Monthly Archives: May 2012

Empirical data gathering

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img_03281Stopped by to visit with a fella the other day and saw a little project of his sitting on his workbench. He had a light fixture hooked up to a 12v battery, just sitting there. I asked him what he was doing. He said that he’d found a place selling 12v bulbs that worked in regular light bulb sockets, so he was seeing how long a charged battery would run the light. As he went about his day he would make a note on the hang tag that was attached to the light noting the time and how much time had elapsed. I commented that I really liked his approach but that it might be better served with an LED light to increase run time, and a light meter so he could monitor the actual decrease of light as time went by. He said he didn’t like the light LED bulbs gave off so he was sticking with the incandescent (which, I gotta say, would not be my first choice if Im counting on running on battery power) and that while I was probably right about getting a metric using a light meter, he just went with what his eyeballs told him was ‘usable light’.

Gotta admire someone that goes past the theory and grabs at a little empirical data for their own edification. I need to do more stuff like that.

Socialization

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Had one of those moments where what was originally supposed to be a five-minute talk turned into 90 minutes of survivalist commiseration.

And that’s not a bad thing.

See, for various reasons I have to exercise a certain amount of discretion. I can’t just sit down at lunch with a couple of the wife’s coworkers and start lamenting about food expiration dates, the difficulties of procuring Betalights, arguing diesel vs. gasoline for bugout vehicles, etc, etc. To quote Bill Murray from Ghostbusters II “You’re scaring the straights.”

The other day I had a few extra goodies laying around and thought I’d drop them at the shop of someone an LMI friend introduced me to. This person has come late to the preparedness table but he’s making up for it with gusto. We wound up chatting about MRE’s, food storage, bugout bikes, silver, caches, guns, etc, etc, and showed off a few new acquisitions. As always, it’s so darned nice and refreshing to be able to talk about these sorts of things with other people who don’t look at you like youve got two heads when you start talking about things like economic collapses, historic parallels, freezedrieds vs. MRE’s, and that sort of thing. It’s nice to be able to let your freak flag fly once in a while without worrying about what the other guy thinks. That is, to me, a part of the attraction of the internet and the preparedness forums that are out there – it’s an opportunity to chat and opine about the sorts of things that you normally wouldn’t be comfortable discussing with folks at the office.  But, as cool as that is, it’s always nice to be able to face-to-face and have a nice conversation with someone.

Those conversation can be pretty weird , though. Lots of “..but I can’t tell you [who/where/exact number], you understand.” Even with those limitations imposed by opsec, it’s still nice to be able to sit down over a burger and just socialize about something that’s important to you.

Does this mean that I’d go to some sort of ‘sirvivalist meetup’? Hmmm. I want to say uniformly ‘no’, but I’d be lying if I said I wouldnt be curious about it. I’m not a big fan of interacting with large groups of strangers to begin with…I think I’d probably feel uncomfortable at such an event. Keep in mind, these meetups are completely different than, say, a preparedness expo or gun show….those I’d have no problem going to.

Anyway, it was a pleasant and welcome change of pace to get to hang out with someone and talk about this sort of stuff without feeling self-conscious. I need to do it more often, if for no other reason than the solidarity is nice to have even if I dont really need it to validate what I’m doing.

AP-74, books, headgear

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We’ve all seen .22 LR copies of the AR-15, right? I had a guy stop by the shop the other day with something I’d never seen before. (And I’m someone who prides himself on having seen pretty much everything.) Walks in with this little M16-clone. “Thats a Jager .22 copy of the M16, right?”, I ask, knowing that, of course, that’s exactly what it is. Not quite, I am told. It is, believe it or not, in .32 ACP. Now, I know the Jager AP .22 LR has been around a while. Go watch the original Dawn Of The Dead and you’ll see that this is the gun they used to arm the SWAT teams. These guns got quite a bit of mileage in Hollywood. However, I never knew they were available in something odd like the .32 ACP (Actually, the gun is marked ’7.65′ but, hey, same thing…)

It was a cute gun. Quirky enough that it’d be fun to own but magazines and parts would be a nightmare. However, I think it would have been a blast with a .30-cal. suppressor on the end. That little .32 ACP isn’t going to be supersonic. Other than novelty, I see no real reason for this thing…I suppose that it is more reliable than a rimfire, but the cost of ammo is hardly much better than .223. You could reload for it with cast bullets and drop the price, but then how are you at an advantage over any other pistol caliber semi-auto carbine?

