APOCALYPSE SOFTWARE
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I’m sure most of you
reading this fondly remember the days of yesteryear when computers were expensive
and the software to make them run were no bargain either. If you didn’t factor in the cost of the added
software you didn’t have a true idea of what owning a computer was really going
to set you back. Now, obviously there
was the additional cost of hardware such as printers or CD-ROM drives and
whatnot, and nowadays it isn’t unusual to get most software for free and most
hardware additions are unnecessary, but we speak of twenty plus years ago.
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Most folks make this
mistake with auto’s. They look at the
price of gas at the time of purchase, along with the monthly payment, and that
is it. Their concession to acknowledging
the cost of insurance is to go to Progressive and get the list of competitors
prices and pick the cheapest. They pay
whatever the total monthly cost of owning an auto is, because we are ‘Merica,
dammit, love it or leave it, and true blooded ‘Mericans have a God given right
to drive. Never mind that they are
directly supporting the bankers and their inbred cousins the insurance
industry, single handedly financing their oppression. We can’t mention that. Like you don’t mention how little you get for
your tax dollar with the defense industry ‘cause, you know, support the troops.
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Personally, I like the
idea of the American Empire. All that
global loot makes those trucks transporting my books from Amazon and my food to
the grocery store extra super cheap ( at least out of pocket ). I’m all jiggy wid that, yo. My point is that you don’t calculate the true
cost of empire, now that it is failing.
The cost of an Oil Economy was quite reasonable for the longest
time. We could afford the
accessories. We no longer can, but
pretend otherwise, because we ignore the cost of that software or the actual
cost per mile to drive.
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It is all well and good to
ignore true costs, if you can hide them.
I get $4 shipping for a big ass book, but the hidden costs are
insane. All those legacy costs we are
ignoring like the highways we can’t keep up on, the cost of bribing the Saudi’s
( who are going to screw us in the end by dropping the PetroDollar anyway, but
kick the can, yo ), the jobs lost to robotics ( or even slave labor. Dave Ramsey, false claimant to the sole
bestest friendship of Baby Jesus, had his books on his financial program printed
overseas ). No, I won’t mention Gore
Warming like some rotting meat puppet. I
don’t know if warming is anthropologic nor am I even sure we are warming rather
than cooling.
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How many of you AR holders
factor in the true cost of magazines?
The average AR mag is truly disposable and designed with exactly that in
mind. Verses the AK mag which is much
more robust. Not that I’m pimping for
the AK, I’m just saying that when you must buy two or three times the magazines
just because they are AR’s, you are spending more and not less ( as alleged by
the proponents of “preppers de facto militia standard issue long gun” ). You can buy less and spend less, but that is
false economics if the magazines by design will not last as long.
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I’ve already stated that
car owners minimize their true cost, even NOT factoring legacy costs. They don’t add in the cost of oil charges,
tires, insurance cost increases, unknowable gasoline costs in the future. And certainly not unexpected repairs. And what hardly anyone does is factor in
Maximum Worst Case Scenarios, which is what I’ll focus on today. Not only must you get a true idea of what an
item will cost over its lifetime, if you aren’t adding the Black Swan Expenses
you really have no idea you really cannot afford to own that item.
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My bestest favorite
example is the water well. Mr. Off Grid
is a super stud making big bucks to support a trophy wife ( back when Internet
personal ads for preppers was tried by different folks, and I’m sure still
mirrored by Backwoods Home and the like, it was truly embarrassing to see what
was available. All the girls were virtue
signally to the Pretty Pony Preppers, none having any idea what living off grid
was like but all willing to try. For the
right price. Your wallet size was far
more important than your acreage ).
Living without firehose pressure and volume is unthinkable and so a deep
ass well is sunk. No problem, barely an
inconvenience! $20k is well worth it! (
get it? WELL worth it )
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Now a few years down the
road your trophy wife left with half your assets because nobody was talking
about how she was going to have to be super inconvenienced by only running her
hair dryer for fifteen minutes least the battery bank be drained. She is NOT a barbarian. Super Stud Survivalist married a more down to
earth country gal and all is good there, but not only did you lose your
savings, in the mean time your company shipped over to China and you aren’t as
indispensable as you thought and the paycheck is a lot smaller now. Annnnndddd, your well goes dry.
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Suddenly, $20k is no
longer chump change. You couldn’t bother
to haul water from town when you came home from work because you were too busy
working and commuting. And you needed
lots of water for those ten eggs a week and all that zucchini ( it’s
organic! Well worth ten times the price
from the store ). So, you know, you
convinced yourself that a well was an actual necessity rather than a luxury (
to be clear, I HATE water wells. It can
be cheaper to buy property back east where it rains than to sink a well in the
West. A well is asking for Mother Nature
to not screw you, and I know for a certifiable fact that Ma hates my guts and
goes out of her way to be ‘aggin me ).
