escape 4

ESCAPING THE COLLAPSE OF EMPIRE 4

( I'm posting tomorrow morning-be there )
( note to G.B-I got your letter and have placed the order with Lulu.  Thanks )

You might think this is pretty much the Arch Druid Collapse Plan, moving to a better location to weather the coming crap storm.  And mostly you are correct.  I respect the heck out of the Druid Dude, even if our views wildly diverge from a common starting point, for living by his convictions.  Growing up and spending your long life in the Pacific northwest, then uprooting to the rural South, that is a tough row to hoe and shows conviction.  But, of course, we can’t just be exactly like the Druid, because he thinks we are in for a long slow collapse and such things as mortgages and jobs and rioting mobs are less important to him than it is to us.  I think we have already seen the long slow collapse for fifty years and all that is left is plunging over the waterfall ( notice how we’ve already picked up speed and that this is enough to freak everyone out?  It sure is bringing in the bucks to the charlatans cashing in on the new increased fear.  Compared to the financial panic now, Y2K wasn’t much ).  So, location is more than just a job and more than just moving to a Softer Collapse area.  It is about surviving a sudden collapse with all its danger and violence.  My best solution for you here is to relocate to an area closer to an optimal location. 

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You move to a better area, and then you still must face utilities failing in the winter and mobs.  But IF the collapse isn’t as severe as I think, you still have increased the quality of your life.  You’ve moved to a smaller town in a more relaxed area with better neighbors.   IF it is as severe as I believe, then what you want is Plan B.  You want options immediately outside of town.  You are living in town, with its jobs, keeping the family unit happy, but you have moved to an area that offers an easy, quick and very close by escape.  My situation here in Elko is an example.  I live in town and have an escape a bicycle ride away.  I can have each foot planted in a different option.  In your case, I understand the wife would not allow you to buy that junk land just outside of town.  Even at $50 a month.  Not a problem.  Once the economy tanks and you and everyone else in town loses your jobs, there will be land immediately surrounding your town up for sale very cheap.  Because nobody else has been saving money like you have ( I’m assuming you are saving it smart.  Burying it in the backyard under the dog crapping area or converted to silver coin, anything but in the financial institution awaiting a permanent Bank Holiday ).  You can then convince the wife to move to the junk land ( lie to her.  Say it costs $500 from a desperate seller.  Don’t tell her you have serous money or she will insist you use that money to move to another area looking for a job ).  You could also use this strategy by moving much closer to friends or family already owning land, stockpiling your entrance fee ahead of time.  This is at best an interim step.  It isn’t optimal.  But neither is staying in a crappy overpopulated area, praying for a lottery win or to die before the collapse.

END

 

Please support Bison by buying through the Amazon ad graphics at the top of the page. 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.  For those that can’t get the ads because they are blocked by your software, just PayPal me occasionally or buy me something from my Amazon Wish List once a year. *The Old Bison Blog on CD: Over five years of work and nearly two million words of pure brilliance: available as a free e-book, but not cleaned up or organized, at Lulu
*Contact Information*  Links To Others*  Top 20 Survivalist Fiction*  Land In Elko*  Lord Bison* my bio & biblio
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* By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there

 

 

escape 3

ESCAPE THE COLLAPSING EMPIRE 3

Okay, so, like, DUH!  We all know the collapse is coming.  Not only is the writing on the wall, it is in one syllable words so as not to confuse any of our recent High School graduates.  So what should we do about it?  Expatriation is WAY too expensive and as you can’t sell your home anymore as it is either underwater or in an area with no jobs, you can’t cash in its equity.  Your best option is to Internal Immigrate.  And no, Virginia, this is NOT another article on moving out to junk land.  I can’t convince folks of the easy cheap option, so this time it is more conventional advice.  If you can’t relocate to a retreat, the next best thing is to relocate to the least worst area.  You won’t own your property when the collapse happens, but at least you will be in an area that has far less chance of killing you off immediately.  And you don’t need much of an investment to get there.  You are merely moving as you would have in the past, packing up a U-Haul and moving to an area for regular reasons such as escaping crime or the high cost of living.  Moving to a state that allows home schooling or has lower taxes.  No one need think you are a crazy bastard fleeing the collapse of the empire, not even the spouse or kids.

