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Who said 2021 was going to be better than 2020?

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Finals week, thats why.

So how are things going in the soon-to-be land o’ Biden? One thing I was confident of, a huge slump in the market, failed to materialize (yet) so I’m 0 for 1 on that one. In fact, the market is pretty close to what it was at the beginning of the year, meaning that if you didn’t take advantage of the freefall we had in March you might be kicking yourself now.

On the other hand, one thing I was right about is the continued demand for gun stuff and the resultant shortages (and pricing). Earlier this year I had the opportunity to buy bulk CCI 9mm ammo for $0.15/@ … and oh Crom, how I wish I had the foresight to get a pallet of that stuff. Easy doubling of money. Triple, even. But, if I could read the future Id be sitting on the several hundred thousand acre Rancho Ballistica enjoying the fruits of my prescience and planning (further) regional domination.

So whats going on these days? Well, the ‘easy’ stuff has been pretty much taken care of… basically any preparedness need that can be satisfied by Walmart or CostCo… has been. Whats left is the bigger, more complicated stuff – money in the bank, more metal, and other steps towards increasing my resilience. On top of that, though, I also have to do all the things for ‘normal life’ in case the world doesn’t come to an end. (Although at this stage..hey…what’re the odds? Y’know?)

Everyone seems to have an attitude of “OMG, I can’t wait for 2020 to be over.” But it does not seem to have occurred to them that there is no promise that 2021 is going to be better, in fact, 2021 may be worse. Perhaps even a lot worse. Just because the odometer on 2020 is rolling over doesn’t mean you’re out of the woods. It ain’t over until its over..and even then it isn’t over. If you’re thinking about letting your foot off the gas because, whew, we made it thoguh 2020…you’re being foolishly short-sighted.

2021 is still going to have the strong flavor of 2020, but with a few new notes. I’ve got some personal milestones coming up in 2021 so even if the Shanghai Shivers gets under control I still have a tumultuous year to look forward to. So…I keep doing what i’ve been doing – be smart, be careful, plan ahead, weigh options, act strategically. Might be worth doing the same for you.

The TP hoarding returns

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I got a text message yesterday from someone I know who wanted to let me know that the local CostCo was out of paper products.

:::dramatic music::::

Apparently the TP hoarding cycle has begun anew. I find that interesting because didnt everyone buy a lifetime supply of TP back in March? I’m guessing the current wave is from people who didn’t hoard in March, got left out, and are now stacking it in their basements going “Remember when we couldn’t find any in March? Well, not this time!”

I’ve heard this music before, ain’t gonna dance to it.

I’ve been (mostly) diligently shopping and laying back stuff since March. Other than my current magazine buying frenzy, I’m not seeing a need for me to do anything differently. Hopefully you don’t either.

Hows that magazine buying thing going, you may ask? FedEx just dropped another case of Magpul Glock mags at the door so….pretty well, actually.

Lucky

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So as you know, the Preponomicon has a list of everything I’ve deemed worth keeping track of…mostly consumables – food, ammo, cleaning supplies, toiletries, etc. It lists what I have as well as what i need. So, literally the easiest thing for me to do is go down my grocery list of things to stockpile, order them up for pickup on WalMarts website, and just get it all done at once. So I did that. Scheduled a time to go there and pick it up and I got an email a few hours later saying, sorry, due to [whatever reason] they had to cancel the order but I could try reordering for a different day…and by the way here’s an online coupon for the inconvenience. Nice. So, tomorrow I’m picking up a stash of canned vegetables, coffee, and a few other things and when it’s all done I’ll have saved 50%. Lucky.

Say what you will about WalMart, it is pretty convenient for my preparedness needs. If I want to spend, say, $50 on items that are needed I can just run down my list, add it all to cart, and head down there to pick it up as they carry it out to my vehicle. No muss, no fuss.

What with this endless ‘second wave’ or ‘surge’ of Kung Flu cases (although, I wonder, are they really surging? Because I can very clearly see the definition of ‘new cases’ being manipulated to suit the political needs of whomever dispenses the information) it seems that the panic buying of earler this year may come back in fits and starts. Makes no difference to me, I’ve always tried to keep my house stocked like its the end of the world.

So, a thumbs up for simply opening up an Excel spreadsheet on one monitor, and a browser tab for WalMart grocery on the other monitor. It literally makes stockpiling as easy as ordering a pizza. Which reminds me, frozen pizza was a scarce item during the earlier panic buying…gotta add that to the list.

Newer normal

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Once an event or action has taken place that affects you, it’s usually too late to undo it. All you can do from that point forward is mitigate the consequences. The previous paradigm of election outcomes was that whichever side lost wold sulk around and say “Yeah, we’ll see what happens in four years”. Nowadays? I think it’s going to be different.

All those people who burn buildings, overturn cars, break windows, trash police cars, and block traffic? They feel vindicated. They look at the election results and are convinced that their ‘tactics’ worked. The result? Going forward, I expect that every time theres a political choice to be made that is a little polarizing you’re going to see an uptick in violence and ‘civil unrest’ accompanying it. Why? Because the people who perpetrate that sort of thing are now convinced that ‘it works’.

