Yeah, theres a distinct lack of posting lately. Real world stuff, Im afraid.

Oddly, you would think with all the tumult going on in the world there would be  no shortage of things to post about…zika, Trump vs. Tramp, wildfires, earthquakes, economic matters, etc, etc. Face it…it’s an interesting world out there.

I’ve been out doing some travel lately, hence the radio silence. It’s a big world and while parts of it are pretty and have some value, they are only a small fraction of the rest of the country. Yeah, Venice is pretty but as a whole Italy is pretty messed up. And the Acropolis looks awesome, but Greece is a Third World hole. So..yeah…the US has it’s issues but it’s better than most of the options.

So…Cruz has bowed out, much to my surprise. I was dead certain he’d be the party candidate (and I really still haven’t ruled it out completely). The only real question now is if the GOP will rally around the frontrunner or leave him to swing in the wind as a lesson to those who would deign to buck the party power players.

Regardless, I think we’re doomed…again. Im thinking it’s going to be President Hillary…but I am virtually certain it will be a one-term affair. Someone pointed out to me that as polarizing as both players are, even in their own party, there’s an excellent chance of gridlock. Dude, I’m pro-gridlock. Government that governs best, governs least.

And to try and stay somewhat on topic, while cleaning out a few things I managed to find a time capsule to the mid-90’s. Behold:

A box of the ol’ Black Talon ammo. Remember all that hand-wringing? How it would fly through a body like a buzzsaw…never mind that with most conventional rifling twists the bullet wouldnt even make a full revolution before exiting the body. Still, once the bad press hit the media Winchester folded it’s tent, took off the black coating, tinkered a bit, and relaunched it as Ranger SXT …where it sits in a lot of badged holsters. So…twenty year old ammo. Sure, it’ll work just fine but, really, who needs the headache of some zealous mouthbreather telling a jury how horrible you are for using ammo that is so evil it was pulled off the market.

Ah, the 90’s….the first half of that decade really was a fun one for guns.

I don’t know what I ate last night that prompted it, but I had some majorly weird dreams.

The biggest catalyst was that I watched a couple DVR’d episodes of “Fear The Walking Dead”.  I swear, the mom on that show is making me root for the zombies. In fact, in my head I refer to her as ‘Andrea 2’, after the loathed character from TWD. My biggest complaint is that her and her family are living comfortably on the boat of the mysterious Mr. Strand, and he really has no duty or obligation to her or her family at this point, and yet she feels she can order him to ‘stop the damn boat’ every time she wants to pick up squalling refugees…risking her family, his boat, and everything else to satisfy her imagined moral superiority.

For the love of Crom, can we please kill this woman off? Please??

But keep this guy..he’s, like, a dozen shades of cool. (Trivia: this man has a Harvard law degree)

Which, naturally, messed with my subconscious and I had a weird dream. I dreamt it was after some great disaster and I helped my neighbor. He was worried he and his family were going to starve and I gave him some food. When he remarked that he didnt want to put me at a disadvantage I said not to worry..I had plenty. And then he just magically assumed that he could have whatever he wanted…and started helping himself to my stores. For whatever reason, I didnt have a gun on me and after he helped himself to some food, a couple bicycles, and some other stuff, he left and I started worrying about if he was going to come back demanding more because, as he said, I ‘have so much’ and he had ‘ so little’. And I worried he was going to tell other people and I’d be overrun with demands for supplies. And then I thought “Well, if he comes back demanding more I’m just going to have to shoot him.” (Which is ungood because i really have no desire to shoot anybody..but I also have no desire to be stripped bare by locusts and left to starve. Grasshoppers are on their own.)

Definitely makes a case for ‘anonymous giving’,  but also makes an even stronger case for keeping your dang mouth shut. And a really strong case for having a secondary location set up. And, finally, it’s a good starting point for deep thinking about just how charitable (or uncharitable) you feel comfortable being.

Really, it’s hitting the point where I’d almost say there’s an industry-wide ‘gentlemans agreement’ going on to get as many AR’s out there as possible before November.

This article was interesting to read. It posits that it isn’t enough for science to learn to predict catastrophic events, science also has to learn how to get that information to people in such a way that they actually do something about it.

This is a fair example of a term that we see pop up from time to time but no one ever really explains – normalcy bias. Wikipedia, naturally, defines it but the short version is this: you’re used to planes NOT hitting skyscrapers, you’re used to people NOT running into a bar and shooting the place up with AKs, you’re used to the earth NOT suddenly shaking and toppling buildings…and when an event like that does finally happen, many people’s brains, not being used to thinking about such things, kinda freeze up. That’s normalcy bias. That’s also why we wargame stuff…fire drills, for example.

Another buzzword that became popular and still pops up is ‘Black Swan’, as in “a Black Swan event”. Again, wikipedia helps us out. A Black Swan event is something that is so statistically rare and infrequently occurring that you can’t really predict it’s occurrence. It is important to note that a Black Swan event is NOT always negative…the development of the internet, for example. One of the criteria for something being a Black Swan event, as stated by the guy who brought the term into popular use, is that it is a complete surprise, it has a huge impact, and it is Monday Morning Quarterbacked afterwards. It is also subjective…whats a Black Swan to you may not be a Black Swan to someone else. An excellent example is this idiot. A power outage occurs, they suffer, and then they rationalize it…and add a dose of normalcy bias to justify their failure.

