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

I seriously need to spend a few hours in the bunker straightening up. As of late I simply shuttle acquisitions and purchases there and leave them on the floor figuring I’ll deal with them later. Bad, bad, bad. I need to segregate them, datestamp them, and put them into their respective storage containers and then label the containers. Tedious and quite unglamourous. It aint all sunshine n’ stun grenades when youre the Zero.

I also need to do a fuels evaluation and come up with some hard and fast numbers regarding fuel consumption and inventory. Basically I just buy more and more and leave it at that. I need to research and experiment and see what actual consumption is. (How long will my lantern/heater/etc run on one gallon of kero, one bottle of propane, one gallon of Coleman fuel, etc.) Time consuming. There are a few references that give some basic rules of thumb in terms of consumption…still, there is no room for error so its gotta get done at some point. Really, a spreadsheet is in order…”If I run the lantern for 12.9 hours, the heater for 18.2 hours and the stove for 5.3 hours that will use 10# of propane”, etc, etc.

The trick is actually doing something…its too easy to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of something, compare prices, check availability, etc. and next thing you know three weeks have gone by from when you said “I better buy a …” and you still dont have it. And meanwhile The Day creeps closer and youre still sifting through catalogs. Its *real* easy to get lulled into that ‘armchair survivalist’ thing.

That reminds me, I need to polish up The List and see what I can pick up in the near future. I keep a tiny 9-point-font list with me so if I find myself at a store I can check against it.

ANd I seriously need to do some website updates.

I seriously need to spend a few hours in the bunker straightening up. As of late I simply shuttle acquisitions and purchases there and leave them on the floor figuring I’ll deal with them later. Bad, bad, bad. I need to segregate them, datestamp them, and put them into their respective storage containers and then label the containers. Tedious and quite unglamourous. It aint all sunshine n’ stun grenades when youre the Zero.

I also need to do a fuels evaluation and come up with some hard and fast numbers regarding fuel consumption and inventory. Basically I just buy more and more and leave it at that. I need to research and experiment and see what actual consumption is. (How long will my lantern/heater/etc run on one gallon of kero, one bottle of propane, one gallon of Coleman fuel, etc.) Time consuming. There are a few references that give some basic rules of thumb in terms of consumption…still, there is no room for error so its gotta get done at some point. Really, a spreadsheet is in order…”If I run the lantern for 12.9 hours, the heater for 18.2 hours and the stove for 5.3 hours that will use 10# of propane”, etc, etc.

The trick is actually doing something…its too easy to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of something, compare prices, check availability, etc. and next thing you know three weeks have gone by from when you said “I better buy a …” and you still dont have it. And meanwhile The Day creeps closer and youre still sifting through catalogs. Its *real* easy to get lulled into that ‘armchair survivalist’ thing.

That reminds me, I need to polish up The List and see what I can pick up in the near future. I keep a tiny 9-point-font list with me so if I find myself at a store I can check against it.

ANd I seriously need to do some website updates.

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

An expensive day for the Zero. Decided to walk through every aisle in CostCo today to see what was around that had some applications for my needs. Found a great deal: Coleman two-mantle propane lantern *with* hard carry case for $30. Zowie. A quick perusla of The List shows that the last hard carry case I bought for that same model of lantern was almost $14. Ka-ching…some savings. So, I now have two perfectly identical propane lanterns with carry case. (And , naturally, they take the same mantles as my Dual Fuel lantern) Drawback is that my ‘adequate’ supply of spare mantles is now ‘inadequate’ since the quantity-per-lantern just took a 50% hit. Fortunately theyre cheap enough I can pick up a dozen for less than $10.

Also found ‘Trio’ brand #10 cans of instant potatoes. Now, why the excitement? Well, a scan of the label showed that this was a food-service product made by Nestle…the same guys who make my beloved Idahoan instant potatoes. Remember the just-add-water instant potatoes I was going on about a few months back? Well, this is the #10 can of ‘em. w00t.

And, although this doesnt really apply to my needs directly, there were surgical scrub sets for $15. Nice, loose, baggy surgical scrubs for lounging around the redoubt house. Navy, burgundy, UN blue, or green. I went with navy…its slimming and wont turn translucent in bright light.

Also grabbed a 6-pack of 16oz propane bottles for $9.99.

So CostCo was good to the Zero today. Spent 10x what I had planned, but that lantern was a sweet deal.

An expensive day for the Zero. Decided to walk through every aisle in CostCo today to see what was around that had some applications for my needs. Found a great deal: Coleman two-mantle propane lantern *with* hard carry case for $30. Zowie. A quick perusla of The List shows that the last hard carry case I bought for that same model of lantern was almost $14. Ka-ching…some savings. So, I now have two perfectly identical propane lanterns with carry case. (And , naturally, they take the same mantles as my Dual Fuel lantern) Drawback is that my ‘adequate’ supply of spare mantles is now ‘inadequate’ since the quantity-per-lantern just took a 50% hit. Fortunately theyre cheap enough I can pick up a dozen for less than $10.

Also found ‘Trio’ brand #10 cans of instant potatoes. Now, why the excitement? Well, a scan of the label showed that this was a food-service product made by Nestle…the same guys who make my beloved Idahoan instant potatoes. Remember the just-add-water instant potatoes I was going on about a few months back? Well, this is the #10 can of ’em. w00t.

And, although this doesnt really apply to my needs directly, there were surgical scrub sets for $15. Nice, loose, baggy surgical scrubs for lounging around the redoubt house. Navy, burgundy, UN blue, or green. I went with navy…its slimming and wont turn translucent in bright light.

Also grabbed a 6-pack of 16oz propane bottles for $9.99.

So CostCo was good to the Zero today. Spent 10x what I had planned, but that lantern was a sweet deal.