Man, I just cannot shake the feelings of impending doom everytime I listen to the news. (I’ve pretty much stopped watching the news. I now either listen to it on the radio or I read it on the various newswires on the internet.)

It seems like everything is doom and gloom about the economy, housing, fod and fuel prices, war, etc, etc.

I have to pause and think about my own exposure to these things – my house has a tiny fixed rate mortgage, I don’t have any debt other than the mortgage, the girlfriend has her job with a good degree of job security, we don’t have many luxuries other than internet and Warcraft, the truck is paid for, there no mountain of credit card debt, and by and large we’re not in a bad place should the economy tumble.

I cannot imagine being one of these people you hear about on the news…the family with two kids, three cars, an overpriced house, fifty grand in credit card debt and the threat of downsizing in the future. I think I’d explode from the stress.

But, at the same time, most of what I read and hear says that the majority of the people in these dire situations put themselves into it. Either by getting mortgages using inflated/falsified earnings data, living so far ahead of their income or just generally being incredibly shortsighted. So, while I feel bad for them I have a tough time feeling sorry for them. Earning $46,000 a year and lying to buy a $750,000 house isn’t a ‘mistake’, it’s fraud.

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‘Jericho’ returns to TV next month for their abbreviated seven-episode season. I read somewhere that the first three episodes were leaked onto the internet so if you’re the impatient kind, you can probably find them out there. Don’t ask me about links, I have none. I read about it on arfcom so you may wanna go look there.

I will say that from what Ive read about the second season, it appears the first season format of ‘just trying to stay alive’ is going to give way to episodes about more ‘tin foil hat’ type of things. I’d elaborate but I don’t want to ruin things for anyone.

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Still following the elections. I am still of the opinion that at this point who wins will be irrelevant in regards to gun policy. Nothing good will happen for gun owners out of the next election, it’ll only be differing degrees of bad. Buying magazines, ammo and gun s is never a bad idea and it is even less of a bad idea now with about ten months left until elections

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That reminds me….

When you stock up on firearms and related materials, don’t think that you are stocking up for the day TSHTF. What you are doing is stocking up for the rest of your life. Whats the difference?

If you’re stocking up because, say, you live in New Orleans and you’re worried another Katrina is going to blow through you might stock a case of 9mm, a case of .223 and a case of 00 buck and figure you’re all set. You’d probably be right. And then when the Katrina Mk II is over then what? Say you used up half of that stash (giving it to friends, neighbors, etc) what do you do? DO you buy more? Of course you do…and you can do that because its still available now that the immediate crisis is over.

I stockpile firearms and materials on the assumption that whatever I have right now is all I have to last me for the rest of my life because at some point they will no longer be available. If I say that I have a Pelican case with x  Glocks in it someone will ask “Do you really think that when TSHTF you’re going to need x Gocks? If you need that many then you should have brought artillery support.” But that’s not what those are for..oh sure, they’re good to have if things really do get weird but Im not thinking that come some Katrina-esque disaster Im going to need x Glocks. I have as many as I have because someday the powers that be may say that no more can be sold, or they’ll restrict them so highly as to make them virtually unobtainable, and then whatever I have has to last me for the next 40 years.

Remember that wild and crazy Assault Weapon ban in 1994? Lets say it didn’t expire, however many AR magazines you had at the time of the ban would be all youd be able to have for the. Rest. Of. Your. Life. Sure, you might be able to buy more grandfathered ones…maybe for $30 ea…and ten years later for $50 ea…and further down the road at $100 ea. So at that moment, when you’re staring at the television watching the news and you realize that whatever you have at that moment is probably all you’ll ever be able to have….do you think you have enough? You have two AR’s in the safe, maybe thirty magazines for the pair and you still have forty years of living left in front of you. Forty years of hoping that your rifles don’t suffer failures, that you don’t lose/break/damage/forget or otherwise ruin a magazine. Do you even own anything mechanical that you’ve managed to consistently keep in good condition for forty years?

