Letter Re: Alternative News Sources When The Grid Goes Down

Sir,

I have been hooked to your blog for weeks now and have a topic suggestion for you.
The only news I can trust comes from independent blogs with communities of users working together to bring critical information to light. Web sites like The Housing Bubble Blog have saved me tens of thousands of dollars by being months ahead of the mainstream media (MSM) and by reporting honestly. With the internet we have the means to organize grassroots efforts to support candidates like Ron Paul. We can be kept up to date with the latest injustices and know when our fellow citizens are taking a stand against a corrupt government. Most importantly we have time to react.
We cannot be dependent upon the Internet in a SHTF scenario, yet we will all be in desperate need of quality and timely information regarding future government/societal moves. It would seem to me that we need to establish a pre-internet means of communication or at least a self-sufficient internet community networking through their own dedicated satellite!
What steps are you and your readers taking to provide “foreign intelligence” on operations outside their retreat location? – Daniel L.

JWR Replies: Although the Internet is designed to be high resilient (a carryover from its original design as a US military network), it cannot expect to survive a grid-down situation. The best that we could hope for in those circumstances is a combination voice and data packet network, via High Frequency (HF) shortwave. (Perhaps the Army Aviator or one of our other readers that are senior ham operator would care to chime in on how a quasi-Internet could be piecemealed together using packet modems and HF ham gear.

At the very minimum, to gather local, regional, and international intelligence, weather data, accurate time of day, and to maintain overall situational awareness you should own at least two radios, neither of which need be very expensive:

1.) A general coverage AM/FM/shortwave receiver. Most of these cover all the way from 500 KHz all the way up to 30 MHz. This includes the AM and FM broadcast bands, many of the amateur bands, the international HF broadcast bands (for stations like BBC, Radio Netherlands, HCJB, WWV, and so forth), and the Citizen’s Band (CB) channels. The inexpensive Kaito KA1102 radios are ideal for anyone that is on a budget. These are available from Affordable Shortwaves–a SurvivalBlog advertiser. If you have a bigger budget, I would suggest (in sequence of price) the following

The Sony ICF-SW-7600G (around $195 to $210, new.)

The Sony ICF-2010 (Discontinued, but used ones are available for around $175 to $275 on eBay.) This model was replaced by the ICF SW-77, but a lot of listeners prefer the controls on the ICF-2010.

And if you have a “The sky is the limit” budget, get a Drake R8A (around $1,100 new, or $750, used.)

BTW, even if you eventually buy a more “spendy” receiver, I recommend that you keep a couple of the little Kaito KA1102 radios as spares, preferably stored in metal ammo cans to protect them from EMP.

2.) A VHF police/marine/aircraft/weather band scanner. Try to get one of the more recent models that can demodulate trunked traffic. One relatively inexpensive “trunked” model is the Bearcat BC898T. They sell for around $240. If you have a big budget, get a digital model, but expect to pay at least $500. OBTW, nearly all scanners cover the NOAA weather bands.

Letter Re: A Reminder on the Terrorist Toxins Threat

Jim,

I bring this news story to your attention: Ricin Found in Las Vegas Hotel Room; Man in Hospital

The Center for Disease Control (CDC) protocols don’t give one much hope if ricin is inhaled or ingested. Unclothing and washing procedures for external contact are not reassuring. Other sources indicate that skin contact is usually not fatal unless accompanied by other agents that enhance absorption. [JWR Adds: DMSO is a well-known transdermal carrier.]

Other sources also indicate that ricin is 30 times more potent than VX nerve gas. Full MOPP suit and gas mask seem to be indicated to avoid aerosol exposure. Since the lapsed time between exposure and onset of fatal symptoms can be hours and with no existing antidote, this seems to be a particularly nasty agent to avoid.

It seems to me that for various reasons, one would be more likely to encounter ricin in a terrorist event rather than the other CBR agents that are usually mentioned. In any event, one might have to rely on the rain gear and N95 particulate mask that should be in every BOB along with the standard decontamination procedures that all should be thoroughly familiar with.

Are there field detection resources and other related items that you might recommend for an ai travel BOB which will be different from the vehicle BOB left in the airport parking lot?

I think this has been covered before but it might be timely to reiterate it again. Best Regards, – William D.

Odds ‘n Sods:

Mainstream market commentator Robert Kioysaki recommends buying silver coins in this piece: The Profit of Doom A SurvivalBlog reader mentioned that Kiyosaki was one of the few mainstream market mavens to recognize silver as a bargain fairly early on. Meanwhile, a lot of his colleagues with stock and bond tunnel vision are still in denial.

   o o o

Lex found this from The Wall Street Journal: Will Thornburg Join Failed Lenders?

   o o o

Thanks to Sapa for flagging this: Zimbabwe bans ‘unlawful hoarding’. The illegal “hoarding” threshold is absurd–the equivalent of just $21 USD!

   o o o

Paul D. mentioned a bicycle engine web site. Paul’s comment: “A friend of mine just got one of these engines for his Mountain Bike. He told me that he rode the dirt roads for two hours on just one quart of gasoline. Wow! Talk about a fuel efficient internal combustion engine. I will be ordering mine soon.”

Jim’s Quote of the Day:

In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation . There is no safe store of value. If there were, the government would have to make its holding illegal, as was done in the case of gold. If everyone decided, for example, to convert all his bank deposits to silver or copper or any other good, and thereafter declined to accept checks as payment for goods, bank deposits would lose their purchasing power and government-created bank credit would be worthless as a claim on goods. The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves.
This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists’ tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists’ antagonism toward the gold standard. – Alan Greenspan, 1967

Note from JWR:

If there is an article in SurvivalBlog that would interest any of your friends or relatives, just click on "Permalink" beneath the blog entry. You can copy and paste that URL into an e-mail. Thanks for spreading the word about SurvivalBlog!

