Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

As you may know, Hornady has come out with anti-zombie ammo featuring their new ‘Z-Max’ bullet. Ruger has alos shambled onto the bandwagon and brought out a LCP-Z model. ‘Zombie apocalypse preperation’ stores are springing up.

Yet…no zombies.

It’s fairly obvious, to me anyway, that the elephant in the room that many people dont want to acknowledge is instead talked about in code. Zombie apocalypse is simply code for ‘whatever freaky stuff is coming down the pike towards us as this economic tragedy unfolds’. Bought three AK’s because youre worried about food riots and home invasions? Youre a paranoid freak. Bought them because of the upcoming zombie apocalypse? Hey, I like zombie movies too!

See the difference? This isnt the first time I’ve mentioned this. The Zombie Squad guys have been couching general preparedness in terms of zombie apocalypse for quite a while now. More and more people are preparing against the zombie apocalypse which, coincidentally, just happens to line up with being prepared for a host of other, more likely, scenarios.

What I find interesting is how it is starting to mainstream to the point that major manufacturers are actually offering product directly marketed to the zombie preparedness market.

Personally, I’ve never needed to justify why I do the things I do so I really don’t need to use zombies as a beard. On those very infrequent occasions when someone asks about what I’m doing I either just dance around the subject or I tell ‘em point-blank that I’m preparing against an uncertain economic future and that those preparations will dovetail nicely into any other disaster that comes along as well.

I will admit to a certain amount of zombie daydreaming. I’ll watch some zombie flick and think “man, I wonder ho we’d fare in that situation” and that will inevitably lead me down the road thinking about ammo, food stores, fuel, communications, transportation, etc, and in that way perhaps highlight something I need to do in my ‘real world’ preparations or give me a new idea altogether. This is one reason that I like ’survival fiction’ so much…it sets one to thinking about things that they may not have thought about before and in that way point towards weaknesses and solutions that were previously unknown.

I’ll probably buy a couple boxes of Hornady’s new ammo just for giggles, but it is an interesting sign of the times.

Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

Too many gun posts. Let’s move on to something else……

Here’s the scenario: we keep a stockpile of goods, let’s say food, that we keep a spreadsheet for. This spreadsheet simply lists description and quantity. A printout of that spreadsheet sits on a clipboard, along with a pen, on the shelf with the stockpile. When something is removed/added to the stockpile a notation is made on the clipboard. Every few weeks I take the clipboard to my computer, open the spreadsheet file, update it, print out a new sheet, and replace it in the clipboard. A copy of that file sits in my iPhone so that when we are shopping I can, if we come across a sale on something, see if we should stock up to replace our inventory. Here’s the rub: the file on my phone is only as accurate as the last time the spreadsheet was updated and uploaded to my phone …. something that is only done every few weeks.

The alternative would be that every time I grab a can of tomatoes from the stockpile I go to my computer, update the spreadsheet, and upload a copy to my phone, the wife’s phone, tablet, her computer, my computer, and my work computer. Every time.

Gotta be a better way.

The first idea was to simply use iCloud or Dropbox to do file syncing as the master file was updated. This seemed okay except for one niggling detail. While it allows us to have the file updated on the devices where we need it, we still need a way to edit the file. There were apps for the iPad/iPhone but they were either a few bucks each (and we’d need several copies) or they’re crippled freeware.

Here is the solution we came up with. We uploaded our spreadsheet (a simple one page Excel document) to a new Google Docs account. This way any device that has internet connectivity and a browser can go to Google, log in, and edit the spreadsheet. The saved document is then referenced by any device that logs in and uses that stored copy. And we can edit the document online, so no need for additional software.

All of this sounds a little convoluted and complicated, right? Okay, here’s a real-world scenario for how this plays out:

I’m at CostCo and the wife is at the house. She whips up some curry or whatever and uses a couple cans of tomatoes and coconut milk. As she pulls them off the shelf she takes her iPhone out of her pocket, updates the spreadsheet, and heads to the kitchen. I’m at CostCo and see that cans of crushed tomatoes are on sale. No point buying them, though, if we already have plenty. Pull out the iPhone, log in, check the spreadsheet…it says the formerly abundant amount has now been reduced to a level that suggests buying more. Cans go in the cart.

More importantly, the ‘gap’ between spreadsheet updates is eliminated…meaning that inventory information is real-time (assuming updates are done as products are withdrawn/added to the stockpile).

