Same Currency War, New Battle Phase
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Russian Rate-hike Stunner. – CDV
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Low Oil Prices Could Point To A More Serious Problem
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Multiple countries have closed their embassy in Egypt, as their country struggles with solvency concerns. It’s the worst economic crisis to hit Egypt since the 1930’s. Such a threat could lead to war. The worst economic crisis to hit Egypt since the 1930’s – CDV
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James Madison: How to stop the federal government. – D.S.
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Prof: ‘Elf on the Shelf’ conditions kids to accept surveillance state. – D.S.
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Spain Pushes Gag Law, Could Become A Nightmare Police State Very Soon. – CDV
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Seems their people have not forgotten…the famous “NUTS” response in WW2. King Philippe and Queen Mathilde return to duty following Queen Fabiola’s funeral. – RBS
“If we truly trust no one, we cannot survive.” ? Megan Whalen Turner, The King of Attolia
December 15th is Bill of Rights Day. (The Bill of Rights became law on this day in 1791, following ratification by the state of Virginia.) We encourage our American readers to gather publicly and read the Bill of Rights aloud.
The 15th of December, 1923, was the birth day of Uziel “Uzi” Gal (born Gotthard Glas). According to Wikipedia, he was “…born in Weimar, Germany. When the Nazis came to power in 1933 he moved first to England and later, in 1936, to Kibbutz Yagur in the British Mandate of Palestine where he changed his name to Uziel Gal. In 1943, he was arrested for illegally carrying a gun and sentenced to six years in prison. However, he was pardoned and released in 1946, serving less than half of his sentence.” He is, of course, remembered as the inventor of the famous Uzi submachine gun and the short-lived Ruger MP9 (an improvement to the Uzi). Uzi Gal is not to be confused with Israel Galili, the chief weapons designer for Israeli Military Industries (IMI), who along with Yaacov Lior designed the Galil improvement to the AK-47.
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Ready Made Resources is offering four extra cases of Mountain House with the purchase of their Premier Gold Package of Mountain House Foods, in addition to the standard package. That’s two cases of Rice and Chicken and two cases of Lasagna– a $636 value. That is in addition to the five cases of yoders meats, one case of Red Feather butter, one case of bega cheese, and 18 yahoo canned cakes. Overall, that is a $5390 for only $3895.
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SurvivalBlog is running low on recipes for the Monday edition. If you have a recipe that you would like to see featured, send it my way. It should not be a recipe that is published on the Internet elsewhere (unless you have modified it for your own use).
Here, at the Rawles Ranch, we heat our house with a masonry wood stove. Because of the thermal mass of its masonry construction, the stove holds heat and, therefore, provides a much more consistent heating effect; well, that is the case for at least three-fourths of our house. Our stove’s wood box is large, so there is the risk of overheating the living room, especially in the fall and spring, when the afternoons warm up outdoors. In those seasons, we have to be careful to keep the stove’s air vent nearly closed almost all of the time. (However, we are careful to let the stove burn “full rip” for a short time each day, to prevent an accumulation of creosote in the chimney. This is of course no substitute for proper chimney cleaning, which is a lengthy annual chore each spring. I usually do so after the roof is clear of snow and dry for the first time in the spring.) A daily brief hot burn keeps a stove safe in snowy climes where you can’t safely get up on the roof for five or six months of the year.
Our house is one story, which greatly simplifies things for wood heat. (Two story houses tend to be too hot upstairs and too cold downstairs.) We typically stoke the stove three times a day– around 5:30 AM, at mid-day, and just before we retire for the night.
I prefer to burn Red Fir and Western Larch woods. (The latter is commonly but erroneously called “Tamarack”, locally.) Last year we burned an odd assortment of wood, because we had just manually cleared two wooded acres of our property in order to make room to expand our orchard. (We have about a dozen varieties of trees on the ranch, including one sizable stand of Western Larch.) Most of this wood was a mix of various types of fir and a bit of pine. Even though the wood was well-seasoned, this Duke’s Mixture made for more erratic heating and more creosote build-up than we experience in a typical year. (In contrast, Red Fir and Western Larch both consistently burn hot and clean.) To heat our house, which is well insulated and around 3,000 square feet, we burn between five and eight cords each winter, depending on the weather and how much we travel each year.
All in all, we enjoy heating with wood. It is nice being able to keep the house at 75 to 80 degrees and not feel guilty about it. (To do the same with electricity or propane would be prohibitively expensive for a house of our size.)
I typically get 60 to 80% of our annual wood supply split and stacked before winter each year. The remainder is kept tarped and is split gradually, to provide some winter exercise on sunny days. We recently had a clear but unseasonably cold week. This was perfect weather for wood splitting. When a piece of wood is frozen at 10 degrees Fahrenheit, it doesn’t just split; it fairly well explodes, when the splitting maul hits it. What fun!
For kindling, I typically burn cedar. I specially cut these rounds just 8″ in height, to make for easy splitting. I split them either with a short-handled mine axe or with a shingle froe.
I’m presently fine tuning my wood splitting tools and techniques. I long ago discovered the trick of using a discarded car or truck tire to keep a round together, while splitting. BTW, I should mention that Wranglerstar showed me a new twist on that method.
I already have as large assortment of wedges and mauls, but I’m now shopping for a Vipukirves “Leveraxe”. Thankfully, their price has dropped dramatically in the past year. (They were formerly ridiculously expensive, but now they are just very expensive. At that price, I certainly hope they are built to last a generation, as advertised.) – JWR
The ability to learn is, in my view, about the most important of the many gifts God gave us. During my stint as a teacher, which continues as I homeschool my son, I got to study learning styles and the ways people manage to accumulate knowledge. Some of us best learn to do something by reading about it. Others best learn if someone tells them how to do it. Then there are those who best learn by seeing others do it, and finally there are those who can only learn if they do it themselves. While I remain convinced that the education establishment’s obsession with catering to learning styles is off task, I am convinced that learning styles do exist and that the best way to learn is to use them all. I also believe that if we don’t practice what we learn, we will forget it in short order.
Training, in my definition, goes a step beyond learning and requires active coaching by a skilled teacher and much practice. This pushes us beyond simply being learned and up to a level of being able to deliver performance on demand. I know how to do a number of things, but there are many I do poorly, and that is because I am not well enough trained through numerous repetitions under the eyes of a quality instructor, who can correct my errant ways. Learning may not require practice, but training certainly does.
