Category Archives: Uncategorized

Sandy musings

Posted on by

Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.

What’s done is done, so, for me, no more reason to be hungover about the election. Accept the situation for what it is, and plan accordingly to mitigate it’s effects.

The NY region continues to try to get past hurricane Sandy. You have to understand that the parts of NY that youre reading about are actually a very small part of NY. Some parts of NYC never lost power or suffered much damage at all….it’s a rather large area, after all. It’s like thinking because of an earthquake in San Francisco all of California must be smoldering rubble. (Albeit, that’s a pleasant thought.)

The lessons and ‘teachable moments’ coming out of there don’t really seem to be things that we haven’t heard before, although once in a while a new twist comes in that I hadn’t thought of (like the rental car thing). It sounds like people were in three groups: those with no generators, those with generators, and those with generators and the logistics to support those generators. Looks like too many people bought generators and patted themselves on the back for a job well done and then gave no thought to where the fuel was coming from once the tank got empty.  If there’s any lesson there it’s that you need to have all the logistics support (gas, oil, filters, fuses, cables, cords, documentation, experience, chain-and-padlock, etc.) or your generator is just a disposable eight hour UPS.

Speaking of generators, it’s always a good idea to run them once a month or so to make sure everything is doing what it’s supposed to. My brother very cleverly cut a length of PVC pipe, capped one end, put a screw cap on the other, hose-clamped it to the frame of his generator and it holds all the documentation, instructions and small parts for his genny. That way it’s always there and protected from pretty much everything.

The tales of looting and that sort of thing are no surprise and the solutions are rather simple for those who aren’t prohibited by local government from having the necessary gear.

One thing that’s interesting is that many people were completely unprepared to cook or heat their houses. Many homes still had natural gas pressure but did not have electricity to run blowers and ovens (assuming their stoves were gas, which many are not.) And while gas pressure may have been unaffected in some places, water was unavailable in many. I had a buddy whose gas hot water heater was doing great except with no water flow it was fairly useless…no hot showers.

Of course, there’s no guarantee that next time an event like this (or any other disaster) takes place that things will go the same way and there’ll be natural gas available. Personally, I’d love to have a natural gas generator for my house but I can’t rely on a fuel supply that can be interrupted. Propane would be my next choice but as someone pointed out to me, when comparing the merits of a liquid fuel generator versus a propane generator, when youre out of fuel you cant just go a few doors down to your neighbor with a five gallon bucket and borrow a bucket full of propane. On the other hand, a 500 gallon tank of propane would probably last a looooong time on a generator thats only run for a few hours a day.

A multi-fuel generator sounds nice but it also sounds like a lot more to go wrong. And my experience has been ‘one-size-fits-all’ solutions never wind up solving anything 100% of the way. What’ll probably happen is that we’ll wind up getting one of the Honda EU-series of portable generators at some point in the coming year. A buddy of mine got a nice feal on one offa Craigslist so perhaps I’ll troll around there for a while.

If you live in the east coast region, expect to see the local Craigslist flodded (get it? ‘flooded’?) with used generators as short-sighted people think “Wow, glad thats over!” and sell of their new gennys.

Car rental, Walking Dead, economic recovery

Posted on by

Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.

Buddy of mine in NY is learning a few things about post-disaster mopping-up that I never considered. For instance, think about this: the insurance guy comes to your house, takes one look at your car, and doesn’t even say anything other than “Yeah, that things toast. We’ll cut a check for you in the morning.” Now you have no car, but a nice check coming to go pick out another. What do you drive in the meantime? Well, your insurance also covers rental, right? So you call the rental agencies and thats when you discover that every car within fifty miles has been rented and the waiting list reads like a phone book.

So…next time you might want to rent a car in advance of things. If your car doesnt get washed out to sea, you can always cancel the reservation.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Latest episode of Walking Dead: not gonna miss her at all.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Since the nation douled-down on four more years of Carter II, I’m pessimistic about an economic recovery in the near future. (Or, an economic recovery that doesn’t require something drastic to jumpstart it.)

Really, I anticipate no major changes in anything we do around here in regards to the election results. About the only thing different will be a bit of an emphasis on securing more gun-related items and countering further economic malaise. Otherwise, business as usual.

As I expected, calling most of the major magazine and AR manufacturers and vendors was an exercise in futility. Most simply had their phones go straight to voicemail. Most of the answering messages started off with “Due to higher than normal call volume…” and ended with “..delays of six to eight weeks.”

