09:14 – It was 39F (4C) when when I took Colin out around 0700 this morning, but it’s now warmed up to 57F (14C). Barbara and I are working all day at home on science kit stuff today.
When Lori delivered the mail and picked up a shipment yesterday morning, I asked her what she thought about the new TrumpCare proposal, which basically amounts to “if you like your ObamaCare you can keep your ObamaCare.” She thought I was kidding. When she realized Trump really didn’t intend to get rid of ObamaCare, she said that was the last straw and things were likely to get very bad very quickly. I agreed with her, of course, and asked how she was doing on prepping in general and food storage in particular.
She said she’d repackaged pasta, rice, etc. in Mylar bags with oxygen absorbers, but that she had nowhere near enough stored. Of course, as she said, she also has many tons of beef on the hoof, “if I can hold onto it”. We talked in some detail about what she should do next, and I later sent her the following email to reiterate and expand upon some of what we talked about.
Hi, Lori
I know I ran a lot by you this morning, so I figured I’d summarize it in writing. Here’s what I’d recommend you buy, assuming you intend to feed two adults. This doesn’t include anything for your dogs. I store the same stuff for Colin as for us, figuring him at 70 pounds to be half an adult.
I don’t know what your long-term food storage totals are currently, but if you’re starting without much I’d suggest you target a one-month supply to start. Expand that to three months’ worth, then six, and eventually 12 or more.
Water – At least one gallon per person/day (shoot for 3 gallons/person/day)
You have a well, which is great as long as you have power, and a year-round spring, which is excellent. Still, water is critical, so it makes sense to store at least some water to give you a buffer. I’d recommend you start by storing enough bottled water to keep yourself, Casey, and your dogs for at least one week, at 3 gallons per day. That totals 42 gallons for you and Casey, plus whatever you need for the dogs. We buy Costco bottle water in gallons at $3.60/six-pack, so enough for you and Casey for week would cost about $25. And in a real emergency, you could stretch that to maybe two or three weeks.
Assuming your spring water is not contaminated by agricultural chemicals, you can count that as your second backup supply (assuming you can’t pump well water). Unless you’re completely sure that the spring water is not biologically-contaminated, you’ll need the means to micro-filter it (as with that Sawyer mini filter you have) or chemically treat it. Many sources recommend using unscented chlorine bleach to disinfect your drinking water, and it’s a good idea to keep an unopened gallon on hand for that. However, the problem with liquid chlorine bleach is that it’s inherently unstable. It breaks down even in a new, sealed bottle. After a year it’s noticeably weaker, and before you know it the concentration is down to nothing. A better alternative is to keep a bottle of dry calcium hypochlorite (pool shock or similar) on hand. If you keep it sealed and dry, it lasts indefinitely.
Carbohydrates – 30 pounds/person/month (360 pounds/person/year)
You can mix this up however you like, but I’d recommend the following per person-month as a starting point. Adjust as you see fit, as long as the total is about 30 pounds/person/month. All of these foods provide about 1,700 calories/pound.
10 pounds of pasta (macaroni, spaghetti, egg noodles, etc.)
8 pounds of white flour (for bread, biscuits, pancakes, etc.)
5 pounds of rice (white rice stores better, but brown rice is good for five years or more)
5 pounds of white sugar (or honey, pancake syrup, etc.)
1 pound of oats
1 pound of corn meal
Protein supplement – at least 5 pounds/person/month (60 pounds/person/year)
Although all of the carbohydrates listed except sugar contain significant amounts of protein, it’s not complete protein because it lacks essential amino acids. You can get these missing amino acids by adding beans, legumes, eggs, meats, etc. to your storage. Beans are the cheapest way to do this, but most people prefer meat, eggs, etc. Note that canned wet beans should be counted as one fifth their weight in dry beans, so while 5 pounds of dry beans suffices for a month, if you’re buying, say, Bush’s Best Baked beans, you’d need 25 one-pound cans of them to equal the five pounds of dry beans.
