Author Archives: Commander Zero

CostCo canned meats again

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I do not like canned meats. It’s incredibly stupid, but my biggest objection is that when you open the can they all look and smell identical and are indistinguishable from cat food. But…when the apocalypse occurs it would be nice to have actual meat to eat that didnt come off the neighbor’s dog (or the neighbor).

I’ve blogged about the canned roast beef that CostCo used to carry and was quite pleased with it. Yeah, it looked and smelled horrible when you open the can but once you cook it up and get it on some rice it turns out to be pretty darned good.

Unfortunately, my local CostCo stopped carrying the Kirkland-brand roast beef several years ago, and although they recently started carrying a different brand it appears they are no longer carrying that one either. Supply chain issues, regional distribution agreements, sales numbers not supportive, whatever ther eason the end result is the dame – no canned beef.

Now, roast beef is one thing but corned beef is another. Personally I think corned beef or pastrami and swiss on rye is proof that the universe has room for luxuries. And canned corned beef, it seems, is never in short supply. Problem is, virtually all of it is imported. Most of the canned corned beef I’ve come across is from Brazil. Makes sense, Brazil is cattle country. But as far as I’m concerned it is also a Third World-ish environ that, honestly, I suspect might be a little fast-and-loose with it’s food safety.So..I avoid.

But, I was up at CostCo today and came across canned corned beef from Australia. Assuming they were sober at the cannery that day, I’d put more faith in Australian food safety observances than those of some South American venue. So, on a whim, I picked up these:

I’ll try it later in the week with some eggs. Probably should go for the full on guerrilla-gourmet experience and use the powdered eggs. Regardless, if it’s any good I’ll let you know. I need to try it soon because with CostCo’s history of dropping products unexpectedly they may be out of it by next week and I’ll never see more again.

Yes, beans and rice form a complete protein and lasts forever in storage. You konw what else forms a complete protein? Meat. I am not going through the apocalypse just to live in a future of textured vegetable protein and other fake meats. I mean, what would be the point?

Article – New Law Will Install Kill Switches In All New Cars

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It gets even better: Barr points out that the bill, which has been signed into law by President Biden, states that the kill switch, which is referred to as a safety device, must “passively monitor the performance of a driver of a motor vehicle to accurately identify whether that driver may be impaired.” In other words, Big Brother will constantly be monitoring how you drive. If you do something the system has been programmed to recognize as driver impairment, your car could just shut off, which could be incredibly dangerous.

Yet another reason used car prices continue to head north.

The usual crowd will say its about ‘safety’ and that ‘if it saves just one life’, etc, etc. But, realistically, it’s another poke in the eye to people who don’t like .gov having their thumb on them.

If you think this is just fine because “If you’ve done nothing wrong you have nothing to fear” then how would you feel if that technology was in your pacemaker, insulin pump, or internal defibrillator

It is my hope that people far more technologically savvy than I will have DIY guides to disabling this sort of nonsense.

Freezer Day

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There’s a lot of things I like about being a survivalist…the clothing is usually quite durable, the sense of security is quite nice, and there’s a satisfaction from being somewhat resourceful and prepared. But, on the other hand…the hours are horrible and there is often a lot of heavy lifting. Case in point…..

Because it was solidly below freezing today, today became Organize The Freezer Day. It could also be called Arctic Archaeology Day.

Let’s be reasonable, if you’re going to ‘clean out’ and organize your freezer you need to temporarily remove the frozen contents. The key challenge in this is, naturally, keeping stuff frozen. There are two ways to do this: have an empty extra freezer or wait until it’s 5-degrees outside and stage your freezer contents outside. I went with option #2.

First off, I discovered that I have a lot more butter than I thought I did. A lot. Same for ground beef. And at least a half dozen half-turkeys that were bought at post-Thanksgiving sales five years ago. but, since they were vacuum sealed and in the freezer all this time, they’ll cook up just fine. They are, however, bulky. Stuff I did not know I have? Well, there was a brisket the size of a folded beach towel. And a buncha short ribs. I had no idea they were there but they’ve been there for at least the last six years so it’s time to crack them open and do something with them. It was also interesting to note the prices over the years as well. It made the coming year look even more dismal.

But…it needed to be done. I was literally out of room in my deep freeze and in the kitchen freezer. On the good side, having no room means I am at full capacity on food. The bad news is that I  have no capacity to increase the supply unless I wanna buy another freezer…which I do not.

But, my advice to you is this: if it’s close to 0-degrees where you are, one of these weekend you might wanna block out a few hours and go through your freezer(s) and get a feel for what you have and make some more space for more food.

Operation Tracer

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Do you know what immurement is? Its a form of execution that has been seen sporadically up to the twentieth century. Succinctly, you seal someone up in a confined space and leave them to die. The stories I’ve read usually involve castles that have a condemned person thrown into a room and then the exits/entrances to the room are walled up. The person is left in the dark to die of thirst and hunger. I believe there are a couple tales in classic literature (Poe?) about someone being ‘walled up’ or ‘walled in’, in a similar manner.

