Housecleaning

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I often joke than when I die, the garage sale will truly be epic. Might also be historical too since some stuff has been in storage for over 2o years. Since I have some time on my hands these days, I’m cleaning up a few things and laying eyes on things I have not seen in a very, very long time.

Freeze drieds from pre-Y2k, old flashlights, rain ponchos, MRE entrees, etc. There’s quite a bit of stuff. And, surprisingly, some did not hold up as well as I would have expected. Case in point – sometime in the wee hours of the new millennia CostCo had a close out on Baygen windup flashlights. They were, as I recall, $20. I think I bought about six or eight. I pulled one out of the box and kept it handy in the bunker for when the power goes out and I need something to find my other gear with. Out of curiosity, I pulled the others out of their boxes and tried them out. None of them worked. Not a one. Perhaps almost 20 years of inactivity deteriorated the internal capacitors or something. But…not a single one worked. Instead, they’ve been taking up space for the last two decades. Obviously, this was before I had adopted the protocol of ‘function test everything before you put it away for the Deep Sleep’. Lesson learned. Interestingly, the one that I took out of the box and use from time to time still works. So, wither that was the one winner in the bunch or the inactivity of the others proved to be detrimental. Regardless, the lesson is the same: test before rest.

Everything else seems to have held up fine. Ammo still works, flashlights work when you put new batteries in them, etc, etc. But its interesting to see how the technology has changed….krypton bulbs replaced by LED, electronics being smaller and more full-featured, that sort of thing.

Its some of that older, more dated stuff that should probably be upgraded. My older MagLites, for example, should be swapped out for LED. Older MRE entrees swapped out for newer. ALICE gear upgraded to MOLLE, etc.

Also, according to the last inspection dates I noted on the boxes, it’s past time to inspect the #10 cans in storage for damage. I’m 99.9% confident everything is fine, but why take chances? Plus, during the course of things I may find other issues that I hadn’t thought about.

So…off to the basement to deep-deg through layers of time like some sort of prepper archaeologist. It’s like a cross between Indiana Jones and Burt Gummer.

Reclaiming that sense of urgency

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Be honest, can you relate to this: several weeks ago you were focused. You were at CostCo, WalMart, and a few other places making sure you were ‘topped off’ on things. Maybe you finally pulled the trigger on some of those bigger expenditures because ‘now was the time’. You went to bed each night mentally wargaming how things might go and what you might need, and in the morning you resolved to hurry up and get dressed and go get those things. And then…things seemed ‘kinda’ normal. The panic ebbed and receded. Sure the rice and pasta aisles were empty, but there’s plenty of other stuff. And, after a few weeks, that sense of urgency you felt, that pushed you into doing things, started diminishing. Maybe ‘right now’ became ‘later this week’ became ‘next payday’ became ‘when I get around to it’.

Can you relate to that? Because that’s pretty much what I’m fighting against with the guy in the mirror. I’ve got a lovely spreadsheet of goodies (The Preponomicon) and far too many things on that list are at less than “90% complete”. But…but…it’s sunny! Gas is $1.65! The electricity is on! Dairy Queen is open! We can eat out again! So…what’s you hurry, buddy?

Complacency…thats what it looks like, guys. You stop running when you don’t see the bear behind you anymore. ‘Course, looking behind you means you might not see the other bear ahead of you.

I’m trying to be diligent about working my way down my list and, I gotta say, motivation can be lacking at times. But I know that even if there’s no ‘second wave’ of infections, no mutation, no economic Chernobyl from spending, no massive job layoffs, no meat shortages, no drug shortages, no stock market slump, happening right now that doesn’t mean it’s not going to happen tomorrow, or next week, or next month. The tricky part is maintaining that mindset that ‘bad stuff could be right around the corner’ when all your sense are saying ‘things arent so bad right now’.

So…I look at my list and remind myself that I wrote it for a good reason, I thought it over carefully, and made the ffort to put it on paper. I trust the me from two months ago that this was worth following up on. So…off to CostCo.

You guys should do whatever it takes…watch Walking Dead, read One Second After, review some graphic historical accounts of societal disasters…whatever it takes for you to recover your motivation, but stay motivated. Even if we sail through this, and the crappy fallout, there’ll be another one along before you know it.

Video – Top 10 Post-Apocalyptic TV Shows

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I’ve watched about half of these. One thing I always find terribly amusing is that in the British series the individual with a simple double-barrel shotgun is the high muckymuck because everyone else had nothing more deadly than a crossbow or a cricket bat. Contrast that with, say, Walking Dead where our heroes went from 870’s and Remington 700’s to MP5, M4, and AUG’s in less than three seasons. (Heck, they even had an RPG at one point.)


