09:07 – Barbara is volunteering for three hours this afternoon at the Alleghany Cares thrift shop. All profits from sales there today go to the local Friends of the Library. Alleghany Cares does this one day a month to benefit a different non-profit each month. The non-profit of the month provides volunteers to staff the sale that day.
The morning news reports more cops shot or shot at, all or nearly all of the shooters blacks out to kill whites, cops in general, and particularly white cops. Those assholes Clinton and Obama, of course, call for stronger gun control laws. I’m all in favor of that, as long as we start by disarming their Secret Service agents, personal bodyguards, police escorts, and so on. The 2nd Amendment guarantees the right of the PEOPLE to keep and bear arms. As far as I’m concerned, government agents have no right to be armed. Only private individuals acting as such are entitled to be armed.
More kit stuff today and tomorrow.
10:20 – I’ve been exchanging email this morning with a young woman whom I’ll call Brittany. I’m not sure how she stumbled across my blog, but I’m glad she did. She and her husband have been getting more and more concerned over the last few years about where things are heading. They’re fortunate enough to live in a small town reasonably far from large population centers. Her husband is an auto mechanic in the family business. She’s a stay-at-home mom who takes care of their two elementary-age kids and homeschools them. She has a nice side business selling stuff on eBay. They’re already better-prepared than most people, simply by virtue of living in mostly rural agricultural area and the fact that her husband is a hunter and shooting hobbyist.
For them, the Dallas shootings were the tipping point, as I suspect they’ll be for a lot of people. She and her husband discussed it yesterday and decided it was time for them to stock way up on food. They’re not Mormons, but there’s a significant Mormon presence in their area, so they’re aware of the LDS policy on food storage for a year. She said their problem was that there was no way they could afford to buy enough emergency food for the four of them for a year. It turns out they can afford it, easily. She’d been looking at prepper websites that push hideously expensive freeze-dried food from Thrive Life, Mountain House, and the like. I figured that out myself because she mentioned that the absolute most they could afford was maybe $5,000 and that would buy only a small fraction of what the four of them would need for a year.
She was shocked when I told her that she could buy enough bulk staples to feed her whole family for a year at a cost of $1,500 or less. Doubling that would allow them to buy a lot of canned meats and other stuff to make the bulk staples a lot more appealing. I sent her links to the locations for their nearest LDS Home Storage Center, Costco, and Sam’s Club, all of which are several hours’ drive from them. I suggested they make a big Costco or Sam’s run as soon as they can, and then just keep doing that until they have their year’s worth of food. I also told her that Augason Farms is a good source of stuff that the LDS HSC doesn’t offer and that the best prices by far on AF stuff are from Walmart online. I also sent her a PDF copy of the LDS prepping book, which is a good way to get started.
And Trump is getting the blame for the shootings, too. The logic chain seems to have a few gaps there, but I guess those don’t matter to anyone inclined to support either of those two butt-munchers.
(Not that I’m a major Trump fan. It’s more a case of “less bad than the alternatives”. Though I do think it would be hilarious if that imbecile Sanders made it to the White House.)
Heh. Email from Brittany, who just placed an order with Walmart on-line for 100 12.5-ounce cans of chicken (50×2 @ $4 each, or $200 worth), 40 5-ounce cans of tuna ($36) a dozen 40-ounce jars of peanut butter ($63), and several assorted other items, for a total of about $400. Actually, several separate orders, each totaling $50+ for free shipping, because Walmart stupidly limits numbers in any one order. You select quantities from a drop-down list, and the normal limit is eight of any one item.
Turns out that Brittany has been following my blog and comments for a couple years. She said she’d been “thinking about it” all that time, which is all a lot of people do. But she’s obviously gotten off her ass and decided to move on it, which is always a good thing. She says she’s not finished buying protein, but her next order with Walmart is going to be Augason Farms stuff, including a lot of rice, pasta, and oats as well as some supplementary stuff like butter, cheese, and egg powders, as well as several 10-pound bags of Krusteaz pancake mix. She’s planning on placing those orders this afternoon. We may have another Jen on our hands.
Tipping points indeed. This may have been a huge one for many people across the country. Best wishes to Brittany and her family; better a bit late than never.
Loud t-storm this AM at 06:30, and steady rain since. Perfect. We don’t mind. The lake is down about three feet from this time last year and so are the local creeks, streams and rivers. Not a drought by any stretch but we could use a week of rain here. I have a bunch of stuff to do outside but if it ain’t raining too hard, I’ll be out there doing it.
Gotta run Mrs. OFD to the airport later this afternoon; she’s off to Fayetteville, NC where she’ll stay at an Air B&B and the gig is in Lumberton this next week.
Field Marshal Fukstik:
“I will call for white people, like myself, to put ourselves in the shoes of those African-American families who fear every time their children go somewhere, who have to have ‘The Talk,’ about, you now, how to really protect themselves [from police], when they’re the ones who should be expecting protection from encounters with police,” Clinton told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.
I’m going to be talking to white people, we’re the ones who have to start listening to the legitimate cries coming from our African-American fellow citizens,” she said.
You have to be kidding me. It’s my fault because *I’m* a WHITEY! some Black dude was killed. That rotten corpse of a Klinton Krook can die none too soon. How could any undecided voter go for her after this blatant pandering? A tiny minority of Blacks will dictate the policy of the whole country? If I was Black, I’d be more worried about the incoming crimmigrants and Syrians who have no love for American Blacks.
Hooray, and welcome aboard Brittany (NHRN)!
Congratulations on taking the steps to secure your family’s future. Ask anything, especially if you think it’s too basic or ‘stupid’ to bother the group with. You are FOR SURE not the only one who has that question, and it will provide a good jumping off point for a discussion and other long-term lurkers like you will benefit from the answers!
