Monthly Archives: May 2023

Dagger impressions

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So several weeks back I decided to order up a bunch of Palmetto State Armory (PSA) Glock knockoffs. The ‘Dagger’ pistol is basically a Glock with just enough tweaks to, I would imagine, keep Gaston’s lawyers at bay, but be Glock enough to be useful to folks like me.

Finally got around to taking a couple of them to the range today along with a couple P95DC’s I needed to test fire.

The Dagger shot very well. No failures of any kind, seemed as accurate as any other Glock, and even fit into the rather snazzy new Safariland 6390RDS ALS Glock holster I picked up.

The Dagger shot as well as the Glock, and fit my hand a little better. I don’t really have any complaint about it. I’d have to put a lot more ammo through one before I would stand on stage and declare it the equal of the Glock or that it was a perfect analog of a Glock. But….a lot of parts do interchange:

What’s the role of it in my world? Well, IF it has the reliability and durability of the Glock, then  it would make a no-brainer choice as a secondary or tertiary backup gun to someone who is invested in Glock logistics. If it takes Glock mags, Glock parts, Glock holsters, Glock sights, and Glock accessories, but is half the price of the Glock, then why wouldn’t you pick up a couple?

PSA has these things on sale…sometimes as a package deal. Let me see if I can find a recent one….Thats a pretty-much-as-good-as-a-Glock pistol and five standard Magpul mags and five happysticks for $370. For perspective, thats approx. $125, dealer price, of mags making the gun itself approx $245. That is a bargain no matter how you look at it.

I like to think I’ve got as many guns as I could possibly need for whats left of my checkered and tragic life, but at prices like these I’d feel no hesitation to pick up three or five as cabin guns, truck guns, tacklebox guns and, most importantly, gifts to people who I think need a good pistol and don’t already have one.

YMMV, of course, and I’d love to see Tam do one of her 2,000 round ammo tests with one of these (but who can afford that much ammo these days?). I’ll be shooting these things more in the coming weeks, but so far I like what I see.

Admin – Word Press plugin to restore old editor

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If you’re not someone who is using Word Press for blogging then this post is utterly of no interest.

WordPress, in its most recent update, changed the editor into this horrible, unworkable mess that was so frustrating to use that it made me dread blog posting.

Turns out there is a plugin you can use that will restore the familiar old text editor. Head to your plugins and add one called “TinyMCE Editor”. Install it, activate it, and get back to blogging.

The people at WordPress should be beaten to death with their own keyboards for foisting that lousy Gutenberg editor upon us.

Article – No cellphone? No problem! The vintage radio enthusiasts prepping for disaster

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There’s an ancient fable that Glenn Morrison, a pony-tailed, 75-year-old who lives in the California desert, likes to tell to prove a point. As the lesson goes, one industrious ant readies for winter by stocking up on food and supplies, while an aimless grasshopper wastes time and doesn’t plan ahead. When the cold weather finally arrives, the ant is “fat and happy”, but the grasshopper starves.

In this telling, Morrison is the ant, and those who don’t brace themselves for future emergencies – they’re the grasshoppers.

 

Morrison is in the business of being prepared. He’s the president of the Desert Rats (or the Radio Amateur Transmitting Society), a club based in Palm Springs that’s dedicated to everything ham radio.

A nice article about the utility of amateur radio in a crisis and the people who appreciate that utility.

There’s the old saying that ‘knowledge is power’, and I’ve never disbelieved that. And, we are also familiar with the old expression that ‘forewarned is forearmed’, yes? When there’s a crisis it is often of tremendous importance to have as much information as possible about whats going on. You can get that information from ‘official’ sources, which is always a rather suspect idea.

So, yeah, having the ability to communicate with whomever you want, wherever you want, whenever you want, is something that is worth ensuring.

Remember, in some countries it is perfectly illegal for citizens to own radio communications equipment. Some countries it’s highly regulated. It doesn’t take much more than the stroke of a pen to suddenly turn your scanner or transceiver into a ‘clandestine radio station’ or ‘terrorist communication network’. It seems like it couldn’t happen here but the simple fact is, you dont know that it wont. So, while youre dropping coin for that new AR, don’t overlook spending a few bucks to make sure you know whats going on in the regions around you.

Video – WW2 US Navy ice cream

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This is an interesing video. It discusses how during WW2 ice cream played a big part in troop morale and he efforts by the military, esp in the far-flung hot Pacific regions, to provide ice cream to the troops.

What makes this interesting is that the military ice cream is made from shelf-stable powdered ingredients…most notable eggs and milk. Now, I loves me some ice cream and the notion of not having to ride out the apocalypse without ice cream has an attraction. That said…..:

Obviously you’re going to need a particular amount of electricity to cool things in your ice cream maker, but often times it’s a lot easier to produce electricity than it is to produce milk and eggs. And I rather like the idea that, once you have the basic ingredients in long-term form, you can whip up some homemade ice cream whenever you want.

