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Its beginning to look a lot like Festivus

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I got, I kid you not, a Festivus card in the mail the other day. A thoughtful reader sent me a Festivus card and a thoughtful (and greatly appreciated) gift. Darn nice of him, if you ask me.

What does Zero want for Christmas?

Well, ammo anyway.

Actually, precious metals (of which ammo would count) make awesome gifts. I genuinely don’t have much I could ask for for Christmas. I did splurge and get myself another lovely Filson garment as an early Festivus gift to myself. I like their products, their style, and quality….hate the price. But..buy once, cry once.

However, were Santa to ask me if there were any preparedness related items he could have his non-union labor force whip up for me…..well…I wouldnt mind a nice ICOM transceiver with power supply and antennae, some more NATO gas cans, another EU2000, and that sort of thing. While I’m something of a sentimental fool, I have trouble with the notion of Santa encouraging children to believe that they can get toys simply because ‘they deserve them’. It seems like it would foster an attitude of entitlement. Still, not as bad as Halloween…where children are encouraged to put on disguises, head to wealthier neighborhoods, and demand treats under penalty of tricks. All thats missing from that picture is a ‘no justice no peace’ sign.

But…not everyone sees it that way.

“There’s a little nip in the air today…”

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Yeah, I bet that’s what they said eighty years ago.

The attack on Pearl Harbor had no parallel in US history until 9/11. Both events, on the surface, came out of nowhere and both reshaped the world afterwards. To me the biggest lesson learned is to not get into the mindset that ‘it cant happen’. It’s all happened before and it’ll all happen again. In just one morning, the entire trajectory of the world changes for decades to come. It can actually happen that fast. Mind-boggling when you think about it.

 

Case musings

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Someone asked me how I store all those magazines.

Answer: The same way I store anything that I feel is important, worth protecting, and might be in storage for a long time: in a hard, airtight, watertight, crushproof container.

For 99% of the things I put in the Deep Sleep, the container of choice is either a genuine GI ammo can of some kind, or a Pelican (or similar brand/quality) case.

Good, quality, name-brand, effective, just-what-the-doctor-ordered cases are not cheap. Only you know how much risk you’re willing to take to save a few dollars. Will the plastic ammo can from Harbor Freight store gear just as well as a GI ammo can? Maybe. If it’s just going to sit on the shelf in your basement for the next twenty years then all it has to do is sit there, quietly waiting in the dark for that one day when life changes in an exciting new way. And that is when the extra bucks you paid makes a difference. When you grab the can off the shelf, swing it around as you run up the stairs with it, it bounces off the doorway as you grab your backpack with your other hand. You run out the door and it’s five inches of snow and freezing rain as you literally toss the ammo can in the back of the truck into a pile of slushy snow and ice. Then its a two hour drive over bumpy roads until you get to your safe place. Then you drag your gear out of the truck, some of it falls and hits the ground, some bounces off other gear, and some just gets none-too-gently shoved into a corner of the room. Now, your headset radios, battery chargers, cables, batteries, and other gear were in those cans… which would you rather have used to store those items – the $7.50 harbor Freight made-in-China plastic “GI” ammo cans or the $65 Pelican case?

Everything I put away for the future is put away because I have concerns about those things being unavailable in the future. Maybe they are unavailable due to price..or legislative action…or simple supply/demand variations…the reason doesn’t really matter; all that matters is that this particular item is now unavailable and whatever ones I have are the only ones I’m gonna have. So…I don’t mind spending the extra money for what I feel is a heightened level of protection.

Of course, not everything requires a super-high level of protection. A Glock magazine can get dropped, bounced off the concrete, get wet/snowy/dusty/dirty and survive just fine thank you very much. Not the same story for a radio. Or your medical gear. Or your other critical-and-somewhat-fragile gear.

Only you know what is and is not important enough to you to warrant the expense of high-end protection. It’s very subjective. Personally, my opinion is that anything worth putting away for the uncertain future is worth protecting as much as possible so it’s there when I need.

You’re going to have to do some math in your head. If the Made-in-China case affords you 75% the protection of the Pelican or Hardigg case is that 25% difference in protection worth the difference in price? Does the 80/20 rule apply here? As a friend of mine said when I complained about the cost of a motorcycle helmet, “Whats your head worth?”

It seems ridiculous to spend as much on a protective case as you did on the item that you are protecting, but, again, whats it worth to you to have exactly what you need, when you need it, in perfect working condition?

