A few weeks ago A.G. told me the Dollar Tree had emergency candles, six for a buck. He noted, though, that a certain survival guru warned that some companies misrepresent the burn times on their candles. And, “He’s the type who would actually time such a thing.”
I’m not usually the type who would. But what the heck. I bought a packet and set a candle on fire.
The package said each candle was good for 5 hours and 30 minutes. I set the oven timer for 2 hours and 45 minutes. When I came back …
… sure enough. They were telling the truth. Half the candle remained.
I don’t recall seeing emergency candles at DT before, but this time there was a front-and-center display. Maybe a seasonal thing. But a heck of a deal.
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Maybe it’s just the season, but I’m feeling more than the usual urge to stock up this fall. One of the local stores is having a two-day bulk meat sale and I bought things like a 12-pound pack of pork chops.
I know that for you folks with a passel of kids, that’s about a meal. For me, it’s a year’s supply of pork, and something I’ve never done before. I also grabbed a few more items on the case-lot canned goods sale.
Whatever it is, something makes me more apprehensive than usual about the coming winter. Not a shiver about the weather. But a shiver about life and unfolding events in the big, crazy world.
I keep thinking of the old poem:
My candle burns at both ends It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends –
It gives a lovely light.
I’ve grown weary and cynical, waiting for America’s bright, fiat-money light to burn out. I was a kid when people first started predicting the dollar’s fall. I shrug at the latest dire warning.
Still, the bright glow of a fiat money economy “will not last the night.” I don’t know what’s going to happen any more than the latest dire predictors do. But it just feels as though this winter could be the time when we’re plunged into the dark.
Funny to hear, “I’m feeling more than the usual urge to stock up this fall”. I feel EXACTLY the same way.
With me,other important purchases are actually taking a back seat to long-term food supplies and preps.
I was not in love with that show Doomsday Preppers, but I first heard about it in your blog, so I gave it a try. The one thing that stood out to me was almost everyone when asked ‘why they prep.’ describes this same inner need to do it that I feel. That part I could relate to.
Not sure what it all means, but that feeling is shared.
Don’t say that Claire. I need at least another 2 years. But I have to admit that the end is getting close, and probably faster than we think. Going to see Atlas Shrugged Part 2 tonight. Will let you know how good it is, or not.
I’m not a big fan of candles for emergency preps. They’re small enough to store, I suppose, and if I saw a 6/$1 sale I’d probably come away with a couple of boxes just because why not. But they don’t give much light, and a hot environment can reduce them to waxen puddles.
I know just what you mean about getting weary and cynical. Doomers have been hollering about the dollar at least since Nixon, their predictions seem perfectly plausible, and they stubbornly fail to come true year after year. Personally, since watching the Mozambique hyperinflation I’ve come to doubt that even the worst would bring TEOTWAWKI in this country. If Mugabe’s government could keep its wheels on through that, this one probably would.
Nevertheless, I live every day like the dollars in my pocket will be worthless tomorrow.
I think a lot of people are getting that feeling. Like when you just know a thunderstorm is coming even if the sky is clear.
I’ve been trying to figure out a shelter I can put over my partly-dug foundation so I can keep digging at it during the winter, and possibly use it as a winter camp if I need to get out before spring.
(No money, so I’m doing all the work by hand. It’s slow, especially with my bad back and shoulders, but I keep at it whenever I can.)
Yeah, I’m gettin a little uneasy too and I can’t tell if its just the mood of the pundits, or if its the underlying facts that have me feeling ill. I’ve been reading this article today, and it seems really fairly written for a ZeroHedge post:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-10-11/we-are-road-serfdom
“By contrast, governments mainly consume the resources they obtain through borrowing in the present period. They do not invest them in productive activities that generate new income streams for society. Via deficit-spending, governments channel savings mainly back into consumption.”
Our five hour financial candle has been lit for a few years now…
Ellendra — OMG, you’re digging a house foundation by hand? We should send Joel over with Gulchendiggensmoothen to help!
Joel — I hear ya on candles, though they’re a handy last resort when all those flashlights and lanterns give up the ghost. And among my gifts from blogistas last year was this UCO candle lantern, which, along with this reflector puts out a lot of light and steady light, to boot.
