The Survivalist’s Odds ‘n Sods:

23 Comments

1. Re: FITZGERALD and MCCAIN

   Let’s amend that lede a bit, please. Rather than “blame the crews” let’s make that “blame the people actually driving the ship at the time.” Having been there and done that (short of the collisions), I’d be pretty damned hot if it were my ship and I was lumped in for an unfair dose of collective punishment — which “blame the crews” most certainly does.

   There are multiple points-of-failure here: the officers actually on the bridge those nights giving orders to the helmsman bear the immediate responsibility for improperly hazarding those ships… and the lives lost. Coming to the bridge, assessing the situation, and when in readiness announcing to the bridge team “I have the deck” or “I have the conn” is a heavy yoke. Clearly, either these officers were derelict or, as has been offered, incompetent… or both. Neither are acceptable and both can be traced to crappy leadership.

2. Beloveds – on the “Blame the crews” news article. I teach at a local community college. If the crew is anything like the caliber of students I have seen over the past few years, the issue is not just complacency but that they don’t see any reason to obey orders or follow any kind of directions or protocols so they don’t. My students are flabbergasted when they receive a poor or failing grade because – after all – they turned in “something” – it just wasn’t what was required of the assignment. So sad that people lost their lives because of it.

3. Bump fire stocks are a great way to waste ammo and burn through money for no good reason.

4. Cut the cable cord this year. Was nothing to watch on cable and there’s about the same amount of nothing on antennae TV. Time is better spent reading anyway.
   So what’s up with the Navy? It can’t be that hard to drive a boat and not run into stuff. Isn’t anybody looking out the window anymore?
   The Plague….odd, but never personally had the desire to dig up Grandma and do the cha-cha. It’s great to live in the USA and not have to deal with this sort of thing….yet.

5. I take the “cable cutting” figure with a little skepticism. Remember, we had a two massive hurricanes this year. That’s why I cut mine. I’m sure there are thousands in the same boat (living in the stix, in an RV because we have no house anymore) as us. However, I doubt we will sign back up, we have not missed it at all and the money we are saving is paying for a storage building to hold our stuff until the new house is built.

6. I find it amusing how the people that claim there are too many people in the world don’t volunteer to reduce the population by one (themselves). It’s always someone else who should be affected.

   Not that I’m advocating suicide. We’re all here for a reason. It’s just that reason is not to advocate what others should or shouldn’t do, no matter what your “station” in life is.

   1. Great point. Reminds me of Jesse Ventura’s position that those who vote for war should themselves or a direct family member be on the front lines

7. Re: TV
   The above reason “most people don’t realize is that the money that you pay for cable (or satellite) pays for the left leaning news outlets like CNN or MSNBC whether you watch those programs or not” is the best way to sway people away from the boobtube.

8. 1) I myself think there are far too many people in the world. People in America don’t realize how crowded this planet has become — as a direct result of acts by our wealthy globalist elites.

   2) In the 1950s, there were 2.5 billion people — today, there are over 7.5 billion. Most of that growth has been in Asia and Latin America. The population in the USA has been mostly flat if you discount 60 million or so from immigration.

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_growth#Human_population_growth_rate

   3) This Earth is a small lifeboat. Go 4 miles up and conditions are lethal to human life for at least 60 TRILLION miles in all directions — and we can’t even travel more than 300,000 miles and survive more than a few days.

   4) Mankind is like a mold destroying a rotting fruit — we have destroyed many thousands of species of life who shared this Earth with us. Is that how we fulfill God’s command to be stewards of this planet? We are fed by livestock raised under appalling conditions in factory farms –conditions so vicious that prostitutes in state legislatures have prohibited recordings that would reveal them to the voters.

   5) This overpopulation is the result of the Cold War Green Revolution funded by our wealthy elites via the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations — providing a massive increase in food to Asia without birth control.

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution#Criticism

   Now Bill Gates is trying to fund a similar explosion in Africa. A place where women have 6-7 children — while American parents struggle to rear even one child. Every morning in our country millions of crying toddlers are dropped at day care because Mommy has to go to work to supplement Daddy’s low wages.

   6) The USA still has some space — but Democrat billionaires want to give it away to the teeming hordes outside our borders in a vicious calculation that this betrayal will give them more wealth and power. We still have some small habitats for wildlife — funded by hunters, not by two-faced Democrat “environmental” groups. Our workers have seen their real wages drop in the past 30 years because they are competing with billions of foreigners for a shrinking rice bowl while our Rich become ever richer. Their foreign investments guarded by the lives of our sons.

   1. I think that it is probable that the population problem is self correcting. Either a pandemic, nuclear war followed by worldwide havoc/purge or some natural causes like a super volcano, asteroid, crop failure…

      1. Slow arterial bleeding may not be dramatic but it can kill you as surely as a shotgun blast.

         The money quote from the Wiki article:

         “Most high intensity agricultural production is highly reliant on non-renewable resources. Agricultural machinery and transport, as well as the production of pesticides and nitrates all depend on fossil fuels.[70] Moreover, the essential mineral nutrient phosphorus is often a limiting factor in crop cultivation, while phosphorus mines are rapidly being depleted worldwide.[71] The failure to depart from these non-sustainable agricultural production methods could potentially lead to a large scale collapse of the current system of intensive food production within this century ”

         Anyone who dismisses this should try planting corn on the same patch of land three years in a row without adding fertilizer and pesticide.