Which brings up a point. Prepping (at least talking about it) has entered the mainstream to a certain extent. Witness my previous comments about survival and prep and ‘old ways of doing things’ starting to show up in mainstream venues, like Costco and the newsstand.
We can now expect a bunch of profiteers and ‘johnny come latelys’ to show up. They’ll come with glossy looking websites, and slick magazines because most people have a bias toward that as authoritative, and they’ll be pushing ‘solutions’. “One secret thing to do now” kind of ad copy, and “learn this trick to keep your family safe in the coming collapse” offers.
Perhaps, as a public service, RBT could add a tag for “Getting Started” and put it at the top of the list. It could be a couple of short posts about long term storage food for less $, basic communications info, water treatment and storage, or just collections of links. It would serve the same purpose as MD Creekmore’s “10 Things to do right now” and “10 more things to do right now” (and could link them) as well as some other basics.
As more people get started, there will be more like Brittany who (maybe) can’t tell the charlatans from the experts, and feel overwhelmed by the firehose of info available. Having a calm authoritative place to start (and not coincidentally pimp the book) would be a service to the community.
nick
(@Brittany- if you haven’t gone there yet, there is a lot of very down to earth info and sharing at http://www.thesurvivalistblog.net especially the “what did you do to prep this week” comments. You’ll find lots of folks of very modest means prepping as much as they can, and sharing their experiences. Few of the frequent commenters are able to order a pallet of freeze dried food, yet they all continue to make progress toward preparedness.)
Absolutely disgusting:
Facebook has refused to remove a sickening cartoon of a police officer having his throat slit from a Black Panther page used by Dallas cop killer Micah Xavier Johnson.
The gruesome image shows a man dressed in black slashing a uniformed officer’s throat with a knife as blood spills out of the cop’s neck.
It was posted on the ‘Black Panther Party Mississippi’ page, which Johnson posted a twisted rant on just days before he embarked on his massacre.
The cartoon carries the words ‘as a R.B.G. killer panther I pledge to defend my black community by any means necessary’.
Zuckerberg should be ripped out of his walled complex in Hawaii and strung up. Another self loathing WHITEY! He loves open borders and crimmigrants so much he built a 6′ wall around his property. Hypocrite.
Afrikan-Murkans are gonna be in for a MUCH rougher ride than has hitherto been the case in the past half-century. They’re not the largest minority, not by a long shot, and the trillions spent over the decades to provide help and encouragement have gotten us nothing. Not to mention the many black senators, representatives, governors, generals, SecStates, and a President.
As has been said before, I never kept slaves and y’all never picked cotton.
“A tiny minority of Blacks will dictate the policy of the whole country?”
Why not? An even tinier minority of homosexuals does. It’s the age of grievance whores and pimps, from all the ethnic, racial and sexual minorities, to swarms of precious snowflake college students who demand “trigger warnings” and “safe spaces” and wish to police the English language to an extent George Orwell did not foresee.
“Zuckerberg should be ripped out of his walled complex in Hawaii and strung up. Another self loathing WHITEY! He loves open borders and crimmigrants so much he built a 6′ wall around his property. Hypocrite.”
This sort of blatant hypocrisy among the wealthy libturd elites is nothing new. Rich Cambridge, MA elites bitched and moaned about a halfway house that was gonna go in on their precious street and got it cancelled some years ago. And not long before that, the libturd bastards who rammed forced busing down everyone’s throats in the poor neighborhoods of Boston sent their own chillunz to private skools.
As for Z-bug and FaceCrack; I dumped all that stuff a good while back and only got onto it for alleged better family commo, but it wasn’t/isn’t worth it, and as for political discussions, my “friends” and I just hashed and rehashed the same old stuff and preached back and forth to the whole choir. And no one then was anywhere near ready for the chit that’s been going down lately. For most of them, it’s far easier to chatter about all this chit online than to actually do anything, and most of them, again, have not given up on our wunnerful democratic elections and voting and parties. Social media is to avoid, like cities and crowds, unless you enjoy yakking about trivia and having everything tracked even more relentlessly than it is already.
FWIW, there are some perennial prepper topics that get a lot of pixels spilled on them.
Prepping on a budget- prepping doesn’t take a bunch of money
–how to stock your pantry for less
–where the bargains are
–couponing as a lifestyle choice 🙂
–where to find gear for less (my area)
—substitutes, alternatives, make do’s
Basic medical preps
–first aid kits
—- EDC, trauma, vehicles, stocking the infirmary
–reference books
–alternatives to grid up medicine
—-herbs, essential oils, traditional medicine, snake oil
Water
–storage and treatment
Defense
–home
–personal
–what’s the best gun for xxx??? <–short answer is one you can use well
Bags- more thought has been wasted on this topic and more angst, more procrastination and frustration. THERE IS NO PERFECT BAG. ANYTHING is better than NOTHING. Get started.
–bug out
–grab and go
–get home
–vehicle bags
–edc
–fighting loads
Gear – gear reviews (beloved by writers as they get free gear, or excuses to buy gear)(beloved by preppers because it gives them a reason to procrastinate, waiting for the 'perfect' knife/bag/flashlight)
–knives
–firestarters
–flashlights
–guns
–bags
–you name it, someone will tell you it sux and you're stupid, and someone else will tell you it's the one critical item that will save your life and everyone that says no is stupid- but YOU are the smartest person alive
Alternative power
–generators
–solar
–gimmicks
Gardening
There are of course other prepper topics, but these are the majority, and they get hashed and re-hashed.
nick
(oh, and doesn't that look a bit like an outline for a book!)
