NEW Bison Blog CD For Sale
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I'm still writing, visit the new blog at
http://www.jamesmdakin.blogspot.com/
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I've got an actual professional to archieve and format all of this blog on a CD-ROM. I haven't got a copy of it yet, but I'm thinking this thing will be better than sliced white bread. It does cost $10 plus shipping, figure another $4 or so, which might be a bit on the higher side. But I think I'm worth it. Depending on how much the production company charges per copy, my cut will be about $5 to $6. That isn't too much to ask for over five years of work and nearly two million words of pure brilliance. Here is the link to order:
http://kunaki.com/sales.asp?PID=PX00KX7Z1I

R AND R


Henceforth and forever more ( or until I change my mind ), the new daily blog will be here:

http://jamesmdakin.blogspot.com/

Starting February 2nd 2012, this will be your Monday through Friday blog. I’m doing this for several reasons. First, one of these days I’ll get off my dead ass and compile the entire five and a quarter years of the Bison Blog together and charge you for the privilege of reading it ( like I do the old newsletter ). Don’t worry, a mere $3 or so. If I actually cleaned it up and indexed it I would charge more, but I don’t know if I’m that motivated. Secondly, I need a clean break from the Best Survivalist Blog Of All Time. My new blog will of course be strongly leaning towards prepping and such, but I want the freedom of occasionally writing about whatever and I don’t need the troll brigade crying about that article having nothing to do with the apocalypse. I understand why they did that before. They were getting info on one subject and expected that. Okay. But as I said yesterday, I’ve saturated the topic and am just repeating myself. If I need to take a day off and write about something else, I want to do so. I know I did that before, but I always tried to tie it into survivalism. I want the freedom to do that more often ( and, sure, it is my blog and I can write what I want to, but when you have financial supporters, there are certain expectations that must be met ). Oh, and I’m going back to a 7 am posting. Tomorrow’s article will be one written previously and held in reserve. So, I’ll write on my lunch break and you get it the next morning.

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Today’s article is R&R. Not Rest And Relaxation but rice and rimfire. Well, wheat or any other grain and rimfire or any kind of ammunition. For the prepper that has most everything, I can’t think of two other items that make more sense for unlimited stockpiling. Either for personal use of barter. Not that I like the idea of trading ammunition. Once our empire collapses ( and, one assumes, the globe follows as the oil runs out ), that will be the last of the high quality ammunition ever manufactured again. But let’s say you have an infection that will kill you without an antibiotic. Then it doesn’t matter. Your life is worth it. So your extra ammo becomes a life and death stockpiled item. You can plan to try to never sell it, but just in case you have to it will be available. Let’s say you have your five years of food, your ten thousand rounds of Russian bolt ammo. Your solar panels. Whatever. You already have a reasonable amount of precious metals ( not enough to drain your savings, but enough as an insurance hedge ). Mostly, you have everything you need. If you buy anymore it will just be duplicating. Or covering disasters so outside mathematical probability it seems silly to worry about ( like the Mayan thing ). If you continue to buy R&R, you have an investment worthy of multi-generational savings of true wealth.
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Once the oil runs out, we will NEVER again be able to grow grain at such an insanely low price ( the lowest paid worker being able to buy a day’s calories for under three minutes of work ). And ammunition will become utter crap compared to today’s modern machine automated items. It will be mid seventeenth century quality, not twenty-first century. Now, once everyone goes to black powder, and once the die-off is over and sustainable organics start feeding us again, your investment is still secure. Because it was so cheap to procure, you shouldn’t ever lose value on it on a purchasing power basis. Granted, there is a bit of an expiration issue. Some grains last longer than others, and no matter how well stored, eventually ammo will start to turn. But it should last enough to make it through several generations. And it is far more affordable than gold. For the price of one ounce of gold, you can buy almost a ton of wheat. In a famine, how much gold do you think you can get for five years worth of food? And once most folks have wasted all their rimfire on squirrels, how much silver do you think you can get for those rounds when folks are hungry?

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This is one of the best cost verses returns I can think of. Cigarettes are too expensive ( if your area will grow tobacco, I’d invest in seeds and training for that ). Booze can too easily be homemade ( although of course, not until there is a food surplus ), but still too expensive even if it is a good initial trade item. And not only are R&R great returns, they are great items for yourself, regardless of a potential market. If you never sell it, they can at least keep you alive. Matches are easily substituted. There might be some demand for needles or sewing stuff, but I’d wager there are enough already around that it will take years before a demand develops. And you can’t eat matches or needles. Or kill something with them to eat ( as an aside, you might think about having traps, then selling that food for yet more rimfire ).

END
The Official Bison Web Site http://www.bisonpress.com/
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My e-mail is jimd303@netzero.com
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Anyone can submit a guest article. No minimum word length, no writing skill necessary ( just get the idea across ). You retain copyright ( this must be your original writing ) and I’ll just use the once. I’ve yet to turn down an article, just don’t use the N Bomb or libel another that can sue me. Send by e-mail ( please, label as “guest article” so I can find it easily later ). Payment will be your removal from my enemies list.
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By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there.

OUR DECLINE IS BETTER THAN YOURS


Before I say anything else, please note that I will continue to post drivel until either the day I die or it becomes uneconomical to do so ( for instance, if a tax was levied on the Web ). But there will be big changes afoot here. I’ll continue to post here Monday through Friday. Even if I really went south I’d still post at least once a week ( don’t worry, I don’t think it will come to that ). I just think I don’t care all that much anymore. I’ve posted for five years, almost every waking hour thinking about the subject of our collapse. I think I’m bored. Not only am I bored, I think it is getting harder and harder coming up with fresh subjects. I’ve always had my down periods, and then rebounded. I’ve always repeated, but managed to make up for it with new insights. I just think all that is getting harder and harder. I’m not burned out as far as being able to write, but burned out as far as being so inspired and motivated. Most of you are faithful minions and I want to keep this together, but I can’t help but wonder if its gone from me bringing up new things to ponder to just us sitting around and rehashing the same crap. I’ll keep writing, but this won’t be my main purpose in life anymore. I’m going to stop spending so much money buying books for research, and I’m going to stop caring so much if the Amazon commissions drop. If I’m not spending $120 a month on books, it won’t matter if I don’t get double that amount in commissions and Google ads and book revenues. This is going from a consuming all encompassing passion to just a hobby. And really, how long is it going to hold together anyhow? The post office and the Internet are both on borrowed time. Netflix is a business model in trouble, and so are blogs relying on ads. Last weekend I sat for hours and just pondered the upcoming pit project. It was a nice change of pace from trying to pull an article out of my butt. I think it is time for more Jim time. And it is necessary that I pull myself off the extra money tit before I become addicted. And the “spoiling myself with expensive books” tit. That one will be harder, but the extra money is going to preps. Some part of this is naked fear we are almost at the edge. I’m going to get serious about reloading components and especially rimfire. I played “big heepum business tycoon” role long enough. Time to stop investing in a micro-business and just go for more supplies. I’ll of course blather more on this another time.
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You can purchase anything, not just the linked item. Enter Amazon through my item link and then go to whatever other item you desire. As long as you don’t leave Amazon until after the order is placed, I get credit for your purchase. Thank you.
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NPR was interviewing some author who wrote a book on North Korea. You know, that relatively harmless country we love to have lined up as a back up Evil Regime Of The Ages just in case a few ragheads with rocket launchers kick our ass in Afghanistan and we have to declare it pacified and desert it ( I’m sure most Afghans are wondering what friggin country we think we are rebuilding when they are still living in tribes ). We have to have SOME country to hate. It gives the sheeple something else to worry about in between Super Bowl Wardrobe Malfunctions, lest they shift their gaze to Quantitative Easing #6. It was fiction, but based on his stay there. Diane Rheem and him were breathlessly droning on how comical that government is. For instance, the one tourist hotel open only had two floors available. Our brave intrepid writer snuck around the deserted floors and noticed how all the other rooms were being stripped of fixtures to keep up appearances in the two open areas. And this was supposed to make us all superior and feel good about our standard of living. Really? Who has bridges falling into rivers? Who has vacant houses being copper mined, and the copper shipped over to China? At least the North Koreans are keeping their raw materials in house. Then he went on about how everyone is brainwashed. Really? Who supposedly has a Constitution? Who’s nation is full of uneducated idiots that think indefinite detention without charges is Constitutional? We blindly go alone with the Kenyans declarations of a dictator and spew about how we are the freest country on earth, and THEY are the brainwashed ones? Then there was some other nonsense about incompetent spying. I’m not sure how competent the TSA is compared to any Third World group of wanna-be KGB goons. Perhaps they are more professional than those jack booted thugs in, say, the Congo, but I wouldn’t put the rent money on that wager.

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In short, we are as sad and pathetic as North Korea, but far more dangerous as we have more precise nuclear missiles. We have nothing to be gloating about. Yes, I love the idea of America. Too bad it’s a foreign land I’ll never find. And no, I wouldn’t

rather be living in Korea. But if we lie to ourselves and pretend nothing is amiss, nothing will ever change. You can’t fix a problem you don’t admit to having. But I think the thing that really chaps my ass is they insult our intelligence assuming we will buy into this crap. Of course, it could just be it underlines of apathy. Or it could be the Wet Spaghetti Theory Of Propaganda. Throw enough half baked notions against the wall and some is apt to be done enough that it will stick. Bombard us with enough manure and something is going to grow. Repeat a lie enough times and the most resistant will eventually just accept it so it stops bothering them. So why do I cry and you listen? Perhaps its just our brand of circus to entertain us through the collapse. Cheers.

END
The Official Bison Web Site http://www.bisonpress.com/
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My e-mail is jimd303@netzero.com
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Anyone can submit a guest article. No minimum word length, no writing skill necessary ( just get the idea across ). You retain copyright ( this must be your original writing ) and I’ll just use the once. I’ve yet to turn down an article, just don’t use the N Bomb or libel another that can sue me. Send by e-mail ( please, label as “guest article” so I can find it easily later ). Payment will be your removal from my enemies list.
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By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there.

FRUGAL MOVE


Before we get into the meat of today’s article, and I’m sure there is no hurry because most of you who’ve stuck around a few years have heard it all before and all you new minions will swiftly desert away to a nice safe Yuppie blog where no one panics or gets upset that the middle class way of life is doomed ( and that includes pampered wives, bug out four wheel drives and a job that allows you to buy twenty three semi-automatic weapons ) as soon as I mention such forbidden words as Peak Oil or PODA ( post oil dark ages ) so I’m being a swell fellow and allowing you this heads up to do so, we’ll talk about today’s little news item with Freddie Mac or Fannie May or whichever Federal Reserve Bank bailout recipient it was that just had an “expose” about how they are actually out to hump you dry. I’m not the least bit surprised about this but apparently National Pravda Radio is all atwitter over said event. It seems FM is taking out derivatives betting against its customers being able to get their loans at a lower interest rate. Everyone is shouting “conflict of interest”. I’m wondering when these idiots are going to learn that “they” are indeed out to get you. I’m also wondering how hard it is to figure out that a bank loses money if you pay them less interest. Then I absentmindedly wonder how close to going belly up these folks at FM are if they are STILL playing with derivatives even after the real estate bubble, and how indicative they are of our whole financial system.
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Please support Bison by buying through the Amazon graphics above and to the right of each article. Or, visit
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You can purchase anything, not just the linked item. Enter Amazon through my item link and then go to whatever other item you desire. As long as you don’t leave Amazon until after the order is placed, I get credit for your purchase. Thank you.
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Because that is our main worry, isn’t it? We have no idea when the entire system takes a big wet runny dump. The people in the World Bank or suchlike are crying on cue to sell the idea of more quantitative easing. The gold bugs are crying imminent crash to sell their wares. The freeze dried food guys the same, and I cry Apocalypse Now through good times and bad. But it is just common sense that kicking the can down the road eventually leads to the road running out. We know it is coming but nobody knows when or how bad. I think we should assume the worse just to play it safe. Which means getting the hell out of the big city. Granted, you could die just as easy in a small town, but the odds are better when you get out of an urban jungle. I still think you should bug out now, while there are no hostile crowds in your way, before the government can blockade you in ( the Warsaw Jews put up one hell of a commendable and courageous fight but in the end they were trapped ) and while you can still earn a living while you learn to live off grid ( it ain’t rocket science but it still requires practice and trial and error ). I’ve harped on this for years but I’m still getting that bad feeling like the cliff is near ( although to be fair I’m a bit of a nervous type and might be overreacting rather than picking up on a cosmic vibe only the reptilian part of the brain is tuned to ). Which might be why I’m so up in arms over “saving” the blog from imminent financial ruin. I might just be thinking it is doomed from grid crash and I’m picking up on the wrong worry. But who the hell knows. The nervous weasel makes a lot of wrong calls diving for safety. I’ve harped on junk land not because it is the perfect answer ( I don’t sell perfect, the Yuppie’s do ) but because it is the affordable answer. But I won’t try to resell you on the concept. You will either glom on to it or ignore it as is your wont. Here we just talk money, how to get to your land.

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Anybody can afford to move to a piece of junk land. What not everybody can afford is being able to move all their stuff to it. Your stuff is very expensive to move. A U-Haul is, let’s just ballpark it, about a buck a mile to rent the unit. And about fifty cents a mile for gasoline. This ain’t anything to worry about across the state, but it adds up quick across the country. You need to figure out if it is cheaper to do one of three things. Move it all, move some and replace some, or replace all. Of course, you can start over smaller and cheaper. You can use the excuse of needing to move to drastically par down your possessions if you so desire. Once you stop using your crap as an excuse, you will find that moving is as cheap as a Greyhound bus ticket or a discount plane ticket. Or, just as cheap as the price to fill your gas tank ( if you get thirty miles to the gallon, it will cost only three hundred bucks to move coast to coast, baring mechanical failure ). That U-haul will run you over four grand. Which is more than your land probably cost you. Now, I understand that we are all different. One of you has more tied up in ammunition than four grand, another has tens of thousands of dollars in books needed for reference as you write for a living. I can’t cover everyone’s situation because I don’t know them. I don’t know who has sick relatives, who has a nearby farm to go to, etc.

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I do know that in my own experience, paring my possessions down to a few duffle bags gave me the opportunity to move whenever and wherever I chose. I’ve lived most places other than Yankeeland. And when I hated it I just moved on with little lose. No investment, so no worries. That of course was before my children or most of my wives, but I’ve also just dumped all my prep gear and lit out half way across the country and started over again. Dumping all your possessions allows you to move freely about the country ( I think that was an old Southwest Airlines commercial ) and to start over smarter. I can’t tell you if that is as smart right now, collapse timeframe unknown, but it can’t be much worse than living in an almost guaranteed death trap. In short, moving to a safer place has nothing to do with financial ability and everything to do with your frame of mind. If you want it, it is as easy as can be. But for how much longer?

END
The Official Bison Web Site http://www.bisonpress.com/
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My e-mail is jimd303@netzero.com
*
Anyone can submit a guest article. No minimum word length, no writing skill necessary ( just get the idea across ). You retain copyright ( this must be your original writing ) and I’ll just use the once. I’ve yet to turn down an article, just don’t use the N Bomb or libel another that can sue me. Send by e-mail ( please, label as “guest article” so I can find it easily later ). Payment will be your removal from my enemies list.
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By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there.

