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

I very much need to stop listening to left-wing hate radio. I listen because it is always a good idea to know what your enemy is thinking. (You all remember your Sun Tzu, right? “Know your enemy as you know yourself…”) So, Im listening and the banter is about, naturally, the health care ‘reform’ package that is being worked on. A caller said that people who were worried about the cost needed to stop being selfish and start caring about their fellow man. So, lets examine that thought a minute. The caller isn’t denyong it’s expensive, and he’s not denying it may degrade the quality of health care services in this country. No, he’s saying that the important thing is that we not be selfish.

Personally, I think if you want to be selfish, be selfish. If you want to be caring, be caring. Problem is, this nosebleed on the radio doesn’t just want people to care about their fellow man. He wants to force you to care about your fellow man. Forced charity is, by definition, not charity. Come to think of it, I think its called extortion.

I’m charitable in my own way. I decide when and how I want to be charitable. If I want to be selfish, the only person I have to answer to about it is me…not my peer group, not some invisible man who lives in the sky, not anyone. For someone to demand that I relinquish some of my own resources to help others is pretty close to piracy. You can ask me for a donation, sure..I might even make one. But demanding that I do it ‘or else’ is just a bad idea. These people are pretty easy with spending other peoples money, arent they? If your cause is truly a good one, you won’t need to force people to donate. This is why the Red Cross pulls in millions in donations and NAMBLA has to have bake sales. If there arent enough people willing to gladly support your program then you need to either make your program more attractive to donors or do more with less. You dont call people selfish and then force them to donate at gunpoint.

Conservatives get tagged as heartless rich people with no regard for the plight of the poor. Liberals are labelled as whiny bleeding hearts who ‘feel for the poor’ and believe that by taking from others they can make everyone’s life better. The truth, as usual, is somewhere in the middle. I’m all for making money and keeping as much of it as possible to do whatever you bloody well please with it , but at the same time Im no fan of people living in cardboard boxes. Tax breaks, deductions, and other incentives might be a kinder and gentler way to convince the well-to-do to stop being ’selfish’.

If I had a decent amount of wealth you can bet I’d be converting it into some sort of untraceable and relatively unseizable form. The notion that ‘the rich’ are somehow evil and that the ‘working class’ are slaves to ‘they system’ is getting more and more play these days. We already hear mutterings about making ‘the rich’ (whoever that is) pay ‘their fair share’ and I promise you that youre going to see the definition of ‘rich’ encompass lower and lower incomes and the definition of ‘fair share’ encompass higher and higher takings.

Banks are giving less than 1 or 2 percent on interest these days anyway, so might as well just keep it in nice untraceable cash at home anyway.

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

Hmmm..I’m hungry, but dont feel like going out for groceries. Fortunately, it’s an easy thing overcome. 2006 was a good year for beef, so I pull 2# of vacuum-sealed 80/20 ground beef outta the deep freeze. Theres cases of jars of spaghetti sauce on the shelves, so I grab one of those. Theres also about 40# of various pastas, so a pound of penne will come with me to the kitchen. And, since part of the reason theres so much of this stuff is because I buy it when its on sale, the whole meal costs about…mmm….$4 and will easily serve three people. Annnnnnnnnd…….thats how we roll.
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Did 9/11 change the way that this country thinks about civil preparedness? In my utterly worthless and unfounded opinion, no. I think the potential is certainly there for the events of 9/11 to be a catalyst for a new era of civil defense but I don’t think its happened. To be sure, .gov started flinging money around to, it seems, any municipality that asked for it. Grants for hazmat training, grants for protective gear, etc, etc….an excellent opportunity for a town or city to get itself prepared. Has anyone taken advantage of that? I’m sure many have, to some degree or another, but I think many more haven’t.

I think part of the reason there hasn’t been a renaissance in civil defense is that there’s an attitude of ‘its too painful to think about’ and ‘worry about it when it happens’. Even if the .gov were to drop. Say. $10 million on the governing body of Anytown, USA, there’d be a dozen committee’s, panels, commissions, advocacy groups and others demanding that the money be used to fit their particular vision of whats needed. Worse, in some cases the money is used to pull money from elsewhere. I had a customer with a local sherriff’s department who was lamenting the the lack of guns and ammo for training. I asked him if his department had gotten any Homeland Security grants or funding. He said that they had gotten $80k earmarked for their department. I asked what happened to it. He said the county commission simply pulled $80k from the sheriffs budget and used it elsewhere…this way the $80k did technically go where it was supposed to.

