08:03 – I got email from Jen overnight. She and her husband ended up making two more trips to Sam’s Club with the trailer. Their basement is now populated with hundreds of #10 cans in cases of six, stacked eight cases high along one wall, atop 2×6 runners on 2×4 spacers to keep them off the floor. That, and hundreds more standard-size cans of soups, meats, etc., dozens of cases of bottled water, and a bunch of 50 pound bags of rice, flour, and sugar queued up to be repackaged later.
Kim was excited yesterday. Jasmine got a real job, one with benefits and a career path. She’d been working at Babies-R-Us as a sales clerk. She starts her real job the first of next month. Kim has already paid off as much of Jasmine’s outstanding student loan balance as she can afford, leaving Jas owing only a couple grand. I hope Jas appreciates just how big a favor Kim has done for her. Jas now gets to start life better off than about 99% of her contemporaries, with a real job and no student loans to worry about.
The more we watch of Saving Grace, the better we like it. Excellent writing. Excellent cast. It’s by far the best cop show I’ve ever seen, and that includes ones like The Shield. Holly Hunter is a genius. She not only stars in the series, she produced it. If I owned a TV production company, I’d give this woman money and tell her to go make me a TV series. Anything she wanted to make, and I wouldn’t interfere with whatever she wanted to do. She’s a lot like Joss Whedon.
She’s a lot like Joss Whedon.
Not really. She an actress, and a very good one. Her role as an executive producer was probably very nominal. Executive producers are the ones that make the deal to do the show or movie. They may have some role in casting the stars, getting the show runner, etc. Or they may be there for ego, or because they got the financing, or because their network will be running the show in another country. The producers and line do the grunt work of hiring the rest of the crew and cast, managing the budgets, working schedules, etc. In films nowadays lots of people end up as executive producers if it’s Best Picture material, because they get the Oscar – not the director/writer/actors.
Joss Whedon not only creates series and produces them, but writes and directs. Saving Grace was created by Nancy Miller, who had a writing credit on all 46 episodes. She’s the Joss Whedon in this case, minus the directing.
Holly Hunter had a great deal to do with the series behind the scenes, from what I understand. She’s credited not just as executive producer but as producer.
I love living in The Great State of Texas but I never went to this event when we used to live in Sweetwater for three years:
http://www.chron.com/life/travel/texas/article/Sweetwater-s-Rattlesnake-Roundup-Still-the-6136886.php
I just followed this link:
http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2015/03/15/oh-oh-students-at-elite-universities-now-taking-up-arms/
I thought the final line of the article summed things up well: “There really are Two Americas, only one of which can shoot.”
“Al Gore at SXSW: We Need to ‘Punish Climate-Change Deniers’ and ‘Put a Price on Carbon’”
http://ecowatch.com/2015/03/16/al-gore-sxsw-punish-climate-deniers/
What a wackjob! To think that he was just a couple thousand votes away from the Presidency. He might have been almost as bad as Obola.
She and her husband ended up making two more trips to Sam’s Club with the trailer. Their basement is now populated with hundreds of #10 cans in cases of six, stacked eight cases high along one wall, atop 2×6 runners on 2×4 spacers to keep them off the floor
A picture would be cool.
I increased my water stash from ten 35 bottle cases to twenty 35 bottle cases over the weekend. That is a lot of water. And I do need to increase our bulk storage goods, right now all we have is a lot of cans.
“… I never went to this event when we used to live in Sweetwater for three years…”
I don’t blame you; I saw enough dang snakes in TX and SEA to last me several lifetimes; we only see the very occasional garter or wottuh snake up here, no venomous reptiles in VT. Except at the Snake House, in the lefty-hippie capital of Montpeculiar.
“… He might have been almost as bad as Obola.”
No kidding. His late relative, Gore Vidal, didn’t have much use for him. Gore Vidal, by the way, ought to be required reading for high skool and college kidz as regards Murkan history and politics. He really can’t be pigeon-holed as a left-winger by any means.