We keep about 100 pounds of dry beans and lentils in stock for the 4.5 of us, but most of our supplementary protein is in the form of canned meats. Cans of chicken from Costco or Sam’s, Keystone Meats canned ground beef, beef chunks, pork, chicken, turkey, etc. You can order Keystone canned meats from Walmart on-line. A 28-ounce can of most of them costs just over $6. We order them in cases of 12 at a time. They also have 14.5-ounce cans, although they cost more per ounce. They might be better for you if you’re planning to feed only the two of you. The actual shelf life of canned meats, like other canned foods, is indefinite assuming the can is undamaged. Keystone, for example, rates their canned meats at a 5-year shelf life, but in fact they will remain safe and nutritious for much, much longer.
Oils and Fats – at least 1 quart/liter or 2 pounds/person/month (12 quarts/liters/person/year)
Oils and fats do gradually become rancid, but stored in their original bottles and kept in a cool, dark place they last for years without noticeably rancidity. Saturated fats (lard, shortening, etc.) store better than than unsaturated fats. Poly-unsaturated fats have the shortest shelf life.
We store a combination of liquid vegetable and olive oils, lard, shortening, etc. We also keep anything up to 40 pounds of butter in our large freezer. In a long term power outage, we’d clarify that by heating it and separating the butter solids from the clear butter, and then can the clear butter to preserve it.
Dairy – at least 1.5 pounds/person/month (18 pounds/person/year) of dry milk or equivalent
This amount is all for cooking/baking. If you want to drink milk, have it on cereal, etc. you’ll need more. You can buy non-fat dry milk already in #10 cans, or buy it in cardboard boxes from Walmart and repack it yourself. (There’s also a full-fat dry milk called Nestle Nido that’s sold in #10 cans and has a real-world shelf-life of at least a couple of years and probably much longer.) Another alternative is evaporated milk or sweetened condensed milk. For drinking or use on cereal, consider a milk substitute like Augason Farms Morning Moos (dumb name, but by all reports it’s the closest thing to real fresh milk). It comes in #10 cans and has a very long shelf life. It’s mostly non-fat dry milk, but with sugar and other ingredients that make the reconstituted stuff taste close to real milk.
Salt – at least 12 ounces/person/month (9 pounds/person/year)
Buy iodized salt. Sam’s sells 4-pound boxes of Morton’s iodized table salt for about a buck each, so a one-person-year supply is about $2 worth. The shelf life is infinite, so buy a lot. Repackage it in 1- or 2-liter soft drink bottles, canning jars, Mylar bags, or other moisture-proof containers. (You don’t need an oxygen absorber.) After extended storage, the salt may take on a very pale yellow cast. That’s normal. It’s caused by the potassium iodide used to iodize the salt oxidizing to elemental iodine. That’s harmless, does not affect the taste, and still provides the daily requirement of iodine (which the soil around here is very poor in).
Meal Extenders/Cooking Essentials (varies according to your situation)
You can survive on just beans, rice, oil, and salt, but the meals you can make with just those foods will get old after about one day. You should also store items that add flavor and variety to your stored bulk foods. (I consider meat a seasoning, but that’s just me…)
Herbs and spices – buy large Costco/Sam’s jars of the half-dozen or dozen herbs/spices (sperbs?) you like best. In sealed glass/plastic jars they maintain full flavor for many years. Your preferences probably differ from ours, but at a minimum I’d suggest: onion and garlic flakes/powder, cinnamon, thyme, parsley, dill, mustard, rosemary, pepper, cumin, etc.
Sauces and condiments – store your favorite sauces/condiments (or the ingredients to make them). We store spaghetti sauce, alfredo sauce, canned soups, ketchup, mustard, pancake syrup, etc. in quantity. Rather than storing barbecue sauce, we store bulk amounts of the ingredients to make it up on the fly. (See http://www.ttgnet.com/journal/2017/03/04/saturday-4-march-2017/)
Which brings up another issue. You need to plan your meals and figure out how much of what you’ll need to make them. For example, we intend to have a dinner based on that barbecue sauce once every three weeks, or 17 times a year. The recipe makes up a quart or so of sauce, which with a 28-ounce can of Keystone beef chunks or pork or chicken is enough to feed the 4.5 of us. (The buns are just part of our flour storage.) To know how much we’ll need to store to do that for a year in the absence of outside resupply, we just multiply everything by 17.
