“You’re WHAT?”
IN so many words, my most normal daughter was telling be she and her spouse would be heading to Las Vegas to take part in a Zombie Apocalypse Tactical Op Training Session.
Oh, one of those… I tried to sound hip but it wasn’t going very well at all.
With good reason, too.
One is with the exception of a few old politicians I have never seen any zombies…ever.
Two is if I did see one it would be meeting a real plastic hollow point from one of my two 9 MM pistols.
Three is unless you have silver-laced paint, I don’t think the paintball contents would be too effective. But I’m the kind of guy who is still looking for a Manufacturers Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) on Holy Water.
Near as I can figure it, the stuff ought to at least have a warning for demons and such as it is reputed to be a solvent on them. Where are the Feds when you need them, huh? Probably trying to write that final draft of the MSDS on air, or something.
While I was taking this all in (dead sober) I got to wondering about the state of today’s youth.
Why, when I was young (shortly after radio was invented) we were busy boffing and making grand children at the daughter’s age, not working on Zombie issues.
Thanks to the Obama administration, however, we seem to have skipped past the need for grandchildren: Just open the fences and here come more grandchildren than you can shake a stick at. Oh, and don’t worry about them not carrying the great Ure name into the future; I’m confident some ID thief will figure out how to scam the family name and go on into the history books….
Still reeling, I decided to look this pastime up online and turns out there are actually TWO zombie operations in Las Vegas (not counting the 4 AM players of slots).
One is https://adventurecombatops.com/
The other is http://zombieapocalypsestore.com/
I think they’re doing the first one, but I’m still recovering from the news of this.
I was sitting here figuring out the money angle to it. You know, maybe on a really bad morning I could be a zombie player as a part time retirement gig in Vegas, right? Or, when comes time to stroke out and die, what a grand tale to be able to recount at the Pearly Gates.
“So there I was Pete, being an apocalypse Zombie for big money. I was hiding on a 56,000 square foot set and a group of 20 visiting Chinese tourists came in with paintball guns thinking they would play at shooting me to death. In a nod to improving US Relations, I decided that would be a good time to drop into cardiac arrest…you know, really give them their money’s worth and see if anyone would try to resusitate the zombie…that kind of thing. Next thing you know I’m up here in the puffies and this dude is selling me harp lessons, though I was more interested in learning the Strat…know what I’m sayin’?”
I figure the kids will be in this $300 for airfare total. Then another bill and a half for a hotel room. Another bill for food. And then there is the cost of the cabs and such..tips…you know. You can’t kill zombies on an empty belly, right? No telling what the cost of the 2 hour deal itself is.
No sooner had I picked up on this than something called the 7 Hour Bourn Adventure caught my eye. No telling how much this one is – and I didn’t have the nerve to ding=-ding the toll-free to find out.
Instead, I will have to sit in the rocker here at the ranch. Plinking at the odd wild pig, copperhead, and coral snake that wanders through. Choice of side or long arms, loads, and so forth.
No traveling to Las Vegas, no hotel. Food is whatever Elaine or I cook up, but it’s less than Las Vegas. Lots less.
Maybe when you get to be our age and you’ve really done most of everything in life (I left the skydiving to my son…I prefer to shoot landings myself) the idea of looking for adrenaline changes a lot as you age.
Not that I wasn’t young once.
At age 30, sure being airborne on a dirt bike, riding a tunnel boat at 85 MPH, or learning aerobatics…yes, that used to be adrenaline.
Now though it comes from different sources. A letter for IRS. A letter from a state tax office. Letter from a law firm…some gypo oil outfit wants to explore and set off bombs…and that’s just the Mailbox Adventure. No extra charge for it. Also no opting out.
Aging used to look easy but now that we’re here or at least sneaking up on it, we’d be pleased to trade straight-across for 20 zombies and a long time-out In Vegas.
Here…you deal with this registered letter that just came…
Prepping – For What?
A couple of people posted comments wondering about how they could prep if we may have only a year before the economy implodes and down we go.
Were it only so simple.
On the Peoplenomics side of the house we have done all kinds of articles including things like living on a boat, roughing in the woods. And lots more including setting up the office, the shop, the gardening, the well drilling – and whnat have you.
Then there it our www.ruralpioneers.com website. And my buddy Gaye’s www.backdoorsurvival.com site.
But before you get all twisted into the prepping mode, a perspective check is in order first.
There are seven major items you need to survive and not one person in a thousand has worked all the details.
These are….
