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

Every now and then various pieces of gear will combine in a Voltron-like fashion to form a ‘perfect’ piece of kit. Of course, your mileage may vary when it comes to what the definition of ‘perfect’ is. What some might see as shortcomings, I may view as strengths (or be willing to ignore completely) and vice versa. Everyone has their own guidelines…Im as big a fan of lightweight gear as the next guy but it seems like often the tradeoff is durability…and if a piece of gear cant take abuse then what good is it, really? See, other folks might find lighter weight or cheaper price to be their criteria for ‘perfect’. Its all subjective. Having thrown that caveat out there, lets move on.

A year or so ago I picked up this. It’s basically a MOLLE-type pouch for the ubiquitous Nalgene bottle. The pouch itself has several redeeming features. First, it has no less than three different attachment methods to other gear – attachment points for a sling, webbing, and an HK-style snap hook. The pouch has thick padding for insulation, which can be handy in the winter. Slip a little chemical hand warmer in there next to the bottle and you shouldnt have any problems with stuff freezing all day long. Theres an attached compartment for accessories and thats what really makes this thing shine.

Although the standard Nalgene bottles are wonderful pieces of gear, I use a military surplus canteen with this thing. A few years ago I found a deal on these Swiss canteens with cup. The selling point, other than the usual Swiss quality, was that the caps were compatible with NBC drink tube systems. (A small detail, and one Ill probably never need, but nice to have anyway.) Various makers also offer a nested cup that will fit on the bottom of the Nalgene bottle in a similar fashion as the surplus canteen and cup that I use. I am especially enamored with this setup. The cup will fit on the base of a Nalgene bottle so it will nest inside the bottle carrier, and the lid can sit on the bottom inside of the carrier, with the Nalgene bottle resting on top. The advantage there is that the lid, which is flexible, won’t get dinged, warped or bent if the bottle carrier takes some hits. Not a fan of the price, but it looks to be almost exactly what Im looking for.

So….A canteen and cup go into this bottle carrier. What next? Well, an Esbit stove with fuel tabs and some matches leaves room to spare in the accessory pouch. A folded up sheet of heavy duty aluminum foil is always a good idea. Add a couple packets of instant coffee/soup/tea/cider/chocolate drink and you have an excellent, compact, contained and fairly complete ‘field kitchen’. This little package has everything you need to set up under a comfortable tree somewhere. fill your canteen cup, light the stove, boil some water and reconstitute freeze drieds or make a life-saving hot beverage.

What you see in the image is:

Liter canteen with NBC cap and cup
Matches (usually I use strike anywhere matches stored in a small poly ziploc bag)
Sugar, creamer, coffee, tea, oatmeal
Spoon
Esbit stove with six fuel tablets
Folded sheet of aluminum foil for windbreak/cup lid

Pretty much everything you need to setup a comfy little field lunch under a poncho shelter or a convenient sheltering tree. And, yeah, it all packs into the attached accessory pocket on the bottle carrier.

Although I normally use a hydration bladder system when Im out in the sticks I do carry this package in case I need extra water, want to make a ‘field lunch’ of soup or cup-o-ramen, or during the winter have the option of a hot drink. The MOLLE attachment points make it nice for attaching to whatever gear Im using, and the options it affords me are definitely nice to have. I’ll probably phase out the military canteen and cup for the Nalgene bottle and Snow Peak cup kit. So, all in all, a good piece of kit and highly recommended.

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

I would imagine that should NYC suffer some sort of devastating incident the last thing on the minds of the judges, court reporters and attorneys will be “How can I safely stay here and continue this hearing?”. More likely they’ll be thinking “How fast can I get off this freaking island?”

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

The Worst Hyperinflation Situations of All Time

An interesting little slideshow showcasing some of the lesser known episodes of hyperinflation. Whats interesting is the brief explanation they give behind each case explaining why it happened. Many times it had to do with wars, but theres a good bit of government bungling in there.

Relatedly, the headline from Drudge today is: Debt Now Equals Entire Economy

Interesting stuff.

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

Took the bioweapon to the vet today to get him weighed. I’d figured he’d have to be pretty close to about 60# or so. Nope….the ‘little’ furball weighed in at an even 70#. Thats at the tender age of seven months. I think a 90# dog may be in the works.

