five year plan

FIVE YEAR PLAN


Before we start today, a word from our sponsor. My changeover from gift certificate to cash deposit from Amazon sales didn’t go through in time so I got one more batch of books. Next month I’ll have the cash in my hot little hands. Now, even though I’ll no longer be exclusively buying books with my Amazon commission like I have for over two years you are still donating to a worthy cause. Some of the money will still go to books because life simply isn’t worth living without buying books ( after the Apocalypse I’ll break into my paperback stash of hundreds- mostly crap fiction I got for a nickel to a quarter each ) and some will go to Bison Compound projects. I ordered another copy of The $50 And Up Underground House ( my last copy is lost or missing in action ). I am seriously wanting to build a Unibomber Shack come Spring. So even if some cash goes to lumber you still benefit from my writing about it. On the back burner ( I don’t know if I’ll get around to it ) is reloading a small number of cartridges continuously, just to test for myself how many reloadings I can do with the Enfield sloppy action. You can pretty much shoot anywhere around here as long as it isn’t too close to a dwelling and you have a backdrop. I ordered Wayne Goddards $50 Knife Workshop book. I don’t know if I’ll actually ever build a knife but it sounds like a good reference book. Nine months after a minion recommendation I’m finally ordering Nourishing Traditions, which I believe debunks the “eat only veggies or die” diet books. And for fun I ordered Arktos: The Polar Myth and Reich Of The Black Sun. Another thing to keep in mind about my Amazon commissions is that I rarely get paid for the stuff I recommend. People use my links and go shopping for other stuff. Just in case it worries you I’m profiting by recommending things I don’t think are minion worthy.

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The Soviets were pretty big on Five Year Plans. They rarely worked out so I think the time frame was meant to erase most peoples memories. But they were meant to convey Big Changes For The Better. In our Five Year Plan, things definitely won’t be for the better. I was nosing around Creekmores site (http://www.thesurvivalistblog.net/ ) hoping to steal something and came across the comments section for his cheap solar setup article ( actually written better than mine, damn it ). A flippant comment about using the thin film panels was made to the effect that they lasted only five years and so should be avoided. Now, I immediately thought this was silly. If we were just talking about frugal living off grid, yes, it is smarter to buy the better made crystal type. They might cost twice as much but they will last three to five times as long. But we are talking about survivalism here. Planning for the end of civilization. And frugal survivalism at that. It is better to buy Better Than Nothing now rather than having nothing come the crash because you were holding out for better quality. Then you just have a pile of worthless Greenbacks. But that isn’t even the best point. Your batteries only last five years! If you bought thirty year panels but your batteries die in five, what was the point? If commerce is undisrupted then you can buy another cheap panel or battery. If we are living in smoldering piles of rubble, a battery fed light is the least of your problems.

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Come the collapse, you need to keep in mind the Five Year Plan. In five years, pretty much everything you are using now is gone. All your ammunition has been used up. All your storage food is gone ( even with lots of grain and supplementing with a garden and game ). Your batteries are dead, and the supply of used batteries from cars has already been sold and seen an early failure ( a car battery will have a very short life already used and not being designed for alternate energy use like a marine battery would be [ yes, there are better batteries but a marine/RV battery combines affordability with Good Enough performance ] ). Your clothes are most likely still okay, with all the extras you got from garage sales and thrift stores. Same with cheap footware. But they most likely are wearing out quickly due to prolonged use and inadequate cleaning. Even if you find treated gasoline it is already turned to turpentine. Your duct tape is a slimy glob. Everything you are used to and love is failing as entropy speeds up and attacks with a vengeance.

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I don’t think the Kurt Saxon Cottage Industry Plan is viable as envisioned. It tries to replicate a positive energy economy while we will be in an energy deficit situation. It is a good start, but don’t bet on being left alone to practice your earth friendly family business. Odds are the Kings men will be knocking at your door with a tax receipt and an introduction to the Guild Master. I know I need to focus more on the post collapse life after the Industrial Age prep items are all used up. It isn’t an easy row to how, knowing that particle future, even for me. But certain big picture items are clear, such as how far we will fall. The question is just in the details. All for now. Have a safe New Years celebration. I’ll be posting tomorrow as I’m coming into work for a few hours for food pick-ups.

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My Web Page http://www.bisonpress.com/

eat what we want

EAT WHAT WE WANT


Today’s article is only marginally related to survivalism. Get over it. Nothing earth shattering occurred to me and I thought this was an amusing concept. And we all know how important it is to amuse me so I don’t get all grumpy and irritable and say hateful things I might regret later. Besides, you got a firearm article yesterday so you shouldn’t be needing much of a Doomer fix right away.

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I’m not old enough to remember first hand, but in the by gone glorious yesteryear of the “Leave It To Beaver” era, it seems that a rather different concept of nutrition was taught to innocent school children. Of course, they also got disease laden polio inoculations as their dad was exposed to radiation experiments in the military so it shouldn’t come as a huge surprise that the ever-centralizing federal government was abusing the trust of its citizens. You see little clips about commercials where doctors are smoking cigarettes, and then they include some chirpy little grade school teacher with those torpedo bras teaching her chargers to indulge in oodles and gobs of meat and other protein of animal origin. Those showing the clips are trying to showcase how ignorant our grandparents were and how enlightened we are now. Of course, I draw a different conclusion which will only surprise you if you are a new loyal minion and haven’t quite got the fact that I’m a tad paranoid.

