Personal Safety Day aka ‘Threatmas’

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I created Paratus as a holiday for myself and all the folks that think like me. A holiday based around and upon our interest in preparedness. I won’t say its been a roaring success, but I get a lot of satisfaction and enjoyment out of it. But its not the only holiday I’ve made up.

Many people have ‘personal holidays’…days that mean nothing to the world at large but have meaning to them and, maybe, those closest to them. It could be your kids birthday, your wedding anniversary, the day you proposed to your wife, the day you won the Powerball, the day you finished your last tour, whatever…

I’ve designated February 5th as ‘Personal Safety Day’ for myself. (Jokingly referred to as Threatmas .) Although I practice shooting as often as I can, and try to make sure my gear is all up-to-date and in good repair it sometimes escapes my schedule. So..I have one day per year where, no matter what, it’s time to audit, review, update, and maintain the things that are meaningful to my personal safety. No excuses.

Whats that look like? Well, definitely some time at the range. Not target shooting, not plinking, not screwing around. Dead serious drills with a critical evaluation of my own performance and a measured plan to improve what needs improving. All the house guns get unloaded, inspected, cleaned. Batteries in lights get rotated out. Armour is checked for wear and tear. Cameras and video systems are inspected. Stashes of ammo and guns are inspected. Car stranding supplies are checked.  Smoke/CO detectors. That sort of thing. If its meant to keep me alive, safe, and secure…it gets vetted on this day.

Now, these are things I try to do during the year. But, we know how life sometimes makes it tough to do what youre supposed to do when your supposed to do it in the way youre supposed to. So..I gave myself a personal holiday in the year that is dedicated to nothing else but making sure the guns are ready, the fire extinguishers charged, the medications unexpired, the flashlights working, and that sort of thing. In fact, on my time-off request at work I label the reason as “Personal Safety Day”..I was asked about it the first time and although they looked at me a little funny, they approved it. I’d have made a big fuss about it if they hadn’t. Its the hill I’d die on to make sure I dont die on a hill.

Ideally, I try to do these sorts of tasks several times a year. Quarterly would be ideal. And sometimes I hit that mark, sometimes I don’t. But even if I completely drop the ball, PSD is the one guaranteed time it will occur. So, worst case scenario, at least it gets done once per year. (And Im not saying these things should be done once a year. I’m just saying I have this mechanism in place to make sure it does happen at least once per year.)

If I did get to do all these things during the year, on the schedule I’d prefer, then PSD is simply another layer of redundancy. But, for me, its the guarantee that at least the bare minimum will be done even if I completely blanked it out the rest of the year.

I’m not saying you need to have your own personal holiday like this. I’m only telling you what I do in my twisted little world. But…I will say that you should check your gear as often as you feel is necessary..at least several times a year. Maybe every daylight saving time changeover. Maybe every three-day weekend. Maybe on you and your spouses birthdays. Whenever. Assign some not-gonna-forget-it milestone days during the year to use as reminders. But do check your gear. A depressurized fire extinguisher, gun that goes click, empty gas can, dark flashlight, or dead radio battery is the last thing you want when you absolutely, positively need something in an emergency.

Other than the gear, PSD is also a day to wargame things. What else do I need to enhance my safety? To give me better odds? What risks am I exposed to that I wasn’t last year? What threats are in place that weren’t last year? Whats my plan in case this event happens?

And this isn’t just theory. PSD started for me when having the right piece of gear, at the right time, in a working and ready state, saved me from a potentially Very Bad Day. That made an impression and as a result….Personal Safety Day.

“Ammo cans”

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So, as I’m reorganizing things, I am discovering that there are a lot of small items that need to be corralled into one place in a somewhat protective manner. For example, my stash of Aladdin wicks, mantles, and burners. Or my stockpile MALICE clips. Things that are numerous enough to need to have their own dedicated container, but not so large or heavy that they need a steel ammo can dedicated to them.

So, for giggles, I hit Facebook marketplace and figured I’d look for some discount ammo cans. No joy. But…I did find some plastic ammo cans in two different sizes that would suit my needs. In for a penny, in for a pound….how many to buy? Well, stuff is always cheaper in bulk. I’ll take 300.

And thats how I wound up with an IBC tote cage full of plastic ‘ammo cans’. They had ‘half height’ ones in addition to the .30-cal-size cans. So, I figured I’d split it 50-50 and wound up with 150 of each. Are they as durable as a steel ammo can? Of course not..theyre plastic. But, theyre waterproof and perfect for organizing the things on shelves in my basement…batteries, first aid supplies, waterproof notepads and pens, water filters, etc.

Got into them cheap enough that I’ll give a bunch away to the local LMI for their own storage needs. Even then, I’m probably going to have way more of these than I actually need but it’ll be nice to be able to get some things nice and neatly packed away for that upcoming Rainy Day.

