Font Size:     

Category: prepping

Thursday, 10 November 2016

10:16 – The civil unrest and rioting have started, although so far they seem relatively restrained. Vandalism is rampant, some streets and highways have been blocked by rioters, a few police cars burned, and some isolated shootings. My guess is that riot organizers were caught unprepared by the Trump victory. It took them the better part of a day to get anything rolling, and even then it’s been limited to large cities. Maybe the special snowflakes, overwhelmingly girls and women, are too busy crying, wailing, pulling their hair, and gnashing their teeth. If someone is trying to get boots on the ground, millions of special snowflakes don’t give them much to work with, other than as cannon fodder.

The progs are claiming that Clinton won the election because she got more votes than Trump. That’s true, but only if you count the millions of votes that were cast by dead Democrats, illegal aliens, people who don’t exist, people who voted more than once, and others who were not actually entitled to vote. Without those votes, Trump would have had an overwhelming majority in the popular vote and probably more than 450 electoral votes.

The progs also claim that people with college degrees supported Clinton, implicitly and sometimes explicitly suggesting that smart people voted for Clinton and only stupid ones voted for Trump. It would be more accurate to say that people who underwent four years or more of progressive indoctrination tended to support Clinton. Not to mention that college degrees are by no means equal. My guess is that people who have college degrees in real disciplines like hard sciences and engineering–which is to say the really smart ones–broke strongly for Trump. The ones with degrees in non-rigorous non-disciplines like social “science” and education–which is to say the ones who are stupider than average–broke strongly for Clinton. Or, in short, smart people, whether or not they have a college degree, voted Trump. Morons voted for Clinton.

Barbara commented on her journal yesterday that she was very happy this election was over. The problem is, it’s not over. It’s just beginning. The progs haven’t given up. They never give up. The political ruling class–nearly all Democrat politicians, the vast majority of Republican politicians, Wall Street bankers, large corporations, and so on–and their underclass clients will fight tooth and nail to obstruct the new administration, and the prospect of violent civil unrest remains high for the foreseeable future. Stay prepared, and keep your powder dry. We’re in the very early stages of what may turn to be a violent civil war, if not a full-blown revolution.

It’s odd that anti-progressives are so happy that Trump won. Trump is, after all, what not long ago would have been considered a liberal Democrat. It’s come to this, that so many of us are happy that the President-elect is not as bad as he might have been. Not good, not even acceptable, just not as bad as he might have been.

So we’ll keep preparing here, in the expectation of bad (worse) things to come. Today, I’m going to order a propane cooktop to replace the electric cooktop.

Read the comments: 76 Comments

Tuesday, 8 November 2016

09:03 – With zero days left until the election, we’ll just make popcorn tonight and watch the game. If the vote is counted honestly, Trump should win in a landslide. Of course, the chance of an honest count is near zero, so the supposed outcome will depend on how successful Clinton supporters are at stealing votes.

I just realized yesterday that I no longer had the means to prepare sterile culture media or agar. In Winston, we were at about 800 feet (244 meters) elevation. In Sparta, we’re at about 3,000 feet (914 meters) elevation. That’s a huge difference for sterilizing things in a pressure canner.

The pressure canner I used down in Winston is a cheap Walmart unit that tops out at 10.7 PSI. That was fine for working at 800 feet elevation, but it’s totally inadequate at our current elevation. So I just ordered a pressure canner on Amazon that will do 15+ PSI. In addition to sterilizing culture media, the 15 PSI unit can be used safely to home can meats and other low-acid foods, which the older unit cannot. We’ll just re-purpose the older unit as a large cooking pot and pressure cooker (versus canner).

I thought about ordering an All American pressure canner. They’re US-made, built like tanks, and if we were going to do a lot of canning I’d have bitten the bullet and paid the price for one of them. They cost more than three times as much as the Presto 23-quart unit I ended up ordering. This unit can process 7 quart jars or 18 pint jars at a time, and is more than sufficient for our needs. I will need to order some spare parts, like a gasket, pressure regulator, and pressure gauge. Even with all of those, the Presto unit comes in at just over $100 total.

As regular readers may remember, I’m not a big fan of home canning for general food preservation. It’s very expensive in terms of equipment, supplies, fuel, time, and effort. For veggies and other low-cost foods, it makes more sense to dry them or just to buy them in cans to start with. I mean, what’s the point to using a $0.75 canning jar and lid, along with all the work it takes, to preserve a can of vegetables that you could buy for $0.60?

