Category Archives: Uncategorized

Article – Blankets, canned tuna and faith in God — how fleeing Venezuelans survive

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The rich were the first to leave. They wired their savings abroad and hopped on international flights.

The middle class departed next. They went on buses, sometimes riding for days across several countries.

The poor remained.

They stayed as the economy collapsed, food got scarcer, medicine shortages turned deadly and the electricity cut out for days at a time. But finally they too began to exit Venezuela.

They simply walked out.

Once you become a refugee, your options are severely limited. But, sometimes, staying put isn’t an option and you’ve gotta go, go, go. Having the resources to make the trip easier, faster, and safer are paramount.

The fact that you’re able to have internet access and read this shows that, financially, you’re probably light years ahead of the people in this article. But, situations change and they change fast. When the truck driver offering to haul you through the mountain passes wants hard currency instead of trading for cans of tuna…those little 1/10 Eagles or 1 0z. silver Maples might come in handy.

Anyway…interesting article. Venezuela is a lost cause until they finally have their coup, and in the meantime the suffering there will provide interesting insight for those of us who study these sorts of problems and how to survive them. (Most obvious solution? Prevention…don’t vote for socialists.)

Recommendations

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Sadly, quite a few of my ‘regular read’ blogs have shut down over the last year or two. It happens. So, I need some new blogs to follow.

Preferred qualities:

  • Big on preparedness or a reasonably related topic
  • Low on religion
  • Good grammar and punctuation
  • Low Alex Jones quotient
  • Low racist/sexist content. (Hey, its fine to dislike a group for no particular reason, but the name calling gets a bit declasse)
  • Updates at least once a week
  • Isn’t all about homesteading and tiny houses

You’d think that wouldnt be a tall order, but…

Whats my current list of blogs I read look like? Glad you (didn’t) ask:

View From The Porch
SurvivalBlog.com | The Daily Web Log for Prepared Individuals Living in Uncertain Times.
The Firearm Blog
Jerking the Trigger
The Ultimate Answer to Kings | …is not a bullet, but a belly laugh!
Living Freedom
brushbeater – “once more unto the breach, dear friends…”
American Partisan | A vanguard movement of Western Civilization
The Field Lab
Raconteur Report

So, trot your faves and let’s see if there’s something that piques my interest.

A decent deal

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It was one of those deals where you had to buy a significant amount of product in order to make the deal and get the good price. But…it worked out.

$0.15/round. Delivered. Farctory FMJ 115 Ball. And it’s off to the Deep Sleep.

I do a lot of reloading, but for end-of-the-world purposes I try to stock factory ammo. Why? Because if all the fiction novels and zombie movies are correct, and we are trading ammo like currency, no one wants a ziploc baggie of reloads from some yahoos garage that may or may not be loaded with fireworks powder. Factory ammo in factory packaging will be, IMHO, more desirable than mixed reloads from someone who may not know the difference between Bullseye and IMR4350.

Article – The Deadliest Marksman’s Cold, Brave Stand

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The war was nearly over on March 6, 1940. The enemy, propagandized as an unstoppable fighting machine, was indeed overwhelming the army of the country they’d invaded. Six days later, the aggressors would finally force an armistice, and soon grab control of much of the land they’d coveted. It had taken longer than the two weeks they’d anticipated, but conditions were harsh, the defenders far more resolute than expected. For more than three months, battlefields roared with motoring tanks, gunfire and artillery explosions, obliterating the natural beauty of the countryside. Through it all, one warrior emerged as perhaps the finest killer in military history, on a mission to serve his besieged nation by picking off foreign attackers — many, many of them — one by one with a sniper rifle.

I sincerely doubt there is anyone here reading this blog who doesn’t know the story of the Finnish version of Hathcock. But, it’s a good article, since many are written from the perspective of gun boffins and military buffs…this one, it seems, is written more objectively.

