Dental report, cause for optimism, Baby Grace

It was 48 minutes and sixteen seconds from when my shadow crossed the doorstep of the dentist's office until the time I was free to pay the receptionist for the damages.

The left side of my head is numb from my jaw to above my ear. Dr Stone did not go-cheap on the Novocain.

It may be a small thing, but Dr Stone is exceptionally gracious with his assistants. "Chris, if it is not too much trouble, can you hand me the blue matrix with the short probosci?"..."Thank-you, dear"..."Let me use the UV wand, you can't get around the rhombus from where you are sitting"

Like most people, I get tense when I am sitting in a dentist's chair.  I start to worry that things are going pear-shaped if/when the dentist starts snapping impatiently at his helper. How am I to know that he is constipated or that his shoes are too tight? I assume the worst. The smooth and easy flow and the total lack of impatience is a balm to my dental anxiety.

ERJ: Pollyanna extraordinaire

The question came up in the comments that I might be unduly optimistic regarding the trajectory of future events. I want to build a little bit of context around my "optimism".

The readers of this blog are people with a wide swath of world-views and future expectations. I attribute that to the range of topics that get discussed on this blog and to the quality of the comments. Some readers forgive me for my idiosyncracies and simply read the posts that interest them.

With regard to the topic of "prepping", the biggest step is accepting that every "foundational assumption" we have about living might be violated. For example, most people assume that they will always have electrical power that they can switch on and potable water coming out of their taps. Once a person accepts that the power might be out for four hours or that the water might not come gushing out, then prepping for other scenarios becomes primarily a matter of scale because the biggest barrier, the one in our minds has been addressed.

I believe that I am less likely to alienate the occasional ERJ reader by sticking to the middle-road in prepping. Most of the US will not descend to Mogadishu or Gaza overnight.

The other factor is that I am inherently lazy. I like to find communities that are already dealing with SHTF and study how they adapted. They undoubtedly made lots of stupid decisions in the past. We don't have to repeat their mistakes.  What they are doing now is what mostly works. At this instant in time, Ukraine is the place to study just like Spain was the place to study in 1936 and 1937. 

Why not study Gaza? Unlike Gaza, Ukraine's population is roughly within its biological carrying capacity of the country's footprint while Gaza's population is at least 20X the biological carrying-capacity. Ukraine looks much more like Eaton County, Michigan than Gaza does. However, if I lived in the cities of Kalamazoo or Detroit or Austin or Phoenix, then I would be studying Gaza.

Some germane details about Ukraine: Kharkiv, Ukraine averages 8-to-12 hours of blackouts every 24 hours. What that means is that they HAVE power 12 hours of power MOST days. They can recharge batteries, fill water tanks, make ice, do their homework in those 12 hours. The center of Kharkiv is currently about 30 miles from the front-lines of the active, eastern front in the Ukraine/Russian war. It is 20 miles from the less-active northern front.

On the other hand, they are dealing with men getting snatched off of the streets. If you watch videos from Ukrainian's urban areas, there are no men who look like they are younger than their mid-forties walking around. It isn't that they have all been snatched. It is that they are in hiding or walked out of the country and are now working in western Europe, Poland or even Russia.

Taken together, the destruction of infrastructure due to military weapons, the intermittent (although outages are often scheduled) grid function and the disappearance of virtually all men between 25-and-45 and you have a scenario that is grimmer than anything likely to happen here in the near future.

There are differences. Anybody approaching a power-plant or critical infrastructure in Ukraine without passing through check-points is likely to be summarily shot. Presumably, the same would happen to an arsonist lighting a Molotov Cocktail. I don't foresee that happening in the US or France anytime soon. 

Ukraine isn't completely frozen up even though their domestic GDP/capita is about 8% of the US GDP/capita. The people are stoic and keep moving even though conditions would likely immobilize the US population. Most of them have something to eat, access to water that is clean enough to drink after making it into tea and a warm-enough place to sleep.

There is a tremendous amount of learned-helplessness that those of us in North America will have to unlearn if we ever have to survive on 8% of our current GDP. That "unlearning" is likely to generate violence. It is very sad that lack of access to Starbucks Venti Matcha Crème Frappuccinos frozen hot-pockets will trigger rioting, but there you have it.

