Saturday, 16 July 2016

09:57 – Brittany emailed to thank me for the advice, but as it turned out it wasn’t necessary. When she showed my recommendations to her husband, he said he agreed with them completely. No surprise, considering he told Brittany that he already had a tactical barrel for the 870, a couple hundred rounds of buckshot for it, and spare magazines for their 10/22. I wasn’t particularly surprised. From what Brittany’s said about him, it sounds like her husband is on the ball. He also told her that as far as he was concerned they’d be better off spending $1,000 on more shelf-stable food than an AR-15.

Brittany also said she wasn’t sure exactly what they were preparing for. She’s worried mainly about civil unrest and a breakdown in supply chains, but reads about other potential emergencies like the power grid going down or a deadly pandemic. They already deal with the occasional severe winter storm and infrequent tornadoes in the area, but they don’t live in an area subject to hurricanes or earthquakes.

I suggested that the best strategy was to prepare for any eventuality rather than a specific threat or threats, focusing heavily on water, food, staying warm in winter, basic defense, basic medical, and meeting minimal power needs. All of those are necessary to prepare for any emergency, and sufficient for dealing with most. The Mormons have been doing this for more than a century, and they have it pretty much right.

One area where I do disagree with the LDS Church is their recommendation to accumulate a 3-month supply of ordinary canned foods first and only then focus on a year’s supply of bulk staples. If I wanted to be prepared for a year, I’d focus first on getting a year’s supply of bulk staples. That way, you know that you and your family can eat for a year. After that, you can start filling in gaps with canned/pouched goods, animal protein, and so on. You can live without the canned goods; you can’t live without the bulk carbohydrates, protein, oils/fats, and salt.

More work on science kits today.



44 Comments and discussion on "Saturday, 16 July 2016"

  1. Dave Hardy says:

    Mostly overcast today thus fah; forecast for possible t-storms, showers, etc. Temps in the low 80s, high 70s; I can live with that; back to the outside stuff shortly.

    There is some current speculation that the Trump campaign is designed solely and exclusively to detonate and deep-six the Stupid Half of the Party and that Field Marshal Rodham is a cinch to become National Administrator in November. i.e., he plans, one way or another, to “throw” the election.

    If this turns out to be the case, we will be in for a wild-ass ride. Fifteen weeks.

  2. SteveF says:

    80ish here, and sunny. Perfect weather for mowing the lawn. Have I mentioned that my skin is about as light as a non-albino’s can get?

    Son#1 and I helped some sort of cousin of my wife’s move this morning. He’s a student who was up here for a summer internship. Going by what my wife said he had, we pulled the seat out of the van and drove that and a regular car… and then found that his stuff would have fit in just the car, if we didn’t need to give him a lift to the train station. -sigh- Some people think quantitatively and some don’t, I guess.

  3. MrAtoz says:

    93 in Vegas, soon it will hit 100 24/7 for three weeks.

  4. Dave Hardy says:

    “Perfect weather for mowing the lawn. Have I mentioned that my skin is about as light as a non-albino’s can get?”

    Indeed. Out to mow the back, do some weed-whacking, chain-sawing, and organizing of scrap lumber.

    Wife and I both fair-skinned, thanks to northwestern Euro/UK/Ireland ethnicity and red hair. The sun is our potential enemy.

    And speaking of the solar system; it will be a full moon on my birthday this year. Some crazy chit might happen….

  5. SteveF says:

    “Potential enemy”, my (pale) ass. The Daystar is my sworn enemy, and one day soon I shall smite it.

  6. Dave Hardy says:

    Let us know when you gonna smite it so we can start walking around nekkid here.

    (That ought to scare Champ right the fuck back to the lower depths or Loch Ness.)

  7. MrAtoz says:

    It is hilarious watching/reading the MSM trying to cover for the Nice terrorist. They call him everything but what he is: Mooslim, Islamist, Terrorist. Pathetic. I can’t wait for Cankles to import the next million. Weapons Free, biotch!

  8. SteveF says:

    Eh? Who says he was a Muslim? Last I heard, there was no reason to believe that he was, let alone that religion had anything to do with him driving down the promenade. Don’t be fooled by his name. Lots of people are name Muhammad and it has nothing to do with terrorism anyway.

