Author Archives: Commander Zero

The weekend ‘Co’s

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It’s the weekend. Time to head up to the Co’s for shopping. (WinCo and CostCo)

I’m pretty well off on food right now so I just ‘top off’ what i’ve used over the previous week, but even if I don’t have more than a handful of items on my shopping list I still take my time and hit every aisle? Why? Because I want to see for myself whats going on in terms of demand, pricing, and availability. Are the natives restless and stripping the stores of toilet paper? Has the price of chicken really gone up as much as the news has warned? Are the strategic canned good disappearing? Are the home canning and food storage items strangely absent? That sort of thing.

I’ve believed for the last twenty years that the apocalypse was going to choose the form of some sort of economic issue…a global depression, massive inflation, or most likely a return to the Carteresque 1970’s. But…thinking ahead….what followed Carter? The great recovery after Reagan took office. And that, mi amigos, was an interesting time to be alive.

Not only do I need to be ready, just in case, for an upcoming economic downturn…I also need to be ready to capitalize on it so that when it finally comes to an end (and they all do, eventually) I can come out the other side stronger than ever.But, of course, the priority is on being able to get through the dang thing first.

What sort of opportunities might arise? Most notably, I’m curious to see what happens to the currently red-hot real estate market. If interest rates ever go back up that might slow down the house buying frenzy and prices might start to drop. And if the interest rates go to where they were during the tail end Carter’s reign, which was somewhere in the 14-16% range, I’d imagine things would really cool down. (BTW, the highest rate I’m seeing was around 18% in 1982 which was one year into Reagans term..by the time he left office, though, it had dropped to 10%.) My house is paid for, so mortgage interest rates only affect me in the sense that they make selling the house easier/harder as buyers demand increases/decreases. But since I’ve no intention of selling, it’s moot. I do, however, have intentions of buying and a 2008 style of real estate crash would really help my plans along.

But, before I can think about using a crisis to my advantage I have to, y’know, make sure it doesn’t leave me as part of the wreckage by the side of the road. So….off to the Co’s.

That one critical skill

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Someone in comments mentioned that perhaps if I was set in terms of gear, perhaps I could opine on necessary skillsets.

Well, this is very abstract, but there is but one skill, in my opinion, that the serious student of survivalism (or even just plain ‘ol Life) should try to develop. Develop this one skill and all the other skills flow from it and are magnified by it.

Learn to think ‘outisde the box’. What does that mean? It means always be open to the previously unthought of, to new ways of thinking, to expanding your outlook past it’s present limits. Lemme put it another way….theres the old joke about what book would you want if you were stuck with only one book to read. The smartass answer is ‘a dictionary’ because it contains ALL books.

Learn to think for yourself, think critically, be able to see from other viewpoints, and whatever skill you try to learn next will be easier and more thorough. Don’t let yourself be limited by religious, political, social, or classist dogma. Keep an open mind so you can see things from every angle and point of view. You don’t have to agree, support, or believe in other viewpoints and perspectives in order to see things from those angles…you just need to be willing to try it so you can explore a topic as thoroughly as possible.

A zillion years ago, armies used to line up facing each other and start shooting until one side had enough and quit. That was how wars were fought. Everybody knew that, right? Hiding behind rocks? Shooting and running? Taking out the officers first? Why, thats the tactic of the heathen savages! And, because of racial, political, and cultural dogma, a lot of European wars were fought the same way for a hundred or so years. And then finally someone thought outside the box, decided to ‘stoop’ to the level of the savages, and discovered that..hey…they were on to something with that whole ‘shoot from cover’ thing.

Being willing to explore previously ignored, undeveloped, or undiscovered ideas is like suddenly discovering the switch for the high beams as you’re driving down a pitch-dark road at night. Not allowing yourself to be constrained into a narrow or rigid way of thinking makes it easier to recognize new ideas, opportunities, and alternatives.

Ayn Rand said that man’s mind is his primary tool of survival. You don’t have to agree with Rand on everything but I think we can all pretty much agree on that one statement. The ability to think….think clearly..think for yourself…develop your own ideas and outlooks….is the starting point for learning everything else worth knowing. Sure, you can grab Ham radio For Dummies and pass the exam.. or you can think about how radio works, find some topics on the subject, perhaps some history, that interest you and lead you to learn more, build a few primitive made-from-parts-around-the-house radio receivers because you have a burning need to know how things work…that sort of thing. Develop a curious mind and learning things will never seem like learning.

