a cold dish

A COLD DISH

A propeller beanie hat tip to the loyal minion who took a few friggin minutes out of his busy schedule to throw me a bone in the form of an article idea.  Actually, the amount and length of e-mails he sent, it could have been an article in its own right.  But here at the Bison Headquarters we don’t let other people write our articles for us, then rush out and cash in on that activity.  I suppose, if one has no compunction about that sort of thing, there is a place for it.   If you are a good editor ( so as to curry favor with web sites much more popular than mine, I’ll give a shout out to the ‘Ol Remus at the Woodpile Report for doing things the right way.  Not only does he have wicked good editor type skills, condensing my long blathering three page article down to a paragraph that encapsulates all of my pertinent points, he does so as a non-profit ) and can’t write to save your life, I’d imagine this kind of publication fills a need.  Me, I’d rather be a good poor writer than a bad well paid editor.  I’ll write my own crap, thank you very much.  But ideas, now those you can always help out on.

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The idea was about revenge.  You know what I’m talking about and don’t try to be coy.  As the streets erupt in mass violence and the crowd hides your actions, you have a list of complete and utter douche bags you’d like to extract your revenge on.  I’m sure the head of your list is the ex-wife who took most of your life savings, earnings and dreams.  It isn’t just the getting screwed.  Everyone gets screwed.  The quicker in life you learn that the world is full of asswhores you want to get rich off of your hard work, the sooner you can protect yourself against them.  And they are everywhere.  Most are institutionalized so you can only mitigate rather than eliminate their effects.  No, getting screwed is normal.  What most likely chaps your ass is getting screwed by those you trusted, AND those you bent over backwards doing everything you could for.  Your kids, hell, you expect that of them.  Possibly your parents.  But a spouse?  That is the one that is inexcusable.  They are not blood, and can’t use that excuse ( family is expected to screw you, honestly.  It is up to you to stop them, and if you don’t it is your fault.  Revenge is not an option for you being a dumbass since you grew up with these people, plus it simply isn’t done ). 

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We all fantasize about revenge on the worthy.  Of course, the question is, are they actually worthy?  Seinfeld reference: are they bullet worthy?  I think we are all different, but I consider every bullet life saving valuable and even the skank that took a third of my life time earnings warrants due consideration as if I deem her bullet worthy.  Even the current boss is only going to get a bayonet, and she grates on my nerves and stomach lining half of every week.   On the other hand, none of us except through extreme luck and divine intervention is going to last very long after the collapse, so perhaps revenge is one of the few things we have to look forward to as a reward for all the sacrifice and hard work of prepping.  Yet, all of these pukes are most likely going to die along with us anyway, so how much satisfaction are you really achieving?  I think the answer lies somewhere in a disciplined approach.  We WANT revenge, but we don’t NEED it, and we need to keep that distinction in mind.  But what we do need is to quickly adapt survival skills, and there we can get a two-fer.

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Most of us, the ones that are not psychotic, have taken our conditioning to heart and will actually have a hard time killing anyone, good or evil.  If you can’t overcome that lifetime programming, you will die as quickly as the unprepared.  In old timey days, programming of the chosen was the opposite, but we have to play the cards we are dealt.  We have been brainwashed that killing is bad.  Most deal with this by vilifying any potential enemy, such as done by the military ( who tells you it is good and just to kill zipper heads or slopes or dinks or commie bastards-sorry, no offense to Ornamentals, but they were on the crap list for the longest time before rag heads and camel jockeys and the like displaced them.  I use the names to illustrate the hatred through depersonalization, not to highlight any xenophobia on my part.  To me, all other tribes suck, religion or skin color or daily staple being meaningless.  And p.s., I only throw in the above to eliminate the PC Brigade from annoying me.  Sorry to deviate ). 

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So, how do you put plan into action from paper?  Yes, you practice overcoming your killing prohibition on your Revenge Fantasy person.  They most likely are NOT bullet worthy, after all is said and done.  But you have a problem, and that is you are far more worthy of surviving than that person is.  Perhaps they repented and started feeding orphans or saving spotted tree owls or whatever, but when you have a 99% die-off, and the good die as well as the bad, none of that matters.  Remember, species survival does NOT favor the individual.  And in the coming cataclysm,  if you aren’t immediately worthy of helping the species, as an individual you will die ( most likely you will anyway, we speak merely of increasing your odds-which is what all this prepper crap is, anyway ).  You can’t assume just because you’ve made up your mind to start popping caps into everybody’s asses that you can overcome your natural inclination not to.  You need to “pop your cherry”, so to speak.  And who better than the one you hate above all others?  At least there you have the additional advantage of pure and unadulterated loathing and repugnance.  It will be a lot easier to pull the trigger.  And they say the first one is the worst.  So after that, you won’t experience a potentially life threatening hesitation.

