Off-Grid Longevity

So you have a nice off-grid homestead with all the bells and whistles. That’s great. It will serve you well during a whole range of disasters. When other people are starving in the dark you can be sitting under a fan drinking smoothies while watching a movie. Nice. 

A few days, weeks, or at worse months later most things will probably be back to normal. The question is, what if things do not go back to normal? Nobody can last forever at a high technology level on their own. Stuff breaks and life gets more difficult. 

Let’s say a disaster goes on for years. What if you can’t replace a water pump that suddenly dies. Do you have a whole backup pump? Maybe you do. Do you have total backup parts and systems for everything that can go wrong? That’s pricey and eventually the backups fail too. You’ve bought, at great cost, some time, but everything breaks down. 

You might find that backup parts are defective right out of the box. Rather than spend money on quality control some companies plan to just replace items if people complain of failures. That does you no good in a crisis. 

Pumps break. Solar electric components burn out. Septic systems fail. Trees fall on your greenhouse. Stuff happens all the time, but when stores are closed and services canceled you are on your own.

Then it’s important to know lower tech ways of living. Can you get water with nothing more complicated than a bucket? Do you have durable hand tools that can replace power tools? Do you have a composting toilet or know how to site and build an outhouse? Basically, can you live like your forefathers of hundreds of years ago? Even then they were usually able to get manufactured goods and outside supplies. Maybe we’d have to live like Native Americans. Of course, for that to work, you need a tribe with a deep knowledge base. 

Just some thoughts.

-Sixbears

Welcome to the Panopticon

The Panopticon is a prison design where a handful of watchers can keep an eye on many prisoners. The psychology behind the design is that the prisoners cannot tell when they are being watched. They then behave like they are always being watched. One person can control the behavior of many.

Our surveillance society, with cameras in more and more places, has turned our world into a giant Panopticon.

The watchers want us to believe they see us at all times. They don’t. Think about it. Lot’s of those cameras are getting old. How long does your electronic devices stay in top shape? Many of these cameras are mounted in harsh environments. Quite a few no longer work, but we are supposed to assume they do.

Sometimes the cameras aren’t even real -just cheap fake dummies. Remember, the idea is not to actually watch people, but to change people’s behavior by making them believe they are watched.

Remember your first digital camera? Piece of crap, wasn’t it? Many of the older cameras have very low resolution. Combine that with security tapes that have been reused and reused, and everything becomes a blurry mess.

Let’s, however, assume that the equipment is top notch, the recordings are the best in high end digital, and actual human beings are watching on monitors. Assume that these cameras are being focused on potential criminals instead of hot women. Can the camera prevent crime? No. They can only record things that may or may not get used to prosecute after the fact. There is no SWAT team hiding in a closet ready to apprehend a mugger.

In a massive public action, the cameras can only watch. Later analysis can be used to pick faces out of the crowd, but what happens when the camera records 3000 people wearing Guy Fawkes masks? Ski masks? Large brimmed hats? Heavy makeup? Powerful infrared lasers that blind the cameras?

The surveillance state only works when the threat of punishment is real. If the state can only look but cannot act, it is only a sad joke. Usually punishing a few high profile cases keeps everyone in line. What if a lot of people have little to lose? When thousands break the law, only a few get punished and the odds of getting away with it go way up.

Another thing the surveillance state did not count on was people’s changing attitude towards privacy. Us old farts remember privacy, but the young ones don’t. In fact, through social media, they broadcast their every move. What are cameras to them? Coupled with little sense of shame, the Panopticon loses its psychological hold. Things once kept secret are now speedily posted on YouTube. They don’t care. Blackmail has no handle on them.

As government resources become more and more constrained, gaps will grow in the surveillance net. Faulty equipment will not get replaced. Maintenance becomes spotty. Screen watchers are laid off, requiring the remaining staff to monitor too many screens. Power failures can make the whole system go dark.

The modern Panopticon state is getting larger and larger, but ironically, it’s real power is getting weaker. Plenty of cracks for naughty little folk to play in.

-Sixbears

Poachers, smugglers, and drug dealers

Now it’s no secret I live out in the woods. My cousin, on the other hand, really lives out in the woods. My lovely wife and I went for a drive and ended up at my cousin’s place. It’s about a 50 mile drive up a winding two lane road. Then down a couple of dirt roads. She doesn’t get many visitors.

As luck would have it, that’s where the motorhome decided to have a flat tire, as the sun was setting. Flat tires are never much fun. Fortunately, the spare was inflated, the jack worked well enough to do the job, and the tire iron was heavy duty enough to crack the rusty wheel nuts. There are a fair number of those little beasts.