A lot happens in forty years…in five years you flip your truck on a patch of ice and your rifle is destroyed in the wreck. Eleven years from now someone breaks into your home and steals your pistol and a rifle. Fourteen years from some overzealous cop at the range says you’re gun/magazine is illegal and confiscates them..he’s proved wrong but you don’t get them back because department policy is to never return guns. Seventeen years from now your house catches fire and your pistol is lost in the flames. Twenty years from now your son is getting married, moving away and you don’t want him to be unarmed so you want to give him a rifle and pistol. Thirty years from now you want to set a pistol aside for when your grandson comes of age.

So, really, is it that outrageous for someone to think that maybe a half dozen rifles and a couple hundred magazines is a bad idea?

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

I don’t particularly like the Ruger firearms company. My main reason is for Ruger’s history of Neville Chamberlain-esque willingness to ‘compromise’ when gun legislation rolls around. For example, Ruger voluntarily pulled their folding stock Mini-14’s off the civilian market. Ditto for the factory 20-rd mags. And Ruger was proud to be the first to suggest to the .gov that pistol magazines be limited to 10 rounds. Their advertising of themselves as “Arms maker for responsible citizens”, has an undeniably, and to me offensive, Orwellian ring to it. To continue the WW2 analogies, Ruger was the Quisling of the gun industry.

But, of course, theres an ‘on the other hand…’

On the other hand, I do like Ruger firearms. Ruger makes some of the most durable firearms around.

I was re-reading Tappan’s opinion on revolvers vs. automatics for self-defense and especially for long-term use. Tappan opined that, by and large, an automatic could be repaired as fast as you could swap some parts. A revolver could be repaired as fast as you could get it to a gunsmith. As usual, there are almost no absolutes in there and the truth is somewhat in the middle. For example, in Tappans book he also goes on about how the 1911 is the finest pistol you can get…once you take it right out of the shipping box and hand it over to a gunsmith for all sorts of modifications. So, apparently, his vaunted automatic was no better than the revolver in terms of being ‘repaired as fast as you can get it to the gunsmith’. On the other hand, I’ve owned and shot revolvers over 60 years old that still seemed to work just fine. Go figure.

But, to be fair, Tappan was right in some ways. Revolvers generally have parts (hand, bolt, etc) that require some fitting by hand. On the other hand, you take a modern auto like the Glock and pretty much any part just drops in with no fitting…a very handy feature for the long term where you never know if theres going to be a gunsmith available. (Or when your favorite gun is verboten and you cant risk taking it in for repairs.)

Personally, I’ve gone past the dogmatic stage of unyielding allegiance to a particular brand of firearm simply because it sound cool to say “Glocks rock!” or “John Browning is my god”. I want what works. For playing at the range and relaxing I have other preferences but for “Holy crap, was that a mushroom cloud?” I want something that I trust implicitly. The main appeal of automatics, for me, is the capacity of the magazine. Ballistically, revolvers appeal to me more.

So wheres Ruger fit into this?

Its my opinion that Ruger, despite their cowardly political practices in the past, make some of the most durable firearms on the planet today. I will also say that they currently make the most durable revolvers. Period.

I’ve been wanting a .44 Mag for a while now. Logistically, it does not fit into my main cartridge hierarchy (.22, .223, .308, 9mm, .38/.357, .45 ACP, 12 ga.) but I’ve been wanting a powerful revolver for stomping around in the boonies as well as for general usage. I’ve owned .44 Mags by  other manufacturers, including S&W, and while they were certainly good guns I do not believe they could stand up to long-term use with full-power loads as well as the Rugers.

Currently, I’m torn between the new 4” Redhawk and the .44 Alaskan model. The Alaskan is built on the Super Redhawk frame and is, in a word, massive. I genuinely believe that twenty years after the bombs go off the only guns still functioning will be AK’s, Glocks and these monolithic blocks of Ruger steel.

At this point Im sure someone is saying “Why not .45 Colt? You can load it as hot as the .44 Mag and you’ll have bullet interchangeability with your .45 ACP bullets.” That’s true. Logistically, I could eliminate the need to stock .44 bullets and brass and simply use .45 ACP bullets if needed. However, I think availability of .44 Mag ammo is better than .45 Colt. Also, the .45 Colt ammo that is available, usually, is the lighter stuff meant for all guns whereas the “.44 Magnumesque” .45 Colt loads are either strictly a handloading proposition or are available only from a limited amount of sources.

