Monthly Archives: May 2020

Reopen

Posted on by

Locally, things are starting to ‘re-open’. Restaurants opened last week and today, finally, barbershops. I firmly believe that every business in this town should demand the city refund a prorated amount of the business license fees. The city extorted money from you to allow you to open a business and then they said you can’t open….the reason behind it is irrelevant, you paid for something and the city withheld it…seems like a partial refund is in order.

I’m going to go ahead and keep cutting my own  hair and see how long it takes before it just becomes so cocked up that only a visit to a professional will salvage my dignity.

I miss eating out every so often, and I also miss being able to do my banking face-to-face with a teller….but other than that, I haven’t been terribly inconvenienced by business shutdowns. I am, however, probably going to be indirectly affected by it as people without jobs start getting desperate. This is an excellent time to look around and determine whare are the skills that pay the bills in a crisis like this.

I can’t speak for the heavy population centers, but for here, in my quaint little 100,000 person town, it seems like people are getting a bit complacent and things are starting to have a little semblance of calm… no more panic lines at CostCo, most of the grocery shelves are restocked, etc. I think people are getting used to the ‘new normal’ and the sense of urgency and immediate need to ‘do something’ is diminishing. I also have no doubt it’ll get stirred up as soon as the media latches on to some new Kung Flu related item to flog to the public.

All in all, so far, lame apocalypse. Unless you actually catch the Kung Flu. But for me, for now, it’s mostly been a cross between a dress rehearsal for the apocalypse and a controlled experiment/drill.

Article – The American Government’s Secret Plan for Surviving the End of the World

Posted on by

Among the greatest foreign-policy dilemmas faced by former President Jimmy Carter is one that has never been publicly aired but is gaining new relevance. It concerns nuclear war, and how the U.S. government would survive it. Carter’s decisions remain classified, but documents declassified by the CIA in 2017, along with the archives at several presidential libraries, provide a window into the White House’s preparations for an imminent apocalypse.

It’s hilarious to think that this was the greatest foreign-policy crisis of Carter’s administration. There’s 52 former government employees who might think there was something a tad more pressing than this. If you’re too young to remember, Carter was a wildly unqualified politician whose own party didn’t even like him. The nation was still nursing a Nixon hangover and an outsider was exactly what people thought they wanted…what they got was a peanut farmer so out of his league he makes Obama look like Kissinger.

Anyway…..interesting article about .gov continuity. for a more..concrete..example of that continuity, look no further than the lovely Greenbrier hotel.

Floor porn

Posted on by

Oh merciful Crom, this thing is *cute*. I have always wanted a little 9mm carbine that would break down into a tiny package. Not as a first choice to Omega Man my way through some darkened city, but rather as a low-profile, easy-to-hide-in-a-desk-drawer option for when you’re at work when the riots start. Chuck a little red dot (leaning toward that TRS-25) on there, drop in a happystick, and you’re good to go.

I gotta hand it to Ruger, this is the sort of thing they never would have come out with when Billy Sr. was still breathing. This thing is lighter than my Uzi, and more compact than my Evo. I’m really curious to see how that short barrel does in terms of accuracy on steel plates at 50 yards.

And, yes, this thing really needs a suppressor on the end just to complete the look.

Urgency

Posted on by

The problem with being a survivalist is that you get pretty jaded, pretty quick. Your eye is caught by every headline that says some sort of doom is impending and after a while you just sort of start going “Yeah, right”. I freely admit, I had that attitude when the Kung Flu started…another sensationalistic headline about how we’re all gonna die. -yawn-

As I suspected, the Kung Flu itself wasn’t , for me, the problem. The problem was all the associated things that it would engender – economic, social, logistic, etc. A couple months into it and I’m pretty much…unchanged. Oh, money is a little tighter as revenue slides a bit, but other than that it’s pretty much business as usual. Its the business as usual part that causes problems.

As I’ve said before, the sense of urgency feels a bit dialed back. Four weeks ago I was doing a good bit of last minute shopping with some urgency. Now…it’s a little less urgent. partially because a lot of gaping holes in my logistics base have been filled, but also because it’s a bit hard to keep that sense of urgency going when, other than some face masks, everything seems fairly normal.

But…media is now clamoring about meat shortages and second-wave explosions of infections. I didn’t take them too seriously last time, do I take them seriously this time? Hmmm.

I’ve got a little extra time on my hands for the next few weeks… I think I’m going to use it to straighten up and organize things a little better around here. That sort of thing usually goes a long way towards keeping my mind focused on being prepared.

What about you? Still feeling the sense of urgency? Are you feeling an even heightened sense of urgency? Or are you some frosty dude who has always lived every day like the mushroom cloud is only a day away?

 

D’oh Canada

Posted on by

Canada, a country almost entirely made of Nerf, has decided to ban ‘assault weapons’. Their list is pretty comprehensive, including some things that I had no idea were in common use…like mortars and grenade launchers. Anyway, here’s a link to the list of guns that are banned by name.

One thing that was quite interesting, and that you should expect to see our own domestically produced idiots put forward, is that the regulations also include a prohibition on AR upper receivers..

