Light work

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About three years ago, I picked up some AGM batteries off Craigslist. My original intent was that I wanted to rewire a common house lamp to use 12v LED lighting. The idea being, naturally, that in a power outage I would have a ‘normal’-looking source of light, rather than the stark and brutal harsh lighting that we get from just standing a battery lantern on top of the refrigerator or something.

So, my initial forray was…meh. I wound up buying an adapter to let me use a bayonet-type socket in place of a normal screw-in bulb socket...basically following these directions. But, in that case, it turned out there was a much easier way to do things – simply buy an LED desk lamp and remove the ‘wall wart’ AC-to-DC inverter and simply run it straight off 12v. Which I did…and it worked awesomely.

And that’s fine. My own testing showed that off of a battery jump pack the lamp would run non-stop for over a week. But try lighting an entire room with a desk lamp…it’s not really up to the task. So, I had a cheapo ‘dorm quality’ lamp sitting in the corner that I decided to experiment on.

First thing was to cut off the existing plug, determine where + and – were (you have a 50/50 shot of getting it right on the first try), and attaching some method of connecting to the battery. Bare wires work, but if you can make things neater, why not?

Next step was the bulb. Here you can see the previous bulb, and the bayonet adapter, that I had used. It worked, yes…but it didn’t put out enough light to seem like the lamp was ‘normal’ in its output. The other bulb is a Made-in-China (just like Covid!) bulb ‘designed’ for low voltage 12v systems. A somewhat more elegant solution than a bayonet adaptor and odd-attachment bulbs. All this required is a) bulb and b) changing the plug on the wire.

So, hows it look? Not bad.

(Yes, I have Archer on DVD. Do you not?)

Public Service Ad re: gun scammers

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I’m sure we’re all pretty smart about these things, but I’ll go ahead and put it out there anyway……

With the crazy demand for guns right now, there are scammers out there taking advantage of it. There was a NIB PTR-91 GI model on ArmsList for $700 this morning. Sure, I’ll do that.  Email the guy. Oooops! Turns out that even though his ad says he’s in Montana, and that he won’t ship the gun, he’s actually in OR and will be happy to ship me the gun. All I have to do is PayPal him the money.

:::facepalm:::

So, I copied the image location of the image in his Armslist ad, threw the address into Google image search, and it turned up a hit…for a Gunbroker auction that already had 14 bids on it and closed in a few hours.

I strung this goober along for a little bit and then finally told him I’d pay him an extra $200 for shipping because I was in a hurry. He gave me his (supposed) PayPal address. I emailed PayPal with a copy of the emails and, since using PayPal for firearms transactions is a no-no, maybe they’ll freeze his account. ALthough it’s probably someone elses hacked account.

Anyway, be careful out there guys. Do just a modicum of due diligence or you can get burned in this crazy market.

Article – Meet the Americans ‘standing by’ for possible election violence

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Some Americans worried about possible violence after the U.S. presidential election are forming community watch groups, others are working on conflict de-escalation and still others are purchasing guns, according to two dozen voters, online groups and data surveyed by Reuters.

Don’t kid yourself. There’s violence after every election. Don’t believe me? Go ask a cop what happens at Thanksgiving every four years when someone has had too many beers and starts talking politics.

But it’s a different kind of violence they are suggesting this time around. I suppose that if you live in a place like California, Chicago, NYC, Atlanta, etc, there may be some localized violence but nothing that “sweeps the nation” as “armed militias storm polling places” or anything like that. Loud and obnoxious groups of people screaming at each other, throwing rocks, carrying baseball bats, setting fires, and the like? Probably. In Kansas? No. In Utah? No. In North Dakota? No. In Maine? No. Contrary to what they’d have you believe, when something happens in California and NYC at the same time that does not equate to ‘nationwide’.

I live in a college town..a bastion of liberal Democrats in a state that is otherwise rather Republican…and my ‘upgraded’ plans for being prepared for election day are the same as for any other Tuesday. I lock my doors to my house, I park where the security cameras can record, I carry a pistol in my pocket, and I keep my eyes open. Same as every other day.