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Coo, eh?  You can get revenge, but for a better reason.  It isn’t just pure emotion, it is a rational decision based on need.  Now, don’t get stupid and go on a crusade.  Yes, I agree that every single judge, lawyer and politician deserves to die a horrible death.  And that is just the short version of the Lamppost List.  But the more deserving you pursue, the more danger you place yourself in.  In that case, wishing to add more to your bullet worthy list, you are falling back into a purely emotional state.  Don’t do it!  Revenge is a dish best served cold after your first victim. Wait until you can safely serve up justice, if any of them survive.  Then, you can give them an early visit to the Grim Reaper and you needn’t waste bullets.

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Please support Bison by buying through the Amazon ad graphics at the top of the page.  IF YOU DON’T SEE THE AD, DISABLE AD BLOCK ( go to the Ad Blocker while on my page and scroll down the menu to “disable this site” ). 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 mail a Greenback occasionally or buy me something from my Amazon Wish List once a year.  Pay your author-no one works for free.  I’m nice enough to publish for mere Book Money, so do your part.***  *Contact Information*  Links To Other Blogs *  Land In Elko*  Lord Bison* my bio & biblio*   my web site is www.bisonprepper.com  *wal-mart wheat*Link To All My Published Books
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your own infrastructure 3

YOUR OWN INFRASTRUCTURE 3

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note: if you want one, don't wait.  Since I ordered two weeks ago most offerings are out ( I tried ordering in January from another company-which was my bad, Sportsman's is the only way to go-and never even got a notice the item was permanently out of stock ).  As per our discussion on leather rifle ammo pouches:
surplus ammo pouch
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You’ve super insulated the best you can on the largest size you can afford, built some kind of south facing passive solar gain ( I purposely didn’t cover thermal mass as a heat battery, assuming here we are short on cash.  Want the best, free, temperature battery?  It isn’t black metal water filled drums or something similar, but simply the ground itself.  Building a dug out, then covering that hill with liner with the edges as far away from the structure as you can afford and the minimal openings well insulated, does wonders for regulating the temperatures inside all year long ) and discovered the beauty of cob and rocket stoves for nearly free efficient heat.  The last items are illumination, water and sewage.  With food storage, a frugal lifestyle, a well insulated structure of whatever kind, passive solar, rocket stoves, PV power, rain catchment and composting, you are very close to a complete personal infrastructure only overwhelming armed force or the ravages of Mother Nature ( a vicious syphilitic whore if there ever was one ) can screw up.  You aren’t dependent on other people to somehow have it in their own interests to not screw you.

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And it certainly doesn’t need to be expensive.  I could have buried my travel trailer for just a few hundred bucks in lumber if I had so chosen, rather than building much more than just a roof over the pit.  Had I planed it better, I could have had south facing solar gain if I hadn’t just gone straight down in my digging ( for some reason it didn’t occur to me, and that was AFTER I had set up my trailer for solar heat.  Instead, I placed most of the fill dirt on that side.  In my defense, I busted my ass at work, pedaled home, then dug by hand, so perhaps my brain was shut off as the blood flowed to my muscles ).  Solar gain is just a little glass and some lumber, another few hundred.  Sheet metal for rain catchment is $80-$100 for a eight foot cube porch.  A composting toilet is very little glass and lumber if placed in another pit.  You needn’t even spend $1k.  Food storage, in generous five year increments with some variety is under a grand, as is a decent arsenal.  $3k is barely over two months minimum wage.  I’m living in town paying rent now, still stockpiling a minimal amount, working twenty hours a week on minimum, and I’m STILL saving almost half of my take-home pay.  I could do all the above in less than a year.  And, your excuse is…

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Illumination we have covered numerous times.  Decide what is best for you, 12v or AA, and buy a VERY cheap system to provide plentiful light for many years ( a few bucks could easily see you in light well past your food storage ).  With LED’s, the survivalist is being handed a near free source of near-forever light.  Too bad that doesn’t make up for all the cheap guns disappearing and the grain prices tripling, eh?  Lanterns for internal lights, headlamps for hands free.  Flashlights for nighttime.  All very affordable and you can buy in multiples, plus have plenty left over for rechargeables by the dozens and more than one solar charger.  Enough about that.  Let’s move on to water.  There is nothing wrong with a shallow well with a manual pump, but if you are out West, I would seriously consider only using rain catchment.  The deeper the well, the more expensive it is and far more to break.  You want that kind of exposure?  If you live in Oregon and rain catchment is illegal, you had better be well hidden or packing a U-Haul.

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I always thought a ground catchment might be a good idea.  Pick the steepest slope on my property, leave the sage brush, lay chicken wire attached to stakes around each bush ( with perhaps a slight up swell to channel the water to each side, right next to the trunk so well hidden ), color the cement brown and construct ferrocement.  At the bottom would be a cement trough leading to a buried barrel or a covered cement basin.  Camouflaged and cheap.  Camo because I don’t want to pay property tax on a permanent structure and cheap because that is how I want to roll.  If I went conventional I was just going to construct a screened porch in the back of my junker pick-up truck so I’d have a summer hang-out and a rain catchment ( I’m not going to place metal sheeting atop my trailers as you can NEVER seal holes on a roof well enough.  Which is why my solar panels are on the ground ) with a barrel buried nearby.  Buried for antifreeze and camo.

