Rugged Cargo Hauler for the Survivalist

This article came across the Defense News site and it looks like the military is getting smarter about vehicle procurement putting dollars to buy these versatile vehicles. 

I could not find a picture on thew web about the newest vehicle in the pipeline, called the Maintenance and Cargo Hauler MACH-2/MACH 2XL manufactured by John Deere, however the picture at above is the current John Deere Gator designated as the M-Gator A1 which has performed well overseas carrying cargo up mountains where the air is too thin for helicopters to fly with substantial loads. 

The M-Gator A1 has a 208 HP Diesel engine that can transport 1650 lbs of gear. The rack in front is actually designated as a litter rack to carry wounded soldiers out, but could easily be used for about anything. 

I have many hours in a John Deere commercial Gator and can attest to the reliability and utility of these vehicles. Not the answer to every survivalist's needs, but does offer a unique capability.

The Defense News article:

Small, rugged multi-purpose vehicles at the AUSA show are equipped with new features but carry a familiar leaping-deer logo.

Visitors to the John Deere pavilion at the exhibition hall might expect to see big green machines that are more at home on the farm than on the battlefield.

What you see instead are three tan vehicles shorter than an F-150 pickup that can haul cargo, carry soldiers and maneuver in austere environments.

“People think of John Deere as the yellow and green stuff,” said Todd Halstead, manager of the Military Utility Business for John Deere. “We are definitely more than just the yellow and green stuff.”

The newest of the vehicles is a Maintenance and Cargo Hauler MACH-2/MACH 2XL , developed in association with International Automated Systems, that can be transported by the V-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft.

That capability is a new innovation in which the bars over the passenger area reconfigure to sit within that space to keep the vehicle low profile at 60 inches high.

The vehicle’s long- and short-bed variations can be configured variously according to the Army’s needs, Halstead said. For example, soldiers have expressed an interest in a fire suppression capability, he said.

The MACH 2/2XL weight is about 2,200 pounds, and payload capacity is nearly 1,200 pounds. Cargo bed capacity is nearly 770 pounds.

To make the vehicle more versatile for mission requirements, an all-terrain trailer can expand cargo capacity, using a trailer tongue that swivels 360 degrees to deal with rugged terrain and prevent problems with decoupling. Up to four trailers can be hauled behind one of the vehicles.

The original MACH is a program of record used by the U.S. Army now, Halstead said, and the MACH 2/2XL are available for consideration by the Army.

Urban Man........

Importance of Owning Silver

This is the message I received from Lear Capital through the American Patriot Daily Net:

Dear Investor, Right now there is very exciting news in the silver market. The largest investment bank in the country today is JP Morgan Chase & Co. In 2012, they held 5 million ounces of silver in their corporate account. However, recent reports have revealed that JP Morgan Chase now holds a staggering 55 million ounces of silver! That’s an increase of tenfold. Just last year, JP Morgan Chase purchased 8 million ounces. That’s a lot of silver for anyone to buy-even an investment giant like JP Morgan Chase. What could they possibly know about silver that we don’t?

Let me tell you what JP Morgan Chase’s CEO, Jamie Dimon, said in a letter to his shareholders, “Some things never change - there ‘WILL BE’ another crisis, and its ‘IMPACT’ will be felt throughout financial markets.“ So here we are. The CEO of the country’s largest bank is telling his shareholders - THERE WILL BE another crisis - and to protect shareholder value, they are buying silver by the hundreds of tons.

Don’t you think it’s time that you consider owning physical silver?

Need another reason?

$21 an ounce. That’s the all-in production cost it takes the average mine to process one ounce of silver. Right now silver is trading just below that threshold.

The last time you could purchase silver below its production costs was 2002. Guess who famously bought 30% of the world’s above ground silver supply back then?

