four storage

FOUR STORAGE

Your typical recommendation for food storage goes something like this: buy MRE’s and freeze dried foods and with the constipation both will give you, get a laxative powder.  And that is pretty much it.  Now, I can already hear you squirming in your seat over in the back row, pumping your arm up and down in a spastic motion, “ooh, Mista Catta, Mista Caata!”.  Shut up, little Johnny, no one wants to hear what your little pea brain comes up with.  I of course KNOW that all you ever hear from me is “buy wheat, and that’s it”.  Okay, that’s not entirely true.  If you read the entire last ten years of blog posts I’ve covered plenty of other storage foods.  It just seems like all I ever discuss is wheat and wheat accessories.  I’m SOOO sorry I’ve focused on the most inexpensive food which is also the healthiest for you.  But real Christian Militiamen don’t eat wheat.   Wheat is for peasants and besides they have their own freeze dried machine ( that never works and must be hacked and requires a direct line to the companies Help Desk which is all anybody could ask from a unit costing four grand ).  And do you ever see wheat being advertised on your favorite Yuppie Scum Survival Site?  Just saying.

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So now, I’m going to discuss the four completely different food storage plans.  Not a “wheat only” or a “MRE/Freeze dry only” plan that is supposed to be a One Plan Fits All Scenarios.  Four separate storage plans for four phases of our collapse.  The first is the Budget Plan, which is just buying whatever you like that goes on sale.  This is for drastically reducing your food budget.  The next is the Inflation Plan, which is just really an extension of the Budget Plan but different in that you are stocking the complete menu you normally follow.  The aim is to have weeks or months worth of a complete diet so you can then relax and keep expanding it cheaper.  The Inflation will merge into the Budget while reducing your regular price items.  The Bug-In Plan is the foods requiring little to no cooking for the times you are bugging out or bugging in under noise/light and smell discipline ( the aforementioned MRE/Freeze Dried ).  Last is the Mostly Just Wheat menu which is the Collapse Plan.  None of this is new or unique, the point is to approach food storage as separate needs and focuses.

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Setting aside the fresh produce issue, how long could you go without stepping foot in the grocery store?  Just regular food items, nothing Disaster Preparedness about it.  Right now, and for a limited time and is subject to end without notice, food is getting pretty cheap in comparison to five years ago.  Perhaps not beef, because Texas is mostly out of the bovine business as their aquifer literally dried up after decades of over abuse, but pretty much all other basic commodities.  If you aren’t stocking up now you are a damn fool.  You should be working on your Inflation Food right now, buying like crazy to offset the coming price increases.  And guess what.  It has nothing to do with your income.  If you are debt free, you can hoard food like crazy even if your income is crap ( I wasn’t taking home more than $500 a month for the last three years, with that last year put mostly into cash savings, and still prepped like crazy in all aspects ).  It’s just living below your means.  Which isn’t a criticism.  I know what it is like to live paycheck to paycheck, also.

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Both traditional food plans are flawed.  The processed foods might taste yummy and require no preparation but they are insanely expensive and terrible for you.  They are a 1950’s TV Dinner quality menu.  Commercial solutions failing badly.  Conversely, wheat diets, while serving a very useful purpose long term, are pretty poor short term solutions.  But having both, that isn’t the worst idea.  As long as you realize the limitations.  The trick is to spend long on all other three plans besides MRE/F.D. and limit yourself financially on that one.  In that way you are maximizing you dollar return.  And it doesn’t even have to be $7 each MRE’s or $30 a can Freeze Dried ( F.D. ) beef.  As long as the food is ready to eat.  Or at least mostly ready to eat.  Wet can foods fall under this category.  Both convenient but expensive ( yes, ever since the sheet metal was jacked up in price-as clear of an indicator of Peak Iron Ore as you can get with being hit upside the head with a trade magazine-it has been less than ideal to buy wet canned foods ) and despite the claims of the industry, in my opinion not very healthy.

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So what we are looking at here is trying to make food storage as frugal as possible, but also investing money to extend food storage from Collapse Only to “right now moving forward“.  We might or might not see hyperinflation, it might just be 1970’s inflation ( I don’t bet on it, as discussed with the end of the PetroDollar ), but food prices WILL go up.  You need to plan for that now, and I don’t mean by thinking you’ll make extra money ( you’ll just be lucky to be earning any at all ).  And since civilization collapses don’t finish up overnight you need to plan on extended periods of clandestine eating.  But since civilization collapses aren’t arrested overnight by Fracking Oil, you also need to plan five years out on food storage.  All these phases are dealt with differently.  Four separate plans for food storage.  Don’t focus on one at the expense of another.  You can drop all for one at a sale event, but next payday you realign them and get them back in balance.  What I propose is to start at the worst case scenario, which is NOT short term MRE’s, and then work on the other three, but that is only because you can’t time the collapse.  After that, you balance the three out.  Even if one has priority over another, don’t ignore one completely.

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FOUR STORAGE 2

I hope you’ve already completed the Collapse Plan ( food edition ).  It is the cheapest and long term ( few might believe they need five or ten years worth, but I wouldn’t be comfortable under three years.  Plan on harvest failures and Murphy’s Law ).  It might be nice to have a stack of MRE’s or cases of chili, but that won’t feed you past a short term natural disaster.  Wheat costs you $12 a month.  The same calories in chili form cost $70.  I’m not saying you can’t have both, just that wheat only is far superior to chili only at the beginning purchasing of your food storage adventure.  Get your wheat first and it can feed you in a pinch if the world ends tomorrow ( hey, can you honestly say there CAN’T be a super volcano eruption or solar flare overnight? ).  It is like only having a pistol.  Less than ideal but it will keep you alive NOW, even if you never get around to owning a battle rifle with crates of ammo and it is a far cheaper option ( the 9mm‘s saving grace is frugality ).  

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If you lost your job tomorrow, you could eat two out of three meals just on wheat and save 50% on your food budget.  If you had to crawl under the house to wait out marauders tomorrow, you could live on wheat if you had to ( eating sprouts ).  And you’d have plenty left over for the years following.  I’m just saying, if the worst happens and you ONLY have wheat, you’ll survive.  You can’t afford enough wet cans, MRE’s or F.D. to come close to that.  After, and ONLY after you have a bare bones wheat stash ( a year-add to that after your others plans get some attention ), I’d start worrying about your Budget Plan.  Any food you will eat, even if you don’t completely enjoy it, you buy when it goes on sale.  I don’t really plan on eating much white flour, but I buy it when the price drops 25% ( it rarely drops 50%, unlike white sugar which can unexpectedly go on sale even if it isn’t the winter holidays ) and I already have storage containers for it.  Sugar is also a better return on storage containers. If I have some trash picking containers, like when the NOL throws away her fake coffee creamer super deluxe size container, or even old coffee cans, I can get a LOT of sugar in that one. But it isn’t really worth the trouble of filling with white flour.  Less calories per square inches.

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Kroger stores routinely have case sales, Albertsons less often.  But there are also weekly sales on the items you can buy at less than case quantities at case sale prices.  Like when peanut butter goes on sale for a buck a jar.  How many jars of PB could you stash in strange out of the way places?  Personally, all my PB stash goes to the Bug-In Plan, because I ate too much of that and Top Ramen ( also Bug-In ) during my bachelor/no cook wife/off grid phases of living.  My point is that you buy whatever is on sale.  This is your first step in the saving part of the plan.  Meat is ALWAYS on sale.  Yes, sometimes you skip a week and you can’t pick or choose what meat to buy, not at first.  And you need to buy a chest freezer.  When I started stocking the NOL’s place two years ago ( there was NOTHING at all in the freezer, fridge or cupboard.  She lived on homemade McMuffins for breakfast, a huge salad for lunch and junk snacks for “dinner”, meaning while watching TV at night.  Not a bad diet-the junk food was usually microwave popcorn, so at least a step up from Dorito’s nutritionally-but there was nothing in the house.  You ran out, you ran to the store ).

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Well, that certainly couldn’t stand.  I was used to going at least a week, if not a month, before needing to go to the store.  My first preps ( besides bottled water which she gave me the Stink Eye over ) were not preps at all but just stockpiling the place with every day food items.  Nobody can object to that, and that was my foot in the door turning her to the Dark Side of prepping.  Now she thinks it’s normal to have all that air dried food and months worth of rice and etcetera ( she still looks askance at my longer term food storage, but I’m even slowly introducing her to that like when I bought a fifty pound sack of wheat to grind up and eat every day.  A daily item rather than a storage item, then turning that into longer term storage items ).  And that all started with stocking the freezer with meat on sale.  At first, the only thing in there was chicken.  That was what was on sale.  But soon, her buddy had a cheap freezer she wanted to sell and we got a huge chest freezer and soon it was stocked up with 89 cent chicken, 99 cent boneless pork and $1.50-ish hamburger. 

