Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.
The Chair Is Against The Wall
Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.
This showed up in the mail the other day:
For those of you who don’t get the joke, maybe this’ll help:
Yeah, my geekdom knows no bounds. Oh, and before anyone asks: source.
As an aside, I’m rather intrigued that OCTactical gives you options on what camouflage patterns you want on your gear…and that they actually include my beloved flecktarn. Now if they’d just get the PenCott Snowdrift or the Dansih snow camo then I’d be really happy.
Gun show acquisition
Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.
So…gun show today. Stumbled acorss, of all things, a 1911 carbine conversion. Now, these things used to be available through Gun Parts and a few other mail order catalogs. What is interesting is that this is the first one I have ever seen with a folding stock. The stock is very well designed and well made from aluminum. Theres a little bit of wiggle in the lockup but when I took it out to the range this evening it shot very well and cycled flawlessly.
TPIWWP, so…………..
The stock must have been made during the ban years…I say this because theres an ugly hole drilled/gouged where a pin must have been put in to lock it in the open position.
Now, I took this thing out tonight and shot it. Works great, accurate, and a lot of fun. Also totally freakin’ useless, in my opinion. Now, if you SBR the gun you could use the stock with the regular barrel and thats only slightly less practical. But…I bought it for resale and novelty value. If anyone wants to look cool at the range with it, here it is up on eBay.
Video – Man builds $65 thousand doomsday bunker
Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.
Man, I love seeing other peoples bunkers. I’ve never cared for the buried-culvert style of shelter but they do seem to be a popular choice. I rather prefer above-ground shelters, preferably of hardy concrete construction.
As we all know, the #1 rule of Survival Club is that you don’t go around showing your gear off on national TV. I suppose some folks just can’t help bragging, and others figure “if it convinces one person to prepare, then it’s worth it”, but showing off to a big audience is just asking for trouble.
Article – Off-grid community ‘The Citadel Project’ gets thumbs up to manufacture firearms
Hmmm. So…theyre not attempting to provoke any government entity. But when they get their 07 FFl they proudly display it and the one-finger-salute. Now, I hate the ATFE as much as the next red-blooded guy. heck, I betcha I hate them even more. But I would call that ‘provocative’. Sure, it’s perfectly legit…heck, I bet you could call your gun company ATFESUCKSDONKEYBALLS LLC. and make an AR called the WACO-15 and ATFE would have no choice but to sign off on it as long as you crossed all the t’s and dotted the i’s. But it it smart? I’m gonna say no. Sure, the satisfaction quotient will be off the scale, but that doesn’t mean its a good idea.
There’s a little bit of heat in the discussion thread in the previous post, so let me clarify – I think the notion behind this ‘Citadel’ project, having a community of like-minded individuals working together, is a great one. More power to you. But I think the scale that they want to do it on is unworkable. Historically, the only societies that functioned on a large-scale like that had either an intense religious belief holding them together or an oppressive government forcing them to work towards common goals. (And while you could argue that the current government is oppressive enough that it is forcing people to band together in a case like this, that isn’t how meant it.) So, as far as I can tell, the only large examples would be religious cults and dictatorships…not the kinda place I want to be.
I do think something like this could work, but on a much more scaled down version. I’d like to be wrong, but this is sounding more and more like a Johnstone ‘Out Of The Ashes’ Tri-States fantasy.
Article- Another survivalist development in Idaho?
Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.
Good luck with that. Getting 7000 families of people together in a demographic that encourages individuality and independence is a textbook definition of cat herding. Consider all the sub-groups, good and bad and wierd, that fall under the ‘survivalist’ umbrella – back-to-the-land folks, ‘anarchists’, christofascists, gold bugs, conspiracy theorists, christian identity, hippies, ‘anti-government’, pro-government, etc, etc – and you’d have a heck of a time finding seven families, let alone 7000, that are going to share quarters and make things work.
“Ties that bind” are formed in varying degrees of strength. First and strongest are familial or “blood” bonds. Siblings, parents and children, then weaker relations such as cousins and uncles/aunts. Next down the line would be ideological bonds such as a shared belief system (religious, political or philosophical). Next down would be the close friends..the guys you served with, childhood friends, etc. After that, casual friends and coworkers. At the bottom of the list, one step above ‘people I’m trapped in an elevator with’ is ‘people who paid an entrance fee to live in the same compound with me’. If the world truly comes to the stage that living in a Fujian Tulou improves your chances of survival, I would feel far more comfortable if that retreat were peopled with folks I loved and trusted rather than people who read the same websites I did and could afford a U-Haul.
