Lately I’ve had additional time to ponder the meaning of life and what the future might have in store for us… (I did say additional time, I know that at least a few of you are wondering why I’m so delinquent in getting posts up if I have the additional time? The truth is I spend a great deal of my day behind the steering wheel, time to think and time to write are two very different things). When I say what the future might hold, I’m of course thinking big picture, the economy and freedom erosion, etc…

   It was during one of these lost in thought moments that I nearly ran over a bicyclist. Yep, that’s right, I was in down town Seattle and the bike was weaving in and out of traffic and had I not snapped out of my trance I would have plowed into this moron. Instead I get the finger and some choice words about sharing the road… The following thoughts are what stemmed from my near collision…

   When we look out at the society we live in currently, at least I think that most of us live here, what do we see? It would appear that most everything is counter intuitive any more. Women dressing as men, more scary – men dressing as women. The few with more rights and protections than the many? I recently heard or read, I can’t recall which, the story about a law suit filed against a mexican restaurant chain. In a nutshell, the restaurant was sued over there marketing slogan – “The Chipolte experience”, this particular restaurant is basically fast food and the meal is prepared to order while you watch. The suit was brought by a disabled patron in a wheel chair. Their complaint was that they were being denied the “Chipolte experience”, because the restaurant didn’t make a provision to allow the disabled to view their food being prepared? I don’t believe that the dollar amount that exchanged hands was disclosed but the restaurant did settle out of court with this individual. Does this make your blood boil or is it just me?

   I’m sure that I’m not alone in the way I usually cope with this? Turning a blind eye to the things that just don’t make sense as it is much easier than allowing yourself to be driven crazy by this madness… While I’m not going to advocate violence, I do adhere to the belief that a little healthy fear in a society isn’t always a bad thing.

   When I was a kid I recall that there were neighbors yards that I made sure to never set foot in as the owner was suppose to be a wacko or something. The point wasn’t that I had a wacko living in the neighborhood or not but that the fear of what going in someone else’s yard might mean kept me from doing it. How about the old corporal punishment in the schools? I know that my father explained that if I was ever to receive “swats” at school from the principal, I would receive twice as many from him when I got home. Knowing that Dad meant it, I steered clear of a lot of trouble on the play ground if it looked like it could be blamed on me!

   What would a healthy level of fear look like in my ideal society? How do you describe what should just be a natural state? If you’re a female maybe you think twice about parking in that dark parking structure when your be yourself, instead of believing the police will be there to protect you? How about if you were to trespass on someone else’s land, the seed of doubt bubbling up in your mind that you might be shot? In addition to possibly getting yourself shot the knowledge that the law would be on the side of the land owner might make a person think twice…? I think that my ideal society is the same society we all lived in, up until several decades ago. That is at least in America!

   A healthy level of fear would do more to protect us than it would to scare us! My wife and I have been doing a little hiking lately and we frequently see single women out on the trail. Single meaning alone, not necessarily unmarried of course. Women in the woods all by themselves? My gut reaction as a modern American would be, “well of course, why shouldn’t a free American women go anywhere she wants, the same a man?”. Just like the wheel chair customer thought about being denied the right to see their food being prepared at Chipolte, we’re all equal and should be able to have exactly what the other guy gets…? HOGWASH!

   In reality this unhealthy belief or over confidence will either get that women in the woods hurt or possibly worse. I think as a society we have brainwashed ourselves from the top down that we can do whatever we feel like doing and there won’t be any consequences. Wrong, there will be consequences and they are going to be much worse when the day of reckoning comes, the longer we behave as if they don’t apply to us. This eventuality applies to us personally as well as collectively as a nation. The government as of late has been running wildly off further and further into left field with their actions and responses to the current problems we face economically. Whoa to the unprepared when this all unwinds, we will all know the truth but in this case I doubt it will be setting any of us free!

   That bicyclist in down town Seattle is just another good example of what has become of common sense these days. A man on a bike that thinks because society says riding a bike to work is a good idea means he is immune to the forces of nature? Weather it comes in the form of nothing more than gravity or ends in the crippling effect of metal on flesh, this wrong belief could very well get him hurt or even killed. Then of course there’s the age old gun control debate… We don’t need guns to protect ourselves, that’s what the police are for – right? The fact that we even have to defend against this ass-hattery is proof positive that we are living in a age of mass hypnosis!

