Computers, Post-Collapse

I am in the process of redoing the operating system on my main computer (I have a Windows environment loaded, and am downloading Kubuntu via Wubi) and it is a bear of a process. It occurs to me, that post-collapse, this process would be infinitely harder, as there are no online utilities for downloading patches, fixes, upgrades in a post-collapse world.

Not to mention the bigger problem of electricity.

I do not currently have the means to generate my own electricity. This, to me, is a major question all survivalists have to answer as they prep for collapse -- do you want to have electricity, or not? If the answer is yes, the problems that come from that are huge -- you need a means to generate power and to store it. Consider Rawles's novel Patriots -- the protagonists have a retreat powered by two means -- a solar and wind generation system. The two complement each other, and in the book, work for a number of years without real problems.

Let's assume Rawles is right, and this is possible. The problem I face is that I cannot implement this system in my current locale -- I have pretty poor sunlight at my location (no one would consider solar power alone in New England), and am not in a locale where I can put up a wind turbine -- and if I were, they are prohibitively expensive. I am commtted, therefore, after a crash to a non-electric world.

What does this mean?

For lighting, I have to use candles. For heat, I have to use wood (my oil heat system requires electricity for the furnace). I'd lose water pressure at some point, as my water is powered from a standpipe at the top of the hill run by the town (I do have a rain barrel for immediate emergencies, and could rig other barrels up to it to expand it if need be). Sewerage requires a pump up to the town pipe (my lot is below the road).

Without electricity, I'd have some quick priorities -- get the water barrel system expanded, and convert my sewerage to a septic/leach field system (I've done some preliminary research). I'd then have to learn to make candles from animal fat at some point.

From a theoretical standpoint, I'm OK with all of that. But from a practical standpoint, life without electricity and computers gets pretty difficult. I do maintain paper copies of my inventories (realizing that computer records can be gone in the blink of an eye in an EMP scenario), but losing the capability of doing quick tallies in Excel, along with losing touch with distant family members, would be very hard.

But what's the answer? Even if I throw an extra laptop into a Faraday cage, I'd still be without the internet, and without sustainable power generation, I'd only have computer power for a short period of time. Does it make sense to invest all kinds of resources into generators, etc., knowing that there is a short time before they all ultimately fail? Wouldn't I be better off just buying more food and ammo?

To me, based on my current location, where I cannot build in any power generation, I have to cut my losses and say "no electricity". Maybe if I get a retreat established in the long term, I can consider power generation. For now, I have a good supply of candles.

I'm Back!

Did you miss me?

I had a pretty busy November -- full of fishing, as I managed to get out 3 or 4 times. Had my best single day of fishing last Sunday, when I caught 11 fish. 9 of them were bluegills, 2 were rather large black crappies. Again I fished with live bait on a small hook, suspended about 12-18 inches below the surface, using a bobber. There's nothing that makes you feel better about the coming Zombiepocalypse than to know that you'll be able to have the occasional fish fry in between reloading the shotgun and foraging for canned goods.

But more seriously, I look at the world markets and I am concerned that we will see a collapse of the dollar. It's time to think of barter goods. Here's a short list I can think of:

1. Ammunition, particularly 22LR, 12 gauge, 9mm, .38special/.357 magnum, .45, and all the hunting calibers (my own favorite is .308 winchester).

2. Food, especially canned food of all kinds.

3. Alcohol, for medicinal and for self-medicating purposes.

4. Medical supplies of all kinds.

5. Soap.

6. Baby food/formula.

7. Clothing.

8. Silver/gold coins (eventually).

I've got a pretty good system for adding food to my larder and have been thinking about slowly building up the other areas. Any thoughts?

The Silver Hoard Grows

I'm continuing to add silver to my hoard. I've read a number of articles and am convinced that silver prices will rise. It's a cheaper investment than gold, which to my mind has become so valuable that it might not be useful as a commodity with which to barter -- who would part with a Krugerrand for a loaf of bread when a Morgan Silver Dollar might accomplish the same thing?

Fishing Capstone -- October 31

I decided to try out all I've learned on fishing in the last month by going fishing yesterday, and concentrationg on "what works" rather than experimenting. The key things I've learned fishing in the local lakes are:

a. There are lots of weeds, so use a float/bobber to keep the hook off the bottom
b. Nightcrawlers work the best.
c. Smaller hooks catch more fish -- larger hooks lead to bait getting stolen.

I fished alomst exclusively with nightcrawlers on a float/bobber suspended about 12-18 inches below the surface. I only fished from 7-10AM, but it was warm out -- fishing in October you need to fish when the water is a little bit warm.

The results:

3 bluegills (all thrown back, but in a survival situation, they would have made a nice fish stew)
1 grass carp (thrown back, but the same rule above as for the bluegill applies)
1 largemouth bass -- 1 foot long, a keeper (the bass in my local lakes don't grow very large, and 12 in. is the state minimum)
1 yellow perch -- 1 foot long, also a keeper.

So, four different species, all caught using the same setup -- nightcrawlers on a #6 hook, suspended 12-18 inches under a bobber. In my last 4-5 outings, this is the setup that worked consistently. In a survival situation, I'd spend the day before digging up worms, then go out and spend the next day fishing. Naturally, in a TEOTWAWKI scenario, many other people will think the same thing. But in some scenarios involving depopulation (pandemic, for instance); I'm convinced that if I had to, I could be a productive fisherman. There are about 4-5 lakes within a few miles of home; by alternating them I wouldn't "fish them out".

Any skill you develop removes some pressure after the fall. My goal is to become highly competent at many things. I can now say that I know a little bit about fishing. Three months ago, I didn't.

Books on Fishing

I've recently bought two books on fishing to help me in developing this necessary survival skill.

The first is Fishing Basics by Gene Kugach.



This is a good book, particularly in its discussion of the individual fish. For a fish like, say, largemouth bass, it gives you a brief synopsis of the fish, an illustrated picture -- and then, which is invaluable -- pictures of which baits and rigs are most effective in catching the fish. The book also includes a good section on making your own lures, cleaning and preparing the different fish for cooking, and so forth. It is an excellent basic guide and very practical.

The second book is Cliff Hauptman's Basic Freshwater Fishing



Although not as immediately practical as Kugach's book, the book is a very good philosophical primer that begins with what fishing is, and then walks you through equipment and techniques for panfish and gamefish. I think both books complement each other well and would recommend both of them; if I had to buy one, I'd buy Kugach only because his is immediately more practical.

The big thing I learned from the books that I have applied in my own fishing is the use of floats. The lakes I fish in are very weedy; my best luck (with bluegills, so far) is using a fairly short line close to the float with nightcrawlers. I have had a few nibbles on crawfish style artificial lures; but my spinners and bass worms have largely gone ignored. I've lost spoons and crankbaits in the weeds; I may try some surface lures next time to try to get the elusive trout and bass.

Here's what I've caught this fall -- all released because they weren't big enough in my mind to keep:

3 bluegills
1 yellow perch
1 crappie
1 chain pickerel

Other than the pickerel, who went after a live worm on the bottom, they're all panfish. In a survival situation, I would have eaten any of them, but I didn't see the need to keep any in the current situation.

Pawn Shop

Yesterday during lunch I went to my usual dealer in Silver, the owner of a local coin store, only to find that he is closed on Tuesdays. So, wanting to make my usual monthly investment in silver, I decided to see who else offers silver coins.

The search brought me to a pawn shop in a pretty bad neighborhood. If you've never visited a pawn shop before, it is a pretty depressing experience. It is, in a sense, the opposite of doing survival prep -- pawn shops are loaded not with useful things, but with things people have decided they can do without. The biggest items I saw in the store were stereo equipment, DVD players, game consoles, and video games themselves. After that, it was cameras, and after that, watches. A woman in front of me had a bag of jewelry which the store owner -- a hyperactive but highly intelligent twentysomething -- was picking through. He was on a cell phone getting spot gold prices for 10k, 14k, and 24k gold, presumably from a bigger dealer upstream.

He looked at me curiously -- I was in my usual high tech serf costume of a polo shirt and khakis. "Do you sell silver coins?" I asked.

He did -- but not my usual Maples and Eagles. He had the older stuff -- Morgan and Peace dollars. After quickly running through my head the value of a Morgan against the price of pure silver (77.34%, if you're curious), I bought five Morgans from him.

One thing that impressed me with the Morgans is that they were coins meant to last -- the edges are heavily milled, and the face and back are stamped deeply. Even after 125 years the words E Pluribus Unum and Liberty are clearly visible. The coins impressed me for being, well, the real deal. The coin itself is the store of value, unlike the "full faith and credit" that backs up the junk coinage of today. On Survivalblog fairly recently, a commenter who lived in the Balkans in the 1990s said that trade there was often carried out in the old coinage of the Austro-Hungarian empire -- governments may change, but a silver coin lasts forever. Even though the Morgans and the Peace dollars no longer circulate, they may yet have service to perform if the U.S. ends up defaulting on its debt and facing inflation -- which it surely must. I'm going to continue to buy Eagles and Maples, but I'll also throw in some Morgans and Peace Dollars as I expect they will also be useful in the future. They are certainly durable old things.