1.Food
2.Shelter
3.Communications
4.Energy
5.Environment
6.Transportation
7.And Finance
Now, if you want to be ready for all that may come our way, you need a second thing besides this list. You need a personal threat board. It doesn’t help to prep for a jihadist attack on the local nuke plant if the real problem is a massive disease outbreak.
You see in the first case, you might need to get the hell out of town very quickly – cross or up wind depending on how things go.
In the second case, however, you will not care about the wind so much as whether people are or can travel at all. Isolation is a good thing for some contingencies.
The p[ersonal threat board is really what drives UrbanSurvival. We’ve had 17 years of prepping and most of it living apart. It gives us a different sort of view on things.
Tomorrow on the Peoplenomics side, for example, we will look at how a real global bail-in (by the greedy banksters) could roll out particularly here in the USA. About then is when we expect you won’t want to work in the banking industry because when people start to break into the American piggybank without explicit consent (and Dodd-Frank ain’t consent) you might want to consider that anyone assocated with banking will be at some level of risk.
Just like people who supported highwaymen in days of old were at risk when discovered. You think the BLM stuff is anything? Wait until the bankers start taking from people’s life savings.
No, it likely would not be like the French Revolution…more likely straight to the paybacks.
You see the problem, though: When that happens and people can’t pay for their homes – and suddenly they have a repo note through no wrongdoing of their own…well THAT is the stuff of violent unexpected change.
So once you get your personal threat board, and then comes the rest of it: The major systems of life. And there are glaring holes in how people think about it.
For example, in housing, people with an RV get smug about “We will just head out…”
Nope – delusional talk there. Where do you park? Who will take your plastic? Where is the water? Power? Cell phone coverage…how do you pay the cell bill from the RV when your house has been repossessed and then you torch it as payback. See? Complicated stuff.
Not the kind of thing to take lightly or quickly. Years of thinking and even then we’re bound to get a lot wrong.
And that’s the hell of it. Yeah…Gaye’s site is great when comes to the emergency food storage and cooking, emergency first aid and so on.
But there’s a lot to be seen on Rural Pioneer, too, since Oilman2 shows you how to bootstrap a homestead from raw land up through beginnings of production there.
All later action steps, however.
The most important part is figuring if a ground war in Europe were to happen over Crimea, what would that do to America? EMP? Then what?
Economic collapse…sure, but how much gold for a piece of toilet paper?
See how this rolls?
Yeah – start with three weeks of water per person and three weeks of food. Better than nothing. But did you add three weeks of toilet paper? Three weeks of meds? And if the power is off, and you can’t get those scrips refilled, what exactly is you detox plan so you become part of the solution, not part of the problem?
That is the grown up prepper mindset.
When UrbanSurvival drove down stakes around the concept in 1997 there wasn’t a single search engine result. Today, the world is full of me-too bullshit artists who scrape screens and rip of real preppers like Gaye, Oilman2, and me.
Pardon me if I seem a little callous about this stuff, but there are people giving advice on the net who wouldn’t last 10 minutes in our neighborhood.
But sure, if you have specific questions, we can take a run at answering some of them.
If you can’t tell me the top 10 prepping risks you have right now, then you have thinking to do before you start getting worked up.
Having Said That
This week up in Seattle, my friends on Tsue Chong Company are mixing up another 6,000 pounds, or so, of my 75% egg Chinese noodles and will be shipping us 50 pounds worth
Egg noodles do have a shelf life – it’s not like freeze dried foods. But damn good and they are good for a year in cool dry storage.
Look up Rose Brand Products (which Tsue Chong makes) on South Weller St. in Seattle or drop an email to brian@tsuechong.com if you care to order.
We use them in place of spaghetti noodles and such and they are way better than the noodles sold in the Asian food aisles of most stores. Those, notes Brian, are made more like an alimentary paste…not as much egg content.
There.. .got myself worked up to hungry now, so let’s toss the market stew on quickly and more on to the gourmet breakfast part of the morning, shall we?
Write when you get rich,
My list starts off with WATER. Is it in your “food”? Then comes food & shelter. Need some way to cook the food? Need to protect the water, food and your loved ones? Ruger SR40 http://www.ruger.com/products/sr40/models.html with a good hollow point is nice for close in. After this I expand out for the rest, depending on the situation expected.
Good luck!
Sorry – Food to me includes water – 1 gallon min per day per person
Check out really starving people and zombies. Gait, bright lights, loud noise, eating, and you may realize that the so called zombies are going to be hoards of starving people.. The media is showing us the future, and telling lies at the same time.. Kind of goes with your prepping advice.. Keep on harping about getting ready..
