Wednesday, April 25, 2018

syria scare 1 of 2


SYRIA SCARE
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We minions, proud and few, were helping out a brother and mentioned some media whores idea of an article about how the Oz homeland had far less gasoline reserves than normal and middle east unrest, supposedly caused by the Great Syrian Conflict, would see destitute Australians hollow eyed and rib showing without petrol and suffering inhumanely.  The Oz minion responded, something about putting the gas can stockpile on his to do list.  There were so many problems with this whole incident I simply had to write an article on it.

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In no particular order, the Syrian war is bullspit.  The height of a bubble is obvious when the activity in question is given life and death importance.  Should minions even be allowed to panic buy?  Why are we even reading mainstream media?  Isn’t just about every other country on earth much better off with public transportation than the US, and shouldn’t they be less worried because of that?  By focusing on other countries problems, are we hiding our own?  I’ll stop there, to minimize my responses to your attention span.  Let’s follow up on each point, shall we?

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A lot of people panicked and at least had a modicum of reason, when nuclear armed North Korea started saber rattling.  As the last declared bully on the block we puffed ourselves up and got uppity and tried to write a check our asses couldn’t cover ( if I was a foreign power, I wouldn’t worry too much about the US navy attacking me.  The ships would crash into each other or commercial shipping before they ever arrived ), but then it all blew over as the media rushed to cover the release of super sexy PC Star Wars or something similar, or China told the NORK’s to shut the hell up and stop disrupting trade.

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But panicking over Syria?  Are we even half way serious?  That is beyond embarrassing.  Syria might technically be part of the middle east, but it could turn into Putin’s glassed over roller hokey rink and it wouldn’t make two craps of a difference to the world energy supply situation.  If you get this worked up when a natural gas pipeline gets taken off line, I hate to see your response when something serious happens.

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I’m going to say one more thing about middle east oil and then I’ll shut up.  All these little Podunk has-been oil suppliers, on par with what Libya used to pump prior to its color revolution, don’t mean spit.  They have been pumping for eighty years or more, and a conventional oil field is pretty much depleted ( for all intents and purposes, commercially and geopolitically ) after half that time.  They are SUB marginal suppliers.  Our capacity to ascertain true risk and panic accordingly needs a lot of work.

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Next, the Idea Peak.  Do you know how to tell when an idea, meme, industry, government or organization has reached its peak of power?  Besides from the hubris and reality distortion, a good way is to see how important it is deemed.  When everybody thinks that the US alone as the world policeman allows trade to flow, you know the effectiveness of the US in that position has in fact dropped exponentially.  When all the media was agog over every daycare provider in the nation molesting its charges, the trend had already peaked and declined.  When every financial move by a company is reported and bloviated on, the company is already a zombie and nobody has noticed yet.  When a TV show is the only thing anyone talks about, it is going to nosedive shortly.

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This obsession everyone has over automobiles is an Idea Peak.  We focus on hydrogen cars, then electric cars, then ethanol cars,  treat gasoline as liquid gold, obsess over the countries that pump it, such as the puny amount from Syria, or make believe what happens there will effect every other oil producing nation, as if each of them isn’t at a critical point economically or demographically and could still show solidarity.  Once we reached the peak of concern and obsession with gasoline supply back in the 70’s, the supply started flowing again.  Today, our concern and obsession with auto’s in general ( the companies that build them, their fuel, the cost and financing, the roads that hold them, etc. ) might just be a sign that our entire auto-centric civilization is about to lose that importance we focus on.  Not a guarantee, obviously, but an observation.

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Should minions be allowed to panic buy?  By that I mean, why are any of my readers in a position of such vulnerability?  When preparedness is all broken down into such frugal terms, there are very few people indeed who cannot afford to prep.  You shouldn’t place yourself in a position of panic buying, only opportunistic stockpiling on the sale.  Okay, let’s say you live in Hawaii and you get a text telling you there are inbound NORK missiles.  Did you just panic?  If you don’t have a fallout shelter in your hardened home ( a lot of places in Hawaii have huge sections of screened walls to catch the breeze and act as natural air conditioners.  These are as you might surmise far from secure against native invaders ), you did something wrong.  Why didn’t you already move?

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I mean, why are you even living in Hawaii?  If you are rich, fine.  Otherwise, WOW!, what a craphole.  You pay more for everything as it must be shipped in, a terrible survival strategy unless you are going to eat pineapple exclusively and that is traditionally a plantation crop so good luck not being indentured, not to mention it is an island offering no escape unless you own a sailboat.  But far worse, the dive is a worse Socialist fecal stain on par with Puerto Rico or the US Virgin Islands, than even my native California.  And that was thirty years ago!  I’d hate to see taxes, regulation and gun control there now. 

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If you are in a position where you are panicking about gasoline, at heart that means fundamentally you have adopted the incorrect lifestyle.  Okay, I get it, you are only worried about commuting and if the gas supply is cut your job is going to disappear anyway because no fuel means businesses go out of business.  That is all fine and dandy, I imagine ( as long as commuting into work doesn’t make you vulnerable to local hoodlums ).  But are you sure that commuting is your only vulnerability?  As long as you use this panic to truthfully evaluate your dependence on gasoline, your panic can be allowed.  It can be a wake-up call on your other supply disruption issues.  We’re out of time today, ladies-I’ll continue tomorrow.