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And don’t even think about buying a chest freezer if you won’t rotate it.  Or if you’ll be putting bread or ice cream in it.  Those are a waste of storage investment money.  Meat is nutritious calories, densely packed.  Sugar is a terrible calories conveyor and bread on sale is false economics if frozen and the space displaces meat.  Remember, this isn’t preparedness food.  You aren’t concerned if the grid goes down.  This is just you eating much cheaper every day.  Besides meat, you’ll also buying whatever is on sale that you like eating.  The object isn’t to eat more of it because it is cheaper but to stock it so deep you won’t need to buy any more for a year or two and you can cross off another item on your upcoming Inflation Plan list.  The budget list is ONLY concerned on buying whatever is on sale.  The Inflation Plan must cover all your food needs ( except perishable produce or milk ).  The Budget Plan is your first Inflation items, meant to reduce how much you spend with as many items as possible.  After awhile, ALL your Inflation Plan items will be bought on sale, just not at first.

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Just like at first, on Budget I bought chicken.  Pork and hamburger were regular price.  Once I started stocking the other meat on Budget, then those items became Inflation items bought on sale.  Some things never go on sale.  Instant rice, or instant potatoes.  You can’t buy them on your Budget plan.  But you’re buying them in bulk anyway, on the Inflation Plan.  You just buy them twice as often as replenishment rate, for example.  Others tell you the same thing when they advocate buying two every time you are buying one to replace.  Same difference.  After a short time most of your Inflation Plan food is stocked deep.  Then it is all whatever is on sale.  It is a nice feeling having your six months of regular food all bought cheap, on hand. 
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FOUR STORAGE 3

Over time you’ll discover that while never predictable there is a certain range of items that always go on sale at the stores.  It isn’t like you’ll be needing to buy fifty different items by the case ( the items total might approach that, but not the items you would eat ).  There will probably be more like a dozen long term storage foods that periodically go on sale ( you might think Top Ramen has an expiration date but I disagree.  Peanut butter does eventually go rancid, but it has hydrogenated oil which turns it into a shortening type oil.  Don’t worry about the official date.  Do the smell test as you would for a jug of oil.  You’ll smell it if its rancid ).  And really, if you look at your non-perishable, non-snack food items ( hard candy stores okay, tortilla chips do not.  Only stock snack items that are long term storage, like pudding or Jello or whatnot ), you don’t really eat a large variety of food in your daily menu.

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You have a certain range of foods for each meal, and if you are poor and like most, it is only two rather than three meals a day because lunch is just last nights dinner leftovers.  Dinner, for most people, is three different meats ( pork, beef, chicken ) and three different starches ( potato, pasta, rice ) and that is pretty much it for your two meals a day.  Breakfast is a whole grain and a protein, which is usually an egg but could also be a milk.  Other than adding condiments to your stockpile, you don’t have a huge amount of items to stockpile before you notice you’ve suddenly got months worth.  Yes, I understand it isn’t QUITE as simple as that, but it is darn close.  You go to the store once and see pasta on sale for 50 cents a pound, my bet would be you spend $20 and you have close to a year of pasta ( I’m not scaling up for families, obviously ).  Instant rice ( you can make your own with a pressure cooker and an air dehydrator, it is just cooked rice dried ) is $3 a big box ( buy at Kroger, not Wally, for cheap generic ) and will last for weeks.

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I tried air drying raw potatoes and had no luck.  I think the GMO revolution already hit Idaho because potatoes are no longer a uniform reliable starch but always seem to vary bag to bag even for the same type.  Nothing cooks up as previously.  I’d hate to go without fresh potatoes in my diet because instant is only good occasionally ( a tasty treat is potato pancakes-I make mine with more potato than wheat.  One tablespoon flour to a small bowl of instant mashed potatoes, add the egg to the flour and mix, then add the potatoes and mix.  If you have the convection over pre cook.  The microwave might also do the trick.  This keeps them from falling apart.  Then fry in butter on the stovetop ).  Eggs and raw potatoes aren’t months  long food storage items but they do go for at least a month in storage.  And yes, I’m aware there are methods of room temp egg storage, but it seems to me a bit excessive just for day to day eating.

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For non-cook foods, you can use many different items besides MRE’s or freeze dried.  My go-to’s are Top Ramen ( can be eaten uncooked ) and peanut butter.  I also have a few weeks worth of sweet canned milk but that is only because the old boss was cleaning the shelves and she saw no use for it in food boxes.  One little can has 1300 calories so it is a great food storage item.  It is also about $2 a can.  Remember the old minion contributed trail food?  Instant oatmeal, uncooked, mixed into peanut butter with Tang powder for flavor.  You have your whole grain and protein and vitamin C and it can be eaten without cooking on the go.  All these items go on sale, eventually.  You might need to wait for the winter holidays for the sweet milk, or the regular canned milk.  There are plenty of foods that need to be warmed up but minimize prep time and clean up, for days when you can’t devote hours to cooking ( such as, if everyone chipped in to pre-stock an evacuation point as marauders neared.  Or, the coast was clear in your bug-in location and everyone wanted a hot meal as a treat ).  Instant rice and canned chili.  Cornmeal ( only long term store de-germinated, not whole meal ) and fried Spam, that kind of thing. 

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See how easy it would be to have six months of daily food items on hand?  All you’d need to buy would be root vegetables ( potatoes and carrots ) and cabbage for long term fridge veggies ( for monthly only shopping ), milk and eggs, vastly reducing your food budget through tough economic times ( not collapse times ).  Just buying during case sales takes care of the MRE substitutes ( the hot meal items are the occasional treats as they are expensive, but no nearly as bad as MRE’s ).  Budget Plan items can vary so you stock variety for all three other plans.  Condiments, to include my medicinal apple vinegar,  and potatoes/cabbage are about the only things I can never buy on sale.  Some items only drop marginally, such as rice, but I can still wait on those to go on sale.  I haven’t calculated how long everything will last although just on the meat I’d wager that hypothetical half year.  I’m sure we have a years worth of frozen butter ( it takes up so little room and has 3k calories a pound, it is one of the few things worthy of taking freezer meat space ), two of pasta and god knows how many years of white flour and sugar and coffee. 

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And remember, I’m living in a 400 square foot apartment ( which includes the available basement storage space ).  My country palatial estate holds its own food storage, but that is subject to mice infestation so storage is just as limited ( for instance, I can’t store Top Ramen or bags of flour without containers-those bastards get up to the ceiling cabinets  ).  Anyone can store years of Collapse Plan food ( buckets stacked behind the closet clothes rack ), Bug-In Plan food ( under the bed ) and Inflation Plan food in the normal kitchen spaces ( back when I had a thirty-five foot travel trailer, living in Carson City, we had a chest freezer in front of the secondary door, tucked well out of the way.  All the Inflation Plan food was tucked away here and there and everywhere.  If I could do it in a trailer, you can do it where you live ).

 

END
 Please support Bison by buying through the Amazon ad graphics at the top of the page. ***You can support me through Patreon ( go to www.patreon.com/bison )***You can make donations or book purchases through PayPal ( www.paypal.me/jimd303 )

*** Unless you are in extreme poverty, spend a buck a month here, by the above donation methods or buy a book. If you don't do Kindle, send me a buck and I'll e-mail it to you.  Or, send an extra buck and I'll send you a CD ( the file is in PDF.  I’ll waive this fee if you order three or more books at one time ).  My e-mail is: jimd303@reagan.com  My address is: James M Dakin, 181 W Bullion Rd #12, Elko NV 89801-4184

*** Pay your author-no one works for free.  I’m nice enough to publish for barely above Mere Book Money, so do your part.***   Land In Elko*  Lord Bison* my bio & biblio*   my web site is www.bisonprepper.com *** Wal-Mart wheat***Amazon Author Page
* By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there

guest article-post 2 of 2 today

GUEST ARTICLE-post 2 of 2 today

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The BIC computer

I believe most survivalists are keeping old laptops as their SHTF computers, and some are venturing in experimental stuff like the raspberry Pi. I did both.

Following the latest WannaCry cyberattack, I realised both solutions were not adapted for a frugal/SHTF setup. Old laptops are power hogs, and I still haven't managed the Raspberry Pi to work on my small 12VDC parking-camera-screen. The Raspberry Pi looks inexpensive as such but then you have to purchase a screen, keyboard (preferably with an integrated mousepad) and various stuff, and you also need to learn a new programming language. The Raspberry Pi is actually a false good idea and a really bad one for our purposes.

1- Hardware

I experimented with two old Android smartphones from 2011, turning them into mini tablets without SIM cards. It works very well, and you can't beat the price, for 25 ? each I have a fully functional computer with screen and interface (keyboard + mouse) that will run on a solar charger or a 12VDC battery (though a cigarette lighter USB adaptator).

