10:44 – It’s to be a mite chilly here in Sparta this week, culminating on Saturday with a high in the teens and a low near zero F (-16C), and that with sustained winds of about 20 MPH (32 KPH). We had 1 to 3 inches of snow forecast for overnight, but got only an inch or less. More snow in the forecast for tonight and tomorrow. We’re very happy that we have a woodstove for backup heat if the power fails.
Even with everything else going on, I’ve been able to get a bit of work done on the prepping book and a start on an outline for a PA novel. That novel, if I ever have time to write it, will be set chiefly in Sparta and its environs. It’ll document the effects of a slow slide into dystopia on a small rural community that after a catastrophic event gradually comes together to defend itself from outsiders and care for its own people. The government at all levels will not be the enemy, but will merely be overwhelmed by events. There may even be some federal government employees who are actually good guys. I haven’t decided on the type of catastrophe other than that it will have widespread effects on the population and it won’t kill the grid and all the vehicles and other electronics, let alone pacemakers and watches. Right now, the leading candidates are a cyberattack that severely impacts the grid but leaves parts of the electrical distribution system still functioning; an airborne bacterial plague; and the New Madrid fault letting go, cutting off the US east of the Mississippi from the food producing regions to the west.
15:10 – We’ve gotten a lot done today: built non-regulated chemical bags for biology kits, inventoried chemical bins, and built another set of steel shelves in my office to get general prepping supplies stored and organized in one place. Barbara’s friend Bonnie is coming up to Sparta next week for a visit, and Barbara wants to have most of the clutter cleared away by then. We’re gradually getting things the way we want them. Neither Barbara nor I has the endurance we used to, but I figure that slow but steady wins this race.
“…and the New Madrid fault letting go, cutting off the US east of the Mississippi from the food producing regions to the west.”
I suspect that an event like that will do more than just a slow slide into dystopia; it will be hugely catastrophic and bring Leviathan to its knees.
We got the same snowfall you did; a solid inch that will now freeze up and stay here until the next storm, at least.
Return to Serfdom:
http://www.freemansperspective.com/banning-cash-serfdom-time/
Gee, I wonder if my grad skool ABD in Medieval Studies will of any use, finally.
“New Hampshire Election Fraud Prediction”
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/138925920596/new-hampshire-election-fraud-prediction
Would they? Would they?
Bernie! Bernie! Bernie!
Oh, yes. I’m talking about the slow slide being the normal situation, with something catastrophic kicking things to a new level.
“Would they? Would they?”
Sure they would. In a haht-beat. Probably a done deal already. The same sort of operatives, maybe even the SAME ONES, will do likewise for the other half of the Party. Right now Sanders enjoys a 3-1 margin over Cankles but watch for a surprise “surge” by her as the urban districts suddenly get counted near the end, or, if not, she’ll just roll on outta there and keep the machine humming anyway. So fah, the indictment talk seems to have faded away, what a shock. And by “urban districts” I mean small cities like Nashua and Manchester and the southern third of the state that is swarming with ex-Massholes.
Should be an entertaining evening ahead; I’ll be washing down pretzels with Moxie and Dr Pepper and doing online courses on one monitor while I watch the freak show on the other.
I think it could make you weep if you weren’t laughing.
http://www.mediaite.com/online/triumph-the-insult-dog-visits-college-to-invade-students-safe-spaces/
Here are the pussies.
Sheeeeeeeit; I don’t gotta watch it; I can tell by the expressions on those wussies’ faces that their bungholes are tightly clenched and if they had the power, Triumph and his handlers would be guillotined on the spot. They’ve been through at least twelve years of publik skool indoctrination and then Advanced Placement PC in their first and subsequent college years.
Our very own Young Pioneers and Hitlerjugend; how the Russians must be laughing at us nowadays; we’re doing the same chit they did, and the Chicoms have been doing, for a good chunk of the past century.
_Rain & Ruin: An Endless Winter Novel_ (Volume 2) by Theresa Shaver
http://www.amazon.com/Rain-Ruin-Endless-Winter-Novel/dp/0988003058/
Book number two of a three book young adult apocalyptic series. The book format is trade paperback, my favorite, and is POD (print on demand). I will order the third book when it available. BTW, I would almost call this a novella rather than a novel due to its shortness.
It has been a rough seven years for those exposed to the nuclear winter in Alberta, Canada. Most people have died of radiation poisoning or starvation. The teenage girl and her young brother have spent an uneasy time in the bunker with plenty of food and clean water. But now, people know about the bunker.
My rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars (23 reviews)
Right now, the leading candidates are a cyberattack that severely impacts the grid but leaves parts of the electrical distribution system still functioning; an airborne bacterial plague; and the New Madrid fault letting go, cutting off the US east of the Mississippi from the food producing regions to the west.
Well, the NK dictator managed to get a 200 lb object into orbit. If he can figure out how to increase the payload by another 9,800 lbs, I would be very worried about him blowing up a nuke in orbit over the USA:
http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/09/asia/north-korea-rocket-launch/
That freakish Pillsbury Doughboy midget couldn’t figure out how tie his own shoes, but I’m sure he’s got a handful of “scientists” working on the caper even now. By the time they get to that point, maybe the Chicoms or Japanese or SORK forces will have taken care of the problem. We’ll have our own issues here, I’m pretty sure, and those clowns blowing something up in orbit will be the least of them.
Besides, which, we just gave away the store to the Iranians anyway.
Who can predict the next use of nuclear weapons? Could be over in Kashmir, a flash point for a long time; the Norks letting one fly at the Aleutians or Hawaii; or some musloid sleeper cells with a several top physicists and chemists and engineers among them, long since crossed over the Rio Grande and beavering away on their own nifty projects.
The Chinese will let NK keep doing it as long as it’s mostly an irritation or woryy to the west. They’ll stop him before he harms their customers.
The Chinese will let NK keep doing it as long as it’s mostly an irritation or woryy to the west. They’ll stop him before he harms their customers.
The USA being Chinese customers is part of the short game. The Chinese real goal is the long game where they dominate the world instead of the USA. Any path to the long game could be taken, including total destruction or defeat and occupation of the USA.
“The Chinese real goal is the long game where they dominate the world instead of the USA.”
That may BE their long game goal, and they DO think in terms of centuries while we can’t get beyond today and history started when we were born. OTOH, they don’t look to be in very good shape right now, on a number of levels and fronts, and if the West goes down the tubes, they will have preceded us by quite a bit. Their infrastructure is worse than ours and the urban areas are friggin’ nightmares of air, water and ground pollution that will last for centuries. And financially and economically they’re not the vaunted mythological powerhouse, either; as others have pointed out, whatever stats we get from them are likely to be utter bullshit and we ought to by now know the crappy performance of our own intel agencies.
Could be over in Kashmir, a flash point for a long time
Both sides want to occupy the area, so nukes would be unlikely.
One would think. But religious fanatics of both persuasions could get into position to make something like that happen. The massacres and atrocities between them have never stopped since the partition.
Yo, sportsfans; check out this podcast:
https://readfomag.com/2016/02/fo-podcast-episode-034-liberty-thought-leader-round-table/
Hey, get me the plutonium and the CNC machines and the other stuff I need and in a year I can make a two-stage fission device that you can use to get the shooting started. Though seriously, is Kashmir really the best place to use your only nuclear device. Wouldn’t, say, Mordor be a more productive use of limited resources?
“Wouldn’t, say, Mordor be a more productive use of limited resources?”
Yo, that’s got MY vote! Absolutely! Followed by Babylon-On-The-Hudson, Hollyweird, and then moving on to Mecca, Medina, Karachi, Islamabad, etc.
Another of wife’s pay checks is now late again past the 30-day deadline that her EMPLOYER set long ago. She’ll email and then get the run-around that it was passed on to so-and-so who will pass it on to another so-and-so who will be SURE to look into it and get back to her. Which they never do. So I’m betting that she’ll have to tell them once again that she can’t go do the NEXT gig until they DO pay her. At that point, miraculously they manage to send it out by Priority FedEx Overnight. Gee, where was it sitting all that time? Are they riding the float? While raking in millions? At their pricey K-Street digs in Mordor.
More very light snow flurries here and no wind. Again, a lot like late November than the northern New England winters we remember in February.
Plague; You probably want to read “The Last Centurion” http://www.amazon.com/Last-Centurion-John-Ringo/dp/1439132917/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1455070581&sr=8-1&keywords=the+last+centurion before you go that route, if you haven’t read it already. John Ringo does a very good job of writing a military thriller set against the backdrop of a worldwide epidemic.
John Ringo does a very good job of writing a military thriller set against the backdrop of a worldwide epidemic.
John Ringo has also written an entire series about a worldwide plague with the military solution, “Under a Graveyard Sky (Black Tide Rising)”:
http://www.amazon.com/Under-Graveyard-Black-Tide-Rising/dp/147673660X/
Looks like Trump and Bernie are rolling through New Hampshire. So, are we going to watch them roll through the next three weeks in the South, culminating on Super Tuesday in mostly SEC country?