WHEN YOU’RE IN A COLLAPSE


Let’s just say, for the sake or argument, that I’m wrong. Let’s just say, acting on supreme ignorance in the face of facts, that Peak Oil never declines in our lifetime and we stay at Bumpy Plateau. In that case, I’d be wrong about collapse and the Druid Dude would be right about long decline. Hey, anything is possible. I’ve always thought a mortgage was a bad idea, but I was twenty years early in my paranoia. I’ve always hated cars, mainly because of the financial drain but also a lot of that is a fierce hatred against the whoring bastard insurance industry for jamming compulsory coverage down our throats. But by and large we still aren’t to the point where you can’t afford a car if you want one. So my timing really sucks on that one. I moved out to junk land only when a combination of economic collapse nationally met local sky high rents ( I knew I’d have to move eventually as rent went up 10% a year ) and then those two combined with the family planning on moving out of the area. In other words, I wasn’t a supreme strategic planner as much as I was just lucky. I’m usually right about the trend, but usually not for the reason I think, and never correct about the timing. I think the total collapse is just around the corner, but look at my track record before panicking.

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But here is my point. Even if I’m wrong, I could be right. As they say, when your neighbor loses a job it is a recession but when you lose your job it is a Depression. The same can be said of a collapse verses a decline. During a decline, you could very well end up dead or penniless and homeless. Let’s go back a short period in history. How about just the first half of the last century? You weren’t alive then, but it isn’t such oldie and moldy history that you might want to discard it. When the Bolsheviks overthrew the Czar, and Russia turned into the Soviet Union, Russia was never in a collapse. In general, food still got into the cities and you didn’t have mass casualties. Not die-off levels anyway. Society was never in danger of collapsing. But if you got caught in between warring factions, you ended up dead. Even if you didn’t starve, you probably had malnutrition and health issues. Did you get enough fuel? In short, you were in a collapse, personally. Looking back, in a macro sense, life in general went on. But even without a collapse, a large segment of the society suffered. Look at Germany at the end of WWII. Civilians were dying left and right. Starvation was rampant ( between the end of the fighting and the relief shipments from the US, there was plenty of time for plenty of folks to starve ). History shows a change of leadership, a continuity of governance. But people still died. Calling this a long decline rather than a collapse was technically true looking at the vast forest. Looking at the trees individually tells a different story.
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Please support Bison by buying through the Amazon graphics above and to the right of each article. Or, visit
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You can purchase anything, not just the linked item. Enter Amazon through my item link and then go to whatever other item you desire. As long as you don’t leave Amazon until after the order is placed, I get credit for your purchase. Thank you.
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Now, people die everyday. Just because you are one of them doesn’t mean civilization is collapsing. I’m talking here instead of mass death and destruction that is hidden in the bigger trend. How can you call Rome a slow decline when invading barbarians sacked the city ( killing all males and violated the females and selling the children into slavery ), food shortages caused malnutrition which exasperated the effects of widespread plague, and hyperinflation wiped out your savings? That was a civilization collapse to the people that went through it. Because it took a few hundred years before the city was a deserted overgrown meadow doesn’t mean people didn’t die as if it were a collapse. Die-offs are messy. I’d state that the majority did NOT slowly adjust over several generations. The majority died violent deaths. How else do you have such a severe population drop? Remember that civilization collapse is resource depletion. To get the population back into equilibrium with the diminished productivity of the land, most must die. And most do not die peacefully in their sleep.

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Assuming that we do stay at the Bumpy Plateau ( the term describing the maxed out production of oil with blips up and down but staying within a certain range ), civilization per se has not yet collapsed. But far below that general trend, a lot of messy reconfigurations are going on. Tribes are fighting, natural disaster victims are receiving no help, infrastructure is not being replaced, quality of life declines and the unnatural death rates increase. Just like we’ve been seeing for the last five years or so. Do you honest injun really think New Orleans fifth ward, the island of Haiti ( okay, half the island comprising the country ), or Japans industrial city are ever going to be rebuilt? Do you think it will be safe to fish the Gulf within our lifetime? Do you think crime is going to decrease in Detroit? Who thinks stability will return to the middle east? The place is falling apart and slapping a fresh coat of paint in the front room doesn’t change things. We are already looking in the rear view mirror of the start of the decline, and there is no guarantee that a general collapse won’t happen. And a greater than even probability that your own personal collapse can occur any time. Sure, all the survival writers called for evacuation of urban areas in the seventies. And they were wrong. What did they lose? Future book sales. If you are wrong and stay where you are, what do you lose? Your life. Wake up about what you are betting.

END
The Official Bison Web Site http://www.bisonpress.com/
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My e-mail is jimd303@netzero.com
*
Anyone can submit a guest article. No minimum word length, no writing skill necessary ( just get the idea across ). You retain copyright ( this must be your original writing ) and I’ll just use the once. I’ve yet to turn down an article, just don’t use the N Bomb or libel another that can sue me. Send by e-mail ( please, label as “guest article” so I can find it easily later ). Payment will be your removal from my enemies list.
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By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there.

EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY


Evolutionary biology is one of those simple concepts that should have been obvious but is hard to sell because of such things as political correct thinking ( an oxymoron to be sure ). Humans have evolved physically to solve problems. Now, if you argue with other educated religious scholars about the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin, this might not be the kind of theory you want to go embracing. Odds are, you will be burned at the stake for your troubles with independent thinking. Dogma can’t allow the most obviously innocent dissention into the conversation for fear of such mental activity. So, even though Darwin was a religious dude and simply said that God created the earth and evolution also, most folks tend to side with the idiot that did a few back of the envelope calculations and concluded that God created the earth whole clothe like three thousand years ago and that was that, end of argument. And just to light a fire under said religious folk, then you have equally baffling theories which worship at the scientific alter purporting that everything evolved from a primordial ooze. Which isn’t any more logical than the existence of God. But if I said that then said same scientists would have “proven” just fifty years ago that plate tectonics was wild quackery. Anyway, evolutionary biology might not be the end all and be all as a theory, but it certainly makes a bunch more sense than sociologists blathering on about “blank slates”. Which might have made sense at one time as there was little else to take its place but now compared to evolutionary biology it sounds pretty retarded. The blank slate theory blames ( or credits ) everything to environmental factors. These advocates are, say, purple haired fat lesbians that claim that if you raise a boy around ponies and tea sets he will be all in touch with his feminine side and be all loving and when he hits puberty he’ll grab the first male butt he sees and try to have carnal relations with it ( actually, the gay gene already gave way to the gay chemical imbalance, but that doesn’t sell in the PC crowd ). The evolutionary biologists on the other hand claim that male and female are born hard wired in their behavior because they evolved those characteristics to survive better.
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Please support Bison by buying through the Amazon graphics above and to the right of each article. Or, visit
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You can purchase anything, not just the linked item. Enter Amazon through my item link and then go to whatever other item you desire. As long as you don’t leave Amazon until after the order is placed, I get credit for your purchase. Thank you
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Anyone that has ever had a child knows this instinctively ( well, they start to know it after a few months- before that they are too sleep deprived to know much of anything ). Which is why lesbians are the chief guilty party for holding views to the contrary. The idiots are living in book theory instead of reality. Other characteristics have evolved to help us survive as a species. Culture, for one. We don’t conform to any old cultural trait. We wouldn’t learn how to be pony playing tea sipping butt pirates if our parents were plastic penile pumping carpet lickers. Culture has to reinforce what is already programmed into our brains. Boys are naturally aggressive. When you encourage that by letting them brain each other with rocks and tree branches, everyone is happy, even the boys with dented heads. When you penalize them in a sports team for being “mean” or “competitive” and give trophies for participation, everyone grows up maladjusted and confused ( and probably wanting to be gay even if they can’t pull it off ). And evolution is not a quick process ( except in catastrophic circumstances when all other traits are suddenly extinct ). You need a fairly stable long term situation ( which is why we still retain all our hunter gatherer traits- ten thousand years of farming is nothing compared to hundreds of thousands of years of killing bison and picking berries ).

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What does this have to do with survivalism? Easy. If you try to work against your programmed nature, you will lower your odds of survival. Right now, you are living as if the modern economy is how we are programmed to live and thrive. As if accumulating intangible wealth to acquire a mate is a viable strategy. Yes, right now that is what will attract a mate. But from a evolutionary biology standpoint, you are still a hunter gatherer. How good are you at hunting and gathering? I’m not saying that is a viable survival strategy after the collapse. There are way too many people, even after a 95% die off, and far too few animals. I’m saying that everything that has been culturally programmed into us is not a viable survival strategy. Women’s lib, the neutering of the males, all that sort of rot. Any female that sits there and cries to me about how oppressed women were a hundred years ago is as good as stewpot food. She has no idea how females have survived up until the modern era. They are the ones that lead males around by the gonads. The females are in charge, and the guys like it that way as long as they are able to act like they run things. And by the way, apropos to little, I’d like to throw in the fun filled fact as to why the female hourglass figure is so appealing. Fat on the breasts and thighs are signs of enough body fat for a healthy pregnancy, but show the right kinds of fat. Fat stomachs can easily point to health problems like diabetes and intestinal parasites. Males choose this body type as a preference, that body type is reproduced more, in time you get more of it. Evolutionary biology.

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I just got done reading three books on this subject ( although at the time I didn’t realize they all followed said theory ). The Red Queen, Why Wealthy Men Have More Daughters, and The Dark Side Of Man. Of the three, I’d recommend The Red Queen.

END
The Official Bison Web Site http://www.bisonpress.com/
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My e-mail is jimd303@netzero.com
*
Anyone can submit a guest article. No minimum word length, no writing skill necessary ( just get the idea across ). You retain copyright ( this must be your original writing ) and I’ll just use the once. I’ve yet to turn down an article, just don’t use the N Bomb or libel another that can sue me. Send by e-mail ( please, label as “guest article” so I can find it easily later ). Payment will be your removal from my enemies list.
*
By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there.

PERFECT DECLINE JOBS

Okay, another one I wrote last weekend. I’m going to go over to my web site and add a page on the top 20 fiction books. I’ve been meaning to do that for awhile. Tomorrow I’ll be back on schedule. Here’s an extra tidbit for you- Shwan’s, the frozen food dudes that home deliver, is shutting down a bunch of distribution centers across the country. If you want their slop you’ll have to UPS it. My guess is that will be MORE expensive, and the company was never much of a bargain to begin with. To me, proof that the middle class and luxury spending is sharply contracting ( but don’t worry, North Dakota oil will allow green shoots to grow out of our ass any day now ). They said so, so it must be true. On to our regular article.

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Well, okay, no job is perfect. Because a job is work and work is a four letter word. But then again, the only thing worse than a job is no job ( kind of like the only thing worse than being married is being single ). What we will talk about here is jobs that actually have a future in a general decline and that have close to zero start up costs. But of course there is a catch. There is always a catch. Ain’t nothing free in life and what should be as obvious as my need to state the obvious. Entire generations thought they could get a free lunch ( Union wages, forced hiring quotas, Social Security benefits far exceeding what they paid into the system ) and now that the various levels of government are trying to modify the amount of free downwards the hue and cry from the public is deafening. So I guess most folks know there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch for the other idiots out there but they themselves are privileged and special. Anyways, back to the catch for a perfect job. You can’t expect to make too much money. In the past, rarified salaries were the expected norm. People sold their one hundred grand home for half a million, opened a granite top or a bead and trinket shop and expected to pull in big bucks. They were by gum special. Hey, Special Friggin Education. What moron can’t figure out salaries and home prices can’t grow upwards forever? The wave of the future is for wages to fall. They have stagnated for almost forty years. Through increased productivity, employee paid further education and computerization. Now add oil reduction and exponential debt growth to that and you get actual wage decline. For everyone except those that can steal it. If you can live on less, you will be welcomed in the future.

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Living on less is having no debt and little expenses. No mortgage, no rent, no car payments or its running expenses ( if you think auto insurance is high now, wait for consolidation and more government granted monopolies [ such as mandatory health insurance- Romney or Obammy, both whores to the financiers so be sure to vote carefully! ]. Don’t drive and free yourself ). Grow some of your food. Eat bulk for everything else ( that doesn’t mean a five gallon tub of Gummi Bears ). Now you can live on very little salary. If you can, read a copy of both Possum Living and How To Survive Without A Salary. If your needs are low, your salary can be also. And with a need to little salary, you can provide services poor people ( the only growing demographic ) will want to pay. If you need to pay a mortgage, pay off the truck, rent a retail office, etc., you have already priced yourself out of this market. The perfect, grow in contraction, almost no start up cost jobs are Alternate Energy, Bike Repair and Bike Hauling. Alternate energy is going to be such things as insulating and 12 volt power. Also solar cookers and water heaters. All the needed skills can be self taught online and through old issues of Mother Earth News ( you can buy the first ten years on CD for $20. I wouldn’t bother with much past that date as the corporate scumbags took over around then ). Bike repair is as easy as a book or two and practicing on your own bike. If you go to where folks need you, you eliminate most of your costs. Bike hauling fits in with almost zero operating costs and the growing segment of folks being priced out of the car ownership market ( and the growing old and feeble segment ).
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You can’t sell your expertise at a high mark up with any of these jobs. If you do, the customer himself will perform the job. You want to price yourself under the threshold where it is worth the cost savings to do-it-yourself. For instance, if you charged $100 to install solar panels, most people would figure it out themselves ( perhaps buying $20 in beer to have a buddy come over and help ). If you just charged that $20, most people would conclude the cost savings weren’t worth them learning that new skill ( especially if it was a one time needed skill ). Usually, they could afford to insulate once ( say, using a years tax return ). They would gladly pay you $100 to get sweaty and itchy and finish it in one third the time. But they wouldn’t pay you hundreds ( my son works each summer on roofing. Him and a buddy charge double material cost as labor. Apparently that is much cheaper than from anyone else. And, he actually has high school carpentry training so it isn’t just two yahoos climbing around like monkeys. The community knows he is trained and experienced and works cheap ) or thousands like a contractor wants. Of course, there is always the problem of licenses and permits and required training. You are on your own figuring that out. The next, bicycle mechanics, is easy enough if you are klutz, and really simple if you are mechanically inclined. Which makes it easy to lose customers to do-it-yourself. You can’t expect to emulate retail bike shops and expect to be able to make all your money in tire repairs. Expect the crap jobs like bearing replacements. But by providing a come-to-you service ( their bike might be their only transportation at that date in the future ) free, and working cheap, you should always have some business.

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Bike hauling anyone can do. If they are in shape, own a bike and aren’t too old. If you are cheap enough and can undersell the guy who owns a jalopy truck, you will always have a market. Have a quality bike ( most folks will own a crappy Mart bike ) and a specialty trailer for serious weight ( they sell a trailer that can haul an electrical appliance- but it also handles four big 18 gallon totes or a piece of furniture ). As more folks go back to the city ( as they give up cars and commutes ), the easier your client growth gets. It doesn’t have to be a serious oil crunch. Higher inflation, higher unemployment, higher insurance- all point to decreasing car ownership. Most folks have eaten at the GM trough of death and having once valued their time more than their health ( the poor don’t eat the majority of fast food- office workers and the wealthier workers don’t have time to waste and mostly eat out ) they are only alive due to modern pharmaceuticals. By the time the oil crunch gets serious, they are your built in customers as their health reflects their past eating habits. Your ability to actually peddle enough to haul your own weight in freight without having a heart attack is job security. And as your sickly customers die off, the newly car-less take their place. Most probably didn’t even have the foresight to buy a bike at all but instead had two or three cars.

