AK mags

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Hmmm…a quantity(!) of Tapco 20-rd AK mags in black and dark earth wound up in the back of my vehicle. I was going to stick a couple hundred back as an investment against Assault Weapons Ban II: The Next Generation……

If anyone wants some, they’d be in a 10-pack, postage paid, for $100. We’d do it just like we did the awesome 10/22 magazine deal from last year. You email me and tell me how many you want (increments of 10, please) and I’ll email you an invoice you can pay online. Shipping by Priority Mail and you’ll get tracking info when its on its way. Only have a couple dozen of the dark earth ones, so unless you’re one of the first purchasers your choice will be black or black.

The Magic Number

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NOTE: This post has been sitting in my “Drafts” folder for three years now. Figured it was time to finish it up.
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It seems like every time I mention to a friend that I picked up a gun they seem to respond with, “Don’t you already have a couple of those?”. Why, yes….yes I do. But, contrary to appearances, there really is a Magic Number that I am shooting for. It is the number at which I feel I will have enough to last me the rest of my life, which is, arguably, about 30 years.

The number is 10.

No, not ten guns total. Ten of each. Ten AR’s, ten 870’s, ten 10/22’s, ten 9mm Glocks, etc.

Its important to have goals.

By and large, when someone on a survivalist forum somewhere starts talking about ‘survival battery’ (whatever the heck that is), the result is something very similar to that. Throw in a ‘hunting’ or ‘precision’ rifle in there and you have pretty much 90% of the responses.

Many of us stockpile stuff on the PACE paradigm – Primary, Auxiliary, Contingency, Extra. I suppose I’ve added an R in there with Redundant.

That’s a total of five. Where does ten come from? Might be more than one person in the household, right? Hence, two times five is ten.

So thats it…once I have ten of what I feel is necessary, in regards to boomtoys, I can back the throttle down a bit in terms of acquisitions.

Those numbers, by the way, only represent firearms….my opinion on firearms accessories (like magazines) is a completely different number. And it’d be foolish to keep a buncha eggs in one basket like that so these things would get spread around a bit.

But thats the number.. five of each type of gun, per person, gives me enough room to keep one at the Beta Site, use one, loan one, sock one away somewhere else, etc, etc. I’m the fist to admit that comes out to a fairly large (though not by Montana standards) amount of guns but if I can afford them…why not? Plus, it’s really kind of an Alpha strategy…theyre just going to be more expensive later so if I just buy ’em all now I can be done with it and move resources elsewhere.

Is it a realistic number? Well, I think so. It gives me margin in case something gets stolen, broken,confiscated,lost, abandoned, etc. It’s rather foolish, I think, to believe that you can buy something and expect to keep possession of it, and have it in good working order, for 30 years. Sure, someone may have grandads Win 94 thats been in the family for 80 years but much of that 80 years it was just sitting in his closet, waiting for the one week every year that he hunted. And no one was trying to ban it.

This ‘Magic Number’ theory extends to non-gun items as well…the number may be different, but there’s still that goal-orientation. How many extra boots, socks, rolls of TP, etc, etc…..that sort of thing. (For example, 210 is the magic number for TP [ 30/package x 7])

Tappan, in his classic tome ‘Survival Guns’, advocated a mixture of guns that eventually added up to about 40 different handguns, rifles and shotguns. I remember thinking it was excessive at the time. Tappan differentiated between ‘working guns’ and survival/defensive guns. I don’t make such a distinction. The End Of The World stuff gets the layers and layers of redundancy…the Walking Through The Woods stuff can be much more freestyle.

Anyway, that’s the plan – ten each of the important thundertoys. Keep ’em identical, scatter ’em around, keep tabs on them, and hopefully thirty years from now I’ll just hand ’em off to someone I like.

ETA: I should also mention ten is MY Magic Number. You may have your own. Or you may have none at all. But, for me, I’m going with ten…you pick whatever number you think works for you. You go do your own thing, man.

It never stops

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In, of all places, the bloody shower….

:::ring:::
:::ring:::
:::ring:::
::rii…”What!?”

“Want a Rugger 556?”
“How much?”
“[price]”
“Dammit.”

I had about fifteen minutes before I had to be somewhere but that was enough time to go to the bank, grab cash, head to the store, and literally walk in the door, hand the guy the money, say “thanks”, grab the box, and walk out. Total time on target: less than 60 seconds.[1]

So, yeah, this happened:

But for $450 it’d be pretty hard to pass up. I’ll function fire it this weekend and then put it back in the box and probably stick it in the rafters or something as a beyond-tertiary backup AR.

The Ruger 556 has a slight ‘bargain’ feel to it with it’s milled front sight tower, but I’d take it over a Palmetto, Delton, Core, or other lower-end AR for the same money. And, yes, that’s green cerakote finish..Model #8504.

 

1 = Yes, there was no paperwork on this transaction. He simply moves it from his license to my license so there’s no real paperwork like a 4473 or anything for me to deal with. I’ll log it into my my book and then write a 4473 to get it off my books to me as a personal gun.

Tourniquets

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Man, I remember years ago when tourniquets were considered some ghastly relic of bygone days and that using one was pretty much a one-way trip to having to buy only one shoe or one glove for the rest of your life.

Tourniquet Use Should Be One of Your Basic First Aid Skills

Now they’ve come into their own, and utilized current technologies, to become kinda de rigueur for ‘serious’ first aid kits.

And, in typical fashion, the Chinese have wound up making low-quality knockoffs of the higher-end stuff.

