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

The missus signed us up for an intro to map-n-compass course at REI. I’m okay with a compass, although I love me some GPS. However, as you know, technology (esp. .gov controlled technology) is only good for as long as it works. So while I think the GPS and UTM system are the best things to hit land navigation in a hundred years I still try to maintain my proficiency with map and compass.

The course was, in my opinion, pretty lame. The problem wasn’t so much the material but rather that the instructor wasn’t really terribly talented as a teacher. He may have known his stuff, and I believe he did, but he was just not very good at presenting it and teaching it. He claimed to have an extensive military background, including time as a SERE instructor, and he seemed like someone who had a good bit of military experience. However, his teaching skills left a bit to be desired. He apparently does some adventure racing and orienteering recreationally on his own with some buddies and invited those in attendance to come along some time. That may have some potential.

Im the first to admit that Im a major ‘gear queer’ or ‘geardo’. The instructor, if he was to be believed, was a professional wood tick…spending a good deal of time in the sticks and a large chunk of that following his compass. His compass? Same as the one I use and same as the one I gave the wife to use – Silva Ranger. Only difference was that his had a paracord lanyard and mine had the one that came with the compass. For some reason I am always gratified when I discover that the equipment I use turns out to be the same stuff the hardcore guys use.

Anyway, the instructor made his way through the course and I could tell the missus was just getting more and more confused. Understandable since theres some parts of land nav that still confuse me. (Which is one of the reasons that every year or so I re-read my land nav books.) It was frustrating to me to sit through the class because I could see people looking confused and I knew that the problem wasn’t the material, the problem was the presentaition, and I wanted to re-explain what the guy was saying and hopefully get some understanding going on. But…it was his show and I wasn’t about to get involved.

Compass work isn’t that difficult. 80% of the time its just knowing what general direction youre going in or want to be going in. For example, the area I hunt in has a highway running west to east at its edge. The area I hunt is north of that highway. If I get lost I don’t really need to know an azimuth to the truck…I just need to know that if I go south I’ll hit my baseline (the highway) and Im not lost anymore. This is probably the most simple method of using a compass to keep from getting lost. Another example – about ten years ago I was coming back from a morning of hunting and the valley filled with fog. No problem, Id hunted there for may years and figured I’d have no problem knowing my way around. So Im walking back to the truck and suddenly I come to a stream that wasn’t there when I started that morning. I checked my compass and thought for sure that I had broken my compass because I was absolutely positive I was heading in the right direction. But the compass said I was off by 90-degrees. Turns out that the creek bordering my hunting area ran south to north. My course should have paralleled the creek but somehow I got turned 90-degrees and instead of walking along the creek, I wound up walking across it. At that point I had to believe that the compass was right, I was wrong, and alter my course accordingly. That’s the most simple form of land navigation with a compass…establish a baseline and stay on one side of it and know what general direction you have to go to get back to it. It can’t get much simpler than that. You may not get back to your point of origin (like your truck or gate) but you will wind up not being lost.

The trickier stuff..things like taking a bearing and following it…well, that’s a bit more work. About the only time I use that sort of skill is for trying to locate my previously-unkown position on a map. Shoot a bearing to a couple of landmarks, track it back, and try to find my position by intersecting a few of those bearings. It isn’t as precise as GPS but its usually enough to tell me where I am on the map with a usable degree of accuracy.

Reccommendations? A top quality compass..dont try to save a few bucks in this regard. Silva, Suunto and Brunton are the most common of the big names and although I am sure theyre all good, I usually go with the Silva or the Suunto.  Buy two..a simple, plain, less expensive one to carry as a backup secured to you with a lanyard or pouch and the more expensive one that you’ll use as your primary compass. If you take a tumble, lose your gear, or otherwise have a Bad Episode you can always fall back on your backup compass to at least show you the direction to your baseline. I like a compass with a sighting mirror, measuring scale, adjustment for declination, luminous points, protective cover, lanyard attachment and full 360-degree scale on the bezel. Plan on spending between $50 and $100…it’ll be worth it for the peace of mind a quality compass affords and it should last you at least twenty years if you take care of it and don’t abuse it. Newer compasses may have a UTM grid built onto them and those are handy to have. After the compass, buy a transparent UTM overlay that you can use with your maps. Make sure the overlay is scaled for the scale on your map (often 1:25000 or 1:24000). Pick up a good protractor while youre at it and use it to mark your maps for your local declination.

