mystery meat

MYSTERY MEAT

I like Commander Zero, but of course he belongs with the philosophical adherents to Yuppie Scum Luxurious Prepping.  Because he can afford high priced preps, everyone should be able to ( not that I’m trying to be unfair.  He is correct, in a sense.  Even a minimum wage worker could afford to Yuppie Prep.  If that was ALL they did, just living like a bare assed savage, lived in a hovel and had a bicycle for transportation, not having a wife, that kind of thing.  My contention isn’t that folks CAN’T but rather don’t WANT to, and so frugal prepping makes sense ).

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There was a guy that just taste tested forty year old freeze dried foods and they were as processed and tasteless as the day he bought them.  Groovy!  For longevity.  But what was the cost?  $10k in 1975.  That is $80k today if converted to gold ounces.  There were, maximum, three years worth of calories ( I assigned a maximum amount of calories to each can, so what follows is actually understated ).  Which translated to $21,000 a year today.  This isn’t too far off what it would cost you today, especially since most commercial units assign you a ridiculously low number of calories per day, not much more that the Jewish workers on starvation wages got.

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Commander Zero responded that most people only use freeze dried as a supplement rather than for all their calories.  Okay.  Let’s just go with one pound of meat a day, assuming you had a fresh source of fruits and vegetables and didn’t eat dairy.  That is still $5k a year, JUST for meat.  I already did the math for you earlier, if you wet canned your meat.  One fifth the price.  Yes, you gave up longevity.  Figure a maximum of five years for home canned meat.  But commercial wet packed meat isn’t too much more expensive than the most expensive home canned ( I don’t include beef in my calculations, because of the high costs due to Texas losing its aquifer.  Right after I get done writing this I’m off to Kroger to buy boneless pork for $1.09 a pound ).

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And I’m not even advocating prepper food commercial wet canned meat.  Those are about one third the cost of freeze dried.  Just regular canned meat at the store is one fifth the cost of freeze dried ( if averaged over several types.  But even if you don’t buy lower cost fish or what-not, the price is no more per pound than the mail order wet can meat, even if not as healthy.  And you can buy less each time, making it easier to budget ).  Yes, it all has heavy salt content.  So does freeze dried.  What confuses me is why anyone buys freeze dried meat when commercial wet canned meat is so much cheaper.  Yes, you have longevity and low weight compact storage with freeze dried.  Or, do you?

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Studies have been done on several occasions on the longevity of wet can foods.  Aside from the vitamin loss, foods last for decades unaltered.  As long as you don’t store canned vegetables susceptible to vitamin loss, or high acid foods ( pineapple, tomato products ) which can corrode the can, you can duplicate the shelf life of freeze dried ( you might wish to add an extra outer sealant such as wax to assure this, as you know companies are cheaping out on quality.  The added expenses is just for future candles, anyway ).  At one third the price. 

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As far as the compact storage, I don’t know how much you are really saving over freeze dried.  Unless you are living out of a van or in a tent, surely the difference is negligible.  So that leaves weight.  $15 a pound for meat so you don’t have to hurt yourself lifting a one pound can from the supermarket.  Now, yes, you are actually saving because of inflation.  In forty years the cost of gold went up eight times, so I’d image the price of meat did also.  So I grant you that you are no worse off in that aspect.  HOWEVER!

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There are two important caveats to that.  One.  When you buy freeze dried food, do you REALLY expect that the apocalypse isn’t going to happen for four decades?  The guy wouldn’t have spent the equivalent of $80k if he wasn’t panicking and thinking the US wasn’t imploding.  He wasn’t worried about inflation forty years from now.  He was worried about eating in forty months.  What I’m saying is that no one buys freeze dried, at the price it is, without expecting to need it soon.  Really?  You are telling me there are people optimistic enough who think NOTHING will go wrong for ANOTHER four decades?

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If you worry about food inflation, don’t pay the premium to buy freeze dried, just put the $3 a pound of meat in gold right now.  Then wet pack meat at home for the same price and rotate it.  Now you have BOTH a supply of food on hand, AND the ability to offset inflation for double that amount of food, all at less than HALF the price of freeze dried meat.  The second caveat is, after 1975 we had oil left to continue industrial meat production.  Oil is highly deflationary in that is allows extremely cheap labor ( all those oil slaves ).  Forty years from now, there will NOT be any oil still being pumped from the ground. 

