Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

Dammit, I had a post brewing about this and sure enough here comes the news I was wondering when we were going to see:

Unpaid Credit Cards bedevil Americans

An Associated Press analysis of financial data from the country’s largest card issuers also found that the greatest rise was among accounts more than 90 days in arrears.

Experts say these signs of the deterioration of finances of many households are partly a byproduct of the subprime mortgage crisis and could spell more trouble ahead for an already sputtering economy.

“Debt eventually leaks into other areas, whether it starts with the mortgage and goes to the credit card or vice versa,” said Cliff Tan, a visiting scholar at Stanford University and an expert on credit risk. “We’re starting to see leaks now.”

Well who the heck is surprised by this? “Hmmm…pay the VISA bill and lose my house or pay my mortgage and blow off VISA…decisions, decisions.” No brainer…people are going to circle the wagons and pay the mortgage rather than lose their homes. Next up – auto loans. You watch, those are gonna be next. And as the housing industry gets shaken up with construction businesses going under youre going to see that sort of effect carried into other parts of the economy as the ripples from the housing industry spread out.
Credit card debt is, I believe, ‘bought’ like mortgage debt so who ever is holding the note on all that debt may be in for a nasty surprise. I think the only ‘winners’ to come out of all of this are going to be people who kept a calm head, lived within their means and have a few bucks to spend. Who knows, in a few years (or less) you may be able to buy real estate, cars and other big ticket items at some very good prices. What I see in the news says that foreclosure sales are being attended with alot less interest than one would think…meaning that perhaps those people with a yen (so to speak) to invest arent convinced that prices will go down even further.

Theres opportunity in everything and Im sure theres opportunities here for those who are careful and have money. Unfortunately, that aint me.

I’m quite glad Im a pessimist. When I got my mortgage a few years ago the guy said to me “We can give you this rate or we can go with an adjustable rate mortgage.”
“Well, thats definitely a better rate…”
“Yup, it’ll save you $[xxx.xx] a month over this other rate.”
“But that rate could change, right? My monthly payment could go up?”
“Yes, but it could also go down.”
“Not a chance. I’ll take the hgher fixed rate.”

I may be economically ignorant but I knew that I could afford $X dollars a month. No more. So I paid a higher rate but assured myself that my monthly payments would pretty much remain the same. Now I pat myself on the back for being paranoid and pessimistic enough to have taken the safe route.

Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

Practical Preparedness

Bear Ridge Project 

Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

I was reading about the ice storms in the Midwest and the article said that many people were short of supplies…even those who had ‘stocked up’ before the storm. The article said that people who went to the grocery and stocked up on food found themselves in a bad way when the power went off and their refrigerators/freezers went dead and the food started to spoil.

First off, if you know theres an event coming that is so bad that you need to run to the grocery and stock up doesn’t it seem logical to infer that event will also knock out your power? So doesn’t it follow that buying foods that require refrigeration/freezing may be counterproductive?

Secondly, the event in question is an ice storm. An ice storm. ICE. Take the meat out of the freezer and stick it out on the porch where the ice is. Even if it isn’t enough to keep it frozen it’ll sure as hell keep it from spoiling for a few more days. Heck, theres days here in Montana where the temperature in my freezer is actually warmer than the temperature outside.

The girlfriend, who grew up in North Carolina, jokes about how if theres a hurricane the response is to immediately stock up on bread and milk. Now Im starting to wonder what the point of stocking up on milk is when you know bloody well your refrigerator is going to very likely lose power. And, really, bread? For what? I have never seen footage of refugees and survivors huddleds around campfires eating toast. The lesson here, I think, is that if you’re going to stock up before a big event use your head and don’t buy something that needs refrigeration.

Speaking of not requiring a fridge, I finally found Parmalat whole milk at my local WallyWorld. If you’re not familiar with it, Parmalat is what I generically call ‘shelf milk’. It is regular whole milk packaged in such a manner that the unopened package requires no refrigeration. It comes in a ‘juice box’ container like chicken stock and you just put it away in your cupboard shelf until you need it. Once opened you’ll need to refrigerate it but until then…nope. Date on the package puts the shelf life at four to six weeks. However, we all know those ‘use by’ dates can be a bit conservative.

Expensive? Not hugely but it does cost about twice as much as an equal amount of ‘regular’ milk. The advantage, however, is tremendous. You buy it a few days before the hurricane and if power is still out in four weeks you can still have milk with your breakfast cereal. I like to keep the stuff onhand for cooking purposes. I normally don’t drink enough milk to finish a quart before it goes bad, so its nice to have some in the cabinets for when I need it.

