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.

Meeting the master of plumb-fu

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Add plumbers to the list of People I Will Look Out For In The Apocalypse.

Horrible plumbing story follows:

In every house (usually) there is a shutoff valve for turning off the flow of water into the house from the water main in the street. Additionally, at the curb in front of your house, there is a valve that the water company uses to shut off water to the house in case you don’t pay your bills or youre doing some sort of massive plumbing undertaking, etc. (Obviously, if youre not on city water this won’t apply to you.)

So, a few years back, the extremely ancient shutoff valve in the basement succumbed to age and would not close. Thus, the only way to turn off the water to the house to allow for work to be done would be to shut the valve off at the curb. All you had to do was have the water company come by, turn off the valve at the curb, and then you could replace your shutoff valve in the basement. Easy peasy Japanesey.

Problem: shutoff valve at the curb is also not working and will not close.

Result: there is literally no way to turn off the flow of water to the house.

This means that if you have a pipe break or something, you literally can do nothing except stick your finger in the broken pipe and hope for the best. The solution is to have the water company come by, turn off the water to the street (thereby turning off water to your neighbors) and coordinating with an excavating company to tear up the sidewalk, dig six feet down, replace the valve, fill the hole, replace the sidewalk. On my dime.

So…I just crossed my fingers that there’d be no pipe issues until such time as I could afford to have this excavation done. My hundred year old house had other plans.

Had a problem with the bathtub faucets that required them to be replaced. This was something that, no two ways about it, needed the water turned off. Hmmm.

So I went to the basement and figured it had been about ten years since I tried the valve, lemme try it again. Surprise..the water turned off. Hmmmm. So, my thinking was this: the valve is on its way out. If I can turn it off and on just one more time, I can shut off the water, install a ball valve right above it, open it back up, and leave it open forever and just use the ball valve above it as my shutoff. And thats what I did. And all was fine.

For a few days.

I went into the basement and I smelled water. I looked, and there was a steady drip coming from the stem of the old valve. Working it had shaken loose whatever packing was left in it and it was now leaking. It needed to be replaced. It could no longer be avoided. I contacted an excavating outfit and told them to write me up a bid. Then I went to the plumber HQ and asked if they had any suggestions.

“Well, just replace the shutoff valve.”, they said.
“Can’t. The valve at the curb doesn’t work. No way to turn off the water.”
“Oh. Yeah. Well, Nick can probably do that. He changes shutoff valves on live water and gas pipes all the time.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. He can do it live.”
“Sign me up.”

And thus, I met the Chuck Norris of plumbers. This Nick guy must have been trained by Shaolin plumbers in a monastery in New Jersey or something because, indeed, his plumb-fu was strong.

So Nick comes in, cranks, the valve shut (although the valve stem is leaking like a ten dollar hooker during Fleet Week), and readys his gear. He pulls out a new ball valve, goops it up with whatever that stuff is plumbers slather on it, loosens the old valve, and goes to work. He puts a five-gallon bucket over the pipe, reaches under with one hand, undoes the old valve, water starts shootting up into the bucket and cascading to the floor, he takes his other hand with the new valve, reaches under the bucket, threads on the new valve, and the water stops flowing. He literally did it in less time than it took to read this paragraph.

Out with the (very) old….

…in with the new.

Amount of water on my floor? A couple gallons, max. Easily remedied with some old towels and an electric fan. More importantly, there is now a working shutoff valve for the house, which means I can turn off the water if I need to…which means I can buy time on getting the valve at the curb replaced.

Soup to nuts, it was a sub-$200 job. I couldn’t hand the money over fast enough. For the last few days I’ve been having to empty a bucket under that valve twice a day and all I could think about was ‘what if…’… like what if the thing suddenly crapped out completely and water is spewing into my basement and I have literally no way to turn it off? So, yeah, the peace of mind I have now is much better.

If I ‘d known they could ‘do it live’ I’d have had this done a long time ago.

I knew a guy in high school who is now a master plumber in NYC…. I shoulda flown him out here and given him a Montana vacation in exchange for doing some work.

Mail forwarding

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Received a letter in snail mail from someone asking me to pass it on to someone else. Since I’ve no way to let them know I received their letter and carried out their wishes (and to thank them for their generosity), I’m making this post.

Message received, secondary message forwarded. Thanks!

ETA: The recipient let me know they received it just fine. Mission accomplished.

Saving space

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So youre a somewhat serious survivalist and you’ve come to the conclusion that a few medical supplies might not be a bad idea to stash back for the day the hospitals are overwhelmed and supplies are short. Off to eBay you go. And you realize that for the price of, say, two boxes of band aids at the local supermarket you can buy an entire case of 2,500 band aids from eBay vendors. Good band aids, too…not made in China crap. Same for gauze, pads, tape, etc, etc.

And then you realize that while 2,000 packages of 4×4 gauze might be useful after the apocalypse, until that time apocalypse happens it sure takes up a lot of room.

Thats pretty much what happened to me. As I was rearranging things the other week it occurred to me that the bulkier first aid supplies took up a lot of room. Not because they were bulky on their own, necessarily…but rather because there was so much of it.