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So, the question is Where To Relocate.  The primary consideration is a job, since you will be paying rent.  No, this is NOT optimal and I’m not recommending you to discount the need to live without a mortgage.  But if moving to junk land just ain’t going to happen, at least relocating to another less dangerous urban area increases your odds.  Jobs are not littering the ground these days, and your job is probably what is keeping you anchored to your current craphole.  I’m not saying it is easy, just that it is easier than moving to the boonies.  But certainly you can downgrade your expectations and salary requirements to live in a better place?  If that is feasible, then you can focus your attention on the best place to weather the coming storm.  Unfortunately, all the places where you don’t need winter heat are pretty crowded, and I would hesitate to recommend them.  I moved to Florida primarily because of that very consideration, but at the time I was pretty stupid and naively thought a years worth of food and a pistol were enough for a soft collapse.  I now understand it will be far less than soft and require much more in resources.  Now, on the other hand much of the North, while doing its best to keep the unwashed masses away with severe weather, is also set up to weather winter ONLY with carbon fuel imports.  Our options do seem to be dwindling.  It seems you must choose between a job or an optimal location, and the twain shall never meet.  More next article.

END

 

Please support Bison by buying through the Amazon ad graphics at the top of the page. 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.  For those that can’t get the ads because they are blocked by your software, just PayPal me occasionally or buy me something from my Amazon Wish List once a year. *The Old Bison Blog on CD: Over five years of work and nearly two million words of pure brilliance: available as a free e-book, but not cleaned up or organized, at Lulu
*Contact Information*  Links To Others*  Top 20 Survivalist Fiction*  Land In Elko*  Lord Bison* my bio & biblio
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* By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there

 

 

escape 2

ESCAPING THE COLLAPSING EMPIRE 2

Certainly, a lot of people are waking up to the possibility that all is not well in paradise.  There are quite a few newly minted expatriates.  Not that I’d want to join them.  Living in a festering jungle speaking Spanish and thinking my Social Security or pension check will keep feeding me is the height of folly.  But at least they weren’t totally stupid.  The American Empire is collapsing and the expats at least saw the writing on the wall.  They saw the wrong translation, but at least they got part of the problem correct.  Our economic collapse has nothing to do with which political party is in charge.  Republicans and Democrats and Independents and Tea Baggers and Greens and Fascist parties are all the same.  Elect me to fleece you for my paymasters.  Our collapse is not because of our welfare state.  Any right wing idiot, such as Beck or Rush, deplore welfare recipients as the cause of our decline, as if a social safety net doesn’t keep their own asses alive ( apparently, the French Revolution with its hungry participants, is a part of the past self-proclaimed historian Beck chooses to ignore ).  In their world, more welfare to the rich would save us all.  Our collapse has nothing to do with The Factories Needing To Come Home.  Over production from factories led to the first Great Depression ( along with central bank manipulations, but I shan’t digress there just yet ), and you’ll notice Switzerland isn’t exactly a pollution spewing Detroit, yet succeeds economically.  In a resource dwindling world, industrialism is a doomed model for running a nation state for profit. 

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Mainly, our economic collapse is due to our overseas colonies failing to subsidize us anymore.  We never would have recovered from our 1970 contraction without their help, and now they are either out of resources ( Mexico seeing 8% a year petroleum production decline ) or opting out of our dollar hegemony ( the invaded as punishment régimes of Iraq and Libya ) or safely in the camps of other super powers ( Iran, a lot of Africa ).  There is obviously a lot more involved, but that is the gist of it.  Our Petro-Dollar was the Saudi Arabian agreement to only price their oil in our Dollars, which meant that anybody importing oil needed dollar bills to settle their bill.  And since Uncle Sam disliked too many dollar bills floating around ( electronics are easier to control and “print” ), rather than trainloads of currency to pay for millions of barrels of oil, US Treasury notes were used.  Foreign countries didn’t buy Treasuries to “invest in America” or “get the best return for their investment” or “seek the dollar safe haven”, they did so solely as a means to buy oil.  China with $2 trillion in treasuries?  That was their saving account to buy oil with, NOT an investment in our economy.  Until now, we could get into as much debt as we wanted since it was free money.  Our debt was increased with each barrel of oil traded.  But now, we are very long into a process where more and more countries are pricing their oil in non-dollars.  As Saudi Arabia lost its oil production hegemony, it lost its sway over what the rest of the world used as petroleum currency. 

