roman meal

ROMAN MEAL

Don’t you just hate how you always have the perfect verbal retort after the fact?  Some douche gets in a great one liner and you sputter and stammer and go away in a huff.  Then as you are falling asleep that night, or showering the next morning, the perfect response suddenly pops into your head and you feel like a complete idiot for lack of timely delivery.  Well, that’s how I feel right about now.  All these years listening to Optimistic Ollie’s go on and on about the Stair Step Collapse and all I can do is get pissed off and try to say ANYTHING except “yeh, well this time is different” because if you say that you sound like the idiot who bought a half million dollar house in San Francisco, which you got cheap because it is on the San Andreas Fault, for no down negative interest rate balloon payment mortgage.  Which included as a bonus a three hour round trip commute to your job.  Which was just downsized.  I’ve always hated the Stair Step Collapse theory.  Not because it isn’t possible-I understand that my extra paranoia, cynicism and hate isn’t ALWAYS a positive trait.  Anything can happen.  I hate it because it is a big steaming pile of complacency.

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I’ve read a lot on the collapses of the Roman and Mayan civilizations.  Enough to know there are as many opinions and theories so as to confuse everyone.  It is like a democratic and republican debate on Gore Warming.  It seems like the best sources of information are when you AREN’T reading about the collapse per se.  Any book genre will flog the dead horse of its own expert, so for instance a military historian will ONLY focus on the sad financial straights of the Legions and the barbarian invasions.  Economists only focus on inflation.  Organic permaculture broccoli huggers focus on soil denuded famines and solar cycle advocates only drought.  Reading on other subjects which only mention the collapse in passing seem to deliver less biased hints.  Of course, no one should be all that confused.  Every civilization in the history of ever has crashed and burned from overpopulation and resource depletion.  That is NOT rocket science 101.  Common damn sense is what it should be but too many folks are too specialized and flailing about for fame and recognition and they allow themselves to attribute overly complex theories and solutions to any and all problems. 

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So aren’t you the lucky one, because here at the Bison Global Empire Publishing, LLC, fame and fortune are the last things that will ever happen.  In fact, there are better odds of a mermaid popping out of my toilet and wanting my babies than there is, ever, of any kind of recognition or worshipfulness.  That’s okay, don’t beat yourself up for not buying my books or telling your friends about me.  I’m okay.  I’m used to it.  But as a bonus to your selfishness and inattentiveness, what you get here is the very opposite of complexity.  I like simple.  My whole life’s work is simplifying complexity.  That quest is what makes my nipples hard and my sphincter tingle.  If fame and fortune came knocking I’d tell them to hump off.  I’m aware I need to be dead before my greatness is acknowledged.  I’m not saying that is fair, just that it is inevitable.  Only after the collapse will you slap yourself on the forehead and proclaim, wow, I could have had a bucket of grain and Jim was right and my AR is jammed and I feel like a douche.  I’m hoping with my last breath I can toast you all with a last shot of whiskey and tell you I told you so.

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Okay, let’s get back to the perfect retort I finally thought of.  Ready? “If Romans lived life as usual in a stair step collapse, and the depopulation of the capital was so complete sheep were grazing in the ruins of the Coliseum but happened so gradually no one noticed, how were they fed that whole time?”.  Got that?  Rome was dependent on imported grain.  The ocean dockworks created with concrete, an engineering marvel as they were cast on site with some of the worlds best cement, enabled the capital to be overpopulated.  Records exist relating the needed quantity of grain arriving daily.  So, once the hyperinflation and military contraction and the collapse of the overseas garrisons was underway, how exactly did the grain get to the capital?  Buuuuzzzz!  Wrong answer.  It didn’t!  Oh, that isn’t a problem, you proclaim, they just moved out to the countryside.  Buuuuzzzzz! Wrong answer!  The grain had to be imported because the farms both couldn’t create enough for the overpopulated cities, but also production was decreasing from fertility loss.  Overproduction of crops over time, the go-to answer always for increasing population. 

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Now, riddle me this, batass, why were there so many plague outbreaks at the time?  DINGDINGDING!  Correct answer!  Malnutrition.  Yes, less food because imports didn’t go 100% one day and zero the next.  It was a gradual decrease, even if it was in the form of a waterfall or Seneca collapse.  Less calories don’t usually kill off the population from famine but from other factors “fed” by malnutrition.  Before the ships stopped bringing grain, just not ever enough, they also brought plague preying on a weakened population.  Now, what was that about business as usual?  Easy adaptation to a slow collapse?  How do people eat when the centralized food importation system crashes with the economy and alongside the end of its protecting military?  They don’t.  That is the simple friggin answer.  How is a stair step collapse possible when the food stops being delivered, while at the same time people drop like flies from disease?  Remember, a new disease, loosed upon a sick populace, typically can initially wipe out 90% of the population.  It quickly drops in fatality as the stronger or further immune increase as a percentage of the population, but the first wave of casualties is brutal.

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The government has collapsed.  As has the military which relied on a central state for funding.  Like all failing empires, the military had been so reduced in size it was at the end largely ineffectual, even if it could have been independently supported by the surviving elite of the day.  No more food was being imported as the economy has collapsed.  No surrounding farmland is productive due to soil exhaustion and few plots were even worked due to taxes.  As the population died off from plague.  And you think this picture represents a stair step collapse?  Buuuuzzzz!  Wrong answer, bitches!  This is a waterfall collapse.  Decentralization is not a pretty process, as the centralized organization collapses and the population was fed by that organization.  Empires collapse from resource contraction.  The soil is already exploited once central power collapses.  Only a very small percentage of the population can survive on the denuded topsoil.  How do you do the math that only a very small percentage die off every decade after that?