Silver yesterday closed over $17.00 again. I'm anticipating it will go higher.

More Shooting and Fishing

It rained Saturday, so my plans to shoot one day and fish the next got compressed. I did both today, with mixed results.

Fishing was hampered by a lack of live bait. New England fish are smart, and only bite if there is real protein invovled. My usual place for bait doesn't open until noon on Sunday, so I was forced to go with plastic lures. It was an epic failure. It didn't occur to me to check the local Wal-Mart; they of course have shiners, night crawlers, and earthworms. Next time, we stock up the night before. I did get to try different rigs, and played with different sinker/lure combinations. That was, at any rate, educational.

Shooting went well. I moved my zero out to 50 yards on the rifle. At 100 yards I began to see the problems creep in -- a slight sight adjustment and I was back on target. I'm now confident on putting shots on target at 100; next time out we'll start from there and see how we do.

Gone Fishin'

Actually, I went fishing on Saturday. As with shooting, I am trying to quickly improve my skills in a number of key areas, and one of the important ones is fishing.

I hadn't been fishing on a lake since 1991, on a week-long trip where I literally caught nothing. But I bought myself an inexpensive reel (a Zebco 33 at Wal-Mart) and was determined to try out a few of the local ponds.

I got out bright and early -- six o'clock, when it was still dark. I fished with rubber lures until about nine, when I took a break and got some live bait at a local convenience store. I got a much better response with live bait; manny nibbles and a few bites. I caught two fish before I knocked off about noontime; a small chain pickerel and a crappie, neither whom were big enough to keep, though in a survival situation, they'd have gone into the pot. The pickerel was a fierce little guy, and he showed me his mouth full of sharp little teeth as I removed the hook very carefully.

A good experience; I learned a lot. My casting got better as the day went on, though I was hampered by a lack of real sinkers and the prepackaged hooks in the kit were a little bit week. I've remedied that with a trip to Dick's sporting goods, where I picked up some good old fashioned lead sinkers, a few swivels, and a package of 100 #6 hooks. I'm going to try to get out once or twice more before winter; I'll take the time to set up some good Texas style rigs before I head out. One of the larger local ponds is stocked with trout at the end of September, so hopefully I'll catch something real. Practice mkes perfect.

Bought Some of These

Bought a can of these today. We'll see how they work, maybe next spring.

Going Shooting

A little early morning shooting today, I think . . . more later.

UPDATE: Shooting was awesome. I got the .308 zeroed, and put about 40 rounds downrange. It's a bit hard on the shoulder, but man, it's a real railgun. I also shot its little brother, the .22, which was a lot of fun. On the way home, stopped at Wal Mart and replenished (and added to) my ammo. Most fun I've had shooting in a long time.

A Good Walk

I've been trying to get some practice in with my bug-out bag. This last Sunday I did about a 3 mile walk with it to get used to it. I was an infantryman when I was in my twenties, so I have done this before, but sitting in front of a computer working for twenty years has a way of taking the edge off. While I haven't completely turned into a jelly donut, it was a good reminder that I need to get out and walk with a pack on from time to time.

As a kid I grew up reading Tolkien, and for some reason I guess I thought that my adult life would involve a lot of walking places with a pack. It hasn't. Other than a few years in the Army, I haven't really led an outdoor life. The fact that I'm good with computers has meant that my work has been indoors in air-conditioned comfort and under artificial light. I suppose I thought I'd be engaged in more quests.

Well, it's amazing how even a short walk can revive a sense of adventure. Walking through my town, rather than riding through it, has given me a new appreciation of the scale of things. There are many patches of forest -- little worlds unto themselves. As I walked I mentally was taking notes of a surroundings -- there is a pond where there might be fish; there is a good place to pitch a tent, there is a good place to hide from Black Riders.

I'm going to be doing more of this in the future. It's a lot of fun, and its helping me get back in shape.

RIP, Mrs. Rawles

James Wesley, Rawles, who is probably the single most influential survival blogger, lost his wife today. She will be in my thoughts and prayers.

Some Good Hard Prep

Today, I:

1. Reorganized my bug-out bag. I included some new items, including some 10lb monofilament fishing line and hooks, a multitool, a and a canteen with canteen cup (the latter for cooking). The things I know I'm missing in it are a flashlight and a shaving kit.

2. Bought some more food for my cellar, using my nifty new 90 day rule I outlined earlier.

3. Updated all my spreadsheets, including the ones for ammo, wine, food, and silver.

4. Filled my gas tank. I am trying to get a little more fanatical about topping off. My tentative bug out location should my current abode provide insufficient protection from mutant bikers, albino vampires, fast and/or slow zombies, etc. is at the far end of my fuel range. If you include a few running shootouts while trying to keep the bad guys away from whomever I'm protecting (my wife, the Keymaker, the midget who knows how to refine mee-thane, etc.), with or without the help of Whirlybird man (dammit, where are you, Whirlybird man?) -- well, let's just say I've concluded I need to keep the gas tank full.



I hate bug-out scenarios . . .

Following Things To a Logical Conclusion

One of the things I'm trying to do in my preparation is to follow things to a logical conclusion. Here's an example.

I worry a great deal about EMP. When I first read William Forstchen's One Second After and then read the government's report on EMP, I was floored. My first reaction was "Why hasn't this happened already?" One airburst nuclear weapon, properly calibrated, could take out much of the electrical infrastructure and computer networks of the United States. We have enemies in the world, and we also have some unprincipled rivals. It must be an awfully tempting thought for them that with one blow, the U.S. could be removed as a major power. Naturally, there would be risk of consequences, but if a nation state could create enough doubt about the origin of such an attack, it might effectively decapitate us before the orders to retaliate could be given.

So when I evaluate TEOTWAWKI scenarios, EMP is one of the main ones I think about.

I work in a town some 40+ miles from my home. If an EMP strike were to occur while I was at work, this means I'd have to walk home (my prep is too valuable to walk away from to consider simply hunkering down where I work). Since my wife and I commute together, this means we'd both have to walk home.

So what follows? 40 miles is too far to go in a day, and we don't have friends along the route. This means we'd be camping out for at least one night (I think two, because I'd want to go slowly and avoid dangerous encounters with other people). In addition, we work on the far side of a fairly large city. We'd have to face a choice early on -- walk through it or go around it. There's no doubt in my mind we'd try to go around it.

So just from these observations, it became clear to me that a bug-out bag must be in the car at all times. The bug-out bag has to be equipped to support a three day walk. It needs to contain a shelter, a means of starting a fire, and a supply of water. It needs to have a change of socks and comfortable walking shoes. It needs a medical kit. It needs a compass and some very good maps of the terrain in between work and home. It might need weapons. In short, I need to envision what might happen on the three-day adventure it will take to get home, and take reasonable steps to ensure I'd be prepared.

From a simple thought -- "An EMP event is possible and must be considered" -- comes a lot of preparation. Get the first things right and everything else follows logically.

More Prep

Since I've integrated prep into my daily routines, I usually manage to do something prep related every day. I certainly work my supply spreadsheets pretty hard if nothing else. This week, I added 3 more ounces of silver to my hoard (American Eagles), bought a .22 rifle (a Savage Mark II GL, which is like a scaled down version of my .308), added ammo, and got some old expired food off the books. I'll go food shopping in the next day or so to increase my supply of staples. Hopefully this weekend I'll get some shooting in.

I'm also just about through reading F.A. Hayek's Road to Serfdom; I'll hopefully get a review of it done. The key insight of it, in my mind, is that Hayek explains why markets work better than command economies -- it is a simple matter of information. Markets have much more information in them than do command economies because a market records the decisions of millions of participants. In a command economy, the only piece of information that matters is whatever insane thought has passed through Kim Jong Il's head this morning. It's a really good point, and is extremely relevant when considering government policy. When the government decides, it is doing so as a very imperfect actor.

Remote Weekend

Well, Friday morning I put a few rounds downrange, but I had only a little time to do so before work. My sights still need adjustment; I figure an afternoon with about 50 rounds of ammo, shooting nice and slow, and I'll be all set. .308 win has many virtues; it will wear out your shoulder, though. I'm still sore from Friday's shooting.

Spent the weekend up in Northern New Hampshire at a friend's. They live in what was once the Indian Stream Republic. It's a pretty part of the state, with the Connecticut lakes dominating the landscape. Good hunting and fishing country, crossed with snowmobile trails in winter. Came home through the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, which to me is probably the best area of Vermont from a TEOTWAWKI survivability point of view.

Beautiful country; I want to relocate more than ever. My wife is not ready, though.