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A compost toilet used to be just like a pellet stove.  Hard to find and expensive.  You used to have the choice of buying a huge two story unit from Sweden, or buying one small unit ( such as for a boat ) that needed electricity.  And not much else.  Luckily for us, just as there will always be someone who is stronger than you and smarter than you, or prettier than you ( such as myself, with my glorious hair ), there are plenty of people out there who are MUCH more frugal than you.  Without states full of cheap-ass rednecks experimenting with rocket stoves, you’d need two grand for a factory stove rather than under $20 for a BBQ metal grill and a bit of welding ( another $5 to your buddy for beer, to use his rig ).  A solar composting toilet came to me from one such tight ass frugal bastard.  His $20 book was one of my best investments, chock full of passive solar plans.  Simplicity itself.  A hole, with a trash can inside, and glass covering the hole.  Throw in your sawdust toilet contents ( turds, TP and sawdust-available as hamster bedding at Wally for cheap-and NO liquid.  Your urine should be diluted and used for plant fertilizer.  About ten to one water/pee.  Your urine is mostly water to begin with-the dilution is not for health’s sake as much as it is to avoid burning the plant ).

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If you are dumping two partial five gallon buckets in a week, even a small can should last you some time ( it compacts ).  When the sun goes down or it is winter, the microbiological process can stop, but once warmed again it starts right back up.  If you had an insulated cover for the glass at night you could probably speed up the process.  Nonetheless, once full, you stop adding to it and let it sit a year undisturbed, just to be safe.  Start a new hole before that happens.   Easy, peasy, just like everything else on your journey towards off grid everything ( well, mostly ).

END

Please support Bison by buying through the Amazon ad graphics at the top of the page.  IF YOU DON’T SEE THE AD, DISABLE AD BLOCK ( go to the Ad Blocker while on my page and scroll down the menu to “disable this site” ). 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 mail a Greenback occasionally or buy me something from my Amazon Wish List once a year.  Pay your author-no one works for free.  I’m nice enough to publish for mere Book Money, so do your part.***  *Contact Information*  Links To Other Blogs *  Land In Elko*  Lord Bison* my bio & biblio*   my web site is www.bisonprepper.com  *wal-mart wheat*Link To All My Published Books
* By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there

your own infrastructure 2

YOUR OWN INFRASTRUCTURE 2

Yesterday we covered insulation as your number one priority.  Worse case, you are only able in insulate the garage.  Figure two or three grand to do it right with triple insulation.  But you don’t need to come up with all that cash right away.  Unlike if you were, say, buying a super ninja FLIR scope for your plastic carbine poodle shooter.  You can buy one or two rolls of fiberglass insulation at a time as cash comes available.  Insulate using the existing studs until that is done, then lay studs down for floor insulation.  Then do the “attic”.  After that, you buy the rigid board for the cube.  After that, another wall up against the rigid board with fiberglass.  Not only can you do it as cash is available, a few bucks at a time, every layer is another step towards perfection and if you never complete it you are still much better off than before.  Your goal of course is to eliminate the need for fuel to the best of your ability.  Just as never needing money is better than earning it, so not needing heat is better than finding a source for it in the first place.  If the garage is too much of a project, just super insulate one south facing room to live in during the day and have wool blankets and feather comforters ( synthetic works just fine in conjunction with wool ) for everyone so they can use the rest of the house at night ( thermal underwear and wool clothing is also a great idea-unless you get stupid with $300 overcoats-they are 10% of that cost as surplus at Sportsman’s Guide-it is also cheaper than buying heat for the house and pays for themselves the first winter ).

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Your next project is a south facing porch ( I trust everyone understands that I’m in the north hemisphere and southern hemisphere types reverse this in all discussions with solar ).  You can do this as cheap as can be by hanging a flat black painted sheet of aluminum from a curtain rod, but it won’t generate the heat you will soon be craving.  Try to budget a porch.  Even a simple eight foot cube with recycled windows will be great.  You can sit in the sun on a winters day and luxuriate.  Hell, you might even be able to take a comfortable sponge bath.  If you give up on the sitting, you can shrink it to a closet size.  The important thing is to have plenty of window to let the heat in.  Then, you either have a window on the house wall, or a door, you open or close to allow the heat in.  Then you can close that when the sun goes down to keep the heat from escaping.  I’d have a roll of foil bubble wrap to cover the glass, and a thick blanket to cover that.  Or, if it is a door, a blanket to cover that.  The exercise here is to survive without central heat.  You must maximize heat entry and minimize heat escape.

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Remember, heat rises.  You want the porch lower and the window up high.  You could sink the floor below ground level a few feet, and have a slanted roof so that the heat is channeled.  Then, use the new roof for rain catchment ( covered soon ).  The thing about the porch is, you might also need it for a fireplace.  The sun won’t be out all the time.  So by building a sun room, you get extra rain water AND solar heat AND wood heat.  It is a good expense.  If you have just used the garage, you merely need one of those glass walls you attach to the outside wall with hatches at the bottom and top.  The concrete slab inside the garage will support the weight of your rocket stove, but if you added that to an existing room you might have issues.  Plus, in an interior room, where would you put the stove?  The garage is open floor, the house is not.  You might not have a choice but to build the porch.  Anywhere from a few hundred for minimum space to a grand for a room size.  You don’t have to insulate the sun room to the same standards, as you are quickly funneling the heat away from it and shutting it off from the living quarters after the sun sets.