But..those were unwilling participants. Could you imagine a circumstance under which you’d pick a half dozen men to volunteer to willingly be entombed in a concrete bunker…sealed in….with several years worth of supplies and the instructions that they remain sealed in until their jobs were done? Such is…Operation Tracer.

NATO had Gladio, the Nazis had Werewolf, and apparently the Brits has operation Tracer…a plan for some ‘stay behinds’ to, well, stay behind and monitor ship movements from the tactical advantage Gibraltar offered.

Turned out the plan was never activated because the Axis never took over Gibraltar. The secret bunker was sealed up and glossed over and disappeared from history and into legend. Until some spelunkers investigating rumours re-discovered it.

The concept is fascinating, of course. But what I’m more curious about is what you put on the shopping list when you’re pitting six guys into a sealed box for,at least, a year. This exercise is actually not much different than planning for a space mission or a submarine tour, I suppose. But, nonetheless, I find it fascinating and thought I would share.

We joke about bunkers around here, but it’s interesting to note that some people not only planned to make a hidden bunker but actually planned to be entombed within it like some sort of military Houdini-esque escape trick.

Meat

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I am amazed at what meat prices are doing these days. I was at CostCo the other day and regular 88/12 ground beef was something like $4.30 a pound. For freakin’ hamburger! It still seems like just yesterday I was getting it remaindered for less than $2/#. Fortunately I have a pretty healthy supply of the stuff in the deep freeze and, honestly, I don’t eat it that much. My go to is usually chicken breast and, as of late, various pork cuts. WinCo sells boneless skinless chicken breast at $1.99/#, which is reasonable, and pork for around $1.85/#. For my cooking, which is often a stir-fry type of affair, those types of meat are just fine.

But, good grief, hamburger at almost four and a half bucks a pound? What the heck are they feeding those cows? Imported Swiss hay?

But, this is the sort of thing I suppose we should be getting ready to encounter on a more frequent basis. Some of you may be old enough to remember a time in the 1970’s when inflation and meat prices were driving many people to designate one day of the week as “Meatless [weekday]”…Meatless Mondays, etc, etc.

I’m an omnivore, as all of us human-ish types are. I do , however, like meat. In fact, I am of the opinion that a meal is not a meal if there is no meat. (Eggs kinda count but that’s getting pretty nitpicky).

Here’s a really odd thing – I’ve been taking pictures of the pricing board at the CostCo meat department for the last few months and the price of some meats has actually come down. That kinda puzzled me until it occurred to me that with ‘supply chain issues’ and whatnot, it may make more sense for ranchers to slaughter their herds (and thus flood the market and drive prices down) than to pay higher prices for feed as the supply becomes unpredictable. What you wind up with is a glut and price drop…for now. The other side of that equation will not be a happy one for the consumer.

I’m lucky because I can live with ‘cheap meats’. I have a pressure cooker, cast iron cookware, a penchant for cooking, and rather low standards. I can take pretty much any cut of meat and make it into something I’m willing to eat. So…I’ve no problem with switching over to cheaper cuts and critters.

But, geez Ruiz, $almost four and a half bucks for burger is just alarming.

Year in review

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These ‘Year in review’ posts are sort of the low-hanging fruit of the blogging world. But, I’m not proud..so you here you go.

Last year I figured that 2021 would be mostly consequences of 2020, and it appears I was right. Everyone walked out of 2020 saying that 2021 would be better (although they never explained exactly why) and, IMHO, they were dead wrong. Pandemic variations, mandatory vaccine orders, inflation, etc, etc….if there’s anything better in 2021 than 2020 I can’t imagine what it was.

From a survivalist standpoint, which is why youre here, it was another year of confirmation bias. Maybe I do cherry pick the events of the previous year in order to support my position, but even if thats the case it only results in me erring on the side of caution…and whats wrong with that?

I had a few goals and I pretty much nailed ’em all. Pay off the house? Yup. Double the Roth? Yup. More gold and silver? Yup. Vehicle upgrade? Yup. Career advancement? Yup. More guns and ammo? Oh yeah.

What’s still to be done? Well, there’s a nice chunk of Montana somewhere just waiting for me to plunk down a bunch of cash but thats gotta wait until the end of 2022. Things that didn’t go according to plan? Well things were going awesome until the markets got wonky in December but I’m still ahead for the year, so even though it was one step back that one step back came after several steps forward…so, net gain.

Goals for 2022? The absolute biggest is: keep what I have. That which I’ve worked for and acquired in 2022 needs to stay right where it is, thank you very much. Every year I say I don’t plan on buying more guns and thats true..I don’t plan on it, but it happens. An estate pops up and the next thing I know I’ve got mounds of .223 and stacks of Glocks. :::SMH::: It happens. But more than anything else I want to get enough money into my Bunker Fund so that at the end of the year I can close on a nice chunk of nowhere and start mixing concrete.

