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

Its pretty easy to get too wrapped up in firearms when youre talking about ’survivalism’/’preparedness’. In fact, the usual image people have of anyone who calls themselves a survivalist is some misanthrope in camouflage carrying a rifle and looking like a refugee from Beirut. At the same time, you cant really exclude firearms from your plans since you need to a) be able to protect yourself and your gear from predation and b) you might need to put meat on the table using a firearm. I mention this because since Im going to be talking about guns in this post I dont want to give the impression that Im that sterotyped image.

Anyway…

Took the AK out for a spin the other day and I continue to be impressed with it. Sure, we all know Kalishnikov’s gun is the benchmark for reliability and we shouldnt be surprised that it simply does. not. fail. But, still, I am constantly impressed with it. Ive had the Chinese AK knockoffs and they were reliable and all but this Bulgarian AK is just wonderful. Its gotten to the point that if I had to grab a rifle and a bag full of magazines in a mad dash out the door, Im not sure if Id take the AK or my AR. However, heres some interesting comparisons on the Ak/AR in terms of money. Obviously, other factors should be considered (magazine/ammo availability) if one were to choos between the two, but just from an economic standpoint:

Magazine, 30-rd – ($15$20~) AR —– ($14.95 or $9.95 if you buy 10)
Ammo – .223 55 FMJ S&B brand, $179.90/1000 ($0.18 @) —– 7.62×39 FMJ, $84.50/1000 ($0.09@)

(Prices do not reflect shipping, prices from Shotgun News 8/1/2004)

So AK ammo is half the price, mags are about half the price in quantity, and the gun is as reliable as a rock. Tradeoffs? Well, the .223 ammo is more common (as are the mags). “But Commander”, I hear you cry, “Since ammo is so cheap I’ll just stockpile 10,000 rounds and availability will no longer be an issue, right?” Wrong. Heres why: You can, for whatever reason, find yourself away from your stack of 7.62×39 (house catches fire, youre caught at work, house is robbed, whatever) and you have to use whatever ammo you can find. Assuming its a TEOTWAWKI sort of day, therell be cops, military, and Nat’l Guard running around and theyre all gonna be carrying .223 and magazines. You can strip them off the dead or trade amongst the living. (At this point, someone will say ‘No cop or NG is going to give ammo out to civillians’…and thats true. But if you strip some ammo out of a wrecked cop car, overturned humvee or off of a dead NG its going to be .223. So at least you always have that option)

Naturally, theres an ‘on the other hand’……… SKS rifles are so cheap, and AK’s are cheap compared to AR’s, that theres alot of guns and ammo out there in 7.62×39 in civillian hands. If you have to trade with Billy Joe Pickuptruck down at the creek, he’s more likely to have 7.62×39 than .223 since he’s more likely to be carrying an AK/SKS rather than an AR.

Me, Im playing it safe…I have both.

Another thing I like about the 7.62×39 is the ammo is packed in steel cans. A nice touch. Paint ‘em with roofing tar and they’ll keep in any environment for a long, long time. A tin of 800 rounds or so is the size of a shoebox and easily tucks away in a closet, truck box, or under a doghouse.

There are other factors I have to think about as well..the AR tends to surpass the AK in accuracy but at the same time I think that if youre going to have to do any shooting its going to be at ranges so short that accuracy is going to be fairly even between the two. That is to say, in the semi-urban environment Im currently in youre shooting across a street, down an alley, etc….ranges that the AK and AR are plenty accurate enough for. In the longer distances (200 yards+) Id say the nod is to the AR for accuracy. Then again, out to 300 yards or so I’d probably rather use the .308 bolt gun.
===============
In less dramatic news, my tomatoes have started to produce itty bitty tomatoes. I am pleased. I grew these plants from seed and am looking forward to having a shelf in basement lined with shiny Ball canning jars full of ripe, red Roma tomatoes and spaghetti sauce. I’ve got the pressure canner sitting at home just waiting. One of the things I need to do is head up to WalMart and pick up a few cases of quart jars and lids/bands. The idea of growing your own food and preserving it for future consumption has a very liberating feel to it. One of the things I need to do is pick up some non-hybrid/heirloom seeds for my tomatoes (as well as other vegetables) so that I can use the seeds from one plant for the next year. Also need to build a nice, lightproof cabinet in the basement to keep the jars of canned food in.