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Anymore, buying a cast iron wood stove is an exercise in greed and bureaucracy.  Everyone wants you to sell your first born to finance it ( the same with the pellet stoves.  If you must burn pellets, do NOT drop one to two grand on a sheet metal box with a computerized fan that clogs easily and breaks quickly, PLUS needs electricity.  Use a rocket stove and build a pellet cradle by taking a BBQ rack and bending it into a V.  This technique is all over You-Tube and is so simple it is embarrassing you would consider buying a pellet stove ) and if you can afford the unit the EPA will take time away from NOT regulating large corporate emissions but rather zero in on you and your burning log and act like you alone caused Gore Warming and must be stopped at all costs.  In other words, the government doesn’t want you to burn wood.  Then you might take profits away from Big Corporate and be-shock!-more independent.  But one can’t help wondering why you are buying a wood burning stove.  A rocket stove is nearly free and home built and comes with a built in big middle finger to meddlesome Yankee colonialists trying to keep you under their yoke ( Uncle Sugar could give a crap less that you are saving beans and bullets to fight his troops.  He doesn’t care about his troops as long as they call in the arti coordinates on your homestead prior to bleeding out.  What he does care about is you not being a good, obedient, docile colony subject.  Make little mistake.  Washington DC is a country.  The rest of the landmass is its colonies ).

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You can make a very pretty rocket stove out of cob ( straw mixed in with clay, then plastered ).  Think of painted abode.  Even the strictest Yuppie Scum wife should have few objections to a cob stove rather than a cast iron one.  The only expense other than recycled metal is shoring up the floor beneath for the extra weight.  If you cob the stove pipe that heads outside horizontally, you capture most of the waste heat and provide thermal mass.  Rocket stoves are so much more efficient it is no contest.  It is like comparing incandescent to LED’s.  Use far less wood and be more comfortable.  Just in the savings on the cast iron stove, all your projects become so much cheaper.  Next article we continue, with light, water and composting.

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Please support Bison by buying through the Amazon ad graphics at the top of the page.  IF YOU DON’T SEE THE AD, DISABLE AD BLOCK ( go to the Ad Blocker while on my page and scroll down the menu to “disable this site” ). 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 mail a Greenback occasionally or buy me something from my Amazon Wish List once a year.  Pay your author-no one works for free.  I’m nice enough to publish for mere Book Money, so do your part.***  *Contact Information*  Links To Other Blogs *  Land In Elko*  Lord Bison* my bio & biblio*   my web site is www.bisonprepper.com  *wal-mart wheat*Link To All My Published Books
* By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there

 

 

your own infrastructure

YOUR OWN INFRASTRUCTURE

My usual article consists of pointing out problems, then running about in circles screaming like a Junior High gaggle of girls about how we are all going to die, and that you probably deserve it since you’ve done something to piss me off.  Well, today is your lucky day.  I shall throw a few solutions your way.  You are certainly welcome.  I was just pointing out how the infrastructure we see falling apart is more than bridges and reservoir dams.  It is everything you don’t think about such as financial systems that makes your job possible, or the eighteen wheeler delivering your food.  Yes, it is ALL falling apart.  The proof is in the pudding and I’m sorry most pudding looks like baby feces.  There are certain things you can’t help but be effected by.  Your money, which unfortunately must be saved for not just the rainy day ahead but the whole monsoon season,  will quickly lose value.  Yes, you can stash some silver bullion, and you’d be retarded not to as it is the inflation proof way to pay your property tax, but that isn’t the same as stashing cash for months of unemployment. 

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Your job will be gone soon, and a small second job, even self employed, isn’t really the answer, not long term.  Short term, you’ll need it.  You can undercut all the big companies if you stay out of debt.  Long term, NOBODY will have money and earning a living in the modern sense is toast.  The answer is not to earn more but need less.  Just like it is now.  Food, sure, you can garden as much as possible.  And you should, both for supplemental calories from legumes, potatoes and corn, and for nutrition.  But again, long term, you won’t be where you are now.  You’ll relocate to a spot where the tribe has both farmland and a defensive communal structure.  I’m assuming here that most of you won’t be so far removed from civilization that you’ll be okay on your own.  So, forget long term money and forget short term total calories from your present location.  That is what bulk wheat is for.  Those infrastructures can be replaced by you with simple food storage and with a reduction of monetary needs.  Replacing law enforcement infrastructure is already covered by every other blogger out there, their nipple rings chained to their AR-15 to better their orgasmic climax. 

