Tag Archives: theory

Keeping things in perspective

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It’s difficult to not repeat yourself when you’ve been blogging on a fairly narrow topic for over fifteen years. But, I have to remember that not everyone has been here since Day One. Thus, something I may have said ten years ago might seem like a new idea to someone who has only been following along for two years.

Case in point: I’m sure the longtime readers recall me saying, on more than one occasion, that I believe one of the signs you’ve matured as a survivalist is when you start getting as enthused, and spend as much money and effort, on food storage as you did on guns.

Guns are, after all, the sexy part of survivalism. They are also, probably, the least used prep that any of us have. We’ll wind up using a good chunk of stored fuel, medical gear, food, batteries, and toilet paper before we even make a dent in the M855 sitting in the barn. But..when someone gets ‘into’ preparedness the guns are usually the first thing they get worked up and excited by.

Nothing wrong with that, of course. But go ask a cop which one he uses more..his gun or his pen. If there’s anyone who went through Hurricane Katrina and used more than 20 rounds on shooting at people, I’d be surprised.But, we tend to focus on the gun stuff because its fun.

When someone tells me that they’re interested in ‘being prepared’ or ‘having some things just in case’, almost always the first thing I bring up is food. Sometimes money, but more often than not its food. Then fuel. Communications. Consumables. And eventually we get around to the gun stuff.

Is this to say the gun stuff isn’t important? No, of course not…when you’ve taken the time and expense to lay away thousands of dollars worth of supplies that may literally be all that is standing between you and a very unpleasant future it is natural that other people are going to want those supplies. And, sometimes, their level of insistence cannot be dissuaded by anything less than a pistol or rifle. But look at all the disasters and emergencies you’ve had in your life thus far…I’d bet that the overwhelming majority were ones that were remedied with greenbacks rather than green tip. Unemployment, transmission failures, broken water heaters, medical emergencies, etc, etc… all things that, broadly, were remedied with things other than a case of Wolf.

I mention this because I think its worth repeating… the big End Of The World will happen sooner or later, but not before a boatload of smaller, personal End Of The World happens to you. Put away the AR’s and Glocks, but expect to use all the other preps, esp. money, long before the AR’s and Glocks become needed.

 

Garbage

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Something that I thought I’d mention in case anyone ever has the same situation….

So, a few posts back, you saw that I picked up a new Ruger rifle, yes? Big rifle comes with a big box. With big lettering that says “RUGER” running across it. Now, I am not one of those guys that saves the boxes that guns come in with the idea that twenty years from now I will have saved the box, it will be in immaculate condition, and it’ll add 20% to the resale of the gun. Why? Because when you get into as many guns as I have, if I saved all the boxes I would literally need a shipping container to store them all. Plus, Im not much for reselling a gun once I take it into my collection.

So..what to do with thebox. Well, it sure as heck isn’t going out in the alleyway to await the garbage collection. Why? Because doing so announces to the world that there’s a guy in that house right there who has a nice shiny new expensive rifle. Who wants that kinda info sitting out there for the homeless dumpster diving wretches to discover? Next thing I know some tweaker is staking out my house waiting for me to leave on a shopping trip or something so he can kick in the door and hope to snatch whatever rifle that cardboard box housed.

So. No. The box goes elsewhere. Where? Well, logically you might just kick the can down the road and leave it in your neighbors garbage a block away. Two problems with that – first, it just transfers the same risk to my neighbors which isn’t really a nice thing to do even though they are complete strangers to me, andsecondly putting your garbage in someone elses garbage collection is a pretty sleazy thing to do, as well as being a theft-of-services kinda thing.

So..where does it go? Easy…just about any gun store will either take the box for themselves for use in shipping, or if you ask nice they’ll let you toss it in their dumpster once you explain why you don’t want it at your own garbage collection point.

Paranoid? No, I don’t think so. I do the same for any high-end item…computer, television, etc. Why let the dumpster divers know that there’s cool goodies at this address just waiting for them?

Alternatively, I could chop up the box into small pieces and mix it in with my usual garbage but thats too much like work. The point here, though, is that this is just another angle of PerSec that might not seem obvious to most people. but..there it is.

