Author Archives: Commander Zero

!!!! Paratus 2020 !!!! The Wuhan Flu Edition

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Happy Paratus, my peeps!

Yes, once again it is that time of year. The backpacks are left by door with care, in hopes the Long Range Recon Gift Squad will soon be there. The water is on the stove for the freeze dried dinner, a Walking Dead marathon is teed up on the bigscreen, and we’re all wearing our favorite combat boots. It’s a Norman Reedus Rockwell Paratus! ( Made even more poignant by virtue of The Current Situation.)

(Everything you want to know about Paratus is at the world-famous Paratus FAQ)

As has become my habit, gifts and cards were sent to a small group of people…mostly people I know IRL, or over years of email/blogging…. however, if you’ve sent me something by snail mail and used your real return address, or you signed up for Patreon and gave me some contact info, you probably got a card this year.

What was this years card? Why, this little ditty:

If you didn’t get a card this year, it’s pretty easy to get on the hit list…. donate something to the blog through Patreon or snail mail and leave me your mailing address. Or, be someone I associate with in real life who I can actually tolerate. Or send me a card as well.

I hope you all have a happy and renumerative Paratus. Did you get cool gear this year? Did you do something special with your fellow survivalists? Did you get chased out of Cabela’s for raising a fuss when they didn’t offer a Paratus discount? Let’s hear about it in comments.

It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad world

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It’s finally reached the point where the evenings are cool enough that I can sleep without a fan going to bring in some night air. Good thing too since the current night air quality can be best described as ‘extra chunky’. There’s a good bit of smoke out there….nothing like the fires back in ’00 (or was it ’01?) but still rather annoying.

Speaking of annoying, I am amazed at what some people are charging for stuff these days. I was cruising the local ArmsList and theres a guy selling rifle primers at $75 a brick. And there’s .223 out there for seventy five cents per round. And I literally saw someone pay ninety cents a round for 7.62×39 steel cased ammo. I cannot imagine what It’ll be like Nov 5 if the Democrats pull off their grand plan.

Me, I’ve got plenty of ammo for my anticipated needs. But….when the natives are restless like this it seems like ‘enough’ really isn’t.

Then, on top of that weirdness, you’ve got the ahole Wuhan Flu nonsense going on…second waves, flattened curves, super spreaders, and all that fun stuff.

But wait, there’s more….’certain groups’ are engaging in ‘civil disobedience’ that most rational people would call ‘rioting’.

And we’re still not done….California and chunks of he west coast are going up in smoke…partially from the usual natural reasons ad, most likely, because of the activites of the denizens of that last paragraph.

I suppose when put all that together maybe $30 to load an AK magazine looks like a reasonable investment.

Like it or not, 2020 is going to be one of those watershed years like 1941, 2001, 2005, and all the other years that had a Big Event that colored things for years and years to come. Pay attention to what’s going on because thirty years from now people will be asking you ‘what was it like’ the way we do that to Pearl Harbor and concentration camp survivors.

Send it

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Paratus cards (and, in some cases, gifts) went out today. There are a few people whom I do not have current snail mail addresses for and am waiting to hear back from.

Didn’t get a Paratus card but want to be like the cool kids and get one next year? Easypeasy: either bribe me into it with a subscription to Patreaon or an Amazon gift card, or interact with me on a more-than-superficial level. Also, if you’re a blogger and you pimp my blog a bit…that works too.

Anway…cards are on the way and I’ll post a picture pf the cards Friday on Paratus. In the meantime, get your last minute shopping done. And be sure to ask your favorite freezedried/ammo/gear vendor if they have a Paratus sale, and if not, why not? (And when they say “Because i never heard of it” you can send ’em here.)

Kalispell Gunshow

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First gun show, for me, since March and it was such a welcome experience…………

Five bucks to get in the door, masks optional (yay!), and they were temperature scanning everyone who came in the door.

Lotsa tables, big crowd, zero bargains. People see where the money is at and the usual assortment of plinkers and hunting guns was severely outnumbered by the ‘assualt weapons’. Apparently, Black Rifles Matter. Saw a lot of stuff that I don’t normally see at shows including Uzi, Valmet, DSA Fal, HK, PTR, Arsenal, Sig, and pretty much every other outfit that ever made something that took a 30-round mag. Come to think of it, the only thing I didn’t see were Mini-14’s. Although I did find a Mini trigger assembly that mysteriously seemed to have had its disconnect sear ground off. Funny that.

Ammo was plentiful if you had the money. A lot of money. Same for mags.

