Tag Archives: theory

Is it enough if you can’t get any more tomorrow

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This is going to be one of those posts thats going to get linked to quite a bit in future posts. Why? Well, because I get tired of repeating over and over again a brief encapsulation of why I buy as many of a particular thing.

Uncertain Goods

I’ve mentioned this in the past, but Uncertain Goods are items whose future availability cannot be readily assured. It’s not a black and white issue….some items will be more uncertain than others. And, depending on the nature of the apocalypse you are forecasting, all items can be Uncertain Goods. Lemme give some examples…

Dental Floss. Those little plastic boxes with the spool of floss and the cutter? Yeah, those. Are they an Uncertain Good? No..I am virtually confident that tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year I will be able to walk into a Walgreens and buy as much of it as I want.

The more forward thinking of you might say “But, in a nuclear war (or similar event) the availability of just about everything would be affected, therefore all goods are Uncertain Goods.” Strictly speaking, this is true. This is where evidence and history come into play. Best I can tell, we haven’t had a nuclear war lately, nor have we had a global failure of the dental floss crop due to floss weevils. Additionally, I’ve heard nothing about dental floss prohibitions, taxes, confiscations, panic buying, distribution chain failures, and that sort of thing. To my way of thinking, dental floss is not an Uncertain Good. Oh, I stock up on it….but not because I worry about it’s availability, but rather because if I can spend fifty bucks and get a few years worth of the stuff tucked away, that’s one less thing to deal with.

Contrast the dental floss with, say, plutonium. Plutonium is an exceptionally Uncertain Good. I can walk out of my house and get dental floss from a half dozen different places without even needing to drive. Plutonium , on the other hand, is something you really have to make an appointment for. Even in ‘normal’ times your ability to obtain it is challenging. Throw some political or social turmoil in the mix and it gets even harder.

These are, obviously, two extreme examples but I think they make the point. An Uncertain Good is one whose future availability cannot be guessed at. Here are some items that, in my opinion, are Uncertain Goods: prescription meds, hard-to-find car parts, clothing in special-order sizes, odd batteries, certain chemicals or mixtures of chemicals, etc. Basically, if the only way you can obtain something is to special order it off Amazon or pay for it with a credit card, it’s an Uncertain Good. (Note that I said ‘the only way’…the fact that you buy your TP off Amazon to save money doesn’t mean it’s an uncertain good. You could buy TP at your local grocery. If you live in Nowhere, WY and you need a forward mounting bracket for the fusebox in your ’89 Saab you’re pretty much only going to get that through Amazon or some other internet contortion…thus, it’s an Uncertain Good.)

Take me, for example. I wear shoes that are, nominally, EEEEE width. (Yes, I have wide feet. I can walk on snow like a moose.) My only source for shoes is a couple specialty outfits on the internet. Thus, for me, shoes that fit are an Uncertain Good. So, I keep several pair on hand.

Alright, we’ve established what an Uncertain Good is. Your idea of what it is and mine may differ due to our regional differences, but, broadly, we should be on the same page. Now it’s a matter of scale.

Relative Uncertainty

Take my 5E shoes and the plutonium, for example. Both are Uncertain Goods, we’ve established that. Now, which of the two is more likely to be difficult to obtain at a later date? Probably the plutonium, right? So in a priority-based system of acquisition, I’d probably want to score the plutonium before I score another pair of black walking shoes. Both goods are uncertain, but one is likely (IMHO) to be more uncertain than the other.

Quantity

Ok, so we know what Uncertain Goods are, and we know that some Uncertain Goods are more uncertain than others. So why do I need several hundred G3 magazines? Or a dozen ARs?

Both of those items are Uncertain Goods with a history of threatened availability, and a near constant threat of diminished future availability. Or, put into simple terms, they banned ’em before and they want to ban them again.

Okay..so they’re an Uncertain Good, with a definite likelihood of future availability being a problem, but why do you need so many???

I have another 25 years on my meter. We’ve established these Uncertain Goods may become unavailable at any moment. So…if tomorrow I couldn’t call up Cheaper Than Dirt and order more, and what I had in the closet had to last me the rest of my life, would I feel comfortable with that? Well…a lot of stuff can happen in 25 years, so I’d want plenty to cover things like loss, breakage, confiscation, abandonment, theft, trade, gifting, and ‘just in case’. When you look at it in those terms, five magazines for your Beretta 92 when your’re forty years old is not a ‘lifetime supply’. In fact, it’s laughably short-sighted.

