic ) are due to have their rates raised. A lot. This might end up being a practice run. I can’t speculate what is going to happen, I have no idea. But I do think that this is a perfect time to get invested in physical assets. Hurry your prep items along. If you have extra money, buy silver. A few of you might be able to buy gold. The precious metal prices are being artificially held down right now. We have covered this before. Investors are forced to come up with cash to cover their bets they lose. They sell silver and gold. Not that they go down to the coin shop and sell bullion, they cash in their paper holdings of precious metals. The markets sees more supply even as demand goes up. Buy it now while it is still low, before mass panic starts and the price shoots to the moon.
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Here is a little hint about how bad the economy is. Retail gasoline prices are falling. More than the barrel of crude price would suggest. Summer driving is down this year. Despite falling gas prices. People must really be hurting if they cut back on driving, the culture of the auto is so engrained into our society. Give it a few more days, milk might be twice the price of gasoline.
END
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back to school

BACK TO SCHOOL RAIN FOREST BLUES
Ah, that special time of year when the rug rats, curtain climbers and juvenile delinquents are forced back into state run indoctrination camps against their will. Now instead of hanging around street corners with their pants hanging down well past their butt crack, looking at you in between greasy bangs with sad puppy dog eyes, imploring you to feel sorry for them since they can’t afford the newest X-Box game and so are extremely bored, now they can all pile into Mommies new BMW and race up and down the street exactly five minutes after the last school bell has rung, looking at you through the car window with sad puppy dog eyes, imploring you to feel sorry for them since they now no longer have time to be bored.
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I used to hate back to school time. Yes, the little bastards ( and I mean that literally ) do get underfoot during the summer, not looking as they dart out into traffic on skateboards. But during the school year they clog up the roads twice a day. Our idiot patrol in City Hall saw fit to place the High School in the middle of town instead of at its edge next to the sewage treatment plant were it belongs and half the high school population drives to school ( the concept of car pooling isn’t foreign to them but unfortunately all the passengers are too young to drive so every driving age spawn has their own vehicle ). But now, I am starting to see that the glass is indeed half full rather than empty. Back to school time also means that my favorite Chinese goods importer, Wal-Mart, has ridiculously low prices on school supplies. I’m not talking about tubes of glue for forty-nine cents, necessarily. Or colored chalk. I am talking about the really good stuff like ink tens or pencils in ten packs for fifty cents. And not the crap like they sell in the dollar store that flies apart on use, such as the pencils with ever-snapping lead or the pens that never deliver ink past the ball even if you store the suckers pointed end down. These are brand name, Papermate.
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Being a spoiled product of a mass producing low cost consumer society, I have always been reluctant to spend a lot of money on basic items such as disposable shavers or tooth brushes or stationary supplies. Well, as we all know, those days are slowly but surely ending. Plastics are no longer cheap as natural gas gets more expensive. The lower 48 has something like four times the NG wells as it used to but is still only producing something like half the gas it used to. We have passed Peak Gas as well as Peak Oil. We still demand a lot of products be made out of plastic, even if for no other reason than we can’t make them any other way now. Katrina screwed up the production and refining end of things, which sharply raised prices for a time but here I am speaking in general long term prices. So whenever a plastic item price temporarily drops back down to reasonable levels I buy as much as I can. Not ink pens, really. They might dry up before I can use them. But things like disposable razors.
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On back to school sales I am primarily interested in tablets of note paper and pencils. I would have bought more tablets this year but I bought thirty last year and had only used two since then. So I just bought one ten pack of pens and three ten packs of pencils. Visit Wal-Mart today. I have no idea when the sale ends so it is best not to push things. Get them while you can. Now, I can hear the slower amongst you whispering to each other, what the heck do I need paper and pencils for? Well, I can’t think of a whole lot off hand myself but it is far better to stock up on ten cent pads of paper ( seventy sheets per pad ) than to try to make your own paper later. You can’t write everything on white boards. One good use would be to use the renewable energy and batteries you have to run a computer, while they still work, and use the pads to write down the pertinent information you have stored only in electronic form now. After the ink in your printer runs out, to a certain degree. But there will be a lot of info that takes far less than a full page and you don’t want to print it out in order to conserve ink. Such as one or two sentences amongst a lot of unneeded pictures or web site illustrations.
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Pencils are even more important as they are far harder to manufacture. Only buy name brand and test them before stocking up. Dollar store generic pencils are pure crap as the lead is weak and you end up spending more for them as you sharpen them more often. And forget the razor blade sharpeners. Only get the manual steel rotary type sharpeners. The ones that will outlast your pencil supply. Don’t over stock on ink pens as they will dry up over time. Just stick with pencils. This is better anyway since the paper is very thin and pens tend to rip it. If you are a budding post-apocalypse lawyer ( God help us ) and need documents signed in ink, invest in the old fashion steel tipped dipping ink pen and research homemade ink production.