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Okay, if you say so. But that well didn’t cost you $20k. It cost you $50k ( sorry, the price went up
with demand ). Never in your wildest
delusional fantasies did you think a well would be that expensive. Just like you never thought when you bought
that SUV when gas was $1.11 that it would ever go to $4. When you started smoking, you never thought
health insurance would go from $100 a month with a $500 deductible to $1,000 a
month with a $5,000 deductible. Not that
you can even treat cancer any more.
Dying is much more affordable.
Continued tomorrow.
END ( today's related link https://amzn.to/2zp2GSX )
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Yes. As an example well water table may/will drop (from all those califorinicator transplants watering their hobby farm lots) and that depth is not enough for the new level, $30k to re drill deeper. Or, it gets contaminated from farm run off, or the fracking fags ejaculating chemicals to blast oil out of pebbles and it leaches into "your" water table miles away. Being on a small munincipal water system may at least give a tad bit of reliability as gov't will try to keep up and running to placate citizens. When watching cowboy movies from latter 1800 era make mental notes, that will be the technology and technique limitations post apocalypse. Pencil, paper, hand tools, oil lamps, very few guildsmiths to create contrivances for replacements. A dark age to live in with that mcmansion full of rendered useless junk bought online.
ReplyDeleteExcept FLIR scopes. Those are REALLY honest injun useful. You'll like, own the night AND the day. As a bonus to being a super urban high speed operator, you can tell where all the winter heat is leaking out in the house you couldn't afford to insulate!
DeleteAnd flir hunt stray sheep in the bushes to bestialate them when the farmer is sleeping.
DeleteI also need to buy many more of those high performance 60 dollar underwears and 80 dollar tee shirts. I want to be cushy comfortable with ample wicking and no chaffing during the apocalypse when out and about Wolverine gaming with my flir scoped ar-15 that has naughty looking skulls painted upon it. Hoorah!
Delete1:30-good Christ! I'm still laughing as I'm trying to type this. Friggin priceless!
Delete*
1:46-nothing is more embarrassing than chaffed ass when going Viking.
Just sending up my best work from las vegas. The heat does make one crazy.
DeleteWe are going into the second week of 85. Hit 90 once. I know that is your lows at night. It's okay, you can laugh at me come winter. Not enough free comps to the Chicken Ranch to live down there.
DeleteThe only way to know how much anything costs is to buy it, use it, and track the expenses over a period of time. Lots of times you'll see hollow-heads citing new home construction costs in the $100 per square foot range. Not true. Not even close. There are too many variables to make a blanket statement like that.
ReplyDeleteWhen I bought my S10 truck I knew the exact cost of the sale of it. I also tracked ALL expenses associated with it for 5 years. I don't remember what the amounts were but I knew how much that vehicle cost for every single mile I drove it. It's more than you might think. Fortunately I never had any major repairs with that truck, and still own it today - 28 years later. Today, the cost per driven mile with that truck is far lower than it was when it was new because many of the expenses in owning it no longer exist. It's looking a little long in the tooth but still fires up immediately ready to haul plywood, so I'll continue to keep it. The longer I keep it the cheaper it gets.
I feel sorry for anyone who has to buy a vehicle newer than 08. Truly pathetic crap now. At least domestic. Well, also Italian ( Jeep ).
DeleteI sure hope Ol' Remus pulls through. It sounds dire. He is irreplaceable in the survivalist forums.
ReplyDeleteLol, I have been a mechanic for about 30 years, and while I don't miss the days of cleaning and adjusting points and carburetors, I have to wonder just what the sense is in $80k pick up trucks.
ReplyDeleteIt's not the fuel economy, I used to have a 78 Dodge 1 ton Maxi Van that got 17 mpg, which is slightly better than most of the pickups on the road today. Parts were cheaper, I could buy spark plugs for about a buck and a half, where these new platinum plugs are about 12 bucks each. I could replace the brushes in my alternator and not even take the belt loose.
I went with a scooter, it's fast enough to get me in to town without getting run over, where you will get run over on a bicycle. I spend about 6 bucks a week in gas, no tax, insurance,or registration required in my state and I know how to fix everything on it. Hell, I don't even need a helmet if I feel suicidal that day. If it falls all to pieces, a new one costs me about 800 dollars, which is about what truck payment and insurance cost for one month on those fancy rigs.
It boils down to consumerism, keeping up with the Joneses, instead of living within your means. Say what you will about Dave Ramsey, but at least he does preach that message. I personally can only take about 15 minutes of his show, but that is because he repeats that message so often.
