Author Archives: Commander Zero

Range time, decision matrix in gear selection

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Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.

Well, I woulda posted yesterday but I was up to my elbows trying to install a new gas range in the kitchen. For the mount of money the bloody thing cost you would think that they’d send couplers that were the correct size <Belushi> but noooooooooo!</Belushi>. Instead, after sitting on my tuchas for most of the day awaiting that “we’ll be there in a half hour” delivery  mantra, I had to make the obligatory two or three trips to Home Depot to finally finish the stupid thing. On the bright side, the house didnt blow up so I guess I used enough pipe dope. Either that or it’s all pooling in my basement waiting for the hot water heater to kick in and put my house into a low earth orbit.

So, back to our regularly scheduled somewhat on-topic content………

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I found this old post at ITS Tactical about price vs. value in choosing critical gear. I was especially interested by this statement:

Your brain is programmed to NOT do decision matrices. You read that right, the human brain is actively designed not to do that. Instead your brain wants to use pre-determined neural patterns to influence your decision; it does NOT want to list out positives, negatives, and mitigations. So we have to beat it. How? The decision matrix. List out all of the needs you previously defined in columns on the top. Next, list out all of the products in rows going down the left. The fun begins by ranking, numbering, or otherwise quantifying the ability of the researched products to meet the pre-defined needs.

And then theres a sample of such a decision matrix which is quite fascinating. Anyway, I recommend reading the whole post. While I appreciate saving money as much as the next guy there’s a hard truth: for the stuff that may mean the difference between life and death, going with the bargain basement stuff might be unwise. Go read, it’s a great post.

 

Upgrades

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Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.

One of the ‘home defense’ guns we keep around is an AR carbine. Why not, y’know? If something goes thump in the night you may as well respond to it with an overwhelming advantage. Since it’s presumed that most bad things happen at night, it’s a Bushy Dissipator that had a cheesy clamp-on plastic bracket to allow me to affix a Surefire Scout light to the side of the A2-style forend. It works, but it’s a little ghetto and not as high-quality and efficient as I’d like.

So, I picked up the SureFire Millennium the other day and I figured I may as well upgrade the carbine. I’ll rotate the older parts down to some of the standyby/backup ARs. Problem was, the usual A2 handguard doesnt have any mounting points for, well, anything. So I trekked back to the gun show and picked up a Magpul MOE rifle-length forend and a section of long rail to mount to it. (And, let me say, I freakin’ hate removing AR handguards. I can think of no other rifle that makes removing the handguards such a tremendous pain in the ass.) While I was there, I also picked up the Magpul illumination kit. See, normally you just rubber band/velcro/tape your lights tape switch to the handguard. It works, but it isnt neat and tidy. This little kit makes the tape switch into an integral part of the forend.

TPIWWP, so:

Although, really, most of the time I’ll pick up the G19 w/ tactical light if I have to go investigate something…but it’s nice to have options. I suppose its the difference between investigating something going ‘thump’ and something going ‘THUMP!’. (Like, say, the sound of car doors slamming and multiple sets of feet storming up the porch steps…at which point, yeah, the G19 would probably get passed over for the AR. [although the tweaked out 870 might come to hand.])

Anyway, it was a pleasant enough gun show and it gave me the chance to do some upgrades, so I’m pleased.

Missoula Fairgrounds Gun Show

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Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.

Ah, the people you meet at gun shows. Headed over to the local gun show today with the intention of Not Buying A Damn Thing. Didn’t quite go as planned.

Found a gentleman, probably in his fifties, sitting at  a table full of misc.  gear….lotsa webbing, pouches, some Surefire stuff, ACOG, older gen. GPS, etc, etc. He had a military look to him…you know, short hair, large and stout but not really fat. We got to chatting as I was examining his stuff. Turns out he was a contractor who was getting out of the biz after spending eight years in Iraq. Yeah, whatever….anyone can say they were an ‘operator’ in Iraq. And then he pulled up his iPad and showed me pictures of him in some sandy environ shooting full-auto stuff….and the footlockers he had all his gear in were marked Unity Resource Group, a ‘private military company’. So, I guess he walked it as he talked it.