I also understand how incautiously stored candles could self-destruct in your summers. But I can pretty much guarantee that no candle has ever self-melted here in the coastal NW unless it was placed in a south-facing window next to an open oven, then hit with a blowtorch. 🙂
Mac and G.W.F. — We can hope we’re all wrong, but one of these days we’re going to be right, and right now just does have that feeling, doesn’t it? As Ellendra said, that thunderstorm feeling …
Joel — As to the wheels not coming off in Zimbabwe’s hyperinflation … I dunno. True, Mugabe lasted. Which is just weird. But when it got really bad, 80 percent of the country was out of work and people were gleaning grains off highways behind trucks. I’d call that “the wheels coming off,” especially when you consider that just a few years earlier, Zimbabwe was in quite decent shape for an African nation.
ILTim — Yeah … well-said on that “five-hour candle” of the fiat economy …
Claire – re: self destructing candles. Store ’em flat on their backs in the box and you end up, at worst, with 6 square blocky ones. A quick bit of work with your Spyderco and you’ve got a candle again.
And that Mugabe lasted is not all that weird. If you ever opt out of the liberty movement and drift into empire, remember to keep your troops fed and paid and you can do a LOT of cowing of the masses.
Just heard Brian Wilson doing an interview and I’m going to have to disagree with the guest; there *are* enough police and military to maintain martial law in America and much of the infrastructure is already in place for it.
Podcast of the interview here:
http://www.wspd.com/player/?station=WSPD-AM&program_name=podcast&program_id=Brian.xml&mid=22530843
I, too, am feeling the sense of “something” impending. Fortunately I am usually wrong when I feel this way. However, I will try to do my preps no matter how I feel- as always.
And, learn skills! Skills will get you through times of no “stuff” better than stuff will get you through times of no skills.
Something evil this way comes… Sometimes it comes to you, sometimes it comes to your neighbor, but it always comes. It will come at the worst possible time, it only remains to be seen what and how bad that evil will be.
I’ve always been dubious of the entire “Survivalist” end of the world fantasies. It often comes down to wishful thinking of the socially inept for the most part, and too many of them aren’t hoping for freedom, just a reorganization of a society they get to run. In some cases it seems to involve some guy living in a trailer who thinks he will suddenly have woman begging him for “love” (to be delicate). Having seen this psychosis in a few friends it was obvious that the women they’re hoping for would prefer death before them… which is why they were so into guns. 😉 Has life ever come to a complete standstill? Perhaps if you lived in Stalingrad in “42”, or Germany during the “Thirty Years War”, it certainly might seem like it, but to be clothed and fed gives one huge advantages during these times. Not even Alaric doing his worst in Rome could stop living for more than a few Months. But it can get very difficult. I do know some Preppers from both Argentina and Zim (Evil White People), and interestingly enough they came out of the trouble in both countries very well off. If one has the ability to stay off of a declining economy this gives us options. By all standards fiat currency is failing, the dollar’s in awful shape, but so is everyone else so the international system can be dead for quite a long time before we get the smell. No one wants to starve to death and humans are quite resourceful. However, just because society doesn’t collapse altogether doesn’t mean there’s not going to be a lot of children and elderly (and this means people in their mid-40s upward) who won’t be able to last hard times without (“sufficient”) food, water, meds and a decent abode. In other words, buy the damn candles and don’t look back.
The thunderstorm bit doesn’t work for me, I like them.
I saw some comments the other night on SHTFPLAN saying what you all are saying. The thought I had, it’s a lot like being in a camping site under an avalanche zone.
Because nothing’s happened, does not mean the prior warnings were wrong.
Also, about this time last year Big Lots had a special on tea candles in a big bag. Good for not letting light out the window and letting others know you’re there, yet enough light to see by. I picked that idea up from the guy who writes about having lived through hard times in Eastern Europe a few years back.
Just good to see i wasn’t the only one feeling a bit more edgy. Not “good” but, you know what I mean.
“…as in so many other areas, a kind of quickening is occurring.” – Eric Peters
Count me among those in the ‘feels imminent’ camp. Along with several of my friends. I don’t have a lot of preps in place, other than guns’n’ammo, and some camping stuff, but I’m gradually getting more essentials acquired. I suppose I’m by necessity in Kent’s camp — i.e. I can learn new skills, and hone the existing ones more cheaply than I can go buy more stuff. Of course, he’s right, irrespective of financial capability. I keep thinking along the lines of, what are you going to do when you can’t just go to the store and buy soap? And where might I get the materials for making soap, if I make it to my bug-out location? And then I don’t have space to store much in the way of #10 cans either. And if I did, well, it seems pointless because I think that my current neighborhood is going to be the place NOT to be.
