09:34 – Happy Independence Day. On the other hand, I confess that I’ve always wondered if the Founding Fathers did the right thing. Yes, they were saddled with a far-off king, but he ruled with a relatively light hand and the taxes he extracted were relatively low. Things might have gone on as they were for another 50 or 80 years. Slavery would probably have ended peacefully sooner than it did, and the Civil War might have been avoided. The States would have grown stronger and more distinct, and we might have avoided ending up with the incredibly intrusive federal government we have now. Instead, we might have ended up with a loose confederation of friendly sovereign States. Even if we ended up with a federal government, it might have been kept small and weak, and we might still be saying “the United States are” instead of “the United States is”.
The test garden is coming along well. Barbara is out working on it now. For the time being, we intend to keep it small. Gardening on a larger scale is too much work. But if a long-term emergency ever does make it necessary, we have what we need to (with a lot of work) expand the garden to an acre or more. Gardened intensively, that’s enough land to grow literally tons of assorted produce, sufficient to support a dozen or more people.
We got our War of Independence thanks to hothead opportunists in Maffachufetts and imbecilic and hostile ministers in London. But if we hadn’t had it, we might now be like the U.K., Canada, or Oz, with commies in charge, utter dependence on the State, and zero rights of self-defense with firearms. Oh wait—we’re not quite that bad yet but our own commies are working on it as hard and as fast as they can.
As for gardening, it sure IS a lotta work, just on our half-dozen raised beds and containers, and we’ll never have the capacity to be able to live off them exclusively, even just us two. But we’re surrounded on three sides by many square miles of flat, super-fertile farmland. I hope that if it becomes necessary, and actually long before then, that we can set up some kind of community garden acreage for the village, town, city and county.
Yep, the British allotment system is a good idea.
As to the amount of work, I expect that if it ever comes to that, we wouldn’t have too much trouble talking one of our neighbors into bringing his tractor over to plow and disc our lawn. There’d obviously still be a lot of work left to do, but that’d eliminate a lot of the initial physical labor.
My shopping list includes a lot of items I can’t buy yet because we have nowhere to store them. Stuff like two or three quarter-mile spools of barbed wire to stake out in coils on the perimeter, stakes and wire to fence off garden areas, raw materials for a chicken coop, etc.
In terms of major projects, Barbara really, really wants to pave the drive, which ain’t gonna be cheap, and she also mentioned putting up a garden shed like the one her sister and Al just had installed. I told her I’d be more inclined, for obvious reasons, to put up a tactically-positioned shed built with a concrete pad and footers and filled concrete blocks for walls, and a metal roof. It’d obviously cost more than one of those pre-fab sheds from Home Depot, but it’d also be literally bulletproof.
Let’s see. How’d that work for Canada?
Pretty well, actually, until the last several decades.
This fellow from down under has a site that might give a prepper some ideas. He really gets back to the basics.
https://primitivetechnology.wordpress.com/
This empire is past the point where it can be effectively governed and administered efficiently and fairly and is well on the way to becoming a gigantic “banana republic.” And a smartly planned cyber attack on either or both coasts would knock us to our knees, for however long it took to get things back up and running. Without even getting into a potential increase in suicide bombers and mass shooters.
But only very tiny percentage of Murkan derps would ever survive long enough to be successful at living at a Stone Age Pacific islander level out in the woods. If things got that bad, of course.
I believe that outside of cyber attacks, EMPs, suicide bombers, earthquakes, etc., etc., we are just simply gonna run out of money and it’s a financial collapse of the house of cards that is likely to put us in the chit. And our beloved leaders are also working just as hard and as fast as they can to bring THAT about, too. While skimming off the top for themselves, of course.
Happy birthday USA!
“… we might still be saying “the United States are” instead of “the United States is”. ”
Do you really say that? I learned in school that one refers to the USA in the plural, and I still do so. Of course I might just be a pedant, as I also don’t refer to “Britain” as a political entity, but rather to the “UK”.
