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I had an idea for a mobile oil change service that would serve self-proclaimed Patriots, Three Percenters, and Sheepdogs. I’d call it “Molon Lube” and the slogan would be “Come and change it!”
Monthly Archives: August 2018
Paratus approaches!
Paratus, the holiday of preparedness, approaches! It falls on September 21st this year. Everything you want to know about the Paratus holiday can be found here.
You know that there is a gift-giving component to Paratus, right? (In fact, it was created specifically to provide an excuse for gift giving.) And what better gift than Ruger 10/22 mags at wow-those-are-cheap prices.
By the case? Buy the case….Pt IV
About 18 months ago my local Albertsons had a good sale on pasta and I took advantage of it like Bill Clinton takes advantage of interns. Well, that sale came back and I decided i could use a few(!) cases of rigatoni.
Shopping carts are for amateurs. When the Zero stocks up, he goes deep.
Savings? Well, according to my receipt, what normally would have cost 238.80 came out to sixty bucks. (Got careless, forgot to ask for the 10% case discount.)
The apocalypse will be a fairly carbohydrate-heavy experience what with all the rice and pasta in storage, it seems.
In actuality, this is mostly my desire to have a large amount of day-to-day use items on hand in case some sort of financial donkey punch occurs. When you show up at work one day and your boss says “We’re being bought out by another company. This office will close in three weeks. Good luck.”, you really want to have some of the expensive niggling details (like food) locked down. Also, I just feel calmer and more at peace when I look at the shelves and see boxes and cans of food, racks of toiletries, paper towels, soap, detergent, and all the other consumables that keep my quality of life above that of some Third Worlder.
Wouldn’t it make more sense to stockpile the cash instead of the food if I am worried about such things? Well, yes…except for that part about the fabulous sale. Lets put it this way: You have $60 cash in hand..save it or buy food? If you’re worried about a job loss, for example, and you’ve tied that $60 in food, then you only have that one thing (food) covered. But if you keep the $60 in cash, you can use it to buy food..or fuel..or electricity. So does that mean it makes more sense to stick that $60 in the bank? Nope.. heres why: I didn’t buy $60 worth of food. I bought $240 worth of food and paid $60. Or, put another way, if I stuck that $60 in the bank, when I used it in the future I’d get only $60 worth of food. In this particular case, my purchase power today was 4x what my purchase power would be with that same $60 later. (Disregarding inflation, which would actually make todays purchase more than 4x the purchasing power.) The more clinically minded of you will say “Wait, we’re drifting into Time Value Of Money country..” Yes. Yes we kinda are.)
This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t put money away as part of your preps…it just means that you need to think about things past the obvious. Maybe you already do that..I didn’t used to. Preparedness is really about resource management in regards to risk reduction – we try to get the most for our money when we take steps to protect ourselves from future problems.
Regardless, I’m pleased with todays purchase. It’s more food on the shelf and one less thing I have to worry about acquiring when/if I hit an economic rough patch.
Article – Can a Harbor Freight Generator Really Beat a Honda?
Mmmmm…mags…mmmm
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Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t. But for mission-critical gear I’ll spend a few extra bucks and have confidence (and perhaps better customer support) in my purchase.
Any generator is probably better than no generator, but I would choose the Honda. However, if all you can afford is a HiPoint Harbor Freight………
In None We Trust
Well, it’s a sentiment I can certainly understand, but it’s not terribly practical in the real world. True, more often than not someone you put some trust in will wind up proving to be unworthy of that trust….at that point your only recourse is damage control of the highest order.
But trust, like virtue, has degrees. For example, Tony at the corner pizza place trusts you enough to let you slide when you order a couple slices and discover you forgot your wallet. Rather than demand you leave your watch or cellphone with him as collateral, he trusts you to bring him a few bucks the next time you’re in there. But Tony ain’t gonna trust some mook like you with, say, the weeks cash receipts getting deposited at the bank. Tony has a scale of trust and you, paisan, are at the bottom.
So, trust has degrees…. it’s easy to trust virtually anybody when the stakes are so low as to be immaterial. It’s when the stakes get higher that we start getting mighty picky about who we trust and how far.
As survivalists, we have a few things going on in our lives that we’d rather the world at large not know about. But, at the same time, we can’t go 100% solo or we’re going to have some really bad moments.
It’s depressing, but true… you’re on this planet for a finite amount of time, with a finite amount of resources, and you simply don’t have room in your life for people who are, passively or actively, damaging (or at least not contributing) to your life.
If you haven’t already done it, you may want to think about people you know and evaluate their position in the hierarchy of trust. And, naturally, you may also want to think about contingency plans for when Cousin Bill or Friend Steve violates that trust (or becomes a non-asset to your life).
Estwing tomahawk
Well, it took about six years but I finally came across one of those Estwing tomahawks in the wild. I could find one on eBay or Amazon, of course, but I was curious when I’d run across one at Lowes or Home Depot. The answer, it seems, was six years.
I am just underwhelmed with the whole tactical tomahawk niche. Yes, if your defending Alexandria from zombies it’s probably a decent tool. But, short of that, or doing some sort of heroic ‘last man standing’ in a Mogadishu hallway, they seem fairly useless. From a weapon standpoint, I kinda like those long-necked framing hammers.
