Portmanteau – disasturbation

I was reading a blog and the writer mentioned ‘disaster masturbation’ to describe getting overloaded on negative media inputs and the resultant effects on ones desire to prepare. In short, if you watch so much CNN, Alex Jones, Glen Beck, and Coast to Coast AM that you  develop the unquenchable desire to head to WalMart right freakin now and stock up on everything…well, that might be ‘disaster masturbation’.

Wishing to leave my stamp on the language, I hereby coin the term “disasturbation” for when you take in so much information (usually visually through internet mediums) that your overwhelming reaction is to run out and stock, prep, buy, hide, now now now!

This is not to say that a little disasturbation isn’t a good thing. Sometimes we need a little reminder that the world is not all sunshine-n-stun-grenades. A little refresher to make our minds wander back onto the course we’ve laid out for our future is a good thing. It’s when we overdo it and the next thing you know theres a Unimog on your Visa card…well, thats a whole other story.

So, thats our word for the day: disasturbation – v. To overindulge on preparedness-, disaster-, and survival-related media to the point that it causes atypical responses that can be interpreted as overreactions.

Use it, and use it well. But not so much that you go blind.

Movie – Stalingrad

Hardigg cases still available.

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Well, this looks interesting. The battle of Stalingrad in 3-D…just like the original:

I enjoyed this movie the first time I saw it when it was called ‘Enemy At The Gates”.

Be interesting to see the Russian take on it, since this is being done by the Russians. In this era of post-Soviet film , I wonder if they’ll touch on the ‘machine gun your own troops if they retreat’ tactics of the NKVD, make every Soviet conscript an everyman who becomes Rambo, and make every German a caricature.

One of my favorite books on the battle of Stalingrad is Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege: 1942-1943. It’s really a tale of survival more than a military recounting of things. The Germans savaged the Soviet citizens and in the end the Soviets absolutely stomped the Germans. The price, of course, was the civilian population. Armed squads to shoot cannibals, people eating wallpaper paste, lice and dysentary, psychological warfare, suicides and desertions, and stark letters home paint the picture of what must have been one of the most savage moments in the ‘European’ theater of war.

Sure, everyone knows about Zaytsev and Kruschev, a few may know about Paulus, but the book tells much about the day-to-day conditions, the starvation, the tremendous denials (which could be rephrased as ‘hope’) of the encircled Germans, and the cruel jokes war likes to play.

From a preparedness standpoint, it’s interesting to read how under even the most inhospitable conditions people managed to survive, and in some cases show mercies that you would not think anyone could afford in those circumstances.

Historically, it was a massively important battle for the Soviets, a shattering defeat for the Germans, and a grueling trial for the civilians. I hope this movie catches some of that historical horror and doesn’t just rely on cool 3-D CGI blood sprays and explosions.

Charity and that hitchhiker from The Walking Dead

Speaking of The Walking Dead, I managed to pick up a cold that has knocked me on my butt for the last day or so. I’m hoping that because it’s such an intense amount of discomfort and suffering that it will burn itself out quickly…the candle that burns twice as bright burning half as long, and all that jazz.

The most recent episode of The Walking Dead brought up an interesting scenario – the hitchhiker. If you havent seen the eipsode you may wanna skip the rest of this post.

 

No? Ok then…..

So here’s the scene: our three heroes are driving down a two-lane road in the sticks. No buildings, no signs of civilization, nothing. Heavy woods along both sides of the road. As they continue on their way, they approach a hitchhiker walking along the road. The hitchhiker waves frantically at the oncoming car, screaming and begging them to stop. Our heroes in the car ignore him completely, and whip by him without a glance. On the return trip along that same road they find a pile of blood and gore next to the hitchhikers backpack…implying the hitchhiker had succumbed to the zombies. Our heroes stop the car, pick up the backpack, and continue on their way.

371px-Hitchhiker

This man very much needs a 10/22.

As you might imagine, this led to some interesting discussions in other forums. Most of the comments opined that there was no way of knowing if the hitchhiker was merely bait used by ambushers waiting in the woods and that stopping would be an unacceptable risk. One person suggested that the car should have stopped at a safe distance, they shoot and kill the hitchhiker from range, and then continue on past him..the idea being that he would somehow be a threat as you whipped by him at 60 mph. The idea of arbitrarily killing someone just because he’s walking along the road I need to drive on seemed a little extreme.

My take on it would have been to drive past him a quarter mile or half mile so he could see me stop, and then, assuming I could spare it, leave some supplies in the middle of the road for him.

