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

,Rawles over at SurvivalBlog had a link to this interesting little article. It seems someone (and I’ll give you one guess who) has discovered that tungsten is close enough in density to gold that faked gold coins and bars might pass some inspection. I forwarded the link to a buddy, and he emailed me back with a link to an outfit that has a bit more detail (ahem) about the subject. I link it not because I want to encourage you to stock up on fake gold to rip folks off. (Passing off non-valuable tokens as having an intrinsic value is the .gov’s job.) I mentioned it because I think being aware of this stuff is the first step towards protecting oneself from this sort of predation. I’m not sure about the tinfoil hat statement in the previous article about how the US Mint has bars of this stuff in Fort Knox and is quite aware of its non-gold composition. On the one hand, I wouldn’t put anything past the .gov especially when it comes to giving the impression that Ft. Knox really is full of gold. On the other hand, that’s the sort of conspiracy that if proved would cause some serious head rolling at some pretty high levels.

Anyway, my point about all this is that, just like paper currency, theres some counterfeits out there and it may pay to be extra vigilant when you’re purchasing metals.

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

I cannot resist passing this along. One thing I love about Third World and Central/South American police is how there is utterly no uniformity in their firearms. There are at least six guns in this pic and no two are alike. And whats Mr. AK doing with all those pistol mag pouches?

Ganked from TSLRF.

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

By the way, one of the things I was wondering about this hunting season was whether the last six months of CrossFit would make a difference in my performance (actual or perceived) during this hunting season. The answer is ‘yes it did’. I got less winded and when I did get winded it didn’t bring me to a halt..I simply sucked it up and kept going because I knew from previous experience at CrossFit that I could. And while dragging animals across non-snowy terrain is never a walk in the park it seemed less taxing this time around. So, yes, the CrossFit experience helped. I was thinking to myself as I was dragging the deer that, based on performance at CrossFit, I know I could throw it over my shoulders and cover one mile with it in about fifteen minutes. But…I would much rather drag it, thank you very much.
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This deer, and I have lost count, is yet another one in a string of “Less than 75 yard” kills. I’ve shot exactly one deer at around 125 yards. Every other deer has been at about 75 yards or less. This is a combination of factors…sometimes I’m just sitting quietly and when I look behind me theres Bambi staring at me, other times I crest a ridge and theres a couple right at the top where they couldn’t see me until I was on top of them, and other times…well…I think theyre just stupid. My point is that while I love the notion of long-range shooting and I have a deep appreciation for the belted magnums and good optics, the naked truth is that my entire hunting career in Montana could quite easily have been handled with an open sighted .30-30. However, since theres no guarantee that the next deer isn’t going to be 250 yards away, I’ll take the advantage that my scoped .308 gives me.

By the by, many folks think that for Montana hunting you need either super flat shooters like .257 Weatherby, .25-06, .270, 7 Mag or .300 Magnums or you need big thumpers like .338 Winchester, .35 Whelen, .375 H&H, or .45-70’s. For eastern Montana, with its flat rolling plains and antelope, yeah, the flat shooters are handy. And in mountainous and timbered western Montana its nice to have the big boomers for elk and bear. But..in my personal opinion, a middle-of-the-road caliber is ideal. Nothing smaller than 7mm and nothing bigger than 9.3mm. The .30-06 is always called the ‘all-around cartridge’ and it probably really would be that versatile in it’s utility. If I had the inclination to add one more cartridge to my logistics table and think of it as ideal for Montana it would be the venerable 7×57 Mauser. Sure, the 7-08 will do the same in a short action, and the .280 will beat it in a standard action, but I’m a bit nostalgic and would like a lovely Mauser in 7×57. I’d use 175 gr. Bullets for the elk and bear and drop down to the 145 gr. For the deer. Pleasant to shoot and plenty powerful. Nothing wrong with the other cartridges, we all have our preferences, but I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for the old 7×57.
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As I’m sure you’ve noticed, the official unemployment figures topped 10% for the first time in quite a while. Note that is the official figure, unofficial figures are almost certain to be higher. The official figures do not count people who lost their jobs and then simply gave up looking or moved off of unemployment benefits. Its like tracking homeless people by counting how many show up on the soup line…theres obviously a percentage who don’t show up and are thus uncounted. Same with unemployment. What is the ‘real’ number of unemployed? I have no idea. I see people throwing around figures that are about half again as much, some higher. The term ‘jobless’ recovery is starting to crop up. How can you have a recovery without jobs? Pretty easily, I’d imagine…businesses simply learn to run ‘leaner’ and do more with less. But I don’t think that’s the case here. I think whats going on is simply that people are worried the economy is going to get worse, so they hold off on hiring, purchasing, acquisitions, etc. in order to preserve capital ‘just in case’ and that inactivity makes things worse. Self-fulfilling prophecy. How can .gov break that? Interestingly, I think an out-and-out Orwellian media campaign. Keep talking about ‘recovery’ and ‘growth’ long enough and loud enough and people will start to believe it and, again, you get a self-fulfilling prophecy.

