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

Here’s an article for ya:

World Hunger Reaches The 1 Billion People Mark (I almost have a vision of the golden arches with a sign – “Over 1 Billion NOT Served”)

A highlight:

“Food security is one of our most critical peace and security issues of our time,” said Josette Sheeran of the World Food Program, another U.N. food agency based in Rome.

“A hungry world is a dangerous world,” she told reporters.

Hungry people are dangerous and desperate people.

There may be 1/6 of the world’s population being hungry but I guarantee you none of those billion live in this house.

I was visiting North Carolina the other week and other than the ungodly temperatures and humidity, it was practically a survivalist Disneyland – everyone was growing corn and vegetables, gardens were huge, growing seasons were long and in the coastal areas you could drag,hook, snag, net, gig and otherwise remove enough protein from the ocean to keep you darn well fed. Add to that a generous limit on their deer tags and you had some poeple who, unless things go very very wierd, are never going to be hungry.

However, as I said, the temperature and humidity were enough to dissuade me of any inkling that moving there would be a good idea. I’ve come to love Montana’s unpredictable, but usually bone-dry, weather…warts and all.

Still, for the price of a saltwater fishing license a fella good eat awfully well down there.

Getting back to the article linked above, notice the term ‘food security’.  The new buzzword is ‘food security’ – the securing of food supplies through government means. The Chinese are already doing this by leasing out large parts of Africa to grow food for their population. While the Germans started the dance with “liebensraum” it would not be surprising to see food (and possibly water) become a factor in some armed conflicts somewhere.

Desperate people do desperate things and nothing makes you more desperate than watching yourself or your loved ones starve to death. Head down to your local LDS cannery and score yourself some of the cheapest food insurance around.

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

Yes indeedy, there appears to be some sort of connectivity issue going on. Lotsa timeouts and failures to load. I’ve upgraded to the latest v. of WordPress but perhaps the problem is with Yahoos hosting. Give it a day or two and see if it fixes itself.

Meantime, someone pointed out to me that Cheaper Than Dirt has ninety-nine cent HK91 mags. If you were smart and bought a PTR-91 like I suggested, you’d have magazines cheaper than any other gun.

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

So every schmuck with a keyboard will tell you how to deal with the TSA when it comes time to slide the gun case across the counter and onto the conveyor belt at the airport. This is just such a post, but with a twist – theres some freaking hard-earned experience backing this stuff up. I’m assuming you know the basics. They are, briefly:
Unloaded gun in a locked airline-approved hard case
Make declaration at gun counter (”Hi. I need to declare unloaded firearms.”)
Receive declaration tags, sign ‘em, put them in (or with) case
Lock it up

Theres some minor variation in there but thats about 90% of it.

What I’ve learned is that no airport does it the same way as other airports, which is a bit odd since it should all be uniformly the same across the board. Allow me to give an example:
I get to the airport here in Montana. In my duffel is a locked Pelican case with a couple Glocks in it. I tell the chick behind the counter that “I need to declare unloaded firearms”. She gives me the orange tags to sign. I sign em, she countersigns, I open my duffel and put them with the gun case. I then take my duffel over to the x-ray machine where retards from the TSA ask if I have any guns or film in the duffel. I say yes and they do a double take since the answer 99.9% of the time is no. I tell ‘em theres unloaded guns in a locked case and theyre declared. They x-ray the luggage and their little software program beeps a couple times as it recognizes the outline of a couple G19’s. TSA goons open the bag (Im standing there and they ask me for the key) and I watch as they open the bag and confirm theres a gun case and declaration tag. I watch to make sure they lock the whole thing up again, it goes onto the conveyor and I head to the security screening area and then to my gate.

Fairly simple stuff, although when this was a free country it was alot easier.

Flash forward to checking guns through at the Minneapolis airport 6/11.

I do the declaration song and dance and an exceptionally rude and incompetent Delta/NWA employee gives me a declaration tag. For the sake of argument we’ll call this particular shining example of asshattery “S. Bradford”…after all, that was the name on the little man’s name tag.