Sunny day with blue skies here; 37, but dropping back down to the low teens the next several nights with some more rain/sleet/snow. Back yahd is sopping wet and muddy but will freeze right up again. Mrs. OFD enjoying temps in the low 70s in San Antonio.
I asked if she’d send me an image, but she’s concerned about anyone knowing that they’re storing food. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that her neighbors certainly noticed them hauling all the stuff in.
Assuming those are 500 mL bottles, that’s 17.5 liters per case, or 350 liters total. Call it 100 person-days, so that should be enough for you, your wife, and your daughter for a month or so. Not a bad start. We have about 400 liters of commercial bottled water on hand, along with another several hundred liters in 2- and 3-liter soft drink bottles. Total is maybe a 3- to 4-month supply for the two of us.
It’s currently 82 and sunny here. The high a couple hours ago was 84.8.
Assuming those are 500 mL bottles, that’s 17.5 liters per case, or 350 liters total. Call it 100 person-days, so that should be enough for you, your wife, and your daughter for a month or so. Not a bad start.
Plus two 30 gallon water heaters. Plus the 35,000 gallon pool. I also own a MSR Sweetwater filter to filter the pool but I have yet to try it out:
http://www.amazon.com/MSR-02237-SweetWater-Microfilter/dp/B001BNPJK6/
Plus the 160 ft deep water well at the office property a half mile away by crow. Or four miles away via the bridge over the always three foot deep bayou. All I need is 13 amps at 230 volts to run the 30 gpm well pump. That could be difficult in certain situations. I need a generator or a lot of solar panels.
Plus, in an emergency, I hope that my former USMC son will join us. He lives 22 miles away in a blue collar neighborhood inside Houston’s second ring (between 610 and beltway 8). It will be a hike through some tough neighborhoods though. He works with the wife and I in our rural office so he is out here most of the time.
Finally, the cops take down some despicable swingers in Vegas! Giving us a bad name. You’d think Vegas was only about gambling, hookers and blow. Wait a minute…
on a side note i understand the batf has backed off somewhat on the 556 ammo ban
“Giving us a bad name. You’d think Vegas was only about gambling, hookers and blow. Wait a minute…”
Its founders would not be spinning in their graves, so not to worry! We will give you advance warning before we convert the metro area there to an armored division gunnery range with close-air support from Puff the Magic Dragon and an old fart manning the Dragon’s guns.
“… the batf has backed off somewhat on the 556 ammo ban…”
Yes, for the nonce. Public uproar and emails, phone calls, etc. to the criminal scumbags in Congress may have made them pause a bit. They’ll try again with something else soon, and various state legislatures, like CT’s, are trying stuff again now, too. These fuckers never stop.
My understanding is that following the back-off on the 855? cartridge, a senior BATF executive/Obama toadie is now following policy and orders, and talking about following a lot of South America and some of the rest of the world, and banning anything that uses “military calibres” or “military cartridges”. I guess that means .223 varmint rounds, .308 and 30-06 and .323 and .256″/6.5mm and 7mm/.275″ deer cartridges, .338 through .45-70 big game, 12-gauge shotguns, and just about every pistol calibre ever used. The next step is to make it “military and police”, and you’ll at least sweep up the rest of the pistol cartridges.
That toadie can talk about that all he wants and if they try to ban all that ammo, he’ll rue the fucking day here. Of course, maybe they WANT another civil war…
Speaking of firearms, although this is old nooz, it’s still good for a laff, our brilliant and bipolar Vice-President ‘splainin’ ’bout shotguns and AR’s:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sW2I5LS08H8
Wow, the wife just told me that my father-in-law had his annual IRA distribution check sent to him last Oct 24 by Fidelity for $10,588. He never got the check and it was deposited in an unknown bank on Oct 31. Fidelity says that they have no clue who and where the bank where the check was deposited at.
Fidelity is supposedly sending my father-in-law a copy of the check . Supposedly all the back says is “deposit only” and an account number. No bank number supposedly which I find hard to believe.
My wife has power of attorney on this account. My father-in-law is bedridden in a nursing home and cannot check on this so she has to do it.