 

Wise decisions

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I read a mention over at SurvivalBlog that the Wise lawsuit has come to an end and Wise lost. (Some backstory and details) The gist of the lawsuit, as I understand it, is that Wise said their food would provide enough food for X number of people for Y number of days. Someone with a calculator and a knowledge of human dietary needs must have read the labels on the packaging because it was discovers that the whole X-days-for-Y-people thing only works out if those people are getting Bataan Death March portions and nutrition. Succinctly, on Wise’s schedule you would be getting less calories than many concentration camp prisoners.

What’s going to happen to Wise? Beats me. Maybe they’ll survive this, maybe not. What will be much more interesting is the repercussions throughout the industry. I guarantee you that the guys at Thrive and Mountain House are sitting down with their lawyers and nutritionists and double checking their packaging to make sure they are n’t setting themselves up for a similar problem.

Who got burned in this? Most likely the ‘casuals’. The not-really-survivalists who wanted to make one phone call, order one big pallet of food, and then say they were done with the food storage part of their plans. I’m all for turnkey solutions and one-stop-shopping, but having a backup plan for when the grocery store is empty is a serious enough task that perhaps a bit more homework is needed.Who can you trust? No one. So when ABC Food Co. says their package will feed three people for a month you should…do what? Correct answer: read the labels and do the math. Anyone with basic math skills and a modicum of intelligence would have realized that 450 calories a day is significantly less than the ‘2000 calorie per day’ mantra that’s been drummed into our head by government food label laws. Sure, 2000 calories is a one-size-fits-all approach that isn’t necessarily accurate, but it does at least give us something of a baseline.

Sitting in a bunker for three weeks waiting for the fallout levels to go down? Might get away with less calories. Snowshoeing to the lake to get water to haul back to your hidden cabin? A lot more calories, please. Even using the somewhat questionable 2000 calorie yardstick, you could see that some of these prepackaged kits were way, way down on calories.

I’m a huge fan of the long-term foods. I’ve got cases of pork chops, spaghetti, corn, apples, chicken, teriyaki, etc, etc. But those are part of a layered approach. I add up all the short-, mid-, and long-term food and thats the yardstick I use. And I use that 2000 calorie baseline as my minimum standard. I have absolutely no intention on subsisting exclusively on freeze-dried food made twenty years ago. I figure on using some of the expensive and exotic stuff (freeze dried meats) to complement the cheap and boring stuff (bulk packed rice and pasta) with the everyday stuff (canned vegetables, jarred sauces, etc.)

Im sure most of you guys are doing the same thing, right? On the one hand we have nitrogen-sealed #10 cans of Pasta Primavera and on the other we have #10 cans of wheat and dried onions from the LDS cannery.

 Moral of the story: avoiding starvation, and the desperate choices forced upon you by the threat of it, is too serious an issue to hand over to some marketing guys at a long term food company. Read the labels, do the math, make the spreadsheet, check other vendors, review other brands. It would be awesome if we really could make one phone call, write one check, and be done with it but that just ain’t gonna happen. Read the fine print, always.

Not Plan ‘A’

Trading stock

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I was talking with someone today and they asked me about whether I stockpile things like cigarettes, booze, or coffee for bartering purposes.

I actually do not. The biggest reason, for me, is that I simply do not use any of those products. Whether its inventory for resale or items for my own personal stash, I never acquire anything in bulk that I cannot use for my own needs. To do otherwise would risk wasting resources on something I can’t use.

However, there are things that I keep a rather large quantity of that is so large it could double as a supply of barter goods if it had to. And, if I got stuck with them, theyre things I use anyway. Such as? Well, medical supplies spring to mind. Same for food, batteries, toilet paper, silver, some ammo and guns, clothing, fuel, etc.

Bartering assumes that there is something I need or want that I do not already have. After all, no one exposes themselves (and their goods) to the risk of some sort of post-apocalyptic marketplace if they don’t need to. Would you? Would anyone? Why advertise to the world that you not only have something but you have enough of it that you can actually use it for trade?

Of course, we can’t think of everything. And something may happen that forces your hand. Maybe floss weevils got into your dental floss stash and you’re completely out of the stuff eve though you had stockpiled cases of it. Things can happen.

For my interests, I figure the things I already use (and have) in large quantity will have plenty of value. Will there be people who would kill for a drink? Or a cigarette? Or coffee? Absolutely. And thats why some poeple stock up on that sort of stuff. But there’ll also be people who’d kill to have food for their kids. Or themselves. And since I already am a user of food, it makes sense have that on hand as trade fodder if I decide to have a reserve of some kind for trading.

