Tag Archives: links to other bloggers

Link – First Aid: Food Storage and Food Poisoning

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A comment from the previous post on “I ain’t eatin’ that” generated a very concise and useful blog post over at Aesop’s. In a world where emergency medicine is wishful thinking, and you’re eating food that might not be up to First World standards, your first bout of food poisoning might be your last bout of food poisoning. Aesop tells it like it might be. Go read. Hall of fame post right there.

Blog roundup

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ETA: Guys, use your head….if youre going to mention a blog that you think other people would be interested in, don’t just say “You need to read Steve’s blog!”…post an actual link. C’mon……

Unfortunately the roster of blogs that are preparedness-related is constantly changing as blogs fall to the wayside…victims of lack of interest, lack of time,  or lack of hearbeats. My blog reading has taken a hit as some of my favorites have gone dark. Even though it is 404’d I still have Self Sufficient Mountain Living in my list of daily reads even though there hasn’t been a peep from its owner, publicly and privately, for a couple years now. But..he’d gone dark before and returned. I hope, I hope……

So, whats on the daily read? Here you go:

I’m always up for looking at new blogs. If you know a blog that might interest me, is frequently updated, has a low religious quotient, doesn’t have a tinfoil hat dress code, and is decently written….link a brother up. And tell ’em Commander Zero sentcha.

And one for my homies……….

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You know, what with the magnitude of this crisis we are in regarding race-n-‘rona I really miss Friend Of The Blog(tm) Harry‘s website. I would really, really love to hear about how he’s fared through all of this. If there was anyone perfectly situated to ride this out, it was him.

Hey Harry…if you’re reading this, drop me a line and lemme know how it’s going.

Link – DIY Panzerfaust

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Well, crap….there’s another project I’m going to have to pencil in some time for.

The niche market for legally registered disposable anti-tank weapons may soon experience a well overdue boom with the introduction of a historically accurate Panzerfaust 60 copy you can make at home. Jonathan Wild started the project last year which will eventually culminate in a book detailing how to build one yourself from scratch.

Capable of firing over 100 yards, the warhead (in this case is a practice dummy) uses a propelling charge of Goex cannon black powder housed in a cardboard tube attached to the rear of the fins. Like the original Panzerfaust design, initiation is provided by means of a primer (in this case commercial muzzleloading primers) fitted into an external nipple that is struck via the sheet metal trigger mechanism. The launching tube is simply a length of commercially available steel tube onto which the trigger mechanism is welded.

The potential seems…interesting.

Depth of scarcity

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Friend Of The Blog ™, Tam, over at View From The Porch, has a post up about the ammo shortage and it’s depth.

In other words, supply of cases and primers and the like starts getting sketchy because, firstly, handloaders scarf up the existing retail supply and, secondly, the majors have to start deciding how they’re going to allocate their own supplies of primers, cases, bullets, and the like.

I don’t know if Tam is old enough to remember the Great Primer Scare back during the Slick Willie administration, but it was, in some ways, a nice warm up for the present situation.

I have an 06 manufacturers FFL, so I get more than the normal advertisements from vendors. I also get advertisements directed at manufacturers, where you buy your brass and other components by the fibre drum. There is, indeed, a bit of scarcity running around.

Many folks feel that reloading is the answer to these ammo shortages, but thats like saying cooking your own hamburgers is the solution to no burgers at Wendy’s because of a beef shortage. If larger manufacturers can’t get the components to keep up with demand, neither will you. Usually.

I say ‘usually’ because, as an individual, you have more maneuverability than Remington or Speer. You can literally troll Gunbroker and pick up 100 cases here, 400 cases there, and another 250 cases from a garage sale down the street. And if you’re willing to expend a little sweat, you can almost always just find brass growing under feet at the range.

But, overall, if you shoot any of the ‘common’ stuff like 9mm, .223, .40, etc, you’re probably going to have a hard time finding it and when you do the prices may not be to your liking. If you reload, you’ll have a bit of an advantage because ammo is often snapped up before the components are since reloaders are outnumbered by non-reloaders.

Tam’s a smart cookie, and the nature of her profession is such that she has, no doubt, a stockpile that would suit her needs in virtually any crisis. But she’s also savvy enough to know that meat doesn’t come from a pink tray in the supermarket and .45 230 FMJ doesn’t grow on a tree in the stockroom at Bass Pro. Amateurs talk strategy, pros talk logistics.

Having been chicken-littling for the life of the blog, I’ve already gotten most of my ammo situation squared away. So much so that the only time I really buy large amounts of factory ammo anymore is when an uncommonly good deal turns up.

When will things get back to ‘normal’? Years, dude. If you don’t have the ammo you want right now then your biggest quandry is do you a) buy the ammo now at the inflated prices or b) risk waiting for prices to drop and availability to increase? If you choose plan A you’re gonna get the sandpaper joystick where the sun don’t shine…but you’ll have ammo. Plan B saves you money when you finally do buy, but that purchase might be two years down the road, if at all.

