A Second Income–A Key Goal for Family Preparedness

I often encourage folks that are preparedness-minded to develop a second income stream. Why is this important? “Living off the land” style self sufficiently is an admirable and commendable goal. But even if you are living truly “debt free”, you will still have property taxes to pay. That means that you will need at least a modest recession/depression proof revenue stream in the event that you lose your primary job. Let me underscore this point with a bit of Rawles family history: My family came out west by covered wagon in the 1850s. They soon after set up a sheep ranch that eventually had more than 6,000 deeded acres where they ran more than 3,000 Merino sheep. Sadly, more than 5,000 acres of the original Rawles Ranch was forfeited, mainly because of unpaid property taxes in the Great Depression of the 1930s. There was just no market for either wool or timber–which constituted the only cash income for the ranch. The family was easily able to feed itself, but despite their best efforts, chunk after chunk of the ranch was taken over by the county and the bankers for unpaid taxes and unpaid agricultural loans, between 1932 and 1942. By the time that the economy started to recover during World War II, the ranch was down to only about 800 acres.

Successful home-based businesses usually center around: unfilled needs. In a rural area, that is easy. Just ask your neighbors: Is there anything that you buy or rent, or service that you “hire” on a regular basis that currently requires a 40+ mile drive “to town”? Those are your potential niches.

A successful recession-proof home-based business is likely to be one where the demand for your goods and services is consistent–even in a weak economy. These include septic tank pumping, home security/locksmithing, care fore the very young and the very old, and escapist diversions such as DVD movie rentals. (It is noteworthy that the movie industry was was one of the few sectors of the economy that prospered in the 1930s.)

Another category of business that prospered in the 1930s was repair businesses. Obviously, in hard economic times, people try to make do with what they have. So repair businesses are a natural. If there is some small appliance that you could repair that could be mailed from and back to the customer, so much the better. (That way you could have a nationwide business, rather than just a local one.) This might include: DVD player repair, laptop computer repair, and so forth.

Another category is second-hand stores. People on tight budgets will be actively looking for second-hand goods, rather than buy new items. A second-hand book store in a medium-sized town might do just fine in a depression.

Yet another approach, for those with mechanical aptitude and don’t mind strenuous outdoor work: Own one or more useful pieces of fairly expensive machinery that a lot of people need to rent (or hire the services of ) on a fairly regular basis, but that are expensive enough that they cannot justify buying one for themselves. Typically, this is a piece of machinery that sells for $2,000 to $20,000 that you can “hire out” in a relatively unregulated business. (Not requiring any special licenses, guild membership, or a union card.) Examples include “Ditch Witch” trenching machines, vehicle-mounted posthole augers, vehicle-mounted well drilling rigs, portable sawmills, “cherry picker:” bucket hoists, Bobcat tractors, small tracked excavators, and so forth. Once you’ve identified a clear unfilled need, and after you’ve confirmed that nobody else in your local area already has one that they presently rent out, then start looking to buy one. Ideally, you’ll want one that is a few years old (since brand new machinery is usually too expensive) in nice reliable running condition, at a reasonable price. As necessary, get a trailer to transport it. Practice with it at your own property, so that you’ll be competent and confident that you can do a good job. Practice loading, hauling and unloading your machinery (if needed) a few times, so that you won’t look like an idiot when doing so. Be sure to get liability insurance started before you officially launch your business. Then it is simple enough to advertise your services on the Internet, through your local chamber of commerce, and post flyers at the local feed store and supermarket. You can “scale” the size of your second business (read: how busy you’ll be) by setting your prices. If you want a lot of “hours”, then price it low. If you are getting too much work, then just start raising your rates to slow your business down. Then, if and when you ever lose you primary income stream, you can drop your rates on your second business substantially, so that it can take up the slack for your lost income. If necessary, add a second or third piece of equipment that you can rent out, to diversify your business. (For example, your business card might read; “Exemplary Excavations: Bobcat, Mini-Excavator, Ditch Witch, and Portable Posthole Auger. Reasonable Rates!”)

Letter Re: The Pension Gamble: Cash In or Stand Pat?

Dear JWR and SurvivalBlog Faithful:
Here is a dilemma that I may encounter soon and one that other Survivalblog readers may face as well.