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Price inflation doesn’t mean crap then.  You won’t be able to buy meat at any price ( because there will only be famine and warfare and absolutely no trade ).  You can have three times the amount of meat now, buying grocery store wet can meat.  MORE meat is exactly what you want.  MORE food, MORE ammo.  Supplies on hand immediately is far more important than worrying about inflation.  It is starvation verses a philosophical concern over vanished wealth.  So to be clear, no, I wouldn’t store gold instead of food.  That was just to illustrate a point.  That the promises of freeze dried are overblown hype.  You could store gold ( silver might even be better, as far as usefulness in trade or barter being low denomination ) for short term, pre-collapse food inflation, though.

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There is ALWAYS another way to skin a cat.  It doesn’t matter how much or how little you spend, as long as you are maximizing the value for each dollar.  There are always better ways.  And, no, freeze dried isn’t completely without merit.  It is fine in niche situations.  Just beware it is the lower value solution most times.

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tribeless 3 of 3

TRIBELESS 3

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note: warning, the Wal-Mart storage tote option for grain stockpiling seems to have ingloriously ended.  Some months ago, the gray Sterilite brand 18 gallon tote was $5.  One hundred pounds of wheat fit in nicely, two unopened fifty pound bags ( your mileage may vary-you might need to treat yours with diatamatious earth-I just expose mine to the winter temps ).  I went yesterday to spend my Christmas gift "apocalypse money", 300 pounds of wheat and the totes for them.  The old gray totes are now over $7 each.  I can get three Home Despot buckets for twice that price ( when the tote was one third the price, its limitations were acceptable.  Not at only half price for far inferior containers ).  The ones that remained $5 were clear plastic and only 14.5 gallons-the wheat did NOT fit in.  At least not in the bag.  But the totes are flimsy enough with a really crappy lid I didn't want to try it out with loose grain anyway.  At this point, you need to give up portability and go with bulk storage price discount for as much as possible not needing to be moved ( metal trash can, cola bottling plant syrup drum, the square totes on a pallet [ IBC units ] ).
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A post-carbon fuel tribe would work the land sustainably, maximizing human labor with minimal tools.  Before goats and pigs keep clear an area your group chops down trees, remove stumps and get a horse to break up the soil with a plow.  A intermediate step there would be using a chainsaw, hiring a guy to brushhog, and renting a rototiller.  You’ve eliminated needing a group in the first place.  Because a lot of the need to even clear more farmland is due to feeding horses or feeding more farmhands, you don’t even need nearly as much cleared land by avoiding having the group.

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You won’t need as many bushels of wheat or corn to feed a dog rather than several men to help guard.  Butchering waste ( yes, I know all waste can go into soups and stews and sausage otherwise ) mixed with flour will make your own dog food, so for far less calories you get a much more effective watchman ( one bred for the task rather than one who learns it ).  And to supplement the dogs there is incredibly cheap alarms and surveillance systems.

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Sure, it would be great if a doctor joined your group, but because of their insanely overpriced education and monopoly protected profession, you would do better with a lay person self-trained.  All the knowledge is out there, and both your amateur and the professional are equally dependent on stockpiled tools to get anything done anyway ( in other words, a doctor is close to useless when the supplies run out ).  Not only that, but the smaller your group, in theory the less conspicuous they are and would in all probability avoid many conflicts and hence decrease the need for trauma treatment anyway ( disease prevention and the like are far less likely to have alternate home crafted tools available than the surgeons ).

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Military experts will be experts in conventional wasteful tactics.  They should be avoided at all costs.  There entire profession is predicated on factories churning out equipment to be thrown at the enemy, along with the manpower.  If you want to be cannon fodder, have a professional military man in your group.  If you are smarter, rather than study military manuals or feeding someone who studied them to regurgitate them, read up on guerrilla warfare.  As a bonus, you’ll need LESS equipment and not more.  Any base fortification can be done prior to the collapse with rented backhoes.

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Grains are the best calorie dense foods.  No one expects you to eat ALL grains.  Some northern Africans eat up to 90% of their diet in wheat, but most other impoverished nations are down around 60-70%.  Even affluent nations still get 50% of their calories from grains ( even though most of that is grain-to-meat ).  But the point is, grain takes a lot of space to grow.  You’ll need a lot of land to do so ( either to feed laborers or to feed bio-diesel to a tractor ).  The more grain you store NOW, at super depressed subsidized prices ( the subsidized part is you the taxpayer to the corporate entities.  It is incidental that you buy artificially lowered cost grain.  The recipient is the corporations that require a close to free commodity ), the less you need to grow later.

