Posted on 02/09/2009 12:36:11 AM PST by nw_arizona_granny
Yahoo ran an interesting article this morning indicating a rise in the number of survivalist communities cropping up around the country. I have been wondering myself how much of the recent energy crisis is causing people to do things like stockpile food and water, grow their own vegetables, etc. Could it be that there are many people out there stockpiling and their increased buying has caused food prices to increase? It’s an interesting theory, but I believe increased food prices have more to do with rising fuel prices as cost-to-market costs have increased and grocers are simply passing those increases along to the consumer. A recent stroll through the camping section of Wal-Mart did give me pause - what kinds of things are prudent to have on hand in the event of a worldwide shortage of food and/or fuel? Survivalist in Training
I’ve been interested in survival stories since I was a kid, which is funny considering I grew up in a city. Maybe that’s why the idea of living off the land appealed to me. My grandfather and I frequently took camping trips along the Blue Ridge Parkway and around the Smoky Mountains. Looking back, some of the best times we had were when we stayed at campgrounds without electricity hookups, because it forced us to use what we had to get by. My grandfather was well-prepared with a camp stove and lanterns (which ran off propane), and when the sun went to bed we usually did along with it. We played cards for entertainment, and in the absence of televisions, games, etc. we shared many great conversations. Survivalist in the Neighborhood
I’ve been working a few hours a day with a “scraper thing” to try to remove it but was wondering if there’s ANYTHING to prevent it from sprouting again? This is back breaking not to mention a fire hazard during the summer.<<<
I am not a fan of using plant killers, it cannot be good for the soil and you might someday want trees or food there.
Pure vinegar, will kill plants if sprayed on them, and so will salt.
Maybe if you sprayed them while young, they would die.....
I understand the time on the plane crash, I got a notice from the FBI that they are “helping with the investigation, but terrorism is not suspected”.
Which tells me they do think it was terrorism that brought it down.
We’ve had a few interesting conversations about our goats! LOL
ROFL!!! That was great!
I am so sorry you lost your dog, it does hurt.
More dog stories on another day.
LOL.
Thank you so much! I swear, after reading this thread and having to read the other one, I should have some kind of a degree in something!
You have a lovely place...look at all the trees! (Unless you’ve lived in the desert you wouldn’t understand my excitement about trees!) We’ve lived all over and when my husband retired we moved back here. Yeah, tell me about the heat! That’s why we’ve been leaving during the summer.
Snow is what I miss the most. Not the shoveling, etc. but just watching it fall.
Thanks again!
Gold on the Desert by Olga Wright Smith $50 at Amazon.com
The library might be a good choice.
I will post the links over there too. Good idea. Thanks!!
You home is in a lovely setting.
You can keep the snow, no need to share with me.
It is below freezing here and still dry.
Bob planned on coming tomorrow to work on the roof.
LOL
Granny talks to goats too, and they talk to her. Just ask her.<<<
Don’t you???
I didn’t know that everyone does not talk to animals, I always have.
Hi, granny!
I don’t like plant killers either. Never thought about salt or vinegar but I think it might be too late for that now. It’s pretty mature. Maybe for next year when I see it start to sprout. That’s the crazy thing about it...it doesn’t come up every year! Seems to appear after a wet summer and fall.
Ah, the joys of desert living!
[I understand the time on the plane crash, I got a notice from the FBI that they are “helping with the investigation, but terrorism is not suspected”.
Which tells me they do think it was terrorism that brought it down.]
I had to chuckle. You think like I do! Although it really could be ice on the wings. Usually planes have de-iceing capabilities. Could be that theirs malfunctioned.
That Ocotillo area is an interesting place. So many boulders! It would be easy to get lost up there, especially when it’s one of those hot days in August. The book sounds REALLY interesting. I hope I can get the library to order it. I imagine they can get it somewhere. Amazon has it too, for $20.
Thanks granny
If I had any sense, I wouldn’t get any more. LOL Still have 2 females, his wife and daughter. One’s 10 and the other’s 8. When these go, I don’t know if I can stand to get another, but I don;t know if I can live without a dog.
We’ll have to have an animal story day! Maybe start another thread! LOL
Happy Valentines Day, granny! Gotta go to bed
A friend never plants his seeds in dirt, he soaks them, rolls them in a good paper towel and sprays the roll several times a day.
That is how he tests them and as he is like me, with lots of very old seeds, saves the time needed for dirt and pots.
The strong sprouted seeds go into the dirt and the weak ones do not get saved.
Your day sounds like some of mine.
My sister comes every year and complains about my junk, she is a toss it and go buy new person.
We all have ‘those days’, I am happy that you found any of the seeds.
The sunflower may not grow, or some of my old ones didn’t, but then mine were picked over the years from my birds seed and may have been treated.
How frustrating for you! I hope you plant them all and get 17 healthy plants, and from that, hundreds of seeds and tomatoes.
Bear Dog was an old dog when I found the skin.
LOL’ing.
I lived in Phoenix for 20 years, but never had a home out in the desert proper. We owned an acre of land in Sun Valley but never lived there; we sold it a couple of years ago.
A friend of mine lived in Cave Creek on a five acre parcel. The house was designed by a student of Frank Lloyd Wright. Someone had come into possession of a couple of boxcars, and they were buried into the hillside, wired and plumbed, and were used as a second residence. They were pretty snug, if rustic. Her husband’s name was Dennis and they boarded horses.
Naturally they named their place the D-Railed Ranch.
from the link
not only that TSHTF (that we all knew) but that the world we once new no longer existed, and that this was not a hurricane, this was an ice age period, it wouldn’t just go away.