I work for the state (which is in dire fiscal condition) and face a possible layoff later this year. When and if this layoff occurs, I will have the opportunity to cash out my pension fund, which after penalties and taxes, would amount to about $50,000—a tidy sum indeed considering I have no other savings except for 4-1?2 ounces of gold and several hundred dollars (face value) in silver coins (thanks to SurvivalBlog’s admonitions and a re-ordering of my discretionary spending in the past year). If I were to leave the pension intact, I would receive approximately $2,100 in monthly benefits beginning in 2017.

The conventional wisdom is to leave the pension fund intact to ensure subsistence funds for the not-too-distant future. I have been called foolish by some (parent, attorney, and friends) to merely consider cashing in my pension early. “Whaddya? Crazy?”

If one subscribes to the survivalist way of thinking, an economic or societal collapse will most certainly occur prior to 2017 that would likely reduce or eliminate my pension benefits.

What to do? Take the sure thing, cash in the pension early and invest in silver, gold and other survival provisions? Or roll the dice and hope that society remains intact [and inflation remains low] for another decade or two? SurvivalBlog readers, what would your decision be? Cash in or stand pat? – David J

JWR Replies: My vote is to cash in. Put at least half of the proceeds into survival preparations, and invest the rest in precious metals. One option for folks with 401(k) and IRA plans is roll them over into a precious metals IRA. These special IRAs are available through Swiss America. With them, you can avoid a tax penalty, yet have it invested in gold.

Letter Re: The Global Vitamin C Shortage Underscores Dependence on Red China

James,
Here is an article I found describing a shortage of vitamin C due to production cutbacks in China. The following are two quotes from the article:
“New York and Beijing – A sharp rise in the international price of vitamin C is focusing fresh attention on the risks of the world’s growing dependence on China for essential food supplies and additives.
China, which exports more than 80 percent of the world’s ascorbic acid – also known as vitamin C and a key food preservative – appears to have cut production over the past several months, pushing prices up by more than 200 percent to a four-year high.”

“Though there appears to be no reason to believe that Chinese vitamin C is contaminated, the sudden shortage highlights another cause for concern over America’s growing reliance on Chinese food imports. Only one Western company, DSM of the Netherlands, still makes ascorbic acid, concentrating production in Scotland since shutting down its US plant two years ago. Chinese firms have driven all other competitors out of business.”

[My observations:] Only one production facility remains in the Western world and that one is in Scotland. The U.S. must either be suicidal or terminally stupid (same result either way) to have actively put itself in the position of depending on non-free countries to supply its daily needs. How many other items like this does China control the market of? I’d bet it’s a lot more than we think and that we won’t realize it until it bites us. Anyway, here is another item that people may want to stock up on. Keep up the good work! – David D.

Odds ‘n Sods:

A brief follow-up to my July 10th post mentioning that iodine crystals and iodine solutions over 3% will be restricted in the U.S.: I just heard from my NAIS grassroots contacts that the DEA regulation will be implemented as of August 1st. That will mean that any of these products that are not already in the retail supply chain will be restricted. So this is your last chance to stock up on Polar Pure iodine crystals. I heard that Ready Made Resources only has about 275 bottles left in stock. They also have some one quart bottles of 10% Betadine solution available, at a bargain price. Both products will likely disappear in just a couple of days.

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Chrysler crisis and the plunge into chaos

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Learning to recognize the many names of MSG. Here is a quote: “It is very difficult to really know whether MSG (monosodium glutamate) is in your food, because it goes by so many aliases. To avoid ingesting this toxic additive, you’re best off choosing fresh, unprocessed foods. But becoming familiar with the hidden names of MSG can also help you determine what foods to eat.”

Jim’s Quote of the Day:

"Outside of the Constitution we have no legal authority more than private citizens, and within it we have only so much as that instrument gives us. This broad principle limits all our functions and applies to all subjects." – President Andrew Johnson (1808-1875)

Note from JWR:

Today we present another article for Round 11 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. I will again be sending out a few complimentary copies of my novel “Patriots” as “honorable mention” awards. Round 11 ends on July 31st. Remember that articles that relate practical “how to” skills for survival will have an advantage in the judging.

