Dude, getting stuck in the cold is no joke. The weather here in Montana changes so fast you would not believe it. In the time it takes you to go pretty much anywhere out here the weather can go from clear, sunny, and above freezing (in winter) to blinding, blowing, and scrotum-shriveling cold in less time than it takes you to pass a few exits on the interstate. Getting stuck is some serious business. Death is the second worst thing that can happen to you, IMHO…first worst is losing your feet, hands, ears, and perhaps nose to frostbite.

I tend to err on the side of overkill. Hey, why not? I’m pretty big on looking out for Numbah One. I keep a few of the following in the Box O’ Gear:

• Road flares – Just the usual variety. I vacuum seal them to keep them dry.
• Parachute flares – Just two oughtta do it.
• Hand flares – And two of these
• Smoke device – And one of these. For when you’re really stuck and they’ve got helicopters locating stranded folks.

(Signal mirror? Uhm..no. There’s at least three or four mirrors already monted on the vehicle. Why use a playing-card sized ‘survival mirror’ when I can just yank a larger one off the windshield?)

And those are great for signalling and whatnot but they are rather ‘active’…you need to be waving them around or actively using them. For ‘passive’ signalling, the Streamlight Siege or any other battery-powered LED light with a blinking or strobe function will do. Make sure you’ve got batteries for it, secure it with some paracord so it doesn’t get lost, and set it on the roof of the car as you sit there patiently waiting for the highway patrol or a snowplow to come by.

If you’re just tooling along I-90 you’ll probably not even be out overnight. Someone in some sort of 6-wheel automotive T-rex will come along and ask if you need a ride. (Accept graciously, offer to pay for their gas, and come back and get your vehicle in a day or two.) If you’re traveling on some of the smaller roads or byways of Montana, well, you better err on the side of overkill. You’re going to want road flares, high-intensity strobes, lotsa batteries and anything else thats going to draw attention.

Cell phones are awesome but we all know that there are places where, sometimes, there just isn’t a signal. Don’t count on your cell phone. Let folks know where you’re going and what route you are taking to get there. That last part is a huge deal. And, most importantly, if it looks like icy weather, blowing snow, deathly cold, and that sort of thing – stay home. Why buy trouble? First rule of surviving any disaster: Don’t be there.

(By the way, while looking for images for this post I discovered that Rule 34 applies to cars getting stuck. NSFW here. I..I..have no words.)

I have absolutely no doubt that someone will chime in with “I bought a bunch of tea lights at WalMart for a dollar! You don’t need any yuppie survivalist candle holder!” May be. But there won’t be any awards given for the person who went through a crisis and survived using the cheapest gear. I mean, let’s be realistic…when you need gear in an emergency don’t you want the best quality you can get? Or, put another way, you’re on a sinking ship…would you like the ‘Made In China’ lifejacket that was on sale at WalMart or would you like the USCG-approved, meets-SOLAS-requirements, double-stitched, inspected-once-a-year lifejacket? Thinks fast, both are sitting on the railing in front of you and the water is sloshing around your knees. Which one do you grab? Yeah..I thought so.

The candle lantern is in the Box O’ Gear because, to me, it seems a good choice for when you’re stuck in the snow and cold in a vehicle. It provides light, heat, warmth, and is just generally soothing. Yes, there is a carbon monoxide threat, I suppose, but cracking the window just a tad should cover it. They usually come with a nice length of chain so you can suspend it from your rearview mirror…the nice thing about that is the heat will rise and keep a spot on the windshield clear of ice and snow so you can see what the heck is going on out there.

The reason I prefer the candle lantern over a bare candle (because someone is going to say ‘just get a plumbers candle and a mason jar!’) is that I don’t feel comfortable with a naked flame in a closed environment where it would be too easy to knock the damn thing over. At least with the candle lantern, you can knock it over onto a pile of newspaper shreds and still be safe. Additionally, used with a canteen cup or similar container, you could melt small quantities of snow as needed.

Possibly the difference between a cold and dark night of misery in a stuck vehicle or a safe and reasonably not-unpleasant night. Add wine and a morally-challenged coed to create your own romantic experience.

Sitting in the box is:

• Candle lantern
• Reflector
• Overhead reflector
• Extra candles
• matches
• Stuff sack

I’ve used these candle lanterns and been very pleased with them. They are clearly no substitute for a good LED light in terms of lumens, but the heat and other benefits make it an excellent choice for when you’re stuck in a vehicle. The reflectors are, admittedly, luxuries but they came with the bundle and they do help make the most of the light the candle provides.