More next issue

END

 

Please support Bison by buying through the Amazon ad graphics at the top of the page. 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.  For those that can’t get the ads because they are blocked by your software, just PayPal me occasionally or buy me something from my Amazon Wish List once a year. *The Old Bison Blog on CD: Over five years of work and nearly two million words of pure brilliance: available as a free e-book, but not cleaned up or organized, at Lulu
*Contact Information*  Links To Others*  Top 20 Survivalist Fiction*  Land In Elko*  Lord Bison* my bio & biblio
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* By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there

 

 

 

escape the collapsing empire 1

ESCAPE THE COLLAPSING EMPIRE

America used to be a pretty sweet place to live.  Other than a few peculiarities, you could be relatively free to do as you wished as long as you were White.  Sorry, dudes of various pigmentations, the pale faces kicked everyone’s ass and got to take the spoils.  That is how the game is played.  Of course, now NOBODY is free to do anything, regardless of skin type or gender, before begging for permission and then humbly and cheerfully paying a massive bribe.   Being White now offers few advantages-and being White is usually a de facto disqualifier when begging for welfare ( yes, I’m aware that per capita more whites than blacks are on assistance.  But they are on different kinds of welfare, and in an area with high minority counts, you are lucky to get traditional welfare if white.  Other assistance such as disability takes hiring a lawyer which can disqualify blacks ).  Of course, if you were the wrong kind of white, such as those living south of the Mason-Dixon Line, or a eastern as opposed to western European immigrant, or, hell, sometimes a Jew in the wrong area, you were just a more pale Negro as far as the socio-economic ladder went.  That said, America has never been all that particularly free, but it did make up for a continuing decline in personal freedom with the freedom to try to get rich.

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Until very recently, say about the time of the Last Depression in 2008, immigrants to this country were never coming here because of personal freedom.  They aren’t like the fleeing oppressed a century ago.  The were coming here because they were allowed to try to get rich.  America hasn’t been free for some time, and any Jerry’s Kid who starts warbling about Land Of The Free or “America, love it or leave it” is at best a flaming retard best left to stew in their own delusions.  It isn’t rocket science.  If your government announces that it can now detain any citizen, indefinitely, without trial ( what used to be referred to as “disappearing” by more enlightened uneducated Third World peasants ), and not one in a hundred million says “boo”, “by your leave” or “hey, that’s bullspit and unconstitutional”, than what you obviously have is the loss of ALL freedoms and a complete unconcern by all involved.  We ain’t free.  Your only freedom occurs prior to anything you do being noticed by the authorities.  And you certainly can’t get rich here any more.  Oh, there are always a few new lucky lottery winners.  A few crooks not of the 1% who get away with a new scam.  But those are the examples held up to notice to keep the deluded serfs panting away at their gerbil wheels, busily working harder and harder and faster and faster, with greater haste and precision, to transfer all their wages to the bankers and the bankers proxies. 

More next article

END

 

Please support Bison by buying through the Amazon ad graphics at the top of the page. 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.  For those that can’t get the ads because they are blocked by your software, just PayPal me occasionally or buy me something from my Amazon Wish List once a year. *The Old Bison Blog on CD: Over five years of work and nearly two million words of pure brilliance: available as a free e-book, but not cleaned up or organized, at Lulu
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* By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there

 

 

farmer john

APOCALYPSE FARMER JOHN

( there is a guest article that was posted just before this one-scroll down )

We were just talking about the foolishness in following the “experts” advice when it comes time for relocation ( you can still buy a $40 coffee table book on the same based mostly on the Cold War Soviet strategy of targeting their ICBM’s ).  I’d like to just take a moment here to add on to that in one other aspect.  A lot of preppers relocate primarily because of farming.  I’m not knocking it.  If I thought I had another five years before the collapse, and I was five years younger ( even with such an active job physically, I have been starting to feel my age the last few years.  I’ll stay healthy, but I doubt I’ll stay pain free ), I’d probably do the same thing.  What I’m saying is that you might be in for a bit of a surprise, the crazy climate change we’ve been having regularly, everywhere ( I could care less if it is man made, solar cycles, whatever.  It’s baked into the cake, it’s already happening ).  Anywhere you move to, the weather which has been kind to the locals for over five hundred years is turning violent and unpredictable.  Last winter, it was New York City weather in Alaska ( above freezing in February!!! ) and Alaska weather on the east coast.  Many years in a row the Pacific northwest has been in drought ( yes, they get plenty of rain compared to other places, but not enough rain for their flora and fauna ).