Took him for a stroll out into one of the recreation areas outside of town. In town, the law is that dogs must be leashed. This is, in my opinion, a sensible law although many people flout it regularly. However, I care about what happens to my dog so I do not allow him to run around off-leash in the city except under very tightly controlled circumstances. (For example, there is a fenced-in schoolyard near here that we sometimes use for exercising him and since it is fenced in we can take him off leash without worry.) The rec area is a no-leash area and many people take their dogs there. So, we packed up and took Nuke for a romp through the snowy hills. It got to an amazing 51 degrees today. Short sleeve weather! I packed my Kifaru bag with a few incidentals and therein is the meat of todays post.

Montana is a lovely place but the unfortunate truth is that you can go from sunny and summery to deadly cold and wet in less time than it takes to type about it. This state, in fact, holds the record for extreme temperature variation within its borders..187 degree spread between 117 and -70. Some places are hotter, some are colder, but none have as great a distance between the two as the Treasure State. So, even for a short sojourn of low-impact hiking within eyesight range of a fairly large population center it is still a good idea to pack a few things.

Since I only wanted to grab a few things, I took the Kifaru Scout pack that I got for my birthday last year. I originally got it as a small pack for hunting but it really seems to fit into the role of being used for short outdoor day trips…hunting, fishing, hiking, etc. Since I had only a few things to throw in it, I left the waistbelt at home. I threw in my down vest (which compresses nicely, a major plus), a pair of wool mitts, a hat, and an UnderArmor poly turtleneck just in case the weather turned. I wore a longsleeve shirt, my Filson vest, and a ranger cap for the initial hiking and as things warmed up I packed the vest and hat away. I also brought along a couple bottles of water, a sheath knife, and a .357.

What I should have brought with me, and I’m kicking myself for this because I know better, was a poncho. If theres one piece of kit that should always be tucked into your gear, its a poncho. Yes, for the love of Crom, pack firestarting and a solid-quality knife but a good poncho is right there on that list. Why did we need it this trip? Well, once we hiked a good bit it would have been nice to sit down and take in the view for a while. Problem was, theres a foot of snow everywhere. We managed to find a tree with a good bed of pine leaves underneath and hang out there for a while, enjoying the day, but if Id remembered to bring the poncho we could have spread it out, pretty much anywhere, and sat around and been dry.

Nonetheless, it was a nice little excursion. The missus took a bunch of pics and heres a good one of me and the BattlePup:

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

A year or so ago I got one of the Kifaru Woobies as a birthday gift. I’d wanted something similar to a poncho liner but with a bit more insulative oomph than the standard GI liner. A few companies make variations on the poncho liner using Thinsulate but Id read some reviews of the Kifaru product, and Ive always liked their gear, so when I was asked what I wanted for my birthday thats what I went with. As I planned, the Woobie ties in to the standard GI poncho and gives you the versatility to configure your pocnho/liner combination as an impromptu sleeping bag, as well as a throw blanket. I know theres at least one kit on the market to allow you to cut a hole in the middle of a poncho liner so you can actually wear it under your poncho. As I was perusing Wiggy’s website yesterday, I spied this little number. Its a quilted, insulated poncho. Not a liner, necessarily, but a poncho. Im assuming it ties in to your regular GI poncho but allows you to wear them both at the same time. This seems to be more useful than the usual liners which do not permit you to wear them in conjunction with the poncho. I think Im going to have to get one of these and try it out. As expected, it isnt cheap but, interestingly, it’s cheaper than the Kifaru Woobie. I may need to get one of these and try it out. If it works well, and compresses nicely, it could wind up becoming a staple of my hunting/outdoor pack.

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

Its a wintery day here in western Montana. The snow is coming down thicker, heavier, and faster than I have seen it do in a while. The roads are rather treacherous…so much so that I have no intention of leaving the house. But..guess what? We have ample(!) amounts of beverages, food, fuel and entertainment so we can sit this out like it isnt even going on. Preparedness FTW!

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

Another opportunistic adventure in evil yuppie survivalism. A coworker of the missus normally gets a 1/4 of a beef every year but this year she decided she still hadnt finished off last years bovine. She’d already committed to purchase it, so would we be interested in buying out her share? Well, thats a pretty big amount of dead animal but I called a fellow yuppie survivalist (and by yuppie survivalist, I mean he makes more than minimum wage) and he said he’d be interested in going halvsies. (Or halfsies, I guess.)

So we drove out to where the rendezvous point was…a parking lot near one of the interstate exits. Must have been about fifteen cars just sitting there with their engines idling. A few minutes later a big Ford dually pulls in towing a trailer. Everyone gets out of their cars and gathers ’round for the distribution…it was like some sort of beefy version of Catholic communion.