  9. Dave Hardy says:

    Some of the MSM chicanery mentions him as a common criminal and doper/drunk. We have LOTS of those here in this country but rarely do they rent a big truck and go slaloming through crowds at the beach. While firing guns out the windows at police.

    Speaking of illegal immigrants: the Pew Hispanic Center said there were 12 million of them in 2005 and they were still arriving at the rate, allegedly, of a million a year. So that would make, doing the math that even OFD can manage, 23 million of them here today. Knowing how the State, the MSM, and various quasi-official organizations routinely LIE to us about this stuff, I’d speculate that it’s more like 30-40 million, or roughly a tenth of our current alleged population. We had, as citizens, zero input as to this ongoing invasion. And our government facilitated it and by failing to secure our borders and our national sovereignty, abdicated its responsibilities and rule over us. They do so again when they will not protect peaceful convention delegates and demonstrators.

    And now they plan to import more millions from the horrific shit-hole Sandbox regions, the vast majority of whom are adherents of a political slavery and death cult.

    It is almost as if our political leaders wanted to destroy the country and its citizens.

    But none dare call it treason.

  10. brad says:

    “It is hilarious watching/reading the MSM trying to cover for the Nice terrorist. “

    The UK media seems to have no problems calling him an Islamic terrorist.

    Anyhow, the debate about whether or not he was actually religious is beside the point. He comes from an Islamic culture (Tunisia), and that would seem to be sufficient. When Switzerland had piles of muslim immigrants from former Yugoslavia, we also had a surge in certain types of criminality. It wasn’t driven by religion so much as by the stupid macho culture: let’s molest girls in the school toilet, let’s race through town at 100mph, let’s start fist fights with random strangers, etc.. It’s taken a couple of decades for this to finally start calming down.

    Integration works if you give it time, but you have to force it, on all levels. A recent example: a couple of teenage muslim girls recently applied for Swiss passports. The girls have refused to participate in the (required) mixed-gender swimming instruction in school. So the canton said “you clearly aren’t integrated, no passport”. Some years ago – very controversial at the time – Switzerland also voted to prohibit the construction of minarets. You can have a mosque, but no prayer tower in the Islamic style.

  11. Robert Bruce Thompson says:

    “rarely do they rent a big truck and go slaloming through crowds at the beach. While firing guns”

    Or shouting that allahu akbar shit while doing so.

  12. lynn says:

    They already deal with the occasional severe winter storm and infrequent tornadoes in the area, but they don’t live in an area subject to hurricanes or earthquakes.

    Is there any such place in the USA ? I have seen hurricanes end up in Kansas or somewhere else in the midwest and drop 30 inches of rain on unsuspecting people. A Cat 5 hurricane will go anywhere it wants to.

    And the potential for earthquakes seems to grow by the day. We are having earthquakes all over Texas and Oklahoma nowadays, I blame the new ultra high pressure (4,000+ psia) injection wells.

  13. lynn says:

    Speaking of illegal immigrants: the Pew Hispanic Center said there were 12 million of them in 2005 and they were still arriving at the rate, allegedly, of a million a year. So that would make, doing the math that even OFD can manage, 23 million of them here today. Knowing how the State, the MSM, and various quasi-official organizations routinely LIE to us about this stuff, I’d speculate that it’s more like 30-40 million, or roughly a tenth of our current alleged population. We had, as citizens, zero input as to this ongoing invasion. And our government facilitated it and by failing to secure our borders and our national sovereignty, abdicated its responsibilities and rule over us. They do so again when they will not protect peaceful convention delegates and demonstrators.

    We have had 65 million legal and illegal immigrants into the USA in the last 20 years. This is freaking crazy. I cannot remember where I saw that number but it so shocked me that I remember it well.
    http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/census-record-51-million-immigrants-in-8-years-will-account-for-82-of-u.s.-growth/article/2563463

  14. Robert Bruce Thompson says:

    We live in an area not subject to hurricanes or earthquakes.

  15. lynn says:

    “Potential enemy”, my (pale) ass. The Daystar is my sworn enemy, and one day soon I shall smite it.

