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

Its worth noting that, according to various news reports, the market for recyclables has dropped quite a bit. Things like paper, aluminum, scrap steel, etc, etc, are bringing a fraction of what they were a few months ago. More importantly certain metals, such as copper and lead, are trading way below what they were a few months ago. So does this tumbling of copper prices mean that the cost of bullets will go down? Dunno…if the price of steel goes down does that mean the price of a Cadillac goes down? Probably not. While the material cost (in this case, copper) may go down, that drop may not translate into a drop in the price of the finished good. After all, that bullet still needs to have the copper made into blanks, cupped, drawn, trimmed, swaged, polished, etc, etc. The costs of those processes aren’t really affected by the lower price of the material. Still, I like to think that there may be some relief down the road in terms of bullet and ammo pricing. Regardless, while I cant say with any certainty if the price of ammo and bullets will go down, I can say that it is more likely that prices wilremain high or go higher. As political situations unfold there will, naturally, be issues with availability that will push prices higher (supply and demand, that old axiom). So…I’d say youre more likely to save money than waste money if you continue buying ammo and bullets at the moment.

Tangentially, I suppose its possible that people who have been cashing in scrap to ‘make ends meet’ or help mitigate their financial problems are going to be outta luck…which, I guess, could translate into a bit of social instability in regions where homeless and poverty-stricken people rely on a few dollars from recycling to keep them from being ‘forced’ to do other unsavory things. But, hey, they’ll be okay because ‘hope’ and ‘change’ are coming. Right? Right??

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Bloody hell, its cold outside. You know its going to be an interesting time when the forecasted daily high temperature is still below zero. However, this is Montana…you have to expect this sort of thing from time to time. For weather like this, if you have to be outside in it, those military ‘Mickey Mouse’ boots do a pretty good job. Fella at the gun show was selling them but, unfortunately, he didn’t have them in my weird foot size. (And before anyone starts sending links, yes, I can find them online but I hate buying clothes and footwear online…if it’s the wrong size it takes two weeks to try again with a different size.)

The belt for the furnace blower broke the other day. Makes sense, its probably about as old as me. Didn’t notice it until I wondered why it was 53 degrees in the house. Could have improvised, I suppose, with some pantyhose or other McGyver-esque improvisation but it was easier to just go to the hardware store and get another belt. ‘Course, if it had been a more catastrophic failure we might have had a problem….or not. We’ve got kerosene and propane heaters and plenty of fuel for both. Might be chilly but the pipes won’t freeze and we won’t get frostbite.

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Cold (really cold) weather means vehicle precautions. The cheapest, best precaution you can take is simply not to drive anywhere when the weather is life-threateningly cold. Realistically, however, that isn’t terribly likely. We gotta go to work, get groceries, go to the range, etc, etc. So the next cheapest insurance you can have is a couple heavy duty blankets or sleeping bags. I’m a suspenders-and-a-belt kind of guy so I prefer a couple heavy military wool blankets (excellent bargains) in the truck along with a military cold weather bag. That’s the minimum. A candle lantern with a few extra candles and matches will help keep things warm and bright if one is forced to sit by the road for any amount of time. The usual carbon monoxide warnings apply, naturally. When the missus was commuting to and from school every weekend I gave her a Rubbermaid container to take with her with all sortsa cold weather gear..as I recall it was a candle lantern, candles, matches, flashlight, batteries, a couple MRE’s with heaters, hand warmers, packets of drinking water (the small ‘lifeboat’ pouches will freeze solid but because of their small size they are fast and easy to thaw whereas a liter bottle of water, once frozen, is going to take a good deal of time and heat to thaw), sleeping bag and a few other odds and ends. And, obviously, its always a good idea to throw a shovel or two in the vehicle if you can.