One place home canning may make sense for some people is in preserving high-value foods like meats, particularly if you buy them in bulk when they’re on sale. Versus commercial canned meats like those from Keystone (via Walmart), it’s about break even cost-wise, but the real advantage to home canning meats is that you can can stuff that’s not readily available commercially. For example, white-meat chicken is readily available commercially canned, and indeed we keep a fair amount of it on-hand. But Barbara and I also like dark-meat chicken, which is very difficult to find in commercial cans. And then there’s bacon. A pint canning jar holds about a pound of meat, and a quart about two pounds. That means that with six or eight dozen wide-mouth quart jars, we can keep 150 to 200 pounds of home-canned meats on hand.

The danger with home-canning meats is botulism. The bacteria itself is destroyed by boiling, as is the toxin that bacteria produces. But the spores of that bacteria are destroyed only by extended heating at temperatures well above boiling, which is why proper canning is essential for meats. The spores themselves are not dangerous to consume, except for infants (which is why infants should never be fed honey). The danger is that in an improperly canned container of meat, those spores may germinate, producing deadly botulinus toxin. That’s why all responsible authorities always note that home-canned meats should always be cooked very thoroughly before consumption. If they are tainted by botulism toxin, cooking them thoroughly renders them safe to eat.

Our 400W off-grid solar power starter kit showed up from Amazon yesterday. Now all I need to do is get batteries to charge and an inverter large enough to drive the well pump. Before I finalize plans, I need to get a well guy out here to look at our well. I have no idea how deep the well is, how deep the pump is, or how deep the water table is. I’d like to know all of that, and perhaps get him to install a new pump. I’m assuming the one in there is quite old and probably over-sized. This well was here long before the house was built, and no one seems to know anything about it. There’s not even a plaque inside the well casing, which is a pretty good indication by itself that this well is very old.

Read the comments: 188 Comments

Monday, 7 November 2016- guest post –some thoughts on ham radio

In response to H Combs question the other day, I said I would post links to my previous comments about getting started in ham radio, from a prepper point of view.

Here is the full text of one comment I wrote for another site.  The poster’s question was about the using the Baofang UV5 handy talkie for communicating with his parents in another state, and what would be involved in making that happen.  Following the text is a link to the original comment, and all the other replies.  Many of the replies have a lot of good info too.  [I’ve added comments in square brackets today.]

 

nick flandrey says:
June 13, 2014 at 2:19 pm

I own this radio too [Baofang UV-5Rplus+], and like it for an entry level radio. It will give you access to local repeaters, (which will increase your effective range) and let you practice radio use with the entry level license- the Technician Class.

Getting that first license is straightforward and (relatively) easy depending on your knowledge of basic electronics. REALLY basic. Many of the exam questions are things like “what is the symbol for a resister?”

The quickest route to passing the exam is to use one of the online practice exams (free) and just keep taking it until you can consistently pass. You can see the correct answer to the questions and you can just learn those. All of the questions on the exam come from the exact same pool of questions as the practice, so this is a good, fast, way to prepare to pass the exam. While you are practicing, once you can pass the Technician test, start learning the questions for the General test. Depending on your starting knowledge, you can learn the questions and answers in a few days of study. DON’T spend money on this. There are several free services online.

Once you are passing the practice tests consistently, go online and find a local time and place to take the actual test. Most cities have them frequently. There is a small fee for the test. The ARRL website has links to training and testing. When you get to the test site, tell the volunteer examiner that you will be taking the Technician class test, and if you pass, you would also like to take the General class test. It doesn’t cost any more to take the second test after you pass the first, and it will give you a lot of additional frequencies and modes to use that will let you communicate longer distances directly. [this is important!  You will need the General Class to use voice on HF, which is the only way to get out of your immediate area if the grid, and UHF/VHF repeaters are down.]

Please note that this is NOT the traditional route to a license! There are many in the ham “community” that really frown on this approach. It is the quickest way to get on the air and use your radio legally (and you should not use it illegally, unless WROL conditions are likely to exist for a long time.) MANY folks in the prepper and emergency response community take this route because they just want to be able to use their radios and communicate with their teams, and have no interest in joining the larger ham community. I was this way when I started, and I used this method.

