ONE BUCK MRE
MRE’s, Meals Rejected by Ethiopians. I had the misfortune to be fed both C rations and MRE’s while in the military and the only good thing one can say about both is that they fill you up and give you energy. The taste leaves everything to be desired, and they contain no fiber. Great if you are in a trench or a tank and can’t expose your naked ass to enemy gunfire. Eat MRE’s for a week or two and you can experience the feeling of birth. Comparing MRE’s with C-rats about the only thing that can be said about the change is that they are lighter to carry. Of course, it is lighter to carry .223 instead of .308, and we all know how that worked out.
*
Despite foul taste and constipation friendly properties, I still didn’t necessarily mind eating the little bastards. I have never been a eater concerned with taste. Not saying I’ll eat something I hate, just that if it taste bland and uninteresting it is okay. I just want to ingest my calories as quickly as possible with as little fuss as possible. Eating is a chore, a pit stop. Throw the slop down my gullet and let me move on. No, what has always really peeved me about MRE’s is the expense. $5 or $6 each is too expensive for me. I can eat on $50 a month. Reasonably healthy, about fifty cents a meal ( just an average, dinner is 90% of the cost ). Paying $5 a meal is insane. I understand BOB meals are not the same as meals cooked at home. You can’t take a freezer along for cheap meat or a fridge for the other ingredients. What I don’t agree with is the need to spend so much when there is an alternative.
*
The objective with bug out bag food is to keep from getting too weak while on the run. The human body ( in good health ) can last a couple of weeks without food if needed. It is not something you want to do on a regular basis, but it can be done physically ( mentally is another matter ). You can eat slightly less than usual and still function adequately. You just need to keep most of the hunger pains away. You can do that without eating two thousand calories of meat and fat such as is in an MRE. Mostly empty carbs, a bit of animal protein and a bit of whole grain should do the trick nicely.
*
Start out the day with two packets of instant oatmeal. 300 calories. 30 cents. Yes, you need to boil a small amount of water. Most likely you would for coffee anyway. If you are on the run and can’t get a few twigs burning, wait until another meal. Just switch meal items. Lunch or dinner for breakfast. Worse case, mix with cold water. The whole grain will fill you up and last most of the morning. For lunch, two Top Ramen packs. 800 calories, twenty cents. They can be eaten uncooked if needed. For dinner, a pack of Top Ramen ( 400 cal ), 10 cents, and a can of Vienna Sausage ( 300 cal ), 35 cents. A days food for ninety five cents. 1800 calories. Not something you can survive on forever, but just fine a few days or weeks. Cook in a small pot or a canteen cup.
*
I understand that one of the benefits of an MRE is that no cooking is required. But you are paying a $5 penalty for that ( okay, the penalty is less since you are also buying taste ). With the price difference between three of their MRE’s and three of mine you can buy a small camping stove at www.bisonpress.com/amazonproducts.html . Assuming you don’t just build one out of a coffee can ( boil the grounds, then filter through a handkerchief for your BOB coffee maker ). Buy some cheap ziplock bags and put a days worth of food in each one ( gallon size ). The bag should only be about five cents so your cost still stays at a buck. Boring? Yes. Less than great tasting? Yes. Dirt cheap food for when you need it? Yes.
END
other Bison stuff http://www.bisonpress.com/
Friday, November 30, 2007
Thursday, November 29, 2007
greater depression started?
GREATER DEPRESSION STARTED?
In the last few months the economic headlines have gotten really scary. This hedge fund loses $10 billion. That bank writes off $15 billion. This car manufacturer loses $30 billion. That central bank gives out over $100 billion, this one $50 billion each time. It almost seems like no one has a clue what a billion dollars is anymore. No one seems to give much thought to these loses. Inflation isn’t that bad, not yet anyway. My thinking is, these loses seem pretty bad to me, so could it be signaling to us that the Greater Depression has already started? Maybe I am just over-excitable. I think anything over twenty five grand wages is big time. I think $30 grand for a new mobile home and a city lot is a lot of money. I wouldn’t pay ten thousand for a new car.
*
I think we can all agree that college education was a lot better eighty years ago, yet plenty of professionals in the economics field failed to realize the Depression stated at the stock market crash of ‘29. To them it was a loss, a correction and then the robust manufacturing economy of this country would rebound. Today, we have no gold backing the dollar, little to no manufacturing, our economy is retail, service and banking. Eighty years ago we weren’t dependant on oil, but even if we were we had enough for us and the rest of the world. Today we need to import 2/3 of our oil to keep the economy running. Back then farms were decentralized and self sufficient. Today they are neither. No one thinks the Depression has started, just as in the last one, yet today we have no basis for optimism like we did back then.
*
The Powers That Be ( always capitalized to promote fear and loathing ) profited during the last Depression. Almost as if by design. I’m sure they will profit from this one. And just as likely they deliberately caused it. No one wants to scream about its arrival, not in the mainstream press. Bad for business, which anymore is living with debt from age 18 to death. Personally, in business and in government. Debt is the economy. If the credit market is freezing up, how does the economy run? Even the tried and true wartime spending is failing to work. I can’t say for certain when our collapse will begin, if it has or not. I am just mixing five percent book learning, five percent common sense and 90% extreme paranoia.
*
If it has started, what does it mean to you? Well, of course it means you are screwed in the future. That is a given. Even recluses with large gardens and root cellars and large stockpiles of ammunition are going to be impacted by rising crime and shortages of oil and propane. No one is going to escape. But, should you care and should you do anything differently? My short answer is that if you are reading this you don’t really need to do anything differently. You are already prepping. You are already paying down debt. You are already making contingency plans. What more can you really do? Take the rent money and buy more wheat and 7.62x54 ammo? Why? Sure, if you have just been lurking and doing nothing but dreaming, you need to seriously buckle down and sell everything you don’t need and get an emergency stash immediately. Buy my book on $500 frugal survival ( www.bisonpress.com ). And read all of my past blog articles which are just updates to the book a lot of times. But everyone should have a security stash, regardless of the economy or the oil or the government. Too much can go wrong, and will. The rest of you, try to relax.
*
The economy looks bad enough to perhaps give some thought to doing a little extra if possible. I would even say charge a credit card if you have no money for the basics. $500 on a credit card is, what, $20 a month. Darn cheap insurance. Economic collapse is what most of us are expecting. Timing is in question, not probability. It should prove fun, anyway.
END
In the last few months the economic headlines have gotten really scary. This hedge fund loses $10 billion. That bank writes off $15 billion. This car manufacturer loses $30 billion. That central bank gives out over $100 billion, this one $50 billion each time. It almost seems like no one has a clue what a billion dollars is anymore. No one seems to give much thought to these loses. Inflation isn’t that bad, not yet anyway. My thinking is, these loses seem pretty bad to me, so could it be signaling to us that the Greater Depression has already started? Maybe I am just over-excitable. I think anything over twenty five grand wages is big time. I think $30 grand for a new mobile home and a city lot is a lot of money. I wouldn’t pay ten thousand for a new car.
*
I think we can all agree that college education was a lot better eighty years ago, yet plenty of professionals in the economics field failed to realize the Depression stated at the stock market crash of ‘29. To them it was a loss, a correction and then the robust manufacturing economy of this country would rebound. Today, we have no gold backing the dollar, little to no manufacturing, our economy is retail, service and banking. Eighty years ago we weren’t dependant on oil, but even if we were we had enough for us and the rest of the world. Today we need to import 2/3 of our oil to keep the economy running. Back then farms were decentralized and self sufficient. Today they are neither. No one thinks the Depression has started, just as in the last one, yet today we have no basis for optimism like we did back then.
*
The Powers That Be ( always capitalized to promote fear and loathing ) profited during the last Depression. Almost as if by design. I’m sure they will profit from this one. And just as likely they deliberately caused it. No one wants to scream about its arrival, not in the mainstream press. Bad for business, which anymore is living with debt from age 18 to death. Personally, in business and in government. Debt is the economy. If the credit market is freezing up, how does the economy run? Even the tried and true wartime spending is failing to work. I can’t say for certain when our collapse will begin, if it has or not. I am just mixing five percent book learning, five percent common sense and 90% extreme paranoia.
*
If it has started, what does it mean to you? Well, of course it means you are screwed in the future. That is a given. Even recluses with large gardens and root cellars and large stockpiles of ammunition are going to be impacted by rising crime and shortages of oil and propane. No one is going to escape. But, should you care and should you do anything differently? My short answer is that if you are reading this you don’t really need to do anything differently. You are already prepping. You are already paying down debt. You are already making contingency plans. What more can you really do? Take the rent money and buy more wheat and 7.62x54 ammo? Why? Sure, if you have just been lurking and doing nothing but dreaming, you need to seriously buckle down and sell everything you don’t need and get an emergency stash immediately. Buy my book on $500 frugal survival ( www.bisonpress.com ). And read all of my past blog articles which are just updates to the book a lot of times. But everyone should have a security stash, regardless of the economy or the oil or the government. Too much can go wrong, and will. The rest of you, try to relax.
*
The economy looks bad enough to perhaps give some thought to doing a little extra if possible. I would even say charge a credit card if you have no money for the basics. $500 on a credit card is, what, $20 a month. Darn cheap insurance. Economic collapse is what most of us are expecting. Timing is in question, not probability. It should prove fun, anyway.
END
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
property values
PROPERTY VALUES
Before we begin today, I wish to clarify a few things. First, while at first glance it might seem that sometimes what I write about has nothing to do with survivalism, you may rest assured that I know exactly what I am doing here. Just trust me on this. Do not look for the man behind the curtain. Second, while I generally lump everyone together as worthless scum sucking toads not fit to share the same air with me, in more lucid moments I recognize that only a few percent actually ruin it for everyone. So when I generalize, please keep in mind that if I were elected supreme ruler of the galaxy tomorrow I would refrain from wholesale liquidations even though I might feel like it at times. Third, I shouldn’t have to say it, but to avoid extra flames I will. I am not racist. When I speak of illegal immigrants, I am disapproving of the social costs not the skin color or culture ( we are lucky to have Mexicans as southern neighbors-much better than Arabs the Europeans deal with ) Today I am going to laugh and spew venom on all the idiots that deserve what they are getting as their property values plummet. This effects the economy, so I can almost justify writing about it as survivalism. And although I make it seem like I hate everyone for ruining my life ( oh, yes, they are all out to get me ) please take it with a grain of salt as I really do know only about ten percent of any one group ruin it for the rest of us.
*
I think by and large we would be a lot better off without a bunch of people here. Let crapholes like Africa and Mexico City and India vomit forth excess population like they were roaches. The US should be losing population as the main demographic was reproducing below replacement level. But, nooooo. Sammy and Sally Senior voted for FDR the pimply crippled bastard ( to get out of the Depression the central bank caused ) so they feel they deserve to be on welfare their entire life. First the military, then college is paid for by the taxpayer, then they go into civil service or a government subsidized field such as a defense contractor, then Social Security and Medicare. So instead of getting rid of the obviously bankrupt program we need to allow millions of Latinos each year into the country to keep the contributions keeping Geriatric Welfare afloat. And instead of going to the doctor when you are sick, you just suck it up and hope you don’t die because all of the old pukes are contributing to medical inflation by making that a welfare system.
*
And since college business school is a complete waste and teaches nothing logical or needed, we get a bunch of CEO’s who think it is just friggin peachy to buy politicians and screw us three ways to Sunday. Such as subsidizing ethanol which also runs up our food prices ( along with Central Bank inflation ). Or allowing strategic industries to move overseas so one day the Chinese can defeat us ( the CEO’s and bankers will be making money over there by then ). We could go on and on about business abuse. But let’s not get me too worked up and go to housing. A bunch of scumbags in California suck off of the public teet, by a house cheap since their income is artificially inflated, wait until retirement and then sell it for a fortune. Then they move out of the sewer they created and ruin the rest of the Western states. But far worse than that are most people in most places with their friggin “property values” mindset. Because some suckwad buys a house somewhere and suddenly the rest of us have to suffer so their property value can be artificially increased.
*
God forgive you if you are poor, or choose to be. You want to live in a mobile home or a trailer, most areas discriminate against you. A trailer would detract from the neighborhoods property value. Never mind that it is your damn land. Never mind, the socialists, pinko commie dill holes want to control your land so theirs is worth more. You can get in hock for thirty years to get a stick built home just like them ( don’t get me started on building codes ). Hurry up, boy, serve me my meds, but do it for minimum wage so my welfare benefits stretch farther. Oh, no affordable place to live on minimum wage because we want our house to appreciate-too F.N. bad you crying whiner. Get a better job. But now, glory of all glories. The housing bubble is doing a great job of starting to erode property values. People get laid off and give up the house and no one will buy the overpriced home ( the glut of houses on the market don’t help ) so one once nice house sits and grows weeds and cracks to let in the rain. The rest of the expensive houses on the block now suffer. HA! Rot in Hell you bloated selfish Yuppie Scum. I hope your house goes into negative equity and you owe more than it is worth. Karmic justice you creeps. Now if only it would strike the ex-wife.
END
Okay, Creekmore is giving his survival blog another go ( http://thesurvivalistblog.blogspot.com/ ). Let’s all go over there, read it, huddle in the corner and whisper mean things about it and then visit www.bisonpress.com to buy stuff from me. No, seriously, lets all try to support him. There are not enough original content survival sites out there ( by which I mean something besides links or forums ).
Before we begin today, I wish to clarify a few things. First, while at first glance it might seem that sometimes what I write about has nothing to do with survivalism, you may rest assured that I know exactly what I am doing here. Just trust me on this. Do not look for the man behind the curtain. Second, while I generally lump everyone together as worthless scum sucking toads not fit to share the same air with me, in more lucid moments I recognize that only a few percent actually ruin it for everyone. So when I generalize, please keep in mind that if I were elected supreme ruler of the galaxy tomorrow I would refrain from wholesale liquidations even though I might feel like it at times. Third, I shouldn’t have to say it, but to avoid extra flames I will. I am not racist. When I speak of illegal immigrants, I am disapproving of the social costs not the skin color or culture ( we are lucky to have Mexicans as southern neighbors-much better than Arabs the Europeans deal with ) Today I am going to laugh and spew venom on all the idiots that deserve what they are getting as their property values plummet. This effects the economy, so I can almost justify writing about it as survivalism. And although I make it seem like I hate everyone for ruining my life ( oh, yes, they are all out to get me ) please take it with a grain of salt as I really do know only about ten percent of any one group ruin it for the rest of us.
*
I think by and large we would be a lot better off without a bunch of people here. Let crapholes like Africa and Mexico City and India vomit forth excess population like they were roaches. The US should be losing population as the main demographic was reproducing below replacement level. But, nooooo. Sammy and Sally Senior voted for FDR the pimply crippled bastard ( to get out of the Depression the central bank caused ) so they feel they deserve to be on welfare their entire life. First the military, then college is paid for by the taxpayer, then they go into civil service or a government subsidized field such as a defense contractor, then Social Security and Medicare. So instead of getting rid of the obviously bankrupt program we need to allow millions of Latinos each year into the country to keep the contributions keeping Geriatric Welfare afloat. And instead of going to the doctor when you are sick, you just suck it up and hope you don’t die because all of the old pukes are contributing to medical inflation by making that a welfare system.
*
And since college business school is a complete waste and teaches nothing logical or needed, we get a bunch of CEO’s who think it is just friggin peachy to buy politicians and screw us three ways to Sunday. Such as subsidizing ethanol which also runs up our food prices ( along with Central Bank inflation ). Or allowing strategic industries to move overseas so one day the Chinese can defeat us ( the CEO’s and bankers will be making money over there by then ). We could go on and on about business abuse. But let’s not get me too worked up and go to housing. A bunch of scumbags in California suck off of the public teet, by a house cheap since their income is artificially inflated, wait until retirement and then sell it for a fortune. Then they move out of the sewer they created and ruin the rest of the Western states. But far worse than that are most people in most places with their friggin “property values” mindset. Because some suckwad buys a house somewhere and suddenly the rest of us have to suffer so their property value can be artificially increased.
*
God forgive you if you are poor, or choose to be. You want to live in a mobile home or a trailer, most areas discriminate against you. A trailer would detract from the neighborhoods property value. Never mind that it is your damn land. Never mind, the socialists, pinko commie dill holes want to control your land so theirs is worth more. You can get in hock for thirty years to get a stick built home just like them ( don’t get me started on building codes ). Hurry up, boy, serve me my meds, but do it for minimum wage so my welfare benefits stretch farther. Oh, no affordable place to live on minimum wage because we want our house to appreciate-too F.N. bad you crying whiner. Get a better job. But now, glory of all glories. The housing bubble is doing a great job of starting to erode property values. People get laid off and give up the house and no one will buy the overpriced home ( the glut of houses on the market don’t help ) so one once nice house sits and grows weeds and cracks to let in the rain. The rest of the expensive houses on the block now suffer. HA! Rot in Hell you bloated selfish Yuppie Scum. I hope your house goes into negative equity and you owe more than it is worth. Karmic justice you creeps. Now if only it would strike the ex-wife.
END
Okay, Creekmore is giving his survival blog another go ( http://thesurvivalistblog.blogspot.com/ ). Let’s all go over there, read it, huddle in the corner and whisper mean things about it and then visit www.bisonpress.com to buy stuff from me. No, seriously, lets all try to support him. There are not enough original content survival sites out there ( by which I mean something besides links or forums ).
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
trade wars
TRADE WARS
It is rare for any one region to be self sufficient in resources. The United States was one, Russia another. By and large. When you control the kind of resources they did/do than the few items you do need are easily bartered or purchased. The historical norm has been for nations to be dependant on others through trade for vital resources. The US is back to that point with its oil. Britain used to be dependant on the US for timber for the larger ship masts, a strategic disadvantage since sail power starter her Empire. Despite large coal reserves and the chemistry industry to manufacture liquid coal fuel the Germans were ultimately defeated by lack of oil ( and largely we won due to our surplus of it ).
*
To argue that individuals can attain total self-sufficiency is as silly as to think that nations can do the same. Almost without fail, you are always going to be at the mercy of others having goods you don’t. Peaceful trade is great, if you can achieve it. Otherwise you are going to either fight to eliminate criminals disrupting trade routes or fight foreigners to take what you need. Right now you can associate a lot of ills with global free trade. Destruction of local farming to grow cash crops. Industries and jobs shipped to lower cost workers. Pollution, currency inflation, etc. But most likely much better than the alternative which is lack of trade and the resulting economic disruption. A trillion dollar war in the middle east will eventually help to bankrupt our nation, but the alternative is running out of oil. Sacrificing the future to survive the present ( shades of Easter Island? ).
*
Post collapse, trade wars are going to become the norm. Without oil ( without a lot of affordable oil, anyway ), larger nation states will be unable to support the vast militaries needed to secure themselves ( you can’t grow enough corn to fuel a fleet of three gallons to the mile strategic bombers ). Nation size will shrink. There will be a lot more hands in the cookie jar. Instead of living in one country that has almost everything, you now have twenty nations. Each fighting for many different resources. Right now we all focus on oil, but historically a lot of different items were necessary for survival. At one time the ingredient for pencil lead ( graphite? ) was deemed a strategic commodity because of battlefield communications. A lot of different metals are scarce in certain places. Salt lead to many wars in the past. After some political units shrink too much, certain food will need to be traded.
