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

Here’s an article that covers so many bases I dont know where to start. Essentially, it downplays the ’suitcase nuke’ scenario. In fact, it sort of gives the impression that such a small sized weapon is highly impractical and unlikely to be an issue. Of course, if you keep reading, you see that the US had something similar..a ‘backpack nuke’. My favorite part though is about Stanislav Lunev and his assertions that there were caches of Soviet gear and weapons in the US for a fifth column-type scenario of invasion. Interestingly, one of those caches was claimed to be here in Montana. More reasons to go geocaching.

Don’t think this sort of thing is limited to the Soviets though. Every time they put in a new tunnel on the Berlin subway they uncover a bunker full of Mausers and stick grenades. Theres always a bunker or cave somewhere with the leftovers from a major conflict. Theres stories of Japanese gold caches, Nazi ‘Werwolf’ operation caches, etc, etc. still out there waiting to be uncovered. On the more mundane side, theres no shortage of semi-modern missing nukes out there to be discovered and rehabbed into service by a dedicated and determined organization.

Anyway, while the prospect of a citybusting device that can fit in a suitcase may be unrealistic (or, at least, they tell us its unrealistic) theres no shortage of larger size devices that while not exactly ‘man-portable’ would probably fit quite nicely in the average cargo container. Keep in mind the US produced small nukes that fit on the end of what was basically a recoilless rifle. Not citybusters but a genuine nuclear bomb nonetheless. And the bombs that nuked the Japs were pretty small, all things considered, and made with technology that nowadys pretty much anyone could acquire. I could be wrong, but my personal belief is that the era of ICBM nuclear strikes is, for now, behind us.

The more likely, in my opinion, nuclear scenario is the ‘dirty bomb’ scenario (which is getting some flak over its actual effectiveness) or the stolen warhead scenario (much like what you see in ‘True Lies’). I suppose that in the strictest sense, ’suitcase nukes’ do not exist, however I all but guarantee that nuclear devices only slightly do exist. Who currently has them, of course, is the itneresting part.

Every year the goons at DHS and various federal agencies trot out the “As the holiday shopping season approacehes, concersn of terror attacks at shopping malls….” warnings. Here’s the first i’ve seen this year:

Exclusive: FBI: Al Qaeda May Strike U.S. Shopping Malls in LA, Chicago

Here’s the actual alert:

The unclassified shopping mall threat information was circulated by the FBI on November 7th, based on intelligence received by the FBI in late September. The full text of one version of that report is as follows:
December 2007 Al-Qa’ida Plan to Target US Shopping Malls in Chicago, Illinois and Los Angeles, California.
As of August 2007, al-Qa’ida planned to strike US shopping malls in Chicago, Illinois and Los Angeles, California during the 2007 Christmas season. Al-Qa’ida hoped to disrupt the US economy and had been planning the attack for the past two years.
FBI Comment: This information was obtained through a lengthy chain of acquisition, and was provided to the source by a sub-source who spoke in confidence. The veracity of the information is uncertain but the threat is being reported due to the nature of the information.

That’s it. The whole thing. Or, to shorten it for clarity: We heard from a friend of a friend of a friend that AQ was gonna try something. ‘Course, that was two months ago, and we can’t say if its true but….

This is like a weather report that says “Might rain tomorrow. Might Not. Back to you, Ted!”

Anyone with even the vaguest sense of self-preservation could figure that, gosh, a mall full of folks shopping for a traditionally religious holiday might make a tempting target. And leaking the possibility of attack might cause buyers to stay home and thus give the ol’ US economy a shot in the chops. Thats the beauty of this kind if terrorism…you dont need to fire a shot – just threaten and get the result you want.

I don’t spend alot of time in malls, when I do spend time in malls I usually have a pistol, and any gift giving I do usually comes from gun shops where the staff and most of the customers would be thrilled if someone walked in, shouted some Islamic slogan and pulled a gun out from under their coat.

But…you never know. Even broken clocks are right twice a day.

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

I’ve been waiting for one of my vendors to come up with a good deal on the happy little Glock 18 mags. These are the 33-rd round mags for the G18 machinepistol, however they will work just fine in any Glock 9mm…such as your Glock 17, Glock, 19, Glock 26, etc, etc. Also, if you have a gun that takes 9mm Glock mags such as the Kel-Tec carbine, Olympic 9mm AR, etc, etc, they’ll fit them too. These mags will fit in most MP5 mag pouches. They are factory Glock mags, not the crappy Scherer brand mags that you see floating around. No minimum but I have a limited amount of these things. In fact, I’ll be right up front and tell you I have exactly 30 of them. When theyre gone, theyre gone and I can promise you that in addition to death and taxes being lifes certainties (althoguh death doesnt get worse like taxes do) another certainty is that as the election approaches prices are going to go up and availability is gonna go down. If you can see the writing on the wall then you can see these are gonna be great investments as well as being handy for situations where you need alot of firepower or dont have a free hand to reload.
Flat rate of $9 to ship anywhere in the US. Details on the website.

