Monthly Archives: September 2019

No business like snow business like snow business I know

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You know, it was just as I predicted. Here in the valley we got snow that barely stuck to the ground (or as the more uneducated would say, ‘didnt hardly stick’). Basically, it was exactly as I anticipated. “But Helena got nine feet of snow! But Billings got seven feet of snow!…”, etc, etc. May be, but you know what? I don’t live in Billings or Helena, so I’m really pretty unconcerned about that. I said that where I live it was going to barely register as snow and thats pretty much how it played out. I call this one in my favor.

But thats this time. Next time…who knows? Which is why we try to maintain a particular level of readiness for these things.

Winter approaches

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If you live in the ‘Redoubt’ region you are undoubtedly aware that this weekend is supposed to be some sort of early-season snowpocalypse. Honestly, with all the hand-wringing going on you’d think we’d never seen snow before. But, I suppose the news media need something to get all worked up about.

True enough, though….it IS fall. Time to say goodby to summer and get the winter gear out. I had a pretty good experience getting the Watergun coated a few months back and I think I’m going to get that Danish winter camo pattern applied to one of my PTR’s and one of my AR’s as well. As I used to tella buddy of mine, “The revolution is not going to happen on a sunny day.”

Im kinda hoping we do get a huge amount of snow because I’ve got a couple sets of snowshoes I really haven’t had a chance to play with very much. I’d like to give them a bit of a workout.

Also, this is the time where hunting season is nigh. I find it highly doubtful I’ll have time to go this season but I like to think the possibility is there. Stranger things have happened.

In the meantime, I need to fire up he snowblower this weekend to make sure it’s ready for winter. Even a blind hog finds an acorn once in a while, so I suppose its possible the hopeless clowns at the weather bureau might have been right and we get a major dump of snow this weekend. We shall see. I’d be utterly flabbergasted if it dumped anything even close to what they are forecasting. If there’s more than an inch of snow I’ll be quite surprised.

The ultimate survivor, it seems

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I suppose it is sort of fitting that “The Survivalist” series of books has managed to …uhm..survive…after the death of it’s author. I may be a little late to the party on this, but it appears that despite Jerry Ahern dying a few years back his famous pulp series is continuing on…

I am a bit perturbed by this. Ahern’s original series, which is a guilty pleasure, required a certain suspension of disbelief if you wanted to make it through his books. But, despite the outrageous over-the-top invincibility and deus-ex-machina luck of the main character, there was still a bit of a foundation in reality…at least, up until a dozen books in where it became more sci-fi than just -fi. But even that still had a bit of a tenuous basis in reality. This book tells us “Corrupt politicians, Neo-Nazis, Aliens, the returned Atlanteans or those thought to be dead for centuries; who is about to finally bring down the human race?” Aliens? Atlantis? Ah, poor Jerry….they should have thrown the copyrights in the casket with you and let the series die a somewhat dignified death.

This somewhat parallels the old “Guardians” pulp series which met a similar fate – the original author moved on and strings of ghost writers came in and all consistency went out the window as, again, somewhat-based-in-reality gave in to shark-jumping nonsense.

Hands down winner, though, for most dissatisfying way to end a series goes to “J. Johnstone” of the infamous “ashes” series. A series of pulp novels so formulaic I literally believe they used the exact same text from the previous books and simply changed supporting character names and locations. The final chapter to this series was so dissatisfying and limp that it effectively alienated the few fans the series had left.

Post-apocalyptic fiction is a genre that used to be pretty fringe. It’s become far, far more mainstream as the whole ‘zombie’ thing has become a cultural touchstone for such fiction. Early fiction did exist, of course, but they were standalone books…not series. As best i can tell, Ahern’s series was the first modern post-apocalyptic serial. It’s heartening that there is still an audience for it, but it’s a little sad to see it become what it appears to have become. It’s like an old Hollywood starlet, far past her prime, slathering on makeup and old costumes to try and recapture the magic from her heydaynd instead being a pathetic and pitiful caricature of her past.

As much as I liked Ahern’s series, I think I’m going to give the post-mortem installments a pass.

 

Paratus 2019

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Greetings fellow survivalists! A happy Paratus to you all (well, most of you anyway).

Thats right, gang…today is Paratus – the holiday for surivalists.

This year I decided to be a little extravagant and send Paratus cards to a few fellow preparedness bloggers and other people who have interacted with me over the year. How did the cards turn out? Rather slick, if I do say so myself. Some people got just cards, some people got cards and a small gift. If you didn’t get a card but would have liked to…well…interact with me more and perhaps next year you too can get one of these (not) highly-collectible Paratus cards.