I have looked at his Fidelity account online and definitely see where they deducted the check and withheld the taxes. I am surprised that I could not pull up the check image as I thought that they are a bank now.
We have a Fidelity office here in Sugar Land where she can go to the counter and talk with somebody. I have no idea what to do other than that.
That toadie can talk about that all he wants and if they try to ban all that ammo, he’ll rue the fucking day here. Of course, maybe they WANT another civil war…
No, what they want is to raise the bar to a totally insupportable level, then when they back off from that people will breathe a sigh of relief, not thinking about the fact that it’s actually far worse than it was in the beginning, but just a little better than the threat had been.
Sure, keep doing it incrementally, pretty much like certain “rights” have gone in the West for the past few decades. If the masses get too antsy, why, back off a little, until the noise dies down; after all, as the late Gore Vidal called this country, the United States of Amnesia. What was rockin’ nooz last week is already forgotten; what’s rockin’ this week will be gone next week.
If they can’t ban the guns, they try the ammo. Can’t ban the ammo? Let’s run those “chokepoints” at the businesses and banks. That ain’t workin’ so good? Jack up fees and taxes on anything related to firearms. They never stop. Then the anti’s whine about how unreasonable we are and why can’t we just settle for some common sense bans on this and that and tighten up this law and that ordinance.
But a lot of us have watched this stuff go down for the last half-century and taken note of how they work; in this, and other areas; the infamous Slippery Slope. They think long-term, while most Murkan derps think only of the present, and if the BATF backed off on the latest attempted ban this week, they breath a sigh of relief and some shout hosannas and jump and dance in triumph. Fools. Which is what the regime and its enablers and supporters take all of us for, but they’re badly mistaken by now.
Rest assured, if they decide to finally crack down on legit firearms owners as has occurred in other countries, they will have reaped the whirlwind here. We are a violent, cussed, and independent group of surly bastards out here, and when riled enough we’ll come out swinging for all we’re worth and won’t stop.
Good luck to ’em; tens of millions of firearms owners, many trained and experienced combat veterans of multiple wars; many more experienced hunters. And if they escalate and start using tanks and jets on us and make a few examples, they will be signing their own death warrants. I can’t shoot down an F-16 or stop a tank but those guys have to eat, sleep and crap somewhere and so do their families. Ditto all those desk jockey drone aces in underground bunkers. Ditto the local constabulary. They make examples of us and we’ll return the favor.
Oh, yeah! Bob, please pass our congratulations on to Jasmine. She is, as they say, sitting in the catbird seat. I hope the job she has, has a moderately long-term future. Even if not, though, she has made a big step up. She just has three things to do now.
1. Get ALL the way out of debt, then stay that way forever (well, paying things off monthly anyway). I’d make an exception for a mortgage, because owning your home is such a radical step up from renting. Just maybe for a very first motor vehicle too, although better not. However, all debts, even then a mortgage, should be paid off as rapidly as possible, making payments always against the principle, and that’s a lot harder to do if you’ve slipped into having other debts as well.
2. Prepare for things that might go wrong, so they become just as far as possible a bump in the road rather than a disaster.
3. Remain aware of her personal and public work environment. No matter how good the position she’s got now, the bean counters and their bosses won’t hesitate in the slightest to make it go away. Quite frequently even her managers will backstab her for purely personal reasons. She should be prepared to discount her loyalty to her employers and jump ship the moment it looks likely that her industry or her company or her division or her department or her branch or her position will suffer, because they won’t even break breath while mining staff loyalty for all it’s worth, then back-stabbing the loyal ones. Most of us have suffered through variationS on this, or at least seen them happen.
I have no idea what to do other than that.
Wait until you get a copy of the cancelled check. There should be an ABA number on the back as required by the FED. The clearing bank, the bank that Fidelity uses, should have that information otherwise how did the check get routed to Fidelitie’s bank. It may not be on the check but the ABA number of the receiving bank should be somewhere in the system. With the check truncation system the receiving bank is the one that made the digital image of the check and that bank’s information is in the electronic transmissions.
