Saturday, December 16, 2017

tools of the devil 3 of 3


TOOLS OF THE DEVIL 3

Again, there isn’t anything inherently wrong with the tools the devil endorses.  Being the devil, we know he is up to no good.  Expensive tools make money for advertisers who pay survivalist gurus.  If I were to hawk war surplus guns, at most I would get a mail order company which sold their spare parts.  But if I tell you that only semi-auto guns hold any value for the apocalypse then I get magazine, red dot scope, tactical slings, gear vests, all the purveyors of the equipment that we are preached to need in order to survive, all that and more for advertisers.

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Not only that, but the majority of “experts” have no critical thinking abilities and parrot what the old gurus advocated.  With the devil, you aren’t supposed to be able to win.  But just because they are tools of His trade doesn’t make them all inherently evil.  You can pick and choose wisely.  Just like going into a store and ONLY buying the loss leaders.  Just like wisely sorting through pennies ( pre-’82 are the mostly copper ) or at best buying silver, rather than the gold you are told you must have.  Like realizing that a bag of jerky and some Top Ramen, along with oatmeal packs and peanut butter, are a far better bargain than MRE’s-marginally better nutrition, far more filling and far cheaper per calorie, with the bonus of actually having fiber.

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The trick is to use the Yuppie Tools sparingly rather than believing them to be the primary tool.  Modifying them to your budget AND situation.  I had some jag-off sell me a book on frugal survival whose solution was to recommend the cheapest AR, the cheapest freeze-dried.  All the least expensive Yuppie Scum Survivalist tools.  No, giant bag of dingus’, I want the most affordable tool, not the least expensive of the far too pricey.  I won’t miss the five bucks, but I sure do chaff to this day that it put food into his oxygen wasting hole. 

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Is there a place for MRE’s?  Certainly.  If spending $7 a meal is your idea of a Good Time Charlie, by all means.  If you are spending $4 on a pound of meat to make jerky anyway, it isn’t a huge stretch to go to $7.  I’d rather have all the meat rather than fillers for the same price, but I also know most people think they need variety.  Which is where learning how to cook comes in.  You can have variety with the same ingredients if you learn how to prepare them differently.  What’s the old joke ( I think by George Lopez )?  Listing all the different Mexican foods, enchiladas and tacos and burritos and such, he said the same thing ( tortillas and beans, basically ). 

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The first initial days or weeks of the die-off, you will be rather busy.  Dodging gunfire, putting out fires, pulling your hair realizing you were in fact an idiot for not moving out of the city.  The time to learn to cook is later, and the time to actually cook at all is later.  MRE’s deliver a familiar food in a time of high stress, with no labor which you might not have time for, and it is high octane fuel.  It will also teach you quite painfully in the toilet how important complex carbs are.  As for freeze dried, I have serious doubts on them delivering anywhere close to the taste you are used to, but sometimes for some they are the better way of storing butter and meat ( foods you need for optimal performance when you become the machine ).

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It will be all fine and dandy to stock your pantry with wet canned meat ( if you are a good minion and buy my next book I talk about home canned verses freeze dried.  $3 verses $10 a pound ) and canned butter and buckets of wheat.  But for your fall back cache, freeze dried can have its place.  You can backpack it up, it takes little space and weighs less ( except the #10 can of wheat, which is $2.22 a pound verses 22 cents a pound from the feed store.  You pay a LOT for that metal can and shipping ).  If you can stomach the slop, Wal-Mart has freeze dried camping meals which are more expensive than even MRE’s, but are far more compact for bugging out.

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You know I hate bugging out, but only if it is long distance and only if you need a dedicated expensive vehicle for it.  Reducing your exposure to people in a small to medium city and having a paid for retreat a reasonable back-up walking distance away is not the greatest strategy, but it is the most realistic most of have as we must relocate to work now.  It is still cheaper to pay for a commute than to buy a Redoubt property that must miraculously come with a rural job.  Next up, that retreat.  For now, more on bugging out.  You must have far more food and water than you have planned on for the known distance.

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If your journey is thirty miles, it isn’t an hour drive.  You must assume you’ll be walking as your car broke down, was stalled in traffic, or whatever.  Then, you can’t assume a day to a day and a half walking, but closer to three or four as you are delayed as you run the wrong way away from danger, detour away from potential danger, sprain an ankle, or whatever.  Freeze dried are a great way to insure against that extra time factor, without weighing yourself down. 

