I very much like when someone actually real-world tests a piece of gear or a system and goes all Mythbusters on it. Whats it like to live 30 days on one of those 30 day emergency food kits? Well, this guy did it and documented the results. And, yes, the digestive results were as bad as you might have guessed.
This video is really quite informative and I highly suggest watching. Skip it to 1.5x speed if youre in a hurry. The short version is that appetite fatigue is real, even at 2000 calories a day he lost eight pounds, and you’re going to use a lot more water than you might think. In the spirit of good science, he also documented the time, fuel, and water consumption involved in the cooking and cleaning process as well. Excellent material.
Most of us, in a crisis, wouldn’t, I think, be living exclusively on pouch survival food. We’d supplement it with offthe-shelf everyday foods that have fairly good shelf life…canned meats,canned fruit, jarred sauces, etc. BUT….those don’t have thirty year shelf life.
Youre mileage may vary, of course, but this video, in my opinion, is very much worth watching. Watch it, and then think how you’d adjust your long-term food storage inventory appropriately to make your experience better than his.
The list of guns that I regret selling is actually pretty short. Probably because I tend to buy and hold. But, there are a couple I really wish I’d kept. Probably the number one is an HK93A3 that I bought in 1986 for the princely some of $600. I was a poor 19-year-old college kid and this was a major purchase. It was the best 5.56 gun I’ve ever owned. It was accurate, utterly reliable, ate even the crappiest ammo, and was fun to shoot. Unfortunately, even in 1986, spare mags were spendy and I eventually traded it off for a CAR-15 which could be fed with $5 magazines. I have regretted selling it ever since.
However… I did not regret it enough to buy another one. These days, a clean HK93A3 with a few mags is easily north of $4-5k. While the .308 version, the HK91, has been cloned by various makers, some good and some really ungood, the HK93 was never really copied as much. Special Weapons, Vector, and Century have dabbled with them in the past, but they are rarely seen. And…most HK clones are just not very good. It’s tough to match the German stuff when theyve amortized the startup costs years ago and have literally decades of experience, versus some little shop that has to start from scratch.
How did PTR do it? Well, in Victor Kiam fashion, they bought the company. See, when a country adopts a weapons system like a rifle or pistol, they often require it to be made in their country. (Waves at SIG USA) Portugal wanted to arm itself with G3’s, so HK built a plant in Portugal. When the G3 was no longer used or supported by Portugal, some guy went in and bought the factory, boxed it up, and shipped it to Connecticut…HK tooling, HK parts, HK everything. Thats the easy way…don’t re-invent the wheel; buy the wheel factory.
Thing is, no military ever really adopted the HK93 ( or its various guises….43, 53, 33, etc) in any major numbers, so there was no big factory to switch to consumer production. But…the Turks managed it, apparently. MKE produces MP5 clones and is out there with a ‘pistol’ version of the HK93. See, you cant bring in the rifle version because of import bans…but you can bring in a ‘pistol’. What you do with that pistol, regarding a stock or arm brace, once you get it in the US…well, thats between you, your credit card, and HKParts.net.
One of the big headaches of the HK93 was magazines. Few and far between. And expensive when found. Well, MKE makes the gun so they may as well make mags. As a result there are polymer mags out there that are very derivative of the G36 mags in style and appearance. And AC Unity, who seemingly came out of nowhere a few years ago, makes a whole range of HK items including HK93 mags. So with mag availability out of the way….maybe it was time to get back into the HK93 game…just for the nostalgia of my misspent youth.
Eforms are faster these days and the SBR on this jewel came back pretty quick. A quick trip to the engraver and it was done.
Its not 100% faithful to the HK93. For one thing, there is a paddle mag release which the original HK93 rifle that was sold in the US never had. And the lower is ‘push pin’ rather than ‘shelf’, which is true to original full-auto HK rifles but definitely not something you see on semi-auto versions. Thread pitch on the muzzle is also different than the metric used by HK. But other than that, its pretty much a clone.
Its purpose? Well, same as any other SBR’d .223…..fun gun and a one-in-a-hundred time when an SBR is exactly what you need over a carbine full size rifle. It is, in fact, virtually identical in size to my MP5 clones. In fact, quite a few MP accessories will work on this thing..most notably the forends.
Honestly, for me, this is mostly just a ‘fun gun’. Even if it were an original 93 it wouldnt be my first choice for fighting the invading zombies…its a logistical outlier. It may be better, in my opinion, than an AR15 in some uses but at the end of the day I can find mags and parts for an AR quite easily whereas it would be a long and often fruitless search to find parts and mags for the HK if I had to.
By the by, this ‘pistol’ is marketed as the MKE AP53 (imported, but not made, by Century). It scratches an Itch I’ve had since I was 19-years-old and so far its been fun to shoot. I’ll be replacing the tuning fork muzzle device ASAP, though. Accuracy? Once dialed in, I could hit the steel at 100 yards which is about as far as I’d really expect an 8.3″ barrelled .5.56 to be used. (To be used at? To be used for?….English, man.)