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Are you surprised that schools are propaganda machines? Are you surprised that the money interests have something to say about the curriculum? School has always been about drilling a strict schedule into kids fresh off the farm. In an agricultural society, time was measured in seasons. In the industrial economy, time was compressed into a daily factory shift. The bell rings, you arrive. The bell rings, you take lunch. The bell rings, you leave. The school rhythm matched the factory. Later, you had shop class to help you fit into the factory system. And you had free, compulsory drivers education to get you behind your own automobile at the time where Detroit was much of the economy. Notice how drivers ed is now being privatized and charged a fee for? The economy no longer is “driven” by autos. No need to subsidize new drivers. Anyway, back in the fifties/sixties, food had yet to centralize on the scale it is now. It was still very much a family farm, more localized endeavor. Animals still fertilized the ground in a symbiotic relationship with crops rather than the food factories they have now where dung is a pollutant. Young bodies growing fast were advised that animal protein was super duper for you. I don’t know if any particular group benefited from this teaching, but I can guess that someone is from changing over to a vegetable based diet like we are pushing now.

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“Diet For A Small Planet” is a great book and has merit, but I still believe that a diet high in meat is healthy for you. If you need protein, and an eight ounce piece of meat gives you as much as several pounds of beans and grains, isn’t your body working a lot less to get its nutrients? Isn’t that a good thing? Yes, you need whole grains. But I think the current pyramid advocating a mostly grain/legume diet is more a reaction to scarcity and over population than it is good science. I can think of a few mega-corporations that benefit from the future where meat is a luxury and corn and soy are much more expensive and used by most for the bulk of their calories. Why sell your bio-engineered Franken seed to farmers to feed cows when it can go directly to the dinner table and have a lot more of a mark-up and profit? Plus, it fits in with the general theme of gradually scaling back peoples expectations.

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Yes, I preach a grain and bean survival stash. Not because it is the best diet but because it is the cheapest way to get a bare bones diet. It will keep you alive in reasonable health. It isn’t close to perfect however. No compromise ever is. Not believing everything the government tells you should include disbelief over their claims of nutrition. Consider this. Hospitals, at least half funded by the Federal government indirectly, hire nutritionists to plan meals. They put corn under vegetables. Corn is a grain. This is how much these dumb asses know about food.

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I forgot to link the mention yesterday of the fiction series “Sharpe”, which I love for the black powder weapons tactics. There you go.

smelly guns

SMELLY GUNS


I’m plugging a book today, but before we start I’ll cover a few more conventional ones. Last week I read “Savage Wilderness” by Harold Coyle which covers the French & Indian wars prior to the Revolutionary War. It wasn’t bad historical fiction, but for black powder weapons tactics I much prefer the Sharpe’s series. I finally waded through WM H. Kotke’s “The Final Empire: The Collapse Of Civilization: The Seed Of The Future”. It isn’t a bad book, but it is hard to read and is 400 pages of dense warning about how we are all going to die. Normally I love that kind of thing ( or, say, the equally thick but much easier to read tirade against central bankers in “The Creature From Jekyll Island”-thanks to the those minions who recommended it ) but he veers so far into left field half the time he destroys the pleasure of the coming collapse. I mean, come on, I agree that agriculture eventually destroys civilizations through soil depletion but when you start blaming female slavery and cancer on agrarian society you kind of lose me. He even had to dance around centuries of history in his defense of indigenous hunter/gatherers as being so peaceful and cooperative rather than warlike. Amongst other inconsistencies. I can sum up most of the book for you, however, because I love you and want to save you money ( just send me half of what you save and we’ll call it even ). The entire globe is facing biological destruction and only by embracing permaculture and Native American spirituality can we survive. Okay, really it isn’t that bad, but at least a third of the book is Hippy Dippy crap and must be skipped through. The rest is good.

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A minion wrote to me last week and it was like a school reunion. Back in the early nineties when the cheap way to share subversive ideas was through cheap Xerox newsletters ( I believe a first class stamp was 19 cents ), I wrote The Walter Mittey Papers. It was truly terrible as I was just learning how to write, but those that stuck with me through that early start are always nice about it and compliment me on my ideas if not their presentation. With fellow newsletters the usual practice was to trade issues at no charge. One such was Cybertek, a curious mixture of computers, hacking and survivalism. I never really got the mix, although now I like to imagine I’ve figured out he will be the go to guy to see to keep computers running after a collapse. Although, it could just be those were his two hobbies. I liked his newsletter, and he has written a book now which is available online.

http://www.lulu.com/product/download/musings-of-a-man-in-black-prometheus/6050144

You can download it for free, and if you love it can buy the paper version for about $11. It is scary how much we think alike, our two biggest influences ( besides the times we lived through ) being Kurt Saxon and Ayn Rand. However, I do take offense that he doesn’t love Enfields the same way I do. He is firmly in the camp of the 308 and 30-06.

