Harder Homes & Garden: Video- Digging a Secret Tunnel

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The British (or Commonwealth types, I suppose) take a little national pride in their ‘two guys in a shed’ stereotype of entrepreneurship. We Americans kinda started that ball with our ‘company founded in a garage’ model. Heck, I remember when NASA was just two drunk guys with a case of dynamite. Anyway, there’s a channel on YouTube of some limey who does some fairly adventurous creating. Once in a while he does something that I find rather interesting and , perhaps, useful at a later date. Such as the bunker he built under his yard. A nice project, indeed. Not content to just have a hidden bunker, he has a video about digging secret tunnels to connect the bunker to his house. Gotta say, the guy has his act together for discreetly removing spoils and, honestly, doing a pretty titanic job of digging.

I find this sort of thing highly informative and somewhat inspirational. I mean, if you’re going to have an underground bunker why wouldn’t you have a tunnel network to go with it, right? You know, pull up the rug in the kitchen and -presto- trapdoor to a tunnel network that leads to the bunker, the garage, an emergency exit hidden in some shrubs at the edge of the property line, etc.

Major kudos to the guy for building his own tools to do the job. I wish I was that handy.

Mundanes

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Like the swallows returning to Cappuccino , I saw my first helicopter-with-fire-bucket of the season yesterday. Yup, its the burning time. The air quality has gone from “ok” to “extra chunky style” and it smells like a week-old dumpster fire.

Picked up a new-to-me paperless AR the other day and took it to the range for a test firing. Shot fine. Clean it up and off it goes into storage. At this point I have something along the lines of a couple dozen AR’s so I’m not really in a hurry to get any more…but when one comes along at a decent price sans paperwork…thats hard to pass up.

About the only deliberate prepping activity I’m doing right now is financial stuff to try and get some money in the bank for the end of 2022. Its my goal to have enough by the end of next year to purchase a chunk of nowhere. Even though I’m nowhere near ready, in that regard, I still peruse the online listings to see whats available out. The short answer is that everything is available…its just wildly overpriced. (Or, at least, overpriced in my opinion.)

I don’t think we’re going to have another real estate meltdown like 2008, but I do think we’ll see this superhot market eventually flame out and start to cool down. And when it does, there are going to be a lot of people holding the bag on properties that are worth less than whats owed on them. And, I am hoping, thats the sort of timing that will coincide with my purchasing. We shall see.

I was thinking the other day, other than a nice chunk of dirt, the only other shopping list item I want is a semi-auto .50 BMG. Other than that…pretty much have everything else dialed in. (Of course, now that I say that Xenu will appear or the Yellowstone volcano will go off….)

Article – The Future Dystopic Hellscape Is Upon Us: The Rise and Fall of the Ultimate Doomsday Prepper

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You know how bridal shops and wedding related businesses make so much money? They do it by catering (so to speak) to a dream or fantasy. Brides have this notion in their head of ‘their special day’ and how they want it exactly a particular way. As a result, when there is suddenly an extra $600 charge for flowers that wasn’t there in the initial budget..well….it’s okay because everything has to be ‘perfect’.

Before any Gyno-Americans accuse me of sexism, there’s a similar costs-be-damned fantasy world that strikes Penile-Americans as well. Case in point, this fascinating article about something I’ve commented on before – the opportunists who (supposedly) build ‘retreats’ and sell ‘memberships’ to people who want to ride out Ragnarok without having to do the heavy lifting themselves:

Barrett Moore had ordered 2 million N95 masks, held enough freeze-dried food to feed families hiding from global Armageddon for decades, owned a small arsenal of guns, and fortified a pole barn in which to wait out the collapse of civilization. But he had something no one else could buy: knowledge that the end was coming and that the supply chains would snap; the best hope your family had was holing up in his northern Michigan compound while things fell apart. The price for this service would run in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, to be paid in installments.

This is a fascinating article that encapsulates everything I’ve seen in the last twenty years or so in regards to ‘membership’ survival retreats…big promises, big names, big money, big ideas, big disappointments, and big embarrassment .

Here’s something to think about – if you’re going to be a member of a ‘survival group’ or organization, membership should be based on something other than money – race, religion, political leaning, ethnicity, familial relation, shared history, etc, etc. If the only membership requirement to get in is to write a check, then in my opinion you are making a mistake.

