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Want To Spend Thousands Prepping? |
| By
Ted Twietmeyer |
| During my career, looking at a problem both from the standpoint of solving
it today and what will happen in the future became a required skill. Let's
realistically apply this form of problem solving to prepping. Prepping only delays the inevitable, which will come sooner than later if America were to crash of fall apart. But will it realistically? LIGHTING AND POWER Supplies like candle wax and kerosene which are used to make your own light sources don't exist prolifically like these did 200 years ago. Kerosene and gasoline is stored in tanks in the ground at gas stations, which requires power to pump it out for customers. No power, no kerosene. No one can possibly store enough gasoline on hand to run a car and a generator for a life time or even one year. Impossible. Generators must be shut down and have an oil change when running continuously (and periodically every vehicle you own.) Oil costs about $6/quart for now, and generators require about 3 quarts for each oil change every other day or so. Bigger generators have oil filters that need changing, too. Spark plug(s) must also be changed periodically. The cheapest gasoline costs $2.49 to $2.69/gallon as of this writing. Clearly expenses required to generate your own power are utterly impractical for the long term. Even a water well requires running a pump to get it out of the ground. What is it like to run off a generator? I was in Virginia about 10 years ago during an ice storm at a relative's home. Power company told callers power would be off about 3 days. Power was out and I wired a generator outside into the home's breaker panel to run it. Each day at 11AM and 11PM I had to shut down the generator and pour in about 4 gallons of gasoline and restart it. Every few days I had to change the oil. We were fortunate; just one gas station near the airport was still operating. Every day or so I drove over to the station and filled up the gas cans. It became expensive as price-gouging was going on. Remainder of the neighborhood remained dark. Power was not off 3 days, but 7 days. Renewable energy? People may use wind or solar. A typical solar installation costs about $50k and requires a lead-acid battery bank for cloudy days. Each year the battery bank holds less and less of a charge until those batteries must be replaced after about 10 years. Wind generators require a battery bank, too. Most people don't realize that a wind generator requires YEARLY service for cleaning/lubrication. I spoke with a couple near us last year. They have a contract with a service that does that; steeple jacks come out and climb the tower to do the yearly maintenance on the generator. Cost of the tower and generator: $18k. Instead of a battery bank, they sell the power to the power company. To qualify for a NY state subsidy for the generator, tower and convertor electronics, the NY state rule requires the generator provide no more than 90% of their power. When there is no utility to sell power to and make up for wind-less days, then what? They would only have power when the wind blows which is about half of the time. Like solar panels, wind mill generators have a limited lifetime. HEATING Then there is the heating issue in winter. Where will that heat come from? Most preppers think wood. Under martial law, you will be forbidden to be outside cutting down wood or even collecting it. Running a chain saw can be heard over large distances. Using a chain saw is like putting a sign on your back which says, "Come arrest me." Jealous neighbors will turn you in out of spite. When you cut, split and stockpile wood it becomes seasoned over time by partially drying out, making it ready to burn. If you don't use stored firewood soon enough, insects start to consume it. I have stood near woodpiles and could actually hear insects chomping away inside the wood. When wood reaches this point, it will burn far too fast to be useful. FOOD, BUILDINGS and RABIES Some churches recommend to have food and fuel on hand when possible for a year to cushion a crisis situation. This time period is based on the idea that the sudden bad situation you find yourself and family in (lost job, weather problems etc...) will be remedied during that time and everything in your life return to normal. That won't happen after disasters like Puerto Rico or martial law. Canned food has a limited lifetime of about one year. Un-canned food only keeps a short time, then becomes inedible without refrigeration. During martial law you cannot go outside to go hunting; sound of a rifle shot travels a mile and you will be arrested and at the least, have your rifle or gun confiscated. Just to be seen outside by patrols or a passing vehicle is just an invitation to be arrested. How can you keep a lifetime of MREs on hand? A month of MREs for just one person can cost hundreds of dollars. Don't forget the need for potable water, too. In fact, globalists would gain nothing and have everything to lose by ruining America. None of them could ever live long enough to see it rebuilt and working again. It took more than 200 years for America to reach the level of development and technology it is at now. Re-populating America with Mexicans or others would largely be pointless; these people won't do anything to rebuild America and will only turn it into another third world country. Look at Mexico - a poor land of shacks and only homes for the rich who make their money from drugs. People living there want out instead of fixing the problem. The cost to rebuild America to the globalist "vision" would far exceed all the money in circulation. Even the richest globalists could not afford it; it would cost trillions of dollars. Buildings which are unoccupied and have no heating soon have paint peeling off the walls and ceiling. Wildlife soon chews a hole into every unoccupied structure and the damage begins. When a roof is not repaired or replaced when needed, water damage will make a home or building worthless and non-recoverable when the black mold sets in. Right now in the wilds in America it's worse than people think. About 4 years ago I asked a game warden in NY state about rabies. He simply replied, "Rabies is everywhere." Dogs and cats running loose after human depopulation will produce HUGE populations and start living with wildlife in empty homes and buildings. Soon all animals will become infected with rabies and other diseases and attack anyone they seen. Rabies is 100% fatal and no doctor can detect you have it until it is too late. A series of painful rabies shots are required immediately after you are bitten by any animal, if you cannot capture the animal for a necropsy (animal autopsy.) It does not matter if the bite is from a dog, a cat, raccoon, opossum or anything else. If the bite was rabid, the power has been out and no vaccine is available you will go insane, die foaming at the mouth and tied to a bed. We haven't even discussed what happens when drugs run out; drugs that require refrigeration no longer exist (like rabies vaccine, insulin and others.) List goes on and on which the globalists already know about all these things and more. Globalists gain absolutely nothing by ruining America, so logically they cannot let it happen. But globalists allow the fear factor to spread to force-convert people to their way of thinking. This fear in turn causes preppers to proliferate when they believe the big lie, and often waste money on it they cannot afford. TRY THIS SIMPLE TEST TO KNOW The next time you take your trash out each week to a dumpster or out to the curb, consider that is the amount of supplies you went through just that week to survive. Look at the containers in your recycling box, too. Now multiply all the trash and containers you see by 52 for just one year. Don't forget the toilet paper you and your family used that went down the toilet. Now multiply a year of that trash by 5, 10 or even 20 years. How can you practically hope to keep a lifetime of that much food and supplies on hand? Preppers are lying to themselves about any kind of long term or lifetime survival. This lie is perpetuated by companies which sell supplies to them. Perppers are already targeted as the first to be picked up or raided under martial law; the fed already knows about them by computer which tracks and flags all purchases. Even if the feds or or foreign troops don't arrest preppers, they can break in and ruthlessly take all their supplies. Ted Twietmeyer tedtw@frontiernet.net |