More of the same

thumbnailAnd another one in the safe. I think I may have hit the Magic Number and need to stop picking these things up. At this point I guess I’ll just keep my eyes open for the late versions that had accessory rails.

Gas rotation

I very clearly need to be more diligent about rotating the stored gas. case in point:

thumbnailYup…that’s five-year-old go-juice. It was treated with PRI-G as a stabilizer. PRI-G seems to get the nod over the more entrenched Sta-Bil product. I dunno. You can’t believe everything your read, but PRI-G seems to get more positive comments than Sta-Bil. :::shrug::: Whatever. I use it.

I keep a funnel paracorded to every other gas can since my experience has been that the nozzles for gas cans very seldom work as advertised.

Anyway, five gallons of five-year-old gas in the vehicle….I’m not expecting any problems, but I’ll let you know.

Amusing notice

Kinda amusing, and, of course, quite useless. It’s certainly no legal waiver, and no group of doorkickers is going to stand there long enough to read it, but I like the attitude.

tumblr_ow2rmzkLjw1qhfxapo1_540Interestingly, Googling ‘self defense police wrong house’ turns up a few cases where the homeowner wound up shooting a cop or two and was eventually cleared of wrongdoing. However, fully expect to spend time in jail awaiting trial and spending everything you have.

Anyway….

Entertaining image and I thought I would share.

Article – How to Survive the Apocalypse

In a world where the bombproof bunker has replaced the Tesla as the hot status symbol for young Silicon Valley plutocrats, everyone, it seems, is a “prepper,” even if the “prep” in question just means he is stashing a well-stocked “bug-out bag” alongside his Louis Vuitton luggage in a Range Rover pointed toward Litchfield County, Conn. Here is a checklist for the neo-survivalist preparing for the apocalypse.

There’s a good bit of disdain for folks like you and I in the article, but it is interesting to note that even the idiots are taking notice.

Maxim 50

I love folks who push the fringes by coming up with things like ‘arm braces’ and ‘non-AOW/SBS’ shotguns. And now the folks at Silencerco have a suppressed .50 cal rifle that is legal to buy in all 50 states and that you can even order online. The catch? It’s a muzzleloader. (Can you imagine what the inside of that suppressor is going to look like after a few rounds???)

I heartily applaud this ‘outside the box thinking’. I also fully expect some legislation to be forthcoming to stamp this thing down.

For the first time since the National Firearms Act (NFA) was created in 1934, civilians can enjoy suppressed shooting in all 50 states with SilencerCo’s latest innovation: the integrally suppressed Maxim 50 muzzleloader. In addition, this product can be purchased right now on the web with no regulation (no 4473, no $200 tax stamp, no photographs, and no fingerprints) and be shipped immediately to the customer with few exceptions.

Link – 5 Apocalyptic Realities In A Country That’s Out Of Food

Mostly  out of laziness I haven’t really done any grocery shopping for the last three weeks.  I’ve pretty much just been living off of what is in the freezer and cupboards. And, unsurprisingly, I didn’t even notice it until the other day when I realized that I’ve used about $25 of my monthly grocery budget and haven’t bought anything other than Coke and a half gallon of milk.

I’d mentioned a few posts back that the bargain meat purchasing has led me to have a freezer full of food and that at the end of the month half of whatever is left in the freezer is carried over to the next month and the other half goes into the deep freeze for that rainy day. Well, it’s been three weeks and my freezer is still full of various bits of dead animal flesh. There is easily another few weeks of pork loin, steaks, turkey breast, pork chops, and such sitting in there.

The point? Clearly theres at least a months worth of meat in the refrigerator’s freezer, and it’s nice to be able to blow off grocery shopping and use the money for something else. Also, its a nice reinforcement that the current policy on picking up and tucking away the bargain meats has been working well.

Contrast with this fascinating piece about how in Venezuela, just having a couple mango trees in your yard can make the difference in avoiding starvation….but can also lead to armed men looting your tree for food.

“I have a mango tree … This tree is currently saving my life, but might also get me killed soon.”

That’s Busteq. He’s a middle-class Venezuelan who lives in a nice neighborhood. In short, he’s a lot like many of you, except his country (which has more oil than any other nation on earth) saw its currency go tits-up when gas got super cheap last year. This, combined with almost comical levels of government corruption, has brought their civilization to the brink of collapse.

Ah Venezuela….it’s like a nationwide Katrina experience that just never ends.

