Reading the news is like trying to read tea leaves these days. Every nation seems to be ‘gearing up for something’, as the kids say. The news is certainly full of things that could make one feel like its 1939 and something big is about to kick off, but the challenge is figuring out what the likelihood of that is. Civil war? Economic collapse? Nato v. Russia? Us v. China?

Out of curiosity, I looked up the things that were in short supply in the US as a result of the war back in the 1940’s. That was a completely different time and the supply chain was quite different back then. But the question I was curious about was what would be affected in the event of a larger conflict in modern times? Perhaps a NATO vs Russia event. Or the Mideast does one of its periodical explosions into violence. Or the Chinese invade Taiwan.

There are supply chain interconnectivity issues that weren’t even dreamed about 80 years ago. And the threat to the mainland US involved bombers and invasion, nowadays its a cargo-container-nuke, cyberattack, or ‘bad actors’ plowing through a shopping mall. Different times.

And, I swear, this feeling gets more pronounced every year. It seems like every year I say “this year feels like something big is going to happen’, and, for the most part, I’ve been mostly-wrong. But even a broken calendar is right once a year, and, eventually, something will happen. The history of the world is not exactly replete with moments of quiet and calm. To be fair, though, the US has historically been the best place to be when the wheels start to fly off civilization, diplomacy fails, the tanks roll, and markets crash.

I dropped a good chunk of cash and precious metals to acquire the Beta Site, but I was careful to make sure I didn’t spend all my cash and metals. I held back what I thought would be a goodly amount for something unexpected. But still, I feel a lot more secure with money in the bank and a big ‘ol box of silver bars in the safe. Now I have to juggle replenishing the precious metals with using that money to advance things at the Beta Site.

I’ve no idea what World War 3 (or is it 3.5 or 4 these days?) is going to look like but whatever form it takes, its likelihood seems more these days. Of course, when the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. When you’ve spent 35 years gearing up for the end of the world, every newsflash looks like the kickoff to World War Whatever.

At the moment, my focus is getting the Beta Site up to a point where at least I could relocate there and have a bit of distance and safety from whatever goes on in the world. At this exact second that looks like simply a place to park a tent and some supplies. But I’m going to try to get it to the point that from a year from now its at least graduated into something a bit more civilized with walls, roof, heat, and basic power. And from that point it advances to running water, creature comforts, and everything else needed to go from bolt-hole to small-year-round-capable dwelling.

But in the meantime I feel like I’m racing the clock…between getting older and the feeling of impending crises theres a bit of a sense of urgency. Not sure if its justified or not, just sayin’ it’s there. But I suspect I’m not the only one, hm?

Its so easy to get wrapped up in my own world right now that I forget that there are a zillion other things going on in the world that are worth noting. I mean, yeah, getting the Beta Site is a big deal (trivia: first reference to ‘Beta Site’ was here) but not everyone is interested in following someone else’s terraforming experience.  So, whats been on my radar as of late?

Well, China keeps saying that it wants its military ready to resolve the Taiwan situation by 2027. Certainly theyve been making moves in that direction. But even China is smart enough to realize that having Uncle Sam’s undivided military attention is not always a great plan. That’s why, in my utterly worthless opinion, the next big global conflict that draws US military attention will almost immediately be followed by some other action that would normally not take place if the US weren’t otherwise engaged. For example, the US gets pulled into the Ukraine/NATO/Russia and China/NorthKorea/Iraq/Iran/whoever decides now is a good time to do their thing while the US is busy. And as more belligerents jump into the fray, more, lesser players see the opportunity and jump in to do their thing.

I know that US doctrine for the last few decades has been to be able to fight two wars at the same time, but that was back in the day when wars looked a good bit different than they do today. Between Russia’s actions, China’s buildups, Middle East rhetoric, and a few other players I’m overlooking, it seems like everyone is waiting to see who will draw the US’ fire first and then they’ll rush in.

