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.

Was in a local supermarket today and saw, for the first time in a while, some flats of canning jar lids. Specifically, wide-mouth lids. I ‘standardized’ on the regular width jars and lids years ago, and I have plenty of both, but I’ll probably pick up a flat of lids anyway, ‘just in case’. But, more than anything else, it was the availability that surprised me. Was it like seeing the first swallow returning to Capistrano? Is this the harbinger of an end, or at least a loosening, of the supply chain and demand issues that made canning lids unobtainable for the last year? Dunno.

But, what I have noticed is that some items are coming back in terms of availability. Maybe everyone who needed to stock up has done so and now demand is lower. Or production picked up and therefore there are now more of a particular product to be had. Or maybe I just got lucky. But, overall, while prices have not come down, I think availability is starting to loosen up.

Of course, a reasonable person might opine that the reason availability is up is because the increase in prices reduces the amount that people are buying…an example of why price controls usually lead to shortages.

Gas went up again by a dime, which puts local go-juice at $4.10 per gallon which is officially higher than I’ve ever seen it. The folks in power are quick to spin it as “Putins inflation” or “Putins gas increases” but any idiot with a calendar can tell you this has been going on for quite a while before Putin went all tanky on Ukraine.

For me, things are still fairly calm. I complain about gas prices, drive a little less, don’t let the shelves or gas tank get empty, and thats about it. Worried about a nuclear exchange? No. Worried about WW3.5? No.Concerned about a new Iron Curtain falling over Europe? No. I’m still of the opinion that there is nothing going on over there that’s worth the life of any American. If Europe is worried about it, let Europe deal with it. Send ’em guns and ammo, give ’em access to satellites and intel, and let them deal with it. Isolationist? Yeah, probably.

This has been a remarkably bizarre century thus far, the last ten years in particular. Ever watch a TV show that they completely changed the cast and direction of the show and it bore virtually no resemblance to the previous season? The post 2000 world is pretty much like that. I feel like the last twenty years could be best summed up as “WTF? Are you kidding me?”

I was up at CostCo yesterday in the battery/tires section. I over heard a fella asking about tires for his vehicle and he was told that “they werent in yet” and that “we’re not sure when theyll be in.” Hmmm. So I asked the guy behind the counter if they wer having availability issues with tires these days. He replied that they were. I asked him if a person thought they might need tires in the next year or so if it would be a good idea to buy them now. He said yes. Now, I understand that you don’t ask the barber if you need a haircut, but perhaps a pre-emptive purchase might not be a bad idea.

Even if availability isnt an issue, I’m pretty confident pricing will be. I’d almost guarantee the tires I’d buy next week are gonna cost more in a year. Like, 99% certain.

You know, when I was a kid and admittedly a bit wet behind the ears, I thought the most likely survivalist scenario was the gun-heavy WW3 nukefest or something equally dramatic and unlikely. Now that I’m older, though not necessarily wiser, I foresee the most likely survivalist scenario as an economic one…either on a grand scale like a national or global depression, but more likely on a personal scale like a job loss or similar.

But, there’s nothing sexy about living on a budget, paying your home early, and having money in the bank/safe/mattress. And yet…my belief is thats the direction things are going to go – less .50 BMG, more $50 bills.

Technically a holiday, but me and the rest of my department had to go in. On the bright side, I’ll get eight hours of holiday pay in addition to the hours I actually worked today. This is good, because with inflation at a 30-year high, it takes more greenbacks to buy the same things as last shopping trip.

Speaking of shopping trip, I’m continuing to stock up on odds and ends. It’s interesting to try and contemplate what exactly to buy. Am I buying this item because I feel inflation will make it too expensive to buy later? Or am I buying this item because I’m concerned oer availability issues? Or am i buying this item because its a good item to have ‘just in case’? There can be a lot of existential thinking in Aisle 6 at WinCo.

But, at the end of the day, the facts remain:

• There are ‘supply chain issues’ for many things currently
• Supply chain issues may continue or reappear with little warning
• Inflation is making life more expensive
• Virtually everything you buy now will be more expensive next month

And if you really want to call inflation what it is: your $1000 paycheck next month may only buy you what $900 gets you this month. Thats inflation robbing your money of value. Thats why Großvater Karl took a wheelbarrow to work with him back in his working days.

Personally, I don’t see anything good coming, economically, on the horizon. I’m not an expert on economics but I can see for myself the effects of it on my surroundings and what I see makes me head up to WinCo and buy a case of soap and another 50 rolls of TP.

Did some running around today to pick up a few ‘nice to haves’ and to do some price checking. I was looking for 15-gallon blue barrels, NATO-style gas cans, and MagLites. Of those three items, you’d think the MagLites would have been the easiest. I mean, every Lowe’s and Home Depot would have them right? Well…you say that….

