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

It appears the Feds are going to screw with the currency….again.

Every time they do one of these changes to the money, I lose more faith in it. Fer cryin’ out loud, they turned the quarter into a billboard for whatever ‘commemorative’ cause strikes their fancy. Then theres the changes to the paper money. Sure, I know it isnt backed by anything but money should be like the nuns at Catholic school – eternal, unchanging, unwavering. The money your grandparents carried around in their pockets should look like the money youre carrying in yours. To redesign it or ‘update’ its look every ten years is just counterproductive.

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Speaking of productive, heres a link of possible use.  Fascinating link to a .pdf of the Glock G3 armorers manual. A bit more detailed than you might have a need for, but a very interesting read. If you have an HK91 or a PTR-91, this is an interesting companion to the regular manual. Use it to help figure out what spare parts you want from robertrtg.com and how to use ‘em. Just the section on the official HK armorers tools is enough to justify the disk space

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

Coming to a street near you?

“At least three people have been killed in the Greek capital as protesters set fire to a bank during a general strike over planned austerity measures.”

No doubt there will be people who cheer and say the ‘banksters’ are getting what they deserve and that it should be a warning to the ‘greedy bankers’ in this country. I’m reminded how everyone seems to hate lawyers but the minute they slip on someones sidewalk or the get arrested for DUI they suddenly see lawyers as wonderful people. Sure, Greece’s situation has some parallels to the American situation  but there are some big differences. Same thing…everyone hates bankers until they want to buy a house or a car.

Some moron scrubbing toilets for $11 an hour lies on a mortgage application and gets the bank to loan him $300k on a house, he discovers he can’t resell it in 6 months and make a cool $50k on the deal, lets the house go into foreclosure, gets sued for the money and this is somehow the banks fault?

Anyway, my point is that in this country (usually) protests tend to be pretty non-lethal. Yesterday was the anniversary of the Kent State shootings that left four college kids dead. The outrage was palpable and these folks are lionized as victims of the turbulent times they lived in. On the other hand, its worth noting that through bombings, shootings, and other methods the various protest groups in the 60’s killed a lot more people in this country than the Guard at Kent State did.

I suppose, though, that in this country we have plenty of non-lethal protests because when they do turn violent or lethal they are quickly renamed ‘riots’.

I’m all for people protesting. If youre unhappy with something it is your right to stand on a street corner and yell your lungs out about it to passerby. Good on ya mate. But the minute you spraypaint a building, break a window or throw paint on someone you’ve stepped out of your constitutionally-granted free speech bubble and are now fair game for a knuckle sammich.

They say our economy is improving but I dont see it. Some folks will be looking for someone to blame…’banksters’, ‘big [pharma/oil/brother/sister]‘ , ‘corporate America’ or anyone else that they think is somehow responsible. At first it’ll be small incidents here and there but theres no guarantee that some bunch of black-clad ‘anarchists’ (usually people who will have a change of heart quite quickly about anarchy when they discover that in their dreamy anarchistic utopia they’ll probably get their asses kicked pretty regularly) won’t start setting fire to McDonalds and Starbucks thinking that it somehow will promote ’social justice’.

Interesting times we live in. This is why I  stopped leaving the house without a gun quite a while ago.

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

From the “You Couldnt Make This Up If You Tried” Department….

Wanna take a guess where I was the last few days? I was at a college commencement ceremony in Ann Arbor where the guest speaker was…wait for it…..Obama. Yes, thats right…I got to see “The One” up close (well, about 250 yards away) and personal (or as personal as a guy who only says whats on a teleprompter can be).  He gave a wonderful speech that had almost nothing to do with the graduates (the ostensible reason for him being there) and was more about, unsurprisingly, himself. He went on about how we can agree to disagree but that the name-calling of terms like “socialist” and “soviet-style takeover” were uncalled for and unproductive. I thought it was a bit hypocritical since his supporters have no problem using terms like ‘racist’ for anyone who disagrees with his policies.

