Tag Archives: links to other bloggers

Blogs from the wet country

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Learning from other people’s experiences is the cheat code to being squared away. There is no reason to reinvent the wheel when Grogg and Thol did it for you a few thousand years ago. As a result, any time there is a disaster or other time-to-use-your-preps event, I always read the blogs of people who were there and ‘saw the elephant’, as it were. Why should I learn stuff the hard way when someone else already paid for the course?

Was flipping around the internet and found this worthy read – Big Country Expat

These After Action Reports (AAR) are almost always worth reading. Did they do things right? Learn from it. Did they completely drop the ball? Learn from it. You learn from other peoples failures just as much as you learn from their successes.

Another AAR: https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2024/10/detailed-after-action-report-from-north.html

One of the common threads in these and other blog posts I’ve seen lately has been the undeniable certainty that once the ATM’s and electronic payment systems are disrupted, cash becomes the only form of payment. The lesson learned: keep a big wad of cash in your safe and don’t touch it.

I know you guys have been following other blogs that are reporting back on the situation out there in hurricane country. Share some linkage and let’s learn from other people’s experiences so we can save ourselves the pain.

CR123, AA batts, and desert hermit logisitcs

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FriendOfTheBlog(tm), Joel, had himself a bump-in-the-night encounter a few weeks back that I mentioned here. I mentioned it because it underscores the utility of weapon-mounted lights and how, in some circumstances, they are just what the doctor ordered.

What I didn’t mention was that I gifted Joel one of these so that he could light something up without pointing a carbine at it, if he needed to. We all know the rules about not pointing a gun at anything you don’t want to destroy, so I figure that a high-capacity-intensity flashlight would be handy for when you’re not sure that whatever is out in the dark is something you want to be pointing a loaded gun at.

Anyway…

There was a comment in the post Joel made about how, given his hermit location, finding CR123 batteries for this light, in case its rechargeable batteries zonked out, would be a difficulty and he would be better serviced with the dirt-common alkaline AA-batts. I politely disagreed because, in my experience, every Home Depot, hardware store, gun store, and supermarket carries CR123 batts.  But..I’ve been wrong before, so I’m open to the possibility that perhaps my experience in the matter differs from what that experience would be if I lived in Joel’s neighborhood.

But the crux of the matter, really, is this: is a device that runs on CR123 batts a liability over a similar device that runs on AA-batts? In terms of price? In terms of availability?

One of the points brought up in the comment was that AA batts were cheaper than CR123. This is quite true. But, as I pointed out, it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison. AA alkaline batteries are cheaper than CR123 lithium batteries. But when you compare AA lithium batteries to CR123 lithium batteries, there is a niggling difference in price. A quick perusal of Amazon showed Energizer lithium AA’s and lithium CR123’s being pretty close to each other in bulk price.

The scarcity issue may have some merit, but CR123 batteries are easily ordered in bulk from Amazon during a time of non-apocalypse, and because of their lithium construction they can be stored longer than alkaline batteries with less self-discharge. (And, I am told, lithium batteries tend to puke all over themselves much less than the alkaline batteries do.)

The advantage to the AA-batt is that if you run out of lithium AA’s for your device you can, usually, still use the dirt-common AA alkalines….assuming its not eight years after the apocalypse when they’ve all self-discharged or leaked into a pile of crud.

All of this underscores that for your battery needs you need to think about things like this. I standardized a long time ago on three battery sizes – AA, D, CR123. Almost every device I could possibly need….headlamps, flashlight, gun sight, weaponlight, radio, freezer alarm, etc…can be had running off one of those types of batteries. Some devices, like a high-intensity weapon light, have power requirements that can’t be met with anything except a CR123. While there are weaponlights out there that will run on other battery sizes, it seems like they usually don’t have the same level of brightness intensity unless they make up for their non-CR123 power requirement by using a much larger quantity of batteries. (In other words, instead of using two CR123, it may need six or eight AA’s.)

Then there’s the matter of rechargeable devices. More and more stuff is of the USB-charger variety. The flashlight I sent Joel, for example, has its rechargeable battery charged through USB. I rather like this feature because it means in a pinch I can charge it from anything that would charge a cellphone….a small solar panel, a battery pack, etc, etc. But, as we all know, rechargeable batteries have a limited amount of duty cycled before the battery starts to no longer hold as much of a charge. This is mitigated a bit by the fact that the package I sent Joel has a spare battery and should, I would think, last probably the rest of his life. But even if the batteries died an ignoble death, the light can still run off CR123’s…which brings us back around to a few paragraphs earlier.

