Because nothing kills like overkill.
Tag Archives: stockpiling
Arbitrage
A market inefficiency like….a Walmart in a populous region that doesnt have a large percentage of the population that does canning winding up with a shelf full of canning lids…..and a Walmart in a rural region where people are known to do quite a bit of canning and be survivalists that has no canning lids in stock.
There’s an opportunity there.
Someone who knew I was interested in lids texted me. The conversation was like this:
Them: Im in a WalMart and they have canning lids…
Me: All of them
Them: They have….
Me: All of them.
Them: How many do you….
Me: All. Of. Them.
(And bring me all your bacon and eggs while youre at it)
And in todays post:
Self-looting and restocking
One of the most true things in survivalism is that ‘you are your own worst looter’. You, your kids, your spouse, whoever, will ‘borrow’ from your stash and not replace/return it long before any panic-driven locust horde breaks down your basement door and helps themselves.
Case in point: I keep some Advil and Tylenol in my Bag O’ Tricks(tm), which is good because I had a bangaroo headache the other day. Popped open the tube, took two Advil, went on with my life. Did the same thing the next day. Sooooo…my stash is down four pills. Now, this isn’t a big deal. There’s another twenty or so in there. But the way things are supposed to work is that a) you use it, 2) you replace it, III) you replace the replacements.
But, no, I sat onmy hands and waited until this weekend to go to the Big Bottle Of Advil, shake out a half dozen tablets, and replace them into my bag.
Bad survivalist.
Yeah, yeah, its only a few tablets…whats the big deal, right? The big deal is that nits become lice, acorns become mighty oaks, and little minor oversights become Three Mile Island…want of a nail,. buddy.
Its so bloody easy to get complacent about doing what we’re supposed to, in terms of preparedness, when the sense of urgency isn’t as great as it could be… we take a jar of spaghetti sauce from the food storage stash and forget to update the list, we use one of the emergency flashlights and figure we’ll just pick up a new one ‘next time’ to replace it, etc, etc.
You’re your own worst looter. I am too, and I’ve been doing this crap for decades. But the day you get stuck in your office because of a power outage is no time to discover that you ‘forgot’ to replace the flashlight you ‘borrowed’ from your EDC and never put back.
That little stuff adds up fast, and although something simple and basic like aspirin, batteries, a razor blade, or a bottle of water may seem like not a big deal today…when you’re in a situation and one of those items is exactly what you need and it’s not there, you’ll sing a different tune.
Moral of the story: yeah, its a pain the butt…but suck it up, go to the store, and replace that item that you pulled from storage that you really shouldnt have used. Future You will thank you.
Skipping the gun show
“I foresee terrible trouble and I stay here just the same” – Steely Dan
There was a gun show in Hamilton last weekend and…I didnt go. I thought about going but it would be $20 in gas, another $10 for lunch, and then whatever I spent on overpriced panic-driven stuf. And, this is the key part, I didnt really need anything. I mean, really, as far as gun stuff go I’m just gilding the lily at this point. The only thing I need is a scope for my .338 Lapua (leaning towards this one, by the way) and that’s really about it. :::shrug::: I’ve had thirty years to get my gun buying needs satisfied…at some point I was gonna hit the “I think I’m okay” stage. So why piss away thirty bucks I could use for other purposes?
Certainly there are small non-gun things I’d like to get..a few more LED MagLites, some more gas cans, that sort of thing. But…nothing hits the ‘urgent’ chord.
And, somewhat, this carries over to a few other things as well. Food, med stuff, fuel, etc. In fact, so many things are ‘in the green’ that I’m really just focusing the majority of my efforts on the financial stuff. By the end of next year I need to have enough money in the bank to buy a chunk of nowhere. As a result, between now and 12/31/22 most of the financial resources that have been going into guns, ammo, and food will be going into saving and investing.
No, this isn’t going to transform the blog into some sort of financial blog. (Although, to be fair, I’ve been reading a few of those on and off for the last year.) It just means that I’ll probably cut the posts about gun buying by a large percentage and there’ll be more posts about the more mundane things in the wide world of preparedness. And, really, who needs financial advice beyond “spend less than you make, save and invest, think before you buy, contemplate the future”?
The Free Money Machine in DC seems to be in overdrive as it pays people to underachieve and that’s gotta have some consequences somewhere. The music hasn’t stopped yet, but it’s slowing down. Folks would be smart to spend a couple hours in a quiet room with a notebook, pen, and start making lists and have an honest reckoning with themselves about what they need to do to come out the other side of things in one piece. But, really, thats good advice any time.
So, for now, the vast majority of my ‘prepping’ is getting money in the bank, into investments, and hitting WinCo/CostCo every weekend to keep things topped off. And, of course, keep a weather eye on the news. As convoluted, biased, and ‘steered’ as the news is, it’s still worth paying attention to…at least, as long as you get the same story from at least three disparate sources. As the saying goes, theres three sides to every argument – your side, their side, and the truth. I’m not a news junkie but I always check the news first thing in the morning after I power up.
Whether its a straight-up LARPing of the Carter years, or if its a more Fabianistic approach to Directive 10-289, the solid bet is that four years from now things are going to look a good bit different than they do today. Reagan famously asked “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” and I suspect that in 2024 the answer will, for most of us, be a pretty strong “No”.
By the by, if, like me, you occasionally have lapses of discipline and you ‘fall off the wagon’ in terms of keeping up with your preparedness, I highly recommend reading this book. It is, of course, fiction but it isn’t hard to see yourself in some of the situations outlined in the book. Every time I read it I feel like taking the day off and doing nothing but loading up my truck with food, gas, gold, ammo, and heading for a quiet place to raise chickens and vegetables while the world eats itself. Good read.