The traditional method, and a better way to actually LEARN about radios, ham, and the ham community, is to join a local club and get guidance and help from them. There is a long tradition of mentorship (having a mentor, traditionally called an “Elmer” to help train you and answer your questions, as well as indoctrinate you into the language, techniques, and culture of the amateur community). They would recommend starting with one of the ARRL test prep books, and learning the material vs. just learning the questions so you can pass. The books are well written, easy to follow, FULL of useful information, and can be had cheaply if you can find them second hand. The questions don’t change that often, so the books are good for a while. The info in the books is good even if they are older, just use an online prep site for the actual questions.

I chose to quickly pass the test, get on the air, and then go back and read the books to fill in the HUGE gaps in my knowledge. I’ve found that I like many aspects of the ham hobby and am slowly joining in the hobby, not just using my radio as practice for TEOTWAWKI. The hobby is MASSIVE with an enormous amount of different areas to focus on or learn about. (You can talk to the space station for example.) There is also a long history of public service (it’s one of the reasons amateurs are given use of the otherwise very valuable spectrum for free.) Many in the prepper and emergency response communities will find a lot of crossover with ARES or RACES which are ham organizations that provide communications support in the event of an emergency. There are others as well- Red Cross, Salvation Army, LDS, NOAA all have amateur supported groups.

Also, don’t get frustrated! Like any culture, amateur radio has an established language, history, and procedures. It can take a while to learn those things, and to feel comfortable. A local club will help tremendously with those things. One note, it can be very hard to get a “straight answer” to some questions. The hobby is large, the participants all have their own focuses, and most are reluctant to give limiting, definitive answers without knowing a lot about your particular situation. Some examples are “what radio should I buy? What antenna works best for (this specific thing) I want to do? How do I talk with my aunt in Idaho?” This is another area where having locals who know you can be hugely helpful.

Finally, I found some accessories will really help you use your radio. You will want a better antenna. They are cheap on ebay, less than $10, and will help. Also, a battery eliminator is a good bet, and the extended battery pack is highly recommended. I’d also suggest a mid-price dual band antenna on a magnet mount for your vehicle ($40) Using a handheld inside a vehicle is problematic. If you are worried about stealth use, a headset/earphone will help keep you quiet.

Get your license, get on the air on a local repeater, and practice! Most folks in the community are friendly, welcoming and responsive. When you find someone who is not, just ignore them and move on. You might find that you have added not just a prep, but a new hobby.

good luck,

nick

oh, and to answer your original question. If you and your parents are in states covered by a repeater system, tied to other states, like the Saltgrass Network, or Winsystem, you may be able to use that radio to talk them during normal times when the repeaters and the internet are up. To talk state to state directly you will need radios capable of HF frequencies, a General class license, antennas, and some other stuff. Even buying used gear, you could spend $500 – $1000 at each end. The key in either case, is practice ahead of time.

/end of copy paste

 

link

 

Nick

Read the comments: 8 Comments

Saturday, 5 November 2016

10:03 – Rats! Barbara and I early-voted Thursday, and she won’t let me go to vote again. I figured I’d go vote again yesterday, today, and Tuesday, for a total of four votes. I thought that was my duty, to help offset the number of dead people that will be voting for Clinton. But Barbara says once is enough, and refuses to go vote again or even let me go vote again. Oh, well. According to my poll figures, Trump is the certain winner anyway.

With only three days left until the election, things are really starting to get tense. Trump will win if there’s anything near an honest count. Everyone knows that, and the FSA/BLM terrorists are no doubt champing at the bit awaiting the opportunity to go out and riot, loot, and burn. Fortunately, although Barbara pointed out an article in the paper yesterday that reported that one sixth of the population of this county is on food stamps, we really don’t have any FSA/BLM problem here. But I sure wouldn’t want to be down in Winston or any other large city on Tuesday or the rest of next week. Things may get a bit exciting in urban/suburban areas if Trump is declared the winner.

If you aren’t yet prepared for civil unrest, which there’s a very good chance of, now is the time to get prepared. You have the rest of today through Monday to do so. With gangsters running the country and millions of their clients thick on the ground in urban areas, we Normals have to be prepared for any eventuality. So go out to vote, early and often, and then head home, load up, and batten down the hatches. Nothing major may happen, but then again it might.

