Category Archives: Uncategorized

Radio active

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I’d been wanting an Icom-7200 for a while…so long a while, in fact, that the 7200 has been discontinued. Sure I can find them used but I really hate buying a product that is used unless I am intimately familiar with how it works and how to check it out to make sure it works. This is why, normally, I have no problem with used guns…Im familiar enough with thundertoys that I can tell fairly readily if a used gun is good or if its someones problem child.

The Icom-7200 was supplanted by the Icom-7300. Ok, thats at least 100 better than the 7200, right? Let’s order one up.

It’ll be here later in the week. I already have a power supply and cable for it, but I need to figure out an antennae (a word I can never spell right on the first go) for it. At the moment, I’ve no interest in transmitting…but I have a keen interest in listening.

As was said in Alas Babylon, “But Sam Hazzard’s principal hobby was listening to shortwave radio. He was not a ham operator. He had no transmitter. He listened. He did not chatter. He monitored the military frequencies and the foreign broadcasts and, with his enormous background of military and political knowledge, he kept pace with the world outside Fort Repose. Sometimes, perhaps, he was a bit ahead of everyone.”

My interest is in listening…taking in whats out there, examining it, and using that information as necessary. Maybe down the line I’d have need to send rather than receive, but for now I simply want to listen. And, yes, I need to get the license to transmit but thats a project for later.

If anyone has suggestions (and links) on the subject, I’d be very interested.

The Last Of Us observations

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So with The Walking Dead having sailed into history and devolved into what will, no doubt, be short-lives spinoff series, I need a new post-apocalypse show to immerse myself in. The Last Of Us is the latest installment in that.

The premise? Well, you can go look it up…I don’t really have the willpower to type out a synopsis that you can easily find elsewhere.

So, historically, television and movies have done a wildy disparate job of portraying the dystopian future. One thing that separates TLOU is that while shows like Jericho, The Walking Dead, The Last Ship, etc, all start with an apocalypse, TLOU is actually about whats happening 20 years after the apocalypse. As a result, we don’t see how the world became rubble and ruin, rather, we just start at that point.

So what does the future look like twenty years after the apocalypse? Apparently we get walled cities that are operated by heavy-handed military governments. People work for chits, everything is in short supply, the guards are goons, and there’s always that contingent of people who want to ‘change the system’. Its virtually a trope.

The characters, after only one season, are a bit one-dimensional but you can see that there’s an attempt being made to flesh them out a bit. You can’t really develop a character into a fully-developed person that the audience cares about in only one season. But there’s plenty of foreshadowing about where those character developments will land…tough, hardened kid who just wants the joy of being a child again, gruff survivor secretly needing to love someone and have connection, that sort of thing.

Gunplay? A bit. There’s an interesting scene where a stolen M4 is squirreled away because finding ammo for it is too difficult. Personally, I’d think that in a world full of armed government goons carrying AR’s youd find that .223 is probably the more common round. And, flying in the face of real-world experience, the main hero carries a….Taurus revolver. Hmm. I’m not sure a Taurus has the build quality to last through twenty years of hard use.

One thing I noticed that seems interesting is that outside of the large cities, survivors carry hunting-type rifles (bolt guns) rather than AR’s, whereas inside the walled quarantine zones the government and the rebel faction both use AR’s. Obviously this is because the rebel faction takes the guns from the government faction as they’re killed, but you’d think the M4 would be useful in the rest of the landscape, not just the cities.

My guess is that, 20 years into the apocalypse, ammunition for the M4’s is widely available to .gov forces and those forces are predominantly in the cities…so the M4 prevails there. Outside the cities, in the sparsely populated outside world, all the 5.56 was burned up long ago and people use whatever rifle happens to be chambered for whatever ammunition they find.

Makes me wonder if this is finally the scenario that justifies the Scout rifle concept.

Article – How to survive nuclear war after a bomb is dropped: what to do, how to prepareArticle –

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Some light reading for Saturday:

If Russia launched a weapon from international waters just off the East Coast, people in cities like New York, Boston, and Washington, DC, might have just 10 to 15 minutes to prepare.

“You wouldn’t even have time to go get your kids from school,” Irwin Redlener, a public-health expert at Columbia University who specializes in disaster preparedness, told Insider last year.
Arguably, the American public is not as prepared or educated on what to do in the event of a nuclear attack as Americans were during the Cold War, when fallout shelters, , and air raid sirens were in place across the nation. So here’s a minute-by-minute guide to help.

