Fact vs. BS - Part 5

WELCOME TO THE NO BS ZONE OF TEDDY JACOBSON

ADDED COMMENTARY BELOW Nov. 23, 2005 - 4:30 pm C.T.

YOU MUST PREPARE FOR HARD TIMES NOW. DO NOT RELAX AND THINK THE WORST IS OVER, IT HAS NOT EVEN STARTED YET. YOU MUST GET YOUR SUPPLIES AND GUNS AND AMMO BEFORE ITS TOO LATE. Go to www.survivalblog.com Do not get relaxed into a false sense of security.


www.actionsbyt.com

www.tacticalknives.blogspot.com

www.tjofsugarland.blogspot.com

www.hipowersandhandguns.com


LETTER FROM ARGENTINA- PART IV - BELOW


PLEASE NOTE: I WILL NOT BE TAKING IN ANY TRIGGER WORK ON A BERETTA MODEL 87 AT THIS POINT IN TIME. I REALIZE THERE IS AN ARTICLE IN THE NOV. 2005 ISSUE OF GUNS MAGAZINE WRITTEN BY MASAAD AYOOB ABOUT THIS 87 THAT I DID MANY YEARS AGO. I WILL ONLY TAKE IN LIMITED TRIGGER WORK ON STREET GUNS ONLY AND YOU MUST CALL ME FIRST. I GIVE NO DISCOUNTS TO ANYONE REGARDLESS OF WHAT YOUR NAME IS AND OR WHAT YOUR STATUS IS IN THIS LIFE. MY WORK IS VERY MUCH IN DEMAND BUT I JUST DO VERY LIMITED WORK THAT HAS NEVER BEEN WORKED ON BY SOME ONE ELSE. YOU CAN CALL ME ON MY LAND LINE AT 281 565 6977 MOST ANY DAY AT 10am CENTRAL TIME. I WILL DISCUSS YOUR HANDGUN WITH YOU ANYTIME AND OR ADVISE YOU WHAT TO PURCHASE, I DO THIS AS A COURTESY TO HELP THE HONEST GUN OWNER..........TJ

DISCLAIMER: THIS COMMENTARY AS WELL AS ALL MY PREVIOUS COMMENTARIES ARE MY PERSONAL OPINION AND MY PERSONAL VIEWPOINT. WHEN I QUOTE SOME ONE IT IS COPIED AND PASTED FROM A PUBLIC DOMAIN OF ONE KIND OR ANOTHER. I DO PAY FOR SOME DETAILED INTELLIGENCE REPORTS THAT I SHARE WITH YOU. IF YOU CAN NOT DEAL WITH REALITY, PLEASE LEAVE NOW.

I USE MILITEC METAL CONDITIONER FOR ALL MY TRIGGER WORK. Go to http://www.militec-1.com/ I do not sell it and you can buy it directly from Militec.

FOR CERAMIC COATINGS I USE PRODUCTS FROM NIC INDUSTRIES Go to http://www.nicindustries.com/ Speak with Brandon Grady, he can help you.

FOR ALL MY CLEANING PURPOSES I USE LPS PRODUCTS, THERE IS NOTHING BETER THAN ZERO TRI OR MICRO X http://www.lpslabs.com/ You can purchase these products from http://www.mscdirect.com/

IF YOU NEED A SILICONE PRODUCT FOR YOUR HOLSTERS I USE DOW CHEMICAL SILICONE THAT COMES IN A SPRAY CAN OR A TUBE AND CAN BE PURCHASED AT http://www.mscdirect.com/

There are a number of very good platers such as Virgil Tripp and Bob Cogan and Horace Booth. I use Virgil and you can go to www.trippresearch.com


Fact vs. BS - Part V

I have been getting at least 100 emails per day with various requests and I will not only answer them privately but also put up here what interest you have. We will stick to the 1911 for a little while as people want to know more about parts and more.

I use Brown Tactical thumb safeties although there is a design flaw which is my opinion, but it is still the best of the lot that is available in todays market.

Grip safeties are another story, and how some of these people have the gall to sell the garbage they do is beyond me, its just greed as there is a sucker born every minute. I generally like to buy King Grip safeties and I do use a Brown once in a while. Some times I am forced to use a Wilson which I do not care for. No grip safety should be sold so crude with obvious casting marks that requires total refinishing. You should not have to spend hours refinishing a stainless steel part for what they charge.