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Las Vegas without water isn’t anything new or shocking, but they and Phoenix are the poster boys for the southwest drying up and blowing away.  And California gets taken with them.  California used to feed most of us everything except Texas beef and Kansas grain.  Sure, it was always an engineered system, but the weather change there making that infrastructure useless is happening everywhere.  Homesteaders in Oklahoma and elsewhere in the South are doing drought regularly.  Given the population densities, I’d worry even if I had a well.  And on the east coast, it isn’t just the bizarre cold, they are also getting flooding regularly.  Drought or flood, either or, never your choice, seem to be the new seasons now.  Here in Elko, June was our summer and since then it has been Spring rains nearly every day, and humidity I thought I’d never seen here.  I’m sure each of you can give a similar example.  If you move anywhere, expect abnormal weather.  And if you plan on farming, you had better have Plan B and C.  The folks who moved to good farmland which is now drying up are just like those swindled poor bastards buying west of the meridian Kansa land while it had an unseasonably wet few years, then reverted to normal ( the weird weather could be nothing more than our return to normal, the roughly 1940 to 1980 or so near perfect global weather saying goodbye.  We mitigated that return with petroleum, which is now disappearing ). 

END

 

Please support Bison by buying through the Amazon ad graphics at the top of the page. 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.  For those that can’t get the ads because they are blocked by your software, just PayPal me occasionally or buy me something from my Amazon Wish List once a year. *The Old Bison Blog on CD: Over five years of work and nearly two million words of pure brilliance: available as a free e-book, but not cleaned up or organized, at Lulu
*Contact Information*  Links To Others*  Top 20 Survivalist Fiction*  Land In Elko*  Lord Bison* my bio & biblio
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* By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there

 

 

guest article

GUEST ARTICLE
Ok everyone has an opinion on what will start the apocalypse . For me it is a HEMP  EMP event . No I don't think it will be for a Red Dawn invasion . Its said history repeats its self unless we learn from it . First I acknowledge our enemies are not stupid. How has the U,S. been on the winning end of so many wars? LOGISTICS we have always been able supply our troops in the field . In WW2 before any troops landed in Europe we bombed the hell out of Germany. We destroyed its ability to resupply. After D day they had no choice but to withdraw from occupied territory's to defend the motherland. We had plenty of arms going to the war fronts but they had only what was stockpiled.
       This is basic history everyone knows it .Now here we are policing the world we are in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan . We are imposing our will on these by force of arms . then we have Russia ,China, North Korea, Iran that we are in a shouting pissing match with. We are still winning on all fronts because of resources and manufacturing keeps our military supplied . If any group or country wants their way they have to overcome our LOGISTIC  advantage. See where I am going?

      Any challenge to Americas interest will be meet militarily. An EMP Event can come from any source with the help of Russia China or 25 other nations. A nation wide EMP would destroy our military's greatest advantage LOGISTICS. Now I do believe we have Some protected ability but it would not be enough . All military would have to be recalled due to civil unrest. People would be dying in mass.  25 million in a month from just medical issues. Even with a working government and military but no intra structure we would see 200 million dead the first year. With out the military and our Allies aid estimates are close to 90% die off in 12 months. As a nation we would be down to about 100 million people. Yea sure we may EMP who we think did it remember we have had a MEASURED RESPONCE POLICY since the 50s. You me and aunt Cindy dying is icing on the cake. We as a nation would be a none issue in world affairs. The aid from our allies would be token at best . We have no hard currency to pay with . We could offer no protection like in the past . By the time we recovered the rest of the world would have realign and allied itself with other nations. All military history has proven destroy the opposing army supply structure you win.

   A lot of folks think other things are more likely than an EMP I have no problem with that. All wars are about growth and resources This is just a cheep way they can gain access to what we have controlled off shore at a minimal cost to them. A goat herder in the desert isn't going to die because his cell phone wont work our adversaries are not technology dependent . WE ARE.

   Think about it. STOCK CHEAP AND DEEP

     

guest article

GUEST ARTICLE

Musings on Food Self Sufficiency if TSHTF

 

Someone asked me this question about living in North Idaho and got me to thinking:

"How long would natural resources there last if it hit the fan? Plenty of people must own cabins there, or at least land for hunting. Of course, if it hit the fan, it would be no different here. Game would be gone in a few weeks."

In order to answer this question, I think you need to divide it into SHORT TERM and LONG TERM.

