Tag Archives: video

Erbswurst case scenario

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There has always been a need for compact forms of food that you could stuff in a pack for times when you were cut off from resupply and had to make do with only what you had on you, or what you could find locally. The Germans apparently approached this with erbswurst…a compressed ration of pea meal and other things that, when dissolved in a canteen cup full of hot water, allowed the user to make a soup. Personally, it seems rather unappealing to me but I suppose if your stuck in Stalingrad watching your comrades eat dead horses, it might not seem too bad.

Today, of course, we have MRE’s, freezedrieds, and even simple off-the-shelf soup products that are leaps and bounds ahead of the technology that brought us erbswurst. But… it’s an interesting concept. If a person had access to on of those consumer-grade freeze driers you could make some pretty impressive fare. Here are a couple videos on the subject:

It’s not too hard to imagine the plethora of items found in a modern supermarket that might lend themselves to this sort of thing. The trick is to keep the main principles as the fore: compactness, longevity, and nutrition.

This was actually addressed in a product that came out of WW2 …MPF…a fascinating product with a fascinating backstory: A nalgene bottle full of that stuff would probably duplicate (or exceed) the nutritional value of erbswurst and be a tad more versatile. That MPF, by the way, can be replicated at home.

For running out the door on your way to the boogaloo, a bag of a few days worth of freeze drieds takes virtually no weight and very little space. The more hidebound might go with a few tins of meat and that sort of thing. But wandering around a supermarket sometime, with a careful eye, might reveal some interesting choices for the ‘iron rations’ to keep in your gear. But…the Germans did it first, apparently.

Video – Debt ceiling explained

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The video is ten years old, so the numbers have changed…upwards…but the reasoning still seems relatable.

Unless there is a bout of hyperinflation, or another World War, it’s going to be mathematically impossible to pay off the national debt. Now, whether or not any level of national debt is a good or bad thing is something to mull over. But what irks me is how, even at the municipal level, the answer is always ‘raise taxes’ and never ‘cut spending’.

Video – How long could you survive in a supermarket

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If you remember the fast-zombie movie, 28 Days Later, there was a scene where the survivors find a supermarket and load up. One of the interesting things in the scene was that the irradiated produce held up much better than the non-irradiated. On a side note, irradiated produce is far more common in Europe than it is in the US because, it seems, we in the US have a knee-jerk reaction to the word ‘irradiated’. If you knew how much stuff in this country is sterilized through irradiation (esp. in the medical industry) I think you’dbe quite surprised.

Anyway, its a trope of apocalypse fiction that survivors either a) find supermarkets that are looted and beyond salvage or b) spared from looting and are treasure trove of unimaginable stores. Which raises an interesting question: if you had a supermarket all to yourself, how long would you be able to survive? Well, someone did the math:

I very much like the fact that they address the issue of food spoilage for the dairy and deli counters. But I think that if you hit the home canning aisle, and then the housewares aisle, you could at least get enough gear to water-bath can some of the produce. If they had a pressure canner on the rack in the home canning aisle you’d be freakin’ golden.

Realistically, I doubt getting locked inside a supermarket is an actual apocalypse thing. Even in post-apocalyptic fiction you’d have to do some pretty deus ex machina to contrive a logical reason for people to be locked in a supermarket (Stephen King’s “The Mist” not withstanding). More likely, you’d have survivors ‘own’ the supermarket and guard it as an extremely high-value resource…assuming they don’t start methodically taking the contents back to their stronghold.

But, if you were forced to stay in a supermarket, how long would you be able to keep from starving? TL;DR = 63 years.

I can’t think of any disaster that would preclude me from being able to otherwise source food for 63 years but…good to know that if I hit the local Safeway as the sole survivor of..whatever…I can cross ‘food’ off my list for the rest of my life.

Video – G3 – HK91 – PTR91 to 500yds: Practical Accuracy

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Came across this video about the accuracy potential of the G3 clones and was pretty impressed. 500 yards with open sights is not a cakewalk under any circumstance.

The G3 platform has two things going for it: rugged, brute reliability and the complete lack of a gas system. What it has going against it is literally everything else. SO, why do I have so many of them? Well, the choices for a .308 ‘battle rifle’ are mighty limited – M1A, FAL, AR-10, and this thing. Yes, there’s all sorts of boutique and niche guns like a Galil or a Saiga but we’re talking about guns that are common enough that you can find them (and their logistics) fairly easy. I went with the G3 platform because mags were a buck each. Even used FAL mags were ten bucks, M1A mags (if you could find a reputable aftermarket maker) were twice that, and AR-10 mags weren’t standardized so it was anyone’s guess what your gun took.

If I had to do it all over again, now that Magpul makes AR-10 mags, I’d go with the AR-10 for it’s best-in-class ergonomics. Do I like it enough to sell my PTR’s? Nope. But I wouldn’t turn down a nice AR-10 if one came my way. And it’s nice to see that with the basic iron sights this thing will still ring the bell at 500 yards…at least, for that guy it did. But he shoots way more than I do.

