Bison Prepper

Thursday, February 9, 2017

druid doomer denier

DRUID DOOMER DENIER

Just as Commander Zero gave me plenty to write about a few weeks ago when he suggested that every prepper tool should cost at least a days wages if you were to be considered worthy of saving, now the Druid Dude is up to his usual deriding all claims of doomers that The End Is Nigh And We Are All Going To Die. He doesn’t deny that the end is indeed nigh, but his unrealistically optimistic ray of sunshine blowing out of his ass blinding most of his readers gives the illusion that once you embrace permiculture gardening you shall be a happy little peasant serfing ( intentional misspelling ) the collapse in style. As I’ve said more than once, the Druid Dude is forever in my limited bro-mance circle, from having introduced me to the pretty close to one book fits all doomer needs “Overshoot” by Clatton. The Druid Dude is far smarter than I, yet having the same source material refuses to acknowledge that pessimism is the order of the day. That is our fundamental difference. Like a close member of your family, you love him even as you admit he’s kind of a douche.

Last week ( start of February, 2017 ) he was yet again hating on the Calamity Corps for ignoring history. He unfolded the cycles of history to prove to us that empires fell and rose and civilizations collapses as others prospered. End result, while the economic collapse will be painful it will be business as usual in a pre-carbon fuel way ( the gist of his stair step collapse theory ). Now, if I was one of the faithful for this kind of soft collapse, I think I’d be a bit pissed that while the Druid Dude is entirely correct, it is only in the macro sense. Some areas will be less effected than others, but those areas suffering the most will primarily be where all his readers will be. They will experience a Rwanda circa the ‘90‘s, not a Great Britain who signed over its colonies more or less peacefully and settled into a Forever Crap Economy. I’ve pointed this out several times, and you would be a fool to ignore the end of oil ushering in the end of oil based agriculture with STILL increasing overpopulation even if the rate of increase has fallen. The Druid Dude has such a wonderful grasp of history that he is only seeing the big long term picture and ignores the immediate horrid journey to get there.

I look at history in a generalist way. And looking at the collapse of empires, you always see a near complete die-off. Humanity in general is never, ever threatened. But the imperial citizenry is pretty much double dog dingus humped. Our imperial implosion will indeed be just like any other in history, just as the Druid Dude ascertains. Which means that the center imperial nation is wiped off the map with only a minimum of successful escapees. Population will be severely reduced. Because one of the defining characteristics of collapsing civilizations is denuded soil. That means you can’t feed your people. Yes, we will return to decentralized organic farming. AFTER the friggin die-off!!! Sweet Baby Jesus On A Pogo Stick! 90%+ die-offs are absolutely no picnic. They usually include close enough to everybody that you should just count on being part of the body count, a twisted bleeding corpse surrounded by your semi-auto weapons in the suburbs.

The Four Corners feathers not dots Indians had a nice civilization going on. Then the long term precipitation changed and they couldn’t grow enough crops to survive. Let alone build. Only a few percentage escaped ( writers of said civilization like to give Happy Joy Hope that they all dispersed to neighboring villages and were greeted by distant family members with open arms. This is a great theory, if we assume the weather didn’t change there for the worse-which to me seems like a lot to assume ). The Mayans had a swell civilization going on in the jungles of Central America. Then the rains stopped and the area never recovered. Greece never recovered for two thousands years plus after they destroyed their farmland from overpopulation. When the Spanish visited the Inca’s, those who survived the diseases were quickly killed off in the silver mines. The Mongols had no problem accepting unconditional surrender, but if not they could easily kill every single non-new slave in an entire metropolis. Now, granted, the last two examples were unlimited warfare rather than civilizations destroying themselves from resource exhaustion, but just like Rome that is usually just the slightly quicker collapse of an empire/civilization already on its way through decline.

Going by historical example, as the Druid Dude wishes us to do, you might notice that the end is usually full of slaughter and starvation, disease and enslavement. Not happy peasants tending their perennials in blissful contact with Mother Earth. Why, oh why, great exalted Poo-Ba of the Druid Order, must you show me how much you hate me, when all I do is shower you with love and buy all your books to support your further research? And, ah, yes, this time will be different. Not because history won’t fulfill another cycle, because it will, but because the entire globe is now a resource collapse area once the oil stops pumping. The dark ages will last about a thousand years, given the time it takes soil to rejuvenate. At least in the fortunate areas. How about that for a slight disruption of the historical cycles? Yes, it will resume at a much later date. But I certainly don’t call that a soft collapse. I don’t call it a return to normalcy after a fall, not when the whole planet will see such a huge die-off.