Since I had the vacuum sealer out, I figured that perhaps vacuum sealing some of these items might cut down the space they took up, in addition to providing a lovely level of protection.

How much space? Well, lets grab a couple boxes of 3×8 non-adherent dressings and check…


So there’s a full box of dressings. Fifty per. Let’s see how they stack up…
One stack of fifty compresses down to a rather significantly smaller package.

So after a few hours I compared ‘before and after’. For example, the original box that held 18 ABD pads now held 35. That’s about a 50% savings in space and a thousand percent increase in protection from environmental factors.

The end of this long story is that I managed to clear off almost an entire shelf’s worth of supplies and compact them down to fit into one large plastic tub…and in the process add a layer of survivability to the packaging. (Everything was packaged in paper envelopes, like you get a band aid in, so there wasn’t exactly a tremendous amount of resistance to humidity, moisture, dust, dirt, etc, going on there.)

Do I ever think there’s going to be a time in my existence I need 50 rolls of rolled gauze? Man, I hope not. But once you divvy everything up between your primary location, the Beta Site, first aid kits, vehicles, etc, you can wind up going through quite a bit of stuff.

My first go-to for eBay medial stuff is these guys. After that, it’s just a matter of knowing the SKU or product number of what youre looking for and searching eBay. Oh…and having one of these.

 

Shelf Actualization

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I about twentyfive years ago, I built several really nice reloading benches. Really nice, solid, beasts made of 2×4’s and plywood sheeting. Problem is, I really only use one of them and the others take up space. So…..I chucked a screwdriver bit into the Dewalt and took the thing apart. What to replace it with? Why, more wire shelving of course.

As I was assembling the shelving, I took a few pics to demonstrate those wonderful S-hooks that I highly recommend for folks who use this type of shelving.

Notice that while one rack uses four uprights, the other rack will use only two. The S-cliips hung from the other rack will support the shelf instead of another set of upright.

S-hooks in place with shelf seated in them.

Finished unit. Still have another set of uprights (since each set comes with four and i only used six) so I could make a three-wide set of shelves using only two complete shelving sets.

Once the shelves were up, it was time to rearrange some things and one of those things was all the first aid and medical gear that had been in storage for…well…a while. Naturally, as I was doing this, I couldn’t leave well enough alone and had to make some changes. Biggest change is that a bunch of stuff got vacuum sealed to help keep the packaging clean, dry, and intact. Those paper pouches that hold the gauze and pads tend to delaminate after a while. I’m hoping that vacuum sealing them will prevent that.

And, while I was doing that, I figured I might as well vacuum seal the contents of the grab-n-go first aid kits. These are a couple milsurp medical bags I picked up off Sportsmans Guide or Major Surplus many years ago. Ideally, it’s not for immediate use, but rather a stash of items to take with you as you run out the door so that when you get to the Beta Site you can unpack them and have a full first aid kit on hand. All the contents of those went into the vacuum sealer too.

Seriously, gang…if you don’t have one already, go get one. It’s one of the most useful survival-oriented gadgets you can buy.

So, once all that was done, it was time to play musical chairs with all the crates, cans, boxes, and drums. Ideally, I’d like everything to be organized neatly and out of the way. The difference between hoarding and prepping is, I suspect, organization.

 

Hosebeastmode

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Years ago, I used to have a friend who was a somewhat well-known character in computing circles. One day, in his home that he had wired and re-wired many times to accommodate his expanding home-technology fetish, a couple wires started smoking and started a small fire within the wall of the house. My friend punched a small hole in the wall, ran a garden hose in, and put out the fire. I asked why he didnt simply call the fire department. He replied that if the fire department arrived they would have torn apart the entire wall, despite his protests, and basically destroyed the place to get to the fire. He figured his small hole in the wall would give him enough access and patch up pretty easily.

New York has quite the diamond/jewelry district. When a burglar alarm goes off, the cops respond but aren’t permitted entry to the store (by previous agreement). The reason is because if a handful of cops run into an unattended jewelry store in the middle of the night looking for someone, the odds are fairly high their pockets will be bulging on the way out.

So, what do these two stories have in common? In both cases, someone determined that the value provided by having ‘official’ response to an emergency was not worth the suspected risk.

I was thinking about that as the plumber was installing a new shutoff valve in my house today. I was thinking about having a line run off the house water line to a small hose bib tucked under the stairs or under the kitchen sink. Purpose? Indoor firefighting. I keep a goodly supply of fairly substantial fire extinguishers around…but if my kerosene heater ignites something in a major way, a flat hose coiled under the sink might come in handy. I’m certainly in no hurry to have civil authorities in my house for any reason. Last thing I want is the fire department responding to a grease fire that got away from me and them passing a note to the feds about an unusually large amount of ammo in some guys basement.

Not sure of the merits, though. I mean, it sounds like a good idea on its face. A compact coil of hose in an out-of-the-way spot ready to go at a moments notice. But I suppose I could get the same effect if I just ran into the yard and threaded the garden hose through the window. Not sure. Whaddya think? Brilliant? Good Idea? Meh? Stupid? Idiotic?
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