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

Buddy of mine comes into the shop and says “Hey, didja see the guy down the street has ammo cans on sale?” No, I did not. So I headed down there and they had two sizes – 25mm cans and what we call ‘40mm cans’ even though they are seldom actually marked as 40mm. Price was the same though…6 bucks each. Well, to be honest, I have plenty of ammo cans sitting around but theyre one of those things that its hard to have too many of in the right size.

I especially like the 40mm cans (8×18×14) for storing winter survival gear for the truck. Waterproof, airtight, and about as crushproof as you can get. They also work nicely for storing larger items in quantity..for instance, I’ve got a couple in storage that are full of bricks of .22 ammo. Barring anything truly dramatic, these little babies are like time capsules – in twenty years these things’ll be just as solid as they are now. Yeah, theyre heavy and and a bit bulky. But…if youre storing essential gear these things are wonderful. I can leave one of these sitting out in the snow and rain for a couple months and the contents will be just fine. Heck, that’s worth six bucks, isn’t it?
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I’ve been opining for several years now that the big looming disaster in this country was either going to be something along the lines of a terrorist-related nuclear event or a profound economic crisis. I gradually moved away from the former scenario (although I haven’t discounted it completely) and am starting to feel somewhat vindicated on the latter one. What I hadn’t foreseen was what the cause of the economic troubles would be. As it turns out, the source of the problem is, apparently, a whole lotta chickens coming home to roost. Certainly theres enough blame to go around. People are quick to hold the banks’ feet to the fire while largely giving a free pass to the morons who bought houses they couldn’t afford. On what planet does buying a $375,000 house on $35k a year salary make sense? “But we were going to just hold it for a year and flip it as prices went up!”..yeah, how’d that work for ya? In retrospect, though, I suppose it isn’t that surprising…people seemed to be less inclined to be cautious and …prudent?…with their money and credit than previous generations.

I really like to think that people are going to learn their lesson from this Very Interesting Time that we are currently in. I hope theyre going to learn to think about the future. I hope theyre going to factor things like job loss and unexpected emergencies into their plans. I hope they learn that spending more than you make and then expecting sympathy and support when you cant pay it off is a bad idea. I would really like to see people learn that thinking about the opportunity cost of purchases is a good idea. But…Im not naïve enough to think that’ll happen on a grand scale. I think that when this is all over many people will change their habits but not enough to make any real difference.

Have I learned anything? I suppose some stuff. I never really lived too far beyond my means in a long time because I just don’t have that much means to begin with. About the only thing Im taking away from this whole affair is that deciding between [expensive but non-essential item] vs [money in the bank/safe/mattress] isn’t as painful a process as one might think. Theres plenty of times I see something I want and tell myself that I can live without it and wouldn’t I really rather have that money available in case something critical comes up? After a while, it doesn’t seem like a hardship or a deprivation…it just seems like a careful review of priorities.
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An article about the Chilean quake and the likelihood of a similar disaster occurring in the US.

Dude! Of course it can happen here. Heck, it already has at least once. California is supposed slip into the ocean at any moment, if the experts are to be believed. Even if you dont live in earthquake country the resultant crisis in logistics, population movement and resource diversion would stil have an impact on day-to-day living. The notion that something like that cant happen here is just wishful thinking.

And if you dont have enough to think about, try this:

The spate of recent earthquakes, starting with the magnitude-9.3 Indian Ocean event in 2004, follows a 50-year cycle of earthquake activity, McNutt says. The last cycle, in the 1960s, produced the two other record holders for recorded earthquakes — the magnitude-9.5 quake near Valdivia and a magnitude-9.2 quake in Alaska’s Prince William Sound.

“We know earthquakes are not uniformly distributed in time; they cluster,” McNutt says. “Now suddenly the earthquakes are lighting up again.”

So, apparently, its ‘earthquake season’. Interesting.