09:56 – More work on science kits today.
Dave Hardy posted this query in yesterday’s comments, and I thought I’d answer it here.
The latest Woodpile Report:
http://www.woodpilereport.com/html/index-438.htm
Chock-full of good stuff, as usual. He first mentions using his FoodSaver and storing a bunch of stuff in quart Mason jars. Anyone else here do this and/or recommend it? How long does the process take to, say, fill a dozen jars with whatever, flour or baking mix, for instance?
One of the selling points he brought up was how much space is saved once it’s all outta the boxes and bags.
Far be it from me to second-guess any prepper, but I don’t think this is a good solution for most people. To the plus, canning jars are rodent-proof. But the minuses far outweigh the pluses for almost anyone. As it happens, I just had two dozen quart wide-mouth Ball jars delivered from Walmart yesterday. I bought them at the best price around, and they were still $0.75 each. One pound, give or take, will fit in each quart jar. That’s pretty expensive storage for bulk staples. Compare that to recycled PET bottles at $0.00 per pound, or even the one-gallon 7-mil foil-laminate Mylar bags from LDS on-line at about $0.40 each. A one-gallon bag stores at least four pounds and often five or six pounds of a bulk staples. That translates to $0.10 per pound or less.
As to using storage space more efficiently, I’m not sure how he arrived at that conclusion. I just measured a case of 12 one-quart Ball jars. It’s 16.5″x12.5″x7.5″, or about 0.9 cubic feet. Call it 6.7 gallons. So, 12 quart jars, three gallons’ worth, occupies more than twice that amount of cubic. If he’s storing 10 cases, that’s 67 gallons of cubic to store 30 gallons of product. In that same 67 gallons of cubic, I’m sure I could fit 60 gallons of product in Mylar bags. I’m sure the problem is that the Mason jars are round, which wastes cubic. So perhaps he’s talking about a lot of stuff that was originally packed in even more cubic-wasteful containers.
On my most recent walmart.com order, I received a #10 can of Augason Farms potato shreds. It cost $8.24, and includes 23 ounces of the product, which comes to $5.73 per pound. That’s a lot for potatoes, but remember they’re dehydrated. I’m going to test them by rehydrating 100 grams of the product in the refrigerator overnight and then weighing the rehydrated result. My guess is that the 100 grams of dehydrated product will rehydrate to 400 or 500 grams. Call it a pound. If so, that 23 ounces would reconstitute to about 6.5 pounds of raw potatoes, at about $0.88 per pound. That compares favorably with products like Ore-Ida frozen hashbrowns, at about $1.50 per pound.
I also pulled a can of Augason Farms Cheese Blend Powder out of the freezer and put it in the kitchen with the potato shreds. At $16.57 for a 52-ounce (1.47 kilo) can, its price also compares pretty favorably with similar processed cheese products like Cheez-Whiz, at $4.00 for a 15-ounce jar. The 10.75 cups of powder in that #10 can reconstitute to about 14 cups of cheese dip, roughly equivalent to seven 15-ounce jars of Cheez-Whiz. Using less of the powder, you can instead make about 21.5 cups of cheese sauce for casseroles, pasta, and so on.
I got an interesting email yesterday from someone who thought it was stupid that, if things got really bad, I planned to share our stored food with Colin. Apparently, this guy had read One Second After, where the protagonist lets his dog starve to death, and thought this was a fine idea. The guy also pointed out that every pound of food we fed to our dog would be one less pound we’d have for ourselves, and asked if I’d really let starving children die while giving food to a dog.
I told the guy he was a speciesist, and that dogs had as much right to eat as people do, which is to say none. But we feed ourselves and family first, and Colin is part of our family. If nothing else, he’s an essential part of our planning. So we plan to feed the three of us, Barbara’s sister and brother-in-law if they show up, and my brother and sister-in-law if they show up. Some random starving child doesn’t affect our priorities. There may be lots of those, and we can’t feed them all.
Plus “Who’s a good boy? Yes! You’re a GOOD BOY!” Colin is a security asset for the home base and property.
