Knutson’s body was near a white car and Bedwell was inside the vehicle, he said.
That last sentence is curious. So the white car was not the same one that the woman was in? Did the woman stay with the vehicle and the husband went off for help and found another car?
Perhaps staying with the vehicle isn’t so great an option when the clock is ticking on your need for insulin. Bad story all around. Be interesting to follow this and get more details.
People throw the phrase ‘battle rifle’ or ‘battle carbine’ around and it always sounds a little…weird…to me. I suppose you may want to differentiate between youre hunting rifle that you knock down deer with and your ‘just in case’ FAL thats sitting in the closet, but ‘battle rifle’ always sounds kinda hokey. But..what else do you call it? Your ‘social rifle’? I usually just call it a ‘rifle’ and, maybe, depending on the context, ‘defensive rifle’. Anyway, Friend Of The Blog, Ryan at TSLRF, has been mulling a .308 defensive rifle. I threw my two cents in and suggested the PTR.
The PTR is a fairly accurate copy of the HK91. There are several copies of HK rifles out there, and there are a few ‘niche’ or ’boutique’ makers who make a very nice (and very expensive) product, but in terms of mass-market stuff its either Century or PTR. My feelings on Century is that it is the ballistic equivalent of treasure hunting at the sight of old outhouses….you might find a jewel once in a while, but most of the time what you find is crap. (Not withstanding their new milled AK which I may have to get two or three of.)
Personally, I rather like the FAL. But economically, if you’re wanting a .308 semiauto for the day the wheels fly of civilization, and you’re on a budget, you would be hard pressed to find a better value.
Eliminating the exotic stuff, here’s the rundown of whats available in .308 these days that fits the bill and isn’t some super-rare oddball thing (like a .308 Galil or Valmet): AR-10, FAL, PTR, M1A and maybe one of the AK-pattern .308s. I’m limiting this discussion to stuff based on platforms that have been around a while…the AR-10 being the newest. Stuff like the KelTec RFB or other gunny-come-lately need to be around for a while so we can see if they have legs or not.
Whats your budget for the gun and it’s necessary gear? Well, let’s say, mmmm, $1250. Let’s also not cheap out and go with the absolute cheapest [rifle/mag/etc] we can find. We want what works. So, while the Century FrankenFAL may be 1/2 the price of a DSA, it is not a contender because it’s simply a crapshoot in terms of its manufacture. LWRC and SIG don’t have anything for less than $1250 at the moment. S&W has some ‘bargain’ AR-10 rifles but nothing on Gunbroker is less than $1250, and while Remington makes one as well I’m holding off on any of their new stuff until they get their act together in terms of QC.
A basic rifle suitable for defensive use, not a target, match or hunting gun:
Magazines? You’ll need a few. Assuming OEM or similar quality..no Tapco, no USA, no Korean/Chinese. Magpul is ok.
So, working within our arbitrary $1250 budget, and not counting mags that came with the gun, we get:
A Springfield Armory M1A with no extra mags
A PTR-91 with 116 extra mags
An AR-10 with 8~ mags
An FAL with 9~ mags
Or, to work it from another angle, a rifle and 30 mags would be:
M1A – $1700
PTR – $990
AR-10 – $1682
FAL – $1575
So, from a ‘bang for your buck’ standpoint the PTR seems to be at the top. But, that isn’t everything when it comes to these matters. What about reliability, ergonomics, modularity, etc, etc? The AR-10 platform is the newest and thus doesnt have the track record of the others, but it seems to be as reliable as most other piston designs. The PTR, while based on a design that has been extremely reliable, suffered a bit with the early guns. Newer PTR rifles (within the last couple years, and all “GI” models) have corrected the fault that caused rifles to choke on tar-sealed surplus ammo. So, assuming you have one of the rfiles made in the last couple years, it should be as reliable as any HK.
Ergonomics suck but, for me, theyre no more awkward than an AK. If you really wanna go nuts, you can have the receiver sent out for the paddle mag conversion to make it ‘true’ to a G3 but I find that the magazine release isn’t a big deal. The AR-10 wins, hands down, on ergonomics, by the way.
The PTR, with a railed handguard, is about as modular as any other gun. There are provisions for folding, tele, and regular stocks. New guns can be had with railed receivers, making optics much easier to mount, and the rifles are accurate enough that a scope really is worth the investment….the guns are capable of very fine accuracy.
Do they eat the brass? Not to the point you can’t reload it. Someday I’ll take the gun, one cartridge, and a loading press to the range and fire/reload the same case several times to prove it. Until the, though, believe me…you can reload the cases just fine.
So, Im not saying the PTR is the best rifle for anyone. For me, who wanted a .308 in a proven platform without breaking the bank, the PTR fit the bill nicely. From a logistics standpoint, it is at the top of the list with cheap mags and spare parts availability (for now). Some folks prefer the AR-10, some folks (including myself) prefer the FAL, but for the guy who wants a quality, reliable, semi-auto and it’s accessories at a reasonable price…well, its pretty hard to beat.
What a weird day. I moved a piano for someone with the help of a professional wrestler.