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The Lee-Enfield, the Queens Own Rifle, the rifle that kept uppity brown natives in line for a half of a century, is in my opinion one of the best bolt action military rifles ever made. No, it isn’t marksmen accurate. It was never meant to be. The British never gave up on massed fire, from the inception of gunpowder shoulder fired rifles to the inglorious end of empire. Curious, as their longbowmen were renowned for long range accuracy. Or perhaps not so curious since the first few centuries of firearms saw very inaccurate rifles and massed fire was the only way around that obstacle ( and it is hard to argue with the success ). The Americans used their vast resource base to combine a more individual approach of fire with the need to shovel tons of lead down range by using semi-autos and the Germans stuck with accurate bolt actions to conserve the ammunition they couldn’t mass produce on the same scale. The Enfield shines in battlefield conditions. It is one of the hardest bolt actions to jam with dirt and fouling. The Mauser, although much more accurate, is far more sensitive to jamming. In my personal opinion, it is better to sacrifice accuracy to assure your rifle functions under adverse conditions. Post Apocalypse isn’t going to be firing range clean. It is going to be crawling through the mud and living for a month in the field dirty. No one should abuse their rifle and let it stay dirty, but it is also very foolish to rely on a rifle that needs cleaning during a firefight. The Mauser isn’t a piece of steaming dog crap like the M-16, but I still prefer a rifle that cycles easily even when fouled rather than be trying to jam the bolt home as a pack of dogs tries to eat me for lunch. Bolt action sacrifices rate of fire in its ammunition conservation ( very important after the ammo factories close ) so you don’t want to slow down the rate of fire even more with a bolt that clogs with dirt and powder residue.

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You can still get Enfields for under $150. Yes, the ammo is no longer available as surplus and you must spend full retail on recent manufacture. But why should that stop you from buying something other than 308? The price is the same either way, and 308 is no longer available in surplus. The ammo is the same price, and sometimes 303 will be more readily available since not as many folks are buying it. Instead of buying an easily jammed Mauser because it uses 308, you should buy an Enfield and use the 303 round. I wouldn’t recommend the Indian Enfield in 308 since it uses the WWI rifle ( No.1 ) rather than the WWII Enfield ( No.4 ). The No.4 is far superior with better metal and sites. And, if this isn’t enough to convince you, remember that Baby Jesus is on my side here. After I bought land in Elko I came to visit. The exit number to Elko is 303. That my friends is a divine message that I was meant to live here. And that the Enfield is the favorite of the Gods. Not no stinking Kraut rifle.

END

bastards one and all

BASTARDS ONE AND ALL


I would like to thank Eugene from the Late Great State of Nevada ( where whores are expensive and sheep are nervous ) for the extra generous holiday donation. The wife says thanks for her half ( I’m pretty tight with an allowance so she doesn’t always have her own spending money ). And to Nova, thank so very much for the book. When you send me a book, you automatically are expunged from the Official Bison Liquidation List, even if you are from California. This is a very coveted prize, needless to say. He is the author of “American Apocalypse”. Now, as fate would have it, I had ordered that very book last month and read it the day before Christmas. His copy arrived too late. I don’t bring this up to appear ungrateful, because outside of, say, an instruction book on gay marriage I’m happy to get any and all printed material. I bring it up because when I spend my own cash on a book it had better be worth it. If the book is free I can be a bit more forgiving. If I bought it myself and I loved it, that is the highest praise I can deliver ( an otherwise acceptable book might fail my frugal test ). I loved “AA”. It is an economic collapse novel, and thus not exactly a “fire fight away from the stew pot” total collapse story. It is also Book One, so it ends rather abruptly. Perhaps it veers into the militia genre. But all that didn’t matter. I loved it, grade A entertainment. I couldn’t put it down. No training manual, just Doomer Porn. But some of the best I’ve seen recently. Nova, you lazy bastard, hurry up with Book Two. I’ll buy it.

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When I make a cavalier, off the cuff remark that everyone is an evil bastard, it is easy to dismiss my ramblings as me just having a bad hair day. You ignore my warning and proceed to send Nigerian telemarketers your Social Security number, fail to buy storage food thinking that Katrina was a one time event and in any emergency the Federales will be throwing MRE cases on your head from a black helicopter, fall in love and ignore a pre-nup agreement, and give the crack dealer the money with his promise he will be right back with your blow. So let me explain in more detail so you can take me seriously. I don’t think that people choose to be evil. 99% of us try to do the right thing. The other 1% are most likely hard wired wrong and don’t realize how bad they are acting. It isn’t that people are trying to do evil, it is that with self interest and justification that is second nature to us, we end up acting evil even as we love ourselves for being such stand up dudes as we are screwing over others.

