Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

I was reading some posts elsewhere and someone mentioned that they didn’t understand why, given all the economic turmoil that appears to be going on, most people don’t seem terribly concerned about whats going on. Is everyone completely oblivious or is she just overblowing the situation.

I commented that most people probably aren’t interested enough as long as they still have their job, can buy gas, and can buy groceries.

And then I started wondering why some people, in times like these, wouldn’t take steps to help them in case things go bad. Why wouldn’t someone start making plans to take care of themselves in case their job is lost and their income severely impacted? Even if things turn out just fine and the economy roars into a Reagan-era style of prosperity you would still want to have a little something up your sleeve in case things go south for whatever reason. So, the question remained – why are some people carefully setting themselves up to have layers of protection from the economic fallout and why are some going on with business as usual without a concern for their future well being.

So I came up with a couple of theories. Maybe they believe that .gov will set things straight because it always has before. Maybe they think that ‘I wont live in fear’ and that ‘it could never be as bad as the doomsayers think’. Maybe they think their profession is one that is bulletproof against recession. Maybe they think that they’ll always have a job.

And then I started wondering why I was wondering. Really, why do I care why other people don’t take steps to protect themselves in this time of instability. Its pretty much impossible to live in a media vacuum these days. Everyone knows that the economy is not as robust as it used to be and there are very clear signs that people should be concerned about their own financial well being and perhaps should start doing things to prepare in case they lose their job or worse. Yet, they don’t. So…I say let ‘em sink.

Everyone has had plenty of time to get their affairs in order, their ducks in a row, their poop in a group, the t’s crossed and the i’s dotted. By and large its no secret among our families and close friends that we are rather pro-active in the area of being prepared. If they choose not to do anything to protect themselves then they really shouldn’t expect a lot of help from me…I’ll have my hands full taking care of my own interests. What exactly are those interests? Protecting and preserving the financial and physical well-being of myself and the missus. Everything (and everyone) else is secondary. Certainly some folks are gonna be in a lot tighter second place than others, but our own interests will always be paramount. And there’s not a bloody thing wrong with that. To expect someone to not put their own needs first is a terribly unrealistic way to think.

In short, the winter approaches and I’ve no patience for the grasshoppers while Im working with the rest of the ants.

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Previous rant not withstanding, I am actually not an anti-social person. Its just that theres people I like and want to spend time with and theres people I really prefer not to spend time around. That’s not anti-social, that’s life. Every once in a while someone will walk into the shop and introduce themselves and say something like “I’ve been reading your stuff for a while now. I read your blog.”

Today was such a day. A fella who was in Montana on business from California (poor bastard) was sitting at the shop when I came back from lunch. He was passing through and wanted to say howdy. It sounds pretty snooty to say “I always have time for a fan” and Im not going to say that simply because I don’t think I have fans. What I do have are people who have ideas and values very similar to my own and Im always glad to meet people like that. (I am, also, usually glad to meet people who have opposite views from my own because I love exploring other ideas…however, I probably will spend more leisure time with the like-minded individual.) We chatted about guns and our mutual interests between customers and had a nice time. Us wacky survivalist-types are usually portrayed as camouflage-clad misanthropic lunatics and while I have met a few of those the overwhelming majority of people I have met have been thoughtful, intelligent, well-reasoned people of strong conviction and open mind. Todays encounter was no exception. So when youre off at WalMart or CostCo buying 50# bags of rice and a dozen bricks of .22 ammo don’t wonder if maybe you’re the only one out there…your way of thinking is more popular than you think. Don’t let the rest of the world convince you otherwise.

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Another day, another five gallons of gas squirreled away. Price today was $3.44/gal for regular. As an aside, the girlfriend asked if we needed to fill up any more and how many were we going to keep and shouldn’t we just fill them up all at once. I love those thoughtful questions. I told her we had enough at the moment for us to be comfortable, I wanted to fill another four or so, and that I figured I’d do them once a week or so in case gas prices continue to fall. No “Why are you wasting money on that?”, no “Don’t you think you’re overreacting?”, no criticism or comments about “the sky is falling”. Know why? Because many years ago I made it quite clear that I have some beliefs that are a little out of the mainstream and that those beliefs may, from time to time, seem inconvenient or ill-founded, but they’re what I believe and acting upon them gives me security and peace of mind and I wasn’t planning on changing that. She accepted that, got on board, and has been a supportive and active partner ever since. Makes things a lot easier. I cannot overemphasize what a force-multiplier it is to have the girlfriend on board on all these things. Moral of the story – when you’re shopping for a significant other and its starting to get serious make sure they know what you’re doing and that they are 110% on board.

