07:41 – Most of the news in the local paper is unpleasant, but every once in a great while I see an article that actually cheers me up. There was one of those this morning, about a Wake Forest student volunteering with local middle-school girls to help them get started doing real science. I love seeing young people getting involved in science, but what really made me happy was reading that this Wake Forest student is doing a double major in Biology and Physics with a minor in Chemistry. The world needs more students like this young woman.
Here’s what I did to prep this week:
- I ordered a dozen more #10 cans of Augason Farms dehydrated foods, including two more cans each of Egg Powder, Butter Powder, Honey-Coated Banana Slices, Brown Sugar, and Lentils, and one can each of Cheese Blend Powder and Granola.
- I read half a dozen PA novels, including the rest of Steve Konkoly’s Perseid Collapse series, and a couple of non-fiction prepping books, including Joseph Alton’s Survival Medicine Handbook. I also used Kindle Unlimited to check out another dozen or so books. None of those were worth taking the time to read in full. In general, books of this class range from mediocre to abysmal, but there are a few bright spots. What’s interesting is the sheer volume of books available. Prepping has obviously become a serious concern for a lot of people and has become a big business. Sam’s Club and Costco both feature emergency food on their web sites and in their monthly promo flyers, which they wouldn’t be doing if they weren’t making lots of money at it.
- I put in another couple days’ work on the non-fiction prepping book.
So, what precisely did you do to prepare this week? Tell me about it in the comments.
12:20 – I got email from Jen, the woman who contacted me a month or so ago about how to get started prepping. Her list this week is about ten times the size of mine. Talk about a Whirling Dervish. She’s gone from basically unprepared a month ago to being better prepared now than literally 99.99% of the population. She and her husband have also started to socialize with the prepper couple next door, who were formerly just friendly neighbors. Both couples are pleased, not least because their critical skillsets don’t overlap much.
But Jen has run into the same problem that nearly all couples do at some point when it comes to prepping. She’s reasonably comfortable at this point, but thinks they still need to do a lot more. Her husband is completely comfortable with their level of preparation as it is. He’s not yet voiced strong opposition to doing more, but as I told Jen, that day will probably come. Her brother’s family is similarly split, but this time it’s he who wants to do more and his wife who thinks they’ve done enough.
I’m in the same situation with Barbara, who believes in being well prepared but thinks we’ve already done enough. Except, of course, that she really wants to relocate to a small town away from the city. I’m reasonably comfortable with where we stand, and we have all of the major purchases out of the way. But I would like to extend our food supply further by purchasing more cheap bulk staples for dry packing as well as additional stuff like fruits and vegetables in #10 cans. At this point, I don’t think it’s the cost that concerns Barbara as much as the space and clutter. I’m going to try to do something about those over the coming weekends.
Incidentally, I suggested to Jen that she should start posting here herself, because I think she could make some useful contributions, but she wants to remain as low-profile as possible, so she’ll just keep emailing me when she has something to say. I asked her about quoting her emails anonymously, but she prefers not.
Not much. Tied up with IRS and bank issues through Wednesday, and VA stuff yesterday and today.
But I continued doing informal recon observation of the local ‘hood, and the territory around Retroville here, including that along both sides of the interstate between here and Burlap, about thirty miles. I do the same thing when cruising back and forth over the Quebec border region and to and from Montreal. It has occurred to me more than once that someone faced with traversing any of this territory on foot and carrying a load would have heavy going, if they wanted to stay off the main roads, that is, and unless they were currently in-shape hikers or soldiers. There are a lot of water barriers, fences, wire, ditches, private property abutting the main roads, and unknown status of local citizen-subjects. Winter weather would make it even more hazardous.
I also continued studying the wealth of Selco material (thanks to Mr. nick for that earlier tip), got the FFL and other Fed license paperwork together, edited our to-do list for the house and yard (which includes prepper stuff like fire protection, security, potable wottuh, etc.), and when the other checks roll in here later this week or next, I’ll add more canned goods and staples to the currently dwindling stock.
