Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

Remember this post about those moments when something happens (or you think something happens) and you’re suddenly quite painfully aware of just how not ready you are?

Yeah, just had one of those.

Im sitting in the shop, literally minding my own business, when the wind starts to blow. The roof rattles a bit and -pop- the power goes out. Now, you have to understand, in regions like this power transmission is almost always above ground. Wires and poles. So the question is – how widespread? And all I could think as the computer fizzled away was “Its 80 degrees out and I have a freezer with several hundred dollars worth of meat sitting at home.” I really need to push getting a generator into a high priority position.

As it turns out the interruption was only for about a half hour and fairly localized. While power at the shop was gone, the house was fine. I keep a MagLite here at the shop (naturally) so I was cool in that regard but -500 points for my police radio (Motorola MT1000) not sitting in the charger and having a dead battery. Bad, bad, bad. The cellphone was unresponsive, so Im guessing my nearby cell tower didnt have its backup generator going. Land line still worked though. On the bright side, I could recharge the cellphone off the small solar charger we picked up last week.

My nextdoor neighbors at the shop are a woodworking shop that is housed in, essentially, a bunker. The building used to be a grocery store back when grocery stores actually kept product on hand. Theres a cavernous space under the parking lot that they use for their shop facilities. Problem is, its entirely underground which means when the power goes it its darker than Obama’s political future in a coal mine. Usually when the power goes out I trot over there with my MagLite and a few light sticks and help the denizens find their way out of the place. For some reason my landlord has never installed emergency lighting down there. I may get him a simple setup for Christmas or something.

But..I need to do watt/amp/load math and find a good, affordable generator that’ll handle the freezer. Do a little homework and then shop Craigslist, Im thinking.

Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

Wow…send enough suggestions to Ruger and you might get lucky and have them actually build what you want!
Ruger is bringing out a .357 bolt gun!
Im a fan of the .357 and would think that a little carbine like this would be a handy number for deer and smaller game. Dirt cheap to shoot, too! And since its only a niggling .002″ difference between a 9mm and a .38 bullet Im sure the 9mm suppressor would work nicely with some big n’ slow bullets. yeah, Im going to have to put some money aside and get me one or three of these.

For the record, the other things I nag Ruger for are a 357/9mm convertible DA revolver, a .357 version of the .44 semiauto carbine, and the reintroduction of the 9mm & .40 ‘police’ carbines.

Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

Went on a little camping trip over the weekend with mixed results. It was a nice opportunity to try out some gear. Elevation was around 7200 feet, there was still snow on the ground, it rained the whole time, and at night it got down to around 35 degrees. Not really optimal conditions for a pleasant summer-y campout.

I was interested in taking the least bulky gear possible. For sleeping, I took a military bivvy sack, my Kifaru Woobie and the Wiggys insulated poncho. I figured I’d nest them all together and that would work well enough. In theory, I was right but in practice it left something to be desired. The problem was that while the Woobie had ties to allow you to configure it as a sleeping bag, the Wiggys did not. So, while I was in the Woobie, the Wiggys would slide off or otherwise undo itself from around me inside the bivvy sack. As a result, it got a bit chilly. I think if I were to order the insulated poncho from Wiggys I would ask them to send it with no snaps or closures at all and I’d put them in myself so I could put them where I wanted to facilitate conversion to an impromptu sleeping bag. However, once morning came, wandering around with the insulated poncho over myself was quite warm and comfortable. However, the whole package of bivvy sack, Woobie and Wiggys did compress down to an impressively small bundle. Westerm Mountaineering makes some nice down bags that compress quite nicely, the missus has one. But I’m a bit reluctant to go with a down bag since, as we all know, once it gets wet your pretty much SOL. (And “dont get it wet” isnt an option…life is too unpredictable.) Not to sound like a broken record, but Kifaru makes a couple synthetic bags that are similar to the Woobie and should compress down quite nicely in conjunction with their compression stuff sacks. Anyway, sleeping was uncomfortable and a bit chilly but it didnt kill me, I didnt get hypothermia and I did get some sleep so I suppose in that manner things worked out.