Its pretty easy to get too wrapped up in firearms when youre talking about ‘survivalism’/’preparedness’. In fact, the usual image people have of anyone who calls themselves a survivalist is some misanthrope in camouflage carrying a rifle and looking like a refugee from Beirut. At the same time, you cant really exclude firearms from your plans since you need to a) be able to protect yourself and your gear from predation and b) you might need to put meat on the table using a firearm. I mention this because since Im going to be talking about guns in this post I dont want to give the impression that Im that sterotyped image.

Anyway…

Took the AK out for a spin the other day and I continue to be impressed with it. Sure, we all know Kalishnikov’s gun is the benchmark for reliability and we shouldnt be surprised that it simple does. not. But, still, I am constantly impressed with it. Ive had the Chinese AK knockoffs and they were reliable and all but this Bulgarian AK is just wonderful. Its gotten to the point that if I had to grab a rifle and a bag full of magazines in a mad dash out the door, Im not sure if Id take the AK or my AR. However, heres some interesting comparisons on the Ak/AR in terms of money. Obviously, other factors should be considered (magazine/ammo availability) if one were to choos between the two, but just from an economic standpoint:

Magazine, 30-rd – ($15$20~) AR —– ($14.95 or $9.95 if you buy 10)
Ammo – .223 55 FMJ S&B brand, $179.90/1000 ($0.18 @) —– 7.62×39 FMJ, $84.50/1000 ($0.09@)

(Prices do not reflect shipping, prices from Shotgun News 8/1/2004)

So AK ammo is half the price, mags are about half the price in quantity, and the gun is as reliable as a rock. Tradeoffs? Well, the .223 ammo is more common (as are the mags). “But Commander”, I hear you cry, “Since ammo is so cheap I’ll just stockpile 10,000 rounds and availability will no longer be an issue, right?” Wrong. Heres why: You can, for whatever reason, find yourself away from your stack of 7.62×39 (house catches fire, youre caught at work, house is robbed, whatever) and you have to use whatever ammo you can find. Assuming its a TEOTWAWKI sort of day, therell be cops, military, and Nat’l Guard running around and theyre all gonna be carrying .223 and magazines. You can strip them off the dead or trade amongst the living. (At this point, someone will say ‘No cop or NG is going to give ammo out to civillians’…and thats true. But if you strip some ammo out of a wrecked cop car, overturned humvee or off of a dead NG its going to be .223. So at least you always have that option)

Naturally, theres an ‘on the other hand’……… SKS rifles are so cheap, and AK’s are cheap compared to AR’s, that theres alot of guns and ammo out there in 7.62×39 in civillian hands. If you have to trade with Billy Joe Pickuptruck down at the creek, he’s more likely to have 7.62×39 than .223 since he’s more likely to be carrying an AK/SKS rather than an AR.

Me, Im playing it safe…I have both.

Another thing I like about the 7.62×39 is the ammo is packed in steel cans. A nice touch.  Paint ’em with roofing tar and they’ll keep in any environment for a long, long time. A tin of 800 rounds or so is the size of a shoebox and easily tucks away in a closet, truck box, or under a doghouse.

There are other factors I have to think about as well..the AR tends to surpass the AK in accuracy but at the same time I think that if youre going to have to do any shooting its going to be at ranges so short that accuracy is going to be fairly even between the two. That is to say, in the semi-urban environment Im currently in youre shooting across a street, down an alley, etc….ranges that the AK and AR are plenty accurate enough for. In the longer distances (200 yards+) Id say the nod is to the AR for accuracy. Then again, out to 300 yards or so I’d probably rather use the .308 bolt gun.
===============
In less dramatic news, my tomatoes have started to produce itty bitty tomatoes. I am pleased. I grew these plants from seed and am looking forward to having a shelf in basement lined with shiny Ball canning jars full of ripe, red Roma tomatoes and spaghetti sauce. I’ve got the pressure canner sitting at home just waiting. One of the things I need to do is head up to WalMart and pick up a few cases of quart jars and lids/bands. The idea of growing your own food and preserving it for future consumption has a very liberating feel to it. One of the things I need to do is pick up some non-hybrid/heirloom seeds for my tomatoes (as well as other vegetables) so that I can use the seeds from one plant for the next year. Also need to build a nice, lightproof cabinet in the basement to keep the jars of canned food in.

