Year end wrapups are kinda the low-hanging fruit of the blogging world, but I’m not proud.

2017 didn’t result in any global disasters that would send good folks scurrying to their bomb shelters. And while there may have been regional, or even national, disasters elsewhere, my little chunk of the planet seems to have made it okay.

It was, though, not without some weirdness. For one thing, I walked around for a few days with a ruptured appendix before thinking “Hmm, maybe I should see a doctor about that.” (And came *this* close to earning a trip to Stovokor.) Then, while flat on my back with three different hoses and tubes running outta my abdomen, Montana decides to shimmy with the most powerful earthquake we’ve had in a long while. I was not amused.

Picked up a couple P95s over the year and that was about it for gun purchases, I think.

Didnt have to use any stored fuel, emergency food, or war reserve ammo….so, all in all, a nice neutral year. And I didn’t have to use my AK.

From a preparedness standpoint, it’d be nice if 2018 was gun-heavy. I would really like that new Ruger carbine, a tricked out Savage .338 Lapua, and a Glock 10mm. Be nice to get a vehicle upgrade this year too. But…gotta be a grownup. There’s some loose ends I’d like to get tied up financially and it really makes more sense to do that then to spend money on what is at this point a quinary level of firearms redundancy.

So, with the forecasted bad weather a-coming, I decided to stage a few things in case the power went out. Grabbed the trusty Streamlight Siege and hit the switch. Fluttering, flickering light. What the heck? Opened it up and found, oddly, wetness/moisture on the bottom of the interior of the light. Apparently one of the batteries had sprung a leak and I caught it way early. As you can see in the image, the lower edge of the battery split open. I’ve had batteries go bad in MagLites and corrode in there, but I’ve never caught a battery issue right as it happened. Interesting. There appears to be no damage to the Siege…just wiped up the moisture and swapped out the batteries. The batteries in question, BTW, were some Duracells that had an expiration date of 2016.

Normally, I am loathe to leave batteries in something for an extended amount of time, but you can’t really leave critical gear un-batteried. The next best thing would be to regularly inspect the device for damage at a scheduled interval. Clearly I need to check on this sort of thing once every couple of months.

It’s a pain in the rear, but part of being prepared means having gear; and having gear means you have to maintain that gear, and that means regular inspections/function tests. I’ve no doubt that if I hadn’t caught this, I’d be looking at having to replace this lantern in a month or two after the innards corroded.

The forecast is for some heavy snow in my particular region. I have a four-wheel-drive vehicle with spare fuel, a radio, an extensive emergency kit, and a host of other survival related goodies.

And I’m gonna leave it parked the next few days. Why? Because the secret to becoming an old survivalist is to avoid being in a survival situation to begin with. Rule #1 of surviving a disaster: Dont Be There.

Sure, I could drive around over the weekend, take my time, drive slowly, brake early, signal often, etc. and I’d be fine…until Bob-from-Carolina who cant drive on snow t-bones me at an intersection. Not my fault, Im doing everything right….and you’re at the mercy of every other idiot out there who may be doing everything wrong.

So why buy trouble? I have a house full off food, fuel, internet porn, dry clothes, extra Coke, and some spreadsheets to catch up on. I can stay here and let the world slip-n-slide into wet, cold chaos. There’s very little I can think of thats worth me risking my vehicle, my health, and my limited financial resources to an accident.

Survivalism (or preparedness, if you prefer) is about values and choices. Which is more important..me not having a wrecked car or me having a quart of milk from the store? Sometimes you have to take chances, but if you don’t have to why would you? Gotta pick your battles, man.

But..for those times when you can’t pick your battles and you gotta go to war anyway, be prepared. I don’t want to leave the house in this weather….but if I have to, I can…and I can do it in a way that reduces the risks and reduces the consequences if those risks go the wrong way. But, again, why buy trouble?

In the meantime, one side effect of staying in is that I get time to sit in front of the keyboard and work on these ‘brain droppings’, as Geo. Carlin called writing.

Be safe out there, gang.

What the hell, Ruger!

“Interchangeable magazine wells for use of common Ruger® and Glock® magazines. Ships with SR-Series Pistol and Security-9® magazine well installed and an additional magazine well accepting Glock® magazines is included. Ruger American Pistol® magazine well is available at ShopRuger.com.”

Utterly brilliant if it works. That stock is the most bizarre looking thing I’ve seen on a gun in a lnog time, but being able to interchange mags with my Glock 9mms is a supermegawesome feature. And takedown!? And threaded? Ruger is going to sell a metric buttload of these to people who want a carbine for their bugout bags.

And MSRP is below what a used older PC9 carbine is running at.

Trouble is, since this thing takes Glock mags, what the heck am I gonna do with all these P95’s? (Unless Ruger makes a magwell for them…but I suspect the aftermarket may take care of that little detail.)

As soon as Ruger gets the obligatory new-product-recall out of the way, I am so down for a few of these.

Scene: Gun Shop

Me: “Hey, you didn’t tell me you got a 686 in.”
Him: “You don’t want it.”
Me: “Why? Whats wrong with it?”
Him: “It’s got bad juju.”
Me: “Really? How bad?”
Him: “Guy killed himself with it.”