The Fleecing of the Sheeple–America Discovers “What That Thing Will Bring”

There is a very old legal maxim: “The value of a thing, is what that thing will bring.” It was developed by the courts to establish the value of a loss, in civil claims. The maxim has been perhaps over-used in central Europe, where if you recklessly drive your car and run down a farmer’s laying hen, you can be held liable for for not only the replacement cost of the chicken, but also the value of its future offspring for the next year–or perhaps even two years if the judge is in a bad mood.

That ancient maxim is important to keep in mind when we consider the slips of paper that we presently carry around in our wallets and call “money.” Most citizens are ignorant about money. The history of money is not taught in public schools, and legal tender laws are taken for granted. Not one citizen in a hundred realizes that we have a currency that is based on debt. (Most mistakenly believe our currency has some connection to the gold stored at Fort Knox. From a practical standpoint, there is no connection whatsoever)

There is no substantive backing behind the US dollar and the world’s other fiat currencies. But it wasn’t always this way: Up until 1933, our currency was “bi-metallic” and was 100% redeemable in gold and silver. Gold and silver certificates were issued, that read “Pay the bearer, on demand…” Then, in the midst of the Great Depression, the FDR Administration craftily banned private possession of gold coins and bullion. Any non-numismatic gold coins in circulation were called in, by executive decree. The government “paid” for these at face value, with paper money–$20 in Federal Reserve Notes in exchange for each $20 gold piece. Any gold bullion not already in government hands was “purchased” at the officially pegged price of of $20.67 per ounce. The only exceptions to the law were for a limit of $100 face value of gold coins for each private citizen, gold nuggets, gold dust, and dental gold. (FDR’s bully boys didn’t go quite so far as to pry gold teeth out of pensioner’s mouths.) Then, shortly after the owners of this small mountain of gold had been duly “compensated”, the government raised the official price of gold to $35 per ounce, realizing a tidy profit. This was nothing short of legalized grand larceny. After 1933, US citizens could no longer redeem their paper money for gold, or possess gold bullion. (Private ownership of gold bullion was banned in the US from 1933 to 1974.) The redeemability privilege was reserved to foreign banks and governments, who could still demand gold. This redeemability “window”was kept open so that the US Dollar did not suffer in foreign exchange. Redemptions in gold started to increase dramatically in the 1960s, once the open market value of gold rose above $35 per ounce. When given the choice of paper money and gold, many trading partners quite logically chose gold. (Economist John Maynard Keynes might have decried gold as a “barbarous relic”, but realists opt for genuine value whenever they can.)

While the American citizenry was getting fleeced, similar abandonment of the gold was going on elsewhere. For example, Australia stopped minting gold sovereigns in 1931. The same happened in England in 1935. France went off the gold standard in 1936, much to the detriment of the Franc. By 1959, the French Franc had just 1/40th of the purchasing power that it had in 1936. Nation after nation went off the gold standard: Argentina, Brazil, and Canada in 1929; Australia, New Zealand, and Venezuela in 1930; Austria, Denmark, England, Germany, India, Mexico, Norway, and Sweden in 1931; Greece, Romania and Yugoslavia in 1932; Honduras, South Africa, and teh U.S. in 1933; Italy in 1934; Belgium and China in 1935; and France and Switzerland in 1936. On and on, they eventually all succumbed and gave up both minting gold coins and providing convertibility.

Even though gold had been banned, for the next three decades Americans could still redeem their paper dollars for silver. Silver coinage circulated freely, trading 1-for-1 with paper dollars. But in 1965, the US Treasury stopped minting 90% silver content dimes, quarters and half dollars. The dimes and quarters were replaced with cupronickel tokens that were merely sandwiched with a thin layer of silver, so that that they would still look pretty. (The copper visible on their rims betrays the perfidy that lies beneath the silver veneer.) The new coin issue, although blatantly unconstitutional, went largely uncontested. Once the”clad” coins entered circulation, people quite logically started to hoard every 90% silver coin that they could find. (This was Gresham’s Law in action: “Bad money drives good money out of circulation.”) To not appear entirely sans cullottes, the Treasury still produced half dollars with a reduced 40% silver content, for another five and a half years (from 1965 to 1970.)

Once clad coinage entered circulation, the value of the hoarded pre-1965 silver coins naturally started to rise. Now accumulated in rolls and in $500 or $1,000 face value bags, these coins sell as a commodity. (As bullion, rather than as numismatic coins.) Their value is calculated by their silver content at a multiplier to Federal Reserve Notes (FRNs). Currently, that multiplier is around 14.2 times their face value. Hence, a $1,000 face value bag of pre-’65 quarters at present wholesales for around $14,200.

Similar debasement of silver coinage took place worldwide in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. Country after after country phased out minting silver coins, as part of “demonetization”. England started the trend when they stopped minting circulating silver coins in 1946. As I recall, some of the last countries to mint circulating silver coins with 50% or more silver content were: Canada and Switzerland (until 1967), Lebanon (until around 1969, IIRC), and France (until 1974).

All over the world, if one of the old silver coins now accidentally slip into circulation, it is quickly snapped up and hoarded. Gresham’s law is in full force, globally. In the present day, just copper, nickel, cupronickel, zinc, and aluminum tokens are in circulation. Granted, many mints still produce gold and silver coins, but those are intended for the collector and investor market. They are not intended for circulation, and few of them are still considered legal tender.

On June 24, 1968–a sad day–the US Treasury ended redemption of silver certificates for bullion or pre-1965 coinage.

In 1970, the last circulating US silver coins–the 40% silver half dollars were phased out, putting the last nail in the coffin for the dollar as a genuine currency. All that we have now in circulation are unredeemable FRN “notes” and tokens that–other than nickels–now have a metal value that is far below their face value. (See the Coinflation web site for details on metal content and the real value of circulating US coins.)

