trash for preps

TRASH FOR PREPS

Once again I was enjoying Commander Zero, and came across a great article on rejecting trash for preps HERE . Basically, if you are poor, you are poor, and feel free to use cleaned two liter bottles for food or water storage. But if you have the means, invest in the proper equipment. How can anyone argue with that logic? Not I. I would just like to cover a few things not mentioned, “devil is in the details” kind of thing. Matching your preps to your income might not be possible. Prepping poor is great practice for living poor. And, prepping poor might be a great way to stockpile much deeper.

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I don't wish to discount what the Commander had to say. His points are valid. By spending nothing, you get a much lower level of performance. He doesn't advocate buying the very best, which makes him much smarter than 95% of the Survivalist Guru's out there ( see what happens when you can write without needing to appease advertisers? ). He is merely saying to buy a properly designed item, one actually made for a specific task ( I imagine he would not approve of my butchering an AR to make a bolt gun and he would-mostly-be correct. It makes a terrible bolt action ).

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Two liter bottles are made for a specific purpose, which is to transport and store carbonated beverages relatively cheap. They work rather well for storing water and food, far more than you would imagine a one use disposable bottle would. They just aren't designed for that, which is Zero's entire point. My only point of contention is he comes across a bit condescending as he implies poverty is a choice. Sure, it was a choice. I could have chosen to disregard my child support order and dropped off grid and sold drugs for extra money.

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Or, I suppose I could have made my second job one I hated but which paid more. I could have chosen to move to an area with higher wages, even if it meant moving away from my kids. I guess you can choose to divorce the wife to get more prep budget. Hell, even I think that is a great idea. Yeah, read the book. Yes, despite the above sarcasm, you always have a choice. My only point is that sometimes choosing more money is retarded, when there are ways to live on a lot less. And if that means you pick frugal preps, so be it.

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Again, I have no bone to pick with the Commander. It was just a tone I picked up on, but that could be me being rather too sensitive. I get that way with people, and sometimes they don't deserve that. It isn't a crime to fail to see things from someone else's point of view. But sometimes choosing the “smart” way to survivalism is a terrible life choice. I have isolated paid for property, and am self-employed. The smart thing would be to live there. But I like being married, especially now that I have a wonderful wife. I choose the less safe way.

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Just like some folks choose to live close to a well paying job, even if the location is more diversified than is prudent. They enjoy living middle class. The prep budget is whatever can be squeezed from that. I don't agree with it, but I wonder how many former readers gave up on me when I made my current choice. “Not hard core enough”, was probably uttered as they returned to the Idaho Prepper who wasn't so frugal about his equipment advice.

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I would say that most months, I probably put more income toward preps than I do living expenses. That is the ideal, even if it is far from practical for most people. They signed up for a middle class lifestyle ( which to me means a car and a house, and if lucky medical insurance ), put the work in to get a job that supported that, and had a family. All of which means even cutting all the corners, there is simply too much going out in expenses to prep expensively. Cutting cable and even Netflix, taking no vacations and doing your own car repair, never going to Starbucks, STILL, you'll never have enough for $50 water bottles as a baseline in equipment.

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That doesn't mean you need to use two liter soda bottles, re-purposing trash. Hell, I don't use those. They simply take up too much room and won't last long enough. Between $50 bottles and $0 bottles, there are plenty of other choices. Middlin quality, rather than cheap junk or The Best. Certainly, even if scrounging, you can find a much better quality container. Or, say, you find a restaurant supplier that offers about the same thing, but cheaper because it isn't directed at preppers ( which always have a built in premium ).

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But my best reason for frugal prepping is that you simply get more of everything. Again, NOT trash. Not the very cheapest. The best bargain on decent quality. I had no problem spending twice what a Mosin-Nagant cost, or for that matter a Lee-Enfield no1, in favor of a Enfield no4. Everybody was busy at the time buying pre-ban AR-15's for $1500, and I'm the retard for buying war surplus “junk”? I have infantryman's rifles, real guns. Not “real” just because it was steel and wood ( the AK is, also ), but “real” because they were the last guns built to last.

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The Nazi's had the worlds premier bolt gun, know for accuracy AND built tough ( although NOT ergonomic, and prone to being allergic to fouling in the field. Accuracy came at a cost ), and by the end of the war they needed a replacement that was a heck of a lot cheaper to produce. Quantity over quality, a Soviet disease ( well, it does have its place, honestly ). Bean counters over engineers. Stamped parts and plastic. With the exception of the US M-14, everyone stampeded to cheaply made guns.

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I will give the M-16 its due, it was engineered brilliantly and was both accurate and held up well in the field ( when the proper ammo was used, thanks for nothing US Army, and corporate asswhores didn't cut costs-looking at you, dingus breath Colt corporate suits ). But it was still a cheaply made gun and disposable. It was NOT meant for hard use for a long period of time. And the round sucked, but that wasn't Stoner's doing. It was an industrial age gun, meant to be used as a lead slinger when ammo was cheap and widely available, and cheaply replaced from copious factories.

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It is NOT all that great of a post-apocalypse gun. It will have to do, but a tank of a WWII battle rifle it is not. Using an AR ( because of its widespread availability, dirt cheap parts, low up front investment cost, and accuracy to make your limited ammunition stockpile last longer ) for a post-apocalypse gun is almost like using a two liter bottle for a food storage unit. It works, but is doing something it was NOT designed for.

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A war surplus bolt gun is designed to last a long time, to withstand hard abuse in the field, to use primitive ammunition and to be used with bayonet back-up. Sounds like a much better fit to the apocalypse, rather than Nazi stamped and secreted parts. My point here being that if you are insisting on using equipment designed explicitly for a certain task, and won't cheap out or improvise, why are you using a modern gun that wasn't designed for after the Industrial Age or the Oil Age? HMMMM?????? Continued tomorrow.

( .Y. )

( today's related Amazon link click HERE )

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