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Paratus – The holiday for, by, and of preparedness

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I bounced this idea around in my head for a while and I think I’m just gonna run it up the flagpole and see who salutes.

You guys are familiar with Festivus? (“A Festivus for the rest of us!”) Its the holiday from Seinfeld that was invented when one of the characters got tired of all the Christmas hype. It has its own rules, its own traditions, and, apparently, it’s own adherents.

Made-up holidays aren’t anything new. Kwanzaa is an amalgam of ‘traditional African holidays and festivals’ cleaned up and marketed to empower black people. Presidents Day is a  holiday created by bumping Washingtons Birthday and Lincolns Birthday into a combined holiday. (To keep the number of federal holidays constant, thereby ‘freeing up’ a day For Martin King Day). So why not a fabricated holiday for those of us who believe in preparedness, and it’s virtues and lessons?

WIthout further ado:

The Paratus FAQ v1.0

What is Paratus?

Paratus (from the Latin ‘prepared’) is a one-day ‘holiday’ that basically exists to give an excuse for like-minded folks to exchange appropriate gifts, get together in a social setting, and, perhaps, share some ideas on the subject. It is intended to be a secular holiday but, reflecting the individualistic nature of it’s practitioners, can incorporate a religious element if the practitioner wants. However, the ‘true’ Paratus is strictly secular, non-denominational, genderless, mostly apolitical, and thus available to every demographic that wants to participate.

When is Paratus?

Third Friday of September. September, because there’s kind of a lack of holidays around that time, on Friday so you can have the weekend to play with your new gear, and the third Friday so you don’t have too close a followup to any 9/11 events.

Are there Paratus colors?

St. Patricks day got green, Christmas gets red and green, Halloween gets brown and orange…the colors of Paratus are subdued earth tones suitable for camouflage, as well as camouflage patterns themselves. Woodland, multicam, digicam, even that crappy ACU all count towards being the ‘Official Color Of Paratus’.

How does the gift giving work for Paratus?

Paratus closely follows the Christmas model – as Christmas traditionally dictates an empty stocking hung by the chimney with care for Santa Claus to fill with gifts, Paratus calls for an empty backpack to be left by the preferred primary exit of the dwelling. Your Paratus gifts are placed in the backpack by the giver. Or, if you prefer the ‘Santa Claus’-type mythos, the backpack will then be filled by the elite Paratus Long-Range Recon Gift Squad. It is advised to wait until a child is in their teens before breaking to them the harsh news that the Paratus Long-Range Recon Gift Squad is really just mom and dad filling their backpack with freeze-drieds once the kid has gone to bed.

Gift giving is not based on behavior (‘naughty or nice’) but based on either need, or revenge gift-giving obligation. Get your intended recipient either something they need or something that will force them to get you something equally as awesome. Win-win for everyone. All gifts should be able to pass the test of “if the world ended tomorrow, would this be really useful?” It is considered perfectly acceptable to leave cash, although in the spirit of preparedness precious metals are preferred over cash. Unreciprocated gift giving is acceptable if the recipient makes a tremendous expression of gratitude and makes a self-deprecating remark about their own lack of generosity. The giver then agrees with the recipient about their lack of generosity, injects a level of snark or good-natured mild condemnation, and the obligation is then discharged. Here’s an example:

A: Hey, man…thanks for the cool Swiss Army knife.
B: You’re welcome. So..uhm..where’s my gift?
A: Yeah…about that…things are a little tight but I promise I’ll get you something even more awesome next Paratus. Plus..Im cheap..I’m  so cheap I watch porn movies backwards because I like watching the hooker give the money back!
B: Yes. Yes you are. You’re so cheap you won’t even tip your hat! But…Happy Paratus anyway.

And everyone can still be friends!

What are the traditional Paratus foods?