You may have to file a fraud report with Fidelity who will then file a fraud report with their bank. That will start the process of reversing the clearing of the check. Since the check was deposited that money will be pulled from the account of whomever deposited the check and given back to Fidelity’s bank.
Fidelity should also be issuing a new check to your father immediately. The fraudulent deposit (stealing) of the check will be Fidelity’s problem once you file a fraud report with Fidelity. You should have to do nothing else beyond filing a report.
If the check was in a batch of checks deposited, like from a company, the bank will never even see whom the payee is on the check. If the batch balances, the checks are processed having never been seen by a human at the bank.
Checks are risky. Your wife may want to see about having electronic deposit done from now on. With a POA you can have the money deposited into any account. That will eliminate the risk of checks being stolen and makes any errors much quicker to resolve.
even then a mortgage, should be paid off as rapidly as possible
Bad idea at her age in my opinion and my financial adviser. She should get a mortgage at the lowest rate possible and put 20% down to avoid PMI. Then take the money she could have used to pay down the mortgage and put that money in a Roth IRA in a solid, low risk mutual fund in the stock market. The growth of that money over the long term will far exceed the interest on the mortgage. If she needs to pay off the mortgage she can pull from the Roth IRA as a last resort. With a 20% down payment there is more equity in the house than is owed thus putting her in a positive financial situation.
A mortgage with a positive equity value is a good debt. Bad debt are car loans and especially credit card balances.
Good advice, Ray, especially with mortgage rates so low (actually near historic averages.) I can only add that many mutual funds are poor investments, so caution is advised. Jas should get a competent financial advisor, but there’s the rub. On a positive note, many good FAs have low minimums, but probably not low enough for someone just starting out. Business opportunity?
I can only add that many mutual funds are poor investments
That is why a good financial adviser is needed. At Jasmine’s age she could tolerate a high level of risk as she is looking at 40+ years of possible growth. A good adviser will have a plan that should be well balanced including some cash accounts. Any of the major firms would be good choices as long as they don’t charge trading fees and up front fees. They all charge some amount as they have to make a living.
As for performance of mutual funds I have some funds that are doing 10%+ per year. My portfolio is gradually moving towards conservative, growth is slowing but risks are lowered.
Checks are risky. Your wife may want to see about having electronic deposit done from now on. With a POA you can have the money deposited into any account. That will eliminate the risk of checks being stolen and makes any errors much quicker to resolve.
Thanks for all the good advice! Electronic deposit already done for this year. My FIL has everything else automatically deposited, he forgot to do this when he was mobile since it only happens once per year. This is his required annual distribution check with his estimated life expectancy rolled in.
[snip] I can’t shoot down an F-16 or stop a tank but those guys have to eat, sleep and crap somewhere and so do their families. [snip]
The best way to stop a column of tanks is to shoot the guy driving the fuel truck. Targeting families is too Stalinist / Columbian mafia for my taste.
“… shoot the guy driving the fuel truck.”
Or hack/foul up their comm net and IT gear, now integral on armored vehicles.
“Targeting families is too Stalinist / Columbian mafia for my taste.”
It’s rotten, to be sure; but if the same regime that is running columns of tanks at us is also burning us out of our homes and attacking OUR families, then yeah, we got us another civil war on our hands. I hope it never comes to that, obviously.
“Targeting families is too Stalinist / Columbian mafia for my taste.”
It’s rotten, to be sure; but if the same regime that is running columns of tanks at us is also burning us out of our homes and attacking OUR families, then yeah, we got us another civil war on our hands. I hope it never comes to that, obviously.
Read about Sherman’s progression through the South sometime. The man torched Atlanta on purpose! We get the saying “scorched earth” from his practices.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Tecumseh_Sherman
Any modern day civil war in the USA will be horrible. We’ve got all kinds of cool weapons to use on each other.
Sherman, Grant, and Sheridan were war criminals and the first two even admitted that if the Confederacy had won, they would have been hanged as such, rightfully. After the War Between the States, Sherman and Sheridan waged genocidal war on the Native Americans in the western states, one atrocity after another.
