Category Archives: Uncategorized

Vacuum-sealed clothing after five years

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One of the tasks I performed the other day was reviewing and inspecting the various items I have stashed away in the vehicle for those unseen emergencies. Among all the items is a complete change of clothes. That stuff has been packed away, freezing and roasting, for the last several years and I figured it’d be a good idea to check on them and see how they’re doing.

Answer? They’re just fine. However, I did unpack the shirt and jeans and discover that the plastic bag had imparted a wierd smell to them. Not offensive, just odd…a vinyl-y plastic smell that, after a few hours in the open air, seemed to fade away. Other than that, clothing held up just fine…as I expected. I re-vacuum-sealed everything and put it away for the uncertain future.

Why the vacuum sealing? Well, biggest reason is because if you need a change of clothes somewhere other than home that means you probably got wet, messy, bloody, dirty, or some similar ugliness. That being the case, youre most definitely gonna want clean and dry clothes. And, of course, vacuum sealing also reduces the ‘footprint’ of the clothing by compressing everything down as much as possible. But, when you’ve had to change a tire on a slushy and wet roadway while freezing rain is soaking you through, that bit of vacuum sealing is going to seem more like a Nobel-worthy idea than it is overkill.

Other goodies in there stored equally as well, although I discarded and replaced all batteries just to be safe. And I I updated the spreadsheet I keep of this sort of thing to reflect any changes.

What do I keep around in the vehicle for emergencies? Well, you can get the links to that epic series of posts here.

And, in other news………

Oh boys…..look what I found

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Weren’t we supposed to be in some sort of violent civil war right now as Three Percenters, OathKeepers, patriots, assorted militias, violent racist groups, leaderless cells, and hordes of keyboard commandos ‘took back’ the government? I mean, everything I’ve read online since November says thats what was going to happen….thats what news media and every ‘patriot’ discussion forum kept telling me…

The passing of Commander Zero

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Commander Zero passed away from unspecified causes although there are rumours of Covid-19 infection. From the NY TImes (behind a paywall, so I’m not gonna bother linking.)

Edén Pastora, a hero of the 1979 Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua who was known by his nom de guerre, Commander Zero — and who later turned against his victorious comrades in arms in a long counterrevolutionary war of words and guerrilla attacks that failed to budge the socialist regime in Managua — died early Tuesday in a military hospital in that city, the capital of Nicaragua. He was 83.

A grandson, Álvaro Pastora Gutiérrez, said the cause was a heart attack. He said Mr. Pastora had been gravely ill when he was admitted to the hospital, though he did not identify the nature of the illness.

Mr. Pastora’s wife told a local newspaper that the cause was bronchopneumonia. His family had denied rumors that Mr. Pastora had contracted Covid-19. The government has been widely accused of listing pneumonia as the cause of death in Covid cases as a way to dispel reports that the pandemic was out of control in Nicaragua.

I hadn’t caught this story when it first broke back in June. Commander Zero ‘made a stunning debut’ in 1979 in a Castro-like underdog story but never followed up on it in terms of future successes. After becoming disillusioned with the victory he helped win for the Communists he picked up his rifle, went back into the jungles, and tried starting a revolution against them. He never had any great successes after his initial one and he eventually wound up as a somewhat charismatic figure popping up in the spotlight once in a while to tweak the nose of whatever government had caught his attention. Sort of a Central American Don Quixote, tilting at political windmills. I always kinda thought it’d be interesting to get a selfie with him someday just for fun. Plus, he probably could have used the money. Kinda funny…I like the HiPower and the G3, same as he did apparently, judging from the pictures.

““The first thing we revolutionaries lose is our wives. The last thing we lose is our lives. In between our women and our lives, we lose our freedom, our happiness, our means of living.” – Eden Pastora

For those who are curious, one of the qualities of any nickname is that you don’t get to choose it. Many years ago I was talking to someone about my preparedness projects and they said something along the lines of “Do they know about your secret life as Commander Zero?” and thats how that appellation came to be.

Video – Items to stock for barter

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An interesting video I recommend watching:

Why recommend? Well, I’m one of the most optimistic survivalists you’ll ever meet….I have a difficult time seeing things come to a point where we’re trading toilet paper and gold coins for antibiotics and motor oil. But…I do store things for my own use (mostly so I don’t have to worry about bartering, actually). Anyway, the items listed in this video are, of course, useful for trade but they are also items you should have on hand for your own use as well. So…thats why I’m recommending this video…watch it and see if theres anything you might have overlooked for your own use.

I can’t imagine there’s anyone who is unfamiliar with this guys library of videos but it’s mostly gun reviews and the occasional piece of gear. The gun reviews are actually pretty good and I find them more valuable than the reviews a lot of other Guntubers have out there.