Anyway, he had some very cool pieces of gear and I couldnt help but get some goodies. Picked up a bunch of Blackhawk and Paraclete magazine pouches in desert and OD for $5 ea. Picked up a SureFire Millennium Weapon Light for $150, which was an ok deal. But the deal that really had me scratching for a way to make it happen was one of these (Vertical Foregrip LED WeaponLight ) for $300 and , man, I wanted that. But, alas, no way to make it happen without some amazingly bad consequences. So I consoled myself with what I had gotten already and moved on.

Not much else at the show jumped out at me, but it was nice to see the usual familiar faces. Main topic of conversation, other than the election, was how just a week ago it had been 80 degrees and where the heck is the heat in this building?

Illustrations

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Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.

Take a look at these images and just study them for a minute. Examine the expressions, the details, and, most importantly, the feeling that is conveyed by them. Here you go, I’ll wait:

Think they have anything in common? Obviously, they’re all featuring young women who appear to be in vulnerable situations. All imply that there is a change in the season coming (as shown by the falling leaves and snow), and the women appear to be..shall we say….not exactly hard workers. The first woman appears to be a courtesan, or perhaps a dancing girl, who is vulnerable and helpless now that the music has stopped and the reality of winter is approaching. Same for the second and third girl, evidenced by her mandolin…ill-clothed and ill-prepared for the coming winter she clutches her mandolin and hopes for the best.

Follow that up with this bit of artwork:

Another girl, with a mandolin, standing at the threshold of what appears to be a decently provided-for house where the woman of the house looks upon her disdainfully. Have you figured out what all three of these paintings (admittedly, the last three moreso than the first) represent? They are all artistic interpretations/representations of the parable of The Ant And The Grasshopper. The grasshopper, as we recall, fiddled away the summer as the ant worked hard in preparation for the winter. When the seasons changed and winter came blowing, the grasshopper was (depending on your version of the story) left to beg the from ant to survive, or in the more classic cases he dies from his lack of foresight. These bits of artwork convey that story by putting human faces on the characters. The girl with the instrument is the grasshopper who, having whiled away the productive summer in song and dance, has found herself caught in the cold and is not able to fend for herself.Left in the cold, without the aid of the ant, she’ll surely perish.

I share these because every so often I stumble across images on the internet that evoke feelings in me that keep me focused and driven when I get a little complacent and start thinking “Ahhhh..this is good enough. We’ll be okay.”  I find them to be good reminders of what I should be doing and why. The Grasshopper one I’ve been aware of for a while. Here’s one I stumbled across on the internet yesterday:

From the caption I found, this is a six-year-old boy in Austria in 1946 who has just received a new pair of shoes from the International Red Cross. You can see the detail of the shoes on his feet and then contrast that with the absolutely unbridled joy on his face and the way he clutches the new shoes to his chest. Six years old and the thing that makes him happy beyond measure is new shoes…at a time in his life when all he should be thinking about is toys, games, hanging out with his friends, and doing kid stuff. If that image doesn’t make you wanna go stock up a few more things in the basement I dunno what would.I don’t ever want to be in a situation where a new pair of shoes, a hot meal, a warm blanket, or anything like that becomes so scarce a commodity in my life that when I finally get it I become this overwhelmed with joy. My goal in life is to find things like that to be dull and unremarkable because they are always available and present in my life.

I think I’d like to get a print of that second and third painting, though.

No tag for this post since ‘art interpretations’ aren’t something I expect to be posting about very often.

Snow, Jarbox, Coke increase

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Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.

Well, it went from 75-80 degree days to snow like *that* [snaps fingers]. Guess it’s time to pull out the cold weather gear and do all the ‘winter is almost here’ stuff.

