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

Unless something that isnt supposed to blows up, any day at the range is a good one.

A while back I picked up an IOR M2 scope with the MP9 reticle. I’d b en wanting a magnifying optic for the AR platform and I’ve been pleased with my IOR 10×56 on my .308 and when I found this M2 (calibrated for 62 gr.) for sale used in a pawn shop I couldnt resist.

It takes a little getting used to in the sighting in process. Zeroing the turrets is a novel experience but once you do it, it makes perfect sense. I had a cheapo set of rings laying around so I used them , but I’ll probably get some ARMS rings here when I have the money for it. Once zeroed I shot some very nice 1″ groups at 100 yards with it. Keep in mind this is out of a standard flattop AR..hideous military trigger, barrel is not freefloated, etc. I dialed the BDC to ‘3′ and headed over to the 300 yard range to spank the metal plates and did quite well.

TPIWP, so:

Shooting prone, using my Tactical Tailor bag as a rest…pretty much the way Id shoot out in the field.

Why the optic? Well, I figure the iron sights are just fine for close range, fast shooting but I wanted something with a bit more precision for longer range shooting. I like the notion of being able to hit small objects at relatively long (and safe) distances with fair predictability. Im not always going to feel like dragging the .308 boltgun around but it would be nice to be able to sling the AR and know that I can hit pretty much anything out to 400 yards or so.

Anyway, the IOR optic seems to be what i expected and, thus far, I recommend it.

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

I usually dont post this sorta ting but once in a while Dilbert hits a home run, even for us non-cubicle dwellers:

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

Ah…again ’tis Independence Day here in the US. The holiday gets more and more ironic as time and government marches on. While Independence Day is indeed a worthy holiday, I place more value on Patriots Day (April 19). Why? Because without the April 19th events there never would have been an Independence Day.

However, I celebrate both and I celebrate them in the most appropriate fashion: thoughtful reflection while taking the guns to the range and practicing my shooting.

If you cannot get to the range today, I at least urge you to read some history on the Revolutionary War and some of its principal participants. Read the Declaration of Independence. Read the Constitution. Read Common Sense. Do all that and then try not to blow a gasket when you realize that current government would appall the folks that started this country.

Meanwhile, if you need me, I’ll be at the range sharing some gunfire with history.

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

North Koreans are playing cat-n-mouse with the US navy in regards to a ship suspected of carrying illegal weapons, hamthrax is spreading throughout the US, the economy is still ailing, oil is up, the Middle East is doing its usual superb job of self-management and the public’s attention is focussed on the death of a pedophile musician who hasn’t even been musically relevant in, what, ten or fifteen years? Every one of those people that you see standing by some curbside candlelit vigil, teary eyed and hysteric, are people who have no ability to discern what is or is not important right now.

The economy is in rough shape, people are losing jobs, and some idiot somewhere thinks this is a good time to take a couple days off from work to drive to California to leave a teddy bear and a homemade card at the gates of Neverland? Very badly ordered priorities. Right now is the time when you give 110% at your job so that when the axe falls it falls on someone else, you save as much as you can, stockpile as much as you can, and make moves to limit your risk and exposure in these uncertain times.
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I’m usually resistant to new technological devices. Often I’ll say something like “But this one I have now has worked fine and done everything Ive wanted for years! Why would I want to upgrade to this new one?” As Scotty said in the Star Trek movie “The more complicated the plumbing, the easier it is to plug it up”…or something similar. So, I was a bit reluctant to make the move to the Blackberry. I had a regular cellphone that functioned fine and took plenty of abuse…why would I need this touch-screen gizmo that would probably break at a harsh word?

Now, I am reluctant to upgrade to new technology but Im not an idiot…if theres an advantage to be gained, I’ll make the switch. That’s why I moved from 1911’s to Glocks. The Blackberry has a number of uses that Im finding fit in very well with my preparedness lifestyle.

Let me start off by saying that if the cell phone infrastructure goes down then obviously this thing is useless. Im aware of that. But my older, less techy cellphone would be equally useless. Most of the advantages the Blackberry offer are advantages that are most practical during pre-SHTF times anyway.

