Winter approaches

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Winter is definitely approaching. The evenings and mornings are cold, and the days, even the sunny ones, are getting cooler. Which always reminds me of this:

It is getting nigh upon time to break out the Filson.

In addition to getting the wool outta storage, it’s also time to make sure all the Plan B gear is ready to roll… alternate heat sources, generator ready, fuel laid in, etc, etc. We seldom get power failures here in town that last more than a couple hours, but there’s always the chance that a Black Swan Swan Of Color event will come along and throw a curve ball that no one expected. ( / North Carolina has entered the chat ).

Every region has it’s own particular set of threat potential. Prepping for a hurricane in Iowa makes about as much sense as prepping for wildfire in Manhattan or a 7.0 earthquake in Nebraska. Statistically, the odds are close to zero. (But…never actually zero.)

But even then, stuff comes out of nowhere that virtually no one foresaw. No one in Manhattan thought they’d ever have to walk off the island because things were shut down on 9/11. I’m sure the folks in Hawaii never thought there’d be a wildfire that turned parts of Maui into a moonscape. And there’s equally as unprecedented and unexpected stuff still out there. We prepare against the likely but sometimes life throws a curve ball that no one could have reasonably expected.

All of these things do have common denominators, though…various forms of infrastructure failure, transport and mobility problems, supply disruptions, etc. Maybe you can’t prepare for every event, but you can prepare for the consequences that they all have in common.

It’s easy to get complacent when it comes to preparedness. You get comfy…cocky even. And then something happens that shocks you back to the mindset that “maybe I’m not as ready as I think’. I suspect this last batch of hurricanes is doing that for a lot of people.

As I said, winter is coming here in Montana and while I’ve always thought Im more than ready for some blizzard-induced winter drama, I’m starting to think that I need to change my thinking a bit and be open to some of the more unlikely-but-not-impossible scenarios that may arise.

So..back to list-making and inventory-taking.

Cat carrying

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I recall that I once said Hurricane Katrina would be the benchmark for future disaster responses until something bigger came along. Is this episode in the southeast that event? I dunno. But while it’s not the same song as Katrina, it certainly rhymes in places.

One thing I’m noticing is that the level of animosity, distrust, and downright antagonism for the federal response is orders of magnitude higher than it was in Katrina. Check out this headline: Armed Militia ‘Hunting FEMA’ Causes Hurricane Responders to Evacuate—Report.

I’m putting this down as a ‘friend of mine heard the story from a guy who had a friend who told him….’ To paraphrase a famous quote, ““the first casualty of disaster is the truth”. Armed militias hunting down FEMA? Thats the sort of thing you see in a self-published ‘post apocalyptic fiction’ series on Amazon. In real life? Mmmm….maybe? I’m skeptical.

But there is no disputing that there is a lot more political anger going on in this crisis than in Katrina. I was going to say ‘If you need a reason to be prepared, avoiding having to deal with .gov types and FEMA is a good one’ but that’s not really true. Your reason to be prepared is wanting to be able to take care of and protect yourself and the people you care about. That’s it. You don’t need another reason. That’s the One True Reason.

Mark Twain said that  “A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.” Katrina was a learning opportunity…some took it to heart, some did not. The .gov, it appears, on a federal and local level, has some cat-carrying going on at the moment.

I’m thousands of miles away from this particular tragedy. Many of you are, too. I’m paying attention, filtering the noise from the signal, and observing what works, what doesn’t, and incorporating those lessons into my own activities. Maybe I’ll never see a hurricane in Montana, but infrastructure failure, floods, blackouts, fuel issues, looting, water shortages, traffic chaos, etc, are not unique to hurricanes…they can happen anywhere. So..it pays to learn from other peoples experiences. I’ve no desire to carry a cat by the tail when I can learn the same lesson from someone else who already got clawed.

 

Blogs from the wet country

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Learning from other people’s experiences is the cheat code to being squared away. There is no reason to reinvent the wheel when Grogg and Thol did it for you a few thousand years ago. As a result, any time there is a disaster or other time-to-use-your-preps event, I always read the blogs of people who were there and ‘saw the elephant’, as it were. Why should I learn stuff the hard way when someone else already paid for the course?

Was flipping around the internet and found this worthy read – Big Country Expat

These After Action Reports (AAR) are almost always worth reading. Did they do things right? Learn from it. Did they completely drop the ball? Learn from it. You learn from other peoples failures just as much as you learn from their successes.