A word about the knock offs: don’t. As with any good idea, the Chinese jumped on it and started making their own copies. The ones I’ve seen have sharp metal edges, loose fitting parts, and are generally not something I’d want to trust my safety and comfort to. Spend the extra bucks and get the real deal. Make sure you remove the candle from the lantern to extinguish it…blowing into the lantern to put out the flame will blow wax against the glass and it is a major pain in the ass to remove it.

The stuff sack has enough room for extra candles, matches, cigarette lighter, and any other goodies you want to add. But, really, who cares? If the supplied stuff sack is too small go grab a Crown Royal bag or a small cardboard box. It’s about what works for you.

Like all gear that you think you might need in an emergency, test the stupid thing. Don’t just jam this stuff into your box o’ stuff and think you’re done. Put it together and make sure you know how it works, make sure all the parts are there, and make sure you know what you’re doing with it.

REI or just about any camping store will have these things but for one-stop shopping you may as well swing over to Amazon and just get the whole kit and caboodle.

(Although, honestly, I might rework that to ‘save those worth saving’)

It seems silly to try and recap 2016 since it will always be known for basically just one thing – the presidential election that many people did not see coming. But…here we are..

2016 was a quiet one around these parts. No major events happened and a happy little status quo of electricity, hot water and food was maintained. I call that a victory.

Since it was an election year, the supply of magazines was somewhat improved upon, and very few additions were made to the household armory. (Most notably an HK91.)

Food stores remain relatively unchanged, as none of the long term stuff was used (nor added to), and the short- and mid-term foods were, mostly, replaced as they were used.

Very little in gear was added. A few odds and ends, but nothing remarkable. Right now things are at the point where the only absolute ‘must have’ items (as I see them) are the hideously expensive ones……vehicle, property, etc.

From a preparedness standpoint, 2016 was a good year in the sense that there was no crisis that required using anything that was stored, what was used in normal use was replaced, and a few things were added to. That’s a win as far as I’m concerned.

2017? Who the heck knows at this point. My most fervent hope is political gridlock. But, at this stage, with the players that we have, it’s anyone’s guess whats going to happen.

There’s been much ado in the media lately about some white supremacists/separatists (they’re never clear on which, and there is quite a distinction between the two) north of here who have been putting out leaflets and making threats against a particular demographic (in this case, Jews).

For whatever reason, these kinds of people do pop up in preparedness circles from time to time. A wise man once said [religion/race] is a stupid reason to hate someone..if you take the time to get to know them, really know them, you can find a much better reason to hate them.

I subscribe to that old libertarian axiom about how your right to throw a punch ends at the tip of my nose. In other words, I think you should be able to hate whomever you want, for any reason, as long as you don’t act out against that group. For example, if you don’t like Group X, thats fine…you and your buddies can sit around hating those damn X’ers all day long. Go put on some linens and march around your back forty burning crosses. Choose to hang out with people who aren’t X. More power to ya. You’re free to associate (or not associate) with whomever you like. BUT..the minute you throw a rock through an X’ers window, spit in their face when you see them on the sidewalk, or make threatening phone calls in the middle of the night..well….then you’ve crossed a line and now your business is everyone’s business.

These ‘neo-Nazis’ or ‘White supremacists’ or whatever have every right to not like any group they want…and I won’t tell them they can’t or they shouldn’t. But the minute they start throwing firebombs or shooting up someone’s house…then I’ll be there happily handing AR15s and ammo to the X’ers. And, yes, even the groups that hate me should be allowed to. Shoot, man….you can hate me all you want. Just don’t threaten or try to hurt me. You don’t want me living next door to you? Great..build a fence or put up a wall on the property line. But don’t attack me or my property…then it’s gone past freedom of thought.

Some folks think that if we jump on top of those ‘bad thoughts’ we’ll be able to prevent ‘bad actions’. After all, they’ll say, if someone had shut down Hitler’s rhetoric there wouldn’t have been crematoriums filled with human ashes. May be. But for every person who has hateful thoughts about someone and acts on them there are probably thousands (or tens of thousands) who don’t…and those people usually outnumber the ‘haters’ by a Custer-esque margin. And I don’t subscribe to the belief that ‘if it saves just one life’ justifies thought policing. Additionally, we then get into the philosophical Vietnam of whose thought are ‘hateful’ and whose aren’t. And that is a conversation that is far too prone to end in violence.