Lists – The Blackberry has a crippled version of Excel spreadsheets on it. I can download all my spreadsheets onto the Blackberry so I can have current up-to-date lists of food, ammo, gear, etc. on hand. How is this useful? If I walk into my local Albertsons and they have canned pears or canning jars or toilet paper on sale at big discounts, I can consult the Blackberry and find out just how much I have on hand at that moment. Thus I don’t spend money on stuff it turns out I already have or I can take advantage of a sale when I find that my supply at home is running low.

Camera – I use this almost exclusively for taking photos of the sides of product boxes to capture the specs of a product. For instance, I was up at CostCo and they had a solar panel package on sale. I took a photo of the side of the box and that saved me from having to stand there and write down all the details about the product. No muss, no fuss. Its also useful for things like gun shows where I can take a picture of a gun, send the image home and say “Want me to get this?”

Internet – This is useful on so many levels. First off, I have all the major news outlets bookmarked so if things suddenly get weird I can get the latest news as quickly as possible…and as we all know, forewarned is forearmed. Its also very handy for quickly researching a product in the store…just head to the website of the product manufacturer and get necessary info. I also use it to get up-to-date prices on metals and stocks. Oh, and its handy for porn while traveling.

File storage – the Blackberry also doubles as a USB drive. I use it to shuttle music and files between home and work. In fact, I type up most of these entries at work and then shuttle them home on the Blackberry. I also keep useful files on the Blackberry, such as a scanned image of the FFL that we use for gun purchases. That way I can go into a gun store somewhere and if I see a gun we want I can email a copy of the FFL to the store right there. (And, yes, emailed and faxed FFLs are valid these days as long as the recipient verifies its validity against ATFE’s website database.)

Applications – I haven’t explored all the various applications out there for the Blackberry yet. I very much want some ballistic and mil-dot applications as well as some cryptography applications. Need to hunt those down…Im sure someone somewhere has them.

GPS and maps – The Blackberry lets me and the missus keep track of each other if we enable privileges on our respective Blackberries. I can pull up a Google map and there’ll be a little dot at her last known location. Can be very handy in a crisis. Of course, anything that lets you track someone can also be used to track you…and Im painfully aware of that.

Is the Blackberry a critical piece of gear? Absolutely not. Is it useful? Very much. Is it worth the money? Well…that depends. I think its about $60 a month for the service but it very much has a great utility to me. It may not be as useful to you, but I find it extremely handy. For me the ability to streamline my shopping experiences by having up-to-date lists, do math calculations and check product info at manufacturers websites is very, very attractive…it makes me a very informed consumer and that saves me money in the long run. (For example, I can be at Barnes and Noble and see if the book in their discount bin is cheaper at Amazon…or if the batteries at Best Buy can be had cheaper at CostCo..) I suppose the class-warfare nobly-poor types will call it a ‘yuppie survivalist toy’ and snicker mightily…whatever, man. If I find something that makes me more efficient, and I can afford it, why wouldn’t I take advantage of that?

Me being me, I have some rubber armour that encases the Blackberry to provide a little protection but I find the best thing for it is the belt holster made by Maxpedition (product #0109) … it features a belt clip, MOLLE back, retention strap, and is available in OD. Does a decent job of protecting my Blackberry Storm, too.

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

Okay, finished “One Second After” this morning.

My impression is that its a grittier, darker version of “Alas, Babylon” with a bunch of “Lucifer’s Hammer” thrown in.

Did I find it entertaining? Yeah, I find these sorts of books entertaining most of the time.

Without being too spoilerish, its a book about a crippling EMP incident. I think that the infrastructure failure shown throughout the book is probably pretty accurate, although I am not sure I agree on the level and timeframe of .gov response to it.

A couple things I disagreed on were the timeframe in which things go severely downhill. Im the first to acknowledge that most Americans don’t have more than a weeks worth of food in their house at any given moment, but at the two-month mark in this book theres some pretty severe starvation going on. I think just by virture of Americans being overweight that the decreased rations situation wouldnt drop them into children-with-swollen-bellies  that fast.

One thing I found incredibly annoying in this book is the constant and unremitting ignorance (or lack of editting) displayed by the frequent use of “of” in place of “have”. For example, if you said “We would’ve starved” that is the same as “We would have straved”, correct? Yet throughout the book characters use the form “We would of starved”, or “He should of stayed home” or similar grammatical abortions.I found it distracting and rather irritating.