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Let me use my favorite example first, ex-wives. They are always, always, the wronged party. Their husbands might have been guilty of nothing more than failing to bring in enough cash in a collapsing economy, but somehow it is their own fault. Now, as much as I hate bitches that justify screwing you over for two decades even after you put them through school to be a professional and make much more money than you ever could yet they still take half your gross income to punish you for breaking their heart and forcing them to cheat on you, I can see where they are coming from. To 99% of fems, wealth is security. If you don’t bring in the cash you are worthless to them. Even after all agreements to the contrary. To women, cash is love ( and to be fair, with guys sex is love ). This is reality, uncoated by BS. Guys are just as bad as the ladies with justifying poor behavior. Some of you are wired for “strange” and find plenty of excuses to cheat as you try to scratch the itch. Do you really think the Nazi camp guards or Blackwater mercs firing into unarmed crowds think of themselves as evil? Of course not. They are no more racked by guilt than the Highway Patrolman who pulls you over for a taillight malfunction and then ruins your life after finding a marijuana cigarette inside. Everyone justifies their behavior when it comes to putting groceries on the table. Everyone. The pastor who guilts you into a donation ( I thought up a new rip for an overly religious person that takes himself too seriously- having a crucifix up your ass. You know, like the Jarheads that have a broomstick shoved up their butt ), the wife that “loves you but isn’t in love with you” and remarries into more money. Your buddy that can’t pay back your loan for one reason after another.

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What makes people so much more dangerous than if they were simply evil is that they think they are doing no harm as they strive to look out after number one. Most folks won’t even admit their behavior is bad. So don’t expect any change. But do expect to get screwed. And come the collapse, that will become much more unpleasant than just being defrauded.

END

guest article

GUEST ARTICLE
FINANCIAL FITNESS FOUNDATIONS - PART 1



What's your Financial Fitness Foundation made of? If you're reading this than yours is probably better than the sand most Americans have been building on lately. Yep, bashing my fellow Americans again... Not for bashing sake but in the hope that more will take the cue and wake up from the drunken spending binge that they've been on for the last few decades.



I'll remind everyone that I imbibed in this cocktail hour of spending for a while in my life too. There's no judgment intended in my comments, unless you know better and refuse to make the proper adjustments. In reality, make the adjustments or don't - doesn't really matter to me but don't try to walk both roads, freedom will most likely only come at the cost of other pleasantries. At least initially!



Lately, I've been attempting to clarify my thoughts on the financial freedom opportunities that are available to everyone willing to make some adjustments. This post will be another illustration of what's bouncing around in that vast open space between my ears.



____________________________________________________________________________________________





We're all familiar with the old food pyramid from our high school health class, right. You know the one with healthy eating habits broken down as you progress up the pyramid shaped chart? Well, that's the mental picture I want you all to have from what I'm describing today... Except with financial health instead of nutrition.



Can you imagine a better foundation design than the pyramid provides? Is there a better design for standing the test of time? Well, maybe there is but since I'm not an architect, I'm not aware of it. For this illustration we're going to accept that the stability that this shape provides is going to achieve what we're after, long life expectancy and invulnerability.



Are you imagining the pyramid? See that lowest level or tier, that's where our necessities should be located... By necessities I mean those old basics, Food - Water - Shelter. I realize that this is overly simplistic, I just need to get everyone on the same page.



Only after we had these basics covered would we be able to move on to build our next level. If we were forced to pay attention to physics, that would dictate that this be required... I have to assume that anyone reading this has these 3 basics taken care of, at least for today or they wouldn't be reading this on the Internet. Most of us do have them covered but for how long? What's coming down the road that could threaten them? Job loss, physical illness or even death of a spouse - any one of these or a dozen other potentially hazardous pitfalls are waiting in the trail ahead that composes most of our futures.



The idea that if I can feed and cloth myself today, it must be alright to move onto the next level. I think that this is the premise that gets far to many folks off track. The thought that I've got today covered and we'll just let tomorrow take care of herself... Hmm, really! It seems that the laws of entropy don't allow us to take our hands off the wheel without catastrophic results!



What is ordered today has a way of becoming disordered tomorrow. That is unless diligent watch is kept to prevent this from happening... With this in mind, I think we should all go back and make sure we have our financial foundation laid solidly before we move on to whatever comes next. It's important that we remember that the foundation isn't the entire house. However, it is the critical piece that must be respected if we intend to build solidly on top of it.



Imagine that this lowest level of the financial pyramid actually is the foundation of your home. Do you take your financial life as seriously as you do this concrete footing? You should... If you were to be able to remove this concrete substructure and substitute it with just plain old soil would the house stay up? Yeah, probably for a while it would. Then winter would come and the wind would pick up, soon the beautiful home would be leaning and the cracks would certainly appear soon after. Look around, see any family members with cracks in their financial walls? If we answer this honestly, we all probably know someone that's currently out of work... Think they're seeing these cracks?



So, you're probably wondering to yourself where I'm going with this whole pyramid illustration, right? Well, we'll get there, we'll get there! If you look at this foundation I keep referring to, what do you see? That's right, just the preliminary step in building an actual house or in this case lifestyle! Not to many of us would stop the home building process at the foundation... I don't advocate stopping your financial lifestyle here either. Build the biggest, most attractive house on top of this foundation as you please! Just don't get ahead of yourself or your financial house will end up just like the house that's leaning precariously and has cracks in the walls.