A compass can be a delicate piece of gear so treat it like you would a cellphone or iPod – keep it in a protective pouch or other place safe from impact, vibration, and damage. Use your head – a compass relies on sensitivity to magnetic fields. Don’t store your compass near metal objects. And especially don’t lay a map across the hood of your truck, place the compass on top and think youre going to get an accurate reading. Think, man!

GPS? Love ‘em. Buy a quality one and use lithium AA batteries in it. They won’t degrade over periods of inactivity like the other AA batts will. What does that mean? It means when you put your GPS away in the fall the batteries won’t be dead or nearly-dead when you pull the GPS outta the drawer the following summer. I normally use GPS when Im afield but always take a compass and establish simple baselines anyway…just in case.

Books? Best I’ve found for the beginner is Compass and Map Navigator: The Complete Guide to Staying Found. The classic text is Be Expert With map And Compass by Kjellstrom. To round out your knowledge base, get the military map reading text as well (FM 21-26 Map Reading is the one I have.)

Finally, there is no substitute for actually using the stupid thing. Head out to your local shopping mall when the parking lot is empty and go practice taking bearings and following them, navigating around obstacles, that sort of thing. Theory is no substitute for hands-on experience. If you really wanna go nuts and get some major experience and knowledge under your belt, take up orienteering and geocaching. Orienteering is great for learning map and compass skills while geocaching is excellent for familiarizing yourself with GPS (and its limitations) and the UTM system of map coordinates.

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

I need to get in a trip to the Mormon cannery. I have several ‘broken’ cases of stuff that I need to ‘round off’. Each case holds six #10 cans, so the quantity of any item should be divisible by six…that way you know all your cases are full. But theres a buncha stuff that I am one or two cans away from a complete case and Id like to get those taken care of. Unfortunately the folks who were managing the cannery, volunteers from the church, had to give it up and a new set of folks took it up. They’re a bit less accommodating than the previous couple and, I suspect, maybe not as ‘into’ the preparedness thing as they were. The couple that used to run it were great…they were true believers in preparedness and walked it as they talked it. It was great to just hang around and talk with them. This new bunch they have running things….I dunno. But, personality issues aside, the important thing is to get what I need so I’ll prolly drive up there tomorrow and see if they have a group coming in for a session that I can piggyback onto. Failing that, perhaps they’ll let me just buy some stuff ‘off the shelf’. According to the handy-dandy spreadsheet here in my BlackBerry I need a  total of seven cans to round out the ‘odd lot’ stuff. One of those items is sugar, which is a little bit of overkill since I have several 5# bags of the stuff vacuum sealed and stowed away in five gallon buckets but I really dislike the unorderly situation of having five cans in a box designed to hold six. One of the very few times I care about things like orderliness and symmetry.

If you haven’t gone, I highly recommend you take advantage of your local cannery. Last I checked you don’t have to be a Mormon to use it. They don’t try to convert anyone, they don’t ask about your religion and they generally don’t seem to care if youre a believer or not. (A nice change of pace from some of the other religions.) As I understand it the higher-ups who run the show figure that if they let the unbelievers like myself use their facilities to stock up that’ll be one less starving heathen they have to worry about when the apocalypse gets here. Good thinking.

I should also point out that the Mormons also sell several of the items you can get at the cannery online and already packed in #10 cans. Additionally, Ive found them to be a very handy source for mylar bags and oxygen absorbers. Finally, if you get in good with them and ask nicely you can probably borrow their portable canning unit to take home and use to can stuff that they normally don’t can at the cannery.