Eventually, yes, all will be well once population drastically falls below solar economy output. Then after that Dark Age we will indeed restart the whole ugly cycle. And yes, during that Dark Age, family life will function as biologically normal. But you can’t discount the die-off, because without it family life CANNOT return to normal. And a 99% die-off is nothing other than a calamity. Only by stretching out the time frame and averaging out deaths does it turn into background noise. For those boots on the ground, at the time, the noise will be hideous. And to think the die-off will last generations? How can you think that when the oil won’t last that long ( and all our food is oil based, yo )?

END

Please support Bison by buying through the Amazon ad graphics at the top of the page. IF YOU DON’T SEE THE AD, DISABLE AD BLOCK ( go to the Ad Blocker while on my page and scroll down the menu to “disable this site” ). You can purchase anything, not just the linked item. Enter Amazon through my item link and then go to whatever other item you desire. As long as you don’t leave Amazon until after the order is placed, I get credit for your purchase. For those that can’t get the ads because they are blocked by your software, just PayPal me occasionally or buy me something from my Amazon Wish List once a year. Pay your author-no one works for free. I’m nice enough to publish for mere Book Money, so do your part.***
*Contact Information* Links To Other Blogs * Land In Elko* Lord Bison* my bio & biblio* my web site is www.bisonprepper.com *wal-mart wheat
*Link To All My Published Books
* By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there

Wednesday, February 8, 2017

flee in 30 days part 3

FLEE IN 30 DAYS part 3

You have a month to move. Yes, it is arbitrary. But any longer and most of you will have your attention span challenged. It is pulling off a band-aid, not planning for the loyal wedding of the century. Plus, I’m kind of trying to explain the obvious here. How friggin easy it is to get out of a very unsafe area. Worried about not finding another job? Hell, how secure is the one you have now? It isn’t any harder finding one there than here ( within reason ). I know my boss will drop me at the first sign they can find another sucker to fill in for me ( of course, good luck with that. This is the first time I’ve ever felt I have good job security. Who else is going to work this hard for this little of pay? I think we’ll go out of business first ). So, as soon as you decide what you are going to do ( move to an apartment with junk land nearby, move out to the land with a trailer, whatever ), you spend all your free time looking for that junk land. Send a mail order overnight or pay on a debit card for a down payment ( almost all junk land sellers finance you, and you don’t need a credit check. Just cash, and on time payments ) and put in your two week notice at work.

Now you liquidate everything you possibly can. I kept my sensible revolver and sold my two boy toy .45’s ( private sale at retail cost with mags and ammo thrown in and they sold the first half day of a one day ad ) and that paid for gas across the country, motel stays ( way too humid to sleep in the van as originally hoped ) and meals ( supermarket cold foods the first two and a sit down hot one at the end of the day-I don’t do well at all driving in the dark so we only did twelve hour days ). I had credit cards at the time which bought the van at the beginning of the trip and the travel trailer at the end of it. Not the smartest financing but it got us out of crowded Florida to a great western locale. With no savings and one low paying job between the two of us. We walked away from our mobile home which we had paid 25% down on just a year or two before. When you want to move, these things take on far less importance. No jobs were waiting for me. Granted, this was just after 9/11 and jobs were easy to find ( our initial destination-warmth for the spouse-was Kingman Arizona. No job prospects there all week long so we moved up to Nevada. That worked out much better. Kingman was full of Yuppie Scum and has no surface water. My pale northern European skin also burned within hours. Land was darn cheap, even in town, but with no jobs…).

It’s scary out there, employment wise. Worse case, if I can’t find another job here I can always get on Food Stamps and crash at my B-POD rather than pay rent in town. But it is still worrisome, and I am in a much better position than most of you as far as employment. I wouldn’t want to make another move across the country at this point in our economy. But I am of course far more paranoid than most of you and panicked early. So you are in the position of staying in a scary crime ridden turd of a huge city which in the event of a collapse will become unlivable even if you have a wicked cool semi-auto concealed carry gun and an armored SUV. And you are anchored there by your job. A job which won’t be there much longer given the direction of our economy. Think on this. In 2008, within a half a week the economy almost went tits up. You had little warning. What? You think it will be different next time? It won’t. Zero warning, immediate catastrophe. Just think back to how bad things were then for the next couple of years with the lay-offs and the local governments running out of money and the high unemployment. And that was with the bail-outs. You MUST panic early.