Whether you know it or not, you’re probably already part of a very informal survival group. You, your spouse, your neighbor who you go shooting with, the guy at work you share books about prepping with, the brother in law who splits a beef with you once a year….shutdown the power grid, roll those people together, and you’ve pretty much got your own ad-hoc ‘survival group’ that would probably be a lot more cohesive than a half dozen families whose only common denominator was the ability to write a check.

Anyway… it’s an interesting read and, really, you should see the red flags a mile away. But, like the bride who justifies every ridiculous extra expense because its ‘her special day’, a lot of people bought a ticket to a ride like this because it catered to their end-of-the-world ‘fantasies’. The moral of the story here is, I think, thatif you really, genuinely believe in your particular version of the end of the world to the point you’d give a con man a million bucks, then you should have been smart enough to realize you’d have been better off spending that million on your own, personal, private version of that commercial retreat.

Video – How long could you survive in a supermarket

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If you remember the fast-zombie movie, 28 Days Later, there was a scene where the survivors find a supermarket and load up. One of the interesting things in the scene was that the irradiated produce held up much better than the non-irradiated. On a side note, irradiated produce is far more common in Europe than it is in the US because, it seems, we in the US have a knee-jerk reaction to the word ‘irradiated’. If you knew how much stuff in this country is sterilized through irradiation (esp. in the medical industry) I think you’dbe quite surprised.

Anyway, its a trope of apocalypse fiction that survivors either a) find supermarkets that are looted and beyond salvage or b) spared from looting and are treasure trove of unimaginable stores. Which raises an interesting question: if you had a supermarket all to yourself, how long would you be able to survive? Well, someone did the math:

I very much like the fact that they address the issue of food spoilage for the dairy and deli counters. But I think that if you hit the home canning aisle, and then the housewares aisle, you could at least get enough gear to water-bath can some of the produce. If they had a pressure canner on the rack in the home canning aisle you’d be freakin’ golden.

Realistically, I doubt getting locked inside a supermarket is an actual apocalypse thing. Even in post-apocalyptic fiction you’d have to do some pretty deus ex machina to contrive a logical reason for people to be locked in a supermarket (Stephen King’s “The Mist” not withstanding). More likely, you’d have survivors ‘own’ the supermarket and guard it as an extremely high-value resource…assuming they don’t start methodically taking the contents back to their stronghold.

But, if you were forced to stay in a supermarket, how long would you be able to keep from starving? TL;DR = 63 years.

I can’t think of any disaster that would preclude me from being able to otherwise source food for 63 years but…good to know that if I hit the local Safeway as the sole survivor of..whatever…I can cross ‘food’ off my list for the rest of my life.

Its quiet…too quiet

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It seems a little quiet these days. I mean, summer is always kinda quiet, right? When you think of summer you normally think of sunny skies, bees flying, grass waving in the breeze, etc, etc. A sort of quiet, bucolic calm.

And, of course, that’s exactly the calm-before-the-storm. In the summer, it can literally be the calm before the storm.

No, I mean that from a survivalist standpoint it’s been a little quiet. The Kung Flu has become ‘old news’ or ‘something we can live with’. The BLM and Antifa insurgents have dropped to below-the-fold news. The economy is still, mysteriously, not getting the kind of mainstream attention I think it deserves. And, naturally, this makes me feel like I’m waiting for a shoe to drop, y’know?

Fortunately, I’ve pretty much nailed most of the immediate needs. In fact, really, the only major prep that needs to be addressed is getting a chunk of land out in Nowhereville…and I’m working really hard at getting that lined up financially. My goal is to have enough in the bank by the end of 2022 to do some serious cash-in-hand shopping for a chunk of dirt.

In the meantime, I’m keeping an eye on what pops up on the news, what happens locally, and, interestingly, I spend a lot of time watching the financial news. But I guess that isn’t a surprise since I’ve gotten most of the materiel and material needs met all thats left is the moneystuff. Right now, I’m buying stocks and mutual funds before 12/31/21 so I can sit on them for a year and unload them at the end of 2022 without getting the short-term cap gains tax hit.

I swear, if I had come to the financial mindset I currently have ten years ago I would be in a very different place.

Price changes

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A couple months ago, just to be safe, I ordered some complete AR lowers from Palmetto. Price? $250 ea. Just ordered some factory blems, with Magpul stock/grips, for….$150 ea.

Things are changing, guys.

‘Tis Independence Day

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To me, Independence Day is mandatory go-practice-with-guns day. Also a good day to bone up on your history and political theory. I think that Independence Day is the second most political holiday after Election Day (which, I suppose, isn’t actually a holiday.)

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust; if you don’t take it out and use it, it’s going to rust.