Everything I’ve ever wanted to know…I mean really wanted to know about…I taught myself. Of course, back then it was more difficult since your only recourses were library cards and first-hand experience. Nowadays genuine world-class experts can show you how to do anything for free on YouTube. How incredible is that? If there’s a skillset for anything that isn’t taught somewhere on the internet…I can’t think of it.

So, yeah….for me…the most useful skillset is being able to think for myself, draw my own conclusions, be willing to explore opinions or ideas that are foreign, uncomfortable, or even opposite of what I believe, and to be open to new ideas.

It’s really a hard task to try and put it all into words, but there you have it. I probably didn’t explain it as well as I could have but maybe some of it resonated. Once you have that mindset, you won’t need anyone to tell you what skillsets you should bone up on….you’ll already know because you know whats best for you and your situation.

When the free ice cream machine goes dry

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I actually have nothing to say today. Go figure.

Inflation? You can see that on the news. Gun stuff? The gunternet is filled with cooler people than me talking about guns. Survival gear? I’ve covered a lot of that and haven’t really gotten anything new lately. Financial stuff? I don’t think thats really why most of you are here.

No..I think that the free ice cream machine (as Tam calls it) is empty today.

Tell you what, how about instead of me telling you what Im doing in my life to prepare for the possibility(!) of a year or four of Carter-like national malaise, you tell me what you’ve been up to? Got an eye on some particular gear? Made some smart financial moves? Come to an epiphany on some preparedness-related topic? Networked with new people? Made some new survivalist friends? Let’s hear it.

Gun Jesus’ new book

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I have little interest in Chinese mystery handguns, but I will buy whatever book Gun Jesus puts out there because I think his work at Forgotten Weapons should be supported whenever possible. I already have a copy of his French rifle book, and the British bullpup book arrived last week. Excellent books even though they aren’t my particular field of interest. However, as I mentioned, Ian does noble work and is deserving, I think, of support.

Skipping the gun show

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“I foresee terrible trouble and I stay here just the same” – Steely Dan

There was a gun show in Hamilton last weekend and…I didnt go. I thought about going but it would be $20 in gas, another $10 for lunch, and then whatever I spent on overpriced panic-driven stuf. And, this is the key part, I didnt really need anything. I mean, really, as far as gun stuff go I’m just gilding the lily at this point. The only thing I need is a scope for my .338 Lapua (leaning towards this one, by the way) and that’s really about it. :::shrug::: I’ve had thirty years to get my gun buying needs satisfied…at some point I was gonna hit the “I think I’m okay” stage. So why piss away thirty bucks I could use for other purposes?

Certainly there are small non-gun things I’d like to get..a few more LED MagLites, some more gas cans, that sort of thing. But…nothing hits the ‘urgent’ chord.

And, somewhat, this carries over to a few other things as well. Food, med stuff, fuel, etc. In fact, so many things are ‘in the green’ that I’m really just focusing the majority of my efforts on the financial stuff. By the end of next year I need to have enough money in the bank to buy a chunk of nowhere. As a result, between now and 12/31/22 most of the financial resources that have been going into guns, ammo, and food will be going into saving and investing.

No, this isn’t going to transform the blog into some sort of financial blog. (Although, to be fair, I’ve been reading a few of those on and off for the last year.) It just means that I’ll probably cut the posts about gun buying by a large percentage and there’ll be more posts about the more mundane things in the wide world of preparedness. And, really, who needs financial advice beyond “spend less than you make, save and invest, think before you buy, contemplate the future”?

The Free Money Machine in DC seems to be in overdrive as it pays people to underachieve and that’s gotta have some consequences somewhere. The music hasn’t stopped yet, but it’s slowing down. Folks would be smart to spend a couple hours in a quiet room with a notebook, pen, and start making lists and have an honest reckoning with themselves about what they need to do to come out the other side of things in one piece. But, really, thats good advice any time.

So, for now, the vast majority of my ‘prepping’ is getting money in the bank, into investments, and hitting WinCo/CostCo every weekend to keep things topped off. And, of course, keep a weather eye on the news. As convoluted, biased, and ‘steered’ as the news is, it’s still worth paying attention to…at least, as long as you get the same story from at least three disparate sources. As the saying goes, theres three sides to every argument – your side, their side, and the truth. I’m not a news junkie but I always check the news first thing in the morning after I power up.

Whether its a straight-up LARPing of the Carter years, or if its a more Fabianistic approach to Directive 10-289, the solid bet is that four years from now things are going to look a good bit different than they do today. Reagan famously asked “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” and I suspect that in 2024 the answer will, for most of us, be a pretty strong “No”.

