Tag Archives: logistics

Must. Not. Buy.

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Ok, Crom as my witness I am done buying Ruger P95DC’s. I unexpectedly won not one but two auctions last week. That’s a pretty hard punch to the wallet to roll with. So….no more. Done. Finito. Inventory says I’ve got.. well…a bunch. Since my policy is usually to never sell a gun except to purchase another one, I suppose I should remove some of the P89 and P95 non-decocker variants to make room for the two on the way.

In my defense, though, the last one I purchased for $200 plus shipping was virtually untouched, with box and docs:

For a pistol platform that is a tertiary level of backup, I really might have gone overboard. But…a quality, reliable, inexpensive, and somewhat semi-disposable handgun is really not a bad thing to have squirreled away for that Rainy Decade. And, quite honestly, for $200 I cannot fathom a better handgun choice….certainly it is leaps and bounds a better choice than any -arov handgun, and it certainly beats, IMHO, a HiPoint. Remember, guys – after the end of the world there will be no award handed out for the person who managed to make it through the apocalypse with the cheapest gear. Yeah, you could go through Katrina with a Mosin-Nagant and a Makarov…. but why would you? Anyone whose aspirations exceed working as a WalMart greeter can come up with better materiels than that.

If someone I cared about showed up on my doorstep with not much more than the clothes on their back, I like to think I’d be able to gear them up in a manner that would not embarrass or shame me.Guns such as this one allow me to do just that. On the other hand, I have, literally, no people I  am close to who do not already have enough guns in their own stashes to do this sort of thing. But Fate is a fickle and unpredictable thing…so you never know.

Is this a likelihood? Probably not. But I feel better when I have extra guns in the safe, and (normally) I can afford to pick them up every once in a while. And, like the stash of freeze drieds, a couple of these will get packaged for the Deep Sleep and wind up at the Beta Site. Since these stupid things are, relatively, so cheap it isn’t like there’s a tremendous opportunity cost.

Overkill? Meh…maybe. But I think differently about these sorts of things than most humans. I tend to overthink things. For example, if I have a friend or relative that I visit out of state, I can afford to stash one of these there for my use while I’m there and not have to deal with the hassle of flying with a pistol.

My reckoning says I’ve about 25 years left on my meter, and if I were unable to buy any more guns after tomorrow I think I’d be pretty okay…not happy…but okay.

The good news for you? You guys will no longer be bidding against me on GunBroker for these things.

Magazines

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There’s a ratio of magazine:gun that makes me feel comfortable. For a pistol that I plan on shooting and having as an integral part of my long-term plans, I like to have a ratio of at least 20:1. For rifles, thats more like 40:1. That’s not an unattainable goal and, in my opinion, it’s a realistic quantity of magazines if you operate under the guide of “will what I have right now last me the rest of my life if I can’t get any more?”

Having acquired recently two Ruger PC9 carbines that take P-series magazines, my ratio of mags:guns took a bit of a hit. So…off to GunBroker……

Once in a blue moon I can find someone selling a bunch of Ruger mags as a single lot. (Which is how this absurd collection of P-series pistols got started.) I just happen to stumble across someone selling a fistful of law-enforcement restricted P-series mags and, since the guns aren’t exactly terribly popular, managed to nail them down for $100 for the lot…or $12.50@. Good deal for gen-u-ine Ruger mags.

Although it’s not something we usually think about, mags are a consumable. They are disposable. They have a limited usage life compared to the pistol. The person who says “Oh, I’ve got five mags for Beretta 92…I’m all set!” is a short-sighted, ignorant, and unimaginative fool. I’ve covered this elsewhere so I won’t rehash it here, but it’s really hard to have too many spare mags.

Anyway, these will get distributed amongs the pistols, and a couple pistol mag pouches will be set aside for the carbines. And, unless a smoking deal comes along, I think I’ll be pretty much done on this particular front.

 

Housecleaning

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Ugh…Im immersing myself in a bit of reorganization of the long-term food. The positive aspect is that it gives me a chance to inspect, update , and repackage things. The negative side is that it’s a buncha work. After the last big Mountain House buy I wound up with a dozen cases of leftovers to add to my own stockpile. But…where to put it? Its an eye-opening experience. I’ve come across quite a bit of older stuff that may need to be excised from the current stash…most notably some MRE’s that are, no lie, 20 years old. Gotta figure out what to do with those.

It’s very odd to come across all these different things that have been in storage so long I’ve forgotten about them.

