Monthly Archives: July 2020

Battery check day

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Battery check day. I’ve got my list of items around the bunker that I keep batteries in at all times (things like flashlights, etc.) and today is one of the scheduled days to go inspect them all to make sure nothing is in the process of crapping the bed. Since I’ve instituted this program I have not found any batteries that have self-destructed or were in the process of self-destructing. But….it’s a half hour every few months, so why not check? It’s a heck of a lot cheaper to throw out a couple suspect D-batts than it is to buy a new LED MagLite.

Thus far, the biggest culprit in crapped-the-bed batteries has been Duracell batteries. I have yet to have any issued with lithium batteries, by the way. For absolutely critical gear, and gear that gets exposed to great temperature swings (like being left in a vehicle) the lithiums are the way to go.

Do it today, guys. Spend just a few minutes checking your flashlights and radios to make sure your batteries aren’t destroying your electronic geegaws.
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In admin matters, someone very generously sent me an Amazon gift card the other day and I’d like to take this moment to thank them. If you feel I provide high entertainment value (or even middlin’ entertainment value) please consider tossing a little something my way.

 

And one for my homies……….

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You know, what with the magnitude of this crisis we are in regarding race-n-‘rona I really miss Friend Of The Blog(tm) Harry‘s website. I would really, really love to hear about how he’s fared through all of this. If there was anyone perfectly situated to ride this out, it was him.

Hey Harry…if you’re reading this, drop me a line and lemme know how it’s going.

Link – DIY Panzerfaust

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Well, crap….there’s another project I’m going to have to pencil in some time for.

The niche market for legally registered disposable anti-tank weapons may soon experience a well overdue boom with the introduction of a historically accurate Panzerfaust 60 copy you can make at home. Jonathan Wild started the project last year which will eventually culminate in a book detailing how to build one yourself from scratch.

Capable of firing over 100 yards, the warhead (in this case is a practice dummy) uses a propelling charge of Goex cannon black powder housed in a cardboard tube attached to the rear of the fins. Like the original Panzerfaust design, initiation is provided by means of a primer (in this case commercial muzzleloading primers) fitted into an external nipple that is struck via the sheet metal trigger mechanism. The launching tube is simply a length of commercially available steel tube onto which the trigger mechanism is welded.

The potential seems…interesting.

Metal

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I guess you have to kinda be living under a rock to not notice that gold hit an all-time  high the other day. I don’t really keep more than a passing glance on gold prices, but I watch silver pretty closely. You know, it was only a few months ago that silver crapped the bed at around $12. Today its more than twice that. In other words, silver doubled within four months. I can’t think of the last time that happened. Maybe back when the Hunt brothers were working their mojo?

Where does it go from here? Beats me. But, to my uneducated way of thinking, people flocking to metals and driving up the prices is indicative of a belief that perhaps the economic outlook is not that great. If that’s true, I think you’d do well to spend some of that precious metals money on getting your debt knocked out, some food and ammo in the basement, and whatever else you need. If you’re so uncertain of the future that you’re buying precious metals, than that future is uncertain enough that you may wanna backstop with ammo and canned goods. Just sayin’.

But…if the market tanks, people are gong to need to raise cash in a hurry to cover their market losses. And that means selling their metals. And that means a big dump into the market which, as I understand it, depresses prices. Or does it? Seems like all the rules are off these days.

As I’ve said, whatever disposable income I have gets split into three different areas: silver in case things go really, really wrong; my Roth in case things go really, really well; and cash savings in case I’m not sure which way to go. That way I’m not totally caught flat-footed if the economy tanks or if it booms.

As much as I enjoy the sexy parts of survivalism, like guns and gun bunnies, the fact is that you’ll  need fifty-dollar bills far more than you’ll need fifty BMG in most emergencies. I can’t recall the last time I had a personal-level TEOTWAWKI that was resolved by the judicious application of M193, but I can rattle off a half dozen where a pile o’ greenbacks turned out to be the multitool that fixed things.

By all means, buy some precious metals when you have the money…but not before you’ve got the really unsexy-but-more-likely-to-be-needed things taken care of.

 

Depth of scarcity

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Friend Of The Blog ™, Tam, over at View From The Porch, has a post up about the ammo shortage and it’s depth.

In other words, supply of cases and primers and the like starts getting sketchy because, firstly, handloaders scarf up the existing retail supply and, secondly, the majors have to start deciding how they’re going to allocate their own supplies of primers, cases, bullets, and the like.

I don’t know if Tam is old enough to remember the Great Primer Scare back during the Slick Willie administration, but it was, in some ways, a nice warm up for the present situation.