And to be blunt, you can always eat him later…
n
Dogs are family, of course. More to the point, dogs are useful. They’ve been human companions for millennia, and this isn’t because they’re cute and cuddly – that came later.
Granted, most household pets don’t have a lot of useful skills, but that’s only because we haven’t needed them to. In a disaster scenario, we would teach them what they can do to help, and they would willingly learn. Many would become watch dogs. Terriers would revert to being ratters. Others would protect livestock.
If you want to be cold blooded about it: you would let your dog starve, just like you would let your toolbox rust in the rain.
Well I like dogs and children. However, dogs are usually better behaved.
As a family with a dog, I’ve given this unpleasant subject some thought. Everyone should.
And you should give some thought to whether or not you will feed your useless drunken violent brother in law if he shows up. Will you take his kids in and send him packing? What about the neighbor’s kid? Does it matter if they are orphaned?
Part of serious planning for serious events is to look at those hard questions in advance, while you have the time. Your answer now may be different from later, but at least you have given it some thought.
nick
Thanks and tip of of the hat to RBT for the updated info and calculations. The storage here at present is canned goods and moving into root cellar vegetables. Once we have enough bulk staples, I’ll start repacking them and probably go the Mylar bag route.
Another sunny day; doing errands and boning up for yet another job interview.
BTW, there are a LOT of hard questions. Most likely, none of us will ever end up in a ‘lifeboat’ type situation, so is it worth the mental anguish to think these things thru? I think YES, to a certain degree, because by looking at extremes we also reveal truths about lesser things.
Would you die to protect your child? Someone else’s child?
Would you KILL to protect your child? Someone else’s child?
Would you kill to preserve your own life? (if you are a gun owner and can’t answer yes to this, you might want some other form of defense, or just give up)
Would you eat a pet? Someone else’s pet?
Do you use all your medical supplies on someone you don’t know? Someone who won’t make it anyway? What if it’s a child?
Would you (like the escaping jew in Schindler’s List) smother a crying baby to keep your group from being discovered and killed?
Do you understand the concept of triage and have you thought thru the consequences? Can you do it?
See, lots of questions and that just brushes the surface.
nick
BTW, many of the reasons to prep boil down to trying to avoid EVER having to answer some of these questions….
@RBT: +1,000,000,000 for knowing the value Colin.
I respect all life in proper perspective; Democans, Liberals, Progressives, Islamists, BLM huggers, “greens”, and like ilk rate below pond scum and are at the bottom of the who gets fed scale. I wouldn’t feed their carcasses to my cats, it might make them sick. They do burn well though.
Hope that brings my micro-aggression average back up.
From the Poisoned Chalice Department:
https://charleshughsmith.blogspot.rs/2016/08/could-deep-state-be-sabotaging-hillary.html
We shall see.
No need to feed Colin yourselves – you can just tell him to take out one of the Black Angas squirrels down at the back fence whenever he’s feeling hungry. He might even share with you.
I don’t store long term in vac Mason jars, I just created an unexpected test with my flour. I typically store coffee, leftover crackers, powdered stuff, etc in jars. Anything that is hard to vac in a bag (although coffee beans vac great in a bag). They’ll get used up and aren’t for prepping. It keeps the bugs out and freshness in.
I prep for my dogs. Who wouldn’t?
The Choom Gang lives on!
Here’s a short review of DEET and it’s effect on different types of “plastic” gloves. Possible some good info for the digital kit bag.
I tried similar douse and wait tests on several types of disposable gloves — they seemed to me to be the best hope to keeping my palms and fingers clear of bad stuff. Surgical-style nitrile, vinyl and latex gloves along with cheapo food-service gloves got several drops of 97% DEET and sat on a shelf for several days. (I thought re-usability would be important in areas as remote as I was planning to be in.) The nitrile was severely weakened, the vinyl looked like a rocket went through it and the latex fared nicely, though it was also weakened. The food-grade cheapie, of HDPE, showed no effect at all, after even a week of standing drops of DEET directly on it.
“The Choom Gang lives on!”
