Author Archives: Commander Zero

Heinlein’s “Friday” on sick societies

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One of my favorite Heinlein books is ‘Friday’. It usually gets short shrift  from a certain quarter because of a gang rape scene in which the titular female character is raped and tortured but ‘deals with it’ and minimizes it’s impact on her. She is a trained assassin and soldier, and she simply compartmentalizes it as a normal risk of the trade, commenting on how it’s a rather unprofessional behavior by the other side. Its in Chapter Two, in case youre curious, and it doesn’t warrant throwing out the rest of the book.

Anyway…in the book, Friday is given the task of, basically, data mining to try and pinpoint when and where the calamitous event that will throw mankind into the dark ages will occur. As she reviews all her data sources, there is this:

“What are the marks of a sick culture? It is a bad sign when the people of a country stop identifying themselves with the country and start identifying with a group. A racial group. Or a religion. Or a language. Anything, as long as it isn’t the whole population. A very bad sign. Particularism. It was once considered a Spanish vice but any country can fall sick with it. Dominance of males over females seems to be one of the symptoms. Before a revolution can take place, the population must lose faith in both the police and the courts. High taxation is important and so is inflation of the currency and the ratio of the productive to those on the public payroll. But that’s old hat; everybody knows that a country is on the skids when its income and outgo get out of balance and stay that way – even though there are always endless attempts to wish it way by legislation. But I started looking for little signs and what some call silly-season symptoms. I want to mention one of the obvious symptoms: Violence. Muggings. Sniping. Arson. Bombing. Terrorism of any sort.”
In the book, Friday comes to the conclusion that mankind will succumb to a new version of the Black Plague and that steps need to be taken immediately to prevent it’s occurrence. The book then goes on into it’s usual Heinlein space opera adventure.
But, the notion that a ‘sick, or declining, society shows particular symptoms is pretty interesting. Not sure if I agree with it, but if you read that excerpt above, it’s pretty hard to find something in there that isn’t going on in some quarter.
But…Heinlein was just an author with no particular grounding in social science, epidemiology, or clairvoyance. But…always a ‘but’….but, he was a pretty smart fella and a appreciator of history. So, perhaps he noticed patterns that we don’t.
:::shrug::: Beats me. But dang if pretty much everything in that excerpt isn’t going on right now.

Getting Paddled IV

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TL;DR version: Worth it. Satisfied. Recommended.

So a week or so back I sent of a bunch of PTR rifles to Bill Springfield for some work. Specifically, I wanted these PTR rifles to have the paddle magazine release installed. PTR rifles of newer manufacture now come with this paddle release, but prior to that pretty much all HKlone rifles did not have it. The reason why the paddle mag release was left out on semi-auto guns is covered elsewhere.

So when looking for someone to do the paddle release conversion, Mr Springfields name is the one that came up the most. He had a reputation for good work and quick turnaround time. (And in these uncertain times, the last thing I wanted was a handful of useless PTR halves that used to be complete and functional rifles because someone was taking their time doing the work on them.)

So I contacted Mr Springfield, told him what I had, what I needed, and was he in a position to take in a buncha PTRs and get them back to me in a timely manner? He replied in the affirmative and the deal was struck.

So, I got them back today and it’s time to see how they came out. This is really not something I’m and expert at…I know very little about machining and welding. But..I can tell if a gun is working properly or not, so I’ve got that going for me…which is nice. How do they function? Seem to function just fine. Mag locks in, mag comes out. Of course I’ll take them to the range and fire a few mags out of each one just to be sure, but so far it seems like a pretty solid job.

I also had Mr Springfield send along a trigger pack that has his trigger work done on it. The G3 series has a fabulously unpleasant trigger. It’s my understanding that this was because the German military had, as part of its testing requirements, a drop test where an un-Safe’d gun had to be dropped from a height of 12′ and not go off. The designers of the G3 apparently decided to build in a bit of safety margin and as a result we get a trigger that is not conducive to terrific marksmanship.

I pulled the trigger pack out of my ‘hunting’ PTR and dropped in the improved trigger. A very welcome and very noticeable change. Barely any take up, no creep, and a nice clean(er) break. Definitely a more advantageous trigger to have on the scoped gun.

A word about economics: a new paddle mag release PTR dealers out at around $1100. This means that if you purchased your PTR several years ago when they were in the $700-800 range, it makes more sense to send the rifle out for a week and have the paddle conversion done than buying the newer rifle. (Unless your PTR is old enough that it has the older style chamber fluting as well, in which case then it makes more sense to buy the newer.) All of my paddle-less PTR’s were in the sub $850 range, with my last one being $400 which really makes the conversion a no-brainer. If you really want a PTR, either buy a new one with the paddle release OR get an older one at a cheap enough price that the $200~ for the conversion still puts you ahead of the game.

All in all, I’m pleased. Communication was good, turnaround was good, and quality of work seems good. I’ve nothing to really complain about. If you have an older PTR that doesnt have the paddle mag release and you want to upgrade to something much more convenient to use, I can recommend Mr Springfield based on my experience thus far.

 

Signs of the times

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Drove up to Lowe’s the other day but they were closed for the Easter holiday. Ok, no big deal. What was terribly interesting though was that the closing up process including getting on a forklift and stacking pallets of heavy materials about nine feet high in front of the doors and loading entrances. Clearly, they are not taking chances on crash-n-snatch robberies. I understand this sort of thing is SOP in more urban locations, but its the first time I’ve seen that sort of thing out here.