Warren Buffett. Two years later, he doubled his money. So, JP Morgan Chase & Warren Buffett, two of the most successful investors on the planet, both stocked up on silver at a price below production cost. Buffett bought right before a crisis happened. JP Morgan is buying right before what they think will be another financial crisis.

Stocks are at record highs. Debt is soaring. Uncertainty in the world is at historic levels. Silver is on sale right now and JP Morgan Chase knows it-just like Warren Buffett knew it in 2002. Now that you know it, will you let this opportunity pass you by?

Okay, you don't have to get the free investor kit,.......I won't because I don't need it. I routinely buy silver, both in one ounce rounds and bars, and five ounce bars, plus junk silver coins as well.

Silver prices have dropped a little from the 2016 high in August and are currently (13 October 2016) sitting at $17.55 an ounce. We're not buying Silver so we can sell and make a few bucks per ounce profit waiting for the high to climb a a little,.....we're buying Silver as a hedge against the collapse where fiat currency won't be worth anything but precious metals will be used in barter. And if this country comes back, maybe we'l have learned our lesson and have a gold based currency. In the this coming election, which appears that the corrupt Hilary Clinton will win, the Market is going to have major issues, major losses and Gold/Silver prices will climb. Don't wait too long now. Practically everyone can afford to buy one or more 1 ounce rounds every payday - just think of it as re-directional spending.

But just don;t take my word for it, Reagan Budget Director David Stockman warns that the nation will plunge into a recession, even though Hillary Clinton will win the presidential election. "When the stock market stumbles and the economy begins to actually register negative growth, which I think is coming if not next quarter certainly in the first half of next year, there's going to be nothing below and the market is going to go through a massive contraction," said Stockman. "I think it's going to be a very nasty time in the year ahead," he added.

Secret Seed Storehouse

[Article is from the Washington Post]

The secret storehouse of seeds that might save humans from the apocalypse

If you’re already familiar with the Global Seed Vault and understand the crucial role it might play in the future of humanity, you can think of Cary Fowler’s new book as a beautiful coffee-table ornament — with the bonus of lots of informative, readable text.

If you’ve never heard of the vault, “Seeds on Ice: Svalbard and the Global Seed Vault”.can be your introduction to an extraordinary, farsighted venture.

The Global Seed Vault is a vast storehouse carved out of rock and ice on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, far north of the Arctic Circle. In it are half a billion seeds from around the world.

More important, it contains the traits found within the seeds: the genes that make one crop resistant to pests or enable another survive drought. The vault is meant to safeguard humanity against losing vital food stocks to extinction, natural disaster, nuclear war or climate change.

Fowler — a native of rural Tennessee who was trained as a sociologist and has worked for decades on behalf of global biodiversity — led the initial effort to create the seed vault and clearly sees this book as a summary of his life’s work. 

Besides the science involved in selecting and preserving seeds, he gives a fascinating account of the creation of the vault itself — selecting Svalbard because it was both geologically and politically stable, and offered year-round underground permafrost that could cheaply keep the seeds frozen; and the decision to design the wedge-shaped part of the vault that protrudes above the ice sheet so that it looked sculptural, a sort of work of art.

He notes the irony of preserving the future of edible plants in a region where virtually nothing grows. The book is illustrated with hundreds of photographs of the vault and the stunning Arctic environment in which it’s located.

And that is the only way you’re likely to see the vault, except through binoculars from the airport tower at the nearby town of Longyearbyen. Security is vital to the project, and visitors (except for seed donor organizations and the occasional diplomat or benefactor) are not allowed in.

Urban Man's Comment: Everyone reading this article should have their collection of seeds. I have a robust supply of both non-hybrid and hybrid seeds. I continually buy hybrid seeds at garden and hardware stores, spending just a few bucks at a time and now I have several ammunition cans full of them.

They will be initially be what I plant at my bug in location and also used for trading material. I would continue to use hybrid seeds at other temporary locations. I am saving the non-hybrid seeds for a final location or suitable site where I can harvest the seeds from these plants - don't want to waste them don't you know.