What I don’t like is that, at least in the series I’ve seen, it all boils down to a) having to fight other survivors for resources and b) scrounging. And while those probably would be rather important, I am always amazed how hygiene, or the utter lack thereof, leads to almost no bad consequences. Take Walking Dead….its summer in Georgia and these people are covered in dirt, sweat, blood, and a zillion other nasties and no one gets an infection when they cut or scrape themselves.

Anyway…entertaining post-apocalyptic TV shows are fairly rare. Movies come and go all the time, but TV shows…not so much. Probably because its difficult on a TV budget to empty out several square blocks of a city (which is why so many of these take place in rural settings, I suppose.)

Anyway, for your amusement…………

Haircut season

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Yesterday was the day that barbershops here in town were allowed to open.They’d been open elsewhere in the county, but our local .gov wanted to show that they were ‘doing something’ about the virus. I think I’ve done a halfway decent job with my own clippers. Not perfect, but if you think your hair needs to be perfect then you clearly need more important things in your life to worry about. I think that, for the time being, I’m gonna save myself twenty bucks a month and keep working with the clippers. I can live with a cowlick here and there for twenty bucks.

So far, for me, thats been the biggest headache resulting from the Current Situation. They may be dropping like flies in Cuomo-land but our hospitals here are quiet and boring with none of the chaos and drama that the evening news likes to showcase.

:::shrug::: I live in a state with barely 1/20th the population of New York spread out over three times the square miles….social distancing is measured in miles here. But…not to pass up on opportunity to throw his considerable weight around, our local mayor – a philandering, alcoholic, overeating statist – decided that this was a great opportunity to flex and issued all sorts of orders.

As I’ve said, tongue-in-cheek, this is the lamest apocalypse ever. But, as I’ve also said, the flu isn’t the real headline…the real headline is all the downhill stuff as a result of it. Sadly, one of those effects will be more government control with the usual ‘for the common good’ pass.

One size does not fit all when it comes to government. What works in California or New York may not work here, and vice versa. But to assume that whats good for one state is good for another….well…that might be a little much. Laws and police thuggery might be what it takes to ‘flatten the curve’ in a cage with nine million people in it like NYC. But in my little bucolic college town it’s a tad heavy handed.

I know, I know….our mayor (aka “The Biggest Boozer”) will no doubt say that because of his edicts we have been spared the ravages of a Covid-19 outbreak similar to what they have experienced in NYC. And…you can’t really disprove a negative…so a lot of people will go along with it. But there’s just some reflexive response within me that chafes when .gov starts doing things like this. Maybe it really does make a difference, maybe it has saved ‘millions of registered voters’, maybe we’d all be dead of of the flu right now if they hadn’t threatened to throw my barber in jail…or maybe not.

All I know is that I haven’t been able to get a haircut for the last two months and I can’t shake the feeling that it was a lot of sturm und drang over something that wasn’t as big a threat here as it was elsewhere.

Article – America’s meat shortage is more serious than your missing hamburgers

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If you go to Wendy’s this week, there’s a good chance you won’t be able to get a hamburger. Go to the supermarket and you’ll probably see some empty shelves in the meat section. You may also be restricted to buying one or two packs of whatever’s available. Try not to look at the prices. They’re almost definitely higher than what you’re used to.

This is the new reality: an America where beef, chicken, and pork are not quite as abundant or affordable as they were even a month ago.

One of the far-downstream  consequences of the Current Situation that probably not too many people thought about when this started. My habit of cruising the remaindered meat aisle and freezing any good deals I find should serve me well. But, honestly, if meat costs a little more…so what? It’s not a problem for me. And, really, this is true of everything. No matter what it is…from caviar to plutonium to machine guns…it’s always available, it’s just expensive. If beef jumps a dollar a pound..:::shrug::: I can deal with it.

Of course, prices go up when supply is low. I can adjust. It’s when the product is completely unavailable…thats the problem. I’ve got a pretty goodly supply of animal flesh sitting in the freezer but thats very much an ‘eggs in one basket’ kind of thing. That freezer craps out on me, I lose a good 85% or so of mt supply of meat. Oh, I have the resources on hand to can it all if something like that happened, but I think that perhaps having more than one freezer should be the way to go. I’ve the generator to run them in case of a power failure, and should the power failure last longer than my generator can support, that still buys me time to can it all.

I’d been picking up more canned meats from CostCo these last two months….chicken and beef mostly. I’ve talked about the CostCo canned roast beef before and I highly recommend it. Canned chicken is canned chicken…it’s all pretty much the same. In addition to the canned meats I’ve a couple cases of Mountain House freeze dried pork chops, diced chicken, diced beef, and ground beef. And, yes, I am aware of canned bacon but I’m just not a huge bacon guy…I like bacon, but I can live without it.