My Svea 123, although a bit heavy, performed nicely as expected. It’s pretty much a bulletproof little stove. As it turns out, it fits perfectly inside my Snow Peak cup…so thats a nice little space saver.

More Kifaru goodness…I brought along a Kifaru Parahootch for shelter. This thing is a slick piece of work. It compresses down to about the size of a softball. Plenty of room on the inside for one person and some gear (or two really chummy people) and kept me dry. An excellent choice for packing ‘just in case’ you might get forced to spend the night out somewhere. Takes up less space but provides more coverage than a poncho shelter. You can improvise the support poles using either hiking poles or sticks you come across…the Parahootch has marks sewn into it to show you how long each stick should be if youre improvising them. I borrowed this one from an LMI buddy to see how I liked it and I think I might have to get one. An interesting alternative is one of the paratipi shelters from these guys. Nice setup but much, much heavier to pack.

Other than it being wet and cold, it was mostly an enjoyable experience. I think we might wait another couple of weeks until its a bit warmer before doing this again.

Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

Well, at the moment the most interesting thing going on around here is a manhunt for a ‘militia’ figure who, after having traded bullets with the police, calmly took his gun and fanny pack from his vehicle, walked into the woods, and disappeared. Speculation is that he had cached supplies for just this sort of situation.

This guy is one of the ‘Project 7′ dudes from a few years back. The usual ‘lets start the revolution today’ crowd that still seems to have some voice these days. Not to be confused with the other assorted organized and unorganized groups of dissatisfied customers that live here.

I was talking to the wife yesterday about this guy and said that I would bet he’s got everything he needs stashed away and that he’d probably make it outside the police cordon pretty easily.

Much like the Robert Rudolph episode, I’d be very curious to know, when this is all over, how this guy evaded capture and what he had stashed away. He’s not the first guy to do this sort of thing. The Four Corners guys did it but their plan imploded almost immediately and the last body was only found in the desert just a year or so ago.

In addition to being a ‘militia type’ this fella is also described as a ’survivalist’. :::Eyeroll::: Its getting to the stage where anyone who feels comfortable out in the sticks and owns a gun is tagged with that moniker.

Should be interesting to see what shakes out over the next few days. The 1990’s were the heyday of organizations like these and many of them quietly faded away or disbanded as the realities of real-life became more pressing than the need to ‘overthrow’ or ‘restore’ the government….but there are still quite a few true believers running around. A couple organized groups too, I’m sure.

Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

Nuke chewed through the safety catch and triggered a cannister of bear spray.
Yes, you read that right….my dog teargassed us out of the house.

Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

I am starting to wonder if there is anyone I know who isn’t either contemplating the end of the world as we know it, or preparing for the same.

I was chatting with someone last week and we were talking about food and diet. I said “Yeah, of course if I suddenly decided to give up things like grains I’d wind up with a ton of storage food I cant eat.” He commented that, hey, he and his wife were trying to put together a years supply of food. The conversation, naturally, turned in that direction and I loaned him a few books on the subject. I also emailed him some links and told him that I’d be happy to answer any questions he may have. This wasnt too surprising, I’d suspected that, to some degree or another, this person had some interest in preparedness. Apparently, I was right. I think this means that I know virtually no one in this town who is not, in some way, preparing against some sort of impending apocalypse, imagined or real.

Today, I was talking to someone and I asked, quite casually, how the sale of his out-of-state property was coming along. He said he hadn’t any takers yet, but that was okay because if the world ends it would be a good place for him to move to. He said the nearest population center was x miles way, game was plentiful, and there was no problem with water, etc. So, again, someone I didn’t suspect turned out to at least be thinking along similar lines as me and a surprisingly large amount of people I know.

So, either the handwriting on the wall is becoming more and more apparent and people are planning accordingly or “Hammer Fever” is contagious. (Hammer Fever was the name given in the book ‘Lucifers Hammer’ to the sudden interest in preparedness exhibited by some people when they discovered that a comet would be passing uncomfortably close to the earth. But you knew that, right? Go read the book.)