Sad and heartwarming at the same time

Electric Forest Music Festival is a week-long, counterculture music festival held in western Michigan. 

In June of 2026, one of the people attending the festival gave birth in a porta-potty and left her baby there. The deceased baby was discovered by another fair goer and 911 was called.

As reported by The Daily Mail: 

On Monday, about 350 people showed up in a display of unity at Fair Haven Church to say goodbye to the baby girl as the search for her parents continues.

The event was organized by Fair Haven congregant and father-of-two Travis Byrnes. Byrnes, who was appointed custody of the infant’s remains through Oceana County Probate Court, selected the name Grace. He said it can be changed if her biological family is ever found.

Fair Haven Pastor Greg VanderMeer said the ceremony was an opportunity for the community to turn its faith into action.

‘Baby Grace is loved by God and loved by us. Holding a ceremony for her is what love looks like. This is a moment for us to put our faith into practice,’ he said.

Those attending were visibly touched by the effort made to ensure the baby received a dignified goodbye.

One mourner said: ‘I feel deeply that this was a child that was loved by God and that she deserves a dignified goodbye amongst people that care that she lived...’

The burial plot and a flat grave marker have already been paid for privately.

But Byrnes is now raising money for an upright monument so that anyone searching for Grace’s grave will be able to find it.

He also arranged for more than 50 handwritten notes, submitted by mourners and members of the public, to be buried alongside her.

The messages were intended to give the little girl a collection of loving memories, even though she never had the opportunity to make any of her own.

A pink baby blanket, stuffed animals, socks and other childhood keepsakes were also placed with her.

Fine Art Tuesday

Sir Peter Paul Rubens was born in 1577 and died in 1640. He was an influential Flemish artist, diplomat and cook. 

 

Eggs, fats-and-oils revisited

We have five girl ducks. When all five lay every day, the eggs pile up quickly. They also eat more when they are laying.

Papillon

This is in-reference to the difference that fats-and-oils can make in austere circumstances. 

The book Papillon was published in 1969 and the author claimed it was an autobiography of when he was imprisoned in a French penal colony of French Guiana between 1931 and 1945.

At one point during his incarceration, he was under the protection of a guardian angel and he received a gift of a half-coconut a day (an additional 700 Calories per day). The half-coconut was a major game-changer. Before it showed up, he was clinging to life by the thinnest of margins. He was cold and shivering even when the weather was hot. After they started showing up, he was filled with energy and doing pull-ups and running in place. Life was good.

In time, the (illegal) deliveries of the coconuts were discovered and stopped. Life once again became grim. 

Link to a three-minute clip from the movie when the first half-coconut showed up. The clip starts when the protagonist (played by Steve McQueen) is recovering from a beating and is at a low-point in his life.

Because we live in a society where access to fats-and-oils is virtually unlimited, the role that they play in brain chemistry and how they impact emotional health is rarely appreciated. If you love movies and have lots of time, the movie "Lorenzo's Oil" might be worth your time.

Raccoons

It was mentioned in the comments that mountain men sought bears in the late autumn just before they went into hibernation because they were rolling in fat.

Raccoons, unlike possum, also pack on the fat and hibernate during the winter. A fully grown, boar raccoon in late fall can be carrying five or more pounds of fat on him.

Paying wages with vegetable oil

I image that some of you did the math in your head after I proposed paying for 1 day's labor with 250ml of vegetable oil. 250ml at approximately 9 Calories per ml equals 2,250 Calories which is less than the laborer burns in a day. Why would anybody work for that?

The answer is that the calculations are done on the increments. 

My reasoning is that it is 2,250 MORE Calories. Somebody else in the laborer's household stands in the bread-line to get his 2000 Calories-per-day that is distributed for famine relief.

Working 8 hours is about 800 MORE Calories burned over the course of 8 hours of work. So he is getting paid with almost 3X times the Calories burned when calculated as (Incremental Calories Received) / (Incremental Calories Burned). That is, 2,250 Calories received / 800 more Calories burned = 2.8 payout or 1.8 net gain per calorie burned.

