Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

I know that bad news is what sells newspapers. As Ivanova said, “Good news can wait. Bad news will refuse to leave.” Maybe theres a recovery going on somewhere but Im seeing nothing in the news that would give anyone a warm-n-fuzzy in regards to the economy. And, considering the inmates that are currently running the asylum, I just don’t see things getting better for quite a while.

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I’ve been on something of a cast-iron bender lately…reseasoning all my cast iron and evaluating my collection of it. I found a really good blog on the subject. Using info I gleaned from there I managed to do a very good job of putting an excellent non-stick finish onto my cast iron cookware and I am rediscovering the utility of cast iron. From a preparedness standpoint the cast iron cookware has a lot going for it. Although it lends itself to cooking in rugged environments and conditions, the thing Im really enjoying is that I can use my metal cooking utensils without concern for the non-stick finish.

Currently, I’ve got mostly Lodge-brand cookware. (None of that cheap Chinese cast iron crap that’s probably recycled engine cores.) I’ve got two Dutch ovens (one w/ legs and one w/o), three frying pans of various size and depth, a griddle and I am looking forward to getting a cast iron wok.

Since I’ve been playing with the cast iron lately I dug out the Volcano cookstove to use in conjunction with the cast iron for some outdoor cooking. And, since we always go a bridge too far around here, we picked up a 20# propane BBQ bomb to hook the Volcano up to. I can either cook over charcoal (or any other flammable material, really) or propane. And, happily, the Volcano comes with an adapter that lets me use the BBQ bomb or 1# propane bottles…excellent versatility there. As a bonus, I have the proper couplings to let the 20# tank run the propane heater and lanterns as well. So…another layer added to the overall preparations. And while the need to cook in a non-kitchen environment may not happen very often it is excellent gear for cooking foods that would normally funk up the house…like anything involving stir fry.

Back to the cast iron, as I said Im developing a new respect for it to the point that I think Im going to haunt a few garage sales and see if I can find some nice vintage cast iron cookware. Apparently the really old stuff is a bit smoother and easier to get a smooth, non-stick finish on.

Although I cant think of too many likely scenarios that will preclude me using the gas range in the kitchen, I think it’s a good idea for us to have the equipment to cook in just about any location. The Volcano stove has been pretty good for my needs. I can run it on charcoal or propane, it can be set on top of a picnic table or tailgate, and works quite well with the cast iron cookware. It would be an excellent choice for setting up a field kitchen or comfort station in a disaster area…additionally, it can also be used for creating that one indispensable thing that makes such a difference in a disaster – hot water. For sterilizing utensils, washing dishes, purifying water, bathing or a dozen different uses there is always a need for boiling hot water.

If a person is stuck with an electric stove, then you really need to have a Plan B for cooking when the power goes out.  Ideally, Plan B would involve more than one type of fuel as well. At the moment, we’re set up to cook with propane, charcoal, gasoline, kerosene, Coleman fuel and, if need be, wood…so I think we’re pretty well covered on the whole ‘how are we going to cook’ angle of things.

Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

The economy…what can you say? If it’s a recovery, it doesn’t look like much of one from this angle. My landlord recently laid off virtually all of her employees. I was in their shop the other day and all of the lights were off except for one in the desk area. She was playing computer games, waiting and hoping the phone would ring with some much-needed business. She says that they used to bid jobs for a couple thousand bucks over cost and never had problems. Now theyre bidding jobs at cost just to keep the lights on and are still getting underbid. Dog eat dog world out there. She was feeling horrible at having to lay off her employees, who she and her husband treat like family, but there was no money to pay them. My shop is in a block of little storefronts and commercial space..Im the second oldest business in the block, having been here for about ten years. Lately other business have come in and folded up almost as quickly. I have never seen so many ‘for rent’ and ‘for lease’ signs in my time here.  I cannot fathom any course of action the .gov could take that would fix this situation and not simply punt it down the road for the next administration to handle. Well, I suppose some sort of ‘pro-business’ agenda might be worth a shot but good luck getting anything like that outta the current administration.