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The wife brought this product – Jarbox – to my attention. Definitely one of those ‘why didnt I think of it’ kind of products. I figured if you had to transport canning jars you could just get some foam pipe insulation, cut it to length, and make little beer cozies for each bottle. This seems handier, although a good bit more expensive. I’ll have to see if theres some sort of discount program available or something. Be nice if they had it in a size to accommodate pint jars as well.

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I don’t have a lot of self-destructive vices…I dont drink, smoke, do drugs, etc. My biggest bad-for-my-health vice is that I suck down a few cans of Coke every day. Okay, maybe more than a few…probably about…mmmm….five or six a day. So when we go grocery shopping I pay close attention to the price of the little red cans of death. For quite a while now the best price I could find was $0.27/can at either WalMart or CostCo. Since both places had the same price I figured that was about the best price they were going to get from the company. Went up to CostCo the other day and, surprise, it was now $0.31/can. Headed over to WallyWorld and it was also $0.31/can there as well. Obviously the new floor price was $0.31….a 15% increase. Why the increase? Price of corn syrup going up, perhaps? Whatever. The point is that a 15% increase in the price of *any* grocery product is worth standing up and taking notice of. True, this only comes out to about a $0.24/day increase in my drinking habits but that translates into $7.20/month…which is about the cost of a case of Coke. In short, I’m paying for an extra case of Coke per month but not getting it.

I expect these sorts of revelations about groceries to continue as our economic …turbulence…continues. This is why, folks, you gotta make every dollar count.

Followup to: Stay with the vehicle

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Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.

May 08, 2011 I posted about this unfortunate couple.

Succinctly, an older Canadian couple gets stuck in the middle of nowhere. Husband goes off on foot to get help and is never seen again. Wife stays with the vehicle and is found alive seven weeks later. My prescient comment:

I’m going to say that the odds of finding the husband alive are absolutely nil. In fact, I’ll be surprised if they find a body within the next few weeks. Probably be one of those cases where they have to wait until hunting season when some hunter finds it.

I was, of course, right. Behold:

ELKO, Nev. • Two hunters found the remains Saturday of a Canadian man who was stranded in remote northern Elko County in March 2011 along with his wife, the Elko County Sheriff’s Office reported Sunday in a news release.

I’m a bit surprised they even found a body at all. Lotta space out there for a guy to go missing…especially when the local fauna scatter the bones all over the place.  If I had to guess, I’d say cause of death was likely hypothermia. I’d be interested in knowing how far he got from the car…and, I’m sure they’ll say the body was found only a half mile from a resort hotel or a pay phone or some other thing that woulda saved him.

Equip your vehicle and stay with your vehicle. That’s the lesson.

Gear – Estwing tomahawk

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Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.

Tomahawks are one of those niche specialty pieces of gear that either make you a forward-thinking outside-the-box kinda guy or show you to be far too immersed in zombie movies for your own good.

I’ll ignore the utility, practicality, likelihood of need, and a few other criteria about why you would want a tomahawk and instead simply link to the bloody things:

ESTWING BLACK EAGLE TOMAHAWK

Nylon Vinyl Shock Reduction Grip®

American-made Black Eagle Tomahawk Axes are designed for sportsmen and military professionals. The lightweight design makes it easy to carry and with Estwing’s Shock Reduction Grip for comfort and durability. Black Eagle tools are perfectly balanced and weighted, and made to last. American forged in one piece out of genuine American steel.

Estwing makes some nice stuff and I really like the all-metal construction. However, I would imagine that when the apocalypse happens and youre knee-deep in the middle of it, your needs for a chopping implement are more along the lines of cutting cable, chopping debris, busting windows, prying doorjambs and that sort of thing rather than getting your Daryl Dixon on and opening up zombie brainpans. To that end, I found this interesting link over at Zombie Squad: Converting an Estwing into a Tactical Tomahawk.

Nice looking and probably a bit sturdier than the other model.

On the other hand, if youre looking for a tomahawk for getting all Mel Gibson-y on some Redcoats, well the lighter, newer, version is probably a better choice to keep from tiring out quickly as you hack through someones vertebra.