*
If our industrial economy is disrupted too much ( certainly a given ) supply priorities will drastically change. Most trade right now is for luxury and consumable items. Basic necessities are supplied locally for poor regions. Once we all become poor trade will remain for the luxury and consumable items, but a lot less people will be able to afford it. That is a given. It would suck, but we could survive without coffee if we had to. It is the trade in necessities that are going to cause the problems. Salt, grains, ammunition. Where water disappears after electric pumps fail we will simply see that area abandoned. But plenty of areas will need things that are just not available locally. War, or at least low intensity conflicts will become the norm. Plenty of peaceful trade ( just make sure you have enough military to keep the other guy honest ) but also plenty of institutionalized theft. Go to the library and check out The Prize by Daniel Yergin for a non-fiction account on the many facets of oil procurement. Dune by Frank Herbert will give you a fictional look at strategic materials being fought over.
*
If you survive the zombies, then you are going to have to survive the post-collapse dictators fighting over salt mines or ore deposits or reopened factories turning out ammunition cases or rifle barrels ( or the hydro-electric damn powering it ). Again, logistics are more important than strategy or tactics.
END
e-books, Amazon books, prep gear at www.bisonpress.com
It is rare for any one region to be self sufficient in resources. The United States was one, Russia another. By and large. When you control the kind of resources they did/do than the few items you do need are easily bartered or purchased. The historical norm has been for nations to be dependant on others through trade for vital resources. The US is back to that point with its oil. Britain used to be dependant on the US for timber for the larger ship masts, a strategic disadvantage since sail power starter her Empire. Despite large coal reserves and the chemistry industry to manufacture liquid coal fuel the Germans were ultimately defeated by lack of oil ( and largely we won due to our surplus of it ).
*
To argue that individuals can attain total self-sufficiency is as silly as to think that nations can do the same. Almost without fail, you are always going to be at the mercy of others having goods you don’t. Peaceful trade is great, if you can achieve it. Otherwise you are going to either fight to eliminate criminals disrupting trade routes or fight foreigners to take what you need. Right now you can associate a lot of ills with global free trade. Destruction of local farming to grow cash crops. Industries and jobs shipped to lower cost workers. Pollution, currency inflation, etc. But most likely much better than the alternative which is lack of trade and the resulting economic disruption. A trillion dollar war in the middle east will eventually help to bankrupt our nation, but the alternative is running out of oil. Sacrificing the future to survive the present ( shades of Easter Island? ).
*
Post collapse, trade wars are going to become the norm. Without oil ( without a lot of affordable oil, anyway ), larger nation states will be unable to support the vast militaries needed to secure themselves ( you can’t grow enough corn to fuel a fleet of three gallons to the mile strategic bombers ). Nation size will shrink. There will be a lot more hands in the cookie jar. Instead of living in one country that has almost everything, you now have twenty nations. Each fighting for many different resources. Right now we all focus on oil, but historically a lot of different items were necessary for survival. At one time the ingredient for pencil lead ( graphite? ) was deemed a strategic commodity because of battlefield communications. A lot of different metals are scarce in certain places. Salt lead to many wars in the past. After some political units shrink too much, certain food will need to be traded.
*
If our industrial economy is disrupted too much ( certainly a given ) supply priorities will drastically change. Most trade right now is for luxury and consumable items. Basic necessities are supplied locally for poor regions. Once we all become poor trade will remain for the luxury and consumable items, but a lot less people will be able to afford it. That is a given. It would suck, but we could survive without coffee if we had to. It is the trade in necessities that are going to cause the problems. Salt, grains, ammunition. Where water disappears after electric pumps fail we will simply see that area abandoned. But plenty of areas will need things that are just not available locally. War, or at least low intensity conflicts will become the norm. Plenty of peaceful trade ( just make sure you have enough military to keep the other guy honest ) but also plenty of institutionalized theft. Go to the library and check out The Prize by Daniel Yergin for a non-fiction account on the many facets of oil procurement. Dune by Frank Herbert will give you a fictional look at strategic materials being fought over.
*
If you survive the zombies, then you are going to have to survive the post-collapse dictators fighting over salt mines or ore deposits or reopened factories turning out ammunition cases or rifle barrels ( or the hydro-electric damn powering it ). Again, logistics are more important than strategy or tactics.
END
e-books, Amazon books, prep gear at www.bisonpress.com
Monday, November 26, 2007
scavs
SCAVS
Scavengers are going to be littering the ground two deep post-collapse. We are such incredible resource wasters in this country thanks to a windfall we rightfully stole from savages and Latinos that we have been able to devote an entire economy and culture towards using it for short periods of time and throwing it away to be replaced. It is phenomenal the amount of perfectly good items discarded daily at our local dump. A small city run dump, they are deathly afraid of lawsuits and so prohibit scrounging. Pussies. You could build entire houses from what is thrown away. I’ve seen intact RV’s, hot tubs and today I even saw a boat with motor on a trailer. Incredible waste.
*
If Third World crap holes can sustain communities that do nothing but scavenge in their dumps, imagine what treasures you could dig up here in the land of excess and waste. If you went to a sub-tropical African dump and fought your way past little stomach bloated kids with more flies buzzing around them than the trash, you would wonder that they could possible find at the dump that was worth any money. Yet somehow they manage. Of course that might be an exaggeration. You might need a bigger middle class and rich population to generate any trash. Places such as the Philippines, or Arab settlements next to Israel. But these settlements of trash pickers speak of a global problem largely fueled by Petroleum Man. Americans win the triple gold medal in waste, the rest of the world merely gets a cheesy pseudo-silk ribbon for honorable mention.
*
And yet, once again the Gods might smile down on us ( USA!USA! ) and bestow upon us riches we scarcely deserve. If God looks after drunks, idiots and children, we are rolling in clover. We are drunk off of our riches, waste it like idiots and throw a nuclear tantrum like a child when we don’t get our way. So once again we will fall in a pig sty and come up smelling like roses. We have so much friggin trash here that conceivably we could last generations off of scavenging through it. Other countries act all Green and recycle their trash now, thus depriving future generations of salvaged goods. We are stockpiling. It is just waiting to be picked through, reused and prized. I would imagine our dumps have more steel, aluminum, copper and other high energy metals than some countries have in their ore deposits. Money in the bank, baby.
*
So come crunch time, relax. We can start back at 19th century levels just mining our dumps. Even crushed and battled plastic electronic doo-dads have some gold and silver on the circuit boards. And plenty of stuff will be used as is. Books will sell as entertainment ( even Harlequin romances ) and then used as toilet paper. Even such totally useless ( for post-collapse, although I would argue even today ) magazines as Sports Illustrated might be recycled for the paper ( can you recycle slick paper? I know it is no good for TP ).
*
Also, think about using some of that waste today for future barter. I have already brought up using purse/duffle bag/gym bag straps for rifle slings ( most folks have more than one rifle but rarely more than one sling ). Just make sure to get the metal rather than plastic ends. I also brought up five or ten cent thrift store stainless steel butter knives ground to stockpile oodles of barter weapons. Another use I just thought of was muffin tins. The bake wear you place paper sleeves in the recesses and pour in batter to make muffins. With or without the paper cups, pour in wax with wicks and you have a multiple of candles ( use as many as needed at one time ) that can’t be knocked over and are thus safer to use. Free at the dump, cheap at thrift stores ( hardly anyone bakes anymore ).
Just a few trash to treasure thoughts. Please share yours.
END
buy my stuff www.bisonpress.com
Scavengers are going to be littering the ground two deep post-collapse. We are such incredible resource wasters in this country thanks to a windfall we rightfully stole from savages and Latinos that we have been able to devote an entire economy and culture towards using it for short periods of time and throwing it away to be replaced. It is phenomenal the amount of perfectly good items discarded daily at our local dump. A small city run dump, they are deathly afraid of lawsuits and so prohibit scrounging. Pussies. You could build entire houses from what is thrown away. I’ve seen intact RV’s, hot tubs and today I even saw a boat with motor on a trailer. Incredible waste.
*
If Third World crap holes can sustain communities that do nothing but scavenge in their dumps, imagine what treasures you could dig up here in the land of excess and waste. If you went to a sub-tropical African dump and fought your way past little stomach bloated kids with more flies buzzing around them than the trash, you would wonder that they could possible find at the dump that was worth any money. Yet somehow they manage. Of course that might be an exaggeration. You might need a bigger middle class and rich population to generate any trash. Places such as the Philippines, or Arab settlements next to Israel. But these settlements of trash pickers speak of a global problem largely fueled by Petroleum Man. Americans win the triple gold medal in waste, the rest of the world merely gets a cheesy pseudo-silk ribbon for honorable mention.
*
And yet, once again the Gods might smile down on us ( USA!USA! ) and bestow upon us riches we scarcely deserve. If God looks after drunks, idiots and children, we are rolling in clover. We are drunk off of our riches, waste it like idiots and throw a nuclear tantrum like a child when we don’t get our way. So once again we will fall in a pig sty and come up smelling like roses. We have so much friggin trash here that conceivably we could last generations off of scavenging through it. Other countries act all Green and recycle their trash now, thus depriving future generations of salvaged goods. We are stockpiling. It is just waiting to be picked through, reused and prized. I would imagine our dumps have more steel, aluminum, copper and other high energy metals than some countries have in their ore deposits. Money in the bank, baby.
*
So come crunch time, relax. We can start back at 19th century levels just mining our dumps. Even crushed and battled plastic electronic doo-dads have some gold and silver on the circuit boards. And plenty of stuff will be used as is. Books will sell as entertainment ( even Harlequin romances ) and then used as toilet paper. Even such totally useless ( for post-collapse, although I would argue even today ) magazines as Sports Illustrated might be recycled for the paper ( can you recycle slick paper? I know it is no good for TP ).
*
Also, think about using some of that waste today for future barter. I have already brought up using purse/duffle bag/gym bag straps for rifle slings ( most folks have more than one rifle but rarely more than one sling ). Just make sure to get the metal rather than plastic ends. I also brought up five or ten cent thrift store stainless steel butter knives ground to stockpile oodles of barter weapons. Another use I just thought of was muffin tins. The bake wear you place paper sleeves in the recesses and pour in batter to make muffins. With or without the paper cups, pour in wax with wicks and you have a multiple of candles ( use as many as needed at one time ) that can’t be knocked over and are thus safer to use. Free at the dump, cheap at thrift stores ( hardly anyone bakes anymore ).
Just a few trash to treasure thoughts. Please share yours.
END
buy my stuff www.bisonpress.com
Saturday, November 24, 2007
long term firearms
LONG TERM FIREARMS
A giant asteroid hitting us and wiping out most of humanity is the least of our worries. Yes, it could happen at any time. But most events such as this happened before mankind was around. More likely, historically speaking, we will see large volcanoes erupt and the sun diluting clouds of ash will wipe out our ability to farm or resource depletion will send us back centuries economically, culturally and technologically. Or, other massive weather changes will do the same. Military conquest and a surplus of slave labor and land allowed the Romans to flourish. When they collapsed ( most likely due to those resources drying up ) we reverted to the Dark Ages for centuries. Weather changes have wiped out most civilizations ( perhaps even the Romans if crop shortages helped their decline ). Recently the indigenous peoples of the Southwest and the Mayans. If our weather changes on us at the same time we start running out of oil, that is all she wrote. And modern Petroleum Man has a longs ways to far back to a solar sustainable agricultural economy.
*
It will not be just our Imperial government that fails. Trade will completely halt, both from overseas and even on an interstate level. Your shoes, clothing, ammunition, metal, chemicals and energy will all be lacking. From a defensive standpoint, what is in your gun rack and the ammunition needed to feed it will be all you have. Once your reloading supplies run out, unless you can improvise those components, you will cease using modern smokeless powder firearms. Thus it is imperative that you plan ahead for this. Even if you have the resources to stockpile tens of thousands of rounds ( not feasible for most of us except for two cents a round rimfire ) you will still run out sooner or later. And no one wants to go back to using bows with salvaged automobile metal for arrow heads. Either your descendants will lack modern arms or you will be raided for your supplies or you will run out in months if you share your stockpile with a defensive force.
*
The thing that really sucks about long term survival preparations is that you will need to share your supplies. Almost no one will be able to survive on their own and once you start sharing with people that you band together with to survive your supplies are gone before you know it. A two ton supply of grain and beans will feed you for ten years. If your tribe numbers twenty people it will be gone in six months. Twenty thousand rounds will last you your lifetime if you use a bolt action. The tribe will shoot that up in a year or less. The notion of a hermit surviving alone in the hills is romantic, but not very realistic. If nothing else our hardwired herd instinct will force you to group with others. You can’t always be on guard by yourself, nor can you acquire all the needed skills to survive long term. Short term hiding in the hills will work, but not long term. And you can be sure that one price to pay for mutual support will be forced sharing of resources.
*
Realistically, can you count on a skilled chemist to be in your group? Not just a High School teacher that knows how to order from a chemical supply catalog, but one that can manufacture those chemicals from scratch. Can you get those raw materials? If not, you have no hope of using modern arms long term. The best you can do to put off the inevitable is to use a .22 rimfire with at least ten thousand rounds stashed. For stopping power against predators you need at least a revolver of adequate size, say a .357. You can’t carry two rifles so a revolver is your best bet. Use that ammo sparingly to stretch out the ammo and reloads. After that it is going to have to be black powder arms.
*
The reason that all the powers of the day shifted as quick as humanly possible from black powder arms to smokeless powdered arms is the huge tactical advantage that smokeless offers. Somewhat importantly, the field is not chocked in powder smoke rendering vision impossible sometimes. Far more importantly, smokeless powder allows a flatter projectile at much farther distances. In a nutshell, it is simply impossible for black powder arms to prevail against their modern counterparts on the battlefield. If you go up against modern firepower with black powder more likely than not you will lose. Black powder is the only sustainable technology without a chemical industry, but if you go up against forces with pre-collapse supplies you will be defeated. It is all well and good for hunting and limited defense but nearly worthless against an army.
*
Unless you are in a scenario where most people were wiped out ( super-plague or asteroid strike ) you will encounter warfare over resources. You only have a few options. Stay a hermit in a very remote region. Start and maintain an armaments industry. Stay hidden until everyone reverts back to black powder arms. Each one has a lot of downside. Being a successful hermit can be difficult with our levels of population ( it ain’t the Depression or the Fur Trader Era ). Starting a chemical/modern weapons industry is no where near being simple, requires a lot of labor and expertise and will necessitate going to war just to secure the needed supplies to start and/or sustain it. Emerging from hiding later on assumes no one else can equip an army with modern ammunition.
*
If this is all just too much and it makes your head hurt and you just want to procure supplies for yourself, then pick your poison. A rimfire rifle with at least ten thousand rounds and a backup revolver for close in knock out power. Or a muzzle loading black powder arm. With any farmer nearby supplying animal fertilizer anyone can make their own black powder to keep the rifle working. If you stay with a flintlock you can always be armed. Primers allow wet weather use but are a whole level of technology above what the economy will likely allow. Cottage industry can keep everyone in arms if you stay with flintlocks. A rimfire with five thousand rounds or any not so fancy muzzleloader will only cost you $200.
*
The preferable course of action is a inexpensive war surplus rifle with as much ammunition as you can afford and then either the rimfire or the muzzleloader. You can have a modern rifle for quite some time before you are forced to “trade down”. If you can only afford one and are certain we are headed towards a new Dark Age I would advise the rimfire. You can continue to buy ammunition cheaply. Anyone can afford $11for 500 rounds every payday. And it is cheap enough that you can continue to practice so you can achieve those critical placement hits. Black powder has a steep learning curve and you might not be comfortable with it. Everyone knows and loves the .22. You can take to it like a duck to water. It is an anemic round but it beats archery.
END
This is turning out to be a peachy morning. It is 40 degrees in my trailer ( 12 outside ), my computer isn’t running well in the cold so I’m late posting, and my regular article had a corrupted file so today you get a few pages from an aborted booklet, the only thing I had available. Sorry. Visit more of Jim at http://www.bisonpress.com/
A giant asteroid hitting us and wiping out most of humanity is the least of our worries. Yes, it could happen at any time. But most events such as this happened before mankind was around. More likely, historically speaking, we will see large volcanoes erupt and the sun diluting clouds of ash will wipe out our ability to farm or resource depletion will send us back centuries economically, culturally and technologically. Or, other massive weather changes will do the same. Military conquest and a surplus of slave labor and land allowed the Romans to flourish. When they collapsed ( most likely due to those resources drying up ) we reverted to the Dark Ages for centuries. Weather changes have wiped out most civilizations ( perhaps even the Romans if crop shortages helped their decline ). Recently the indigenous peoples of the Southwest and the Mayans. If our weather changes on us at the same time we start running out of oil, that is all she wrote. And modern Petroleum Man has a longs ways to far back to a solar sustainable agricultural economy.
*
It will not be just our Imperial government that fails. Trade will completely halt, both from overseas and even on an interstate level. Your shoes, clothing, ammunition, metal, chemicals and energy will all be lacking. From a defensive standpoint, what is in your gun rack and the ammunition needed to feed it will be all you have. Once your reloading supplies run out, unless you can improvise those components, you will cease using modern smokeless powder firearms. Thus it is imperative that you plan ahead for this. Even if you have the resources to stockpile tens of thousands of rounds ( not feasible for most of us except for two cents a round rimfire ) you will still run out sooner or later. And no one wants to go back to using bows with salvaged automobile metal for arrow heads. Either your descendants will lack modern arms or you will be raided for your supplies or you will run out in months if you share your stockpile with a defensive force.
*
The thing that really sucks about long term survival preparations is that you will need to share your supplies. Almost no one will be able to survive on their own and once you start sharing with people that you band together with to survive your supplies are gone before you know it. A two ton supply of grain and beans will feed you for ten years. If your tribe numbers twenty people it will be gone in six months. Twenty thousand rounds will last you your lifetime if you use a bolt action. The tribe will shoot that up in a year or less. The notion of a hermit surviving alone in the hills is romantic, but not very realistic. If nothing else our hardwired herd instinct will force you to group with others. You can’t always be on guard by yourself, nor can you acquire all the needed skills to survive long term. Short term hiding in the hills will work, but not long term. And you can be sure that one price to pay for mutual support will be forced sharing of resources.
*
Realistically, can you count on a skilled chemist to be in your group? Not just a High School teacher that knows how to order from a chemical supply catalog, but one that can manufacture those chemicals from scratch. Can you get those raw materials? If not, you have no hope of using modern arms long term. The best you can do to put off the inevitable is to use a .22 rimfire with at least ten thousand rounds stashed. For stopping power against predators you need at least a revolver of adequate size, say a .357. You can’t carry two rifles so a revolver is your best bet. Use that ammo sparingly to stretch out the ammo and reloads. After that it is going to have to be black powder arms.
*
The reason that all the powers of the day shifted as quick as humanly possible from black powder arms to smokeless powdered arms is the huge tactical advantage that smokeless offers. Somewhat importantly, the field is not chocked in powder smoke rendering vision impossible sometimes. Far more importantly, smokeless powder allows a flatter projectile at much farther distances. In a nutshell, it is simply impossible for black powder arms to prevail against their modern counterparts on the battlefield. If you go up against modern firepower with black powder more likely than not you will lose. Black powder is the only sustainable technology without a chemical industry, but if you go up against forces with pre-collapse supplies you will be defeated. It is all well and good for hunting and limited defense but nearly worthless against an army.
*
Unless you are in a scenario where most people were wiped out ( super-plague or asteroid strike ) you will encounter warfare over resources. You only have a few options. Stay a hermit in a very remote region. Start and maintain an armaments industry. Stay hidden until everyone reverts back to black powder arms. Each one has a lot of downside. Being a successful hermit can be difficult with our levels of population ( it ain’t the Depression or the Fur Trader Era ). Starting a chemical/modern weapons industry is no where near being simple, requires a lot of labor and expertise and will necessitate going to war just to secure the needed supplies to start and/or sustain it. Emerging from hiding later on assumes no one else can equip an army with modern ammunition.