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Let’s do the calculations.  The petrodollar is abandoned by all but Mexico and Canada.  The US instantly bankrupts as oil imports stop and we are suddenly faced with 30% less oil.  As the economy fails, truckers can’t get fuel and companies can’t get paid as the credit and redemption system fails.  Food imports into New York City ( or, fill in the blank for the metropolis of your choice ) are cut drastically.  The National Guard can’t escort or replace enough trucks as most units are still overseas and there aren’t enough troops.  Now, after a couple of months of this, less food, plus garbage piling up and sewer main leaks not being fixed, disease breaks out.  This is what you call a stair step collapse?  The first winter and more population is rotting away than moving about.  At the same time, PG&E can’t get enough coal shipped to it as the banking payment system which had used the Internet fails alongside it.  Lack of electrical power generation leads to the system being overloaded when the power does come on at random times ( remember, the system is past replacement date and suffers from decades of maintenance avoidance ) and before you know it, the Los Angeles basin isn’t getting water pumped over the mountains to it, nor are gasoline pumps working.  The mass exodus must be on foot.  Well, guess what surrounds L.A.?  Desert, and lots of it.  How do most of the fleeing population survive?  That is a stair step collapse?

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Empires are food importers.  First the conquered territories provide the extra food and population explodes.  Later, you conquer more land and use your new wealth to buy even more food.  Your military safeguards the food shipments.  Then, your nearby farms fail as they were overworked trying to feed even more people and the inflated currency buys less food imports and the military can’t get more land or protect enough shipments.  That is how empires rise and fall.  There might be exceptions, such as the Egyptian empire rising and falling over and over with the level of the Nile, but they are exceptions.  Most Agricultural Age empires follow the same pattern.  We are also, just that oil is substituting for food right now.  The soil is gone, and as soon as the oil is gone so are food imports and domestic food and food transportation.  That is why the US cannot last as a viable entity.  The only part of the country able to feed itself is so overpopulated it won’t feed itself and without petroleum inputs the Midwest can’t feed everyone else.  Without oil, they are NOT our breadbasket as the soil is dead and the well irrigation some places need along with it.  Greece fell along with grain imports, as did Rome as will we with the inevitable oil import cessation.  That is why it is so important to believe that Fracking will save us all.

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Stair step collapse, bite my ass.

END ( article related link http://amzn.to/2eIyrwb )

 

Please support Bison by buying through the Amazon ad graphics at the top of the page. ***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

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screw grandkids

SCREW GRANDKIDS

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note: if you are silly enough, after you saw contrary evidence with your own eyes in the news, to buy into the official 9/11 propaganda, how about a little history lesson on false flag attacks? click here
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Sunday is my Two Article Day, following my one day off a week from writing on Saturday.  I function a lot better all week from taking that one day off, a break from taxing my brain overly much.  But that doesn’t always translate over to great Sunday articles.  Sometimes having to squeeze that second article out of my ass translates into less than stellar material.  I figure, hey, you get a long article every day even if they aren’t all worthy of framing, but sometimes I still feel bad about it.  Like last weeks Yuppie Scum articles, which I didn’t feel turned out that good ( I re-read it for grammar corrections but didn’t try to absorb it for publishing worthiness.  I won’t reread it until after I’ve published it, for fear of not approving of it.  Yeh, sometimes you just have to bow to the time pressure of quantity publishing-I strive for quality but it simply isn’t realistic to expect perfection constantly ).  Like today-is this even something that needs discussed?  Probably not.  So sue me for a partial refund on your subscription cost.

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All those idiots blathering on about balancing the budget, Austrian School economics and the morality of screwing our grandkids by piling up the debt?  Morons.  That crap doesn’t matter.  I’m not trying to sound like a liberal retard, just a Mathusian Survivalist.  In the long run, every civilization completely and utterly collapses due to resource depletion and soil infertility.  That is a given.  The western colonial civilization has been around for five hundred years and is in the process of collapsing.  Globalization is in effect slurping that stale beer from the carpet quicker ( reference some Gore Warming porn star talking about using unconventional petroleum sources as akin to a drunk getting the last of his fix in the bar after hours ), so while there might be enough resources in South America or Africa to keep the party going longer you still run into the transportation issue.  The West, firmly attaching itself to the five century old “central bank to fund colonialism debt paradigm”, will shortly crash and implode from economic issues-mainly the derivatives market issue.  The East, mostly China but some Russian, has dedicated the new silk road infrastructure construction to more energy efficiently hauling to actually kick the can a bit more down the road but overpopulation in that very part of the world will impede their economic colonialism project. 

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Everything we have been doing, from quantitative easing to middle east occupation to the aforementioned derivatives gaming is all a moot point.  The collapse is already baked into the cake.  End, stop.  When you cry and whine about these strategies, you are either hoping the good times will roll again or you think the collapse can be averted or you think its effects can be marginalized.  No, the Roman citizens were NOT sitting around looking at invading barbarians otherwise unaware of collapse.  They were busy dying from famine and pestilence in place, or busy dying on the road as refugees.  Stair step collapses are really cool to dream of, but you can’t look at animal and plant overpopulation collapse and die-off and discount humans following the same path by declaring us smarter.  Smarter?  Are you friggin serious?  We denude our environment and die, as a survival strategy for our species.  We are smarter?  And even if we were, smart doesn’t pull resources out of your ass.  As a species, we might be better able to recover from collapse, using strategies from cannibalism to fire to cook otherwise inedible foods, but that is rebounding, that is NOT preventing collapse.

