I got a wild hair today to make a town run. I needed some pine 2x4s and I wanted to replace some of my shop and MCP (Mobile Construction Platform) tools. The 2x4s were going to be for shelving in the newly placed containers. I got some severe sticker shock on that, I was not expecting $7.50 2x4 studs, they had come down from the pandemic high of $8.75 to a unreasonable $4.90. Pretty sure we will never see $2.25 2x4 studs again So I was prepared for the $5.00 price and my new shelving costing A LOT more than my old shelving projects. I just refuse to pay $7.50 for a stick of pine wood lumber. I did note while at Menards they had some heavy duty steel shelving units 102" wide, 80" tall and 36" deep with heavy wire shelves with a 1800 pound capacity each for $229 per unit. I was planning on building almost those dimensions except my height was going to be 120" tall. But these were close enough and considerably lower cost than building my own from pine lumber. So I was at home depot as they generally have better quality lumber than Menards and don't have to go into THE YARD with the Guards that stop just short of cavity searches before letting you enter or leave. I do most of my power tools at Home Depot because they have Dewalt and Milwaukee and well I am fond of Dewalt for everything but cordless drills and prefer Milwaukee Drills. The tool list was short and turned out to be more expensive than I had planned but AMAZINGLY HOME DEPOT DID HAVE EVERY TOOL ON MY LIST!!! The Portable 10" Jobsite table saw, the sander, the planer, the 21 Degree Colated air powered framing nail gun and well I took all 10 boxes of 3 1/4 in nails, 8 boxes of 3" nails and only took 4 boxes of 2" and 2 1/2" nails (2 Each) A couple mallets, a 22,000 BTU LG window AC to replace a ragged out 7 year old LG unit in the Cabin (Not a fan of LG brand but they work (Mostly) and are cheaper than say GE units.) I snagged every steel triangle shelf bracket they had in the 24" range Which was two unopened cases they were getting ready to put on the shelf. Four Dozen heavy barn door hinges ranging from small 5" up to 10 inch and several big boxes of lag screws of varying sizes and galvanized nuts, bolts and washers of varying sizes. Two sets of deep well impact sockets, a new 3' long breaker bar for my big sockets for the big nuts and bolts..... Sometimes you just have to set the impact down and apply manual pressure to get a nut or bolt to break loose........ or fire up the torch and turn the nut and bolt to a molten state The dewalt tools were not too bad in price only about 20% more than they were a few years ago. The Nails were way higher than they used to be at $160-$220 per box of 5,000 all of the hardware type stuff what 40%-70% higher than 2 years ago. The airtool oil I buy while not much in the grand scheme of things was the most inflated at 350% higher than 2 years ago. Yeah this was a very expensive trip to the big box stores Back to Menards for the shelving units, yep home depot had the exact same shelving units but they were $379 VS $229 at Menards. Would be kind of stupid to pay $150 more per unit for the same units a mile down the road and $150 less And I like all metal fans Menards has, They are comfort zone brand but I have one that has ran on high every day for 3 years now and not even a hint of a bearing squeal or slowing down and even the small ones move some air! So 3 fans and 4 shelving units later and having to put back 2 of the shelving units because I had hit my daily limit on my debit card at that point and did not bring enough cash with me to cover it all at Menards and can't call the bank on a Saturday afternoon to have them temp raise the daily limit. Last stop was Rural King to load up 10 bags of dog food of a bacon and chicken flavor natures. That was a challenge because at this point I was debating if I could fit a popcorn fart in the bed and cab of the truck. Somehow managed to squeeze the dog food in between other things and a bag on the console between the seats LOL. On the hour drive back to the farm I kept thinking THIS IS PATHETIC! Two-Three years ago all of this stuff would have cost a whole lot less than it did today! While I got everything I wanted and needed minus the 2x4s the stock was very weak. I should not be able to go in and wipe out the nail, lag screw, nuts and bolts at any big box store. So what does this have to do with general survival and prepping? IT IS GENERAL SURVIVAL AND PREPPING At least it is if you are Hunker Down and bug in type. Having a strong stock of tools and hardware in my situation is just as important as a strong reserve of food, guns and ammo. What is a hammer and a box of nails worth if you need to make a repair to keep the rain or wind out? What is a can of PB or WD40 worth when you need to replace a rusty plow blade or disc? What is a wood lathe worth when you need to make new long tool handles? A tap and die set to thread a hole? What are surplus tubes of grease, buckets and barrels if hydraulic oil and engine oil worth? What are heirloom seeds worth that you can harvest more seeds from and keep growing infinitely ..........And on and on. Bug out is a different mindset than I have and is a light and mobile way. Bug In is Heavy and a Fixed position. If I were Urban I would be more geared to bug out as survival in a safety in a Urban environment in any