THE POSSIBILITY OF A PROBABILITY 2
What got my little pea brain churning on this subject was the argument
“you won’t survive that many firefights to need that much ammunition”. In other words, you might think you need ten
thousand rounds of ammunition but if each bout of conflict uses two hundred
rounds, what makes you think you will be victorious through fifty battles? Chuck Norris or a Ninja Turtle you
ain’t. A valid point, even if it
presupposes standard modern combat using assault weapon tactics. So, in this case you are acknowledging the
probability of the odds against you in combat and making logistical assumptions
based on that reality. Which, as we all
know, is how actual logical thinking and decision making is done, even if most
of us try to avoid doing it.
Unfortunately, this completely ignores a very real problem. The Fickle Finger Of Fate. That Syphilitic Whore Lady Luck.
When The Fates conspire against you, when The Gods disfavor you, all the
mathematical certainty you used to be able to count on goes running away,
jumping out the window and saying Sayonara Bitch! When that second Five Hundred Year Storm hits
you three years after the first one, that is simply Bad Luck. When The Perfect Storm brews, that is Ill
Boding, especially when the convergent parts are in themselves supposed to
never happen. Going back to the 1990’s
with some of the first Derivatives failures ( if I’m not mistaken, Orange
County was the first, although I’ve heard rumors the late 80’s market crash
might have been the embryonic case ), when those idiots went tits up when
Russia defaulted on its bonds, the Nobel Prize winners had calculated the odds
of what befell them to be trillions to one-i.e. impossible. First, we should have know way before the
White House Negro got his that they pass these things out like bubble gum
comics , and second, pointy egg professors are not very good about discounting
probability.
*
What over-educated idiots suffer from ( and, yes, that includes you if
you are informally very educated in your field of interest ) is too much
learning, especially specialized learning.
Once they know everything there is to know on a subject, they become
biased in their own favor, believing they are as technological gods. They think they know how something works, and
are hence privy to knowing how it shall perform. Luck?
They are oblivious. They didn’t
need luck, but hard work and brains ( ignoring the fact they were lucky to be
born to parents enriched in the global imperial headquarters ). Bad luck?
Pish, posh! They were smart and
educated, and bad luck steered clear of such Beautiful People. But ask any High School drop out who finished
Hard Knocks School for his diploma.
Sometimes, you just have crappy luck, when improbably things turn
against you. I have ten thousand rounds
for my bolt action rifles, if I can reload my brass the maximum times, and I
don’t expect to use but a few dozen to a few hundred of them. Then I’m killed or injured fatally. Why do I stockpile so many? Because, as my luck might have it, despite
the love of Baby Jesus, I might need them all.
If I have the bad luck of surviving the die-off, despite the odds and
the probabilities, I need to be prepared.
Which is the same reason I have years and years of food. Not because I expect to live that long, but
in case I do. Don’t fall for probability
hype. The possible can always bite you
in the ass.
END
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Glad you circled back around at the end.
ReplyDeleteDon't know where these arbitrary numbers are coming from, 10,000, 500, etc. Who gets to say how many of anything are right for me? Why me, of course.
Anyway, my neighbor and I are just went together on a Dillon loader and we're gathering up supplies currently. We've been talking about it for some time and are now making some headway. We each have more than 10k of various rounds, and we have more than that on order in supplies.
Regarding the cul-de-sac mentality, that is acquired by educated people in *salaried* positions. Salaries make people lazy, especially if the salaries are ample. Thus, that myopic sight you mentioned.
I haven't had ONE employer since the early 80's nor will I ever. I gotta have multiple sources of income going on at all times. Working for a single employer is wrong in so many ways.
To start, he steals a bunch of your coin right from the beginning and sends it off. This is wrong, of course, but completely avoidable.
Second, if you work for just 1 employer that is tantamount to placing all your financial eggs in 1 basket and letting someone else, a dickhead that doesn't really give a shit about you, carry it. Not too smart.
When I accept an offer from a client for work and then get paid, I get paid ALL of what is owed to me, nothing is held back. Then it is up to ME, the worker, to decide how to dispose of that consideration. No one else has the right to dictate otherwise, nor will I ever accept such a strange notion.
From my perspective, it's got to be one of the oddest arrangements ever created, where people routinely allow others to steal a portion of their money before they ever receive it. Even odder, the victims then complain about that arrangement but never DO anything about it.
I assume you are speaking of their profit sharing? As in, they get all the profit and you get peanuts? That is just capitalism. I don't think your situation would apply to marginally trained workers, which used to be most of us. Less now, but as corporations robotisize, if it wasn't for welfare the whole thing would have collapsed long ago. So all of us indirectly have that tax, unemployed revolt suppression tax, we must agree to part with to benefit from our work.
DeleteNo.
DeleteI'm talking about the income tax thing, where the employer removes a portion of the money he agreed to pay you and sends it to the IRS.
For example, I agree to provide a specific service to a client and he agrees to pay me a specific amount of money. Then, when the service is completed and the client is in the process of paying me he removes a large portion of what he owes me and gives it to someone else. What is going to keep me from tearing his eyeballs out of the sockets right on the spot? In the past 30 years I have been self employed this has never happened to me, though there have been some adjustments to the balance due, due to changes in the original agreement.
My intellect and my morality would never permit me to work under the financial arrangement that most american employees readily agree to, where the employer works for X but gets paid Y - substantially less. It's a losing game, or at minimum very difficult to function with.