I keep thinking about the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. Right up until the barbarians started streaming through the gates, most Romans thought everything was completely normal. They were shocked when they found themselves being run though with barbarian spears. The point is, collapse happens very quickly. That’s not to say that this country is imminently in danger of complete collapse, but the prospect is there and if/when it does happen it will come as a complete surprise to most people. Don’t be one of those.

Read the comments: 85 Comments

Friday, 4 November 2016

10:06 – Updated polling results. Last time, I surveyed five people, of whom only four were likely voters. The results were Trump 100% and everyone else 0%. But that was when Barbara had told me she wasn’t going to vote. Yesterday, she changed her mind because not voting would essentially be a vote for Clinton. So, with the sample size now five, the results are now Trump 125% and everyone else 0%. Even with a large margin of error, things are looking dim for Clinton.

Barbara called me on her way back from Winston yesterday when she was about half an hour from home. She suggested picking me up on the way past and heading into Sparta to refill her gas tank and vote. Gas had gone up Monday from $2.13 to $2.19, and it was still at that price. No line. So we filled up and headed for the early voting place downtown. No lines there, either. We voted and headed home, all within ten or fifteen minutes. I was pleased to see that, although the voting machines were electronic, they produced a paper audit trail.

As we got in the car to return home, I commented to Barbara that the last time I’d voted Republican was for Nixon in 1972. Barbara and I were among those millions (or tens of millions) of “hidden” Trump voters. Not that we like Trump. Both of us despise him, but he’s infinitely better than Clinton. It felt very strange to me to be marking the Republican boxes instead of the Libertarian boxes, but there it is. I mean if I, as a radical anarchist libertarian and a former member of the Libertarian National Committee, voted Republican, how many votes can the LP expect to get? My guess is that a huge majority of those who are either large-L Libertarians or small-l libertarians will be voting for Trump.

The Colonial pipeline fire was still not completely extinguished as of late last night, but Colonial is still saying they expect Pipeline One to be back in full service as of this Sunday. They obviously know things that I don’t, so at this point I’ll believe them. Of course, even once they start pumping again, there’s a lot of empty pipe between the break and the tank farm in Greensboro. They’ll have lost a week or so of transfer, but I’m assuming the gigantic tank farm has enough capacity to buffer that loss and continue distribution uninterrupted. If so, the disruption may be minimal.

Barbara made a small Costco run yesterday on her way out of Winston. The only food she picked up was two boxes of Ritz crackers, two dozen cans of Kirkland green beans, and two 3-liter bottles of Kirkland olive oil. FedEx showed up here yesterday morning with my Walmart order. That included a gift Barbara wanted for her sister and four 2-pound boxes of Alpo Variety Snaps for Colin. As usual, I filled in with dry staples to get to the $50 minimum for free shipping, so we also got a 5-pound bag of store-brand macaroni and ten 1-pound bags of egg noodles. The macaroni was indistinguishable visually from the name-brand stuff we get in one-pound boxes at Costco, and we already knew that the store-brand egg noodles from Walmart are indistinguishable from the name-brand ones Barbara gets at the supermarket. Everything was in plastic bags and had best-by dates from 18 months to two years out, so I’m not going to worry about repackaging it.

I also ordered a 400W off-grid solar power starter kit, which gives me four panels and a PWM charge controller. For a functional system, I still need to add a couple of deep-cycle batteries and an inverter, which I’ll do shortly. And the good news is that all of this solar stuff is eligible for a 30% federal tax credit and possibly a state tax credit as well, so our actual out-of-pocket cost will be only a small fraction of the total cost.

And I see that the FBI has issued an alert. They’re apparently expecting muslim terrorists to pull something on Monday in New York, Texas, and/or Virginia. As alway, keep your eyes open, and stay away from urban areas and crowds.

Read the comments: 55 Comments

Thursday, 3 November 2016

08:47 – Barbara left about 0740 to drive down to Winston for a doctor appointment, various shopping errands, a haircut, and lunch with a friend. I expect her back late this afternoon, so it’ll be wild women and parties for Colin and me until she returns.

Colonial’s estimate that they’ll have Pipeline One back in full service by the end of this week is looking more and more questionable with each passing day. The morning paper ran a headline that says the pipeline is still burning. After they get the fire out, they need to let it cool before they can even inspect it, let alone repair it. Unless they’ve spent this week building a bypass, I can’t see any way it’ll be back up by the day after tomorrow.

