Category Archives: Uncategorized

Battery-in-a-box buffoonery

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I was up at CostCo the other day and saw this:

The semantic part of me recoils at the advertising calling this a ‘gasless generator’. A generator…generates…electricity. This thing stores electricity, it doesn’t make it. Calling it a ‘gasless generator’ is at best a stupid mistake and, more likely, at worst, misleading. Its like calling a 55-gallon drum of water a ‘portable well’.

What is it? Basically its a big lead acid battery with a built in inverter and some bells and whistles. What does it do? Absolutely nothing, as far as I can tell, that you can’t do for a fraction of the price with some wires, a couple AGM batteries, and a battery charger.

It’s 55Ah, which is, really, kinda puny. What it does have is a built in ‘solar controller’, the ability to be used as a UPS, visual metrics, and a few bells and whistles. But, really, it’s just this with a nicer casing:

If you zoom in on the packaging you can see it boasts that it’ll run an LED lamp for 48 hours. Color me unimpressed. I ran one for almost 4x that long with the battery jump box and it cost 1/5 the price.

While I like the turnkey plug-n-play approach this thing represents, the frugal part of me is aghast thinking what I could (easily) put together for $500 that would perform the same basic functions (albeit without the bells and whistles of automatic low-discharge shutdown and solar controller) at an exponential increase in capacity/runtime.

Article – The American Government’s Secret Plan for Surviving the End of the World

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This led to a key recommendation: five 50-person “interagency cadres” that would be pre-positioned or pre-deployed during emergencies to support would-be presidential successors. These “presidential successor support teams,” codenamed TREETOP cadres by the Pentagon, would deploy randomly to any one of “several hundred sites, perhaps 2-3 thousand, that would be pre-selected,” allowing for a relocation of institutional knowledge that was “highly flexible and adaptive.”

A fascinating little piece about a government-continuity program that came out from, of all things, the Carter administration. Presidential successor support teams? Secret hideouts spread across the land? Agencies tasked with teams to transport and protect possible Presidential successors? For those of you who remember your apocalypse fiction, this seems mildly reminiscent to the old ‘Guardians’ pulp novels from back in the day.

Make no mistake, there’s probably some sort of “Crystal Peak”-type facility out there that we don’t know about (as opposed to the ones we do know about, like the Greenbrier.) Are there special ‘cadres’ of .gov out there whose sole purpose is to navigate political VIPs through the imagined chaos to concrete-reinforced safety? Maybe. It’s certainly an interesting thing to think about. I want to say I recall reading somewhere that there were elite military units that were trained and tasked with just that sort of duty but I can’t recall where.

A quick search on Google for “Treetop” and “Continuity of government” turned up a few more results, but this one was interesting.: It mentions “… supplemented by more than 100 other bunkers, sprinkled around the country, as well as numerous mobile units, that have included two ships”

Interestingly, there was a recent article I read about how during World War Two the Brits had a special plan, team, and real estate specifically for hauling the monarchy to safety in the event of German invasion. And, buildingo n that, a Cold War evacuation plan as well.

Interesting article, though, and it raises interesting questions. To me, that  made it worth the short read and inclusion here. Who knows what sort of poured concrete palaces hide ‘neath the deserts and prairies?

 

 

Lego guns

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Someone asked me in email about gunsmithing/armorer courses. I thought about it a minute and realized that, for me, while I know enough to (usually) get a gun apart, back together, and diagnose problems, I try to avoid the issue altogether by selecting guns that don’t usually require ‘gunsmithing’.

If the end of the world happens to occur, the odds are pretty good that taking your malfunctioning thundertoy to the services of a competent gunsmith will not be an option. So, whats a survivalist to do? Well, the most obvious thing is – don’t break your gun. Some guns are more prone to breakage than others. But since we can’t always be confident our gun won’t break, the next reasonable step is to have a gun that, if it does break, does not require gunsmithing but rather a simple parts swap. For that, two guns spring to mind – the typical survivalist pairing of a Glock and an AR. (Yes, an AK wins on durability, but when it does break youre going to need a welder, rivets, a mill, or other specialized treatments.)

Starting with the AR, it’s hard to think of any other semiautomatic non-pistol-caliber carbine that doesn’t require the services of a full-service gunsmith to tweak, maintain, or repair (note I am not talking about making a match-grade target AR..I’m talking about just a rack-grade hand-it-to-a-grunt level of AR.). FAL, G3, AK, whatever…most of the common ‘battle rifles/carbines’ require some degree of professional skill to swap a barrel, or fit internal parts that need replacing. The AR is pretty much plug-n-play. I suppose the metric to be used is ‘can I repair this without needing a lathe or a milling machine’? Bad barrel on the AR? Swap the upper or change out the barrel. Broken sear or somesuch? Trigger group parts drop in. There seems to be, in my experience, very little, if anything, that requires hand-fitting or machining to be done to keep, or return, an AR to functionality.

