Category Archives: survivalist

Overtime and Spending my pay

Posted by thetinfoilhatsociety in common sense, Economy, home, Independence Days, peak oil, preparedness, survivalist, sustainability, work

Overtime in the last two weeks: nearly 30 hours. I’m exhausted and sick of my job. But I am putting the money to good use: new 15 cubic foot freezer and an electric rototiller I bought from a coworker.

Next purchase next payday with my overtime: pergola for the back patio area; I was going to build one but I found one at Sears that is similar dimensions to what I was going to build for just about what I would spend in materials. Yes, it will be slightly less sturdy, but I am OK with that vs. possibly not getting around to building one at all this year.

I agonized over the freezer purchase but I do plan to buy a small solar array and have the freezer ultimately run off that exclusively. That way I can be assured that even with power outages or shutoffs (Gods forbid) we will have our food supply secured.

The rototiller is for getting rid of all the bermuda; I’m planning to sow red clover in the side yard before I till it under and plant amaranth for the chickens next year. I could just let them loose and let them pick it down to the ground this year as well.

Next big purchase after the pergola/arbor: wood stove, one of the 85% efficient ones that we can get a tax rebate for. And the permit. And the installation. As soon as I call our insurance company and make sure they won’t cancel our homeowner’s insurance if we get one (we live in a modular/mobile on a foundation).

Grain mill update:  love love LOVE my new nutrimill grain mill…7 cups of flour in about 5 minutes.  My only gripe is that it is LOUD.  Like have to wear earplugs kind of loud.

Of burkhas, veils, trade goods, and the future

Posted by thetinfoilhatsociety in Economy, peak oil, survivalist, the dreaded politics

I belong to Tribe.net which is a social networking site.  Pretty much any kind of tribe you might be interested in, up to and including sexual ones, are there (or used to be, anyway).

Given that I have a wide variety of interests, I belong to tribes about bellydance and several subdivisions of that such as Egyptian bellydance, American style, Turkish style, and of course my locally based tribes.  I also belong to handspinning tribes, gardening tribes, natural health tribes, and one post apocolyptic tribe.  This is the one I’m blogging about today.

One of the topics posted on Saturday which I replied to on Sunday, was titled Post Apocolyptic Trade Goods.  One of the posters brought up women as a trade good.  Several men replied joking about an appropriate price.  I replied because I was offended by that…my post was simple, to the point, and without hatred.  I of course got completely flamed, quite viciously, and was told to ‘go make me a sandwich, woman’ along with other more vile comments including accusing me of being a typical manipulative woman who is not capable of actually doing anything myself so I have to use my sex as a weapon.

I have as my avatar there, the same picture I have of myself on my blog.  That of course was also brought up as an issue.  I know that ignorance is bliss, but people really shouldn’t comment on stuff they don’t actually know anything about.  Comparing my colorful silk veil to a hijab, and making cartoon caricaturish comments about Islam while accusing me of being  a Muslim hypocrite who wears the veil yet accuses them of sexism doesn’t place them in a positive light in my view.  It only proves my point.

Here is my reply to them:

First of all, you are displaying your ignorance by comparing a silk veil, used in AMERICAN STYLE bellydance, to a hijab or to a burkha. A hijab being a traditional religious and cultural modesty artifact, and a burkha being a male imposed means of control and dehumanization.  I do happen to be a bellydancer.  I have MANY friends who are from the Middle East, and yes I DO speak some Arabic. The fact that women dance in the Middle East, which to the average American male is ‘stripper lite’ while in the Middle East it’s just a dance, and some women make money at it (and some use it as a front for other things), is typical of the misunderstanding. Women dance there as a rebellion against their culture.  They dance for themselves.  Just as those of us who truly fall in love with the artform here do.  We share our love with the audience if there is one, but we don’t do it for them.

I am well aware of what goes on in some parts of the Middle East.  That was exactly my point.  So are men just basically, secretly, waiting for TEOTWAWKI so they can go back to being chauvinistic jerks like most of the rest of the world?  To be ‘real men’?  Oh, you poor put upon men, that can’t just do and say whatever they want.  So oppressed.  That’s the feeling I get from many of the survivalists I know, and I have corresponded with.

Thousand, I am the very LAST person you should accuse of being a whiney manipulative woman trying to use her sex as a weapon or a reason not to do something.   My husband would laugh to hear you accuse me of using my sex.  I would never ask my husband or any other man to do something I am capable of doing myself, unless I was planning to pay him to do something I didn’t want to do myself.  So sure, I’ll make you a sandwich…on my own time…and you might want to think twice about eating it if you want to live to eat another, if you keep talking like that.  My, my…such sensitive men we have here…almost as though you are just as easily offended….

My point was, and is, that this is one of the things that I wonder and worry about — my ability to be in a place, and just be looked at as a person, with skills and knowledge to share, and be treated as an equal, is something I fear will be lost in a TSHTF situation.  I truly do fear this for women generally.  Equality as something closer to reality is something that seems to have been made possible only by cheap oil and lightning fast communication.  What will happen when those go away?