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Again, this is NOT long term.  I am NOT being a Yuppie Scum trying to sell you a lifestyle of Oil Age luxury items like semi-auto’s and propane heaters.  I’m pointing out a short term lifestyle those of us advanced in age and unwilling to support a group can live with minimal costs or effort.  It is how to live during the die-off and before tribes take over.  If you worry about your children, they will NOT be able to duplicate this reliance on Oil Age stockpiles.  This is just a five to ten year lifeboat.

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Feeding a family on stored grain is feasible, even if a sizeable investment.  Storage containers are much cheaper with larger amounts of grain anyway.  Right now, the cheapest buckets are 50% as much as the grain inside ( $25 for a hundred pounds of wheat, $13 for their buckets ).  If you buy the industrial size tote on a pallet, food grade, used ( IPC tote-330 gallon size, equals 66 buckets ), your container cost goes from 13 cents a pound to as low as 5 cents.  That is only $100 per ton container cost , and a ton of wheat feeds you for five years.  Even if you were too far away to buy jobber or wholesale, retail feed store wheat AND the container is a mere $600 per person per five years.

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It is a LOT cheaper to buy and store wheat than to buy the land or equipment for it or pay people to help grow it manually.  It is also cheaper to buy a good battle rifle with decent scope ( not sniper grade, marksmen grade with back-ups, so “middlin cost” ) and practice with it, and stockpile ammo, than feed a bunch of yahoos who will in the end just bang away without aiming, wasting ammunition on poodle shooting plastic carbines, confusing noise with skill.  One practiced guy is better than a group of posers ( unless you paid by the scalp, and then they would be worth it since they were fed to kill, not fed to pretend to protect ).

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Like cement and a backhoe to build a dugout now being  cheaper than quality tree cutting equipment and its labor ( eliminate the need for heating with trees ), a lot of tools now are cheaper than manual labor later.  In time, manual labor will be the only game in town, but that comes later.  In the future, a candle will require a beekeeper or a butcher, and a candle maker, necessitating a LOT of land feeding all those inputs.  Right now, it takes ten pounds of wheat equivalent ( $3 ) that will buy an LED light and its rechargeable batteries that will last TEN YEARS at a minimum ( low lumen output, just like but still better than a candle, lasting at least a week on one batt charge, with at least a thousand charges out of a set of batteries on a solar trickle charge ). 

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How many candles would it take for that?  At far more than ten pounds of wheat.  Low tool, high labor food is the only sustainable way once we are in a Dark Age with little ore or energy, but right now we can stockpile incredibly cheap labor substitutes.  Just don’t confuse cheap tools or energy for surplus.  Everything is cheap right now because we are in a economic depression, not because we are in a surplus.  Get it now while the getting is good, and enjoy the seclusion.

END ( today's related link http://amzn.to/2FuYqzm )

 

Please support Bison by buying through the Amazon ad graphics at the top of the page. ***You can make donations or book purchases through PayPal ( www.paypal.me/jimd303 )

*** Unless you are in extreme poverty, spend a buck a month here, by the above donation methods or buy a book. If you don't do Kindle, send me a buck and I'll e-mail it to you in a PDF file.  If you donated, you may request books no charge.   My e-mail is: jimd303@reagan.com  My address is: James M Dakin, 181 W Bullion Rd #12, Elko NV 89801-4184

*** Pay your author-no one works for free.  I’m nice enough to publish for barely above Mere Book Money, so do your part.*** junk land under a grand *  Lord Bison* my bio & biblio*   my web site is www.bisonprepper.com *** Wal-Mart wheat***Amazon Author Page
* By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there

 

tribeless 2 of 3

TRIBELESS 2

Yesterday we discussed how realistically few of us would ever actually join a tribe.  Even though tribalism is the only realistic successor to the nation state, right now few can join unless it is a criminal gang or a fundamentalist religion.  You can say you’ve joined a tribe, you and a few survivalist buddies, but I’d wager you and they are strictly individuals joining together for support, and no where near a tribe ( since in true tribes everyone must pledge fealty to the group and most of us are far too individualistic [ which while we celebrate the condition we forget that leaves us unsupported against the State ]). 

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So, rather than fight our life long conditioning and get you all pumped up to Go Tribal ( since it might be both unrealistic and dangerous at this point-the nation doesn’t like being dismissed and ignored, and will do something you won’t like to get your attention ), let’s just take a breath and explore the benefits of being tribeless.  I would wager a LOT of survivalists are introverts.  When you are an extrovert, you thrive and require group activity.  An introvert only gets as much social interaction as is minimally required ( obviously, this is a sliding scale with few being all the way either one.  Mostly, you are more of one than the other but not 100% of one ).

