Winter is on the way. Although the afternoons can get warm enough here to require air conditioning the mornings are bitterly cold. Remember all that advice you get on the Discovery channel about dressing in layers? A lot of truth in that. Standard uniform around here is usually a t-shirt, then a heavy shirt and then a vest. That pretty much keeps you covered as the temperature does its usual daily rollercoaster ride.
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Bird flu has sort of fallen off the radar as of late but with winter coming and the seasonal crowding as people stay indoors more I expect it to get back on the medias radar again. Admittedly, all of last years hype about it certainly seemed a little anticlimactic but that’s the thing about disasters – by and large, you cant really predict the majority of them. Oh, you can predict them broadly as in “California is going to get hit by The Big One” but nailing it down to a specific day, week, month, or even year is usually not in the cards.

So, any day now I expect the news to suddenly start with its reports of the CDC quietly stockpiling vaccines, Chinese authorities hushing up deaths, migratory waterfowl corpses found to be infected, etc, etc, etc.

Am I worried about it? Nope. It just seems so unlikely to me. If it did happen my interest is on how it would affect infrastructure and the resultant problems. Isolation is easy..I can close the doors, pull the blinds and as long as the water holds out not have to leave the house for almost a year. Nah, my interest is in how travel, commerce and the like will be affected and what the results will be.

The flu of 1918 is the benchmark that other pandemics are compared to but the differences in society then versus now would make huge differences. With air travel and the majority of Americans being quite mobile you would have disease spread much faster but on the other hand with the advent of modern communications and medicine the effects could be mitigated. Still be a mess though but I don’t think you’d get the body count like in 1918.
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I was puttering around the kitchen the other day and someone pointed out that they thought the screw-on lid on my 5-gallon bucket of rice was pretty cool. I’ve mentioned it before but I’ll touch on it again for the new people… If your going to store anything in five-gallon buckets (or any bucket that has a mouth of approximately the same size) you may want to investigate Gamma Seal products. These are screw-on lids for buckets. Normally buckets have lids that ‘snap’ on and are a major pain in the ass to remove. The Gamma Seals are a collar that snaps on to the bucket and then a gasketed screwtop lid that screws into the collar. The result is that your bucket is now easily accessed but keeps out all the nasties. Its excellent for storing bulk dry goods like rice, pet food, grains, etc. Its also extremely handy if you want to put together a 72-hour kit or a kit for your vehicle and want it protected from dirt, wet, dings, dents and the like. The Gamma Seals are normally around $8-10 a throw and come in several colors so you can color code your gear. Hmmm…I may have to investigate a group buy on those.
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Speaking of group buy, if theres enough interest I may try seeing what sort of deal can be swung on the Glock 18 mags…you know, the 9mm mags that hold about 30 rounds. They work great, can be used in some 9mm carbines, and are handy for those situations where you’ve got only one hand free and cant spare another hand to reload (like when your driving or dragging something). I was toying with ordering a dozen or so for myself but if theres enough interest I’d see if maybe a better deal can be had on, say, fifty or so. And before you ask: yes, they’ll fit all 9mm variants of Glock and no they are not available in any caliber other than 9mm. (Although aftermarket ones exist in .40 and .45 but Ive had bad luck with them.) Even if you don’t have a Glock in 9mm, enough people do that they would be worth a nice chunk of change if another mag ban passes.