I do agree with your position on a well and Ma Nature. No matter which side of the tree you hug, she is gonna get ya. But eventually I would like to give it a try. Having a hard time finding info on the water table in my area, and not wild about sinking a sand point by hand much past 30 feet, so if anyone knows a good place to find info on that, I am all ears
I can't see how 'Ol Dave has ANY message past "live below your income" How hard is this crap? He is making it into unicorn glitter. How hard is getting out of debt? Nuke your credit rating and live WAYYYY below your income for a short time.
DeleteCheck with a well driller in your area and they can tell you if a sand point is even possible. I asked a local driller and he gave me all the info i needed and more.
DeleteDon't have any clue, how deep our well is. The house is a hundred years old and I'm sure the well's of the same vintage. It is artesian and delivers a little over two gallons a minute with no pump. Drawback is that it is high in calcium and iron with a slight sulphur smell...
ReplyDeleteWe also have city water though.
The well water can be treated and drank using a holding tank for aeriation makes it palitable. The old underground cistern still exsts and is intact too, no idea how large it is. One day I need to pump it dry and check it out
Daytona area seemed to average 15-20 feet for wells, but that was second and third hand.
DeleteWhile a depth of twenty feet is likely true for a surface well. A artesian well has to come from below the bedrock, which around this area is way deep below the sand lol.
DeleteAh. Okay, I wasn't paying much attention. Although, truthfully, I had no idea the definition of "artesian". I'm sure I've run across it a time or two but had no recollection.
DeleteEverything I know about Artesians I learned from Richard Farnsworth on his Olympic Beer documentaries circa 1980 or so.
DeleteBrilliant work.
I'll take a well over municipal 8 days a week.
ReplyDeleteThen I get to control the output and the cost is far lower.
But overall I'd prefer a pond fed by underground streams, roof rain run-off, and a solar pump and cistern. We're 800' up on the side of a hill and the farm lands are below so no agricultural run-off. After having a well in FL for 20 years I hate it every day that we're on county water and the $80/mth cost, and no telling what the delivered result is like. We have a whole house triple filtration system now and still use a Brita for drinking water.
Municipal water is the finest water profit maximizing corporations can bribe the mayor to deliver. If you care about Mother Gaia, you will reward the efforts of Green Corporations to recycle wastes much as floride and fracking chemicals.
DeleteSpeaking of Florida, I design multi-million dollar cribs out on the barrier islands and Useppa Island has had water piracy regulations since the mid 90's. Gutters are required on all homes but you can't use that water for ANYTHING at all. No sir. Mother gaia owns that shit (the gov't says so!) so keep your cotton pickin fingers off'n it!
DeleteOf all the senseless crap gov pulls, that has got me the most confused and baffled. Outside of putting a gun to your head to pay to drink, what possible justification can they use?
DeleteFor a water well to be practical for a survivalist, I’d think that you would have to factor in additional cost for it to be self powered in some way (either a windmill or solar). The ideal is to have a water table close enough to the surface to permit the use of a hand pump. But of course, if water is that readily available, it’s likely going to be among the higher priced parcels of land. This leaves rain water collection as the only practical option for those on a budget (and ideally, a non-taxable option).
ReplyDeleteI never had much desire to own a PC back in the 1980’s. The prices, combined with a very limited internet experience (The WWW didn’t premier until around 1989, and even then was very limited) made them less practical to own at the time. I might have considered one had I been able to 3D print my very own Kelly LeBrock. Though from the looks of things lately, I’d of had to reprint her a few times by now :D
“Weird Science”
https://4.bp.blogspot.com/_wSjnLWPvgfU/Sw--0Q-RFtI/AAAAAAAAHdE/lXwaKooxciU/s1600/kelly_lebrock_today.jpg
Meh. Only a one-bagger. Look at that rack-I'd gladly suffocate in there.
DeleteI do not fault you for your relaxed, yet pragmatic standards dear writer. And if I may turn an eloquent phrase of a former coworker:
Delete“If you turn them upside down and spread their legs, they all look like sisters anyways” :D
A less vulgar form of "it's all pink inside". But I think that one is more a plea to avoid racism. :)
DeleteIf she licks her lips you can stick her to the fridge.
DeleteA mental picture there.
DeleteI have also hit a wall trying to find out how deep water is in my area. Don't see me driving a sand point 30 foot either. The elderly lady across the road told me on her water bill its says not to drink the water, might cause cancer. Everyone buys bottled water. Junk land ain't easy.
ReplyDeleteBut easier than a mortgage, right?
DeleteNothing is better than a well in your basement. The inspectors need a warrant to come in and when the siege happens at least you aren't thirsty.