I’m not saying there’s not going to be violence after the election. What I’m saying is there isn’t going to be violence after the election that violently affects me. And this notion that we’re going to have an actual armband-wearing, black-flag waving, up-against-the-wall revolution is, in my opinion, pure fantasy. If we have a ‘revolution’ it’ll be an engineered political one rather than a spontaneous shooting one.

So why am I stockpiling ammo, AR’s, food, and that sort of thing? Because you don’t have to have a civil war to have the wheels fly offa civilization. Angry mobs burning down LA or NYC may not constitute a civil war, but it does constitute a giant inconvenient pain in the ass to the people who live there. I live peacefully in flyover country but, as we know, crap rolls downhill, right? Well, it also radiates outward like ripples in a pond. So…I keep the freezer, gas tank, and magazines topped off.

New tag: election

The gaping void on the shelves

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I was looking at the ammo shelf in a local store yesterday and it was, naturally, picked over pretty hard. Of the ammo that was left it was a box of this, three boxes of that, two boxes of the other….nothing left in any quantity. As for what was missing….that pretty much tells the story.

Hit any preparedness forum and you’ll see the endless posts about “What calibers should survivalists standardize on” and you get the usual list. But, simple observation of the shelves shows that this nation runs on 9mm and .223. QED.

FIFO

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One of my guilty pleasures is that the local restaurant supply place sells frozen dumplings by the case. I toss em, frozen solid, into my steamer and in 15 minutes I have delicious, hot, Chinese(ish) dumplings. No muss, no fuss. Splash some tamari soy sauce on ’em and eat. About as labor-unintensive a meal as you can get.

Except, when I opened the cupboard I found my bottle of soy sauce with but a few dribbles in it. Solution? Trek to the basement, locate the five other bottles on the shelf, pull out the one with the oldest date, return to the kitchen, make a note to purchase more on my next grocery trip, and then have dinner.

I went to Wallywolrd the other day, picked up another couple bottles, wrote the purchase date on them with a Sharpie, and stuck ’em back in storage.

Thats what food rotation looks like. Nothing magical, mysterious, or tinfoil-hat about it. It’s that easy. And it is bloody convenient to not have to halt your meal plans because you need to run to the grocery for something. And it’s especially convenient to not have to run to the grocery when the streets are littered with bodies of the BLM/Antifa/ProudBoy/redneck battles that, I am told, we are all heading for as the looming second Civil War approaches. (Yeah, thats sarcasm….I’m wrong on a lot of things but I’m willing to bet that this time next year the lights are on, the water is running, the shelves are stocked, and it’s not Bosnia out there.)

In other interesting news, when I was at CostCo the other day I noticed that the limits had been removed from some items (notably the torpedo-shaped “chubs” of ground beef I’ve been purchasing) and reinstituted on others (toilet paper). Doesn’t really matter to me, though…I’ve gotten into the habit of buying certain items every weekend, religiously, so a limit of ‘one per trip’ doesn’t slow my roll. Matter of fact, I may have to dial it back a bit because the freezer is way full. Buying another freezer might make sense but for my household, one freezer full of meat is plenty for a good long while. Also, it seems that freezers are a bit hard to come by in some parts these days. Restless natives…….

Election years are always expensive…Pt. 3

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Election years are always expensive…Pt. 1
Election years are always expensive…Pt. 2

I have, literally, a bucket of stripped AR lowers.
I have hundreds of AR mags.
I have, at least, a half dozen complete AR’s scattered about.
I have a few ‘investment’ AR’s sitting around as well.

All that and I still wound up dropping some coin and picking up another five AR’s the other day.

I am so vulnerable to my own second-guessing….

Life goals

Thank you for smoking

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Johnny Trochmann,, he of Militia Of Montana fame, puts in an appearance at the larger gun shows in these parts. He has about a dozen tables covered with what could best be desscribed a ‘survivalist’ gear…potassium iodide pills, surgical kits, QuickClot, books on everything, specialty ammo, and that sort of thing. At some point he must have found an in with someone in the cruise line industry or a subsidiary thereof because he always has parachute flares, hand flares, and smoke generating devices for sale that clearly came from someone’s lifeboat emergency kits. These items are usually a couple years ‘out of date’ but that doesn’t really mean much in materiel like this.

