one to go?

ONE TO GO?


According to the comments section Friday, I’ve done a bang up job confusing those silly enough to ask my advice. I do have to apologize as I try to always go on the assumption that most folks are new to the game of prepping and I shouldn’t assume a prior level of experience or knowledge. Sure, of course there is a certain amount of middlin to advanced advice here but I hope I give enough background so that its not incomprehensible. Specifically, a bit of confusion on just what the heck I was talking about with grains and beans being added together for protein. And, yes, I know I was upstaged by Rawles here already publishing an article on Monday. But honest Injun ( did that phrase originate to imply that natives were honest in comparison to the whites who cheated them, or is it something more sarcastic- I never got its reference ) I was planning on Friday to add this to my next article. Hey, sometimes I beat Rawles ( How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It: Tactics, Techniques, and Technologies for Uncertain Times ) to the punch, such as by several years on Peak Oil Panic ( as opposed to the pixie dust and unicorn idea that we will gently float down the idyllic river of renewable energy, Volvo driving and tree hugging ) and sometimes he makes it look like I’m cheating and getting article ideas from him ( which most likely I am ).

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Complete proteins have all their amino acids. I think 17 of them but that’s not important. An egg is considered a perfect protein as it has all those in the “perfect” percentages. A grain contains some amino acids, but not all and a bean has those amino acids that a grain lacks ( this is simplified but sufficient ). Think of it as grain having amino acids #1-9 and beans having #10-17. You combine them together and then you have a protein that is complete, such as if you had eaten a big juicy fat dripping tri-tip steak ( most folks don’t agree but I think tri-tip is the best cut ). The book to read, available second hand cheap, if you want way more information than is prudent is “Diet for a small planet”.( Diet for a Small Planet ) At first the author told you to eat both beans and grains in the same meal and in later editions changed it to make it “eat both in the same day”. I can’t remember too many details but my own personal preference is to eat them in the same meal as it seems to fill you up better and give you more energy. If you look at all “third world” dishes you usually find the grain/bean combo and in the same meal.

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We all tend to simplify. Even I do it, both as I am vainly trying to get a point across to legions of stubborn minions and sometimes under time constraints when I don’t bother to elaborate. And we also tend to go for the simple to understand. We all fear the “big one”, whether it be a nuclear war ( The Cold and the Dark: The World After Nuclear War ) or avian flu ( The Fatal Strain: On the Trail of Avian Flu and the Coming Pandemic ) or whatever. But our luck, multiple problems both muddle the issue and make it more severe. A good example is our current economic crisis. It isn’t just one thing that is causing the difficulties. We have declining energy imports coupled with a real estate bubble added to an uptick in money creation combined with a socialistic federal government that thinks getting into more debt will cure the problem. You might also want to throw in global warming, currency wars amongst nations, food shortages ( Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization ) and pollution, but that is optional. The point isn’t that the derivatives market caused the problem, or will make it worse but that that combined with all of the above makes a mess no one can clean up. So today’s essay question that counts for 90% of your final grade is, do we have one to go? You know how I feel about the unfolding grain crisis. It is huge and going to go critical. Is there one more event that will push us over the edge?

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For no darn good reason, the news on the current impending volcanic eruption ( La Catastrophe: The Eruption of Mount Pelee, the Worst Volcanic Disaster of the 20th Century ) in, I think, Indonesia got me to worrying about a repeat of the early nineteenth century eruption that caused worldwide crop failures. We don’t necessarily need Yellowstone to erupt to cause farm failures. We all worry about Yellowstone. My pet theory is that everyone is so concerned about it not because it will vaporize half a state or bury the east coast in feet deep drifts of ash or wipe out all that years crops but because the ash will clog up their internal combustion toys and their fat asses will have to use manual tools ( if you’ve run out of things to worry about, think about that ash clogging up your chainsaw and you can’t get wood to get you through the “nuclear winter” ). But that’s just me being critical and unsympathetic to marshmallow people ( and before you blather on about how wonderful a tool a chainsaw is, my point is that your modern miracle petroleum tools are not sustainable long term and might even be unusable short term- manual is best ). Volcanoes erupt constantly, and there are a lot of them. Perhaps we won’t see a dinosaur killer sized one, but at what size does enough ash get into the atmosphere that added to our other crop problems ( overpopulation, decreased stockpiles, drought or flood, potential wheat rust, potential pest infestation, “zone creep”, irrigation failures, Peak Oil,[The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil ] phosphate supple issues, etc. ), we tip over the edge into mass starvation?

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And remember, you never get just one disaster at a time. A hurricane comes along and floods you out and then the ghetto dwellers riot and the Blackwater ( Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army [Revised and Updated] ) troops fire wildly into the crowd and the feds hold up shipments to make sure the drivers are in compliance with DOT regs. And that’s all in the first day. Food problems will launch wars which might include nuclear weapons. At a minimum, add war to starvation, and don’t forget to sprinkle in some epidemics caused by malnourishment. The disease usually kills you off being the lack of food does. I don’t bring this up to cause you added worry. If you have a good food stockpile ( soon, “good” will not be freeze dried meat and dairy but anything, even plain rice or flour ) there isn’t worry about food ( although you should worry about war and disease ). Rather, my point today is a lot of little events you might usually ignore might add up to a new disaster.

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