Monthly Archives: April 2020

More Observations

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I dunno about you, but so far, in this slow-moving apocalypse, I have yet to need to shoot anything or anyone in a directly-related-to-the-pandemic situation. In fact, amongst all the myriad items I (and probably you) put back against that uncertain future, virtually none have gotten taken out of their storage containers. Its starting to look like that for 90% of most disasters you can sum up your preps into two different items – a shoebox full of cash, and some food.

Gasoline? Not only is it still available it is at a markedly lower price than when this whole thing started. How many disasters do you see that make the price of a staple commodity go down?

Food? It’s been about a month since this thing really blew up and most of the shelves at my local grocery are back to normal..including TP and rice. It looks like there’s about a four-week lag for the supply and distribution change to catch up.

Guns and ammo? Yeah, they’ve been hit hard over at the gun shops. But, broadly speaking, I haven’t heard of anyone getting into a shootout with starving cannibal armies yet. In more rural environs, with overstretched departments, there might be some tweakers who are waiting for an opportunity to do some home invasions at remote properties but so far…nothing I’ve heard.

Water? I’ve not heard of anyone having problems with their water supplies.

I’m almost tempted to say that your basic Kung Flu survival needs can be met with a well-stocked freezer and a big-ass box of cash. (And, really, that box of cash is often the secret sauce for most disasters.)

Honestly, I could not have imagined such a global-scale disaster or event that still has all the utilities running as normal and seems so…orderly? Neat? Calm?

To be fair, I’m only going off my own experience here in a Montana city (or town, I suppose, if a population of less than 100,000 counts as a city).

But, thus far, it looks like the best preps have been to have money in the bank (or gun safe).

Key words there, though: thus far. Yeah, no shootouts with opportunistic looters…so far. No around-the-block lines for ground beef…so far. No fistfights at the pumps as cars line up for gas in a blocks-long queue… so far.

And its because of ‘so far’ that we keep the freeze drieds, stabilized fuel, Glocks and ammo, etc, etc.

But, I suspect one of the biggest takeaways from this episode, other than the obvious ‘wash your hands, dammit’ is that having money in the bank or on hand alleviates a large part of the headaches involved in a disaster.

Article – The Food Expiration Dates You Should Actually Follow

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From the NY Times. If you can’t get to it because of a paywall, try clearing your browsers cache and then try the link again. Or open a different browser and cut/paste the link.

With most of us quarantined in our homes, chances are you’ve been reacquainting yourself with the forgotten spices and fusty beans from the depths of your pantry. But how fusty is too fusty? When is the right time to throw something out? And what about fresh ingredients? If I’m trying to keep supermarket trips to a minimum, how long can my eggs, dairy and produce keep?

Here’s the first thing you should know: Expiration dates are not expiration dates.

Decent article explaining what most of use should already know: those dates on most foods (though not all) are fairly meaningless. Speaking as someone who routinely eats canned/dry/frozen food that is years old, I can tell you that anything other than high-acid foods (pineapple, tomato products, etc) will last a lot longer than the date on the can. A lot longer. Like, several years.

However, that is no substitute for rotating through your stocks just to keep everything topped off and fresh. For canned goods, I use these and have find them quite handy.

Those Five Recession-Proof Businesses vs The Plague

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I’ve mentioned that this Current Situation is an excellent chance to observe and learn. This is a dress rehearsal for whatever bigger things come down the pike next. If you’ve been watching the news lately, which is rather tough to avoid, we’ve been told that unemployment is rocketing through the roof as people are laid of, furloughed, fired, downsized, or otherwise off the payroll. Makes sense…if a business is closed then there’s no way to pay the employees.

But…some people are not only still getting paid, they’re getting paid more. They are in a position that allows them to continue to have employment in this situation. Let’s examine that.

I read somewhere that people who made it through the tumult of World War Two noted that no matter how bad the situation in the civilian population, certain trades or businesses were able to stay afloat. Broadly, there were five: food, medical, sex, weapons, and entertainment. If you were in a business that was in one of these categories, the odds were better in your favor during recessions, depressions, etc. With various states on lockdowns, people holding onto their money (if they’re smart), and social distancing the order of the day…who is still in business?

Well, the gun and ammo businesses are doing well. Weapons always make people feel, right or wrong, that they have some control over their lives. If you’re in the ammo business or the gun business right now, and you have some inventory, you’re probably doing pretty well. So…thats 1/5th that seems accurate.

Grocers are always going to see people buying from them. Folks have to eat. And, again, as long as they have inventory there will be no supermarket that has sales flatline. Pandemic or no, people wanna eat. (Also folding booze and smokes into this group.) 2/5ths.

Nurses and doctors are probably not short of work right now unless youre something a little more pedestrian and a lot less ER. For example, I don’t think there’s a lot of dentists or podiatrists doing business right now. But you’re an ER, ICU, or flight nurse? Bet you’re getting all the work you want. So, yeah, 3/5ths.

