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

A polymer revolver??????

I believe I speak on behalf of Elmer Keith, Skeeter Skelton, Bill Jordan and Ed McGivern when I say “WTF?!”

Apparently the engineering department at Ruger has been let off the leash since the old man died.

As the dogmatic and hidebound proclaimed guru once espoused about another type of handgun, its “an answer in search of a problem.”

I really do have to get my hands on one of these things and examine it. in typical Ruger fashion Im sure I’ll get one after the first or second factory recall.

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

I wonder if this is what it felt like a week before the Russian revolution? After all, in about a week we are supposed to be getting an unprecedented ‘change’ which promises us all no solidly defined policies except ‘hope’.

The forecast is for….1978.
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Went to WalMart again the other day. No bulk .22 of any flavor. No 9mm. No .38 or .357. Some .40 and .45 ACP. As we headed down the aisle away from the gun counter I remarked to the missus that I was feeling a little smug that every time we come to WallyWorld we usually pick up two bricks of ammo. So while WallyWorld is outta .22, we’ve got a pretty healthy amount….enough to see us through any shortage. Of course, no supply of anything lasts forever so when bulk .22 is available again we will, naturally, continue to acquire it. But, its an excellent example of self-fulfilling prophecy.

We rush out to stock up on ammo because we think Obama will make it unobtainable. As a result the shelves are bare and the ammo is, ironically, unobtainable. So the concern that ammo would become scarce actually made the ammo scarce. Youre seeing the same things with Evil Black Rifles at the moment.

For the Johnny-come-lately types this is a heck of a time to try and find an AR or some ammo. But you and I, because we look past the immediate, saw this coming miles away and have been stocking up, right?

It isn’t over, by the way. As Ive been saying, this panic buying is going to come in four waves:
1) When he’s elected
2) When he’s inaugurated
3) When new anti-gun legislation is proposed
4) When that legislation is voted into law

So, yes, I think after January 20 there’ll be a slight slump in demand. That might be a window to get your last minute purchases, but once new legislation is proposed you can expect an even more intense flurry of panic buying.

I had a customer come in the other day with, I kid you not, $7000 in cash. He was looking to buy AR mags and rifles. He was prepared to pay around $1300 for any NIB AR he could find. Six months ago I could have sold him as many as he wanted for $900 ea. And still made a good profit. But because someone decided to wait until late in the game, theyre gonna be on the hook for several hundred dollars more per gun and probably about $10 more per magazine. And that’s without a ban being debated and voted upon yet…imagine what its going to be like when that political jockeying starts.
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While I was tooling around in WallyWorld I noticed that the price of canning jars went up a little. I had a little canning frenzy last week and did a couple dozen pints of soups so I needed to have a few extra jars and lids. The jars, naturally, are re-usable…the lids are not. Fortunately the lids are cheap enough that, like .22 ammo, they’ve become an item that I just automatically pick up a couple boxes of everytime Im at the store. There are some food preservation forums where people say that the lids have enough adhesive on them that they can, if you remove them carefully, be reused. Maybe. That’s definitely a last-ditch thing for me though. Why take chances with the nastiness of botulism and other food-borne baddies when I can get a dozen brand new lids for six bits?