I read an interesting statistic the other day that the majority of Americans never live more than fifty miles from the same spot all their lives. I have a hard time counting all the times I’ve moved in my life ( 30-40+ ) and for me it is no big deal. Or, it was no big deal. Now I’m rooted and refuse to even vacation far from here. The big deal for most of us is being able to give up everything normally construed as an investment, plus worrying about employment at our destination. Yet, most of you are at a higher skill set than I am in employment. Why haven’t you moved? Surely your odds of finding a job surpass mine? And it isn’t the problems you shall face moving now, it is the far more serious ones later if you refuse to move now. Right now, moving moves you around in the frying pan. Trying to move later, you are forced to jump from the pan into the fire. It is really as simple as that. Look, all those people who were convinced the end was nigh, back in the ‘70’s or ‘90’s? You can’t claim they screwed up, because they are the ones who got in early and got to move to a great location which was expensive then but cheap compared to today’s prices, plus they found steady employment and learned homesteading while there was still time.

NOT moving NOW is the wrong course of action, not moving way too early. Once you resolve yourself, it is as simple as liquidation and packing. The move itself is easy ( of course, given Murphy’s Law which ALWAYS manifests itself during a move-trust me, I’ve had plenty of experience-you need to double the anticipated money, time and trouble and plan accordingly ). Even if nothing goes right, it is a great learning experience. I know, easy for me to say as I won’t be giving up my house or job or marriage. Hey, I’ve been there and bought the T-shirt. I know the disruption and loss. I also know I finally got it right and found a location that will suit me come retirement or collapse. In the end, after a high price, it is worth it. If you don’t actually think we will collapse any time soon, just find a nice $50 a month junk land payment and a affordable used travel trailer and plan on retiring there. Worse case, you can move there during the collapse, without any disruption before that. Have everything in place. The land, trailer in the back yard, savings. And move in two weeks once the next economic collapse begins-and again, without any disruption now. Come on! You can’t handle $50 a month now? I’ll bet you a jelly filled donut that right now there are junk land lots in Arizona and Elko that are $50 a month, and that is without having looked on E-Bay for the last few weeks. Again, this stuff is easy. The resolve is the issue.

END

Tuesday, February 7, 2017

peak profit 3

PEAK PROFITS 3

More competition is a very real deciding factor in the across the board loss in profits for almost everybody. If a factory making silicon chips costing $1 Billion plus must compete with other companies to the point business is tough, what hope do all the other Podunk jag-off’s using a lot cheaper businesses have of making much of a profit? Just look at Subway sandwiches. A mediocre food item, fake bread used as a salad container with a minimum of pressed and formed meat flavors ( when they started they were just a fast food deli and were a meal. Now they are just another food like snack ). They are one of the cheapest franchises to get into. And as a result, they are everywhere, especially right in each franchise holders former customer territory. Less entry cost, more competition. Our town of 20k just got a second bike shop. Which of course is retarded as the first one had to sell high end bikes to miners who would never use them but needed to spend whatever their trophy wives didn’t manage to piss away, just to pay the rent. He also leases his lot to one of those overpriced rent to own outdoor shed manufactures, plus does U-Haul. If one was barely making a profit, in a cold climate where only I and the homeless ride in winter, how can two? This is duplicated in every location in every country in every industry. Just another unintended consequence of overpopulation.

Without having a boots on the ground understanding of specific industries, I’d still have to say that we have probably already seen Peak Automation. What jobs can be replaced by robots or software have already seen the switchover. At least speaking of the majority ( tweaking will still occur ). Profits have been too constrained, while debt has been freely acquired, to assume otherwise. It is a lot cheaper to sack a worker than buy a share of your competitor. Of course, we are still seeing layoffs, the only assurance you can count on in a job anymore. But the jobs aren’t being replaced, which is my point here. They might be outsourced to another firm, saving a marginal amount, but a robot or a computer program isn’t why the job was lost. I’m not sure why it is considered gospel that AI will replace all workers. Moore’s Law finally soiled the sheets a year or so back, and if the people who programmed Windows are any indicator of the industry, no rocket surgery personnel are available to perform this miracle. Really, it is all nothing more than a variation of Fracking Fags thinking we had another century of American Hegemony to fund their Social Security retirement.