Anyway, when you have spent as many years as I have doing this sort of lifestyle you wind up having these sorts of to-do lists. I’m hoping that once Im done I’ll have freed up a bunch more space for better organization. And, really, I need to split the whole thing into an even distribution of three or four stockpiles to be relocated elsewhere…Ive got way too many eggs in too few baskets.

But…there’s a certain fun and bittersweet nostalgia to going through stuff from so many years ago. I’m curous to see what turns up and what winds up not being worth keeping. (For example..the cheap sleeping bags will probably be eliminated since I have so many of the military sleep systems these days.)

Its only overkill if you don’t need it

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So after the last large purchase of freeze-drieds, it was time to put the leftovers away. The freeze-drieds (FD) are packaged with an advertised shelf life of a minimum of around 30 years, and the experience of some folks seems to suggest that rating is pretty spot-on.

Thirty years…. I’ll expire before the food does.

But, the food only lasts as long as the container it’s packaged in. Now, I have had some MH sitting on the shelf for almost 20 years and it appears to be just fine. BUT….I have also had some #10 cans from the LDS cannery that eventually started to rust and look like they may be a bit sketchy. (One can had almost turned black with freckling, but when I cut it open everything was flawless inside…but there is no room for ‘probably ok’ when it comes to food storage.) Honestly, I do virtually nothing special to my #10 cans…I stick ’em in a cardboard box that holds six cans, tape it shut, and stick it on a wire shelf in my basement. Here in my part of Montana, the basement stays cool with virtually no humidity…optimal conditions. But, when a can of FD beef or chicken sets you back fifty bucks a can, it’s probably a good idea to maybe add an extra layer of protection. And some folks live in areas where the humidity can get downright troublesome…like, oh, the southeast US for example.

I’ve read a lot of stuff on how to store food long-term. Other than the ubiquitous statement about ‘a cool, dry place’, there are a few other suggestions on how to make sure your canned stuff doesn’t have it’s structural integrity compromised. The most detailed that I’ve read involves removing the labels from each can and ‘painting’ the can with (or dipping it in) melted paraffin. This seems like a pretty solid way to do things except that it also sounds like a tremendous pain in the butt. As I pointed out, there is an alternative. The folks at repackbox.com were kind enough to send me one of their kits that are designed to maximize the lifespan of the #10 can that’s housing the stuff that’s preventing you from having to eat your dog. I am always up for examining new gear..

So, starting at the top:

UPS dropped off a box and I was delighted at how much detail went into things. I mean, the storage boxes are marked with places to write down he contents of the box and then they provide a new black Sharpie for you to do the writing with. And a roll of tape to tape up the boxes. Literally, everything you need to pack your #10 cans for long-term storage is included…except for the shelves. Note to the guys at repackbox.com: find a bulk deal on surplus P38 can openers and include a couple with each overbox.

  • 24 boxes for individual cans
  • 6 overboxes that hold 4 individual boxes
  • 24 polybags
  • 24 dessicant packets
  • 24 zip ties
  • Sharpie
  • Roll of tape

So the idea is that you take your expensive can of yuppie chow, put it in the polybag, add a packet of desicant, ziptie the bag shut, seal it up in the small box, and then load four of them into the overbox. At that point you’re good to go for what will probably be the next hundred years.

Lather, rinse, repeat until all boxes filled. The boxes, by the by, are some heavy duty cardboard. Is it waterproof? Of course not, but thats why the cans are sealed in a polybag. Is this the sort of packaging that you could put together on your own? Maybe. I ship stuff for a living so I know all the sources for this kinds stuff. But…here it is, in one place, ready to go, and just a couple mouse clicks away.

For my current needs, this is overkill. But, overkill isn’t a bad thing. What I mean by overkill is that, for me and my current circumstance, this is more protection than seems necessary (although erring on the side of caution isn’t a vice in the world of preparedness). But…let’s say I was going to store a bunch of this stuff offsite at the Beta Site, or the family hunting cabin, or in the attic at my uncles warehouse, or under the floorboards of a family members kitchen…..well, then there’s really no such thing as overkill. Come the day when you’re fleeing the [zombies/hurricane/troops/tornado/alien overlords] and arrive at your hideout, tip over the fake woodpile, and untarp your cache, it’ll be hard to think “Man, I really didn’t need to pack that stuff as well as I did”.

The biggest issue I would think anyone would have with this sort of lily gilding is the expense. But, four cans of FD meat is $200. And then there’s the whole what-if-my-life-depends-on-it angle. Breaking the cost down, it’s about $2.91 per can to exponentially increase the level of  protection of your food supply.

