Preparing for WW3

[offgriddave]

Yup... very much possible. Next question is HOW MUCH biodiesel do you want to make? 10 gallons a week, 500 gallons a week? A one time thing of 20 gallons for emergency?

100 gallons a year? Enough to go to town and back once a month to sell at the farmer's market (2 gallons) and run my tractor (ethanol) and excavator for 100 hours (60 gallons) at a minimum, although I'd love to run my excavator a lot because there's ore up here on the mountain.
I've got a chrome mine 1500 ft away, 1 mile north a gold/silver mine, and 1 mile south a nickle mine. All abandoned claims from the 1930s, back when they used pix axes and shovels.

It makes a difference in how you invest in the equipment..

DO NOT mix used engine oil into it and DO NOT burn engine oil in your diesel engine.. that's a great way to destroy it. You could burn hydraulic oil in your engine and various other oils, but never engine oil. Crankcase oils have dissolved metals in them, when burned, those dissolved ions will come out of solution and condense on the first cold surface they find.. cold being relative here = valves and valve seats. And you can not simply use a mechanical filter to remove them any more than you can remove salt from water. Bad juju.. don't do it.

Yeah, I had an old 1965 Case 530CK and ran transmission fluid in it no problem. I accidentally mixed it in with red dye diesel and poured it in. Ran great. I wouldn't do this with my truck or excavator

In a total SHTF event, diesel fuel is easy to find.. there's 20 gallons of it in every electrical pole transformer and hundreds of gallons in the big base transformers with cooling fins. It's actually mineral oil, but it runs fine in any diesel engine.. Only thing to watch out for is that it lacks lubricity, so its a good thing to mix in some regular diesel, hydraulic oil, or even biodiesel with it.

Nice, but not really an option

Making quality biodiesel (that won't clog up your injectors) is a function of the quality of the transesterification process. If you get your titrations correct, and your biodiesel processor is capable of the correct heat and mixing parameters (simple stuff), then you'll get good fuel that will pass an ASTM test.
Your old 5.9 will probably run sludge and still work, but if you have a common rail system, then you better darn well make high quality fuel or you'll have problems.

So this probably isn't a realistic option? It's a 2004 dodge 3500 dually. Wish I had something pre-electronic with a Detroit diesel. That'd burn anything.

As for lighting.. Honestly, rechargeable batteries and a small solar panel are your best bet by far. But if you really want that flame, then you can use biodiesel, you just need to change the wick.

Don't think any of this is going to work post EMP but got that covered. I buy 18650 flashlights by the dozen every year because keep losing them. If I check under the bed, couch, and behind the cabinets I usually find dozens of them. I have I think 300-400 18650 from a failed Powerwall project.

Your statements about coal are a bit confusing. Coal, like the stuff we run power plants on, is not the same as Charcoal, which is what comes from wood. I'm a bit confused when you shorten charcoal into just coal..

I screwed up, I meant charcoal. Can I use charcoal to make lye and other chemicals?

Also, if you need methanol, every automobile dealer will have 55 gallon drums of the stuff sitting in their service bay.. It will be labeled "Concentrated Windshield Washer Fluid", and is somewhere between 75% and 90% pure methanol.. But beware, it still needs refining as the other 10 to 20 percent is water and water will screw up a biodiesel process very quickly. It will burn nicely however and will work great in an alcohol stove, but be careful, it burns with a nearly invisible flame.

I have an old coffee percolator that's basically it for distilling.

Wood ash can be used to make potassium hydroxide, which can then be used to make soap.. but it would be a crap poor substitute for actual KOH flakes and would most likely cause more problems than it solves.

Any way to purify it? I have an electric water purifier. Could also be used for distilling or for getting particulates.

You can also make methanol from wood.. (which is why its sometimes referred to as wood alcohol), but it needs to be distilled to purify it before using it to make biodiesel.

How do I do this? Distill wood smoke? From a bong?

Making biodiesel is easy.. making the raw chemicals to make biodiesel = not so much. There's a BIG leap between those two.

Wish I kept my Case 530CK it'd run on this. It had a rotary based injector pump instead of inline.


