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

Okay, finished “One Second After” this morning.

My impression is that its a grittier, darker version of “Alas, Babylon” with a bunch of “Lucifer’s Hammer” thrown in.

Did I find it entertaining? Yeah, I find these sorts of books entertaining most of the time.

Without being too spoilerish, its a book about a crippling EMP incident. I think that the infrastructure failure shown throughout the book is probably pretty accurate, although I am not sure I agree on the level and timeframe of .gov response to it.

A couple things I disagreed on were the timeframe in which things go severely downhill. Im the first to acknowledge that most Americans don’t have more than a weeks worth of food in their house at any given moment, but at the two-month mark in this book theres some pretty severe starvation going on. I think just by virture of Americans being overweight that the decreased rations situation wouldnt drop them into children-with-swollen-bellies  that fast.

One thing I found incredibly annoying in this book is the constant and unremitting ignorance (or lack of editting) displayed by the frequent use of “of” in place of “have”. For example, if you said “We would’ve starved” that is the same as “We would have straved”, correct? Yet throughout the book characters use the form “We would of starved”, or “He should of stayed home” or similar grammatical abortions.I found it distracting and rather irritating.

Someone in earlier comments said this book was compared to ,Rawles’ book. I suppose it compares in that both are post-apocalyptic but thats about the extent of it. ,Rawles’ book is his idea of how to survive the end of the world, presented in novel narrative….sort of an infomercial. This book is less a how-to and more of a cautionary tale. Its preface and introduction (as well as a short speech by the main character) lament that the .gov doesnt take the threat of EMP warfare seriously and that this could be the result. In that way its a ‘call to arms’ much the way ‘Alas Babylon’ was written to urge more emphasis on Civil Defense. (Its author, ‘Pat Frank’, was a big proponent of a strong Civil Defense program.)

So, lets cut to the chase….is it worth reading? I say yes. Is it entertaining? Yes. Realistic? I suppose…Im no expert on EMP but the infrastructure failure consequences portrayed in the book seem logical and believable. Is the book as enormously hopeless and depressing as “The Road”? Meh. Its got some depressing moments, to be sure, but if you look at the timeline that the story covers probably everyone reading this post would be just fine. I doubt anyone here doesn’t have enough food to get them through six months or so of empty grocery shelves. There are some interesting topics brought up in the book..one notable one is that the increased population density of the eastern US results in a lower food:person ratio than in the less populous western states. Theres almost no mention of how the western half of the US fares in this book but I’d bet money that in the western states things weren’t nearly as bad and Utah probably didnt have problems at all.

For me, the hallmark of good survivalist fiction is whether or not the book motivates me or otherwise affects my behavior in regards to being prepared. Using that as a barometer, then, yes, this book is a good read. When it was done I felt like hitting the WalMart and stocking up on more of everything.

As a side note, the book mentions, very briefly, ‘local survivalists’ that the townies think about taking/requisitioning supplies from. The idea is dismissed because the concern is that the family, the Franklins, would put up a rather costly firefigh, although it is also mentioned that the Franklins might prove useful for their knowledge and skills. Later in the book it mentions that the Franklins come down from the hills and help the townies with their improvised munitions that they are assembling to defend the town. Nice to know my collection of Ragnar Bensen books might come in handy some day.

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

Received a copy of “One Second After” today. So far, its pretty good and very reminiscent of “Alas, Babylon”.

I am always up for post-apocalyptic fiction. I’ll let you know how this one goes.