And last but probably not least but I’m pretty much done on this subject for now so it will have to be, increasing costs. When a barrel of oil cost $10 in the ’90’s, and a pair of pleather boots cost $25, with $5 material cost, at most, a barrel of petroleum costing $40 still only makes a pair of shoes $20 in raw materials. Yet, that $50 pair of boots lasts only half a year instead of three to five years. So there is no way it costs $20 in materials to churn out that piece of crap. Probably $10. Yet, the shoe company isn’t making a profit. So other costs must be contributing to the issue. As retarded as CEO’s are, surely even they can see that selling garbage loses you customers. It has to be an act of desperation on their part ( I hope ). Obviously, more debt is leading to higher loan payments. They bought as many machines as possible to minimize human labor costs, and the machines are probably going up in cost as those companies are seeing less sales ( as is everybody ) and must compensate.

The shoe sellers are most likely seeing the same thing. If supermarkets are saturating each market, so must sell higher profit items such as pre-made meals to stay in business, than a shoe seller too must sell higher priced footwear to keep paying the higher rent ( thank you asswhore bankers for jacking up real estate prices globally ) and utilities ( thank you Peak Oil and overpopulation and governments taxing anything nailed down or otherwise ) and CEO salaries ( not necessary as they are all morons of the first degree but somehow every board of directors thinks a higher paycheck will translate into higher profits. Well, it does. For the short period of time prior to bankruptcy after mismanagement. Just like the whole country unable to continue maintaining infrastructure due both to lack of materials and money, so too are corporate assets allowed to decay due to lack of upkeep. And that is just willful neglect. Add in purposefully stripping the copper wiring from the structure for faster decay ).

Middle management is increasingly squeezed to eliminate positions, but by necessity every company still must employ extra layers of management to deal with the Frankenstein creation of mindless drones filling all chairs. So much cover your ass and job security creation retards real work that nobody can do anything without extra bureaucracy. Another added cost. How many jobs are needed just because politicians and lawyers helped create them? The entire medical industry is nothing but a profit center for litigators and Medicare bureaucrats. Run a business lean and mean? Right. So many carrion eaters are trying to wet their beaks on your back that you don’t stand a chance in hell. I could go on and on, but I think the point is made. Too much debt, a shrinking customer base as unemployment is your new job, too much competition from overpopulation, as well as increasing costs as more mouths compete for less resources and the end of the robot revolution. Profits? Faggitaboutit.

END

Monday, February 6, 2017

peak profit 2

PEAK PROFIT 2

At least five economic issues have resulted from the end of high energy oil. Each issue adds to and increases all the other issues. Added debt, less customers, more competition, Automation Peak and costs have increased. All together make for Peak Profit. The first, added debt, has been Business As Usual for the last thirty years. The difference is that back then, debt was good. Or, I should say, it was profitable. The problem of course is that most guys running corporations are as dumb as a box of rocks ( and the gals desperately trying to out machismo them, as they lack any kind of testosterone producing testicles, act even stupider as they vainly try to build something without the proper tools in the box ) and being Type A personalities, they double down on stupid since they cannot ever admit to failure. Once the central banker paradigm broke down give or take ten years ago, business didn’t try to get out of debt but kept getting into more and more. Partially, because they are idiots, because they blindly follow the accepted business model, and partially because if you believe yourself incapable of making a mistake you’ll never think to change your behavior. You and me, we see the hole getting deeper we stop shoveling. These guys just puff out their chest and dig harder and faster ( me Ug! Me strong! ).

When extra energy isn’t added to the system, and interest cannot be paid, loans cannot be made. But bankers need more loans to stay profitable. So SOME loans are continued, mostly to government and big corporations. Large companies might not be profitable, but they can pay the interest at least ( as long as interest rates stay low, obviously ). Companies buy back their shares to inflate the value of the outstanding stocks, giving the illusion of profitability and keeping the stock market inflated. CEO cash-outs are profitable, and the new suckers investing pay into the Ponzi scheme for paying the loans on the share buy-backs. A better bad bet than trying to sell a good product. But, as you might have noted occasionally as you took out too many Payday loans, too much debt can dictate all spending and all decisions. All that debt you used to buy back stock or buy other companies so as to cash out on the previously widely appreciated brand name, in time it adds up to the point you simply cannot make a profit to save your life.