On your garden shed / outbuilding – perhaps consider a structure of pre-cast concrete double-wall elements? Around here they are reasonably priced, and very quick to build, as once the slab is in place and cured, the structure is brought and lifted into place by a big truck with an onboard crane. If you choose the right kind of stone/aggregate in the concrete, they can even look reasonably well.
On your long-term / SHTF supplies, perhaps also add some flat-packed gabion baskets and ties, to complement the barbed wire? If need be, you can assemble the baskets yourself, and have a friendly neighbor/farmer with an earthmover tip sand, soil or stones into them for instant ramparts / fortifications or even a tough makeshift building (just add sheet metal roofing or even a tarpaulin).
Re: Canada. Well I do like their syrup. Do they have any other export? Oh, oil, but we won’t let them ship it south.
Of course they now have the boy wonder to fix it all.
Have a good fourth.
You could improvise Hesco barricades with pallets and rolls of wire fence. Get forks for your garden tractor so you can fill, move and stack them.
Get a smallish plastic septic tank and put it in the ground under your shed. For little money you have an underground shelter that is water tight.
For that matter, a 20ft shipping container, with suitable exterior dressing up would make a great and sturdy shed, especially if a roll up door was installed in one side.
nick
Just back from our neighborhood bike parade, hot dog and watermelon fest. The kids dressed up their bikes and scooters, and wagons, and hot wheels, and then paraded around the park. Ribbons were passed out for ‘Most Creative’, ‘Most Patriotic’, etc. My spawnlings both won ribbons. Good turn out, couple hundred people. Fire dept stopped by so kids could get a picture sitting in the driver seat and blow the big horn.
Hot dogs, watermelon, chili, and icee was consumed. Water balloons were thrown.
We’ll spend the afternoon at our local pool, then meet friends at a neighboring city to watch fireworks from the mall parking lot.
I will be taking the same precautions as last year.
[and I did carry my trauma kit around with me all morning]
Saw one backpack with some patches and a molon labe slogan on it. Some fellow travelers around.
I may throw a gym bag full of stuff into the back of the van just in case. It feels paranoid, but F it, I’m paranoid.
nick
Oh, in general, at least in my neck o the woods, today I’ll agree with Sarah Hoyt– the people are all right.
Gardened intensively, that’s enough land to grow literally tons of assorted produce, sufficient to support a dozen or more people.
Remembering that is unlikely to help with the first winter unless the timing of the disaster is fortuitous. And depending on how many hundreds (thousands?) of canning jars (and associated stuff) you have on hand. Not that everything needs canning*, but a lot would.
*(Are you ready to plant potatoes?)
“I may throw a gym bag full of stuff into the back of the van just in case.”
Good plan.
Taki sez the correct way to pronounce “molon labe” is with the accent on the second syllable in both words and the “b” in “labe” is said as a “v.” He oughta know, being a poor little Greek boy.
I’m taking precautions here, too; the usual EDC getup, but things haven’t gotten so bad as to make me wanna strap on the Taco magazines yet. (double mag pouches, one rifle and one pistol each). Emergency med kit in the car and the house kit close enough, but of course with the crowds here on Saturday there were ambulances and fire trucks standing nearby anyway. I assume they have the same deal going down where you are for der feurwerken.
The back porch and cellar cleanup ops continue, a nice breeze off the bay.
“*(Are you ready to plant potatoes?)”
Yep. I’m not particularly worried about the first winter, or necessarily the second or third, either. My long-term food storage goal is to have at least three years’ worth. Most of that would be bulk staples like flour, rice, oats, beans, oil, salt, etc., but this is after all a heavily agricultural area. I suspect food would be less a problem here than most places.
A very appropriate sign for today:
https://scontent-sjc2-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/13512210_10154183531076427_3136157063777886667_n.jpg?oh=8f60852d2815417f897044fc9c72bb6e&oe=5801479E
As to the container, I’ve thought about it, but tactical positioning is a concern and Barbara is not going to tolerate a container that’s visible in the front or side yard. And, as far as field-expedient bastions, yes, there are several front-end loaders that live within a half mile of here.