The videos have been taken down now, but very early this morning there was full motion full exposure video (perfectly clear, not blurred like the linked pictures) of Malia taking so long drags and twerking while pulling her panties and tube top up and down. Not an impressive performance.
Yeah, DEET is a solvent for many plastics.
dogs had as much right to eat as people do
Plus they are your early warning system with the ability to hear what you cannot, and see what you cannot.
I guess that Jefferson guy was inciting violence…
http://wiki.monticello.org/mediawiki/index.php/The_tree_of_liberty…(Quotation)
“Not an impressive performance.”
I always get a kick outta the comments following these things; one person bitched that it was rayciss to show this stuff and she be goin’ to Harvard, where’ y’all be goin’? And she beautiful and what about the Bush daughters gettin’ drunk, etc., etc. And “shut up.”
Funny as chit. If my parents were the Obolas or the Klintons, I’d be doing speedballs all day and staying drunk as a lord all the time. What else could ya do? You can’t run away and the years go by too slow until you’re 18 and “emancipated.” (Of course after age 40 or 50 or so the years go by in a FLASH.)
“I guess that Jefferson guy was inciting violence…”
I know the quotation but it looks like that page took out the actual quote and now gives us a little mini-lecture on Chicago Manual of Style guidelines. Thanks!
Tommy was defending necessary violence when you’ve run out of all other alternatives and walked the walk like he talked the talk, as did the other Signers. We don’t have ANYONE now of the caliber of these men.
Of course my comment was directed at democratic hysteria not the spouting from the ego attached to a mouth.
“Trump Prediction Update”
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/148740944816/trump-prediction-update
Scott Adams is an optimist.
I got an interesting email yesterday from someone who thought it was stupid that, if things got really bad, I planned to share our stored food with Colin. Apparently, this guy had read One Second After, where the protagonist lets his dog starve to death, and thought this was a fine idea. The guy also pointed out that every pound of food we fed to our dog would be one less pound we’d have for ourselves, and asked if I’d really let starving children die while giving food to a dog.
So are the parents of these starving children storing food for the potential event ?
Scott Adams is an optimist.
This pretty much sums it up:
My personal bias is that I don’t think any 70ish-year old person (Clinton or Trump) should be president. You wouldn’t hire a 70-year old into any other type of job that requires high energy, mental flexibility, and a possible eight-years of service. Why would we do it for the most important job in the land? And keep in mind that we haven’t seen detailed medical records from either oldster.
+1,000,000
And you should give some thought to whether or not you will feed your useless drunken violent brother in law if he shows up.
Depends if he, my brother, is drunk or high. Otherwise, he will work. And work hard. But, he is a drunk. And, yes, he is a mean drunk.
Will you take his kids in and send him packing? What about the neighbor’s kid? Does it matter if they are orphaned?
Tough, tough, tough questions.
And BTW, dogs are definitely good security assets. The first dog in the “One Second After” book was killed by an 3 am intruder bent on stealing their food if I remember correctly.
We crate our dog at night because we have always crated her. But her wandering freely around the house at night might be better for security.
Our wiener dog sleeps in the bed with MrsAtoz and I. He’s 17 1/2# and takes up some room.
lol! I just got the “the IRS is filing a lawsuit against you…” vm on the home Ooma phone. Why doesn’t Obola track these guys down and “drone” them. A couple of Hellfires up their asses would cut down on all spam.
“And keep in mind that we haven’t seen detailed medical records from either oldster.”
Here is how the lefty MSM works: we just saw a bunch vids, pics and historical facts on HRC’s various medical mishaps, amirite? So the Dems and the MSM start screeching that we need to see cheeto-head’s records like RIGHT NOW! The Maoists at Salon chimed in with that, too.
If Cankles craps a load into the giant diapers that she has to wear under that Mao pantsuit tonight, there will be a furor tomorrow morning that we need to see a stool sample from cheeto-head.
The Klinton Krime Family skates again.