So! The traditions of Paratus have a long and noble history datingback to the times of…uhm…ok, it’s actually a fairly recent holiday. BUT….you can read all about it at the world-famous Paratus FAQ. I won’t recap it here because thats what the FAQ is for.

I did receive Paratus greetings (and even a gift or two) from several people and I am grateful. I’ll give the mail another day or two to make sure anything that was sent has arrived and then, if i received a gift from someone to whom I did not send a card/gift…..then I have to discharge my Paratus obligation of making a self-deprecating statement about my lack of reciprocity. (Check the “How does the gift giving work for Paratus?” part of the FAQ for more details on how that works.)

Ihope you’ll take some time today to engage in the traditional Paratus activities…although some of you live your everyday lives in such a state of preparedness that pretty much everyday is Paratus. If thats the case, I salute you! But as for the rest of you… get out there and shoot today, hang out with your LMI buddies and talk about preparedness-stuff, go to WalMart and pick up a case of canning jars, eat some freeze-drieds, or go watch “Threads” or “Red Dawn” while cleaning your AR.

It’s your holiday…make a new Paratus tradition for your household or something equally interesting. But, regardless, have a happy and well-geared Paratus.

Oh..and if you’re curious what the Paratus cards for this year looked like….

Cover

Inside

Back

Slick, no?

The problem with remote locations

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Minding my own business the other day, and I ran into someone at the post office. He’s an LMI, and rather serious about it, but for some reason we interact very, very infrequently. I probably haven’t seen him in about a year. So I ask him how he’s doing and how tings are coming along vis-a-vis the whole preparedness thing.

Sadly, he told me some meth-head broke into his bugout cabin and, with privacy and time on his side, took a hatchet and managed to whittle through some concrete to get to his stash of guns and ammo. Also tore open a couple Stack-On gun safes cabinets. And that he destroyed what he couldn’t take…tossed a buncha guns in the river. Then the useless tweaker dragged himself to his campsite to get his nod on and thats where he was, gorked out of his mind, when the cops and the very annoyed cabin owner found him.

The LMI in question mentioned that the whole thing sorta soured him a little on the idea of preparedness. Makes sense…you invest time and money and some waste of skin sets you back to square one.

Thats yet another one of the Great Survivalists Quandaries – how to have a remote location that is secure enough to be left alone and unattended. The easy answer that I would imagine 90% of the blogosphere would come back with is something involving large waterproof containers and a backhoe. Mind you, I’m not asking what you think the ideal solution is. Already I know the comments are going to be filled with people saying “He should do this….”. My point is that when it comes to stashing goods away at those lovely remote locations you should always expect that it ain’t so remote some piece of trash can’t get into it when youre a hundred miles away.

Its also a pretty good reason to not keep all your eggs in one basket. Sure, it’s entirely possible that when The Day comes and you have to leave now, now, now you may not be able to grab as much gear to throw into your vehicle as youd like. Maybe you’ll be leaving straight from work ,or the supermarket, or the ball game, and have no chance to return home to grab your gun cases and gear. Thats why you pre-position your gear, but you don’t pre-position all of it.

I know folks that keep a storage rack system bolted to the ceiling of their garage. It holds several storage containers full of gear and supplies. In a crisis, their plan is to back the pickup into the garage and just lower those ready-to-go containers into the bed of the truck and be out the door in about five minutes.  But their arrangement of gear is such that if they load the truck and can’t get to their secondary site, the gear will keep them safe…and if they have to leave without their gear, they have enough gear at the site to keep them going. Its when the possibility of having to leave without their gear AND not make it to their secondary location comes up that the problems start.

The fella I mentioned is pretty bummed, and he’s a bit disillusioned, but I have a pretty strong feeling he’ll stick to the program and continue his journey in preparedness. I suspect he will make some very big changes at his cabin in terms of construction, concealment, contents, and countermeasures. It’s unfortunate that it had to happen to him, but it’s incidents like those that remind us that just stacking AR15s in the closet might not be the best idea for long term solutions.

 

Article – The grandmaster diet: How to lose weight while barely moving

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I am in no way a sports guy, so for me to link to an article from ESPN must be an indication that there is something interesting going o. And, indeed, there is…

At 5-foot-6, Caruana has a lean frame, his legs angular and toned. He also has a packed schedule for the day: a 5-mile run, an hour of tennis, half an hour of basketball and at least an hour of swimming.

As he’s jogging, it’s easy to mistake him for a soccer player. But he is not. This body he has put together is not an accident. Caruana is, in fact, an American grandmaster in chess, the No. 2 player in the world. His training partner, Chirila? A Romanian grandmaster. And they’re doing it all to prepare for the physical demands of … chess? Yes, chess.

