Unverified by me, but, hey, thats not my job……..
H/T to AmericanPartisan.org
I’d only started reading it in the last year or so, but I liked what I saw.
Sad story that the guy’s wife died but it’s a little less sad, IMHO, that he followed her so quickly. I’m sure the months after her passing must have been tough. It comes for us all…memento mori.
So, there’s the answer, it seems, to something more than one person asked me in comments.
It’s the weekend, therefore it is time for me to spend another fifty bucks on getting the Preponomicon into the green. And, as more and more things are approaching the 100% level, it’s become greener and greener on that list. Today I rang the bell on dental floss, iced tea mix, spaghetti sauce, cleanser, and toothbrushes. Boring stuff, right? Well, yea, actually…it is. Seems unlikely that in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina there were people sitting on the roof of their house saying “Thank science you had all that dental floss!”. But, it’s those mundane and boring things that often add to the quality of life. And, really, if the world has gone downhill badly enough that you need to get into your stockpile of emergency dental floss then it’s also bad enough that the last thing you need is dental problems. Plus, dental floss grows wild out here. That crap is everywhere.
So, the stockpiling continues… It’s worth pointing out that the stuff I’m stockpiling, in terms of foodstuffs, is all short- to -mid-term foods. The long-term stuff, like the #10 cans of freeze drieds, were purchased years ago and have been securely packaged and laid back for the Deep Sleep. Pretty much everything I’m stockpiling now is day-to-day stuff that I want to have a large enough quantity of so that if I’m unable to resupply for any reason I can go a long time before having to explore less attractive options.
The stockpiling has progressed to the point that of the 85 items (thus far) on the list, 60 of them are at 90% or better. There are 18 items below 50%. All in all….progress.
By the by, what goes on and off that list changes over time. Some stuff just doesn’t need to be kept ‘live’ in terms of updates to quantity. Stuff is always changing. One week I might find something and think it definitely needs to be added to the mix, and the next week I might determine that a item is superfluous and remove it. Adaptability.
Cruising through CostCo doesn’t seem to indicate any ‘second wave’ of panic buying yet. Yet. However, some items, like bleach wipes, are still a no-show whereas items that had previously vanished, like TP and rice, are plentiful. I’ve got plenty of both, so I can be a detached observer.
Other than dedicating about fifty bucks a weekend towards preps, I’m being rather tight-fisted with the greenbacks these days. There is just too much uncertainty in the air for me to feel comfortable letting go of the Ultimate Multitool (which is cash). Between a pandemic-ravaged economy and political turmoil, there is less certainty that things will ‘be okay’ fiscally and that naturally makes a fella wanna circle the financial wagons. So…no impulse buying, put the vacation on hold, drive the same car for another year, skip the new iPhone, and make the most of what you’ve got.
No one knows with certainty what the future is going to bring. That’s kinda obvious. But there are times when we’re comfortable with that uncertainty (“might rain, might not”) and there’s times we’re very uncomfortable with it (“Might lose my job today, might not…better hold off on the Harley”). Right now, it’s the latter kind of uncertainty…the kind with big consequences. For me, anyway. But, that’s cool because me is the person I’m most concerned about in all this.
So…progress. More food on the shelves, supplies in the bins, money in the bank, silver in the safe, and peace in the mind.
(Not to be confused with anus horribilus, which is the Latin name for Nancy Pelosi.)
One thing about running around all the time yelling that the sky is falling is that, on a long enough timeline, eventually you’ll be right.
This year has been an unholy trifecta of factors that make the guns and ammo market a bit…challenging…right now.
Other than an invasion by Communists or the election of a Democrat President (But I repeat myself), I don’t think you could do much more to generate demand.
I keep an eye on the gun and ammo markets and right now it’s readily apparent that prices and availability have changed dramatically from what they were at the beginning of the year. This is, pretty much, one of the worst times to get into guns and shooting in recent memory.
Remember the gun-glut hangover after Trump got elected? You could practically get an AR free with an oil change at most garages. Rather a different story now.
What I’ve seen so far is availability of guns, when they’re not out of stock, is light and prices are a solid 25-50% higher than what they were at the beginning of the year. Ammo is, especially, a bit difficult and pricey. The sweet deal on 9mm I got in January is now showing up at twice the price, when available, for the same ammo.
.22 ammo, which was starting to amke a bit of a comeback, is drifting back into unobtainium country.
But…after my years and years of non-stop Chicken Little-ing about looming gun bans, you’ve gotten your stuff squared away, right? You’ve got your thousands of rounds of pistol and carbine ammo, the couple dozen magazines, the spare and backup redundancy guns…right? Right?
I’ve been at this sort of thing for almost thirty years so I’ve had time to do it gradually…an AR here, a case of mags there, a couple cases of ammo here…that sort of thing. Stretch that out over thirty years and it isn’t difficult at all. But if you’re new to the game, or if you’ve been a tad lackadaisical in getting stocked up….well….you’ve got two choices right now and neither one is great: don’t buy it or buy it at higher prices.