The microSD card is the smartphone's external Hard Drive equivalent, which is perfectly fine ; those come with an SD adaptator than itself can fit into an SD card reader that costs about 5 USD.

Both Android smartphones run on Android 2.1 OS, which is also why they are so cheap. That, and their 320x480 screen. Now this is actually an important point : because it's obsolete doesn't mean it can't do its job.

2- Install disk equivalent

If you search for software for the Android OS you will generally have to use Google Play, that will install these straight to your smartphone, but you won't get the install files, which have the suffix ? .APK ?

In order to have APK files for these apps, I used an app called ?MyBackup?. It saves your apps in APK form, on the microSD card if you choose so. This is how I got most of my apps, a few I had to obtain from shady sites that allow you to download straight to APK format. This whole gymnastic here is actually the difficult part in the whole setup.

Once you have searched, collected and tried all the apps you have yourself an ?install disk? for these. In case of trouble, you'll reset the smartphone to factory settings and re-install those apps. Now this is a very good antiviral option. Don't try to fix the virus, just delete everything. I don't know about Android viruses much, if they do nest in the devices' ROM then the device is ruined anyway :(

3- Software suite (for Android 2.1)

Most smartphones don't come with a files manager, but this is crucial. So I got the APK for an app called Total Commander. My smartphones all had an in-built browser, and you have to use this to install this first app. Change the (very complicated) file name to something short like totalco.apk and then type " file:///sdcard/totalco.apk " in the browser bar to install this. (Yes, three / )

The other apps I installed are :
- Jota text editor (for inventory I ditched any Excel sheet capability, I'll edit a text list instead.)
- an ePUB reader ( Nomad Reader ). Due to the small screens I complement this with a 5? hand-sized plastic fresnel lens for easier reading.
- a Talkie Walkie app (made by ACES Android Development - Bahia Blanca -Argentina) for local texting - I can't get the talkie function to work)
- A8 player video player, that is choosy regarding the files it wants to read. Together with the in-built video reader I could read most video files but not all.

These are programs that will run under Android 2.1. If you have Android 4.0 you can have much more choice and functionalities, but it will be a couple of years before these phones can become affordable. Also, those large screens smartphones prove to be somewhat flimsy, the more compact ones have less screen issues.

4- Useability

I think the key argument in favor of the smartphone solution is that it doesn't require knowledge of coding, it is quite easy to use and configure. This ties in with the Zero-Skill Approach : your average human in 2017 knows how to use these. Also, the Bluetooth local networking options are very simple to configure and use, albeit with limitations.

The downside of the smartphone solution is that one can't run external devices such as external hard drives. Either you build youself an extensive collection of large-capacity microSD cards with all you movies and e-books, or you still have an old laptop computer in order to access external HDs or DVD-Roms etc.

Why would we need a BIC computer ? Our first use is access to knowledge and entertainment.
You can also manage your inventory, when you don't want to use pen & paper, but with just a text editor you won't have a synthetic view.

A smartphone has many additional apps such as a calculator for instance, a motion camera alarm, some have an integrated compass, Android 4 allows you to scan documents etc. etc. This would make for another article, but I lack the information& experience to list all useable apps (that don't require connecting to Internet or a SIM card, that is...)

living on I-80 post 1 of 2 today

post 1 of 2 today
LIVING ON THE INTERSTATE

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note: SE in OH, got your PayPal.  Most excellent, thanks.  Another appreciated $1 a month for the next year, as per my humble requests.
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Interstate highways are one of those Evil Incarnate items yuppie scum survivalists look at and cringe and gasp over.  Oh My Friggin God, Becky, look at their butts!  All those POOR people.  Like, groady, dude.  Poor people have cars and they want to come take our food and violate our women!  Sweet Baby Jesus, rich people sound the same now as they did 150 years ago ( OOOO, dude, look at all those BLACK people.  They want to violate our women! ).  Don’t get me wrong, rich humpers are equally prejudice to all colors but green.  And by rich, I mean aspiring rich also.  If you ain’t a redneck, you are either a rich humper or want to be one.  Same difference.  You think you are better than me because you have money.  I’m sure you are quite proud of the fact you were able to game the system, but hump to very much.  You are as much of a weasel as lawyers helping to double the cost of everything through litigation fears.  You are not better than one who toils honestly, that is for DAMN sure.

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Anyway, you are scolded and chastised if you even so much as THINK about moving anywhere near an Interstate highway.  Because, you know, poor people will zip on over, smell you out because obviously your crap don’t stink, and then rape your women ( or, even worse, take your MRE’s and FLIR scopes ).  Now, please don’t think that I’ve ever even considered Yuppie Scum Survivalists as being all that rational, but even for them this one is a huge leap.  They know about gasoline being a JIT inventory item, they should know the electrical grid is way over aged and over burdened, and yet they think Golden Hordes will have the fuel to reach your retreat location?  Nobody can drive three hundred miles to smite your ass because every city will, with only a fraction of the population leaving, experience gridlock.  One car runs out of gas from stop and start traffic and then the driver abandons the car in the lane and suddenly traffic backs up and creates more gridlock and then more people run out of gas and suddenly every road system surrounding every city looks like Houston during the hurricane evacuation. 

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Not to mention all the wasted time and gas at every exit as motorists look for fuel and food and lodging.  Every entrance will have vehicles trying to force their way in, and every road away from the city decreasing the number of lanes will form congestion.  You are looking at a parking lot, not a means of transportation delivering attackers.  Which doesn’t mean Interstates are safe.  Near the city, they are not.  But while getting the hell out of the big cities is smart, discounting a smaller city to live in because it is near the Interstate isn’t necessarily.  In times of energy decline, in fact, being away from that major trucker thoroughfare might see no supplies getting to you.  You’d have been safe come the collapse, it is just too bad you couldn’t wait it out for that there.  Not every collapse will be overnight, nor easily recovered from.  You must factor in the lead up to collapse and prepare for that.  Which includes out of the way burgs being denied transportation of goods ( it can easily be an economic denial, not necessarily a government dictate ).

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You of course smirk, but consider how quickly New Orleans was rebuilt.  You had no choice but to move elsewhere, on your dime.  The worst affected areas were simply abandoned.  Will your hideaway hovel up in Idaho, now on the Do Not Plow list after severe budget cuts, get resupplied?  Or will it be up to you to go WAY out of your way to go get supplies.  Again, people, this is what energy decline looks like.  You can’t assume it is supplies one day and complete collapse the next.  The transition phases are going to be a bitch.  Will there be gas, or jobs to have gas money, to exist in these idyllic prepper paradises?  I’m certainly not saying they are a poor choice, just that logic dictates every location has its Achilles Heel.  As does every strategy.  Even mine, although mine is the least worst ( well, I have to say that, don’t I? ).

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Yuppie Scum Survivalists tell us to relocate to the West, that the West is the Best.  But the western Interstates, until relatively close to the big cities, are passing through desolate wilderness.  There is nothing there.  Yes, that makes you somewhat vulnerable since there are so few roads and the one you are on will be a target just from lack of choices.  But that assumes the fuel to reach you and then the complete lack of locales to oppose you.  I’m right on I-80 and I could give a crap less that anybody from Idaho Falls, Las Vegas, Reno or Salt Lake City MIGHT wander out this way.  Even eliminating the neighboring threat of those living in Elko, as desolate and huge as Elko County is, there are STILL a good ten to twenty thousand residents living there ( Elko is 20k population.  Elko County is about 60k.  Discounting the few small towns, there are still a lot of rural residents ).  Some of them will be coming my way, and likely before the idiots from the big city do.  You should always fear the locales before the potential long distant immigrants, come a collapse ( as opposed to the current threat from Muslims and Latinos threatening to come our way ).

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Between traffic jams and lack of gas assuring few city folk ever reaching you, given the regular spaces dividing western locations, to the more urgent need to fear your neighbors, I think that the Interstate prohibition is ill founded.  It is on par with Eastern Oregon being pushed as a Tri-State retreat area.  It can be done in Oregon, and Interstates do bear a SMALL amount of concern, but by and large you should ignore both.