shtf or disaster situation is by nature a very high risk and dangerous situation. Hell bugging out a little to late from a Urban position is a high risk and dangerous situation. Bugging in, the mentality is much more long term defensive thinking. Absolutely no point in having all of the long term stuffs if the first refugees that come along can take the stuffs from you. Always good to keep stuffs that will be worth something in trade to the refugee types. For me it is heavy duty 20 gallon trash bags, plastic quart and gallon jars and containers and of course food and water. Will I help refugees in a SHTF......... Not only NO but Hell NO! That is what FEMA and the Government are for I am not a refugee camp or free stuffs distribution center. Even refugees especially American Refugees from Urban areas will have things of value to make fair trades with. Under no circumstance would I trade guns or ammo, might very well be trading the bullet that comes back and kills you the next night. Trash bags are a refugees Luggage and plastic jugs are canteens. Now it does not hurt to have more Urban friends and family that will bug out and make you their BOL more bodies that can be trusted are more hands on the weapons to defend the fixed position and present a show of strength to deter any bad thoughts refugees might be having. Sorry if it is bad of me but I strongly dislike refugees, they are people that were not prepared or prepared poorly. The best option IMO is to be remote enough and far enough off the beaten path that no one would be interested in traveling down a gravel road that turns into a dirt road that turns into a goat trail and just not have to deal with them to start with. I actually talk with a lot of aspiring prepper/survivalist types. I see two common threads among almost all of them. Heavy on weaponry and buckets of freeze dried garbage pretending to be food. And real light to non existent on everything else. When what would serve most the best would be one good sidearm and 20 gauge single or double barrel shot gun with 3 barrels Slug, Modified choke and a full choke with a good range of slugs shot and shells for each barrel. That covers pretty much all game and defense. I don't imagine anyone would be to pleased to get hit with expander slug, a load of copper plates or a load of buckshot coming through a full choke. Why 20 gauge instead of 12 pretty much everyone from pre teen, small female or toothpick arms make to hulking giants and wookie women can handle a 20 gauge and they are very effective. The single and double barrels are simple in function with minimal working parts and easy to clean and maintain and as a bonus you can swap barrels out in 2-3 minutes and are just all around KISS. I won't knock the buckets of freeze dried garbage pretending to be prepper food too hard as I do keep two myself as last ditch emergency food sources. Anyone that says that crap is good is one of three things..... Someone with no sense of taste, a liar or trying to sell it to you But hey if someone gets hungry enough they will eat their own crap and the prepper food is a step above that LOL. I will take my jars of canned beef, pork, chicken, soups, stews and dehydrated and smoke foods any day over the expensive offerings offered as survival and prepper food. A even more rare commodity I find are hands on applied skills. Reading a book or watching a video is a decent starting point but does not make one skilled. Going out after reading the the book or watching the video and applying what you read or saw is another matter entirely. Canning and preserving food is a skill one bad run of green beans can kill you and your entire family. Trapping is a skill, getting hand or arm caught in a 220 or 330 conibear after stake is pounded in could very well be a death sentence and at a minimum some serious bruising and fractured bones. There you are standing knee deep water in a trap designed to kill a 60 pound beaver locked onto your wrist, held by a strong chain to a stake or slide strong enough to hold that 60 pound beaver through its death spasms. Woodworking and Carpentry are a skill. All Skills are developed by doing and repetition reading a book and watching the video is just a starting point and the conception of basic knowledge. If you can't apply the skill then the knowledge is worthless. I know a lot of folks packing around a lot of worthless knowledge that will be happy to tell you what a exspurt they are on the subject. And to Circle back as Peppermint Patty would say........ Most skills require tools and resources to be viable skills. Unless you have a lot of money to start up with obtaining all of the stuffs is not a instant gratification thing that can happen right now. I have spent 4 decades getting to where I am now with a commitment way back then to get to where I am now and continually working toward this goal and I still have another solid 10 years before I am where I ultimately want to be. Back then was a good time to get started in the independent, prepper, homestead/farmstead survivalist life. Fast forward to 2020 and it instantly turned into a horrible time to decide to get prepared. It is only marginally better in 2022 than it was 2 years ago but a whole lot more expensive now that it was then. 40 years ago I was lucky to earn $12,000-$15,000 per year, my first two survivalist type guns and only guns were a Savage over under .22LR/.410, A .22Mag Revolver and a Colt Python .357mag My go bag consisted of a $10 first aid kit, two changes of underwear and socks, 10 cans of starkist tuna, a box of ritz crackers a can opener, a knife, a spoon and 4 boxes of ammo and damn weak set of neophyte skills. But I had a plan and I had a goal with little plans and phases to make the grand plan work and the goal become a reality and every year my circumstance improved, my skills improved and my survival rating went up....... LOL yeah I have a objective look at myself and situation rating system, and I am brutal on rating myself. 