Tag Archives: theory

Delayed

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I was cruising around the internet and saw a meme that said “You didnt save their life….you just delayed their death.” Technically true. If you save someone’s life it is functionally and literally equivalent to delaying their death.

This got me ruminating about the recent election…Harris’ defeat / Trumps victory didn’t save us from the upcoming bad times, it just delayed them.

It’s all very subjective, but my belief is that no one…Trump or even Teddy Roosevelt…can have 100% of my trust to not do something that I believe is against my best interests. I’m glad Trump won, absolutely…but I see his victory as, at best, a stall giving me more time to get myself squared away against the uncertain future and it’s certain bad times.

While I’m okay with my current level of preparedness, I still have a little ways to go before maxing out. I’d like to think that Trump’s victory buys be a little bit more time to get there. We’ll see.

Resilience against political change

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Self-interest is the dominant trait in humans. It kind of has to be or else we’d have died out generations ago. Intellectually we may think we are putting our self-interest aside when we act ‘for the greater good’ but when it’s time to bail out of the plane and theres only one parachute between you and a total stranger…well…that self-interest thing comes roaring to the surface and the knives come out.

Rightly or wrongly, a lot of people look at political results from an ‘is this good for me’ angle rather than an ‘is this good for the country’ perspective. You could argue that if something is good for you, then it’s good for the country (or vice versa), I suppose. Most people, I think, will vote their own self-interest. Whether I agree with it or not, I can at least understand it.

And while you may think you can ignore politics, I can assure you that politics will not ignore you. Sometimes that looks like an extra bite in your paycheck to pay ‘your fair share’, and sometimes it looks like a Bearcat in your driveway to enforce a ‘reasonable and commonsense’ law.

In preparedness there’s a tendency to, after an election where the ‘right’ candidate wins, get complacent and think that a bullet has been dodged and things will be ‘better’ for the next four years. Personally, I think thats a wildly foolish attitude to take – no matter who wins, there are no guarantees. Likelihoods, the odds, may change, sure…but they are never 100% against.

I suppose the trick, if there is one, is to increase your resilience to the point that a change in government will affect you as little as possible no matter who wins. You can’t be 100% proofed against the .gov but you can certainly increase your level of preparedness to the point where you are impacted far less than Joe Blow is when the political wind changes.

I guess political sea change is one of those things to add to the list of scenarios to be prepared against. What does that look like? I’d imagine it looks alot like being in a situation where you can comfortably keep your head down and your profile low when the powers that be decide to start hammering down the nails that stick up.

But…my point is this: if, when elections roll around, you think “I hope my candidate wins because if they dont this bad thing will happen that will affect me” then perhaps its worth investigating being prepared against that bad thing so you’re not vulnerable to the fickle political winds.

National debt

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Do you know what the current national debt is? It’s around $35 trillion dollars. A trillion dollars is a big number so let me give you a way to relate: if you took  $35 trillion dollars in $1 bills and laid them end to end they would reach to the sun and back….eighteen times*.

You know that enormous loop around the sun that this planet makes in twelve months? Those dollar bills, end to end, would cover that orbit…almost six times.

Want more to relate to? If you took all the US currency thats out there right now it would add up to…..around $2 billion dollars. Put another way, we owe, as a nation, around 17,500 times more money than actually physically exists.

Let’s keep rolling. The US population is around 330,000,000 people. Your share of that national debt is about $106,000,

Wanna seize all the privately owned land and use it to pay the debt down? Good luck with that…that won’t even cover half the debt since all the privately held land in the US is only worth about $14.488 trillion dollars.

What does a high national debt mean? People are less likely to lend to you if youre already maxed out on your cards. Who is going to lend you money when all your available cash is going to pay back previous lenders? So..you gotta sweeten the deal…and thats where those 30% interest rates on predatory credit cards come in. Now imagine that on a national level.

So..you’ve maxed out your credit cards to the point where you owe 17,500 times more money than you have in the bank. How do you get out of this mess? Well, you can try to pay it back but you literally will not live long enough to do so even if you lived several lifetimes. You can file for bankruptcy. Or you can shrug and just keep spending knowing that it is impossible to pay off the debt so you may as well go full kamikaze and spend like there’s no tomorrow.