And I’m still working on the online web dev/IT security courses, and some online firearms-related training.
Overcast and a little breezy today and 48 now but supposedly rising to 68 later, with some rain expected tomorrow.
This and dozens of other comments and emails I’ve read are an excellent example of actually using prepping supplies to get through a difficult time. I got email from one woman a couple or three months ago. Her husband had lost his job and she wasn’t employed. Fortunately, they had lots of food and other supplies stored and an emergency fund in the bank, so in the six months her husband was unemployed they and their kids continued to live pretty normally. She’s proud of the fact that they were never late paying a bill and that they didn’t even bother to apply for food stamps or other government aid other than unemployment.
Her top priorities now that her husband is making good money again are to build up their emergency fund again and to replace and increase their stored food and other supplies. This is the kind of woman I’d like for a friend and neighbor.
Exactly. Especially if she and her husband either already have or are willing to develop other skillz that would be vital in the coming troubles, whatever their intensity and longevity.
Once I also start making good money again, we can accelerate our tax payments and escalate our supply storage. That day can’t come soon enough.
Later I’ll take a quick look at the ammo situation, mainly for laffs, in our local Walmutt Sooper-Store, which I’m kinda wondering how it is they stay in business. It was built a year or two ago to much accompanying media hoopla but I have yet to see the mobs there and shopping in this area seems about evenly divided between the big-box stores, most of which require travel down to Burlap, and the local downtown, which locals take pride in frequenting.
I should probably also point out that we are seeing a fair number of ‘for sale’ signs along the lake shore road, mainly of the summer homes; it could be that more folks either can’t or won’t run second homes up here anymore. Or folks that bought those places years ago are now hoping to make a bundle and retire to Florider. Then, on the other hand, we are seeing reports from carpenters and electricians who have been working long-term contracts in the north country here and across the lake in the Vampire State on multi-million-dollar mega-mansions and estates. So some peeps in this country have loads of money to blow. This will also show up this summer when we start seeing the gigantic motor homes and motorboats on the highways and byways that get about three miles a gallon for gas.
One wonders how much longer North Murka’s Happy Motoring Days will continue.
As I keep saying, short of a Black Swan Event like a high-lethality pandemic or a super-CME, I still expect the slow slide into dystopia. I think part of that is likely to be extreme civil unrest spreading from the inner cities out into the suburbs as the inner cities become completely increasingly uncontrollable.
A major consideration here is the old frog-boiling thing. The middle and upper-middle classes will put up with a lot if they believe that things will eventually get better, or at least not any worse. After all, they have reasonably comfortable lifestyles and there’s no obvious reason that those lifestyles can’t continue indefinitely. But eventually these people will increasingly start to draw lines in the sand. Stuff like cops shooting middle-age, middle-class people is pushing things now. If the cops continue these actions, which I think they will, it’s going to turn into a real us-versus-them mindset. That doesn’t bode well at all.
Well I’ve always bragged that I never have taken public aid or unemployment but my thoughts now are hell I’ve paid for it and if I need it I want it.
Of course dealing with petty bureaucrats would probably send me over the edge.
Garden prepping. I’ve just made arrangements to borrow a rototiller tomorrow to turn a part of my back yard into a garden. A good spot with plenty of sunlight. I’ve never done much in the way of gardening so I don’t know exactly how much I will get. I’m starting with all the easy things that grow well around here, squashes, peas, tomatoes, carrots and the like.
I’m curious as to what the rototiller might turn up. The land was cleared and houses built in the late 1800’s for the jewely factory workers (my house built in 1880). I don’t know if it was ever farmed. It would have been a great camp sight in days long past with some flat areas. exposed rock and a small river nearby.
I also have a hypothesis that the Knights Templar must have had to pass through Plainville on the way to Minnesota to bury the Kensington Runestone. I’ll keep my eye out for anything grail shaped…….
” That doesn’t bode well at all.”