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I just had a chat with my UPS guy. He noticed my “Commies Arent Cool” t-shirt. He asked me if I thought Obama was a communist. I said that, strictly speaking, probably not but that he is definitely a Roosevelt “New Deal”-style liberal with some leanings that could be considered socialist. The UPS guy agreed and said Obama was just bad news all around. This is coming from a union guy, folks. But, pay him no mind because, as we are told, we only dislike Obama because we’re racists. Riiiiiight.

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When I taught hunter safety to the 12-year-olds, one of the things we were supposed to touch upon was what to do when (not if) you got lost. We gave them the usual spiel about making their own survival kits, etc, etc. Every instructor would always tell the students to pack one of those mylar space blankets..you know the ones. Theyre about the size of a pack of cigarettes and the material is thinner than a Kleenex. Funny thing is, as far as I know, only one instructor actually ever bothered to open up one of the darn things. See, in order for them to pack that sucker into as small a package as possible those gossamer-thin layers of mylar become practically impossible to pull apart. This is especially the case when your hands and fingers are cold and near frozen and shaking…the exact conditions under which you would wind up using this thing. The instructor advised that the students should unfold the space blanket at home and then re-fold it. The package wont be nearly as compact but it will be much, much easier to unfold with club-like hands when the time comes.

Since then, everything Ive read says that you should throw one of these things into your survival kits when you go into the boonies. Good advice. But are there alternatives? Didn’t used to be, really. But nowadays there are a couple alternatives. The guys at Thermos made the only alternative to the mylar space blankets for a number of years. Their product was much more heavy-duty with the consequence of trading durability and ruggedness for bulk and weight. One of the most important things about survival gear is that it has to be with you when you need it – if its too heavy or too bulky youre probably going to leave it at home. The Thermos space blanket was a good product but the tradeoff was a bit much. Its still available and if you don’t mind the weight and bulk I would take it over the mylar blanket. A military version is available from Sportsmans Guide as a ‘casualty’ or ‘evacuation blanket’. Surely there must be a middle ground between the Thermos and the space blanket, yes? The closest thing Ive found are the Heatsheets and Thermo-Lite branded blankets. I’ve carried around the Thermo-Lite bivvy during hunting season and while it isn’t as compact as the folded mylar blankets it is still very manageable at 7”x4”. The smaller version rolls up to about the size of a Coke can, which will pretty much fit into any small survival pack. Another product I’ve been made aware of is the Land/Shark bivvy sack. This thing is about twice the price of anything listed here but it appears to be an interesting product with a quality not found elsewhere – its waterproof. This means if youre stuck floating in the ocean somewhere you can wrap up in this thing and stave off hypothermia and stay afloat. Handy.

I still carry the little mylar space blankets but I carry them in addition to the Thermo-Lite. I figure that in a pinch I can use both for added insulation and protection from the elements. Since I got the Kifaru Woobie for my birthday last year that goes in my bag at times. It compresses small enough to be worth sticking in the pack but it’s still a bit large for a dedicated survival pack. However, I think used in conjunction with the bivvy sack it’ll do an excellent job of keeping things from getting terminal. (Normally, I carry a poncho and the Woobie when I go hunting. Although both are much bulkier than the emergency blankets I find it an acceptable tradeoff for the versatility they provide. The Woobie ties into the poncho to form a sleeping bag that works quite well.)

Of course the best way to avoid needing stuff like this is to not get lost or put into a situation where you need it to begin with. After that, the next best thing is to build a nice big fire, sit in front of it, and patiently await the local search and rescue guys. But sometimes things happen despite our best efforts….

Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

Kid did a pretty good job of living on the lam for a couple years. And then, inexplicably, he does something stupid like fly into an island where your avenues of escape are severely limited.