Whats it look like if the US did that? Well, we coulud simply refuse to pay Japan and China, our two biggest creditors, and we’d probably be in an economic cold war with them for the next forseeable future. Or, we could renegotiate the deal which just kicks the can down the road and makes it more expensive later. We could just print the money, physically or electronically, to pay it off thereby devaluing our currency.

(/:Zimbabwe has entered the chat)
(/:Weimar Republic has entered the chat)

Or, more likely, we will just pay lip service to debt reduction and continue to spend because apparently austerity measures and budget cuts just aint gonna happen. And at some point there is only going to be two choices:  monetization or renunciation. Either one spells economic chaos on a global level.

On the other hand, we surpassed the level at which debt couuld be mitigated a long time ago and we are still here, still borrowing, still being loaned to, and still spending without cutting…although at this point cutting anything will have a virtually zero effect on things.

I bring this all up because I was curious about where the national debt was today and fell down a math rabbit hole. But, honestly, I’m hoping I’m simply being naive, unlearned, and grossly ignorant about economics, because everything I just wrote pretty much concerns  me greatly.

For a literary treatment about a US renunciation of the debt and the apocalypse that follows, I highly recommend this book.

To the sun and back, eighteen times……geez.

* = Math: one dollar is 6.14 inches long. 35t of them is 214,900,000,000,000 inches. That is the same as 17,908,333,333,333.33 feet, or 3,391,729,797.97 miles. The distance to the sun is about 93,000,000 miles. 3,391,729,797.97 divided by 93,000,000 is 36.4. Since its a round trip we cut that in half = 18.2 times the length distance to the sun and back.

Bargain meat musing

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Sometimes I’ll swing by the supermarket after work to pick up some last-minute stuff. But, I always take a swing through the meat department to check for bargains. While I always appreciate 30% off the sticker price, its more than just frugality that makes me walk the aisle when I’d much rather be kicking my shoes off after work and relaxing.

There have been times when money was tight and if I did have any cash in my pockets, it was needed for other stuff. By not having to worry about things like having to buy groceries, I’m able to free up cash for more important things in my desperate state…fuel to get to job interviews, etc, etc.

You prepare in the good times against the bad times. Right now, I have a job, money in the bank, virtually no debt, a paid for house, and a few other advantages that give me a safe and secure life. But I’ve been on the other side of that coin. I can remember a time when I had just enough money for the next three months rent, no job, and the only thing in the fridge as some baking soda and ketchup. Eating every other day…that sort of thing. And…I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything. It is experiences like those that give you the grit and determination to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Sure, you don’t need to have gone hungry to realize that having stored food is a good idea, but I absolutely guarantee you that the person who has gone hungry, or been around hungry people, will take it much more seriously than someone for whom ‘going hungry’ is just a theory.

So, even though I’m tired, and I don’t feel like spending 20 minutes after work shuffling through a supermarket when I’d rather be flopped in a chair at my house with a cold Coke, I’ll suck it up and hit the aisle. And when I do, pretty much all I think about is what could go wrong in my life and how someday, maybe years from now, I’ll pull this steak or roast out of the freezer and be grateful I had the foresight to take a lousy twenty minutes to give myself some breathing room at a future date.

Of course, this isn’t exclusive to remaindered meat. Canned goods, toiletries, clothes, fuel, medicine, cash, gold, silver, ammo…..these are all things that at some point I sacrifice something in the present..a dinner out, some ice cream, a trip to the movies…in order to have that moment in the future where I thank myself for having some foresight.

Thats it. Twenty minutes and taking a pass on a half gallon of Breyers against the day when, for whatever reason, I don’t have the resources to spare for a decent meal. Could be a bout of unemployment, illness, sudden responsibility to others, but there’s no shortage of darn good reasons to have some extra food tucked away…in the freezer, in the cupboard, in a buckets, on the shelf.

So even though after work today I was ten different types of tired, I didnt begrudge my future self too much when I picked up some flank steaks and 85/15 at 30% off. Vacuum sealed and in the freezer, or canned in jars, my hungry future-me will thank past-me.