Another AAR: https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2024/10/detailed-after-action-report-from-north.html

One of the common threads in these and other blog posts I’ve seen lately has been the undeniable certainty that once the ATM’s and electronic payment systems are disrupted, cash becomes the only form of payment. The lesson learned: keep a big wad of cash in your safe and don’t touch it.

I know you guys have been following other blogs that are reporting back on the situation out there in hurricane country. Share some linkage and let’s learn from other people’s experiences so we can save ourselves the pain.

Article – Through Hurricanes Helene and Milton, Amateur Radio Triumphs When All Else Fails

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Amateur radio is definitely one of those things I’ve neglected over the years and need to dig into.

Like the tens of thousands of other North Carolina residents, the power to Witherspoon’s neighborhood was completely out. It was impossible to communicate with the house down the road, let alone anyone several miles away. Unable to send text messages or make phone calls, radio became the one form of communication left in rural North Carolina. After fixing what he could on his own property, Witherspoon, a lifelong amateur radio enthusiast, began distributing handheld radios to his neighbors.

No doubt being able to communicate with people outside the affected area is important, but being able to communicate with people within the affected area is absolutely critical. From what I’ve been reading, despite the disdain for them as the Hi-Points of radios, the Baofeng radios have been heavily represented in this episode.

I have some handheld radios that I keep on the charger, with spare batteries, specifically for contact with close-by people. If I’m roaming around the neighborhood checking on the situation it’s nice to know that the people back at the house can contact me, and vice versa, if something needs to be communicated.

One thing I’ve been absolutely dragging my feet on is getting the antennae set up for the Icom 7300 I picked up last year. I need to get off my butt, climb up on the roof, and get something up there. I probably should start investigating the local amateur radio scene and see if I can find that particular brand of boffin…the radio nerd who is also a survivalist…to help me get things set up.

In fact, really, I should probably do some sort of communications audit and see what exactly I have, and what I need, in regards to this sort of thing.

What to power a house with

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Let’s say that you find that perfect chunk of dirt and you decide to build your modest dwelling there. It’s pretty much an ‘off grid’ situation so you’re on your own for power. The way I see it there are things that you’ll need to run:

  • Generator
  • Well Pump
  • Lights
  • Fridge/freezer
  • Heat/Water heater
  • Stove
  • Assorted small devices (phone charging, table lamps, laptop, etc.
    (Not a complete list, I know)

So now, you’ve got a choice about how to run things..you can go with propane, gasoline, diesel,  or electric (from generator, hydro, PV, wind, etc.)

And, of course, you could do some combination of the various fuels/ systems….you could run your lights and accessories offa PV system, your well pump off a generator, and your generator, heat, water heater, etc. off propane.

Or you could try to do one fuel to cover all those needs…something like everything being electric and running off a generator.

So, my question is…how would you set things up? To my way of thinking, propane would cover all systems…propane to run the generator, freezer/fridge, heat, water heater, stove, and the electrical would have its needs met from the propane generator. Although, most likely, I’d just wire for DC and use 12v LED light fixtures and lamps. Laptops already charge from DC. Use propane for everything else.

There’s also nothing that says a household can’t be a multi-fuel affair. I’m thinking that for my anticipated needs, some sort of PV battery system (unless I’ve got running water for a turbine, or perhaps a windmill) to run the low-draw electric like lights, radios, etc, and then propane to do the heavy lifting of generator-driven electric well pump, propane stove, water heater, fridge/freezer, and furnace.

The drawback to propane is that you cant just walk down the road, borrow some from a neighbor, and carry it back to your home in a bucket like you could with diesel or gasoline. And theres the matter of getting a truck out to your location to refill your tank. I’m not sure of the regulations regarding transporting a large propane tank to get it refilled, but I wonder if a 250- or 500-gallon tank, permanently mounted to a trailer, hauled into town once a year to be filled, and then returned home and reconnected to the house system would work.

Yes, I’m sure I could live in a cabin with a woodstove that heats the place up and makes my hot water but I like to think that in a pre-apocalypse world I would strive for a bit more comfort and convenience than that.

So…if it were you…and you had to provide for lighting, heat, hot water, well pump. and device charging, what would be your fuel of choice? Keep in mind, we’re trying to keep as low a profile as possible…so a tanker truck of some flavor coming by twice a year is not optimum.