As I said, I’m a bit of an evil ‘yuppie survivalist’ so I spend the dollars for the Hardigg, the Pelican, the SKB cases. Or, if they’ll do the job, the virtually new genuine GI ammo cans. It’s just not worth it to me to go through the pain and labor of buying a piece of expensive top quality gear, house it in a POS knockoff plastic ammo can, and then have the lovely surprise of having that item absolutely not work when I need it most. At that moment the last thing I’m thinking is “Man, sure glad I saved thirty bucks by buying that cheap just-as-good-as-Pelican case.”

 

 

Hamilton gun show

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You know, just because you can (somewhat) get away with selling .223 at eighty cents per round does not mean that all the other crap on your table has commensurately gone up in value. For example, the Smith and Wesson Model 10 has not been invented that is worth $1050. And you can cover that 4″ Highway Patrolman with hookers and cocaine and it is still not worth $1150.

I bought nothing. Nada. Zip. At least….not until I swung by a local gunshop on the way back to town. And…this followed me back to the truck:

Its a polymer KE Arms lower. The foundation for Gun Jesus’ project gun – the WWSD rifle. Now, I’d love to have one of those WWSD rifles but I’m not dropping that kinda  coin. But I am interested in the monolithic stock/receiver idea. As you know Cavalry Arms started this trend and these stock/frame combos are the natural extension of that. The notion is that by switching to a polymer lower you get a substantial weight and balance advantage. While telescoping stocks are fine, I never do anything with them that i can’t do with a full stock. And, I rather like full stocks but didnt like the weight. This gives me thebest of both worlds.

While I’d like to have a WWSD gun, I’ll probably hunt around for an upper that does what I’m looking for and mate it to this lower. I’ve always thought carbine uppers on full-stock lowers were a good idea and I’d be interested to see if this combo gives me that advantage without the weight penalty.

California’s mag ban upheld

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In case you missed it, the courts upheld California’s ban on normal-capacity magazines.

I can’t say I’m surprised but I can say I’m disappointed. I was hoping that from a legislative and judicial standpoint we had turned a corner in regards to such things. Apparently not….although the Ninth Circus is the one most likely to go and do something completely wonky out of all the courts.

What’s it mean to me and you? Well, unless you live in California, not very much except as an indicator of how the political winds may be blowing.

However, it’s a good example of why you need to buy your Uncertain Goods when you can and in the quantities that you want. Unless I buy some previously not stockpiled thunderoty, I have plenty of mags for everything I shoot that needs a magazine.

If Biden can get his marbles together long enough to comprehend what his advisors and handlers are telling him, he’d start pushing for Assault Weapons Ban 1994: The Next Generation. Fortunately he’s just busy mispronouncing ‘omicron’ and sniffing women’s hair.

The nice thing about putting my magazine needs to rest years ago is that I no longer have to funnel resources in that direction. I can take my rapidly devaluing dollars and put them into other tangible goods….like food, fuel, fuel cans, radios, armour, gold, silver, medicines, clothes, shoes, and all the other little things that go to make up a prepared life.

Ammo cans

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Those ammo cans are 18″x11″x6″ and are marked as being for belts of 40mm for the lovely Mk19 GL.  As it turns out, each can will hold 34 Magpul 30-rd AR mags. Or 69 Magpul 27-rd Glock mags.

Yknow…in case you ever need to know something like that.

Back the truck up…again

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I’ve been having a heck of a time finding ammo cans lately. And before someone starts in with how Harbor Freight/CostCo/Sams Club/Whoever has brand new ammo cans for sale…don’t. They have brand new ammo can knockoffs on sale. Hecho in China. Will they work as well as US GI ammo cans? Maybe. But a) I avoid buying Chinese goods whenever possible and b) if something is important enough to store in an ammo can, then it’s important enough to  not take chances by saving ten bucks and buying a ripoff ammo can.

So…that leaves hunting down the real deal. Which I did.

Behold the new home of a rather embarrassingly large quantity of Magpul magazines in various calibers.

I prefer the larger ammo cans but these days you really do have to take what you can get. Anyway, these will get stencilled up and filled with Deep Sleep stuff. Then theyare off to a cool, dark place and …see ya in twenty years. Or at Der Tag. Whichever comes first.

 

Erbswurst case scenario

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There has always been a need for compact forms of food that you could stuff in a pack for times when you were cut off from resupply and had to make do with only what you had on you, or what you could find locally. The Germans apparently approached this with erbswurst…a compressed ration of pea meal and other things that, when dissolved in a canteen cup full of hot water, allowed the user to make a soup. Personally, it seems rather unappealing to me but I suppose if your stuck in Stalingrad watching your comrades eat dead horses, it might not seem too bad.

