Author Archives: Commander Zero

Practice on the cheap

Posted on by

Picked up a new Glock the other day. A Glock 44 which is a .22 caliber version of the Glock 19. Why? Because with 9mm at around forty cents a round, I can practice my pistol shooting technique for 1/10th that.

Look, good pistol shooting includes having the bullet hit the target, no two ways about that. But before that happens you need to grip, draw, present, acquire a sight picture, squeeze the trigger while maintaining that sight picture, and do followups. Doing that at forty cents per round adds up in a hurry. You don’t need full power 9mm for acquiring a sight picture….22 works just fine and it lets you know when it does (or does not) hit the steel plate if you got your sight picture correct. Same for your draw and presentation. And since the G44 fits the same holsters, mag pouches, etc, as the G19 it makes sense to use it for training.

What do I do with it? I practice drawing from concealment, getting a good sight picture, and placing the shot on the steel. Repeatedly. Over and over and over. And then do it from weak hand. And then from different positions. And practice mag changes. And..and…and.

These are all things that go towards improving and maintaining skill. If you can do it on the cheap, then absolutely go that way. I have .22 conversion kits for my G3 clones, my AR’s, and now for my Glock.

So how does the Glock stack up against some of the conversion kits on the market? The only one I have any real experience with is the Tactical Solutions kit from about ten years back. As I recall it was tempermental. This Glock 44 fired about 350 rounds, half of which were ancient Winchester Western, and had exactly 2 failures to fire. I attribute that to the sometimes sketchy nature of rimfire primer compound application. No failures to extract or feed, which kinda surprised me. Accuracy at usual pistol distances was surprisingly good. Sights were Glock adjustable white-dot and they worked fine although for true replication of your carry gun you might wanna drop some ‘real’ sights on it.

Mags are ten round, and two come with the gun. You’re definitely gonna want more. This thing was a blast to shoot. It is easily my favorite Glock and I’ve got a buncha drastic plastic in the safe…but this one is just downright fun.

Worth paying price of a 9mm Glock? To me, yes. Let’s say it saves me $.30 per round in practice ammo. That means it’s paid for itself after around 1200 rounds, or $50 worth, of .22 ammo. But more importantly, I can go spend and hour at the range doing nothing but draw-shoot-draw-shoot for an hour and be out less than $30.

I’m a Glock guy when it comes to the pistol I’ll run out the door with when the apocalypse gets here. That means I need to practice shooting it in all sorts of conditions…strong hand, weak hand, oblique angles, from retention, etc. Odds are pretty strong that any real-world episode will not be like standing patiently on a shooting line squarely facing a non-moving target. No, it’ll be fast, close, and using whatever position gets the sights on the target as quick as possible… and for that, you have to practice. Thus…the Glock 44.

Dealer prices was $319, and with shipping it as about $345~. Totally worth it.

Paratus 2022

Posted on by

Happy Paratus, my fellow deplorables!

EVERYTHING YOU WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT PARATUS

In case you didnt get one, here is this years card:

This year, the Paratus Long Range Recon Gift Squad brought me a little boomtoy I’ve been wanting for a while. I’ll have a post up about that tomorrow.

I hope you all have a great Paratus, get lotsa cool gear, and take this opportunity to increase your resilience against what’s coming.

And a generalized thank you to everyone who wished me a happy Paratus, and a special thank you to the handful of people who sent gifts (or gift cards) to yours truly. I appreciate it.

Go out there and play with your new gear this weekend…thats what the holiday is for!

Quietly gilding the lily

Posted on by

Hmmm…so what’s this particular survivalist up to these days? Well, most just lilly gilding. I mean, I’m pretty satisfied with where I’m sitting on everything, and although there is always room for improvement, I do feel that if things fell apart tomorrow I’d be just fine. At least, that’s assuming that ‘things falling apart tomorrow’ doesn’t take the form of something I never thought I’d need to plan against.

So, mostly I’m just touching things up here and there…an extra bag of sugar here, a few cans of meat there, a few more batteries, a couple ounces of silver, that sort of thing. It’s almost like waiting for the other to drop.

Other than lily gilding, I’m just watching the news and being utterly amazed at the spectacular political fail that is going on these days, and the rather pronounced political divisiveness among the peasantry. (I almost said unprecedented political divisiveness but, no, there’s precedence.)

The Balkanization, or tribalization, has been a long time coming but it’s only in the last few years that it’s really picked up steam. Used to be you could be friends with someone you didnt agree with politically as long as you both agreed not to talk politics….now politics is the litmus test being used to determine who to be friends with.

