Here’s a few fun filled facts for you. Why do I tell you these things? Is it to fill you with paranoia, inviting you into my world of fear and pain? Trying to get you to move up to Elko so we can form the nucleus of the next Mongol Empire ( The Mongol Empire: Its Rise and Legacy
)? Not at all. It is because I’m all about the caring. I love to share. I love to help a brother out. First, the price of beef during the American Revolution ( American Insurgents, American Patriots: The Revolution of the People
) rose 33,000% due to inflation. But, hey, don’t let that be a lesson to you. Uncle Obammy will take care of you. We aren’t like those stinking Krauts or those Africans who experience hyper-inflation When Money Dies: The Nightmare of the Weimar Hyper-inflation
). Americans don’t do inflation because we are Baby Jesus’ special chosen ones. Oh, you poor deluded fools. Just shut up and keep cashing in those Social Security checks ( you may as well cash them because the government is beyond broke and even canceling the entire retirement program won’t save them, just don’t expect those checks to buy diddly ). No danger there. COLA will always keep pace with inflation. What? No COLA this year or next? Why, that is SOOOOO odd. How could that happen? I’m confused. You mean, no COLA even if suddenly grain prices shoot up to catastrophic levels? Which brings up fun fact two. Kazakhstan ( Apples Are from Kazakhstan: The Land that Disappeared
) and Ukraine are number seven and number six respectively in world grain exports. And they are experiencing the exact same weather that Russia is right now. Oh, but please don’t worry your pretty little heads about that. Let’s see. Canada grain down 25%. 13 million people displaced by Pakistan flooding. Chinese flooding forces three million to relocate. Thailand drought. Half of all smallholder farms wells drying up in India. Russia stops grain exports. Could two more major exporters be next? Where does most of the Russia grain go? The middle east. Where Pakistan is, and where wheat rust is due to arrive at next. Oh, but no need to panic. All is well. I will so enjoy doing the “told you so” dance here really soon ( if I’m wrong, you can enjoy my discomfort and nasty denials ).*
Not to long ago I shared my pain with you over Kindle ( Kindle Wireless Reading Device, Wi-Fi, 6" Display, Graphite - Latest Generation
) books. If I recall correctly, I said that I had no problem with the reader, but the books were way overpriced. What really got my dander up was Tainter’s book “Collapse Of Complex Societies” ( The Collapse of Complex Societies (New Studies in Archaeology)
). The Kindle edition was $32 while a used paper book was $33 plus $4 shipping. I really didn’t think Amazon needed to make that much profit off of an e-edition. Now, to be fair, it could have been the fault of the book publisher that wanted a huge cut of that price. If it was published by a taxpayer funded university odds are that they are broke from buying derivatives to finance the lavish retirement of their presidents, which of course disappeared into a black hole two years ago and now the idiots have no retirement funds and neither does the state the school is in because they did the same thing, but the states can only take out low interest loans to finance their deficits because all the money from the federales is going to bail out the banks and forcing the states to take out loans keeps the bankers alive ( did you catch that about the Fed wanting to buy derivatives to “help the economy with liquidity”?- they have absolutely no shame being bailed out of the mess they created ). Perhaps I was being a bit harsh. I mean, I absolutely love the company Amazon all to pieces. So I should give them the benefit of the doubt. So I got to thinking about Kindle again, and its place in survival strategy.*
Before, Kindles were $200. I was surely not interested. It would take a lot of books being bought at a whole one or two bucks less than paper to pay off a Kindle purchase. But, now the entire equation has changed. Now, a Kindle is $139. That is almost like saying they are $100. I mean, if you closed your eyes real tight and went on a visit to Happy Place ( Happy Place
), you might convince yourself you barely paid over a hundred for that bad boy. Now, pray tell you scream in consternation at my unwillingness to ever get to the friggin point without jettisoning my mental diarrhea at high velocity, why do I want a Gott-Dang Kindle? I don’t need instant Wi-Fi delivery of books. I don’t think I can order enough books to pay for the device. I want paper which can’t be erased once the Amazon achieves ( they will back-up your ordered books for cases of digital collapse on your device ) go up in EMP smoke. Etcetera. But here was my thought. Being bound in place by supplies might be tragic. You can cache wheat and ammo and cold weather clothes. Books can be cached, but it is a pain and you can’t use them if they are. I can see caching duplicates of a few “how old tech works” books, but not your whole library. And, even if your library was safe, if you were to go with the nomadic herding lifestyle after the collapse, your library can’t be moved with you. Okay, perhaps your library is a small bookcase worth. I have hundreds of reference books alone, and hundreds more in paperbacks. I could jettison the entertainment books, but even if most of the reference books are pre-collapse specific, you don’t know which ones have tidbits of pertinent info for after the collapse. If you have a duplicate library on Kindle, you have a vital back-up.*
Book back ups are usually computer files. Those can be destroyed. But Kindle can accept your own PDF or Word files from your computer. Hence, you can get free or low cost e-books and import them to the Kindle. Which uses a HECK of a lot less electricity than a notebook or even a netbook computer ( Toshiba Mini NB255-N245 10.1-Inch Black Onyx Netbook (8 Hour Battery Life)
). You back up on disc, and hard drive and read on the Kindle which also backs up the book. You have three copies of the e-book, even if you own no paper book. The Kindle is small and portable and uses almost no juice. They claim a month of reading if you don’t use the download feature on one charge, but they don’t say how many hours of use that is. But it has to be a lot. Even at an hour a day that uses ten minutes of notebook computer power ( five hours to recharge the Kindle ). That should be a minimum six times the reading for the same electricity. No, it isn’t a mandatory must have item. Last weekend I spent $120 for 300 pounds of wheat in buckets. I don’t think I would have felt as warm and fuzzy if I’d gotten the Kindle instead. But it is something to think about.END
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13 comments:
I like the idea of a Kindle back up. Most public domain works are nearly free on Kindle; for example, I got 200 Jack London books for $3.99, and a bible for .99. I also bought a solar charger for my Kindle and I Pod, so I can read and rock after TEOTWAWKI.