The canning stuff, though, is starting to take up a bit more space than I’d like it to. Jars need no special storage requirements other than protecting them from breakage. I do leave the bands screwed onto the empty jars in order to protect the mouths of the jars from damage. (Any chips, nicks or damage to the mouth of the jar can preclude the lids sealing properly. Lids that don’t seal properly are Bad News.) Fortunately, I have an extra wire shelving rack that I can dedicate to the canning stuff. I need to order some spare parts for the canner and I wouldn’t mind another dozen cases of jars. For the canner, Im going to order a spare guage, extra parts for the locking matches, a couple extra safety release plugs, an extra handle or two and that should be about it. The darn thing is only made up of ten parts anyway. The particular canner I have doesn’t use a gasketed seal so I don’t need spares of that. The canner I have (An All American) was mighty expensive compared to something like a Mirro but I do believe it more than makes up for it in terms of ruggedness, quality and just plain brute construction – it looks darn near bombproof.
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Speaking of canning, I have a trip to the Mormon cannery this week. I’ll just round out some of the less-than-whole cases of stuff I have and I think I’ll be pretty much done with the things that they offer. That isn’t to say I wont go anymore, just that I’ll pretty much have hit my saturation point on wheat, rice, dried apples, potato pearls, and drink mix. However, they do have a portable canning unit that they let people check out so I may get the chance to can some items that they do not offer up there…things like dried corn, barley, certain legumes, etc, etc.
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And to continue the food storage theme, my local Sportsmans Warehouse is selling 5-gallon buckets. The buckets, unfortunately, are stamped with the SW logo on them but theyre $5 ea. And, more importantly, are of the much-preferred .090 mil thickness. Since Im trying to pinch pennies these days, I’ll wind up getting a few of these things and using them to add to the stored stuff we have. Should probably check and see if maybe they have a better deal on the 15-gallon blue barrels…I find them to be pretty much the optimum size ofr storing grains and water while still being small enough to be handled by one person. (Although 15 gallons of water cloks in at around 120#, so you’ve got your work cut out for you on that one.)
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And Mountain House, purveyor of freeze dried yummies, has now increased the size an order must be to get free shipping. Whereas a $3000 would get you free shipping the new magic number is $10,000. My contact there said this was due to fuel issues. Result? Group buys will have to be bigger to take advantage of the shipping.

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

I am, regrettably, still convinced that this economic…downturn…we’re experiencing is not done. Economy aside there are still ‘old’ threats still out there…Muslim terrorists, bird flu, natural disasters, etc, etc.

I hope 2009 isnt going to be worse than 2008 but I don;t see how it can’t be. I can’t believe anyone would really think that the Carter II administration is somehow going to pull us out of this. I saw a cover of Time magazine that had Obama caricatured as the new FDR. Lets not forget a couple things about FDR – he is, hands down, the father of the .gov nannystate…so much so that he threatened to stack the Supreme Court if his New Deal programs continued to be assailed as ‘unconstitutional’..and that FDR didn’t end the Depression. FDR never presided over anything except a Depression economy or a wartime economy. Make no mistake…WW2 ended the Depression (some may argue FDR got us into WW2 for that very reason). To imagine Obama as a new FDR means that the person making the comparison is either ignorant of history or acutely aware of it.

I think 2009 will be a tough year. I have no intention of this being the year we get a new house, new car, new television or cruise through the Med. This will be a year of looking over one’s shoulder while stuffing money into the mattress. However, when all this turns around…and it will eventually turn around…I plan on us being there to see it. Ideally, in much the same situation we are now…safely rooted in our house, with cabinets full of food, a safe full of guns, enough cash to handle a crisis, and ourselves steeled against the uncertain.

I suppose my point, if I have one at all here, is that you shouldn’t be lulled into a sense of security that things are getting better…that a rebound is right around the corner…that ‘hope’ and ‘change’ are coming…it would be foolish to think the clouds have broken and that its okay to drop $4200 on a bigscreen HDTV only to have your job eliminated the week after you start making the payments.

What will be the signs that things are ‘back to the way they used to be’? Not sure. I do know what those signs won’t be though….most of the ones we’re seeing now.

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

Went to Wally World the other day and, mostly out of curiousity, I stopped by the gun department for our usual two bricks o’ Federal. No Federal. No Remington. No .22 at all. That, my friends, is some disturbing stuff right there, I tell ya. The natives are restless.

Speaking of .22, I went out to the range today to take part in a little experiment. We all know that if you shot a propane tank with a bullet it will usually not explode. The gas jetting out will send the tank careening around like a spastic pinball, but no boom. So…what if we incorporate the boom into the bullet? To wit – armour-piercing incendiary bullets. Unfortunately, the range was just a little too crowded for engaging in rule-breaking, membership-voidng pyrotechnic experiments so that little frontier of science will have to wait until another day. Heres the background: Full 1# bottle of propane, 100 yards, .30 API, 2700 fps, temps. between 10-30 degrees f.

Im betting nothing fireball-ish happens.

I comforted myself with playing with the PTR and the .22lr conversion kit.

ptr22

(Yes, my finger is in the triggerguard before I was ready to shoot. Those mitts are so thick that I wanted to get my finger in the triggerguard before there was a round in the chamber. I didnt chamber a round until I was at the firing line, though.)

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Stayed up far too late into the wee hours of the morning doing some canning. The missus and I made about 40 pints of various soups we like and when possible I’d rather have them canned then frozen. Its more convenient to not have to thaw something, and if the power goes it I dont have to worry about temperature regulation. I discoverd, while I was at the aforementioned WallyWord, that pint jars we’re up 10% in price although lids dropped about 15%. Go figure. I’m careful to treat the jars carefully, keep bands on them when not in use to protect against chips, and carefully inspect each one before use….so I should be able to get plenty of life out of them. Spending all that time parked in my kitchen keeping an eye on my pressure canner makes me appreciate the quality of the new pressure canner I got. I have to admit, there is a certain warm fuzzy that results from seeing all those little jars lined up on the counter cooling.

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

A couple interesting products I found today. Actually I need to distinguish between practical and interesting.

In the interesting category is The Wall Of Life. This thing has Hollywood written all over it. An instant chem/bio shelter that normally looks like part of the wall but in a crisis can be transformed into a self-contained environment to protect a user from airborne threats. I cant imagine they sell many of these but its definitely some clever engineering on someone’s part.

I am, however, more taken with this gadget: Breath Of Life Emergency Escape Mask.  Smoke hoods have been around for a number of years and if I worked in an office building or similar environ I’d bloody well have a couple of these in my desk (along with rappelling gear and a couple hundred feet of rope).  Nowadays I have a stack of these lovelies sitting in the bunker, but for compact and convenient ‘just in case’ carry these things would be awful nice. Just the ticket for getting out of a smokey subway tunnel, office building or similar deathtrap.

I do like the TacPac pocket emergency kits, though.  If I were stuck working or commuting in big city that was ripe for some sort of terrorist action I’d have a couple of these and the smoke hood in my bag at all times.

One final product from these same people is this fireproof poncho. (The “[noun] of life” naming convention apparently didnt extend to this thing.) Kinda reminds me of the Dorest Service emergency fire shelters (”shake n bakes”) that are issued to firefighters here. Im not sure how much I would trust something like that but I suppose it beats being trapped behind a wall of flame and heat.

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

I must have lead either an amazingly dull or amazingly lucky life in that I’ve never really seriously injured myself. Never broke any bones, never needed a ride in an ambulance, never damaged myself to the point that someone else had to bundle me into the back of a car and drive me to a hospital. That doesn’t mean it won’t happen, it just means it hasnt happened yet.

Wars and violent confrontations are terrible events but there is one ‘good’ side effect – new developments in trauma treatment that eventually trickle down to the civilian world. One of the more interesting developments in the last few years has been the introduction and development of clotting agents for field use. These products, the most popular being QuickClot (although there are, naturally, other brands) , are applied to a wound to staunch bleeding until the person can get to medical aid. A very important development. A guy who just got shot in the leg can pour some of this stuff into the wound, tie a compress bandage around it and stop the blood loss until such time as he can be extracted. How is that not an amazingly useful development?

Well, theres apparently some issues in the military about whether the cure is worse than the disease.

WASHINGTON — Until more testing can be done, Army medics are being told to stop using a new product just sent to the war front to help control bleeding among wounded troops.

Officials were in the process of distributing some 17,000 packets of WoundStat, granules that are poured into wounds when special bandages, tourniquets or other efforts won’t work. But a recent study showed that, if used directly on injured blood vessels, the granules may lead to harmful blood clots, officials said Tuesday.