A case of six cans, by the way, fills a box that measures approx. 18”x 8” x 12”. This means that, assuming you have a normal 8-foot ceiling in your house, if you can spare a square yard of floor space you can fit..uhmm…carry the two…around 432  #10 cans (72 cases) in a space with a footprint of 36”x36”…so don’t tell me you don’t have room for storage food. You’ve got room.

It’s an incredible useful resource, these facilities. I’ll have to take some missionaries out to lunch or something as a thank you.

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

I said to the missus today “Is it just me or have things gotten more violent around here?” She said that it wasn’t just me. This area of western Montana has always been pretty quiet. Mostly non-confrontational property crimes…very little face-to-face violent crime…a lot of stereos may get snatched out of parked cars but almost no one gets bonked on the head and dragged into a dark alley. Maybe someone gets drunk and shoots or stabs someone once a year or so. But, lately, there have been daylight burglaries, people waking up to find strangers in their house, people being accosted while out walking,  and the increasing transient/homeless population doing their best to reduce their own numbers through attrition. Its gotten to the point that walking around downtown is to run a gauntlet of filthy and drunken transients asking for, and sometimes demanding, spare change.

I haven’t been concerned about violent crime directed against me in a very long time. Im usually armed, usually aware, and Im not exactly of small stature. Someone trying to rob or intimidate me has gotta be stoned, drunk, or a  poor judge of potential victims.

But Im still disturbed by the recent increase in violent crime and criminal activity. Is it a result of the worsening economy? I don’t think so. A fella laid off from the paper mill after seventeen years doesn’t start breaking into houses or accosting lone women on nature trails. He may drink and smack his wife around, he may play skeet with the back of his throat and a shotgun, but he doesn’t usually go out and turn into a thug.

I suppose the economy could be responsible in the sense that people who were otherwise being ‘serviced’ through public programs are now out on their own and are full of resentment and Mad Dog. Much like how you feed a wild animal and when you stop feeding him he starts going after your chickens.

I suspect its going to do nothing but get worse for a while. People who feel hopeless are going to do stupid things, unbalanced formerly employed people will shoot up their workplaces, strained family relationships will fracture at an accelerated rate, resentment by the ‘have nots’ against the ‘haves’ will build with rationalized acts of theft and violence taking place, etc, etc.

This is all on a local level, mind you. On a national level, in larger population areas, the effects would be worse, Id imagine. You don’t seem to read too much about huge increases in violence and crime during the Great Depression. I suspect that was because there was a far more different moral code in place than today. Today people loudly demand their electronic benefits card and as many handout programs as they can qualify for…back then, being on any form of public assistance was a matter of great shame and many folks said theyd rather go hungry than go on the dole. And if you did wind up swallowing your pride and getting on a government program folks worked as hard as they could to get off of it as quickly as possible.  Today, people game the system to get as much as they can. And today the thought of stealing, robbing or hurting someone for their property isn’t as repugnant as it used to b e. This depressino will, I think, be more violent than the last one.

I’ve become one of those people who says “I remember when I used to be able to leave my doors unlocked…” and then goes on to decry the current state of affairs. But, its true. I think there was a stretch of several years where I never locked the door to my house. It just wasn’t necessary. Didn’t bother locking up my bicycle most of the time either. But nowadays….now I try to be discrete about transporting firearms, I lock my doors, I vet my new neighbors, I scrutinize the people around me, and just generally live in Condition Yellow. It’s probably a better way to go through life than just blithely thinking the world is like some G-rated Disney film but I wish it was driven by choice and not circumstance. Still, it could be worse I suppose. At least here in Montana we can shoot back.

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

They call themselves sovereign citizens, U.S. residents who declare themselves above state and federal laws. Many don’t register children’s births, carry driver’s licenses or recognize the court system.

You know, this interest of ours does tend to sometimes draw in people with … unusual … opinions.

I can see where they may have a point here and there, but Im at least willing to hear their arguments rather than just dismiss them out of hand. However, I must say, the people I have met who run in these circles tend to come across as frakkin’ nutjobs most of the time.

