Bad advice is much worse than no advice

Let me be up-front about the next few installments of the Cumberland Saga:

I know ZERO about Close-Quarters-Combat. Maybe even LESS THAN ZERO.

I had a friend check out the first installment and he shared it with his friends bin-Dar and Doondat. He emailed back several a multitude of corrections.

Rather than overload my friend (he is a busy man) and impose upon his connections, I WANT those of you who know more than I do to be ruthless in your corrections to what I write. The benefit is that I am likely to make many mistakes that a newbie is inclined to make and the readers of this blog will see the TIME PROVEN ways of doing it right. As comments get added, I will reference them in the text with (See comments 1, 5, 6 and 23).

We now resume our regularly scheduled programming...

The pernicious effects of high fixed costs

High Fixed Costs

High fixed costs creates market pressures that "bloat" offerings.

Consider two houses. One house is 800 square-feet and the other house is 3200 square-feet. Both houses had a "variable cost" to build of $100-per-square-foot.

Both are built on lots that cost $60k (including utility hook-ups).

Both have an additional $90k in regulatory compliance costs associated with building them.

The cost of the 800 square-foot house is $80k+$60k+$90k or $230,000 or almost $300 per square-foot.

The cost of the 3200 square-foot house is $320k+$60k+$90k or $470,000 or about $150 per square-foot. Four times more house (in terms of square-footage) at only twice the cost.

Which do you think is easier for builders to sell? Which do you think banks are more willing to finance with an eye of not losing their shirts on a distressed sale?

A feature, not a bug?

That inevitably dries up the flow of new "affordable" single-family dwellings entering the market which drives that demographic into dense-pack housing which might be the actual end-goal of the policy makers.

That creates a cascade of consequences which might appear to be good for the environment but is not always so good for the humans.

Even the "good" for the environment is debatable since it is an illusion. The environmental "costs" are simply driven over the horizon and are not visible.

And, for good or for ill, people in dense-pack housing  are easier to "control" as we saw in China during COVID when authorities literally welded the doors shut on buildings.

Malthus Smirks (Cumberland Saga)

It was a grim meeting on Sig’s patio that evening. Planting in the new fields was going more slowly than expected and Malthus seemed to be smirking. The Cove was top-heavy with people. The new people were getting blisters and sprains and sunburn and there was just too much work.

But what really shook all of the old-timers was what had happened to Miss Shannon. Miss Shannon attended their Sunday services on a regular basis and she was one of the life-lines, the very few, they trusted to order stuff “on-line”.

And she was invariably cheerful. Everybody agreed (except perhaps the now departed Constanze) that Miss Sharron was “a peach”.

Miss Shannon had been toileting her mother when the chime informed her that a vehicle had entered her ½ mile drive. The chime was located at the mid-point well away from the road to minimize the number of false alarms. It was where the drive hooked to the south just past the gully.

She was just getting her mother settled back into her power recliner when the men started battering the back door. She looked at the security cam and saw four men and they had a law-enforcement grade breaching tool.

Miss Shannon uncharacteristically said “Shit!”

“What is it dear?” her mother asked sweetly from her chair.

“We gotta go to the safe room” Shannon said as she tried to dial 9-1-1. No signal. Crap!

As they huddled in the confined space behind the false-wall between the house and the garage, Shannon had a lot of time to consider what she had seen.

Bob and Shannon had seen the signs that society was fragmenting. They discretely became preppers. They did a lot of research and a lot of shopping before they found their dream property, 120 acres with one corner touching Soddy Creek and completely masked from the road.

Over the years they had added a deep pond just east of the house, gardens, outbuildings, orchards and animals. Bob hired a local to plant the 30 acres of tillable soil into food-plots to attract deer which he hunted in the fall.

In time, Shannon’s mother was unable to care for herself due to a host of health issues. Shannon resigned from her job and took her mother into their home. Bob was a saint and was fine with the idea.

Even though Shannon and Bob were hard-core preppers at that point, you really had to know what you were looking for to see it. A casual look at their house and property would not inform of how deeply integrated everything was. Many of their neighbors had animals for pets. Many of their neighbors had food plots for deer. Many of their neighbors had a pond or their property touched a rapidly flowing creek. Many heated with wood and a surprising number had a few solar cells. Many of their neighbors were set back from the road or had a mix of different aged woods and open ground. But very, very few of them had ALL of those elements.

Shannon shared those things with the men crowding Sig’s patio. “But I don’t think it was about the supplies or the house or the land. I think somebody knew that Mom’s pain was so bad that there would be good drugs in the house.”

Samson was the first to bring up the unmentionable. “So you think it was an inside job? Somebody you trusted was in on the job?”

Shannon looked bitter. “So it appears.”

Sig, in his role as her pastor asked “If we git it back, are you willing to move back in? Sometimes folks don’t wanna ever go back to places where bad things happened.”

“Absolutely!” Shannon said. “Bob and I planted our hearts there. But the point is that two women can’t defend it, not when one is an invalid who needs care and the other one is the care-giver.”

Blain rarely spoke up at these meetings. In his opinion, he was still “the new guy” although in the eyes of the newcomers he had been there forever. “I don’t think that is really much of a problem. We have many families who would be overjoyed to live on your property and would defend it as their own.”

“The only real questions are “How many?” and “Which ones?” Blain said.

To that end, Samson launched into a monologue where he discussed different threat environments and various force multipliers. Based on what he had learned about Shannon’s property and his own personal assessment of how quickly things were falling apart he opined “Three families in addition to Miss Shannon and her mother would be marginal, even with older kids. We really need to send at least four families and a couple of them need to have dogs.”

“Not just any dogs but dogs that are alert and intelligent and can be trained when they are supposed to sound the alarm.”