On the other hand, you can’t realistically expect the out-of-towners to dictate where the money has to go. After all, wouldn’t it make sense that the chier of police or the fire department would have a better idea of what they need than some guy in Washington with a clipboard who has never even been to RFD #3?

We used to have a Civil Defense program in this country. It was an embarrassment compared to other countries but at least it was an effort. Relics of the program can still be seen in the black-and-yellow fallout shelter signs that still adorn many public buildings. (As an aside, I saw my first one in Montana the other day at the local high school. When I grew up in NY every school and some apartment buildings had the signs on them, with caches of ‘supplies’ tucked away in some dark corner of the building.) The programs eventually were folded into FEMA and the shelter programs, which were already languishing, were abandoned, I believe, in the late 80’s or very early 90’s. There are still, however, mounds of the old CD shelter supplies quietly rotting away in the dark wet basements of courthouses and schools all around this country.

Since 9/11 the other major disaster was hurricane Katrina. You would think that watching videos from that even would convince people that local government needs to take a serious stand on civil preparedness and defense. However, I’d be surprised if the folks in Louisiana have done much more than prepare for the next event by having their excuses and blame games transcribed to laminated cards.

On the other hand, 9/11 and Katrina did change the way the people of this country think about preparedness. Preparedness has gone a bit more mainstream, and although the stereotype of some gun-toting, camouflage-clad redneck misanthrope remains as the image people think of when they think ‘survivalists’, I think more people are coming around to our way of thinking.

And, still, the public sector lags behind the private sector in terms of preparedness. I’m sure there are people reading this now who work in some capacity for their local municipality and they’ll say in comments that their agency has been buying new fire trucks/body armour/hazmat suits/etc, and while thats great it’s still a drop in the bucket. Even if local governments couldnt afford to set something up you would think they would do their best to strongly encourage and support people who take the responsibility for their own preparedness seriously.

Perhaps its natural selection in action…the prepared will come out of the disaster just fine and the .gov that failed to prepare gets voted out next election, however given Nagin’s ability to retain his job I dont have much hope for the future.

For a window into the past of this nations Civil Defense progarm, hit this website. I especially like the fallout shelter tours.

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

I finally got back my copy of “One Second After” the other day, but not before lack of new reading material got me thumbing through a copy of “Lucifer’s Hammer”. (And if theres a difference between the last two thirds of both of those books, I cant see it.) Books like that make a person wonder what the end of the world will actually look like. I’m probably the most optimistic survivalist you’ll ever meet. Of course, at the same time I hedge my bets. Someone was saying to me the other day that they were talking to someone who firmly and passionately believed that, by Crom, it was all going to come to a head by December and there’d be blood in the streets. Who knows? We all have beliefs that other people may think are ludicrous but make perfect sense to us. Space aliens, global warming, religion, conspiracy theories, etc, etc….you name it and someone somewhere believes in it with the same conviction they have that the sun will come up tomorrow. (Although, to be sure, there’s probably a few folks around who will happily take money against that.)

Do I really, genuinely, honestly believe that there will be some huge Bosnia-esque civil war with armband-wearing factions running around with stolen military weaponry leading a great revolution against [insert nefarious cause/organization/person here]? No, I do not. I would sooner believe that a comet will hit the Pacific Ocean and wipe out California than believe that you would get a coast-to-coast widescale shooting war in this country. Why? Well, for one thing, by and large, most Americans are simply too lazy. We have our houses, our cars, our mortgages and our jobs…to risk all that you would have to genuinely believe that not only is your cause a righteous one but that it’s a winnable one. While there are certainly plenty of people who probably do believe they could foment a successful armed revolution in this country I think its extremely unlikely that there are enough of them to amount to anything bigger than a Shay’s Rebellion type of scenario. Armed uprising? In all states? With tens of thousands of armed citizens willing to throw away everything they’ve worked for in their lives and face the rest of their lives in jail if they don’t succeed? Nope…not seeing it. (Because unlike Shays Rebellion, there aint gonna be any amnesty.)

