Cut for size and for PETA weenies

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

The news media, in some circles, is saying that we’re in a sort of, kinda, possible, gradual economic recovery. Maybe we are, maybe we aren’t. Even if we were in an economic recovery, so what? Does it mean you can let out a deep breath because the bad times are over? Does it mean that somehow your job is safer than it was before? Absolutely not. Businesses aren’t going to stay the ax because we’re in a recovery. They keep people around as long as those folks earn more money than they cost. That’s Econ 101. I’m no expert but I would imagine that if we are really in a recovery businesses are just as likely to ax people on the premise that, having made it through the recession, the company needs to stay ‘lean and mean’ to weather the next one and be competitive. So…even if we are in a recovery (which Im not sure I believe) that’s no reason to think your safe. Heck, Im not even sure that there is a ‘safe’ time. So just because someone is saying we’re in a recovery is no reason to buy the new bass boat or remodel the bathroom. Hold on to that money for a while ‘just in case’ and let’s see if things actually get better.
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I’m fairly content with the food storage situation. I’m always up for adding more to it, of course, but if things fell apart tomorrow I know we wouldn’t starve for quite a while. I do need to stock up on some of the more mundane things, things like toiletries, tissues, cleaning agents, bleach, etc, etc. We do keep a somewhat larger-than-average quantity of these things on hand but it would be nice to have a more generous stockpile. For example, while we may buy toilet paper in the 36-roll pack up at CostCo we usually only have one pack on hand at the house. The smarter way to do it would be to have one in storage at all times and one that’s open for use. That way theres always that reserve of one package. Of course, in reality perhaps it would be more like two or three in reserve.

For storage, by the way, I really like the steel wire shelves that you see used for food service type situations. Although the other kind of steel shelving is quite good, I find the wire shelves to be far more versatile. Unfortunately the heavy-duty ones are not cheap. There are some cheap ones out there but they are just that – cheap. They sag like an aging porn star. I lucked out and found a ‘liquidator’ business not far from me. This is a business that buys out other businesses and liquidates their inventory. They tend to have a huge amount of office-type furniture but I recently found that they have the steel wire shelving I like as well….and at a good bit cheaper than new.
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Speaking of gear, I’ve been interested in the ‘poly bottles’ that have come out lately. These are, essentially, soft-sided water bottles. Pouches, I suppose, would be a better term. The idea is that they are lighter and more packable than the usual Nalgene bottle. Several companies offer them including Nalgene and Platypus. The Nalgene one seems to get lesser reviews than the Platypus. I have the Platypus one and have been pretty pleased with it thus far, my only complaint is that I haven’t found a wide-mouth version yet. One very nice feature of these things is that as you consume the liquid you can squeeze the remaining air out of the container so the liquid doesn’t slosh around. A very nice feature. My concern, of course, is durability. The reviews I’ve read say that obviously these things don’t take the same abuse as the hard bottle, and that they need to packed so they don’t encounter sharp or hard corners in your gear, but other than that they seem like a good idea. The Nalgene one, according to the reviews, seems more prone to failure at the seams than the Platypus, so for now I’m sticking with the Platypus ones.

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

Here’s a very useful resource. Hundreds and hundreds of firearms manuals online in .pdf form in one place. Darn handy, if you ask me.

Bears?
Wolves?
Rabid meth heads?
Pot growers?

Not a problem when hunting in Montana:

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

I went hunting on a heavily-armed nature hike this morning.
As is always the case, I crept around for several hours and saw squat…and then as I’m casually ambling back to the truck, with no effort at being quiet or stealthy, naturally, thats when I see a deer. Actually, I saw the ass end of it bouncing away. Ah well, its only the first week.

Couple things….

First, a three-point sling is utterly fabulous for wandering around in the cold. I had the rifle slung across my chest at the ready but I had my hands in the pockets of my wool pants. No cold hands. Very nice. Recommend highly. (Yes, gloves would keep my hands warm too but its rather restful to not have to carry the rifle in hand all day.)

Secondly, once I found a comfortable spot to sit and lurk for a while it gets pretty darn cold quickly. (It was about 30-35 degrees.) Reached into my bag and decided this was a good time to try out the Woobie I got for my birthday. Worked as advertised. An expensive product from the guys at Kifaru but it did exactly what I wanted – kept me warm in the cold outdoors while taking up minimal space in my bag.

