Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.
Haiti seems to have run through its scheduled news cycle and is back in the page-five category of ‘news events that continue, but are no longer interesting to the public’. Not surprising, major news stories are all the rage for a brief amount of time and then media focuses on newer, fresher issues. In the meantime, a month after the earthquake, Haitians live in squalor and grinding poverty, slowly starving and dying from disease and violence. The cynic in me wants to say “So, things have gotten back to normal then”.
Sucks to be in Haiti, no doubt about it. And as bad as conditions are there for those folks my primary concern is stuff closer to home. The economy continues to shed jobs, the hopey-changey administration continues to be an epic fail, more businesses seem to be shuttering up, and lotsa folks don’t know if theyre gonna be homeless in a year. Im supposed to, with that in mind, be concerned about a disaster in a Third World country? My plate is kinda full at the moment as I worry about this First World country. (And, yes, there is, technically, a such thing as a Second World country….Canada springs to mind.)
Im actually a little disappointed at the reduced coverage of Haiti. I was very interested in seeing how the various problems were overcome and what sort of methods were being used. Mass disaster planning and mitigation is mostly theory. You can have all the drills and mock events you want but in the final analysis you cant be sure a program works until you actually try it in a crisis. Haiti may wind up being a case study or laboratory in which these sorts of programs and policies will be proven (or disproven). Should be interesting to see what happens.
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The Mosin-Nagant rifles (and to a lesser degree, ammo) continue to be one of the best bargains around these days. Cheap enough to buy a few and stick ‘em away for a rainy day, the Mosin-Nagants are certainly better than no gun at all. Heres a link to a very nice tutorial on disassembly and , more importantnly, re-assembly. A nice touch is that theres some explanation on how to use those curious disassembly/takedown tools properly.
Im kind of a snob on surplus rifles. Theres plenty of good ones out there but I think its pretty hard to beat the classic 98 Mauser style action. Sure the Enfields are rugged beasts, and yes the Schmidt-Rubins are amazingly well-machined, and the 1903 Springfields make excellent sporters. But I just really like the old Mauser. I think thats one of the reasons the CZ rifles appeal to me….although to be fair, the current incarnations of the Ruger 77 rifles with their claw extractors and controlled round feeding are excellent derivatives.