Video – Rob a CCW class. What could possibly go wrong.

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I mean, technically there is nothing funny about this video. But still….
You try to rob a class full of people who are taking a concealed firearms course, and then you try to get stabby with the po-po. Is there anyone…I mean anyone…who cannot imagine what happens next.

Here’s the interesting part. There are people out there walking the streets who think that trying to rob a roomful of gun-carrying people while only armed with a screwdriver is a perfectly reasonable plan. That level of stupidity, coupled with the disregard for personal safety and .. you know…the law….makes this Darwin winner a very dangerous animal. His victim selection model did the rest.

It’s a wild world, baby.

YouTubing

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Broadlu speaking, there’s only three channels I follow on YouTube – Gun Jesus, InrangeTV (a collaborative project with Gun Jesus and one of his buddies), and the questionably entertaining but usually informative Nutnfancy. Someone posted a comment with a link to this persons channel and I thought some of it was worth watching, and, frankly, gunbunnies and survivalbabes are always interesting….so, I added this one to my list.

I’m the most optimistic survivalist you’ll ever meet….I don’t foresee a mandatory-attendance-nationwide-impromptu-3-gun-match (aka Civil War 2: Electric Boogaloo) actually taking place (although I do love the memes). But whatever you stockpile to give you an edge in the big igloo will, by extension, be pretty darn in handy in 90% of every other flavor of apocalypse. So…vidoes like these have some merit.

I don’t necessarily agree with everything in this video…or any video, actually. But there’s always some wheat mixed in with the chaff and watching chicks who are on the same wavelength as us is always fun.

Video – 1911 vs. M1 Carbine

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As you know, the M1 Carbine was never supposed to be a replacement for the M1 rifle. Rather, the purpose of the M1 Carbine was to give people who normally don’t carry a full-size rifle (radiomen, mortar crews, messengers, truck drivers, etc.) something more efficient than a pistol. Basically, the idea wasn’t to replace the M1 Rifle, the goal was to replace the 1911 pistol for people who would, normally, only be carrying a pistol.

The 1911, like any pistol really, is challenging to shoot well under stress. A carbine is way easier to handle and get hits with under stress. Gun Jesus ran an impromptu course using both a 1911 and an M1 Carbine and the results are interesting.

As Chuck Connors pointed out in virtually every episode of his show, a short carbine with a pistol cartridge at pistol ranges will outperform a pistol pretty often. This seems to answer the age-old question of ‘what good is a pistol caliber carbine’. Or..does it?

An M1 Garand is about ten pounds. The M1 carbine was about half that. Obviously, theres a tremendous weight advantage. But….a 9mm carbine like a 9mm AR is virtually the same weight as…a .223 AR. So you get virtually no advantage.

You could say, though, that a 9mm AR pistol would be more compact and lighter than a .223 AR carbine and you’d be right. But then you could also just carry a .223 AR pistol and be right back to zero.

So, comparing apples to apples…..AR platform to AR platform..is a zero-sum game it seems. But as mentioned, the M1 Carbine wasnt meant to replace the M1 Garand, it was meant to replace the pistol. So…what about when you compare the 9mm carbine against the pistol? Thats where things would change. But…since you can get your 9mm AR carbine in .223, why not just use your .223 carbine?

It’s an interesting mental exercise. Almost anything you can do with a 9mm carbine you can do with a .223 carbine, so why take the ballistic penalty of being in 9mm? I gotta say, it’s hard to imagine a scenario where a 9mm carbine is a better choice than an M4. Easy to suppress and marginally lower recoil but after that…………..?

Having said that, though…I still like my 9mm carbines. I especially like my Ruger PC Charger which is probably the only format (an arm-braced ‘pistol’) that gives an advantage over the M4..namely, compactness.

Anyway, an interesting video although I’m not sure the implications it suggests are as relevant in a world of M4 carbines that ape the M1 Carbine in terms of length and weight.

Video – 10 Things That Would Happen if the United States Went Bankrupt

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In the book “The Mandibles: A Family , 2029-2047“, the US defaults on it’s national debt and all sorts of Bad Stuff happens. Its a very good book, in my opinion, except for the somewhat out-of-character ending.

Could the US actually default on it’s debt? What would happen? Well, here’s one limey’s interpretation:

The notion that a bankruptcy would kick off some type of Purge-like orgy of violence seems a bit dramatic. Crime go up? Sure. But unlike every other country that has gone through that sort of thing, there are enough people with guns in this country that a large part of the population would be quite a bit safer than the rest.  The problem with this sort of thing, as seen in places like Venezuela and similar venues, is that only the bad guys have guns. In ‘Murica, it’s a different story. I’m not saying its going to be all sunshine and stun grenades, but stuff like you see on the news in those Third World places? Mmmmm…not so much. Except for our own little pockets of Third World-like places such as New Orleans, any major California city, Detroit, etc.