So, it appears that gas shortages, for whatever reason, are plaguing regions of the Southeast US. ( I normally wouldnt link to Pravda-On-The-Potomac but…) I was reading some friends blogs and people were saying that they didnt even know if they were going to be able to go to work. In this case, is it some huge and ‘unlikely’ event that is causing this? Nuclear war? Act of terrorism? Red Lectroids? Nope..just a bit of collateral damage from a hurricane. Interestingly, over the last week or so, as gas prices have come down a bit ($3.50/gal locally) I’ve been taking time to refill/rotate some of our existing stocks. Whats involved? Just what you see here:

This is about 30~ gallons of gasoline. Thats enough for two tanks of gas for the truck, or, to put it another way, about 450~ miles of range if we wanna leave for somewhere. The fuel stabilizer (PRI-G, by name) keeps the fuel from degrading over time. I usually rotate the stuff out every year, but it should be good for at least a year or two once treated. (The PRI-G, by the way, was a gift from the girlfriend when we first got together. Having an understanding significant other makes things alot easier around here.)

The gas cans, by the way, are the ‘Euro’ style that use a stirrup-style closure mechanism rather than the usual screw-on type we normally see on Blitz-style cans. I usually pour gas through a funnel because I just havent found nozzles that are as fast. Each can will have a plastic funnel para-corded to it for convenience. However, I do have the correct nozzles as well but seldom use them. I got a very good deal on a bunch of used military cans and bought about two dozen and these are from that batch. The dark colored German ones are my special favorite. Nothin’ says lovin’ like something from the Bundeswehr
Were we to have a Georgia-style gas shortage right now we could, under normal driving circumstances, probably be okay for six to eight weeks. Quite simply, we dont really need to use the truck for much of anything except going to CostCo. We both work only about none or ten blocks from the house. I usually ride my bike well into the late fall, so just whats in the picture above would last us a good while. Of course, whats in the picture above isnt all that we have

I should also mention that DOT regs require gas cans to be red. These ones are quite obviously not red. They are a lovely shade of brown and olive, ideal for my purposes. DOT can write me a nasty letter at their convenience. Additionally, there are a buch of safe-handling practices for gasoline that I won’t get into here but broadly – don’t store the stuff anywhere that you dont wanna see burst into flames.
Right now theres plenty of people in the southeast who would happily hand over the contents of their wallets for whats seen in the picture above. So, like ammo and food, a small stockpile of fuel can be very handy to keep.

Deadline will be this coming Friday. Order will go Monday after that. Anyone interested, you need to email meand let me know if youre interested. This will definitely be the only MH for the remainder of 2008. zero@commanderzero.com

Some details….

Ordering:
Minimum order is $3000 to gethte discounts and shipping from MH. If that minimum isnt met then obviously the whole thing is called off. It looks like right now we’re pretty close at $2500 so Im not going to ask anyone to have a minimum order amount.
Cans and pouches must be ordered by the case. Why? Because I have to order them by the case. If you want two cans of Lasagna that requires me to order six cans (one case) and if I cant find someone else who wants four cans I get stuck with them and Im just too poor to afford that. In the past, I have been willing to split cases with poeple who have agreed amongst themselves to do so. For example, X wants 2 cans and Y wants 4 so they get together in email and set it up. When ordering time comes one of them orders the whole case (and pays for it) and when it gets here they aske me to ship 2 cans to X and 4 cans to Y. X and Y then settle the monetary difference between themselves. Thats cool, I can do that. Feel free to use the comments section of this post to set that up (“Anyone wanna split a case of…..?”)

Payment:
The food has to be paid for up front, the shipping can be paid for later when the stuff gets here and I have everythign boxed up. Payment can be done by plastic, PayPal or you can mail me a money order. Plastic and PayPal both have merchant fees so you’ll have to add about 4% for their processing fees. Thats money that goes to them, not me. Cheapest way to do it is a money order made out to ‘Zero’ sent to PO Box 1893 Missoula MT 59806. I’ve done three of these group buys so far and no one has ever complained that they got ripped off or anything so while I appreciate how sending your hard-earned money to a faceless yahoo on the internet can be a little wierd, you need to trust me that I’m not a Nigerian scammer. Talk to some people who comment here regularly and they’ll tell you “Yeah, I sent him the money and he sent me the goods. A++++. Will buy again.”

