Well, I ordered some new grips for the Ruger Redhawk .357, they arrived,  and I’ll take it out tomorrow and see if that makes a difference. While I’m at it, I’ll also take the CZ457 ‘Jaguar’ .22 out for a spin and see how quiet a 29″ barrel is with another 8″ of suppressor on the end. I expect it to sound like a staplegun.

I didn’t watch the State of The Union speech yesterday because, well, it’s pretty predictable and I saw no need to rush into my first heart attack. Nice of whoever was feeding Biden lines to make sure to get that whole ‘assault weapon’ thing in there. I am amazed at how the Democrats never seem to learn that it’s not an issue that does them any favors. Republicans do the same thing with the abortion issue, and Libertarians just can’t let go of their drug legalization fantasies.

I have spent the last thirty years as a survivalist and I do think that every year I say “this coming year is the one that will justify everything I’ve done”. And…I’ve been right every year.This year will be no different.

Is the economy ‘the envy of the world’ as was said at the speech? Maybe. I suppose when everyone is dying of cancer the guy with ‘only’ diabetes is the envy of everyone else. But if you ran the question of ‘are things better now than they were four years ago’ I think you’d have a strong case for a negative response. Inflation, interest rates, foreign affairs, crime, and the price of gas….there’s a bit to look back at fondly a bit over four years ago.

Nothing is perfect, though, and we tend to look at the past with a bit of rose-tint. The future, on the other hand……is there anyone who thinks good things are in store? “Good” will be defined as things not going as badly as we expected.

As the man(?) said, the avalanche has started…it is too late for the pebbles to vote.There’s no magic pill that’s going to just make things better. Even if you elected the perfect candidate, you can’t unscramble these eggs overnight. No matter who gets elected, it’s still going to be a bumpy ride…just a question of whether its a bumpy ride towards the better or a bumpy ride towards the worse. Either way: bumpy ride.

But, hey, those are just observations and musings. What’s the useful part? I suppose the useful part is that it’s worth noting that no matter who gets elected, the ride is still gonna be humvee-at-55-mph bumpy. So don’t let your guard down thinking that ‘after the election the threat will be reduced’. Nope. Nada.

I’ll continue to do what I’ve always done: stay on top of food and supplies, avoid debt and liabilities, sock away cash and cash-like instruments, be ready for things to go (further) downhill, but also be prepared for them not to. What not to do is get complacent and think there’s a light at the end of the tunnel because someone is going to get/notget re-elected.

Tomorrow, in addition to the range, I’m heading to Winco, CostCo, and WalMart, and continue to keep the pantry full, the gas cans topped of, and supply shelves stocked. Then I’m going to spend time in my budget spreadsheet and make sure I’ve got enough cash tucked away for an emergency. And then it’s a trip to pick up some precious metals. And when it’s all over, I’ll feel like I have some control over my future instead of just being a victim of it. I recommend you do something similar. Weekends are two days: one to do what you want and one to do what you need. Invest a few hours in a more resilient future for you and your loved ones.

If you polled a group of people about what ‘survivalists’ or ‘preppers’ do, I would wager that the majority of answers are something along the lines of ‘they prepare to survive and live through the end of the world (or some flavor of it).” Now, this is a reasonable, albeit uninformed, opinion to have. I mean, we have camouflage, guns, ammo, bunkers, night vision, freeze dried food, livestock, gold coins, etc, etc. These are things that, normally, are kinda regarded as ‘end of the world’ items. Apocalypse is nigh? Get thee some chickens and rabbits. That sort of thing.

But I disagree. You, right here right now, are engaged in survivalist activity. When everyone is driving their car down to ‘E’, you’re never letting it get below half-full (or half-empty, I suppose). When people blissfully walk out the door of their houses unarmed, you’re slipping some thundertoy in your pocket. They’re buying jet skis and big screens, you’re paying off debt and saving cash. In short, even before the bombs drop and the pathogens spread, you’re engaged in various acts of survivalism.