By the by, if, like me, you occasionally have lapses of discipline and you ‘fall off the wagon’ in terms of keeping up with your preparedness, I highly recommend reading this book. It is, of course, fiction but it isn’t hard to see yourself in some of the situations outlined in the book. Every time I read it I feel like taking the day off and doing nothing but loading up my truck with food, gas, gold, ammo, and heading for a quiet place to raise chickens and vegetables while the world eats itself. Good read.

Pipeline musings of things to come

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‘Tis the weekend, so its time to go grocery shopping. Realistically, there is very  little I need from grocery shopping these days…the house is full of food. I t ink I picked up some butter and that was really about it. :::shrug::: Food is money in the bank.

Speaking of money, I saw that the pipeline fiasco back east wound up with people getting paid off after all. Wanna bet that the oil company will quietly either get a $5m tax deduction or .gov quietly paid the $5m ransom for them to prevent major chaos? Either way, a buncha guys in a basement in Russia just inspired everyone on the planet to get into the hack-the-infrastructure business.

The days of having to cripple a country by carpet bombing and boots-on-the-ground are waning. A buncha guys in the Utah desert can fly RC planes over Iran, and a buncha basement dwellers in Minsk can cut off a fuel pipeline in the US. Push-button warfare indeed.

You know the saying about how amateurs talk tactics but professionals talk logistics? That tells you that logistics is just as paramount as everything else…heck, even Napoleon agreed when he famously stated that an army marches on it’s stomach. The Germans tried it WW2 by torpedoing every supply convoy it could find.You don’t have to get your hands terribly bloody to throw a country into turmoil these days…you just cutoff the pipeline valve controls, lock the floodgates open, turn all the traffic lights to green, shutoff all the runway lights, and power down all the telecommunications relays.

I suspect we’re going to experience more of that sort of thing although we probably won’t hear about much of it. Heck, for all I know we’ve experienced it a buncha times recently and it was dismissed in the media as something else. After all, it doesn’t do the .gov any good for the people to know just how vulnerable the systems really are. They  might wana know why their tax money isn’t going towards keeping things secure.

So, the lesson here is that when people can bloodlessly shut down a system from halfway across the planet, with minimal risk to yourself, and a potentially huge payday, you’re going to see a lot more of that sort of thing. So..be prepared for it. It took only a couple days for people to turn into savages fighting in gas lines. Why be there if you don’t have to be? Store enough fuel to meet your needs for at least a couple weeks. I keep about two months worth of gasoline on hand, based on my average usage.

But, most importantly, this is a harbinger of things to come. Compromised infrastructure that leads to calls for .gov to ‘do something’ and the next thing you know Uncle Sam is keeping his thumb down even tighter on ‘public services’.

The news just gets more and more interesting, doesnt it?

Classic wisdom from the movies

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Four minutes and forty-four seconds of perspective, philosophy, attitude and mindset that, in my opinion, is worth listening to. It’s called something else in this video, but what they’re really talking about is resilience.

Doesn’t matter if the economy is going gangbusters or if it’s swirling down the drain. Survivalism is resilience. How do we gain resilience from economic issues? By being where John Goodman says….you have  a solid car, a paid for house, money in the bank…thats your Fortress of Solitude. A good place to start.

But, as Goodman says, what you really want is to be in a position to say “F You” to…everything. To be able to have the freedom to not have to do something.

Inflation? I have a paid for house, a pile of cash, and gold. F you.
Food shortages? I’ve a basement full of food, a huge garden, chickens, and a pressure canner. F you.
Unemployment? I’ve no debt, money in the bank, and other revenue streams. F you.
Crime and violence? Me and my family are better armed than the local police. F you.

The position of F you is pretty much where you wanna be. How you get there…that’s up to you. Whats it worth to you to be able to just quit your job for six months and not have to change your lifestyle one bit? To be able to ride out a food/gas/power shortage? To have enough financial strength to weather pretty much anything? Is it worth giving up going out to lunch for a year? Quitting drinking and smoking? Driving the same crappy car for another two years? Working ten hours of overtime every week for the next year and a half? All up to you, man.

I’ve been increasing my levels of resilience over the last couple years and, if I stick to the plan, I should be at a pretty awesome level of F You in about three years or so. And then…the world can burn for all I care. Go get some F You.

Article – Inflation speeds up in April as consumer prices leap 4.2%, fastest since 2008

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“I think I have cancer…”
“I think I left the stove on…”
“We’re not gonna make it….”
There are some times I really don’t want to be right. But..here we are:

Inflation in April accelerated at its fastest pace in more than 12 years as the U.S. economic recovery kicked into gear and energy prices jumped higher, the Labor Department reported Wednesday.