More WinCo wandering
So I’ve been making a few trips to the WinCo to try and get a feel for whether it’s all that it seems to be in terms of selection and value. So far, I’m pretty pleased although there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to whats ‘on sale’ and when. I need to see if they have some sort of online presence or mailing list that will send me weekly alerts on items that are on sale. So far, however, it looks like for 90% of my survivalist grocery needs, they’re gonna be my first choice.
I had mentioned that over in the corner of the store they had an itty-bitty ‘home storage’ or preparedness section…basically Gamma Seal-type lids, buckets, water containers, oxy absorbers, etc. Here’s the picture I took when I went there the other day:
And then when I went there today:
So…which one of you savages read my post, went down there, and cleaned them out of buckets and lids?
They also had some nice 5-gallon poly jugs for water storage. At about $8 ea, these seemed to be a good value. I was amused at how the label recommends them for camping, preparedness needs and….zombie apocalypse:
Although I’ve got a pretty decent supply of this sort of thing, I’m always curious to see how this sort of stuff is selling….sort of a canary in the coal mine. A gauge to see just how restless the natives are.Judging by the way someone cleaned them out on lids and buckets, I’d say there’s definitely something going on.
Anyway, I grabbed a copy of the preponomicon and wandered around WinCo filling in some gaps.
CostCo
My little CostCo ‘rebate’ certificate of $250 arrived in email last week. Now the question becomes what to do with it. I’ve got $250 to spend on just-in-case up at CostCo. Where should it go? If you had $250 of ‘free money’ to spend on prep-type stuff up at CostCo, what would it be? A pallet of TP? A Bin of hope-they-dont-leak Duracells? A case of canned chicken? Four dozen socks? (hmmm…thats actually not a bad idea…) LED flashlights? Bleach? 50# of M&M’s?
Let’s hear it…..
Video – Items to stock for barter
An interesting video I recommend watching:
Why recommend? Well, I’m one of the most optimistic survivalists you’ll ever meet….I have a difficult time seeing things come to a point where we’re trading toilet paper and gold coins for antibiotics and motor oil. But…I do store things for my own use (mostly so I don’t have to worry about bartering, actually). Anyway, the items listed in this video are, of course, useful for trade but they are also items you should have on hand for your own use as well. So…thats why I’m recommending this video…watch it and see if theres anything you might have overlooked for your own use.
I can’t imagine there’s anyone who is unfamiliar with this guys library of videos but it’s mostly gun reviews and the occasional piece of gear. The gun reviews are actually pretty good and I find them more valuable than the reviews a lot of other Guntubers have out there.
Back to the regularly scheduled buying
No one was even hinting at banning rice, pasta, drink mix, frozen meat, or canned vegetables. But…they were talking about banning ‘assault weapons’ and ‘high capacity’ magazines. As a result, it made logical sense to focus on the acquisition of things that may not be obtainable if I waited. So, now that thats out of the way and the mags are resting in their new olive-drab steel homes, it’s time to reshift my focus back to where it was earlier – increasing resilience against the upcoming economic issues that seem to loom for 2021.
For me, that resilience-building is exactly three things: resources (money/metals) laid back, more food and necessary tangible goods, and alternate sources of income.
Once in a while someone asks if I’m really stockpiling food because I’m worried about some sort of shortage or famine. No, I’m not. I think that, by and large, it’s virtually impossible to starve in this country as a result of economic factors. I store food (and other things like TP, cleaning supplies, socks, soap, cooking oil, etc.) because if my life hits a hiccup where I suffer an income loss I’ll be able to use whatever income remains wisely since I won’t need to spend it on those goods. Coincidentally, those goods also come in handy if something Very Bad does, in fact, happen.
I’ve no idea what 2021 holds, but even if the Wuhan Flu thing gets under control, there are sill some major paradigm shifts that are going to have consequences. Probably the biggest is the ‘work from home’ model that we have moved into. For decades we have been told that with the advent of he internet we will all be telecommuting and that we will be able to work form home. It never happened on a big scale because there was little motivation for it to happen. It would have happened eventually, but the flu has forced that change to come much earlier. And now businesses are realizing that employees either weren’t 100% necessary, or they are realizing that if employees work remotely then they can hire cheaper employees from across the nation or across the world for the same results and less money. As a result, I see the jobs market changing radically. No longer are you competing with other job hunters in your region, you are now competing with job hunters from across the nation (and world). And with that kind of competition, the wages can be lower because someone will always be willing to work for less. So, to my way of thinking, while there never was a such thing as a ‘steady job’ there is now even less stability in a job. Physical jobs will be mostly unaffected…the guys on the garbage truck, the guys changing your oil, the fella delivering packages…they’ll be okay. But accountants, salespeople, consultants, the white collar stuff….thats going to be different. And since I can’t see how that’s going to shake out, I err on the side of caution and try to be ready.
So I’m finished with the ‘ban stuff’ stockpiling (unless something comes along at a screaming deal) and getting back to the basics – update the preponomicon and start continue increasing resilience.
Final mag purchases of 2020
Unless something insanely discounted happens, I am done with buying magazines. (Although I am done buying them, there’s still some in the pipeline that aren’t here yet. Most notably a buncha Magpul AR-10 mags.)
Under a Biden $200-tax-stamp-on-magazines program, you’re looking at $40,000 worth of tax stamp. I mean…you know…if a person actually registered them.
Betcha can’t eat just one
It has now hit the point that I am stockpiling magazines for guns I don’t even own.
Yet.
