Preparing for the Future 05

ON TRAVELING

To me travel is familiar..... my family has traveled for generations...... some types of humans like to travel...... Its adventurous, and has it's benefits...... There is nothing I personally like better, than hiking along a creek, with a Fly Rod, following its wandering way up into the mountains, far from anyone or anything.... I tend to like most forms of travel, and some of my best memories are of trips across continents, and oceans......... One of my favorite ways to travel is by horse, when one rides along the country roads on horse back, its slow enough, and people greet you as you go by........ Also on horseback you have time to stop and talk.... very pleasant to be on a horse and encounter a friend on his horse....

I like walking, some times I can go for miles and miles exploring....... a trip to a beach and I'm off wandering around, poking into things, seeing whats over the hump and around the other side of the point....

The biggest problem with travel, is baggage.... In most situations, its the baggage that makes or breaks a trip... Having the right things, and not having the wrong things.....
I find using the Nomadic mindset, that I can limit and control my materialism, and benefit exceedingly for doing so....... I think eventually in whats coming, that it may get down to migration...... I hope I have the help of at least a horse if it gets to that..... In the tropics I have learned that the less you carry the easier the walking in the tropical heat...
A friend from the north came down years ago, and we were carrying h2o from the creek, an El Nino year, all the springs were dry, and a month or so to go, until the first rains of the new wet season.... And this friend packs two 2 and ½ gallon plastic jugs up from the creek, and breaks a good sweat doing it, And realizes how in the topics very little was needed in the way of cargo to turn a hike into work....

My point is that less is better when it comes to packing things, but on the other side of the balance point is the sheer necessity of some items.... Choose wisely or suffer, either side of that balance point.............

My big hope with this writing, is that I am able to trigger the thinking of some people, and they manage to become more able to survive through the coming problems... What it will take, is a near spiritual correction in one's course, and for people to begin to focus on a reality where there is only ownership of what you can pack....... I doubt Donald Trump gets away with much gold.........and if he does, there wont be much to do with it.......

In travel, one has to live where you find yourself every evening.................. the usual perfect situation is at a water site........ A dry camp is a temporary camp........

Humans live off of resource consumption, the good news, is that we dont need all that much to live...... a small bowl of food, something to drink a few times a day, and enough water for bathing and washing one's clothes....... Places with water are still common enough, but I suspect that in the future this may not be the case.... after water comes food.... and it either has to be based on something growing, or something you hang around and grow, or something you plant and come back to when its producing....

Food in the wild can also be almost non-existent in an area for long periods of time... its critical that you have reserves if possible..... I think a habit of harvesting and storing everything possible, will be the norm.....

BASIC CRAFTS

many things that a person uses are fairly expendable, like clothing..... it lasts a year or two under harsh conditions beyond the horizons one sees from the Ivory towers..... Most people today dress for vanity. And few for the reality.... Take a look at business suits....... I wouldn't want to be wearing one of them in a survival situation.... I'd have to get out the knife, and do some cutting......
Few people think about what it is going to be like with no store boughten clothing available... It will be a very pressing necessity to a very many people soon after the collapse..... The most important piece of cloth for a person to own is a blanket....
And within 5 years after a cultural collapse people will be starting to eye their blankets, and realize they too need replaced....... the first problem is when they realize that their clothing is going down hill, and replacement means starting from scratch..... I moved to a tropical climate, and can live with very little clothing if necessary....... but still the production of textiles worries me....... I've woven before, and played around with spinning yarns etc., and what I know is its going to take a lot of that, to even come up with a hand towel....... And its going to take more than a hand towel............

I suspect one had better start studying spindles and carding, and learn to knit if nothing else, as knitting needles as far as I know are what makes the most hand towel for the least amount of investment in materialism, i.e. Tools....... A spindle and knitting needles will fit in any pack, but a cotton plantation, or a herd of Alpacas wont..........

