Jim’s Quote of the Day:

"Those gentlemen, who will be elected senators, will fix themselves in the federal town, and become citizens of that town more than of your state." – George Mason

Two Letters Re: Updated Nuclear Weapon Targeting Data?

Dear Jim,
I love your site. This is just a quick note while you are on the subject of the nuclear threat. I have been following Joel Skousen’s World Affairs Brief web site for the past few years and he seems to be of the opinion that this is a threat we should take very seriously. I encourage your readers to check out his article on analysis of strategic threats. I also HIGHLY recommend his books “The Secure Home” and “Strategic Relocation.” I know you’ve mentioned his books before in past articles but it is worth repeating. No preparedness library would be complete without them. – “Kaivman”

 

Dear Jim:
The Nuclear Weapon Archive has a lot of useful information on the past and present of national arsenals. The Russians seem to have much lower capabilities now than previously, but it’s believable and reasonable, given the state of their economy and domestic troubles. I don’t believe they’re a likely threat any time soon. Here are some brief quotes from the site:
“This single warhead missile is currently (late 1997) the only strategic nuclear delivery system in production in Russia.”
“The Topol has a range of 10,500 km, and a payload of 1000 kg. It is armed with a single 550 KT warhead with an accuracy (CEP – circular error probability) of 200 m.”
Russia does not appear to have any ERRB (Enhanced Radiation Reduced Blast) warheads for strategic use. China may:
“Current estimates assert that only about 20 ICBMs are in service – the Dong Feng (East Wind)-5A. This figure is surprising in light of China’s ability to produce the same basic booster in larger numbers as the Long March 2 satellite launcher. The U.S. government has stated that in 1981 there were DF-5As deployed in hardened silos at two sites. It is thought to carry the largest warhead ever tested by China (4-5 MT).”
“The neutron bomb claimed by China is strictly a tactical weapon (designed for use against armored vehicles). China has conducted a number of low yield tests that may have been tactical weapons, and a large military exercise incorporating simulated nuclear weapons was held in June 1982.”
Their best missile is estimated at a 13,000 km range, making them more of a potential threat than Russia. I don’t believe their dependence on our market for their economy makes an attack likely in the foreseeable future. – Michael Z. Williamson

Letter Re: Toilet Paper Calculations

Jim,
I hope the following information will help some of the readers with their supplies of toilet paper. I consider this a very important part of the total preparedness plan. If anything it will be a tremendous comfort for people during a really Schumer time. I will mention toilet paper brands, however, this is in no way an endorsement of any particular brand.
I was always curious how much toilet paper I would need per person for a year during a post-SHTF event. Not being the one that bought the stuff I relied on the wife for this. The info I got just wasn’t exact enough. I really needed to know so as to have enough on hand. I did what anyone would do and searched the internet. I was looking for the average amount of toilet paper that is used per person per day. Wikipedia had the answer. It said that Charmin Toilet Paper determined that an American uses 57 sheets of TP per day. I needed to convert this into how many rolls used per year. All brands make different size rolls of TP. So to make it easy I used Charmin’s numbers. Charmin makes 176, 352, 440 and 704 sheet rolls of TP. For my calculations I used a roll of 352 sheets. The number of ply’s was not considered. If I use 57 sheets per day that comes to 20,805 sheets per year or (using 352 sheets per roll) 60 rolls per year. Again, your numbers will vary depending on what sheet count you buy and even your daily usage. Multiply that by the number of family members and it should give you a pretty good idea of your yearly TP needs. You might want to add an extra case(s) for good measure incase mice, water, charity or what ever depletes part of your stash of TP. Try and buy the cases of TP that are in the cardboard boxes. This will provide them some limited protection. Plastic tubs are another good form of protection. These would also help you with storage issues because the cases could be broken down into smaller units. Make sure you identify them.
If you have a retreat and are expecting people to be there they should preposition TP for themselves (as well as other stuff). You can’t be expected to provide everything for everybody.
As Buckshot mentioned in an earlier post, telephone books can be a good source of TP. I consider this emergency TP. I consider using the full size telephone books but the smaller ones work also. Each page can be cut in half long ways and used that way. Maybe crumpling them up and then unfolding them will make them a little softer to use. Oh well, hope this helps some of your readers. – Larry in Kansas

JWR Replies: As previously mentioned in this blog and in my novel “Patriots”, I recommend acquiring a large stack of telephone books to use a secondary supply of toilet paper. Phone books are usually available free for the asking. New phone books would be preferable (more sanitary), but they are not quite so readily available as used ones.

