Election years are always expensive…Pt. 1
Election years are always expensive…Pt. 2
I have, literally, a bucket of stripped AR lowers.
I have hundreds of AR mags.
I have, at least, a half dozen complete AR’s scattered about.
I have a few ‘investment’ AR’s sitting around as well.
All that and I still wound up dropping some coin and picking up another five AR’s the other day.
I am so vulnerable to my own second-guessing….
Life goals
Johnny Trochmann,, he of Militia Of Montana fame, puts in an appearance at the larger gun shows in these parts. He has about a dozen tables covered with what could best be desscribed a ‘survivalist’ gear…potassium iodide pills, surgical kits, QuickClot, books on everything, specialty ammo, and that sort of thing. At some point he must have found an in with someone in the cruise line industry or a subsidiary thereof because he always has parachute flares, hand flares, and smoke generating devices for sale that clearly came from someone’s lifeboat emergency kits. These items are usually a couple years ‘out of date’ but that doesn’t really mean much in materiel like this.
Invariably, I pick up a buncha parachute flares and smoke cans. Why not? Both can come in handy if something goes wrong in the boonies and you need to indicate your position to the ‘copter people, and, honestly, there are some tactical applications as well.
Despite having a pretty large store of these items squirreled away, I’ve never actually gotten around to trying the smoke devices. The reason was simple…I can’t very well touch one off in town without attracting a large amount of attention (thats what the dang things are designed for, after all) and I never seem to have the time to head to anywhere remote to try them. Until today.
I was scouting out some hunting areas that I have not been to for many, many years and since they were hell-and-gone from prying eyes I figured I’d try one of those smoke cannisters. Pop the top, pull the igniter, and toss it for distance. It sputtered and then started spitting out a rather impressive cloud of smoke for a good three minutes. I didn’t take any pictures or video because YouTube has plenty of them showing this exact version, but it lived up to the expectations. Does it have, shall we say, ‘non-rescue applications’? Well, just from what I observed, you throw three of these down a stairwell or hallway and you’re pretty much going to reduce visibility to zero in a hurry. Maybe you have a use for that sort of thing, maybe not. But…like many tools, it’s a multitasker when you have the right mindset.
Johnny T. sells these at the gun shows for about $4 ea although if you buy enough he usually cuts you a deal. I’ve got a couple dozen in storage and I keep a few in the vehicle at all times ‘just in case’.
Buy them new? Man, I’d hate to have to…but, maybe I wouldn’t have to:
When I was a kid, my high school science teacher whipped up a sugar smoke bomb for a class movie project they were doing. He rather…underestimated…the amount of smoke his little device would generate and the fire department rolled up to the school thinking the roof was going up like Dresden. (Protip: instead of a coloring agent, mix in fine ground red pepper or cayenne to create an irritant effect.)
Anyway…if you’re in Montana and happen to run across Johnny Trochmann and his Tables Of Fun, be sure to grab a dozen or so of those things. And tell him Commander Zero sent you.
October means really nice days and crisp nights here in Montana. But it also means that winter is around the corner and it can often come a tad early, or at least give us some sneak previews. So…time to start getting ready.
For me, it’s mostly two things: put the Winter Module into the Bag O’ Tricks, and get the winter gear in the vehicle. As for the abode, it pretty much takes care of itself…take the air conditioner out of the window and put it away, make sure the snow blower is ready, lay in some salt for the sidewalk.
But, being a good survivalist, there’s also a few other things – make sure the kerosene heater is filled and ready in case the power goes out. Same for the generator. Power outages in winter have a bit more drama to them than outages in the summer. Most notably the little issue of the house dropping to a temperature where pipe freezing becomes an issue. Fortunately, I know from previous experience that the kerosene heaters can keep the house above freezing for a while.
It’s also time to pull the wool outta storage. I’ve got my wonderful Filson coat and a goodly selection of hats and gloves to keep me warm, and I have snowshoes as well.
I’ve lived in the same house for a long time now and gone through a couple dozen winters with no power outage lasting more than a 24 hours or so. Not to say it won’t happen, just that it hasn’t so far. But…if it does, it’s nice to know that sitting huddled in the cold and dark will not be part of the program.
