Category Archives: Uncategorized

Article – Living in a steel box: are shipping containers really the future of housing?

Posted on by

It takes time to adjust to living inside a steel box. Timothy Ader did not, initially, like the idea of staying at Wenckehof, a student village in Amsterdam made up of 1,000 recycled shipping containers. But three years after moving in, he has no regrets.

“My first impression of the containers was, ‘It’s ghetto stuff – I’m not living there,’” recalls the 24-year-old. “But I started visiting a friend of mine living here and started to like the place. Then I moved in and I realised how good it was. I’m really comfortable in my container and I have a lot of space of my own. I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else in the world right now.”

The notion of living in a converted (or unconverted) storage container is nothing new…you drop into various preparedness forums and you’ll see posts that go way back on the topic. You’ll also see posts from folks who have made their own habitable/storage spaces out of used shipping containers.

The biggest contention on the issue of shipping containers as survivalist retreats is that it seems lotsa folks want to bury them, a’la Terminator 2, and they just ain’t built for that sort of thing. Sure, they stack, but thats because they sit on the corners which are built for just that sort of thing.

I live in a somewhat cold envrion…by the time you pad a shipping container with insulation and the other goodies necessary to handle -20 weather you’re probably better of building a ‘real’ structure. But…I think that fo their original purpose they are ideal. I could see dropping one on a couple concrete piers, and then building up a concrete or forced earth berm on three sides to conceal it and using it as storage at a retreat location. I often wonder if it would make sense to just crib it with lumber and encase the whole thing in a few inches of concrete and rebar, using the container, basically, as a form.

There’s a place down the road from here that sells ‘retired’ containers. They also have the short 20′ ones and those look terribly useful. A fella could probably, with the help of his buddies and a few jacks/winches, manhandle one of those wherever he needs it on his property..in the barn under the hay, in the falling-apart garage under a tarp, or even out in the thick brush, concealed by netting, paint, and timber.

Someday, if I ever get a place in the stick, I’ll probably have a container or two tucked away in some hidden location where I can keep gear, a vehicle, etc. But, in the meantime, the developments in the ‘normal’ communities regarding the development of container-housing construction will come in handy later on. ‘Zon has no shortage of material on the subject….



But by the time you finish framing, cutting out metal, etc, etc, you’re pretty much where you would have been if you had started with a regular cabin built from scratch. Why re-invent the wheel? Check out the military CHU if you want to see what mass-production can do to make a container livable. As expected, Wikipedia has some info on the subject as well. As I read it, the huge amount of containers available is because we import more crap from overseas than we send out…so there are plenty of containers to go around. Since I don’t see that changing any time soon, it makes sense to think of them as a handy resource. If nothing else, they can build a hellaciously cool perimeter wall if you backfill them.

Link – The Ten Best Ways To Maintain Your Car In The Apocalypse

Posted on by

In the apocalypse, it’s likely that resources will be scarce, mechanics will be long gone, and your car will be on its last legs. Stay prepared with these 10 steps!

It’s a bit misleading, because some of these steps have nothing to do with maintaining a car. But…it is a worthy subject to think about. My experience has been that anything mechanical cannot be trusted. If it’s got more than a couple moving parts to it, something can and will go wrong.

Best way to maintain your car in the apocalypse? Maintain your car before the apocalypse, and have the materials and information to continue that maintenance.

H/T: Thanks to the person who emailed me about this.

Happy Paratus!

Posted on by

Yes indeed, today is Paratus!

If you’re going to have a holiday, why not a holiday you can actually enjoy and support? Today is Paratus – the holiday of the prepared!

Go read the FAQ and see what’s expected and what its all about. ut, succinctly, it’s a day to get cool new gear, watch end of the world movies, and hang out with fellow Like-Minded Individuals. Religious overtones? Nope. Awkward family get together? Not required. Getting to do cool stuff you actually want to do? Absolutely!

So, my friends, today is your day of absolution…today is the day you can head to Cabela’s, CostCo, Big Five, Sam’s Club, or Bass Pro, and buy the case of ammo, buy the mega-pack of toilet paper, buy six dozen pairs of boot socks, buy the army surplus folding cots, and not feel an ounce of self-consciousness or guilt. Why? Because it’s a damn holiday!

Go! Get out there and flex your purchasing power, watch some zombie movies, and take a trip to the range with some friends. Pick up a little something for your like-minded buddies and wish them a Happy Paratus. (See the FAQ on proper gifting etiquette.)

But, most of all, take some time today to reflect on preparedness…why you do it, what you get out of it, and what you have left to do. Thats the most important part.

Well…that and sending me Paratus gifts.

Some folks just Will Not Learn

Posted on by

The world is populated by idiots.

Im in the bank this morning and the teller and the woman next to me are talking about the power outages that continue in many areas around here. This woman is saying how she hasn’t been able to charge her laptop, that she has no water (well pump), that she’s going to lose the food in her freezer, and how she hates being in the dark.