George, your survival list may sound nice on the surface but in fact only TWO of your categories fall under personal control: food and shelter. All of the rest are governed by unknown factors and will be under the direct influence of 1. TPTB or 2. nature itself… and even food and shelter can be adversely impacted. The rock-solid truth is that you simply cannot prep for every contingency and to attempt to do so is like a dog chasing it own tail: it accomplishes nothing except adding frustration to your ultimate failure.
It’s okay to plan & prep [I’ve been doing both now for over 15 years] but in all honesty survival rates continue to drop as every day brings new variables over which we have no control and cannot overcome. My advice is always to focus on those factors you CAN control to some degree and only your first two items meet that criteria.
I agree with your premise – particularly your “rock-solid truth” that one can’t prep for every contingency.
It’s why George’s 7 major items is missing a critical item: RELATIONSHIPS
Another commenter noted this a while back on another post, and that person was dead right.
In TEOTWAWKI scenrios other humans become either our greatest asset or our worst obstacle.. the quality of our relationships – the ability to form a cohesive cooperative community is tantamount to surviving at any level worth living at.
No person, even a highly vigilant & trained group, can be “prepared” for all that could happen – given that others will join or clash with that group after a disaster.
Improvisation and adaptation will be necessary, and diversity of people & skills will become a necessity.
IMHO, one’s individual karma & the ability to form meaningful relationships with others will be the real determining factors in survivability and longevity into the world to come (presuming TEOTWAWKI). Level of prep and forethought is minor by comparison.
Exactly, relationship(s) are key. We cannot be islands unto ourselves, HOWEVER, one person and or one couple can BEGIN the safe place with the knowledge that the others can and will follow when their locations become unsustainable. There will be plenty of signs and NOTICE for those that have eyes to see and ears to hear. The best thing is for those chosen others to know when to heed the call AND what to bring with them. The Mormons are doing this right now and have been preparing STEADY for over 10 years; they also publish a lot of information on their preps, places, family/friend units, etc. So, if you are right now doing it solo, or with a mate, keep at it. We still have time to get prepared, I have been told by a knowledgeable source that next April is a change month. Jives with George.
Regarding the bail-in concept, does it apply only to regular savings accounts? Yesterday there was this announcement on marketwatch.com
“Pfizer to Buy Medivation for $14 Billion”
If a US bank account is insured only up to $250,000
where exactly is this $14 billion?
And where are the billionaires billions stashed? In foundations? Like the Clinton Foundation? Untouchable money if there is a bail-in? Enquiring minds want to know.
A couple things . . .
Did you see the report about ‘Ramen’ being currency in the prisons – supposedly it’s filling and you can add stuff to it to make it edible – I remember eating it decades ago (even dry as a snack) – ready to eat quickly!
Second – sanity and peace would be promoted with the addition of some dice and playing cards to a kit. (The creative souls out there might look at the hobby of art on playing card sized stock . . .)
Spent days (of a very rainy vacation as a kid playing hearts rather than killing my family down at the beach) – my parents, rather than admit defeat, were going to stay regardless . . .
My comment went “poof”, trying again….regarding bail-ins, yesterday it was announced that “Pfizer to Buy Medivation for $14 Billion”. So where is that $14 billion? In some safe haven where it can’t be touched? Is money in a foundation or trust untouchable? Is it only the little people that get screwed in a bail-in situation?
My biggest fear has always been the tax man and the ranch. Don’t think he’ll take goats for an annual installment on our “rent” of the land even though we hold full title to everything and make a good living on it. Short of a full-on assault force coming up from the Mexican boarder we don’t plan on bugging out to any place North, South, East or West. Water, food and such is there but I’ll probably have to buy a horse or two for transportation if it gets that bad – and if it DOES get that bad it’ll take the tax man that much longer to show up at the front gate. I suppose I could also dig a few shallow graves at the front and back gates and just leave them open as a suggestion to those that prefer taking over asking…
How bad can it get? We’re 4 hours from San Antonio and I consider that bad. Angelo is bad enough. A couple of months into a total J-I-T delivery system breakdown you’re past seeing martial law imposed across the nation. A bunch of spoiled Americans can make Venezuela look like a bump in the road. I do have it in mind to partner with some gardeners that are real pros in our town to help feed the locals but that will be a full growing season down the road.
Best prepper book ever: “One Second After” by Forstchen. Also throw in Pearl Buck’s “The Good Earth” because the government will never leave you alone.
