How it happens

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Backstory: I like rice, I like chicken, and I like chicken and rice. What I usually do is cut up a buncha chicken and cook it in some sort of teriyaki or other ‘Asian’ sauce. The stuff I really like comes in a glass bottle for about $4. I have a tough time finding it, so I figured I’d special order it at Walmart.

Me: How many of these to a case? :::Shows manager the bottle of sauce I want:::
Mgr: Six to a case. :::consults handheld digital device:::
Me: Okay, I’ll take ten cases.
Mgr: Ok. Got something going on?
Me: Really wanna know?
Mgr: Sure.
Me: Im one of those crazy survivalist types. I like to stock up. :::Said in a ‘maybe he’s joking, maybe he’s not way:::
Mgr: :::takes a step closer and looks around before speaking::: I’m LDS. We do alot of that, too. Smart.
Me: Ah, so you must know [name of couple that was operating Bishops Storehouse]
Mgr: Yeah, I went to school with their son.
Me: Oh, [name of son]…he runs a preparedness website now.

And the conversation continues as he taps his device to order the cases I want.

That’s how it happens, folks. That’s how you meet fellow LMI. No internet meet ups, no ads on Craigslist, no waving a Gadsen flag in the parking lot and seeing what kinda people it draws. Just a normal everyday transaction

To be fair, virtually every LDS/Mormon I have met has been on ‘the same page’ as me on the important things. That’s one of the reasons I like Mormons so much. (That, and Mormon chicks are almost always uniformly hot.) I would bet money that if you put a observant, tithing, lives-in-Utah Mormon in front of me I can tell you who he voted for, whether he likes to shoot, and whats in his basement. Sucker bet.

I should just buy controlling stock in Ruger and be done with it

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Yeah. Uhm….so that happened:I’ll be phasing out a couple of P95’s in favor of these p95DC’s. I’ve never really seen the need for a manual safety on a double-action auto. The pistols were a case of heading to Gunbroker and thinking “Ahhh….this low bid will never win. Someone will bid it up.” Idiot.

The Mini-14? Uhm…well…see, it’s like this…it was one of those deals that you would have had to have been an idiot to pass up. Seriously. It was a good deal. Note that the Mini has one of the extremely hard-to-find Eagle 35-round polymags. This was, IMHO, hands-down the best aftermarket mag for the Mini and as best I can tell they havent been made since the early 90’s. I have some of the AR versions, but the Mini versions are tough to find. People hold onto those things with both hands.

Today was a stainless kinda day.

The fella I got the Mini from brought that mag along to show me and let me hold onto for a few days so I could blog about it. It’s a little esoteric (well, a lot esoteric, actually) to write a post about a magazine that hasn’t been available for twenty years, but….

 

AA battery case and pouch

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Battery standardization is kind of an important thing. When I need batteries for my flashlight, radio, or other geegaw, the last thing I want is to discover I’m out of the battery I need but I have zillions of the batteries I don’t.

For my general needs, it’s just three battery sizes: CR123, AA, and D. End of story. Sometimes it requires a compromise when one product might use one of those batteries but another, better, product might use something like a 9-volt or C-battery. In cases like that I usually fall on the side of logistics because even if the product is a bit better, when the batteries fade and it’s non-functional it will be a lot less than ‘better’.

For stuff that I carry around in the Bag O’ Tricks there is no room for argument – one battery size. Period. Full stop.

For that task, I go with AA lithium batts. They are expensive, yes. The advantage is that they are far less vulnerable to temperature, and they tend to keep their charge over time. The problem is, how to carry spares. I used to just take an Altoids tin, line it with plastic, put tape over the ends of the batteries, and  store ’em that way. Cheap, but there are better ways. A fella handed me a Maxpedition catalog years ago and they had this little guy:

It has been my absolute first choice for storing spare batteries in my gear. It keeps them separate from each other, protects the important ends, and conveniently splits apart and is colored to help differentiate dead from live batteries. (Whys ave the dead ones? Might be rechargeables that you want to save for later recharging.)

I’ve used this thing to carry around my spare AA batts (and it’ll carry CR123 batts as well) for years and can’t think of a problem I’ve had with it. I keep it in the nylon pouch as an added measure of safety and security, but the plastic sleeve by itself would seem to work fine in a tucked away pocket on your gear.

The things I carry in my bag that need those batteries? A couple small LED lights, a small AM/FM/SW radio, and the very small and very useful ICOM R6 receiver. All of those run on AA’s and therefore I only need to keep the one type of battery in my bag. (Also means that, in a real crunch, I could swap batteries as needed between devices.)