Llikelihood of the classic Reagan-era all-out nukefest actually happening? Pretty small, I think. But all it takes is one thermonuclear weapon to ruin your whole day and , besides, this information may prove to come in handy some day.

Scabbard

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A dear friend of mine, after reading my post about BBQ guns, sent me a link to a place that has their own BBQ holster/belt package. Indeed, a pretty cool looking rig. However, that really interested me was that they are manufacturing a leather rifle scabbard for AK’s and AR’s.

I have to say, that would be a pretty cool accessory for the person with a hayburner.

They actually used to make scabbards for M1 Garand rifles back in the day. Of course, being a semi auto, there has to be an accommodation for the charging handle and the Garand scabbards have a metal shield over a cutout in the scabbard to make that accommodation.

I suppose a scabbard would be handy on a 4×4 or motorcycle but I’d think most of the time you’d be just as well serviced by having the rifle slung at your side or across your back.

Regardless, its nice to see, in a world full of kydex, that there are still folks working in great-smelling, creaking, looks-better-with-age leather.

Speaking of BBQ guns

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A couple people were curious what I wanted in a barbecue gun. Well, my plan was one of the following:

In a nice extra fancy floral engraved Tom Threepersons holster from El Paso Saddlery.

And, of course, a nice set of showy grips.

Now, I know an engraver here in the valley who does good work ( Mike Gouse ), but I rather prefer factory engraving even if it’s just machine done.

So, there you have it. Attend some big social function and if you see some goober with a gussied up GP-100, well, say hi ’cause its probably me.

Texas…why did it have to be Texas?

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The first and last time I was in Texas was not exactly a resoundingly good time. It left a bad taste in my mouth, and a hole in my foot, and I resolved that I was done with Texas.

And then I had a wedding reception to go to in San Antonio. On the bright side, it wasnt nearly as hot as the last time I was down there. And I didnt get bit by fire ants this time either. But I was mightily annoyed at the preponderance of one-way streets and crazy drivers.

But, this time I had a bit of time to go visit gun shops. I hit three or four which were all pretty lame, and then I found this place. Selection? Outstanding. General atmosphere? Very polished and upscale. Staff? Stretched thin but mostly knowledgeable. Prices? Hgih, by my standards. But I saw not one but two HiPower GP comeptition guns and damn near bought one. Saw a Cetme L, piles of minty 100 year old 1911’s, three HK squeezecockers, and a bunch of other hey-you-dont-see-that-every-day guns. (And a genuine FN-made FAL which made me think long and hard….)

Other than that, still not really diggin’ Texas. However, I have resolved that I very much need a barbecue gun.

So there you have it. Another trip to Texas, another reason for me to appreciate Montana. You guys in Texas…Im sure you love it and all, but it just isn’t for me.

Article – The high price of low interest rates

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An article by author Lionel Shriver about how we are now paying for the years of low interest rates and what to expect going forward. Shriver, you may recall, is the author of, among other works, the rather probably-prescient The Mandibles.

Paltry interest rates haven’t only been profoundly unjust – making a mockery of prudence, frugality and the old-fashioned habit of paying for stuff with money you’ve already made, while encouraging recklessness, profligacy and the terribly modern habit of buying stuff with money you may never earn. Nil rates were also systemically irresponsible. Reward debt, get more debt. It shouldn’t surprise central bankers that sovereign debt is through the roof (the US government now owes an unimaginable $31 trillion, the UK government nearly 100 per cent of GDP), that corporations have never been more leveraged, or that household debt is climbing towards its pre-2008 high. Soaring debt is intrinsically unstable – building an economy on borrowed money is like constructing a house atop a big black pit – and fiscal stability is what central banks are meant to ensure, not an ever-rising stock market.

To paraphrase Ayn Rand, you can ignore bad fiscal policy but you cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring bad fiscal policy.

Last of Us

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So I finally signed up for HBO so I could binge watch The Last Of Us. I watched the first three episodes last night because I really wanted to watch Episode 3 with Nick Offerman playing hardcore survivalist-not-prepper ‘Bill’.

Something that struck me as rather ‘yup, thats really how it happens’ was the scene where Bill, the hardcore survivalist, is in a relationship with Frank, the not-a-survivalist. Naturally, there is some butting of heads on some subjects. But I really resonated with this:

F: You live in a psycho bunker where…the government are all Nazis.
B: The government ARE all Nazis!!
F: Well…yeah, NOW, but not then!

Thats the kind of conversations you have when your significant other isnt on the same page.

Technically, I suppose those creatures in TLOU are a form of zombie so I dont feel that using the ‘zombie’ tag for TLOU posts will be amiss.