This, naturally, brings up the topic of charity in a disaster/EOTWAWKI situation. There is a school of thought that says there is a ‘Christian duty’ to provide charity. I see this term bandied about frequently when the topic comes up. This kinda bothers me because it implies that non-religious people are naturally non-charitable and that only by adopting some sort of belief system can you be compelled to overcome your naturally non-charitable nature. I, of course, disagree with this. I think that a person can have a charitable nature without a religious or spiritual underpinning. Additionally, if youre being charitable out of some sort of religious mandate or compunction then youre not being charitable, youre simply following orders.

My own take on the subject of charity is that there are far too many people in the world, even outside of disasters and EOTWAWKI events, to help. Every one of us has limited resources and, naturally, our priorities are to ourselves and our loved ones first. (Our ‘tribe’, if you want to put it into simpler terms.) Once those needs are taken care of, there’s a sort of ‘charity triage’. You cannot help everyone so who do you help? Or, since you can’t help everybody should you then help nobody? And if you choose not to help anyone, how do you answer the inevitable pointed question of “Well, what if was you in that situation? Wouldnt you want someone to help you?”

I usually answer that by saying that while I would want someone to help me, I wouldn’t expect it and I’d be quite understanding of someone not helping. One of the reasons I’ve gone through twenty-plus years of being a survivalist is so I dont find myself in that Blanche Dubois situation of having to rely on the kindness of strangers. Invariably, some genius will respond with “Well what if your house burns down and you lose all your stuff and you have nothing and have to rely on charity, then what?” Well, then I mentally kick my own ass for putting all my eggs in one basket.

Certainly, if I had ‘plenty’ and if I thought the person was worth the expenditure of resources and if I could do it safely and, most importantly, if being charitable didn’t increase the risk to my tribe, then, yes, I’d be charitable. I certainly would not ‘give till it hurts’ because, logically, if you give till it hurts than you’ve obviously given too much. I’m certainly not going to engage in charitable giving that loads risk onto my end of things. Sorry youre having a bad apocalypse, dont come any closer, heres a couple MRE’s and some bottled water, don’t come back.

I figure that one year after the zombie apocalypse that hitchhiker must have been doing something right to still be alive. I’m willing to believe he had a run of bad luck and lost his weapons and his vehicle and thats why he was on foot, apparently unarmed. As I said, I’d've dropped off some supllies down the road if I could spare them, but thats about as close and personal as Im going to get to some stranger in a situation like that.

Observations on infrastructure failure in fiction

Get ten survivalists in a room and you’ll get ten (at least) different reasons why they’re survivalists. The Peak Oil nut will shout down the hyperinflation cheerleader who is sneering at the Bird Flu advocate and they all get together to snicker at the zombie apocalypse fanboy.

But, ignore the disease and look at the symptoms…zombies don’t eat food, so why are you storing those freeze drieds? “Because the grocery supply chain will be disrupted”, replies the machete equipped lad. And what about Bird Flu lady? Cans of Spam don’t catch bird flu and die, so why the cases of food in her basement? “Because the grocery stores won’t be getting any more inventory as things are quarantined”, she’ll say between spritzes of Clorox. And the Peak Oil wonk, asked why he’s stocking up on canned tuna when tuna don’t drive or require petrochemical lubrication, says “because the grocery stores won’t be getting trucks of food in if those trucks can’t run.” Each one of these folks sees a different disease, but the symptoms, by and large, will all be the same – the grocery store will be useless. Infrastructure will be affected and distribution networks/chains will be destroyed or disabled.

So, really, 90% of what we’re preparing for is infrastructure failure – the inability (or total collapse) of a distribution system (distribution of food, distribution of power, distribution of supplies, distribution of security, etc.) While it does matter how that failure occurs (an interruption in electrical service from a fallen power line will probably be remedied faster than one from a comet strike that wipes out the eastern seaboard), the preparations against that failure differ only in scale (a weeks worth of generator fuel will probably get you past the fallen power line, it might take significantly more to get past the comet strike.) But, fundamentally, no matter what we think the main event will be, we all agree that infrastructure will be affected.

Looking at the crop of post-apocalyptic films and television shows, the one thing they all have in common is that infrastructure failure is central to their premise. “Jericho”, “The Walking Dead”, “I Am Legend”, etc, etc. are far less compelling without the element of scarcity-of-supplies. Surviving a nuclear war is a snap if the power stays on, the water keeps flowing, the grocery trucks keep driving and the cops still make their rounds. Zombies aren’t any more dangerous than rabid dogs when society is still functioning like it does normally. Take away the electricity, water, power, heat, food and ‘civilization’, though, and all those things become something else.