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Yet, there are certain aspects of the infrastructure you can easily, cheaply replace.  Water, sewer, power ( heating and cooking, mostly, with adequate lighting ).  No, not with a $200 Chinese electrical generator.  Number one, if you can’t drop serious cash for a rice burning gennie ( Honda for sure, perhaps Yamaha although I’ve not gotten feedback on that one-perhaps Amazon? ), do not own one at all.  Chinese crap is usually but not always crap ( computers and solar panels-stuff without too many moving parts-seem to do good ), but some of their crap is far worse crap than any of the other crap.  And number two, hello!  Noise discipline, AND money.  Plus gasoline storage.  No, passive is far better.  First off of course, you don’t do anything else before you insulate.  Without that you are blowing toxic smoke up your own ass.  This isn’t exactly cheap, but it isn’t break the bank expensive either.  Do you remember my trailer insulation?  It looked like crap, with egg carton squishy foam stapled to the ceiling, all north windows covered in foam and blankets or comforters, the skirting done in pink foam board, and tin foal covered bubble wrap in tight quarters and the south windows.  It was nearly free with trash picking and thrift store items and helped immensely on keeping warm. 

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Your insulation of course must conform to Wife Hen Circle Competitive Extreme Sports Rules, meaning it will be much more expensive than my $150 ( or whatever it was-that’s ballpark on a 32 footer ).  But that is not the point ( shut up, you make way more than me, anyway ).  The point was living in the trailer prior to adding insulation was nearly impossible off grid.  Your home will be too unless you insulate ( and don’t cry into your beer.  You could do it cheaper by using just two rooms or the garage ).  As you’ll also remember because I know for a fact you should have been paying attention, we had a four hour limit on our propane use every day.  In winter.  The sun would come up and we’d remove the covers off of the east windows.  Even in single digits outside, it took little time for the inside temps to go to fifty.  The sun went down at four, we got four to six hours of heat.  90% of the time we could do four hours maximum.  On a four thousand BTU propane stove, we barely used over one five gallon tank of fuel per month ( in December and January ).  All thanks to being well insulated ( and only being 250 square feet ).

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Sorry, but that will be YOUR future.  Only, perhaps without the propane use.  The reason I did it so cheap was that aesthetics were of zero concern to me, after going a couple of winters freezing my balls off ( you try bathing in fifty degrees ).  If I had to construct interior walls for insulation and looks, not only would the trailer been much warmer, it would have also been much more expensive.  Perhaps you could glue rigid board to the interior walls and cover with drywall or shelves?  I’m not sure how one could really insulate a conventional home frugally.  But you must do it.  Even just one or two rooms, or the garage ( the garage would be easy to construct another wall inside, plus flooring.  Remember, outside stick built with fiberglass, middle foam board, another wall up against that also fiberglass insulated.  Alternate lumber so the heat cannot escape through nails and touching wood.  Fill up most of the attic with whatever insulation.  Triple it! ). 

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Tomorrow we continue with south facing passive solar, rocket stoves, a well or rain catchment, composting toilet and LED lighting.

END

Please support Bison by buying through the Amazon ad graphics at the top of the page.  IF YOU DON’T SEE THE AD, DISABLE AD BLOCK ( go to the Ad Blocker while on my page and scroll down the menu to “disable this site” ). 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 mail a Greenback occasionally or buy me something from my Amazon Wish List once a year.  Pay your author-no one works for free.  I’m nice enough to publish for mere Book Money, so do your part.***  *Contact Information*  Links To Other Blogs *  Land In Elko*  Lord Bison* my bio & biblio*   my web site is www.bisonprepper.com  *wal-mart wheat*Link To All My Published Books
* By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there

power out in the forest

POWER OUT IN THE FOREST

I don’t know how many of you living as far away from the malignant craphole of California as possible ( not that a lot of you aren’t living in equally untenable locations that are swarming with the scumbags of the universe in million multiples-so no offense to Cali residents in particular.  I just hold a place near and dear to my rectum for the state since I was trapped there for so long ) have heard about the dam in Oroville threatening to give way, or did give way, or whatever it did-and frankly my dear loyal minions I could give a crap about anyway-and are now loudly proclaiming yet another instance of infrastructure collapse.  Which of course it is.  This latest bout of warmer weather and rain are flooding a lot of places out here in the west.  Places that are no stranger to many years of drought followed by flash floods.  Hell, California itself, in particular Southern California, has ALWAYS seen flash flood damage after prolonged drought and fire. 

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As fire and flood are normal, we then ask ourselves if  the rain damage now is severe because of Gore Warming or because of infrastructure neglect and collapse.  As you might suspect, I fall in the infrastructure collapse camp ( not that global weather change isn’t real, it is just that past flooding has been about as bad and yet didn’t effect infrastructure as badly-in general, as there always being exceptions ).  As bad as weather change will be, and is already, we have done ourselves little favor by the way we’ve painted a target on ourselves so that the change is all for the catastrophic.  Overpopulation to profit the elite, infrastructure neglect to amass fortunes for the few ( locally, streets are repaved even when not needed, with the curb work extremely substandard and inefficient for drainage even as that was the justification for the work, while the old part of town by the river is allowed to rot.  It is far easier to skim the money off easy work than something hard.  And someone ALWAYS profits ).  Now look at your location and note the eye candy extremely expensive work being done even as the rest of everything is neglected.  This was especially easy to see during the pre-2007 building bubble as new subdivisions were slapped up with huge municipal fees for construction.  The added infrastructure is guaranteed to fail prior to the mortgages being paid off, the work and material were below Mexico standard, and at the same time the older infrastructure was ignored.