Really? Thats what kicked off inflation? A ‘recovery’? You sure it wasn’t .gov promising to spend and tax more money than actually physically exists?

Look, I’m not an economist. I’ve got some finance classes under my belt and thats about it. But I look further downstream than most when  it comes to downstream consequences. Perhaps my caveman-like understanding of economics is far too primitive to grasp the nuances of what the Biden people are doing. Perhaps my understanding of what does and does not cause economic problems is lacking. Perhaps…perhaps…

But…here’s what I see.. prices on virtually everything are going up. People are very concerned about the economy doing poorly and, regardless of whether the economy actually is doing poorly, that sort of sentiment has a way of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Me? I’m keeping outta debt. I’m not spending money on vacations, jet skis, $700 living room chairs, new iPhones, or some I-deserve-this feelgood trinket. I’m saving money, buying metals, investing, keeping the pantry full, and being fiscally conservative…very conservative. Worst case scenario? I missed out on a Disney cruise or a sale on Samsung televisions. Boohoo. I can always spend it next year. And if we get into a Carter Redux economic situation I will look like the smartest person in the room.

Do what you will, man. You do you, and I’ll do me. As for me and my house, we will serve…our best financial interests.

Gradually, then suddenly

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As I’ve gotten older, and acquired more years of doing this sort of thing, I’ve come to a couple conclusions. I’ve mentioned them a million times before but I think they are absolute truths that are worth hearing again:

  • The small, personal EOTWAWKI will happen to you far more often than the Great Big EOTWAWKI. In other words, you will lose your job, be betrayed by those close to you, get stuck in the snow, have a medical emergency, experience a blizzard/earthquake/tornado, replace transmissions, repair water heaters, and be in money crunches far, far, far more often than you will be in a post-nuclear, EMP, dirty bomb, Chinese invasion, comet strike, or zombie situation.
  • It’s impossible to be 100% proofed against an event. (Except maybe having your appendix out.) But what you can do is increase resilience. Survivalism isn’t so much about reducing the odds to zero as much as it is bumping up the survivability rate a point or two at a time. Preparedness (or survivalism) is increasing resilience to events.
  • Determination, motivation, and clear-headed thinking with minimal preps beats wishy-washy, uncommitted, unfocused thinking with lotsa gear. If you can’t afford an FAL and a Land Cruiser, you can afford a library card and free wifi at McDonalds. Develop ‘mans basic tool of survival‘ , and you’ll still be at a tremendous advantage over the normies.
  • Money or money-like instruments are the duct tape that fix 99% of the problems you will encounter right up until the wheels fly off civilization. For TEOTWAWKI there’s 5.56, for everything else there’s money. By all means, stack food, meds, fuel, clothes, radios, ammo and water. But stack some form of valuable currency (dollars, gold, silver, etc.) just as deep if you can…you’ll need it a lot sooner and more often than the rest.

But you already knew all that, right?

What an interesting time we  live in to be a survivalist. We’ve got pandemic, race issues, economic issues, lurking foreign policy issues, and who knows what else fate has on deck?

From Hemingway: “How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked. “Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually, then suddenly.”

Article -Treasury warns of need to deal with national debt limit

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The Treasury will continue to initiate the types of bookkeeping maneuvers it has used in the past to keep the government from breaching a level that would trigger a default on the massive national debt.
……..
The amount of the debt that is held by the public currently totals $22.1 trillion, an amount slightly higher than 100% of the entire economy and heights not seen since the huge borrowing the government did in the 1940s to finance World War II.

I genuinely believe that, in one way, the national debt has become absolutely irrelevant. Simply, there is no feasible way to pay it down without going Weimar on it’s  butt. The best anyone can even hope for is to slow down it’s growth.

I remember the Carter years and the inflation. I don’t remember it’s real-world affect on those around me because I was just a kid with no real interest in economics. Nowadays, I’m an aging survivalist with a real interest in not being a homeless, broke, beaten down wretch…so I follow economics like a man with cancer follows drug trials.

End of the world? Probably not. End of your world? Quite possible. A smart man will have eliminated as much debt as possible, put away a goodly amount of cash or cash-like instruments for when his job disappears, and stocked up on things he’d rather not be forced to buy during a period of austerity. And….thats actually a good policy to have even when the economy is doing well.

There is a time when you can still do something to save the ship, and there is a time when the best thing you can do is head for the lifeboats. The critical part is knowing which particular moment you’re in and acting accordingly.