I have an 06 manufacturers FFL, so I get more than the normal advertisements from vendors. I also get advertisements directed at manufacturers, where you buy your brass and other components by the fibre drum. There is, indeed, a bit of scarcity running around.

Many folks feel that reloading is the answer to these ammo shortages, but thats like saying cooking your own hamburgers is the solution to no burgers at Wendy’s because of a beef shortage. If larger manufacturers can’t get the components to keep up with demand, neither will you. Usually.

I say ‘usually’ because, as an individual, you have more maneuverability than Remington or Speer. You can literally troll Gunbroker and pick up 100 cases here, 400 cases there, and another 250 cases from a garage sale down the street. And if you’re willing to expend a little sweat, you can almost always just find brass growing under feet at the range.

But, overall, if you shoot any of the ‘common’ stuff like 9mm, .223, .40, etc, you’re probably going to have a hard time finding it and when you do the prices may not be to your liking. If you reload, you’ll have a bit of an advantage because ammo is often snapped up before the components are since reloaders are outnumbered by non-reloaders.

Tam’s a smart cookie, and the nature of her profession is such that she has, no doubt, a stockpile that would suit her needs in virtually any crisis. But she’s also savvy enough to know that meat doesn’t come from a pink tray in the supermarket and .45 230 FMJ doesn’t grow on a tree in the stockroom at Bass Pro. Amateurs talk strategy, pros talk logistics.

Having been chicken-littling for the life of the blog, I’ve already gotten most of my ammo situation squared away. So much so that the only time I really buy large amounts of factory ammo anymore is when an uncommonly good deal turns up.

When will things get back to ‘normal’? Years, dude. If you don’t have the ammo you want right now then your biggest quandry is do you a) buy the ammo now at the inflated prices or b) risk waiting for prices to drop and availability to increase? If you choose plan A you’re gonna get the sandpaper joystick where the sun don’t shine…but you’ll have ammo. Plan B saves you money when you finally do buy, but that purchase might be two years down the road, if at all.

And then, there’s Plan C….have purchased all this crap years ago and it’s quietly sitting in ammo cans in a safe location just waiting for Der Tag. I’m a Plan C kinda guy.

 

Water and canteens

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In storage I have a couple of milk crates that hold nothing but various water containers. Some of these things go a ways back. Over thirty years of being a survivlist has given me the opportunity to try all sortsa things…some worked, some didn’t; some lasted; some didn’t.

I distinctly recall, as a young and wildly stupid lad of 14 or so, when the first hydration bladder (“CamelBak”) hit the market. I can’t recall the brand name but it was the most novel and bizarre contraption. It looked like something you’d find in an emergency room rather than in a back pack. (Trivia: hydration bladders got their start from repurposed IV bags and tubing.)

Of course, starting in the 80’s, everyone’s go-to was the ubiquitous military canteen which had just been transitioned to plastic.They were somewhat inexpensive, seemed to work, worked with the ALICE gear which was all the rage at the time, and were widely available. Drawbacks? The die-hards never quit wailing about how because it was plastic you would melt it when you mated it with your canteen cup if your canteen cup was still hot from boiling up some water. Also, they tended to smell rather strongly of plastic. Nalgene makes a version that I have tried and can endorse, although they don’t fit quite right in a military canteen cup and cover.

Moving forward, Nalgene bottles started migrating from something that was almost exclusively a backpackers piece of gear to something a bit more mainstream. They were capacious, modular, and very durable. Drawbacks? The BPA scare that caused people to turn towards stainless bottles and forced bottle makers to reformulate their plastic with, according to some people, a decrease in durability. Personally, I’m a huge fan of the Nalgene bottles. There are all sorts of aftermarket accessories and pouches available for them and I will often use them when I need a ‘hard’ water container.

Continuing along the evolutionary highway, the hydration bladders showed up and these pretty much still dominate the hydration-on-the-go market. Eventually the military caught on and started issuing them. Their biggest advantage has been the ‘hands-free’ usage of them, the ability to carry a large quantity of water, and the reduced bulk since as they empty they can be compressed. Drawbacks are that theyre sometimes tough to keep clean and, depending on circumstances and manufacture, they can suffer damage.

