Adventures in food storage

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Todays “Lets See What Happens” episode is a six year old can of corned beef hash. Nominal ‘best by’ date was three years ago. So….how is it?

Fine. Of course.

Properly canned food lasts pretty much indefinitely. This can features the pre-scored ‘pop top’ feature that don’t really like in canned goods. If you drop the can or pressure is applied against the pre-scored region the can will fail more often than if it were not pre-scored. But, unfortauntely, these small single-serve cans were not available without the pop-top features. But…they held up just fine.

Storage conditions? Just sitting in the back of my kitchen cabinet for six years. Nothing special.

And that’s sort of the point. While I fully appreciate the nitrogen sealed, ceramic lined #10 cans filled with freeeze dried meats that will last longer than I will…..I also appreciate that modern food canning processes, by first world companies, do an awesome job of creating a product that will last a long time. Sometimes there is a need for a $40 can of freeze-dried pork chops, but sometimes you’ll get along just fine with a case of Kirkland canned pulled pork. It just depends on a few other things like if you plan to transport it, what the storage conditions will be, etc. I love me some long-term food but, really, you can put together a very reasonably long-term food supply without breaking the bank on ‘survival food’.

I bet the folks in whats left of Florida would be happy to have some hash and eggs for breakfast after a long evening of clearing debris and unblocking roads. A case of this stuff, a #10 can of powdered eggs, a case of instant oatmeal, a case of fruit cocktail cups, a jar of Tang, instant coffee, some hash browns, and you’ve pretty much got a breakfast that’ll last five-ten years.

As I’ve mentioned, around this house the food storage paradigm is short-, mid-, and long-term storage. This stuff counts as ‘mid-term’ storage….it’ll be good for more than a year or two but probably not out at the twenty year mark. I wish I had written the price down, I’d be curious to see where the price went.

Minor ramblings

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A couple weeks back, my local Albertsons had a sale on pasta and, in the typical fashion, I picked up a small quantity. Yesterday was the day to pick up a commensurate amount of jarred pasta sauce. While I was at it, I stopped off at the restaurant supply store and picked up a couple 5# ‘logs’ of Italian sausage. With nothing better to do, I made up a huge batch of spaghetti sauce with sausage, distributed it into styrofoam containers, and loaded up the freezer.

The apocalypse may come, the economy may sour, the world may burn, but Crom as my witness there will always be a baked ziti in this house.
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After a somewhat successful 12-year run, my beloved mountain bike tried to kill me the other day. I was pedaling furiously to get to an exam and -bam- one of the welds on the frame came apart like a Clinton alibi. Broke a toe, maybe two, in the process. So, I’m now having to shop for another mountain bike. Given that winter is going to be here in short order, it probably makes more sense to wait until spring to buy one rather than tie up that money now. From a survivalist standpoint, though, a good mountain bike really should be on the list of ‘must haves’.
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Fall is definitely here in Montana….65-70 degree days and nights in the low 30’s. Thats how we roll here in the climatic lab experiment that is the great state of Montana. Fall is my favorite season…you go outside and theres that smell in the air that activates some part of the brain that says ‘get your crap together….the cold and dark is coming.’ Of course, there’s also the impetus of hunting season.
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And, finally, elections are just a  few weeks away. In typical fashion, Montana politics boils down to where someone is from. Not the issues, not the promises, nothing of real substance….the deciding issue is usually ‘were they born in Montana’. A sad way to decide your vote considering that some of the lefty-ist idiots to run for office are homegrown. Heck we even have a Californian, educated at Berkely, who is running with a pledge to ‘do something’ about assault weapons ‘for the children’, and she’s trying to run as a “Pro 2nd Amendment” candidate..complete with the usual picture-with-a-shotgun-and0orange-vest. Somehow, in the minds of these leftists, hunting somehow has something to do with the second amendment. Go figure.

Choate Mini-14 stock

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As you may recall, I picked up a Mini-14GB last month. Fine gun, nothing wrong with it. (The magazine was a different issue.) But…that wooden stock…..

An email to the fine like-minded individuals at Choate for a replacement stock revealed that not only did they have the stock I wanted, it was available in something other than the ubiquitous black – a nice shade of green. Yes please! Arrived today. Thus:For my anticipated needs, I really like rifle furniture that is something other than black. Black just jumps out at you since large pitch black objects are not something you normally see everyday and when you do, well, isn’t your attention drawn to them? This is the reason I went with the green laminate on my Scout rifle and the green laminate on my .22….. I think they blend in with my environment much better than black.

