nary a drop to drink 2 of 3

NARY A DROP TO DRINK 2

For the American West as a whole, you have a giant desert.  One area has sufficient rainfall, and then you have the coast up from San Francisco.  All others between that strip and to the Continental Divide-again, more often than not, the exceptions proving the rule- are not suitable for farming except for mass energy infrastructure dams and their irrigation or deep well pumping.  You can rule out the Federal dam structures, many past their prime and subject to failures due to budgetary constraints ( down stream from a dam?  Don’t be ), at least long term.  And wells?  You can put more into drilling one than buying a house, but you have no control over new neighbors moving in and sucking off the same aquifer.  You might run out of water before the mortgage is paid ( ask the Texas farmers and ranchers ).  More importantly, aside from the debt and money issue, is long term viability.  You want to live through the Apocalypse with the nearest non-well water source hundreds of miles away?  I can see a relatively shallow well, with few neighbors and few prospects of future growth, in addition to a manual draw system, but I can’t recommend no other source of water.

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If you are contemplating moving to the desert, I think your number one rule is, do NOT rely on a well for your primary water source.  Surface water and rain catchment only.  If you don’t wish to live like a savage, and the wife insists on more than a three gallon a day water allotment, it is cheap as hell to just haul water, dump it in a tank and pump it with 12v.  If you are driving to work anyway.  To me, $60 a foot well drilling is a complete waste of money ( granted, your area might be $40 as most companies in my area are suckling at the gold mine’s teat and can’t be bothered dropping the price for mere civilians, but even a 100 foot well at that lower price is ten times the cost of a plastic tank for your truck, AND one for your home [if freezing is an issue, just bury the sucker and cover with insulation] ).  After the electric outages deny you town water, you have your back-up catchment and your nearby surface water.

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At one time I had a lot in northern Arizona, bought at some ridiculously cheap price like $300.  It was my first lot, if I’m not mistaken, and it was my homelessness insurance.  But it certainly wasn’t my retreat location.  The closest surface water was not only seasonal, it was twenty miles away.  If you feel safe doing that on rain water alone, more power to you.  I didn’t.  Which is really a shame as directly moving there would have saved me much toil and treasure.  Not that I’m unhappy at my present location.  If I had moved to Arizona I think I’d be having several nervous breakdowns there, the place is outpacing most of the rest of the West besides California for ecological/overpopulation collapse.  My point is that ideally you want a home near water, as skimpy as it may be, as long as it is year round.  Food is far easier to hoard and do without an immediate second source than water is.  But you don’t need an insane amount of that water, either.  Five or six gallons a day, if watched carefully and utilized intelligently, is enough for hot weather hydration, cooking, dishwashing, bathing and clothes washing.  If you have transport or food animals, you’ll need surface water, period.  Rain catchment is for immediate isolation while waiting for the die-off to complete itself ( it won’t be long-the entire globe is oil dependent and transports nearly all its food great distances-a recipe for widespread quick collapse ).  Horses or even just goats need more water than you can catch, so don’t plan on a well for them, or raising them with alternate energy.  They are for after the die-off.  If you have them now, and use a well, it isn’t an impossible situation ( except perhaps financially ), but you had better have a back-up source of water they can rely on.

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On rain catchment, if you live in a monkey molesting overly socialist People Paradise that bans it, such as Oregon or Colorado, I would suggest telling them to bite your ass and move out post haste.  If you are in a well watered area, it isn’t a huge deal.  If you are in the desert section, it is only your life they are screwing with.  Oh, but hey, our little buddy The Northern Idahoan Survivalist Guru likes such locations as Oregon, with all its Hippies and communists ( don’t get me wrong, I have little love for Capitalists, but at least with Mammon Worshipers I can throw down a bit of silver and scurry away.  With communists, they are never satisfied unless you can honestly prove to them you are happy they are screwing you.  It is a matter of degree of fear and hate on my part ).  Don’t misunderstand me, I’m happy he doesn’t like Nevada-I have more than enough neighbors and don’t need any Yuppie Scum Survivalists moving into these parts.  But, really?  Oregon and Washington?  The dry parts and those downwind of massive nuclear waste collections?  Those are preferred lifestyle choices?  In what insane universe?  Are there already enough survivalists in northern Idaho and he prefers the poor riff-raff proletariat masses to relocate to the crappy parts in other states?

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Anyway, the desert is fine for you and me, po’ boys.  We don’t expect a retreat to have woods and streams and concrete bunkers and farm fields.  You know who else had all those except the bunkers?  Confederate civilians.  All those locations fared poorly when Sherman went marching ( Grant, proving that anyone on a piece of Federal currency except the ones favored by free market drug dealers is a centralist punk, used the homely analogy to describe his strategy as “I’ll hold down the cat and Sherman will skin it” ).  Just saying.  The desert looks mighty inviting when it isn’t targeted by centralist agriculturalist empires.  Tomorrow, lets wrap it up with feeding yourself without much water.

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