Add in the increase in savagery:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3043038/Teacher-left-unconscious-school-hallway-parent-34-14-year-old-niece-strangled-punched-kicked-ground.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3042626/Gang-violent-high-school-students-caught-camera-brutally-attack-man-baby-gas-station-trying-storm-store.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3043536/Man-brutally-beats-elderly-truck-driver-road-rage-attack-caught-camera-two-Samaritans-step-knock-refuses-end-violent-fight.html
and too many more to list.
It is becoming clear to anyone who pays attention that personal security risks are increasing. I’ve been the first to quote FBI stats about real crime decreasing, but I think they don’t capture the recent rise in violence, and it turns out there was some under-reporting and incorrect classification going on. The rapid increase in gun purchases and the explosion of concealed carriers seem to indicate an increased awareness too.
nick
“I’m curious as to what the rototiller might turn up. The land was cleared and houses built in the late 1800’s for the jewely factory workers (my house built in 1880). I don’t know if it was ever farmed.”
Down there in tropical Maffachufetts, and Plainville in particular, you are likely to find bits and pieces of plates, cups, other kitchen-ware stuff, and assorted household rubbish from those Golden Days of Yesteryear. Also possible to find evidence of earlier Wampanoag habitation, maybe even arrowheads and bone fragments. Most peeps down there are clueless as to what they’re sitting on top of, now that it’s mostly asphalt, cement and glass. Old battlefields, cemeteries, etc.
Some of the earlier eras are still eminently visible above-ground, however; check out Paul Revere’s house in Boston, the oldest extant structure in the city, or the concentration of 17th-C houses in the Ipswich area, largest such in North Murka, if memory serves.
Yep.
I keep hoping that North Carolina will, like an increasing number of states, allow concealed carry without a permit. (We’ve been allowed open carry for something like 150 years.) I think the big problem is that our state constitution specifies that open carry is allowed and conceal carry is not, so they’ll need to amend it.
Barbara and I actually started the process ten or fifteen years ago by taking the required firearms safety class at a local range. (Ironically, that was the class where the NRA-certified gun safety instructor had an accidental discharge and came within literally inches of putting a .44 bullet into my head.) We eventually decided to bag it because the state and federal governments had placed so many restrictions on where a permit holder could carry that it became nearly impossible to carry anywhere. The same applies to open carry. I mean, what are you supposed to do with the pistol when you move from one of the increasingly few places you’re allowed to carry it to a place where you’re not? The effect essentially eliminated the right of anyone to carry openly and of permit-holders to carry concealed. If I were a suspicious type, I’d think that was the intention all along.
We need an amendment that makes it clear that anyone is permitted to carry any weapon, open or concealed, on all public property, including schools, federal buildings, courthouses, etc. and to carry on any private property if the owner doesn’t object.
hey didn’t even bother to apply for food stamps or other government aid
Bad idea. Basically getting money back that they have thrown into the system for years. Only problem with many of these programs are that they require you to get rid of most of your assets, or at least that was how it was 20+ years ago.
When I got laid off I applied for unemployment. That supposedly gets funded on the backs of the companies when they pay their unemployment insurance premiums. If my applying made my former employer rates go up I was pleased to accommodate.
I tried to apply for food stamps. But I had too many assets. I had more than one car and was living in my own home. Back then the state would have required me to sell a vehicle and the home and rent living space. Was not going to to that. Rules may have changed since then.
Regardless, if I was laid off and had limited funds I would take advantage of any handout, freebies, gifts or entitlements from any government agency possible.
In 1993 (actually got laid off December 1992, worst Christmas I ever had because my 10 year old son had very little for Christmas while his friends had a lot, he understood but it was tough to watch as a parent) I was unemployed for six months. I did make all my payments, we ate (lot of cheap foods), no movies, no eating out, cut cable to the minimum, dropped the thermostat down low, minimum number of lights, etc. I was working part time for a fund raising company and my wife substituted at the school. Between savings and that income we survived and never missed a bill.
