Monthly Archives: September 2019

Lighting

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Last week I plugged in the 12v desk lamp into the rehabbed Goal 0 battery to see how long it would run. Well, today is about a week since then and the little battery meter says it’s down to approximately 40% charge.

So, seven days at 24 hour usage means I could run this thing for six hours every night for a month. Or eight hours a night for three weeks. Thats a not inconsiderable amount of time to have ‘normal’ lighting.

Sometimes it’s hard to wrap your head around something like an economic collapse, a gigantic earthquake, a global pandemic, etc, but pretty much everyone can relate to a blackout or loss of electricity because we’ve all experienced it before at some point in our lives.  A power failure is probably the ‘disaster’ that the majority of people can relate to. Not everyone thinks keeping a case of 5.56 and years worth of freeze drieds is a good idea, but pretty much everyone has a flashlight at home.

Anyway, as I mentioned in the previous post on the subject, I like keeping a couple battery-in-a-box type of items on hand so that I can just set up a light source and pretty much not have to worry about it. I’ve yet to experience the outage that lasts more than a day and at the moment I have the resources to not have to sit in the dark for an entire month.

Gotta say, man….Ii remember when LED lighting started to be a thing. I recall thinking that if it delivered the lighting they promised at the low-usage rates they calculated it would revolutionize emergency lighting and low-power lighting systems for remote locations. Apparently it lived up to the hype.

Article – Feds Demand Apple And Google Hand Over Names Of 10,000+ Users Of A Gun Scope App

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TL;DR version: a high-end riflescope lets you link to your phone to get images and other data from the scope. A buncha the scopes were illegally exported.  .gov is demanding to know who uses the app so they can try and see where the scopes wound up.

According to an application for a court order filed by the Department of Justice (DOJ) on September 5, investigators want information on users of Obsidian 4, a tool used to control rifle scopes made by night-vision specialist American Technologies Network Corp. The app allows gun owners to get a live stream, take video and calibrate their gun scope from an Android or iPhone device. According to the Google Play page for Obsidian 4, it has more than 10,000 downloads. Apple doesn’t provide download numbers, so it’s unclear how many iPhone owners could be swept up in this latest government data grab.

This is quite similar to the blanket searches the cops are doing where if someone gets shot in XYZ neighborhood they demand the phone records of everyone who was in that are at the time and then they troll through that info looking to see if they recognize a suspect.

The solution to these rather broad and offensive assaults on privacy, other than politely walking these people to the end of a long pier and giving them a strong pat on the back, is not to discard your smartphone but rather acquire one that isn’t attached to your ‘real life’. Theyre a tad more expensive, but burner smartphones that don’t require ID might be worth it. And, of course, never leave your phone with the battery in it anyplace where you’re going to be spending a lot of time.

 

Paratus reminder!

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A friendly reminder, September 20 is Paratus…the holiday for survivalists. As always, the Paratus FAQ is available for your reading pleasure.

If you’re too lazy to bother, here’s the short version: Paratus is the holiday that is all about preparedness. You are expected to give/receive preparedness-related gifts, engage in preparedness-related activities (which are broadly defined enough to include ‘sitting around with your buddies, drinking beer, and watching The Walking Dead’), and hang out with like-minded individuals. In a perfect world it would be like a heavily-armed version of Mardi Gras.

However….I take it slightly more seriously. I’ll be handing out Paratus gifts to various folks, probably using the day as an excuse to do inventory, and hopefully receiving Paratus wishes and goodies from other survivalists.

As best I can tell, no one has marked down their merchandise and started playing Paratus carols yet, but it’s only a matter of time.

Mylar after two years of exposure

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A few years back I picked up a heat-sealer and a supply of heavy-duty mylar pouches. The goal was to use them to store small first aid items in a protective package that would be impervious to dirt, moisture, etc. (Links are still good in that post, so if you want your own sealer and bags go hit those links.)