END

Please support Bison by buying through the Amazon ad graphics at the top of the page. ***You can support me through Patreon ( go to www.patreon.com/bison )***You can make donations or book purchases through PayPal ( www.paypal.me/jimd303 )

*** Unless you are in extreme poverty, spend a buck a month here, by the above donation methods or buy a book. If you don't do Kindle, send me a buck and I'll e-mail it to you.  Or, send an extra buck and I'll send you a CD ( the file is in PDF.  I’ll waive this fee if you order three or more books at one time ).  My e-mail is: jimd303@reagan.com  My address is: James M Dakin, 181 W Bullion Rd #12, Elko NV 89801-4184

*** Pay your author-no one works for free.  I’m nice enough to publish for barely above Mere Book Money, so do your part.***   Land In Elko*  Lord Bison* my bio & biblio*   my web site is www.bisonprepper.com *** Wal-Mart wheat***Amazon Author Page
* By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there

panic plan

PANIC PLAN

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note: if you get Amazon Prime, you might like the movie "The Girl With All The Gifts".  A step above your average zombie film.  Hang in there the first thirty minutes, it starts out slow.  And see if you can figure out the blatant PC message at the end.
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Now, when again were you planning on panicking?  Some things you don’t need to panic all that early about.  I moved to Florida to be near my young children, but my deciding factor was that it was a great Y2K retreat due to the lack of winter weather ( I would not have followed them to one of their other locations such as Dearborn Michigan ).  I knew it was going to one day be underwater due to Gore Warming ( well, I didn’t KNOW, but I strongly suspected ) but I was in no panic to leave there because of that.  I stayed five years.  Then moved to the capital of Nevada, which I knew was not a long term viable location due to its population ( for those you living in, say, Los Angeles, Carson City is anything other than overpopulated but to me it was.  Even if I had just left crowded coastal Florida.  The desert areas tend to jam their populations right on top of each other near the watering hole whereas in the East things spread out.  I felt more claustrophobic than before ) but also, was not so panic inducing that I felt I needed to leave immediately.

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Weather Weirding is nothing new.  I had yet to sarcastically attach Global Warming with its first politician pimp daddy while in Florida but you could easily see how the place very well COULD be underwater soon ( I hadn’t come across the research yet on how Florida was completely submerged only 14,000 years ago ).  It was a very good indicator of where not to live, just as the Yellowstone super volcano may never happen in our lifetime but it sure isn’t what I want in my overpriced backyard.  Why pay a mortgage if your house will soon be a coral reef or under hardened ash?  Now, I don’t care for all the Hopium being smoked in the permaculture punks paradigm ( oh, look, if we just compost and plant organically in our back yard located in a megopolise, it will teach others to do the same and the Earth with over six billion too many will be saved! ), which gives far too much false promise, but I also acknowledge that there is plenty of time and really no need to panic just yet ( and what good would it do?  Yes, you need practice to make a farmer but no, you can’t pick the right spot if your climate change hypothesis is correct.  The historical crop records will become moot ).

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Where I start to get irritated is when folks go about ignoring economic and energy issues.  They dismiss economic concerns with false hope ( the other political party will save us-ah, okay, how has that worked out for you so far? )( well, we’ve always recovered from a Depression before ) and they completely dismiss energy problems ( Fracking will save us all, forever, just like The Hydrogen Economy and the Ethanol Infrastructure did before it! ).  Where does one start with that?  I’ve discussed this before ad nausium.  The last five centuries was colonial resource extraction moving the economies, not capitalism or American Freedom.  At some point with exponential population growth it didn’t occur to anyone that a finite planet would start to run out of everything?  That is already baked into the cake.  We are already scrapping the bottom of the barrel for everything except pollution and people.  Please refer back to one of the best military sci-fi films of all time, Aliens ( the second one. Alien, the first, was just horror.  The second was another James Cameron masterpiece.  Like his Terminator was one of the best post-apoc films ever ), and the memorable line, “we’re all going to die, man!”.

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I can’t help but touch on Peak Oil in nearly all my writing.  Central to everything and everything dependent on petroleum, it is the elephant in the room everyone refuses to acknowledge.  We are wading through waist deep turds and using the trunk as a hat rack.  There is no avoiding the damn thing but we still won’t do anything other than pretend the scat is shag carpet and the lack of available floor space is due to optical illusions.  But I’ll try to skirt around the issue as much as I can.  God forbid I offend any readers, who are here for survivalist advice but stay for the…I have no idea what.  Last year we used 25 billion barrels of oil, and discovered approximately two point five.  Ten percent.  As oil companies are slashing their discovery budgets to keep out of bankruptcy.  But there is no elephant.  Let’s just say that for some bizarre reason the economy keeps getting worse over the last fifty years and while we have recoveries it is one step forward and two steps back and that this just continues.  Wouldn’t you say that from simple observation we can conclude the economy is really friggin bad?

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Now, here is an important question.  Are economics a Slow Panic problem or a Panic Now issue?  Is it on par with Gore Warming?  Will it blow like Yellowstone, any day now but let’s root for it for during my grandkids life so it’s okay to move right next to it?  Do we have a life time or is time short?  I have no idea, and neither do you, as neither of us has a crystal ball.  But we can make some pretty darn good guesses, can’t we?  How about you just drive down your neighborhood and look at the foreclosed homes.  A decade after the real estate bubble popped.  How about a Google Earth tour of New Orleans or Detroit?  Do you see anything getting better, or does it just keep getting worse?  How about your pay, hours or benefits at work?  Much better?  Come on, people.  We have been in an economic contraction for half a century.  Can we live like this indefinitely, or is it possible that the Bell Curve, the Senega Trap or the Waterfall Collapse could be a more probable outcome? 

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So why haven’t you panicked? 

PANIC PLAN 2

Let me ask you a question.  Why are you reading this?  Is it to keep you motivated to prep, a daily reminder that all is far worse than reported and you need to stay focused and not fall for the soothing Siren call of optimism?  Or is it for entertainment?  If you are just having a good time here, you might have already panicked and planned and prepped and can now relax and just tweak your plans on a hobby level.  I know I can’t have too much influence either way, after a certain point.  You have either already followed the basics I’ve covered long ago, or know you need to and are doing so ( anyone can, say, buy a bag of wheat a payday ), or figured it all out without my help and are just here for community or e-teet distraction ( so, I can see how you couldn’t possibly fathom why I deserve your paltry financial support of a buck a month ).  I truly hope most of you are just here for the entertainment.

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I know I’m just spinning my wheels here.  But before I was doing that I was just spinning my wheels at a job with a paycheck.  I kept on the gerbil wheel for no other purpose than enriching those in management, despite their “help” always being a hindrance and their existence overcompensated by 100%.  So now that I’ve focused all my attention here, I might still just be wasting my efforts but at least it is for a slightly more noble goal than putting profits into the pockets of the new fem overlord’s overseers.  What, you think I’m blind to the fact that I just keep covering the same topics over and over again?  Most of our jobs are completely unnecessary, to include mine.  And yours, I would wager a jelly filled donut.  Just think of me as the town crier that never delivers much new in the way of news but is a familiar and comforting presence.  Hey, if you don’t like naval gazing and contemplation you are definitely in the wrong place.

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Now, unfortunately the whole Crying Wolf thing has been so overdone, as has the counterpoint Optimism Ollie viewpoint, that few know if they should defecate or go blind.  I think the above is a good lens to view yourself.  Are you here out of fear or out of boredom?  If you are bored that means you don’t need to panic because you are all prepped.  I think the fear, warranted or otherwise, is good to get us to act.  I feared often and early and was hence ready for early retirement.  That hadn’t been my intention, of course.  But I’m glad I listened to the crying wolves.  I know our civilization will collapse.  I wouldn’t have poured twenty years into my studying and writing otherwise.  It was never a business but a vocation, which is why I don’t do things like all the others.  Yes, I am holier than them.  But my point is, I lost very little by panicking.  Panicking early was in fact nothing but first class bonuses and special treats.

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Can you afford to buy any Lee-Enfield’s now?  They are $300-$400 each, but I only spent $500 on four rifles.  Because I panicked early, twenty years ago ( okay, I started buying them twenty years ago and finished ten years ago ).  Find any $500 lots of land lately, other than tax sales?  I did.  Because I bought twelve years ago.  That was when I bought my silver, at $6 an ounce.  I could go on and on.  It wasn’t because I was smarter than you.  You were right, the world didn’t end on my schedule.  I was wrong.  But I’m ready because of it.  And if the world never ends, what have I done wrong?  I’m now working for myself, even if I’m not making enough.  Even that I have no regrets on, as none of us will have money soon enough anyway so I’m just learning to live on even less than expected.  Your niggardliness is actually helping, so wipe that smug look off of your face.  Okay, granted, nobody needs five thousand rounds of ammunition if the world isn’t ending.  But what else could I have done with the money?  Bought a cell phone plan, rented more movies, gone out to eat more often?  I don’t sleep better at night because I spent $10 a plate on dinner and didn’t have to wash the dishes.