It’s nice to think that just the stuff sitting in my kitchen right now has gotten me through almost a month all on its own. And thats just the stuff in the kitchen cabinets. Once I dip into the long-term storage food I’d probably be right at a year or so, at least. Of course, as the link above demonstrates, having food when your neighbors do not is great for keeping you fed and lousy for keeping you safe. This is where the Venezuelan experience differs from what might happen here. (And, if you’ve been reading about the hurricane-ravaged islands in the Caribbean you can read some pretty scary stories about looters and other opportunists running amok.) In this country, assuming youve got your head screwed on straight and don’t think the world is all peace-n-love, the smart prepared individual will have the means to keep his property his.

What’s it like when a prepared survivalist rides out something like the recent hurricanes? Well, our Friend Of The Blog, Harry,  at Self Sufficient Mountain Living sat out the tail end of it and appears none the worse for wear.

It’s an interesting, but very predictable, time in a survivalists life when the gun stuff fades in precedence and the mundane things like food and toilet paper take the spotlight. On the other hand, having been into preparedness in one fashion or another for about thirty years it’s not unreasonable to think that within that time frame I’ve managed to get the gun needs pretty much met.

Anyway…..

Fun little piece about Venezuela and worth a read. Definitely makes you feel like heading to CostCo or SuperWallyworld to stock up. Oh, and before I go, here’s another piece in the same vein from the same source: My Wealthy Country Became A Dystopia Overnight: 6 Realities.

Paratus obligation discharged

A few people were very thoughtful and threw a few bucks in the donation jar and wished me a happy Paratus. ( You do know theres a link there on the right side of the screen that says ‘Bunker Equippage Fund’, right?)

Since the gift-giving paradigm for Paratus requires that when someone gives you a gift and you do not reciprocate:

Unreciprocated gift giving is acceptable if the recipient makes a tremendous expression of gratitude and makes a self-deprecating remark about their own lack of generosity. The giver then agrees with the recipient about their lack of generosity, injects a level of snark or good-natured mild condemnation, and the obligation is then discharged.

(Yes, I am linking to my own blog…the internet equivalent of shouting your own name during sex.)

So, for those who generously threw a few bucks in the hat: Thank you very much. I appreciate every bit of help. I’m sorry I didn’t get you anything..but I’m cheap. I’m so cheap I named myself as the beneficiary in my will. Heck, Im so cheap the suits I wear have been in style four times. I mean, I know money talks but all mine ever says is goodbye!

Gun show blues

Oh merciful Crom, whatever happened to the good gun shows that this region used to produce? I went to the Hamilton gun show and it seemed smaller than ever and there was virtually nothing of note. I did see a cute little Ruger Compact in 7-08 (which is a nice little gun in a nice caliber), an FR-8 (the pinnacle of bolt-action truck guns), and that was about it. Even the usual mishmash of survival-related stuff was absent. Very much not worth the drive, or the six bucks to get in the door.

However, as long as I was in the neighborhood, I hit the local gun shops. Wound up getting a trigger for the project AR. Got it installed, seems to work, but I’ll need a trip to the range this week to confirm it with live ammo. All thats really left is to replace the standard A2 stock with a Magpul PRS, attach a sling of some kind, and thats about it.

As I was heading down the valley I could see that, surprise, the snow has started to fall in the mountains. We’ve had a major weather change in the last couple days. Finally had two days of drizzle, cold, and high-altitude snow….an excellent recipe for getting the fire situation straightened out. The air, while still just a touch hazy, is much better than it has been and I welcome it.

All in all, not a bad day since I got to visit some gun shops, but I still think the quality of local gun shows has gone downhill. I clearly need to start expanding my range and hit the out-of-valley shows and see what theyre like.

Article – Are you prepared for the end of the world as you know it?

Happy Paratus, guys..

In a startling coincidence, the local leftist fishwrapper has this:

There’s a line, though, that most of us don’t care to cross. It’s one thing to stock up on essentials ahead of a blizzard, but what about stashing a military-style backpack by the back door with enough dried food, medical supplies and handgun ammo to last weeks? That’s tinfoil hat territory, the kind of over-the-top survivalist prep reserved for those who have watched Red Dawn one too many times. I’m as big a fan of The Walking Dead as the next nerd, but the zombie apocalypse is pure fiction, no alien invasion is imminent, and I’m only about 60 percent sure we’re headed for a full government collapse. I need a bug-out bag full of waterproof matches and MREs like I need a hole in my right foot, right? At least that’s what the Southern Poverty Law Center would have me believe.

Havent read the article in its entirety yet, but I’m sure it will live down to the Independent’s usual standard of journalism.