When I got home, I went through my woodpile. Some of it proved to be termite loaded and reduced to compost; I've gone through it and separated the good from the bad. I have some beautiful hickory that I've begun to split that has been drying for a couple of years that I'll try to keep fresh.

I've also come up with a new set of rules for managing my food inventory.

1. If you're taking the item out of storage and the expiration is more than 90 days away, replace with 2 of the same item next time you shop.

2. If you're taking the item out of storage and the expiration is within 90 days, replace with one of the same item next time you shop.

3. If you're taking the item out of storage and it has expired, do not replace until you are in either a rule 1 or rule 2 situation. If you're not likely to use the item in 6 months, or if it is a seasonal item only, do not replace it.

We'll see how it works.

The Rifle Is In

Going to the range to zero it this morning. Mounted a scope on it myself last night; we'll see if I did it properly this morning.

Savage 14 American Classic, left handed, chambered in .308 Winchester.

Video Of Me Doing Prep

Kidding, of course. But awesome, nonetheless. This is EXACTLY how I picture the post-apocalypse to be.

Ordering Guns

I have had for some time a hunting rifle on order, chambered in .308 Winchester. It is a custom job, left handed because I am left handed. It has been almost 90 days since it was ordered, and I am getting antsy.

The same manufacturer makes a .22, left handed, that is very similar in design. Talking to my gun guy, he says they are in stock and would be available in a day or so on placing the order.

I think of my long gun needs as being threefold -- a shotgun for home defense and bird hunting (the Remington 870 Combo Express with both deer and bird barrels was the answer to this need); a hunting rifle chambered in .308 (more than big enough for deer), and a .22 for small game and varmints. If I had infinite money I'd also put into this list a 20 gauge, a rifle chambered in .223, and probably a cheaper AK variant.

The beauty of ordering a .22 from the same manufacturer as my .308 with a very similar design has its advantages -- it will be easy to train my wife on the .22 and have her move up to the .308. I took the same approach with pistols -- her 9mm and my 9mm are similar in design, and both are similar to my .45. Should we take other people into our refuge after the TEOTWAWKI event, it will be easy to train them as well.

This Week's Prep

Did some cleaning out of my cellar. I am in need of doing quite a bit more of this, in order to fit all the prep I have in mind.

Added to my food inventory. This included some canned goods and liquor (barter item, sterilizing agent, and poor man's anesthetic. Plus, who wants to go through the apocalypse sober? If I'm surrounded in my bunker by mutant vampires like Heston in The Omega Man, you can better believe that like him, between bursts of gunfire, I'm going to have a martini or two). I also added some spices (my salt and sugar supplies are growing). I have enough bread flour and peanut butter to last at least 6 months.

I also added to my ammunition, and now have enough 12 gauge ammo that turkey hunting becomes an inevitability.

Also added to my silver hoard, and now have 43 oz. I am considering buying a kit to do my own handloading of ammunition. I figure with the silver supply, I can make a few dozen silver bullets if things turn lycanthropic.

I also rotated some of my stored fuel, putting older stuff (with Sta-bil added, of course) in my gas tank and buying some new gas.

Added some ponchos to my bug-out bag.

I continue to research retreat land; my eventual bugout location will probably be in Northern Vermont, where the wife has family. My own home, though I am doing what I can to make it viable, is in too high a population density area to last for long before I am burned out by Mad Max style biker gangs. Put simply, it would be a simple matter of tossing a Molotov cocktail from the street to my roof to burn me out; my house is pleasant enough for ordinary life, but tactically indefensible against a determined attack. My house also has all kinds of blind spots and dead space; I'd never try to defend in place -- more likely if a gang approaches, I'd just simply beat feet and try to make it to Vermont. Looking at a map, Maine is to me the ultimate New England bugout location -- all that empty land owned by timber companies who would be no more powerful than ghosts after something like an EMP attack. Think of the hunting. Land up there is (by Massachusetts standards) dirt cheap, too. But for now, the plan is Vermont.

Book Review: Eternity Road

Eternity Road, by Jack McDevitt

Eternity Road is not a typical post-apocalyptic novel in that it is not set in the immediate aftermath of an apocalyptic event, but rather, like A Canticle for Leibowitz, it is set some hundreds of years in the future after the collapse of civilization (due to plague), and considers the problems of the restoration of science and our civilization. In McDevitt's Illyria, a city state in the Mississippi valley built near what we realize are the ruins of Memphis, the only technology that has been maintained are the guns. Almost all other traces of our civilization have been lost, except for a handful of books (the collapse occurs in the 2070s, so most books were on computer, and the intervening several hundred years of barbarism has meant that few books survived). There is legend of a place called Haven, where numerous books were stored before the collapse. An adventure to find Haven ended in failure -- or so we believe, until a young woman inherits an extremely rare artifact from the only survivor of the quest -- a copy of Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. This spurs a new quest to find Haven.

The book is a quest story, with a party of adventurers setting out to find Haven. They wander throughout the Midwest, eventually making their way to the Great Lakes and eventually, to the Atlantic. They have some encounters along the way with some surprising artifacts that survived the collapse, and learn a lot about our technology. I won't ruin the story for you.

The book is somewhat anti-religious, and McDevitt does not come to the conclusion that Walter Miller does in Leibowitz, which is that the Catholic church would survive the fall and act as a catalyst to a new civilization (I happen to believe that it would). In this sense, it is "A Canticle for Leibowitz for Atheists". But this did not ruin the story for me -- the problem of reestablishing civilization from a handful of books is a compelling one, and McDevitt has many good insights.

Recommended.

Book Review: The Coming Dark Age

In reading Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's post-apocalyptic Lucifer's Hammer, I found they made, in their chapter headings, a few references to a hard-to-find book by an Italian computer scientist called Roberto Vacca. I was able to buy an old used copy of it on Amazon, and found it to be a pretty interesting read:


The Coming Dark Age, by Roberto Vacca

The book was written around 1970, and Vacca expressed fears about Western civilization arising out its dependence on highly complex systems in order to function -- electricity, the phone networks, the traffic grid. While Vacca foresaw a collapse coming around 1995, he also saw the rise of computer systems as something that could, at least, temporarily forestall a collapse. And yet, in the long run, adding computers adds another degree of complexity to the equation. Certainly with things like the Y2K scenario, one can envision a problem in the world of highly networked computers could be a cause of the end of civilization as we know it. Vacca's book theorizes that some untoward event of sufficient size, even a "big enough" New York city traffic jam, could cause the end. While the end hasn't come yet, certainly if you look at the effects of an event like 9/11, one could see everything coming to a screeching halt very quickly.

I myself have often worried about the complexity of systems -- I work with computers, and am aware of both a) how fragile they are, and b) how much we depend upon them. It takes little imagination to envision a multi-system collapse today; it takes far more imagination to see the problem in 1970, which Vacca did. Even then, he understood that we are far too dependent on technology.

The book occasionally strays way too far out on speculative limbs -- for instance, he envisions Sweden surviving a general European collapse and having colonial governors in New York and London by 2000 -- but it is, nonetheless, an entertaining read, and Vacca never fails to be interesting. He has one of those relentless minds that pushes toward inevitable conclusions, and he states the problem oh highly complex systems very well. Although his predicted collapse has not occurred, one takes small comfort in looking at the systems problem today, especially considering scenarios like EMP, dirty bombs, or large scale computer viruses which weren't thought of in 1970. We have been very fortunate, indeed.

Faith

I think it is important to have faith in God. But faith does not mean a simple sense that "everything will turn out alright." Faith means that one has to endure and persevere on the path God has set. That that path may not be an easy one is apparent, to a Christian like me, in the path that Christ had to walk. God undoubtedly loved his Son, but Christ's life was full of purpose, and what He had to endure was the most difficult path of all, the via crucis.

God loves us. But that does not mean there might not be crosses in our future. In all my preparations, I sense the hand of God; there is a purpose to all of it that I do not fully understand. It may be that the supplies I put in my basement are never used; it may be that I get hit by a truck tomorrow and all my preparations are meant for someone else. I know I need to prepare for a period of tribulation. I do not know the shape it will take, or if all of this is just a simple exercise by God to teach me the value of things.

I know I need a year of food in my basement, a good water supply, a hunting rifle, and some money put aside. I do not know why I need these things, but as I add to the inventory I feel better. It will either be revealed to me in time, or I will never know why. Maybe a friend or neighbor or relative who sees my well stocked domain will suddenly get the urge to prepare also; maybe I am simply here as an example. The message I hear consistently is "prepare as if you mean it, and pray that you never need it."

I think God's ways are so far above ours that it is pointless to speculate beyond a certain point.

Random Thought

It would be great to have an entire interior room set up as a Faraday cage and to keep a few spare radios and laptops in there.

Lists

Prepping begins with a list. You look at what you need and then look at what you have. Anything you need that you don't have, you put on the list.