I sign the declaration tag and stuff it with the luggage and prepare to drag my duffel to the x-ray machine. Bradford tells me to give him the bag and that it is to be put on the conveyor belt behind him and that Im not allowed to lock it. How many things are wrong with that sentence? Guns in luggage? That mofo gets locked and only the passenger has the key/combo…says so right there at the ticket counter in fine print. We ask Bradford if he’s sure this is the right way to go..normally we escort it to the x-ray machine so the TSA thugs operating it don’t sprout wood when they see guns in the luggage and think theyre about to become heroes. Bradford assures us, in an amazingly rude and patronizing way, that mere civillians like us don’t know the rules (cause, hey, we’ve only been travelling with guns for about 20 years) and he’s the expert. (An expert, by the way, who had to try six different check-in terminals to find where the declaration tags were kept…not exactly an old hand at this gun check-in thing, methinks.)

I say to the missus “We’re gonna see that bag again real soon.”

Duly chastised by S. “Respect mah authority” Bradford we go to our gate. And, exactly as I predicted, when we get there we get the “Will passenger [name] please report to the gate attendent.” I roll my eyes, I know exactly what this is about. Bradford’s inability to know how to do his job is about to make our trip alot more annoying.

We go to the counter and identify ourselves. Some tall NWA/Delta employee says to follow him please, theres a problem with our luggage. I said “Theres no problem. I know exactly whats wrong. We’ve got a buncha guns in our bag and the guy at the check-in messed up.” We quickly walk along the terminal to some unmarked doorway. Tallguy swipes a card through the reader and theres two suits standing there. TSA supervisors or somesuch. They say they need us to open the gun case for inspection. We’re whisked down a flight of stairs to what looks like a parking garage but is actually where all the luggage is transported to, by conveyor and chutes, for inspection and x-ray. I ask where the guys are who dont speak English and steal luggage. Theres a polite snicker. I then ask if this is where all the Northwest pilots hang out drinking between flights. Im told, no, thats in the bar upstairs. As we are ushered along we tell the guy that we tried to explain to Bradford that we needed to take the duffel to x-ray but noooooooooo he knew what was best. Polite small talk ensues. We’re asked if we are military. I say no, she’s a cop and I’m a talented amateur. We get to our destination – three TSA goons huddled around our Pelican case like its the ark of the covenant. I open the case, the inspect, I lock the case, I lock the duffel bag and we’re escorted back to the terminal. About a half dozen times, various TSA goons said “Its not your fault. You did everything right. Its the fault of whoever checked you guys in.” I helpfully volunteered it was S. Bradford and might they please go kick him in the nuts or something.

So. Let me tell you what I’ve learned. (And this was not my first rodeo as far as TSA thuggery goes.)

First – Obey the rules. If you don’t pack the goodies the way theyre supposed to be packed you have absolutely zero right to complain. Yeah, theyre absurd rules. Yeah, they protect no one. But if you wanna bring the hardware home you gotta pack it to their satisfaction. More importantly, if you want to be able to vindicate yourself against these morons you must be in the right.

Two – Make a note of the name of whomever checks your guns. Can’t stress this one enough. When we hand over our boarding passes and ID at the ticket counter we always make a note of the name of the person who gives us the declarations, signs them, and takes our bags. Always. Thats why I can say “S. Bradford” and not “some rude NWA scumbag”. You dont have to be obvious about it, but make damn sure you get their name and remember it. Tell it to your travelling companion in case one of you winds up in a cell and is incommunicado.

Three – Serious locks. Not the ‘TSA approved’ lock that they have a key for. Not the key that came with your Doskocil case. Get a six pack of keyed-alike Master locks. Lock the gun case. If the gun case goes in your bag, lock the bag too. If they give you crap about it gently remind them that the rules say guns go locked and that only the passenger has the key. They should know that…unless theyre S. Bradford of the Minneapolis terminal.

Four – Contingency plan for being detained. In this instance the gun case was in the missus’ name. If they were gonna slap the bracelets on anyone, it woulda been her. Me, I would have stood off to the side and watched them take her away. Why? Because if we’re both holding down a bench in the TSA lockup whose gonna act on our behalf? If you can swing it, make sure your traveling companion knows that one of you needs to stay on the outside to help the one on the inside.