Paratus is a gastronomically flexible holiday. You can either do a ‘real’ dinner with your fellow  celebrants where the cuisine is whatever you want – pizza, Chinese take-out, home-cooked turkey, whatever – but the more orthodox celebrants will enjoy meals that are exclusively comprised of long-term food and/or homegrown/harvested foods cooked using a non-grid-connected cooking device. Whereas Halloween has candy corn, St Patricks Day has corned beef and cabbage, and Thanksgiving has turkey as traditional food, Paratus supports the notion of ‘do what you can with what you have’. However, anything freeze dried would probably be considered a ‘traditional’ Paratus food. The little marshmallows in Lucky Charms do not count.

What are the traditional Paratus activities?

Shooting, naturally. Anything that promotes the idea of preparedness. This can include, but is not limited to, watching traditional Paratus movies (“Red Dawn”, “The Omega Man”, “Threads”, zombie movies, or any other movie with a ‘survival’ theme), trading books on related subjects, going shooting, hunting, fishing, or just sitting around discussing current events and strategies against them.

What are the traditional Paratus greetings?

“Happy Paratus” seems to work best. “Joyous Paratus” sounds odd, “Merry Paratus” sounds like a Greek actress, and “Good Paratus” sounds like a medical diagnosis.

Is there a Paratus mascot?

Well, there are leprechauns for St Patty Day, witches and ghosts for Halloween, Santa Claus for Christmas, Cupid for Valentines day……the Paratus Development Committee is still on the fence about this one. A heavily armed, and slightly scarred, Felix the Cat is in the lead since the notion of “Whenever he gets into a fix, he reaches into his bag of tricks” has some merit as well as cats having nine lives. However, at the moment, there is no official Paratus mascot.

Are there any Paratus carols or music?

Paratus is discouraged from having a specific musical theme in order to prevent people from playing it a month-and-a-half before the actual holiday. Additionally, retailers are discouraged from starting their “Paratus Season” sales more than 30 days before the holiday. However, after-Paratus sales are highly encouraged.

Again, reflecting the individualistic nature of adherents and participants of Paratus, some folks may concoct their own Paratus playlists. Commonly encountered tunes might be “Opening Theme” from the Red Dawn soundtrack, “Silent Running” by Mike + The Mechanics, “A Country Boy Can Survive” by Hank Williams Jr., and similar arrangements.

Anything else to know about Paratus?

At the moment, no. Go forth, have a Happy Paratus, and be sheeple no more!

Fun with eggs

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Have you ever actually eaten powdered eggs? I know theres all sortsa stories from military folk talking about the horrors of such tings, but those stories are also usually pretty dated. Food preservation (and fabrication) technology has changed a bit.

Being an unapologetic bargain hunter, I always peruse the ‘marked down’ shopping carts in the back of the store where my local supermarket dumps the stuff it wants to sell now. Usually it’s things no one wants like sugar-free cake frosting, squirrel-flavored olive oil, dill pickle flavored barbecue sauce, and other ‘food’ items that are obviously not moving and taking up valuable shelf real estate.

So, the other day as I was sifting through the cart I found this:

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My history with powdered eggs is a long one. I originally wanted some back in the late ’90s but had no idea for a source. I found this particular brand, Deb El, but found out they did not offer any larger quantity of them than these cans and some industrial-sized 50# bags that I was in no position to repackage. A few years later I discovered ‘Wakefield’ powdered eggs (an excellent product) but its availability was spotty since it was basically manufacturer overruns from .gov contracts (they can sometimes be found through REI). Finally, I found that Mountain House offered #10 cans of eggs and I picked up a few cases of that. Later on I found that Augason Farms offers whole eggs in the far more convenient #2 size cans…and scrambled egg mix in the larger #10 cans. I got a buncha those as well.

IMG_1925

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The first time I used powdered eggs I was extremely skeptical… the powder, when mixed with water, made this foul-smelling, orange-colored, pancake-batter-consistency mix that looked amazingly unappetizing. but, after a couple minutes in a frying pan with some butter it was like some sort of culinary magic trick – the orange turned into that lovely scrambled-egg-yellow that we all know and love, the smell was just like regular scrambled eggs, and the texture, while quite uniform, was also very similar. In fact, the giveaway that fresh eggs were not used came from the even coloring of the eggs….’real’ scrambled eggs have random flecks of white among the yellow. These were an even yellow across the board. But….absolutely delicious and indistinguishable, taste wise, from fresh eggs.