*
If this is all just too much and it makes your head hurt and you just want to procure supplies for yourself, then pick your poison. A rimfire rifle with at least ten thousand rounds and a backup revolver for close in knock out power. Or a muzzle loading black powder arm. With any farmer nearby supplying animal fertilizer anyone can make their own black powder to keep the rifle working. If you stay with a flintlock you can always be armed. Primers allow wet weather use but are a whole level of technology above what the economy will likely allow. Cottage industry can keep everyone in arms if you stay with flintlocks. A rimfire with five thousand rounds or any not so fancy muzzleloader will only cost you $200.
*
The preferable course of action is a inexpensive war surplus rifle with as much ammunition as you can afford and then either the rimfire or the muzzleloader. You can have a modern rifle for quite some time before you are forced to “trade down”. If you can only afford one and are certain we are headed towards a new Dark Age I would advise the rimfire. You can continue to buy ammunition cheaply. Anyone can afford $11for 500 rounds every payday. And it is cheap enough that you can continue to practice so you can achieve those critical placement hits. Black powder has a steep learning curve and you might not be comfortable with it. Everyone knows and loves the .22. You can take to it like a duck to water. It is an anemic round but it beats archery.
END
This is turning out to be a peachy morning. It is 40 degrees in my trailer ( 12 outside ), my computer isn’t running well in the cold so I’m late posting, and my regular article had a corrupted file so today you get a few pages from an aborted booklet, the only thing I had available. Sorry. Visit more of Jim at http://www.bisonpress.com/
Friday, November 23, 2007
fresnel lens
FRESNEL LENS
A fresnel lens is like a magnifying glass on crack cocaine. If you go down to the dollar store and buy a magnifying glass you can, after a fashion, use it to start fires. Hold the glass really steady after focusing the light spot in as small an area as possible and if it is really hot out and an actual Sun God helps you out you might get a tickle of smoke from a combustible material after what seems like a few hours. A fresnel lens however is much more efficient in setting things on fire ( and from plastic, no less ). Something to do with ridges instead of a smooth curved surface. Hey, I don’t care how the thing works. Go ask your really ugly fourth grade science teacher with buck teeth and a horse face that wouldn’t get laid on a good day with a visible asteroid about to impact the Earth. She would love to explain it to you. Give me MacGyver or the professor from Gilligan’s Island that just got stuff done easily instead of explaining to me the underlying process named after a 16th century priest turned amateur scientist ( I don’t know when Fresnel was around improving lighthouses, but you get my meaning ).
*
Go to a office supply store and see if they have flexible plastic sheet magnifiers. This is a fresnel lens. I imagine they would be around five bucks or so for a small one. If you want me to think highly of you, go to my Amazon affiliate products page and order one for three bucks. www.bisonpress.com/amazonproducts.html near the end of the page. I won’t think too badly if you don’t, but with you being a middle aged balding fat guy with a wife edging over two hundred pounds, living in Chicago or LA, driving an SUV and planning on living off of Social Security, you need all the blessing I can bestow upon you to feel good about yourself. It’s less than a gallon of gas, for goodness sakes. Less than a video rental. Which you won’t even enjoy because it’s a chick flick instead of the new Die Hard movie.
*
Now that you have your new toy, start fires with it. Hold the sheet perpendicular to the sunlight, make a fine focus on a combustible. Now watch in bliss and awe as your target bursts into flame. Larger fresnel lens’ can melt metal. A small one can start a fire with some tender. In the future after your Bic lighters are drained, after all the matches are gone, after gasoline powered Zippo lighters have ignited your privates then have no more fuel to operate, fresnel lens fire making will be the way to start the days fire for warmth and cooking. Amaze your rat-skin coated buddies with instant fire as they vainly try to rub two sticks together for friction. Win a new bride ( after the last one “accidentally” fell off of the glacier after you found her in bed with your best friend ) by starting a fire after their fire filled clay pot was dropped during the last saber tooth tiger attack. Long after your last ammo primer was used up and you had to start carrying a butcher knife on a stick for protection, you can still impress the natives with the magic of fire.
*
If things get so bad that you need a fresnel lens to make a fire on a regular basis as your tribe retreats from the advancing ice, you probably won’t live long enough to enjoy the campfire. But this is some extremely cheap insurance. For under ten bucks you don’t look like an idiot carrying around a flaming torch so you can have a cooked meal later that day. And since this lens will easily start fires on a sunny winter day you have no chance of freezing unless you foolishly waited until after sundown to make camp. Yes, cannibals will attack your party with sharpened rebar and throwing stones and tear the flesh from your bones as you still struggle, but at least up until the point you can stay warm and eat cooked food. And all for a three dollar piece of plastic.
END
A fresnel lens is like a magnifying glass on crack cocaine. If you go down to the dollar store and buy a magnifying glass you can, after a fashion, use it to start fires. Hold the glass really steady after focusing the light spot in as small an area as possible and if it is really hot out and an actual Sun God helps you out you might get a tickle of smoke from a combustible material after what seems like a few hours. A fresnel lens however is much more efficient in setting things on fire ( and from plastic, no less ). Something to do with ridges instead of a smooth curved surface. Hey, I don’t care how the thing works. Go ask your really ugly fourth grade science teacher with buck teeth and a horse face that wouldn’t get laid on a good day with a visible asteroid about to impact the Earth. She would love to explain it to you. Give me MacGyver or the professor from Gilligan’s Island that just got stuff done easily instead of explaining to me the underlying process named after a 16th century priest turned amateur scientist ( I don’t know when Fresnel was around improving lighthouses, but you get my meaning ).
*
Go to a office supply store and see if they have flexible plastic sheet magnifiers. This is a fresnel lens. I imagine they would be around five bucks or so for a small one. If you want me to think highly of you, go to my Amazon affiliate products page and order one for three bucks. www.bisonpress.com/amazonproducts.html near the end of the page. I won’t think too badly if you don’t, but with you being a middle aged balding fat guy with a wife edging over two hundred pounds, living in Chicago or LA, driving an SUV and planning on living off of Social Security, you need all the blessing I can bestow upon you to feel good about yourself. It’s less than a gallon of gas, for goodness sakes. Less than a video rental. Which you won’t even enjoy because it’s a chick flick instead of the new Die Hard movie.
*
Now that you have your new toy, start fires with it. Hold the sheet perpendicular to the sunlight, make a fine focus on a combustible. Now watch in bliss and awe as your target bursts into flame. Larger fresnel lens’ can melt metal. A small one can start a fire with some tender. In the future after your Bic lighters are drained, after all the matches are gone, after gasoline powered Zippo lighters have ignited your privates then have no more fuel to operate, fresnel lens fire making will be the way to start the days fire for warmth and cooking. Amaze your rat-skin coated buddies with instant fire as they vainly try to rub two sticks together for friction. Win a new bride ( after the last one “accidentally” fell off of the glacier after you found her in bed with your best friend ) by starting a fire after their fire filled clay pot was dropped during the last saber tooth tiger attack. Long after your last ammo primer was used up and you had to start carrying a butcher knife on a stick for protection, you can still impress the natives with the magic of fire.
*
If things get so bad that you need a fresnel lens to make a fire on a regular basis as your tribe retreats from the advancing ice, you probably won’t live long enough to enjoy the campfire. But this is some extremely cheap insurance. For under ten bucks you don’t look like an idiot carrying around a flaming torch so you can have a cooked meal later that day. And since this lens will easily start fires on a sunny winter day you have no chance of freezing unless you foolishly waited until after sundown to make camp. Yes, cannibals will attack your party with sharpened rebar and throwing stones and tear the flesh from your bones as you still struggle, but at least up until the point you can stay warm and eat cooked food. And all for a three dollar piece of plastic.
END
Thursday, November 22, 2007
willful overpopulation
WILLFUL OVERPOPULATION
Politicians being what they are, soul sucking eaters of the dead, inhuman spawn of the dark lords, vassals of extraterrestrial puppet masters ( some exceptions such as Ron Paul who seems hell bent on Suicide By Election prove the rule ), they will sometimes rule in the worse interests of individuals but supposedly in the interests of society at large. Cracking a few eggs to make an omelet, sacrifice the few for the many, etc. Of course once you start down that slippery slope the hive replaces the individual and we all become Borg. Willful overpopulation is a prime example of this.
*
If you put a tree hugging granola eater in charge of the country one of the first things that would happen after all guns were melted down into guard railings to keep humans off of the grass and stuck in their cities would be population controls of some sort. Those that were LSD burnouts from the 1960‘s would just instruct us all to form a large circle and get in touch with our auras or our inner feminine side and wish the problem away. The more devote followers of Al Gore would introduce germ warfare to kill off 90% of the population and sterilize most of the survivors. But those freaks are not the norm. Most leaders would just assume spit on a polar bear, shoot him, serve his liver to the opposition, melt his iceberg with pollution than even think about saving the thing. The norm is to desire extra population. Look at China today. Rather than employ the smaller population it had after its One Child policy it has loosened the policy to allow more breeding. Presumably to use an excess to keep wages down even in light of 20% annual inflation. And the US. We have so many immigrants larding up the population so Social Security can be saved that one day we might not even be able to feed ourselves ( come oil shocks and warmer weather ).
*
Traditionally, more population was a strategic necessity. More peasants meant more crops, more crops meant more soldiers, more soldiers meant more conquered land, more land meant more crops, etc. To defend yourself you were locked into this cycle. So when severe weather arrived the excess population died off. Sucks if you were one of the malnourished ones, but good for the tribe/nation. Again, DNA programming will always trump our common sense. Just as our hormones lead us down a path we have no control of so that the species survives, so it is with groups. Groups fight each other to assure resources so one will always survive rather than both perishing. To fight each other certain evils are embraced. Government, excess population, war spending instead of social welfare, etc. That being said, there are many paths to take to get there. The wrong path means your group that dies off while the other survives. Social organization should fit the times and conditions. Some times, decentralization will be good, other times bad. Some times it is good to expand into an empire, other times it assures your defeat. And so on.
*
After a collapse, there will be an immediate race to overpopulate. Those that do will take the farmland, equip the armies, steal the resources. Those that can’t secure the food to breed more farmers and soldiers will die off after the die off. Remember, Christian charity is, really, for other Christians. You can’t afford not to hate the group different than yourself. Hating others is how social cohesion is accomplished, which allows more resources to be allocated towards fighting. A society at war with itself ( such as the US for the last several generations ) cannot join together to defeat enemies. So, not only does it pay politicians to continue the boom/bust cycle of population, it is a survival trait. And you might be caught up in it post-collapse.
END
I’m posting a comment from a few days ago. Anyone help?
Jim, I've searched and search - eons ago someone left a comment about a company in Lancaster, PA that delivers grains. I live close enough, but can't find the bloomin comment. Do you recall the name of the place? Would you pls email me at Hamstrhair@yahoo.com. Thanks much.
*
A deal! Go to www.sportsmansguide.com and look up item number LX7M-126119. It’s 100 P-38 can openers for $20. What a great barter item to have.
Happy Turkey Day, everyone. Be thankful we can still stuff our faces.
my page www.bisonpress.com
Politicians being what they are, soul sucking eaters of the dead, inhuman spawn of the dark lords, vassals of extraterrestrial puppet masters ( some exceptions such as Ron Paul who seems hell bent on Suicide By Election prove the rule ), they will sometimes rule in the worse interests of individuals but supposedly in the interests of society at large. Cracking a few eggs to make an omelet, sacrifice the few for the many, etc. Of course once you start down that slippery slope the hive replaces the individual and we all become Borg. Willful overpopulation is a prime example of this.
*
If you put a tree hugging granola eater in charge of the country one of the first things that would happen after all guns were melted down into guard railings to keep humans off of the grass and stuck in their cities would be population controls of some sort. Those that were LSD burnouts from the 1960‘s would just instruct us all to form a large circle and get in touch with our auras or our inner feminine side and wish the problem away. The more devote followers of Al Gore would introduce germ warfare to kill off 90% of the population and sterilize most of the survivors. But those freaks are not the norm. Most leaders would just assume spit on a polar bear, shoot him, serve his liver to the opposition, melt his iceberg with pollution than even think about saving the thing. The norm is to desire extra population. Look at China today. Rather than employ the smaller population it had after its One Child policy it has loosened the policy to allow more breeding. Presumably to use an excess to keep wages down even in light of 20% annual inflation. And the US. We have so many immigrants larding up the population so Social Security can be saved that one day we might not even be able to feed ourselves ( come oil shocks and warmer weather ).
*
Traditionally, more population was a strategic necessity. More peasants meant more crops, more crops meant more soldiers, more soldiers meant more conquered land, more land meant more crops, etc. To defend yourself you were locked into this cycle. So when severe weather arrived the excess population died off. Sucks if you were one of the malnourished ones, but good for the tribe/nation. Again, DNA programming will always trump our common sense. Just as our hormones lead us down a path we have no control of so that the species survives, so it is with groups. Groups fight each other to assure resources so one will always survive rather than both perishing. To fight each other certain evils are embraced. Government, excess population, war spending instead of social welfare, etc. That being said, there are many paths to take to get there. The wrong path means your group that dies off while the other survives. Social organization should fit the times and conditions. Some times, decentralization will be good, other times bad. Some times it is good to expand into an empire, other times it assures your defeat. And so on.
*
After a collapse, there will be an immediate race to overpopulate. Those that do will take the farmland, equip the armies, steal the resources. Those that can’t secure the food to breed more farmers and soldiers will die off after the die off. Remember, Christian charity is, really, for other Christians. You can’t afford not to hate the group different than yourself. Hating others is how social cohesion is accomplished, which allows more resources to be allocated towards fighting. A society at war with itself ( such as the US for the last several generations ) cannot join together to defeat enemies. So, not only does it pay politicians to continue the boom/bust cycle of population, it is a survival trait. And you might be caught up in it post-collapse.
END
I’m posting a comment from a few days ago. Anyone help?
Jim, I've searched and search - eons ago someone left a comment about a company in Lancaster, PA that delivers grains. I live close enough, but can't find the bloomin comment. Do you recall the name of the place? Would you pls email me at Hamstrhair@yahoo.com. Thanks much.
*
A deal! Go to www.sportsmansguide.com and look up item number LX7M-126119. It’s 100 P-38 can openers for $20. What a great barter item to have.
Happy Turkey Day, everyone. Be thankful we can still stuff our faces.
my page www.bisonpress.com
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
derivatives simplified
DERIVATIVES SIMPLIFIED
Derivative markets are the dinosaur killing asteroid that’s path hid behind the moon until it was too late to send up Bruce Willis to save all of humanity. Heck, don’t take my word for it. Guys that know what they are actually talking about such as Warren Buffet think they are a grave danger. You know, the same guy that warned about dollars sucking hind teet long before the current meltdown started. I know I wrote about derivatives before. Frankly, I don’t have the time to go back and read what drivel I spewed into your slack-jawed face. I have come across the best description ever about that market and I thought I should share it with you. I know you are like most folks and whenever economics are mentioned you run screaming from the room, grabbing a woman or child to take with you as a hostage, threatening to saw through their jugular with a TSA disapproved small nail clipper if anything else is said. And yet, the paranoid must have more than a passing knowledge of economics to protect themselves.
*
If you amble on down to the Web site
http://www.oftwominds.com/blognov07/empire-debt1.html
and read the brief article, you will find the easiest, plainest description of derivatives yet given to the rest of us idiots. This is a good thing, because although I tried to tell you about the dangers, I had little understanding myself. In my defense, college educated thieves tried successfully to bury the whole thing in important sounding language to make it seem a lot more complicated than it should have been, both to justify outrageous salaries and to fool a bunch of older collage educated swindlers into buying into the suckers game. It worked. Here it is, simplified ( I am going by memory, always dangerous, be sure to read the original article ). If you were playing a game of roulette in Las Vegas you would be playing a risky game. But if someone sold you insurance on each bet against losses the risk would disappear. Say you bet ten bucks to win a hundred. You bought insurance for a dollar. If you lost the bet, you got ten bucks back from the insurance, in effect only losing a buck. The upside was that you could win a hundred. Now multiply this by hundreds of billions of dollars. Or trillions of dollars.
*
The only problem with this market is that if the guy that sold you insurance losses too often, he can’t pay you. Here you are, thinking you only lost a billion instead of ten billion ( yet even then still panicking because you were sure you would be winning a hundred billion dollars and there goes another ten million dollar bonus that you were counting on to buy off your mistress because she was planning on showing compromising pictures to your boss of you, her, and a few shocked and surprised farm animals ) but your insurance guy just passed your 14th floor window in freefall. Oops! This one might be a tough sell to the board. Even for corporations that buy and sell corrupt country dictators for breakfast, ten billion bucks is still NOT pocket change.
*
The credit market/derivatives game is just starting to unfold and you have hedge funds losing twelve billion, CitiGroup a bit more ( the biggest bank in the US is hemorrhaging billions, but do not panic, all is well, carry on buying McMansions and SUV’s ). Freddie-Mac and May between them are three billion down. European central banks are out several hundred billion trying to avoid a meltdown, the Fed somewhere close to that. This is just the beginning. The derivatives market is over 300 trillion. The entire world economy is about ten percent of that. But all is well, do not panic.
END
e-books, Amazon books, prep gear at www.bisonpress.com
Derivative markets are the dinosaur killing asteroid that’s path hid behind the moon until it was too late to send up Bruce Willis to save all of humanity. Heck, don’t take my word for it. Guys that know what they are actually talking about such as Warren Buffet think they are a grave danger. You know, the same guy that warned about dollars sucking hind teet long before the current meltdown started. I know I wrote about derivatives before. Frankly, I don’t have the time to go back and read what drivel I spewed into your slack-jawed face. I have come across the best description ever about that market and I thought I should share it with you. I know you are like most folks and whenever economics are mentioned you run screaming from the room, grabbing a woman or child to take with you as a hostage, threatening to saw through their jugular with a TSA disapproved small nail clipper if anything else is said. And yet, the paranoid must have more than a passing knowledge of economics to protect themselves.
*
If you amble on down to the Web site
http://www.oftwominds.com/blognov07/empire-debt1.html
and read the brief article, you will find the easiest, plainest description of derivatives yet given to the rest of us idiots. This is a good thing, because although I tried to tell you about the dangers, I had little understanding myself. In my defense, college educated thieves tried successfully to bury the whole thing in important sounding language to make it seem a lot more complicated than it should have been, both to justify outrageous salaries and to fool a bunch of older collage educated swindlers into buying into the suckers game. It worked. Here it is, simplified ( I am going by memory, always dangerous, be sure to read the original article ). If you were playing a game of roulette in Las Vegas you would be playing a risky game. But if someone sold you insurance on each bet against losses the risk would disappear. Say you bet ten bucks to win a hundred. You bought insurance for a dollar. If you lost the bet, you got ten bucks back from the insurance, in effect only losing a buck. The upside was that you could win a hundred. Now multiply this by hundreds of billions of dollars. Or trillions of dollars.
*
The only problem with this market is that if the guy that sold you insurance losses too often, he can’t pay you. Here you are, thinking you only lost a billion instead of ten billion ( yet even then still panicking because you were sure you would be winning a hundred billion dollars and there goes another ten million dollar bonus that you were counting on to buy off your mistress because she was planning on showing compromising pictures to your boss of you, her, and a few shocked and surprised farm animals ) but your insurance guy just passed your 14th floor window in freefall. Oops! This one might be a tough sell to the board. Even for corporations that buy and sell corrupt country dictators for breakfast, ten billion bucks is still NOT pocket change.
*
The credit market/derivatives game is just starting to unfold and you have hedge funds losing twelve billion, CitiGroup a bit more ( the biggest bank in the US is hemorrhaging billions, but do not panic, all is well, carry on buying McMansions and SUV’s ). Freddie-Mac and May between them are three billion down. European central banks are out several hundred billion trying to avoid a meltdown, the Fed somewhere close to that. This is just the beginning. The derivatives market is over 300 trillion. The entire world economy is about ten percent of that. But all is well, do not panic.
