08:39 – Barbara returns sometime this afternoon or this evening, which means Colin and I need to get rid of the nekkid women and dead bodies. Fortunately, we get recycling pickup (blue cart) and trash pickup (black cart) today, so I figure we’ll recycle the nekkid women and toss the corpses in the trash. Or vice versa. We got yard waste pickup (green cart) yesterday, but neither Colin nor I was quite ready to get rid of the nekkid women. Or the dead bodies.
Nearly all of my time this week was devoted to working on science kit stuff, but here’s what I did to prep this week:
- I bought a box of 15 packets of Oral Rehydration Salts, with each packet sufficient to make up a one-liter serving. Actually, we stock the chemicals we’d need to make up hundreds of liters of ORS solution on-the-fly, but I wanted the commercial product to shoot an image for the book. Also, it’s not a bad idea to have these on hand for an emergency, and they’re cheap enough. What’s bizarre is that they have an expiration date two years after the manufacturing date. All the packets contain is anhydrous glucose and some inorganic salts, all of which have real shelf lives measured in centuries or millennia. These won’t go bad any time soon.
- I continued work on our long-term food storage inventory spreadsheet. Overall, we’re in pretty good shape, although there are a couple areas that need attention.
So, what precisely did you do to prepare this week? Tell me about it in the comments.
11:49 – When I was talking to Kim yesterday, she mentioned that her aunt had just been taken by ambulance to the hospital. I figured she must be pretty old, since Kim’s mother, Mary, is in her mid-80’s. I asked Kim if this was her mother’s sister or her dad’s. Kim said, no, that it was actually her great-aunt, her mother’s aunt. My estimate of the patient’s age went way up.
When I talked to Mary this morning, she said her aunt had a urinary tract infection. UTIs can be very serious, particularly in older women, where they’re often asymptomatic until the infection is well advanced. One of the standard treatments for UTIs in patients who can tolerate sulfa drugs is sulfamethoxazole/trimethoprim, AKA SMZ/TMP. Like all sulfas, sulfamethoxazole is a broad-spectrum antibiotic, which is useful for a lot more than UTIs. But bacterial resistance to sulfas is pretty widespread, so they’re often used in combination with TMP or another DHFR inhibitor. The two in combination work synergistically and are more effective in most situations than sulfas used alone.
From a prepping standpoint, a lot of people buy Thomas Labs Bird Sulfa tablets, which contain 400 mg of SMZ and 80 mg of TMP each, or Fish Sulfa Forte, which are twice that amount. The problem is the cost, which is $0.50 per tablet or thereabouts. Here’s one place that sells bottles of 500 SMZ/TMP tablets (800/160 mg) for $115, or less than half the cost per tablet. If you’re storing antibiotics for a large family or group, you might want to grab a bottle and stick it in the freezer.
Note that I am not a doctor. I don’t even play one on TV. Sulfa drugs would not be my first choice of a broad-spectrum antibiotic, not least because severe sulfa allergies are quite common. But SMZ/TMP is effective against a pretty large number of bacterial pathogens, and it’s something I’d want in my toolkit.
I just added a new category that I’ll use when I write about something that I’ve found that’s particularly important or a particularly good deal.
I would assume that the FDA, or some other government functionary, mandates the expiration date on medical supplies. If they put a 100 year expiration date, people might realize just how silly the bureaucracy is.
Yeah, that’s the problem. Read up on the military Shelf-Life Extension Program. They (and FEMA, etc.) had been discarding drugs literally by the ton because they’d reached their expiration dates. Someone with some sense suggested they assay those drugs for activity and safety. Of course, they found that expiration dates were pretty much imaginary on almost all drugs in tablet or capsule form. Obviously, there are exceptions. Most liquid drugs don’t keep well, and some (like insulin) are inherently unstable. But typical drugs are safe and effective for years or decades past their expiration dates. Longer if kept frozen.
Sometimes I think that expiration dates on non-perishable items are really a way for a company to say, “We will not be liable for this product after this date.” The expiration date is on their accountability and not on the actual product.
That’s absolutely right.