So next time youre tired, or you’d rather spend on a luxury, or you just don’t feel like doing anything productive…..think of that time your back was against the wall and how much better things would have been if you had set something back for just such a situation.

 

Article – Is There a Future in the Doomsday Economy?

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Set on a rise above the lush valley cradling the Lost River in eastern West Virginia, about two hours from Washington, D.C., the 50-acre property backs up against the George Washington and Jefferson National Forests. A handsome guesthouse, built of dark timber slats, anchors the property. Two large, boxy dormitories, also timber but more rustic, as well as a bare-bones bunker, are designed to house more than 100 members. They are each expected to pay $2,000 to $20,000 (depending on the level of accommodation) to join Fortitude Ranch, and another $1,000 per year per person in dues to call this their “home fort,” meaning they will head there when catastrophe strikes.

I am of the opinion that these “tactical timeshares” are snake oil. If you have the money to sink into a subscription or membership to one of these places then you have the financial wherewithal to build your own. Additionally, when the apocalypse arrives don’t you think the ‘Golden Horde’ will think “Hey, there was that doomsday hotel about ten miles down the road…lets go there!” And unless the security guards at that place are scarily armed and determined, those party crashers will probably get in. I would rather take my chances with five trusted friends on ten acres than two hundred strangers on 640 acres.

The real Doomsday Economy isn’t so much these rental bunkers, but rather everything else. The ‘doomsday economy’ is the market for magazines, ammo, freeze drieds, solar panels, batteries, medical gear, training, communications, etc. And, as long as a large amount of people still retain a good bit of their natural instinct towards self-preservation, those tranches of the market will always be active.

 

Offsite….just in case

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I was talking with Guido here in the office yesterday about Trump’s ear-piercing. He said, “..yeah if we were out shopping or on the road and I heard that news the he’d been killed I’d have said ‘lets go. Back to the house. Now. Some crap is going to go down.”

Curious, I asked him what he would do in a situation like that. “Dude..we’d probably head to her parents. They have a piece of land outside of town. We could stay there if we needed to.”

Interesting.

“You know”, I said, “If you really believe thats what you’d do, you might want to think about getting one of those big black-n-yellow storage tubs from CostCo and put some stuff in there…change of clothes, toiletries, dog stuff, a pistol, y’know…that sort of thing. Pre-stage it up there so it’s one less thing to worry about. Have your ducks in a row.”

Even if youre not an end-of-the-world kinda guy, this sort of planning has utility. Let’s say an event happens…forest fire, hurricane, tornado, etc….and, for whatever reason, you have to leave your nicely stocked and fortified home. Maybe you’ve got your little bugout location all prepped and awaiting your arrival. Great. But what if you can’t get to it? Or you don’t have such an option? For many of us that means asking family/friends outside the danger zone if we can crash with them for a few days until things blow over.

If your friends/family are like-minded individuals, then you’ve got a pretty good situation going on. If theyre not, well, blood is thicker than water so maybe they’ll let you couch surf for a few days.

But, what makes it a far easier experience for both host and guest is if the guest has their own supplies and gear so they don’t put out their host, who may already be operating under stressful circumstances if the disaster that affected you is affecting them as well. For example, if an earthquake knocked down your neighborhood and you’re staying with your sister and her family a mile away, her place, though still standing, may be without power..or water…so whatever you can do to ease the situation is gonna go a long way towards making you a more welcome guest.

All this to say that it isn’t the dumbest idea in the world to grab a big ol’ tote or two and stuff in some clothes, toiletries, batteries, flashlights, food, pistol, ammo, medstuff, and other essentials and tuck them away where you might need them if you have to beat feet from your primary location and cant get to your secondary (or don’t have a secondary).

Look, I’m a somewhat squared away guy and I have enough ‘extra’ that a houseguest or two isn’t going to be a practical problem. But it’s a far less problem if they come with food, fuel, sleeping gear, a folding cot, toiletries, fuel, water, etc, etc.

If things come crashing down and your plan is to head to Uncle Bob’s cabin or your brothers ranch? Start staging some stuff there, man. Ask if when a crisis happens, can you come to their place for a short stay? Emphasize that you’d like to preposition a couple totes in the basement or garage or attic of stuff so they don’t have to treat you like a welfare case.

