medicine chest

MEDICINE CHEST

Just today on the comments a loyal minion paid me a ( perhaps backhanded ) compliment describing my writing as sometimes “full of microscopic detail”.  Let me tell you, that warmed the cockles of my little beady black pea picken heart.  Because, aside from one pony show economists or political commentators, most doomer sites do little more than use broad shallow strokes on anything they try to describe.  They think they are specialists, which they can’t possibly be because survivalism is too varied of a field, and they ain’t generalists because they specialize to their limited abilities in too narrow of a fashion.  I certainly have my limitations, but I do like to think I’m a far better generalist than anyone else.  The “microscopic detail” isn’t possible because I specialize but because I’m well read in many fields, plus I can actually apply a modicum of common sense to a problem for a better solution ( and I don’t mean any disrespect, but having too sharp of a focus on religion, as do most of my competition, does not seem to compliment rational thinking and common sense solutions to most people-if you accept blind solutions of faith you can’t by definition think for yourself outside your orthodoxy box ).

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All that said, sometimes an easy and simply article on something can be a real help.  I had run across one on one of the all too many Happy Graphics Heavy Ads doomer pages, a quick and easy guide to over the counter medications that should go in your medicine chest stockpile.  I read it, liked it, and then had a brain fart and moved on without taking notes.  Then, as is often the case as I read and think organically with no organization, I couldn’t remember who wrote it.  I moved on with life, but a little nagging voice, that permanent Fish Wife who resides in my brain and is actually far more helpful than you would think because although she’s a bitch to listen to most of ones waking hours she actually does have my best interests at heart ( like all good parasites should ) and only gets uncommonly shrill and loud when I really do need to change something important, she wouldn’t let me forget that this was Muey Importante, yo!  I mean, sure, having little more in your first aid kit than Kotex and duct tape is not great but also past a certain primitive level you can’t help yourself much and will either die or won’t.  It is going to suck for the gene pool to get a sudden chlorine shock treatment during our generation, but there you go.

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I had gaping wound closure material, and plenty of vitamins to continue my megavitamin regimen ( it does little to take them after you get sick-you need to do this preventively ) for a healthier immune system, but it was also crazy to allow yourself to die or get seriously sick to the point of incapacitation from something simple like diarrhea that can be easy treated by simple and cheap medicine that is available now.  Our grandchildren might die from crapping themselves after drinking unheated river water, but not us if we can help it.  My mission was to stock some basics to prevent easily treatable conditions.  It wasn’t really much more than keeping yourself alive after fever, diarrhea or constipation, or a minor infection getting worse after you didn’t get enough to eat over the winter.  This wasn’t about battlefield surgery or sanitation soap or clothes washing to eliminate lice ( remember that diatomaceous earth from Home Depot we talked about-not for consumption treating food but for clothes and bed linens and hair to kill any lice or bedbugs or whatever ) or other problems.  Just the issues you could solve by going to the drugstore.

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You do NOT want to go out after the collapse.  Every time I read in Post-Apocalypse fiction about shopping after the collapse I have a very hard time keeping myself from throwing my Amazon Fire against the wall.  ( now a word from our sponsor.  Amazon Fire, a tablet computer that can read Kindle books, but cheaper.  And with the bonus of being a tablet! )   There can’t really be any scenario where you feel it is safe to go crawling along the wreckage looking for crap, is there?  Look at the densities of population.  Despite the sprawl we live in, it isn’t really more than an illusion given by crowds that there are corner stores blanketing the country.  Stores are where the population is, which is centralized to a huge degree.  The elites were not interested in keeping a country full of yeoman farmers once industrialism began in earnest.  They centralized agriculture for control and profits, then centralized population into urban areas for control and profits.  What? You want a population that feeds itself, with a mom and pop store independently operated to give them just a few of the commodities like salt they don’t grow?  You want LESS people in the cities to jack up factory worker wages?  Of course not!

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Centralization means profits.  Stores are there to serve the masses, not the few.  Hell, we can’t even get a dollar store back in this town, with 20k population and a surrounding county count of about the same.  A dollar store isn’t profitable with 40k people?  THAT is what I’m talking about ( I know Dollar Tree knows we exist because Family Dollar, same corporation, opened a SECOND store here rather than a Tree which would have nicely fit in their new store ) with population densities and retail.  So even with huge die-offs quickly ( for the sake of argument ) even a vastly reduced number of people are going to concentrate to a few locations everyone knows about.  Repeatedly.  You have zero to gain by playing the retail game during or after the collapse.  You need supplies now, and now only, and NOT later.  Some writers, perhaps as contemptuous of the implausibility of post apocalypse grocery shopping as I am, try to think past retail.  They have the characters pre-plan trips to distribution centers ( ignoring the issue of employee plans to lock down and secure the place ahead of any outsider attempts at looting-you know anyone in that position of employment has watched Walking Dead and during boredom at work has fantasized about this scenario ) or rail yards-but how Super Secret do you really think these places are?  We continue tomorrow.

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