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

Wow. And that’s an understatement.

I was listening to someone talk about public employees pensions and the current state of the economy the other day. As I was listening I had a vision appear in my head. Imagine, if you will, a gallon bucket. Fill it with a gallon of water and lets call that water “general funds” or something similar. Now, get an ice pick and punch a hole in one side of the bucket near the bottom. Call that hole “pensions”. Punch a few more holes and give each one a name..”bonds”, “social services”, “schools”, and that sort of thing. Now, as the water goes out of those holes the level in the bucket is dropping, right? Okay, you have two choices – plug some of the holes or add more water. Lately it seems like no one plugs the holes, they just add more water. Head to the faucet (lets call it “taxes”) and get more water. As long as you can keep putting water in the bucket faster than its leaking out of those holes youre okay. But, as we are seeing, theres a bit of a drought going on..when you turn on the tap not as much water is coming out and its getting harder keep putting water into that bucket fast enough. So, you plug a few holes or pinch them off a bit. But unless you either find more water to put in that bucket, or you plug up some of those holes, or you do a combination of both….youve got a problem.

You saw that Camden NJ laid off 1/3 of its public employees, including the cops? Yeah…its like that.

i suppose its worth pointing out that some of the people getting water out of the holes in that bucket will not take kindly to someone plugging those holes up..

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

Ah, they grow up so fast.

Cute li’l bugger, ain’t he? Of course, what youre not seeing is the entire bottle of Febreeze he made us go through, whats left of my shoes, the countless hours I slept on the floor with him, all the sleep I’ll never get back, the scars I have from his puppy teeth,etc, etc.

“Yeah, yeah…stop talking to me about the labor pain. Show me the baby.”

Ok, three times the size and begining his appetite for destruction:

(Well, he is for personal protection, after all.)

Nowadays? He’s probably north of 50# and he’s still got at least half that much more to gain. His adult teeth are mostly in and he can snap a rawhide bone in half with them like you or I snap a pencil between our fingers. Fingers. Fingers can go missing if he’s of the mind to not be gentle. With great power comes great responsibility and so it is with the battlepuppy. He loves running around here in the Montana snow. Here’s one of him looking like something from a Jack London book. This is probably the last thing a snowshoe hare would see barreling at it:

And fast? He’s fast on his feet, no doubt, but he also has some pretty darn quick reflexes. Once in a while the ‘herd’ part of shepherd comes into play and he’ll nip me in the butt. I’ll reflexively swat at him but I may as well be moving in slow motion. He is fast. Here’s one of him recently haulin’ fur across the tundra:

Now that he’s done teething he has become far more manageable. He’s been given a bit more free reign around the house. At night, rather than sleep in his crate, he can have the run of the house. He usually sleeps on the floor of the living room, which is good since it puts him in a central location to monitor things. My goal was never to have him sleep in his crate..that would be useless. One of his functions is to be an early warning system. If someone rattles the doorknob at 3am I wanna know about it. Thats where Mister Furman comes in… He’s pretty good at staying on top of that sort of thing. He’s also a good set of eyes and ears when we’re out at night. It can be deathly quiet and still, not a sound, and he’ll suddenly stop walking and stare intently down the street. You or I wouldnt see anything but then, blocks away, we’ll suddnely see someone walking down the street or quietly talking on a porch somewhere. Puppy has some excellent situational awareness. The big thing I need to get him started on is defensive behavior. Essentially, if the missus is walking him down the street and someone approaches in a less-than-friendly manner she can give the dog a cue and he does the whole bark-n-lunge thing to scare off whomever. We have a zillion dog books and videos, and theres a local schutzhund group here so I dont think were going to have trouble getting the right kind of training.

In the meantime, he hangs out at the house with us and I take him to the shop with me. More than one person has stopped us on the street and commented on what a great looking dog he is. I guess they dont see a lot of purebred German Shepherds. So, he’s about six months old now and Im finally feeling like the worst part of it is over. I mean, I hope it is. In the meantime, its hard to believe that this enormous sack of fur (who is still growing) looked like this only a few months ago:

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

I was talking to someone the other day about preparedness and he asked what my version of TEOTWAWKI looked like. See, everyone has their own flavor of apocalypse. Religious/superstitious prophecy, nuclear war, invasion, pandemic, economic collapse, Red Lectroids, zombies, whatever…. put ten survivalists in a room and eventually you’ll hear someone yelling “Yes, but the real threat is….” every couple minutes.