The Woobie got me thinking about a throw/comforter the missus has. Its a fleece-type quilted blanket that has snaps and a zipper so you can, essentially, turn it into a sleeved coat/robe. However, if you dont use the snap/zippers it is simply a normal flat rectangular blanket-type textile. What would be nice is if I could take a poncho liner like the Woobie, add the zipper and the snaps, and make the same thing but more suited for outdoor use. It would be ideal for this sort of hunting. You could roll it up like a regular poncho liner and use it the same way, but if you were going to be sitting still and wanted optimal coverage while still having your hands free and not have the thing slide off your shoulders you would zip/snap it together and make a very nice warm cocoon for yourself. Its a simple design, any suitable material that can have a zipper and some snaps attached should work. I really need to investigate this.

All in all, although I didnt get a deer this trip it was fun, as always, to be outdoors with a gun and the wonderful Montana scenery.

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

As I’m sure most of you remember, the heyday of preparedness was back in the late 70’s/early 80’s when it was referred to as ‘Survivalism’. It was about this time that guys like Ragnar Bensen, Duncan Long, Mel Tappan, Kurt Saxon and a few others made names for themselves with their books. I like re-reading some of these things because it’s always interesting to see how the mindset has changed since those Cold War days.

Back in the 70’s and 80’s the most obvious EOTWAWKI scenario was a nuclear exchange of some type. People stocked up against an imagined scenario of hiding from fallout, mass casualties and possibly invading Soviets. We look back now and snicker a little but that was the threat back in those days. Nuclear Armageddon wasn’t always the theme of the day. Some writers postulated we’d have a civil war or revolution following on the heels of the ‘counterculture’ activities of the late 60’s and early 70’s. This was such a strong sentiment in some quarters that groups formed specifically to combat this anticipated threat. (The Minutemen, for example.) People predicted race wars, Communist revolution, etc, etc, but the idea of a nuclear war was the meat-n-potatoes of the survivalist movement back in those days.

The changes since then have been noticeable. The distrust of the Communist governments has shifted to our own government, the notion of city-busting nuclear missles has given way the the notion of city-contaminating ‘dirty’ suitcase-nukes, waves of ‘Red Dawn’-style invading paratroops have been replaced by small cells of fanatical terrorists, etc, etc. The window dressing and players have changed but the stakes are still the same.

However, some things don’t change.

I was rereading one of Duncan Long’s lesser known texts the other day and came across this:

Dinosaurs, so the paleontologists tell us (at least they told us when I was in school), died out because they couldn’t change when their environment changed. Well maybe so, maybe not. It does make a good point. Even though the dinosaurs did some marvelous things while thundering about the earth, they died off because they couldn’t adapt to new problems. They stuck to the good old tried and proved ways. People can be like that. Once they find a brilliant way of doing something they often refuse to change plans when things stop working right. Better to admit its no longer working and try something else. Be flexible and you and your shelter group will survive. Dinosaur and you’ll only be known for sticking to a job – foolishly.

Interesting, I made a post that pretty much said the same thing the other day. Apparently, there really isn’t anything new under the sun. The more things change the more they stay the same and all that.

I wonder what it’ll be like thirty years from now when people look back on the current ‘next generation’ of survivalism. There was the ‘Golden Era’ in the 70’s, the ‘Militia Movement’ in the 90’s, the Y2K reincarnation as ‘preparedness’, and the current post-9/11 interest that moved it further into the mainstream. Many of the things that survivalists in the 70’s dreamed about are realities now. (Affordable and efficient battery and solar technology, affordable night vision, incrased long-term food options, etc.) I like to think that thirty years from now the things we dream about now will be available and better than imagined.

I wonder what the big threat will be in the future. For decades we were sure that a nuclear exchange between superpowers would be the thing that brought about TEOTWAWKI and while it is still possible, its been bumped far, far down the list. Nowadays we worry about pandemics and terrorist nukes (and, if youre into that sort of thing, ‘Peak Oil’). What will the big fear be in thirty years? I can’t even begin to guess, but I suppose I’ll know when it happens.

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

Storage seems to be a recurring theme around the blogosphere this week. Nine times out of ten its something like “I live in a tiny apartment and I have no place to store food or anything else. Am I doomed?”

Yes. You are doomed.

You’re doomed because you’ve locked yourself into thinking that the amount of space available to you is insufficient to store what you need and therefore you are less likely to pursue being prepared. How much space do you need? Beats me, everyone has their own crazy ideas about just how much stuff they need to be prepared. However, I can guarantee you that you’ve got the space for it. People will chime in and say that you can utilize the space under the bed, the high shelves in closets, the crawlspace behind the wall, etc, etc. and those are all good ideas. But it seems like when people say they don’t have the space what they are really saying is “I don’t have any empty space that Im willing to use for this stuff” and that’s a big difference than “I have no space”.