“hashed and rehashed”
OK, weird synchronicity there. OFD uses the phrase that I’m typing in my comment WHILE I’m typing !!11!11111!!111
Mysteries of the universe………..
nick
I tell my one sibling who is interested to just remember the basic human needs, such as shelter, heat, water, food, medical, and defense, with commo being pretty dahn important, too. Then figure it out based on your own family/household situation currently and your AO and the threats you may face.
For us here, it’s the basic human needs if and when the Grid goes down for more than a couple of weeks and we currently have local goblins and orcs breaking into houses, selling drugs, and being traffic hazards, let alone later potential for looting and assaults if law and order breaks down significantly. To that we add the very real possibility of winter ice storms and blizzards, and lately, major flooding just outside our AO.
RBT and Mr. nick are walking encyclopedias of experience and know-how on a chit-ton of this stuff, and many others here also have specific technical experience and tips for lotsa things. There’s even a guy here who is the de facto guru of FLASHLIGHTS. And another one who is fast becoming our very own drone aficionado. Me? I’m heavy into medieval epic poetry…oh wait…that’s not relevant….how ’bout a nodding acquaintance with firearms, military stuff and law enforcement…oh wait again….as the latter areas existed thirty years ago…lol.
“Mysteries of the universe………..”
Great minds think alike…
How’s the prepping book actually going? Is it/they nearing completion?
I’ve had so little time to work on the prepping book that it’s going to be awhile until I’m ready to go. In the meantime, I recommend the LDS Prep Manual and Lisa Bedford’s Survival Mom for beginning preppers.
Incidentally, Brittany is taking Jen’s approach. She’s never posted here and has no intention of doing so. She wants to remain anonymous, except from her family and local friends.
It sounds like she’s in an excellent position. They live on the outskirts of a small town in a rural area. Her parents and siblings live locally, as do her husband’s. Her younger brother is a deputy with the county sheriff’s office, and her younger sister is a nurse for a local doctor. Her husband is not just on-board, but actively encouraging her to get the family as prepared as possible.
Sounds like she’s well on the way, and more power to her and hers.
“She’s never posted here and has no intention of doing so…”
I don’t blame her; this board is replete with haters and homicidal maniacs, and the language used is atrocious. It’s a wonder it isn’t shut down by the AG, but she’s been so busy with other things.
Well, I hope she continues to lurk, and passes any questions to you….
(and isn’t put off too much by the political, scatological, or theological tomfoolery.)
nick
Meh, you’re saying that only because you’re hyper-literate and see the Red Curtain of Blood when someone uses a pronoun with an unclear antecedent.
“… isn’t put off too much by the political, scatological, or theological tomfoolery.”
If she’s been reading all this drivel for that long, I would surmise that it doesn’t faze her much. Especially the theological tomfoolery.
The rain has stopped for now but it remains overcast and significantly cooler (63) than the last few hot and humid days, with a nice breeze. Showers in the forecast through tomorrow night and then Wednesday is allegedly gonna be back up over 90 again, which will suck. Maybe I’ll spend that day in the cellar, which is usually 15 degrees cooler than above. We’re in that phase of summer which normally includes sporadic t-storms, sometimes violent, but none as shattering so far as what I used to see down in central MA and Woostah back in the day, complete with lightning strikes within fifty feet and funnel clouds approaching.
Hope to get some decent prepping stuff done in the next few weeks and will update here accordingly if any of it might be useful.
“…see the Red Curtain of Blood…”
I see that a lot, daily, if not hourly, and not so much here as elsewhere. Like the military history mag I stole from the VA lounge the other day; jeezum, does anyone do copy editing anymore anywhere??? Not to mention countless web site errors.
Well, there are going to be errors in my posts, because I just sit down and start writing. Mosr of the time, I don’t even read what I wrote before I post it. My policy here has always been not to go back to fix errors unless they’re substantive.
Yah, I know what you mean. I’ve mentioned poor editing here and there recently, such as mentioning that a lot of self-published stories or even stuff put up for free on the internet has a lot of basic errors … but so does the “professionally edited” work coming from the “real” publishing houses. And the self-pub stuff is not only a better value for the dollar, it’s often a better read because it isn’t adulterated with PC/SJW BS.
Also, from what I can tell, the “real” publishers have cut way back on their spending for editing. Like, cutting the number of line, copy, and content editors and paying them much less per book. That doesn’t directly affect me, as I’ve never had a contract with any “real” publisher, but I’m indirectly affected because the rates for freelance editing have been driven down. Please note that this is based on what I see, have been told, and deduce for myself. I haven’t seen results of any industry surveys or anything.
On a couple sites where I have admin or editor privs, I’ll clean up my or others’ errors as the whim takes me. Unless the error is amusing, in which case I’ll generally leave it uncorrected but instead goof on it.
Even though I know the difference, I still sometimes type the wrong it’s or its, and their, there, they’re….. fingers have a mind of their own.
I have spelling error highlighting turned on in Firefox, so I at least get the red squiggle on obvious mistakes. jsut, soem, etc. Never did like or use the grammar mistake highlighter. Given that I’ll make mistakes with full knowledge afore thought… (like this fragment)
And I’ll abuse style with So and But and And, while ‘quoting’ with the wrong characters because I like single quotes better……….. and don’t get me started on improper use of the ellipsis…..
🙂
nick
added- and I see that wordpress or this template replaces some of my mistakes anyway– double dash to an emdash, and single quotes that were made with the apostrophe key’ get changed to true single quotes with an open and a close quote character. “double quotes too, I’m gonna assume”
I am having a serious case of feeling unprepared. I have the funds to do so, but I have not done so yet. I know what I want to do and what I need to do, but I can’t throw domestic tranquility out the window.