Shipping:
The food is shipped free from MH to here. Once it gets here (usually on a couple shrink wrapped pallets) it’ll get broken down into various orders. It’ll be weighed, the shipping will be claculated, and you’ll get an email the amount needed for shipping. When thats received, under same terms as payment listed above, your package goes out and you get an email with a tracking number so you can follow along. If you have your own UPS or FedEx or DHL or whatever account that you wanna use I can probably accomodate that.

Backorders:
If anything is backordered, which has happened very rarely in the past, theres two options:

• Hold the partial order here and then ship the entire order when the backordered item arrives
• Ship the partial order and then ship the backordered stuff when it arrives.

In the latter case, please note this means you’ll have to pay shipping for both packages. The two times stuff was backordered the order was filled within two weeks. I can’t promise thats the story now, but in the past its been two weeks.

Deadline:
Once the deadline is reached and the order is made there can be no changes. None. Nada. Not sure when the deadline will be but you’ll probably have a weeks notice. In the past, MH usually ships about a week after getting the order so figure that from the deadline when the order is placed to your getting the email saying its ready to ship to you is going to be about two weeks, maybe a bit more. Updates will be posted as warranted. Gotta have your order in (and paid for) by the deadline, guys. Gotta.

About the product:
Pouches are rated for 7 years and cans are rated for at least 25+ years. This assumes the packagin remains undamaged so make sure to store in a safe manner. Its also a good idea not to store them in hot attics and garages. A nice cool basement works best. On the #10 cans, once opened the clock starts ticking. You’ll need to either use up the contents within a week or two, or repackage the unused portion in some sort of airtight manner (A vaccuum sealer would probably be best).

Taste is subjective, however, my favorites are the lasagna, spaghetti, meat and rice dishes, and the chicken/beef patty combos. The single serving ProPack products (anything starting with a product # of 0050xxx) are probably the most convenient and best suited for backpacks, storage containers, off-site caching, etc.

Fianlly, please keep this group buy to yourself. It would be detrimental if it got out among the general discussion boards.

If you have any questions, email me.

A local customer has said he’ll take $2500 worth of stuff, which means my $3k minimum may happen alot faster which means the timetable for this goat-rope may get moved up substantially.

Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

Here’s everything thats wrong with the economy in one simple Craigslist ad:

Upside down on the SUV. It sure is a nice truck.
I need a Ford F250 Crewcab with a long bed for my work.
I owe about 32,000, i bought it for 53,000 it sure is a nice truck.
I bought the 2006 in 2007, i have paid down 19,000 of the loan.
I am willing to keep it in my name and provide insurance on it.
For the right person, You pay all the payments and keep it or pay on it for a year or so and give it back.I will work it out nice and fair.
Truck is here in Delray.
Come by and see me and drive the truck home.

$53,000 for a truck seems a little…unsmart. A loan for $53k isnt a car loan, thats a mortgage. And yet someone a year ago thought “Yeah, I’ll pay fifty grand for a car” with no concern that perhaps this would be a bad idea. And now he doesnt even really want to get rid of it, he wants to loan it to you until he can get back on his feet…he’ll even pay the insurance. Which means he wants to continue “in a year or so” to pay on what will be then a four-year old truck that will still be worth even less than what is owed on it. I think I see why this guy is having a problem.

In the thread I was discussing all this in, I made a couple comments I wanna share. First, that its way too late to prevent this thing from getting worse. All we can do is prepare to make it through it as best we can. Its like that scene in Terminator 3: our destiny wasnt to prevent Judgement Day, our destiny was to survive Judgement Day.

Secondly, this may be the chlorine shock treatment that cleans up the economic hot tub that we’ve all been sitting around in. Or, to put it another way, this may be the asteroid strike that wipes out the financially irresponsible dinosaurs and paves the way for a more responsible and financially intelligent form of life. And as in both analogies, theres gonna be some carnage among the lifeforms until it gets straightened out. If you wanna make an omlette, you gotta break a few legs.

