Month: January 2015

09:49 – Barbara continues to do very well. She has physical therapy every day this week, and is up and walking around frequently.

We finished watching Jericho last night. Well, I watched it while Barbara kind of paid attention to it while she worked her crossword puzzles. On second viewing, I’m even more impressed with it than I was the first time. The best prepping series I’ve ever seen. Yeah, they get some trivial stuff wrong. For example, during a severe winter and a fuel shortage, people continue to live individually or in small groups in their own homes rather than consolidating several families per home to conserve scarce fuel. And, since the Event occurred at harvest time in rural Kansas, there really shouldn’t have been any shortage of food. A large surplus, more like. IIRC, every Kansas farm feeds on average something like 250 people. There should have been grains, beans, and other crops in abundance, and a surplus of meat and dairy products. And Jericho must have had a gigantic warehouse filled with batteries and candles, because three months after they’re isolated, Jericho residents are still using those profligately, with no apparent shortage. Routinely lighting rooms in homes with literally dozens of candles or several battery lanterns, and so on.

But despite those minor quibbles, the writers get it right. They have good leaders and bad leaders. Competent people and incompetent ones. Hotheads and conciliators. Even the good people sometimes behave badly, and most of the bad ones are bad only because they’re forced to be by circumstances. And, beyond the local authorities, government is not their friend. They’re even lucky enough to have a resident wizard.

09:33 – Barbara is doing very well, better than last time. As usual, the problem is to keep her from over-doing.

I took Latin starting in 8th grade. In 9th grade, we read Vegetius, and his most familiar phrase has always stayed with me: Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum, usually translated as “If you want peace, prepare for war”. Vegetius was a prepper. I thought about that as I was reading an article that was linked to in the comments yesterday: Bracken: When The Music Stops – How America’s Cities May Explode In Violence

It’s a longish article, but worth taking the time to read. I don’t expect things to get this bad any time soon, but it’s certainly a possibility. History tells us that when law and order breaks down, things get very bad very quickly. And right now we’re watching law and order break down.

09:03 – Barbara had dinner out last night, so I took the opportunity to watch several more episodes of Jericho. Also, as usual when she’s out for dinner, I took the opportunity to experiment by making dinner from our long-term food stores.

I’m also experimenting with Thermos cooking, which can be important in a long-term power down situation where you’re trying to minimize fuel usage. Rather than bringing a pot of rice to a boil and simmering it for 20 minutes, for example, you can just add the rice and boiling water to a Thermos bottle or insulated cooler and let it sit. When you open the Thermos hours later, you have hot cooked rice.

One morning, transfer two cups of dry rice, a cup of beans, and some bouillon and spices to a large wide-mouth Thermos bottle. Add the appropriate amount of water, cap the bottle, and by dinner time you have a nutritious meal. Of course, beans and rice get boring pretty fast, so I’m also playing around with food extenders. Last night I tried a can of Dinty Moore Chicken & Dumplings. A 24-ounce can of that is sufficient to make two pounds of dry rice and a pound of beans into an appealing meal for six people, at 1,000 calories each and with plenty of protein and fats. Not gourmet food by any means, but something that most people would find reasonably tasty.

13:33 – We’re back from the hospital, where Barbara had knee-replacement surgery on Thursday. Everything went very well, and the insurance covered all but about $3,000 of the cost. She’ll be at home recuperating for a month or so, which means no more wild women and parties for me.

We stopped at Walgreens on the way home to pick up three prescriptions, one for ninety 5 mg oxycodone. She’s allowed to have one or two every four hours as needed, so at maximum dosage that’s more than a week’s supply. All three prescriptions totaled $33.19, including the $450 worth of oxycodone. Or $0.90 worth, depending on how you count it.

In the long-term section of the prepping book I have a note to myself to write about growing common poppies (P. somniferum, AKA opium poppies) and extracting the opium alkaloids, including morphine and codeine. I’ll probably add some material about processing the raw opioids into more useful forms like hydrocodone.