I have seen many hammers with poor geometry. For a custom handgun model 1911, I always use the C&S ultra light hammer and his tactical sear. That is not saying I like or dislike C&S and or all his parts, I just like those two and you can be sure he buys them and puts them in his own packaging like the rest of the parts companies. I use other hammers and the best for the money is a cheaper MIM hammer but you will not be able to cut the hooks properly unless you really are a pro because the steel is super hard. Its harder than most files. You must buy the best part for your application regardless of who is selling it.

Many people do not know much about files, there is an American cut and a Swiss cut and a German cut and they are graded entirely different. My video I made years ago had charts on this. No, I am not trying to sell you my video.
There are also special diamond files along with files made of exotic hard steel that you are not aware of, but I do not teach gunsmithing.

Firing pins are not all the same. I do not like alloy firing pins of any kind. Always check a part with a magnet to see if its steel.

Mainspring housings vary a great deal and the best there is, is made by Brown. That is not to say I like or dislike Mr. Brown as I buy the best part for my application regardless of who it is. I am a nitemare to please because of my attention to detail and that is very good for a customer as well as my own personal degree of quality. I want flawless parts and internals and I never have settled for second best, past, present or future.

Not many people make a decent plunger tube. Its easier to work with a Brown plunger tube because the staking rivets are longer. I think Kimber makes the nicest looking plunger tube although the staking rivets should be longer. I must have 5 different staking tools in my tool box. When it comes to buying tools money is no object. You usually get what you pay for when it comes to tools.

I have at least 7 hang up motors of industrial quality and the one that has held up the very best is the Dremel 732. I have tried most everything in the past 30 years. Never buy cheap tools and or parts. It is worth the extra money to buy Snap on Tools.


I see many people that have installed steel guide rods in an aluminum frame pistol, example is the Colt Light Weight Mustang, the steel guide rod batters the aluminum in no time, stay with the original plastic rod in cases like this. The fact that all these new parts are available in all kinds of material including Titanium means nothing. When you ask a company what percentage of Titanium is in the part or the frame they usually give you the very same BS answer. "ITS A COMMERCIAL GRADE OF TITANIUM" that tells you nothing. They just want your money. ITS ANOTHER BS STORY.

Many tools that were available to the gunsmith in the past 40 years are no longer available because they do not sell enough of them to make it worth there while to stock them. Try buying a Tom Wilson Jig made for the Browning Hi Power today. NOT AVAILABLE, HES OUT OF BUSINESS. Try buying Bull Shooters sight insert colors that were mixed as a liquid, DON'T BOTHER, Hes OUT of BUSINESS... and the list goes on and on and on.

Most of the good people are in their favorite nursing homes or cemetaries. Todays work is done in major machine shops that cost a small fortune, take away their machinery and they will go on the unemployment line. Not many people do everything by hand like I have always done. I have paid the price with pain and misery. I am not very well liked because I tell the rest of the story that many people do not want you to here. If I cared I would not keep trying to wake you up.

I do not ever buy cheap chinese calipers that cost $20.00 , its a waste of time. I buy the very best of everything. If you want a dial caliper the smoothest dial movement is made by Brown and Sharpe. If you want a digital caliper you can buy Mitutoyo and they can be purchased at www.mscdirect.com You will have to spend about $75.00 min. to get a decent 6 inch caliper.

For your files I suggest being you may not know much about the various cuts, I would suggest you stay with the swiss cut. For example a #0 file is courser than a #2 and a # 4 is finer and many of these tool companies can provide you with comparison charts. Do not buy cheap tools, its a waste of time and money.

Getting back to various guns that I have not touched on yet, the MAKAROV is still the very best buy in a handgun. I would only buy the single stack version and in 9x18 caliber. This handgun has but 30 parts and springs and it is super reliable and super accurate. You will never be sorry if you go ahead and buy this handgun. It can be refined but it will work fine as is. Many people think that it is similar to the Walther PPK or PPK/S and they are very wrong. The only similarity is that the trigger guard pulls down for field stripping. The Makarov is far more reliable.

My friend Marc at ISMI has just made recoil springs for the Makarov using chrome silicon wire that is excellent. He also has recoil springs for my favorite handgun the HK P7 M8 and he can be reached at 800 773 1940. www.ismi-gunsprings.com

Any questions email me at tjacobson@houston.rr.com I will try and help any decent honest gun owner.

Added Wed. Nov. 23, 2005 - 4:30 pm -C.T.

At this point in time I believe that the only revolver that is still made very well is the Ruger SP 101 and the Ruger GP 100. Most of my revolvers are the older SW's and they are far better than current production SW models in my opinion.