Five – This is overkill but it beats sitting in a cell for six hours with your hands cuffed behind your back: get a declaration tag for each gun. The tag clearly says it is for declaring “Unloaded firearm(s)”. See that little (s) on the end there? That means that one tag covers all the guns in that one gun case…one or six, it covers them all in that one case. If it didnt why the optional plural? But play it safe and say you want one for each gun. The check-in clerk will say you only need one. Politely, but resolutely, say youve had problems in the past where someone insisted you needed one for each gun and youd really rather avoid that. If they refuse, when they give you the tag write something like “(4) guns per Bradford”…which is what I wrote since Bradford refused to hand over a couple extras.

Now, look, you dont have to be a dick about any of this. Be polite. These people have absolutely no motivation or reason to be nice to you. If you are a dick they can make your trip a major bummer very easily and with almost no cost to themselves. Youre in an airport with no real option for transportation and theyve been dealing with people all day. Smile. Be polite. Ask ‘em how their day is. But make sure you have enough information (like their names, etc.) to throw them under the bus if their screwup blows back onto you.

The last thing you need, especially now, is to have quality firearms confiscated and held for a few months while the poltroons at TSA/Fatherland Security arbitrarily decide if they want to return them to you or not.

Read the rules on flying with guns and know them so that when the S. Bradfords start making screwups that can put you in a cell you know how to deal with it. Serious stuff, gang.

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

Back from vacation.
Tired and grumpy but at least Im back with my bunker and goodies. I realize that the odds of the world ending during the week Im out of town are something like 1:52 but it still makes me feel better to be back with my goodies.

This is not to say that we travel unarmed. Or even lightly armed. Which brings me to tomorrows post that will likely get me added to yet another .gov watch list – a few choice words about experiences with the TSA (Motto: Making America safe one stripsearched grandmother at a time), an organization that needs a swift kick in their collective nuts.

Now, I would never threaten any member of such a fine upstanding group as Fatherland Security’s darlings, but history has shown some pretty ugly things happen to collaborators when the people under their heel finally get their day.

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

Still, going to CrossFit. I suck tremendously at it, but even with my poor performance there Im getting results. I’ve met too many preparedness-minded individuals who, while having plenty of good intentions and their heart being ijn the right place, might have a bit of difficulty doing anything extremely physical. There’s alot of things the end of the world is going to be and I think one of them is ‘physical’. We’re going to be running up and down stairs with armloads of gear, slinging rucks around, making mad dashes with 5-gallon cans of fuel and water, moving heavy objects, digging out from debris, walking long distances, etc, etc. It’d be nice not to have a heart attack while doing it. So…I go to CrossFit. I figure I’ll have mny heart attack there and get it out of the way.

Todays workout was inspired by a guy who was apparently so hardcore that he ran the workout in his armour. He was also such a major badass that he earned a (posthumous) Medal of Honor. The workout?
Run a mile, do a hundred pullups, two hundred pushups, three hundred squats and after your done with that go run another mile…just because. Oh, and youre doing it for time. Have fun.

I made it through about 75% of it before the clock ran out on me. This was about the same time my arms ran out on me and I couldnt do another pullup to save my life. Miserable failure? I suppose, but at least I have something to work against next time. Plus, I figure my lackluster performance is still quite an improvement over not doing it at all. A few of the savages in the group managed this hellacious task in about 35 minutes. I suspect theyre refugees from Krypton.

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

Theres some spoiler stuff here for “The Road” so consider yourself warned. Also, this is probably the last Im gonna mention anything about it until the movie comes out.

Theres a scene where the father and son have exhausted their meager food supply. They haven’t eaten for days and they scavenge and scrounge through every place they stumble across. Over the years, everything has been picked clean and theres nothing to be had. Theyre weak, starving and the dad feels that its only a matter of days before they die. Then he stumbles across someones backyard bomb shelter hidden under a few inches of topsoil. They find cases of canned goods, fuel, clothes, toiletries, and are thus saved from starving to death. The boy wonders why this stuff is there and the dad says:

Its here because someone thought it might be needed.
But they didnt get to use it.
No. They didnt.
They died.
Yes.
Is it okay for us to take it?
Yes. It is. They would want us to. Just like we would want them to.
They were the good guys?
Yes. They were.