The TL;DR version is this: even though chess is the least apparently physically taxing sport since competitive napping, the studies show that the stress, mental load, and related stresses cause your body to lose weight the same as if you were engaged in heavy sports.

What this means for survivalists is that the people who stress about long-term food being loaded with fat, salt, and calories that you don’t need when all you’re doing is sitting in a fallout shelter waiting for the rads to go down are missing a point. And in a crisis, the severe stress and mental taxation that you will be subject to will take a toll on yourbody even if you’re just sitting around a battery radio in the dark as the city crumbles around you.

Read the article and substitute ‘chess’ for ‘disasters’ and you’ll see how this affects you and I.

Grandmasterssurvivalists in competitiondisasters are subjected to a constant torrent of mental stress. That stress, in turn, causes their heart rates to increase, which, in turn, forces their bodies to produce more energy to, in turn, produce more oxygen. It is, according to Marcus Raichle, a neurologist at Washington University in St. Louis, and Philip Cryer, a metabolism expert at the school, a vicious, destructive cycle.

Meanwhile, playerssurvivalists also eat less during tournamentsdisasters , simply because they don’t have the time or the appetite. “The simple explanation is when they’re thinking about chess disasters, they’re not thinking about food,” says Ewan C. McNay, assistant professor of psychology in the behavioral neuroscience program at the University of Albany.

Stress also leads to altered — and disturbed — sleep patterns, which in turn cause more fatigue — and can lead to more weight loss. A brain operating on less sleep, even by just one hour, Kasimdzhanov notes, requires more energy to stay awake during the chess game. Some grandmasterssurvivalists report dreaming about chessdisasters, agonizing over what they could have done differently for hours in their sleep, and waking up exhausted.

Sound familiar?

Continue reading the article and read what these people do to maintain mental acuity under these conditions of heightened stress. Big exam coming up? Strategy session with your department chairs? Making long-range plans for your familys survival? You’ll need your brain in peak performance so you might want to read what these guys do to their diets, exercise patterns, the way they breathe, and even the way they sit in order to maximize brainpower for “the ultimate test of cerebral fitness.”

I’ve noticed that when I need stone-cold clear-headed maximum-brainpower I get best results if I exercise to get the blood flowing and don’t eat for several hours beforehand. The ability to think clearly and efficiently is probably the most useful talent for someone who plans on making their way through the crapstorm that life tends to hurl at us once in a while. Optimizing your body to allow you to ‘think better’ may be one of the better tricks you can have up your sleeve.

15 years after the ban

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It has been brought to my attention that this weekend is the 15 year anniversary of the expiration of the Clinton Assault Weapons Ban. Fifteen years. If you remember the ban expiring, and you are, at this moment, scrambling to find ARs and mags “just in case”, then you’re one of those fools who, as the saying go, “…does not remember history is doomed to repeat it.”

If, after the ban expired, you had bought one AR mag a month, and one AR per year, you would have 15 AR’s sitting in the safe and 180 magazines to go with them, for a somewhat-comforatble gun:mag ratio of 1:12. And it would have cost you, by my math, $75 per month.

Not an AR guy? Well, you could  be sitting on around 540 Glock mags for that same $75/month

“But I only came to guns in the last ten years!”, some will say. Or the last five years. So what? That’s still enough time to have put away an AR and a dozen mags every year.

Kids? Job? Car Payment? House payment? Sure, that gets in the way. But you make room in your life and your wallet for that which is important to you. $75 a month is about $2.50 a day… drink one less Starbucks coffee each day, smoke two less packs of cigarettes a week, or just cut back from eating out once a week to once every two weeks.

I guarantee you that 95% of you make more money than me and even then I am still able to squirrel away a few (ahem) guns and ammo. The difference isn’t financial, the difference is intentional. To me, it’s important enough to give up buying a new bicycle, to pass on buying the expensive groceries, to make do with a ratty pair of shoes for another month or two, to ride my bike rather than drive, to eat another plate of rice and chicken rather than go out to dinner….because, to me, I’d rather have the guns in the safe.

No matter what it is you want out of life…money, fame, cars, women, expensive toys, whatever….if you want it bad enough, really bad enough, you will find a way to get it. You just have to want it more than the other things.

This is why I have no sympathy for anyone who, fifteen years after the ban, is suddenly now worried about getting more mags and Evil Black Rifles. You had fifteen years to get ready by doing something that takes most people one year. If you get caught with 10-round magazines and neutered rifles this time around it’s poor planning on your part, buddy. (and, of course, the fault of those idiots in Washington.)