Got down to our last couple hundred dollars before I got a job. Hated the owner and the place but strung him along long enough to find a much better job four months later. Only really did two useful lines of code and I think one was a comment line. Really pissed the owner off when he found out as I told him I was leaving.
Being without a job taught me a lot. I quickly developed a six month reserve of cash, paid off all the credit cards, paid off the car loans and worked to pay off the mortgage. Without those weights over your head you would be surprised at how little you can live on if push comes to shove. I currently have a 20 year reserve largely from being out of debt and not paying interest.
I’ll 2nd Mr Ray’s comment.
Esp. with unemployment. Your employer paid that for every dollar you earned. If he was not forced to pay that, he could have paid you more. That money is yours if you need it. Using it will require you to pay taxes on it as income, and you will have to file 1040A. If you can file 1040ez, you’ll find that to be an additional burden, but worth it.
I’ll second his response to the event too.
For preps, not much this week other than working on the radios. Not much in the estate sales this weekend either, so we’ll see. I might just stay home and work on the garden or antennas.
I did make a sale, so I might apply for an NFA Trust. Better to have it as a done deal, than miss out if the rules change.
nick
That’s because some people in Tennessee actually have common sense. Ray and Dave Ramsey are at least two people there with half a bit of sense when it comes to money.
One wonders how much longer North Murka’s Happy Motoring Days will continue.
I do not expect the price of crude oil in the USA to exceed $75/bbl ever again. Barring regulatory action, etc. That means $2 to $3 gasoline per gallon for the long term future depending on gasoline taxes.
And another item. Older people are moving to RVs as a means of cutting their expenses. No property taxes on RVs in Texas so they base themselves here and travel north in the summer months, snow birds! I expect this trend to continue and maybe accelerate as the number of 65+ year old people grows.
I haven’t done anything this week, but I have started thinking about building an emergency kit for each car. After that I’m considering building a bug out kit in case we have to leave. If something happens, I’m planning on staying in place rather than leaving, but I figure it’s easier to use your bug out box at home than to evacuate with a rack full of stuff in the basement.
I have also been saving two liter pop bottles for a little experiment. My wife and I are trying to eat “healthier” and so we have switched from white rice to brown rice. I know brown rice doesn’t store well, so I’m looking at parboiled rice as a compromise between white rice and brown rice. Actually, I’d like to just try parboiled rice. The only place I can find parboiled rice locally is in a 25 pound bag from Sam’s Club? So I’m thinking of getting some oxygen absorbers and using them to keep the parboiled rice in two liter soda bottles.
There is a “prepper show” at the Indiana State Fairgrounds in Indianapolis this weekend. I’m not going, but I was pleasantly surprised that some of my Facebook friends are going.
Ray and Dave Ramsey are at least two people there with half a bit of sense when it comes to money.
There are many who say that paying off a mortgage is a bad idea. Their rational makes sense.
Basically a home mortgage is a secured loan. If necessary you could sell the home, perhaps at a loss, but hopefully with enough to pay off the mortgage. You basically owe more than you owe. Which is unlike a loan (not so good) or credit cards (really bad). The theory as explained to me is that you can invest the money that you would have used to pay off the mortgage and make 5% to 7% over the long term by investing in the market. With mortgage rates at less than 4% you can make more money than you would be spending.
My financial adviser asked me if I thought about taking out a new mortgage on my home and letting him have the money to invest. He showed me the numbers based on past performance (no guarantee of future performance) that I would be making about 2% a year. Based on a $100,000 mortgage that is about $2,000 a year more in income than I would be paying in interest. Plus the mortgage interest is tax deductible saving some additional money on taxes.
My position is that as long as I pay the taxes no one can take me out of my house. And that is a good feeling. I don’t pay any interest on anything thus everything I get after taxes is mine. Being out of debt allows me to put back back several hundred dollars a month into investments. Payments that would have gone to the house and interest that would have benefited a bank, are mine to keep and invest.