And befoe anyone mentions Mountain House’s freeze-died ice cream…it’s not that great. I’ve had it before and its just a bit gummy.

LifeStraw at CostCo

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It appears that CostCo has the LifeStraws back in stock. For a fire-and-forget solution , these are pretty good. Throw one in your hunting pack, BOB, etc, and be done with it.

Note that CostCo was selling these last year around this time and they were $5 cheaper. Or, put another way, about 15% more expensive than last year. Thanks Brandon!

These make excellent gifts (especially for Paratus) to the rest of your team, cadre, clan, cell, unit, stick, squad, group, tribe, wing, detail, or gang. (Dang if there aren’t a lot of metaphors for ‘small group’!)

As you can see in the picture, CostCo is also selling some Mountain House these days. As the summer season approaches it seems CostCo is getting in ‘camping supplies’. And, lets not dance around it, on a Venn diagram there’s a lot of overlap between ‘camping’ and ‘preparedness’ supplies.

Anyway, head off to CostCo and grab a pack of these so you don’t wind up like these guys.

Video – Top 10 Post Apocalyptic TV Series

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An interesting lineup.

I’ve only seen a few of these, but I have a soft spot in my heart for Jericho…not the least of which was because of Lennie James portrayal of the one person who takes it all in stride (although, to be fair, he had inside information.)

I wish Jericho could have been on one of the non-networks like Walking Dead was. The ability to have a bit more violence, gore, and harsh language would have been a more accurate foretelling of what the apocalypse would be like.

I’m not sure what I would look for in a show these days. My interest is less the typical ‘survivors vs bad guys’ shootouts that seem to be a staple of things. I’m far more interested in stories involving the coping with failed infrastructure, supply shortages, medical emergencies, and that sort of thing.

Hmmm… a multi-part documentary on Haiti would probably be the same thing.

Article – Drug Shortages Approach an All-Time High, Leading to Rationing

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Remember when things like drug shortages were things that happened in Third World and Soviet satellite countries?

Thousands of patients are facing delays in getting treatments for cancer and other life-threatening diseases, with drug shortages in the United States approaching record levels.

Hospitals are scouring shelves for supplies of a drug that reverses lead poisoning and for a sterile fluid needed to stop the heart for bypass surgery. Some antibiotics are still scarce following the winter flu season when doctors and patients frantically chased medicines for ailments like strep throat. Even children’s Tylenol was hard to find.

Hundreds of drugs are on the list of medications in short supply in the United States, as officials grapple with an opaque and sometimes interrupted supply chain, quality and financial issues that are leading to manufacturing shutdowns.

I’m lucky, I suppose, in that I don’t need any particular medication to keep my quality of life where it is. No insulin, no high blood pressure meds, none of that sort of thing. Sure, there are times I eat ibuprofin like M&M’s, but other than that….

And, fortunately, any meds I do want to keep on hand are all over the counter so I can keep a pretty generous supply around. Sure, maybe they lose a bit of efficacy after a few years but so what? Just up the dosage. I’d rather face a cracked rib with five year old Tylenol and Advil than I would without. Drugs that only deliver 85% of their effectiveness is orders of magnitude better than the 0% afforded by not having drugs at all.

Moral of the story: while you’re stacking up the .223 and 9mm, the freeze drieds and AA batteries, the water filters and toilet paper….stock up on the OTC stuff (and first aid as well) because thanks to Brandon we are, apparently, dipping our toes into the warm water of neo-Soviet supply issues.

10% mags

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It’s interesting…I was thinking about how mags for the Barrett are normally around $150 ea. To buy, say, six spare magazines, which is a reasonable amount, would be almost $900. Thats the sort of thing that would make most people, reasonably so, declare “what the heck, I’m not spending almost a grand on magazines for one gun!”

And then the math kicked in. That would be about 10% of the cost of the Barrett. Hmmm. A quality AR is, say, $900. Ten percent of that is $90 and that would get you about….six or seven spare magazines.

A Glock? Retail is about $550. Ten percent of that is about $55. That $55 would get you about five Magpul magazines.

An AK? A Zastava goes for about a grand in the stores. Ten percent of that is a hundred bucks. Again, you’re back to around a half dozen magazines.

So, the more I think about it, I’m starting to think the answer to “how many mags should I have for a gun?” is to plan on having at least as many mags as 10-15% of the gun’s cost will get you. That would seem to put you on some pretty solid ground…a starting point.

Of course, that math gets skewed if you buy a used gun which is usually much cheaper than new. But the notion of spending about 10-15% of the MSRP of a gun on magazines sounds like it might be a good baseline.

Mags

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I didn’t even know police surplus M82A1 mags were a thing, but….

I daresay that might be enough mags for a gun that costs almost $9 a round to shoot.

I lucked out and found these for $60 ea. on GunBroker. Serendipitous, that. Apparently the universe wants me to have a squared away Barrett. Maybe the universe is planning on bringing back the t-rex or something.

Still to purchase – optics. And I am dreading the outlay.