Theres a few dissenting voices I hear from, from time to time, saying I have nothing to worry about…between the administrations lack of movement on gun control (cough*fastnfurious*cough), the Heller decision, and whatnot theres no signs that new regulation is in the works. Well, if that’s true (which I dont thin it is), then wheres the harm in putting two, three or seven more Glocks and AR’s in the safe, hmm?

Voting

Posted on by

Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.

“If you are part of a society that votes, then do so. There may be no candidates and no measures you want to vote for … but there are certain to be ones you want to vote against. In case of doubt, vote against. By this rule you will rarely go wrong.”
-From Time Enough for Love – R.Heinlein

 

Lighting minimalism

Posted on by

Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.

This post is mostly for my friends in NY who got stuck without any lighting other than their MagLites and a handful of batteries.While some light is better than no light, you can do a lot better, for little money, than brushing your teeth with one hand while holding your flashlight in the bathroom mirror with the other.

The simplest and, done properly, most rugged and safe system would be some LED lights that run off of a 12v battery. I actually have just such a set up in storage. It’s bare-bones simple but it beats the crap outta wearing a  headlamp to make a sandwich.

Here’s a simple rig that I keep around – it’s nothing more than a 12v marine battery (115 aH) and a couple of the Goal0 lights. A battery clip-to-cigarette adapter lets me run the light straight from the charged battery. The light is 3 watts at 12v, so that means it draws .25 amp/hour. Some math shows that 115 divided by .25 is 460….so, in theory, this fully charged battery would run this light for 460 hours. But…I’m a cautious guy…I don’t discharge batteries more than 50% so, really, its 230 hours…or almost ten solid days of light. (or almost a month of 8-hour usage.)

The Goal0 lights are better described in this post. Two very nice features, other than the low draw of power, is that they can be daisy-chained together. Each light has a socket on top that lets another let be plugged into it. Here’s two of them daisy-chained together and plugged in.

Each light has about nine feet of cord so you can stretch string of lights along the length of a house or whatever. Each light also has a hook to allow you to hang it from whatever nearby object is suitable.

The box in the background, by the way, is an old (pre-Y2K) ConSci PPP ‘battery in a box’ that I bought many years ago. It’s basically a couple 6v batteries and a charge controller mounted in a .50 ammo can. It gives me a small amount of electrical power in a waterproof container that can run lights, radios, etc. They apparently don’t make them anymore but you can easily engineer one on your own with a trip to Radio Shack and Home Depot.

Enough space for a small inverter, spare fuses and 12v accessories. But…you can build a better one.

If you’re an instant gratification guy like me, you can just buy one of those battery-jump-booster things you see at CostCo and Home Depot. Theyre pretty much the same thing but with more capacity. Keep it charged up and you’d have at least a couple days worth of lights. Buy a 12v-to-USB car charger and you could also charge your toys off of it.

Goal0, by the way, makes an all-in-one package for this sort of thing. It’s a battery, light, and panel to charge the battery.(Goal Zero Escape Combo Pack) Combo isn’t cheap, but if you have daylight to run the panel youre pretty much assured of no dark nights.

Realistically, though…you can do this on the cheap for emergency use. Get the battery clips, get the lights, and go scavenge some car batteries out of all those flooded cars out there. Or just spend the $50 and buy the marine battery/battery-booster and a charger.

Out the door you’d be looking at about $100 for the light and a battery that when charged would run that one light for, oh, about a month….which probably seems like a smoking bargain at the moment.

 

Article – Queens residents arm themselves in the post-storm blackout from looters

Posted on by

Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.

I love the picture of a Queens resident getting his Daryl Dixon on.

When night falls in the Rockaways, the hoods come out.

Ever since Sandy strafed the Queens peninsula and tore up the boardwalk, it’s become an often lawless place where cops are even scarcer than electrical power and food. Locals say they are arming themselves with guns, baseball bats, booby traps — even a bow and arrow — to defend against looters.

Thugs have been masquerading as Long Island Power Authority (LIPA) workers, knocking on doors in the dead of night. But locals say the real workers have been nowhere in sight, causing at least one elected official — who fears a descent into anarchy if help doesn’t arrive soon — to call for the city to investigate the utility.

Kudos for at least having the bow. Minus fifty points for the staged picture that all but says “come arrest me for showing off in public”.