FBI Director James Comey didn’t recommend a Justice Department criminal investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server and her mishandling of classified information. However, the FBI did recommend a DOJ probe of the Clinton Foundation, and it reportedly went … nowhere:
“However, the FBI did recommend a DOJ probe of the Clinton Foundation, and it reportedly went … nowhere:”
Cue up Dem/MSM response thus: “That’s a blatant Republican LIE! The Foundation has been completely cleared by DOJ! We need to see a complete and full investigation of the Trump Towers right NOW!”
Just another shocking nooz story that leaves us out here just totally gobsmacked, eh? I hope that guy is right about the Deep State about to sabotage her and get her outta there, but so far it doesn’t look good.
The other thing is that he and others are correct in that we all know out here pretty much what is going on now, thanks largely to the internet and alternative radio. And we’re getting really tired of it and angry. This is likely to continue building for a good long while and when it blows, it’s gonna be the real shit.
And right on time, too:
https://westernrifleshooters.wordpress.com/2016/08/10/europes-last-chance/
He makes sense right up until he exhorts us all to vote…because…Brexit. It WORKED! Yeah, the vote got done and everyone lost their minds but will the UK’s political leadership actually go THROUGH WITH IT??? Or will they tinker and finagle and screw around and delay it until peeps forget in light of amazing new nooz stories? We shall see. We will also see if it’s not already too late.
Then we have the German bitch in the video with her tired sullen eyes that show impatience for why the fuck we aren’t on the same page as her, i.e., blaming some guy who shouted at the murderer, and blaming whoever might have theoretically bullied the murdering scumbag, etc., etc. So she’s gonna use the German legal system to stir the shit. No doubt Commissar Merkel will decorate her and appoint her to a high office any day now.
Apparently, Cankles can’t stand on a box without two people helping her.
A photo from April shows now-Democratic Party presidential nominee Hillary Clinton being firmly held up by a man on her right side to keep her from falling over as she addressed an overflow crowd during a campaign stop in Los Angeles, while a man on her left side is seen urgently extending his arm to aid in propping up Clinton. Obscured behind Clinton is a third person whose extended hand can be seen reaching out to steady her left arm.
No doubt Commissar Merkel will decorate her and appoint her to a high office any day now.
Mr. Chuck might be available for Reichsleiter. Maybe he can solve the crimmigration problem.
“Apparently, Cankles can’t stand on a box without two people helping her.”
She has a history of falling down and her balance is probably all screwed up. That, plus mini-seizures that we KNOW about, the persistent cough, etc., and it’s pretty clear she’s a medical basket case in terms of being qualified for ANY high-level job. Yet the media is now howling for cheeto-head’s medical records. Typical redirection for the masses.
“Maybe he can solve the crimmigration problem.”
I’m just gonna go way out on a limb here and say that the immigration problem in the western European countries is now past solving; they opened up Pandora’s box and hordes of demons flew out and now live among them. Now our own “leaders” intend to do the same thing to us here but they have evidently not reckoned on how it might not work as smoothly as it did in Germany and France, if you can call pending civil wars smooth.
I point out up here that the obvious vast majority of the invading hordes are young angry and sullen males of fighting age and not poor suffering women and children and I get annoyance and crickets. With the fems, all they gotta see is one image of a musloid kid being beaten up in Iowa or another musloid toddler washed up on a beach and those images are the only ones that stay in their heads forever and preclude any others from entering or staying for every long. Including, apparently, the countless rabid assaults and murders of European girls and women going on, or previously, the Afghan women taken out and shot or stoned by jeering mobs in the Suck over many years. Does. Not. Compute. Apparently.
But bring up the “glass ceiling” or the phony disparity in pay between the sexes and they’re ALL OVER IT.
And of course cheeto-head is the Anti-Christ and will blow the earth apart in a thermonuclear war after first massacring women and children. Which is, of course, what the creature wants and intends to do, eventually, if she lives much longer, which is doubtful.
See how that works now? It’s called “projection,” a favorite commie tactic. Take whatever terrible shit your candidate is doing or saying and project it onto the other one and say it loud enough and often enough and it will sway the mobs.
