Email for detail.
Link – Great-grandmother survives 5 days stranded in mountains with her cat
Stayed with the car and survived. She accidentally had food and ‘blanket’ materials with her. Even without a dedicated survival kit she had one thing that every person who is going to survive a disaster must have: presence of mind.
“I keep myself very calm, which surprised me. Of course, if you raise 5 kids, you know,” she said with a smile. “What will be, will be. You just got to accept it.”
That resourcefulness helped her survive, as she fashioned a makeshift blanket from clothes her granddaughter had given her for donations.
She also melted snow in a can on her dashboard during the day, and she rationed sweet rolls and Rice Krispie treats to two bites a day, wondering if she would have to eat her cat’s food to keep from starving.
It is hoped that she will have learned a lesson and think twice about deviating from her planned route and will have a better stash of food/water and blankets in her car. Spring is kinda sorta here in the mountains, although there’s still plenty of snow higher up….but you can still get stuck pretty easily if you wander too far off the asphalt and think “I’ve got all-wheel-drive…this thing can go anywhere.”
Moral of the story: Stay with the vehicle. Have gear.
Fortune favors the cheap
Kinda been having a hankering for meatloaf this week. Thing is, have you seen the prices on ground beef these days? Outrageous. But, I figured I’d hit the remaindered meat bin at my local Albertsons. And, to my surprise, there was this:
Now, let’s do some math. Those are 3# rolls of ground beef. They are on sale at $5.99 per ‘log’. Let’s not split hairs and call it $2/#. They are marked down to 30% off since they need to get it our before it hits expiration. Hmm… lets see how many there are…1..2…3…..10. So thats 10 x 3# @ $2/#, or, another way, it’s 30# of ground beef for $60. That’s a pretty good deal. But….I bet they’d like to get rif of all of it. I wander to the guy in the butchers apron cleaning the meat case.
“Howdy. Is the meat department manager around?”
“No, he goes home at 4pm. Can I help you?”
“Can you point me at someone who has the authority to change prices?”
“I can do it if it’s on something that we already have marked down and today is the expiration date.”
Achievement unlocked…..
“Excellent. Let’s talk money. If you’ll mark these down to 50% off, I’ll take all of them.”
“All of them?”
“All of them.”
“I can call the manager at home.”
“Awesome. I’ll wait.”
And thats how you get this:
And to put that in perspective, thats 30# of ground beef at $0.998/#. That’s right, less than a buck a pound for dead cow flesh.
How does this relate to preparedness? Well, for starters, my deep freeze now has another 30# of meat in it at dang near Carter-era prices. With ground beef hanging in there around $3.99/# that frees up $90 to go towards other foodstuffs. These sorts of deals are out there, man. You just gotta look and you can’t be embarassed to ask the manager (or whomever has the authority) if they’re willing to make a deal if you take a big enough amount.
It’s a rare thing for me to feel pride in anything I do, but I am a wee bit satisfied with myself on this one.
Taurus AR-15
Hmm…this can open up a deliciously diabolical philosophical debate: it’s the end of the world and you can only grab one of two guns – either a HiPoint 9mm carbine or the Taurus AR.
I can literally jump into my email and order, right this moment, at least three different American-made AR’s for less than $600 ea. Even when you drift into MSRP country, you can still get a decent AR for less than $750. Taurus is going to have to price their product significantly below that if they want to capture any share of the AR market, IMO.
And, according to this source, the MSRP is $1200. Madness.
My experience with Taurus has been almost nil. Taurus is, to me, one of those guns you buy only if you literally have no other option. (Or you want a disposable gun to leave someplace where it might get lost/stolen/destroyed.) I had a buddy with one of their Beretta 92 clones and it was a decent enough gun, but with trade in Berettas going for around $350 these days why bother South American quality control and non-standard magazines?
Oh, thats right…I’m one of those ‘yuppie survivalists’ who can’t grasp the real issues the way ‘us working men’ do. Hey, if ‘yuppie’ means I’m willing to make the sacrifices to buy quality gear the first time around, so be it. There’s a solution to not being able to afford ‘yuppie survivalist’ gear – either earn more money or spend less money elsewhere.
Thus far I haven’t seen any of these Taurus AR’s floating around, and my vendors don’t show them at the moment, but it will be interesting to see how they are received. The AR market is already pretty saturated, and unless you’re bringing something new to the table it is going to be hard, I would think, to draw any appreciable market share unless you have a radically different pricing schedule.
The AR market is such right now that you can buy two brand-name AR carbines for what you’d pay for one of those Taurii at MSRP. The only reason to spend more than a grand on an AR these days is if it has some really sweet options on it…match triggers, special furniture, high-end scope and mount, etc, etc. Right now, though, you can get rack-grade M4geries all day long for less money than I’ve seen them go for in a long time.
Remington gets into the non-NFA shotgun game
While I’m still not 100% sure there’s a niche in a person’s personal armory to be filled by this thing (other than ‘fun gun’), I’ll probably still get one or two anyway. I like the idea of tweaking ATFE’s nose by following the letter of the law.
I am still waiting for my vendors to get the Mossberg Shockwave in stock so I can get one to play with. As I said, questionable utility but looks like a fun gun to play with.
Amusement
From the same guy that brought you:
Ronald Reagan riding a flag-waving velociraptor while one-arming an MP7
Flag-waving Teddy Roosevelt one-arming an M60 at a raging bigfoot
and a min-gun-toting Geo. Washington..