SHORT TERM:

In my opinion if the one in a billion disaster/end of the world/zombie apocalypse happened, hardly any place is self sufficient in food given population densities at this time. Even so-called "bread basket" areas are dependent on tractors, fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, irrigation, seeds, etc. You may live in the midwest and surrounded by fields but how are you going to harvest the crops, store them, process them, prepare them???? And when spring time comes around, how are you going to plant the quantity needed without modern technology and fertilizers?

This is why I am such a proponent of having a deep larder and plenty of food storage. You have to be able to last through the die off and transition stage. Over several years, the population will level out to the natural carrying capacity of your area. I think that having SEVERAL YEARS worth of bulk calories (i.e. wheat, rice, corn, beans, split peas, lentils, sugar, cooking oil or lard, oatmeal, etc.) would be wise. Yeah, the diet would be pretty monotonous but that could be supplemented with other food storage, gardening, foraging. The big thing you are looking at are the total quantity of calories. Budgeting for 2,500 to 3,000 calories per person per day, would not be excessive by my reckoning. Luckily for us, most of these bulk calorie items are easy to store long term.

LONG TERM:

Again, this is imaging a total collapse with no modern technology available (not very likely IMO, I think some smart folks would be able to get something cobbled together). How would we fare in North Idaho? One word -- potatoes!



Seriously though, lets look at what you need to be food self sufficient:

WATER: You need a dependable water source or rain that does not rely on irrigation or a deep well pump. Unlike southern Idaho, North Idaho normally gets good rainfall. There are also plenty of rivers, lakes and streams. Some areas irrigate but that just makes for a consistent, higher yield. Even without irrigation, you would still harvest something. On our homestead, I do not have a well. We rely on a rain water collection system and have a couple of ponds to draw water from. Currently, I use a small Honda gas-powered water pump for watering the yard and garden. However, our irrigation pond is right next to the garden and we could set up a pitcher pump or haul buckets. Wouldn't be fun, but it would be possible. It would take a lot of time and labor, though.



FERTILITY: Your soil needs to be fertile without relying on chemical fertilizers. I recommend that even if you don't garden, that you still do whatever you can to raise your soil's fertility in case you need to plant. This means hauling in manure, making compost, etc. My soil is glacial clay from the last ice age. I started with no "dirt" to speak of. Over the years, I have created a wonderful garden area that I use to grow food for my family. I also go through and bring in truckloads of manure and use it to level out areas of my forest. I don't plant anything there right now, but if I ever needed to....... I also mulch a LOT. This enables me to use less water and as the organic material decomposes, adds to my fertility.



Also, potatoes love to be planted in "new" soil. They really don't care for too rich of soil. So if the unthinkable ever happened, I would till up a new area and plant it in potatoes and use my fertile area for those plants that needed it.

DOING THINGS MANUALLY: So imagine that you couldn't get any gas/diesel or your modern equipment wouldn't work like tractors, rototillers, etc. How do you plant and harvest? Personally, I turn all my garden by hand using a garden fork in the spring. I just go out and do one area at a time as the snow is receding. I do wide row planting so I rarely walk on and compact my beds. I have also added sand and organic material so my garden soil doesn't get too packed down. 

 

The only time I use a rototiller is when I relocate my strawberry bed every five years. After sitting for five years, the soil is rather hard to turn by hand. Mulching also helps keep the worms happy and they help loosen your soil. 

 

If I had to expand my garden and had a little time before we lost all technology, I would prioritize using the last of my diesel fuel in the tractor (This is assuming that the tractor still runs) to till up new areas. Once the initial tilling is done, I could keep them up with my garden fork.

HARVESTING: I do all my harvesting manually so I would just continue doing the same thing. Though I do own hand sickles and scythes for grain and hay harvest if needed.

Speaking of grain, I have experimented to see what grain grows best at my location. I have had excellent luck with MILLET, WHEAT, and PAINTED MOUNTAIN CORN. I am planning future experiments with hull-less oats, sunflowers for oil, and rye. I have had bad experience with buckwheat. It was hard to thresh out and the chickens didn't care for it anyway.

Hay harvest was really bad up here this year due to the abnormal heat. Even with a dozen phone calls, I have yet to locate even one ton. We have 1 goat and 2 sheep to feed over winter.  So this year I am experimenting with drying our grass clipping and storing them in old feed sacks. When we planted our yard, we used pasture mix. So we have a mixture of grasses, clover, plantain, dandelion, etc. I have several old sliding glass screen doors that I set on sawhorses and put the grass on to dry. I turn it once and usually in one or two days it is dry enough to store. 