Less customers is obvious. Less employment equals less money for customers to spend. At times I actually wonder if the fudged employment numbers-5% at a time that no jobs are available and no one you know actually works makes for a VERY unbelievable number except for idiots like Beck and Limbaugh who think the unemployed are simply parasites ( because, you know, if everybody started their own radio talk show serving as the elites propaganda piece, nobody would be unemployed )- are not for the 99% living in the trenches but for the idiot corporate types. They can’t see that money for consumption is shrinking so they help keep the system from failing as quickly ( the herd helping to profit the top tier mustn’t alter course ). Anyway, unemployment needn’t stay at the previous ‘08+ levels of 25% to have the same effect. Since far more folks are UNDERemployed, you still have enough idiots taking home a paycheck to forestall any uncomfortable Lamp Post List implementation. Of course, when you don’t work enough hours you can’t exactly buy too much, now can you?

Going globally, look at another effect of grain inflation and shortages. When you are already poor-real poor as in not enough to eat, not American poor as in not enough disposable income to buy enough crack cocaine-and grain prices double, are you going to eat even less calories or stop buying goods from China? Granted, this was never the Next Great Profit Center corporations looked forward to, but it adds to the First World job loss acting in concert to damper profits. But I’d imagine that even in BRIC countries this has been a serious factor contributing to Peak Profit. All those one billion Indians working the phones trying to explain to an American why their latest screw job is now company policy, they aren’t turning out to be as good of consumers as hoped. First, some uneducated Dot Not Feather dude is smarter than most Americans with sixteen years of school, and they actually buy precious metals for saving rather than just consume money to avoid inflation. Second, new consumer BRIC paradises were idiotic from their very conception.

What part of finite planet don’t they understand in their quest for infinite growth? Back in the ‘90’s, you could read about how if every consumer in China drank an extra beer or two, you’d exceed the worlds grain supply just for that one item. How hard is it to extrapolate from there? Evidently, from the Fracking Fags and the other optimists out there, very hard indeed. Just remember, if you call yourself a prepper, you still actually have to make the right decisions to survive. Just the title itself isn’t magic. Not like with Papists who go to Heaven regardless of behavior. And you know what? Corporate types have no damn excuse for their ignorance. Henry Ford, that lovable anti-Semitic social engineer that everyone in business loves all to pieces after he successfully turned biologic units into machine cogs, he himself warned your workers needed enough wages to buy the product they manufactured. Why isn’t he being listened to? Evidently you cannot pay heed to your Prophets when Peak Profits have become the new normal. Continued tomorrow with the last three of the five contributing factors in profits taking a big squishy.

END

Friday, February 3, 2017

peak profit part 1

PEAK PROFIT

Note: part three of the last posted article, “Flee In 30 Days”, will continue after this article series ends. What can I say? I got excited about this one.

A hat tip to a loyal minion for the suggestion for this article idea. As yet another indicator that the old ways of doing business are over and gone, we now come across Peak Profit. I was moaning in a decidedly non-provocative manner about how I was completely confused why every swinging cheese dingus shoe manufacturer out there insists that I am only able to purchase either complete crap or ultra expensive two weeks wages footwear ( as opposed to shoes that cost you half a days wages and lasted, literally, ten times longer than the ones costing three times as much today. The ultra expensive ones are what is needed to equal the cheap ones of yesteryear in longevity. A fifty dollar pair lasts six months and a $300 pair is, supposedly, going to last you the five years you used to see for $25 ). I’m still fuming about it, and as you know I’ll pick at the scab of an idea for eons until I decipher the what-how’s and what-for’s. I don’t promise that this is the last rumination on the subject, however, so kindly refrain from any celebratory excitement.

