Archive for February, 2010
Feb
17
Reader Questions
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I haven’t done a readers questions post in a couple of weeks so I’m going to knock out a few today… For all the new people that have been joining us lately, I receive a lot of emails from readers with questions about something we’ve been discussing. Sometimes I will just send an email response and bthat’s it but other times the answer is worth sharing with the group. So, if you have something you want clarified or expanded on, send me an email!
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Question #1 - “After the bare bones guns are acquired, what’s next?”
I received a number of responses to the “What’s in your gun cabinet” post. Most people agreed with me to the larger extent but several asked this question or one similar… Once we have these basics covered, what do I think should come next?
Well, that’s pretty subjective! I’ve already said that I once was a “more is better” guy when it came to firearms, I guess I still am to some degree. After you have the basics covered, I would probably think that you would be free to augment the collection with whatever suits you.
I would consider a high capacity rifle or carbine a good addition. However, unless all the other areas of your preps are handled, I don’t think I would be able to justify a decked out $1500 AR-15. There’s a place for those pieces in any collection but that’s after the food supply and other “keeps ya alive” areas have been shored up, at least in my opinion.
I’ll take you back with me to my passionate 20′s once again… I was completely into squirreling away as many high capacity weapons as possible… MANY thousands of rounds of ammo and all the logistics to keep a small army running equipped. I truly believed that this is what would be necessary to keep our country free. Voices of respected older relatives where dismissed when they tried to help me see the error in my thinking. I recall one specific word of advise, that a good man with a hunting rifle and ability to use it could do far more for the cause of freedom than an army of passionate young men playing batman in the boondocks could… I couldn’t see it then but I can now!
I suspect that most of the readers here already have their basic level and probably the second, third and fourth string firearms as well. For the newer and more cost sensitive preppers, I would suggest not over looking those additional hunting rifles. Maybe spend some discretionary money on a rifle that is built to be more robust. Pick a good quality rifle with the approach of turning it into a solid long range tack driver. I would even consider selecting a second rifle of the same make as your first “Basic” hunting rifle. This would give you parts compatibility -”Two is one and one is none”.
As usual, we could go round and round arquing this topic. All I can say from experience is that having a firearm is better than not having a firearm. Those basic level guns will take care of nearly any credible need or threat. After that, it’s all frosting on the cake!
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Question #2 - “How long do I give the economy before – game over?”
We had a pretty dark week here at Preppernation last week. Even considering the fact that we all have some times that we might see the situation as worse than it truly might be, last week wasn’t one of those for me. I actually think we have come to an ending of sorts for our nation.
Unless, something major were to change in our nation… We’re running right at a brick wall or maybe for the edge of a cliff would be a better analogy. I think that we are at a precarious time in history that will only be clear when it’s reviewed in whatever books are eventually written about what we are seeing first hand. With the exception of something like this whole cap-n-trade debacle creating one last artificial bubble, I can’t see where the money will come from to even begin to fund the obligations that our nation is already on the hook for.
Politicians would have to stop spending and make significant/strategic budget cuts before I would give us more than a year or two on the outside. Human nature and especially political nature has run to far a muck to expect that the leadership available to us, currently in power or standing on the sidelines, will make any of these changes.
I’m still waiting for someone to step forward and explain the error in my thought process! I think we are at “Game Over” now. So that’s the answer to this question, in its most basic form!
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Question #3 - “What about traps and snares for taking small game?”
I like the idea! I can’t remember if we’ve discussed this topic in a previous post or not? We’re at the 6 month mark and I’ve started to loose track of what we’ve looked at and what’s new to preppernation…
Anyway, like I said, I like the idea of using traps and snares for taking the small game that will hopefully still be in abundance after we collectively take the plunge! I plan to implement these tools widely around my BOL.
Shamefully, I have to admit that like so many other things in my preppers tool chest, I have yet to get them out and become proficient. Many of you will probably recall seeing ads on the survival websites for a website called “Buckshots Camp”? This man was and I believe still is a professional trapper. Meaning that he provides himself an income from the trade.
Buckshot had a series of DVD’s he put out on trapping and snaring. I purchased these and a supply of his #10 conibear traps and a few dozen snares in a variety of small to medium sizes. I watched the DVD’s and did try out one of the traps on a couple of occasions. The DVD’s were made by Buckshot himself and were not of good quality. However, the content was VERY good and you could see that this guy was or is the real McCoy, his techniques worked and would be replicable.
My attempts at using the traps were aimed at an offensive skunk or skunks that had taken up residence under a cabin at my original bug out location. Each time I set the traps and left them overnight I would come back to find squirrels in them. This leads me to believe first, that these traps do work and will work for me. Second, that skunks aren’t as dumb as squirrels and will require additional tactics to relocate!