I mention this because I was watching the latest episode of “The Walking Dead” (a guilty pleasure) and if you ignore the there-might-be-a-zombie-behind-this-door moments, and watch it with a critical eye towards how infrastructure fails, the results of that failure, and the methods of coping with that failure…then the show becomes a bit more entertaining (although it will probably result in more yelling at the screen.) Electricity is virtually unavailable, food is scrounged, medical supplies are exhausted, fuel is scavenged, communications are nil, etc, etc. On a larger scale, transportation is greatly limited due to obstructed highways and fuel shortages, long-distance communications are gone as the telecommunications networks fail due to fuel and maintenance issues, lawlessness (in the sense of people killing you for your stuff) is the norm….and all of these things occur (or have occurred) in pretty much any disaster. Remove the flesh-eating undead and the infrastructure failure (and it’s consequences) are pretty much exactly what you had after Hurricane Katrina.

I have absolutely no idea what the future looks like. I’m pretty sure zombies, the rapture, and global thermonuclear war aren’t on the menu. But, no matter what sort of unpleasantness does kick off the freefall into chaos you can be certain that it’s most manifest component will be infrastructure failure. And thats why I like watching these end-of-the-world shows and reading the books – I like seeing situations and how some people think folks should react to them. (And, so far, no one has really impressed me with the depths of their preparedness…with one exception.)

While I’m sure you and I have a good enough imagination that we can ‘wargame’ potential problems arising from various system failures, I find that watching fictional interpretations of the apocalypse help me to think through scenarios I may not have previously considered. Sure the premises of some of these shows may be far-fetched or extremely unlikely, but the results are a different story..alien invasion or hurricane, the power is going down. So, I guess if someone were to ask me what it is I’m preparing against (or preparing for, I suppose) I’d have to say ‘infrastructure failure’…unlike many other apocalyptic scenarios I can at least point to dozens of occurrences of that, wheres I’m hard pressed to point to some of the other scenarios.

 

 

The Walking Dead 10/22

I’m a gun nut Ballistic-American and something of a nerd, so why am I not surprised that these two character traits/weaknesses/identities have conspired to hijack my subconscious as of late.

Where exactly has it shanghaied it to? (Yeah, that sentence probably could have been constructed…gooder.) For the life of me, I have spent the last week playing over in my mind what I would want out of a 10/22 if I were stuck in a world full of soft-skulled, slow-moving zombies. Seriously. I’m spending, like, an hour a day surfing the web for just the right barrel, just the right stock, just the right sights, just the right accessories…and then when I find them and think “Yeah, that’d be perfect” I rethink the requirements and have to start from scratch.

RIght off the bat, I was absolutely in love with this:

It’s a one-off from Nodak Spud. But…I loved the HK MP5 look. Compact, has provisions for an optic, has open sights, enough barrel to thread and suppress ahead of the sight, and a telestock. Oh..but that stock….mmmm…not so sure. I mean, the zombie apocalypse is going to require a good bit of running around and being light on your feet…so wouldn’t a folder make more sense? But then again, rimfires can be fussy…and if you pull the trigger and are rewarded with a ‘click’ you’re going to want a stock with some stoutness to it so you can drive the buttplate (need a metal buttplate now rather than the OEM plastic) through the skull of the zombie. And what about a suppressor? I can find threaded .22 barrels all day long but I cant find a threaded .22 barrel with iron sights. That shouldn’t surprise me…once you screw a suppressor onto the end of the barrel you wind up having the diameter of the supressor block the sights. But..I need iron sights in case the optics fail. And..and..and….

See, this has been running in my mind for the last week since I’ve been watching season three of The Walking Dead.

So, I figure what I’d want is a solid stock, wood or plastic, a threaded barrel, sights high enough to overlook a mounted suppressor, a rail for optics, maybe a better mag release, and some rail for mounting a light. Not much to ask for, right? Something that when it’s all done would like very much like this:

The flash suppressor is probably gilding the lily, but it protects the threads when you don’t have the suppressor on the end. I’d swap the barrel band for the side-mounted, rail equipped one from Pro-Mag (ProMag Barrel Band) and call it a day.

Not as compact as it would be with a folder, but I like having the ‘blunt force trauma’ option. True compact would look like this. But I think this would be a nice rig for capping the slow, shambling zombies at up to 100 yards. And, with a couple Butler Creek mags, a small group of ‘em could be knocked down by one person almost as fast as knocking down one.

See, this is what happens when you give a science-fiction/comic-book nerd an internet connection and a 10/22.

But, in the interest of stimulating dialog and catering to my mania, how would you set yours up? We’ve established that the skull of your average Walking Dead zombie is easily penetrated by simple hand tools, so a .22 offers plenty of penetration. The rule of law has quite obviously taken a holiday so SBR and suppress to your heart’s content. Bonus points for detailing parts and model numbers.