Being out of debt for the last several years has allowed my investments to grow and I am now to the point where I can retire and not worry much about money. In fact it may get to the point where I will have trouble spending the money once I reach 70.5 and have mandatory withdrawals from my IRA’s.
Here’s a flashlight I suspect Ray will like, and for only $179.46 including shipping. That’s not bad considering the light retails at $240.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00JM6V9T4
Frankly, it looks to me as though SureFire ripped off Ultrafire’s intellectual property and made a clone. I also dislike the deceptive claim:
“Virtually indestructible LED emitter regulated to maximize output and runtime”
Hey, guys. Pick one. You can’t “maximize” both. They’re mutually exclusive.
North Carolina has done some loosening of restrictions on where you can carry in recent years, as have the Feds (as regards national parks). For one thing, a court threw out the North Carolina “no carrying when there’s a declared state of emergency” law, aka “no carrying just when you need it the most”. So you might want to take another look.
Once my mother’s estate is settled, I’m planning on paying off our mortgage. I realize that on average I could make more than enough on investments to merit keeping the mortgage and investing the money I will be using to pay off the mortgage. In the housing bubble, the stock market spent 18 months dropping 50 percent and spent the next 18 months recovering. I would like to avoid a three year long white knuckle roller coaster ride where I wind up where I started after three years. If I invest a mortgage payment every month through the same mess, I would wind up with a profit at the end of the three year period. If I’m wrong, I’ll spend the rest of my working life watching the market go up without ever falling. That’s the kind of being wrong that I can live with. The kind of wrong where my investments are only worth half the amount required to pay the mortgage I can live without.
Here’s a flashlight I suspect Ray will like
Nope, it’s ugly. Don’t like the bezel on the light.
Besides, I have a three Surefire lights and don’t need anymore. One high quality light is good enough, two is even better, a third was because I liked it. I have some Streamlights, some Fenix and some off brands, even some cheap lights. Worst of the bunch seem to be the Maglites. None seem to work as well as my Surefire in terms of light output and quality of light (even over entire beam, no squares, no color fringing).
Regardless of your feelings about Surefire lights if you need CR-123 cells they are the best source that I have found. Never had a bad cell from Surefire.
I also have this battery tester. http://www.ztsinc.com/minimbt.html. Works well. I need it for the CR-123 testing.
After my earlier errands and appointments I checked out the ammo situation at our local Wallmutt Superstore; I was surprised to find the available case jammed with ammo, all kinds of it, everything but AK-47. Plenty of 9mm, .40, .223, etc. with about half of the total being all kinds of shotgun ammo.
I’ll do some more recon in a couple of weeks at the area gun stores accordingly.
Continuing my slow but steady process of preparing, being sure to be covering all bases for all situations like fire, flood, high winds, civil unrest, and hunker down or bug out. We are comfortably at the 6-month point.
Actually, my main emphasis has the past couple of weeks been preparing for reaching the magic 65 in September. There is a lot you need to consider and you need have it ready before you hit 65. Sure there are some grace periods, but why chance it.
Got new certified copies of my birth and marriage certificates. I used an online service, http://www.VitalChek.com. I first tried using the state sites, but they are horrible, must have been programed by the same company that did ObummerNoCare. Anyway, VitalChek is part of LexisNexis Risk Solutions and charges a very reasonable fee of from $5 to$12 (depending on state and document) and reasonable shipping. What is not so reasonable is what the states are charging for the documents. VitalChek kept me well informed on the document fulfillment process and I got everything within a week. So if you need a birth, death, marriage, and/or divorce certificate I highly recommend VitalChek.
Figuring what to do regarding Medicare is a PITA. I am on my wife’s medical/dental/vision insurance and all will automatically cancel me on the first day of my birth month. As much as I hate AARP I am glad I joined because through them I am getting factual and truthful information regarding Medicare choices. The Federal site for Medicare is woefully out of date. Example: claiming that there are more than 20 companies providing Medical Supplemental Insurance in WA State. In reality there are now only 3 and that is directly related to ObummerNoCare.
