Shed my skin

Healing can be such an interesting process. I spent a week in the hospital with a nasty leg infection. Eventually the intravenous antibiotics did the job. The oozing mess of my lower leg dried up. 

Since then it’s been a rather itchy business of massive scabs flaking off. I actually have to sweep the floor in my office to clean up the mess. It’s pretty gross. However the healing is coming along. Overdoing it right now is a real concern. Keeping my leg elevated is part of the healing. I have to plan plenty of breaks in my day. That’s an issue as I’m feeling well enough that it would be very easy to overdue it. 

Now I’m working with my doctor to put together a plan to prevent these infections from happening in the future. One of the things is sticking to a weight loss plan. So far I’ve taken off about 25 pounds. My doctor recommended I get into the local weight loss clinic. It’s a paperwork nightmare. After filing out the forms my hand cramped up pretty badly at the end. It’s taken a couple weeks and might take weeks more to get into the clinic. In the mean time I’m losing weight on my own. 

Funny thing about me and bureaucracy. My tolerance is limited and small rebellions creep in. On the form where it asks for race I write: human. That might be a bit of a stretch but I’m sticking to it.

-Sixbears

Campfire season

It took a few years but a good friend finally had a bunch of us over for a campfire. Life gets busy. 

However, it’s something we want to do a lot more of. We have some snacks, good conversation, and some homemade music. Sure beats the heck out of watching TV. 

If you don’t make the effort to get together it just won’t happen. Then the only time we’d get to see each other is at funerals. We are looking to make this a weekly thing, weather permitting -and it has to be pretty nasty weather to prevent us from a good campfire. 

We were getting together at John Little Wolf’s place. Since he passed the tradition will continue at other places. We are expanding it to more people too. Tribe is important.  

-Sixbears

The Highwaymen - Highwayman

My favorite reincarnation song. 

Our adventures continue.

-Sixbears

That Strange Plumber Guy

That would be me. The plumbing in my basement is very visible. It looks like the History of plumbing down there. New materials have been added over the years. Several types of plumbing have been discontinued. Repairs and additions can be problematic. Sometimes the new stuff doesn’t fit with the old stuff. 

Then there’s stuff that isn’t like any normal house. For example my water heater is no longer in the basement. It’s hidden in a closet on the first floor. Why? That’s so I can hook it up to a water coil on the  kitchen woodstove and get a decent amount of BTUs from burning wood. 

Another odd thing is my pressure tank. In normal houses they’d be found on the basement floor. Mine is suspended just below the basement ceiling. That was to protect it from freezing. Cold sinks. Heat rises. Mounting the tank high keeps it where it’s warm.

Unfortunately my mounting rack suffered some rot over the years. Yesterday I had to drain everything, jack the tank back up and rebuild the rack. It was a pain. I got wet and annoyed but the job got done. 

While down there I noticed one of my water filter housings has developed a leak. Something in the built in shut off is failing. That’s the next project. 

After that I’m going to pop the cover off the well and inspect the pump and everything else down there. 

All part of the joys of being a home owner with a DIY bent. At least everything held together until spring. Playing with water in the winter is no fun at all. 

-Sixbears

Tornadoes

Tornadoes aren’t much of an issues here in Northern New Hampshire. Sure, we get the occasional twister but they aren’t too huge and don’t last very long in the mountains. While not bi it’s a far cry from when I was a kid and “we just don’t get tornadoes in New Hampshire.” 

However, my lovely wife and I have relatives and friends in tornado alley. We follow the news and our ears really perk up when we start to recognized the names of the towns affected. So far our people have been safe. There’s more tornadoes on the way.

Unlike something like a hurricane tornadoes pop up with little warning. If all goes well you only really have seconds to get under cover. If it was me I’d have a full blown tornado shelter if I lived in that area. The destructive force of a such a storm is nothing to take lightly. People die.

Some years ago a friend lived in trailer on some rural land in Kentucky. Some NH friends and I stopped in for a visit. The guy showed us his storm shelter. It was made of reinforced concrete and was sunk into the side of a hill. He had emergency supplies -a half gallon of whiskey and a half gallon of vodka. I guess you might as well have a few drinks if your house is being blown away.

-Sixbears

Golden Horde

There’s a concern among rural preppers that we’ll get overrun in a crisis by people leaving the big cities. How much should we be concerned about that? I’m not too sure of the answer but I’ve some thoughts.

My last blog discussed the possibility of a massive hacker attack that takes down utilities and services. That’s one scenario but there are other things that can set us back to the 18th century. A massive solar flare could do the job nicely.

So what would most city dwellers do when the lights go out? I’m guessing the vast majority of city people would try to wait it out. Most people don’t understand what’s involved to bring services to their apartment. All they know is that there are people in charge of that stuff. 

By the time they realize that things won’t come back to normal it might be too late to safely leave the city. Studies have been done on how difficult it would be to evacuate a major city. If everything went right it would still take a long time. There are plenty of choke points where traffic could come to a halt. Just one flipped over burning tractor trailer truck on the highway or an accident on a bridge could shut things down. 

A lot of city people don’t even own cars and rely on public transportation. They’d be reduced to travel within walking distance. Some would have bicycles but they also rely on the roads. 

During the pandemic we did get some city people move to our lake. They were quick to tell everyone they were relatives of the people who owned the cottage. They turned out to be decent and self-reliant neighbors for the duration. 

If the disaster happened during the winter nobody would be able to get here on unplowed roads. I wouldn’t be going too far myself but that’s something I planned for. 

So what causes people to move all at once and in large groups? War is a big one. Nothing like an invading army to provide travel motivation. Drought and famine are the reason large groups of people to pick up stakes and get out of Dodge. Massive earthquakes, hurricanes, or other natural disasters will also do it. 

So how much of a threat are city refugees? I’m really not sure. One thing to remember is that cities are huge. Even a small percentage of those people could move on and overwhelm rural resources. 

Let’s hope we don’t have to find out. 

-Sixbears

Hack Attack

A good friend, a fellow prepper, and I were having a discussion. He was concerned about our country’s vulnerability to foreign hackers. It’s already happened on a small scale. Well, I guess it’s small scale if you aren’t one of those affected. 

What concerned him was a potential hack attack across various platforms: grid, Internet, water supply, water treatment, and communications. My argument was that a major hack like that is a one shot deal. Our computer people would soon be able to patch up most of the problems once they came to light. 

He pointed out that even a two week disruption for most people would be a major catastrophe. My error was in thinking how a total systems collapse would affect me, not in how it would affect others. Two weeks or two months without those systems wouldn’t be that big a deal for me. Between my solar electric system, good water supply, septic system and food storage our household wouldn’t suffer. 

It’s easy to forget that most people have little to no backup for these things. There are people that don’t even do their own cooking, never mind have food storage. If they do have food they have no way to cook it with the systems down. Water could be a major issue for multitudes. It could get ugly relatively fast. 

So I have to concede to my friend’s argument. A major hacking attack is something to be concerned about. Fortunately, your preps for everything from winter storms to hurricanes will get you through. You do have preps? Right?

-Sixbears