On January 1, 1975, it once again became legal to own gold bullion in the United States. A personal aside: When I was 16 years old, I rode my bicycle to Bob’s Coin Corner and bought my first Krugerrand. That was in 1976. I bought that coin with money that I had saved from mowing lawns and working at the local library (the latter, for $2.05 per hour). As I recall, that 1975-dated one ounce Kruger cost me $155. I spent a lot of time fingering it, feeling its heft in my hand, and admiring the design–especially the Springbok on the reverse side. Holding it in my hand, I knew that it was real money. I sold that coin in early 1980 for $715. Soon after, I invested the profit in my first M1A and my first Colt M1911 .45 Automatic. I’ve bought and sold a lot of gold and silver coins since then, but that first shiny Kruger–and its hiding place under the corner of my bedroom carpet–hold a special place in my memory.

By 1981, the US Dollar had become so debased that the copper metal value of the lowly penny exceeded its face value. So Congress authorized the US Treasury to replace them with zinc tokens that are merely flashed with copper. (Recently, the penny has become an embarrassment, since in these days of inflated dollars, the worthlessness of the penny has become blatant. (Even “penny candy” sells for 5 cents or more.) There have been calls to do away with penny coins entirely.)

In 1971, facing a massive hemorrhaging of gold, president Nixon closed the “gold window” for redemption by foreign banks and governments. Many foreign governments, most notably France, raised howls of protest. John Connally, who was the Treasury Secretary at the time, had the nerve to comment “It may be our currency, but it’s your problem.” He was able to be snide about it because he knew that the US was the dominant nation in global commerce, and that the US Dollar would continue–based on sheer inertia if nothing else–to carry on as the world’s reserve currency. It has indeed carried on, despite its unredeemability. But ever since 1971, the dollar has suffered markedly in foreign exchange. Today, the US dollar seems about ready to lose its reserve currency status.

Let’s get back to the legal maxim that I mentioned at the beginning of this post: What is the real value of a “dollar”? The current Federal Reserve Notes (FRNs) are only redeemable for other Federal Reserve Notes. You can of course use them to purchase goods and services, but with FRNs you are at the mercy of inflation. In contrast, “junk” silver coins are essentially inflation proof. Times may change, but today you can still walk into your local coin shop and salvage some value from the paper notes that now pass for “money.” As I mentioned before, the real money to funny money trading ratio is presently around 14.2-to-1 to buy pre-1965 dimes, quarters, and half dollars. Given the inherent value of the FRN (which is essentially an “IOU Nothing”), I am surprised that the ratio is not already 100-to-1 or higher. I suspect that within a year or two, that ratio will come and go.

I am big believer in tangibles investing. I am suspicious of any investment–aside, perhaps, for some mining shares–that are denominated in dollars. When the currency unit itself is in flux, all dollar denominated investments are risky. I recommend that SurvivalBlog readers first get their essential “beans, bullets and band-aids” squared away, to ensure your physical survival. After that, you might consider investing in other tangibles such as productive farm land, common caliber ammunition, magazines (the kind that hold rifle and pistol cartridges–not the kind that you read!), tools, and other nonperishable barter items. Following that, you might put any excess cash into silver.

‘The US Dollar is not unique. There are now no national currencies that are officially redeemable in circulating gold or silver coins. (Although there are rumors that redeemable gold Dinars and silver Dirhams may soon be widely circulated in parts of the Islamic world.) To various degrees, all of the world’s governments are fleecing their citizens, through legal tender laws, lack of redeemability, restrictions on offshore banking, excessive taxation, currency controls, and inflation. They are all engaged in larceny. It is just the rate and scale of the theft that varies. (In Zimbabwe, inflation is running at the incredible rate of more than 100,000%, annually!)

Currency inflation is insidious and inexorable. Inflation is little more than robbery, in slow motion. It gradually robs us of our buying power, and is essentially a hidden form of taxation. Given the track record of the 20th Century, we can certainly expect inflation to continue. My advice is to protect yourself, by taking some of your greenbacks and converting them into silver. Don’t expect to profit from that silver. (Although there may be some profits in the near future.) Instead, consider these silver coins your fire insurance for the dollar. When the dollar collapses, your silver coins will at least hold their store of value.

Taking the long view, we can look at the current “bull market in commodities” as nothing more than a bear market in un-backed paper currencies. Markets cannot be fooled, at least not for very long. They always find equilibrium. Prices shift. Currencies adjust. Inflation marches on, and the paper money-holding sheeple suffer. But those of us that diversified into precious metals can take solace in the time-proven resiliency of gold and silver.

For any of our readers in Europe that are feeling smug, knowing that they are holding Euros, consider this: All of the world’s fiat currencies are in a race to the bottom. Some of them are just presently farther ahead than others. Eventually, all fiat currencies are all doomed to collapse. The US Dollar will probably be the next to exit the stage. (This is nicely illustrated in a short documentary by a Dutch filmmaker.)

In addition to buying pre-1965 silver coins and barter goods, I have written before in SurvivalBlog about another strategy to combat inflation: Gathering nickels (US 5 cent pieces), before their long-standing 75% copper and 25% nickel alloy is superceded, most likely by just zinc tokens. (This is very likely to happen in 2008 or 2009.) At present, the base metal value of a nickel is about seven cents. (See the Coinflation web site for details on the metallic content and value of a nickel.) In my opinion, getting five cent pieces that have seven cents in base metal value for just their face value is a bargain. Think about it: If you asked a bank teller or a store clerk “Can I have a $1.40 in change for this dollar?”, they would think that you were crazy. But when you get nickels in exchange for a paper dollar, that is effectively what you are getting: $1.40 worth! Although the potential gain for nickel is smaller than with silver, the situation today is not unlike that back in 1963 and 1964. My advice: buy up as many rolls of nickels as you can, at banks and casinos. I predict that in just a few years, nickel rolls will sell at a substantial premium, much like pre-1965 silver coins do now. If silver is the working man’s gold, then nickels are the poor man’s silver. BTW, I should mention that pre-1982 copper pennies are now worth about 2.5 cents each. But since the old and the new issue coins now circulate co-mingled, it is hardly worth your time to sort out (by date) the real copper pennies from the more common post-1981 copper-flashed zinc tokens. But at least for now, you can squirrel away some rolls of nickels. Do so before the debased non-nickel “nickels” get into circulation!