Cute gun and if I had the money to throw away on an orphaned gun, I might be interested. But…zombies are walkin’ the streets and I need me some more food and ammo.
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I was re-reading “Alas, Babylon” and “Lucifer’s Hammer” the other night. These two are, hands down, my favorite end-of-the-world reading and of those two, I think ‘Alas Babylon’ is my favorite…probably because it differs so much from LH which is the progenitor for 90% of the fiction that is out there in this genre. What I really like about Alas Babylon is that it isn’t about wall-to-wall gunplay and the obligatory cannibalism. There’s one episode of gunplay, it’s wrapped up neatly, and that’s pretty much the end of it. The rest of the book is about day-to-day existence after a disaster and that means it’s more about infrastructure failure, explorations in adapting, and interpersonal dynamics…nary a Metalifed Python or cannibal looter to be found. It is, I suppose, a more wholesome apocalypse….sort of a pastoral ‘Maybery RFD TSHTF’ story. But, for some reason it’s my favorite…maybe because it’s the first book of this genre that I ever read. (And probably the one that nudged me in this direction.)

(And, wow, wouldn’t that be the ultimate in fan fiction? Post-apocalyptic Mayberry? Barney Fife turning into Mad Max, Andy and Opie doing ‘The Road’, etc, etc. I cringe thinking about the cheesiness but at the same time, I’d watch that.)
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True to our notoriously fickle weather, the Montana spring took a break and left winter to sit in for it. Its been cold and rainy the last couple days. Good opportunity to try my new Outdoor Research hat, now in grossly overpriced multicam! Like my other OR hats, this one does a great job of keeping the weather off my head, shoulders and face. Godawfully expensive for that darn Multicam pattern, but once you get past that they are great hats for foul weather.

Article – Naked man killed …was ‘eating’ face off victim

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Zombie time. Quick, get an axe.

One man was shot to death by Miami police, and another man is fighting for his life after he was attacked, and his face allegedly half eaten, by a naked man on the MacArthur Causeway off ramp Saturday, police said.

The horror began about 2 p.m. when a series of gunshots were heard on the ramp, which is along NE 13th Street, just south of The Miami Herald building.

According to police sources, a road ranger saw a naked man chewing on another man’s face and shouted on his loud speaker for him to back away.Meanwhile, a woman also saw the incident and flagged down a police officer who was in the area.

The officer, who has not been identified, approached and, seeing what was happening, also ordered the naked man to back away. When he continued the assault, the officer shot him, police sources said. The attacker failed to stop after being shot, forcing the officer to continue firing. Witnesses said they heard at least a half dozen shots.

If a followup article says the last shot that finally stopped the guy was a headshot, I’m just gonna jump straight to Defcon 1.

Year Four

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The nice thing about emails and blogs is that other people remember stuff for me so I don’t have to. For example, today is my wedding anniversary. It’s been four years, although some days it seems longer…. Getting married was mostly remarkable because in the space of a few hours I turned my entire supply of food, guns and ammo into 50% of what they were…a years supply for one suddenly becomes a six-month supply for two, etc, etc.

Having never been married before, I heard that weddings were a nightmare, the bride turns into bridezilla, etc, etc. Well, I figured if I’m gonna be part of this, I should get to have some fun. So..we had some fairly unconventional stuff. First lets start off with the invites. This was the logo used on the invites:

invite
The little wedding favors at the tables were also a bit different from your normal ones:

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We encouraged the guests to come armed, and many did. Since there was a preponderance of firepower, it was a non-booze wedding. The mayor, who used to do stand-up comedy before getting elected, did the ceremony. And, never ones to miss an opportunity to stand around and eat free food, several of the girlfriend-now-wife’s co-workers showed up. Official wedding photographer Oleg Volk (yes, that Oleg Volk was our photographer. We just happen to know the right people) even pulled a couple of them into posing with the bride.

More gunplay ensued when one of our guests brought along his 1/3 scale Revolutionary War cannon and fired a salute outside the hall. (I don’t recall exactly, but I believe the facilities manager was a little surprised by our asking about if we could fire off a cannon on his grounds.)

Other highlights included me and the best man getting fitted for tuxes while wearing shoulder holsters (of course I was wore a gun at the wedding. Who wouldn’t?), cutting the cake with a 1917 Enfield bayonet, and the day-after-the-wedding trip to the shooting range with all the wedding guests. How many weddings have you been to that included a range day?