I suppose it wouldn’t kill me to throw $20 on the counter at WalMart and grab a couple dozen single-serve packets of freeze dried coffee. Or a couple airplane-sized bottles of Jack Daniels. And I might do that. But, for me, it simply makes more sense to stockpile things I can use since a) if I can use it someone else can too and b) if i wind up keeping it then I only wind up improving my situation.

Let me put it another way: which makes more sense..buying $100 worth of an item that may have some barter value but has no use to you individually, or buying $100 worth of an item that may have some barter value AND can benefit your stockpile if you wind up keeping it. Hmm.

Anyway, your mileage may vary but, no, no hoard of cigarettes and Mad Dog in the bunker.

Link – Pistol Grip Only shotguns video

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So those new pistol grip 12 ga. firearms (which, technically, are not shotguns) are kind of the rage these days. I first became aware of them when I saw one on Gunbroker. A little later, I saw that Mossberg was going to introduce them. And then finally I got to shoot one. My ardor was cooled a bit after shooting one.

Unless your plans include spending a lot of time in hallways and elevators, it seems that a shoulder stock would be a better option. Really, a ‘wrist brace’ on one of these 14″ wonders would be the way to go. But, surely at the usual 7-yard distance the advantage of a stock versus stockless shotgun isn’t that great right?

Well, Gun Jesus explores that with some really interesting results:


TL;DR is that unless you’re someone who practices a lot with your pistol-grip-only shotgun, you are going to get better (and faster) results with a stocked gun.

Personally, I keep an 18″ 870 laying around for repelling boarders, but thats only because I don’t want the paperwork hassle of a 14″ or 16″ barreled gun. If barrel length legalities weren’t a thing, a 14″ stocked gun would be my first choice for operating in the confines of my humble abode.

This isnt to say that there is not a situation where something like the Shockwave would be exactly what the doctor ordered. But nine times out of ten, you’d probably be better served with the stocked gun.

This mean I won’t get a Shockwave or two? Nope. Because I love ‘rulebeater’ stuff. And, like wrist braces, I suspect there’ll come a time in the not too far future where ATF will get serious and tinker with their regulations and rulings. (“They can’t make laws! They can only enforce them!” is what I can already hear people typing in the comments. Dude, they’ve already proven they can classify/declassify/reclassify whatever they want. No one wants to be the test case.)

So…the 18″ full-stocked gun remains on night duty. But, an interesting video to watch for those who think about the efficacy of new goodies like the Shockwave.

 

Linj – Do you have a magic “keep you safe” talisman?

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From TUAK:

Neither do I. The older I get, the more I have to fight the urge to ridicule keyboard kommandos who think “prepping” is all about guns and gear and a case of MREs. I try to suppress the urge because I despise hypocrisy in all its forms and especially when I’m the hypocrite. And the truth is I was a proto-keyboard kommando: I was into “guns and gear” prepping long before keyboards – and preppers – became so ubiquitous. Yes! I was a faithful follower of Father Mel Tappan. I wore out my copy of Survival Guns in a way that would have made a Christian quite proud if it were his Bible. I was … a dumbass. And I kept it up for far longer than was wise.

Outstanding post and I suggest reading the whole thing more than once. My own impressions to follow.

Money v. Goods II

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I had mentioned that next paycheck I was going to work an item or two off my proposed Go Heavy list. As it turns out, I woke to a mailbox with a paystub from a former employer paying me for…I have no idea what. I’m guessing a payroll error somewhere got caught in an audit and this is what happens. Regardless, it means that I can go ahead and start my little experiment.

The format is actually pretty simple. Whatever I buy a huge quantity of will be marked with the date, place of purchase, and price. At the end of the year, there are two possible outcomes (well, really an infinite number of possible outcomes, but liet’s not split metaphysical hairs…) – either I am out of the item, in which case that means the amount purchased was, in fact, not a years supply (QED), or there is some product left which indicates that I overestimated. At the end of the year I’ll see if the prices have changed and figure what that change was, and I’ll have my percentage (+/-) of what purchasing en masse at the beginning of the year saved me.

Of course, this doesn’t have to take place at the beginning of the year, it can take place whenever you want as long as you faithfully track 12-months from the starting point.

