Ar15.com and ,Rawles’ both had reposts of an after action report (AAR) from some hurricane refugees. It was pretty much what Ive been reading over the last six months…taking 30 hours to cover what normally took eight hours, closed gas stations, etc, etc. The disturbing part was about how when they were refueling their vehicle the people involved were close to being robbed for their fuel. The description mentions having to stand there with pistol in hand while fuelling and even the deterrent effect of that was sketchy.
As we all now, desperate people sometimes do things that defy good sense, and unarmed people trying to rob obviously armed people are one of those things.
So, I was wondering to myself, whats the solution. Its easy to say ‘shoot the first guy that comes too close after being warned’ but when push comes to shove I think there’ll still be reluctance to actually do that.
I figured there were a few options. In no particular order –
Refuel in an out-of-the-way area or in a way that obscures what youre doing from most observers. Perhaps when youre at ¼ tank you pull off an exit and drive a mile or two down the road and into a driveway or to the side of the road in some trees and refuel that way. Drawback is that from what I read, many exits were blocked off by the cops for various reasons. This means youre only choice is to refuel on the side of the interstate in full view of everyone else, who will no doubt be jealous of your forethought and wonder why you shouldn’t share with them since its unfair that you have fuel and they don’t.
A subterfuge would have been to have two people hold ponchos up to screen the activities of someone fuelling. To the casual observer it might appear to simply be someone taking a dump by the side of the road. Pretty sure this wouldn’t work though. Also require more people than might be available.
Neatest option would be some way to refuel covertly designed into the vehicle. In the case of a pickup truck, perhaps a secondary fuel port on the inside of the truck bed. Then a person could sit in the bed, have the fuel can below the line of sight and use a bulb-type pump to transfer fuel. Or simply run a large diameter length of tubing into the tank and have the free end routed over the gunwale and into the bed of the truck. Drape a sleeping bag or something over the side to conceal the tubing and it may simply appear that youre lounging in the back of your truck when in actuality your discretely pumping fuel into your tank below everyone elses line of sight.
Travelling at night might make a little more sense since you’d have cover of darkness to refuel and perhaps even less traffic to deal with. However, darkness brings its own problems too.
Finally, a dedicated non-lethal shotgun loaded with a blank or two and then some rubber buckshot. If things get ugly you fire a blank or two into the air or ground and if that doesn’t work you start bouncing rubber buck off the tarmac and into legs or just aim directly at the offending persons legs. If that doesn’t dissuade them, drop the gun and transition to pistol. The major drawback to this is, of course, that once you start pulling the trigger, even if it’s a blank or nonlethal round, someone might respond in kind.
A few people replied to the initial post suggesting that an overwhelming show of force would be the answer. Someone fuels while someone stands guard with their tweaked out M4gery. I think that some misanthropic opportunists might see this as a challenge and do the old ‘Whaddya gonna do? Shoot me? C’mon tough guy!’ routine and wind up escalating the situation unnecessarily. Tough call. In a pure nukes-have-destroyed-Chicago-NewYork-and-Washington-its-the-end-of-the-world scenario you probably could get away with simply warning someone to leave you alone and then shooting them if they press the issue. In a temporary disruption though…well, things will be back to normal in a week and it’ll catch up to you.
Of course, you could also just leave early and avoid a good portion of this. Or you could prepare to stay in place and avoid a good portion of this.
Really, theres no easy answer. Each possible solution has its own particular set of drawbacks.
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Unless Hillary Clinton runs for President in 2008 or Al-Queda nukes Miami, I don’t think the Republicans will win the election. I usually try to keep the political content to a minimum here but I think the current administration has made too many people hostile to them and its going to show at the polls. Unless the GOP clones Reagan and nominate him, I think the 2008 election will give us a Democrat for president.
If I’m wrong, great. I’d be happy to be wrong. But if Im right, then we could be looking at more gun ban situations. Sure, a Democrat President hamstrung by a Republican House and Senate majority might result in the kind of political stalemate we can all benefit from but Im not willing to take that chance.
In preparation for 2008 I am advocating:
- Magazines, magazines and more magazines (Those $2 HK91 mags may be a good investment) Esp. Glock, AR, AK and FAL mags.
- Stripped AR lowers. The remaining parts are uncontrolled.
- .50 BMG guns and ammo if youre into that sort of thing
- 7.62×39 ammo and any other caliber that a shut-off of the imported stuff would cause you to drastically shoot less. (8mm., 7.62×25, 5.45×39, etc.)