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

Know what gives me satisfaction? Seeing that the gallon jar I use to hold my ‘immediate use’ rice in is running low so I crack open the GammaSeal on one of my five gallon buckets and behold the joy, peace, and security that comes from seeing pounds and pounds of yummy rice…quietly waiting its turn to be consumed. I can pull a can of chicken broth out of storage, add a cup of rice, a can of crushed tomatoes, some remaindered bargain meat out of the freezer, a few select spices and have enough food to feed several people in hearty proportions. And I can do that anytime I want. All the ingredients are right here and will last for years. I genuinely never need to really worry about where the next meal is coming from.
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In addition to the fabulous deal on the G3 mags, a buddy and I picked up another 150 AR mags. The availability and pricing seems to be coming back to earth. In fact, I daresay that I think we are in a lull where now may be the time to buy such things. I think many people who wanted to stock up have and the demand has been somewhat sated. However, all it takes is one idiot shooting up a WalMart somewhere and the Attorney General getting on television saying that “reasonable restrictions on firearms need to be introduced” and the panic buying starts all over again. I’m seeing magazine and, to a lesser degree, ammo availability improve but reloading components, especially primers, are still in short supply. I did some assessment the other day of our own stock of primers and while we’re in good shape, we could always use more. However, forty bucks a brick is just freakin’ insane.
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Wen’t out shooting last weekend with some friends. One of the guns we shot was the Steyr AUG clone made by Microtech – the STG556. The AUG platform is interesting. Its biggest feature is that by being of the bullpup design you can have a 16″ barrel in a gun that is as short as legally possible. The gun features a piston gas system, plenty of rails, a forward handgrip, quick-change barrels and the ability to be made left-hand friendly. But how does it shoot? It shot well enough but being so used to ‘traditional’ (non-bullpup) rifles it takes some getting used to. It handles very, very nicely…holding and shooting an AR one-handed can be tricy..not for the STG556. We shot it at steel gongs so it was hard to gauge accuracy but it hit them every time. The gun I shot was mounted with an EOTech, which Im not sure I like, but overall I think if I spent more time with the gun I might like it more. Reliability was fine and it seemed a solid enough shooter.

Further shooting was done with AR’s and PTR-91 HKlones using .22 conversion kits. It was nice to practice shoot-n-move drills. At this point in time, even with the sometimes difficult availability of bulk Federal .22, the .22 conversion kits are absolutely worth whatever you pay for one.

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

Yay! More Mountain House!

,Rawles over at SurvivalBlog pointed out that Cheaper Than Dirt was selling used G3/HK91 mags for ninety-nine cents. Prior to this, the best price I’d found was from Lew Horton at around $1.50. So for less than a buck each, wouldn’t you have picked up 250 of them also?

Out of the 250 that I received, 20 were new in the wrapper, 23 were culled for dents of varying severity. I pulled any mag that has a dent that looked like it might even remotely cause a problem. In all likelihood, most of the dented mags are strictly cosmetic although theres at least three that are genuine ‘what the hell happened here” kind of dents. Two mags were pulled for having very bent baseplates. I figure this means theres about 15 or so mags that are gonna be scrapped for parts. That’s a reject rate of 6%. So the $0.99 per mag becomes closer to $1.05 once you factor in the rejects. Still, that’s mighty cheap for anything stamped “HK”.

Oldest mags were dated around 1965, newest around 1985. Various manufacturers with about ½ being HK. About 40% of the mags had rust on the baseplates but it was strictly cosmetic. It was about 60/40 in terms of blued/parkerized finishes…except for one mag that had the bluing turn to a very pronounced purple color. Go figure.

I am so very, very done with HK magazines that it isn’t even funny. At a buck each you can almost afford to just throw the magazine away when youre done. Or, put it another way, the magazine is cheaper than two rounds of the ammo it takes. How many mags does this give yours truly? Uhm…well, I guess I shouldn’t feel embarrassed about this..about 500. I have two PTR-91 rifles (at the moment..I might need one or two more.) so I think I can honestly say that the magazine needs for those guns is very handily met. I can keep fifty with each gun, fifty in storage for each gun, fifty offsite for each gun, fifty for range use for each gun, and fifty for caching for each gun. I can spread all the eggs among a number of baskets and each basket can hold enough to keep me well supplied indefinitely. So…no more HK91 mags! I am done. Finito. Finished.

Move on to picking up some more mag pouches and HK spare parts and we’ll be sitting pretty.

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

,Rawles over at SurvivalBlog pointed out that Cheaper Than Dirt was selling used G3/HK91 mags for ninety-nine cents. Prior to this, the best price I’d found was from Lew Horton at around $1.50. So for less than a buck each, wouldn’t you have picked up 250 of them also?

