Clark, I got your care package in the mail today. Very hearty thanks and hi ho. Folks, I wish for you to take a moment of your time, bow your head, and curse the very gods that you are not as worthy as I. Clark sent me a hand made knife with wood handle that is simply stunning. Not only is it big enough to board ships with or attack supine villagers from longboats, it is beautiful indeed. I imagine Clark will make a successful knifesmith ( Wayne Goddard's $50 Knife Shop, Revised
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I read the Kunstler book “The Witch Of Hebron” ( The Witch of Hebron: A World Made by Hand Novel
) this weekend. It was a very well written novel- I didn’t want to put it down. That said, it was a bit overpriced and had almost nothing to do with a post-collapse life outside of the characters backgrounds he had already detailed in “World Made By Hand”. ( World Made by Hand,A Novel, 2008 publication )
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I also read an old book that a loyal minion had mailed me, bless his heart. “The Face Of Battle” by John Keegan ( The Face of Battle: A Study of Agincourt, Waterloo, and the Somme
) was an attempt to look at battles from the individual soldiers perspective rather than from the commanding generals. I liked the book as it was well written rather than dry and dull like it could have been from an English professor type. I especially liked his long drawn out sentences, in some cases close to half a page long, as I thought I was the only idiot that delighted in such shenanigans, liberally sprinkling commas around like flies on horse offal as if they were the only means of stringing random thoughts together, which if you think about for just a few seconds is in fact the case since they work just as well as anything else even if it does aggravate the hemorrhoids of the Grammar Police who are a rather stuffy bunch and probably never get laid and so must be prodded as much as possible by those of us who write without any formal education but have massacred numerous keyboards in an on-the-job training and delight in abusing the Queens English ( The Queen's English: And How to Use It
) since it is just a mongrel cur of a language anyway and deserves no respect until you get to know it a bit better and then it can be a bit cute and loveable but should never be taken too seriously as if it were a purebred being readied for a show.*
The book covers three battles. Agincourt, Waterloo and the Somme. He thus covers the iron weapons, black powder and automatics and armor, focusing on western Europeans of similar culture in his quest for how the common soldier feels in battle. This isn’t about how the soldier lives. There are no tales of camp life ( Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making
) or of equipment. Rather, what motivates different generations to risk their lives. Which got me thinking about the collapse combatants and their motivation. Come the end of Oil Age, medicine is going to take a huge leap backwards ( this was covered rather well in “With Of Hebron” come to think of it, so I suppose there is that in favor of the book even if it was only a few pages out of three hundred ). Getting wounded in combat is going to be something of a death sentence. No, not all wounds will kill. But in the period between the oil economy dying and the rebirth of a sustainable agricultural economy, there will be little to no medical care. If your immune system came heal you, you’ll live through minor injuries. Chances are no medic will help you out. Even the best supplied survivalist group can only care for intermediate wounds for so long before their modern materials run out. And attending EMT school ( assuming we are all blessed with that kind of motivation and free time ) will only marginally help your doctoring skills without modern equipment and medicine. *Since medical care has to wait until the cropland is fought over and conquered, until life stabilizes and a food surplus can pay for herbal doctors, combat will not be the modern equivalent. Now, baring major injury, the finest transportation and medical network man has ever known will repair you more often than not ( no, I’m not saying some of them will want to continue living in their new condition, but it must be nice to have a choice ). As soon as that network fails, you are going into battle and can expect three things to happen. You are not hit. You die. Or you receive a minor injury. Given how much your new odds are, what will motivate you to fight? Despite being glossed over, ignored, or made over complicated, it is pretty simple. Combat beats the alternative. Which, in the new kind of brutal world we’re headed to, includes malnutrition, starvation and famine. Slavery, torture and banditry ( Masked Raiders: Irish Banditry in Southern Africa, 1880-1899
). Combat assures no one steals your crops, or gets you someone else’s crops so you don’t starve. Combat with even odds of death are better than slavery with death assured. Looting might be the only way to strike it rich in a world of serfs or controlled/monopolized trade. *
If life expectancy drops back down again to the thirties or forties, the prospect of gambling in combat for a better future isn’t so strange a thing. So you die at 25 instead of thirty. If you don’t die you are better off. If you do die you face an unpleasant time. Old school, there were just as many step-mothers/fathers/siblings as today. The difference was remarriage was from the partner dying of disease or violence. Since the family unit was the social safety net, it had to preserver. If combat either protects your family or betters it, that is a powerful motivator. If you die, the wife gets remarried. She won’t starve in the street ( unless she is REALLY ugly with no chest and her kids are incorrigible ). No one wants to relearn life’s basic expectation, especially if it is for the worse. But death will need to be relearned, from something you put off as long as possible to a daily fact of life. Dying in combat will become normal. As will living with your injuries if you survive. Our present system for all its faults is great cushioning us from reality ( which usually sucks ). But it is falling apart. Get ready for it.