Did getting married do anything good or bad to the preparedness model? Well, as I said, everything gets reduced by 50%. Thats a tough one to deal with. But, on the other hand, she brings some unique and handy skills to the table. (Most notably, an ‘in’ with the local police…which can, and has, come in handy). Before we got married I made it pretty clear that I was into the preparedness thing and that I had no plans of changing that, and that she was welcome to participate, but that from time to time it might create some weirdness that she’s just going to have to put up with. What kind of weirdness? Ah, things like coming home and finding cases of MRE’s and freeze drieds stacked to the ceiling in the dining room and me excitedly saying “Hey, guess what UPS dropped off!”, observing the ‘First Rule Of Fight Club’ with her coworkers, discovering that grocery shopping trips can ger really interesting if something cool and long-term-storable is on sale, etc, etc. But she’s been quite good about that.

For those of you who arent married and are thinking about it, make sure to tell the girlfriend up front about your secret life as Burt Gummer. After you’re married, when she demands that you drop several hundred dollars on something useless like new curtains because ‘we already have a basement full of that junk of yours that you never use’, it’ll be too late to explain that this is how it’s going to be. Personally, I think that in my case I’m pretty benign…I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I don’t buy expensive toys like trucks or jet skis or big screen televisions, I’m not crazy with money, I don’t have really weird friends who constantly come by, or have equally bizzare relatives always dropping in. From a relationship standpoint, pretty much my only quirk is the preparedness thing and, hey, what chick doesn’t like the idea of being well taken care of?

So, today we’ll head over to the wedding venue and take our annual anniversary picture there and then go out to dinner. Next year will be the five year anniversary so maybe we’ll have to do something special then.

Greece and devaluation

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A new government may have to respond with capital controls to prevent citizens, faced with potential devaluation of their savings, from withdrawing their money from banks, said Dawn Holland, a senior research fellow at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research in London.

“This has to happen very quickly, as capital flight has already happened,” she said. “This is when things could get ugly too, as on an individual basis you cannot blame people for wanting to hold on to their euros.”

Back in the 1860′s, right after the War Of Southern Overconfidence, that Confederate money was worth….what? Nothing, right?

Back in the Weimar, around 1920-something, the Marks you got paid on Friday would buy only half of what they bough the previous week.

In Harare, your life savings of 1,000,000 dollars suddenly became 1 dollar at the stroke of pen. And it still wouldn’t buy you a dozen eggs.

If there really are bank runs going on in Greece, where do you think people are sinking their money to keep it’s value? I would guess that, like the Germans, it’s going into durable goods, food, medicine and those shiny little bits of metal.

Link – Ballistics Calculator

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I’m taking the CZ to the range tomorrow for some long overdue exercise. I bought one of these data books and stocked it with these pages that are ‘cheat sheets’ for using reticle marks as holdovers. I was dreading doing all the math involved and decided to check for any decent Excel ballistics calculator downloads. Found what appears to be a really good one…it does MOA, MILS, prints range cards, and even has an interface for palm computers. Highly recommend! Link and grab “Excel Ballistic Calculator”.

Snubtacular

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Over at TSLRF there was a little blurb about how the definition of an optimist is a guy carrying a snubby revolver and a speedstrip. I was somewhat amused by this because it happens that particular day was so hot that rather than try and conceal my usual G19, I just dropped a S&W 640 and a speedstrip in my pocket. Undergunned? Maybe. Definitely not ungunned, though..which was the whole point. We all know the best gun for a ‘violent encounter’ is the one you have with you versus the one you left at home in the safe, right?

Do those little five-shot snubbies really have a place in a world of Betamagged AR’s, Glocks with ‘happy sticks’ and drum-fed Saiga-12s? It would be easy to argue that if a five-shot revolver has a place in the grand scheme of things, then a two-shot derringer does as well, and if a two-shot derringer then why not a single-shot derringer?