Also, and this is one of those things that should be written in stone, stay with the vehicle. In almost every news story about someone getting stranded and dying the rescuers find the vehicle first and then find the hapless, lifeless victim. (Yeah, one or two exceptions, but easily 90%+ of these things have the rescuers finding the vehicle first.) If you have water, blankets/sleeping bag, a little food and some candles why wouldn’t you sit tight? Vehicles are usually pretty easy to find since they follow known courses (called ‘roads’) whereas a guy on foot could be anywhere. So…stay with the vehicle. And if you wind up getting a ride from a good Samaritan, leave a note at your stranded vehicle so no one thinks you wandered off to die.

We’re supposed to go to Helena tomorrow but the weather forecast is calling for some winter nastiness. We’ll head out and once on the interstate we’ll see how things look. If it looks ugly or even remotely dangerous we’ll do the smart thing: turn the bloody truck around and return. Sure, the odds would probably be good that we’d make it okay but why take chances? However, just to be on the safe side, I’ll be packing up all the necessary surivival gear as well as adding a few sundry items to the truck (like a few extra flares, another 5-gallons of gas, my insulated Carhart bibs, and the like.)

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

Ice storms are giving people back East a hard time. I haven’t had the pleasure of being in one for about seven years or so. They can be pretty excinting, especially from a driving standpoint, and they are all but guaranteed to throw your electrical capability into the Bronze Age.

Other than trees falling, the problem with an ice storm is that heavy ice forms on power lines, the lines sag and eventually break. (Of course, lines also go down when cars plow into the power poles and snap them off at the base.)

Last ice storm we had made a heck of a mess but power wasnt out for more than a few hours. I wasnt nearly as prepared then as I am now for it. We have plenty of fuel, heaters, water, food and communications gear so all an ice storm would do for us is make leaving the house even less attractive.

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Returned from the Hamilton gun show. I only saw a couple things I wanted (S&W 686 4″, Mossberg 590) but nothing I wanted enough to spend precious resources on. Problem is, no one at the show wanted to risk what money they had for something as superfluous as a gun show acquisition. Its hard to justify spending $250 on AK ammo when you dont know if youre going to have a job in three months. however, judging from the buying habits of those who were actually spending money…the natives are restless.

Enjoy the gun shows while you can folks, ’cause you really cant be certain what’s coming down the pike from Washington next.

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According to at least one self-proclaimed prophet, this holiday season is the last one since we’re all gonna get nuked.

Listen, there is no one who knows precisely when the world is going to end except the guy who is actually going to push the button, light the fuse, release the microbes or set the timer. Oh, sure there are folks who will claim that it’ll be ’soon’, ‘within our lifetime’, ‘when the signs are nigh’ or something equally vague and nebulous. But in narrower terms, even down to within 12 months, no one ever seems to want to go on record.

So, yeah, its gonna happen someday but anyone who says they know when is just smoking crack.

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

Gun show…what to say..well, lets hit the ’ssocial barometer’ signals…

There was no ammo in large quantity to be had. A box of .223 here, a box of .45 there. I saw no table with more than three boxes of the same caliber on it.

If there was any AR that was less than $1200, I didnt see it.

I did see, however, an AK underfolder for..hang onto your hernia belt….$3000. Or, put another way, 1.5 DSA FALs, 3 PTR-91s, or a genuine Steyr AUG would all cost about the same. Out-freaking-rageous.

Only a few AR mags. Almost all were aftermarket and going for $20-30. I did find a guy selling genuine Colt (and one marked Armalite/Colt) 20-rd mags for $15 ea. along with a few of the infrequently seen 4-mag pouches.

Come to think of it, handguns were a bit sketchy too. Alot of overpriced, 2nd gen Glocks for $500. I can buy used 2nd gen Glocks for $360~ all day long so these guys were definitely in fantasy land.

Did I see anything I wanted? I saw a Ruger SP101 in 9mm that was kinda cute. Also a Steyr SPP with a buncha mags for $900. Not an Uzi, like I wanted, but still kinda cool.