And then, there’s Plan C….have purchased all this crap years ago and it’s quietly sitting in ammo cans in a safe location just waiting for Der Tag. I’m a Plan C kinda guy.

 

Link – On panic buying

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Friend Of The Blog ™ Tam, over at View From The Porch, comments on the gun buying situation before us:

This current panic has a different flavor to it than most, though. Available evidence shows that there are a large number of first-time buyers looking for something to defend home and hearth, rather than existing gun hobbyists adding a twelfth or thirteenth AR15 to an existing collection.

That there is some panic buying going on isn’t really news to anyone who knows how to work a trigger and the internet. But Tam makes an astute observation that while AR’s are proving out the demand-supply graph, the parts to build your own AR are still fairly static. This, she opines, suggests that there’s a lot of first-time AR buyers out there buying complete guns rather than ‘building’ (assembling, really) their own.

I concur. This is why when PSA had some super low prices I picked up a dozen guns. And I hope you did the same.  Tam doesn’t foresee tings approaching anything close to normal vis-a-vis gun pricing/availability until next year and she is 100% right. Between Kung Flu, Black/White/My Life Matters ‘demonstrations’, and the upcoming election, 2020 may prove out to be a) the worst time to buy a gun and b) the best time to sell a gun.

But, and this is important, don’t get tunnel vision – guns are important because they protect the things that are important to us. Things like our lives, naturally, but also things like food, fuel, money, shelter, and a host of other things that keep us alive. And it’s those other things you should also be working on acquiring.

Put another way: if you think the world is getting scary enough that you need to go out and buy your first AR “just in case”, then it’s also scary enough you need to be out there buying food storage, fuel, meds, and getting your financial poop in a group.

Link – RIP: Ol’ Remus and the Woodpile Report

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Unverified by me, but, hey, thats not my job……..

On July 8th we lost a legend in the online patriot community – Ol’ Remus. As you may recall, he had previously lost his wife in March of 2020 and had been posting intermittently after that. His blog had not be updated with a post since June 9th and people were starting to get concerned because, even after losing his wife, he was only disconnected for a couple of weeks. Over at Western Rifle Shooters, it was reported in a screenshot from the comments of this article at American Digest that Ol’ Remus succumbed to cancer on July 8th (he had been diagnosed only three weeks prior).

H/T to AmericanPartisan.org

I’d only started reading it in the last year or so, but I liked what I saw.

Sad story that the guy’s wife died but it’s a little less sad, IMHO, that he followed her so quickly. I’m sure the months after her passing must have been tough. It comes for us all…memento mori.

So, there’s the answer, it seems, to something more than one person asked me in comments.

Recommendations

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Sadly, quite a few of my ‘regular read’ blogs have shut down over the last year or two. It happens. So, I need some new blogs to follow.

Preferred qualities:

  • Big on preparedness or a reasonably related topic
  • Low on religion
  • Good grammar and punctuation
  • Low Alex Jones quotient
  • Low racist/sexist content. (Hey, its fine to dislike a group for no particular reason, but the name calling gets a bit declasse)
  • Updates at least once a week
  • Isn’t all about homesteading and tiny houses

You’d think that wouldnt be a tall order, but…

Whats my current list of blogs I read look like? Glad you (didn’t) ask:

View From The Porch
SurvivalBlog.com | The Daily Web Log for Prepared Individuals Living in Uncertain Times.
The Firearm Blog
Jerking the Trigger
The Ultimate Answer to Kings | …is not a bullet, but a belly laugh!
Living Freedom
brushbeater – “once more unto the breach, dear friends…”
American Partisan | A vanguard movement of Western Civilization
The Field Lab
Raconteur Report

So, trot your faves and let’s see if there’s something that piques my interest.

Linj – Do you have a magic “keep you safe” talisman?

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From TUAK:

Neither do I. The older I get, the more I have to fight the urge to ridicule keyboard kommandos who think “prepping” is all about guns and gear and a case of MREs. I try to suppress the urge because I despise hypocrisy in all its forms and especially when I’m the hypocrite. And the truth is I was a proto-keyboard kommando: I was into “guns and gear” prepping long before keyboards – and preppers – became so ubiquitous. Yes! I was a faithful follower of Father Mel Tappan. I wore out my copy of Survival Guns in a way that would have made a Christian quite proud if it were his Bible. I was … a dumbass. And I kept it up for far longer than was wise.

Outstanding post and I suggest reading the whole thing more than once. My own impressions to follow.

For science!

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Well, I can’t say Im surprised but Joel over at TUAK called it quits on his storage food experiment after a couple days. Yes, I kinda predicted it but you gotta give the man credit for giving it a shot.

The big takeaway from all this is that, like first aid kits, you’re probably better off building your own ’30 day kit’ rather than stocking up on an under-caloried, over-salted, under-flavored, and over-priced packages.

Here’s a website that I really found fascinating: Safely Gathered in: Recipes. The recipes all use foods that store well and are therefore excellent candidates for your pantry.

Sadly, they haven’t updated in a while, but the info there is, in my opinion, highly useful.