Comments on: Marauding hordes require organization

By: Turboguy!

Turboguy! — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 15:07:11 +0000

Marauding hordes coming to steal your bacon!?!
Don’t have the food to give to all Nobunga’s Raiders and have some left over for you and yours?
Never fear, The M14 in .308 Winchester is here! It slices, it dices, easy to use with the ever useful “Kung Fu Grip,” and even makes Juliann fries! Reliable as all get out, even the wife will love it! Think it’s too big for the kids? No way! it’s great for all ages! Stops bad guys *DEAD* in their tracks, is great for righties, but even better for lefties! 2 MOA accurate and perforates body armor like it was paper out to 800 meters! Nothing stops the bad guys quite like the M14! Get yours TODAY!
Realistically Guy, you’re far enough out that for someone to make a play for you and yours, they’d have to be desperate in the extreme or think you’re weak. I don’t know how many people you’ve got out there (Nor do I want to), but if even one of them has a firearm and more importantly the willingness to use it, that in itself is a huge deterrent. Being that you’re far outside the distance that could feasibly be covered by someone without transport, and the sparse nature of the desert, the risk just isn’t worth the potential reward for ousting you. Also because of the distances involved a potential marauder is going to have to come at you in a vehicle, which makes quite a bit of noise and leads us into the next paragraph.
Another great idea is a couple dogs. For the all time low price of dog food and a nice place to sleep they’ll keep your Mud Hut interloper free, or at the very least let you know someone’s there long before you’d notice them. Dogs are good like that, especially farm dogs or dogs that don’t come into contact with strangers and will bark. A friend of mine from work lives way out in the sticks. His dogs seem to know when someone’s headed toward the house and will start barking and walking down the road before you’re within a mile of his place. In the desert Southwest where you’re at, with their hearing that is estimated at 28 times more sensitive than yours, better direction finding, and since there’s wide open expanses of nothing out there, they’ll probably start warning long before someone gets remotely close to your spot, in which case you should be ready.
Don’t attract attention! Let me say that again: Don’t Attract Attention!!! As you and I said before, the area your hut is in is very sparsely populated. The odds that someone is going to be headed your way intentionally are rather slim. The possibility is there that someone could blunder into your area, but that’s a remote one at best. Let’s face facts here, it *IS* a hot, waterless expanse of a great place to die of dehydration. Second, don’t tell people where it’s at, or worse yet that you’ve got preparations there. Remember the grasshopper and the ant? The grasshopper only went to the ant because he knew where the ant lived. Give the grasshopper an AK47 and have a nice pacifist ant and the story of who survived that one might have been radically different. If people know what you’ve got, and where you’ve got it, when they’re out of their own, they’re going to come for their share of yours. It’s up to you how you handle it at that point.
Lastly, have a rifle. Learn to use it effectively, and I’m not talking just for protection from bipedal game. Military calibers are best for the simple reason that they’re plentiful, reliable, hard-hitting, and cheap. If the fecal matter impacts the spinning air displacement unit tomorrow, there’s going to be a pile of .223, 7.62×39, .308 and 9mm rolling around out there. What there’s not going to be is ammo for that .476 Newton Bee you thought you had to have. A .308 is a fantastic deterrent to doers of evil, and will keep venison in your belly, but anything you know the limitations of is a good choice. (as long as it’s a plentiful choice.)

By: matt

matt — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 01:36:36 +0000

http://www.energybulletin.net/node/47615
apologies for being optimistic about the future,
scroll down to the bottom article,
its about co-ops in australia,
they had their genesis during
hard economic times in the past,
- the businesses primary function
= community benefit!
I know its a crazy mixed up world.
8% of europes GDP comes from
co-operatives
to paraphrase Dr Rob Hirsch with regards to peak oil,
‘we are not going to lie down and die,
we are americans afterall’.
regards

By: matt

matt — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 22:44:59 +0000

CBD – central business district , ie centre of melbourne

By: Frank Mezek

Frank Mezek — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 01:57:13 +0000