I have the gear but lack the skills to feel confident in my abilities! As long as this real estate market keeps inching along than I’ll be able to keep my doors open and thus have a very limited amount of time to devote to new skills. Having the equipment is alright but I do hope to develop a margin of success at using them before the time came to need to rely on them for food production.
I would recommend seeking out a supply of these tools and taking the time to become proficient. The traps will catch the animals and are reusable for ever as long as they are not abused. I have a large supply of .22 caliber ammunition but it’s not endless, these traps will come handy if society takes it’s time getting back on its feet! Plan accordingly!
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Prepper
Feb
16
Guest Article – Mobile Survivalist
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MOBILE SURVIVALIST
The guy with a backpack heading off into the hills to survive by hunting and camping has long ago been discredited and dismissed. But it was an idea that had certain advantages. The disadvantage of course was that you would starve, freeze, get eaten by wild animals or a combination of all three. The advantage was that you saved money not needing to buy a retreat ( no small thing at today’s land prices ), you really got away from the crowds and there was a lot less competition for the available food supplies.
Down in settled country you need to trade for food, defend your crops, join a protective association and in general deal with people that don’t have your best interests in mind. Of course I would rather deal with feral people than wild critters such as lions and tigers and bears. If for no other reason than that they are a lot smaller and have no claws. It takes a certain aptitude to survive out in the wilds. Don’t delude yourself into thinking you are Grizzly Adams if you ain’t. You must deal with nature on its terms, not yours.
But if you choose to take to the mountains you become a lot safer, not from nature but at least from man. No one is going to mess with you up in the mountains or in the middle of a vast desert. Or, for that matter, in a sailboat in the ocean. You are mobile, and you are in a wilderness. Two good ways to avoid unreasonable people. Because lets face it, man is a predator and despite political correct brainwashing from our handlers, left outside of the safe confines of civilized society he will quickly kill you, then abuse your person then eat you. Perhaps in that order.
If you choose this route, again with realistic expectations of the difficulties you will encounter, you will need to make some preparations. You will need to build caches and stock supplies in the wilderness area you intend to inhabit. And besides supplies you need to build your skills. No GPS receivers, you must learn to use a map and compass. You must learn primitive wilderness skills in case your equipment is lost or stolen.
I would stash in small cans and/or PVC pipes to easily carry each cache into its location. While you are there on the weekend you can practice fire starting and snare building and other needed skills which are readily available taught in book form. You will want to stash as much as you can since you never know when the game will get scarce. Your containers should have the cheap stuff, as usual, grains and beans. A shelf stable fat such as lard or shortening, ammunition, matches, etc. Neither the caches nor hunting/trapping foraging by themselves are going to be sufficient to keep you alive and well. You will need both. Don’t start slacking on your stash containers and expect your largely untested skills to do the trick.
You want both grains and beans so as to get a complete protein in times where you can’t get animal flesh. The fats, which I would rotate no less than every five years, are going to be essential keeping you alive in the winters. Ammunition of course can’t be carried in bulk so must be stashed. Spare warm clothes such as thermals and caps and wool socks and sweaters. Matches and toothbrushes and entertainment items such as playing cards and books. Needles and thread, knives, shoelaces, iodized salt. You can’t forget those small critical items or you’ll be making dangerous visits into a settlement.
For weapons I would stick with my bolt action surplus rifle, a few knives and a pistol. You could do with just a .22 rifle and a 357 revolver. The 22 will harass humans that showed up and kill game. The revolver will be some protection against bears and other large dangerous animals. You could afford to stash thousands of rounds of 22 and several hundred revolver rounds. It is less than the ideal arsenal but it is light weight, affordable and long lasting.
In the winter you are going to need to shelter in a good cave or build yourself a small underground cabin. It is going to be cold and you are going to have to try to minimize your wood smoke. An underground shelter will allow you to survive with good clothes and no fire. And you need more than one winter shelter in case you are forced out of one. The same goes for your stashes, have more than one and in different areas. You really need to always assume the worse case scenario. It will save your life.
Don’t forget to really think this one out. Such as getting a metal thermos for “hay box cooking” to cut down on the needed cooking. Or the best longest lasting water filter. And try to have everything backed up as far as equipment. The store isn’t going to be available.
Remember, this isn’t for everyone. Know your limitations. And if we never suffer a collapse you can commit a crime and escape to the wilderness with your caches already there.
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Today’s article is from Jim over at
http://bisonsurvivalblog.blogspot.com
Feb
15
“Soup Line” by any other name…?
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Why is this different?
I found this photo and it’s like so many that we all recognise on sight. The Great Depression, right? Well, yes this one is of the Great Depression but why are these photos so attributable to this particular time period? The poverty and soup lines? If you notice the sign above the line of people in the photo… Free coffee and doughnuts for who? The unemployed!