END
e-books, Amazon books, prep gear at www.bisonpress.com
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
mobile "home" two
MOBILE “HOME” TWO
When we last left our intrepid adventurer he had bargained with a desperate Yuppie homeowner behind on his credit card payments for possession of an older van. The deal was beautiful in its ravaging of said Yuppie scum, delivering back on his investment not much more than a mere few months worth of insurance payments. Thus balance was restored to the universe and karmic justice was served. In his next life our Yuppie might reconsider working for The Man and living large on pilfered loot. Now that said van was procured, what to do with it?
*
Two likely situations will occur. The few jobs left to be had will pay a lot less and the few lucky workers will not be able to afford rent and will live out of their cars. The other is that only government jobs will be available and everyone else will go on welfare. Imagine our 80% of GNP service sector losing all of its private sector jobs ( defense contractors and medical practitioners taking Medicare are not really private sector ). Then you can retire to a secluded spot and live out of the van, killing wild rats for meat and eating forest fungus for vegetables. Having lived out of the Hippie Bread Van for five months, I can tell you living out of a vehicle in an urban setting really sucks. Either the city will harass you for parking on the street or the owner of private property will. If you constantly move around you need to worry about mechanical breakdown.
*
Far better to live on your own piece of junk land. You can also squat, but a thousand bucks now for a legal spot will really go far towards your piece of mind. The one thing that will make all the difference in the world living out of a van will be whether you have a porch of not. Huddled inside, masking light and minimizing noise so that a cop won’t taser you or a resident won’t narc on you, that is no way to live. If you must, okay. You can deal with it. But if possible not having to hide will allow you to relax and enjoy a rent free/minimal utilities existence. A porch not only doubles your space, but it relieves claustrophobia. It will make all the difference. And it can be as simple and cheap as a few pieces of wood and a tarp ( back East, have screening also ). If you are planning to stay ( having little choice, as this is economy down ) the porch overhang and insulated sides can get more elaborate and permanent.
*
Having a porch means you can store more junk, but we will assume right now you will remain semi-mobile and only have the inside available. The key to living in a van is to be as clutter free as possible. Being a survivalist you store way too much junk, you can’t do that. You must minimize or go literally mad from it. When I moved from Florida I planned on sleeping in the van but it was so stuffed you couldn’t even sleep lying down. $300 went to motel rooms on that trip. Place your mattress in back over your buckets of wheat and beans. If you can, a small hole in the middle front will hold a tote or two of other items. Put a wooden dowel over the mattress for your hanging clothes.
*
Left will be about five or six feet of wall on the drivers side. If you don’t need constant access on the back passenger door you gain another foot or two. Your shelves and/or counter space will either be an L or two parallel lines. If you aren’t handy or know someone who is to install shelves you are going to be limited on what you can store. Most likely just totes bungeed down. Now from the available space, subtract a cooking/cleaning area and a portable toilet area ( enclosed if possible ). You will need a spot to anchor your grain grinder permanently. An ice chest with a propane stove atop it and a tub for washing might suffice for the kitchen, but you need a spot for the grinder. Try for a shelf over the ice chest so you can pull out the chest rather than remove the stove from the chest lid. Go to www.cheaprvliving.com for great ideas on layout.
*
Minimize whenever possible. One small tub for washing you and your dishes. One gun. Only a few books. One plate, one pan, etc. Once you allow yourself to accumulate you will see the difference it makes. Minimize in your living area to harmonize your life ( storage sheds are a whole different kettle of fish ). Why have I wasted two days on this subject, after having covered it before? Because while I’m entertaining and wise beyond my years, due to circumstances most of you will fail to heed my call for trailers and cheap land. You will lose your job, then your house/apartment. If you at least have some money put back ( your call paper or precious metal, we’ve already covered that ) you will not be homeless ( you might call car living homeless, I call no where to go with no shelter outside of a cardboard box homeless ).
END
www.bisonpress.com for all my stuff
When we last left our intrepid adventurer he had bargained with a desperate Yuppie homeowner behind on his credit card payments for possession of an older van. The deal was beautiful in its ravaging of said Yuppie scum, delivering back on his investment not much more than a mere few months worth of insurance payments. Thus balance was restored to the universe and karmic justice was served. In his next life our Yuppie might reconsider working for The Man and living large on pilfered loot. Now that said van was procured, what to do with it?
*
Two likely situations will occur. The few jobs left to be had will pay a lot less and the few lucky workers will not be able to afford rent and will live out of their cars. The other is that only government jobs will be available and everyone else will go on welfare. Imagine our 80% of GNP service sector losing all of its private sector jobs ( defense contractors and medical practitioners taking Medicare are not really private sector ). Then you can retire to a secluded spot and live out of the van, killing wild rats for meat and eating forest fungus for vegetables. Having lived out of the Hippie Bread Van for five months, I can tell you living out of a vehicle in an urban setting really sucks. Either the city will harass you for parking on the street or the owner of private property will. If you constantly move around you need to worry about mechanical breakdown.
*
Far better to live on your own piece of junk land. You can also squat, but a thousand bucks now for a legal spot will really go far towards your piece of mind. The one thing that will make all the difference in the world living out of a van will be whether you have a porch of not. Huddled inside, masking light and minimizing noise so that a cop won’t taser you or a resident won’t narc on you, that is no way to live. If you must, okay. You can deal with it. But if possible not having to hide will allow you to relax and enjoy a rent free/minimal utilities existence. A porch not only doubles your space, but it relieves claustrophobia. It will make all the difference. And it can be as simple and cheap as a few pieces of wood and a tarp ( back East, have screening also ). If you are planning to stay ( having little choice, as this is economy down ) the porch overhang and insulated sides can get more elaborate and permanent.
*
Having a porch means you can store more junk, but we will assume right now you will remain semi-mobile and only have the inside available. The key to living in a van is to be as clutter free as possible. Being a survivalist you store way too much junk, you can’t do that. You must minimize or go literally mad from it. When I moved from Florida I planned on sleeping in the van but it was so stuffed you couldn’t even sleep lying down. $300 went to motel rooms on that trip. Place your mattress in back over your buckets of wheat and beans. If you can, a small hole in the middle front will hold a tote or two of other items. Put a wooden dowel over the mattress for your hanging clothes.
*
Left will be about five or six feet of wall on the drivers side. If you don’t need constant access on the back passenger door you gain another foot or two. Your shelves and/or counter space will either be an L or two parallel lines. If you aren’t handy or know someone who is to install shelves you are going to be limited on what you can store. Most likely just totes bungeed down. Now from the available space, subtract a cooking/cleaning area and a portable toilet area ( enclosed if possible ). You will need a spot to anchor your grain grinder permanently. An ice chest with a propane stove atop it and a tub for washing might suffice for the kitchen, but you need a spot for the grinder. Try for a shelf over the ice chest so you can pull out the chest rather than remove the stove from the chest lid. Go to www.cheaprvliving.com for great ideas on layout.
*
Minimize whenever possible. One small tub for washing you and your dishes. One gun. Only a few books. One plate, one pan, etc. Once you allow yourself to accumulate you will see the difference it makes. Minimize in your living area to harmonize your life ( storage sheds are a whole different kettle of fish ). Why have I wasted two days on this subject, after having covered it before? Because while I’m entertaining and wise beyond my years, due to circumstances most of you will fail to heed my call for trailers and cheap land. You will lose your job, then your house/apartment. If you at least have some money put back ( your call paper or precious metal, we’ve already covered that ) you will not be homeless ( you might call car living homeless, I call no where to go with no shelter outside of a cardboard box homeless ).
END
www.bisonpress.com for all my stuff
Monday, November 19, 2007
mobile "home"
MOBILE “HOME”
The beginning of the 80’s I had a scooter for transportation. I had no idea what high oil prices were. Nearing the mid 80’s I foolishly bought a Ford Mustang II, the first of many pieces of crap from America’s East European Car Company. Do you ever wonder why there were a lot more used Fords on sale instead of Chevy’s ( recently all cars are so friggin expensive there are plenty on the used market as they are dumped to forestall Bankruptcy By Vehicle )? Don’t get me wrong, all American cars are crap compared to Honda/Toyota. It is just that one company puts out less crappy cars than another ( a dig at management, not the workers unless you personally contribute to the problem by whining about ONLY making $30 an hour and do bad work especially on Monday and Friday but also every other day ending in a “y” ). Anyway, not only did the Mustang have problems mechanically, you could actually see the gas gauge move down as you drove over 60 mph.
*
I “allowed” the bank to repo that one. Actually, I went to the dealer and tried to get them to take it back ( “no one is interested in V8 anymore” ) first, then I just walked into the bank and gave them the keys. That was priceless. Best abuse of credit, ever! The thing that stuck in my mind was the non-marketability of the gas guzzler of that time. Since then we got fat and spoiled on cheap gas again, but the time when new and used gas-guzzlers sit untouched in the dealers lots will return. Of course, when that happens another blow to the housing market will be the big middle class McMansions sitting empty both due to lay-offs and to natural gas shortages to heat the suckers ( the rich will continue in their wasteful ways ). It will also be the time when you can pick up used vans, used pick-ups with cab-over campers for not much more than scrap metal price.
*
At first, folks will be in denial such is the case now with high priced homes. They still hold on to their Gum And Glue dwellings as if they can still find an idiot more out of touch with reality than they were that will buy the thing. Unless you are sitting on a gold mine entrance, there is no way a quarter acre lot with a thousand square feet of green wood and pressed board and plaster thrown up over wet concrete by Mexican illegals is worth a half a million dollars. And that’s the new and improved price! I know, you know, and perhaps even Ross Perot knows that most people are complete and utter idiots, saved from a lifetime of poverty and fruit flavored rubbing alcohol spiked wine only from the fact that Mommy and Daddy paid for a college certificate so junior can bribe his way into a monopoly controlled trade and safely practice his incompetence on captive customers at an absurdly high, unjustified salary. But even for those idiots, buying during the housing bubble was really friggin stupid.
*
Once the fact of Peak Oil has been pounded over peoples heads repeatedly with $7 a gallon gasoline, and then after the high prices don’t diminish, then you can buy your new home very cheaply. As in under one ounce of gold cheaply. You might even be able to barter for something to reduce that price. I don’t think travel trailers will be sold off except for quite recent buyers unable to make the mortgage along with the trailer and ATV payments. Older trailers will command better prices as fewer folks can afford apartment rent. New motor homes will revert back to the semi-rich buyers. If you don’t have a cheap used trailer now, forget about it later. But the vans will be given away as gas becomes a luxury again. Hope you bought your cheap land to park it on. Wal-Mart will disallow parking there once the lot is overtaken with mobile Hillaryvilles.
END
e-books, amazon books, prep gear at www.bisonpress.com
The beginning of the 80’s I had a scooter for transportation. I had no idea what high oil prices were. Nearing the mid 80’s I foolishly bought a Ford Mustang II, the first of many pieces of crap from America’s East European Car Company. Do you ever wonder why there were a lot more used Fords on sale instead of Chevy’s ( recently all cars are so friggin expensive there are plenty on the used market as they are dumped to forestall Bankruptcy By Vehicle )? Don’t get me wrong, all American cars are crap compared to Honda/Toyota. It is just that one company puts out less crappy cars than another ( a dig at management, not the workers unless you personally contribute to the problem by whining about ONLY making $30 an hour and do bad work especially on Monday and Friday but also every other day ending in a “y” ). Anyway, not only did the Mustang have problems mechanically, you could actually see the gas gauge move down as you drove over 60 mph.
*
I “allowed” the bank to repo that one. Actually, I went to the dealer and tried to get them to take it back ( “no one is interested in V8 anymore” ) first, then I just walked into the bank and gave them the keys. That was priceless. Best abuse of credit, ever! The thing that stuck in my mind was the non-marketability of the gas guzzler of that time. Since then we got fat and spoiled on cheap gas again, but the time when new and used gas-guzzlers sit untouched in the dealers lots will return. Of course, when that happens another blow to the housing market will be the big middle class McMansions sitting empty both due to lay-offs and to natural gas shortages to heat the suckers ( the rich will continue in their wasteful ways ). It will also be the time when you can pick up used vans, used pick-ups with cab-over campers for not much more than scrap metal price.
*
At first, folks will be in denial such is the case now with high priced homes. They still hold on to their Gum And Glue dwellings as if they can still find an idiot more out of touch with reality than they were that will buy the thing. Unless you are sitting on a gold mine entrance, there is no way a quarter acre lot with a thousand square feet of green wood and pressed board and plaster thrown up over wet concrete by Mexican illegals is worth a half a million dollars. And that’s the new and improved price! I know, you know, and perhaps even Ross Perot knows that most people are complete and utter idiots, saved from a lifetime of poverty and fruit flavored rubbing alcohol spiked wine only from the fact that Mommy and Daddy paid for a college certificate so junior can bribe his way into a monopoly controlled trade and safely practice his incompetence on captive customers at an absurdly high, unjustified salary. But even for those idiots, buying during the housing bubble was really friggin stupid.
*
Once the fact of Peak Oil has been pounded over peoples heads repeatedly with $7 a gallon gasoline, and then after the high prices don’t diminish, then you can buy your new home very cheaply. As in under one ounce of gold cheaply. You might even be able to barter for something to reduce that price. I don’t think travel trailers will be sold off except for quite recent buyers unable to make the mortgage along with the trailer and ATV payments. Older trailers will command better prices as fewer folks can afford apartment rent. New motor homes will revert back to the semi-rich buyers. If you don’t have a cheap used trailer now, forget about it later. But the vans will be given away as gas becomes a luxury again. Hope you bought your cheap land to park it on. Wal-Mart will disallow parking there once the lot is overtaken with mobile Hillaryvilles.
END
e-books, amazon books, prep gear at www.bisonpress.com
Saturday, November 17, 2007
led desk lamp
LED DESK LAMP
All in all, I am pretty darn lazy. Oh, sure, I read a lot in order to spew out about five hundred words a day on some topic few are interested in. But that is fun. I love reading, especially non-fiction ( I never went to college where they could have killed my love of learning ). And writing is both therapeutic, addicting and also fun. I stress over a topic most days but once I have that I love to write. Not like work, really. So I can still do that and be lazy. I should write more, to provide for-profit booklets, but I need to feel passion on the subject so right now I am coming up dry in that area. Anyway, being lazy by nature I take a long time to complete projects. Even if I get a burning desire to create I temper that with the need to pace myself through life.
*
My recent project was for an LED desk lamp. LED flashlights are cheap and I own a lot of them, but they are impractical for most other uses. Such as reading or other activity that is hands free. To get an area light you need a LED lantern but they shine out rather than down. And strip lights in LED are twice as expensive as flashlights and are not concentrated enough for eye-strain free use. LED’s are perfect for the homestead or post-grid living but they do lack the brightness of conventional 110volt bulbs ( and 12v bulbs suck up too much juice ). So rather than lighting up the whole room, just concentrate your light on to one area. A desk lamp is perfect for this. The adjustable arm of the lamp allows a small light to focus on an area and provide adequate illumination.
*
Now, of course if there is one thing I am worse at than laziness, it is being a tightwad ( my electric bill last month was $19-HA!, in an all electric dwelling ). I refused to spend any money on experimenting on my lamp. I needed to find something in the trash. A goose neck lamp was what I wanted, those neat metal arms that look like conduit and bends in any direction. I didn’t find that but I finally came across a similar one after weeks of looking. The arm moves up and down only, but the neck moves sideways so it is easy enough to get the thing pointed correctly. I cut off the wire and removed the innards of the base, plus the bulb and its hood. That left a small ring that tightened down slightly. Of coarse the ring was too big for the flashlight, being about an inch while the light was about three quarters. You might think I would resort to duct tape but I have moved away from 100% duct tape as I age and gain wisdom. As it turns out, duct tape isn’t good in all cases ( who knew? ).
*
I wrapped an old shoe lace several times around the flashlight until I had to force the light into the lamp ring at the end of the arm. Then a few turns with a screwdriver clamped it down nicely. I now had a free LED desk lamp. Nice and comfortable reading ( or other needed chore such as reloading on a cloudy winter day ) with only two AA batteries and a $3 flashlight. Some of you might be thinking to just go with a head mounted LED light, but that cost twice as much and will squeeze the blood out of your head, a condition most of you can’t afford. Wearing one of those things reminds me of wearing a tie.
*
I’m sorry if any of you were disappointed today. I thought this was a neat project to solve a lighting problem. If you were less thrilled than I was, my apologies. I could get all rude and tell you you get what you pay for, but I feel high class and benevolent today so I won’t.
END
You know the drill-buy my stuff www.bisonpress.com
All in all, I am pretty darn lazy. Oh, sure, I read a lot in order to spew out about five hundred words a day on some topic few are interested in. But that is fun. I love reading, especially non-fiction ( I never went to college where they could have killed my love of learning ). And writing is both therapeutic, addicting and also fun. I stress over a topic most days but once I have that I love to write. Not like work, really. So I can still do that and be lazy. I should write more, to provide for-profit booklets, but I need to feel passion on the subject so right now I am coming up dry in that area. Anyway, being lazy by nature I take a long time to complete projects. Even if I get a burning desire to create I temper that with the need to pace myself through life.
*
My recent project was for an LED desk lamp. LED flashlights are cheap and I own a lot of them, but they are impractical for most other uses. Such as reading or other activity that is hands free. To get an area light you need a LED lantern but they shine out rather than down. And strip lights in LED are twice as expensive as flashlights and are not concentrated enough for eye-strain free use. LED’s are perfect for the homestead or post-grid living but they do lack the brightness of conventional 110volt bulbs ( and 12v bulbs suck up too much juice ). So rather than lighting up the whole room, just concentrate your light on to one area. A desk lamp is perfect for this. The adjustable arm of the lamp allows a small light to focus on an area and provide adequate illumination.
*
Now, of course if there is one thing I am worse at than laziness, it is being a tightwad ( my electric bill last month was $19-HA!, in an all electric dwelling ). I refused to spend any money on experimenting on my lamp. I needed to find something in the trash. A goose neck lamp was what I wanted, those neat metal arms that look like conduit and bends in any direction. I didn’t find that but I finally came across a similar one after weeks of looking. The arm moves up and down only, but the neck moves sideways so it is easy enough to get the thing pointed correctly. I cut off the wire and removed the innards of the base, plus the bulb and its hood. That left a small ring that tightened down slightly. Of coarse the ring was too big for the flashlight, being about an inch while the light was about three quarters. You might think I would resort to duct tape but I have moved away from 100% duct tape as I age and gain wisdom. As it turns out, duct tape isn’t good in all cases ( who knew? ).
*
I wrapped an old shoe lace several times around the flashlight until I had to force the light into the lamp ring at the end of the arm. Then a few turns with a screwdriver clamped it down nicely. I now had a free LED desk lamp. Nice and comfortable reading ( or other needed chore such as reloading on a cloudy winter day ) with only two AA batteries and a $3 flashlight. Some of you might be thinking to just go with a head mounted LED light, but that cost twice as much and will squeeze the blood out of your head, a condition most of you can’t afford. Wearing one of those things reminds me of wearing a tie.
*
I’m sorry if any of you were disappointed today. I thought this was a neat project to solve a lighting problem. If you were less thrilled than I was, my apologies. I could get all rude and tell you you get what you pay for, but I feel high class and benevolent today so I won’t.