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You can start now, and with very little money. As time goes on you gain reputation and experience. When the serious decline starts, you are in like Flynn. As government teat juice dries up, the difference in earning a few hundred bucks or not a month will make all the difference ( and then, there is always barter for eggs and veggies, etc. Say, you take infirm grandma’s eggs around to her customers and she gives you a cut. Boom. Protein in your diet solved ).

END
The Official Bison Web Site http://www.bisonpress.com/

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My e-mail is jimd303@netzero.com
*
Anyone can submit a guest article. No minimum word length, no writing skill necessary ( just get the idea across ). You retain copyright ( this must be your original writing ) and I’ll just use the once. I’ve yet to turn down an article, just don’t use the N Bomb or libel another that can sue me. Send by e-mail ( please, label as “guest article” so I can find it easily later ). Payment will be your removal from my enemies list.
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By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there.

NEWSSTAND MAGAZINE REVIEW


Okay, okay. I’ve finally pulled my head part way out of my butt. You’ll have to excuse me. I’m still fighting with this damn cold/flu/crud two weeks later. I’m blaming that for my more than usual amount of dumbassness. Since I mega-dose on vitamin C and have for many years, I can only think of three reasons the thing is hanging in so long ( when my co-workers, who are usually much sicklier, get over it in days ) One, since China produces almost all of the globes ascorbic acid, they are poisoning me. Two, Baby Jesus is infecting me with the worse strains in order to boost my immune system so I can fight the Super Deluxe Obammy Barnyard Flu soon to be unleashed on mankind. Or, three, I’m sucking in Japanese radiation and so my immune system sucks. I like number two, personally. My probably final word on the new magazine to be is this. Rather than more blog drivel, rather than a thrice yearly book, I’ll still put out a monthly mag but make it a booklet on one subject. That should be worth a buck. With m original idea, I was in essence begging you for charity. With the idea for a book, I’d soon run out of ideas for a thirty or forty thousand word book ( the reason I haven’t put one out in years ). With booklets, I thoroughly cover on topic. You should get perceived value added. And I shouldn’t run out of ideas. Month one will be junk land. The second will be firearms. Since I have to start over again next weekend, I’ll just post the articles I wrote last weekend. That way I’ll have time to do my tax return. Thanks for your patience while I thrashed around for a viable alternative to declining commissions.

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If you simply love your books on CD and you positively love your Kindle to the point of indecency, a paper magazine would undoubtedly fail to move you. But for those of us that prefer paper reading to electric reading, who associate a book with joy and learning, a paper magazine has the tactile reinforcement that a web page is never going to match. Granted, electric media is the only reason self publishing is now possible on such a scale. None of us has much choice in whether we can read much if anything on paper. But when we have a choice, it sure is nice to hold our reading material in hand without the aid of electrons. I like survivalist magazines not because of the content so much but because it is paper and it does provide a better advertising medium ( I don’t buy the Yuppie Vermin Bastard Scum products by and large, but it is nice knowing what is out there and available ). But the last paper survivalist magazine was ten years ago. Why they failed is beyond me. They had a monopoly and they had oodles and gobs of advertising from Y2K. Granted, the ads fell after that date, but look at Wired magazine. They had a much more drastic fall in advertising after the Tech Wreck and they stayed in business. Of course, you could look at Blockbuster and wonder how a business with a monopoly in retail video rental could fail. Sure, Redbox and Netzero were competition, but with retail you could search for a movie you didn’t know you wanted. And, their acquisition cost had been reduced to nearly zero. They paid a percentage of sales for each movie- they didn’t have to buy the movie up front. It could have been the real estate bubble that did them in ( rents went up drastically ), or they just could have been grossly incompetent. I suppose American Survival Guide had about the same story. Even though low paying hacks were churning out worthless drivel, so were obviously low paid ( reading their output at times it almost seemed a computer program was churning out the stories ), perhaps the magazine still couldn’t handle the drop in ad revenue.
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Please support Bison by buying through the Amazon graphics above and to the right of each article. Or, visit
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You can purchase anything, not just the linked item. Enter Amazon through my item link and then go to whatever other item you desire. As long as you don’t leave Amazon until after the order is placed, I get credit for your purchase. Thank you.
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The other day I was at the bookstore. I wanted to buy something besides a discard table ten cent book ( you have to help them pay the rent so they keep that table ) and couldn’t find anything worthy in sci-fi ( all the Apocalypse books had been wiped out just before Christmas ) or in my favorite authors in the used section so I went over to the magazines. I had resigned myself to having to buy the newest Backwoodsmen ( a fine magazine, but I hadn’t found many articles that interested me in the last year or so ) but there was a message from Baby Jesus himself ( I easily translated the message, “I love you like the red headed stepchild I never had, and I admire your hair, so unlike my mangy hippie freak show of a mop” ). A newsstand magazine of survivalism. How the heck had I missed this for the last year? There it was, issue number five of the bi-monthly “”Survivalist”. Which, by the by, has the obvious web address of Survivalist dot com. I was so excited that the retail price of five bucks bothered me not in the least, and that was just for 48 pages which included both covers.

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Let me tell you, compared to the old American Survival Guide ( they changed the name just before they went out of business but I never remembered what it was ) this thing is the pinnacle of professional prose. ASG was pretty predictable in its contents. Every issue had an article on a gun none of us could afford, and the required ( by law it seemed ) article on cold weather survival. The rest was pretty much all ads. They could have won a contest with Shotgun News ( which, speaking of competent business practices, has weathered the death of the amateur gun dealer and the huge surge in gun prices ) to see who had less writing and more advertising ( for the few out there that never saw a copy of Shotgun News, it is nothing BUT advertising from gun jobbers to gun retail dealers ). But ASG was great in that it was the connection each of us needed to the survivalist community. Nothing since has really filled that void, be it chat rooms or even Rawles ( he comes close, but it is hard to feel the connection through the computer screen. Hey, I’m not a total Luddite. I love books, but I also love the fact I can publish a lot more of my writing when I don’t have paper costs or postage cost to factor in. Before, I sent out a monthly eight page newsletter. Publishing electronically, I do that two or three times a week ).

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I don’t know if “Survivalist” will fill that void left by ASG, but it should. The movement needs its paper mag rag again. Okay, the writing is inoffensive, non-alarmist and pretty basic. But at least it is by talented writers that care about the subject. This magazine has Doug Bell ( who used to be my gun go-to guy before we lost touch ), Jerry Ahern ( still a hack writer, but OUR hack writer ) and guys I’ve kinda heard of like Robert Scott Bell and C Green, Jim Richter, Mat Stein and Ed Corcoran. The subject matter in issue five covered Martial Law, communications, gold and silver, collapse investing, CDC propaganda, suturing, Is The Family On Board?, emergency lighting and grid down, EMP, the interview with Rawles hawking his new book ( I guess this issue has been on the newsstand since October ), lasting survival shelters, essential oils, Did Civilization Peak In The 70’s?, frugal fire lighting ( by some fool pretending to be the Frugal Survivalist ) and a few unexciting classified ads. The regular page ads were NOT overwhelming. A Goldilocks amount of advertisements, in my opinion. Nothing you can’t pick up on the web as far as the articles, granted. So, honestly, this is just a luxury item. But I love it. I’m already decided, I’ll pay the under $20 subscription price.

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Is it worth even the reduced $3 an issue? Like I said, a luxury item. But come on! $3 every other month? Who can’t afford that? I have a pretty high standard for content and I was satisfied with the items offered. Most of that could just be nostalgia, sure. The articles were really too basic and too short and too timid, by and large. But for the cost, if you pick up just one or two pertinent pieces of information it will be worth it. Frankly, we are all way too spoiled by the Internet. We pay $30 or $50 a month for access, and then assume everything on the web should be free. Hey, writers don’t get a share of that $50. Greedy bloodsucking corporations do ( I’m not anti-free market, but corporations can be, and usually are, pretty damn evil. My Payless boots just got their hole big enough to show socks. After a mere four months, less than a thousand hours of use. Piss off you whores! ). And while the magazine writers don’t get paid much more, they get exposure and pay in other ways, hopefully, eventually. So do your part and part with a buck fifty a month to put some profit motive into the movement ( better to pay that, and a few bucks a year on any new survival books, than buying a $500 wheat grinder to keep a Yuppie Survivalist equipment seller in business ).

END
The Official Bison Web Site http://www.bisonpress.com/
*
My e-mail is jimd303@netzero.com
*
Anyone can submit a guest article. No minimum word length, no writing skill necessary ( just get the idea across ). You retain copyright ( this must be your original writing ) and I’ll just use the once. I’ve yet to turn down an article, just don’t use the N Bomb or libel another that can sue me. Send by e-mail ( please, label as “guest article” so I can find it easily later ). Payment will be your removal from my enemies list.
*
By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there.

EMP OURSELVES


Before we begin today on why our good buddies in DC are probably going to kill us all quickly and avoid a lot of headaches, yet more on my just announced schedule change. You know, not publishing the blog on the weekends anymore. I’ve only published seven days a week for a year. This blog has been going for more than five years. So less than 20% of the time I’ve been posting both weekend days. Nobody should be that darn upset. Granted, perhaps the monthly magazine to take its place was stupid. But something WILL take its place. Your choice of doing this the hard way or the easy way. The easy way is, everybody chime in at the comments section. Monthly magazine ( which, granted, will be no more exciting than regular articles, just a smidge longer ) or a book every four to six months. The hard way is, I publish my first magazine issue and if nobody buys it, I know to go to books. Look, I’m not trying to get extra money from any readers. I’m trying to anticipate falling Amazon commissions and put something else easier in its place so you all keep supporting my writing. If you feel you will get higher value from a couple of e-books every year, great. We’ll do that. As I said, it takes twenty grand in Amazon sales for me to get $300 in commission. If my mere thousand readers don’t have that much to spend, my commission goes down even as you still buy through my links ( albeit smaller amounts ). You all were great supporting me in the past, I’m just mixing it up on how you can continue that. Remember four years ago when I started the Amazon links? It was because my Google ads and book sales had drastically declined. Same difference this time around.
*
Please support Bison by buying through the Amazon graphics above and to the right of each article. Or, visit
http://bisonpress.com/affiliatebooks.html
You can purchase anything, not just the linked item. Enter Amazon through my item link and then go to whatever other item you desire. As long as you don’t leave Amazon until after the order is placed, I get credit for your purchase. Thank you.
*
By paying so much attention as to how the federal jack booted ninjas are going to be trying to control us come the collapse, I wonder if we are missing the real danger. Should we be worrying about detention centers, or man made viruses? Should we worry about Muslim terrorist attacks or false flag attacks? Are UN troops a worry, or is mass genocide? If we don’t have the resources to pacify the population, isn’t it likely that the logical preemptive action would be to eliminate most of that population before they started to rebel? If I was the President ( and be thankful I’m not ) I’d look around me and see nothing but problems. The oil supply was flat with periods of slight decline in between periods it goes back slightly to that years new normal. You can’t replace that decline of domestic supply with ethanol anymore because the grain supply is contracting faster than that of oil. You’ve pulled out of Iraq because you can’t afford to garrison it at full strength anymore, even with borrowing half of the budget. All of your quantitative easing is being sucked up by Europe and they still keep getting worse. As soon as they go, your banks go. You know any day that the Straights of Hormuz are going to be a war zone. You know that as soon as that spark ignites the next world war ( nuclear only as no one has the resources to repeat WWII ), your citizens start rioting from lack of heating oil and grid power. You can wait for that event to unfold, and react blindly, or you can control the situation and be proactive. Keep in mind that the Constitution to you is a living document and it is as flexible as need be. Lincoln and FDR showed the way.

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A man made virus is problematic. It isn’t always effective ( look at AIDS- it was targeted at Africa and butt pirates thirty years ago and both groups have yet to be eliminated. Very disappointing results ). And it can always backfire on you ( you know enough not to trust the pharmaceutical companies claims on the effectiveness of an antidote ). You don’t want to false flag ( Kristalnact, Gulf Of Tonkin ) attack. Anything you do will be only marginal in swaying the public, baring a nuclear strike. And you don’t want to make anything radioactive ). The best course is to EMP the Homeland. You have plenty of nukes to spare, you can blame it on anyone you want to, and you can mostly prepare for it with prior warning. We have enough missiles to defend the government, even if most of our conventional forces were missing or retired. We can spare a dozen to cover the entire lower 48 and really fry the civilians nicely. Since most military vehicles were stationary or warehoused, you retain your mobility. Even if you fry most of your own high tech equipment, do you really need it? Once the US economy is destroyed, the global economy is toast. And since they can’t buy parts now, the high tech arms race isn’t an issue. Plus, by immediately nuking the “guilty” party, everyone gets the message you can still defend yourself. They stay in their own back yard.

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You have just duplicated a cold warriors dream. Killing off the civilians while leaving the infrastructure intact ( wasn’t that the hydrogen bomb? ). Oh, sure, there will be damage as the starving freezing civilians fight to the last full stewpot, but there isn’t the heavy damage of an industrialized war. Suddenly it doesn’t matter that Social Security is broke, or the fuel and food supply is shrinking. European economic meltdown isn’t an issue. And it doesn’t matter about the bankers. Those pricks might have controlled every President since 1914 ( Kennedy was an example to the rest not to get uppity ), including you, but you’ve just destroyed their money machine. Now you can become dictator for life ( one has a hard time believing Obammy wants the job, but Hilary sure will ). Things are a bit tough in the adjustment, but far easier than if you had let events unfold at their natural pace.

END
The Official Bison Web Site http://www.bisonpress.com/
*
My e-mail is jimd303@netzero.com
*
Anyone can submit a guest article. No minimum word length, no writing skill necessary ( just get the idea across ). You retain copyright ( this must be your original writing ) and I’ll just use the once. I’ve yet to turn down an article, just don’t use the N Bomb or libel another that can sue me. Send by e-mail ( please, label as “guest article” so I can find it easily later ). Payment will be your removal from my enemies list.
*
By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there.

GUEST ARTICLE
My article will post at 1 pm ( see article below explaining ).
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survival/food storage




We are a couple in our late 40's



each of us has 2 part time jobs



we don't have much disposable income



no kids



last few years we have been trying to build our food supply and become more self sufficient.



some of our food is now past "best before" dates



we decided to try to consume it to see if it was still ok to eat.



(we did the "sniff & taste a wee bit" to "check" it - this is not advice to eat food past the "best before" date. If you are unsure of any food - chuck it! It is better to be safe than sorry!)



some long term storage experiences



Pace salsa 5 years old-still good



Tea and coffee-over 3 years old-still good



Shelf milk aka UHT milk-over 2 years past best before date-ok as long as you shake it before you use it-fat settles - bottom of tetra pack turned to "yogurt"



canned goods from store (meat, fruit, vegetables, soups etc)-2 years past best before-still good Had a couple cans of tomato paste swell up-didn't open them-threw them in garbage.



Miracle whip salad dressing-2 years past best before-still good



Kraft bottled (italian, french, ranch, etc) salad dressing. Over 2 years old-ok.



honey-crystallized-but still good-soak jar in to water for a while to re-liquefy.



dry goods-sugar, powdered milk, flour, baking soda, baking powder, yeast, cake mix, pasta, etc. Over 2 years old-no difference. Stored in area that never gets past 70 deg. F



Breakfast cereal (corn flakes, rice crispies type)-over 1 year old-very slightly stale-but still good.



Health and beauty aids and over the counter meds-all health and beauty aids were ok (except for expired birth control-didn't want to take a chance on that!). The pain killers still killed the pain, the soap still washed as well, the cold and flu medicine worked just as good. Band aids don't stick quite as well and certain vitamin tablets changed color.