Why a revolver? The revolver offers me more power than can be stuffed into the average auto. (Yes, I know theres .45 Win. Mags out there. Im talking about the average auto.) At its best, the .45 ACP puts out around 500 ft/lb of energy (a +p load with 185 gr.) The 10mm, a worthy choice, puts out 600 ft/lb. at its best. A .44 Mag can put out 700-1000 ft/lb. without too much difficulty. The .357 Magnum puts out around 500 ft/lb. so ballistically its as good as any .45 ACP. The attraction to a revolver is that I get an extremely broad selection of bullet choices. I can shoot shot loads for pests at close range, lightweight bullets for plinking or small game, heavy bullets for larger game, and wicked cavernous hollowpoints (or even inverted hollowbase wadcutters) for brutal stopping power. This is not to say I’d run off to WW3 with the revolver on my hip…rather, for everyday use in the boonies the revolver has more appeal to me than the auto.

Is the revolver my first handgun choice for running out the door with when Der Tag arrives? Nope. That would be my Glock. But when Im hunting, or mountain biking, or fishing, or just tooling around in the sticks it would be nice to have something that affords me a large degree of power.

So, I think for a .44 Mag the Ruger is going to be the way to go.

As I was typing this a customer came in and as he was fishing around for his wallet I noticed some speedloaders on his belt. “Packing the revolver today?” I asked. He replied in the affirmative and produced his 4” GP100 Ruger .357. Im a fan of S&W handguns, and have a bunch of them, but that GP100 is a rugged little piece. I may have to get a couple of them too.

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

Okay, you gotta admit…its a pretty cool looking bomb shelter.

“The disaster shelter that you are about to view was custom built for a very discerning and well-informed family. It took approximately two years to construct and was never installed. This project is available and ready for delivery.”

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

Got the new Sportsmans Guide HQ catalog the other day. The HQ catalog differs from the regular SG catalog by being mostly military surplus stuff. It is rapidly becoming one of my favorite catalogs. There’s some very cool, very handy surplus stuff in there that I normally haven’t seen elsewhere. Some highlights from this recent catalog:

The fabulous flectar parka w/ liner for $29.97 (AX8M-124413X) – These things are wonderful. They are very comfy, warm and well made. I notice the price has gone up about $10 since I last saw the liner/parka combo offered. This is the coat I wear through most of the Montana winters and I’ve been pleased. You can roll the whole thing up into a tight ball and stuff it into its hood for compactness. I usually leave one basketball-sized rolled up parka in the truck ‘just in case’. These are excellent pieces of gear and I always recommend them when I see the catalog has them available.

2-pc Snow Camo Set $19.97 (AX8M-87700X) – Another fine German product I can recommend. In fact, I just had mine out the other day to try it in our new snow. My buddies agreed that at 50 yards I was pretty much invisible. These are covers that go over your normal clothing. They offer no real warmth or insulation, they simple act to cover your winter clothing you’re already wearing. They are completely reversible from/to solid white/white with pine. Even the pockets are reversible. I’ve had my set for years and this is the first time Ive seen them available at such a reasonable price. Obviously, since you’re wearing them over your bulky winter clothing, you might want to order a size larger than what you normally wear.

Two fairly new items that look interesting that I have not purchased:

Chinese copy of the GN58 portable hand generator – $149.97 (AX8M-115980) – The GN58 was made to power various military radio equipment. You can sometimes find them on eBay. They’re output is particular for the requirements of the mil radios but Im sure anyone with a soldering gun and knowledge of electronics could convert it to whatever voltage output they wanted. This Chinese copy looks almost identical to the genuine article. An interesting thing to experiment with.

Czech military RF-10 radio $129.97 (AX8M-130642) – Another new item…says it operates 44,000 to 53,975 Mhz which sounds odd for some reason. Comes w/ battery, antannae, mic, cables, charger, etc. 1 watt output (pretty short range). Might be fun for the radio enthusiast who wants to tinker.