I would be remiss to fail to mention that PTR makes a version of this (the so-called HK51) in .308. Thats right, a .308 in an 8.3″ barrel. Sometimes referred to as ‘the semi-auto flash bang dispenser’. Not for me.
I do believe I’ve now hit the roller-locked trifecta – 7.62×51, 5.56, and 9mm…call it ‘the HK Hat Trick’.
Really, it isnt exactly what Im looking for (but pretty close, actually) however the marketing is pretty spot on for someone like me. “Sit on my porch and watch the world burn” is, literally, one of the phrases I use in describing what I’m looking for.
You guys remember this group of properties? The realtor dropped me a line to tell me that the sellers have become ‘more motivated’ with some of the lots reduced by $50-60k. Buddy, you could drop it to $0k and I’d probably still not be interested. Too much going on with these properties that make it a hard pass for me.
So, still looking for a chink of dirt. Interestingly, Im seeing more and more properties getting marked down as I read various news articles about how the housing market is slumping. Perhaps theres a buying opportunity coming up? It’d be nice.
I fully recognize that ‘perfect’ is the enemy of ‘good enough’…but honestly, I haven’t seen ‘good enough’ yet. There’s always “Yeah, its perfect except for…” and some things, like a public road bisecting the property, are just not things Im willing to compromise on. So…search continues.
The KEArms gun was also quite nice, but it was giving me fits. I could never get off more than five or six rounds before I’d have a wild failure to eject. Since the 9mm cases are so short, and there’s plenty of room for bolt travel in the gun, a case would fail to eject, the bolt would cycle all the way back, and upon return the bolt would slide forward with the unejected case held firmly to it, and the empty case would actually push the next round out of the mag and into the chamber….creating a hellish doublefeed.
I tried swapping springs, changing ammo, etc, etc. Nothing worked. Since I had a lot of guns here to play with I kinda set the KEA gun back and forgot about it. Last month I finally contacted KEA and explained the problem. They emailed me a paid shipping label and sent it back. Took ’em about two weeks to get to it. There was some problem with the bolt and they replaced it. Got the gun back yesterday and headed to the range. Shoots fine.
One thing about those KEA poly lowers is their claim to fame is that they are lightweight. The 9mm is no powerhouse of recoil, but in a lightweight gun like the one I have it was interesting that the recoil almost seemed the same as what you’d get from a .223. I’ll throw a tri-lug on the end of the barrel and see if a suppressor makes any difference.
Once you’ve played with roller-delayed 9mm guns, you become a little spoiled and a straight blowback 9mm seems ker-chunky and brutal.
Invariably, any time someone brings up the topic of pistol-caliber carbines there will be someone who chimes in with “Ive never seen the point of carrying a full size carbine in a less than full-size caliber” or “You might as well just have it in .223 for the same size and weight”. Arguments that completely ignore everything except caliber. Would I rather run out the door with a 5.56 carbine than a 9mm one? Absolutely. So why would I have a 9mm carbine? Very streamlined logistics for situations where you don’t have the luxury of carrying two different types of magazines and two different types of ammo. If all you can take with you is what you can carry, there’s an advantage to streamlined logistics. Additionally, I can suppress a 9mm carbine a lot easier than a 5.56.
To carry the pointlessness of this argument even further, someone will say either:
a) If portability is a factor then you should just grab a 10/22 and a .22 pistol
or
b) Get a 5.56 ‘pistol’ AR
Firstly, Im not going though the apocalypse with just .22 . As it is, I’m already compromising on terminal ballistics by dropping to 9mm. Secondly, no AR ‘pistol’ is really a pistol. A pistol fits in a holster on your belt or tucks under your shirt for compact and concealable purposes. “Get 5.7 then”, will be the retort. Sure…I’ll get right on that when I can find 5.7 just as easily as I can 9mm.
First choice for Der Tag? Nah. But if I had to run outta here with just a backpack and what could fit in it, I’d probably grab the 9mm Glock, 9mm carbine, 9mm suppressor, a dozen Glock mags, as much 9mm as I have room for, and call it a day.
Id have to check my records to make sure, but I don’t think I bought any guns in June. Might be the first month in a couple years I didnt buy a gun (or suppressor). My records suggest the last gun I purchased was the SBR lower receiver I used for the stubby BRN-180, and that was in May. Perhaps I’m finally on the downward side of this crippling gun-buying addiction I seem to have developed. Or, more likely, I’ve hit the point of pretty much running out of stuff that I really want enough to actually drop money on.
Speaking of addiction, I finally managed to quit drinking regular sugared Coca Cola. I tend to drink a goodly (and ungodly) amount of the stuff. Probably between 5-7 cans a day. I went to the doctor in January and when she asked how much Coke I drank her professional composure disappeared and she blurted out “Wow!”. And my bloodwork suggested that if I didn’t knock the sugar intake down I might have a future of sticking myself with needles several times a day. So, walked out of the docs office and forced myself to switch to Coke Zero. Tastes horrible, but more palatable than Diet Coke.