What was security like? Interesting. For about a block around the stadium there was no civilian traffic..you had to walk in. No bags, no camera cases, no umbrellas, no camera tripods, no water bottles. Electronic devices were cool as were phones and cameras. The actual metal detector screening process was faster and less intrusive than airport security. Streets that led to the stadium were blocked off with heavy equipment or fire trucks. Sewer openings were modified to prevent access and show any signs of tampering. Barry O came in on three helicopters…obviously to confuse any poor bastard that managed to scrape up a MANPAD and the temerity to use it. I’ve no doubt that radio and phone freq’s were being monitored. There were, of course, the guys on the roof with binoculars scanning the crowds as well as the sterotypical SS guys who looked like the Blues Brothers. Of course, their purpose was to keep you looking at them and not at the SS guys you couldnt see who were mixed into the crowd.

What was tremendously disturbing was the cult of personality that was present. These kids at the graduation were around 21 years old. Their first vote for President was, apparently, for HopeyChangey Guy. They applauded and cheered like he had actually, you know, done something. I would bet you money that not one of them could explain why any of his policies were good or bad…they’d just regurgitate the party line of ‘inherited this mess’ and ‘hope and change’ without actually having any idea about the consequences theyre going to face in a few years when all that ‘hope and change’ hits them like ton of bricks.

It was a stadium that held about 100,000 people, Im told.  The way they all jumped to their feet and cheered when the helicopter came into view was the sort of thing that would have sent Leni Riefenstahl dashing for a camera. It was like being in a room full of preschool kids who wet their pants with glee when Barney the Dinosaur walks into the room. The grownups know what a ridiculous farce it is but the kids just eat it up because they dont know better. I was willing to listen to the guy’s speech but I sure as hell wasnt going to stand up for him when he got on stage…I’ll respect him when he respects me.

Unfortunately, of the thousands of students that were graduating there (giving great, sincere, heartfelt statements about their commitments to ’social justice’ and the environment) most of them are Kool-Aid drinkers of the highest order and, sadly, will be the faces running whats left of this country in a few years. Orwell said “If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever”…I think I had a chance to see a possible vision of the future – its a bunch of twentysomethings with no idea of what the role of .gov should or should not be and no sense of the Pandora’s Box theyre opening when they cheer and encourage more and more .gov in their lives.

:::shrug:::

I suppose every generation says that about the next one, but the way these people just rolled on their backs like puppies wanting their bellies rubbed by their Great Leader was just disturbing.

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

On the admin side of things, the software for this blog tells me when something here has been linked somewhere else. Its kinda nice because then I can go over to where I was linked and look around and see in what context it was about. Usually its other preparedness blogs or that sort of thing that I wind up getting these pingbacks from. Yesterday I got my first pingback from a ….questionable…website – Stormfront.org

I’m sure this will somehow put me on the ‘black list’ (or, I suppose, ‘list of color’) with the race pimps at Southern Poverty Law Center. I cant control who reads this stuff, folks…

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

I love getting ‘real world’ reviews of gear. Here’s an interesting post from a board about what worked and what didnt at an intensive gun class.

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

I found this channel on YouTube and am immensley enjoying this guy’s videos. I haven’t watched all of them but they are definitely worth watching.

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

Lately I’ve been trying to cut back on gun-centric posts and limit myself to one every Friday. Oddly, I missed last Friday’s.

Ever see people post about ‘guns as investments’? They’ll point out that if you had bought [gold/index funds/California] a certain number of years ago and at the same time bought a [AK/AR/case of ammo], the gun stuff would have realized a higher percentage profit than the other stuff. Thus, guns are a sound investment.  At least, that’s the argument.

Let’s establish a few terms. An investment is putting capital (money usually) into something with the intention that after a certain amount of time you’ll be able to get back your capital and then some. Contrast this with items that are purchased not to increase in value but rather to hold a value (or a purchasing power)…like gold.