I dont know what its like now, but when I turned 18 in Brooklyn the first thing I got was my ‘rifle/shotgun license’. Right after that I think I immediately went to Carnival Sporting Goods on McDonald Ave and bought a Mossberg 500 pistol grip shotgun. Or maybe it was a Chinese AK. It’s been so long I can’t recall. My point being that unless things have changed a lot since then, getting a ‘real’ defense gun isn’t out of the realm of possibility. Handguns (legally) were a bit tougher, and I never did get my NY pistol license. But there was a time I had a few shotguns, AKs, and even a lovely HK93A3 tucked away in my bedroom.

Nowadays, of course, it’s a different story. And the funny thing is, while we are tremendously well-armed for this sort of thing we live in an area where this sort of behavior doesn’t happen on a scale like that….probably exactly because most folks here are so well armed.In the post-Sandy environ I suspect a stuby little pump gun with a tactical light and an assortment of shells would be just the ticket.

 

 

Augason Farms arrival

Posted on by

Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.

As events in NYC point out, when the power goes down, the refrigerator becomes a petri dish, and Tony-&-Sal’s aren’t delivering any more chicken parms, it’s time to go with what you have in your cupboards.

While we store a decent amount of food, much of our long-term food supply is packed in #10 cans. These cans are great, but unless you can use up the contents before the open container goes bad you might wind up wasting food. I never really gave that much thought because in my mind a #10 can of chicken-and-rice would probably be consumed within three days or so…well within the threshold of safety. But lately I’ve been thinking that smaller sized cans would be useful…especially for handing out to friends or, more importantly, for creating ‘custom menu’ food packages.

Mountain House is obviously the benchmark for this sort of thing. The food is pretty tasty and should last for the rest of my life. Trouble is, it’s expensive, the menu is limited, and they really pissed me off with the screw-the-small-dealer program a few years back. I’ve been wanting to experiment more with the Augason Farms brand products. I am especially interested in their ‘everyday size‘ cans. These are cans that are much smaller than the #10 so you can use up the contents much more quickly. I decided to take advantage of a sale and order a bunch of stuff to try out and feed to the unsuspecting wife. Depending on what seems good (or not good) I’ll probably wind up ordering more to supplement ,round out, and add creativity to our long-term stored food supply.

First off, here’s the difference between the #10 can and the smaller ‘everyday size’ which, according to industry specs, looks to be a “#2.5″ size. Here’s a photo for size comparison. The Coke can is for scale.

l.-r.: #10 can, #2.5 can, Coke can

As you can see, the #2.5 size can might be a bit more practical in terms of ‘dinner for two’. Of course, some stuff is gonna be just fine if you open the #10 can and then put a plastic lid on it…rice, vegetables, etc. But some stuff will draw moisture like crazy and cake up (eggs, for instance). So it might be nice to have those in smaller ‘single serve’ cans.

I picked up some soup mix, egg mix, cereal, etc, etc, and will be trying them out over the next few weeks and reporting back on what I thought of them. While I’ll be trying these things ‘standalone’ I’ll also be incorporating other long-term foods into them to see how well they integrate…like adding some canned chicken to the chicken soup, for example. Or using the freeze-dried strawberries with some sugar and other ingredients to make syrup for the pancakes…that kinda thing. What’s nice is that the #2.5 cans give me a chance to try a product without having to spend the coin on the #10 and then find out I don’t like it.

I’m rather looking forward to trying this stuff out. They have daily specials on the website and also on their Facebook, so if this looks like stuff you might be interested in check those venues for sales.

 

 

Article – Staten Island Borough President: Don’t Give Money to the Red Cross

Posted on by

Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.

Staten Island Borough President: Don’t Give Money to the Red Cross

At a press conference this morning on Staten Island, a host of local officials, including Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, gathered to highlight the needs of the hard-hit borough in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. And, although many pols spoke, no one was more impassioned than Borough President James Molinaro, who called the Red Cross an “absolute disgrace” and even urged the public to cease giving them contributions.

“Because the devastation in Staten Island, the lack of a response,” Mr. Molinaro said to explain his comment to NBC after the press conference. “You know, I went to a shelter Monday night after the storm. People were coming in with no socks, with no shoes. They were in desperate need. Their housing was destroyed. They were crying. Where was the Red Cross? Isn’t that their function? They collect millions of dollars. Whenever there’s a drive in Staten Island, we give openly and honestly. Where are they? Where are they? I was at the South Shore yesterday, people were buried in their homes. There the dogs are trying to find bodies. The people there, the neighbors who had no electricity, were making soup. Making soup. It’s very emotional because the lack of a response. The lack of a response. They’re supposed to be here….They should be on the front lines fighting, and helping the people.”

