Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.
I should probably turn this into a banner for the page header……….
Author Archives: Commander Zero
Wanna try your luck at finding a product online for me?
Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.
So, I was thinking about post-apocalyptic menu planning and I was ruminating about breakfast. It is, as they say, the most important meal of the day. Now, while I can appreciate the nutritional and caloric benefits of grain-based diets I am not prepared to go through the apocalypse as a grazer. I need meat. So….what are some traditional breakfast meats that lend themselves to long-term storage? The most obvious is everyone’s favorite – canned bacon. Plenty of it out there and it’s definitely on my list. But, while I enjoy bacon as much as the next guy what I really like for meat at breakfast time is corned beef (or roast beef) hash. Fortunately, this is also easily available in cans. Here’s the problem – most of this stuff is available in the #303-size cans…which is around 15 oz. I might eat half of that at breakfast and if no one else is going to have any then half a can of hash winds up being wasted since, presumably, there’s no refrigeration in this apocalypse. Ok, maybe there’s a way around that. Sure enough. Hormel (who makes the hash that I rather like) does offer their product in the small pop-top ‘single serving’ size. Awesome! As I perused their website to see if they had the roast beef hash available in that small can as well, I came across this promotional photo:
As you can see, there’s the convenient single-serving pop-top can up front. Nice, right? But..wait..are those…???? Yup, single serve ‘retort pouches’ there on either side of this family portrait of dead animal flesh. So, now it becomes interesting. See, while the small cans are good I would really like to have some of the retort pouches as well…they’ll travel nicely, fit MRE heaters, and should be a bit lighter and perhaps more durable (freeze/thaw cycles) than the can.
And, of course, that’s when my internet shopping experience fell apart. I can not find any place carrying the bloody things. Now, I’ve got pretty good Google-fu skills…I can find an ex-girlfriend or my kindergarten teacher like that :::snaps fingers:::. But…I’m pulling nothing but zeroes in my search for this product. I suppose it’s possible that it was a limited-time offering or an experimental packaging that they never moved into mass production…but if it’s out there, I want it.
So, my friends….I’m going to continue searching but if any of you out there wanna take a swing at this and find me a US source for this stuff (I found one in Japan. Useless.) I would appreciate it. Leave a link in comments if you come up with anything.
ETA: Yes, I know I can contact the company. Yes, I did that. But Im an instant gratification kinda guy and who knows how long it takes them to answer their email.
Link – Oatmeal on dogs
Article – $7 Million In Gold Bars Found In Reclusive Man’s Home Month After He Died
Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.
Well, the good news is that this guy was discreet enough that no one suspected he had Fort Knox in his basement. The bad news is, no one he cared about was able to come and get it before the .gov caught on to it.
Anyone else kinda get reminded of ‘Second Hand Lions’ by this?
Stocking up
Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.
Well, it isn’t like food prices are going down, right?
One of the local supermarkets has ben running some pretty good sales over the last week or so. Prices that were just too good for me to pass up. So, when they have Green Giant canned vegetables marked down to $0.39/can wouldn’t you stock up too?
Food prices are only going up, folks. And, if you think that isn’t the case because your favorite product is still the same price as it was six months ago, take a really good look at it….I’ll bet you it’s less product at the same price. In economics we call that ‘a price increase’.
While I certainly have food socked away for the zombie apocalypse, I also have food socked away to avoid getting screwed at the checkout counter. Don’t think it makes a difference? Try this experiment sometime….head down to your local grocery store and price a 1# bag of plain, white rice. Now head down to WalMart or CostCo and price a 25# or 50# bag of the same rice. Do a little math and come up with a price-per-pound. That difference that youre seeing is a pretty good representative sample of why it pays to buy in bulk, shop around, take advantage of coupons and read those annoying flyers in your Sunday paper.
$40 billion a month to buy distressed mortgage-backed securities and that money has gotta come from somewhere…and when that finally catches up to us you’re gonna see that thity-nine cents for a can of vegetables was a bargain compared to the price your going to pay later.
Article – Colorado Hiker Who Abandoned Injured Dog Relinquishes Custody
Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.
Just so. Saves me the trouble of finding someone to rough this guy up.
His BS excuse:
And yet, thats exactly how the dog was rescued. The rescuers retort:
I can understand having to leave the dog behind. I really do. But what is utterly beyond redemption is that this guy’s efforts to retrieve his dog did not extend past a few phone calls. Dude, I could be anesthetized, lobotomized, and deep-frozen and you would still have to break my legs to keep me from gearing up, shanghaiing some friends, making every superhuman effort possible and try to retrieve. my. dog.
This isn’t over. This guy needs to be on some sorta blacklist where if anyone ever sees him with a dog he gets a ride in the back of a police car.
Article – Wildlife agents kill black bear after attack on camper in Bob Marshall
Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.
Pepper spray is not the panacea that some would have you think it is. Then again, neither are bullets. I’ve only come across bears a couple times when I’ve been out fishing or hunting. Once, I came across a cub standing in the middle of the logging road at which point every sense went on alert asking “where’s momma bear?”. I was a bit undergunned that time since all I had was my P35 with me. Second time was when I was quietly sitting on the side of a hill and saw a black bear come running across my field of view, follower a few moments later by my hunting buddy running after it. Apparently he liked to chase black bears because if you got the running downhill, their butt end would eventually flip over their head and they’d go cartwheeling down the hill. Whatever. I was a little better armed that time with a FAL.
Sometimes bear spray works, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes bullets work, sometimes they don’t. Play it safe and cover all the bases.