It’s nice to think that if we had to leave the security and safety of our home we would have time to grab a dozen totes, pile them into the truck, and head to the Beta Site. But thats a best-case scenario and those almost never happen. Think more along the lines of you’re at CostCo and the way to your return home is cut off….bridge collapse, train derailment, roadblocks, ground fissures, rockslides, whatever….going home has suddenly stopped being an option. Nice to know you can head over to buddy Steve’s where you know theres clean clothes in your size, toiletries, food, a cot, a radio, extra cash and cards, and that sort of thing waiting for you in those boxes you left there last time you guys got together for a fishing trip.

Depending on the nature of your work, you can use your workplace for this sort of emergency caching. Maybe you own your own business and have a big steel building with a fence around it. Nothing says you cant keep a couple footlockers full of goodies in a corner of the warehouse, maybe a few five-gallon jugs of gas and water, and have that as your off-site resupply.

If you’re really dialed in, and you can afford it, you might go one or two levels of redundancy on this sort of thing. Identical stashes at dad’s cabin and at Steve’s house. Potentially an expensive way to do things but if the situation ever calls for such measures…well…the last thing you’ll be thinking about is what it cost.

Anyway, just something to think about as we continue our descent into clownworld.

 

That final epic loot drop

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Friend of The Blog ™, Tam, had a post that linked to an article about that day when you finally stop being a going concern and what happens to your stuff afterwards. From “Where Will Your Guns Go When You Die?”….

Regardless, both guys leave behind a tremendous legacy, family, friends — and a sizable firearms collection. While it might seem a trivial matter when locked in the throes of grief, the proper disposition of a gun collection is actually an important task which will dramatically help the survivors in the long run. However, meticulously liquidating a collection to get maximum value requires some planning and forethought, which is where we all stumble.

Another sad fact is many of our families aren’t interested in our guns. Despite their intrinsic and sentimental value, to some family members, guns are considered no more valuable than old kitchen appliances and are generally handled the same when it comes time to liquidate an estate.

Here are five steps that can help solve what will be an eventual problem for nearly every shooting enthusiast. Don’t put these important tasks off because you never know when the final bell will ring! I could give you a couple of recent examples …

I paid a hot little Charlize Theron lookalike attorney a buncha money a couple years ago to crank out a will for me. Pretty simple stuff…house/property goes here, money goes there, guns go over here. That was it.

Whats interesting is that, as of late, I’ve been privy to a couple estates from families that lost someone who was into guns. In every case it was scene where various family members ‘got first dibs’ and whatever was left afterwards was sold. I’m fine with that. I like a Smith Model 21 as much as the next guy, but if grandson wants it because grandad taught him to shoot with it…I’m not gonna get bent outta shape.

But I’ve also been to a few estates where no one in the family was interested. And some very nice and hard-to-find guns wound up leaving the family.

It’s easy to give the old saw about how ‘when you die, we’re splitting up your gear’ but it isn’t always that easy. Heck, I know at least one guy who never even told his wife the combination to his gun safe. Pretty good bet she doesnt have a solid grasp of whats gonna be laying around when he shuffles off.

I’ve some interesting stuff, but I’ve told my friends that if there’s something of mine they like, let me know…I’ll make sure that the executors know it goes to them. I’ll tell you what I dont want, though….under no circumstances does any of my property or wealth go the state. None. Burn it all down before that happens.

Musings

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Many times the creative wellspring runs a tad dry and I go for the low-hanging fruit which, often, is a gun post. And, evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, I really don’t like doing more than one or two gun posts a week because, as I’ve said before, I don’t think of this as a gun blog but rather a preparedness blog that throws in some gunstuff as it relates to preparedness.

So other than spending stupid amounts of money on boomtoys, whats going on in my brain these days in regards to preparedness?

Well, probably the most front-of-mind thing is the ‘housing crisis’ that seems to dominate the news cycle. The news shows us homeless encampments everywhere, gives us tales of bold squatters ‘seizing’ houses, and stories of people who make what most normal people would think of as ‘very nice incomes’ who somehow still can’t afford a home. Part of me wonders if this isn’t stage-setting for some sort of .gov legislation. After all, it is an election year.

