Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.

http://minisentryalarm.wordpress.com/

This landed in my email the other day: http://minisentryalarm.wordpress.com/

I actually built something very similar a few years back out of plumbing parts from Home Depot. Difference was, instead of using a nailgun blank, mine used a shotgun primer….to ignite cannon fuse.

Years ago a fella had a couple options for this sort of thing ‘artillery simulators’ or ‘boobytrap simulators’ were available from some of the usual mil-surp sources and they were ten shades of cool. They havent been offered in many years. For a number of years, outfits like CTD, Sportsmans Guide, BQ, etc, etc, offered a trip-wire system that would let off a 12 ga. blank. (Homemade version here) Those were great but I guess some folks modified them into ‘trap guns’ or somesuch and they disappeared from the matket, only to be replaced with a Nerfed-down version that uses a cyalume lightstick instead of a 12 ga. blank. Lame.

If you hunt around a bit, you can find some slightly different designs ( 1, 2, 3 ) being offered.

These arent new ideas…about a hundred years ago there used to be cool little devices called ‘trap guns’. They were nothing more that short barrels affixed to an ation and the trigger was usually a long rod with some food attached. Youd nail one of these things to a tree and when a critter came and niggled on the food, the trigger would be activated and the gun would go off…shooting the animal in the head. Sort of a ‘fishing yo-yo’ for mammals. Of course, there was always the chance you’d wind up shooting a neighbors stock or pet.

The designs eventually led to ‘sentry guns’ or ‘burglar guns’ that were a similar design and meant to be affixed to a window or door. When the window or door was opened, it would trip the action and a small (usually .22 or .32) blank would go off. Most of these were big in the pre-War era of the 1920′s or so. They turn up as novelties at gun shows from time to time.

If I had a chunk o’ property and I wanted a fairly maintenance-free warning system I’d probably get something similar to the 12 ga. systems, but scale it up to 26.5mm, and a length of tubing to act as a barrel, and make sure I have a clear shot through the tree camopy and use 26.5mm flares. Illumination and warning at the same time…nothing makes folks freeze in their tracks like that popping noise and suddenly finding your stealthy ninja-approach illuminated in that ghostly flicker of a parachute flare.

Probably in about ten years even this stuff’ll be obsolete. We’ll have tiny copters the size of a deck of playing cards that will patrol our perimeters giving live-feed video. Or they’ll just have a few grams of explosive on board and a kamikaze subroutine when an intruder is detected. Seriously. You know someone somewhere is developing one of these things in their garage right now.

Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.

Man, I’ve been busy lately. It’s just non-stop work, work, work lately. These sorts of episodes of high-demand don’t happen very often (thankfully) but when they do you have to strike while the iron is hot. So..this is why I haven’t been around much lately. however, that doesnt mean that there arent things going on…….

I picked up one of these the other day to go along with the marker panel from the same outfit. It’s made of glass (albeit thick glass) so it may not be as unbreakable as other signal mirrors out there but its hard to beat the reflectivity of a good glass mirror. I’d been shopping around for a signal mirror to put in my little survival kit for when Im hunting/fishing and I just wasnt finding anything that I really thought was any good. I picked up a few of the non-glass mirrors from countycomm and while they would probably do the job, I have a hard time finding anything thats as good as old-fashioned breakable glass.

I need to do some empirical research and see just how visible these mirror flashes are at a distance. next time the wife takes the dog for a run up the nearby mountain I’ll have her call me from the top and tell me if she can spot the flashes from up there. I would imagine reflected sunlight must be rather highly visible at range since the military used to use heliographs for communications.

Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.

The usual article about a shelter manufacturer with comments about the customer demographic being ‘scared and nervous’ people.

I take issue with the term ‘paranoia’ being tossed about. Being worried about civil disorder or WWIII isn’t any more paranoid than being worried about a house fire or a car accident. It’s simply another form of insurance against those things.

Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.