Survivalism is giving yourself as much advantage as possible for when something big and bad happens. If we were to sum up the nature of survivalism in one word, one idea, it would be resilience. For most anticipated unfortunate events we can’t be 100% proofed against them..a lot of that stuff is out of our control. But, while we can’t control what happens to us, we can control our response to it.

An example… I worry about being unemployed. I increase my resilience to that by trying to do a good job at work, but also by living within my means, keeping as much money as possible, and making sure I’m ready to go find new work if I have to. By not carrying debt, keeping plenty of cash, and keeping my skills up to date, I increase my resilience to losing a job. Contrast this with someone who lives off their credit cards, spends everything as fast as they get it, and never develop or grow professionally.

Another example…when I take road trips my biggest concern is getting stuck somewhere due to bad road conditions, fuel issues, vehicle problems, etc, etc. I increase my resilience to these threats by carrying water, extra fuel, backpacking gear, food, cash (notice that money is a multitool for pretty much every emergency), and that sort of thing. Contrast this with someone who just blithely hops in their truck for a four-hour drive and winds up running out of gas when the gas stations are closed, gets stuck on a closed highway due to snow, or winds up on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere with a busted u-joint.

The message I’m trying to communicate here is that as a survivalist, you aren’t engaging in survivalist activities after the bombs drop, but that you’re actually engaged in them pretty much 24/7 in your pre-TEOTWAWKI life.

Or..at least…you should be.

Here’s a truth that you can absolutely bank on: before the big EOTWAWKI happens you will face many smaller, personal ones. You may be in one right now. What do they look like? Job loss, divorce, medical emergency, foreclosure, busted transmissions, leaky water heaters, tennis-ball-swallowing dogs, vulnerable loved ones, home invasions, unexpected expenses, 2am phone calls, and a thousand other crises that mean nothing to everyone else but are paramount to you because they are happening to you.

THIS is going to happen ALOT more often…..

…than THIS.

But if you’re a bit prepared for those events…youve increased your resilience against them…then, guess what, they aren’t EOTWAWKI events. They’re learning experiences. Or pains in the ass. Or simply and only…inconveniences. And I will happily trade EOTWAWKI for an inconvenience all day long.

So, moral of the story here – being a survivalist is an every day affair.

One of the blogs I read daily is The Field Lab. Basically, a guy in Texas moved to the middle of the desert and lives his life the way he likes…flying drones, building stuff, and doing life on his terms. (Basically, a  more theistic version of Joel over at TUAK.)

Right up until a tumor shows up in his pancreas. As you know, a pancreatic cancer diagnosis is pretty much a one way trip to the forever box. This guy, in less than a month, has gone from “Waitasec Doc, youre telling me….” to checking in to hospice. It happens that fast apparently.

While I am all for doing whatever it takes to preserve my comfort and life in a world that shows ironclad disregard for both, I am very cognizant that, eventually, the music stops. Its easy to forget that, but sometimes stories like this remind us to memento mori.

:::shrug::: Can’t fight it…sooner or later, you gonna dance wit da reaper.

I had planned on mentioning this last week, but I got sidetracked: don’t get so focused on the future (and preparing against it) that you don’t enjoy the moments in the present. Walking through the snow at night, watching stars twinkle, enjoying every sandwich, etc. The day will come when you won’t have the chance to do those things again, so appreciate them when you can.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled apocalypse…….

A comment on the previous post about the perceived need these days to be more than a little armed at all times….specifically, regarding vehicles:

 If gear or extra guns must be shed, abandoned or cached away from home base in an incident so be it. That excess cargo kit in vehicles should be sacrificial extra inventory items any way. How much is your life worth? It may be stolen from vehicles, the vehicle stolen, or the vehicle totaled out or torched in some scenarios that are indeed possible. It is deadly serious out there, so equip yourself to at least stand a chance.

