Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.
Hmmm…we’ll see how long this lasts. This was a good opportunity to buy and I took advantage of it as best I could. (Too much so, if you believe the complaining of my dealer who feels I’ve robbed him and keep him in penury.)
I’m not 100% that it won’t dip back below $30, but I’m holding off on any more purchases for a week or so to see where it goes.
Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.
For patients and pharmacists in financially stricken Greece, even finding aspirin has turned into a headache.
Mina Mavrou, who runs a pharmacy in a middle-class Athens suburb, spends hours each day pleading with drugmakers, wholesalers and colleagues to hunt down medicines for clients. Life-saving drugs such as Sanofi (SAN)’s blood-thinner Clexane and GlaxoSmithKline Plc (GSK)’s asthma inhaler Flixotide often appear as lines of crimson data on pharmacists’ computer screens, meaning the products aren’t in stock or that pharmacists can’t order as many units as they need.
“When we see red, we want to cry,” Mavrou said. “The situation is worsening day by day.”
This part is especially interesting:
The reasons for the shortages are complex. One major cause is the Greek government, which sets prices for medicines. As part of an effort to cut its own costs, Greece has mandated lower drug prices in the past year. That has fed a secondary market, drug manufacturers contend, as wholesalers sell their shipments outside the country at higher prices than they can get within Greece.
Government control of pricing is leading to products being sold elsewhere where better profits can be realized. I am shocked! Shocked, I say, to find there is capitalism going on here!
This sort of thing is to be expected any time .gov throws price controls on anything. Scarcity is usually the result as artificially low prices encourage waste. Don’t think so? If gas was $1.00 a gallon right now would you drive more or less than you do now?
Anyway, the lesson here is twofold: 1) .gov control of medicine pricing is a bad idea and 2) it’s entirely possible that what’s in your medicine cabinet now can wind up being all you have.
I’m reminded of the old saying: If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the government.
Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.
These little babies arrived today from a slightly curious FedEx guy. (That is to say , the FedEx guy himself wasn’t curious, but rather he was curious about the odd packages. Anyway…)
You may remember the Transporter Test Articles sonobuoy tubes from an earlier post. As you can see, they have arrived. Condition is ‘Used, Filthy’ but pretty is as pretty does. They are in good shape, structural integrity intact, and just need to be wiped (or hosed) down.
Possible uses? A bunch. The most obvious is to tuck a longarm, some ammo, and a few essentials in there and tuck it away some where. (A Mosin Nagant M44 and a pile of ammo would fit great in there.) Not sure my particular flavor of apocalypse will be that dramatic…and even if it were, I’d probably use one of my Pelican cases. These would make a good container for keeping emergency winter gear in the bed of the truck…fold up a blanket or two, roll ‘em up lengthwise, slide ‘em in there along with some gloves, hat, candles, matches, etc, etc. Really, the only limit here is imagination and physical dimensions.
I hope at least some of you managed to score a couple before CTD sold out. Stuff like this doesn’t usually hit just one vendor…check some of the other surplus guys and they might have some as well.
I’ll probably keep three of these and send the other two off to some LMI.
Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.
My buddy calls me up and asks me about the Filson coats I have been lusting after (specifically, this one and this one). I ask him why the interest. Turns out, he found a gal selling new Filson products at a discount. I have no money to spend, but figured I’d tag along. Big mistake.
I wound up with one of these, MSRP $310, for $120 and one of these, MSRP $140, for $20. Well, sure, it wasn’t in my color but for $20 you’d have to be an idiot to take a pass. She has more stuff so Im going to go through the Filson website, make a list of things Im looking for, and if she has them I might wind up spending even more money that I don’t have. But…but…but how can you pass up +60% savings on Filson gear?
Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.
My favorite thing to store firearms in is the Pelican/Hardigg gun cases. You’re familiar with them, I’m sure. They’re waterproof, airtight, reasonably crushproof and uber-professional looking pieces of gear. They are, however, pretty damn spendy. But…what’s it worth to you to have your firearms and accessories be in pristine condition when you pull the case out of the flooded rubble of what used to be your home?
For absolute end-of-the-world durability to protect a gun, I have yet to meet anything that beats the storage tube for the 120mm M865. Those babies are my first choice. They are pretty much indestructable, have points to run a length of chain for security, watertight, and the lid even has a hasp for a padlock. Perfect Problem is, they’re rather heavy and they are difficult to find regularly.
So somewhere between the $200 Pelican case and the $35-50 (plus shipping) M865 tube and its scarcity, there must be a compromise…right?
Indeed! If you’re a fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation you probably recognize these ‘Transporter test articles’. These are sonobuoy tubes. They’re made out of plastic similar to a Pelican case, one-piece with a screw-on top, and an excellent compromise between the two previously mentioned containers. Best of all, it appears CTD has ‘em for ten bucks at the moment.