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As far as the Redoubt property, I have severe reservations about it ( see my book I just put out on Retreating ).  But if you do decide to live there, you don’t need three hundred thousand dollars.  You can easily do it on three grand.  Just pick the desert portion, away from power lines.  You can pick up tax delinquent property for a few hundred bucks, or buy on payments for a few thousand.  And the desert is perfect for building in or with dirt.  Just be close enough to a natural water source, as a back-up to rain catchment ( a well should be your last, not first, choice ). 

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And that concrete bunker atop a mountain?  If a recreational crack user I knew can build one on casual income, so can you.  He just bought the concrete cinder blocks as he could afford them and hand mixed the small batches of concrete for them.  Rather than a slab or concrete wall for the foundation, he just used those blocks.  It isn’t meant to last much past his lifetime ( okay, so it was a hilltop rather than atop a mountain ).  I’ve also seem Colorado land on E-Bay that wasn’t much past $100 a month, in sight of the Colorado river, way up there in elevation.  The nearest town was a few hundred folks.  I wouldn’t want to live there, but it sure is much more affordable than a place up in Idaho or Montana, isn’t it?

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No one wants you to do without the luxury items completely, if you have the means otherwise.  Just don’t go Full Retard on them.  Listen to your common sense rather than the Moneyed Interests.

END ( today's related link http://amzn.to/2BWkKjI )
 
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18 comments:

  1. James, Article on Zero Hedge originating from Peak Prosperity: "The Great Oil Swindle."
    The Tactical Must Haves are never ending once you convince yourself down that road. I know a number of guys that are basically in a never ending arms race with each other and themselves pursuing the latest and greatest: AR bolt carriers with special coatings, suppressors, constant upgrades until few original parts remain. Always another gun or accessory for far fetched scenarios.
    But a general lack of balance in preps. Sanitation, food and food production, the nuts and bolts of continued daily needs that are not far fetched - these areas get the short end of the stick.
    On the tool issue, as far as something to keep around that will save your footwear is Barge Cement. Shoemakers use it for attaching soles. It has no peer.
    The best is the Barge Cement with the orange and yellow label. There is a toulene-free version with a blue label that reportedly doesn't work as well. Although the blue label version has plenty of other chemicals you don't want to breath. Just use the orange/yellow version with excellent ventilation.
    Comes in tubes, or for the best value the 32 oz. Metal can with brush attached to lid.
    I have repaired running shoes, women's dress shoes, military boots with Vibram soles starting to loosen, and completely removed/cleaned/reattached Vibram soles to USA made Chaco sandals.
    If you do leather work (sheaths, pouches, etc.), it will meet all your gluing needs there. Tandy sells a pack of plastic applicators with a flexible paddle end that are useful for more accurate glue placement than the brush allows. They are inexpensive and reusable.
    I have a 1976 book, Shoes for Free People by David & Inger Runk. A hippie book with enough detail and foot measuring/fitting info to turn out simple shoes. This is something I haven't done however.
    Speaking of shoe books, Thomas J. Elpel in Primitive Living, Self-Sufficiency, and Survival Skills, has a section detailing making tire sandals and a simple moccasin. He wears the leather moccasins with the tire sandals.
    Steve in Fla.

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    1. Barge cement. Excellent! Never heard of it, thanks.

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    2. steve,
      many, maNY THANKS. JUST WHAT WE HAVE BEEN LOOKING FOR.
      sorry about caps, errant little finger.

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    3. Deborah, Glad the info was useful for you, stay well. Steve

      Delete
  2. http://www.bargeadhesive.com/products.html

    Appears the orange/yellow label only comes in cans with the smallest being 1 qt which costs $29.50 on amazon

    https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00ANV704U/ref=s9_acsd_hps_bw_c_x_3_w

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  3. For the record, a "Prepper" has ALL the required primary essentials for the long haul, otherwise they are just posers.

    Now, you can waste your time all day long calling them yuppie scum or whatever but since they are NOT "Preppers" (see above) why bother? - they don't exist. Kinda like, out here in Ruralville the urban gorilla's don't exist so we don't waste much time thinking about them - got more important stuff to think about.