Personally, I welcome any who is interested to the fraternity of preparedness. Mostly because, in Darwinian fashion, I want those people who think like me to be the dominant forms of life. Im sure that in other parts of the country there may be survivalists of a more left or liberal stripe, but every survivalist Ive ever met has been, to some degree or another, pretty like-minded with how I think politically and socially. Not always, mind you, but often enough. I’m sure there are lefty, commie, share-the-wealth survivalist types out there but in my day-to-day life I’ve never met one in person. Of course, the right leaning survivalists dont automatically qualify as being the same as me either…especially the superstitious/religious ones…but I can usually get along with them better than the ones at the other side of the spectrum.

Regardless, I’m always pleased to discover someone else is thinking along similar lines as myself.

Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

It’s an interesting disparity of compassion that when some homeless guy asks me for change I either ignore him or ask him why, if he has two good arms and legs, why he doesnt have a job and maybe take some initiative in his life; yet when a doggie shows up on my steps, looking lost and hurt, I’ll bring my life to a complete halt and work the phones for hours to get him back to his home.

We were minding our own business when Nuke suddenly started acting nuts. Looked outside and there was the most pathetic looking little dog sitting on our steps. One of his legs was shaved and had a couple bolts and a steel rod bolted to it. Poor little guy. We called the number on his tags and got voicemails. The owner finally called and came by to pick him up. Turns out he lives a block down the street. Poor little guy. Last thing he needed was a big lug like Nuke knocking him around so I kept the newcomer (“Arlo”) in the yard until the owner got him. Poor guy.

Made me want to go into the house and hug on my dog for a while.
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Someone pointed this out to me. Its a piece of property for sale on Craigslist that, if you read all the features, looks like it was someones BOL. Sounds nice except for the trailer home. I dont care how nice, modern and cozy they are….you can fill it with hookers and cocaine and it still aint worth $75k.

Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

This came up in the comments section and its worth putting into a post:

Let’s imagine that you pass away comfortably in your bed many years from now, wife by your side and dog by your feet. Toilet paper and fresh fruit and vegetables are still readily available daily at your local grocery store. Hi-cap magazines are still legal, and ammo is available at Walmart 6 days out of 7. Gas is 10 bucks a gallon and silver is $70 an ounce, but hey, that was probably gonna happen anyhow.

So basically–if you die comfy in your home and the S never hits the F, do you leave this world with any regrets on how you lived your life and spent your efforts?

If you have medical insurance and you die of old age, having never been sick a day in your life, do you look back at it bitterly as a waste?
If you have homeowners insurance and never, ever, have anything happen that causes you to file a claim was that a waste?
If you stockpile food in your pantry against the day you can’t get anymore food and that day never comes to pass, was that a waste?

Of course not. Those forms of insurance allowed you to enjoy your life because those risks/threats had been reduced/mitigated/transferred. I would imagine that every person who prepares for the end of the world would be happy to die in their sleep at a ripe old age never having to have lived through Katrina, a civil war, a depression, or a pandemic. If the missus and I spend the next forty years in a boring routine of filled supermarkets, electricity at the flick of a switch, clean water from the tap, heat at the push of a button, and entertainment upon demand, and we never have to crack open a single can of freezedried spaghetti I will consider that a tremendous success and not regret a single dime spent.

Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

Its been raining to beat the band here in western Montana the last few days. In this neck of the woods, rain is good. We’re only an inch or two away, in average yearly rainfall, from being classified as a desert. But, its a mixed blessing…the rain is great and makes stuff grow, but then in the late summer when it gets dry all that growth goes up in great conflagrations. Feast or famine, I’m afraid.
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I noticed over at ,Rawles’ website that there is apparently some sort of preparedness gig going on in Kalispell in a week. I might go just to look around and see if theres any vendors with anything interesting. I’m less interested in the speakers. I’ve met and chitchatted with Randy Weaver before, so thats nothing new. I certainly won’t be there for the religion-oriented parts. But, if theres some vendors with some cool goodies and decent prices, well, then maybe it’ll be worth the trip.
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I was playing around with my 10/22 the other day and while it is a handy little gun, it could be handier. What I’d like is a side mounted sling. Not a three-point sling, but rather a sling that is mounted on the side of the rifle rather than the bottom. Something much like what you see on old Mausers. The first step is finding a side mount sling attachment for the front end. To my surprise, someone was already making something like that. This little jewel shall be mine. I can live without the rails. (Rails on a .22?) Although the more I think about it, a handy place to put a bipod on night might be nice.