Survival Planning–More Than Just Gear and a “To Do” List, by Ray

A lot of people tend to approach survival planning as a simple exercise in gathering stuff and making a “to do” list. Having the right supplies and equipment is important, as is prior planning. But there may be a way to optimize your post collapse/disaster actions. I’d like to talk about the concept of the decision making aspects of survival. Decision making is the “Why” that joins the “What” (As in “Here’s what we’re going to do…”) to the “How” (As in “…and here’s how.”) All the gear and knowledge in the world do you no good if you don’t think your actions through before you act. Right up front, I’d like to acknowledge that a large part of these thoughts are drawn from various decision-making training that I’ve been exposed to, not the least of which is the OODA Loop, conceived by Col. John Boyd. The simple fact is decision making is a skill, and not one that naturally occurs for most people. But it is one that can be learned. The ability to calmly and objectively make the best decision in a given circumstance is largely the cultivated skill of learning to quickly sift through data in a systematic way in order to evaluate the available options.

Your plan is really a string of objectives, culminating with a desired end state; safely at your retreat, family accounted for and well, property secured. Decision making is critical in determining what actions to take to move you closer to a particular sub-objective or your ultimate goal. All decisions are based on the probability of a favorable outcome, but that probability is rarely, if ever, 100%. Even a slam-dunk, no-brainer decision has some slight chance of failure. The validity of a choice can be measured as those choices with the highest probability of a positive outcome, but even those have a tangible risk of turning out badly, and thus not being ultimately “correct.” Poker players call it getting “cracked”, when a strong, high probability hand is still beaten by the luck of the draw. A decision maker should understand that no decision is guaranteed to produce a positive result. Setting the expectation for yourself that even well thought-out decisions will be 100% successful is the road to disappointment and frustration. This is because decisions have variable dimensions, most of which are beyond the average person’s ability to control or even be fully aware of. The validity of a given choice is a function of the available data, context, and time. A valid decision is the best one you can make, right now, with the available information. Five minutes (heck, 30 seconds) from now a different choice may be better. But realize you will never have perfect, complete, and timely data, and that’s assuming that no one else is actively interacting with the situation, changing it and invalidating your information, or actively generating/feeding disinformation in some form. You will bring some level of bias to you we interpret the given dataset, as do your information sources; this works against our being able to form the proper context for a decision. And all factors are in flux, changing constantly; and implementing a choice once made takes some measure of time, making the clock an enemy. A good decision making process has to exist in the here and now, and be forward looking. You must avoid self recrimination and the tendency to doubt after something bad has happened; past choices are in the past, and useful only for how they inform future decisions. Focus on your goal, and how you get from your present location/situation (the here and now) to there (your future goal.)

The point of a decision is to generate a course of action. The objective validity (or lack thereof) is measured by the actions facility to meeting your desired end state – your ultimate goal. Decisions should be framed in terms of the what/why/how of the chosen action;
* What action do you think you need to take?
* Why are you taking this action?
* How (exactly) do you intend to accomplish this action?
Systematically examining your choices with the same criteria will let you determine their relative validity. Define the choices; state their goals and success or failure conditions, and reasonable prediction of the consequences of either. Is the objective critical or merely preferable/optional? How does it advance your larger goal? Do you have the means to accomplish it, and do those means require external help, or “a bit of luck”? What can go wrong? Once you’ve got answers for those questions, congratulations, you’ve just done simple risk analysis. Large and complex courses of action should be broken down to simpler action components to make them easier to analyze. It really should never be left at “…then we’ll head to the retreat…”; that action has tons of smaller actions and tasks that need to be accomplished to make it happen. Addressing that as a whole is almost guaranteed to under analyze one of those components, thus jeopardizing the overall chances of success. Part and parcel with a decision (part of the “How”) is the subdivision into logical action/decision chunks and delegating, communicating, or performing the required sub-task/making a required subordinate choice as quickly as possible. A seasoned decision maker may look like they’re making snap choices, but a good one has just internalized and sped up the pace at which the decision loop occurs.

Weighing the long list of variables can make for complex decisions. However, you can take a few shortcuts by using what I’ll call “filters” or rules of thumb. Think of these as decision constants; chunks of the equation where the math’s already been done. There are reasons why these are the case, and it’s interesting to learn the reasoning behind them, but for our discussion, it suffices to say that these are truisms that generally hold up pretty well. A few of my favorites are:

1.) Decisions where the outcome leaves you more future options are generally preferred over those with less.
2.) A decision that can be implemented now is generally preferred over a decision that requires you to wait.
3.) A solution that’s proactive is generally preferred to one that is reactive.
4.) Equipment fails.
5.) New data is worth more than old data, old data is worth more than conjecture, and conjecture is worth more than sentiment.