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Not that I’m saying you should panic and prep just for an insurance policy or for retirement.  You should panic prep because the system is obviously crashing.  I’m just saying if everyone is wrong you haven’t gambled and lost.  You win either way.  I’m also saying, why haven’t YOU personally already panicked?  You no longer need a crystal ball.  It is already in the rearview mirror.  When I started writing on survivalism, twenty-five plus years ago, all this prepping stuff was a lot more wild-eyed and suppositional.  Not so much any more.  Now it is historical reporting.  All we can now do is point out the window at Rome burning and talk about bug-out bags.  It isn’t about IF the sucker is going to burn, but at what rate, and that is true to everyone but the most oblivious.  If you are still stuck in a loveless marriage in suburbia surrounded by ghettos and working in a soul crushing job, it isn’t because you think that is a viable position.  It isn’t because you can’t see any options ( what part of this being frugal prepping/rat race escape don’t you understand? ).  It is because you don’t want to change.  The fear of the unknown about finding another mate and how many visitations you’ll get with your kids and what your take home pay will be outweighs your fear of the apocalypse. 

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Why?  The ex can only metaphorically rape you and skin you alive.  The love and proximity of your ingrate family will not heat or feed you.  And your job will pink slip your ass and leave you defenseless in a near future riot location.  Just saying.

END

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inflation book

INFLATION SURVIVAL GUIDE BOOK

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INTRO

At the time of this writing, Spring 2017, the common perception of the American public is that there is no inflation.  Food prices have stabilized as has gasoline, and any upticks in medical insurance or practice cost is blamed on the ( White ) House Negro’s disastrous Mau Mau occupation of the last eight years.  You think Obammy is a smart little Kenyan, don’t you ( when the “proof” of Hawaiian birth was presented, his Social Security number reflected that of a resident of another state, but you just keep believing that “The Birthers” are crazy and deluded )?  All those degrees from Ivy League schools, those books, that Nobel Prize?  He was an ignorant whore, sorry to burst your bubble.  He allowed himself to not only be a meat puppet for his owners/handlers, he is now the whipping boy for all the systematic collapse issues he had no part in other than as a Front Man.  You could say he was laughing all the way to the bank but, one, he is saddled with his transvestite “wife” which seems not worth all the millions and two, he was too dumb to do anything other than what he was told to do ( the college degrees were just Negro Quota diploma mills ).

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Anyway, sorry about that as sometimes a memory of my horrid whore of an ex-wife surfaces and sometimes it is that of the First Kenyan and you get what you get.  Back to inflation.  We are only seeing a quasi-deflation now due to a near complete collapse of global consumer demand.  Made up money being injected into the stock market is the only illusion of buying or selling, but elsewhere in RealityLand where most of us live, Sales Of The Century are occurring as less profit is better than no profit and everyone desperately attempts to goose sales.  The leading indicator is of course decreasing oil sales because since everything is made with oil and shipped with oil and customers use oil to perform employable work that gives them disposable income, less oil being consumed even at lower prices means the whole Extract-Manufacture-Work-Buy process has slowed down.  Remember the last Depression we were in ( don’t make me laugh with such made to order propaganda bullspit replaceable titles such as The Great Recession ) when nobody could buy an ocean of crap because nobody had a job?  Rinse and repeat. 

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Now is the perfect time to really think hard about inflation because now is when you have the opportunity to stockpile cheap to combat future price increases which are guaren-friggin-teed to occur which we’ll cover shortly.  And a good time to use the last of your paychecks to get out of debt.  In short, if you don’t feel like my deity level wisdom is worth consuming for the rest of this book, being out of debt and having stockpiled consumables is all the inflation hedge you need to worry about.  Gold?  Real Estate?  Maximizing your income potential?  All equally worthless.  And all covered in due time, not to worry.  But I do like to babble on incessantly and I don’t want you to feel like I keep stringing you along without getting to the point.  So there you go.  The Point.  All you need to know is how to minimize your need for money because inflation is NOT beatable, only manageable.  Anyone that is telling you otherwise is selling a dream.  I only sell nightmares.  It is kind of my niche, yo.

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CAUSES OF INFLATION

Inflation isn’t exactly Rocket Surgery.  More dollars are created and so each dollar is worth less and hence to be giving  a commodity or service the seller needs to bring in more dollars to equal the same amount of purchasing power to buy his own commodities.  It is more currency chasing the same amount of goods.  Inflation is just readjusting barter units to reflect the fact there are more of them in circulation.  Prices did not Go Up, the amount of dollars did.  Prices can increase if supplies decrease, but that is not currency inflation which is what we are concerned with here.  If prices increase because of shortages, you have bigger problems.  Because currency inflation is just a tax but commodity inflation means systematic collapse is possible.  A shortage of food or oil is civilization collapse.  A glut of currency is just an individual collapse.  Hyper-inflation usually means collapse to the system anyway, but from your perspective 100% inflation or one million percent is equally unmanageable ( and civilization collapse is already baked into the cake for everything NOT having to do with the banks or the economy as they are mere indicators ).

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Just understand that any paper currency ever, historically or to come, is always inflated to worthlessness as every government or civilization ALWAYS creates too much currency ( and credit creation verses currency creation is more of an academic abstraction than a noticeable distinction as the end results are the same ) to pay the bills.  It is a verifiable law of nature like gravity.  The only reason a hegemony group can “kick the can down the road” for any length of time AFTER they inflate is because of colonial resource extraction.  Exporting the inflation, partially or in whole.  But those chickens always come back to roost.  We forced other countries to assume most of our inflation after we created the PetroDollar and priced oil in dollars, and that standard is eroding with our global dominance.  Inflation in a very meaningful percentage is on the way.  Oil was paying our bills but soon only currency will be left to do so, and we have a LOT of bills.  And tomorrows inflation isn’t going to be like the ‘70’s inflation, because next we’ll have no colonies to exploit resources from ( and the only wealth creation engine for the last five centuries has been colonialization, besides oil extraction, and unless you are a Fracking Fag you understand the oil is running out ). 

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MONETARY INFLATION

Credit creation is nothing more than monetary inflation.  A bank says to you, in effect, here is a credit card.  The credit card is backed by zero assets from savers.  Inflating the currency by a fractional reserve process ( if you have $5 savings, you can create $100 to loan ) and creating credit ( $100 from nothing ) is nearly identical because the interest you collect from each is free money.  You are collecting $5 a year on the loan and $25 a year on the credit card, and all you had to do was get a schmuck to put $5 in the bank ( of which then becomes your property  in the event of a bank bankruptcy ) which he pays a monthly fee on to have an account unless his balance is high enough to make you more profit, AND you get to control inflation which is a another bit of free money.  And if someone defaults on the credit card, you are out no money.  It was made up, not drawn from savings!  Sure, you had to pay vendors for the products purchased, but the vendor transaction fees are more than the default rates!  And you made money on those vendors taking your credit card!  You make money on poor people buying food on an EBT card!

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And all that is before the derivatives market profits, and the mandatory auto and health insurance everyone must buy!  The federal government is paying interest on Twenty Friggin Trillion Bucks A Year!!  Who cares if the interest rates went from three to one percent!  Give me a quarter of one percent of twenty trillion a year and I’d be happy.  All the credit cards in everyone’s wallet are at 20%, 10% at the least, so there is an equal amount in interest right there.  Good Christ On A Pogo Stick, this credit creation stuff is all right!  Interest payments, the inflation tax, mandatory insurance.  Being a banker is fun.  And don’t think this is a favorite Christmas movie with a loveable loan officer, this is a single entity, a Rothschild’s banking empire of old.  The Federal Reserve Bank is an umbrella group that controls all the “independent” banks, as well as the government ( really, you think the feds tell their loan officer what to do? ) and the corporations ( who borrow for competitive advantage ).

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Now, inflation is the key here.  Yes, the bankers and government get a slight advantage by spending money as it enters the system, prior to that money creation raising prices, but inflation is needed for the simple fact that loans need to be repaid.  Every time a new loan is created, more money must enter into circulation so that the interest on the loans can be paid.  It is as easy as that, a concept simplified beautifully by the Peak Prosperity folks and their “Crash Course”, free on YouTube if you are poor, or available on DVD if you want a hard copy.  And what has by and large guided the amount of monetary inflation?  Energy entering the system, as energy creates products.  New products that mostly counterbalance the new money entering the system.  The inflation rate you see as rising prices is the amount of dollar creation above and beyond the rate energy is introduced.  Yes, like everything else in this booklet, this is a simplification.  But this stuff IS simple.  Complication is for a group of economists ( what do you call a group of them?  A Gaggle?  A Herd? How about, like crows, a Murder?  That seems fitting ) that are busy jerking each other off for fun and profit.