Geeky, right? But its a tremendous leap forward in logistics and inventory tracking for us. I know some folks do a similar thing, keeping track of their inventories on spreadsheet, and thought I’d share this method of keeping the info handy and up-to-date.

ETA: Can’t believe I have to mention this, but apparently I do. The particular spreadsheet we have uploaded is a spreadsheet of our short- and medium-term groceries and housewares. Things like aluminum foil, spaghetti sauce, and paper towels. It’s not a spreadsheet of guns, ammo, gold, silver, freezedrieds, fuel, etc, etc. So, no, I’m not really concerned about Google handing it over to the feds.

Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

It doesn’t just happen to us civilians, it seems.

If there’s a common thread here between this and the last post, it’s that obscurity is no substitute for security, and vice versa.

ETA: Rhetorical question: if theyre firing blanks, how are they ‘high powered’?

Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

Gun, weapons parts found buried in Arlington

A gun and weapons parts were found buried Wednesday morning in North Arlington and police and FBI agents are investigating the discovery, officials said.

Utility workers digging near an overpass of I-66 on Patrick Henry Drive found the gun and parts inside PVC pipe about 11 a.m., said Det. Crystal Nosal, an Arlington police spokeswoman. Police and FBI agents were called to the scene and investigated for hours.

You know, if you’re gonna hide your stuff like that you gotta take into account this sort of thing.

Wonder if perhaps there were a few ‘extra’ parts in there to make a lovely little off-paper Class III and thats why the feebies are involved.

I would love to see pictures of the cache and see a followup if anyone comes to claim it.

Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

$23.99 for a box of bulk Federal .22? C’mon, really?

Three years ago it was about $10 cheaper per box.

This is why we used to buy 1000 rds. every trip we made to WalMart.

Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

I have my own ideas about what the end of the world is going to look like. Fiction, naturally, has its own idea as well. How do they stack up?

The Road – Not a chance. Nada. Zip. Nil. A world where nothing grows anymore? (Read the book..that’s indeed what one of the stated problems is. No flora of any kind. Plenty of dead vegetation around, but nothing alive and growing. Makes you wonder where the oxygen is coming from.) Although the mechanism of the apocalypse is never mentioned in the book, the implication is that there is a nuclear winter going on as a result of either a nuclear exchange or possibly a celestial event. In either case, all plant life all around the globe isn’t going to just stop.

The Rift – Megaquake in the midwest? Possible, although I call it highly unlikely. Even then its not really an end of the world event for the people who don’t live nearby. If you life in that region, yeah your life just got interesting. However I think the folks in Fairbanks, AK and Honolulu, HI aren’t going to be too concerned.

The Survivalist – This comes in two flavors since thats the direction the book took. Starting with the first nine books or so: a nuclear exchange that devastates the major superpowers and is followed up by an invasion of the US? Possible, but, again, seems terribly unlikely. After about book #9 or so the entire atmosphere of the Earth was destroyed by the consequences of the nuclear exchange, eradicating all life from the planet except for a few small groups….I’m ranking that right up there with the scenario in The Road.

Lucifer’s Hammer – Comet smacks the planet leading to global devastation. Hmmmm…well, it’s possible. And, to some degree, it’s happened before. The scenario presented in the book seems plausible with it’s consequences, at least to an unscientific type like myself. But, lets look at it another way. Imagine that your lifespan is, say, about 100 years. Folks who believe in science over superstition figure the earth is around 4.5 billion years old. Your lifespan is 1/45,000,000th of the age of the planet…what are the odds that an event like that will happen in the miniscule blink of an eye that is your lifetime. Pretty small, I’d say.

One Second After – The entire US is crippled by an EMP strike. Chaos and hijinks ensue. Probably the most plausible so far but with a couple caveats. There’s plenty of science out there to support this sort of view, but the fact is that no one has ever done anything on a large enough scale like this to determine if it actually would be as destructive as portrayed. Everything stops? Everything? I’m the first to admit that I probably havent read as much as I should have on the subject, but what I have read seems to suggest that the smaller an objects profile or ’signature’, the less damage it will receive. The analogy I see used is radio waves…a smaller antennae receives far less signal than a larger one. A large device with plenty of radiating wiring and other conductive materials is going to receive a larger share of the pulse than a smaller system. As I read it, that means an electrical substation will be toast but my wristwatch might be just fine.

Zombie fiction – Right up there with the “Left Behind” series. Ditto for anything by S.M Sterling…fun to read and absolutely not gonna happen.

Red Dawn/Invasion USA/Invasion – A vulnerable US faces an invasion from a foreign power. In Red Dawn (the first one) it was the Soviets with the help of Latin American revolutionaries. In Eric Harry’s book, Invasion, its a powerful Chinese military. And, in Chuck Norris’s feel-good classic its..well, everybody. I really see Chuck Norris’ version being the most likely scenario of those three…laugh if you will…but let’s look at it. In the other two scenarios you have massive military invasion scenarios. In the Chuck Norris scenario you have very, very small groups of fighters sowing chaos and violence in carefully orchestrated events. An excellent example is where a few guys shoot up a bar and make it appear that it was a corrupt police action attacking the bar patrons. Riots ensue. In this manner you don’t need an invading army, you have the population do it for you. Heck, six guys shut down LA by knocking the crap out of a black motorist in ‘92…it just as easily could have been six guys faking the incident and letting the video ‘leak’ to cause rioting and chaos. Look at the 9/11 episode. Twenty guys shutdown all air traffic in the US, started a war, effected some massive political and economic changes, polarized certain demographics, and didn’t need an army of tens of thousands landing on a beach to do it. So, the terrorism-as-mechanism-of-apocalypse has a bit of life to it.

Soylent Green – Overpopulation leading to state-sponsored cannibalism? Never going to happen. Overpopulation has a way of fixing itself. It’s like the old joke about clan warfare being Scottish birth control. You get enough humans on one piece of real estate, they’ll take care of the overpopulation problem eventually. Think ‘liebensraum’. (And by that, I mean they go to war.)

Mad Max – Global dystopia because of fuel shortages? Possible, I suppose, except Im having a hard time believing that a lack of fuel regresses civilization into the leather-clad, crossbow-shooting carnage that was the Mad Max series of films. And, you know, for a world that presumably had run out of gasoline they sure had some awesome car chases. Even if the Peak Oil crowd is right, I don’t think the end of the world will result from it. Craptacular standard of living? Maybe. Regression to 19th century lifestyle? Unlikely, but possible. Lord Humongous and V8 Interceptors? No.

Jericho – I’d say the first season, and especially the first few episodes, were probably about as realistic as youre going to get in a fictional setting. (Which isnt to say Jericho was technically accurate in every regard, but it certainly had more ‘lifelike’ aspects to it than other treatments of similar material.) Hunger, fuel shortage, looting, social issues arising from disaster, etc, etc….definitely interesting. The day-to-day aspects of survival interested me far more than the conspiracy plot that eventually overwhelmed the series (esp. the abbreviated season two.) Sure it had some obvious deus ex machina moments, but still enjoyable. The premise of individual nuclear warheads smuggled into cities and detonated is, in my opinion, more likely than a genuine nuclear exchange but still, to me, seems pretty unlikely.

Atlas Shrugged – Well, thats really what it is…an end of the world book. While it’s a bit heavy-handed and so very, very, very long (a 68-page speech? Seriously??) some of the premises and events portrayed in it seem to be either coming to pass or darn near close to it. This is one of those books that polarizes people, which I suppose is the hallmark of good literature. Like everything you find between the covers of a book, take it with a grain of salt. However, the premises of pillorization (did I just make up a word?) of the rich, the idea of wealth redistribution, the notion that the individual is subordinate to the ‘greater good’, etc, etc, all seem to be getting too much play these days. So, I’d say the half of the book about that is correct, the notion that there’ll be a great change that sets all that aside and ushers in an age of personal responsibility and moral freedom? Not holding my breath.

What’s interesting is that, as far as books go, the scenarios I see being most likely aren’t found in fiction but rather in history texts. A little Great Depression here, some Weimar Republic there, a bunch of Carter Administration to hold it all together and -whammo- you’ve pretty much defined the times we live in. What;s really interesting is that across the entire pantheon of fiction and literature there is virtually nothing that, as far as I know, contrived anything like the situation we are currently in. You’d think someone somewhere would have thought it up, but, no, it was easier to dream up Russian invasions and zombie uprisings than to predict what’s going on now.

Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

It’s an ugly world out there these days, and I’m guessing that it’s gonna get a lot uglier before it gets prettier. While being armed doesn’t make the world any prettier, it does a fairly good job of keeping the ugly at a distance.

Normally, I stick to factory/OEM magazines for guns if I can. What this means is that, in the case of , say, Browning HiPowers I use only Browning-made mags or mags made by whoever is making them for Browning. (Mec-Gar, most likely.) Why? Usually the folks who make the gun provide the best magazine for that gun. Spend $700 on a Browning and drop a $15 Triple K magazine into it (or a USA Brand mag) and become a master of the malfunction drill.