I do find that a very small hatchet or ‘pack axe’ can be handy in the boonies when out hunting or what not. Gerber makes some very lightweight stuff, but I’m rather taken with this Swedish one: Mini-Hatchet… expensive, but I like to think that in this case it’s a reflection of the quality of the product. This would be a nice one to have in my pack for disassembling deer.

Anyway, I figured some of you might find the recent addition to Estwing’s product line interesting and figured I’d share. Big shout-out to my buddy on Facebook who pointed me in the direction of this new offering from Estwing.

Those “I have a friend…” warnings

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Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.

He said “let me give you a tip, and take this seriously. Do not go anywhere far from home between now and November. You will not be able to get back home if you do.”. That’s all he could tell me, as I tried to get more detailed information from him by asking questions. He rushed me off the phone as if he was telling me something he shouldn’t be. I was pretty stunned at what I just was told. This gentleman has never acted like this before and is far from a so called “conspiracy nut-job”.

If you do any frequent traveling around the preparedness blogosphere, you eventually come across this sort of nonsense from time to time. (Yes, nonsense. Im being judgemental.) Almost always these things follow a format that looks like this:

“I have a [friend/buddy/relative/coworker/sex partner] who works in the [military/police/FBI/Homeland Security/UN/banking industry/FEMA], and they told me that [soon/before the election/after the election/during the holiday] there will be [civil disorder/martial law/invasion/economic collapse/currency exchange/declaration of war/terrorist act/postponed elections] and that all concerned patriots should [stay home/gear up/stock up/get in their bunkers]. I’ve known this person for years and they would never say anything about this unless it was 100% true! You have been warned!”

All that is missing is “if you really want to save America you’ll email this to all your friends and Like it on Facebook. And Microsoft will give everyone $5!”

Now, let’s look at this critically for a minute. Let’s say you really do know that, for example, on New Years Eve the .gov is going to declare martial law because they have inside information that Al Anon Al Roker Al Qaeda is going to pop a nuke in NYC. You know it with 100% certainty…you saw the plans, you saw the warnings, you even saw the guys planting the nuke under Madison Square Garden. It’s a done deal, guaranteed to happen.

So, why would you tell people and remove anything that could give you a shred of credibility? I mean, if you really believe in what is about to happen, and you really want to warn people, wouldnt you say “Hey! I’m Col. Joe Schmoe of NORAD, and we know there’s gong to be a nuclear war tomorrow! Here’s a link to classified intel proving it. Heres a link to the foreign news media thats slowly uncovering the plan. Heres a link to a real major media outlet covering the mysterious departure of everyone in Washington. Heres a picture of me standing in front of the Big Board holding a sign that reads ‘GET IN YOUR BUNKERS NOW!’.” and not care about losing your job or being jailed since, if you really were correct, we’re all going to be living in Mad Max world in the next 48 hours?

Succinctly: if you really do have info about crap like this, why do you care if people know who you are for broadcasting it? Are you saying that the lives of millions of people aren’t more important than you keeping your job?

Listen, if I knew that the Chinese were gonna nuke our military, invade California, and sweep eastward in Red Dawn fashion and telling you this was gonna cost me my job guess what….I’d tell everyone who would listen, back it up as best I could and take the unemployment checks.

When someone makes one of these statements and actually puts their name, career and credentials on the line along with even some fairly credible evidence then I’ll give it some weight. Otherwise it’s nothing more than the preparedness version of “I am Dr. Mugato Timbawawa of the Burkino Faso. A client of mine has left me $20,000,000 of money to my self. If you will help me move it from my country I will give you half……”

Books – ,Rawles’ new book

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Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.

I was going to purchase a copy of ,Rawles’ new book the other day,( Founders: A Novel of the Coming Collapse ), but am seeing some not-so-good reviews on Amazon. Has anyone read it yet and can tell me if it’s worth shelling out the greenbacks? I enjoyed his first book and was hoping he might catch lightning in a bottle again.