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

Someone commented asking why I was worked up about the Mountain House supply issue when I have been going to the LDS cannery. Valid question, I suppose. Quick answer: one has stuff that the other does not.

The LDS cannery is limited to dry goods. That means no meats. MH at least has chicken, beef and pork available. And, while I can appreciate the streamlining that would occur in my logistics if I were to become a vegetarian, that just ain’t gonna happen.

In case no one has ever been to one of these cannery facilities before (and I hadn’t ever been to one until this year) here’s a fast rundown of whats available: 3 different beans, nonfat milk, rice, sugar, wheat (hard and soft), apple slices, carrots, macaroni, oats (regular and quick), onions, potato flakes, spaghetti, refried beans, coca mix, flour, pancake mix and drink mix.  You can buy the stuff in either #10 cans, mylar pouches, or in bulk (25# sacks).

Not a bad selection, but you can see how it could get a bit boring and perhaps a bit difficult to work with in terms of variety.

Now, supplementing the stuff from the cannery with some freeze dried ground beef, some canned tomatoes and a few spices and you can whip up a Bolognese sauce for spaghetti, a cacciatore, or a half dozen other dishes. So, yeah, the LDS cannery offers a good selection of staple goods…I just want a broader selection to expand my menu planning. Some facilities will allow non-members to use them, some will not. (The one I went to was not open to non-members.) However, they may allow a member to bring a guest…which is how I’ve been going. If you can find a buddy or acquaintance who is a church member and get them to bring you along as a guest, I highly recommend it.

You might want to keep in mind that as things get more interesting in the world, access to the LDS facilities may get tightened up so that resources are always available for members….so the sooner you get there the better, most likely.

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Speaking of putting things into storage, I did a casual inventory of a few things the other day and surprised myself in that I was short in a couple areas (and long in a few others, which didn’t surprise me). Most glaring was that I had about a bit less .22LR ammo than I thought. Fortunately, I had enough in the ‘shootable’ ammo category to transfer to the ‘storage’ category and get me back up to where I want to be. (Normally, we buy two bricks of .22 ammo every time we hit WallyWorld. That ammo gets put on the shelf with the ammo we normally use for plinking and whatnot. When it starts to pile up [since we don’t get out shooting as much as we’d like] into a quantity exceeding 5k rounds, 5k gets pulled and moved into storage and whatever is left over is allowed to accrue until it hits 5k rounds again. In this manner a good deal of .22 gets socked away.)

Other than the .22 ammo everything was pretty much as I expected although one or two food items were a bit lower than what Id like them to be. Easily fixed with a quick trip to the store, though.

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I’ve been reading a book lately Im going to go ahead and recommend. “Island In The Sea Of Time” by S.M. Stirling (ISBN 0-451-45675-0). Stirling is the geek who wrote the ‘Dies The Fire’ trilogy that started off well and ended absurdly. Succinctly, Stirlings books involve modern society getting thrown back into a Middle Ages (or earlier) level of technology, for whatever reason. Invariably, the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism…the nerds with the plywood shields and swords playing King Arthur) wind up becoming the saviors of the world by virture of their ‘swordsmanship’. Its easy to get the impression that the author got his ass kicked a lot in high school and decided to write a book where the SCA geeks become the heroes. Anyway, the premise of ‘Island’ is that for the typical ‘reason that is never explained’ the island of Nantucket, with buildings, occupants and everything else, vanishes from the twentieth century and winds up in 1250 BC. Its an interesting story about modern society forced to adapt to having no resuplly, limited fuel, no outside food sources, etc. as well as having to deal with hostiles (within and without) and form a local government. I actually enjoyed it quite a bit. And, true to the authors penchant for SCA geekiness, theres a bit of that. But as people like myself lament in these sorts of books ‘why the hell don’t these people fashion simple blackpowder firearms???’, in this case they do exactly that which, to me, shows a certain amount of real-life logic.

Anyway, it’s a good read and I recommend it. If nothing else its an excellent form of entertainment to second guess the story and ask yourself how you would cope with the lack of [ammo/electrical power/flush toilets/propane/toilet paper/etc].

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I sold a customer a PTR-91 a few weeks ago and he ordered a couple of the OEM surplus HK G3 .22 conversion kits that have been on the market lately. He brought it by today for me to look at and get some pictures of. The kit comes in a fitted wooden case and consists of a barrel sleeve and insert, bolt assembly, 2 20-rd mags (weighted to feel like full .308 mags) and a cleaning kit. As it turns out HK did at one point offer an HK91 conversion kit in addition to the G3 conversion kit. Whats the difference? The HK91 kit was meant for semiauto guns and has a ‘tail’ on the bolt assembly that is not present on the G3 (fullauto) .22 conversion. As a result if you pull the bolt handle all the way to the rear with the G3 conversion in a semiauto gun, the hammer will hang up and you’ll have to disassemble the gun. Not a big deal, simply pull the bolt back far enough to chamber a round and let it go.

Lets talk math. The kit is approx. $500. That, my friends, is a lot of money. However that’s also what you would expect to pay for 1000 rounds of quality .308 ammo these days. So for the cost of 1000 rounds of .308 you can have a kit to shoot ammo that costs $12/1000.

Put another way:
$500 = 1000 rounds of .308, next 1000 rounds is $500
$512 = kit and 1000 rounds of .22, next 1000 rounds is $12

Whats the purpose since recoil and ballistics will be different than when using .308? First of all, familiarity. You can practice snap shoot drills – bringing the rifle up, quickly getting a sight picture, flipping the safety off and taking a shot – for about 1/20^th the cost of doing it in .308. Its an excellent way to practice trigger control and sight pictures and get the immediate feedback that is only possible with life-fire.

Still gotta get the Ruger built up as an AR trainer, though.