I’m sure theyre useful for opening ammo crates, breaking windows, forcing entry, and that sort of thing…but so are a dozen other multitaskers. I realize that when youre diddybopping through downtown bazaars and narrow hallways in a ‘stan somewhere you’re going to want something to chop/pry open doors, bust windows, cut cable and wire, etc,etc. And I suppose the tomahawk does that…I just can’t imagine theres other stuff that doesnt do it better and more efficiently while still maintaining the high-speed-low-drag qualities we all know and love.
Nonetheless, it appears to be a solid little item that will stand up to whatever it is that is was designed to do…which still kinda escapes me.
For a general ‘multipurpse’ tear-stuff-up-tool…I have two. For when space and weight aren’t a big deal, one of these will pretty much get me out/in to whatever it is I’m trying to get in/out of, and when space is at a premium and your limited to something one-handed…I like this guy.
But, what do I know?, perhaps someday when I’m in a partially collapsed building or have to hack someone out of a car wreck I’ll think “Man, this would have gone a lot better with a tomahawk”. I doubt it, but could happen.
And ‘Tomahawk Axe’? WTF? That’s like having a ‘Pebble Boulder’ or some other equally diametrically opposed term.
Studying, Hawaii, goals
I was re-re-reading Ben Franklin’s biography the other day and I read a snippet of a letter he wrote to his grandson who was, shall we say, a bit off the path towards a bright future. Franklin, encouraging him to focus on his schooling, said “…people who study hard live comfortably in good houses.” Leave it Franklin to come up with a summation to something that takes most people an entire chapter to instill.
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I see that Hawaii is getting ready for some inclement weather, and in typical fashion the people who live on the island(s) are panic-shopping for storm supplies. Why, oh why, wouldn’t they already have a footlocker or two full of the requisite flashlights, radios, batteries, and bottled water? Not only do they live on a place with active freaking volcanoes, but they also live someplace where, when the Bad Things happen, it takes days to get supplies there because of the location.
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With that in mind, I’ve been doing some minor upgrades here and there to my own level of preparedness. Mostly there’s been a gradual but sustained shift from ‘survive the end of the world’ to ‘survive an economic hardship’. Now, you might think that if you’re prepared for the former that will cover the latter. Mmm…some ways yes, some ways no. Mostly right now I’m working on getting money in the bank, money in the safe, paying off the house, and rewriting some budgets and other financial plans. (To say nothing of the continued adventure of increasing my value in the marketplace.)
So, yeah, plenty of ammo and freezedrieds in storage, but I feel even more prepared when all the bills are paid a month or two ahead, there’s cash in the safe, money in the bank, food in the fridge, a couple pairs of new shoes on the shelf, and a decent emergency fund. In the non-stop Blender O’ Despair that is my life, I’ve needed cash far more often than I’ve needed body armour…..
By the way, you wanna help ol’ Zero achieve the fulfillment of these worthy goals and do yourself a great service? Yeah, this.
Discreet communications
Someone asked me a question in a private comment but left no way for me to contact them other than posting a message. So: yes, numbers are the same as listed on the page.
As an aside, folks, if you have something you want tell or ask me privately, feel free to send me an email. If you’re a big privacy fan, and who isn’t these days, there are plenty of anonymizers you can use to send me an email without compromising your ‘real’ email address.
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Just a reminder
Putting the goober in gubernatorial
Our Democrat governor has come out in favor of the usual ‘assault weapons’ ban and is spewing the predictable balm of how he’s pro-Second-Amendment and he has a family history of hunting to back it up. Not sure that the one has anything to do with other but, hey, if I pose for a picture while wearing orange and holding an elks head that must mean I’m a foe of tyranny.
It’s so predictable…”I grew up around guns, BUT…….”, “My family has hunted for generations, BUT………”, “I’m a strong supporter of the right to bear arms, BUT………” and then it’s usually followed up with some inane free association exercise involving deer, AK-47’s, and the words “Don’t need” and “to hunt”.
Likely, this Quisling is posturing for some sort of potential political advancement come 2020. What he has done, though, is crap the sheets in his own electoral bed. I will personally make sure that this statist nonsense is not swept aside when the elections roll around.
Does he have a chance of making his dream come true in Montana? I doubt it. But the problem is that, like bedbugs and other vermin, he isn’t alone. You get enough political opportunists like him in one place and you get a synergistic form of stupidity that feeds on itself to be more than the stupid sum of its stupid parts. Scientists call it ‘critical mass’, most folks call it ‘Congress’.
And this, my fellow survivalists, is why you cannot let your guard down. There are always people like this who, while entitled to their opinions, believe their opinions need to become your opinions….whether you like it or not.
Vote early, vote often, and stock up just in case.
Bad habits
Man, I don’t even really like the .380… especially since most guns that used to be the big performers in that caliber (Sig, Walther, Browning, etc) now have counterparts that are virtually the same size but in 9mm.
But….for $225 who could say no to a little SIG 230?
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