I used to fall into the ‘terrorist attack that plunges the US into chaos’ school of thought…dirty bombs, suitcase nukes, etc, etc. Tom Clancy kind of stuff. I think I started re-thinking that around 2003 or so. I havent really discarded any of the likely scenarios but I did re-rank them. Terrorism-related scenarios dropped to the #2 or #3 position and economic turmoil took the #1 slot. Looks like I may have been prescient on that one. Is what we’re going through now part of that scenario? Well, certainly the symptoms are. I never really gave any thought as to what the cause of an economic malaise would be, I just figured one would happen. Even a broken calendar is right once a year, it seems.

This doesnt discount the possibility of a cargo container passing through some US-Canadian port with a stolen nuclear artillery shell tucked inside it. That sort of thing could very well happen. But I think the current situation validates my concerns when I re-prioritized.

But, you know what? Whether its Black Helicopters or Helicopter Ben the fallout (so to speak) is pretty much the same – you still need food, you still need fuel, you still need a roof, you still need money. Even if your particular ragnarok du jour is different than most other folks’ it is still a fairly safe bet that preparing for it gives you a head start on being prepared for all the other harbringers of doom.

I suppose it could be summed up as “It doesn’t matter what apocalypse youre preparing for as long as you prepare”.
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Did I mention that it was numbingly cold here last week. I was sifting through the closet looking for something warm and pulled out an UnderArmor turtleneck cold weather undershirt. Wow…spendy piece of gear but holy Drokk does it work. Just that and a heavy cotton shirt and I could go walk the dog in five-degree weather. Yeah, its got a certain tacticool stigma about it but the darn thing actually works. I might have to pick up a few extras. Keeping one vacuum sealed away in my bag would be very handy if I get caught somewhere when the weather changes or I’ve underdressed. Not cheap, none of their gear is, but I’ve had plenty of times where I was cold enough to think “You know, maybe $45 isnt alot to pay for a shirt”.
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Speaking of stranded, how the heck do you get stranded in one of the most populous cities on the planet. I read an article about the snowmageddon in NYC and that some poor slobs on a subway train were stuck on the rails, immobile, for around nine hours. In the cold. I’d imagine that lighting and heating may not have worked the whole time. Amazingly, although not surprisingly, the train folks would not let the passengers disembark. Not safe. If the train isnt in the station theyre not gonna let you off. Third rail and all that. Passengers did say they could see the station from the train, which must have been maddening. Normally Im a big fan of ’stay with the vehicle’ but I think I’d’ve jumped from between cars and hoofed it to the nearest station. Staying in the train car was probably tedious and uncomfortable for the passengers. If it had been me, and I had my usual everyday bag with me I’d probably have been able to ride it out in much better comfort than the rest of the crowd. At least until it turned into Lord Of The Flies. Most likely I’d pull out my cold weather gear, suit up, jump to the tracks and start walking to the station. The point, though, is that even in the middle of a place like NYC it isnt necessarily a bad idea to carry some of the more useful essentials like a flashlight, a bottle of water (or two), and some compact spare warm clothes. Proper mindset helps too. Although I cant imagine that it takes a special frame of mind to think “Why am I sitting here in a dark, cold subway car with fifty strangers when I can jump down to the tracks and walk to the station from here?”

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

hey, remember last week I posted that I scored a used Hardigg rifle transport case for $75?

Yeah. Well.

Case is in good shape but make no mistake about it – this thing is designed for M16’s and M4’s that are basically stock. No optics, no special foreends, no special stocks, no sidemount slings on the buttstock…any of that stuff and they will not fit in the case properly. I had to leave the scoped/dotted AR’s out but the no-frills guns fit in there quite nicely. The case alone weighs 66# and once you stuff a dozen AR’s in there your gonna north of the 150# range…hitting the upper limit of man-portable. On the other hand, if you and your cell need to stash away a dozen rifles (with 24 magazines) in some sort of long-term hideout location, well this is the case for you.

Someone asked me what I thought of the case. I told ‘em it was like a prescription – now that I have it, I have to go get it filled.

Case purchased from: Old Grouch

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

Another 50 surplus G3 mags showed up the other day. Why? Well…why not? I know someone who is thinking about buying a used PTR-91 so I figured I’d send some mags as an encouragement and the rest Im sure I can find a use for.