For those of us that spent hundreds or thousands of hours studying Peak Oil, it turns out to be surprisingly disappointing that nothing is turning out how we envisioned. We aren’t running out of oil, we ran out of high BTU oil. We aren’t seeing economic contraction through lack of oil, but low prices as a result of both petroleum producer bankruptcies caused by lack of demand and economic failure from the end of high EROEI oil taking down the banking system ( if you want a highly technical and detailed explanation of this, you can read The Druid Dude and the Internet posts that turned into his economics book ). Products aren’t getting more expensive and decreasing in quality because oil is scarce, but because the first casualty of the Low EROI was employment. We are seeing a repeat of the Great Depression as far as a consumer economy goes. The difference this time is that while we lack jobs just as before, we also lack resources, most unlike before. We used the last of the higher ( not High, just Higher, because oil has been Low and Getting Lower BTU for nearly fifty years. It finally went to a tripping point ) energy oil to strip mine miniscule ore ( high levels of rock with low levels of ore-as opposed to the opposite since the Agricultural Age started. Since we used up all the high concentrate ore discoveries we had to burn increasing amounts of oil to get the remaining ore. As we all know, there are thousands of times the amount of gold on land in sea water. Since it is so diffuse, it is never going to be economically feasible to extract it. Apply that observation to most of our ore supply on land now ).

Just don’t confuse the last Great Depression with this one. Then, we had most of the worlds gold to confiscate, as well as our own citizens. We had lakes of oil so vast we had to regulate its release onto the market. We had food supplies so vast we had to destroy a lot of it to keep prices from going even further below cost of production. We had abundance of everything ( except population ). So abundant that we had to fight a global war to destroy most of our surplus. Not only did we put nearly ten percent of our population in uniform, as well as staff all production centers with women, we supplied all our own needs AND almost all of the Allies ( Russia’s vast surpluses could not easily be tapped with their infrastructure disrupted and we gave those crusty commie bastards a LOT of war material. We then doubled down on that waste fighting them during the Cold War. Then they became our buddies because they had the oil they DIDN’T burn in the world war to sell to us as we began running out. All pointing to the retarded-ness of our leaders ). We could build THOUSANDS of naval ships and tens of thousands of aircraft. None of which we can do today.

Oil caused the first Great Depression from its over abundance, and now after we readjusted our economy to run on that oil, lack of that KIND of oil is causing this Great Depression. Before, lack of jobs caused by lack of demand caused by over production was remedied by destroying the surplus through war. Today, we don’t have any kind of surplus. Just lack of demand caused by lack of jobs, coupled with overcapacity of production. Just not enough to create employment. Just because we aren’t using all our oil or ore doesn’t mean we have an abundance of it. It just means what we have left is unaffordable to those unemployed. Which is most of us. But oil/energy is just the root cause. Now let’s turn to the economic problems that was caused by lower BTU energy, which just causes a perfect storm. A negative feedback loop. We have us five basic issues, economically speaking.

1) added debt

2) less customers

3) more competition

4) Peak Automation

5) increasing costs

These were all issues that were nullified while the oil supply increased. A perfect way to easily understand energy and the economy is to watch “Crash Course”. You can buy the DVD for $8 or watch it free on You-Tube. It is just a low production, still picture with commentary, but it is simply beautiful in its clarity and simple explanations. In short, if you create money and charge interest on it, you must have more energy coming in every year to pay the interest which is an increasing cost. Without that energy, game over. We are living in the opening to mid phases of that, with the final end of that game coming along very shortly ( by all indicators-just keep in mind only a moron tries to time the collapse. One almost wonders if Y2K, if not simply a game played to keep the Tech Bubble inflating, wasn’t a False Flag to propagandize us into never panicking early again. Buys the elite extra time during the real collapse ). We continue next time with those five economic problems.

END

Thursday, February 2, 2017

flee in 30 days part 2

FLEE IN 30 DAYS part 2

When you are trying to leave the Rat Race, buying land has some unique problems. It has to be cheap, close to town to compensate for lack of a motor vehicle and with low property tax. When that land also serves as a crash pad for the economic crash, you must add in distance from people and access to nearby surface water ( I don’t place fertile farm land on the list. You store the one thing difficult to farm on a small plot-grain-and you can raise veggies and eggs on the worst land. Wheat costs $100 for a years worth of calories and does away with the requirement for rare soil and excess water. You spend more than that in a month on cable and cell phones. But everyone is holding out for twenty acres and a mule, hence never leaving their city. Methinks they aren’t too serious about surviving ). With the 30 Day Plan, you can try to factor in all these requirements, and you should, but they are not critical. You can make marginal payments on the land if you keep in the rat race. As well as have the motor vehicles for commuting. And have a larger property tax. You have a broader amount of land to pick from.