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

Tom Ridge, our old buddy at Fatherland Security, is making noises that he may walk after the election because he needs more money than his $175k/year gig at Fatherland produces.

Okay, first of all, and I freely admit I never met the man, I think he’s about as useful as a hibachi on a submarine. This man’s public persona is limited to a Crayola-inspired warning system and pimping duct tape and plastic sheeting. Now, Im sure he’s doing alot behind the scenes that you and I will never know about but this smacks of pre-emptive CYA. How so? The election is coming up and we *know* theres gonna be a terrorist incident of some kind…exactly the sort of thing Ridge’s Raiders are s’posed to prevent. So Tommy makes noises about leaving *now* so that when terrorists machine gun a busload of delegates and the spotlight gets shined on Ridge he can say “Well, I was planning to leave anyway”.

This Orwellian habit of naming things so innocuously (Patriot Act, Homeland Security, free-speech zone, etc) has got to stop. Theres exactly one free-speech zone in this country and its bordered by the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
=================
Its coming. You know its gonna happen. You’ve had that ’somethings wrong’ feeling for a while now but you dont know what it is. Lemme tell you you what it is. Its your subconcscious. While youre in your cubicle surfing porn, eating take out, driving home, reading the paper, watching tv your subconscious picks up a thousand different clues that you dont even notice. ‘Hey, there was never a cop stationed at that subway platform before’, ‘Hmmm…I dont remember there being concrete barricades outside City Hall before’, ‘I wonder when the fire department got those cool spacesuits’, etc. You dont notice it but your subconscious does…and thats where that vague undefined sense of unease is coming from. Each little clue to the upcoming Interesting Times is seemingly insignificant by itself..but two hundred of them add up to a ‘hey, maybe I should worry about this’. Solution: be ready.
=================
Product pimping: “Charmin To Go” Yes, the Zero is talking about ‘bathroom tissue’. This is a roll of Charmin toilet paper that is in a plastic cylindircal tube, has no hollow cardboard tube, and the protective plastic tube its in acts as a dispenser. 210″x4.5″ – 55 normal sized sheets. Less space than a usual roll, better than using the little packets of Kleenex, and alot easier to pack in a 72-hour kit. No, I will not be evaluating it and posting a report. Its toilet paper – if you dont know how it works, stay the hell out of my kitchen.

Tom Ridge, our old buddy at Fatherland Security, is making noises that he may walk after the election because he needs more money than his $175k/year gig at Fatherland produces.

Okay, first of all, and I freely admit I never met the man, I think he’s about as useful as a hibachi on a submarine. This man’s public persona is limited to a Crayola-inspired warning system and pimping duct tape and plastic sheeting. Now, Im sure he’s doing alot behind the scenes that you and I will never know about but this smacks of pre-emptive CYA. How so? The election is coming up and we *know* theres gonna be a terrorist incident of some kind…exactly the sort of thing Ridge’s Raiders are s’posed to prevent. So Tommy makes noises about leaving *now* so that when terrorists machine gun a busload of delegates and the spotlight gets shined on Ridge he can say “Well, I was planning to leave anyway”.

This Orwellian habit of naming things so innocuously (Patriot Act, Homeland Security, free-speech zone, etc) has got to stop. Theres exactly one free-speech zone in this country and its bordered by the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
=================
Its coming. You know its gonna happen. You’ve had that ‘somethings wrong’ feeling for a while now but you dont know what it is. Lemme tell you you what it is. Its your subconcscious. While youre in your cubicle surfing porn, eating take out, driving home, reading the paper, watching tv your subconscious picks up a thousand different clues that you dont even notice. ‘Hey, there was never a cop stationed at that subway platform before’, ‘Hmmm…I dont remember there being concrete barricades outside City Hall before’, ‘I wonder when the fire department got those cool spacesuits’, etc. You dont notice it but your subconscious does…and thats where that vague undefined sense of unease is coming from. Each little clue to the upcoming Interesting Times is seemingly insignificant by itself..but two hundred of them add up to a ‘hey, maybe I should worry about this’. Solution: be ready.
=================
Product pimping: “Charmin To Go” Yes, the Zero is talking about ‘bathroom tissue’. This is a roll of Charmin toilet paper that is in a plastic cylindircal tube, has no hollow cardboard tube, and the protective plastic tube its in acts as a dispenser. 210″x4.5″ – 55 normal sized sheets. Less space than a usual roll, better than using the little packets of Kleenex, and alot easier to pack in a 72-hour kit. No, I will not be evaluating it and posting a report. Its toilet paper – if you dont know how it works, stay the hell out of my kitchen.