And, for the first time in several years, I ran into Johnny Trochman..he of Militia Of Montana fame. I think I spoke to him for about ten seconds before he started in with New World Order plans that were being leaked. Whatever. We both wear tinfoil hats, it’s just a matter of whose got the shiny side in and who has the shiny side out. But, he thinks of me as a like-minded soul so he gave me a double handful of parachute flares to tkae with me after I bought some smoke cannisters and other goodies from him.

Things I almost bought? Blued 4″ GP100 for $500, looked hard at the Valmet in .223 but figured logistics would be easier with a 7.62×39, another Ruger PC Charger came close to coming back with me but I managed to keep my resolve. I discovered MagPul is making polymer replacement lowers for the Hk-series ‘Navy’ (plastic) lowers and came close to getting one but, again, managed to keep a cool head.

Also ran into a few people I knew, which is always fun.

All in all, a really good show….a lot of tables, good turnout.

Paratus approaches!

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Next Friday is Paratus…get your shopping done now and avoid the rush!

I’ll be dropping cards/gifts in the mail next Monday. As always, if you want to get your buddy Zero a little something for the holiday you can find the details here.

One other thing I’m exceptionally excited about: Gun shows! There are finally some gun shows going on around here. First ones since March. I’ll be up in Kalispell this weekend getting my fix.

Thought for the day

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Every so often you read about people who let their dogs run loose and those dogs start terrorizing neighborhoods and chasing down deer. These are, for the most part, “good dogs” who, once they start hanging out in groups, tend to let the pack mentality make them do things they otherwise would not. I suspect rioters are the same way. Put twenty college kids, who would normally shrink from violence, into a group and watch them egg each other on to things that they never woulda had the cajones to do on their own.

Thats why any group of people is more dangerous than a single person. Not because of the numbers, but because with others encouraging or ‘backing him up’ someone is more likely to behave in a manner that they would not have before. A rioting mob is an example of the ‘herd’ mentality at its worst.  A person is smart, people are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals…and you know it.

I’d be curious to see if the election, regardless of how it turns out, convinces a lot of otherwise peaceful people to be less-than-peaceful because ‘everyone is with me on this’.

I expect plywood sales to explode in early November.

.357 ammo security

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I have a lovely stainless GP-100 that I consider to be my ‘primary’ .357. That is to say, of the half a dozen in the safe it is the one I take with me nine times out of ten when I need a .357. I got it from Caleb  years ago after he stopped using it for competition. Its been slicked up a bit and shoots rather nicely. (Trivia: serial number ends in 1337 so…its my Leet gun)

A few weeks ago I stumbled into a decent deal on 2600 158gr. JHP bullets. Before I load up 2600 rounds of .357 I’d like to find a load that shoots well in my gun. So, off to the range today to try out a few loads. Best results? 8.0 grains of the old favorite, Unique. On a side note, I find Unique to be the most versatile powder for reloading…if you have a can of Unique you can load pretty much any pistol cartridge.

Anyway, the 8.0 of Unique shot controlably , ejected cases cleanly, and shot a lovely group in the 2″ orange sticker at 25 yards. Seems like a winner. So…next step is to set up the DIllon RL1050, run some brass through the tumbler, fill up a buncha primer pickup tubes, and get ready to crank out an apocalypse worth of .357.

I stuff fifty rounds into some cardboard boxes I got from repackbox.com. Theyre smaller than the usual plastic boxes which lets me pack more into an ammo can. I have them for pistol calibers and rifle calibers…pretty handy.

Oh, and why .357? After all, I have a lovely (and, it appears, rare) Ruger .44 Mag. Well, the .44 Mag is for when I’m out wandering the boonies and am worried about the four-legged. A .44 Mag is a bit of overkill for the two-legged and I really prefer the controlability of the .357 vs the .44 for fast DA shooting. And I doubt very highly that there are any two-legged that would fall to a .44 that wouldn’t fall just as DRT to a .357. ( I know, some retired badge will chime in about how when he was a rookie they encountered some drugged up monster that took five 12 ga. slugs to the head and they finally had to put him down with a Carl Gustaf.) But for normal day-to-day situations, I think the .357 is about as good as you can get in a revolver cartridge for when you’re carrying a full-size pistol.

 

Prescience

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2020 is approaching. I am dreading it. Historically, years that were divisible by five have been very bad for me. I expect 2020 to have no shortage of kick-to-the-jimmies episodes.

Man, I have a talent for understatement. Historically, years divisible by five have been really bad ones for me. While 2020 has (so far) been annoying on a bunch of levels I like to think I have (thus far) weathered it better than many folks. ‘Course, the year ain’t over yet….