There are natural fibers available in the wild. Common Nettles have a fiber in the stems used for cloth making.... so does Hemp.... so does flax, a domestic plant that is easy to grow, and also produces seed that is not only edible, but has an oil of very high nutritional quality... Flax flowers are also pretty, and my Grandmother told me about growing up far from the sea, and when she was a girl, she imagined the the sea must look like a field of flax in the wind.........

My point is that one best be thinking beyond the immediate in survival terms... You have more to do than to just catch the last bus out of town, and apply for a job at the employment department in your new location....

GROUPS
At first, The safest place to be is going to be where there are the least people....... I wouldn't worry too much at first about grouping up......and I would be very careful just who I joined up with.... Humans are power trippers, and a good group would be the one with no power trippers...... Why suffer the collapse of one big lie, and immediately submit yourself to another one? There is power in self-sufficiency..... Trading herd dogs, never freed a single sheep....The other side of this coin, is that a good group is also in some ways, the best insurance in the future..... and if I were a man living around others and in an urban setting, I think I'd try to use the internet to group up with like minded folks.......... When it comes to survivalism, the most effective group is the family, with the usual sprinkling of friends added. I'd avoid a lot of types, and choose very carefully... go for an outdoor club, instead of beady eyed rabid conspiracy theory style people.... Of course there are conspiracys, levels and levels of them.... but I dont waste my time trying to convince other slaves that there are such conspiracies......... That we have problems is obvious, that one had best get busy doing something now to save your own rump, strangely seems to be less obvious....

I tend to like people, until they screw me over....... And I know that very few are who you want to be with, in whats coming.... If I were in the city I'd be checking out the camping group types..... scouts? People who fished, all kinds of clubs and groups, that one can socialize in that will have a higher percentage of outdoor types.......... gardening clubs? You bet...... go for organic, those chemical factories are part of the problem, and not likely to make it through the solution....... I would also really want to have textiles folks in my group, people who did weaving for a hobby.... perhaps we need to do a “Village Internet” of the right types of people? perhaps some such already exists in Cyberville........

BACK TO CLOTHING
Clothing can also be made out of leather, which requires an animal skin........ and much work....... also a good bit of know how, and if you dont know how now, its a good time to get curious, before the libraries disappear........ The facts of leather making are that you start with a skin, remove the natural oils and other juices, and replace them with other oils that dont go rancid, and you keep the leather flexible throughout the entire process, with liberal amounts of work....

Leather can be tanned, with acids, common soap, or brains and smoking... the generally missing piece of information on the brain tanning method, is that the brains are cooked...... Here in the tropics I'd use lemon juice, an acid, because I have the lemons........

To date the best printed information on tanning I have seen is in the Ben Hunt, Indian crafts book.....
My point is that the change over to a subsistence/survival reality is going to take re-acquiring the personal crafts manufacturing habit, one will need to be adept at using your hands and eyes and brain to come up with practical items needed for the new reality... you wont be able to do it with your credit card...............

ON KITS
I find doing kits to be a form of entertainment, kits for everything, and all in their organizers............. the organizers are for packing and also keep the kits together when not in use..... I noticed years ago that nothing seemed to be sized properly to create kits out of..... but I've stuck with it and managed to find pots, pans, bowls, cups, etc., all of a size to nest into a kit bag and do it efficiently bulk and weight wise....

Sometimes I will start using out of a kit just for the practice.... to get used to it, learn limits, improve if possible.... this is a good idea just for the psychology, in a survival situation if you are cooking on familiar cookware, have your favorite coffee cup or what ever, its something, and when you feel like you have little, the familiar is like old friends if you've taken the time to know them........



I like to do really complete and well thought out kits.... but also minimalistic....my smallest cook kit, I call my sub-mini............would be about what you'd need as a prisoner of war...
and it all would easily fit in an old school lunch box......

My point is that kits are worth taking the time to do...... and I dont mean just to buy kits, as they never really do it... you gotta' do it your self to get it right for you...........