Crackers (triscuit, ritz) Just over 1 year old Very stale - eatable but not pleasant.



Pet food-dry food that was older than about 6 months-pets would turn up their noses at. They would eat it if nothing else was given. We felt sorry for them and gave the old stuff to the animal shelter.



Has it changed us or the way we look at or do things? Yes! We now regularly buy products that are discounted because they are close to the expiry date. We have not had to do very much grocery shopping in January because we have been consuming this expired food.



We have noticed that many of the new packages are quite often a few ounces less than the old ones, but still charging the same price as 2 years ago. I would say we have saved money by purchasing food 2 years ago that was on sale-every week a few extra items.



We were thinking of trying "the Bison diet" (buying sacks of wheat, beans, corn, etc at the feed store), but were not sure if we would like it or be able to figure out how to use it. With the "buy extra normal food every week" plan we knew we would not mind eating what we had stored. I found it very easy to have both the male and female food urges satisfied. He buys what he likes and she buys what she likes. Sometimes we have to keep track of each others inventory (and remind the other person to "ease up") because we tend to stock up too much on our favourite foods.



Submitted by: a nameless couple

ARTICLE AT 1 PM
I'll now be posting right around 1 pm ( baring server malfunction ).  Since the weekend articles will now be pay-per-view I don't have to post weekday articles three days ahead of time anymore.  I'll vomit up my daily drivel and serve it fresh, warm and smelly.  Sorry to spring this on you last second, I forgot to include it is Sunday's article.  See you in about six hours.

HOISTED WITH YOUR OWN PETARD


You know, it is just my luck that while I strive mightily to present fact and fun filled sermons and beseech and implore all my minions to change their evil ways by vomiting article after essay on any particular subject, in the end the only one convinced appears to be myself. Not that I’ve convinced myself I’m right. I knew that all along. But rather motivated myself to change. As of late ( I don’t know, the last year or two perhaps ) I’ve been forced to consider arsenals beyond that of war surplus bolt actions. The times they are’a changing and what used to make perfect sense is now sometimes a flawed theory. Of course you can still buy surplus and cheap ammo if you are on a strict $500 prepping budget. That part hasn’t changed in the last five years since I published the best survivalist book to ever grace the masses. It is just that now you only have one choice and that is the Russian bolt. Which I hate because of the lack of the gas safety but no one else considers an issue. If you want a better designed weapon you are now forced to pay the same as a new modern arm, so why pay for a used rifle? And the ammo saving are no longer there. I’ve been lamenting this insidious development, but didn’t give it too much concern since I already had laid back my own supplies cheaply prior to Y2K. Yet yesterday seemed to be the straw that broke the camels back. I investigated in depth one too many times another aspect of the negative aspects of war surplus.
*
Please support Bison by buying through the Amazon graphics above and to the right of each article. Or, visit
http://bisonpress.com/affiliatebooks.html
You can purchase anything, not just the linked item. Enter Amazon through my item link and then go to whatever other item you desire. As long as you don’t leave Amazon until after the order is placed, I get credit for your purchase. Thank you.
*
A minions comment on the poor shot placement at 300 yards got me mulling things over ( again ). I should have gone with 200 yards ( going up against the AK ) rather than 300. At 200, I’m not too God awful of a shot although I won’t claim a one shot one kill. But at $1 a round, even that cut in range is too much of a compromise. When I first bought the Enfields I also had a couple of SKS’s. At 100 yards they both sucked for accuracy but the rifle, if for no other reason the barrel length, was not as bad. But that was also the old WWI Enfields with those crappy leaf and post sights. When I went to the No. 4’s there was a great improvement in shot placement. But I also was living in Oklahoma and then Florida. You wanted a bit more than a pistol round but the terrain still didn’t call for much range. My 100 yard shots were usually all I needed and I felt comfy out to 200 ( and since I was buying thirty cent surplus rounds I didn’t mind the fact I couldn’t always connect the first shot ). Even when I first moved to Nevada it was at the base of the Sierra mountains and I didn’t worry about open range. Now however, I have to worry about 200 yards all day long ( 300 yards is about max because of the rolling hills ) rather than 100. I can’t easily practice enough to be proficient at those longer ranges ( even if I started reloading, with the shortened life span-so I’ve been told- of the 303 case I won’t be able to spend less than fifty cents or so a round taking into account the 65 cent case cost ). I could afford the cost but to me it seems this smacks on the case of shopping around trying to find VW Bug parts- it might be cheaper to replace the car itself. When you can buy a new factory case of a carbine round for half the cost as reloading your antique thirty caliber, it might be time to replace the arsenal.

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It wouldn’t be the first time. I’ve replaced a pistol only arsenal, an SKS arsenal, my first Enfield arsenal and a rimfire arsenal. It might be time to replace this one. I have time, because if things go to hell tomorrow, I’ll still feel comfortable with what I have. I’ll just have to pay real close attention to ranges. But it is something I should place a few more rungs higher on my Master To Do List. First of course is building a more habitable pit. And designing better solar heaters. Paying off the land, perhaps rain catchment. It’s still up in the air, but I think I’m running out of excuses. I could still keep the Enfields ( security blanket, possible investment, bartable items ) and it would only cost me about two grand. Three bolts ( or single shots, I’m not sure ) and three thousand rounds. When you are on a totally frugal budget, bolts make sense. When you are looking for ways to waste extra, not so much.

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Okay, this weekend is the last weekend of free articles. I’m going back to five days a week on the blog. Just like we did in 2010. But I’m still writing seven days a week. To read the extra, you will now have to pay. I’ll take my weekend writing and use it to put out a new e-magazine. It will be published monthly and I only am asking a buck for it. For you all wanting to read free, you still have the blog. For those of you wanting to support my writing, you can buy the magazine if you wish. You are all wonderful at supporting the blog, don’t get me wrong. But it takes thousands of dollars in Amazon sales for me to see a hundred bucks in commission. If you don’t have it, it doesn’t matter how much you love me. You can’t pay what you don’t have ( I’m down half of last January’s commissions- I’m thinking you all just don’t have the money you did a year ago ) to pull out of your butt. So instead of relying on you spending hundreds at Amazon, I only need you to pony up a dollar ( I’ll see 80% of that ). I think this makes better sense in a contracting economy. There will still be the option of Amazon, I’m just diversifying is all. The first issue should be out mid to late February. I’ll try to lard it up, but don’t expect much more than about eight articles and around ten thousand words. In the future, who knows? I might go bi-weekly or whatever. Let’s see. Of course, the best part of the magazine will be its name. The Cockroach Chronicles. Get it? Cockroaches will be the only species to survive global nuclear war.

END
The Official Bison Web Site http://www.bisonpress.com/
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My e-mail is jimd303@netzero.com
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Anyone can submit a guest article. No minimum word length, no writing skill necessary ( just get the idea across ). You retain copyright ( this must be your original writing ) and I’ll just use the once. I’ve yet to turn down an article, just don’t use the N Bomb or libel another that can sue me. Send by e-mail ( please, label as “guest article” so I can find it easily later ). Payment will be your removal from my enemies list.
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By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there.

DIVORCED FROM PREPS


From SHTF Blog, we have an article on divorce and how to deal with it. Now, of course the first thing I did was thank said publisher for being kind enough to trash his life so I could get an article idea. Most of my loyal minions are no where near as dedicated as that. I liked the part about having to medicate to sleep. My first “real” divorce ( wife number two, Handmaiden Of Satan. Wife #1 was more of a marriage of convenience and in our divorce she only got me for me for two months net income ) produced the worst bout of illness I’ve had in my entire life. Now, I’m warning you up front, you might not like this article. I don’t bemoan my situation ( and we all know it is all about me ). I won’t be too hating on females. No rants or pleas for divine intervention to smite my enemies. In fact, I might even be able to squeeze out an optimistic tone. You might wish to proceed with caution.

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If you and the spousal unit are always at odds over life in general, you are not meant to be together. If you can’t agree on fundamentals such as what is considered a safe place to live or how to budget money ( or how often you can bump uglies ) or whatever, you might not want to admit it but sooner or later you will split up. When times get tougher economically, those problems will be much worse. Every worsening of your situation will cause both parties to blame the other for past bad decisions. If he hadn’t stayed in that crappy job until the company went bankrupt we could have already been living in a much more affordable location and not lost the car, etc. I’m not saying that healthy couples won’t have the same issue ( selective memories on both sides when it comes time to blame ), just that a dysfunctional couple will NOT survive times of trouble but a healthy couple should be able to. If you know your marriage is in trouble, don’t postpone the inevitable. If you wait too long you end up homeless, unemployed and legally liable to make those support payments every month ( I’m going to assume 99% of my readers are male and will be on the hook for child support ). If you act soon enough, you can guide your destiny rather than be tossed about by it.
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Okay, financially you are going to be screwed. This is a given. You will usually be paying about 60-70% of your gross income to federal taxes and support combined. Take it from experience, if you try to stay living a conventional lifestyle, you live just sink deeper and deeper into poverty. And as a father, I understand that your kids are about the only decent thing about your miserable existence. But if you stay in the same location as them and that place has too high a cost of living, you will be dooming yourself ( and odds are, the ex will move them away anyway AFTER that event ). The ex-wife and the courts give not a care about how little money you have left ( there will be ZERO justice for you. I tried getting Food Stamps as I was paying 75% of my gross, and was denied ). You WILL make your payments or you can go to jail, get butt humped and die from AIDS. I kid you not. But as bad as this is, it can be liberating. You can now start over again living a sane and sustainable ( financially speaking ) life. You can start over again with another marriage to a spouse that isn’t allowed to act as your ex did. You can have your life back, and while doing so on 33% of your former income doesn’t seem possible, it isn’t hard. Give up your car, get out of debt, live in an unconventional dwelling and never waste a cent on luxuries. You will have plenty of prep money very quickly. But only if you give up any hope of a middle class lifestyle and middle class mate. Hey, trust me, middle class mates suck anyway. The lower rungs of the economic ladder might not hold the prettiest prospective wives ( I’m talking about the perceived beauty desired such as you see on TV or in the mall at the high end stores ) , they might be pretty bruised up being used up by life, but they have a far more sensible attitude. They’ve been through the squeezer like you are now experiencing and they accept that life will hand them a crap sandwich long before they get a gold lottery ticket. And did I mention the preps?

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You can prep like a mother humper once the consumerist shoe shopping, central air wasting two car payments bitch of an ex is gone. You usually can come out ahead financially if you can learn to live below your means. How do you think I ended up on my own land, out of debt, running my own micro-business with preps coming out my ass? I make minimum wage and support a wife on that, as well as an ex-wife. One, I live below income. It took me awhile to learn how to do that. And mainly it boils down to just getting rid of the car and/or living in the cheapest area you can find. Two, you remarry a wife that is diametrically opposite of the ex. You can find cheap to keep wives. They all have their own issues, but then, we are talking about wives. We aren’t talking about just leaving a wife who won’t prep ( not that I’m opposed to that ). We are cutting off a limb once it becomes gangrenous. If you wait until the bitter end, you end up screwing yourself. If you are going through a tough time anyway, make the best of the pain and stress. Restart your life. Take your financial screwing, but don’t let it hurt you as much as the bitches want it to. If you cling to the middle class lifestyle, not only are you doomed to fail, if you aren’t careful you might attract another middle class wife!!!!! The Horrors. The Horrors.

END
The Official Bison Web Site http://www.bisonpress.com/
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My e-mail is jimd303@netzero.com
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Anyone can submit a guest article. No minimum word length, no writing skill necessary ( just get the idea across ). You retain copyright ( this must be your original writing ) and I’ll just use the once. I’ve yet to turn down an article, just don’t use the N Bomb or libel another that can sue me. Send by e-mail ( please, label as “guest article” so I can find it easily later ). Payment will be your removal from my enemies list.
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By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there.

99 BIG WHEELS


I’m sure as soon as you all read the comment by the troll saying that I should write about Big Wheels ( I think he was pissed he had to read another few words on bug out bicycles ) you instinctively understood that there was a fifty/fifty chance that I would take him up on his offer, no matter how steeped in sarcasm it happened to be. But you said to yourself, self, how in the world could even such a talented and wonderful creature blessed by Baby Jesus himself come up with an article on Big Wheels for survivalism? People, this stuff might look easy, but I think here is proof positive that it takes supreme talent to do all I do. Today’s article is on two topics, one being the three wheel bicycle as a survival conveyance. Okay, it technically isn’t a Big Wheel, that wonderful plastic tricycle that was for most the first vehicle any of us ever had unless we were just poor white trash living in an Appalachian coal mining town shack wearing flour sack shirts, watching whitewash dry ( too poor for actual paint ) and seeing how closely your cousin could be related to you before your offspring was stunted and looking like some freak from Hiroshima ( ohhhh! The humanity! How could he possibly have such a marked lack of compassion? ). But it is a Big Boy Big Wheel, so I call it close enough. Now, even I’ll admit that this article lacks much importance, so I’ll throw in some familiar ranting on the Republican Party Idiot O D Day. That might not be enough to keep you off my back, but I’ll deal with it.
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*
Oh, and one other thing. Speaking of “99”, remember that German band in the early Eighties singing about “99 Red Balloons”? I think that was the title of the song. If you listen to the English version ( the German version of course sounds better in a Teutonic Wench Pleading To Dominate You With Bondage Gear kind of way ) you might enjoy the reference to nuclear war worries ( the Balloon Going Up ). Okay, let’s get back on track. We all agree that bugging out by bike makes perfect sense because the bitch can’t break. Well, anything can break, but the odds are so far against it because you have as close to zero moving parts as is possible in a vehicle. A car on the other hand has close to a gabizillion parts ( actually 987 thousand kazillion ) to fail and with your luck one of them will on the worst possible day. Bikes are, at no additional charge, both on and off road. And the cost difference is insane ( about one to twenty at best ). Also, with a motor vehicle, once your fuel runs out you have a worthless tool. With a bike and just a handful of parts that thing should be good for years after the collapse. I think the reason so many Yuppie Puke Bastard Scum Survivalists insist on everything petroleum powered is because they refuse to believe it will ever disappear ( Little Johnny, where does meat come from? A white tray from the store ). Their argument is, It’s The Best For The Job ( giving an example of a chainsaw verses hand saws, for instance ). They don’t want to ask the more pertinent question of What Is The Best Tool For PODA ( Post Oil Dark Ages )?

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Now, while I won’t ever switch to this kind of bike, it does have advantages. A three wheeler is great for cargo hauling and remaining upright. A regular bike, two wheeled, is of course easily turned into a cargo hauler, but if you are suddenly attacked you have to let the bitch fall over. You might damage precious cargo. And you usually have to get untangled from a regular bike if you want to run or return fire. With a three wheeler you are far less encumbered at defense. Plus, if you are old, you almost have no choice but to have this type of bike ( okay, perhaps one day I’ll be forced to go three wheeled if I live long enough and the collapse hasn’t happened ). I don’t pretend that I have any more information than you on this bike. I don’t know prices other than you are paying a premium due to its low volume in demand. If the idea appeals to you the research should be easy enough ( guest article, anyone? ). It certainly is an option for a tool for a certain problem.