I’m never happy when something I believe in gets shot down at the polls, but I take it like a man. I grumble, I fume, and then I move forward and deal with the consequences. I don’t hunt down supporters of the other side, I don’t burn their businesses, and I don’t threaten their families. But I think that sort of thing is going to become more and more common in future elections.

Mitigation? Well, as Theo. Roosevelt once said in regards to the tactics of the anarachists of the day, “”There is but one answer to be made to the dynamite bomb and that can best be made by the Winchester rifle.” (As an aside, I would totally buy an M4gery made by Winchester.) But I suppose in the future we’ll have to add Election Day (and the weeks leading up to it) as one of those ‘heightened alert’ times. It’s a shame too…I remember when watching election violence with mobs, burnings, and violence was the sort of thing that happened in Third World banana republics.

I guess ‘election related violence’ gets added to the list of ‘Apocalypses That People Prepare For’, right up there with Peak Oil, Planet X, the UN Invasion, and that sort of thing.

 

Quiet day

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One thing I like about winter – when it’s cold and unpleasant outside, it is the perfect time to hang out in the basement organizing supplies and going over the reassuring stash of food, meds, tools, ammo, and other goodies that make life a lot easier when the wheels fly off.

Thanksgiving is in two weeks. I need to check the freezer and see if i have any turkey left over from last years post-Thanksgiving sales. And, of course, Black Friday Friday Of Color sales will ge up in a few weeks. I suspect that this years sales will be rather lackluster since anyone in a field that is even remotely gun-related doesn’t need a sale to get merchandise moving out the door. Still, I’ll keep my eyes open,.

2021 approaches and it’s going to be an interesting year. Not in a good way, I suspect. But…I’m all about resilience. Just keep adding layers and layers of options, backups, and alternatives.

Oh, and while rummaging through the stored food I found some canned goods of rather advanced age that I’m thinking I might have to test out ‘for science’. We’ll see how that goes.

In for a penny, in for a kidney

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Remember I said “I have a ‘favorites’ list at one of my vendors websites. Its a list of things I want to buy when they eventually become ‘in stock’. I check that list several times a day. As of late, I have noticed that around 2-3am they are adding stock to their online inventory and it sells out almost instantly. But…sometimes I sneak one past the goalie and get lucky.“?

So…this happened:

:::sigh::: I don’t know whats worse…my trying to time the market, or my trying to time the magazine market. (Although to be fair…I did really, really well in the market this year.)

Two hundred more for the Deep Sleep. No, I will not sell you any, don’t ask. Normally I’d say go hit your local FFL and have them contact RSR and order them but I’m fairly confident these will sell out in the next 24 hours.

Edited to add:

Did I just spend a buttload of money that I didn’t need to spend? My neighbor thinks so. We were talking and I mentioned that I foresaw a magazine ban on the horizon. My neighbor, a learned man and retired military officer (though a Biden supporting Democrat) said that a magazine ban had been ruled unconstitutional. He was, of course, referring to the Ninth Circus Circuits decision earlier this year that struck down Californias magazine ban as unconstitutional. (And, yes, who would have seen that coming from the Ninth?) So, as I understand it, states within that Ninth district should be free from any onerous magazine capacity ban (on a state level. Federal level is a different story. Federal law usually supersedes state law. We kinda had a war about that). But on a federal level it is still an undecided thing. Same for states outside the Ninth. Is California going to appeal it to the Supreme Court? If they do, I hope that the legacy Trump has created there would smack any ban down without even blinking. I suspect California knows that and might not be willing to push the issue further, but rather bide(n) their time for a leftist court-stacking as opposed to risking creating a nationwide precedent that they really don’t want. In short, they might be content to live with a ‘maybe’ instead of pushing the issue and getting a ‘no’.

So, back to the question at hand… should I be spending money on magazines like this when there might be enough legal juice out there to preclude another magazine ban? I really don’t know. Historically, .gov does what it wants and when it gets smacked down on constitutionality it takes some time. California’s mag ban, for example, has been around for decades and only now is it finally getting threatened. Additionally, there are probably several ‘loopholes’ that .gov (state or federal) could exploit to give a de facto ban. Registration of magazines with high registration fees, expensive enhanced background checks….basically a tedious and discouraging NFA-style process that doesn’t strictly limit your ability to own a magazine…it just makes you wanna throw up your hands and say ‘screw this’.

Note that we’re just talking about magazine bans in this case. The other elephant in the room, “assault weapons”, are a different story. My neighbor says that he does foresee that one coming. I agree with him on that one. But the magazine thing….hmmm… I hope it winds up going to the Supremes and gets decided in my favor but until it does I have to operate on the assumption that a magazine ban could stand. So….I wish I didnt have to spend this money on magazines, but I’m not sorry I did.

