Before I get into today’s post I want to encourage all of the readers that haven’t signed up for the email updates yet to go ahead and do it today. This is a private email list and I will not sell your contact info to anyone, anytime for any amount of money!

 

   Starting with tomorrows post, a book review, I will be doing something different. Whenever I do a book review from now on, I’ll be giving the book away. I always have at least a few emails from readers thanking me for the review and they tell me that they have decided to order the book from someplace on line. If people are going to buy the book, that’s great but its secondary to my desire to bring all of you a report on something I have read recently and my take on it, good or bad.

 

   With this in mind I thought that it would be a nice jesture to my subscribers if I would donate my copy of the book to someone that would like to read it and save that person a few bucks in the process. Obviously, this will be a used copy but I try to take care of all my stuff and books are no exception. I am willing to donate the book and ship it anywhere in the US. So this isn’t going to cost that person a dime, they will however, have to give me an address to ship it to.

 

   The way that this will work is, at some point in the book review post I will give out an instruction that says I’ll be giving the book to say, the 10th person to send me an email stating that they are interested in having the book, this is just an example… I am going to narrow the criteria a little bit and require that the book go to a subscribing reader. This is a free email updates subscription, so really anyone can qualify but I do want to reward the folks that are regular daily visitors to the website. So just take a second and submit yours or any email address and then email me from that address if  you would like the book, its really that simple… This will start with tomorrows post so lets see how it works out!

 

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   Alright on with the show. I want to talk to you about a concept that I’ve heard about for as long as I’ve been prepping and more specifically reading about prepping. Its call the “Two is one, One is none” principal.

 

   This is referring to the idea that is you only have one of a particular item or one way to accomplish some task than you essentially have nothing. While I realize that this is not literally true, the concept is sound to my way of thinking. It is very easy to have something break that you’ve been counting on. It would seem that the more redundancies you have built into your system the better off you are.

 

   This is applicable to almost anything that is on the level of keeping you and yours safe and or even comfortable. While that second television is probably not a good example, since one TV is really one to many,  it does illustrate my point. If you’re getting ready to sit down to watch the Super Bowl and your 72″ movie screen, whoops – I mean TV,  decides that now is a good time to crap out… What are ya gonna do? That’s right, go in the bedroom and watch it on that TV, maybe you grumble but no harm, no foul… See what I mean!

 

  Now imagine that you have only one of something critical? On almost any day that wouldn’t be a problem but on the day that it is a problem, its a BIG problem. I want to tell you about something that happened last week in the Central Washington area.

  

Landslide in Central Washington

I became aware of the issue I’m about to share when I was on my way back home from the BOL, the weekend before last. Up here in Washington we have the annual “Lets do road construction on every road at the same time” campaign. This requires that regular travelers such as myself, come up with creative ways to get back and forth across the state without losing to many hours in the construction traffic.

 

   I thought I had found the best and relatively little traveled road to take as an alternative to the main East/West mountain crossing, which is called Snoqualmie Pass. This is a smaller pass to the South of Snoqualie, its called Chinook Pass. It is only open through the summer months as the state DOT doesn’t keep it open once the snow flys.

 

   Anyway, we had decided to go out of our way to take Chinook Pass this year in our attempts to avoid Snoqualmies traffic. We were already committed to going this way home when I happened to make a stop at a roadside hamburger stand. While I waited for my order,  a few other people standing there were discussing the landslide… Wait, what landslide I asked them? They gave me the where’s your box you moron, look… You know the box I must have been sleeping in only moments before? I persisted with getting them to explain.

 

 

 

Completely covered the road and blocked most of the river

   Earlier that morning a LARGE landslide had taken out, or should I say covered, about a 1/4 mile stretch of the highway that is just a few minutes up the road. Like a bozo, I say – “So the road’s closed”…  Uh, yeah they replied… Sorry but his is the first I had heard of it… So, now what was I going to do, I thought rather self centeredly. Well, to make a long story short we detoured around, over another nearby mountain pass! This was a minor inconvenience for us but would be a real problem for the people stranded on the other side of the slide.

   After we had made it safely home, the details started to unfold. The highway where the slide had occurred was mostly a two lane road that ran up a river valley and then over the pass at the top. It’s essentially a one way road in either direction, meaning you go up there only to cross the pass or come back across. There are just a couple of small towns, more like wide spots in the road, before you get to the top.  Apparently about 1500 people live along the highway and river beyond the point where the landslide occurred. These folks have only one way in and one way out from November to June.

 

   Once the pass closes for the year the detour route that we took on our way home and that this population group currently can use will be gone! This brings me back to the “One is none” line of thinking… Since we are still living in a first world nation and the .gov has the ability to spend an unlimited amount of money to create, I mean fix, an endless number of problems. These people will have a temporary road cut in to get them around the slide. The State people are saying the highway will be closed all winter, while they dream up a solution to the 80 acres of dirt that came down across the road and all but plugged the Nachez River causing flooding. At least two homes were destroyed in connection to the slide as well! 

 

 

 

State says the road will remain closed at least through the winter

   Even the geologists agree that this wasn’t an area that they had been watching for slides and they haven’t come to a concensus as to why it happened at all. The truth is that these things happen and if we only have one way to accomplish our goal than we can suddenly find ourselves with NO way to complete the task. We are fortunate and blessed that we are still living in a society that can and does band together to help each other out… Will this always be the case? Do you want to become dependant on the .gov and the help that they bring or maybe at some point in the future that they withhold? I know I don’t want to be put in the  position of needing them. I may not always succeed in in this strategy but I will always try to be self reliant.

 

   I encourage each of us to explore the areas in our daily life that we might be caught breaking this principal. If there just isn’t anyway to have a particular area become redundant, then at least make the proper preparations to be without that item or ability for a duration of time. I know that some things aren’t really in our control but as these folks found out that beautiful valley they live in could become a real trap in a situation like this.

 

   If we take the proper care to have our bases covered, give some thought to what redundancies could be put in place, we will all be better off. At the BOL we have an electric furnace, so we have heat right – you know where I’m going with this… I’m sure that as preppers we have it all figured out but I actually had looked at properties up in that same valley about 10 years ago and I don’t recall having the thought cross my mind even once about getting stranded behind a landslide. It is pretty obvious in hind sight that this was a potential trouble spot, just like any valley with only one way in and out would be.

 

  Just more food for thought.  At first I only saw this slide as an inconvenience to my drive home! Now I see it more clearly as the wake up call it really was…

 

See ya tomorrow!

 

Prepper