There is no expiration date on canned foods, except baby formula which is required by federal law to include one. Canned foods, assuming they were canned properly and the can has maintained its integrity, are safe literally forever. Spontaneous generation was decisively disproven in the 19th century by Pasteur and Tyndall. If the contents of a closed vessel are sterile, nothing is there to create new life.
Spontaneous generation was decisively disproven in the 19th century by Pasteur and Tyndall.
Then where did the lowest forms of life originate? Specifically, politicians, lawyers, and Hillary.
No one knows where they originated, but they did evolve into various human pathogens, from viruses to worms.
“No one knows where they originated…”
Lesser demons, the lower orders of same, culled from the ranks of fallen angels and then the results of mating with warthogs and jackals.
So, were Hillary’s parents warthogs, or did Hillary mate with a warthog to produce her spawn?
Come to think of it, this thread is insulting to warthogs on so many levels. Not to mention insulting to viruses, worms, demons, and fallen angels.
Yes, I do wish companies would put proper expiration dates on things. My wife’s little business has a kitchen, and gets inspected occasionally. So she religiously throws anything out that is “expired”, even though this is total nonsense in many cases.
…quick break run to the pantry…
Yep, even canned good have expiry dates here. At least there’s no expiry date on the box of salt :-/
Does Switzerland have actual expiration dates or best-by dates. There’s a huge difference.
You should probably write your own expiration date on that salt. If you bought it this year, I’d suggest you make the expiration date 5,000,002,014 CE, by which time the planet should be vaporized by Sol.
“…this thread is insulting to warthogs on so many levels. Not to mention insulting to viruses, worms, demons, and fallen angels.”
Yes, I was mortified as soon as I hit the “Post Comment” button and wish devoutly I had not committed so many micro-aggressions against those entities.
“…by which time the planet should be vaporized by Sol.”
I’m almost certain we’ll beat Sol to it, and maybe even on September 23. No shortage of bad actors out there with their itchy fingers on various radioactive devices. The old Soviet Union alone is missing roughly a couple of hundred warheads and other nuke equipment since it went down the tubes, so to speak. And we have countries like Pakistan, India and the Norks with those things now, while we fret like idiots over the Iranians, who are nowhere near weapons capability yet, and it’s quite possible that even their nutjob mullahs know the consequences of lighting off a nuke war. Not so for the others, who may know, but don’t care.
Sunny with blue skies and puffy white clouds today so fah; the weather liars had mentioned t-storms supposed to have occurred after midnight but they didn’t happen. Maybe later today.
Back to the back yard plantation…
“Does Switzerland have actual expiration dates or best-by dates. There’s a huge difference.”
Perishable products have both, for example, milk or meat. When there’s only one date, I am pretty certain it is the official expiry date. Certainly the health inspector gets persnickety at anything past that date.
Persnickety…now there’s a word I haven’t used in a while…
Fortunately, nukes do have best-by dates, and they’re for real. I doubt that any of the old soviet warheads would be anything but fizzles, although a dirty bomb can ruin your day if you happen to be nearby when it goes off.
You don’t need a gun in a supermarket:
Really? Well fuck you.
Carry all the time. Keep your eyes open.
nick
Slow prepping week for me. Hopefully some stuff will get done this weekend.
Did some radio programming.
Got some stuff up on ebay.
Refreshed a truck bag.
Made a bunch of comments here, that were hopefully helpful to some…
Otherwise, not much got done.
nick
Well, as they say, prepping isn’t a shopping list or a destination; it’s a mindset.
Huh. Thunderbird just popped up a notification that I have new email from Jen. I’ll see what she’s up to.
HAHAHAH
Bloomberg tv is spinning
“10% correction will be good for market”
not so much for the folks who see their retirement savings decrease by 10%
Oh, and the ‘commodity collapse’ is overblown….
shills
nick
I’ve got a five ft long alligator sunning himself on the pond bank outside my office this morning. And the two whistling ducks and their 13 ducklings are gone. They had moved to the front pond yesterday when the gator moved to the back, but they are missing today. Me thinks that something foul has happened…
“Carry all the time. Keep your eyes open.”