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Seeking out a group means winning and keeping their approval, and you are by nature more apt to Group Think because of just this.  Survivalist ( not pretty pony preppers ) by their nature must go AGAINST consensus because that is the only natural way to survive, after you’ve done the relatively simple math ( more population with less resources equal, what? ).  You know you need to flee people, not race towards them with open arms ( I’d wager those able to go rural are the introverted while those seeking reasons to stay urban are more extroverted.  Just think about it.  It isn’t a criticism, but an explanation.  You fear leaving people-it is in your nature ).

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And introverts are probably the last ones to WANT to join a tribe.  There is strength in unity, but there is also the need to socialize with other people, and that SUCKS, yo! ( the closer to the collapse we come, the more I find myself wanting to limit interaction with others, and more I stay away from folks the more relieved I am that I can stop putting so much effort into pretending I care about other people-now that I’m getting a taste of isolation I’m liking it more and more ).  We only socialize because we are forced to.  Given our “druthers”, our circle of people allowed into our bubbles would be far below tribal levels.

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The excuse always given about why we should Tribe Up is something along the lines of “you have to sleep sometime”, or “no man is an island” or “you can’t do it all yourself”.  And while that may be true on its face, a bit of digging reveals it to be the mad lunatic barking of an extrovert justifying his pathological need to have other people around him.  You know what I say about optimists and pessimists.  They will, with unshakeable religious fervor, always find the facts to support their philosophy.  The same with introverts and extroverts.  They will pick and choose the facts to support their respective illnesses ( neither is good or bad but both are illogical ).

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But let me ask you this.  Our society, as a whole, what would you think it is?  And extrovert or an introvert?  Sure, most of the population lives in urban cores, so you could say we crave interacting with our fellows, but do we really?  We live close together but know very few of them.  I only know my neighbors enough to know I want nothing to do with them.  Society as a whole is a bit introverted.  Our infrastructure is build to isolate us from one another.

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Automobiles, the suburbs, working in isolation, TV watching over going to the movies, eating in our cars instead of a restaurant, Internet instead of Meatspace.  Yes, the extroverts put more attention into friends and social activities, but as a whole we are isolated from one another.  And since our culture and infrastructure is already set up this way, how hard is it to drop out of society as much as possible and stay isolated and more importantly, NEED far fewer people to survive? 

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The answer is it is almost impossible to form a tribe and simplicity itself to Go Hermit.  The only consideration is minimizing the density of people ( also being urban hermits ) around you.  Since culturally we have isolated ourselves, it is easy to find all the resources we need to replace people.  I’m not saying this is a great idea long term, but for now it will allow us to avoid a tribe.  Because while a tribe is a great tool for survival, post-carbon fuels, before and during a die-off and shortly after tribes can be counterproductive. 

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In a nutshell, members of the Free Stuff Army want you to be communal with your stuff, and only YOU worked hard for Your Stuff.  So screw them!  If you, AND they, had always equally shared, that would be one thing.  But they didn’t.  They are parasitical.  Forming a tribe now is all obligation and no reward for you, because they won’t strive to protect you even after you’ve fed them and given them weapons.  They got what they wanted from you and will just let you die afterwards.  So why start a tribe?  A small group of like minded family and friends, that is one thing ( we can’t go Full Hermit, only Partial ).  But screw being part of a larger group, a tribe.

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I promised we’d explore HOW to go tribeless and instead I babbled on.  Tomorrow, this subject gets wrapped up so I’ll have to deliver then.  I’ll tell you this much-you’ll probably enjoy it immensely, as I admit machinery and internal combustion engines and other robots are a great way to substitute Oil Age Tools for other people.  But I’m also partial to rental rather than ownership, to keep things frugal.  Well, a combination of initial rental followed up by manual tool completion. 

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Please support Bison by buying through the Amazon ad graphics at the top of the page. ***You can make donations or book purchases through PayPal ( www.paypal.me/jimd303 )

*** Unless you are in extreme poverty, spend a buck a month here, by the above donation methods or buy a book. If you don't do Kindle, send me a buck and I'll e-mail it to you in a PDF file.  If you donated, you may request books no charge.   My e-mail is: jimd303@reagan.com  My address is: James M Dakin, 181 W Bullion Rd #12, Elko NV 89801-4184

*** Pay your author-no one works for free.  I’m nice enough to publish for barely above Mere Book Money, so do your part.*** junk land under a grand *  Lord Bison* my bio & biblio*   my web site is www.bisonprepper.com *** Wal-Mart wheat***Amazon Author Page
* By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there

 

tribeless 1 of 3

TRIBELESS

A lot of electrons had to die as we have discussed ad nauseam the aspects of tribalism, the move towards tribes after the nation state loses the excess energy to stay solvent, the guerrilla war by tribes in the US ( no longer confined to the ghettos-thank you public transportation! ), the anthropologist structure of tribes and blah friggin blah.  I’m sure I’m not done, or anywhere close to it, but today we talk about NOT having a tribe.  As I’ve mentioned before in the comments, I tend to compress events time wise.  More likely, given our average age, none of us will actually see the widespread formation of tribes. 