When I used to ship long guns across country these were an ideal container. You take your rifle, roll it up in a blanket, fold the ends over the muzzle and butt to give extra padding, slide it into the tube, screw the cap on, roll some duct tape around the juncture of cap-to-tube, and you were all set. A durable gun case that was light enough to be shipped back empty for re-use.
Are these waterproof? They are in the sense that there are no joints, valves, openings or other points for atmospheric integrity to be lost. However, I suppose that if you don’t screw the lid on tightly enough you may have water migrate up the threads. I can’t recall if there’s an o-ring in there, I’ll have to check. However, if youre doing the long-term storage thing just run a bead of silicone sealant in the threads, tighten it down, and that should do it.
Go to the CTD page and you can read the dimensions. Guns with pistol grips wont fit without having the pistol grip removed but things like SKS, 10/22, shotguns, etc, will fit just fine. At the price CTD is listing I don’t expect them to last long so you may want to grab a few while you can. Even with shipping factored in they still came out to $15 each to my locationm which was still quite reasonable for what they are.
Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.
Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.
Genuine military sleep system for $100, used. Can’t say if they’re “good, used” is good or bad, but $100 for a genuine MSS is a pretty good deal.
http://www.armygear.net/ag/store/00148.html
Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.
Okla. Woman Shoots, Kills Intruder: 911 Operators Say It’s Okay to Shoot
Recently widowed, young, single mom cowering in a bedroom with her infant child, on the phone with 911 as two men force their way into the house…..pretty much pushes all the ‘righteous shooting’ buttons.
The only way this shooting could possibly be more justified is if the bad guys were the re-animated zombie corpses of Adolf Hitler and Osama Bin Laden wearing dynamite sport jackets and holding a molotov cocktail in each hand.
Part of me wants to say that, if there were an afterlife, her husband would be very proud of her. But, then again, that was exactly the proper response for that situation so I’m not sure excess pride is warranted for doing something that your supposed to do anyway. Regardless, it’s a just and proper ending to what could have been quite a tragedy. Poor gal is probably still grieving from losing her husband, now she’s got to deal with the emotional aftermath of this incident.
I’m going to ignore the part about asking the 911 guys if it was okay to shoot the bad guys. The threshold for that kind of response was met long before they came through the bedroom door. I understand that no agency is going to want to be on the hook for ‘giving permission’ for someone to shoot someone else, but at least they gave the veiled and coded approval with the ‘do what you have to do’ answer.
Man, I bet that shotgun left a real mess behind.
Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.
Gun makers baffled by ATF criteria
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is in charge of determining whether a gun model is legal, but the agency won’t say much about its criteria.
Despite overseeing an industry that includes machine guns and other deadly weapons, ATF regulations for the manufacture of weapons are often unclear, leading to reliance on a secretive system by which firearms manufacturers can submit proposed weapons for testing and find out one at a time whether they comply with the law, critics say.
The ATF recommends that manufacturers voluntarily submit weapons for case-by-case determination. But those judgments are private and, it turns out, sometimes contradictory. Critics say nearly identical prototypes can be approved for one manufacturer but denied for another.
It’s like some sort of government-institutionalized version of Calvinball.
Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.
A little product release announcement from the guys at Stag Arms landed in my mailbox today. They are pimping the “2012 Executive Survival Kit”. Now, I’ve always thought that a big Pelican/Hardigg case full of essentials would be handy but Im not sure I’d stock it the same way these guys have.
STAG ARMS and LAN World, Inc. have designed the executive survivor’s kit (ESK) for the discerning customer that demands the highest quality equipment. Using only the finest products the 2012 ESK is truly the survivor’s kit of choice for any type of disaster preparedness and personal security. The ESK can be purchased ($2012) online or over the phone where a customer service agent will find your closest dealer and assist in the transfer to you. The ESK with its military grade case is perfect for long term storage or can easily travel with you.
The 2012 Executive Survivor’s Kit includes the following and is competitively priced at $2,012 (over $2500 value!):
*Stag Arms Model 2 AR-15 rifle
*Diamondhead Versa-Rail handguard*EoTech 517 Holographic Red Dot Optic
*Stag Arms Field Repair Kit, OTIS AR-15 Cleaning Kit, & Silent Sling
*Two 30 Round Magazines (10 rounds for restricted states)
*Gerber MP 600 Multi-Pliers
*Gerber Omnivore LED Flashlight
*Dual Purpose Human/Pet First Aid Kit
*MRE Field Ration Meal
*Pelican 1700 Long Case
*60 Rounds of Quality Ammunition
In fact, I figured that a kit like that for me would be a Pelican case big enough to hold the usual BOB-sized pack and a broken down rifle.
Depending on what flavor of apocalypse youre expecting, I think you’d be far better prepared with your own kit rather than so e pre-bought package…and this applies to pretty much everything – ‘years supply’ of food packages, wilderness survival kits, first aid kits, etc, etc.
Still, it’s kind of interesting to see something like this. Obviously gun manufacturers know that theres folks like us out there who buy their products, it’s just fairly rare that they pander to us so blatantly. (And I’m looking at you Z-Max ammo makers!)