If you are looking for a small pocket size semi auto I would look at the NAA Guardian, which is chambered in many calibers. It is still made very well and the company does resolve any issues that come up rather quickly. www.naaminis.com

Glock pistols are hard to beat for reliability but many people like the new Springfield Armory model "XD" which is made in Croatia. The only downside to this pistol in my opinion is changing out the extractor. The "XD" is becoming a top seller and is priced right. I have studied the action and it can be refined.

As for 1911 pistol, everyone has jumped on the bandwagon and they are making a copy in most every size. The very best one out there for the money is the Springfield Armory Mil-Spec basic G.I. Model. It is $400.00 and not easy to find as they are selling them as fast as they make them. Read Stephen Camp's article on his personal 1911 SA Mil-Spec at www.hipowersandhandguns.com He has fired over 3000 rounds and it never missed a beat. This is the only current production 1911 that I would purchase.

As for the shotguns that you ask about, I am not a Smith that works on them so I called my friend Ed Vandenberg (Custom Gunsmith) and he likes the Remington 870 and that has a steel receiver. Most of the other shotguns use an aluminum receiver. I am very familiar with the operation of these shotguns only I do not work on them. The Mossberg 500 is a lighter shotgun and will meet most requirements. When I buy #00 buck shot ammunition for my shotgun I prefer to buy Remington Nickle plated buck shot as it has more penetrating ability.

For a carbine many people are asking me about the new Beretta Storm. I really do not have any information on this carbine yet other than what I have read. Many of the wholesalers have them listed in the 500 dollar range. I have seen they were chambered in 9mm. I do not know much more about it other than it should accept the same magazines as the Beretta 92F.

I like to keep things very simple and I like having extra parts and springs for my survival handguns which I have narrowed down to no more than four calibers, plus or minus. The more you aquire, the bigger your problem will become in protecting your assets.

I will continue this type of commentary for awhile before get into specific models of handguns in extreme detail. There are many people that go to gun shows and like to buy their guns there. Unfortunately I have not been to a gun show in at least 10 years as its to difficult for me to walk a show.

Thanks for reading my commentaries, I actually have 4 bloggers and you can find them if you do a search on www.google.com on Teddy Jacobson...

Sunday, Nov. 20, 2005

New Orleans Today:

It's Worse Than You Think Neighborhoods are still dark, garbage piles up on the street, and bodies are still being found. The city's pain is a nation's shame By CATHY BOOTH THOMAS NEW ORLEANS
On Bourbon Street in the French Quarter, the neon lights are flashing, the booze is flowing, and the demon demolition men of Hurricane Katrina are ogling a showgirl performing in a thong.

The Bourbon House is shucking local oysters again, Daiquiri's is churning out its signature alcoholic slushies, and Mardi Gras masks are once again on sale. But drive north toward the hurricane-ravaged housing subdivisions off Lake Pontchartrain and the masks you see aren't made for Carnival. They are industrial-strength respirators, stark and white, the only things capable of stopping a stench that turns the stomach and dredges up bad memories of a night nearly three months ago.

Most disasters come and go in a neat arc of calamity, followed by anger at the slow response, then cleanup. But Katrina cut a historic deadly swath across the South, and rebuilding can't start until the cleanup is done. In much of New Orleans, the leafy coverage of live oaks is gone. Lingering in the sky instead is a fine grit that tastes metallic to the tongue. Everyone's life story is out on the curb, soaked and stinky—furniture and clothing, dishes and rotting drywall, even formerly fabulous antiques. Dump trucks come periodically to remove the piles, taking some to a former city park, now a heap of rubbish several football fields long, towering above the head. The smell is sweet, horrific.

They're still finding bodies down here 13 weeks after Hurricane Katrina hit—30 in the past month—raising the death toll to 1,053 in Louisiana. The looters are still working too, brazenly taking their haul in daylight. But at night darkness falls, and it's quiet. "It's spooky out there. There's no life," says cardiologist Pat Breaux, who lives near Pontchartrain with only a handful of neighbors. The destruction, says Breaux, head of the Orleans Parish Medical Society, depresses people. Suicides are up citywide, he says, although no one has a handle on the exact number. Murders, on the other hand, have dropped to almost none.

Mayor Ray Nagin opened up most of the city to returning evacuees last week, but only an estimated 60,000 people are spending the night in New Orleans these days, compared with about half a million before Katrina. The city that care forgot is in the throes of an identity crisis, torn between its shady, bead-tossing past and the sanitized Disneyland future some envision. With no clear direction on whether to raze or rebuild, the 300,000 residents who fled the region are frustrated—and increasingly indecisive—about returning.