One thing I know you trust the science, so I have this book CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics 84th edition I think 2002? It's your kind of bible.
I figure from this I can (deep breath, ... eventually) figure out everything I need

EDIT: Unfortunately "transesterification" is not in the CRC handbook

 

[MurphyGuy]

100 gallons a year? Enough to go to town and back once a month to sell at the farmer's market (2 gallons) and run my tractor (ethanol) and excavator for 100 hours (60 gallons) at a minimum, although I'd love to run my excavator a lot because there's ore up here on the mountain.
I've got a chrome mine 1500 ft away, 1 mile north a gold/silver mine, and 1 mile south a nickle mine. All abandoned claims from the 1930s, back when they used pix axes and shovels.




Yeah, I had an old 1965 Case 530CK and ran transmission fluid in it no problem. I accidentally mixed it in with red dye diesel and poured it in. Ran great. I wouldn't do this with my truck or excavator



Nice, but not really an option



So this probably isn't a realistic option? It's a 2004 dodge 3500 dually. Wish I had something pre-electronic with a Detroit diesel. That'd burn anything.

100 gallons a year is silly easy. Go build yourself an appleseed biodiesel processor.. Its made from salvaged electric water heaters. Its a flawed design but not so flawed that it can't make good fuel correctly... It's convenience and ease to build and operate makes up for the minor flaws.. Once you get going and get a dozen batches under your belt, you'll begin to understand how it could have been designed better.. but don't let that deter you, its a good processor to start with. Nice and safe.

Don't think any of this is going to work post EMP but got that covered. I buy 18650 flashlights by the dozen every year because keep losing them. If I check under the bed, couch, and behind the cabinets I usually find dozens of them. I have I think 300-400 18650 from a failed Powerwall project.

Just keep your electronics in a Faraday cage and they'll be safe. You can rip the rubber seal out of an ammo can and replace it with a RFI gasket and it will make for a fine Faraday cage. Even cardboard and tinfoil makes an excellent cage. I have three large cages myself with 120 db of attenuation.. Short of an alien super weapon, the contents inside will survive any EMP..

I screwed up, I meant charcoal. Can I use charcoal to make lye and other chemicals?

Unfortunately no.. You can use wood ash to make a sort of poor-man's potassium hydroxide for making soaps, but the quality is too low for biodiesel production.

I have an old coffee percolator that's basically it for distilling.

You would need a either a reflux column type still (the kind used for making booze), or a molecular sieve somewhere in the 2A or 3A size. And preferably you'd want to use both.. the reflux column to get it into the 99% range, and then the molecular sieve to polish off the last remaining traces of water.

Any way to purify it? I have an electric water purifier. Could also be used for distilling or for getting particulates.

Methanol is an alcohol and behaves just like ethanol. If it won't work to make booze, it won't work to purify methanol. If you got your hands on a still to make moonshine, that would do a fine job on methanol.. Either that, or just build one yourself.. its not all that difficult.. especially if you make it out of stainless.

How do I do this? Distill wood smoke? From a bong?

Pretty close.. basically you heat up wood inside an inert atmosphere without any oxygen.. like a wood-gassifier, but absolutely no oxygen.. the heat energy has to be delivered externally instead of allowing the wood to combust in an oxygen starved environment like a gassifier. Obviously, this is quite dangerous as its basically a bomb.. if you ever got a leak and oxygen entered, very very bad things would happen.. Fire and brimstone, people running for their lives, etc..

You might also want to consider that a biodiesel processor is basically a giant Molotov cocktail that has been preheated.. You're mixing oil with alcohol and then heating it up.. Which is why you never use a plastic reaction tank or an open flame to heat them.