How do they make the stuff? UHT processing. Read about it here. Fairly common overseas, Im told. Its interesting to note that more and more stuff in the market is being packaged using these ‘no refrigeration required’ methods. Very convenient for those of us who want to keep extra food on hand. I want to say it’s a trickle-down benefit from the development and manufacture of MRE’s but in actuality its probably a lot less glamorous. Economy of storage and shipping is probably the bigger motivator.

Powdered milk is always an option but the most common is lowfat milk which makes sense from a preservation standard (keeps longer than whole) but, to me, tastes horrible. There is powdered whole milk (Nestle’s Nido springs to mind…usually found in either the baking section or the ‘ethnic/Mexican’ section of the supermarket) which has a shorter shelf life but does a more palatable job (to me) in passing for milk.

The powdered milk has an advantage for storage since it can be had in #10 cans from various retailers. The UHT packaged milk is, as far as I know, only (commonly) available in the foil ‘juice box’ containers which may or may not hold up well in terms of longer-term storage. It would be interesting to see if freezing the UHT milk would negate the shelf life requirements. By this I mean could you keep it in your freezer for six months and then when the power goes out, have it thaw and still be safe for room temperature storage. I would imagine that the freezing process would cause the fat to separate out and the resultant thawing wouldn’t allow you to ‘recombine’ the whole thing. Im curious, but not enough to bother experimenting with it.

Several ‘survival’ oriented food storage books (Making The Best of Basics, for example) tell how to make yogurts and cheeses from stored milk so, to paraphrase Anita Bryant “Its not just for breakfast anymore”.

In addition to mixing it with your corn flakes, powdered milk can be mixed with various fruit ‘flours’ (taking dehydrated or FD fruit and running it through a blender to make a powder of ‘flour’ out of it) or beverage mixes to create nutritionally rich smoothies and drinks. I recall reading somewhere about mixing powdered milk and Tang to create an ‘orange creamsicle’ kind of drink. Haven’t tried it (‘cause I hate that lowfat powdered milk) but I might have to give it a shot with some Nido.

So, if you imagine a circumstance where you just gotta have milk theres a couple options for you. I would imagine this is more important to people with kids than to most adults, but there you have it. You don’t necessarily have to have a cow in order to have milk after the power goes out, although in the very long term it would probably prove handy.

This reminds me, I received Mountain House’s 2008 product info and theres a couple additions – #10 cans of FD strawberries, and #10 cans of FD banana slices. If theres enough interest I may put together a #10 can group buy in a few months…depends on the interest.

Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

I forgot these two:

http://bisonsurvivalblog.blogspot.com/ – Not sure what to say about this one
http://www.shtfblog.com/ – This one is proving to be a reliable read

Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

Went to the Hamilton gun show today. Nothing really jumped out at me. AR mag prices seem to have come down. In bulk, military contract 30-rd mags were about $10. Ammo was still high. Lucked into a guy selling big boxes ‘o bullets. The Kiwi and I snagged 2000 .30 147 gr. FMJBT w/ cann. for $75/1000….a very nice savings. I also saw the only sporterized G43 I have ever seen. It was hideous. Also saw some guy selling a “sniper” Springfield 1903A4….except it had a front sight (hmmm….werent they all made without front sights?), had the serial number and maker data in the wrong place (hey , werent they made so the scope base wouldnt obscure them?) and had a very non-military base (Wow, I didnt know Redfield made a nice blued one piece base like that way back when!). In short it was everything I could do to not ask the guy if he really knew what he was talking about. Sad thing is some idiot will come along and give him a couple grand for that abortion.

But, more importantly, I got a good deal on bullets and can start putting some .308 ammo away for that rainy decade.

=-=-=-=-=

Misc. links:

A survival blog that seems to have gone nowhere: http://survivaleky.blogspot.com/

More of the same: http://www.backpackfever.com/

Interesting files from an odd website: http://thedisease.net/?ejaculate=library

Practical Preparedness: http://practicalpreps.com/forums3/

More than I ever wanted to know about making lanyards: http://stormdrane.blogspot.com/

Preparedness discussion forum: http://www.whenshtf.com/

Good grief, Kurt Saxon hasnt blown himself up yet? http://www.survivalplus.com/

An to round out the list: ,Rawles’ Survivalblog

Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

Ok..I went, I saw, I came home and fondled my AR15.

Theres three movie versions of Mathesson’s “I Am Legend” and I think I like this one best althoguh it probably follows the book least of all of them.