The simple truth is, given the choice between no gun and a derringer, I’ll take the derringer. Between the derringer and the five-shot snubby, I’ll take the snubby. Between the snubby and the Glock, I’ll take the Glock. But, I really didnt have a choice between the snubby and the Glock that day, it was between the snubby and a mousegun (or no gun at all) so I went with the biggest with the mostest in that circumstance.

img_0318When you’re slogging through the muck and mess of a Katrina-esque aftermath, running like hell from the fast zombies, or scavenging through the mildly-radioactive ruins of your city, is there a place for the little five-shot snubby? I think so..but certainly not as your primary pistol (unless the circumstance is such that anything bigger would be impossible to have with you at that moment….like when youre in line at the back of a National Guard deuce-and-a-half being handed rations and water.) To me, the snubby is either for when you can’t carry anything larger or as a hideout/backup for your larger gun. Massad Ayoob tells a story about being unarmed on a ridealong with some cop and when they got into a  tight situation the cop pulled out his backup gun and handed it to Ayoob. In this case the snubby becomes a force multiplier…you hand it off to your buddy and suddenly you go from being a guy with a gun to two guys with guns. Plus, part of being prepared for the end of the world is also being prepared for everything up to the end of the world…and that includes mundane things like walking three blocks to the grocery for a quart of milk at 9pm. For those quick trips down the block or around the corner, the little snubbies are quick to drop in a pocket as you grab your keys and head out the door.

What do I like in a snubby? Well, I like the stainless .357. Why .357 over .38? The .357 framed guns are a tad bigger than the .38′s, but the ability to shoot two different kinds of ammo makes it worth it, IMHO. Although both cartridges are widely available, why not put yourself in the position of being able to take advantage of the availability of both? What about the other calibers? The .22LR are certainly easy to feed, but if you need to use your hideout gun you probably want as much ‘oomph’ as you can stuff in it. The .44 or .45 snubbies? Big enough that you lose the size advantage that makes them a hideout gun. (Notable exception is the .44 Spl.  Bulldog but then you’re back into ammo logistics issues.) The 9mm snubbies? Love the logistics, but moon clips are prone to headspace issues if they get bent or damaged, and not using them makes reloading the gun a pain. The .32 cartridges give you one more shot than a similar-size .38/357 but don’t expect to find ammo as easily. Stick to the .38/.357 unless you have a really compelling reason to go off the beaten path.

While hammerless guns are nice, I really prefer the ‘humpback’ design of the old S&W Bodyguard line…snag-free but still with just enough hammer exposed that you can single-action a shot if you have to.  However, I have to think long-term, end-of-the-world, no-gunsmith-or-parts-resupply when it comes to this sort of thing and as much as I love me some S&W I would probably wind up with a buncha Ruger SP101′s. The Ruger just seems to have the durability thing going for it.  Although capable of shooting .357 I tend to stick with .38 +p rounds for controlability but I like to have the option of stepping up to the fireballs and muzzlewhip of the .357 if it comes to that.

img_0320And those speedstrips? I like them a lot. They arent as fast as a speedloader, but, and this is important to me, they are a ‘universal’ speedloader – they’ll work on just about any .38/.357 revolver regardless of the size of the cylinder. You know how speedloaders have to be specific to the gun so that they cartridges line up with the chambers? J-frame guns use J-frame speedloaders, L-frame guns use L-frame speedloaders, Pythons use Python speedloaders, etc, etc….doesn’t matter with the speedstrips. Same strip will load a tiny J-frame .38 or my N-frame .357. That’s some streamlined logistics right there. (Although, to be fair, I do keep speedloaders and they are my first choice for reloading my revolvers…however, a bin full of loaded speedstrips is nice because as I walk out the door I can tuck two or three in my pocket without giving a second thought to whether they are ‘correct’ for te revolver I’m carrying. In reality, they make a nice secondary or tertiary level of reloading backup after a speedlaoder or two.)

To be totally candid, though….if it’s too hot for me to conceal the Glock and I have to go with the snubby, I’ll usually just wear a Hawaiin shirt and conceal the Glock under that.

Still

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Silver continues to sit below $30. I have been quietly trying to buy as much as my meager resources allow. Will it fall further? Maybe. Maybe it’ll drop to below $25. Will I then feel I was foolish buying it at $28? Nope. Not at all. I’m in it for the long haul. I mostly only care about the price of silver from the standpoint of how much can I buy at this moment with the cash available to me. I feel this way because when the time comes to sell or trade it, the purchase price, no matter what it was, will be nothing compared to whats going on when it comes time to sell. Or, put another way, I don’t care how much a parachute costs today because when the time comes that I need it, things will be bad enough that it’ll seem like it was a bargain no matter the price.