One thing I know you trust the science, so I have this book CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics 84th edition I think 2002? It's your kind of bible.
I figure from this I can (deep breath, ... eventually) figure out everything I need

EDIT: Unfortunately "transesterification" is not in the CRC handbook

Transesterification is the process of turning triglycerides (fats) into methyl esters (biodiesel). When you get to my age, your doctor will start blabbing on and on about watching your "triglyceride levels".. Those are organic fats. In overly simplistic terms, a triglyceride molecule looks like the letter E. The vertical backbone is the glycerine and the horizontal parts are the esters We use a hydroxide catalyst (Potassium Hydroxide or Sodium Hydroxide), to break apart that E. The first thing that happens is that one of the horizontal lines comes off and you end up with an F.. So a TRIglyceride gets turned into a DIglyceride.. and as the part that broke off is floating around, a methanol molecule comes by and caps the end off... and that's a methyl ester (biodiesel).. then the F floats around for a while and runs into another hydroxide molecule and the F (DIglyceride) becomes an L (MONOglyceride).. and again, that horizontal part runs into another methanol molecule and gets capped.. The process repeats until all that's left is that vertical backbone from the original E (now just an I), and the three methyl ester molecules floating around as biodiesel.

The specific gravity of the lone glycerine molecule is higher than the biodiesel so all the glycerine settles to the bottom and the mixture separates like Italian salad dressing.

And that's Transesterification.

You DO NOT need to know all this technobabble to make biodiesel.. You just need to understand the most fundamental parts of what's happening inside. Make sure you can maintain 136 to 140 degrees, make sure your pump can turn your tank over every minute or two, and make sure your titrations and math are correct. Actually, for brand new oil, there is no need to titrate as it will always be the same.

For oil that has been used in a restaurant, you perform the same process, but if the oil has been used too much, then you might have to do a straight esterification before the transesterification. Transesterification is pretty quick, it takes about an hour, but you should let it run for two hours.. too much is never bad. Straight esterifications are rather slow and can take a full day.. they're also a hassle because it produces a lot of free water that has to be removed. Try to stick to new oil or oil that hasn't been abused.

 

[Ralphloren]

.

 

[Ralphloren]

.

 

[12VoltInstalls]

more info on NATO expansion since 1949

If McDonald’s doesn’t like Wendy’s building a new restaurant across the street, McDonald’s should make a better burger. To transpose, putting boots on the ground and killing people because you don’t like your position in the world is unacceptable. Nevertheless, I don’t think all the other western world theories, conspiracy ideas, or economic concerns change the fact that what Russia is doing should not be acceptable in my mind.

 

[Ralphloren]

.

 

[Ralphloren]

.

 

[joeblack5]

With cuba there was some bargaining ..did we not remove stuff from turkey?

Wonder how turkey reacted on that in those days..

 

[Ralphloren]

.

 

[12VoltInstalls]

NATO could back down but they don't see it as an option.

NATO has annexed Ukrainian territory for the exact reason you stated.
But Putin advanced anyway. That means he ain’t gonna back off even if whatever presence nato has backs off. It’s the definition of aggressor that is the issue and Putin is doing the Russian boilerplate. NATO ain’t the problem imho. Western weakness gave ‘permission’ for the problem to appear imho.

 

[12VoltInstalls]

Russia backed off for the USA in 1962 why can't the reverse happen here?

In 1962 Russians were advancing wherever they could; the west hasn’t been advancing, just doing the same things they were in 2008. 2014 France talked them down but they essentially kept what they took.
Today it would be like British establishing a base in Canada and sending boots across the northern border butthurt over 1776. Of course in a way that thought was settled in 1812, so to speak.

Russia is being a bully; they had nothing to protect but they do have a fortune to gain- on the backs and over the bodies of dead soldiers and ethnically related Ukrainians

 

[Ralphloren]

.

 

[Ralphloren]

.

 

[MurphyGuy]

Russia has come a long way since the fall of the USSR..

 

[Ralphloren]

.

 

[MurphyGuy]

China isn't too shabby either.... I've been to one of their ghost cities and it was impressive. Had a USA type feel but bigger. Have no idea about the quality of construction but was impressed. This is not my image but I figured I'd find a similar photoshopped nice image of Shanghai on the interwebs.
View attachment 86918

When it comes to China, Russia, and the USA (and NATO), there are significant differences in how society is handled.

USA - You invent, you keep, you get rich.
China - You invent, we keep, you get rich, just so long as you behave.
Russia - You invent, we keep, we get rich, you work for us and you better behave or else.

