by Pete Thorsen
In the big box that she had never looked at there were many boxes of bullets in a few sizes, six cans of gun powder, thousands of primers, several full and part boxes of loaded ammunition, a lot of empty brass cases, case length gage, powder trickler, powder dipper set, Case trimmer with pilots, case lube with pad, three reloading books, and some odds and ends that they did not recognize. When she told him that she paid three hundred for the lot he was surprised and happy. A couple of the items were for calibers they did not have right now but most of the stuff they could use right away.
“There is $150 worth of primers alone.”
“Well now you can build a reloading bench and set everything up. A cabinet to keep some of this in would be a good idea too. We can maybe fill in with what we need for our other calibers as we find it. Maybe we can get a few things off EBay if we watch for what we want.”
“That Rock Chucker press was the one I thought we should get too. I heard they were about the best. Maybe an electronic scale but not right away. People have been using these balance scales for reloading for many years so they obviously work. This is great; we got all set up in one swoop. And we can read up how to do everything in these books before we ever start doing anything else. You made a great find. I have plenty of stuff to build the bench and a cabinet.”
“Just a couple more sets of reloading dies would make it so we could reload for most of the guns we have now. I’ll maybe do some checking and I might try to buy those dies soon so we are totally set up.”
Chapter Six
The winter was just another winter. The power was out for a day when a truck slid off the icy road and took out an electric pole, but it happened in the morning after they were gone to work and was fixed by the time they got home, so they never got to use any of their ‘preps’.
It was soon time to start thinking about getting the garden ready again. They were tempted to make the garden even bigger but still had home canned stuff from last season left over so left it the same size. Meg had started baking their own bread so they laid in a couple pails of flour and other ingredients but they knew the yeast only lasts a couple years so that had to be rotated on a continual basis.
The good news was it was getting warmer and turning into a nice spring. The bad news was all the news on the TV and internet. The winter in Minnesota curbs the crimes due to the extreme weather but crimes would likely pick up with the warmer weather. The Federal Reserve hinted that they were thinking of gradually cutting back on the three billion dollars per day they were ‘infusing’ into the economy and the DOW dropped way over three hundred points just at the thought of it happening. The Fed quickly said that they would just keep printing the new money then and not to worry, so the Dow went back up. That pretty much sealed the deal as far as ever stopping the ‘stimulus’.
Egypt had a military coup and ousted their President. Now there were bloody riots there, again. Syria’s bloody civil war was still going strong and looking more and more like the USA would get involved. Israel said it may strike Iran any day to stop them from building nuclear bombs. It was pretty much the same crap again and again.
Then a couple of new things happened. Saudi Arabia said they were mad at the USA over the US doing nothing about Syria and were thinking about making some major changes in their interaction with the United States. Maybe they would start selling oil using currency other than US dollars. Wow that would do some major damage to the USA. It could easily start a flow of events that ended with the collapse of the United States.
But everyone was thinking it was simply talk and they would never do such a thing. Then there was all this information coming out about the NSA spying on all American citizens. Recording all phone conversations, all emails, all text messages, all transactions. Pretty much every single thing every single person in the USA does or says is recorded and inspected. This even made the Democrats and the Republicans join together in saying this is a no-no and please don’t do that any more or if you do don’t let us find out.
The other countries of the world thought it was funny that our own government was spying on all its own citizens. Other countries did not think it was so funny when they found out the NSA was listening to every single thing every one of them were doing and saying also, especially when the heads of state in each country were totally compromised also. Then there was a world wide uproar about all the spying. But what could they do other than say please don’t spy on us any more, pretty please.
There were several scandals involving the White House including some resulting in the deaths of Americans and many people were subpoenaed by Congress to testify. They showed up before Congress and some blatantly lied while under oath, or pleaded the fifth and left without saying anything. Some just avoided answering any questions by saying things like “I don’t remember” or “I don’t think I was briefed on that” or “Gee that’s news to me”. So nothing was done, none went to jail, no one lost their jobs, no one resigned, no one was reprimanded, and several actually got promotions.
Congress had passed a huge bill changing the whole health care system in the United States. It was debated for some time and the population was against it but it very narrowly passed and was signed into law. Now after three years it was being implemented and it was a fiasco of epic proportions. Millions in the United States lost their health insurance and were told to sign up for the new improved insurance. But that proved to be virtually impossible to do on the government’s multi-million dollar web site that didn’t work. The few that could sign up found the rates to be way higher than they were paying even with the huge federal subsidies.
Maybe worse was the fact millions were automatically signed up for the free Medicaid insurance. People wondered where all the money to fund this was coming from because the national debt was already well over 17 trillion dollars. With the national debt so high, many countries were very skeptical about buying US treasury bonds so the Federal Reserve ended up buying almost all of them. This was called monetizing the debt when a country ‘bought’ its own debt. Again, a bizarre unprecedented event for the United States that could only end badly.