If they do come back, will there be jobs good enough to stay for? If they do rebuild, will the levees be strong enough to protect them? They can't shake the feeling that somehow they did something wrong just by living where they did. And now the money and the sympathy are drying up. People just don't understand. You have to see it, smell it, put on a white mask and a pair of plastic gloves, and walk into a world where nothing is salvageable, not even the mildewed wedding pictures.
Beyond an island of light downtown, most of Orleans Parish is still in the dark. Of the city's eight hospitals pre-Katrina, only two are open to serve a population that swells to 150,000 during the day. The public school system—destroyed by back-to-back hurricanes—is in limbo while the state considers a takeover and charter-school advocates vie for abandoned facilities. One lone public school for 500 students is set to open this week. The once flashy city has become drab. The grass and trees, marinated for weeks in saltwater, are a dreary gray-brown.

Parking lots look like drought-starved lake beds, with cracks in the mud. Within a few hours, anyone working outside is covered in a fine layer of grit. The trees that gave New Orleans such character—the centuries-old live oaks with their grand canopies and graceful lines—are toppled, exposing huge root balls 10 ft. or more in diameter. It's all the more surreal because the Garden District, which survived the flood, is lush and beautiful once again.

The tax base has been shredded, forcing New Orleans to limp along on about a quarter of its usual income of $400 million to $500 million per year. The city has lost an estimated $1.5 million a day in tourism revenues since Katrina, and only a quarter of the 3,400 restaurants are open. Moody's has lowered the city's credit rating from investment grade to junk. The latest insult? The nation's flood-insurance program ran out of money for the first time since its founding in 1968, and some insurers temporarily stopped issuing checks.

That may have consequences for people like Marguerite Simon, 82. She worked hard cleaning other people's homes, earning just enough to buy into the Ninth Ward, one of New Orleans' poorest neighborhoods. She was wearing rubber gloves, rubber boots and a paper face mask last week, cleaning black amoebic splotches of mold off precious family treasures. Inside the small house, her well-made furniture, with its carved arms and curved legs, lay scattered as if some giant Mixmaster had been whirling away.

Sitting on her tiny porch, she managed a laugh. "You have to laugh," she said, "but it don't come from the heart." She wants to stay in her neighborhood, even though bodies are still being found there. Across the street, a widower was found dead by his visiting son just last week. Simon had a small flood-insurance policy, but even so, she's not sure she can afford to rebuild or that she will be allowed to. The cost of demolishing a house is several thousand dollars and rising. For now she's living with her daughter Pamela Lewis in nearby Algiers, but Simon hates the loss of independence.

"Inside, I'm hurt," she says. "I miss having things my way." Lewis is helping her complete Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) paperwork to get a trailer to place at the back of the lot in Algiers. "I believe there's a lesson and a blessing in everything. We just haven't found it yet," says Sharon Welch, another daughter who is visiting from Chicago, and the women laugh.

Real estate agent Sherry Masinter, 46, lived with her lawyer husband Milton, 73, in the Lakeview neighborhood until the 17th Street Canal levee broke and flooded their house with 8 ft. of water. Today mold grows up the walls. The couple paid for flood insurance faithfully for 20 years and were reimbursed, but their neighbors are still battling with their insurance company over arcane formulas.

Milton argues—as did independent experts from the National Science Foundation and the American Society of Civil Engineers recently—that poor levee design by the Army Corps of Engineers caused the flood, not Katrina. That puts the burden on Washington to help, he says. The breached levee, shored up with sandbags, is still leaking onto city streets. "It's very frustrating," says Sherry, "to the point where we've talked of going to Washington for a peaceful protest just to say, ‘You've forgotten us.''

Repair and cleanup are linked, to some degree, with planning what New Orleans should look like five years from now. The Louisiana Recovery Authority, appointed by Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, met in November with hundreds of New Orleans residents to develop priorities, brainstorm ideas with planners and businessmen, and present a unified voice. The Authority vice chair Walter Isaacson petitioned Congress last week for help in establishing a "recovery corporation" as a vehicle for the city's rebuilding neighborhoods.