You won’t see this on the MSM:
http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/08/09/wages-shock-drop-americans/
Edit: Added:
Just one example why Idaho is not the prepper paradise that some would like you to believe:
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/08/10/twin-falls-refugee-rape-special-report-refugees/
“You won’t see this on the MSM:”
Yeah, and that’s for peeps who still GET wages. Some of us out here prefer to look at real life instead of the MSM rumpswabs. And a LOT of us have gotten used to being screwed over by corporate and gummint managements over the last couple of decades, too. That anger and bitterness just keeps building and this will not end well.
“Just one example why Idaho is not the prepper paradise that some would like you to believe:”
Known full well to many of us already, but again it’s the damn cities. In any case, the various state gummints and the Feds are very busy bringing in Turd World replacements for Murkan workers and have been doing it for a long time now, on TOP of all the jobs they’ve offshored to foreign countries, esp. Mexico, Slovakia, India and Bangladesh. We’re being replaced, and I guess the end game also involves taking our property and hunting us down, and what’s even funnier is that the people organizing all this are the same race and ethnicities as US! i.e., OTHER Americans have betrayed us and are selling us down the river. National sovereignty means nothing to them nor does citizenship, and such outmoded values as honor, integrity and responsibility to defend the country.
The end-end game is a world government with no borders and a tiny class of imperial rulers and their minions who serve them. You don’t even need to find a religious angle in any of this or invoke the machinations of the Prince of this world; it’s mainly a massive secular enterprise conducted by people of no faith at all except their own diabolical and narcissistic need for power and wealth.
You won’t see this on the MSM:
http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/08/09/wages-shock-drop-americans/
Obola’s open borders at work. This is all part of the plan, nothing to see here.
http://cis.org/all-employment-growth-since-2000-went-to-immigrants
“Government data show that since 2000 all of the net gain in the number of working-age (16 to 65) people holding a job has gone to immigrants (legal and illegal). This is remarkable given that native-born Americans accounted for two-thirds of the growth in the total working-age population. Though there has been some recovery from the Great Recession, there were still fewer working-age natives holding a job in the first quarter of 2014 than in 2000, while the number of immigrants with a job was 5.7 million above the 2000 level.”
But, but, but $15 minimum “living wage” with 80hr/wk promised by Odooshnozzle!
lol! Crash and burn me pretties.
See my previous post, amigos; we are being replaced. Clear as a bell, ain’t it? They’re being brought in to REPLACE us. So where are we going and what are we gonna do? Probably half of us will STFU and sit back and suck down the gummint bennies and become an even bigger FSA. Until the money finally runs out, that is. The other half will be in re-education camps or prison or shot, looks like. Think I’m exaggerating or just funnin’ here? Think again. Look at the history from other countries. At least that’s probably their intentions but they fail to recognize that it’s a far different population that is armed to the teeth and getting more pissed off by the day. With a LOT of Anglo-Saxons, Germans and Celts in the mix, and check out THOSE histories if you’ve a mind. War is one of our favorite things, evidently, and we’re very good at it.
Is this the next step in Obuttwad’s National Police Force? A city now cannot police itself.
Baltimore’s top law enforcement and political leaders on Wednesday vowed a sweeping overhaul of the city Police Department after a searing rebuke of the agency’s practices, which the Justice Department said regularly discriminated against black residents in poor communities.
Re: Dogs. I grew up on a small family farm. When I was two, my mother chased off a pack of feral dogs that were threatening me as I played outside. She used a pre-war Belgian Browning auto-5 12ga to “scare” them. After that we had two farm dogs to protect the livestock and property. I like working dogs, they earn their keep and never want in the house. I have a deep dislike of animals in the house. So of course the wife has 4 cats and two dogs as house pets. I swear, I could keep the house clean without the constant flow of animal hair and dirt they track in. Sigh. Love my wife but HATE indoor, useless, animals.
“So of course the wife has 4 cats and two dogs as house pets. I swear, I could keep the house clean without the constant flow of animal hair and dirt they track in. Sigh. Love my wife but HATE indoor, useless, animals.”