How realistic is it, though, that some grandma like that is gonna be in Condition Yellow/Orange and CC’ing at the friggin’ store? Even a big bruiser guy packing a firearm and wandering around inside the store could be vulnerable to some wack job coming up behind them with a razor really fast. You gotta have eyes in the back of yer head all the friggin’ time now, it seems. I do, despite my VA counselors telling me I don’t really need to do that as much anymore. Oh really?
“…not so much for the folks who see their retirement savings decrease by 10%…”
Not a concern for us here; we have no retirement savings. We’ve blown through one of wife’s and four of mine over the years just to pay bills and taxes. And any loose change around here now goes to hard goods and house repairs/renovations. We figure we’ll have to work anyway, until we’re too old and sick to do it anymore, at which point I have no idea what will happen to us.
Prepping this week has been the ongoing house and yard stuff, raised beds, cleaning out the cellar and assembling shelving down there, programming the scanners and Bow-Fungs, and getting things set up to mod some firearms. Continuing the online ham radio tech license course and hanging some more on two more possible Linux jobs while also working on the writing gig every day.
IIRC, there was an old bromide kicking around years ago to the effect that work expands to fill the time allotted to it, and it sure seems to me like that’s the case here at the house; I could easily put in 40 and more hours per week right on this property.
” Me thinks that something foul has happened…”
Yeah.
No alligators up here.
But we have Champ.
“Bruce Schneier: The cyberwar arms race is on”
http://www.zdnet.com/article/bruce-schneier-the-cyberwar-arms-race-is-on/
“What’s bigger than the Sony attack though is how this attack showed how hard it is to tell who’s attacking you. “You used to be able to tell who attackers were by the weapons they used. Governments used tanks, so if one rolled up outside your house, you’d know a government was behind it. Online everyone uses the same tools and techniques, so it’s hard to tell whether the attack was from a government source, or two guys in a basement,” said Schneier.”
Lynn, do alligators taste as good as crocodile?
Just suggestin…
Me thinks that something foul has happened
Me thinks that something fowl has happened
Fixed it for you.
On the topic of expiration date, although I hope it does not become the new Flashlight topic…
I have been moving in to a new home and unpacking boxes that I have had in storage for years. I am being thorough on sorting and purging things I do not need or want or cannot use, largely because my wife passed away. There are some things I just do not need.
I have been finding my older first-aid kits, in sealed boxes. I had several from working as a SCUBA instructor and as a contractor some twenty years ago. Most of the kit supplies lasted just fine, but on some, the packaging does not survive so well. The adhesives on the sterile packaging, like gauze, Band-Aids, stainless steel tools, etc., have broken down and in some cases completely separated. I now have a small collection of kit supplies that are no longer sterile, but otherwise useful.
I suspect the expiration date, while fictitious especially on something like salt, is a guarantee on the packaging. With a compromised seal, the contents may not be safe.
So, I have been thinking, what is the best way to re-sterilize and package some of my kit tools? On the other hand, should I not bother and just keep them clean and sterilize with alcohol as needed?
Since you mentioned people having issues with sulfa drugs I thought I would an an interesting family history tidbit that I just figured out recently. My late mother was allergic to sulfa. I just recently realized that when my mother was nine and had her appendix out, she was allergic to the world’s only known antibiotic.
Yep. Before antibiotics, millions of people died from infections. Only the fact that they had immune systems that make ours today look like that of the boy in the bubble allowed them to survive at all.
That’s one of the reason that a good pediatrician will recommend that new parents let the baby/toddler play in the mud and otherwise be exposed to environmental pathogens. That’s also why for 40+ years I’ve made a conscious effort to expose myself to environmental pathogens, such as using the same drinking cup for months on end without washing it.
The sad truth is that we’re going to go back to the Bad Olde Days pretty soon, unless there’s a real breakthrough in antibiotics. And by that I mean an entirely different mechanism, such as tailored bacteriophage viruses. And most of that is due to the misuse of antibiotics prophylactically on livestock. Granted, even the smartest bacterium is only a little brighter than underclass scum, but they’re very good at developing resistance or even immunity to every new thing we throw at them.