Availability

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Much to my surprise, I’m starting to see availability of guns and ammo pick up, although the prices are still in Ludicrous Mode. Most notaly, one of my vendors had my favorite AR, the Ruger MPR, in stock. Madness!

But, it’s not all sunshine and stun grenades… most dealers shelves are devoid of any common-caliber stuff. 9mm might as well be made out of gold jackets and platinum cases.

But…it looks like either production is ramping up, demand is damping down, or (probably) both.

Which, naturally, means we are due for a ‘mass shooting’ or other catalyst event annnnnnny second now.

I never have ‘enough’ ammo, but I seem to usually have ‘enough for now’. However, if I ever come across a deal like the last one, I will literally take an entire pallet.

 

Shortages

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I was going to say that I apologize for the slow posting but then I realized, I actually don’t owe you guys anything so..why apologize?

Just had some distractions lately and then this amazingly absurd heat isn’t helping.

Anyone else notice that it seems like nowadays there’s (supposedly) a shortage of everything? I mean, it seems like overnight we went from a nation that has 98 different types of breakfast cereal on the shelves to a nation where newsmedia keeps telling us that there are shortages of…well..everything.

Global infrastructure logistics failures or some such technobabble being the words du jour. Objectively, I can see a few hiccups.. The Kung Flu reduced manpower (or person-power if you think along those lines) at ports, terminals, and other transport hubs. Ok, makes sense. Some  nations closed their borders, thereby making trade more difficult. Okay, still with ya on that. And there was, naturally, unprecedented demand as people suddenly realized that toilet paper and rice might suddenly vanish. Ok, still seems legit.

So where is all this sky-is-falling media blitz coming from and, more interestingly, why? Are we being groomed to become used to ‘getting by with less’ in some sort of sneak attack on ‘consumerism’? Is it jockeying by our larger trading ‘partners’ (cough*China*cough) to flex a little and see how much the markets cringe when they raise their hand? Or is it just the delayed effect of all the other stuff I mentioned finally catching up?

Personally, I’ve not seen shortages of anything that I use except for, of course, ammo and related materiel. My neighbor has been building a garage and has had a helluva time finding lumber, trusses, etc. But in my world? No…no shortages I’ve noticed. But then again, I tend to live a fairly simple lifestyle at the moment. I buy my groceries, I get new clothes every other year, I fill my vehicle twice a month, and thats about the extent of my shopping.

Still, I’m quite curious about these supposed shortages and if there is something more sinister going on here.

PCC Takedown Protector

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So, always having been fascinated with takedown firearms, I wound up with a Ruger PC Carbine and a PC Charger. Both guns take down into two halve, with a shank of barrel and some locking lugs that mate into a hole in the receiver. Here’s the issue – since the guns takedown and can be transported in pieces, it is entirely possible to have the exposed metal locking surfaces on both halves get dinged or damaged if rough handling occurs. And, lets face it, rough handling is pretty much gonna be they by-word of the apocalypse.

If youve ever come across an old shotgun case from the early half of the last century, you’ll see that the two halves of a shotgun were each given a separate padded compartment to keep things safe. While that is certainly an option today, I rather prefer not to be tied to a particular piece of luggage…I’d rather just drop my gun into my Bag O’ Tricks ™ and skeedaddle.

As it turns out, there’s an outfit that makes a ‘muzzle cover’-style cap that protects the mating surfaces on each gun half. Lets take a look:

One cap gets put over the lugged section of barrel, protecting it’s surfaces. The other cap is inserted into the corresponding locking recess, thereby protect it from dirt and debris. The two parts are simple plastic extrusions that, really, anyone with a 3d printer could probably fab up in ten minutes.

Do they work? Seem to. I haven’t bounced my guns around in my bag lately, but I see no reason it wouldnt work. Is it necessary? Beats me. For $17, I feel its a reasonable precaution. I mean, I could just wrap things up in an extra pair of socks or something and tuck them into my bag, but this is a more elegant and purposeful product. While I can see the potential for damaging occurring if those parts were unprotected, I can’t really say I’m all that worried about it. But, I’ve been wrong before…and I’d rather not find out the hard way when the Antifa torchbearers are running up the stairwell to my office and I’m wondering why the two halves of my carbine won’t click together.

As an aside, I’ve been pretty pleased with the Ruger 9mm carbine/pistol setup. I wish it were a locked breech mechanism in order to reduce weight, but then the price would be even higher. Still, been a good shooter for me thus far and I really like he takedown features.