You can build additional ones based on your experience and observations, which again is where past decisions inform future ones. If you’ve got options that seem equal, run them through your list of filters and use them to break the ties. Over time you should be looking to develop a feel for the exceptions to those truisms and build your own, which is what separates great decision makers from good ones. (But beware laziness here; there’s a knife edge between a good rule of thumb and a lazy or bad habit that just hasn’t bitten you yet.) Having them in your bag of tricks really speeds up your ability to evaluate options and get to a valid choice.

Routines or processes are similarly useful for simplifying, speeding, and eliminating redundancies in your decision making cycle. At the granular level, for a decision that can be immediately implemented once made, preset (and tested) routines mean that the “How” is already answered. A process that anticipates the possible consequences of the actions it proscribes and addresses them is even better, since it effectively ‘multiplies’ a decision and frees up a decision maker’s bandwidth. For example, you could decide that in the case of a bug-out situation, you need to get the car loaded as soon as possible, and stage your supplies in an area where loading will be easier. That’s fine. But when you’re on the side of the road, unloading and digging for some vital piece of kit that was buried during the loading process, you’ve now got another set of choices that needs to be managed, and decisions that need to be made because of a fairly foreseeable outcome. The process could be proofed/practiced and perhaps fleshed out to not only what and where, but how and why; anticipating what supplies will need to be at hand and which probably won’t, using this info to create a loading inventory and order. And taken one step further, this prompts you to containerize your supplies and label them with contents or loading order; now someone else (“Come here son…”) can be assigned to do this job with little to no input from you other than the loading order. Even if an hour’s worth of work now only hastens your departure by 30 minutes in some future time of crisis, that’s a reasonable trade off. The vehicle gets loaded quicker, you get to make better/other use of your pre-departure time (since you’re not the one loading the car), you are on the road quicker, and you arrive at your destination quicker. The one decision has been multiplied, enhancing multiple steps in your plan of action.

And realistically, beyond the granular level, you also want to devote some thought to encapsulating groups of processes within procedures. Define success and failure conditions, when it’s time to try something else or what to do next. This branching logic is more complex than a “by rote” routine, and requires more work up front, but the simple fact is canned strings of actions can’t adequately respond to changing real world conditions. Defining procedures and communicating them to your family/group makes for greater speed in going from decision to execution, while still giving you the flexibility to modify your course of action midstream. It also allows for greater autonomy, allowing you to delegate decisions (or entire branches of the decision tree), which means people who are closer to the the current situation are free to act on new data without having to report back. Going back to the bug-out situation example, predefining a fueling procedure might encompass processes to effect a quick and safe fuel stop under pre-, intra-, and post collapse scenarios for the driver alone, driver and passenger, and so on, out to the capacity of the vehicle, and what to do if none of those scenarios is possible. The base procedure and it’s variations are built on the logic of criticality and minimizing risk. A vehicle with no driver is sculpture, so a driver is critical; during a stop is when you’re most vulnerable, so you want to get moving again as quickly as possible. An individual is significantly more vulnerable than a pair or group, so you never want to get separated or have a member isolated if possible. All the variations are “best fits” to those criteria with the available bodies. For instance, with us, in a typical full four-passenger vehicle situation, once stopped, the driver stays where they are, someone else fuels, another person gets out to provide eyes/security for the fueler, the last person is extra eyes for the driver. Once fueled the vehicle is immediately restarted, the two people outside go to pay and the vehicle moves to support/retrieve the other two. (If you can’t pay at the pump). With three people, the driver’s extra eyes are eliminated. With five people, the extra person stays in the vehicle, except in intra or post scenarios where the odds of having to go inside are greater and the odds of needing extra muscle/firepower is more likely. And so on. It may seem excessive, and maybe it is. But ultimately, once the basic idea is communicated, it’s just a flexible, simple, and easy to execute procedure to get in and out of a gas station quickly that scales from everyday stops all the way up to worst case scenario with a couple of choices and some communication on your part. And no procedure is complete without an exception alternative, what to do when the process has obviously failed or something you didn’t anticipate occurs. Programmers call this an “if else” clause and it’s always a good practice to include them in decision trees since it accounts for the possibility of a result/condition that the programmer didn’t anticipate. Never assume that you thought of everything, because it’s almost guaranteed that you didn’t.