SO, I went through my extensive piles of first aid supplies and pulled out the basics, loaded them into a mylar bag, and sealed them up. This was, ostensibly, for me to basically throw under the seat in the vehicle.

At some point, I needed to clean out the accumulated detritus in the vehicle and loaded all the loose items that were kicking around (water bottles, pens, loose ammo, maps, e-tool, etc.) into a milk crate and kept that milk crate in the vehicle. One day, I needed to maximize the space in the vehicle so I pulled out the milk crate and tucked it away in a corner of the yard while I did what needed doing. And then forgot about it. That was two years ago.

So, I was straightening things up and found this mylar pouch of first aid supplies that had been sitting out in the elements – snow, rain,sun, heat, cold – for two years…completely unprotected. Seems like a good opportunity to see how it held up.

Two years in the sun, rain, snow, heat, and cold of Western Montana. Dusty, but otherwise undamaged.

Tear it open and take a look inside. Contents appear to be undamaged and just fine.

Everything appears as good as it was when I packed it up two years prior.

Unfortunately, I loaned my heat sealer to someone last year and despite my occasional requests for it back they’ve not returned it, so unless they get a sudden dose of responsibility I’m probably going to have to order another one. I still have a goodly supply of pouches and the evidence seems to show that they are very good at protecting important items from the elements. In addition to the obvious things like a bit of first aid supplies, small objects that need to stay clean and dry would be suitable candidates….small electronics like radios and such spring to mind.

I rather like the convenience of having several of these pouches sitting in a bin in storage and I can just grab one and throw it in a pack or bag if I’m going somewhere. And when you buy the stuff in bulk like I do, it’s ridiculously cheap to put one of these together. Cheap enough to the point that I can just give them away to friends and like minded individuals, keep on e in every bag, stash a bunch at some offsite location, etc. Of course, if you’re willing to pop for the larger size pouches you can put together some extensive kits.

By the by, these pouches are the resealable kind…so once open, the contents can be put back inside and the bag ‘zipped’ closed. But if you really wanna go the suspender-n-belt route you could easily stuff a ziploc bag in there to perform the same function.

The upcoming 20th anniversary of……..

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I realized something today as I was trolling around through my library of various survival books. Do you guys know what this December is? Think about it a moment….what happened 20 years ago this December? Correct! It will be the 20th anniversary of The Great Y2K Scare!

An interesting book at the time, it’s downright amusing to read now. Technology, especially on alternative energy systems, has changed so much in price and performance that the recommendations in this book are like reading Tappan’s “Survival Guns” and being amused at the anachronistic recommendations. HOWEVER, what worked twenty years ago would work now, just not as efficiently or economically…so there is still some merit here.

Ah, remember that? We were going to have to face the apocalypse with 10-rd magazines and nothing to fix our bayonets to because the Assault Weapons Ban was still in effect. I remember seeing news articles about True Believers selling the condo in California’s wine country and buying scrub land in Arizona to build a bunker, fence it in, and ride out the massive civil disturbance that would happen as we all suddenly found ourselves in a Stirling/Kunstler/Forstchen novel. Everyone laughed and pointed fingers at people who were concerned over it while secretly doing a little extra shopping and stockpiling.

With hindsight being 20/20 and all, we know now that Y2K turned out to be prety much a bust. The following summer there were some fascinating garage sales as people sheepishly sold off their new-in-box generators and whatnot. But, just as people started laughing at the foolishness of the preparedness crowd we had the Septenber 11th terrorist attacks and suddenly having a few goodies tucked away didnt seem so unreasonable.

Its a toss up as to which thing made preparedness more mainstream…Y2k or 9/11. Either one, on its face, wouldn’t have been enough but the two events (or non-event, I suppose) together within a short timeframe….thats a different story. But, that was almost twenty years ago and many people who jumped on the bandwagon after those events have probably slacked off a good bit. However, those of us who were of that mind before those events took it as validation of our beliefs and continued apace with the conviction of the vindicated.