Donald Powell, the new hurricane czar appointed by George W. Bush, said his job is to listen and gather facts to help the President "understand the vision of the local people." The one-time banker, who admits he has a little boning up to do on levees, says he will spend the next few weeks shuttling in and out of the hurricane area, developing a blueprint for federal reconstruction help. Washington approved $62.3 billion to help hurricane victims after the trifecta of Katrina, Rita and Wilma. With an additional $8.6 billion in tax breaks and programs for the region, the total tab of nearly $71 billion is far beyond the $43.9 billion dedicated to emergency spending after the 9/11 attacks.

But congressional Republicans are picking up strong signals from the White House that the Administration is not going to move forward with any grand coastal plan. "There's not a sense of urgency anymore," says a senior House Republican aide.

Louisiana's recent request for $250 billion, perilously short on details, got a contemptuous reception from Republicans ("Nonstarter," said a Senate aide), editorial writers (who dubbed it the "Louisiana looters' bill") and even a few Democrats ("They're thieves," said a House aide involved with budgeting for Louisiana relief). Michael Olivier, Louisiana's secretary of economic development, points out that Katrina devastated a far larger area—23,000 acres—than 9/11 did and destroyed nearly 284,000 homes. With 71,000 businesses shut down by Katrina and a further 10,000 by Rita, and with local governments short on tax revenues, he says, "We're looking at potentially the largest business insolvency since the Depression, and a government insolvency." FEMA continues to be a four-letter word in Louisiana.

In Kenner and Metairie, suburbs west of New Orleans, blue tarps provided by FEMA dot the roofs of homes damaged by wind, but there are few in the worst-affected neighborhoods like Lakeview, the Ninth Ward and East New Orleans—a policy defended by the agency. "What's to protect?" asks FEMA spokeswoman Nicol Andrews in Washington. She argues, like the insurance companies, that most of the damage east of New Orleans was from floodwaters, not wind. Tarps, she says, would be a waste of money.

"There are still houses left standing, but you wouldn't let any living thing you cared about get near them [after they had soaked in] standing black water for four weeks," says Andrews.

FEMA trailers for temporary housing are a rare sight in East New Orleans, largely because there is no electricity and inundated city inspectors are behind on approving utility hookups. Entergy New Orleans, which filed for bankruptcy protection after Katrina, plans to double its repair work force so that most of the remaining 75,000 customers will have power by year's end, thus clearing the way for trailers to be installed. The move comes none too soon, since FEMA is cutting off payments for hotel rooms by Dec. 1 to encourage families to move into permanent homes, using money they were given for apartment deposits.

Olivier told a gathering of planners in New Orleans that FEMA's trailer parks had been held up by epa requirements for an environmental study. "They told us that we have to protect the endangered species," said Olivier, who then delivered his applause line. "I told them, ‘Hell, we are the endangered species!'" Andrews says the agency does not mandate such studies.

The delays and squabbles mean that Congress's $62.3 billion largesse has mostly gone unspent. More than half—$37.5 billion—is sitting in FEMA's account, waiting for a purpose. Under fire for being slow to respond, the Bush Administration had rushed two emergency supplemental bills to Congress with little thought about how the money would be spent or how fast. Now FEMA is "awash in money," says a Democratic appropriations aide.

Of the nearly $25 billion assigned to projects, checks totaling only about $6.2 billion have been cashed. As a result, a third supplemental-funding bill sent to Congress suggests taking back $2.3 billion in aid. Mayor Ray Nagin attempted to shore up support for the city's recovery before Congress last week, but he came home with little new. The comment of a G.O.P. aide was typical: "We want to see them helping themselves before they ask us for help."

The mayor's Bring New Orleans Back Commission has created buzz in the city by involving thousands of people in public life. But what residents want most is something the mayor pragmatically believes may be impossible for the moment—levees that will protect against Category 5 hurricanes. The Corps of Engineers plans to repair 40 miles of the 300-mile system before the next hurricane season. Nagin won promises from the Corps to rebuild the system to withstand a Category 3 storm "plus some," which means they plan to fix the flaws that reputedly caused the levee breaks that flooded 80% of the city—for as long as four weeks in some areas.

The improved levees will be 17 ft. high, vs. 12 ft. to 13 ft. pre-Katrina. With $8 million pending for a two-year Category 5 study, the mayor seems content to bide his time. "There is no science to build a Category 5 levee protection now anyway," says Nagin.

