A VERY INTERESTING E-MAIL

Hi Mike,
You are a clever man. Post-disaster skills are what we all will need. I am focusing on medicine, but small engine repair to the point of making new parts I think would be useful. Have you seen the TV series Jericho? It talked about Windmills as an alternate for electric power. In the Mountains you would have to string about a mile of cable from a ridge top to send electricity down. What are your thoughts on alternative energy?
Also I plan to plow up the dirt road in front of my house to plant. after I made sure it was impassable to get to me by vehicle. What are your thoughts on that?
Respectfully.
Jim

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This guy, Jim, is a thinker. I have never heard of anyone plowing and planting their road. And it might very well be a good method of keeping interlopers away from your retreat. I can see some problems with getting the road plowed if it has been run on quite a while. Packed dirt can be very hard to plow. Very hard. It might take a big tractor and just a two bottom plow. I just don't know how long the road has been used for traffic.

If the road has been graveled it can pose a problem. Packed gravel can be very tough to plow. Here in southern Indiana most of our country roads are graveled with Limestone or Gypsum. Both of these are high in Calcium. Calcium grows good crops. Plowing under a little manure would be a nice thing if you are planning on harvesting what you plant. A lot of sand brought in and dumped would slow traffic down a lot. The more sand the less traffic.

I don't watch television. I unplugged my satellite TV hook-up years ago. I cannot stand to have all those people hawking their wares in my living room. And it seemed to me that commecials ruled television. You got a little bit of show for watching a lot of commercials. And I was paying for this barrage of commercials. There was no "free" TV on the satellite except for maybe HBO.

The Handmaiden rents videos of popular shows and I get to see them that way. I absolutely LOVED Deadwood. Talk about Phase I people! Killers and whores and drunks and one doctor. And all those guys out trying to strike it rich in the gold fields. She has brought home a show called LOST of late and I am getting tired of it. Seems like there are some segments that show flashbacks more than they show action on the island. And there is very little or no explanation of how things got done. Devoid of showing the interrelationship of people trying to survive. More pretty girls in bikinis and less survivalism. They must have had a boatload of bikinis on that plane that crashed.

I have not seen Jericho though I have heard some good things said about it. The wife says it is not out on video as yet. I will give it a try, most likely.

As to a power source after the Big Bang, well, I don't know how intersted in that I am. I have no intention of establishing the very culture that bred this mess we have now. I think candles would be nice, if we can develop a source of tallow. But I am not interested in re-establishing MTV on the planet. I'll miss NFL Football but I will live without it.

The human family is varied as to its personalities and its like and dislikes. But media tends to make us all talk about the same thing. Our conversation agenda is set FOR us, not BY us. I think now of the idea you have had for plowing your road in the event of a catastrophe, to keep people like freebooters and other malicious folks away from you. I love it. I have no idea how practical an idea it is but it is damn sure an original idea. And people can't run up on this type of thinking if their conversation agenda is being set for them. This is home cookin' of the highest magnitude. This is what makes life interesting. This provides discussion among people who care about their survival. I would be shocked to see it mentioned on MSNBC or CNN. You are to be commended for your originality.

Go ahead and make your power if you like and if you can. It will happen anyway. Man will try to re-establish technology as we fight our idiotic wars and print our funny money. But for those intervals of quiet, when the mass produced mind of this world is silent, I will be happy. I will be quiet right along with the world. The scripture says He sits on the rim of the world and the earth is silent before Him. If quiet is what God likes than I like it too.

Stay alive!

Michael

mboone@rtccom.net