If the worker walked the entire 8 hours, it would burn about 1600 more Calories and the economics would shift. Most work is less than half "walking" time and is more tedious than strenuous. Pulling weeds, hoeing, watching children for example.

Some kinds of work like cutting and hauling wood in the wood-lot, running a mechanical tiller, chopping weeds beneath an electric fence, bucking bales of hay have significantly higher calorie burn-rates and will require much higher pay-rates to make the economics work for the laborer. 

Delayed onset muscle soreness

Yeah, those Farmers carries are sneaky.

It isn't debilitating but it is noticeable. Mostly in my pecs and quads. A little bit in my forearms.

"And this too will pass." 

Get back on the horse and ride it

Counterintuitively, continued exercise may temporarily suppress the soreness. Exercise increases pain thresholds and pain tolerance. This effect, called exercise-induced analgesia, is known to occur in endurance training (running, cycling, swimming), but little is known about whether it also occurs in strength training. There are claims in the literature that exercising sore muscles appears to be the best way to reduce or eliminate the soreness, but this has not yet been systematically investigated.     -Wikipedia

Mission creep

My smartphone will not up-date to the newest operating system.

Keeping the OS "fresh" is considered a good practice because evolving security risks are addressed with patches.

The reason it will not update is because it requires 17.8 Gigabytes of free memory. The new OS boasts two AI modules which may be adding to the bloat.

A lightweight Linux install requires about 5GB. 

Windows 3.1 Operating System, by comparison, required 3 Megabytes of RAM and 6.2MB of hard drive space. So, doing the math, the OS for my phone requires 2000 times more memory than Windows 3.1 

Donald, take a vacation

I say this with love in my heart, Don, you are acting like a man who is in dire need of some down-time. Take three days off. Take care of yourself. Let the dust settle. Get some perspective. Make a plan.

We will survive three days without you. Heck, the country managed to stagger along for four years under Biden and he was never really all there. 

Today's work-tickets

Deliver Quicksilver to play-date. One of the new kids is named "Felonious". Ok, I fictionalized her name for privacy reasons. But the child does have a name that is listed in the Michigan Penal Codes. Why do parents do that?!?

See if my buddy on Bellevue Hwy has a window of time to sell me the item he agreed to hold for me.

Buy a couple of gallons of vegetable oil and transfer it to mason jars. My current plan, based on information that 10x45mm shared, is to put a layer of polyethylene "stretch wrap" over the glass jar before installing the lid. I doubt that he jar will vacuum seal but I can leave the screw ring in place and that should maintain the compression on the seal and minimize oxygen infiltration.

Buy some rodent poison. 

Clean the truck in preparation for deer season. I would invite Don but I don't think the Secret Service would approve of Don Sr. joining our party. 

Visit the dentist. 

Presented without comment

 

Obnoxious 20 year-old mocks gym-bro because she can lift 2X her weight

Farmer Carries and other random thoughts

Lifting notes

I have been enjoying the Farmer Carry. I can walk with Mrs ERJ during my recoveries, pop into the gym and do a "set" of Farmers Carry and be out of the gym in time to catch Mrs ERJ on the next circuit of the walking track.

A few days ago I was able to catch Darius, one of the fitness trainers, between classes and he graciously gave me five minutes of his time. No sarcasm...he gave up his "getting ready for the next class" time to coach me.

Based on my goals, he gave me a 10 meter long path and told me to walk out-and-back twice (2 x 2 x 10m = 40m). He told me to put the kettlebells down, spin around and then pick them up at the terminus of each walk.

He started me at 30 pounds in each hand. I am somewhat above that now 8-).

I go to the dentist tomorrow

My appointment to address the missing filling is tomorrow afternoon. 

My gut-feel is that I will either end up with a crown or will have the tooth removed. 

A pithy quote about preparing (from a very long essay)

Household braced for the worse one (case) loses almost nothing if the better one arrives. Household braced for the better one loses a great deal if it does not, because the things it would then need are unavailable precisely at the moment of need. That asymmetry carries the entire case for doing anything.   Source

Hidden contempt

The "academic advisors" in the education industry have contempt for today's young people. In general, they have greater contempt for the young men than they do for the young women.