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), eating granola, braiding female armpit hair, dropping mushrooms or following the Grateful Dead ( 
) waiting to see which member is the next greybeard to wear out his ticker and die in the middle of a guitar riff ( do the Grateful Dead even still tour? ). The good thing about a jug shower is that it is free, simple, collapse proof and has no moving parts. Yes, at one time I advocated the garden sprayers ( 
). They are only good for mild climate showers. And as long as you don’t expect their more shoddy construction to last that much longer compared to the older ones. www.survivalblog.com gave the catalog number for a company that produced a shower nozzle attachment for their sprayers but I don’t know that this will improve the product. 
), the washers then available were poorly built at a higher price and were painful to use. The fine mist from the sprayer feels much colder than the drizzle from a bleach jug. During the winter it is the norm to bath while in the lower fifties in the tin trailer. Using the sprayer is intolerable. At least with the jug you have short periods of near-warm. You use the same amount of water to bathe either way but the jug is a better method. And you can use any kind of plastic jug. I like using my old liquid laundry detergent jug ( wider mouth than a bleach jug ) which has lasted me almost two years. And it often gets below freezing in the trailer ( this morning was 2 degrees out, 26 in- my skirting seems to make a difference not just at keeping the feet much warmer but letting the warmth out slower ). So the jug goes through a lot of freezing temperatures without cracking or splitting. 
). I put four holes in it, not sure if two would give me enough volume. To shower you turn it upside down and usually have to shake it up and down to keep the flow. I wet down my body ( barely- sopping wet will deplete the water too quick ), wet the soap and lather. Then wet my head and lather, the water pouring down helping to keep my body lather from drying. Then work your way down. Squeezing the jug at critical parts like the eyes helps get the soap off. Just don’t do it too often. You don’t want to run out of warm water with soap still in your crack and have to use cold water ( use your other hand to help remove the lather under the water stream ). There, you just did away with a hot water heater and water pipes. I use another jug at the kitchen sink to wash off the dishes. The bathroom sink I use an old thick juice bottle as the water source. 
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)Okay, I just got done fixing the spokes on my pimping red bomber. I wanted to replace the whole wheel but one wasn’t in stock ( needing to be wide enough to accommodate my fenders which cut down on two miles of dirt road mud in the rainy season ). A new one would have been $55 installed versus $35 labor just to repair the old. But since it takes $10 in gas for a round trip in the truck it was cheaper to get the bike back on the road immediately. So, as all the fates would have it, as Lady Lucks evil demented syphilitic red headed stepchild arranged it, no sooner do I get the repaired bike on the road do I endo off a curb and bust up a few more spokes ( no, no, don’t be worried, I’m fine- it was a bit embarrassing though ). Back to the bike shop ( 
) this lunch hour. I’ll repair plus order a wheel for next time. Short and sweet article as a result of dropping off the bike on my lunch hour.
). $200. I bought the pipe for the eventual earth tube. $200. Several hundred more pounds of wheat. $200 ( I actually can’t remember how much I spent, but close enough ). I buy books every payday and sometimes at the end of the month when writing revenue has been extraordinary. Say, $800. I paid off the other lot of land. $1200. So, at least three grand last year on extras ( probably more like four adding in the kids gift money and whatever else I forgot to add ) . My income is minimum wage which supports two of us. Since I get all my fed taxes back my withholding is only 10%. Fifteen grand gross. Minus ten percent taxes and minus five grand child support. $8500 take home from working, plus two grand from writing ( it picked up recently so next year I might see three ). I bring home $875 a month. That might not sound rich, but consider my bills. A hundred for the land payment and a hundred for all combined expenses for the truck. Both those are either luxurious or short time expenses. Food is the only bill ( along with propane to cook it ) I really have that is unending and hideous. I can easily drop two or three hundred, 25 to 30% of my monthly take home and not worry about it. And since the books are built into my budget, the “frivolous”spending comes closer to 50%.
) being “official”. In the 1950’s an oil geologist named Hubbert forecast that the continental US would hit a bell curve peak in its oil production in 1970. We did. After an all time high of 10 million barrels a day for the lower 48 we now produce five million a day which includes that oil from Alaska and the Gulf Of Mexico. Taking Hubberts methodology others ( 
) it is kind of silly to argue that twigs from the shrubbery will provide the same uses the trees did. When you compare renewable energy to oil you compare a reed to an oak.
) is fine. But it doesn’t run an empire founded on oil ( 
). Those that are rich and in power haven’t shown any inclination to transition in two generations and I can think of no reason they will. The last eight years have proved that it is business as usual. Burn oil to occupy oil producers. If the transition ever does take place it will still be too late. We will have already used the last of our resources holding on to the old oil dreams and will have no ability to build the new infrastructure. 