Book – The Dog Stars

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A month or so back a generous reader sent me a book off Amazon. Specifically: here

I’ll tell you right off the bat, if you’re a fan of action-packed post-apocalyptic fiction that’s pretty much one gun battle after another with no real attention to character motivation and development….you’re not gonna like this book at all. And, admittedly, the style of writing can be very detracting with it’s first-person stream-of-consciousness style. But…if you get past that, its a good story (in my opinion). Succinctly, it’s about a guy who survives a kills-99%-of-everyone plague and is living quietly at an abandoned airport, flying his plane, fishing with his dog, and dealing with the tremendous grief and loneliness that comes from all the loss he has experienced. Eventually the opportunity arises to not be alone anymore but the risks are high..emotionally and physically. A lot of people will say this isn’t a very enjoyable read because all it talks about it feelings, loss, pain, hope, and questioning. Fair enough…but thats going to be part of living through an apocalypse as well.

It was a difficult read, what with its sometimes-disjointed style, but it was relatable in terms of the character’s sense of grief, loss, and ennui. Its an interesting take about an aspect of post-apocalypse fiction that I have seldom seen explored in this much detail.

Anyway, I’d like to thank the generous person who sent me the book and if you have any other recommendations, please share them.

And, as long as we’re on the subject of gifties… if you’ve found this blog entertaining or otherwise worthy of your time, I invite you to kick in towards it… everything received goes towards bandwidth and laying the foundation for a post-apocalyptic empire that will provide a safe refuge for morally-challenged-but-creatively-fun coeds.

 

Just In Time II

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I have a ‘favorites’ list at one of my vendors websites. Its a list of things I want to buy when they eventually become ‘in stock’. I check that list several times a day. As of late, I have noticed that around 2-3am they are adding stock to their online inventory and it sells out almost instantly. But…sometimes I sneak one past the goalie and get lucky. Case in point:

When the inventory said they had a bunch of the Magpul Glock 27-rd 9mm mags on hand I didn’t even think about it – send ’em all. I’ve now got a big ammo can of these sitting in the Deep Sleep. And I have enough left over for my own personal needs, and a bunch to sell to hapless panic buyers that will, ideally, pay for the whole shebang.

MH shelf life

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‘Twas ‘generator day’ yesterday. Pulled the EU2000 outta storage, fired it up, plugged in the leaf blower, and spent an hour blowing leaves around. I try to run the generator every month but I’ve been a tad remiss about it.

Good thing I did it though, because I woke up this morning to a few inches of snow which means it’s less about leaf blowing and more about snow blowing today. (That’s a lot of blowing, I tell ya).

I’m trying very hard not to make every single post related to a) the election and b) guns. But, man, it’s tough. So, let’s just keep on keeping on with some of the things that have been going around here before this election.

Mountain House has been floating a survey around asking peoples opinions about lowering the shelf life on some of their products. Sounds like MH is going to become the New Coke of survival food. The reasoning, I suspect, is that if they offer ‘tiers’ of shelf life (Product line A is 15 year, Product line B is 30 year) it may open up pricing, packaging, and content opportunities that they can’t do with their present life span. I, of course, think this is a fabulously fatal idea. I’ve spent 40 years thinking of MH as the 800-pound gorilla of the ‘survival food’ industry and that was all predicated on their long shelf life. Of course, getting nay of the #10 cans out of MH is a bit of a fools errand right now. Fortunately, I covered that base years ago.

It’s interesting, come to think of it, that it’s only been in this year that I’ve had so many moments of ‘glad I stockpiled those…’ in regards to things.

Mitigation

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Nothing really changes until January 20 so think of it like getting three months warning that a meteor is going to hit the planet, or that a Category 12 hurricane is going to hit. You’ve got three months to try and get whatever it is that you think you won’t be able to get later down the line.

The nice thing about being a pessimist is that, worst case, things go exactly as you planned for. Thus, for me, I really don’t need to do anything…I’m just gilding the lily at this point.

As Kosh said, once the avalanche has started it is too late for the pebbles to vote. Or, to carry it in a different direction, you can’t change the fact that the meteor is going to hit in three months…what you can do is prepare for the consequences of that hit. In other words, stop bellyaching about the election and refocus on mitigating the results of it. While you’re frantically and self-righteously pounding your keyboard about election fraud, watermarked ballots, and more-votes-than-voters, the people who have moved past that are scooping up the things that you should be buying while you still can.

Predictions? Same as I’ve been saying since pretty much I turned on the lights and flipped the OPEN sign on this blog: mags, ARs, mags, ammo, mags, armour, mags, cryptogrpahy, mags, radio gear, mags, paperless guns, mags. I’ve also predicted that the markets are going to tumble on a Biden win…we’ll see how Monday goes.

Honestly, you should already have been at a point of resiliency in your life where the victor in this contest would have been irrelevant to you. Money in the bank, metals in the safe, guns on the wall, food in the basement, no debt in sight, ammo on the shelf, fuel in the tank, meds in the cabinet… you get all that squared away and it really won’t matter who wins the election.

Basement goals