Okay, you all know my official Bison policy. Well, sure, there are a lot of sub clauses. You must hate Yuppies, and if you are one you must solemnly swear to change. You must hate ( my ) ex-wife number two with every fiber of your being, but praying to Baby Jesus
for her suffering is optional. You must tithe
10% of your gross, which I believe I’ve mentioned before but since my financial situation is still below the level I’d like to see you all must have forgotten so I’ll remind you now. But, to the point, all topics and issues must be over analyzed, endlessly repeated and beat like a dead horse. So, to go over once again my recent musings on moving out to a truly remote location, I’ll just remind everyone that I did state I was perhaps being over panicky. Unless I do decide to move, you can’t begin the count down to doomsday
. If a cute bosomy gal that owns a four wheel drive ( and optimally an arsenal of HK-91’s ) wants to become my sugar momma I can move out there immediately and still work. Otherwise I am still weighing the pros and cons. I am prone to needless panic, so unless I actually follow up on it, don’t use me to plan for the collapse by following my example. I might have moved out here several years early, and been right in my timing, but remember I was concerned primarily with frugal living
at the time. My lot rent was eating about 60 or 70% of my take home pay and going up every year. It is a good thing I moved out, as the food bank down in Carson is now going through severe financial distress. It would have been a sure bet my overtime or even base hours would have been cut and I’d have been forced to move without a plan or resources. *
Another topic I love to endlessly drone on about is whether we will see a fast or a slow collapse. I believe this is important, because you are in essence betting your life on the outcome. If you only prep for a short term disaster by buying an AR-15, one hundred magazines, five thousand rounds of ammunition, a red dot sight
, a spare parts kit, a gabizillion watt generator with four gallons of gas and one case of MRE’s, you are betting on neither. If we ever have to worry about the power being off more than a few weeks, your only option is to turn feral and go steal food. By the time the well armed, empty cupboard
survivalist gets around to deciding that we are in a true crisis, all the normal citizens have gone through all their food, to include last Christmas’ fruit cake
, the jar of pickled artichokes and the old rice with weevils. That leaves other survivalists, which is a losing proposition. Either they fight back, or you can’t find any of them. Remember, a good estimate for the number of preppers in the US is about one tenth of one percent. And even of those, most are still woefully under equipped since they feel a survival diet
must mirror their current one. If I might diverge quickly here, today I was given hardboiled, pre-colored Easter eggs in my food donations. They had been priced at $4.99. Is it me, or does no one realize that to color eggs yourself not only gives you face time with the kids, it is very cheap and as easy as boiling water. Are most people this humping lazy? I still can’t get over the canned, pressurized pancake batter, or even the mixed salad packs. I know those kind of customers would never buy a grain grinder that was operated, gasp!, manually. But why do preppers think eating after the apocalypse is going to be easy or appetizing? Do they think they are going to listen to Mozart in a La-Z-Boy perched on a Persian rug
, sipping sherry, counting their pile of salvaged goods, the last man on earth besides a few pesky zombies that come out at night? *
If you bet on a slow collapse, you have a wonderful set-up to garden and ideally produce enough food for yourself. If the collapse happens suddenly, law and order
is non-existent and your food is stolen and you are killed. That is the downside of slow collapse prepping and covered here before. But of course, there is also a downside to prepping for fast collapse. The one most folks will make is overextending themselves financially to buy the Yuppie Survivalist setup. The forty acres, the concrete bunker
, the thirty three mandatory semi-automatic weapons with fifty mags for each one. The collapse happens slow enough that they lose all that to the bankers after becoming unemployed. The other, far more rare occurrence, is that you aren’t allowed to procure food outside the money economy, yet you are unemployed. I know my insistence on taking up herding after the collapse isn’t very popular. The advice has always been to farm, and no one wishes to deviate from that. So you all lust after moist fertile soil, regardless of the cost or crowded conditions. You will of course be vindicated if conditions deteriorate but don’t collapse. On the other hand, I’ll be right if Yellowstone