 

I am also going to try a fodder system this year and sprout barley. So hopefully between the lawn clippings and fodder, my animals will be well fed. I am still planning on getting some hay but I am curious to see if I can get more self sufficient in our animal feed.



So how do I feed my chickens? Currently, we buy our lay pellets and grain. If the unthinkable happened, I would butcher out some chickens so I would only have enough to produce eggs for our family. I would stretch our grain to last as long as possible. During the summer, we weed the garden and feed all the greens to the chickens. All of our scraps from the kitchen also go to them. I don't usually let them free range because we live in the middle of the woods with predators all around. 

 

I have thought about setting up a string of mouse traps to catch mice for protein. Plus it would keep the rodent population down. I do have portable pens I could put them in so they could get bugs. I would expand the garden and grow some grain for them. I think chickens are a great homestead animal because they provide eggs/meat and they act as garbage disposals.



STORING THE BOUNTY: I have read several sources that stated that pioneer families would often can 1,000 jars a year. If you divide that by the number of days in a year, that is a little less than 3 jars a day to eat. Obviously, you would use less in the summer while eating out of the garden and more in the winter. So I make sure that I stockpile lots of jars, lids and Tattler lids. Meat, vegetables, fruit, juices, jams, etc are all fairly easy to can. Get yourself the equipment and a Ball Canning Book and you're ready to Rock and Roll.



I am also a big proponent of root cellaring. It is less labor intensive than canning. Carrots, potatoes, beets, cabbage. apples, celery, onions, and garlic are all things that I put away for the winter. If you don't have a way to root cellar and you believe that hard times are coming, I would make putting in a root cellar a priority. Check out the book, "Root Cellaring" by Nancy Bubel.



Produce can also be dried. I do a little of this. I dry lovage, basil, celery leaves, apples, and jerky. In the past, I have also dried zucchini, mushrooms, onions, tomatoes, berries, pineapple, etc. During the fall, I use collapsible cookie cooling racks on my wood cook stove. I can stack them four high.



HUNTING: In a long term survival situation, I am not sure how much you could count on hunting. During the Great Depression, many animals were almost hunted out. If disaster struck, I would probably make it a priority to hunt early before I needed to and then can the meat to save it for later. If you wait, there might not be anything left.



FORAGING: Make it a point now to start including various wild vittles into your diet. Mushrooms, berries, greens like watercress and nettle, are a good place to start. Rose hips and fir/spruce needle tea are good sources of vitamin C. We also harvest mint that is growing wild for teas.





Overall, I think my best advice is to make sure that you could produce at least some of your food using the lowest amount of technology or modern input, have plenty of long term food storage for bulk calories and be able to expand your growing operation as the situation warrants.

 

Idaho Homesteader

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follow the leader 4

FOLLOW THE LEADER 4

I am posting a guest article Saturday morning.  Be there.
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What was any self respecting survivalist to do, now that a fallout shelter in the city or suburbs were non-viable because of the Third World Slum level of perpetual war and crime?  Suddenly, country living became the new overnight norm.  Self proclaimed lords of the post-Apocalyptic landscape arose and degreed that they alone knew the perfect place to permanently bug out to.  At first, it was Oregon.  One of the few places thought to be fallout free after a Russian nuke attack ( along with the western portion of Texas, but there wasn’t any water there and any self respecting survivalist has to grow crops because marauding and rapine are not good selling points to the passive middle class desk jockeys who buy newsletter subscriptions or advertised items from the experts ), it had a lot going for it such as woods to hide in and seclusion.  Well, all the scum suckling anal spelunkers from California also discovered the place at about the same time, a wooded secluded paradise to replace the one they had just destroyed back home.  Today, the geographical attractions haven’t changed completely, but the place resembles its southern neighbor as far as political correctness, tax levels and intrusive Nanny State control.  Now, any self proclaimed Lord Of The Apocalypse who recommends Oregon is quickly laughed out of business ( I’m surprised there isn’t more negative reaction to the Rawles Redoubt recommendation of eastern Oregon and eastern Washington.  Such hatred towards Nevada, yet the Oregon half and the Washington southeast are similar, yet with a worse government ).  Idaho is where it is, brother!  Any other suggestion is “proven” false quickly.