And THAT right there is how you bring a conversation to a screeching halt. I’m not majorly superstitious…but it did give me pause. I’ve owned Mauser 98’s that, no doubt, killed someone way back during the war, Mosin Nagants that probably also perforated people, and other military guns that almost certainly had been blooded. So why would this one be any different? But….still…….

So I made a lowball offer. Maybe a good price makes up for the bad juju. I dunno.

So what say you? If someone offered you a decent price on such a gun, and you knew that a year or two ago someone used it to spackle the ceiling with their cerebellum would you buy it? Would you have the least bit of trepidation about it?

This rolled across my email from CDNN.

The sub-$400 AR’s are still out there. I’m kind of a snob and would be a tad apprehensive to run out the door with The Cheapest AR I Could Buy, but given a choice between this and a Mosin Nagant………..

I’ve seen a few YouTube videos where people melt down a few budget AR’s like this, but they seem to mostly run pretty well. The notion that AR’s are for ‘rich yuppie survivalists’ whereas  the Mosin is a good choice for ‘working folks’ kinda falls apart at this point. Give up beer-n-cigs for six weeks and any WalMart greeter in a doublewide can have one.

Although we’ve had a bit of snow here and there, we haven’t really had any cold weather to speak. That apparently changed today. It is -1 out there right now. (For those of you in countries that never put a man on the moon, thats -18c.)

Not the coldest I’ve ever seen. (That would be the couple days when it was -26 [-65 with wind chill] back in the 80’s.) The part of Montana that Im in is the warmest part. You head east, across the divide, and those flat parts of Montana (I’m looking at you, Billings and Great Falls) get brain-numbingly cold.

What is the secret to living in such an environment? What arcane time-tested secret allow people to endure such climate? What trick allows us to survive in this condition?

Don’t go outside. Duh.

I’ve got a ton of things to do this week and will be using the holiday to capitalize on the free time. Being a rather secular fellow, this holiday provides me with the perfect opportunity to get things done.

Of course, tomorrow this town will be a ghost town. No businesses open (except mine), no mail, no banking, no UPS, no one on the roads. It’ll be like they neutron bombed this place. It’ll look alot like the opening city montage from ‘The Omega Man’…but with snow.

Still, staying indoors is great when you have that option. When you have to go outside..well…then it’s time for the N3B parka or a couple sheep’s worth of wool.

So , thats my plan for the weekend… stay indoors as much as possible and work on some organizational projects.

Stay warm amigos!

It occurred to me, as I was wondering when this jump pack was finally going to give up, that I have a cheap little battery voltage meter sitting in the box with some gear. Let’s see what we have:

Yeah…it seems that thing is running on the battery equivalent of fumes. But…it’s been running 24-hours for the last seven days. Or, put another way, if you used it eight hours per day, youd get three weeks of use. Six hours a day (or night, really) and you’d get a month of use. Personally, I’ve seen enough. Time to unplug and recharge. I have the info I need.

I’ll plug this thing in and let it charge, and then leave it alone to await the day the power goes out and that long, cold, winter night starts looking grim.

I should also like to point out that this setup is wonderful for task lighting or whatnot, for rummaging around a darkened bunker and illuminating various rooms in an outage, I really do like the Streamlight Siege. In fact, I really need to get two or three more to round things out.

Interesting article on how there’s been a bit of resurgence in the desire, among some small countries, to renew their military preparations against invasion.

Finland shares an 833-mile border with an aggressive and unpredictable neighbor. That proximity led to a major conflict during World War II—the horrific Winter War—and even now it keeps Finns nervous about Russia’s intentions. David Wolman suited up to train with the elite soldiers who will be on the front lines if this cold feud ever gets hot.

The Finns arent the only ones keeping eye on how the wind is blowing. The Estonians, too, are doing similar things.

It’s not exactly a holiday, but today was Underwear Day. Every two years or so I throw out all my socks, all my underwear, and most of my t-shirts, and start over. Three dozen socks (all matching), three dozen boxer briefs, and three dozen black t-shirts. One pass through Costco and I’m pretty much done for the next two years. Are some socks still good after two years? Some, not many. My rather oversize feet tend to wear socks and shoes out pretty quickly. Same for my oversize genitalia and my underwear. And t-shirts, as comfy as they are, only last so long before the collars start shredding out. So…every two years I scrap the whole thing and start over. One benefit to this policy is that I don’t have to match socks. In fact, if I get a hole in one sock I can toss it, keep the good one, and just mix it in with the others….they’re all identical.

It’s a very guy way to buy clothes.

And, if you’re into making things easier on yourself, there’s plenty of videos on youTube showing you how to take a pair of underwear, socks, and a t-shirt, and roll them all up into a tiny cloth burrito that makes packing easier. I find it just makes my morning less hassle. Get up, grab a sock-shirt-underwear bundle from the bin, and there’s half my getting dressed right there.

I suppose there’s an economical benefit…after all, prices generally only go up. But then there’s the issue of opportunity cost. For me, I just like knowing that, for the next two years, I can cross one more thing off my list.  And, I suppose, if I have to leave in a hurry or something I can grab-n-go a lot faster that way.

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And while at CostCo:

The desk lamp is still running although the battery indicator is now down to one bar. So thats, hmmm, about 96 hours so far of constant use. Assuming 8-hour use per night, thats 12 days worth of use.