It seems like every election year CostCo trots out the PanicPak.

So that is, ostensibly, $40 for 3 days worth of food for 4 people. Or, put another way, $10 for a 3-day supply for one person. Sounds like a bargain, I suppose, but there’s not a shred of meat on that list of food (“chicken-flavored” = TVP or non-meat ingredients), and most of it is soups/stews. I like the notion of ones-stop-shopping, but, honestly, I’d grab a 5-gallon bucket from Home Depot and load it up with some bottled water, instant oatmeal, Cup O Soup, some cans of chicken or tuna, and a few other long-term goodies and call it  a day. I mean, c’mon, its only three days….I’ve eaten leftover pizza for 2-3 days at a pop and never felt at a loss….and it was only $10.

In a crisis, I probably wouldn’t be working on the 3-meal-a-day paradigm anyway. Sure, it depends on your activity level – hanging looters and manning barricades requires more calories than just huddling in a fallout shelter – but I’m most likely to do two meals a day and leave it at that. but, of course, your mileage may vary.

For someone who wants a turnkey solution this sort of thing might be nice but when the apocalypse gets hear I don’t want to be the last real meal in my belly to be cheesy broccoli soup or some such nonsense. It’ll be freeze dried porkchops, mashed potatoes, corn, apple pie and some sugary beverage.

This is highly amusing: Anti-Hillary ‘Walking Dead’ Posters Surface in Los Angeles
This is what happens when you mix popular culture with politics. And , for some reason, it just tickles me silly.

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Hunting season opened today. Me and an acquaintance will be going out tomorrow to do our part to keep ourselves at the top of the food chain. I’m starting to think that the only reason I like hunting season is because it gives me the opportunity to try new gear and show it off.

While I was out picking up my Bambi tag, I checked the supply of .22 ammo at the Sportsmans Warehouse. To my surprise, there were several bricks of Federal on the shelf. Hmm. They were apparently in some sort of gyno-friendly promotional mode because the box was pink. Dude…if you’re stupid enough to pass up buying a brick of .22 because the box is pink, well, I’m not. So, that was a sorta bonus.

Truer words were never spoken……..

Mission fatigue sets in from time to time. Let’s face it, getting ready for the zombie apocalypse (or whatever flavor of KoolAid you prefer) starts to wear you down after a while. Sometimes you’re too busy worrying about getting tickets to the ballgame, to worry about getting more freezedrieds into the bunker. And then more life occurs and you push the preps further down the priority list. The kids need shoes, so that new GLock can wait a month. The car needs tires, so the generator can wait. And, eventually, you suddenly look up and realize that three weeks have gone by without you doing anything survival-related and -surprise!- you’re just fine. So then you start to lose momentum…yeah, you meant to go to Costco for more canned beef this weekend, but you wanted to go geocaching instead. But you can always go next weekend, right? The end of the world won’t really happen tomorrow. You’ve got plenty of time. And then you wind up never getting those cans from Costco. Or the batteries from Walmart. Or the case of .223 from Cabela’s. Or the filled gas cans from Conoco.

And then, one morning, you get a phone call waking you up at 6am and it’s your family member on the other side of the country and the first words out of his mouth when you answer the phone are “Are you watching the news?”

And that, my friend, is when it alllllll catches up to you.

I wish I wasn’t speaking from experience, but I am… Look, my identity is predicated on being some sort of super-secret-squirrel survivalist. It is, literally, my only claim to fame. And with all that, even *I* let my foot way off the gas sometimes and just drop the ball on keeping up on preps and maintenance.

What fixes it? What refocuses my efforts? What makes me sit up, cancel Thrusday movie night, take the phone off the hook, and Get Real Serious Right Now? Good question. For me, its either a close call or reading something that inspires me. At the moment, I bought a new copy of “One Second After” to replace the copy I loaned out and never got back. After reading that I find it virtually impossible not to grab a clipboard and make sure things are topped off and shopping lists planned.