Magazines for the Glocks have been a hot commodity in the last couple days following the events in AZ. I’m amazed at posts I read on the forums about how people are trying to buy them now before prices go into the stratosphere and availability goes into the basement.

Here’s a thought… it has been 17 years since the 1994 Assault Weapons ban, its sunset in 2004, and all the disturbing crap that has been going on in the last few years and you still dont have all the mags you need? Well..hate to say it…youre an idiot.
“But..but..you just bought 50 more magazines so you’re just as bad!”
Well…no. See, I didnt buy them because of a panic (they were ordered before the shooting), and quite honestly I dont need them. In fact, I passed the ‘need’ stage for HK mags about 350 mags ago. If they announced tomorrow that anything over 10 rounds is verboten I would have a lifetime (several lifetimes probably) supply. And I had it years ago.

When my vendors had Glock Happy Sticks at around $20 ea. I ordered a bunch. I even shared the wealth with people who read this stuff. And as a result I can smugly watch people frantically scouring the interweb for $35-45 magazines.

To summarize, the handwriting on the wall has been there for years, the opportunity to purchase has been in place for almost seven years, and anyone who is deciding, suddenly, that now is the moment to stock up on magazines is…well, you pick the term.

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

Second time in about a month that a casual customer has hemmed and hawed and then finally ‘outed’ himself by asking me “How can I get started in being prepared?”

I hand ‘em a couple books, tell them to read them and come back to me and I’ll be happy to answer as many crazy questions as they want.

Interesting times. I’m sure other people are experiencing the same sort of ‘late to the party’ would-be survivalists.

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

,Rawles has an interesting link to this article about a cop who was killed for his gun collection.

In a place like Chicago, where not everyone (legally) has a gun (or guns), the notion of a fella having a safe with a dozen guns might seem like a golden opportunity to equip your gang of inner-city urban mutants. Here in Montana a fella with a gun safe with a dozen guns in it is regarded with the same compassion and pity reserved for someone who has to eat government cheese and live off of food stamps. A dozen guns is cause for a raffle to help the poor slob catch up to the average which, according to zealot and gun rights activist Gary Marbut, is 26 firearms for the average Montanan.

There are, of course, a few individuals who are a bit above the average and they carry those poor deficient souls that only have 25.

I do a little buying and selling of guns at the shop and while I may tell the missus who bought what, I never, ever, share information like that with customers. They may say “Hey, my buddy Joe was telling me he got a rifle from you the other day” and my usual response is something along the lines of “Sorry, I can’t say who bought what”. I also dont talk about what my friends own, at least in terms of quantity. I may say “My buddy has an FAL” but I never say “My buddy has seven FALs”. In that regard, guns are like that secret, weird, out-of-the-mainstream porn that you like…you collect it, you sometimes trade it amongst people with similar interests, but you never let it get known in public that you have it or are interested in it. (Where am I getting this analogy from? I worked a couple years in an adult bookstore and saw some folks whom you would never suspect have some rather unusual interests. Plus…I have the internet.)

Probably one of the best responses I’ve heard to the “How many guns do you have?” question is “More than Sarah Brady (or Hillary Clinton) and less than Ted Nugent”. I’m rather pleased with what we own, and while we have a few close friends that know, with a small degree of accuracy, what we have we never tell outsiders or casual acquaintances/coworkers a number.

This article is also a good example of the need to spread your eggs outta that one basket. If everything that guy owned was in that one safe, and thebad guy had gotten to it, the family of the victim woulda been outta luck.
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Headshots are in the news. Just how hard is it for the inexperienced/casual shooter/FPS-gamer to make a headshot anyway? Lets find out using zombies as test targets:

Shoulder weapons (long guns) seem to offer a much better advantage to the novice or casual shooter. Tradeoff was speed. Something to think about.

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

Firearms distributor Davidson’s has the PTR-91 carbines (16″ bbl) on sale for $979 and Cheaper Than Dirt still has $0.97 aluminum mags and $1.97 steel mags. Even if your dealer charges you $50 to do a transfer you still come out way ahead. And theres still a huge amount of surplus G3 parts, stocks, slings, etc, etc, out there.

And, despite what armchair experts may tell you, you can reload your brass.