Instructional videos are very useful tools in acquiring knowledge. We get to hear and see things we want to learn, and a skilled presentation by a quality instructor makes it all the more effective. As is repeated frequently in the videos I’m going to review here, instructional videos are not, however, a substitute for training. Good ones, however, can give us a basis that will save time and energy in the process of acquiring skills, and that’s why we should consider using them.
As much as I learn from videos, I don’t buy many, due to the cost. I suspect others are in the same boat. I recently got a press release about the videos Panteao Productions, LLC is planning to begin releasing in December on survival, and I thought it might be helpful to review a few of their current ones to get an idea of what we might have in store, in terms of quality in the upcoming ones.
Panteao is a South Carolina-based video production company that specializes in videos on shooting, self-defense, and documentaries on military events. They have been involved in making videos with the NRA.
I was grateful that their website explains that Panteao is a Portuguese word that means Pantheon. While it refers to the Greek temple where the pagan gods supposedly gathered, it has the additional meaning of being an influential group of people. Panteao has indeed gathered such a group of shooters and instructors to make a series of videos on weapons related topics. Some are competitive shooters, while others, such as the late Louis Awerbuck, Bill Jeans, and Freddie Blish, have roots in Gunsite and the practical use of firearms. There are also folks with reputations in law enforcement, armorers, and gunsmiths, as well as special operations veterans, such as Paul Howe. Massad Ayoob contributes with videos on legal issues, home defense, and concealed carry. I am leaving out a number of significant names, but these few should give you an idea of the quality they have brought to bear.
Panteao videos are available for purchase in DVD form or you can subscribe to their streaming service, if you have a fast connection. The subscription may be the best deal to experience as many videos as possible, though you can’t archive them, which is something I would want to do if I found one particularly useful. They offer monthly deals for $20 or yearly for $165. The subscription allows you to see all of the videos currently available. I did have problems with one hanging up a few times, but otherwise, they worked fine on a fiber optic connection.
Panteao was kind enough to let me view a number of their videos online for review as well as sending me a few disks. It was hard to choose which ones, but I picked a new one on optics and an older one on the use of the defensive shotgun, based on some knowledge of the two instructors.
Introduction to Combat Optics – Freddie Blish
Freddie Blish is a retired Marine Lt. Colonel who has worked for Aimpoint, LaRue Tactical, and Robar since he left the Corps. Aimpoint is the maker of some of the red dot sights that sit on many U.S. military weapons today, and a lot of those sights are in LaRue mounts. Robar is a well-known shop that refinishes firearms and performs custom gunsmithing on practical weapons. Colonel Blish also designed the combat optics tool that will work on the various controls and fittings on many of the optics found on defensive long arms. He is a Gunsite instructor and brings a lot of knowledge and experience to a video that focuses on what some might term close combat optics. These are primarily the increasingly ubiquitous red dot sights along with the low power Trijicon ACOG sights found on Marine rifles. Most of the time is spent on the AR-15 platform, but he delves into their use on handguns, shotguns and as backups on rifles with more powerful scopes.
What impressed me the most with this video was how much information is provided in one place. I don’t want to seem egotistical, but I did already know most of what is in this video, but I had to take three classes and spend many, many hours of reading and research to learn it. Here, you get it in a three-hour video, which is a pretty good deal at $40.00. Mind you, it isn’t the same as having a good instructor looking over your shoulder and correcting you, but I would have gotten a lot more out of my classes had I already stockpiled in my brain what is in this video. A number of dumb questions on my part could have been avoided.
As one might expect, Colonel Blish spends a fair amount of time discussing hardware. He goes over the various offerings from Aimpoint, EoTech, Vortex, Trijicon, and JP Enterprises. Despite his affiliation with Aimpoint, he seems to give all of the sights their fair due.
He also tells us about mounts, focusing on the sight maker mounts as well as some aftermarket ones. More importantly, he goes into the issue of co-witnessing in a very clear manner. Co-witnessing is how the dot in the red dot sight relates to the iron sights on the weapon. In the early days of red dot sights, we worried a lot more about sight or battery failure. Shooters wanted to keep their iron sights available in the event of some failure to the optical sight. If the optical sight is co-witnessed to the iron sights, the front and rear sights are at the same point in the view through optical sight. That causes a lot of clutter and interference to our seeing the target unless we are able to fold down the rear sight, which we didn’t want to do as they provided instant backup in case of sight failure. That problem lead to the 1/3 co-witness mount, which places the red dot sight a bit higher, so the irons are in the bottom third of the window of the optical view and not in the way when we use the red dot sight. Should the optical sight fail, we just drop the head a bit and use the iron sights. Today, since red dot sights are so robust and the battery life has stretched to as long as seven years on some, we may not have to worry about optical sight failure, so leaving the rear folded and out of the way is not a problem.
One of the most important things he does in the video, in my view, is showing the effect of various zeroes with the AR-15. Watching a trained professional go through the zero process at different ranges was very illuminating to me. I always suffer a lot of angst over what range to zero at and whether I am doing it correctly. Colonel Blish helps a lot on that note, taking us through 100-, 200-, and 300-yard zeroes. By actually firing groups at distances out to 300 yards with each zero, he shows us what to expect in real life. I had already decided on the 200-yard zero and will stay with the decision, but seeing how the others performed helped convince me I had made the right choice for my circumstances.
The next thing I was really happy to see explained is the effect of the mechanical offset of the sight. The straight line stock of many modern long arms forces the sight to be higher over the bore than on traditional rifles. This means that we have to allow for more difference between the point of aim and the point of impact of the bullet at close range. Colonel Blish explains and demonstrates this clearly. Getting it wrong can result in the death of the wrong person.
I noticed that he drops the magazine of his AR after chambering a round to verify that a round fed. If your weapon has a double row magazine, you can do this by noting which side the round is on when you insert the magazine and then checking after running the bolt. If a round chambered, the top one will now be on the other side of the magazine. It is a good trick to perform and one I have trouble remembering.
The good Colonel sees miniature red dot sights as the future for handguns, noting that ten years ago we didn’t trust them on carbines but now we do. As they get more rugged, he feels they will become what we expect to have on handguns. He does like having iron sights along with the red dot, as it helps us index the weapon as we present it. I have so little red dot on handgun time that I can’t say much about it, but I suspect I will need to spend a good bit of time to get it to work as quickly as irons. Since my eyes no longer want to focus on the front sight, the concept is still appealing for when I need a very precise shot.