Invariably, I pick up a buncha parachute flares and smoke cans. Why not? Both can come in handy if something goes wrong in the boonies and you need to indicate your position to the ‘copter people, and, honestly, there are some tactical applications as well.

Despite having a pretty large store of these items squirreled away, I’ve never actually gotten around to trying the smoke devices. The reason was simple…I can’t very well touch one off in town without attracting a  large amount of attention (thats what the dang things are designed for, after all) and I never seem to have the time to head to anywhere remote to try them. Until today.

I was scouting out some hunting areas that I have not been to for many, many years and since they were hell-and-gone from prying eyes I figured I’d try one of those smoke cannisters. Pop the top, pull the igniter, and toss it for distance. It sputtered and then started spitting out a rather impressive cloud of smoke for a good three minutes. I didn’t take any pictures or video because YouTube has plenty of them showing this exact version, but it lived up to the expectations. Does it have, shall we say, ‘non-rescue applications’? Well, just from what I observed, you throw three of these down a stairwell or hallway and you’re pretty much going to reduce visibility to zero in a hurry. Maybe you have a use for that sort of thing, maybe not. But…like many tools, it’s a multitasker when you have the right mindset.

Johnny T. sells these at the gun shows for about $4 ea although if you buy enough he usually cuts you a deal. I’ve got a couple dozen in storage and I keep a few in the vehicle at all times ‘just in case’.

Buy them new? Man, I’d hate to have to…but, maybe I wouldn’t have to:

When I was a kid, my high school science teacher whipped up a sugar smoke bomb for a class movie project they were doing. He rather…underestimated…the amount of smoke his little device would generate and the fire department rolled up to the school thinking the roof was going up like Dresden. (Protip: instead of a coloring agent, mix in fine ground red pepper or cayenne to create an irritant effect.)

Anyway…if you’re in Montana and happen to run across Johnny Trochmann and his Tables Of Fun, be sure to grab a dozen or so of those things. And tell him Commander Zero sent you.

Gearing up for winter

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October means really nice days and crisp nights here in Montana. But it also means that winter is around the corner and it can often come a tad early, or at least give us some sneak previews. So…time to start getting ready.

For me, it’s mostly two things: put the Winter Module into the Bag O’ Tricks, and get the winter gear in the vehicle. As for the abode, it pretty much takes care of itself…take the air conditioner out of the window and put it away, make sure the snow blower is ready, lay in some salt for the sidewalk.

But, being a good survivalist, there’s also a few other things – make sure the kerosene heater is filled and ready in case the power goes out. Same for the generator. Power outages in winter have a bit more drama to them than outages in the summer. Most notably the little issue of the house dropping to a temperature where pipe freezing becomes an issue. Fortunately, I know from previous experience that the kerosene heaters can keep the house above freezing for a while.

It’s also time to pull the wool outta storage. I’ve got my wonderful Filson coat and a goodly selection of hats and gloves to keep me warm, and I have snowshoes as well.

I’ve lived in the same house for a long time now and gone through a couple dozen winters with no power outage lasting more than a 24 hours or so. Not to say it won’t happen, just that it hasn’t so far. But…if it does, it’s nice to know that sitting huddled in the cold and dark will not be part of the program.

 

No boogaloo today

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For years, there’s been the notion that we have a ‘culture war’ going on. You know the one I’m talking about…the red state vs. blue state, gunnies vs antigun, city vs. rural, etc, etc. There’s a Balkanization going on, it’s just that no one can agree on what the dividing issues are.

Nowadays? It’s the Wuhan Flu polarization. On the one hand you have the people who mask up, disinfect everything, call the cops if the neighbors have a barbecue in their yard, demand that ‘outsiders’ self quarantine, and that anyone not wearing a mask is probably also an anti-vaxxing illiterate redneck who votes for Trump…on the other hand you have the people who don’t wear masks, think the othe side is a bunch of nervous Nellies who are quick toe the line whenever the CDC says something, and thing anyone wearing a mask is some sort of Democratic drone who can’t think for themselves and wants a nanny state.

And, according to the media, they’re both buying guns at rates previously unheard of.

