bill Russell

Greg Mamishian wrote:Bill, you offer an excellent example of creative adaptation. Your self motivated resourcefulness is inspiring. Rentals are the biggest "industry" in our area. They make it possible for many of the folks here to afford to live in their homes. I also avoided college loans by apprenticing in a trade and then going into business for myself doing repairs and upgrades on landlord's rentals as well as on their own homes.

They will let you stay out of loan default with a 1% per month payment. If you owe  50k, you pay them $500 a month. My rental rooms easily paid off my loans in 2 years. Now I live very comfortably and about all I have to do is guard and maintain my home, which I'd have to do anyway, without anyone else living with me. 1 year of schooling, full time, will suffice to make you an LPN,  $18 an hour with VA.  RN is another year, then it's $23 an hour. You dont have to have a 4 year degree, and if you are an RN,  you can get a job anywhere in the US.  If you'll work a bit of overtime, you'll make  60-100k a year, depending upon the area and how much OT you work. You can get a 4 year degree in something else, half time, in 2 more years. I suggest criminology,cause in the US, prisons are one very secure job and the Fed ones, at least pay very well, with lots of overtime and a great pension after 20 years, civil service AND union protection, great medical insurance. 100k a year is pretty common, after you've been with them a couple of years, at least in some parts of the US. Easy work and less dangerous than tending a bar.

Deb Stephens wrote:I'm not sure the definition of survival is to spend your life running away. At some point, no matter how thrifty you are, that bike or raft has to stop and resupply. If the world becomes the hell-hole you hint at, there aren't going to be convenience stores along your route and anything you might think of foraging has probably already been foraged by the people who live in the area you are passing through. People who opt to survive in place may be the only ones with food and you can bet your bottom dollar they will see you coming if you think your best option is to steal your way along to wherever you're going. So what IS your plan for resupply?

 the rivers are highly likely to always have fish, if you have netting.  100 lbs of the right kind of food will get you thru 100 days of rafting, if it's not too cold,  So many people are going to be dead, so quickly, that there's going to be plenty of stuff to pick up, from abandoned vehicles/buildings, and from dead bodies,  There will be lots  of space in which to garden. Have some non-hyrid seeds and you'll be ok. People will be a very high risk to kill you, either directly, with poison, explosives, other types of boobytraps, or by contagious diseases. Avoid them for as long as possible.  Then join a proven-viable group, carefully, from a distance, using dead drops and message flags to establish your value (and theirs) before risking actual person to person contact. Nobody's at all likely to see you when you travel at night.  Everyone has eyeballs, but not even 1% have night visions and most wont have solar chargers. Batteries die, especially in cold weather.

I've at times made my living selling cast bullets. with Lee Precision's low cost, aluminum 6 cavity molds and hand-sizer, you can make at least $15 an hour. The problem is lead's getting hard to find, Tin and antimony to harden it are VERY expensive, and lead is heavy as hell, so selling bullets beyond your local shooting ranges is a non-starter. But you can make a clear 5k a year at it, with less than $500 of gear, all of which fits in a 5 gallon bucket, except for the propane fired weed-burning device, (or plumber's furnace, if you can find one)  which is not a lot bigger than a 5 gallon bucket. I use a big cast iron pot and a large, homemade side pour ladle. The lyman ladle is not really big enough to cast .44's and .45's in 6 cavity molds, altho it will suffice for .38's and 9mm molds.

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/

there are places in the mountains, where moving  30 miles moves your temps 30F degrees. That temp difference can be very significant in how much food you can grow/forage, and how much effort you have to put out to control your bodyheat. All  3200 miles of the US has been crossed by a bicycle in 8 days. Google it.  Moving  500 miles south can change your temps 30F degrees, almost anyplace,  and  1000 miles can double the change. You can bicycle  700 miles in a week, all at night, with NVD goggles and passive IR scanning,  rather easily, on pavement. Even more easily, you can drift an inflatable raft down a creek, to a river, to Louisinana, from anywhere in the central US. it's slower, since the rivers move at  3-4 mph, typically, and for most of the country, they move sw or se, not straight south, as does the Mississippi. You can haul 100 lbs on a bike, and tow 50 lbs more in a trailer behind a bike. You might have to walk alongside of it, on steep grades or off road, but at least the wheels are carrying the weight, not your back.  You can use some small logs to lock the front wheel in aligmemt with the frame, making it a lot easier to walk alongside of it, with your rifle in spring clamps on the handlebars.  At least you can hop aboard and coast forthe downhill parts of your journey!   Use solid rubber tires, so as to avoid a lot of hassle and delay/worry. A 3 man inflatable will let you float the bike, you know, along with all the other stuff, food, etc. If you have a water filter, water and fish are never in short supply as you drift down stream. If shtf, few are going to notice you on a river at night and even fewer will want to waste time or ammo on you, if they lack a boat to go get your stuff. I once had some fool say that the tugboat's wash will swamp my raft. Well, if it's shtf, tugboats wont be running up and down the river, guys. To do so will mean getting shot-at. All that diesel fuel and grain will make them a very attractive target, worth swimming out to capture, worth biking along the shore to keep up with and shoot-at. Riots, storms, flooding, avalanche, mud-slide, fires rarely mean a damned thing to you if you bicycle 50 miles away (in the correct directions)  which takes just half a night.

Not long ago, I lived in an old minivan for 3 years, on 5k a year, and sold my plasma for 3k a year. I did oddjobs from craigslist for the rest. I saved my college loans and what I made selling cast bullets and doing day labor in the summertime. I used my VA homeloan to buy a big old house and now clear 30k a year from renting out 8 very small rooms, $100 a week each, because my own housing/utilities/wifi bill is built into the expenses of the building. I never once needed to cook a meal in the van. I ate lunch at the baptist church, supper at the SA mission, drew food stamps and staples from the food bank. i'd buy some $1 or less item at a convenience store, or $5 worth of gas now and then, so that I was a 'customer'" and used their microwave. I hung out at the college library or their gym. Planet Fitness, for $10 a month, offers 24-7 access to electricity, wifi, shower, toilet, a place out of the weather, and a legit place to park. I used a pee jar a lot, rinsing with bleach after dumping it.  I had a litter pan and litter for solid wastes, but only needed it half a dozen times in 3 years. I just stayed parked near the college, the gym, a convenience store or a construction site's porta potty.

break the bones, boil and simmer them, until all the marrow has melted out. Let it cool and freeze it. it makes a great stock for soup.