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Compressing timelines is helpful seeing the big picture.  If you can see the history prior to excess energy, the power structure before and during based on that surplus, you can see the future rather clearly.  But nothing changes overnight, so going from a fast and breezy summation back down to the gritty day by day reality, the mess that is reality also needs to be dwelt with.  It is refreshingly carefree to state “after a short time of spastic ammunition use, the living will tend to husband their remaining rounds, even with semi-auto’s, and abandon tactics such as spray and pray and suppressive fire”.  It is another kettle of fish entirely to live through the several months of lead flying everywhere.

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As is the transition from State to tribe ( with a minority of areas still able to form centralized agricultural empires-very few areas are still naturally fertile, as population growth was only kept ahead of until recently with industrializing and carbon fuel fertilizing.  Most of the globe has denuded soil, only productive with artificial inputs ).  It won’t be overnight, even if you could make a claim its been ongoing for near fifty years already anyway.  Look at the 90’s.  Between the disruption caused by Iraq and our battle over oil, and the last few years disrupted by Y2K and the Tech Wreck, that was our last financial gravy train ( the housing bubble later was all unicorn fart finances, not cheap and abundant oil which was what made the earlier decade ).

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Yet, even in the 90’s, there was much ado about losing control of vast areas of real estate to tribal occupation.  Of course, the Powers That Be blamed everything EXCEPT loss of control.  They blamed drugs, or racism or inequality or under budged police forces or politics.  But really, it was nothing more than the concrete reality that the State was ceding control on the monopoly on violence ( which is the ONLY indicator of power and control.  Nothing else ) in one area after another.  And, I’m sure few would have the desire to admit otherwise, things have gotten oh so much worse since then. 

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Political Correct Thought Police won’t even allow the conversation of the above, but that is just denial by the nation state that the die has been cast ( PC’ers are just the meat puppet of the Elite.  They have as much control as Obammy or Trump ).  Look at the poster child of failed states, Afghanistan, and outside of a few neighborhoods in Kabul there is ONLY tribal control ( warring tribes fighting for control doesn’t change the fact ).  That is our destination.  However, Afghanistan has always been tribal, which is why they have lasted as long as they have through decades of foreign occupation.  In the US, tribes didn’t form until recently.

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Which means there is no fallback position.  That certainly isn’t the family, deliberately killed off generations ago ( Social Security, Bitches Lib, taxing families off the farm ).  Folks can form associations, and survival “families”, but I don’t see coherent tribes being able to form from the wet putrid clay of today’s population.

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There is a lot of cultural deprogramming to do to get tribal material, and since we are evolutionarily opposed to change outside of the application of pain or suffering, that will be a drawn out process.  Yes, I’ve stated in the past “burrow down and hide out during a die-off and then reemerge and join a tribe”, but that may or may not be feasible.  Several minions have said they’d prefer to just hunker down and avoid people since people are so rotten and worthless, and there is something to be said for that, also.  The LONG term associations that have the only chance for success are tribes, true, but the Industrial Oil Age also gives you an interim choice.

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While the surplus lasts, while the petroleum product supplies are still in stock, you can keep your narcissistic individualism attitude and avoid tribalism ( not that tribal dynamics are bad, just that most of us might be too old to adapt successfully to them ).  This isn’t about being a hermit, as nice as they would be in theory, but about selfish folks banding together for a strength in numbers lifeboat hide-out.  But they won’t be a tribe.  Tribes are too communistic and Americans and ilk are too self-centered and consumerist orientated.  In the tribe, everything is ours.  In present day, all in mine.  You can’t mix and match the two systems.

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Even if individual or family wealth is allowed, being tribal means in bad times you share that wealth as if it was a animal carcass and other families are hungry.  The expectation was reciprocation, a built in safety net.  Today, very few have that mentality.  Even if they think they do, giving charity, today one views this as an optional activity with them acting as a gatekeeper.  Tribes don’t make this optional.  You aren’t allowed to build your own safety net.  Our outlook today is that ONLY personal nets will save us.