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Now we get to the meat of the matter. The pencils are made in America (!!), but the notebooks are made in Brazil. Which means we can be reasonable sure that the paper comes from rain forest trees left over from hard wood sales. The Amazon rain forest is in the second year of a severe draught. Reports are that this is the worse it has ever been with new islands being formed as the water levels drop. Now, I am not a tree hugger nor do I believe global warming is man-made ( look up at the big fusion reactor in the sky ), but global warming is still a fact of life and a major concern. I don’t want legions of old farts leaving Phoenix to come live up here after their water dries up, and I really don’t know how I would eat during the next Dust Bowl. And if the Amazon stays in drought and too much organic matter dries up and catches on fire, that could really screw up the global weather patterns. So, why am I buying paper made in Brazil?
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The reason I buy Chinese goods that might be made with slave labor, the reason I don’t care if my purchases are made from wood from the tundra, why I don’t bother to think about if the tuna fish I am eating is part of the last fish left in the ocean is because I don’t have the extra income to care. Conservation and green living cost money. Which is why peasants in Africa strip the hillside of trees for firewood and then get buried in a mudslide next rainy season. Or why Brazilians strip the jungles for wood to sell as paper, or plant sugar cane or clear the forest for coffee plants or to graze cattle going to Burger King. Too many people could give a crap less, more fretful of their living standard. Old Yuppie’s play golf in the middle of the desert, the only green oasis for hundreds of miles, the last of the melting snows going to keep the course green as their livers, already the size of basketballs, swell even more as they slam a fifth vodka martini down at the sixteenth hole.
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Locally, we had almost no snow last year. At least once a week we have the mountains covered in smoke as California burns, but when you can see the Sierras there is no visible snow on the peaks this side of the mountain chain. That is a first for me. Yet people keep wasting as much water as they please. The wells are filled from two winters ago but much more drought and they start to fall quick. The Carson River is dried up in spots, and it wasn’t that small of a water way. The response? The city put up a banner over traffic for three days Don’t Waste A Drop. Two weeks before it was about the old car show, now for the last week it is about a free online High School Education. Weeks devoted to entertainment, at least a week devoted to turning you into a better speaking wage slave for the fast food industry, three days to saving a dwindling resource. No one cares.
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Stock up while you can. Forget where it was made. It is far too late and you need to look after you and your own.
END
Need a reason to be worried about the recent events on wall Street? The best explanation I have seen about the derivatives market
http://www.financialsense.com/editorials/weiss/2007/0813.html
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burning a hole in your pocket

BURNING A HOLE IN YOUR POCKET
I don’t trust paper currency. I think it is not a promise to pay but a promise to steal my accumulated wealth. I understand that I must stockpile a certain amount. I might wake up one day and Bank Of America ( which has over half of its assets tied up in home mortgages ) has closed its doors and taken my checking account with it. So I have some cash on hand. Not much, but enough to get me by a month or two ( and definitely enough to allow me to escape the city ). I hate leaving it that way but there is little one can do to avoid the necessity of having cash for emergency expenses. Silver coins will not be readily tradable in the early parts of a collapse. Afterwards, sure, that and tangible goods. But not at that point where you are still buying the last of your emergency supplies from still functioning retail outlets.
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Outside of that necessary savings ( and of course the usually amount for holidays/birthdays and upcoming bills such as insurance ), I don’t hold any cash. It burns a hole in my pocket. I have to trade it for real goods. Beans and bullets. Not that I have anywhere as much as I used to. Back working at the casino I had hundreds of dollars a month to invest. Now the occasional $20 or $30 is all I can part with. But that is my own choice, a voluntary step down into genteel poverty to cut back on the stress from a job and concentrate on my writing ( which in itself is quite stressful, but at least it is for love rather than money ). But enough about my favorite topic, me. What about you? Is there money burning a hole in your pocket? Do you have extra to invest in prepping? It could just be that $500 you got from a credit card as we discussed earlier. It could be the upcoming tax return. No one is ever done with disaster preparedness supplies, there is always more junk you just need to have. So how do you allocate your spending? Especially if it is a one time windfall and you need to make it count.
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Keep in mind that no matter what you do, it might be wrong. None of us can see into the future, so how we prep is merely a crapshoot. You can’t guarantee your survival, only enhance your odds. Say you bought a ton of wheat and beans in metal rodent proof containers. Treated for insect infestation. Then, after the gasoline ran out ( and you can’t escape with supplies ) you experienced flooding. All your containers are now rusted. Or, you bought a cheap piece of land out in the boonies in Arizona. No floods there. But if the Southwest is entering another Two Century Drought, you have to pack up and move to a water source eventually. You wasted the money buying the land. However, we need to do something. Anything is better than nothing.