I suppose that’s the one thing I really am a bit deficient on – expanding my ‘tribe’. I could probably use more like-minded friends, but couldn’t we all? I would think a core group of three or four would suffice. Even close relatives would work, if they were like minded. Annoyingly, all my relatives who might qualify are living a thousand miles away…thats great for keeping my life neat and tidy, not so great for having people around I can trust to do things like hold onto gold and ammo.

I like to think in a few years we will all look back at the current political climate and think “Hey, remember back in the early 20’s and how nuts that all was? Man, those were some fouled up times.” More likely, though, we’ll look back at the current political climate and think “and THAT’S when all this crap started.”

 

The universe provides

Posted on by

So, you know how a little while back I picked up an MP5K clone? Its a cute piece but it really needs an..”arm brace”…to really make it useful. And, this week, two separate Paratus gifts arrived. A TailHook arm brace, and an MP5 sidefolder from Choate that is made to take the TailHook. Well, I guess thats everything needed to make this thing more practical.

A thank you to the generous readers who sent Paratus gifts that managed to serendipitously compliment each other.

Alternate magazines for Ruger PC

Posted on by

When Ruger brought out their PC Carbine takedown gun a few years back, I was quite excited. The new Ruger was setup at the factory to take mags from Rugers poly 9mm pistols but you could swap out the magazine well insert and put in a different insert that allowed you to use Glock mags. The gun ships with both the Ruger and the Glock mag insert. This is a good idea on Ruger’s part because, realistically, no one buys Ruger centerfire autos. For every SR9, Security9, or American pistol sold there are probably about 250 Glocks sold. So…Ruger plays it safe. Smart.

But since the gun is designed to accept different magazine well inserts to accommodate different magazines, it would only be a matter of time before magazine inserts for things other than Glock pistol mags started showing up, right?

Well, you’d say that, but………for a while it was a barren wasteland of innovation.

Just on a whim, I did some Googling and discovered that, indeed, third parties are now getting magazine adapters out there for other pistols. Most notably Beretta, CZ, and Sig pistols. The free market abhors a vacuum, and every swinging Richard with a 3D printer thinks he’s got the Next Big Thing…..and that is awesome. Thats how innovation works.

I’m not going to get into the conversation about why a person would want a carbine that takes the same caliber/magazine as their pistol. Thats been hashed out elsewhere. My point is, though, that if you like the Ruger PC carbine platform but wish that it would accommodate your favorite pistol magazine….take heart, you may be in luck with a little Googling.

I’m married to the Glock platform so I’m pretty happy with the OEM insert, but I’ve got a buddy who likes the .40 Beretta 96, and another one who is a CZ75 afficianado, and now they can have a carbine that matches their pistol.

Major kudos to Ruger for creating that environment for the PC Carbine….although, really, it’d be to Rugers advantage to be the ones making a variety of inserts.

 

Paratus this Friday

Posted on by

Just a reminder that Paratus is this Friday. I received a very thoughtful package in the mail today of some .357 brass and I’d like to thank the thoughtful person who sent it, and a card, for Paratus. Much thanks!

Truth be told, I find wrapping gifts to be a waste of time and resources.

Paratus cards were mailed today, so keep an eye open…you know who you are!

How do you get on Commander Zero’s card list? Well, naughty or nice has no bearing on it (unless youre a smoking hot chick, in which case naughty will very much work in your favor).

To get on the list you either sign up for Patreon and make sure i have an address for you, send me a gift or card, or be someone I interact with often. Thats it…simple. What does not work: saying “Here’s my address. Please add me to your card list.”

Remember, fellow deplorables….Paratus is your holiday. It’s about you and the interests that you and I share. So make the holiday into what you want it to be, just make it about preparedness and resilience.

Article – How Long Does Frozen Meat Last? Here’s What You Need to Know About Freezing Meat

Posted on by

When it comes to stocking up on food, there’s nothing as convenient as filling up your freezer with a variety of frozen meals and ingredients, since freezing your food is the best way to guarantee freshness, long-term.

If you’re like many people and keep key meat items — such as raw chicken or ground beef — in the freezer, there’s probably a question you might be wondering: How long can you freeze meat before it goes bad?

I have something this article does not – empirical data. And I feel rather qualified to say that this article is utter and total BS. IF you vacuum seal the meat and IF you store it in a deep freeze (not the freezer in your fridge) I can say without any trace of doubt that it will last years.

I routinely eat meat out of my freezer that is a couple years old and it’s fine. In fact, I have half a turkey from 2016 thawing out for dinner tomorrow. I believe the oldest meat I’ve eaten out of my freezer was over ten years old and it was fine.

Articles like this try to be helpful, and I know many people would be aghast at the thought of eating meat that is years old, but I and my content gastrointestinal system are here to tell you that IF you freeze it properly you can get years and years of storage life out of your meat.