While the pouch has MOLLE webbing to let you mount it to your gear, I find it more useful to carry it inside my gear. Why leave it outside your bag to get banged around?

As I said, I’ve used this sort of thing for carrying around spare batts for years and haven’t had a single problem with ’em. Recommended.

Article – 4 Ways to Pressure-Test Strategic Decisions, Inspired by the U.S. Military

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Strategy is a nice way to sum up “Have a plan, and a backup plan, and another backup plan, and make sure they work.”. This article basically tells you how and why to test those plans.

Every leader wants to avoid major strategic mistakes, but, in a complex world, it’s hard to anticipate all the forces that might impact your goal. It’s vital to find weaknesses in your strategies before you implement them — and developing a rigorous process to do so.

One of those ways to test things is also my favorite: wargame it. If you think youve got the perfect mix of gear in case you get stuck ten miles from home….go on that ten mile walk. That sorta thing.

 

Article – The Hero of the Sutherland Springs Shooting Is Still Reckoning with What Happened that Day

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Excellent article about a story I’d almost forgotten about. H/T to Claire Wolfe

He rushed into a back room and opened his steel gun safe, where he stows his collection of pistols, rifles, and shotguns. Without hesitation, he snatched one of his AR-15s. He’d put the rifle together himself, swapping out parts and upgrading here and there over the years. It was light, good for mobility, and could shoot quickly. It wasn’t as accurate as some of his other rifles but good enough to hit the bowling pins he and his friends used for targets. He loaded a handful of rounds into the magazine.

Wonderful article. A fast take away: a spare loaded mag mounted on the gun is always not-a-bad-idea.

I keep a stack of various mags (AK,AR,HK,Glock) loaded and ready to go sitting on a shelf near the gun safe. If I need to grab an extra loaded mag in a  hurry…theyre there.

I’m not going to Monday morning quarterback anything this guy did because I wasnt there, it wasnt me, and I don’t know if I’d have had the presence of mind to do anything differently. Oh, I like to think I might have…but I dont really know and neither do you. Fact is, this guy saw the elephant and performed well. I am especially impressed with his humility. Pretty much all the qualities you look for in good person…they do the job that needs doing, get it done well, and don’t make a fuss about it.

Good article. Worth a read.

Halloween

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Living in a college town during Halloween means you get to sample heavily the best part about Halloween: college girls in slutty costumes. Naughty nurse, wicked catwoman, adulterous county attorney, hot teacher, etc. I don’t know why these chicks feel like they can’t dress like that the rest of the year. Who’d complain? Not me.

But, over at the post office, where they have to keep a modicum of decency, there’s a guy who, every year, goes the step further to really put in some effort at his costumes. This year? ’70s Disco Man:To be frank, could be Disco Man, could be John Holmes…..tough to tell without getting a lot closer than i care to. But, I salute the effort. The interesting part? He already had all these clothes. Thats the really scary part.

I don’t have the foresight to plan ahead for a good costume, but perhaps one of the years…. For now, when people ask where my costume is, I give them that famous reply from Wednesday Addams:

TacTool

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One of the things in the Bag Of Tricks? This monster:

It’s really just a sharpened crowbar with a handle. I have it expressly for the purpose of cutting, chipping, prying, hacking, hammering my way out of or through whatever is between me and safety. Prying open doors, busting windows out of frames, hinge pins out of doors, and all that sort of thing. I have a more ‘regular’ knife or two in my bag as well, but this is the big kahuna for when something needs to be destroyed.

It’s made by Becker Knife & Tool which is now a part of Ka-Bar. Made in the USA although the sheath is made overseas. I’ve been a fan of he BK&T products for years…they have a brute ruggedness that meshes nicely with my ideas about the qualities I look for in just-in-case-the-world-ends gear. Not cheap, and you could probably get similar results with something cheaper… but I like BK&T and I don’t mind paying a bit extra for something that I might someday need in a very, very bad way.

This thing sits in its scabbard at the bottom of my bag, and it’s my first choice for deconstruction of my surroundings. Of course, it also can cut things but it’s main function, as I said, is for breaking things. Never know when you’re going to need to break down a door or window for a quick getaway, y’know?

Article – Suspicious packages spotlight vast postal surveillance system

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The U.S. Postal Service regularly photographs the front and back of every piece of U.S. mail, or about 150 billion parcels, envelopes, and postcards every year. A longstanding practice known as the “mail cover” program enables law enforcement to obtain address information and images of the outsides of mail as part of an investigation without the need for a warrant through the Postal Inspection Service, the U.S. Postal Service’s policing arm.