WOKS
I once saw a foto in National Geographic of a Mung (Mountain yard) family coming to the US........... the woman was carrying a stack of nesting stainless bowls through customs....
I pondered the bowls for days, wondering the why of the bowls.... I figured she didn't have too much, and being a wife and mother, she chose the bowls knowing that she could cook in them, the family could eat out of the smaller ones etc., the bowls were the least amount of cookware in a nesting kit form that the woman had, and she wasn't sure when she could get more cookware...... This led me to thinking more about Wok shaped pots, and how one can cook just about anything in them.... especially doing your cooking over a fire.....
Since then its been years and years of experiences doing day to day subsistence living and cooking.... and Woks are a favorite... for years I wanted to find a nice down-size wok for a camping kit....also I wanted it to have a copper bottom.... I never found one in the classic oriental style, but I did run into a similarly shaped pot from India, with copper bottom and a couple of hoop style handles.... I consider this my universal pot for my camp cook kit...
It will handle the stir frys, it will boil the noodles, it will fry the yucca.... and it will also do fry-breads....... If I have to get down to one pot, this will be it.........

ON CARTS

I have pondered survival carts for years.... when young I appreciated the wheelbarrow, and what I could do with it... it got the wood I split from the forest to the wood shed, and wood shed to house...... also it was used for transporting dirt, you know, digging a basement by hand as sub-human adolescent slave unit for one's less than patient father......

I admired the ability of the wheelbarrow to the point, that when I saw a foto of a painting of the era in north America of the covered wagons, one poorer fool pushing everything he owned across the prairie in a wheelbarrow, the vignette stuck in my mind......


For survival carts, I suspect the rubber tires of being a problem.... I've patched a lot of inner tubes in my life, and so would worry about a day when the patch kit wouldn't find replacements any more, or in a refugee situation, and there was a serious need of a hurry and no time for problems with a flat tire.............. So one possibility is to go solid tire, which I dislike for its bumpy ride, another is to upscale the tire toughness, by getting away from wheelbarrow or bike class tires, and go to a small car tire size or bigger....
I've had car tires that held their air for years and years...... they are a class above bikes and wheelbarrows when it comes to durability factor........ Another problem area on carts, is the bearings...... I'd go bearings off of a small car or truck, out of the junkyard, or one could buy the small boat trailer bearings and hubs....... The Idea on a cart, is to keep the cart weighing as little as possible, and so hauling more with less work........

A mistake I see often, is people using truck or car rear differentials, way too heavy, and hard to pull, even for a horse, especially if the gears are left intact.........

I know carts are a discussed issue among survivalist circles, and no doubt everyone will use whatever they could get......... And also no doubt much junk gets sold as something special...... One needs to be thinking “Expedition” quality........... I have a design worked up for a hand cart, a couple welding projects away..... when I get one done, I'll insert a foto......
My thinking on the bearings for pony carts, is to use fairly lightweight car spindles, or go the boat trailer hubs, because both are fairly small physically, and my pony will need a smaller cart....
The error I see most people making with pony carts, is over building them... they end up weighing 2x of what they should, I see horses hauling palm fruit here with carts that outweigh their loads............ For a survival cart, I worry also about the bearing system, and I would repack used bearings, and check them at least visually for sloppy tolerances..... A regular car type Timkin bearing would last a couple three generations of constant rolling, If the seals are good, and one keeps mud out of them... Bearings need to be kept totally clean when reassembling, and the seals are what save the bearing.......... For my smaller hand cart, I am considering going wooden bushings, as its something I can replace anywhere on the planet.... I certainly like roller bearings better, but I have a third world availability problem with parts........ When I first came to Costa Rica, all the wheelbarrows had a steel shaft running inside a hunk of pipe, no bearings, no bushings, nada.... It made for squeeky work sites.......... With carts, etc. the big problem when “oh! Shit!” day happens, is going to be over-loading.... I suggest you try using your cart for groceries or what ever first, and learn what it and you limits are............. and I suggest that you work on a list of items to be on the cart that day, and have those items packed up and ready to go on the cart in minutes........ For bike tire type carts you're looking at about a 250 lb practical limit, and maybe better go 200 or less to get more distance between flat tires......... Car tire and bearing carts are likely good for 1000 lbs or more.... i.e. More than you are going to want to pull or push........