Food for thought here:
http://zerogov.com/?p=4774#more-4774
Prep for Most Likely to Least Likely.
And from the Next VP Department:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joni_Ernst
From the Yuuuuuuuge Surprise Department:
Field Marshal Rodham wants to keep Attorney-General Lynch.
Happy Independence Day!
Now, back to some family-oriented explosives and drinking. 🙂
Field Marshal Rodham wants to keep Attorney-General Lynch
lol! Maybe BJ was bangin’ her on the plane. Rumor from that floosie’s book is he likes dark meat the most.
IMHO, Jerry Pournelle’s post today is a worthy read with some great links.
https://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/independence-consent-of-the-governed-and-the-new-class/
As do many of us, I work in the IT field. My standard joke to explain to customers the importance of computer security is that if I ever had to hire a it security person, the first step in screening applicants would be to have a psychiatrist screen all the candidates and sort them into two piles, those who are paranoid and those who aren’t. The second step is to throw out the resumes of the people who aren’t paranoid. Because if your in computer security and you think everyone isn’t out to get you, you belong in a padded room.
So in other words, Nick isn’t paranoid, he’s the sanest man here. Except maybe for Bob, who never leaves the house, and may be the most prepared of all of us.
I’ve been out in the yard twice just today.
I’m like Bob….I went outside today also. It was trash day, so once early in the morning to take the cans to the curb, and once later in the day to bring them back into the garage.
I’m exhausted after all that outside work.
(Well, that and the 330am trip to SEA-TAC and back to drop off granddaughter after her visit here.)
Murkan derps are showing off American Excellence on social media today. I think my favorite, all over Twitter, is “I can’t believe America is 2016 years old today. Happy 4th of July.” The best comment, “Jesus wept.” Game over, man, game over.
I’ve been up since 0200 — nightmare. Unlike the lazybutts — er, the wise people who save their energy for use in emergencies — I mowed the lawn, ignored my wife attempting to justify having destroyed yet another thing of mine, moved some crap from where it was probably perfectly happy to another place which is not objectively better, figured out how to wire up some electronic components which had incorrect labeling, and wrote a program and a tutorial using those components.
Yesterday was Son#2’s birthday. My dad gave him a box of tools, mainly stuff useful for working on cars, and entirely culled from extras he’d accumulated over the years. Pretty impressive that he was able to pull together complete metric and standard wrench and socket sets just from spares, as well as ratchets, breakers bars, and such. I took Son#2 to a couple hardware stores to get more things, especially stuff useful for working on a house. He’s been living with his grandmother while going to college and her house has a bazillion little things wrong with it which could be taken care of if only he had the tools. Which now he does.
What have we got?
If we don’t have it you probably don’t need it but lets see.
We are the world’s largest producer of uranium. But due to stupid people who don’t understand the difference between “enriched” and “weapons grade” we don’t do enrichment.
We have one of the largest deposits of high grade nickle ore. Mining has moved to cheaper third world countries but the ore body is still there. It isn’t going anywhere else.
Unfortunately some of the best ore deposits are in the shield (northern Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan) and the need to establish transportation to these areas makes them uneconomic unless strategic need should outweigh the economics. I’m think mostly about “rare earth” metals here.
Lots of oil and gas and not just the tar sands. Large reserves off the east coast and there is still a fair bit in southern Ontario. But I don’t think there is a single refinery left in Canada. That is criminal. We do send oil south but it goes by rail instead of pipeline. Refined petroleum comes back the same way.
Canadians make up a large part of the workforce in the entertainment industry. Not as much as they used to but at onetime there were probably more Canadian writers in Hollywood than any other group. Since the Canadian education industry is following the American Industry in the pursuit of illiteracy we may lose or advantage there.
We also gave you David Frumm (take him back please), Celine Dion and Justin Beiber. Pleas keep them.