You guys all know the ‘stone soup’ story, right? Buncha soldiers come into a besieged town and decide to cook a meal. They have no food and the locals are in no way inclined to share whatever they have. One of the soldiers sets up a big kettle of water and makes as if he’s about to prepare a huge pot of soup. A curious villager asks what he’s going to make. “Stone soup.”, he replies, dropping a couple large round rocks into the pot. “Its delicious. The tastiest soup you’ve ever had.” The villager, and the others that have started to come around, are, naturally, skeptical. But the soldiers make the motions, bring the huge kettle to a boil, and put in some large rocks…stirring and commenting amongst themselves about how good the soup will be. By now a crowd of villagers has gathered to watch this absurdity. One of the soldiers says that the soup, while good, would be superlative if only it had a little bit of onion. One of the villagers says she might have an onion or two, and comes back with a sack of onions. Into the pot they go. More stirring, more murmuring. The crowd is starting to wonder if maybe there isn’t something to this as the smell of onions wafts from the kettle. After a while another soldier says “It’s a shame we don’t have some potatoes to put in. Those would make this soup truly memorable.” Another villager says he might know where to get some potatoes and comes back with a few pounds. Into the pot. This goes on for a while, every so often a villager returns with something to put in the pot. Hours later the kettle is simmering with onions, potatoes, carrots, celery, meat, spices and all the other ingredients the villagers have added. The soldiers finally pronounce the soup done, pull out the rocks and discard them, and everyone has some of the ‘stone soup’.

To be sure, there are several sinister implications and interpretations to this story but I could see it being a parable for what the .gov thinks is needed for recovery. “This recovery is going to be awesome, but what would really put us on top would be if interest rates were changed.” And a few weeks later “Smell that? This is going to be an excellent recovery. I wish we had some tax changes to add to it. That would make a wonderful addition”. A few weeks later “This is turning into a fantastic recovery. Best we’ve ever had. An extension of the home-purchase credit plan would make it perfect!” And the next thing you know – ‘stone soup’ recovery.

I think you could argue that any economic event is instigated by perception as much as by economic theory. The bank run scene in “It’s a Wonderful Life” is a great example of that. Bailey’s was, in fact, unsound at the time the townies came in clamoring for their deposits. However, by convincing people that it was sound kept it from being blown away, never mind that it really was unsound. To carry the movie analogies even further, perhaps this will be a ‘Field Of Dreams’ recovery – build up the hype that the economy is roaring back to health and the consumer confidence will come.

Regardless, I don’t believe we’re out of the woods yet economically. There are way too many variables and indicators that no one really believes we’re on the train back to Fat City. Sure, there’ll be a recovery…how could there not? But when and what it will look like are still up for grabs.

My opinion, for what its worth, is to stay the course…be careful with your resources, hold off another year on the jet ski, and be prepared to have a ‘deep personal financial crisis’.

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

Back in ye olden days when I first started developing an interest in what we now call ‘preparedness’ (and back then called ‘survivalism’) it was often a crapshoot when it came to finding information and reading materials. Sure, there were Tappan’s books and a slew of Long and Benson how-to guides but other than a self-addressed-stamped-envelope to the guys at Paladin Press you were pretty much on your own when it came to finding informative reading.

There were no shortage of books on firearms and self-defense, and to many at the time that was the whole crux of the ‘movement’. But if you wanted information on the less sexy aspects of survivalism like composting toilets, non-electric wells, DIY medicine, alternative energy, food preservation and that sort of thing you were pretty much relegated to back issues of Mother Earth News or wandering the stacks at the local library…inconvenient and often unproductive.