40 years ago I was a 1.2 out of 100 today I rate myself at 93 out of 100. In ten year I plan on being capped out at 100. 40 years ago going to town and spending over $10,000 was a big pie in the sky dream, hell going to town and spending $10 was often a challenge back then. I still don't spend money on things that do not advance my plans and goals and move me continually up the steps into better positions. Well not much wasted money anyway.... I do enjoy my Hulu Subscription and eating out now and then Everything I purchased today was thought out even if the trip itself was a wild hair. Everything purchased either maintained or improves my position and personal survival rating. HOW DO $500 worth of Shelving units improve the position? BY being able to be well organized and know what I have and don't have by walking down the shelving and looking at the inventory sheets and making notes of what I am good on and what I need to restock. Hard to do that with a unorganized pile on a floor Organization BTW is another skill and shelving and containers are the tools of that skill I DO NOT envy anyone deciding that now is the time to start getting prepared for what is likely to be hitting America in the near future. I sense time is short and the cost is high. I am very good at reading body language of people. Every time I go to town I observe people to get a feel for what folks are feeling. About 40% are expressing no worries and everything is fine, around 20% don't know whether to be unworried or concerned and the last 40% express moderate to a high level of concern. You can learn a lot by observing what is in folks carts and what shelves in a store are full and which are empty to lean. Go back to 2019 and it was about 85% not expressing and concern and 15% Concerned and well stocked shelves of nearly everything........ that sure did change in a blink of a eye. When I see 40% of the people looking worried and the shelves of practical and needful things lean or empty that is a big red flag about the general state of at least the region I am in. 60% if you count the undecided as worried....... Yeah real big red flag. I strike up conversations and learn more from them and find yep folks are getting real worried about the Economy, the Geo Political Situation, the supply chain thing, the general incompetence of our Government, Crime, more riots disguised as peaceful protest, that shelves are going to be completely empty again, that our president has checked out of reality, having to pick gas, groceries or rent with the paycheck but not all 3. I am finding this to be much more pronounced in the small/mid size towns and rural communities. It is very obvious that goods and groceries are being diverted away from lower population areas and to higher population areas. We are also seeing larger % inflation on those things than urban areas are. The Median Household income in my County is $36,000 per year Which is a $5,000 increase since the previous census. When Gas has doubled in price or more, groceries have tripled in price, rent has gone up 35% across the board and property taxes have jumped 31% over 2 years, that $5,000 means nothing and the $36,000 is more like $22,000 it is brutal on even many of the above average income folks. So how do you even begin to get into being prepared when you have almost zero disposable income in this economic environment and State of the Union? I wish I had some sage advice to hand out on that one. I Don't. Beyond start with the most basics that you can afford and improve as you can with what you can. There is no way to get around that 3-5-10 years ago was when you should have been thinking about today. The signs have been pretty clear as to where the Nation was heading for at least 40 years, just no one could predict when it was going to seriously start unraveling. I would say Covid was the catalyst that started the mass pulling on the threads. I am pretty sure most of the Existing Monkeys in the tree are in decent to good positions and fairly well to super well prepared. Nooooooooo I am not forgetting Ed From my perspective Prepping/Survivalist/FarmStead/Homestead or what ever adjective you want to use for it, is a way of life and journey one starts with a long term set of plans and goals. I just am not seeing how the average American with little to no equity, large debt loads, and little disposable income can even begin to get into a secure position right now. It took me 40 years in a decent to good economy to get here, carrying zero debt and constantly building equity. If someone sees something I am missing here, where someone new to this can get started and into a good position right now I would love to hear it and learn something!