The second half of the equation, naturally enough, is a rear side mount for a sling. Thats a bit trickier. I think Im just going to have to hit the military surplus parts bins and find a sling bar for an old cavalry Mauser or something and use that. I could, if I were really creative, cut the stock like an M1 carbine and go that route but thats more work than I really want to get into.

Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

I was jawboning with a fella the other day and he mentioned something that I thought was amusing enough to repeat. He’s been wading in the shallow end of the preparedness pool for a few years, but only in the last year or so has he jumped into the deep end with both feet. He’s definitely of the opinion that he’s working against the clock on this one. Anyway, when Bin Laden was killed (or not killed, depending on if you have the shiny side or the dull side of the tinfoil on facing inside your hat) a friend of his called him up with the usual opening line of “Have you seen the news? Quick, go turn on your tv!”. He said at that moment he thought his buddy was calling him to tell him that the end of the world had started and all he could think was “Dammit, I’m not ready!” as every little detail he had unfinished came to him in a moment of perfect, clear recall.

I hate those moments.

I had them 1994 when the Assault Weapons Ban went through and I instantly had a mental image of exactly how many ‘high capacity’ magazines I had. And I thought to myself, “I’m not ready for this!” Fortunately, these moments dont happen often and when they turn out to be ‘false alarms’, as in the case of the fella in the first paragraph, it gives us a ‘whew!’ moment where we think we avoided a disaster and maybe we really should put off the vacation to the Grand Canyon this year and sink the money into freeze drieds and solar panels.

Everyone has a different idea about what flavor the apocalypse is going to be. The superstitious say it’ll be based on some religious prophecy (and, hey, howd that work out lately?), the Peak Oil crowd say its happening right now and we all need to go buy mules and leather harnesses for plows, the Scientologists (really a subset of the first group) figure its the Warth Of Xenu, and guys like me figure its a slow economic descent into a Soviet-era style of toilet paper lines and entropic failure. All of them, though, figure that its happening soon.

I’ve been kinda sorta waiting for something to happen for…mmmm…well, quite a while. Sometimes things that I’d think were catalysts for TEOTWAWKI turn out to be nothing, and sometimes stuff I never even considered comes outta left field and makes me think “hmmm…hadnt thought about that”.

So if you got one of those phone calls tomorrow, and you had that momentary flash of insight where all the things you have left undone and on the ‘to do’ list suddenly pop into your head, would you also think “I’m not ready” or would you think youre ‘ready enough’? I’d say we’re not as ready as we could be, but probably ready enough for most situations. There is, naturally, room for improvement.
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Speaking of room for improvement:
Man sacrifices self to save wife in tornado.
This fella is being lionized as an ideal husband who sacrificed himself to save his wife and is a role model that all husbands should emulate.
As my wife would say: WTF?
Lets assume for a moment that the role of the husband in the marriage is indeed to protect the family. Personally, I’m not a big fan of rigid gender roles in a relationship, but your mileage may vary…..however, lets say for the purpose of this discussion, it is the role of the husband to protect the family.
So, did this guy live up to that responsibility? Well, technically, yes. But if he was really going to protect his family, why didnt he take the steps to protect them from the predictable threat of a tornado? Sacrificing your life to save your family is noble, but it shouldnt be “Plan A”. His wife, I’m sure, wishes that his duty to protect her would have been fulfilled by having a stocked storm shelter where she could yell at him later for building that ugly thing in their yard, but at least he’d be alive for her to yell at.

Sure, maybe sometimes theres simply no other options but it sounds like if these people had a small storm shelter to retreat to theyd both be around today.