Why get rid of the wood stock? Well, Im not getting rid of it as such…I’ll keep it for some tinkering projects, but if the time comes when leaving the house every morning includes throwing a rifle into the back of the vehicle or slinging it into a scabbard on a motorcycle, getting rained on, dropped, banged around, and generally abused….well, the Choate products are, literally, pretty tough to beat.

The stock itself is deliciously rugged, it took all of a couple minutes to transfer the hardware from the wooden stock to the Choate stock, nothing needed fitting, and although I havent checked it yet, I think it might be a tad lighter.

When I buy gear for the sake of increasing my odds of survival and comfort in the uncertain future, one of the rubrics is durability and survivability – in short, I need things that can withstand abuse or neglect and still perform all or some their function. This is why I’m a huge fan of the Choate replacement stocks for my shotguns. A Mossberg 500 that was buried in mud after Katrina will probably be rusted and need a couple parts replaced, but you could hose off that Choate forend and stock and you’d never know they spent a month under a mountain of wet sewage and sludge. Thats the sort of property that I want my gear to have… I try to take care of my gear, I try not to abuse it, but if the time comes where I have to neglect it and let the chips fall where they may..well..it’s nice to know they’ll hold up juuuuuuuust fine.

Other than a couple factory mags, this concludes my financial expenditures into this gun. I have enough ARs and PTR’s that it would be a strange circumstance indeed that this gun becomes my go-to carbine. But…it is an uncertain world, after all.

Article – These Doomsday Preppers Are Starting to Switch From Gold to Bitcoin

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Wendy McElroy is ready for most doomsday scenarios: a one-year supply of nonperishable food is stacked in a cellar at her farm in rural Ontario. Her blueprint for survival also depends upon working internet: part of her money, assuming she needs some after civilization collapses, is in bitcoin.

Across the North American countryside, preppers like McElroy are storing more and more of their wealth in invisible wallets in cyberspace instead of stockpiling gold bars and coins in their bunkers and basement safes.

They won’t be able to access their virtual cash the moment a catastrophe knocks out the power grid or the web, but that hasn’t dissuaded them. Even staunch survivalists are convinced bitcoin will endure economic collapse, global pandemic, climate change catastrophes and nuclear war.

I’m not some dinosaur that refuses to embrace technology Because. But what I most definitely am is someone who tries to objectively evaluate the utility of something against what I envision my future needs will be.

I would think the people who froth at the mouth about “If you cant eat it, shoot it, or set fire to it, it’ll be useless after the apocalypse!” will lump bitcoin in there with gold as having no post-collapse utility.

As I see it, gold and silver (and perhaps bitcoin) have utility in the descent from “Times of Plenty” to “Thunderdome”.

Bitcoin does have an interesting use though…as long as there is internet you have a portable, secure, anonymous way to move your wealth. While getting on a plane from Dubai to London with a couple kilos of gold may cause some problems at customs, you can, I suppose, transport that same amount of wealth with nothing but a few passwords in your head.

Do I see a need for bitcoin in my preparations against an uncertain future? I dont think so. But Im also the first to admit that I am probably terribly underinformed on the subject. However, would I divert resources from other preparations I make towards getting bitcoin into those preparations? I would not. I’m just more comfortable with a mix of cash, metals, and, honestly, paperless handguns, as a method of doing commerce…pre- and post-collapse. (And, really,  most of my ideas about a sustained collapse are based on economic issues rather than comets/Xenu/rapture/bird flu/nuclear holocaust.)

However, and this is a big however, it might be prudent to dump a hundred bucks into it and just let it sit there in case it blows up again. Much like how penny stocks are fun to play.

Seasonal gear rotation

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A bit of snow up on the mountains today…none down here in the valley. Checking last years posts, I see that we had our first snowfall in the valley right around this time last year. Well, at least it’s consistent.

Survivalists in the south lament that when the apocalypse comes, summer will be unbearable without air conditioning. I suspect they are right. And while summers up here will be just fine, the winters will be downright lethal. But…I’ve a goodly stash of alternate fuels, warm clothes, and food, so if we do lose power in some sort of ‘storm of the millennia’ blizzard I’ll be juuuuuuuust fine.

