A comment on the previous post about the perceived need these days to be more than a little armed at all times….specifically, regarding vehicles:
If gear or extra guns must be shed, abandoned or cached away from home base in an incident so be it. That excess cargo kit in vehicles should be sacrificial extra inventory items any way. How much is your life worth? It may be stolen from vehicles, the vehicle stolen, or the vehicle totaled out or torched in some scenarios that are indeed possible. It is deadly serious out there, so equip yourself to at least stand a chance.
This ties into something I’ve always found interesting when it comes to survivalism – the notion that ‘just in case’ gear, or gear that you stash away for an unlikely-but-possible emergency can be several orders of magnitude beneath your ‘primary’ gear in terms of quality.
Let’s say that you decide you’re gonna ride out the apocalypse with your Daniel Defense AR, a tricked out Glock, and maybe a sweetly set up Rem 870. But you figure that you should have a stash somewhere else ‘just in case’. And, more often than not, that same person stocks their ‘backup stash’ with a Makarov, an SKS, and whatever extra shotgun they have laying around.
I’ve mentioned this before but heres the crux of things – if you need to resort to your hideaway stash becase you can’t get to your primary gear, then its safe to assume that your life has just taken a turn for the spectacularly ungood, agreed? So, in that time of (literally) existential crisis doesn’t it seem to make sense that you would want the best gear you can have?
Or, put another way, assuming the guns listed above, you show up at Uncle Steve’s cabin, tear up the floorboards, find your Pelican case of hideout gear, and throw the lid open. Would you rather your DD AR and Glock was in that case or would you rather it was an SKS and a Mak?
When people skydive, do you think their backup ‘chute is of lesser quality and construction than their primary ‘chute? When people scuba dive, do you think the respirator and tank that are carried for emergencies are made to a markedly lesser quality?
This is why, personally, I spend the money on such a heavy layer of redundancies. I can take a good Glock 17, a quality AR, and a reliable 870, tuck them into a Pelican case and stick it away in a hideyhole somewhere ‘just in case’ and be just as well armed with that set up as I would be as if I hadn’t had to resort to my stash. And I can do that several times. Sure, stash one and two may never get used, but when its 3am on a dark rainy night and I’m frantically pulling that Pelican case out from under the woodpile while looking over my shoulder for the headlights that I’ve been trying to avoid….that third stash will be worth the expense of the other two.
And this doesn’t just apply to guns. Think about the stuff you keep in your vehicle. I know people who, when they wear out a pair of boots, throw them in the vehicle for emergencies. Dude, an emergency is when youre gonna want a pair of good boots…not ratted out old ones with blown stictching, split seams, and floppy soles.
Your backup gear should be of the same ‘tier’ as your primary gear. Is that expensive? Heck yes. But it’ll seem dirt cheap if you ever need to use it. Are there exceptions? Maybe. If your primary setup is a SCAR and a Zev Glock you could probably get by with an AR and a regular Glock, for example. But there is not going to be an award given to the person who made it through the apocalypse with the least expensive gear. I have no doubt that a person could make do with bleached-out two-liter pop bottles to store their water in, a ChinaSport 3-9x on their .22, and a Harbor Freight generator. Maybe. But if you didn’t have to, why would you? Don’t you want to give yourself every possible advantage at a time when you’re desperately going to need them?
As the commenter pointed out, yes, you may wind up sacrificing your gear for some reason. And thats gonna suck. But up until that point, you will have a tremendous advantage in your favor.
Everything is sacrificial when it comes to survivalism. Yes you paid $3k for that rifle. But if you go through that checkpoint and you get caught with it you may wind up in jail cell as the world collapses around you. So out the window at 45 mph it goes. It hurts, yes…but look at whats more important.
We purchase things all the time, never use them, and consider it money well spent. Take homeowners insurance for example. If you pay the insurance for 30 years and your house never burns down, was it a waste of money? No, it was not. For those thirty years you transferred your risk to someone else. For those thirty years you were effectively bulletproof if something happened to your house. So, no, not a waste of money. Same thing with any gear you wind up having to ditch or never get to use – it bought you a level of safety and security by its very existence. Worth the expense.
So do it right the first time and get back-up gear as good as your ‘main’ gear. Or if thats really too painful, and I know it can be, get the next step down. But for the love of Crom, don’t just skip the second- and third-best options and sink straight to the Mosins and HiPoints. Scared and desperate future you will thank you for it.
Having multiple caches of important items makes sense in these austere times.
i would make one of those daggers my truck gun and bury my glock as my back up…they are coming out with the micro dagger later this year…g43x and they have a 15 rnd mag with a plastic strip where the mag release locks it in place…so you don’t have to use a metal release…and it will come optic ready only…a friend is buying the 2 fer on the lowers for $99…going in half and getting one…it’s the g19 size…figure i’ll get a blemish slide and barrel when they are on sale…
Two is one, and one is none.