All in all, the gun show demonstrated that folks are holding onto their money, holding onto their guns and that everyone seems to be adopting a wait-n-see attitude on things as the increase their ammo and mag stashes.

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

I was strolling through one of the local gun shops yesterday and found the most overpriced AK I have ever seen. I thought $600 was an outrageous sum when we got our Arsenal AKs (although, in retrospect, it was worth it) but these guys feel the Polytech (Chinese) Legend National Match AK they have is worth north of $2500. What the hell, man? “National Match” AK? So that means it’ll do, what?, keep all your rounds in 6″ at 100 yards instead of 10″? Sure its a heavy barrel and a nice milled receiver but for that kinda money I could buy a NM M1A or a nice DSA FAL…or something accurate in a better caliber.

Scary thing is, with the way the gun market is at the moment, they’ll probably get that. Oh, and that $2600 doesnt include any mags.

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I was talking to a customer yesterday who was telling me that he was dissatisfied at his job and was thinking of quitting. “What would you do?”, I asked. He said he didnt know. He just felt confident that he could get another job with no problem almost immediately. I told him that I cant imagine anyone would be thinking of voluntarily unemploying themselves right now. Theres no certainty that people who even want their jobs will have them in the next 12 months. Then again, maybe I was just projecting my own fears on this guy.

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Gas prices continue to fall in my region with a gallon fo gas now hanging out at around $1.55. The lower gas prices makes traveling in the great state of Montana a little cheaper so I may attend some out-of-town gun shows over the next few months and see if I can find some bargains. I have a gun show this coming weekend and it’ll be the first gun show Ive been to since the elction…Im curious to see how the market for various guns and gun-related items goes.

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

The whole reason, for me, to plunk down $500 on a G3-to-.22 conversion kit was so that I could practice things like quickly getting a sight picture from a ‘ready slung’ position, practice shooting while walking, weak-hand shooting, etc. So today I headed out the the range with a brick o’ Federal and did exactly that. And it was great. Had a wonderful time. Most of the shooting was done at fifty yards since I figure thats probably pretty close to the distances that are present when one really does need to snap a rifle up for a hasty shot. Moving-n-shooting was challenging as was weak-hand stuff. The range has some empty oxygen cylinders hanging from a rack that are used as targets. Just about the right height and width of your average bad guy so they were an ideal target with audible feedback.

All in all, alot of fun. I shot about 200 rounds of ammo..put another way, I shot $0.50 of ammo and saved almost $100 of actual .308. (ALot of the surp .308 is clocking in at almost fiftycents per round these days.)

Now I just need to get the .22 conversion for the Glock so I can practice transition drills.

By the by, the previous couple of times I took this kit out I had a few jams and stoppages. This time everything ran like a Swiss watch. No malfs of any kind..slow fire, rapid fire, dump-the-mag-in-3-seconds fire, etc….not a prob. Same ammo as last time, so I dont know what was different but it was a real joy to shoot. Takes a little of the sting out of the cost of the kit.

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

Received one of…well, actually more than one…of these today. It comes with this filter which pretty much stops everything (”..Sarin, nerve gas, mustard gas, cyanogen, phosgene, radioactive dust, toxic particles, aerosols, tear gas, bacteria, viruses, anthrax, smallpox etc. — Also provides protection against industrial gases such as ammonia, hydrogen cyanide, acid gases, chlorine, sulfur dioxide, hydrogen chloride and many more…”)

Price was right, quantity was right, and, well, why wouldn’t you if the price was right? Naturally the missus and I have the older M 17a1 series which I suppose is better than nothing but filters are rather dated, you cant change them without taking the mask off, etc, etc. So, when these newer masks were offered to me, I figured “Why not”?

Never know when theres going to be some sort of chaos that makes breathing a tad difficult. And oxygen is alot like sex…you dont give too much thought to it until you arent getting any…then it becomes mighty important in a hurry. Am I expecting a little nuclear or biological ‘event’ in my neck of the woods? Nope. But you never know whats going to happen and its always nice to be prepared, no?