I do have to admit though, the uncle and cousin in Baton Rouge have bore witness to a lot communal help between neighbors of late. The cousin has several flood victims living in his house and my uncle has told be a few stories about the “Coon-ass Navy” (all racial backgrounds, everyone that loves Louisiana is a proud one) moving people out of the water logged homes long before the “o-fishul” authorities ever geared up to do anything. People can be good to each other for a while.
Just read the Wikipedia synopsis of One Second After. I would have to let my friends Smith and Wesson take me out as that scenario sounds too real to be able to deal with.
Actually I had to quit reading just before the main character’s daughter succumbed to diabetes. I got the point of it shortly into the book. It’s scary to think how many of us there are around today that wouldn’t have been when I was a kid.
Ditto on property taxes being my biggest fear of making it through an eco-disaster. They keep going up no matter what. Have to pay all at once, no forgiveness, no mercy, no excuses and 10% penalty for late payment…Then every time someone sells a farm for big bucks (yippie for them, hell for the rest of us) the comp rates go sky high driving all our taxes higher. If we can’t keep the farm we are just as helpless as everyone else out there who owns and has nothing. As it is we have our own food, water, shelter, firewood and some electric. If we can cover the taxes and ‘they’ just stay in the sub-urps and cities we might be able to carry on. And I don’t mean zombies. They are the least of my worries.
It’s an epidemic in the USA. Adults who simply never grow up, on a continual quest to “have fun.” Star Wars, Disney, zombies, computer games, casinos, cruise ships, the list is endless and Americans spend billions on this “fun” crap mindless of the 90 plus people who live a subsistence life to support this immaturity.
Life is so much simpler, being a part of a community. Our fate is inextricably intertwined with the people of Ecuador. We store enough food to share with our barrio, and natural flowing water is walking distance from the house. A solar oven insures we can cook enough to to kill the germs. The most radical preppers we see are those with no children. What’s the point, other than American arrogance thinking that somehow surviving to live in a world that will instill the realization that those who died early were the fortunate ones, was a good idea.
My wife and have discussed this. If it comes to the point of eating insects for survival, we are done with this life. Going to sleep at night and not waking up, instead of competing for scarce resources would be our gift for those with children inclined to create a new world.
In native cultures, the old have traditionally had the wisdom not to suck more resources out of the community than they can contribute. Early explorers in Africa tell of old people who would simply sit down facing a wall and will themselves to die. Others walked out into the bush and became food for the carnivores and scavengers. The Eskimo elderly would simply walk away. In contrast, my 97 year old mother, paying $3,000 a month for a facility, requested (and paid for) a full funeral to the tune of $9,000, and there was probably another $1,000 in flowers.
Real prepping is knowing what you will do when you exit a grocery store and there are Families begging for food to keep their children alive.
In contrast, we took care of BOTH of our parents until they passed, continents apart, without having them in nursing homes. This was the TRUE OLD WAY; honoring, loving, caring, and supporting them like they did for us. Many cultures across many countries take care of their elderly and even the American Indians did; not all just set up for a walk into the wild to die.
I’ve been looking at Costco Mountain House 30-day Outdoor Adventure Kit, $469, 84 packages, 12-year shelf life, all you need is water, very light for bugging out if necessary. Can you see any downside to these?
http://www.costco.com/30-Day-Outdoor-Adventure-Meal-Kit-by-Mountain-House.product.100282427.html
Um, yes, the cost. Every store which sells sporting goods sells Mountain House, as do a
-= truly breathtaking =-
number of online “prepper sites.” Mountain House is the best known, but they share the top quality tier with AlpineAire and EFoodsDirect, and share Mormon ties with AA.
The best places to buy MH foods are often Amazon, and direct from MountainHouse.com
Have you tasted it and do you like it? Will you be able to supply the water necessary to rehydrate it?
As suggested, Costco doesn’t always have the best prices. Shop around and definitely get on Mountain House’s email list to take advantage of any specials they might be running. The ala cart option might be better in the long run.
No, seems like it would be about what a food bill would be for the month and if you like freeze-dried… me? Rather have more noodles and such to cook up with water, but that’s my tastes… vitamins, oyster sauce, bullion cubes and 50 lbs of egg noodles. We can scrabble up some small game in a pinch.
Only problem with it is the price – if you had four people in a family it would be $1,600 per month…and that’d be filets every night…
The beef stroganoff is good – I could eat that 3x per day and bought the big cans back in my sailing days and would go through a can or two per week when batching it…er…between temporary guest crew, lol
Unless you plan on eating that stuff before it goes bad my advice is to skip the dried stuff and get what you normally eat and that won’t spoil. Start rotating your food. I write the month/year on everything I buy in a sharpie. The other downside is the opportunity cost of $500 that you could have used some other way. If you’re paying interest on anything you may want to pay that debt down first.
