If your disaster preparedness plan consists of throwing a can of Beanie Weenies into your ALICE pack, grabbing your SKS, strapping a colander to your face, and setting off to play Humungous, Lord of the Wasteland, in the local park, then you might want to rethink it. Even assuming you could live off a diet of pigeons and dirt and had enough woodcraft to keep from wiping your butt with poison sumac, this is not what we call a "Plan".
The people at Alpha Rubicon have plans. They have tried their plans. They live their plans each and every day, without even giving up their flat-panel TeeVees, much less having to subsist on a menu of tree bark and MRE wrappers. They will be on the Texas Fellowship Blogtalk Radio show tomorrow night to discuss the topic of disaster preparedness, whether that disaster is a hurricane, plague, nukyular war, or a White House that thinks we can print our way out of a recession.
Tune in!
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15 comments:
Thanks for the pointer, that's a good site.
Added that to my favorites; thanks for the heads up.
What if it's a can of sardines and beenie-weenies?
That's a good site. That's something I've been thinking about for awhile, and I've been trying to adjust my everyday life accordingly -- heating with wood, using rainwater from my rain barrel and cistern, raising chickens, that sort of thing.
If I can be so bold as to pimp my own forums:
http://practicalpreparedness.com
The idea is to encourage preparedness for family folks that fits into everyday life, trying to get away from the "survivalist" wargaming that is so common. We've taken in quite a few refugees from the GlockTalk survival/preparedness forums. I'm not terribly active at my own site, but it's turned into a pretty neat community all on its own.
(By the way, this is Paul, who posted the pug video and wanted to like Outpost. I've got a new blog minus my real name in the hopes that it will make job stuff easier.)
I tried three or four times in the last couple years to join the Rubies when they've had openings, but to no avail. They have a policy to not accept members whose e-mail accounts come from web-based services like Yahoo or MSN. They determine this by examining the source address "components" of an applicant's e-mail and rejecting it out-of-hand if there are any references to anonymous servers. (I'm probably describing this a bit wrong since I don't have their reply e-mails in front of me...) Admittedly, I had used my Yahoo account and my e-mail met their rubber-stamp rejection criteria to a 'T'.
So I tried again, sending an application e-mail using my domain name (which I've held for almost 15 years) from my Network Solutions e-mail account. I was rejected again for the same reason. I sent back an e-mail to Warlord explaining that these were the only e-mail accounts I had and it seemed a rather arbitrary criteria for rejection. He replied, indicating that their history showed most folks using these e-mail accounts were short-termers just there to suck their servers dry. I sent another e-mail explaining that I'd held that e-mail account and domain name for over a decade and I had no intention of being a short-timer were I allowed in. He didn't reply a second time.
So simply based on the origins of my e-mail, I was rejected. No comments on my introduction letter, no review of my CV. Just, "See ya..." This is more apparent when one reads their introductory pages directed towards (potential) new members. There's no small amount of sardonicism towards applicants in their "warnings". There seems to be quite a bit of paranoia from folks who claim to distance themselves from the paranoid.
Now I admit, The Rubicon is a private deal. They are perfectly entitled to vet their membership as they see fit and secure their web-site content from prying eyes. But they seem rather intent on playing "We've got a secret!" rather than disseminating information others might find useful. (They claim that the bits of A/R that are available to the general public is but a mere fraction of the content that lies behind the login screen...) I suspect they could make a pretty penny simply allowing non-participating, fee-paying subscribers access to their files. All that bandwidth has to cost somebody some money. But, again, it's their toy and if they don't want me to play, I'm obliged to abide.
Who, me?? Bitter??...
The Cabinet Man
Actually, my idea of a "disaster preparedness plan" is to hunker down with what I have in my apartment, and go from there. NBC/major natural disaster, I am pretty much boned. The unfortunate thing is that there is little I can do about it without land... so I deal with that and move on :).
Thankfully, people like these Rubicon folks exist to provide an example, and at least the "free" stuff I can get to looks interesting.
"whether that disaster is a hurricane, plague, nukyular war, or a White House that thinks we can print our way out of a recession."
I wasn't going to comment until I read the very last phrase. Political discussions are prohibited at the Rubicon. As in censored. The financial board there is quite a chilled and stilted place.