So we got about 207# of beef, some scraps for the battlepup, and went home to divvy it up. Half to us, half to my buddy. We got some awesome roasts that are about the size and thickness of a phonebook. Plenty of steaks and yet more ground beef. All the roasts and steaks were indivisually vacuum sealed so that saved a huge amount of time. I’ve filled the freezer. Unless there is some special cut that we need for a recipe down the line I think we’re pretty much done buying meat for 2011.

You know how some people have a policy about not letting the tank of their car go below half full? The policy Im instituting is that we dont go below 50# ea. of chicken and beef. As it stands right now theres easily 100# pounds of beef in the freezer and about another 70# of chicken. Careful management and menu planning could make that last a looooong time…without resorting to rice/beans and TVP.

So, Im crossing “fill freezer with meat” off of my list. I really do need to invest in a small generator to keep things on an even keel in case we get an extended power outage but in the 25 years Ive been here we’ve never had an outage that lasted more than eight or nine hours. Still, every good yuppie survivalist should have an EU2000 (or two) floating around. On the other hand, as all this meat freezes solid, the thermal mass should keep it quite safe and frozen for at least a day or two should the power cut out.

When the apocalypse gets here (or finishes getting here, depending on your point of view) we’re gonna be eating just fine.

Bonus: Unrelated picture of the battlepup starting his day. When you have a long day of chewing shoes and barking at strangerts in front of you, you want a double shot of that latte.

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

Today was the festival of meat. No, no..Im not talking about the wifeswap/swingers gathering at the strip joint across town (Thats on Thursdays anyway). Like all good stories, it requires a little backstory.

I was in the shop and had, sadly, finished the last Coke in the fridge. So I figured I’d head over to Albertson’s, grab a 12-pack and as long as Im there I would hit the meat counter and see if there was any remaindered meat to be had. I get to the meat counter and they’ve got 85/15 ground beef marked down to $1.99/#. Not great, but good enough to warrant parting with a $20 for 10# of the stuff. (Normally its something like $2.79 or $2.99 a pound.) I ask the girl why its on sale…after all, it wasnt mentioned in the sales circular at the front of the store. She said that they had ordered too much of the stuff and needed to get rid of it. Ah, she had me at “get rid of it”. Casually, I ask “So…you got any room to move on the price if I take more? Like 20# or so?” She says she’ll have to go ask her manager. She comes back and says if I take at least 25# they’ll knock it back to:

Buck and a half a pound? Yes, please!

Well, at that point the wheels started spinning in my head. Sure, I can get protein from beans and rice like a large part of the Third World, but why subject yourself to that if you dont have to? I’ll take 50# please. I get on the cellphone and call the wife. Tell her to gear up, we’ve got a date at Albertsons. Pick her up (the meat folks needed somet ime to package all that beed) and we head to the counter to pick it up. As we’re at the checkout line I anticipate the question from the checkout girl about why we have a case of Coke, a case of Mountain Dew and 50# of raw meat. Sure enough…”Wow. What are you going to do with all that meat?” and my wife, who has up to this point in our relationship been, shall we say, comedically challenged, deadpans “Atkins diet.” The checkout girl nods her head sagely saying something about having some relatives who were on that plan. Who knew?

So, back to base with our beef. (Not to be confused with beef base, which is a whole other thing.) Clear off the kitchen counter and grab the camera for a trophy picture:

Can *not* be reassembled to make a small cow.

Because Im an evil yuppie survivalist I happen to have an evil yuppie survivalist luxury/toy – a freezer. So all this meat is going to wind up in the freezer to be kept, used, and hoarded against…well, whatever it is that we’re expecting to rock our world. Trouble is, you take that meat, as packaged, and drop it into the freezer and youre going to have a buncha freezer burned cowflesh in very short order. It’ll be edible, but it wont be attractive. Plus, it really needs to be broken down into smaller portions to facilitate storage.

If youre like me (and, really, I hope you arent because, frankly, you can do better) you probably have a drawer or cabinet in your kitchen that is full of mismatched Tupperware-style food containers. I cleaned ours out last week of mismatched containers but saved one that seemed useful for the task before me. I discovered that if I use it as a mold, I can make bricks of ground beef that weigh about 1.5# each. A good size for my uses and, most importantly, it allows me to stack them in the freezer more efficiently. So, I grabbed a box of wax paper, my brick o’ meat mold, and a roll of vacuum sealer material and got busy.

