Forgot to pat myself on the back

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I was so wrapped up in the Current Situation that I overlooked something – two weeks ago was the 17th anniversary of this waste of electrons. Yes indeedy, 2003 is when I started blogging. I do believe that makes me one of theoldest preparedness blogs (although that definition may be suspect) still in business. In my time here I’ve seen a lot of blogs come and go. I’m still here ‘cuz….well…I’ve got nothing better to do.

In that time…Peak Oil, Bird Flu, H1N1, Ebola, SARS, Mayan calendar, Obama I, Obama II, and a host of other events. And..we’re still here. Which means either we are really good survivalists or we’ve just bee lucky so far. Honestly, Im more inclined to believe the latter.

Anyway, I realized this evening that I had overlooked the anniversary and figured I’d address that.

How many more years of this? Beats me. At least a few more years I suspect.

Mary Mallon

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All this talk about asymptomatic people carrying a virus without knowing it and infecting others brings to mind the story of … Mary Mallon.

No doubt the more astute medical types will recognize the name, but for the rest of us she was better known as Typhoid Mary.

TL,DR version: In the early 20th century a functionally illiterate Irish woman wound up being a carrier for typhoid fever. Mind you, she seemed pretty healthy and had no reason to think she was sick..but wherever she went and worked as a cook…people got sick and died.

Eventually, in some pioneering medical investigatory process, the NYC health people figured out that Mar was making other people sick. The record is a little unclear if they tried to explain it to her but it isn’t hard to imagine that someone with her lack of education might not grasp the idea of being a carrier. All she knew was that the one marketable skill she had was being taken away from her. So, she nodded her head, said she’d stop cooking, and went right on cooking for more families who mysteriously got sick.

Eventually the health department locked her up, quite against Mary’s will, and she wound up spending the rest of her life on North Brother Island.

If you’d like to read the more detailed version, and follow some of the legal wranglings that locked her up, try this and this.

In a time where many people chafe at the notion of .gov forcing restrictions upon them in the name of the ‘public health’ it’s interesting to see how far some municipalities went.

Momentum

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Funny..it seems like it was just two or three weeks ago my focus was rather intense about getting topped off on various foodstuffs and other items. And now…the sense of urgency seems…diminished…I suppose. That is, of course, the classic survivalist trap – you get fired up over something and pursue it with great intensity and then that intensity wanes. And then, something big happens, and you’re caught flat-footed.

Solution? Well, for me, it’s reminding myself that we aren’t out of the woods by a long shot. Oh sure, virus-wise its a maybe-maybe-not thing, but my concern is more economic. The repercussions aren’t going away anytime soon and I need to be in a position to not only survive it but be able to take advantage of the situation as the less-foresighted suddenly have to choose between their pre-ban Bennelli M3 Super 90 or making the mortgage that month.

Did you know that, as a group, the Mormons came out of the Great Depression better than when they went in? Because of their conservative nature and dogma they weren’t as impacted as most other groups. As a result, they were in a position to take advantage of opportunities that arose.

From an economic standpoint, the impact the virus (and it’s ‘control measures’) inflict on the economy are pretty big. I don’t see a lot of new hirings for the rest of the year, I can see a lot of places shuttering up from not being able to withstand the revenue loss of a couple months, surviving businesses might have to cut back hours/employees, and the smarter folks will cut discretionary spending to the bone to make sure hey have enough cash ‘just in case’. In short, the worst person to be right now is a Starbucks barista with $50k in student loans, a car loan, credit card debt, and a month-to-month lease with roommates. (Actually, thats a pretty crappy position to being pretty much anytime.)

Other things I find interesting are how the media beatas a slightly different drum every few days. Drug shortages one day, restricted airline travel the next, and the current crsis du jour is….meat shortage. Here’s how strong an influence that media can be – I saw no less than three articles on various news wires predicting a beef shortage. My natural inclination was to think “Ok, time to head up to CostCo and buy a case of beef” and then I realized, waitasec, I don’t really eat beef. (True fact: other than cheeseburgers, I don’t eat very much beef. Rarely do I eat a steak. My go-to animal protein is chicken and Italian sausage.) But the media hype had gotten to me to the point that I was almost ready to go stock up on something I don’t even really eat. Insidious the way these media panic stories mess with your head.

On the other hand, as I said, there’s also the problem of them not messing with your head and you becoming complacent or losing your momentum/initiative. Thats what I have to be on guard against right now. The ship is sinking, and it’s a slow leak, but the fact it is happening slowly does not change the fact that it is happening.The Current Situation seems to move slowly and invisibly but it is moving….and not for the better (economically). So, stay focused, keep your eye on the big picture, and stick to the plan.