blows and the globe is plunged into permanent winter and nothing grows. What will bite me in the ass is if for whatever reason, I eat up all my storage food and then am unable to start herding ( bio-engineered animal epidemic, local farmers cutting off access to water, Food-Stamps ending along with increased enforcement of no-trespassing along river ). I believe the likelihood is small, but I would be silly to assume there is no danger. *
Only the filthy rich or the eternally indebted can have it both ways ( Rawles
way, the slow but sure preparedness, is not likely able to be repeated as we haven’t got another decade of a functioning economy that pays well enough with affordable enough supplies- his timing was perfect and yours will not be ). You might have a great farming set up, and great food reserves, but if you in an area that is overpopulated you are still set up for failure. The junk land plan is unfortunately a fast collapse plan in that food reserves are it, for the most part. You can’t garden enough to be self-sufficient in food. If you can garden at all. At this point I’m short on solutions. But give me a bit of time and I’ll pull something out of my butt ( I think. It might be no work-around is possible other than MORE reserves, which is getting harder as prices are jacked up ). I understand the plan has flaws. It is betting, after all.END
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. There is an unfortunate need to be an uber-consumer, unfortunate in that too much 
is in no small part one of the causes for our crash into the wall of resource depletion, but it isn’t like you have much choice in the matter. Acquiring food is the basic impulse behind everything else culturally. Look at any particular activity from any culture, primitive or advanced, and you can trace it back to how those folks eat. And how we eat today is through paper currency. Not farming or herding or fishing, hunting/gathering, raiding or anything else. We head to an office and shuffle paper, keeping track of how much petroleum is burned or processed, are given paper chits in return and are allowed to trade them in for mechanized food products. We have no choice but to consume. We aren’t allowed to produce our own food. On the other hand, the up side is that we can consume a lot of things cheaper than if we had been farming and made them ourselves or bartered for them. Not that this will last long, so enjoy it while you can ( if you doubt that this is a valid trend, look at how EVERYTHING is going up in cost as quality suffers. Even gasoline and diesel are being lowered in BTU ). I’m not saying it is a good trade-off, or all that advantageous, just that if you want to look at the bright side, there it is. 
, comfort food, and a few others, but these three will keep you alive. A pound of flour and a half pound of beans a day will give you a complete protein and a slim bit over two thousand calories a day. For sixty cents or so a day. Add about a pound of fat a week. Total cost, excluding 
, under $300 for a years worth of food. Sprout the wheat for veggies.
for $25 as a back-up. 
. There are a variety of ways to purify water, and you should know most of them. But it can’t hurt anyone’s budget to spend $50 for a Berky brand filter element to make your own water filter. Peace of mind, ease of use, another way to keep your water safe.
is great in the woods, but if you can only afford one gun a rifle will give you range and knock down power. It isn’t as effective as the other two close in, but the other two are worthless far out. You do the best you can with what you got.
.
. Lighting is not a luxury, so you can read your Penthouse collection after dark. It is a necessity enabling you to survive. Animal and man night attacks come to mind. Don’t spend a fortune on each light, you need back-ups and cheap barter units. Store the back ups in a Faraday box ( my preferred type is a Christmas cookie tin, the light still in its plastic package inside [ to be effective the item can’t touch the metal ] and the lid taped on ). Just in case of 
natural or man made.
and several sets of rechargeable AA, AAA 
( I don’t recommend C or D using lights. They are really much more expensive than the A’s, most lights don’t use them and they take far longer to charge ). Think of these like your ammo. What you have must last you a life time. Buy accordingly.
for winter with no overnight heat, the way it used to be done, and wool clothing for the cold. If it makes you itch, wear cotton under it. Wool is low tech and can be replaced, but you’ll need to stockpile it now to avoid being cold immediately. Sheep herds will take time to reestablish. And you won’t find them for sale after trouble starts. Seeing as how nobody dresses for the cold and expects the natural gas to keep them warm.
. But you don’t want to wait to be armed ( back-up weapon, plus great tool ) for when that happen. Kind of like the wool. They are dirt cheap right now, buy a few. And get a few dollar store sharpeners ( the stone in a wheel kitchen knife sharpeners ).