Could such a ‘survival community’ work? Maybe. You’d have to start with a base of people who already had a well-developed sense of connection to each other…more than just ‘I love [liberty/jesus/guns/america].’ And even then, 7000 families just seems ridiculous. The Free State Project, the largest cat-herding project so far, is looking for 20000 people to commit to their cause and if you figure a family is defined as an average of three people then they too are looking for 7000 families….and theyre still coming up short and they have a much better campaign (and image) than this Citadel project.
A ‘survivalist’ community could work..heck, it already exists on some levels with just folks being good neighbors….but seven thousand families co-existing together as a unified group is just a pipe dream. Three or for families living along the same stretch of road, situated next to or across from each other, is probably about as big a ‘survival community’ as you can get without dipping into ‘Woodbury-esque‘ power games and intrigue.
Crasche not-a-helmet, Sony radio, seeds
These look interesting. They’re knit caps that incorporate lightweight protective inserts. No substitute for a PASGT or similar helm, but when you want to have your melon protected from casual abuse and want to be discrete, these look like an interesting choice. Looks less dorky than your average bicycle helmet.
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Picked up one of these the other day. (Sony ICF-SW7600GR AM/FM Shortwave World Band Receiver with Single Side Band Reception, plus External Plug-in Antenna
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Our shipment of seeds from Victory Seed showed up last week. Personally, I like starting them indoors as early as possible so I need to get off my butt and get them going. Peppers and tomatoes FTW. Sometimes I am amazed at the size and productivity of plants that I can grow out of a 5-gallon-bucket. I have a fantasy about someday having a piece of property with a natural hot spring on it. One thing I’d do is run that water through some piping and heat a nice glass-block greenhouse with it. Year-round vegetables, baby. Man, that’d be sweet.
Tripwire alarms
Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.
http://minisentryalarm.wordpress.com/
This landed in my email the other day: http://minisentryalarm.wordpress.com/
I actually built something very similar a few years back out of plumbing parts from Home Depot. Difference was, instead of using a nailgun blank, mine used a shotgun primer….to ignite cannon fuse.
Years ago a fella had a couple options for this sort of thing ‘artillery simulators’ or ‘boobytrap simulators’ were available from some of the usual mil-surp sources and they were ten shades of cool. They havent been offered in many years. For a number of years, outfits like CTD, Sportsmans Guide, BQ, etc, etc, offered a trip-wire system that would let off a 12 ga. blank. (Homemade version here) Those were great but I guess some folks modified them into ‘trap guns’ or somesuch and they disappeared from the matket, only to be replaced with a Nerfed-down version that uses a cyalume lightstick instead of a 12 ga. blank. Lame.
If you hunt around a bit, you can find some slightly different designs ( 1, 2, 3 ) being offered.
These arent new ideas…about a hundred years ago there used to be cool little devices called ‘trap guns’. They were nothing more that short barrels affixed to an ation and the trigger was usually a long rod with some food attached. Youd nail one of these things to a tree and when a critter came and niggled on the food, the trigger would be activated and the gun would go off…shooting the animal in the head. Sort of a ‘fishing yo-yo’ for mammals. Of course, there was always the chance you’d wind up shooting a neighbors stock or pet.
The designs eventually led to ‘sentry guns’ or ‘burglar guns’ that were a similar design and meant to be affixed to a window or door. When the window or door was opened, it would trip the action and a small (usually .22 or .32) blank would go off. Most of these were big in the pre-War era of the 1920′s or so. They turn up as novelties at gun shows from time to time.
If I had a chunk o’ property and I wanted a fairly maintenance-free warning system I’d probably get something similar to the 12 ga. systems, but scale it up to 26.5mm, and a length of tubing to act as a barrel, and make sure I have a clear shot through the tree camopy and use 26.5mm flares. Illumination and warning at the same time…nothing makes folks freeze in their tracks like that popping noise and suddenly finding your stealthy ninja-approach illuminated in that ghostly flicker of a parachute flare.
Probably in about ten years even this stuff’ll be obsolete. We’ll have tiny copters the size of a deck of playing cards that will patrol our perimeters giving live-feed video. Or they’ll just have a few grams of explosive on board and a kamikaze subroutine when an intruder is detected. Seriously. You know someone somewhere is developing one of these things in their garage right now.
Mirrors
Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.