“My VA check is late”, “I need new tires”, “The wife wants to go visit her sister”, “Rammstein is playing at the stadium”….whatever excuse you’ve used in the past to justify why you didn’t spend the $100 on mags, the $300 on ammo, the $750 on the AR…..they all seem a little small right now, don’t they?
Sure, life happens….hot water heaters fail, alternators crap out, plumbing does it’s thing….BT;DT…but those events eventually get resolved and you’re back to wandering around with an extra $20 in your pocket. And it’s those times when you’re caught up on bills, the truck is running, the job is secure, and all seems calm in your world when you think to yourself “Y’know, instead of buying that XM radio for the truck, I think I’d rather have a case of .223 in the basement.”
So, I hope all of you have, at some point, made the grown up choices to exercise a little restraint and hold off on the ‘fun’ purchases to fund the ‘just in case’ purchases. Right now, I can walk by the depleted ammo shelves at Cabela’s and the sparsely populated gun racks at Sportsmans Warehouse and be…unconcerned. And that feeling of being unconcerned makes the little sacrifices in the past worth it.
If you build a home on a beach where everyone and the .gov knows there’s gonna be strong hurricanes, it seems that when your house blows away like something out of The Wizard of Oz you really have no one to blame but yourself. However, if you’ve got the resources, and the inclination, you can apparently throw in some engineering to make sure you have the last house standing.
I’ve covered my fascination with concrete dwellings in other posts (search for the HHG tag). But sheer strength isn’t all you need…you gotta have solidly engineered ideas, quality materials, and competent construction. In the example shown in the article, these folks were willing to make some tradeoffs and lose a battle (sacrificing the ground floor storage area) to win the war (keep the house standing).
It’s hard to find old construction that has all the features we wacky survivalists would like to have, and retrofitting an older place can be almost as expensive as building new. I’m inclined to go for a purpose-built place. When it’s time to break ground on Commander Zero’s Post-Nuclear Bunker O’ Love and Lingerie Proving Ground (also known as the Fortress of Derpitude) ypu can bet everything is going to be done with an eye towards surviving forest fire, gun fire, economic meltdown, and as many other forseeable events as possible. Won’t be cheap, I’m sure, but I’ll bet I’ll sleep real good when its all done.
An interesting list, to be sure. However, one that was neglected but, in my opinion, worthy of a watch, is “Carriers”. (Featuring the smoking hot Emily Can Camp). Most notably for the ride into grittiness and ruthlessness as the characters start facing harder and harder choices.
But, really, who needs to watch stuff like this when it’s happening, to a slightly lesser degree, in real life?
The media is telling us that a ‘second wave’ is on the way, or that reported infection rates are increasing (keyword: reported…by whom? Reported how?), and that we should expect worse times to come.
Well, yeah….is there anyone who really thought this was over? Even if they came up with a vaccine tomorrow it will still be months, if not years, before the consequences of this thing are behind us. Even if you snapped your fingers and it disappeared tomorrow, the effects will still be here…the economic, social, and political fallout will linger even after the Kung Flu is considered ‘no longer a threat’.
You and I, we’ve been expecting something like this for a while…some sort of event that makes us start locking our doors more often, keeping a wary eye open, and start circling the wagons. Now it’s here and it’s time to see if we’ve been making smart choices these last few years (or decades).
If this really is an escalation of the current situation, it’s been a quiet one. I haven’t seen an increase in panic buying at the supermarket. However, guns and ammo are still virtually unobtainable without paying ‘the Covid tax’. Fortunately, for many of us, guns and ammo were the first thing we stockpiled when we were a fresh wet-behind-the-ears newly minted survivalist.
Anyway, there you have it…a list of movies to download and watch in a darkened room while patting yourself on the back for your foresight and planning. You did stockpile popcorn, right?
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When all of this Kung Flu hit the fan, I stepped things up a bit and did a few things that, at the time, seemed prudent against threats that seemed reasonably possible. How’d that work out?
Cash – I pulled out a couple grand in cash to keep in the gun safe against the banks closing. As it turns out, the bank lobbies were closed, opened briefly, and closed again. ATM’s were always accessible but they limit your daily withdrawals. However, the drive-through lanes never closed so you could always get your money that way. So…was it necessary to pull out the cash and stuff it in the safe? No.
Gas – I beefed up the amount of gasoline I normally keep on hand. Again, this was under the threat of gas stations closing or fuel deliveries being disrupted due to quarantine, sick drivers, etc, etc. Best I can tell, no gas station was closed or was short on product. I did, however, beat the fifty-cents-per-gallon difference between then and now. So…gas stockpiling…unnecessary.