. And a magnifying glass to start fires with. Chances are you already have shelter, but if these don’t serve as a back-up, at least they have other uses such as rain catchment. Until waterproof canvas is once again for sale, these tarps are a better than nothing, cheap substitute.
receptacles of my mind. I can’t be held responsible for what sticks or what doesn’t, that is out of my control. It could be random firing neurons, it could be an evil imp residing therein, it could be proof of 
. And I want you all to consider this my gift to you. Yes, yet another Thing To Behold, at little to no cost to yourself. Because that is just the kind of guy I am. Always thinking of the little people. And, verily, behold the shining hair! A comment went something to the effect that while the long suffering minions had been inhumanly subjected to the ranting and wrath of my feelings towards semi-autos, could I pretty please give my opinion on the best one to own, if one were foolish enough to wander from The One Path Of Bisonian Wisdom. Hey, glad to help out. Just keep in mind this IS IN NO WAY AN ENDORSEMENT of semi-autos. While fun and dandy to play with, a semi-auto in untrained hands ( which is 99% of you, myself included ) will waste and piss away ammunition and endanger your life after the 
. However, assuming you are trained to such a degree that under the extreme stress of combat you will revert to training and practice fire discipline rather than pray and spray in a blind panic, here are my picks and the logic behind them.
. It is half the price of the closest competitor. You can fire prone with it, there are no magazines to buy, it is easily turned to bolt action, it is by most accounts more accurate than an AK. And of course it is inexpensive. However, should you have more money, and your needs are for a longer range weapon, you can do much better. I would recommend that you skip the entire family of AK’s ( with the exception of the SKS ) for a very simple fact. They can’t hit crap. The 
is meant to be the most rugged, easiest and cheapest to manufacture assault carbine ever, and it fills that role wonderfully. But the weapon is indeed meant to be a pray and spray weapon. Period. It isn’t meant to be anything else. Without a supply of cheap and abundant energy, ore and chemicals to resupply the ammunition for it, this is a useless weapon. The only reason to consider the SKS is because it is so cheap and is the more accurate of the bunch ( disregarding expensive custom versions ). But it still has the flaw of being pretty inaccurate. After the 
, with limited ammunition, you DO NOT WANT an ammo pig or an ammo waster ( why fire slow and aimed shots yet still hit little because the weapon is inaccurate? ). 
, as I just said a few days ago, is a wonderfully accurate rifle, assuming you have the right ammo for it. If the AK is a plump, squat pig farmer of a wife, the AR is an anorexic, hypochondriac former beauty queen with cancer. They are both deeply flawed in one form or another, so you pick your poison. If you use it as a mid range 
, never as an assault rifle, it will work pretty well for you. But the price is $800 whereas the SKS is about $250 to $300. So, what is a semi dreaming boy to do? Pay way too much and get a tack driver ( knowing of course it is a weak hammer compared to a 308 ) or pay less and sacrifice accuracy? The 
is about the same price as the AR, so don’t consider that. I’ve heard too many bad tales of needing to ship the bitch back to the factory ( but, granted, that could have been one dissatisfied guy whose tale ballooned out of control ). Even if that weren’t an issue, the spare parts aren’t as available as the AR. And you can rule out HK-91’s, the Garands, M1’s, etc., as they are $1200 plus. Okay, the Garand might not be that much, but, again, parts availability. As a rule, the 308 semi’s are out of control. However, there might be two exceptions.
( I believe a minion told me the Spanish developed the weapon and the Germans licensed it ). According to 
, these rifles are fine except that some of them come with wildly out of alignment iron sights. If you are using this as a sniper, this shouldn’t matter. Use glass. And then you have an HK at half the price. With cheap mags and spare parts available. This would be my number one recommendation, the Spanish HK-91 ( I think they are called the CEMTE or something like that ). This weapon uses a non-gas system to reload, so the fouling is virtually zero. The round is powerful, the parts almost never break. The perfect survival gun. I agree with all the old 70’s survival guru’s on this one. The HK-91 is #1 ( of course the German version is superior, but IF the only issue with the Spanish one is the iron sites, then I give it a #1 recommendation ). Again, proceed after your own research. I’m passing on second hand observations, not personal experiences. I’ve picked the 
for its overall performance and price, and I can only vouch for that rifle ( and I’ve gone through four months of training with the M-16 and hate it as a semi ). If you don’t feel comfortable with the last two choices, than I would have to recommend the AR. For the price ( half the others ), AND if you don’t use it close range spray and pray, it will suffice. I think it is far too dainty for the field, and the round pathetic, but if you think the SKS is too inaccurate, the Russian sniper too expensive or if unavailable ( the weapon or the spare parts/mags ), and you feel the Spanish quality is too low, what other choice is there? 