The timing of this event is very different from the one a couple months ago. In the earlier failure, the problem didn’t hit the news for ten days after the actual failure. That meant that the fuel still in the pipeline had time to reach the tank farm in Greensboro and the pipe itself was empty. This time, the break hit the news just a couple of days after the actual failure, so there’s still fuel in the pipe, still being delivered to the tank farm. That means distribution from the farm to gas stations has continued pretty much normally. Some gas stations are reporting sporadic delivery issues, but basically gas stations are still open and still selling fuel. The crunch will really hit around the 10th of this month, when resupply goes down completely. It looks to me as though analysts’ initial estimates that fuel delivery won’t be resumed until the late November through mid-December period were probably spot-on. It’s like watching a train wreck from orbit. It hasn’t happened yet, but you know it’s going to happen and there’s not a thing you can do about it. I suspect things are going to really start to bite just after Election Day. Just what we need.

Meanwhile, the election looms. Depending on the results, over the few days following the election we may see anything from business as usual to widespread violent civil unrest in the cities. If Clinton “wins”, I would expect little to no violence; if Trump wins, all bets are off. But the main point is that no matter which of the candidates is declared the winner, half the country will not accept the results. If it’s Trump declared winner, the progs, BLMers, and so on may be out in force, looting and burning. If it’s Clinton, things will be calmer in the short term, but don’t discount the burning resentment present in tens of millions of well-armed Trump supporters. No matter what happens on Tuesday, we’ll all wake up Wednesday morning to a very dangerous situation. Either way, it won’t take much to blow the lid off. We’re about as ready as we can be here to hunker down and watch the game. Are you ready wherever you are?

In terms of last-minute preps, Barbara is picking up some food at Costco today if she has time to make the stop. She’ll fill her gas tank when she gets back up to Sparta. Mine is already full. I have 15 more pounds of pasta and egg noodles on order with Walmart, which is due to arrive Monday. I also have a 400W off-grid solar power starter kit on order from Amazon, also due to arrive Monday. Other than that, we’ll just sit back and watch what happens next week.

Read the comments: 74 Comments

Tuesday, 1 November 2016

09:35 – Déjà vu all over again. Except this time it’s different. At least one and possibly both of the Colonial Pipeline pipes was damaged yesterday by an explosion and fire. That’s 100+ million gallons of fuel per day that won’t be making it to the East Coast for an indefinite period. No word yet on how long it will take to repair the lines, but my guess is it’ll be a lot longer than last time. Rather than just having to deal with a fractured line and a large pool of gasoline, this time they’ll have to deal with the aftermath of an explosion and fire.

Fuel progresses through the pipelines at a walking pace, which means it takes a week or ten days to get from the site of the break to the Colonial tank farm in Greensboro. So that’s the good news. We have another ten days’ worth of fuel that’s still in transit. The bad news is that that’s all we’ll get for some time to come. When the pipeline broke on September 9th, the news didn’t hit the media for ten days. During that time, people were filling their tanks normally. By the time most people became aware of what had happened, repairs were underway. Panic buying starting on September 19th and 20th quickly caused big fuel shortages, but it was only a week or so before supplies resumed.

This time, it may be a lot different. The 100+ million gallons/day that the pipeline delivers is a lot of fuel, but only when consumption is normal. When people realize there’s a problem, the panic buying starts. Instead of waiting until they’re down to a quarter tank before filling up, as most people usually do, everyone rushes out to fill their tanks, and gas stations quickly run dry. Panic breeds more panic, so the new norm becomes to keep your tank as full as possible. When people see an open gas station, they get in line even if they’re nearly full already. There’s no way the distribution system can deal with this kind of volume even with the pipeline running at full capacity.

Right now, we’re in the calm before the storm. Supplies aren’t yet restricted. Prices are going up and will continue to do so, but gasoline remains available, as it will for the next few days. As the pipeline runs dry, more and more gas stations will be unable to get gas, and panic buying will start occurring in spades. My advice is to get ahead of the curve. Panic-buy today, regardless of price. It’ll cost more tomorrow, and much more next week. Minimize your driving. Car pool to work. Put off any long trips you have scheduled, at least until the supply situation clears up.

Barbara is scheduled to drive down to Winston on Thursday to spend the day running errands. We’ll keep an eye on the situation. It takes only four or five gallons of gas for Barbara to get down to Winston and back, but depending on the developing situation it may turn out that we’d be better off rescheduling that trip.