@Terry Losansky
I’m sorry to hear about your wife.
For a lot of items, I think you’re right. Obviously even canned food has a shelf life, because cans don’t maintain their integrity forever.
I have, on occasion, had to rely upon antibiotics which I obtained without a doctor’s prescription. When I did so, I was concerned about possible allergic reactions and I dug up some information on how I could desensitize myself to the allergenic aspects of the antibiotic (Amoxicillin) in case I was allergic. The desensitization process was developed to treat pregnant women who had syphilis but who were allergic to penicillin. The doctors wanted to use penicillin on these women because it is apparently the only drug that works well in such cases.
The basic idea is that you start yourself off with an extremely low dose of the antibiotic (say one millionth of a standard dose) and then double the amount every fifteen minutes until you are up to a full dose. The whole process takes a five or six hours. I don’t know if this desensitization process would work for sulfa drugs or other antibiotics, but it might be a worthwhile precaution in an emergency or off-the-grid situation.
I followed a modified version of the protocol and then used the antibiotic with no adverse effects. I also kept a bottle of Benadryl (diphenhydramine) handy in case I did have an allergic reaction.
Here’s the abstract of the gated paper that describes the desensitization protocol:
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM198505093121905
And here’s an ungated discussion of the paper:
http://allergycases.org/2008/10/penicillin-desensitization-in-patient.html
Thanks. Useful information.
My WSJ update, delivered wondrously to my wunnerful iPhone 4, informed me just now that U.S. mil-spec forces, allegedly, killed the ISIS second-in-command, allegedly, earlier this week, allegedly.
Can you hear that sound? Listen carefully…
Yup, it’s the sound of one hand clapping.
Because, if true, and that’s really going out on a limb when it comes to ANYTHING our gummint tells us, it simply means that they’ll put yet another hadji p.o.s. in to replace him. So BFD. Who cares?
Here it is in a nutshell: We have three choices: Withdraw from mil-spec bases and bring all the troops home from the Sandbox shit-holes and leave those hornets to their nests over there and be done with it. Two: Blast Mecca, Medina, Riyadh and any other sites that harbor the core of hadji radicalism and turn large swaths of the Sandbox region to molten glass. Round up hadji hotheads in North Murka and crucify them in the tens of thousands on the roads outside NYC and DC. In the event of any potential attack from then on, wipe out the country of origin. Three: Kneel before the scimitars and gratefully accept dhimmi-hood.
OFD favors a combination of the first two choices.
Well my nutshell compliments @OFD”s: use all those nukes that are reaching their expiration date, drop them on all of Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, et. al. and let he whose name shall not be mentioned sort them out. Yes, there will be some collateral damage but not much as the Muslims have already killed 90%+ of the Christians and Jews in the area.
It is time to stop tolerating all the intolerant; here, there, and everywhere. Some lives don’t matter.
Withdraw from mil-spec bases and bring all the troops home from the Sandbox ****-holes and leave those hornets to their nests over there and be done with it.
+1
Well done, and Semper Fi marines.
“Unarmed US Marines foil suspected terrorist attack onboard high-speed train between Amsterdam and Paris after they take down Kalashnikov-wielding Moroccan gunman known to intelligence services”
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3206426/U-S-Marines-armed-gunman-onboard-high-speed-train-Amsterdam-Paris.html
Murderous assh0le had 10 mags in his bag.
There is a case of good situational awareness. “heard him load the gun in the toilet”
well done
nick
Butt sex.
Even if the radioactives and enhancers are working, a debatable proposition, I’ll bet not many of the missiles will work as intended. “Not many” is probably not “none”, but the Russian pols — er, the tyrant — and the generals would be insane to send them off in any but the direst extremes. The likely world response to a Russian launch would be either hilarity as none of them worked right or outrage at the attempt to conduct a first strike.
99.9% of the time, that’s right. That last little bit is a bitch, though.