The Matt Foley suvivalists (You know, the ones who think all you need to survive the apocalypse is a Mosin Nagant and a vaaaaaaan down by the riverrrrrrr.) are aghast at the notion of spending money, but if your career goals go beyond being a WalMart greeter and complaining about ‘the rich’ full-time, you can afford such things. The secret to being able to afford things like guns designed after World War 2, food that isn’t stored in 2-liter pop bottles, and housing that doesn’t have a license plate holder, is to complain less about people who have more money than you and start doing what it takes to become someone who has more money than you.

The paradigm I use is: if I could not get any more of these [items] tomorrow, would I be comfortable with the amount I currently have. I’ts not any more complicated than that.. When I buy supplies and items to enhance my survivability, I’m thinking on the long term. Even a ‘personal’ EOTWAWKI like a job loss or health issue would benefit from such planning… its one less thing to worry about.

Obviously, there will be a couple factors to consider – cost, storage, expiration, opportunity cost, etc. I wouldn’t buy a lifetime supply of Toyota Tacomas because of cost, I wouldn’t buy a lifetime supply of drinking water because of storage issues, and I wouldn’t buy a lifetime supply of bananas because of expiration. But, something like, say, toothpaste? Dental floss? MagLites? Blankets? Lantern wicks? I’d have no problem with several dozen in storage.

So there you have it. Next time you want to comment and say “You have one Blastomatic 500, why do you need fifteen magazines for it” you’ll have your answer. And maybe the rubric of “if I could not get any more of these [items] tomorrow, would I be comfortable with the amount I currently have” might prove useful to you. But, regardless, those are the reasons and logic behind why I buy as much as I do of some items.

Letting your guard down

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Ok, time to steer this blog back to being on topic…….

Friend Of The Blog ,Rawles over at SurvivalBlog had a link to a video about the ‘lull’ that seems to be going on in terms of people prepping. (And, wow, I really dislike that word ‘prepping’.)

Has there been a lull? I really couldn’t say because I don’t keep my finger on the pulse of the preparedness community – a group that is notoriously secretive to begin with. But.. I can say that when Trump won the election the blogosphere was full of “Now we don’t have to worry” sentiment which I have constantly maintained was a mistake.

The economy is doing well, gun bans are not looming (mostly), no great disaster has reared its head lately (unless you live in Puerto Rico) and you could almost say that this is a ‘good time’. But here’s the thing – when times are good is exactly when you should be getting your ducks in a row for the bad times. You don’t put on your seat belt during the accident, you put it on before the accident. Same story with preparing for [insert your favorite scenario here].

Yeah, there’s not the sense of urgency to buy guns and mags like there was when Obama was in office. And there’s not the sense of urgency to buy bleach and face masks like there was when Bird Flu was all the rage. And there’s not the same sense of urgency to stock up on generators and gasoline when Y2K was bearing down. (Hey, remember those days?) But just because the threat isn’t looming over you at the moment doesn’t mean it won’t…or that you can relax and take your foot off the gas.

Now is precisely the time you want to stay focused, and even maybe ramp things up – the economy is better than it’s been in a while, employment is up, so there’s the potential to bring in some extra money to get those last details taken care of. Now is the halcyon summer of plenty and ease that comes before the brutal and stark winter. Remember the ant and the grasshopper? The grasshopper played all summer and when winter came the grasshopper had to beg the ant for food. In some versions the ant helps the grasshopper, in others the grasshopper starves. It’s a classic fable that turns up with surprising frequency in art:

Someday Im going to have a print of this framed and on my wall…….

My opinion is that too many survivalists thought that they could relax and slow things down once Trump got elected. I think that those people are making tremendous mistakes… not necessarily because Trump wind up doing something that works against my interests, but rather because to slow things down now in a moment of relative safety is to throw away time and opportunity.

So, if you’ve slowed down since the election, or put stuff on the back burner because you figure you don’t have to worry until 2020, I suggest you rethink your position and get on the bounce.

An example of the ‘loaner’ or ‘disposable’ gun

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Tam very nicely linked back to this post and opined in her blog:

But say you wind up with a friend or family member who suddenly finds themselves in a life circumstance where they realize that they need a better way to protect themselves than 911? A crazy ex, a stalker, a neighbor making threats, or just one of those violent criminal incidents that happens close enough to home to be a wake-up call…

If you’re the “gun person” in your family or social circle, this has probably happened to you at least once already. Lately, seeing the occasional sub-$300 fire sale prices on Smith & Wesson Shields and SD9s, I’ve more than once thought about buying one to set aside for just this sort of occasion. “In case of crisis, remove unfired-in-box gat from safe.”