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Every civilization in history rose to power by out consuming and out breeding its rivals.  Then, after the resources were over consumed by the very overpopulating that won them victory they crashed and burned ( even today, demographics are discussed as if that was the only consideration for survival.  Oh, look, the Germans are below replacement level, they will all die.  Well, probably in the past that was true.  The group that breed the most and grabbed the most resources survived.  Now, tell me how that is applicable during a resource contraction?  The victor isn‘t the one that reacted by going on the offensive after resources began to diminish, as the Muslims to Europe are doing now.  The victor to resource contraction must act prior to that point.  The Germans survive well by cultural adaptation, due to geography.  Their below replacement birthrate might be a survival mechanism, other factors changing such as their Dear Leader at present being hung from a lamp post and the open borders policy reversed ).  I’ve said it before and I’ll keep repeating it, you don’t end up with ZERO records of a time period when you are adapting successfully to a collapse, as in a stair step descent.  You end up with a lack of records from a total catastrophic collapse.  I’ve also said, if I’m wrong you slow collapse as usual.  But if THEY are wrong that total collapse NEVER happens, you die if you listen to them.

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Only a damn fool has no back-up plan.  The back-up plan for slow collapse is you don’t burn your bridges.  You plan for slow AND total collapse.  What is the back-up plan for the Slow Collapsers?  If they aren’t planning for total collapse they have no back-up plan ( your back-up plan can’t be NO collapse, since we’ve been in one for fifty years ).  I trust we are all clear on this?  So, we can go back to assuming total collapse?  Sweet Baby Jesus on roller skates.  As a species, we condemn X generation to suffer, after A, B, and C generation has wallowed in decadence and luxury.  We are a boom and bust species.  Your grandkids are already screwed, even if we balanced the budget and returned to the gold standard and built the southwest Berlin Wall.  Not that we WILL do any of that because the Spice Must Flow ( by which we speak not of the usually referred petroleum, but the wealth to the elite ) and until we start throwing ropes over the lamp posts, nothing will change.  And nobody is grabbing their ropes because the fast food outlets are still serving corn derivative meals, the football cable networks are still broadcasting their circuses and not one swinging dingus out there is going to downgrade their living arrangements to save their grandchildren, let alone yours.  When every climate change advocate gives up all their cars in favor of bicycles, I’ll lend them an ear.  Until then, you are an evil puke who hates my as yet hatched grandkids.  Put up or shut up, bitches.

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Why do you care so much about economics when ecology is so much more important?  Granted, in the past and at present, economics are all that matter as far as your personal survival as well as advancement.  But in the future, economics won’t mean spit.  A large deficit isn’t what is going to cause us to starve and riot, but the end of the petrodollar could.  One is an abstraction, the other a concrete means of feeding ourselves, even if both are economics.  One is pure economics, the other a calorie proxy.  As a matter of fact, screwing your grandkids now with our policies is all that is keeping the present generation from starving already.  Screwing your future generations to live today, eating your seed corn?  The first step to the end of the collapse.  You act like fiscally irresponsible actions are boneheaded, when they are actions of those with no other choice.  Remember, that little thing about the collapse being baked into the cake?  These policies should actually be the signal to you that collapse IS assured.  A confirmation. 

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How many of us want to be assured of a collapse, or not, to confirm the actions of preparedness?  Yet every time we get a confirmation we disguise it with economics, transforming it into merely a worrying statistic that is troublesome but hardly actionable?  Did anyone care that the deep well blow out in the Gulf Of Mexico was the beginning of the end for a large source of our fake fuel?  No, they focused on tourism and the price of seafood.  How about Fukishima?  More focus on government lies than the beginning of the death of alternate fuel sources ( granted, the Peak Uranium issue settled that long ago, but this gets no press ) or the other issues of nuclear power.  We look through the lens of economics and lose sight of more important issues, daily.  Damn fool monkey men, after wearying from flinging feces they glom on to whatever is shiny and pretty in the corner of their cages.  Easily fooled and distracted.

END ( today's related link  http://amzn.to/2tjhnmT )

 

Please support Bison by buying through the Amazon ad graphics at the top of the page. ***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

 

revolvers

REVOLVERS

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note: YKW, MM: got your snail mail donation of exceptional generosity-thanks a million!
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note: another "duh!" idea.  When building a dome with rebar and chicken wire, soak cloth in a cement slurry and lay on top of the structure.  When dry you can then add on more serious thickness of wire and cement.  YouTube vid on tire wall hut.
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I generally don’t care to relive ideas from my old blog five years ago.  Been there, done that and yawn.  I do it of course because I always need something to write about, but I don’t like it.  I just had one subject, survivalists “fighting the last war”, that I pulled out of the JMD blog from 2012, but not only did I already redo that in my “grandpappy” series and similar,  then I run across Commander Zero doing a piece on it the other day.  Granted, CZ has terrible hair, proof in the fact he has no photos out, too embarrassed to be compared to my perfect translucent dome, but I know if I followed through you all would inevitably taunt me for copying ( not that I have any compunction ripping off others ideas, I just have the grace and style to wait a suitable period until I do so ) even if I took a month of twelve hour days to research everything I’d ever written and noted each time I originated the thought, you would STILL have a little devil dude perched on your shoulder whispering in your ear how uninspiring and unoriginal I was, the ingrate minions that you are.  Luckily, today I was able to revert to responding to a readers comment.