The person who commented on there being a disadvantage, in Joels case, to the CR123 batteries has a valid point – resupply is definitely a concern. But, in my opinion, that potential risk or failure point is mitigated by the the CR123 being able to be long-terms stored meaning that a supply of them purchased now should take care of things. Also, for what I was looking for – a compact, handheld light with tremendous brightness – wasn’t as readily available in a non-CR123 version while still meeting the compact requirements.

Anyway, some food for though there.

 

YouTube videos re: canned meats and canned food

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Following a link from ,Rawles’ SurvivalBlog led me to this channel.

There is no shortage of preparedness-minded folks sharing their opinions and experiences on things like guns. Thats easy, low-hanging fruit that is always good for views. But preparedness is about a lot more than boomtoys. And, if you think about it, while you don’t need to shoot something three times a day, we all usually eat three times a day. So….food is kind of a somewhat bigger deal than guns when it comes to preparedness. Its just not as sexy.

So, I’m perusing this fella’s YouTube channel and while I may not be interested in everything he has to say, or even agree with it, I gotta give him credit for doing the work.

Food taste is very subjective. What you think tastes great might not taste great to me, and vice-versa. But it’s still good to at least see the options that are out there and let someone else take the financial hit of opening a dozen different cans of food, dumping them on a plate, and taking video.

Peripheral notoriety

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Friend of The Blog ™, Tam, over at View From The Porch has a post about the Ruger P-series. I have a few P89DC but my favorite is the P95DC. It’s clunky, bulky, primitive in a pre-picatinny kind of way, with a DA/SA system that leaves a bit to be desired. Why do I love them so much? Because they are utterly unkillable and reliable. For $200 you can’t buy a more reliable and durable gun. Its prolific nature in evidence lockers throughout the US attests to the staggering number made, the low price point, and the abject immortality of it.

The notoriety? That ugly evidence-locker P89 on the cover of the book used to be mine.

Nowadays, the Palmetto Dagger is leaning towards my choice for cheap-and-reliable tertiary level of gun, although I’m not sure about it’s durability. But, compared to a P-series, the only thing more unbreakable is a lump of depleted uranium.

I should pull one of these Daggers off the shelf and send it to Tam for her to bang around.

Bison goes extinct

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It appears that James Dakin, of Bison blog fame (notoriety?), hit the non-biological state of existence last year. You can never tell with bloggers….their deaths can be quite overstated. But, without proof to the contrary…

Announcement from from someone elses blog

I first mentioned his blog about 16 years ago in this post. My first impressions of him were that he was a bitter, classist, misanthrope. In fact, if you peruse my blog you’ll see me use the term ‘evil yuppie survivalist’ which I took directly from Dakin since he had a passionate disdain for anyone who spent money on ‘toys’ like modern firearms and freeze dried food.

He posted comments here from time o time and we had a agree-to-disagree sort of situation going on. I’m sure he saw me as an out-of-touch yuppie survivalist and I saw him as the Matt Foley of survivalism.

Nonetheless, he was entertaining and it was always interesting to read his diatribes. I’m sure that in person he was probably a nice fellow, but we shared little common ground about preparedness except for our utter certainty that it was necessary.

ETA: A quick check of comments showed that his last posting here was twelve days before his passing.

Shots fired in anger vs. shots fired in fear

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Friend Of The Blog, Tam, over at View From The Porch, had a post up with a link to this post about how the best fight is the one you never get into. Or, in other words, “The best defense is still not being there.” (Whcih, by the way, is my number one rule for surviving a disaster.)

The post basically says what I’ve said all along: that bullet parties are the exception rather than the rule, and that statistically your chance of needing to shoot someone is ‘not zero’ but fairly close.

But I take tremendous issue with this line: “First, (and I know some people are really going to be disappointed about this), you are most likely not going to be in a gunfight tomorrow. I can say this with some confidence, because statistically very few people ever need to fire their gun in anger.”

Can you spot the issue in that statement? It’s the use of the word ‘anger’. As a law-abiding, peaceful, I-won’t-bother-you-if-you-won’t-bother-me citizen there is never a need to fire a gun in anger. We don’t shoot people because we’re angry…thats what bad guys do. I can’t really think of a time when you’re justified in shooting someone because you’re angry, I can only think of times when you’re justified shooting someone because you’re scared.

The correct construction of that argument should be that “…statistically very few people ever need to fire their gun in fear.”

