It’s under the “I Don’t Know What I’d Do With It, But I Want Them Anyway” category.

I’m not exactly 100% sure what use smoke grenades (or smoke-generating devices) are in a preparedness situation. Oh, sure…from the ‘lost hiker’ perspective it’s nice to have an enormous cloud of smoke wafting through heavy forest canopy making your location more readily apparent to rescuers. Or if you’re in a boat at sea. Now, drop those two scenarios and ….. ?

The last time I heard of anyone outside of the military using smoke to cover a retreat or advance was this guy..and it did not go well for him. I suppose that in some sort of Mad Max world you’d use them to choke people out of buildings or perhaps provide distractions. But, other than that, I’m not really seeing a lot of practical application. Then again, I relly haven’t sat down and wargamed it through completely either.

Regardless….the subject does have some interesting baggage with it.

In the old days, back when this was a free country, you could buy your classic military pull-ring smoke grenades through the mail and at gun shows. They were fun and, no two ways about it, looked cool mixed in with your gear. Paintballers loved em. And, as usual, some scrotally-challenged wonder at ATFE decided that the fuze assembly and/or igniter system fell under the classification of ‘regulated explosive’ and that was the end of the party. (although they are still available on department letterhead or with an ATFE explo license.)

Nature abhors a vacuum and so does the market. A few outfits have stepped in with their own version of ‘pull ring’ smoke grenades. Most notably, these guys. I ordered a few of them the other week, out of curiosity and they arrived a few days ago. I haven’t tried them yet but the videos of them being used seem rather promising. But…they are nowhere near the durability of the military product. For one thing, it’s hard to shake the feeling that this is a firework that has been dressed up with tactial-looking stickers and graphics. The ‘body’ is a heavy cardboard tube..like most fireworks. The degree of weather-resistance and durability of this product would seem to be….mild. As I said, I have no idea what I would do with these things, but if I did think I had a need for them I’d want them to be as waterproof, crushproof, moistureproof, and durable as possible.

To be fair, though…it looks like they generate a nice amount of smoke in a hurry. And..theyre cheap.

Giving us better durability and water-resistance, but a distinct lack of color, are the distress smoke signals available to boaters. I like these. I can usually find them cheap at gun shows, they aren’t about to raise the eyebrows of anyone, and they seem to generate a decent amount of smoke. I could entirely see someone rolling one or two of these down an office stairwell in Katrinaville to dissuade looters from coming up the stairs.

Naturally, there is always a DIY option for these sorts of things. A quick perusal of YouTube, a trip to WalMart, a side trip to Home Depot, and you an pretty much build some amazing, albeit improvised, smoke generating devices on your own.

…and somewhere at Cheaper Than Dirt headquarters, they are readying the pricing algorithms on the website for $100 Pmags.

Quick! Time to take guns and magazines away from the people who didn’t do anything wrong.

Buckle up, kids…it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

ETA: Nailed it.

I was at the campus library here in town and, to my surprise, they had a couple displays about the ‘good old days’ of the Cold War bomb-shelter era.

Interestingly, about twenty years ago, I’d heard some rumours that there was a stash of CD supplies hidden in the machinery level of one of the campus dorms. A sympathetic and equally curious head resident grabbed his keys and we went exploring. Sure enough, on the levels above the elevator machinery were dozens of the old Sanitation Kits and some of the old water barrel kits. This stuff is still out there.

The pamphlets and booklets are quite interesting. Some of them I had not seen before.

One of my favorite places to read about this sort of stuff.

Conspiracy theorists claim a secret bunker has been buried beneath Denver International Airport as the US government prepare for the apocalyspe.

And, they say there’s plenty of evidence to back up their incredible claim.

One video examines several theories, from murals and artwork to secret blueprints, as they seek to prove something suspicious is occurring under the Colorado site.

The DIA has been a swirling dumpster fire of conspiracy theory since they built the thing. To be fair, building an airport with a ‘secret purpose’ makes sense…you have the advantage of air transport, huge swaths of space for storage, a built in security component, communications networks and facilities, large fuel stockpiles, etc.

Really, the only way to solve this one is for someone to ‘get on the inside’ and go spelunking in the lower depths under the place.

Do *I* think there’s some sort of NWOZOGCIACFROMGWTF!!11!!! connection to it? No. The last time .gov built an enormous bunker and camouflaged it to keep it secret was around 1960 when they built the Greenbrier. They managed to keep a lid on it for about 30 years, but that was before the age of cellphones, internet, and flying drones. I’d think that keeping a place that a secret in this day and age is much harder.

But..I’ve been wrong before. Maybe it really is the interstellar JFK airport from ‘Men In Black’. Nonetheless, an interesting article for those of us who like the idea of secret underground facilities and bunkers.