The interweb, Crom bless it, has changed that on so many levels that I genuinely think a ‘survivalist’ from 1985 would just be slackjawed at the incredible potential offered by the internet. In the old days if you wanted to find a blast map of projected US targets with the anticipated fallout paths so you could plan your retreat location accordingly you had to cruise through stacks of all sorts of .gov and non-.gov documents. Now you can Google it and even get recent satellite imagery of the area to show you what the scenery looks like. Recent economic trends? Alcohol conversions for engines? Installing non-electric well pumps? All there. Heck, even YouTube all by itself offers more preparedness resources in one place than we ever saw when I was a kid. You trundle over to YouTube and they have videos on sealing buckets, storing grain, making smoke bombs, installing solar panels, cooking with Dutch ovens, etc, etc, etc.

In some ways I’m envious of the people who just recently came to this party. They have more resources available to them than I ever imagined twenty years ago. At the same time, though, theres so much information, good and bad, out there that it can also seem pretty overwhelming. But, I do think that the amazing amount of information out there on the internet makes todays survivalists potentially far more prepared than their compatriots twenty years ago. Heck, just the networking options alone are astounding. Back in the day you pretty much either ran a personal ad in SOF or ASG and opened yourself up to all sortsa whackos or you closeted yourself and hoped to someday just run into a fellow Like-Minded Individual. Nowadays you can lurk unobtrusively and fairly anonymously on various forums and strike up conversations with people without ever leaving yourself vulnerable.

Certainly one wonderful convenience of the internet has been its ability to make purchasing of obscure and hard-to-find items as simple as ordering a pizza. Used to be if you wanted to purchase, say, freeze dried foods you would mail the company for a catalog, review the catalog, possibly find a local distributor to get in touch with (since many companies don’t deal direct), send off your check, and have yours tuff shipped. Nowadays you can price shop on the internet, type in a credit card number and your stuff is on the way within a day or two. And for really obscure stuff and oddball military surplus, eBay has been mighty reliable. One of my favorite things about the internet is the ease and convenience of finding books that I want. No thousand-page publishers catalogs to weed through any more…I just type ‘off-grid living cabin’ and I get a list of all sortsa books that fit the bill. A couple clicks and theyre on the way. How utterly awesome is that?

Even gun purchases are more efficient and easier with the internet. Used to be that you only found a bargain if you hit the gun shows and maybe the out-of-the-way gun shops. Now you hop over to Gunbroker or AuctionArms and hunt around for exactly what you want. And spare parts? Never been easier. Used to be that getting parts for a gun was a tedious experience thumbing through the Gun Parts catalog and hoping they had what you want. Nowadays some fast Google-fu and you can have all the spare parts you want on their way in 24 hours.

Amazing resource, that interweb…..

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

When you’re interested in the sorts of things that you and I are interested in you invariably run into people who take things a wee bit too seriously. Case in point, a comment I received a few posts back saying that the CA mail-order ammo ban is part of a New World Order plan to disarm and depopulate the world for the corporations and bankers.

I don’t know where to start with this. Does someone really believe there is a board meeting at Nabisco and Wells Fargo with executives saying “Yes, profits are up and we anticipate some negative growth in the next quarter but, more importantly, hows our plan to depopulate Australia coming along?”

The latest rage is believing that the H1N1 vaccine is actually a .gov plan to depopulate the US and bring populations down to sustainable levels. Right…because .gov doesn’t already have a hundred different ways to do that? “But..but..but that’s why they exempted the drug manufacturers from liability! So when the ‘surplus population’ is killed they won’t be liable!” Right…sure it is. For every one of these theories there’s an equally plausible (albeit not always sensible) alternative. I may think the vaccine was not given as rigorous and thorough testing and development as previous vaccines but that isn’t the same as thinking its some sort of human pesticide.

Does that mean there aren’t conspiracies out there? Of course not. But heres the thing, I look around me and see dozens more empty storefronts than I did last year, employment is at 10%, gold is hitting record highs, I still have a hard time getting ammo, winter is coming, the terrorists are still terrorizing and somehow all that is less real than the notion that some Bilderberger Illuminati TriLateral New World Order of ‘banksters’ and UN globalists is out to control the planet? Seriously?

“Cockup vs. conspiracy” – never attribute to conspiracy what is more likey to be attributable to a simple screw up. You run over a nail and your front tire blows. This is a case of:
a) simple bad luck
b) a multinational global conspiracy by ‘Big Tire’ to increase sales and create a corporate oligarchy for the Firestone dynasty that the puppet US-.gov is complicit in.