For Chrismahanakwanzakah I received, among other things, a nice down jacket. I’d been wanting something that I could compress down to about the size of a Foster’s can and tuck away in my bag. I was up at REI looking to buy some sort of stuff sack for it and stumbled into a closeout sale. I really wasnt looking for anything but this flashlight caught my eye. (I’m a sucker on a deal for a good flashlight.) It’s the Fenix E11LED flashlight. (Fenix 105 Lumens Flashlight) What jumped out at me was that it was a good output (100 lumens), had the usual tailcap switch, had two brightness levels and..this was the clincher….ran on a single AA batt.

Now, I love my SureFire lights. While I understand that performance does not come cheap, there are times I don’t need a $100 flashlight that uses $4 batteries…..like when I’m picking up Nuke waste on our midnight walks. The Fenix E11 was on sale for $19.95 so I grabbed one. I figured it would be a good ‘disposable’ flashlight and if I liked it I would get a few more to salt away in my various packs and bags.

Loaded it up with a new Duracell AA and was mightily impressed. I like this little flashlight. It throws a somewhat unfocussed beam thats good for about 50′, is very compact, has a lanyard attachment, and uses cheap readily available AA batts. I’m liking this light a lot.

Biggest drawback is that it is, dammit, Made In China. Of course, thats also why it was $20 and not $120. I’m gonna have to go get a few more, a package of lithium AA batts, and these will be the flashlights I leave in the truck and shop kits. It’s not something that will replace my primary lights, which are SureFire and MagLite, but for those times when I want a light that I dont care if it gets lost or damaged this would be an excellent choice.

On Amazon they go for about 1/3 more than what I paid but you’d save that after a few battery changes where you weren’t paying for expensive CR123 batts. So far, Im very, very pleased with this light.

To my surprise and delight, one of these (Streamlight 73001 Nano Light Miniature Keychain LED Flashlight, Black) showed up in my mailbox a week ago…a gift from a thoughtful reader. (….who now gets a shout-out and sincere thank you from yours truly.) Normally, I like the little Photon microlights for keychain/zipperpull lights. But…I’m mightily impressed with this little Streamlight. The major negative review about it is that the twist-to-turn-on/off head can twist a little too easily and come on in your pocket. This wasnt a big deal for me since I planned on using it as a zipperpull, but buried in the reviews on Amazon was a comment from a fella telling how he removed the head, wrapped a little teflon tape around the threads, put the head back on and the problem of the too-easy-to-twist was solved.

This is an excellent light for finding your keys/keyhole in the dark, looking for stuff in your truck at night, etc, etc. Best part is that the darn thing is always with you if you have it hooked to your zipper. The wife an I were unloading the truck in the dark and I let her use it…she was so impressed with it she got on her computer and ordered up five more for her other coats and jackets. She doesn’t get excited easily about preparedness toys so this must be a really good piece of gear. Use itty bitty coin batteries but at about $7 per light, I’m rating these as ‘disposable’ although if you wanna buy a buncha those little batteries you can certainly replace then. Battery life is said to be about eight hours…that’s a long time whe you think about the intermittent use of a product like this.

Anyway, two really cool, really handy lights that I thought I’d bring to your attention.

(Did I mention the E11 takes a single AA batt? Thats my favorite thing about it!)

Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.

Went to the Kalispell gun show today. I saw no AR on dealers tables for less than $2k. That doesn’t mean any of them were selling at that price, as evidenced by the fact that the ARs were still there…but thats what they were asking. No AK’s for less than $1k. And even SKS rifles were up in the stratosphere. There was one lone PTR-91 for $2100. Cheapest AR mags were about $30 ea. I saw absolutely nothing I would want to spend money on.

Cool part was that I found a little gun/preparedness shop on my way back. Last time I was in Kalispell, there was a new gun shop being set up. That was six months ago so I figured I’d go see what it was like. To my delight, it was a small gun shop with a large emphasis on preparedness…they had #10 cans from MountainHouse, AlpineAire, etc, first aid supplies, Gamma Seal lids, buckets, books, etc, etc, etc. Prices were good on some stuff, not so good on others. The Mountain House cans were at a pretty good price, though. If youre up in that neck of the woods, it’s Big Bear Firepower 115 Main St., Kalispell.