…
That looks to me like a refutation of what the VA counselors say. (And what practically everyone else says, with varying degrees of screaming, depending on how much you scared them after they jokingly surprised you.)
” ‘It is too early to speak of a terrorist link’.”
Yeah, that’s right, you stupid fucking Frog fuckers. You had him on your lists and in your databases but there he was on the train, and if not for our two Marines, he would have murdered dozens of your countrymen. Assholes. Watch: they arrested him and he’ll do a bit of time in jail and then they’ll quietly let him out under pressure from hadji mobs and the apologist dhimmis in Brussels.
Semper fi, Marine brothers, and semper paratus for all of us.
“Butt sex.”
Well, that got it down to two words. Now let’s try for one: sodomy.
“…I’ll bet not many of the missiles will work as intended.”
I’ve always thought and contended that many, if not most, would either blow up their own pads or end up crashing in their own territory. Nothing’s changed my mind since.
“That last little bit is a bitch, though.”
Nothing, but nothing, sucks worse than desperately needing and wanting a gun and not having one. OFD does the CC thing 7x24x365.
“…depending on how much you scared them after they jokingly surprised you.)”
No one does that to me, not for decades. No idea why not. And this holds true for my fellow combat vets at the VA groups. A fellow cop tried that caper once on me over thirty years ago and was shocked to find himself on his back, bleeding, with a gun pointed at him. Wife has accidentally done it, but not in many years now.
Not a concern for us here; we have no retirement savings. We’ve blown through one of wife’s and four of mine over the years just to pay bills and taxes. And any loose change around here now goes to hard goods and house repairs/renovations. We figure we’ll have to work anyway, until we’re too old and sick to do it anymore, at which point I have no idea what will happen to us.
You have got plenty of retirement savings, that is what Medicare and Social Security are for. As far as I can tell, these two items form the basis of retirement for about 90 to 95% of the USA.
You say that Medicare and Social Security are broke? Not today they are. Not tomorrow, not next year, not five years. Maybe ten years though. I’m not worried, I figure some bright dude or dudette in DC will fix this problem. After, they are from the government and they are here to help you.
But sodomy unpacks into more than one act, while butt secks is one act. Oh I guess you could count the variations on it if you really wanted to, but it’s a lot more specific than sodomy.
nick
So, what precisely did you do to prepare this week? Tell me about it in the comments.
Got my Ozarka 35 bottle cases back up to 50 cases. And no snide comments from the significant other. I did explain my dating system which consists of writing the month and year of purchase on the side of each case to the significant other. I thought that code 08/15 was obvious but I guess not.
The GC’s subs are sheetrocking the new game room / utility room this week and may be done today. Please, please, please. They are trimming and fixing the sheetrock in our bedroom as a result of the new door into the game room. The plumbers have yet to tie the new sewer line into the old sewer line since they found the old sewer line goes vertical at a point (I now have a trench in the front yard that looks like an OSHA violation).
https://www.winsim.com/gameroom.pdf
https://www.winsim.com/perry_homes_plan_2991.pdf
@nick, have the floods swept you into the bay yet? I am hearing that Galveston got ten inches of rain yesterday and quite a bit more today.
People will not infrequently do that to me when I start a new contract and no one is around to warn them off of that behavior. I think the problem is that they’re mostly programmers, work in a mostly genteel office environment, and live a sheltered life. Most of my co”work”ers are Indian, with a different culture, and a lot are women, with a massive sense of entitlement and untouchability. It simply never occurs to them that when I tell them seriously “Don’t startle me and never never never do or say anything that I might interpret as a threat”, it’s not a challenge with the prize being me admitting “Yah, you got me good, all right.” That said, one near miss* is usually all it takes to put a stop to that.
* 52 years old and my reaction time is still in the “what the hell just happened” range. I’m almost always able to steer the throat strike past them, or at least pull it so not much damage is done.
” Maybe ten years though.”
Well, if it runs out by then, that, of course, is exactly when we’ll be trying to “retire” and need it the most. Once it’s gone, and we’re too old and sick to work, what then? Knackers yard, of course. Made into glue.