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Let’s talk about revolvers.  I mentioned they were simple, and a minion took me to task.  If a revolver gets out of tune it takes a gunsmith to fix it, so auto’s were much simpler ( especially now after a hundred years of perfecting the design, I would imagine.  I actually just read an old Shotgun News-old for me, as it was in a stack waiting- article on a bunch of writers arguing over the best auto’s of WWII, and the 45 was both worshiped and poo-pahed for already being out of date.  I didn’t much care other than to get the gist on the improving simplicity ).  And yes, I knew about primitive gun makers creating auto’s where they really couldn’t revolvers.  I read that on the Vietnam War back in my teens, so this issue has been long known.  And I’m not arguing this here.  I will of course mention, because it bears repeating and I love poking sleeping bears-I used to try to shy away from that as I didn’t need the stress but now I like the thrill and challenge-that if you are a AR lover, you just crapped all over the simplicity argument anyway.  You want simple you stick with the AK, or better yet stick with bolts. 

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But I don’t care about gunsmithing simplicity.  I care about user simplicity.  How long do you really think guns are going to last in the apocalypse?  Probably at most ten thousand rounds, which while problematic in some cheap civilian firearms, accuracy long ago compromised, is rarely going to be problematic mechanically.  And that is rifles.  Pistols will most likely never be fired that often.  Not revolvers anyway.  If you own an auto you might be shooting the crap out of them now, and have thousands of rounds for them post collapse, but auto owners seem to think that they need to be ready to single handedly combat Jihads, protect the innocent by carrying concealed carry, and engage enemy combatants at close range ( wonder why the M4 guys always carry an auto back-up?  All that firing on their carbine at close ranges in the desert and you know the bastard is going to seize up.  But even if it doesn’t, hello, close range.  Didn’t we talk about survivalists NOT being soldiers? ) which by doing so they seemingly are able to emulate both of their boyhood heroes, cops and grunts.  Another childhood fantasy you need to let go of already.

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Auto owners are pray and spray pukes.  They believe their job will last past the economic collapse and they can practice and fire indiscriminately forever.  Prepper Pony Princesses unable to grasp simple equations of logistics and EROI.  Not to mention the laws of physics,  as applies to hauling gear.  Why in the name of sweet Jesus do you think you need a pistol back-up on your carry load?  Anything above twenty pounds above and beyond your boots and clothing almost automatically disqualifies you from Light Infantry.  And let me tell you straight up, if you ain’t light infantry you ain’t surviving all that long.  You need a back-up in combat, that is what a nice long knife is for.  I highly recommend the Kukri, at a very reasonable price of $25, carbon steel blade made in India-NOT China-but even better would be the bayonet.  I understand they are problematic in several ways but they beat the pistol all to hell in eliminating issues such as cost, portability and practicality.  It is hard to find a decent battle rifle with bayonet anymore.  But you can still find a near new Mauser for the same price, or so, as a factory hunting bolt, so you get that bonus bayonet ( it ain’t the much better Enfield, but all the smart and smartly coiffured survivalists already bought those up ).

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Do you ever WANT to use a bayonet in combat?  Probably not.  But who wants to get into a knife fight at ANY time, anyway?  If you are reduced to fighting after the ammo runs out, it is better to have a long ass spear than a knife.  You might be sputtering and spewing about how you’ll just carry a fifteen round 9mm auto and spare mags and kill any “spear chuckers”, but I’ve seen your load, guys.  Festooned with AR mags and those for the pistol, FLIR scopes and helmets and armor plate body armor, you are NOT light infantry.  You are mechanized infantry.  And you might do great in that role but as soon as your “mechanized” part is compromised you are suddenly Fighting The Last War ( to coyly refer back to where we started ) and true light infantry will kick your ass.  Hell, it already has.  When a nation that finances its wars with inflation runs out of quality troops ( because it takes too much to train them ), and quality mechanized tools and quality fuel to run them, irregular forces defeat you before you even start.  In a one on one pistol to bayonet fight, the pistol is obviously going to win.  In the long run, those pistol equipped troops will not prevail.  Bayonets will return to good effect.  They didn’t do jack against full mechanization, but they will be more effective once the fuel runs out.

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A pistol was only ever supposed to be about fighting your way back to your rifle, prepper wise.   If you are looking at it in a LEO or nation state soldier viewpoint, you are not looking at its role properly.  An auto has evolved into a spray and pray weapon, with all the attending sociological issues that entails.  We talked about that recently, with the over educated over paid understaffed LEO’s which are out today.  Why do you think the 45 was the way it first appeared ( I speak of course of the 1911A1, not its predecessors )?  It was a better “revolver“.  It was a replacement for an underpowered round and it was only ever intended for those personnel not carrying a real gun, ie a rifle.  Only seven or eight rounds?  That was an improvement over the revolver.  Spray and pray would come later, but this was a time of scarce ammunition.  It might have been on occasion delivered by a Model T Ford but the times were still predominantly mule and train for logistics.  The motor vehicle and petroleum assisted mining and smelting had yet to become widespread.  Ammunition was husbanded, not wasted wantonly.

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So, we come back around, as always, to energy.  You don’t want to hear about not because you’ve learned all you can but because you don’t want to do the hard work of thinking through the end of oil.  Starting with your ammunition wasting guns.  Your handgun doesn’t need to be an ammo waster, if you just use it as a homestead/town visit back-up to your rifle.  And if it doesn’t see a lot of use it will most likely never break, and if it most likely doesn’t have the issue of breaking because it lacks heavy use, you can use a revolver instead of an auto.  The revolver was never meant to be used in a prolonged firefight, not even by law enforcement.  The Miami FBI shoot-out and massacre incident which changed so much in the way of perceptions and equipage ( until then the revolver was standard and accepted by LEO’s, most of who never even discharged their sidearm in their career outside the shooting range ) was more of the apex of the consequences of the newly ramped up and militarized War On Drugs than it was about suddenly discovering a better way of doing things.  The cops in the Sixties, during a time of widespread civil unrest, did just fine with batons, using the revolver as the back-up.  They didn’t need semi-auto in the hundreds of rounds.  Only by inventing our version of the drug cartels did we begin to see street firefighting and paramilitary tactics.

