A filler piece about how the demand at Mormon food handling facilities has gone up and how the trepidation about the economy is to blame. Interesting to note that about ’5%’ of the people using the services are not actually Mormons. :::waves:::
Dean Ing wrote a few books about a post-apocalyptic America where the LDS church, being the most organized and well-prepared section of the populace, became the ruler of a theocratic America. (For those who are curious ‘Single Combat’, ‘Wild COuntry’, ‘Systemic Shock’….a trilogy.) While Im sure there are individuals and small groups probably better prepared than the Mormons, Id bet that theres no single block of people approaching anything like their sheer numbers.
As I’ve flogged the idea before, lemme flog it again – if you can wrangle an invite with a Mormon friend, or if your local cannery allows unaccompanied non-members, you’d be doing yourself a disservice not to take advantage of the opportunity to use their facilities. Its also a good opportunity to network.
=-=-=-=-=
Florida had itself a not-a-hurricane. The news was full of the usual stories about people evacuating and roads being jammed full. It seems that its standard practice to insert a fast paragraph somewhere about someone determined to ride it out. The article I read had one guy saying he wasnt worried…he’d built his home out of concrete, knew what it could handle, and had a generator ready to go. Sad thing is, guys like this are mentioned because they are the exception. How can anyone posibly live in a place that gets these things every year and not think that it might be a good idea to prepare for them? For crying out loud, the state even gives used to give sales tax exemptions to encourage people to buy the gear they need! Just from an economical standpoint you would think .gov would find it advantageous to have people prepared so that they can not need .gov services.
The cycnics among us will point out that thats exactly what .gov wants – people needing their services. Lest they discover that perhaps they really can live without Big Brothers benevolent hand in their lives. Hmmmm.
Lemme tell ya kids, if I were governor you can bloody well believe that ‘Emergency Management’ or ‘Civil Defense’ or whatever you wanna call it would be a totally different ball game.
=-=-=-=-=
Okay, as a nice change of gears to something more pleasant, lets have a link to the fabulous Swiss civil defense programs and their poured-concrete testimonials to optimism.
Those of us who’ve been through more than one hurricane generally don’t start to panic until we get to Category 3. Below that – unless you live close enough to the coastline to get storm surge, or in a trailer or other fragile structure that’ll blow away – it’s just another rainy day.
Speaking of living in trailers… why is it that guys who live in a “van down by the river” feel eminently qualified to start their own blogs and give people advice on “being prepared”?
These are people who are barely getting by when things are good. Do you think they’re going to “survive” when things get bad? I’ll put my money on a “Yuppie Survivalist” (or the Commander– a business owner– before putting too much weight into the ramblings of some guy who works at McDonald’s and lives in his “van down by the river.”
Don’t get me wrong: Nothing to criticize about living in a trailer. I just don’t see how that qualifies anybody as a “survival expert”.
Rant off.
Personally, I dont think theres anyone online who qualifies as a ‘survival expert’ unless they actually sat through a genuine SHTF event or two. However, there are plenty of people who have some solid ideas and are good at making others think about things they may not otherwise think about. The “van down by the river” guys might be on to something in terms of relative freedom but I think they handicap themselves a bit with their financial Puritanism. Given the choice between working for $7 an hour, living in a travel trailer and crapping into a chemical toilet versus working for, say, $12 an hour, renting an apartment and ‘working for the man’…..well, I can always quit when I make enough from ‘the man’ to set myself up as i want.
Nice thing about the internet is hat anyone can have soapbox. My qualifications as an ‘expert’ on anything are pretty suspect. I just write about what Im doing and why Im doing it…and I freely admit I may be doing it wrong or doing it unnecessarily.
Lets face it, 95% of people are sheeple, bury their heads in the sand and figure it is the job of someone else to take care of them during and emergency. Imagine a Katrina disaster only the size of the entire country.
Prester is right about “just another rainy day”. It all depends upon the area. For example here in Northern NH people still go to work with a couple feet of fresh snow on the ground while south of us in, say, New Jersey a couple inches of snow can be a state wide disaster.
The problem lies with the people who refuse to evacuate, and then scream loudly when the rescuers don’t come save them. (see NOLA Superdome) As a rescuer, I see this all too often- the people who think they are prepared, but aren’t complaining that the rescuers aren’t there yet.
When I leave to go to work during a disaster, I leave knowing that my wife has enough guns, gas, generator, and groceries (the 4 g’s) to get her through. My mom even takes shelter in my home (I don’t like Mom being alone during a disaster- my family takes care of our own, thank you) Many who refuse to evacuate are not so well equipped. If it gets too bad, or the storm looks too big, we have a bug out plan, complete with rally points that are anywhere from 10 miles to 300 miles from home.
Living in a trailer isn’t a bad decision.
A 2-3 bedroom double-wide trailer has almost the same amount of living space as my small house.
But trailers are depreciated every year like vehicles in my state.
So people in the doublewide are paying taxes on essentially just the value of the land after 20 years, but taxes increase every year on my stick-built home.
Limit housing expenses, and you’ve taken control of your biggest expense after taxes.
That frees up a LOT of cash to spend on survival preps.