When the Lights Go Out

This article came from a mainstream source - The Finance Section of Yahoo.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/lights-inevitable-failure-us-grid-230000502.html
Delta Airlines recently experienced what it called a power outage in its home base of Atlanta, Georgia, causing all the company’s computers to go offline—all of them. This seemingly minor hiccup managed to singlehandedly ground all Delta planes for six hours, stranding passengers for even longer, as Delta scrambled to reshuffle passengers after the Monday debacle.

Where Delta blamed its catastrophic systems-wide computer failure vaguely on a loss of power, Georgia Power, their power provider, placed the ball squarely in Delta’s court, saying that “other Georgia Power customers were not affected”, and that they had staff on site to assist Delta.

Whether it was a true power outage, or an outage unique to Delta is fairly insignificant. The incident was a single company without power for six measly hours, yet it wreaked much havoc. Which brings to mind (or at least it should) what happens when the lights really go out—everywhere? And just how dependent is the U.S. on single-source power?

When you hear about the possible insufficiency, unreliability, or lack of resiliency of the U.S. power grid, your mind might naturally move toward the extreme, perhaps National Geographic’s Doomsday Preppers. Talks about what a U.S. power grid failure could really mean are also often likened to survivalist blogs that speak of building faraday cages and hoarding food, or possibly some riveting blockbuster movie about a well-intentioned government-sponsored genetically altered mosquito that leads to some zombie apocalypse.

But in the event of a power grid failure—and we have more than our fair share here in the U.S.—your survivalist savvy may be all for naught.

This horror story doesn’t need zombies or genetically altered mosquitos in order to be scary. Using data from the United States Department of Energy, the International Business Times reported in 2014 that the United States suffers more blackouts than any other developed country in the world.

Unfortunately, not much has been done since then to alleviate the system’s critical vulnerabilities.

In theory, we all understand the wisdom about not putting all our eggs in one basket, as the old-adage goes. Yet the U.S. has done just that with our U.S. power grid. Sadly, this infrastructure is failing, and compared to many other countries, the U.S. is sauntering slowly behind many other more conscientious countries, seemingly unconcerned with its poor showing.
According to the United States Department of Energy, the American power grid is made up of three smaller grids, known as interconnections, which transport energy all over the country. The Eastern Interconnection provides electricity to states to the east of the Rocky Mountains, while the Western interconnection serves the Rocky Mountain states and those that border the Pacific Ocean.

The Texas Interconnected System is the smallest grid in the nation, and serves most of Texas, although small portions of the Lone Star state benefit from the other two grids.

And if you’re wondering why Texas gets a grid of its own, according to the Texas Tribune they have their own grid “to avoid dealing with the feds.” Now that’s true survivalist savvy—in theory.

When you look at the layout of the grid above, it’s easy to see that a single grid going offline would disrupt a huge segment of North America.

Wait—make that all of North America.

To give it to you straight, our national electrical grid works as an interdependent network. This means that the failure of any one part would trigger the borrowing of energy from other areas. Whichever grid attempts to carry the extra load would likely be overtaxed, as the grid is already taxed to near max levels during peak hot or cold seasons.

The aftermath of a single grid going down could leave millions of residents without power for days, weeks or longer depending on the scope of the failure.

So although on the surface it looks like the U.S. has wisely put its eggs into three separate baskets for safer keeping, the U.S. has in essence, lined up our baskets so that if one were to drop, or if the bottom were to fall out, the eggs from basket #1 would fall into basket #2. Which would break from the load, falling into basket #3—eventually scrambling all the eggs. Sorry, Texas.

And sorry for all you out there, likely 300 million of you, who have no idea or have no plans on how to live without power. Or how to live without trips to the local grocery store. Or how to live in a society where most people will ignore social norms and respect for law or even lives. Sorry for you but not everyone can survive the coming collapse.