Man, the things I find….remember the .223 bullets and powder? Well, I’ve got about 1200 .30 caliber AP bullets. These are not pulls. These are the M2 bullet for the .30M1. Steel (I think, naybe carbide, but I think steel) penetrator. Sure you can load them in your .30-06 or .308 but if youre a real hardcase you’ll drop them into your .300 Win Mag or similar cartridge. I loaded some of these into a .300 H&H and they handily penetrated one of those steel sheets they lay down at construction sites for cars to drive over. Price? Best part: Fourteen cents each. ($14/100, $140/1000). Shipping is a flat $9 regardless of quantity. For comparison, a regular .30 caliber softpoint bullet is about fourteen cents these days…at least.

Interesting piece in the Wall Street Journal the other day about ‘diet squads’. Apparently, the diet squads were “A publicity stunt by Chicago’s health department to prove that nutritious and satisfying meals could also be cheap. Since the beginning of World War I, food prices had shot up; between 1914 and 1920, the cost of food for an average American family more than doubled. Malnourishment was becoming a public health problem, especially in cities. And people were starting to complain about the ‘food pirates who had America by the throat’…”

The article goes on to say how squads of volunteers would submit to a diet that was not to exceed a particular budget. Each group tried to outdo the other by thriving on a smaller budget than the other squads. A group of NYPD rookies subsisted on 25 cents per day (adjusted, that would be $3.93 per day in todays currency.) Eleven of the 12 NYPD rookies, by the way, put on weight in this experiment. Go figure.

The article continues that at the time it was believed the average family of two adults and three kids could be fed for $7.31 a week ( $138.51 in todays world.)

I have a sort of odd curiousity about how little money it can take to contentedly feed someone. Note Im saying how little money it takes, not how little food. Big difference.

When I was in college I recall that during summer session, when students had to fend for themselves without food service, I fed myself on less than five dollars a day. Didn’t get hungry either. The notion that you cannot feed yourself on X dollars is absurd. Minimum wage, at this moment, is a bit above $6 an hour. Anyone who says they cannot feed themselves for one day on $6 is either completely incapable of working a calculator, a stove, a cookbook or all three.

The trick is, of course, shopping wisely. While a dozen eggs may cost $1.50, or 25% of a daily $6 budget, those eggs last six days at two-per-day. Same thing with rice…at twentyfive cents per pound you can spend two days worth of your six dollar budget but wind up with months worth of rice.

What did I make for five bucks a day? I bought ground beef ($1.50 worth as I recall), rice, onion, peppers, tomato sauce, spices and that sort of thing and made a huge bowl of rice and beef. Some for lunch, the rest for dinner and a pair of Cokes from a vending machine. (I had no refrigerator so to get cold pop with dinner I had to go to the more expensive vending machine).

My point is that when a person doesn’t have a lot of money you can still, without much difficulty, manage to feed yourself if you can find one hour of employment per day at the lowest legal wage possible. No one wants to live like a Third World-er but despite their staggering amount of poverty they manage to swell humanities ranks with more warm bodies every year. A tough feat when you’re starving to death. But they’re proof that you can subsist on ‘pennies a day’ (if Sally Struthers is to be believed.)

Wanna eat cheap?
Buy in bulk. Know how to cook and prepare food. Be willing to do some math.

You’re poor and live in a ‘food desert’? Grab a back pack, get on the bus and go where the food is. Too poor for the bus? Walk or ride a bicycle. I can and do regularly stuff several days worth of groceries into a backpack and bring them home on my bicycle. ‘Food desert’ is a convenient way of saying ‘I don’t want to have to walk further than my neighborhood corner store for groceries’.

Food is powerful stuff. Like oxygen, you don’t really think about it until its gone. Hunger makes people do amazing things. Chilean soccer teams in the Andes eat their dead, tribes kill other tribes for cattle, people attack each other in food lines after disasters….when people are truly, genuinely hungry the gloves come off and they revert to the very dangerous primitive human stage. And while on hungry, desperate person is pretty damn dangerous imagine the danger of them in groups.

Moral of the story: it is proven that you don’t need to spend a lot of money to feed yourself. So, take the twenty bucks you were going to spend on porn, beer or Blockbuster this evening and buy some food so that when you do lose your job, or you do lose your house, or your local government collapses you have something to eat.

Seriously dude, if you cant live off whats in your cupboards for at least one solid week you’re doing something wrong.

New “I Am Legend” trailer up…and…its a good one.

(Choose the longer trailer)

Happy Halloween. In that spirit and keeping in line with preparedness, I give you the emergency zombie kit.

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And this isnt a Halloween theme..at least, not on purpose…but its LOLtacular if you ask me.
The gun case that ‘transforms’ into a lvlIIIA tactical vest. (Im actually laughing as I try to find a .jpg of this..)

Here we go!
LEObots…transform!

He looks like the Leroy, the unknown Autobot.

Heres the link. Its absurd, and yet…hmmmm.
And, seriously, I can’t stop laughing.
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I’ve 2k of the 55 gr. left if anyone is interested.

Ok, theyre here. I have limited quantities of each so its first come, first served. I’m filling these in the order they are received. Once theyre gone, I’ll take down the links. Everything is shipped Prioority Mail so these prices are good for AK and HI. No non-US orders guys, sorry.

I have 2500 of each:
2000 1000 of the 62 gr.
3000 2000 of the 55 gr.

Unknown, probably Win. or Horn.55 gr. FMJ, 500 pc. – $40/500

All bullets sold, thanks for playing!

On a completely sparate note, I also have nine kegs of DP220, a fast-burning Accurate Arms bulk powder meant for the 7.62×39 but can be used in several other cartridges including the .223. Find data on AA’s website. Thats gonna be $96 per keg but you’ll need to coordinate with me on the very affordable shipping in email.

Winter is on the way. Although the afternoons can get warm enough here to require air conditioning the mornings are bitterly cold. Remember all that advice you get on the Discovery channel about dressing in layers? A lot of truth in that. Standard uniform around here is usually a t-shirt, then a heavy shirt and then a vest. That pretty much keeps you covered as the temperature does its usual daily rollercoaster ride.
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Bird flu has sort of fallen off the radar as of late but with winter coming and the seasonal crowding as people stay indoors more I expect it to get back on the medias radar again. Admittedly, all of last years hype about it certainly seemed a little anticlimactic but that’s the thing about disasters – by and large, you cant really predict the majority of them. Oh, you can predict them broadly as in “California is going to get hit by The Big One” but nailing it down to a specific day, week, month, or even year is usually not in the cards.

So, any day now I expect the news to suddenly start with its reports of the CDC quietly stockpiling vaccines, Chinese authorities hushing up deaths, migratory waterfowl corpses found to be infected, etc, etc, etc.

Am I worried about it? Nope. It just seems so unlikely to me. If it did happen my interest is on how it would affect infrastructure and the resultant problems. Isolation is easy..I can close the doors, pull the blinds and as long as the water holds out not have to leave the house for almost a year. Nah, my interest is in how travel, commerce and the like will be affected and what the results will be.

The flu of 1918 is the benchmark that other pandemics are compared to but the differences in society then versus now would make huge differences. With air travel and the majority of Americans being quite mobile you would have disease spread much faster but on the other hand with the advent of modern communications and medicine the effects could be mitigated. Still be a mess though but I don’t think you’d get the body count like in 1918.
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I was puttering around the kitchen the other day and someone pointed out that they thought the screw-on lid on my 5-gallon bucket of rice was pretty cool. I’ve mentioned it before but I’ll touch on it again for the new people… If your going to store anything in five-gallon buckets (or any bucket that has a mouth of approximately the same size) you may want to investigate Gamma Seal products. These are screw-on lids for buckets. Normally buckets have lids that ‘snap’ on and are a major pain in the ass to remove. The Gamma Seals are a collar that snaps on to the bucket and then a gasketed screwtop lid that screws into the collar. The result is that your bucket is now easily accessed but keeps out all the nasties. Its excellent for storing bulk dry goods like rice, pet food, grains, etc. Its also extremely handy if you want to put together a 72-hour kit or a kit for your vehicle and want it protected from dirt, wet, dings, dents and the like. The Gamma Seals are normally around $8-10 a throw and come in several colors so you can color code your gear. Hmmm…I may have to investigate a group buy on those.
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Speaking of group buy, if theres enough interest I may try seeing what sort of deal can be swung on the Glock 18 mags…you know, the 9mm mags that hold about 30 rounds. They work great, can be used in some 9mm carbines, and are handy for those situations where you’ve got only one hand free and cant spare another hand to reload (like when your driving or dragging something). I was toying with ordering a dozen or so for myself but if theres enough interest I’d see if maybe a better deal can be had on, say, fifty or so. And before you ask: yes, they’ll fit all 9mm variants of Glock and no they are not available in any caliber other than 9mm. (Although aftermarket ones exist in .40 and .45 but Ive had bad luck with them.) Even if you don’t have a Glock in 9mm, enough people do that they would be worth a nice chunk of change if another mag ban passes.

Theyve been a little hard to find lately, but if anyone is interested I have several thousand IMI 62 gr. FMJ bullets in lots of 500 for sale. These will attract a magnet. Hmmm. Wonder what *that* means…. eight cents each. New bullets, not pulls. Shipping is a flat $9 regartdless of quantity. Will happily ship to CA, NJ, NY, or any other place in the US.