Monthly Archives: November 2012

Scenes from Costco

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Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.

Well, now…….

That looks six kinds of yummy.

That little baby would be enough to run my house rather handily. Hell, probably the neighbor’s too.Nothing kills like overkill…..Whats the punchline? Not too bad:

See, this is about what I’d figure a Honda EU2000 would set me back. But this is more than three times the power. But, the question of the moment is: would my needs be met with the smaller, more fuel-efficient EU2000 even though the EU2000 is more expensive for (much) less power. Or, put another way, dollar-to-watt ratio says the larger genny is the better bargain…until you factor in the fuel efficiency. If The EU2000 is 2000 watts and this thing is 6800 wattsm and my average load in a crisis is gonna be, say, 1500 watts….then why burn the extra fuel in the larger genny when I can get the same results with less fuel in the smaller one. BUT….while I can run small loads, expensively, on the larger genny I cannot run the larger loads at all on the small one. While the small one may be just fine for keeping the freezer cold, if something comes up and I need more power for something dramatic like helping out a buddies well pump or similar big-draw item…well, then the bigger one will save the day.

Gonna have to think about this one for a while.

Trailer – World War Z

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Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.

Probably one of the most eagerly anticipated zombie flicks since the Omega Man remake. It appears to follow the book only in the sense that we get to see the situation from different global venues and viewpoints rather than just the local shopping mall. Brad Pitt doesn’t appear to be a journalist though. Regardless, we’re back to fast zombies with an apparent hive mentality:

I dunno what kinda drum that is in the M249 Negev at 2:06 but put me down for three. (I originally that that was a Daewoo Ultimax but, no, it appears to be a Negev…makes sense considering the Israeli-lookin’ gear on the guy wielding it.)

Anyway, yeah, put me down for two tickets to this one.

Scenes from Brooklyn

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Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.

How many “only use approved DOT gasoline containers for fuel transport” violations can you find in this picture?

This is why we keep over 50 gallons of treated gasoline in storage. I can either a) stay in my warm house with my hot food and consumer electronics giving me the latest news or I can b) stand in line in the snow like a Third World refugee or extra in a Mad Max movie.

Skip the plastic crap and go with metal. This guy is a straight shooter and I buy from him. Fill ‘em up, treat ‘em (PRI Fuel Stabilizer- For Gasoline 32oz), put ‘em away someplace safe and save yourself the trouble of being like the folks in this photo.

And, yes, I’m a snob….I want the Nato/Euro metal cans over the plastic cans. When life has hit the point where gasoline is so precious you’ll stand in line in sub-freezing weather to get it then life has hit the point where its worth the extra expense to preserve/protect that gasoline by using the best containers you can find.

Sandy musings

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Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.

What’s done is done, so, for me, no more reason to be hungover about the election. Accept the situation for what it is, and plan accordingly to mitigate it’s effects.

The NY region continues to try to get past hurricane Sandy. You have to understand that the parts of NY that youre reading about are actually a very small part of NY. Some parts of NYC never lost power or suffered much damage at all….it’s a rather large area, after all. It’s like thinking because of an earthquake in San Francisco all of California must be smoldering rubble. (Albeit, that’s a pleasant thought.)

The lessons and ‘teachable moments’ coming out of there don’t really seem to be things that we haven’t heard before, although once in a while a new twist comes in that I hadn’t thought of (like the rental car thing). It sounds like people were in three groups: those with no generators, those with generators, and those with generators and the logistics to support those generators. Looks like too many people bought generators and patted themselves on the back for a job well done and then gave no thought to where the fuel was coming from once the tank got empty.  If there’s any lesson there it’s that you need to have all the logistics support (gas, oil, filters, fuses, cables, cords, documentation, experience, chain-and-padlock, etc.) or your generator is just a disposable eight hour UPS.

Speaking of generators, it’s always a good idea to run them once a month or so to make sure everything is doing what it’s supposed to. My brother very cleverly cut a length of PVC pipe, capped one end, put a screw cap on the other, hose-clamped it to the frame of his generator and it holds all the documentation, instructions and small parts for his genny. That way it’s always there and protected from pretty much everything.

The tales of looting and that sort of thing are no surprise and the solutions are rather simple for those who aren’t prohibited by local government from having the necessary gear.

One thing that’s interesting is that many people were completely unprepared to cook or heat their houses. Many homes still had natural gas pressure but did not have electricity to run blowers and ovens (assuming their stoves were gas, which many are not.) And while gas pressure may have been unaffected in some places, water was unavailable in many. I had a buddy whose gas hot water heater was doing great except with no water flow it was fairly useless…no hot showers.

Of course, there’s no guarantee that next time an event like this (or any other disaster) takes place that things will go the same way and there’ll be natural gas available. Personally, I’d love to have a natural gas generator for my house but I can’t rely on a fuel supply that can be interrupted. Propane would be my next choice but as someone pointed out to me, when comparing the merits of a liquid fuel generator versus a propane generator, when youre out of fuel you cant just go a few doors down to your neighbor with a five gallon bucket and borrow a bucket full of propane. On the other hand, a 500 gallon tank of propane would probably last a looooong time on a generator thats only run for a few hours a day.