Entertainment? Thats tricky. Mass gatherings are kinda frowned upon right now..concerts, movies, etc, are not doing well. Even if your venue isn’t closed down by .gov edict, no one wants to sit elbow-to-elbow with coughing strangers. So, no, this fifth doesn’t work in this situation.

Sex? Well, with everyone staying at home there’s a rise (ahem) in online porn, toy purchases, cam shows, etc, etc. And, I suppose that for those who make house calls…there might be a consistent demand. 4/5ths.

So out of those five businesses, it looks like four of them will weather this pandemic. Others I’ve noticed: the local gold/silver shop is doing crazy business.

If you work for government, you’re probably also somewhat bulletproof in all this. Certainly if youre a cop or fireman you can expect to keep working.

All in all, this is an interesting subject to watch play out in the real world. If you’re looking for a career or sideline to give you an extra income in all sorts of situations, you might want to look around your neighorhood and see who is open, and how much business theyre doing. If they can make money during a crisis like this, then perhaps its a business worth looking into.

Excel-ence in logisitcs

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First off, that last poll really surprised me. A full 50% of you people don’t keep track of what you have using anything more complicated than what’s between your ears. And only 1/5 of you use anything more technologically advanced than a paper and pencil.

Why am I surprised? Well, you’re sitting in front of a computer right now, aren’t you? You know how to work the thing, don’t you? So it seemed reasonable to figure that people who can figure out how to use a computer would take advantage of it for this sort of thing. However, a previous poll showed that the readership around here is..shall we say…a bit ‘seasoned’…and perhaps with the older demographic there is a resistance (or ignorance) towards the technological. Who knows. All in all, though…I was very surprised.

I use spreadsheets for keeping track of all my stuff that I need to consider myself ‘prepared’. You can call it your Master List, Inventory, TOE, or whatever. Since I have a bizarre sense of humour, I call mine The Preponomicon.

Anyway……

I use Excel. Mostly because I’m familiar with it and because I still haven’t sat my butt down in front of the computer and mastered Access. My spreadsheets don’t have anything really fancy to them, but I do have them wired up to alert me when inventory levels are at particular thresholds. This is signalled to me by changing the colors of the cells that show my percentage of quantity. At the moment it’s set up like this:

100%-90% = Green – All good
75%-89% = Light green – Okay, but you might wanna jump on this
50%-74% = Yellow – Next trip to the store, get this stuff
0%-49% = Red – Get this fixed ASAP.

It looks something like this:

How do we do the color change? Conditional formatting. Somewhere in your menu bar you’ll see it.From there, under “Manage Rules”, are the rules I made:

And here’s the actual rule saying that if the value in that cell is equal to 90%, or more than 90%, make it green:

For the other values its just a mater of creating a separate rule for each one. And, yes, you can also use a rule that uses a color gradient rather than just these….I just went with something basic. What’s that you say? Still seems overwhelming? Alright, how about I give you a template to work with?

template

Fairly simple….Just a basic template. As you add stuff to your list copy the cells in Column M downwards to your new line. I threw in filters for the column headers in case you want to sort or see only a specific category.

Delete or add columns to add/delete the things you want to sort by. I de facto go with four categories so I can narrow down my focus….Gun stuff, Magazine, Glock, 9mm……Food, Dry, Freeze Dried, Rice & Chicken……Hygiene, Dry, Paper, TP….. that sort of thing. I throw two descriptors after that for brand/model and size. If you really want to go nuts, add a column for ‘servings per qty’ and ‘servings total’, throw in some math, and get yourself an idea of how many servings of oatmeal three five pound sacks will provide. I’m sure there’s someone reading this who is chuckling to themselves that this is a kludgy spreadsheet and that there’s a more streamlined way to do this. Hey, have it. Just showing ya what works for me.

If your virus warning pops up as you try to open the template, ignore it. They do that if there isn’t some sort of certificate or whatnot. This is just a half dozen or so lines of Excel.

If you find this useful, how about thanking me in a renumerative way? Oh, and I lay claim to the term ‘Preponomicon’ which, if you haven’t figured it out, is a nod to the necronomicon from ‘Evil Dead’.

 

 

Mag(a)

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So these arrived today:

Ruger Mini-14 factory 20-rd mags…marked ‘BLEMISH’. I think that means it was for the Blem military.

Price? $19.99 ea for a Ruger steel factory mag. w00t.

Big thanks to the person who emailed me and told me about this deal.
I know, I know…why didn’t I pass this on to you guys? Easy…about a half hour after I ordered…OOS. (Out of stock). Right place, right time.

(I swear, every single time I play with Mini-14 folder or the mags I wind up whistling the A-team them. Every. Single. Time. And I’m not even aware Im doing it! Curse you, Cannell!)