I gently steered the conversation to ask her if, when this is over, if it will change her behaviors and perhaps she’ll keep some battery-powered chargers around for her cell phone. “Oh, no..this almost never happens.”

You know, your house almost never burns down, you almost never have your car stolen, you almost never get cancer, and you almost never get disabled from your job….yet you have insurance in place for that, so why not this?

For these… clueless idiots…. it appears it truly is better to curse the darkness than buy generator.

My buddy on the other side of town is still without power after a transmission tower (not a power pole, mind you…a transmission tower) decided to go horizontal not far from him. Is he inconvenienced? Yes. He has no internet. Is he still in the game? Absolutely. He has not one but two of the Honda generators. He’s got his freezer, fridge, lights, cell phone charger, and all the other accoutrements of civilization up and running. And he has some stored gas on hand to keep it that way. As his neighbors live out the lifestyle of “Home & Garden: North Korea Edition”, my buddy drinks hot coffee, has lights, has communication, and can continue to run his business. (And also the means to keep it if someone decides his bit of civilization needs to become their bit of civilization.)

I still need to do some after action things… I need to top off the tank on the generator, get all the cords in one place, put some emergency lighting in that one place, log the run time for the generator, pick up some accessories for the extension cords, etc. But, all in all, the generator did the trick.

The EU2000 is too small to run the entire house, but Im thinking of picking one circuit in the house and seeing if I can’t have an electrician come in and set that one circuit up with a transfer switch. That way, I can have one room of the house with the outlets running. The alternative, which I’m also seriously considering, is an entirely new circuit throughout the house of emergency ‘red outlets’ that are completely independent of the house panel and would solely be connected to the generator.

The Honda EU2000 usually runs right around a grand. Worth it.

Discovered some old food bars

Posted on by

Was doing some gear swapping from one vehicle to another and, naturally, discovered a few things I had forgotten about. Most notably, these:

20150809_111508Everyone is familiar with those ‘lifeboat ration’ bars that come in a brick of 3600 calories, right? Well, turns out they make smaller size ones as well. The USRDA of pretty much everything is based on a 2000 calorie a day diet. It would take five of these things to equal that recommended intake. Interestingly, five of these bars is actually fairly compact and while I would hate to have to subsist on them for any length of time they would certainly beat starving to death. Someone on one of the forums decided to try eating nothing but those Mainstay/Datrex bars for a week and see what would happen. I can’t find the link but he was less than enthused about the experience.

But, hey, something you can stick in your pack and not worry about for several years is kinda handy. As I said, it definitely beats eating the upholstery. I’ll be folding some small pouches of Mountain House into the vehicle kit just in case. A small Esbit stove and a canteen cup are already in there so that’s half the battle towards having a ‘real meal’. MRE’s work too but theyre just too darn bulky and heavy.

Article – A Marine explains which state would win if the US declared war on itself

Posted on by

These are the accounts of the Second American Civil War, also known as the Wars of Reunification and the American Warring States Period.

After the breakup many wondered which states would come out in control of the power void created by the dissolution of the United States. There were many with little chance against several of the larger more powerful states.

The last time a buncha folks tried to leave the Union we wound up with the War Of Northern Aggression War Of Southern Overconfidence. But the notion of the US fracturing and balkanizing is something of a staple in much of the apocalyptic fiction out there (Johnstone’s ‘Ashes’ series springs to mind, as well as season 2 of ‘Jericho’, and several other works.)
It’s an interesting read and would certainly make excellent fodder for some more ‘realistic’ post-apocalyptic fiction. Although I highly doubt that, as presented in the article, Mexicans would flood the border to head back to Mexico. Even fractured and at war this country is still probably a better place to be than Mexico.
De facto, the US is already a balkanized state. Don’t think so? Compare New England with, say, the South….they may as well be different countries given the politics, demographics, economy, and political structures. California is a country all by itself. This region I’m in may as well be a separate country as well. And, man, don’t think that sometimes I don’t think it would be nice to have a wall around it to keep everyone else out. But..walls also keep people in and I could never be okay with that.

Article – Greek banks reopen but cash limits remain; taxes soar

Posted on by

An article about how things in Greece are nowadays since they signed up for another austerity plan. Here’s an interesting paragraph:

Ready cash is something Greeks will need as new taxes also came into effect on a wide array of goods and services Monday.

Sales taxes have risen from 13 percent to 23 percent on many basic goods — including some meats, cooking oils, coffee, tea, cocoa, vinegar, salt, flowers, firewood, fertilizer, insecticides, sanitary towels and condoms.

Most European countries already have a VAT on things, but a haircut of 23 percent on something as essential as meat….well, thats a tough pill to swallow. How do you adjust your budget to suddenly accommodate this sudden redirection of your spending power?