One closing thought: All un-backed paper currencies share the same fate. Eventually, and inevitably they all reach a value of near ZERO, where they are only suitable for use as kindling or perhaps as novelty wallpaper. Someday, the value of the US dollar is bound to collapse. This will most likely be in an orgy of Zimbabwean-scale hyperinflation. After this happens there will doubtless be immediate calls for the issuance of a new “safe” currency. I just pray that our elected representatives have the wisdom to not repeat their old mistakes. Hopefully they will feel convicted to obey the constitutional stricture: “No State shall… …coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts…” Granted, this section was directed at the states rather than congress, but it clearly shows the intent of the Constitution’s framers. Clearly, they wanted our nation to have coinage with genuine tangible value, and sound, specie-backed, currency. The recent dramatic failure of the un-backed Continental Currency undoubtedly weighed heavily on their minds when they drafted the Constitution.

Letter Re: Calculating The Bullion Value of US Silver Coins

Mr. Rawles:
My parents and grandparents gave about $60 face value in junk silver coins, including a few Morgan and “Peace:” dollars. The quarters and dimes are all 1964 and earlier, but some are the 50 cent pieces were made in the late 1960s. (Those are 40% [silver content], right?) With silver now rocketing up past $20 an ounce, how do I determine the current market value of these coins? Thanks, – G.E.T.

JWR Replies: To calculate the silver metal value of 90% silver pre-1965 mint date US dimes, quarters, and half dollars: A $1,000 face value bag contains approximately 715 ounces of silver. Hence, at a spot silver price of $19.80 per ounce, a $1,000 face value bag has a wholesale value of $14,157. That means that “just one thin dime” (with a mint date of 1964 or earlier) is now worth $1.41 in present day funny money.

To calculate the silver metal value of 40% silver US half dollars (minted between 1965 and 1970): A $1,000 face value bag contains approximately 296 ounces of silver Hence, at $19.80 per ounce, a $1,000 bag has a wholesale value of $5,680. So just one of these 40% half dollars is worth $2.84, wholesale. (A few of these, BTW, can still occasionally be found in circulation. Buying rolls of half dollars at small town banks is still a fun sport, with about one coin in 70 found to be 40% silver. Rarely, you might even chance to find a 1964-dated (90%) 50 cent piece. (These are presently worth around $7.10 each.) Oh happy day!

Pre-1929 Silver dollars are a special case, because even dollars that are in very worn condition have numismatic value in addition to their bullion value. Hence, these dollar coins now sell for $17 and up. But for calculating just their bullion value, a $1,000 face value bag contains approximately 765 ounces of silver. Hence, at $19.80 per ounce, a $1,000 face value bag has a wholesale value of $15,147.

Letter Re: Self-Sufficiency–How Do We Do It All?

Dear Memsahib and Jim,
I am a daily SurvivalBlog reader and contributor, along with my husband. I am very interested in learning more how Memsahib and other retreat women manage to do all that they do. How does a day or week in your life go? How do you can, bake, cook, shear, spin, weave, knit, sew, teach, et cetera and get it all done?
We are moving to our retreat soon. I have baked, cooked, knit, learned to spin and weave, and have canned in the past, but not all at once. I forgot to mention clean, wash, take care of a garden, etc. etc.
We need a blog [post] about how to accomplish everything and remain sane. Not to mention home school and run a family, continue church life, etc.
For those of us who have been working and raising a family in a large town and are moving to a retreat life, we need some how to’s!!!
The order of things is of the most importance or we will never accomplish all our tasks!!!

Memsahib, does your work every stop? Do you feel like you have no personal time?

I also work as a registered nurse and will try to continue with my specialty in teaching young mothers how to breast feed and care for their newborns.
Thank you for your input from all of us women who will try to “do it all” on our retreat sites. Thanks again, – Kathie

The Memsahib Replies: Thank you so much for your huge vote of confidence. How nice to think there is a woman out there who thinks that I do it all! 🙂 First let me say first, no I don’t do it all. And secondly I don’t worry about doing it all either.

I’m writing this reply specifically to married women with children. The most important thing is to keep your priorities right: I believe the correct order is: God, your husband, your children, and then everything else after that. Also remember it is not up to you to insure the survival of your family. God is in control of everything. And after God is your husband. I hope this will lift some if the burden that you are feeling. Don’t shoulder the burden of the family’s survival yourself. That is not your role. I think that is usurping your husband’s role of provider and protector of the family.Your job is to be a helpmeet to your husband.

Okay, that said, I have acquired a lot of skills that could be put to use in TEOTWAWKI, but I do not try to do them all now. I think to attempt that would put me in an early grave like my pioneer great grandmothers! I think this is time for learning preparation skills, but if you tried to actually do them all there is no way you would have time to learn any new skills. For example I have a lot of food preservation skills. But at this present time most of our larder is full of mostly purchased foodstuffs. For the satisfaction of it, I have fed my family entire meals from food I personally raised including the milk that came fresh from our cow. It feels great to know I can do it. But I don’t try to do it on a day to day basis.