The father-in-law of one of my wife’s coworkers died last week and I was asked to come out and evaluate the gun stuff. If you spend any time around guns, and people know youre kind of a ‘gun guy’ you eventually get called for these sorts of things. There was a bunch of reloading stuff, but it was mostly older presses and dies. There were, however, lotsa primers, some powder, and a small stash of .22 ammo and I wound up carting off a bunch of it.
As I was leaving, I asked the gal there if, since I was already there, could I help them with anything else as they were packing up the house. Well, she said, could you move the piano out to my truck? Uhm..sure..but not by myself. No problem, she says, a friend of my dads is on his way here…maybe the two of you can do it.
The friend, as it turns out, was Keith Hart of the Hart wrestling family. A gentleman in his early sixties but in good enough shape that the two of us managed to haul a piano down the driveway and into the back of a Tacoma. I don’t remember much about him but I do remember his brother dying in an accident during the introduction of a match. He was a nice guy and we chatted a little about pro wrestling (he says it really is fake, but a lot of times it ‘turns real’ when the two guys get their blood up), and also talked a little about working out. His deadlift was 500# in his prime. Pretty impressive. He’s apparently a substitute teacher now and lives a couple hours north of here in one of the border towns.
So, an interesting day….got a buncha primers and powder, and got to work up a sweat with a professional wrestler. Another interesting day in Montana.
ETA: Here’s what I
was graciously and generously permitted to take for myself…….
Reason #27 why I love Amazon….radio remote fire control systems for $25. For launching your model rockets and fireworks remotely…yeah…thats the ticket. How do you see something like this for sale and not have the wheels in your head suddenly start spinning into overdrive?
ETA: And they make a party pack!
So you guys saw this? Tesla Motors, as a development in their car-battery technology I am assuming, says they are going to be offering a ‘plug-n-play’ battery that will be suitable for home use. Now, you and I both know that ‘home use’ means a few lights, some entertainment devices, and other small-draw items, because you ain’t running your refrigerator, freezer, well-pump, furnace blower, and hot water heater off a battery small enough to hang on your wall. Oh, you could run a household like that off of batteries but it would be a battery (or battery-pack) the size of a cargo container.
Really, this is a brilliant move for Tesla if they pull it off. The car side of their business is obviously heavily invested in battery technology, so if they develop an uber-battery it would only make sense to put out out into other, non-auto markets as well. The market for $200K $100k electric cars is probably pretty small compared to the market for $3500 batteries that, ideally, work better than any existing backup battery or off-grid-cabin battery.
My own efforts as of late are still in the DIY/beginning-hobbyist stage. I’m planning out a small battery system to maintain a charge off of household current when the power is on, and to be used for DC applications (lights, radio, battery charging, security system) when the power goes out. But thats a much longer post (or, really, couple of posts).
In a happy little world, I’d have something like one of these batteries up at my very-attractive, yet heavily-reinforced concrete off-grid Beta Site. The world would convulse into spasms of chaos, I’d pack up and head to my little quiet bastion of security, and patiently wait for things to calm down…all the while enjoying LED lighting, radio communications, laptop, and security surveillance. Ah, the great American (survivalist’s) dream.
Go read some Heinlein sometime, or just Wiki it, and look up “Shipstone”. In the books, the shipstone was a revolutionary technology that greatly improved batteries. Or, as the book says, “To call a Shipstone an improved storage battery would be to call an atom bomb an improved firecracker.” In the book, shipstones didnt create power, they simply acted as containers for it. And you could stuff a lot of power into one. Every so often someone comes up with some ideas in battery technology that looks similar to Heinlein’s fictional supercapacitor. About eight years ago the big thing was ‘nanowire‘ technology that would, allegedly, increase a lithium-ion batteries output by 10x. Haven’t read much about it since then.
Anyway, if Tesla has made any strides in the battery arena, I think it would be a classic example of a business having a small branch or division that was ancillary to their main business become more profitable than the main business. Serendipity.
Stayed with the vehicle and survived. This is almost, but not always, the case. However, it is the outcome often enough that staying with the vehicle should be the preferred choice.
Nice day outside. Time to set out the generator and run it for a while to make sure everything is working for when we need it.
I keep a copy of the startup/shutdown instructions attached to the generator so there’s no doubt about doing things the right way. Sure, I commit as much of it to memory as I can but you never know when someone else may be needed to start/stop it and this way they can have all the proper info right there.
In a crisis the only thing I really need the generator for is to keep the freezer/fridge cool and maybe run the furnace blower. In the winter any food can simply go outside and the generator will be mostly for just running the blower and charging batteries.
Household emergency lighting will be mostly LED lights run off a couple deep-cycle batteries. Thats a project I’m kinda working on at the moment.
Had one of those end-of-the-world dreams last night. Something, not sure what, was going on in California and the news media were saying how people should be prepared to evacuate and not go near..whatever it was. I was in some supermarket pushing a cart as I watched people blindly knock stuff over in a mad dash to fill their carts. I finally gave up and left when I suddenly realized “Hey, I’ve got a years worth of food already. I dont have to be here.” I returned to the house and the wife was telling me how the lines at the bank were out the door and around the block. We started loading stuff up to leave, stacking up guns and ammo, when suddenly two people (looters, I think) burst in with drum-fed full-auto AK’s and started hosing the place down.
