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DIPPED

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note: KL of PA, got your most bitchen bob donation and order.  Many thanks!
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note: "A Crude Awakening" the documentary movie on oil depletion is available on YouTube.  If anything in there disturbs you, just remember it is ten years old already.
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Almost no survival plans are completely terrible.  I do not think a plan based on large amounts of debt has a huge margin of success attached to it, but one could almost-almost-say it was better than nothing.  I mean, I have a hard time seeing how anyone has lived in this country for the last forty-five years and not witnessed the increasing precarious state of employment, increased debt and purchasing power destruction all but the elite have suffered.  How can you actually think that not only is your job NOT the furthest thing from secure, but not see there also are less and less jobs to replace the one you are going to lose?  Are you blind or are you too optimistic or are you fatalistic?  Are you blinded by your own unique skills and personality?  Do you still buy into the fifty year out of date Horatio Algiers rags to riches fable ( the current incarnation of said propaganda is the Computer Company Buy Out, the unsubstantiated dream that the bankers will loosen enough funds for your dreamtime investor angel to spend extra millions beyond what a company can ever earn in three lifetimes, for an ap that is barely above Better Mouse Trap status ).

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The typical prepper plan is one of unbridled consumerism ( I’m not sure if it is still published, but Shotgun News’ “Be Prepared” is literally nothing more than a glossy magazine with every single article highlighting up to dozens of products to buy.  It doesn’t even pretend to be anything other than Prepper Consumer Digest, but without the negative reviews ) which is only one of the aspects of survivalism.  And no, Dorothy, consumerism to purchase survival skills ( martial arts classes, shooting schools, semi-auto spray and pray with manly cries of Cover Me tactical schools taught by Sandbox vets ) is not what I’m talking about.  One of the most valuable skills you can learn in this game is learning how to spend less money.  Not more.  Any Gott Damn fool can “teach” you to spend more money.  Any moron can plan on Surviving And Thriving ( hint: spend lots of money because you deserve it.  Whether you can afford it or not is immaterial ).  Look, if you have a great paying job, nobody is saying you shouldn’t ratchet up the gear spending level.  If you already have years worth of wheat, why shouldn’t you treat yourself to a cool handgun?  But what you should NOT be doing is Business As Usual.

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Isn’t the whole point of prepping to survive Wicked Things This Way Coming?  On what basis of facts do you assume nothing TOO bad is likely?  History?  If you assume Rome has another three centuries prior to collapse, you’ve opened the textbook too close to the beginning.  You start at the 400’s AD and you could be mere years away from barbarian occupation, plague outbreak, starvation and massacres.  In your self congratulatory state thinking you understand history, did you start early enough at the beginning of American Empire?  We might have only begun overseas rapine in the 1890’s, but the empire started no later than the founding of the Constitution, the original federal usurpation of power ( and we were wrestling for control of land far before that-but here was the controls taken off the westward expansion ).  What is to say 225 years isn’t long enough for an empire to rise and fall?  Did you forget that our oil and industrial economy has been around way OVER a hundred years?  If you think fracking oil is a new technology and will save us, you have no grasp on history whatsoever, cherry picking as it pleases you.

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We are so over due for a collapse it isn’t even funny.  Miraculous, sure.  Humorous, perhaps not so much.  Amusing that folks who should know better refuse to acknowledge it ( and I will be laughing uproariously as the idiots swarm around like ants by a kicked over anthill ), but not as humorous per se as it used to be.  It’s easy to act all ninja warrior while things are good, no so much as reality rears its head.  Like the reality that retail is crashing.  70% of the economy is consumer spending and retail is in freefall as fewer customers have money to consume, after hour cuts and increased medical payments.  Obammy will join FDR as one of the most obvious banker suck asses in history.  And you think with extra effort and gumption you will be able to start a business and succeed and make a butt ton of money so you can stay in debt and buy all the cool prepper toys?  Genius, the economy is crashing.  Less money, less consumers, more business failures.  You can do everything right and less money in less hands means less purchases.  Does nobody remember the original Great Depression?  Why are you acting like the worlds biggest dumb ass, shoving more inventory on the shelf, bound and determined that if you present a pretty pony the sparkle will be enough to create more spending?  All the consumer goods in the worlds biggest mall are worthless without customers.

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So, given all that, perhaps you realize that when it is time to batten down the hatches, that means don’t get into more debt.  Don’t spend too much extra.  In the almost year from the first new director’s panic ten percent hours cuts at my old job, I saved money like crazy.  I think in the whole time I treated myself to one case of ammo, a limited stock of war surplus 303 Cheaper Than Dirt came across and was selling at near 1990’s prices.  I could have gone psycho and bought every single case, as I had the money.  But joblessness was far more eminent than zombie hoards, and I already had a good amount, so I was a good boy and just kept stashing savings.  In the long run, perhaps this will prove to be short sighted.  But the thing about the collapse is that it isn’t all about combating evil biker gangs raping women.  First, it is about, wait for it, an economic collapse.  Is saving money for that retarded?  Perhaps, but getting into debt or mindlessly consuming for FURTHER into the collapse is worse.  If you have decided that where you are is far less than perfect but time is too short to dink around and spend more money, you might be in a DIPPED position.

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 Right, dipped in crap.  But also, DIP, as in Defending In Place.  In my last blog, which wasn’t bad but surely wasn’t great as I had burned out on over five years of the Bison survival blog and drifted slightly from prepping plus I didn’t always have very long articles ( it was easy to go back to the primary focus as things careened wildly out of control and panic levels ratcheted ), a minion mentioned that he was going with a DIP plan.  It wasn’t perfect, that was acknowledged, but what he was doing was the best of bad choices.  Since he couldn’t relocate, and was getting up in years, he just started filling large plastic barrels with grains.  Come the time, his son’s teenage buddies would be fed in exchange for being the neighborhood defense force ( I think I’m remembering all that correctly-it’s been awhile ).  Two thirty gallon barrels will hold each person for a year ( yes, I know you can’t train and fight well on only 1500 calories a day-so that amount is emergency bare bones better than nothing one notch above the enemies starving hoards ) and ten would run you, what?  $700 or so? 

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That is a heck of a lot cheaper than buying junk land half way across the country, moving there and building even a shack on it ( not to mention, lost wages or permanent unemployment ).  Yes, I know.  Extra weapons and ammo and water filters and all the issues of suburban survival.  No one is claiming perfection here.  Nor advisability or feasibility.  But, perhaps, practicality.  I of course didn’t remember the original article, but upon rereading it I do remember being impressed with the whole idea.  It went against everything I preach as far as location, but it was a wonderful thinking out of the box strategy.  A very brilliant solution to a seemingly unsolvable problem ( “how do we stay safe in our current situation”? ).  It didn’t try for the standard “I’ll just arm myself with a semi-auto arsenal and by the magic of my cyclical action I shall be a super warrior stud”.  You have to respect that.  It acknowledges tribe and true Force Multipliers ( higher tech is NOT a force multiplier, not in the long run and not against intelligent irregular warfare.  You can pretend your high resolution satellite photos and drones will win the war, but all the enemy has to do is hold on long enough for those toys to bankrupt you and your overseas supply line.  He just needs to keep herding his goats for a profit while you spend billions finding and killing a few other herders goats ) which is a strategic food supply.  I’ll continue this tomorrow.

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