My take on it comes down to this: the non-mentally ill homeless are homeless because they just don’t want to stop huffing spraypaint and get a real job. Squatters need to be dragged out of the house by baseball-bat-wielding family members of the homeowner and given percussive therapy to remind them what happens when you steal. If you make $150,000 a year and cant afford a home, you have a spending problem not an income problem…stop trading up to a new car every three years, stop eating out, stop having kids, and stop looking for homes in areas you can’t afford.

Unfortunately common-sense solutions don’t count for much in this world of abdicated responsibility and imagined oppression.

Survivalism isn’t about changing the world, its about surviving the world. I can’t change the direction things are heading…not really. I can’t repair the hull, but I can make sure I have a lifejacket and warm clothes on as I pre-stage my lifeboat. Watching the news pushes me more and more into believing that the end of the world won’t be as dramatic as something we see in the movies but rather a slow descent into a world of Soviet-style oppression and bleakness, usually in the name of ‘equality’, ‘justice’, or ‘democracy’.

When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion–when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing–when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors–when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you–when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice–you may know that your society is doomed.

I won’t tell you who wrote that because, as a learned, literate, and well-read man of the world, you should know.

I’m very much of the opinion that the classic survivalist scenarios are becoming statistically less likely when compared to some politically-driven economically-based episode of grave outcomes. Guns and ammo are certainly going to be a factor in pulling through that sort of situation, but probably not nearly as much as food and supplies, and definitely not as much as carrying no debt and having a good stash of cash and ‘cash like instruments’ (cough*metals*cough).

Guns are a very  important part of survivalism, but I’m starting to think that their utility, while undeniable, may take a back seat to a pantry full of food and a buried mason jar full of krugerrands. Only time will tell, I suppose, but as I’ve said…I’ve need $50 bills far more often than I’ve needed .50 BMG. But, having both makes me feel safer.

Stepping off the porch

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I must say, for a fella whose blog is, nominally, not a ‘preparedness’ blog, once in a while Joel hits it outta the park with this simple-but-profound line:

“…I have a strict policy of never leaving my porch unless I’m ready to go to war.“

Now, for context, Joel lives in the lonely desert and in this case he was talking about the risks posed to him and his dog by bold coyotes. But…there’s some good sense in that statement, especially if your anticipated threat is more than just a bunch of tweaker-lookin’ dogs. (Or, as someone once opined, “coyotes look like German Shepherds on heroin”.)

I commented that my similar policy is that I don’t leave my house without the gear necessary to either fight my way back to it, or to abandon it. And, broadly, thats true. When I leave for work every morning I have my Bag O’ Tricks which covers a pretty wide range of possibilities. I also have a good bit of gear (including a thundertoy or three) stashed in my truck. And, finally, I’ve a carbine and plate carrier discreetly tucked away next to my desk at work. Power failure, road closures, civil unrest, earthquake, whatever….if I’m away from my house, odds are I’ve got the gear handy to enable me to either get back to my house or to survive away from it.

I’m pretty sure that by just about anyone’s standards that might appear a bit extreme, but thats the lifestyle I’ve chosen and it makes me….calmer. The odds of me ever having to Omega Man my way from my workplace to my houseplace are virtually none, and I know that…but thats still a more-than-zero chance. On the other hand, it is orders of magnitude more likely that I will be caught away from  my house when here’s a power outage or some other event that precludes the normal ease-of-travel.

Give you an example…back in ’97 a bunch of tanker cars derailed at the town of Alberton, about 30 miles down the road, and the folks there had about the same experience as Chernobyl evacuees. It’s not impossible that a hazardous chemical spill of some type, accidental or purposeful, will shut off my ability to return to my house. Thus, I need to be able to function with whatever resources I have with me or that I can count on at other locations.

And it could be something other than a chemical spill. Police activity, civil unrest, a plane crash, earthquake, gas leak, bridge collapse, etc….all are reasonably possible events that would inhibit my ability to return.

When I leave my house, it’s not necessarily ‘prepared for war’ but it is prepared to not return for a few days at least. In a time of crisis, my house is, for now, the safest place for me to be. It may not always be that way, but for now thats the way it is. It’s the boat that keeps me afloat in the sea of uncertainty. Why would I want to take my chances away from it if I didnt have to..Never get out of the boat.