A multi-fuel generator sounds nice but it also sounds like a lot more to go wrong. And my experience has been ‘one-size-fits-all’ solutions never wind up solving anything 100% of the way. What’ll probably happen is that we’ll wind up getting one of the Honda EU-series of portable generators at some point in the coming year. A buddy of mine got a nice feal on one offa Craigslist so perhaps I’ll troll around there for a while.

If you live in the east coast region, expect to see the local Craigslist flodded (get it? ‘flooded’?) with used generators as short-sighted people think “Wow, glad thats over!” and sell of their new gennys.

Car rental, Walking Dead, economic recovery

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Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.

Buddy of mine in NY is learning a few things about post-disaster mopping-up that I never considered. For instance, think about this: the insurance guy comes to your house, takes one look at your car, and doesn’t even say anything other than “Yeah, that things toast. We’ll cut a check for you in the morning.” Now you have no car, but a nice check coming to go pick out another. What do you drive in the meantime? Well, your insurance also covers rental, right? So you call the rental agencies and thats when you discover that every car within fifty miles has been rented and the waiting list reads like a phone book.

So…next time you might want to rent a car in advance of things. If your car doesnt get washed out to sea, you can always cancel the reservation.

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Latest episode of Walking Dead: not gonna miss her at all.

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Since the nation douled-down on four more years of Carter II, I’m pessimistic about an economic recovery in the near future. (Or, an economic recovery that doesn’t require something drastic to jumpstart it.)

Really, I anticipate no major changes in anything we do around here in regards to the election results. About the only thing different will be a bit of an emphasis on securing more gun-related items and countering further economic malaise. Otherwise, business as usual.

As I expected, calling most of the major magazine and AR manufacturers and vendors was an exercise in futility. Most simply had their phones go straight to voicemail. Most of the answering messages started off with “Due to higher than normal call volume…” and ended with “..delays of six to eight weeks.”

Theres a few dissenting voices I hear from, from time to time, saying I have nothing to worry about…between the administrations lack of movement on gun control (cough*fastnfurious*cough), the Heller decision, and whatnot theres no signs that new regulation is in the works. Well, if that’s true (which I dont thin it is), then wheres the harm in putting two, three or seven more Glocks and AR’s in the safe, hmm?

Voting

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Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.

“If you are part of a society that votes, then do so. There may be no candidates and no measures you want to vote for … but there are certain to be ones you want to vote against. In case of doubt, vote against. By this rule you will rarely go wrong.”
-From Time Enough for Love – R.Heinlein

 

Lighting minimalism

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Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.

This post is mostly for my friends in NY who got stuck without any lighting other than their MagLites and a handful of batteries.While some light is better than no light, you can do a lot better, for little money, than brushing your teeth with one hand while holding your flashlight in the bathroom mirror with the other.

The simplest and, done properly, most rugged and safe system would be some LED lights that run off of a 12v battery. I actually have just such a set up in storage. It’s bare-bones simple but it beats the crap outta wearing a  headlamp to make a sandwich.

Here’s a simple rig that I keep around – it’s nothing more than a 12v marine battery (115 aH) and a couple of the Goal0 lights. A battery clip-to-cigarette adapter lets me run the light straight from the charged battery. The light is 3 watts at 12v, so that means it draws .25 amp/hour. Some math shows that 115 divided by .25 is 460….so, in theory, this fully charged battery would run this light for 460 hours. But…I’m a cautious guy…I don’t discharge batteries more than 50% so, really, its 230 hours…or almost ten solid days of light. (or almost a month of 8-hour usage.)

The Goal0 lights are better described in this post. Two very nice features, other than the low draw of power, is that they can be daisy-chained together. Each light has a socket on top that lets another let be plugged into it. Here’s two of them daisy-chained together and plugged in.

Each light has about nine feet of cord so you can stretch string of lights along the length of a house or whatever. Each light also has a hook to allow you to hang it from whatever nearby object is suitable.

The box in the background, by the way, is an old (pre-Y2K) ConSci PPP ‘battery in a box’ that I bought many years ago. It’s basically a couple 6v batteries and a charge controller mounted in a .50 ammo can. It gives me a small amount of electrical power in a waterproof container that can run lights, radios, etc. They apparently don’t make them anymore but you can easily engineer one on your own with a trip to Radio Shack and Home Depot.

Enough space for a small inverter, spare fuses and 12v accessories. But…you can build a better one.

If you’re an instant gratification guy like me, you can just buy one of those battery-jump-booster things you see at CostCo and Home Depot. Theyre pretty much the same thing but with more capacity. Keep it charged up and you’d have at least a couple days worth of lights. Buy a 12v-to-USB car charger and you could also charge your toys off of it.