“Oh I guess you could count the variations on it if you really wanted to…”
No thanks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTbTHlTmDX8
OFD and nick: sheesh, all I did was recycle an old joke and here you are, dissecting it like a Sovietologist going over the audio of a Stalin speech. No, wait, that puts me in the role of Stalin, and he was an asshole. More of an asshole than me, I mean.
[snip] And we have countries like Pakistan, India and the Norks with those things now, while we fret like idiots over the Iranians, [snip]
The fact that none of those first three countries have actually used those weapons is, to me, prima facie evidence that there is at least one person within their command & control structures who still has some grasp of reality. I sure hope that’s true of the Iranians.
[snip] Me thinks that something foul has happened… [snip]
Nope, just mother nature taking her course. Mister or Miss Gator is an apex predator, and the tail meat is actually pretty good eating.
[snip] My late mother was allergic to sulfa. [snip]
As am I. At least I was as a kid; I was given sulfa for some reason and puked like mad for several hours. It would almost be worth it to try a single tablet of SMZ/TMP, to see if it still has that result. And if it does, to see if the desensitization process work work.
[snip] My estimate of the patient’s age went way up. [snip]
My grand nephew is only 30 years younger than I am. Oldest sister’s oldest kid’s oldest kid. And I have a cousin who is older than this aunt; not so odd a thing in centuries past, a 40 year old woman would still be fertile when her 20 year old daughter was.
Had 5 generations of hillbillies alive on my mom’s side a couple of different times, and generations.
When I was a kid, had mom, grandma, great grandma, and great great grandma. The males didn’t do as well. Happened again with some of my cousins when their kids had kids. Unfortunately, the hillbilly vices took their toll, drink and smoke, and decades of hard work. And sometimes it’s just lifestyle.*
nick
*anyone else here have a relative or spouse of a relative get murdered in prison?
No relatives murdered in prison. One of my wife’s cousins spent a few years as a guest of The State of Texas for armed robbery though. He was actually in the new prison here in Fort Bend County for a while.
My brother-in-law was murdered over on Fondren Road, south of South Main, back in 1982 on his 21st birthday. Two guys fresh in from Detroit watched him cash his $65 paycheck in the till at Pizza Hut (he was a cook, made a mean pizza). They followed him out and ran him off the road. One of them shot him in the back with a .357 when he would not give them his money. When the cops showed up, he was still alive and one of the guys was trying to start his car. Bad, bad, bad. He was my best friend and introduced me to his sister one day, now my wife of 33 years.
“…* 52 years old and my reaction time…”
Actually peeps probably don’t do that to me anymore ’cause I’m 62 and they probably figure it’s too easy and I’d hurt myself and have a haht attack or stroke.
“…in the role of Stalin, and he was an asshole.”
I’m just gonna go out on a limb here and say he’s the biggest asshole in human history. I’ve read a couple of biographies of him and it ain’t a huge stretch to figure/imagine that he was sent directly by, and controlled by the Devil himself.
“…at least one person within their command & control structures who still has some grasp of reality. I sure hope that’s true of the Iranians.”
Probably. Even the late Nikita Khruschev, as hard an old NKVD commissar as one is likely to find in Soviet history, wouldn’t even push the button during simulated war games over there. It was too scary even for him. I’m gonna guess that the top military guys in those places know full well what the consequences would be and have the ability to put the brakes on. I’m not real sure about that with the Norks, though, as the psycho Pillsbury dough boy over there keeps whacking his top minions in various interesting ways.
“*anyone else here have a relative or spouse of a relative get murdered in prison?”
No, but the spouse of a relative got sent to prison for killing that relative; fired a semi-auto pistol at him and then reloaded another mag and emptied that one, too. Two other relatives were killed by gunshot. And we ain’t hillbillies; all that side of the family were/are of English colonial descent.
” And we ain’t hillbillies; all that side of the family were/are of English colonial descent.”
Hah, that’s what my mom says, “don’t call us hillbillies, we’re DAR.”
Never saw any papers though.