Read the comments: 51 Comments

Monday, 31 October 2016

20:20 – Go fill up your gas tanks now. Colonial Pipeline #1 just blew up near the break from a couple weeks ago. My Trooper has 6 miles on the trip. Barbara’s car was down to half a tank, so she just now headed out to fill her tank.

09:27 – I got my Fire HD7 updated to Fire OS 5.x yesterday. The current version of the Silk browser is still pathetic, but at least it’s better than the 4.x version. I installed Adguard, which seems to work well in blocking ads.

There’s little point to visiting news websites right now. All of them, from MSM to Alt-Right, are focused on the election, and none of them has anything useful to say. Polls, polls, polls, Comey, Comey, Comey, Weiner, Weiner, Weiner, blah, blah, blah. Who gives a shit?

I did see one interesting post by a Tennessee state senator who took a drive through his district and into SE Kentucky to look at the autumn leaves and political signs. He spotted two Clinton signs and 56 Trump signs. Granted, that area, like most of the US, hates Clinton, but even so. I also saw an article about someone dumping a load of cow shit at an Ohio Democrat headquarters. That seems only fair, returning their property to them.

Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your point of view), no one seems to be shooting politicians yet or committing other violent acts. I have noticed that the muslim scum seem to be very quiet lately, which leads me to think they’re Clinton supporters. One or two terrorist bombings/shootings would probably shift a lot of votes to Trump.

I’ve had a lot of emails from people concerning their plans for election day. Most of them, particularly those in small towns and rural areas, plan to treat it as they would any other day. A fair percentage of those who live in larger towns and cities plan to stick pretty close to home next Tuesday and Wednesday. I don’t expect any widespread violence, but I’ve been wrong before. And, sitting where we are and as prepared as we are, that’s easy for me to say. If we lived in an urban/suburban setting, I’d be a lot more concerned. If that’s your situation, you now have a week left to make at least minimal preparations.

Read the comments: 105 Comments

Saturday, 29 October 2016

10:53 – I decided to start using the standard WP template formatting rather than formatting each paragraph separately. We’ll see how it looks in serif rather than sans-serif.

Dave Starr posted this comment on yesterday’s entry, and I thought it deserved a more complete reply than I could make in comments:

I’m really enjoying your LTS and other aspects of prepping articles. I’ve lived outside the USA for more than 10 years now, seriously considering moving back in the next year or two though. One of my main reasons would be LTS. Americans are spoiled by the cheapness of food in the USA and the broad choices. In most of the world, building up a few shelves of LTS items would be akin to storing shelves of gold bullion for the average person.

Year ago I used to follow the LDS guidance on food storage. We kept a lot of hard winter wheat in 5 gallon food safe containers, placing a small block of dry ice atop the wheat and letting the C02 sublimate, then sealing the containers. I assume the current practice of using oxygen absorbers is a superior way to go?

Checking into the availability of dry ice where we live now (it’s also become like gold), I found that the commercial dry ice manufacturing process is very simple, basically nothing more than capturing and compressing the C02 “frost” that forms when you discharge a C02 fire extinguisher.

Given that the ability to chill or even freeze things temporarily might be useful from time to time in long term survival situations, what are your thoughts on perhaps storing a commercial cylinder or two of C02?

No, most of us in the US don’t appreciate just how good we have it in terms of consumer goods. I’m 63 years old, and I’ve spent a total of about a month outside the US and Canada. I suspect very few Americans other than those in the military have been outside the US even that much. Moving back is a good idea. I think things are going to get worse and worse all over the world over the next five to ten years–we’re watching it happening now–and I think the US and Canada are the safest places to ride that out.

Yes, dry ice is as good a method as any of eliminating oxygen from storage containers. I use and recommend oxygen absorbers because they’re inexpensive, effective, safe to handle, and readily available from the LDS store, Amazon, and other vendors. Back 40 years ago, I did use dry ice when it was the only practical choice. Once oxygen absorbers became readily available, I started using them exclusively.