17 – 28-ounce cans of Keystone canned beef, pork, or chicken
25.5 cups (11+ pounds) of white sugar
25.5 Tbsp (12.75 fluid ounces) of molasses
25.5 cups (204 fluid ounces) of ketchup
8.5 cups (68 fluid ounces) of prepared mustard
8.5 cups (68 fluid ounces) of vinegar
8.5 cups (68 fluid ounces) of water
17 Tbsp (8.5 fluid ounces) of Worcestershire sauce
17 Tbsp (8.5 fluid ounces) of liquid smoke hickory sauce
34 tsp (77 grams or 2.7 ounces) of paprika
34 tsp (194 grams or 6.8 ounces) of salt
25.5 tsp (59 grams or 2.1 ounces) of black pepper
Cooking/Baking Essentials – varies according to your preferences
You’ll almost certainly want to bake bread, biscuits, etc., so keep at least a couple pounds of instant yeast (we use SAF). On the shelf, it’s good for at least a year. In the freezer, indefinitely. You’ll also want baking soda, baking powder, unsweetened cocoa powder, vinegar, lemon juice, vanilla extract—all of which keep indefinitely in their original sealed containers—and possibly things like chocolate chips, raisins and other dried fruits, jams and jellies, etc.
Multi-vitamin tablets/capsules – one per person/day
Contrary to popular opinion, fruits and vegetables aren’t necessary for a nutritious, balanced diet. Still, most people will want to keep a good supply of them. As usual for canned goods, canned fruits and vegetables last a long, long time. We buy cases of a dozen cans each at Costco or Sam’s of corn, green beans, peas, tomatoes, mixed fruit, pineapples, oranges, etc. (Note that pop-top aluminum cans are problematic. Where a traditional steel can will keep foods good indefinitely, the pop-top cans don’t seem to do as good a job. I recommend you stick to traditional cans, and of course that you have at least two manual can openers.)
Give me a call if you need to talk about any of this.
* * * * *
Wow, that’s pretty thorough and detailed.
Only a couple of things I can comment on from experience-
I think the costco canned green beans are some of the worst canned beans out there, both in taste and texture. Almost any can I’ve tried has been better. Conversely, their corn is among the best.
I store peanut oil, and because of the added vitamin E, it is fine several years later, even under my less than ideal storage conditions.
Salt has so many uses besides as a nutrient, I have been stocking boxes of kosher salt, as well as buckets of salt, and iodized cardboard containers. The Kosher salt will absorb moisture into the cardboard box, but this doesn’t seem to have any effect on odor or taste. Looks weird though.
Soy sauce! Opens a whole world of alternative flavors and is cheap.
Curry cubes, like this, https://www.amazon.com/House-Foods-Vermont-Curry-8-1-Ounce/dp/B003V3E6XU are a great way to add flavor. they are compact, and seem to store indefinitely. It’s packaged like a chocolate bar, and you break off cubes as needed. One big bar, 2 cans kirkland chicken, and rice = dinner for 4-8 depending on rice…. Add a can of carrot pieces or peas too… I’ve used this after more than a decade of storage with no noticeable change in flavor.
I stock stuff we don’t normally eat, specifically against appetite fatigue.
I didn’t see any mention of peanut butter, or pb powder.
anyway, I’m gonna start filling gaps.
nick
https://www.amazon.com/Golden-Curry-Sauce-Medium-8-4-Ounce/dp/B0011ULFVG/ another curry
Feeling a bit better today. Starting to taper the cough syrup. I’ve been doing half the dose twice as often to avoid peaks and valleys and it’s been working well. Almost no coughing yesterday. I’ll be stretching the time between doses a bit today. I don’t know if the Tamiflu really works or not, but I do feel a bit better, and it’s still early days. I do get woosy and have to lay down, but not as quickly.
Sold some stuff so I have to pack and ship today too. Thankfully my wife is dropping stuff at UPS for me. I really don’t want to drive like this.
Between being sick and the weather, I’m gonna miss my planting window for most things. I’m gonna plant anyway, but who knows what the result will be.
The farmer is chained to the land.
n
_Frozen: A Stranded Novel (Volume 5)_ by Theresa Shaver
https://www.amazon.com/Frozen-Stranded-Novel-Theresa-Shaver/dp/0988003082/
Book number five of a six book indie young adult post apocalyptic series. I read the trade paperback version, very nice fonts and format. Book number six has not been published yet but is promised.
It has been almost a year since the five nuclear bombs detonated in orbit above North America. Canada, the USA, and Mexico have been devastated. The electrical and communications grids are totally nonfunctional. All computers are dead, including computers in cars. Incidentally, I disagree that the computers in cars will be fried, I think that car computers are very well protected due to their horrific operating conditions.