Careerwise, I wouldn’t mind a bit of a raise and I expect that’ll happen. My other revenue sources, for now, seem like they aren’t going anywhere so while I won’t be able to reach my goals just on the strength of savings I think I should be able to hit them with a combination of savings and trading.

Forecast for 2023? Inflation continues and blame for it goes everywhere except where it should. Wuhan Flu continues to be an issue until finally we develop natural immunities and it becomes a seasonal nuisance like the regular flu. China continues to a) duck the blame for the Wuhan Flu, b) continues its incremental imperialism, and c) keeps feinting at Taiwan. The Russians continue their low-key war against the rest of the world in the form of cyberattacks and state-sponsorship. On the domestic front, I think we’ll see the whole BLM/Antifa/Woke nonsense hit a nadir as people start getting tired of paying high taxes just to have ‘marginalized groups’ threaten to kill them and burn down their neighborhoods. Gun and ammo availability? Guns up, ammo down. “Supply chain issues” becomes the catch-all phrase and excuse for people and businesses not living up to expectations. Cubs do not win the Series.

You know, after thirty-some years of being a survivalist, I never thought I would be somewhat vindicated in this particular manner. I mean, on a long enough timeline, sure, something is going to happen. But I would not have thought that global pandemic and craptacular economy were going to be the leading causes. But…still weathering it pretty well nonetheless, so I’ve got that going for me…which is nice.

 

Article – Down the barrel of a gun: How Second Amendment activism can be a gateway to extremist ideologies

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Gun shows like this have long been part of the connective tissue between mainstream conservatism and the American extremist movement. The vast majority of gun owners are law-abiding citizens, but experts and former members of the extremist far-right said a passion for gun rights often serves as a gateway to radicalization – one eagerly exploited by recruiters and leaders in the movement.

The culture war continues unabated. If they can’t stigmatize gun shows because of…well…guns, then they’ll stigmatize them as open-air recruiting centers of Timothy McVeigh-wannabes.

Its so much easier to swing the hammer of public opinion against someone if you’ve marginalized them and made them loathsome first.

Me, I like going to the range, shooting guns that look big and scary, and having a rather large variety of them. And, thus far, I am the least violent person you will ever meet. But…if you can portray me as some sort of violent extremist….well….thats a narrative that makes it much easier to oppress me and my lifestyle.

It’s not just a war on guns…its a war on people who own guns.

More of the same

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Approximately 37 months ago, I stocked up on soap. As the supply started to dwindle, I figured it was time to bump it up. Here’s an interesting note – I purchased it from the same place as I did three years ago. But..instead of 100 bars for $40, I now get 80 for that same amount. Put another way, my cost went up by 25%. Sure, it could have been a simple change in wholesalers or something but in this economy…:::waggles hand::: ..who knows?

Regardless, I’ve enough soap for the next several years at current usage rates. As Forrest Gump would say, “One less thing to worry about.”

As I mentioned in that earlier post, soap seems to ossify over time. I vacuum sealed the soap to keep it from doing what it does and that seemed to work just fine.  So…empirical data for the win.

I should also mention, while I’m on the subject of long-term toiletries, that about ten or twelve years ago I bought out a closeout of toothpaste. Still using it and it seems to work just fine.

Yeah, we’re going to sink into a 1970’s -style era of inflation and, possibly, unemployment on our way to Third Worldism but, by Crom, I’m gonna be the cleanest, best smelling insurrectionist at the revolution.

Holiday AAR

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There was a bit of holiday gift exchanging going on around here and I figured I’d share the haul with you guys. (Or “Y’all”, if you’re of that ilk.)

  • This required me to actually go to the website to figure out what the hell it was. It thought it was a fleece-lined jockstrap of some sort.
  • If I ever get time to read, I’ll probably spend an entire night reading this and this.

And that was really about it. The older I get, the less I’m concerned with getting gifts…although, naturally, I do enjoy them.

Santa didn’t bring me a slightly-drunk and self-destructive Jennifer Lawrence this year, but, hey, a man’s reach should exceed his grasp else what’s a restraining order for? I’ll get over it…eventually. (For those keeping track, Jennifer Lawrence replaces my old celebrity crush/stalking traget of Angelina Jolie who is looking more and more like the trans version of Sekletor.)

One thing I need to jump on, sooner rather than later, is planning the goals for 2022.

And, sadly, these goals are not going to be helped out by the looming “Hey I know a guy who wants to sell…” opportunity that landed in my lap today. It may be nothing, or it may have some life to it, but the phrase “Pallet of loose .50 BMG ammo” was used. Could be interesting. Definitely be expensive. Of more interest were the pictures I saw of the stacks and stacks of ammo cans of 250 round belts of .308 w/ tracer. Uhm…yeah…might be buying that.