So when you see a big deal on bulk meat, don’t hesitate to purchase it because you’re worried it’ll “go bad” or “Won’t keep” until you’re ready to use it up. Seal it, freeze it, and it’ll be good for a decade. Thats years of personal experience talking.

 

Article – The Easiest Ways to Open a Can Without a Can Opener

Posted on by

Probably nothing you didn’t already know, but still worth a read.

One basic rule of life is that everything is easy with the proper tools, and nearly impossible without them. A great example of how this works is the can opener: Although we’ve had the pull-tab design since 1962, you can still somehow find plenty of canned goods on the grocery shelves that lack this simple advancement—and if you have one and lack a can opener, you will quickly learn the definition of futility.

I have opened cans with a knife before…it isn’t fun, but it isn’t terribly difficult either. I have not tried the spoon method yet. If you’re a survivalist of any stripe, you always have a knife handy even if you dont have a can opener or multitool on you. And, yes, a P38 works well and takes up no space on your keychain.

My experience is that the can openers on a Swiss Army knife or multitool do excellent jobs and have the bonus of being part of a larger ‘multitasker’…in other words, a multitool with a can opener is more useful than a can opener by itself.

By the way, when it comes to #10 cans of food for storage, I always tape a P38 to the bottom of every second or third can. Theyre cheap, small, and a far better choice than banging a screwdriver with a rock.

Paratus Reminder

Posted on by

Paratus is in two weeks, guys. (Sep 16 2022)

Get your shopping done early and be sure to ask your favorite vendors why they aren’t having a Paratus sale.

And, naturally, if you want to get yours truly a little somethin’ for the holiday, I wouldn’t say no.

And just because it’s kinda fun, here’s a link I’ve posted before:

Happy Paratus Day! The Story Behind a New Holiday, and a Gift Giving Guide

This year is the fourth year of what has become a somewhat-tradition of sending cards/gifts to certain readers. However, in case you missed it, here’s the original post from when I came up with the idea. As you can see, if you go by this post, Paratus has been around for dang near twenty years.

Is it a ‘real’ holiday? Dude, all holidays are as real (or unreal) as you make them. Paratus is your holiday, you make it into as real a holiday as you want. In the spirit of rugged individualism and sovereignty, it’s what you want it to be.

 

Whats left?

Posted on by

That’s a trick question because, realistically and literally, there is always one more thing that a person can do to increase their resilience. You’re never really “done”…you’re simply at a more prepared stage than you were previously. Admittedly, there is a point where you’re just gilding the lilly but I don’t think I’m quite there yet.

But, after having been doing this for a couple decades what could possibly be left to accomplish? Well, the absolute biggest is the crowning jewel of any survivalist’s career – the BOL. That sweet little innocent-looking cabin in the middle of nowhere that is more heavily fortified, stocked, and hardened than Cheyenne Mountain. That one is going to take some serious planning and a metric buttload of cash.

Other than that rather expensive to-do list item, I’m fairly well set on most things. I mean, if there’s anything I think I really truly need at this point I can just buy it. I still need to get a nice radio setup for keeping tabs on the world, and it would be nice to have a larger stash of precious metals, but other than that I think I’m pretty set on things. I could always upgrade and increase the amounts of some things…food, ammo, cash, etc., but they’re at levels right now that I’m comfortable with and I’d rather funnel my resources into getting that nice chunk of Middle O’ Nowhere.

No one is every ‘fully prepared’, in my opinion. However, I’m satisfied enough with what I have now that, while I recognize there’s always room to add more depth to the stockpiles, I have no problem focusing resources into other projects.

It hasn’t always been this way, though. I remember when every $25 can of freeze drieds, and every $150 SKS, was a struggle to justify to my limited budget. But, I’ve hit the point in my life where I can drop a few hundred bucks here and there every so often for things that I want. Didn’t always be like that, though…..there were some pretty tight times back there.

Overall, though…I have absolutely no regrets about spending what I’ve spent over the years. I have literally thousands of dollars of freeze drieds and if I never wind up needing them I will still consider it money well spent. Like insurance, it gives me peace of mind and reduces risk. That has a value.

I also have no regrets because I see where the social zeitgeist is going and I’m pleased to say that I can sit back and watch everyone else scramble for freeze drieds, gas cans, ammo, and other gear. Those decades of picking up gear here and there have paid off in that I don’t have to deal with the scarcity and pricing issues that the Johnny-come-latelies have to face.

If you’ve been a survivalist for more than a few years, I trust that you are in a similar position. And if you’re new to the scene..well…don’t be discouraged.