parallel lines/\coverging currents.

Something I am seeing, besides silence after a sitting (r)Resident calmly says “food shortages are coming”, is SHOCK. Our country has been rocked for two years now, rocked to its very core with all the KRAZZEEE of “The Science” and ilk, and the power plays and thefts by DeepState, obvious and blatant PROPAGANDA by all major media outlets, and the BIGBROTHER stance of Tech. When you start tossing in supply chains getting wrecked, uncertainty of Material availability, and shifts in employment levels: things get down right wonky.

At the J.O.B., there are some materials we seemingly stopped dealing with all-together. Aluminum ‘wrought iron’ specifically. The last that we put up, had a six month wait before we were shipped the gates to it, and those gates were not square and needed sent back: A one year wait from start to finish, with increasing costs the entire time. We lost our asses on that job and when you lose your ass often enough,,,,

Since I moved here in 2010, I have been operating on parallel lines. The day to day everyone sees, making the J.O.B., building a house, keeping a certain amount of “normal” in my routines. Then there is the parallel line of ‘Prepper’: building the house for off-grid living, establishing off-grid power, collecting water from available natural sources, rotating and growing my ‘reserve food’ stuff. and self-education, always self-education. It may be something frivolous, like kayaking, but always something to learn.

But even in the kayaking, I learned things that apply elsewhere. Skin on frame boat building is not limited to just kayaks, but canoes, wherries, and other larger, more utilitarian types of boats. I guess you could say that while I am doing “X”, I am also building on the parallel line of “Y”, and you would be correct.

I do that because I have seen the converging currents building since Obama 1.0, and here we are in Obama v3.0 (and I can see Obama v3.1 coming with a quickness, seeing how the Media is no longer covering over Xi-dens gaffs, or Cackles’ word salads.). And I no longer even ‘think’ about it: I constantly look for how this will translate to that, and for work-arounds for those things that are irreplaceable/irreparable without modern chemistry/industrial supply chain. Things that hold value over time, like my Snap-on hand tools purchased in the nineties, get held on to and maintained. Things like computers, that are irreparable by most people, get swapped out with whatever can do the job for the next couple of years. I keep two hard-drives as backup, but there are docs on both that are in hardcopy in a firesafe because HD’s DO fail, along with the ‘puters that read them. All the other stuff on the HD’s; music, video, etc. well, they’re in my head still, and I may not be able to pull them up to show others in the future. Those will be lost to time if things keep spinning out of control. BUT how much have we already lost to time because the storage medium was lacking/technology specific? How much did your gran-parents know about food storage without modern refrigeration that we no longer know, and can’t regain because the knowledge is either buried in the ground, or buried in obscure books on dusty shelves that no one even knows exist anymore? Will we find them? probably, so long as the world doesn’t burn down first,,,,

And that’s one of the parallel lines that I have been traveling as well. Trying to regain lost knowledge of ‘things’. My search has been kinda specific in regards to machines, making machines, and doing so in as primitive conditions as possible. One of the reasons I love watching all the utoob vids of Pakistani and Hindi repair shops. Those boys are rebuilding modern engines in dirt floor shops with air/acetylene torches and hand tools made by the local smith. The acetylene torches are fueled by Calcium carbide and water(totally safe so long as you keep the generator chamber clean), not bottled C2H2. (hint to other preppers: find calcium carbide crystals and store them. Making the generator is easy with some old cans, but the use of acetylene is one that can’t be ignored or forgotten when things really start to fall apart. oh, and learn how to make a good ‘gas weld’. The TIG’gers are already a step ahead of us MIG’ers on that one.)

I’ve said ‘I don’t want it to burn down’ and I mean it, but I can see it failing enough that things like 3Dprinters will be desk junk in only a few years. When the feedstock is gone,,, but a metal lathe and the knowledge of foundry work: scrap metals abound and aluminum cans are ubiquitous waste these days, despite the whole recyclerecyclerecycle mantra. Knowing how to cast metal, makes it so one could, if need and the area is secure, one could make the bed and ways of a metalworking lathe, and the lathe is the tool that makes ALL the other tools.

Not that there will be need for that since there so many machine shops scattered in so many little burgs across the world, but KNOWING it expanded my ‘outside the box’ thinking exponentially. Watching those guys in Paki and Hindi doing what they do, adds to my tactical playbook of what CAN be done with dirt, callouses and a bit of know-how

(ClickSpring on Utoob did a series on building the AntiKithera device and he taught me things about making tools that opened possibilities previously unimagined: Carbon hardening, tempering, making files,,,, )

The water is starting to get rough people, and I can hear the roar of converging currents ahead. Is it class 5 or a waterfall? We never got to scout this far ahead.

I’m off playing redneck engineer today, making sumpinfromnuthin and there is a bit of driving involved so I’ll be back tomorrow with,,, hopefully something not so dreary,,,,

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