- Powder and primers in case ATFE gets a wild hair to classify them as bombmaking gear and start requiring licenses. They already did this for some model rocketry motors.
- If youre of the mind to get an FFL of some type (C&R, 06, etc) get it now.
I don’t think that the non-gun aspects of preparedness would be affected nearly as much as the gun aspect. Freezedried foods will still be available, as will fuel cans, MagLites, sleeping bags, water containers, etc, etc.
I’ve read that story a few times. Hauling cans of fuel on a bumper rack past cars with empty fuel tanks and angry, frustrated drivers is stupidity, plain and simple! Hide the fuel and keep any fuel can you’re not currently refueling with well hidden. Empty ones can serve as “sorry, used it all already” decoys should someone ask.
Personally, should the situation feel risky, I’d keep the guns holstered and hidden and have someone standing by with a Louiseville Slugger. I think you’re right about some people believing a person wouldn’t accelerate the situation to lethal over gasoline, but I suspect most people believe getting smacked with a big stick isn’t outside the realm of possibility…plus, standing around with a baseball bat makes you look too genuinely crazy to mess with. If you have to go for the shotgun, there’s always rock salt! I know people who have been on the receiving end of this (back in the days when rural folks could shoot a vandal’s butt full of rock salt and the only one who got in trouble was the vandal). It’s most distracting and unpleasant.
I agree that it’s unlikely the Republicans will win the next election (unless the Dems run Hillary). I’ve been stocking up for some time. I have ammo almost where I want it, but I need more magazines. I’ve long thought the Brady Bunch types will one day go after surplus ammo imports.
Charles Manson once opined that knives were better for insilling fear than guns. He said something like “Some dudes aint afraid of being shot but everyones afraid of being cut!”
Clinton did his bit on ammo imports by prohibiting all the Chinese stuff. Up till that point I was getting SKS-and-a-case-of-ammo combos for $150. Ah the good ole days…and that was steel core stuff too….
i’m thinking one of the big lessons learned from the hurricane incident was to make sure you have maps of your area. supposedly if you stayed off the highway you could get out of the area pretty quick.
so learn those backroads. then you wont have to get off at an exit or refuel in sight of 400 people that are mad that you planned ahead.
magazines for the Glock ?, that reminds me, Have you heard ANYTHING about the 29 round magazine for Glocks in .40 S&W, i ask because Delta Press has them for $59
Drawback is that from what I read, many exits were blocked off by the cops for various reasons. This means youre only choice is to refuel on the side of the interstate in full view of everyone else, who will no doubt be jealous of your forethought and wonder why you shouldn’t share with them since its unfair that you have fuel and they don’t.
If the cops are blocking the exits and preventing you from leaving the highway, that sounds like a decently secure place to refuel.
Unless they are unmanned blockades, in which case it’ll either not stop you or it’s still better than anywhere else for refueling.
If you are going to go to the trouble of putting a fuel port in the bed of the truck, why not make it a coupling of some sort and work up some sort of method to anchor an aux. fuel tank in a similar position to a lot of the tool boxes that sit in the far front of the bed. Couple the aux tank to the aux port with a bit of tube (doesn’t need to be big at all…think how much gas the gas station tubes flow – you consume a LOT slower than that) and let gravity keep the truck’s tank topped up. Fuel from the port in the top of the aux tank, and you’ve just added maybe 50 gallons of fuel capacity in the space of one of those toolboxes. Double that size horizontally and create a sloped floor to the tank to ensure drainage and you are looking at 90 or so gallons of automatically provided extra gas with NO increased visibility.
Aux Fuel Tank at Northern Tool. There are feed kits that tap into the stock fuel filler below it’s full mark, so that when you open the valve on the aux fuel tank, it’ll feed into the standard fuel tank but cannot overfill said tank.
“Charles Manson once opined that knives were better for insilling fear than guns. He said something like “Some dudes aint afraid of being shot but everyones afraid of being cut!”
Oleg?
An aux fuel tank would be the way to go for a truck imo.
The Scherer(sp?) magazines are, sadly, not that great. Glock only makes the ubermags in 9mm, so youre kinda screwed unless someone else comes up with a good one. I had the Scherer in 9mm and it worked okay the first two or three times and then it was one big jamfest.
I think, as usual, that the best bet is to have a place to hunker down somewhere within a one-tank drive (about 300 miles for either of my current vehicles). I’ll take hardened defense over mobility any day. That said, I don’t have that place yet, nor am I in any condition to get it soon. But ammo stores are looking better, and I’ve given some thought as to how I would defend the homestead if I had to.