9/11 also sent a whole generation of people into the military and overseas where a good chunk of them, now in their 30’s and 40’s, got exposed to what the rest of the workd is like when you’re away from the relative civility of the First World and it’s people. I’ve met plenty of Afghanistan/Iraq vets who were not into preparedness, but I’ve never met one who thought it was stupid. They have a perspective that people who have never been to Third World violence-fests simply don’t have.

I do recall sitting around at midnight on New Years Eve 1999 with an AR across my lap waiting to see what happened. As it turned out….virtually nothing. Certainly nothing catastrophic to my world. Oh, maybe there were some isolated incidents here and there of time locks not functioning, extremely localized grid failures, that sort of thing….but a Purge-like, blood-in-the-streets, we’re-on-our-own sort of situation? Nope.

It was about ten years before I finally used up all the rice I had laid back, and I’m fairly confident theres still a few ammo cans of .38 and .308 ammo sitting in storage from that era. A lot of the consumables (toilet paper, batteries, canned goods, etc.) were used and replaced as time went on, so no real waste there. I would guess that the only real ‘wasted effort’ was that instead of finding a New Years Eve party to attend for the big event I chose to hole up in my house with a very attentive eye and ear on the news.

But, of course, the world is a somewhat different place now. Terrorism was something that happened overseas, digital infrastructure attacks were a theory, people with too many vowels in their name limited themselves to blowing up cars in distant lands, and no one got strip searched for trying to bring more than 3 oz. of shampoo on an airplane. I would guess that the reasons to be prepared are even more pressing than they were then. :::shrug::: Makes no difference to me. Even if the world suddenly turned into a quiet, peaceful place tomorrow I’d still keep a secret room in the house….just in case.

 

 

Goal 0 Extreme 350

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I have a couple ‘battery in a box’ setups around the house. I have an ancient (pre-Y2K) ConSci powerpack that has, rather unbelievably, held up for the last twenty years. And, as of late, I picked up a battery jumpbox that ran an LED desk lamp for a week. That told me that as far as emergency lighting needs go: a) anything other than LED’s is a remarkably foolish choice and b) assuming six hours of use per night, I can light the house up for a month with a lamp and a charged battery. So, the logical conclusion was to get a couple lamps,a couple batteries, and keep them charged. This I have done.

Now, the emergency lights I use are from Goal 0. I have fabbed up my own in the past, and I’ll probably do that again, but Goal 0 had some nice, simple, daisy chainable lights. Goal 0 also makes various battery packs. I was gifted a dead one last week, along with a Goal 0 panel to charge it. And thus begins our tale.

So I was generously given a Goal Zero Extreme 350…a discontinued batterybox type of product. It featured Anderson power pole connectors, charging regulator, charging input, fuses, and a battery meter. Really, you could put together the exact same thing for less than what Goal 0 charges but some of us are not terribly handy with tools and prefer an out-of-the-box turnkey solution.

Anyway, this thing had sat in storage and was deader than Hillary Clintons presidential chances. I let it sit on the supplied charger for a couple days and got no joy at all. Clearly the long period of non-use, and slow discharge (because the battery meter is on all the time), led to the sealed lead-acid battery becoming unrecoverable.

But..I liked the other features. Perhaps Goal 0 has a replacement for this battery? Nope. And the replacement batteries they do sell are $$$. So….off to the itnernet. Which is where I found this – directions on DIYing a replacement battery off Amazon. Since my basis was $0 in this, I didn’t mind dropping the coin for a new AGM battery to replace the dead SLA battery. So, ran off to Amazon and ordered up the suggested battery which was an exact dimensional fit, gives me the advantage of AGM, and was an extra 5 amp/hour. Followed the instructions and – voila – brought it back to life. I’ve got my desk lamp hooked up to it to see how long it’ll run on a full charge, and then to see how long it takes to charge it using the panel. I’e no doubt this thing willrun the lamp for at least three or four days…and probably longer. It’ll give me one more self-contained lighting unit to distribute where needed next time the power goes out. And the price was right.