Category Archives: Uncategorized

16 years in storage

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For my backup heating needs around the house, I went with kerosene. It stores well, has the most BTU’s of pretty much any fuel, and is easily portable. But, years ago, I picked up one of those Mr Heater Buddy heaters as a ‘just in case’ along with a case of 1# propane bottles. I tested the thing out when I got it, put it away, and haven’t touched it since.

Until today.

I was going through some stuff and thought I’d check to make sure this thing actually still worked. I had packed it away in the original box and, surprisingly, I left the purchase receipt in there. So…I can see that I purchased it in December of 2004. (For about $75) Its sat in its box for the last sixteen years.

Okay, lets see if it works. Fished out an equally aged propane container, screwed it into place, turned the switch to Pilot, hit the starter and…*whoompf* it lit right up. Rather nice when something you put away a long time ago works just like it was yesterday.

Interestingly, the Buddy heaters have evolved since I got that one. They have a model that incorporates a battery-powered fan to circulate the hot air. I might get one of those and, since it runs on DC, wire it to run off a large battery.

My go-to backup heat is kerosene and thats one of the reasons I pretty much ignored the Buddy heater for the last four administrations. But, it’s nice to know it stored well. I’ll put it away, pick up a few more propane cylinders (because they have multiple uses and, if you want to carry the idea further, they would have excellent barter value.) Probably my biggest use for the Buddy heater is as a ‘spot heating’ unit for a room or are of the basement where keeping things above freezing is critical.

Link – First Aid: Food Storage and Food Poisoning

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A comment from the previous post on “I ain’t eatin’ that” generated a very concise and useful blog post over at Aesop’s. In a world where emergency medicine is wishful thinking, and you’re eating food that might not be up to First World standards, your first bout of food poisoning might be your last bout of food poisoning. Aesop tells it like it might be. Go read. Hall of fame post right there.

Canned goods

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“The people have spoken…and they must be punished.” Ed Koch, on losing the mayoral election. Say what you will, the man was awesomely quotable.
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I was digging around in the canned food storage and found this:

A can of soup whose ‘Best By’ date was ten years ago. Whaddya think? Sure…why not.

And then, upon opening the can and pouring the contents into a saucepan I discovered ‘why not’.

Once heated and served, even a canned chicken soup should have a certain yellow or golden color to parts of it. And it should smell good. This was…not. Everything was uniformly gray and exuded no smell whatsoever. I have a hyperacute sense of smell, so when I tell you something did not smell like it should have, you can take that to the bank m’friend. Nope, I didn’t taste it. Can wasn’t bulged, nothing looked amiss other than the color, but between the newsprint-gray color and lack of smell I decided that I’m not taking a bullet for food storage data gathering.

So, if youre keeping track, 10+ years on canned soup might be a bit excessive. You have been warned.

Gratitude

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I wanted to take a moment to publicly acknowledge a couple folks who recently sent me stuff in the mail, or signed up for Patreon to help keep the lights on in the bunker. Notably, someone sent me an Amazon gift card code for Christmas, which was very thoughtful…and just the other day someone sent me a silver dime in the mail, which was quite cool…and a couple folks signed up for Patreon. So, a sincere thank you to those folks. It’s that sorta thing that helps pay the blog-related bills. (And, if you provide your mailing address, its the sorta thing that gets you on the Paratus card mailing list.)

 

Casus belli

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Gotta say…no burning police stations, no flipped over police cars, no looted Starbucks….still a more peaceful protest than your average BLM march.

Doesn’t matter though… these are the sorts of optics that people need to further an agenda of nerfing your gun rights. They’ll say that, clearly, there is a ‘clear and present danger’ in America of ‘right wing extremists’ and that those ‘weapons of war have no place on our streets’ and that ‘reasonable, commonsense’ legislation is needed to……, etc, etc, etc.

Probably add in body armour just for good measure…’cause those ‘right wing extremists’ were armored up against the ‘legitimate government’.

Regardless of where you stand on the issue of electoral misconduct and impropriety, it’s hard to not think that all this news footage of outrage and outrageousness isn’t going to come back in the form of justification for some sort of Draconian legislation.

I’ve been banging this drum for years, that a new ban was coming…… maybe this is the year. Certainly, it seems more likely this year than at any point previously. Take your stimulus money and grab a couple stripped lowers and a twenty-pack of magazines, guys…might be glad you did in the not too distant future.

Said I wasn’t gonna, did anyway

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Minding my own business, not planning on buying any guns (especially a single-stack gun), and this came across my radar:

Actually, it didnt really come across my radar….the bloody thing came and found me. I got ‘The Call’ from the same guy that has been putting dents in my wallet for the last couple years now. He texted me and said if I wanted first crack at it, cmon down.

Ok, so who knows if Remington is ever gonna make more of these. And it is apparently a decent gun. And it’s like new in box. Punchline? $400.

Dude, I’m not even a 1911 guy! They’re fun guns, great range toys, but a 1911 is never my first choice for anything involving self-defense. I’ll take a modern-ish double-stack 9mm every time.

But….price was right, condition was good, brand was okay, and in this market any gun is a good value gun. But….I was so sure I was done buying guns.

Black Start

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An article from Yahoo about a state-sponsored data breach that may have handed over some interesting info to the Chinese/Russians.

“For example, it’s reportedly possible the hackers accessed Black Start, the detailed technical blueprints for how the U.S. would restore power if there was a major blackout. If that was indeed the case, Russia would theoretically have a list of systems it could target to keep power from turning back on.”

A government plan for restarting power generation? Interesting. Makes sense when you think about it…but I’d never thought about it before. Shades of “One Second After“. (WOrth reading, btw.)

As the saying goes, “it takes money to make money”. Apparently the same is true, to some degree, in power generation. As I read it, previous plans for restarting an offline power plant assume you’ll be able to have power from elsewhere where the grid is up. But, if the entire grid is down…well…you can’t start up your power plant if you can’t even turn on the lights in the control room.

The solution, it seems, is to either have enough capacity in your onsite generators to get the plant up and running, or get your electricity from a source that will continue to provide..such as hydropower.

What I find interesting here is that .gov had a planned response in place for a grid-down power plant restart procedure..and now that the playbook for that has fallen into enemy (and make no mistake about it, thats what the Chinese are) hands they know how to create that grid-down situation and disable our ability to get past it. All in all, to my unstrategic way of thinking, that seems to have just made the possibility of an attack of some kind on the national power system more likely.

Very cursory googling shows that apparently the current plan (or one of them) is RADICS.. Apparently the .gov has, in the last two years, stepped up it’s research into preparing against cyberattacks that target energy infrastructure. Interesting, that.

Remember the old days when targeting a nations energy infrastructure involved a B-52 instead of a laptop?

 

 

Blog roundup

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ETA: Guys, use your head….if youre going to mention a blog that you think other people would be interested in, don’t just say “You need to read Steve’s blog!”…post an actual link. C’mon……

Unfortunately the roster of blogs that are preparedness-related is constantly changing as blogs fall to the wayside…victims of lack of interest, lack of time,  or lack of hearbeats. My blog reading has taken a hit as some of my favorites have gone dark. Even though it is 404’d I still have Self Sufficient Mountain Living in my list of daily reads even though there hasn’t been a peep from its owner, publicly and privately, for a couple years now. But..he’d gone dark before and returned. I hope, I hope……

So, whats on the daily read? Here you go:

I’m always up for looking at new blogs. If you know a blog that might interest me, is frequently updated, has a low religious quotient, doesn’t have a tinfoil hat dress code, and is decently written….link a brother up. And tell ’em Commander Zero sentcha.