The teens who made it home from California are in deep winter in central Alberta. But there is food and heating difficulties. And a plague appears in the town population with very limited medicine.
My rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.8 out of 5 stars (19 reviews)
Water – At least one gallon per person/day (shoot for 3 gallons/person/day)
I can validate this number from the former USMC son. On his first trip to Iraq, they got a freighter of Nestle’s 24 bottle cases on pallets delivered to them in Kuwait. The supply officer for the battalion used the formula of 1/2 gallon per Marine per day (1,500 Marines). They ran out of water four ? five ? months into the seven month deployment.
They ended up driving their 7 ton trucks over 100 miles across the desert to the big Army base outside ???. They went in a back gate and bribed a supply sergeant for enough water cases to finish the deployment.
“Donald Trump sends B-52 NUCLEAR BOMBERS to South Korea after North fires missiles at Japan and US warns of ‘overwhelming’ response”
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/3049573/donald-trump-sends-b-52-nuclear-bombers-to-south-korea-after-north-fires-missiles-at-japan-and-us-warns-of-overwhelming-response/
Is Trump going to make it rain over the nork missile sites ?
Don’t the norks have SAMs and interceptor jets ?
I am still feeling unwell. I could do things around the house, I just don’t want to. The high point of my day was my shower. It will take me at least twice as long to do everything, and I’ll make more mistakes because I’m not thinking clearly.
NK has nothing, compared to a carrier group with EWACS support. Their SAM sites, including mobile launchers, will disappear pretty quickly TOT. Their fighters probably wouldn’t get a shot off. The US military isn’t what it once was, but it’d still be–I was going to say Pop Warner, but make that gerbils–against the NFL All Stars.
I note that Trump is sending Marine Corps F-35Bs to South Korea also. I guess that they could soften the radars and SAM sites first.
How do you start prepping if you live in small home or an apartment? I’m thinking specifically about storage space, if that is not obvious.
The B-52 is a bomber. Full Stop. Any bomber can be a nuclear bomber, as can most fighter/bombers. Sheesh, people are stupid.
What the North Koreans do have is an enormous number of heavy artillery pieces. This is very much on the Red Army model, dating back to Trotski. Were they to be all unleashed at more or less the same time, and told to keep firing until they’ve exhausted all their ammo, South Korea could be in a very bad way. They’ve got to have all the targets from the DMZ to the Blue House plotted very well, and counter battery fire would be no easy task with that many tubes in place, dug into the reverse slopes, et cetera.
Don’t the norks have SAMs and interceptor jets ?
My grandfather was an artillery sergeant in Korea and he did the full tour of the peninsula with MacArthur: up, down (Chinese invade — run!), inbetween (post-Inchon landing).
When the Dear Leader started making trouble in the 90s, Grandpa worried most about the North Korean artillery around Seoul. He doubted that the US could take out enough of the North’s gun emplacements before they did serious damage to the capital, where a sizeable chunk of the population lives. His guess was Seoul would be uninhabitable after the first day of fighting but the first 15 minutes would be uglier than then remaining 23 3/4 hours.
During my “trips” to South Korea, the EUSA OPLAN when the NORKs started firing was “RUN AWAY”. All politics that we have units within arty range of the NORKS. Both of my aviation units first order was to redeploy (bugout) to the south.
@josh,
the first thing to do is address the most common threats in your area. Weather related disasters are usually local or regional, help will come in from outside the affected area. that makes you initial goals smaller and simpler.
1 week without leaving your house.
Build up your existing pantry. Use your existing cabinets, closets etc. Cases of water store under beds, or stack as bedside tables, or fill the deepest 8 inches of every cabinet. Same with canned food. If you are in an earthquake area, sealed rubbermaid type tubs OUTSIDE your home are recommended, in case your structure is damaged. Cali has some good info online about that.
Improving your first aid kit doesn’t take much extra space, nor will adding a couple of reference books. A single burner counter top butane stove and a couple cans of butane will fit under the sink easily. So will a small water filter.
Stashing some stuff in your vehicle is easy.
As your preps grow, you can look at renting a small storage locker or utilizing your apartment storage space better.
SKILLS don’t take up any space 🙂
There are lots of sneaky ways to hide preps if you have to.