    I vote that you go study that bad boy up close. The Daystar is the only functioning nuclear fusion reactor in the Solar System. We need to figure out how to clone it in much, much, much smaller entities for a future of infinite energy for the human race.

  16. Nick Flandrey says:

    Doesn’t matter what he WAS doing. Even the biggest sinner gets into heaven if he martyrs himself while killing unbelievers on jihad. Kind of a do over, get out of jail free card, and winning lottery ticket all in one.

    N

  17. Nick Flandrey says:

    I was at my bank yesterday and there was not one other white English speaker. 20+ Hispanics and me. Stores are the same way. 30-40 million.

  18. Robert Bruce Thompson says:

    I saw a Hispanic once in Sparta.

  19. lynn says:

    I was at my bank yesterday and there was not one other white English speaker. 20+ Hispanics and me. Stores are the same way. 30-40 million.

    Most of the whites have moved to the third ring (The Grand Parkway) around Houston. Or back inside the first ring (I-610) into very expensive areas (homes well over $500,000). There are three million people who are mostly Hispanic or Asian living between the first ring and the third ring. And the Asians are now moving to the third ring in a hurry.

  20. Robert Bruce Thompson says:

    Is it time to get out?

  21. Nick Flandrey says:

    Prime earning years and this is where her job is.

    N

  22. Nick Flandrey says:

    Most of the time, we aren’t IN the neighborhood. We do most of our shopping, banking, etc online. It’s clear that this is not the nation it wss even 10 years ago.

    Nick

    Btw, I’ve spent most of my adult life in heavily Hispanic border states. It was never like this.

  23. Dave Hardy says:

    You can tell me to bugger off, Mr. nick, but are youse maybe thinking of at some point getting out of there, like looking at other areas not as vulnerable to whatever? I would ask Mr. Lynn the same, but he’s kind of stuck, too, for other reasons. And I know full well why my siblings won’t get out; their spouses won’t let them, and their occupations are fairly transferable, too.

    We all know that with a country this big and with mostly open borders we’re gonna see some changes over a couple of generations but our political leaders have taken it and blown it up geometric orders of magnitude, all comers, no qualifications, no hassles, no vetting, for all practical purposes, despite what they’re telling us. What other country or empire has ever done this voluntarily in human history and survived?

  24. Nick Flandrey says:

    Yes I’d like some property further out, with outbuildings! It’s her commute though. Few more years and we’ll be set. We paid off this house, will pay off the rental, and then some retreat property is possible.

    Maybe even earlier, if business is good….

    It’s on the list in other words, but not yet a priority. Can’t save our way to money, no matter how I work it, need to keep making it while we can. And that means keeping her happy and productive.

    Nick

  25. Dave Hardy says:

    “Few more years and we’ll be set.”

    I hope and pray we all have a few more years, but it doesn’t look good.

    We should know more over the next several months.

  26. Robert Bruce Thompson says:

    Do you have family/friends at a reasonable distance?

  27. Nick Flandrey says:

    Not really. Hence the consentration on bugging in. It is a major propping gap, but one I suspect is far more common than having some place to go. Long term, major change, I’ve got a possibility in Michigan that needs stocking. Otherwise, there are a couple of desperation choices, of varying utility.

    Nick

  28. Nick Flandrey says:

    Btw, posting from my phone, so may be some auto correct weirdness.

    N

  29. Robert Bruce Thompson says:

    Geez, Nick. We’re 200 miles closer to you than Michigan is.

  30. Nick Flandrey says:

    Well yeah, there would have to be radiation or the South turned into a superfund site for that to be a real fall back, but it’s good for when visiting family in the upper Midwest. No good choices for visiting family near the Hub of the World. In Florida, I’ve got the family of an emergency Management pro as backup. At home, there are a couple of get out of Houston choices, but more in the sense of waypoints in a journey than endpoints.

    Needs fixing. Hope we get the time.

    Nick

    I

  31. Robert Bruce Thompson says:

    Oh, I think you have time, barring a Black Swan event.

    I’d be very nervous living in a major population center, as you and Lynn do, but then I’m a nervous sort of guy.

  32. Nick Flandrey says:

    There are much worse places near Houston. Anything East is in the hurricane zone and evac becomes much more difficult. I’m on the west side, have several routes to choose from and am ahead of about 1 million or more folks. There’s not much dense humanity West of me.