When I started building my list, I very quickly got to about 80 items. I realized that I couldn't do it all at once, so I went through the list and prioritized it. I keep my lists in Excel (and then print a copy) for easy maintenance, sorting, etc.

I then budgeted a portion of my pay (roughly 2.5%) and put it in a separate account. Each item on the list gets researched on the web to find the best price and quality I can reasonably afford, and then gets bought in order. As time goes on, I plan to devote more of my pay to prepping, and to saving in gold and silver.

My master list gets updated, and I keep track of all the things that I've bought for prep. It gives me a real sense of accomplishment to see that list of tools, food, and items grow, knowing that I've removed a little bit of insecurity from my life.

Granted, you can't plan for everything. But having a plan gives you a degree of flexibility.

This Week's Prep

A good week for prepping.

My wife and I both work in a city 40 miles from our home. We commute together, which saves us on gas and on wear and tear on the cars. However, it has occurred to me that in an EMP scenario, if the cars are not working, we'd probably have to hike home; or to an alternative location. Or, alternatively, if there were a natural disaster or a nuclear attack on, say, Boston, we'd probably want to head directly to our alternative bug-out location in Vermont.

So in thinking through the scenarios, it occurred to me that a bug-out bag in the car would be pretty high on the list.

I opted for a light, inexpensive backpack, a Jansport Access 40. It is a decent size and price, has pretty good support, and seems pretty well made.

I have a few basics in it, but this list is by no means complete. It currently contains:

Two water bottles.
Two emergency reflective blankets
a Lensatic compass
a half dozen bungee cords.
a magnesium firestarting block
a couple of lighters
a first aid kit
US Army FM 21-76, in a plastic bag
a US Army Ka-bar with sheath

Items I know I need to add are:

Tarps
Water purification tablets
A sleeping pad of some kind
A change of clothes
A pack of smokes in a plastic bag
Food (an MRE or two)
A cooking vessel (probably just an Army canteen/canteen cup.
a 9mm with a couple of magazines and a holster
Fishing line
100 feet of paracord.
Extra money
A large handkerchief/'do-rag

Nevertheless, it's a start. I feel better having a bag in the car that at least has some basics in it.

Book Review: Emergency

Emergency, by Neil Strauss

One thing you have to give Neil Strauss credit for is that he is willing to learn. In Emergency, Strauss becomes convinced that society is falling apart, and so he takes it upon himself to learn things that will help him survive. His political perspective is a little different from most survivalists, who are usually libertarians or conservatives, in that Strauss's fears were triggered by worries about the Bush administration, which in retrospect seems like worrying that President Taft might declare one man rule. But nevertheless, like many survivalists, once the trigger is pulled or the switch is flipped on, he becomes committed to a course of learning.

At first, he focuses on getting a foreign passport, thinking that if the American political system falls apart, he could simply go elsewhere, in his case, to the island of St. Kitts. But as his thoughts on survival evolve, he realizes that if America is screwed, probably everywhere else is, too -- so he begins to study the necessary arts of survival: stockpiling food, learning about weapons, learning how to live in the wild, learning how to raise a goat in the backyard of his Los Angeles apartment. At the same time, he helps his girlfriend, who is paranoid and does not have a driver's license, learn how to drive -- she sees that by him overcoming his fears, she can overcome hers. In the end, Strauss signs up for courses as an EMT in order to learn how to become a person who overcomes disasters, rather than merely fleeing from them.

The book has its high points and low points, but Strauss does hit on an essential part of the Survivalist school of thought -- the idea of Survivalism as a problem of self. Strauss has fears, and so he allays these fears by learning, and finds that as he becomes proficient in different skills, these fears are mitigated. I think this is true to a point -- as I become more proficient and knowledgeable, I also find I am less fearful. The book is more of a personal journey than a survival guide, but as such, it is an interesting read.

Points of Failure In My Home

I am having my chimney guy come over to talk to me about wood stoves.

I live on a very wooded lot, and over the years have had a few hardwood trees removed, which have been aging in a woodpile in my back yard. I have perhaps a cord and a half or two cords of wood, about a third of which I have split. I have a maul for splitting wood which does a pretty good job; it is also good exercise.

Many New England homes today are built around premises which, to our great grandparents, would seem foolish. Although my house is a pretty traditional design, it lacks some of the features a traditional New England home should have -- a root cellar, a well, and a cooking fireplace. All of these things would have been part of the standard equipment a hundred years ago, but homes built in the last fifty years (mine was build in 1972) are premised on a few questionable assumptions:

1. Unlimited municipal water.
2. Unlimited municipal sewerage.
3. Unlimited electricity.
4. Unlimited cheap oil.

I have town water, town sewer, electricity from a distant supplier, and oil heat. My stoves are all electric.

Worse yet, in my case, all of these things are tied to one single point of failure -- the electrical grid, because:

1. I live on a hill, and the water for my neighborhood is pumped to a standpipe. This standpipe relies on electricity to function.
2. I live slightly below the grade of my street, which means my house relies on an electric pump to move material up and into the sewer.
3. My oil burner has an electric starter. When I lose power, I lose heat.

So part of my preparation for a TEOTWAWKI event (I take the EMP scenario very seriously) involves removing this single point of failure and making my heat, water, sewerage, and cooking independent of the grid and of each other.

A wood stove would solve my heat problem somewhat; I have access to a nearby forest that, in a pinch, could keep me in wood for years. If I run it through my chimney, and hang curtains to block off the unnecessary rooms, a wood stove would let my wife and I survive the coldest New England winter. If it is of the right design, I could potentially use it to boil water for cooking.

Combined with my water barrel and emergency storage of potable water, I could do alright for myself for a time. The problem I then have to solve is sewerage. Two potential solutions I see for this:

1. Build a composting box out of wood, and convert my shed to an outhouse. With lime and sawdust, I then have a way of recycling waste, or

2. Dig up my connection to the sewer, unhook it, and build myself a septic system. Using buckets to keep the tanks full, I could then use my toilets.

I do not think my town will let me put in a septic system independent of the town sewerage, but in an end of the world scenario, if I could obtain a sufficient supply of gravel, cement, and PVC pipe, I could build my own rudimentary system.

Superb Book on The Basics

When All Hell Breaks Lose, by Cody Lundin


If you can get through the first 30 or so pages of Cody Lundin's When All Hell Breaks Loose, which has a large amount of new age pop psychology in it, you'll find that the rest of the book has some very valuable information. Lundin runs a wilderness survival school in Arizona, and has a great deal of practical field experience to share with survivors of all environments. I found two sections particularly fascinating -- the section on purifying water and the section on heating homes using passive solar design. Lundin is highly practical when not waxing philosophical -- he takes everyday materials and shows you some practical survival uses for them. But the tips extend to all kinds of things, and he is unafraid to talk about things that other people don't consider or discuss -- practical field sanitation and disposal of human waste, burying the dead, how to cook and serve rat, how to open cans without a can opener -- there are literally hundreds of items in here that could have practical application in a grid down or disaster scenario. The information is presented in a humorous way -- Lundin does not take himself too seriously -- and is full of little illustrations and summaries that make his point. I highly recommend this book. It is like a Boy Scout survival manual that never got edited to remove the controversial content. Well worth the price.

Book Review: Patriots

Patriots, by James Wesley, Rawles

This is probably one of the best modern survival novels, taken for what it is. Rawles has a slightly different focus than William Forstchen -- he concentrates on a small group of 8-10 survivors, there being no coherent community once law and order breaks down. The survivors in Patriots are a band of friends, who have spent years prepping a retreat and training in small unit infantry tactics. This group survives the crash and then form the nucleus of a resistance group that takes on an unlikely power trying to assert control over America -- European troops under U.N. command who are there to prop up an illegal U.S. government. The first half of the book concentrates on surviving the crash, the second half focuses on the guerrilla resistance to the Europeans.

I think there are very many things Rawles has right. His "trigger" for the TEOTWAWKI event is hyperinflation; to me this is a very realistic possibility. He envisions societal unrest in the cities leading to riots and governmental collapse, playing out rather quickly. I wonder if this would happen -- considering Weimar Germany, although there was horrific hyperinflation and the twin demons of Communism and Fascism arose as political movements, there was no general societal collapse. Instead, the people went to a "man on a horse," the genocidal maniac Hitler. I think hyperinflation could well trigger frightening political parties even in America, but I don't know if hyperinflation could cause a complete, overnight collapse. I think it would play out over some years.

Rawles is at his best when he describes the preparations of the survivors -- he details great lists of weaponry, supplies, the contents of the "bug-out bag," preferred post-apocalyptic vehicles, considers the various improvised weapons and tactics the resistance develops (homemade Claymores, improvised thermite grenades, etc.). The book is a great reference for developing and supplying a survival retreat. At times this tendency becomes tedious, the narrative becoming too didactic and less character focused. He is not a great writer, there is none of the poetic beauty or deep irony of Earth Abides or A Canticle for Leibowitz. Patriots isn't literature; it's a survival manual presented in novel form. This is how you ought to read it -- and as such, it is an excellent book.