Roof Korea is best Korea

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Its the anniversary of the genesis of that unique subset of Americans – the Roof Korean. Someone sent me this link and it’s too good to not share:

Roof Korean Week is here again. After the savage beating of Rodney King at the hands of police officers and their subsequent acquittal, rioters took to the streets in what is known as the “LA Riots.”
Korean citizens and their businesses/homes were intentionally targeted by the rioters. Sure they had nothing to do with King or the police officers who beat him, but “their prices are too high, their attitude is wrong, they have no respect for the community.”

Koreans were savagely attacked, while their businesses and homes were looted and burned.

They did what good citizens do, they called the police and they waited for help. Unfortunately, police were stretched thin and were also being targeted for violence.

I swear, I never get tired of those guys. Interestingly, while articles like the one mentioned above pop up with frequency, I have never encountered any interviews with any actual roof Koreans. I get that many of them may not want to admit to things that may still get them in trouble, but there’s also gotta be a lot of them who just hung around the rooftops with their Mini-14s, never got a shot off, and could tell their story.

Scenes from Costco

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If you flip around the blogosphere enough you start seeing those clickbait ‘Things That First Disappear From The Shelves During A Crisis” sorts of lists. Apparently my local CostCo is proving to be a source of a bit of empirical data:

Most of that stuff on the first sheet makes a lot of sense, the rest…well…reasons.

Interestingly, we’ve seen that, as far as a pandemic goes, the masses went straight to the TP and rice aisle and cleaned ’em out. The more savvy folks hit canned goods and then went to the appliance store and bought freezers.

There’s that saying that the military is always planning on fighting the previous war. (Which is why a lot of guys fought Gulf War I in woodland camo.) It’s easy to fall into the trap of preparing against the previous disaster…meaning that you you’re so wrapped up in what did happen that you neglect to prepare for what could happen. Take note of what sailed off the shelves this time, but don’t make the mistake of assuming it’ll be the same way in the next one.

As an aside, when I go to CostCo I also usually hit WallyWorld. The selection is broader at WalMart and the crowd is not restricted to members like CostCo is, so WalMart is probably a better representation of what the hordes will be after. While WalMart has had some of its shelves swept clean, they get them restocked mighty quick. Their logisitics footprint is probably bigger than Costco’s and their network of supply and transport is probably also commensurately larger. Point being, sometimes wading through the human genetic frappe that is their customer base may pay off when you can’t find something elsewhere.

Monkey on my back

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I need to get this gun buying thing under control. Or I need a small concrete bunker hidden in the woods. Who am I kidding? I’ve always needed that.

Years ago, my ideal was to have enough guns on hand to equip at least five other people with common arms…same rifles, same shotguns, same pistols, etc. It seems I can field a larger fire team now. Funny thing is, I’ve more guns than friends who can use them.

Ah well…they’ll always hold their value. I almost never buy guns unless theyre a good deal, and when people need a gun they’re pretty much not gonna bark about the price. Silver dropped, DJI got cut at the knees, oil crapped the bed…. but guns and ammo prices stayed the same or went up. Interesting, that.

Article – Ranks of Absent U.S. Food Inspectors Swell on Virus, Union Says

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Well, normally I take anything a union says with a big grain of salt. Add in another heaping tablespoon for it coming from Bloomberg. But…it makes sense.
As I pointed out to someone in comments earlier, most people just looked at the immediate consequences of this pandemic (“I might get sick”) and many fewer looked at the downstream consequences (“The guy who fixes my car might get sick and I need to have work done on it.”, “The guy who delivers the food to the market might call in sick”, “I may not be able to schedule that root canal in two weeks”, etc.)
Meat inspectors? Sure. Probably the same for vehicle inspectors, air safety inspectors, engineering inspectors, etc. (Which might underscore that perhaps we have too many inspections required in our everyday lives.) Occupancy permit for your new addition on your house? City inspector isn’t coming out. Vehicle inspection so you can renew your tags? Most garages are at half staff and have huge waiting lists. You get the idea.
All of this, though, is completely predictable if you think far enough out. What is it that you cannot do yourself and will bottleneck things if the person who does it is unavailable? Thats the question. The answer, of course, is to have a workaround in place…could be stockpiled materials, alternate vendors, DIY, or a Plan B to make do until later.
And, maybe, it’s a good idea to make sure the freezer is topped off. Just in case.

Article- Five threats to US food supply chains

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The coronavirus pandemic has upended food supply chains, led to closures of meat producing plants and left Americans with the unsettling experience of seeing empty shelves at supermarkets.

Coupled with the run on toilet paper that led to severe shortages, recent events are leading Americans to wonder if the nation’s food supply is secure.

Experts say that by and large, Americans don’t need to worry about food running out, but that does not mean all food will be readily available.

I’m seeing more and more articles like this pop up lately. The cynic in me says it’s simply the media looking for a new equine to flog. The conspiracy buff in me says it’s TPTB warming us up to the idea of Soviet-style grocery shortages. Regardless, I post the link here for your own scrutiny.