Buying guns as an investment can make sense if youre buying something truly funky and perhaps one-of-a-kind. Pat Garrett’s Colt revolver, the handgun Clinton lieutenants used to kill Vince Foster, Annie Oakley’s .22 rifle, a toolroom prototype from S&W, etc, etc. Sometimes, if you’ve got your finger on the pulse of things you can predict something will be on the market a very short time and therefore become quite valuable..a Colt Survivor, Ruger Hawkeye, Winchester 88, S&W 76, etc, etc. Or…if you like to gamble, you can invest in something that isn’t rare, isn’t hard to get, isn’t too expensive but someday will be. For example, the HK93 I bought in 1986 for $600 would bring about $4000 now. An AR bought in 1993 became worth two or three times its purchase price in 1995.

The biggest drawback to guns as investments is the regulatory aspect. By and large, trading an ounce of gold among people in the US is fairly benign…you can sell it to convicted felons, ten-year-olds, or pretty much whomever youd like, wherever you like. Guns, on the other hand, come with a whole bunch of regulatory strings attached. The longest string and the one likely to wind up choking off your daylight is that if you sell enough guns or make enough money you might come under the BATFE’s definition of being ‘in the business’ which means they will expect you to have a license. Now, every one of us has at some time or another picked up a gun at a gun show for a song, walked to the other side of the show and sold it to someone else and pocketed a good profit. Seems reasonable to me but I saw a fella at the Helena gun show get in trouble with ATFE for that sort of thing. I don’t have all the details, I just know that they paid him a visit and while he didn’t go to jail it pretty darn near wiped him out and shaved a few years off his warranty.

In short, guns as an investment is a mediocre strategy for high returns in normal times. The only way you can really make it work is if you have a huge amount of money to lay out and you can afford to tie up that money for years before seeing a return. If you can afford to head down to your local gun shop, buy five AR-15s, seal them up in a box and shove them in the closet and not touch them for ten years….yes, you’ll make money. Of course in the meantime you probably could have made more money by investing in other things during those ten years.

Now, to be totally inconsistent, there is at least one circumstance where during normal times firearms are good investments for realizing high returns. That circumstance is if you are thoroughly knowledgeable on the guns, have the opportunity to buy them at very low cost (garage sales, gun shows, ‘motivated sellers’) and have an avenue to sell them (GunBroker, a shop, etc.) However, in those circumstances you’ve gone from ‘investor’ to ‘having a job’. Scouring classified ads, Craigslist, gun shows, auctions, estate sales and then purchasing, cleaning and pricing firearms to be sold, if you can find a buyer, is work. At that point, surprise, you’ve pretty much become a dealer. I’ve done it before…I had a guy come in with a Savage 110 in .300 Win. With a Leupold 3-9x on top of it. Gave him $250 for the package. The scope brought $150 and the rifle brought $275. A good investment? Absolutely. Repeatable with any predictability? Not at all. You can go a long time between deals like that. You can also wind up buying a package like that and have it sit on the rack for several long, hungry weeks or months.

But…that’s during normal times.

When the LA Riots occurred, the demand for firearms and ammo was amazing. I’ve no doubt that in the aftermath of Katrina you could pretty much name your price and get it for a Mossberg 500 and a box of shells. If another more oppressive and permanent assault weapon ban comes down the pike you can bet that the price of pretty much anything with a trigger will go up. A fella with a footlocker of cheap AR carbines might wind up making quite a bit of coin.

Is it worth buying guns strictly as investment tools to be cashed in after things get weird? Maybe. A used SIG 9mm will run about $400 right now. When the end of the world occurs you could trade it, quite easily Im sure, for food, medicine or fuel. On the other hand you could also take that $400 today and buy food, medicine or fuel and stockpile it for later. There are folks who feel that should civilization truly run off the rails things like gold, silver, ammo and such will become the new currency. There might be some truth to that, after all civilization is still limping along and you already have plenty of people who are willing to take those things as currency for goods and services.