There are some things that we do that allow for extra time in my schedule. We don’t own a television. I think I get a lot more done for the lack of watching television. Also, I do not have a full time job outside the home. Not having to commute saves a lot of time. Another thing I attribute to getting more done is the fact that we are out in the middle of nowhere, so I don’t shop. There is no place to shop. Every two months or so we stock up to top off our supplies. I also know the capacity of our larder well. I’m very strict with my family about sticking to the list! This saves time and money when we are out shopping. Also we only shop for clothes twice a year when we visit family in the big city. My sister knows all the great thrift stores. And, she knows which department stores have the best sale prices on shoes socks and underwear. If we didn’t have growing children we probably could go several years without buying clothes! By the way. I do know how to sew clothes. And I know how to knit sweaters, hats, socks, mittens, and such. But I don’t make my family’s clothes because I don’t particularly enjoy sewing. (For now, I go to the thrift store. I often can buy down jackets, Merino wool sweaters and nearly new blue jeans for $3 each, and shirts, slacks, blouses, skirts, dresses for less than than that.)

Another thing is that our family does which frees up quite a bit of time for me is cleaning up after themselves. Our children for example clear their places after meals, take their dishes to the sink and putt the scraps in the chicken bucket, and rinse their plates and glasses, and put them in the dishwasher. When there are clothes to be folded at our house all the children fold and put away their own clothes. Our children also have an individual chore based on their age, such as setting and clearing the table, unloading the dishwasher, keeping the wood box filled, and feeding their pets. And you may have realized by now I make use of all the modern appliances which make household chores quicker. In the past, we’ve lived without running water and without electricity. I know I can survive without them, and I may have to in the future. But I sure enjoy the luxury of having them now!

The “survival skills’ that I do practice daily are the ones that I personally really enjoy. I practice them as recreation and relaxation. For me personally that is raising small livestock. I really enjoy going out to the barn and feeding my critters. I especially enjoy my sheep because I also enjoy the fiber arts. I also really enjoy gardening. So my hobbies dovetail nicely with my husbands desire to be well prepared. So what hobbies and interests do you have? Which ones could you cultivate as prepping? Just because I don’t care for sewing doesn’t mean that it wouldn’t be a great dovetail for you.

You might say another one of my hobbies is acquiring “life skills”. Some people have a personality that is suited for focusing on one skill and developing that skill to a master level. My personality is more suited to trying everything. I try to make the most of each situation in which we’ve lived to learn what I can. My motto is: when God gives you zucchini take the opportunity to experiment baking, drying, frying zucchinis! The older women of the communities we’ve lived in have been wonderful teachers. They have taught me how to can pickles, make grape juice, milk goats, make soap, knit socks as well as sharing the abundance of their gardens and orchards. But I in no way feel compelled to now makes all the food we eat from scratch, knit all our clothes, make all our soap, and neither should you!
I would be remiss if I did not say that I think it is very important to use this time of liberty of ideas and travel to attend Bible studies. Yes, you can and should read and study the Bible at home. But, I find that the commitment to do a study with other believers disciplines me to stay in the Word even when life gets hectic. And our pastor has many valuable insights into the Scriptures. If you have the ability to attend a good Bible study, then do it! You may not always have that opportunity because of poor health, high gas prices, lack of transportation, or lack of religious freedom. Reading the stories of prisoners of war, I am struck by how their knowledge of God’s word helped them endure. As the Bible says, “make the most of time, because the days are evil”.

Odds ‘n Sods:

My old friend Jeff moved to England to get his final sheep skin–a doctorate degree. He tells me that the price of gasoline (“petrol”) now averages £1.09 GBP per liter in the Thames Valley, and that he has seen it advertised for as much as £1.50 GBP/liter out on the highways. At current exchange rates, £1.50 GBP equals $2.97 USD. Now, multiplying liters to US gallons (x 3.785) that equates to a heart-stopping $11.24 USD per gallon. Ouch! (For comparison, I most recently paid $2.98 per gallon, locally, but I’ve seen it as high as $3.05) OBTW, Jeff mentioned that SurvivalBlog readers in England might want to get an account at PetrolPrices.com. It is a price aggregator for all of the UK.You can find local prices by entering your postal code.

   o o o

Ranger Man posted a great article on cast iron cookware over at the SHTF Blog: Cast Iron is the Ultimate Survival Cookware

   o o o

From The New York Times: The Buck Has Stopped. (A hat tip to Manky for sending us that link.)

   o o o

Hardly a news flash for SurvivalBlog readers: Gold Beats Financial Assets as Investors Seek Haven

Notes from JWR:

If you value what you read in SurvivalBlog, then please become a 10 Cent Challenge subscriber. I am confident that SurvivalBlog has kept you from making some costly mistakes in your preparations. I am also confident that SurvivalBlog has pointed you toward some investments that have been profitable for you. (When I started the blog in September of 2005, silver was $6.90 per ounce, gold was $445 per ounce, wheat was $3.30 per bushel, and military surplus .308 ball ammo was just $220 per thousand cartridges!)

Less than 2% of readers subscribe, so you can count yourself amongst those few that contribute 10 cents a day. Subscriptions are entirely voluntary, but gratefully accepted.

Today we present another article for Round 15 of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest. The writer of the best non-fiction article will win a valuable four day “gray” transferable Front Sight course certificate. (Worth up to $2,000!) Second prize is a copy of my “Rawles Gets You Ready” preparedness course, generously donated by Jake Stafford of Arbogast Publishing. Round 15 ends on March 31st, so get busy writing and e-mail us your entries. Remember that articles that relate practical “how to” skills for survival will have an advantage in the judging.