I suspect if he’d simply moves to another region of the US, perhaps the SE or SW, or even the NY area, he would have been able to blend in and disappear. The lesson here, I think, is that if youre going to make a career out of evading people dont put yourself in a position where your potential exits are limited by terrain….like being surrounded by ocean.

Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

Here’s why we’re doomed:

Im walking outta the post office and theres a chick with a clipboard. “Do you have 60 seconds to bring back Amtrak to Montana”. Okay, game on. “Where is it now?”, I ask? She tells me Amtrak hasn’t run in our part of Montana since the late 1970’s. I ask why they stopped. It wasn’t profitable, she tells me. Will Amtrak be able to pay for itself on this Montana route, I ask. Well, we hope it will, she says. Amtrak hasn’t made a profit since..well…ever..how is this route going to get paid for, I ask. Stimulus money from president Obama’s economic package.

Of course.

So what she is saying is that ‘public transportation’ needs trump good fiscal sense. The railroad won’t be profitable, it’ll need government money to run, but by Crom there will be something for tourists to ride.

This is why we’re doomed. Let me rewrite the scenario:

Hi do you have 60 seconds to help me open up an organic ostrich farm? There hasn’t been a successful ostrich farm in Montana in..well, forever…but we think its in Montana’s interest to have an ostrich farm anyway. It might make money someday but history says that it probably wont. We’ll keep throwing money from your taxes at it though. Whaddya say, wanna sign up?

And this bubblehead standing there with her clipboard sees nothing wrong with asking people to have government create yet another money hole because it has the magic words ‘public transportation’ written on it. Its for ‘the public’…you know, the people. The working class. Whatever.

Its these 20-something know-nothings who don’t see anything wrong with spending tax money on nonsense like this that are making things worse. I’m halfway surprised her nipples didn’t poke through her top when she mentioned Obama’s name.

I feel like I should make a sandwichboard with a graph showing Amtrak’s dismal record and stand next to this chick.

Unemployment is around 10%, the economy is stumbling like Ted Kennedy at an embassy dinner, personal savings are at an all time low, people can’t keep their homes so lets take their money in the form of taxes and instead of spending it on bare essentials lets throw it into the wind by subsidizing a railroad that has never been able to pay for itself.

This is why we’re doomed, folks. To throw out even more metaphors, while you and I would be heading for the lifeboats this chick would be re-arranging the deck chairs. And yet her vote counts. Whats worse, she’s oblivious to her being part of the problem.

The avatar of fail, I have met her.

Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

Chicago’s Mayor Daley, a fine and shining example of political corruption if there ever was one, isn’t taking the recent Supreme Court ruling regarding his city’s handgun ban lightly. In what can only be described as a world-class example of sour grapes, the mayor has determined that city residents may own a handgun. A handgun. But you gotta license it..and register it..and take a class…and some range time (but outside Chicago since gun ranges aren’t allowed there for mere civilians)..and you cant take it out of your house..and you can only have one functioning handgun per person per household. There were further restrictions that he wanted but they were discarded because even his own people said that there was no way theyd stand up in court.

So what does this mean to you and I? Well, its an example of how even if something is perfectly legal there are ways to make it virtually illegal. My own lifestyle would violate every line of the Chicago ordinance. I own more than one, took no classes, take one or two out of the house daily, and no way are they registered with the locals. And that’s just the handguns…the rifle collection would positively push them over the edge.

While it may be, on paper, legal for you to own a gun the government can make it so onerous and burdensome as to make it virtually impossible. As time goes by, Im sure that the Daley cabal will polish up their knives and make ‘improvements’, ‘modifications’ or ‘sensible changes’…prohibitively high fees, ammunition restrictions, magazine capacity limits, etc, etc, etc. You’ll see.