Regarding the center part of your reply. When I was 12 yo (in 1967) I was pushing an old 20" mower around the neighborhood and knocking on doors asking folks if they wanted their lawn mowed for $3. I did 2 or 3 lawns most days in the summer (in FL where lawns are mowed weekly year round) and the only experience I had was mowing my own dad's yard (for free). That particular model may not work anymore but the notion always will. Create an idea, then figure out how to make it work, while avoiding being stolen from. (If one of my lawn mowing clients decided to keep 50 cents from the $3 he owed me his car would receive a dam good keying or I'd tape an M80 to his sliding glass door.)
I'm sure your High Hairedness has already considered this but, I wan't to point it out anyway. Even though an individual may never use more than a few hundred rounds it still makes sense to stockpile from the community stand point. What if I end up teamed up with group that (for whatever reason) was not well armed? I might be inclined to arm some of them to help defend me. I know many of us are planning on the lone wolf, hit and run model but, you never know. Hence your reason for this article I'd imagine (forgive this loyal minion for interrupting).
ReplyDelete-Novice
As much as I hate the concept of community, because by definition all those scumbags never prepped and I have to help carry their ass, I know it is the only way to survive long term.
Delete“Chuck Norris or a Ninja Turtle you ain’t.”
ReplyDeleteChuck Norris or a Ninja Turtle they ain’t.
Dang James, that's just a painful reminder of how incredibly cheesy and overly choreographed all of those crappy martial arts movies are! A guy walks into a bar, kicks twenty bad guys asses, and walks away without a scratch? And from what I can gather, all the ninja's must have been on vacation at the time of Guadalcanal, since we all know that one ninja could have easily taken down the entire Allied forces!
I have to admit I loved all the White Boy martial arts films, Chuck and Van Dam and whatnot. Stupid in retrospect, sure, but for my age and for the time, exciting entertainment. I should remember that, I suppose, when I mock the zombie fanboys.
DeleteFor rounds of ammo, one must remember that there are other uses for ammo -(and for that matter, food, water, heat, shelter, medicine, etc.)
ReplyDeleteAmmo isn't just for putting in your enemies rear, it is for practicing with, getting dinner, running off pests without actually hitting them, possibly trades, arming friends/relatives you can trust, etc., etc.
Ammo is expensive now vs. the past 20 years, but vs. the past 300 years it is actually reasonable.
Food likewise can be spread around as fertilizer, bait for animals, trade goods, charity, help for friends /family, fuel (all most all dried foods will burn and keep your outside warm too), etc., etc..
Most preps can be multifunctional if keep simple and basic.
If it is possible to make your own powder and primers, a doubtful proposition due to nitrates shortages, it will still be dear and I'd image even more expensive than the last 300 years ( nitrates were dear then, but abundant in places with far less population to demand them ). Even at fifty to seventy-five cents, still a screaming bargain than what they will be. Stock all you can. The idiots using suppressive fire tactics after the Apocalypse will chew up any surplus fast and your stock will grow in value.
DeleteEven absent Apocalypse your stockpile will grow in value. Imagine that there is no crash but the year is 2080 and you still have 5k rounds. If other trends continue close to how they have been you will have enough money to buy Microsoft should you sell those rounds, or a sexy new "companion" robot.
DeleteOf course, by then you should be able to buy Microsoft and WalMart stocks for a penny each. MS will be selling its disposable cheaply made in Congo computers at the three Radio Shack mobile vans left or the nine mall kiosks remaining. WM will have sold its Internet domain name to a Greek investment firm blowing through the last of its oil ship trust fund, held in trust by a Chinese bank, and their last real estate holdings are HQ in Arkansas which has been devalued since it is an island in the new Gore Warming expanded Gulf Of Mexico.
DeleteThis reminds me of the scene in "Lucifer's Hammer" right after the comet hit.
ReplyDeleteThe scientist are all standing around at the lab not knowing what to do now because it was such a low probability event, they didn't plan for it actually hitting.
Then the janitor speaks up and everyone sees that he has his family and supplies packed in his car over in the parking lot. He wasn't educated enough to realize that it was a low probability event. He only knew it would be bad if it hit, so he prepared.
Idaho Homesteader
Forgot all about that one. Good reference, thanks!
DeleteIn Lucifer's Hammer, another lesson is that a clear vision of the situation, even at a post-event moment, can lead to some options that may allow survival (miserable, but alive). Merely getting out of the highly-populated low ground (even walking, if you start asap) guaranteed to be flooded with dangerous desperate people, waterborne infections, and non-survivable tsunami-like conditions, gives you better odds.
DeleteAttempting to occupy & defend obviously attractive positions (cabin on high ground, rural gas station-grocery, farmhouse) will be bad for your group unless 3x superior in military capability (with buried secret-squirrel container-warehouses of supplies for years) to all-comers. Better to dig a concealed hobbit hole with camo tarps well off any path and eat cold-camp food until the super-bad improves somewhat. Waffling people die in-place, where they have been for the past decade, waiting for help.
Everyone should read Lucifer's Hammer, if only for the 1970's notions of Survivalism. Mel Tappan, too. They aren't wrong, and may be right for some situations.
pdxr13
Mel was the yuppie survival guru of his day, but yes, you can glean useful info from anyone.
Delete