Now, having said that, I’ve been blogging for going on fifteen years now. In that time I’ve only had a handful of people come through here and say something that *I* thought was offensive enough to delete. And it wasn’t the content that did it, it was the way it was expressed. My policy since day one has been pretty simple – no profanity (oh, sure, ‘hell’, ‘damn’, and even an infrequent ‘bitch’ [when used as a verb] is okay) and no religion. Other than that, anything goes. And over the years this whole race/religion silliness has pretty much been absent. I like to think that’s because the demographics of the people who pass though this blog tend to be people of good intelligence who realize that something as trivial as race/religion/gender are pretty stupid reasons to want to hate someone. Politics, on the other hand, is a different story…….although I’m fine with people having different political beliefs as long as they don’t try to impose them on me.

In conclusion, I have less of a problem with people ‘hating’ other people than I do with people who want to control or channel who I do or don’t hate. With the former, they’re at least upfront and honest about it…the latter are far more insidious and, when it comes down to it, just as hate-filled, they just cloak it in self-righteousness.

Just my $0.02 on this whole Kalispell ‘hate speech’ nonsense.

Not a lot of information here, but it appears they stayed with the vehicle .

A sheriff’s office official says a man walking in a wooded area in rural Virginia stumbled across a missing New Jersey woman and her great-granddaughter.

Maj. William Knott of the Dinwiddie County Sheriff’s Office says 71-year-old Barbara Briley and 5-year-old La’Myra Briley were still inside their vehicle when the man found them Wednesday. The two had been missing for days.

Knott says the man called 911 and the sheriff’s office responded. He says he has “absolutely no clue” how the Brileys ended up in the secluded area.

State police said earlier that Barbara Briley was flown from the scene to a Richmond hospital.

Knott says La’Myra has been reunited with her family.

The two left New Jersey on Christmas Eve to visit relatives in North Carolina but never arrived. They had last been seen at a gas station north of Richmond.

Could have been the elderly woman was driving and suffered a stroke or heart attack, and that’s why everyone was still in the vehicle. Would also explain why she had to be flown out. Regardless, staying with the vehicle is usually the best choice.

ETA: A slightly clearer description here

I’m fond of saying that if you wind up stranded in your vehicle in any climatic extreme, cold winter or hot desert summer, that you are better off staying with the vehicle than you are trekking off, ill-equipped, to get help. From what I’ve read in the news, I’d say that nine out of ten times staying with the vehicle is the smart choice. I’ve posted plenty of news reports about people who wandered off ‘to get help’ and were never seen alive again. But the key to staying with the vehicle and surviving is to have a certain base level amount of gear to make such a stay more conducive to your survival.

In the land o’ preparedness, we often talk about bugout bags, get home bags, and a handful of other such things. No one really gets too into their ‘stranded in the vehicle’ kits. Maybe they aren’t sexy. The notion of the rugged individualist donning his bulging backpack and setting off to find help is far more exciting than that same rugged individualist wrapping himself up in a blanket, reclining his seat, and reading a copy of ‘Atlas Shrugged’ while waiting for the Highway Patrol to find him.

Since it’s the winter season and this sort of topic is the low hanging fruit of the survival blogging world, I figured I’d go on a bit about what I usually tote around in the winter. Sure, there’s always the usual winter get-me-unstuck gear like a shovel (or two), traction sand, etc. but for actually staying in the vehicle and waiting for help gear…well, here you go:

The container in question is a Pelican 1650. It’s large enough to hold a complete military sleep system and a buncha other gear. The problem with listing the contents of a kit of any kind is that invariably someone will chime in with ‘what about…’ or ‘do you really need….’. So, let’s forestall that by saying that this is an incomplete list of whats in there: sleep system, food ration bars, water packets, complete change of clothes vacuum sealed, candle lantern and accessories, toilet paper, parachute and hand flares, flashlights, spare batteries, knife, pen and paper, a couple thick paperbacks, poncho, water filter, portable radio (takes same batts as flashlight), first aid kit, entrenching tool, backpack, Esbit stove and tabs, canteen and cup, and a few other niceties.