You may have a constitutional right to own a gun, as the courts have agreed, but theres nothing to keep that right from being fraught with restrictions. And, mind you, these restrictions can be slapped on at any point. One day you wake up and your local municipality has decided you only ‘need’ one gun, it needs to be licensed, registered, and ballistically fingerprinted, and those ‘extra’ guns you have need to be turned in, sold or taken out of the city limits immediately. To one extent or another this has happened already in places like New York and California.

When situations like this occur, the choice is pretty simple and straightforward – obey the law or don’t obey the law. It may not be much of a choice, but if you have your guns already then at least you have that choice. If you wait until after nonsensical legislation like this is passed before getting your guns then you really don’t have much of a choice at all..

Mayor Daley, living proof that corruption and malice may in fact be hereditary traits passed from one generation of weasel to the next, no doubt feels that his restrictions will somehow keep Chicago safe. Here in the great state of Montana there are more guns than people, yet we have a gun crime rate that is rather low. Perhaps the problem isn’t guns but rather people? Of course, espousing that possibility may not be politically correct but………

Here’s the lesson to take away from this: you’ve just seen how even when something is guaranteed to you by one part of government (gun ownership guaranteed by the feds) it can be nailed to the floor by another branch of government (Chicago local government machine) making it virtually worthless. Plan accordingly. Have these things before the time comes where you may be prohibited from having them (or having more of them).

Or, I suppose, move out of Chicago.

Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

I had a chat with a cop the other day. We got to talking about guns and he’s not much of a gunny. He said he thought that five guns was ‘plenty’. I pointed out to him that according to the Montana Shooting Sports Association the average Montanan owned 26 firearms. He thought that was nuts. I said that you have a nightstand gun, a truck gun, a plinker .22, a hunting rifle, a couple guns you picked up because they were too cheap to pass up, etc, etc, and they can add up in a hurry. He thought about it and revised his estimate. He said that ten guns was plenty. I told him Id mention that to my Ballistic-American friends and we’d all have a good laugh over it.

There is no such thing as ‘too many’. Once in a while someone will opine on the discussion boards that anything over ‘x’ amount is stupid because you cant carry that many guns at once. The number of guns you can carry at once has no bearing on how many guns a person can have before they are ‘too many’. That’s like saying you can only wear one pair of shoes at a time so owning more than one is ‘too many’.

As someone who has had discussions like this with many, many people I can say that there are only two people who have a hard number about what constitutes ‘too many’ guns: people who don’t shoot and wives.

Personally, I know people who own well over 100 guns and I wouldn’t say that’s ‘too many’. If you specialize in a field of collecting you can easily get into the several hundred range. Even a broke college kid will probably have three or seven guns floating around at any given point.

Does anyone need more than ‘x’ amount of guns? Well, need doesn’t really enter into it. If I want a dozen AR’s in the safe and I can afford to then, by Crom, Im going to have just that. My buying habit is that I treat every gun as an irreplaceable object. What I mean by that is that I judge and value every gun in my collection as if I would be unable to buy another one tomorrow. My goal is to have enough firearms to take care of my projected needs in a worst case scenario for the rest of my life. If tomorrow every gun shop closed and all you had in the safe was all you could have for the rest of your life would you be content with what you had? If not, get out there and shop.

The problem with the notion of ‘too many’ is that it implies theres some arbitrary number where once you exceed that number you’ve gotten into wasteful and irresponsible behavior. Pshaw. Gun ownership is probably the most responsible behavior you can engage in. If I were to define what ‘too many’ is I would say it is the same as with any other thing that you do to excess – when your behavior negatively affects other aspects of your life. Or, put another way, when you let the car get repossessed because you wanted to buy another FAL you may have hit the stage where its time to stop buying guns and start spending a little more wisely. (On the other hand, if it’s a really nice FAL and the car needed a new tranny anyway….)

