Autumnal tasks

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Today is, as I understand it, the first day of fall/autumn. This means, of course, that winter is on its way. Don’t kid yourself, though…fall can get pretty damn cold and nasty long before the ‘official’ start of winter occurs.

So what’s getting done around here now that we are officially in fall? Run the generator to make sure it works. Ditto for the snowblower. Get the winter emergency gear put in the vehicle. Drag the winter clothing and gear out of storage. Make sure the kerosene heaters are ready to go, etc, etc.

I don’t mind the house getting cold in the winter….I prefer it that way, actually. What I don’t want is frozen pipes. So…kerosene heaters. If the power goes out I can put one in the basement to keep the pipes from freezing and keep another one upstairs to keep the rest of the house from freezing. If your’re going to go that route, though, you absolutely must, must, must have a carbon monoxide detector. Preferably more than one. And make sure you have fresh batteries in them. You just can not take chances with that sort of thing. I prefer detectors that have a numeric display so I can actually see if things are getting worse or better in terms of air quality. In addition to that sort of thing, I also keep a huge CO2 fire extinguisher handy for the fueling process. (And these precautions are also in place for the generator as well).

Which reminds me, I need to go fill a couple jerry cans and treat some gas. The winter blend of craptacular MTBE/oxygenated/’envirofriendly’ is going to be all thats available soon and that crap is not friendly to the small engines. (And, by the by, if you’re going to store fuel, I highly recommend the PRI-G product.)

Happy Paratus!

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Yes indeed, today is Paratus!

If you’re going to have a holiday, why not a holiday you can actually enjoy and support? Today is Paratus – the holiday of the prepared!

Go read the FAQ and see what’s expected and what its all about. ut, succinctly, it’s a day to get cool new gear, watch end of the world movies, and hang out with fellow Like-Minded Individuals. Religious overtones? Nope. Awkward family get together? Not required. Getting to do cool stuff you actually want to do? Absolutely!

So, my friends, today is your day of absolution…today is the day you can head to Cabela’s, CostCo, Big Five, Sam’s Club, or Bass Pro, and buy the case of ammo, buy the mega-pack of toilet paper, buy six dozen pairs of boot socks, buy the army surplus folding cots, and not feel an ounce of self-consciousness or guilt. Why? Because it’s a damn holiday!

Go! Get out there and flex your purchasing power, watch some zombie movies, and take a trip to the range with some friends. Pick up a little something for your like-minded buddies and wish them a Happy Paratus. (See the FAQ on proper gifting etiquette.)

But, most of all, take some time today to reflect on preparedness…why you do it, what you get out of it, and what you have left to do. Thats the most important part.

Well…that and sending me Paratus gifts.

Article – ‘This is the month it will all happen’: Some Mormons are cleaning out Utah stores in preparation for a September Doomsday

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Fasten your seatbelts, if some Mormons are right, it’s going to be a bumpy September.

A perfect storm of Bible prophecies, the Hebrew calendar, the stock market jitters, a blood moon, and an author who claims to have had a near-death experience are all convincing plenty of Utah Mormons that the end is near, reports The Salt Lake Tribune.

A store in American Fork, Utah that sells freeze-dried goods says that business has skyrocketed in the past couple of months.

Dude, any month could be the month the world comes to an end. Doesn’t matter whether its the bible, chicken bones, a magic 8-ball, or Miss Cleo….unless you’re the guy with your finger on the Big Red Button no one can really predict the end of the world. Oh, you can predict some lesser problems…hurricanes, floods, blizzards, and even some wars and famines….but Ragnarok? Nope.

And this is why it’s just good sense to be as prepared as possible. The end of the world wasn’t yesterday, and it’s probably not today, but it is certainly sometime tomorrow or later.

CostCo canned pulled pork

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I’ve mentioned the Costco/Kirkland canned roast beef before. It’s really good stuff and although food preferences are subjective, I recommend the stuff highly. Last time i went to buy some at CostCo they no longer had it and I was told it was only available through the website. Bummer. But, apparently, it’s back on the shelf at my particular CostCo. As I was picking some up, I noticed that they also had cans of pulled pork. The thing that really caught my eye was that the pulled pork was quite a bit cheaper than the beef. Well, for my end-of-the-world planning, protein is protein. So lets pick up a roll of four 12 oz. cans for $6.99 which comes out to…uhm.. lets see….$2.33/#, which is actually pretty good.

20150906_130743I figured I’d try one of the recipes on the can and see how it turns out. In this particular case, a form of chili. Now, lets get this part out of the way – I’m from the school of thought that says chili doesn’t have beans. I’m not going to argue it with you, I’m just puttin’ it out there. Moving on, now.