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Put in another order with Stag Arms today. I asked the usual question of ‘how long?’ and was given a firm, no-nonsense reply of “twenty weeks”. Thats damn near April, folks. Over two months in the Carter II administration. Woe unto he that ain’t got his evil black rifle by then.

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By the by, got a few cases of Mountain House freeze-dried pork chops on the way. When they originally ran these things off for the military they canned ‘em up as whole pork chops. Sometimes things dont go as planned and the freeze-dried pork chop breaks in half. Well, the broken pork chops get set aside and canned all on their own. …. And find their way to a guy like me who doesnt care if a pork chop is in two pieces instead of one when it results in a huge savings in price. ‘Cause when the apocalypse comes I am not spending it as a freakin’ vegetarian. Sure, I could go out and knock down squirrels, cats, and birds for meat but if things are that desperate Im prolly gonna wanna stay indoors where its relatively safe. Open up a can of pork chops, instant potatoes, corn, some fruit for desert and wash it down with some instant iced tea or fruit drink. Sitting in the dark eating cold Spaghetti-O’s out of the can is not an option. If I gotta spend the day cleaning up the rubble of society, shooting looters, bandaging the injured and lugging fuel around the last thing I want is to be rewarded for it at the end of the day with a styrofoam Cup’o’Noodles and some sardines. Bleah.

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

Someone asked in comments if I had a list or other worksheet that they could use to start their own program of being prepared. Unfortunately, I never really kept any kind of list until many years later and even then it was mostly a list of things to pick up as time and money permitted.

My ‘method’, if you want to call it that, for deciding whats needed is to use my imagination and some fairly simple logic. I usually start off with “Its dark, Im cold, naked, unarmed, broke, slightly injured, hungry and thirsty” and then start extrapolating from there. Logic plays a big part. A chain of reasoning might go like this: We want to be able to eat so we need food. We have food, now we need a way to store it. We have stored food, now we need a way to cook it. We have a way to cook it, now we need fuel for that cookstove. We have cooked food from storage, we need something to eat off of. You get the idea. Following that sort of logic through several generations can fill up one side of a legal pad pretty quick.

Two books I’ve found on the subject (and I’ve read a lot of them, believe me) are:

Making The Best of Basics by Stevens

Crisis Preparedness Handbook by Spigarelli

Both books are good places to start, provide suggestions on what to stock and why, and give plenty of food for thought. No one resource is going to have a list of everything you’ll need…everyone’s needs, and everyone’s idea of what the enod of the world will look like, are different. What you might think is necessary may not be what someone else thinks is necessary.

I’m of the ‘economic disaster’ school of the apocalypse. Some folks feel strongly that the biggest threat will be a nuclear war. Some think that ‘Peak Oil’ will be the downfall of civilization. Whatever you think it is, think about how it would affect you and then do whatever you think is necessary to reduce or eliminate those risks.

I think the economy is going to get worse before it gets better. I think unemployment will go up, banks will go down, people will find themselves in the uncomfortable position of actually having to worry about what their food costs, and some goods and services may become unavailable….thus, my preparations tend to be centered around those sorts of things.

No matter what youre preparing against, some things remain the same – you need shelter, food, water, heat, light, sanitation, protection and fuel. Get those avenues covered and youre pretty much good-to-go against 90% of anything that comes your way.

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Speaking of the economy, I am at a loss to believe that theres anything the .gov is doing right now that makes sense. I readily admit that my grasp of economics and finance aren’t anything beyond ‘average’ but I cant see how the amount of money being thrown around at the moment can’t become something that’s going to haunt this country in a major way further down the road.