Sometimes, when a house has been built on a faulty foundation, it has to be completely taken down and then rebuilt only after the problems are corrected. Many Americans are facing solutions that are this drastic, right now! Bankruptcy, foreclosure - suicide? All because the building went beyond the carrying capacity of their foundation - financial foundation. Can't happen to us? Don't believe it, it can happen to us and that's why we prep, so we have solutions to the problems that life throws our way... What better prep than a deeply dug, thoughtfully laid, wide financial foundation. Sound goods, doesn't it!



In part 2 of this post, I'm going to describe what goes into this foundation and some possibilities in how it might be built. Just like all of us, our foundations will be somewhat unique depending on what we intend to build on top of them but they all have many things in common. They all have to be built of solid materials that will stand the test of time. It'll be these similarities that we focus on... Stay tuned!





Prepper



***This is part 1 of a 5 part post series I recently completed over on - preppernation.com

water to gold

WATER TO GOLD
Good gravy, that employee lunch for Christmas ( where the socializing is kept to a minimum as they all stuff their face and then bolt for the door to enjoy the extra day and a half off ) was good. Pot luck, so we had to buy our own chow, but I’m still bloated an hour and a half later. Which is why I’m writing late. A few of us were finishing up work as the rest tore into the food, I ate, everyone else deserted ship, I cleaned up the mess and now at two I can start writing. I brought salami and cheese and as usual my food was the least eaten. No taste whatsoever. There wasfudge, celery with cream cheese with dried cranberries in it. Stop me, I’m still thinking of food. No damn fruit cake, though. As I said, no taste.
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Since Ryan of the Three Amigo’s Survival Site (http://tslrf.blogspot.com/ ) has been so restrained as I growled and snarled and made a pest of myself, I felt I needed to alert the new minions of my basic mission statement ( yes, it is Make Money, Get Chicks For Free, but not officially ) which is I’m trying to prepare for the worst case scenario for the least amount of investment. So, just because I make fun of Yuppies and those owning semi-auto’s living in a thirty year mortgage doesn’t mean they are absolutely incorrect. Their brand of survivalism has its place for some people in some instances. One size doesn’t fit all. If you are poor and are afraid of running out of time and assume the worst will happen, then I’m right. Otherwise, The Three Amigo’s have advice that is just as good as mine. I always see both sides of the coin, but presenting the illusion of rational thinking and reason just ain’t my bag, baby. I go for shock and amusement, but every once and again such as now I try to set the record straight.
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In the not so distant future, almost all of us are going to face heating bills so outrageous that the ones from 2008 looked almost free. Assuming the economy and distribution system stay in place, a lot of us are going to need to drastically cut back on the amount of energy we use to heat the homestead. Food and energy are guaranteed to keep going up, as is inflation. At best our wages/pensions will stagnate ( they could go down, too ). Eventually your heating bill is going to face severe cuts. And we can cut way back before we are really all that inconvenienced. No one needs to keep the house at a constant 80 degrees. Or even seventy. You can stay at 55 and with a wool sweater and thick socks, perhaps a hat, and stay comfortable. You might need a throw blanket while stationary. But the one stumbling block for most people seems to be that they need to blast the furnace so that enough heat gets to the water pipes so they don’t freeze and burst. I am a macho, He-Man, descended from Kit Carson, and would love to live in a more modest heat, you proudly proclaim. Alas, sigh, I can’t. The pipes will freeze and it will cost thousands of dollars to fix. My hands are tied. Really, it has nothing to do with the wife threatening me with no sex and a butcher knife to the scrotum.
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Liar! Lying liar! You are whipped, pure and simple. You would rather spend four hundred bucks a month than give up your once a week loving. Fine. Keep wasting that cash you could be using for preps. However, when the time comes that you simply have no choice and must turn down the thermostat, I hope you can easily adapt to no water. The solution to turning your heat way down is to turn off your running water. Now, I’m no home owner, and I don’t play one on TV. But there has to be a relatively simple way to turn off the house water but leave a source to fill containers from. I know that the water pipe in the city park never freezes, regardless of the outside temperature. Perhaps that red painted “pump lever” is made for outside use. A ranch supply place would have the answer, an outdoor faucet. If you installed that outside or in the basement, could you turn off the rest of the house water? I think it is something to look into. Fill up containers and fill/flush by hand inside. That is what I do now. And when I was living in a trailer park, a neighbor couldn’t afford to heat tape her water hose so she just hauled in gallon jugs of water from the outside faucet. Primitive, but effective. Shower with the cleaned bleach jug with four holes in the cap. Flush the toilet by filling the bowl.
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My water jugs don’t start to freeze inside until the outside gets into the single digits and the sun doesn’t come out. In your more modestly heated home they won’t freeze at all. And remember, use the food grade five gallon buckets with the Gamma Seal lids for your water buckets. Much more sturdy than camping water jugs, can be stacked, and only cost a few bucks more each. Merry Christmas, best to you and the family. A guest article will be posted tomorrow.
END