Natural selection takes a holiday

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When the judge says it like it is:

Years ago, here in town,  there was a little old man who was asleep in his house when some drug monster came crashing through his living room picture window, Terrified old man did the reasonable thing and gave the intruder a new belly button. Cops were pleased enough that there was talk of offering to reimburse the man for his ammo.
Such is the world we are in……

Sui generis

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I was sent this quote the other day and it kinda fits me…

I’ve no idea who this Russell guy is but that sure sounds like a Heinlein quote to me. I’m slightly disturbed, though,  at the thought that the phrase “unnecessary tyranny” implies that there is a such thing as “necessary tyranny”.

Still and all, a good quote and probably pretty appropriate for a character like m’self.

 

Less theorizing, more shopping

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Focus, Zero, focus…..

I’ve been a bit remiss lately on the physical side of preparedness and been spending too much time on the theoretical end of it. What does that mean? It means I’ve been staring into the computer too much making plans and strategies for the upcoming year and not spending enough time walking through CostCo, WalMart, and Home Depot getting things to improve my resilience.

What sort of planning? Honestly, mostly financial planning and reviewing. I’m reviewing how I did on my financial goals for 2020 (nailed them…nailed ’em hard), thinking about where the goalposts should be for 2021, and figuring out how much money I need each month to hit those goals. Thats the easy part. The more challenging part is adjusting the calculations for if I miss/surpass the monthly goal. I’ve a spreadsheet for that, but it takes a bit of fine tuning. Like I said…its all theory. But theory doesn’t fill the freezer. I need to remember to do the more practical stuff and get out there and buy the items, stock the shelves, fill the freezer, rotate the fuel, check the expiration dates, evaluate the quantities, etc, etc.

I’m still sitting at a pretty good level of preparedness from all of 2020’s renewed urgency. Just need to keep that motivation going. The Kung Flu thing has sort of had all the shiny taken off it and many people aren’t as frantic about it as they were last year, so motivation might seem a bit reduced. However the new(er) motivation is the upcoming economic…activities…supported/fomented/mandated/foisted upon us by the new administration. And that’s something I prepare for more with bullion than bouillon. As of late I’ve been just as concerned about stacking cash ( and cash like instruments) and investing as I’ve been in stacking ammo and stockpiling. I really am exceptionally diversified.

Inauguration is this week and even if it doesn’t turn into a boogaloo theres still those ‘first 100 days’ agenda items that will try to get ramrodded into law in a hurry. All in all, the year has barely started and its just fixin’ to get more interesting. Sell the jet ski, cancel the trip to DisneyLand, and start making more trips to CostCo.

Tiny house? Nah…tiny *bunker*

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I understand the appeal, a bit, of the whole ‘tiny house’ thing. You’re small enough to be exempt from many building codes, there’s a modicum of portability, it has an “I’m a minimalist’ vibe, and it’s usually cheaper than a real house. Downsides, of course, are the enormous lack of storage, plumbing is often not much better than what you’d get in an RV, and it’s not something that I can imagine anyone wanting to live in full-time. It’d be like a nicely appointed jail cell.

However…I can see an appeal where a hardened, fortified tiny house might make a nice little bolt-hole. Small enough to hide nestled in the gully or trees of a remote piece of property, but ‘full service’ enough to get you back on your feet after two weeks of hoofing it with just the clothes on your back across the post-apocalypse landscape. It would be a …tiny bunker?

Ok, let’s throw ‘tiny bunker’ into google and see what we get.

I suppose it depends on your definition of bunker, but a nice little fortified ‘cabin’ of tiny-house proportions tucked away somewhere unobtrusively might make a very nice fallback plan for when you have to beat feet.After all, if you have to flee for your lives to your Beta Site you really arent going to care that it’s only a hundred or so sq. ft. All youre gonna care about is that it has lights, food, weapons, meds, comms, and distance.

Given the ‘OMG this is it!’ attitude going on right now, I bet a ‘tiny bunker’ manufacturer could easily make quite a splash in the tiny house marketplace which has lost its luster as people realize it isn’t the minimallist panacea they thought it was.

 

 

 

Capitol Friend/Foe firearm recognition

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On closer inspection, a number of those pistols have reflective red-and-white striped tape on the sides of their slides. There is an established practice of marking guns in similar ways to help members of security forces quickly identify each other and prevent friendly fire incidents in a chaotic situation, especially when there might be one or more active shooters present brandishing their own weapons.

Interesting. Apparently there’s more to federal ‘same team’ identifiers than just the lapel pins. I would think it’s safe to assume that they have changed the color or pattern of those markings by now.

I recall one large metropolitan police force used to prohibit officers from carrying stainless/nickel guns off duty. The reasoning was that if you came across a situation you could be sure that the guy was not a cop if he was waving a ‘silver’ handgun around. And if you were an offduty cop who had his gun in hand when the uniformed officers arrived, you were less likely (though not certainly guaranteed) to be shot as a bad guy before you had time to scream “I’m on your side!”.

If you really want to hone your your super secret squirrel skills, next time you’re in an environment where theres a lot of ‘presence’, check for people that all seem to have something in common…. pins, buttons, armbands, particlar shoe colors, etc…might just be a unified group subtly showing recognition signs so that others of their like can identify them.

Anyway, an interesting little piece about last weeks excitement. Interesting read.