“Unless the error is amusing, in which case I’ll generally leave it uncorrected but instead goof on it.”
heh, I used to subscribe to a bridge magazine where the editor of Bidding Forum said he usually fixed up the spelling and stylistic errors of non-native English speakers. Except one time he left the word “mouses” as is, because it described perfectly a group of people who he loved to criticise.
I miss him. RIP Keith McNeil.
http://www.abf.com.au/about-abf/biographies/keith-mcneil/
Back 10 years before Lynne Truss’s Eats, Shoots & Leaves was published, I had a friendly running battle with Robert Denn, who was at the time my editor at O’Reilly. I argued for (and used in my drafts) the British serial comma, e.g. “red, white and blue”, while Robert supported the American serial comma (red, white, and blue). My argument was that the comma developed as a shorthand substitute for “and”, so “red, white, and blue” expanded to “red and white and and blue”, which was obviously not the intent.
Robert responded, “I’d like to thank my parents, Ayn Rand and God”, to which I replied, “How did you know who my parents are?”
And that doesn’t even count our running battle about me placing punctuation marks outside the quotes unless the punctuation was part of the actual material being quoted.
Nick, what spelling error highlighter do you use?
I’m guessing that was the Blue Team, or perhaps those Precision nutters.
From the bio:
“Keith was not afraid of adopting positions that could be seen as reactionary. He hated negative doubles over overcalls and despised weak two openings. He was not though an opponent of all things new. He developed his own variant of Acol – ROMACOL and he also promoted in Australian Bridge the concept of the “tartan two” – the forerunners of the modern multis and myxos.”
@Dave
Perhaps use SteveF’s method. Tell your wife this stuff is all for you and that you don’t intend to share it with her.
I started bridge using “Standard American” five card major, better minor. I then started learning Precision, but my regular partner got sick of being beaten up all the time so we quit.
Precision rocks!
I must hasten to ‘splain that I find very few errors other than obvious typos here and was not targeting anybody or singling anybody out for mistakes. I get annoyed with books, magazines and other web sites that at least ought to use whatever pooter-generated toolz there are to augment their scribblings. And yes, I’m a “hyper-literate” bastid who automatically sees wrong stuff immediately; I can’t help it. I’m so anal I’ll go back and correct my own typos. It’s a sickness.
“I know what I want to do and what I need to do, but I can’t throw domestic tranquility out the window.”
Ditto. We’re a bit strained for revenue, too, but yeah, I know what ya mean. The spouse here is not entirely on board with the enterprise; she knows about the weather/climate threat and is aware of the local goblins and their activities but stops short of believing that a general SHTF could happen and obviously thinks I’m a bit nutty for even mentioning it. Of course I’m also WAY to her right politically, as I am with most peeps, even up here, and we do not see eye to eye, to put it mildly, on the Church and its history and theology. Again, I’m WAY to the right, there, too.
So I also have to tread carefully and slowly on this stuff. Domestic tranquility is to be devoutly wished for and treasured.
WRT prepping this week,
I won some more radio test gear in a surplus auction. This I’ll sell to finance the stuff I won a couple of weeks ago.
I won 6 pallets of camera enclosures, control boxes, and led illuminators in another auction. I am breaking down the enclosures for scrap as each is a good 10 pounds of aluminum, and I can generate some quick cash from a few hours work. That cash will go where cash should be spent… The rest will be listed on ebay to bring in money for a while.
I got about a hundred of the control boxes which have an industrial power supply in them that will sell well on ebay. That’s the easiest way to make money on ebay– sell multiples of the same item. One listing keeps bringing in sales for a while. With unique items, you do the same work (test, photograph, write the listing) but only get to use it one time. I do a mix of unique items and multiples, just ’cause that’s what I end up buying, but it would be more efficient to just buy multiples.
The LED illuminators are interesting, but will be another “project” to see if I can use them as anything other than the strobes they were designed as (20,000 lumen strobes!). I also don’t know if I got any IR ones. That would be awesome, if so. I will probably put a couple on ebay to test the waters, and I may just strip out the LED modules to sell. They use a whole bunch of 100 lumen Luxeon Rebel white LEDs, mounted 12 to a module. Projects, bah, I don’t really need any more.
Garden continues to produce carrots. The Japanese eggplant will be cooked this week. The turnips too. Got a bunch of leeks that are about 3 years old in the pots, so I finally harvested some to eat. The sweet onions I put in this spring are growing. The last few times I tried onions they all vanished. Collards are doing well, esp considering the heat. Kale is stunted. Tomatoes have given up and mostly died. It’s just too hot. Picked up some diatomaceous earth to deal with the snails. Hope it works. Grape vines continue to grow up the arbor. It looks nice even if I never get grapes.
Despite all the rain we had recently, I’m back to watering the garden nightly.
One thing I forgot in my other recent garden post, if you intend to actually eat out of your garden you need LOTS more plants than you might think. Couple pots of strawberries will get you one or two berries PER WEEK! Half a dozen pepper plants and you might get one or two a day when you go to eat them, and you’ll finish them all in a week or two. The time I actually got green beans, I got one meal’s worth from the plants I had. Get some in the ground and start figuring out what you need to plant to get the yield you hope for.
Did a tiny bit of clean up on the vintage Griswold #9 roaster I picked up. It had the best seasoning in it, so I gave that a wipe out with alcohol, then heated and oiled it. It’s hard, black and slick. I de-rusted and cleaned up a lid I had that almost matches the roaster, oiled and seasoned that. Now I’ve got a nice deep roaster to add to the cast iron collection.
Today I’m watching the kids, hiding from the heat, and avoiding work. I better get back to that. 🙂
nick
We note that several, or maybe many more, urban police departments across the country, including Boston, Lost Wages, and Burlap, Vermont, are now going to….wait for it….two-MAN patrols. IMHO, this makes it even easier for would-be murdering scum to pick them off, a twofer, if you will, seeing as how most cops have a stupid tendency to always bunch up and cling. A slick operator could nail two cops with one shot, actually. But it’s the imbecilic politically-whored-up brass who make these kinds of announcements; I’m guessing the rank-and-file know it’s bullshit.