We’ve barely scratched the surface, but the foregoing is a good start. This stuff isn’t profound, we all do it every day, yet rarely do we take a systematic approach or verbosely examine why we make decisions a certain way. The problem is that without ever examining your thought process during non-critical times, even if it generally works, you have no idea why it works. Luck, blind chance, the support and forbearance of others; day to day life in most of our normal existences is fairly forgiving and tolerant of simple mistakes and occasional bad choices. But when the Schumer has really and truly hit the fan, the margin for error goes way down. When every choice may truly be life and death is a hard time to start learning how to make good decisions, and one would expect that the lessons will hurt. One shouldn’t focus on obsessive micromanagement or anal-retentive over-planning. Just give some thought to how you make choices, and maybe look for ways to optimize that area.

The U.S. Stock Market: “Eject!, Buckaroo, Eject!”

The massive injections of liquidity from the Federal Reserve for the past five+ years–created by artificially low interest rates–have clearly come to an end. Cheap credit “fixes” are no longer available, and the credit junkie is going to experience withdrawal symptoms. Recently, news of the sub-prime debacle and teetering derivatives hedge funds have registered with investors–at least at the institutional level. Collectively, they have come to the realization that the party’s over. So it was no surprise that Wall Street prices declined 4.23 percent last week. I predict that this is just the beginning of a major bear market cycle that will last several years, bringing the Dow down out of the stratosphere–perhaps to as low as the 9,000 level. I foresee that many trillions of dollars of “on paper” gains will be erased. This bear market will make the 2000 sell-off seem quite small, by comparison.

Sadly, the Generally Dumb Public (GDP) is the last to catch on to these macro-scale market swings. Long after the institutional traders have switched to bonds, TIPS, and other instruments, lots of individual investors are going to continue to stand fast like deer in the headlights, and consequently get splattered. Individual investors tend to be emotional and get attached to particular stocks, or hold out for price points that are determined viscerally. The big traders are down right dispassionate, by comparison. To illustrate: I have some close friends–a couple in their 40s–that had recently sold most of their stocks, but were still hanging on to some Sun Microsystems (SUNW) stock, waiting for it to touch a $5.50 price. (The wife had acquired most of it between $3 and 4 per share, from her stock options while working at Sun.) I strongly encouraged them to sell when Sun was at $5.41, just before Sun reported their quarterly earnings. I had advised them: “Sell your Sun stock within two hours after the earnings announcement, regardless of the exact price. It is only going to go down if you wait.” But they hesitated, because the stock didn’t jump to the $5.50 as they had expected. (Sun’s earnings numbers were good, but the entire market was sliding last week.) The last I heard, after last week’s mini-debacle, SUNW was selling at $4.93. So, presently, my friends are down about 10% from what “might have been.” By selling now, they would still realize a good profit. I have again urged them to sell, but I doubt that they will. Some deer just won’t budge.

For those of you reading this that that are still in the US stock market, my advice is now practically at shouting level. Get out now. Cut your losses. To quote one of my favorite movies: “Eject, Buckaroo, Eject!” You are driving straight toward a mountain, and your vehicle is not equipped with an Oscillation Overthruster. If you “stay the course” or “wait for a big rally” then you are probably going to be disappointed. To mix metaphors, the US equities market is now is a down escalator. Chances are that the Dow will continue to decline–at least until interest rates turn around. That may be a decade away.

Odds ‘n Sods:

Tom at CometGold.com flagged this piece: The Real Morons of Orange County Why America’s most reckless real estate investors come from Irvine, California. About a year ago, I coined a name for this crowd: contrapreneurs.

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The high bid is still at $300 in the SurvivalBlog benefit auction for a brand new Big Berkey water filter, kindly donated by Ready Made Resources. They are one of our most loyal advertisers. The auction ends on August 15th. Just e-mail us your bid.

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Courtesy of our friends at SHTF Daily: Europe in fire and water onslaught

Three Letters Re: Advice on Generators?