The book has certainly helped my own preparations, and his approach to the problems of survival is very rational and pragmatic.

Food Storage: The List

Part of my preparations for the upcoming TEOTWAWKI (The End Of The World As We Know It) event includes meditating long and hard on food storage. I have a lot of food in my house, but it is poorly organized. My wife and I both shop, and we often don't go with a prepared list. We walk down the aisles and throw things in the cart that we think we need. This is how we end up with 11 boxes of instant oatmeal in the cellar. At our current rate of oatmeal consumption, we have enough oatmeal to last us for the rest of our natural lives.

Or, at any rate, until the food is no longer safe to eat.

This week, I've been making an Excel spreadsheet that lists all of our food. I'm working my way through the cellar, reorganizing, cleaning, and putting like thing next to like thing, while entering in key data on each item onto a yellow legal pad, which then gets transferred into Excel and printed (so that, in the case of an EMP scenario, I do not lose it). I print a couple of copies, actually. One copy is taped inside our kitchen cupboard as a reference (so if the cupboard is empty, we can see what exists in the cellar already rather than buying the item on our next trip to the store), the other is in my briefcase. This way if my wife and I stop at the store on the way home from work, we have a guide to go buy. The key data I'm recording are:

Category (Dry Goods or Canned Goods)
Item (e.g., Oatmeal, instant)
Description (Low Sugar Apples & Cinnamon)
Brand (Quaker)
Quantity (1)
Unit of Measure (box, 10 1.23 oz. pkg.)
Expiration Date
and Notes (mainly, for now, the location -- which rack it is on).

Using Excel's Data Filters and Sorting, I can quickly arrive at which stuff in my cellar represents a surplus, which stuff needs to be thrown out, and which stuff should be eaten soon. To work on the Great Oatmeal Surplus, I'm taking a couple of packages to work for my lunch every day. As I write this, I'm eating a bowl of Oatmeal that (technically) expired in 2006. The good news is that even with no special storage (I didn't keep it in a plastic food grade barrel filled with nitrogen, a la Rawles), the Oatmeal is still edible. This gives me hope for the future -- if I bought some Oatmeal today, I'd still have something to eat when fighting off the hordes of zombies in 2012, 90 days after the "canister" at Fort Detrick accidentally goes off and the CDC fails to seal off Baltimore ("Damn you, CDC," he snarled, while jamming a shell of double ought buck into his Remington).

My plan is that when the inventory is complete, I'll then start building up the key supplies to give my wife and I a 2-year supply of food. They say the average American eats a ton of food a year. Besides some heavy lifting, this means that I need to store it efficiently and have systems in place to manage it so that food is not wasted.

This Week's Prep

1. Bought 4 more Canadian Maples. Silver hoard is up to 37 oz. in Maples and Eagles.

2. Installed my rain barrel to my downspout. This now gives me a reserve supply of water that is off the grid. I have a Platypus filtration system; combine that with a little bleach and I now have a post-apocalyptic water supply.

3. Went to the range and "patterned" my Remington 870 shotgun. It's very accurate and I had a good time. I'm increasing my supplies of 12 gauge ammo, and now have a range from slugs to #8 birdshot.

Prep Weekend Ahead

Two big prep things for this weekend. First, I'm going to the range to do a little shotgun practice with the Remington 870. It's been quite a few years since I've practiced with a shotgun; I picked up the Remington this spring and this is my first opportunity to use it.

The second, I'm installing a rain barrel to have as an emergency water supply. I've got a Platypus for filtration of it, and along with a little chlorine bleach, it should give me a reserve of water for the summer months. If nothing else, it gives me water for my gardening.

Going to try to pick up some more silver coins today, too. As I outlined earlier, my preferred coins are Canadian Maples, but if my coin dealer is out, I'll pick up some American Eagles. Silver reserves are at 33 oz. currently; I'm going to try to expand this in the coming year.

I'm also thinking long and hard about canned goods. Looking at the shelves in my supermarket, I've figured out that canned goods are good for about 18 months to two years. Assuming very aggressive planting of food and hunting, the 18 month cushion might be sufficient to get a crop in the ground (which reminds me, I'll also want some seeds). To me, the problem with storing a large amount of food is one of data management -- knowing what you have and when it expires. You know the freezer full of meat is going to go bad quickly if the grid comes down. But keeping accurate tabs on all those rusting cans in the cellar is another matter. I'm going to build a spreadsheet to manage it.

In addition, while thoughts turn from firearms and water to food, I'm thinking about buying a pressure cooker/canner. I make my own tomato sauce, and usually store it im mason jars in the freezer, which is OK for now. But if the grid goes down, I'll want to store stuff warm. This means heat and pressure treating the food using a pressure canner. You can't simply heat treat it -- botulism microbes can survive high heat. You need to treat with both. So a canner becomes an essential item, along with a supply of mason jars and lids. And, naturally, a reference book on how to preserve various types of food using canning.

The problem with survivalism is that there's always a next thing, or another thing. Once you secure some firearms and a water supply, you worry about food. And then heat. And then medicine. And so on. The problem is, you need to be able to do all kinds of things that were common a hundred years ago, but are rare skills today. And the basic problems of food supply require a daunting amount of knowledge, if no one is specialized.

I have, for instance, two very useful old-time skills. I can brew beer and I can bake bread. It suggests a simple postapocalyptic role for me. However, with no one in New England (to speak of) growing barley or wheat, the skill is fully a year off until it becomes usable, assuming someone gets a crop of wheat in the ground in the spring after the crash. So I have to survive long enough for those baking and brewing skills to come into play. Which means I need to be a farmer and a hunter, as well. And a guy skilled in firearms.

Survivalism is, in a sense, a problem of self. What can I do, and what do I have? I think a true man is one whom you can drop in the woods with nothing, and in a few years he has recreated his entire culture -- or, at least, that of his great-grandparents. Who of us can do it? If you cannot, the problem then becomes one of learning a lot of old ways. Of becoming useful.

This is a large part of what fascinates me about it.

Review of Lucifer's Hammer

This week I finished Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's contribution to post-apocalyptic literature, Lucifer's Hammer.



Overall, I liked it, but it is a bit dated. It is set in the mid 1970s, in Southern California, and you could easily imagine the characters hanging out in a fern bar before going back to their homes for some white wine and a dip in the hot tub (and some casual sex in "a consequence-free environment," as Austin Powers might say).

It is a "cast of thousands" novel, with about 20 major characters in it, and reminds me of the great 70s disaster productions -- The Towering Inferno, Earthquake, etc. As I read it I kept saying "Lucifer's Hammer -- An Irwin-Allen production." It starts pretty slow, but by the ending, in which our 70s swingers take on an army of cannibals, it has become a pretty good book.

A few points it has in common with Forstchen's One Second After is the concept of the local government setting up roadblocks to keep outsiders out. This is, as I see it, one of the major questions in survivalist literature -- at what size is the "community" organized? In One Second After; Alas, Babylon; and Lucifer's Hammer; the answer seems to be "a small town". In books like Rawles's Patriots, the answer is a retreat of about a dozen people, which Rawles identifies as the smallest unit able to provide its own round the clock security. Earth Abides hits upon a like-sized group -- an extended family of four or five couples (which expands to a tribe over a few generations). In The Road, it is a man and a boy. In A Canticle for Leibowitz, it is a monastery. It is an important question, which I suppose is driven by the likely scenario one encounters. The question is, does local government dissolve when the federal government falls apart? For Rawles the answer is yes, and I suspect he is right. I can't see my local selectman imposing martial law and setting up roadblocks; frankly, I think they'd skedaddle pretty quickly.

A problem I see which is not addressed in any of these books, is what happens if a local police force (or National Guard company) decides to take over a town? Initially, they'd have a certain legitimacy which people -- not trained to think for themselves -- might be inclined to obey. If, after a disaster, the local police went around and knocked on doors and said "Everybody report to the high school, turn in your weapons, and hand over any food you have stored" -- a number of well-prepared people might be inclined to simply obey. Me, I think I'd say "Get off my property." But what if they then came back in force? In Lucifer's Hammer and in One Second After, the major characters have a seat on the town council, and are asked for their opinion. But what if the local constabulary simply seizes power and then rules badly? I think this would be a good topic for a novel -- a character has the foresight to see the collapse, prepares for it, and then has his property and goods seized by the town (with the threat of overwhelming force), and all his preparations go for naught.

Not Really Worth It

Continuing in my reviews of post-apocalyptic novels, we come to a modern one, Cormac McCarthy's The Road. The book's viewpoint is unremittingly bleak -- a man and his son wander through the American southeast, trying to reach the ocean. A nuclear war several years before have made life so unlivable on the planet that nothing will grow -- the sky is devoid of birds, and animals have either died or been hunted to extinction. People are living off whatever they can scrounge from canned goods to, well, each other. The man and the boy are "the good guys" -- they do not kill or eat people.