 

Odds ‘n Sods:

The U.S. The government is asking for public comments on the USDA‘s NAIS animal identification/tracking scheme. Please give them a piece of your mind. (For some background on the NAIS plan, see The Memsahib’s article.)

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A Category 5 Hurricane Landfall in Miami Could Cost Insurers Up To $130 Billion

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There is currently an interesting thread of conversation about wind generators over at The Claire Files.

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North Korea is about to test an ICBM capable of reaching the US

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To compete with the Canadian Maple Leaf, the U.S. Mint will soon release a .9999 Fine “Buffalo” gold coin. These new one ounce coins will be available for ordering next week, and deliveries begin in early July. The mint decided that there was sufficient market demand to produce both the .9167 fine “hard” American Eagles, and “soft” .9999 fine Buffaloes. To prevent damage, the “Buffs” will be individually encapsulated. The only downside is that this will make them more bulky to store than Eagles. Why .9999? In some markets such as India, investors prefer pure gold bullion coins rather than circulating bullion coins with hardeners added. Such coins are more easily usable for conversion to jewelry or for industrial use.

  

Jim’s Quote of the Day:

"Personal honor, decency, and courage are the basis of any successful civilization. Moral and virtuous citizens form the rock of any successful society. Toleration of, and eventual encouragement of, corruption, iniquity, and sleaziness unfailingly mark the decline of a civilization." – John Farnam

The U.S. in 1906 Versus 2006

I generally ignore most of those ubiquitous thrice forwarded pieces of Internet trivia and humor, but I thought that the following one was worthy and would be of particular interest to SurvivalBlog readers in the U.S.:

The year is 1906. One hundred years ago. What a difference a century makes!

Here are some of the U.S. statistics for the Year 1906 :
The average life expectancy in the U.S. was 47 years.

Only 14 percent of the homes in the U.S. had a bathtub.

Only 8 percent of the homes had a telephone. A three-minute call from Denver to New York City cost $11.

There were only 8,000 automobiles in the U.S., and only 144 miles of paved roads.The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.

Alabama, Mississippi, Iowa, and Tennessee were each more heavily populated than California.With a mere 1.4 million people, California was only the 21st
most populous state in the Union.

The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower.

The average wage in the U.S. was 22 cents per hour. The average U.S. worker made between $200 and $400 per year. A competent accountant could expect to earn $2,000 per year,
a dentist $2,500 per year, a veterinarian between $1,500 and $4,000 per year, and a mechanical engineer about $5,000 per year. More than 95 percent of all births in the U.S. took place at home. Ninety percent of all U.S. doctors had NO COLLEGE EDUCATION! Instead, they attended so-called medical schools, many of which were condemned in the press and the government as “substandard.”

Sugar cost four cents a pound. Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen. Coffee was fifteen cents a pound. Most women only washed their hair once a month, and used Borax or egg yolks for shampoo. Canada passed a law that prohibited poor people from entering into their country for any reason. The five leading causes of death in the U.S. were:
1. Pneumonia and influenza
2. Tuberculosis
3. Diarrhea
4. Heart disease
5. Stroke

The American flag had 45 stars. Arizona, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Hawaii, and Alaska hadn’t yet been admitted to the Union. The population of Las Vegas, Nevada, was only 30.

Crossword puzzles, canned beer, and ice tea hadn’t been invented yet. There was no Mother’s Day or Father’s Day. Two out of every 10 U.S. adults couldn’t read or write.

Only 6 percent of all Americans had graduated from high school. Eighteen percent of households in the U.S. had at least one full-time servant or domestic help.

For the year, there were about 230 reported murders in the entire country.

