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Augason at Winco II

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One of the nice things about blogging for twenty years is that I can go back and check details that would otherwise be lost in time.

The Augason storage food I mentioned yesterday? The price on the potato shreds is the same as it was last year. Interestingly, though, the butter powder is $2.50 cheaper than it was last year.

Storage food is insurance. Certainly it’s a nice hedge against the day the zombies arrive, Xenu comes back, the Chinese invade, the race war starts,  and the comet hits. But it’s also a comfort against job loss, economic troubles, and supply issues. In general, like all insurance, one of it’s great benefits is the peace of mind it offers.

We seldom see hunger in this country to the point that exists in other countries. (We’re the only country with obese poor people, so you know food isn’t exactly a problem for us.) But while as a nation we virtually never experience hunger, we can (and do) as individuals…we suffer individual setbacks like job losses, crippling injuries, etc. And while there may be miles of aisles of food at the Walmart, there may be none to be had by you. So….yes, a form of insurance.

Preaching to the choir, I know, but let’s be real….too many people emphasize the sexy gun stuff and under-emphasize the unsexy things like food. But your gonna eat a lot more often than you’re going to shoot things in most crises. So…yeah, lay back some .223 but spend at least as much in time, effort, and money on food as well.

 

Augason at Winco

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Was up at Winco today and, to my surprise, they had a bunch of Augason Farms. Last time they had the Augason Farms stuff was about nine months ago.

Not a huge selection, but certainly some good items there to fill in the gaps if youre not quite ready for the upcoming apocalypse. An LMI buddy of mine dragged his feet last time in getting up there and wound up kicking himself about missing out on a couple things. I told him, repeatedly, to not dawdle and get up there….but, he didnt and ha spent the last nine months regretting it. I immediately let him know these were back and that he should take a lunch break from work and go pick up the cans he missed. I also told him that he should let me know if he couldnt get away and I’d do it for him…. Because thats what survivalist buddies do for each other.

I didn’t pick up anything because…well…I’m Commander Zero and I stocked up on this stuff a long time back. But, I’m tempted to pick up a couple cans of the vegetable stew to try with a couple cans of canned roast beef.

Tableware

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‘Twas my birthday last weekend. I received a couple gifts…a nice BK&T camp knife, and a very expensive, very Japanese, mechanical pencil set. (In my line of work, mechanical pencils are far handier than the usual yellow #2 variety.)

As I was admiring my loot, I was reminded of an article I saw a while back about the gear that soldiers have carried throughout the centuries. This isn’t the same article, but it’s close to it. The original article, which I can’t find, noted that even in the most underequipped armies, across the span of time, there has been one piece of equipment that nearly all soldiers or combatants carried. Surprisingly, it’s not a knife. It’s a pice of ‘field gear’ that is about as innocuous and undeadly as you can get. But…every soldier since the Romans carries one in some form or another.

A spoon.

If you think about it, it makes sense. There’s nothing you can eat with a fork that you can’t eat with your hands. But a spoon…..a spoon makes soups and stews possible to eat. A spoon makes forkable food faster to eat. A spoon is pretty much the one eating utensil to have. Knife? You already have one on your belt or attached to the tip of your rifle. Fork? Anything forkable is fingerable. But a spoon is a completely different story.

Not content to let things lay after a couple thousand years of fine tuning, mankind tried the two-fer of the spork. While I appreciate the intent, I have found that, again, anything I can eat with a fork I can eat with my fingers. So why compromise the efficacy of my spoon?

Having said that, there is a certain appeal to the spork that is not a spork…the ‘reversible grip’ eating implement. This is what I use when I’m afield. Actually, thats not true. Because I’m an evil yuppie survivalist, I spent the extra coin and got the titanium version because titanium.

It actually rides in my pack when I’m traveling, along with a couple freeze dried meals, a canteen cup, esbit stove, and a bottle or two of water. Does the titanium version do anything the plastic version does not? Mostly no, but I like the notion of a tool that is wildly overbuilt for its intended purpose. Gotta say, it is delightfully lightweight, though.

And while I love imagining what sort of ‘load out’ I’ll need for Der Tag, the simple truth is that even in the best of times a man’s gotta eat… so even when the zombies are shamblin’ about, I’ll still probably be needing to eat more than I need to shoot. So, I give some thought to my eatin’ irons and think the reverse-grip sppon/fork combo is the way to go.

I know, I know…nothing sexy about a spoon. Hard to imagine a survivalist getting worked up over tableware when there’s guns and knives to get excited about. But…the amateurs talk tactics, the professionals talk logistics. And nothing is more logistical than figuring out how the hell youre gonna eat soup after the apocalypse when you don’t have a spoon.

Paratus approaches

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Paratus is next month. If you received a Paratus card from me last year, you’re probably on track to get one this year. If your address has changed then you need to email a new mailing address. Didn’t get a card and want one? Then you need to interact with me more. Anyone who sends me a Christmas or birthday card? On the list. Patreon? On the list. Sends me a gift or just a supportive note? On the list. Intereacts with me in ‘real life’? On the list. Fellow blogger? Usually on the list.

Still haven’t finalized this years design but I’m working on it. Don’t forget, Paratus is the holiday about you, you deplorable, crazy, survivalist. Get together with your like-minded buddies and have a nice gift exchange and some range time. Are you the quiet type lives a secret life as a survivalist? Then use it as an excuse to by yourself that nice Icom or Glock you’ve been wanting.

And feel free to send me a card!

Youre not as alone as you think

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I restocked on some household staples the other day and, as often happens, the guy hauling the cases of food from the ‘special order’ repository asks what I’m buying all this stuff for. And, as of late, I’m deadly honest with them…”I’m one of those crazy survivalist types. Stocking up against price increases and supply issues.” No lie, thats what I say.