I agree w/RBT; clear out of their lousy ‘hoods and leave ’em to it; but get the decent people out if they wanna come. And move our assipes in and good riddance.
Mr. nick is right, again, on how much to plant. You need a LOT of plants to feed a family from a garden and it can be done, just not here where we are. Half our yard is worthless for this thanks to the leach field/septic and the overhead shade. And your plants have to be SUCCESSFUL, year after year. IMHO, this requires a good sunny couple of acres, at least. If some stuff craps out, you’d have other crops that don’t. We are gonna have to go another route for this up here. Maybe organize a community garden or possibly buying another couple of acres within reasonable distance to devote exclusively to a garden, but without much in the way of OPSEC, I guess.
@dave, like most things, you just have to START. Keep chipping away at it and little by little you will build. It worked for me, and judging by the comments elsewhere it works for lots of people.
Think of your plan as an outline or a framework, and fill in parts of it when you can.
The best way to get started with food, simply buy a few more of the things you normally buy, when you buy them. Put the extras somewhere different from your normal pantry so you don’t just draw them down during normal use. I did this for years. I also would buy a few items that were shelf stable on each shopping trip. The Compleats(tm) shelf stable meals are in every supermarket. Most of them don’t taste great, but they will taste like ambrosia if they are all you have. I concentrated on the ones that could be eaten by themselves or used in other things (like the meatballs.)
If money is so tight that spending an extra couple of percent each trip is out of the question, (and I know that for some folks it is) look for reduced cost items. My ‘big’ store has buy one get one sales (BOGO), buy 2 get 3, etc, as well as featuring reduced prices on the ‘house brand’ version vs the name brand.
For bulk items, they are generally cheap enough to get ‘lost in the noise’ unless you are in a situation where every cent counts. Adding 25 pounds of rice to your cart, adds $12 to your bill, but provides a lot of food security. Same for flour, sugar, and salt.
I know there is a tendency to see disaster just around the corner, and to want to do it all at once, but don’t let that stop you from chipping away at it. You’d be surprised how it builds up. When the opportunity presents itself, buy a chunk of stuff. With your outline or framework in place, you will recognize the opportunity when it happens.
I’ve made my feelings on “panic buying” clear in other comments (I’m for it.) It provides reassurance/peace of mind, fills a gap, and gets you breathing space to learn more, research, or find the better options. It is NOT efficient moneywise, or even long term resource-wise, but I think it has it’s place.
If money is tight, there are things you can do. Sell items that no longer are needed. Most people have clothes they haven’t worn, that no longer fit, or that they don’t like. I think of worn clothes as yard sale items, but if you have some with tags on, they sell well on ebay if they are name brands. Hobby stuff sells on ebay, as do collectables. If you stopped collecting StarWars, and don’t enjoy it, sell it. Even broken stuff sells in the right venue. If you have a yard sale, your non-running yard tools will probably sell if you price them right. Heck around here, ANY tools sell.
The flip side is to reduce spending. I’d bet almost everyone on here has a subscription service they no longer need or use. Leo Laporte still gets a periodic small donation from me. Netflix, or cable tv, a landline phone, insurance policy, Tivo, some web subscription, all places that could be cut if you aren’t getting value from them.
More in a minute, got kids to feed
nick
Quoth Dave:
Quoth Dave Hardy:
Quoth RBT:
If it were a simple matter of my wife not being on board or even grumbling at me about spending money on supplies, that would be one thing. Annoying but tolerable.
But she’s actually poured out a bunch of water in 2L bottles and thrown away the bottles, she’s raided the stored supplies because they were just sitting there and not bothered to tell me, and she’s loudly bitched at me in front of her friends about wasting money this way, which has the side effect of telling a bunch of idiots that there’s a stockpile of food and OTC medical supplies and what-not.
If that is not the functional equivalent of saying “No, I’m not interested in eating after the grocery store runs out of food”, I don’t know what is.
I’ve decided that financing preps needs a whole post, so I need to think about that a bit.
In short, you can reduce your spending on other things to free up money for preps.
-cut out unneeded expenses, often some sort of recurring thing you no longer need
-reduce needed expenses, often by switching plans or providers
—an example, most people can benefit from reviewing their cable, internet, and cell plans yearly. Often cheaper plans with MORE service are available. This happened to me with ATT cell, for a YEAR, a plan was available with more service than mine, but 30 bux cheaper. I spent over $330 more than I should have.
—with Comcast, they increased speeds available on my internet access plan, but they were only available if you got a new modem. Again, over a year of getting less than I was paying for.
—tivo was supposed to cancel a plan for a standard def device, never did, and continued to auto charge my account. Over $240 wasted there before I caught it.
-cable will almost always reduce your bill temporarily or permanently if you call and tell them you are switching to dish.
-If you don’t need a landline, switching to a pay as you go cell plan will usually save a bunch of money. Ditto for switching to an internet phone provider.
– cut out or reduce a vice. Stop drinking alcohol or stop smoking.
The second thing you can do is increase your income.
-for many people this means get more hours at work, or work a second job
-for others it means supplementing with casual income from side work or a hobby
–this is me selling on ebay, craigslist, etc.
-others have an expertise that they can leverage, web or graphic design, small engine repair, etc that they can do outside of their other obligations
-writing is a great way to do this if you have a talent for it
-for some it means passive income from rental property or other investments
-get paid for something you do anyway (writing reviews, blogging, etc.) some of the highest paid youtubers are women who sell their LIFESTYLE. and gamers. One is famous for disney figure unboxing.
