A while back I purchased some LifeStraws from CostCo. The next week the price dropped by ten bucks. Oh well, thought I, thats life. Until this arrived in the mail:

(Don’t be an idiot…the knife is there to cover the address the letter was sent to.)

Mind you, I didn’t go to CostCo and complain and demand a refund for the difference. Nope. They went through their records, all on their own, looking for folks who purchased this product within that window of time.

So the obvious thing is that a person would see this as a good thing. And, it is. But it’s also an excellent example of the fact (as proven here) that CostCo tracks and keeps records of everything you purchase. Your first inclination might be to think you could beat the system by using a Gift Card..but someone has to buy that gift card, and that card is recorded as a purchase by them…so youre kinda back to square one.

Now, CostCo is not usually my first choice for preps….about all I get that might raise an eyebrow are large amounts of toilet paper and batteries. But, they do sell long-term storage food online and I’ve no doubt that that is something you really don’t need to have people keeping tabs on.

So..yeah, buy from CostCo…just don’t buy stuff in a manner that someone could look at last weekends shopping trip and say “Hmm…looks like someone is hoarding against the apocalypse. Better notify the authorities.”

Sitting on the couch watching TV at 10pm and there’s an odd noise in the background. Hmmm. I mute the television and hear a sound of….water? The hairs on my neck stand up and that little adrenaline rush bumps me from ready-for-bed to red-alert mode.

When you live in the same house for a number of years you become very attuned to the sounds of your surroundings. You know what noises are supposed to occur (or not occur) and when. This was a ‘something is not right noise’. It took about six seconds for me to run through the possibilities and then I was bolting down the stairs to the basement where, even before I saw it and heard it I could smell it…water.

We had snow during the week and the temperatures dropped abruptly. I wasnt ready for it and didnt turn off the water to the outside spigots. One of them cracked and a high-pressure jet of water was doing its thing.

I immediately grabbed the main shutoff lever and swung it closed. That solved the immediate problem. It also turned off the water to the entire house. But…with the immediate problem taken care of, now was the time to look closer.

The outside spigot branches off from the main water line and has it’s own shutoff as well. I closed that off and re-opened the main. Water was back to the rest of the house and the outside spigot line was isolated and shut off. I’ll deal with it in the spring. In the meantime, damage control.

I had always been concerned about pipe breakage in the basement so I shielded all my stored preps that were near any pipes. I also never put anything that was susceptible to water damage anywhere lower than a foot and a half off the floor. So, yeah, a few cardboard boxes of Pmags got soaked but while the boxes are a soggy mess, the mags are fine. I’ve a fan running down there now to dry out things but the bigger issue is: if I had gone to bed early, this thing would have run all night. How can I be alerted to such a failure in the future.

Well, first step, is I should have shut off the outside water two weeks ago. That was the biggest fail. But after that, unless I’m taking a stroll through my basement once a day, I need some alert systems. So..off to Amazon to pick up water alarms. Additionally, since I have plenty of unused ‘channels’ on the security cams, I’m going to dedicate a camera or two to keeping an eye on the basement.

All in all, it could have been a lot worse. But it could have been a lot better too.

“Experience is a dear teacher, but fools will learn at no other.” – B. Franklin

Buddy of mine gets a call from his 30-year old son. Son shot an elk 6.5 miles off the road in the backcountry and needs help hauling it out.

Turns out, the young man and his buddy were out bowhunting and shot this elk 6.5 miles off the road…at the end of the day. No way they were going to get it out in the dark, so they gutted it and prepared to spend the night outdoors. They built a fire and had their cheesy little space blankets so all was…ok. Next day, both their phones are at 2% from constantly looking for a signal. Neither guy thought to bring a small charger with them. And, most critically, after starting to haul the elk out, they had no water to drink. The place was lousy with creeks but they wouldnt drink from the creeks unfiltered.

Dad shows up, finally, after playing Marco Polo with handgun fire to locate each other. When he finds them, theyre both exhausted, theyve stopped sweating, and son is shaking from dehydration.

It was at this point I interjected that I had given dad one of these as a Paratus gift, and he needs to hustel junior and his buddy up to CostCo and buy a few for their hunting packs. If theyd had one of these things they could have drunk their fill from any of the creeks they were crossing. I always carry one of these in my bag anytime I’m out in the field.

Same thing for whistles. I always have at least two loud-as-funk whistles…one in my bag and one on my person. Thats the easiest and most efficient way to do that Marco Polo where-the-heck-are-you dance short of having a radio.

And speaking of electronics, I also carry a small battery pack to recharge my phone off of. Sometimes theres no signal when youre out in the sticks, but more often than not you can get a signal these days.

I would have thought his kid knew better, but I guess not. Moral of the story: even if youre not planning on spending the night afield, have some gear with you just in case.

Why do newbies at the gun range flinch? I mean, we tell them what to expect, we warm them up with .22’s, we show them how to properly hold their gun….and when they pull the trigger..:::flinch:::.

Well,, there’s a really good reason. We’re used to it so we often don’t even think about it, but for a new shooter the biggest thing on their mind is that an enormous explosion is about to take place in the hands right in front of their face.

A lifetime of shooting kinda makes you forget that. At least, until you get an unpleasant reminder that, yes, there’s a metric buttload of kinetic violence happening right in front of your nose:

I hate wearing safety glasses at the range, but you can bloody well  believe that I’m going to do it anyway. This guy is alive only because he had someone at the range to haul his bleeding ass to a hospital while he pinched his own severed artery shut. I usually shoot by myself..I’d have been found a few miles down the road, bled out all over the steering wheel.

Moral of the story: safety gear sucks but what happens when you don’t wear it is infinitely worse.  The apocalypse is gonna be difficult enough with two working eyes and a skull without additional holes in it….why make it harder than has to be?

I suppose another moral of the story is: don’t shoot ammo of unknown pedigree…especially if such ammo is some monstrous high-pressure number like a .50BMG.

There are a lot of guys on YouTube with gun channels who engage in somewhat…..questionably reckless…..gunplay ‘for the views’. Usually its somewhat harmless….but there’s always someone who has to buy 250# of Tannerite, or make a stack of engine blocks to shoot, or decide to see if a lathe turned bullet made out of [unicorn horn/titanium/polystyrene/granite] ‘will shoot’. This guy does a bit of that but it looks like the ammo is at fault here rather than the shooter. But the point remains: your detonating a grenade-equivalent a foot in front of your face. Take precautions.

H/T to the thoughtful Friend Of The Blog(tm) who sent me the link.