What might I actually wind up getting?

Swedish M90 insultaed pants $19.97 (AX8M-130964X) – These look like just the ticket for wearing under the snow camo for those long, cold moments laying in the snow waiting for something to walk in front of the muzzle.

Theres a few other things in the catalog as well but they’re mostly luxuries or novelties that don’t serve a purpose that I haven’t already got covered. And while surplus stuff is always a bargain, Im not buying stuff just for the sake of having something new to play with. Resources are too limited for that. Still, alot of cool stuff if you should happen to get one of the HQ catalogs.

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

I think the Church (or cult) of Preparedness just got a new prophet.

Here’s a fascinating article about Lt. Gen. Russel Honore, whom you may or may not recall was a larger-than-life figure in the Katrina relief efforts. One of his more notable moments was “Chocolate” Nagin calling him a “John Wayne dude” who cut through the incompetence with a take-charge attitude, and telling reporters “Don’t get stuck on stupid!”.

(Actually, Chocolate said “Now, I will tell you this — and I give the president some credit on this — he sent one John Wayne dude down here that can get some stuff done, and his name is [Lt.] Gen. [Russel] Honoré. And he came off the doggone chopper, and he started cussing and people started moving. And he’s getting some stuff done.”

So, Honore retiring after almost 40 years of service. His plans?

“…he says he wants to spend the rest of his life creating a ‘culture of preparedness’ to prevent another post-disaster disaster.’

“’What happened in New Orleans could have happened anywhere on the eastern seaboard’”

“His next project is taking shape, but he wants to see civil defense classes for young people that would teach first aid and survival basics, such as how to purify water. We wants to lobby drug stores and other businesses to keep generators in case of a long power failure. He wants cities to stockpile food and water so they don’t have to rely on the federal government.”

I’d like to know his opinion of disarming disaster survivors at gunpoint ala Katrina. He’s a military man so while he can appreciate the use of firearms and violence he may also have that mindset of ‘only authorized personnel’. If he’s got a book project going on I’d be interested in reading it to find out some more about him.

He’s saying everything a fella like me would like to hear. Sadly, I don’t think it will matter. He would be the perfect face and voice for a pro-civil-defense lobby. However, I don’t think such a thing exists on any large scale. (Im sure there are small, hideously underfunded groups but none with very much clout or manpower.) Perhaps on a state level he could help grassroots organizations that are trying to appropriate federal funds for local preparedness projects. I’d hate to see him wind up being the pitchman for water purifiers or other product. The guy seems to have a bit of passion, I hope he gets to apply it as he’d like and not have his enthusiasm diminished.

It would be nice to put him in charge of something like FEMA or other relief organization. Presumably he could cut through the BS and spend more time on the problem at hand and less time worrying about how his necktie looks on camera like that last idiot did.

But a ‘culture of preparedness’? We haven’t had that for a long while, if ever. The closest we may have come was during the heyday of Civil Defense when the .gov stocked shelters and encouraged public participation in preparing for the day the Reds pushed the button. And even that was a token effort. No, the true ‘cultures of preparedness’ occur on much smaller levels. Local and state, mostly. The folks in Utah, home of the Mormons, probably have their act together regarding civil defense more than any other state. And even then that’s mostly due to religious groupthink. We all know that the Swiss have the high ground when it comes to civil defense with some other European nations (even excommunist ones) holding the top of the charts. The US is right down there in the basement. I suppose that since we’ve historically never really had occasion to use a civil defense program it never amounted to a very high priority. Even with the terrorist attacks of 2001 and the continued terrorist threat it seems like civil preparedness still gets short shrift.

Best quote from Honore: “In this new normal, with the possibility of terrorist attacks, natural disasters and industrial accidents, we need this culture of preparedness. A vast part of America still thinks ‘It cant happen where I live’ and they are dead damn wrong.”

Is it possible to create a ‘culture of preparedness’ without breaking the bank or becoming too heavy handed? I think so.

First of all, remember all those military base closings from years ago? Find a closed military base in each state and rehab it as a disaster staging point. Bring in National Guard engineers or the local vo-tech construction classes to update the buildings, add runways and helipads, and set up storage facilities. Create a point where supplies can be flown in and shipped out.

