Category: Preparedness

One completely non-sexy topic within preparedness….cooking

For some reason, it’s just struck me how important it is to know how to cook from scratch. What works with what. Basic techniques, and advanced ones. Ingredients, and how to maximize them.

It’s just not a huge topic in many preparedness talks – but if you think about it, it’s probably one of the more critical ones. Food preparation isn’t just an energy source, but it can also be a morale booster, a barter item, and an employment source.

Folks have two basic strategies regarding cooking and preparedness.

One strategy is to use prepackaged items as much as possible – MRE’s, freeze dried items, pre-cooked and canned items, and the like. Not much prep time to get a meal together, but oftentimes the meals become boring fairly fast. (ah yes, the old Tabasco Sauce cure. They still sell the little shot bottles of Tabasco, by the way. Not inexpensive, but I have a few that I throw in a bag if I’m going overnight. Brings back memories, it does. Mmmmmm….nothing like a can of pork patties and some crackers to feast on. Which is where the Tabasco sauce comes in…anyway, back to my point) Once meals become boring it’s harder to keep eating. Matter of fact, there are folks out there, kids and adults both, who will happily become malnourished or worse if they can’t find food they find palatable.

The second strategy is storing bulk foods, spices, and growing your own as much as possible. Call it the homestead style, if you’d like. Learn how to cook those basics, and get those you’re with to experiment and learn too. Learn how to prepare some things that you might find “strange”, but work perfectly well. The added plus to this form of pushing the envelope is, if done right, you and those you’re with will develop a tolerance of other foods and ingredients. Could come in pretty handy in a situation where you can’t find your regular chow.

This also leads into another facet of preparedness supplies.

Cookbooks.

I have a shelf section (actually a couple of shelves) that are devoted to nothing but cookbooks. Nothing new in there, all bought used, and some that are turn of the century. Things like Pioneer Kitchen, The Frugal Gourmet series, and even old Good Housekeeping cookbooks. Great spots to find them are library sales, garage sales, and second hand bookstores.

Now I’m gonna go finish off those beef stroganoff crepes I just made. Excuse me….I’ll see you folks later!

-Greg

What the Double Dip Recession Will Look Like

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This is a great article that sums up how we got to where we are currently with the economy, what people are thinking about the economy and what’s likely ahead for us.

http://finance.yahoo.com/career-work/article/110344/what-the-double-dip-recession-will-look-like

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Here are the points I came away with (most of this text comes right out of the article):

Nearly two-thirds of Americans believe the economy has yet to hit bottom
A growing and vocal minority of economists believes that there will be a double-dip recession primarily because of the intransigence of high unemployment and the rapidly faltering housing market.
The cause of the 2008-2009 recession:
The first trigger was the drop in housing prices, which robbed many people of their primary access to capital. As that access disappeared, so did the availability of credit. Consumer buying power evaporated and business cut inventory and production. Joblessness rose. Finally, consumer confidence plunged.
Over 17% of the official unemployment numbers, or 1.4 million people, have been out of work for over 99 weeks, nearly 2 years.
they are no longer eligible to receive unemployment insurance benefits, unless congress extends benefits again – which just adds to this problem.
Unemployment claims are running well above expectations, and recently hit a six-month high.
There is nearly no jobs creation in the private sector.
Real estate prices continue to drop, particularly in the hardest hit regions such as California, Nevada, Florida and Michigan.
The federal, state and local governments are in no position to lend assistance to businesses, most of which lack access to capital.
Banks are not prepared to lend to small businesses, especially those with modest balance sheets and relatively low sales. This presents a problem for employment since companies with less than one hundred workers have traditionally been the largest creators of jobs.
The second dip of the recession that ended in 2009, according to economists and the federal government, is likely to begin within the next two quarters if certain conditions are met:
These conditions weren’t given, but it’s pretty obvious that the lack of recovery in key areas, like jobs and housing, are critical to a recovery.
  • Nearly two-thirds of Americans believe the economy has yet to hit bottom
  • A growing and vocal minority of economists believes that there will be a double-dip recession primarily because of the intransigence of high unemployment and the rapidly faltering housing market.
  • The cause of the 2008-2009 recession:
    • The first trigger was the drop in housing prices, which robbed many people of their primary access to capital. As that access disappeared, so did the availability of credit. Consumer buying power evaporated and business cut inventory and production. Joblessness rose. Finally, consumer confidence plunged.
  • Over 17% of the official unemployment numbers, or 1.4 million people, have been out of work for over 99 weeks, nearly 2 years.
    • they are no longer eligible to receive unemployment insurance benefits, unless congress extends benefits again – which just adds to this problem.
  • Unemployment claims are running well above expectations, and recently hit a six-month high.
    • There is nearly no jobs creation in the private sector.
    • Real estate prices continue to drop, particularly in the hardest hit regions such as California, Nevada, Florida and Michigan.
  • The federal, state and local governments are in no position to lend assistance to businesses, most of which lack access to capital.
  • Banks are not prepared to lend to small businesses, especially those with modest balance sheets and relatively low sales. This presents a problem for employment since companies with less than one hundred workers have traditionally been the largest creators of jobs.
  • The second dip of the recession that ended in 2009, according to economists and the federal government, is likely to begin within the next two quarters if certain conditions are met:
    • These conditions weren’t given, but it’s pretty obvious that the lack of recovery in key areas, like jobs and housing, are critical to a recovery.