  • 1 can of pulled pork
  • 1 diced green pepper
  • 1 diced onion
  • 1 small can of chiles
  • 1 can of diced tomatoes

And we’ll toss that in the cast iron, cover it, and simmer it for an hour to give everything time to mix.

Turns out, it was actually pretty good. The pork isn’t really ‘pulled’ as we recognize it from, say, a good BBQ joint. It’s more ‘flaked’, like tuna fish. But, even though like all meats it smelled like cat food when the can was opened, it was good.  For the price, this is an excellent product to have on the shelf…cheaper than the roast beef and quite useful in a variety of dishes.

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Hey! Paratus is this coming Friday! Tell your friends!

Link – Rental Range endurance of ARs

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Forget about any military endurance testing of the AR/M16 platform, a rental range in Las Vegas has some extremely interesting findings when it comes to large round counts, sometimes in excess of 200,000 rounds through commercially available and full auto ARs. Granted, none of the grueling testing procedures in place from a military standpoint are there, but for sheer round count alone, it really tells a lot about what some companies can take and what others can’t when it comes to their rifles and products in general.

I love articles like these. Real-world numbers and experiences. It is interesting to note that the article does not look favorably at the piston ARs. I guess it makes a bit of sense that the direct impingement versions, which are going to have no reciprocating parts on the barrel (and less parts overall) are going to be a bit more durable than a piston version. On the other other hand, I’d be very curious to see the failure numbers on a designed-from-the-ground-up piston .223 like the Min-14 or AR-180.

In a similar vein, they had a similar article about the AK family as well.

Article – Selling Survival

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Broker Theresa Mondale and her client stand in a clearing on the patch of mountain forest he wants to sell, making small talk about whether society is going to collapse. The topic, weighty in any context, might be anathema to other agents, whose business trades on the promise of better days. In real estate, amenities always mingle with aspiration: The house has space to grow into, the yard is big enough for a dog or the patio will entice neighbors to come by for barbecue.

But Mondale’s big, cheerful voice doesn’t waver. This is her bread and butter. She has been following the latest buzz online predicting a “global reset” in September and wants to know if the client is worried.

“If something like that were coming I would feel it, because I’m a pretty intuitive person,” says Seth Pogue, a bald man with weathered skin, strong arms and an intense manner that seems to contradict his tie-dye shirt.

The local lefty fishwrapper has an article about a local real estate seler who is quietly specializing in properties that would appeal to those of us who share our rarefied interest. I’d heard some of the commercials, and seen some of the print ads, that were put out for this gal and I recall thinking that she might be on the same page as me.

The article, which isn’t too terrible for a lefty publication, goes on to mention Friend Of The Blog ,Rawles  and his coining of the ‘redoubt’ moniker as an appelation for the region.

In my years here I’ve seen more than a few properties that had odd little quirks and features that could not be explained away as anything other than ‘survivalist’-themed. But out here, those features are not necessarily considered to be odd or strange.

If I had the money, I’d be getting myself a nice acreage out in the middle of nowhere to build my quiet little concrete home and ride out what’s left of my life in quiet and security.

Anyway…interesting article and worth the read. I’d be curious to know if her business takes off or suffers because of the spotlight being shined on her particular niche.

Whats up with silver

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I’ve been noticing that silver has been in the (mostly) below $15 range for the last couple weeks. At one point it very briefly dipped below $14, which was pretty surprising. Problem is, you head down to your local metals dealer to by some you wind up at dang near $20/oz. because of the premiums. Whats up with that?

As I understand it, delivery times on physical silver (and, really, why would you own anything else) are pushed out pretty far. Want a ‘monster box’ (500 ct.) of Silver Eagles? Pay now and we’ll call you in a few weeks when it arrives. And that’s not just Eagles…pretty much all the nationally minted stuff is backed out, too. The generics aren’t much better. Sunshine makes the plancehttes for the US mint, so getting Sunshines is also an exercise in patience. So while the generics have a lower premium than the nationally minted stuff, you’re still looking at waits for anything in quantity.

It seems that the only thing that isn’t on backorder is ‘junk silver’…the pre-’65 coins. Which makes sense since there is no manufacturing bottleneck on those…they’re already made. I want to say the junk stuff was going for around 14-15x face value the other day…which means ten dollars worth of dimes, or ten dollars worth of quarters, will set you back $140-150.

I rather like Canadian Maples and Sunshine rounds for their anti-counterfeiting measures. The Maples are hard to get right now but I can usuualy find some Sunshine Buffaloes in the ‘generic bin’.