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We are all different, we all have different situations. But we all need similar goods. Water, food, protection and shelter. I’m going to pull a figure out of my butt and call your finances $2,000. Both because most of us could get that if we really tried ( although not much more ) and because a reader suggested that amount for an article topic. If you had two grand burning a hole in your pocket, what should you spend it on? Again, I’m going to assume you have this money and no more is coming your way. I also have to assume you aren’t past the reading stage in your preps. It is all so overwhelming, and we all have so little extra cash to spend, that many of us have yet to prep. Nothing wrong with that as the wrong actions are worse than no action at all. I did a lot of research over eight years before I bought my first prep supplies. A few years were while I was still in school, then the military ( where they frown on you stocking freeze dried food and an arsenal in the barracks ). But I kept procrastinating until I finally got some good advice from Kurt Saxon ( who is currently in Arkansas writing nothing-nor has he for nigh on a decade or so- which leads me to believe his severed head is kept alive to give oral consent for his wife to continue cashing the checks his writing still brings in ) on frugal prepping. I owe most of my ideas in that regard to Kurt.
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The portion we have been over time and again is basic prepping for $500. A lot of you, most of you I believe, have already bought that e-book. Or read the short version from the Bison newsletter. Old news. $250 bolt surplus rifle and ammo, wheat in buckets for $150, $50 water filter, and $50 in misc. Nothing new to see there, move along please. Remain calm. What do you do with the rest of the money burning a hole in your pocket, the other $1500? Most of you will just buy more of the same. More ammunition, more guns, more grains and beans, more filters. More how-to books. We could even say that a large portion of this daily blog is devoted towards helping you spend the surplus money you have after you get the basics.
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To be perfectly honest, there is very little you really need past the basic $500 menu. You could buy that piece of junk land for under a grand. Buy a used dilapidated trailer for about the same amount. Start a business with a $75 computer and a free web site and try to sell e-books. You could start converting your paper into precious metals. But all you are really doing is widening the number of disasters you are trying to cover. Economic Depression, or job loss or not being able to afford a place to live in town. Not a bad plan. I try to cover all of these things. But I also worry a lot. It used to be, I had my basic prep goods and I slept well at night. Then I started writing about potential disasters and the more I learned the more I worried and so the more I prepared. But it was an accelerating ride with no end in sight. I do not recommend it to anyone ( well, except for my ex-wife ). The stress level is high and the rewards are low. Not that I feel sorry for myself. I picked it and I can stop it at any time. My point is simply that you shouldn’t do the same.
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It is nice to have the extra, but you don’t absolutely need it. It is nice to have a legal residence, a place to hang your hat without a jack booted thug harassing you. But you can just squat somewhere if you needed to. It is nice to have a place to garden, but stocking up on food is cheaper than buying the land, usually. Nice to have the security blanket, but you can work around it if you are too poor. A trailer is a nice shelter to have. Somewhat luxurious compared to other frugal living arrangements, but if you must you can always just live under a natural shelter you built while squatting in the wild. Precious metals are a great way to preserve your wealth, but are more of a luxury than a necessity.
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I am not saying a years worth of wheat and a bolt gun is enough to help you survive. I am not saying that you shouldn’t have more. I am not saying you should stop adding to your supplies. What I am saying is that with all of the unknowns that go with survival prepping, past a certain point can largely be pointless. Overkill. Too much of a good thing. Now you are starting to get less return on your investment and it will start to take more investment, more maintenance, more worry to add what is not as necessary. Determine when enough is enough and stop worrying after that. I can’t do it, but I hope you all can. A little paranoia is great, a lot can kill you. Perhaps that money burning a hole in your pocket doesn’t really need to go towards buying the latest doo-dad. Perhaps you have enough doo-dads to supply your own army.
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Look, take this advice while it is being offered. I most likely won’t repeat it. My usually answer to everything is more, more, bigger, bigger. Save your sanity while you can. Plan, prep, invest, then get the heck on with your life and enjoy the time you have left.
END
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wearing a talisman

WEARING A TALISMAN TO DOOMSDAY
Whenever I turn a phrase that rings musically in my ear, I have an overwhelming urge to use it too much, in an objective manner until one and all are sick of hearing it, knowing I am merely basking in the glow of my own whit and charm. While trying to come up with a short answer to why I dislike Yuppie Survivalist, I came up with “money is not a talisman”. Wow, that was pretty good if I do say so myself. A talisman is not just a book by Steven King. It is a worn object that is used as a charm, having magical power. Say, a rabbits foot for luck. Now, I don’t know a whole lot about these things but I assume it would ward off evil as well as bring good luck. With that assumption, I would like to talk about talisman that people wear to give themselves security. Nothing wrong with that, as long as it doesn’t turn out to be a false sense of security.