The problem after the collapse with carts, is going to be access....... depending on your local style of disaster you may have to deal with rubble, or also raiders, or worse; bureaucrats, who understand nothing, and want to control everything..... A good cart is kept small and fairly narrow, and even if you are working with horses, be careful not to be overloaded that day of all days..........

IT'S SOMETHING YOU CAN DO, NOW.....
Making the decision to go Neo-Indigenous is something you can do now..... its a tiny little decision, with far reaching consequences.... it also needs no one else's permission regardless or race, sex, age, religion, etc., and if necessary, one can slip off into it without bothering to tell anyone.... 'tis a simple thing to just start making your decisions as if you know that in the future you will have to go back to living in harmony with the ambient natural world, and that you're heading that direction every chance that comes your way.... I suggest you learn to want it..... you know how we all are about wanting stuff for ourselves........

For some it will be the missing piece.... What comes to mind is the hunters in the US, who spend all year looking at catalogs for their annual hunting trip, its a prime recreation, one shops the pages, and in time buys this or that item, thats “just missing” from our collection of junk..... all the junk is geared toward that few days a year that the average poor fool is free to do what he really wants to be doing.

My point is it isn't going to be a one week trip, and you dont have to come back on Monday.... No matter what your outdoor hobby, when the shit hits, you're going to be doing something like it 24/7.............

And you can start now, by working on your kits, deciding what is leave behind stuff, and what is “gotta-havvit”.........

I suggest that if you do some kind of annual trip, be it hunting, photography, fishing, horse-packing, etc., that you do it with a new gleam in your eye, and some spring in your step, because hell day will be freedom day for those who make it happen for themselves.......

Remember, more is less..... and the less you have, the more mobile you are.......
I do everything now with the “Subsistence” mindset... And if I was back in the old days when the system had me snookered, I'd be biding my time, and putting together that escape kit, with the money from my continual yard sale....... letting go of this, and reaching for that.......... And long before the day of darkness, I'd be down the road, and headed toward sunny days, and clear nights under the stars............

Think of how little one really needs, and then think about the value of what the average person has now.... And even if the Liars and Thieves trash your retirement fund etc., you can still win, by taking what you can and walking with it, instead of bowing down and taking what they want to do to you, which is use up your life, and give you as little as possible for it.......

Leaving early wins you the game....


THE TRAVELING COWBOY.........
I once saw a Vignette..... I was in a government pickup truck, riding shotgun, headed out for the day's work.... we were crossing over the Willamette River, going through Eugene Oregon, on Belt-line Highway.... Just after we get over the hump of the bridge, and I can see down the right hand off-ramp into the Santa Clara area, and I see a strange sight, and only get a short look, a long glance really, And I see this scene: There is a horse pulling a flat bed cart down the offramp, the cart has about a pallet load of stuff all neatly stacked in the center of perhaps a six foot by eight foot flat bed, on a pair of automotive tires, wheels, etc., and poles running forward alongside the horses body, connected to some harness... the load is tarped with clear plastic, and roped down neatly, the horse is unusual, its one of the bigger midsized draft horse breeds, and not a smaller saddle horse.... There is a man running alongside the cart urging the horse on... the horse is healthy, well fed, and groomed.
The man is a big guy, over six foot, maybe six and a half... He's beefy like the horse... and has black hair, an Australian style Duster coat, and a wide brimmed hat... “cowboy”
written all over him, big beefy european stock... Riding boots, bandana, And you could tell he had a good relationship with the horse.... Everything about them spoke of well taken care of, minimalistic, and headed somewhere... I knew in an instant what the probabilities were...
This guy was technicaly homeless, and had just come a long ways, to cross that bridge, as the next bridge was twenty miles or more up river, and the other bridges down river where longer and no quick get-away after doing the crossing.... Basically our Freeman Had waited out the morning rush hour, and when traffic got light, had run his horse and cart across that bridge, and gotten off the bridge and out of the freeway car traffic, with not more than a couple of minutes of exposure to danger....... And I figured he was probably another victim of the divorce system, like me..... and all he got left with was his horse and the flatbed cart..... The Whole Vignette Had An ATTITUDE... He wasn't beaten, he wasn't lost, He had taken the hand delt him, and played it........ And come out of it a free man........ who knows who he was, who knows where he was going, All not really important... what was important to me, is he and the horse looked like they were doing good... They were free, they were together, and they were traveling..... This scene haunted me...... I had seen Free people before, but rarely, generally its their sun tan that gives them away.... people living outside, one occasionally sees them fishing rivers and ponds, often living out of a vehicle... The homeless who dont hang out around the shelter... the ones that are picking up wind fall apples, fishing, doing crafts, and camping long term somewhere....
The ones who have let go of normalcy, and chosen to go free and live by their wits, instead of living by letting others screw them over..... Beyond Homeless..... A new morning dawning.....Think about that cowboy. He had everything he needed, and it didn't include most of what passes for normal.... Was he trashed? Didn't look like it to me, looked like he had made some good decisions..... That was over a dozen years ago.... I hope he is still free and going somewhere... he helped free me, by just seeing that it was possible..... Its one thing to see horses and carts on movies etc., and its another seeing a man using them to establish a free life.....


