Canned goods

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“The people have spoken…and they must be punished.” Ed Koch, on losing the mayoral election. Say what you will, the man was awesomely quotable.
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I was digging around in the canned food storage and found this:

A can of soup whose ‘Best By’ date was ten years ago. Whaddya think? Sure…why not.

And then, upon opening the can and pouring the contents into a saucepan I discovered ‘why not’.

Once heated and served, even a canned chicken soup should have a certain yellow or golden color to parts of it. And it should smell good. This was…not. Everything was uniformly gray and exuded no smell whatsoever. I have a hyperacute sense of smell, so when I tell you something did not smell like it should have, you can take that to the bank m’friend. Nope, I didn’t taste it. Can wasn’t bulged, nothing looked amiss other than the color, but between the newsprint-gray color and lack of smell I decided that I’m not taking a bullet for food storage data gathering.

So, if youre keeping track, 10+ years on canned soup might be a bit excessive. You have been warned.

Gratitude

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I wanted to take a moment to publicly acknowledge a couple folks who recently sent me stuff in the mail, or signed up for Patreon to help keep the lights on in the bunker. Notably, someone sent me an Amazon gift card code for Christmas, which was very thoughtful…and just the other day someone sent me a silver dime in the mail, which was quite cool…and a couple folks signed up for Patreon. So, a sincere thank you to those folks. It’s that sorta thing that helps pay the blog-related bills. (And, if you provide your mailing address, its the sorta thing that gets you on the Paratus card mailing list.)

 

Casus belli

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Gotta say…no burning police stations, no flipped over police cars, no looted Starbucks….still a more peaceful protest than your average BLM march.

Doesn’t matter though… these are the sorts of optics that people need to further an agenda of nerfing your gun rights. They’ll say that, clearly, there is a ‘clear and present danger’ in America of ‘right wing extremists’ and that those ‘weapons of war have no place on our streets’ and that ‘reasonable, commonsense’ legislation is needed to……, etc, etc, etc.

Probably add in body armour just for good measure…’cause those ‘right wing extremists’ were armored up against the ‘legitimate government’.

Regardless of where you stand on the issue of electoral misconduct and impropriety, it’s hard to not think that all this news footage of outrage and outrageousness isn’t going to come back in the form of justification for some sort of Draconian legislation.

I’ve been banging this drum for years, that a new ban was coming…… maybe this is the year. Certainly, it seems more likely this year than at any point previously. Take your stimulus money and grab a couple stripped lowers and a twenty-pack of magazines, guys…might be glad you did in the not too distant future.

Said I wasn’t gonna, did anyway

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Minding my own business, not planning on buying any guns (especially a single-stack gun), and this came across my radar:

Actually, it didnt really come across my radar….the bloody thing came and found me. I got ‘The Call’ from the same guy that has been putting dents in my wallet for the last couple years now. He texted me and said if I wanted first crack at it, cmon down.

Ok, so who knows if Remington is ever gonna make more of these. And it is apparently a decent gun. And it’s like new in box. Punchline? $400.

Dude, I’m not even a 1911 guy! They’re fun guns, great range toys, but a 1911 is never my first choice for anything involving self-defense. I’ll take a modern-ish double-stack 9mm every time.

But….price was right, condition was good, brand was okay, and in this market any gun is a good value gun. But….I was so sure I was done buying guns.

Black Start

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An article from Yahoo about a state-sponsored data breach that may have handed over some interesting info to the Chinese/Russians.

“For example, it’s reportedly possible the hackers accessed Black Start, the detailed technical blueprints for how the U.S. would restore power if there was a major blackout. If that was indeed the case, Russia would theoretically have a list of systems it could target to keep power from turning back on.”

A government plan for restarting power generation? Interesting. Makes sense when you think about it…but I’d never thought about it before. Shades of “One Second After“. (WOrth reading, btw.)

As the saying goes, “it takes money to make money”. Apparently the same is true, to some degree, in power generation. As I read it, previous plans for restarting an offline power plant assume you’ll be able to have power from elsewhere where the grid is up. But, if the entire grid is down…well…you can’t start up your power plant if you can’t even turn on the lights in the control room.

The solution, it seems, is to either have enough capacity in your onsite generators to get the plant up and running, or get your electricity from a source that will continue to provide..such as hydropower.

What I find interesting here is that .gov had a planned response in place for a grid-down power plant restart procedure..and now that the playbook for that has fallen into enemy (and make no mistake about it, thats what the Chinese are) hands they know how to create that grid-down situation and disable our ability to get past it. All in all, to my unstrategic way of thinking, that seems to have just made the possibility of an attack of some kind on the national power system more likely.

Very cursory googling shows that apparently the current plan (or one of them) is RADICS.. Apparently the .gov has, in the last two years, stepped up it’s research into preparing against cyberattacks that target energy infrastructure. Interesting, that.

Remember the old days when targeting a nations energy infrastructure involved a B-52 instead of a laptop?

 

 

Blog roundup

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ETA: Guys, use your head….if youre going to mention a blog that you think other people would be interested in, don’t just say “You need to read Steve’s blog!”…post an actual link. C’mon……

Unfortunately the roster of blogs that are preparedness-related is constantly changing as blogs fall to the wayside…victims of lack of interest, lack of time,  or lack of hearbeats. My blog reading has taken a hit as some of my favorites have gone dark. Even though it is 404’d I still have Self Sufficient Mountain Living in my list of daily reads even though there hasn’t been a peep from its owner, publicly and privately, for a couple years now. But..he’d gone dark before and returned. I hope, I hope……

So, whats on the daily read? Here you go:

I’m always up for looking at new blogs. If you know a blog that might interest me, is frequently updated, has a low religious quotient, doesn’t have a tinfoil hat dress code, and is decently written….link a brother up. And tell ’em Commander Zero sentcha.

