Sportsman;s guide has a pretty good deal going on. Twenty bucks for a 400-yard spool of military two-strand commo wire.
This is the stuff you want for things like field phones or any other..ahem..’device’…that you need to run some current to. This stuff usually goes for a lot more per spool, so …get while the getting is good.
ETA: They changed the price on that one SKU. This one appears to still be cheap…
And now the talking heads on the TV are blathering on about ‘military grade body armour’…..you know what that means…
Time for GunBanBingo! Here’s your card…go crank up NPR/MSNBC and let’s play…
It’s under the “I Don’t Know What I’d Do With It, But I Want Them Anyway” category.
I’m not exactly 100% sure what use smoke grenades (or smoke-generating devices) are in a preparedness situation. Oh, sure…from the ‘lost hiker’ perspective it’s nice to have an enormous cloud of smoke wafting through heavy forest canopy making your location more readily apparent to rescuers. Or if you’re in a boat at sea. Now, drop those two scenarios and ….. ?
The last time I heard of anyone outside of the military using smoke to cover a retreat or advance was this guy..and it did not go well for him. I suppose that in some sort of Mad Max world you’d use them to choke people out of buildings or perhaps provide distractions. But, other than that, I’m not really seeing a lot of practical application. Then again, I relly haven’t sat down and wargamed it through completely either.
Regardless….the subject does have some interesting baggage with it.
In the old days, back when this was a free country, you could buy your classic military pull-ring smoke grenades through the mail and at gun shows. They were fun and, no two ways about it, looked cool mixed in with your gear. Paintballers loved em. And, as usual, some scrotally-challenged wonder at ATFE decided that the fuze assembly and/or igniter system fell under the classification of ‘regulated explosive’ and that was the end of the party. (although they are still available on department letterhead or with an ATFE explo license.)
Nature abhors a vacuum and so does the market. A few outfits have stepped in with their own version of ‘pull ring’ smoke grenades. Most notably, these guys. I ordered a few of them the other week, out of curiosity and they arrived a few days ago. I haven’t tried them yet but the videos of them being used seem rather promising. But…they are nowhere near the durability of the military product. For one thing, it’s hard to shake the feeling that this is a firework that has been dressed up with tactial-looking stickers and graphics. The ‘body’ is a heavy cardboard tube..like most fireworks. The degree of weather-resistance and durability of this product would seem to be….mild. As I said, I have no idea what I would do with these things, but if I did think I had a need for them I’d want them to be as waterproof, crushproof, moistureproof, and durable as possible.
To be fair, though…it looks like they generate a nice amount of smoke in a hurry. And..theyre cheap.
Giving us better durability and water-resistance, but a distinct lack of color, are the distress smoke signals available to boaters. I like these. I can usually find them cheap at gun shows, they aren’t about to raise the eyebrows of anyone, and they seem to generate a decent amount of smoke. I could entirely see someone rolling one or two of these down an office stairwell in Katrinaville to dissuade looters from coming up the stairs.
Naturally, there is always a DIY option for these sorts of things. A quick perusal of YouTube, a trip to WalMart, a side trip to Home Depot, and you an pretty much build some amazing, albeit improvised, smoke generating devices on your own.
…and somewhere at Cheaper Than Dirt headquarters, they are readying the pricing algorithms on the website for $100 Pmags.
Quick! Time to take guns and magazines away from the people who didn’t do anything wrong.
Buckle up, kids…it’s going to be a bumpy ride.
ETA: Nailed it.
Clearly I need to get out more, because up until the other day I had never heard of Cuben fiber.
Silnylon is the shizznits when it comes to lightweight materials for backpacking gear. But, apparently the new kid on the block is this material called Cuben fiber. I was talking to a guy the other day and he was showing me his gear. He had the lightest bivvysack I’ve ever seen… the ground-side was Cuben fiber, the top side was snetting and silnylon. Apparently the CF was waterproof/resistant enough to be a good choice for that task.
It reminds me of Tyvek in terms of the feel and color. Apparently it got its start as sailcloth material for high-tech sailboats and, as with a ll technology, it eventually trickled into other fields.
I need to do some investigating to see if it comes in some more useful colors. And I’d like to test it out to see how waterproof it really is. With the ridiculous light weight it would make an awesome ‘tarp’ to take along in case you have to shelter overnight when on a hunting trip or something.