A nice byproduct of the evolution of the hydration bladder was the collapsible water bottle. I remember exactly when I first became aware of these. I was in Alaska visiting some glacier and the park ranger was drinking from one of these. I was immediately fascinated and asked her if I could examine the product. It was, as I recall, a Platypus of some kind. I had no idea such things existed but I knew I was seeing the future of on-the-go water carriage. These things are my go to for carrying water when out in the sticks. The biggest attraction is that as you drink, you can squeeze the air out of the ‘bottle’ so that there is no noise from water ‘sloshing’ around. This was always a headache with rigid canteens and water bottles. And, when empty, you can roll the thing up and tuck it way where it takes up no room. I keep two of them in my Bag O’ Tricks so that in a crisis I can load up on water and take it with me. In an emergency, when you’re on your feet and moving, you may not know when and where you’re next opportunity to get water may arise. It’s nice to have extra containers along, that take up no room when empty, so that when you do find that hose bib or lawn sprinkler that works you can load up. (Tangent: I have always hated those scenes in movies where someone is stranded somewhere, they drink the last drop of water, and then they look at their empty canteen in disgust and throw it away. Idiot! If you find another water supply how are you going to carry the water????)

And, interestingly, there’s a rather neat hybrid system that I’ve found extremely useful. Made by Source, this kit turns your Nalgene water bottle (or other water bottle) into a tube-feed hydration system. Highly recommend. (The Source ‘tactical’ line is probably one of the more survivalist-oriented lines of these types of products.) Nalgene makes water bottles in larger sizes that still use the same diameter cap, so you can have a nice big jug of water in your pack or in the seat pocket behind you and plenty of water. The Source products also feature modular attachment points for bite valves and bladder connectors, which allow you to fill you reservoir without taking it out of the pack. Good stuff.

And finally, for ease of use, disposability, and all around convenience, a couple cases of cheap bottled water are handy. Shove a couple in your pack or in the trunk of your vehicle and leave ’em there. I’ve had them go through dozens of thaw/freeze cycles and never had one fail.

When Im out on my bike or running around tow, I usually just have a Nalgene bottle with me…I can abuse it and know it’ll be just fine. When I’m out in the woods, I have some sort of hydration system like the Platypus to keep things quiet and compact. And for just general hand-out-to-the-unprepared I have plenty of surplus military canteens floating around.

By the by, the Nalgene and Platypus product freeze quite well. In hot summers like we are having now, I usually fill them 1/4 with my preferred beverage and let them freeze solid. Then fill the remaing 3/4 with whatever I plan on drinking. Keeps things cold all day…especially if you’re dropping that hydration reservoir into an insulated pouch.

Anyway…if you’re still rocking the OD plastic canteen from 1985, more power to you. But, you may wanna examine some of the newer options out there.

Migration

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Life continues in the time of the great plague…

I was reading an article, and then confirmed it by checking real estate listings, that says people are fleeing the major population centers in droves and purchasing property in out-of-the-way locales like Montana. This is my surprised face. /s

Two things keep everyone from moving to Montana: economics and the weather. We have some nasty and long winters, and that tends to keep some people away. The bigger factor was economics: jobs don’t grow on trees here (although it used to be you could get jobs cutting trees down). But if there is one thing that the Kung Flu has taught us, it is that all those jobs that we were told could not be done from home can, surprise!, be done from home. As a result, there’s a lot of people who are discovering that they can keep their Chicago, L.A., or Dallas salary while living in a remote place like Montana.

This happened before in the id 1980’s…Montana became the place to be. it tapered off a little, hit the map again when the Y2k thing came up, and then sorta died down a bit. But, make no mistake, the notion that you can move to Montana and buy a couple miles of beautiful land for a few dollars is pure fantasy.  Oh, there’s parts of the state, eastern mostly, where you can buy some big chunks of land for a few thousand dollars an acre but you’re talking flat-as-a-cookie-sheet, middle of nowhere, no water, no utilities, might-as-well-be-on-the-moon types of parcels. And, for some people, thats ideal. Most folks though want something with, you know, water. And septic. And electricity.

If you think you’ll move to one of the larger cities in Montana be prepared to pay dang near as much as if you were living in NY or Seattle. The median house price in this college town is around $250k, and most houses are north of that going as high as half a million.

And, unfortunately, the problem with people from NYC, L.A., and Chicago moving out here is that they bring their attitudes (and voting records) with them and wind up turning the new place into the place they just left. There was a time in this state when having a California license plate on your car was a recipe for getting some major attitude and bad vibes from the locals. Still is in some places.

It’s going to be a reverse Grapes Of Wrath… instead of poor rural dwellers heading to the promised land of big cities it’s going to be affluent urbanites heading to the bucolic idyll of the country.

I suppose it was inevitable that eventually the telecommuting promise that we were made thirty years ago would finally come to pass.

So, this will be another consequence of the Kung Flu…a surge in population in my beloved Treasure State. And a lot of that surge being people coming in from states that I’d just as soon build a fence around and lock the gate.

For those of you who continue to live in more urban locales, perhaps it’ll be a buying opportunity as motivated sellers try to get out ‘to the country’. For those of us already here…well…it’s gonna kinda suck.

Power tool

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I had to buy a cordless power drill today. I’ve used a corded power drill forever but I really wanted the convenience of a cordless. Anyway, the package I bought came with, among other things, this little tool bag:

Now, that tool bag is about one foot wide, eight inches deep, and about eight inches tall. It’s a small bag…really about the size of a lunch box. I was looking at it and started wondering…..hmmm. Let’s see if this will work.

It’s been a long day of being in the office and as 6pm rolls around you hear the zombie hordes marching down the street, with their black hoodies and baseball bats. You reach into the bottom desk drawer and next to the bottle of Old Grandad you have this little tool bag that you unzip. And….

Remove the contents….

And you’re position on the food chain just shifted upwards in a dramatic way….

And there’s still room in the bag, but barely, for two 50-rd boxes of ammo, a good light, and a couple more mags.

I like that little Ruger PC Charger a lot. I’ve wanted a little packaway carbine for years and the Uzi was the first iteration of it, the PC Carbine was the second, but this little charge absolutely takes the prize for compactness. Not my first choice for Omega Man-ing my way out of a tight spot, but a far, far, better choice than just a pistol. And it fits in a tiny little gear bag. How adorable is that?

If you run the Glock 9mm (or .40 as Ruger seems to be bringing out a .40 version soon) you really need to look into getting one of these guns. Right now they’re about as hard to find as an honest politician, but very worth it IMHO. Figure close to $600-650 for the gun and another $200 for the wrist brace.

It’s funny…every time I pull the PC Charger out of its storage container and assemble it I have this scene from the old “Lost In Space” movie play, unbidden, in my head.

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If you find this entertaining, please consider ….

A sign of the times

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So just how hard is it to get guns from vendors? RSR is a pretty big distributor. Here’s the results when I told it to show me all the handguns the list in their inventory:

And then when I said to show me only the ones that are actually in stock:

2,670 items normally carried, 55 in stock. In other words, they are about 98% out of stock on varieties of handguns.

That’s just one vendor. You can’t really draw any conclusions from a sample size of one. However…it’s not far from the same situation at most other larger wholesalers and distributors.

Glad you bought when you did, right?

Equanamity

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Feeling a little burned out because of the constant, unyielding barrage of news about how no one knows when, of if, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. Now, personally, I don’t really mind riding through an apocalypse, what I mind is not knowing how long it is to the off ramp.

But, one good thing to come out of this is that I have stepped up my prep game by several orders of magnitude. However, I am, honestly, getting a little tired of it. To be fair though, I’ve been going at it 110% for the last few months. I suppose I could dial it back a tad and still get things done without the burnout.

Perspective, I suspect, is the big thing for me to keep in mind. I’m really not that concerned about getting sick from the Kung Flu. I’m far^5 (thats the same as far, far, far, far, far) more worried about the consequences of the flu….the shortages, the price hikes, the inconveniences…but especially the economic impact. Look, you may avoid contracting this thing entirely. And if you do contract it, the odds are you’ll live through it. But there’s virtually no avoiding the economic fallout. It could be something fairly indirect, like your IRA not being anywhere near where it was 12/31/19, or it could be more direct as when your boss says “Don’t bother taking off your coat”. There’s not going to be any avoiding the economic fallout, the best you’re going to be able to do is mitigate it. The key word is resilience.

At the moment, I’m spending a few minutes each night, long after the sun goes down, sitting on my front steps, appreciating the overall quiet and placidity of the end of the day. I try not to think about anything other than that particular moment. Not think about tomorrow, not think about what needs to be done, not think about what may (or may not) be coming down the pike. Just enjoy the moment of sitting on the steps, on a summer evening, enjoying the calm and quiet. Kinda give myself five minutes where there’s nothing to think about, and just experience five minutes of sitting in the breeze, smelling the night air, and feeling good about that instant.

Of course, after that it’s back to checklists, expiration dates,  spots and premiums, 30-rounders, 4473’s, rates of return, and due dates….the things that make up a life.

What about you? Getting a little burned out at the constant ‘under the gun’ feeling of this crisis? The ambiguous and often conflicting statements about severity and duration? The constant little voice in the back of your head that urges you to ‘do something’ even though you know you’re doing exactly what you should be doing? Whatcha doing about it?