Whats this gotta do with being prepared? Do you really have to ask?

Edited to add: Further indication that things are interesting: US Mint suspends sale of 24-karat gold coins

Bet you didnt even know i had a filter, didja?
If youre reading this, then your on my filter either because you took part in one of the previous group buys or because I think its something you might have interest in.

Im toying with the idea of another Mountain House group buy. They are a termendous pain in the ass for me to do but I love you all so much that Im willing to go through the incredible hassle.

Oh…and…well…I like getting a discount ont he stuff so I can resupply.

Anyway, if youve done these before with me you already know how they go. This buy will be for cans AND pouches. That means much bigger selection. New additions this year include #10 cans of cottage cheese, strawberries, bananas and macaroni & cheese.

Minimum order this time around is $3000 so if I can get enough people willing to buy enough to add up to that amount, we can make it happen. If anyone is interested, email me at zero@commanderzero.com and I’ll email you the form letter with details.

Please keep this partiucular group purchase under your hat, hm? I really dont wanna read about it in a discussion forum somewhere. So, please…shhhhhh.

EDIT: How long does this stuff last? Ask this guy..he bought his in 1975.

Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

You know what I really love about older houses and apartments? They have pantries. For the purpose of discussion, a pantry is a space designed for the storage of kitchen/food items. Most of the pantries I have seen are basically large closets lined with shelves. I have also seen some pantries that were as big as some peoples kitchens. Unfortunately my house doesn’t have a dedicated pantry. Oh sure theres the usual amount of cabinetry above the kitchen counters and stove but that’s not what a pantry is.

So where do I store food? I store the usual amount of food in the kitchen cabinets but it required some serious dedication to rearranging where I store pots and pans, blenders, etc. The short- and mid-term food storage, which is things like cases of pasta, canned goods, etc. Are stored in another part of the house on steel wire shelving. Its not my first choice for storage because since I like to cook, I want to keep my food near the kitchen. But, I don’t really have that option so I store food where I have to.

I store food for several reasons, the biggest is for the sake of saving money. Here’s an example…I was at Albertson’s yesterday and, as usual, I check the sales circular at the door. The canned chicken broth that I use a goodly amount of is on sale. Normally about $1.39 but for a few days it’s $0.50. That’s a savings of…uhm…about 64%. Put another way, what normally would have cost $33.36/case winds up costing me $12. So what? Well, that means that any meal I prepare with those components now costs less. Or, to put it in another light, I can eat twice as long for the same money. Because I found space to store food, I can take advantage of these situations and buy food by the case, by the drum, by the bucket. When I cook, almost every ingredient is something that was bought in bulk or on sale and I’d be very surprised if any meal I cook for the girlfriend and I costs more than a five bucks. Of course, one of the best things about this is that when I buy stuff on sale like this is that I buy enough to lay back in storage for those times when food or cash isn’t available for whatever reason.

Thus, the second reason I store food – security. I’ve had times where I didn’t have enough money for food and I pretty much ate one meal a day and often skipped eating completely. When I started getting my act together I started being real particular about food. It wasn’t a conscious decision..I just started refusing to throw out leftovers and I never turned down a free meal. Being hungry and despairing over an empty refrigerator makes an impression, believe me. In fact, whenever someone invites me to lunch or offers me a slice of pizza I usually accept and tell them “Never turn down free food.” If you cant feed yourself, or worse, cant feed your family, you’re in a pretty vulnerable situation. You’ll do things you’ll regret (like sell your beloved grandfathers pocket watch so you won’t have to watch your kids eat ketchup soup) and you’ll be more likely to hurry into a bad work situation just to get food on the table.

Theres a third reason to store food, although it’s not a reason for me since the first two are all the reason I need. However, it is a nice bonus – convenience. Years ago I made the mistake of trying to go out and buy the ingredients for a nice Christmas dinner on, well, Christmas. Good luck. Only thing open was the local Stop-n-Rob and they don’t exactly have a huge grocery selection. Nowadays if we don’t have the time (or inclination) to run out for groceries it usually doesn’t matter since we have plenty of food we like to eat on hand at home. That means I can shop when I want and if I don’t see anything on sale I can simply just not buy stuff and wait for a sale.

So can you think of any reason not to build up a decent supply of food?

