Category Archives: Uncategorized

Forecast: There’ll be a little nip in the air

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Pearl Harbor Day… an excellent reminder that a) stuff can happen when you least expect it, and b) nuclear fission can be air delivered.

FDR gets credit for ‘getting us out of the Depression’, but if you look at the numbers he presided over a Depression economy and a war economy. The only way ‘he got us out’ is if you believe he let Pearl Harbor happen so as to get us into WW2. And, of course, once the war was declared that pesky Depression was gone faster than you can say “Well take five million Garands and all the bombers you can build.”

This was also the catalyst for the forced internment of American citizens into concentration camps. Another lesson there.

And, of course, the end of the war brought about massive changes to American life and culture as everyone came back from the war.

But, for America, it all started on that December 7 day. Years ago I met a guy who was at Pearl Harbor when it all went down. Like an idiot, the only question I could think of was “What was it like?”. “Terrifying”, was the response.

[yop_poll id=”16″]

Money v. Goods II

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I had mentioned that next paycheck I was going to work an item or two off my proposed Go Heavy list. As it turns out, I woke to a mailbox with a paystub from a former employer paying me for…I have no idea what. I’m guessing a payroll error somewhere got caught in an audit and this is what happens. Regardless, it means that I can go ahead and start my little experiment.

The format is actually pretty simple. Whatever I buy a huge quantity of will be marked with the date, place of purchase, and price. At the end of the year, there are two possible outcomes (well, really an infinite number of possible outcomes, but liet’s not split metaphysical hairs…) – either I am out of the item, in which case that means the amount purchased was, in fact, not a years supply (QED), or there is some product left which indicates that I overestimated. At the end of the year I’ll see if the prices have changed and figure what that change was, and I’ll have my percentage (+/-) of what purchasing en masse at the beginning of the year saved me.

Of course, this doesn’t have to take place at the beginning of the year, it can take place whenever you want as long as you faithfully track 12-months from the starting point.

My list of items to store has actually gotten fairly long. Food, housewares, etc. Since some of the items on my list are actually on sale now at Albertsons, I’ll probably start with those and work from there. Should be interesting.

Money v. goods

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I ran out of dish detergent yesterday night an thought “No big deal, I’ll trot downstairs and grab another jug of the stuff.” To my chagrin, that was the last one. Bad survivalist! Sure, the end of the world is not going to be made worse by a lack of dish soap, but it’s the principle of the thing: shoulda had it, didnt.

So, that got me to thinking that January (or, really, late December) should be my evaluation period for purchasing “a years supply” for the coming year. I’ve made a list of a few things I’m just going to go ‘heavy’ on and see if they do indeed last me the year. This should make for some interesting looks from the guys running the registers at CostCo when I pick up a dozen drums of detergent.

And as I said, the end of the world experience will not be greatly affected by a lack of dish soap. But a ‘localized’ end of the world..such as a job loss or similar, ‘personal’, disaster will be somewhat eased if I can reduce the number of things I have to buy until I”m back on my feet.

Think about it. Pretend you lost your job and its going to take you three months to get another paycheck coming into the household. Every dollar is going to count, right? So the less money you’re spending on toilet paper, paper towels, soap, food, clothes, etc, is more money you have to stretch for other necessities. This is why I try to keep as much long-term-storage-friendly consumables on hand as possible.

I have the storage space (mostly) to go deep on stuff like that, and even if the world doesn’t come to an end I’m still ahead, inflationwise. There is an opportunity cost, I suppose, to tying up that money when it could be doing other things. That brings up a much bigger quandary: cash or goods?

Let’s say I spend $100 on toilet paper to store for the year. Assuming inflation runs around 4%, that means it would take $104 to buy that same toilet paper at the end of the year. By buying it upfront, I ‘made’ 4% on my money. But what if I simply took the $100 and put it in an envelope in my desk? At the end of the year it only buys me $96 worth of toilet paper. BUT…it can also buy me a host of other goods, whereas if I had spent the $100 on TP all I’d have is TP. In other words, $100 worth of TP vs. $100 cash. $100 of TP is just TP…but $100 cash can become $100 of TP, food, fuel, ammo, shoes, etc. So, it might make more sense to store the cash, rather than the TP.

