Quote from: Haniel on May 27, 2026, 06:36 PMEvening dudes. Been a while.

What did I miss? 

THE END!!!!

Didn't you notice?

I can't speak for all Ameerikans, but I'm well aware of it.  Back in the 70s & 80s when I did my Summer Euro Tours on the rails. on a motorcycle, in a rent-a-car and on a sailboat,there wasn't a countrry I visited where Yanks weren't the most despised touristas, by far.  I took to sewing an Australian flag on my backback and greeting everyone I met with a "G'day, mate" in a passable Down Under accent and proved my bona fides with my fairly thorough knowledge of Sydney, Bondi Beach and the arcane rules of Australian Rules Football.  I did get caught a couple of times when I had to flash my passport at border crossings, but by then I was friends and my new traveling companions were very sympathetic to my plight of being from the Great Satan.  I can't imagine how bad it must be by now.  I'd be terrified of either being kidnapped, beaten to a bloody pulp or shot on sight.

RE

Quote from: K-Dog on May 31, 2026, 09:16 AMThis is a true sign of collapse.


Insurance companies will be the first to fully embrace A.I.  It is the perfect way to deny claims.  While everyone else is using A.I. to simply log customer complaints in the round file, insurance companies will be ruining lives.

I have always considered insurance to be a total ripoff.  My one experience was with my one and only New Car I bought with my ex-wife.  I had to carry a full policy including repairs and collision besides liability and when the tranny quit they refused to pay for it because I didn't have all the receipts for my engine oil changes, which I did myself. Never mind I kept a log book of all the changes and engine oil has nothing to do with a tranny failure.  After that, I only carried liability, and only for a couple of months when I had to renew my registration.  Otherwise, I drove the other 50 years of my driving life uninsured, except for my trucking years where the company I leased to picked up the tab.  I saved over $50K in premium payments this way just on liability, double that if you include collision, repairs, fire and theft.  Fortunately of course I was a fabulous driver and went accident free my entire life, including 1M miles behind the wheel of a big rig.  Never carried any other type of insurance..

The whole biz model is designed around refusing claims.  The more claims they refuse, the bigger the profits.  There is no other way for the biz to make money, other than taking the money you pay and either investing it or handing out loans.

AI will definitely make getting claims paid in disputes, where it is already almost impossible to win.  The Insurance Company holds all the cards and a huge legaL dept stuffed with Harvard and Yale Law School grads while you have Jo Schmo from Devry Night School who you met at the bar and handled your divorce. LOL.  I'm sure their IT depts are now also stuffed with AI algo designers from Cal Tech and MIT working day and night with their own AI Agents designing new algos to rip you off while they burn gigawatts of electricity on supercomputers raising your power bill for your McMansion and EV car while they do it.

The answer to insurance company rip offs is simple.  Don't own anything worth insuring. 😀  For me, even my life isn't worth insuring.  lol,

RE

This is a true sign of collapse.




Insurance companies will be the first to fully embrace A.I.  It is the perfect way to deny claims.  While everyone else is using A.I. to simply log customer complaints in the round file, insurance companies will be ruining lives.

Dr. Alan Gonzalez, MSF's deputy director of operations, said in a statement. "Nobody knows the true scale and severity of this outbreak."

Will it escape Africa?  Given there is NO TREATMENT & NO VACCINE available yet, it seems pretty likely to cause significant DEATH inside the Dark Continent.  How many Dead will we end up with?  Will it top 1000?  1M? 1 BILLION ?!?!? 😬👿 What's the over-under on this?  Will it have legs or will it peter out?

The more cases we get, the more likely it becomes there will be mutations.  If it goes airborne or crosses species, we're cooked.  If it hits the Avian population that will bring it to Europe pretty quickly.

On the positive side, if it gets bad enough we won't have to worry about Hormuz and the Oil trade. 😀

RE

And that is merely the headline federal debt number. When you add in private debt - corporate, household, municipal, bank - the United States now sits atop over $100 trillion in total outstanding obligations. In fact, total business debt alone has skyrocketed to $22 trillion, or 70% of GDP - the same percentage that ushered in the Global Financial Crisis in 2008. That alone should terrify any rational investor. Oh, and then there's the unfunded liabilities, which add another $80 trillion to the dung pile.

No worries.  Raise the Debt Ceiling to $INFINITY$ !  Or Infinity to the power of Infinity!  No wait...Mint a $200T Platinum Coin and pay the whole thing off with that!  Can we apply for that new Bioluminescent VISA Card?

I really have to wonder WTF buys the Toilet Paper at the Treasury Auctions these days and where they get the money to buy the bonds?  Do they sell Nvidia stock?  Do they pay for it with BTC?  Maybe they borrow it from Luxemborg? 

Clearly, The Smartest Guys in the Room now are equipped with the best AI Super Cooled Super Conducting Paralle Processing Super Computers and understand this far better than the rest of us mere mortals, so just Pahhty On!

RE

No point tracking his private jet as a doom thermometer.  Thiel has already flown.

Looks like NJ is gonna be this year's Minneapolis.