So, you aren’t trying to finance $150k for a boonies survival retreat, nor are you stuck on a $3k piece of desert in a state you don’t care for. I’d say a good rule of thumb is to buy land equal to the average automobile price, if two of you are working and you aren’t excessively in debt ( otherwise, you might have no choice but to go low end ). Again, this is far from perfect. But you went from a mortgage of $150k to that of $15k. Or, you went from renting to buying. As long as the buying cost is lower than the renting, of course. Nor do you even need to buy land. If you move from a $600 a month apartment to a $300 a month trailer space rental, you are still ahead of the game. That way, you can move anywhere you desire. And since a lot of RV parks are out in the boonies, there is a bit of a bonus. It simply increases your options-it is not a perfect or preferred method. And granted, it probably doesn’t make sense if you need to make payments on the trailer. Better to tent camp and build as cash comes in. But if you already have an RV, or can get one cheap, it is another way you can go. It certainly doesn’t leave you any excuses why you haven’t moved. All you need is a hitch and some fuel ( just beware a lot of RV parks are being greedy whores and only want Social Security pukes parking there. They put a maximum age on the trailer to ensure poor workers don’t have this rental option ).

This is just one of the myriad of ways that the poor are confined to their reservations. Try not to fight that trend. You could work a solid honorable job, rescue kittens or volunteer as a firefighter in your spare time, but if you are poor some fat worthless lawyer or a Yuppie Bitch spreading her legs for the lions share of the husbands paycheck will look down on you like you are a dog turd smeared on their shoe. Stay away from the better off so as not to become one of their targets. They know people who know people in City Hall. In other words, keep to your own tribe. Which usually also means, beware the advice most survival guru’s give. It is geared towards the Yuppie Scum. If you are not worthy because you can’t afford their advice, they don’t need your patronage. You probably have more to spend on them, seeing as how you aren’t in debt for a retreat and retreat bug out vehicles, but that is not how they look at it. Anyway, back on subject. Moving is the hardest aspect of vastly improving your percentage of disposable income, and the advantage of improving your location. And you’ve done it enough so that it isn’t too strenuous or mysterious. Move, already.

You don’t have to live in a well funded property tax suburb to have your kids in a better school. Move to a state that allows home schooling, or baring that you know perfectly well that a small town is probably much safer than a big city school regardless of money spent per pupil. So you can’t use the kids as an excuse. And don’t listen to them whine about leaving old friends. Kids are some of the most fickle unloyal little conehead bastards around. They’ll make new friends. They just are trying to avoid undesirable change. We all hate change-it is in our DNA from the time it might have meant danger. We are still in a high enough energy economy ( most of the issue is that we aren’t in anywhere near as HIGH FLOW of an energy economy as it was designed for. But we still have enough surplus to make stupid decisions based on change and have a sufficient cushion to rescue ourselves ).

Family nearby? A false sense of security, as nobody has the means to help those in need, not even family. And a false sense of happiness as most families has everybody working and they are all on different schedules and nobody sees anybody anymore. With nearly free mail, e-mail, cheap long distance, Facebook messages and Skype connections, why do you need to live in the same area? Again, excuses. Almost finished with retirement and must stay put? Why aren’t you paying for land now, so retirement lacks that expense? If you are living in a house that is, or almost is, paid for, yet you don’t feel safe living there any longer than you have to, why pretend you are forced to stay there because of the money you’ve already paid? Do you stress about the money you’ve paid all these years on cell phones? For food? For cars? You don’t desperately hold on to cars that are paid for, do you? Of course not. You get rid of the piece of crap and get another. You don’t look at them as investments, but consumables. Well, sorry, but houses are the same way. With the property tax you pay, and the commuting you do, and the deteriorating surrounding areas ( blight, pollution, crime ), how can you call that an investment? It was always just an ill-considered expense. Better late than never to make better choices. Move, already. Continued tomorrow.