Sure, there are plenty of people in this community with sig lines that say things like “vote from the rooftops” or “Soap box, ballot box, cartridge box…in that order” and other pithy bumper sticker slogans. And some of them may mean it quite seriously. But are there enough people who genuinely believe that to pick up a rifle, kiss the wife goodbye, march off to wherever, and join some partisan army of thousands who think the same way? I doubt it very much. It’s happened in other countries, to be sure, but the motivation…the catalyst…for those incidents was much more pronounced than whatever affront we currently feel we are being forced to face. Quite simply, things are not bad enough to really make huge numbers of people want to sacrifice everything they have in their life at this point and in that manner.

Keep in mind, though, Im talking about a nationwide type of insurrection (or revolution or civil war or whatever you want to call it). On a local, smaller level…well, that’s a completely different story. Smaller venue, smaller forces. Still awfully unlikely though. And there’s still the usual race/class riots but, again, that’s usually quite localized.

No, I think that when the big event(s) take place it’ll be something, anything, other than some enormous citizen uprising that tries to ‘restore’ or ‘replace’ the current government. Earthquakes, hurricanes, riots, depression, hamthrax, economic collapse, terrorist nukes, etc. all seem far more likely than some sort of replay of the Revolutionary War. As an aside, it is interesting to note that while we think of the American revolution as something that swept up everyone in a united cause against the British the facts are that while there were Loyalists and there were those wanting independence there were far, far more who simply just wanted to live their lives, which were already difficult enough, without buying more trouble. I suspect that’s quite true today.

Where do I sit on that? Well, I’m all for ‘reforming’ or changing a few faces in the .gov and there are plenty of ways to do that that don’t involve marshalling an army. It’s a lot easier to put together $100k for opposition campaigning and a good smear job than it is to put together $100k for munitions and remote operating bases. Heck, we’ve just seen that a guy with a radio show can get people punted out of national-level positions…that’s a lot easier than convincing 500 people to run off into the woods and sacrifice their lives for a cause they cant be certain they’ll win. At this point, I’d say that money and media will change government faster and more effectively than any armed insurrection will.

So will it all come to a head by December as this fella opined? Maybe, but not in the form of revolution or armed uprising. Maybe in December the bottom will fall out of the stock market and we enter a depression, maybe we all get hamthrax and die, maybe an earthquake turns Nevada into oceanfront property. What I will guarantee will not happen is a parade of armed citizenry marching down the boulevards banging drums and waving banners urging people to enlist and ‘take back’ their country by force.

I think by December youre just going to see more of the same of whats going on right now…political shenanigans, economic gloom, unemployment and blame games.

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

Well. This looks interesting. The cutter head is advertised as being great for cutting cables but I wonder how it does on softer materials like seat belts. If it’ll cut through a seatbelt okay then this might be an excellent little rescue multitool to keep around the truck and home. I like the gas shutoff wrench feature, thats kind of handy. The folks at Stanley make their FuBar which I thought was pretty handy. What I did not know was that Stanley makes an ‘entry tool’ version of the FuBar that has some cool features including gas shutoff, hydrant wrench, and a few other features that might make it handy next time your world is crumbling down (literally) around you.

I can see where these things could come in quite handy. A gas shutoff wrench is always a nice idea, and the 30″ version of that Fubar looks like just the ticket for punching your way in/out/through a building or vehicle.

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

A few months back I was talking to one of the local cops and, as often happens, the topic turns to gear. He had a new LED flashlight he was testing out and I asked if I could examine it. The flashlight in question was the Pelican 8060…an LED flashlight designed and marketed towards the LE community. I tried it out in the dark parking lot there at the police station and was mightily impressed. Most lED lights tend to have their beam diffuse over distance so that, up close, theyre great but at distant ranges they scatter and wind up being almost useless. Not this thing…this baby was like the landing lights on a 747. I lit up buildings a block away with concentrated, focussed light and it was mightily imrpessive. I dont think any of my Krypton-bulbed MagLites do as good a job.

