Monthly Archives: November 2019

Black Friday scene from a gun shop

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True story: Local Cabela’s had a little Black Friday doorbuster sale on some guns and folks started lining u pearly. Doors opened at 5a and the gun counter was, of course, swamped. A few minutes into this excitement, an older gentleman passed out and hit the floor. An ambulance was called and he was taken away. Two hours later, he comes back in, heads to the gun counter, borrows a pair of scissors to cut the hospital bracelet off because his wife “would be pissed if she found out”, and bought the gun he had originally come in for.

Hardcore. (Although not as much so as if he didn’t care what his wife thought)

 

 

Reminder

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If you’re anything like me (and Crom help you if you are), you could probably benefit from a well-intentioned and well-timed reminder:

  • 1) Go run the generator for an hour
  • 2) Go check the batteries in all the devices to make sure they haven’t crapped out and are slowly destroying your device.

It s a cold, clear day with the late fall sun slanting down giving everything that odd look that says “seasons are changing”. It’s the sort of day where you can feel that something approaches. A lizard-brain response to the upcoming winter, I’m guessing. Or maybe a subconscious response to the current zeitgeist. Regardless, whether its simply winter or Civil War 2: Electric Boogaloo, it’s always a good idea to make sure some of the critical gear is ready to go. Standing on your porch, holding a flashlight in your teeth, when its five below zero and you’re sweaty from repeatedly and unsuccessfully whipping that recoil starter cord back and forth is no time to discover that maybe you should have run the generator three weeks ago to make sure it was up to snuff.

The generator, flashlights, radios, GPS, and the like were not cheap. Spend an hour today making sure you didn’t waste money and time.

 

Article – What Not to Do in a Disaster

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Surprisingly, plenty of other people in deadly scenarios don’t act fast enough to save their own lives. From arguing over small change while a ship sinks into stormy water, to standing idly on the beach as a tsunami approaches, psychologists have known for years that people make self-destructive decisions under pressure. Though news reports tend to focus on miraculous survival, if people escape with their lives it’s often despite their actions – not because of them.

An article that says what we’ve known all along – normalcy bias and the ‘this can’t really be happening’ mindset will work against you in a crisis.

Decisiveness, preplanning, equanamity, and a dose of luck make the difference between being embraced and being embalmed. Interesting article and worth a read.

Article – What to Eat After the Apocalypse

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In 1841, an invasive water mold began to infect the world’s potatoes. Starting from Mexico, the infectious agent of blight traveled up through North America, then crossed the Atlantic. Eventually it reached Ireland, where, as the journalist Charles Mann described it, “four out of ten Irish ate no solid food except potatoes, and … the rest were heavily dependent on them.”

The Great Famine, as it came to be known, could have been avoided in any number of ways, not least by ceasing the export of food from Ireland to Britain. But the British government failed to take effective action. The question of avoiding starvation becomes harder still if some apocalyptic event causes the whole world to starve. How might a government prepare for a worst-case scenario?

As a survivalist, I’m all about caring where my next meal is coming from. I am less about caring where the rest of the worlds next meal is coming from.

Assuming some sort of “The Road”-esque disaster that reduces the global supply of food, I would imagine that the global supply of people will also suffer in very short order. Or, put another way, when the freeze dried porkchops and barrels of rice are exhausted in a year or so there are going to be a lot less people out there needing food.

Honestly, the notion of some sort of global famine ranks pretty low down there on  my probability list. Localized famine, maybe. But it’s interesting to see that there are people thinking about the subject.

Interestingly, the article seems to take itself seriously about ‘feeding the world’ after some sort of global disaster but even now, in a time of relative calm, we still can’t feed the entire world. Additionally, I’m not sure we have an obligation to do so but thats another argument.

Article – Nuclear missile bunker: yours for less than $400k

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One local newspaper described the sales listing, with calculated understatement, as a “mid-century fixer-upper”: an underground bunker built to withstand a nuclear attack, and to house the fire power to retaliate.

The decommissioned nuclear silo in southern Arizona was once home to the Titan II, the largest intercontinental ballistic missile deployed by the US Air Force.

Yawn..another article about a flooded missile base being up for sale, right? True enough. But the 3D virtual tour is utterly fascinating. Highly recommend. It’s like a video game.

I’m still rather partial to the old decommissioned long-line microwave relay stations that dot the US. I looked at one in Whitehall years ago and it was a nice, unassuming little bunker with some serious muscle to it. Ah well…a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, else whats a heaven for?

Gaming the system

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There’s a Cabela’s down the road from me. They are grossly overpriced on most things but once in a while something gets in there that catches my eye. On a whim, I picked up their Cabela’s credit card. It returns 2% of the purchase price of anything you buy there as ‘points’ that can be redeemed on future purchases. In other words, buy $100 worth of gear and you get $2 in points. On your next trip you use that $2 against the price of whatever your next purchase is. Follow?

Here’s where it gets… interesting.