This is perhaps the crux of my post.  Sharon Astyk puts it much more elegantly than I ever could in her blog post Peak Oil, Gender, and Power what it is that I am talking about, and why I found it so offensive.

Women historically, have not been considered equal to men.  This is not opinion.  It is fact.   Sharon points out that “…Most of those weird, queasy moments that don’t quite fall into any category, but where some man makes a woman know that they are only safe because the man chooses it to be that way…”  I’ve been there.  While I was on duty, no less.

The thing is, that my avatar photo is kind of offensive to some in the ME community, and I chose it deliberately because of that.  I do see the double standards, the fact that women are supposedly on a pedestal but that the reality in many cases is that women are seen and treated as objects. It’s a controversial subject.  Although if you are a man you probably don’t even realize it, here in America sexism is alive and well.  However, over there it’s much more overt.  How do women maneuver successfully?  How can I learn from them?

I probably would not even realize the extent of sexism in the US today if I had not chosen a traditionally male profession as my first career.  I was a firefighter for 10 years.  Believe you me, sexism IS alive and well.  As is racism.  I got out of the business because I became so disillusioned with our ‘public servants’ who are not any such thing in many, if not most cases.

So.  As the depression worsens, what will happen to us as a society?  What will happen if the federal govt and its ‘protections’ for women and minorities are no longer enforced, due to either lack of money/staff or due to the breakup of the US?  What will happen to worker protections generally?  The prohibition against children working?

Things to be grateful for.

Posted by thetinfoilhatsociety in Economy, home, preparedness, survivalist, sustainability, work

I still have a job. The economic downturn has hit home, finally, in a very real and up close way. I had a meeting with my boss yesterday; the upshot of it was that I keep my job, but I got hours cut.  He had two shifts open that I offered to work:  an 8 hour shift every other week, and a 4 hour shift also every other week; these two will keep me at my same hours but I have to be at work an extra day per pay period.  So, because of gas, I am still losing money, but I am grateful to be keeping my job.

I have land to plant on that we own (well, us and the bank).  I have been working in the back yard this afternoon, cutting down a scrub oak, planting lettuce, planting my mini greenhouses with produce, and prepping beds for later in the season.  I could be paying rent that goes ever up, with no available planting space, and no security. I am planting many more plants than we will have room for, but I am hoping to be able to sell some healthy tomato, eggplant, and pepper seedlings in my community.

We have chickens that give us eggs every day.  We presently have probably more than we can use but I am grateful for the surplus.  I know several people that could use free eggs, and we could reduce our footprint equally well by eating more eggs — local, fresh, organic, and lower on the food chain.  I have already begun trying out egg recipes and will expand our repetoir as the season progresses; I can also crack them open and freeze the eggs raw.  This will carry us through to the winter season when we get few or none. For the cost of grass, water, and a little scratch and feed, we get their love — and eggs!

I have family that is supportive of my craziness.  Not always, but mostly.  And they’re always amazed that stuff works!  I can’t take credit for plants growing, sheep giving wool, cotton plants, flax plants, or knitting needles, but I’m grateful that my family appreciates that I work to give them fresh produce, hand knit socks/hats/sweaters/etc.

Relative health.  I’m strong, I’m willing to work, and I like doing ‘grunt’ work around my house.  I’m grateful I can.

I’m grateful I got a reprieve, that I can still spend my income on prepping our house for a lower cost, lower energy lifestyle, that I can prep my gardens to be self sustaining (thanks in part to chicken poop), that I have sources for local milk and meat.

What I’ve done recently

Posted by thetinfoilhatsociety in home, preparedness, survivalist, sustainability, Uncategorized

I have spun many sample skeins of the wools given to me as part of my spinning class.  I have some simply beautiful bamboo to spin up later tonight.  It looks like silk and is dyed a deep red that reminds me of roses. I have a new problem.  I don’t have enough spindles for my wheel!!  Why I ever thought three would be more than enough is beyond me.

I made three loaves of bread yesterday, and finally made DH happy.  I made two loaves of unbleached white flour bread just for him.  He doesn’t like the whole grain loaves, he thinks they’re too heavy.

Our home grinding of grain is still going on; DH suggests getting an attachment for the drill and using the drill to grind…kind of defeats the purpose of getting a hand powered one, but doable if I get a small solar powered battery charger.

Our best blend: either organic unbleached white flour about 50/50 with home ground wheat, or home ground pastry berries with home ground wheat.

The worst one: hard red winter wheat 60% with 40% buckwheat. Yuck. It makes bread bitter tasting, and HEAVY. Doesn’t rise well either.

I found a local source for milk, if I can get it. She gave me a sample jar, warning me it doesn’t taste like holstein milk. She was right but I don’t think it’s because she has dexters and jerseys, I think it’s because they free range on the desert plants in addition to their feed. Very rich, but definitely a different taste than the stuff you get from the store.

Pictures later; I went with my middle son to a blacksmithing demonstration by Henry Pomfret from England. Simply fascinating! A very nice bunch of people too!

anarchy, continued

Posted by thetinfoilhatsociety in Economy, home, preparedness, survivalist

Update:  this story from USA Today is exactly what I’m talking about, as is the story about the BART police shooting an unarmed, nonviolent man in the back while they held him down and stood on his neck.