I hope Justin Trudeau will prove to be “mostly harmless”. He isn’t his father. He lacks both Pierre’s arrogance and brains. I think we will survive him. We’ve survived everyone else.
“US oil reserves surpass those of Saudi Arabia and Russia”
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7525f1dc-41d6-11e6-9b66-0712b3873ae1.html
“The US holds more oil reserves than Saudi Arabia and Russia, the first time it has surpassed those held by the world’s biggest exporting nations, according to a new study.”
“Rystad Energy estimates recoverable oil in the US from existing fields, discoveries and yet undiscovered areas amounts to 264bn barrels. The figure surpasses Saudi Arabia’s 212bn and Russia’s 256bn in reserves.”
“The analysis of 60,000 fields worldwide, conducted over a three-year period by the Oslo-based group, shows total global oil reserves at 2.1tn barrels. This is 70 times the current production rate of about 30bn barrels of crude oil a year, Rystad Energy said on Monday.”
We’ve known this for quite a while in the oil patch now. Natural gas reserves in the USA are even more impressive, over 1,000 years of supply at the current usage rates which is steadily climbing.
“Rumor from that floosie’s book is he likes dark meat the most.”
That was apparently his preference back in the old Arkansas governor days, usually at least two or three at a time, too. What a man!
“I think my favorite, all over Twitter, is “I can’t believe America is 2016 years old today. Happy 4th of July.” The best comment, “Jesus wept.” Game over, man, game over.”
Mrs. OFD saw vids of all the derps who had zero clue about July 4th via Mark Dice, who I gather is a real conspiracy buff but whatever. Easily explainable: they’ve all grown up and been “educated” in the commie-indoctrination pubic skool mess over the last few decades. The rest of the time they’ve been deeply immersed in their pixels, whether tee-vee or net.
The USA is 12 generations out from the declaration now. The SJWs are trying hard to take us down. One wonders.
“What have we got?”
You’ve also got millions of decent, regular people, and your country has fought on our side throughout the last century, taking brutal casualties, also throughout, but most especially in the Great War. Your fellow citizens in the Maritimes also took in a bunch of our people when their planes got diverted on 9/11. We will never forget any of this. We sent doctors, nurses and supplies when that ship blew up in Halifax Harbor and every year since, those folks have sent us down a Christmas tree to Boston. But then you went and gave us Neil Young. Thanks a bunch.
““Rystad Energy estimates recoverable oil in the US from existing fields…” and “… Natural gas reserves in the USA are even more impressive…”
So why are we always so bloody exercised with the fossil energy over in the musloid Sandbox shit-holes?
Say, doesn’t National Review still run the TownHall site?
http://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2016/07/04/you-owe-them-nothing–not-respect-not-loyalty-not-obedience-n2186865
Wow, that seems pretty ballsy for NR. Good one. We don’t owe them shit.
And Michael Hill weighs in:
http://leagueofthesouth.com/god-bless-the-4th-of-july/
Well this is interesting; tried to post something with a link with both of my IDs and it doesn’t show up but I still get this:
“Duplicate comment detected; it looks as though you’ve already said that!”
So why are we always so bloody exercised with the fossil energy over in the musloid Sandbox s***-holes?
Because we are crazy? BTW, that answer works for just about anything the USA government is doing nowadays. If generals are always fighting the last war then what are bureaucrats doing ?
And, I’ve got my own Princess and SJW. She is 29 now and the wife and I have concluded that she will never leave home due to her brain damage. I offered to buy her a new small suv with an automatic today and she turned me down. She is still blacking out, having times losses and is afraid to drive.
But, she does lecture me on how evil the USA is. Gets old sometime. We all went swimming today and out to James Coney Island instead of going to one of the official fireworks shows tonight. We had enough volunteer fireworks going on at 9pm to see a lot. I’ll bet there was 40 to 50 mortars going at that point within a mile radius.