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

Link to a large selection of army field manuals in .pdf.

Some useful, some not so useful. All, however, are interesting.

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

All right, lets say youre in the market for:

• A semi-automatic centerfire carbine
• Pistol or rifle caliber
• Must have aftermarket support for parts, mags, etc.
• “High capacity” magazine availability, pref. 25-32 rd. range
• Rugged
• Can be broken down into a package no longer than 18″ (fold in half, take down into subassemblies, whatever) but can be made ready in under a minute
• Not be AOW/SBR

I come up with only a handful…Uzi, Feather, KelTec.  CatCo had a BATF-approved Sten a few years back but I dunno if they were able to be broken down.  Any ideas?

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

Should Americans view these kinds of scenarios as extraordinary circumstances — or a warning sign of a darker future?

Duh..any blackout is a ‘darker future’.

But seriously, folks………

Is it a sign of a ‘darker future’? (Pun not withstanding.) Hmmm…lemme think on that one (/sarcasm)

Annnnnd the captain has turned on the ‘fasten seatbelts’ sign as we begin our descent into a greatly diminshed standard of living. Please make sure all your firearms are in a locked, loaded and upright position. Portable electronic devices should be used at this time. On behalf of the governemnt and myself we’d like to thank you for your patronage and next time your travel plans include a trip to 1979 please keep us in mind. Lame ducks, prepare for departure.

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

The big Missoula gun show is this weekend. Thus far, Ive been able to show some pretty good restraint. Although…there is an IMI/AA Uzi Model A in 9mm that is sorely tempting me. $900, used. Hmmm.

Primers seem to have come down a bit. Theyre in the <$30/m range.  I might be tempted to get a few bricks. No sign of match primers though.

Saw plenty of the usual stuff…a lot of AR’s, a smattering of FALs and AKs. Magazine prices were reasonable and ammo was still in short supply.

Interestingly, there were more ‘personal’ guns for sale than usual. The economy has hit people hard and some of them are suddenly deciding that the gun safe could use a little more room and they could use a little more money in their pocket. Its still early, but I suspect its a buyers show.

Ran into John Trochmann, of course, and said hi. He has a very nice Barret with scope, case, spare mags and ammo for $10k. A serious piece of hardware, but then again these are serious times we live in.

Tomorrow is my birthday so perhaps I’ll treat myself to some cheap little luxury at the show. We’ll see. I received a birthday gift today from my dad, a gift certificate to Kifaru so suddenly I have some choices there that I wasnt expecting. Love the Kifaru gear, though, so this was a wonderful and very generous gift.

Other than the Uzi did I see anything at the show I couldnt live without? No, actually. There were plenty of things that would be nice to have, but nothing that I regard as ‘must have’. Which is good since money is so tight these days anyway. By the by, everything you wanna know about Uzis.

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

What do you suppose Custer thought as he saw the increasing number of Indians circling his position and his own forces dwindling under their attack? I mean, yeah, he probably thought “Crap, I shouldn’t have left those Gatling guns behind” but do you think there was a point where he figured there was no way out and that any further fighting would be pointless? I imagine there was a point where he knew there was no way he could save himself or his men and that he was going to die. So, I wonder, why didn’t he just drop his pistols and wait for the inevitable end?

In the heyday of survivalism one of the common comments made about the possibility of a US-Soviet nukefest was the classic “If it happens I hope Im sitting right under where the missle hits”. Another great standard of stupidity was “If it happens we’re all dead anyway”. These statements were usually given by people when confronted with the option of preparing for surviving a nuclear exchange or doing nothing. The worst of the bunch not only resigned themselves to the defeatist attitude of “we’re all dead anyway” but would discourage others from preparing because if no one was prepared to survive such an exchange, the logic goes, theyd be more likely to avoid one. Those who thought they could survive a nuclear war would, they said, be more inclined to participate in one…remove their chances of survival and they won’t throw nukes around. (A fascinating idea that only really works if both sides play by the same rules.)

