rationing

RATIONING

Both days this weekend for guest articles ( you're getting spoiled ).
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When I first started assaulting your sensibilities with this blog I would write it up at lunch time, take it home to add or proof-read and post the next morning. That was back when I had grid power and dial-up connection. Nowadays, due to both living off grid and having limited Internet time, I quickly type out some drivel ( Pure Drivel ) at lunch and post the next day with no time to revise or add to. Now, we all know I am the next best thing to sliced white bread so I can pull this sort of thing off and nine times out of ten come up smelling of roses. My dad laughs like a maniac every time I tell him a story or two of my life’s adventures ( and usually he is of a stoic nature ), announcing that I fall in horseshit and come up smelling like a rose more than anyone he knows. But when I’m not focused as well as I should, I remember key ideas and points I had wanted to include in a previous piece and forgot. Or, subconsciously, I actually wanted to do that so I would have more filler the next day. I don’t know. The shrink ain’t in and if she was it would cost more than a nickel. Inflationary forces being what they are, plus recent advances in the mapping of the physical brain. Even if our deflationary ( Conquer the Crash: You Can Survive and Prosper in a Deflationary Depression ) buddies are correct, and I’m not saying they are, and little is added in the way of currency or credit, we are still looking at commodity price inflation due to Peak Oil and overpopulation and resource depletion and pollution and a few other fun facts of modern life. As in food doubling just in the last year or two. No, I’m not talking about a short spike in eggs due to one centralized producer being shut down ( nothing fishy smelling there, move along, no payola to inspectors/Congresscritters from other producers needing to save themselves from bankruptcy ), which is temporary. Although I wonder if the one guy won’t be forced out of business and the remainder can keep eggs higher for a very long time. Remember way back in the day when we had a fire or explosion in one of our anti-freeze ( E-Z Red S102 Anti-Freeze Hydrometer ) plants? There were so few plants that the price hikes were almost permanent. I guess no one learned a thing from the Soviets and centralization. Or, for that matter, every failed civilization reliant on central irrigation. Anyway, if I might come to my point, doubling food prices mean the average family went from spending ten percent of their budget on food to twenty percent. That kind of difference, on a personal level, is highly inflationary ( add in going from two incomes to one and you really feel the pain ). So, deflation can be technically correct but not experienced by the average person.

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A loyal minion finally got around to ending her harassment of me, as I was getting all butt hurt and very sensitive, and submitted an article idea. It isn’t a sexy idea, but it is one most of us never talk about. Rationing ( WW II and Rationing - So This is Washington (1943) [DVD] Featuring Comedy Duo Lum and Abner with Roger Clark ). Or, perhaps I covered it before and my trial size of Alzheimer’s is too effective and I CRS. It is all well and good to say, supplement your wheat with trapping. And leave it at that. Even I myself give the post-collapse future short shift ( but I can still tell the difference between farming with animals and herding them, so don’t even go there ), being entirely too focused on history and the coming collapse. Of course, no one ever survived a civilization collapse and wrote about it, so we have little idea what to expect ( even the Roman period sees a three hundred year blank between the collapse and the next settled group, as admitted by the Druid Dude [ The Long Descent: A User's Guide to the End of the Industrial Age ]which should have given him reason to pause and reflect but he was too busy growing beets ). But I think what little thought we give to eating afterwards is fundamentally flawed. I’m guessing that the long process of rebuilding is going to be messy and dangerous. At first, you are going to have everyone and his brother running around and putting each other in the stew pot. Along with fighting over the last can of Fabreeze in a vain attempt to duplicate the fresh smell of the Petrol Age. It is one thing to live in Hawaii ( Hawaii: A Novel ) or the nicer parts of the orient and go play in the water everyday, and quite another to keep smelling nice in northern latitudes, what with cattle in the living room and no fuel to heat water in the winter.

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After all the looting and thievery are done ( which is why I’m advocating temporary isolated junk land hiding before relocation- you get a twofer, rent free now, a calm in the storm later ), then comes the long back and forth as various factions fight for supremacy. After that, when peace is forcibly reestablished, then trade is possible again ( and only then does your pre-’82 penny and silver rounds [ Buffalo Design 1 oz (.999) Fine Silver Round ] collection come in handy as currency ). Then you can eat from something other than your food stores. And no one knows how long that will be ( I imagine up in Rawles country, order will be quickly established by armed supremacy [ we might be talking literally a million stored rounds if all his buddies join him ] and a religious dictatorship will be established. It will suck if you are a non-believer but it will be great for trade ). My advice is to ration your stored food from day one. Don’t count on supplementation, although the occasional rat will help. This means you will need to go hungry from the start. And have everything except guard duty already done. If you plan on digging trenches after the collapse ( Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed ), all the fuel is going to come from your cupboard. Better to find the money now for a backhoe rental. Today is the only time you will have to cheaply stockpile food. In the future, its price will no longer reflect a petroleum discount

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And as far as rationing ammunition, that also must be immediate. Which is why I am such a complainer and whiner about bolts verses semi. Every suppressive round you fire is a round taken away from the future and it won’t be there to help save your life. Tactics should be sniping and retreat and ambush, not conventional military spray and pray. When the resupply lines disappear, anything from our industrial machine is an endangered species. Which includes wheat and other grains as well as ammunition. Which might be a good reason to stop pampering yourself and learn a bit of deprivation, as practice.

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My e-mail is jimd303@netzero.com
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Anyone can submit a guest article. No minimum word length, no writing skill necessary ( just get the idea across ). You retain copyright ( this must be your original writing ) and I’ll just use the once. I’ve yet to turn down an article, just don’t use the N Bomb or libel another that can sue me. Send by e-mail ( please, label as “guest article” so I can find it easily later ). Payment will be your removal from my enemies list.

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