Because I am a compassionate human being, I will post a spoilers cut.

Read the rest of this entry »

Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

Friday is the day, folks. I am jazzed. I am always up for a good (or even a crappy) post-apocalyptic movie. This years ‘Resident Evil: Extinction’ was only mildly entertaining (although if the apocalypse is going to be full of Milla Jovovich clones then I will personally press The Big Red Button that starts doomsday) and just made me that much more eager for Legend.

Its beaten to death but heres the fast background: “I Am Legend” was a book that was made into a movie with Vincent Price – “Last Man On Earth”. A few years went by and it was re-made as the classic “The Omega Man” with Charlton Heston. Fast forward a few years and its now “I Am Legend” with Will Smith.

All three movies share the same source material but handle it differently. LMOE gave strong vampirical overtones but followed the book pretty well. Omega Man lessened the vampirical angle and utilized a bunch of Christian/Messiah imagery that, once you know what to look for, is hard to ignore. I’ve seen some previews for Legend and it looks to be closer to the book and less like Omega Man although since more people are familiar with Omega Man than LMOE there’ll probably be some nods to the Heston movie.

This movie has been in development for years with Schwarzenegger slated for the lead role but it never materialized. It’ll be interesting to se how Will “Aw hells no” Smith does in it. I love this image from the movie. It looks like me leaving for work in the morning (except I have more hair):

Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

Obviously the solution to the problem of teenagers shooting up shopping malls is difficult but it needs to be looked into. Yes, I know Im going to get stiff resistance from the ‘individual rights’ crowd but, dammit, theres lives at stake. Now, be objective and just think this through: Ban teenagers.

No one needs a 16-year-old emo slackard around the house. Studies show that you are 43 more times likely to run out milk and breakfast cereal if theres a teenager in your home. Statistics dont lie, people!

Now, some may say that theres some sort of constitutional right to have teenagers but if you intepret the Constitution that way you have to remember: that document was framed in a different era. The teenagers in those days were harmless. They worked in the fields, handled the livestock, and were actually useful. Modern teenagers are entirely different. A modern teenager can lay waste to an entire refrigerator without pausing to ask “Did you want some of this?”. If our founding fathers knew that the familiar and useful teenagers of their era would be supplanted by todays high-capacity eating machines they’d have struck all language from the Constitution that allows these horrid emo wastes of skin to exist.

What can you do? First of all, if you have a teenager or two in the house GET IT OUT. Send it to college, the Marines, the Peace Corp, whatever. But get it out of the house now! Reduce the risk at home!
Second, work to reduce the incidents of senseless teen violence by removing the source of the problem: support licensing and strict insurance requirements for anyone ‘needing’ a teenager in their home. The US is the only industrialized Western nation that allows completely unfettered teenagers. Fetter them!

Teenagers shooting up shopping malls is a nightmare scenario all too common today. By putting reasonable restrictions on teenagers we can stop this senseless violence. These restriction will not affect people who have legitimate, normal children. We’re not talking about taking away anyone’s toddlers. We just feel there should be sensible controls on the more dangerous and destructive children – teenagers.
Thank you and good night.

Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

A few links…….

I found this fascinating and I recommend it. Videos from a program about those crazy Americans with their bomb shelters:

Part I Part II

I recognized several of the shelters from the book “Waiting For The World To End” by R. Ross. Some very nice shelters in the videos including everyones dream home: the converted missle silo. An interestingthing, and something that surprised me given the apparant UK origination of the show, was that there were no scense of shelter owners displaying their firearms. You couuld see ammo, ammo cans and a rifle in some of the backgrounds but not nearly what Id expect from liberal weenies like the Brits.

More links: shout out to merccom over at LiveJournal for the links to DIY wind turbines:

DIY turbine link #1

DIY Turbine link #2

I would imagine that simply replacing the blades with a chain and sprocket assembly would be all thats needed to build a bicycle generator instead. Good stuff.

Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

I dont normally get too far into politics here because thats not what this blog is about, but I do like this candidates unambivalent statement on the gun control issue.

“Other candidates say gun control doesn’t affect hunting. Now I’m a very avid hunter, but the Second Amendment isn’t really about hunting. It’s about tyranny and self-defense. The Founding Fathers weren’t worried about our being able to bag a duck or a deer, they were worried about our keeping our fundamental freedoms.”

Nice words if he really believe them. Alot of folks go to gun shows and get their pictures taken for a campaign, its what they do in office to follow up on that that matters.

Still, refreshing to see such an opinion.