dry run

DRY RUN
Nova's third installment posted last night.  A guest article posted earlier today.
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My article the other day seemed to put the fear of Baby Jesus into a few people. There was shouting and confusion and bleating. No, not the article on the Mosin Nagant. As far as that goes, I’m going to do you all a solid and one day very soon, hopefully within a week, I’m going to retype the pertinent paragraph from the 1970’s article from American Rifleman that dwelt with the gas safety issue. Just to put the matter to rest. No, what I’m talking about is the article on four years to zero oil imports. I could smell the denial factor kicking in overtime to such a degree as I’d rarely seen outside of my badmouthing ammo wasting semi’s or geriatric welfare Social Security. Look, I’m not predicting this as much as I’m pointing out an already established trend which, if it continues at the same rate will result in the zero import numbers. As I said, if we went to war to occupy rather than just take the product off market as we’ve already done, that could stretch out the time frame. If the decline rate of production or the rate of domestic use increased, the time frame would shrink. Four years isn’t carved in stone, but it sure as crap is a huge neon blinking warning sign with blaring klaxon. And, of course, I do apologize for the few mix-ups substituting import for export or visa versa. The problem with looking over your work right after you wrote it is sometimes you still see what you meant to write rather than what is staring at you on the screen.

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Rather than just make a blanket statement of denial based on your disagreement with the numbers ( which, as I’ve said are based on several years trend and more likely will get worse rather than better since new discovery is only one forth current use and has been for some time ), you should perhaps look at this in one of two ways. First, just as in the prospect of nuclear war with the Soviet Union, it wasn’t necessarily the odds of an exchange but rather the consequences of being wrong and not being prepared if one does in fact take place. If I were living in, say, West Germany during the time, I would be guzzling down jugs of beer and flirting with every skirt that walked by, blessed by the Gods or cursed by a troll, because I knew that come a war I was ground friggin zero and after all the strategic and tactical nukes aimed my why were cooked off my odds of surviving were essentially zero. But living in the US, even with EVEN more targets, the spaces are so vast that your odds of surviving, even with minimal preparation, are pretty darn good. It pays to prepare, in other words. With 20% of the effort as compared to Congress building their very own multi-billion buck shelter, you still had 80% odds of surviving. It didn’t matter if you were ten years too early, as long as you weren’t ten minutes too late. Second, you can look at this as just another dry run, practicing for the apocalypse.

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Up until about 1996 or so, I was the typical underprepared, unconcerned survivalist. I had a few guns, a few hundred rounds of ammo , a years worth of wheat and a grinder. And that was it. No filter, I was figuring on boiling water. No lights, no alternate shelter, no real cold weather gear ( gas was a buck a gallon and I was oblivious to outside weather ). Sadly, I thought myself to be wonderfully prepared, smarter than most, and qualified to write about prepping. But once I started reading more and more about the consequences of Y2K, the more I realized how much I’d ignored about having to prepare for. This wasn’t going to be a short term event but a civilization changer. Before, I had prepped in a vacuum, not paying attention to outside forces. Which, I think was pretty much a result of growing up with nuke shelter survival advice being the norm. You were an isolated survival pod. Later, I realized how much more I had to do to remove myself from the results of a catastrophe effecting everyone else. And even then, had Y2K happened, I would have been in the stewpot pretty darn quick.

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Y2K was a dry run for me. Yes, I was vastly more prepared afterwards. But more importantly afterwards I realized how badly I’d done. Not right away of course, it took far more pondering. It wasn’t a time issue since I’d been pretty much all done for a year except small inconsequential add-ons. Just a further education issue. My point here of course is that I had absolutely zero regrets for the time spend preparing for a non-event. The supplies were not wasted and neither was the time spent studying. It was another step towards the awe inspiring perfection you now have in front of you as a model and an inspiration. So if it turns out in four years we are in fact at zero oil imports and the entire ass end of American Empire falls off rather than just a rusty panel like before, you will be ready. If the whole idea was overblown and an unfounded worry on my part, worse case you are much better prepared for whatever else comes along. Panic is a paying proposition.

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Okay, enough about that. As far as the comment on the Apache being a bad example of thriving in a “junk territory”, I can’t agree. The minion spoke of their success as being a combination of imported horses and white man’s weapon. They were the zombie bikers of their day. And? They still thrived. The Mongols were the same way, living off conquest. So the Apache lived off banditry, lots of cultures/tribes did. The important point was that they used the harsh desert region to fall back into as a sort of castle. I’m not saying banditry is a great idea survival wise, I’m saying they used junk land in a way to add value to it. No one else could use it, but they did.

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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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By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there.
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