I did the math and a can of Coke has 39g of sugar. Multiply by six cans a day and you get 234 grams. A half pound is 227 grams. So, I was sucking back, on average, a half a pound of sugar per day. Thats three 5# bags of sugar a month. That equated to 840 calories a day just from Coke. Thats 42% of your RDA-suggested daily 2000 calorie intake.
Did switching to the 0-calorie, 0-sugar Coke Zero make a difference? Well, yeah. My A1C dropped by about 20% and I lost about ten pounds. I’ll be getting more bloodwork in October and I expect my triglyceride levels will have dropped from “Thats not supposed to be possible” to “a little high but okay”.
I have no discipline, but as I tell people, I can pretty much do anything when I have a gun held to my head. Staring down the barrel of diabetes was pretty much what it took to make me give up a 45 year habit.
I hate spending money. However, I seem to have come to grips with that because I often spend money on things that a lot of people would cock an eyebrow at. When I can afford to, I try to by the high quality version of whatever it is I am after. “Hey, we have this version made by a company that you’ve never heard of and its just as good for $240 less”….or you can spend stupid money and get the ‘genuine article’. If I can swing it, I’ll get the genuine article.
The angle of the photo precludes seeing the reticle
Thats my EOTech XPS2 after spending 45 minutes in the pouring rain running snap-shooting drills with my FN. Theres enough water there to pool on the optic to a considerable depth. And I am completely unworried. I know the product is built for this sort of thing and getting wet isn’t an issue for it. Perhaps for a knockoff or lesser product it might be a problem, but, in this case, I clenched up and forked over the money for a product that I believed would meet the rigors of the ‘real world’. And, it seems that it does.
Crises and disasters rarely make appointments, and you go to war with the gear you have, not the gear you want. When I have to beat feet out the door on some dark and stormy night, heaving ammo cans and cases of MRE’s into the back of the truck at 2am while juggling a flashlight and looking over my shoulder, its nice to know that theres some bits of gear that I won’t have to worry about.
“The price of freedom is the willingness to do sudden battle anywhere, any time and with utter recklessness.” ― Robert A. Heinlein
Independence Day and Patriots Day are pretty much the only two holidays I take seriously. And, in my opinion, both (esp Patriots Day) are best observed by exercising your right (and duty) to spend time with your favorite freedomstick and work on your skills. Its also a good time to ruminate on the liberties that we (in theory) have that separate us from those cucks in the UK and Commonwealth who get jail time for ‘disruptive’ Facebook posts or saying the quiet parts out loud.
The difference, to me, between the two holidays is that Patriots Day is about remembering the grim reality that sometimes the only solution to a problem comes from blood being spilled and unpleasant choices being made, whereas Independence Day celebrates the success that came from it. Kinda like the difference between Veterans Day and VJ/VE Day.
While you can defend your interests with dad’s .30 carbine or grrandma’s .32 Iver Johnson (which still puts you miles ahead of those metric-using cucks). why would you if you didn’t have to? And you don’t have to. Don’t think for a minute that if AR-15s and Glock pistols were available 250 years ago that the guys in the field wouldn’t have been all over them like fat kids on ice cream. Most of the world can’t have access to these marvels of modernity..you do. If you don’t have a good semi-auto rifle and a quality pistol (or five), then get out there, show some respect to history, and buy them. The most patriotic thing in this world is an Independence Day sale at your local gun shop. Tell them George sent you.
“Package guns” are those find-them-in-WalMart type of deals where you get a rifle, an attached scope, and maybe a carry case for a set amount of money. The scope is invariably some variable of the 3-9x variety and the gun is usually a no-frills model. Theyre a nice package for someone getting their feet wet in hunting or for someone on a tight budget. But… is it any good?
The guys at 9-Hole Reviews usually work with military-use guns. In this video, they jokingly and tongue-in-cheek refer to this type of guns use in the ‘documentary’ movie ‘Red Dawn’. You don’t go to war with the guns you want, you go to war with the guns you have. How would a package gun like this acquit itself as an impromptu mid-range rifle? It acquits itself fairly well.
A standard trope of almost every ‘invasion’ book and movie is some non-military dude running around with his hunting rifle nailing invading soldiers from distance. Is it an accurate trope? Well, it’s certainly happened. Is it likely that one woodtick with a hunting rifle is going to materially stop an advance of enemy troops? Beats me. Certainly things come to a temporary halt when someone starts dropping bullets into a dismounted group of soldiers, but it doesn’t seem to stop the advance…it just delays it momentarily. But, hey, Im no expert.
The evidence, at least from this video, seems to support that a good shooter with a Tractor Supply Christmas Sale rifle can pose a reasonable threat at distance. And..doesnt everyone have a gun like this somewhere?