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Inflation used to be more straight forward.  There was gold, and then there was gold bonds, a paper currency that was a redemption certificate ( prior to paper, the gold content was degraded in the coin ) and one day a gold storage place figured out they could create more bonds than there was gold and since not everyone withdrew the physical gold at the same time it was safe to do so.  So then you had the storage fee you were collecting, then on top of that more interest on more loans you were using that gold for ( the gold you weren’t authorized to lend out as loans ).  Well, that was all rather primitive compared to funding imperial governments to go conquer distant lands, using some of that loan to pay the military ( the rest was from taxes ) to occupy a zone of near free commodities which created new wealth which was the interest needed for new loans.  Today, oil takes the place of colonies commodities.  It is basically the same thing but in concentrated form. 

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This is your basic capitalistic system.  The banks loan money to invest in the means of extracting wealth, and wealth MUST grow to pay back the banks.  It looks really good on paper but the problem is that we live on a finite planet and capitalism requires infinite growth or it dies.  Along with the planet, evidently.  Look, I hate to burst your bubble, but capitalism was only a creation to enable the Industrial Age to flourish.  It wasn’t to set the poor free or to be a more efficient way of conducting trade.  The benefit’s the masses saw was from extracting carbon fuels, not because of capitalism ( which is a rich mans game ).  The philosophy of capitalism is the same benefit to the bankers as religion was to the kings, a system of thought used to delude the oppressed into thinking it was to their benefit.  The fact that you are thinking I’m a communist for saying that is proof it has worked wonderfully.  I know I sure as heck would appreciate it more if it wasn’t mostly for the benefit of the Bankers.

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INFLATION USED TO HELP

Way back in the day, the urban legend that fooled most people into accepting inflation was commodity inflation.  Real estate and precious metals went up at one time and so everyone had it stuck in their heads that inflation wasn’t all that bad.  Heck, it was usually good.  Gold and silver only inflated at the end of the Seventies, although that set the legend, but since only crazy survivalists bought the stuff it doesn’t apply to most.  The real estate market was the focus of Joe Average.  Heck, he didn’t even believe gasoline saw inflation, since it was the Evil Corporations that raised prices and beef prices were always raised due to drought and the EPA regulating land for the protected species of mold.  Real estate inflation was a huge racket that was enriching the elites systematically and the lesser players such as the local evening news and newspapers happily went along with as they received advertising from those enriched.

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The mortgage payer thought that rising prices were magically enriching them.  They could sell the home and make a profit, even after buying another one ( or if they didn’t make money, if they broke even, the next house was bigger ).  That was good inflation!  Well, that was also property tax inflation, and gross mortgage loan interest payment inflation, and local government development fee inflation and contractor and laborer inflation and an increase in roads and car sales and gas taxes and real estate developers profits, also.  Anyone who was anybody was making money off the prices of homes increasing, but it usually wasn’t the home owner.  Any gains were subject to tax if not put right back into real estate ( another push on inflation ) and with real estate agent fees, property taxes and interest, plus repairs and improvements, the gains were largely illusion.  Enough early trend setters made real money profits to fuel the fantasy, but your average working couple was barely staying ahead.

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Most of the time you made enough money for the down payment on the new home, followed by a thirty year mortgage.  All that commodity inflation allowed you to do was to more easily stay in debt.  And the interest rates lowering since the Reagan administration?  That gain was also an illusion.  The prices went up quick enough that even at a lower rate you still paid more in toto.  The interest rates lowering was just allowing you to get into more debt on everything, since most folks buying anything on credit-a car, a card, college-just look at the monthly payment.  What did they care it took twenty years to pay off at a fraction of a percent of the principle payment?  They only looked at the monthly budget.  And, they never look to inflation as a culprit.   Their house equity went up, so inflation is their friend.  Monetary inflation is never to blame, it is greed and incompetence that make prices increase according to the narrative and any official recognition is downplayed and admitted to as a necessary evil ( we MUST inflate this benign amount to stop deflation!  OOOOO, deflation is bad, it will make your house go down in price! ).

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Well, 2009+ was the end of the housing/real estate commodity inflation.  Suddenly, after trillions in equity was lost in homes, your house was underwater.  You owed more on it than it was worth.  AND the property taxes increased as local governments were seeing all their funding sources disappear.  You remember, when roads couldn’t be repaved and cops had to budget their gas on patrol and prisoners were released early.  That passed after a time but it wasn’t because the economy recovered.  It was because the government inflated.  Most went right back into the bankers profits, such as pumping up the stock market and the Fracking Industry ( an outright subsidy to get that energy back into the economy-too bad that Frack wells peak and crash in two or three years rather than decades, meaning that source is unavailable for the next crash ), getting the velocity of money ramped back up ( velocity is just money being spent rather than hoarded ).  Between the increased spending and the increased energy, we had our recovery such as it was.  It was a great breathing spell and a wonderful chance to prepare since 2008 pretty much caught most by surprise ( not the real estate bubble popping part, that was obvious, but the derivatives markets crashing the global economy ). 

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By a lot of empirical evidence it appears that most people have adjusted to this new reality on a superficial level.  Consumerism is as rampant as ever but debt levels are down and downsizing in one way or another has been experimented with if not necessarily practiced widespread.  But they still haven’t a clue of inflation, mostly because it remains hidden.  Products both downsize portions and quality and the crashing of global demand does bring the odd product down in cost at regular enough intervals that the illusion of steady prices prevails.  Rents become somewhat more reasonable as folks use the cheaper gasoline to live further from the high cost areas or the supply of overbuilt units forces the reduction.  Meat somewhat keeps going on sale enough to give the effect of food price stability ( too bad we all stock the big chest freezer when a sale occurs, and those are reliant on a very overburdened outdated electrical grid using fracking gas ).

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And meanwhile unwatched and unappreciated is the disintegration of the PetroDollar standard that has allowed us to export inflation away from our shores.  Saudi Arabia, at the time pumping around 20% of the globes petroleum, agreed to only accept dollars in payment for oil.  Since the dollar bills in existence aren’t enough to buy tens of millions of barrels of oil a day, everyone used Treasury notes.  That’s our national debt.  Foreigners bought our debt to buy oil.  We paid interest on that, and on the debt we used ourselves to buy nearly free oil.  And our economy recovered from losing our domestic sources of petroleum ( remember, your oil supply needs to INCREASE to keep the economy moving economically.  Ours stalled and soon dropped ).  It was a sweet deal for us.  In 2003 we invaded Iraq when Suddam threatened to start taking Euro’s for oil.  He didn’t have a lot of oil, but we couldn’t allow the precedent to be made.  We stayed there as an anchor for the rest of “our” oil.  Libya wanted to trade oil for gold Dinar’s, and that wouldn’t do!  But that was our last successful military defense of the PetroDollar.

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Since then we haven’t been able to stop anyone else for trading other instruments than Treasuries for oil.  China and Russia completely ignore us in their trading, and Russia is in one of the top slots for production.  And China used to buy our debt.  No more.  The demise of the PetroDollar has been underway and is gathering steam.   We are completely oblivious.  We have no idea how oil for dollars has kept our inflation rates down so far.  And it has really simply kept our economy running when nothing else was.  THAT is completely off the radar.  We think fracking oil will save us.  Except fracking oil and tar sands and deep water Gulf Of Mexico drilling is most of our fuel supply and it is low as hell EROI ( energy return on energy invested-far simpler, net energy ).  But to veer back from Peak Oil to economics ( the two are connected, but we’ll focus on the one ), the lesson point here is that the day the PetroDollar dies is the day our oil imports take a huge hit AND inflation enters hyper-inflation territory.  Nothing to be done for that.

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WAGES AND COLA

Are you old enough to remember wage hikes?  Sure, during the Dot Com bubble the economy was going gang busters and there was actual job positions going unfilled, but that didn’t last long.  You might have gotten paid more to start a job but the bubble didn’t last long enough for you to see a wage increase.  The last time wage hikes were violently agitated for was the 1970’s, over forty years ago.  Now, we all just know we are screwed on that as it is far too easy to lose your job now, and to get another is far less easy.  2009 as my productivity was skyrocketing and oil went to $150 and prices shot up to the moon, I got a nickel increase on my $7 an hour wage ( which was minimum wage to begin with ).  I know the boss gave herself a much bigger cut, and everyone else got the same nickel even as they didn’t work as hard, so it was all a bit insulting.  In nearly nine years there that was my only wage hike outside of minimum wage hikes.  And since my hours kept getting cut it was a wage decrease in effect.  That is the new reality.

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So even if the inflation rate as officially reported was factual-which it ain’t, it is always a minimum of three times higher ( see the Shadow Stats web site )-your wages aren’t even keeping up with that.  And again, folks don’t care.  They live on a budget and everything is almost frozen.  They have X for rent and if that goes up they move ( if they can.  If they can’t they cut elsewhere ).  The car payment is their transportation cost.  If gas goes up they just take less trips on their days off to compensate.  If food X goes up they instead eat food Y.  They are so used to substitution and trimming and adjusting that they don’t look at inflation as systematic.  Hell, I can’t really notice it myself and philosophically I’m hyperaware of being screwed by the elite.  I don’t go to the doctor ( knock on wood ) and I don’t rent.  I don’t buy insurance or gasoline.  I buy food, pay some of the electrical bill and go to thrift stores for clothing.  My bicycle is my transportation.  I’m as deceived by the pause in inflation as most.  The only difference is I know it is temporary.