Being the jaded survivalist, I wonder how much of this meat panic is genuine and how much of it is a self-fulfilling prophecy brought about by the media. Thus far, for me, in my locale, I haven’t seen any real change in pricing or availability but then again perhaps it takes a while for these effects to trickle down to flyover country. I’ll continue to buy my meat trays once a week and just keep working the vacuum sealer. A full freezer is never a bad idea, really, anyway.

Reopen

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Locally, things are starting to ‘re-open’. Restaurants opened last week and today, finally, barbershops. I firmly believe that every business in this town should demand the city refund a prorated amount of the business license fees. The city extorted money from you to allow you to open a business and then they said you can’t open….the reason behind it is irrelevant, you paid for something and the city withheld it…seems like a partial refund is in order.

I’m going to go ahead and keep cutting my own  hair and see how long it takes before it just becomes so cocked up that only a visit to a professional will salvage my dignity.

I miss eating out every so often, and I also miss being able to do my banking face-to-face with a teller….but other than that, I haven’t been terribly inconvenienced by business shutdowns. I am, however, probably going to be indirectly affected by it as people without jobs start getting desperate. This is an excellent time to look around and determine whare are the skills that pay the bills in a crisis like this.

I can’t speak for the heavy population centers, but for here, in my quaint little 100,000 person town, it seems like people are getting a bit complacent and things are starting to have a little semblance of calm… no more panic lines at CostCo, most of the grocery shelves are restocked, etc. I think people are getting used to the ‘new normal’ and the sense of urgency and immediate need to ‘do something’ is diminishing. I also have no doubt it’ll get stirred up as soon as the media latches on to some new Kung Flu related item to flog to the public.

All in all, so far, lame apocalypse. Unless you actually catch the Kung Flu. But for me, for now, it’s mostly been a cross between a dress rehearsal for the apocalypse and a controlled experiment/drill.

Article – The American Government’s Secret Plan for Surviving the End of the World

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Among the greatest foreign-policy dilemmas faced by former President Jimmy Carter is one that has never been publicly aired but is gaining new relevance. It concerns nuclear war, and how the U.S. government would survive it. Carter’s decisions remain classified, but documents declassified by the CIA in 2017, along with the archives at several presidential libraries, provide a window into the White House’s preparations for an imminent apocalypse.

It’s hilarious to think that this was the greatest foreign-policy crisis of Carter’s administration. There’s 52 former government employees who might think there was something a tad more pressing than this. If you’re too young to remember, Carter was a wildly unqualified politician whose own party didn’t even like him. The nation was still nursing a Nixon hangover and an outsider was exactly what people thought they wanted…what they got was a peanut farmer so out of his league he makes Obama look like Kissinger.

Anyway…..interesting article about .gov continuity. for a more..concrete..example of that continuity, look no further than the lovely Greenbrier hotel.

Floor porn

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Oh merciful Crom, this thing is *cute*. I have always wanted a little 9mm carbine that would break down into a tiny package. Not as a first choice to Omega Man my way through some darkened city, but rather as a low-profile, easy-to-hide-in-a-desk-drawer option for when you’re at work when the riots start. Chuck a little red dot (leaning toward that TRS-25) on there, drop in a happystick, and you’re good to go.

I gotta hand it to Ruger, this is the sort of thing they never would have come out with when Billy Sr. was still breathing. This thing is lighter than my Uzi, and more compact than my Evo. I’m really curious to see how that short barrel does in terms of accuracy on steel plates at 50 yards.

And, yes, this thing really needs a suppressor on the end just to complete the look.

Urgency

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The problem with being a survivalist is that you get pretty jaded, pretty quick. Your eye is caught by every headline that says some sort of doom is impending and after a while you just sort of start going “Yeah, right”. I freely admit, I had that attitude when the Kung Flu started…another sensationalistic headline about how we’re all gonna die. -yawn-

As I suspected, the Kung Flu itself wasn’t , for me, the problem. The problem was all the associated things that it would engender – economic, social, logistic, etc. A couple months into it and I’m pretty much…unchanged. Oh, money is a little tighter as revenue slides a bit, but other than that it’s pretty much business as usual. Its the business as usual part that causes problems.

As I’ve said before, the sense of urgency feels a bit dialed back. Four weeks ago I was doing a good bit of last minute shopping with some urgency. Now…it’s a little less urgent. partially because a lot of gaping holes in my logistics base have been filled, but also because it’s a bit hard to keep that sense of urgency going when, other than some face masks, everything seems fairly normal.

But…media is now clamoring about meat shortages and second-wave explosions of infections. I didn’t take them too seriously last time, do I take them seriously this time? Hmmm.

I’ve got a little extra time on my hands for the next few weeks… I think I’m going to use it to straighten up and organize things a little better around here. That sort of thing usually goes a long way towards keeping my mind focused on being prepared.

What about you? Still feeling the sense of urgency? Are you feeling an even heightened sense of urgency? Or are you some frosty dude who has always lived every day like the mushroom cloud is only a day away?