The missus was in the market for a new flashlight, her rechargeable MagLite having gone MIA somewhere. So, biting the bullet, she dropped the $180 for the rechargeable Pelican 8060. After playing with this thing further, I can say that if you can afford it this is a great flashlight. Im not going to go over the details, you can get them here in this review. One thing I dislike is that if you , for whatever reason, want to swap out the rechargeable battery with regular batteries you have to use ‘C’-batts. Now, the only things Im aware of that take C-batts are sex toys and various obscure devices that are seldom encountered. If Pelican made this thing to take a rechargeable battery unit and the much more common D-batts I would be thrilled. My other complaint is that there is no attachment point for a lanyard, however the more creative amongst us can fab something up pretty easily with some zip ties, I’d imagine.

Not really a flashlight for looking under the bed for your shoes or creeping around in the attic, this flashlight is definitely geared more towards outdoor use and tactical/emergency use with its brilliance. It’ll blind someone quite nicely if youre needing that sort of ability. Although it is of plastic/polymer construction it feels solid enough that you could crack heads with it if the need arose.

Price aint cheap but, dude, this thing makes every MagLite I’ve ever seen look like a toy. And I like MagLites. If Pelican makes this thing compatible with D-batts Ill be one of the first ones in line for it.
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Ninety percent of the time, the gun Im carrying around is a Glock. However, I do like revolvers and have quite a few of them. Mostly in, unsurprisingly, the common caliber of .38 & .357. While I do use speedloaders (Safariland ones) I also keep a bunch of the Bianchi Speed Strips around. For those of you who arent revolver dinosaurs, the Speed Strips are little plastic strips that hold six rounds of .38/.357 ammo in a straight line. You slip two cartridges into your cylinder’s chamber and ‘peel’ off the rest of the strip. Repeat two more times and you’ve loaded your six-shooter. The design is actually rather old and similar products were in existence a hundred years ago. These were an alternative to speed loaders and they work quite well. Why would you use them instead of a speed loader? Well, for one thing, they are caliber specific rather than gun specific. I havea S&W 36, S&W 10, and an S&W 28…I would need three different speedloaders. However, the Speed Strip works with any .38/.357 swingout-cylinder revolver, regardless of maker.

Bianchi literature years ago suggested the Strips would be available in other calibers but that never came to pass. A shame since a lot of folks carry bigger guns these days than .357s. Since Bianchi has shown no interest in the subject, another company has started making Speed Strips under their own name and in other calibers. While I prefer speedloaders for their quickness, there is a very nice convenience to just grabbing a few strips of .38 ammo and walking out the door without having to worry if I picked up the correct speedloader for a particular gun. Anyway, for you dinosaurs that still use the wheelgun, I figured this link may prove interesting. I’ll be getting a few for my Smith .44 Special and a few other guns as well.

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

Anyone notice the increased media attention to the swine flu situation? Hamthrax was all the rage earlier this year as the second coming of the 1918 Flu, then the bubbles were burst with objective observations like “regular flu kills more people than swine flu”, then there was a sharp drop in media attention to the issue, and now we’re being told to expect a large amount of Americans to get it (although, it is reported, many already have it and simply don’t know it).

Personally, Im pretty unconcerned about the flu from a medical standpoint. I’m probably as healthy right now as I’ve ever been and while a bout of the flu can knock me on my ass for a week or so I am quite confident it won’t kill me.

What interests me far more, and should interest you as well, is the non-medical effect that such an outbreak would have. Schools would close, medical facilities would be overtaxed, some industries and services would be hamstrung by workers calling in sick or not showing up, and the financial considerations are impressive too.

Is it the end of the world? Not unless you die from it, no. But if youre smart you’ll start thinking about how it would affect you and what steps you’ll need to take to mitigate those problems. For example, if your business shuts down or cuts back on hours because of an outbreak are you going to have enough money to make up for the lost income? If local markets are cleaned out by people in a frenzy of panic buying are you good to go with what you’ve already got in your cabinets? Got enough bleach, disinfectant and Kleenex around? You prepared to curtail your social life and stick close to home until it blows over? Are you aware enough to make sure you don’t handle doorknobs, telephones, keyboards shopping cart handles, bank pens, or any of a myriad of items that may have been handled by some wheezeing, mucous-dripping flu sufferer? Bleach wipes will be your friend in a very big way.