This ties into something I’ve always found interesting when it comes to survivalism – the notion that ‘just in case’ gear, or gear that you stash away for an unlikely-but-possible emergency can be several orders of magnitude beneath your ‘primary’ gear in terms of quality.

Let’s say that you decide you’re gonna ride out the apocalypse with your Daniel Defense AR, a tricked out Glock, and maybe a sweetly set up Rem 870. But you figure that you should have a stash somewhere else ‘just in case’. And, more often than not, that same person stocks their ‘backup stash’ with a Makarov, an SKS, and whatever extra shotgun they have laying around.

I’ve mentioned this before but heres the crux of things – if you need to resort to your hideaway stash becase you can’t get to your primary gear, then its safe to assume that your life has just taken a turn for the spectacularly ungood, agreed? So, in that time of (literally) existential crisis doesn’t it seem to make sense that you would want the best gear you can have?

Or, put another way, assuming the guns listed above, you show up at Uncle Steve’s cabin, tear up the floorboards, find your Pelican case of hideout gear, and throw the lid open. Would you rather your DD AR and Glock was in that case or would you rather it was an SKS and a Mak?

When people skydive, do you think their backup ‘chute is of lesser quality and construction than their primary ‘chute? When people scuba dive, do you think the respirator and tank that are carried for emergencies are made to a markedly lesser quality?

This is why, personally, I spend the money on such a heavy layer of redundancies. I can take a good Glock 17, a quality AR, and a reliable 870, tuck them into a Pelican case and stick it away in a hideyhole somewhere ‘just in case’ and be just as well armed with that set up as I would be as if I hadn’t had to resort to my stash. And I can do that several times. Sure, stash one and two may never get used, but when its 3am on a dark rainy night and I’m frantically pulling that Pelican case out from under the woodpile while looking over my shoulder for the headlights that I’ve been trying to avoid….that third stash will be worth the expense of the other two.

And this doesn’t just apply to guns. Think about the stuff you keep in your vehicle. I know people who, when they wear out a pair of boots, throw them in the vehicle for emergencies. Dude, an emergency is when youre gonna want a pair of good boots…not ratted out old ones with blown stictching, split seams, and floppy soles.

Your backup gear should be of the same ‘tier’ as your primary gear. Is that expensive? Heck yes. But it’ll seem dirt cheap if you ever need to use it.  Are there exceptions? Maybe. If your primary setup is a SCAR and a Zev Glock you could probably get by with an AR and a regular Glock, for example. But there is not going to be an award given to the person who made it through the apocalypse with the least expensive gear. I have no doubt that a person could make do with bleached-out two-liter pop bottles to store their water in, a ChinaSport 3-9x on their .22, and a Harbor Freight generator. Maybe. But if you didn’t have to, why would you? Don’t you want to give yourself every possible advantage at a time when you’re desperately going to need them?

As the commenter pointed out, yes, you may wind up sacrificing your gear for some reason. And thats gonna suck. But up until that point, you will have a tremendous advantage in your favor.

Everything is sacrificial when it comes to survivalism. Yes you paid $3k for that rifle. But if you go through that checkpoint and you get caught with it you may wind up in jail cell as the world collapses around you. So out the window at 45 mph it goes. It hurts, yes…but look at whats more important.

We purchase things all the time, never use them, and consider it money well spent. Take homeowners insurance for example. If you pay the insurance for 30 years and your house never burns down, was it a waste of money? No, it was not. For those thirty years you transferred your risk to someone else. For those thirty years you were effectively bulletproof if something happened to your house. So, no, not a waste of money. Same thing with any gear you wind up having to ditch or never get to use – it bought you a level of safety and security by its very existence. Worth the expense.

So do it right the first time and get back-up gear as good as your ‘main’ gear. Or if thats really too painful, and I know it can be, get the next step down. But for the love of Crom, don’t just skip the second- and third-best options and sink straight to the Mosins and HiPoints. Scared and desperate future you will thank you for it.