At issue seems to be a concern that the loose granules of clotting agent may cause ‘bad’ clots…the kind that cause strokes and embolysms, it seems. The clotting products usually come in two forms – a powder that is poured into the open wound and bandages that are treated with the clotting product. The concern seems to stem from the powder version. I’m guessing the concern is some of this material getting into the bloodstream and clogging up things in a lung or brain. A shame, since these types of products seem to be doing far more harm than good. I have both the powder and the bandages and it ranks right up in my list of things I genuinely hope I never need.

The Russians, naturally, are a more pragmatic people. Theres the story of how when the space race was in its infancy NASA spent thousands of dollars to develop a pen that could write in zero gravity, the Russians simply used pencils.  KaiserVonTexas has a post, with pictures and links, to the Soviet version of QuickClot – the tourniquet. An outstanding photo showing the troops with tourniquets wrapped around their rifle stocks. Also a link to a seller on eBay of the genuine article.

Tourniquets are a mixed blessing. As you know they do indeed shut off the flow of blood to a wound. They also shut off the flow of blood to the rest of that limb which can lead to some very ugly results and amputations. However, it does usually beat being dead. I recall reading somewhere that tourniquets are discouraged in most situations unless its an absolute last resort and even then theres careful instructions to loosen it every so often, etc.

I’m a pragmatist so I have all three – the clotting powder, the treated dressing/bandage, and the barbarous tourniquet. I am more likely to go for the bandage first though. However if theres a nice arterial fountain shooting  out of my thigh I may worry less about a loose clot giving me a stroke and worry more about not dyiing in the next five minutes.

Several companies sell ‘blowout kits’ or specialized kits for treating gunshot type wounds. These kits are almost always a small MOLLE pouch with gauze, compress bandage, clotting agent, sucking chest wound materials and a few other sundries. Its deisgned for one purpose – treating a heavily bleeding wound. Its not bandaids and bactine and it isnt priced like it either. However these kits are probably a good idea to have if theres even the small chance of some very traumatic injury (gunshot , stabbing, penetrating wound, etc).

I keep a packet or two of QuickClot in the first aid kit I carry in my Tactical Tailor bag. I’ll probably swap out one of those packets for one of the treated dressing/bandage units.

Anyway, I thought that the article about the military halting issue of the clotting product may be of interest to some and worth mentioning.

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

First, Im all out of the #1120 Pelican cases. They were a good deal and they shall not come this way again. However, still got plenty of the #1010 cases..they’ll fit cell phones, MP3 palyers, most small digital cameras, emergency spare parts kits for guns, backpack stove parts, etc, etc. Theyre $12.50 each prepaid postage right to your bunker. When they gone, they gone.

Cool! Gimme one!

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Right now probably the biggest and most active topic on the forums are the ‘predictions for 2009′ threads. If I had any precognitive ability whatsoever I’d be sitting on the porch of my 1500-acre parcel shooting icicles off of trees with a AI AW sniper gun. However, since I don’t have any precognitive abilities that will allow me to win Powerball, break the bank in Vegas, shut down the race track and nail Angelina Jolie after an all-night strip poker game anything I predict will be worthless.

All Im willing to say is that, for almost everyone, 2008 was quite the year. I think 2009 will be more of the same with the added thrill of the Carter II administration making it worse. It is, in my humble and thoroughly discredited opinion, time to circle the wagons and hold onto every cent you have. It will get worse before it gets better. And though it will indeed get better, you gotta make it through the bad parts first.

Regardless, depsite my own feelings of doom and gloom regarding the next spin around the sun, I hope that everyone has a safe, warm, well-fed, financially-secure 2009.

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

I likes me Pelican cases. Crushproof, waterproof, airtight and always up for taking some rough usage….all the qualities I look for in a gal right there. One of my vendors was closing out some gen-u-ine Pelican cases that had been contract-made for Nikon. Turns out theyre Pelican cases with Nikon stickers on ‘em. Oh they still say Pelican on ‘em, it’s just an annoying yellow sticker next to the Pelican logo. Fortunately, that sticker peels right off. Best part, the #1120 cases are my favorite olive drab..I mean..sage…er…whatever the new term is these days.