After the march through Georgia, when Sherman bragged that he would “make the South howl,” I would have considered their hometowns and households to be legitimate targets forthwith. Of course I also confess to sympathy for John Wilkes Booth, which makes me quite the rare anomaly up here in Nova Anglia, coming from two states that sent tens of thousands of Union boys to their mutilations, crippling, and deaths. Union moms even told their sons, after the Spartans, “Come home with your shield or on it.” Gee, thanks, Mom.
Any civil war is a terrible and evil thing and if it ever comes here, it will break all historical records and be on new ground for humanity.
Boy, I hope you guys are wrong and I’m right. I’m getting too old for this shit. A gradual slide into dystopia I can deal with, if I have to. But a full-blown civil war? How the hell does anyone prepare for that?
Sherman, Grant, and Sheridan were war criminals and the first two even admitted that if the Confederacy had won
The Confederacy never hoped to win. All they hoped for was a stalemate and a negotiated peace. Hopefully not near as bad as the ceasefire between North and South Korea which is still ongoing to this day.
“All they hoped for was a stalemate and a negotiated peace.”
True, that; but the Northern oligarchs and the chief war-monger Lincoln would not have it; their aim was the destruction of the South’s economy and culture, period. In which they mainly succeeded, and then went on to destroy the Native Americans, again a resounding success.
Just as our bastards near the end of the Good War would not accept any terms whatsoever from the Japanese except Unconditional Surrender, period, and underlined that message with continuous incendiary bombings and then finally the atomic bombings of mostly civilians, including women and children.
“But a full-blown civil war? How the hell does anyone prepare for that?”
I don’t predict it, but fear the worst, eventually; the country is badly polarized right now and that’s only gonna increase. I sincerely hope it never comes to such a terrible and evil thing but gee whiz, half the country lives in some other dimension, apparently, in their thought processes and ideas, while the vast majority of plebes don’t have any clue at all, but are guaranteed to panic when the shit hits the fan.
Maybe not just one event, but a “perfect storm” of events, in series; could be anything. Part of the Grid goes down; EBT and ATM cards don’t work. Store shelves empty out in three or four days. Another bad hurricane in the Gulf or Florida or the Carolinas. Mega solar activity that fries a bunch of electric/electronic circuitry. An epidemic or pandemic. Yet another long, bitter cold, snowy winter with major Grid outages lasting weeks. Terrorists light off dirty nukes in one or more cities and/or start with the suicide bombings here that they’ve been using in the Sandbox regions.
One of these is bad; two or more in the same couple of months?
And what happens when the State finally pulls the plug and does that Default thang? We’ve never been there before, should be interesting. Meanwhile our erstwhile Euro allies and pals are looking to bail out of the U.S. dollar; Red China looms large, despite how messed up they are right now. Then there’s the Ukraine, Kashmire, the Taiwan Straits, and the Norks.
Our last decade/s on the planet are likely to be quite intriguing.
By making a list of those who’d be against you in various scenarios: declaration of martial law for specious reasons, race war, class war. Get names, addresses, and other info for people near you and prepare to make war on them if war is waged on you.
And what happens when the State finally pulls the plug and does that Default thang?
Not gonna happen. They will inflate the dollar first. The USA has control of its currency and can crank that printing press XXXXXXXXXXX those tortured electrons in a spreadsheet at any given moment. Teeth will be gnashed and hands will be wringing but they will do it. The alternative of a default is just too horrible to conjecture.
I severely doubt that we will have a situation like the USSR in 1991 where things spun out of control and into hyperinflation / default:
http://www.pragcap.com/the-russian-default-what-happened
But, it could if the USA has a civil war. I prefer the long slide into dystopia.
Just get ready for $20 bread and milk.
Oh, no doubt they’ll inflate the dollar and keep printing fiat currency till the cows come home, but that can’t last forever.
I think we’ll get the financial meltdown/hyperinflation/Default BEFORE there is another civil war; things have to be fairly drastic to kick off something like that, so all the more hope it won’t get that bad.