FUEL
try installing a second fuel tank either underneath the truck or built into a wall. an electric fuel line switch can be installed to switch from one tank or another; or to drain into an existing empty lower tank. check your local autozone or west marine dealers. don’t forget to install lockable fuel caps to protect your investment.
an electric fuel pump equipped with lenghts of fuel hose, switch, fuse, and 12vdc line and plug makes a dandy fast siphon when borrowing gas from another soul. Wildflower 06
Off topic, but I so love that icon.
Unless Hillary Clinton runs for President in 2008 or Al-Queda nukes Miami, I don’t think the Republicans will win the election.
I’m not sure Hillary will lose if she runs (and that should not be read as an endorsement of anything to do with her). If the disgust level with the GOP gets much higher, she’d stand a better chance. I hope that doesn’t happen.
Where was I going with this? Oh yeah…what you described unfortunately nails the two biggest scenarios I see that could drag us into a civil war.
If/when the Dems win back enough to be in control, look for a wave of “in your face” legislation from them as they attempt to roll back everything the GOP did over the past few years…and then roll it back even further, for good measure. Push hard enough, and conservatives will push back…in the streets.
On the other hand, a terrorist nuclear attack on a US city? In the chaos that follows, the government’s going to be run ragged trying to maintain order and quell panic, a tough job with the military largely tied up overseas. Let a little anti-Muslim anger grow into Mosque burnings, let some liberal backlash turn into street demonstrations to protect the innocent Muslims, let a few bricks be thrown…then shots fired…it could get ugly very fast.
Of course, I’ve been wrong before.
Oh, with regards to getting out of dodge, apparently, one of the folks that evacuated Katrina (Not sure if it was Old Sarge’s comment) stated that he got a train of 4×4 vehicles behind him that more or less stuck with them no-matter where they went until they were directed off the highway onto a better road by law enforcement. Apparently he was able to push through some vegetation to get around blockages in the road where road bound cars had run out of gas and traffic was hopelessly snarled.
In some cases, if you have a group of like minded friends, there would be safety in numbers and one or more larger trucks could act as a mother craft for several smaller off-road capable vehicles. The increased cargo capacity and deep water fording capability would allow for dealing with some problems that the smaller vehicles couldn’t handle. CBs or FRS radios being a good idea for keeping in touch.
Oh, and the types of vehicles that are easily seen as military are Blazers and dodge pickups (CUCVs), M715s in some cases, Contact Maintenance Trucks and of course the usual HMMWVs and such. The USMC And Army have started using G-Wagons and Landrovers, so, perhaps a couple of OD painted pickups of a certain style would be able to trail along with the larger truck no problem.
I have to disagree with you here. First, it’s the moderate 10% in the middle who decide every (somewhat close) election. We tend to lean conservative because though both sides will get you in the end, one will get you more slowly. That’s the Reps.
Two, both sides are slaves to the primary system which is designed to pander to the hard core fanatics in the party, so we’re doomed to get extreme candidates on both sides. Since both sides have effectively squeezed out any potential third-party opposition, we’re left with a decision between two raving rhetoric machines.
Three, the Dems have failed dismally in recent yeats to have any platform other than “But we’re not them!” This will never get them elected, no matter what the Reps have done.
We’ll have to wait and see, but I feel that the time is coming where the Dems will finally realize that the gun control issue is a losing argument. It gets them nowhere except with the fringe fanatics who don’t decide elections.
2008 Results
As far as a shooting war in the streets as someone posted earlier, I really doubt that will be case. Americans don’t have the ‘street’ as in the media’s ‘Arab street’ where we all congregate and exchange ideas. Well we do, but you are reading it right now. Besides that, Americans don’t really congregate much outside of naked displays of consumerism or rock concerts. Honestly, how well do you know your neighbors? Can you rely on them if the power was out for weeks on end or would they become a burden, or worse – a threat?
The other issue with civil war is that the front line is everywhere. This will be an ideological war, not a territorial one so plan accordingly. The only territories you can count on being sided one way or another are the cities and urban areas. Rural areas will be more receptive to 2nd Amendment type of folks, but at the same time will have a dim view of refugees from the cities, even like-minded ones.
Crom
I got a few of those cheepy chinese sks for something so cheap (at the time) and ugly, its pretty damned accurate and a good knock around throw in the back of the truck type gun.