At its core, those are the fundamentals. You won't find a Jeff Bezo's, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Intell, Ratheon, Lockheed, Boeing, or any of the other dozens of technology giants in Russia or China.

This is why the smartest and most brilliant leave these countries and come to the USA.

As far as military technology goes, Russia doesn't come close.. The world runs on chips, and in this "day and age" the one with the best chips wins.

When it comes to making chips, certain technologies are beyond top secret. Chip makers like Intel, working with an army of physicists and other scientists, invest huge amounts of money to break current manufacturing limitations to make chips smaller, faster, more energy efficient, and to cram more transistors into the same space. These technologies result in faster computers that require less energy, less cooling, and occupy smaller spaces.
None of this means much for a desktop computer, but it means a lot when you build a missile, a submarine, or a satellite.

Chip technology is as guarded as nuclear technology is, and we do not allow Russia or China to have access to such technologies. Russia has no chance, but China is now using their new found wealth to try to catch up.. even so, it will be a couple decades before they can make up for lost time.. Not only do they have to reach our current levels, but by the time they do, we will have advanced beyond and they will still be behind.

This is what separates the USA from everyone else. You can't create a political environment were someone's lifelong hard work is habitually taken from individuals and then expect them to stick around and let you benefit. Nope, they tend to migrate to the USA where we develop these advances and then farm out the production to other friendly countries.

Russia is a corrupt authoritarian country... China isn't corrupt, but they are authoritarian.. The USA is really the only place where the super rich can speak up against their own government without fear of consequences, and that is what separates us from them.

 

[Ralphloren]

.

 

[time2roll]

When it comes to making chips, certain technologies are beyond top secret. Chip makers like Intel, working with an army of physicists and other scientists, invest huge amounts of money to break current manufacturing limitations to make chips smaller, faster, more energy efficient, and to cram more transistors into the same space. These technologies result in faster computers that require less energy, less cooling, and occupy smaller spaces.
None of this means much for a desktop computer, but it means a lot when you build a missile, a submarine, or a satellite.

I read Ukraine produces about half the world supply of neon used in making chips.

 

[MurphyGuy]

That may be the case but what is really worrying about the US is the government.

Too many debates and bureaucracy. Too long to make a decision and too many agendas flying around in different directions along with special interest groups. Very hard for leadership to focus longer than 2 to 4 years. Not the case with China or Russia. They are poker faces through and through compared to Biden and Trump and can laser focus on anything they want in comparison and make a very fast decision and it will be done no questions asked.

That could be significant for military decisions I would imagine especially if they are into conquering other nations like Hitler and other leaders. If they know they have an advantage and believe they can win a war with a super power and have the right opportunity, they're not going to bicker about it.

Maybe they'd like the USA for the reasons you just mentioned as well so maybe that could be their prize they are looking at but the USA is too busy with internal problems to consider it (or the US leaders are laughing too hard at the prospect and never consider it a serious threat) and by the time they do they've already set up camp inside the country.

I hope its a far fetched possibility. Read that speech from the Chinese General. It's a good read about strategy and what they might want to do and the lessons they've learned from WW2.

Your points on this issue are valid.. As I've always said, while the Russians and Chinese can make long term plans measured in decades because their leaders don't change, the USA can barely keep its eye on the ball four years at a time.

The philosophical argument on that front is simply: Which system is better? Authoritarian rule with long term status quo? Or freedom of expression that can change with the wind? And so far, the answer is ours.. and as the old saying goes "if it ain't broke, don't try to fix it"..

Our system isn't broke, it just needs some routine maintenance to adjust for a changing world. Russia's system IS broke, and China's system, while not really broke, just isn't effective.

My worry is that Putin and his oil sales are going to get over zealous and he's going to try to reconstitute a de-facto soviet empire... I can't even begin to describe how bad that would be.

I just made a few phone calls and am inquiring on the purchase of some large diameter culvert pipe.. As a prepper, I never thought a radiation shelter would be something I needed.. but now I'm thinking it might be better to have it..

A nuclear war would spread a lot of radiation around.. anyone who doesn't have a place to hide for a few days is going to be dead within a year.

 

[Ralphloren]

.