Crom forefend that you ever have to shoot anyone for any reason, but if it happens I believe that “I fired in anger” will not help your case nearly as much as “I fired in fear”. It is inculcated the minute we start looking into self-defense that you only shoot “in the gravest extreme”, as one author says. No one should be firing their gun in anger.

Am I being nitpicky about the use of words in the OP’s post? Maybe ‘fire their gun in anger’ was just an expression. Perhaps. I’m a  bit sensitive on the subject, and I’ve always been a stickler for precision in language. But, I think that, for me, the only reason to shoot someone, heck..or even point a gun at someone, is out of genuine heartfelt fear for my own safety…not out of anger. Be angry after the incident for the bad guy forcing you to do something that, I assume, you did not want to do. Be angry at him for the way he’s now changed your life and your assumptions about. Be angry at a lot of things. But righteous self-defense comes from a place of fear, not anger.

 

Lightsticks above the doorway

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While investigating other blogs, I found this post: The Light Stick Over The Door Trick

This is something I’ve been doing for almost thirty years. I leave a lightstick on the top of each doorway in the house. They are unobtrusive, mostly out of sight, but when the power goes out you know theyre always there and they are just what you need to find your way to a real flashlight. (Assuming you don’t already carry a small flashlight in your pocket at all times…which you should.)

I might have mentioned this before but, honestly, I don’t have time to trawl 20 years of blog posts. I will say, though, that with lightsticks being relatively cheap, it’s worth it to replace them every couple years. And always keep them in the foil pouches until ready to use. I’ve never had one fail, but I tested one last year that was almost 15 years past its expiration date and it worked just fine. But for less than a dollar each, why take chances?

As an aside, I also keep a couple lightsticks inside any container of emergency gear so that if I need to use that gear in the dark, I have a light source of some kind. I tape them to the inside of my Pelican gear cases, and I always have one or two in every larger first aid kit. (Thats in addition to a small, lithium-batteried light.)

Power failures have a habit of being unplanned, which means next time youre in the bathroom and the power goes out, it’d be nice not to stumble your way outta the bathroom, down theahll, to your computer room or wherever you keep your emergency lighting tools. Instead, find any doorway, reach up, and -presto- illumination.

Texas chilly

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A few posts back I was mentioning heating options for when the power goes out and the thermometer has the bottom drop out of it. Apparently thats a real thing in Upper Mexico Texas right now. The Texicans, not quite accustomed to that sort of climate, are managing as best they can but it seems many werent quite prepared for that particular level of cold. Some you-are-there reporting from one of our blog commenters can be found at his blog.It’s an interesting read and definitely makes me think that, for my needs, I’ve gone in the right direction with heating options. For me, kerosene heaters to heat the basement (pipes) and main room of the house, and a Buddy heater for spot warming where needed. Although I have a small Honda generator, my anticipated use of it is basically just communications, lighting, internet, and security cameras. (And all of those are on battery backups that can run for a good length of time.)

I suspect that many people in the Texas scenario were ready for Texas-cold weather but never really anticipated actual-cold weather. And I think that’s a pretty understandable thing…I doubt there are folks in Hawaii with kerosene heaters, Yak Trax, and parkas tucked away in the garages. Its just one of those scenarios that seemed legitimately unlikely.

But, as a survivalist it is always informative to read other peoples accounts of what happened, what worked, and what didn’t.

Oh, and I should mention, in the blog linked in the opening paragraph there is also recounting of how some local businesses were ‘cash only’ and not taking plastic. Another reason to have an envelope of $20’s stashed away in the safe.

Anyway, its good reading and if anyone else has some links to some ‘I was there’ AAR blog posts or whatnot, please share.

YouTubing

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Broadlu speaking, there’s only three channels I follow on YouTube – Gun Jesus, InrangeTV (a collaborative project with Gun Jesus and one of his buddies), and the questionably entertaining but usually informative Nutnfancy. Someone posted a comment with a link to this persons channel and I thought some of it was worth watching, and, frankly, gunbunnies and survivalbabes are always interesting….so, I added this one to my list.

I’m the most optimistic survivalist you’ll ever meet….I don’t foresee a mandatory-attendance-nationwide-impromptu-3-gun-match (aka Civil War 2: Electric Boogaloo) actually taking place (although I do love the memes). But whatever you stockpile to give you an edge in the big igloo will, by extension, be pretty darn in handy in 90% of every other flavor of apocalypse. So…vidoes like these have some merit.

I don’t necessarily agree with everything in this video…or any video, actually. But there’s always some wheat mixed in with the chaff and watching chicks who are on the same wavelength as us is always fun.