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That might be a subtle difference, but it is important.  Today, we have the PERSONAL responsibility for taking care of our family ( and sometimes, friends ).  That is the expectation, even if not widely held or practiced.  Tribes have a communal responsibility.  And the simple fact is that cultural programming doesn’t suddenly change.  It will be a violent change over, as all change is.  Most of us will only see continuation of nation state citizen mentalities, husbanding the last of the dwindling supplies.  It might even become MORE dangerous to push for tribalism in this situation, as change is always resisted and sometimes violently.  Next article, we continue on how to live without a tribe.

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Please support Bison by buying through the Amazon ad graphics at the top of the page. ***You can make donations or book purchases through PayPal ( www.paypal.me/jimd303 )

*** Unless you are in extreme poverty, spend a buck a month here, by the above donation methods or buy a book. If you don't do Kindle, send me a buck and I'll e-mail it to you in a PDF file.  If you donated, you may request books no charge.   My e-mail is: jimd303@reagan.com  My address is: James M Dakin, 181 W Bullion Rd #12, Elko NV 89801-4184

*** Pay your author-no one works for free.  I’m nice enough to publish for barely above Mere Book Money, so do your part.*** junk land under a grand *  Lord Bison* my bio & biblio*   my web site is www.bisonprepper.com *** Wal-Mart wheat***Amazon Author Page
* By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there

 

winning the last war

WINNING THE LAST WAR

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note: sure you want to wait for them to go up again?  When I stockpiled my solar panels two years ago they were 20% cheaper. http://amzn.to/2DU0wIx
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You’ve all heard the phrase, “fighting the last war”.  Supposedly this is a very bad thing, even though mans nature is to oppose change ( this is an evolutionary survival mechanism.  Man seeks a equilibrium and then violently opposes losing this.  It uses less energy, is more stable for longer and is less dangerous.  Those opposed to this tendency always use hindsight to disprove its utility, and usually from a nineteenth and twentieth century Extra Carbon Fuel viewpoint ).  But let’s talk about something even worse.  Winning the last war.

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Winning tends to lead to an even tighter embrace of equilibrium.  It leads to hubris.  When you win the last war, you always plan on fighting the same war again.  The losers might-MIGHT, if culturally able-at least think about how to fight another kind of war.  On January 22 and 26^th, over at the blog Raconteur Report ( a favorite since I ran across him debunking the Ebola whitewash.  He is usually wrong, but for all the right reasons, so remains a source of research ), there was commentary on how LibTards have won the war and how we are all scumbags for armoring up against the FedGov.

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I make fun.  It was a pretty good point.  We are all fighting the Last War, waiting for the Feds to kick in doors and take our shiny black carbines, whereas the Liberals have won the public/cultural discourse and control all the important institutions ( colleges, military, corporations, propaganda organs ).  They won the control of the country, while we stockpiled ammunition against a dwindling army of alphabet soup agencies ( or, at least dwindling in numbers of actual fighting boots on the ground.  You might have a building full of armed detectives, but they aren’t fighting out in the street.  Remember, it is really an insurrection/low intensity conflict guerrilla war out there ).

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The next article was talking about some strategic theory enshrined in a military manual which I just skimmed over ( you know I have little love for military manuals, the Mandarins scribbling their wisdom of the ages on paper as if recording dangerous doctrine made it spiritual ).  The main point was you had a LOT of activity in the war prior to actual bloodshed and we as conservatives/Republicans/Righties or whoever were just assuming that the fight was ONLY military in nature.

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Now, I’m not saying the gist of the whole was wrong.  Any one who has been divorced and devoted 50% of their net wages paying the ex wife tax for half of their working career knows how much more dangerous an asswhore in a black robe is than a fat guy looking fierce with an AR is ( that wasn’t just directed at Militia Mike, but also at most of the FedGov Goons ).  The Bitch Libbers who took over the courts are an army that won a war.  No one can be educated for any of the 9% Straw Boss jobs without going through Mao Reeducation.  On its face, the article is spot on.  Where it goes wrong is assuming winning this war is either important or has any longevity.

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Look, we’ve beat this dead horse to a pulp.  You either believe in Business As Usual, Fracking Fuel Forever, infinite growth on a finite planet being feasible, or you believe that his holy right reverend Malthus was actually the Bomb Diggity and all the Optimistic Ollie’s out there are stupid ass Tulip gamblers.  You know what side of the fence I sit.  All empires crash and burn due to resource contraction and overpopulation.  To state that a giant calamity won’t occur because it never has and all empires fail over centuries is to cherry pick the facts.