. I don’t know why, since if you’ve stuck around for any length of time, long enough to be eligible to proudly wear the super secret Bison 
available for $3.99 plus five box tops of whole wheat cereal, you must at least in general agree with the basic philosophy of super paranoia tempered with burning all consuming hate of ex wife #2. Oil IS the economy, and with a shrinking economy you have to say 
to such things as a pension, property values, basic infrastructure deliveries like water and food, law enforcement protection and etcetera. We might not be able to forecast the timing of such failures but we sure as rabbits crap out little round pellets can predict they will happen in our pathetic lifetimes. I’m not digging on other survivalist writers for minimizing or ignoring Peak Oil. I understand that they must eat and pay the bills and the first casualty of pleasing your readers is the honest hard truth. I’m not saying they purposely do this. They might honestly think nothing of the problem. Or, their subconscious desire to eat directs them to minimize the issue. I do not have any malice towards this natural inclination. I don’t really hate women ( or Seniors on SS, or lawyers or politicians ) who act within their nature, even if it sounds like I hate them on general principles. And I don’t despise other writers for their soft sell of Peak Oil. They must eat from their writing while I hold a day job and write for a hobby. My writing income is just 
, not eating money. Which is why most likely I’ll never stop working a regular job. I love to piss people off and the best way to do this seems to be to rub their furry little noses in reality. 
( the correct side is the left side, increasing production, and the wrong side is the right side, decreasing production ). I think we all realize this. But are you willing to consciously accept this fact, PLUS what it really means? Before the 1970’s oil troubles, we had a historical average INCREASE of oil supply of 7%. This was what the US economy was based on. After the 70’s that average INCREASE dropped to 2%. Our oil rate of increase dropped 2/3’s. We were still increasing production annually but just that decrease in the rate of increase accounted for all our economic woes ( real rate of decline in wages, 
replacing a sole breadwinner, huge increases in inflation, our factories moving overseas to be replaced by paper shuffling ). Now however we are faced with annual DECREASES. 
. Doubling of our national debt. 
for the first time is in deficit ( previously the SS surplus had kept our borrowing lowered ). The government has to buy its own debt as no more foreign governments wish to. We are just lucky they don’t dump what they already have. Local and county and even state governments are increasing their race towards bankruptcy. I could go on and on, but just think of the last few years, the new and novel financial woes, and you get my point. Now, while the US has been seeing a decline in oil imports, the rest of the world was pretty much on hold. The Chinese continued their extreme growth, but seeing all the new and empty cities in worthless locations one imagines they are only one step behind us in the collapse. We PLAY at government stimulus compared to those boys. 
nearly double ( okay, just silver, gold is still fully manipulated ). Gasoline is nearly up a third. All foodstuffs have doubled in price. The middle east exploded overnight and shows no signs of stabilizing. We lost two percent of global oil production overnight from Libya. Even a fleet of US warships and 
aren’t bringing production back, which is a death blow to Europe which puts a huge amount of pressure on the US economy. And Saudi Arabia saw a one month TEN PERCENT DECLINE!!!! Granted, we don’t know if this is a long term trend. I can’t see why not, since with oil at $110 the Saudi’s are making a killing financially. If they are dropping the dollar as payment, it makes sense. Otherwise, their production is dropping 
. Remember, the Saudi super giant fields have already seen forty years of production. This is it for any oil field before decline. But wait! There’s more! If you order in the next ten minutes, you get a much faster decline in production. The Saudis have used advance drilling techniques, horizontal rather than vertical pumping. This allowed them to pump out 60% of the oil verses 50%, but what that means is that the remaining oil is not as accessible. More importantly, it means the second half of the oil doesn’t decline at two or three percent, but at much higher rates of depletion. In theory, the wells could be only marginal producers in as little as five years. Look at the rapid declines of the Mexican wells for comparison. They didn’t gently slope down, they fell off a cliff.
. And the Saudi decline hasn’t been proven yet. And the US dollar being flushed down the toilet is an influence on prices probably more than supply decreases have been. But we are still on the wrong side of the curve. Before, any economic consequences were mere warm ups. The real fun began this year. I’ll wager that Japan won’t be able to replace its lost energy from nuclear 
with oil. Their economy is done. Along with any company that needs its parts production such as flash drives or auto parts ( drive a rice burner motorcycle? A Toyota? Its days are numbered ). I’ll wager that oil will see close to $200 before the year is out ( if the Saudi decline is permanent, that figure will be optimistic ). I’ll wager that before the year is done, grain prices will double again. Yes, this is all super paranoia. But I can be sure of one thing. The globe will NOT see a gentle 2% decline in oil for decades. We will see a fall off the cliff. 