Unconventional Bug-Out Transportation Methods, by A. Taylor

I read with interest the inquiry about, what I term a “Bug out Boat”. I made this recommendation several years ago, in numerous survival forums. Most readers seemed unable to process the potential for this kind of plan or it seemed to be impractical to them compared to hunkering down or egress by vehicle. I would advocate that the more eclectic methods of egress from chaos may hold greater potential for success than some mainstream ones. Traditional modes of travel in the modern age are easily controlled by the powers that be, accidents, infrastructure break down, computer problems, electricity (can you say “grid down”?), etc. How many have actually considered (much less planned?) on using the following practical means of getting from Point A to B (whether a short or long distance).

1. Walking- hard work but very quiet and stealthy. Drawback- slow.
2. Bicycle. As long as you can keep your tires inflated, you can travel [at least] three times as fast than as on foot. Drawback- awkward to carry equipment unless you buy a trailer or stroller for the back.
3. Boat/canoe- Who is going to blockading the river or watching it? The river does the work for you if your are going down steam. The preferred method of
choice for hundreds of years by Native Americans, trappers, traders, frontiersmen, market hunters, settlers and soldiers.
4. Snowmobile- Don’t worry about the roads being open. Just try to follow me in/on anything else. Drawback-seasonal.
5. Skis- No trail, no problem. Drawback-seasonal.
6. Motorcycle- Easy to get around that road block isn’t it? Just try to follow me through the woods in your squad car.
7. Ice skates- many frontiersmen/trappers traveled this way up river systems. Drawback-Seasonal.
8. Roller blades-the modernized society equivalent of ice skates. Drawback-Seasonal and depends upon roads and sidewalks being in place.
9. Horse/Horse and wagon/Horse and sleigh – has both advantages/disadvantages, accessibility issues, and disadvantages, but you won’t need electricity to keep them going. Drawback-you have to pay to feed/house them.
10. Dog sled- For those in the far North. Drawback-Seasonal.
11. Para-planes –fuel efficient, no license needed, can land in small areas.
12. Light aircraft- expensive but they are what they are.
13. Freight trains/barges/cargo ships- It seems no matter how much chaos a country descends into, occasionally a train, barge, cargo ship goes somewhere. Drawback-Can be Seasonal depending on low water levels, ice, snow.An undependable mode of transport to plan on using.

The reason you haven’t considered these methods is because we as Americans are too d–n lazy and we carry around too much stuff. If your supplies are pre-positioned, you will need very little physically on you.

We as Americans are pre-conditioned to think first and foremost of the family vehicle almost exclusively. Unless you have a full tank of gas when the grid goes down or an EMP-resistant vehicle, you’re screwed for any number of reasons. Your going to be thrust down a channelized highway of horrors (just ask anyone who has fled a hurricane inland). This highway can easily be barricaded by law enforcement, the military, gangs, or a group of local idiots. Accidents, traffic jams and lack of fuel will prevent you from getting out of the area at the speed which you anticipated.

Not only may you be stripped of your dignity, you may be stripped of all your supplies, valuables, clothes and chastity. If you are counting on the herd to protect you from harm, I have news for you, they will readily look on while you are assaulted (and hope it doesn’t happen to them) and/or they will participate in plundering your belongings (see Katrina stories). If psychologically less than 5% of the population is prepared to act as a warrior or protectors of the flock, which leaves potentially 95% of the population as someone who will not come to your aid or will prey upon you given the situation. I prefer to believe that there is a percentage of 20% of Christians, rural or generally good people, that may not physically risk their life for you, but are none the less, good people who might assist you in other ways. Your car may be a false hope that ends up getting you into a more dire situation or delaying critical choices that need to be made before you start out.

For our purposes I am going to concentrate on canoes and Jon boats. Those heavy ski boats, yachts and sailboats will only work for limited distances or in limited places. If you live near the ocean or the Great Lakes , they will work just fine. If your only using you ski boat to go across the lake or 20 miles down the river, it may work out for you. Do not, however, plan on using them to navigate the Missouri , Mississippi , Ohio River ‘s drainage basins. Those rivers have locks and dams aplenty that you may not be able to portage or pass through in a worst case scenario. Many of the rivers in the Northwest and Southwest are in a similar state except the dams are bigger and often not designed to accommodate navigation (Think of the Bonneville Dam at the Columbia River Gorge, Grand Coulee Dam and over 225 others in the Columbia River Basin . Hoover/Boulder Dam. Upper Mississippi has 38. The Ohio River has around 30, but the Lower Mississippi has none. Missouri River has none from St. Louis to Sioux City Iowa, but the headwaters have numerous Dams and Reservoirs). If the locks have no electricity or they have been told by the military or police not to let anyone through, you’re a sitting duck and it may be game over.

In many parts of the country the boat may be a preferred method because it is stealthy, uses little fuel, can be suitable entirely without fuel, will never be subject to the same amount of usage demands as the highways, will be noticed less by the public/looters/law enforcement/military. The majority of motors out there should be 2 cycle. These are more EMP-resistant and easy to work on.. Most boats will still remain functional even while leaking or having holes shot in them. You would have to be taking on a lot of water from holes below the waterline to make it untenable to remain afloat.Many boats will contain buoyant materials designed to keep the boat afloat. A Marina may be more likely to have fuel available than any gas station. (Note: Kevlar was sometimes used as a hull material for some larger and more expensive ski boats, since it stronger than fiberglass.)

Most of the major river systems are about a half mile across. If you stick to the middle of the channel, anyone trying to shoot at you will have make a shot of an average of a quarter mile. Call me optimistic, but most of the people shooting at you from that distance are more likely to hit you by accident than on purpose. An old USGI Kevlar vest will provide some ballistic protection for your motor or fuel supply. Most bridges will not be suitable for either looters/military/police to set up on, and fire directly down upon you, unless the entire bridge is shut down to traffic. In most cases, anyone trying to get at you will not have any guarantee of actually boarding your vessel. Even if they managed to kill you, your supplies would continue to float down stream and out of their reach. This may discourage any but the most criminally motivated elements of society. I happen to believe that I have a better chance to survive in the water as on any interstate or major highway. If you should happen to run into a motivated criminal element in speed boats, either flee, beach your craft and run, or turn and fight with everything you have. Chances are they won’t want to mess with heavily armed elements on a flat surface with virtually no cover. A bow-mounted belt-fed Browning [Model 1919A4 machinegun or semi-auto equivalent, mounted on a larger boat] would chop any attackers watercraft into matchsticks in no time at all. (I am not endorsing it. I’m just saying it’s a nice idea to consider.)