To me, the book goes so far to paint a bleak picture that it goes too far, and at points descends into self-parody. I remember asking myself, "When are we going to get a baby roasted on a spit?" and, lo and behold, a few pages later, we get a roasted baby on a spit -- headless. I have found Cormac McCarthy's work to be bleak and soulless, and in that respect, I was not disappointed.

From a practical point of view, the book is too bleak to be worth it -- in McCarthy's post-apocalyptic view, there is no survival strategy, nothing to figure out, and no point to it.

I provide a product link, but really can't recommend it.

Two Postapocalyptic Classics

I've been on vacation this week, out west. It's been a welcome relief from work, and has allowed me to catch up on some reading.

Two highly recommended books. First up is Walter M. Miller, Jr.'s A Canticle for Leibowitz.



Unlike a lot of postapocalyptic novels, this one takes place well in the future, after a nuclear war has wiped out most of humanity. The Catholic Church has survived, and one of its saints, a pre-war scientist named Leibowitz, established a monastic order devoted to preserving books to help mankind recover. The book discusses, in several short novellas that take place in the millenium after the war, man's eventual recovery of civilization and science. The book is darkly humorous, and yet also touches on very serious questions of theology, ethics, and the nature of science. It is a very thoughtful reflection on human scoiety, and in my mind, ranks right after Earth Abides in the survivalist canon.

The second book is William R. Forstchen's One Second After. The apocalyptic trigger in this book is a high altitude ElectroMagnetic Pulse (EMP) that wipes out the electrical grid of the United States. A retired Army colonel, teaching history in a small college in North Carolina, becomes a leader in his town, reacting to the aftermath and to life without electricity. The situations his town faces range from epidemics to starvation to roving biker gangs, and the town has to face some very hard decisions in order to survive. The book is somewhat similar to Alas, Babylon, but in many ways, I think it is actually better. The problem in an EMP scenario is grim due to the sheer mass of population that has to survive in a world reduced to 1860s technology. A serious book, and very well done.

This Week's Prep

1. Bought 7 Silver Canadian Maples at $17 apiece. This brings my silver count to 33 ounces, between Maples and Eagles.

2. Researched a few things, including wood stove fireplace inserts. This would go in my current home, because:

3. After some discussion with my Mrs., we have decided to try to improve the current homestead rather than strike out and buy a rural refuge. I am working on the details, but part of the strategy is financial (pay down the current mortgage as rapidly as possible to ensure we are always "right side up" on it and can borrow against it in a real emergency), and part of it is a product of our work situation -- while I can work anywhere, my Mrs. is tied to her employer. I'd prefer to take the risk, liquidate everything, work from a remote location, and have the Mrs. find what work she can. She's not ready to do this, not being convinced things will get all that bad. We do have one possible retreat with her family in northern Vermont; it's a workable solution for now, though not ideal. As a result, we'll "improve in place" for now. Our discussions continue.

4. I've read another post-apocalyptic scenario, Alas, Babylon. Pretty good, but not as good as Earth Abides. The "trigger" in this book is a nuclear war; the survivors, located in Central Florida, do pretty well for themselves.

The British Are, Officially, Idiots

They have come up with an "anti-stab" knife to cut down on the number of knife homicides in Britain.

He said: “It can never be a totally safe knife, but the idea is you can’t inflict a fatal wound. Nobody could just grab one out of the kitchen drawer and kill someone.”

Me, I don't worry about strangers walking into my house and stabbing people. Because a stranger who walks into my house and tries to get something out of the cutlery drawer will have a couple of holes put in him by my friends, Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson -- assuming I don't instead pull Mr. Remington out of the cabinet.

If you gave a 10 year old child one of these knives and a file, he could make the tip perfectly deadly, mount it on a spear, smash Piggy's glasses, and take the conch in about ten minutes.

What keeps people from murdering each other is not a lack of pointy things. You can kill someone perfectly dead with a hammer. You can kill someone perfectly dead with an electrical cord. You can kill someone perfectly dead with a pail of water. And even if you don't have those things, you can kill a person with your bare hands if you get ahold of their head and apply the proper amount of torque. If he's at the top of the stairs, give him a slight nudge and gravity will do the trick.

I suggest two better courses for my friends in Britain:

1. Cover the entire country with padding, put everyone in straightjackets, and insist that no one goes anywhere without proper supervision, or

2. Insist on something called "personal responsibility." A person may own weapons, but if he murders someone, he is hanged.

This Week's Prep

What did i do for prep this week?

1. I bought some 12 gauge ammo -- a box of 5 copper slugs for my rifled deer barrel on the Remington 870, and a box of 25 steel shot shells, #4 shot, which is a good multi-purpose round for both home defense and larger birds.

2. I read one of the original great post-apocalyptic novels, Earth Abides, by George R. Stewart.



3. I bought a carrying case for my shotgun, for bringing to and from the range.

4. I bought and stored 10 gallons of gasoline, and stabilized it using Sta-bil.

5. I got out my 10 lb. weights, and started doing curls and presses while working at the computer.

So, you tell me -- what prep have you done this week?

Silver

I was considering the problem of hyperinflation the other day and it occurred to me that with gold already over $1000 an ounce, it is far likelier that in a post-apocalyptic world, silver becomes a more natural currency. Gold is so valuable, relatively speaking, that it gets driven out of circulation.

This is by no means an original observation; James Wesley, Rawles makes the same point in his book, Patriots. I think it makes a great deal of sense.

This is, of course, after the shooting and looting dies down. But once parties become known to each other and somewhat trusted, trade becomes possible, and assuming there is the reestablishment of a marketplace, coin eventually replaces barter items.

In the short term, of course, ammunition is a better currency -- everyone will need guns and ammo.

I have put aside a few silver American Eagles -- the bullion quality, not the more expensive, collector kind. An Eagle right now costs about $18, which is a slight premium over actual silver prices -- silver closed today at $15.38. The premium can be rationalized very easily -- you get silver in coin form, at a mint-assured purity and quantity -- no need for anyone to weigh it, assay it, etc. It is a premium paid for convenience. The other thing about an Eagle is that it is legal tender. It carries a face value of $1, though, so that's a very unlikely use of it.

I am also considering Canadian Silver Maples -- they are similar to the Eagle in concept, but with one advantage -- they have a face value of $5 Canadian. The Canadian dollar right now is valued at $.9065 American. In other words -- $5 Canadian is worth $4.53. In New England's northern reaches, it is not unusual to see the Canadian dollar used and exchanged. So for about the same price as an American Eagle, you get 4.53 times the face value should you need to go that route. In states bordering Canada, I'm thinking the Maple makes more sense.

Guns

Which gun do you need in a survival situation? The answer is "the right gun."

I think you need a variety of guns, because one has to plan for a variety of situations.

If the problem is other people, you need guns designed to stop other people.

If the problem is food, you need guns that allow you to hunt.

If the problem is an oppressive military or police force, you need guns that give you standoff range or superior firepower.

For Category A, you need pistols and/or a shotgun.

For Category B, you need a) a deer rifle, b) a shotgun for birds, and c) a varmint/small game rifle.

For Category C, nothing will suffice to give you superior firepower, as machine guns and fully automatic weapons are impossible to buy legally, and even if they were obtainable, the force opposing you would simply "call higher" -- make a telephone or radio call to higher headquarters, and bring in mortars, artillery, armor, or tactical air, which you do not have at your disposal. The best you could do against such a force would be to ambush isolated units or to attrit them with sniper fire.

My thoughts on the survival front started back around 2004. At that time, my scenarios -- the dark thoughts in the back of the mind that plague my sleeping, and sometimes my noonday thoughts -- involved other people. There would be a rise in crime, a threat against me from more than one person or someone significantly younger or stronger. My thoughts turned to "equalizers"; i.e., to pistols and revolvers. On that front, I think you need a .45 caliber pistol as your main line of defense. I also think you need a smaller pistol for concealed carry, as a Colt 1911 is a little big to fit in a waistband, or pocket, or in a shoulder holster. I own a .45 caliber pistol, though as I am left handed, I didn't go with a 1911 as the safeties seem awkward. I went with more of a police model. I'm not a believer in composites, so it is steel. Heavy, too. I also have 2 9mm models. The first is the old standby. Mine is extremely accurate, and only misfires if I use an aftermarket magazine. The other is a concealed piece, which to my knowledge is the smallest 9mm concealable handgun that is all steel. It is reasonably accurate and conceals easily in a jacket pocket or in an inside-the-pants holster.

I am currently working on Category B weapons. For shotguns, I went with the multipurpose Remington 870, in 12 gauge. I considered some bottom-eject Browning and Ithaca models (left-handed), but I liked the versatility of the Rem 870 and its multiple barrels. Deer hunting in Massachusetts is shotgun only, so I went with a model that gives me a deer barrel with iron sights. For non-Massachusetts deer hunting (and for elk, moose, bear, etc.), I chose another Massachusetts "Gun Valley" company and went with a Savage Model 14, chambered in .308 Winchester. It does not come with iron sights in its left hand variant, so I am having them put on by the factory.