There is much more on the video that is worth knowing, but I hope I have given you enough of a taste to judge whether it could help you. I found it a superb review of the information I had to work hard to gather on my own, and seeing and hearing it greatly reinforced my notes from classes, the books, and articles I’ve collected over the years. Additionally, I really enjoyed his direct language and some of his expressions, like “Marine math” and “applying some group tightener” to his shooting.
The DVD is still in the pre-order state on the Panteao website, but I was able to stream it online.
As a disclaimer, I have paid good money to take a class from Bill Jeans, and he has been gracious and kind enough to answer a number of moronic questions I have written him. He is an avid reader and a keen student of history, who served four years as a combat Marine, twenty-one years as a street cop, and ten years as an adjunct instructor at Gunsite under Lt. Colonel Jeff Cooper, who then hired him for a seven year run as the operations manager of Gunsite. He left Gunsite after Col. Cooper sold it and formed his own on-the-road training company– Morrigan Consulting, in 1998. Unfortunately, he decided to retire recently and that makes the world a less well versed place. Despite his best efforts to appear otherwise, he is a warm and kind individual who works hard to keep us from making fools and worse of ourselves. That said, I wouldn’t want him as an enemy.
One of Jeans’ favorite things is the shotgun. I am really sorry I only took his carbine class. Friends who took the shotgun class speak of it with awe. That’s why, when I spotted the video on the Panteao site, I decided I had to review it.
While it is a far cry from sitting in class with Jeans at the front of the room, the $40.00 video does capture more than I expected. The man has a way with words, which would do merit to the book he won’t write, and it comes across in the video. Among my favorite quotes are:
“We have a name for people who stand still in gun fights; we call these people casualties,” as he addressed the need for movement.
“Get it right, then get it fast,” when he spoke about how we all too often attempt speed when we still don’t know how to do something properly.
And perhaps my favorite, as he discussed slug loads, “Slugs are wonderful things; I love them– great, big, flying door knobs of death.”
The shotgun is an interesting arm, one that Jeans calls the “thinking man’s” weapon and one which is often misunderstood. This is because it has two forms of ammunition– shot and slugs. Furthermore, shot loads come in a variety of sizes and they perform differently as the range changes. Jeans likes the gun for its devastating power and versatility and tells us that it allows a bit of a fudge factor on the marksmanship level, though not as much as many think.
A common belief is that the shotgun is a street sweeper and you don’t have to aim it. Jeans makes it clear that you need to aim, but he also shows that if you are off a bit, it will still work. You just can’t be off by too much. The shotgun is extraordinarily useful at night, which is when, as Jeans notes, the creeps come out. If you are using shot, he explains, the pattern can “make up for the shakes”. He also points out the intimidation factor and that “the slide being run is a universal communication tool” and that TV gives us the impression that if hit with a shotgun we will “burst into flames”.
There are a number of different loads available for the shotgun. You could use birdshot for a close shot, which would limit penetration so that you don’t endanger as many people on the other side of a wall; you could use buckshot, which has more penetration, or use a slug, which will just keep on going and going as well as give you the accuracy to make solid stopping hits at 100 yards.
Shotguns are limited in ammunition capacity, but Jeans argues that the shotgun is decisive and the “power factor is such that we get very few failures to stop”. One of the solutions for this problem is to always replace any rounds we shoot. If we shoot one, load one; if we shoot two, load two, and so on.
There are certain things we need to do to maximize the potential of our shotguns. Better sights are one area of concern. The gold bead, according to Jeans, is fine for close range, but we need something better to take full advantage of our weapon. He likes the ghost ring aperture sight on the rear, with a post on the front. A sling gives us a way to carry the gun when we need to use our hands, and he shows the types we could buy and how to use them. He also considers lights to identify targets and how to carry extra ammunition on the gun to help make up for that limited capacity.
When we are carrying ammunition, Jeans points out how critical it is that we keep it straight. Slugs and shot loads have very different characteristics, and using the wrong one can have horrible consequences. He tells us about a police officer who meant to use a slug and got a buckshot round by mistake for a long shot. Not only was the bad guy not hit hard, a stray pellet killed another officer.
Gunsite developed the concept of the A, B, and C zones for the shotgun, with shot loads, and they are well explained on the video. The basic concept is in the A zone; you are basically shooting one projectile as the shot has not had a chance to spread. The B zone is the sweet spot for shot loads, as the shot has spread some but not too much. We can be off a couple of inches and still do the job well. It does not mean we can just point the gun down the hall and let fly. The C zone is where the shot has spread so much that you might not get enough into the center of your target to do your job. At this point, we need to switch to slugs. Complicating this is that each shotgun varies in how it patterns any given load, so these distances with vary. The only way to be sure is to go to the range and try your gun and ammunition.
Then there is the recoil issue. They have it, but Jeans mentions a five foot one inch tall, one hundred pound woman who had no problems. A lot of it is psychological, and there are big hulking linebacker types who are turned into Jell-O at the mere thought of a shotgun. Jeans likes to point out that “if you are uncomfortable in the back of it, think about the guy in front of it.” Making sure it fits helps a lot. Most stocks are too long. It is far easier to deal with a stock that is too short than one that is too long. Recoil pads can help and also keep the gun from sliding about on the shoulder. Forming a pocket on the shoulder helps with recoil as well as with shooting effectively, and Jeans shows how to form one and fit the shotgun into it.
How we stand when we shoot is important, and the more recoil we have, the more important the stance becomes. Jeans advocates that we form a box with our feet, arguing that this is a fighting stance rather than a shooting stance. We can move or fight. Some stances work well for shooting but prevent movement. I recently saw a range safety officer push a woman shooter to use an extreme stance that did provide good recoil control, but it would have prevented her moving to cover or pivoting to another threat. Jeans shows that our feet should be shoulder width apart and the support side foot should be forward with the heel about even with the front of the firing side foot’s toes, forming a box. We then should push weight forward onto the support side foot and tip the spine forward. The position allows good control of the weapon as well as movement.
As we move, Jeans advises that we should maintain this position as “things are going to go haywire soon enough; there’s no point with helping that situation by lunging around and getting your feet out of sorts any sooner than you have to.”