One dawg and three cats here, and yeah, the hair is EVERYWHERE constantly. Impossible to keep up with it. Today I brought a sport coat back from the cleaners and upstairs it fell out of the plastic bag onto the floor that I’d swept earlier and when I picked it up there was hair all over it. Ten bucks shot for nothing. But the dawg will bark if there is any unusual activity near the house and the cats take care of the rodents and sometimes birds.
“A city now cannot police itself.”
Ballmore is a lost city like Detroit now, and a few others around the country and meanwhile we’re seeing more Federalization, for all intents and purposes, of more and more police departments nationwide. The DOJ can just step in, take a look, say the place is fucked and then take over law enforcement functions. And that probably means a massive Federalized army of police, modeled in part on the old German SA brownshirts, the various Soviet organs, and the musloid morality thugs.
I wonder if Hillary’s staff got the message this time ?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3726250/Enemies-Hillary-Bill-say-27-year-old-murder-victim-Seth-Rich-suspected-leaking-DNC-emails-belongs-Clinton-Death-List-people-ties-couple-died-time.html
“‘There had been a struggle. His hands were bruised, his knees are bruised, his face is bruised, and yet he had two shots to his back, and yet they never took anything,’ his mother Mary told Washington’s NBC affiliate.”
If you talk, you die.
“If you talk, you die.”
They have a very long trail of corpses behind them, going all the way back to their days in Arkansas and the drug-smuggling and dealing that went on at that time. While she routinely deducted their used underwear for tax purposes and chiseled the hell out of the state’s taxpayers and treated the state cops like total dog shit, which she later unleashed on the SS people at the WH.
She is one evil bitch-on-wheels and most folks know all about this stuff but many will vote for her anyway because Trump “scares the shit outta me” etc., etc. I point out that cheeto-head hasn’t killed anybody yet or sold state secrets or weapons to our enemies, but then I get “I don’t wanna talk about this stuff.”
So we cover our ears and go Nyah, nyah, nyah, and maybe the problematic info will disappear.
I swear there’s a lotta peeps out here who just will not believe until they hear the gunshots down the street or see Mr. Lynn’s APC coming up the block with guys yelling through a bullhorn to turn in all our chit.
They won’t believe it then either. They won’t believe it could happen here. They won’t believe it could happen to THEM, and they won’t believe it IS happening. They’ll get on the bus.
Don’t get on the bus.
nick
How about if your name is Gus?
“Don’t get on the bus.”
Or the train.
Even if your name is Shane. Or Wayne. Or Zane.
It must be some kind of libtard or prog mental deformity where reality only makes rare appearances, such as when one of the profs back at Rutgers in the day, teaching Feminist Theory in Literature, said that she had to admit when she got on a plane that male engineers had designed and built it and chances were good that males were flying it. But otherwise everything else is up for grabs.
And for one last batch of late-night boffo laffs:
http://thepeoplescube.com/peoples-blog/muslim-roulette-like-russian-roulette-but-with-six-bullets-t18343.html
From the Numbers Game Department:
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/obama-has-collected-19966110000000-taxes-incurred-8795689333049-debt
A lotta peeps think this is real money. As if.
It’s a gigantic clusterfuck mess but the lefties’ answer, of course, is to double down on it:
http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/291056-next-president-faces-possible-obamacare-meltdown
Vermont may just bail out of it entirely, depending on who becomes gov. The taxpayers here have already lost $2 million and the attitude of the government is basically “fuck you.” We’ll see about that. Thus the importance of collecting IDs and profiles of all the major players.
How about if your name is Gus?
Just make a new plan Sam.
Just make a new plan, Stan. FIFY.
All together now:
You don’t need to be coy, Roy…
Now let’s start the countdown to oblivion leading to the November cluster truck:
99 bottles of beer on the wall, 99 bottles of beer, take one down and pass it around…
Oh Lordy, we used to sing that stupid jingle on the skool buses back in the day…thanks for the memories…lol. Around the same time, Simon & Garfunkel songs like “Sound of Silence” were on the radio.