Well, if you’re smart, you either have connections or networks to allow you to buy things without paying the tax. (Which, really, has been part of Greece’s problem all along…tax-evasion and avoidance is something of a national pastime there.) This is why cash is awesome….so you restrict cash and limit people to the use of debit cards or other instruments that leave a trail of paper. That trail of paper means that you can’t really evade those pesky taxes. So the winners here will be the folks that have lotsa cash (or cash-like instruments such as gold or silver), folks with heavy stockpiles of goods, and folks who can get those two groups together for a little piece of the action.

Look at that list of things that these new taxes affect….mostly things that are pretty easy to store for the long term. interesting, that.

Sharp pointy cutty things

Posted on by

I hate knife sharpening. I mean, I hate it with a passion. You have to remove material (which you can never put back) from your favorite  knife and keep the right angles on the blade and still produce a good edge. I swear, every time I sharpen my own stuff I cringe when I have to go cut something because all I can think is ‘geez, now I’m going to have to sharpen this thing again’.

Obviously, some metals are better for knives than others. Stainless steel has the edge, so to speak, for maintenance but carbon steels win for holding an edge. Unfortunately, given the nature of the world that you and I are preparing against,. stainless blades tend to dominate. Sure it would be nice to have everything made out of that nice blend of carbon steels so that they cut wonderfully and sharpen easily…but the future is going to be full of days where being able to wipe down your metal tools with an oily rage at the end of the day is just not gonna be in the cards.

Lansky makes one of those sharpening tools that keeps the blade at the same angle every time and I know quite a few folks who love that setup. I’ve only fiddled with them and for a guy who grew up using the old-timey methods it was a bit…difficult. What I use nowadays is one of those three-stone deals. Lansky and Smith both make them, I use the Smith simply because thats the brand of stone I’ve used since I was old enough to start accidentally slicing myself with dull knives.

See, it’s the dull knives that cut you. You use a dull knife, you start to use more effort than normal to make the cut, something slips or gives way and -whammo- QuickClot and a trip to the ER for some mattress stitches. If something is supposed to be sharp, keep it sharp…it’s actually safer than using a dull tool.

YouTube is full of knife sharpening how-to videos and if any three of them agree on the technique and materials…well..I haven’t seen ’em. I put some oil on the softest stone, spread it around, and start like Im trying to slice off long strips of the stone…one side, then the other, repeated a buncha times….then switch to the next hardness of stone and lather, rinse, repeat. Some folks like to finish up with ceramic sticks or a strop…I don’t usually go that far. The test that I’ve read about to determine if the edge is good is to pull the blade across a fingernail..if it just slides across, thats bad. If it bites and drags into the nail, thats good…means you’ve got the microscopic little ‘teeth’ just the way you want ’em.

Someday they’re going to have adamantium knives that will never need sharpening but until then…ugh…shhhhhhk, shhhhhhk,shhhhhhk,shhhhhhk, over and over, as you slide the blade across the stone.

Followup – Wife stranded in desert was prepared to die next to husband

Posted on by

A followup to this post/article about a couple that got stranded in California.

RIVERSIDE, Calif. (AP) — A woman stranded in her car for two weeks in the Southern California desert in May said she forgave her husband for making a wrong turn and was prepared to die with him.

 

“I told him, ‘Honey, we all make mistakes. We all make wrong choices.’ That’s all that was,” Dianna Bedwell said Friday after the memorial service for Cecil “Paul” Knutson, who died a week into the ordeal. “We had 29 wonderful years together. If we make it out, fine. If we don’t make it out, fine.”

Touching. Eight pounds of oranges must last a while, but I can’t imagine being diabetic and having nothing to eat but oranges and pie….thats like having a choice to either starve or eat radioactive cheeseburgers.

There’s a couple lessons in this story, and they’re really the same as in most of the other ones: let people know where you’re goin, your route, and pack some supplies.

Article – The Strange & Curious Tale of the Last True Hermit

Posted on by

An interesting tale about a man who ran off into the woods and didnt come out for almost thre decades. What makes it interesting isnt so much the psychological exploration (which is interesting) but rather the techniques and strategies used to avoid detection for 27 years. Camouflage, it seems, is paramount.

The hermit set out of camp at midnight, carrying his backpack and his bag of break-in tools, and threaded through the forest, rock to root to rock, every step memorized. Not a boot print left behind. It was cold and nearly moonless, a fine night for a raid, so he hiked about an hour to the Pine Tree summer camp, a few dozen cabins spread along the shoreline of North Pond in central Maine. With an expert twist of a screwdriver, he popped open a door of the dining hall and slipped inside, scanning the pantry shelves with his penlight.

I can relate to wanting to just disappear, but when i fantasize about it it doesn’t involve never being seen again…its more along the lines of new location, new name, and new life.