   Is there hope for a civilization that no longer has the understanding that the rules of the universe require there to be an iron clad relationship between cause and effect? I don’t think that we will have to wait much longer to find out the answer to this question? Stay tuned in to the world around you and see if you don’t start spotting the blatant disregard of all things logical going on all around you everyday!

Food for thought!

Prepper

Model 629 44 magnum and Glock 19 9mm

   A few days ago I was talking about my latest interest in firearms being that of the more practical variety. I thought I’d go flesh out that subject just a little more for today’s post. As we break into one of the hotly contested areas of prepping and before I tweak any one’s nose unnecessarily… I own firearms of both configuration and probably always will. It isn’t so much a case of one is good and the other bad or undesirable.

   As a serious prepper for many years, I’ve had the opportunity to stock up when the price was right and more importantly in the FAT years as aposed to the relative lean years many of us are experiencing now. These stockpiles can reach great proportions over a course of time and that’s what happened to me. Don’t lose heart you younger or newer preppers your pile’s will grow too over time! So, this is where I found myself as of late, big piles of stuff and much smaller piles of bank account. What to do? Like I said before I concluded that a degree of soul searching was in order as to what my current priorities were going to be?

Marlin Guide Gun 45-70

   I really didn’t know how my decision was going to come out… It would have been much easier to have just left everything as is, stored away for a rainy day sure to come along soon enough! I also was deliberating on a direction to take with my firearms collection, I’d been feeling that I may have the ratio of practical tool guns out of kilter with the more tactical in design? As you already know, I decided that I would focus a bit more attention and money on the practical preps that were lacking in my plans…

  

   The good thing was a significant profit could be made if I indeed decided to sell off surplus stores of guns and or ammo. Well, like I said, I already told you the other day I did eventually decide to sell off a number of duplicates from my collection as well as a huge amount of ammo. It took me nearly 2 years of contemplation before I began to make the phone calls and visits to the gun shows to move all of this inventory. It wasn’t exactly easy to see these items go as I know in my heart of hearts that I will probably never again be in a position to purchase this quantity of these particular items again…

 

   I decided that my focus would move more into the practical direction and I would use the profits to complete projects at the BOL and also add a few firearms to the battery. Obviously, practical is a relative term and means completely different things to each individual! My version of PRACTICOOL is a more broad approach, practical preps like woodstoves and practical guns like the Marlin pictured above. The woodstove speaks for itself but the Marlin may not. I’m looking at practical firearms as those that will fill their intended purpose on a more regular basis… Yes, I know that we all have our favorite AR or AK for the practical purpose of home defense against the MZB’s that WILL BE coming on one gloomy afternoon not to far in the future. Let’s agree that we’re on the same page about having a high capacity, round spewing rifle close at hand, everyone should! However, how much Zombie death have any of us brought in the recent years? Remember, it could happen but has it yet? For most of us, at least the preppers that I have been privileged enough to gain their confidence, have an unrealistic skew in our preps leaning toward the Tacticool! Let’s face it, AR’s are cool and lately there have been a gazillion (sounds like a number soon to be used to describe our national debt) companies popping up to sell us there version of awesome upgrades to an already great firearm… I venture to say that we all enjoy taking that favorite gun out of the safe and just holding it while we watch a favorite action movie. Come on, don’t try to blow smoke at me, you all know you do that!

 

   These Tacticool guns are great and I will probably always have more than my fair share of them around somewhere but lets get serious… Is that AR going to go out into the woods and bring back a rabbit? AR haters will always refer to it as a “mouse gun” but is it really? Of course not and it isn’t a rabbit gun either! How about using an AK for bear protection? Yes, I’d use any gun I happen to be carrying to protect myself from whatever threat came along but some threats and or uses are going to be more common than others… While at my residence in the suburbs, the 9mm will probably be perfect for the most likely threats I could encounter but out in the sticks at the BOL…?

 

   With the exception of the lapse of judgement the other day when discovering our BOL break in, I would be more likely to cross paths with a black bear or cougar than a hostile 2 legged threat. While my 44 magnum will certainly make short work of a man sized threat, my 9mm would be anemic against that same threat in the form of a hungry bear! Can you see where I’m going with this?