New Orleans has a more immediate problem: its health-care system. "Should we have another hurricane, multiple accidents, a major fire or a flu epidemic, it could overwhelm our system," warns Dr. Breaux. Fewer than 15% of the doctors are back, nurses are in short supply and medical records are missing or destroyed. The Navy hospital ship is gone, replaced by a makeshift treatment center that moved out of tents and into the New Orleans Convention Center last week. Level One trauma care, for the most seriously wounded, is available only in the next parish. "If you're in a major car accident, have been stabbed or shot or hit over the head with a pipe, the soonest you could go into the operating room now is about an hour—and that's if you ‘schedule' your trauma between 8 a.m. and 2 p.m.," says Dr. Peter DeBlieux, an internist at the temporary convention center site.

Eighteen months before Katrina, business leaders in New Orleans created an economic development vehicle, GNO Inc., with a five-year goal of creating 30,000 jobs. They may make their goal quicker than that, but the jobs will be in Baton Rouge, or perhaps Houston and Atlanta, thanks to the hurricane. At a downtown job fair last week, Leo G. Doyle, a sales-training manager for UPS, said his company lost 30% of its work force after Katrina and was looking for drivers and package handlers.

"We have a lot of good workers who have been displaced, a lot of good workers with loss-of-family issues, loss-of-spirit issues," says Doyle. "If we had housing, they would return." Burger King is offering a $6,000 signing bonus to anyone who will work in New Orleans for at least a year.

New Orleans will never again be the New Orleans of Aug. 28, 2005, the day before Katrina hit. But that New Orleans was not the city of 30 years ago either. There is no reason to think New Orleans will not once again be a vibrant place, but it will take time, and more time than one might have thought just a month ago. As Jim Richardson, director of the Public Administration Institute at Louisiana State University, puts it, New Orleans is not a traditional hurricane-recovery model. "It's more like a war zone. You're looking at a 10-year recovery, not two years."

LETTER FROM ARGENTINA - PART IV

-Interlude -Studying the SHTF at the University: Dark Omens.
I forgot it! Darn, same as the gold stuff but worse, much worse. I’ve never been good at remembering some things, like numbers and names of people I meet, I forget those (instantly), they just flee my mind, uneventfully, but I do remember some other things that don’t seem to be as important. I do remember living in USA as a kid. I remember my school, Pierce School, Don’t remember exactly were it was, because we lived some in Boston, Massachusetts and some in New Hampshire.

I remember my best friend, Freddy, and a girl (why is there always a girl? [Smile] ) Samantha, Sam. She was red haired and tall, I had a picture of her playing together but I lost it. Some time between the age of 3 and 26 I lost that picture that was so dear to me. I remember the smell of an orange shaped “scratch and smell” sticker my kindergarten teacher stuck in a small book we made once. But I almost forgot this forever. This, this was important, a moment where the life we once knew stopped existing, and a group of students, in a class room that looked like and abandoned building, realized it, all 60 of us at the same time.

It’s 1:06 AM over here. I just finished showering and my wife and son are asleep. I was putting shampoo on my hair, thinking about what I wrote today on this post, and remembered the exact moment when I realized along with several other people, not only that TSHTF (that we all knew) but that the world we once new no longer existed, and that this was not a hurricane, this was an ice age period, it wouldn’t just go away.

We understood it the same way a kid understands photosynthesis: Because a teacher coldly explained it to us, even used graphics. I slept 5 hours yesterday, 2 hours the day before yesterday. Saturday night I didn’t sleep at all. I’m already used to it. Deadlines at the University, staying late at night, drawing in CAD 3D, waiting until Renders are ready. It’s a competitive world out there, and no one sympathizes with what you are going through, they just want you to perform as expected, and the standard is always high.

It happened 4 years ago, almost a year after the December 2001 crisis. It was a social studies class and this teacher, don’t remember if it was a he or a she, was explaining the different kinds of social pyramids. God! Now I remember more! We even had a text book with those darn, cruel pyramids! The first pyramid explained the basic society. A pyramid with two horizontal lines, dividing those on top (high social class) those in the middle (middle class) and the bottom of the pyramid (the poor, proletarian).

The teacher explained that the middle of the pyramid, the middle class, acted as a cushion between the rich and the poor, taking care of the social stress. The second pyramid had a big middle section, this was the pyramid that represents 1st world countries. I which the bottom is very thin and arrows show that there is a possibility to go from low to middle class, and from middle to the top of the social pyramid. Our teacher explained that this was the classic, democratic capitalist society, and that on countries such as Europeans one, socialists, the pyramid was very similar but a little more flat, meaning that here is a big middle section, middle class, and small high and low class. There is little difference between the three of them.