Get comfortable…youre gonna be here a while.

So for the next several hours it was fill mold, empty mold onto sheet of wax paper, wrap meat in wax paper (to facilitate sliding it into the bag), slide it into the vacuum sealer bag, seal it, stuff it in the freezer behind me, repeat….

This would be the ultimate Wendy’s hamburger at 24 oz. ea.

It was a tedious job and when it was all done there were about 34 bricks of beef to be shuttled from the kitchen to the deep freeze in the basement. Once they firm up in the freezer I’ll take a marker to them and label them (“85/15″) and write the date on them for reference. They should last several years. Heres an idea of what the finished product looks like. Stacks neatly and ready for a trip to the freezer.

Bricks o’ beef, ready for the deep sleep in the freezer.

Coupled with the last few trips to the bargain meat bin, theres about 70# of just ground beef down there right now. Versatile enough for taco filling, spaghetti sauce, hamburgers, meatloaf, or any other yummy dish that springs to mind.

Was it expensive to do this? Not really. We had about $50 left over from this months grocery budget and advanced the rest from next months budget…which is good because it means that ground beef is off the list for next months shopping. I bought my deep freeze in 1992 and actually split the cost with someone so I’ve gotten about 18 years of freezer usage for $150. Honestly, though, you can find used freezers all day long in Craigslist….theyre really quite affordable. The vacuum sealer has been a staple in my kitchen for almost as long and it has paid for itself many times over by allowing me to take advantage of deals like the one today. On paper, we saved about $75 on meat…and we would not have been able to take advantage of that without the freezer or the vacuum sealer. So, that $75 that was saved could be applied against their initial cost if you needed to justify their purchase.

All in all a productive day for food security.

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

Morale patch for the bioweapons vest arrived today. The missus takes him out in the hills so he can get some exercise (and burn off some energy that would otherwise be spent tearing my house apart) and when he’s out running in the sticks I dont want him ‘mistaken’ for a coyote or other nuisance. So…reflective orange vest for puppy. We sent a picture of him wearing it to the manufacturer and they sent us another free vest and said they’d put his pic up on their website. Yes, my dog is doing endorsements. I think that, for all intents and purposes, puppytime is over and we should probably start getting more serious about his training. He’s a decent companion, when we’re not pulling shoes and socks out of his mouth, but I didnt sign on to this ride to have someone to talk to.

Speaking of things he eats, he ate half of one of my wool mittens yesterday. Fortunately I have about 20 more pairs but I was still a bit pissed off.
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Its going to be time to start this years seeds soon. I didnt start them last year until around March and I think that might have been a little late. I think next week I’ll dig out the gear and get things set up. Last years efforts at growing in buckets was a resounding success … so much so that I think Im pretty much done digging holes in my yard. The buckets were easier to keep watered, to move around as lighting requirements demanded, and were just easier to deal with all around. This year, I think I’ll get a little more complex in how I do things. Someone sent me this link about using a pair of nested buckets. Looks interesting. Last years peppers did pretty well, although the tomatoes were hit-n-miss. I think a smaller bush-type tomato will be called for this year. Last year I didnt do very much with herbs so I think this year I’ll correct that.
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A couple weeks back a fella from one of the neighboring businesses came by and chatted me up regarding preparedness. I gave him a few books and told him to read them. He came by today to say hello and we chitchatted some more. He said that I was a ’strange duck’, no doubt because of my own interests, but that he always learns something from me. I suppose Im not exactly ‘average’. In alot of ways I’m below average and in even more ways I’m neither above nor below average, just ‘different’. But, and this is improtant, I usually dont care. To paraphrase Popeye, I am what I am. You dont like it, thats cool..youre entitled to your opinion. You dont have to like me and I dont have to like you. Nothing wrong with that. I stopped caring about what people think about me a long time ago. I care what certain people, the people Im close to, think about me but theyve known me long enough, I hope, to figure that I’m generally an okay guy. Anyway, I gave the fella some more books and told him to come back to me when he was done with them and id be happy to talk end-of-the-world with him. He seems to be on track for becoming an ‘economics’ survivalist. That is to say, he sees economic issues and problems being more likely than a Mad Max we’re-all-eating-our-children future.
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Egypt apparently activated their ‘internet kill switch’ to isolate itself from the internet. Dissension needing to be muzzled and all that. Note that the Obama folks have been wanting an internet kill switch as of late. Not sure I see any reason for such a thing. At least, no reason that sits right with me, anyway.