I actually practice a blend of the 2 methods I like to call ‘living better on less’. In this method, I trade time for money, buying stuff I need for less, and sometimes fixing it, and selling stuff to finance the buying. The goal is to constantly upgrade along the way, and have it pay for itself. One of the downsides is compromise as you rarely find EXACTLY what you want, and patience, as you rarely find it at exactly the right moment. That’s where the outline or framework comes in. I keep a mental list of stuff I need or want, so that I’ll recognize it when it becomes available.
gah, for off the cuff, I hope I’m making sense. More kid stuff intrudes….
nick
IMHO, this requires a good sunny couple of acres,
Plenty of sunshine in Vegas, just crappy dirt and no water. Do you need those too?
I guess the OFD fems and Atoz fems think alike. Cankles has a vagankle so I’m a votin’ for her. I rarely talk politics with the fems anymore. They’ve all fallen for the narrative and don’t research for themselves.
Pics or it didn’t happen.
Say… Isn’t one of the Daynotes frequent contributors a pro or semipro photographer? We could set him to getting up-close-and-personal pictures of this alleged vagankle.
“But she’s actually poured out a bunch of water in 2L bottles and thrown away the bottles…etc.”
Yikes. This cause you to lose face bigtime, Number Ten poo-chai. I’m sorta surprised she either does not realize this or does not care.
“I rarely talk politics with the fems anymore. They’ve all fallen for the narrative and don’t research for themselves.”
There it is. It’s just easier; esp. when you’re busy all the time with work and family stuff and also, in this case here, signing up for extra chit to be responsible for, whether family or otherwise. Why not just accept the standard MSM and FaceCrack bull-chit and let it go at that; everything is more or less copacetic and if things were to get REALLY bad, the government would step in and fix it. (of course my possible retort there is “Like they did for Katrina?” Or “Like they do on our southern border?”) But it’s pointless getting into those kinds of arguments; my siblings’ wives are the same way, they don’t wanna hear any bad nooz. My next-younger brother and I figure, though, that if and when the S really DOES HTF, they’ll be screaming bloody murder on how come we didn’t tell them and how come we’re not fully prepared???
I think we’re back to a MrAtoz, Mr. OFD and Mr. SteveF threeway.*
*Not like that!!! You know, a mutual support community after TSHTF. We could eat your wife together, Mr. SteveF.**
**Not like that!!! You know, consume her.
Uh-oh, I think MrAtoz might be getting a little confused or sumthin’….threeways, eating, etc. Could it be the Lost Wages air? The fuel fumes from his fleet of drones?
But yeah, the wives don’t wanna hear it; on the way down to the airport I got, in a semi-snarky tone, “This prepping stuff is a bunch of stuff that just goes too far…etc.” I just said, well, based on what we know has happened in other places and is happening now, we just don’t wanna get caught with our pants down…”
Oh great, now I’m doing it, the sexual innuendo….UNINTENDED!
Anyway, she’s off to Fayetteville, NC, where they have a Heat Index warning in effect with real-feel temps up over 100, and she’s leaving here where it’s been in the low 60s.
lol! Obola is going to return early to hold another “task force” on race relations. Remember what came of the last one? That’s right, nothing. I’m sure the usual suspects will show up: Jackwagon, Sharpless, BLMers*. The results will be the same. Down with WHITEY!, reparations, more FSA stuff, more Federal studies. Obola sucks. Why doesn’t he just come out and say race relations are worse under his watch.
*Fartinacan will have secret discussions on how Black Mooslims will inherit the Earth.
With all of @nick’s talk on eBaying, I suggest some of his guest posts be about about how to get started on eBay and how to avoid the buying and selling scams.
Got a new garden pest around here. We have always had slugs, but for the first time that I can recall we know have huge snails with big colorful shell (shells the diameter of a quarter) and the snail’s body at least 6-inches long. So far my research is showing that this appears to be a non-native species.
BTW, a new common denominator of cities with cop and black problems is that most of these cities have a visit from Lynch who has basically now “Federalized” these police departments. The Police Chiefs are no longer the last word, he has to check with the Feds. This would explain the extremely long time of the standoff in Orlando and the confusion in Dallas. Also may also explain the use of The Terminator. The puzzle pieces are starting to fall in place. We will probably get the full picture with the upcoming riots at the Republicrat Convention. I foolishly got caught in the middle of the 1968 Democrat Convention riots in Chicago. Bad enough back then, but it will be orders of magnitude worse for the Republicrats.
About as hilarious as the Holodomor.
Prepping doesn’t have to be expensive. For less than $30 at Sam’s Club, I got 75 pounds of rice ready to be transferred to 2 liter bottles. I got some oxygen absorbers from Amazon. Now I just have to wash, sanitize and dry the bottles and then fill them. I picked up a thing of chicken boullon and beef boullon. For about $50 we have enough food to eat rice until we’re sick of it. We need other foods, but we’re better off than we were.
I literally started our in car emergency kits with pocket change. I took a big jar half full of change to a Coinstar machine, bought an Amazon gift certificate, and came home and ordered cheap backpacks, flashlights, water purification tablets, multi tools, magnesium fire starters and space blankets.
The current first aid kits that I added to our emergency kits were literally purchased for $20 at the dollar store including the quart zip top bags they are in. I still need to add to them, but we are better off than we were when we had nothing. They’re also much more useful than two $10 first aid kits from Amazon, and possibly better than two $20 first aid kits.
If you’ve only got $5 to prep, pick up a couple of 12 packs of Ramen noodles at Walmart. That’s a very small start, but it beats sitting at home hungrily staring at a five dollar bill in an emergency.