I believe we are the only country in the world with basic freedoms written into our founding legal document. The UK and Canada routinely punish free speech and owning an air rifle in the UK is treated the same as an AK. Alternative history is always fun but the hard work of the founders did give us a unique political system, if we can keep it. I posit we have not been able to.
Home safe, without incident. Preps, including the 5 gal. bucket toilet went unused.
Long day at the pool, and long night chatting with friends. Got to fly a couple of kites.
Some nice fireworks. Budget seemed a bit bigger this year than last. Couple new fireworks.
Still noise and booms from the surrounding ‘hood. Lots of semi-pro looking fireworks as we drove home. Almost everything the pros had, but lower altitude. A whole bunch of someones in the area with literal money to burn…..(and in theory all illegal here.)
Back to the grind after the nice weekend.
And off to bed after a shower and cold beverage.
nick
(wrt Canadia, it’s worth remembering that their entire population is less than just California, and 90% of them live within just a few miles of the US border. Their land area in contrast is HUGE. Good neighbors, but not a role model.)
“Because we are crazy? BTW, that answer works for just about anything the USA government is doing nowadays.”
+1,000
“And, I’ve got my own Princess and SJW.”
Ditto, and ours is 24. Had everything handed to her, fah in excess of what her older brother ever got; he worked his ass off from high school through college and thereafter and still is. I get argumentative discussions from ours on the terrible plight of poor musloid refugees, and she thought Obola was the cat’s whiskers and even more so is Bernie. Just found out she’s NOT graduating in December after all; she didn’t go to summer skool this year and is doing the Euro Tour again instead and thus another six months added to the Eight-Year-Plan for her BA, I guess; grandma and mom don’t have a problem with any of this, of course. Everyone else pays the freight and life is grand.
“We had enough volunteer fireworks going on at 9pm to see a lot. I’ll bet there was 40 to 50 mortars going at that point within a mile radius.”
Must be nice to have the discretionary income for chit-loads of fireworks over a four-day weekend.
“The UK and Canada routinely punish free speech…”
Hey, c’mon, we’re trying as hard as we can to catch up with that; many stories every day of this, esp. in the skools and colleges.
“…a unique political system, if we can keep it. I posit we have not been able to.”
I posit likewise; we crapped all over it during those secret proceedings in 1787 in Philadelphia, when special interest deals were cut. We were damn lucky to weasel the first ten amendments out of the Federalist bastards. Later we crapped on it some more for the Mexican War and of course the attempted genocide of 1861-65 and thereafter, while extending the Fed leviathan’s tender mercies to the Plains Indians.
It’s just a birdcage liner joke now, where the lawyers and judges and justices and all three branches of government make shit up as they go along.
(wrt Canadia, it’s worth remembering that their entire population is less than just California, and 90% of them live within just a few miles of the US border. Their land area in contrast is HUGE. Good neighbors, but not a role model.)
And the USA’s best customers! We buy their oil, convert it into processed liquid hydrocarbons such as gasoline and diesel and sell it back to them. What a country! They buy our clean natural gas also in place of their nasty old sulfur infused natural gas that needs extensive cleanup before usage. I lost several customers up there as they shutdown their plants.
BTW, Mr. Canadian, don’t feel too bad as the pain is going around. We only have 100 refineries left in the USA and still dropping. Was 150 refineries around ten years ago. My friends and customers working in the refineries are worried. It is hard to compete nowadays if your refinery is less than 200,000 barrels/day and still uses crude oil for the crude oil fired heater instead of natural gas. In fact, there is a brand new refinery in North Dakota that may be going into bankruptcy soon. The owners just sold it for pennies on the dollar.
http://www.journal-news.com/ap/ap/indiana/tesoro-corp-buys-struggling-oil-refinery-in-north-/nrpFM/
Ditto, and ours is 24. Had everything handed to her, fah in excess of what her older brother ever got; he worked his ass off from high school through college and thereafter and still is. I get argumentative discussions from ours on the terrible plight of poor musloid refugees, and she thought Obola was the cat’s whiskers and even more so is Bernie. Just found out she’s NOT graduating in December after all; she didn’t go to summer skool this year and is doing the Euro Tour again instead and thus another six months added to the Eight-Year-Plan for her BA, I guess; grandma and mom don’t have a problem with any of this, of course. Everyone else pays the freight and life is grand.
