Useful Hard Skills for the near future

Fixing and making things, what tools to get and what skills to learn, ...
jacob
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Re: Useful Hard Skills for the near future

Post by jacob »

Since insurance companies have researched the probabilities and scenarios complete with actual numbers and impact (link above), I don't really see the point in arguing based on speculating or fantasizing about how odds could/should be much different than what they are known to be. The risk is well-defined. It's the topic of actuaries and commodity traders, not fiction writers. The personal decision is merely whether to act on this knowledge.

The decision is simple: if probability * cost of no precaution > cost of precaution then take precaution; otherwise ignore.

It's not different than the decision of whether the keep a fire-extinguisher around. I do that too. Three in fact: Bedroom, kitchen, and car. Not because of a fear of fire, but because fires do happen and because extinguishers make a big difference (compared to filling a bucket) if there is a fire. Also, they don't cost more than a #20 bag of rice :-P Conversely, I don't own a firearm because the odds of needing such in my location/lifestyle are negligible.

Where you see fear on one side, I see is somewhat of an ostrich effect on the other side in which some risks get ignored because they are unpleasant to think about or inconvenient to deal with. Fear-based decision making can make for some costly/wasteful decisions (see e.g. terrorism, the personal odds of which are much much lower than food security failures, even in Israel) and the effect can be contagious and compound in the wrong direction. However, ostrich-based decision making can also be contagious and the resulting Eloi-effect can compound in the wrong direction too. In this case, if everybody thinks they can just go pick up a sack of rice in their local Asian store once shortages are being discussed on the 6 o'clock news, it guarantees that there will be no rice left except for the first 20 people to show up... or however many bags they have on hand. The usefulness of the just-go-shopping-strategy is disproven every single time there's a serious winter storm; also see McGee's post above.

luxagraf
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Re: Useful Hard Skills for the near future

Post by luxagraf »

jacob wrote:Where you see fear on one side, I see is somewhat of an ostrich effect on the other side in which some risks get ignored because they are unpleasant to think about or inconvenient to deal with.
I think that's still fear, just fear of a different thing. But to your point, I agree. The middle way is almost always the best choice when planning.

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Re: Useful Hard Skills for the near future

Post by jacob »

Be careful with the middle way argument: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation

The "best" (=most sensible) way is the level of effort where [probability * cost of no precaution ~ cost of precaution]. If the market is efficient, precaution costs are priced accordingly. For example, the probability of a serious(*) house fire---a market that's quite efficient---over a lifetime is somewhere around 1/100 to 1/5000. The cost of a house fire is, say $20-200,000. So the market cost of prevention should be expected to be around $20000/5000=$4 and $200000/100=$2000 which is pretty much where a collection of fire-alarms + extinguishers + insurance premiums is priced. If they were priced much higher (say $50,000), people wouldn't buy them .. and if they were priced much lower (say 50 cents), everybody would have them and serious fires would be rarer (so the issue would be a non-issue).

(*) Where some person gets very injured and/or much if not all of the house is "totaled".

Same deal with driving around in a car. What level of precaution should people take against crashes? Factory installed three-point seat belts. You don't see people putting on helmets and installing six-point harnesses and roll cages when they get in a car to go to work or refusing to get into a car because they might die at any point when they're on the road. You also don't see that many people not using seat belts because they think that strapping in leads to a fear-based society. Fear does not enter the decision. You just put the belt on.

Decisions don't always have to be based on emotions. Pedestrians who cross the streets look right and left, not because of fear, but because it's just a pretty good idea. Ignoring a 1% chance of a high cost incident corresponds to crossing a street blindfolded every 100th time. Not a good idea when looking out is cheap. Appropriate precautions are just the sensible choice.

I don't feel any fear when I refill a bucket with beans or when I buy a tray of 12 cans of tomatoes or 10lbs of chicken. It's just a habit which has been calibrated to conform to reality. It saves money too (see other thread).

If we're going to look at fear, maybe the more pertinent question is why the "fear"-issue was brought up when I first mentioned this risk. It's not like having 6 weeks of food on hand is hard or expensive in any way or that one only has a few days left to correct the situation before "the big one". It's just a habit that your future self may (30% chance) thank you for some day.

Looking back, I said two things which basically boil down to:

1) Don't eat too much/move too little because over the next few decades you might get sick from that behavior.
2) Don't have empty cupboards or presume that supermarkets will always be stocked because over the next few decades you not be able to eat/buy enough for a period.

Pretty basic stuff, really. Interestingly, nobody had an issue with (1).