I do not consider Category C weapons practical or likely at the moment. My biggest current "scenario" is an economic collapse in which the police and military largely melt away. My concern is a) other civilians, and b) finding food. The Savage is, to my mind, a good hunting piece, and can be fitted with a scope for longer range hunting work.

If there's anything I need, it is some additional versatility. I'd add a revolver chambered in .357/.38 special, a 20 gauge shotgun, and a varmint rifle chambered in .22LR or .223 to round out the collection.

Edge

If the center of something is collapsing, you want to get to an edge. If you believe that the American state is collapsing, sucked into the huge vortex of debt in Washington, then you'll want to get as far away as possible.

I mean this both figuratively and literally.

Figuratively, you'll want to reduce your exposure to Washington's decisions. The way in which Washington influences us most profoundly is through the currency. Money effects everything -- if you need a wheelbarrow full of bills to buy a loaf of bread, then you cannot say that Washington's actions don't affect you. We're not at that stage yet, but anyone can see that the endless spending, borrowing, and printing of money ends one way -- in a worthless currency. I would not care about the currency, but for two reasons: 1) it is what my retirement is in, and 2) I need it in order to buy things in order to survive, such as food and water.

My home is dependent on the state for water and for sewer; it is dependent on a large public utility for electricity; it is dependent on a transportation and refining network for heat. My home is also dependent on a social contract -- I live in close proximity to neighbors I don't know very well, and on a police force that may or may not arrive in time should I be attacked. These dependencies all create risk. In my lifetime, these risks have been minimal, for society has been prosperous and well-ordered.

But the risks have not been eliminated. And doing as the folks in Washington are doing right now -- pretending that the risks do not exist -- is extremely foolish. The only thing more foolish than not recognizing the precipice towards which we are heading is to keep following those leading towards the precipice.

In other words, you may pretend that there is no precipice. I no longer will. I can see it. I have read my history, and I have studied enough economics to know that a day of reckoning is coming.

The folks in Washington are building a black hole of debt. That black hole will suck everything into it, unless you are far enough away to escape the pull of it.

I have been thinking about Asimov's book, Foundation. In it, a social scientist foresees the end of the current civilization, and sees no way to forestall it. What he decides to do is set up a Foundation to preserve civilization's knowledge so as to minimize the destruction wrought by society's collapse. He locates this Foundation on the planet Terminus, at the extreme edge of the galaxy. The Foundation's goal is a great encyclopedia of knowledge, primarily focused on science, to preserve human knowledge. He chooses Terminus because it is far enough away from the center to survive the collapse.

In a literal sense, I think one needs to get to the edge. The survivalist James Wesley, Rawles at Survivalblog ranks the states by their potential for being locations for a retreat. He takes a rather dim view of the states east of the Mississippi, when he considers population density. I respect his opinion, but I am a New Englander by birth and I cannot, at this time relocate west. In other words, I accept that his judgment may be correct, but I am going to hope that it is not.

My likely retreat has to focus on two possible places -- Vermont and Maine. Northern New Hampshire is also a possibility. These places, at the remote edge of New England, have a shot at surviving the collapse of Boston.

Once at the edge, I then have to start gathering a community of like minded people. I also have to think of ways to keep knowledge alive. I do not have the requisite knowledge to eliminate all of my dependencies, but the knowledge is out there. Much of it is on the Web; it is a question of dowloading and storing it, assuming I come up with a way of preserving a) an off the grid source of power, and b) a few working computers. It is possible -- and over the long term, likely, should the collapse last for long -- that electricity will fail and computers will die; but if I gain a few years and get the requisite knowledge preserved, those who survive me in the community will be able to grow in strength and knowledge. This will give them an edge in the dark ages.

Population Density

One of the basic issues facing a survivalist in New England is a simple problem: population density. In a scenario where basic law and order has broken down, government has collapsed, and the power grid has gone inoperable, you have an immediate problem -- too many people, and no way to get them the basic supplies of life.

Most people, when considering this, say: "Well at that point the National Guard is activated, and the Federal Government steps in."

Perhaps. But as we saw in Hurricane Katrina, sometimes local government does not act responsibly, sometimes the state government is incompetent, and sometimes it takes the Feds a week or more to get their act together. What happens at street level when this occurs?

First, you have looting. With the breakdown of government in Katrina, the first looting began within 24 hours. The age old proscription "Thou shalt not steal" was overridden almost immediately by hunger and thirst. People living in a hurricane zone, with ample warning of the approaching storm, did not act appropriately and did not set aside a 72 hour supply of food and water. In some places, even if they did, the rising water quickly inundated formerly safe places, and people had to seek refuge, with no supplies, on whatever high ground they could find, sometimes becoming stranded on their own roofs. A sudden catastrophe triggers the inner child in just about everyone -- "Someone ought to have prevented this, someone ought to be taking care of me." When that someone fails to appear, then people quickly rationalize and say "Well, I'm going to take what I need." A brick gets thrown through a window. Once that line is crossed, it is not only bread and water that get taken, but anything else people feel they need in order to comfort themselves -- "I'm suffering, therefore I deserve a new TV." These desires do not always focus on the immediate and practical. Once the first brick gets thrown, everything inside the store becomes fair game.

From there it is a short distance to murder. "You have water, and I need it -- or better yet, my baby needs it? Hand it over. Stand and deliver." This is the practical language of the highwayman. Soon people are armed, and then it becomes a question of who is willing to shoot first.

Without continuous delivery of food and water, the cities soon descend into a maelstrom of violence. And when the city's supplies are used up, the population heads out first to the suburbs, and then to the country, in order to find food. A lot of people will suddenly get the urge to take up hunting, but without the experience and skill, it becomes more practical to find people with supplies, to shoot and loot. A rolling wave of violence spreads out of the city. People form together in bands. To overwhelm a strong point, you need a group. A man and his wife holed up in a house, with guns, could soon find themselves surrounded. They might kill three or four, but eventually, numbers prevail.

If you assume society is headed for chaos, you then find yourself facing a hard number very quickly -- how many people are there around me? In New England, there are a lot of people around you. Consider where the New England states stand in this table of population density:

Rhode Island is # 2 in the nation with 390.78 people per square kilometer.
Massachusetts is #3 in the nation with 317.63 people per square kilometer.
Connecticut is #4 in the nation with 279.11 people per square kilometer

Southern New England becomes a demographic nightmare almost immediately in a disaster situation. There are a lot of people with too little land to feed and water them.

Head north, and it gets a little better:

New Hampshire is #20 in the nation with 56.65 people per square kilometer.
Vermont is #30 in the nation with 25.93 people per square kilomter.
Maine is #38 in the nation with 16.38 people per square kilometer.

New Hampshire has a slightly higher population density than the average U.S. state. Vermont has fewer than half the people jammed into it than New Hampshire, and Maine less than a third.

All things being equal, if you are in New England and you want to survive a societal collapse, your best bet is to go North. If you are planning a refuge ahead of time, you really ought to think about Maine and Vermont.

To me, Maine has two considerable advantages. First, it is the farthest away from New York City. In looking at New England, we haven't considered where the urban population of the five boroughs heads in times of trouble. We certainly know where they go for vacation. If I'm a well-off New Yorker and the power grid has gone down, I'm going to remember those summers in Vermont pretty fondly. Route 91 becomes crowded quickly in the summertime and in ski season. Vermont is empty much of the year, but it has a lot of New Yorkers with vacation homes. In a disaster, its population will go up very quickly.

The second advantage to Maine is that once you get off of the coast, it has a huge amount of undeveloped forest, owned by a lot of lumber companies. Most of it is empty. If you are in the far north or northwest of Maine, you're surrounded by forest. You've got a virtually unlimited supply of firewood and game. You've got plenty of rainwater. All you need is a hunting lodge well off the main roads, and some rifles.

Because of family, my current "bug out" scenario is in Vermont. My home in Massachusetts is in a small town, but two of the major roads out of Boston run right through the middle of it. I could hole up here for only a few days, at best. But if I did so, the roads would be jammed, and it would be a very long walk to Vermont, indeed. My best bet would be to head out early, and get to family in Vermont.

But if I have a long time to prepare, I'm going to think hard about a cabin up in Maine.

So, How To Proceed

If you are convinced that society is headed toward collapse, what do you do?

Well, if you're me, you start making a list of things you're going to need.

You, on the other hand? You're probably curled up in a fetal position under the blankets, hoping that mommy will walk in and make everything better. I say "mommy" because your daddy probably checked out of the picture long ago. But I kid. I'm a kidder.

We start making a list of things we need.

