09:24 – I got email from Jen overnight. She and her husband had been talking about the idea of converting some of their paper assets to hard assets. She and her husband decided to kill a whole flock of birds with one stone. Her husband is a veterinarian who has a mixed small- and large-animal practice. Until now, he’s been reordering supplies the first of every month, keeping only a small month-to-month reserve. As of the first of June, he started boosting his inventory levels, particularly of items that are also suitable for human use in an emergency. For items that don’t expire or have very long expiration dates, like bandages, he’ll shoot for a one-year stock initially, and then continue reordering monthly to cover current usage. For drugs, he’ll adjust stocking levels according to their expiration dates because it would be unethical to use expired drugs in his practice, even if they’d been kept frozen. But it’s perfectly ethical to use drugs that are near their expiration dates, which will allow him to keep a greatly increased inventory of antibiotics and other drugs that are equally suited to human use in an emergency. If he misjudges and ends up with drugs that have expired, he’ll simply continue to store them frozen as emergency supplies. I told Jen that sounded like an excellent plan to me. In any long-term emergency, antibiotics and other essential drugs will be better than gold. And a veterinarian will be the next best thing to an MD. Humans are, after all, large animals.
Don’t git much better than that; one spouse is a veterinarian. Sweet.
How are they for armed defense of their operation? And are they in a good location?
They’re exurban, pretty far from any cities of 100,000 or more. They’re 20 minutes from the town where her brother and his family live, which is apparently just large enough to have a Sam’s Club.
They both shoot sporting clays regularly, and each has a Remington 870, I’m not sure what gauge(s). They’ve bought 1,000 rounds per gun of mixed buckshot and slugs. They don’t have any tactical rifles and don’t feel the need for them, which I think is fine. Her brother and his family are also shooters, although the wife is a novice. I’m not sure what the total mix of weapons is, although she has said they have more than one scoped centerfire rifle.
Their “quick-start” prepping budget was large but not unlimited. I suggested that they focus on the weak areas, so they’ve spent most of that on food and water, water treatment, and so on. They were already armed reasonably well. I think they’re now pretty well set on food, water, light, power, comms, and (obviously) medical. There’re still some areas they intend to shore up, but overall they’ve gone from 0 to 60 in very short order, and at this point it sounds like they’re better prepared than about 99.9% of the population. They also have at least one close neighbor family who are preppers, which helps. With Jen and her brother’s family along with the neighbors, they have at least 8 adults/teens to secure the place if they need to.
Outstanding.
They’re in better shape than us, presently. We’ve been limited by financial considerations and basic rehab necessities on the house itself, but are beefing up and tooling up as best we can, a bit more slowly. We’re at the stage where we could manage a solid month of Old Man Winter off the Grid completely and defend the place against individual and very small groups of attackers if necessary. Mrs. OFD has to accelerate from nearly-0-60 as her schedule allows with the firearms. The goal is to get us to six months by Christmas.
Judging by what you and Barbara and Mr. nick have accomplished thus far, it will take us quite a bit longer to reach those levels. But that’s OK, so long as chit doesn’t blow up too soon, and I really hope I’m wrong about some kind of major chit going down this summer.
Oh, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to see pretty large scale civil unrest this summer, or indeed at any time, but I think you have a good while left before things get really bad.
Jen is a hell of a smart woman. I’d like to link up with her and her group, but they’re quite a ways from us. If they were near-by, it’d be a no-brainer. She also has some very useful skills of her own, but she won’t let me say what they are because in combination with other information she thinks it’d be pretty easy for someone to figure out exactly who they are and where they live. As I said, she’s a smart woman. She’s also adding incrementally to her current skills by doing stuff like studying for her ham license.
Oh, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to see pretty large scale civil unrest this summer, or indeed at any time, but I think you have a good while left before things get really bad.
+1
Although the impending bankruptcy of Greece is worrying me a little bit. That could cause a worldwide cascade of the weaker financial systems. Similar to that of the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy in 2008.
I got email from Jen overnight. She and her husband had been talking about the idea of converting some of their paper assets to hard assets. She and her husband decided to kill a whole flock of birds with one stone. Her husband is a veterinarian who has a mixed small- and large-animal practice. Until now, he’s been reordering supplies the first of every month, keeping only a small month-to-month reserve. As of the first of June, he started boosting his inventory levels, particularly of items that are also suitable for human use in an emergency.
Smart lady. Stock what you know. And convert to hard assets when possible.
As I have said before, the USA is actually not in that bad of shape. It is just that we are sliding down a slippery slope. And the speed of the slide is increasing. I do not see any USA financial problems in the 201xs. But come 2020 or 2025, look out!
To me, the fact that 40% of the federal debt is self owned (SSA, Medicare, Federal Reserve. etc) is heartening. We can wipe that off the books quickly. It is the other 60% which is rapidly increasing that is unnerving.