“Thanks to the Obama administration, however, we seem to have skipped past the need for grandchildren: Just open the fences and here come more grandchildren than you can shake a stick at. Oh, and don’t worry about them not carrying the great Ure name into the future;”
Although he’d probably love to take credit for it, you can’t blame the (almost irreversibly) low Total Fertility Rate of the entire developed world on the US president. If anyone is to blame, it’s people like your kids, George. And I was taught that children are a reflection of their parents. So unless you can tell your kids they have a duty of reproduction at a rate of no less than 2.1 per kid, then you can hardly argue against immigration.
As you and the rest of the baby boomers retire, who’s going to help your kids pay for all the boomer’s pensions and entitlements? Without your kids having kids, who’s going to pay for their pensions and entitlements? Maybe the comments from Ecuador are onto something?
I suppose it doesn’t matter, given that most of us won’t see those days anyway. Best of luck with your preparations.
Sorry to say SP, you’re right – George has always been a proponent of “please no more children, the planet is full.” George is buying the LIE of over-population and especially, the LIE of too many white babies.
Cheers!
ps Michelle’s astrological forecast missed the actual changes coming our way…. I wouldn’t worry about the earthquakes!
It is the administrations since the JOHNSON administration who started the WAR on the family and do not forget roe vs wade and the whole abortion epidemic, that is what is decimating families and future children. This excuse to import ‘other’ people to have our babies for us is CRAP! A government incentive to form families (FATHER AND MOTHER) and have children is ALL it would take to get things moving again, but our SYSTEM is not set up that way ON PURPOSE!!! So, we lie to each other and excuse the low birthrate on US and not the government policies!!! The fact that this model is REPEATED all over the developed nations TELLS us something! Read up on George Soros and what has been revealed about him and his AGENDA lately; do it and remember, there are at least 100 George Soros’ working at that high of a level to FUND, STEER, and CULTIVATE just the society you find yourself living in right now! A designed society and that includes citizens not reproducing enough!!! Did you hear that Gloria Steinem worked for the CIA? Again, hundreds of examples of behind the scenes sheninagans destroying families and the cultivation of families. How about the crushing 35 year low wages while we watch the illegals get FREEBIES that the rest of us have to be spend all our hard earned money just to afford ourselves! If people would REALLY SEE the corrupt system designed to take your inheritance from you; even after all you have done to build this country, if you can’t see it now, WHEN WILL YOU SEE IT?
Forget the Zombie Apocalypse, check out the rapt attention given to a millennial trying to open a can with a manual can opener. https://www.facebook.com/AmericanStrong/videos/10154057471407730/
But I’m the kind of guy who is still looking for a Manufacturers Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) on Holy Water.
——————————————–
BTW- Good way to make unlimted amounts of Holy Wather.
1) Take a full kettle of tap water.
2) Place on stove burner.
3) Boil the Hell out of it.
4) Repeat as needed.
Its Pure HOly Water!!
hmmm
looking at buying a bike, the one I’m interested in is marked up as “zombie outbreak response team”….
I’m tempted to leave those stickers on……. ;)
M
I like to consider the risk of an event occurring with the possible level of damage. The greatest risk we all face is from driving followed by disease, falls at home and burns. So wear a seatbelt, stop smoking, exercise, eat right, get physicals, be careful on ladders, etc.
That being said there is always the potential of an outlier event. For me I think that is a weather related natural disaster. So it’s all the regular “hurricane/storm” stuff. Basically being prepared to hunker down for a week or two without power or being able to flee somewhere safe with whatever we can grab.
most information concerning EMP is posted by people who have something to sell, or are without any verifiable credentials. Logic implies that there are more than simply totally safe or totally unsafe degrees of protection. Would you please discuss? I believe a 20 foot shipping container is not as good as a commercially built Faraday cage, but is far better than nothing. A metal roof on a metal house is superior to a frame house. Are there not various degrees of shielding? thanks
You’ve never seen a zombie? Have you gotten a good look at some pictures of George Soros lately? He sure looks like one to me!
BTW, the government seems to think there’s a reason to prep for a zombie apocalypse, too:
https://www.ready.gov/community-preparedness-webinar-series-zombie-awareness
http://www.cdc.gov/phpr/zombies.htm
It’s okay George, yer kid is just getting ahead of the crowd…