END
You know the drill-buy my stuff www.bisonpress.com
Friday, November 16, 2007
bean flour
BEAN FLOUR
There is a lot of advice out there in everyone’s favorite alternate reality the Internet on cooking beans. First off we need to soak beans overnight, then cook, then soak again then cook some more. Or soak overnight, then leave in a thermos, then cook. Or soak, then cook all day in a solar cooker. Or use a pressure cooker after soaking. Or soak and then cook all day in a crock pot. I remember my mother cooking pinto beans all day long on our electric stove, constantly adding water. The smell was a bit this side of butchered animals hung up to ferment in the house, but since refried beans meant it was Mexican food night I didn’t mind overly much ( I have yet to find a wife that makes tacos as well, and two were Mexican ). I don’t know what she paid per kilowatt hour but I am sure those were expensive beans. But, being the 1970’s and since this was before civil servants were paid very well we had little meat in the diet and all day cooked beans had to still be cheaper. God, I still remember homemade soy burgers ( and the only reason I didn’t hate those was because her vegetarian dishes were far worse ), most likely about half and half to stretch the meat.
*
A loyal minion sent a letter, and actual by gum paper letter through snail mail, mentioning a method of several days ( instead of a single day ) soaking for beans. Now that is dedication! I tried a bit of Google search but didn’t find anything on it. A good idea to research, I’ll try again later. The problem with searches is that phrasing them wrong yields nothing. It took me many accumulated hours of different search phrases to find out about bayonet fighting in combat, as an example. Another reader suggested a book and I can’t find the darn thing on Amazon since I don’t have the right title. Anyway, with all of the bother associated with beans and their preparation, I think the only logical answer for beans is to use their flour. Not that this is my own personal brainstorm. Kurt Saxon came out with this long ago and www.beprepared.com has a section on it in their recipe section.
*
If there is one essential piece of equipment that every survivalist should own, it is a grinder. You can own various weapons, from black plastic Mattel Toy carbines to bolt action surplus rifles to crossbows for those stuck in areas frowning on individual freedom. You can own a water filter, or make your own from a plastic bucket and a filter element, or use unglazed clay pots or even make one that uses layers of charcoal/sand/etc. Transportation will run the coarse from sturdy walking shoes, bicycles, mopeds, super jacked up four wheel drives. A little bit of something for everyone. But the one item everyone is going to agree on is a grain grinder ( speaking of search difficulty, Amazon doesn’t recognize any search words other than Corn Mill or Grinder- must be corn ). This modest hunk of cast iron for a paltry $25 is the common tool we must all own ( if you have all freeze dried or MRE’s, don’t even talk to me! ). Put it to good use, grind up your beans.
*
Take your grain mill, throw in your dry beans. Grind. If you have a Corona or clone it might take more than one pass, from coarse to fine grind. Some other more expensive mills will shriek in despair at moisture. The Corona loves all things grindable. Coffee, corn, wheat, beans. Whatever. Sift through a wire mesh to get rid of the outer hulls that are too stubborn to die for our gastronomical pleasure. If you have an old school pasta drain, the metal screen bowl type rather than metal or plastic with drilled holes, you get a two-fer on a kitchen tool. Now, you have two choices with your bean flour. Add to regular flour, one part bean to three part grain. Use as regular flour in baking. The quickest, least energy types are pancakes of flat bread. You have a complete protein flour then. Two, put the bean flour in some water and cook on the stovetop for about three minutes. Now you have a paste for filling as in refried beans, or as a dip for your chips/crackers.
*
Almost no cooking beans. You can even eat them if you hate beans since in baking products the taste is disguised. But most importantly, no long preparation and no high energy use.
END
Out of gratitude for yet more superb writing, buy my crap at www.bisonpress.com
There is a lot of advice out there in everyone’s favorite alternate reality the Internet on cooking beans. First off we need to soak beans overnight, then cook, then soak again then cook some more. Or soak overnight, then leave in a thermos, then cook. Or soak, then cook all day in a solar cooker. Or use a pressure cooker after soaking. Or soak and then cook all day in a crock pot. I remember my mother cooking pinto beans all day long on our electric stove, constantly adding water. The smell was a bit this side of butchered animals hung up to ferment in the house, but since refried beans meant it was Mexican food night I didn’t mind overly much ( I have yet to find a wife that makes tacos as well, and two were Mexican ). I don’t know what she paid per kilowatt hour but I am sure those were expensive beans. But, being the 1970’s and since this was before civil servants were paid very well we had little meat in the diet and all day cooked beans had to still be cheaper. God, I still remember homemade soy burgers ( and the only reason I didn’t hate those was because her vegetarian dishes were far worse ), most likely about half and half to stretch the meat.
*
A loyal minion sent a letter, and actual by gum paper letter through snail mail, mentioning a method of several days ( instead of a single day ) soaking for beans. Now that is dedication! I tried a bit of Google search but didn’t find anything on it. A good idea to research, I’ll try again later. The problem with searches is that phrasing them wrong yields nothing. It took me many accumulated hours of different search phrases to find out about bayonet fighting in combat, as an example. Another reader suggested a book and I can’t find the darn thing on Amazon since I don’t have the right title. Anyway, with all of the bother associated with beans and their preparation, I think the only logical answer for beans is to use their flour. Not that this is my own personal brainstorm. Kurt Saxon came out with this long ago and www.beprepared.com has a section on it in their recipe section.
*
If there is one essential piece of equipment that every survivalist should own, it is a grinder. You can own various weapons, from black plastic Mattel Toy carbines to bolt action surplus rifles to crossbows for those stuck in areas frowning on individual freedom. You can own a water filter, or make your own from a plastic bucket and a filter element, or use unglazed clay pots or even make one that uses layers of charcoal/sand/etc. Transportation will run the coarse from sturdy walking shoes, bicycles, mopeds, super jacked up four wheel drives. A little bit of something for everyone. But the one item everyone is going to agree on is a grain grinder ( speaking of search difficulty, Amazon doesn’t recognize any search words other than Corn Mill or Grinder- must be corn ). This modest hunk of cast iron for a paltry $25 is the common tool we must all own ( if you have all freeze dried or MRE’s, don’t even talk to me! ). Put it to good use, grind up your beans.
*
Take your grain mill, throw in your dry beans. Grind. If you have a Corona or clone it might take more than one pass, from coarse to fine grind. Some other more expensive mills will shriek in despair at moisture. The Corona loves all things grindable. Coffee, corn, wheat, beans. Whatever. Sift through a wire mesh to get rid of the outer hulls that are too stubborn to die for our gastronomical pleasure. If you have an old school pasta drain, the metal screen bowl type rather than metal or plastic with drilled holes, you get a two-fer on a kitchen tool. Now, you have two choices with your bean flour. Add to regular flour, one part bean to three part grain. Use as regular flour in baking. The quickest, least energy types are pancakes of flat bread. You have a complete protein flour then. Two, put the bean flour in some water and cook on the stovetop for about three minutes. Now you have a paste for filling as in refried beans, or as a dip for your chips/crackers.
*
Almost no cooking beans. You can even eat them if you hate beans since in baking products the taste is disguised. But most importantly, no long preparation and no high energy use.
END
Out of gratitude for yet more superb writing, buy my crap at www.bisonpress.com
Thursday, November 15, 2007
camping away from the farm
CAMPING AWAY FROM THE FARM
If we are faced with a full blown collapse a farming strategy might not be a real great idea at first. If you are not in an area where herding will work well such as the arid West then farming is of course a good idea. But only after the mass die-offs occur. Instead of trying to protect your crops against hoards of literally millions of city dwellers, instead hide out and wait for a bit. Your storage foods will see you through the initial times of danger. Then come out of your hole and start to farm. The great part of this method is that, one, you avoid being killed ( this should be part of everyone’s strategy ) and two, you don’t need a farm right now. There will be plenty of suitable land later on.
*
I understand that you need to practice your farming skills now, not later when you desperately need a successful crop to feed yourself. But you also need to be realistic. Is farming now and during a collapse safe? If tens of thousands or more population is within walking distance of your land how can you hope to survive the violence? To get enough people to help you defend land you need to be able to feed them in the mean time. That is not going to happen. It might only be feasible to run away, hide, then emerge later. Too many of us have an unrealistic view of our fellow man. We think in the end they will, for the most part, be decent and good. No, once the food supply dries up they will turn on you. Even if you are surrounded by farms, or homesteads capable of farming, enough people will migrate towards your place and help themselves. Even if you are nothing more than a few meals to them and they can’t farm your land, you are still dead and in the stewpot.
*
In a land of plenty that has never really seen mass starvation, we are used to thinking our neighbors will leave us alone to grow our crops. But today there are way too many of us on marginal land. Or way too many of us in the food producing regions. Too many mouths to feed without oil inputs. Can you or a few neighbors really stop all of the hoards descending from the cities and suburbs? And this is not even taking into account the fact that most of us aren’t even in the country. The majority live in towns and cities. Your best plan is to bug out in the early stages of collapse, taking your supply of food and planning on camping out for awhile.
*
Let me repeat, you need to take a supply of food with you. You won’t make it foraging off of the land. Most of us have vehicles suitable for hauling a lot of grain and beans. Have a few essential tools such as pick and shovel, axe and saw. Build a small dugout to hunker down in, to survive the winters without a constant plume of wood smoke to betray your position. Have a wood camping stove. Forget propane, you can’t take enough with you. A small AA/D battery solar charger will power your LED lights. And of course a water filter or two. Warm clothing and a grain grinder. Primitive camping for the duration. This is the only way city frugal survivalists are going to have a fair chance at making it. Hide, hide, run away, live to fight another day.
*
Far from a perfect plan, but much more realistic. The historic norm for farmers was to serve as slaves or serfs. The local government will be better armed than you and will not encourage the idea of Yeoman Farmers. Our duly elected officials already frown on our Constitution, any government after a collapse will be far worse. Most likely you will not be an independent farmer but forced to toil mainly for the benefit of your military overlords. By fleeing at the beginning of the collapse you can avoid that threat. By staying by your food security you become enslaved.
END
buy e-books, Amazon books, prep gear www.bisonpress.com
If we are faced with a full blown collapse a farming strategy might not be a real great idea at first. If you are not in an area where herding will work well such as the arid West then farming is of course a good idea. But only after the mass die-offs occur. Instead of trying to protect your crops against hoards of literally millions of city dwellers, instead hide out and wait for a bit. Your storage foods will see you through the initial times of danger. Then come out of your hole and start to farm. The great part of this method is that, one, you avoid being killed ( this should be part of everyone’s strategy ) and two, you don’t need a farm right now. There will be plenty of suitable land later on.
*
I understand that you need to practice your farming skills now, not later when you desperately need a successful crop to feed yourself. But you also need to be realistic. Is farming now and during a collapse safe? If tens of thousands or more population is within walking distance of your land how can you hope to survive the violence? To get enough people to help you defend land you need to be able to feed them in the mean time. That is not going to happen. It might only be feasible to run away, hide, then emerge later. Too many of us have an unrealistic view of our fellow man. We think in the end they will, for the most part, be decent and good. No, once the food supply dries up they will turn on you. Even if you are surrounded by farms, or homesteads capable of farming, enough people will migrate towards your place and help themselves. Even if you are nothing more than a few meals to them and they can’t farm your land, you are still dead and in the stewpot.
*
In a land of plenty that has never really seen mass starvation, we are used to thinking our neighbors will leave us alone to grow our crops. But today there are way too many of us on marginal land. Or way too many of us in the food producing regions. Too many mouths to feed without oil inputs. Can you or a few neighbors really stop all of the hoards descending from the cities and suburbs? And this is not even taking into account the fact that most of us aren’t even in the country. The majority live in towns and cities. Your best plan is to bug out in the early stages of collapse, taking your supply of food and planning on camping out for awhile.
*
Let me repeat, you need to take a supply of food with you. You won’t make it foraging off of the land. Most of us have vehicles suitable for hauling a lot of grain and beans. Have a few essential tools such as pick and shovel, axe and saw. Build a small dugout to hunker down in, to survive the winters without a constant plume of wood smoke to betray your position. Have a wood camping stove. Forget propane, you can’t take enough with you. A small AA/D battery solar charger will power your LED lights. And of course a water filter or two. Warm clothing and a grain grinder. Primitive camping for the duration. This is the only way city frugal survivalists are going to have a fair chance at making it. Hide, hide, run away, live to fight another day.
*
Far from a perfect plan, but much more realistic. The historic norm for farmers was to serve as slaves or serfs. The local government will be better armed than you and will not encourage the idea of Yeoman Farmers. Our duly elected officials already frown on our Constitution, any government after a collapse will be far worse. Most likely you will not be an independent farmer but forced to toil mainly for the benefit of your military overlords. By fleeing at the beginning of the collapse you can avoid that threat. By staying by your food security you become enslaved.
END
buy e-books, Amazon books, prep gear www.bisonpress.com
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
peak resources
PEAK RESOURCES
Now that Peak Oil is starting to go mainstream, lots of Chicken Little writers are trying to outdo each other on the concept. Now we have “Peak” being used as a catch-all phrase. Peak Coal, Peak Uranium, Peak Water, etc. All of this seems to be lumped together under an anti-capitalism and Green Power thought process. We need to downsize, hug a tree, plant a garden in our eco-village lighted with florescent bulbs. Vote for Hillary, cut up our credit cards, drive a hybrid vehicle. Well meaning, perhaps, but ultimately futile. The entire economy of the US and other first world nations, plus Johnny Come Lately’s such as Brazil, China, India and Russia is based on resource depletion to power their economies. The entire power structure and the economic model is continued growth fueled by consuming resources. We can’t change that, it is as futile as battling the Catholic Church prior to the Gutenberg printing press.
*
Almost the entire history of our country has been resource exploitation to fuel growth. We had an unimaginably treasure at our fingertips, impeded only by a few indigenous tribes of hunter/gatherers. Wood and farmland were a vast sea in front of settlers. Nothing but fuel and food. We couldn’t help but grow and prosper. In no small part, the Southern states fought over their continual growth of slave labor cash crops by continual expansion. When that was stalemated they had no choice but to fight. When the new fuel of coal was utilized economically it was a foregone conclusion the North would win ( and coal and steel helped free up farm workers to fight with machine farming ). Our nation went from wood and farmland to coal and steel, then to tapping vast oil deposits. Our entire growth was energy exploitation. As it was throughout history for any great power.
*
That has ended. The beginning of the end was 1971 when our domestic lower 48 oil reserves hit a peak of production. Alaskan oil picked us up off of our feet when we stumbled, but that too has peaked. Since then only military might both to enforce a dollar priced oil and a global market has kept us in power. And now that too has ended. We don’t realize this yet, but the same forces that stopped Russian expansion into Afghanistan will also see our military power erode. The military power of the nation state is seriously threatened by handheld weapons insurgents now possess. And of course by the beginning of the end of the oil supply globally.
*
Without a cheap abundant supply of oil, the large military we rely on to force the world to sell us their commodities will become impotent. You can only project power with an energy surplus, and that will end with imports being threatened. Only the timing is unclear. Now to that we can add in all the other “Peak” problems. The dollar looks like it is being seriously challenged. Peak Dollar. What damage the foreigners don’t do to it, we will accomplish ourselves. Peak Soil fertility is a concern as we have stripped the soil with modern fertilizers. Peak Water will effect us as we have seriously overpopulated arid regions ( and even traditionally wet ones, where any drought is felt immediately ). Peak Mild Weather is being felt everywhere, and only now effecting food prices. Peak Suburbia is our insane belief that the oil will never stop being imported so most folks live an uncomfortable distance from work. Peak Economy is easily seen in our current real estate and credit and derivative meltdown.
*
We don’t have a continent full of energy resources anymore. We have used up too much to support our population and our life styles of excess. The economic model of America is dying before our eyes. How many generations before the entire place is thinly populated by hunter gatherers again?
END
Visit www.bisonpress.com for my contact information, e-books for sale, Amazon books and prep gear.
Now that Peak Oil is starting to go mainstream, lots of Chicken Little writers are trying to outdo each other on the concept. Now we have “Peak” being used as a catch-all phrase. Peak Coal, Peak Uranium, Peak Water, etc. All of this seems to be lumped together under an anti-capitalism and Green Power thought process. We need to downsize, hug a tree, plant a garden in our eco-village lighted with florescent bulbs. Vote for Hillary, cut up our credit cards, drive a hybrid vehicle. Well meaning, perhaps, but ultimately futile. The entire economy of the US and other first world nations, plus Johnny Come Lately’s such as Brazil, China, India and Russia is based on resource depletion to power their economies. The entire power structure and the economic model is continued growth fueled by consuming resources. We can’t change that, it is as futile as battling the Catholic Church prior to the Gutenberg printing press.
*
Almost the entire history of our country has been resource exploitation to fuel growth. We had an unimaginably treasure at our fingertips, impeded only by a few indigenous tribes of hunter/gatherers. Wood and farmland were a vast sea in front of settlers. Nothing but fuel and food. We couldn’t help but grow and prosper. In no small part, the Southern states fought over their continual growth of slave labor cash crops by continual expansion. When that was stalemated they had no choice but to fight. When the new fuel of coal was utilized economically it was a foregone conclusion the North would win ( and coal and steel helped free up farm workers to fight with machine farming ). Our nation went from wood and farmland to coal and steel, then to tapping vast oil deposits. Our entire growth was energy exploitation. As it was throughout history for any great power.
*
That has ended. The beginning of the end was 1971 when our domestic lower 48 oil reserves hit a peak of production. Alaskan oil picked us up off of our feet when we stumbled, but that too has peaked. Since then only military might both to enforce a dollar priced oil and a global market has kept us in power. And now that too has ended. We don’t realize this yet, but the same forces that stopped Russian expansion into Afghanistan will also see our military power erode. The military power of the nation state is seriously threatened by handheld weapons insurgents now possess. And of course by the beginning of the end of the oil supply globally.
*
Without a cheap abundant supply of oil, the large military we rely on to force the world to sell us their commodities will become impotent. You can only project power with an energy surplus, and that will end with imports being threatened. Only the timing is unclear. Now to that we can add in all the other “Peak” problems. The dollar looks like it is being seriously challenged. Peak Dollar. What damage the foreigners don’t do to it, we will accomplish ourselves. Peak Soil fertility is a concern as we have stripped the soil with modern fertilizers. Peak Water will effect us as we have seriously overpopulated arid regions ( and even traditionally wet ones, where any drought is felt immediately ). Peak Mild Weather is being felt everywhere, and only now effecting food prices. Peak Suburbia is our insane belief that the oil will never stop being imported so most folks live an uncomfortable distance from work. Peak Economy is easily seen in our current real estate and credit and derivative meltdown.
*
We don’t have a continent full of energy resources anymore. We have used up too much to support our population and our life styles of excess. The economic model of America is dying before our eyes. How many generations before the entire place is thinly populated by hunter gatherers again?
END
Visit www.bisonpress.com for my contact information, e-books for sale, Amazon books and prep gear.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
prepping styles
PREPPING STYLE
There are many different types of preparedness. Some go GI Joe and emulate the military while others turn Hippie and go hug trees and rhubarb on a farm. The Mighty Campers have plenty of camping gear and dehydrated foods. Others simply want to avoid internment camps so they stock the pantry and have alternate energy sources for after a natural disaster. For some nothing less than a remote bunker with farmland ( and a four wheel drive to get there ) will do. Many are content with the FedGov recommended two weeks canned goods and a flashlight. Whatever disaster you perceive and prepare for, to your comfort level is just fine. While it might be true that it is better to prepare for the worse case scenario, we are all living in the real world and reality dictates few of us can prepare well enough for total collapse.