And every single time, the other person has come back with something along the lines of “Yeah, I do that too. I just bought a couple cases of….”

Every. Single. Time.

So,  mi amigos, don’t feel that you’re alone in this world as you push your shopping cart with 48 cans of tomatoes and 50-pound sacks of rice through the Kroeger. It is a virtual certainty that you are amongst your own kind and you don’t even recognize it.

As I pointed out to someone the other day, for the last thirty years I’ve been viewed as some sort of right-wing, anti-government, Montana survivalist….but lately I’m viewed more as a prophet.

As the world gets weirder and weirder, with dystopian tropes becoming tomorrow’s headlines, absolve yourself from any self-doubt or self-consciousness about what you’re doing in the name of resilience and being prepared. When your neighbor is selling his jet ski to pay the light bill, pulling his kids out of private school to afford to eat, and brown bagging his lunch to his new-job-at-a-lower-wage-because-thats-all-that-was-available, you can pat yourself on the back and take some pride in what you’ve done, and are still doing, to secure the safety of yourself and your loved ones.

Rock on with your bad self, fellow survivalist.

 

Article – Magnet fishers fined after pulling 86 rockets from Fort Stewart river

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No good deed goes unpunished.

In the case of some magnet fishers who cleared 86 rockets, a tank tracer round, and .50 caliber ammo belts from a river on Fort Stewart, the toll was a number of fines from the Georgia Department of Natural Resources.

If you hit YouTube, and search for ‘magnet fishing’, you can come up with some fascinating videos. And, not surprisingly, there’s a lot of firearms at the bottom of some of these bodies of water. The Europeans, especially, seem to have quite a few bodies of water that are 90% guns. (The original quote was that the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn was the only body of water in the world that was 90% guns.)

I’m not sure if I’d have kept ‘fishing’ after the first couple of rockets turned up. I’ve no experience with those sorts of things and who knows if they were just inert projectiles or actually had some juice behind them. But, if someone knew what they were doing, and had some grande cajones, they could probably do pretty good for themselves salvaging explosive components.

I actually have a couple of magnets like those used in the video. Sadly, I havent found anything nearly as interesting with them. But, maybe someday I’ll dredge up an old ’73 WInchester from under an old bridge or something. More likely just lots of lost car keys.

Still, armies have to practice somewhere…and not every piece of ordnance goes boom like its supposed to. Never know what you might stumble across.

Scenes from CostCo

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Hmmm. A package of four Lifestraws for $35. That’s..uhm…carry the one….$8.75 ea. Thats not a terrible deal for something that you should have in your truck, go-bag, hunting pack, and elsewhere. My local CostCo also had some Goal0 stuff, but I was more interested in the deal on the LifeStraws. If I didnt already have a dozen of these I might pick up a package of these to use as Paratus gifts.

Article – Zimbabwe debuts gold coins as legal tender to stem inflation

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HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) — Zimbabwe has launched gold coins to be sold to the public in a bid to tame runaway inflation that has further eroded the country’s unstable currency. The unprecedented move was announced Monday by the country’s central bank, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, to boost confidence in the local currency. Trust in Zimbabwe’s currency is low after people saw their savings wiped out by hyperinflation in 2008 which reached 5 billion%, according to the IMF.
This would, I think, actually make Zimbabwe’s currency more stable than the dollar. Economics and goldbugging are two flavors that are tough to get into one candy. There’s a line in the book The Mandibles where the character is talking about how the independent nation-state of Nevada is on the gold standard..he says something along the lines of ‘Gold is useless..can’t eat it, can grow it, but for some reason it works as money…even if no one seems to know why.’ I’ve often that that gold is about as close as you’ll ever come to a global currency. According to the article, Zimbabwe will sell you all the minted coins you’d like as long as you pay in foreign currency. I wonder how Zimbabwe will acquire enough gold to make a difference in their economy..I wouldn’t want to be paid for my gold in those crappy Zimbabwe dollars. Theyre gonna have to pay in other ways…foreign currency, military land leases to the Chinese, oil, etc. I’d be curious to see where this goes. I suspect what will happen is that this plan, like every other great idea in Africa, will fizzle out from mismanagement and the resources (gold) will disappear into some general or prime minister’s pocket. And the Zim gold coins will become collectors items that are seen ore outside Zimbabwe than in.

Pantsless

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I was out in the world doing Stuff and, somehow, tore my pants. Not just tore them, but I mean a gaping hole from the base of the crotch all the way up to the beltline, running parallel to the fly. In short, if it wasnt for the fact I was wearing a very long t-shirt, I would have been running around with Commander Seven-and-a-half snorkeling for air like an asthmatic elephant. To compound matters, there was no place nearby to purchase another pair of pants.

So..I dealt with it. But then I kept having a nagging thought in the back of my head….don’t I have an extra pair of pants in the vehicle? So, I checked the laminated card in the glove box that details all the gear I keep in the truckbox and…yes….a vacuum-sealed pair of jeans was, in fact, part of the loadout. Dug through the backpack, found them, retired the destroyed pair, and got back to business.

Preparedness for the win!

As an aside, I apparently keep, individually vacuum sealed: jeans, t-shirt, heavy shirt, boxer briefs, long underwear, and socks. Essentially, one complete change of clothes suitable for any season. Theres also a winter coat, gloves, scarf, hat, etc in there. The vacuum sealing helps keep the space requirements down.

Moral of the story: A spare change of clothes is a good idea because you never know when you might accidentally wind up ruining whatever it is you’re wearing.

And I pat myself on the back for my tremendous foresight.