Clearly, more investigation is in order.
I was at the campus library here in town and, to my surprise, they had a couple displays about the ‘good old days’ of the Cold War bomb-shelter era.
Interestingly, about twenty years ago, I’d heard some rumours that there was a stash of CD supplies hidden in the machinery level of one of the campus dorms. A sympathetic and equally curious head resident grabbed his keys and we went exploring. Sure enough, on the levels above the elevator machinery were dozens of the old Sanitation Kits and some of the old water barrel kits. This stuff is still out there.
The pamphlets and booklets are quite interesting. Some of them I had not seen before.
And, they say there’s plenty of evidence to back up their incredible claim.
The DIA has been a swirling dumpster fire of conspiracy theory since they built the thing. To be fair, building an airport with a ‘secret purpose’ makes sense…you have the advantage of air transport, huge swaths of space for storage, a built in security component, communications networks and facilities, large fuel stockpiles, etc.
Really, the only way to solve this one is for someone to ‘get on the inside’ and go spelunking in the lower depths under the place.
Do *I* think there’s some sort of NWOZOGCIACFROMGWTF!!11!!! connection to it? No. The last time .gov built an enormous bunker and camouflaged it to keep it secret was around 1960 when they built the Greenbrier. They managed to keep a lid on it for about 30 years, but that was before the age of cellphones, internet, and flying drones. I’d think that keeping a place that a secret in this day and age is much harder.
But..I’ve been wrong before. Maybe it really is the interstellar JFK airport from ‘Men In Black’. Nonetheless, an interesting article for those of us who like the idea of secret underground facilities and bunkers.
I saw the Metals Pimp the other day and he said “By the way, this is for you” and handed me a Silver Eagle. Apparently one of you fine people did some biz with him and said “Give the Zero an Eagle from me!”. So…thank you! When the radioactive fallout has cleared and I’m buying desperate coeds to work in my Lingerie Proving Ground I will think highly of you.
And someone was also nice enough to kick in a some greenbacks through the PayPal link for the Bunker Equippage Fund. So, again…much thanks.
Blogging is it’s own reward. I do it mostly for my own enjoyment and, honestly, the teeny-tiny bit of ‘internet fame’ that once-in-a-rare-while comes my way. But it’s nice when folks drop some coins in the hat. Thank you, guys.
This is interesting:
The very interesting part is that this totally supports the long-standing generally recognized principle that knife-wielders within seven yards are a viable threat. Note that Adam gets the shot off in time at the eight yard threat, but when the threat is within seven yards the window of opportunity to get a shot off is greatly reduced.
Now, to be fair, Adam is doing the so-called ‘Israeli carry’ where the gun is carried with an empty chamber. With a gun in the ready-to-fire condition, say, like a Glock/XD/revolver or similar ‘no active safety’ firearm, the time would probably be geatly reduced.
Nonetheless, it is interesting to show that even at around 20 feet, a bad guy with bad intent and a sharp piece of metal is a viable threat to a man with a gun…despite what some lawyers in a courtroom might say. On the other hand, with the threat 24 feet away Adam also had a 24 foot headstart to simply turn around and run from the threat. (Of course, that assumes he outruns the threat…if he doesn’t he loses all his advantages.)
In the real world, not everybody has access to guns. There are still plenty of people who get robbed, jacked, raped, and murdered at knifepoint. And while some people may have trouble getting access to a gun, for whatever reason, just about any idiot can go into Walmart and buy (or steal) a good sized knife.
So, when someone says that the guy twenty feet away with the machete wasn’t a threat because the other guy was armed…well…show them this video. And..don’t lull yourself into thinking you’re not in trouble because he ‘only has a knife’.
Well, thats just depressing.
The haunting note, dated Aug. 6, 2013, was written on a torn-out page from a journal.
It sounds like, other than a bad sense of direction, that this chick had a pretty good head on her shoulders. I’ve no idea of what her gear list comprised, but the article almost makes it sound like she was unable to build a fire. Rough story. When I’m off in the boonies I always take a couple handflares along. Great for signalling, sure, but also an awesome way to get a fire going. Then again, I also take compass and map along as well and try to establish some baselines in case I do decide to step off the trail.
Sad story. Tough to lose your wife, tougher to lose her in such an anguishing way.