END

Wednesday, February 1, 2017

flee in 30 days part 1

FLEE IN 30 DAYS

This is not advice on bugging out in the traditional sense. You must anticipate events and leave early. You are, in effect, giving notice at work and leaving your area and moving to another. All aboveboard and legitimate like millions do every year with nothing doomer or prepper or panicker related as far as everyone knows. This is a condensed time version of the six month plan on leaving the rat race and prepping at the same time. Since it is accomplished in a months time you must plan far more carefully since you won’t have as much income to invest in things. Also, being a one month plan this should meet with the approval of the spouse. It isn’t so much a “get out of debt” plan as a “relocate to a cheaper and safer place” plan. You’ll still be looking for a job and living as close to possible as normal, to also win the approval of said spouse. It has a higher rate of success since you are working closer to the approved middle class paradigm. You can keep a car and other effects. You’ll still be tied to the “normal” world as per the wife’s wishes and be much safer and better prepared as per yours ( for newbies here, yes, I understand some gals lead in the preppers ball dance, but are rare. So the males viewpoint predominates here. Don’t mistake for misogynist tendencies. If I were to always refer to gals as Bitches & Ho’s [ “Boys In The Hood“ movie reference ], then you could make that assumption ).

Okay, all of us seriously into preparedness have long term goals. One of which, inevitably, is moving out of the city to the boonies. And while I would love to live in the boonies, if you are like me you need a job. And, probably also just like me, you aren’t a super educated professional ( since I’m far too analytical and not at all responsive in a timely manner, I deemed my only quasi-professional training and experience as a LEO to be an incorrect career path and settled for lower end management which isn’t professional at all but simple OJT capable ) who can work out of his home. The boonies isn’t conducive for employment for most of us ( also, remember that any job that can be conducted from your home can simply be transferred to another country when your boss needs to save money, so beware outsourcing of your telecommuting career if you are redoubt bound ). So you settle for as small of a city or town as possible and live outside that where land is cheaper.

Once affordable land meets employment location, you have a place to move to, outside of your present hellhole one. Is it a perfect location? Of course not. The boonies is best. But once you start on the road towards acquiring Only The Best Because My Life Is Worth It, you’ll find you can’t afford anything and you sit and rot where you lay dreaming. Conversely, once you start thinking in terms of Better Than Nothing, whole worlds of possibilities open to you. So, find a place you can still work but on affordable land. This is the hardest part of the process. You have two weeks to find a place ( but no pressure! ). Hey, I thought we were fleeing in a month. You find a piece of junk land and they get an overnight money order for the down payment, then you put in your two week notice at work to quit. The whole time, you are setting aside next months rent as your moving fund ( and, if you are lucky, awaiting that tax return. I just got my W2, and I have to sit on it. I’m a whole $184 over the maximum wage insofar as the health care penalty. I’ll wait and see if Trump actually repels that fee. Good thing I don’t need the money right away ).

Land is both easier and harder to find than it was ten years ago when I acquired mine. It is harder in that it is no where near as cheap, but easier in that a whole lot more companies sell it besides E-Bay now. Just Google the area you want for raw land for sale. You can also find tax delinquent sales a lot easier now, with everybody being online. Just beware the law that allows nine years grace period for the former owner to pay you the tax amount and reclaim the land. This is a federal law ( I believe “The Soldiers And Sailors Act” ) which might supersede your local county/state law. The former owner probably doesn’t care if you put a dwelling on it, or your problems with having to move. It is a potential problem but a low probability event. Also, beware strange state laws. For example, in Arkansas, if someone squats on your vacant land X number of years they get claim to it ( or so rumor has it ). There are other potential issues such as mineral rights and whatnot, but rather than extensively research all that my solution was merely to buy cheap enough land ( and more than one parcel in the area ) I could give it up if needed. And the Big Kahuna, be especially careful on the zoning laws, property taxes and HOA’s.

I bought land in 2005, a time of wild economic upswings, merely for unemployment purposes ( the crippling child support made rent the big killer even at higher income levels ). In mid 2006 I started getting Spider Sense tingling telling me I needed to get the heck out of Dodge ( although, to be fair, it wasn’t so much clairvoyance as it was rent going up 10% a year. I could have been experiencing subconscious warning from processing all the economic news, but I honestly can’t claim credit for it ). At that time I gave away our junker travel trailer to a needy family and packed up the Hippie Bread Van and drove up to my current location. The land was paid for but in a location I couldn’t commute from all winter long. So I slunk back to Carson City ( Elko is my current abode in the great state of Nevada-again, for any newbies ) and parked the van under a tree to live and found another job. Two years later, after getting two more lots on time payments ( a long story ), lots much closer to town so worth the price as my bicycle was my commute, I moved back up permanently. The point being, I never waited until the last minute to decide to move. I avoided the rush by panicking early. I got to my location just prior to the economic meltdown. This is what you’ll need to strive for. Continued tomorrow.

END