The powdered eggs are a bit more orange-y colored that fresh eggs, but in the half-light of your average apocalypse-induced power failure you probably won’t notice the difference. However, here’s a comparison of the powdered egs [first photo] cooking versus the fresh eggs cooking [second photo]:

IMG_1927 IMG_1930

Takes about two  minutes to cook. Powdered:

IMG_1928Fresh: IMG_1931

Side by side on a plate you can see the color difference. (Too be fair, I used much more butter with the powdered eggs and virtually none with the fresh, so that may contribute to the color difference.) However texture is identical:

IMG_1932

The powdered eggs come out looking not as good as the bright-yellow fresh eggs, but they have a far greater shelf life and lend themselves to mass feeding. Ever go to a hotel that has a breakfast bar and you can get all the omelettes you want? Notice the cook often has a juice bottle or container full of egg mix he pours or dips from? Yeah. Thats powdered egg (or liquid egg mix from powder) that he’s using.

So what good is this stuff? Well, for starters, if your breakfast includes scrambled eggs, french toast, or anything that requires an egg….well, heres your egg. No refrigeration necessary (although refrigerating eggs is, I am told, a mostly American notion. In Europe eggs are left at room temperature.) When Hurricane Sandy knocks out the power and the morning promises a long day of grunt work it’d be nice to be able to have scrambled eggs to go with the canned bacon, canned hash, or other breakfast fare. (According to my research, a post apocalyptic breakfast can be pretty impressive – scrambled eggs, hash, bacon, breakfast cereal with milk, oatmeal, canned fruit, orange drink, and coffee….a better breakfast than I have now.) And, of course, anything that requires egg like pasta dough, breaded foods, etc, etc, are going to be needing this stuff as well.

So…for those of you who may be curious about powdered eggs but don’t feel like cracking open a $40 #10 can of them for an experiment…well, I risked $4 to show you what to expect:

My suggestion to you? Buy the long term eggs in the smaller cans (because once you open a can of powdered eggs it’ll start drawing moisture and if you dont use it soon it’ll cake solid). Don’t expect it to taste/look exactly like fresh eggs, but don’t be terrified about it either. Its about the same quality as fastfood/breakfast bar/college cafeteria eggs.

 

Gear – ‘Seek’ thermal camera attachment.

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Ok, this is, like, ten shades of cool. Here’s a few articles for background:

Heat seeker: Meet the thermal-imaging camera you can afford

The Seek Thermal Infrared Camera for iPhone and Android

Seek Thermal, a $199 Thermal Imaging Camera for Your Phone

Short version: for $200 you can see in the dark if there’s bad guys, warm car engines, animals, or other heat sources lurjing around your AO. This really is one of those products that is ‘limited only by your imagination’. Pour hot water down a clogged pipe to find the clog, see how much propane is in a tank, see if the dog was sleeping on your couch, see if the cars in the driveway/parking lot have been used recently, where is the deer you shot just before sundown, is that a SWAT team hiding in the bushes, which beer in the fridge is the coldest, and, possibly, is that gal across the room really into you or not.

For the survivalist I can see this thing having all sorts of uses…seeing if something is out there in the dark, checking the ground for heat sources from recently extinguished fires, seeing what guns in the rack may have been handled/fired recently, etc, etc.

I’m tellin’ ya, man….we’re living in a Star Trek world more and more everyday. And while the technology is interesting enough on its own, it isnt that new since its been around a while. Whats new is dropping it down to the price of HiPoint pistol and a box of ammo.

I think I may have to get one of these.

End of the world practical joke

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Rather clever. Succinctly, they take a superduper HD 82″ television and set it up in an office environment to replace a window. As people sit for the interview, they see the ‘window’ behind the interviewer showing a calm city scene…until the giant flaming meteor starts streaking across the sky….and they…respond.

Once in a blue moon, my end-of-the-world dreams look a lot like that….sudden brightness in the sky and then that agonizingly slow-looking descent of a fireball. The Russians got the real thing a few years back:

Scary stuff, right? I see something like that as I’m driving to work, guess what? I’m turning the car around and getting back the house…pronto!