Too expensive? No, it isn’t. Buy it on sale, buy the store brand, buy in bulk.
No storage space? You can find or make storage space if its really important to you. Boxes under the bed, on the top shelf of the closets, a large bookshelf in the living room. You always have space for at least a few weeks worth of food.
I can’t cook. Learn to cook. If you can boil water, know how to turn your oven on, and can read then you can cook.
I don’t think theres a need for it. Then you’re being, in my opinion, short-sighted and need to be more aware of the fragility of you and everyone elses lifestyle. Seriously,man…it can change like that.

There is one other, distant, philosophical reason for food storage and its sort of an existentialist touchy-feely reason – Personal growth (or perhaps politics). When you start taking the steps to take care of yourself and to prepare yourself against life’s uncertainties you start becoming what we euphemistically call ‘a rugged individualist’. You start thinking less about others taking care of you and more about taking care of yourself. You start developing confidence in your own abilities and a desire to develop those abilities further. You start questioning where individual responsibilities and society’s responsibilities lay. You basically start ‘unsheeping’ and become, in my opinion, a more thoughtful and careful and prudent person.

The drawback, naturally, is that then you’ll never be able to watch the news again without yelling at the television set.

Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

Went to the LDS cannery the other day and it was a notable trip for the simple reason that nobody else showed up. Yeah..nobody else. It was just me, the guy I went with, and the older couple that run the place. To my way of thinking it seemed a little bit much to go through all the effort and cleanup for just two guys so instead I hung around and shot the breeze with the couple that run the place. We talked HAM radios and that sort of thing for an hour or so. Just so the trip wasnt a total waste, I got some already-sealed #10 cans of product off the shelves to bring home. Their shelves are much fuller than the last couple times I was there. In addition, they got a new portable can sealer for their ‘loaner’ program so if theres some goodies you wanna can that they dont do at the cannery you can take this thing home, along with the necessary cans and lids, and do it yourself. A more devious and twisted indivisual might stick a pistol and some ammo in a #10 can and then carefully remove the label from a #10 can of chili or somesuch and use it to make the other can look far more innocent and uninteresting thatn it actually is. As you can see, theres potential there.

The cannery has a decent selection of staples for dry-pack canning (meaning you are canning dry goods like rice, grain, etc). However, there may be stuff I want to can that they do’t offer…in which case checking out the portable unit would be nice.

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I have very little to say about the economy simply because if you are reading this then youve been paying far more attention to the situation than the average American. All Im gonna say is that unless youre a zillion percent confident that youre not gonna get laid off anytime soon I’d start socking away the cash and goodies you’ll need to get you through a bout of unemployment. Me? Im trying like hell to keep expenses down and supplies up.
I was reading somewhere about how October 7th is some sort of critical day where a huge event of great significance will take place. *Yawn* I followed the threads on the forum I saw the initial post at and tracked it back to this. Ever hear of Godwins Law? It says that “As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.” Meaning that sooner later in a discussion about, say, politics someone will bring up a comparison to the Nazis or Hitler at some point…at which point the discussion is over. I propose theres a similar maxim somewhere on the preparedness forums..”As a forum discussion about possible EOTWAWKI events progresses the probability of Art Bell/C-to-C AM being cited as an autoritative source approaches one”..at which point rational discourse logs off and the Tinfoil Beanie Brigade are all that remain.

I love a good conspiracy theory as much as the next nutjob, but conspiracy theories are delicate things. Theres gotta be enough that can be proved, mixed within a proper ratio of what cant proved. Take Area 51/Roswell incident vs. alien abductions. We think something is going at at Area 51 since its got all the elements – .gov involvement, heavy security, mystery, etc. So we can look upon the conpiracy theories it generates as unlikely but maybe not impossible. Then we skip over to the alien abduction guys…not much eveidence except someone saying “there was this bright light and when I woke up I was naked and being probed”. Thats not a conspiracy, thats a date rape.

So…is October 7th anything that will be cataclysmic in its importance? I doubt it. Probably a hell of a lot less than November 4th will be.

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Gas prices continue to decline a bit. About $3.50/gallon locally. I need to sock away more fuel and I’d like to think gas will drop to $3 before coming to a rest around $3.25. Goal is enough fuel for two complete tanks of gas for the vehicle. Thats enough to give us local mobility for a month or so and enough range to leave here and get some distance if we want.

Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

The new Sportsmans Guide HQ milsurp catalog showed up today. A few highlights:

HK Flare pistols, 26.5mm – $39.97

26.5mm flares – $79.97/10

Flectar parka w/ liner – $29.97

Trioxane fuel bars – $39.97/100

A few other interesting items in there, but you can head over to their website and see what they have. I highly recommend the German flectar parks and liners. They used to be twenty bucks for the pair but even with the price increase they are worth it. They are warm, comfortable and superior to the US field jacket/liner combo. I’ve had several of them for years and I am very reluctant to wear anything else in the cold. (Reluctantly, I wear a Carhart coat for those winter situations where wearing milsurp is frowned upon.)
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Was in the Goodwill store the other day nosing around and found a copy of WarDay. (Strieber & Kunetka, 1984, #0-03-070731-5) I read this book many, many years ago (probably over twenty years ago) and it made an impression on me. Succinctly, the book takes place a few years after a US-Soviet limited nuclear war. NYC, DC, and such places are obliterated, California is a fenced off paradise, the Mexicans have made good on their Reconquista plans, reconstruction is under way with the help of foreign aid, and salvagers make a living recovering materials from whats left of NYC. The book is about two writers who decide to travel across the recovering US to see how things are going. The most chilling part is the first chapter where one of the main characters describes his experiences in NYC when the bombs fell. He takes refuge in his childs Catholic school and church with other survivors as the city crumbles around them. Having grown up in NY it was very realistic to me. After two weeks of living on water and crackers, hoping to avoid the worst of the radiation, he emerges and the story begins.

I believe the risk of the classic nuclear exchange (between the US and an aggressor, anyway) is lower right now than it has ever been since Oppenheimer built the damn thing. However, I think the risk of nuclear attack is highest. (That is to say, I see the classic ‘suitcase nuke/dirty bomb’ scenario being far more likely than the Cold Ware-era ICBM strike.) Although the book deals with the after effects of a nuclear exchange, what makes the book interesting to me is its detail about how the infrastructure of America has changed as a result of the ‘War Day’. Air travel is reserved for .gov and the highly connected. Gasoline is still rationed and many families share cars. Food is imported since the grain belts are full of radiation. California is a walled off paradise that escaped destruction and American ‘illegals’ try desperately to get in. British and Japanese relief missions help out tremendously while advancing their own agendas for the new Third World United States. Health care is rationed based on the dosage of radiation a person received. Government control of most industry and services is the norm, and expected to continue for years and years. The average family survives on rationed electricity, rationed food and hope. Like “World War Z” this book is mostly first person interviews with various survivors, opportunists, foreigners, etc. that the writers come across on their travels. As such, it puts in some horrific and tragic personal stories. Powerful stuff.

As I said, I read it as a kid and while its no “Alas Babylon” I think its good reading for getting an idea of how infrastructure changes as a result of large-scale disaster. The sections where people recount their experiences at overwhelmed hospitals and the experiences of radiation poison were enough to push my impressionable young mind in this direction years and years ago. Re-reading those sections, actually, makes me want to head to the bunker and double-check supplies.

“Alas Babylon” was written by a vocal Civil Defense supporter and, unlike many stories of that time, showed nuclear war as a survivable event. “War Day” shows it as a survivable event, but at a terrible cost and makes the subtle message that war is to be avoided at all costs. The message is not dissimilar to the gloomy “The Day After” movie or the incredibly depressing movie “Threads”. Arguably, there is no way to ‘spin’ coughing up blood and having your intestines leave your body with every bowel movement. While Im certainly no advocate of jumping to war I see these stories as compelling reasons to advocate strong civil defense programs, not as cautionary tales urging us to sit down at bargaining tables and give away the store to avoid getting nuked.

However, as I said, the likelihood of the storied ICBM exchange we grew up fearing actually coming to pass is, for now, far less likely than many other horrible scenarios. So my interest in re-reading “War Day”, other than nostalgia, is to read it with a more critical eye now that I have a different way of thinking about preparedness than I did at the impressionable and highly immature age of 19.

If you can track down a copy of this book, I recommend it. Its intresting and a very good companion to “World War Z” in terms of telling the stories of individuals in (albeit fictitious) times of total apocalypse.