The Pelican case keeps everything protected, tidy, and in one place. I can simply roll it out to the vehicle, toss it in the back, and we’re good to go. The case is rugged, waterproof, crushproof, and because of this I can either leave it in the vehicle or outside the vehicle exposed to the elements and the contents will remain safe and dry. But…suspenders and a belt: any piece of critical gear (warm clothing, electronics, etc.) gets vacuum sealed anyway as an extra layer of weatherproofing. (And this is why having a vacuum sealer is a smart idea even if you never plan on using it to put away bulk pork chops you bought at CostCo.)

Why the backpack? Because, if for some reason you do have to leave the vehicle it would be nice to take as much of that gear with you as possible. When you read about the people who left the vehicle and died, invariably the cause of death was one of two things: hypothermia or dehydration. Being able to take your gear with you lowers that risk factor tremendously.

The logistically-minded of you will think “Hmmm…why not just keep everything in the backpack and that way you’re ready for anything”. Great idea, but unfortunately it wont fit in the Pelican case loaded up, and I very much want the convenience and protection of my gear that is afforded by using the case.

Keep in mind, also, that the things in this case are in addition to the usual stuff-kept-in-the-vehicle…things like road flares, water, flashlight, USB charger, batteries, first aid kit, pioneer tools, etc. (And, yes, there’s a few redundancies.)

In a perfect world, I’d be sitting by the side of the road, after the blizzard has shut down the interstate, tucked safely far enough off the side to avoid crash trajectories from soccer moms in their four-wheel-drive SUVs, sitting in my sleeping bag, reading a book, listening to the radio, awaiting notice that the roads have re-opened and are safe to travel. Worst case, I pull further off the road, fold down the seats, roll out the sleeping bag, and spend a quiet night asleep or playing games on my phone.

I’ll pull some of the stuff outta the case and show you what I carry around in the winter. Your mileage may vary, of course, but it should be entertaining nonetheless.

I was trotting over to some preparedness forum and someone there asked the question “Will this forum slow down now that Trump is elected president?”. The implication, it seemed, was that because Trump won the election we’re all able to slide back to Defcon 4 (or D5 if you’re feeling particularly confident). Where is this coming from? Yes, Hillary didn’t win so the certain doom was avoided, but that doesn’t mean we’re necessarily better off. Let me use an analogy..

You’re walking down the street late at night and a mugger holds you up at gunpoint. As he’s pointing the gun at you and you’re fishing around for your wallet someone steps up behind the mugger and hits him over the head. Now, can you relax and feel that everything is going to be okay? No, of course not…you have no idea if that guy is going to try and mug you as well or if he’s just a good samaritan. All you know is that the immediate threat is gone. Same thing with the election.

I spent far more money than I wanted to in the leadup to the election. But I regret nothing. When the next election rolls around I’ll be buying because I want to, not because I have to.

So, while we’re on the topic, what’s my shopping list for 2017 look like? Well, in terms of thundertoys I’m wanting a few odds n ends. Most notable:

• Mossberg 930 SPX
• Ruger Redhawk 8-shot .357
• Ruger GP-100 .44 Spl. (this makes no tactical sense at all but I have always been a fan of the cartridge.)
• Ruger Precision Rifle in .338 Lapua (Yeah, it’s not even a real thing but I expect Ruger to come out with a magnum length version of the PR very soon.)
• Angstadt Arms PDW-style AR in 9mm for Glock mags
• Ammo

One thing about preparedness, man….there is never a shortage of things to spend money on.

True fact: if you look at the numbers, in terms of victory/losses, during the Revolutionary War you see that Washington only decisively won a few battles. All the rest were either losses or a draw. Washington realized that beating the British in a stand-up fight was not in the cards, so he avoided engagements that he knew would wipe out his army. How is that a recipe for victory? Washington didn’t have to win…he just had to not lose. As long as he still had an army the British would have to keep fighting. And all Washington had to do was ‘prolong the war’ until the British finally got tired of it. It’s the now-standard way of smaller and inferior forces. The technique was best exemplified in Vietnam – the North didn’t have to win…they just had to drag things out long enough that we got sick of the whole thing and quit.

It’s a good thing to remember that, despite it sounding like a cliche, sometimes surviving is a victory. And ‘he who fights and runs away’ really does live to fight another day. So, next time you’re feeling up against the wall try to remember that you don’t necessarily have to win, you just have to survive.

But..uhm….post some really good perimeter sentries on Christmas Eve just in case.