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

Article about how the home generator is becoming ‘the status symbol of choice’. A reminder that I really need to get one at some point in the not-too-distant future.

The notion that in our modern world a power failure is only a minor inconvenience seems to be flying in the face of recent events where people on the east coast are spending weeks without power.

This quote is especially resonant:

“Each time it happens,” she said, “you swear, never again. And then, of course, you forget all about it. But the kind of generator we want costs $5,000. That’s money you really hate parting with. After the ice storm a few years ago, when we lost power for six days, I went to Home Depot to look at one. You kick it, you say, ‘Ah, a generator.’ But it’s not very sexy. Imagine all the things you could do with $5,000.”

Man, it ain’t cheap trying to be ready for all comers but I like to think it’ll pay off in the end.

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

Mmmph…I’d been putting off doing an ammo inventory for a while. What can I say? Those ammo cans are heavy. But, as our lives continue towards who-knows-what, it seemed a good idea to just re-affirm what was and was not available. The good news was that there was plenty of .22, 9mm, .38 and 7.62×39. The fair news was that .45 ACP (a low-priority) could use a little boost in its numbers. The bad news was that .223 and 12 ga. were a little thin and need some timely attention. It also occurred to me that I need to stockpile a few thousand rounds of .357. While the .38 ammo can be shot out of the .357 pistols as well as the .38’s, and thus the reason it makes sense to be heavy on .38 ammo, it would still be good to have enough .357 ammo on hand to take advantage of the performance of the longer cartridge.

One thing I find irritating about discussing stockpiling ammo on forums is that one person will post about how they have stockpiled a zillion rounds of ammo and someone will then comment saying thats stupid because you can only carry xxx ammo with you or ‘if you need that much ammo in a gunfight, youre in bigger trouble than you thought’.

Let me ask you something, you have a couple hundred pounds of rice or wheat in your storage, right? Well, you can’t eat it all at once so whats the point of having it? You have 80 magazines for your AR’s? Whats the point since you can only carry a few at a time and if you need to use all 80 mags youve obviously bitten off more than you can chew? See, thats the same utterly short-sighted stupidity that rears it’s ignorant head in these discussions. I don’t have umpteen million magazines for my PTR-91 because I plan on using them all at once. I have the foresight to look a little further down the road….I have umpteen million magazines because at any given moment those may be all the mags I have for the rest of my life. Assuming I’ve got another 35 years or so in front of me, a lot can happen in those 35 years.

So, back to the subject at hand, ammo….yeah, gonna have to set up the big Dillon and crank out some more. The missus picked herself up a .40 Glock police trade-in (Detroit PD..they stamped their name on the slide, frame and even the mags!) and tweaked it out for use as a competition gun which means my logistics train just had another boxcar attached to it since we previously had nothing in .40 caliber. However, since that’s just one Glock out of..well..a bunch…..of 9mm Glocks I think we’ll be okay limiting it to just a thousand rounds or so.

I was, however, immensely pleased to see that our policy of always buying a brick or two of .22 ammo when we went to WallyWorld has paid off. We have plenty of .22 on hand and most of it bought when it was about 40% cheaper than what it is now. Same for 7.62×39…I still have cases of the stuff here from when it was $95 a case.

How much ammo? Man, it’s like food, money, silver and gold….you cant have ‘too much’, you can only have ‘not enough’.

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

American Company Profits With War Wagons

This is kind of a no-brainer. Why wouldn’t you deck out a pickup truck for duty as a MadMax/anti-zombie/security vehicle and market it to poorer countries. Strip away the government contracts and, essentially, what you have here is a company making BOVs. The video says its $25k for one of these things which seems like an awfully good deal, unless they mean $25k on top of the base price of the new truck. Interesting stuff.

Here’s a link to the company. Cool looking rigs. But I bet a DIY’er could part together the same thing.

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

Today was the day the feds were going to test the nationwide emergency alert system. At the appointed time my radio …. went on like nothing happened. Apparently, there are still a few bugs in the system. To be fair, I would imagine that radio stations in Flyovercountry, MT are pretty low on the fed’s priority list but it still doesn’t do much to instill confidence in their ability to inform of, let alone manage, a crisis of national proportion.

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

I can’t vouch for the authenticity of this website, but, regardless of whether it’s genuine or not (I think it is), it is a fascinating read and certainly gives a ‘been there, done that’ vibe. Thank you to the person who emailed me the link.

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

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

The problem with having a dog, and I suspect it is a similar situation with children, is that your previous indifference about them not only goes out the window once you have one of your own but suddenly every child/dog everywhere becomes a concern to you. I dodged a bullet in the kid department, but after raising Nuke up from a puppy I feel amazing empathy and concern for almost every dog. Which sucks because this popped up on Facebook and I cannot get away from it in my mind.

I was going to treat myself to ten bucks worth of Chinese food for lunch but I think I’ll do something else with it instead.

Damn puppies.

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

Buddy of mine called me yesterday to alert me that our local CostCo was selling Pelican cases. Hmmmm. I went up there and, sure enough, there was a stack of ‘em. Two different sizes – the Pelican 1750 for $199.99 and the Pelican 1400 for , I think, $69.99.

