Category Archives: History

Article – Mussolini air raid shelter opens to tourists

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Seventy years old and it appears in better shape than many more recently made bomb shelters I’ve seen.

ROME (AP) — A Roman villa’s wine cellar, which was converted into an air raid shelter for Benito Mussolini and the Italian dictator’s family, is opening its anti-gas, double steel doors to tourists.

The shelter was quickly constructed in 1940, after the outbreak of World War II, in what had once been the wine cellar of a noble family who lived there before Mussolini took up residence during his Fascist rule.

Visitors at a preview Saturday saw the iron-rung ladder used for emergency exits and a rusting contraption to purify air in case of a gas attack. A label on the apparatus was dated November 1940 in Roman numerals, in keeping with Mussolini’s style of evoking the ancient Roman empire’s glory days as inspiration for his own rule.

I enjoy seeing these older shelters when they turn up. Part of the attraction is that many of them were quite effective but were built, necessarily, using materials and techniques of the time. With modern techniques, materials, and equipment you could build something better, faster, and probably cheaper. But if all you have is 1930’s technology you can still build something like that. I find that a bit reassuring.

Link – Guide to Military Survival Kits

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I thought this link was rather interesting. It’s educational to see how the contents of the kits, as well as the materials used, have changed over the years. It’s kind of hard to think that there are places in war zones where you could be stranded long enough that you’d have to worry about things like fishing for food, but then again sometimes you wind up stranded in wartime in some places where no one will ever find you.

Given the technology and materials available nowadays, I would think you could put together some amazingly compact and effective kits. Pencil flares, small radios, water purification…all that stuff has come a long ways.

Ranking the LMI, Fire fight, Medical Guide For Ships

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Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

Its Patriots’ Day! Get out there and make some noise!
I have a hot date with the Dillon 1050 and 1m .452″ 230 gr. TC bullets later this week.
Plenty of food, plenty of ammo….the upcoming years are going to be messy but we’re going to go through them with every advantage we can get.
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After I went to Rosauers the other day and confirmed that they were, in fact, selling large quantities of storage food in #10 cans I started calling all my LMI friends and acquaintances to inform them to get in on the action. As I thought about it later I realized that the order in which I called them, and those whom I thought ‘call immediately’ and ‘meh, I’ll call them later’ was a subconscious prioritizing and ranking of where they stood on the Friends Of Zero scale. The ones I felt closest to I called first, the ones I’m kind of ambivalent about I called much later (or haven’t called at all yet). In this way, I’ve had a rather eye-opening experience into the nature of my relationships with the people I hang out with. Kinda interesting.

Speaking of, I went back there today and there was significantly less food. One of the LMI told me that when he went to checkout the clerk said “Oh, another one!” and mentioned that the record for the day had been one person buying $800 worth of food. The fella at the supermarket I spoke with said that the stuff has been selling very well and he thinks it might become a regular item. I dont know if they appreciate the market for that kinda product. Once you spend your $800 on it, youre pretty much done for twenty years or twenty kilotons, whichever comes first. I picked up a couple more cans of scrambled egg mix. Me and a budding LMI (more about him in the next paragraph) joked that there was no way we were going through the apocalypse eating just rice and beans. Indeed, while rice and beans has been a staple of Third World countries I cannot for the life of me think why anyone would want to live like a Third World country when they dont have to.
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In the last few weeks a fella has been dropping by the shop once in a while to talk preparedness. He’s been into it on and off since Y2k but he has gotten back into it in a much bigger way as of late. I bounce ideas at him, give him my opinions (for whatever theyre worth), loan him books and sometimes make him a nice deal on preparedness stuff. We chitchat in that familiar and welcome way of people who have finally found people who ‘understand’ each other. Lets face it, many times when youre talking long term food, ammo, bunkers, ham radios and bugout bags to people youre going to get some seriously weird looks unless the person youre talking to is a like-minded individual. Anyway, he’s in a business that, like my own, has a certain utility amongst the LMI. One of the things he does is sell, recharge, test, etc. fire extinguishers.

Now, most of us have the small extinguishers you buy in a two-pack up at CostCo for $40. Nothing wrong with them, Im sure many a kitchen grease fire has met its powdery end at the hands of someone wielding one. But, sometimes you want something with a little more firepower. After all, when the wheels fly off civilization it won’t take a Ph. D in BTU’s to whip up fiery trouble with some gasoline and an empty bottle of Night Train. So, without getting into the realm of ‘not man-portable’, I got the fire extinguisher equivalent of “ten pounds a’ swingin’ cod” as a wise man once said.

Considering the plethora of electrical equipment thats running around here, this could be handy.

What I really want is a modern version of the old stirrup pumps used during the Blitz. There is a modern version out there, but Im having a hell of a time finding a US supplier.
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An interesting .pdf came across my monitor the other day. International Medical Guide For Ships. The ’ships medicine chest’ at the end is pretty illuminating and would probably go quite well with the appendices in ‘Where There Is No Doctor’.

Patriots’ Day

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Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

Ah, ’tis Patriots’ Day. Note that is Patriots with an ’s’, not to be confused with the faux holiday, Patriot Day.  Succinctly, the day marks the beginning of the American Revolutionary War where ‘beginning’ is determined by when the first shots officially flew. The day is always met in two ways with me – first, rumination and reflection of the events and people involved and secondly, a trip to the range.

How important a holiday is it? Well for almost 20 years now April 19th is a red letter day at Federal law enforcement levels…heightened awareness is the rule of the day since those of us that mark the holiday get labeled with some unflattering descriptions like ‘possible threat’, ‘domestic terrorist’ and my personal favorite ‘anti-government extremist’.

Come to think of it, this nation was founded by ‘anti-government extremists’ and ‘possible threats’. And, according to Joe Biden, this nation was founded by unpatriotic types….because, as Biden says, “paying taxes is patriotic”.

Its a glorious holiday with somber notes as well as celebratory ones.  Like any war remembrance its easy to overlook the loss and suffering that occurred. Some fella kissed his wife goodbye, risked losing his farm and his family as well as his own life, and marched with lousy equipment for minimal pay because of his ideals. Everyone talks about ‘taking a stand’ and ‘opposing tyranny’ but it seems no one ever does…at least, not in that sense. As an interesting exercise, think about what it would take for you to quit your job, walk away from your home, push your family away, and join an insurgent group that has no guarantee of winning and a high probability of putting your neck in a noose.  Interesting stuff.

Anyway, I’ll be at the range today with some form of ‘assault rifle’ practicing and shooting. I recommend, as I do every year at this time, that you do the same.

Patriots Day

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Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

April 19th is the traditional Patriot’s Day. In some states it is celebrated as such, in some it goes under a different name, and in far too many locales it goes by completely unobserved.

I always try to spend Patriot’s Day at the range, since I think the holiday is best marked by gunfire or firworks reminiscent of gunfire. I also tend to contemplate (more than I usually do) the roled .gov should or should not have, and the powers it should and should not have. I should probably incorporate reading some Heinlein or Rand into the holiday as well but usually im too busy cleaning guns at the end of the day.

Regardless, it is my hope that you’ll mark the holiday and even research it a little.