Goal0, by the way, makes an all-in-one package for this sort of thing. It’s a battery, light, and panel to charge the battery.(Goal Zero Escape Combo Pack) Combo isn’t cheap, but if you have daylight to run the panel youre pretty much assured of no dark nights.

Realistically, though…you can do this on the cheap for emergency use. Get the battery clips, get the lights, and go scavenge some car batteries out of all those flooded cars out there. Or just spend the $50 and buy the marine battery/battery-booster and a charger.

Out the door you’d be looking at about $100 for the light and a battery that when charged would run that one light for, oh, about a month….which probably seems like a smoking bargain at the moment.

 

Article – Queens residents arm themselves in the post-storm blackout from looters

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Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.

I love the picture of a Queens resident getting his Daryl Dixon on.

When night falls in the Rockaways, the hoods come out.

Ever since Sandy strafed the Queens peninsula and tore up the boardwalk, it’s become an often lawless place where cops are even scarcer than electrical power and food. Locals say they are arming themselves with guns, baseball bats, booby traps — even a bow and arrow — to defend against looters.

Thugs have been masquerading as Long Island Power Authority (LIPA) workers, knocking on doors in the dead of night. But locals say the real workers have been nowhere in sight, causing at least one elected official — who fears a descent into anarchy if help doesn’t arrive soon — to call for the city to investigate the utility.

Kudos for at least having the bow. Minus fifty points for the staged picture that all but says “come arrest me for showing off in public”.

I dont know what its like now, but when I turned 18 in Brooklyn the first thing I got was my ‘rifle/shotgun license’. Right after that I think I immediately went to Carnival Sporting Goods on McDonald Ave and bought a Mossberg 500 pistol grip shotgun. Or maybe it was a Chinese AK. It’s been so long I can’t recall. My point being that unless things have changed a lot since then, getting a ‘real’ defense gun isn’t out of the realm of possibility. Handguns (legally) were a bit tougher, and I never did get my NY pistol license. But there was a time I had a few shotguns, AKs, and even a lovely HK93A3 tucked away in my bedroom.

Nowadays, of course, it’s a different story. And the funny thing is, while we are tremendously well-armed for this sort of thing we live in an area where this sort of behavior doesn’t happen on a scale like that….probably exactly because most folks here are so well armed.In the post-Sandy environ I suspect a stuby little pump gun with a tactical light and an assortment of shells would be just the ticket.

 

 

Augason Farms arrival

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Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.

As events in NYC point out, when the power goes down, the refrigerator becomes a petri dish, and Tony-&-Sal’s aren’t delivering any more chicken parms, it’s time to go with what you have in your cupboards.

While we store a decent amount of food, much of our long-term food supply is packed in #10 cans. These cans are great, but unless you can use up the contents before the open container goes bad you might wind up wasting food. I never really gave that much thought because in my mind a #10 can of chicken-and-rice would probably be consumed within three days or so…well within the threshold of safety. But lately I’ve been thinking that smaller sized cans would be useful…especially for handing out to friends or, more importantly, for creating ‘custom menu’ food packages.

Mountain House is obviously the benchmark for this sort of thing. The food is pretty tasty and should last for the rest of my life. Trouble is, it’s expensive, the menu is limited, and they really pissed me off with the screw-the-small-dealer program a few years back. I’ve been wanting to experiment more with the Augason Farms brand products. I am especially interested in their ‘everyday size‘ cans. These are cans that are much smaller than the #10 so you can use up the contents much more quickly. I decided to take advantage of a sale and order a bunch of stuff to try out and feed to the unsuspecting wife. Depending on what seems good (or not good) I’ll probably wind up ordering more to supplement ,round out, and add creativity to our long-term stored food supply.

First off, here’s the difference between the #10 can and the smaller ‘everyday size’ which, according to industry specs, looks to be a “#2.5″ size. Here’s a photo for size comparison. The Coke can is for scale.

l.-r.: #10 can, #2.5 can, Coke can

As you can see, the #2.5 size can might be a bit more practical in terms of ‘dinner for two’. Of course, some stuff is gonna be just fine if you open the #10 can and then put a plastic lid on it…rice, vegetables, etc. But some stuff will draw moisture like crazy and cake up (eggs, for instance). So it might be nice to have those in smaller ‘single serve’ cans.

I picked up some soup mix, egg mix, cereal, etc, etc, and will be trying them out over the next few weeks and reporting back on what I thought of them. While I’ll be trying these things ‘standalone’ I’ll also be incorporating other long-term foods into them to see how well they integrate…like adding some canned chicken to the chicken soup, for example. Or using the freeze-dried strawberries with some sugar and other ingredients to make syrup for the pancakes…that kinda thing. What’s nice is that the #2.5 cans give me a chance to try a product without having to spend the coin on the #10 and then find out I don’t like it.

I’m rather looking forward to trying this stuff out. They have daily specials on the website and also on their Facebook, so if this looks like stuff you might be interested in check those venues for sales.