Consumables – I considerably ramped up the storage of food and other consumables, most notably cleaning supplies. Although there were initial shortages, and in some places there still are, the grocery shelves quickly were refilled. So, was it absolutely necessary to ‘go long’ on some things? No.
There’s three big things I did at the beginning of this pandemic that turned out to be unnecessary. Thus far. Do I feel I made any mistakes by doing those things? Do I wish I had not done them? Do I think I wasted resources?
Heck no.
Does anyone ever truly regret this sort of thing? (Stock photo)
Here’s why: this ain’t over. And even if the Kung Flu finally dies down and people stop wearing face masks and bathing in hand sanitizer I will be positioned exceptionally well for whatever comes next. Just because something hasn’t happened doesn’t mean it won’t .
At the time I did the things I did, no one knew what was coming down the pike. As a result, I erred (if you want to call it an error) on the side of caution. And I have zero regrets about it. None. Nada. Because when the next Big Thing comes along, I will be even more prepared than I already was. This stuff is like any other form of insurance – if you get it and don’t use it was it a waste? No, it was not. Because the insurance did exactly what it was supposed to do – it transferred the risk elsewhere.
My risk of being hungry? Gone My risk of being unable to fuel my vehicle? Gone. My risk of having to wipe my butt with leaves? Gone My risk of having to meekly hand over my things to some horde of thugs? Way, way gone. My risk of not having access to the cash needed in an emergency? Gone.
When your spouse starts giving you crap about how you ‘wasted all that money’ on ‘all that crap you have sitting in the garage/basement’ because ‘nothing happened’, ask them if they felt better knowing that stuff was there just in case. If so, then it was not a waste. And, by and large, a lot of the stuff you and I put back is good for years and years, if not decades.
So don’t second guess yourself if you took all sorts of preparations at the beginning of this event and feel like they were unnecessary and unneeded.Keep doing what you’re doing. The day ain’t over yet.
This is what addiction looks like. Three Ruger PC carbines (the old style) and a half dozen P95DC pistols to match with the carbines.
It’s also a decent example of what will fit in the Boyt51 rifle cases that are for sale at the local CostCo right now. This is the sort of package that goes up in the rafters or down in floorboards to sit quietly for decades until needed. More importantly this frees up a bunch of needed space in the gun safe. I know that the fact that two of those pistols are blued versus the other four that are not is pegging the OCD meter on some of you..have no fear. I swapped them out after this picture was taken for a couple stainless ones that were in the safe.
I don’t want to be pedantic but….we celebrate Independence Day, not the fourth of July.
Now, having irritated many of you, I suggest you take that irritation to the range and go shoot some guns. Independence…whether its from other nations, people, ideas, or paradigms…does not come peacefully and without incident*. Be ready… emotionally ready, mentally ready, and physically ready.
“The price of freedom is the willingness to do sudden battle anywhere, any time and with utter recklessness.” ―
* = I cannot hear the phrase ‘without incident’ without thinking of this incident.
I received a very thoughtful note of encouragement from someone in the mail a couple weeks ago ( you know who you are, person in AZ), and a few people have, as of late, stepped up to chip in a few bucks towards keeping the lights on and the brain droppings flowing. Figured I should recognize their generosity… so, here ya go. Mucho thanks! ( I should also mention that while many people prefer to be anonymous in this sort of thing, the ones who do send me things in the mail and use their real return address wind up getting on the Paratus card list.)
The local CostCo is selling Boyt hard cases at a decent enough price that I might have to pick one (or five) up. Not as good as a Pelican case, IMHO, but nothing really is. However, for just organizing some of these guns that are laying all over the place here it should do nicely. I do need to find a smoking deal on Pelican 1750’s though.
A loaned out copy of “One Second After” was returned to me the other day. It’s a good book, in terms of story, although a little heavy-handed at times. But it seems far more gritty and realistic than similar works. Two thing I really didn’t like was the obligatory armed-townies-versus-cannibal-army climax which seems to be a requirement for any post-apocalypse book, and I felt like the depths of starvation and it’s attendant issues were happening sooner than I think they would in real life. Nonetheless, it was a good read and certainly a bit motivating.
Independence Day is this weekend and, like Patriots Day, it is properly celebrated by including the handling of arms and the usage of same. Folks who fought and sacrificed in the Revolutionary War would expect no less of you. But…don’t shoot off all your ammo. We do, after all, seem to have a cold civil war a-brewing.
It’s pretty telling that it takes a global pandemic, economic upheaval, and race rioting to make Joe Biden look like a contender for President. Once again, this is going to be ‘the most important election of our generation’….as we are reminded Every. Single. Election.
It’s a heck of a time to try to stock up on guns and mags against the election, what with the ‘Corona Tax’ making guns more expensive than they were this time last year, but if you’ve been so remarkably short-sighted as to not have your thundertoys purchased by now….well…you kinda deserve this.