As I said, my buying power is reduced by inflation…Assume TP was $1 a roll, just for round numbers. $100 gets me 100 rolls in January, but in December it gets me 96. But if I invested that $100 at something that made more than 4%, that would mean I could buy at least 100 rolls in December. The stock market, yearly, returns upwards of 10% on average, right? So, in theory, I park $100 in January and in December I buy 110 rolls of TP.

But…risk, scarcity, and self-discipline come into play. The investments may go down and my $100 may get cut to $75. So..75 rolls of TP in December. Or scarcity may come into play..the TP crop could get TP weevils and the price shoots up. Now my $100 can only buy 50 rolls in December as the price doubled. Or inflation may go past 4%. And, finally, self-discipline – can I stare at $100 sitting on my desk for a year and not touch it? Mmmm…

And often the bird in the hand is worth the two in the bush, y’know?

So…goods. This isn’t to say I don’t keep money stored away. I just keep it where I can’t see it or get to it without a conscious, purposeful effort.

All this to say that next payday I’m going to pick one item off my list of ‘Go Heavy’ and stock up for the year. At the end of the year I’ll review if the amount purchased was indeed a years supply. That’ll give me a good metric of what a years supply constitutes around this house.

This mental exercise in frugality, preparedness, and cost/benefit has been brought to you buy writers block, an empty soap container, and un upcoming sense of dread.

Age

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A full 50% of my readership is over the age of 55? That was really unexpected. I thought for sure it would be mostly 30-45 year-olds.

So that means that at least half the people around here are old enough to remember olden days of ‘survivalism’ when it was 1911’s and AR-15’s, Mel Tappan and Kurt Saxon, woodland camouflage and Rambo knives, and Red Dawn and The Day After. Ah, what a time that was.

Now, it’s entirely possible a lot of folks were lying to stack the numbers (for whatever reason) but if the numbers are true…well, thats a pretty interesting little fact, dontcha think?

 

Poll results

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I gotta say, I was kinda surprised by the numbers in the last poll. 46% of the people responding had been into preparedness for 15 years or less. Put another way, I  had been blogging about preparedness for they even got into it.

Another thing that surprised me was largest group was people who had only been prepping since Obama was President – 6-10 years.

Honestly, I was expecting a fairly even distribution across the board. But, I should probably also consider the age component… most people here are probably in their 30’s…not grey old geezers like myself.

But, now that I think about it, lets address that as well…….

[yop_poll id=”15″]

P-series mag stockpile

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Fella on GunBroker had an auction for a half-dozen Ruger factory mags for the 9mm P-series. My ‘buy’ threshold is $15 ea. Any more than that and I’ll just wait for a better deal. Turns out I won the auction. As Im emailing the guy to coordinate the purchase he says “Oh, we found another ten mags in the shop. Ten bucks apiece?” Uhm..ok. And then another guy on GB was trying to unload a bunch(!) of ban-era Mil/LE-only marked factory mags. His state had gone to 10-rd mags and he had to sell his 15-rd mags. I told him I’d trade him for the 10-rd mags I have sitting here.

So…I have more than neatly sewed up the magazine needs for the dozen or so guns I have here that take the P-series mags.

Speaking of P series, Tam over at View From The Porch is doing a 2,000 round shoot-it-till-it-dies test on a P89. She’s mentioned that the sights are a challenge, the grip is bleah, and the trigger belongs on a staplegun. There’s a bit of truth to that. So why do I love the P95 (the next stop on the evolutionary highway of the P-series) so much? Easy. Because unless you come across someone selling a Glock or a Sig for $200, there is no better 9mm handgun that you can buy for two hundred bucks.