) is based on surplus energy. Cheap and easy credit for thirty year mortgages and SUV payments are based on continual growth from extra energy. Basics such as retirement and health care are built on free flowing oil. Non-local food production needs oil. Most of our jobs need cheap oil. But oil is no longer cheap or easy to extract. It isn’t just an Oil Age, it is a Cheap And Easy Oil Age. If oil still lasts thirty years ( we should be so lucky- but let’s play pretend ) it won’t be cheap. And EVERYTHING we do needs cheap oil. 
), shoes, underwear, whatever- it is ending soon. This is just common sense. It is still affordable even after doubling in price. Our ancestors would be amazed at how affordable our food is and our grandchildren will not believe you when to tell them. You need to jump at this limited opportunity. Who cares if Gore Warming doesn’t happen and crops don’t all wither? Grain is going up in cost anyway. Get it while you can. Forget about collapse for now and focus on CHEAP AND AFFORDABLE OIL. That condition, if not already dead, is dying. Act now. 
) for my upcoming lunch. If you try to soften it on cook it turns nasty after separating . If you put it on defrost just enough that you have to stir it to soften it goes for several days of reusing. I don’t usually eat a whole pound in a week but sometimes it comes close. The cook of course is aghast at my potential cholesterol level. I tell her not to worry, what with my exercise and my bodies need to burn fat to stay warm in my tin box. Not that she buys into that. Still WAAAY too much butter( 
) in her opinion. But it isn’t like I’m going to be on this diet for the next twenty years ( I didn’t mention my several times a week potato fried in lard addition ). I seriously do not think life as we know it will be unaltered in just a few years hence. I won’t have the luxury of sucking down gobs of butter and lard on a daily basis. I’m well aware that you can’t abuse your body the same way as you age, but I do look on arteries clogged with fat as a non-issue to concern myself with. If I felt nothing bad was going to happen, I never would have left warm climates. I don’t live up here because it is the optimal present location, but because it is the least objectionable future location ( Florida will turn into a Mad Max [ 
] disease ridden crap hole- millions fighting over little food and uncontrolled mosquitoes spreading ancient pestilence ). And in the very near future any fat I am lucky enough to get will help keep me alive as firewood will be scarce to non-existent. I might have gotten here in fits and starts, but I’ve never lost the destination. It WILL all end and insulating/insuring ourselves is a full time endeavor. The world will end much sooner than my arteries will become dangerously abused ( which is the same reason I make my nuke bread on plastic disposable plates- the microwave will be inoperable long before I have to worry about leeching toxins ).
), grandfather of frugal survival, said- bolt rifle, shotgun and pistol. Simple. I like simple. Over complication is for people that enjoy stress. Or people that are really friggin bored and need a hobby. Writing this daily drivel is my hobby and it keeps me busy about twenty hours a week ( including reading for research ). Throw in a full time daily job and simple is all I have time for. Lucky you. Now, because you are bored and need a hobby, you might be a gun fag ( defined as one who has more guns than windows on their house ). If you are, you know all about the Rossi brand “Trifecta”. I just ran across it in a newspaper ad and thought it was pretty nifty and I wanted to share it with you. To me, It’s new. To you gun fags that already knew about, thanks a bunch for sharing with the rest of us you selfish bastard. 
) round was so I looked it up on Wiki. It is just a necked down 308. So conceivably you could make your own ammo out of the popular battle rifle cases. It is marginally better than a 223 from what I understand so you are getting a carbine round, not a full power rifle round. But besides the very affordable price there are other advantages. You are using the same weapon platform for all your long arm needs ( one assumes you can get by okay with a intermediate rifle round ).
). Meaning it is smallish. To me, that means less weight carrying it around all day ( one assumes you aren’t actually carrying all the spare barrels but have them at base camp ). And, it is a break open single shot. To me, that means it sips scarce ammo rather than guzzles it. True, there are better individual weapons. But at a cost. A Rugar 10/22 ( 
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alone costs almost as much as the Trifecta. I have yet to see a pump action shotgun below $199. And even if you bought a Russian surplus bolt ( my only complaint is with the lack of a gas bleed on them, a potentially fatal feature-otherwise they seem to be beloved by their users ) to come close to the cost you still would have three totally different systems that will far more complicated ( I’m not saying that a semi-auto rimfire, a twelve gauge single shot and a high powered bolt rifle aren’t better, just that they are more prone to failure than single action break-opens ). 
) for it ( although I hate my semi rimfire with the humping plastic innards and would trade it for a single shot any day of the week ). But if you don’t have the basic arsenal of your dreams it is another possibility.