Our son is 33 now and went to the school of hard knocks in the US Marines Corps. Two tours of duty in Iraq convinced him that governments need to leave people alone!
Wow, eight years for a BA ? Wow ! I took four years to get a BS in Mechanical Engineering with 143 hours at TAMU and took you know what from my dad the entire way through about wasting his money. I started at age 17 and graduated when I was 21. Did the same to my son which is why he quit and joined the Marine Corps. In my defense, he was wasting my money until he and the GI bill started paying his own way.
RBT wrote:
“I’ve been out in the yard twice just today.”
That’s pretty good bladder control for Colin… 🙂
OFD wrote:
“https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joni_Ernst”
She’s pretty cute. And I like her policies of abolishing the IRS, EPA and DoEduc.
She can apply her pig castrating skillz to her fellow congresscritters any time she likes…
So you seldom leave your property, not the house.
thus another six months added to the Eight-Year-Plan for her BA
As Mr. Ray has posted many times, Universities are in the business of making money these days, not educating the derps.
I got my BS in Maths in four years, MS in Maths in two (18 actually, but had to stay the summer, on the Army’s dime, yay!). My Twins are in STEM at UNLV and at “indoctrination” they already tell you it will take 5+ years for a BS in STEM. The mantra is “take only 12 credits ’cause it’ll be too hard on you.” Special snowflakes, one and all.
And, I’ve got my own Princess and SJW.
At least you didn’t end up with this:
And EJ, 24, made a statement with a pair of black thigh-high lace-up boots paired with a white dress split to the waist on either side.
Joni Ernst has my thumbs up. Her biggest qualification IMHO is that the Republicat Oligarchy hates her. More points for Joni because my progressive/regressive sister doesn’t and my independent/conservative BIL does. She gets bonus points for her hog castrating skills. I can tell you from experience it is not easy and the screaming is deafening.
WRT reserves of any fuel or mineral in the USA and Canada, I can only tell you that the actual numbers are greater and not all locations are in the public domain.
No. We are most definitely NOT a role model.
Britain ALWAYS treated the colonies as a secure market for British products. As such, any manufacturing and innovation by the colonials was actively discouraged. Why would you want do that here, they do it so much better in Britain? To be successful, a Canadian was expected to go to Britain (or later the US). To remain in Canada was a sign of failure. If the original colonies remained under British rule, there would not have been the industrial development and innovation that took place in the US.
Slavery was abolished through out the British empire by 1832 and all the slaves were freed by 1934 (I think, I can’t recall the exact dates at the moment.) This would have avoided what is perhaps the ugliest chapter in US history. It would also have accelerated the mechanization and industrialization of agriculture.
Left under British rule, I expect that British North America would have eventually coalesced into several self-governing dominions much as Canada did in 1867 with the British North America Act, there would just be more of them, more along the line of the “Nine Nations” idea.
But we will never know.
Not only is Canada’s population smaller than California’s, it is smaller that Mexico City’s.
As long as you’re not using all of that land….
I’d say we drop all of the Syrian refugees up in the taiga, at least 300 miles from any other human. In October. We’ll leave them generators and electrical strip heaters… but no fuel. We’re told these refugees are a clever and hard-working people, so let them prove it. If they can survive the winter, they can join civilization.
DadCooks wrote:
“She gets bonus points for her hog castrating skills. I can tell you from experience it is not easy and the screaming is deafening.”
I’d pay good money to see her doing that to the libruls on The Hill, White House and elsewhere… 🙂
She’d wrestle McConnell to the ground and pull down his pants, then start poking around and grab a flashlight to look more carefully. “Someone beat me to it! Looks like someone took his balls at least five years ago.”