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A revolver does one thing and one thing very well.  It sits there and does nothing.  When it is needed, it is ready to go with zero preparation.  It can outlast all but the best magazines, which might last years before losing spring strength but which are still a potential point of failure, sitting in a bedside drawer ready to use for years on end.  Or sitting in a holster for months between oiling.  For this attribute if nothing else ( there are others, such as ease of firing substandard in power rounds using salvaged components ), they are perfect for novices and survivalists.  Again, this is not the ONLY reason revolvers are superior to auto’s for the survivalist, just the answer to a minions comments.  Just keep in mind that in regards to complexity, a revolver isn’t your only weak link.  Just look at your LED bulb.  It might as well be magic, for all we can do to fix it.  I’ll leave it at that for now.

END ( today's related link http://amzn.to/2urEeMX )

 

Please support Bison by buying through the Amazon ad graphics at the top of the page. ***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

 

paycheck prepper 2 of 2

PAYCHECK PREPPER 2

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note: via YouTube, cowboy coffee.  I thought the selling point was lack of equipment.  Nope.  Lack of acid.  Rolling boil, add grounds, let roll for a few minutes, throw in a cup of cold water and you are done with 99% of the grounds at the bottom, and did I mention NO acid!  No need to add eggshells or whatever.  Damn, it was nice to drink a cup of black coffee ( I've had to drink with sugar and milk due to my heartburn for the last almost two years ).
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Okay, for whatever reason you are broke.  You have no money, and I’m not talking like, oh, I have no money because I have a mortgage and a car payment and five cell phones and pay a wetback to scoop the poop ( remember those businesses?  Talk about hope springing eternal, some newly laid off schmuck thinking both you can start a company with no overhead or expense AND enough people weren’t laid off and had all the extra money in the world to pay you to pick up their dogs crap because their fat wheezing asthmatic electronic game playing kids couldn’t get off their widening ass ) of your dear pooch, but rather I’m talking about you having no pay and no assets and no joy in your life except the daily library visit when you get to read my blog and a free porn site that keeps jamming up the computers that are supposed to be enjoyed by ALL patrons and not just yourself.  You’ve got yourself a fine apocalypse road warrior weapon, a spear or bow or pipe shotgun, and a Sawyer water filter after cashing in one months food stamps.  You’ll still need a few extra supplies but, since you are NOT so foolish as to give priority to weapons over food but realize you need both, for now worry about calories.

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Obviously you can’t just piss away the other fifty bucks as you need to eat ( we go with a low minimum amount of about a hundred bucks per month per person Food Stamps-for some retarded reason now called SNAP-and use this as our benchmark.  You had taken $50 and bought food for a friend who reimbursed you $38.  Your weapon was $10-$20 and your Sawyer $20.  I’m not sure who has that retail, but online that is what they go for.  Retail would be nice if you can’t pay extra shipping.  You can buy online with no bank account, just buy a gift card ) this month so you will be limited your first time to a $8 bag of flour.  Twenty-five pounds of white flour is almost enough calories for a month.  It is a terrible food.  White flour, white rice, degerminated cornmeal, dry instant potatoes, all of these are calories without nutrients.  But lack of calories will kill you before lack of nutrition.  First, you get calories.  Remember, nothing here is optimal.  It is below bare bones.  It is Third World Prepper. 

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With your twenty or twenty-five pounds of flour or rice, your choice, you have a months worth of calories which is, very sadly, more than most people keep on hand.  Of course you don’t want to stop there, but my point is that for $30 anyone can be a prepper.  You don’t need a $9.99 an issue quarterly slick magazine reviewing products to gay that all up for you.  You can do it for $11 if you boil all of your water instead of filter it ( $8 food, $2 weapon and $1 pot from the thrift store ).  Even the homeless dudes can beg for $11.  You can trash pick two liter soda bottles to store your rice in.  I don’t know how good that will keep out wildlife, but how about lashing each bottle to a branch high up in a tree?  No one looks up there, and fewer varmints.  Good friggin gravy, this stuff is even easier than I would have thought.  Okay, you now need to wait a month.  Even if you didn’t buy a Sawyer, you can’t live too well on less than half of your Food Stamps anyway.  Even without the need to get any more cash, the storage calories cut into your bare minimum enough as it is.

*

Until the next month, here is what you do to live on almost no Food Stamps.  Twenty pounds of potatoes is maybe $5.  A bag of flour is $8.  A bag of rice is $10 and several tubs of margarine another $10.  $33 for plenty of calories for a month.  You get three different meals a day, with some variety.  The potatoes provide all your nutrients except what the occasional green leafy veggie gives you.  I’d suggest butter rather than margarine, but that varies by climate.  If you can spend extra, try to go half and half whole wheat flour to white.  It sticks to your ribs longer ( although store bought WW flour is most likely already rancid.  The fact your body can’t tell, tells you how poor all the rest of the food we eat is ).  You might get another kind of oil to cook in, as margarine dropped  exponentially in quality as our corn crop was burned in our SUV’s and no grain was safe from the price surge and availability issues.  Margarine now has too much water and not enough oil, but at least it tastes almost okay.  Crisco, not so much of course.  Your call.  But the $33 amount is pretty close regardless.  When I lived on nothing but potatoes and margarine for a month, back in the Eighties, I think I spent about two hours minimum wage on that, maybe $6.  It gave me plenty of calories and I didn’t crave meat ( which was weird ).  Given the variety of the above, which I didn’t have, and the global drought/ethanol fiasco food price increases from almost a decade ago, I’d say double that ( minimum wage now $8, two hours would have been $16, so double my historical cost.  Everything else except computer chips has doubled at a minimum, so this ain’t bad ) is still a bargain.