Tedious. Not super difficult, just tedious. As I slowly removed the rusty nuts, I thought of the can of WD40 sitting back at the house that I forgot to put back in the vehicle. By then it was dark. Fortunately, I’d put a Coleman lantern in the vehicle -just in case I ever had to change a tire in the dark or something.

It did give my lovely wife and I more time to visit with my cousin. She said it was a good thing I had everything I needed to do the job. There’s no cell phone service and the few neighbors are not the sort of people who take kindly to strangers knocking on their doors.

Her immediate neighbor is a poacher. Rumor has is his land is booby trapped. Further down the road there’s a drug dealer -who no one messes with. The other choice is a guy who’s suspected of smuggling people across the Canadian border.

“Nobody talks to the neighbors around here,” she said.

No kidding.

There are a few other cabins in the area, but they are owned by out of state people who are gone for the season.

It always was sparsely populated and remote, but the economic downturn hit the area hard. There used to decent jobs within reasonable driving distance but those are all gone. Now it’s a longer drive, with high priced gas, to poorer paying jobs, if you can get one. People are giving up and moving away.

There are some truckers based out of that area. Housing is cheap. Taxes are low. If you are a long haul trucker, it doesn’t matter a whole lot where you eventually park the rig. Some are getting by like my cousin and her elderly husband -poorly on a small Social Security pension. There seems to be some attempt to make a living by selling each other the same piles of junk at yard sales.

On paper, it might look like a pretty good bug out location: few people, isolated, plenty of fresh water, fishing, hunting, low taxes, cheap land. However, better check out the neighbors and see if they are poachers, smugglers. and drug dealers. That could change your mind.

-Sixbears

The insurance was worth it

I learned a valuable lesson last year. AAA won’t do much of anything for you if your boat trailer burns out a wheel bearing crossing the Everglades. It was an expensive lesson.

A tow truck driver told me about BoatUS trailer insurance. They’ll take care of the boat trailer and the tow vehicle. It was less than $40/year.

This year while towing the trailer, the truck had problems. I had the truck and boat towed 158 miles. The tow truck guy wasn’t a regular BoatUS company, but they agreed on the phone to reimburse me.

I had to fax them the bill. Lacking a fax machine, I used Got Free Fax to fax over the bill using a scanner and a computer. That worked fine.

My insurance was for only 100 miles. I expected to eat the over mileage. Instead, they covered the whole bill. Turns out I also have boat insurance with BoatUS. There was some tow insurance that I wasn’t even aware of.

I’d only gotten boat insurance because many marinas now require it. Since we had planned on stopping at a few of them, an insurance paper to wave around looked like a good idea. Marinas pretty much accept zero liability.

Insurance is one of those things I really had to pay for. I probably drove over a million miles before I got roadside insurance of any type.

Outside of being a customer, I’ve no connection to BoatUS. I just thought I’d pass along that they really pulled through for me when I needed it. Anyone trailering a boat any distance might like to know it’s available.

I wish I knew about it last year before my Everglades misadventure.

-Sixbears

Response to silly laws

Desperate governments do the darnedest things. Politicians pass law after law, one on top of the other. Eventually, the laws get so overbearing, contradictory, and down right silly, that people ignore them.

Governments lose the ability to enforce the laws. From Ireland to Greece people are ignoring new taxes and austerity laws. On a more prosaic level, how many of us break the speed limit? Fudge on our taxes? Ever barter or pay cash for something, cutting the government out of the loop?

Often new laws have unintended consequences. People who didn’t mind paying a small tax or fee, will balk at paying big money. In the end revenues go down not up. That always ends badly for governments. The Roman Empire taxed farms so heavily that it wasn’t worth working them and they were abandoned. That was at a time when Rome really needed the food. Expect that sort of stupidity in the dying days of empires.

What about the poor cop on the street? He’s the guy who’s supposed to enforce those laws. Law looks a lot different in the street than it does in Washington. The cop knows he’s only got so many resources so he’ll pick and choose what to enforce. Lot’s of “B. S. laws” get ignored. At the extreme the LEO knows some of those dumb laws could get him killed.

Civil disobedience can overwhelm the system. That’s one of the tactics of mass protest.

Even individuals can muck up the system. I had an uncle who was audited by the I.R.S. year after year. He looked forward to it. It was one of the things he did for fun and profit. Yes, profit. He’d wear the auditors down and in the end they’d let him get away with a lot just to get rid of him. They aren’t used to fighting against people who don’t fear them. Eventually, they didn’t even audit him anymore. My uncle was disappointed.