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

Hmmm….received a package today that I wasnt expecting. A book about the history of the Romanovs. No idea why it was sent to me. Didnt recognize the name on the return adress either. Anyone wanna shed some light on this?

Hmmm….received a package today that I wasnt expecting. A book about the history of the Romanovs. No idea why it was sent to me. Didnt recognize the name on the return adress either. Anyone wanna shed some light on this?

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

Bleah..I dont know what the hell I breathed in but it sure makes ones throat rough.

Anyway…..

Sitting here in the shop minding my own business when theres the sound of screeching brakes and the thud of metal. I look out the window and some guy in a truck t-boned a woman in a car. The woman, having had her bell rung quite nicely, continues to try to drive, with her drivers side door crumpled into her lap. Being the Zero, I grabbed the first-aid kit out of the bathroom and bolted. A pedestrian was running alongside the vehicle yelling at the woman to hit the brakes but she wasnt quite coherent. He grabbed the wheel and the car crept to the curb and stopped. I skidded to a halt and took a look. She was an obese woman who was sitting there with what looked like a small cut on her temple and no other signs of trouble. I pulled out a trauma dressing and gently held it to her head and had her hold it there. Went around to the passenger side of the car and opened the door and checked to make sure her feet/legs werent pinned or broken. About this time the usual cellphone activity starts from bystanders. Theres various fluids leaking from the car and one of them must have been noxious because im still coughing. The Human Brakepad, who had steered the car into the curb, reached in and pulled the keys since this gal was still trying to drive. After about four minutes the first ambulance arrives. The guy comes over and asks what happened. I tell him all I know is that she’s ‘out of it’, has a nice cut on her forehead, doesnt appear to be pinned, and that sort of thing. Fire trucks and tow trucks eventually arrive and theyre out there know, as a matter of fact, cleaning up.

No idea what her story is. I usually dont hang around once the cars with revolving lights on the roof show up. Maybe therell be something about it in the paper tomorrow, maybe not. Minimal expenditure on my part in terms of equipment. I’ll grab a couple more dressings out of the bunker and replace the one I used in my first aid kit here at the shop.

Bleah..I dont know what the hell I breathed in but it sure makes ones throat rough.

Anyway…..

Sitting here in the shop minding my own business when theres the sound of screeching brakes and the thud of metal. I look out the window and some guy in a truck t-boned a woman in a car. The woman, having had her bell rung quite nicely, continues to try to drive, with her drivers side door crumpled into her lap. Being the Zero, I grabbed the first-aid kit out of the bathroom and bolted. A pedestrian was running alongside the vehicle yelling at the woman to hit the brakes but she wasnt quite coherent. He grabbed the wheel and the car crept to the curb and stopped. I skidded to a halt and took a look. She was an obese woman who was sitting there with what looked like a small cut on her temple and no other signs of trouble. I pulled out a trauma dressing and gently held it to her head and had her hold it there. Went around to the passenger side of the car and opened the door and checked to make sure her feet/legs werent pinned or broken. About this time the usual cellphone activity starts from bystanders. Theres various fluids leaking from the car and one of them must have been noxious because im still coughing. The Human Brakepad, who had steered the car into the curb, reached in and pulled the keys since this gal was still trying to drive. After about four minutes the first ambulance arrives. The guy comes over and asks what happened. I tell him all I know is that she’s ‘out of it’, has a nice cut on her forehead, doesnt appear to be pinned, and that sort of thing. Fire trucks and tow trucks eventually arrive and theyre out there know, as a matter of fact, cleaning up.