Comes this:
What amuses me most is the American eagle with the AA-12 mounted on it. Nice touch.
Link – What I Learned Living off a 30 Day Emergency Supply of Food
Interesting series of posts.
Not all 30-day kits are the same, though. The Wise brand kits turn up in Costco and a few other places, and I’ve not really heard anyone say too many nice things about them. Mountain House makes a few different kits and most people are have neutral/good comments about them. Augason Farms makes a 30-day kit that I recommend as an entry-level way to try a variety of their products. It’s a broad selection of small cans (not pouches) with about 20 different items. I catch these on sale every once in a while and they make outstanding gifts.
Mountain House offers a few variations on this theme…2-, 3-, 4-, 5, and 14-day kits of pouches. I’ve sold the 3-day kits before and they’re an attractive and convenient option. (By the by –$50 Rebate when you buy the 14-Day Emergency Food Supply + Free Shipping!
All these kits, and this is touched on in the link at the begining of this post, are best when you use them to supplement or augment an existing stockpile of food. Rice, pasta, grain, whatever….these kits help stretch things out and prevent appetite fatigue.
In my opinion, where these kits really shine is in portability. If you have just got to go, go, go and it’s a matter of taking whatever you can grab and throw in the back of the truck in five minutes, thats where these things shine.
Anyway, I’ve seen a few people online do similar types of ‘dietary challenges’ and I thought it would be interesting to bring it to everyones attention.
Scenes from the neighborhood
Another reason I love living in Montana –
Doorbell rings and it’s my neighbor from across the street. He hands me a couple containers of Accurate #9 and Accurate 1680 and says “Here. I don’t load anything anymore that uses these.”
See, that’s the sorta thing that gets me taking the snowblower to your sidewalk in the winter for free.
Multiple purchase dispositions
A couple years back I touched on what exactly (in Montana) happens when you fill out the ‘yellow sheet’ 4473 form when you buy a gun. Succinctly, nothing happens. Your name isn’t added to a big .gov file somewhere with a list of what you bought. Doesn’t happen here. (In your state, it may be different.)
But…there is a scenario where .gov does get all that info.
Remember this? Well, a guy came in and bought five of those from me last week. Three on a Monday, and two on a Wednesday. So, he bought more than one handgun within five business days from the same dealer….that gets a special form sent, within 24 hours, to the fedgoons.
It’s called the 3310.4 Report of Multiple Sale or Other Disposition of Pistols and Revolvers form. It asks for the info off the 4473 and also includes the specifics of what was purchased. This form then has to be transmitted to ATFE and your local CLEO within 24 hours. The gal at the sheriff’s office told me they’ve never had anyone come and ask about the forms. ATFE, on the other hand, takes a more pro-active role.
SO, in case you didnt know, next time you feel like buying a six-pack of handguns from one source, try not to do it within five business days of each other. Or, better yet, buy them in a private sale.
This has been a public service announcement.
New stuff from Repackbox.com
I got a postcard in the mail the other day (who sends real mail these days??) from repackbox.com telling me that they’ve expanded their product line to include boxes for more calibers of ammo.
What is repackbox.com? Well, they sell a few useful cardboard products that have appeal to those of us who keep ammo onhand. What I’ve been getting from them are cardboard boxes to store ammo in.
Every so often I find deals on ‘bulk’ ammo. Bulk ammo is just that – bulk. You buy a thousand rounds of ammo you dont get a nice cardboard box with fifty little boxes of 20 rounds each. Nope, you get a big ol’ polybag or box filled with loose cartridges. 
Great savings, but not exactly easy to store. When the zombies are massing at the barricades the last thing you want to be doing is counting ammo into little ziploc baggies and handing them to your buddies. Repackbox gives you small cardboard boxes, appropriately sized to a particular cartridge, so you can have your ammo organized, neat, and ready for the apocalypse. Case in point: a guy came into the shop and sold me a .50 can full of loose 7.62×39 ammo. I’m not just sticking a can of a thousand loose rounds on the shelf…grabbed a stack of 7.62×39 boxes and a little while later everything was neat, organized, and ready for the apocalypse.
The advantage? Plastic ammo boxes are great, but they aren’t cheap. The cardboard boxes are cheap enough that you can hand out ammo to your buddies at the range or at the rally point and not feel like you’re throwing away money. Also, inexpensive storage boxes are hard to find for some calibers. Repackbox just came out with boxes in a buncha new calibers inc. .30-06, .303 brit., 7.62x54R (better than those string-n-paper bundles you get outta the spam can), and, of interest to me, .30-30.
Although I don’t talk about it much, I like the .30-30. My like for it stems from the fact that after the ubiquitous .22 rifle, the .30-30 carbine is probably the most common rifle in many parts of the country (although the SKS may have supplanted that for a while…but since the days of the cheap Chinese SKS are long behind us….) I rather like the .30-30 in an unltralight single shot Contender carbine, but there are still several million Winchester and Marlin rifles out there. (And Savages and other brands as well.) So…I stock a decent amount of .30-30 and now have a convenient way to package it for distribution and storage.
I’m also a huge fan of he old ‘military style; 50-round ammo boxes. Repackbox makes these for .45 ACP as well as other calibers. Extremely handy.
Since I have a Dillon 1050RL sitting on the bench, I can whip out a lot of ammo in a couple hours. There is very little more satisfying than watching the boxes of ammo stack up like bricks as I package the ammo for storage.
Check ’em out.