Even more so with the Glock. If you’re building some type of uber Glock for competition, maybe theres things you want to polish or hand-fit. But for running around during a crisis I don’t believe theres a single part on the Glock that wont just drop in and function. To be fair, virtually every modern polymer gun is like that, though. Glock seems to have gotten it right first, though. The antithesis of this would be the 1911 which, with modern machining specs, has improved in terms of drop-in parts but I would bet you money that you could take a stripped frame, order a buttload of Wilson parts from Brownells, put it all together, and it won’t run because something, somewhere needs a bit of stoning or metalwork. Not so with the Glock.

Typical Glock repair kit

Typical 1911 repair kit

So, for me, my need for learning advanced gunsmithing skills is obviated a bit by selecting guns that, broadly, don’t require them…or require so little of them, skillwise, that it isn’t a challenge (or expense) to develop those skills and acquire the tools.

Shotguns? A bit trickier, but I have taken apart a lot of Mossberg 500-series and they’re pretty plug-n-play as well. Not as much as an AR, but Id say they are the least ‘skill intensive’ shotgun in terms of repairs.

When you get into things like hunting/’sniper’ rifles, all bets are off. The Savage series of rifles are probably the easiest to deal with since you can headspace and remove/install barrels with simple tools and not need a mill/lathe operation.

By the by, even if youre not a tinfoil-hat-type like yours truly, there are still some scenarios where you won’t have gunsmithing as an option even without bombs falling and boogaloos in the street.

Under a Biden administration, for example, your AR or FAL becomes a ‘Turn them all in‘ sort of item and then your option of taking it to a gunsmith is about as viable as taking your unregistered machinegun in for a tune up. You’re either stuck with a broken gun, have to find an ‘underground’ gunsmith, or DIY. And DIY is a lot easier with a Lego gun.

Whatever you get for that upcoming uncertain future, keep in mind how easy (or not) it will be to repair and maintain. For now, I’d say the Glock and AR kinda sit at the top.

Snow day

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Winter seems to have arrived a tad early. It dropped about 4″ of snow here in the valley bottom overnight. That means it dumped a lot more up in the hills. Fortunately, I was pretty much prepared for this. I had just gotten the snowblower back from its annual tuneup a few days ago so at 8am this morning I was doing my mitzvah for the neighborhood and cleared the snow from the neighbors sidewalks and driveways. Do they ever thank me? Rarely. Do they ever offer to pay for gas? Never. But, being a glutton for abuse I continue to do it anyway. I have a history, it seems, of letting people take advantage of me.

Driving was a bit o an adventure. Even with 4-wheel drive you still have to be very ‘in the moment’ while driving. And its really easy to see who the drivers are who were formerly from warm snow-free states. Theyre the ones that think that, at an intersection, they can just stomp on the gas and clear the intersection before the crosswise traffic gets to them. They learn the hard way. I had already pushed two idiots out of icy intersections before 10am. Unsurprisingly, they were women. They seem to just think the answer to being stuck on ice is to stomp the gas pedal down further…thatll fix it! Not.

I’ll be heading to the hills next week to do some hunting. Opening day was today, but it’s like Beirut during the busy season out there. I’ll wait until the middle of the week when folks are at work and I can have more of the woods to myself.

Other than that, a quiet weekend. I’m catching up on business stuff, gotta do some homework, and really gotta jump on the housecleaning. Nice thing about being a paranoid survivalist is that I really don’t have to leave the house unless I really want to. I’ve got food aplenty and no reason to go out in the cold if I don’t have to.

Two weeks until The Most Important Election Of Our Lives(tm) and the start of Civil War II: Electric Boogaloo. Or not. I’m of the ‘not’ camp.

And, finally, if it is going to be a heavy winter as some people are forecasting it to be, I am looking forward to finally get to use these babies. Let it snow!

Annnd…just when I thought it was going to be a quiet, inexpensive day I get an email from one of my vendors saying that, surprise!, they have the Magpul happysticks for the Glock in stock. How many? Doesn’t matter. I’ll take them all.

Article – Americans Are Frantically Buying Military Gear Before the Election

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Conflict is on America’s streets in 2020, and “tactical apparel” has become a lifestyle industry serving militarized law-enforcement agents and the freelance gunmen who emulate them. Less than two weeks before Election Day, orders are rolling in. Since last year, online purchases have driven a 20-fold jump in sales of goods like the $220 CM-6M gas mask — resistant to bean-bag rounds — for Mira Safety of Austin, Texas. “It doesn’t matter who gets elected,” founder Roman Zrazhevskiy said of his new customers. “They think that no matter who wins, Biden or Trump, there are going to be people who are upset about the result.” Not long ago — perhaps a generation — dressing like you’re going to war was for the veteran who never quite made it back from Vietnam or the angry young men who obsessed over gas masks and combat boots at the military surplus store. (Every American town seemed to have one, and only one.)