Some guns, though, are so ubiquitous that everyone makes a magazine for it. Take the 1911, for example. A hundred years of existence creates a fairly large aftermarket manufacturer base. What’s good? What isn’t?

Of the 1911’s I own, I don’t think I have a single genuine Colt magazine. Mostly because, for whatever reason, any magazine with the prancing pony on it starts commanding a lot of money. I’m poor. I’m trying to prepare for the apocalypse while my currency is devaluing. For the price of a genuine Colt magazine (which actually may not be the best choice for the 1911) I can get (usually) two of another brand of magazine at better quality. In the course of my travels I’ve tried a bunch of 1911 mags. Here are my two favorites:

Wilson Combat 8-round mags – These are some seriously nice mags. My experience has been that this is a terrific magazine in terms of quality. I’d have a stack of fifty of these in the bunker except for one little niggling detail…they price out at over $30 each. Owie. These are the kind of mags that if you’re wandering around with one in the gun and two on your belt, it’s worth the expense. But if, like me, you want the ‘lifetime supply’ and need about thirty or fifty….well, you’d have a really great lifetime supply but you’d also be hurting in the wallet pretty bad. My feeling on this is to buy three or four of the Wilson’s and use them for the everyday carry.

Second favorite mag, and the one I stockpile for that rainy decade is:

Chip McCormick (CMC) Shooting Star magazines – This is the magazine I stockpile. They’re 8-shot, come with a removable base pad, have an excellent follower design, and seem to work great. MSRP on them is around $20 but I can find them from time to time on special at wholesalers for about ten bucks. (Even at $12.99 theyre still a great value.) When that happens, it’s the best value out there for a high-quality 1911 mag. Only drawback to this mag (and to a lesser degree the Wilson) is that if you have the basepads on the magazine they may be too long for the flap on your magazine pouch to close properly. Obviously, on open top mag pouches this isnt a problem. Personally, I prefer the basepads on my 1911 mags because it gives me a little extra length to make sure my mag is seated properly. It also protects the mags when you do mag changes at the range and the mag hits the concrete.

I’ve also used a bunch of other mags, including quite a few GI mags of dubious age, and have found that there are plenty of mags out there that will work but not very many that work consistently, reliably, and affordably. In my experience, the two I’ve just mentioned are, to me, the best choice.

Other mags out there that might be better choices? Sure…It’s just foolish to think I’ve tried every brand of mag out there. Plus you may be shooting a higher (or lower) end gun than what I normally shoot and it may have a preference for a particular magazine. In my experience, with my guns, I’ve found that the Wilson and CMC mags seem to be the best mags out there for the 1911-pattern pistols.

Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

It’s handy knowing someone who works in a medical field sometimes……

Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

A quick note to the several people who offered to loan me their copy of ,Rawles’ new book so I wouldn’t have to fork out the cash….thank you, but I succumbed to temptation and bought a copy.

I am weak.

Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

Went up to CostCo to check things out for myself. Indeed, there were Mountain House freezedrieds there. Two different types.

First up was a ten-pack of their ‘two serving’-size entrees. I forget the flavors…lasagna, teriyaki, stroganoff and something else. Price was $39.99 or $3.99 per pouch.

Next up was this package of ‘Kirkland’ brand fruit. Kirkland is CostCo’s ‘in-house’ branding. Buy a few million dollars worth of any product and the manufacturer will slap whatever name you want on it. (You really think Sears made all those .30-30 rifles we see on the used rack?)

Notice on the corner of the box where it says Oregon Freeze Dried? That’s the parent company of Mountain House. Apparently CostCo contracted to buy enough of this product to get OFD to package it up as Kirkland. Reasonable price, by the way, for a little snack size of freeze dried fruit. Winds up at something like eightysix cents per package. A nice addition to your morning oatmeal when out in the boonies.

Speaking of Mountain House, I received an email from thm other day. It says they are re-introducing the #10 cans to their dealer network. In my opinion MH was a jerk to their lesser-volume dealers over the last couple years. They basically only released the #10 cans to their highest volume dealers while letting the little guy get virtually none. That’s not how you build brand loyalty. In fact, I would bet that MH’s behavior and HK-like attitude (“Because you suck. And we hate you.”) is one thing that has put Augason Farms on the map in terms of food storage. Mountain House sells some great product, and has a few things that are hard to find elsewhere, but before plunking down coin with them I’d check AF and see if they have a similar product.