Blog
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My Prepper Song: Don’t Be Scared, Be Prepared
Buy at Amazon My Cousin Sarah Cole helped me with my new Prepper Song. The “Tennessee Twister” theme from iMovie started getting on my nerves. I decided on doing my own thing.
I came up with the lyrics, and Sarah did her thing to make it jive with the melody. She is a very talented artist. (Check her out on YouTube). Consequently, I owe her a lot. She has done a ton of work to help me out.
Furthermore, beside her musical abilities, Sarah has many talents. She is an author, and has illustrated a couple of my books. She manages a Tattoo Studio in Mississippi, and manages to bring culture to a small rural town in the deep south.
My idea is to use different verses to setup the various themes of a video. As an example, the badguys and zombies verse would work for any defense video, and the bees in the cities would work for livestock and gardening.
Feel free to give me any ideas for other verses.
Here are the Lyrics:
If it ain’t one thing then its another,
That’s why I prepare like no other
You don’t have to be scared if you’re preparedTornadoes, Wildfires, floods and earthquakes,
Think of all the plans you need to make
You don’t have to be scared if you’re preparedBadmen, boogy men, zombies too,
We all know what they want to do,
I bought a rifle to help me through
You don’t have to be scared if you’re preparedLying politicians and economic disaster,
They all make me prep a little faster
You don’t have to be scared if you’re preparedBoxes of beans, bullets and bandaids
It feels good to have a full pantry to raid
You don’t have to be scared if you’re preparedRaising rabbits, chickens and bees
You can even do it the big cities
You don’t have to be scared if you’re preparedI have a plan that fits my point of view,
I’m getting ready, so how ‘bough you,
You don’t have to be scared if you’re prepare*Update
Finally, after a few hundred videos, I decided that I just don’t care about YouTube video Intro music. Consequently, I have begun making much shorter videos.
Similarly, I decided to just get into shooting the video and getting on with the projects. Certainly, I find it interesting how things change and adapt as time goes by. That should not surprise anyone, as this entire website grew from my desire to stop reading and start doing the things I was reading about. Above all, it seems like I should be thankful I was reading books on survival and not serial killers….
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Perspective on National Debt
Buy at Amazon The wife and I were talking about the “government shutdown” and she said she needed a visual reference to make the connections.
Certainly, It is not easy for hourly individuals that deal in tens and hundreds to visualize spending billions and trillions.
Consequently, so I quickly did some math to break it down and give some perspective on National Debt
Here is our problem:
$113,000,000,000,000 Unfunded Liabilities
$14,000,000,000,000 National DebtThat is:
$1,000,000 Unfunded Liabilities per Taxpayer
$128,000 National Debt per TaxpayerOur government has to pay that with:
$2,000,000,000,000 Annual Tax Revenue
Loans cost money, so we pay:
$3,500,000,000,000 Annually on Interest
Which is $1,500,000,000,000 more than our Countries annual tax receipts, so we have to borrow that each year to pay interest (Which increases our debt, which increases our interest, which increases how much we have to borrow to pay interest)
Even Dropping off 6 Zeros Still show as heck of a problem.
$113,000,000 Unfunded Liabilities
$14,000,000 National DebtThat is:
$1 Unfunded Liabilities per Taxpayer
0.19 National Debt per TaxpayerOur government has to pay that with:
$2,000,000 Annual Tax Revenue
Loans cost money, so we pay:
$3,500,000 Annually on Interest
Which is $1,500,000 more than our Countries annual tax receipts, so we have to borrow that each year to pay interest (Which increases our debt, which increases our interest, which increases how much we have to borrow to pay interest)
For Perspective
If a two income family brought home $80,000 a year, and the Government took the entire amount, it would take 25 Million families to equal the total amount of tax revenues that the US Federal Government receives in taxes….
However, it would take 42 Million, 750 thousand such $80,000 Families taxed at 100% just to pay the interest on the 14 trillion dollar debt.
It would take 175 Million Families with an income of $80,000,000 to pay off the debt, (or 350 million individuals with a $40,000 dollar a year income. That is 50 million more individuals than the total US population.)
A families share of those mandates is 1 billion, 412 million, and 500 thousand dollars with a $80,000 a year income as a family. If you made $80,000 a year, and owed over 1,412,500,000 and had to borrow money just to pay the interest, what kind of promises would you have to make to get someone to give you more money?
Add in Unfunded Mandates
Say you think its unfair to add in unfunded mandates (say you don’t want to pay for Granny’s medicare, or Mom’s social insecurity) We can just look at the national debt.
Similarly, for a family with an $80,000 a year income you would have to owe 175 Million dollars to owe the same ratio as what the US Federal Government owes in relationship to its income…
Finally, the Fed says the combined housing market value is 10 Trillion, since we owe 14 Trillion in National Dept and another 100 Trillion in unfunded mandates, it seems like I am not the only one upside down on my mortgage. The difference is, I like what I spent my money on, and no one forced me to take out my mortgage.