There is a lot more on this video, but the most important section, and the one that should have been first, is the one on mindset. I have heard several instructors give these, but Jeans’ is the best I have experienced. I never got to hear Colonel Cooper give his in person, but I can’t think of anyone besides Jeans who could substitute for Colonel Cooper. I’m going to buy this video so my son can hear it, since he won’t be able to get it in person. I got to hear Jeans give a lot of it on a cool and crisp morning as the sun came up while waiting for the range to open. We were gathered with a group of kindred circled around him. I will never forget the time. The video is good, but it is a pale version of what I was lucky enough to get. Even so, it is better to experience it vicariously through video if that is all you can get.
If the survival series comes up to the caliber of these two videos, they should be worth a look. Again, subscribing and watching all of them is probably the best deal. If you see one that you want to be sure to have for all time, then you can buy a hard copy.
– SurvivalBlog Field Gear Editor, Scot Frank Erie
We eat a lot of beans, prepared in a variety of ways. I read on SurvivalBlog that alot of people are stockpiling “beans, rice, and bullets”. However, I’m wondering if all of those people who are stockpiling beans know how to prepare them so they will be enjoyable. Here is our most basic recipe, which is sometimes spiced up more with additional red chili, cooked longer for softer/refried beans, or added to other recipes. I cook up a big batch and can them, as it is just as easy to make a “mess” of them for additional quick meals later. (They can also be used with eggs and tortillas for breakfast, in place of or in addition to meat. This recipe can be used for other beans, such as black beans, as well. You just might want to adjust spices to your liking.)
Sort dry beans, removing rocks and any non-bean items. Wash/rinse beans with water and drain them; repeat several times. Soak beans in large pot in about 14-16 cups of water overnight (or at least eight hours). (If you do not have time to soak them, you must cook them at least 2-3 hours longer; they will be firmer. Some folks soak in baking soda water or salt water to de-gas or add flavor.) After soaking, be sure to rinse beans again, especially if you have soaked them in baking soda water.
Return rinsed beans to soup pot, add cans of chicken broth, bay leaf, chopped onions, garlic, Rotel tomatoes, chili powder, cumin, black pepper, and 2 tsp of salt; also add meat, if using. Add water so that there is about 2-inches of liquid above the beans/vegetables. Bring to a boil, stirring the bottom occasionally. Turn heat down to a simmer. Cover with lid tilted. Simmer for about two hours, testing for doneness and stirring occasionally to keep what’s on the bottom from sticking. Add water, as needed, to keep some liquid above the beans.
(If pressure canning the beans, you can remove them from the heat when they are cooked but still firm, since the canning process will cook them more and soften them further as well as reheating them when they are prepared for a meal. If you are planning to make refried beans, you will want to cook them very well, until they are soft and mash easily.)
Remove the bay leaf before serving, canning, or freezing.
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Do you have a favorite recipe that would be of interest to SurvivalBlogreaders? Please send it via e-mail. Thanks!
Mr Rawles,
I received an interesting letter today that profoundly reminded of OPSEC. The letter was notification of a class action suit against Oregon ARCO stations. They failed to disclose their prices when the station charged a 35 cent debit card transaction fee.
While my visits to Oregon Arco stations “south of the river” are quite sporadic, the dates of time are what really got my attention– January of 2011-August of 2013. This seems to prove three things to me– our debit and card purchases are being tracked and cataloged, and perhaps Mr. Snowden is not the ogre he is being made out to be in some circles. The third, of course, is OPSEC. Purchases locally with cash may be the better action, even though some items may cost a bit more.
Thank you for the info posted on your site and your books! Take care. – P.M.
Paying Down The Debt Is Now Almost Mathematically Impossible. – E.B.
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Items from Mr. Econocobas:
Venezuela Has a 93% Chance of Defaulting on Its Debt
Greek Bonds Extend Worst Week Since Euro Crisis
Greek Stock Rout Means ASE Is 2014 Worst After Russia
Memo To Citigroup CEO Michael Corbat: Does Your Crony Capitalist Plunder Know No Shame? – FDIC is not a free market solution, and Glass–Steagall was only needed because of FDIC. It’s an example of government regulations necessary to protect us from a prior government mandate. Perhaps we could try the free market again? Perhaps we would then spend more time researching the bank we choose to deposit with than we are currently spending, as a nation, researching the TVs we buy.
Thug run “fake roadblock” documented by NJ driver’s dashcam. – T.P.
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Teachers Are Being Mandated To Get the Flu Vaccine or Wear a Mask and Gloves. – D.S.
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“Knockout Game” Player Shot By Concealed Carry Permittee . – RBS
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From the Department of Fiscal over-reach: Despite promises, Social Security still trying to collect old debts from kin. – B.B.
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Cop admits on camera MRAP is for “Constitutionalists”. – T.P.
“You don’t drown by falling in the water; you drown by staying there.” ? Edwin Louis Cole
December 14th is the birthday of the late John Warren Wadleigh (born 1927, died September 24, 2013). Wadleigh was better known to many SurvivalBlog readers by his pen name– Oliver Lange. He was the author of the best-selling resistance warfare novel Vandenberg.
This is also the birthday of Air Force General James H. “Jimmy” Doolittle, who died September 27, 1993.
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Today, we present another entry for Round 56 of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest. The $12,000+ worth of prizes for this round include:
First Prize:
Second Prize:
Third Prize:
Round 56 ends on January 31st, so get busy writing and e-mail us your entry. Remember that there is a 1,500-word minimum, and that articles on practical “how to” skills for survival have an advantage in the judging.
I saw a weather commentary on television one night in late August, 2005, that was a bit different from any I had ever seen before. It appeared that a pair of chubby fraternity brothers were yucking it up over an incoming hurricane. They were downright giddy.
“Yes, indeedy,” the first guy said with a big smile. “It sure looks like Louisiana is a-gonna get spanked. And spanked good! This looks like it might just be the best hurricane ever!”
The other guy agreed with great enthusiasm. “Yes, indeed! A once in a century event. Maybe even a once in a lifetime event and it looks like we’re going to get to see it all right here!”
Apparently, neither of them had gone for weeks without electricity in the Subtropics in late summer, where the heat index can go as high as a hundred and twenty degrees. They had probably never gone to a grocery store to find the shelves stripped bare or waited in line for hours for ice that may or may not be there when the front of the line is finally reached.