In the first two weeks of a catastrophe, a miniscule number of people are going to be watching the rivers or lakes. They will be down looting televisions and liquor. The cops will be at roadblocks and chasing looters and arsonists. Your main antagonists are likely to be; federal employees manning the locks/dams, Conservation Officers (since they already have lots of boats, the military (probably a naval reserve unit) or in certain instances, the US Coast Guard. None of this group is usually looking for trouble on the water and Conservation Officers are notoriously cautious when working alone. It’s too easy for them to just “disappear”.

The larger the body of water (in square miles or distance from shore), the more distance or greater buffer you can put between you and anyone who may wish you harm. Night travel by water with no running lights and your motor off, will make you nearly invisible to 99% of the population. Watch out for logs, snags and sand bars and keep a watch out for other boats or you might well be sunk. Night vision might be handy if traveling at night. Many duck and goose hunters have metal supports for blind materials that could come in handy for camouflaging your boat if you choose to lay up during the day at some creek or island.

Your average inner city gang member doesn’t know how to operate a boat and cant swim anyway, but don’t count on it. Even criminals near a resort/sailing/boating area are sometimes familiar with boats. Ever heard of pirates and drug runners?

You could potentially carry much more equipment or personnel with you by means of a boat. Several Jon boats/canoes can be lashed together or roped in parallel (with the front boat pulling all the others in line). In this way you save fuel and have spares engines at hand in case a motor conks out. A boat can theoretically carry quite a load (much more than a car or small truck). However, remember anything you put into a boat may have to be portaged across any barrier. If you don’t like the idea of lugging it in and out of the boat many times, then don’t take it along. If you read a book about fur traders or Lewis and Clark, they often spent an entire day (or days) at a portage site.

Say you come to an inoperable lock/dam, you find an area to unload, carry the boat across land to a suitable location, carry the supplies to the boat, and resume your journey. This will be fraught with peril and hard work. You will need a crew. A minimum of one individual is needed to watch both locations (point A to B) and you will need the individuals necessary to carry everything between those points. The only way to avoid that is to do it so fast nobody notices or take a canoe and only what’s in your pack. If you try to navigate smaller rivers, you will find yourself having to portage across every log jam. It’s no fun, it’s frustrating and it’s slow. You might be better off walking at that point unless you will break through to a larger body of water that will make the endeavor worthwhile.

In a freshwater area, you will have a supply of drinkable water (albeit full of herbicide, fertilizer, and pesticide or toxic waste depending on the area). This is why you have a water filter, right? Food can be supplemented by fishing or trolling (dragging a line behind the boat as you go). A small island might be a good place to stop and cook lunch or dinner. Waste can be dumped over the side or [better yet] buried p[when you go ashore.]

Four Letters Re: Sizing a Retreat AC Power Generator

Mr. Rawles:
I saw that you recently posted my question to the blog, so I thought I’d update you. I ran the tests again and got what I believe to be a more accurate assessments.

My second test showed the refrigerator consuming right at 2.7 KWH (2,700 watts) over a 24 hour period for an average of 112.5 watts-per-hour. Now mind you, that includes all the hours we were asleep and so no one was opening the door, using up ice, etc.. During hours of heavy usage it was using about 150 watts-per-hour.

Test #2 for the chest freezer yielded the following results: KWH usage for the full 24 hours came to 1.02 KWH or 1,020 watts. This is an average of 42.5 watts-per-hour. Mind you, this freezer basically only gets opened once per day when we take out whatever we’re defrosting for dinner. All in all, I’m pretty happy with those results.

The next step is to test our other refrigerator and our upright freezer and to calculate the Amp Hours required (how many deep cycle batteries I’ll need) to build my homemade UPS system.

FYI, I found a really good deal the other day on a 4 KW emergency gasoline genset, and went ahead and bought it. My next big purchase will be a tri-fuel conversion kit from US Carburetion, so I can run her on propane. I know you guys usually endorse diesel as a primary genset/retreat fuel, but I really like the stability and shelf-life of propane – in my area, I can rent a 300-gallon tank (I own two 100-gallon cylinder tanks) from the propane provider for around $50 per year and fill it a little at a time as opposed to making an expensive all-at-once fuel purchase. My logic there being that I can dump a little in each month, so that it’ll be full when I actually need it to be. – JSC in West Virginia – A “10 Cent Challenge” Subscriber

 

Dear JWR:
I was catching up on SurvivalBlog this weekend and noted the article on generator set sizing. The main issue here is that there is a significant difference in the average electrical energy consumption of an appliance and its peak usage. This issue is compounded by electrical devices such as motors which are not purely resistive (i.e. inductive load) and thus have up to 3 times the energy demand to start as opposed to running. This is commonly referred to as “starting current” verses “running current”. When sizing an electrical generator, one needs not only to calculate the total energy consumption of all electrical appliances one anticipates to be running simultaneously, but also to cover the starting current for the item with the heaviest draw. Most electrical motors are labeled with their electrical current needs, commonly listed as starting or peak current and continuous current. In regard to an appliance which doesn’t list this information (such as a refrigerator), the owner needs to use his Kill-A-Watt [meter] to determine the current used while running (typically 3-5 amps) and multiply this by 3 to get a good estimate of the starting current demands.