But…I suppose this means it’s time to migrate the winter gear back into the vehicle. But first…inspect it. Swap out all batteries, regardless of whether they’ve been used or not. Check gear like radios and flashlights for function. Inspect food/water for degradation. That sorta thing. Sitting by the side of the road when its five below zero is no time to learn that the radio won’t work, the flash light is dead, the mice got into the PopTarts, and your spouse took the blanket outta the car. Ya gotta check this stuff, man!

Some previous commentary on the subject:

Of course, you are supposed to add/remove things to this basic list as you deem necessary. One size has never fitted all.

Direction

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I was having a little exchange in email with someone and was describing how the direction of my own prepping (and I really hate that word..it sounds so cutesy and trendy) has changed as of late and why. Maybe it’s worth a post or two.

I’m fairly satisfied with where I’m sitting in terms of food, fuel, materiel, etc, etc. It’s not necessarily gilding the lily to continue on the current path, but this current economic clime is one that makes me think now is the optimal time to shift directions for me.

As I mentioned earlier, we’re in a somewhat better-than-usual economic period. Jobs and markets are at record numbers. I’m not going to say that money is out there falling from the sky, but for someone with a brain, work ethic, and ambition, now might be a good time to work on getting the financial side of preparedness buffed up…take the extra job, invest the extra cash, sell the unused items, etc.

What does the financial side of preparedness look like?  For the ‘casuals’ that may look like the classic six-month-emergency fund in the bank, pay off the credit cards, and beef up the Roth. For us lifestylers it may look like that plus cash in the safe, cash equivalents like gold and silver, trade goods, and other assets (like land).

I’m pretty sure I will be just fine if I don’t buy another gun, freezedried, or backpack for the next five years. And, as I’ve said over and over, the times in my life where I urgently needed money far outnumber the times in my life where I urgently needed a Barrett 82A1. Doesn’t mean that moment won’t happen, just saying that so far I’ve need $50 bills more than I’ve need .50 API.

Trying to avoid this

So, for the last few months I’ve cut back on my spending on things like storage food, ammo, guns (sorta), and the like, and have instead been moving more resources into savings, investments, cash, hard currency, and that sort of thing.

The economy is doing well at the moment but nothing lasts forever. If this good economy affords me the opportunity to get my ducks in a row for when it inevitably starts to decline…well, wouldn’t that be the smart thing to do?

So..for now, my focus is mostly on getting the money stuff squared away. If the zombies/war/Depression/invasion/flu/volcano/collapse occurs tomorrow I think I’ll be just fine with what I have on hand…but I don’t share that same level of confidence if some of the more mundane life disasters (transmission, broken leg, water heater, job loss, unexpected critical expense, etc.) occur. This change in direction will hopefully change that.

As I read that last paragraph it seem that could be interpreted as the direction of the blog changing, rather than personal direction. Nope…the blog will continue to strive to mediocrity with no change in its usual aimless topical wanderings. But personally, yeah, I think I’m going to be working on the really, really unsexy parts of preparedness. But…it’s gotta be done.

Piggy Goals.

Surreal estate

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You know, when youre a survivalist shopping for a chunk of property, there are certain words or phrases in the listing that jump out at you and make you think “hmmm…that might be just the place I need”. You know, phrases like “year round spring”, or “bordered by National Forest”, that sort of thing. Or, how about the phrase “Local lore claims that there are many hidden bunkers on the property holding the needed provisions to protect and support the members of the group. Current owners know of one bunker, have never looked for more.”

Ok, color me interested.

Backstory: about twentyfive years ago there was a happy little religious cult called the Church Universal and Triumphant (CUT) that wound up becoming newsworthy when the feds raided one of their properties and basically found them to be building bunkers and stoking them with some rather serious (but mostly legal) firepower. I forget what the original issue was. Anyway, once the leader of the church moved on the whole thing sorta fell by the wayside and, as far as I know, is now just a handful of believers scattered here and there.

Apparently one of their “Strongholds” is for sale.

121.76 ACRES OF HIGH BITTERROOT MOUNTAIN VALLEY, CLOSE TO IDAHO BORDER. SURROUNDED BY FOREST SERVICE; 2+ M. OF CREEK RUNS THROUGH IT! PREVIOUSLY PURCHASED AS THE ‘FINAL HOLD POSITION’ property of the religious sect CHURCH UNIVERSAL AND TRIUMPHANT (“CUT”).