We only have one nice neighbor left. A young LDS couple working on their 5 kids. When they see my wife and I outside working, we soon have a couple or three Morman Missionaries showing up to help. No proselytizing, just some nice folks helping an old couple.
This is for all you haters:
“Look around you. Every person you see came from a woman. Your mother was a woman. Traditionally, women have nurtured us, fed us, held us close and helped shape our lives. Though they are so much more than that. Women are heroes and mentors. They are mavericks and fighters. They are also leaders. It is time for them to lead and for us to let them.”
http://takimag.com/article/all_you_need_to_know_about_hillarys_campaign_gavin_mcinnes/print
I guess HILLARY! at the second sentence cause I’m a hater. Her “campaign” so far is so phony the Dumbocrats are even looking the other way. Hollyweird libturds may be her only cash source left.
Mr. DadCooks thanks for the VitalChek link. My wife and I are retired military with kids born coast to coast and Puerto Rico. I may order a birth certificate for all for Christmas. The youngest will be 20 and I’m giving useful stuff as gifts from now on.
It’s gonna be a fun year ahead for political “campaigns” and election charades; we can tell already, with a clown car full of RINO cretins storming the Granite State next door and then Field Marshal Rodham trying to come off as sweet and lovable and caring, when in reality she could easily fill in for and carry on the traditions of Elizabeth Bathory, Hilde Benjamin or Ieng Thirith.
Yes, thanks Mr. DadCooks for that tip on the VitalChek thang; I have a little over three years before I hit 65 and plan to make the most of them; good idea by MrAtoz on getting multiple birth certificates for the kids.
I am also uber-retired military, haha, a short-timer! I bailed outta that mutha just over forty years ago, active duty, anyway.
Our financial advisor that is managing our pension money had us pay off the house. Sure, he might have been able to squeeze out 1-2% after taxes on the money, but, not having a house payment is a great insurance policy for an income shock. Like my getting cut to half time for a year and then laid off. Plus the house continues to appreciate (around 8-10% per year right now) and when we sell, we likely won’t need to do any fixing up, since they’ll scrape it off for a McMansion. (Being within walking distance of the best public high school in Houston and a magnet elementary has it’s perqs.)
It’s gonna be a fun year ahead for political “campaigns” and election charades
Nah, here is the most important event for 2015: “New Star Wars: The Force Awakens trailer ventures into a war-torn galaxy”
http://www.ew.com/article/2015/04/16/star-wars-force-awakens-new-trailer
Its been a long time since Star Wars IV came out.
had us pay off the house
I have advisors tell me otherwise.
I have also had advisors tell me to take SS early. I have had advisors tell me to wait.
Basically, they all have their opinion and many times their advice pads their commission.
You have to do what you think is right as long as it is not blatantly stupid.
We gon hang onto this house and be carried out of it horizontally when our times come; also waiting to the max or close to it for taking SS, assuming any is left for us to take that hasn’t already been looted by the criminal scum who run the country.
I could foresee, however, that there might come about national/regional circumstances which necessitate our hauling ass overland and over water to our northern New Brunswick cottage and ending up there, although this is pretty doubtful.
Here ya go, flashlight fanatics: Flashlight projects
@ech, I’m with you. In 5-7 years, not withstanding a global meltdown, my house will be a teardown too. People can’t get into the villages around you, so they are following the big streets north and have pushed my home value up over 75% in the last year. ‘Course I’m guessing at your location but the villages fit.
Financial advisers will tell you all kinds of things. What works for ordinary folks to get security and value is pretty clear. Get rid of debt. Get some cash or equiv stored up. Own your home if you are in an appreciating market. (Even if not, unless your neighborhood is developing crack houses, I’d still do it.) Take advantage of any matching program your work might provide. Own some other things that will provide income, like dividend paying blue chip stocks, or rental property. Live in the right place, which includes a state with no income tax. Spend less than you make.