If I remember my history, there was around a 20% unemployment rate during parts of the depression… We have some sketchy numbers put out by a government that is almost continuously caught lying to their employer, the American people. Should we believe the government numbers that tell us we only have 10% of our workers sitting at home? Maybe we should but that isn’t the point I’m going for… Why are our workers sitting at home instead of standing in line for free coffee and doughnuts to start a day of feverish job hunting? Why should they, they receive government assistance in the form of a check each monthand they can often even purchase food on a little government issued debit card, so as not to have to be singled out at the grocery store with food stamps and the associated stigma.
Trust me, this is not in anyway aimed at the unemployed worker but at the government. I realise that times are tough and no one is immune to the possibility of needing assistance. It’s the form of assistance that is being offered that I take issue with! It appears from the photo that these poor souls were indeed also receiving assistance but from a private charity or even a church… Heaven forbit we acknowledge that our churches ever played a positive role in public life…
Is there a possibility that we have a similar situation on our hands now and this is actually already a ”Depression?” As I’ve pointed out we wouldn’t know we were in any financial hardship by looking at the Shopping Mall parking lot! What if the general public could see into the living rooms of our fellow Americans. Are there any cars still in the driveways of your neighbors homes when you leave for work? There should be 1 in every 10th driveway, according to the government numbers.
We can argue about the validity of the published unemployment numbers but it wouldn’t do much good. We can only accept them at face value and do our own research if we choose to go beyond that. I truly believe that it’s in the governments best interest to keep us looking straight down the road, don’t want us noticing a line forming outside a bank or even a food bank for that matter.
Our society will continue to hold itself together as long as our surroundings don’t change to much. We may not even mind if the local Chevrolet dealer has been replaced with an independent used car lot. Vacancies are to be expected and so we don’t notice them much either… Let me assure you – “All is not well”, the patient is having trouble breathing but we are being told that everything is fine, just get back to the mall where you belong and this will work itself out!
I maintain the opinion that our finite resources are being stretched to the breaking point and we can only carry on the business as usual charade for a few more months. All of the traditional excuses for a lacking economy will soon be used up as we enter the spring months. We have to get our workers back to their J-O-B’s or we will go beyond the point of no return. However, I fail to see where the jobs are going to come from?
Let’s look at an example… I was recently seated next to a man on a airline flight who is in the road construction business. He had worked hard and owned his own business until a year or so prior to our conversation. The down turn in the economy had forced him to close his business. Granted he only operated a small company, several people besides himself lost their livelihood. Through the conversation it became apparent that he was feeling his fortune had turned around… He was hired as a foreman for a large company in the next state that was using TARP funds that were designated to the state for road improvement projects. This story had apparently had a happy ending for him and his family…
Hey, that sounds great I told him and we parted company at the end of our flight. I am genuinely happy that he has found relief to his financial troubles, I wish I could check back in with this man in a year and see how it has all played out! Those TARP funds were actually suppose to make alotof those type of positions available and I see the logic behind the idea… I disagree with it but I do understand what the government was attempting to do. Just like the government, I’m tempted to use my credit card on those S-L-O-W months in my business. If I just took a credit advance and put it my bank account, my bottom line would look and feel a lot better… WAIT! Wouldn’t I have to pay that money back with interest and become a lot broker than I was already. So you see TARP is as short term a solution as me using my credit card to make up for personal budget shortfalls…
Where I was going with the story about the road construction contractor was this… He may have been helped by this type of make work program but we have people out of work in all sectors? What about the guy who works in the tech field? Please don’t give me the story about how the tech sector isn’t being widely effected by this economy – BS! Don’t forget that I live in the Seattle area and we are home to a variety of LARGE tech companies and I have worked with employees of many of them. They are keeping their job worries a little more quite but these companies are seeing lots of lay-offs just like everyone else. Are these folks that have been used to making six figure incomes going to be employed rebuilding bridges to nowhere? Even if they had the skills to be hired into those opportunities, they would have to take a significant pay cut. This mean that they would have a hard time making ends meet – but hey they would get to go to work each morning and return to their car each evening after their home was foreclosed on…
We can’t spend ourselves out of this mess! We need a real solution because these unemployed workers are there whether we see them standing in a long soup line or not. Look through the family Rolodex and see if you can’t find friends and family members that are either out of work or hanging by a thread.
A soup line is a soup line! Actually a soup line run by the government is far worse than the soup lines of years past. Government soup is far more expensive than any soup my church would be ladling out. Our bureaucracy would be a committee who went to Costco to purchase the soup and another committee to serve it to the needy. Compare that structure to what it takes the government system to administer all those workers sitting at home… Like I said a soup line by any other name is still a soup line, except that this one is doing more harm than good!
Prepper
Feb
12
Now what?