Picked up a few and I have some extras for those that are interested. Theres two sizes:

The 1120 which will fit a G19 and a couple mags, most snubbie .38/.357’s, and would make an uber-sweet first aid kit container.

The 1010 which will hold a cellphone, iPod Nano, rifle/pistol spare parts, and many small digital cameras. Very handy.

The 1120 has a foam insert that was pre-cut for whatever Nikon was selling. Digital camera, Im guessing. You can buy replacement foam or just throw the foam away and maximize your usable space. Color is the lovely OD/sage. Takes a beating and keeps on …well..something, I guess that rhymes with beating.

The 1010 is solid black, non-transparent, has a lanyard, comes with a foam insert that is uncut and may be cut to accomodate whatever you want.

#1010 $12.50 postage paid.

#1120 $22.00 plus whatever shipping is. Weight is two pounds so cheapest is USPS from zip 59801…anywhere between $4.80-$8.25.

Both types of cases are brand new, never used. Just overruns, Im guessing. Only have about a dozen of each so when theyre gone, theyre gone. Excellent containers for storing stuff that absoultely must be protected. Ideal for critical electronic gear like GPS, camera and radios. Email if youre interested: zero@commanderzero.com

Pictures? Ok:

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

Got a chance to stock up on tuna today. The local Albertson’s had the StarKist brand pouches of tuna marked down to a buck each. However, there was also a stack of manufacturers coupons there that were ‘$1.50 off 3’. So that winds up coming out to $0,50 per pouch. Well…at that price wouldn’t you pick up a couple dozen too? (Those coupons expire 9/2009 so a stack of ‘em are coming home with me also.)

It’s weird…finding little scores like that seem like huge triumphs to me these days. Like Im getting away with something or just discovered plutonium by accident. I become immensely pleased with myself. However, as Poor Richard would say, a penny saved is a penny earned. Any money that isn’t being spent on food, fuel or other goods is more money we have to set back against whatever may come.

When I was a kid I never gave a thought to where the food, heat and shelter in my life came from. What kid does? We open the fridge and theres a carton of milk, we turn on the shower and we get hot water, we go to bed and we have clean sheets. We never really grasp, as a kid, that every one of these things came from our mom or dad (or both) getting up every morning and slogging to work. It wasn’t until years later that that lesson dawned on me.

Nowadays, money is right up there with fuel, food and ammo. It’s a ward..a charm..a talisman..a protection… against the uncertain future. The more you have the greater your insulation from dire circumstances. And while there may be times when money won’t do much for a person (like when the store shelves are bare) money is quite easily converted into goods (when those goods are available). So anytime I can get tuna for 1/3 the price…that’s just as good as getting an extra 5 miles per gallon, or hitting three deer with one bullet. Its an economy of resources that means what I have will go further…or that I can keep more resources in reserve.

So..money is our friend. And store club savings, coupons, and manufacturers rebates are our friends also. (As an aside, I’ve encountered people who actually think theres a stigma attached to using coupons. :::shrug::: Theres a greater stigma attached to using food stamps and food banks, honey. Use the one so you won’t have to use the other.)

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I don’t want to sound like a broken record, nor do I want to sound like an “I told you so”, but for the last several years now I’ve figured that the most likely Very Bad Thing that would happen would be economic. Sure there was a tie for first place with ‘nuclear terrorism’ but for the last several years economic disaster has been my first choice for what the most likely next catastrophic event would come as.

There are, to be sure, plenty of folks out there that say that this isn’t really as bad as every one makes it out to be. That this is a normal cyclical economic change and that it’ll swing back to the ‘good’ side of the meter in short order. Maybe. I probably tend to read the articles saying we’re all going to be eating our pets by Christmas more closely than I read the ones saying ‘sit tight, it’ll be back to normal in six months’.