Honestly, my own policy is probably that the stuff I store in my basement will probably not be packed like this. I mean, its in my basement…I can go downstairs and check on it every week if Im so inclined and stay on top of any issues. BUT…the stuff thats going to be tucked away Elsewhere…where I may not see it for a year (or years) at a time…well, that stuff is going to definitely get packed up like this.

So there you have it. There’s the old saying about how if your pants absolutely Must Not Fall Down that you go with suspenders and a belt…and then you sew your shirt to your waistband. This kit from repackbox.com is definitely the sew-your-shirt-to-your-waistband step of extra certainty. Go check ’em out.

 

Go deep

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One is none, forty thousand is one.

It occurs to me that one of the better reasons for having a ‘group’, rather than being solo, is to have some folks to help you carry the damn ammo up and down the stairs. Whew.

This will be Deep Sleep ammo. For target and plinking I’ll use whatever is available at WalMart or wherever, but this stuff goes right in there with the Mountain House stuff. The only time I expect to see it again is during some enormous crisis or when I transport it to the Beta Site. And, for the record, each 40mm ammo can holds 8,250 rounds…or 165 boxes of 50. And they’re heavy….right at the limit of man-portability.

New stuff from Repackbox.com

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I got a postcard in the mail the other day (who sends real mail these days??) from repackbox.com telling me that they’ve expanded their product line to include boxes for more calibers of ammo.

What is repackbox.com? Well, they sell a few useful cardboard products that have appeal to those of us who keep ammo onhand. What I’ve been getting from them are cardboard boxes to store ammo in.

Every so often I find deals on ‘bulk’ ammo. Bulk ammo is just that – bulk. You buy a thousand rounds of ammo you dont get a nice cardboard box with fifty little boxes of 20 rounds each. Nope, you get a big ol’ polybag or box filled with loose cartridges. 8290915400329fc2a66d65b6f89dfeaf (1aa)Great savings, but not exactly easy to store. When the zombies are massing at the barricades the last thing you want to be doing is counting ammo into little ziploc baggies and handing them to your buddies. Repackbox gives you small cardboard boxes, appropriately sized to a particular cartridge, so you can have your ammo organized, neat, and ready for the apocalypse. Case in point: a guy came into the shop and sold me a .50 can full of loose 7.62×39 ammo. I’m not just sticking a can of a thousand loose rounds on the shelf…grabbed a stack of 7.62×39 boxes and a little while later everything was neat, organized, and ready for the apocalypse.

The advantage? Plastic ammo boxes are great, but they aren’t cheap. The cardboard boxes are cheap enough that you can hand out ammo to your buddies at the range or at the rally point and not feel like you’re throwing away money. Also, inexpensive storage boxes are hard to find for some calibers. Repackbox just came out with boxes in a buncha new calibers inc. .30-06, .303 brit., 7.62x54R (better than those string-n-paper bundles you get outta the spam can), and, of interest to me, .30-30.

Although I don’t talk about it much, I like the .30-30. My like for it stems from the fact that after the ubiquitous .22 rifle, the .30-30 carbine is probably the most common rifle in many parts of the country (although the SKS may have supplanted that for a while…but since the days of the cheap Chinese SKS are long behind us….) I rather like the .30-30 in an unltralight single shot Contender carbine, but there are still several million Winchester and Marlin rifles out there. (And Savages and other brands as well.) So…I stock a decent amount of .30-30 and now have a convenient way to package it for distribution and storage.

I’m also a huge fan of he old ‘military style; 50-round ammo boxes. Repackbox makes these for .45 ACP as well as other calibers. Extremely handy.

Since I have a Dillon 1050RL sitting on the bench, I can whip out a lot of ammo in a couple hours. There is very little more satisfying than watching the boxes of ammo stack up like bricks as I package the ammo for storage.

Check ’em out.

 

Organization

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Wrapping it up. Four sets of mags left.
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You know, a big part of being a survivalist is simply being he manager of your own personal warehouse. Sure we have to learn skills, read a lot of books, practice various tasks, etc., but we also have to be curator to a stockpile of gear. Think about it, you keep gear in your vehicle, in your home, at work, at a friends house, buried at some middle-of-nowhere cache, etc, etc. And all that gear has information about it that needs to be kept – where is it, what is it, how much of it is there, when does it expire, etc, etc. It can be a major pain in the ass.

Someone I used to know turned me on to a program called Evernote. It runs on your desktop machine as well as on your phone/pad. I’ve found it to be exceptionally useful..more so than a simple spreasheet (although the data can be imported/exported through spreadsheets). Right about now there’s a contingent of people mentally screaming “No! Government sees everything on the interweb! They’ll know to come to your house for your guns and food!”.