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I’m certainly not advocating one spot over another.  South Oregon has a lot of pluses.  Northeast Washington looks good to me.  North Idaho and west Montana look great other than Yellowstone.  Nevada is my personal choice, but mostly because no one else likes it ( after the collapse, the entire Humbolt River corridor is going to support at most a few hundred folks and that is going to require raiding into distant lands on a regular basis to even be viable ).  The entire West except for the strip of land along the coast from Frisco up into Canada is drier than the hot air emanating from a politicians lips.  Less saturation per square mile is its only attraction, but even then it is too populated for its resource base.  The West is truly a vast desert without petroleum inputs.  East is little better with its coming race wars and its insane population densities.  NO place, none, is a perfect survival spot to relocate to ( in the case of Idaho, it is an oasis in a desert which will attract immigrants after the power goes out.  In the meantime, if draught hits it hard, the whole place could go up in smoke and evaporate economically and it suddenly is no longer the survivalists Best Place ).  In the future, if there is one before the collapse, where else will the experts lead us as the new promised land?  I would hesitate to Follow The Leader, if I were you.

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follow the leader 3

FOLLOW THE LEADER 3

Our glorious leaders thought they had a handle on social unrest by introducing the Welfare State ( in the Great Depression, it was the Workfare State ), the cheapest way in a socioeconomic sense to placate the excess population.  And it worked.  Look at most of the Appalachians and almost any other economic rural craphole, full of dilapidated shacks boosting satellite dishes in the back yard and rusted car bodies in the front.  Disability checks and Food Stamps are THE industry keeping money coming in ( the few jobs that survive eat off of that income stream-the only real jobs besides those are resource mining controlled by a far away corporation but those are mostly jobless activities, a colonial operation ).  This is deliberate.  Any less and the South would actually rise again.  The welfare is to sedate sedition.  But things didn’t work out that way in the urban areas.  The inhabitants weren’t content to take their federal bribe and passively entertain themselves through television.  The urban inhabitants were pissed off Blacks who had all emigrated from better places with the promise of factory jobs and been led into ghettos as you would corral a predator into a trap, and they knew it.  The welfare calmed the riots, but the long term resentment was still there.  The illegal drug trade drew in the malcontents, where once militant agitation had.  In effect, by ramping up the War On Drugs to employ the FedGov police who had been previously created trying to avert rebellion, the government created a revenue stream to ramp up crime, a perpetual employment scheme to grow the Police State ( and many feel this was a deliberate construct as the illicit drug trade benefited the bankers and the intelligence agencies.  It could have been deliberate, or just synchronicity ) and the High Crime Economy in cities.

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I wouldn’t attribute all this to a giant conspiracy theory.  More unintended consequences and opportunistic latching onto money schemes by greedy and employment security conscious entities.  But needless to say, the end result was a huge explosion of crime at the same time our economy tanked with the removal of Saudi Arabian oil.  The behind the scenes forces had already been put into place, it wasn’t an organic spontaneous reaction.  Suddenly, it wasn’t so easy being a survivalist.  The city was no longer safe.  Crime was the new normal.  No longer muggings or burglaries confined to the bad section of town, crime was now part and parcel with city living.  When those in power needed a cheap labor force they enticed rural Blacks into the industrialized North.  Then when economic contraction and the Vietnam draft exploded into race riots, the welfare state was used to pacify the masses ( either way, money was introduced as a bribe ).  But as soon as that happened, the PTB screwed it all up by shutting down all the factories as soon as oil prices quadrupled.  Selling illicit drugs was the only economy left outside welfare payments.  You see this now in rural areas with crack cocaine, but the urban areas started forty years earlier.  Where cities once saw militant Blacks agitating for equality and money, they are now better armed, even more agitated and have undergone a decades long Darwinian elimination process through continual warfare, stronger than ever.  Crime pays way too much nowadays.  So you get more of it.

More next article.

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Please support Bison by buying through the Amazon ad graphics at the top of the page. 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.  For those that can’t get the ads because they are blocked by your software, just PayPal me occasionally or buy me something from my Amazon Wish List once a year. *The Old Bison Blog on CD: Over five years of work and nearly two million words of pure brilliance: available as a free e-book, but not cleaned up or organized, at Lulu
*Contact Information*  Links To Others*  Top 20 Survivalist Fiction*  Land In Elko*  Lord Bison* my bio & biblio
*My books: http://bisonprepper.blogspot.com/2015/04/my-book-links.html
* By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there