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    1. Too many "preppers" have enough for just a natural disaster and a few weeks after, not the long haul. I think we really lack an adequate vocabulary, partially my fault as I use Prepper where I should use Survivalist. There should be "tiers" of preppers, perhaps.

      Delete
    2. Tiers of preppers- how to judge?
      Most likely by duration.
      None
      Overnight power outage
      Weekend without running water or power
      Week long on own supplies only
      Month long on own supplies only
      Season long and ready to resupply self some how
      Year of minimal survival no outside inputs
      Can handle the something like the Yellowstone eruption on what they have stored.
      Can retire and provide for all their own needs without having to have outside inputs.

      That seems to me about 7-10 tiers. How to name them gets questionable, and at the lowest level are they preppers? And at the highest are they sane, OCD, or completely flipped?

      Delete
    3. Ha! Love that last line. Thanks for the article idea-I'm stealing it.

      Delete
  4. Jim, again, nice hair. Always on the right track, these yuppers are not in the surviving game if the're not packing "enough" of the right gear. These candy-assed twinkle-toes do not have they're heads screwed on well enough to be gear queer at the expense of what makes the rest of your day livable. Rathole the hell out of can openers, sewing kits, socks-n-drawers, etc. Cheap fodder now, but valuable as the trucks stop rolling. Those low to the ground, not in quarter million dollar compounds are the ones making it out on the other side. Maybe an exercise for the minions would be to take a maxed out vacation-leave of absence, within job allowances and go guerilla in the hills to see if they got the salt to get it on as necessary. Nothing like living in the weather, eating your stash, and doing some e&e exercises to be an eyeball opener. Better some bruises now (to the egos?) Than an up side the head oh-shucks! Thanxs again.

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    Replies
    1. Camping sucks, but I can see a form of what you are suggesting. Not so much E&E, or extreme camping, but close to. The focus should be living off your supplies-throwing in the weather or lack of shelter might detract too much from that. Hmmmm. A ponderable.

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    2. If you plan to bug out, that is what you should do - in the worst possible conditions (E&E on foot). If you plan on bugging in, you should do that instead. Either way TEST what you have planned, and see if you can live the way you plan on the other side...

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  5. I purchased a 32oz can of the Barge cement about 4 or 5 years back, and still have some left. My father used it for holster and sheath making, in addition to stitching, for all of his guns and knives. I believe that my grandfather used it as well, when he worked as a cobbler during WW2 (Recall the leather and rubber rationing, making shoe repair a practical alternative; no cheap Chinese shoes back then).

    I used it to glue some soles that I made from garden tractor tires to some thin soled shoes that I had, making walking over large gravel a little less painful.

    Just make sure that you thoroughly clean the items that you glue, and try to rough them up a little with a wire brush. You have to coat both sides to be glued, then let it tack up for a little while before pressing them together. Over time, the glue in the can thickened up to a snot like consistency, but is still usable. But for this reason, I’d recommend vacuum sealing the can after opening it if at all possible.

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    1. Appreciate the life experiences-makes this stuff less on the theoretical level.

      Delete
    2. The tire soles that I glued would actually come loose after a few months time. It’s possible that I got a hold of a bad batch, or more likely that I wasn’t as thorough in cleaning the surfaces to be glued. In my opinion, a high traffic item such as a shoe sole should also be stitched, but I had no way of doing so, or rather, lacked the knowledge and tools to do so.

      The combination tire sandal/moccasin mentioned above, sounds like a pretty good idea to me. Don’t know why I never thought of that?

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    3. Hell, I never even thought of the glue.

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  6. If you haven't yet tested your mettle out there in the wilderness then you are just a poser and its a hobby. Stop talking and start doing. I hate these suggestions "preppers Light" love to say like "do a weekend without electricity" How lame is that? Try a few YEARS without electricity. Then you can test your head lamps, your clothing, you can sidle up to the nearest wolf or bear and not know they existed, you can see the stars, go night fishing, cook over fire. And when stuff runs out, catch or gather what you need, starve a few days, go without water till you're keeling over, push your body over the edge till you know you could die, then you'll know your limit, but just do it. Do something !!!. . . stop talking . . .

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    Replies
    1. Sure, if you plan on living out there, you need to become more than a beginner/novice. I'm wondering how many plan on a pure wilderness life? But point taken on doing after reading, not just talking.

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