I don’t remember which station those idiots were on, but it was probably one of the big stations up north. I don’t remember seeing either one of them on TV ever again either.
We had been through many hurricanes and tropical storms over the years (Camille and Andrew immediately come to mind), but there was something particularly ominous looking about this one. It was huge, the eye was extremely tight, and it looked like we were going to be on the western side of the hurricane when it made landfall.
I went out that Saturday to fill the car up with gas and to pick up a few odds and ends that might come in handy over the coming days, though I wasn’t planning on going anywhere. I was doing this simply because the gas stations had run out of gas after previous storms.
Charcoal had been quite useful after previous storms when the electricity had gone out, so I picked up an extra twenty-pound sack. A few briquettes can heat a cast iron skillet very quickly. I’d been meaning to get one of those propane camp stoves, but whenever I could find the money and actually made the effort to go out to pick one up (usually at the start of hurricane season), the local sporting goods places were always out of them.
Ah, well. Somebody once said that you don’t go to war with the army you want. You go to war with the army you have.
Two cinder blocks and an old refrigerator shelf on a concrete patio table had done service as a stove on other occasions. I also have an old coffee can that has been converted to a hobo stove. (This is done on the outside patio, of course, because of the carbon monoxide, you know.) Two briquettes generally do the trick for the morning coffee, which I’ve brewed on numerous occasions in my very handy German mess kit. It’s aluminum and has a bail handle and a lid that doubles as a small skillet. I’ve actually cooked rice (not the minute stuff but enriched long-grain white rice) with it, and two briquettes can boil a quart of water almost instantly when the lid is on. The mess kit was a daily special from one of the big military surplus mail-order places. They practically gave it to me after I ordered a pair of boots over the phone. Maybe I’ll get one of those propane camp stoves this year.
Batteries were still plentiful at the dollar stores. Also, there were pallets of bottled water and charcoal stacked up in front of nearly every convenience store and service station, and nobody appeared to be buying any of it. There was no sense of urgency among my fellow shoppers that morning or the even next day, when I went out to pick up a couple of extra fifths of eighty-proof nerve tonic. Very few people appeared to be taking the weather warnings seriously. There had been too many misses over the last few years. (However, over the next year or so afterward, if it so much as drizzled, the store shelves would be completely stripped of bread, soft drinks, bottled water, and batteries within an hour.)
I secured the things in the yard that could potentially blow away and went about making the other usual pre-storm preparations. I cleaned out the ice chests and filled them with soft drinks and ice and filled two five-gallon jerry cans with tap water from the bathtub. We had gravity feed from a water tower, so as long as the thing didn’t blow down we would have water for awhile; the toilets would flush, and we would be able to take baths. If things started to get thin there, I had a big stainless steel cauldron we could use to boil water from a nearby creek, and of course we had bleach.
I also arranged the two cases of bottled water in the deep freeze. They would prove to be very useful, as both ice and as drinking water after the ice in the ice chests melted, if the power was out for an extended period.
Over the years we had pretty much converted all of our flashlights and portable radios to AA battery, and we had tons of batteries and candles. Last but not least, I found a couple of pairs of my olive drab, Vietnam-era 100% cotton tropical shorts. I saved them for such occasions.
I also had four seventy-two count cases of MRE entrees and a case of a hundred assorted MRE pound cakes stacked up in a dark corner of the utility room. I picked them up at a very, very good price, shortly after the Y2K thing blew over. They would come in handy in the event of things getting really thin.
I found it interesting that my neighbor in the National Guard Engineer Detachment in town hadn’t been put on alert. He was getting ready to take his family on vacation the day before the storm was scheduled to make landfall, and no silly old hurricane was about to stop him. There was still a chance that the storm would miss us, and the governor was gambling that it would because an alert would cost the state a small fortune.
The mayor of New Orleans called for a mandatory evacuation of the city on the 28th of August, and the Contraflow Plan was activated. All the lanes of I-10 and the other major highways intersecting the city would be directed out, and all the lanes of I-55 were directed north. We were approximately seventy five miles from New Orleans, and our exit was the first place where the Contraflow evacuees would be allowed to get off of the highway.
Our electricity went off shortly after dark the night before the hurricane made landfall. The little Grundig Traveler AM/FM shortwave would be our only source for news from the outside world until the lights came back on.
It was different from the other hurricanes we’d been through. There was almost no rain, and it was still a Category 3 after it made it a hundred or so miles inland. We would find out later that the winds were so strong that the rain became mist before it could hit the ground. The young pine trees in the front yard were bent completely over to where their tops touched the ground. The big oak trees took a pretty good pounding, and there was lots of potential firewood scattered around the yard.
A couple of shingles blew off the roof, but otherwise we were left relatively unscathed. The people who had ridden out the storm in the city started to pick up the broken limbs and other scattered debris.
Then the levees broke.
Several months later, I ran into an old acquaintance who had lived in the city near the 17th Street Canal. He said that after the storm passed, he went inside and started getting the stuff together to do a little outdoor grilling. While he was in his kitchen, he noticed a trickle of water coming from under the door that led to his patio. Next thing he knew, his face was pressed against the ceiling and he was treading water. He and his wife somehow managed to make it into their attic and they dug a hole in the roof with a pocketknife after the water hadn’t gone down for a couple of days. They were eventually picked up by a helicopter.
He’s still got that pocketknife and never goes anywhere without it.
The local news reports were nonexistent, as all of the local radio towers were down. Cell phones were useless, as most of their towers were down as well and the underground landlines were very shaky at best. About all we could really tell from the initial radio broadcasts coming out of Baton Rouge was that several levees had broken and a massive evacuation operation was starting to take place in the New Orleans Metro Area. They didn’t say where they were bringing the evacuees.
There were lots and lots of large military aircraft flying over at the time, mostly C-17s, C-130s, CH-53s, Blackhawks, and Chinooks. More than once, we were shaken out of bed by low-flying CH-53s and Chinooks.
It appeared that the main sources for most of the early radio broadcasts coming out of Baton Rouge were just people calling in to the stations.