*

Next up we have friggin Newt Gingrich and his stupid comment on how 99 week unemployed are slacking whores. Okay, he actually only hinted at that. He did say something to the effect that “99 weeks is an associates degree”. As in, why are these slacking ho bitches wasting my tax dollars lounging about in the sun drinking beer when they could be earning a college degree. Newt, I usually love ya big fellow. You are a politician but at least you know history which makes you a less than total idiot of a politician. But here you are either showing your ass or showing us what a sell out you are. ANY government pay out has its share of hucksters and cheats. The unemployed are no different, that doesn’t make all of them so ( you have as many cheating the Social Security system or the military disability system or whatever ). And, workers pay into the system. To me it is just another tax I’ll never see a return on, but to those using that argument about SS, here is the same rationale. You can’t say everyone is entitled to SS but not unemployment. Third, you stupid twat, more college degrees do not create new jobs. They just create more debt for people who can’t afford it. It’s a good thing I have no plan on voting ( your vote is not for a candidate, your vote is your consent to being screwed by the establishment- if voting actually changed anything it would be illegal. Castro had 100% voter turnout at each “election” ).

END
The Official Bison Web Site http://www.bisonpress.com/
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My e-mail is jimd303@netzero.com
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Anyone can submit a guest article. No minimum word length, no writing skill necessary ( just get the idea across ). You retain copyright ( this must be your original writing ) and I’ll just use the once. I’ve yet to turn down an article, just don’t use the N Bomb or libel another that can sue me. Send by e-mail ( please, label as “guest article” so I can find it easily later ). Payment will be your removal from my enemies list.
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By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there.

FIVE YEAR PLAN


I liked the article Monday at Rawles on Japan with its debt at 300% of GDP. Of course, if we would just listen to the West Podunk Community College School Of Business all that would be necessary for the Japanese to do to increase their productivity and hence lower their debt, even in the radioactive ruins of their industrial parks, is to stop giving those whiney lazy bitches handouts like free shelter and meals. And to stop taxing the rich, since we all know all rich guys spend all their money on consumer items so it is all magically trickle down. They never send their money overseas for safekeeping or increased returns. But since we don’t listen to WPCCSOB, we are all doomed to economic ruin. The article mentioned the end of this decade as Really, Really Bad Times To Come. So, you have at most eight years to prepare by buying fortified zucchini farms atop mountains in any northern drought stricken state of your choice ( behold! Yeoman Farmer Paradise Of The Future! ), arming your troops with really cool looking short range high firepower carbines made by God Fearing Americans For God Fearing Americans To Smite The Unbelievers, and of course lots of complicated digital radio communications devices relying on odd sized batteries, wearing ballistic helmets sporting cameras and infrared detectors and night vision devices and bullet proof vests and at least five hundred clips of ammo and even if you can’t move under your own power with all that crap because of the weight you don’t have to worry because you are bullet resistant and can just remain immobile and lay down an uninterrupted spray of lead like that really cool gun in “Predator” that somehow didn’t need electrical power to rotate its barrels as it mowed down whole jungle ecosystems.
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Obviously this is a lot of stuff to buy, but if you are one of God’s chosen you make a lot of money, usually as a government contractor. You love the “free enterprise system” and Baby Jesus loves you ( I’m being sarcastic, Baby Jesus says you suck ). If God loved you, he made you rich and you can afford to buy your way to safety through the Apocalypse. Now, the article didn’t say a thing as to why we only have six to eight years. I’d imagine since it was talking about inflation through government quantitative easing, it is felt that is all the time we will have before the whole silly circus melts down. Hey, why not? It is as good a guess as my four years to zero oil imports. I’m glad to see the article as it is a much better heads up in the time line to collapse than you usually see over there. I think it is overly optimistic, but then I’m usually way too pessimistic. Keeping in mind my general rule that you should have your bare bones, better than nothing stockpile yesterday, would there be any harm in assuming a five year plan? If we assume that my overly paranoid date of death should be stretched out a bit ( but also keep in mind my last child support payment is now only nine paychecks away!!!!! ) and their overly Pollyanna assumption is too much to hope for, let’s just compromise, meet in the middle and say about five years to go until the twin oil import death and the hyperinflated economic contraction meet. I’m not saying this is a set in concrete date we should all fear, just that it is a possibility.

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And why not go with it? If you already have some food and protection, you can now gamble with the date of deliverance. The nice thing about an arbitrary date in the future is that no matter how small the probability of it being correct, you benefit from accepting it in that you get much more down. We all didn’t have to really truly believe all the computers would crash at the beginning of the millennia, we just used it as a motivator. A cattle prod to our lazy asses. For me it worked as both a timeline and as a way to visualize how I could prep better. If you work better under some kind of pressure ( I get so much written because I have a deadline. I don’t wait for inspiration or motivation. Those are too fickle and can be used by your brain as excuses ), the five year plan should do you a world of good. And it will work much better for you than it did for the Soviets because you are actually motivated. Fear and greed can be great motivators, but they work much better together than separately. You fear for your life, and are working to make your future lot in life more comfortable. If you have done nothing, go with my $500 plan. It is strictly bare bones, but with it and a cynical paranoid attitude you should survive a black swan event that happens anytime. Then, as serves you, make improvements.

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We all want more food than just wheat. More accurate weapons shooting modern ammunition. We would all like a place to live that is debt free and runs on alternate energy. Being out of debt. A retirement plan. All this is included in your five year plan. Just balance everything. Being completely out of debt is nice, but if that is all you do in five years, you have no where to live, no food storage, etc. Plan in order of importance. You won’t get everything done, but much more than if you “just prepped as I felt the budget allowed” ( which usually means never ). And plan your activities in order of freeing up cash. Like paying off one credit card quickly, then doubling up on the next. You free up a car payment, say, then that money plus the original amount that went to the first item goes to the next. Like I’ve outlined on moving to your junk land. You live in your car, or rent a room, putting your former mortgage money or higher rent into saving up moving money or paying off the land quickly. Everything gets easier and moves quicker this way. You might find the structure and the immediate feedback really work wonders for you.

END
The Official Bison Web Site http://www.bisonpress.com/
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My e-mail is jimd303@netzero.com
*
Anyone can submit a guest article. No minimum word length, no writing skill necessary ( just get the idea across ). You retain copyright ( this must be your original writing ) and I’ll just use the once. I’ve yet to turn down an article, just don’t use the N Bomb or libel another that can sue me. Send by e-mail ( please, label as “guest article” so I can find it easily later ). Payment will be your removal from my enemies list.
*
By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there.

MIGHTY THUNDER STICKS


A minion wanted to know my thoughts on apocalypse orphans. This will be a wonderful topic but must wait for another day after it ferments in my brain awhile more. But it did get me to thinking on the subject of firearm caliber. And all our favorite surplus war bolt action rifles. If the mighty he-man warrior of the clan sucks in an airborne virus, gets sick, soils his drawers in a bloody manner and dies ingloriously, will the more frail members of his family be able to pick up one of those ten pound clubs and then actually fire one? All along my less than perfect plan had been for the wife to act as back-up with the rimfire rifle, and if needed she could use the revolvers in rimfire or even the 357 if she went with 38’s. This is all fine and dandy with me using the Enfield to reach out to longish ( I’m no sniper, but even three hundred yards is a good distance to start taking out AK users ) distances but if anything happens to me her survival chances diminish with such an arsenal. There is nothing wrong with a rimfire as the sole long arm, but it must be used in very skilled hands ( stalking, ambush ). The average survivalist is an overweight office worker, not a practiced bushwacker. And the spouse is usually going to be less skilled in the martial arts. While a good firearm in untrained hands is a marginal tool, to a certain extent the tool will substitute for that lack. In a knife fight, you are just as disadvantaged with a stainless steel $5 knife from China as with a $100 knife custom made if you are untrained. In firearms, the training level is much lower than a knife to achieve a tolerable level of skill. If you are half-assed in using a gun, the difference in the tool starts to matter ( unlike the knife ).

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A guest article was posted earlier.  Scroll down after my article.
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Spending a grand on an AR-15 makes some sense as the carbine did have an original selling point that our little Vietnamese brothers in arms could shoot the thing far easier than the current 308 in service. They couldn’t shoot it for long as it jammed up easily, but don’t get me started on that. A African pygmy with arthritis could fire the AR for as long as it took to jam, with no discomfort. The AR is THE best design for a firearm that any urban boy could pick up and hose down the enemy. The recoil is zero. You do not flinch and can easily follow up shots. In all other aspects, this is the worst firearm every made. The parts are so over engineered that it would make a German cuss, the site is stupid, one can’t imagine why such a light weight carbine needs a carrying handle, you need a stick and a rock to extract a case jammed in the extractor, and the thing is dangerous to the user in a protracted firefight when the enemy won’t honor your request for a time out so you can clean your piece of crap. You might be tempted to arm your 100 pound five foot tall wife and your teenage children with this weapon because of the weight and recoil. As long as you hate them and want to see them die ( okay, I’m only sorta kidding ).
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For a loner survivalist, no other warm and fuzzy feeling will equal that of a scope mounted thirty caliber bolt action that will easily smite our enemies at eight hundred yards ( I ain’t that skilled, you might be- the gun certainly allows for it ). But if you have a wife and or kids, and are on a budget that precludes the purchase of four or five AR’s ( which are only three quarters of the price of the cheapest thirty caliber ), I’d recommend adopting a mid level arsenal. I’m talking about your average poor prepper here. I understand thee are plenty of Warrior Princesses out there that can pick up a M1 or whatnot and kick some serious long range ass. But that is not normal, is it? It is exceptional. Even though I applaud that skill, I won’t pretend it is normal. For the family defense unit of limited means and normal skill levels, think about carbine rounds. Yes, the 223 and 762x39. But not the semi auto rifles that are traditionally associated with those rounds. Semi-auto is retarded for a long term collapse into a dark age. You must conserve ammo from day one. And the cost of acquiring them is double. I’m suggesting civilian hunting bolt action rifles ( gasp! What of the bayonet? ).

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It is true that a surplus rifle is a far superior military arm than its lighter constructed civilian counterpart. You can shoot them longer, butt stock your enemies in the trenches, mount a bayonet and charge if you run out of ammo. You can abuse them and they still function. A deer rifle is not so accommodating. But the difference in the ammunition and weight is critical in arming females and children. Even a slender short pasty Englishman weighing one hundred twenty pounds soaking wet has the upper body strength to carry his Enfield all day long and shoot at bloody Krauts at the end of it. His wife, even if taller and matching his weight, does not. Despite what FemiNazi bitches tells you, the genders have physical differences. Males, even the weak ones, have superior strength. That is just the way it is. That also kills them quicker, so stop your whining. You fems also have the ability to store much more body fat ( and stay healthy ). If you aren’t busy at the gym trying to turn your body into one matching a pre-teen boy, you can put some fat on your ass and carry that portable apocalypse pantry around with you. Just don’t try to carry around a heavy rifle. You will only set yourself up for failure.

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A mid-caliber bolt action should be used for mid range sniping. Not close in urban assault. And it is an offensive weapon, not defensive. Don’t hunker down and wait to be attacked. The best defense is a good offense. So, while the rifle itself is not perfect or the best, it is affordable at around three hundred bucks. It should be light enough for the females and children to tote. Perhaps not easily, but easier. And the recoil, with a rifle mounted pad, should be manageable. Not as nice as a AR, but a heck of a lot nicer than a Mossin Nagant. And the benefits of scaling down your caliber are reflected in price and resources. The rounds cost half thirty caliber ( applicable to all but the 762x54r ), which means the same cost for arming two family members as one using his mighty macho thunder stick. And, while I’m not overly skilled on reloading so I can’t give exact figures, you are using less gunpowder to propel your lead down range. Yes, less stopping power and range, but more ammunition in the long run. As long as you are sniping instead of spraying and praying, the mid level calibers should only be marginally less effective ( 80/20 rule ). Now you are armed as a family with less than perfect but acceptable weapons rather than just having one member armed with the perfect rifle.

END
The Official Bison Web Site http://www.bisonpress.com/
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My e-mail is jimd303@netzero.com
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Anyone can submit a guest article. No minimum word length, no writing skill necessary ( just get the idea across ). You retain copyright ( this must be your original writing ) and I’ll just use the once. I’ve yet to turn down an article, just don’t use the N Bomb or libel another that can sue me. Send by e-mail ( please, label as “guest article” so I can find it easily later ). Payment will be your removal from my enemies list.
*
By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there.

GUEST ARTICLE



As more people are seeing that those damn survivalists were perhaps not wrong about everything, more attention is devoted to them in the general media. While most of that fiction is not great at all, some works really try to have something to say. For instance, "Take Shelter". ( http://www.imdb.fr/title/tt1675192/ )



This is a movie that is clearly stemming from someone's personal experience, as it accurately describes the first stages of survivalism as experienced by newcomers.



It is a movie with premonitions and twist endings/moments, so it cannot be talked upon without referring to that. Just like it's nearly impossible to talk about "The Sixth Sense", once you've seen it, without spoiling it.



That being said, there is only suspence for those who aren't in survivalism. For survivalists, the fact of the hero being right or delusional is irrelevant.


OK, SO there are ONLY SPOILERS from now on.



We follow a character named Curtis LaFourche, played by Michael Shannon, who is reminiscent of Christopher Walken in his performance. Curtis is not a big talker, he has a wife and a young girl (approx. 5-6 years old). They belong to the working class in a small town in Ohio.



Curtis has very vivid dreams about a tornado threatening his home and his family, and this leads him to get prepared for it. This is one of several points where the movie does not want to confront itself with the more disturbing aspects of survivalism. Curtis' actions are not motivated by politics or economy, but by a dream, and a general sense of doom (and impressive sleeping disorders as well...). Now this is somewhat fortunate, because the storm becomes a metaphor for anything "SHTF", and we don't get caught by the technicalities. The movie focuses on Curtis' situation and choices.



His own mother having had schizophrenia, and being treated for it, Curtis is as cautious about a potential mental disorder as he is about his preps. A lot of people who have barely passed the door to survivalism may also ask themselves if they're not overreacting, or not having some condition (depression, paranoia...), when they're witnessing all the nonsensical stuff that revolves around survivalism, which is full of apocalyptical visions and general wackiness.



As more dreams occur, for instance his daughter and him being attacked while being in a car, or Curtis being bitten by his own dog, Curtis takes precautions (buys some extra food, for instance), and reorders some of his world slightly. No big fuss, but this starts to startle his wife, to whom he also becomes more directive. My view : Curtis is not kidding about his security, and will not let it jeopardize by discussions , compromise and other home economics/politics.



Then Curtis falls into the Big Trap of starters, which is overdoing things. He already has an old, small storm shelter in his backyard (from previous owners, probably), but decides to dig up a hole next to it, to put a ship container (!) and thus expand the living space. This costs him north of 6800 dollars, and he borrows company equimpent without telling his boss to do so. He takes his best buddy, also his work buddy, to help him.



Then he dreams about this buddy hurting him, and overreacts. He wants the buddy to be reassigned to another team, the buddy tells everything to the boss, who then fires Curtis. The buddy gets fired too (which is also good bonus lesson).



At first, Curtis' choice of doing things the way he did is not optimal. Of course, there's an easy explanation : he did rush things, didn't have the money to rent the equipment etc.



But there is another clue, and it's the center of the movie. Curtis is all alone on this. Nobody, not one single person is going to be of any help to him whatsoever. His wife is dreaming of a holiday by the sea, his father-in-law is a domineering idiot, his brother is patronizing him, his buddy turns against him and tells the whole social club (100+ people) about what he's doing (& provokes him in front of everybody), shrinks are clueless etc.