You do you, of course. What works for me (or that I think works for me) may not be something that you think works for you. But I feel that being prepared every time I leave the house to not come back gives me options. I like having options.

 

 

CR123, AA batts, and desert hermit logisitcs

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FriendOfTheBlog(tm), Joel, had himself a bump-in-the-night encounter a few weeks back that I mentioned here. I mentioned it because it underscores the utility of weapon-mounted lights and how, in some circumstances, they are just what the doctor ordered.

What I didn’t mention was that I gifted Joel one of these so that he could light something up without pointing a carbine at it, if he needed to. We all know the rules about not pointing a gun at anything you don’t want to destroy, so I figure that a high-capacity-intensity flashlight would be handy for when you’re not sure that whatever is out in the dark is something you want to be pointing a loaded gun at.

Anyway…

There was a comment in the post Joel made about how, given his hermit location, finding CR123 batteries for this light, in case its rechargeable batteries zonked out, would be a difficulty and he would be better serviced with the dirt-common alkaline AA-batts. I politely disagreed because, in my experience, every Home Depot, hardware store, gun store, and supermarket carries CR123 batts.  But..I’ve been wrong before, so I’m open to the possibility that perhaps my experience in the matter differs from what that experience would be if I lived in Joel’s neighborhood.

But the crux of the matter, really, is this: is a device that runs on CR123 batts a liability over a similar device that runs on AA-batts? In terms of price? In terms of availability?

One of the points brought up in the comment was that AA batts were cheaper than CR123. This is quite true. But, as I pointed out, it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison. AA alkaline batteries are cheaper than CR123 lithium batteries. But when you compare AA lithium batteries to CR123 lithium batteries, there is a niggling difference in price. A quick perusal of Amazon showed Energizer lithium AA’s and lithium CR123’s being pretty close to each other in bulk price.

The scarcity issue may have some merit, but CR123 batteries are easily ordered in bulk from Amazon during a time of non-apocalypse, and because of their lithium construction they can be stored longer than alkaline batteries with less self-discharge. (And, I am told, lithium batteries tend to puke all over themselves much less than the alkaline batteries do.)

The advantage to the AA-batt is that if you run out of lithium AA’s for your device you can, usually, still use the dirt-common AA alkalines….assuming its not eight years after the apocalypse when they’ve all self-discharged or leaked into a pile of crud.

All of this underscores that for your battery needs you need to think about things like this. I standardized a long time ago on three battery sizes – AA, D, CR123. Almost every device I could possibly need….headlamps, flashlight, gun sight, weaponlight, radio, freezer alarm, etc…can be had running off one of those types of batteries. Some devices, like a high-intensity weapon light, have power requirements that can’t be met with anything except a CR123. While there are weaponlights out there that will run on other battery sizes, it seems like they usually don’t have the same level of brightness intensity unless they make up for their non-CR123 power requirement by using a much larger quantity of batteries. (In other words, instead of using two CR123, it may need six or eight AA’s.)

Then there’s the matter of rechargeable devices. More and more stuff is of the USB-charger variety. The flashlight I sent Joel, for example, has its rechargeable battery charged through USB. I rather like this feature because it means in a pinch I can charge it from anything that would charge a cellphone….a small solar panel, a battery pack, etc, etc. But, as we all know, rechargeable batteries have a limited amount of duty cycled before the battery starts to no longer hold as much of a charge. This is mitigated a bit by the fact that the package I sent Joel has a spare battery and should, I would think, last probably the rest of his life. But even if the batteries died an ignoble death, the light can still run off CR123’s…which brings us back around to a few paragraphs earlier.

The person who commented on there being a disadvantage, in Joels case, to the CR123 batteries has a valid point – resupply is definitely a concern. But, in my opinion, that potential risk or failure point is mitigated by the the CR123 being able to be long-terms stored meaning that a supply of them purchased now should take care of things. Also, for what I was looking for – a compact, handheld light with tremendous brightness – wasn’t as readily available in a non-CR123 version while still meeting the compact requirements.

Anyway, some food for though there.