*

When the next month comes up, see if you can buy some wheat kernels.  Wal-Mart stores are all different, so yours might not carry the $16 bucket of twenty five pounds of wheat.  Due to the Mormon population here we have a short section of prepper food, #10 cans and some buckets.  I don’t even know if you can buy these with food stamps.  Are they a food, or a seed?  If they don’t have a “disaster preparedness” section, some stores will have a sack of kernels in the flour section, but they are NOT cheap.  Best if you buy from a feed store, for $12 you get fifty pounds.  But that would take cash ( I’m going from the viewpoint of the food stamp recipient here to illustrate the ease of even the homeless prepping.  I’m sure you’re not in this situation.  I hope you never are ).  The purpose of the kernels is for sprouting.  You don’t even need a grain grinder.  Just sprouting will make the kernels edible.  These might not keep you alive by themselves-you may need extra vitamin pills.  But they will see to it that white flour or rice won’t kill you, anyway.  Now buy another bag of your White Food of choice.  Your two months of food storage is now a whopping $30. 

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I wouldn’t want to live on White Food for too long, but it is after all calories you can easily buy and cook.  Just don’t skip the necessity of whole kernel wheat-those are the nutrients that will keep you alive.  A quarter pound a day will be a LOT of sprouts ( if sprouts still disagree with you, gluten-wise, you can grow wheat grass.  I’m sure it tastes like green dirt ) and you won’t need much kernels to keep you a year.  Seventy five pounds with Wally kernels is $45, $25 if from the feed store.  Twelve months of White Food is .30 a day, about $120.  I don’t know if you want that much, or prefer to veer off to wheat kernel only after three months worth of White, or whatever ratio you prefer, but figure a minimum six month food storage will run you $12 for a sack of feed store wheat kernels and $50 for White Food, and compute from there.  $85-$100 for a six month supply of food, a water filter and a range weapon ( the shells or the arrows would be a smidge extra ).

*

If you were financing from Food Stamps your time frame would be about three months.  The first month, $50 to get cash and $10 for storage food, leaving you $40 to survive on, but with a weapon and a months worth of food.  The second month you could spend $40 on storage food leaving you $60 to eat on now, with an additional four months preps now in store.  The last month, get more cash and $10 more in storage food.  You are left with $40 in groceries and have $38 more to spend, as well as having your six months supply of prep foods now ( you skipped a month cashing in Stamps so as not to cut it too close for too long of a period of time ).  And it is actually just two months as you got three payments in sixty days going from end of month to end of month.  This is exciting stuff!  Of course, you still have almost $40 to spend.  What should you get with that?

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At the beginning I mentioned a knife and sharpener.  You can stick with the butcher knife or you can buy one better suited for combat or cutting thicker items than dinner.  The Swedish Mora knife is hard to beat, bang for your buck.  $15 for a carbon steel blade.  On sale, down to as low as $12, then you can throw in that Rada sharpener for an even $20.  You want the Rada.  I’ve bought many a different sharpener over the years and that is the best one if you don’t have the stone sharpening skill.  Of course, you need the Rada to sharpen.  It doesn’t re-cut the correct angle if it is off on the knife.  For that, if poor, you need a stone.  If you can’t use that bastard, find someone who can and fill get your edge back.  Then use the Rada to keep it sharp.  If you have more money, use the Lansky system to angle and the Rada to sharpen.  With the Lansky, and with older better steel that was unfortunately butchered on a grinder by underpaid labor, such as my Enfield bayonets were, you’ll probably want to add the rough diamond attachment for the initial cut ( the rough stone won’t last as long using this way ).

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Now get yourself a few to a dozen Mylar emergency blankets.  These are disposable items, so they must be modified.  I’d go to the thrift store and ask the help if you can buy soiled blankets they would normally throw away.  Then they are from free to dirt cheap.  Wash them yourself, and place an emergency Mylar blanket in between two cotton/poly blankets.  Secure, perhaps with those clips you use to bind a stack of papers ( clothespins wouldn’t be strong enough ), or worse but better than nothing, those $1 heavy spring clips you get at Home Despot to clamp wood together for gluing or similar project.  The point is to sandwich the Mylar in between two regular blankets to both protect it and to make the regular blankets much more efficient in trapping heat inside.  Boom, done, cold weather gear ( don’t use this out on the top of the Rocky Mountains and get pissed at me if you freeze to death.  I’m not sure how cold you can survive in with this.  Do your own due diligence ).  If you can add a squishy foam pad to sleep on, so much better.  You should be able to trash pick for this.

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Don’t forget to buy a magnifying glass or a plastic lens that does the same thing but fits in your wallet.  You’ll need fire.  All in all, I can’t think of an easier or cheaper way to get prepped.  Nobody north of the Rio Grande is so poor they can’t do this.  You don’t even need your own money, Uncle Sugar will pay for most of it ( I shouldn’t have to mention this, but “selling” your Food Stamps is a good way to get in trouble.  Most scumbags buy twelve packs of soda and sell it to a Habeeb store for half price.  That is how they have Food Stamps but no food past one week after getting funds in them, but do get tobacco, alcohol or illicit drugs.  What I mentioned is no where near as douche-ish, and is what I’ve heard of being done, but I’m just a reporter here, not a preacher or moralizer or advocator ).  You can improvise most of whatever else you need.  Happy prepping!

