“The people have spoken…and they must be punished.” – Ed Koch, famous mayor of NYC.

The UK leaving the EU isn’t the end of the world. All it really means, in practice, is that the top guys in Brussels have to order new stationary.

The world got along without the EU twenty years ago, they’ll get along without it now. Not a big deal.

What does surprise me is that the UK voted for the secession. How often do you hear of anyone seceding from anything without a war or revolution?

If I had to bet, I’d say markets are back to normal by next Wednesday as people have an entire weekend to realize that it’s not a big deal. What is a big deal, though, is that the UK might just have been the first rat off the ship and the EU might start getting a  little sticky about who else leaves. Stay tuned.

CUMANÁ, Venezuela — With delivery trucks under constant attack, the nation’s food is now transported under armed guard. Soldiers stand watch over bakeries. The police fire rubber bullets at desperate mobs storming grocery stores, pharmacies and butcher shops. A 4-year-old girl was shot to death as street gangs fought over food.

Venezuela is convulsing from hunger.

Hundreds of people here in the city of Cumaná, home to one of the region’s independence heroes, marched on a supermarket in recent days, screaming for food. They forced open a large metal gate and poured inside. They snatched water, flour, cornmeal, salt, sugar, potatoes, anything they could find, leaving behind only broken freezers and overturned shelves.

And they showed that even in a country with the largest oil reserves in the world, it is possible for people to riot because there is not enough food.

In the last two weeks alone, more than 50 food riots, protests and mass looting have erupted around the country. Scores of businesses have been stripped bare or destroyed. At least five people have been killed.

This is precisely the Venezuela its leaders vowed to prevent.

Yay, socialism. I think you’d have to wait a long time to see such a level of dystopia hit this country. And while I don’t think it will ever be like that, on a national level, here in the US, it is still a fascinating example of what happens when food becomes scarce. That ‘thin venwer of civilization’ that we always hear about gets scratched away and the next thing you know there’s an angry mob prying the bars off the window to your house.

So many tangents to go off of in that story…personal security, hard currency, foraging skills, food storage, armed revolution, etc, etc. Make no doubt about it, folks that don’t care who gets voted into office will suddenly care about politics when their kitchen cabinets are bare. I haven’t found much in the way of news about it, but I’d imagine the rural dwellers in Venezuela are probably faring a little better than their city brethren.

There’s a lot to take away from the article. And the related articles about the crumbling medical infrastructure are illuminating as well. And while I don’t foresee it happening on a national scale here, I can see it happening on a local scale to various degrees as things like weather and natural disasters come and go.

Go read. Then go sit in your pantry an imagine what it would be like.

It’s only a matter of time before the government collapses or is forced out by a crowd with pitchforks and torches. What comes in after that will be anybody’s guess.

Sportsman;s guide has a pretty good deal going on. Twenty bucks for a 400-yard spool of military two-strand commo wire.

This is the stuff you want for things like field phones or any other..ahem..’device’…that you need to run some current to. This stuff usually goes for a lot more per spool, so …get while the getting is good.

ETA: They changed the price on that one SKU. This one appears to still be cheap…

It’s under the “I Don’t Know What I’d Do With It, But I Want Them Anyway” category.

I’m not exactly 100% sure what use smoke grenades (or smoke-generating devices) are in a preparedness situation. Oh, sure…from the ‘lost hiker’ perspective it’s nice to have an enormous cloud of smoke wafting through heavy forest canopy making your location more readily apparent to rescuers. Or if you’re in a boat at sea. Now, drop those two scenarios and ….. ?

The last time I heard of anyone outside of the military using smoke to cover a retreat or advance was this guy..and it did not go well for him. I suppose that in some sort of Mad Max world you’d use them to choke people out of buildings or perhaps provide distractions. But, other than that, I’m not really seeing a lot of practical application. Then again, I relly haven’t sat down and wargamed it through completely either.

Regardless….the subject does have some interesting baggage with it.

In the old days, back when this was a free country, you could buy your classic military pull-ring smoke grenades through the mail and at gun shows. They were fun and, no two ways about it, looked cool mixed in with your gear. Paintballers loved em. And, as usual, some scrotally-challenged wonder at ATFE decided that the fuze assembly and/or igniter system fell under the classification of ‘regulated explosive’ and that was the end of the party. (although they are still available on department letterhead or with an ATFE explo license.)

Nature abhors a vacuum and so does the market. A few outfits have stepped in with their own version of ‘pull ring’ smoke grenades. Most notably, these guys. I ordered a few of them the other week, out of curiosity and they arrived a few days ago. I haven’t tried them yet but the videos of them being used seem rather promising. But…they are nowhere near the durability of the military product. For one thing, it’s hard to shake the feeling that this is a firework that has been dressed up with tactial-looking stickers and graphics. The ‘body’ is a heavy cardboard tube..like most fireworks. The degree of weather-resistance and durability of this product would seem to be….mild. As I said, I have no idea what I would do with these things, but if I did think I had a need for them I’d want them to be as waterproof, crushproof, moistureproof, and durable as possible.

To be fair, though…it looks like they generate a nice amount of smoke in a hurry. And..theyre cheap.

Giving us better durability and water-resistance, but a distinct lack of color, are the distress smoke signals available to boaters. I like these. I can usually find them cheap at gun shows, they aren’t about to raise the eyebrows of anyone, and they seem to generate a decent amount of smoke. I could entirely see someone rolling one or two of these down an office stairwell in Katrinaville to dissuade looters from coming up the stairs.

Naturally, there is always a DIY option for these sorts of things. A quick perusal of YouTube, a trip to WalMart, a side trip to Home Depot, and you an pretty much build some amazing, albeit improvised, smoke generating devices on your own.

…and somewhere at Cheaper Than Dirt headquarters, they are readying the pricing algorithms on the website for $100 Pmags.

Quick! Time to take guns and magazines away from the people who didn’t do anything wrong.

Buckle up, kids…it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

ETA: Nailed it.

I was at the campus library here in town and, to my surprise, they had a couple displays about the ‘good old days’ of the Cold War bomb-shelter era.

Interestingly, about twenty years ago, I’d heard some rumours that there was a stash of CD supplies hidden in the machinery level of one of the campus dorms. A sympathetic and equally curious head resident grabbed his keys and we went exploring. Sure enough, on the levels above the elevator machinery were dozens of the old Sanitation Kits and some of the old water barrel kits. This stuff is still out there.

The pamphlets and booklets are quite interesting. Some of them I had not seen before.

One of my favorite places to read about this sort of stuff.