While I cant give you a hard and fast number about ‘too many’, I can easily give you a number for ‘not enough’. That number is 0. I think one gun is too few but even one gun is better than no gun. But two are better than one and three are better than two….
“Yeah, look man, Im not after a lifestyle I just want a number for adding to my checklist of zombie prevention gear.” Okay. Four. Anything between one and four is bad news. Less than four is skating on thin ice, driving on bald tires, being called to Al Gores hotel room for a massage, driving without a seatbelt…you’ll probably be okay for a while, but youre definitely flirting with disaster. Why? Four is a handgun and a rifle, with a spare of each. Four is a rifle, handgun, shotgun and .22. Four is a stash of handguns for barter or sale. Four is a minimum that provides enough versatile combinations to handle just about anything. There have been some times when I didn’t have whole lot of money to my name and when the gun collection shrank in the face of money problems there was still usually four guns that never got sold. So, I cant tell you what too many is but I can tell you what too few is.

Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

I’m not sure I even care what this chicks politics are. Whatever she’s sellin’, I’m buyin’.

And here’s another one. Its a little ‘out there’ but ya gotta admire the historical angle:

Its going to be a political season like no other, these coming elections. Vote early, vote often.

Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

The new Sportsmans Guide HQ catalog showed up the other day. The HQ catalog is different from the regular SG catalog in that it is almost exclusively military-surplus and related stuff. In short, a very cool catalog. SG has been hit or miss in terms of order accuracy and value for many people but I’ve had pretty good experiences with them. What I find interesting in this catalog may not ring your bell, but heres some highlights that I think are worth pointing out:

German Sniper Sleeping Bag – #FXM-158691 – $29.97

I got a couple of these and theyre either new or like-new. Theyre a quilted bag with an outer vinyl cover. I have no idea if they really are ‘sniper’ sleeping bags but if you had to sit out in the cold somewhere for a period of time these would be nice. I could easily see myself in one of these while on a high point overwatching a small valley or ravine waiting for Bambi to show up. Definitely a good choice for those days duck hunting where its hours of sitting still in the cold. Whats cool is that in addition to sleeves, theres a zipper across the waist allowing you to keep your lower half outside the bag, so you wear it like a parka or as a sleeping bag. For thirty bucks, a fun piece of gear to play with. Good for tossing in the truck ‘just in case’.

800m Swiss Military Phone Wire – #FXM-182432 – $49.97

Ive a stash of TA-312s and this would go very nicely with them. Also great for running wire to your seismic sentry probes or impromptu ….devices. Often when you find surplus wire its been used which means it is tangled, knotted, spliced and probably not going to carry a current for its entire length. New wire is great because it lays out easily. A half mile of wire can be a handy thing.

10 New US Military Lashing Straps – #FXM-177549 – $19.97

Ten straps to use on rolled up blankets, ponchos, tarps, etc. Cant go wrong there.

US Military 120mm Cylinder Container – #FXM-183933 – $29.97

If you can afford the shipping for this thing, they are, hands down, the best firearms container ever. Better than the Pelican case. Many guns will need their pistol grips removed to fit inside, but these things are as bombproof as you can imagine. The perfect container for storing a rifle/shotgun, some ammo and a few essentials. If youre the type who likes to cache stuff around this thing is exactly what you need. They can even be padlocked shut. I have one of these that I picked up locally and I wish I had a dozen more. Airtight, watertight, crushproof, capacious, and perfect for housing important gear in inhospitable conditions. You could make something similar, I suppose, from PVC pipe or somesuch but no way will it take the raw, brutal abuse that this thing will. Cannot recommend these highly enough. Major drawback: heavy and expensive to ship. Try to find locally first.

Used Austrain Military Glock Bayonet – #FXM-175397 – $62.97

This is a case where SG drops the ball. A used Glock knife for $62? WTF? I have a vendor selling brand new ones right now for $21. This is why you should always shop around folks. The Glock knives are great general purpose field knives and are cheap enough to buy ‘em by the bunch. They are of excellent quality but are remarkably affordable – a rare treat in this world. This deal is so absurd it makes my teeth hurt. I point it out not to encourage you to buy, but to encourage you to keep your eyes open…everything that glitters and all that jazz.