Most of us, I would hope, will answer “a”.

Do I believe the Obama administration may have plans to roll out new gun control? Sure. Do I think its because he’s the mouthpiece of a backroom cabal of international corporate and political interests intent on disarming America so their troops can seize American resources and enslave us all with microchips implanted in our hands –or- do I think its because gun control is historically a plank in the Democratic platform? Wow..tough call…tough call.

To be sure, there are conspiracies out there. But, really, some of these more outlandish ones do nothing but detract from the ‘real’ (or ‘more real’) threats and problems we face. I suspect I’d be better served preparing for extended economic malaise, or pandemic-related infrastructure failure than I would be by preparing to repel masses of Nepalese Ghurkas in UN berets marching down Main St. to the strains of “L’Internationale”.

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

Well, my deer hunting season is done.

Oh noes! Bambi!

Cut for size and for PETA weenies

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

The news media, in some circles, is saying that we’re in a sort of, kinda, possible, gradual economic recovery. Maybe we are, maybe we aren’t. Even if we were in an economic recovery, so what? Does it mean you can let out a deep breath because the bad times are over? Does it mean that somehow your job is safer than it was before? Absolutely not. Businesses aren’t going to stay the ax because we’re in a recovery. They keep people around as long as those folks earn more money than they cost. That’s Econ 101. I’m no expert but I would imagine that if we are really in a recovery businesses are just as likely to ax people on the premise that, having made it through the recession, the company needs to stay ‘lean and mean’ to weather the next one and be competitive. So…even if we are in a recovery (which Im not sure I believe) that’s no reason to think your safe. Heck, Im not even sure that there is a ‘safe’ time. So just because someone is saying we’re in a recovery is no reason to buy the new bass boat or remodel the bathroom. Hold on to that money for a while ‘just in case’ and let’s see if things actually get better.
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I’m fairly content with the food storage situation. I’m always up for adding more to it, of course, but if things fell apart tomorrow I know we wouldn’t starve for quite a while. I do need to stock up on some of the more mundane things, things like toiletries, tissues, cleaning agents, bleach, etc, etc. We do keep a somewhat larger-than-average quantity of these things on hand but it would be nice to have a more generous stockpile. For example, while we may buy toilet paper in the 36-roll pack up at CostCo we usually only have one pack on hand at the house. The smarter way to do it would be to have one in storage at all times and one that’s open for use. That way theres always that reserve of one package. Of course, in reality perhaps it would be more like two or three in reserve.

For storage, by the way, I really like the steel wire shelves that you see used for food service type situations. Although the other kind of steel shelving is quite good, I find the wire shelves to be far more versatile. Unfortunately the heavy-duty ones are not cheap. There are some cheap ones out there but they are just that – cheap. They sag like an aging porn star. I lucked out and found a ‘liquidator’ business not far from me. This is a business that buys out other businesses and liquidates their inventory. They tend to have a huge amount of office-type furniture but I recently found that they have the steel wire shelving I like as well….and at a good bit cheaper than new.
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Speaking of gear, I’ve been interested in the ‘poly bottles’ that have come out lately. These are, essentially, soft-sided water bottles. Pouches, I suppose, would be a better term. The idea is that they are lighter and more packable than the usual Nalgene bottle. Several companies offer them including Nalgene and Platypus. The Nalgene one seems to get lesser reviews than the Platypus. I have the Platypus one and have been pretty pleased with it thus far, my only complaint is that I haven’t found a wide-mouth version yet. One very nice feature of these things is that as you consume the liquid you can squeeze the remaining air out of the container so the liquid doesn’t slosh around. A very nice feature. My concern, of course, is durability. The reviews I’ve read say that obviously these things don’t take the same abuse as the hard bottle, and that they need to packed so they don’t encounter sharp or hard corners in your gear, but other than that they seem like a good idea. The Nalgene one, according to the reviews, seems more prone to failure at the seams than the Platypus, so for now I’m sticking with the Platypus ones.

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

Here’s a very useful resource. Hundreds and hundreds of firearms manuals online in .pdf form in one place. Darn handy, if you ask me.

Bears?
Wolves?
Rabid meth heads?
Pot growers?

Not a problem when hunting in Montana: