I have no idea why.
Monthly Archives: June 2018
Ask for a large Farva…do it meow
Saw this beer at the local hippie mart the other day. The copchick was highly amused.
Haven’t seen the sequel yet, though.
Mail forwarding
Received a letter in snail mail from someone asking me to pass it on to someone else. Since I’ve no way to let them know I received their letter and carried out their wishes (and to thank them for their generosity), I’m making this post.
Message received, secondary message forwarded. Thanks!
ETA: The recipient let me know they received it just fine. Mission accomplished.
Saving space
So youre a somewhat serious survivalist and you’ve come to the conclusion that a few medical supplies might not be a bad idea to stash back for the day the hospitals are overwhelmed and supplies are short. Off to eBay you go. And you realize that for the price of, say, two boxes of band aids at the local supermarket you can buy an entire case of 2,500 band aids from eBay vendors. Good band aids, too…not made in China crap. Same for gauze, pads, tape, etc, etc.
And then you realize that while 2,000 packages of 4×4 gauze might be useful after the apocalypse, until that time apocalypse happens it sure takes up a lot of room.
Thats pretty much what happened to me. As I was rearranging things the other week it occurred to me that the bulkier first aid supplies took up a lot of room. Not because they were bulky on their own, necessarily…but rather because there was so much of it.
Since I had the vacuum sealer out, I figured that perhaps vacuum sealing some of these items might cut down the space they took up, in addition to providing a lovely level of protection.
How much space? Well, lets grab a couple boxes of 3×8 non-adherent dressings and check…
So there’s a full box of dressings. Fifty per. Let’s see how they stack up…
One stack of fifty compresses down to a rather significantly smaller package.
So after a few hours I compared ‘before and after’. For example, the original box that held 18 ABD pads now held 35. That’s about a 50% savings in space and a thousand percent increase in protection from environmental factors.
The end of this long story is that I managed to clear off almost an entire shelf’s worth of supplies and compact them down to fit into one large plastic tub…and in the process add a layer of survivability to the packaging. (Everything was packaged in paper envelopes, like you get a band aid in, so there wasn’t exactly a tremendous amount of resistance to humidity, moisture, dust, dirt, etc, going on there.)
Do I ever think there’s going to be a time in my existence I need 50 rolls of rolled gauze? Man, I hope not. But once you divvy everything up between your primary location, the Beta Site, first aid kits, vehicles, etc, you can wind up going through quite a bit of stuff.
My first go-to for eBay medial stuff is these guys. After that, it’s just a matter of knowing the SKU or product number of what youre looking for and searching eBay. Oh…and having one of these.
Shelf Actualization
I about twentyfive years ago, I built several really nice reloading benches. Really nice, solid, beasts made of 2×4’s and plywood sheeting. Problem is, I really only use one of them and the others take up space. So…..I chucked a screwdriver bit into the Dewalt and took the thing apart. What to replace it with? Why, more wire shelving of course.
As I was assembling the shelving, I took a few pics to demonstrate those wonderful S-hooks that I highly recommend for folks who use this type of shelving.
Notice that while one rack uses four uprights, the other rack will use only two. The S-cliips hung from the other rack will support the shelf instead of another set of upright.
S-hooks in place with shelf seated in them.
Finished unit. Still have another set of uprights (since each set comes with four and i only used six) so I could make a three-wide set of shelves using only two complete shelving sets.
Once the shelves were up, it was time to rearrange some things and one of those things was all the first aid and medical gear that had been in storage for…well…a while. Naturally, as I was doing this, I couldn’t leave well enough alone and had to make some changes. Biggest change is that a bunch of stuff got vacuum sealed to help keep the packaging clean, dry, and intact. Those paper pouches that hold the gauze and pads tend to delaminate after a while. I’m hoping that vacuum sealing them will prevent that.
And, while I was doing that, I figured I might as well vacuum seal the contents of the grab-n-go first aid kits. These are a couple milsurp medical bags I picked up off Sportsmans Guide or Major Surplus many years ago. Ideally, it’s not for immediate use, but rather a stash of items to take with you as you run out the door so that when you get to the Beta Site you can unpack them and have a full first aid kit on hand. All the contents of those went into the vacuum sealer too.
Seriously, gang…if you don’t have one already, go get one. It’s one of the most useful survival-oriented gadgets you can buy.
So, once all that was done, it was time to play musical chairs with all the crates, cans, boxes, and drums. Ideally, I’d like everything to be organized neatly and out of the way. The difference between hoarding and prepping is, I suspect, organization.
Re-homing a Ruger
Remember that P89 I had for sale?
I think it’s about to get quite the workout. Should be highly illuminating.
Not to worry, though. Still have enough Rugers on hand to fill out the Post-Apocalyptic Party Pack:
Hosebeastmode
Years ago, I used to have a friend who was a somewhat well-known character in computing circles. One day, in his home that he had wired and re-wired many times to accommodate his expanding home-technology fetish, a couple wires started smoking and started a small fire within the wall of the house. My friend punched a small hole in the wall, ran a garden hose in, and put out the fire. I asked why he didnt simply call the fire department. He replied that if the fire department arrived they would have torn apart the entire wall, despite his protests, and basically destroyed the place to get to the fire. He figured his small hole in the wall would give him enough access and patch up pretty easily.
New York has quite the diamond/jewelry district. When a burglar alarm goes off, the cops respond but aren’t permitted entry to the store (by previous agreement). The reason is because if a handful of cops run into an unattended jewelry store in the middle of the night looking for someone, the odds are fairly high their pockets will be bulging on the way out.
So, what do these two stories have in common? In both cases, someone determined that the value provided by having ‘official’ response to an emergency was not worth the suspected risk.
I was thinking about that as the plumber was installing a new shutoff valve in my house today. I was thinking about having a line run off the house water line to a small hose bib tucked under the stairs or under the kitchen sink. Purpose? Indoor firefighting. I keep a goodly supply of fairly substantial fire extinguishers around…but if my kerosene heater ignites something in a major way, a flat hose coiled under the sink might come in handy. I’m certainly in no hurry to have civil authorities in my house for any reason. Last thing I want is the fire department responding to a grease fire that got away from me and them passing a note to the feds about an unusually large amount of ammo in some guys basement.
Not sure of the merits, though. I mean, it sounds like a good idea on its face. A compact coil of hose in an out-of-the-way spot ready to go at a moments notice. But I suppose I could get the same effect if I just ran into the yard and threaded the garden hose through the window. Not sure. Whaddya think? Brilliant? Good Idea? Meh? Stupid? Idiotic?
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