They believe, deep in their black-hearts, that men are not capable of being responsible.

Responsibility is the combination of "Authority" and "Accountability".

Accountability without authority is scapegoating which is the tool of every tin-pot despot.

Authority without accountability is the other face of tyranny.

The education industry coddles young men instead of challenging them. It weakens and emasculates them. It crowds them into a land of fantasy.

While most young people enjoy the coddling, in-the-moment, part of them craves adventure, heroes and challenges. They are being fed unlimited amounts of cotton-candy when they need freshly-killed meat that is charred over an open fire and still leaking red juices from the interior.

"Sign, sign, everywhere a sign..."

 

"Morning has broken..."

 "One is the loneliest number..."

 

Our local Walmart now carries reloading tools and components!!!

People don't need therapy. They need work.

Scott Galloway said "for most of the young men he works with, a job, friends and a girlfriend would do more than therapy". 

"...get a job, get a friend, get a girlfriend, get out of the house, start exercising".

"That is the equivalent of a nuclear detonation of therapy for 60 to 90% of the young men I deal with."

Galloway is one of the most respected members of the WOKE community.

"A job" is the gateway to self-esteem, discipline, discretionary income, practicing social skills and status within the greater community.

Galloway's public statements are an unexpected dose of reality and represent a shift of seismic proportions in "WOKE" thinking.

I expect it to get disappeared, at least for a while.

 

What about fats and oils?

There are large numbers of people who are new to war-gaming "famine" scenarios. I feel compelled to throw a stake into the ground to, maybe, provide some perspective.

There is a spectrum of scenarios that range from long-term, total collapse of civil society on one end while the other end is characterized by a weakened safety-net that allows the most fragile and isolated to fall through the cracks and die from malnutrition. 

The middle-range is some combination of reduced supply/choices, reduced logistical capability or increased demand/prices...but there are still remnants of social structure that prevent total free-fall of food availability. Versions of the second scenario are what happened in the U.K., Germany and the US during WWII.

It is imperative that the planner communicate a clear vision of the scenario he is planning for. Plans that are useful for one group of scenarios may be wasted effort for other scenarios.

This particular post looks at a scenario that is somewhere in the middle of the famine spectrum. 

In my humble opinions, the responsible "prepper" position is to position one's pantry and garden so that we can reduce our burden on the struggling system. It doesn't necessarily mean that we will be totally decoupled from it. It means that we will do as much as we can so that there is more for those who actually need it.

Peering into my crystal ball

Likely to be available:

• Carbohydrates, grains
• Cheese
• Dried soybeans

These are logistically "easy" and the path-of-least resistance for people trying to backstop shortages. 

Likely to be in short(er) supply

• Protein (other than cheese) from animal sources
• Fresh fruits and vegetables
• "Human-quality feed" for animals (bagged feed for chickens, pigs)

These are logistically more difficult due to being perishable, bulk and cost. 

Likely to be spot shortages

• Convenience foods: Frozen, ready-to-eat meals
• Meals prepared outside of the home 
• Flavorings: garlic, onions, peppers, herbs, spices
• Fats and oils
• Comfort items like candy, sugar, alcohol, tobacco, cannabis

Dietary disruptions

Rapid changes in diet will cause intestinal distress. Switching from a diet where 45% of ones' calories come from fats-and-oils to a diet heavy on grains, especially if they are high fiber, will incapacitate some people.

Another factor is that some people will be forced to become less sedentary and will need more calories. Increased need for calories combined with food with fewer calories per unit volume will compound the problems in the lower digestive system.

Bureaucracies being what they are, nearly everybody who is not a child, pregnant/nursing or working in an "essential industry" will be tagged as "low needs" and be allocated a ration of 2000 Calories/day which is great for a sedentary, 150 pound woman but woefully short for an active man who weighs 200 pounds.

Some of the difference will come from the fat-on-our-back, but that eventually runs out. A person burning 2800 Calories a day but only eating 2000 Calories a day will lose one pound of body-fat every five days. When he runs out of fat he starts metabolizing muscle.