My list of items to store has actually gotten fairly long. Food, housewares, etc. Since some of the items on my list are actually on sale now at Albertsons, I’ll probably start with those and work from there. Should be interesting.

Money v. goods

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I ran out of dish detergent yesterday night an thought “No big deal, I’ll trot downstairs and grab another jug of the stuff.” To my chagrin, that was the last one. Bad survivalist! Sure, the end of the world is not going to be made worse by a lack of dish soap, but it’s the principle of the thing: shoulda had it, didnt.

So, that got me to thinking that January (or, really, late December) should be my evaluation period for purchasing “a years supply” for the coming year. I’ve made a list of a few things I’m just going to go ‘heavy’ on and see if they do indeed last me the year. This should make for some interesting looks from the guys running the registers at CostCo when I pick up a dozen drums of detergent.

And as I said, the end of the world experience will not be greatly affected by a lack of dish soap. But a ‘localized’ end of the world..such as a job loss or similar, ‘personal’, disaster will be somewhat eased if I can reduce the number of things I have to buy until I”m back on my feet.

Think about it. Pretend you lost your job and its going to take you three months to get another paycheck coming into the household. Every dollar is going to count, right? So the less money you’re spending on toilet paper, paper towels, soap, food, clothes, etc, is more money you have to stretch for other necessities. This is why I try to keep as much long-term-storage-friendly consumables on hand as possible.

I have the storage space (mostly) to go deep on stuff like that, and even if the world doesn’t come to an end I’m still ahead, inflationwise. There is an opportunity cost, I suppose, to tying up that money when it could be doing other things. That brings up a much bigger quandary: cash or goods?

Let’s say I spend $100 on toilet paper to store for the year. Assuming inflation runs around 4%, that means it would take $104 to buy that same toilet paper at the end of the year. By buying it upfront, I ‘made’ 4% on my money. But what if I simply took the $100 and put it in an envelope in my desk? At the end of the year it only buys me $96 worth of toilet paper. BUT…it can also buy me a host of other goods, whereas if I had spent the $100 on TP all I’d have is TP. In other words, $100 worth of TP vs. $100 cash. $100 of TP is just TP…but $100 cash can become $100 of TP, food, fuel, ammo, shoes, etc. So, it might make more sense to store the cash, rather than the TP.

As I said, my buying power is reduced by inflation…Assume TP was $1 a roll, just for round numbers. $100 gets me 100 rolls in January, but in December it gets me 96. But if I invested that $100 at something that made more than 4%, that would mean I could buy at least 100 rolls in December. The stock market, yearly, returns upwards of 10% on average, right? So, in theory, I park $100 in January and in December I buy 110 rolls of TP.

But…risk, scarcity, and self-discipline come into play. The investments may go down and my $100 may get cut to $75. So..75 rolls of TP in December. Or scarcity may come into play..the TP crop could get TP weevils and the price shoots up. Now my $100 can only buy 50 rolls in December as the price doubled. Or inflation may go past 4%. And, finally, self-discipline – can I stare at $100 sitting on my desk for a year and not touch it? Mmmm…

And often the bird in the hand is worth the two in the bush, y’know?

So…goods. This isn’t to say I don’t keep money stored away. I just keep it where I can’t see it or get to it without a conscious, purposeful effort.

All this to say that next payday I’m going to pick one item off my list of ‘Go Heavy’ and stock up for the year. At the end of the year I’ll review if the amount purchased was indeed a years supply. That’ll give me a good metric of what a years supply constitutes around this house.

This mental exercise in frugality, preparedness, and cost/benefit has been brought to you buy writers block, an empty soap container, and un upcoming sense of dread.

Article – 4 Ways to Pressure-Test Strategic Decisions, Inspired by the U.S. Military

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Strategy is a nice way to sum up “Have a plan, and a backup plan, and another backup plan, and make sure they work.”. This article basically tells you how and why to test those plans.

Every leader wants to avoid major strategic mistakes, but, in a complex world, it’s hard to anticipate all the forces that might impact your goal. It’s vital to find weaknesses in your strategies before you implement them — and developing a rigorous process to do so.

One of those ways to test things is also my favorite: wargame it. If you think youve got the perfect mix of gear in case you get stuck ten miles from home….go on that ten mile walk. That sorta thing.