Got some indian mixed in there a few generations back, not enough for any of that sweet casino money though.
nick
“Got some indian mixed in there a few generations back, not enough for any of that sweet casino money though.”
Ditto. 17th-18th-Centuries, southeastern Maffachufetts, the Cape and the Islands, Algonqian/Wampanoag bands.
Haha, we’re DAR and Mayflower Society. BFD.
Much of my mother’s family aspire to the rank of hillbilly, as opposed to the more common Drunk White Trash. Dad’s side of the family were mostly con artists. I don’t think anyone’s ever done a family tree trace; I sort of assume that a lot of the ancestors used an alias when they got to these shores.
Here’s the scoop for next week’s capers and possible hijinks:
http://straightlinelogic.com/2015/08/21/plunge-protection-teams-of-the-world-unite-by-charles-hugh-smith/
An email sent today to one of my Roman Catholic sites:
“One of the neat extras of living around so many illegals: I was diagnosed today with an active case of TB. The local school system stopped testing kids two years ago – they thought it would single them out for attention, hurt their self-esteem.”
“Please remember me in your prayers.”
Very nice.
Better to let the local community be ravaged by TB or some other horrific disease that modern nations got rid of decades ago, than to theoretically bum out some kids.
Next up: polio, smallpox…
On the other hand, should I not bother and just keep them clean and sterilize with alcohol as needed?
Alcohol won’t sterilize. It doesn’t kill all spores, viruses, and bacteria, but does disinfect pretty well.
My wife had two brothers killed. One was killed stopping an assault on a woman outside a bar in L.A. The other was killed shortly after getting out of prison, probably by associates of a guy he and some others robbed and killed. He got a very light sentence, as the guy that ended up dead was a major drug dealer in Houston. If the cops had had their way, they would have pinned a medal on him. He was drunk and rode along with some “friends” to rob this guy, guns were produced and the target ended up dead.
Next up: polio, smallpox…
Smallpox is dead outside labs. Has been for years. As for polio. From Wikipedia: “In 2014 the disease was only spreading between people in Afghanistan, Nigeria, and Pakistan.” It’s been a year since a case in Africa as of a few weeks ago. The best things the UN has done is to eradicate smallpox and nearly eradicate polio.
Good news, then, about smallpox; let’s hope the labs get rid of it soon, too. And let’s also hope no immigrants came into the U.S. via the Mexican border who originated in one of the countries that still has polio. Or some other rotten disease.
More nooz on the economic front:
https://goldswitzerland.com/the-great-financial-catastrophe/
Entero virus, “polio like symptoms”
Common way down south, not so common here until it started wiping out kids last summer.
There was a recent update to the research with some genetic tracing, but I can’t find the article.
Kids suddenly getting sick with progressive weakness. Fun.
nick
More crime and misfortune here than I thought.
My cousin has 2 dead ex-husbands, but I’m pretty sure only the one was murdered in prison. Run wild, marry young, outlive your mistakes. She’s doing pretty well now, solid citizen, solid middle class.
You can overcome your birth and family, but it does set you back.
nick
Shhhhh….mustn’t mess with childrens’ self-esteem…
And here’s Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous (with apologies to Robin Leach):
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3206593/Hillary-Bill-away-seen-relaxing-sea-50-000-week-Hamptons-vacation-home.html
These people need to take a quick look at some history books real soon now. I’d start with the immediate aftermaths of the Russian Revolution and the earlier French one.
“More crime and misfortune here than I thought.”
Yo, homes, violence as American as cherry pie…
@OFD: Re your link to GoldSwitzerland.com, they are a serious company (I just looked into them briefly), but one does have to keep in mind that they are in the business of selling Gold as an investment. They are pretty involved in politics and such, and are happy to drive people in the direction of their business.
Not that I’m saying the world financial situation is healthy, or anything, ’cause it ain’t.
I woke up this morning to all the news stories about the terrorist in the train who was taken down by three passengers. It’s a great story, but I wish the news services over here would stop refering to “American marines”. First, as far as I can tell, the three central figures were: one guy in the Air Force, one guy in the Oregon national guard, and a Brit who wasn’t a soldier at all.