stuck in place

STUCK IN PLACE
Well, yesterday saw my sarcasm and whit in full force and Ryan came along and deflated my efforts with a polite reply. I feel gypped. Damn you, man! A correction, I gave reference to the book “1612” when it should have been “1632”. You may, this one time only, make fun of me and call me a dumbass without first mentioning what wonderful hair I have. I was in a big hurry yesterday and as I was trying to finish up the article the massed hoards were pounding on my door buzzer. Let us in! Let us in! We can’t be expected to buy our own holiday meal! I actually got complaints that I didn’t include cans of milk along with the pumpkin pie mix. You didn’t get a friggin pie pan, a pie crust, a turkey pan, a thermometer or me at your house washing up the damn dishes for you ya puke! My God, did they change the date of Christmas this year? Did you not have 365 days to plan for it? OK, I’m calm, relaxed. Gnome Day is almost here ( the day people stop donating holiday food and I can get caught up on the huge pile of crap already littering the isles ).
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You know, I know, and Ross Perot knows that at least once a week now I’m going to reference the blog site www.americanenergycrisis.blogspot.com to either support my arguments or have someone to belittle and chant hurtful things about. In this case, I direct your attention to Monday’s article wherein he admits that things are not quite as rosy as he has projected and the Doomers have a point about how we are all going to die soon. Okay, he didn’t say that outright, but you can tell he was trying to hint around that I am his new god and he now worships me and he would come out and say that but the other investment bankers on his block would make fun of him and perhaps even TP his house. He admitted that he hadn’t factored in the transportation and credit end of farming. This is as close as its going to get being fearful and paranoid because basically he is pretty optimistic about the coming collapse. But this is one smart dude, so we just might make a doomer out of him yet. In the meantime I’ll be the shrill unreasonable voice in the wilderness screaming that we are all doomed and the only consolation prize you are going to get for preparing is that you will be the last one in the stewpot. He also mentioned that the economy will continue to take a big steaming squishy dump and basically you are pretty much stuck where you are now at.
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I’m pretty sure we can all agree that things will just keep getting worse economically. If 2009 was a reprieve from 2008 it is only because we created so much credit and cash and sold the last of the countries assets for a short stay of execution. I predict that 2010 will be a replay of 2008, because you can’t paper over real energy problems indefinitely. And that is if we are lucky. Unlucky, next year will be even worse than 2008. So, your options are extremely limited. The basic problems won’t go away. Your house will stay upside down in its equity. The problem of potential layoffs will get worse. Once secure and safe jobs will start failing ( I predicted LEO layoffs before news of Oakland, CA, that some officers were being replaced by security guards ). Credit will be even harder to get. More banks will fail ( gee, that’s a real difficult prediction ). In short, you can’t just pull up roots and move to a more desirable location because that would mean giving up the house and perhaps not being able to find any job at all. For most of us, and especially Yuppie Scum with vindictive trophy wives that have a divorce lawyer on speed dial, this is the same as saying you are stuck in place.
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Even my loyal minions, perhaps numb from my repetitive assaults on their luxurious living standards and at least open to the idea of voluntarily stepping down in lifestyle, view the future as a trap they are unable to escape from. I don’t look down my nose at others for surviving in place. After all, I didn’t move off grid right away but waffled until my kids moved away from the area and my parents started looking for property elsewhere. I am far from perfect. I completely understand not wanting to uproot and take a huge step backwards. But just keep this in mind. Thing are guaranteed to get worse. In an energy decline model, where the entire economic structure is built on increasing energy inputs for growth and stability, you will see inevitable collapse. It is going to happen. Not in your children’s future but in yours. You will be affected. If you don’t volunteer to make the sacrifices now, they will be forced on to you later. And you won’t like the changes you have no control over. As hard as relocating is now, it will be harder if you don’t. Rent nice now and end up with nothing, or buy primitive now and end up with some support structure. Buy better than nothing now, or have nothing later. I would rather be living under a tarp and collecting food stamps now than living in a large metro area apartment. Got wheat/Enfields/RV and junk land?
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With nothing in the article to link, here's some random ones.  Stainless steel knives, Razor Savor, "
Bastard coated bastards with bastard filling", last weeks fiction pick, crossbow.

why not rent?