And no sooner had that post hit the light of day than my vehicle decided that it’s alternator had had enough of this mortal coil (get it? ‘Coil’?) and shuffled off to wherever dead car parts go. As a result, my vehicle very inconveniently puttered to a stop. In front of the homeless shelter.

Joy.

So, I called a buddy of mine to come help me push it off the road because I really didn’t want to ask the whiskey-for-breakfast crowd for a hand. My mood was already several orders of magnitude into the red zone and it wouldn’t have taken much to release some pressure in an unprofessional manner. So my buddy shows up and asks how long till the tow truck arrives. “Two hours”, I reply. He looks over at the homeless milling around aimlessly, goes back to his truck, and pulls a beater Beretta 96 out from under the seat. “Wanna borrow this until the tow truck gets here?”, he asks. I thanked him and told him me and my G19 were just fine. But…here’s the big takeaway from that: because he had what amounted to a ‘disposable’ or ‘beater’ or ‘truck gun’ available he was able to offer it to someone else. And a scenario like that is precisely why we have extras, and extras on top of extras – because someday a friend, family member, or other person you care about might be in a bad position and in this way you can offer them assistance. And thats not just guns, guys…. that could be food, ammo, batteries, money, or any host of other things that, when you don’t have it and really need it, are really important.

This is a big distinction from charity. Charity is generalized giving out of some sense of moral or religious imperative or duty. I generally don’t suffer from this particular quality, so my generosity is a bit more selfish – I give to those that add a value to my life, or I give for the satisfaction I get from the act of giving. It may seem like that’s a difference with no distinction, but I see a distinction. I suppose the greatest distinction, for me, is that charity often comes across as an obligation and I am extremely opposed to obligations being forced upon me rather than they being voluntarily assumed.

On a side note, I had my Bag Of Tricks with me as well as my mountain bike sitting in the back of the vehicle so I could very easily have left the area and made it back to base with minimal inconvenience…if I was willing to just abandon the vehicle, which was not called for at that point.

Words have meanings

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Listening to late-night talk radio, especially some of the more…offbeat…programs (looking at you, Geo. Noory) can really mess with your head. On the one hand, the forecast is for economic depression or massive hyperinflation and if you don’t move your money out of currency and into metals you are doomed…doomed! And then there’s an upcoming global disaster that will lead to famine…unless you stock up on food now! But not before the powers that be decide to enact a scheme to repeal your second amendment rights….so get out here and buy guns and ammo!

I don’t know which is worse, the emotional whiplash or the financial whiplash.

I was having a discussion with a classmate today. He said that todays generation will be less successful than the previous one.  I said that without establishing a baseline of what ‘successful’ meant, the conversation was pointless. His grandfather fled the Nazis and got out of Europe with just the clothes on his bank and not a penny to his name. We both agreed that would probably, to him, qualify as ‘success’. The generation after that? Probably saw raising good kids and having a job as success. That led to the question – what did we think success was?

I can’t speak for anyone else but me….to me, success is safety and security. Having constructed a system , or series of systems, to minimize my exposure to risk and harm and having those systems in place and effective…thats success to me. What does that system look like? It looks like a life without debt, some marketable skills, a paid house, with cash in the bank, gold in the safe, guns on the wall, food in the pantry, fuel in the cans, heat in the winter, and good health. I would say I’m a success if I could stop what I’m doing right this second and not have to worry about any of my needs being met for a year.

It’s different for everybody, of course….folks with kids might say that success is raising your kids to adulthood and having them turn out to be fine adults. Or some folks (notably Gyno-Americans) might judge success by how their relationships with other people are. And, of course, a lot of folks figure success is measured by your bottom line.

I’m not saying any of that is true or not. I’m simply pointing out that when you say ‘success’ it’s pretty good odds that what you think of as ‘success’ may be different than someone (or everyone) else. Nothing wrong with that, though.

Speaking of words having meanings, we throw around terms like ‘collapse’ or ‘end of the world’ but we never really specify what constitutes that sort of thing. Here’s a very interesting piece on how we define ‘collapse’:

And that’s why I hate using the words “civil war” and “collapse”, because they’re not specific. Whenever I read the words “societal collapse” or “economic collapse”, I wonder: collapse to what level? 100% collapse? 50% collapse? (Even a 25% collapse in employment and living standards is going to cause significant problems.) One could argue that we’re witnessing a societal collapse right now — a collapse of established, normative sociopolitical behavior and attitudes. It might be more accurate and specific to say that we’ve entered into a period of societal decline, but it only goes to show just how vague the word “collapse” actually is.