IN THE FUTURE....
A person will do better if they are more natural path oriented.....
Its the cure to the problem.... We've gotten too far off the wise trail......... Time for a little re-grouping, i.e. Finding a good group if possible, and if not, not worrying nor letting it be a problem... Mobility will be a handy thing, and pre-positioning one's self out beyond the danger zones and ground zeros will be a good idea...... I hear the survivalist types, on short wave radio, and they are doing the right things, but maybe some cant get too well set up with a place in the sticks, and so are planning to Neo-homestead a remote site when the shit comes down... I think thats a good idea, if its away from Nuclear anything....

Then the big issues are food, fuel for cooking and heating, & Water supply through any local dry season, and after that its digging in, and rigging a camp, that should be fairly hidden by design, and after the balloon goes up, one should not show lights at night, i.e. Campfires, lanterns, or solar powered lighting.... (Its no time to get out the big Coleman white gas lantern, and light up an area of hillside.... ).......

I think a lot of people will do OK on house boats, sail boats etc., and no doubt there are some with nothing but a Jon-boat or punt, planning to go back into the swamp and sleep under a tarp and mosquito net..... the safety is in getting separated from the system as it does the “dieing giant” dance routine....

Really, I think the biggest problem for most folks will be the amount of materialism and junk they are tied to emotionally........... while some poor slob, living in poverty and misery, could find himself doing fine compared to other folks, and never have to change a thing....


I can see a lot of people in the northern areas who are city types having a hard time due to not realizing what it takes to get, and keep enough fire wood up to heat their shelter......
The food growing issue will be similar, it takes work and perseverance to come up with a stock of food good for a year or more of continual eating... The most likely to survive types will be those already doing it, and those the farthest from the Empire.... I suspect it will be a blood bath in the cities, people fighting and not knowing why...... just fighting to live, and dealing with one assault after another, until they run out of raiders, bullets, or get a space to run, and do so....... some may be able to “Fort up” and be able to last it all out, in some areas........ I think the global warming effects will eventually include Mega-quakes, or a planet wide mega-quake, and a time when volcanoes start popping off in concert.....

Theres not much anyone will do about it..... and the effects of this would be to rubble all the cities, and kill off all the agriculture...... nuclear winter effect. Only hope will be to get south fast enough if you are north.....

And there isn't going to be much time after it hits, and the best time is now...... One can start moving ever so carefully toward being gone before all that..... lighten the baggage, acquire any missing items, build your kits, come up with your transport system, shelter, and a plan on how to resupply your food stash with out having to do anything risky..... Many will think raiding and looting will be a fun way to survive, but those types will be genetically editing themselves through increased risk taking...

REMEMBER TO BE AS WARY AS A WILD DEER.......