Gregor volunteered to join the men who would recover Shannon’s property. Roger said he would take a poll of the newcomers in the morning and make two lists of those who would be willing to relocate again: One list with with dog-owners and one list of non-dog-owners. 

That is when Samson threw a wet-blanket on the plans. "You are grossly underestimating the resources this is going to take. This ain't a TV show."

"This is going to take at LEAST 10 men. And it is going to take scouting and training. We will be lucky if we can pull it off in less than 10 days."

Shannon was dismayed that Samson insisted on training prior to the mission. The longer they waited, the more animals she would lose due because they ran out of feed and water and the more supplies the looters would use/steal/destroy.

“Look” Samson told her “it is pretty easy to get shot by your own team and we don’t vests or flash-bangs or tear-gas or have air-lift to a hospital. So we need a plan and we need to train each man to the plan...and each man needs to be able to do at least two roles in case we have to shift people around.”

"That means we need to build a replica of your house, even if it is sticks laid on the ground for walls and short-sticks for where the doors are and then we train to the replica until we can do it with our eyes closed."

"I refuse to participate in an evolution that is more focused on saving a few chickens than on keeping my men safe!"

"We might get lucky and just walk into an empty house...but counting on luck is not a plan that leads to long-term success" Samson concluded.

Odds and ends

Cortisol

Cortisol is the "stress hormone". Stress in moderate doses is not a bad thing as long as there are recovery periods.

Stress, and cortisol in high doses or without breaks is a bad thing. Chronic stress can result in weight gain, anxiety, heart disease, metabolic issues like diabetes.

There is a good article HERE with action-items that are well presented.

Looting

There is a hierarchy of "things" that are most attractive to thieves and looters.

1. Cash, credit cards, drugs, firearms, jewelry
2. Vehicles, electronic gadgets, booze, ammo
   
3. Anything else on wheels, copper, aluminum, fuel, designer apparel, fashionable footwear, tobacco
   
4. Food in freezers, tools, tires
   

If things go pear-shaped, some things like credit cards, designer apparel and vehicles might drop down the list while things like food and fuel will move up the list.

If things go really pear-shaped, items that are not even on the list become significant: Bars of soap, toothbrushes, seeds, fertilizer, pesticides, window screens, and durable clothing for example.

MOST people who are into looting are cunning rather than bright. They will be behind the curve on values because they will still be weighing everything with respect to how easy it is to transport, pawn and if it is fungible/anonymous.

Calves

I was mowing our orchard this afternoon when I ran across this.

It looks like calf-poop!

No, I didn't see any of the missing calves. But it got me to thinking.

Motorcycles

Motorcycles are very big sellers in third-world countries.

The biggest sellers in Mexico and India are between 99cc and 150cc. They top-out at 65 mph, down-hill with a tail-wind.

People living on the edge don't commute daily to jobs 90 miles away. They might toddle over to a job 6 miles away...2 hours walking, one way.

Presented with minimal comment: Oakland, California 2022

 

"COOPERATVE COMMUNITY BY DESIGN"

Directly across the street

Overhead image. Approximately 30 tents and 10 RVs in this partial image. Unknown number of the vehicles are lived-in.

Serviced by four porta-potties

You gotta wonder why Google doesn't have more recent imagery than May, 2022

About THAT verdict

I am trying to look a little deeper than the obvious with regard to the NYC verdict against President Trump.

Things are happening very rapidly and there are eddies and turbulence and rip-tides at much deeper levels than I have information about.

The layer I CAN see suggests that the Democrats stepped into a mess of their own making.

Weak people who dislike guard-dogs throw rocks at them, usually from other side of the fence. Dogs can jump fences. Dogs chase people who run.

People who are fearful* become magnets for the things they are afraid of. Women who are terrified of being hurt by men seem to attract that kinds of "man". People who are fearful of being conned out of their life-savings attract con-men.

For those who say "Elections don't matter" I ask, "Why are the Democrats trying so many unprecedented things to win this one if elections don't matter?"

Looking at my sphere-of-influence 

• I have my family.
• I have frequent talks with God. Sometimes I even remember to listen.
• So far I am pretty healthy in spite of normal wear-and-tear and a bit more pain in the morning.
• I have a garden and a dog and various means of harvesting meat.
• I have this blog and I have the deepest respect for you, my readers.
• I have a truck and a chainsaw that work.
• My neighbors are tolerable.
• I am not broke.
  

I am not going to get into a dither about the things I cannot control. I am going to try to avoid blathering about things I know nothing about.

*This note added later: In many cases people CREATE what they fear most by their maladaptive responses. Afraid he will get physical...establish dominance by needling and insulting him and sabotaging his ego and telling lies about him (and so on and so-forth)

June 1, 2024 garden notes

Handsome Hombre gave me a list of what he wanted to grow in his garden. His job demands make it hard for him to get it planted and he doesn't seem to mind if I throw the plants and seeds into the ground for him.

Part of the clump that self-seeded

 

This is what old men feel like when they don't stay hydrated

Today saw a row of Pontiac Red potatoes go in and a row of Red Russian kale seedlings that volunteered.

I have Summer Dance cucumbers started as well as assorted greens.

In my garden I planted a bunch of onion seedlings. Ooof! That is hard on the back.

It was a good day for moving seedlings. Very little sun loading and high humidity...and the kale still wilted. Rain expected tonight. It will recover.

I did some maintenance on some cheap, Chinesium shovels. I replaced these tiny brads that joined the handle and the blade with a through-rivet on two shovels, and then coated the handles with linseed oil.

Dortmund Rose.

Miscellaneous meme

Pictures taken Sunday morning after about 0.3" of rain

The kale perked up nicely.