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If you get COLA, you are being paid at the official acknowledged inflation rate.  That is bad enough.  I’m sure Seniors are looking at insane medical and pharmaceutical increases, not to mention it seems most are either paying rents or unconscionable property taxes which amounts to the same thing.  But then, to make matters worse, you are getting paid a year late!  Your COLA increase goes into effect at the end of the year ( fiscal or calendar, same difference ) and if inflation is one percent a year this is no big deal but if it jumped from one year to the next, you in effect eat the difference.  Now, an uncharitable person might comment that those bastard old humps are getting free money and they shouldn’t complain if they get less free money ( the way withholding taxes were historically, a lot of Baby Boomers got back all they paid into the system within three or so years and then everything beyond that is extra.  Since Social Security was a Ponzi scheme from day one, there was NEVER any investment and growth on your contributions so you can’t claim you earned interest off your taxes.  Not to mention medical cost inflation and their very low Medicare taxes ), but I’m a swell guy so I’ll only point out the scam of COLA.

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Here is your point.  Even at a very benign rate, inflation thus far has been a tax.  Wage hikes and COLA do not counteract inflation, if they even make a difference at all.  So far you’ve been able to pay.  But you mustn’t confuse historical inflation with future rates.  And heck, hyper-inflation isn’t even for fuzzy foreigners like Zimbabweans or Germans, Hungarians or Argentines.  Hyper-inflation is as American as apple pie.

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AMERICAN HYPERINFLATION

“Ain’t Worth A Continental” is an obscure saying few are familiar with.  Our history books are chock full of propaganda and I’m not even talking about textbooks.  An otherwise very brilliant English author whom I wasted money on but still won’t name as he has illuminated me in other periods, started out a giant tome on the War Of Northern Aggression with the blatant bullspit of blaming the conflict on slavery.  Number one, slavery was legalized by the northerners in order to get the Constitution ratified, a document that federalizes power at the expense of the States ( which was the beginning of the coup de tat, the end came during the Civil War when ALL states rights were banished ), and since slavery was legal for almost a century after we became a nation I can’t believe it suddenly became an issue.  And two, millions of young men weren’t going to risk their lives for a sub-human race ( pardon the candor, but this is how Blacks were viewed at the time.  In the North, Blacks were legally bared from holding occupations, owning property, mating with Whites or even simply occupancy ).

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Washington “stop-loss’ed” his troops, forcing them to stay after their contracted enlistment, after NOT paying them and shot “deserters” as examples.  He needed a 300 man protection detail because of this, but you rarely hear about that.  Nor that he profited off land speculation after the promised land for troops was postponed and most of them sold off the to-be-delivered real estate at a huge loss.  You don’t hear about Lincoln arresting newspaper reporters for exercising freedom of speech, or how as a politician on campaign he endorsed slavery or how he imposed martial law on border states to force them into the Union, by arresting House members while debating. 

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You don’t hear about how unarmed peaceful protesters, trying to get their bonus’s paid early because of the political/banker caused Great Depression devastated them, being burned to death and gunned down by soon to be famous WWII generals such as Macarthur.  You don’t read about FDR, days after being inaugurated, makes gold illegal and devalues Greenbacks 40% overnight.  Or how he was preparing for war long before the Pearl Harbor false flag attack.  How he ignored the Jewish problem in Europe, or how he encouraged Stalin’s suppression and financially rewarded him with Lend-Lease.  You don’t read about us occupying Greenland and building bases uninvited. 

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So why would you hear about the Continental currency hyper-inflation?  Most accounts would have you believe that since the bills couldn’t be paid the government simply printed a butt ton of the currency.  Which was true as far as it goes.  But that was also instrumental in getting the Articles Of Confederation repealed and the Constitution installed.  The Articles were very friendly towards the States, and the federal had almost no power.  But, almost magically, after a financial scare, after hyperinflation, it was a lot easier for States to surrender a good amount of their sovereignty in exchange for a gold backed currency.  Of course, I digress with all that.  The main point is that hyperinflate we did.  There was also hyperinflation in the Confederacy during the Northern Aggression War, after the naval blockade did enough damage to leave the government few choices in the matter ( not to mention the behind the scenes pressures to keep Britain and France out of the conflict ).

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Financial scares were also used to install the Federal Reserve Bank, and we know how poorly that worked out inflation wise.  It just wasn’t hyper-inflation.  But we’ve seen it before, twice, and we’ll see it again.  You can pretty much bet all your savings on it.  Which you are.  I’d strongly advise getting out of ALL debt ( we cover that next ) and maxing out commodity storage and minimizing the bills you have.  Nothing else is going to protect you, not in the long run.  Burying gold won’t help as much as you think, just because cashing in too much of it for too long to pay for too many things does mark you for kidnapping, torture and death.  A small amount is fine, for use when law and order haven’t collapsed.  Few will engage you in a running gun battle for twenty pairs of shoes and a case of Tampons, but for the gold you‘d buy them with after the collapse, you betcha.   Not to mention gold will be illegal again.  Not that many have it, or the government will have the means to search for it, but just so your assets are frozen unless you visit a black market participant to liquidate.  That is just common sense paranoia to assume.  You can, given enough surplus, engage in a gamble and buy one or two ounces now and hope the price goes up enough for you to cash out prior to inflation indexing on debt for you to pay off your mortgage, but if it was me I’d rather invest that in junk land and an underground hovel for a better living location during chaos.

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DEBT ISN”T HELPFUL

Even if debt isn’t indexed to inflation, which I believe it will be even as your wages are not, you still have the basic problem with debt in that you can’t assume you’ll have a job to pay it back.  How can anyone but the most delusional even think, given all the evidence to the contrary, that massive unemployment won’t take place?  If you think your job is secure, you have not been paying any attention whatsoever.  Did you just enjoy a plate of fried chicken recently?  How did that cooked feces taste to you?  You know why you’re eating that?  Robots and immigrants are doing the butchering now, after we eliminated Union wages and conditions in that industry.  How secure was their jobs ( “you’ll always need butchers since people have to eat” being some very famous last words, I would imagine )?  Lower management is there to supervise you, but upper management has one job and that is to make the company more money.  And that isn’t by supervising your immediate supervisor.  It is figuring out how to screw you.  Oh, I’m sure that every single one of those fat silver spoon sumbitches would positively love you all to pieces if they got to know you, but that ain’t happening.  Like an enemy in war you must be dehumanized and vilified.

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This is Class War in the trenches.  The spawn of the elite went to private schools all their lives, then an East Coast collage, all not to educate the person but to prove that his family could afford to do so, a mark of the elite ( the idiots allowed to go through, such as faggot cocaine huffing Kenyan Muslims, are recognized as equalitarian propaganda tools and relegated to harmless roles such as Presidential Meat Puppets or HR hacks in corporate ), a price of admission to the Mandarin Class.  They don’t need all that education to be a ruthless prick-you can teach that from Life Experience.  If your workload just increased as your hours were cut to pre-medical insurance levels, you’ve just been Elite-jacked.  Welcome to the Real World.  Now, really, most of our jobs aren’t all that important.  We only have them because the idiots in charge don’t know how to run a company ( they only know how to screw people for money-what?  You think it is an accident you keep getting sold inferior products as a consumer? ). 

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But a stopped clock is right twice a day and eventually the idiots will stumble on a way to downsize your position.  And guess what, you cheap bastard who won’t pay a buck a month to read this, if you are one of those upper management pricks tasked with screwing others, your time will come.  The revolution always eats its young, doesn’t it?  Once no one else is there to fire, why do they need you?  The more you earn the bigger a target on your back.

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Once upon a time in the farthest reaches of the World Trade paradigm, the BRIC nations happily watched as their GNP’s increased.  Praise Baby Buddha, they cried, now we can wear Big Boy pants and GROW.  We can smoke Marlboro cigarettes and drive Fords, not because they are good products but because I need to get laid and nothing impresses the girls like a status symbol to announce my junk is indeed plated in gold.  Well, how is that working out for them?  Not so great now, as all the First World consumers for all that crap made in the Third World are losing their jobs and hence putting the kabosh on GROWTH.  They are losing their jobs because the energy supply is contracting, and by losing their jobs and not being able to buy stuff the people that make the stuff are losing their jobs and the companies that were selling stuff to both parties aren’t doing so great financially.  And one of those companies is the one you work for, or, they do business with one of those companies and really what it all boils down to is that your employer is not very happy right now and wants to send you a pink slip instead of a check.