Very few people have a hundred square feet of space that isn’t doing anything. So you make space. You decide whats more important – having a 3’x1.5’x6’ shelving rack holding enough food to get you by for three months or sitting a rocking chair that you never use but looks quaint and ‘ties the room together’ in that space.

Preparedness requires rethinking priorities. I have a bunch of different things I’d like to do with the space I have devoted to storing preps, but are any of them more important to me than having those preps? No. I’ll trade the footprint of a bookshelf full of books that we barely read for the footprint of a steel shelf full of freeze drieds. Books are important and I’ll find somewhere else to put them, but if it’s a real estate deal between dedicating square footage to insurance against the future or an end table that just sits there and never gets used….well, the end table loses.

“Easy for you to say, you don’t have to deal with my wife”. Hey, I’m married too. We have a deal that (usually) works pretty well. She gets this room, that room, this hallway, and the other room to do whatever she wants with. Furnish it, don’t furnish it, move furniture around in it…do whatever you want. I get this room, that room, and this part of the house to do whatever I want with and if it looks like an Iraqi arms bazaar or supermarket warehouse then that’s entirely my right. I call it ‘Man Country’. She can visit Man Country, conduct business in Man Country, import/export things from Man Country and even be a legal resident in Man Country but she gets no voice in the (literal) one-man-one-vote system that governs Man Country. But, when I leave Man Country I’m in No Man’s Land. And in No Man’s Land I’m the one who doesn’t get to rearrange the scenery. (There are some jointly held territories that sometimes see some border skirmishes, but all in all it’s a peaceful détente.)

So here’s the upshot – you do have the room you need, you’re just deciding that it’s more important to have an entertainment center, a bookshelf, a china cabinet, a dog bed or a loveseat in that space. The space is there, you’re just using it for something else. It isn’t that you don’t have the space, its that you don’t want a stack of buckets in the corner of your living room, or a collection of ammo cans in the hallway closet, or steel rack of #10 cans in the corner of the bedroom. And that’s perfectly cool, after all it is your home and your space.

If you genuinely believe in what youre doing, what it will afford you in security and peace of mind, and that it will make a difference in your safety and well being in times of crisis, then you need to decide if that’s more important than the closet in the guest bedroom, your ‘home office’ room, or the storage area in the basement where the old furniture goes to die.

If its important to you and you believe in what youre doing, you’ll find that you have all the room you need.

As an aside, the floor in the room I am typing this in has linoleum tiles on the floor that are 1’x1’. Using them as a guide, I’d say that, other than fuel, all of our preps including food, ammo, guns, etc, if packed carefully and as snugly as possible, would fit a footprint of 8′x8′. Be stacked to the ceiling though.

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

Man, I love the Swiss. Strong tradition of civil preparedness that includes giving everyone with military training a rifle to keep at home ‘just in case’. Thats the kind of thing, along with something of a neutral stance, thats kept them out of some of the twentieth century’s more debilitating wars. Who could have a problem with that? Apparently these drones. Here’s a lovely article, with video, about the Swiss tradition and the scrutiny it now faces:
Staring down the barrel of Swiss gun traditions

HEIM: The key to freedom is the ability to be able to defend yourself, and if you don’t have the tools to do that then you are at the mercy of anyone who wants to put you away. And the tools for that are guns.

However, not everyone sees guns the same way.
While gun crime is relatively low in Switzerland, more than 300 people a year are killed military rifles, the majority of them suicides. Recently efforts for more regulation have been picking up. And a certain faction of people want military rifles stored in army barracks, rather than peoples cellars.

Good stuff. Recommended viewing.

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

Dinosaurs died because they didn’t adapt to a changing environment. At least, that’s what I recall reading somewhere. ‘Dinosaur’ is also used as a term to describe someone who, correctly or incorrectly, tenaciously clings to something that is old or, at least, not very modern. And while ‘new’ isn’t always ‘better’, a lot of the time it is.

I was thinking about Jerry Ahern’s ‘Survivalist’ book series the other day. It was written in the 80’s and he managed to stretch it out through the mid-90’s. No mean feat for a formulaic pulp novel. Ahern’s protagonist was a devotee of 1911 pistols, AR rifles, and Colt wheelguns. High tech for the early Reagan years. What I was wondering was what effect would the current crop of available firearms have if he had been writing that book today. Would the 7-round 1911s be replaced with Glocks holding almost twice that much .45? The Victorian-era lockwork of the Python replaced with the brute strength of a GP-100? The sometimes-finicky AR swapped out for a gas-piston AR or perhaps a Sig 556?