Today, of course, we have MRE’s, freezedrieds, and even simple off-the-shelf soup products that are leaps and bounds ahead of the technology that brought us erbswurst. But… it’s an interesting concept. If a person had access to on of those consumer-grade freeze driers you could make some pretty impressive fare. Here are a couple videos on the subject:

It’s not too hard to imagine the plethora of items found in a modern supermarket that might lend themselves to this sort of thing. The trick is to keep the main principles as the fore: compactness, longevity, and nutrition.

This was actually addressed in a product that came out of WW2 …MPF…a fascinating product with a fascinating backstory: A nalgene bottle full of that stuff would probably duplicate (or exceed) the nutritional value of erbswurst and be a tad more versatile. That MPF, by the way, can be replicated at home.

For running out the door on your way to the boogaloo, a bag of a few days worth of freeze drieds takes virtually no weight and very little space. The more hidebound might go with a few tins of meat and that sort of thing. But wandering around a supermarket sometime, with a careful eye, might reveal some interesting choices for the ‘iron rations’ to keep in your gear. But…the Germans did it first, apparently.

Turkeyday

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Happy Thanksgiving, boys. Sometimes life is a swirling cesspool of despair from which no ray of hope can ever escape. (Or as I call it, “Lifes default setting”) But no matter how craptacular it is, it could often be worse. So, sure, take a moment to be grateful for what you have. But also be grateful to yourself for getting you there.  You overcame that crappy obstacle. You put yourself on the right track. You did the hard work. You made the tough choices. You fought the battles. You made the sacrifices. Sure, you may have had advice, help, and direction from others, but in the final analysis it was you who got you where you are now…good or bad. Own it. If you’re hitting bottom, slap yourself in the face a few times, grit your teeth, cowboy the F up, and do what needs to be done. If you’ve recovered from hitting bottom and are on your way to being a baller, keep your foot on the gas, amigo.

But take today to recognize what you’ve done and what still needs to be done. Then pig out, sleep it off, and get back to the plan.

 

Book – WarDay

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Post-apocalyptic fiction is usually, by definition, after the apocalypse. Its a niggling point, but if your science fiction is about the apocalypse, then, really, it’s intra-apocalypse* fiction.

But, in the case of the book WarDay, it is most definitely post-apocalyptic fiction.

The book has been out of print for a while but I enjoyed it when i was younger and when a used copy turned up on Amazon for a few bucks I grabbed it.

WarDay is about two reporters who decide to ‘see America’ after a nuclear exchange five years earlier. They travel cross country, interviewing people and chronicling their experiences. The book came out in 1984 and was predicated around the then-plausible idea of a somewhat limited nuclear exchange with the Soviets.

If you’ve read Max Brook’s ‘World War Z’ book, the format will be very familiar….journalists interview various people and let them tell their stories of how they survived the one-day war.

This book shows some of the tropes that we’ve come to see in post-apocalyptic fiction that has been printed since then. Things like a Mexican reconquista of the southwest, foreign troops providing ‘aid’ that turns out to be more of an occupation, submarines cutoff from contact thinking the war is still going on, survivors in cities eating each other, etc, etc.

In addition to these narratives, WarDay also tries to cover a bit of the .gov’s experience as well. There are copies of reports, directives, orders, and other bureaucratic paper to show how the government eventually tries to get back to normal with forced relocations, rationing, martial law, etc.

Having come out in 1984, some of the book is dated…reporters using tape recorders, for example…but the descriptions of starvation, radiation poisoning, oppression, etc, are pretty timeless.

Because the book is written as a ‘documentary’, don’t expect the usual townies-vs-cannibal-army that is a staple of this sort of genre. But if you want a  more thoughtful read that seems quite rooted in reality, this is a good choice.

Is there anything to be ‘learned’ from it? Probably not. It’s most redeeming quality, from a survivalists standpoint, is that it’s portrayal of how the average person fared in a nuclear aftermath might make you think twice about not stocking up on more of everything.

I think it’s a good read, and definitely a ‘thinking mans’ sort of book….light on gunplay and Ahern-esqe ubermensch, the realistic scenarios, responses, and consequences make this a story that seems quite plausible.

If you can nail down a used copy for a few bucks, I think you’ll find it a worthwhile read. Just remember the time it was written.

 

* = Pre-apocalypse fiction would be before the apocalypse, post-apocalypse fiction is after the apocalypse. Whats the prefix for during the apocalypse? In-apocalyptic fiction? Intra-apocalypse? Peri-apocalypse? Mid-apocalypse? I’m going with intra-.