I had the problem with dry ice brought home to me in spades one day when I was visting a prepper friend, back when we were still called survivalists. He and his wife had just repackaged a dozen or so large Mason jars of dry staples, using dry ice from the ice cream shop to eliminate oxygen. Unfortunately, they didn’t wait long enough before they screwed the lids and bands on all the Mason jars. I’d showed up just after they finished. We were standing at the kitchen door when there was a loud bang from the pantry. His wife ran toward the pantry door. Fortunately, he grabbed her, because just then there was a second loud bang. I actually drew my .45, because I had no idea what was going on. He started shouting, “The Mason jars!” and told me what they’d just finished doing. I suggested he wait at least several hours before he entered the pantry. He told me later that a few more of the jars had exploded, and then when he finally entered the pantry the next morning there were shards of glass all over the place, including some embedded in the wood, as well as scattered food all over the floor and shelves. The lids just blew off some of them, leaving the glass undamaged, but at least a couple of the jars had fragmented. A carbon dioxide bomb is no joke, even in a plastic soda bottle. The takeaway here is to be extremely careful if you use dry ice, and NEVER EVER use it in a glass container.

Adiabatic cooling is certainly one option, but storing compressed carbon dioxide is very expensive, unsustainable, and dangerous. (I once saw the results of a poorly-secured compressed gas cylinder falling and breaking its valve. It blew through a concrete block wall into the neighboring lab, banged around and destroyed a lot of expensive equipment, and finally came to rest after cracking a poured reinforced concrete foundation wall. Fortunately, other than the guy who loosened the retaining strap to start the whole event, no one was around when it happened. He was uninjured, but I suspect he needed to change underwear.) Better to depend on evaporative cooling with clay containers, making provision for at least some electric power to drive standard or Peltier coolers, etc.

Read the comments: 68 Comments

Friday, 28 October 2016

09:54 – We got more flour repackaged yesterday. Today we’ll finish up repackaging rice and oats. The oats will use the last of our 3-liter bottles. The rice will go into 2-liter bottles because rice flows very freely through the narrower mouths of the 2-liter bottles. Any additional fluffy stuff (flour, oats, etc.) we repackage will go into LDS 1-gallon foil/Mylar bags. We’ll continue to use 2-liter bottles for free-flowing stuff like sugar and rice.

When Lori, our USPS carrier, stopped by yesterday to pick up a shipment, I asked how she was doing on repackaging the bulk staples she’d picked up at Sam’s Club last weekend. She’d finished repackaging the sugar and rice, but was waiting for her brother to deliver more 2-liter bottles for the bagged flour. I told her we had plenty of empty 2-liter bottles and that she was welcome to a trash bag or two full of them, but she said she didn’t need them right now. I offered to lend her a flexible silicone funnel with a stem that’s a slip fit for the inside of a 2-liter bottle and makes it much easier to transfer flour. She accepted with thanks. I asked if she was using oxygen absorbers and she said she intended to order some on Amazon. I told her we had plenty and offered her some to use with her repackaged flour and rice. She insisted on paying me for them, although I told her that I bought them in packs of 100 from the LDS on-line store, and they only cost twelve cents each. I then gave her a small Mason jar of the oxygen absorbers and a one-minute tutorial on how to use them.

Barbara and I have been trying different main courses that can be made exclusively with LTS food. Last night, we made a skillet dinner with one pound of ground beef (we actually used frozen, but it would work just as well with the Keystone canned ground beef we keep in stock), one pound of macaroni, one can of green beans, two cups of Augason Farms cheesy broccoli soup in four cups of water, and three tablespoons of onion flakes. It was quick and easy to make, and turned out very well. In fact, we’re having the leftovers for dinner tonight and decided to add it to our main meal rotation. Barbara did suggest dropping the onion from three to two tablespoons, but she’s not a big fan of onion or garlic. These ingredients make sufficient to serve as a main meal for four to six people.

We’re spending some time today and tomorrow on inventorying kits and components. We’re at a comfortable level of finished goods inventory for this time of year, when we’re shipping an average of only one kit per day, but I want to get ready to build a lot more as kit sales ramp up in late November and through December and January.

Clinton and Obama’s wife made a campaign stop in Winston-Salem yesterday, at the Lawrence Joel Veterans’ Memorial Coliseum. The front-page article in the paper this morning said the crowd was estimated at 11,000, with a vast majority being women, but I have my doubts. The photograph they ran with the article showed Clinton and Obama on-stage with maybe a hundred people in the stands. There was a large section of empty seats visible, and a few populated rows of seats with a large curtain blocking off the seating behind them. My guess is that actual attendance was probably a few hundred people. Clinton rallies are notorious for being lightly attended, while Trump rallies are invariably standing room only.

Read the comments: 74 Comments
// ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- // end of file archive.php // -------------------------------------------------------------------------------