For those of you out there with Mosin’s sitting in the closet, there’s a few sentences about a drill where 16 shots at 500 feet on a target in one minute is mentioned. Possible? Not possible? Grassy-knoll level of expertise required? You decide.

Good article, worth the read.

Article – Design of AR-15 could derail charges tied to popular rifle

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DALLAS (AP) — A subtle design feature of the AR-15 rifle has raised a technical legal question that is derailing cases against people who are charged with illegally buying and selling the gun’s parts or building the weapon.

At issue is whether a key piece of one of America’s most popular firearms meets the definition of a gun that prosecutors have long relied on.

TL;DR version: ATF’s definnition of a ‘receiver’ includes parts that are not present in just an AR lower, thus an AR lower is not a receiver. QED.

Historically, ATF has never let little things like legal definitions stand in the way of them doing what they want. I suppose the only way for this to get resolved is to redefine what a receiver is, which seems likely. The AR is certainly an inconvenient rifle for the anti-gun crowd…it’s ubiquitous, easily modified to skirt ‘assault weapon’ bans, modular AF, and, it seems, defies legal definitions that never anticipated such guns. Everyone should own at least three or five.

 

Article – Man rescued in Alaskan wilderness more than 20 days after fire destroys home, kills dog

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A man was rescued after surviving more than 20 days in the Alaskan wilderness after a fire burned down his cabin and killed his dog.

Tyson Steele, 30, was spotted Thursday more than 100 miles from Anchorage by a police helicopter responding to a request from his family to check on him, said Alaska State Trooper Zac Johnson. 

“It’s a pretty routine call for us,” Johnson said. “This is the first time we’ve encountered somebody who’s been through something quite so harrowing.”

Hours after his rescue, a shower and a “McDonald’s Combo Meal No. 2,” Steele told police he’d been stranded since his cabin caught fire on Dec. 17 or 18, according to a detailed release.

It’s easy to Monday morning quarterback this sort of thing, but if you live in the middle of nowhere and something like losing your cabin might be a death sentence, wouldn’t you keep a ‘lifeboat’ of some kind far away enough to be there for you if you needed it?

Even here in Montana its pretty easy to just check into a Motel 6 if you’re willing to drive an hour. Although, to be fair, there are parts of Montana where if you are suddenly without a house, and the nearest neighbor is several miles way, you might be in trouble.

I’m curious how a chunk of burning cardboard set his roof on fire what with all the snow. And the dripping, burning plastic part? Makes me think this was some sorta shack with a couple tarps over the top to make it waterproof.

Regardless, interesting story. Gotta give the guy points for keeping it together long enough to get rescued.

The problem with thinking your done thinking about something

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It occurred to me today that when youve been a survivalist long enough, its easy to lose track of whats available out there to improve your situation. Let me give you an example: Twenty years ago you decided to go deep and stock on high quality flashlights. You figured you’d buy the best, tuck ’em away, and then you’d be done with the flashlight component of your preps. Seems reasonable, right? So you go out and spend your money on a dozen top of the line MagLights with the bright Krypton bulbs (and spares). You tuck them away and figure “Thats that. I’m done.”

Here’s where the problem comes in. Because you think you’ve sewed up the flashlight side of things you now stop even thinking about them. After all, you have a dozen of the best flashlights available tucked away…so why bother thinking about them anymore? Fast forward twenty years to today…and whats the standard in flashlights? LEDs. Flashlights that give three times the brightness, for 2/3 the cost, and 10x the battery life. And, because you stopped thinking about flashlights twenty years ago, you have no idea such things even exist. So, while you were cutting edge for 1999, you are now hopelessly fourth-tier for 2019.

Other examples might include newer and better magazines, optics, radio gear, battery management devices, knife sharpeners, etc, etc. The trap is in thinking that because you are all squared away with ‘X’ that you don’t have to keep track of changes and improvements in ‘X’ developments. It’s like tucking away your old-school XM177 CAR-15 in 1985 and never discovering it had evolved to the M4.