Bushmaster CAR15 .223

 

   The same logic could be used while looking at the the to do list… Yes, a 10,000 round stockpile of ammo is AWESOME or at least more than adequate in most people’s minds but will it keep me warm when the power goes out? What if the power goes out and stays out? Can I eat it or would I be better off having a large woodpile to feed the stove while I dig through my bursting pantry deciding what the “Prepper” family will have for dinner to go with the rabbit I shot while doing my afternoon perimeter inspection? I say of the most likely scenarios I see on the horizon, I’d be better off with the wood and pantry… Am I wrong?

 

   Something else that has me concerned is the “Preppers” that have only prepped the Tacticool way? Often, we preppers don’t know alot of others like ourselves from anywhere other than the internet. If those guys on the internet forums and even other supposed DOOMER blogs are any indication of what a prepper is suppose to look like… All guns and no food will make Prepper Pete a very hungry boy… I also believe that with a more balanced approach we serve our own survival needs much better. When we have adequate food and or the proper equipment to grow or gather more, we have a far greater chance of survival than if we are limited to attempting to take it from others…

 

   Alright, you say that this doesn’t apply to you as you wouldn’t ever try to take from someone else… Besides if all you have is an AK, it will take down a deer for you, right? It might under ideal circumstances… I don’t expect that we will be able to count on ideal circumstances and when you’re hungry I believe you will no longer have the moral fortitude to starve before you attempt armed robbery!

 

   As usual this post is nothing more than one preppers opinion and attempted justification of my own actions… I do think that my final decision to liquidate some overstocked items in favor of a more balanced survival approach will turn out to have been a wise decision, only time will tell! I’m willing to bet that there are others out there in our community that have been or maybe should be having these same conversations with themselves. If this post is nagging at you or causing you to think about something from a new perspective, don’t ignore it – act on it! You may find that you’re all set and no corrections need to be made but from my research there are far to many Tacticool survivalists and far to few of the Practicool variety!

 

Prepper

 

  

   Some of you that know me personally know that I’ve been liquidating some of my collection… This certainly isn’t because I don’t think I’ll need preps in the not to distant future… I actually believe that we’ll all be needing them now, or soon, more than ever! Since I’m a bit cash poor currently or to put it more accurately, the cash I have isn’t available for preps and or improvements to the BOL, I’ve been selling off some of my duplicate items and things that are just plain stacked to deep!

   As I’ve come to grips with letting some of these treasures go, I’ve been doing additional soul searching while I was at it… I turned 39 this year and I’m not in the best physical shape of my life, too much time doing the desk jockey routine. I’m convinced that riding a desk must be just about the farthest thing from what the human body was designed for, it’s no wonder that us paper pushers end up so soft. I digress, it isn’t my sorry physical state that I was pondering but my inner most feelings about what my prep inventory really required and what might be turned into cash for other prepping uses… That’s right, I’m not selling things off to pay the house note but to keep pushing forward with the more important things that wouldn’t get completed otherwise, at least not as quickly!

   What I discovered was that the “Red Dawn” syndrome of my 20′s has passed and I no longer feel convinced that I’ll be called upon to defend my country from enemies foreign or domestic… Wait, I know what your thinking! Yes we have more and more evidence that our enemies are closer to home than ever before and the time may just about be upon us to stand at our personal lines in the sand. I haven’t given up on the ideals of fighting for the cause of liberty, I have just come to see those around me as ever less likely to stand up even for themselves, much less liberty and freedom. This being the case, my previous belief of needing to have plenty of armament to spread around for recently shocked awake friends and neighbors seems highly unlikely!

   I even find myself less likely to go spend a day at the range than I once did… Ammo prices what they are and even cleaning the beloved battle rifle doesn’t hold the same appeal it once did? Who knows, maybe I’m completely crazy but I’m looking at my weapons more and more as the tools that they are, rather than the cool that they were… Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of guys of all ages that are looking at their guns in the ways that I used too and I’m not about to say there is anything wrong with it – I just wish I had the same LOVE for the gun I used too, at least when it comes to justifying it’s place in the safe!

