Stronger Dollar, Metals Rising?

I've been slowly building up my food storage supply and people have been looking at me like I'm some kook. Actually my wife being one of them! I told her that I'd rather have it sitting there and not need it, than to need it and have it not be sitting there.

Do you guys also have a good amount of water stored? I thought the ratio was a gallon a day per person. Well, I have a wife and two kids, so if I want to have a good amount of water stored, it's gonna take up some space!

Yeah water isn't a big concern for me either because of lake water around me. Plus I have a hard time imagining it that bad.

I once saw a "I shouldn't be alive" show where a guy lost a sea was able to stay alive for over 60 days in a life raft with a solar still

There is nothing nutso about being prepared, there are all kinds of emergencies: weather, medical, terrorism - they are a way of life in our time. There are plenty of web sites with recommendations for even the most basic things to have, water and beef jerky are just a couple. I have to admit, I'm in the majority of Americans; I turn on the light switch, open the fridge, twist the faucet. I am ill prepared...

And when none of those things work... you get that "deer in the headlights" look.

Not picking on you, Jack. There are a lot of folks out there who are not prepared for much of anything unusual. A lot of us are also under-prepared. We've made some preparations but not enough. I'm in this group. Food, water, basic tools, first aid kit, portable radio and batteries, a few guns and some ammo, etc. One can always find something else that should be added to their list.



That is a nice design... simple and apparently quite efficient. I can see where that would work really well in a warm climate. Not too sure about the cooler and wetter Pacific NW. It should still work here but the efficiency might not be as high. Even so, that looks like a great way to convert brackish or salty water to something drinkable.

That new show on history...."Inspector America" will show you the other big problem in our country, via failing grades on many bridges, dams, Levy's well over fifty years old, such as Fort Loudon dam I live right below, thankfully way up on a hill, so if that dam erected in 43 breaks, I will probably be o.k.....

Most recently back to my point, he did a show in Vegas, talked about how they rely on Lake Meade, and how it is down 120 feet in the last ten years or so. They said they needed long pipe systems like the oil pipes in Alaska, to run water from say flood areas like Mississippi, to dry places like Nevada and that overall section of the country....

In Cali, they are (this is the real eye opener) converting potty water into drinking water, that is right strait from the sewer, and right through miles of tubes an processing, and right out with much less parts per millions of contaminants than you get from your sink tap water. For example a parts per million tester will register say like 150 to 180 parts per million out of most tap facets, while this refined sewer water is like 50 parts. He drank a big swig, and said it was the best water he had ever drank. Give me a glass, I would drink it, it is all just mental, that water is good once it goes through that system. Hey, can't they convert salt water into drinking water, like those huge machines on AC carriers. Seems like these salt water conversion machines would solve the water problem....

I recall on one of the end of the world shows most recently, the one with many different experts in many fields, and the guy who was worried about the water, seemed to be the one with the best argument for the near future, esp with a constantly growing population, people living longer, and less food and water, and space. The one thing he said that really caught my ear, is that humans have taken water for granite more than any other resource, and many a long lost forgotten civilization parished for it....

Some good points Amida17, I think I will have to re-think that first glass if it ever comes to that, lol. I have no idea what "cryptosporidium" is, but it does not sound good....

Also the possibility of contamination of the Colorado River due to oil shale drilling in the watershed. Water is pumped into the ground to cause the oil to float then it is accessible from the shale. Problem here is it is not contained so the ground water may become contaminated and then runoff into the river. What would the western stated do without the Colorado River?

I've been telling people here in the Pacific NW that we need to build a couple of 12 foot diameter pipes to run Columbia River water from here down to Calif. and Texas. Then, we put meters on them and say, "Well now, boys, just how much water do you want?".

Millions of acre-feet of this water flow into the ocean every day and are then contaminated with salts of various kinds, rendering it undrinkable by man, animal, or plant. Instead of flushing it all down the drain, siphoning off a small fraction of it for use in the drier parts of the US could hugely increase their farm and ranch productivity, while costing the NW virtually nothing.

Would that have an environmental impact? Perhaps a very small one. But then, so does every breath we exhale... and no one seems to be volunteering not to breathe in order to "save the Earth" from it.