Dear Mr. Rawles,
On the subject of generators, I was wondering what your thoughts were on fuel.
Recently, the municipality I live in equipped it’s municipal buildings with large generators powered by propane. My thought was that a wiser choice would have been diesel. My reasoning was:
Propane can only be provided by large trucks with specialized equipment or by smaller, but heavy, containers. In a situation where the roads may be blocked or impassable, a propane truck would not be able to get through.
It’s hard to convince a propane dealer to come out with his truck for a smaller delivery such as when you are looking to just ‘top off’ your tank From a re-supply standpoint, I sort of favor diesel.
If roads are closed or impassable, diesel can be delivered by something as simple as filling five gallon fuel cans and transporting them on snow machines [(snowmobiles)], horses, pack frames, etc.
In a true emergency, there are more re-supply points, as diesel can be found in the tanks of municipal vehicles, in storage tanks at the municipal garage, in private storage tanks at the bus depot and construction yards, etc. And again, in a pinch it can be man-portable by using smaller containers.Your thoughts? – RMV

 

Hi Jim and Family,
I wondered if you had heard the actual hard facts on the proposed ban on properties housing more than 1,000 gallons of LP? From what I understand, this will be a very large feat to register, prove need, and obtain such a quantity.
In my region, 1,000 gallons does not last very long drying corn. I understand that we in the agri-economy will still be able to obtain it. But, I guess we can add this to the ever expanding list of common items that are being made difficult at best to obtain. Maybe stocking up sooner than later is a goal. I sure don’t like your predictions. Time is starting to tell. – The Wanderer

 

James:
Having had the opportunity to run/install/maintain all sorts of generators. Propane is by far the easiest, and the cleanest fuel for standby generators, and the fuel never goes bad. To get any sort of quantity of diesel legally stored on your property takes an act of God and reams of paper: Rules, EPA regulations, containment systems, et cetera. And this country is set up for propane delivery, not diesel delivery.

While I won’t deny the longevity of diesel engines, I can tell you that propane engines last almost as long. And to get a 1,000 gallon propane tank delivered to my house tomorrow takes a phone call. No papers, no permits not anything but money. Try putting a 1,000 gallon diesel tank in your yard. (Legally )

If anyone is thinking of long term power ( TEOTWAWKI ) then they ought to be looking at [photovoltaic] solar panels and inverters, as getting diesel will be harder to obtain than propane. Mainly as they will reserve the diesel for trucks, military and police. But propane? It’s a consumer item mainly used to cook and heat with, so it will be available to you and me.

I am adamant with my clients to not look at diesel for all these reasons.

I have a 20 KW Onan water cooled genset at my house that has 80 hours on it now, burns 2 gallons per hour and I have 1000 gallons in reserve. That coupled with my large battery bank and solar would give me a very long time of independence and electricity. Plus my genset is very quiet.

What is my backup genny? A small tri-fuel from Northern Tool & Equipment that is loud but puts out 9 KW on gasoline, 8 KW on propane and 7 KW on natural gas…

When I moved into my house 12 years ago, I bought my first gennie to power my well pump during power outages. And later moved to the big one…

I am currently designing a large renewable energy setup on Lake [Deleted for OPSEC] and they are going with Solar (large array and batteries), Wind (10 KW Bergey) and Propane Generators (Onan) as backups. Regards, – Mel

JWR Replies: Parts of the United States have a home heating infrastructure that is geared more heavily toward home heating oil delivery rather than to propane delivery. In those regions, diesel generators might be better option, especially for those that live in farming or ranching country outside of city limits. There, large diesel tanks would not attract suspicion, and they are only lightly regulated. (At least in most western states.)

Virtually all diesel generators will run equally well on off-road (dyed) diesel, road-taxed diesel, biodiesel (including waste vegetable oil and freshly pressed oils), and home heating oil. The only significant difference between “home heating oil”, road taxed Diesel #2, and off-road diesel is the Federal standards for sulphur content and ash content. In fact, up until the recent introduction of Ultra-Low Sulphur Diesel (ULSD) all three typically came from the same production runs at refineries. In essence, they are just marketed differently. And of course the portion that is destined for on-road vehicular use gets a hefty tax added–and it is left un-dyed. (The dye is intended to keep people from cheating on the road tax.)