“About as hilarious as the Holodomor.:
Excellent juxtapositioning there, Mr. Dave! Yes, ol’ Bernie and wife Jane did their honeymoon in Moscow…………..when it was still the HQ of the Soviet Union……which ran the intentional famine/genocide in the Ukraine. I’m waiting to see what little quid pro quo Bernie gets once he fully endorses Field Marshal Rodham. And also waiting to see, if she gets in, whether Lynch gets on the SCOTUS, sitting beside the wise Latina and the not-quite-dead-yet Ginsburg.
“Obola is going to return early to hold another “task force” on race relations.”
Yeah, the task force will be all-Afrikan-Murkan and probably again include beefy gangbangers with full tatts and electronic ankle bracelets. Maybe a New Black Panther and a couple of hip-hop stars. Meanwhile we have Cankles preaching to us how we nasty white folks need to deeply examine ourselves, etc., etc., blah, blah. Which is a laff riot, because we have her and Larry on record with VIRULENT rayciss and anti-Semitic utterances at the gov’s mansion in Little Rock AND the WH. And in the former period, Larry was very busy boffing as many black hookers and trannies as he could throw coke-dealer cash at.
“….huge snails with big colorful shell (shells the diameter of a quarter) and the snail’s body at least 6-inches long.”
We don’t see those up here but I did used to see them a lot on rainy days down in MA, usually on the sides of wooden buildings. Ours were gray, and also quite large. If they’re being pests in your garden, the saucer full of beer treatment might work.
“…“Federalized” these police departments. The Police Chiefs are no longer the last word, he has to check with the Feds. This would explain the extremely long time of the standoff in Orlando and the confusion in Dallas. Also may also explain the use of The Terminator.”
Very interesting; I had not been aware of that. So it’s not the top-level police brass and city managers anymore calling the shots in these situations, but some Fed asshole back in Mordor. Of course that also explains the MOVE HQ bombing in Philadelphia, Ruby Ridge, and Waco, where we know for sure the Feds made the final decisions.
“We will probably get the full picture with the upcoming riots at the Republicrat Convention. I foolishly got caught in the middle of the 1968 Democrat Convention riots in Chicago. Bad enough back then, but it will be orders of magnitude worse for the Republicrats.”
Word is that the coming Repub convention site is gonna be a security nightmare and the authorities are at their wits’ ends trying to figure it all out and prep for whatever, when they’ll probably get some pro and semi-pro agitprop operators running increasingly violent demonstrations. I intend to follow streaming online intel and radio monitoring while enjoying iced Moxie and pretzels.
Incidentally, what were you doing to be caught up in the ’68 Chicago war games? We were watching it on the tee-vee, of course; what a year; assassinations, Tet, etc. I was only fifteen, and on the honor roll every term at skool.
In other nooz, Emperor Barack Hussein Soetero is putting a thousand troops in Poland, of all places, I guess to keep poking the Russians in the eye; likewise Commissar Merkel is sending troops to Lithuania. Ya think this might make the Russians a tad nervous and pissed off??? Why the fuck do we DO this??? And still playing fun hide-and-seek games with our subs, ships and planes.
No, I was referring to the inedible prepping supplies. You know the kind that SteveF would suggest would come in handy were his mother in law to annoy him more than normal.
I’m not sure what you’re talking about. I have a crocodile as part of my SHTF supplies and the crocodile would come in handy with the M-I-L, but crocodiles are perfectly edible. Yum! And you can make handbags from their skins once they no longer need their skins themselves. Practical!
Sudden thought about guest blogging….is there a desire(need?) for a separate *prepper* blogging area for youse guys? I can do the back-end admin, and can set up things so that authorized peeps can post via email, which might be easier for some.
I can even ‘host’ the place. I might even chip in for the first year of the domain registration.
A ‘worth-it’ effort?
(Edited to add ‘prepper’ – a blog with prepper advices – not the other blatherings around here…)
I can’t speak for anyone else, but I think the only thing I could offer up would be a draft copy of The Definitive Book of Fart Jokes, and I’d be reluctant to put that up because public availablity would make the big publishers reluctant to offer me a huge advance.
Believe it or not, it’s just a coincidence. The Holocaust didn’t seem to work in that sentence, so I went with the only other thing could come up with.
-cough- You may wish to change your answer, Dave.
Tip: when someone complements you on your clever wit, excellent shooting, or other exceptional abilities, the correct response is not to brush it off as luck. Not unless you are even more awesome than it first appears and you are attempting to lull people into a false sense of securi…
Oh…
WRT the party in Chicago 1968: My late Godfather was a real Machinist and one of the last real ones to hold the office of President of the Machinist Union and then was a VP when they became The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM). He had an office with a view of the White House. He was courted and wined and dined by both parties. Well he attended the Democrat Convention (as well as the Republican) and thought it would be a good experience for me to meet some of the movers and shakers in the Democrat Party. He was chauffeured around in a big armored limo with some armed security. The driver, unfamiliar with Chicago, took a wrong turn that took us right into the mob. The cops were not doing a very good job of diverting traffic. Good thing the limo was equipped to withstand a riot as it got beat to heck. The doors had gun ports and the “security” let fly with some buckshot that opened up a clear path for us to get out. We didn’t tell my mom, she thought we were safely in the convention center.
The best experience with politicians that I had with my Godfather was getting to meet President Kennedy in the Oval Office. It was first names all around, and some great Cuban cigars and snifters of cognac, I didn’t tell mom.
My Godfather stuck with his high union position until he finally had had enough of all the politicking and the screwing over of the union member in the shop. He was also losing favor with the other union officers (who hadn’t ever touched a lathe) that didn’t like that he was truly for the union member in the shop, not the political perks of high union office.
We could set him to getting up-close-and-personal pictures of this alleged vagankle
Oh hell no, never, ever, nope, ain’t gonna happen.