“…a list of those who’d be against you in various scenarios…”
Fairly easily done, esp. in a small state like this one. The nut comes when we start running into Stasi-style informants, spies, snoops and supergrasses. Ethics gets harder; in one case you’ve got someone who’s just dime-ing out peeps for the cash rewards; in another you may have a person who’s been threatened or had his or her children threatened with dire fates.
Mrs. OFD reports low 70s in San Antonio today but she has to co-teach all this week with a real jerk. She also found out that the upcoming assignment in Hawaii, a state where she’s yet to go, and for which she and another senior instructor put in, was secretly given to a pair of incompetent fems who are pals of one of the managers. They were told not to tell anyone else. 8th-grade hijinks among PHB manglers and professional fem types.
I didn’t have the haht to remind her of her ten-year sentence served in state gummint up here; near the end, her boss moved her out of their offices to a single office in a house at the big gummint complex (since flooded out) that she’d have to arrive at and leave from in the dark during the winter, alone. Then he moved them all out to another office building 20 miles to the west, closer to where he lived. After that he successively kept moving her out of her office, out to a desk by an exit door, with no phone and no computer. This was her reward for running the entire Medicare/Medicaid program for the state, firing up a major childrens’ health program, and bringing in millions in grants from private foundations and the Feds.
What the state job did to me pales in comparison but I was ready to actually kill somebody by the time I left after only four years.
So her ex-boss is on our list. As is mine.
Ray, JimB – you are making an assumption about Jasmine’s, the USA’s, and the World’s future that I am unwilling to concede. You are assuming that Jasmine will have a job and a continual income stream for the rest of her life, or the the rest of the life she could work.
I posit that, at any time, she (along with the majority of the rest of the people) could lose her job and enter a long or even permanent period of unemployment or underemployment. Why not? It’s happened to plenty of people already. If someone in that position already has their home paid off, they can keep skating with part-time work. If not… well, the finance industry could become chaotic. It’s not beyond the realm of possibility that people could lose their savings, while still being expected to pay their debts. The only way you have a hope in that sort of situation is to not owe anything, and to have your assets in real property (the realest of which is real estate) rather than in numbers in a digital bank that can be wiped out or redirected at whim. After all, people who have never owed anything have still had their homes “repossessed” and sold by crooked financial megacompanies, which simply goes to prove that the banking industry is corrupt and immoral at the core.
In theory, Jasmine (or anyone else) might do better by owing money and not paying off her mortgage ASAP. However, that’s the cost of insurance – you are more secure if you don’t have a mortgage that could be called.
It’s also a lifestyle decision. The peace-of-mind that comes with owning everything free-and-clear, with being debt-free, may not be priceless but it is still invaluable.
A couple of points-
Jasmine is young! Buying a house will tie her to a particular location and local economy and seriously limit her opportunities. To paraphrase Sam Kinison, “Go where the work is!” Being flexible about where I lived in the earlier part of my various careers let me advance, earn, learn, and thrive. Siblings tied to one locale by housing they couldn’t get away from lost 3 years of prime earning waiting for a local recovery. I have friends that would like to leave the DC area, but are still upside down on their mortgage. They are morally and financially unwilling to walk away. Owning a home is not the automatic right answer for everyone.
That said, at this point in my life and career, I’m looking forward to having my house paid for in full in the next couple of years, and about 15 years earlier than is traditional. I could pay it off today, but prefer to maintain the cash cushion and to preserve the chance to purchase other property if needed. Lots of people with cash did very well during the Great Depression.
If owning a house is the right choice, doing it as suggested works very well. 20% down, sweat equity, 15 yr mortgage, and paying extra every month will maximize the benefits and minimize the cost.
The best financial advice I ever got was to transfer 10% of every check into a savings account. You won’t notice the difference and the account will build quickly.
Only use credit cards if you can pay them in full every month, and only if you get a real benefit that outweighs any fees (points, discounts, insurance, etc.) Amex is good for this as it is a charge card and not a credit line.