Remember, simply getting to the point where you don’t have to leave your house for any reason for a week would put you ahead of almost everyone around you. Aim for 3 days (FEMA recommendation) then roughly double and keep doubling until you run out of space or hit your goal.
If you’re in a house, even better. You have attic, crawl space, outdoor areas, sheds, cabinets, garage….
Storing fuel is likely to be your most difficult prep, so look for a stove that takes sealed cartridges or alcohol. Those will be safer than liquid fuel inside. You might look for solar and batteries rather than a gennie and fuel.
But get your food water and meds in line first.
Keep asking questions! No matter how basic, they make the rest of us think.
nick
“How do you start prepping if you live in small home or an apartment? I’m thinking specifically about storage space, if that is not obvious.”
Prepping really doesn’t occupy that much space, or at least it doesn’t have to. I know preppers who live in a small two-bedroom home with no basement or garage and have managed to fit a year’s supply of food and a lot of gear without too much problem. Under beds is one popular space, along with the backs of closet and cupboards, behind sofas and other furniture, even behind rows of books on bookshelves.
Unrelated but interesting.
Apparently we have a National Ebola Training and Education Center. They recently had a webinar about how to run an exercise to see if your facility was “up to the challenge presented by highly contagious airborne diseases.” If you are interested in what your local heath care provider likely HASN’T done, the webinar is at https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/recording/3308777215303817986
” Speakers discussed:
• Exercise methodology and program management;
• NETEC’s suite of free, customizable exercise materials;
• How exercises support Ebola-specifc Hospital Preparedness Program (HPP)
outlined by the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR);
• NETEC’s 4-hour interactive Emergency Management Workshop.
Tools include both discussion-based and full-scale templates for developing special
pathogen drills and exercises. Speakers also covered planning and execution tips.”
Also the field of active shooter response continues to evolve. There will be a forum next week for planners and there will be a web presentation available afterward, that I will try to post. This quote was interesting
As a private person caught in one of these events, you need to consider your response if it is a lone wolf or organized terror attack. Run-Hide-Fight still works either way if you are alone. If you are not alone, you might have to go right to Fight. Understand that who you are fighting might be evolving.
nick
Back from Texas. Long trip. Spent the night in Meridian MS and drove in today.
It seems a lot of truck drivers cannot read, cannot comprehend, or simply just don’t care. Many places trucks were restricted to the right hand lane but continued to hog the left lane. This was especially noticeable on that long bridge that is west of Baton Rouge. Of course they try and pass each other with a speed difference of 0.01 MPH, and do it going up a hill at 45 MPH.
Saw no accidents the entire trip, LA troopers were out in force on I-10 East as you leave Texas, packs of them looking for people heading to the casinos and still think they are in Texas where the limit was 75 MPH. Had to make a stop in southeast Houston. Traffic in Houston was not bad except for that short span I had to take on I-45 south. It was about 1:00 in the afternoon. I cannot imagine that place during “rush” hour. Avoided most of Highway 6 and the lights so a good trade off.
If you want to watch some vids about donning and doffing EBOLA protective gear–
http://netec.org/resources-repository/
As well as decon procedures, cleaning up spills, some interesting MERS info, and a ppe calculator for ebola in your facility. Hint- a lot, and they ain’t got enough.
n
@ray, glad you made it thru.
I make every decision about route with the real time traffic map in mind, as well as knowing which parts will historically be blocked by the time I get there.
Still, it can take over an hour to cross the city. Depending on route, it takes me 1 hour to get to Alvin from my house at 10 and 8 on the west side. It took 3 to get home going thru town on my last trip, but I wanted to hit some stores on that side of town.
n
Back from the doc, it’s official, I have the man flu. I’m about to head out to Walgreens and pick up my Tamiflu prescription. Maybe I should get a flu shot next fall.
@dave, feel for ya man…
and I’m off to bed….
n
Back from the doc, it’s official, I have the man flu. I’m about to head out to Walgreens and pick up my Tamiflu prescription. Maybe I should get a flu shot next fall.
Stay away from me. And I got the flu shot back in November.
In the book I reviewed above, what do you do when three plague infected show up at your farm and there is no medicine ? And they are coming to the house ? Yup, shoot, gasoline, and burn.
Well, duh. What else would you do?