Next, take the out-of-date-but-still-good military items that would be relevant to a disaster and turn them over to the states for use in their programs. Bulk MRE’s purchased at the current .gov pricing schedule, vehicles that are otherwise no longer used, water treatment purification equipment, surplussed fuel tankers, etc, etc.

Offer incentives to citizens to prepare the way Florida does. Florida has a ‘no tax’ program every year, I believe, where you can buy hurricane preparedness gear without paying sales tax on it. I say take it a step further – tax credits for having generator, approved disaster shelter, advanced training, etc, etc. Any revenue lost through a tax break is offset by having one more family that doesn’t need .gov aid in a disaster.

Encourage civilian organizations to participate. This is already done with ham radio enthusiasts and private plane enthusiasts (ARES and CAP, respectively), it should be extended to other groups. Even the Boy Scouts would be an asset. Everyone gets an assigned role and everyone gets training in that particular role. Not everyone needs to be shoveling debris and bagging bodies…theres always going to be a need for runners, camp kitchen staff, sanitation orderlies, refugee processors, vehicle refuelers, etc, etc.

But, of course, we’ll never see anything like that coming out of Washington. You may, maybe, find it coming out of your state capital someday. You’re more likely to find it coming out of your county seat.

Also, there is, of course, no substitute for taking your own steps to be prepared, regardless of .gov participation (or lack thereof).

I’d be very interested to see what the future holds for Lt. Gen. Honore. I wonder if his statements aren’t some sort of positioning for a cabinet position when the administration changes, or if he genuinely believes what he’s saying. I would like to think the latter.

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

I was skimming through arfcom the other night and found an interesting post. A fella was saying how he had come across about 20 cases of Mountain House canned food that someone had put out in the trash. Still sealed cases, mind you. Naturally, he grabbed as many as he could.

So how does something like that happen? That’s easily a thousand dollars or so worth of food, so why would anyone discard it? The obvious, although possibly not correct, answer in this case is that the previous owner probably died and the family was getting rid of his junk.

So, yes, lets talk about dead survivalists.

We’ve all seen the t-shirt with the expression “If you die, we split your gear!” or similar sentiment. Sometimes someone will post something on the discussion forums about doing something their wife will obviously disapprove of and someone will reply with “Can I have your guns afterwards?” implying the wife would kill the original poster for his insane behavior and then his gear would be up for grabs. And we joke about it. But, it does happen. Plenty of people who stockpile food, ammo, fuel, medicines and gear wind up dying of heart attacks, car accidents, cancer or just plain old age before they ever encounter the big event that they were preparing against.

Mel Tappan, the guy who was the voice of survivalism back in its heyday, died long before he would have gotten the chance to need his guns, food, gold and other gear. (And what a collection of gear it must have been, eh? Esp. with his wife being from the Mack truck family. A little family wealth would buy a lot of AR-15’s….) Tappan died in the early 1980’s, when there was still a USSR, Soviet imperialism, a national hangover from the Carter years and a general ‘malaise’ in the spirit of the American people. Not a time of positive outlook. Tappan’s vision of societal collapse never materialized (not yet anyway) but Im sure he was glad it didn’t happen in his lifetime.

The Four Corners ‘survivalists’ prepared for their own little SHTF and all three died in short order after vanishing into the desert after their crime spree, the last of their skeletal remains only recently being discovered. I would bet that theres caches of supplies they left in the desert that will remain hidden for a very long time to come. They brought their disaster on themselves, thinking they were ready, and died before they could implement their plans for survival.

The folks at CUT (Church Universal and Triumphant) here in Montana built an extremely impressive bomb shelter that is all but abandoned and is occupied by only a couple people who, almost certainly, will not be around to use it under the circumstances for which it was built. Most of the people involved in CUT are still around but have moved on to other things.

Going back a little farther in time, there are plenty of houses in the United States that have bomb shelters in them…leftovers from the height of the Cold War. In many of those cases the original shelter owners have been deceased for quite a while. Their determination to survive, however, continues on after them in the form of concrete shelters under many suburban homes…now called ‘storage rooms’, ‘wince cellars’ or ‘bonus rooms’.