Letter Re: Stocking Up on Stanley Knife and Saw Blades

Dear Mr Rawles,
Congratulations on a great blog, which I have just discovered. I am in the U.K. and am probably one of the few people here who has a copy of “Patriots”… a great read.
Two things it may be worth mentioning to your readers:
I haven’t seen mentioned before the importance of stocking up with small tool consumables — I am thinking of Stanley knife blades, “Olfa” type snap off blades, hacksaw blades and especially jeweler’s/gunsmith’s saw blades (who will want to make their own 3/0 saw blades WTSHTF?).
You might also note the importance of keeping the traditional manual equivalents of those power tools which will quickly become useless [in the event of a grid down situation]– such things as crosscut and rip saws, planes, “yankee” screwdriver with bits, carpenter’s brace with bits, sharpening stones, cold chisels. These things should be in everyone’s essential kit, and kept well maintained.With Thanks, – “Mr Lessogg”

Odds ‘n Sods:

Japanese canned bread: Bread that comes in a can and stays fresh for up to three years

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SurvivalBlog reader C.K. recommended the book Marion And His Men or The Swamp Fox Of Carolina. It is the true story of Francis Marion, an American Revolutionary War hero. Marion was the basis for Mel Gibson’s role as “Benjamin Martin” in the movie The Patriot

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The folks at The Daily Reckoning (one of my daily “must reads”) quoted a very telling letter from one of their readers about the U.S. housing bubble: “When you mentioned Las Vegas real estate woes, I’d like to comment further,” begins a letter from a reader. ‘I am a Phoenix real estate agent and March 2005 there were 5,000 houses on the market, March 2006 there were 35,000 houses on the market. Today there are currently 40,000 houses on the market. Staggering!'” If you don’t already subscribe to The Daily Reckoning , then I highly recommend it. Subscriptions are free.

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The month-long global stock meltdown cost investors $2 trillion. Stock prices seem to be rebounding (along with commodities prices), but it was still a stomach-churning few weeks.

Are You Serious About Surviving?, by Doc

Jim:
Recently Paul Harvey mentioned that hospitals are making some expensive upgrades. It seems the standard operating tables, which are rated to hold a five hundred pound patient, are not sturdy enough. The standard doors, at forty two inches wide, are not wide enough to accommodate today’s obese patients, so they are being widened. Hydraulic hoists are being installed. Longer hypodermic needles are being ordered to penetrate thick layers of fat. Even the toilets are being reinforced.

I sincerely hope this does not apply to you, but the painful truth is, if you are so large you can’t fit through your front door, you are not going to survive any emergency. One of my friends, now deceased of an obesity related heart attack, broke his foot simply by walking across his living room floor. At more than 450 pounds, he could not walk even half a block. Simply walking to the car exhausted him.

I’m not trying to be cruel here, and I do sympathize with the overweight. With all the excitotoxins and appetite stimulants in today’s foods, it is difficult not to gain weight, no matter what you do. This area seems to be taboo among survival and preparedness writers, but it is critically important to your survival chances that you get in shape. I’m not talking winning marathons or iron man competitions here, just getting rid of the excess weight and getting some sensible exercise. My friend died while sitting at his computer, not running for his life in some emergency. Even if he had a helicopter to take him to a well-stocked cabin in the Canadian wilderness, it would have done him no good. All the firearms in the world would have helped him not one bit. A library full of hunting and survival books and videos and DVDs would have been useless. My friend dug his grave with his teeth.

It is not like me to point out a problem and not offer a solution. Here is my secret weapon against obesity: You may recall the grapefruit diet that was so popular decades ago. Recent research reveals that grapefruit contains an ingredient that aids in weight loss. Please read that last sentence carefully, because it does not say that grapefruit causes weight loss, only that it aids in weight loss. You can’t chase down a pizza with grapefruit juice and expect to do anything but gain weight.

The secret recipe could not be simpler. Simply mix half pineapple juice and half grapefruit juice, to make a one cup drink. That’s all there is to it. The combination of those two juices is a very powerful and fast appetite suppressant, and it usually hits me before I finish the glass. While it works anytime to fight the urge to eat, the best time to use it is before the bedtime snack. You know the one I am talking about, the one nobody admits to enjoying. Food taken before bedtime is not needed to fuel the body, because the body is at rest. That meal goes straight to your fat deposits. If you can eliminate that meal alone, you will most likely lose weight.