ReplyDeleteI started using a simple rainwater catchment system by putting 50 gallon free pickle barrels under any roof structure, even some flat ones. Put them anywhere I had trees or veggies I was growing so I wouldn't have to carry water far. In places there were no structures but I needed water Id string up a ocean state job lot 8 x 10 foot tarp tied to two trees, put a three-quarter inch pvc pipe down the center of the top held by a spring clamp on either end to direct the water into the barrel. Tie the bottom end of the tarp going into the barrel. by putting a rock tied to the end in the water. works like a charm. I can water all my plants and trees for two months of no rain with the barrels that get full. Put a bunch of 15 cent goldfish in each barrel to keep the mossquitoes at bay. Never had a well, though it would be convenient, but price is out of this world, and the locals will know what youre doing so better to be stealth with your water catchment set up. Now it is illegal to be able to build a house without ELECTRIC power to run a pump. Youre not allowed to be off-grid legally anymore. you also have to have electric to run the septic pump as most septic systems are "mound" systems. They rarely allow a gravity system out here anymore because of the profit more than the logistics. Its 50 thousand for a mound versus 30 thousand for a gravity. Its all about the money. Plus they rip up your yard (for well and septic) and the bulldoozers compact the soil so bad you cant even dig the soil to plant a tree by hand, you need a pickaxe. I know, I worked for a landscape company and it was grueling to plant a tree on compacted soil.
ReplyDeleteBuild anything you need on your property/junk land by hand with simple low-cost technology. Otherwise you work for years to pay off and are dependent on these systems that you cant repair when things go down the tubes. Good luck.
Did you already cover how you stealth live there, bypassing the electric & etc. ?
DeleteI am in the middle of nowhere on a road that was so rutted out and weather-stricken the town gave up on it.(Though I still get taxed at the same rate as everyone else even when I filed for abatement). I regularly drag out of the way huge tree limbs that have fallen across the road and I keep a big crosscut saw in my vehicle. It is only accessible by FOUR WHEEL DRIVE a few months of the year. Even a bad storm in the middle of summer makes it impassable by four wheel, the road becomes a river. Soon I'll need a boat. Those are the times I walk in, wade in, bike in, motorcycle in, etc. Over the last decade I have experimented with an array of carts from deer carts to wheelbarrows to jogging strollers just to get my supplies in. The town probably figures if I can get in there, I deserve to live there.. I do snowshoe in stealth-wise in the winter with a sled that I pull over the snowmobile tracks that come through. No electric, never has been on that old road. I just have some Harbor Freight solar panels and damaged ones people have cast off and junk batteries I pulled out of the landfill, that, if the sun is right I can get a few hours of solar in summer. Its cuz the tree canopy keeps growing over my sunny areas and theyre getting taller and harder to pole saw. But I only use a headlamp, a lantern and some 12 volt tools. Everything else is done by hand. So no amenities, rough living, but beautiful and quiet. Had some townie cop activity checking me out the first few years trying to figure me out. I had a junker car with 31 issues and they thought I was from the inner city and stole the car cuz it wasn't a Prius and every yuppie scum in the area has one, but we cleared that up right away. I keep a very low to absent kind of profile. I go out of my way to not be seen. If for some reason someone spots me I have an eccentric thing going on. I have a running dialogue with the bears during the day to alert them i'm around so maybe some joggers or mountain bikers have heard me and questioned my sanity. Not to mention it looks like a scene out of "Deliverance" down there. Not even intentionally but because I haul all sorts of free cast off building materiel to make some creative structures and it aint pretty. But it is functional and the bears don't care what it looks like. I just need to keep them out of my stuff. I've cared less and less about appearance and more and more about functionality and surviving through the winter intact with the least amount of damage done to roofs and structures due to trees falling from the extreme weather in that area. There are a lot of old timers who have a lot more junk in their back forty than I have if you look on satellite. A few regular hikers know Im there a lot and they say "Why don't you just put out a mailbox?" I say "Then Ill be verifying Im living out here." The summer Out-Of-Towners that come to camp in the area actually believe that it is a residence, maybe it looks like ones they are used to in their area, unlike the locals who have lots of dough and live in stylish McMansions. I personally think after my odd eccentricity, my ghetto-mobile, the determination to just keep going, the chicken-shittedness of the town officials who know there are cougars and bears and coyotes and mosquito hordes and ticks down there, and Ive started no trouble, and I'm getting up there in years, they have better things to do, I don't ask or expect anything from the town, and as long as I'm paying my taxes they'll just leave me in peace, knock on wood.
ReplyDeleteOkay, you've dropped hints here and there-this is much more complete story. Thanks, enjoyed it.
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