Kinda makes you all warm and fuzzy, doesn’t it? They may(!) not be reading your mail, but they’re logging where it came from and where it went.

These clowns can scan over a billion packages a year but they can’t get my Priority Mail packages across town in three days. :::eyeroll:::

Whats really annoying is that The Powers That Be will point to the recent bombing suspect’s arrest and use that to validate what is, to any reasonable standard, a rather intrusive policy that  kicks the spirit of the right to privacy right in the sac.

The dream is always the same

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Pizza before bed. What was I thinking?

In the dream I was away from my house, and trying to get back to it. For some reason I didn’t have my vehicle and, for an equally unexplained reason, my Bag O’ Tricks was in that missing vehicle. So..there I am…trying to walk back to my house which, in this dream, is a good distance away and requires me to walk through a city.

In the dream, people are kicking in doors to other peoples houses to steal food, nowhere is safe, and there’s a general feeling of ‘every man for himself’. There’s one particularly nailbiting scene where I have to traverse a tunnel under a river as people drive through it at hellish speed, hauling trailers of belongings, and swerving all over the place.

The whole time I’m thinking that if I can get back to the house I’ll have everything I need. But…I have to get there first. I also recall thinking “why didnt I hide a gun and ammo somewhere out here?”

I finally get to a roadblock manned by someone I know. They let me pass, and then I wake up.

This is the first dream like this I’ve had in a while. But, it follows the trend of how these things usually go. I’m not inclined to believe that dreams are prescient , but I do believe that our unconscious mind can observe details in our day-to-day that our conscious mind doesn’t pick up and puts them together….thus giving us that ‘funny feeling’ we have about something.

So, first thing, I need to go through my Bag Of Tricks and make sure everything is cool. It would be a bit of a stretch to call it a GHB or something equally corny. It’s basically just a buncha gear that would come in handy in pretty much any unpleasant circumstance….everything from zip ties and batteries to multitool and Glock. It’s just something to tilt the odds back in my favor a little bit. But, it has come in handy a time or two.

No idea what the particular apocalypse was that kicked off the dream…there was one scene where a local power plant exploded in a cloud of black smoke and dust so I’m guessing it was something a little man-made but , really, it doesn’t matter.

Whats interesting is that, being a dream, the same emotions are instilled in you because you think whats happening is real. (Dreams are, after all, the first virtual reality environment ever made.) So if you wonder what that frantic, panicked feeling as you realize its The End will feel like…well, there you go.

I dont regret these kinds of dreams, they usually serve as a swift kick in the khakis to get me off my butt on preparedness things I may have been putting off. In fact, that may be why I had the dream…my subconscious may have been worrying about my lack of activity in that regard.

Any moral of the story for me to be aware of? Hmm..probably that if I think my Bag Of Tricks is useful enough to keep nearby it’s probably useful enough to clone and keep at an offsite location on one of my major travel pathways. I’ll have to think about that, but that really just falls into what another blogger would call ‘an operational cache’… which might be worth thinking about.

Also, no pizza after 9pm.

Complacency and motivation

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I’ve mentioned it before, but, man, that complacency thing….it’s tough to get past sometimes. You let your foot off the gas, you feel less of a sense of urgency, and then -wham- something happens that makes you wish you had stuck with things.

As I mentioned earlier, I’ve sort of shifted my preparedness efforts towards getting the finances squared away now that 90% of everything else is within an acceptable level of readiness. But that financial stuff…thats the hardest to keep on track with. I mean, when you’re working on your food storage you can see those shelves getting fuller and fuller, you can see the gun safe getting fuller and fuller, that sort of thing. But getting your financial preparedness taken care of? Numbers on paper. You don’t really feel it because there’s no real visual metric other than numbers on a statement.

Of course, just because you don’t feel your financial preps getting squared away like you do your physical ones…well…thats no excuse no to do it, right?

My motivation has been focusing on the opportunities that will be afforded to me once I get things like the house paid off. Thats a rather large chunk of money every month that can now go to…whatever I want it to. Silver? Gold? Ammo? Roth? Vehicle? Land? Savings? Six hours with Jennifer Lawrence?  Anything I want. But…to do that, I gotta get these stupid financial obligations taken care of.

The unsexy parts of survivalism suck, but they tend to be the most practical ones, it seems.