Regarding water storage-
It looks like you are using the 1 gallon per person per day formula, which is woefully inadequate in a real long term situation. That assumes a short duration event where some privation is acceptable and expected (ie. spongebaths or wipes daily.) In a long term event, you will be exerting yourself outdoors and getting filthy. Hygiene will be critical to your health. Washing cookware, food prep, and yourself takes on a new level of seriousness when you can die from food poisoning. Additionally, people that don’t bathe suffer all sorts of things, just re-read the Canterbury Tales for some vivid descriptions of what happens to your skin. You will use lots of water eating and cooking the typical storage food too. How much water will it take to clean a wound? What about pets or livestock?
My personal experience during [regional weather disaster] led me to dramatically increase our bulk storage of both potable and “could be” potable water. You want it to be in sealed covered storage too. If you are counting on your water heater, keep in mind that unless you shut it off BEFORE the problem occurs, any contamination of the city supply will be in your tank before you are aware of it. This happened here. If you are counting on a swimming pool, or open body of water, many disaster scenarios will make that water unusable (flood water contamination, fallout, dead animals, chemical contamination from precipitation, etc.) Your filter can help with some of that, but not all. (Just ask the residents of the area that was affected by the chemical discharge into the river a while back. It got into municipal treatment plants and was NOT removable by filters.)
Don’t fall into the common trap of thinking at that first level. “I’ll just do/use xxxx.” Think to the next level “what would KEEP me from doing/using xxx?”
This is getting long, but here are a couple more real world examples (ignoring the obvious problems and focusing on the second level).
“If SHTF, I’ll just jump in my BOV and leave.”– what could stop you?
–how many mounted spare tires do you plan to carry? After any hurricane or tornado the roads are covered with roofing nails. They are better than average caltrops. Lesson learned from Katrina is that to move around in an area like that you need a set of mounted tires, a patch and plug kit, and an air pump.
–how sophisticated is your vehicle’s computer? After the Colorado fires, some people discovered that with so much smoke in the air, their vehicles WOULD NOT START. One guy (who posted about it) thought he was all set, loaded and ready, but had to switch to an older vehicle and abandon his loaded BOV with fire rushing toward him. I was in LA during the Rodney King riots, and I’ll tell you, a burning city gives off LOTS of smoke.
–how will you clear fallen debris? Lesson for crews after Sandy was that every truck needed chainsaws and gas (and tow straps) because there were trees down on every road. Mother Nature isn’t the ONLY one who might put a tree across your path…
I could go on, but the point should be clear. If any of your plans or thinking involve the word “just,” you need to look for the next level. There are some hard learned lessons out there….
nick
Good points from Mr. nick on the wottuh situation; and not a bad idea to load up the vehicles with the items he mentions even if you’re not planning to bug out to the hinterlands. We may not have a burning city and riots here, but we do get ice storms and blizzards that knock down trees and power lines.
The onboard vehicle pooters are a potential problem, though, in modern machines; Eric Peters (you can link to his articles on Lew Rockwell’s site) has talked about this and others have recommended having an older vehicle to avoid problems like this. I had one, but couldn’t afford the expense of mitigating the rust damage underneath and on the doors and rocker panels. (it still has to pass inspection and get a sticker.) Will be looking anew this summuh, though.
New vehicles have other potential issues for the freedom minded too.
Onboard black boxes, remote kill switches, using onstar to do surreptitious audio monitoring, etc.
Sounds like conspiracy theory time, but all 3 of those things are publicly reported in newspaper articles…..
nick
I’m specifying one gallon per day as a minimum, intended for short-term emergencies. We live in the East, so water isn’t really a problem. Mill Creek is a block from our back door, and we have several ponds within a few hundred feet of our house. Rainfall here is pretty reliable, and I have what I need to capture several hundred gallons per rain. I also have treatment methods out the wazoo, both chemical and absolute filters.
Incidentally, bathing or showering isn’t actually very important. What’s important is to keep clean, and I know from experience that sponge baths work fine for that. Don’t tell Barbara, but last year I went for more than three months without taking a bath or showering even once. All I used was a sink of water and a washcloth, and it worked fine. Barbara has a very good sense of smell, and she’d certainly have said something if she’d noticed.
Mother Nature isn’t the ONLY one who might put a tree across your path…
Sounds like the evacuation route could have broken down BOVs in your preferred exit path. Might need a bulldozer to clear the BOVs out of your way.