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Article – Las Vegas ice cream truck mistaken for ICE vehicle: ‘I’m an ice cream man, that’s it’

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Holy Crom, real life really is made up of…things you can’t make up.

LAS VEGAS (KLAS) – Social media posts mistakenly identified a law enforcement-themed Las Vegas ice cream truck as an Immigration and Customs Enforcement vehicle, leading its owner to fear for his safety.

“ICE and Border Patrol don’t use trucks from 1985,” Billy Settlemyers, the owner of Las Vegas Ice Cream Patrol, said Monday.

Last week, a person posted a video of Settlemyers’ black-and-white truck driving into a neighborhood with the caption: “Please be on the lookout for ‘ice cream’ trucks… they play music to get people to come outside… this is actually so sick.”

While I normally have no love for the federal government, I have even less love for parasite illegal aliens…so, I am, generally speaking, on board with the recent uptick in immigration enforcement.

Other than that, this is just an amusing example of people not reading whats right in front of them, and also underestimating the feds ability to be sneaky.

Legacy gear – GI Anglehead

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Im in the midst of completely reorganzing my basement stash of food, supplies, and other gear. It’s forcing giving me the opportunity to go through a lot of gear that I’ve collected over the thirty years I’ve lived in this house. One of the things I came across was a box of GI anglehead flashlights.

These things are old school with their incandescent light bulbs. They have nice enough features….belt clips, colored filters, lanyard loop, momentary on-off switch for signalling purposes, etc. But that bulb leaves a lot to be desired in a  world of LED brightness and efficiency.

Out of curiosity, I decided to order a couple LED replacement bulbs.

I want to say, right off the bat, that this was not an efficient and economical way to go. The replacement bulbs, on Amazon, are about $17. For $17 you can buy a fairly decent flashlight that’s already LED native. However, I was still intellectually curious about the difference in performance that the LED bulb would offer the GI anglehead over the regular bulb.

Res ipsa loquitur:

  Clearly, the LED has an advantage over the OEM incandescent bulb. And while this is simply an interesting anecdote regarding the tactics of upgrading these flashlights, it has a lesson about the strategy of upgrading these flashlights. The lesson here is that sometimes the juice isn’t worth the squeeze. Legacy gear can sometimes be brought up to modern standards, but sometimes it is more effort and expense to do so. At that point it’s time to throw up your hands and realize it’s time to clean house and start over.

Let me give you an example of this. I had a friend, now deceased, whom I have mentioned before. He thought that he needed a .30 caliber semi-auto rifle to prepare for the upcoming apocalypse. He wound up, in one incarnation, buying a Remington 7400, finding some sort of military-ish stock, locating aftermarket ten-round magazines of questionable reliability, and going through all sorts of financial contortions to basically re-invent the M1A. If he had just bought a Springfield Armory M1A he would have saved himself a ton of time, money, and reliability issues. But he had the 7400 and thought it could be made ‘just as good as’ a military-style semi-auto .308.

Sometimes it just isnt worth updating or ‘upgrading’ a legacy item when the technology and manufacturing have advanced. Here’s another example – I have a few incandescent MagLites that I purchased twenty years ago. They have an on/of switch, a krypton bulb, and run times of a couple hours on a pair of D-batts. In my pocket, right now, I have a Streamlight that has an on/off/low/high/strobe switch, an unbreakable LED bulb, and will put out as much light as the old MagLite…and it’s a fraction of the size. Inflation adjusted, its about the same price. (And, yes, you can buy LED upgrades for MagLites but they don’t work as well as a native LED MagLite. Reflector geometry  and all that.) So, it really doesn’t make a lot of sense to upgrade or update these 20-year-old lights. No reason to toss them, though. They can serve in a tertiary role around the house or something.

As I continue with my reorganization project, I am finding a few items here and there that are old enough that it just doesn’t make sense to upgrade them to modern standards. Some things are worth it, yes, but you really need to look at each item with an objective view as to whether its worth upgrading or replacing.

So…there’s some data on flashlights for ya.

Patient without patience II

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So my doctors appointment was mostly uneventful. They didn’t really tell me anything I couldn’t already guess. (Exercise, lose some poundage, stop eating crap. Real surprise, right? That’ll be $450 please.)

Apparently they are screening for domestic violence or some such. I forgot to mention this gem from the new patient intake process:

Them: “Is there anyone who makes you feel unsafe at home?”

Me: “Well, the last time someone made me feel unsafe in my home, I killed them.”

Them: <pause> “Ok, the doctor will be with you shortly”

I understand that an argument could be made that the doctor needs to look at certain environmental considerations in order to get a full, well-rounded picture of your health. What you do for a living, what your living situation is, etc. You may have a rash on your skin that no one can explain…until the doctor discovers that you work in a plutonium processing plant, at which point the penny drops. So, yes, I can understand some of the questioning. But at the same time, I’m just here for some bloodwork…not to trade life stories with some assistant.