    Our very close in is ok, not great, but our subdivision has one of the lowest crime rates in Houston metro.

    For anything except leaving for a long time, I feel ok. Not great, but ok.

    I’ll feel a lot better with a retreat property, but actually living any great distance from where we are currently is unlikely. At least a retreat would give us that 1-2 hour distant place to stock and equip.

    N

  33. Dave Hardy says:

    Not Buck Owens’s or Merle Haggard’s Bakersfield:

    http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-14-shot-bakersfield-20160716-snap-story.html#

    Yo, foolz, BLM.

    Where Obola and Cankles now, to yak about gun control again? Crickets.

  34. dkreck says:

    Well no it’s not like it used to be but then it’s a whole different culture at work…

    http://www.turnto23.com/news/breaking-news/14-people-shot-at-party-in-south-bakersfield

    A disagreement broke out and as the party began to disperse suspects drove by in a car and started shooting. KCSO says at least two different guns were used to fire at the crowd. KCSO says people in the crowd fired back.

    KCSO says 14 people were hit, including two who suffered critical injuries. At least one person was flown to a Fresno hospital.

    The Sheriff’s Office says they believe there are people who were at the party who know who the suspects are, but are not cooperating.

    The suspects are believed to be black and between the ages of 17-19 years old.

    No arrests have been made.

  35. Dave Hardy says:

    “The Sheriff’s Office says they believe there are people who were at the party who know who the suspects are, but are not cooperating.”

    Yo, dat’s ’cause “snitches get stitches…”

    “… it’s a whole different culture at work…”

    No chit. And we used to think the Hatfield-McCoy thang was bad nooz.

  36. MrAtoz says:

    I can’t be bothered with this BLM nonsense. Bingo starts in 20 minutes.

  37. Rick H says:

    Mr. Atoz: Bingo Lives Matter more?

    heh

  38. Dave Hardy says:

    “Bingo starts in 20 minutes.”

    Yo, fool, we gon put a day o’ rage on yo bingo card!

    But yo, we digs yo crazy avatar, homes!

  39. MrAtoz says:

    Bingo is yuuuuuge!

    tRump 2016!

  40. lynn says:

    You can tell me to bugger off, Mr. nick, but are youse maybe thinking of at some point getting out of there, like looking at other areas not as vulnerable to whatever? I would ask Mr. Lynn the same, but he’s kind of stuck, too, for other reasons. And I know full well why my siblings won’t get out; their spouses won’t let them, and their occupations are fairly transferable, too.

    The cost to move us and office would be incredible. We live in a $450K house and work in a million dollar property that we own personally. Selling both would be easy but I figure at least 10% change out costs. Finding the equivalent of both fifty miles out would be difficult in El Campo, etc. And my daughter needs the doctors here in the Houston area. So, we are not moving. But, we are 20 miles further out than Mr. Nick.

    My parents live 110 miles southwest of here. So, we do have a bug out place in a town of 14,000. In fact, we bugged out there during the recovery for Hurricane Ike bck in 2008.

    I still see a long slow slide into dystopia. But nothing like South Africa or Rhodesia. But yes, there could be a black swan event.

  41. lynn says:

    Totally awesome 3D look at a house for sale. I know how they built the model but the dollhouse view (lower left icon) is freaking incredible:
    http://www.6302bridlewood.info/

    Here is the house listing:
    http://www.har.com/6302-Bridlewood-Dr/sale_99545314

  42. MrAtoz says:

    Sweet digs. If it was on 25 acres, I’d snap it up with my bing winnings. They’re yuuuuge!

    tRump pEnce 2016!

  43. Spook says:

    “That’s everything you need, including an alternative to your toilets? If so, you’re probably already in the 99.9th percentile.”

    Cut the bottom out of a five-gallon bucket. Get one of the toilet seats
    that fits that bucket (not all fit), dig a small deep hole (not too deep;
    stay in live soil for good processing). Make sure you stabilize the
    bucket over the hole and be careful about the bucket folding under
    you. Dig the hole(s) in advance of urgent need!
    Bucket can still be used (very carefully) with a bag, if necessary.

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