Somebody said that a hundred thousand body bags had been staged outside New Orleans. Somebody else said that people were shooting at the rescue helicopters as they passed over. Some people were setting buildings on fire so they could shoot and rob any firemen who might still be around and interested. Giant rats had formed a caravan and were using the I-10 to relocate from New Orleans to Baton Rouge. Crabs from the lake were getting fat from the dead bodies floating around the city. Sharks had escaped from the aquarium and had eaten several people. (There are still a hundred and thirty-five people listed as missing.) Rock and roll legend Antoine “Fats” Domino was missing. (He was eventually found; he had been rescued by a Coast Guard helicopter.) Roadblocks had been set up on bridges to keep evacuees from New Orleans out of Gretna and other areas that were connected directly to the city.
Dangerous prisoners who were being evacuated from New Orleans had escaped. (Two of them were apprehended in an abandoned trailer near my mom’s house.) Citizens were having their firearms seized by law enforcement. Intensive care patients and the nursing home residents were being euthanized by their medical staffs and caretakers. A United States Congressman had commandeered two rescue helicopters to save the furniture from his house, while many of his constituents were trying to survive on rooftops. (The U.S. Congressman who commandeered the rescue helicopters to save his personal belongings is currently in prison, but they didn’t get him for that. He was convicted for racketeering and a bunch of other stuff.) Street gangs had taken over the city.
Nearly four hundred New Orleans Police Officers were missing and presumed lost in the flood. These police officers were eventually accounted for. A large number of them had selflessly saved their patrol vehicles for future use by driving them to Houston or Lafayette before the chaos and looting really got out of hand. Some of the officers did stay and performed as admirably as they could have under the circumstances, and there were others who have since gone to prison for various atrocities. A few of them were convicted and sent to prison in 2011 for the Henry Glover murder and the subsequent cover-up. Five others were sent to prison after the Danziger Bridge shootings. Both incidents involved law enforcement opening fire on unarmed civilians.
A brigade from the 82nd Airborne was supposed to be arriving soon to help restore order in the city. The various local and national leaders did a very good job of making sure the words “martial” and “law” were never strung together in a sentence. “Declared State of Emergency” did have a nicer ring to it.
I finally ventured out about a week after the massive evacuation operation began to see if I could find out anything in town, since the news reports we were getting from the radio were just short of useless. The four-lane highway had pretty much become an eight-lane parking lot for miles in either direction. There were hundreds, if not thousands, of dirty, ragged, and sunburned people just wandering around between the cars and looking up at the sky. A few were sitting under trees or whatever shade they could find; they all had the same glazed-over look. I had seen it before– usually in people who were way too tired and had been through way too much. It was like something out of a zombie movie, except they weren’t zombies and this wasn’t a movie.
The first thing I found out was that over the previous week, the population of our sleepy little town had grown significantly. Later, there would be estimates that our population had gone from around 4,500 to approximately 35,000.
It took nearly two hours for me to drive the four miles into town. Uniformed troops of an unknown origin were attempting to direct traffic, and I somehow wound up getting directed into a MRE distribution line that had been set up in the parking lot of a shopping center.
“How many?” a young-looking E-6 asked. He had an accent that wasn’t local.
“How many what?” I asked.
“How many you got to feed?” He sounded like he might have been from the Northeastern United States.
“Uh, six.” One of my older kids had a friend staying over during the storm.
“Got it.”
Four troops near the back of the truck threw four cases of MREs, four cases of bottled water, and two twenty-pound sacks of ice over the tailgate and tapped it twice.
“Where you guys from?” I asked as I started to drive away. I could tell from the patches they weren’t Regulars and they weren’t local Guard or Reserve.
“Pennsylvania. We’re Pennsylvania National Guard.”
They were from Pennsylvania?
Police from all over the United States were everywhere. I saw a K9 Cadaver Recovery Unit from Idaho.
Idaho?
Somebody must have thought we were in pretty deep poop. I don’t remember seeing any local, parish, or state law enforcement at all. It had been a week since the landfall, and they had probably been pretty busy. They were probably taking a break.
“Any news from the outside world?” I asked one of the National Guardsman who was helping direct the traffic out of the MRE distribution point.
“I don’t know. They sent us here to hand out MREs and water. How and the hell do you people live down here with these mosquitoes?”
I asked another who was halting the traffic on the highway, so the traffic going through the MRE distribution point could exit.
“I don’t know. How in the hell do you people live down here in this heat?”
That was about all I could get out of the Pennsylvania National Guard on that first trip to town. It’s not that they were unfriendly or anything. I don’t think they knew what was going on, either. Plus, they had been busy.
Most of the Louisiana National Guard was still scattered and gone. They were all at home or somewhere else when the chaos started. It would take weeks to get them mobilized at this point.
I decided to attempt to take seldom used back roads in an attempt to get home, since the Red Cross had set up a relief center in a large vacant lot across the highway from the MRE distribution point and I really didn’t want to get directed into a two-hour long line for clean clothes and toiletries that we didn’t need. I was surprised to find the old, gravel roads clogged with utility bucket trucks and military vehicles, but I still managed to make it home in under an hour.
I quickly discovered that given the traffic considerations, the shortest route into town was actually through the MRE line. I was still fairly fluent in the language of the Regular Army and the troops did eventually start to let tidbits of information slip when they got it, which was a bit sooner than the general public did, since they were also there to provide security details. I found out that the Post Office would be opening in a week and that the people who got rural delivery would be able to pick up their mail. The big Postal Processing Center in New Orleans had been flooded out, and the big Postal Processing Center in Baton Rouge was trying to pick up the slack. I also found out that they would soon announce that I was eligible for $750 worth of emergency food stamps and that the Red Cross was going to give all the families in the disaster area $1275 apiece for just having been in the disaster area when the storm hit.
I also found out that this particular Pennsylvania National Guard Battalion had just received a bunch of brand-new 5.56 NATO M249 Squad Automatic Weapons and that, even though none of the troops were ever seen carrying weapons out in the open, there were several fully armed, locked and loaded special reaction teams dispersed out of plain sight at various strategic locations around town. They were behind the Post Office, behind some buildings near the MRE line, and behind the food stamp office, just in case things started to get out of hand for whatever reason.
I figured I’d better go check on my other neighbors. I had known them since I was a little kid, and Mrs. D was a serious busybody. If there was any real news to be had, she would have it. If not, she would at least have some interesting gossip. She and her husband were retired professionals, who lived in a very nice house with an extremely well-manicured lawn. They had been without electricity for about a week. As I approached their yard, I cinched up my belt a few notches and slipped the big Colt Government Model into my back pocket, because I didn’t want to cause Mrs. D. any undue concern. I had been bringing it everywhere lately, and my shirt tail covered it when it was in my back pocket. I hid the old black flap holster and heavy web pistol belt under hedge bush near the front door. All of the doors and windows of the house appeared to be open wide.