Out of the gate

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Alright, its Januray 1st…let’s light this candle.

My goals are fairly simple for this year – double my Roth, double my stash of silver, double my emergency fund, and find a damn scope for my .338 Lapua that I still havent shot.

The rest of the plan is to just maintain what I have. Cycle through the food and fuel and replace as used.

Basically, just keep up the resilience. I expect there’ll be some career moves this year, so I look forward to that and the resultant additional income it’ll offer.

What say you, my peeps? Whats on the agenda for 2021? I mean, you know, other than not dying from the Wuhan Flu*. Got any prep-related goals left unfilled? Got a glorious upgrade planned that the wife finally gave you the greenlight to do? Pulling the trigger on that whole house generator? BOV? Hideyhole? Let’s hear about it.

 

 

*=Yeah, I’m gonna keep calling it Wuhan Flu because there should be no doubt about who is responsible for that stuff.

And we’ll take a right good-will draught, for auld lang syne.

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And so it ends….not with a bang, but with a whimper.

Although it impacted me far less than many people, it was still a long year. To my uninformed, cynical mind 2021 portends worse.

The polite and socially-acceptable thing for me to do is to wish all of you a happy New Year and wish you good luck for 2021. I say ‘screw that’. Luck is for rabbits. If you’re reading this then you’ve the mind to be the one who makes your own luck. Laissez les bons temps rouler.

 

 

Remaindered meat trays

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Ah the meat tray. I’ve posted before about it. $20 for four trays of assorted dead animal flesh. A good way to get your animal protein for the next week or so, depending on how you cook and what your tastes are. As you also know, every other day or so I cruise the meat aisle at my grocer looking for the ‘remaindered’ meat….the stuff that is marked down 30% or 50% to sell immediately. Perfectly good stuff, but it needs to be used or frozen immediately. And then…on rare occasions…the two combine to create: the remaindered meat tray.

Normally $19.99….but knock off an additional 30% and now that deal looks pretty attractive. So…I’ll take ’em all. Why not? I’ve got a vacuum sealer and a freezer. So $14 each.

I literally have no room in the freezer now. Everything is repackaged, vacuum sealed, and ready to sleep until much later in 2021 (or beyond). Food security, baby.

Stress

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Tam (aka ‘Our Lady Of Snark’),  has a post about how the Current Situation has us swimming in stress hormones and that regardless of whether the stress is from being chased by a lion or having to queue for TP at CostCo, the physiological and mental results are the same.

No doubt, there are stressors aplenty in the wind these days. How do you avoid stress? Remove (or mitigate) the situation that you are stressing over. Do I stress about getting eaten by a T. Rex? No, because there ain’t no T. Rex anymo’. So if I want to not stress over, say, a toilet paper shortage the solution is…have plenty of toilet paper.

I’ve touched on this in an earlier post.

The solution is simple, it just isn’t easy – remove the source of stress.

Every year I stress about my property taxes. I worry that I won’t have the money to pay them and that I’ll lose my house. What eliminates that stress? Paying the taxes (or having the money to do so). So every month I force myself to set aside 1/12th of my property taxes and once a year I pay them for the upcoming year. And the stress disappears (for that year). I don’t worry about getting eaten by that T. Rex because, for that year, the T. Rex doesn’t exist anymore.

Realistically, virtually any single thing you are stressing about can be resolved with enough money..housing, food, health, security, etc….all fixable with enough greenbacks. But, addressing the issue directly is often the best choice… worried about going hungry? Stockpile food. Worried about not being able to make your car payment? Pay off the car or downsize it. Worried about your neighborhood being unsafe? Move or change the character of the neighborhood. Etc, etc.

I hate to use this word, but the secret to avoiding stress is…..control. If you can exert control, of almost any degree, over the situation then your stress is reduced. Sure there are situations you can’t completely control but you can exert some control. I can’t control if I’m going to suddenly have a debilitating stroke..but I can exert some control by eating well, watching my health, etc, etc. I can’t control the goobers in Washington in regards to guns, but I can exert some control by having my mag and gun needs met before they can start their shenanigans. I can’t control what 2021 is going to be like but I can control my supply of food, money, fuel, resources, information and all the things I need to mitigate 2021’s sting.. and that modicum of control reduces any stress I may have.

Probably the best example is my water heater. Years ago, I was informed there was a puddle under my water heater. A prior version of myself would have suddenly had the whole day go dark, and I’d have spent the next few days brooding and being upset wondering where the heck the money was going to come from for this repair and why was my life so crappy that I can’t even get the water heater fixed and..and…and…you get the idea. But, no, it was simply a shrug, “that sucks”, and write a check to the plumber off the emergency fund. No muss, no fuss, no stress. In this particular case, having money was what gave me the control over the situation and eliminated the stress.

Personally, I have not stressed about 2020 (or 2021) enough, in my opinion, to be experiencing negative physiological reactions. Or maybe I am and I’m not noticing it. But I don’t think I am. Why? Because I try to control what I can, and for those things I can’t control I prepare against. Between control of a situation, and being prepared against if the situation arises, any stresses I have are pretty manageable.

Of course…this only works if I’ve foreseen all likely outcomes. As I read on the interwebs, 2020 was the equivalent of stepping up to a crosswalk, waiting for the light, looking carefully both ways before crossing, stepping off the curb….and getting hit by a submarine. Didn’t quite see that one coming. But…by and large….yeah, not stressing.