There you have it. We’re the good guys. Next time you wonder if youre just being paranoid and wasting your time and money, think about that – youre one of the good guys.

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

Someone asked:

Having followed things here off and on for a few years I’m surprised you say you only spend $1,000 per year on smallarms related purchases. I’m in the induetry when in the states and I know dealer costs are a little easier on the checkbook but I’d still have guessed $3,000 or maybe even a little more per year.

That makes me wonder, since you seem to be the sort to do detailed tracking through your lists, have you ever thought about going through the books and seeing how much your expenditures are in different categories? Not just adding to the stocks but other expenses as well? Vehicle, business, home (all survival related but maybe not in the same category as FD foods and ammo), entertainment, etc.?
Might be an interesting exercise. Actually I suspect many people might be a bit surprised as to where the money goes if they were to sit down and look at it. Some might even change their priorities if they knew a good chunk of change goes to things that they don’t really get much use out of.

Well, it helps that we have the FFL and that in my civilian life I run a shop that sells reloading components and gear. But, really, alot of the stuff we have that is directly preparedness-related as far as firearms go is stuff we already had. For example, I still have the first AR I ever bought myself back in 1988. When I started putting together a collection of guns with preparedness in mind I already had most of what I deemed necessary…just needed extras. Most of our ammo was either purchased back in the day when you could get a case of 7.62×39 for $95, or .223 for $135, or is reloaded on the big Dillon. There might have been years where we spent more than $1000 (this year for example will be a big one) but there are years when we spent half of that. On average, its probably about $1000 a year for the gun stuff. A thousand bucks a year is not alot of money…even an underemployed monkey can come up with $3 a day, I would imagine. Also, very few of our firearms were purchased new. I dont think I’ve ever paid more than $400 for a high power or $800 for an AR or $200 for an 870. If you cracked a look in the gun safe it’d be easy to scream “yuppie survivalists!” because theres nothing in there that was used at Stalingrad or has ‘-arov’ in its name but the fact is that if you make more than minimum wage and youre not an idiot with your spending, you can sock away an AR, Glock and 870 pretty quickly.

How much do we spend per year on non-firearms preparedness stuff? Thats trickier. Why? Because alot of preparedness stuff is simply stuff you normally use, except in larger quantities. Let me give an example – I like chicken. When I go to CostCo I always get about 10# of the stuff and when I get home it gets broken down into 1# packages, sealed up, and tucked away in the deep freeze. As the year goes on some gets pulled out and used and more goes in to take its place. So that chicken isnt really bought solely for preparedness…it gets used for normal usage as well. ALot of our food storage is like that so I dont really see the cost of that being considered any different than regular groceries. Succinctly, very little money above ‘normal’ grocery expenses goes to food storage. There are, of course, exceptions. The frezedrieds arent cheap so I got dealer status with MH and save myself a big chunk of money. Even then, since the MH lasts at least 25 years you could dollar cost average it out and it would be less than $200 a year. The bulk stuff like wheat, corn, rice, etc. is ridiculously cheap. A hundred pounds of rice is only about, I think, $30 last time I looked at CostCo.

Stored fuel is like groceries…we fill the fuel cans and rotate them through usage, so its fuel we were going to use anyway. Same for alot of things.

If you were to ask what % of household income goes into preparedness around here I’d say less than 10%..probably closer to 7%. But we’re atypical of average consumers. We don’t buy toys like jet skis, ‘fun’ vehicles, or boats. We don’t have any debt except the mortgage. We don’t have any credit cards, student loans, vehicle loans, or anything like that nibbling away at what comes in. No kids. We live pretty plainly and try to live within our means.

It’s just my opinion but I think pretty much anyone can put together a very nice ‘war chest’ of food, fuel, ammo, guns, gear and the like if theyre sincere in their desires, focussed and disciplined in their spending habits, and careful in their shopping around.

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

Ordered 12/03/08
Delivered 05/28/09

SIX MONTHS!!!!

But….each of the three guns you see there only cost $750 ea. And theres a complete A2 Upper. And three lower parts kits. And a field repair kit. And two stripped lower receivers.

