Competition

Of all the many things preparedness minded individuals think to cover or write about one thing most often left undiscussed is the individual. While it's true that we want to do everything we can to keep ourselves and our families safe, we ignore the fact that maybe, just possibly, this is not in the best interest of surviving.

Our ancestors had something in common. They were the best. They gathered or obtained resources like no ones business. Something about them, whether you call it spirit, force of will or just plain brute strength lead them to be the most viable candidate to continue their genetic line.

There is no such impetus today.

Now, lest you think me a hard line right winger that wants to end the nanny state and take away people's welfare and food assistance benefits, let me disabuse you of that notion. My employment depends a great deal on people that need financial assistance in order to obtain the resources necessary to live. So it is not out of a desire to see people "pull themselves up by their bootstraps" that inspires this, but rather a simpler desire to produce the best that humanity can by employing the innate methods that got us here.

In order to produce the line that I am descended from, my ancestors had to fight tooth, nail and sharp pointy stick to ensure that they were the ones that had resources and were able to secure a mate of their choosing. We have none of that today, or rather we have so little of that as to be almost unnoticeable. This has produced a population that is soft, weak and frankly, rather stupid.

One of my many tasks as a social worker is to aid people in gaining access to resources available from the community. Now truthfully regular people would have trouble gaining access to the plethora of resources available to them (i.e. community assistance with food, money,etc.) simply because those with the resources do not advertise this to the general public.

And when I say advertise I mean lead people by the hand to the door, put a pen in their hands and move it about for them to mimic writing so that the at-risk type can be "helped".

I know a lot of folks think the thing to do is being prepared not just for themselves and their families, but to help out their neighbors in hard (read: SHTF) times I have to wonder if in fact we're "helping" them at all.
More to the point is that what is--at the core--what survival is all about? Propagating members of a species that do nothing to strengthen or improve the species?

If we continue to prop up those that are a drain on resources would we not just be heading back to where we are, but making it harder on ourselves as we rebuild? This is in truth a moot point. If we are ever faced with any of the dire situations we hear about (peak oil, economic collapse--choose your poison) nature will likely sort this out for us.

Those that do not work, will not eat.

China is the new black.

There are a number of comparisons made by prepper/survivalist type folks out there between where America currently is and the Weimar Republic. Our currency is backed by nothing more than the governments say-so and the continued good will of the people (foreign and domestic). I have been a prepper for a while, but really only woke up to the idea of a true economic collapse just recently. The national debt is $15 trillion dollars and climbing.  The government collects plus or minus 1% of that in income tax every year.

This does not take into account the trillions of dollars of unfunded mandates that we manage to somehow meet every year (magic?). There is no danger of America becoming a Weimar republic, because we already are one. They even took away the money and replaced it with something else. Sure it looks similar to the old money and it was done under the guise of making it more difficult for counterfeiters to reproduce (why would the government make it more difficult for themselves I wonder?).  Never fear, the Weimar Republic is here.

So let's look at the aid we give out. Unlike with our debt where the number is put right out there, you cannot as easily find the number for aid dollars we give away. Go to http://www.usaid.gov/ and try and find a cohesive numerical representation of hom much money is going bye-bye.  Our assistance amounts to around 53 Billion dollars, most of it currently going to Egypt and Israel. More surprisingly is that we are still subsidizing programs in China. In case you havent heard, China is the new us.

So how about for every dollar we give in aid, we get say a dollar or some fraction (no less than 50% I would say is fair) knocked off what we owe other countries? It would be nice if we could stop foreign aid all together, but of course that's racist and our government would lead you to believe it is in our best interest to continue giving away money.

We may as well give away toilet paper instead. At least that has a use.

Top 5 Guns

Seen this on some other blogs I read and I'm jumping on the bandwagon. My top 5 'if money were no object' (in no particular order) guns:

1. M6 Air Crew Survival Weapon -I'd be all right with any decent .22/.410 over under but the M6 is the first one that came to my attention and so is the one I want.


2. M14: I have a personal attachment and some personal experience with the M14. I love this gun and I'm glad to see it's making a comeback in the service and on the civilian side.


3. M1 Garand. in one word: Ting! I chose the M6 because of it's dual purpose capability, but the m14 and M1 really appeal to me as a shooter mostly for my enjoyment of shooting, at great distances. Sure you can put multiple rounds on target sharpish, with either gun, but going slow and enjoying the shot is what I enjoy.


4. Snayperskaya Vintovka Dragunova: The Dragunov sniper rifle (cf. 2 and 3 above). I like the long distance shooting. The Dragunov especially of the Viet-Nam era was a beautiful and deadly accurate gun. The new ones with all the plastic are less appealing, but I'd still take one.


5. GAU-8 Avenger. Right. No one said I had to be able to carry the gun. The GAU-8 sets the standard for not to be fucked with. When you positively have to destroy everything in sight in a matter of .5 seconds, choose the Avenger.

Having children is not a reason to have a blog.

No one cares that you had sex at some time in the past. No one. Not even the person you had sex with. Especially not them. In fact they would probably be happy if you just forgot about it. So congratulations, you reproduced. Good job. Now, how about you shut the fuck up. Your kid? It's not special. It is not--to quote Chuck Palahniuk--a unique snowflake. You have not improved the world nor the lives of those around you by bringing the planet an extra mouth to feed.

Now go do something worthwhile.

The shrinking middle class

Babies!

Puppies!

This blog is full of win!