It occurs to me that I’ve always found it a little…skewed? …that when it comes to things like a ‘Get Home Bag’ or other I’m-away-from-my-main-gear kits, the first emphasis is almost always on weapons. I’ve known people who have gotten stuck in Manhattan and had to walk off the island during 9/11, or been in an earthquake that brought things to a halt, or any one of a dozen similar scenarios. In almost all of them , the thing that made the most difference was comfortable shoes to walk in and water to drink. Nowhere in there did anyone say that the real gamechanger was having a pistol or carbine tucked away in their gear. (In fact, in virtually all the scenarios people have told me that they were in, being visibly armed would have been a big problem what with all the cops and other folks running around.)

I suppose, fairly, that the circumstances of your stranding have a lot to do with whether you’re need for a firearm is higher or lower. If you’re walking three miles home through the city because you’re alternator died it’s not as high a need as if you have to walk three miles through the city because the power grid just went down and night is falling fast.

Thats not to say that those things aren’t important, but rather that their usage in a crisis is almost nil. Yeah you should have them, but you’ll wind up using 90% of your other gear before it comes time to use that 10% that goes bang. Usually.

But when I think about the situations where I’m away from base, even in this current (mostly) non-EOTWAWKI period, my concerns drift towards the potential for violent encounters. There are far too many deranged homeless people, drug-influenced crazies, politically motivated thugs (‘peaceful protesters’) and just general whackadoodles out there for me to feel comfortable going anywhere these days without some sort of means to protect myself. And in a real crisis, the kind where civilization is hanging by a thread, being on foot with a backpack of useful gear just means that you’re an epic loot drop for anyone who thinks you’re ‘easy pickings’.

I’m starting to think that the real-world has finally caught up to the level of risk and threat the we always kind of imagined it was. Twenty years ago I was far less likely to be subject of a home invasion, mugging, armed robbery, or violent crime than now. Heck, there was a period of years where I never even bothered locking my door. But, for better or worse, it seems like the times have changed to the point that not having a weapon of some sort in any type of ‘survival kit’ or ‘bail out bag’ is just poor planning.

I’ve always kept a G19, holster, and a couple mags in my Bag O’ Tricks ™ just in case….and one of the reasons I got the Ruger PC takedown carbines (or the PC Charger) was specifically for toting around in my bag. It’s just interesting that the things that seemed a little ‘out there’ or ‘overkill’ a few years ago seem like reasonable prudent measures no

Unless you’re a maritime engineer and have a trained crew and materials to work with, the best thing you can do when the ship hits the iceberg is put on some warm clothes and head for the lifeboats.

I’m one person in a voting bloc of approx 168,000,000. It’s ridiculous for me to think that of the handful of issues I vote on each election that every one of them will go my way. Quite simply, there arent enough people who think exactly like me for my will to be enforced.

So, when I watch the news and see things that are going on around the world and in this country, it isnt too hard to make the leap that I cannot fix the situation, but what I can do is prepare myself and my world for the consequences. And thats pretty much what a survivalist is.

I can’t control the economic policy of this nation, I can’t control the Ukes and the Ivans, I can’t control the weather, and I can’t control the job market. All I can do is control my response to them. My response to these uncontrollable (by me) things has, and continues to be, to prepare for them as best I can.

Imagine two engineers standing on the deck of the Titanic as it is sinking, and they’re arguing about the best course of saving the ship. As they argue, the ship continues to sink further and further into the water. Instead of watching the two engineers argue, perhaps the best course of action is to head to the lifeboats.

Maybe the engineers can fix things, maybe not. But there’s no point in standing around wasting precious time watching them argue and, perhaps, uselessly trying to fix things when the lifeboats are filling up.

Maybe the world will straighten itself out. It usually does at some point (often after a really bad time). But instead of waiting around for things to get better, perhaps its a good idea to get ready for what happens if they dont get better.