Are these not things of beauty!?!?!

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

Cannibalism is a strange business. It crops up in ‘survivalist fiction’ more often than not. Almost every post-apocalyptic movie or book makes reference to it at some point. Almost always the context is a bad one..the bad guys eat people, the good guys don’t. Historically, its been almost the opposite….survival cannibalism seldom has any nefarious or evil undertones. This is probably because, with very few exceptions, most cases of survival cannibalism involve consuming those who have already died rather than choosing someone and killing them. (However, there are at least one or two tales of sailors stranded at sea who drew straws to see who would be killed and consumed for the benefit of the others. Even in those situations it was consensual – everyone agreed to the draw and the consequences.)

In most fiction, cannibalism is a devilish, evil business of hunting down people and either killing them straight away for consumption or torturing and abusing them and eating them later. In one or two books Ive read theres an even more sinister but quite practical practice – partial cannibalism. Removing a limb from the victim and keeping the victim alive (and the ‘meat’ unspoiled) until more is needed. I find this last practice especially horrific and, unfortunately, it may not be solely fiction. Supposedly there were isolated Japanese troops in the islands during World War Two who may have eaten prisoners (or parts of prisoners) and kept them alive, taking parts of them as needed, to keep their food source from spoiling in the tropic heat. Stories like these are almost never proven but stranger things have happened during wars. I’ve been rereading a book about the battle at Stalingrad and theres mention of cannibalism and the military response to it – execution squads that would kill anyone who had a rosy color to their cheeks amongst the grey, starving troops.

Why do I mention this macabre subject? I was reading ‘The Road’ and one of the characters asked if they would ever resort to eating people if they couldn’t find any food. The response was that they would never resort to that, better to starve.

So, what we have here are ethical or moral questions. Is it wrong to eat someone in a starvation situation? I think it depends on a few more variables. In the famous case of the soccer team stranded in the Andes, the snow was littered with bodies, preserved by the cold. Faced with starvation, they chose to consume the already-dead. I see no moral or ethical issue there. In fact, the survivors were very concerned about how the public would receive their actions and they were almost universally accepted and supported for what they had done. Even in the straitlaced age the Donner Party episode occurred in there was little reproachment for what had been done in the name of survival. People just accepted that it was a horrible situation and that people ‘did what they had to do’. (However, British sentiment was far less sympathetic when accusations of cannibalism arose in the adventures of some of their doomed arctic explorers. A proper Englishman would rather die than lower himself to such savagery, they claimed. Discovery of the bodies of ill-fated adventurers with knife marks on the bones, dismemberment at the joints and bones with the marrow removed proved otherwise.)

In the case (literally a ‘case’ since it eventually wound up in court) of the sailors drawing straws on the ocean I think that there was no moral or ethical issue there if it really went down as described with everyone agreeing to draw lots. Note that there was some issue about whether the poor soul consumed was conscious when the lots were drawn…a factor which clouds the issue. But, if all were consenting to the lottery then I suppose theres no ethical or moral issue.

The notion of hunting down a person solely to kill them for food? I want to say that’s pretty much a guaranteed ticket out of the human race but then it occurs to me that people hunt down other people and kill them for their iPods, rather than as a matter of survival, and we often imprison them and let them out after twenty or so years. Would we be more or less forgiving of someone who kills a person, literally for their own survival? That’s the question I’m more interested in regarding this grisly subject. If someone shoots a shopkeeper for $200 cash are they more or less evil than someone who kills a person to eat them? You might argue that the cannibal killer’s motivation is more ‘reasonable’ – if he doesn’t do it he’ll starve to death – whereas the robber’s motivation may be something far, far less urgent. We can grasp, and maybe even understand, that people in a dire survival situation may do extreme things to survive. History is replete with cases of people marching across trackless deserts, living on rats and rainwater, cutting off their own limbs to save their lives, etc, etc. Under incredible and unimaginable circumstances I suppose its possible to at least rationalize the actions of murdering a human being for the sake of consuming them to prevent one’s own death by starvation. (And make no mistake, starvation, as Ive read about it, is a process that takes over a person and makes them pretty single-minded. It really is true – hungry people are dangerous people.) As distasteful and horrific as it is, I’d guess that the person who would kill you for your sneakers is a worse person than the person who would kill you to keep themselves alive.