Why wait for plague?
n
Why wait for plague?
I am so proud ! I want to be on you guys team after the event.
That is really a great outline of food items to start prepping. You should write a book about it. (yes, I know). I’m just starting to prep now and am planning on doing about what you suggested. First a one month supply for four people, gradually increasing it until we’re covered for a least a year.
“It will take me at least twice as long to do everything, and I’ll make more mistakes because I’m not thinking clearly.”
Welcome to my current world of low back pain and sciatica. What is this “thinking clearly” that you speak of?
Prepping: Working first on the one-month supply of food and water, and doubling as it becomes possible. Good for toys like radios and firearms and ammo and previously experienced with the latter two areas. Also a decent library of prep-related books. Probably have the one month of food now and we still have the well, but if the juice cuts out, no well. So keeping the lobbying going for a generator and I’d also add a SimplePump, again, when possible.
Got my flu shot the other day; both wife and I have had that and the shingles shots, which are apparently good in perpetuity.
Went to the vets combat support group thing today; only four of us and no moderator/psych. I’d guess that we run one out of every four of these meetings ourselves and they go pretty well and for the whole 90 minutes, too. Today we discussed farming, milking cows, transporting milk, which local dairy farms had been clean and well-organized and which ones were shit-holes. A dash of politics and a few jokes; we try to avoid politics and religion because it almost always immediately gets heated and tempers flare. I discovered that two of them had not had English as their first language as kids up here; it was Quebecois French, even though they lived here in northern Vermont. Our older paratrooper told us that not one of the kids in his school spoke English.
He was in Laos in the very early days; they operated only at night along the Ho Chi Minh Trail and moved to different locations every day. Sporadic contacts with the Pathet Lao, one of which ended badly. He was the NCO in charge and reported after each eight-day outing only to a “colonel” who came out via Mordor-on-the-Potomac. This would have been late 1950s and early 1960s.
Our Army nurse was there today also; imagine working in a military field hospital with guys coming in all fucked up 7×24 for a solid year. She and her husband were also dairy farmers for a while down in Addison County.
And another Army guy was in today; worked in isolated compounds out in the sticks with no non-Murkan personnel allowed in them.
Yours truly was air base defense and enlisted air crew (gunner) on Hueys and C-130 Spectre gunships, working with E8s and E9s who were vets of the WWII “brown shoe air force,” (Army Air Corps) and the Korean War. I was the kid; 20-year-old buck sergeant.
National Administrator tRump and the generals seem to be looking for trouble all the time now, in Ukraine, Poland, and now the Korean peninsula. I sure hope nothing blows up out of all proportion; I was worried about that with Field Marshal Rodham. I see where he also met with our commie U.S. Rep Welch on pharmaceutical costs and Welch came away “encouraged.” Probably not a good sign.
Princess supposedly coming down to swap cars tomorrow AM but I’ll believe it when I see it. And then wife and I may ride out to Enosburg to see how her horse is doing. Wife leaves Saturday for Nawlinz.
Lynn: welcome to the Flu club
We spent a great vacation in Orlando and when we got back on Monday I wasn’t feeling well. Went to the doctor, after a test, she came back to the exam room fully masked. I picked up the tamiflu and headed for bed. Two days of complete misery and I am finally feeling more human. Of course my wife, who gets the flu shot every year, came down with it to. She still is in the “I’m going to die” phase.
Got my flu shot the other day; both wife and I have had that and the shingles shots, which are apparently good in perpetuity.
Dadgumit, I need to get that shingles shot even though it is $265. BCBS does not pay a penny towards it at Walgreens.
As I noted earlier, the staff at the Dr’s office got it this year so the shot must have missed this one.
Seems to be hitting 50ish white males disproportionately…. hmmmm. Or maybe that’s selection bias on the sample group. ya think?
n
While on this trip to Blanco TX to photograph my nieces wedding one of my flashes exploded. Well, not apart, as in pieces. I pressed the button to rotate the head and sparks flew out, loud bang, and a little magic smoke. When I got home I thought I would tear down the flash and find out why. There is a reason a 330V capacitor is hidden behind multiple layers of screws that are hidden behind stick on pieces to hide the screws. Lets just say that all sparks were not released the other day. I was amazed at how complicated those devices are inside and cleverly put together.