*
The whole point of prepping is to sleep better at night. To know that the next rainy day is covered. Just as no one weapon is perfect since you must factor in what disaster you are preparing for, so too is no overall plan perfect. It must fit your idea of the danger ahead. I was reading some comments from another article and I was getting a bit jealous about others preps. Full functioning gardens, multiple cords of wood, salvaged material houses. And then I realized that while these folks really had their stuff together, that wasn’t the lifestyle I was going after. I don’t want a homestead with garden and animals and a snug energy efficient dwelling. I don’t want to be a farmer. I’m happy with my shack ( figuratively speaking ). My primary lifestyle is frugal living. Living on less so I can work less so I can enjoy my life. That is just my thing. Maybe not for most. So my prepping goes hand in hand with that. Frugal prepping for a frugal collapse lifestyle.
*
Self-sufficient farming is a worthy goal. It is a good bet for future collapse. Not perfect, not a guarantee, but a darn good bet. But it is not for everyone. There are other ways to survive a collapse. Even in pure agricultural economies there are always plenty of folks who earned their living off of the farm. I don’t know if I could ever be one, but I guess it is something I had better figure out pretty darn fast. Those of you not already improving a plot of soil will be faced with the same question. If the science behind oil geography is correct we are already past the point of global Peak Production ( do you feel safe betting on Abiotic Oil theory? ). Add to that the obvious danger of global warming. The insane leaders of our country insuring war and economic collapse. How can we not be in for hard times?
*
My hope is on a less speedy collapse, where oil running out will cripple us economically but not throw us into a collapse for a time. Then us non farm types can have some hope of income or at least food welfare. The frugal approach should work in that case. An asteroid strike, a Yellowstone eruption, no farming would work anyway. No one plan is going to be perfect. Each and every plan has dangers to it. We are all just rolling the dice and placing bets. We are improving our odds, not buying refundable insurance. As long as you sleep well at night.
*
At least, that is what I tell myself when I worry I haven’t done enough. No need to panic, a bit of improvement at a time, a little less worry after each new action. Good theory, I hope it works for you. Me, I always worry. A hazard of living and breathing this prep crap. Don’t try this at home, kids.
END
You buy now!! www.bisonpress.com for e-books, Amazon books and prep gear
There are many different types of preparedness. Some go GI Joe and emulate the military while others turn Hippie and go hug trees and rhubarb on a farm. The Mighty Campers have plenty of camping gear and dehydrated foods. Others simply want to avoid internment camps so they stock the pantry and have alternate energy sources for after a natural disaster. For some nothing less than a remote bunker with farmland ( and a four wheel drive to get there ) will do. Many are content with the FedGov recommended two weeks canned goods and a flashlight. Whatever disaster you perceive and prepare for, to your comfort level is just fine. While it might be true that it is better to prepare for the worse case scenario, we are all living in the real world and reality dictates few of us can prepare well enough for total collapse.
*
The whole point of prepping is to sleep better at night. To know that the next rainy day is covered. Just as no one weapon is perfect since you must factor in what disaster you are preparing for, so too is no overall plan perfect. It must fit your idea of the danger ahead. I was reading some comments from another article and I was getting a bit jealous about others preps. Full functioning gardens, multiple cords of wood, salvaged material houses. And then I realized that while these folks really had their stuff together, that wasn’t the lifestyle I was going after. I don’t want a homestead with garden and animals and a snug energy efficient dwelling. I don’t want to be a farmer. I’m happy with my shack ( figuratively speaking ). My primary lifestyle is frugal living. Living on less so I can work less so I can enjoy my life. That is just my thing. Maybe not for most. So my prepping goes hand in hand with that. Frugal prepping for a frugal collapse lifestyle.
*
Self-sufficient farming is a worthy goal. It is a good bet for future collapse. Not perfect, not a guarantee, but a darn good bet. But it is not for everyone. There are other ways to survive a collapse. Even in pure agricultural economies there are always plenty of folks who earned their living off of the farm. I don’t know if I could ever be one, but I guess it is something I had better figure out pretty darn fast. Those of you not already improving a plot of soil will be faced with the same question. If the science behind oil geography is correct we are already past the point of global Peak Production ( do you feel safe betting on Abiotic Oil theory? ). Add to that the obvious danger of global warming. The insane leaders of our country insuring war and economic collapse. How can we not be in for hard times?
*
My hope is on a less speedy collapse, where oil running out will cripple us economically but not throw us into a collapse for a time. Then us non farm types can have some hope of income or at least food welfare. The frugal approach should work in that case. An asteroid strike, a Yellowstone eruption, no farming would work anyway. No one plan is going to be perfect. Each and every plan has dangers to it. We are all just rolling the dice and placing bets. We are improving our odds, not buying refundable insurance. As long as you sleep well at night.
*
At least, that is what I tell myself when I worry I haven’t done enough. No need to panic, a bit of improvement at a time, a little less worry after each new action. Good theory, I hope it works for you. Me, I always worry. A hazard of living and breathing this prep crap. Don’t try this at home, kids.
END
You buy now!! www.bisonpress.com for e-books, Amazon books and prep gear
Monday, November 12, 2007
low energy hunting
LOW ENERGY HUNTING
If you are a coyote, you don’t get a heck of a lot of respect. You run along, eating mice and small game, pretty much whatever jumps out in front of you. No glory in that. The wolf gets better press, the mighty pack working together to take down game. The only problem with the pack strategy is that it is high energy hunting. You need a lot of participants which means a lot more mouths to feed. So bigger game is needed. Kind of like farming, raising dairy herds or meat herds. Dairy needs less land to produce protein.
*
Rednecks barreling down the bayou in monster trucks listening to country music about “country boys will survive” are going to be a little surprised when crunch time comes. Unlike the rural South sixty years ago where a barefoot bib-overall’ed hick with a rimfire or flintlock could go out hunting in the woods down in the hollers and get meat for the family, today the area swarms with Carpetbaggers, jacking up real estate prices as they suck down geriatric welfare checks. The population has grown enough that one week after Winn-Dixie’s shelves are bare there won’t be any mammals surviving in the woods. However, that being said, hunting small game is still preferable to relying on larger prey. Your odds are much better you will get something to add to the stew pot. It might not be enough to handle your meat craving, not like a slab of venison, but it is better than nothing.
*
Most importantly, small game hunting can be done with renewable weapons. No need to expend cartridges. You can use a crossbow, a pellet gun and a slingshot. Yes, you can use a bow. But I think the skill level is too high for the average Joe. Initially, first stages of a collapse, stick with your cheap, easy to use hunting weapons. Later you can play around making and using your own bow. Frankly, I suck at using a sling shot. A pellet gun in my price range isn’t much better. But my use of a bow was a total failure. As in, how the heck can I keep missing a friggin hay bale at such a close range? I will stick with a crossbow, given a choice.
*
No weapon is perfect. Crossbows will break, their string split apart. The bolts bend or break. The slingshot ( the wrist braced type ) needs replacement tubing. The pellet gun will eventually experience parts failure that few know how to fix. But these are meant to be short time weapons. Keeping meat in the cooking pot until farming/ranching/herding become established. They are great at what they do for the time period they are used. They are silent. They take limited skill ( the slingshot more than the others ). They are dirt cheap right now. I just added a $20 pellet gun to my Amazon prep gear page. www.bisonpress.com/amazonproducts.html as well as a $20 crossbow. An 80 pound pull pistol crossbow has limited use but the bolts are really cheap as is the weapon itself. The pellet gun is of course Chinese and can’t be expected to be top quality, but it did get good reviews and is, again, better than nothing. I also added two books to www.bisonpress.com/affiliatebooks.html . One is the Kunstler novel that must be pre-ordered ( they seem to be taking their time getting it out ). Post-Peak Oil living. The other book is on human powered weapons.
*
I didn’t much care for pellet guns before. The ammo is almost as expensive as .22 LR’s. So why spend the same amount on a pellet gun as a .22? But with the gun only costing $20, why not indeed? Crossbows are more toy than anything at the $20 mark, but why spend $100 on a crossbow? The string breaks quickly, the bolts are not cheap and the range sucks. I would prefer a silenced rimfire. As far as the slingshot, if you can find cheap enough replacement tubing it is a great little game getter. I imagine medical supply stores should have it. I know the retail replacement made especially for the slingshot is a bit pricy, as in half the slingshot cost.
END
www.bisonpress.com for my web page
If you are a coyote, you don’t get a heck of a lot of respect. You run along, eating mice and small game, pretty much whatever jumps out in front of you. No glory in that. The wolf gets better press, the mighty pack working together to take down game. The only problem with the pack strategy is that it is high energy hunting. You need a lot of participants which means a lot more mouths to feed. So bigger game is needed. Kind of like farming, raising dairy herds or meat herds. Dairy needs less land to produce protein.
*
Rednecks barreling down the bayou in monster trucks listening to country music about “country boys will survive” are going to be a little surprised when crunch time comes. Unlike the rural South sixty years ago where a barefoot bib-overall’ed hick with a rimfire or flintlock could go out hunting in the woods down in the hollers and get meat for the family, today the area swarms with Carpetbaggers, jacking up real estate prices as they suck down geriatric welfare checks. The population has grown enough that one week after Winn-Dixie’s shelves are bare there won’t be any mammals surviving in the woods. However, that being said, hunting small game is still preferable to relying on larger prey. Your odds are much better you will get something to add to the stew pot. It might not be enough to handle your meat craving, not like a slab of venison, but it is better than nothing.
*
Most importantly, small game hunting can be done with renewable weapons. No need to expend cartridges. You can use a crossbow, a pellet gun and a slingshot. Yes, you can use a bow. But I think the skill level is too high for the average Joe. Initially, first stages of a collapse, stick with your cheap, easy to use hunting weapons. Later you can play around making and using your own bow. Frankly, I suck at using a sling shot. A pellet gun in my price range isn’t much better. But my use of a bow was a total failure. As in, how the heck can I keep missing a friggin hay bale at such a close range? I will stick with a crossbow, given a choice.
*
No weapon is perfect. Crossbows will break, their string split apart. The bolts bend or break. The slingshot ( the wrist braced type ) needs replacement tubing. The pellet gun will eventually experience parts failure that few know how to fix. But these are meant to be short time weapons. Keeping meat in the cooking pot until farming/ranching/herding become established. They are great at what they do for the time period they are used. They are silent. They take limited skill ( the slingshot more than the others ). They are dirt cheap right now. I just added a $20 pellet gun to my Amazon prep gear page. www.bisonpress.com/amazonproducts.html as well as a $20 crossbow. An 80 pound pull pistol crossbow has limited use but the bolts are really cheap as is the weapon itself. The pellet gun is of course Chinese and can’t be expected to be top quality, but it did get good reviews and is, again, better than nothing. I also added two books to www.bisonpress.com/affiliatebooks.html . One is the Kunstler novel that must be pre-ordered ( they seem to be taking their time getting it out ). Post-Peak Oil living. The other book is on human powered weapons.
*
I didn’t much care for pellet guns before. The ammo is almost as expensive as .22 LR’s. So why spend the same amount on a pellet gun as a .22? But with the gun only costing $20, why not indeed? Crossbows are more toy than anything at the $20 mark, but why spend $100 on a crossbow? The string breaks quickly, the bolts are not cheap and the range sucks. I would prefer a silenced rimfire. As far as the slingshot, if you can find cheap enough replacement tubing it is a great little game getter. I imagine medical supply stores should have it. I know the retail replacement made especially for the slingshot is a bit pricy, as in half the slingshot cost.
END
www.bisonpress.com for my web page
Sunday, November 11, 2007
guest article
GUEST ARTICLE
Batteries are our friends.
*
I have been studying homemade power generation for a number of years. One great reference is www.homepower.com. They will allow you to download a magazine for free to check it out. It is a wonderful reference and can be subscribed to for a reasonable amount in PDF format. Another resource is www.otherpower.com which focuses on making power by way of DIY wind generators. Unless you are using power as it is being generated, then some form of storage will be necessary.
*
Industrial batteries tend to be built much better and last considerably longer than batteries designed for consumer usage. I found a battery place that gets kick-butt Hawker 6VF11 AGM (Absorbed Glass Matt) batteries that are non-spillable units retired from the phone company after 3 years in service. They are designed to have a 12 year lifespan. These are maintained in a float state ready for power outages. That is why the phones work when the power goes out. New they cost $700 each and I can buy them for $.40 per pound. I also can trade them in on a pound for pound basis plus the cost of lunch for the battery guy. So if they don’t work well, I exchange them even up for other used batteries of the same make and model. These are 12 volt and are rated at 100 AH at the 10 hour rate and weigh 105 pounds.
*
Four in series nets 48 volts DC to create a string. Additional strings can be added to increase the amperage. I use 5 strings to get to 500 AH @ 48 volts to feed one of the two used Exeltech pure sine wave inverters that I got off of eBay for an average cost of $300 each. These are about $800 each new street price. They produce 1100 watts (2200 surge) of power that is at least as clean as the power company puts out. I keep one of the batteries in my box truck as a way to have some extra power available to the 700 watt inverter 12 volt unit when needed.
*
There is a switch to disconnect the AGM battery from the rest of the system, so if I do happen to run down the Hawker battery, I can still start the truck, connect the switch, and charge the AGM battery as I tool down the road. These batteries are a great deal especially when you consider that they are being purchased at a salvage price, and can be traded in. When I go to pick out batteries, I take a digital volt meter to make sure that each unit I get has over 10.50 volts. If they do, then I charge them slowly and submit each to about a week of pulsing to get as many of the lead sulfate crystals off of the plates to increase the capacity of the batteries. If you want to build your own desulfator here is a link to one that does work well. http://home.comcast.net/~ddenhardt201263/desulfator/desulf.htm.
*
There are lots of options available, and you can build many types that work better than the commercial versions. The information is out there and with a little research much can be learned. To sum up, power generation is a great thing, but what about when you want more than you produce at that moment, or the sun isn’t shining, or wind isn’t blowing? It is really all about the care and feeding of your batteries. Most batteries don’t die, they are murdered, so remember to be good to your batteries, they are our friends. Skip can be reached at: survival@roscoevideo.com
Batteries are our friends.
*
I have been studying homemade power generation for a number of years. One great reference is www.homepower.com. They will allow you to download a magazine for free to check it out. It is a wonderful reference and can be subscribed to for a reasonable amount in PDF format. Another resource is www.otherpower.com which focuses on making power by way of DIY wind generators. Unless you are using power as it is being generated, then some form of storage will be necessary.
*
Industrial batteries tend to be built much better and last considerably longer than batteries designed for consumer usage. I found a battery place that gets kick-butt Hawker 6VF11 AGM (Absorbed Glass Matt) batteries that are non-spillable units retired from the phone company after 3 years in service. They are designed to have a 12 year lifespan. These are maintained in a float state ready for power outages. That is why the phones work when the power goes out. New they cost $700 each and I can buy them for $.40 per pound. I also can trade them in on a pound for pound basis plus the cost of lunch for the battery guy. So if they don’t work well, I exchange them even up for other used batteries of the same make and model. These are 12 volt and are rated at 100 AH at the 10 hour rate and weigh 105 pounds.
*
Four in series nets 48 volts DC to create a string. Additional strings can be added to increase the amperage. I use 5 strings to get to 500 AH @ 48 volts to feed one of the two used Exeltech pure sine wave inverters that I got off of eBay for an average cost of $300 each. These are about $800 each new street price. They produce 1100 watts (2200 surge) of power that is at least as clean as the power company puts out. I keep one of the batteries in my box truck as a way to have some extra power available to the 700 watt inverter 12 volt unit when needed.
*
There is a switch to disconnect the AGM battery from the rest of the system, so if I do happen to run down the Hawker battery, I can still start the truck, connect the switch, and charge the AGM battery as I tool down the road. These batteries are a great deal especially when you consider that they are being purchased at a salvage price, and can be traded in. When I go to pick out batteries, I take a digital volt meter to make sure that each unit I get has over 10.50 volts. If they do, then I charge them slowly and submit each to about a week of pulsing to get as many of the lead sulfate crystals off of the plates to increase the capacity of the batteries. If you want to build your own desulfator here is a link to one that does work well. http://home.comcast.net/~ddenhardt201263/desulfator/desulf.htm.
*
There are lots of options available, and you can build many types that work better than the commercial versions. The information is out there and with a little research much can be learned. To sum up, power generation is a great thing, but what about when you want more than you produce at that moment, or the sun isn’t shining, or wind isn’t blowing? It is really all about the care and feeding of your batteries. Most batteries don’t die, they are murdered, so remember to be good to your batteries, they are our friends. Skip can be reached at: survival@roscoevideo.com
Saturday, November 10, 2007
disco and double digit inflation
DISCO AND DOUBLE DIGIT INFLATION
Ah, the 70’s. Great rock and roll music, crappy cars, best selling books on three hundred recipes for meals with hamburger. Disco died, a Central Banker actually stabilized the economy and the North Seas and Alaskan oil came online to give us our cheap oil again. All was groovy again. Except for the fact that we exported all of our factories, gave up all our gains in alternate energy, turned to deficit spending to run the government and turned from leading economy to military Empire to keep our energy flowing. We bought some time after killing the dollar. Today, we have God awful music. Our cars are just as crappy and much more expensive. We are killing the dollar to save the derivatives market which will eventually kill our military. And make our former bankers such as China reluctant to loan us much more money.
*
Where do we turn for salvation this time? No new large oil finds are waiting to save us. Business is addicted to debt to function. For a time cheap credit will allow them to limp along but they do not rest on solid fundamentals. Inflation will not be tamed, as it is the only way our government can pay the bills. That hollow pit in the bottom of your gut telling you very bad things are going to happen economically is there for a reason. When leading financial institutions lose $10 billion at a wack something is seriously wrong. When GM writes off over $40 billion at one time the Motor City is closer to losing its last few major companies. When the Chinese give up on further purchases of US debt, when the dollar index falls ten percent, when gold doubles in a few years, when our major cereal food almost triples in less than a year, who but talking TV bubbleheads can proclaim happy times ahead?
*
The Artic ice hits its feedback loop and we have ice free seas for the first time in recorded history. Al Gore traveling by jet to get us to buy florescent bulbs will not stop global warming which will alter our farmland. Ten percent of our population is comprised of illegals and other than a temporary stay of execution for corporations getting cheaper labor the long term effects are overcrowding in the arid West with water tables and snow packs falling rapidly. We have more people in prisons than anyone else, and yet as soon as the average TV viewer comprehends he will lose his SUV and McMansion crime will erupt on an unimaginable scale.
*
Our economy is in such serious trouble that the only logical outcome prior to total collapse ( the rest of the world will follow as the oil runs out ) is going to be a totalitarian society in a last gasp effort to keep social order as real scarcity is felt for the first time. Any paper asset you own will become worthless. Your 401(k) will die even faster than Social Security. We will have hyperinflation to pay for all of the government security make work jobs. The only construction will be government sponsored. You will be unable to declare bankruptcy and must pay off a car you can’t afford to gas up. Produce will be for the well to do. Meat will be rationed as most is sold off to China for hard currency. Soybeans will be the only affordable protein and the genetically modified unfermented bean will cause health problems, only medical care will be socialized and only more-harm-than-good drugs will be available. We should see gun control to rival the UK. In fact, we might even begin to hope for Peak Oil to move faster to blunt the effectiveness of large government as our last solution to survive the labor camps a bit longer.
*
In the mean time, keep watching the Dow Jones like it means a damn thing. The Seventies will really start to look good.
END
Watch for this Sunday, another guest article
www.bisonpress.com for my crap for sale
Ah, the 70’s. Great rock and roll music, crappy cars, best selling books on three hundred recipes for meals with hamburger. Disco died, a Central Banker actually stabilized the economy and the North Seas and Alaskan oil came online to give us our cheap oil again. All was groovy again. Except for the fact that we exported all of our factories, gave up all our gains in alternate energy, turned to deficit spending to run the government and turned from leading economy to military Empire to keep our energy flowing. We bought some time after killing the dollar. Today, we have God awful music. Our cars are just as crappy and much more expensive. We are killing the dollar to save the derivatives market which will eventually kill our military. And make our former bankers such as China reluctant to loan us much more money.