That’s it. We can own our house today if we needed to. If we stay on schedule, we should be paid in full in another 2 years. That will be 9 years from purchase. Anyone who takes money from their home and gambles with it in the stock market, better be ready to lose it.
nick
“Here ya go, flashlight fanatics…”
Thanks a lot. Now you’ll get them going again.
I’ll stick with the candles, lanterns and matches. Also torches and pitchforks.
Mr. Creekmore of the survivalist blog ( http://www.thesurvivalistblog.net/ ) writes that if you do not own your bug out place free and clear then you do not own it. He moved into his bug out place after he lost his job and his wife divorced him. Living on a 150 watt solar panel and 5 gallon jugs of water, oh yeah!
http://www.amazon.com/Dirt-Cheap-Survival-Retreat-Mans-Solution/dp/1581607474/
I figure that the only bug place worthy of buying around Houston is in the El Campo area. Not too close to the Gulf of Mexico and not too far west (no rain). Lots of pasture land at the outskirts of the city for sale that you can throw an old trailer on. Centerville is too tough to get to and Lufkin is likewise.
We have got about 30% equity in our home now and 50% equity in our commercial property. The three mortgages are our only debt but that debt is about 200% of our gross annual income. Our home mortgage is 3.75% on a 30 year basis. Our commercial property is 5.7% on a 15 year basis but there is a balloon coming in three years. I am thinking about refinancing it right now since Wells Fargo keeps claiming that they will give me a 15 year fixed rate loan on it.
I believe I can state without fear of contradiction that I just plain suck.
“Weapons: SOCOM And Marines Adopt Hollow Point”
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htweap/articles/20150416.aspx
“SOCOM experimented and found that a full-metal jacket 9mm round has a one-shot stop rate (OSSR) of 70 percent, while the best 115-grain 9mm hollow point has a one-shot stop rate of 91 percent.”
“Much depends on where you shoot someone and SOCOM found that the highest OSSR was achieved with a .45 caliber (11.4mm) pistol firing hollow point bullets. That gives you something like .99 OSSR and the OSSR stays high no matter where you hit someone.”
Interesting.
Hat tip to Jerry Pournelle’s website:
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/
“I believe I can state without fear of contradiction that I just plain suck.”
See, now that’s what we in the PTSD recovery biz call a “stuck point.” There’s an “event,” and then our “thought” about it followed by our “feeling.” I’m learning all this neat chit in my very own 12-week program at the VA these days.
“… while the best 115-grain 9mm hollow point has a one-shot stop rate of 91 percent.”
Roger that. JHP’s here in the .357, .38, .38+P and 9mm categories. And sure, the .45 will have slightly higher stopping power but in order to have as many rounds in the mag you gotta have a double-stack, which then renders its concealability rather moot. One or two assailants, great. Multiple assailants not so much. A pack of coyotes, for instance, on a dark Texas night…
Mm-hmm. And then there’s the guy with the extremely robust ego* and the highly questionable sense of humor who busts on himself at least as much on anyone else, because his ego can handle it at least as well as anyone else.
I also joke about suicide (mine and others), cannibalism, my sexual attraction to livestock, wild animals’ sexual attraction to me, taking Wally (from the Dilbert cartoon) as my mentor, my alcoholism, my deep and abiding love for chocolate-frosted donuts, going into politics, and going deep into debt so I can get a degree in Postmodern Interpretation of Masculinist Tropes of the So-called “Hard” Sciences. Except for the bit about suicide for others, which I generally support, none of these have any basis in reality. Er, except maybe the bit about wild animals. I thought that that one time when a bear came toward me in the woods it was warning me away from a berry patch or its cubs or something, but maybe it wanted to get frisky. -shrug- I’ve done worse, though alcohol was usually involved.
* Ego problem? What ego problem? My ego’s in great shape. No-o-o-o-o problem here.
Wally and Ratbert are my de facto mentors in the corporate prolecube life, if I ever have to go back to it.