No idea what her story is. I usually dont hang around once the cars with revolving lights on the roof show up. Maybe therell be something about it in the paper tomorrow, maybe not. Minimal expenditure on my part in terms of equipment. I’ll grab a couple more dressings out of the bunker and replace the one I used in my first aid kit here at the shop.

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

For every person who sticks a jug of water and a carton of freeze-drieds into their basement, theres at least a hundred who dont. More disturbing, for every hundred who dont theres probably at least one who subscribes to the Mutually Assured Destruction theory. Thats the theory that says if you wear body armour it’ll promote violence because then you no longer risk being fatally shot. Imagine two guys in a room with a loaded pistol pointed at each others heads.. thats MAD. ‘Tis true…theres a school of thought that says if you take precautions to survive a nuclear war (Civil Defense) you are removing the motivation to prevent nuclear war. That is to say, if you could survive a nuclear war, you might actually engage in one…so remain vulnerable in order to keep your risk high. Yes, the arguement is that you prevent nuclear war by being vulnerable to it. Go figure.

For better or worse, this kind of thinking only surfaces rarely these days (usually in regard to ABM defense systems). Replace ‘nuclear war’ with ‘terrorist acts of mass destruction’ and you get the same concrete shelter but without the dose of liberal guilt.

One of my favorite authors, Dean Ing, wrote a book I picked up the other day called ‘The Chernobyl Syndrome’. Normally a sci-fi/drama author (”Systemic Shock’, ‘Pulling Through’, ‘Blood Of Eagles’, etc), this book is Ing’s little primer on preparing and surviving the upcoming Soviet/US nuclear war (ca. 1988). In it theres mention of an organization called Doctors for Disaster Preparedness….sort of an opposite version of Physicians For Social Responsibility, which, according to Ing, believed that a good way to prevent nuclear war was to not have a Civil Defense program.

Anyway, my curiousity piqued, I Yahoo’d DDP and found this link to DDP. Scroll down the left-hand menu to ‘Civil Defense’ and theres one or two interesting links. Esp. one about one of the doctors recommended list of shelter medical kit contents.

Its an interesting website and the links from there landed me here, which eventually dropped me into The American Civil Defense Assoociation website.…which begat this very nice page of links..esp the bottom links.

An interesting morning of browsing. Check em out.

For every person who sticks a jug of water and a carton of freeze-drieds into their basement, theres at least a hundred who dont. More disturbing, for every hundred who dont theres probably at least one who subscribes to the Mutually Assured Destruction theory. Thats the theory that says if you wear body armour it’ll promote violence because then you no longer risk being fatally shot. Imagine tow guys in a room with a loaded pistol pointed at each others heads.. thats MAD. ‘Tis true…theres a schoool of thought that says if you take precautions to survive a nuclear war (Civil Defense) you are removing the motivation to prevent nuclear war. That is to say, if you could survive a nuclear war, you might actually engage in one…so remain vulnerable in order to keep your risk high. Yes, the arguement is that you prevent nuclear war by being vulnerable to it. Go figure.

For better or worse, this kind of thinking only surfaces rarely these days (usually in regard to ABM defense systems). Replace ‘nuclear war’ with ‘terrorist acts of mass destruction’ and you get the same concrete shelter but without the dose of liberal guilt.

One of my favorite authors, Dean Ing, wrote a book I picked up the other day called ‘The Chernobyl Syndrome’. Normally a sci-fi/drama author (“Systemic Shock’, ‘Pulling Through’, ‘Blood Of Eagles’, etc), this book is Ing’s little primer on preparing and surviving the upcoming Soviet/US nuclear war (ca. 1988). In it theres mention of an organization called Doctors for Disaster Preparedness….sort of an opposite version of Physicians For Social Responsibility, which, according to Ing, believed that a good way to prevent nuclear war was to not have a Civil Defense program.

Anyway, my curiousity piqued, I Yahoo’d DDP and found this link to DDP. Scroll down the left-hand menu to ‘Civil Defense’ and theres one or two interesting links. Esp. one about one of the doctors recommended list of shelter medical kit contents.

Its an interesting website and the links from there landed me here, which eventually dropped me into  The American Civil Defense Assoociation website.…which begat this very nice page of links..esp the bottom links.

An interesting morning of browsing. Check em out.