I’m not sure where the price of silver is going but I would say its almost certainly going to go up. The days of $6 silver are, I think, gone for a long time. I’d say $15 is about the new normal for this sort of thing. Of course that can change depending on how the markets go…when the markets get wonky people run for something that holds value a little better. And, of course, us ‘anti-government, survivalist’ types always feel a little better with our holdings diversified into tangibles….ammo, guns, fuel, silver, gold, cash, etc.

If you think you want some silver and don’t mind the wait (which really isn’t even a choice at the moment) go rattle the cage of the Metals Pimp.

‘Walking Dead’ spinoff

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So the other night was the premier of the ‘Walking Dead’ spinoff – ‘Fear The Walking Dead’. The premise, in case you missed it, is that unlike ‘The Walking Dead’ which shows us the zombie apocalypse about a month after it started, we get to see it from the start.

I find this interesting because I want to see the descent into a dystopic world. Walking Dead shows us the ashes of the world, but I want to see the world when it was burning.

Im expecting that since the first episode was used primarily to set up who was who and what their situations were, the second episode will get to the ‘meat’ o the matter. I want to see the panicked mobs in the supermarket, the violent traffic jams, the looting, the every-man-for-themselves police, the mobs of scared people, the infrastructure failure, etc, etc. To me, thats the most interesting part.

The first fifteen minutes of the otherwise forgettable World War Z movie was like that.  There was a great scene in the supermarket where the cop ignores the patrons shooting each other while he grabs stuff for himself. Sahdes of hurricane Katrina.

So far, though, Im less than impressed. I understand that the real zombie action has to wait until we’ve been introduced to the characters. Thats fine, I understand that. But, geez, there was not a single person there whom I cared about. Drugg addled son, bitchy daughter, desperate-to-be-a-family dad, badly-defined ex-wife, angst-ridden new wife…genuinely no one I cared about. We’ll see if that changes.

29 days ’till Paratus

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The free ice cream machine, as Tam calls it, has been a little empty lately. Sometimes real life gets in the way, m’friends.

It is worthwhile to note (or at least I think it is) that Paratus is rapidly approaching. I know what you’re thinking…”But, Zero, it seems like I just put away all the Paratus trimmings from last season!”. Hey, man….that’s how holidays work.

For your full Paratus shopping needs, I recommend this list of Festivus items I put together a few years back. For the budget minded they are broken down into the cheap, middling, and dang-you-really-like-me price range.

Given the nature of the crappy storm we had recently that resulted in power outages that, in some areas, are still going on, I think this year a lot of the local people will be getting the LED MagLites as gifts. I am stunned at how many people dont have a good, quality, flashlight around the house. Stunned, I tell you. Me, I loves me some MagLite…..sure the Pelican lights are nice, and sure its hard to beat SureFire on a lot of stuff….but for a $25 flashlight that will take abuse like Clinton’s wedding vows, you can’t do better than the LED MagLite.

Anyway…Paratus approaches! Get out there and shop!

Pocket machete

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Well, I guess since the cat is outta the bag, I can quickly mention a cool toy I was gifted.

20150731_151835The knife is done by Cold Steel with input from SurvivalBlog’s own ,Rawles. (Yup, thats his name on the blade. Yes, they included the comma.) Proceeds from the sale of the knife go to charity.

This monster of a pocket knife was gifted to me at the Missoula gun show a couple weeks ago. It’s an interesting knife and a far departure from what I normally carry around. While calling it a ‘pocket’ knife may stretch the definition of ‘pocket’, it definitely doesn’t depart from the definition of knife. This thing is a big folder with a half-serrated blade, beefy, rough-textured handles, and everyones favorite black/olive tacticool finish. It’s a litte big for my personal EDC, but it will definitely go in my bag when I’m out tromping around the woods or E&E’ing ahead of the zombie hordes. Personally, I like half-serrated blades. Sometimes stuff needs to be cut that is just too challenging to a straight blade….nylon/plastic strapping comes to mind…and the serrations make short work of that sort of thing.

From Cold Steels website:

The RAWLES VOYAGER was made to James’s unique specifications, with an O.D Green Griv-Ex™ handle, heat treated 6061 Aluminum liners and our famous Tri-Ad® locking mechanism, offering unparalleled shock and impact resistance and durability in the field.

The Rawles Voyager has also been equipped with a high performance American CTS XHP steel Tanto point blade and a durable black DLC (Diamond Like) coating, making it an excellent choice for the modern day survivalist!

This limited edition knife is the only version of our highly popular Voyager that features an American CTS XHP blade, giving it even greater edge retention properties!

Cold Steel, Lynn C Thompson, Andrew Demko and James Wesley, Rawles have all chosen to donate all proceeds from the RAWLES VOYAGER to charity.

Cool knife with cool backstory. My thanks to the person who generously gifted it to me.