Could the US go bankrupt? I don’t know enough about economics to say. But I do know this – when the US catches a cold, every other country sneezes. Just from a self-interest standpoint, it would be in the best interest of a lot of the planet to make sure the US doesn’t have something like that happen. That might mean a degree of debt forgiveness, renegotiation of terms, loans from the World Bank, etc, etc. I’m fairly confident what it won’t mean is hyperinflating our way out of it.

But…one never knows, does one? Which is why Zero had food, guns, and silver. And, really, probably why you should too.

 

Video – Dangerous Things Are Dangerous

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A very interesting video from Ian McCollum (aka ‘Gun Jesus’) detailing the time a trip to the range put a chunk of shrapnel in his chest.

There’s a lot in here about the importance of medical training and equipment when you spend a bunch of time out in the desert shooting hundred year old machine guns. However, whats really interesting is something that is sort of oblique to the main issue – how do you direct help to your location when you’re “in the middle of nowhere”?

The range I shoot at is an established shooting range in the sense that if you called 911 and said “Im at the So-N-So Range” they would know where that is and how to get there. But, what about when you go off the beaten path? At that point, you’re going to have to try and meet folks halfway by getting your bleeding butt to some sort of common rally point that the medics actually can find.

While I try to maintain a pretty decent degree of situational awareness I am surprised to say that when I go hunting I never take a moment to notice what mile marker I’m parking at when I disembark and make my way into the timber. It occurs to me that I need to take note of the sort of information that would come in handy if I had to call for assistance if I got hurt out in the sticks. It would be nice to be able to tell the dispatcher “Yeah, its along Highway 200, just after mile marker 27 theres a logging road heading east. Im parked four miles up that road.”

Of course, I also usually carry a couple signalling devices (flare/smoke) so that “close” becomes “close enough”.

It’s always a good idea to have an exit strategy and to ‘begin with the end in mind’. Which means when heading out into the sticks I need to start thinking about “what if”. Obviously I carry a certain amount of gear in case things go sideways, but I need to start being more cognizant of where I am and how I would direct others to that location. While I know how to use UTM coords, I wonder if the 911 people would have a clue.

Regardless, an interesting video to watch and a reminder that shooting guns can sometimes turn dangerous and therefore it’s always a good idea to have some gear (and training) to stay on top of things in case someone gets a hole punched in them.

Speaking of Gun Jesus, have you guys seen his Kickstarter? The man wrote a book that he hoped might garner $25,000 in sales. He failed to take into account his internet notoriety and he leaped past the $25,000 to almost $270,000…and thats with three weeks still left on the kickstarter.

Video – Should I Buy A Used Ruger P95

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An interesting video:

I’ve made no secret that I rather like the P95, but I like it for one very simple reason: for about $200 it’s the best gun you can buy. Thats not to say its the best gun out there, or that its even a ‘very good’ gun. Rather it means that if you have $200 in your pocket, unless you get extraordinarily lucky, the Ruger P95 will be the best gun you can afford.

But…there’s some other things to think about.

On the police trade-in market these days there are tons of Glock and S&W .40 caliber pistols. For about $250 you can have a S&W M&P or a Glock 22/23. And, honestly, both of those guns are better than the P95.

Why don’t I get a stack of those pistols if theyre better than the P95 and only a few bucks more? Well, first off, I already filled my need for some cheap disposable pistols…I already have a dozen of the P-series so there’s really nothing to be gained by picking up the other ones. Additionally, I’m not a .40 guy. I prefer the 9mm.

However, if you’re looking for something that is ‘affordable’ and far better than a HiPoint, Bersa, or Taurus, head over to Kings and check the used pistols. Or, you can cruise Gunbroker and try your luck at scoring some $200 P95’s. They don’t usually go that cheap, but there’s always plenty to bid on and if you bid often enough you’ll get one at that price.

Guns like these are not really my first choice for carrying around everyday (although you could), but rather they are ‘loaners’ or ‘expendable’ handguns. Guns that you don’t mind loaning or giving to a friend who needs a gun, that you can leave in a truck or cabin and not be heartbroken if it gets stolen, or that you can abuse by getting wet and banged up as you rough-n-tumble your way through some disaster. They are like Bic lighters…they work quite reliably but they are basically disposable and cheap enough that you can have several.

I’ve ordered up a few of the police trade-in M&Ps for a friend and I have to say, I really like the gun. We got a .45 ACP version with three magazines for, I believe, $270 which is a smoking deal for a .45 with spare mags. What amazed me was how narrow and comfortable the grip was for that double stack mag. Very impressive.

Anyway, I was perusing YouTube and saw that video and thought I’d pass it along since I’ve mentioned my penchant for cheap, uber-stout handguns more than a few times.