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Ego
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Re: Useful Hard Skills for the near future

Post by Ego »

jacob wrote:Since insurance companies have researched the probabilities and scenarios complete with actual numbers and impact (link above), I don't really see the point in arguing based on speculating or fantasizing about how odds could/should be much different than what they are known to be. The risk is well-defined. It's the topic of actuaries and commodity traders, not fiction writers. The personal decision is merely whether to act on this knowledge.
I am not disputing the odds of it happening. I am disputing your interpretation of what will happen after the fact. You keep saying that it won't happen overnight but then use these analogies that are instantaneously catastrophic.
jacob wrote:You can compare this to a boat. Once you broach, what you have is what you have strapped onto your person. There's no time or opportunity to go below and fetch a life jacket.........
jacob wrote:It's not different than the decision of whether the keep a fire-extinguisher around. I do that too. Three in fact: Bedroom, kitchen, and car. Not because of a fear of fire, but because fires do happen and because extinguishers make a big difference (compared to filling a bucket) if there is a fire.
Yes, shelves are temporarily cleared after a storm. We are not talking about a storm, right?

I think you left out some important factor from this calculation.
jacob wrote:The decision is simple: if probability * cost of no precaution > cost of precaution then take precaution; otherwise ignore.
I see it like this:

(Probability * (A= Benefits of Precaution)) - (B= Cost of Precaution) > (Probability *(C= Cost of no precaution)) - (D= Benefit of no precaution) then take the precaution.

We are an action oriented society so it is a common mistake to forget that inaction (refraining from action) can be beneficial. Often it is better to do nothing than it is to take action. It is important to actually take into account the benefits of inaction. That is the opposite of sticking my head in the sand. But we as a society are biased toward action and we are driven by the precautionary principle so we are likely to forget to factor those into the calculation.

What is the lifetime benefit of not having an extra storage room full of food? Or a big garage? Or a storm cellar? How much to heat the room for a lifetime. How much to insure it? How much will I pay in taxes on the room over my lifetime? How long will my commute be so that I can afford a home with such a room and what will the health costs of that commute be? How much extra will I pay over the life of my mortgage for the room?

How many life hours will I spend earning the money to pay for the room and what are the opportunity costs of those life hours?

I am sure many would add another function to the calculation, the anxiety coefficient to factor in how it makes them feel. Do you feel vulnerable when your pantry is empty? Do you feel insulated from the hostile world out there when you have a hundred pounds of oats*? It feels better to act (fill the pantry full of two months worth of food) than to fully calculate the many costs involved in having a full pantry.

We fail to notice that these feelings build on themselves. Today I need 100 gallons of water to feel safe. Tomorrow I will need a well and the next day a stream. This is where the stockpiles and preps can become like your #1.
jacob wrote:Number one is not getting reliant/dependent on some kind of [prescription] drug.
Medication of a different sort.

And don't get me started on the moral hazards of having stockpiles.


*BTW I have a hundred pounds of oats in my secret lair (seriously!) stored in gamma seal dog food containers. I bought it because it was cheap at 45 cents a pound and we will eat every last bit.

Toska2
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Re: Useful Hard Skills for the near future

Post by Toska2 »

I will use the middle of the road solution. The cost, for me, greatly goes up due waste after three weeks. Potatoes may last months in a cellar but not that long in my pantry sort of thing.

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Re: Useful Hard Skills for the near future

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

jacob said: nobody had an issue with (1)
I did, but I am bored with reiterating the differences between belly fat and butt fat, and what sort of metrics would best measure the health of people who are differently proportioned. There is no number of pull-ups that can beat the extra year or two of estrogen protection provided by maintaining vigorous sexual activity into mid-life combined with not smoking and rarely drinking.

OTOH, I don't think risk management is necessarily connected with the emotion of fear, and I do think it is often simply a matter of having a level of knowledge about the situation. For instance, my BF has expertise in the field of safety engineering, so sometimes when we go to a concert or movie together, he will notice that there isn't a sprinkler system. So, then he will check for the emergency exit doors. Even though I would never occur to me to check for a sprinkler system, it doesn't make me feel anxious to know that there isn't one, and I think that it is cute that he checks the doors while I relax and munch on buttery popcorn.

I did the math, so now I believe that there is an 85% chance that it will never happen that all three crops will fail in the same year any time in the next 20 years, if things stay the same. Since I am lazy and optimistic, this makes me want to do nothing. However, I don't think things will stay the same. Also, I believe that not having a clue about the origins of the food we eat is almost the hallmark of the fragility of our modern system. Therefore, I think the way through any fear/anxiety has to be MORE knowledge rather than less. First obvious question to ask if you are loathe to add 20 minute moderately tedious routine of Maintain Larder to your repeating bi-monthly ToDo list might be "Where does the ethnic market on the corner source its 15 lb. bags of rice?" Anyways, I am working on my self-sufficient perma-culture project, and I know somebody who has goats and hogs short bike ride away, and I know two people who are going to be buying farms long bike ride away from me, and I have decades of experience as pick-up cook, so I will be fine, even though I eat for free at restaurants quite frequently in these days of golden decline.