But three or four is sweeeeeeet.
I don’t have second-tier gear.
I have several sets of first tier gear.
The second-tier stuff is hand-me-downs. For people I might like, but who show up with nothing.
Ditto
So true!
I think this is the prudent approach. I’d want to cache gear i had “muscle memory” with. 2nd tier gear is donatable ….excellent approach.
Yes but…. Having read many people’s posts over the years on gear, two is one quickly turns into 10 is better than 9. For most people eventually there is a quantity versus cost per item tradeoff. The likelihood one ever needs that 10th stash of gear gets really small. I try to have several layers of redundant quality gear, but then there is the other gear accumulated over time. Stash it somewhere or ditch it? Stashing it isn’t the poorest choice.
Maybe the people who choose to cache the low cost items picture in their minds a future of retrieval and finding them 1) found, stolen and long gone, 2) severely damaged and rendered useless, 3) cache location lost and never recovered. In all scenarios, no cookie for you. Losing the low cost might have some satisfaction that the person who does find it will be only marginally better off.
So maybe the low cost isn’t as reliable or strong as the 1st tier. But it is far better having them than just bare hands. The Liberator pistols dropped in WWII were for partisans to upgrade their armament with the German army supplying better down the line.
I do take your point that if you are dependent on the cache as your insurance, it should be the best you have due to the circumstances. Not a talisman though – the ammunition you use in it is as important if not more than the firearm. Protected ammunition should be a high priority as well.
This is a good post – thank you for bringing it up.
Yes. Thank you for elaborating on this subject matter’s side topic. There are too many Chuds out there with too many diversionary toys and hobby expenditures that causes them to cheapskate out on actual and proper survival gear. (Boats, atv, cycle, rent to own furniture for “her”, etc) I adopted lessons from military and gun shop jobs to just equip one’s self with g.i. and l.e.o. common calibered and usage weapons. This commonality and proven quality standards are a necessity. Your manual of arms training and support gear will match up seamlessly, and provide advantages if an integration with other “frens” personnel or units scenario arises in mid spicy times. Instead of drooling on the glass gun cabinet at the newest and shiney thing out now from acme gun consortium, just get a redundant unit to fall into marching formations with your other redundant units. Simple, and no excess brain energy expended on that purchase decision making. Stay (properly) equipped and frosty out there.
I love when he brings up the “dark and stormy night”…
For years it has amazed me that when a tool wears to the point of needing replacement, the new tool goes into the garage toolbox and the well-used and worn tool goes into “the truck toolbox” because “it still has some value.”
The new one will be used indoors, where it’s dry, there’s good lighting, and perhaps heat in winter and a fan in summer. The nearly worn out tool will be used under the vehicle, at midnight, in the dark, while lying in mud.
I. Do. Not. Get. It.
There are some truths in life that some people will only ever learn under their vehicle, at midnight, lying in the mud, cursing their stupidity and lack of forethought.
Much like when a man picks up a cat by the tail.
Murphy’s sense of humor is wickedly twisted.
Experience is a harsh teacher, but some will learn at the hands of no other.
Commander:
There is an old saying…
“The burnt finger learns fastest”
Leftists say the MUSTN’T be true!
Ceejay
Zero- As usual your survivalist logic is spot on. I have pretty much all tier one or at most some tier two stuff. I admit I have a difficult time deciding on where to put a remote cache. My primary home is suburban and my 80 acre retreat is 325 miles away. Where should I have a cache? Halfway? Close to primary? Closer to the retreat? Perhaps you fine commenters and fellow preppers could advise me on best course to follow.
If it were me, I’d have something there and then something halfway between here and there. And whatever I stashed at the halfway point would include a couple 5-gallon cans of fuel for the trip.
Thanks. That is helpful. Appreciate your common sense advice.
You’re right. Here’s another, most people barely train on their primary gun like an AR and so they suck. Now they think they are going to pick up an even more unfamiliar gun like that SKS and be able to run it? Not only is it a lesser gun, you’re less able to employ it to its full potential. For that reason I don’t juts buy high quality backups I build clones. The light is the same and in the same place, even the trigger is the same. In a crisis I don’t want to be fumbling for a bolt release or safety. I also don’t want to have to stock a seperate set of support gear. What if I make it out of the house with my rifle but no spare mags and I get to my cache and all those stripper clips will do me no good. Whereas if they were both ARs with AR mags I now have 2 working guns with mags for both even if each one doesn’t have 7 plus to go with them.
Now if right now you can’t afford a second clone but have grandpa’s old SKS then yes, that’s better than nothing but I wouldn’t buy one just for that role.
Truth.