Matt:
What does CBD stand for?
Frank

By: matt

matt — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 23:31:31 +0000

Frank
for new years we travelled to the
CBD to watch the fire works with the kids,
not a single drop of grog all day.
(I dont drink or very little, you would think otherwise
given my obvious ‘mental impairments’).
New years day rode my bike in the morning with the
lads, 65km through the countryside.
on ag -
there is a great pdf available on line
by jared diamond, no doubt you are
familiar with it.
http://www.environnement.ens.fr/perso/claessen/agriculture/mistake_jared_diamond.pdf
for my masters research project I travelled to bangkok,
the subject was called ‘sustainable environments studio’,
anyway, we looked extensively at sustainable ag
and agro forestry. Asian nations have a long history
of sustainable ag prior to industrialization.
They planted nitrogen fixing plants (legumicacae family)
alongside their food producing plants. Aquaculture was/is
still being used by families in rural/semi rural areas.
Also, asian nations are famous for their use of human manure.
(we now see it as waste, they saw it as a resource)
It is true however that their growing season is 10 months
long, and they are blessed with an abundance of rain.
anyway, historically their ag techniques did support a large
population base. In thailand they had a unique understanding of the
sacred – ie nature. Influenced by buddhism and animistic/indigenous
religions. The landscape or their view of the world was seen via
a 3 part prism – ie the temple, the rice paddy and wild nature.
I did the project 6 years ago, stretching the memory a bit,
I have a book on thai agriculture, I have been meaning to re read.
Having said the above bangkok is now a sewer, and ironically
the physical reminders of the sacred are everywhere ie
coke bottles with insence (sp?)in gutters honouring the water spirits.
I know I am unfashionably optimistic, anyway the thoughts of
David Holmgren are worth investigating, he is a little more
optimistic when it comes to the future of suburbia.
The thoughts of John Michael Greer also worth reading,
no doubt you are familiar with him.
ever the ‘dilletante’
matt

By: Frank Mezek

Frank Mezek — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 01:39:24 +0000

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL !!!
Frank

By: Frank Mezek

Frank Mezek — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 17:43:44 +0000

HAPPY NEW YEAR MATT !!
What did you do last night to ring it in?
Living on the other side of the Line,we have to wait another 12+ hours to do so.
Thanks for the Ortega references.Professor Guy and I understand that when we stopped being hunter-gatherers it was the beginning of the end for humans.
And you’re damn right I’m ambivialent.As a fan of the drop,I’m wondering how I’ll keep the beer cold when civilization ends.

By: matt

matt — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 00:37:25 +0000

hey all
the following I was going to include on
the previous post. Camping in a national
park listening to the nocturnal copulations of
koalas was my lot last week. (a family of 4
went through 10 lites of water a day).
I love the simplicity of camping.
Something that we may have to get used
to as our standard of living slides.
Anyway 2 quotes – both from Michael Pollan,
he quotes John Berger. (british marxist cultural critic
currently living the life of a peasant in rural france.)
Thought of you Frank, Guy and Stan? when I read them.
‘Ambivalence and ambiguity are the hunters lot, and according
to Ortega it has probably ever been thus. Like John Berger
he believes that the mystery of animals – how they can be at once so like and
unlike us – has always been one of the central mysteries of human life:
“humanity sees itself as something emerging from animality, but
it cannot be sure of having transcended that state completely. The
animal remains too close for us not to feel mysterious communication with it”‘
and
‘Dreams of innocence are just that; they usually depend on a denial of
reality that can be its own form of hubris. Ortega suggests that there
is an immorality in failing to look clearly at reality, or in
believing that the sheer force of human will can somehow overcome it.’
These quotes come from The Omnivores Dillema, a chapter on hunting.
Hunting is an interesting bridge/’mediation’ between the animal and the civil/culture.
The literary discussions and the self reflection a hunter experiences is quite interesting. ie the hunter experiences both exhilaration, grief and thanks.
Pollan quotes Ortega extensively – Ortega y Gasset, Jose. ‘Mediations on Hunting’
anyway I always going to talk more about the garden – a place that is both
real and metaphorical, perhaps some other time.
regards
matt

By: Frank Mezek

Frank Mezek — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 02:29:41 +0000

Professor Guy:
I believe you are correct on everything except the time line.My own forecast is for Dow 5,000 and S&P 500- 500 level by end of 2009(neat huh), but probably we’ll have an exponential then parabolic death curve that will take us to much lower levels within a few years.I envision death by a thousand cuts,as the powers that be deperately try to forestall the inevitable.You’re time line is much more humane—it is going to happen–so the sooner the better.