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.

If you’re into preparedness long enough, you can observe and participate in the evolution of technology as the years go by. For example, forty years ago when I was just getting my feet wet in this particular interest, the Krypton bulb was considered the pinnacle of flashlight technology. Then came a few other specialty bulbs for your MagLite, twenty or so years ago the LED bulbs started to first appear, and now I doubt anyone buys a new flashlight with anything other than a high-output LED bulb. Another example would be optics. Back in the day, if you had a 4x Colt scope mounted to the carry handle of your CAR15 (which we now call an M4), well, you were operating. Then it moved to variables, then holographic and dot sights, then night vision, and now thermals. This was technology that wasn’t only unavailable when I was a kid…it was undreamed of. (At least at the consumer grade.)

I mention this because I recall about ten years ago people were wondering if ‘drones’ had any place in the smart survivalists repertoire. At that point drones were, mostly, an observation device….like airplanes in WWI. And then, much like WWI, some wag decided to bring along a hand grenade to surprise the enemy. Drone combat was born.

That brought me around to thinking what was one of he greatest force multipliers (and greatest threats) for your average survivalist in the last decade or so and I think the answer is…drones.

At the moment, if you wanna blow up a tank in Ukraine, or scout the national forest for elk, you need to sit there with a GameBoy in your lap and a set of goggles on your face. If the hype is to be believed, in the not-so-distant-future we’ll have AI to do the grunt work of drone flying for us. You’ll whip out your KillCopter2000, flip the switch marked ‘sentry/patrol mode’, heave it into the air, and go back to your roadblock as the thing patrols a pre-set flight path and investigates anything unusual…all while your camped around your JetBoil with the rest of your buddies drinking coffee and discussing current events.

Funny thing is, while we’re using all this rapidly evolving technology in drones, scopes, radios, geolocation, and illumination, most of us will be still carrying rifles that are fundamentally unchanged from when they were introduced 60 years ago (AR) or almost 80 years ago (AK). The classics just keep marching on, I suppose. (Especially if the WWI tactics in Ukraine are anything to go by.)

That last statement reminds me…ever do one of those fantasy ‘what if’ daydreams? You know, something like “what if there had been AK’s in the Civil War?”, or “What if a nuclear aircraft carrier were at the attack on Pearl Harbor?” (spoiler…that first one was a book, that second one was a movie.) If you ever wondered what would have happened if the guys in the trenches had automatic rifles instead of bolt actions in WW1…well, youre seeing it. Still a stalemate. Technology can’t make up for staid and outdated military tactics, I suppose.

Call them what you will…disasters, events, apocalypses, crises, whatever…..but they come in two temporal flavors: the fast and the slow. The fast ones are easy to recognize – an earthquake, tsunami, explosion, martial law, riot, etc, etc. Its basically going from zero-to-MadMax in the span of a few moments. The slow ones are things like what we’re experiencing now….every day the water gets a bit warmer and you don’t notice it until the day it becomes a rolling boil. And by then….well, I hope you had your gear stashed and your plans made….because, brother, it’s too late now.

Gas prices are still absurd, inflation is uncontrolled, politicians of both stripes are warning of politically motivated violence, crime seems to be increasing, the housing markets are fomenting cries for socialist policies, taxes are going up, and who knows what the international situation will be adding to the mix. Interesting time to be alive, isn’t it?

Eventually all of this will be a memory…inflation will drop back to its ‘optimal’ level of 2%, the housing market will calm down, politics will return to something you can talk about without it devolving into a knife fight, and your average Joe won’t feel like a trip through the WalMart parking lot is like taking a stroll through Fallujah.

The big question, of course, is what will the medicine look like that finally cures this ailment? Chemotherapy kicks cancer’s butt but it darn near kills you in the process. Will the fix for these things be almost as bad as those things themselves? I mean, Mussolini made the trains run on time, and Hitler built the autobahn…but look at the cost.

I have no idea what its going to take to change the current situation. But I am fairly confident that I know what it will not take…it will not take out-of-touch leftists whose solution to inflation and crime is “Green Deals” and “inclusive” pronouns.

Next week’s elections should be telling. Maybe I’m wrong, but I’m gonna go on a limb and guess that the major issues on the minds of your average voter are inflation and gas prices. I’m of the opinion that most people, fundamentally, look out for Numbah One and that means that when chicken jumps 70% in a year they will vote on the economy and their pocketbook, not on transgendered bathrooms and carbon neutrality.

No two ways about it, these are weird times. So far, I’ve been able to deal with inflation, scarcity, crime, and pandemic simply because I’ve been preparing for stuff like this for the last thirty years. Food prices up? I’ve enough stockpiled food to help defray the high costs. Housing is expensive? Good thing the house is paid. Crime is up? Dude….not even gonna worry about it. Pandemic? Happily unvaccinated and still healthy as a horse. But you and me, we’re the exceptions. And, unfortunately, it isn’t the exceptions that decide the outcome of elections, but rather the general populace… the general unprepared populace.

So, long story short, make sure to vote next week, and make sure to grab some friends and drag them to the polls and make sure they vote. Then go back to your bunker and keep working on your readiness, ’cause one way or the other this nonsense is still far from being done.

I wish the stock market was going to the moon like gas prices were…then maybe I could afford gas.