However, some doctor/patient interactions are interesting stories. I had an elderly customer come into the shop once with a beautifully preserved old Smith .32 revolver. I asked the customer, who was a doctor, how he had come into such a lovely and well-preserved pre-war Smith. Turned out his dad was a stereotypical country doctor …taking payment in chickens, that sort of thing…back during the Depression. One day dad and the sheriff had to go quarantine a family. This was back in the day where they would nail a notice of quarantine on the house and everyone would keep away and isolate the residents. So the doctor and the sheriff go up on the porch and start tacking this notice up on the door. A gunshot rings out and the deputy tumbles backwards with a bullet where his beltplate should have been, the bullet coming right through the door the deputy had been tacking the notice onto. The doctor, demonstrating the better part of valor, rockets of the porch and into a ditch by the road. He then runs down the road to a house with a phone and calls the sheriff. Sheriff comes out and they drag the guy out of the house and haul him to jail. As the sheriff is winding things down, he walks up to the doc, tosses him the pistol the bad guy used, and says “Here. Souvenir.” And his dad kept that pistol for the rest of his life and it wound up going to my customer. He had no intention of selling it, but liked telling the story.

I bet that country doctor never asked anyone about their preferred pronouns, what their ‘assigned’ sex at birth was, or if anyone in the house made them feel unsafe. Different, and in some ways better, times.

The year is 7.67% done and so far I have only bought __1__ gun

Patient with no patience

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I have a doctors appointment tomorrow. In addition to asking me on the forms what my preferred pronouns are and what my “gender assigned at birth” is, they also asked if I had guns in the house. Thats when the Woke exhausted my patience:

I’ll be curious to see if they choose to pursue it further.

You can imagine how it’ll go when they start asking me about my Kung Flu vaccination status.

Article – California Resident Credited With Creating Homemade Water Pump That Saved Home from L.A. Fire

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I haven’t posted anything about the fires in California for a couple reasons –

a) Its California
2) I’m not there, I’m not an expert, and my opinion is worth all of what you pay for it
III) I doubt theres anyone reading this who, in that locale and environment, wouldnt have taken steps to increase their resilience against fire

But not all Californians are clueless volunteer/victims.

But Palisades Highlands father and son, Gene and Patrick Golling, credit the survival of their house—when most in the neighborhood perished—to a homemade water pump and their swimming pool.

Before evacuating, the pair used the water pump they’d bought last summer and directed 20,000-gallons of water from their swimming pool on to their home and the surrounding hillside.

Its an article about a couple guys who bought some homestead fire-fighting equipment and basically hosed their place down for several hours and came back to…their house.

Seems like every place worth livingi n out in California has a swimming pool. Why not transfer all that water to the roof of your house and the grounds around it?

There is no shortage of outfits online selling firefighting equipment for the DIY’er. And while fighting a forest fire on your own with no training is a recipe (extra crispy recipe, actually) for disaster I will completely understand the man who does in order to protect his home.

And, yes, when the sheriff shows up and tells you to evacuate or else … there may not be much you can do, but you can at least leave the hoses running and the pumps pumping like some sort of hydro-sentry-gun.

I’ve investigated this sort of stuff here and there over the years as I daydreamed moving to a nice quiet place in the sticks. Make no mistake…metal roofing, some type of reservoir, and a well designed network of hose connection points is definitely in the cards.

I’m surprised I haven’t seen more articles about people either beating the fires by tactical house construction design or water-projection defenses. Surely there’s gotta be a bunch of people, even in California, who saw the writing on the wall and invested in concrete shingles and water pumps. Perhaps the media doesnt want to encourage people to rely on something other than .gov for their safety. Or maybe no one noticed. Or maybe no one thinks it’s newsworthy. But, if it were me, I’d have had my pool plumbed to me eaves-mounted sprinkler system within the first week of building the place. But, easy to say since I’m not there.

Nonetheless, it is worth a trip through the internet to see whats available for when you do need to be your own basement-flooding, hose-dragging, ladder-monkey. 😉

ConSci twenty years on

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As I may have mentioned before, I’ve been doing some major cleaning and re-organization in my basement. Since I’ve been squirreling away stuff down there for the last thirt years, there’s gonna be a rather interesting collection of stuff down there. And some of it is goes back those full thirty years. Thing is, things change over thirty years… Technology, manufacturing, etc, all changes to some degree. So, what artifact from the the pre-Y2K days do we have today? Why, it’s the ConSci Power Pack:

Very simply and succinctly, this is a manufactured version of the classic battery-in-a-box

The ConSci power pack is a 12v battery (and associated electronics) encased in a .50-cal ammo can to keep everything protected and water tight. It featured a pair of female 12v ‘cigarette lighter’ sockets to allow use of common 12v items of the era. Here’s what it looks like:

This thing has been sitting in my basement, plugged in and charging, for over twenty years. So, I decided to see how well it would work. Remember this lamp from my how-long-will-it-run experiment? The answer to the question of how long the ConSci would run the lamp is two-and-a-half-days of continuous use. Thats about a week of use if you used it for eight hours per day. This is less than what results were when I performed this experiment with the battery jump pack I purchased at CostCo.