   I guess what I’m really saying is that I’m looking for a gun that’s going to earn it’s keep… Weather for hunting or homestead protection against 4 legged predators, those are my more likely scenarios these days, I’m gearing more to that end rather than say, “The other”…

   It’s true that many guns will serve double duty, however many of mine would be poor choices in the roles I find the most probable. This doesn’t mean for a second that I’d be caught unprepared or I’ll even go out on a limb and say out gunned by most that would cross my path, I wouldn’t! I’ve “collected” for many years and have taken advantage of many great buys that I’ve come across… I’ll recognise a tidy profit on most anything that I have or will decide to part with. This is a good example of something we’ve discussed here in the past – Investing in tangibles… My investments can relatively easily be turned back into cash and not even one will have lost value!

   I haven’t even posted this to the website yet and I can already feel the emails coming… “Why would you sell off guns right when we could be facing our darkest hours?” Well, for one, I think these coming dark hours will be better faced with some practical guns sitting beside a well stocked pantry, a well fed woodstove and a solid “debt free” roof over my families head… In recent years I wouldn’t have been forced to choose and hopefully you’re not faced with a choice like this… Given enough time, I would have found some other way to accomplish these goals and still kept the gun safe fully intact but I don’t think that we have the luxury of unlimited time!

   If there are others out there with this same feeling in their gut, get moving – do whatever you have to do to get your house in order… Typically I would say you can’t have to many guns but in this present global setting you COULD have to little of something else, like food!

   Let me just encourage everyone to do a little soul searching of your own and see if possibly you’re over prepared in one area and under in another? Maybe you’re like me and now is a good time to re-evaluate your holdings and see if there is a reallocation in order? No one can tell anyone else what the right answer is when it comes to something of this nature, we all have to decide for ourselves…

Prepper

It’s been over a month since the last episode of the Mutant Zombie Bikers Story, so you may want to go back and reread the story up until this point as I will pick up right where I left off back in April… The link is to the first post, where the story began…

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   The sound came in strangled gasps and he thought it was coming from the far end of the hallway, which would have been the master bedroom. The problem was that he would have to pass 3 dark doorways before he reached the one he would inevitably have to enter… Driven forward mostly by the guilt he felt for his own inaction, he slowly entered the hallway. In his attempts to remain silent, he feared that even his breathing would give him away but down the hall he went. Several times he heard the low sound of what he envisioned was one of the parents pained breathing.

   As he approached the doorway, he heard the sound once again… A low moan, followed by what had to be the husband weeping quietly. A renewed courage came over the man as he had to fight back the urge to just barge through the mostly open doorway to the young mans aid. From just beyond the door, the man quietly announced his presence and intentions to try to help. When no answer came he decided to go in and let these cards fall where they may. Kicking himself for not grabbing a flashlight, he proceeded to feel his way past the door jam and began searching for the source of the sounds. His feet shuffled as he continued several feet at a time into the dark room… He spoke quietly to anyone listening that he was a neighbor and hear to help… His hands found what would have had to be the bed and as he swept them out across the fabric of the bedspread, he brushed against flesh.

   He explained that even though he’d found what he was looking for, it was unsettling to be touching another persons body in the middle of the night in a dark bedroom. As he reached back to discover more details about what he had found, he again spoke quietly to the room. “I’m only here to help, please tell me what happened?” – “Tell me where you are so I can help you?” – “Where are the children?”… He said it was when he mentioned the children that he finally got a response. The leg that he had touched, began to move ever so slightly and he heard the moan again but close this time! The closeness of the sound almost made him run from the room as fear ran sharply up his spine! As it turned out it wasn’t a leg he found after all, it was a shoulder. The sound that came was close because he was leaned directly over the mans head and hadn’t even realized it.

   It dawned on him that there had to be a window into this room and if he opened the curtains maybe enough moonlight would get in to allow him to locate the woman. As he edged closer to the outside wall, he continued to ask the man questions about the children… Slowly, soft words began to come from the man on the bed… He continued his questions and proceeded to grope in the darkness until he found and opened the curtains. Moonlight streamed in and he turned his attention back to the man. Clearly he could now see he was in the middle of the crime scene, blood was splattered across the closet doors and running down the wall above the headboard.