The flash became totally inoperative after the initial sparks. Fortunately none of the damage reached my camera. This also brings home a lesson in why I carry two of everything when I do a wedding. Failure is always an option and having backup is critical to avoiding that scenario.
Now I need to get a new flash, about $600.00, to replace my old unit. I cannot complain as I had the unit 10 years, flashed a couple hundred thousand times, been knocked in the mud at a football game, bounced around multiple places, dropped more than once, had a shoe broken (which I replaced). Served me well all those times. I think a part broke loose in the latch that must be released to rotate the head. Probably a spring or something and it shorted against the capacitor with the now released electrons taking some path that fried the flash electronics.
Seems to be hitting 50ish white males disproportionately
Racist. I think we should gather together and protest, burn some cars, break some windows, loot some stores. After all, 50ish white male lives matter. (Or maybe not).
How many arrests?
Who you callin’ white, homeboy? I’m self-identifying as a 12-year-old black girl today, and you have to respect that. Er, young womyn descended from proud African kings and queens, I think I meant to say.
Right, african queens who were not at all black, having long straight thin noses and straight hair, and pale skins, and… oh damn, whadda ya mean that was just a movie????????
n
Eh? The African Queen was a river boat that had a movie named after it. You know, sometimes I simply can’t follow the conversation.
[snip] My grandfather was an artillery sergeant in Korea and he did the full tour of the peninsula with MacArthur: up, down (Chinese invade — run!), inbetween (post-Inchon landing). [snip]
My dad was an infantryman in a heavy weapons company, mostly using recoilless rifles, making that same tour. Came home as a 19 year old E-5, with a head full of bad memories, ears that didn’t work, 3 CIBs, and a distaste for Harry Truman, among other subjects. Some of that changed after the 1988 Olympics. South Korea is free & prosperous because of our huge expense of blood & treasure, and those of our allies.
[snip] BCBS does not pay a penny towards it at Walgreens. [snip]
An older friend got shingles a few years back, after which he looked into getting Medicare to pay for the inoculation. They won’t, because it seems that the shot is only ~50% effective. I’m not surprised that the big insurers don’t want to pay either, but the cost of treatment that they do cover can be fairly steep. The CDC says that this year’s flu cocktail isn’t all that effective.
http://www.aafp.org/news/health-of-the-public/20170221fluvacceffect.html
When the Dear Leader started making trouble in the 90s, Grandpa worried most about the North Korean artillery around Seoul. He doubted that the US could take out enough of the North’s gun emplacements before they did serious damage to the capital, where a sizeable chunk of the population lives. His guess was Seoul would be uninhabitable after the first day of fighting but the first 15 minutes would be uglier than then remaining 23 3/4 hours.
I cannot remember if it is Israel or South Korea that constantly have 14,000 artillery pieces pointed at them. Maybe both.
I wonder what a couple of squadrons of A-10s running down the DMZ would do to those artillery pieces ?
BTW, we are still at war with the norks, we are just in a cease fire. I don’t have a clue what the stops are. I do know that China is supposedly getting tired of Dear Leader also.
@steve, the black supremicist cant has them all descended from cleopatra, and explains where all their white features come from. It’s either that or believe they are full up on amerind blood. Both being repeatedly proved false in most cases by genetic testing…[don’t have the links but it was a story again in the last month].
Was an article I didn’t read that suggests that maybe we’re out of china and not out of africa after all in the news last week…
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TRUMP isn’t the one saying “If you like your Obamacare…”; that’s RYAN’s attitude.
I wonder what a couple of squadrons of A-10s running down the DMZ would do to those artillery pieces ?
Too many targets, well fortified, and the terrain is different than the Middle East where the A-10 does its best work.
“While the United States cannot back down, it is difficult to reconcile a second Korean war with our America first policy. Which is why some of us have argued for decades that the United States should moves its forces out of South Korea and off the Asian continent.”
http://buchanan.org/blog/korean-missile-crisis-ahead-126662
I keep hoping that some relatively level-headed generals whack this psychopath before chit gets really out of hand over there. Yeah, we can wipe them from the earth but we still have the Chicoms to deal with. I dunno, maybe they’d welcome the removal of a persistent migraine.
The only genuine African queen well-known from history that I recall was Sheba, who came up to ancient Israel from what is now Ethiopia and visited King Solomon. But a conflicting account is that she was from what is now southern Arabia. So who the fuck knows, really? That would leave Cleopatra, technically. Who mos def was a queen, but not, IIRC, recognizably African in features.