The article does make some sense about the threats to the food chain. For you TL;DR types, here they are:

  • Virus outbreaks at food plants
  • Agricultural reliance on guest workers
  • Supply chain mismatches
  • Increased food insecurity (Which really has nothing to do with the food chain)
  • Crunch on delivery capacity

The first one, virus outbreaks at food plants, are already happening as several meat processing plants have had to dial back. The rest…we shall see.

But despite all this, for now, my local supermarkets seem to be puttering along just fine. Of course, everything works fine right up until the point it doesn’t. Is this the calm before the storm of empty shelves? I have no idea. But… you don’t wait for a drought to dig a well, so if you’ve got some gaps in your pantry now might be a reasonable time to get ’em plugged.

 

Article – Food Rationing Is New Reality for Buyers Once Spoiled for Choice

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(Bloomberg) — At a Publix store in St. Petersburg, Florida, handmade signs limit customers to two packages of beef, pork and Italian sausage. In Toronto, shoppers at a west end Loblaws can’t buy more than two dozen eggs and two gallons of milk.

Spoiled for choice before the pandemic, North American shoppers are finding they can’t get everything they want as grocery stores ration in-demand items to safeguard supplies.

While the panic that swept through supermarkets in the first weeks of the coronavirus lockdowns has eased, people are still filling fridges and pantries with stay-at-home staples from flour and yeast to pasta sauce and meat.

The strong demand comes at a time of supply disruptions as food makers adapt to dramatic shifts in buying patterns and some processing plants close as workers fall ill. As a result, stores are restricting purchases to prevent items from vanishing from shelves. For shoppers, that can be unnerving.

Wait..so there is a global crisis that may cause disruption in the availability of some food products? Who couuld have possibly predicted such things? Well, pretty much anyone with half a brain, really.

Hazlitt said that economics was not about just looking at a particular action, but rather at the consequences of that action, for all groups, further downstream. It seems like many people figured that out, on a subconscious level mostly, as people wet out and started buying huge quantities of goods for reasons they couldn’t really articulate.

Which reminds me, the Current Situation is showing what people (as a group) are truly made of. For all their ”we are in this together” nonsense, even the most obnoxious NPR-listening, Volvo-driving, limousine-liberal is out there buying up  more than her ‘fair share’ of goods. Why? Because when it really comes down to survival we put our ‘tribe’ first. That tribe can be your family, your religion, your race, your class, your region, whatever…but we all have one. For 99.9% of us it’s our families.

Food rationing? Maybe, but not as it really is… ‘food rationing’ is not settling for store-brand Mac&Cheese because the Trader Joe Organic version was sold out. That’s not rationing. Rationing is getting something that is probably not what you want, not in the quantity you want, and not in the quality you want…and you’re grateful to have it.

Gun Jesus has a nice four-part series on food rationing in Britain during WW2. It’s interesting to see what you would have had to work with.

Generator Day

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Reminder to self: Today is Generator Day.

Took advantage of the nice weather to go out and do some yard cleaning. Took out the EU2000i , fired it up, plugged in an electric leaf blower, and spent an hour playing hockey with the leaves. Generator gets a workout and I get a better looking yard.

That Eu2000, by the by, has been a useful item. I put a run clock on it when I first got it and it has only about a dozen hours on the clock. This makes sense because I’ve only actually had to use it twice for emergencies, which turned out to be only of an hour or two duration, and the rest of the time are little 20-30 minute episodes of me running it every few months to verify it’s function.

For my needs, it’s enough generator..for now. The only thing I absolutely need to run is the freezer and maybe the security cams. Ive lighting that will last me a month on battery power, so no point in using the generator for that. I wouldn’t mind creating another small battery bank to keep the router running, though. Sure, its likely that a large enough power outage will take out local internet access but in the past the outages have been rather localized and I still had internet. (I was the only place in the neighborhood, actually, to still have wireless….made me very popular with the neighbors.)

It seems like every year for the past fifteen years I keep saying I’m going to get some big batteries, run a panel on the roof, and have a nice bank of backup power on hand. And, like a lot of things, I never seem to get to it. This year is proving to be the year of I-Should-Have-Taken-Care-Of-That. No blackouts or rolling brownouts yet, but fire season will be here soon and you never know what’s gonna happen next.

Whatever I wind up doing, it won’t be cheap. And right now is not the time to be spending money unnecessarily. But, I suppose I can keep an eye on Craigslist for panels or similar items that wind up hitting the market as people start seeing their cash reserves drop. Or as the local renewable energy* places try to drum up revenue.

* = As I recall, you cannot create or destroy energy, you can only change it. Thus, wouldn’t it seem that energy is not ‘renewable’? You’re not ‘making’ energy, you’re simply taking it from somewhere else.