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Re: Useful Hard Skills for the near future

Post by Fish »

Isn't stockpiling food similar to maintaining an emergency fund? It is just another practical measure if done for the right reasons. Objections to food storage seem rooted in zero-sum thinking. What about the opportunity cost of exercise or maintaining 6 months' expenses in the bank?

I will agree that fear (read: insecurity) is a very poor justification for action. But we're not talking about food in selfish terms here, e.g. "FU food" or "food independence." The point is to take a need that is normally tightly coupled to the market and introduce some slack.

@jacob @jennypenny What is an equivalent level of preparedness in terms of water and energy/fuel storage?

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Re: Useful Hard Skills for the near future

Post by George the original one »

Toska2 wrote:I will use the middle of the road solution. The cost, for me, greatly goes up due waste after three weeks. Potatoes may last months in a cellar but not that long in my pantry sort of thing.
This is where you need to match your stored food to your storage conditions and palate. Dry and canned goods probably make more sense for you.

I don't like oatmeal very well, so we don't store any long term, but for someone with an apartment pantry, it is ideal. Beans I do like, so we have a few pounds in the pantry. In my case, to supplement the beans & have some variety, storing the potato crop in the garage makes sense especially since I like potatoes. Onions store in the garage, too. Carrots can stay in the ground for a surprisingly long time.

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Re: Useful Hard Skills for the near future

Post by George the original one »

Columbia River gorge and the Blue Mountains have been closed for many days this month. That's one of the primary trucking routes from points east to Portland, along I-84. Either the trucks sit or they take a longer route.

Near my house, a tree fell across the highway this morning. Highway traffic was blocked for 2 hours while the powerlines and tree were cleared. It took another 7 hours before power was restored. This was a typical winter storm... the once-a-decade storm can close the highway for days.

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Re: Useful Hard Skills for the near future

Post by Ego »

George the original one wrote:Near my house, a tree fell across the highway this morning. Highway traffic was blocked for 2 hours while the powerlines and tree were cleared. It took another 7 hours before power was restored. This was a typical winter storm... the once-a-decade storm can close the highway for days.
Right, but you (like me) are a middle aged guy and you already own your place so the space involved is largely a sunk cost. Look at it through the eyes of Zalo or C40/bryan or Brute living in Brutlandia or one of my tenants in these micro-apartments or someone in a roommate situation or someone in the developing world where homes are much, much smaller.

How much space does two months of food take up? Add to that the fact that the conventional prepper-wisdom here says we need to store lots of water as well. How much space does that take?

Poor Zalo is starting to look like an episode of Hoarders.

It certainly makes sense for you (George) to stock up considering your distance to big stores. Does that make sense for the average city dweller?

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Re: Useful Hard Skills for the near future

Post by jacob »

Here's our system. This is the backwall of our kitchen. I don't think it takes up much space.

Image
There are six white buckets of staples (black beans, pinto beans, rice, sushi rice, flour, and sugar) which form the foundation of all our cooking/baking. There are cans (mostly tomatoes) on the next shelves. One shelf has various sundries+other (e.g. jars of pickles, mustard, olives, oil ...). On the top shelf is a collection of more rarely used beans/pulses.

We have what we normally use (just more of it = buffer) and can cook anything we normal cook out of it.

From what I've seen, many people don't have much of anything at all (shelves are empty) or their shelves will be full of crazy stuff that just sits there and never gets eaten, e.g. bizarre spice collections, biscuit or gravy mixes, pickled onions, powdered mashed potatoes, canned coconut milk, etc. stuff that you can't really make a full meal out of. Most rely on what's in their fridge + going shopping every other day. If they do stock up, they buy "special foods" like MREs (expensive) or some other strange stuff they'd otherwise never eat (canned hamburger?) leading to waste when it expires and gets thrown out.

That's where getting into the habit of having a buffer (instead of a stock that just sits in a closet) and being able to turn it into edible meals comes in as a "hard skill".

Some math: Each bucket holds up to 35 lbs. Staples have about 1500kcal/lbs dry weight. Thus, one person needs to eat 1 pound per day to maintain weight or 2 pounds to do physical work. This means that as long as the sum total of the content of all the buckets is over 2 full ones, two people have a month of sitting around... over 4 is two people for two months. Add all the other food as well (freezer and other shelves) and we should be able to go 60+ days. We just fill the buckets up whenever they go low/contents are on sale.

