Monthly Archives: August 2020

Fall guy

Posted on by

I’m not super-extensively well-travelled. I’ve been to portions of Europe several times, but in a touristy capacity. I’ve never been to the ‘stans or that region. But..I can say that I’ve seen varied living conditions to give me a pretty broad base of experience.

So, I ask with all sincerity, why…why…WHY,,would anyone live in Texas? I just spent a couple days in the Houston area and I have never, ever, EVER!!11!11111 seen a climate less hospitable to human life. There was heat, humidity, fire ants, scorpions, and unrelenting sun baking everything. People say “So what? You just go from one air-conditioned building to another.” Dude, if you want to live in an artificial environment because the natural one outside your door will freakin’ kill you then you may as well be living on Mars. SpaceX needs volunteers to colonize Mars? Send the Texans…theyre already living in a climate that will kill you just as soon as look at you. They actually went to war with Mexico for that place? You know that saying, “All my exes live in Texas?”…well, yeah..because most people tell their exes “go to hell”. Well, there you go!

So..why was I there? I was helping someone move. I volunteered. And since I had to fly, I mailed a Glock and S&W 642 to myself ‘just in case’. What I did not mail ahead, and I should have, was one of my IFAKs. I didn’t want to take one in my luggage because I didn’t feel like having the grepos at TSA rummaging through my QuickClot and Dermabond. Bad move. Why?

Well, after several hours of unloading a storage unit into a rental truck in 103 degree heat, being covered in dirt, bruises, scrapes, and sweating faster than I could powerload on Gatorade, it was time to wrestle a ginormous fridge up the ramp to the truck. And….at the top of the ramp, it went sideways. I jumped clear to avoid ‘death by Frigidaire’ and I rolled up to my feet. The fridge missed me but I was a tad bruised.

  • Them: are you okay?
  • Me: Yeah. The only thing that can kill me is me.
  • Them: are you sure you’re okay?
    Me: Yeah, my heel feels a bit weird though.

And I took off my shoe and beheld this:

A close look showed a hole in the bottom of my shoe. When I leapt clear of the ramp, one foot landed in a bin of tools. Something drove right through my shoe and tore a hole in the bottom of my foot.

So, NSTIW, sitting on the curb by the storage unit wondering why I stupidly sent ahead my pistols and not my first aid kit. I had to scrounge through the storage unit…found some ancient Bactine, an elastic bandage, and a clean paper towel. Well, you do what you can, where youre at, with what you have.

SO..bandaged it up as best I could and carried on until I could send someone into a Walgreens and, like some scene in a gangster movie, have them go to the checkout clerk while carrying an armload of gauze, pads, tape etc, and trying not to be suspicious.

After that, it was..better. But it needs to be..ah..trimmed..in a few places. Hence, the doc in the box. (also some tetanus shot and keflex.)

So, other than wearing a more resilient pair of shoes, what could I have done differently? I should have been smart enough to realize that doing something like loading/unloading a truck could lead to this sort of thing and I should have mailed one of my first aid kits ahead. Failing that, I should have gone to Walgreens before I started the job and purchased materials to be prepared ‘just in case’. Honestly, I shoulda sucked up the $60 to ship and just mailed my Bag O’ Tricks to myself. That woulda covered me for bloody near anything that might go wrong.

Moral of the story: ‘remote’ preps don’t start and stop at guns.

And I shoulda just swung by Home Depot and grabbed a few Mexicans to unload /load the stupid truck.

Also, Texas might as well be the surface of Mars.

Life continues apace

Posted on by

It’s been a rough few days here at Casa Zero. Just that time of year. However, I’ve got some stuff to do in my civilian life that’s gonna keep my busy for the next few days so…amuse yourself with 15+ years of posts. I’m sure there’s something in there somewhere that you haven’t read yet.

But…some observations….

Guns and ammo continue to be either unobtainable at reasonable prices, or obtainable at ‘fetch the Crisco’ prices. I sealed the deal on guns, ammo, and mags a long time ago so I’m not really concerned for myself. I do, however, admit that I had bought more ‘speculative’ guns and ammo so I could be one of those people making bank on the current demand.
—————-
I was talking to one of the flunkies at the post office today. He’s switching roles from front counter to back room sorting. I asked why. He said he started off enjoying dealing with people but as of late has decided that people are “80% mean” and he doesn’t want to deal with people anymore. (Hey, disgruntled postal worker! Good thing ammo is hard to find.) He said that between Kung Flu and everything else, people are getting mean. I pointed out that people aren’t ‘getting mean’. Rather, the current situation is simply bringing out the person they always were.Good people, the mensches, remain mensches. Bad people remain bad or get worse. Nothing brings out who a person really is like adversity. And adversity usually has an element of fear, and fear is what makes Mr Rogers into Mr T. This is why in times of crisis…war,famine,depression,whatever…you have to be cautious. Scared people are dangerous people and they don’t even think they’re being dangerous.

So, the postal guy realized that most folks are not intrinsically happy, shiny people.