Not worried. If you’re really worried about it, do your inventory management on your mobile device while youre snagging McDonalds free wifi. Or just don’t put your name and address in any of the files.

I find evernote most useful for tracking inventory of Deep Sleep stuff. For example, if a vendor emails me a deal on magazines I can pop into Evernote, bring up my ‘Mag’ notebook (or just search for ‘magazines’) and view my list of what I have on hand. Then I can make an informed decision about whether I need to sell the other kidney and buy more mags.

Another useful thing about Evernote is the ability to selectively share some of the data. For example, lets say you and your brother are planning on riding out the apocalypse together. You can have one notebook that is shared between the two of you. Say the two of you want to stock up on radio equipment. You might have a notebook named ‘Radio Gear’. You give him access to it. Now when he’s at some hamfest in Iowa he can check and see a live version of the list of gear and know what does or does not need to be purchased. Handy. Excellent for avoiding those awkward moments of “I didn’t know if we had [name of item] so I picked up three cases of it. I wish I’d know we already had plenty.”

Having said that, spreadsheets are still amazingly useful…especially if your Excel skills are good enough to take advantage of tables and conditional formatting. Again, it’s going to knock some people’s tinfoil hats off, but Excel is great for keeping track of guns. I also use it to keep track of the long term food storage… having those spreadsheets accessible to me was quite handy when I was up at the Mormon cannery a few weeks back. I immediately knoew what I did and did not need, which means whatever money I spent was spent wisely.

There’s that old saying that the first step to wisdom is knowing what you do not know. If you don’t know what you have vs. what you need to get then you’re not using your resources wisely. You’ll wind up with a hundred AA-batteries and five MagLites that take D-batteries. You can’t be your own quartermaster without knowing what the heck you do and do not have.

Between Evernote and Excel, the savvy survivalist can manage his resources wisely and make the most of their purchasing power. If you’re just going along with a clipboard and legal pad you are definitely doing yourself a disservice.

 

Cannery trip

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So I stopped in at the Mormon cannery the other day. Actually, if you want to be technical, its the Bishop’s Storehouse or Missoula Home Storage Center. What it actually is is a solid example of a group of Like Minded Individuals working together for a common benefit. Say what you will about the Mormons, they take care of their own and are not screwing around about it. Their logistics are amazing.

I hadn’t been up there in several years since they stopped the DIY dry-canning opportunities. Nowadays you can go up there, but instead of canning the stuff on your own you buy it already canned. It’s certainly more convenient, but I really liked the hanging out and interacting with other (somewhat) like-minded folks.

Anyway, I went up there not because I needed anything but because a friend of mine wanted to go and he’d never been there before. He wound up with a few hundred dollars of assorted goodies and all parties concerned were glad to help. The official line, as I understand it, is that the church offers the services and products of their food storage facility because they want to help their fellow man. Good on them. I’ve been told by people with a more pragmatic bent that the more accurate reason is because if they make the food storage available to their neighbors it lowers the odds of the neighbors forming an angry mob and coming to take their food storage.. I suspect there is an equal element of truth to both statements.

If you’ve never been to one of these places, it is an outstanding source to get some staple goods at unbeatable prices to round out your home storage. The place is almost exactly like Costco but smaller and with about 200% more Jesus. In all my trips there I never once had anyone put a religious spin into things except for starting the visit off with a quick prayer. No one tries to convert you, engage you in religious conversation, or anything like that. We all know why we’re there and we get it done.

20170225_090700 20170225_091102What they offer are very basic foodstuffs. Wheat, onions, carrots, sugar, pasta, dried apples, oats, etc. These are things that you could survive on by themselves if you absolutely had no choice, but they’re much better used in conjunction with other storage foodstuffs.

Anyway, it was a nice visit. I always feel a sense of belonging around the poeple there when I go…not because of some religious compatriotism but rather because I’m around other people who don’t think stuffing your basement full of food, ammo, and toiilet paper is a weird idea.

The Deep Sleepers

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Being a survivalist, you tend to ‘go long’ on stuff…a hundred rolls of TP at a time, canned goods by the case, socks by the dozen, etc. On a long enough timeline, all this stuff will get used. Some sooner than others. For example, the canned goods will probably get used up within a year or two, but some things, like the #10 cans of freezedrieds, are meant to never be used. They are a ‘only in case of apocalypse’ sort of thing. Some other items, like the bulk AR mags I bought a few weeks ago, aren’t meant to be used but rather tucked away safely for, probably, at least a decade or two.