During the movie, Curtis becomes increasingly paranoid, but the introverted way. He's not aggressive, but he takes it upon himself, and continues stubbornly. Buys horribly expansive gas masks. Anybody in the survivalist world knows he's been horribly ripped off, but this could be a good metaphor of the whole profiteering business that grows around freaked out survivalists, with certain bloggers more than happy to oblige - after all, there's money to be made here.



As the movie draws to an end, as with every "omen" movie there has to be a confirmation of the omen. Here, the alarm sirens roars, a bad storm is approaching. Curtis can bring his family into the shelter, though. At this point the survivalist viewer can say "See ? It made sense to do everything he did." The setting of the shelter is extremely bare, there aren't spare clothes for instance (they're all in their pyjamas). The place looks cold and unfamiliar, like a cave.



At that stage, Curtis is stricken by terror of what is outside. His wife makes the whole Oprah stance "you have to open the doors of the shelter by yourself, this is something that you'll have to do", as if it was a first step towards recovery. My take on this : recovery from what ? His condition just saved your life and your child's life as well, just how is that a bad thing ? Is it because the danger is gone now ? it is because the shelter is finished, and you can take it for granted ? I guess it's all that "feminine selective memory" thing (or the "always be on top" thing).



And as the shelter's doors are opened , men in the audience and survivalists even more so hope to see utter devastation. But no, just a few branches that the storm took away from trees, the rest is undamaged.



Thus, Curtis accepts to go to a shrink, who convinces him to take a treatment AND to be hospitalized for a while.



In the final scene, which is the key scene that can be interpreted in several ways, the family is at Myrtle Beach (SC), and then the storm Curtis was dreaming about (with oily rain drops) is coming towards them, with two tornado hoses visible. Curtis looks to his wife, who nods in approval.



Now that scene can be interpreted in several ways.



First interpretation : it is one of Curtis' dreams. The way it is filmed is like the other dream sequences, but then again those started quite realistically as well. This interpreation means he's trapped in his madness forever. Another clue for this version is that they would not have been able to afford the vacation in the first place.



Second interpretation : this is what he prepared against, but he's away from home now. It might kill them all (who knows - you can't tell from the scene) and thus it was all Inescapabale Fate.



Third interpretation (it is a bit less solid) : By having gone so extreme, he's in this situation now where he had to go to the beach instead of having stayed at home. He missed the Test givent to him by the Almighty because he overreacted.



My interpretation : Shit does happen, and who cares if it happened to you or to somebody else. His premonitions did come true and he was right to worry and to act, even imperfectly.



End of the movie.





This kind of movie is focusing on the individual instead of the underlying technical / statistical aspects. But this is acceptable because most people don't care about economics, politics or fallout but do get interested by relations between people. (It's the old LEGO vs PLAYMOBIL divide).



Many survivalists have seen the Twilight Zone episode "The Shelter" where friendly neighbours try to break in one' shelter as the sirens roar. Here, I would have expected the Curtis' social environment to be somewhat jealous of his preps, or sneaky, but instead they never seem to understand what he's doing. One critic I read on the internet says it's a "Noah's Ark" kind of story. Indeed it's incredible that nobody in the movie questions the whole reason behind Curtis' actions. To everybody, he's just losing it. And, because he's isolated, that's how he thinks about himself, too. After all, he is using the same reasoning patterns as his environment does.



I believe that for the majority of serious survivalists (NOT yuppie survivalists), there is a tremendous internal force that drives them to act. They just know. And they also happened to have lived through serious shit at least once in their lifetime. (Here, it's the mother's schizophrenia that represents this kind of trauma). So the movie would be about the mysteriousness of this internal force in the eyes of those who cannot understand it, and the interaction between the two points of view.





From a survivalist perspective, I identified easily with Curtis. I had the same sense of overblown expenses, that stems from a lack of practical knowledge (well shown at one point in the movie). Curtis doesn't use the internet , but goes to the public library and looks for books on mental illness. His research strategy is not adapted either, as are his sources of knowledge (small rural library).



This movie had to leave practical aspects out, for the sake of the message. There is never any mention of firearms (although two moments in the picture could have led to it - the abduction dream and the entrance in the surplus shop), and there is no survivalist subculture, from internet or otherwise. Also, "SHTF" is a powerful storm, but nothing political, societal, economic or technological. It's a "clean" SHTF scenario (not "DEAD ZONE" with Christopher Walken, which is an evident reference for this movie).



From the perspective of the frugal survivalist, the movie pinpoints the trappings of uncontrolled spending (consumer culture) and lack of factual research. Actually, he could have made it just fine with what he already had and the few things he did in the beggining (more food, remove the dog's unpredictability issue etc.), if his only concern was a tornado.





The message of the movie is that you'll be completely on you own, even and especially within your own people. You will have to do the right thing while everybody will oppose you. They will oppose you because they want what they believe is best for you, and they will not listen to you.





Â

CLAN CRACKIE


I don’t know why but my Supreme Hefe ( Hefe is a wonderful moniker for a female boss. Hefe being Spanish for boss, but they always are worried you are calling them heifer ) loves to institute huge changes into my work life during the mad Christmas rush. I think this is nothing more than sweet revenge disguised as sad but necessary business changes. The first season I had to sledge hammer the old walk in freezer apart ( that part was pretty fun ) as it had finally given up the ghost, but to top that off it was decided that since the place was trashed anyway we might as well just reorganize the shelves for a better flow pattern ( industrial warehouse shelves full of canned goods ). This last Christmas it was decided that since we had gotten so busy with the increased amount of businesses donating to us ( we went from donation pick ups lasting an hour and a half or at most two hours a morning to all morning and sometimes even after lunch ), I would be delegated towards the scut work and a new boss would be placed over me to do paperwork, interact more with clients, etc. No problem, in the long run less stress for me and I love monkey work as it frees my mind towards this writing. The problem, temporary but started at the worst time, was going from running the food bank completely alone for three years to having someone micro-manage everything I was doing. And another female boss ( affectionately known as The Straw Boss )? I have three friggin female bosses, not counting the wife! The friggin humanity!

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Anyway, all that was just a lead up to setting up this article. I’m driving the long route to the next burg and so two times a week I have a long time to listen to Glen Beck on the radio. For the most part he is more entertaining than annoying. But every once in awhile he really makes my teeth itch. He starts out ( okay, it was one of his co-wankers, Glen was out at the hospital or something ) about how he is sooooo tired of everyone bad mouthing America. Why, we are the most diverse, tolerant people on Earth. He then went on to something else, happy that he made his point that we as a country have done such a wonderful job assimilating so many different cultures together and we have not been killing each other like they do in such yuckie places like Yugoslavia or West Pestilent African places. Later, as I pulled up back to work, I was greeted to the always sad but amusing sight of a group from the Clan Crackie grabbing ass and cavorting in the winter sun ( it of course gladdens ones heart that the bright sunshine warms the poor skinny dears meth weakened bones ). I’m not overly fond of that clan. I dealt with those idiots working in the casino as they tried to stay indoors and mooch alcohol without spending money. It’s one thing to want to stay out of the freezing temperatures, quite another to do so while being disruptive and cheap ( frugal is saving money, cheap is getting others to pay ). Luckily they don’t stay around long. But the thing that grabbed my attention was how unified a tribe they were. Crack users have their own tribe. What more could so well underline the persistence of such a drive that the most pathetic and vile idiots instinctively ( there is little intelligence behind it as I’m sure the collective IQ is room temperature ) flocked to it?
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Sorry Glen dudes, on this point the drug users are smarter than you. The natural human tendency is to go to tribal affiliations. Different cultures do not mix. If you throw enough surplus wealth their way, they will temporarily play nice and get along for the free handout. But underneath it all they still hate each other. Tribes are natural, nation states, if they do not share a common culture, are not. Tribes have been around as long as man. Nation states are artificial and basically the spoils of war on an industrial scale. If you would look just a bit closer than the glossy high school text book version, here in the US we are not very tolerant amongst our diversified peoples. I don’t think it would be out of line to say that only the last twenty years have been the exception ( and that might just be a statistical blip in our 400 year history ). We have always hated each other. The Indians were the target of genocide, the Blacks of enslavement, the Mexicans of land fraud, the Asians of citizenship denial, any White of lower class of indentured servitude ( there was always a good change of death before your term was up ) and any non Anglo-Saxon of discrimination. Then, when we felt like it, they were allowed to begrudgingly assimilated AFTER discrimination, harassment and death so that the next group could be a target. We never were tolerant so much as our intolerance was a moving target. So I don’t see what we have to be so proud of. But even putting all that aside, regurgitating such mindless patriotic pabulum is dangerous. If we condition Joe and Jane Sheeple to think all our little black and brown brothers love them, the simple pukes never see them as a threat. And no, I’m not just talking about race. Yes, race is a huge problem in this country, and mostly because we try to force a façade of love over our hate. But ANY tribal differences are the same.

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When the surplus wealth disappears, the fake tolerance and cultural diversity acceptance will be wiped away in an orgy of blood and violence. Look at how hard the federal government has been trying to hide the fact we are a tribal species and has been pretending “Americans” is a natural grouping. In effect, they are trying to replace your tribe with their tribe. But their tribe isn’t one. A tribe shares a culture. Americans are 101 different cultures that were held together with the promise of free wealth ( almost all of it stolen of course. First from other nations and now from each other ). Look at their century and a half war against the South. It isn’t just about punishing States from thinking they are superior to the federal union ( Constitution? We don’t need no stinkin Constitution! ). It is also a war against another culture or tribe. The Yankee bastards hate the South. Slavery had nothing to do with it ( the North was guilty as well in all but tolerating it longer ). States Rights were not any less important in the North, it was just that when it came to the tribe, it didn’t matter what the political unit was. The North was its own culture and the different states had no problem surrendering some independence to the feds. Because they were their own tribe ( and of course things were the messiest when one state had a blend of the two cultures ). The problem was that the northern tribe wanted the southern tribe to surrender economic independence and the south was in no mood to let that fly. They might have enjoyed slavery, but so did the north in other disguises. That was not their sin alone. But slave owners or not, those in positions of power weren’t going to become enslaved themselves. And ever since then, the North has kept up its subjugation to the southern colonies. I’d even say that the civil rights movement was encouraged or subsidized, but that might be too paranoid. At most, a subject for another day. But the success led the north controlled federal government to assume it could colonize all the other cultures and tribes on the continent. And beyond. Certainly it is no surprise when the North got a taste of empire controlling another culture it felt comfortable then going global.

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But clashing cultures never stay together long. Our yearning for tribes at present leads us to affiliate along harmless lines such as hobbies, sports or drug use ( harmless to those in power ). In the future, as the tribes are no longer bribed to tolerate, and as they then sense weakness in their controller, the fake tribe fails. Entropy of the diverse nation state.

END
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NOT ALL PROBLEMS


As per the remarks of a loyal minion in the comments section with the article “Ethanol Horde”, serious preppers must admit that not all problems can have a solution. Great observation. This is of course as true as can be but your rank and file doesn’t want to admit it. And any idiot with a keyboard that writes on survivalism certainly doesn’t want to admit he doesn’t have all the answers. Your average survivalists puts a lot of effort into research and a lot of money into supplies. Naturally you don’t want to see any of that go to waste so you might tend to place unwarranted faith into what you have done, and apply that unwisely. Thinking a stockpile of ammunition is sufficient as you go around spraying and praying in an approved military manner ( if I just sacrifice enough manna to the Semi-Auto god, he shall bless me and protect me ). When the very simple fact is that there is absolutely no good answer to the problem of keeping our modern arms operational. With improvised ammo, if any is available ( and if you tell me strike anywhere matches I shall scream until blood spurts out of my nose- the new formula matches are less combustible than when the military manual was written ), you corrode your rifle or your cases and soon enough you are back to the same problem but worse.

*

We can talk about it until the cows come home, but really almost under any serious scenario most of us no matter how prepared will not survive the initial die-off. We are well prepared to survive a serious economic contraction, and we could survive nicely once things shake themselves out, but none of us have the resources to actual survive the process of devolving political control in a populated area. When you start with a centralized government run on oil and end up with a localized agrarian society, in between is all the fighting between groups for who is to become the new king. If you have anything worth stealing, you die. If you are part of the fighting you roll the dice and fifty fifty you die. You could have the New World Orders most valuable skill and you will die at the hands of indifferent hungry mobs. You could die in a famine stricken city or die in a isolated spot cut off from resupply. Hell, you could die from nuclear attacks as the worlds armies run out of conventional arms and must resort to the missiles to starve off one more attack ( or try to steal the last of resources ).
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Not that everything is hopeless. You still go driving your car every day even knowing that this might be the leading cause of death. You take extra precautions and trust in the luck of the Wee People that some asswhore doesn’t T-bone you as they are distracted texting. In the case of survivalism, you will most likely die, but you fight the good fight until the end. You try your hardest, but don’t bemoan your fate as you lie dying in a ditch. Hopefully you did all you could. The cards were always stacked against you. Just make sure you play a mean game while you can. I think that most people place way too much faith in the fact that they will live close to forever. Damn, after a certain point, who wants to? I’m content to just let fate strike me down as the fickle bitch sees fit. If I’m going to have a heart attack peddling my bike, fine. Irony is funny, after all. What better way to go than the exercise that is supposed to keep you fit?

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Let’s say you are battening down the hatches, arming yourself for the zombie assault, wearing a mask in case of government induced contagion ( I’m pretty sure that AIDS had a bit of help getting here and spreading so quickly in specific areas, so I would hold no surprise if a barnyard flu outbreak is in our future ), you’ve bugged out to the concrete bunker, etc., etc. Then a left field Murphy’s Law happens. Say, the spouse, who has been hiding her affair with the UPS man ( and here you thought she was helping with the finances with all those E-Bay sales ), decides the time is right to unlatch the backdoor one night and lets in her new and improved husband. They both live happily ever after on your supplies. The point being, there is no way you can solve that potential problem. And I’m sure you could think of 100 different scenarios like that. You could drive yourself crazy doing that ( literally, like becoming a paranoid schizophrenic ). Do your best, and don’t worry about the inevitable.

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Christ on a rocket propelled cracker, I’m feeling like double warmed over crap today. I’ve been sick for a few days, sore throat morphing into fever and work has been a challenge. This morning I barely biked into work I was so weak ( looking on the bright side, even though it was 3 degrees out I was quite comfortable with a long warm flash ). So, today being Friday as I write this, my article might be mediocre and a bit on the short side. I’m hoping I kick this by the end of the weekend.

END
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My e-mail is jimd303@netzero.com
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Anyone can submit a guest article. No minimum word length, no writing skill necessary ( just get the idea across ). You retain copyright ( this must be your original writing ) and I’ll just use the once. I’ve yet to turn down an article, just don’t use the N Bomb or libel another that can sue me. Send by e-mail ( please, label as “guest article” so I can find it easily later ). Payment will be your removal from my enemies list.
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By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there.