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paycheck prepper 1 of 2

PAYCHECK PREPPER

I trust you understand by now that I do not care for Plodding Preppers.  You know who I’m talking about.  The mortgage holders of a homestead.  The “buying a case of freeze dried a month on sale” folks.  The guys saving up for a bigger and badder gun.  Since you can’t, you know, time the collapse, although evidently they are much more intelligent than anyone ever in the history of mankind, since evidently they can in actually fact tell you exactly when they won’t have a job and the ghetto explodes.  They are so good they should go work for the CIA and forecast the next Soviet Union Collapse ( perhaps the CIA did know, as they orchestrated it through color revolutions in Poland or something similar.  I don’t know.  But I use the example following the perceived common knowledge, which was that the organization was as surprised as we were ).  I have no problem with someone guessing, as that is natural and human nature.  But when you keep staying in danger with your guessing, that is what I mock and deride.

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You can guess when TSHTF, but in the meantime you need to have an insurance policy in case you are wrong.  Having a stash of wheat and a bolt gun, before you ever even think about taking the next five years to buy freeze dried or the next six months to save up for the sniper AR.  The wheat isn’t going to waste because you’ll always eat bread ( you just might not have the eventual plan of living on it, as I do ) and if you have the bolt in the same caliber it can be used by another member of the group.  Or a burial gun or a barter gun or whatever.  Guns don’t go bad.  The quality has gone down, as with everything at the end of the Industrial Age, but it is still a firestick.  Well, hell, the quality of the wheat is down also.  Less nutrients from degraded soil, pesticides and whatnot.  But it will still get you through the apocalypse just fine.  The days of affordable quality are gone.  Anyway, no one is saying you are a dumb ass because you are guessing at civilizations pull date.  But you are a moron if you don’t have a plan in place to substitute for all the future preps you may never be able to buy. 

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But let’s say that you are not prepared.  Not in the slightest.  I’ve almost always had a minimum of a years worth of wheat on me, since the ‘80’s after getting out of the military ( they frown on buckets of wheat in the barracks-the other times were short occasions when I was with HOL-handmaiden of Lucifer, wife #2 ).  But sometimes I’ve had that and about nothing else.  Not a nice feeling, feeling vulnerable.  And looking back, it wasn’t even the feeling of being under prepared but of being in a location that was overcrowded.  I was feeling like a rat in a cage, and not even realizing it was because of the other rats.  So, if you have plenty of food and ammo, and still are feeling afraid and nervous, that is probably your lizard brain screaming at you at the top of its lungs-DANGER, Will Robinson, DANGER you stupid dumb bunny moronic ass wipe!  I’m forcing you to lose sleep and get acid reflux and keeping your junk limp, how much more clear can I get that you are in DANGER.  I’m a friggin primitive organism without the gift of speech, friggin work with me here ( Lost In Space TV show AND Austin Powers reference, a two-fer! ).

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So, if the friendly helpful lizard brain is hollering at you, and you are in no eminent danger of the other rats getting hungry and gnawing on your ass while you are still alive, that means you have no supplies.  The best tool you could ever use for survival is simply moving ( no spot is safe.  You’ll eventually be dead in a town of 500.  But in a big city you’ll be dead instantly.  You are not buying safety as much as time to get safe ), but the second best tool is basic bare bones prepping supplies.  What if you don’t have any and you are dog dingus broke, too poor to pay attention, broker than a politicians word?  We have all been there, and not just during college student days.  Wives leave you taking the kids, husbands leave you and hide from paying child support.  Parents get old on you and have made zero financial arrangements, kids suddenly move back home in their Thirties.  Few people have good, honest, smart, loyal families anymore.  Usually it is just one bastard taking advantage of a person trying not to be a bastard.  So, that doesn’t stop you from being broke, and we’ll cover that sometime today, but let me get side tracked for a moment here and talk about family.

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I understand you can’t abandon them.  But you need some tough love.  A parent that is broke but wants your help?  Fine.  I’m moving and you can move with me if you want.  But, snivel, whine, I grew up in this house, I gave birth to you kids in this house, I don’t want to leave.  Ma, the place isn’t safe anymore.  You need to sell this turd and come with me.  End of discussion.  If they don’t want to, off you go.  They had the option.  It doesn’t matter if they don’t agree with you about the collapse, they won’t.  To them, FDR was their hero and big daddy gov will always protect them.  You aren’t asking them to agree, just that they can’t have it all their own way.  You are leaving.  Come along or be left on your own.  Your spouse is a bit tougher, but let me make this really clear.  A functional couple will want to be together, regardless of location or situation.  A taker, a user, one in the relationship for what is in it for them?  They are not worth keeping.  Honey, I know you don’t fear the zombies like I do, and I’m not asking you to agree with me or help me, but I’m moving and I want you with me.  We can make it work, but I feel I HAVE to move, NOW.  I’ve waiting all this time because that is what you wanted, but no more.  Take it or leave it.