I almost never pass up a deal on ‘cheap’ (pricewise) firearms. Even if it’s a caliber I have no earthly use for, I’ll go ahead and pick it up if the price is right. Someday that oddball bastard-caliber handgun or rifle, with a box of appropriate ammo, may wind up being just as valuable, to me, as a stack of greenbacks is today. I remember reading a fairly forgettable post-apocalyptic book years ago called ‘Wolf & Iron’. One of the characters was a fella who traveled with his daughter as a sort of traveling merchant. They had a wagon full of trade goods and theyd do a circuit through various towns and villages. Tied to the back of the wagon were horses that were always saddled and ready to be ridden off in case they were attacked or ambushed. Each horse had a pack on it that contained all the essentials of survival including a couple small handguns to be used for trading purposes. For some reason that always made an impression with me.

Years ago I had the opportunity to buy a bunch of police trade-in revolvers. This was back when the transition from revolvers to Glocks was in full swing at many police departments. I think I paid between $150 and $200 for each S&W .38 Special I picked up. Some were in great shape, some were not. All worked, though. I remember thinking that I could take one of these pistols, add a cheap holster, a box of ammo, a cleaning kit and a speedloader or two, throw it in a small ammo can and it would make an ideal package to use for trade someday if I ever needed it. Of course, it also makes an excellent package to hand out to an undergunned friend who may not have a pistol.

“Waitasec, wouldn’t it be foolish to trade guns and ammo to someone who may wind up using them against you?” Yup. So don’t trade them to someone like that. There’s only two ways that’s going to happen – either youre so desperate that you cant be choosey or youre doing it from a position of overwhelming strength.

Are firearms a good investment? If your goal is to spend 100% of ‘x’ on firearms and a year later get 125% of it back, no. It might happen but the risk and opportunity cost probably isn’t worth it. If your goal is to have some sort of high-value ace-in-the-hole for the day you need to bribe someone, get desperately needed [medicine/food/fuel], or equip a trusted friend…then, yeah, it’s a good idea.

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

A lot of the stuff we acquire for preparedness is fairly middle-of-the-road in terms of  cost. Some stuff is cheap, some stuff is mid-range, and some stuff is just downright spendy. Take those spendy items and put them in the environment that we are preparing against (earthquake, flood, fire, zombies, etc.) and you’ve got a recipe for frustration and loss. Some of the more expensive items are things like guns, radios, optics, GPS, range finders, cellphones, etc. So it stands to reason that we want to protect those items as best we can until such time as we need them.

There is no shortage of scenarios that damage gear – it’s 2am and its time to leave in a hurry. Its pouring rain, the ground is muddy, and the only space left in the vehicle is in the back of the uncovered bed of a pickup truck. You drag your radio gear out of storage, trip on the steps and it goes flying to land in the mud. You pick it up, run to the truck, and heave it into the back where it sits in the rain for twenty minutes as you frantically run back and forth from the house grabbing as much as you can. Then it’s a two hour ride in the rain, gear bumping and jostling against itself, gravel and dirt flying around, and crushing weight as the load shifts back and forth on the rough roads. But, finally, you make it to your destination of relative safety and you start unpacking. Now there’s two endings to this drama – your radio gear is either in more pieces when you started, and soaking wet to boot or its dry, intact and ready for use. The biggest factor in the outcome is how you protected it. And the same goes for your guns. Or your binoculars. Or your laptop.

To me, the qualities Im looking for in a hard storage case are pretty straightforward: durability, survivability, adaptability, utility, and affordability. Not necessarily in that order.

The best things I have found are the hard plastic cases made by Pelican and Hardigg. Hardigg was doing a great job of giving Pelican a run for its money so Pelican did what any smart business would do – buy them out and recapture market share. I’m going to use the term ‘Pelican case’ to describe the hard plastic cases made by Pelican and Hardigg interchangeably. In its simplest form, the Pelican cases are briefcase-shaped cases of various dimensions made from near-indestructible plastic, gasketed to be watertight, and foam padded on the interior. They are pretty much the last word in readily available consumer-marketed (meaning available to average joes and not just .mil) cases out there. I bought one of their big rifle cases for my .308 bolt gun and have been very pleased with it. I can heave it into the back of the truck, take it to the range and know that the gun will be just fine. This sort of security and peace of mind doesn’t come cheap, though. The rifle case cost me $200 all on its own. Would a $75 Dosckocil case have done the trick? For a while, maybe….but I’ve ‘sprung’ a few of them in air travel and while theyre great for traveling and keeping a gun in the closet or basement they wouldn’t be my first choice for fleeing advancing hordes of zombies in the rain or snow.