Out of the 250 that I received, 20 were new in the wrapper, 23 were culled for dents of varying severity. I pulled any mag that has a dent that looked like it might even remotely cause a problem. In all likelihood, most of the dented mags are strictly cosmetic although theres at least three that are genuine ‘what the hell happened here” kind of dents. Two mags were pulled for having very bent baseplates. I figure this means theres about 15 or so mags that are gonna be scrapped for parts. That’s a reject rate of 6%. So the $0.99 per mag becomes closer to $1.05 once you factor in the rejects. Still, that’s mighty cheap for anything stamped “HK”.

Oldest mags were dated around 1965, newest around 1985. Various manufacturers with about ½ being HK. About 40% of the mags had rust on the baseplates but it was strictly cosmetic. It was about 60/40 in terms of blued/parkerized finishes…except for one mag that had the bluing turn to a very pronounced purple color. Go figure.

I am so very, very done with HK magazines that it isn’t even funny. At a buck each you can almost afford to just throw the magazine away when youre done. Or, put it another way, the magazine is cheaper than two rounds of the ammo it takes. How many mags does this give yours truly? Uhm…well, I guess I shouldn’t feel embarrassed about this..about 500. I have two PTR-91 rifles (at the moment..I might need one or two more.) so I think I can honestly say that the magazine needs for those guns is very handily met. I can keep fifty with each gun, fifty in storage for each gun, fifty offsite for each gun, fifty for range use for each gun, and fifty for caching for each gun. I can spread all the eggs among a number of baskets and each basket can hold enough to keep me well supplied indefinitely. So…no more HK91 mags! I am done. Finito. Finished.

Move on to picking up some more mag pouches and HK spare parts and we’ll be sitting pretty.

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

Here’s an article for ya:

World Hunger Reaches The 1 Billion People Mark (I almost have a vision of the golden arches with a sign – “Over 1 Billion NOT Served”)

A highlight:

“Food security is one of our most critical peace and security issues of our time,” said Josette Sheeran of the World Food Program, another U.N. food agency based in Rome.

“A hungry world is a dangerous world,” she told reporters.

Hungry people are dangerous and desperate people.

There may be 1/6 of the world’s population being hungry but I guarantee you none of those billion live in this house.

I was visiting North Carolina the other week and other than the ungodly temperatures and humidity, it was practically a survivalist Disneyland – everyone was growing corn and vegetables, gardens were huge, growing seasons were long and in the coastal areas you could drag,hook, snag, net, gig and otherwise remove enough protein from the ocean to keep you darn well fed. Add to that a generous limit on their deer tags and you had some poeple who, unless things go very very wierd, are never going to be hungry.

However, as I said, the temperature and humidity were enough to dissuade me of any inkling that moving there would be a good idea. I’ve come to love Montana’s unpredictable, but usually bone-dry, weather…warts and all.

Still, for the price of a saltwater fishing license a fella good eat awfully well down there.

Getting back to the article linked above, notice the term ‘food security’.  The new buzzword is ‘food security’ – the securing of food supplies through government means. The Chinese are already doing this by leasing out large parts of Africa to grow food for their population. While the Germans started the dance with “liebensraum” it would not be surprising to see food (and possibly water) become a factor in some armed conflicts somewhere.

Desperate people do desperate things and nothing makes you more desperate than watching yourself or your loved ones starve to death. Head down to your local LDS cannery and score yourself some of the cheapest food insurance around.

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

Yes indeedy, there appears to be some sort of connectivity issue going on. Lotsa timeouts and failures to load. I’ve upgraded to the latest v. of WordPress but perhaps the problem is with Yahoos hosting. Give it a day or two and see if it fixes itself.

Meantime, someone pointed out to me that Cheaper Than Dirt has ninety-nine cent HK91 mags. If you were smart and bought a PTR-91 like I suggested, you’d have magazines cheaper than any other gun.