Welcome to my outlook.
———————
Although I’ve been light in posting lately that doesn’t mean I’m not still diligently working on keeping up my end of the Ant-Grasshopper paradigm. Still socking away food and supplies, although that pace has slowed down considerably since I went so hardcore on the subject a few weeks back. Now it’s mostly fine-tuning and maintenance…that is to say, I’m starting to rotate older stock into everyday use and replacing it with newer stock. For example, I pulled half a dozen bars of soap out of storage, moved them to the bathroom for use, and then replaced them in storage with newer product. (Because, unsurprisingly, soap can kinda ‘go bad’. It ossifies. Thats why I vacuum seal the soap I put into storage.)

But, by and large, I am…okay….with the situation here in terms of preparedness. Certainly I am far, far better off than most of the sheep out there. Somewhere right now there’s a 30-something with a crushing student debt, a car loan, sharing an apartment with two other people, and working in a Verizon store where their hours just got cut. It’s been a major drag most of the time getting there, but I’m extremely grateful to me for not being in that situation. Tomorrow might be different…anything can happen. But if it does turn to crap tomorrow I’ll have at least a couple tricks up my sleeve to improve my situation…money in the bank, food in the cupboards, gas in the tank, etc. And thats pretty much what preparedness is, no?
——————–
Posting will be short and sporadic, if at all, for the next few days. Go outside and do a ruck march, practice your shooting, or something.

Article – The Science Behind Honey’s Eternal Shelf Life

Posted on by

Ignoring the disturbing mental imagery that honey is basically bee vomit, this is a fascinating article about one of the few foods that can, virtually, last forever:

Modern archeologists, excavating ancient Egyptian tombs, have often found something unexpected amongst the tombs’ artifacts: pots of honey, thousands of years old, and yet still preserved. Through millennia, the archeologists discover, the food remains unspoiled, an unmistakable testament to the eternal shelf-life of honey.

There are a few other examples of foods that keep–indefinitely–in their raw state: salt, sugar, dried rice are a few. But there’s something about honey; it can remain preserved in a completely edible form, and while you wouldn’t want to chow down on raw rice or straight salt, one could ostensibly dip into a thousand year old jar of honey and enjoy it, without preparation, as if it were a day old.

And, yes, the article touches on the medicinal use of honey on wounds as well…and explains why it works on wounds, which was quite interesting.

For me, honey slathered over hot cornbread or other warm baked good is all the reason I need to keep it on hand. Had I the space and time, an apiary would not be an unwelcome part of Casa Zero.

Scenes from CostCo

Posted on by

Was up at CostCo yesterday and saw this:

At the end of each aisle was not just one but several pallets of TP and paper towels.Now, CostCo usually does these ‘endcaps’ with various product they are sellingbut I’ve never seen them do an endcap of all the same product on every aisle.

So, now I’m wondering, do they know something I don’t? Are they privy to some information that indicates an upcoming surge in demand? Is something coming that they are aware of and i am not?

Or did they just get a really good deal on overstock?

Hmmm.

Serendipity

Posted on by

Right place, right time:

Rem. 158 gr. JHP….2600 pieces at $0.06 ea.

I have a case of AA#2 powder, a five gallon bucket of fired .357 brass, and a Dillon Super RL1050….looks like its time to put my .357 needs to rest.

Winner winner chicken dinner

Posted on by

Beef is, supposedly, in a bit of a shortage right now but that’s fine with me. When it comes to animal protein my flesh of choice comes from chickens. So…when I was patrolling the meat counter at ALbertson’s I saw this:

Hmm. $1.69 a pound is pretty good for boneless skinless. So I ask the guy behind the counter how the stuff is packaged in bulk. The answer is this:

Forty pound box. Okay, hook a brother up.

Of course, once you get a box of forty pounds of chicken breast you have a job in front of you. See, in the box is a big plastic bag full of loose chicken and about two gallons of the most disgusting, slimy, chicken funk you can imagine. Can’t just leave it like that for the cryo nap…nope…gotta repackage.

So, out comes the trusty vacuum sealer. Took a while, but the freezer is now full of lotsa animal protein. Did I buy it because I think there’s going to be some sort of chicken shortage? Heck no..how does the world run out of chickens??? No, this is simply because while I believe there’s always going to be chicken to buy I don’t believe I’ll always have money to buy it. Never know what the future holds, and only an idiot would assume that they’ll always have a job and always have money.

So, a happy little day of food security. Go me!

Link – Descend Into Great Britain’s Network of Secret Nuclear Bunkers

Posted on by

Seems to be the season for bunker news………

We’re standing in a room buried 10 feet below the North Yorkshire moors in northeast England, near the village of Castleton. The wind howls over the hatch above our heads as Hanlon—no expert, just an enthusiast—describes how the room would have been used, as an outpost of English civility and resourcefulness in the face of a nuclear attack. This bunker is one of hundreds just like it, scattered across the country. They’re no longer in use, having been decommissioned for decades, but they’re a nationwide network of relics of fear—a fear that seems never to have left.

As I understand it, there were quite a few of these ‘observation’ bunkers in England. Small one- or two-man concrete rooms no bigger than a bedroom buried to provide observers with some token protection. At least one was purchased privately for use as a ‘study room’. I suppose with a bunker that small it’s best function is as a bolt-hole for when you’re on the move and need to resupply or lay low for a few nights. Otherwise, it seems awfully small to live in for any length of time more than a few days.

On the bright side, a smallish bunker like that would be a pretty basic build project as opposed to something larger, I would think.