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No empire since the beginning of the gunpowder revolution has drastically failed in the sense of “crickets in the Coliseum” or “vines overgrowing the stone temples” because it has been a single empire, the Western Empire ( the bankers moved the capital around at will, after being bloated by war and inflation.  You could even say it was a Bankers Empire rather than a Western one ).  It was fed by colonial resources, then coal, then oil and natural gas.  Running out of carbon fuels ( we will quickly reach the point every producer needs to keep all their own fuel for domestic use, which will freeze international trade which will crash the whole financial system which funds same and with enough oil left in the ground it will still be Game Over ) will be the equivalent of the Mayan Mega Drought or the Roman Wheat Crisis.

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All those Ollie’s dismissing Peak Oil ignore the facts of 2005 Peak NET Oil and the 1979 Per Capita Energy Peak.  Take those apples, put them in your pipe and smoke them, bitches!  To claim an overnight calamity will never happen is correct, if you ignore the coming multi-week/month calamity.  To claim the Liberals Won The War is to assume all the institutions they now control are going to be worth two wet farts while the oil supply contracts.  They won the last war and assume the next one will be fought the same way.

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Remember chariot warfare?  Trench warfare?  Armored cavalry?  That isn’t about tactics or weapons changing, that is RESOURCES changing.  Infantry didn’t just come to dominate over cavalry because of gunpowder-increased food supplies allowed a nitrate surplus and a surplus of peasant fighters.  Trench warfare didn’t JUST end because of tanks, but because that level of industrial production of armaments was no longer sustainable.  Fighting one war that way bankrupted many empires ( well, all of them except one, the US, which waited to pick up the near corpses in return for all their gold ).  The demise of chariots followed the ruin of armies by resource contraction throughout the region ( from events not yet recognized unequivocally ).

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Without a surplus of carbon fuels ( you’ll note the ten year old Depression was started by the carbon fuel net supply merely halting its growth.  Now the supply is contracting.  Things are obviously going to get much uglier ), all those liberal controlled institutions are going the way of the dodo bird.  College, corporations, the courts, centralized governments, currencies ( the C5’s ).  Politics and money are meaningless.  Resources are where the rubber meets the road.  Focusing on the strategy and tactics and ignoring logistics is a great way to lose the war.  Liberals and PC Princesses and Bitches Libbers and Multicultural Mandarins and all the other retards won the strategic war.

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They cannot control the logistics ( their only grasp on logistics is the PetroDollar.  This is akin to looking at the warehouse shelves and thinking these are your supplies.  No, your supplies are fuel and ore and transportation and manufacturing and a military that can hold and exploit.  All gone, bye bye ).  Also ignored is the fact that a decaying system allows the takeover by forces that will by their nature weaken that very system ( the navy now being run by PC swabbies accounting for all the crashing and clanging of their overly expensive ships run by Blue Screen Of Death computers, for example.  College graduates being completely brainwashed morons, for another ).  Strong well funded ( resources to run it ) institutions wouldn’t have been defeated.

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The economic and hence cultural collapse has been ongoing for fifty years.  The global energy decline has lasted forty years.  This is no “sudden calamity”.  All praise the overriding paradigm of logistics ( it‘s all about the food, stupid )!

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old and grumpy

OLD AND GRUMPY

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While it is true that Young And Dumb are ideally suited to fight wars, so full of testosterone that only F--k Or Fight is the guiding principle, almost none of us are young anymore.  Most of us, when young, might be able to work like mules but we are singularly devoted to rearing a family ( I speak of the historical norm, not the current MGTOW video game playing narcissists ) and have little aptitude towards wisdom or inclination towards investment.  So while young and strong we tend not to be real preppers ( done right, not the pussy preppers gathering back-ups of luxurious on-grid living ).  That takes experiencing Real Life to give us wisdom.  So by the time we are ready to gear up for chaos, we are near grumpy old men.

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Being older makes for much smarter survivalists, but it also makes for rather poor fighters.  At least in the conventional sense.  If you can rid your soft and gooey barely functioning brain from silly notions such as “PT with my militia homey’s” or “tote everything and the kitchen sink because I must be a mighty ninja”, and just forget trying to emulate young bucks in the military, you still have many advantages over the boys with boners.

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The young are endowed with strength, endurance and health.  But that is about it.  Many a day you might wish you had any one of those three, or even a little of each, but the brain chemistry that gives you those rarely gives you the gifts you gain with age.  Not just wisdom, but patience and experience and especially cynicism ( which is a gift rarely appreciated as it should be ).  These all make for a rather good guerrilla fighter ( as opposed to an eager young warrior who cannot control himself ).  And guerrilla fighting is a great way for you to avoid the crowds and mobs, either of which hurt you offensively or defensively. 