All that to say, with the way everyone seems to be gearing up, arming up, and not shutting up, it feels like the potential for a war (or a facsimile thereof, in practice if not name) is at a rather high point. Thus, my concerns are about being ready for it. I’m not sure a Taiwan fight or a NATO/Russia matchup will affect my ability to buy Captain Crunch and toothpaste, but I am dead certain it will affect the markets enough to threaten my finances.

So, in my its-worth-what-you-paid for it opinion, there’s a lot of horses at the starting line and their just waiting for the starting shot. I’ve been wrong before, and Im probably wrong on this too, but it sure looks like everyone is just waiting for the music to start.

So The Piece Of Property I Am Buying is approximately 200 times larger than the piece I own here in Missoula. But my property taxes in Missoula are 106 times larger than what my taxes would be on that 20 acres.

Now, to be fair, TPOPIAB has no development on it, has no services, no paved roads, and any 911 call can have its response time measured with a calendar… but its less than 1% of my Missoula taxes for 200 times the ground. Obviously thats gonna change as I develop it, but still…

Sorry for the quiet the last few days, guys. Just busy at work and ‘real life’ (such as it is).

Not that there isn’t a lot to chew over.Seems like the Mauser rifle is seeing a bit of a re-emergence these days.

I’ve been, as of late, running over the current events and trying to think how they do/don’t/might affect me. Just off the top of my head, there’s cyberattacks that disrupted air travel, a large seizure of a cell pphone system that, supposedly, could have been used to disrupt communications, the Russians are taunting Poland and NATO, political violence has become in vogue, precious metals are soaring as faith in the greenback slides, and I’m sure I’m overlooking even more.

So what’s my concern? Supply chain disruption, at the moment. I’m not really worried about food, electricity, and that sort of thing. But I am thinking that I need to evaluate what critical items might encounter problems if shipping and commerce is disrupted by cyberattacks, tariff wars, localized disturbances, banking issues, etc. For me, I suppose the possible vulnerabilities are spare parts for my truck, generator, foreign-made firearms, and a few other things.

While there is always a degree of uncertainty in every day’s fortune, the stakes are sometimes higher, and sometimes lower, than at other times. Nowadays, the stakes seem pretty high. As of late I’ve been making sure that there’s plenty of cash on hand (in case of bank ‘holidays’..government induced or cyberattack-induced), a healthy amount of precious metals, and that the ammo levels are topped off. Can’t say why…just makes me feel safer.

Maybe the feeling of pensiveness is the result of watching and absorbing too much news (“doomscrolling”). But what choice is there? There is obviously a clear need to be informed on matters that are decidedly unpleasant. I need to know war news, terrorism news, economic news, social disturbance news, etc, etc. If I want to keep myself and those I care about in as safe a position as possible, then I need to be aware and informed. Such is the price of vigilance, I suppose.

A person could make an argument that ‘quality of life’ is diminished by this sort of thing. Perhaps. But, for me, being ‘on top of things’ and in a position to be ‘ready for anything’ is what enhances my quality of life. Still, it seems a little difficult these days to not feel like theres a shoe waiting to drop somewhere out there.

SO, while I was in WalMart the other day, I noticed that the price tags for the items on the shelf had changed. If you look at the pictures from the post referenced above, the usual price tags on the shelf have been replaced with digital price tags that are remotely updated. In the old days, you had a guy trundle a cart down the aisle a couple times a week with new price stickers to put on the shelves. No more. Now, the guys in the back office can update the price on an item and it’s instantly reflected on the shelves. I admire this sort of efficiency, yes….but the cynical part of me says that this is a sign that prices are changing so frequently, probably upwards, that it makes sense to be able to change them instantly and often to keep on top of inflationary pressures.

Sign of the times? Yes. But specifically what kind of times is the better question.

I recall that I once said Hurricane Katrina would be the benchmark for future disaster responses until something bigger came along. Is this episode in the southeast that event? I dunno. But while it’s not the same song as Katrina, it certainly rhymes in places.