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This story is of course nothing new.  I merely expand upon it to fill in the back story.  Here is what I’d like to touch on today.  You excitedly point out single instances of infrastructure collapse.  The Michigan bridge.  The Oroville dam.  The L.A. earthquake decades ago only collapsing government structures ( in an area with insanely high taxes ).  The constant electrical outages even on clear and windless days.  The Internet slow downs regularly.  Water from the tap either full of extra chlorine or extra toxins.  Potholes everywhere except into Yuppie Hill.  And then, you still stay exactly where you are, completely vulnerable to the effects of infrastructure decay and collapse.  All these failures are certainly NOT one off events.  They are systematic.  We no longer have the skill, materials to include energy ( in the sixteen years since the new century, our energy net return is HALF what it was, globally ) or financing ( an interesting fun filled fact.  I was just reading that something like 80% and up of all monies in the financial sector stay there.  The remaining twenty percent trickles down into the real world for real needs ) to maintain our infrastructure.  As a minion helpfully and hilariously pointed out, our whole surrounding structure was a White Elephant we stupidly rewarded ourselves with.

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How did we develop the blindness where we see collapse but then convince ourselves we can avoid it even as we live in it?  We are seeing the trees and ignoring the forest.  Or, in this case, the power has gone out in the forest and we don’t worry about it.  I am certainly NOT calling for mass action to “fix” our problem.  There is no acting in concert nor is there any hope in Hades that any of this can be fixed or reversed.  The Donald can’t stop the Muslims from being flown in one by one and he thinks he can build a thousands of miles wall on our southern border?  All we can do is act to save our own families and tribes and to Gott Damn hell with the rest of humanity.  But to do even that, you must pull your head out of your ass.  Your job?  THAT is part of the failing infrastructure.  Your thirty year mortgage house?  That is part of the job market, financial industry, centralized government, petroleum importation, electrical and sewer and water grid and Internet infrastructure all tied together.  Now, if all those are failing, why are you staying in the city again?  What am I missing?

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Just because our infrastructure has been failing for forty years and we have worked around that doesn’t mean we can continue to.  Before, single failures abounded.  Now, systematic failures are occurring.  Surely it hasn’t escaped your notice that New Orleans is still only half full with piles of bulldozed neighborhoods still sitting in soggy refuse piles?  And that was a relatively small metro area.  How about Detroit?  Anyone notice the street lights suddenly lit again?  How about all those tens of thousands of abandoned buildings?  Suddenly cleared or occupied?  We are the 1920’s Jews in Germany, reading articles on how we are going to be removed from the Aryan State.  Do we do something about it, or not?  The infrastructure collapse is a very blatant canary in the coal mine keeling over.  Are you paying attention?  Today it is dams failing in the West, tomorrow it could be you sitting in the dark trying to read your pink slip.

END

Please support Bison by buying through the Amazon ad graphics at the top of the page.  IF YOU DON’T SEE THE AD, DISABLE AD BLOCK ( go to the Ad Blocker while on my page and scroll down the menu to “disable this site” ). 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 mail a Greenback occasionally or buy me something from my Amazon Wish List once a year.  Pay your author-no one works for free.  I’m nice enough to publish for mere Book Money, so do your part.***  *Contact Information*  Links To Other Blogs *  Land In Elko*  Lord Bison* my bio & biblio*   my web site is www.bisonprepper.com  *wal-mart wheat*Link To All My Published Books
* By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there

popcorn prepper 2

POPCORN PREPPER 2

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Got Kindle Unlimited?  This one is friggin hilarious!
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00GR32JSU/ref=kinw_myk_ro_title
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What inspired the original article ( the repeat was inspired by nothing more than Article Selection Block ) was my job at a movie theatre.  I was working as a manager at a gas station/mechanic service place and we had just popped out kid number one.  I didn’t need extra money for that because the then wife worked as a nurse and they got 100% medical free at their hospital.  But we were planning on moving out of the Late Great State Of California as soon as kid #2 was old enough, so the second job, along with asset liquidation ( read: MY assets liquidated, her assets moved at an expense exceeding their value ), was our nest egg for the journey.  Yes, in the end it was almost worth it since I had been trying to leave the state since the early ‘80’s a decade prior and it never seemed to stick until that time.  The second job didn’t bother me-it was fun.  Who wouldn’t have liked free movies at the time ( Terminator 2, The Bodyguard, Unforgiven, etc. )?