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Remember, you are supposed to be “staying away from crowds”.  Joining the fight, fighting for justice, that is a young mans game.  The old humpers just want to see another day with minimal disruption.  They’ll fight smarter, because they have little ability to fight harder.  They don’t mind springing an ambush and melting away during the confusion, while the young guys are chomping at the bit to Get Some.  If you can minimize the need for strength and endurance, and maximize your mental attributes, age shouldn’t hinder you.  Hey, it’s not like you have much choice in the matter.  A few of us will be able to hide in the boonies but most will need to fight due to location.

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Now, before we continue, obviously you understand you must be in better shape than most your age.  But that by no stretch of the imagination means you need to be “PT’ing” all the damn time ( just walking or biking and a good diet will suffice ).  PT is for young bucks needing to cart a mules worth of supplies long distances.  Old bastards should be smarter than that, minimizing the gear they carry because they are NOT emulating the military doctrine of a group of 18-25 year olds.  All that ammunition you are carrying because you think you need “suppressive fire” and someone to “cover me” while you assault?  Those are soldiers tactics, not warriors, and you would do well to remember the distinction.

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Soldiers die for the State, warriors fight to survive to fight another day.  Don’t believe me because your drill sergeant filled you with jingoistic claptrap?  How do you make contact with the enemy so that the air force or artillery can drop bombs on them?  They ambush you.  You are the tripwire.  Well, your corpse was the tripwire.  Where do you think the term “cannon fodder” came from?  Fodder is animal feed, by the way.

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Okay, how do old grumpy geriatrics excel as fighters ( insurgents/guerrillas/warriors, not soldiers )?  First, they are probably pretty good at sucking up and working through pain.  Just from getting older and getting out of bed.  If you are indeed in better health than your peers, one of the ways you do that is to minimize drugs which merely mask pain and create other ailments as a side effect.  The price for that is accepting pain.  Second, they are probably lighter sleepers, plus being able to go longer with less sleep ( they aren’t doing anywhere close to the exercise that wouldn’t necessitate more sleep eventually ).

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They actually have patience.  Few of us have any when young.  We need to Get ‘Er Done.  As you age, you gain the wisdom to slow down and improve your performance.  But mostly you are so damn weak and weary you take everything slow anyway.  Patience is great for marksmen and sentries and ambushers.  You are in no hurry to Get ‘Er Done, so there is no rushing or distraction.  Your sex drive is diminished ( thank all the gods! ).  This helps you to be more wise and more patient.  And more focused!

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Cynicism is an underrated skill/outlook.  To be cynical is to not only trust others less, it also helps you trust your own abilities less ( from fantasy closer down to reality ).  Both are very helpful figuring out how to fight.  Also, being cynical helps you have less patience with BS ( even as you gain patience in other areas ).  The young are swayed and blinded by BS.  The old will have as few helpings as possible, being more cynical and jaded and taught in the school of hard knocks ( wisdom ).

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And lastly, old people are far more comfortable in their own heads.  Being more cynical, they hate more and trust less, and being cynical and wise means they have less time for BS and start preferring to spend more time with themselves ( because you become more and the more the smartest person you know ).  Group bonding is still great, but quiet time is just as important ( less energy for the effort required for group dynamics, plus less energy to leave and travel to a gathering ).  Being more cynical means you don’t necessarily want to encounter and deal with young whippersnappers, either.  They are exhausting, both for their energy levels and enthusiasm, plus their idiocy of views.

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No one is saying 75 year old grandpa can go on patrols.  It is still a younger mans game.  I’m merely saying a old fifty or a young sixty might only be Slow But Sure, but they are devious and cunning too.  Staying secluded and hidden for the die-off, even without a tribe full of young bucks, is entirely feasible as old fighters can get the job done-sometimes better.  As long as they play to their strengths rather than the enemies.

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Please support Bison by buying through the Amazon ad graphics at the top of the page. ***You can make donations or book purchases through PayPal ( www.paypal.me/jimd303 )

*** Unless you are in extreme poverty, spend a buck a month here, by the above donation methods or buy a book. If you don't do Kindle, send me a buck and I'll e-mail it to you in a PDF file.  If you donated, you may request books no charge.   My e-mail is: jimd303@reagan.com  My address is: James M Dakin, 181 W Bullion Rd #12, Elko NV 89801-4184

*** Pay your author-no one works for free.  I’m nice enough to publish for barely above Mere Book Money, so do your part.***   Land In Elko*  Lord Bison* my bio & biblio*   my web site is www.bisonprepper.com *** Wal-Mart wheat***Amazon Author Page
* By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there