Cabelas is having a ‘Cabelas Club’ event this Sunday. That means that theres a few things on sale but, more importantly, people who have the Cabelas card get some bonuses: a 10% off coupon for their purchase, and ‘triple points’..meaning that if you normally got 2% back in points you will get that 2% and another 6%, meaning you really get 8%. Annnnd…Cabela’s gift cards are 10% off this weekend.

And thats when my brain kicked in.

For the sake of argument let’s say a gun is $1000. You’re going to buy that gun using your 10% discount coupon. That means you need to fork over $900, right? (Because $1000 x .10 = $100 and $1000-$100=$900) Okay, so the gun will now cost you $900. BUT…gift cards are 10% off, right? So you go to the customer service counter and buy a $900 gift card. With a 10% discount on the gift card, that card will cost you $810. So far so good. You’re buying a $1000 rifle for $810. But wait, there’s more! You use your Cabela’s card to pay for the gift card. So you get 8% in points….and $810 x 8% = $64.80.

So you head to the checkout with your $1000 rifle. The gal says “$1000 please”. You hand her the coupon for 10% off. She says “Ok, that’ll be $900 please”. You give her the $900 gift card that you paid $810 for. Then you say “Id like to use my Cabelas points” and hand her your Cabelas card. She discounts you another $64.80 for the points you earned paying for the card.

Your final cost on that rifle is $1000 (orignal cost) – $100 (10% coupon) – $90 (10% for gift card) – $64.80 (points you earned paying for gift card) = $745.20, and you’ll still have some money left on the gift card. Or put another way, you’re looking at a 25% discount.

It’s also worth pointing out that Cabela’s price matches on non-internet competitors. So if your local gun shop has a gun in stock and at a cheaper price that Cabela’s can verify, they’ll match it. So..match the price first, and then hit ’em with the discounts. I did this a couple weeks back when Sportsmans Warehouse had Ruger 10/22 rifles in the $180~ range.

Gonna try this over the weekend since they have a rifle I’m kinda desirous of. (Although its not a $1000 rifle, but the math should still stand up.)

Stay sharp

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One of the knives that I stockpile for Der Tag is the BK&T… it is basically a sharpened crowbar. It has the end-of-the-world durability Im after at a reasonable price. But the sheaths that come with them suck. So I usually replace them with these highly recommended SpecOps sheaths. Note that the sheath has a pocket for a sharpening stone or similar device. I was having a heck of a time finding a stone that fit that pocket correctly. Then, as I was perusing the knife section at Cabela’s, I found this:

Very much me likey. It puts a fast edge on pretty much anything, has built in angle guides, two grades of diamond plates, a leather strop, and a ceramic for fior sharpening fish hooks and serrated edges. But…while its an awesome tool, it doesn’t fit in the pouch on the sheath.

Intrigued, I looked at what other products these guys made and picked up a couple other things:

This one does fit in the sheath, so I picked up a couple of these. I also picked up a couple of their small pocket sharpeners. They have a carbide feature on them sor they are no t something you want to use every time you sharpen a particular knife, but the ceramics and diamond on it are great for keeping the knife sharp once you put the new edge on it:

Now, I do have a nice set of stones on one of those Smith-brand three-stone setups. And I use it when I need to. But it isn’t exactly portable or pack/pocket sized. These sharpeners seem to fit the bill for throwing into a small pack and keeping a knife properly sharp out in the field. And, considering some of the really awful things we are going to subject a knife to in a crisis, being able o resharpen them in the field seems a solidly prudent move.

Silver

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Silver was down a bit the other day, and I had the treacherous combination of a few extra dollars in my pocket and a bit of impulse control issues. As a result, there’s another tube of silver dimes sitting in the safe.

Why? Well, thats an interesting question. Intellectually, I know that the odds of there being an event where greenbacks are worthless and we’re trading silver and gold like some sort of Roman market are pretty slim. And if the world collapses in on itself, its probably more likely that a box of .22 or a package of AA batts will get me more merchandise than silver or gold.

On the other hand…. we have plenty of episodes in the last 100 years where a national currency became worthless and people who had silver and gold were able to get the things they need.

Somewhere between “Current standard of living” and “Mad Max” is where the metals will be handy, in my opinion. Today, you can walk into a 7-11 and Apu might not take silver for a pack of Marlboros, and when the bombs fall and we’re all eating our children it is also likely that silver and gold won’t be very valued. But there’s that in-between….that point where the currency still has some worth but is rapidly becoming worthless, and there is the opportunity to purchase needed items. Thats the sweet spot, I think, for the use of metals.

There’s always the wag who thinks he’s being clever and original with some pithy line abou t how ‘if you can’t eat it it, shoot it, or live in it, it’s worthless’. And yet….he’s at the Kroger paying for his groceries with greenbacks that he can’t eat, shoot, or live in. Hmmm.

Now, I’m not saying that after the end of the world we’ll all be trading silver and gold for our transactions. I’m saying that its during the ride to the end of the world where the metals will have the most utility.

And…for some reason I cannot precisely express… I just feel better having some shiny metal on hand.  So…a little more silver in the safe.