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All my co-workers were young punk teenagers, and I was the Old Man of the crew.  And while they were enjoyable to work with, they were also a bunch of degenerates.  No one gave much of a crap, and none of them wasted a whole lot of time until they were “teaching” me about stealing from the company.  Pocketing the ticket price and not ringing it up was the preferred method, but only a few gals had the coveted position and wouldn’t share ( our local theatre last year went to “tickets at the concession stand” policy.  Is this normal now, where you live? ).  The concession crew which I was on used the method of popcorn container re-use.  If the tub didn’t have butter in it ( making it too obvious it was used with soaked through grease spots ), it was put back in the stack of empties.  A count was kept by the cashier-the number of times he could pull this stunt-and the customer bought a popcorn without it being rung up, the money pocketed.  Since so much corn was thrown away, inventory was made on the containers.

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I never partook in the game, not from some holier than thou moral sense, but merely because I didn’t need the extra and I didn’t want to get caught and lose my free movies.  I wasn’t anywhere near as paranoid then as I am now, but I still possessed enough in embryo form.  I really had to applaud their moxie and imagination.  Grazing at a convenience store job is one thing, but pinching cash was new to me.  I have yet to do so, but again, out of paranoia rather than stern moral fiber ( even now, storage food galore staring at me every day, I only take what is allowed-I don‘t need to lose this job quicker than is going to happen anyway.  The flooding at work is much better, but we still haven‘t re-opened the thrift store.  I have no idea how long that can go on before we go broke ).  Of course, back then most jobs were small business rather than corporate-or at least small corporations which had yet to turn evil ( “QT” C-stores in the Midwest were a good example of a generally cool corporation.  Then I worked for “Dollar General” which changed while I was there-and what a bunch of douche bags they turned into.  The Army and Dollar General were two of the worst corporate mule molesting organizations I ever had the displeasure to work for ).

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Just prior and after Y2K I was working for a C-store chain down in Florida which were less bad than most corporations ( the South seems to be full of companies founded by very religious folks.  The original owner runs a nice ship, then his dumbass brats run it aground ).  I can’t remember the name for the life of me.  Anyway, they always treated me right and I got lucky and worked for a gal past menopause ( bitches are almost impossible to work for, but some are better than others ).  I didn’t feel they deserved my scorn or dishonesty.  I did help myself to a lot of coffee from them, placing it in my prep supplies ( all my guaranteed overtime went to regular preps.  Guns and ammo-oh for the thirty cent war surplus ammo and $100 Enfield’s of yesteryear- and sealed wheat because this was after all Florida and propane bottles and etc. ).  They wanted coffee dumped and fresh made every twenty minutes ( if I recall correctly ) and instead I went thirty or forty and took home the amount that would have been used anyway.  It was sealed in Mylar and I would have been a fool NOT to.  It was a shame I had to quite that job, I might have made a go of staying in the state.  Not that that would have been the greatest idea, but that alternate history does hold some appeal.

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Honestly, I have little idea how someone would go about stealing from work to fund preps.  The popcorn scam was all I ever heard about ( again, discounting outright theft or embezzlement ).  But who else would know better than you how to do so?  If applicable.  The point is, your company probably deserves to be ripped off.  When was the last time you got a raise?  I’ll bet it wasn’t the last time they kept giving you more things to do in less time.  And how often does your company screw customers?  If it wasn’t today, it certainly was probably no later than yesterday.  Now, let me put it this way for you.  If your company is a den of thieves, and they DESERVE to be screwed, and you don’t do it even if there is no chance of being caught, how are you going to survive the collapse when the rule of the day is Begger Thy Neighbor, regardless if they are good people or not? 

END

Please support Bison by buying through the Amazon ad graphics at the top of the page.  IF YOU DON’T SEE THE AD, DISABLE AD BLOCK ( go to the Ad Blocker while on my page and scroll down the menu to “disable this site” ). 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 mail a Greenback occasionally or buy me something from my Amazon Wish List once a year.  Pay your author-no one works for free.  I’m nice enough to publish for mere Book Money, so do your part.***  *Contact Information*  Links To Other Blogs *  Land In Elko*  Lord Bison* my bio & biblio*   my web site is www.bisonprepper.com  *wal-mart wheat*Link To All My Published Books
* By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there

popcorn prepper

POPCORN PREPPER

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Nicus, could you kindly contact me regarding your comment on hydroponic nutrients?  I'd like more info on location of purchase, basic how-to books, etc.  I'd like to both pursue an article and do this myself.  Please leave comment or e-mail me at jimd303@reagan.com
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note: even while the faint stench of liberalism is apparent, this guy has some wicked good analysis on big picture and energy influence.
https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence
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note: S.F. I just noticed your PayPal donation ( I never got an e-mail notice, sorry it took a month ) and a hearty thank you.  To the rest of you, PayPal has decided that they are going to suspend "donations" as a payment method.  I have no idea why.  So, from now on, that's it for that.  I appreciate every one of you that's supported me with donations ( or, obviously, any other method ).
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I wrote about this around twenty-five years ago, what seems like barely yesterday.  Damn old age, time flies by a year at a time when it used to be an eternity until next payday.  The article, for my wicked cool ‘zine ( an amateur publication back before the Internet )  that was the envy of none, was on stealing from work to finance your preps.  I have no recollection of what the article contained, although I hope it did differentiate between Mom & Pop businesses and those that were corporate run.  To your mind, stealing is wrong no matter the circumstances but over the years I’ve come to think of corporations as evil and I would no more feel bad stealing from them as I would stealing from a thief or a douche bag of other stripes.  A small business owned by a sole proprietor, no, stealing from him isn’t cool.  He actually works for a living.  Now, I know this is going to piss some minions off to no end.  Your whole life your parental units, your nice old lady teacher in grade school, your church-all told you that stealing is a sin and you shouldn’t do it.