The third pyramid showed the communist society. Where arrows from the low and middle class tried to reach the top but they bounced off the line. A small high society and one big low society, cushioned by a minimal middle class section of pyramid. Then we turned the page and saw the darned fourth pyramid. This one had arrows from the middle class dropping to the low, poor class.

“ What is this?” Some of us asked.
The teacher looked at us. “This is us”
“ It’s the collapsed country, a country that turns into 3rd world country like in pyramid five where there is almost no middle class to speak, one huge low, poor class , and a very small, very rich, top class.”
“ What are those arrows that go from the middle to the bottom of the pyramid?” Someone asked.

You could hear a pin drop. “That is middle class turning into poor”.
I won’t lie, no one cried, though people rubbed their faces, held their heads and their breath.
No one cried, but we all knew at that very moment that all we thought, all we took for granted, simply was not going to happen.

“ You see, the income from the middle class is not enough to function as middle class any more. Some from the top class fall to middle class, but the vast majority of the middle class turns into poor” Said the teacher.
I don’t know how many people in that room suddenly understood that he/she was poor.

The teacher continued “You see, we have a middle class that suddenly turns to poor, creating a society of basically poor people, there is no more middle class to cushion tensions any more. Middle class suddenly discovers that they are overqualified for the jobs they can find and have to settle for anything they can obtain, there for unemployment sky rockets, too much to offer, too little demand.

You see they prepare, study for a job they are not going to get. You kids, you are studying Architecture because you simply wish to do so. Only 3 or 4 percent of you will actually find a job related to architecture.”

We all sat there, letting it all sink in. After a few months, it all proved to be true. Even the amount of students that dropped out of college increased to at least 50%. They either so no point in studying something that would not make much of a difference in their future salaries, had no money to keep themselves in college, or simply had to drop college to work and support their families.

Someone once said, in this forum, that if this had happened in USA, the social unrest would have been much worse, because people from S. America are stronger. At first, I told him that I didn’t think so, I said that all humans adapt when they have no other choice. But now that I consider it more, maybe he was right. Not that S. Americans are stronger, but they are more used to adversities.

Most of us are children from grandparents that escaped civil war, either in Spain or dictators in Italy, our parents survived the dirty war, even more dictators, and therefore their children are of strong character too. Can USA citizens survive what we survived? Of course they can, though I think that there are too many that are not like you, many that don’t prepare, and take everything for granted.

Those are the ones that will be responsible for the increase in the social unrest once the SHTF, those that were too lazy to take care of themselves before the SHTF, or that had gone soft through out the years, believing that the government will “take care of them because they pay their taxes”. But in the end, they will pull through. People will adapt, they always do. You’d be surprised.

And those that don’t want to adapt to the new reality they live in, will die young, thus cleaning the gene pool and ensuring the continuity of the specie. It’s been this way for thousands of years.
Note: I’m sorry I took so long to continue this post. I spent the last few days drawing on the computer, I have to present this sort of thesis for the University, a school project, to a board of 4 teachers in 3 weeks.
CRIME AND LACK OF SECURITY
Even though crime has always been an issue in South America, my country was quite the exception. It was dangerous, yes but nothing like after the 2001 economical crisis. One used to be able to let kids play on the sidewalk, or walk back home from a party, a few blocks, and be somewhat safe. This all changed now. There are no kids playing on the sidewalks anymore. I should emphasize this a little more.

There are absolutely NO kids playing on the sidewalks at all, at any time of the day. Maybe a kid rides his bike a few meters on the sidewalk, but always under the supervision of an adult. A kid riding a bike on his own will get that bike stolen in no time, probably get hurt in the process, therefore no responsible parent leaves a kid alone on the street. Teenagers present a greater problem. You can’t keep a 15 or 16 year old inside a house all day long, and even though they are big enough to go out on their own, when the sun goes down things get much worse.

This is when parents organize themselves; either taking them to someone’s house or to a club and picking them up at a certain time. Taxis and remises are used sometimes , but there have been lots of cases of girls getting raped, so no parent worth a buck leaves his son or daughter in hands of a stranger. After years of living like this, almost everyone learned to be careful; sometimes they had to learn the hard way. Practically no one leaves a door or window opened or unlocked. Nor do they hang out in front of the house talking to friends. A bad guy might just see you there, like a sitting duck, pull a gun on you and take you inside your house.