Hey, you know who should be on the front lines fighting and helping the people? The people!

I know it’s easy to Monday morning quarterback something like this, but this hurricane didn’t drop down on them without warning.  See this? Hundred and fifty bucks. It will hold a weeks worth of food, water filter, flashlights, batteries, clothes, toiletries, camp stove and fuel, radio, medical supplies and every other item a person would need to keep them going for about a week…and still have some room left to spare. (Or, you might wanna get two.) Waterproof, airtight, rugged, durable and all but hurricane-proof. You don’t even have to screw with it….just load it up, rotate the contents once a year, and tuck it away somewhere you can get to it so it’s there when you need it. When the winds and rain stop and you’re standing in what used to be your house you can unpack it and be in a position to be a ‘self-rescuer’…which is nanny-state talk for ‘someone who can take care of themselves’. And once you can take care of yourself you’re in a much better position to take care of others.

Imagine five or six guys, or two or three families, who were all on the same wavelength. Each one having a box like that for each member of the group or family. Now you have a team of people who aren’t worried abut how they’re going to eat, wash their hair, or take a crap. While everyone else is whining about ‘wheres the .gov?’ they can actually, you know, get stuff done….dig out their rigs, set up a radio network, help their neighbors, whatever.

I should go surf the LDS websites and see how the Mormons are faring out there. I don’t know if the heavy-urban ones are as prepared and organized  as our western-rural ones but if they are, boy, there’s a crowd who you aren’t going to see on the ‘victim’ side of a Red Cross food line.

I recall saying that Katrina was going to be the benchmark for modern American disaster planning and armchair-quarterbacking for the next decade or so. I’m waiting for the comparisons to begin. I know its only a matter of time before the usual suspects start saying that because of the ‘flavor’ of NYC, they got a better response than ‘chocolate’ New Orleans.

 

Article – New Yorkers in fuel scramble as storm-hit pumps dry up

Posted on by

Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.

New Yorkers in fuel scramble as storm-hit pumps dry up

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Drivers and homeowners scrambled to secure fuel for their cars and generators in the U.S. Northeast on Wednesday as storm-hit gasoline stations started to run dry.

More than half of all gasoline service stations in the New York City area and New Jersey were shut because of depleted fuel supplies and power outages, frustrating attempts to restore normal life, industry officials said.

Reports of long lines, dark stations and empty tanks circulated across the region. Some station owners were unable to pump fuel due to a lack of power, while others quickly ran their tanks dry because of increased demand and logistical problems in delivering fresh supplies.

No sympathy. If youre smart enough to buy a generator but dumb enough to not think about where the next tank of gas is coming from then you probably deserve what happens to you. Some of the best money I ever spent was on these babies:

Wish like hell I’d bought more but I did what i could with what I had. That and a nice jug of PRI-G and I’ve got enough gas stored for most emergencies.

Right on schedule….

Posted on by

Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.

Hurricane Sandy Looting, Fights Plague South Brooklyn

Water that had risen six feet high hadn’t completely drained away from the streets of Coney Island in Brooklyn, N.Y., yet looters had already rifled through the remains of vulnerable shops on Mermaid Avenue.

At about 8 a.m. on Tuesday, workers arrived at Mega Aid Pharmacy to find that not only had Hurricane Sandy obliterated the building’s interior the night before, but thieves had broken in and gone through more than 10,000 pharmaceutical items. Most of the stolen goods were prescription meds.

“The water went away and these people started walking down the streets and just robbed stores,” a frustrated worker at the pharmacy, who wished to remain anonymous, told HuffPost Crime.

I grew up in Brooklyn and I am shocked..shocked I say!..to find there is looting going on here. Especially in that neighborhood. </sarcasm>

Naturally, in that environment, anyone who prepares against this sort of thing is considered a paranoid survivalist and, more importantly, is now a target for their generator and fuel. I fully expect some interesting stories and after action reports to start popping up on arfcom, Glocktalk, etc, etc.

Also, since it’s NYC, the good guys are usually without guns which makes fending off a bunch of looters a tricky exercise in melee tactics. Bouncing some rubber buckshot off the ground and into their legs would probably dissuade everyone real fast and keep the paperwork to a minimum.