2 New US Military Canteens w/ Covers – #FXM-148181 – $19.97

Ive switched over to Nalgene for ‘soft canteens’ and for hard ones I prefer the Nalgene bottles, but these have a lot to recommend to them. For me, theyre a secondary or tertiary level item – good for use as backup, loaners, stashing or expendable. Good for a day of gopher shooting or fishing, the major attraction is the cover with its sling.

Theres plenty of interesting stuff in the catalog, I just hit the stuff that looks like it fills a need. Its very easy to see stuff that looks cool and then fabricate up a need. Bad move. You’ll go broke in a hurry that way.

Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

Went to Helena yesterday. Its about 150 miles in each direction and I figured that since I was having to make the trip this would be a good opportunity to use up and rotate some stored gasoline. Of course, once you use up the stored gasoline you need to replace it, yes?

Im sure you already know it, but I’ll go into it here….the procedure for filling fuel cans has changed in the last decade. Seems that folks were filling up gas cans in the bed of their trucks and, disastrously, bursting into flames. What was the problem? Well it seems that there was a couple things. First, the cans need to be grounded and sitting them in the back of a pickup truck on a plastic/polymer bed liner wasn’t doing the trick. The approved and recommended method now is to set the container on the ground and fill it as it sits on the ground. Also, the nozzle is supposed to be in contact with the mouth of the container to prevent a static electricity issue. At least, that’s as I read it. I suppose it makes sense…you’ve got a metal fuel can, static builds up as the fuel flows through the nozzle, the nozzle touches the edge of the can, a spark  and –presto- instant Bad Day.

So, nowadays I pull the fuel can from the truck, place it on the concrete, make sure the nozzle stays in contact with the inside of the mouth of the can and fill ‘er up.

Of course, since this is fuel for long-term it gets treated with preservative. A few years ago the girlfriend gifted me with a large jug of PRI-G and Ive been using it exclusively for treating our fuel. Sta-Bil is good stuff, but PRI-G seems to be a little better. I usually try to mix the stored fuel with fresh fuel. Half a tank of fresh fuel, half a tank of stored fuel…that sort of thing. Ive never noticed any difference in vehicle performance between stored gas and fresh gas. (For the record, I usually try not to let gas go more than a year but sometimes a can or two can be as much as two years old.)

The drive to Helena was nice and, other than one oncoming vehicle drifting into my lane and causing me to do some awesome reflex moves, uneventful. It’s awfully pretty country along the way and its easy to get lost daydreaming about a nice place to live out in the hills there.

The gas cans, by the way, are the NATO/Euro-style metal cans. Century Arms had them on sale for about $12 each a few years ago. Since shipping was free on orders of over $500 I ordered a pile of these things, sold a bunch, and kept a dozen for my own use. They’ve worked out very well and I find them superior to the Blitz cans. Ive never found a fuel can, Blitz or Euro, that really seemed to pour well from a nozzle. I paracord an automotive funnel to each fuel can and I find it to be a much more convenient and handier way to fill the tank. Once consideration is that you need to either keep the funnel in a protective container or you need to wipe it out before you use it so you don’t wash dust, dirt and grime into the tank along with the gas…sure, that’s what a fuel filter for by why tempt fate?

There are plenty of plastic fuel cans on the market, but I have not yet found one that I like. I’ve found them to leak, vent fumes, and generally be more trouble than they are worth. I don’t have any experience with the military fuel cans (MFC) but I have heard mixed things…essentially, if you are going to go with a plastic can theyre the one to go with. Maybe they really are that good, but I’ll stick to the metal cans I have now.

For day-to-day use I leave one can in the back of the truck. I use a bicycle cable lock to keep it from walking away. By the by, when it comes to locking up essential gear I almost always prefer a combination lock over a keyed lock. It is far easier to carry a few numbers around in my head than it is to hope that I’ll always have the correct key on hand in a crisis.