Back to fats-and-oils

A source of supplemental fats-and/or-oils is the logical choice to increase the ration's calories without grossly increasing the bulk in your digestive system.

As a planning exercise, let's assume 

• Everybody is allocated 2000 Calories a day in tortillas, bread, breakfast cereal like substances by FEMA
• Assume that your household is mixed, half only need 2000 Calories a day and half need at least 2800 Calories a day so the average need is 2400 Calories per day
• At 9 Calories per gram, a budget of 45 grams of additional F&O per person-day is a reasonable starting place for this scenario.
• A gallon of vegetable oil weighs 7.6 pounds and represents about 75, 45 gram doses. That is very, very close to the volume of a shot-glass.
• Ergo, one gallon of oil or 7.6 pounds of butter/lard/tallow represents slightly more than two people-months of supplemental F&O. In a scenario without external ration support, it represents half that time. 

If the crisis is short-term, then a person burning 2800 Calories a day can easily make it through a month and will lose about ten pounds. Not a big deal. For most of us, a six month disruption means we are deeply into losing muscle.

A few parting thoughts

Written narratives of wars almost always record extreme optimism about how short of a period the war will last. The American Civil War was supposed to be over in a matter of weeks. WWI and WWII were expected to only last a few months. In fact, each of those wars lasted more than four years AND the impacted areas were in-crisis due to demolished infrastructure and lack of manpower for a like period of time. That tots up to about a decade of hunger.

Looking at Cuba, the people are still impoverished 65 years after their color revolution. From another perspective, American Indians are still impoverished 200 years after losing their war.

Another consideration is that a stick of margarine (2.5 man-days supplemental amount) or a 1/4 liter of oil (half a standard "water bottle" represents 5 man-days of supplemental amount) might be a half-a-day's and a day's wages for outside help. It is a commodity that is easily divisible, a durable store of value and can be traded by the person who receives it for other things they need. It  has intrinsic value. That is, it has enough of the characteristics of money to be a serviceable substitute for it.

Summary

One gallon of vegetable oil represents about 2 man-months* of calorie supplementation for a "buffered" economic crash and 1 man-month of supplementation for an unbuffered crash. At current prices, a gallon of name-brand, long shelf-life** vegetable oil (Wesson) costs $13/gallon at our local Walmart.

Oils and fats go rancid when exposed to oxygen, so thought must be given to storage. Rancid oils are not toxic but have a much lower smoke-point when used in frying and might cause digestive distress when consumed in large quantities.

*Remember, this scenario assumes a household of one man and one woman in traditional roles. If you are a single guy then you might want to double that amount/person. If you are a single woman you might want to halve that amount. 

**Breeders have been selecting soybean genetics that have reduced amounts of linolenic acid in their oil molecules. Linolenic acid is the component that oxidizes the most quickly and is the main driver of oil turning rancid.

Quick chemistry lesson: Edible fats and oils are a glycerine molecule with three short, fatty acids attached to it. Think if it as being like the letter 

"E" 

where the backbone (the vertical line) is the glycerine molecule and each horizontal line is a separate fatty-acid.

Fatty acids that are saturated are straight lines and the molecules pack easily. Consequently, they turn solid at higher temperatures than "E" molecules made with kinky, unsaturated fatty acids.

The more highly unsaturated the acid (i.e. poly unsaturated), the less stable that horizontal arm is and the more susceptible it is to partial oxidization...that is, becoming rancid.

The actual mix of short, fatty acids varies by the genetics of the plant. There are strains of sunflowers and soybeans that produce oils that are low in Linolenic and high in Oleic short, fatty acids. Those oils exhibit shelf-life that is significantly longer than oils made from traditional sunflowers and soybeans. 

As a consumer, you can read the "Best by" dates and select the brands with the longest storage horizon. You can store them in cool, dark places. You can repackage them in glass which excludes oxygen. All of those moves should significantly increase the shelf-life of your oils.

Or, you can store tallow, coconut oil(fat) or clarified butter. Since they are very high in stearic acid, they are relatively impervious to oxidizing. They are, however, very high in saturated fats which has been linked to cardiovascular disease. Get educated and make your own decisions.