04 – The camera guy and the sound guy

It’s a little story / joke I like to tell.

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There is this camera guy and sound guy doing some background shots for a wildlife film in Africa.

It’s going great, and they are getting better and better shots of the bunch of Lions they are filming.

After some ten minutes, it becomes apparent that;

1. Not all the lions were in the shot
2. Some of the lions have been circling
3. They are on the menu

Without making any sudden moves, the sound guy squats down, pulls off his desert boots, and pulls on a pair of trainers from the grab bag.

The Camera guy starts laughing, and says “You don’t really think you are going to outrun a lion in some Nikes?”

The Sound guy smiles back, and says “I don’t have to outrun the lions, I only have to outrun you.”

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The moral here is obvious, but it has corollaries to “real life” back here in the western world today, pre-economic collapse.

• I have no debt, no mortgage, no loans, no credit card balance, no nothing.
• I have six months rent in the bank (technically 3 months rent as credit, 3 months overdraft facility)
• I have a job and a lifestyle that means I get a little ahead every month, even with buying the odd toy or treat
• I have no “assets” as such, just a bunch of possessions that if push comes to shove I can load into a van and clear out in 48 hours / 4 loads.

As for the impending financial collapse / whatever, who knows what will actually go down and when and in what order and how fast, not me…. I know some-motherfucking-thing has to happen, cos the elastic is already stretched to breaking point and more tension is being added daily, but what or when or how… no fucking idea.

Bit like the camera guy and the sound guy at the point in time the “joke” deals with.

Adding to my credit in the bank, at this point I think I have enough exposure to a bank, even a national big name bank, pull it all out as cash? Well, I can do that at 3 visits to hole in the wall machines within about an hour if push comes to shove, I’m not really ready to pre-empt it and stuff it under the mattress just yet.

It is time I got more tinned and dried goods food in, I only have about 2 weeks of food in, but having said that, 2 weeks is enough, see the camera guy and the sound guy.

I’m not in “good” shape, but I am in better shape than the vast majority…

Yet, being a single man, it is amazing just how much of what I do have is absolutely fucking “useless” to anyone with kids / dependants, or anyone with no skills other than being a parasite / wimminz.

Not because an Indian family of 12 wouldn’t happily treat my single man’s stash as unimaginable luxury, but because us pwiviledged and entitwwwwd pwincess white folks look at ANY significant reduction as simply impossible.

The USA and the UK have a lot in common, though, the UK and NZ / Oz have a lot more in common, you can’t simply walk there from most other places.

I’m going to break a rule here and admit to a truth / secret / survival thing, there is a fucking reason I am not in mainland europe right now, or asia, or africa, and that is that any other fucker can eventually walk where you are.

No matter how bad things get in the UK, it is a fucking island, and I happen to be in a bit of it that still has farming / fishing etc going on, not a big city.

There is always a limit to how bad things can get on an island, provided that island is big enough and has a suitable climate and soil etc.

I already did the sound man thing, I did not for one instant think that the bubble would continue to expand this long, I genuinely believed things could not get any more crazy around 1995, when I came back last, I gave it a year or two, which doesn’t just mean that I was wrong, the bubble could get bigger, it also meant when it pops it will be worse.

I have been to other islands, the council of Calvia on the island of Mallorca in the Balearics in the Med is the richest council in the whole of Spain, has been for fucking years, but Mallorca simply cannot support the population that is there, any more than Dubai can.

This criteria also wipes out all the Caribbean islands except perhaps Cuba, and all the other Mediterranean islands except perhaps Sicily.

While you *can* walk anywhere in the USA from anywhere else (the 50th state is also fucked, same reason as the Balearics or Cyprus), you could say the same thing about China or the former USSR, only a Romany style nomad can do that shit and survive, because they have the skills and attitude.

For a time, I will now admit, I toyed *seriously* with the idea of emigrating to St Helena in the south atlantic, but it faces the same problems, too many people, too small to be sustainable, no resources.

The problem with the USA is that there really isn’t anywhere far enough away from any where else that a tank of gas and a three day walk won’t have them turning up on your doorstep.

There are also far too fucking many crew fed weapons, and far too many freaks with .22 and 5.56mm long barrel weapons ready to reach out and touch you at 200 yards for no reason other than to see that fucking look on your face when TSHTF.

I’m in the UK, and the greatest population centre in the UK is Londinium, inside the M25 ring road, and that shit is a 4 to 5 day walk from here for a Roman legionnaire… travelling LIGHT bitch… which nobody today knows how to do…

See that’s the other thing about the sound guy, he was a stone cold motherfucker quite prepared to sacrifice his long term buddy the camera guy to ensure his own personal survival.