I’m not worried about any of that very much. We’re pretty we’ll covered on most of those fronts. If anything it may be a macabre form of entertainment watching the less prepared folk panic and implode. The drawback to that sort of entertainment, however, is that they outnumber us exponentially and that makes them politically powerful…next thing you know some nosebleed in the Senate is saying we ‘have to do something’.

Speaking of doing something, the goofballs in Massachussetts (State motto “Another boilermaker, Senator Kennedy?”) passed a public health law in anticipation of a hamthrax episode that, among other things, gives appointed public health drones the power to enter private property without the usual niceties like a warrant. Sort of a ‘Patriot Act’ for the public health crowd. You know, if you shop around you can still find old people who remember when the sheriff would nail a quarantine notice to someone’s house or farm. ‘Course, back then there were leper colonies as well. Isolation does tend to slow down these pandemic things. And while Im no fan of the ‘do it for the public good’ credo, I think people are far less likely these days to self-quarantine in the interests of preventing the spread of disease.

But, under the guise of ‘doing something’ about the ‘public health’ these goons want to be able to do an end run around protections afforded to us constitutionally. Nothing new there, I suppose….The TSA and their shenanigans are ample proof that constitutional niceties can be disregarded under ‘heightened circumstances’.

So, really, it’s standard operating procedure – stock up and shut up.
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My tomatoes are starting to ripen and I pulled the first one off the plant the other day. My peppers are doing nicely and the basil has turned into quite the shrub. Basil, tomatoes, peppers….add in some garlic and onion plus a little meat and you’ve got a snazzy meal going on there.

I planted two different types of tomatoes this year and both seem to be doing well. I was especially interested in one that was promoted as a cold-weather variety. (Hey, they say its from Siberia!) It seems to be doing well here in Montana. Our frost date is around June so you can’t really start stuff outdoors too early and expect success. Tomatoes tend to be a wee bit sensitive about the cold, so I try not to put them outside until the last minute. Seems to have worked so far though, none of the plants has died or failed to produce.

The plants that I put in five-gallon buckets are doing quite well, and are bigger than the same plants being raised in pots. I very much like the buckets for their portability and modularity…I can just pick up a bucket and face it in/out of the sun if necessary, also it makes watering very efficient – simply fill the remainder of the bucket with water and it all goes where it needs to, etc, etc. I think next year I’m going to do about a dozen of these tomato plants in buckets. I’ll be able to affix a trellis or other climbing aid right to the side of the bucket.

The peppers, which previously have been a little fussy, will definitely go in the buckets. The Hungarian peppers I’ve got going now are doing wonderfully and I think I’m going to go long on them next year and plant enough to can.

This years garden was very light…maybe a dozen tomato plants and that many pepper plants. However the positive results Im seeing are making me think that next year will be the year of the huge garden.

In addition to the peppers and tomatoes, the basil is doing great and the dill is coming along nicely as well. About the only failure has been one or two pepper plants that just don’t seem to want to amount to anything more than stubby weeds. So be it. That’s natural selection in action.

If I could grow some garlic and onions, and maybe a couple chickens, I’d have one hellaciously good meal growing out there….a nice cacciatore or some fajitas. Still, although urban livestock is on the rise I’m not ready to put a couple chickens in the yard. Although, really, it might not be *that* difficult and it would be nice to have fresh eggs. Plus, they’d eat the weeds. Hmmmmm.
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Winter is coming and I need to get on track for that. Plenty of kerosene in reserve, so we’re good on that. I do need to get out the kerosene heaters and clean them up, check the wicks, etc, etc. Propane is a very nice alternative fuel for lighting and heating but I just like the kerosene…its stores quite well, is versatile, is about as safe to store as anything else, and won’t explode. Plus, my lamps, stoves and heaters can burn it. To be fair, I do have propane stove and lamps as well along with a goodly stash of 1# bottles. Redundancy….it ain’t just a river in..uhm…never mind.