It looks like .gov is pulling out all the last gasp desperation tricks it can…the ‘extreme measures’. The consequences of using those tricks will be severe, but at least we’ll be around for the consequences. That’s the plan, anyway. What remains afterwards, though, will, I think, be a far different economic landscape than what we’ve grown used to in our lives.

Naturally, this is all bigger than you and I. Theres nothing we can do to stop it, and certainly nothing we can do to undo it. All we can do is try to forsee the resultant effects and prepare ourselves accordingly.

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I am having an annoying experience finding suitable five-gallon buckets lately. I’d decided it was time to stock up on more 5-gallon buckets for my various stored items. Trouble is, the buckets I normally picked up at the paint department at Lowe’s and Home Depot seem a little flimsy as of late. Turns out that theyre marked on the bottom as .060 mil thick. The ones I want are at least 075 mil thick but I cant find any plain white ones. I can find some 090 mil ones at the local beerbrewing place for an outrageous $15@. Home Depot’s buckets are .075mil and priced affordably but theyre the annoying Home Depot orange color. What I want is a simple, plain, white bucket that’s at least 075 mil and less than $10. Now, before you get your Google-fu on, yes I can order them online. Problem is once you do that your cost, with shipping, gets a bit prohibitive. So I need to travel around town a bit more and hit the paint stores and see what shakes loose.

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Sweet Link O’ The Day:

Ballistics By The Inch – Three guys, two chronographs and 7000 rounds of ammo

A fascinating experiment on barrel length and its effect on velocity. Succinctly, chrono ammo through a barrel, cut off 1″, repeat. Highly recommended.

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

I’ve a few cases of MH #10 cans leftover from a group purchase if anyone is interested. Only requirement is you have to buy in increments of 6 cans, but you can mix/match to your hearts content.  Shipping is actual UPS. Email me for a list. zero@commanderzero.com

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

Lon Horiuchi is:

• a) A respected law-enforcement tactical marksman
• b) An expert on rifles and rifle usage, whose opinion should be respected
• c) A guy who shot an unarmed woman while she was holding her baby and claimed he was ‘just following orders’

If you answered anything other than ‘C’ then youre probably working for the ad company that H-S Precision hired.

H-S Precision, whose stock I have on my lovely CZ550, is, apparently, using an endorsement from the Ruby Ridge mom-killer to pimp their guns. As best I can tell, Im not making this up. Before we tear them a new one we should make sure that this is a genuine event.

Linkage:

Call Me Ahab

The War On Guns

The ad copy in question

Next thing you know Charter Arms will hire David Berkowitz as a spokesman for the company.

If this is real then H-S Precision may single-handedly be responsible for stealing the award from Jim Zumbo for the ‘Bite the hand that feeds you’ championship title.

Hat tip to  Books, Bikes and Boomsticks

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

Made another trip to the Mormon cannery the other day. There were more people there  than at any point I recall in my brief time going there. However, despite the crowd and the apparent increased usage at the cannery, they were well stocked with the usual foods. I’m actually sitting pretty well on most of the types of foods they carry. It really has come to the point that one of the main reasons I go is to be around people who share a similar mindset as myself. They older gentleman running the place, for example, is great to talk to…he’s into amateur radio, takes preparedness very seriously, and will try to convince anyone he can that they need to stock up not only for themselves but to also encourage their neighbors to stock up because ‘really good people can do bad things when theyre desperate’. I agree with a good deal of that attitude except the ‘my brothers keeper’ part. Unprepared neighbors may be dangerous neighbors when theyre hungry, I agree. And I’ll mention once or twice “You know, you may wanna think about stockpiling some [food/fuel/water/etc]..ask me if you need help doing so.” And that’s about as far as my feelings of responsibility towards my fellow man go. If I tell you the train is coming and you continue to stand on the tracks…well, I warned you.