Also, I don’t want to be me when the caffeine and nicotine run out. 😉
Trying to decide what it means that so many of us have that “imminent” feeling. Maybe nothing; we are, after all, paranoid weirdo wing nuts. 🙂 Aren’t we supposed to be like this all the time? OTOH, there’s definitely something in the tom toms — a sense that maybe things can be held together until after the election, but then they’ll fall harder because of being propped up so long.
FWIW, I’m not expecting the zombie apocalypse any time soon. As EN and Joel say, things usually work out different than that. But I wouldn’t be at all surprised if a lot of dominoes fell. (Added) Or maybe things just slide and stay slud for a long, long time.
Jed- Around here we don’t even have to make soap- yucca makes a good ready-made soap. Just pound a leaf between some rocks and use it with water. Smells fresh, too. Lots of areas of the country have plants that work similarly. Until you learn to make soap, anyway.
Kent, yeah, making use of the local flora (and fauna) is on my list of things to learn more about. There’s a YouTube channel — ‘Practical Primitive’ I should look at more. Or I could decide that bathing is overrated. Yucca sounds nicer than Lye, I think. I tried some pine-tar soap and like it, and would like to find a recipe for that — again, on my list of things.
Claire, I don’t believe in morphogenic fields. But I can’t deny a feeling of collective gestalt here. This huge interconnected web of financial instruments all using fiat money, plus what I see as a growing disconnect in people’s abilities to see cause and effect, which ties into the entitlement class, and the evils of democracy, and increasing racial and class friction, and all manner of other things — these are all meshing into each other into this very precarious situation, and I worry that once something gives way, there could be a domino effect. Matt Bracken recently wrote a scenario; I’m sure everyone has read that. I think it’s just that there are a lot of us who are seeing this for what it is. And there’s positive reinforcement, because we can all read each other on the web.
I am unsure of what time frame is covered by ‘imminent’, and perhaps inevitable is a better way to put it. But Herbert Stein’s law will have its day. (Yes, his meaning of that formulation isn’t the way I’m using it here — mine is worse.)
The 2nd season of “Doomsday Preppers” starts 16 October on the National Geographic Channel.
I frequent a bunch of doomer/prep/EOTW forums and the feeling is rampant! I think a small part of it is the normal and natural desire to prep to hunker down for winter. The hunters are out in force to fill the winter freezer. The cat is eating way more than normal. The deer have started coming in a bit early for the apples and alfalfa cubes I put out for them. Days are shorter, temps are going down – all part of the normal cycle.
My doomish feelings of imminent trouble are pretty specific so far. I fear a colder than usual winter and felt pressure to get in extra firewood. Grocery prices go up with every weekly shopping trip and I feel pressured to get in extra food while it’s still vaguely affordable. The country has become so polarized along the lines of politics/race/income that DH and I felt pressured to get our concealed carry permits.
I suppose I should be worried about the middle east, but they’re so far away. I guess I should be worried about the election, but it’s so out of my control. Firewood I can gather, cut and split. Politicians and Arabs, not so much.
I have been a prepper for most of my adult life (that’s a really long time). It’s just the way I live now. During the 70s and 80s I thought the end was near, and I was wrong. In my dotage I’m just coasting along. Is the apocalypse imminent? Don’t know, and if it is I’m not sure I would make any significant changes in my lifestyle. I don’t live quite as remote Joel does but my relatives think I live at the end of the world. I’m not moving. Think Harry Truman of Mount St Helen’s fame. If I sound apathetic, I’m really just mostly content with my life at the moment. You only get to do it once so try to enjoy life as much as you can. We live in interesting times.
EN, Great observations. I wish I had said that.
The reason we all feel this crunch on time is simple. The Federal Reserve is creating 85 billion dollars a month *Officially*. They WANT the world to know about that creation of money. Nevermind what they do behind closed doors.
Imagine this: The fedgov announces it is going to give a check to every adult in America. This check will be for 10,000$. What happens next? Prices JUMP, as most retailers KNOW that money will be burning a hole in the pocket as SOON as it gets cashed.
Why can’t they do THAT instead of giving the money to banks and their friends?
I missed one statement. From “da man” George Carlin.
“It’s a big club, and you aint in it. You, and I are not in The Big Club.
By the way, it’s the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe”
Sassafras leaves also boil down to make a shampoo, just collect them, add a little water and reduce by half, gentle and works well. AND sassafras grows in a lot of places yucca doesn’t. Sassafras is a very useful tree.