I DO NOT like what my tax dollars are being spent on, and I have long begged them to stop mortgaging my future.
The music is about to stop on our Countries game of hot potato, and those in Washington still refuse to stop playing games…
Note:
This is a low estimate, as the numbers keep growing as Congress keeps spends, and the President keeps starting wars….
Source US Census, and the US National Debt Clock
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Public Safety Response – Sampling Techniques and Guidelines
Buy at Amazon I recently took some courses on Public Safety Response classes from LSU and the Homeland Security Consortium, This one is was this on Sampling techniques and guidelines.
Awesome Class
It was an awesome class, as are most of the consortium classes. You see my head a couple of times in the video. However, many of my coworkers at my day job were featured. If you are a first responder, I would recommend looking into this kind of DHS training. It is federally funded and does not cost your agency anything. It greatly increases your response capabilities.
They Made This Video During My Course, But I Was Deemed Too Ugly to Participate
I post it here because the video was taken from the actual class I was in. Many of my co-workers were selected to be interviewed on it. I am too ugly to be on video that is not produced by me. So I was not selected to Participate. If you pay close attention you may see me running around in a hazardous material suit. I really do justice to a full Level A suit.
The class was very helpful to me as a hazmat technician, but also in my role as a resource coordinator for emergency response. By knowing what can be done, the better I am able to get what is needed.
I know a lot of preppers are concerned with the government, and are afraid of the department of homeland security. While I understand (and occasionally share) those feelings, not all of the programs are intrusive. the public safety response classes are geared toward providing life saving training to local first responders to make them more capable of saving lives.
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Brass Wizard Review
Buy at Amazon Today’s review is on a device that gets me more oohs and ahhs at the gun range than my spectacular shooting skills or neato jiffy gun gear – the brass wizard.
Like all gun guys I have a couple things I really don’t like:
- People that are irresponsible in their usage of firearms
- The rising cost of ammunition
- Policing up brass
- Sorting said brass
I believe that most gun guys have similar dislikes. I also think that most would agree with me that all but the first are minor irritants that we gladly put up with as long as we get to use our favorite spent casing creation devices.
At some point I will cover all of these pet peeves; this article will show how I deal with number 3 – Picking up brass after my range sessions.
I have long searched for an easy way to collect my fired brass, both to keep the ranges I use looking nice, but also to feed my reloading habit.
Things I Have Tried to Get Out of Picking Up Brass
- People
- I have tried getting kids and girlfriends, more than one wife, and students.
- Using people is either prohibitively expensive (especially wives that turn into ex-wives).
- Tarps and mesh screens
- I don’t like being tied to one spot.
- At the risk of sounding tacti-cool – I don’t want to do anything that may place a subconscious routine of standing still while shooting. (like dumping spent casings from your revolver into your open hand).
- Mesh bags that attach to your firearm
- I am severely biased against those bags that attach to your gun to collect fired cases (both from malfunction prevention and training viewpoints).
- I don’t like anything extra on my gun that does not fix an articulable problem and makes the firearm run better. This does not fit those criteria.
- Those little sticks with the gripping claws that sell on TV infomercials
- They are cumbersome and only pick up one casing at a time.
- “bag-a-nut” machines adapted to range use
- These are to large to move about easily and are awfully expensive.
Only Three Choices Left
This leaves me three choices. I can shut up and pick up my brass; I can design some Rube Goldberg contraption to pick up my brass, or I can use the brass wizard.
As soon as I saw this device I ordered it. It originally was designed by farmers that grew tree nuts like pecans (just like the bag a nut). It’s a small wire cage that attaches to a broomstick (and later a collapsible metal pole) by a hanger that allows it to roll on the ground.
What happens is that as the metal cage rolls over a fired cartridge case, the wires are forced apart, allowing the case to be swallowed up by the wizard. As the brass wizard continues to roll, the wires spring back to their original shape trapping the case inside.
This device works really well, and can hold several cases before having to be emptied. I works on rounds from .380 and up and while it can collect Shotshell hulls, the company makes a large wizard that works better for hulls.
Works Best on Packed Ground
In all fairness, I do have to tell you that this device works best on hard ground. Cement is the best, but I have personally used this with success on hard packed ground, sandy soil, and short grass. I have even tried it on a gravel range, but that is the weak point of the system. In gravel, it picks up as much gravel as it does cases, making it pretty much useless.
When I bought mine it came with a metal device that presses onto a 5 gallon bucket (I supplied the bucket) and helps with emptying the cage full of cases. You just press down and wither wiggle or twist the wizard and the cases fall out into the bucket.
This is starting to become a more common item, but I enjoyed being an early adopter of the device. When I went to a range with my brass wizard I was very popular, and many people borrowed my wizard to try it out.
They sell for around $45.00 and if you police up your own brass, this is a bargain due to the amount of labor you will save.
Stay tuned, as next week we will review my solution for peeve #4 Sorting Brass