Someone in earlier comments said this book was compared to ,Rawles’ book. I suppose it compares in that both are post-apocalyptic but thats about the extent of it. ,Rawles’ book is his idea of how to survive the end of the world, presented in novel narrative….sort of an infomercial. This book is less a how-to and more of a cautionary tale. Its preface and introduction (as well as a short speech by the main character) lament that the .gov doesnt take the threat of EMP warfare seriously and that this could be the result. In that way its a ‘call to arms’ much the way ‘Alas Babylon’ was written to urge more emphasis on Civil Defense. (Its author, ‘Pat Frank’, was a big proponent of a strong Civil Defense program.)

So, lets cut to the chase….is it worth reading? I say yes. Is it entertaining? Yes. Realistic? I suppose…Im no expert on EMP but the infrastructure failure consequences portrayed in the book seem logical and believable. Is the book as enormously hopeless and depressing as “The Road”? Meh. Its got some depressing moments, to be sure, but if you look at the timeline that the story covers probably everyone reading this post would be just fine. I doubt anyone here doesn’t have enough food to get them through six months or so of empty grocery shelves. There are some interesting topics brought up in the book..one notable one is that the increased population density of the eastern US results in a lower food:person ratio than in the less populous western states. Theres almost no mention of how the western half of the US fares in this book but I’d bet money that in the western states things weren’t nearly as bad and Utah probably didnt have problems at all.

For me, the hallmark of good survivalist fiction is whether or not the book motivates me or otherwise affects my behavior in regards to being prepared. Using that as a barometer, then, yes, this book is a good read. When it was done I felt like hitting the WalMart and stocking up on more of everything.

As a side note, the book mentions, very briefly, ‘local survivalists’ that the townies think about taking/requisitioning supplies from. The idea is dismissed because the concern is that the family, the Franklins, would put up a rather costly firefigh, although it is also mentioned that the Franklins might prove useful for their knowledge and skills. Later in the book it mentions that the Franklins come down from the hills and help the townies with their improvised munitions that they are assembling to defend the town. Nice to know my collection of Ragnar Bensen books might come in handy some day.

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

Received a copy of “One Second After” today. So far, its pretty good and very reminiscent of “Alas, Babylon”.

I am always up for post-apocalyptic fiction. I’ll let you know how this one goes.

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

Know what gives me satisfaction? Seeing that the gallon jar I use to hold my ‘immediate use’ rice in is running low so I crack open the GammaSeal on one of my five gallon buckets and behold the joy, peace, and security that comes from seeing pounds and pounds of yummy rice…quietly waiting its turn to be consumed. I can pull a can of chicken broth out of storage, add a cup of rice, a can of crushed tomatoes, some remaindered bargain meat out of the freezer, a few select spices and have enough food to feed several people in hearty proportions. And I can do that anytime I want. All the ingredients are right here and will last for years. I genuinely never need to really worry about where the next meal is coming from.
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In addition to the fabulous deal on the G3 mags, a buddy and I picked up another 150 AR mags. The availability and pricing seems to be coming back to earth. In fact, I daresay that I think we are in a lull where now may be the time to buy such things. I think many people who wanted to stock up have and the demand has been somewhat sated. However, all it takes is one idiot shooting up a WalMart somewhere and the Attorney General getting on television saying that “reasonable restrictions on firearms need to be introduced” and the panic buying starts all over again. I’m seeing magazine and, to a lesser degree, ammo availability improve but reloading components, especially primers, are still in short supply. I did some assessment the other day of our own stock of primers and while we’re in good shape, we could always use more. However, forty bucks a brick is just freakin’ insane.
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Wen’t out shooting last weekend with some friends. One of the guns we shot was the Steyr AUG clone made by Microtech – the STG556. The AUG platform is interesting. Its biggest feature is that by being of the bullpup design you can have a 16″ barrel in a gun that is as short as legally possible. The gun features a piston gas system, plenty of rails, a forward handgrip, quick-change barrels and the ability to be made left-hand friendly. But how does it shoot? It shot well enough but being so used to ‘traditional’ (non-bullpup) rifles it takes some getting used to. It handles very, very nicely…holding and shooting an AR one-handed can be tricy..not for the STG556. We shot it at steel gongs so it was hard to gauge accuracy but it hit them every time. The gun I shot was mounted with an EOTech, which Im not sure I like, but overall I think if I spent more time with the gun I might like it more. Reliability was fine and it seemed a solid enough shooter.