RTWT, it’s quite interesting. Words have meanings, and when you talk to someone about something as important as preparedness it’s a good idea to make sure that you both know exactly what you mean when you say things like ‘collapse’.
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Fun ‘gotta share this’ .jpg for the day:

 

Article – Enough is enough: Tenants join landlord in Bay Area exodus

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SAN JOSE – Tony Hicks moved to San Jose in 1981, but he’s had enough.

Hicks told his 11 tenants he would soon place the three homes he owns on the market. He expected disappointment. Instead, most wanted to move with him to Colorado.

“It didn’t take them long,” Hicks said. “I was surprised.”

This article, ostensibly, is about high real estate prices in California and how it’s driving some people out of the state. Really, nothing in the article that is particularly interesting to people who are interested the sortsa things you and I follow.

But….

Read the article closely. Basically, this guy established relationships with his tenants, who became long-time tenants, and many of them are retired or highly mobile so they can really live anywhere. And…they’re packing up to move with him to a new out-of-state location to continue to rent from him in the new properties he’s going to buy/build.

So…do you see what happened here? This guy, totally by accident, is creating an actual community of like-minded individuals. I’m not saying they’re survivalists, but rather that he’s established these relationships, and gotten to be part of these peol[es lives (and vice versa), to the point that theyre willing to pack up and ‘keep the family together’.

We always think about communities and how they would be started… here’s an example of a guy who completely inadvertently created his own community. It’s rather interesting.

Methods to the madness

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Is Preparedness Category based, Linear or All Over The Place?
Such is the question asked by Ryan over at his blog. Succinctly, it is this:

Of the three approaches to establishing a level of preparedness – category based, linear based, or scattershot – which seems to be the way to go?

For me, it’s a balanced approach. My thinking has always been to imagine that I’m dropped naked, in the middle of a winter night, into an empty field. What do I need? And then I work it out from there. I’d want, immediately, a small amount of everything….rather than a huge amount of one thing and no supply of anything else.

Lots of people ‘go long’ in some way…they drop a couple grand on guns and get the sexy part of survivalism out of the way and then go to the mundane things like toilet paper and socks. There is some merit to that, but you leave yourself open to being caught short if you’re still working on that gun/ammo thing when some big event happens and you still haven’t gotten around to buying that water purifier.

Some folks go with a more ‘balanced’ approach and buy everything they need for, say, three days. Then they simply repeat this process over and over until they have their year (or whatever timeframe) supply. I rather like this approach.

And some just keep their eyes open an when they come across something that could be useful, they snag it. In the long run that might work, but it’s a great way to wind up sitting on a pallet of 500 MagLites and absolutely no batteries.

I’ve been doing some form of preparedness (or survivalism) for over 25 years. My experience has been that the most sensible way to do things is to get everything you need for ‘x’ amount of time, and then when you have that do it again…and again…and again. Once you’ve put your ‘weeks supply’ together, do it three more times…and now its a months supply. Do that twelve more times and it’s a years supply. That sort of thing. The alternative is that you shoot your wad and buy a years supply of food up front and get caught with only two weeks worth of toilet paper or gasoline.

The one argument I’ve come across for going ‘all in’ and buying as much of one thing as possible to the exclusion of other things you need (other than a spectacular sale) is when the thing you want may not be available in normal channels later. No one is trying to ban Ivory soap….but it’s entirely possible that in three weeks we’ll never have another ‘high capacity’ magazine available to us. And while gun stuff is the easy answer to ‘what might those soon-to-be-unavailable items be’, there’s other things too. Burner phones, cryptography software, electronic devices without ‘for your safety’ GPS tracking, etc, etc….all things you can have now but very possibly might be on the verboten list next year. If something you feel you need is possibly going to be unavailable later, then it makes sense to get it, in the quantity you want, while you can.

If you haven’t already got your supplies and gear socked away, and are still in the stages of acquisition, the best method…in my humble opinion….is the balanced approach. An increase across the board, on a regular basis, with occasional ‘spurts’ of increase in some categories as finances allow. I’d rather have six months of  food, fuel, power, clothes, medicines, and the like, rather than three years of food and one month of everything else. .

What you do, is of course, is your prerogative. For me, I try to raise the level of preparedness evenly across all categories if I can.