Water, shelter, food, stuff you can barter, and guns to protect it. And when all of that becomes too big to fit in a backpack, then you need to start thinking about the bigger questions. Where do I hole up with all my stuff? Where do I find land to grow the food and a population of serfs to till it?

Because if things collapse, feudalism is going to start looking pretty damned good to a lot of people.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

You start making a list. The first problem I confront is, how do I assure myself of a supply of water?

Turn on the tap? I live in a town where my water comes from public utilities, on a hill where the stuff has to be pumped up to a little standpipe nearby. If power fails, then the pressure in the pipes will get lower and lower until there is no water.

Then I face the basic, existential problem of thirst. In three days -- assuming Mad Max style biker gangs don't get me first -- I die from it.

So, how to prevent it? Make a list.

On my person, I need canteens. I actually have some from my days in the Army, and Web gear to put them on.

In my house, I need a several-day supply of water. Trip to Costco, bitches.

Into the future, I need something renewable, for Costco will get looted soon enough by the same crowd that looted it during Hurricane Katrina when they ran out of disposable baby diapers. Yeah, remember that? A Cat 4 hurricane was approaching and these idiots didn't even have a supply of baby diapers stacked up, or forgot about something called CLOTH. Morons. Children. If I lived in a hurricane zone, I'd be more prepared than Charlton Heston in The Omega Man. I'd be in a smkoing jacket playing chess with a bust of Caesar in my fortress (occasionally interrupted by the need to spray automatic weapons fire on the mutant vampires below). But I digress.

For renewable water, the best thing I've hit upon is to collect rainwater. This means I need three things.

1. A rainbarrel big enough to get me between rainstorms.
2. A method of filtering that water to get out leaves and debris, etc.
3. A method of purifying the water from biological contaminants. In other words, some bleach. Since a little bleach goes a long way, I need a few bottles of it in my cellar.

The rainbarrel has been ordered. Home Depot, bitches. 60 gallons, which ought to be enough to last between rainstorms here in New England, provided I don't take Caligula-style baths every day.

For filtration systems, I'm torn between the Big Berkey, which has a huge capacity, and is shiny, but real expensive; and the Platypus, which is cheaper but less capable. I'm leaning toward the Platypus because a) I'm not made of money, and b) it is portable, if I need to bug out.

And I'm betting that long term, I'll need to bug out, because of the problem of population density, which I'll post about in the next few days.

You know, unless between now and then it all collapses.

How Big Is The Tumor Inside My Head?

There is an old Saturday Night Live skit which parodied the PBS talk show, The McLaughlin Group. The host in the skit, playing the eccentric John McLaughlin, asked his panel of commentators a series of increasingly bizarre questions until he finally asked "How big is the tumor inside my head?"

No one dared offer a guess, so he revealed that it was "The size of a tangelo."

I want you to know, upfront, though even though I wrote in my first post that I am not a lunatic, well, even a lunatic might assert such a thing.

I accept two possibilities:

1. The stuff I am worrying about is real.
2. I am mentally ill.

Actually, there is a third possibility:

3. The stuff I am worrying about is real and I am mentally ill.

I find the third proposition to be strangely comforting, for it means that I eventually will be insane enough not to consider the problems of the world around me as it collapses. I'll be too busy making paper airplanes and talking to Napoleon to worry about the trivial issues of survival that concern you petty mortals. You want to know what I think? Hah! Talk to the tangelo, bitches. I will be of no help to you.

So, read with caution. I may be on to something. Or I may be headed for medications, icy baths, the straightjacket, and electroshock therapy.

Time will tell.

Systems

A tower is built upon a base, a flower is built upon a stem. Take enough stones from the bottom of a tower, and it collapses -- and, generally, not in an orderly way. It comes down all at once. Rot the roots or the stem of a plant and the flower dies.

We live, especially in New England, in a tower, or, if you prefer, as a flower. There are a lot of people in New England, and the region is not self-sufficient from a food point of view. We depend on things brought in from other places. Meat and bread are brought in from the Midwest, shipped by rail or by truck into the region. In dairy items we are, perhaps, self-sufficient -- though I have not researched the issue deeply enough to truly know. In water we are likely self-sufficient. Consider the problem of water and how necessary it is, and it is certainly better to live in New England than it is to live in Las Vegas.

New England has not been self sufficient since it industrialized, probably since the beginning of the twentieth century. It supports a large population because of the goods and services it produces. In the twentieth century, these products were finished goods -- shoes, paper, guns, garments. These items are useful for barter and have a higher added value than food does. So we made a wager -- I will make you shoes, paper, and guns, and you will provide me with food. As long as I can trust you to make food for me, and you can trust me to make finished goods for you, all is well, and we each prosper. The Midwest grows the corn and wheat, we make the finished goods, and specialization makes both of us wealthy due to the division of labor. This is Adam Smith 101.

Of course, since about 1950, the goods New England has produced have become progressively more intangible. Rather than secondary goods -- the shoes, paper, guns, and garments -- we are now producing, well, tertiary goods. We produce technology, health care, media, and education. All good things, and in an ideal world in which the rule of law and societal order prevails, things that have a higher value than food or even than finished goods.

And things that depend, to an even greater degree, on order and trust. We trust the Midwest to produce our food, the South (and increasingly, China) to produce our finished goods, and we provide high tech, medical specialization, education, and media.

But we are living farther and farther removed from the essentials.

What happens if the rule of law fails? All of our transactions are dependent on, as I see it, three things.

First, we are dependent on currency to facilitate the exchanges. This currency, like the goods we produce, has become increasingly intangible. It once was based on two metals -- gold and silver. It then was made in paper and was based on the full faith and credit of the United States government -- paper that had printed on it words to the effect that it was legal tender for all debts, public and private. It is increasingly digital -- Boolean ones and zeroes stored in digital form on silicon hard drives and on little plastic cards.

Second, we are dependent on transportation -- rail lines and roads that make commerce between separated regions possible. The trains and trucks that serve commerce are powered primarily by oil. Even an electric train is ultimately dependent on oil; the power plant that generates the spark is probably fueled by oil or its byproduct, natural gas.

Third, we are dependent on contract law and interstate commerce to make transactions possible. If I deliver you a railroad car of shoes for ten railroad cars of wheat, and you fail to provide the wheat, I can sue you, with reasonable expectations that a court will enforce our contract and ultimately make you pay for the shoes.

These systems have been pretty reliable for the last 100 years.

The dilemma I see is that if these systems fail, I still need to eat.

I am worried that these systems all face threats that make failure possible. Electricity is tied to oil, and oil is controlled by people who hate us. The currency is increasingly becoming fiat -- where once the promise of the United States government was "as good as gold," the government is increasingly looking financially shaky. And our system of commerce is becoming so regulated that if I did indeed need to sue you, the courts are so crowded and Byzantine that I would probably starve to death while the lawsuit was still in the discovery phase.

I see a government run by, at best, adolescents, and in some cases, children -- not in terms of their age, for the President is older than I am in years, but in outlook -- a child always knows that no matter how bad he screws up, his parents will straighten it out for him. Mommy and daddy will step in and make everything right. This is the mindset of our leaders in government right now. They are not leading. They are playing games in the backyard. "Let's make Barry our King, and he can fix everything by magic." Except that there is no one minding the house, ready to call us in for dinner when night falls. Barry is not our king, and magic does not exist.

The problem is that in the world, America is the only adult in the room. Europe may think it is the parents -- for certainly, the Europeans scold like parents -- but the only thing that kept the Nazis and the Communists from enslaving them was our military. Right now, they are suffering from demographic collapse, and the Arabs are moving in and becoming increasingly powerful at the ballot box. The Europeans may be our parents, but if they are, they are frail and elderly and living in an increasingly bad neighborhood. They are going to be hassled by punks, and if they don't hand over their wallets and purses, they will get knocked down. It's tough to be an American right now, but still a damned sight better than being a European. Over there, it's Clockwork Orange time.

In New England, we live producing intangible things, paid by fiat currency, supported by laws that are dubious at best and a government that can't even pay its bills, never mind bail us out in an emergency. I can feel the tower trembling.

Food, water, and shelter -- it would be nice to have a guarantee of all these things right now. Who is going to give it to us now that there are no adults left in the room?

First Things

First off -- I'm not a lunatic. I am just a former Army officer concerned by certain trends he is seeing in the broader society.

Brad Hamilton is not my real name, though people of my age will recognize the reference. I'm a guy who is working a series of bad jobs on his way to eventual retirement, hoping that at some point he gets to throw a pot of coffee on a guy robbing a convenience store and achieve his 15 minutes of fame. Again, you'll get the joke if you're my age. I once served in a National Guard unit where one of my NCOs told me, "The dream of every National Guardsman is that someday, he gets to shoot a looter."

That's a joke, of course. Though I'm not sure he meant it as one.

I look at society and I see the words of William Butler Yeats being played out in front of my eyes.

THE SECOND COMING

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?


I don't know. But whatever it is, I plan to survive it.