Thats when my phone rang and I woke up.
First dream like that I have had in a while. Scary stuff until you wake up. Nice to see that in the dream I was vindicated about some things, though.
My experience has been that these sorts of dreams usually come in three flavors: the end of the world and Im way undergunned, end of the world and no one seems to react when Ii shoot them, and this most recent one – end of the world and Im hurriedly trying to last-minute shop for stuff.
I’m blaming the Mexican food for this dream.
Interestingly, I as just re-reading In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex when this was brought to my attention.
As I was reading, an interesting subject came up…what was the longest that someone has been adrift at sea and survived? According to the book, a Chinese crew on boat transporting rice was adrift for over a year. During that time they lived off the cargo of rice until they were rescued.
In preparedness forums there are always folks who advocate for a ‘retreat at sea’, living on boats and roaming the world, going ashore at rare intervals, and living off what you catch in the oceans. Interesting thought but even if you discount the food and fresh water issues, maintaining a boat is a lot of work. Unless, of course, the boat is question is the Baychimo. Short version: the Baychimo was abandoned in 1931 when it became trapped in ice up near the Arctic Circle. After it was seen, boarded, and lost, reappeared, and generally wandered the ocean for the next 40 years. Built ’em tough, back then.
Back to this guy in North Carolina, I look foward to hearing his story. Especailly how in modern times a guy can remain lost off the coast of one of the most technologically advanced countries on the planet, and in one of the most heavily trafficked parts of the sea.
Our Friend Of The Blog who runs Self-Sufficient mountain Living has a nice post up about the old days of survivalism and some of the cool books that came out then.
To me, the ‘Golden Age’ of survivalism (when it was actually called ‘survivalism’) was the days of the Cuban Missle Crisis and the years before that…back when the Red Menace was just a Tu-95 away from starting WW3. After that, I suppose there was the ‘Silver Age’ of survivalism which would be the late 70’s and early 80’s. Thats the era I got interested in that sort of thing. Of course, at the time I was a mere gunless 13-year-old, but I eagerly devoured every book I could get my hands on. Stuff like Alas Babylon, A Canticle For Liebowitz, Warday. and, of course, the now-embarassingly-bad works of Ahern.
But, once in a while, I stumbled across some stuff that was not ‘entertainment’ but more of a ‘how to’. See, back then we didn’t have the intarwebs to deliver hard-to-find books. Amazon was still an adjective describing women over six-feet tall, and if it wasn’t in the Brooklyn Public Library (or any of it’s branches) I wasn’t going to have access to it. (And, honestly, what 13-year-old walks into a book store and really expects them to have something as oddball as Kearny’s Nuclear War Survival Skills or Tappan On Survival?)
In fact, it really wasnt until much later that I actually became aware of these books and was able to finally read them. Prior to the advent of the internet, my only exposure to any resource of any kind on this subject was American Survival Guide (back when it was in it’s non-neutered guns-on-the-cover format) and, to a lesser degree, Soldier Of Fortune. Both those magazines had plenty of advertising that made me aware of books and products I wasn’t aware of. It was probably through them I got into ordering things from the old Brigade Quartermaster catalog. (BQ, by the by, has apparently changed hands.) Back in those days you wrote to a company and asked for a catalog, then you waited, the catalog arrived and you filled out the order form, you got a postal money order, mailed it off and waited. And waited. And eventually, your little survival geegaw showed up in the mail. Nowadays..heck, I can be in the bathroom and still order a case of ammo off my phone in less time than it used to take to fill out an order form and stuff it in an envelope.
For folks who have only recently (in the last ten years or so) gotten into ‘prepping’, this all sounds strange but its true…there really was a time when you were pretty much relegated into the same dark corners of the bookstore as German dungeon porn. In the mid 1980’s and pretty much into the very early 90’s you really had virtually no avenue for meeting like-minded individuals and sharing ideas except for classified adverts in SOF or ASG. Nowadays, of course, its a different story…there are numerous forums, newsgroups (remember those?), and probably even a few mailing lists still out there. The survivalist community, such as it is, is more aware of itself than it ever used to be. In the old days you could very reasonably think that you were the only person with your particular interest…after all, you never ran into anyone else doing the same things you were, right? But now with the internet I can see that there are plenty of people, some very close by, who have the same concerns and interests as me. (And this is a good thing, in terms of making one feel less like a wierdo, but, lets be honest, survivalists tend to play it pretty close to the vest…so even if you’re aware of a larger group of people who think like you, that doesn’t necessarily mean youre going to take any steps to meet them. We’re a rather individualist lot.)
Today’s survivalists really have it easy. Cool gear, easy to order, acceptance by the mainstream, etc, etc. Why, I practically feel like some sort of survivalist hipster some days with my old Brigade Quartermaster neck gaiter, old Gerber Mk II, and ALICE pouches.