These prices aren’t great, but if you peruse Amazon and a few other sources you’ll see that these cases are often on a two-tier pricing: for cases with or without foam. These cases at CostCo come with the foam, and even if the prices are the same as elsewhere on the net at least you can save a few bucks on shipping.

However, I suspect if you shop hard on eBay you might find a better deal, even with the shipping. Nonetheless, for the local LMI, it might be worth heading up there and checking it out.

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

A couple of people have asked how the bioweapon is doing. Sub-commander Nuke is approximately 16 months old. He weighs in at just a hair under 80#. He still looks far too skinny for my tastes. In fact, I took him to the vet because I was worried. The vet came into the examination room and asked me what the reason for the visit was. I said I thought my dog was too skinny. She looked at me like I was the dumberst person on earth. “He’s a teenager“, she explained to me, “he’s going to be skinny for a while. In a few years I’ll be having to convince you to stop feeding him so much!”

His ability to destroy/deflate every toy he comes across is uncanny

He has stopped chewing things he isn’t supposed to. He can do ’sit’, ’stay’, ‘come’, ‘down’ and ‘up’. This isnt a 100% thing, but if you’ve got food in your hand its a virtual certainty he will do whatever you want him to. ‘Heel’ is still kinda hit-n-miss.

In addition to the basics, he also practices his kung fu

He’s better at letting the humans sleep. I take him for his final walk at midnight and then he’s pretty content to not bother us until morning. He’s not a fan of other dogs. He doesn’t want to hurt them, but he wants to run over and play and jump and generally be a puppy…which is great except he’s eighty pounds of teeth and fur.

His ability to be tube-launched from submersibles is sometimes apparent

The biggest thing right now is teaching him that when we go for walks at night, the humans approaching us on the sidewalk are okay and not to lunge and bark at them. It’s a work in progress.

Then there was the time he got loaded and went to Mardi Gras

And that’s pretty much the state of the bioweapon.

‘Quiet! I think I hear someone dropping a piece of chicken on the floor!’

Oh..and there was a second bear spray episode but the less said about that, the better.

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

I’ve been quiet for the last few days because, honestly, I’ve not much to say. :::shrug::: I’d say that on the average I probably post every third day or so. It would be nice to post something relevant, timely, and original every day but that’s just too much work for a non-commercial endeavor. Non-commercial? Pretty much. I see quite a few blogs that have links to stuff to purchase off Amazon and while that seems like a great idea, I didn’t really get into this for the money. (Fame, sure; ego gratification, yes; chicks, absolutely; money, not so much.) I originally started blogging because preparedness was something of a large interest in my life and I wanted to write about my experiences and ideas but wanted to keep it separate from another blog I was doing.

How long? Well, the first post I made would have been around 2003 which puts me a bit earlier than our buddy ,Rawles at SurvivalBlog. I havent looked around too deeply, but I dont see many survival/preparedness blogs that are still active that go back that far. I might be in a fairly small group.

Has the blogging been rewarding? Yes and no. Sometimes it’s a chore, there’s a small amount of expense involved, and often it feels like talking into a microphone that isn’t wired to anything. On the other hand, I’ve met some nice people (online and in real life), discovered many other blogs that I enjoy reading, have learned things, discovered new resources, and have sometimes gotten a free goodie out of the deal. Overall, the best thing I get out of the blogging experience is validation. Other than opsec, one reason many people keep their interest to themselves is because they don’t want to be thought of as weird, strange or nuts. But through blogging I encounter many, many people with the same interests, the same ideas, the same concerns, and the same beliefs…and it’s refreshing to be able to talk freely about this sort of stuff and not get people looking at me like I have two heads. (This is one of the reasons I enjoy going to the LDS cannery – a dozen people packaging food for long term storage are all going to have similar mindsets as myself and be a pleasure to talk to.)

Do I have any plans to change things? Not really. Things on this blog aren’t really driven by readership because, well, I’m not doing it for you, I’m doing it for me. I like writing and , hopefully, you like reading. But I write about what I want, when I want, how I want….thats just the way it is when you don’t have to answer to anybody. I try to keep to a few simple guidelines – I avoid profanity (although youre welcome to use it), I try to keep the politics to a minimum, I try to keep the place religion-free, and I try to keep a fairly open mind. Pretty simple stuff, really.

I bring all of this up because, as I mentioned, I haven’t posted much the last few days. Every day isn’t an adventure in preparedness…or even a mundane day in preparedness. Theres the usual grind of regular day-to-day living that has nothing to do with preparedness, but why would I post about that here? So if you see things seem quiet for a few days it is most likely because I simply have ‘real life’ stuff to do and the preparedness stuff and my secret life as Commander Zero get put aside for a few days while I do work stuff, play Warcraft, hang out with friends, etc, etc.

Will I ever stop blogging about this stuff? Sure. Someday there’ll be a post saying that I’ve said all I need to say and that I’m moving on to other things. But I don’t see that happening anytime soon. I like blogging and scattering my ‘brain droppings’, as Carlin would call them, all over the internet. There may be times when there’ll be nothing new to say and I might cover some old ground, but I think I’ll be good for at least several posts a week for the forseeable future.