The laddy doth protest too much, methinks.
“The doors had gun ports and the “security” let fly with some buckshot that opened up a clear path for us to get out.”
Outstanding.
The closest I ever came to the Presidency was the time I met candidate Pat Buchanan in NH, and the time I listened to the SS on my scanner when Ford was at Clark University down in Woostah, MA. Well, I also took the early Saturday AM tour through the WH with my first wife back in early ’89, thanks to our local congressman’s office. Mordor was a ghost town that week, thanks to…..wait for it….two inches of snow. SHUTDOWN. We visited the National Zoo and the lion was wicked pissed off and you could hear him roar for miles; a big-ass tiger was pacing back and forth and also looked very peeved; we hoped the cage was secure. Underclass bums at the Metro entrance within sight of the WH, of course.
“I’m all in favor of that, as long as we start by disarming their Secret Service agents, personal bodyguards, police escorts, and so on. The 2nd Amendment guarantees the right of the PEOPLE to keep and bear arms. As far as I’m concerned, government agents have no right to be armed. Only private individuals acting as such are entitled to be armed.”
There it is. We will not be going the same way as the former USSR, Nazi Germany, the other communist nations, the UK and its former colonies, or the European countries. Too many cussed Anglo-Saxon-Celts and Americanized Others armed with hundreds of millions of firearms and mountains of ammo. And increasingly pissed off and bitter, with a very long list of grievances and complaints that are not being addressed. In fact, we’ve been given the middle finger, spat on and laughed at for way too long. The Day of Reckoning cometh.
SteveF wrote:
“But she’s actually poured out a bunch of water in 2L bottles and thrown away the bottles…”
Tap water in recycled bottles or “spring water”?
“…and she’s loudly bitched at me in front of her friends…”
Run Forrest, RUN.
DadCooks wrote:
“The best experience with politicians that I had with my Godfather was getting to meet President Kennedy in the Oval Office. It was first names all around, and some great Cuban cigars and snifters of cognac, I didn’t tell mom.”
Did he, ah, “introduce” you to Marilyn Monroe? 🙂
“Did he, ah, “introduce” you to Marilyn Monroe?”
Or any of the dozen other dollymops, sluts and slatterns that he was boffing every chance he got? There’s a pic of Larry Klinton as a youngster shaking hands with Saint Jack, with adoring eyes, sure he gonna be like you, man, sure he gonna be like you…
Two uncontrolled serial adulterers and horndawgs, also heavy dopers. At least Saint Jack was a bona-fide combat vet and managed to back off NKVD thug Khruschev; nowadays he’d be considered a maniacal reichwingnut fascist pig. And Saint Bobby even more so.
You know, one thing that needs to be addressed is long term storage of food and water with the risk of varmints. Ants, mice, rats, dogs, cats, crazy wifes. I’ve got to wonder about the risk of varmints getting into the Auguson plastic pails such as:
http://www.walmart.com/ip/22001476
I’ve killed four rats in our home in the last several years. They can be quite destructive. Of course, RBT says to buy the #10 cans of rice from the LDS bulk food stores. Their website has been swamped lately so ordering from there is tough.
Nine-year-old daughter.
Your writing is generally of very, very high quality. The typo above is the first one I’ve seen in a while.
Maybe I’m just noticing it more, but people seem to be more concerned about prepping. I was at a couple of different events this weekend. At a hobby trade show, while we were browsing through sales literature, a total stranger said to me, this is just like the NRA show, they give you a year’s supply of reading material. At an amateur radio meet I heard a small group of guys talking when one of them said now is probably the time to buy some 80% finished lower receivers. I don’t know any of these people. At the hobby trade show, I met a semi-retired pharmacist who refuses to work retail because sooner or later we’re going to be reading about a pharmacy robbery where the pharmacist is shot and killed.
They’re all agents provacateurs, my good man, testing you; if you see something, say something.
“…now is probably the time to buy some 80% finished lower receivers.”
Sure, along with BCGs, uppers, barrels, and parts kits. And the toolz to work all that stuff.
Well, Mrs. OFD ain’t all bad on these issues; she said that ‘every time there’s one of these shooting incidents, the first thing they say is take away the guns,’ and I said, yup, take away MY guns and that will fix it so there will be no more shooting incidents anywhere. You gotta admire libturd logic. Fact is, they don’t care about the shootings; they simply want us proles disarmed, as did the Soviet and Nazi regimes.
“Did he, ah, “introduce” you to Marilyn Monroe?”
No skirts present, just talk of golf, sailing, and cars.
My Godfather knew of all the politicos proclivities toward various activities, but kept himself above compromise. He was a very smart man and knew the game. Remember that this was a time of power for the big unions, they had DC wrapped around their pinky finger.
BTW, my Godfather owned two condominiums in DC, and then in Dallas TX after he “retired”. He and my Godmother lived in one, the other was turned into the most well equipped machine shop you can imagine (did I mention he had “power” that the condo association couldn’t argue with). Until the day he died he spent time working in the shop every day.
Very rarely, (twice) I’ve walked into an estate sale where the man had taken over an interior room as his shop. You commonly find ‘hobby’ rooms, with an area dedicated to the craft or storage, but rarely an entire room converted to a workshop. Sewing rooms, sure. But nothing noisy or dirty.
I read a magazine article about a guy who converted a bedroom to his wood shop. It was a bit shocking to read. But why not? It’s a historical fact though that women’s hobbies or crafts or activities got a place INSIDE the house while mens were in the basement or outside.
nick
Here’s a video of Penn Jillette arguing with three libturd fems that we should blame the killers and not games, movies or guns for gun violence:
In a debate where Penn Jillette was outnumbered three to one, he destroyed the talking point that video games cause gun violence. Watch