True story: I met the guy who developed the Counter Assault bear spray. He’s the guy in the promotional literature with blood all over his head from being mauled only moments before the picture was taken. Back then the stuff was sold as ‘pepper spray’ and the words ‘bear repellent’ on the can had been crossed out. I asked why and was told that to sell it as pepper spray for use against people was perfectly cool, but to market it as bear repllenet you had to do studies to show that it gave no lasting injuries to the bear. Go figure.
The apocalypse will never look this good
Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.
Article – Gun Sales Hinge on Obama Re-Election
Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.
Old news, man. This stuff is as predictable as the seasons. Election year = article about Americans buying more guns.
But…let’s go off the track for a second and play ‘what if’. If you look at, say, the last 75 years of gun legislation as a whole you can definitely see a trend where the pool of ‘permitted’ firearms and firearms owners gets smaller and smaller. Obviously, there’s only a certain level of restriction that can be approached before public sentiment becomes politically unmanageable. Things like machine guns, which were heavily regulated around 70 years ago, caught another hit when they were prohibited from being manufactured for anyone except military and law enforcement. (Which, naturally, drove a $400 Uzi purchased in 1984 into being an $8000 Uzi 25 years later.)
The 1994 Assault Weapons ban was about as close as we’ve seen to a stroke-of-a-pen ban on certain styles of firearms. If nothing else, the AW ban of ’94 gave us a glimpse of what a future ban (or obscenely prohibitive regulation process) would look like.
Obviously, the biggest thing, short of banning the guns themselves, would be a ban or regulation against ‘high capacity’ (whatever that means) magazines. Unlike last time, there probably wouldn’t be a grandfather clause for mags made before the ban.
Another import ban would be easy to achieve using ATFE’s notorious ‘sporting clause’ rule. Guys like SIG, HK, FN, Saiga, etc., would either have to move their manufacturing to the US or drop their product line. This was already done back in the late ’80s which is why an HK91 costs $3000.
Having trimmed the supply of magazines, and cut off the flow of imported guns, domestic manufacturers will ramp up production of the AR-15 since everyone is making one. Limited to a ten-round (or less) magazine, most folks will have no problem coming up with old GI mags. However, domestic production will probably have to go back to the no flash suppressor, no bayonet lug, no pistol grip designs. Existing guns probably will be grandfathered in because of the sheer numbers and because no one wants to be the person to start the legendary ‘door to door gun confiscations’ that the Alex Jones crowd have been yelling about. A new firearms classification, like they have in Canada, may come into being with evil black rifles being regulated like suppressors or SBR’s – intrusive licensing and controls.
Let’s look back at a reasonable timeline…something that will fit into most of our lives. Let’s look back thirty years. In 1982 full-auto machineguns were still being made for civillian use, you could buy HK, FN, Steyr, Uzi, etc. carbines all day long. Buying a handgun was as simple as filling out a one-page yellow sheet at the gun counter and walking out the door with it. No place in the US, as far as I can tell, had a ban on magazines holding a certain number of cartridges. Within a few more years you’d be able to buy drum-fed semi-auto shotguns, cases of cheap AK ammo for $85/case, SKS rifles for $75, and all the cheap Chinese ammo you wanted. And that was all within most of our lifetimes ago. So, yeah, things can change pretty dramatically in a short time.
Most folks will calmly point to the Heller decision and say that they have nothing to worry about. Interestingly, the guys making the new laws will point to the Heller decision and say the same thing. With established precedent in the form of the various Gun Control Acts, your right to own a firearm will still exist, it’s just that your choices will be kinda slimmed down.
Now, let’s drop back into reality for a moment….do I really think that this sort of thing will happen? Absolutely. I have 100% certainty it will happen. I am as certain of it as I am of the sun rising tomorrow. But I don’t know when it will happen. I don’t see it happening anytime ‘soon’. Within my lifetime, assuming I live to be around 80, absolutely. A law changed here, a rule changed there, all over the course of twenty or thirty years. But do I believe that something like I just described will happen in the next four years of an Obama second term? Nope. I believe it’s possible, and I believe that some aspects of it might be trotted out, but do I believe the whole grandiose disarmament plan will occur within the next four years? Nope.
But, since I believe it will happen someday, I’d like to be prepared for it. So, while the stuff is still available, I buy what I can.
Sales. camo II, QE3
Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.
Well, the local Kmart closes for good this weekend. I figured I’d head over there and check to see if there was anything left I couldn’t live without. As it turns out, whatever was left was knocked down to 50-60% off, but the things I was after..first aid supplies…were long gone and all that remained were made-in-China medical supplies that I was in no way going to acquire.
I figured that the good stuff would be gone before this point so Im glad I stocked up when it was 37% off.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
As some folks pointed out to me, not all the digital camo was an uninspired flop. Apparently the Army digital camo is the one just about everyone agrees doesnt quite hold water. The other branches’ patterns seem to be meeting with different results.
For those of you who have an interest in camo and it’s development around the world, here’s a link to a resource you might like: kamouflage.net
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
QE3? The .gov is promising to spend $40 billion a month to by mortgage-backed securities in order to decrease unemployment. Did I read that right? I’m no economist but I’m having a tough time seeing the relationship between underperforming mortgage-backed securities and unemployment. Are jobs somehow not being created because banks and other institutions are holding a security that is underperformng? I’m not sure exactly how that works. As I see it, the only way banks affect unemployment is by affecting the availability of capital for use by businesses. Since the Fed has kept interests rates so low that banks can borrow money at virtually no cost, how can any bank not have the capital to provide to businesses to create jobs?
And while I may not understand where the correlation is between mortgage-backed securities and unemployment, I can understand that .gov is going to be getting that $40 billion to spend every month from…where? Oh, thats right….they have a printing press.
I wonder if this explains gold and silvers interesting price changes as of late.