   You watch the older mans demeanor as he tries to convey the weight of the scene and control what is obviously an emotionally charged life event. The fact that he came to his brothers neighborhood to warn others of this pending peril spoke volumes. It would seem like the easier thing to do would be lay low and not do anything to make yourself a target… Thankfully, there were still people like this man to prove that a couple weeks time wouldn’t turn all men into the kind of desperate animals that very well may be standing all around you – your neighbors!

   With the bedroom illuminated, he could see the man clearly laying across the bed. He was bleeding from multiple gunshots to his chest and stomach. Trying to speak was painful but the mention of his children was enough to keep the man making attempts to communicate. With his ear down very near his mouth your story teller heard the details of what had transpired only minutes ago from what would prove to be the only witness alive to tell them…

   Through broken sentences and pained speech the dying man explained that it was all his fault! He had gotten his family killed through his own stupidity. As this man was a young husband and father, possibly even a little nieve, he had tried to make a trade with these bikers for supplies he needed for his family. Much as the rest of the neighborhood, their food supply was getting very close to exhausted. With this in mind the man had ventured out to where he had heard from another neighbor that these bikers were running a sort of trading post. A deal was struck to trade several cases of expensive wine for a size-able amount of canned food. This young man was a wine salesman by trade and thought he had executed his best deal yet and positioned his family to survive for several more weeks on what he had secured earlier that morning. As it turned out the bikers had sent someone to follow him when he had returned home. The outcome of that trade was what this neighbor had seen after being awakened less than an hour before… The bikers forced the front door open and proceeded to retrieve the traded food back, took the additional cases of wine the man still had stockpiled… The young man had sealed his families fate when he responded to the threat of one of these intruders entering his bedroom with the golf club he had at easy reach. The club being the closest thing to a weapon the man owned. Without batting an eye the biker shot him… As he was losing consciousness he watched the biker drag his wife off down the hallway by her hair… Through sobs that were the last sounds the man would ever make, he apologised for being so stupid…

   You witnessed this older man breakdown as he relayed those details… A long silence hung in the air as this all sank in to the collective body of neighbors standing around you. After what felt like minutes had passed, the man continued with the rest of the details he had come to relay to your group.

   The young man had died literally in his arms. He knew however that this night was still far from over and more was left to discover in those dark bedrooms he had passed on his way down the hall. Without giving it much thought he covered the young mans body with the bloody comforter. His nerves were strangely steeled or maybe numb was a better description, as he moved back into the hall way. One door down he turned and entered the child’s room, this time moving swiftly through the dark to find the window. He pulled back the curtain and turned to face a certain tragedy. This time he found nothing but a child’s room, empty bed and nothing more! Thanking God, he moved back to the hallway…

   With tears streaming down his face the older man continued to tell a horrific story of nothing short of brutality at its worst. The three children had all been killed while huddling together in the oldest child’s closet. Apparently the children had all been sleeping in one room under several sleeping bags, it appeared that the parents had been trying to make an adventure out of the unpleasantness… As terrible as this had been up until now, it almost got worse as he delivered an additional detail that the crowd only came to grips with over the minutes to follow – the wife was not found in the home…

   After a few moments of reflection, the older man continued his story with the details of the following morning. As dawn approached more of the men began to find their courage. Mostly men but a few women as well came to the young families home where they found the older man digging graves in the backyard. As excuses were made to allow these cowardly men to escape reality and retreat back to the perceived safety of their own homes, one man stayed to help… It was this man that, after the bodies were buried and many long silences, brought additional details of the last few days…

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   Well, if you have to know… I very well might be crazy! I see everyday things and find myself making the jump to how folks like us could possibly use that to gain an edge in our prep lives or maybe garner additional freedom. What am I talking about? The boat, that old wooden boat in the picture… Can’t you see it too? Since I know that few people actually see the same things I do – we are a very small minority of the population and even inside the “Prepper” world, we all seldom can agree on much. I’ll just come right out and explain myself!

