10:41 – I need to spend this week mostly doing science kit stuff. We’re in reasonably good shape on chemistry kits, but I just shipped the last forensic kit this morning and we’re down to half a dozen biology kits. I’ll be making up and bottling chemicals, building subassemblies, and building kits most of this week.
I’ve been putting a lot of effort into the prepping book and I need a break from it. Thinking and writing constantly about disasters gets depressing, particularly the types of disasters that are essentially impossible to prepare for. As I’ve said many times, unlike some of my readers I don’t really expect an apocalyptic end of all things. What I expect is a gradual slide into dystopia, with increasing poverty, social unrest, and government intrusion into our lives. That’s why I want to get away from the city, and that’s why I’m storing foods, guns, and other supplies and developing more useful skills. But in a true catastrophe like a long-term grid-down situation or a nightmare pandemic, there’s no real way for anyone to be prepared. The simple fact is that we have too many people who are entirely dependent on a complex, interlocking network. If something catastrophic enough to break even part of that network occurs, there will be a mass die-off in the US and there won’t be anything anyone can do to stop it. The most that Barbara and I can do is relocate to thinly-populated farming country, stock up, and hope that when the crunch comes we’re prepared to ride out the worst of it with our family and friends.
There it is.
So, we are all Greece? “Heading to Greece this summer? You might have a secret mission to complete.”
http://money.cnn.com/2015/03/09/news/economy/greece-tourists-tax-inspectors/
“The Greek government is planning to recruit tourists to spy on tax cheats as it casts around desperately for ways to stave off bankruptcy. ”
Oh yeah, I really want to spy on people while I am on vacation.
Maybe not you, but other folks might not turn up their noses at a chance to have their Greek vay-cay paid for with a little snitching. We’ll see more of this sort of thing as governments get increasingly antsy about looting us for every last dime.
And it could get nastier than just being paid for it; they tell you to snitch for them or you’ll lose your job or your ailing spouse will lose their med bennies or your kid will not get accepted to whatever skool. All you gotta do is turn in a couple of tax cheats every once in a while or one of those damn gun nuts.
Because I browse the prepper books on Amazon, this one was on my front page today:
Dirt Cheap Valuable Prepping: Cheap Stuff You Can Stockpile Now That Will Be Extremely Valuable When SHTF [Kindle Edition] Published 2/17/2015
http://www.amazon.com/Dirt-Cheap-Valuable-Prepping-Stockpile-ebook/dp/B00TREMB0C/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1425922254&sr=1-1
Took a look at the sample pages, besides the formating problems there might be a couple of dollars worth of information.