The process should be to add up the total draw for all the appliances, and then double the highest one and add that also to the total. This will give a rough estimate of the peak current draw, in Amps. To convert Amps to Watts, one simply needs to multiply by the operating voltage (typically 120 or 240 Volts). This assumes that no more than one heavy draw appliance starts at the same time, but to cover all the starting currents would require a much larger generator.

Several years back, during an ice storm, we were living off of an emergency generator rated at 5,000 Watts (6,200 peak Watts ). One should disregard the “peak” rating of typical portable emergency generators since they are uniformly overrated (I have noticed that recently, peak rating is what is listed, look for the “continuous rating”). Our water heater (a purely resistive load, hence no “starting current”) consumed 4,500 Watts. In order to take a hot shower, we needed to turn off all other circuits and allow the water to heat up. After an hour, the water heater was disconnected to allow the well pump to be operated to provide water through the water heater to the shower. This constant switching of loads was a real nightmare.

As a caveat, typical consumer portable electrical generators are not up the rigors of continuous use. Their fuel economy is atrocious; our 5 KW unit uses about 5 gallons of gas in an 8 hour period. They are also typically powered by the equivalent of an air-cooled lawnmower engine. Consider taking your lawnmower into heavy wet grass and mowing continuously for 200 hours. After a week of trying to keep this loud and hungry beast fed, thankfully the power came back on-line. We went with a diesel powered 15KW unit which would even cover the arc welding unit and it uses about 1/4 gallon of fuel per hour during typical household test uses. The gas generator seemed to use virtually the same amount of fuel regardless of the load, but the diesel unit just sips fuel when it is just loafing along, with consumption roughly linear with the load.

When choosing a generator for long term use, I would make several recommendations:
First, if you pump water or want to run a welder or air conditioning unit, you will need at least 10 KW and 120/240VAC capability.
Second, get a unit with double windings so it can run at 1,800 rpm instead of 3,600 rpm (to make up 60 Hz AC power). This vastly improves fuel economy and noise level as well as longevity.
Third, the unit needs to be water cooled. While some air cooled units are built for longevity, they are the exception.
Fourth, think of fuel storage requiring long-term stability. This effectively rules out gasoline, and leaves us with NG/LPG or diesel.

While electrical generators are very useful and highly recommended, their Achilles’ Heel is fuel availability. We store adequate diesel fuel to run the generator full time for approximately two months use, which would extend to one year or more with limited part-time use, but it is still a finite resource. They can be useful as a bridge for short duration (till the power comes back on or we learn to live without). Except in the hottest climates, running a refrigerator or freezer a couple of hours twice a day is adequate with limited door opening. Once the foodstuffs in the freezer and refrigerator are used up, you will still need a manual pump for your water well in TEOTWAWKI. Hope this helps, – NC BlueDog

 

Sir,
The Kill-A-Watt meter is a great tool but [KSC] really didn’t give it a chance to work. If you want to find out how much power your refrigerator uses over the course of the day leave it plugged into the meter for a few days at the minimum.

Most watt meters have the option to see how much power is currently being used by whatever is plugged into it. You’ll want to look at that while the appliance is cycled on. The refrigerators and freezers that I’ve dealt with generally don’t use more than about 150 – 200 watts while running, figure they use about three times that during startup.

In your situation, figure 600 watts startup power, times four appliances would be around 2,400 watts. I’m guessing that there will be other things that you will want to run also (lights, grain mill, battery charger etc.) so you may want to go with a 3,500 watt generator but as long as you aren’t looking to power your whole house from top to bottom with it you don’t really need a huge generator. – MercCom

 

Jim-
Here’s a helpful site for figuring power requirements.

By the way, we all have useful generators sitting in our garages–in our car and/or truck. An inverter will let you tap that power. COSTCO has a 1,000 watt inverter for $65. If you use good sense in using power, and keep your vehicle tank(s) full, you can ride through a temporary power failure. Not bad for $65. But you also will have to buy or make up a pair of cables that will clip to your battery. The provided cables have useless terminals (closed end type) for the battery end of the cables. – Bob B.

Odds ‘n Sods:

Cleveland:ghost town created by America’s loan scandal. Here is a snippet from the article with some downright post-apocalyptic imagery: “…street after empty street of boarded-up houses, their roofs caving in, collapsed balconies hanging from the fronts of buildings. Some people seem to have just upped and left, leaving their belongings behind for the rats and vandals. Owners have put up signs offering their burnt-out homes for a $500 (£250) down payment. Bins and rubbish litter the street. Signs warn trespassers the structures are unsafe. People have spray-painted “No copper” or “No metal” on their doors to deter crooks who have stripped anything of value from these decaying shells. Even brick steps have been ripped off, leaving houses that look as if they are floating on a dark sea of garbage.”

   o o o

Credit crisis throws AIG into “uncharted waters”. One quote that was buried in the article that should have had its own headline: “UBS on Friday estimated that the global credit crisis is likely to result in losses of more than $600 billion.

   o o o

Green Mountain Gear (one of our advertisers) has an announced a new discount program: The OSG—Optics Savings Group There are three optics purchase choices each month at various pricing levels. These are some “screaming good” deals. You will need to click on “Too Low To Show” GMG Pricing!” and then enter your e-mail address to get the special pricing. Make sure your spam filters are able to let GMG e-mails through.

   o o o

RBS sent us an article that is a not-so-subtle warning flag: FDIC Brings Out Retirees to Ready for Bank Failures

Jim’s Quote of the Day:

“Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest prop of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked: Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice? And let us with caution indulge in the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle… Observe good faith and justice toward all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all. Religion and morality enjoin this conduct; and can it be that good policy does not equally enjoin it?”
– George Washington, Farewell Address to his cabinet, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; September 17, 1796