Lee had an older gas powered farm tractor with loader that he mainly used to move snow in the winter to clean their yard and driveway. He did have a few attachments for it and did use it in the summer for this and that around the farm. He had been using just a couple of gas cans to bring home fuel for the tractor and lawnmower and any other gas motors they had at the farm. This worked fine, but when he got the chance to buy a farm gas tank at a very reasonable price he didn’t hesitate to buy it and set it on a heavy stand he built so it could gravity feed through a hose to fill any machine he had.
It was a 275 gallon tank according to the man he bought it from. When he called to have it filled he found he could not fill it as it did not meet the required regulations. That was unhandy but not the end of the world because Lee just bought gas in his cans every day and dumped them into the storage tank. It was not long and he had the tank full and added fuel stabilizer to it because he thought it might be awhile before it was emptied. On the hose he had installed a filter and a water trap and it had a nozzle on the end. He put a lockable ball valve at the tank and locked it even though they were in the country and had never had any problems before this.
They had the garden growing good and on a walk one day they found a large blueberry patch. They picked what they could but it was not enough to do much with other than have them in their cereal, on their ice cream, and make some blueberry pancakes. Or Lee’s favorite, just eating them. It was about the same with the wild red raspberries and the black berries in their immediate area. They all tasted good though.
One weekend Lee made a fairly large outdoor grill that could use wood or charcoal. They had a gas grill already that they would continue to use but Meg admitted that the one Lee made sure looked nice. The garden was already producing and Meg was busy canning. Between Meg and Lee they had bought a considerable number of canning jars and canning lids at ya
rd sales. Plus they had previously bought a big bunch of the plastic reusable canning lids. Meg finally said that was enough. She did not think they would ever use all the lids and jars.
She almost changed her mind when she started to can all their apples that year but shifted much of the apple canning to drying instead. The trees were really coming of age and were good producers. They couldn’t help themselves when the neighbors again asked them if the wanted their apples like last year. So Meg said yes again and this year they had another used dehydrator they had bought so they could dry more at the same time. The second machine was a big help.
With all the apples and all the garden produce she did fill an awful lot of canning jars. Lee had built many shelves in their basement and they both looked in pride at all the food those shelves contained. Both the home canned jars and the LTS food in buckets and large cans.
With fall there were hunting seasons and they both went pheasant hunting again and also did some grouse hunting this year. Meg really liked the all white meat grouse and said it was the best meat she had ever had bar none. Meg also went deer hunting this year and between them they shot three deer. Their freezer was packed. This year they even made their own jerky out of some of the deer meat. Meg said they could be snowed in for two years and still not run out of food.
Chapter Seven
It was in early December that there were a curious series of events. The economy was still very weak and Christmas sales were predicted to be dismal and had been so far. The Federal Reserve decided to do a temporary bump up in their ‘stimulus’ because they said the infusion of additional money would make a huge improvement in the general economy. So they bumped it to five billion dollars per day or $150 billion per month of new money printing. The stock market took a big bump right away, rising five hundred points in one day to another new record high.
That was on a Wednesday and on Friday afternoon Saudi Arabia announced they would now deal in the Chinese Yuan and the Euro and would shortly be dropping the US dollar but would except them as payment until the end of this year (which was less than a month away). Saturday all the OPEC nations made the same announcement.
This caused quite a stir in the world and on Monday most markets in the world were down. Not a huge amount but all were down mostly in the two to four percent range. Stuff was happening in the bond market also as US treasury bonds held by other countries came up for sale and there were no bids. Also crude oil prices took a little bump in price by about another ten percent.
The spot currency price for the US dollar fell a little over ten percent which was the most significant event. Things still held together on Monday and the markets closed and in the US and abroad it was pretty much life as normal. It should have ended there. The announcement was a shake up and that is what occurred on that Monday. Obviously the United States was still the same as it was the previous week. And the loss of the ‘petrol dollar’ while rather shocking, was not an end all and life should have continued to be just another ‘ho hum day’.
But for the last few years, things had been so rocky for every country and there were worldwide jitters about every thing and every action. Everyone in the world knew they were living in a house of cards. And apparently many thought this was it and a few panicked. That was what led to the end when more jumped on the bandwagon.
Tuesday when the markets opened they started to drop a little. After a couple hours the US market was down about one and a half percent. Then it was like the bottom fell out and the market swooped down like a dive bomber. When a preset amount of selling happened, the market automatically closed for the two hour ‘cooling off’ period as per the normal controls that were in already in place.
After the two hours were up the market reopened. Then it fell again and fell fast until the market automatically closed again, this time for the day. And it was not just the markets as the spot currency price for the US dollar fell again, this time almost another sixteen percent. Oil futures also rose but only a rather modest ten percent as futures were now thought to mean little.