Are hungry neighbors dangerous neighbors? Of course they are. So I generally try to keep most of our preparedness stuff secret from pretty much everyone outside our immediate circle of friends. And, heaven forefend, the day comes when those hungry masses are hammering down the door clamoring for our food, our water, our medicines, our fuel….man, I hate to think what that would be like and I hate to think of the ugly, brutal choices that would have to be made. Another reason to have a “Plan B” place to go if things get that bad.

What about family and friends? Do we have a responsibility to them? Tough question. I don’t believe in forcing responsibilities on people. I think we’re only responsible to those people whom we have willingly, consciously, and actively agreed to accept responsibility for. That is to say, I agree to accept responsibility for helping out certain friends and family because I say “Yes, I will do this for you.” Anyone else is, generally, outta luck. In my case this isn’t a terribly big deal because 95% of my friends are also interested in preparedness. Odds are quite high they’ll be just fine. The rest of my family live a thousand or more miles away. Its seems unlikely they’ll make the journey to show up on my doorstep to say “You have to take care of me! Im your cousin!”.

When this subject comes up someone will invariably ask “What if a stranger with her starving children showed up on your doorstep and needed food or else her children would die?” Tough call. I like to think I would have enough to spare a small handout here and there but if theres the slightest chance that giving away our own supplies would put us in a more dangerous position, supplywise, then there’s no contest. We take care of ourselves and our interests before putting a strangers well-being ahead of our own. If you ‘give until it hurts’ then I think you’ve given too much.

This begets the next progression of thought – shouldn’t we stock extra food and materials for helping out the unprepared? To my way of thinking, there is no such thing as ‘extra’ to the point that you can give it away. Certainly I am not squandering what little financial resources I have for the purposes of giving it away to strangers…that’s the governments act, not mine. If I have enough money for 100# of rice I see it as 100# of rice for me and the missus, not as 75# of rice for us and 25# for the unprepared masses. A 25% ‘tax’ on what I buy and store is, again, the .gov’s answer to things…not mine. If we have 12 months of food and are trying to make it through a disaster of indefinite length what could possibly compel me to shorten our potential 12-month lifeline when , for all we know, the crisis may go 14-, 16- or 18-months? Imagine being on a plane that is spiraling to the ground…maybe the pilot will regain control before it crashes..maybe not. You have a parachute for every member of your family. Do you give away a couple of your kid’s parachutes to someone else and figure ‘well, maybe we won’t crash and we wont need them’? Of course not.

To expect a person, in a time of crisis, to act in a manner that is counter to their own survival seems pretty irrational. On the other hand, history and monuments testify to untold amounts of people who acted in a manner contrary to their own survival for the sake of others. We call these people ‘heroes’. It is worth noting, however, that all these people did their heroic acts of their own volition. They willingly accepted the responsibility to act, against their own interests and in the interest of another, and the consequences.

My long-winded and evasive point is that although the world is a better place for the actions of those who do feel they have a responsibility to others, I don’t share that responsibility and I don’t think theres anything wrong with that. Im sure somone will say “You’re a sociopath” but thats not really the case. Some might say that I’m being amoral (not immoral). Again, no. I simply think that asking me to cut my own throat to save a stranger isn’t terribly reasonable.

Some might say “What if it were you who needed help? Wouldn’t you want people to help you?”. Sure. But, first of all, the reason I go through the expense and effort of being prepared is so that Im not that person. Secondly, should something take place where Im in that position of vulnerability, while I would hope someone would be charitable I wouldnt expect (or demand) that someone put their own safety in jeopardy by giving me a handout….much akin to the same way Im not adverse to giving a handout if I can safely afford it.

I’m not against charity. I think the world is a better place for the charity of other people. I simply don’t feel that being so charitable to the point that you risk your own safety is a good idea. I don’t feel that I should have a responsibility forced on me by others. And, finally, I don’t think that not feeling a personal responsibility to feed every person who asks for it is wrong.  I’ll be charitable, sure..but when I want to, as much as I want to, to whomever I want. And I really think there’s nothing wrong with that.