retrieved from the future

RETRIEVED FROM THE FUTURE


I believe it was last Friday that http://www.survivalblog.com/ had an article on how dandy and great the AR-15/M-16 family of assault rifles ( The German Assault Rifle: 1935-1945 ) were. Normally most of you know that this was a red cape waved in front of my face and that I would respond to it in a wild and irrationally explosive manner. For those new minions that just walked in and are surprised, the short story is I absolutely loathe the M-16. The long story, prompted by the Rawles ( Patriots: Surviving the Coming Collapse ) article is that the M-16 is a foul hunk of crap. Any government that sends its troops into battle with a flimsy easily befouled anemic assault rifle should be overthrown and its rulers hung from lampposts. Put aside the issue of assault rifle versus battle rifle. Put aside the limp member round. Assume that the assault carbine has a tactical place in the mechanized armed forces. Just on its design the M-16 is a hunk of crap. I loved it to pieces for its light weight and zero recoil but that is its only attribute. It jams WAAAAAY too easy. I was issued an A1 model in basic training. The same hunk of crap they used over in Vietnam. It jammed all the time in the field straight from parade ground inspection ready clean. You can’t tell me it was the ammunition like Friday’s article claimed unless we were issued the same type 15 years after the Vietnam War was over. As was stated in a reply to the original article, if you buy aftermarket equipment you can decrease the errors inherent in the design of this dog. So you pay twice the price for a carbine still performing poorly. Good choice.

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I went to the ranch store this weekend to stock up on rimfire ( BARSKA 3-9x32 Plinker-22 Riflescope )( and incidentally to get Herself a better pair of mittens for the winter as the poor dear has the circulation of roadkill and needs to keep her hands warm ). Since my minions were feeling pretty generous ( I got two more payments in the mail-thanks Sam and DW!! ) and forcing cash on me I figured it would be a good thing to buy more 22’s. I toyed with the idea of more wheat but more ammo seemed a better idea since I haven’t bought but a few rounds in the last few years. Rimfire has nearly doubled as I’m sure most of you are aware. Factor in the sales tax and the shrinking box sized ( from 550 to 525 ) and it went from 1.8 cents a round to 3.3. I figured if I waited another few years it would be over a nickel a round. Better get another thousand now.

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I also started digging again this weekend. I can’t think of a better return on my investment than Earth Pipes. You know, the deep trench that has PVC pipe that sends warmed or cooled air into the house. Put a few pipes down four feet for a hundred feet and the stabilized temperature of the ground warms/cools the air from the downhill intake pipe ( if you are on flat ground you need to have a pump to draw in the air- you can also go around and around on a lawn if you don’t have a straight 100’ shot ). I have no idea how this will perform but even a ten degree increase in winter added to my extra insulation will do wonders. My solar gain ( Solar Architecture: The Direct Gain Approach (Energy Learning Systems Book) ) is pretty good but there are also long cloudy periods plus nighttime that a little added boost will be a godsend. If I paid for a backhoe I’d double my cost so I’m going to manually dig it. Two foot wide, four deep, a hundred long. It’s going to be a bitch. The PVC I’ll buy fifty feet at a time for about $35. In no time at all, long before the digging is done I’ll have the pipe stockpiled. I’m thinking five pipes side by side, two inch types. Hopefully that will be enough air intake. And hopefully I won’t have to stop digging all winter long.

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I also read a great fiction book this weekend, “Retrieved From The Future” ( Retrieved from the Future ) by John Seymour. Yes, the same John Seymour ( The Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live It ) ( The New Self-Sufficient Gardener ) that wrote all those books on self-sufficiency and farming. I had ordered it long ago once the used book price became reasonable, knowing if I waited the price might increase to insane levels. The guy being British and a non-fiction writer, I didn’t place much hope in the book and never cared about reading it. But a small bug crawled up my butt and I decided to tackle it. And it turned out to be far better than I had anticipated. Far better than a lot of American gun porn post-apocalypse. Why did I like it? Other than it kept your interest and was well written? Because he says what I’ve been trying to tell you for years, but much better than I have. Farmers must go through a period of crop confiscation and displacement and will suffer from power struggles over who shall rule them.

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Now, keep in mind this was written in the mid 1990’s. I think he nailed a lot of current events. In the book, a combination of Chinese economic dominance cornering the market on buying oil and Shiite attacks against middle east refineries made oil supplies dry up. Today we have China buying more oil and so imports here shrink. And we invaded Iraq and Afghanistan which did take a lot of oil offline, to some degree mimicking refinery attacks. In that aspect his fiction written fifteen years ago before Peak Oil ( Hubbert's Peak: The Impending World Oil Shortage (New Edition) ) was a known entity is very closely mirrored by reality. Not a lot of space is devoted to the causes of the collapse, but instead dwells on the lot of farmers and how society is dependent on them. All the panic you hear now about crops being dependent on nitrogen fertilizers and such was written about here. He doesn’t touch Peak Oil, but uses the lack of imports and terror attacks to highlight the point that the oil will run out one way or another and some day soon. He talks about the lack of transportation for crops, how soil has been killed by chemicals, how organics deliver far less but for far longer, etc. And not only are these issues talked about, he also goes into “big picture” looks at how an entire region runs out of fuel, fights over food, and transitions to a sustainable agriculture ( in England of course ). It is a combination of the personal and the wide view. Although only 200 pages, a darn good read and instructive. Turmoil, chaos, death, then transition.

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