I have to snicker because there really should be a distinction here and it is completely missed in the article – people buying the gear now are interesting, but not as interesting as the ones who already bought it long before this happened.

Rioting? Sure. In places like NY, California, Chicago, various parts of the south. But a nationwide blood-in-the-streets uprising like you see in the Middle East everytime some dictator gets out-dictated? ‘Technical’ pickup trucks? No..not a chance.
I suspect that with all these articles about ‘Americans preparing for anarchy’ might morph into a self-licking ice cream cone. Really, such a circumstance is the sort of thing media types salivate over so it seems it wouldbe in their interest to instigate/foster/encourage such chaos.
I think that in three weeks we’re gonna see that this whole thing, no matter who wins, was not the ‘Purge’-like event that people were forecasting.

Bigfoot riding a unicorn

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I don’t know about you, but at my local CostCo this is a sight that is rather rare:

A five-pack of Clorox bleach wipes. They are, apparently, some sort of magical talisman that keeps the Kung Flu at bay. Or, at least, thats what one might reasonably suspect from the way these things are snapped up within moments of hitting the floor. Other than their rather convenient disposable nature, they don’t do anything a bucket of water/bleach and a rag won’t do. However, I do track their availability everytime I am at CostCo because I’m curious to see what is and is not flying off the shelves as people get the hoarding bug again. oh, and of course these were marked as one-to-a-customer.

What was I at CostCo for? I needed to pick up another 50# of rice. I have about five or six large gallon pickle jars on the shelf that I keep my rice in. They sit on the shelf in the kitchen and it gets used up in the course of things. When I get down to the last jar, I pull one of the Gamma Seal-ed buckets from storage and refill them all. Then it’s time to refill the bucket. So…a couple bags of rice. Which, by the way, do not appear to have been depredated yet.

And one final thing about COstCo before I drop the subject entirely – it isn’t even Halloween yet and there are freakin’ Christmas items out for purchase. What the hell, man?

Solo Stove

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A few years ago a very generous friend of mine gave me a Solo Stove as a gift. Its a steel woodburning stove designed for, I’d imagine, camping use. It’s basically a large steel can with a grate at the bottom and an arrangement of vent holes to allow efficient burning of twigs and sticks. The primary advantage being that you don’t need to carry fuel since you’re running around in an environment that is lousy with it….trees, bushes, deadfall, blowdown, etc.

But, I got busy with things and it just sat there on my filing cabinet collecting dust. Finally decided to try it the other day and dang if it didn’t create quite the little conflagration. The design gets plenty of air to the fire and as a result, once this thing gets a cheery little blaze going it burns hot and it burns fast. Most interestingly, it burns thorough….everything is reduced to powdery ash. It burns stuff quite completely.

I just grabbed a handful of twigs, snapped them down to about hand-width, tossed the loosely in this thing and lit it with a lifeboat match. Once it started buring I added progressively larger sticks until things were going along rather nicely.

The biggest drawback I found was bulk. This thing is bulky.  I’ts pretty light for its size, but it takes up some space. For backpacking, I’d think twice about taking it along. However, for car camping, vehicle survival gear, or that sort of thing this would be about ideal. I suppose it’s bulk, rather than it’s weight, is the biggest drawback but if you can clear the square footage in your pack to take it with you I suspect it would be immensely handy on a backpacking trip… just a matter if youre willing to give up the necessary space in your pack.

Even if you’re not sitting a canteen cup full of water on top of this thing to boil, it creates a nice little ‘campfire’ where you want without leaving a blackened pile of half-burnt debris on the ground. Never underestimate the calming and spirit-lifting effect of having a small fire in front of you when you’re sitting in the dark at night in the middle of nowhere.

I think that with the advent of ridiculously light canister stoves these days this sort of product has a very limited appeal, but I suspect that small demographic happens to be the one we survivalist-types fall into.

Anyway, it took several (three, I think) years but I finally got around to playing with this thing. Considering it was a thoughtful gift from a friend i really should have used it sooner so I wouldn’t like like an ungrateful idiot. Ah well…they know me better than that.

 

Books – The Ultimate Prepper’s Survival Guide

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Today, Tuesday, is ‘book bomb’ day for ,Rawles’ new book….”The Ultimate Prepper’s Survival Guide”

If you’ve been thinking about getting a copy, today is the day to do it. I was fortunate enough to get an advance copy several weeks back but I’ll probably pick up an extra copy as a gift for someone. A timely Christmahanukwanzakah (or Festivus) gift for the not-quite-yet-an-LMI on your list.

Not sure if its” the ultimate preppers survival guide”  or “the ultimate preppers survival guide”. What if I’m not the ultimate prepper but just a really good one?