I may not need to cross the lines here in deep red country and vote for Bernie after all. Wow, Trump and Bernie in November, what a pair! Which one will I vote for, hmmm?
Trump 34%.
Guess 66% don’t like you.
Stop the media. Two small mostly rural states don’t make a national election.
Trump, Kasich and some other RINO all finished in an exact dead heat, how shocking, three guys with the exact same percentage, almost like unto the Cankles coin toss in Iowa previously.
I don’t rule out the Evil Half of the Party somehow getting rid of Sanders, nor the Stupid Half dumping Trump; so it would be a guaranteed loss by the Stupid Half with their clown against Cankles. As is their wont for a long time now. Some kind of cute deal with the Evil Half, so, in essence, the whole Party is now evil.
We have our annual Town Meeting Day coming up next month so I’ll pitch in for that and our local town stuff, and that’s it.
Boy, I don’t guess Scott Adams could have been any further off. He should stick to the cartoons. Much more accuracy there.
Well, to be fair, voters in the NH primaries are a persnickety bunch, almost a stereotypical cartoon of sorts. And it’s deuced odd that the three Repubs got exactly the same percentages there; reports are of a LOT of money being spent and LOTS of slick operators be-bopping around. Trump was clearly out of his element during this particular phase of the campaigns; one assumes he’s a quick study, though. And Jebster so far has outspent everyone else put together and come up with a goose egg; wot a luser!
I might vote for Peyton Manning.
Hey, the sports talk guys here in town claim that if he announced for President, he would win!
Fine by me; we could do a LOT worse and I’m sure we will.
Pretty sure any random landowner with money in the bank would be better than the current occupant. Bonus points if said landowner tries to get out of it, like jury duty.
nick
How can IA and NH even matter? They’re mostly white. Votes should be adjusted for diversity.
United Airlines to discontinue service between Bakersfield and Houston. Oil prices take their toll.
[snip] Two small mostly rural states don’t make a national election. [snip]
And don’t have a Divine Right To Be First. Seriously, the Secretary of State (or whomever runs the elections in each of the several states) ought to get together and hash out a system whereby groups of states vote on a common date, and the various groups rotate position every four years.
Well primaries are just state elections and of course they can do what they want. What I object to is the media response and the idea that this is so important. If I have to hear ‘Trounce’ one more time…..
John Ringo does a very good job of writing a military thriller
I have mixed feelings about him as a writer. Some of his stuff is really good, but one book was a really over the top wish-fulfillment S&M porn. It was as ludicrous as Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds but without the humor. It was awful. I read on Wikipedia he wrote it to “get it out of his head”. I wish I could. He also said he never intended to publish it. I wish he had kept to his original intentions.
yep, I recommend him but always with the caveat to avoid the Ghost series.
There is a whole internet meme about it, “Oh no John Ringo, no!” or something similar.
He is a very FAST writer, and he’ll leave a storyline unfinished, which can be frustrating. Also, he’s partnered with folks on some series and the partner is no longer available to write in the series, which can leave details unfinished.
He has some stuff (possibly a trilogy) coming out in Larry Correia’s Monster Hunter universe later this year. It’s set in the 80’s.
I’ve read most of his stuff at least twice, and some more than that. Like candy bars or popcorn, they are good quick reads that are satisfying but might just condition you to want more 🙂
nick
(I have a rule never to start a Ringo book at midnight. I’ll be seeing the dawn if I do.)
“What I object to is the media response and the idea that this is so important.”
Hey, c’mon! It’s all just part of the SHOW! Where’s yer sense of FUN?
The rubes are simply being greased for the usual year-long bogus charade known here as “national elections.” Dwindling numbers of voters actually still pay attention and will dutifully trot down to the polls and thus encourage, enable and validate the very people who make their lives increasingly miserable and less free.
The progs and SJW types are true believers in Bolshevik Bernie’s line of gab; on the “other side,” we have more true believers who buy into either the billionaire carny barker or one or another of the RINO clowns who would ostensibly be better than Cankles.
Here’s a clue: they wouldn’t.
John Ringo does a very good job of writing a military thriller
I have mixed feelings about him as a writer. Some of his stuff is really good, but one book was a really over the top wish-fulfillment S&M porn. It was as ludicrous as Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds but without the humor. It was awful. I read on Wikipedia he wrote it to “get it out of his head”. I wish I could. He also said he never intended to publish it. I wish he had kept to his original intentions.
“Ghost” is his number one selling book. By far apparently. He crossed over into the romance novels on that one and got into the “Shades of Gray” crowd.
I am ashamed to admit that I liked it. And the other four books in the series.