We understood it the same way a kid understands photosynthesis: Because a teacher coldly explained it to us, even used graphics. I slept 5 hours yesterday, 2 hours the day before yesterday. Saturday night I didn’t sleep at all. I’m already used to it. Deadlines at the University, staying late at night, drawing in CAD 3D, waiting until Renders are ready. It’s a competitive world out there, and no one sympathizes with what you are going through, they just want you to perform as expected, and the standard is always high. It happened 4 years ago, almost a year after the December 2001 crisis. It was a social studies class and this teacher, don’t remember if it was a he or a she, was explaining the different kinds of social pyramids. God! Now I remember more! We even had a text book with those darn, cruel pyramids! The first pyramid explained the basic society. A pyramid with two horizontal lines, dividing those on top (high social class) those in the middle (middle class) and the bottom of the pyramid (the poor, proletarian). The teacher explained that the middle of the pyramid, the middle class, acted as a cushion between the rich and the poor, taking care of the social stress. The second pyramid had a big middle section, this was the pyramid that represents 1st world countries. I which the bottom is very thin and arrows show that there is a possibility to go from low to middle class, and from middle to the top of the social pyramid. Our teacher explained that this was the classic, democratic capitalist society, and that on countries such as Europeans one, socialists, the pyramid was very similar but a little more flat, meaning that here is a big middle section, middle class, and small high and low class. There is little difference between the three of them.
The third pyramid showed the communist society. Where arrows from the low and middle class tried to reach the top but they bounced off the line. A small high society and one big low society, cushioned by a minimal middle class section of pyramid. Then we turned the page and saw the darned fourth pyramid. This one had arrows from the middle class dropping to the low, poor class.
“What is this?” Some of us asked.
The teacher looked at us. “This is us”
“It’s the collapsed country, a country that turns into 3rd world country like in pyramid five where there is almost no middle class to speak, one huge low, poor class , and a very small, very rich, top class.”
“What are those arrows that go from the middle to the bottom of the pyramid?” Someone asked.
You could hear a pin drop. “That is middle class turning into poor”.
I won’t lie, no one cried, though people rubbed their faces, held their heads and their breath.
No one cried, but we all knew at that very moment that all we thought, all we took for granted, simply was not going to happen.
“You see, the income from the middle class is not enough to function as middle class any more. Some from the top class fall to middle class, but the vast majority of the middle class turns into poor” Said the teacher.
I don’t know how many people in that room suddenly understood that he/she was poor.
The teacher continued “You see, we have a middle class that suddenly turns to poor, creating a society of basically poor people, there is no more middle class to cushion tensions any more. Middle class suddenly discovers that they are overqualified for the jobs they can find and have to settle for anything they can obtain, there for unemployment sky rockets, too much to offer, too little demand. You see they prepare, study for a job they are not going to get. You kids, you are studying Architecture because you simply wish to do so. Only 3 or 4 percent of you will actually find a job related to architecture.”
We all sat there, letting it all sink in. After a few months, it all proved to be true. Even the amount of students that dropped out of college increased to at least 50%. They either so no point in studying something that would not make much of a difference in their future salaries, had no money to keep themselves in college, or simply had to drop college to work and support their families.
Someone once said, in this forum, that if this had happened in USA, the social unrest would have been much worse, because people from S. America are stronger. At first, I told him that I didn’t think so, I said that all humans adapt when they have no other choice. But now that I consider it more, maybe he was right. Not that S. Americans are stronger, but they are more used to adversities. Most of us are children from grandparents that escaped civil war, either in Spain or dictators in Italy, our parents survived the dirty war, even more dictators, and therefore their children are of strong character too. Can USA citizens survive what we survived? Of course they can, though I think that there are too many that are not like you, many that don’t prepare, and take everything for granted. Those are the ones that will be responsible for the increase in the social unrest once the SHTF, those that were too lazy to take care of themselves before the SHTF, or that had gone soft through out the years, believing that the government will “take care of them because they pay their taxes”. But in the end, they will pull through. People will adapt, they always do. You’d be surprised. And those that don’t want to adapt to the new reality they live in, will die young, thus cleaning the gene pool and ensuring the continuity of the specie. It’s been this way for thousands of years.
Thanks for the research on the books, both are worth reading, for history and the fun of it.
The Smith book, is interesting, she was a school teacher in the east and one day her engineer husband said his dad needed him at the mine.
So on the train to Arizona, in the middle of the depression.
LOL, I just remembered that she tells the tale of another neighbor/prospector, who talked to the ground squirrels and swore they talked to him.
At one time, the kids whose burros were rented to haul the rich lapidary ore off the mountain, were known to me, but I forget which they were now.
A woman told me one day when I questioned why she was so glad to have moved back to Wellton, after 16 years, that one day I would understand.
I do now, the people there were fighting to survive and shared all they could, they were real people.
I had to chuckle. You think like I do! Although it really could be ice on the wings. Usually planes have de-iceing capabilities. Could be that theirs malfunctioned.<<<
Yes, and it is so easy to do, any mechanic can bring down a plane and not be linked to it.
Substandard parts, or wrong fitting parts will in time ruin an engine.
Much of the airplane maintenance is done in other countries.
And check the old Immigration busts, they often take illegals out of the airline hangers, and catch them working on the airplanes, without the the airplane mechanic certificates that they need.
The cave with the guns, is west of Ocotillo and south of the
I-8 freeway, in the foothills.
That is also on the San Andreas earthquake fault, so there is no doubt that the boulders have moved in a hundred years to hide a cave.
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