What I really need to stop dragging my feet on, in regards to winter, is making sure the house is as weatherproofed as possible. I foresee a date with me, a caulking gun and a buncha windows. Also need to change out the furnace filters while Im at it. No rest for the wicked. On the other hand, anything that prevents a $300 heating bill is worth it. That’s more money to be used for other things or socked away against the uncertain future.

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

Man, talk about ugly.
Here’s an update on that nursing home incident during Hurricane Katrina.
I would have thought that a facility like this would be a little more prepared…especially since hurricances usually give you at least a few days warning. But, really, when youre three feet below sea level don’t you think it might be a good idea to move your electrical facilities to the second floor or higher?

Easy to Monday-morning-quarterback these things, though. Still, its a chilling and heartbreaking example of poor planning and folks being forced into hard decisions.

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

On the right, bell peppers. On the left, the “I dont think thats too many seeds for one pot” basil collection. Just watering the basil fills the air with that lovely aromatic smell. Mmmmm…..pistou!

What we have here are the Hungarian peppers that Im growing in a discarded 5-gallon bucket. Theyre doing very nicely and are convincing me that, as far as container gardening goes, the discarded bucket is the way to go. While I like the look of the traditional style clay pots (as in the first photo) I like the cheapness, durability and potability of discarded buckets better.

Not shown is the dill, which may or may not get used for pickling peppers, and the tomatoes which are doing pretty good although I really should have staked them out earlier. Next year, I’ll screw some old conduit onto the sides of 5-gallon buckets and use that for trellising tomato plants.

Basil, tomatoes, peppers…..get some garlic and onion going and we have a party.

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

Hmmm…this is interesting.

,Rawles linked to this article but it isn’t until you read further that you realize the religious survivalist type referred to is the head honcho over at Frugal Squirrels. Im sure the guy at FS has his own particular take on the situation but I imagine that whatever his argument to the .gov types are it’ll be punctuated with a good deal of self-righteous religious zeal and impromptu interpretations of the law.

I do read the stuff over there at Frugals but I have a hard time dealing with the outrageous hypocrisy they have. Normally, I expect that from the superstitious types but I find it amazing they don’t seem aware of their double-standards. For example, they’ll rant endlessly about those darn Muslims and their wanting to impose Islamic law and how terrible it would be to live in a country ruled by such religious laws…then they’ll lament how the US needs to have its laws based on their holy texts and belief system. Hey, a theocracy is a theocracy no matter whose invisible friend is at the helm.

Another thing that I find annoying about the place is that they’ll delete a post that links to anything they consider offensive. For example, Penn and Teller’s “Bullshit” television program did a really great job skewering gun control. Someone posted a link to it and that link was deleted. The reason? Because the name of the show was offensive. ‘Course these are the same folks that’ll post about how all the ’sodomites’ need to be killed and that, essentially, if you don’t believe in their particular flavor of religion you’re obviously evil. Personally, after 42 years on this planet I’m pretty hard to offend and ‘bad language’ doesn’t even come close. I’m more offended by someone saying we need to kill a segment of society because someone’s imaginary friend told them to.

Of course, the head guy over there is quick to remind people that it’s his party and if you don’t like it you can pack up your bandwidth and go elsewhere. And thats absolutely true. Sadly, I think its a rotten thing to stifle discussion because you don’t agree with other peoples opinions. Im not saying that you cant use the banhammer on someone whose posts are just endless profanity and racist diatribe, but thats not the same as simple and polite disagreement.

So why do I still read the stuff over there? Once in a while theres a poster or two who can be rational and reasonable without dragging things down into a ‘my god is better than your god’ flamewar. Also, I find myself unable to turn away from the drama that sometimes ensues. Some poor bastard says his flavor of Christianity is slightly different than everyone elses and the fur starts flying. For a group that disdains .gov intrusion into peoples lives they sure don’t seem to find anything ironic about wanting to enforce their policies and beliefs into the lives of people who don’t share their beliefs.

This article about the right-of-way/road issue is going to be interesting on so many levels. I’m curious to see how it turns out. Im especially interested in seeing how the guys over at FS portray their side of it. I am certain that, no matter how it plays out, the guys from FS are going to come out of this looking like tinfoil-hat wearing religious zealots.