Life in the petri dish

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One of the more amusing and annoying consequences of The Current Situation is that every time I am out in public and feel the urge to cough or sneeze, I have to stifle it or risk am impromptu Salem witch trial.
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If anyone was curious, the Home Depot SKU for those buckets is 084305392411.
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I’m continuing to polish up my existing inventory of necessities. The basics were covered long, long ago. Now it’s just getting the final touches…little things that, while not necessities in any sense, are nice to have to make eating stored food a little more enjoyable….jarred garlic, soy sauce, salsa, etc, etc. One of the things I do need to pick up more of is disposable eatingware…paper plates, plastic tableware, that sort of thing. While this is, for now, a ‘grid up’ disaster it is likely the next one won’t be. Electricity may not be available. Water may be better used for drinking than washing. So…let’s scrap the need to wash dishes and just have a couple hundred paper plates, knives, forks, and spoons on hand.
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The media is, as usual, full of mixed messages. On the one hand, everything is available in copious quantity – shop as usual. On the other hand, we read that some food producers/processors/suppliers are closing up or cutting back as their labor force calls in sick. For some reason I am reminded of the old Soviet joke where the bureaucrat visits the potato farm and asks how things are going:
“Comrade, if we piled up all the potatoes we harvested, they would reach up to god’s ankles.”
Comrade”, the bureaucrat chides, “You know there is no god.”
“Comrade,”, the farmer says, “You know there are no potatoes.

When it comes to news….Doveryai, no proveryai
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So what’s going on here in Zeroland? Not much. Still feeling like my region is in that half-normal,half-not-normal stage. Other than people wearing masks, salad bar sneeze guards everywhere, and lots of marking tape on floors, there doesn’t seem to be too much change. Thus far, this is turning out to be the least dramatic apocalypse I could have imagined…I mean, up until the point I cough up a lung or something.  Sure there are some rough spots…the economic toll isn’t pretty….but so far I haven’t had to hang looters, repel boarders, eat my neighbors, cook over a camp stove, sleep in a sleeping bag, or take a dump in a hole in the ground. First World lifestyle maintained: Achievement unlocked!

But…it’s still early…might not wanna put that Donner Party Cookbook away just yet.

 

Observations

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As many of you, I am sure, have noticed…a good part of my postings aren’t so much about what I’m doing as much as they are about what Im seeing. Couple reasons for that…first of all, I’m fine. I’ve got food, fuel, supplies, etc. So do you. So there’s no need for the back-patting festival of constant posts saying “People were on line for [item] but I had plenty…”.

What I do wind up posting about is the details about how this is all unfolding and what the takeaway from it is. What worked, what didnt, why didnt it work, why did it, what should I have done, what shouldnt I have done, and so forth. In short, we’re in the middle of a global experiment in disaster management, what can we observe and learn from it? Disaster planning rarely gets a global-level real world event to examine, dissect and learn from. Katrina was the benchmark for hurricane preparedness modeling, Kung Flu is going to be the benchmark for how pandemic planning is to be planned. In reality, there’ll be a lot of ‘white papers’, death by PowerPoint, committee’s and hearings, and then very little will actually be accomplished. Bureaucratic inertia. But on an individual level, guys like you and me should be taking notes like crazy. You could probably get a lot of info just from this exercise:

Ask yourself what concerned you most during the crisis. Then ask what would have made you not concerned (or less concerned). Then, for next time, go do/get whatever that thing was that you think would have made you less concerned. Example:

What concerned you? I was worried we wouldn’t have money coming in to pay the bills.
What would had made you less concerned? Having money in the bank.
So for next time: have a large emergency fund saved up

What concerned you? The grocery stores would be devoid of food
What would had made you less concerned? Having a full pantry and freezer
So for next time: build a stockpile of stored food

What concerned you? I’d die because I’m already in poor health
What would had made you less concerned? Having taken better care of myself
So for next time: start what you can to get back into shape and being healthy

You get the idea, I’m sure.

Notably, it’s interesting to see what people rushed out and bought and in what order. According to virtually every source, toilet paper and rice/pasta were the first things erased from the supermarket shelves. It was only after a week or two, presumably when people had time to think, that they started figuring out what else they might want to stock up on.

Those things that the knee-jerk panic buyers bought? Those are things you should plan on becoming virtually instantly unobtainable. Keep plenty of those. As things progressed and people had more time to think, other stuff started disappearing. Noticing what went fast in those early days is a good indication of what you should already have had on hand.

Really forward thinkers got things done that otherwise are now rescheduled. Dental cleanings, vehicle maintenance, in-person banking (loans, mortgages), etc. That was pretty smart and something that didn’t occur to me until later.

Lotsa lessons to be learned in this crisis, guys. Just gotta keep your eyes and brain  open to learning them. Maybe the next pandemic won’t be for another hundred years like the last one, but we just don’t know. In the meantime, we’re getting first-hand real-world examples of how people will respond. Take it all in and use that information to your advantage.