But the various contemporary BLM-type theorists and alleged academics wish to sell the view that there was a great civilization and royalty and wealth and scientific knowledge, all stolen “by those Greek homos.”
And now let us hope and pray that we get through the weekend without another Korean war blowing up in our faces. And that tRump really does do a massive number on the CIA/Deep State people. Because if he doesn’t, things are gonna get worse for us all.
“I keep hoping that some relatively level-headed generals whack this psychopath before chit gets really out of hand over there.”
Second that.
What I don’t get: I was always under the impression that China kept NK more-or-less under control. So: have they lost control (as cancelling their coal imports would indicate), or is there something in this game for China?
Anyhow, to taking the nutcases out: a few cruise missiles should do the job. The problem is: what happens then? If the remaining army leadership decides to shell Seoul, that’s a problem, and there’s no real defense. But you can’t take the artillery out first either – you need to decapitate the beast before you can declaw it.
It’s a tough problem, likely with no good answer…
I think the Chinese realized some time ago that the North Koreans are more trouble than they are worth. The problem is that they don’t know how to rid themselves of the Kim family regime without doing enormous damage to their trade partners in South Korea, Japan, and the US.
China is the obvious candidate to invade NK and get rid of that psycho dictator. Frankly, I’d just as soon see China running things in NK. They are at least adults.
They’re adults, and it’s their side of the world. If there’s anyone whose business East Asia is, it’s NOT the US.
I just saw a history stat the other day about the number of wars in the world over a certain period (forget how long) and it was around 250, and the U.S. had started around 200 of them.
What is so freaking hard about staying home and taking care of our own problems, which are fucking LEGION!
All this stuff kinda started when Jefferson sent the Marines in against those Barbary pirates. Then we got into it again with Britain, and then the Mexican War.
Since I’ve been on the planet we’ve had Korea, all the countries of southeast Asia, and a bunch of countries in the Middle East, plus various capers in Cuba and South America. Pretty much nonstop war my entire life so far, and counting. There’s gotta be another way of dealing with young single men than to maim and kill them.
The USA has guaranteed the safety of Japan and South Korea. We would need to withdraw from those treaties. It is time.
South Korea, Japan and SEA countries can all take care of themselves, ditto the Europeans, so let’s quit shelling out billions to arms dealers and banksters and oil executives while bankrupting our own country and destroying our middle and working classes. Close most of the 1,000 or so military bases and installations around the world and bring the troops home to defend our borders, coasts, sea lanes and air space.
To paraphrase the old McDonald’s motto: Billions and Billions Saved.
Some of which could be used to take care of the legionaries when they return home, all banged up mentally and physically. And more of which could be put to use on our national infrastructure, with hard labor battalions composed of progs, SJWs, banksters, politicians, lawyers, and financial speculators. Alongside hardened criminals.
That isn’t asking for too much, is it?
Your neighbor has an opinion on the norks, China, and various other entities. “Is a Korean missile crisis ahead? Pat Buchanan: Why should Americans on the DMZ be among the first to die?”
http://www.wnd.com/2017/03/is-a-korean-missile-crisis-ahead/
Works for me. One of my cousins is a paralegal for the Army and has constant three week visits to South Korea, Japan, Iraq, and Afghanistan to help the soldiers out with their legal issues. All of those troops could be home here in the USA. He has told me that most of the USA troops are 100 miles south of the DMZ nowadays.
@Mr. Lynn; if you looked a little further up on this page you’ll see I already posted the link to Pat’s article.
Bring ’em ALL home NOW!
Secure the Rio Grande!
Then send them round to deport all the illegals. (while making mistakes occasionally and grabbing lawyers and politicians…)
@Mr. Lynn; if you looked a little further up on this page you’ll see I already posted the link to Pat’s article.
@OFD, Oops ! I blame short attention spam and non-retentive memory.
Then send them round to deport all the illegals. (while making mistakes occasionally and grabbing lawyers and politicians…)
I APPROVE ! Cue the movie, “Born in East LA”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born_in_East_L.A._(film)
Yeah, I’d wanna keep any Hispanic LEGALS or other LEGALS, of course. And it could easily get down to a case-by-case basis. But most of them can GO.