Precious metals were the big winner. Over Monday and Tuesday they were flying up by twenty five percent averages in the two days. But physical gold and to a somewhat lesser extent silver sales by the end of Tuesday were way over spot prices, way over. On Wednesday the US markets stayed closed by order of the President.
But he could not control the rest of the world. There was no currency spot price for the US dollar as no one would buy. Precious metal futures were going up so fast it could not be reported and word was physical sales were scattered prices but at absurd amounts if it could even be found at all.
On Monday in the United States people were increasingly uneasy. Tuesday things started out uneasy and there were lines at most banks and ATMs. Actually there were lines most places, gas stations, grocery stores and big box stores. Maybe most disturbing were the long lines at gun shops.
By Wednesday every store was a mad house and shelves were looking very empty. There were many altercations between shoppers and shoplifting was an epidemic. Many small stores boarded up their doors and windows like they do for hurricanes only this time it was all over the United States. Every police department in the United States (and likely the world) called up all their reserve officers and all leaves were canceled.
They all knew by Thursday night big cities would be totally out of control and mostly lawless. Governors’ called up the National Guard units in their respective states and sent them into the larger cities. Guard turnout was poor with many not showing up at all and some that did had an odd look about them that did not bode well. Thursday morning dawned bright and clear, over most of the once proud United States.
With some of their own insight and after reading some of what sounded to be good advice on the internet Friday night, Lee and Meg had gone to town on Saturday morning. First they stopped at their bank and made a substantial withdrawal in cash. Then they went to three gun shops and bought an awful lot of ammunition. When they were done there, they went to the coin shops where they were regular customers anyway and bought all the silver they could. They stopped at a couple pawn shops and bought more silver and then went to Walmart and bought more ammo and a many other items.
They bought all that they thought would fit in their vehicle. Then they went home and talked about making another trip because things were still pretty much normal in town. So they went back with the pickup, had a very nice meal at a fairly expensive restaurant (something that was rare for them), and then filled the whole pickup box with stuff. When they got home they both just relaxed for the rest of the day.
On Sunday they did the regular stuff they always did. Meg mostly puttered around the house and Lee mostly puttered around in the shop. They went for a nice long walk together in the afternoon and watched a TV movie together that evening. Lee tried to talk Meg into calling in sick on Monday but she refused, so they both went to work Monday morning as usual.
It turned out to be a regular day, but they both could feel the tension everywhere. Again Lee could not talk Meg into staying home on Tuesday so they both went to work as usual. They both filled their gas tanks that morning as they had planned just in case things got screwy during the day. Then things did get screwy that day.
They both had radios on at work and heard about what was happening throughout the day. Lee had no problems getting home that evening and was relieved to find Meg home. She told him it took her an extra hour to get home but she was never in any actual danger, just the streets were packed and there had been a couple accidents. They watched the TV news that night and got all the news they could from the internet also.
On Wednesday morning they again watched the news and Lee told Meg he would not let her go to work that day. Meg only agreed if he would stay home also. They both called in sick that morning. Neither had called in sick for as long as they could remember and were sure each of their bosses knew very well that they were not sick but who could blame them.
Both of them watc
hed the news and internet all day long. They knew they would not be working for some time. Neither one bothered to call in on Thursday morning. Anyone working in any city would have been crazy to go to work on Thursday. It was bedlam everywhere.
Many workers did not go to work on Thursday and many stores were closed but that did them little good because riots were everywhere even in the bright daylight. Pretty much every store in every city was broken into in broad daylight. Looting was rampant everywhere. Car accidents were so common place that there was no way for police to go to them.
The police were totally overwhelmed and nine-eleven phone lines were all totally clogged so no one could get through. By afternoon many accidents resulted in shootings. But it was somewhat hard to tell because there were so many shootings everywhere anyway. By evening all news vans were recalled for their protection.
Even the news stations knew it would be murder to send anyone out after dark because they had many problems during the day. Announcements were almost constant telling everyone to go home and stay home. Roads and streets were clogged in cities and where ever there were accidents they stayed because tow trucks would not or could not go out, even if you could get a call thru to them.
Phone circuits were busy and most could not place any calls to anywhere. After an accident people just walked away from their cars if they could no longer move them. If they were hurt in the accident it was just too bad for them because no help was coming. Highways were packed with people going who knows where. Some just sought refuge out of the cities because they knew things would only get worse and would likely soon be totally untenable.
Thursday night the inevitable happened and live fire was shot into rioting crowds. When you have police or National Guard troops told to hold a line or protect an area or a building, they only have a couple of choices at a certain point. If the mob advances and tear gas, smoke canisters, and non-lethal actions fail then they have to make choices.