Augason Farms Cheese Powder

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As I mentioned earlier, the local WinCo had restocked on Augason Farms food storage. One of the things that was there that I had not seen previously was the cheese sauce. Off the top of my head, the thing that would benefit mostly from this would be the simple meal of macaroni-and-cheese.

The LDS cannery people offer #10 cans full of elbow macaroni, and that stuff keeps quite a while. A case of that, a can of this cheese blend, and you can feed a lot of people without too much fuss. Nutritional value? Probably sketchy. But macaroni-and-cheese will fill up the entire church basement full of refugees without too much fuss. Bonus is that the kids are probably already used to it. Its a no muss, no fuss meal.

So…lets crank a can open and see what we have:

A can of … orange powder. What a shock. Theres a lot in there. There’s also a handful of oxy absorbers hidden in there too. I’m guessing this stuff is pretty hygroscopic, so get what you need and then seal that can back up. The can says to use a 2:1 ratio of water:mix. I followed the instructions and did exactly that.

The instructions say to bring the water to a boil and whisk in the mix, stirring for a couple minutes until it thickens. The thickening part seemed to take a while. My suggestion would be to use some of the starch-loaded pasta water to help thicken this stuff. I guess we better make some elbow macaroni to go with this.

Elbow macaroni is kind of a staple in many storage food pantries. Any interesting shaped pasta should work for this purpose…shells, penne, ziti, orrecchiette, orzo, etc. So, cook up some elbow macaroni until it is al dente, drain, and mix with sauce.

And…thumbs up. It was pretty good. It did need to be a bit thicker but thats easy enough to do. I might throw in a little butter, and perhaps use milk instead of water next time. But, overall…….good product. A little goes a long way, by the way.

Definitely good for mac and cheese. Theres a recipe on the can for making a queso dip. Im told that sprinkling this on popcorn would have some appeal as well. For me, it seems like an excellent choice for feeding a buncha people in a hurry with something everyone will like and that doesn’t require a lot of effort. So, yeah…I’ll pick up a couple cans this weekend and tuck ’em away with the LDS cans of elbow mac.

Go. Buy with confidence.

Last Blogger Standing II

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First off, for context, let me link to a five year old post: Last Blogger Standing

I’ve gotten a couple messages in the last few days from people noting that it seems like the number of preparedness blogs (or related material) seem to be dwindling.

Off the top of my head, I can think of a handful that are no longer around. The most sorely missed, by me anyway, was Self Sufficient Mountain Living which was my favorite. Claire Wolf has stepped back and semi-retired from her blog, Dakin shuffled off the non-corporeal plane as did a couple other folks. And some folks just up and disappeared, leaving their blog up with their last post being years ago.

At this point, and please feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, I think the longevity title is between me and ,Rawles. As I’ve said before, I am most definitely not in this for the money, its more of a passion/vanity project for me. A little Amazon affiliate money shows up once in a while, and Patreon kicks in a few bucks a month, but other than that….nada. And that’s fine. I will say, however, that if you ever do think “Dang, he really nailed it on the head with that last post” please feel free to send me something in the mail or Patreon. I;ve even had people email me gift cards in the past. I’m not proud, I’ll happily take whatever renumeration you want to give.

In the last few years, I feel like my motivation has changed when it comes to this blog. More and more, I feel like my mission, such as it is, is to encourage and motivate the people who think like me, and to help bring people over to ‘my side’. Sort of a combination of morale officer and recruitment officer. To make sure that you know you’re not being ‘crazy’ or ‘weird’ when you buy three cases of TP at CostCo, bury a 10/22 in the woods, or map out ‘bug out routes’ from your AO. The world is on fire and people are telling you everything is fine. Anyone who doesn’t increase their resilience in the face of what we see on the news today is the crazy one.

I’ve no intention of leaving the blogosphere any time soon. Especially how, year after year, it seems we are getting into those ‘interesting times’. Why would I?

Of course, some things are out of my hands. I could get hit by a bus tomorrow, have a widowmaker heart attack tonight, or die in another home invasion….who can say? Maybe one day I’ll wake up and just want to re-invent my whole life and that’ll include leaving the blog behind. Could happen. But, for now, I’m not planning on going anywhere.

So, yes…it does seem like the number of preparedness blogs is going down. But one other reason for that, and this might be a good thing, is that perparedness is becoming more mainstream and less niche…therefore it doesn’t need the ‘underground’ of blogs and websites (or, gong back really far,BBS’s and Usenet groups) that supported it back in the day.