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

So every schmuck with a keyboard will tell you how to deal with the TSA when it comes time to slide the gun case across the counter and onto the conveyor belt at the airport. This is just such a post, but with a twist – theres some freaking hard-earned experience backing this stuff up. I’m assuming you know the basics. They are, briefly:
Unloaded gun in a locked airline-approved hard case
Make declaration at gun counter (”Hi. I need to declare unloaded firearms.”)
Receive declaration tags, sign ‘em, put them in (or with) case
Lock it up

Theres some minor variation in there but thats about 90% of it.

What I’ve learned is that no airport does it the same way as other airports, which is a bit odd since it should all be uniformly the same across the board. Allow me to give an example:
I get to the airport here in Montana. In my duffel is a locked Pelican case with a couple Glocks in it. I tell the chick behind the counter that “I need to declare unloaded firearms”. She gives me the orange tags to sign. I sign em, she countersigns, I open my duffel and put them with the gun case. I then take my duffel over to the x-ray machine where retards from the TSA ask if I have any guns or film in the duffel. I say yes and they do a double take since the answer 99.9% of the time is no. I tell ‘em theres unloaded guns in a locked case and theyre declared. They x-ray the luggage and their little software program beeps a couple times as it recognizes the outline of a couple G19’s. TSA goons open the bag (Im standing there and they ask me for the key) and I watch as they open the bag and confirm theres a gun case and declaration tag. I watch to make sure they lock the whole thing up again, it goes onto the conveyor and I head to the security screening area and then to my gate.

Fairly simple stuff, although when this was a free country it was alot easier.

Flash forward to checking guns through at the Minneapolis airport 6/11.

I do the declaration song and dance and an exceptionally rude and incompetent Delta/NWA employee gives me a declaration tag. For the sake of argument we’ll call this particular shining example of asshattery “S. Bradford”…after all, that was the name on the little man’s name tag.

I sign the declaration tag and stuff it with the luggage and prepare to drag my duffel to the x-ray machine. Bradford tells me to give him the bag and that it is to be put on the conveyor belt behind him and that Im not allowed to lock it. How many things are wrong with that sentence? Guns in luggage? That mofo gets locked and only the passenger has the key/combo…says so right there at the ticket counter in fine print. We ask Bradford if he’s sure this is the right way to go..normally we escort it to the x-ray machine so the TSA thugs operating it don’t sprout wood when they see guns in the luggage and think theyre about to become heroes. Bradford assures us, in an amazingly rude and patronizing way, that mere civillians like us don’t know the rules (cause, hey, we’ve only been travelling with guns for about 20 years) and he’s the expert. (An expert, by the way, who had to try six different check-in terminals to find where the declaration tags were kept…not exactly an old hand at this gun check-in thing, methinks.)

I say to the missus “We’re gonna see that bag again real soon.”

Duly chastised by S. “Respect mah authority” Bradford we go to our gate. And, exactly as I predicted, when we get there we get the “Will passenger [name] please report to the gate attendent.” I roll my eyes, I know exactly what this is about. Bradford’s inability to know how to do his job is about to make our trip alot more annoying.

We go to the counter and identify ourselves. Some tall NWA/Delta employee says to follow him please, theres a problem with our luggage. I said “Theres no problem. I know exactly whats wrong. We’ve got a buncha guns in our bag and the guy at the check-in messed up.” We quickly walk along the terminal to some unmarked doorway. Tallguy swipes a card through the reader and theres two suits standing there. TSA supervisors or somesuch. They say they need us to open the gun case for inspection. We’re whisked down a flight of stairs to what looks like a parking garage but is actually where all the luggage is transported to, by conveyor and chutes, for inspection and x-ray. I ask where the guys are who dont speak English and steal luggage. Theres a polite snicker. I then ask if this is where all the Northwest pilots hang out drinking between flights. Im told, no, thats in the bar upstairs. As we are ushered along we tell the guy that we tried to explain to Bradford that we needed to take the duffel to x-ray but noooooooooo he knew what was best. Polite small talk ensues. We’re asked if we are military. I say no, she’s a cop and I’m a talented amateur. We get to our destination – three TSA goons huddled around our Pelican case like its the ark of the covenant. I open the case, the inspect, I lock the case, I lock the duffel bag and we’re escorted back to the terminal. About a half dozen times, various TSA goons said “Its not your fault. You did everything right. Its the fault of whoever checked you guys in.” I helpfully volunteered it was S. Bradford and might they please go kick him in the nuts or something.