It’s illegal to be poor in the US. Sit in at your local courtroom sometime. Case after case it’s people who did some like violate some insurance requirement or had “defective” equipment on their vehicles. When you live paycheck to paycheck, something simple as minor car repairs can break the budget. I know what’s it’s like to drive an “illegal” vehicle, hoping to make it to payday. I had to drive to get to the job, but the job didn’t pay enough to keep the car in tip top shape.

Now they want to make it illegal to not carry health insurance. If the requirement stands up in court, it won’t stand up on the street. People without health insurance don’t have it because they want to be a burden to society. They just can’t afford it. You can’t get blood out of a stone.

Laws get ignored so more laws are passed. Governments believe that the new laws will do the trick, or better enforcement is the key. Rarely do they admit that the original law was the real problem.

Stupid unenforceable laws condition people to seek ways around them. Day by day respect for the government is lost. Eventually, there’s a government that has very little influence outside of the capital. For example, take Harmid Karzai, the President of Afghanistan. He’s often called “The Mayor of Kabul,” because that’s about how far his real influence reaches. The reality out in the provinces is totally different than the reality in the capital.

Historically, governments have collapsed under the burden of unenforceable laws. The invading barbarians just finished the job. The only historical exception to this, that I’m aware of, is the Eastern Roman Empire. They reached the point where laws and centralization could no longer be enforced and maintained. Their response was for the central government to do less. More authority was given up to the outer reaches. Things got a lot simpler, but the empire endured.

The federal government could follow that historical example: shorten its reach, let power flow back to the states then, to the counties, cities and towns. It could narrow its ambitions. Instead of policing the world, it could police its own borders.

So how are we going to bet? More silly burdensome laws and we go the way of the Western Roman Empire, or decentralization and we follow the Eastern Roman Empire?

-Sixbears

Magic Blue Smoke

We had a little problem on the Tamiami Trail. Just about in the middle of the Everglades, I happen to notice something in my rear view mirror. At first, I hoped it was just from the big truck right behind me. Alas, the smoke was coming from my trailer wheel bearing.

It was the magic blue smoke. Magic blue smoke is the smoke that's put in machinery and electronics that makes them work. When the magic smoke comes out, it doesn't work anymore. There was an awful lot of magic smoke coming out of the wheel bearing.

We were in the middle of the swamp, but at least we had cell service. There was some issue finding someone to come out and pick up a trailer. Called AAA, but they really don't want to deal with trailers. Now I learn there's cheap insurance for that sort of thing. Live and learn. AAA was able to put me in contact with a tow truck out of Naples. He was able to hook me up with a guy in Miami, as it was closer to where I wanted to go. Also, he said Naples closes down at 5 p.m.. The Miami tow truck driver hooked me up with a guy willing to repair the trailer.

After leaving the boat there, we drove down to Key Largo where we had campground reservations. An evening dip in the pool was quite welcome.

Currently, the trailer is sitting in a garage in Miami. I'm told it should be ready by 1. Might be able to get the boat back to Key Largo in time for a late afternoon sail, but we shall see.

-Sixbears

Roadside Assistance

I'm curious how common it is for people to stop and help people who's cars have broken down. It seems pretty common out here in rural NH. I've been offered assistance more than a few times. Saturday, I gave a couple a lift into town. They broke down on a lightly traveled country road in an area with no cell service. Glad I was able to help. No big deal.

It's said that the rich won't stop to help. One time I thought I'd discovered an exception as a guy in a big luxury car stopped to help me out. Turns out he was a retired Navy guy who spent all his money on his car and lived in a one room apartment.

One of friends ran into trouble when he stopped to offer assistance to a woman who'd broken down on the highway. She was afraid and told him to just go. He did. However, she took down his license plate and told the State Police she was scared. At the time, the police were looking for a serial killer, and my friend's van matched the description of the suspect's vehicle.

Next thing you know, the FBI is investigating my friend. They impound his van and forensics teams went over it. He'd been camping and had forgotten to unload his rope and machete. Worse yet, he was having an affair and having sex with his girlfriend in the van. Even worse, because he was about to leave his wife, his emotional state was such a mess that he had inconclusive results on a polygraph test.

In the end, he was cleared as a suspect, but it certainly caused him a world of grief.

Even knowing what happened to my friend, I still stop to help people. However, if it's a single woman, I might just offer to contact the police for her.

-Sixbears