Interestingly, the CostCo across the street from Lowe’s also appears to be…hardening…itself. Their remodel included moving the main entrance to the facility and that main entrance is now ‘picket fenced’ with concrete bollards every six feet or so to, presumably, prevent someone from crashing the place in a vehicle, looting, and scooting.

Once, when the Hells Angels were in town many years ago, I actually recall CostCo having a shotgun-toting guard at the front entrance. Never saw that again until about a year or so ago in the panic phase of the Wuhan Flu epidemic.

Heinlein said that one of the signs of a sick society, one that was on the decline, was the breakdown of civility and manners. I look around at the balkanization, increasing crime rates, the apologists trying to justify it, the social zeitgeist, and I am certain that I am not “better off than I was four years ago”, to borrow from Reagan…at least not socially.

I can’t say if it will ever get better but I can feel fairly certain that it will continue, if not get worse. All I can do is take measures to protect myself and my interests. I can’t change the course we are on, and I probably don’t want to. Sometimes to make an omelette, you’ve gotta break a few legs. Perhaps if this decline hits enough people hard enough they’ll shake off their indifference and step up to the plate….change laws, change politicians, change direction. Not holding my breath, but you never know.

Getting Paddled III

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Well, I got an email from Mr Springfield that my paddled PTR’s have shipped. I have to give him credit, I’d been following my bank balances to see when I would get billed and he billed after the work was performed and the guns were on their way. So…so far, thumbs up. FedEx is supposed to deliver them today. We shall see.

And, because I am an impulsive type, I had him throw in a trigger pack with a trigger job to try out. Because..why not?

Patriots Day

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My favorite holiday. Dedicated to the notion that otherwise law-abiding citizens sometimes just need to shoot at The Man.I will argue that there is virtually no finer way to observe the holiday, short of leaving an upper decker in the executive bathroom of the British Embassy, than to go out and spend some time practicing with your freedom-rifle.

Wheat at WinCo

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WinCo has that little corner of the store that carries what could best be described as ‘preparedness minded’ products….bags of flour, rice, salt, sugar, 5-gallon buckets, lids, etc…but one thing that was notably absent was wheat. Oh, flour they’ve got plenty of..but wheat? Not so much.

So, I was a bit surprised to se this today:

Hard white wheat in 25# bags. I wonder if they’ll get more varieties or if this is a one-time ‘gauge the response’ sort of offering. Regardless, it’s a welcome offering.

Propane

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For those of you who are local, or semi local, the place to get propane at the moment seems to be Bretzz RV on Reserve St by the interstate. If you’re a ‘member’ of their ‘propane fillup club’ or whatever the heck they call it you wind up at $0.99/gal. Which means you can fill your average barbecue bomb (which is about $30 new at CostCo just down the street) for $5.

I’d been there the last two weekends but for various reasons their filling station was closed. Not today, though. Five bucks and I’ve enough propane to keep me heated, fed, and illuminated for a few days worth of power outage. I’ve got about four or five of these tanks at the monet, I’ll probably make it an even six. I had refrained from getting anything larger because I didn’t want to incur the penalty to mobility. A 20# barbecue bomb is easy for anyone to handle…when they get bigger, not so much.

By the by, signing up at Bretz’ is free, and they don’t ask for ID, so just go down there, sign up as Heywood Jablowme, and save a few bucks on getting your tank filled.

And, just because if I don’t make a reference to ‘King Of The Hill’ in a propane post someone will feel obligated to do so in comments:

Nineteen years

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Well, its the anniversary of the blog. I started this thing back in 2003 and in that time we’ve had…hmmm…Bird Flu, SARs, 2012, Hurricane Katrina, Obama, inflation, Ebola, Zika, Wuhan Flu, and a few other interesting events. But..still here. And I haven’t had to use my AK… this was a good day.

If you’ve found the 19 years worth of brain droppings to be entertaining, or even informative, I welcome you to sign up for my Patron account. a buck or two a month goes a long way towards keeping the lights on, the domain registered, and the mindless ramblings of a weird gun nut in Montana flowing. And, lets not kid ourselves, gearing up for the apocalypse ain’t cheap.

What’s been the most interesting part of blogging over 19 years? Hmm. Looking back at old posts and seeing how my forecasts of the future did (sometimes) or did not (most of the time) turn out the way I thought they would. And, wow, I’m such a different person than I was when I started this blog. Not worse, not better, just…a different person.

But! Still a person with a keen interest in being prepared and having enhanced resilience.

On a much lighter note, I like to needle Friend Of The Blog ,Rawles from time to time about how I predate his blog by about two years, although he has managed the remarkable accomplishment of managing to post every single day whereas I usually average a post every three days.

When will enough be enough? A lot of blogs have come and gone in that nineteen years and one day there’ll be a time when this one goes dark as well. After all, it’s not easy saying the same thing over and over, in dozens of different ways, for almost two decades. And, considering that the ostensible mission of this blog was to chronicle my own adventures in preparedness, after almost twenty years I should be pretty much done in terms of getting my ducks in a row. But…no, it seems there’s always more to do, to learn, to buy, to pack away, etc.

Next year will be the twenty year anniversary. Maybe I’ll have a cake or something………….

Getting Paddled II

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According to the UPS tracking numbers, the PTR’s I sent to Bill Springfield arrived the other day. As I’ve mentioned several times before, the semi-auto HK91 platform really benefits from having the original mag release on it rather than the pushbutton release. So much so, in fact, that it is worth the $$$ to me to have it performed on my older guns.

If you decide to buy a new PTR or other G3 clone, hold out for one that has the paddle mag release already on it.

I am hoping to get my PTR’s back sometime next week (I hope) at which time I’ll be happy to report back on what I think of the job that was performed.  Stay tuned.