I was watching a really bad disaster show on SyFy last night. Typical midwestern farm town, huge black clouds ominously roll across the sky and the townspeople…walk out of their shops and stand in the middle of the street to watch. And they continue to stand there as it approaches, hurling debris and automobiles in their general direction. Why? Because they’re slack-jawed at never having seen such things before. You’d think someone would have the brains to turn around, run back in the building, get on the phone, warn their family, and then hustle to the basement. Normalcy bias.

While the Black Swan event is, by definition, unpredictable we can still prepare for consequences even if we can’t predict the event. We don’t know if it’s going to be a flood, tornado, earthquake, the return of Xenu, planet X, or Red Dawn….but we can be pretty sure of what the consequences will be – electrical failure, infrastructure issues, communication issues, etc, etc. And we can prepare for those. I think for most of us, we’re a bit past normalcy bias because we tend to think a good deal about ‘what if’ situations.

Preparing for the ‘Black Swan’ type of event reminds me of the ‘Tenth Man‘ response. In fact, go watch the video…the Mossad guy gives some very good examples of normalcy bias.

Anyway, ‘normalcy bias’ and ‘Black Swan’ are two buzzwords that seem to appear more and more in various articles on the subject of preparedness and I thought it might be a good idea to explore them.

When they get to $400, I’m going all in.

Cruising around the internet today, I got to thinking about the various survivalists I’ve known and met. In gaming, you have ‘casuals’ who are players who don’t take the game seriously. They play for fun, maybe with a few friends, but they don’t schedule hours-long ‘raids’, spend endless hours testing strategies, or basically immerse themselves up to their eyebrows in the game. On the other side, you have the hardcore gamers for whom the game is practically a second-job. They min/max, research game mechanics, learn exploits, and even buy (with real money) better gear to enable them to pwn noobs.

Most of the survivalists I’ve met are somewhere between ‘casuals’ and ‘hardcore’. I have met some who felt preparedness was a lifestyle – every vehicle was a potential BOV, they never left home without their gear, and if you carefully analyzed their clothing from head to toe it was all ‘tactical’ or ‘operator’ brands.

But, I’ve also met some whose entire depth of preparedness didnt amount to much more than what FEMA recommends in their pamphlets. And..I’ve met some who are so far down the preparedness rabbit hole you’d only meet them when they make their bi-annual trip to CostCo.

I vacillate between ‘lifestyle’ and ‘hobby’. I suppose now that I’ve gotten most of the grunt work out of the way I could ease up off the gas a bit..and I think thats what I’ve done. I’ve got most of the things I think I’ll need (you can never have all the things you want), so at this point I’m mostly in a ‘maintenance mode’…making sure things are topped off, stuff is rotated, and even making plans for a future that doesn’t involve eating out of pouches while manning roadblocks to deter looters.

But, as we all know, it’s complacency that we have to worry about. It’s the day we leave the pistol at home, the day we don’t pack the rain gear, the time we don’t check the batteries in the flashlight, the day we don’t listen to the news…..that’s when we wind up stumbling into A Bad Situation.

It seems like every year something comes up that gets the crowds shouting that this is the year it happens. In my time as a survivalist I have gone through the heyday of the militia movement (which broadly coincides with the Clinton years), Y2k, Bird Flu, Peak Oil, 2012, and a host of other supposed apocalypses. Still here. In fact, other than running the generator a time or two, there hasn’t been anything that’s sent me into the Vast Prep Warehouse. Is that a bad thing? Hell no…I’ll die a happy survivalist if when I pass away I never needed any of the things I have. I want a life where the electricity is always on, the water is always hot, the fridge is always full, and the streets are quiet and peaceful. I have all this stuff because I know that those times aren’t guaranteed and it can happen like that <snaps fingers>.

But…I have slacked off a bit and need to start being more…mindful…of how things are. Like anything else you do day after day after day, you eventually start letting your guard down and thats when you get caught off-guard. Complacency, man…it’ll screw you over every chance it gets.

A buddy of mine brought this to my attention:

Whether your interest is in preparedness, homesteading, or sustainable living, you will find a wealth of information. Come learn valuable skills at many excellent training sessions, connect with preparedness-minded attendees, obtain hard to find equipment, supplies and advice you need from a wide variety of vendors present at their booths. It’s a one-of-a-kind experience you won’t want to miss! Our venue will be the Spokane County Fair & Expo Center, with its convenient location and ample free & easy parking.

I’ve never been to one of these events, but I think I might wind up going. If nothing else, it’ll be interesting to see all the cool stuff the vendors have to offer.

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I get it….a musical performer has died and it’s noteworthy. Sure. But think of all the crazy crap that is going on in this world and then tell me that the passing of a musician shuld be the top story in the newscycle for several days running. Priorities, man…..