 

Hamilton gun show

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I’m a cheap bastard. But, I’m also a dude who likes certain things a particular way. And, once in a while, I’m a dude who will pay the extra coin for something that is literally no better than a similar item at half price simply because of the brand (‘goodwill’). I was walking through the gun show today and found this:

What is it, you may reasonably ask? Why, it is a tanker holster that is made to fit a 9/40-frame Glock. A regular GI tanker holster ain’t gonna fit a bulky gun like the Glock. Who made it? Thats the nice part….

The fine folks at one of my favorite I-wish-I-could-afford-it leathergear makers. This was virtually new and cost me sixty bucks. I am pleased.

The other deal I found was the classic “My buddy died and Im selling off this stuff for his wife” deal. Federal and CCI large pistol and large pistol mag primers…$13.33 per brick. Or, put another way, $160 for twelve thousand pistol primers. And I didn’t even buy them all…there were still about 20k left. And recent-production 1# cans of Bullseye for $15. So much stockable reloading supplies, so little cash.

But…I’m feeling pretty smug on the holster.

 

Oh…and I ran into the guncoating people from when I had the Watergun done. They didn’t remember me but they sure remembered the gun. They apparently talk it up to customers. I need to send them some really good images for their advertising.

Link – Beto O’Rourke Goes Off on Gun Control at Debate: ‘Hell Yes, We’re Going to Take Your AR-15, Your AK-47!’

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“Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47!” O’Rourke said. “We’re not going to allow it to be used against a fellow American anymore.”

Rejoice!

When someone  loudly, unequivocally , clearly, and with no trace of doubt declare themselves as your enemy it is time to rejoice. Why? Because they have removed all specter of doubt that they are your enemy. You can now proceed with a clear conscience and moral clarity that this person is, indeed, your enemy. All doubt is removed, all ambiguity is gone. Would that all of our enemies be so clear and forthright.

So, freely donate to his opponents, disparage him far and wide, shun him and his supporters, ridicule his policies and beliefs….and do it without the least bit of remorse or compassion….the man has clearly said he’s your enemy.

Call it what it is: confiscation with compensation

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I’ve gotten a couple emails from people asking me what I think about this push towards  mandatory ‘buybacks’ of ‘assault weapons’.

First, you can’t buy back what wasn’t yours to begin with, so right off the bat the name is flawed. Let’s call it what it really is: a “confiscation-with-compensation” program. Think of it as a form of eminent domain directed at your guns… like eminent domain against ‘real property’ the .gov gives you no choice in the ‘sale’, hands you a check for what they think is fair, and then say you ‘sold’ it to them.

You know, if I take your car out of your driveway without your permission but leave a check for what I think your car is worth on your doorstep…guess what?..I still go down for stealing a car. It doesn’t matter if someone pays you…if you don’t want to sell something, and they take it a give you a check, to me that isn’t a ‘sale’ … thats a crime. But, of course, the rules are different for .gov.

Laws like this never start on a national level. They are birthed on state levels (NY, CA, IL, etc.) and are then held as shining examples to be replicated on the national level. You’re not going to see a national mandatory buyback before you see a city/state level mandatory buyback. Sure, it’s already happened in some places… somewhere there’s an ancient copy of the letter I received from the NYPD many years ago telling me I needed to turn in my HK93 to the cops, take it out of city limits, or render it inoperable…with no compensation, mind you. But those sorts of things are fairly rare. Expect that to change.

Solution? Well, there’s only two solutions.. first is you politically quash this thing with such extreme prejudice and furious righteous outrage that, to paraphrase Tip O’Neil, gun control becomes the ‘third rail of politics – you touch it, you [politically] die.’

The second solution, which isn’t necessarily a solution as much as it is a personal choice, is to head over to GunBroker, Palmetto State, GrabAGun, and all the usual firearms venues and work your credit cards so hard they lay limp in your wallet like sheets of overcooked lasagna.

I’ve been saying that the sky is falling regarding rifle/mag bans for over fifteen years now and I do not see that belief changing for the better anytime soon. Had I the financial resources, I’d have a case of 50 stripped AR lowers and about 500 Pmags sitting in a Hardigg case somewhere. :::shrug::: But that’s just me.

Anyway, someone asked me what my take is on the ‘mandatory buyback’ threat and that’s it – I see it happening on a local level in some places, but I do not see it on a national level for quite some time. Note, thats not me saying it won’t happen…Im just saying I don’t believe it will be happening (on a federal level) anytime soon. But, I’ve been wrong before so it’s up to you to decide if it’s the jet ski this year or another couple AR’s. Choose wisely.