Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.
Its like a horrific traffic accident that I cant look away from. The mayor of New Orleans demands everyone leave, sends goons to reinforce that position, then a few days later starts letting folks back in and now he's telling 'em to leave again. If this were Vietnam he'd have been killed by one of his own men by now.
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Winter approaches here in the Land O' Mountains. Soon it'll be time to start toting my Cold Weather Module around in my backpack, make sure the winter survival gear is in the truck, and generally take a few precautions to prevent freezing to death. One nice thing about winter, if the power goes out my freezer full of meat just gets emptied to an outside location where it'll stay frozen. Hell, alot of the time its warmer in the freezer than it is outside.
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Still, I do need to get a small generator for the freezer. Actually, just a small generator for general purpose. My anticipated power needs during an outage are quite small. Some 12v lighting (LED mostly), radios, a battery charger for the handhelds and thats about it. It wouldnt be too hard to draw up a list of requirements in terms of usage, pad it a bit, and match it to a small generator. A large generator, would of course, be nice but that demon money is always souring the sweetest intentions. With the exception of the freezer, almost all of my needs are DC rather than AC and are fairly small draw…so a bank of batteries charged from either house AC, solar panels, or a small generator might be the way to go.
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One of the LMI picked up a side-mount (mounts on the siderail) AK red dot sight. We're going to take it out and see how it does. I'll do some with/without shooting and see how much of a difference it makes. Stay tuned.
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I'm sure I'll have a longer (much longer) post on this subject later but one thing I've learned as far as preparedness goes is that you cant learn just one thing as far as preparedness goes. Its a huuuuuuuuge skill set…just off the top of my head: compass skills, small unit tactics, first aid, sewing, radio theory and practice, rappeliing and ropework, plumbing, electrical, gun handling, carpentry, camping, hunting, fishing, computer skills, cryptography, map reading, spreadsheet usage, reloading, food preservation and canning, bicycle repair, fuel handling, urban survival skills, gardening, wilderness survival skills, organization, etc, etc, etc…and always logistics. Talk about being a well rounded individual….
Yeah, I know – whine, whine, whine.
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Was in the local sporting goods shop and found an LED replacement bulb assembly for the MinMag. Only $10. I love the MiniMag for its durability and wide availability. If I can get it to run using LED's and get the associated battery life then this may be a good ting indeed. Will probably pick it up in the next few days and give an evaluation of it here and on the website.