*
Where do we turn for salvation this time? No new large oil finds are waiting to save us. Business is addicted to debt to function. For a time cheap credit will allow them to limp along but they do not rest on solid fundamentals. Inflation will not be tamed, as it is the only way our government can pay the bills. That hollow pit in the bottom of your gut telling you very bad things are going to happen economically is there for a reason. When leading financial institutions lose $10 billion at a wack something is seriously wrong. When GM writes off over $40 billion at one time the Motor City is closer to losing its last few major companies. When the Chinese give up on further purchases of US debt, when the dollar index falls ten percent, when gold doubles in a few years, when our major cereal food almost triples in less than a year, who but talking TV bubbleheads can proclaim happy times ahead?
*
The Artic ice hits its feedback loop and we have ice free seas for the first time in recorded history. Al Gore traveling by jet to get us to buy florescent bulbs will not stop global warming which will alter our farmland. Ten percent of our population is comprised of illegals and other than a temporary stay of execution for corporations getting cheaper labor the long term effects are overcrowding in the arid West with water tables and snow packs falling rapidly. We have more people in prisons than anyone else, and yet as soon as the average TV viewer comprehends he will lose his SUV and McMansion crime will erupt on an unimaginable scale.
*
Our economy is in such serious trouble that the only logical outcome prior to total collapse ( the rest of the world will follow as the oil runs out ) is going to be a totalitarian society in a last gasp effort to keep social order as real scarcity is felt for the first time. Any paper asset you own will become worthless. Your 401(k) will die even faster than Social Security. We will have hyperinflation to pay for all of the government security make work jobs. The only construction will be government sponsored. You will be unable to declare bankruptcy and must pay off a car you can’t afford to gas up. Produce will be for the well to do. Meat will be rationed as most is sold off to China for hard currency. Soybeans will be the only affordable protein and the genetically modified unfermented bean will cause health problems, only medical care will be socialized and only more-harm-than-good drugs will be available. We should see gun control to rival the UK. In fact, we might even begin to hope for Peak Oil to move faster to blunt the effectiveness of large government as our last solution to survive the labor camps a bit longer.
*
In the mean time, keep watching the Dow Jones like it means a damn thing. The Seventies will really start to look good.
END
Watch for this Sunday, another guest article
www.bisonpress.com for my crap for sale
Friday, November 09, 2007
post oil military logistics
POST OIL MILITARY LOGISTICS
Logistics are pretty much the red headed step child of the military, as well as the military historian. The average person doesn’t even acknowledge its existence outside of how much it cost to fill up the gas tank, and even then little to no thought goes into how the gasoline even got there ( well, see, a shiny tanker truck was unloading… ). Myself, I get a warm and fuzzy feeling about logistics, but in this one area I realize I am a bit strange. However, this is my blog, and not only will I cry if I want to, I will also write about what ever I want, so there. Hah! So, today I will touch on logistics as it pertains to military travel. A military is a neat thing to have, and if it actually goes some place else besides where you are living it is even better. Static defense is only good for a inactive militia comprised of old men, cripples and women. Your main military needs to be mobile to be of any use at all, because regardless of how low we sink after a crash it is silly to think we would ever lose the ability to at least have crude black powder cannon. We will not revert back to defending castles.
*
One of the greatest military forces of all time were the Mongol horsemen. One of the main reasons, if not the only reason, they did so well is because they were able to field a mobile force that was self sufficient. They used horses that could live off of the grasses, and the soldiers lived off of the horses in turn. Other military forces did the same, but never as successfully, or in the same numbers. Some of it was training from birth. But mainly the lack of a supply train was the biggest advantage they had. Alexander the Great performed similar feats but was in the wrong kind of terrain to be as good at it, and since he was a rarity as a General that studied logistics and applied them brilliantly, with his death came the end of living off of the land militarily over distance and time so well in the West. Apart from those, however, the norm has been nothing but problems in logistics. Even Gustavus Adolphus who was much better than most in supplying his army either had to live off of the land or direct his campaigns around where the supplies would be.
*
To supply an army in the field you either have to move through rich land to feed them or bring all the supplies to them. It might look easy today but that is only because of abundant oil fuel. Viet Nam was mostly fought while we had plenty of our own oil. Today we help squander the last of the oil trying to secure the fields in Iraq. After the oil supply falls low enough that it is essentially gone, the centralized political governments of today will fall and we will see a reemergence of smaller governments, all fighting each other for resources. While we won’t have to cross the globe to fight, without oil even the lesser distances will be harder to reach.
*
Walking troops average 15 miles a day. This is without tiring them out past usefulness for battle, accounting for difficult terrain, etc. They need a ration of at least two pounds of bread a day to do so. If you bring a horse you will average 25 miles a day and the horse needs 20 pounds of feed a day. Local foraging will provide a lot of that food but most horses need supplemental feed such as oats to remain in good health. Once you have a large enough force they will strip the local vegetation quickly and you must bring in fodder. Historically, fodder has always been highly problematic for military campaigns. In all too many instances the supplies are insufficient and the horses provide one way transportation ( although on the plus side it is meat for the troops to supplement their grain ). If you had a four horse drawn wagon carrying a ton of supplies you could carry the load about one hundred miles with minimal capacity going to the animals. Much past that and you can’t carry enough for other horses to make the trip worthwhile. A mechanized vehicle would travel up to a thousand baring breakage to deliver a comparable load of supplies, but the fuel efficiency is half that of animal power ( carrying capacity of fuel to cargo ratio ). The main advantage of internal combustion engines is the distance they can cover, although the real long term effective distance they can travel is less than double that of horses at forty miles a day. ( this paragraph source Supplying War by Martin Van Creveld )
*
A acre field of grass crops will deliver about three hundred gallons of fuel in the form of ethanol, using modern farming practices. In energy terms that will equal about two hundred gallons of gasoline. Now figure out the yield using animal power and fertilizer. Far less. It doesn’t seem likely that there will be the resources allowing organic high intensity farming for a fuel crop to keep the figures at modern levels, but even if there were how many acres do you think you will need to keep a fleet of vehicles running? A few tractors are one thing, a military fleet another. And that assumes you can keep them running. Spare parts? More importantly, what about spare tires? After a salvage period, warfare will revert back away from mechanized transportation. And trains are really only viable to get troops around the country, not into other ones. Hitler invaded Russia with too few motor vehicles and optimistically planned on much more rail than ever was available ( and the Air Force was never big enough for resupply on the needed scale ). You saw how that turned out.
*
As you can see, traveling too far from internal supply bases is a big part in planning for warfare. As is abandoning current technology faster than your opponent in a post collapse situation. The same problem facing firearms. Something fun to keep you awake at might as you battle enemy biker zombies invasions. And this is just a small part of your concerns. Add in chemistry for primers, metal supplies for cases, mining for chemicals, defendable farm land, water supply for milling, enemy occupation of needed resource areas, etc. Fun stuff, a shame we have to wait post-Apocalypse for it.
END
visit www.bisonpress.com to buy e-books, Amazon books and prep gear
Logistics are pretty much the red headed step child of the military, as well as the military historian. The average person doesn’t even acknowledge its existence outside of how much it cost to fill up the gas tank, and even then little to no thought goes into how the gasoline even got there ( well, see, a shiny tanker truck was unloading… ). Myself, I get a warm and fuzzy feeling about logistics, but in this one area I realize I am a bit strange. However, this is my blog, and not only will I cry if I want to, I will also write about what ever I want, so there. Hah! So, today I will touch on logistics as it pertains to military travel. A military is a neat thing to have, and if it actually goes some place else besides where you are living it is even better. Static defense is only good for a inactive militia comprised of old men, cripples and women. Your main military needs to be mobile to be of any use at all, because regardless of how low we sink after a crash it is silly to think we would ever lose the ability to at least have crude black powder cannon. We will not revert back to defending castles.
*
One of the greatest military forces of all time were the Mongol horsemen. One of the main reasons, if not the only reason, they did so well is because they were able to field a mobile force that was self sufficient. They used horses that could live off of the grasses, and the soldiers lived off of the horses in turn. Other military forces did the same, but never as successfully, or in the same numbers. Some of it was training from birth. But mainly the lack of a supply train was the biggest advantage they had. Alexander the Great performed similar feats but was in the wrong kind of terrain to be as good at it, and since he was a rarity as a General that studied logistics and applied them brilliantly, with his death came the end of living off of the land militarily over distance and time so well in the West. Apart from those, however, the norm has been nothing but problems in logistics. Even Gustavus Adolphus who was much better than most in supplying his army either had to live off of the land or direct his campaigns around where the supplies would be.
*
To supply an army in the field you either have to move through rich land to feed them or bring all the supplies to them. It might look easy today but that is only because of abundant oil fuel. Viet Nam was mostly fought while we had plenty of our own oil. Today we help squander the last of the oil trying to secure the fields in Iraq. After the oil supply falls low enough that it is essentially gone, the centralized political governments of today will fall and we will see a reemergence of smaller governments, all fighting each other for resources. While we won’t have to cross the globe to fight, without oil even the lesser distances will be harder to reach.
*
Walking troops average 15 miles a day. This is without tiring them out past usefulness for battle, accounting for difficult terrain, etc. They need a ration of at least two pounds of bread a day to do so. If you bring a horse you will average 25 miles a day and the horse needs 20 pounds of feed a day. Local foraging will provide a lot of that food but most horses need supplemental feed such as oats to remain in good health. Once you have a large enough force they will strip the local vegetation quickly and you must bring in fodder. Historically, fodder has always been highly problematic for military campaigns. In all too many instances the supplies are insufficient and the horses provide one way transportation ( although on the plus side it is meat for the troops to supplement their grain ). If you had a four horse drawn wagon carrying a ton of supplies you could carry the load about one hundred miles with minimal capacity going to the animals. Much past that and you can’t carry enough for other horses to make the trip worthwhile. A mechanized vehicle would travel up to a thousand baring breakage to deliver a comparable load of supplies, but the fuel efficiency is half that of animal power ( carrying capacity of fuel to cargo ratio ). The main advantage of internal combustion engines is the distance they can cover, although the real long term effective distance they can travel is less than double that of horses at forty miles a day. ( this paragraph source Supplying War by Martin Van Creveld )
*
A acre field of grass crops will deliver about three hundred gallons of fuel in the form of ethanol, using modern farming practices. In energy terms that will equal about two hundred gallons of gasoline. Now figure out the yield using animal power and fertilizer. Far less. It doesn’t seem likely that there will be the resources allowing organic high intensity farming for a fuel crop to keep the figures at modern levels, but even if there were how many acres do you think you will need to keep a fleet of vehicles running? A few tractors are one thing, a military fleet another. And that assumes you can keep them running. Spare parts? More importantly, what about spare tires? After a salvage period, warfare will revert back away from mechanized transportation. And trains are really only viable to get troops around the country, not into other ones. Hitler invaded Russia with too few motor vehicles and optimistically planned on much more rail than ever was available ( and the Air Force was never big enough for resupply on the needed scale ). You saw how that turned out.
*
As you can see, traveling too far from internal supply bases is a big part in planning for warfare. As is abandoning current technology faster than your opponent in a post collapse situation. The same problem facing firearms. Something fun to keep you awake at might as you battle enemy biker zombies invasions. And this is just a small part of your concerns. Add in chemistry for primers, metal supplies for cases, mining for chemicals, defendable farm land, water supply for milling, enemy occupation of needed resource areas, etc. Fun stuff, a shame we have to wait post-Apocalypse for it.
END
visit www.bisonpress.com to buy e-books, Amazon books and prep gear
Thursday, November 08, 2007
staging the next election
STAGING THE NEXT ELECTION
Lately I have begun to wonder about the big push behind Botox Clinton and Arab Obama. Not wondering why the Democrats are complete idiots and want two total retards to run for office. Just look at I Gore running seven years ago. No, I am wondering why these candidates are flooded with money. They are prostitutes just like any other politician and the same interests making money now off of Bush ( military, intelligence, oil companies, bankers, etc ) are backing them. I realize that any politician is going to be firmly controlled by these interests. What I wonder is why the candidates are being pushed when they are so unsuitable for election. Clinton is clearly a Communist, transparently fake and shifting in the wind easily, pushed by money or polls. Obama doesn’t really stand for anything outwardly, other than a desire for political control and appearing in the history books. Both politicians would not get elected for other obvious reasons. A female and a black. Don’t hate the messenger. I am saying what most folks have in the back of their minds even if they can’t say it for fear of attacks by the Political Correctness Police. I make that statement with an eye on political reality, not on a make believe world of wishful thinking.
*
Some people most likely won’t get elected. Facial hair has been a proven election killer for nearly a hundred years. That is just a fact. As is being a minority. Sorry. Just the way it is. So why spend so much money on two losers? Tens of millions of dollars each. My latest Wild Ass Guess is that our little fascist buddy Rudy Giuliani is being groomed by the Powers That Be. He is the perfect candidate to take over the Bush spot. By putting up two opposing candidates that most likely won’t stand a snowballs chance in Hell of being put into the highest office, his election should be secure. Most idiots that still vote will ignore his stand on the issues and elect him simply because he is not a ball busting bitch or a half breed Muslim ( again, sorry to be insensitive but this is reality, regardless of our own vows to remain modern and enlightened ). The lesser of evils, as it were. Except that Rudy is most likely the worse possible choice.
*
Clinton has dangerous views. Most likely the Waco massacre was dreamed up as she and BBQ Reno were in bed together. She would love to preside over an Amerikan Socialist State, with 95% taxes for any income over minimum wage, universal health care for all those that lived through the mandatory waiting list to be seen from doctors, universal military draft, etc. She has proven she will kill anyone in her way ( you don’t think Bill was that vicious, do you? ), with a death count at almost fifty just for those in the way on the way up ( not counting Waco, etc ). She is two levels removed from Satan himself. Obama is just eye candy. Liberals, tree huggers, University professors, etc., might just love him to pieces but he is just filler for the bread and circus show keeping the public distracted from the unfolding collapse. But can either be as bad as another eight years of Bush politics?
*
Bush has his handlers. He is being told what to do. He is too simple to form his own thoughts. Dumber than a box of rocks. Imagine our danger when an intelligent and devious person with the mandate to continue Bush policies is elected. That is Rudy. Think Iran, think widespread detainment and torture. Oil will double, the dollar will reach 1920 Germany levels. Our Constitution will be officially ignored. All the things Bush has set the groundwork for. He will be told what to do by the guys that bought him, and then he will be much more successful at it since he is not the flaming idiot that George is. No, I have not forgot how Bush was pushed into office over a fake election, with I Gore bought off with his lucrative Green Earth tour. This time will be the same, the election is already decided. But no one will have as hard of a time believing it this time around ( see reasons above ). Perception is reality. The dictator has been chosen and the people will be glad. Suckers.
END
buy all of my crap at www.bisonpress.com
Lately I have begun to wonder about the big push behind Botox Clinton and Arab Obama. Not wondering why the Democrats are complete idiots and want two total retards to run for office. Just look at I Gore running seven years ago. No, I am wondering why these candidates are flooded with money. They are prostitutes just like any other politician and the same interests making money now off of Bush ( military, intelligence, oil companies, bankers, etc ) are backing them. I realize that any politician is going to be firmly controlled by these interests. What I wonder is why the candidates are being pushed when they are so unsuitable for election. Clinton is clearly a Communist, transparently fake and shifting in the wind easily, pushed by money or polls. Obama doesn’t really stand for anything outwardly, other than a desire for political control and appearing in the history books. Both politicians would not get elected for other obvious reasons. A female and a black. Don’t hate the messenger. I am saying what most folks have in the back of their minds even if they can’t say it for fear of attacks by the Political Correctness Police. I make that statement with an eye on political reality, not on a make believe world of wishful thinking.
*
Some people most likely won’t get elected. Facial hair has been a proven election killer for nearly a hundred years. That is just a fact. As is being a minority. Sorry. Just the way it is. So why spend so much money on two losers? Tens of millions of dollars each. My latest Wild Ass Guess is that our little fascist buddy Rudy Giuliani is being groomed by the Powers That Be. He is the perfect candidate to take over the Bush spot. By putting up two opposing candidates that most likely won’t stand a snowballs chance in Hell of being put into the highest office, his election should be secure. Most idiots that still vote will ignore his stand on the issues and elect him simply because he is not a ball busting bitch or a half breed Muslim ( again, sorry to be insensitive but this is reality, regardless of our own vows to remain modern and enlightened ). The lesser of evils, as it were. Except that Rudy is most likely the worse possible choice.
*
Clinton has dangerous views. Most likely the Waco massacre was dreamed up as she and BBQ Reno were in bed together. She would love to preside over an Amerikan Socialist State, with 95% taxes for any income over minimum wage, universal health care for all those that lived through the mandatory waiting list to be seen from doctors, universal military draft, etc. She has proven she will kill anyone in her way ( you don’t think Bill was that vicious, do you? ), with a death count at almost fifty just for those in the way on the way up ( not counting Waco, etc ). She is two levels removed from Satan himself. Obama is just eye candy. Liberals, tree huggers, University professors, etc., might just love him to pieces but he is just filler for the bread and circus show keeping the public distracted from the unfolding collapse. But can either be as bad as another eight years of Bush politics?
*
Bush has his handlers. He is being told what to do. He is too simple to form his own thoughts. Dumber than a box of rocks. Imagine our danger when an intelligent and devious person with the mandate to continue Bush policies is elected. That is Rudy. Think Iran, think widespread detainment and torture. Oil will double, the dollar will reach 1920 Germany levels. Our Constitution will be officially ignored. All the things Bush has set the groundwork for. He will be told what to do by the guys that bought him, and then he will be much more successful at it since he is not the flaming idiot that George is. No, I have not forgot how Bush was pushed into office over a fake election, with I Gore bought off with his lucrative Green Earth tour. This time will be the same, the election is already decided. But no one will have as hard of a time believing it this time around ( see reasons above ). Perception is reality. The dictator has been chosen and the people will be glad. Suckers.
END
buy all of my crap at www.bisonpress.com
Wednesday, November 07, 2007
off grid computing
OFF GRID COMPUTING
The standard advice for computing off grid with little in the way of electric generating power is to have a notebook/laptop computer to save on energy. I am assuming here that you do not have a generator. They are relatively cheap but without a bit of bother to suppress the noise they are irritating to run daily. Here you are out in the middle of nowhere and your peace and quiet, your solitude, is interrupted by a noisy contraption. More importantly, they are another link to our fossil fuel dependency. I think it is better to just go with solar panels to begin with ( or a windmill if you suffer from regular cloud cover ). If you do get a cheap generator for construction purposes, just plan on not replacing the machine when it wears out, which will happen in about two thousand hours of use if you buy a cheapie from an auto parts store ( about $200 for a one to one and a half kilowatt unit ).
*
I have been questioning this line of reasoning. I have gone through a lot of computers over the years, both desktops and laptops. And I am a bit disenchanted with the laptops. They never last as long as desktops, all things being equal. And they cost three to four times the desktops if you buy a unit needed for broadband. Desktops are three times as powerful in computing power for the same price. You really pay a premium for a compact unit. If you are out in the boonies you will need at least a 800 Mhz computer to connect to a satellite Internet service. So your prices are for that range of machine. A used desktop in that range is under $100 but a laptop is about three times that cost. Now, once you add a LCD monitor to get your electric use down to a reasonable range to spend as much money total for either machine. However, your desktop will last at least twice as long and repairs are easily done on them. Just compare the keyboard replacement of each machine ( I go through keyboards with all my writing ). Or adding memory. Or replacing the power supply.