One thing I’m noticing is that the level of animosity, distrust, and downright antagonism for the federal response is orders of magnitude higher than it was in Katrina. Check out this headline: Armed Militia ‘Hunting FEMA’ Causes Hurricane Responders to Evacuate—Report.

I’m putting this down as a ‘friend of mine heard the story from a guy who had a friend who told him….’ To paraphrase a famous quote, ““the first casualty of disaster is the truth”. Armed militias hunting down FEMA? Thats the sort of thing you see in a self-published ‘post apocalyptic fiction’ series on Amazon. In real life? Mmmm….maybe? I’m skeptical.

But there is no disputing that there is a lot more political anger going on in this crisis than in Katrina. I was going to say ‘If you need a reason to be prepared, avoiding having to deal with .gov types and FEMA is a good one’ but that’s not really true. Your reason to be prepared is wanting to be able to take care of and protect yourself and the people you care about. That’s it. You don’t need another reason. That’s the One True Reason.

Mark Twain said that  “A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.” Katrina was a learning opportunity…some took it to heart, some did not. The .gov, it appears, on a federal and local level, has some cat-carrying going on at the moment.

I’m thousands of miles away from this particular tragedy. Many of you are, too. I’m paying attention, filtering the noise from the signal, and observing what works, what doesn’t, and incorporating those lessons into my own activities. Maybe I’ll never see a hurricane in Montana, but infrastructure failure, floods, blackouts, fuel issues, looting, water shortages, traffic chaos, etc, are not unique to hurricanes…they can happen anywhere. So..it pays to learn from other peoples experiences. I’ve no desire to carry a cat by the tail when I can learn the same lesson from someone else who already got clawed.

If you’re into preparedness long enough, you can observe and participate in the evolution of technology as the years go by. For example, forty years ago when I was just getting my feet wet in this particular interest, the Krypton bulb was considered the pinnacle of flashlight technology. Then came a few other specialty bulbs for your MagLite, twenty or so years ago the LED bulbs started to first appear, and now I doubt anyone buys a new flashlight with anything other than a high-output LED bulb. Another example would be optics. Back in the day, if you had a 4x Colt scope mounted to the carry handle of your CAR15 (which we now call an M4), well, you were operating. Then it moved to variables, then holographic and dot sights, then night vision, and now thermals. This was technology that wasn’t only unavailable when I was a kid…it was undreamed of. (At least at the consumer grade.)

I mention this because I recall about ten years ago people were wondering if ‘drones’ had any place in the smart survivalists repertoire. At that point drones were, mostly, an observation device….like airplanes in WWI. And then, much like WWI, some wag decided to bring along a hand grenade to surprise the enemy. Drone combat was born.

That brought me around to thinking what was one of he greatest force multipliers (and greatest threats) for your average survivalist in the last decade or so and I think the answer is…drones.

At the moment, if you wanna blow up a tank in Ukraine, or scout the national forest for elk, you need to sit there with a GameBoy in your lap and a set of goggles on your face. If the hype is to be believed, in the not-so-distant-future we’ll have AI to do the grunt work of drone flying for us. You’ll whip out your KillCopter2000, flip the switch marked ‘sentry/patrol mode’, heave it into the air, and go back to your roadblock as the thing patrols a pre-set flight path and investigates anything unusual…all while your camped around your JetBoil with the rest of your buddies drinking coffee and discussing current events.

Funny thing is, while we’re using all this rapidly evolving technology in drones, scopes, radios, geolocation, and illumination, most of us will be still carrying rifles that are fundamentally unchanged from when they were introduced 60 years ago (AR) or almost 80 years ago (AK). The classics just keep marching on, I suppose. (Especially if the WWI tactics in Ukraine are anything to go by.)

