Monday, November 17, 2014

bulls-eye 5


BULLS-EYE 5

It wasn’t until about article #3 in this series I realized this would have made a great booklet if I’d doubled the word count in each section.  I probably won’t subject you to a rewrite but rather just do so in addition to the regular daily blog article and then let you know when I have the completed manuscript.  You won’t really need to buy the thing, as the important parts have been covered here.  As usual, it will be a means of showing support rather than me holding out for your cash before I gave you priceless info.  The next booklet will be on biking for transport, so gird your loins for that upcoming rehash.

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The last ring on the target, the furthest from the bulls-eye, the last thing you want to worry about, is in some ways the most expensive and for that reason placed here.  None of it is strictly necessary, but it sure will make things more pleasant and add more depth to your preps.  Here we include semi-auto weapons, precious metals, gardening, rain catchment, in depth supplies and a library.  You know how I feel about semi-auto’s.  A fast one way ticket to a very expensive plastic club as you will, 99% of you NOT trained in high stress fire discipline, deplete your ammunition way too quick.  Of course, semi’s can come in really handy a lot of times and if you plan on those at the beginning of the collapse so as to not surrender tactical parity ( those too poor to afford them are well advised to hide out until their slower loading arms have retaken the battlefield ), you’ll be glad to have them and unconcerned with the cost afterwards ( of course, it is still a good idea to hide away through the die-off even if you have a Maxim machinegun and a warehouse of ammo.  Folks tend to get hurt in armed conflict ).  They aren’t the talisman most associate them with, magically transferring combat superiority as if a machine can replace skill and experience, but they can give you a nice needed edge all other things being equal.

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Precious metals are far from necessary.  The main reason to hold silver is so that regardless of inflation you can afford to still pay property tax at the ass end of the economic collapse ( but BEFORE the die-off.  Come that, PM’s quickly lose any utility until centuries later after the Dark Age when trade starts back up- I hate to break it to you but in an energy contraction in an overpopulated soil depleted area, which means globally now, there will be zero trade ).  After that, it becomes a homing device for theft, so I wouldn’t bother with it.  Gardening is great, but far overrated since it too will invite invasion.  And it isn’t even anything but a practice lot for farming anyway.  Since the best strategy, if you can’t afford a mega mountaintop concrete bunker, is to await the die-off and THEN find a choice farming spot, gardening is useful practice but no reason to spend oodles and gobs of extra money for your house location.  Which is there because of carbon fuels and usually nothing else and is NOT worth spending your labor compensation on since it won’t survive past the Oil Age.  Rain catchment should be #2 or #3 in your water supply, so it can wait until you can afford it.  It is needed, but you always pick the cheapest way at first to be prepped, then improve later.  Not the other way around like most folks do.  In depth supplies are just a lot more of everything-never stop bulk buying wheat as it’s a better barter item than most everything else due to its daily necessity and its extremely low current cost and future very high cost.  And a library, well, how can knowledge in printed form ever be a bad thing?  Not lowest common denominator books but specialized knowledge prioritizing old school skills.

END

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18 comments:

  1. Traditional row-crop gardening or farming is a crap ton of work without mechanized equipment and potentially poses the risks you discuss. Learning to grow food that does not look like food to most people has more value if your preparing for tough times. Mix in root veggies and herbs here and there in amongst the weeds. Grow some grains that people don't recognize as traditional grains. Not a substitute for bulk calories, but it helps round out the diet a bit.

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  2. Ok, forget gardening and learn wild edibles, never go as hungry again. Poodle shooters, don't waste your money, there will be plenty sitting around with no ammo. so buy extra ammo that goes with them, once you aquire one youll be set. Lying low is your best bet, let the fools kill each other over the last case of pabst blue ribbon. LOL! peace

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  3. hmmm....
    As always magnificently Maned Dakin is mostly right.
    BUT- I would move rain catchment up to ring #2 if not #1.
    You are going to have to rely on sky water at some point.
    Trekking to town to transport water? it will work for a bit, or to supplement your sky water, but relying on it is stupid.
    Stores of water? can and will go bad faster than most shelf stable foods - a filter might (or might not) restore them but why wait.
    Any body of water that you intend to get access to off your property is liable to be a choke point for bandits or government taxes, and liable to become chemically polluted as well.

    A simple tarp hung over a 55 gallon barrel may be all you need for make do rain catchment. But why not spend the money now to get a more secure, usable, and sustainable, long term system? They are cheap as compared to a well or other on property source of water (pond, stream, spring, etc - will all hugely increase the costs of any land you want to buy). But rain fall is everywhere.
    Funnel it to a cistern, and purify it as you need it.
    Done.

    Water is required to live. Gutters and water tight containers are cheap. get those basic parts of rain catching working and add to them in rings 2+. Don't carry water to and from town every day (except _maybe_, purified drinking water).

    If you have a well, spring, or other water on your land, you can guarantee that everyone in miles of you place knows about it. It will be stolen or used against you if you don't have a backup. But who looks twice at a gutter? especially if it looks like it just goes into a storm drain (aka your buried cistern)...

    Cistern and rainfall collection are the perfect backup. *its hard to poison the sky for long*. Fiberglass screen mesh, clean washed playground sand, charcoal aquarium filters, can be added on cheaply enough, and even made sustainable.

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    Replies
    1. If you are in a well watered area, no one pays attention to a pond or stream you have. In the desert, they WILL pay attention to rain catchment. Just depends where you live.