The guys at Pelican offer their cases in various sizes from stuff small enough to fit just your iPod to cases the size of footlockers. All of them are quite durable and all of them aren’t cheap. But, you do get what you pay for. On the bright side, Pelican (and Hardigg) cases can be found new and used on eBay at big savings. Often they’ll be without the foam inserts or the foam will have been cut to a shape that doesn’t suit your needs. Not a problem, the foam inserts are replaceable and can be ordered from Pelican. I often remove them altogether and put my gear in nylon pouches and then pad it with some eggshell foam…this way the gear is ready to go and still protected for transit and storage. If you can afford them, the Pelican cases are outstanding ways to ‘ruggedize’ your gear for travel and storage in adverse conditions. A year or two ago I found a closeout on small Pelican cases that had been used by Nikon for their digital cameras. Other than a Nikon sticker (easily removed) these were brand new Pelican cases. I bought all they had, sold a bunch and kept a few for myself. One of them serves as my “Glock first aid kit” containing a bunch of spare parts, disassembly tool, test cover plate, and a few other items. They also make excellent indestructible containers for personal pocket/pack-sized first aid kits.

Of course, not everyone wants to spend $125 on a Pelican case the size of a phone book. I can totally relate to that, Im one cheap bastard myself. The next step down from the Pelican case is the tried and true surplus ammo can. Assuming that the ones you get are in good shape and haven’t been dinged up too badly they are usually watertight and their metal construction certainly affords a great deal of protection to whatever you put inside. Drawbacks are the limited sizes, sketchy availability, rather distinctive military look, and lack of internal padding. On the other hand when you can find them in the size you need almost nothing works as well. I have far more ammo cans than I do Pelican cases and I use them for storing all sorts of stuff that needs to stay dry, protected, and clean.

Other than expensive electronics and guns what else needs this level of protection? Well, pretty much anything that absolutely needs to stay dry, clean and in one piece. First aid gear comes to mind. I’ve a couple Pelican cases that I bought used for about $20 each. Theyre kinda cube shaped and just the right size to hold a large first aid bag. Some folks get a large rifle case and make it into a ‘backup gun package’ – a rifle, shotgun, pistol and a couple magazines all in one place ready to be tucked under a house, left in the loft of a barn, or hidden under some deadfall. One of the larger Pelican cases or 40mm ammo cans make an excellent bombproof container for complete kits or storing a 3-day bag.

Although I try to take good care of my gear I do realize there are going to be times when babying stuff just isn’t going to be a possibility. For those times I want my gear packed in such a manner I can throw it around, leave it in the snow, bounce it around in a truck, lash it to a pack from or cache it somewhere.

As I said, eBay is an excellent source for used Hardigg and Pelican cases. Many military surplus cases are on the market these days and although they may be scratched, nicked and painted they are usually still just as good as they were when they were new. While they aren’t cheap, by any stretch of the imagination, they most certainly are cheaper than having to replace a critical piece of gear that got destroyed because you left it sitting out in the open.

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

Yoyo = “Youre on your own”

A brief article, with a link to a very interesting .pdf, on how the .gov response to a nuclear ‘incident’ might take a little while. But don’t worry, “What citizens need to know fits on a wallet-sized card”.

I’d expect that theres going to be a delay of a lot more than several days before .gov can mount any real, meaningful response. Partly because .gov isn’t the best at responding to disasters of any magnitude and also because, realistically, if someone nukes Denver the .gov is going to be too busy doing ’security’ stuff to focus on the aftermath…they’ll be shutting down borders, mobilizing response teams, staging military units, etc, etc. In short, they’ll have their hands full doing the ‘Homeland Security’ thing. Another reason to have your own ducks in a row…when the .gov finally does get its act together it’ll most likely consist of guys with guns forcing people to stay indoors ‘for your own protection’ as they try to find their butt with both hands.