END ( today's related link https://amzn.to/2JdPEYd )
 

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20 comments:

  1. Well gasoline *and diesel* is perishable, so you are limited in how much of it you can stock up and use before it goes bad. And you want the employer to go down before you are unable to get to work - it looks better if there are any future employers and to the community as a whole "oh, look such a dependable person, he held on going to work until the end of the economy" vs " nah, that guy just quit going to work when things were still scraping along " - which one do you think will get charity, etc?
    BUT! ideally, you would have enough fuel saved back and used in rotation if needed to get to work to keep you going to work for at least a few months, and would only pre-panic buy a little extra for appearances sake (so that the drones think that's why you can still afford to get to work via car) and also have a bike or other alternative that you can ride to work as things get tighter.
    If you appear totally unconcerned AND have more than others as things come down they will assume (correctly) that you were well prepped well in advance and (maybe / maybe not) that you have even more stored back - enough to
    "share" (cough, cough, ch-hell no-ough, cough!)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hey, how about driving to about two miles, or even a mile, from work, unhooking your bicycle, then everyone assumes you don't even have gas. Won't work if there is one road in and out, but in a big city...

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    2. And leave the car where? Really it is very situational. I walked back to work from lunch at my rented house yesterday - I was only 2 minutes late. Left both vehicles at home. The bike needs repairs, but once done that will replace the cars for quickly getting to and from work and around town. In the larger city I used to live in I still biked to work most of the time, and left the car parked at home. When combining driving and biking you have to risk both vehicles at some point being unattended - if you live so far away that you have to drive it will likely already be known by coworkers, so what would be point of switching be? If you CAN bike you might as well do so and conserve the fuel while getting practice for when you have no other choice. Maybe if you have good public transportation in your city you could convince them that is what you are using in conjunction with the bike. But then, why not use the public transportation in that way?
      My point though, is that a little of the appearance of 'panic buying' can help preserve at least a little "common guy" cover.

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    3. I was thinking you working in a large hive in a cubical farm ( semi-autonomous ), and parked at a mall parking lot or such. If you didn't have gas from the beginning, you are poor from the start in everyone's mind.

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    4. Mall parking lots and the like are the WORST for parking a vehicle safely (I used to work security at such places, I _know_ it is so and is vastly underreported). You are better served leaving the car at home- then the robbers aren't certain if someone is home or not or when they might come out to see the car.

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    5. Good thing nobody is going to malls anymore, right? :)

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  2. Yeah, as long as fuel is available and somewhat affordable driving for a commute or gathering supplies is a security activity. If your in any large city, suburb, towns of size, your in an exposed flank if on foot or bicycle. If economy starts cracking pedestrians/cyclers are road bandit targets, or just safety jepordized by other douche bag drivers. my crazy self drives 3/4 ton truck with mediocre fuel economy just to have frame-axles-steel around me in a crash,etc. And/or ability to bring along b.o.b.-gear/weapons. There is a term called false sense of economy. O.k. in certain areas but in ground movements other things need to be considered.

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    Replies
    1. Right, good point. The last time I bought a vehicle for commuting ( well, I got it for wife#3 ) was twenty years ago and I went for a mid size to replace her tiny rice burner, just out of accident survivability. At the same time I was driving a truck when I could have walked, as there were some vicious dogs at one house that would swarm me.

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  3. My astro van gets about 18/25. I using it to travel back and forth from the city to the junk land I'm working on. After I move I may get a cheap Chinese scooter. And then vandwell in the big city when I need to work.

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    Replies
    1. Do they still make Astro's? Or were they from like 20 years ago? I'm always amazed when I still see a Geo Metro still chugging away, not rusted out.

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    2. Those Geo Metro’s got awesome mileage, particularly the early, or 3 cyl models. Probably close to comparable to the same mileage that you would get from the hybrids that cost at least $20k. The Rancho Costa Nada dude had one for a while that he used to head out to the Rancho with. I thought about getting one, but front wheel drive cars are a mother f_ _ _ker to work on. So it will probably be a motorcycle instead. But then you’re risking your life instead. I guess you just can’t win at this game called life.

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    3. Remember, you aren't meant to win. Best case, you don't lose as much.

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  4. Even if you could stockpile fuel, it still wouldn't matter, because the very vast majority of people did not. So you can show up at work but your co-workers don't and your customers don't. You end up screwed anyway.
    (extra bonus is that your neighbours not only did not go to work but they watched you leave for your, so right now they're rummaging through your stockpiles...)

    Panic is about tremor-like shocks, whereas slow collapse is like erosion, it doens't translate into strong feelings but into a pervasive sense of dread (or a pervasive sense of letting go of your worries, in a sense. If you know your job is already dead, be it in two months or in four years, then mentally you're already moving on).

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    Replies
    1. "Extra bonus" of rummaging. Hmmm. Darn good point.

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  5. Deep into a post collapse when die off subsides, forces in contest lines stabilize, and more folks mope about for trade-scavenging then minions can get into formation and route march unobtrusively. Until then, this pre collapse, current stupidity on display, society requires a different security posture in the interim. Minions, if they can utilize or spare a sacrificial beater-door slammer demolition derby vehicle would be in a good position. Limit it's use and have an allottment for fuel even if pricey or harder to get. Mad Max it!

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    Replies
    1. You wonder how long anything of value lasts unscavenged, even in war zones.

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    2. No wonder: assume immediate scavenging as soon as dust clears or sniped civilians stop yelling from open ground (as long as several hours in case of hip shot).

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    3. Sounds like a good reason to try not to scavenged, but I don't think any of us are that fortunate.

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  6. They made the astro van from 85 to 2005. My crappy example is a 99. But it was dirt cheap and will haul a 4 by 8 sheet of plywood between the inner fenders. Also very stealthy with the white work van look so I can sleep in it almost anywhere.

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    Replies
    1. Cheap and stealth are good, hauling a bonus. Can't really go wrong.

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