I’ve seen more than one person blogging about how there’s going to be a civil war or balkanization and that various enclaves will form and we need to be at this location with our like-minded fellow citizens and..and..and…

Not gonna happen. The US is comprised of fifty individual political lab experiments…if you don’t like something in one state, there’s probably another state that does things the opposite way. You like .gov controls and regulations? You have states that have it in spades. Want .gov that pretty much lets you run amok (comparatively speaking)? Got those too. Want lotsa .gov services? Got just the state for ya…. Want a .gov that offers as little as possible and YOYO? There’s a couple of them too. It’s a fact of life that turns out to be something of a safety valve. Tired of high taxes and bureaucracy? You leave California and New York. Tired of lack of .gov services and oversight? You leave…pretty much everywhere else. But..there’s always someplace else to go that might be more to your liking.

“But..what about Kenosha? Or [location of rioting and shooting]?”, you may ask. Those aren’t revolutions. Those aren’t civil wars. They probably don’t even count as insurrections as much as they are simply ‘a riot’. A civil war where you have armband wearing groups taking over radio stations, airports, roadblocks, and military bases? Not a chance.

We just don’t do political gun-battles-in-the-street like some sort of Third World country. We’re too lazy. We’re too complacent. We’re fans of revolutions-without-the-work. The closest thing you’ll get to a revolution or civil war in this country is some group finally getting it’s political act together enough as a unified bloc to swing an election in their favor. A bloodless coup would probably be about all that could be worked up.

Heck, can you think of any First World country that actually had a shooting-in-the-streets political revolution in the last 75 years? Some First World country with the same level of development as the US? Hmm….some former Soviet state might come to mind but that’s not First World.

Anyway, my point is that as ugly as the upcoming political season is going to be, it isn’t going to be a civil war. It’s going to be stupidly violent in places….riots, arson, that sort of thing. Maybe even a targeted killing or two. But a civil war? Nope. Not a chance.

Lotsa little localized boogaloos, maybe. But no big national boogaloo.

 

 

 

Article – UK supermarkets … are rationing toilet paper and hand sanitizer as fears of panic buying return.

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British grocery chains Tesco and Morrisons have started rationing essential items over fears that stricter lockdown measures will send shoppers into a panic. 

Supermarkets limited sales of certain goods earlier in the pandemic, and Morrisons became the first major grocer to reintroduce these measures when it said on Thursday that customers could only buy three of certain products. These included pasta, soup, hand wash, and hand sanitizer, as well as multipacks of toilet paper and kitchen roll.

I’m a bit perplexed that anyone could have had the experience of standing in line for rationed toilet paper (in the classic Soviet model) and not learned a lesson that would preclude them from getting caught up in another round of rationing. But, people are idiots. There’s such a strong normalcy bias that “oh, that’ll never happen” even though it just freakin’ happened. Thats not willful ignorance, it’s just genuine shorsightedness (which is a polite term for ‘stupidity’). I can’t say that I’ve accounted for 100% of my anticipated needs but I’m so far ahead of the general population that if some sort of rationing did kick in, or anothe shortage reared its head, I’d probably not even notice.

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About five weeks until the election. Part of me has that same morbid, detached fascination that exists when you watch a horrific car accident on video…you know something terrible is about to occur, is occurring, but you kinda want to see it happen.

I used to have a friend who believed that we should vote Communists into office so we could just skip the foreplay and get the war started.Definitely an interesting outlook.

I disagree. I’m the most optimistic survivalist that youre ever going to meet. I mean that in the sense that my ‘perfect apocalypse’ is the one that doesn’t happen. If I die peacefully, warm, and well fed with a basement full of food,ammo, and fuel that was never needed…..I call it a triumph.  If you really have a secret desire to live out the Mad Max lifestyle with your gear and your buddies go live in Somalia, Afghanistan, or Detroit. You can LARP Mad Max all day long in those environs and you may find that it isn’t the glorious rugged-individualist fantasy camp that you thought it was.

Why would I want to spend a single day having to crap into a plastic bucket, eat freeze drieds, shoot looters, sleep under a poncho, and drink bleach-flavored water if I didn’t have to?

But just because you don’t want to do something doesn’t mean you’re not going to have to. So…big basement of goodies.