I’ve seen pictures of some of CUT’s bunkers and shelters before. The ones I saw are not the least bit amateurish. At the height of their membership they had the money to throw around. (I remember the news article with ATF pointing out the Barret 82A1’s they had…. not cheap guns.)

I’d imagine the biggest drawback to a property like this is that if the apocalypse does occur, members of the church my come back to claim it. That could be…inconvenient.

Don’t kid yourself, properties with bunkers (and, in some cases, tunnel systems) are not unheard of out here. They’re just usually pretty low profile…but they are out there. A thousand years from now archaeologists will have a hell of a time wondering what sort of civilization ritually buried weapons in plastic tubes.

Last Blogger Standing

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Well, it happens from time to time….a couple of my frequently-visited blogs have decided to hang it up and go from ‘survivalist blog” to just “survivalist”. They’ll be missed, but I hold out hope they’ll be back someday in one form or another.

One of the reasons I don’t have a blog list on this thing is because they come and go so fast. I’ll go to someones blog, check out their list of other blogs, and half of them are either 404 or haven’t been updated in five years.

Blogging is not all groupies and lucrative endorsement contracts. Not even close. Not even close to being not even close. Sometimes it’s just a chore that borders on being a pain in the butt.

Me, I’m ambivalent. There are times I don’t feel like posting, and sometimes I can let a week go by without sharing my brain droppings with the world, but I try to post at least a few times a week. Some more, some less. But it’s been a good way for me to stay focused and informed on preparedness. I’ve been doing it for over 15 years now, and I’ll probably keep at it until the FBI snipers get lucky, or I’m drafted to a cabinet position with FEMA.

In the meantime, I wish for the best for those bloggers and I thank them for their years of work. And, if YOU think you’ve got what it takes to blog…go do it. There are plenty of blogging websites that will give you everything you need. Who knows, you might be the next Big Thing in preparedness blogs.

 

Prepiquette

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“I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people: that each should stand guard over the solitude of the other.”
— Rainer Maria Rilke

You’re a survivalist, Im a survivalist, we’re survivalists. And although we’re on the same page on a bunch of things, one of the things we really need to be on the same page about is privacy and not being offended when someone leaves you out of the loop, to a degree, to protect their privacy.

Example: I’d had some back-n-forth online with a fella for a while and we agreed to meet for lunch one day to talk about guns and generally get to hang out with like-minded individuals. As we wrapped it up and we were leaving the BBQ place, it turned out we were both walking in the same direction to our vehicles. And walking. And walking. And…walking. See, he didn’t want to get into his vehicle and have me know what he was driving (and, presumably, catching his license plate info) so he walked past his vehicle. And I walked past mine for the same reason. And…kept walking. We still laugh about that.

Unless you’ve been friends for years, try to be mindful of the other person’s privacy and desire to keep some things private:

  • Ask what they like to shoot, don’t ask how many guns they have
  • Don’t ask where they live (or work), although you can ask what they do for work
  • If someone politely declines to answer your question, or tactfully evades a question, recognize that they are very politely trying to tell you it’s none of your business…accept it gracefully and move on.
  • Do not ask if they know so-and-so or if they are related to someone
  • Let them be as vague as they want to be
  • Don’t follow them to their vehicle as you leave
  • If you are joined by a friend/relative of theirs, assume that those people are ‘outside the loop’ in regards to what you’ve been discussing. If you’ve spent a half hour talking to your new friend Steve about his $10,000 Barret 82A1 and his wife sits down to join you, do NOT say to her “Steve here was just telling me how much he enjoys his Barrett” because the last thing you want is her saying “What Barrett? You told me you weren’t going to buy that thing!” Don’t be that guy.
  • Never ask for someone’s contact information, instead offer yours and if they want to give you their info they will reciprocate.
  • Don’t overshare. It makes the other person uncomfortable and puts them in the awkward position of feeling like they aren’t being equally forthcoming.
  • Don’t name drop.

Obviously, if you’ve known someone for years to the point you’ve had then to your house, then it’s obviously a different story. These suggested guidelines are for new people you meet.

And for Crom’s sake, don’t overshare. It’s better to hold back too much info about yourself than it is to go dig a six-foot hole in the National Forest because you told someone too much too soon. (See, ya gotta have that hole already dug…cause if you don’t, you could be digging it and someone comes along and sees what you’re doing. Now you gotta dig two holes. You could be out there all night!)