Posted by: Prepper | Comments (2)I wanted to start today’s post with a brief set of articles that I found with just a quick search of the recent headlines. I think that our most important information comes through alternative sources but the tone of the mainstream news is indicative of the underlying trend that I’ve been discussing with you here. I’ve linked just 5 articles concerning the coming change in the Fed’s policy surrounding their various interest rates, there are dozens more if you care to do a little poking around for yourself… It’s apparent that they are easing all of us up to the idea of these rate increases coming in the next few months. Take a look and then read today’s post following the links…
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The following link is to a San Francisco Chronicle article on the coming Mortgage rate increases -
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/02/15/MNSP1BVILP.DTL
An MSNBC article on the state of home values in 143 markets as tracked by Zillow…
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35335957/ns/business-real_estate/
Article from Bloomberg again stating that the fed interest rates are going to be going upward in the near future.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=afLtoLSxKSKc&pos=1
The LA Times is expecting an increase of 4 million foreclosures this year…
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-mortgage-mods17-2010feb17,0,7573498.story?track=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+latimes%2Fbusiness+(L.A.+Times+-+Business)
The NY Times says that the many are worried that the fed rate changes will be the final straw for real estate!
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/15/business/15housing.html?pagewanted=1&source=patrick.net
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Look familiar?
So? Future looks bright huh… Seriously, it does appear that the interest rates about to be increased rumor has some validity to it… We’ll just have to wait and see what happens, I told you I feel blessed to live in interesting times!
The other day I was grumbling about the similarities between the soup lines of yester-year and the politically correct version we are seeing today. Along those same lines, I was thinking about the people in the photo I attached to that same post… The free coffee and doughnuts were for the “Unemployed”, right?
Why were there places setup like that? Was it because there were masses of unemployed workers out looking for jobs? I think that it was. I remember seeing pictures of the road signs telling the unemployed to keep walking and that there were no jobs available… I haven’t seen anything like that around here yet but what comes next in this charade of normalcy?
Let’s not argue about what the actual unemployment figures are, we can all agree that they’re large. We have so many that the government can’t continue to carry them all indefinitely. Eventually we will see the available benefit extensions come to an end. This will force both men and women to start hitting the streets in earnest, actually seeking employment. Not to say that they haven’t been looking for work but lets face it as long as that check keeps coming in the mail, many people are happy to keep their butts parked on the sofa and just wait-n-see what happens.
I have had my ear to the ground for many months trying to follow what the job market is looking like. I’ve heard all the same stories that you have… Starbucks coffee posts an opening for an entry-level barista position and has several hundred applicants… Retail opportunities are few and far between and layoffs are continuing at many of the big companies we have in the greater Pacific Northwest region.
I feel fortunate to still have my business hanging on in this real estate market so I can’t speak about un-employement, first hand. However, unless the job market is completely, like 180 degrees off from the reports we’re all hearing, many of these job hunters will come up empty handed… What will they do then?
I for one have found that I can do a lot more of the office work than I have previously done and therefore will delay any hiring for quite a while, even after we see an improvement in the real estate business. If that indeed does happen at some point in the future. So where are all the new jobs going to come from? Are these folks going to be able to stay in their homes while they search for these elusive jobs? I’m not sure that the old standby of living in ones automobile is even a sure thing anymore… Many people haven’t owned a car in a long time, at least in the sense that it’s not going to be repossessed by the bank due to non-performance on the loan.
Where does this leave us? I suspect that we might again see the unemployed hitting the roads looking for whatever work they might find. During the depression men would follow the harvest and do the migratory farm work… Wait, I thought the undocumented workers had that industry all hemmed up as work that Americans would not do? I wonder if that will still be the case when the home finally gets foreclosed on and the options get real thin? I know I’d pick apples before I’d let my family go hungry and I’d be willing to work harder than the next guy if that secured me a picker position. The free-market will set the wage for this work and with a lot of competition for these and every other job, wages will certainly be going down. Again, I would like someone to show me where I’m wrong in my assumptions?
One thing that I heard the other day about a government agency that is adding to their employment roles… Anyone able to guess which agency this might be?? It was the IRS… Care to guess what this means… More audits, too many good Americans playing tax cheat, I guess! I have no doubt that this up-tick in auditors will be to get out and beat the bushes looking for the funds to keep paying for government bail-outs of the special companies that are to big to fail… May I make a prediction, it won’t be just the bushes that take a beating at the hands of these auditors!
On one hand, these economic times create an atmosphere of dedicated hard working employees that aren’t eager to loose their jobs. In addition to that we see plenty of evidence that employers will be offering lower wages for any positions that they are able to provide. It appears that the economic indicators are still pointing South with more people going to be laid-off and those still working making less than they did previously. Top all of this off with an energized tax enforcement squad on patrol for both those employees and their employers, we see a self perpetuating decline that will only be gaining speed…
As we see all of this unfolding, we have to ask ourselves – Now what?
Prepper