(more…)

2012 Solar Storm incoming! (how’s that for a 2012 coincidence?)

If you’re into ham radio, you’ve probably heard about Solar Maxima/Minima issues, and how they affect high frequency propagation, and the various other things good old Sol affects.

This is for the other folks. Those of you that aren’t ham radio people, the effect the sun has on many of our systems is huge. Of course, I’m not talking about the weather – I’m talking about things like the GPS system, the power grid, computers, telecom, data storage, and all sorts of other systems that can, and have been, affected by “Solar Storms”.

What am I leading up to? Well, it seems that the good folks at NASA have released some thoughts on the next solar maximum, and potential trouble areas. I’ve included a map here that gives some idea as to the vulnerable areas.

Map of potential power grid loss in USA

Map of potential power grid loss in USA

Here’s another, more detailed map that hits vulnerability state by state:
transformermap

Note also what the caption says on that map “Regions with high percentages of at-risk capacity cold experience long-duration outages that could extend multiple years”. Note also that the data is fairly current, not like some of the fallout maps out there, that are popular to look at and ponder.

For those of you that are relocating, take a look at the maps, and think about this. It’s definitely something to consider, both from a pro and con standpoint.

For the full article, go here, it’s pretty interesting stuff:http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2009/21jan_severespaceweather

-Greg

Yet more fuel for the fire – the Hindenburg Omen

It’s being passed around the net a bit right now, the news that the developer of the “Hindenburg Omen” predictive system has divested himself of all his equities. Completely left the market, Jim Miekka has. That’s how serious he is about what’s coming.

The basic strategy of the Hindenburg Omen is to find and quantify trigger points for market drops. In Miekka’s system these trigger points are referred to as “criteria”, and we’ve just recently hit five of the criteria needed for a major market crash.

Recently as in August 24th, 2010, and that’s pretty much the same day that Miekka took himself out of the market.

Hit some of the links, check out some of the ideas, and do some further research. Many people are following this quite closely, and you can bet that the financial markets are all a-twitter about this too.

Google “Hindenburg Omen”, “Jim Miekka”, etc. Some very interesting reading.

Got your network set up, folks?

-Greg

Countdown to Zero…the movie

If you’ve heard the buzz about this movie, or maybe considered going to see it, there are a few things you might want to know about it.

The movie has a tendency to portray the nuclear weapon issue out there as a world-ender. Kinda like the usual thing, in other words it’s not worth living after a nuclear exchange of any sort, etc. There are a few other ideas out there, and Shane Connor, from KI4U has this to say about it (have to say I agree with him on this)…just something to think about, and something to keep in mind about media influence…

“No surprise the new ‘Countdown to Zero’ disarmament documentary omits life-saving strategies from their agenda of banning nukes, like advocating public Civil Defense, to try and better survive nukes in the meantime.

The disarmament movement for decades has hyped that with nukes; all will die or it will be so bad you’ll wish you had. Most have bought into it, now thinking it futile, bordering on lunacy, to try to learn how to survive a nuclear blast and radioactive fallout.

In a tragic irony, the disarmament movement has rendered millions of American families even more vulnerable to perishing from nukes in the future.

For instance, most now ridicule ‘duck & cover’, but for the vast majority, not right at ‘ground zero’ and already gone, the blast wave will be delayed in arriving after the flash, like lightening & thunder, anywhere from a fraction of a second up to 20 seconds, or more.

Today, without ‘duck & cover’ training, everyone at work, home, and your children at school, will impulsively rush to the nearest windows to see what that ‘bright flash’ was, just-in-time to be shredded by the glass imploding inward from that delayed blast wave. They’d never been taught that even in the open, just laying flat, reduces by eight-fold the chances of being hit by debris from that brief, 3-second, tornado strength blast.

Then, later, before the radioactive fallout can hurt them, most downwind won’t know to move perpendicular away from the drift of the fallout to get out from under it before it even arrives. And, for those who can’t evacuate in time, few know how quick & easy it is to throw together an expedient fallout shelter, to safely wait out the radioactive fallout as it loses 99% of its lethal intensity in the first 48 hours.

The greatest tragedy of that horrific loss of life, when nukes come to America, will be that most families had needlessly perished, out of ignorance of how easily they might have avoided becoming additional casualties, all because they were duped that it was futile to ever try to learn how to beforehand.

The disarmament movement’s sincere supporters, just wanting a world safe from nukes, will discover those unintended consequences to be inconvenient truths of the worst kind.

The Good News About Nuclear Destruction! at www.ki4u.com/goodnews.htm dispels those deadly myths of nuclear un-survivability, empowering American families to then better survive nukes. For as long as nukes exist, these life-saving insights are essential to every families survival!

-Greg

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