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Re: Useful Hard Skills for the near future

Post by cmonkey »

Awesome!

What are all the clips/papers under them?

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Re: Useful Hard Skills for the near future

Post by Papers of Indenture »

Ego wrote: In the past I would probably have shut up and shrugged. I may have even played along for the fun of a mental exercise. But I've come to realize that it is harmful to indulge the fear in those who are prone to it. Harmful for them and harmful for all of us. It is like a contagious disease. The contagion of fear builds when we indulge it.

And that fear itself causes real, actual problems.
:shock: Err when I read Jacob's suggestion my first reaction was "Hm might be a good idea. On to the next thing." When I read your comment above my reaction was "Ooh scary. I don't feel good about the world."

A lot of preppers are off their rocker but Jacobs storage unit up there looks pretty reasonable to me.
Last edited by Papers of Indenture on Thu Jan 19, 2017 10:49 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Useful Hard Skills for the near future

Post by jacob »

@Fish - I don't think it makes sense to speak of equivalent amounts of water or fuel because of local variations and because they're relatively independent from food. Water will still be running even if the shelves are empty. Unless, we're talking natural disasters or simply the utility company messing around with the pipes. That depends on where you live and what you live in.

@cmonkey - Business cards from the plumber, HVAC, electric, random, etc. people. It's standard office binder clips. Useful for closing bags.

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Re: Useful Hard Skills for the near future

Post by Ego »

jacob wrote:That's where getting into the habit of having a buffer (instead of a stock that just sits in a closet) and being able to turn it into edible meals comes in as a "hard skill".
Okay, I admit, that does look perfectly reasonable. We have a shelf just like that one and it looks the same but we stock up because we found the things cheap. I agree 100% that the "hard skill" is turning that into something edible every day. I guess I would add the "extra hard skill" would be for someone who is in the accumulation phase to find the time to make the food and use the stocks so that they did not spoil. Did you have that level of stockpile when you were both working? Did you experience spoilage? When you were living in the RV?

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Re: Useful Hard Skills for the near future

Post by jacob »

Yeah, it was about similar, but not as organized or convenient (original 5-20lbs bags on available shelves, sometimes in other rooms, instead of buckets in a row). Actually, until recently, I had the buckets stacked in a closet instead due to the strange decision of filling the bottom shelf with canning supplies. Now THEY sit in the closet. Having them set up like they are now is easier than going to grab the bottom bucket every time.

Historically, I've cooked for several days at a time (typically 4) since grad school. Because I'm lazy that way + just not that into finer cooking these days (DW is, so she cooks on weekends).

Since inventory turnover takes ~2 months ... we usually manage to get staples on sale every time. Having the stock pile => a lot more time spent not going shopping again. In undergrad and grad I went to the supermarket almost every day. A lot of time wasted. It was the main reason I stopped drinking milk.

It's quite rare for us to throw any food out because it wasn't eaten/spoiled. I can roll most meals into the next one. It also gets easier because most our cooking doesn't involve meat so it lasts longer before risking spoilage.

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Re: Useful Hard Skills for the near future

Post by cmonkey »

I seem to remember you mentioning you don't have kitchen cabinets. Is that because this works better? Did you have something like this before you moved into the house (when you probably had cabinets in an apartment) ?

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Re: Useful Hard Skills for the near future

Post by jacob »

@cmonkey - Nope, I don't have kitchen cabinets because there weren't any when we bought the house and I've been too lazy to build any yet. That this system works fine (the shelves were free) doesn't help on my motivation/priorities. In the apartment+before I just kept things in their original bags. I resisted getting the buckets for a long time because with the seals each of them is $10 + special order and bulk-$hipping :shock: I think what happened was that after having listened to me talking about them for a long time but hemming and hawing about the price of ordering some, DW saw them in Home Depot and bought a couple. Then I was hooked. They are so much nicer to deal with than trying to get a cup of rice out of a bag.

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Re: Useful Hard Skills for the near future

Post by cmonkey »

Personally, I like what you have. Out of site, out of mind is very applicable here and it's how 'food accumulation' gets started. Traditional kitchen cabinets are very conducive to this! If I could redo the renovation we did for our kitchen 6 years ago I would have probably skipped most/all of the cabinets altogether and gone for a nice shelf system instead.

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Re: Useful Hard Skills for the near future

Post by Dragline »

jacob wrote: . . . or their shelves will be full of crazy stuff that just sits there and never gets eaten, e.g. bizarre spice collections, biscuit or gravy mixes, pickled onions, powdered mashed potatoes, canned coconut milk, etc. stuff that you can't really make a full meal out of.
Give me your tired, your poor, your pickled onions, yearning to be eaten . . . :lol:

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