“Hello?”
“Back here!” came the answer.
I walked around to the back of the house to see Mrs. D. draping an enormous pair of freshly wrung boxer shorts over her chain-length fence. She had been doing her laundry with a hosepipe, a five-gallon bucket, and an old washboard that had been a decoration on her patio the week before.
“I really miss my washer and dryer, and I’m afraid this heat is killing poor Mr. D. All he does is lie on that mattress we drug out in front of the big window after the air conditioner stopped working. He never did take care of himself the way he should have.”
“He should be acclimated before too long,” I said.
A few weeks before the storm, I thought I had seen a Sasquatch or a bear or something in Mrs. D.’s yard. It turned out it was only Mr. D. He wasn’t wearing a shirt at the time.
“Oh. Did you hear? Uncle Paul’s going to open the store for a little while tomorrow. The bread man, the potato chip man, and the beer man are all supposed to make deliveries in the morning, if they can get through.”
“Whoa. What time?”
“There’re opening at ten in the morning. It looks like we’re going to have to shop by candlelight.”
After that, I made it a point to check in with Mrs. D. every couple of days or so.
Mrs. D’s uncle ran a small grocery store a few hundred yards away from where my driveway intersected with the highway. They were closed on Sundays and had been closed since before the storm made landfall that Monday morning. They would probably still be pretty well stocked. Unfortunately, I was a little short on folding money at the time.
Whoops.
I knew I was forgetting something during those pre-storm preparations. The banks were all closed until further notice, and ATMs did not work without electricity. Mrs. D.’s uncle was a mean old man. I knew people who wound up driving as far away as Arkansas to find ATMs during those first weeks. I did have a big jar of change I kept for emergencies. It was mostly nickels and pennies, but it was still legal tender. There were probably a few dimes in there, too.
There was already a long line outside the store when we got there, shortly before ten. Word of such events gets around fast in a disaster area.
One of Mrs. D.’s cousins was allowing people to enter in twos and threes, while two more of her cousins escorted them around the store. After we finally made it inside, we saw Uncle Paul sitting on a stool behind the liquor counter and manning an old mechanical cash register that had been little more than a decoration the week before. There were six or seven racks of fresh white bread stacked next to the counter and several more empty ones leaning against the wall behind it. Two large ice chests were lined up on the floor in front of the counter. One was labeled “DAIRY” and the other was labeled “MEAT.” Uncle Paul was wearing what looked to be an old Smith and Wesson Service Model .38 on his right hip, and he was dripping with sweat.
Lit candles were arranged between the isles at six-foot intervals, which didn’t help the sauna-like conditions inside the store at all. Shopping carts were not allowed, because of the danger of someone running over a candle. Uncle Paul grunted and nodded toward a sign that said “CASH ONLY” and then toward a stack of shopping baskets. The wife picked one up.
He didn’t appear to notice the big jar of change I was holding, and the improvised back-pocket method for carrying the big Colt piston was still working out pretty okay for the time being.
We picked up a twelve-pack of red Coca-Cola (limit of one per customer), two cans of deviled ham, a big bag of potato chips (another item limited to one per customer), a pound of butter (the only thing left in either of the ice chests, except for the ice), two loaves of bread, and what were possibly the last two packs of red Marlboros to be found in the Gulf South Region.
“Limit one loaf per customer,” Uncle Paul grunted. I put one of the loaves back.
He looked over everything, punched a few buttons on the old cash register, hit the big total button, and said, “Seventeen dollars.”
I set the big jar of change on the counter.
“What is that for?” he asked as his hand moved toward the butt of the revolver.
“It’s money. Give me a minute to count it.”
“You’re crazy if you think I’m going to fool with all that.” Uncle Paul grunted as he rested his hand on the butt of the revolver.
The wife stepped in. “It’s seventeen dollars even, right? Can I just write a check?” Uncle Paul glanced over his shoulder at the long line of people still waiting outside. He grumbled and nodded.
I don’t really think the mean old man would have shot me for attempting to pay for $17 worth of groceries with nickels and pennies. However, at the time, I wasn’t so sure.
The traffic and chaos began to slack up a little after a few weeks. Our electricity did come back on at some point during that time. Ours were among the first lights to come back on, as living down the road from a light company executive does have some advantages. There were people on the other side of town who went several more weeks without electricity. I did eventually find a working ATM at a local bank shortly after the lights came back on in town and it still had some money in it when I finally made it to the front of the long line, but there was a $40 limit on withdrawals.
Rows and rows of small, white, rectangular FEMA trailers had begun to appear in vacant lots and open fields all over the place, and every bit of useable indoor space was occupied by somebody or something. The house in front of ours that had been vacant shortly before the storm, had three families of evacuees from New Orleans sharing it afterward. Somebody even camped out one night in an abandoned barn in a nearby field. I saw their headlights and went to check it out the next morning, but all I found were tire tracks and a few empty beer cans. The brigade from the 82nd Airborne set up shop at a nearby university.
The shortages continued and things in red packaging were particularly hard to find. It was impossible to find red cans of regular Coca-Cola or red Marlboros. (There was plenty of Diet Coke though.) While no fresh meat, fresh produce, or dairy ever seemed to make it to the grocery store shelves, somehow the beer trucks always found a way to make it through, and the Pennsylvania National Guard made sure we had plenty of ice. They were very sharp and professional.
Mrs. D told me that she heard the electricity was back on in the city where the brigade from the 82nd Airborne was and that they were going to open the big Walmart. We probably should have waited a few weeks before making that trip, especially since there wasn’t anything we really needed, but we went anyway. Cabin fever and curiosity got the best of us. The traffic was still pretty rough, and it took nearly an hour to make what had been a twenty-minute trip.
Several hundred people (if not more) were milling around the parking lot. There were people looking for lost relatives. (Message boards had sprung up all over the place since the mass evacuation operation had started and there was still no cell phone service.) Families were looking to pick up a few supplies they should have picked up before the storm, and others were looking to restock their pantries after the unexpected arrival of evacuee friends and relatives from New Orleans. One family I knew had over thirty people move in with them after the storm. People were sleeping in their utility room and tool shed.