Perhaps preparedness/survivalism is finally ‘out of the closet’ enough that the need for a handful of standard-bearers has passed. Certainly, it seems like its less fringe and more mainstream these days.

Regardless, I agree…it does seem that the presence of active preparedness blogs (that aren’t just shills for ad revenue) seems to be on the downward trend. But, your buddy Zero is here for now.

Building the wall

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I finally received all the parts for putting together the gunwall I ordered up from Gallowtech.I spent most of today putting it together and getting it set up the way I wanted.

Normally, I’d share pictures but, unfortunately, this is a PerSec issue so I can’t really show the pictures. However, I can say that it does a very nice job of helping me get the gunclutter problem under control.

It actually looks not too much different than this. Just….more of it.

It wasn’t cheap, but it really does make a difference in terms of getting most of the stray boomtoys rounded up and secured. It’s definitely one of those things that will not convey if I ever sell this place….that sucker is going with me to the new place.

The modularity is what really make it worth the money, for me. As my acquisitions change or evolve, I can adjust my storage system to match. That’s pretty much the reason I didn’t just sit down with a buncha lumber, some deck screws, a chop saw, and make my own.

And, honestly, it looks pretty cool too.

Not every survivalist ‘needs’ this many guns. Tappan’s “Survival Guns” is considered by many to be a bit over-the-top in terms of guns he recommend that the savvy survivalist own. I don’t recall the exact number, but once you got past defensive pistols, working pistols, pocket pistols, hunting pistols, etc, Tappan was advocating something like 15 handguns. Contrast this with the fact that most people will not own fifteen different handguns over an entire lifetime. Heck, we all know that one old guy who owns something like two or three handguns and he’s had them ever since he got out of the Army after Korea. My ownership numbers definitely trend towards the far side of that bell curve.

My way of thinking has always been to assume that what I have now is all I’ll ever be able to have, therefore I need to have enough to last me against all the possible futures that could occur in the next 25 years. So…a little gun heavy. Guns seldom go down in value, so even if no legislative changes occur to preclude future purchase, I’m still ahead of the game by beating inflation..

But, overall, I like the Gallowtech product. It seems well made, is modular, looks good, and has enough accessories and ways to arrange them that I think it should fit my needs for now. But, most importantly, I am very glad to have all these dang guns out from underfoot.

WinCo is at it again

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The cheese powder is new…might have to get some to try out for post-apocalyptic mac-n-cheese. Not the price on freeze dried strawberries….$3 per ounce, or $48 per pound. Let me crunch some numbers while you go  look at these pictures…..


Strawberries appear to be $3.49/#, or .22/ounce locally. Quick Googling shows that freeze drying strawberries reduces their weight (not volume) by about 88%. So, to get one ounce of freeze dried strawberries you need to start with about 8.33 ounces..or, in other words, a ratio of 8.33:1.

If strawberries are $3.49/#, then 8.33 ounces (52% of a pound) of strawberries would cost $1.81.

So, the can of Augason FD sstrawberries, at 6.4 ounces, contains 3.33 pounds of strawberries before FD processing.

Augason is $3.00/oz for FD strawberries. You can make them yourself for $1.81/oz. You would save $1.19 per oz. At $1600 you would need to make 884 ounces (55#) of FD strawberries for the machine to pay for itself. That would be the equivalent of 138 cans of strawberries.

Obviously the margins, and therefore the returns, on more expensive things like meat would result in ‘paying off’ the purchase of the machine faster.

Something to think about.

CostCo freeze dryer

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Ok, that caught me completely by surprise:

$2295 from the manufacturers website

I know from what I’ve seen on the internet that the oil pump system is annoying, messy, and kind of a pain. The optional non-oil pump system is rather expensive but if you offset it with the savings from getting this at CostCo….well, that might make it worthwhile.

But…heres the other thing: CostCo has a very generous return policy. So, perhaps after a while you may decide this product isn’t for you. Head back to CostCo, hand it back, and get your money back.

Hmmm…I have a large amount of freeze drieds already, but this would be interesting to experiment with. And I know enough local LMI that perhaps we could ‘group buy’ it and shuttle it around to our respective locations for use.

Also, how big could the market for this really be at CostCo? Perhaps if I’m patient I’ll see it marked down l50%~ like the LifeStraws. Maybe get it for under $1000 in a couple months.

Hmmmmm.