I have not ever run into any bears in the woods, and the largest animal sorta close to me in the outdoors was a big buck deer, and he was at the edge of the woods of our back yard at our first house up here, years ago. Had a huge rack, too. We’ve seen bobcats and coyotes running away from us and big-ass wild turkeys in fields and bald eagles overhead. Oh wait–then there’s the huge-ass bull moose running down U.S. Route 2 in South Burlington, VT during morning rush hour one day, coming right at me and galloping like a friggin’ horse. He turned off down a side street and disappeared. A few blocks ahead on the left was the Loyal Order of Moose Hall, I kid you not, so he was probably suckin’ ’em down at the bah there.
Ego? I have none. Just the id.
On not claiming one’s entitlements when the oppotunity arises – that is simply one’s own money thrown away a second time. I have drawn unemployment only once, and thankfully can expect never to need to again, but I certainly took it when I was entitled to – I was merely getting (a fraction of) my own tax money back: I had worked my way through college, paying my taxes, but when I finished college and before my first full-time job in my new profession, I was officially “unemployed”, so I took the benefit payments. They weren’t much, but I did have some extra beer-money on my pre-job holidays.
Prepping this week: nothing for my household directly, but I did take ten new shooters on their first visit to a gunshop today. We had a lot of fun, learned something, and firearms and ammunition were purchased. I think having (additional) friends with guns counts as prepping!
I’ve claimed unemployment money several times. I don’t have all the data available, like the rates my employers were paying, but I’m pretty sure I’ve collected less than was paid in for me. I do know that when I was self-employed with S corps I had to pay premiums on my salary as a person, but that as a business owner I was not eligible to collect, and I know that that was over $11K stolen right from just one my companies’ bottom line.
As I said, she and her husband collected unemployment compensation, but not welfare.
In case of dystopia, I’m not sure why owning your place matters. If there’s still a government to enforce contracts, well, it doesn’t matter if you have no mortgage, the government is still going to demand money every year for taxes, or else take it away from you. In that sense, property taxes are pretty offensive: property is never yours, except at the sufferance of the government. If there’s no government left, then mortgages probably don’t matter anymore either.
That’s not to say it’s not a sensible investment. If only psychologically – it would be an amazing feeling, not to have a house payment. Given housing prices here, there’s no way, but it’s nice to think about…
“In that sense, property taxes are pretty offensive: property is never yours, except at the sufferance of the government.”
Exactly. And that’s the situation that we have now here; we’re merely subjects/serfs, not citizens with free rights of property. And our own political “leaders” see fit to tell us that the Bill of Rights is not “absolute.” While those of us of a certain age can recall how the SCOTUS was able to locate all kinds of neat but vague stuff in the “penumbra” of the Constitution and like Alice in Wonderland make it say anything they want. Thus rendering it null and void in my view. They nullified it themselves even way back before that, with the crushing of the rebellions in Maffachufetts and Pennsylvania and then the War of Northern Aggression against our Southern brothers and sisters.
“If there’s no government left, then mortgages probably don’t matter anymore either.”
“…but it’s nice to think about…”
Indeed.
I’ve drawn unemployment benefits for precisely three weeks of my life, in early 1980. After being finished with uni but before starting work on my first job.
I’d take other forms of welfare in a blink if I needed them or felt “entitled”. I currently pay the student rate on my bus fares to and from uni. What I’m entitled to is far less than what older and impecunious folks get.
In case of dystopia, I’m not sure why owning your place matters. If there’s still a government to enforce contracts, well, it doesn’t matter if you have no mortgage, the government is still going to demand money every year for taxes, or else take it away from you. In that sense, property taxes are pretty offensive: property is never yours, except at the sufferance of the government. If there’s no government left, then mortgages probably don’t matter anymore either.
Dystopia just means that society is crumbling all around you but I guarantee that the local governments will still collect property taxes until their last breath. And, they will enforce mortgages. They will probably not enforce IRS seizures though as they barely do that now.
Apocalyptic is where everything stops functioning and we are totally on our own. If, we survive the event that started the apocalypse. That means no food, no water, no sewer, no electricity, no cops, etc.