Further shooting was done with AR’s and PTR-91 HKlones using .22 conversion kits. It was nice to practice shoot-n-move drills. At this point in time, even with the sometimes difficult availability of bulk Federal .22, the .22 conversion kits are absolutely worth whatever you pay for one.

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

Yay! More Mountain House!

,Rawles over at SurvivalBlog pointed out that Cheaper Than Dirt was selling used G3/HK91 mags for ninety-nine cents. Prior to this, the best price I’d found was from Lew Horton at around $1.50. So for less than a buck each, wouldn’t you have picked up 250 of them also?

Out of the 250 that I received, 20 were new in the wrapper, 23 were culled for dents of varying severity. I pulled any mag that has a dent that looked like it might even remotely cause a problem. In all likelihood, most of the dented mags are strictly cosmetic although theres at least three that are genuine ‘what the hell happened here” kind of dents. Two mags were pulled for having very bent baseplates. I figure this means theres about 15 or so mags that are gonna be scrapped for parts. That’s a reject rate of 6%. So the $0.99 per mag becomes closer to $1.05 once you factor in the rejects. Still, that’s mighty cheap for anything stamped “HK”.

Oldest mags were dated around 1965, newest around 1985. Various manufacturers with about ½ being HK. About 40% of the mags had rust on the baseplates but it was strictly cosmetic. It was about 60/40 in terms of blued/parkerized finishes…except for one mag that had the bluing turn to a very pronounced purple color. Go figure.

I am so very, very done with HK magazines that it isn’t even funny. At a buck each you can almost afford to just throw the magazine away when youre done. Or, put it another way, the magazine is cheaper than two rounds of the ammo it takes. How many mags does this give yours truly? Uhm…well, I guess I shouldn’t feel embarrassed about this..about 500. I have two PTR-91 rifles (at the moment..I might need one or two more.) so I think I can honestly say that the magazine needs for those guns is very handily met. I can keep fifty with each gun, fifty in storage for each gun, fifty offsite for each gun, fifty for range use for each gun, and fifty for caching for each gun. I can spread all the eggs among a number of baskets and each basket can hold enough to keep me well supplied indefinitely. So…no more HK91 mags! I am done. Finito. Finished.

Move on to picking up some more mag pouches and HK spare parts and we’ll be sitting pretty.

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

,Rawles over at SurvivalBlog pointed out that Cheaper Than Dirt was selling used G3/HK91 mags for ninety-nine cents. Prior to this, the best price I’d found was from Lew Horton at around $1.50. So for less than a buck each, wouldn’t you have picked up 250 of them also?

Out of the 250 that I received, 20 were new in the wrapper, 23 were culled for dents of varying severity. I pulled any mag that has a dent that looked like it might even remotely cause a problem. In all likelihood, most of the dented mags are strictly cosmetic although theres at least three that are genuine ‘what the hell happened here” kind of dents. Two mags were pulled for having very bent baseplates. I figure this means theres about 15 or so mags that are gonna be scrapped for parts. That’s a reject rate of 6%. So the $0.99 per mag becomes closer to $1.05 once you factor in the rejects. Still, that’s mighty cheap for anything stamped “HK”.

Oldest mags were dated around 1965, newest around 1985. Various manufacturers with about ½ being HK. About 40% of the mags had rust on the baseplates but it was strictly cosmetic. It was about 60/40 in terms of blued/parkerized finishes…except for one mag that had the bluing turn to a very pronounced purple color. Go figure.

I am so very, very done with HK magazines that it isn’t even funny. At a buck each you can almost afford to just throw the magazine away when youre done. Or, put it another way, the magazine is cheaper than two rounds of the ammo it takes. How many mags does this give yours truly? Uhm…well, I guess I shouldn’t feel embarrassed about this..about 500. I have two PTR-91 rifles (at the moment..I might need one or two more.) so I think I can honestly say that the magazine needs for those guns is very handily met. I can keep fifty with each gun, fifty in storage for each gun, fifty offsite for each gun, fifty for range use for each gun, and fifty for caching for each gun. I can spread all the eggs among a number of baskets and each basket can hold enough to keep me well supplied indefinitely. So…no more HK91 mags! I am done. Finito. Finished.

Move on to picking up some more mag pouches and HK spare parts and we’ll be sitting pretty.