Only one of the big store’s entrances was open. I saw people waiting in a long line to pass through a metal detector as we looked for a place to park. I hated to do it, but I was going to have to leave my pocketknife and the big Colt pistol in the car. Two security guards in black BDUs and body armor wanded us after we passed through the metal detector, while two more stood off to the side. They were both holding HK submachine guns, and all of them were armed with big Glock pistols. They were all wearing tactical headsets and Terminator-style sunglasses.
“Where are you guys from?” I asked, as I passed through the metal detector.
I got no answer. He silently waved us into the store. There were no distinctive markings or name tags on their uniforms or body armor. They all had shaved heads, and they were all tall, lean, and muscular. The ripple-soled boots they were wearing probably added a couple of inches to each of them.
I remember being surprised that there were not very many people in the big store, but there wasn’t a whole lot to shop for. The shelves were mostly bare; it was “CASH ONLY”; the ATMs all had “out of service” signs on them; there were no batteries of any kind (which was okay since we still had plenty); and there wasn’t as much as a crumb of charcoal to be found (but that was okay too, since our electricity had come back on). There was no fresh meat or produce, but they did have gallons of whole milk (limit one per customer), and their bakery had been working overtime to keep the bread and doughnuts flowing. Another pair of security guards stood at each end of the bakery counter.
“Where you guys from?” I asked.
Again, there was no answer.
I glanced down to see the selector switch on his HK submachine gun was set on burst.
These were no regular security guards. They were too well equipped, too well armed, too lean and muscular, and too well disciplined. I couldn’t get a word out of them, so I had no chance of picking up an accent.
Mercenaries? Foreigners? Foreign mercenaries guarding a Walmart?
Maybe my imagination was slipping into overdrive, but things were strange all over.
As was typical, we had spent way more time waiting in line to get into the store than we actually spent in the store itself. Probably an hour in the line for the metal detector and twenty minutes to pick up a loaf of bread, a gallon of milk, and a dozen fresh doughnuts.
It may have seemed like a lot to go through for a loaf of fresh bread, a gallon of milk, and a dozen glazed doughnuts, but at the time, they were the best doughnuts in the entire world.
Many of the evacuees were having a hard time adjusting to the current situation. Our small town was in no way prepared for the traffic nightmares that came about after a sudden infusion of 30,000 new residents. Fender-benders and road-rage incidents became common occurrences. A couple of months after the storm, a little fellow in a great big pickup truck parked way too close to me in the grocery store parking lot. Instead of backing out and attempting to park again, he started slamming his door into the passenger side of my much smaller truck. He then shimmied through the partially open door and started screaming and cursing. He clenched his fists and took on a somewhat more threating posture after he stomped around to where I was still sitting in the driver’s seat. His shirtless passenger was right behind him. He was waving his arms around in the air for some reason.
I had already slipped the big Colt pistol out of the old black flap holster, but I didn’t actually cock it until he put his hands on the edge of the open window.
“Can I help you with something?” I asked.
His eyes grew large and his mouth dropped open. He made a kind of squeaky sound as he slowly removed his hands and backed away. He grabbed his passenger by the arm and led him back to the great big pickup truck. He hopped in the passenger side and slid across into the driver’s seat. His passenger got in behind him, and they quietly drove away.
I remember being worried about shooting through my rolled-down window.
It wouldn’t be the last time I cocked the big pistol during what was now being called, “The New Normal”.
Several weeks later, a large SUV came creeping down my long, ill-repaired driveway with its lights off. It was a little after 4:00 a.m. and still very dark, when three little fellows got out of the vehicle and approached my front door.
I have six treacherous little dachshunds that are capable of making quite a terrible racket when they’re disturbed, and they are very easily disturbed. They’re also extremely vicious and have very large teeth, for being such small dogs. We can no longer have visitors, as they tend to bite people– even people they know. Last time my son visited, he wound up trying to get out of the door with one clamped tightly on his rear end. One of them bit my older daughter (also in the same area) the last time she visited, and they raised them as puppies. I have no doubt they wouldn’t leave a scrap of meat on the bones of a stranger.
Anyway, the dachsies made such a terrible racket that I had no trouble at all slipping out the back door unnoticed with the big Colt pistol. I was standing no more than ten feet away and noticed that one of the little fellows appeared to be holding a pry-bar or something. They appeared puzzled as they looked through the window of the front door while the dachsies continued to bark, shriek, and howl. They were making such a racket that I couldn’t hear a thing those little fellows were saying, nor could they hear me cocking the pistol.
Fortunately, they got back in their vehicle and left without further incident. It probably wouldn’t have looked too good if I’d shot them in the back while they were attempting to break in my front door. Of course, they may have just been looking for directions or something.
We had Thanksgiving without a turkey that year. My sister did find a turkey in Baton Rouge for Christmas, but she has connections. We also had a hard time finding Easter candy that spring.
Most of the evacuees eventually started going home to start rebuilding. A few stayed in the area, and some went somewhere else to start over. We actually ran into a few while passing through Northern Georgia the next summer.
For a very long time afterward, the name “Katrina” wasn’t spoken out loud by the locals. It was a weird, almost tribal, kinda thing. It was as if we said the boogeyman’s name, he would come back and get us. When we relate incidents, we say “before the hurricane” or “after the hurricane”.
It’s been nearly ten years, and there are still reminders everywhere. Just the other day I saw a herd of dairy cows around in a pasture between long rows of utility hookups that once serviced a couple of hundred FEMA trailers. We still have the ridiculously over-sized traffic signs that came into vogue after many, many traffic accidents occurred at a couple of intersections that were either beyond the patience or the comprehension of the evacuees. Also, my pine trees are still crooked.
Hugh,
Another alternative: Take two laundry baskets. Put the wet clothes in the first, nest the second inside the first, and stomp away. Water will flow through the holes. You may have to drill holes lower in the basket, if the floor of the basket is solid.
Alternatively, you can use two buckets. Drill large holes in the bottom bucket. – CDV
o o o
The US Mint (and Congress) inch forward to composition changes (or phase out) of pennies and nickels.
(It looks like we will have at least one more year to accumulate “25/75” composition nickels.)
o o o
Items from Mr. Econocobas:
Giving Up Your U.S. Passport Getting More Expensive
Russia’s Rate Increase Fails to Halt Ruble’s Slide to Record