Man, I’ve been busy lately. It’s just non-stop work, work, work lately. These sorts of episodes of high-demand don’t happen very often (thankfully) but when they do you have to strike while the iron is hot. So..this is why I haven’t been around much lately. however, that doesnt mean that there arent things going on…….
I picked up one of these the other day to go along with the marker panel from the same outfit. It’s made of glass (albeit thick glass) so it may not be as unbreakable as other signal mirrors out there but its hard to beat the reflectivity of a good glass mirror. I’d been shopping around for a signal mirror to put in my little survival kit for when Im hunting/fishing and I just wasnt finding anything that I really thought was any good. I picked up a few of the non-glass mirrors from countycomm and while they would probably do the job, I have a hard time finding anything thats as good as old-fashioned breakable glass.
I need to do some empirical research and see just how visible these mirror flashes are at a distance. next time the wife takes the dog for a run up the nearby mountain I’ll have her call me from the top and tell me if she can spot the flashes from up there. I would imagine reflected sunlight must be rather highly visible at range since the military used to use heliographs for communications.
When bellyguns go bad……..
Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.
So I’m sitting in front of the missus’ Mac, watching a movie (Dredd…way bloodier than I expected), and I see her little KelTec 32 sitting next to the keyboard. I pick it up and examine it. Pull the mag, rack the slide to eject the cartridge and…hey..is that a spot of rust on the breechface? Hmmmm. I stop the movie, Google up some disassembly directions and….
Someone is going to get a spanking. And not the fun-Friday-night kind. And it ain’t gonna be me and it ain’t gonna be Nuke.
A half hour later I’ve cleaned it up and mitigated as much damage as I can. Mostly cosmetic but…some barrel pitting. How does this happen? Well, really, a maintenance routine would be nice. (Like, maybe every time we switch to/from Daylight Savings Time we should detail strip our carry guns?) But, mouseguns like these are especially prone to this sort of thing.
Here’s a S&W 36 that I carry sometimes when I’m just too lazy to carry the Glock. Please observe it from two sides:
Not a bad little gun. It’s a former NYPD gun that I got for a good deal years ago. Why so good? Well, lets flip it over and see…….:
Oh! Thats..thats not right! I know, I know…I probably should have warned the weak-stomached S&W fans that there was some gun-gore coming. In my defense, this is how I got the damn thing. I take much better care of my thundertoys than to have that sort of thing happen. As an aside, the Smith works flawlessly…it’s just damn ugly on that one side.
Here’s the skinny – mouseguns and other hideout firearms are usually carried in a manner that is not terrbily conducive towards gun health. Take the case of the Smith shown above…why is all the pitting and funk on one side of the gun? Heck, even only one side of the cylinder has it. The reason is simple – the cop who carried it carried it with the pitted side facing his body. Moisture and corrosive sweat, combined with typical cop gun maintenance, slowly started defacing that side of the gun over time. The other side, which was free to ‘breathe’ didnt suffer as bad. Same story on the KelTec..she carries it in the ‘appendix carry‘ style, which puts it close to her…uhm…well, let’s just say that I bet I could get a lot of money from her fans for that KelTec. But seriously folks….when you carry any small gun tightly against your body you are asking for this sort of trouble. That doesn’t mean you shouldnt do it, it just means you need to have an accelerated rmaintenance shedule for these and other guns that are in the ‘elevated risk’ category.
I carry a Glock, normally, which is fairly difficult to damage. Oh, you can do it, but it’ll take damage that would kill lesser guns. I usually fully disassemble and clean my EDC gun every other month or so. My little pocket guns, like my 640 or 21A, get cleaned and oiled more frequently.
Don’t think that stainless steel is going to get you off the hook, either. It’s stainless..not rustless. I use TetraLube on most of my guns and I’ll wipe it on with my fingers, getting it into every nook and cranny on the gun, and then wipe it all off with a paper towel. This leaves plenty of lube behind but doesn’t leave a gooey mess that can attract pocket lint and become gun-jamming sludge. Use whatever lube you want, but use your head in the selection and application.
Moral of the story: even with the use of a holster (especially with the use of a holster, since if you just leave the gun in it all the time youre leaving it in there trapped with whatever moisture and body funk youve generated) you need to take these things and air ‘em out and clean ‘em once in a while. To quote Michael Ironside from the unfathomably bad ‘Highlander II’ sequel: “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, if you dont take it out and use it, it’s going to rust”.