Fact of the matter is that regardless of what you do, youre gonna die eventually.  Superstitions about an afterlife aside, once your dead you’re pretty much done with existence. The only variables, really, are how long you live and how well. (And, to a degree, how well you die. Technically, we’re in control of that to some degree but theres still plenty of room for the unexpected terminal event.) Personally, Id rather die fat and well-rested in my sleep in a warm bed, in a nice house, on a quiet, cool peaceful night than to die emaciated and filthy, on my knees, coughing up blood as I watch joyous thugs ransack my house before setting it ablaze.

So, if we accept the fact that we are gonna die someday (and if you can’t accept that fact, boy are you in for a surprise someday) whats the point of preparing to weather life’s disasters? You die two years from now or thirty years from now youre still dead, yes? So why go through all these expensive and elaborate steps that we take to preserve our safety and comfort? Same reason that, as I read it, Custer kept going until he was dead – our number one motivational imperative is to survive.

Look at what goes on in the animal kingdom…pretty much every animal’s number one priority in life is to survive, at least long enough to ensure a new generation of that animal. Only under the most extreme circumstances do animals willingly risk their survival … almost always in defense of their young or defense of their social group (hive, pack, whatever). When we see animals exhibit behavior that is counter to their survival we usually discover those animals are diseased or deranged in some way. Theyre ‘mad’.

So what does it say about people who refuse to prepare against threats to their own survival? Or about people who actively discourage or disparage people who take measures to protect themselves? Are they diseased and deranged? Are they somehow twisted in their thinking that they are going against their own instincts of self-preservation? I doubt it. I think that the people who do these things aren’t delusional, they’re either being purposefully ignorant of the threats against them or they’re quite aware of them but choose to pretend they don’t exists and prefer not to be reminded that they do exist. And, as Rand pointed out, reality exists whether you choose to believe in it or not.

On the other hand, one could argue that one thing that separates us from animals is our ability to control and regulate our instinctual behavior. If we were unable to do that, we’d be living in a fairly anarchistic and chaotic world. Those crazy preparedness freaks are people who can’t rationalize or intellectualize past their lizard brain instincts..theyre no better than primates in a jungle. Two sides to every argument, I suppose.

Reality has a predictable way of bending people to its will. (Or it crushes them completely.) I would bet you that there are less people today ‘against us’ and more people ‘with us’ in terms of being prepared. There will be huge differences of opinion as to just what exactly it is we are preparing for, but I think it is the rare individual these days who looks at the person cutting their debt, stocking up on food, cutting their living expenses and asks ‘why’.

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

Next Saturday is my birthday. If you have a few extra stun grenades or a couple acres of arable land you don’t really need, feel free to send it along with a birthday card. Crom will bless you for it.

My birthday list is actually fairly short this year. The economy sucks, people are losing jobs, so why would I ask someone to buy me something expensive? However, this year I only have three things on my list – a Kifaru Scout pack, a cast iron wok from Lodge, and a  SureFire E2D LED Defender. Pretty simple tastes.  Really, though, I’ve been quite happy when my friends just drop by a 12-pack of Coke with ‘happy birthday!’ scrawled across it.

My birthday will occur right smack in the middle of the three-day Missouula gun show – the largest show in the great state of Montana. I plan to spend all three days there looking at stuff I cannot afford and saying hi to familiar faces. Its a great show, always a full house, and tons of awesome stuff there. If youre in the neighborhood you should check it out.

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Remember how after the feds pulled off their little stunt at Waco many people asked ‘why not just wait them out’? Well, here’s a case where someone did just that. A guy has been holed up on  his property for ten years and the local cops know he’s there they just don’t feel its worth the hassle of getting him. His original crime carried a sentnece of…you guessed it…ten years. And for ten years he’s been hanging out on his property. Its an interesting read with some humor and a good dose of WTF and tinfoil hattery.

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And finally, when shopping for that hideout pocket gun here’s a very handy chart showing the most popular and common ones with their relative sizes.