The Children Are Our Future

20 Replies to “The Children Are Our Future”

1. Eh, I’d give it a go. A few decorative pilsner or great western beer can candles for the patio.

   1. I’ve always preferred tin cans. Parafin wax is easy to work with, I’ve added some citronella oil to try to keep the bugs away (not more than about 1/8 by volume, you don’t want the bulk to melt too easily). Best to buy a lantern wick and embed it in the cooling wax, I’ve never had any luck with floating wick set-ups. Making the handle is the hardest part. Bailing wire has worked well, but does get too hot if the top loop is too far up.

2. To actually make candles requires tallow, which requires animal fat. To make candles, you need to have access to animals you can kill for meat if you have to.

   In the future, the only people most people will encounter who will get much meat to eat will be the thugs sent to collect taxes by the local Chinese overlord, and kill you if you don’t deliver.

   What’s left over after a year’s farm work, after taxes, may buy you enough white rice to fill your belly in a good year. It will never be enough to supply a balanced diet. For animal protein you’ll have to learn how to hunt and trap rodents, snakes and songbirds—anything the overlord can’t be bothered hunting and won’t have you killed for “stealing” from him.

   Why would he want you sitting up after dark anyway? What is there for a slave to do after dark but plot mischief and treason against the master Heaven appointed to rule over him?

   —

   The lie sold by the “prepping” scammer is that surviving the collapse of industrial civilization, much less maintaining anything like your current living standard, is as easy as buying a few supplies and learning a few weird tricks.

   Sorry, no.

   If you don’t plan on dying of hunger and disease on a slave plantation or in a “re-education camp,” you’re going to have to actually grid your loins like a man and start fighting back, fully prepared to either win or die fighting.

   1. Beeswax. Next!

      1. Do you have any idea how much beeswax and labour it takes to make a beeswax candle?

         There’s a reason wax candles were a luxury item until paraffin wax was developed.

   2. In the book The Postman he starts out by saying the first people murdered by roving mobs were preppers because everyone knew they had stuff. Well except for any young women. The gangs of thugs had different plans for them. And given the behaviour of the BLM mobs we know there is no way a small bunch of preppers with a half a dozen guns will make it. Can we say swarm?

      1. Can you say large magazine?

3. May I suggest that the BLM version of the lantern uses 40oz Colt 45 Malt Liquor cans? Stupid white boys using 8oz beer cans .., pfffftt! That’s not enough light to see their tiny white penises.

4. Handy to keep the human heads mounted on pikes outside my cave illuminated at night to scare off marauders. That and a sign – “ No Warning Shots Given “.

5. You can melt and sandcast aluminum with backyard tools; that seems like a much more effective use of the material.

6. Member when …. A taper candle in a wine bottle is a lot easier. Take the cans to recycling and save the wine bottles. No sharp tools needed. Beware of wax drips though.

7. Lol. The “related article” was for making antiseptics to treat wounds….presumably after cutting yourself making lanterns.

8. Reference material for all the preppers out there.

9. Well my only contribution here is/are: “Fire starters”

   It’s been a decade since I’ve used an axe/hatchet or poured Gasoline (Stupid), to make kindling and/or start a fire.

   Save your cardboard Egg cartons..rip off the top and into the holes stuff your dryer lint..tightly. Once the carton is full, melt all your unused candles in an old tobacco or Coffee tin, attack a vise grip to it, put over stove. Then when totally melted and HOT, Pour said wax over lint … 2 -3 passes allowing some cool down time in between.

   Once done and solidified. Break off a pair and set on a couple of logs…. add more wood over top and around. Instant fire. It has NEVER Failed me – even with wet wood
   ZERO kindling paper etc reqd.

   And this is something they did NOT teach us in the Cdn military while on the Summer Bush Survival course..!! (Hinton)

   1. “It has NEVER Failed me – even with wet wood”

      Amateur – but nice try. When I was young and pretended to enjoy camping, I always had a blazing fire with wet wood. Go camping with a giant economy size bag of charcoal and keep it dry.

      To prove that genius runs in families, my cousin always took a propane cylinder and a tiger torch.

   2. Learned that in my daughter’s Girl Guide group. 20 years ago.

   3. Or visit the dollar store and get 10 tea candles for a buck.

10. Was feeling a little restless this afternoon so I took a can out of recycling and cut it open. Stuck a tea light in it and put it outside. It looks quite nice with our other lanterns and plants.

    Like Kenji, we only burn beeswax. We save the paraffin for outdoors.

11. Steakman – gasoline can work! My better half and some friends were on the far side of a lake in NE Alberta while it was raining some years back and an old fellow showed up and did some instructing.
    He told us to use a soup can and fill it about half-full of gas and place it in the middle of your fire pit with kindling over. He lit it and in short order the kindling was burning nicely. He took us on a walk and pointed out the rotting logs with filled branches sticking out. The had copious amounts of pitch in them that further contributed to their flamibility. The occasion changed a boring afternoon into a darn fine occasion for all! We all thought we were big time campers.

12. As the downward slide continues.