Second – more importantly – we need to encourage any bystanders to take down attackers. If you have a train full of hundreds of people, the only right answer is to swarm the lone gunman. If you’re close to him, you’re gonna get shot anyway, so you’d just as well make it count for something. Easy to say from my armchair, of course, but I’d like to think I would react that way in reality as well.
Of course, the SJW press is busily trying to not call him a terrorist, despite the plain evidence that he was, and was even known for his previous involvement with jihadists.
More nooz on the economic front:
https://goldswitzerland.com/the-great-financial-catastrophe/
Good night! That was the most depressing article that I have read in quite a while. Then I saw what the author did for a living.
“So the Great Financial Crisis of 2007-9 will now transcend into the Great Financial Catastrophe. This could very well involve a total reset or more likely a collapse of the world economy, financial system and world political system. And it won’t be orderly. It is likely to take a very long time and will involve bankruptcies of major parts of the financial system as well as many major nations. It will also lead to social unrest, escalation of wars, major poverty and famine with the world population going down significantly.”
He forgot cats and dogs living together. We do have that going on here at the McGuire household with Lady, our 13 year old cocker spaniel, and Remy, our five year Siamese mix. Remy is allowed to snuggle up to Lady when he feels like it. But Lady is not allowed to snuggle up to Remy. Yes, cats and dogs can live together but, there are rules.
I just ordered some stuff from Amazon to build two inadequate vehicle emergency kits. I had one backpack, so I ordered another one like it and a few basic things for the kits. My order includes no food or first aid supplies. I was going to add a couple little tiny first aid kits to my order, but looking at the contents I concluded I could get a lot more for the same amount of money from Dollar General.
So I ran out to Dollar General, and found that they were out of stock on several of the $1 items I wanted. So I wound up spending $20 on first aid supplies and zip top bags. Which is more than two cheap first aid kits would cost, but I have a whole lot more supplies for the money.
Here are the contents of my under $10 first aid kit:
30 clear adhesive bandages
0.33 oz triple antibiotic ointment
50 extra strength acetaminophen tablets
50 alcohol prep pads
5 2×2 gauze pads
5 3×3 gauze pads
5 yards of 1/2″ adhesive tape
Everything listed above fits in a one quart zip top bag.
Hey Dave, some things to think about adding,
tube of crazy glue (to glue skin, stings like fire but works)
wet naps (get some at chick fil a)
packets of sunscreen (like a condiment pack at fast food, might be in the sample size section of your store)
sunblock chapstick
fewer tablets,
gloves- vinyl if you are worried about latex allergies.
moleskin
scissors
flashlight
knife
OR just buy one of these kits. I have several versions and like the quality and what’s included.
http://www.adventuremedicalkits.com/medical-kits/adventure-first-aid-0-5.html
http://www.adventuremedicalkits.com/medical-kits/adventure-first-aid-1-0.html
http://www.adventuremedicalkits.com/medical-kits/adventure-first-aid-2-0.html
The 1.0 kit is a good balance of price and performance.
In general, you are right that you can put together a better kit for the money, but the Adventure Medical kits do a good job of proving that wrong (or LESS right.)
nick
BTW- great job taking that step! Keep adding to your preps!
@nick
The first aid kit is intended to go in a vehicle emergency kit, which will be a little stripped down to start with. I’m betting that I’ll be there with a knife and a flash light that I’ll remember to grab the flash light out of the car. The other suggestions look like things I will want to add when I expand the kit.
The things I think are missing:
1. Oral rehydration salts.
2. A splint and a more effective pain reliever than acetaminophen.
3. A weeks supply of my prescription meds.
4. Some loratadine tablets.
The last item is for my wife, and the other things are things I actually could have used at one point or another. On our last vacation, my wife and I both could have used the oral rehydration salts. Would have made the vacation a little less memorable.
Update: The oral rehydration salts on Amazon I linked to a couple of days ago are sold out. Amazon doesn’t know when they will be back in stock.
That seems to happen to a lot of stuff mentioned here, which is odd considering that this is no longer a high volume site.