   It all started a couple of months ago. I began my latest money making endeavor (Yes, I mean the second job) and this had me traveling down roads that I typically would have no reason to ever see… Low and behold one afternoon I spot this older wooden boat moored in a place I have never even seen a boat previously. First, in the Pacific Northwest, we have a gazillion rivers but many aren’t of the size you would usually find a boat in. Possibly a small boat that a couple of guys would do some weekend fishing from but generally not a boat like the one pictured here. Second, this particular river is in an urban setting, just South of downtown Seattle and a known pollution nightmare. I know what your thinking, this doesn’t appear to be that urban? I know, I see all those trees too, this is actually adjacent to a little know and lightly used strip of park land. A city bicycle trail runs through there as well but the whole area is surrounded by what I would describe as a light industrial area…

   So anyway, the thing that got me thinking was that here’s this boat in an unexpected area, tied to who knows what and has a makeshift wooded walkway coming out of the woods right down to it. I think to myself,  “I wonder if some-one’s living on that thing”?? Well, I watch this thing sitting just as you see it in the picture from the day I first noticed it up until just hours ago when I last drove past and it is still there. So lets say a couple of months at least!

   As the weeks went by and I kept checking to see if the boat has moved or eventually would disappear, sink or anything else! The thoughts keep running through my head… Someone is beating the system, parking a boat in what would have to be described by the lay-person as a “No Mans Land” – except on water, of course! Was this a viable lifestyle for some freedom seeker? In reality I would think it most likely that it’s some guy that got tossed out of his house either by the economy or his old lady and had no other choice. It wouldn’t surprise me to find out that this boat was occupied by someone working in one of the many businesses or warehouses near by. It’s only my lack of ever seeing anyone aboard when I drive by that has kept me from attempting to interview this elusive live aboard…

   If this would work for the poor guy that’s down on his luck, why couldn’t it work by design? Like I said the greater Pacific Northwest is riddled with rivers. Why couldn’t a creative individual just give up living in the rat race and live on the river…? They could! Provided they have a boat to live on. Usually the boats we see around this area are more modern and often smaller than anyone I know would attempt to live on. Around here we are fortunate to have a large number of lakes as well, I guess all these bodies of water come along with the fact that it rains here, I believe 364 days per year – last count! So, the typical boat owner has a small fishing boat or a sporting boat, you know water skiing and other day use designs. However, if a person had a larger boat, this idea could work.

   Unfortunately, I do not own a boat – or fortunately, depends how you want to look at it… Mrs Prepper is feeling very fortunate that I don’t own a boat as this currently prevents me from asking her to come live on the river with me. I’m only half way kidding here, as I am very much done and over with the whole rat race lifestyle! Why not buy a boat to try this all out? Not me, some theoretical “prepper”? I realize boats can be and often are quite expensive! How about looking for an older wooden boat such as the one pictured on craigslist? On several occasions my searches for other products, like used mobile homes, have lead me to find used boats in this category… Expensive? Not necessarily, I saw some boats that sounded and looked to good to be true – I will assume they were! I also so some moderately priced boats in the 26-30 foot range and were setup very similar to a land based RV. What was there true condition? Of course I don’t know for sure but even if they needed a lot of repairs, as long as the structure was sound…?

   I’ll even take this one step further, why would this boat have to have a good motor? Yes, yes… it would have to be able to get to the spot picked for your new life up the river! There are ways to get boats moved when their engines aren’t working, which on all the boats I’ve been around is fairly often… Boats usually come with a large amount of ongoing maintenance to keep them dependable. Many of the classified ads I’ve read were for “Project” boats, the prices on these boats were shockingly cheap… For good reason, the buyer was taking the problem off the hands of the current owner! I did see apparently beautiful boats that had some “Issues” with the power plant… Also, one large expense with a motor boat is the cost of fuel, an additional expense that would be nullified in our little thought exercise…

   What I’m imagining here is doable! Would it work for you and yours – probably not but it WILL WORK for some. A rather small but well setup cabin cruiser, with or without it’s own on board power plant, moored “Up the River” or even at a local marina… Hmm, what are moorage rates at the local marina – might be worth looking into. Usually these moorage rates are with hook ups for your sewer, phone and electric… This wouldn’t be nearly as cheap but at least around here the rates are FAR lower than even an inexpensive apartment…

   As usual I’m submitting this as just another option that might work for one of you guys out there. This strategy would come with several downsides but it would also allow for that freedom only achievable when that mortgage payment has been destroyed… Food for thought!

Prepper