*
Let’s call it a two year life on used desktop machines, one on laptops. You save a hundred bucks a year having a larger unit instead of a laptop. Call solar panel cost three hundred for a laptop, nine hundred for a desktop at the very most ( heavy daily usage, factoring in cloudy days, less than optimal generation ). That is a long payback, six years. However, you also need to factor in redundancy. It is simple to have replacement desktops, they are almost given away. You don’t even need to buy online, they are available used locally. Laptops are not as easy to find used. You most likely will have no backup machine, not cheaply. If you are a casual user, and a computer is not a necessity, stay with a laptop. But, if you are a business owner ( likely as a source of income so you don’t need to commute long distances ) you really need to pay the extra in power and keep a desktop.
*
When my desktop breaks, sometimes I can fix it myself. I can always buy one cheaply locally. When the laptop breaks it stays that way and I have to pray I can find another cheap one, usually through the mail. Long delays. Death to a business. Because, really, if a computer is not a necessity for you to make money, most likely you don’t even need it for off grid living. If you need it, you have a replacement always ready. Cheaply available as a desktop. Expensive as a laptop. I have gone through four laptops and none were cheap nor were they powerful enough for broadband. Plus, you could even write off the extra panels as a tax deduction. Have a separate office building perhaps, and the whole thing can easily be proven to be business related ( and after the crash you have a bunch of solar panels and a cast iron heating stove, maybe even a super insulated cabin, that were written off as business expenses ).
*
Power consumption for a desktop with flat screen monitor, 125-150 watts. Laptop power use about 60 watts. You take a hit with power consumption, in time the cheaper machine pays for that. Just some food for thought.
END
please visit www.bisonpress.com for your book and gear needs
The standard advice for computing off grid with little in the way of electric generating power is to have a notebook/laptop computer to save on energy. I am assuming here that you do not have a generator. They are relatively cheap but without a bit of bother to suppress the noise they are irritating to run daily. Here you are out in the middle of nowhere and your peace and quiet, your solitude, is interrupted by a noisy contraption. More importantly, they are another link to our fossil fuel dependency. I think it is better to just go with solar panels to begin with ( or a windmill if you suffer from regular cloud cover ). If you do get a cheap generator for construction purposes, just plan on not replacing the machine when it wears out, which will happen in about two thousand hours of use if you buy a cheapie from an auto parts store ( about $200 for a one to one and a half kilowatt unit ).
*
I have been questioning this line of reasoning. I have gone through a lot of computers over the years, both desktops and laptops. And I am a bit disenchanted with the laptops. They never last as long as desktops, all things being equal. And they cost three to four times the desktops if you buy a unit needed for broadband. Desktops are three times as powerful in computing power for the same price. You really pay a premium for a compact unit. If you are out in the boonies you will need at least a 800 Mhz computer to connect to a satellite Internet service. So your prices are for that range of machine. A used desktop in that range is under $100 but a laptop is about three times that cost. Now, once you add a LCD monitor to get your electric use down to a reasonable range to spend as much money total for either machine. However, your desktop will last at least twice as long and repairs are easily done on them. Just compare the keyboard replacement of each machine ( I go through keyboards with all my writing ). Or adding memory. Or replacing the power supply.
*
Let’s call it a two year life on used desktop machines, one on laptops. You save a hundred bucks a year having a larger unit instead of a laptop. Call solar panel cost three hundred for a laptop, nine hundred for a desktop at the very most ( heavy daily usage, factoring in cloudy days, less than optimal generation ). That is a long payback, six years. However, you also need to factor in redundancy. It is simple to have replacement desktops, they are almost given away. You don’t even need to buy online, they are available used locally. Laptops are not as easy to find used. You most likely will have no backup machine, not cheaply. If you are a casual user, and a computer is not a necessity, stay with a laptop. But, if you are a business owner ( likely as a source of income so you don’t need to commute long distances ) you really need to pay the extra in power and keep a desktop.
*
When my desktop breaks, sometimes I can fix it myself. I can always buy one cheaply locally. When the laptop breaks it stays that way and I have to pray I can find another cheap one, usually through the mail. Long delays. Death to a business. Because, really, if a computer is not a necessity for you to make money, most likely you don’t even need it for off grid living. If you need it, you have a replacement always ready. Cheaply available as a desktop. Expensive as a laptop. I have gone through four laptops and none were cheap nor were they powerful enough for broadband. Plus, you could even write off the extra panels as a tax deduction. Have a separate office building perhaps, and the whole thing can easily be proven to be business related ( and after the crash you have a bunch of solar panels and a cast iron heating stove, maybe even a super insulated cabin, that were written off as business expenses ).
*
Power consumption for a desktop with flat screen monitor, 125-150 watts. Laptop power use about 60 watts. You take a hit with power consumption, in time the cheaper machine pays for that. Just some food for thought.
END
please visit www.bisonpress.com for your book and gear needs
Tuesday, November 06, 2007
lemons to lemonade
LEMONS TO LEMONADE
As the saying goes, life is like a crap sandwich. The more bread you have, the less crap you need to eat. Now, it pains me to even do it, but I feel I must explain. I ain’t that old, but I’m sure a few of you young pups don’t get it. Bread, in 70’s ghetto slang, is money. Get it now? We, the poor great unwashed, those unworthy of sharing the coming post-Apocalyptic landscape with the great heroic Yuppie Survivalists, we are assigned to a life of having to eat a lot of crap. Mostly. I am here for my fellow proletariat brethren. I can help ease your pain slightly. I am here to help you spend a lot less to achieve almost the same results ( don’t make me mention the 80/20 rule, you know I will ).
*
Most of you are sitting around your Salvation Army $50 ten year old used computer with long sad faces, wondering if you are going to have to start manufacturing crack in order to afford paying rent next month, convinced you will never be able to have your own home, forever paying half your paycheck to the landlord. The same one that won’t fix the leaky pipe or your broken furnace in January. So I tell you to buy a junk piece of land. I even go out of my way to point out the good ones for you at www.dirtcheapdirt.blogspot.com but still that is not good enough for you, nooooo! You get all hurt at my lack of sensitivity and try to explain that you will have no electricity, no decent road, no water, no sewer, blah, blah. Granted. I understand. I am still in town because of family, plus economically it makes little sense to move since commuting cost are 75% of my town rent ( it only is viable if I work part time- I refuse to pedal thirty miles a day five days a week to have most of my paycheck stolen, one or two days are okay ). So $100 is not worth roughing it. But my point here is you should be making lemonade out of lemons.
*
The things that make land darn cheap are all its shortcomings. No utilities and poor roads. But you should be looking at these as opportunities. No utilities means you must generate your own solar or wind power ( generators are not a option for survivalists ). A crappy road means you must do without a car. I know most of you are visualizing a massive $3,000 diesel generator and a big four wheel drive to overcome these obstacles. Now you can justify not moving since you can’t afford that. But if you can wean yourself from a car and grid power you are miles ahead of anyone else preparing for Peak Oil. Or even an economic Depression, as plentiful gas is still not affordable if you are unemployed. You are taking a normally undesirable product and making it attractive to yourself by thinking outside the box.
*
Doing without a car sucks. Not having grid power sucks. Not having a flushing toilet sucks. Crappy Internet from a cell phone or a satellite is not going to be very fun. But when you do without you don’t notice when they are taken away. The grid will eventually fail. The oil will eventually run out. Our economy will eventually implode. Be ready now. Do without a car, ride a bike with a trailer. Your crappy road will keep away unwanted visitors. Not having a car will save a lot of your paycheck. Buying your solar panels now and not waiting for the never to materialize price breakthrough means you will always have power, although never all that much. Buy your cheap land as a security blanket. Even if you don’t use it right away. Get in good enough shape to ride a bike without a coronary. Buy a solar panel or two. Have a shelter for the land. Stop thinking you need a conventional home and piece of land. Embrace the frugal life.
END
www.bisonpress.com for my books and gear for sale
As the saying goes, life is like a crap sandwich. The more bread you have, the less crap you need to eat. Now, it pains me to even do it, but I feel I must explain. I ain’t that old, but I’m sure a few of you young pups don’t get it. Bread, in 70’s ghetto slang, is money. Get it now? We, the poor great unwashed, those unworthy of sharing the coming post-Apocalyptic landscape with the great heroic Yuppie Survivalists, we are assigned to a life of having to eat a lot of crap. Mostly. I am here for my fellow proletariat brethren. I can help ease your pain slightly. I am here to help you spend a lot less to achieve almost the same results ( don’t make me mention the 80/20 rule, you know I will ).
*
Most of you are sitting around your Salvation Army $50 ten year old used computer with long sad faces, wondering if you are going to have to start manufacturing crack in order to afford paying rent next month, convinced you will never be able to have your own home, forever paying half your paycheck to the landlord. The same one that won’t fix the leaky pipe or your broken furnace in January. So I tell you to buy a junk piece of land. I even go out of my way to point out the good ones for you at www.dirtcheapdirt.blogspot.com but still that is not good enough for you, nooooo! You get all hurt at my lack of sensitivity and try to explain that you will have no electricity, no decent road, no water, no sewer, blah, blah. Granted. I understand. I am still in town because of family, plus economically it makes little sense to move since commuting cost are 75% of my town rent ( it only is viable if I work part time- I refuse to pedal thirty miles a day five days a week to have most of my paycheck stolen, one or two days are okay ). So $100 is not worth roughing it. But my point here is you should be making lemonade out of lemons.
*
The things that make land darn cheap are all its shortcomings. No utilities and poor roads. But you should be looking at these as opportunities. No utilities means you must generate your own solar or wind power ( generators are not a option for survivalists ). A crappy road means you must do without a car. I know most of you are visualizing a massive $3,000 diesel generator and a big four wheel drive to overcome these obstacles. Now you can justify not moving since you can’t afford that. But if you can wean yourself from a car and grid power you are miles ahead of anyone else preparing for Peak Oil. Or even an economic Depression, as plentiful gas is still not affordable if you are unemployed. You are taking a normally undesirable product and making it attractive to yourself by thinking outside the box.
*
Doing without a car sucks. Not having grid power sucks. Not having a flushing toilet sucks. Crappy Internet from a cell phone or a satellite is not going to be very fun. But when you do without you don’t notice when they are taken away. The grid will eventually fail. The oil will eventually run out. Our economy will eventually implode. Be ready now. Do without a car, ride a bike with a trailer. Your crappy road will keep away unwanted visitors. Not having a car will save a lot of your paycheck. Buying your solar panels now and not waiting for the never to materialize price breakthrough means you will always have power, although never all that much. Buy your cheap land as a security blanket. Even if you don’t use it right away. Get in good enough shape to ride a bike without a coronary. Buy a solar panel or two. Have a shelter for the land. Stop thinking you need a conventional home and piece of land. Embrace the frugal life.
END
www.bisonpress.com for my books and gear for sale
Monday, November 05, 2007
28 weeks later
28 WEEKS LATER
28 Days Later was a good survival-type film. It touched on living without the cities utilities and using non-firearm weapons for defense. 28 Weeks Later is not really as good from a survivalist viewpoint, but it is a heck of a good piece of entertainment. For one thing, there is a lot more action. More explosions and gunfire and neat military stuff. It isn’t about personal survival ( food, water, defense ) as much as it is about running away from zombies. Not anywhere as good as the original, survival wise. Far superior to the original, action film wise. If you want the film to be a surprise, I am about to spoil it for you.
*
This time, the US army occupies London and is cleaning up the mess, opening parts to Brits coming home from abroad. A repopulation effort. The virus is supposed to have killed itself out, what with no more fresh victims to eat off. Very poorly designed virus, from a reproductive standpoint. The army buys into the concept that the virus is dead. And if it is not, no big deal, there is always Code Red. That means the military can do what it does best, kill everything in sight if the virus resurfaces.
*
The focus on this film is on one family and a couple of army personnel. Dad survived through the zombie attacks, in one scene acting sensibly if not very courageously by allowing the zombies to snack on the wife so he can escape. So dad is in London to meet his kids who had been abroad during the first attacks and were shipped home by our military. And, kids being the irresponsible idiots that modern society has turned out, the brother and sister escape the settled island and go into town ( the part not yet sanitized ) to go to their old home to get a picture of dear old Mum ( get over it kid, “I’m worried I’ll forget what she looked like”, dad will remarry some other refugee camp ho so you can have another mom ). Our new found buddy on the American side, a military sniper, sees their escape and radios it in. The kids find the mom at home, not a zombie. The reaction squad finds all three and brings them back to the safe zone.
*
Now our second American makes her appearance, the head medical doctor ( ok, she was seen earlier but now she serves a purpose ). The sniper, his buddy the helicopter pilot, and the lead MD are The Good Guys. The rest of the military like to shoot first and ask questions later. Doc says, oh gee lookie here, she is a carrier but has immunity. A valuable specimen. The General is much more sensible and orders the bitch killed, then the doc can do all the medical tests she wants. But wait! As this is going on the father/husband sneaks into her secure room where she is restrained in the bed. Oh, my dear, I’m so friggin sorry I left you to die at the zombies hand. So sorry I’m a pussy. Wife says, I love you, so dad, needing little encouragement since it has been many months since he got any of the good stuff, starts kissing on her. Oops! The virus is transmitted by fluids you idiot. Talk about instant erection lose.
*
Hubby turns into a zombie, meaning he gets all pissed and in a good rage and knocks the crap out of his tied down wife, then gouges out her eyes. Cool! Here’s for not dying the first time, you slut! Now it is time to feed, so down goes nearby military guys. The alarm goes off, everyone panics. All the civilians are herded down to a basement holding area and locked in ( New Orleans sports stadium lock down similarities were intentional, I’m sure ). And of course, dad shows up, forces himself in and starts biting people, who them start biting others, it’s like a vampire orgy in fast motion. Now the military really starts panicking and orders Code Red. The snipers are told to kill not just zombies but everyone fleeing. Our Hero Sniper leaves his position in order to save the boy, who the medical doc has ID’ed as Essential For Medical Research ( yeh, that worked out great the last time ). He might carry the DNA for immunity. Well, from there we start the great escape sequence, where our little group must not only escape the zombies, but avoid being killed by the military also. Double the enemies this time.
*
After a bit, the kids escape and are flown across the Channel. Our little immunity carrier can save humanity. Right. He also infects the Continent. Oh, our bad! Fad out as zombies shuffle towards the Eiffel Tower, sequel assured. Great flick. I loved it. Not a great Apocalypse training film, but good solid movie entertainment. The other movie I watched the same night was Earthstorm. Another end of the world disaster averted by hero scientists.
*
Earthstorm sounded pretty cool, and it was not that bad of a movie. Not great, but if you rent it cheap enough you can enjoy it. I went thru www.redbox.com so I only paid a buck. If you want to make a end-of-planet movie, do like Earthstorm did. Take the assault on the Death Star, mix it with Armageddon, add MacGyver, hire Dirk Benedict from Battlestar Galactica and the cheapest Baldwin brother ( little Stevie ) for some kind of name recognition. Big ass asteroid hits the moon and cracks it, our hero demolition specialist must explode it back together again. As cheesey as that sounds, it actually could have done a lot worse. At least they hit on things like the moons changing orbit changing weather conditions. I have seen a lot worse disaster movies. No panic in the streets, no hoarding or looting. No good stuff. A disaster flick, not a survival one.
END
buy my crap www.bisonpress.com
28 Days Later was a good survival-type film. It touched on living without the cities utilities and using non-firearm weapons for defense. 28 Weeks Later is not really as good from a survivalist viewpoint, but it is a heck of a good piece of entertainment. For one thing, there is a lot more action. More explosions and gunfire and neat military stuff. It isn’t about personal survival ( food, water, defense ) as much as it is about running away from zombies. Not anywhere as good as the original, survival wise. Far superior to the original, action film wise. If you want the film to be a surprise, I am about to spoil it for you.
*
This time, the US army occupies London and is cleaning up the mess, opening parts to Brits coming home from abroad. A repopulation effort. The virus is supposed to have killed itself out, what with no more fresh victims to eat off. Very poorly designed virus, from a reproductive standpoint. The army buys into the concept that the virus is dead. And if it is not, no big deal, there is always Code Red. That means the military can do what it does best, kill everything in sight if the virus resurfaces.
*
The focus on this film is on one family and a couple of army personnel. Dad survived through the zombie attacks, in one scene acting sensibly if not very courageously by allowing the zombies to snack on the wife so he can escape. So dad is in London to meet his kids who had been abroad during the first attacks and were shipped home by our military. And, kids being the irresponsible idiots that modern society has turned out, the brother and sister escape the settled island and go into town ( the part not yet sanitized ) to go to their old home to get a picture of dear old Mum ( get over it kid, “I’m worried I’ll forget what she looked like”, dad will remarry some other refugee camp ho so you can have another mom ). Our new found buddy on the American side, a military sniper, sees their escape and radios it in. The kids find the mom at home, not a zombie. The reaction squad finds all three and brings them back to the safe zone.
*
Now our second American makes her appearance, the head medical doctor ( ok, she was seen earlier but now she serves a purpose ). The sniper, his buddy the helicopter pilot, and the lead MD are The Good Guys. The rest of the military like to shoot first and ask questions later. Doc says, oh gee lookie here, she is a carrier but has immunity. A valuable specimen. The General is much more sensible and orders the bitch killed, then the doc can do all the medical tests she wants. But wait! As this is going on the father/husband sneaks into her secure room where she is restrained in the bed. Oh, my dear, I’m so friggin sorry I left you to die at the zombies hand. So sorry I’m a pussy. Wife says, I love you, so dad, needing little encouragement since it has been many months since he got any of the good stuff, starts kissing on her. Oops! The virus is transmitted by fluids you idiot. Talk about instant erection lose.
*
Hubby turns into a zombie, meaning he gets all pissed and in a good rage and knocks the crap out of his tied down wife, then gouges out her eyes. Cool! Here’s for not dying the first time, you slut! Now it is time to feed, so down goes nearby military guys. The alarm goes off, everyone panics. All the civilians are herded down to a basement holding area and locked in ( New Orleans sports stadium lock down similarities were intentional, I’m sure ). And of course, dad shows up, forces himself in and starts biting people, who them start biting others, it’s like a vampire orgy in fast motion. Now the military really starts panicking and orders Code Red. The snipers are told to kill not just zombies but everyone fleeing. Our Hero Sniper leaves his position in order to save the boy, who the medical doc has ID’ed as Essential For Medical Research ( yeh, that worked out great the last time ). He might carry the DNA for immunity. Well, from there we start the great escape sequence, where our little group must not only escape the zombies, but avoid being killed by the military also. Double the enemies this time.
*
After a bit, the kids escape and are flown across the Channel. Our little immunity carrier can save humanity. Right. He also infects the Continent. Oh, our bad! Fad out as zombies shuffle towards the Eiffel Tower, sequel assured. Great flick. I loved it. Not a great Apocalypse training film, but good solid movie entertainment. The other movie I watched the same night was Earthstorm. Another end of the world disaster averted by hero scientists.
*
Earthstorm sounded pretty cool, and it was not that bad of a movie. Not great, but if you rent it cheap enough you can enjoy it. I went thru www.redbox.com so I only paid a buck. If you want to make a end-of-planet movie, do like Earthstorm did. Take the assault on the Death Star, mix it with Armageddon, add MacGyver, hire Dirk Benedict from Battlestar Galactica and the cheapest Baldwin brother ( little Stevie ) for some kind of name recognition. Big ass asteroid hits the moon and cracks it, our hero demolition specialist must explode it back together again. As cheesey as that sounds, it actually could have done a lot worse. At least they hit on things like the moons changing orbit changing weather conditions. I have seen a lot worse disaster movies. No panic in the streets, no hoarding or looting. No good stuff. A disaster flick, not a survival one.
END
buy my crap www.bisonpress.com
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