Don’t get confused here…Im not condoning, forgiving, excusing or legitimizing something as abhorrent as killing another person for the sake of eating them. I think it’s the stuff nightmares are made of and I’d probably quite remorselessly shoot the first pro-active cannibal I come across. What Im saying is that, to me, its more understandable than the notion of killing someone over a stereo.

Do I think I could ever participate in such things? I think in the case of the stranded airplane passengers, absolutely. I’d detest it for reasons Im not entirely clear on (societal, Id imagine) but these people were already dead and I see no moral or ethical problem with consuming them to prevent my own death by starvation.

The lifeboat survivors? Im not sure. I’ve read accounts of people cast adrift and they seem to be able to subsist on seagulls and small fish. Of course maybe they conveniently overlooked mentioning they ate the cabin boy. I can’t really say what Id do in that situation … the notion of drawing lots and then killing the loser, even with his permission and approval, just seems wrong but I don’t think I could judge those who did partake in it.

The idea of starving, being desperately hungry to the point of eating the bark off trees, and then seeing someone walking down the path and deciding to kill them and dress them like a deer? I don’t think so. While I can understand the desperation and hopelessness of watching your body waste away and become so weak that getting up is a tremendous effort I cannot relate to the notion of arbitrarily killing an innocent bystander. Maybe its just me but I can’t see myself going along with it.

Non-survival cannibals (Jeffrey Dahmer, Albert Fish, Ed Gein, etc, etc.) are a completely different story altogether, obviously. They should be taken out right after their conviction and hung from the nearest tall object, their bodies utterly cremated and their ashes dumped far at sea to remove any trace of their poisoned existence.

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

Weather here in Montana has finally warmed up enough that I feel its safe to move the tomato seedlings to the outdoors. One of the varieties of tomatoes is a Russian variety that’s supposed to be very hardy and able to handle less-than-warm environments…we’ll see how that works out. While the cukes and tomatoes are in the ground, I still need to get the peppers in. A buddy of mine was nice enough to drop off his rototiller for me to borrow so I’ve got no excuse for not getting out there and getting these things in the ground. Unfortunately, this area was at some point a giant glacial lake so theres no shortage of rocks and stones (is there a difference?) in the ground. Thus rototilling has a certain element of excitement and frustration to it. Still, it beats going at it with a pick and shovel.
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The folks at Mountain House have warned me that prices will be going up in July, so Im putting in an order this week to beat the increase. Some people disdain the freeze-dried stuff as ‘yuppie survival food’ but if you can find a better way to get a piece of chicken to last twentyfive years in a lightweight, highly portable form I’d like to hear about it. While the wheat-salt-sugar-bean-rice approach may keep you from starving it isn’t terribly flexible and I have no intention of spending the apocalypse eating whole wheat bread, wheat cereal, bulghur ‘burgers’, and wheat sprouts. Sure, if I had no choice…but I do have a choice and that choice includes chicken, beef, pork chops, lasagna, teriyaki, scrambled eggs and chicken ala king – without the need to rotate. Additionally, the pouch freeze-drieds (as opposed to the #10 cans) come in handy for bugout bags and car kits.

This isn’t to say that we don’t keep the usual drums of wheat, corn, rice, salt, sugar, etc. around…theyre an excellent and cheap way to keep from starving. The freezedrieds just give me a million more ways to prepare the ‘staples’ into something that won’t get boring.

If you’re smart, and I hope you are, youre food storage repertoire isn’t just any one solution but rather a mix…canned goods, bulk dried goods, freezedrieds, MRE’s, etc. Im the first to admit that freezedrieds are an expensive way to go but then Im not advocating them as the everyday solution for food storage…theyre more of a nice adjunct to the cheap stuff like rice, beans, wheat, etc. Personally, the backbone of my food storage is the bulk dried stuff (rice, corn, wheat) and canned goods. The freezedrieds come in handy for other reasons, such as high portability if I have to leave and long shelf life if I want to cahce something.

Anyway, big order going in to MH and Im hoping that they wont be too backordered these days.