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Wow!  I mean, really!?!?  Your father worked for a defense contractor which got rich off of taxes, which were definitely NOT going to defense but rather offense.  Colonialism is not protecting our borders ( and allow me to further piss you off by calling 9/11 a complete false flag attack, on par with the Gulf Of Tonkin, The Maine, Pearl Harbor and I’m pretty sure a few others I’m forgetting.  But just this morning a certain Yuppie Scum prepper site had a blurb on how it was a shame certain elements in government were acting poorly.  Really???  Only a few?  The whole rotten fascist régime is and has been acting badly for all of last century and a good chunk of the one prior.  Naïve, and overly optimistic, much?  This is the normal attitude most people take, blind acceptance with just a smidge of disappointment, so I no longer have much hope most of you will wake up to the danger ).  And your school teacher.  How was she paid?  By voluntary donation?  You’re going to believe the mouth pieces of the government that enslave you-both as a student and a taxpayer- in order to teach you slavery was wrong in 1861?  Organized religion always, ALWAYS, turns into a for-profit rather than for prophet organization.  These stupid bastards, in between molesting choir boys, are telling you that carbon dating is a scam and there is no such thing as overpopulation.  How credible are they, really?  Okay, I have my issues with scientists running their own scams, but testable hypotheses even with an agenda certainly beats blind faith in the matter of biology/physics ( blind faith for ones soul is a different matter of course ).

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Now, in a small group setting, stealing is of course wrong.  It is also stupid.  You are cutting off your nose to spite your face.  If you are caught, you lose your membership in that group.  And grouping is fundamental survival 101.  So stealing is self defeating behavior of the worst kind ( so is cheating on the spouse, yet so widespread that there are social safety valves to allow it to some degree-you have to go back to a very small tribal unit to see its complete prohibition ).  But you are no longer part of a small group, or tribe.  You are a citizen in a nation state and that is a completely different animal.  The nation state exists as a large enough military force that your odds of being attacked by outsiders decreased in occurrence, hence making the extra cost of membership ( much higher taxes, enslavement as brute labor and/or cannon fodder in special circumstances, lack of freedom ) tolerable.  You must also pretend that small tribal culture extends to include everyone you call a countryman.  And as long as the nation is running in a surplus, that fiction serves everyone well.  You pretend you give two stinky craps about the moron living several days travel away.  Social lubricant, of a kind.

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When a nation is in energy decline ( wealth is merely surplus energy-solar, carbon, whatever- in the end ), cultural cohesion takes a beating.  A nation doesn’t disintegrate because we become rude and hateful to one another, we become that way AFTER energy decline.  Divorce and latchkey children wouldn’t be commonplace in an economy in surplus, when one wage earner was all that was needed ( yes, of course you had bored out of their gourd housewives popping pills and pumping the milkman, but that was boredom in a energy surplus so good that everyone had house robots.  Looking back, that would have been a preferable existence to what we do now to get through life ).  Well, we all hate each other, now.  It has been building and fermenting for quite some time.  The optimists, blinded by the rainbows shooting out of their asses, think we can all still live a Leave It To Beaver life, if we just put our minds to it ( dumb asses ).  They think we should still care about each other, especially those not of our tribe.  They also hate everyone else, but don’t realize it yet ( what do you think mammon worshiping is, if it isn’t class warfare? ).  They’ll come around soon enough.

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Corporations are, to an extent, robot businesses.  Their bureaucracies are mindless circuits running on autopilot.  They don’t have any other binary input except PROFIT.  That is what they do.  That is ALL they do ( is that a Terminator reference?  I was trying for it ).  They don’t try to be evil, but evil is as evil does, yo.  They will crush you in an instant if that action translates into PROFIT.  We all have stories of mindless corporate activity that defied logic or explanation.  Except for the above one.  If said corporation has no issue with screwing you, why aren’t you returning the favor?  Your only input should be CONSEQUENCES.  As long as you don’t get caught, why are you worried?  I’m not talking about grand larceny or embezzlement ( which the corporations can do with near impunity, such are our laws ), but chump change theft.  We continue tomorrow.

END

 

Please support Bison by buying through the Amazon ad graphics at the top of the page.  IF YOU DON’T SEE THE AD, DISABLE AD BLOCK ( go to the Ad Blocker while on my page and scroll down the menu to “disable this site” ). 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 mail a Greenback occasionally or buy me something from my Amazon Wish List once a year.  Pay your author-no one works for free.  I’m nice enough to publish for mere Book Money, so do your part.***  *Contact Information*  Links To Other Blogs *  Land In Elko*  Lord Bison* my bio & biblio*   my web site is www.bisonprepper.com  *wal-mart wheat*Link To All My Published Books
* By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there