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Say you are some ignorant peasant dude wandering around the woods cutting firewood. If you are wearing your talisman you don’t have to worry about evil forest trolls attacking you. This is a good thing, otherwise you would be all nervous and keep glancing out of the corner of your eye and perhaps even cutting off your foot with the ax. And we all know the kind of substandard medical care peasant dudes were exposed to. It would have been enough to send Hillary swooning, mumbling about poor peasant children being denied the care or the Global Village and she falls on her ass and cracks her Botox. You cut off a foot a few hundred years ago and if you can’t stop the bleeding with a handful of chewed up herbs you bleed out and the forest trolls eat you for a desert. Better just to be alert and careful to begin with and avoid that unpleasantness. But now say that the local witch that fixed you up with your talisman promised you too much. Like you now processed an object that was equal parts Superman Strength and a Clock Of Invisibility. You would start thinking you were Hot Stuff and go running around at night chasing after Elf tail. No one would ever see you again.
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So, a talisman is a good way to stop worrying so much that you kill yourself from an ulcer. But just don’t let it lull you into a false sense of security. A talisman is not a security blanket. It is merely a tool that can get a certain job done most of the time. Not all of the time. Most things are beyond our control. But unfortunately our viewpoint seems to assume that with the right talisman we need not work hard or try to avoid unpleasant situations. We blunder towards danger assuming all will be well. Is it because we are a consumer society, or are we like most people through history that are basically idiotic enough to believe in magic. It would be comforting to think Madison Avenue has conditioned us to false worship consumer goods, but looking at most people and the stupid things they do I would just lean towards us being superstitious barbarians.
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Not too long after birth we seek comfort with our mothers voice. Nothing wrong with that unless Mom just happens to be a crack-whore with AIDS. But then soon after that we take comfort in a blanket or binkey. But we don’t know shinola at that age. I’m sure it serves a purpose, and the only drawback would be when the blanket has smallpox spores on it. But then comes young adulthood. Now we need a car. This starts our lifelong pursuit of a talisman. A car will get you laid, or give you freedom through mobility, or win you friends. Or get you a job. We never fall out of love with the auto after that. If people had that kind of devotion to their horses back in the day others would assume an unnatural relationship with the animal. This is a very destructive talisman. An evil one. But that isn’t enough for most people. Oh, no! They wear other charms. A trophy wife, a rich husband. Barbie gets a boob job and entices Richie Rich into the sack. A few carets on her finger later and the dirty deed is done. She thinks she has security. What she has done is trade one headache for another. Poverty is now traded for worry about how she looks, how fast she ages, how long she can keep her talons in her husband.
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The most common talisman amongst the preparedness crowd is a case of MRE’s or a semi automatic battle rifle. With an MRE, you become convinced you will never experience the sharp discomfort of hunger ( although you definitely will experience the sharp discomfort of constipation ). With a semi-auto you become the indestructible Arnold of your neighborhood. Neither snow nor sleet nor rabid dog packs or zombie biker gangs can ever harm you. You add a concrete bunker in the hopes that the millions of folks surrounding you can never touch you. These are very dangerous talismans.
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However, the worse talisman to wear is money. Money is worn by so many people. They believe that it is the answer to all of life’s problems. That money will bring happiness. They waste their whole life on getting and spending it. Even Bill Gates, who accidentally ( and on purpose as the economic corpses tell a tale ) fell into a bloody fortune, is devoting a lot of time to getting rid of it. Supposedly, he really enjoyed programming. But he needs to devote all of his time now to getting rid of his fortune. To the needy. You know how many needy people are out there? At least six billion. Just give everyone about six dollars and be done with it, otherwise you spend the rest of your life worrying about needy people. How depressing is that?
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Look, we all need things to survive. Money buys things. But money is just a tool to get those things. And that tool is just a way to measure the amount of time you trade from your life to buy the things you need. Money is time you don’t have anymore. You spend a third your young life learning to eventually make money. The other half you get to spend in leisure ( the rest is sleeping and utter helplessness being an infant where the only pleasure is soiling yourself ). By the time you are eighteen you have wasted six years learning how to make money. Then you waste a third of your adult life making money. And I say wasted because you really usually only enrich other people, parasites really. Landlords, government officials, spouses. Union workers, lawyers, etc. Money is a necessary evil, but if you don’t learn to live on less of it you just enrich others and waste your life. I would rather see a youngster waste his life playing video games than working to support a retiree on Social Security. At least his quality of life is better that way.
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So, using money as a charm against the evils of the world is a waste of effort. It is needed to a certain degree and no more. It can only give you the tools to avoid most bad things, not all. By spending twenty percent of the norm you still end up with eighty percent of the security ( I know there is an economic law which spells this out but at the time it escapes me ). Frugal is good. Yuppie is bad.
END
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