If you’re patient, you can land a P95 off gun broker, with shipping, for $200. Now, there are NO new handguns you can buy for $200 that I’d feel comfortable going into Katrina-ville with. And the ‘good” guns like Sig, Glock, Beretta, and Smith seldom show up used for a mere pair of Franklins. Sure, maybe your HiPoint or TokaMakarov has been reliable as a sunrise…but I’ll take the 15-round capacity of the Ruger.

So, while the P95 isn’t a great gun, it is the best 9mm you can buy for $200 unless you know some meth addict selling a G34 in an alleyway somewhere. And for my intended use of the P95, which is as a, basically, disposable handgun for truck/cache/cabin/loaner… well, you cannot do better at that price.

I wish Tam were testing the P95 rather than the P89… the P95 had some refinements that made it a better shooter, IMHO, than the P89. However, I’ll be curious to see how the 2,000-rd shoot turns out.

As I was looking through her blog at all the other 2,000-rd tests one thing becomes clear: virtually any handgun from a reputable large manufacturer, using quality ammo, is darn near 100% reliable. Many of the failures that do occur in the tests that she writes about involve Wolf ammo, or bargain ammo of questionable pedigree. Not all, but enough to let me form an opinion about the ammo. The point being that if you buy a new, modern manufactured handgun in 9mm (that isn’t a Remington R51) and feed it quality (not high grade, just ‘quality’) ammo, you will probably achieve monotonous reliability.

Anyway, unless I pick up another P95 or three…which I really am going to hope I don’t….I think I’ve got the magazine angle covered. So much so, in fact, that it might be time to package a couple of the P95’s for the Deep Sleep with a half dozen mags, some ammo, and the usual accoutrements.

When didja get started?

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I was trading “How did YOU get started in preparedness?” stories with someone the other day and did some walking down memory lane.

I remember that like, I believe, 99% of survivalists, my acquiring started with the guns. Or knives. But definitely with the more ‘sexy’ aspects of preparedness. Nowadays though…gun purchases are just as good opportunities present themselves, the focus is on day-to-day stuff, food, and money.

I’ve said it before, but I really think it’s true – when you hit the stage where you spend more time, effort, thought, and money on non-weapony stuff than you do on weapony stuff, you’ve stepped into a new stage of preparedness. Sort of a ‘later season’ or maturation of your life as a survivalist.

I know that right now my focus is very much on finances, putting away day-to-day stuff and food, and positioning myself to be in a position to be more resilient and adaptable. Giving myself options, I suppose, is what it’s all about.

Something about having a huge amount of food in reserve just makes me feel calmer. Ditto for money in the bank, although that’s always a challenge given how there’s always a gun somewhere in the world that needs to be brought into my life.

Let’s do a poll:

[yop_poll id=”14″]

 

Gobble gobble

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There is a LOT of turkey,  Butterballs marked down 50%, going into the freezer this week. I actually had to do some shuffling around to fit them all in there. Vacuum sealer is getting a workout. Yay turkey!

And thats just the first trip to the store…..

Nudge to pick up an E12

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I’ve given away a couple of the Fenix E12 flashlights and have recommended them to a few people who actually took me at face value and went and purchased one. To a man, every person who got one from me or bought one on my recommendation has been extremely pleased.

I was reminded just how freaking handy these things are the other day when the power was out. Since the E12 is so small, taking only one AA batt, it’s small enough to carry in your pocket without losing much pocket real estate. But disproportionately big performance.

I love SureFire for their stuff, and even Streamlight makes a couple things I like, but these things are the absolute shiznits. About $20-25 at most places, but absolutely worth it. I have several that I keep scattered about. Drop in a lithium AA, leave it in the console of the rig, and you will be extremely happy someday when it’s the middle of the night, the weather has turned to crap, and you need to exit your vehicle to investigate something. Lanyard one to the inside of you EDC bag. Or just carry it religiously in the pocket of your jeans like I do. But….handiest flashlight ever.

This is one of those items that when I recommend it to a friend I tell them “Look, this is an excellent piece of gear. Buy it and if you don’t agree I’ll buy it from you.” That, mi amigos y amigas, is a ringing endorsement.