ENTROPY


When you lead off most of your articles, “I’m not sure if I covered this before, but…”, that is bad enough. At best it points to a lack of any organization ( I’m the cluttered desk kind of guy ). But when you are writing about entropy and make the same statement, that sadly transcends irony. Entropy is simplified ( you can sound all knowledgeable and go to great lengths describing it, as the Druid Dude does very well, but we all know I go to great lengths to simplify things mostly for my own understanding rather than yours ) as Things Fall Apart. Okay, things fall apart without effort being put into arresting that process, but you get the point. Entropy is about states of energy degrading or some such, but I like my definition better ( its probably not mine but I’ll use it like that ). Everyone both instinctively knows/learns about entropy but at the same time takes great pains to either sidestep the consequences, hide it or bribe off the process. When you buy a house, there is a constant state of repair that must take place or the state of the house reaches a lesser quality than what you started at. A car, having a limited number of miles to go before it takes more energy to keep it running than it is worth, is the first lesson in entropy most of us experience. It starts to decay/get worn from day one. Inflation is a great example of entropy. Without adding real tangible goods to back each printed batch, each dollar becomes worth less. Every new batch of bills added makes every other bill in existence worth less.
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My blog is an example of entropy. As time goes on, the relatively fixed number of ideas in my head is worth less and less. If that goes on long enough you really start sounding retarded as many ideas are topical and have a limited shelf life ( a simple example would be expecting the federal government to still stock public shelter with food. There are few if any shelters left, and they aren’t stockpiled ). I feel I must continually consume more and more information to stay ahead of this obsolescence ( I know most of you think I’ve failed ). Just as most people today know they must learn upgraded skills for their job ( each additional skill of course returns less and less in the way of compensation. You are learning to keep your employment ). Our countries infrastructure is a poster boy to the consequences of allowing entropy to run its course. Gum, glue, baling wire and duct tape are not suitable repair materials. Because our entire industrial infrastructure was built to such high quality using the best material and world class engineering, all this crumbling around us is still working, after a fashion, with said half assed repairs, but since we don’t have replacements for the original materials it won’t last forever. Our empire ( well, anyone’s empire throughout time ) is victim to entropy. We built it up with a world class military ( it might still be world class, but it simply ain’t big enough now to do the job ), the worlds leader in oil production, the worlds king of steel, etc. None of this is available to us now, so we aren’t inputting enough material to freeze entropy. We are just band-aiding the giant as it slowly dissolves.

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See? Entropy is familiar to all of us. Obvious examples. Yet because we used the last century denying entropy ( more oil was found and used as a way to put wrapping paper and a bow over entropy ), it isn’t the lens we choose to view our world anymore. I’d even like to guess that our throw away society was a prop we used to deny entropy. It takes continued effort to maintain a marriage. Too much work. Throw the bitch away and start over with a new one ( that’s right, on marriage number four and unhappy as ever. I’ve just stopped thinking the next one will be much of an improvement so I keep this one around ). Rather than sharpen and oil a razor, we just use disposable ones ( not the greatest example, since safety blades are a heck of a lot safer than the straight edge of death, but you get my point ). Rather than clean or fill or sharpen a writing pen, use disposables. Who wants to clean dookie? Use disposable diapers. God knows our bloated corpses are too precious to journey down to a recycling center, so throw away that beverage bottle. There is nothing much to maintain and take care of and mix your labor with if everything is easily replaceable ( I’m just as guilty and have only started turning over a new leaf as the old types of disposables have dipped past the point they make economic sense. The new frugal is quality for more and more items ).

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The thing to take away here is that if you start asking a simple question, you can get a much clearer view of the future of our organizations and institutions. Is the level of energy or material needed to maintain its original configuration being applied? If not, entropy already has or soon will start to cripple it. And you plan accordingly.

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Okay, on to a short subject. The make-your-own water filters using the Berky replacement ceramic elements. I had been worried that the squishy washer used to obtain a water tight barrier would grow brittle with age. I opened up my five year old element ( I have a second one that’s newer ) and the washer is just like new. And that is with it wrapped in the original bubble wrap surrounded by newspaper and in a cardboard box and subjected to weather fluctuations. While I was in there, I measured the washer. It is the same size as your standard outdoor garden hose rubber washers ( the Berky washer is much thicker and looks to be of higher quality though ). I had bought a pack for my five gallon water dispenser ( spout at the bottom edge ) and so they were handy for comparison. I threw the package into the filter box thinking it might make a decent cheap patch if something happened to the original washer. Use that as you see fit.

END
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Anyone can submit a guest article. No minimum word length, no writing skill necessary ( just get the idea across ). You retain copyright ( this must be your original writing ) and I’ll just use the once. I’ve yet to turn down an article, just don’t use the N Bomb or libel another that can sue me. Send by e-mail ( please, label as “guest article” so I can find it easily later ). Payment will be your removal from my enemies list.
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By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there.

BUG OUT BLATHER


A kindly minion made the suggestion that I elaborate in depth on junk land, either as a series of articles or another book ( with a huge list of possible subjects ). Which of course I might just have to do if for no other reason that you are all crying poor and not doing much in the way of Amazon ordering ( bad minion! No biscuit!- thanks to a minion for giving me that one to rip off ). I do think another book would be nice, perhaps an updated companion piece frugal preps/cheap homesteading. But time she is not kind. Lacking financial motivation ( my books are the second least profitable aspect of my begging ), I tend to begrudge anymore time writing. Anyway, I bring up the above suggestion for a reason. I was thinking about an article on “why buy junk land” ( relax, I won’t subject you to that, yet ) and of course you get around to the argument as using it as a retreat rather than a homestead. Most folks are rightfully hesitant to move out to the semi-wilds when the job market sucks. It is bad enough to face the prospects of finding another job where you are, even with references and networks. At this point in the economic collapse, to move is to assure unemployment baring a miracle by Baby Jesus himself ( we were having a beer together the other day and he told me to pass on that your hair looks awful and hence he won’t be intervening ). Now, moving isn’t necessarily a bad strategy. You could use the unemployment as an excuse to declare bankruptcy, dump the house, perhaps the wife, go on Food Stamps and live off those as you learn to garden and raise chickens ( for under two grand you could buy a lot in east Texas and spend most of your time fishing ). Use the twilight of the Welfare Oil State to your advantage ( Wos, kind of a play on words with Oz, or Australia. Get it? ). Alas, if you like your wife, most likely she won’t go along with this primitive strategy ( hell, even my wife would most likely take off if I didn’t provide her regular booze and cigarettes, and she is a much better Prepper Bitch than your wife ). So understandably that leaves you with no other option than a retreat.
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As you should all know by now, I hate the bugging out strategy. You should live at the retreat, and since I’ve pointed out how to do so very cheaply, this should be an option open to all. But see the above. Even if economically feasible, it is a route almost no one wants to take. Most of us, and I include myself, would rather stay married and live in a less than perfect location. I could be living in an even more remote location, and live on almost nothing, but I doubt the wife would stay ( or if she stayed, I wouldn’t want to put up with her attitude she developed ). So a bug out option isn’t as retarded as I make it out to be, looking at it realistically. Oh, it is still a very bad choice, the variables almost assure your death. But realistically it is probably what most folks will do. We’ll cover a frugal approach, but as my final word on its advisability, I’ll just say it should, in a perfect world, be a fail safe back up plan rather than a primary strategy. Your basic plan is CCC. Creep out, cached camping. You bike out off road and go to a innocuous camping spot. It doesn’t necessarily have to be your own land, but I would highly recommend it. We can talk until we are blue in the face about possible future calamities, and many might indeed happen, but the one happening now, and for the last three years, is the economic collapse. It is already here and if you ignore it hoping for a sudden collapse that eliminates the bankers and the property tax collectors, you are setting yourself up for failure. The bankers and the politicians have been kicking the can down the road for a very long time. They are doing a splendid job of it. But eventually the road ends. If you try to time that, you will most likely fail. Plan on economic collapse, which means eventually you will be homeless long before the government collapses. Junk land is your ultimate insurance against homelessness.

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Get yourself a piece of land. Cache your food supply. And other vital equipment. The olde timey French trapper dudes were the ones, I believe, who introduced the cache concept. Hundreds to thousands of miles from town, hostile Injuns about, caching was life or death. Sound like your future? Caching eliminates expensive buildings and the prospect of theft ( obviously, bury in secret ). Construct a shelter, but one that won’t be broken into. Such as a lean-to or a outdoor roof on poles ( I’ll feel stupid when I hear the name but I’m having a brain fart on it. Most likely because these damn people around here don’t respect Jim Time and I got some fool yammering in my ear as they watch me hunched over the keyboard typing. Hello? This is your friggin clue calling ). Bury the tarps or bug screening or canvas you will use later to finish the shelter. The point is to disguise your intentions. For all the world to see, a weekend camping spot. Nothing to steal here ( just in case, I’d bury a hatchet or whatnot if they do destroy the shelter and you need another one ). As to bugging out, get a bike. A single speed, and not from a China Mart. A single speed ( coaster brake, like you had as a kid ) because nothing breaks on it except the chain and eventually the ball bearings. The spokes can break, which on a geared bike cause wheel wobble against brake pads. If a single speed gets wheel wobble, you don’t have to loosen up the brakes to peddle. Carry a spare fitted chain, and you are almost guaranteed to make it there mechanically. Your tires of course should be the solid tires.

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Around roadblocks and not running out of gas, the bike is what you need as a BOV. Have a front and rear basket. You will need to carry some water, a route by water to replenish ( have a filter ), and a pack full of peanut butter and beef jerky. Calorie dense foods. Remember, it is fifty calories a mile to peddle. Strap on a pistol for protection with a decent amount of ammunition. Bare bones anything else such as sleeping gear or what not. Weight takes calories to haul, and you can only travel as far as your food supply. You might never arrive, but if leaving is better than staying, it is better odds. Good luck.

END
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My e-mail is jimd303@netzero.com
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Anyone can submit a guest article. No minimum word length, no writing skill necessary ( just get the idea across ). You retain copyright ( this must be your original writing ) and I’ll just use the once. I’ve yet to turn down an article, just don’t use the N Bomb or libel another that can sue me. Send by e-mail ( please, label as “guest article” so I can find it easily later ). Payment will be your removal from my enemies list.
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By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there.

ETHANOL HORDE


A minion was wondering if the Golden Horde threat was all that real, and there is a new article out at Energy Bulletin on the end of the ethanol subsidy and import ban. Let’s take the ethanol news first as I have very little new to say on it. When TPTB do something incredibly stupid it is both because they are indeed incompetent short sighted asswhores and because some group is benefiting from the action. When they finally reverse themselves it is not out of logic or common sense but because they have no other choice. When Bush The Younger got us involved in Iraq, it was most likely because his handler Cheney ( supreme douchebag of this century, but also a pretty cool guy that had no problem busting a cap into, literally, the ass of a lawyer. Hell, if Hitler and Stalin killed a bunch of lawyers they can’t be all bad even considering the other 40 million combined body count ) wanted to make a few bucks, because the country needed a nice war spending booster to counter a sagging Tech Wreck economy and to control future flows of oil from the middle east. Obammy The Kenyan promised to end that war but he is a lying sack of crap ( read my big floppy lips, no new taxes. New cigarette taxes two months after swearing in may his evil soul combust in the putrid flames of a bubbling bowel in hell alongside wife #2 ). After three years, he finally placed a piece of eye candy on the sore to make it look like we were out. Why? Not to win reelection because elections are rigged nowadays. Not to fulfill his promises ( read my fecal stained lips that continually suckle the anus of central bankers, no new taxes. What the crap is that new universal health care bill, bitch? ) because he lies so much he can’t remember what he promised. He pulled out of one war because we are hemorrhaging money much worse than is admitted and that was the only choice we had. So when Bush Junior starts the ethanol subsidy it is because it benefits one special interest group plus it denies food to the Third World. Those darn darkies must be ethnically cleansed ( as a bonus, it makes the Saudi’s regime less stable and they are more beholden to us for military support ). And most importantly, at the time we didn’t have the frac fuels we do now. We were desperately trying to stem the decline from import drops. Of course I can’t be sure, but I’d wager the food situation here is much more dire than admitted. We needed to put a heck of a lot more grain on the market for human consumption. As far as gasoline prices, expect them to soar. Ethanol was ten percent of our liquid fuels.
*
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*
A minion was wondering why The Horde was such a fearsome foe if most people are going to assume the government will come to the rescue. And given folks reluctance to leave their “castle”, their only form of savings. And their only form of retirement most likely ( I don’t think there will be ANY market for reverse mortgages anymore, but idiots who lived the middle class won’t acknowledge that truth as it is their only life preserver ). These are good points. Most folks will remain stationary. Most won’t have enough gasoline in their vehicles. Most will wait until the roads are a huge stationary traffic jam before they try to bug out. All this is true. But the problem isn’t in the percentages, it is in the raw numbers. Because we are so overpopulated, even small numbers pose an extreme risk. And the places folks live nowadays is far worse than it used to be. Back in the last Great Depression, the bulk of the population lived on farms. Or, they lived in cities near farms. Today, almost everyone is far away from food production and it is totally centralized. To cope with the overpopulation of once fertile food production areas, people moved into all the marginal land. They didn’t see a problem. Here was a piece of land, dirt cheap because it was junk land. They imported federal money to live on and used federally constructed grid power to survive. None of these areas, from the swamps of Florida to the deserts of the southwest, can support more than a few miserable indigenous tribes. When the grid fails or the government checks stop, there is no living off the land. The land is incapable of supporting more than a handful. So, even though a lot of people will eventually move some time or another, even after most are dead there is such a huge number of them ( 15 million in Florida, 7 million in L.A., etc. ) that the survivors, warm from burning McMansions for fireplace heat and still picking the rotting flesh of the first dead out of their dentures, will make up a formidable horde. It is just like the small percentages that toppled the banks. When you are leveraged 100 to 1, a two percent loss bankrupts you. When just a percent or two of every town survives, there were so many there that a huge mob is left. Most can’t hoard enough ammunition.

*

This is true almost everywhere you look. Small percentages are now huge threats because the system has been overleveraged. To the number of retirees that will bankrupt Social Security, to the amount of money an insurer can pay out before all claims are denied, to the low number of crop failures that will start widespread famine. This ain’t your pappy’s survivalism anymore, as I’ve said before. Surviving the sixties nuke attack was as easy as picking a desolate area not downwind. Today, what desolate areas? I might live in one of the more remote spots, but that doesn’t mean most cars can’t make that 200 miles. It also means that once sleepy town itself is overpopulated so its location is little consolation. Fear the horde.

END

The Official Bison Web Site http://www.bisonpress.com/
*
My e-mail is jimd303@netzero.com
*
Anyone can submit a guest article. No minimum word length, no writing skill necessary ( just get the idea across ). You retain copyright ( this must be your original writing ) and I’ll just use the once. I’ve yet to turn down an article, just don’t use the N Bomb or libel another that can sue me. Send by e-mail ( please, label as “guest article” so I can find it easily later ). Payment will be your removal from my enemies list.
*
By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there.

BWEEBS


Always hunkering for another acronym, today we refer to the earlier post on killing the wife. BWEEBS. Bitches With Brats. Do I have much new here to report? Of course not. It’s Monday, and not only is it Monday, it’s the first Monday in over two years I have to start working a full eight hour day again. Even less time to meander through other blogs and dream up something new, or more usually dream up a new way of saying the same old thing, so the only thing I pulled out of my butt was the above title. Let’s see if we can actually come close to the regular allotment. Just to kill a few more words, I’ve tried in the past to write half length articles and I just don’t seem to be able to enjoy them. I don’t feel like I’ve harped on a subject long enough. I’m sure many disagree but if I wanted your opinion I’d slap it out of you. Okay, I’m kidding. I’m rather non-violent. Not because I want to be but because that has been my coping mechanism my entire life ( non-threatening and the class clown ). I’m wondering if all the repression will lead to Going Postal. It certainly can’t hurt after the Apocalypse when I can let loose.
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*
One of my few female minions who has stuck around despite my continued abuse ( and to be fair, I’m an equal opportunity abuser and try to get seniors and commies in a lather also ), Lamb, commented that it would be just as easy and desirable to kill the husband. Hey, no argument there. I’m a big fan of Farrah Fawcett. Mostly for the nice scenery rather than the acting. All females who cry and whine that they are abused need only think “Burning Bed”. And if you are too timid to risk the electric chair, think “Bobbet”. I’m also very aware that females are really, really humping evil and mean if you cross them. They fight back in different ways, not having the strength to risk a male fighting back, but they can be meaner than a cornered junkyard rat. Now, I’m aware that I sometimes write from a male-centric viewpoint. Most of my readers are of the courser sex and it is also a way for me to vent against political correctness and the modern liberated female ( both of which I like about as much as the Handmaiden Of Lucifer ). Occasionally I’ll try things from the other view, although it will probably always make me look stupider than usual. Plus, I’m usually just pulling stuff out of my butt here. But what the heck. Not knowing what I’m talking about never stopped me before.