I’m guilty of this sort of lack of thinking from time to time. For example, I’ve a Leatherman Wave that I’ve had for over ten years now and I’ve been pleased with it. So pleased, in fact, that in never occurred to me to see if they had come out with better, more useful, versions since then. And, of course, they have. So while I was happy with what I had, I was lacking the the efficiency of the newer tool. You might ask, since you were happy with the older one, and you were unaware of the newer one, were you not then, in fact, not really missing anything? You are correct, I was not aware of what I was missing. But that doesn’t mean I may not have been better served with the newer tool.

Survivalism is about being able to improve your chances and lower your risks (threats) in a bad situation. You don’t necessarily need the ‘latest and greatest’ to do that, but many times the latest and greatest are improvements over the older. There will be no award after the apocalypse for the guy who achieved the most using the least amount of gear. If you want to ride out the apocalypse in travel trailer on a piece of junk land, eating beans and rice stored in 2-liter pop bottles, and shooting jackrabbits with your HiPoint carbine…..have at it. But given a choice, I’ll go for the higher end of the price charts… not beause I’m a snob, but because ‘good enough’ is not the adjective I want for crap that might someday have to be relied on to keep me safe and alive.

So, moral of the story: even if you think you have so many of something that you don’t need to think about them anymore…..think about them.

 

It goes up to eleven…I mean, eight.

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The intellectual part of me recognizes that it is a 16% increase in ammo capacity, but I refuse to accept the notion of a 7-shot .357. The idea that, when picking up a revolver, I have to remind myself “no, no…you have one MORE” as I shoot seems to fly in the face of the last 85 years of .357.

And yet, I am wildly excited about the notion of 8-shot .357’s.

I am a conflicted beast.

(As an aside, I think that for someone who fancies the revolver [which does have much to recommend to it] for personal defense the .357 is pretty much perfect. Fur and claws deserve a .44, but a six-shot k- or L-frame size gun in .357 seems ideal in weight and size for maintaining civil discourse. Although I like S&W, my .357 of choice these days is the GP100. However, I do trot out my Speed-Six and Highway Patrolman from time to time.)

Article – The Doomed Mouse Utopia That Inspired the ‘Rats of NIMH’

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Give a buncha rodents all the food, bedding, water, and stress-free living you can give them and they should breed like..well..rats. And have a population boom, right? Maybe not.

Such rapid growth put too much pressure on the mouse way of life. As new generations reached adulthood, many couldn’t find mates, or places in the social order—the mouse equivalent of a spouse and a job. Spinster females retreated to high-up nesting boxes, where they lived alone, far from the family neighborhoods. Washed-up males gathered in the center of the Universe, near the food, where they fretted, languished, and attacked each other. Meanwhile, overextended mouse moms and dads began moving nests constantly to avoid their unsavory neighbors. They also took their stress out on their babies, kicking them out of the nest too early, or even losing them during moves.

Some fascinating parallels to be had in just that one paragraph. To quote Judge Dredd “You put that many rats in one cage and something’s gonna happen.” The apparent message is that mammals ain’t cut out for being put into large metropolises. Even when you give them all the welfare food and shelter they want, they’ll still go bad.

But, men are not rodents. Yet look at any major city and you’ll see that the segments of the population that have everything handed to them seem to be the most troubled and troublesome.

Moral of the story? Stay out of enormous cities. Having just returned from a week in one of the biggest i can tell you with utter sincerity that nothing reinvigorated my mind and spirit more than being able to have room to stretch both physically and metaphorically. Away from the restricting confines of mandatory recycling, absurd gun laws, high sales taxes, etc, I felt I could breathe easier again and feel in control of my life.

Big cities, in my experience, are superior in providing only three things: money, women, and food. High paying jobs, endless varieties of women, and a dizzying array of types of food…thats about all I can recommend for the big cities. But what do I get out of smaller venues, such as where I live? Relatively high levels of freedom, or, at least, qualities that I equate with freedom.

Men or mice…put too many in one place and bad stuff happens. Don’t be there.