You need to find your impetus if you suffer from these motivational lapses like I do. For some people, it’s watching the news. For others it might be reliving a previous experience that made an impression. Or it could be as simple as watching some homeless wretch on the street eating out of a dumpster. But…find something that motivates you and gets you back on the path. When life decides to suddenly go sideways, all those “I meant to” statements will be worth less than nothing.

Now, back to reconciling my spreadsheet inventory of stored food with the actual physical inventory…………..

Just been massively busy with a metric buttload of ‘real world’ stuff. But…I’ve got a few posts brewing.

It’s worth pointing out that fall is offically here, hunting season is around the corner, the election looms large like an iceberg, and we’re all going to be screwed no matter what.

But other than that…

And one bright spot – new Walking Dead in a week or two. Let’s hope they don’t screw it up.

Regularly scheduled brain droppings will continue in a day or two. Just gotta get caught up on some real-world stuff.

Harry, our Friend Of The Blog ™ over at Self Sufficient Mountain Living is still noting the effects of the regional gas shortage. The stations have gas, but only Premium. Fancy that…the only gas they have available is the most expensive. Whoda thunk it?

Speaking of gas, I’m rotating some fuel and saw this at the local gas station:

There is probably a lot of truth to this. When I go grocery shopping, I often look in other peoples carts and try to imagine what their lives are like based on the things they are buying. I think you might be able to do the same thing with the things people keep in their vehicle. I knew one person who had a really nice truck, big, spacious, hardcover on the bed….lotsa room. And you could not fit more than one person in that truck because it was full of gear. It was like a rolling showroom for US Cavalry or Brigade Quartermaster. I’m only a tad less subtle than that, but you could look at all the things in my vehicle and make some pretty solid guesses about where my interests lay.

Gas rotation continues….cycling through the 2-3 year old gas and making sure there are no empty cans. As we’ve discovered, there is no guarantee that the pumps will be running tomorrow, and fuel is right up there in terms of ‘things that are a good idea to stock up on’.

Well, its officially that time of year. Time to move the winter durvival gear to the vehicle, drag the hunting clothes out, top off the kerosene heaters, switch to the winter camo, and just generally get ready for fimbelwinter.

It also means the election is just around the corner. I genuinely don’t know what to think at this point but you really cannot go wrong with precious metals, food, fuel, guns, and ammo. I mean, all of those are things that are going to go up in price anyway, right? So regardless of who wins the election, or what new policies do or do not occur, you’re still ahead of the game.

Fall in Montana means hunting season is just around the corner. I havent decided what to hunt with but I’m really tempted to take out my 29″ barrel, open-sighted .275 Rigby. It has a classic look to it, and I’m a big fan of the cartridge.

And, speaking of thundertoys, did you guys see Ruger has dropped a new version of their .22 pistol on the market? It’s the Ruger Mk IV….and it has at least one awesomely cool feature that puts it way ahead of the previous models. A feature greatly appreciated by those of us who have had to disassemble one of those things. Read about it at Tam’s blog.

There are hundreds of millions of guns in the United States—enough, according to several estimates, for every American civilian adult to own more than one.

But actual gun ownership is far more lopsided than that.

A sweeping new survey by researchers at Harvard University and Northeastern University finds that roughly half of the nearly 300 million firearms in the United States are concentrated in the hands of a tiny sliver of the U.S. population: Just 3 percent of American adults own some 130 million guns, according to The Trace and Guardian US, two news organizations that first reported on the survey. (The full survey has not yet been released; Guardian US and The Trace reported plans to publish a series of stories about the findings throughout the week.)

This portrait of gun ownership represents the equivalent of about 17 guns per person among a group of “super-owners,” the 7.7 million Americans who own between eight and 140 guns each.

If there is anyone reading this who is not a ‘super-owner’ I would be a tad surprised. How many guns do I have? More than Sarah Brady and less than Ted Nugent. I leave it at that.

Gary Marbut, Montana’s gun zealot extraordinaire, famously asserted that the average Montanan owned something around 26 guns. I think that estimation is a bit high, but I have met some folks who were very much picking up slack for those Montanans who were a little light in the hardware department.

Regardless, it doesn’t matter how many guns you own…what matters is that you be free to own as many (or as few) as you want.