Like fire insurance, health insurance and homeowners insurance we spend resources against a perceived threat and then hope like hell that all our expenses will be for nothing and that we’ll never need the recourse that we’ve been paying on for years and years. It really isn’t throwing money down a rat hole since one thing you do get is peace of mind.

But, preparedness is a funny business. Like old men who collect model trains, the things that we value, seek and collect have marginal interest to those ‘outside the loop’. Take the cases of freezedrieds mentioned earlier… the family getting rid of it probably regarded it as more crap that crazy Uncle Eddie cluttered up the basement with. But the arfcom poster who found it regarded it as a major score.   Its almost like being in a secret club…we recognize fellow members by their gear, not by their names. Not a lot of people walk around with name badges saying “Hi! My name is: Steve And Im A Survivalist”. (Well, maybe at conventions…) But it seems like everyone recognizes the ‘symptoms’. The guy at work who wears 5.11 clothes, a belt that looks suspiciously like a gunbelt, drives a simple four-wheel drive vehicle or pickup truck, has a Leatherman tool on his belt, listens to talk radio, and never seems to get caught unprepared for anything. Maybe in a casual conversation he’ll mention buying some new backpacking gear, home canning some venison he shot, or discussing current events in a manner that shows he’s thinking ‘what if?’. Put all of these things together and you start thining “Yeah, I think he’s probably on the same page as I am…” And some day when he gets divorced and moves to Outer Yakistan and his wife is throwing out his gear, you’ll come across piles of web gear and MRE’s sitting at the curb and you’ll think “Damn, I knew I was right.”

But, as I said, most of the time we’ll all die before The Day arrives. And I am perfectly cool with that. I would much rather have the things I have and not need them than to have a situation arise where I did need them. I doubt many people who have fire insurance on their home would like their homes to burn so they can feel smug that they had insurance, right? Same with me…if I never have to use any of the things I have stockpiled I will be a very pleased individual.

Living out the rest of my life prepared for most disasters but never having to go through one would be a nice triumph. 

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

I received some current 2008 pricing from some of my vendors on bullets and cartridge brass. Across the board everything went up by at least 10%. Let me give an example… Win. 55 gr. FMJ bullets jumped up by 16%. If you have any plans to produce large quantities of ammo and you need bullets/brass I recommend buying them now because the prices will continue to rise. Also, if you can, you may find some older inventory on your local gun shop shelves that has not been priced at the new higher prices. Might wanna snap that stuff up.

Speaking of purchasing, its worth repeating that with the election process well under way you might want to make those purchases of ammo, guns, mags, etc. that you’ve been putting off.

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I should like to mention that a few months back I bought a 3 D-cell MagLite that uses an LED bulb rather than the usual Krypton bulb. I have been extremely pleased with it. Its strong point is that it seems to throw a tighter beam and any impacts or jolts wont break the bulb. In fact, I dropped it on some concrete from about 6’ and it didn’t even flicker. Usually, dropping a flashlight on a hard surface is the kiss of death for most flashlight bulbs. Not an issue with LED. The LED version of the MagLite also comes with a spare incandescent bulb in the tail. Makes sense since the LED isn’t likely to ever need replacing unless something really terminal happens.

MagLite also sells LED conversions for your current MagLite. They work but the dedicated MagLite LED flashlight uses a completely different shaped reflector which I think accounts for a good bit of the flashlights fine performance. The ‘regular’ MagLite reflector is more ‘funnel’ shaped whereas the LED reflector is more…ovoid?…egg-shaped?..parabolic?

The LED MagLites do cost more upfront but I believe it to be worth the difference. All the other MagLite accessories (filters, cone wands, etc, etc) work with both versions.