Self-looting

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““The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

That being the case, apparently I am the greater thing. I was supposed to do something important today and..I forgot. And then it was too late. Fortunately I managed to humble myself enough that I was given a reprieve and got it done on the ‘do over’. Moral of the story: you are usually your own worst enemy.

As it turns out, you are also your own worst looter as well. We all have lovely stockpiles of food and supplies, along with a gun or two to protect those hard-earned supplies from the locusts, right? And yet who winds up doing the looting? Yourself, naturally. (Or the folks you share the house with.) You take a few batteries out of storage and never replace them, you pull some MRE’s for a hunting trip and fail to make a note of it, you grab a bottle of mouthwash off the shelf and don’t think to subtract it from your List. Thats how 99% of us get looted without a single disaster being declared.

Self-discipline, obviously, is whats called for. But if you live in a household with other humans, it can also be hard to convince them that, yes, it actually is important that you make a note of something when you take it out of storage.

It seems like no matter how meticulous I am, when I do an inventory there is always something that is off on the count. And I know it’s my own fault…at some point I was in a hurry, grabbed something, and thought “I’ll take care of that later” and later turns into … never.

As 2020 continues it’s donkey punches to our ‘nads, keep in mind that with our increased supplies and the perceived higher risk of needing them, now is not the time to be your own worst looter.

America Stone knife sharpener

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Several weeks back I got an email from a fella asking me if I’d be interested in trying out a sharpening tool he was promoting. I love free stuff, so, ‘Sure!’.

Thus far, my hands down favorite knife sharpener has been from these guys. The one that I highly recommend has been this one. And while it’s been awesome for sharpening my pointy stuff, it doesn’t quite fit in the pouch on my knife sheath.

So, I received this stone and pouch in the mail the other week. It’s a pretty unassuming stone…a ceramic-ish looking stone that is rounded on one edge and beveled to a point on the other. Here’s the website, and there is a video on YouTube to explain it’s use:


Yes, its a pretty DIY video but production values don’t really have much to do with whether information is  accurate or useful. It would have been nice to have some good close ups, but you get the gist if you watch it all the way through.

Anyway, I watched the video and decided I’d try it out on one of my hard-used knives…specifically my Glock knife that I use for hunting. Here’s what it looks like these days:

It had a small nick in the edge about 3/4 of the way down the blade and the video said that using the wedge/pointed shape of the stone would take care of that so….off we went. Three strokes each side using medium force, and repeated this a dozen or so times. Then, as the video says, I used the rounded side to sharpen things up. And…it worked. How sharp? Well, there’s always the ‘will it cut paper’ or ‘will it shave the hairs on your arm’ sort of tests which are kinda unquantifiable. Like everyone else, I test the edge with my thumb and pull the blade across my thumbnail. If the edge bites into the thumbnail , I know its really sharp and will cut. My unofficial test is to slice up some cardboard boxes…I try doing that, gauge the effort required, then sharpen and try cutting again. The subjective difference in effort required tells me what I want.

I did find that this stone did not work as effectively on thin, flexible blades. I suspect this is because as you move down the length of the blade, the force you exert cause the blade to bend away from you..throwing off the whole process. So, for a long thin-bladed slicing or fillet knife it might require you to do something to hold the blade in a rigid, unflexing manner. For my Glock knife, which has absolutely zero flex in it, not a problem. For pretty much any knife that isn’t a fillet knife, there shouldn’t be any issues.

Did an outstanding job on my Glock knife, and, interestingly, a prety admirable performance on my good kitchen Henckel knives.

What I’m most interested in is whether the stone would fit in the knife sheath I like to use. (The SpecOps sheath) As it turns out, the stone is about the size of a couple sticks of chewing gum…so not only does it fit in the pouch, you could actually fit more than one in there. So if you have a knife like the USAF ‘survival knife’ or a Randall with those pouches on the sheath, this thing should fit in it just fine.

So, what’s the final word? It seemed to do what was promised and it did something the Worksharp did not do, which is fit into the pouch on the sheath. I think, for me, the greatest use for this is for an in-the-field sharpener. Gut your elk, break a few joints, touch it up on the stone, cut some more, break it up some more, touch it up on the stone…that sort of thing. It also did a really nice job taking a nick out of the blade, which kinda surprised me

Durability? Can’t say. I did drop it once on my kitchen floor and it didnt break or shatte, but that’s strictly anecdotal. However, it’s small size and mass means that it probably would survive being dropped more than a larger, heavier stone would. .

I’d like to get a couple more of these for my other knives and kits. I can see where I might, when at the house, do my sharpening on something larger like a Lansky sharpener system or a series of Smith stones, but as a field sharpener this thing has some nice merit – it works, seems to not require much attention to angles, and fits in a tiny space – all big pluses when you don’t want to carry more weight than you have too.