LOL,Ok now that is a pic I will never get out of my head.You going Mongol on us,can see you now rideing down I80 on your bike,a pail of wheat in one hand and a blot action in the other.
I still think you have a way to bright out look on the Canada grain thing.I have been up 3 times this year sofar and belive me awhole lot more than 25% of the feilds are empty.Also I would be looking for the banks to take more than a few farms at the end of this season.
Today's post is a classic example of why you really piss me off sometimes. As mentioned, you make a good 3X what I do. And your disgusting buying habits show your bloated-bourgeousie status. Not only do you heat with propane, because you can afford it and can hump those tanks, having a working motor vehicle (and thus eschew kerosene, the heat and light fuel of The People) but you have all these fedbucks to spend on stupid stuff from Amazon.
Not only do places like MIT and the US Navy have all kinds of tech manuals and courses you can download for free. but there's all kinds of old tech out there, for the downloading. Burn onto CDs then seal the CDs up so light and air can't get to them (my wallet's a good place but we live too far apart) if you're worried about their breaking down in a few decades, there's enough old computer crap out there you'll always be able to get something working to read 'em. Archive.org, The Gutenberg Project, etc. There are private people out there with old-tech stuff on their pages for the sharing and downloading.
So not only do you buy books without knowing if they're potboilers or not, you buy this Kindle piece of junk, with current-tech lousy soldering and Chinese capacitors, that will likely break down within 3 years.
Have fun however you like but I dunno sometimes.....
Seems a flimsy sort of backup... all high tech, "oops I dropped it and cracked the screen" fragility.
How many black and white copies can you make for 140 clams? Pick 12 of your best books that easy-to-move backups would be good for, spend an afternoon doing a quick scan through them, marking the chapters or pages that would be most useful to be able to reference while scavenging a living among the broken husk of America. Take those 12 books and do B&W copies of those marked pages, for 140$ you could copy thousands of pages. Organized into cheap little (color coded if you want) folders and there you go. Backup. Not instant, and not sexy, but easy to carry, lighter than the 12 books you started out with, requiring no charging of batteries to read. Plus you could make multiple copies of the really really good pages and include them with your various food stashes. (Perhaps in a large ziplock to guard against wetness.)
Spare copies could be bartered perhaps. Or gifted to those worthy of such information.
Just a thought. :-D
First good argument to get the Kindle I've heard yet. (I've argued against it in the past) I'm beyond the land of cell phone service so the wi-fi version would be plenty.
Still not 100% convinced, but wouldn't throw one in the fire if found in my Christmas stocking.
anon825- my point was portibility and a very small power requirement. In other words, cheaper to buy Kindle than more solar panels. And, since you can download YOUR OWN BOOKS, you get all those free internet books you can read on a low power device. It is fine to have the CD backups- you should do that with both Kindle and notebook computers. But the energy required to run a conventional computer will not be available one day. To run a Kindle, and only occassionally the notebook if you need to download to the Kindle, will take much less energy. It is like buying a $13 LED bulb to replace the 50 cent conventional RV bulb- 3 watts for one and 18w for the other.
Ok I got one for last years birthday, some body loves me.
I have over 400 free books on it from amazon, from scrib'd, and other sources, I get 3-6 weeks of regular reading from it before charging if I keep the wireless off. you can changet the orentation, ie rotate right, on pdfs for make them readable, and it is nice to carry 3-400 Books all in the size of a paperback, I hardly notice the weight and just keep jaming on through my life. Tip in lost wages
I have a large collection of survival type digital books.
My solution to this problem was to install PuppyLinux on a USB key with a copy of my library. It's bootable and doesn't need a disk or software on the salvaged system.
A laptop will use a lot more power than an ereader so that's an issue but I do have a small solar panel and inverter for use with salvaged car batteries.(Works well for powering my other toys too like radios, chargers, etc..)
Not perfect but it's small, light, and cheap like my beer can stove.
It's too bad the zombie biker hoard will likely smash my toys while I run away into the woods.
Someday I plan to get an ereader which does PDF/DOC files but for now this is the best I can do.
-Your loyal minion
I'm gonna git one when I lern ta reed
for anyone shooting 7.62x39 wally world has 20 round boxes for less than 5 bucks tax included russian
Jim,
In your post you state that you bought 300 lbs of wheat for 120 bucks. Are you still buying from the feed store? I went to my local feed store here in FL. and they looked at me like I had a second head on my shoulders when I asked if they had any wheat for sale. Course they didn't have any but thought they could order it. Is there a specific type you tell them to get? They asked if I was going to plant it or use if for feed. I told them I was going to plant it. Any info you could send my way would be appreciated!
JP
anon648- you ask for whole grain wheat, fit for human consumption, no vet medicine. Explain to them that this is a fairly common grain, one that bread is made with. Don't get the cracked wheat or one that has molasses on it or some such crap. My feed store might charge a lot, but at least they have plain old grains in stock rather than just Yuppie Livestock feed. Damn city-folk.
I too was surprised about how expensive Kindle books are. Also they can randomly disappear them, ironically shown with George Orwell's 1984.
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