I’ve met a surprising amount of people who seem to make their choices not on objective performance and criteria, but rather on romantic image or historical legacy. More than one person says they want a [insert name of old gun design here] because it’s “blued steel and walnut, not a bunch of plastic and sheet metal”. Never mind that the “plastic and sheet metal” gun may have a much better performance record than the blued/walnut gun.

I’m not immune to this sort of thing either. For a while I figured my Browning P35 was the go-to gun for 9mm. Nowadays I carry and recommend the Glock. Why? Once you get past the “Saint John Browning” sentiment and the “old world craftsmanship” dogma you realize that it’s a 75 year old design that was great when Dillinger was robbing banks but it seems rather unlikely pistol design hasn’t improved since then. (And, yes, Dillinger died in 1934…a year before the ostensible rollout of the P35.) Strip the history and romance from the 1911 guns and pretend they were dropped on the market today. Brand new design. Never seen before. How would the public respond? “Why is there a swinging link on the barrel”? “The lockup is on grooves milled into the slide? Seriously?” “It’s a single-stack magazine?” “It has a manual safety, why is there a grip safety as well?” “That’s a lot of machining involved. Must be expensive.”

But, some people won’tbe swayed. “The Marines carried them at Iwo Jima!” they’ll loudly cry, as if this somehow means that it’s a superior weapon. The Rough Riders went up San Juan Hill with Colt Single Action Army revolvers, so by the same logic the SAA should be the choice of the thoughtful individual. (And yes, I know someone is going to chime in about how they carry a single action revolver as their daily carry gun. Great. Good for you. But don’t think that means it’s a superior choice to some of the other stuff that’s out there.)

As technology changes what used to be perfectly reasonable choices suddenly become also-rans. Take LED technology for instance. I’ve got a half dozen MagLites that use the Krypton bulb. These were pretty much the top of the line in flashlights right up until a few years ago when LED technology caught up and in some cases surpassed the old incandescent flashlights. I can either retain the lights I have now, which will be good but not as good as whats on the market now or I can swap them out for the newer LED lights with all the advantages they bring. This wasn’t a case of being a dinosaur, this was a case of becoming a dinosaur.

Same for load bearing gear. For the last twenty years the ALICE system was what you used. Every Army/Navy and gun show had mounds of green nylon with the clips and wide webbing on it. Then we got PALS and MOLLE webbing and modularity became the new standard in load bearing gear. Is the ALICE stuff no good anymore? Nah, its great..its just not as good as some of the new stuff. I still have plenty of ALICE gear laying around but I prefer the newer stuff for its modularity.

I had a friend of mine who made truly odd choices for bizarre reasons while completely ignoring the obvious solutions. He would reinvent the wheel for five times the original cost. An example: he wanted a .30 caliber semi-auto rifle that could be quickly reloaded. So he spent large chunk of money on a Johnson 1941 rifle. It held 10 rounds of .30-06 and could be reloaded with stripper clips. For the same money he could have had an FAL, an M1A or an HK clone….and have had a better supply of spare parts and accessories. But he was adamant that the .30-06 was superior to the .308 enough that it justified what he was doing. No amount of reasoning would convince him that his choice of the Johnson was just an expensive half-measure. (His other choice for a semi-auto battle rifle was the AG42(b) in 6.5×55….another oddball that would prove to be an expensive logistics nightmare.)

Back to the opening paragraph, Im not sure what to make of people who doggedly stick to the seemingly-unsensible choices. Its their right to own whatever they want, I know that. I think what irritates me is the attitude that they give as they mention their choices. Their gun was carried by guys at Inchon..youre gun is a plastic toy. “Real men carry a pistol that starts with a “4”, etc, etc.”

So I guess my point here is that its probably a good idea to remain objective when it comes to new gear. Sometimes new isn’t necessarily better, but old isn’t always better either…sometimes old is just as good, but sometimes it isn’t. New gear needs to be judged on its merits and not on romantic history or ideological connections. And while I may be guilty of ‘dinosauring’ on a few things, I don’t delude myself andthose around me by saying my [whatever] is better than the newer ones, I just shrug and admit that sometimes personal preference trumps rational decisionmaking.