  • https://www.cbsnews.com/news/counterfeit-tourniquets-could-cause-catastrophic-consequences/
  • https://medium.com/homeland-security/a-fake-tourniquet-could-cost-your-life-e095821c61f0
  • https://www.jems.com/articles/2015/08/counterfeit-tourniquets-found-in-new-hampshire.html?c=1
  • http://soldiersystems.net/2017/03/27/caveat-emptor-counterfeit-tourniquets-remain-an-issue/

Yeah, its kinda-sorta old news, but it’s worth a reminder since, periodically, we all update our various FAK’s or create new ones and the last thing you want is critical gear like that failing because you tried to save ten bucks by buying it from a no-name seller on Amazon or Ebay. I like saving money as much as the next guy, but for stuff that’s going to be keeping me somewhat alive  I’ll spend the extra money and order straight from the manufacturer.

Outage

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I was talking to a guy from New Zealand today and he pointed out that Britain’s largest export is independence days…. they’ve created something like 90 of them. I was amused.

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Had some good rain the other day. For some reason my part of town lost power and I had to haul out the generator. Second time in the last three years I’ve actually needed the thing for a genuine event. Function? Worked great. Had internet and television. The battery backup for the security cams worked fine as well, although I need to disable that annoying warning beep that keep playing the whole time…as if I’m not going to notice that the power is off.

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It was about this time last year we had the ‘big” earthquake. Definitely a reminder that I might need to do some special disaster-specific preps like tying down that other hot water heater.

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Hope you all had a good Independence Day and got to the range.

 

Not being there

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A trending topic in the survivalist blogosphere (the Preppersphere?) has been the old classic “When the world comes to an end, I’ll just go to your place” scenario. [ 1, 2 ] If you’ve been into preparedness for any amount of time, you’ve heard that line from someone. Usually they say it jokingly because if they realy thought the world could come to an end they’d get off their butts and get ready themselves. But they don’t think its going to happen, so they think they can just say pithy and clever things like that and be funny.

Unfortunately, once the forced good-natured grins leave our faces we think to ourselves “Well crap…how am I going to deal with this?” On the very rare occasions someone says something like that to me, my reply is to usually either say “Knock yourself out. I won’t be here”, or, more often, “wouldn’t it make more sense for you to just take similar precautions?”

Obviously, not telling someone that you’ve got a secret life as Burt Gummer Jr. would be a good way to go. But…sometimes you can’t help it. Close friends fade away over time, people you trust  surprise you, the electrician notices the garage full of stuff when he’s wiring in your transfer switch, the neighbors see the UPS guy dropping those big blue barrels off, etc, etc. Try, but it’s still a tough secret to keep.

I know very few people who aren’t into preparedness, so I don’t worry about it too much. I don’t think I’d have much trouble turning away strangers, it’s the casual friends and the like that might be an issue. Easiest solution? Don’t be there. Throw the remaining gear into the vehicle and head for the Beta Site.

But, between Everything Is Fine and Gotta Go Now Now Now, there’s a continuum.. take, for example, a windstorm that comes through and knocks down some power lines. Electricity is going to be out for only a day or two…three, tops, but your causal work buddy would like to camp out in your yard  since you’ve got power from your generator and hot food and showers because of that 500 gallon propane tank behind your garage. It’s not the end of the world exactly….but he wants your help. Yea? Nay? Or it becomes more pronounced…and it’s a week without power. Does that change your willingness to host the less prepared?

There’s always that chorus that says “If someone said to me they were going to come to my place when the world ends, I’d tell them I’d [shoot them/eat them/keep their women and send the men away/similar tough-guy talk]” but you can’t really think that’ll dissuade anyone.

Keeping a very low-profile would certainly help. The neighbors are less likely to come knocking on your door if they think you’re just as bad off as they are. It would also help if they didn’t know that the person living next door to them was a survivalist.

I mean, if I have a 12-month supply for two people of something, someone bringing themselves and another person (or more) knock me down to 6-months…just like that. Why, in the name of Crom, would I willingly cut my margin of safety in half (or worse)?

Like I said, my favorite plan to deal with the “when the world comes to an end….” issue is to simply not be there when it happens. When the distant family members, faded-from-history friends, and other arms-length people come to the doorstep I hope I’m far away.

I should mention, there’s a few (really, really, really, small few) people I’d take in but it’s a number small enough to count on the fingers on one hand of a careless woodworker. It’s easier to try and convert those people rather than explain to them why you don’t want them in your lifeboat. But, it’s even easier to just not deal with them at all by being elsewhere.

Spring cleaning

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So we’re now at the stage where the days are getting shorter instead of longer. Man, where did this year go? When I was a kid the days just crawled by…now they whip by so fast. :::sigh:::

Summer is, for the most part, here in Montana. Now’s the time for the warm weather tasks that need doing. Most importantly its time to do some spring cleaning and get stuff neatened up. It’s alot easier to do that sort of thing when you can leave the doors open so you can haul stuff out of the house… can’t do that when its ten degrees out.

I had to shuffle alot of stuff around to accommodate the plumbing adventure a few weeks back and it just emphasized that I really need to get rid of junk thats been piling up. Broken power tools, scraps of lumber, things like that.

I envy people that can have an entire building or two on their property to dedicate to storing stuff. Someday I’ll have a place like that, but for now it’s a bit of a challenge utilizing space as efficiently as possible.

My weekdays are a hot mess, but the weekend should give me a chance to get stuff moved around if I can get my butt out of bed nice and early.

I suspect theres a couple more sets of wire shelving from CostCo in my future.