Good summery of the present situation as for the economy. Good summery of what those of us who have been at it a while are trying to reach. Wild cards are : ! Government has gone Bat Sh** crazy and threatens us all. No idea which way it is going to end or where it is going to jump. 2 World situation is most tense I have seen since Cuban Missile crisis and a nuclear war can spoil all your end goals. 3 Racial, tribal situation is the worst it has been in my life from a white male Christian perspective. Most seem to be out to get me 4 Common sense of who we are as a nation and where we are going and view of moral basics seems to be fragmenting. 5 Immigration patterns since WW2 and illegal immigration have created a new multi cultural society with different goals. 6 Employment is based on non productive skills and manipulating ideas and distribution, not on making useful things. 7 No longer masters of our own destiny, UN, China, WHO, and other multinational organizations are trying to control us. 8 Urban vs rural, red vs blue, Christian vs non Christian, tribe vs tribe, I can no longer even list all the conflicts I have a very biased view of possible outcomes, some of my forefathers were Lakota and lost the game in the 1860's. For many it went from a very good life to the reservation in a few years. While we all must prepare to the best of our abilities, the outcome has not yet been determined. If I were in my 20's, had just started my family, and were starting over today, I would have a different approach than the one I have used the last 50 years. I think keeping out of debt, educating your children in the old values and the old skills is very important. Trying to prepare for survival in the short run, with location that is safe, food storage, some means of defense, some like minded friends who can provide short run assistance, learning skills that have some application in the real world is critical. But in the long run, I think for many the best hope is to get involved with someone that has been prepping for 20 years and has many resource but needs the right people with the right mind set to help in the every day life without electricity and oil that is going to require much more manual labor and is also going to need people to help keep what he has prepared. While we may all joke about life on the plantation and it now has a very bad reputation, in the real world it feed, clothed, etc, many people, and kept them alive.
I can't disagree with anything you've said ,, and about the only thing I could add is having a backhoe for the " not taking no for an answer refugees" . I bought a Dewalt 10" portable table saw, a Milwaukee drill, Makita skill saw , Bosch Lazer level, Dewalt 12" chop saw with the Dewalt saw table , Bosch electric hand planer , And a few other things ,, everything was like new ,, used very little,,, everything for right at 700 bucks. I sold the chop saw and table for 375 ,, didn't need it . Found a guy on Craigslist that was getting rid of everything he had,, should have bought the rest . Hoarding tools was an inherited gene from my Dad. I'm no where near sitting in as good a shape as you ,, I'm still stocking up ,, and hoping my skills will be enough to get me thru for a while. Can't wait to add a saw mill to the stocks ,,,,,,, You're assessment gave me a few areas I should work on as well . Thanks for the list .
I had never really believed we would be seeing stuff like we are seeing now in the USA in my lifetime........ but here we are.
Yep, went to the super market in area, 20 oz loaf of bread three weeks ago is now 15 oz, no soda crackers in store, canned veggies section has shrunk from about 40 feet to about 8 and lots of things, spinich for one, not available. Cheap brands are gone, organic brands at 3 times the price still there, no green beans in produce one week, no cabbage the next, no 10 lb bags of potatoes, only 5 lb bags, lots of snack foods gone, store brand cheese, about 1/2 price of name brands, gone, half of ice cream brands gone, shortages in cottage cheese, and it goes on. Ransome ware attack on company that made my tractor, Massy Fergusen, was having problems with parts for 2005 tractor with Japanese engine before the attack. I am afraid that we are in for some rough times in near future. Get that garden in now.
I think I will put new tires on the 5th wheel and get a spare set for all the vehicles now while we still can. Its like the pace of everything is getting much quicker and there seems to be a quiet desperation in much of the population. They powers that be are trying to stir the shit of divisions within the country to keep us at each others throats so we don’t have the time to look at who is really worthy of the anger. They have picked the winning team and none of us are on it folks. I just hope I have prepared enough to keep myself and my family and friends alive.
That is the most important thing in a nut shell! Individual Personal and Tribal/Clan/Family or whatever you want to call it responsibility. You can't help anyone else if you can't provide and take care of yourself and your own. I am finding it pretty amusing that family and people that used to tell that I was nuts for doing what I do and living how I do,,,,,, Now days are not thinking I was or am so nuts Think it might of had something to do with I had cases of toilet paper when they were having to steal it from public restrooms............