*

If a kid moves in with you, it isn’t as much of a big deal.  If you won’t get caught, tell him to claim homelessness and get on Food Stamps, and then he is barely a burden, living out in the garage.  If you are staying at your job because you need their medical, well, you aren’t long for this world.  Buy a case or two of ammo, get an AR or SKS on the credit card, a few cases of MRE’s and a couple of bottles of whiskey.  You’ll be dead shortly, so make it count.  Take a bunch of the pukes with you, payback for a life dictated by the existence of criminals.  The cops aren’t to blame, but the politicians selling out the country and creating unemployment and crime, profiting off illegal drugs ( Kennedy‘s Da made the family fortune in illegal booze ).  Even the criminals aren’t really at fault, being pawns in a Machiavellian opera they can’t comprehend, but it will still feel good to waste their asses.  Go out in a blaze of glory.  If you are staying for any other reason, most likely it is all your fault and you are just a pussy and deserve to die.  Why even be a survivalist?  If you can’t stand up to a wife or an aged parent or the fact you’ll earn less, you won’t stand up to road warriors or invading hoards or being hungry.  See the above on medical invalids.

*

Okay, back to dirt poor folk who have nothing.  You’ll have no choice but to be a Plodding Prepper, a Paycheck Prepper, buying a bit each payday.   The trick is, you don’t do it for years or even too many months.  You get it done post haste.  Lickity split.  You need immediate answers no matter how problematic.  You need to be prepared yesterday.  If you aren’t working, just on food stamps, you take half your amount and go grocery shopping for a friend, for three quarters of the price.  His $50 in groceries nets you $38 in cash, as a for instance.  When I’m talking dirt poor preps, I’m talking far worse than wheat kernels and a bolt action.  This is not a level you want to be at, but it is doable by everyone.  If you are homeless, reading this on the public library computer, you can do this.  How do you only live on $50+ a month food stamps?  You don’t eat meat that month, substituting butter and/or beans, whichever works for you.  Take your $38 and go get a weapon.  Easy, peasy.  Go to Home Despot and get some metal pipe and you have a shotgun. 

*

Do NOT try for a 12 gauge!  The round is too big.  Do not be swayed by images of knock down power or universal availability or the like.  You can’t properly aim or shoot the bastard.  Go with 20 gauge.  It is more available than 410, far more powerful and far cheaper ( although not as, compared to 12.  Too bad, sacrifice those features ).  With the recoil of the 12, you are both in danger of the weak metal pipe being compromised while being used too many times and also of bruising while firing it.  Kurt Saxon in his Martian fiction had our hero using a piece of plywood or similar strapped to his chest and braced the slam-bang ( pipe shotgun ) against that.  It might work, or it might not.  You can of course explore.  It isn’t illegal to make your own gun, at least not yet ( it is illegal to have bomb making components, if they decide it is so,  so only have ONE threaded end and ONE cap.  No guarantees of course  ).  You can try it out and see.  Me, I’d just stick with the 20 gauge for its better controllability.  A pipe shotgun is just two pieces of pipe, one into another, with a cap on the end containing a piece of dowel with a smoothed nail sticking out of the end.  You place the shell in the smaller pipe, sticking that pipe down into the larger, and the shell hit’s the nail primer.  Grip tight!

*

Or, if you don’t like that, perhaps you can get a fiberglass bow from a garage sale cheap enough.  I like the YouTube videos showing how to make a PVC pipe bow not by melting and flattening the pipe but by placing the driveway fiberglass sticks used for marking the road by the snowplow or seeing the reflector at night to locate the drive ( not placing the name right now ) down the middle of the pipe to strengthen it and increase the poundage.  Those can be made for, what?  $10 or so.  Nobody needs to be without a weapon ( of course, making one and carrying one or using one are different legally, so this is more a future apocalypse weapon than a crime fighting weapon ).  And of course you can always just make your bow out of natural materials, for free.  Hey, if you are homeless, unemployed, under employed or such, you got nothing but time for manufacture and practice.  I’m not saying you want to show up to a gunfight with a bow and arrow, but at least you are armed.  With the remainder, get a Sawyer water filter.  Perfect?  Of course not.  It is not a countertop gravity fed unit.  But it is super cheap at $20 and in theory filters tens of thousands of gallons of water.  The Sawyer is to prepper filters as the LED light is to prepper illumination.  Far from perfect but so cheap for such long use it is retarded to NOT have them.  Both made the lives of survivalists so much easier, simpler and cheaper.

*

Now you need food.  Those you can use your Food Stamps to purchase.  There are lots of other cash items you’ll want, from $15 carbon blade Mora knives to the $8 Rada sharpener to plenty of other knick knacks.  We’ll cover the minimum in a bit.  Here we speak of priorities in purchasing.  I hate saying Weapon First, because you know I keep screaming at you that prepping is all about Food First, but here we are talking about such basics at this point it is a hard call.  Do you protect your life first, or do you spend that money for a months worth of food?  If you have the food, but no protection, you’ll lose the food as well as your life but if you are protected with no food you starve anyway.  If you are so concerned the end is tomorrow and you have less than a payday to prep, I’d do the following.  Go to a thrift store and buy a bunch of kitchen knives which go for something like 25 cents per steak knife.  Get four steak knives and one butcher knife, more stout and sturdy than large, and you’ve spent $2.  Now you have four spears and a knife.  I’d prefer distance weapons, which is why you want the shotgun or bow, but a spear is how our ancestors got to the top of the food chain in Africa.  You could do worse.  Don’t just lash the knife at the end of the stick, try to cut a long opening and set the knife blade, sans the handle, deep into the end then secure and wrap.  The idea being to really bury three quarters of the blade into your stick making it rigid as can be.  A floppy blade at the end doesn’t work.  Ask any gal-long and floppy isn’t the same as short and rigid.

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I’m stopping here and we’ll continue tomorrow.

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*** 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
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