The Regulations also prescribe the upper receivers of M16, AR-10, AR-15 and M4 pattern firearms to be prohibited devices in order to ensure that these firearms can-not easily be used with illicitly manufactured or acquired lower receivers. The M16, AR-10, AR-15 and M4 firearms are modular firearms consisting of the lower receiver assembly, which is the component bearing the serial number and subject to registration and that is now prohibited; and the upper receiver assembly, which is the pressure- bearing component and has not previously been regulated.
Not sure how you enforce such a regulation on a previously unregulated part, but I’ve no doubt some sort of awkward and unworkable solution will be put forth. As Tam says, ignorance is no excuse for a law.
The dog-shooting thugs at ATFE have, in the past, managed to prohibit previously non-regulated parts (which is why parts kits no longer come with barrels) so I suppose they could possibly make it stick.
What I can totally see happening, in light of the rather awkward realization that an AR lower receiver is not actually a receiver, is ATFE requiring upper/lower receivers to be numbered and ‘mated’.
One day, guys, it’s gonna happen.

Forgot to pat myself on the back

Posted on by

I was so wrapped up in the Current Situation that I overlooked something – two weeks ago was the 17th anniversary of this waste of electrons. Yes indeedy, 2003 is when I started blogging. I do believe that makes me one of theoldest preparedness blogs (although that definition may be suspect) still in business. In my time here I’ve seen a lot of blogs come and go. I’m still here ‘cuz….well…I’ve got nothing better to do.

In that time…Peak Oil, Bird Flu, H1N1, Ebola, SARS, Mayan calendar, Obama I, Obama II, and a host of other events. And..we’re still here. Which means either we are really good survivalists or we’ve just bee lucky so far. Honestly, Im more inclined to believe the latter.

Anyway, I realized this evening that I had overlooked the anniversary and figured I’d address that.

How many more years of this? Beats me. At least a few more years I suspect.

Mary Mallon

Posted on by

All this talk about asymptomatic people carrying a virus without knowing it and infecting others brings to mind the story of … Mary Mallon.

No doubt the more astute medical types will recognize the name, but for the rest of us she was better known as Typhoid Mary.

TL,DR version: In the early 20th century a functionally illiterate Irish woman wound up being a carrier for typhoid fever. Mind you, she seemed pretty healthy and had no reason to think she was sick..but wherever she went and worked as a cook…people got sick and died.

Eventually, in some pioneering medical investigatory process, the NYC health people figured out that Mar was making other people sick. The record is a little unclear if they tried to explain it to her but it isn’t hard to imagine that someone with her lack of education might not grasp the idea of being a carrier. All she knew was that the one marketable skill she had was being taken away from her. So, she nodded her head, said she’d stop cooking, and went right on cooking for more families who mysteriously got sick.

Eventually the health department locked her up, quite against Mary’s will, and she wound up spending the rest of her life on North Brother Island.

If you’d like to read the more detailed version, and follow some of the legal wranglings that locked her up, try this and this.

In a time where many people chafe at the notion of .gov forcing restrictions upon them in the name of the ‘public health’ it’s interesting to see how far some municipalities went.

Momentum

Posted on by

Funny..it seems like it was just two or three weeks ago my focus was rather intense about getting topped off on various foodstuffs and other items. And now…the sense of urgency seems…diminished…I suppose. That is, of course, the classic survivalist trap – you get fired up over something and pursue it with great intensity and then that intensity wanes. And then, something big happens, and you’re caught flat-footed.

Solution? Well, for me, it’s reminding myself that we aren’t out of the woods by a long shot. Oh sure, virus-wise its a maybe-maybe-not thing, but my concern is more economic. The repercussions aren’t going away anytime soon and I need to be in a position to not only survive it but be able to take advantage of the situation as the less-foresighted suddenly have to choose between their pre-ban Bennelli M3 Super 90 or making the mortgage that month.

Did you know that, as a group, the Mormons came out of the Great Depression better than when they went in? Because of their conservative nature and dogma they weren’t as impacted as most other groups. As a result, they were in a position to take advantage of opportunities that arose.

From an economic standpoint, the impact the virus (and it’s ‘control measures’) inflict on the economy are pretty big. I don’t see a lot of new hirings for the rest of the year, I can see a lot of places shuttering up from not being able to withstand the revenue loss of a couple months, surviving businesses might have to cut back hours/employees, and the smarter folks will cut discretionary spending to the bone to make sure hey have enough cash ‘just in case’. In short, the worst person to be right now is a Starbucks barista with $50k in student loans, a car loan, credit card debt, and a month-to-month lease with roommates. (Actually, thats a pretty crappy position to being pretty much anytime.)

Other things I find interesting are how the media beatas a slightly different drum every few days. Drug shortages one day, restricted airline travel the next, and the current crsis du jour is….meat shortage. Here’s how strong an influence that media can be – I saw no less than three articles on various news wires predicting a beef shortage. My natural inclination was to think “Ok, time to head up to CostCo and buy a case of beef” and then I realized, waitasec, I don’t really eat beef. (True fact: other than cheeseburgers, I don’t eat very much beef. Rarely do I eat a steak. My go-to animal protein is chicken and Italian sausage.) But the media hype had gotten to me to the point that I was almost ready to go stock up on something I don’t even really eat. Insidious the way these media panic stories mess with your head.

On the other hand, as I said, there’s also the problem of them not messing with your head and you becoming complacent or losing your momentum/initiative. Thats what I have to be on guard against right now. The ship is sinking, and it’s a slow leak, but the fact it is happening slowly does not change the fact that it is happening.The Current Situation seems to move slowly and invisibly but it is moving….and not for the better (economically). So, stay focused, keep your eye on the big picture, and stick to the plan.