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More and more articles, for better or worse, are turning up in the news saying that the new ‘conflict-causing resource’ will be food and/or water as opposed to oil. I can see this being somewhat true if you believe what the media says about unprecedented lengths of drought ravaging the US and other parts of the world. There is no argument that food prices certainly have gone up over the last year or so…more so than one might expect based on history. No one seems to be in agreement over the exact cause but as with many things in the media, no one cause is totally responsible, but many causes are partially. Blame has been laid on increased fuel prices (transport, farming equipment, fertilizers, etc), global warming and drought (reduced rainfall, increased irrigation costs), increased demand from developing countries, etc, etc. No single cause is probably the culprit but rather all of these things taken as a whole. In some parts of the world there are indeed shooting wars over water supplies and food supplies. In the less Third World regions, litigation replaces confrontation. Every year it seems some outfit takes the federal .gov (or the Corps of Engineers, or dam authority, or other water-controlling org.) to court of releasing/not releasing water from dams or rivers. Theres anecdotal pieces on the internet about wells drying up, water tables lowering, etc, etc.

People are dangerous critters when they are hungry. Miss a meal or two and folks get grumpy. Miss several days worth of meals and they get downright mean. When they then start watching their kids get hungry and skinny, then the gloves come off and you get Somalia-style anarchy. Much the same story for water. Im sure we’ve all seen footage of drought stricken regions of Africa where people line up at water tankers and someone cuts in line and things dissolve into raucous chaos.But…that’s Africa. Its always been like that.

How does this sort of thing affect those of us in the more civilized parts of the world? Well, the food items you buy will obviously go up in price. Availability, in my opinion, won’t change too much. I think you’ll always be able to find a can of Green Giant corn on the shelf, you just may wind up paying a bit more for it. But, obviously, a 10% increase in food costs means your only able to purchase about 90% of what you were able to purchase before with the same amount of cash. At least…until the price goes up another 10%. And again.

I can’t recall a time in this country when there was ever a nationwide food shortage. (A shortage is not the same thing as unavailability…food can be unavailable because you’re broke, but a shortage is the actual non-existence of the item.) There have always been regional shortages..hurricanes, blizzards and that sort of thing always empty supermarkets. But I cant recall a genuine nationwide food crisis. There have been times when a particular food was unavailable nationwide (food recalls spring to mind) but those events affected only a handful of items leaving the vast majority of the supermarket untouched. Classic preparedness literature like Tappan suggests that a nationwide truck or rail strike could cause a antionide shortage but that seems unlikely to me.However, no one I know is stocking up for a national (or global) food shortage…they stock up for a local food shortage. They stock up for when the Katrina-like storm floods their city, for when a blizzard makes travel impossible for two weeks, for when terrorist activity locks down their region for days at a time, etc.

But, having all those shelves full of food, the cases of MRE’s, the cases of freeze drieds, the drums of rice, etc. all make me feel a bit more secure when I read articles about projected food issues. That peace of mind is a nice thing to have even if none of those stored long-term food items ever get used. I guess the best I could hope for would be that my food supply outlasts me.

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

I made the mistake of re-reading “Alas Babylon” last night. Why was it a mistake? Because about 2/3 of the way through the book I got out of bed, retrieved a notepad and pen, got back into bed, and resumed my reading while making some notes. That is, arguably, the hallmark of good literature – it makes you think.

“Alas, Babylon” was written in 1959 by Harry Hart under the pen name Pat Frank. It is probaly one of the best known end-of-the-world books and for many people their first introduction to the genre. Although its dated in many ways (esp. its portrayal of racial issues) its premise, characters and situations are still excellent reading.

If you haven’t read it, its about life in a small Florida town after a US-Soviet nuclear exchange. The small community is isolated from the rest of the world and life tries to go on amidst food shortages, medical emergencies, epidemics, looters and people’s personal demons. Theres nothing spectacular or fantastic in the book, and for the most part its very well grounded with what day-to-day existence might be like after a nuclear shooting match.