         Plus about 20% of our food production is from Midwest fields irrigated by water pumped up from the Ogalala Aquifer. That huge Aquifer is being drained — towns in West Texas on the shallow end of the swimming pool have already died after wells went dry. Ogalala was the solution to the Dust Bowl and the motivation for rural electrification. When it runs dry, its back to the Dust Bowl.

   2. Do you know? If every person on the planet lived only in the USA each individual, man, woman, and child, would still have 1/3 of an acre each (and that does not include the lakes, rivers, and streams). It wouldn’t be pleasant to live that way, but it is a reality. So to say that this planet is over crowded is bordering on the ludicrous.

      The problems aren’t even poor population distribution except, of course, in the cities. These problems are mostly lack of land and water resources management and a really very poor education system. We are forced to depend on government land management systems, largely a failure. We are forced to depend on government water resource management systems, also largely a failure. Unfortunately we also are largely forced to depend on government educational systems that intentionally do not educate, unfortunately at this, the government is largely a huge success.

      Yet, with your own land, who manages? You do. With that land comes the water resources that touch that land. Who manages that water? You do. With home schooling, who manages the education of yourself and your family? You do. You instinctively know this or you wouldn’t be a reader and a commenter on this site.

      We can all point out those who have caused the problems on this planet and within this country. I personally blame both political parties, progressives all (except for maybe a hand full). In each country you can look to the government in charge and to the political parties that run those governments, progressives all (except for maybe a hand full). In each there is a neo-liberal/neo-conservative cabal, progressives all, that make the decisions and the rules and the regulations that bind the hands of the individual to keep them dependent. As example, in the movie “V for Vendetta” the fascist chancellor makes the comment; “We have to show them why they need us!” That is our government’s, and most of the governments’ on this planet, attitude toward us, the individualists.

      1. 1) What is “ludicrous” is your argument.
         Yes, the USA has 3.797 million square miles which works out to 2430 million acres which works out to roughly 1/3 acre per each person in 7.5 billion people.

         2) But that isn’t the full story. Only 40 percent of our surface area is farmed — I feel sorry for the people getting their 1/3 acre in Alaska, on a steep slope in the Rocky Mountains, or in Nevada’s deserts.

         3) The maximum carrying capacity of the USA with renewable resources is about 200 million people — and we are already at 320 million. We get by at the present by waging endless wars to loot the rapidly dwindling oil deposits of the Middle East. Try farming when you have no pesticides from oil and no fuel to run the tractors. Mel Tappan thought a survivalist family needed 5-10 acres of good land.

         4) I do not want my descendents living in the deep, miserable poverty found in the slums of India just to satisfy people’s personal political opinions. And if you want the human race to advance, you need minimum living standards and surpluses to support scientists and engineers. What major tech advances/innovations have we seen coming out of poverty stricken , overpopulated Third World nations. How many astronauts have they launched into orbit. What medical breakthroughs have they made?

9. Correction: My link above to Wiki’s article on the Green Revolution was to a sub-section. The link to the full article –including the account of who funded the Revolution — is here :
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution

10. No more “Be fruitful and multiply” eh?

11. The blame the crews is the usual answer when things go upside down,perhaps they should address not being able to get qualified people enlisted a recent report stated that 18-25 year old people of both genders can’t get in because they are either obese,ignorant, have drug problems or have criminal records,the real problem is that the people on active duty are burned out.

12. Re. human population: There ARE too many people on Earth (7.5 billion is way more humans than the living systems of the Earth evolved to cope with). Wildlife IS being put under enormous pressure as a result of human activities.
    Just because a parasitic member of the British aristocracy pointed this out does not mean that it is untrue.

    1. If I may inform you father Jack Hackett, the Earth did not evolve, it was created by the one and only true Father, Jehovah God. The earth can sustain many more people if the backward countries learn to farm there land in a productive manner. Trekker Out

       1. Your “productive farming” requires massive consumption of nonrenewable resources (phosphate, fossil fuels,etc.) as I noted above. What happens when those necessary inputs are exhausted?

          PS Also, please explain to me how you know the manner in which God created the Earth — and why you are sure he is pleased with the manner in which we are destroying it.

    2. Hmmm, odd. US deer population is at it’s highest ever. Probably due to human activity. all the crops we grow keeps them and other wildlife well fed.

       1. 1) Really? One species out of thousands? WHere are the honeybees? The guys that pollinate some of our crops?

          http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/1/5/e1400253.full

          2) When you destroy diversity of life and install monoculture, you have a vast area that is vulnerable to a disease mutation or bioagent. Was this what God created in Eden — just a big corn field? Did he create all those different animals just so you could wipe them out?

          3) And have you looked at what occurs outside this country to create all of our Imports?

13. I suppose all those Apple computers and smartphones grow on lemon trees?

    1. Nope, but maybe they they do grow on APPLE trees??

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