Fascism, anyone? I swear, Orwell was a prophet not a novelist.  I truly cannot believe Kissinger actually said that in his outside voice…New World Order???

If you think I might be over-reacting, just take a good look around you.  Or read this, or this, the second of which is actually an update from the original CATO Institute document by the same name written in 1996.

I read a blog post by the wife of a police officer who says she was brought to tears by the viciousness of the people who wrote saying terrible things about the police, and protested that her husband was just not that way.  Well, having worked in the fire service for 10 years, and in Emergency Medical Services for 15, I have to disagree.  The system is set up so that the officer either becomes the paramilitary machine or gets out of the service altogether.  They are pleasant enough to those they consider in their ‘tribe’ but view basically everyone else as the ‘enemy’, dehumanizing them in order to keep any feelings of remorse or ethical behavior at bay.  Everything becomes easy to justify if you simply say ‘They had it coming” “If they wouldn’t have broken the law this wouldn’t have happened”  and so forth.  Where is the responsibility of the police to stand with the citizens they are charged with protecting, to ask why these draconian (in some cases) laws are in place and help to change them?  Those ‘animals’ they are arresting are citizens too, in most cases, and even if they aren’t still deserve to be treated with basic human dignity.  Otherwise the police are merely the government sponsored animals caging the law breaking animals.  They both wear a number and a uniform.

What happened to the idea of a police officer as a public servant?  It’s long gone, never to return.  I say, as a mostly law abiding citizen (after all, who can obey ALL the laws all the time?) that the police are NOT my friends and are NOT on my side.  The best thing to do is to stay out of their field of view.  This will only become more important in the coming years.

The coming anarchy

Posted by thetinfoilhatsociety in common sense, Economy, home, peak oil, preparedness, survivalist, sustainability, the dreaded politics

Mr. Kaplan’s prescience is becoming more evident by the day.  I see the increasing militarization of our police forces, with all the atrocities that brings, as evidence that our government is aware of, and powerless to prevent, the anarchy that will be our lot as the economy continues its downward spiral.

Now, please don’t misread me.  I am not one of those gun toting, cache burying, paranoid survivalist types…although I am a fervent supporter of the right to keep and bear arms, think everyone should stock up on bulk foods, and I do tend to be on the more cynical side of things regarding politics and life in general.

I tend to see the absurdity in the endless pursuit of ‘stuff’ whether it’s survival stuff or designer purses.  Not the least because I am guilty of being a compulsive saver.  I grew up having so little and moving so much that now I keep *everything* because surely as I’m sitting here, I WILL need whatever it was I threw away.  Maybe not now, maybe not in a week, or even a year, but I will need it.

So, with that said, back to my point, and Mr. Kaplan’s prescience.  The article was written in 1994 yet the situation in Africa not only has not improved, it has deteriorated; places in other parts of the world that were stable (at least compared to today) have destabilized and are in turn destabilizing regions around them — look at Russia vs. Ukraine or Russia vs. Georgia, or the tribal leaders in the outlands of Afganistan and Pakistan vs. the recognized governments of each.

We are tribal.  We are not nation oriented; our evolutionary path designed us to be loyal on a gut level to a tribe at the largest.  Anything beyond that becomes abstract and when push comes to shove, impossible to enforce over tribal loyalties.  Our problem as modern Americans is that, like the countries of Africa, we have taken away the tribal mores and punishments in exchange for the laws of society…and those just don’t hold up well when there’s survival, even profit beyond subsistence, in violating the law in favor of supporting the tribe.

I think it’s a myth that we ever as a nation had a unified idea of morality or ethics; even among those of the same faith, there are marked differences between sects even of the same denomination regarding the lines in the sand of right/wrong.  However, there was a broad understanding of the principles within those two extremes that were shared by the great majority of our ancestors.  I don’t think that is so any longer.  A quick search around google will show study after study supporting the premise that people think it’s OK to cheat to get better grades, to cheat to get more money, to lie on a resume, and so on.  I surmise that our nation’s obsession with youth and beauty arises at least in part due to the supposition that if it gets you better _fill in the blank_ it’s OK, and even expected.

So what is my purpose in bringing that up already??  Well, this.  Igor Panarin, who is no slouch regarding predicting – accurately- trends within the US.  He used to be a KGB analyst.  Read his story; I think Dimitry Orlov must have had a conversation with him at least a time or two, or read some of his works as his analysis and predictions dovetail nicely with Panarin’s.

Our nation is so fragmented; as pressures both economic and social mount, people revert to the tangible area of loyalties, the tribe.  It can also be called community, gangs, family.  These are all sections of our society that are gaining traction, members, influence.  They all give a sense of support and identity to their members.

If we want to avoid outright anarchy, we need to build community now, build up those tribal networks.  It’s becoming late in the game; say hello to your neighbor today, it’s a good place to start.  I would rather depend on my neighbors to keep an eye on my place than the police, and rather depend on my neighbors for that same security than pay a private security force to do the job less well and with less care than those who also depend on me for the same.