The book, as I said, was written in 1959 which is pretty much around the early/middle part of the Cold War when nuclear war (or ‘atomic war’, if you prefer) was not entirely an unthinkable proposition. Other books covered the same subject but, as far as I know, Frank’s was the first that was not a ‘we’re-all-going-to-die’ defeatist story. The notion that when the bombs fell ‘the living would envy the dead’ is probably largely responsible for the dismal Civil Defense programs this country had. (I have nothing to back that up with, I just think that too many people were willing to throw up their hands and assume everyone would die rather than make an effort to deal with an uncomfortable issue like preparing for the horror of a nuclear war.) Historically, we only have a few occasions where people were actually nuked. (While hundreds of nukes have gone off in the last 60 years only a few have gone off with people under them.) Obviously, the Japanese experience is the standard by which we still judge nuclear exchanges (as evidenced by statements like “a thousand times more powerful than the bomb at Hiroshima” used when describing current nuclear threats). However, many people don’t know that people in close proximity to the blast, as close as a few hundred yards, survived. These people were in sheltered locations such as heavy concrete/stone buildings, air raid shelters, etc. (Admittedly, overpressure made many of the shelter dwellers into corpses but the shelters themselves withstood the blast.)

In fact, theres a remarkably unlucky (and very small) group of people who have the distinction of being nuked twice…once at Hiroshima and then at the place they were evacuated to – Nagasaki.

The notion that when the bombs fly we’re all as good as dead certainly may have played into the reluctance of government (federal and local..esp. local) to do anything proactive in regard to civil defense. I believe that attitude has changed. Todays civil defense (which is now usually called something like ‘emergency management’) tends to focus on smaller, more likely, disasters…hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, earthquakes, etc. Some places (Texas, most notably) still keeps their dosimeters and chargers current and well-maintained but by and large the task of preparing against nuclear war has fallen to the wayside in favor of preparing for more likely, more manageable, more ‘survivable’ disasters.

My personal belief is that while a full-out ICBM-launching nuclear war in the classic sense is extremely unlikely, the possibility of a nuclear attack is still extremely possible. Those small ‘backpack nukes’ we’re told do, don’t, do, don’t exist; nuclear artillery shells smuggled out of former Soviet countries, etc, etc. A nuclear attack doesn’t have to be a humongous mushroom cloud…a 1991 Toyota Camry with a ‘tactical battlefield nuke’ can take out a nice chunk of metropolis and render even more of it unsafe.

But..back to Alas Babylon…

When I first watched Jericho I thought ‘Cool..its “Alas baylon: The Series”’. And while I think ‘Jericho’ was a good series, I don’t think its nearly as motivational as Alas Babylon. I attribute this mostly to the characters in the book, by virtue of the medium, having more depth and allowing the reader to relate to them more. That said, there are episodes of ‘Jericho’ that do wonders for kicking my motivation back up a notch or two.

Does the book have some flaws? Well, in my opinion, yes. You have to keep in mind that when the book was written things were a bit more..how shall we say…genteel. Even for a subject like nuclear war, theres a few things missing from this book. First and foremost, the violence that we’ve seen in other disasters is largely absent. Theres one episode of classic post-holocaust predators but other than that people, even the ‘lower class’ people, tend to isolate themselves or cooperate for a better tomorrow. Secondly, this book takes place in the south where you still have White Merchants Associations, ‘colored’ housekeepers, and folks that run around saying ‘Yessuh, I’s reckon we does.” I cant imagine that in a post-collaspe situation there wouldn’t be a certain amount of racial violence. Sorry, just not seeing it.

Largely, it’s a somewhat sanitized version of how things might be. Radiation victims have skin lesions and hair falling out. Not a lot of description of vomiting blood, wailing and thrashing from injuries, etc, etc. It’s a PG-13 nuclear war. But…that’s the era this book was written in.

Frank believed in strong national defense and civil defense. Although its not mentioned elsewhere I don’t think he wrote the book as a ‘how to’ manual with a fiction disguise. I think he wrote it as an account of how Joe Average would respond and prepare, correctly and incorrectly, for a nuclear disaster. Im sure he hoped it would make the reader more interested in pushing for a stronger Civil Defense program.

It’s a good book and I do recommend it for those who haven’t read it. Like most of the works in this genre, its good for playing ‘what if…’ and making one think ‘outside the box’, that is to say, making the reader consider things they may not have thought of on their own.

As an aside, I remember the first time I read this book. It was in 1980 when I read it for an extra credit book report assignment. It and Ahern’s pulp ‘Surivalist’ series are probably the two books that most got me pushed in this direction.