I know very little about economics. I try to familiarize myself with basic ideas and theories but I am not nearly as conversant in the field as I should be. (I am trying, though.) However, I do know about consequences and results. For me, one of the interesting things about preparedness is how it changes your way of thinking. Preparedness makes you look at the possible outcomes of an action or event and to continue looking past those to the next generation of consequences. Its become second nature for me now.

So…anyone else would see automakers not getting their bailout and then predict that there’ll be higher unemployment. And that’s usually where their thinking slows down or moves on to other things. I see it as higher unemployment…and then an increase in demand for public services, those services being overburdened, taxes going up thereby forcing some businesses to cut back thus increasing the problem, crime rates going up as people with nothing to lose start to take ‘whats due them’, and finally a vocal group of these people getting a political solution that makes things even worse. All the while the economic figures, which may actually not be as bad as they seem at first blush, spook more people into circling their wagons…buying slows down, retailers suffer, more people are out of work, the .gov tries some Third-world tactics to get the economy moving again (stimulus checks, anyone?) The rest of the world follows our economy and things get lean everywhere else…and some of those economies, my friends, are in countries that are already unstable to begin with. And this sort of thing isn’t just on the US automakers…it can come from any market segment getting wiped out. However, that doesn’t mean I think the .gov needs to jump in to start getting into the [auto/financial/mortgage] industry. Let ‘em go broke. Things will be rough for a while but when the dust clears the surviving corporations and industries will be stronger. Natural selection and all that.

Or, quite possibly, Im overreacting and things really are just doing part of the give-take of a normal economic cycle. I hope that’s the case. I hope that people start feeling secure in their future and start spending money like drunken Democrats. I’m in the retail business, after all…my best days are when someone comes in with pockets full of cash and a head full of impulse and spontaneity. I want people to feel that theres no problem spending money because there’ll always be more. Its good for my business. Heck, all the stored food and gear we hold against bad times will keep for a long time so it won’t be like I wasted any money if things suddenly turn into a bustling vibrant recovery. But given the simple binary choice of ‘are things going to get worse or better in the near future’ I want to say that I feel they are going to get worse and not get better for some time. I’d like to be wrong, I really would. I have friends and family who are suffering now and will suffer worse as the economy runs its course. I don’t want to see them suffer and I certainly don’t want them to find themselves in the position of too many people these days – getting foreclosed on, eating .gov cheese and feeling helpless. But I do think that its going to get worse before it gets better. New administration or no….I think things are at a point where there are no ‘good’ solutions and only lesser degree of bad ones.

Nothing you or I can do about it. All we can do is take steps to prepare against it. Writing letters to politicians won’t, I think, make a difference nor will standing around pointing fingers. While the captain and crew are re-arranging the deck chairs I plan on quietly loading my gear into the lifeboat and start paddling away before getting sucked under by the whirlpool.

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

A friend of mine passed away recently and I wound up with his pile o’ guns. We had some very dissimilar tastes in guns. I figured that when push comes to shove you wanna go with something in a common caliber thats relatively easy to find mags and parts for and is designed for hard use. He chose a more…esoteric..path. Anyway, although he did have a couple winners that I’m keeping for myself I do have a couple long guns to find a home for. If anyone is interested:

AG42b Ljungmann, 6.5×55, 10-shot semiatuo. Might even be California legal. Comes with: bayonet and scabbard, correct military sling, two leather ammo bandoleers, small spare parts kit/toolroll, bunch of stripper clips, several boxes of genuine Swede ball ammo that’ll shoot through a battleship.  $900

JC Higgns 45 in .35 Remington. Let’s not get wierd here, its a Marlin 336 made for JC Higgins brand. Pre-crossbolt safety. Good shape.  $250

Glenfield 60 (another Marlin re-brand…its a Marlin 60) .22 LR. $125

Mas 49/56 It’s French. And, oddly, some folks like to tinker with them. $275

Springfield 1903 sporter in 6.5-06 comes with dies and if youre willing to pay a little extra, a pile of ammo. $375

The .22 and the 1903 have El Cheap ™ scopes on them so Im not even considering them scoped.  Interested folks can email me. Buyer pays shipping and whatever FFL fees your dealer charges.