Items that are meant to be put into long, long, long-term storage are referred to around these parts as ‘Deep Sleepers’. They are items that are not intended to be used anytime within the foreseeable future. And, honestly, probably not even after that.

Case in point, the recent stash of Magpul AR mags. I have no intention of using them. I have enough mags on hand to handle my needs for quite some time. So, this recent batch of Magpuls are Deep Sleepers. They are there as a ward against a new ban, in case the next civil war breaks out, or some other Very Bad Thing happens.

First thing we do is stuff them away into a clean, solid, ammo can with good seals. They’re arranged carefully and sealed up in the ammo can. Once the can is closed up, I put a couple loops of poly strapping around it. This serves two purposes – first, it makes sure the lid stays closed. Second, it keeps me from sneaking a mag or two out of there when I think “Ah, I’ll just take a couple from the stash and put them back later.” (Trust me…you are your own worst looter.) Once that can is sealed up it gets marked up with the contents and quantity on it..preferably on each side and top so I can see at a glance whats in it. After that, I write the contents on a ‘key tag’ and wire it to the bail on the ammo can. After that, the can gets tucked way back in storage and…byebye, baby…see you in twenty years. Once that’s done, the records (I use Evernote and Excel) are updated. In Evernote, this is tagged as “magazines”,”Deep Sleeper”, “Storage”, “AR”, and “MagPul”. I also make a note that this is an item that does not need to be periodically inspected.

20161120_110025That’s it. Right now, as I think about it, Deep Sleepers include stashes of magazines, clothes, freezedrieds, and a few other things. But, most importantly, I know what I have, how much of it I have, where I have it, and how well it is stored. Peace of mind.

Methods to the madness

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Is Preparedness Category based, Linear or All Over The Place?
Such is the question asked by Ryan over at his blog. Succinctly, it is this:

Of the three approaches to establishing a level of preparedness – category based, linear based, or scattershot – which seems to be the way to go?

For me, it’s a balanced approach. My thinking has always been to imagine that I’m dropped naked, in the middle of a winter night, into an empty field. What do I need? And then I work it out from there. I’d want, immediately, a small amount of everything….rather than a huge amount of one thing and no supply of anything else.

Lots of people ‘go long’ in some way…they drop a couple grand on guns and get the sexy part of survivalism out of the way and then go to the mundane things like toilet paper and socks. There is some merit to that, but you leave yourself open to being caught short if you’re still working on that gun/ammo thing when some big event happens and you still haven’t gotten around to buying that water purifier.

Some folks go with a more ‘balanced’ approach and buy everything they need for, say, three days. Then they simply repeat this process over and over until they have their year (or whatever timeframe) supply. I rather like this approach.

And some just keep their eyes open an when they come across something that could be useful, they snag it. In the long run that might work, but it’s a great way to wind up sitting on a pallet of 500 MagLites and absolutely no batteries.

I’ve been doing some form of preparedness (or survivalism) for over 25 years. My experience has been that the most sensible way to do things is to get everything you need for ‘x’ amount of time, and then when you have that do it again…and again…and again. Once you’ve put your ‘weeks supply’ together, do it three more times…and now its a months supply. Do that twelve more times and it’s a years supply. That sort of thing. The alternative is that you shoot your wad and buy a years supply of food up front and get caught with only two weeks worth of toilet paper or gasoline.

The one argument I’ve come across for going ‘all in’ and buying as much of one thing as possible to the exclusion of other things you need (other than a spectacular sale) is when the thing you want may not be available in normal channels later. No one is trying to ban Ivory soap….but it’s entirely possible that in three weeks we’ll never have another ‘high capacity’ magazine available to us. And while gun stuff is the easy answer to ‘what might those soon-to-be-unavailable items be’, there’s other things too. Burner phones, cryptography software, electronic devices without ‘for your safety’ GPS tracking, etc, etc….all things you can have now but very possibly might be on the verboten list next year. If something you feel you need is possibly going to be unavailable later, then it makes sense to get it, in the quantity you want, while you can.

If you haven’t already got your supplies and gear socked away, and are still in the stages of acquisition, the best method…in my humble opinion….is the balanced approach. An increase across the board, on a regular basis, with occasional ‘spurts’ of increase in some categories as finances allow. I’d rather have six months of  food, fuel, power, clothes, medicines, and the like, rather than three years of food and one month of everything else. .

What you do, is of course, is your prerogative. For me, I try to raise the level of preparedness evenly across all categories if I can.