“It’s the deep breath before the plung”-Gandolf in Lord of The Rings
You all made me nervous yesterday with your feelings of doom, which admittedly I don’t have. I spent a big chunk of yesterday talking with old acquaintances and comrades, most of them retired military who live (and double dip) in Mordor. Their take, based on minor inside info is that you all have a right to be feeling uneasy. The EU is about ready to collapse in spectacular fashion. Obama has spent a lot of time cultivating the EU and even loaning their central banks money when the S was about to HTF last year. Our semi-esteemed president has asked the Germans not to get rid of Greece and Spain until after the election (there’s some fact in this) as the chaos in both those countries will likely be something not seen since the last big war. The Germans are supposedly saying that events are going much faster than they can control. One retired Col. who works at HHS went so far as to suggest that Obama’s poor debate performance had something to do with “reality kicking in”. I’m thinking that the collapse of the EU would be good for us, but who knows? I guess that’s always the problems with chaos, no one knows what will happen.
EN — Sorry our heebie-jeebies were so contagious. But if it led to you digging for that info, I’m glad you “caught” the creepies from others here. I know you have some fairly strong contacts in Mordor & that’s provocative info, even where it only confirms what We the Peasants have been putting together in our own minds. Thanks!
It seriously was a good thing to get the HJs. At times I’ve grown so cynical as to assume everyone’s FOS, and it would be seriously wrong to miss the big event. I just got back from a really pleasant afternoon with family and have an email from an acquaintance in the bond industry who’s in Brussels for some meetings. He says all everyone talks about is how they are going to kick out all the miscreants from Southern Europe. This may sound strange but according to him there’s no mechanism in place for this event so legally they’re struggling to come up with a good way to do it. His analogy was to imagine a train with no way to shut down the engine and the track is out ahead.
Tell you how pervasive this feeling is: earlier this afternoon, my MOTHER went to a gun range, and shot a weapon for the first time in her life.
And then she stopped at a farmers market and got half a bushel of tomatoes and asked me to can it up as spaghetti sauce.
And then, asked if she could borrow my old shotgun some weekend so she could try her hand at deer hunting.
This is a woman who thinks “roughing it” is a hotel without a swimming pool! I’m sitting here in shock.
My mother ignored everything my brother and I have been telling her for years regarding preparing for harder times. Her pastor did a sermon on it this past week, and now she’s all gung-ho. LOL Guess it just needed to come from someone she trusted, rather than her crazy kids!
I was kinda getting the hang of the gypsy life, and all it’s awesome freedom from responsibilities that cost money…..until about a month or two ago and the sudden urge came along to find a place to “set” IMMEDIATELY, and it hasn’t gone away…..It’s different than the usual “fall urges” to be ready for colder weather and the possible blizzards that can bring daily life to a standstill, this has the added urgency to “be ready” more than “hunker down”……I’m so far behind the 8 ball that it’ll be interesting to see if I can catch up before “whatever it is hits”……
So yeah, whatever it is we all “have gotten” must be real….and we probably shouldn’t ignore it, either….
GOOD anecdotes. Definitely, definitely something in the tom toms.
http://rt.com/news/switzerland-prepares-europe-unrest-263/
““Minister Maurer, accompanied by whispers from the top uniformed leadership in Switzerland, is trying to raise awareness that Europe’s massive fiscal-cum-political crisis could get very unpleasant,” John R. Schindler, a professor of national security affairs at the US Naval War College wrote in an article for the XX Committee website.
The Chief of the Swiss Armed Forces, Lieutenant General André Blattmann, likewise revealed plans to deploy an additional four battalions of military police (1,600 soldiers) to protect strategic points across the country. Blattmann is expected to present the plan in December.”
http://www.cnbc.com/id/49385502
“It’s not excluded that the consequences of the financial crisis in Switzerland can lead to protests and violence,” a spokesperson told CNBC.com. “The army must be ready when the police in such cases requests for subsidiary help.”
I work for a very large corporation and our customers are the state governments. Early this year our CFO had a meeting with us to run through the basics for the year, sort of a touch base with the little folks. He specifically mentioned his conversations in New York with a number of international banking types. He had been working to deal with our company holdings in Greece. These bankers gave him a heads up that they and their cohorts were going to crash the Greek economy and that we needed to flee it as soon as possible. This conversation was from just before the Greeks hit the skids. Our CFO had no reason to mention this item to us other than to explain why he had moved Greek investments and I walked away from that meeting thinking that we had seen a little inside info that things were going to get progressivly worse in Europe.