One of the best pieces of survivalist fiction out there, Lucifer’s Hammer, revolves around comet fragments hitting the earth and doing terrific destruction. Movies like “Deep Impact” also cover the subject.

This is definitely one of those scenarios that you really just can’t prepare for. If it hits on the other side of the planet you’d be okay, although your life will definitely never be the same. And if it’s an ocean strike and you live anywhere near a coastline you might have a bad day. But if you lived in, say, Colorado, and it struck in Spain you’d probably be fine.

Likelihood? Not even something on my personal List of Things To Worry About. It’s right there with Xenu returning, the Rapture, Vogon constructor fleets and Mayan calendar failures.

But…I’ve been wrong before. Which is why we keep a basement full of freeze drieds.

I like to think that in that interview video if it had been me, I’d have quickly tood up, moved away from the window into an inner hallway and waited for the impact and shock wave. But, you never know.

As an aside, I bet that TV looks great.

“Collapse” – The post-apocalyptic card game

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While I’ll be the first to agree that the end of the world will not be all sunshine-n-stun-grenades, the fantasy apocalyptic worlds can be entertaining.

Collapse is a deck building card game for 2-4 players set in the final months before the end of the world. Players can choose to play one of four world-ending Collapse scenarios, including: financial, biological, natural, or nuclear; or they can play at random where any combination of events may occur.

When playing Collapse, you will need to stock up on supplies such as food and weapons, as well as build fortifications on your home to earn months of survival time. Just remember, time is running out, and you and your neighbors are competing for the same resources. If you are going to survive, you will need a healthy mix of strategy and flexibility as available supplies change and events unfold.

Kind of amusing.

I’m still working on a bunch of back-end stuff here at the blog so more ‘substantive’ posting is slowed down. I do appreciate everyone hanging around while I get this sussed out, though.

Link – The Post-Apocalyptic World Sucks Balls

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It is an interesting thing to contemplate a post-apocalyptic existence but , as this link tells us, if you really wanna try and live in a Mad Max world you can do it easily today with just a plane ticket to pretty much anywhere else on the planet…and you may discover that it isn’t the fun-in-the-sun-with-a-gun festival that you might have thought it was.

Question: If you really want to live in the post-apocalyptic world then why don’t you just move to Pakistan?

Answer: Cuz It sucks balls there.

With 5000 “friends” on Facebook I see all sorts of “tough guy” nonsense flash across my news feed every day. Lately I’ve been seeing this “would you survive the post-apocalyptic world?” Q&A tests where you answer some mind-numbing multiple choice questions and, BAM, you can proclaim that you and Robert Neville will rule the wastelands.

This is of course followed by “Fuck Yeah bro, I’ll be shooting and looting in the post-apocalyptic world. It’s gonna’ be awesome” by whoever took this test. Next comes a legion of other people also saying something to the effect of “I can’t wait for this to happen” to “it is only a matter of time before it collapses and it can’t come sooner” in the comments below.

I have no desire to live in a Third World country. Heck, even a Second World country. I rather like flushing my toilet with water that is cleaner than what 90% of the people on this planet drink, I like having electricity available 24/7, and I love being able to walk into a supermarket  and buy Hostess cupcakes and a copy of Hustler at 2am. I am in no hurry to lose that cushy lifestyle. But, it can happen at any time and thats why we prepare.

Interesting article and I suggest you read it if you think living in the apocalypse will be a fun and liberating experience.

Food and edged instruments

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Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.

:::carefully lights the candles and incense burner:::

:::consults the oracle [teh interwebtubes] and sees the signs look favorable:::

:::begins Gregorian chanting:::

OhBigBrownTruckOfHappinessArriveTodayyyyyyy……..

OhBigBrownTruckOfHappinessArriveTodayyyyyyy……..

OhBigBrownTruckOfHappinessArriveTodayyyyyyy……..

And…it works! What sort of goodies has pre-apocalypse consumer America deposited on my doorstep today? Well, lets take a look.