WHY NOT RENT?
I was pondering what juicy items to include today in my Amazon links ( which, by the way, I am now officially notifying you that I’ve switched from a coupon to cash for my commission. When you buy an Amazon product from my links I see about 6% as a commission. I used to use that solely for book purchases but now I’m going to spend a bit on myself plus the normal reference books. I hope you still love me ) and just decided to go off topic. According to the fiction book “1612 “, really cool martial music to use in freaking out the enemy is Shostakovich Symphony #8. If you really want to take a lot more time you can depress them with Pink Floyd ( my favorite poison ).
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Over yonder at http://tslrf.blogspot.com/ there arose with a clamor an article, Prepper Myth Busters: Dropping Out To Your Land. Now, I love the Three Amigos survival site. But in truth we disagree on a lot of things. I won’t come right out and say they are always wrong, being the holiday season and all. Okay, I actually think we have a bit of fun just disagreeing and giving each other a hard time. So I swear they wrote that article just to mess with me. But I easily arise to such bait. In essence ( but please do read the whole thing yourself ) it states that rent only comprises a third of your expenses so you can’t really gain all that much independence by moving to a junk lot in a trailer. WOW! Written in true Yuppie opulence and denial. I get the point they are trying to make, but it ignores the basic assumption that junk land and a trailer are not the only things you are going to do to lessen the golden handcuffs that bind us. A pair of handcuffs most of us willingly put on ourselves. But here at the world headquarters of the Bison Brigade ( situated in a secret underground lair and guarded by sharks with laser beams on their heads ), off grid tin shack living is just the beginning of the Officially Approved Semi-Retirement Plan. None of us under fifty ( heck, perhaps not even under sixty the way things are going ) are going to see Social Security, so there won’t be much of a retirement. The best we are going to do, if we are lucky and we can’t get approval to start ambushing California refugees and put them in stew pots ( and I don’t know if I can cede all lands south of Hawthorn, Oldsubotai, but we can talk further ), is to work until we die without medical coverage. But to do that you need to drastically reduce your needs so you can work part time.
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Unless the ass totally falls out of society, then yes, you will need to continually work and bring in some cash. But does that mean you really need a motor vehicle? A cell phone? Cable TV? Starbucks? You can live a heck of a lot cheaper by doing without a lot of unnecessary luxuries. I get that it is hard, the wife won’t do it, blah, blah. I also get that the friggin oil is starting to run out and sooner or later ( being unable to time it, I can’t say positively to panic right now, but I’m going for a decade early rather than a minute late ) all this luxury and normal modern living is leaving us anyway. Which includes the job to pay the rent. Tin box/junk land is a solution to multiple problems. It allows for cheap living now so more cash is available for preps. It allows you to avoid being homeless once the job is gone. It allows you to have a tiny version of modern living, like electricity, independent of the grid. It allows you to survive if your money supply shrinks. It helps you stay out of debt and on the margins of the rat race. It isn’t about replacing income, but about giving you the options you need in emergencies.
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And you can save most of your income by living this way. If you are lower income. Sure, high incomes don’t feel the pain of rent, much. But on the minimum wage scale, you are saving at least half by not paying rent. Even if you keep a car, your living expenses can go from a thousand a month ( and that is living in a trailer park or as a roommate, not paying for an apartment yourself ) to five hundred. With no sacrifice other than a smaller dwelling and limited electricity. All other expenditures stay the same. A few more sacrifices and you can live easily on $300. That’s what it cost me to live, minus the land payments and car expenses. Cheap land is part of being frugal, not the exclusive answer. You have to do your part in other areas. But if you do, you can live on almost nothing. And when the economy crashes, you can safely stay in place as your former workmates scamper about for a highway underpass to park under.
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solar start

SOLAR START
To answer a comment from Mahtomedi on my new links ( too many, don’t go commercial on us ), a little background. I have had Amazon links up at my web page for over two years now. All I am doing is putting them in your face every day rather than hoping you will visit them at my web page. But I’ve always relied on them for revenue. Now, I’ll never advertise the big boys. The guys selling the freeze dried foods and sleeping bags and such. I don’t blame others for doing it, everyone deserves a paycheck if they devote serious time to a blog. But it simply isn’t for me since it does mean, to a small degree, you need to kiss butt. You can’t yell from the rooftops what a worthless item is being advertised. I tell you all the time that freeze dried foods are an expensive luxury ( as are MRE’s ). And I also post them in my Amazon link. Why? Because no one is going to pull the ad for it. If that is your thing, go for it, I make a commission. Or buy something else through Amazon. I’ll make a commission off that and everyone is happy. The advertiser doesn’t get all bent out of shape. Because I’m using a third party seller. This is how I have it both ways. Being able to dis on a product while at the same time letting you choose for yourself if you want it. This doesn’t mean I can’t be bought. If someone wants to bribe me, I’ll cave in. The only problem is, I can’t stay bought. I’m like a politician playing both sides. You can try to buy me but in the end I’ll betray your trust and tell my loyal minions the truth about your product. Not that anyone has tried, dammit.
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Now that I’ve justified selling out like the cheap whore I am, more of today’s worthless links shall begin. I read the latest ( for the library ) Harlan Coben this weekend. I like his never ending suspense style, even if his common theme seems to be that suburban Yuppie Scum are people too and have their own problems. Cry me a friggin river in your SUV waiting in line at Starbucks, slut. I also read Pirate Latitudes. More fluff than Coben. But a light read. I stopped reading after Timeline as it was getting a bit too formulistic. Each chapter ending in an unnecessary cliff hanger. But what can I say? It was gloomy and cold and cloudy and I needed a break from doom so I just read escapism fiction all weekend. Next weekend is three days so I should concentrate more on blog stuff. Today, at the request of a minion, simple start for solar. A few years back I bought a butt load of panels from Northern. I believe three ( okay, three isn’t usually a butt load by definition, but it was a major investment on minimum wage ) of the Chinese made 15watt units. They were on sale so that the shipping was included in the $99 each price. When I moved to the Bison Compound I hooked one up. One panel to one controller to two batteries already in the trailer. I only used one light bulb, but it was a car brake light used in RV’s ( 18watt ) and the one panel couldn’t keep up once the fall clouds rolled in. I tried everything else I could think of. An extra battery in the truck. A jumper battery I charged at work ( transported in my bike basket ). Taking the computer to work for a recharge ( I stopped after Creekmores notebook tragedy reminded me how dangerous it was ). At last, I happened into a free panel from a coworker. He had a cabin he couldn’t get to often and the panel was draining his battery. So I got the panel, the crystal type rather than the thin film. 40watts. I also finally bit the bullet and hooked up the second thin film panel, leaving one in reserve/as backup rather than two. I now had seventy watts and it was enough to get through the cloudy days ( as discussed last week ).
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I’ve already had one panel fail me, a Chinese made one. Hint-if you clean the dirt off a panel and it shocks you, it isn’t sending the charge to the panel. But my other two panels have been going over a year. When you buy the cheap panels it is going to be hit and miss. But better four thin film panels where one fails than one crystal panel where all your eggs are in one basket. Plus, the cheap panels allow you to add one panel at a time as finances permit. Better to have one cheap panel come the crash than a wad of paper cash you were saving for a quality panel. In the end, sure, having half thin film and half crystal is great. Crystal produces more juice and lasts longer, thin film produces some juice under low light conditions and is cheaper. But if finances are tight ( if really tight, just go with AA/C type rechargeable batteries and a small solar shoe box size charger ) just buy one thin film at a time. The auto parts stores usually have them for $99 ( recently including the controller ), the mail order firms have them for $75 plus shipping ( equaling about the same price ). Remember your hero- one is none and two is one.
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Solar is easy. The Chinese panels come with all the required wires and doo-dads. Join the right color wires together and you are in business. Yes, it is hideously expensive power at $6.66 a watt ( get it? Chinese evil panels, 15 watts into a hundred bucks ). But for the coming collapse it is going to be the longest lasting and/or least conspicuous.
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CAR/TENT