There are no “bandit’s law” anymore. One used to hear people talk about “You shouldn’t resist a robbery, give them what they want and they’ll go away”. That holds true no more. These guys are under the influence of drugs, epoxy glue, or just hate your guts so much, because you have a better life than they ever dreamed of, because they were abused since the day they were born, that they will hurt and humiliate you as much as they can. Letting a criminal inside you house almost guaranties you that he will rape/beat/ torture and abuse whoever they find inside.

I personally drew a line a few years ago and decided, after one long, serious conversation with my wife; that no one would be allowed inside the house, no matter what. We figured that there are worse things than death. Having decided that, I make sure I always have a weapon on me. They’ll have to pay dearly for my life, plus interests.
By far, the most dangerous moment of the day, is when I (or my wife) leave/enter my house. A solid, secure house cannot be broken in easily, so criminals wait until you are standing on front of the door with the keys on your hand to jump on you.

This is why we are extra alert when approaching our house, look all around us and if we see anything strange, keep walking around the block or keep on driving. No door is ever opened when there is a strange person around. Whenever someone knocks on our door (and we don’t know him/her), they are answered from a second story window. Criminals sometimes disguise as electric company guys or something like that, saying that they have to fix something. NO! If there is something to be fixed they can fix it on the sidewalk. Anything inside your house is your responsibility and the company is not going to fix it for you. Either way, it’s always better to play it safe, Better to be rude than dead.

On the car/driving issue, that calls for an entire post dedicated to SHTF driving. For now I’ll just say that windows and doors have to be closed at all times, a weapon must be within arms reach, and that stop signs and traffic lights have a hole new meaning once TSHTF. If your country ever falls as mine did, you’ll remember me whenever you see a traffic light. You never stop at a red lights or stop sign unless there is traffic, especially at night.

At first, police would write you a ticket for not stopping at a red light if they saw you (another way of saying that they will ask for a bribe if they see you pass a red light), but after a few months they realized that nothing could be done, people would rather risk a ticket than risking their lives, so they decided to turn traffic lights to permanent yellow at night, after 8 or 9 PM. This is, of course, very dangerous. Night car accidents are both frequent and brutal since sometimes both cars hit each other at full speed.

MissinLink asked some good questions that might interest others as well, and since we are on the security issue, here they are:
quote:“Do the invaders of homes in the country just drive up in cars or trucks? Do they hide and sneak up? How do these home invaders attack a home in the country? A similar question could be asked for homes in the city.”

Sometimes they just drive up to where you are working, if you are far away from the home, but most of the time they sneak up on you. Criminals are not stupid, and they will spend days checking the place and specially YOUR ROUTINE. For example, if they see that you lock the gate at night, as most do, they will wait for you behind a tree until you are close. This is done a lot. Dogs are the best alarm you can find, and criminals know that.

They will poison them with pills when you go to sleep and attack the place in the middle of the night. I know of many that had their dogs killed. If they think that security is tight, they will just hide near the main gate, and wait for you to leave or return. When you stop at the gate and must get out of the truck to open/close the main gate, they attack. I’d say that the most frequent kind of attack is attacking by surprise when you enter/leave your home.

quote:“Most common times of attack? Day night evening morning? I understand occur when coming or going from ones home, etc.”
7 am, 9 am, 1pm 7pm, all are common times for attacks. There is no “safe” hour of the day. Night is particularly dangerous. Maybe attacks during the day are faster, they want to get some money or jewelry and leave fast, while at night they might stay inside more time, maybe till the next day. But there are no fixed patterns.

If I could give one advice concerning SHTF security, it would be: Eyes and ears wide open when you enter/leave your home. If possible, keep a gun on your hand when doing either one. If something looks, even “feels strange, then go around the block and check again, carefully. If you see them still there, either call the police (if still available) or get help. If you approach the house with a large number of people they will leave. One time, I saw a couple of strange looking guys at my door.

I went round the block and saw them still there. I started flashing the car lights and the horn and they left. I had a gun with me, though, so be careful when trying this. Also, remember that a car is one heavy, powerful piece of machinery. I know a guy that had one of those big chrome–tube bumpers installed on his truck, especially for hitting those that were stupid enough o try to make him stop by standing in front of the car.

If I had a truck, I would do so myself. Though I would keep my mouth shut about it, as always. Just say that you think it looks cool or something. Every now and then someone tries to force me to stop my car by standing in front of it (I suppose there are still fools out there that get robbed this way), in the middle of the street. I just aim at them and accelerate at full speed. They always jump out of the way before I hit them. By the way, at first, doing this made me feel nervous, but can you believe that now it’s just common driving, as normal as changing gears? I guess it’s a little sad.

Teddy