Don’t expect any ten pound a week miracles with this drink. Slow steady progress is the key to success. Then you will give your other preparations a chance to help in the event of an emergency. – Doc at www.bigsecrets.cc

JWR Replies: Thanks for mentioning diet and exercise. I concur with you wholeheartedly. I should emphasize those more in my writings. My apologies if I heretofore haven’t sufficiently emphasized them. Indeed, a key part of preparedness is physical fitness. The rigors of a post-collapse world may be too much for some SurvivalBlog readers, unless they demonstrate the determination to control their weight and get plenty of exercise. For those of you that are overweight and out of shape, start making some changes today. Eliminate junk food from your diet. Eat healthy catabolic snacks. If you are stuck behind a desk at your job, then at least get out on your lunch hour for a daily walk. Make that walk part of your daily routine. (It is a good idea to set the calendar on your PC with an alert pop-up message.) Park your car at the far end of the company parking lot. Use the stairs instead of escalators and elevators. Join a fitness club. Buy smaller plates. It is little things like these, collectively, that will gradually make you trim and fit. It just takes some discipline.

Letter From England Re: Gun Buy-Up Programs

Hi Jim,
I have to support you in your view of Gun ‘Buy-back’ schemes. When the law changed over here in the UK in 1996 and the private ownership of handguns was made illegal the government put in place a scheme where all handguns were to be handed into police stations and the owners were given what the government called ‘fair recompense’. This took no account of the market value of the firearms handed in and most were overvalued. So what happened was that many people were spending their time buying cheep handguns and immediately going to a police station handing in the weapons just purchased and making a profit. I heard of several people who made over £10,000 (GBP) in profit doing this. So why not take advantage of schemes like this and if you have, or can get hold of, any cheap weapons hand them make a profit, and put the money to a better use.
Allied to the illegality of many weapons in the UK, semi-automatic rifles (made illegal in 1987) and handguns (from 1996), crimes committed in which firearms have played a part have increased by over 1000%. Making firearms illegal only removes them from the hands of the law abiding people not the criminals, especially as breaking the law tends to be part of the job description of a criminal. (If you are going to break one law why not break another especially if it will help you get away with it.) Also, illegal firearms are ridiculously easy to acquire, and relatively cheap, in the large cities in the UK if you have the contacts. Regards, – Ross

JWR Replies: I would only recommend taking advantage of schemes like these, under the following circumstances: 1.) You can “donate” guns anonymously (no record of sellers name), 2.) You sell only junker guns with no practical value, 3.) You receive cash rather than amusement park or movie coupons, and 4.) You immediately invest the cash generated into practical/tactical guns, ammunition, and accessories. That would warm my heart!

Odds ‘n Sods:

Kentucky farmers and ranchers voice their distrust of NAIS.

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The 2006 Kansas wheat harvest is down 23% from last year. Stock up, now. Buy f rom your favorite storage food vendor before prices increase. We recommend Ready Made Resources (one of our first and most loyal advertisers) and Nitro-Pak (one of our affiliate advertisers)

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From a recent Reuters wire service story on the bankruptcy rate in the U.S.: “More than $300 billion in ARMs [Adjustable Rate Mortgages] are subject to interest rate resets this year and that figure is expected to reach $1 trillion in 2007, according to DB Global Markets Research.”

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I’ve noticed that the readership of SurvivalBlog in Europe is picking up substantially, and it is quite widely dispersed. I guess that I’d better start covering European issues in greater depth. Does anyone there care to join us as a correspondent? (Strictly for the glory, since I can’t afford to pay a writer. In fact I’m barely keeping my own family fed.)

Note From JWR:

It is gratifying to see that we’ve had 462,000+ unique visits to the blog site and that our readership is still steadily growing. Many thanks for spreading the word. If you haven’t done so already, please mention SurvivalBlog to your friends, co-workers, and members of your congregation.

The “Quotes of the Day” that will be posted for the next nine days were all suggested by Dave of Captain Dave’s. Be sure to visit his site. There is a wealth of free information there!