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    2. True, but I think what he is saying is that it is relatively easy to funnel the water off your roof to a buried container. You could even add a little faux-spout peace where the pipe goes into the ground to conceal what is going on.

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    3. Exactly. Even in in Las Vegas houses have gutters on them, seldom used or cleaned but they are there unnoticed. just redirect a down spout from your own roof toward an apparent storm drain (actually a buried cistern) and start collecting rain fall. Its not hard. and as long as you don't go overboard building pre-filters, rain barrels, etc., above ground where everyone can see most people wont notice a thing... I have a friend in Vegas who uses part of his roof run off to water his garden when it rains. It is in his back yard, and is just a screen mesh over a big barrel (under the down spout of the gutter that was already there) that has a spigot and hose on the bottom.
      He doesn't use it much, it is dry much of the year, but he saved the cost of the parts, from using it to water his tiny garden in just one season.

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    4. My plans when it comes to looting would feature gutters and drain pipes near the top of the list. I assumed I wouldn't be the only one.

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  4. Scouted out some land this weekend James.

    Found a nice, level, heavily wooded 1 acre lot. Remote; no nearby neighbours, and backs up to federal land.

    $1500.00, but a closing cost of around $700, so around $2200.00 when all is said and done.

    Does this seem like a good deal?

    Wayne

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    Replies
    1. You haven't already bought it? I'd buy it for that price, and I don't even know what state its in.

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    2. Bullseye 5 11 17 14

      Modoc county James, in far North Eastern CA. The third least populated county in the state, and fewer than 10,000 people in the entire county.
      I mentioned it to my prick boss, and he made it seem like the biggest waste of my funds, and an absolutely terrible investment, in spite of the low cost. He suggested that I finance something for a $100k plus, like "everyone else" does. I'm really starting to hate that bastard. I suppose that it's in the best interest of his kind, for my kind to remain in debt, and as such, in his servitude for my remaining days.

      Delete
    3. You know how I feel about my home state, and I'd STILL buy it. You get water and trees and it costs 1/3 what my desert hovel spot did. Buy it!

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  5. Books on the 'outer' ring?? F*#k no! I would die without books. They are 'essential' in the literal sense. I am a connoisseur of words. That is why I read you.

    Get one of the cheapo plastic bag vacuum seal units for food and use 'em for your paperbacks. Then pack 'em in an ammo can and bury 'em if ya have to.

    Books come after food and water, but before clothing and shelter.

    When Ya'll are looting Walmart and Target after the Rag-Heads nuke us, I will be looting the bookstores and the libraries. With nary any resistance. The post-apoc bookstore owner will be one of the Big Chiefs after a year or two. Food, Sex, Medicine, and Books will be the big four after the balloon goes up. Guns and ammo will not be traded at all. People who have them will not part with them for any price. Would you??

    Get books!

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    Replies
    1. Since this is a technical library, a rebuild lo-tech library, it isn't exactly a cuddle up by the fire to enjoy set of books. You can e-book most of those for free, and you should as a BTN. When you can afford, you paper version. Which is why they went to the outer ring

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    2. We'll have to split the book looting Anon!
      Tech related books (like water harvesting) make it closer to my inner most ring than the finely haired Bison has on his rings...
      But then I have more resources ($) than Bison does, too.

      Delete
  6. Re: e-book technical library

    Instead of hoarding paper books in ring 2, multiple redundant e-book readers and multiple removable media copies of the important ebooks, sealed in plastic with dessicant and buried in ammo cans above the water line. I like paper books, especially printed on modern water-resist paper like rite-in-the-rain (which is easy to annotate with pencil). Always consult with Soviet-era college-educated Russian immigrants about "how would 1960's SovUnion do this?". Nicest example is writing instrument in space: Astronauts had Space Pen, Cosmonauts used pencils. Modern way would be "Ask Indian Space Probe engineer how to do a thing", and the answer will be Cheap (the opposite of NASA).
    Modoc is almost in outer space. Get a flat tire and a bad spare and see how much and how far you go to get fixed. It's where you go to hide out and live down your unfortunate non-violent felony conviction.

    pdxr13

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    Replies
    1. Cosmonauts bought the same space pen from the same company NASA bought from....NASA got a pretty good bulk discount too.

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    2. But NASA paid for R&D and most likely the price of the pen didn't reflect that. Unless they were $1k each, I have no idea

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  7. "Modoc is almost in outer space. Get a flat tire and a bad spare and see how much and how far you go to get fixed. It's where you go to hide out and live down your unfortunate non-violent felony conviction."

    Yes, it's quite remote, no doubt about it. There's a definite trade off to be sure. But it was the only place that I was able to find the type of land in CA that I wanted within my price range. I wasn't even able to find desert within this price range.

    Of the three people that I dealt with while I was there, the realtor, the motel owner, and the tow truck driver (Accidentally locked myself out of my car; fortunately I have AAA) all three were very pleasant.

    The other consideration is that few realtors in CA will list such low priced land. This is the type of land that ordinarily, you would have to scout out on your own, then find out through county records who owns it, and send out letters to various owners enquiring as to whether or not they may wish to part with it?

    Will need to get a Verizon phone though, as my AT&T phone lacks much coverage for the area. And there are literally stretches of highway at a 100 miles plus, where I have very little to no coverage with my current provider, and there is nothing but high desert as far as the eye can see. Break down out there, and you would truly be screwed! :shock:


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