Might at that 🙂
http://i.ebayimg.com/00/s/OTAwWDE2MDA=/z/cpAAAMXQEgpTENYZ/$_1.JPG?set_id=880000500F
nick
There’s a National Guard/Army Reserve depot a couple of miles from here with all kinds of nifty vehicles; we’ll just rustle up what we need when the time comes; only a chain-link fence between. (of course maybe they have alarms, drones overhead, attack dawgs, whatever, but it sure don’t look like it). I never see any troops inside the compound and it almost looks semi-abandoned.
And no pressing shortage of wottuh in these pahts yet. We still need to get an alternative pumping gizmo on the well, though and ramp up the storage anyway.
Sounds like engineer thinking to me. I approve!
but last year I went for more than three months without taking a bath or showering even once
OK, I’ll ask. Why?
There ya go, Mr. nick! Approved by Mr. SteveF! Pat.Pending. Trademark Registrada or whatever, I forget.
Here’s how it works in RL: “I’ll set up a top-secret comm net to link up with like-minded revolutionaries.”
“What would KEEP me from doing that?”
“Snoopy gummint bastids.”
“Terminate their command.”
“Terminate the bastids’ command?”
“Terminate. With Extreme Prejudice.”
Research, of course. At the time, it was for an apocalyptic novel rather than the non-fiction book.
That is what I figured. And I have no idea how I moved the comment from Wednesday to Monday. Sheer incompetence. Can’t see either.
At the time, it was for an apocalyptic novel rather than the non-fiction book.
What was your trigger event?
Trigger event? I’ve been a prepper since the 1950s when our first-grade class used to do the nuclear attack drills.
What was the trigger event for the apocalypse in your fiction book? There seems to be a million varieties.
MDR tularemia
Well, that would have PO’d all the preppers who’ve been depending on rabbits, wouldn’t it?
MDR tularemia
Nasty. I guess that you would cough your lungs out. I would blame it on the pigeon eaters.
My daughter has MDR Lyme disease which is sweeping the USA with 300,000 known new cases last year. All we can do is keep it at bay with changing drug concoctions (doxycycline, amoxicillin, etc), every six weeks. It has destroyed the joints in her body and she is on severe anti-seizure medicine to stop seizures also.
One of the protagonists in the novel was to be a biologist/virologist who develops a genetically-engineered virus that’s basically a tiny little hunter-killer submarine that lies dormant in the human body until it spots an F. tularensis A or B bacterium, at which point it attacks, and infects and destroys the bacterium as it replicates itself. This, incidentally, it not at all far fetched. See what Todd Rider did at MIT a few years ago, and he’s an engineer rather than a biologist/virologist. I think Todd should have been awarded a Nobel Prize for what he did, and there should now be thousands of biologists/virologists working on genetically-engineered viruses targeted at all serious human bacterial/fungal pathogens. It’s what I would be working on if I were 40 years younger.
One of the protagonists in the novel was to be a biologist/virologist who develops a genetically-engineered virus that’s basically a tiny little hunter-killer submarine that lies dormant in the human body until it spots an F. tularensis A or B bacterium, at which point it attacks, and infects and destroys the bacterium as it replicates itself.
This is also the mechanism behind most of the zombie stories. My cousin, Seanan McGuire, wrote a series of books about cure for the common cold causing zombie-ism. She thinks that the cure could kill the human forebrain.
http://www.amazon.com/Feed-Newsflesh-Book-Mira-Grant/dp/0316081051/
She is writing a new series about a genetically engineered tapeworm:
http://www.amazon.com/Parasite-Parasitology-Mira-Grant/dp/0316218928/
@Lynn, LOVE the NewsFlesh series. Actually brought a tear to my eye. I love the idea of journalists having to be trained and licensed and required to carry guns, especially in the presence of the country’s leaders. Some great funny moments with all the “erwins”.
Some really grim stuff too.
nick
(I like her InCrypid series too, and the October Day series, although it’s taking a really long time to develop.)
nick