The battery in the ConSci is smaller and less capacious than the one in the battery jump pack, so I suppose it isnt a truly fair comparison. And thats fine. What is important is that after twenty years this thing will still perform admirably for most emergencies.

The ConSci was discontinued a long time ago. But the whole battery-in-a-box concept has been done to death on the internet. There are all sorts of websites that give you an Amazin shopping list of everything you need to build your own version. Or, as I’ve done, pick up one (or two) of those battery jump packs and leave them plugged in and ready to go. The newer ones have built in inverters and USB ports. I’d take one of those over the ConSci for its capacity and greater versatility.

Nice to see, though, that this thing still work and the battery hasnt cooked itself after being left on the charger for twenty years.

MH – 25 years later

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There used to be a gun/outdoor store in this town that did a ”sidewalk sale’ every year. They would set up tents in the parking lot, put tons of merchandise out there, and have a sale. Problem was, when the store closed at night you couldnt just leave all that stuff out in the parking lot unprotected. Thats where I came in. I would sit out there all night in a lawn chair keeping an eye on the stuff in exchange for store credit. I then took that store credit and cleaned them out of some of their leftover Y2K Mountain House inventory. Mind you, this was all around 2000-2001.

So, I have a bunch of MH in #10 cans that I have been sitting on for about 25 years. In the time I’ve added to my MH stash quite considerably, so it’s not a hardship to pull out one of those cans, crack it open, and see how it fared.

I am not the first guy to do that. Friend Of The Blog(tm) [And friend of Gun Jesus] Joel, over at his blog, cracked open some old MH and had mixed-but-generally-good experiences.

I’ve no doubt that this stuff is going to be just fine but I have a chance here to do a little empirical data-gathering so why not? Lets go!

The sales tag on it indicates that it was put out for sale sometime in 1999, which makes sense since it was part of that stores attempt to cash in on the Y2K thing. The date stamping on the bottom of the can confirms that, yes, this stuff is a quarter century old.

Grabbing a can opener and removing the lid shows….ghostly white pasta. The pasta, being larger than the other components of this meal, sit on the top of the can and the smaller components have migrated to the bottom.

So, lets dump the whole can into a bowl and stir it up.

The contents of the can appeared just fine and smelled unremarkable. The powdered cheese and tomatoe mix had caked a bit at the bottom of the can but it broke up easily.

The instructions call for 3/4 cup of boiling water to one cup of food, and then letting it sit for 5 to 10 minutes. Okay, lets do that.

The final result, after five minutes, was this. I really should have let it sit for ten minutes but I figured I’d follow the instructions at their minimum.

The big question: how was it? It was fine. It wasn’t as spicy as the modern spaghett-with-meat-sauce that MH has out these days. It had a very faint ‘tinny’ aftertaste but I think thats actually the normal flavor. Was it edible? Yeah, as best I can tell. I mean, I guess I’ll have to report back in 12 hours. The taste was about what I expected… pretty much on par with your average Chef Boyardee product. After a long day of hanging looters, manning the roadblocks, and digging out of the rubble, this would be a fine meal.

So, yeah, it seemed to hold up just fine. The can had sat on a shelf in my basement since Y2K. The temperature down there was fairly consistent…never getting below freezing in the winter, and never getting over 70 in the summer. It was, pretty much, kept in the classic “cool dark place”.

The tag on the can indicates that it was about $32 for this can back in ’99. I’m an MH dealer, so I can see that todays dealer price for this same product is currently $29.50 per can. Amazon shows it for about $53, which is pretty close the 100% markup on MSRP for Mountain House cans. If you want to amortize it, it comes out to about $1.28 per year to have it sit there all this time.

What was i expecting? Actually, pretty much this. I’ve read reports from people opening even older cans of MH and finding it just fine. It really does appear that the 30-year shelf life on these products is pretty much spot on.

I’ve added more recent production MH into my supplies over the last few years so I have no probem ‘wasting’ this, one of my oldest cans of food. Its quite worth it to me to confirm what I’ve believed all along about the longevity of the MH products.

So, there you go, guys. Buy the cans and you can be pretty certain of at least 25 years of life…although I have no doubt that it’d be just fine for at least another five or ten years on top of that.