So. Let me tell you what I’ve learned. (And this was not my first rodeo as far as TSA thuggery goes.)

First – Obey the rules. If you don’t pack the goodies the way theyre supposed to be packed you have absolutely zero right to complain. Yeah, theyre absurd rules. Yeah, they protect no one. But if you wanna bring the hardware home you gotta pack it to their satisfaction. More importantly, if you want to be able to vindicate yourself against these morons you must be in the right.

Two – Make a note of the name of whomever checks your guns. Can’t stress this one enough. When we hand over our boarding passes and ID at the ticket counter we always make a note of the name of the person who gives us the declarations, signs them, and takes our bags. Always. Thats why I can say “S. Bradford” and not “some rude NWA scumbag”. You dont have to be obvious about it, but make damn sure you get their name and remember it. Tell it to your travelling companion in case one of you winds up in a cell and is incommunicado.

Three – Serious locks. Not the ‘TSA approved’ lock that they have a key for. Not the key that came with your Doskocil case. Get a six pack of keyed-alike Master locks. Lock the gun case. If the gun case goes in your bag, lock the bag too. If they give you crap about it gently remind them that the rules say guns go locked and that only the passenger has the key. They should know that…unless theyre S. Bradford of the Minneapolis terminal.

Four – Contingency plan for being detained. In this instance the gun case was in the missus’ name. If they were gonna slap the bracelets on anyone, it woulda been her. Me, I would have stood off to the side and watched them take her away. Why? Because if we’re both holding down a bench in the TSA lockup whose gonna act on our behalf? If you can swing it, make sure your traveling companion knows that one of you needs to stay on the outside to help the one on the inside.

Five – This is overkill but it beats sitting in a cell for six hours with your hands cuffed behind your back: get a declaration tag for each gun. The tag clearly says it is for declaring “Unloaded firearm(s)”. See that little (s) on the end there? That means that one tag covers all the guns in that one gun case…one or six, it covers them all in that one case. If it didnt why the optional plural? But play it safe and say you want one for each gun. The check-in clerk will say you only need one. Politely, but resolutely, say youve had problems in the past where someone insisted you needed one for each gun and youd really rather avoid that. If they refuse, when they give you the tag write something like “(4) guns per Bradford”…which is what I wrote since Bradford refused to hand over a couple extras.

Now, look, you dont have to be a dick about any of this. Be polite. These people have absolutely no motivation or reason to be nice to you. If you are a dick they can make your trip a major bummer very easily and with almost no cost to themselves. Youre in an airport with no real option for transportation and theyve been dealing with people all day. Smile. Be polite. Ask ‘em how their day is. But make sure you have enough information (like their names, etc.) to throw them under the bus if their screwup blows back onto you.

The last thing you need, especially now, is to have quality firearms confiscated and held for a few months while the poltroons at TSA/Fatherland Security arbitrarily decide if they want to return them to you or not.

Read the rules on flying with guns and know them so that when the S. Bradfords start making screwups that can put you in a cell you know how to deal with it. Serious stuff, gang.

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

Back from vacation.
Tired and grumpy but at least Im back with my bunker and goodies. I realize that the odds of the world ending during the week Im out of town are something like 1:52 but it still makes me feel better to be back with my goodies.

This is not to say that we travel unarmed. Or even lightly armed. Which brings me to tomorrows post that will likely get me added to yet another .gov watch list – a few choice words about experiences with the TSA (Motto: Making America safe one stripsearched grandmother at a time), an organization that needs a swift kick in their collective nuts.

Now, I would never threaten any member of such a fine upstanding group as Fatherland Security’s darlings, but history has shown some pretty ugly things happen to collaborators when the people under their heel finally get their day.