RE

Another You Heard it Here First! 😀

Of course, coming off the keyboard of Gen. BetrayUS more people pay attention, but the fact that drones make it much more possible for smaller countries to inflict significant damage on large countries is the most significant change in the dynamics of warfare since the invention of gunpowder.  That technology spawned the whole colonial era, where a few tall ships equipped with cannon and a couple of 100 grunts with muskets could take over entire countries of people still using stone age weaponry.

I'll let you read Betrayus for the implications as far a warfare between Nation-States and you can imagine mmore for yourself.  I'm going to focus on an old problem we often discussed,Protectiing Your Doomstead🤬

We have always considered the major problem of how a few Doomers, say 2-3 families of a farm could hold off the hoards of roving Zombies.  The answer now is obvious: A SWARM of cheap Drones, each equipped to fire up to say 20 rounds of 9mm ammo and also an explosive charge of C4 about Grenade size.  Also carrying a small camera and motion sensor and range finder.  Mass produced, I'm sure you could bring the cost down to under $1000.  You have them deployed all around the perimeter of the doomstead and all controlled by an AI computer in your secure underground Panic Room.

Zombies show up in their Mad Max Pig Fart Powered SUVs and trip your alarms, the drones take off from their nests in the trees and pick off the Zombies as soon as they exit their vehicles. 😎  You don't drop the grenades on the vehicles unless absolutely necessary, since you wanna keep all that good hardware for your own use once the Zombies are exterminated.

Similarly, you can use the Drones in your Hood to pick off roving Black Cadillac Escalades filled with MIB ICE Gestapo agents as they cruise around seeking Brown People to deport.  They will start thinking twice about leaving the safety of the local DHS Office to Desapecido poor people once a few of them have their heads blown off by a blast from the short barrel 12 Gauge, also mounted on the drone. 👿

Total payload weight capacity necessary for said VTOL Drone I would estimate at about 20lbs for the hardware, ammo and explosives.  Flying time needed no more than 30 minutes per charge.  I think you could do it with 4 100 Watt 48V motors and Li-I batts weighing about 20 lbs.  I'll let Haniel work out the exact power requirements.  Definitely no more than 250W motors needed though.  My 200 lb EV wheelchair runs on 2 250W motors with me on it total 360lbs.  Runs all day on 2 35AH 12V batts.  Keep the total weight of the drone and hardware to <50lbs, you're good to fly!

Kdog can design the AI to control the swarm, identify targets aim and fire.  The system will sell like hotcakes.

This one has a 25kg payload capacity.  That's probably enough.


RE

Quote from: RE on May 29, 2026, 12:17 PMGlad to know we are findable via the search.  We've been around here on Kdogs Chasingthesquirrel.com URL, bur I only recently was able to buy the DooomsteadDiner.com URL and point it here.  About 2 months ago.

Eddie pretty much retired from Collapsology study, although I think he still has his Doomstead.  He may have retired by now also, I haven't spoken to him in at least 4 years.

I'm still not a huge fan of Gold, but I can't say I have any alternative much better.  Maybe balance with some Crypto, which I also am no fan of.  As we move forward, I think the real problem will be a lack of stuff to buy, and eventual Rationing for food and fuel.   Here in the FSoA though, the rationing thing is still probably a few years away.

So besides installing alarm systems, what else do you do as a Security Expert?  Sell gunz?  Design Booby-traps? lol.

RE

I don't install alarm systems --that requires an Alarm Company Operator with a different license type, my cameras are already mounted by my supplier, onto solar tow-behind trailers.   I have a PPO - a Private Patrol Operator's license.   We deploy stationary guards, mobile patrol, and mostly mobile camera systems which are watched from dispatch.  A few patrol vehicle visits each of the 1-2 dozen active sites on a predetermined schedule, checking the assets, and checking in with dispatch.

We had an arsonist torching port-a-potties for a while - those things burn! The criminally-minded homeless are an issue, I've lost a few batteries, a wheel, and recently a solar panel.  My folks Standing Orders are to treat any homeless on property as a welfare check, give them water if needed (company provided), give the the English/Spanish info sheet on local resources, and treat them as human being even if you job requires you to escort them off the property. 

We have an unhoused guy who keeps jumping fences, using port-a-potties, then occasionally gives the camera the bird, before riding off on his bike, but he's never left a port-a-pottie in a mess, and he gets the finger back just so he knows we watch.

Not all fun and games, though.  We had two homeless die in a fire in an under-a-bridge utility room earlier this month, CHP requested nearly one hundred hours of footage from our nearby systems as part of their investigation.

I don't sell guns, I don't build booby traps - although one of the local EOD folks is a friend.  What I do have is a small private security force.  Management team are all ex-military.   Newbies are cutting their teeth watching bowling alleys, school gymnasium remodels, and equipment sitting around waiting for California red tape to go through. 🤣

Moving my headquarters to Texas and building a dome compound is back on the table. Winter '26-'27 west coast floods may cause issues in some areas of California this winter, which is expected to put upward pressure on Fresno home prices, given we're a potential bedroom town with the HSR project (which is further along than most think). 
 

Thresholds passed, plans triggered...