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

Not sure why, but for some reason I seem to be getting enthused about hunting season. Its pretty early to be even thinking about it since season doesn’t open until November. Still, for some reason I find myself looking forward to it. I suspect that its just me getting a hankering to grab a buncha cool gear and head out into the boonies for a while. Well, if that’s the case, so be it. Who am I to argue with such urges?
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A buddy of mine brought by his Kifaru Paratrap for me to play with. I was kind of interested in one of these as a ‘just in case’ shelter for this hunting season in case I wound up getting stuck somewhere. However, after setting it up and examining it, I think it would work out rather nicely for someone who wants to keep weight to a minimum. Coverage and ‘floor area’ is more than if you used the classic standby of a poncho and some paracord. More importantly, this thing compresses to something you could fit in an M16 3-mag pouch and weighs less than a pound. It has no floor, so youre going to have to either be okay with laying on the ground or perhaps roll out your poncho to use as a groundcloth. (or, a ground pad if you have one). Color is a nice neutral brown that blends with pretty much everything. A fascinating accessory for this thing is a vestibule that has a cutout for a stove. Kifaru makes a stove that folds flat and has a rollup stovepipe that, literally, gives you a woodstove you can fit in your pack. Very clever. Anyway, the Paratarp looks like something I might need to add to the Christmas gift list. Price is typical of Kifaru, a little south of $200, but I must say that Kifaru seems to be a pretty good example of getting what you pay for. For giggles I set up the Paratarp and then set up a poncho shelter. The Paratarp had more room, offered more protection from the elements, and was a lot lighter when rolled up. The only advantages to the poncho shelter are its price, about 1/10th the price of the Paratarp, and its multitask role as a poncho.

I’ve been fortuitous in that I’ve never been forced to overnight unexpectedly out in the sticks. It’s been close a time or two, though. If I did have to overnight in some inclement weather, this thing and my Woobie would make quite the difference…and given the rather light weight of both products theyre things that wouldn’t be objectionable to keeping in the hunting pack ‘just in case’. The prices though….oy.
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A friend of mine introduced me to curry. Im fairly predictable in my cooking and dining tastes. I have no problem eating the same thing over and over if its something I like. Some folks have a problem with that, but it suits me just fine. I suspect that if there was a 50# of Purina People Chow in the store, and I liked it, I’d live off it. (Two cups a day. One if Im trying to slim down. And maybe crack a raw egg over it if I want my coat to get glossy.) Anyway, the curry was interesting because all of the ingredients (curry paste, curry powder, onion, chutney, salt, pepper, lemon juice, tomatoes, etc, etc.) can be had in long-storage form. This means that a fella with 100# of rice sitting in a drum has a new option. This, naturally, interests me.

There are a few ‘cookbooks’ out there for cooking with long-term food and I’ve read the majority of them. They all seem rather bland and repetitive to me. Of course, this all depends on your idea of ‘long term’. For example, a can of tomatoes is good for a couple years whereas a jar of ginger may only be good for three months.

Still, theres very little that’s packed in cans and jars that won’t keep for at least a year or two these days.For example, I bought some spaghetti sauce when it was on sale a year or two ago and still use it. Tastes fine and keeps fine. (Of course, how you store things makes a tremendous difference in these matters.)

The missus has been reading backpacking magazines and as I was flipping through one I noticed that they have recipes for ‘on the trail’ meals. These meals require food that requires a minimum of preparation and doesn’t need a lot of refrigeration. So, I think I’ll have to start perusing the backpacking recipe books and whatnot.

Speaking of food, if anyone is interested I have an excellent deal on freeze-dried pork chop pieces. These are from a contract run of pork chops for the .mil. In the drying process some of the pork chops broke and therefore were rejected. But, hey, four 1-oz. pieces of pork chop is the same as one 4-oz. pork chop, right? More importantly, it’s a heck of a lot cheaper. Freeze dried, raw (so cook ‘em after you rehydrate them), with a thirty year shelf life. I only have a couple cases sitting here but if anyone wants some theyre $30/can. MSRP on the whole pork chops is about twice that. Email me at zero@commanderzero.com if you don’t want to spend the apocalypse as a vegetarian.