*

Don’t think of the title BWEEB as derogatory. Just descriptive. And fun. Remember DINKS? Dual Income No Kids. Already an endangered species of course. And Bweebs does rhyme with dweebs. If you are a bweeb, I would think you would have all the incentive you need to prep like crazy. I mean. you don’t really enjoy lying under a fat sweating guy twice your age, do you? But what do I know? I’m a guy. My little brain does all my thinking for me. Now, if you do play the poverty card and weep and moan that you can’t afford to prep, then I guess you really do desire the above mentioned sort of gentleman. More power to you. Certainly, it is a viable survival strategy. Today you see this sort of thing all the time. Stepfathers probably come close to the same percentage as the biological ones. My stepdad was a pretty cool fellow. I mean, he was a super nerd engineer and a pretty straight laced religious guy, but he put up with all the abuse of my sister and me with a song in his heart and a smile on his face. It didn’t seem like it was ever faked. My stepdaughter was an extreme pain in the ass, constantly pushing and testing ( and hating ), but I always thought of her as another daughter, as family. I think adopting another family comes naturally. With death rates the way they used to be, I’d image it is engrained in us. The point is, bweebs are no different from today’s second marriages. With one very important difference.

*

Today, we are still wealthy enough that feeding two or three times what we are used to usually won’t put too much strain on the budget. Tomorrow, it will be a matter of grave importance. Can we take in multiple mouths? Another mouth, a starving female, would be hard enough. Multiple that by a kid or three. If you are a bweeb, you had better have a strategy figured out beforehand as how to determine a potential husbands larder. You do not want to be taken in and become someone’s sex slave and see your kids kicked out of the house. Now, part of me says, dude, these are bitches here. They know more about being sneaky that you’ll ever know. Another part of me wonders. Bitches can act pretty stupid, at least American bitches. When it comes to attracting their flies, they seem to think vinegar works better than honey. Has women’s lib bred out the females natural ability to exploit men? Are they now only aware of how to take under the laws we now have punishing males for being born? Regardless, it is good advice. Trust has to be earned, not promised. And guys, you might think how you are going to be able to put her mind at ease. She actually might be stupid enough and can’t figure out how to figure it out on her own ( the bigger the boobs, the smaller the brains ). And you all are aware that six months of freeze dried foods isn’t a great investment for acquiring a new family, right? You need multiple years per person. The great thing about being able to afford a new wife ( even if the price is feeding small mouths ) is that she has less of the American bitches bad attitude. Sometimes when the threat is real and obvious, people act a lot nicer.

END
The Official Bison Web Site http://www.bisonpress.com/
*
My e-mail is jimd303@netzero.com
*
Anyone can submit a guest article. No minimum word length, no writing skill necessary ( just get the idea across ). You retain copyright ( this must be your original writing ) and I’ll just use the once. I’ve yet to turn down an article, just don’t use the N Bomb or libel another that can sue me. Send by e-mail ( please, label as “guest article” so I can find it easily later ). Payment will be your removal from my enemies list.
*
By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there.

TURD EATING ANTS


The Oil Age can be simply described as turd eating ants. Our future is going to be that of leaf eaters. I’ll explain shortly. I’m sure the authors of “Drilling Down: The Gulf Oil Debacle And Our Energy Dilemma” didn’t intend this to be the main lesson their book conveyed, but the message they tried to impart, namely that the deep water drilling in the GOM is typical of the energy we have left ( hard to reach and expensive to extract ), is old hat to me ( as opposed to the targeted general audience ) so I focused on other things. That, and the observation of cultural conditioning which hinders most folks acceptance of Peak Oil. I do highly recommend this book, but be aware that it is hard to process. It might be meant for a wide audience, but it is so dense with information that it must be slowly consumed. I loved it, but it is rather the nerds/geeks guide to the oil age and the vulnerability to society through its acquired complexity ( almost all societies are complex, some are far more complex than others ) manual. It is a much easier read than Tainter’s earlier work ( which reads like the worlds most boring college text book ) and covers the same ground but updated and focusing on our energy dilemma. Also, it is no where near a doom and gloom book ( the authors- the other one is the petroleum engineer T. Patzek- seriously think pleas of logic will lead to change even after they make the case that complexity must increase, as the amount of energy needed to keep the old levels of complexity stays the same and new levels demand more- which I read to refute The Druid Dudes arguments against devolving peacefully although I’m sure this books authors would politely deny that ).

*

There are different species of farmer ants ( ants that bring in fertilizer and grow fungus on it and then harvest that food ). Which is funny as hell to me because we think as humans we are so smart and special because we thought up farming like it was something special when all along these dumb as dirt ants were living off mushroom farms long before we even started eating carrion out of the savanna dirt. But I digress. There are dung farmer ants and there are leaf farmer ants. The dung dudes go a short distance from their hole, gather up animal feces, bring it back and start farming that treasure ball of nitrogen. The leaf ants on the other hand, must travel long distances to get leaves, a marginal source of fertilizer. The ants eating crap don’t need much energy, or specialization, or organization to eat because they have access to a highly concentrated form of fertilizer very close to their home. The ants having no other source of fertilizer other than leaves have to work a lot harder at feeding themselves. They have evolved into specialized workers to perform all the extra tasks, they must employ far more workers to haul a lot more leaves from farther distances ( because the yield in nitrogen is so small, there needs to be a lot more of it and over time the harvest takes place farther and farther away ). In short, they must use a lot more effort to get a lot less energy.
*
Please support Bison by buying through the Amazon graphics above and to the right of each article. Or, visit
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You can purchase anything, not just the linked item. Enter Amazon through my item link and then go to whatever other item you desire. As long as you don’t leave Amazon until after the order is placed, I get credit for your purchase. Thank you.
*
Just as we are pretty blind to the fact that farming isn’t a trophy to our wonderful brains, we also overlook what kind of ants we are forced to become. Before, we were happily wallowing in a backyard full of crap balls. Just Texas alone used to provide most of our petroleum needs and a good portion of the globes. We even won half the globe off the richness of Texas oil. We strolled a short distance, gathered up a dung piece and started farming. Almost no effort, few workers, and all the other ants sat around enjoying the surplus. Well, we have, by necessity, now become leaf eating ants. We have been forced to specialize in order to harvest leaves far away ( turned to taking overseas oil as our primary energy ). And we are getting a heck of a lot less energy out of each barrel of oil ( we used to get by on 20 million barrels a day globally, now it takes 85 [ a lot of that is oil energy equivalent such as tar sands, ethanol, liquid gas, etc. ] and we have gone from using one barrel of oil to extract 100 to today’s one barrel to extract a mere 15. Total energy in BTU’s is way down ). One of the lessons is we have been forced to increase complexity in order to deal with this decrease in energy.

*

Complexity is nothing more than a way to solve a problem. The cost to reward ratio is usually positive. Until the cumulative effects crash the whole system. When Rome ran out of territory to steal, it could no longer steal the accumulated wealth, both agriculture and precious metals. It turned into a much more complex system to start to tax and control its land owners. Of course, that wasn’t enough in the long run to substitute for the wealth that building the empire brought. Peter was robbed to pay Paul and eventually the whole imploded. As America today has no surplus wealth or energy, she has turned to complexity to start taxing and robbing the old wealth owners. It was overseas colonies, increasingly now our own middle class. Just the complexity of the financial sector alone ( not to even begin to dissect the military-industrial complex or others ) is far and away more than what used to be needed to manage our whole system back when oil and ore flowed freely.

*

Another great insight I took from this book was the observation that most folks are indeed blind to our energy dilemma through simple cultural conditioning. A little bit of our training as children came from direct teaching from our parents. Perhaps a smidge came from formal schooling ( it almost has to happen by accident as schools are just regimentation programming ). But the huge bulk is just simple observation. What we are surrounded by is what trains us. The culture imprints its Xerox copy on our spongy brain, most of it not even conscious on the part of the imprinters. And what did we all grow up on? Energy abundance. Actions speak louder than words, right? We might holler about oil scarcity, but our actions, driving everywhere, eating fruit flown in from South America, throwing away tons of plastic, speak differently. Children are programmed to think oil is available their whole lives. Most of them bring it into adulthood. Okay, it hurts to say this, but people aren’t idiots about Peak Oil, that is just the way they were taught.

END
The Official Bison Web Site http://www.bisonpress.com/
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My e-mail is jimd303@netzero.com
*
Anyone can submit a guest article. No minimum word length, no writing skill necessary ( just get the idea across ). You retain copyright ( this must be your original writing ) and I’ll just use the once. I’ve yet to turn down an article, just don’t use the N Bomb or libel another that can sue me. Send by e-mail ( please, label as “guest article” so I can find it easily later ). Payment will be your removal from my enemies list.
*
By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there

ENERGY TRENDS


When you are a paranoid little weasel, hiding in a blind panic at every perceived threat, more like a paranoid schizophrenic Chihuahua, you tend to look at things like preparing for a future of less and trying to save money as natural and good. When you are a typical corporate clone trained in a manner that suggests perpetual growth ( as if not everyone is familiar with the grains of rice and the chessboard story ) is a natural law that replaces the second law of thermodynamics ( which was actually thought to be inviolate by actual trained scientists until disproved by graduates of the West Podunk Community College business school ) you naturally scoff at such doom and gloom. It is offensive to their sense of wish fulfillment and blind optimism. So, here I am saving the company ten percent a year on my paycheck, thinking I’m providing a service equal to ending world huger or communicating with other sentient beings, and the company is looking at me as if I’m the sole roadblock to doubling productivity, bringing in huge management bonuses and creating a bonze bust of the current boss to be placed at the front entrance by a board of directors so grateful that they instantly go from hostile and surely to fawning and sickeningly sweet. Always looking towards a future of possible contraction, I voluntarily kept my work hours at 36 hours a week for the last two and a half years. The company saved a minimum of five grand, and I was happy to have a smidge more Jim Time every day.

*

Well, the company never asks what you did for them yesterday. Institutional memory excludes anything positive. They want to know what you have done for them today. Okay, understood. You must always increase productivity to stay employed, crap rolls downhill, life is like a crap sandwich ( the more bread you have the less crap you have to eat-bread being a 70’s slang for money for you young pups already deaf from gangsta rappers screaming about killing whitey, pants hanging down past your ass cheeks like you want Tyrone to have easier access to your bung, ball cap on backwards like you want to have no protection from the sun because your cool ass hipsta self is unconcerned with that pitiful ball of energy keeping you alive, stupid ignorant bastards ). All that is understood. And a normal person would inquire as to why I dislike a ten percent pay raise. First, it is just worthless paper. My time is irreplaceable. Money is printed at will. Second, I don’t need it. Now I have two new problems. How to not screw up my writing productivity by replacing that time with more work time, and how to get rid of the extra money without wasting it. But as you all know, eventually I always come up with the perfect answer to any problem.
*
Please support Bison by buying through the Amazon graphics above and to the right of each article. Or, visit
http://bisonpress.com/affiliatebooks.html
You can purchase anything, not just the linked item. Enter Amazon through my item link and then go to whatever other item you desire. As long as you don’t leave Amazon until after the order is placed, I get credit for your purchase. Thank you.
*
For now I’m going to go ahead and start regularly buying more solar panels. I may not have the extra time every night to write ( twelve hours a day I’m out of the trailer. Two hours commute, eight hours work, and hour lunch/write and an hour Internet research/blog maintenance. Throw in an hour or two showering, cooking, dishes. Seven hours sleeping. An hour spouse interaction. Two max watching TV. That’s my weekday. TV is my only down time. If I replace that with writing I get zero Jim Time ) so the extra electricity is worthless right now, but it is an exercise turning worthless paper into tangible assets. It provides juice for the future pit home, or acts as back-ups to the panels I already have, or doubles my current generating power ( or a combination thereof ). Solar panels are an excellent personal investment. They can translate into very cheap energy independence. Not by buying enough panels to power up a refrigerator, obviously, but by providing lighting and other essentials only. Alas, they are worthless in providing national energy independence.

*

In a year, we use 200 days worth of coal for all our electrical generation. 79 days of natural gas. 72 days of nuclear energy. Hydropower is down to 23 days, mainly as a result of silting and long term drought. 4 days of fuel oil, five days of biomass, five days of wind and only one day of geothermal. Solar collectors and PV panels deliver a whopping ONE HOUR of electrical power to the country. Even as we double the rate of solar power every year, we are at such a small start rate that it will take decades to make any meaningful change.

*

But let’s move on to a much more important point than solar will never save us. Transportation and electrical generation use 70% of all our energy use ( 20% goes to food, although there will be some bleed over as some transportation is food ). As total BTU return on energy decreases, total energy available goes down in two sectors almost exclusively ( food and military will suffer last ). Transportation and power. Transportation can be easily cut without too much initial harm, mainly by increasing the cost of gasoline and diesel. But grid power is a bit more problematic. The Internet alone uses 1/8th our electric power. This is everything from your PC to the server farms and extra power lines. Besides metro areas switching off street lights and adding taxes to kilowatt prices to reduce waste, where do you think the target for reduction will lie? The Internet. The low lying fruit is always picked first. Sure, there is a lot of backlash against the government fiddling with the Internet. Indefinite detention got a total free pass from the public, but the start of site shutdowns has everyone in an uproar.

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I expect that the Internet control will move into a less public phase. Expect less overt control. It seems a good number of folks are just hanging on with a small Internet income. Otherwise, there would have been no cry if no money was being lost. Look at the way that the number of gun dealers was wiped out overnight. Instead of $30 a year in fed gov fees, suddenly dealers had to pay a hundred ( I’m rusty on the numbers but I think there was a tripling on fees ). There was no ban on dealers, just an economic penalty. This killed the market. Expect the same with gun control ( just quadruple the ammo tax ). Internet taxes will gut the usage of bandwidth hogs like movie downloads ( poor Netflix, first the post office goes broke then the Internet is no longer a freely exploitable resource ). The government doesn’t have to forbid Internet use, it just has to take it from subsidized to free market. Applying sales tax to the Internet will cut way back on commerce. The Internet is a zombie, walking around unaware it is dead. It isn’t about thought control, it is about energy decline and triage.

END
The Official Bison Web Site http://www.bisonpress.com/
*
My e-mail is jimd303@netzero.com
*
Anyone can submit a guest article. No minimum word length, no writing skill necessary ( just get the idea across ). You retain copyright ( this must be your original writing ) and I’ll just use the once. I’ve yet to turn down an article, just don’t use the N Bomb or libel another that can sue me. Send by e-mail ( please, label as “guest article” so I can find it easily later ). Payment will be your removal from my enemies list.
*
By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there