Turns out that Home Depot, Lowe’s, Murdoch’s, and a handful of other places that you would think would carry them…didn’t. I wonder if maybe MagLite did some sort of change to their pricing or distribution program and got dropped from the stores. Oh, sure…they’re available elsewhere but I really expected them in home Depot.

While I was at Murdoch’s the woman in line in front of me asked the clerk about canning jar lids. She said that their website reported they had three boxes of them in stock, she wanted them, but didnt see them on the shelf. The guy told her they keep them behind the counter because…”Theyre a high theft item.” Canning jar lids. High theft item. let that ferment in your brain for a minute. As someone opined to me after hearing that, “Youd think someone who would steal canning jar lids would be too lazy to can.”

As for the 15-gallon blue barrels I wanted…nada de suerte. Same for the gas cans. And, yes, they’re available online but I find it interesting that the local supply is picked over so thoroughly. Signs of the times, it seems.

In the course of my travels I also hit the restaurant supply place and while they had a pretty normal selection of stuff, some things were absent…certain cooking oils, large cuts of meat, etc.

For me, all the things Im after are just really gilding the preparedness lilly. I’ve got enough of pretty much anything that I’ll come out the other side of whatever happens just fine. But it’s interesting to see the evidence that theres a restlessness amongst the natives.

The world continues apace.

It’s hard to know whats ‘real’ and what’s just clickbait-generating hype these days in regards to to ‘shortages’ and ‘supply chain disruptions’. Oh, there’s no doubt that there’s shortages going on with factories unable to get their materials, store shelves with big gaps in them, and that sort of thing. I’m just not 100% sure why we have them. We had Wuhan Flu and it’s restrictions for all of 2020 and we didn’t see this sort of thing. I suppose you could argue that there were already plenty of things ‘in the pipeline’ and that it’s only now that it’s catching up to us. Or perhaps it took this long for the disruption in Chinese manufacturing to take hold. Or maybe longshoreman and dockworker unions have decided this is the perfect time to hold up management for more money. Or…or…or…

The reasons, to me, are somewhat irrelevant. I don’t care which iceberg hit the Titanic, all I care about is getting my lifejacket on. I suppose the smart thing to do would be to go and buy an extra set of ..well…everything. Thus far my experiences in “whaddya mean you’re out of [XXXX]” have been limited to canning lids, ammo, certain guns, and satisfactory postal service. But I suppose its only a matter of time before a bearing in power turbine somewhere craps out and, surprise, the German company that made it can’t get parts…or a ship to carry it…or someone to unload that ship…or a truck driver to haul it from the docks. It doesn’t take a lot to throw a wrench into things…there’s plenty of potential failure points along the way.

Me, I’ve been kinda sorta  preparing for this thing for a long time. Longer than some of you have been around, actually. I’m expecting, for me, some direct inconveniences but nothing too dramatic. What I’m worried about is people who should know better clamoring for .gov to “do something” and, Crom help us, thos idiots actually do something.

At the moment, the current plan to ‘fix’ things involves spending more money than actually physically exists and creating a debt that is mathematically impossible to payoff unless you go Zimbabwe, have World War III, or literally just renounce the thing like a $50 credit card bill that’s followed you since college. It seems like for all intents and purposes the notion of national debt has become meaningless except as a scorecard to see what country is in the lead for the race to the bottom.

What to do? Same as always, man: keep cash, metals, land, food, guns, meds, fuel, and that sort of thing. The same thing you’ve been doing to get ready for the boogaloo, the Rapture, the UN invasion, Xenu’s arrival, or Great Depression Mk II. From a disaster preparedness standpoint, having precious metals, money, food, fuel, and guns never goes out of style. Being outta debt helps too.

I wish I had a good track record of predicting the future but, alas, I do not…that’s why I have a basement full of food and ammo. But, I think it doesn’t take a lot of foresight to figure that as society starts to fray around the edges there’s going to be more occasions of violence that come into our lives. Whether its increasing amounts of deranged homeless wretches wandering the street aggressively panhandling and doing opportunistic burglaries, or it’s mob violence as some disaffected-group-of-the-moment decides that your ‘privilege’ is an affront to their dignity, it seems reasonable to see things getting a good bit more dangerous out there.

Price increases, ridiculous taxes, consumer goods shortages, racial violence, a renewed push towards socialism, and who knows what else is on the horizon. Is it any wonder we’re buying canned goods and 9mm?

Hmmm…solar panels and LifeStraws. What do the folks at CostCo know that the rst of us don’t?

In actuality, this is probably just related to summer-outdoor-time rather than descent-into-chaos-time….but, they do sell Mountain House freeze drieds and bulk bags of rice, so perhaps….

Actually, for someone who wants to experiment with an itty bitty solar power setup to practice their skills, that $99 deal might not be a bad buncha cheap materials to practice on.