I’m glad that you mentioned photovoltaics. There was recently some interesting analysis/commentary over at The Oil Drum from Robert Rapier: The Future is Solar. If SurvivalBlog readers want to get serious about making their own electricity with photovoltaics, contact Ready Made Resources. (Our first and most loyal advertiser.) They have the expertise, and great prices on panels, charge controllers, and inverters. They even offer pre-packaged systems up to 5.6 KW. Also BTW, lots of states now offer special incentives and rebates for people that install alternative energy systems.

Letter Re: M1 Garand En Bloc Clip Ejection–Modify or Leave it As-Is?

Jim:

I’d like you advice on buying the Holbrook “Thumb Saver” modification device for M1 Garand Rifles. Do you have any experience with this device or thoughts on it?

The following is John Holbrook’s description of his Thumb Saver Device. It has been advertised in Shotgun News for a long time.

The Device is a replacement for the GI op[erating] rod catch and it stops automatic bolt release when loading a clip. It also prevents auto clip ejection when the last round is fired.

With it installed, the Garand operates much like the M14/M1A. When a full clip is inserted into the receiver it will latch, however you must pull and release the bolt handle to charge the top round. It will operate in the normal manner until the last round is fired and the bolt will lock open but the clip will not eject. To eject the clip you
must push the eject button on the receiver…

With an empty clip latched in the receiver, single rounds can be loaded into the clip, 1 through 8. when you have as many as you wish, just pull and release and away you go…

The rifle is not modified and can be converted back to GI [specification/function] by replacing the Device with the original catch.

The maker of the Thumb Saver is
John Holbrook
2015 24th Street, #57
Bellingham Washington 98225
phone: 1-360-671-8522
E-mail: john.holbrook@comcast.net

Also see: Boston’s Gun Bible (post-2002 edition) page 11/30.

JWR Replies: The Holbrook device works fine, but it is primarily designed for target shooting. I recommend leaving a Garand’s action “as is” for defensive shooting situations. You’ll want automatic clip ejection in most foreseeable self-defense situations, because you’ll want to know when your rifle is empty, so that you can reload quickly. One exception would be if you have a scope-equipped and match-accurized M1Garand that you plan to use as a counter-sniper rifle. For those circumstances, a high rate of fire and rapid reloading are secondary to stealth. That would be where a Thumb Saver would be apropos.

The only real drawback to automatic clip ejection is that if you are operating solo, the bad guy(s) are familiar with Garands, they will wait until they hear “bang-bang-ping!”–the sound of the empty en bloc clip ejecting–and then charge your position. But luckily, as time goes on, there will be fewer and fewer bad guys that have been around Garand rifles.

Odds ‘n Sods:

DV forwarded this one: Goldman Sachs guru warns of war-debt failure — Is America becoming a global credit risk?

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Thanks to B.H. for sending us this: Ammo Makers Prepare for Drop in Demand

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J. from East Tennessee Sterilizer Service sent us what might be the answer to the honeybee Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) mystery: A Spanish researcher blames an Asian parasite

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The Army Aviator sent us this one: Economist: World Is One Hedge-fund Collapse Away From Crisis. The article begins:”The problems in the U.S. subprime mortgage market could spiral out of control into a global financial crisis, economist Mark Zandi said Thursday. With a “high level of angst” in the financial markets about who will take the losses from more than $1 trillion in risky mortgages, we could be just one hedge-fund collapse away from a global liquidity crisis, said Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Economy.com.”

Jim’s Quote of the Day:

"The friend in my adversity I shall always cherish most. I can better trust those who helped to relieve the gloom of my dark hours than those who are so ready to enjoy with me the sunshine of my prosperity." – Ulysses S. Grant

Note from JWR:

Today we welcome our newest advertiser, Liberty Mags, in Casper, Wyoming. They offer a 17 round magazine for the Saiga .308 series rifles. These magazines work without any modifications to your existing rifle. They are based on modified steel HK91 (G3) magazines and retain the original feed lips and reliability. All the magazines are made with new surplus magazines and are completely refinished using zinc phosphate Parkerization. Their price is $35 each for each freshly-modified and refinished magazine, or $25 each with your steel 20 round HK91/G3 magazine supplied as a trade-in. These mags are guaranteed for 100% function in the Saiga rifle system and each comes with a full replacement guarantee. Presently, their “on hand” supply of completed magazines is limited to less than 100 pieces. Orders are shipped in the same order that payment is received, (“First come, first served.”) For ordering information, contact Liberty Mags: libertymags@hotmail.com