CAR/TENT
First, our recent comments. I tried the motor vehicle to charge an additional battery, as outlined in How to be Your Own Power Company: Low Voltage, Direct Current, Power Generating System, and had no luck with it as I am too close to town ( not enough distance charging ). So, solar is all it is for power. I hate the thought of a generator, not necessarily because it is the weakest leak with gasoline but because for the first time in my adult life I am living with no neighbors. Which means no noise. To run a generator would be like spitting in the face of the Gods. To Vlad, thanks for the shout out, and I don't recommend "The Road" because it teaches anything survival wise ( it doesn't as far as personal skills ) but because it is the gloomiest, most depressing post-Apocalypse fiction ever. It offers a glimpse how bad it could get, which is valuable in and of itself. Just like "One Second After", it is a walk up call/inspiration rather than instructional. For that, I can recommend"The Frugal Survivalist" and "How to Prosper During the Coming Bad Years" . And speaking of shout outs, I believe it was Big Bear that originally recommended the 12v LED lighting to me. Without that power saver I would have long been screwed on my solar system. Hey, this linking almost pertenant products is fun
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I'm sorry if I'm not giving you huge, earth shattering, intellecually stimulating, fare as of late. As I’ve said, November and December are the Hell months here at work where everyone wants to be generous all at once. If that isn’t bad enough, my boss who usually leaves me alone most of the time sat on a tack and suddenly took an interest in the back room. Everything had to be reorganized and moved around ( envision moving twelve foot high, twenty foot long metal shelves filled with canned food ). During the holiday season. Plus, every day during lunch someone is bringing crap in, interrupting me. I’m so friggin stressed I’ve invented a new holiday between Christmas and New Years. It celebrates the end of the holiday donations. Still trying to think up a good name. Perhaps Gnome Day ( Go away, NO MorE ). My point is that my wandering attention span I usually devote mostly to writing my drivel is totally sidetracked. I’m trying to pull something out of my butt.

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When I recommend tent or car living on junk land ( on payments ) as a better than nothing, cheap way to live after your pink slip is delivered ( since you won’t buy junk land up front for cash, put a trailer on it and stock it with wheat and 303Brit ammo ahead of time ), I’m recommending both. Not one or another. Van living is best, if possible. I’ve already covered that in detail. Tent living is close enough to free that anyone can do it. But it is better if you combine the two. A tent is cheap, but it leaks and is just one thin nylon skin between you and a bear. Most of us already own a vehicle or need to get one to commute to work, but they are very cramped. I would sleep in the van. Only staying inside during the day in bad weather. Have a tarp slung on its side as a porch with chairs and a table set up, if you are commuting to work on a bike. The tent I would use for storage so that the van or car stays uncluttered. If you have curtain climbers, they get another tent. If a bear gets them you can always pop out another one. By using the tent as storage, you avoid climbing in between boxes and crap to get to bed, plus you can quickly take off in the morning to work. If you are storing all the back issues of Big Juggs magazines, or other perishable items, sling a tarp over it.
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Just making the best of a bad situation by trying to maximize space and minimize hassle.
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