First up, a nice little collection of #2 cans of goodies from Augason Farms. Before I buy anything in a #10 can I try to get it in a smaller serving so I can see if it’s something I’m going to enjoy or did I just waste ten bucks on wallpaper paste? Sure, after the meteors hit and we’re living in Lucifers Hammer country, what with the murdering cannibal armies and all, we’ll be happy to eat wallpaper paste. But why if you don’t have to? Franklin said that hunger never met bad bread, but I’m sure hunger would prefer awesome bread if it had a choice. I’f I’m eating out of food storage I plan on eating more than just rice-n-beans (which I actually don’t like), or whole-wheat-everything. Man does not live on grains and legumes alone. Third World diets are for Third Worlders. I live in a country where I can make a world-class gourmet meal using nothing but a credit card and a cel phone…why wouldnt you take advantage of that? What did we get this time? Glad you asked:

  • Dehydrated Diced Red & Green Bell Peppers
  • Freeze Dried Banana Yogurt Bites
  • Freeze Dried Pineapple Chunks
  • Freeze Dried Sliced Strawberries
  • Freeze Dried Strawberry Yogurt Bites
  • Spiff-E-Whip Dessert Topping
  • Chicken Bouillon

Interesting choices, no? I’m sure the more drug-centric will make jokes about ‘Spiff-E-Whip’. Whatever. Ever go and do the MRE gourmet routine using the MRE components? There’s something about mixing the non-dairy creamer and the hot chocolate powder to make your own field-expedient chocolate mousse. I admire that kind of culinary creativity so I figured an instant ‘non-dairy desert topping’ would be a good base to mix with, say, orange drink powder or similar to achieve mousse-like results. Yes, the apocalypse is gong to feature shortbread with frosting…my end-of-the-world is not for diabetics and paleo freaks. After a long post-apocalyptic day of hanging quislings from lamposts, clearing roadblocks, and cheerfully relocating the contents of the local National Guard armory who wouldn’t want to relax with luxury food?

The fruits and ‘yogurt bites’ are mostly for grabbing a couple fistfuls, shoving them in a ziploc bag, and putting them in my cargo pockets for later consumption during those slow times as we repel looters and man checkpoints.

I’ll have some write-ups on these and some of the other Augason’s products down the line.

Next up, a box ‘o knives. The amazing irony was that I had nothing on me to cut open the box. :::facepalm::: I like the Glock knives for their utility, ruggedness and price but sometimes you need a big hunk of sharp steel for getting medieval on something that needs..uhm…medievaling. Anyway…another knife I rather like for sheer brutality is the Becker Knife and Tool (BKT) series of knives. With full-tang construction, 1/4″ thick blades, and somewhat-indestructible handles, these things have been moving up on my list. I have their ‘TacTool’ which is really just a sharpened prybar with a handle…and it looks like just the ticket for getting myself out of any situation where the things standing between me and safety are things like windows, doors, debris and the like. This trip I picked up:

What can I say? Knives are like guns…no one item does it all. I figure the BK7 is sort of a GP large fixed-blade knife…enough heft for chopping things, enough length for big tasks, amd if it had a bayonet attachment it’d be right at home on the end of my AR. But, for those quiet non-zombie-filled walks in the woods during fishing, hunting or geocaching trips something with a little less weight and bulk would be nice…hence the BK2 to try out. The little BK11 was just an impulse buy. I usually carry a Benchmade folder that was a gift from one of the LMI but an EDC little sheath knife might be nice to have. Cool part is if any of these wind up not really fitting my needs I can always give ‘em away as Christmas gifts or something.

Speaking of silver….

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Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.

My metals-dealing buddy  stopped by the other day and handed me a silver Eagle. Not known for his boundless generosity, I inquired as to what I had done to deserve such a coin. He said that “one of your readers” contacted him to do some purchasing and said to send an Eagle in my direction. Of course, he won’t tell me who it was since that would violate the customer/metal-pimp confidentiality clause. So, whomever it was that put that Eagle in my pocket, mucho thanks! After the economy collapses and I use it to procure desperate coeds to work in the Lingerie Proving Grounds I will be reminded of your generosity.