For price comparison:
A standard M1A from Springfield will set you back, dealer, $1300 and each additional mag is $41.00 (Source: Jerrys Sport Center catalog)
A standard AR10 from Armalitewill set you back, dealer, $1200 and each additional mag is $35.00 (Source: Jerrys Sport Center catalog)
I dont have the dealer pricing handy, but DSA lists their standard FAL at $1700 MSRP (so figure about $1300 dealer) and spare mags at around $20.

(Even if you say “But, I can get mags from XYZ Inc. for less than that! Only $12 per mag!” youre still getting one mag for the price of twelve.)

Point being that while I like the FAL platform a lot better than the G3 platform, for the money you cant beat the PTR and a footlocker of dollar magazines.

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

I try not to do New Years resolutions because, honestly, if something is a good enough idea that its worth being a resolution, then it is probably a good enough idea that you shouldnt wait until January 1 to implement it. Makes sense, right? But we all like having that clean slate on the calendar when we flip the page from December to January.

I’ve got a few things I would like to do differently this year, but Im going to keep them to myself for a while to see if I stick with them. However, if youve made some New Year’s resolutions in regard to preparedness I wouldn’t mind hearing them, if youre willing to share.
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This has been bouncing around for a few days and is too useful to pass up: Top Ten Survival Downloads You Should Have. I already had most of them, but its still some great reading.
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Ruger continues to try to stay relevant in the gun industry. Their new Scout rifle caught my eye and now theyre coming out with a mini 9mm. Not sure I’d prefer this over a Glock 26 but it is definitely further proof that innovation (if you can call copying KelTec designs innovation) has been let out of the cage since Billy Ruger left the biological plane of existence.

Trivia question: anyone know of a 9mm pistol that utilizes a locked breech of some kind but also a fixed barrel? The HK P7 springs to mind but thats really a delayed blowback rather than a mechanical locking.
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Ordered up one of these last week. Retail is running around $500 but this guy had ‘em used for $75 each. Well, at that price who could resist? It’ll be pushing the threshold of ‘man portable’ once it’s loaded with a dozen rifles but it should do an outstanding job of keeping them protected under even the worst conditinos. Pictures and details when they arrive.

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

Man, its a skating rink out there today. It’s bad enough that the roads are glazed over like Clinton intern, but its a bright sunny day so the glare off the road surface is blinding. In short, unless its Der Tag I’m gonna stay off the roads for a couple days. However, as the temperature hangs around on either side of the zero mark, Im going to have to make a note to run the vehicles for a few minutes each day. Went out this morning to a dead battery. I shouldnt have been surprised, I havent driven the truck in three days and it was under a crust of ice. I jumped it offa the missus’ Fubaru and all was well. I’ve been meaning to head up to CostCo and pick up one of those 12v batteryjump/power supplies. It would be handier for this sort of thing and it would also run some of the more useful devices around here in case of a power failure. (Which reminds me, I need to pick up a 12v LED handheld spotlight.)

I see the folks back east got dumped on the other day. In typical fashion the city labor unions decided to use it as an opportunity to make a statement about personnel and budget cuts. In the interim, of course, at least one person died from the inability of emergency vehicles to navigate the obstructed streets. The cost of donig business I suppose. The lesson here, obviously, is that living in a modern large city, like NY, is no guarantee that sometimes things arent going to turn into Lord Of The Flies (or The Donner Party) and you might wanna be ready for it.
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On a side note, a buddy of mine shared his recipe for chicken curry and I found that me and the missus actually like it. I’m kind of a fussy eater so I tend to do most of the cooking. Im not a huge fan of vegetables and really only will tolerate a few…thus my meals tend to be focused mostly on meat (protein) and carbohydrates (rice, pasta, bread). Its probably an unhealthy lifestyle but it’s worked for me so far. Anyway, I think since its so damn cold out today would be a good day to make an especially big batch o’ curry and whip out the All American 921 and make some homemade ‘convenience food’. ‘Cause, Im tellin’ ya, nothing is more satisfying and warming than a nice bowl of steaming hot rice topped with curry, Mexican spiced chicken, or some other yummy topping. Be nice to just come back to house, cook up some rice, crack open a jar of curry and have a satisfying meal.

Plus, I’ve got about 150# of rice to use up and rotate through.
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And in other notes, I noticed today that the toothbrush I use to brush the dogs teeth and my own toothbrush look a little too similar for comfort. There was a moment of intense examination trying to discern whose was whose (or who’s was whose, or whose was who’s, or who’s was who’s).

And then I thought, “Screw it, he’s my dog and I love him”, and brushed my teeth anyway.