Finished up an inventory the other night. I was mentioning to the missus exactly what we had in the way of long term food storage (which is completely different from the short- and mid-term storage we have) and she nodded approvingly and said “Sounds like we’re done on the long term food”. I blinked a couple times and for some reason my brain seemed to have a hard time getting into gear after that. She was, for the most part, right and it had never occurred to me that there actually might be a point where you could say “We’re done”. So I mulled it over, looked at the numbers, did some sample menus in my head, and it looks like it actually might be at the stage where its ‘enough’. I would like to round off a few ‘broken’ cases where a box of six only has five in it, but otherwise…. Of course, more is better but I think we’d be okay with just what is on hand at this moment. How odd…I’d never thought that there’d be a point where I could wrap up this particular aspect of preparedness and move on to another. I knew that, in theory, theres a point where you sit back and say “Ok, now we’re good to go” I just didnt think I’d actually hit it.

Of course, this is just on long term foods. Theres still plenty of other things to work on, and some stuff is always ongoing, but the most urgent and obvious ones seem to be taken care of to the point that they are at a level I can feel comfortable with.

Now, I bet youre just chomping at the bit to ask what the duration of that food supply is…six months? A year? Two years? Five? Something I’ve noticed is that no matter how much of something you have, there is always someone who wants to bust your stones about it. If I said I had two years supply of food someone will say ‘but what are you going to do after two years?’. If I said I had a five year supply theyd ask ‘what are you going to do after five years’. And, honestly, I think its a pretty annoying game of one-upmanship and I don’t want to get into it. Theres a point where you have to figure that civilization will get back on track and the stores will have food on the shelves again. We have enough that Im comfortable that if the wheels fly off of civilization in a major way we’re going to be just fine for quite some time.
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How do I do inventory? Usually its pretty simple. I grab a clipboard, pen, paper, and start making lists. I find it to be a relaxing activity. Its usually late at night, I have a small radio tuned to Coast-to-Coast or some other bizarre talk format, and I go through boxes and shelves making lists as I go along. When its done I usually transcribe everything into spreadsheets and print out copies to keep and use as checklists as things get used up. At a glance, I can tell you how many AA batts, packages of freeze dried chicken, or paper towels we have tucked away. If youre going to take your preparedness seriously, you really have no choice but to keep inventories…otherwise you waste resources buying things you dont need any more of.
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Ordered a bunch of the Korean Glcok mags for the wife’s ‘new’ .40 competition gun. I’d tried the 9mm mags in the past and found them to be virtually indistinguishable from the factory Glock magazines in use and construction. So much so, in fact, that I have several dozen of them tucked away. So when we needed some .40 mags it seemed like a good idea to get the Korean ones for about $7 each. Unfortunately, while the 9mm ones were great the .40′s are all getting returned. Quite simply, they dont fit in the magazine of the gun…oh, they’ll go in if you really work ‘em in with some elbow grease but any idiot can tell from the exertion that there is something Not Right. Tried several of the mags in three different guns. All were lousy fits. Not a really big deal, they’ll be returned with no problem; but theres an important lesson here – try any new magazine in the gun before you tuck it away somewhere. I have a huge(!!!) pile of G3 mags and I sat there and ran every single one through the rifle to make sure they fit the magazine well. Tedious process, oh yeah. Worth it for the peace of mind? Most definitely.

So, the Korean mags, which are at various times referred to as Kang or KCI or Korean contract mags, are, in my experience, just fine in 9mm but should be avoided in the other calibers.