I should know - I was recently banned from the place. My egregious offenses? Suggesting that Warlord read "The Creature From Jekyll Island" so he better understands the Federal Reserve (which is NOT Federal and which has NO reserves), and then making the observation that economics and politics are inextricable linked, making the heavily censored forums one-dimensional and therefore incapable of critical analysis of economic matters.
War responded qo me in a very rude manner - not once but three times. I ignored the first two episodes but called him on putting words in my mouth on the third occasion, and suggested it was time to apologize or time to ban me. He did - ban me, that is.
A large number of "Rubies" are government employees, gov't contractors, military or LE. That's fine, but they can't acknowledge the chilling effect that's had on political speech.
At a time like the present, when overbearing government is arguable the largest single threat we face, such censorship is absurd. It ends up being a purple kool-aid atmosphere, where everyone is afraid f standing up to War, and equally afraid of telling it like it is.
No offense if anyone reading this is a Rubie and happy there. I just happened to get my fill of this kind of crap in public school.
I've just launched a blog and by this weekend it will link to a preparedness forum that will NOT engage in censorship of the facts. Check out InvertabrateNation if you're interested. (Tam - Apologies if you don't want such plugs posted here. Feel free to delete this portion of my post.)
Agreed with eveyone else, it's a neat site. I'm looking at 12 acres up in Vermont, about a mile back from the nearest highway, and near friends I could trust if doo-doo happens. The networking thing is as important to me as the locale.
And,I come from a rural environment, so pumping water, cutting wood, and keeping the chickens safe is old hat.
Has anybody considered chickens as a tough times resource? I'm serious. 4 pounds of easily stored feed makes 1 pound of protein, and plenty of eggs along the way.
Plus they're not a hell of a lot of work, they keep the bugs down on the lawn, and they're not difficult to protect.
I'm not about to run them here in suburbia, at least not without a rusted out '54 Chevy and a broken down Allis-Chalmers to add to the ambiance, but outback of a cabin, in a lot with a berm pushed up around it, covered in nice, toxic blackthorn?
And a single acre of corn, call it less than 70 yards on a side, would give you 45-50 bushels, without fertilizer or hoeing. Enough to feed 600 chickens for a year and leave seed corn for spring.
Do pseudo-survivalists think about things as mundane as that? How many rounds of .22 long rifle would you trade for a freshly dressed chicken, three or four months after the woods were hunted out?
An inaccessible site is a usless site.
1) There's plenty of publicly accessible stuff there.
2) Pull up your big girl pants and make a better site and declare yourself supreme overlord. I'm not a member at Alpha Rubicon, and I don't think I could be, but that doesn't make me want to throw myself on the ground in a fit and call them names.
I am a member of the Alpha Rubicon site. And I remember Fireplaceguy's posts. I'm sorry but when an Admin tells me to stop something not once, not twice but 5 times and I still keep doing it I have no reason to be surprised when I get booted out. As far the private side versus the public side, all the articles on the public side are written by our members. Same with the articles on the private side. We are putting this information out there without charging 1 cent, we only ask that you honor our copyright if you wish to use the information. For someone who does not pay dues, or makes an active contribution to the site in either writing articles or being available to answer questions for other members, some persons seem to expect they should have full access to our site. Sorry but we pay for the servers, we pay for the bandwidth, we pay for the custom software our systems run. Not you. The Rubicon is our home away from home and for you to demand entrance to my home take what ever you want and offer me nothing in return is the height of hypocrisy. The largest thing about being a member of the Rubicon is the higher standard we demand of ourselves. Our Motto is Facta Non Verba Deeds Not Words. In my own little Mantra Put up or SHUT UP. You are free to start your own website and invite whoever you wish to invite to join, but please don't do as some have done and stolen the articles from the Rubicon an passed them off as their own, We do copyright them and we will file suit for copyright infringement. You can use for yourself, but don't try to make money off of them. We don't.
No beenie weenies for me. They're icky. I'll just toss some Bush's Baked Beans into my WallyWorld backpack instead. And some Charmin, 'cuz my woodcraft skillz ain't exactly l33t.
With enough beanie weenies and cheap beer, you can mount your own gas attacks on the bad guys :-D
This site has some great info! I don't intend to join, but I do appreciate what they make available to the public. Thank you for putting up the link.
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