That last statement reminds me…ever do one of those fantasy ‘what if’ daydreams? You know, something like “what if there had been AK’s in the Civil War?”, or “What if a nuclear aircraft carrier were at the attack on Pearl Harbor?” (spoiler…that first one was a book, that second one was a movie.) If you ever wondered what would have happened if the guys in the trenches had automatic rifles instead of bolt actions in WW1…well, youre seeing it. Still a stalemate. Technology can’t make up for staid and outdated military tactics, I suppose.

Call them what you will…disasters, events, apocalypses, crises, whatever…..but they come in two temporal flavors: the fast and the slow. The fast ones are easy to recognize – an earthquake, tsunami, explosion, martial law, riot, etc, etc. Its basically going from zero-to-MadMax in the span of a few moments. The slow ones are things like what we’re experiencing now….every day the water gets a bit warmer and you don’t notice it until the day it becomes a rolling boil. And by then….well, I hope you had your gear stashed and your plans made….because, brother, it’s too late now.

Gas prices are still absurd, inflation is uncontrolled, politicians of both stripes are warning of politically motivated violence, crime seems to be increasing, the housing markets are fomenting cries for socialist policies, taxes are going up, and who knows what the international situation will be adding to the mix. Interesting time to be alive, isn’t it?

Eventually all of this will be a memory…inflation will drop back to its ‘optimal’ level of 2%, the housing market will calm down, politics will return to something you can talk about without it devolving into a knife fight, and your average Joe won’t feel like a trip through the WalMart parking lot is like taking a stroll through Fallujah.

The big question, of course, is what will the medicine look like that finally cures this ailment? Chemotherapy kicks cancer’s butt but it darn near kills you in the process. Will the fix for these things be almost as bad as those things themselves? I mean, Mussolini made the trains run on time, and Hitler built the autobahn…but look at the cost.

I have no idea what its going to take to change the current situation. But I am fairly confident that I know what it will not take…it will not take out-of-touch leftists whose solution to inflation and crime is “Green Deals” and “inclusive” pronouns.

Next week’s elections should be telling. Maybe I’m wrong, but I’m gonna go on a limb and guess that the major issues on the minds of your average voter are inflation and gas prices. I’m of the opinion that most people, fundamentally, look out for Numbah One and that means that when chicken jumps 70% in a year they will vote on the economy and their pocketbook, not on transgendered bathrooms and carbon neutrality.

No two ways about it, these are weird times. So far, I’ve been able to deal with inflation, scarcity, crime, and pandemic simply because I’ve been preparing for stuff like this for the last thirty years. Food prices up? I’ve enough stockpiled food to help defray the high costs. Housing is expensive? Good thing the house is paid. Crime is up? Dude….not even gonna worry about it. Pandemic? Happily unvaccinated and still healthy as a horse. But you and me, we’re the exceptions. And, unfortunately, it isn’t the exceptions that decide the outcome of elections, but rather the general populace… the general unprepared populace.

So, long story short, make sure to vote next week, and make sure to grab some friends and drag them to the polls and make sure they vote. Then go back to your bunker and keep working on your readiness, ’cause one way or the other this nonsense is still far from being done.

I wish the stock market was going to the moon like gas prices were…then maybe I could afford gas.

Is there anyone in the world who hasn’t figured out yet that if the fuel that runs the trucks that delivers your food goes up in price, everything delivered by those trucks will also go up?

I fill my truck up even when its only down to 3/4 of a tank. Why? Because if I wait until I’m at 1/4 tank, the gas prices will be higher. So I constantly keep filling the tank to remain ahead of the price increases. Who does that???? Zimbabweans. Venezuelans.

And the worst is yet to come: government ‘relief’. Price controls? Nationalizations? Subsidies and rebates? Who knows? But there is no problem that cannot be made worse by government intervention.

Me…I’ll at least be able to eat, even though I’ll have to ride my bike everywhere.

Literally, there have been revolutions and coups that started over this sort of thing.

Say what you will about Trump, but I remember a glorious moment of sub-$2 gasoline.