Is there anyone in the world who hasn’t figured out yet that if the fuel that runs the trucks that delivers your food goes up in price, everything delivered by those trucks will also go up?

I fill my truck up even when its only down to 3/4 of a tank. Why? Because if I wait until I’m at 1/4 tank, the gas prices will be higher. So I constantly keep filling the tank to remain ahead of the price increases. Who does that???? Zimbabweans. Venezuelans.

And the worst is yet to come: government ‘relief’. Price controls? Nationalizations? Subsidies and rebates? Who knows? But there is no problem that cannot be made worse by government intervention.

Me…I’ll at least be able to eat, even though I’ll have to ride my bike everywhere.

Literally, there have been revolutions and coups that started over this sort of thing.

Say what you will about Trump, but I remember a glorious moment of sub-$2 gasoline.

Was in a local supermarket today and saw, for the first time in a while, some flats of canning jar lids. Specifically, wide-mouth lids. I ‘standardized’ on the regular width jars and lids years ago, and I have plenty of both, but I’ll probably pick up a flat of lids anyway, ‘just in case’. But, more than anything else, it was the availability that surprised me. Was it like seeing the first swallow returning to Capistrano? Is this the harbinger of an end, or at least a loosening, of the supply chain and demand issues that made canning lids unobtainable for the last year? Dunno.

But, what I have noticed is that some items are coming back in terms of availability. Maybe everyone who needed to stock up has done so and now demand is lower. Or production picked up and therefore there are now more of a particular product to be had. Or maybe I just got lucky. But, overall, while prices have not come down, I think availability is starting to loosen up.

Of course, a reasonable person might opine that the reason availability is up is because the increase in prices reduces the amount that people are buying…an example of why price controls usually lead to shortages.

Gas went up again by a dime, which puts local go-juice at $4.10 per gallon which is officially higher than I’ve ever seen it. The folks in power are quick to spin it as “Putins inflation” or “Putins gas increases” but any idiot with a calendar can tell you this has been going on for quite a while before Putin went all tanky on Ukraine.

For me, things are still fairly calm. I complain about gas prices, drive a little less, don’t let the shelves or gas tank get empty, and thats about it. Worried about a nuclear exchange? No. Worried about WW3.5? No.Concerned about a new Iron Curtain falling over Europe? No. I’m still of the opinion that there is nothing going on over there that’s worth the life of any American. If Europe is worried about it, let Europe deal with it. Send ’em guns and ammo, give ’em access to satellites and intel, and let them deal with it. Isolationist? Yeah, probably.

This has been a remarkably bizarre century thus far, the last ten years in particular. Ever watch a TV show that they completely changed the cast and direction of the show and it bore virtually no resemblance to the previous season? The post 2000 world is pretty much like that. I feel like the last twenty years could be best summed up as “WTF? Are you kidding me?”

I was up at CostCo yesterday in the battery/tires section. I over heard a fella asking about tires for his vehicle and he was told that “they werent in yet” and that “we’re not sure when theyll be in.” Hmmm. So I asked the guy behind the counter if they wer having availability issues with tires these days. He replied that they were. I asked him if a person thought they might need tires in the next year or so if it would be a good idea to buy them now. He said yes. Now, I understand that you don’t ask the barber if you need a haircut, but perhaps a pre-emptive purchase might not be a bad idea.

Even if availability isnt an issue, I’m pretty confident pricing will be. I’d almost guarantee the tires I’d buy next week are gonna cost more in a year. Like, 99% certain.

You know, when I was a kid and admittedly a bit wet behind the ears, I thought the most likely survivalist scenario was the gun-heavy WW3 nukefest or something equally dramatic and unlikely. Now that I’m older, though not necessarily wiser, I foresee the most likely survivalist scenario as an economic one…either on a grand scale like a national or global depression, but more likely on a personal scale like a job loss or similar.

But, there’s nothing sexy about living on a budget, paying your home early, and having money in the bank/safe/mattress. And yet…my belief is thats the direction things are going to go – less .50 BMG, more $50 bills.

Technically a holiday, but me and the rest of my department had to go in. On the bright side, I’ll get eight hours of holiday pay in addition to the hours I actually worked today. This is good, because with inflation at a 30-year high, it takes more greenbacks to buy the same things as last shopping trip.

Speaking of shopping trip, I’m continuing to stock up on odds and ends. It’s interesting to try and contemplate what exactly to buy. Am I buying this item because I feel inflation will make it too expensive to buy later? Or am I buying this item because I’m concerned oer availability issues? Or am i buying this item because its a good item to have ‘just in case’? There can be a lot of existential thinking in Aisle 6 at WinCo.

But, at the end of the day, the facts remain:

• There are ‘supply chain issues’ for many things currently
• Supply chain issues may continue or reappear with little warning
• Inflation is making life more expensive
• Virtually everything you buy now will be more expensive next month

And if you really want to call inflation what it is: your $1000 paycheck next month may only buy you what $900 gets you this month. Thats inflation robbing your money of value. Thats why Großvater Karl took a wheelbarrow to work with him back in his working days.

Personally, I don’t see anything good coming, economically, on the horizon. I’m not an expert on economics but I can see for myself the effects of it on my surroundings and what I see makes me head up to WinCo and buy a case of soap and another 50 rolls of TP.