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You think you have job security because you work for the government?  Those with jobs will circle the wagons and layoff the new hires, and never hire again, and give themselves early retirement to “save” the taxpayers money, as soon as money gets tight.  As soon as money hemorrhages, a point where “tight” was a nice memory, nobody is safe.  Not cops ( selective enforcement to compensate for less bodies ), firemen ( replaceable with volunteers ) or ambulance drivers ( focusing on pre-paid subscribers, those headed to the ER as indigents  might need to not die so quick waiting in line ).  It simply amazes me the delusional hoops preppers jump through convincing themselves how their job is safe.  All we need is to elect Republicans instead of Democrats and the fracking oil flows ( “the spice must flow!” ) and all is good dawg, cause I needs me some FLIR scope, bitches!  All of our jobs are Oil Age dependent, so deny the Oil flow is in danger and your job will last forever, and you’ll retire to the Arizona golf course safe as can be from Cartel drive-by shootings because you stashed an AR in your club bag.

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By denying your job is in danger, you can keep buying stupid crap on credit.  Bug-out vehicles, bug-out retreats, semi-auto’s ( I’m not completely against semi’s.  If you can use one properly rather than spray and pray with suppressive fire idiocy, they can be a pretty sweet toy.  Since all the good WWII surplus is gone, it is now a choice between a perhaps low quality hunting rifles or a semi-better semi for almost the same price.  I’ll stick with bolts out of personal preference, but semi’s have their advantages.  One handed operation, lessened recoil, better parts availability.  I just saw a Slavic made beefed up AK, along the lines of their SAW rather than the carbine, in handy calibers such as 762x54r and 308.  And only $900!  If I was still working for The Man I might even consider it, except nothing built has ever surpassed the Lee-Enfield ).  Not that you CAN’T buy anything on credit.  A piece of junk land seller financed is still a great idea as long as the note is easily paid off.  Just that if you have the idea your job is safe you’ll tend to waste money on crap you don’t really need.

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As far as debt being paid off with cheaper dollars, that was a strategy from the ‘70’s.  Even as manufacturing left for Japan and elsewhere, retail and computer industries were growing.  You could realistically move and get a job, even if it paid less.  Now, what friggin jobs?  Even fast food is in trouble, job-wise.  The terrible racket about increased minimum wage demands is really not a valid argument.  Fast food jobs were being automated long ago ( and places that pay fifty percent over industry averages such as the delicious In-N-Out Burgers in California and a few points east are selling better food at the same price and making good profits.  That is the difference between an intelligent operator and your typical run of the mill moron CEO ).  Have you tried to choke down the swill these places are passing off as food now, at greatly increased prices?  It doesn’t matter how much you pay the help, you are torpedoing your own business even if you got it down to one person per store per shift and had robots doing everything.

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No jobs out there mean you simply cannot have debt any more.  It doesn’t get less complicated than that.  No more sirloin steak dinners when you are belt tightening and no more credit when your job is in danger.  You need to figure out NOW what to do later when you do lose your job.  Unsecured credit must be bankrupted and everything else repo’ed and you need to walk away from ever needing or using credit again.  You don’t necessarily need to live like bare assed savages to pay off all the debt now, as long as your plan allows you walk away legally without any more payments.  Perhaps a mixture, paying off what can’t be discharged in bankruptcy, leaving unpaid that which can be returned such as your car.  Dude, when the economy goes for good, your credit rating doesn’t mean dingus!  Stop trying to protect it.  Slash and burn that bitch, because being debt free isn’t just a huge weight off your shoulders it also allows you to prep far more efficiently and intelligently.  And it allows you to hang in their more comfortably on the way over the cliff.

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If I had debt, would I have been able to retire and live on my writing income?  It isn’t about being lazy ( even though I have less free time now than when I worked for a paycheck ), but about knowing a job in the very near future will be a luxury and a lottery winner position.  What shiny babbles I could buy on credit can compete with the freedom to live on far less money, and while working half time on minimum wage being able to prep like crazy, AND triple my savings?  No debt and almost no bills stretches a dollar a mighty distance.

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PROTECT ASSETS

If you could get out of debt ( yes, I know it can be difficult and sometimes untenable ), you can then start protecting your assets.  An unsteady job and too much debt, you’ll pretty much lose everything and be screwed ( if this is the case, put a piece of junk land under a relatives name and stash your preps there, then plan on just disappearing off the map [ I hate those shows like the detective dramas that say “they went off the grid” meaning they are leaving no electronic traces.  Off the grid should mean what it has always meat, severing the power and water lines ] ).  No debt means you can live in society in relative comfort a little longer as those around you move to homeless camps and underneath overpasses.  It also means you have a surplus to invest.  Not to spend, but to invest.  A mortgage is just spending money, junk land is an investment.  A car is just wasting money, alternate transportation is investing.  Not because it will make you money, that system is ending ( Dark Ages don’t allow peons to have money ), but because it will eliminate bills.  Which you can’t afford without a job.

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But if you invest it is survival commodities alone, or an alternate business, you aren’t completely helping yourself.  Not against inflation.  Remember, this is the step PRIOR to the collapse.  More carbine ammo can’t help you at this point.  A shrinking client base certainly won’t.  You need as few bills as possible prior to hyperinflation, so that come the time you can far more easily eliminate those remaining if possible.  This is where raising most of your own food is really helpful, since your shelter is paid off and you can feed yourself you’ve eliminated 90% of the money you’ll need.  100% would be better of course but that is impossible under our current system.  You learn to downsize living within the system or you head out to the wilderness and live Stone Age.  Just note, prior to reading further, that no matter what asset you’ve combated inflation with, the primary strategies are no debt, few bills and stockpiled consumables. 

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Silver and gold are only for stopping inflation on your property tax bill.  Unless you burn down the records building and take out the grid to your county, they will know you owe them.  And those taxes will just keep increasing.  Your homelessness means nothing to them, but their paycheck does.  Food storage is necessary as you can’t grow all your own.  Have enough for inflation, AND post-collapse.  You just need supplementation, not complete coverage.  Alternate water and energy sources will allow you to survive the utilities being turned off if you still live in town.  Note that these aren’t even really extra assets being protected but the bare minimum.  Even living off grid, that is a minimum ( even though your bills are a lot less off grid ).  There are no real asset safe parks, because we are going from inflation to collapse, die-off to Dark Age.  It isn’t that important to preserve your wealth, but more to live comfortably during hyper-inflation.  And then live Pampered Peasant after the collapse. 

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But forget post-collapse.  Focus just on inflation.  How can you turn cash, now, into no-cash-needed for tomorrow?  Most of your bills are unnecessary for survival.  But bare bones survival is for post-collapse.  How can you minimize your life style changes for inflation?  That junk land can have a regular cabin on it ( save the underground for after the collapse ).  I’m not talking about Yuppie Scum miniaturized McMansion, but more like the Unibomber shack or the Ruby Ridge plywood home.  A minimum housing unit just above being homeless.  You can do that cheaply enough regardless of your budget.  And there went a mortgage or rent, the cable bill, the power bill, etc.  What, you can’t downsize from two vehicles being paid for to one being paid off?  You might not have gasoline available to buy for it, even at $50 a gallon, so don’t live too far from town.  Better than a car, get a couple of two cycle motor powered bicycles or even a solar powered one. 

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All this has been covered ad nauseum before.  What I’m trying to emphasize is the need to prep for inflation, which is a step on the way over the waterfall collapse.  If all you have are MRE’s, and you use those because after six months of unemployment you are out of money, PLUS the food in the store is up 3,000%, you’ve cannibalized your collapse preps to live through a functioning economy going through price inflation ( mere rioting rather than civil war ).  You can’t be a Yuppie Scum Survivalist, only prepping for a six month grid interruption followed by a complete recovery.  You need to prep for joblessness, then for hyper-inflation, then for the die-off and then for the Dark Age.  A minimum of four distinct preparedness stages.  Not just warm economy-cold-warm and that is it.  Not just a slight vacation for The American Way.  You know what needs to be done to sit out unemployment and insane prices.  That isn’t the hard part.  Forcing yourself to do it is.

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Can you tell me one thing that isn’t beneficial to you even if we never see hyperinflation, or a collapse?  Being out of debt is good, regardless of the economy.  Stockpiling consumable every day items protects you against even minor inflation ( such as stocking up the chest freezer when meat goes on sale, buying BOGO shoes, end of season mark-downs ).  A junk land shack is a great vacation or retirement location, saving money either way.  As we discussed earlier, if nothing bad ever happens, you are just stockpiling for retirement since medical costs will necessitate saving money elsewhere in the budget.  You cannot lose if you plan on combating inflation. 

END BOOKLET

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