quote of the day
“There is no shortage of rednecks in the neat, quiet American military cemeteries which now dot the globe. However rejected in normal times, the redneck has always been welcomed when the nation went to war.”
– F.N. Boney
For My Buddies Down South, Because This Is How They Roll
Are you a Democrat, a Republican, or a Southerner?
The answer can be found by posing the following question:
You’re walking down a deserted street with your wife and two small children.
Suddenly, an Islamic terrorist with a huge knife comes around the corner, locks eyes with you, screams obscenities, praises Allah, raises the knife, and charges at you…
What do you do?
…………………………………………………………. THINK CAREFULLY
THEN SCROLL DOWN:
Democrat’s Answer:
- Well, that’s not enough information to answer the question!
- Does the man look poor or oppressed?
- Have I ever done anything to him that would inspire him to attack?
- Could we run away?
- What does my wife think?
- What about the kids?
- Could I possibly swing the gun like a club and knock the knife out of his hand?
- What does the law say about this situation?
- Does the pistol have appropriate safety built into it?
- Why am I carrying a loaded gun anyway, and what kind of message does this send to society and to my children?
- Is it possible he’d be happy with just killing me?
- Does he definitely want to kill me, or would he be content just to wound me?
- If I were to grab his knees and hold on, could my family get away while he was stabbing me?
- Should I call 9-1-1?
- Why is this street so deserted?
- We need to raise taxes, have paint & weed day.
- Can we make this a happier, healthier street that would discourage such behavior.
- I need to debate this with some friends for a few days and try to come to a consensus.
- This is all so confusing!
BANG!
****************************************************************
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
BANG ! BANG!
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
BANG!
BANG!
BANG!
BANG!
BANG!
BANG!
Click
Daughter: ‘Nice grouping, Daddy!’
‘Were those the Winchester Silver Tips or Hollow Points?! ‘
Son: ‘Can I shoot the next one?!’
Wife: ‘You ain’t taking that to the taxidermist!
Book Review: World Made By Hand
The basic plot is that by a combination of peak oil, resource wars, economic difficulties thereon and terrorist attacks our fossil fuel based just in time delivery system world falls apart. Without getting too into details I would say it falls somewhere between a slow slide type scenario and an immediate One Second After kind of situation. The book takes place some years after this event has happened and the population of the region is significantly diminished. It follows a small town through a summer full of interesting events through the eyes of an older but healthy and lively widower who makes his living doing carpentry. A variety of events happen and they lead to other developments and stuff happens. Now onto our standard format.
The Good: I enjoyed this book more than I have enjoyed any book in a long time. It is really a great read. I appreciated that it talked more about how peoples lives developed, the economy changed and how folks got through everyday events than anything else. I found that particularly noteworthy and thought provoking.
The book went into significant detail about how people did the little things and got along with each other and such. I mean there was some action but the ratio was probably a lot more realistic than most books in the genre which are almost just action/ adventure and gun porn. Instead of writing one paragraph about how the main characters grow a garden, cook and preserve food, etc and then devote whole chapters to very lengthy and detailed discussions of the exact rifle with such and such modifications this book talked about how people got everyday tasks done without electricity or fossil fuels.
One thought provoking thing I appreciated in this book was that it was realistic in that people interacted and worked together. There was still a fair amount of division of labor. Of course everybody had a big garden and usually some chickens and rabbits it was realistic in the sense that they still needed to do something to get a surplus of money/ trade goods to swap for stuff they can’t produce.
In a world made by hand the need for semi skilled physical labor will be significant, if just to meet local food production needs. The days of a 70 year old man and his 50 year old son working a huge piece of land with tractors and combines to grow one or two crops would be over. The amount of labor a farm needed would go up exponentially. Seeing as people will (even with a garden and some chickens) need to get some surplus to trade lots of folks would likely end up in this capacity. To compare people who ended up in this role to serfs or peasants would likely be more accurate than not. Just like any other economic system (life isn’t so good for somebody who works at McDonalds) it is better to be close to the top or at least not at the bottom. This got me thinking about skills and how one could position them self to be as comfortable as possible. In the short term stocking food and goods would help but in the long run it would be about wits, skills and productive land.
I could go on for a long time about the great parts of this book. Seriously it was a great book.
The Bad: It probably leaned a bit to peace nick/ everybody just gets along to be realistic. The town didn’t have any sort of security plan (like say an informal checkpoint or a night watch) and aside from a couple people getting beat up everything went just fine for a long time after it was clear law and order had collapsed. I halfway just put this here because there should be a “bad” for this review format to work. It was sort of refreshing after reading book after book that are like a mix of a war book with occasional references to storing food and gushes of gun porn about the authors favorite guns/ gun accessories.
Edited to include: I also found it curious that in the book though our federal government (as well as state and pretty much county) had collapsed people still used dollars as currency. Especially in a slow slide type scenario I don’t think dollars would go away quickly. Somewhere around when the power goes out and people realize things have changed for the long term I doubt the dollar would be good for much except keeping track of friendly games of poker and monopoly. In the book barter was the most common followed by silver and they mentioned that gold was pretty much hoarded. I just found it curious that in the book people still accepted dollars albeit at a highly inflated rate. I just can’t see it working out that way.
The Ugly: It was clearly written from a New England small town perspective. The book was at best halfway condescending of Christianity/ religious people and really anybody who isn’t from New England. A good friend of mine found it quite condescending to Southerners. He also noted that while the town folks mocked these people they relied on them for protection. I can’t say I entirely saw what he saw but them again I am not a Southerner. Anyway if it bothered him it might bother some other people too.
I really enjoyed this book and think you would too.
quote of the day
“We’re not going to save our way out of this recession. We’ve got to spend our way out of this recession, and I think most economists know that.”
–Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.)
quote of the day
“It’s great to be in a state where it’s okay to cling to your guns and religion.”
-Sarah Palin upon being given a Henry .44 Big Boy rifle by the Arkansas Republican Party.
An Interesting Discussion Going On At Surviving In Argentina
This and this are worth reading. Also my comment about dealing with the ammo shortage of last winter is on the main page. Man that was a dumb thing to do. Space was at a real premium in our cars for the drive but a shoe box full of .38 would have given me peace of mind. The real kicker is that I had the ammo and just didn’t bring it. Oh well it was a busy time and we had lots of stuff on our minds.
In any case having a couple hundred rounds per gun is probably reasonable advice for someone who is just getting started or is cautious but not full bore paranoid. Probably enough ammo for anything other than a Mad Max scenario.