Tag Archives: logistics

The folks you meet

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There’s always that question of ‘how do I meet other like-minded individuals to network with?’. I’m of the opinion that putting an ad in the back of American Survival Guide or on a forum is a last resort sort of thing. There’s too much risk of winding up auditioning a revolving door of whackos and nutjobs, all the while compromising PerSec.

I am firmly of the opinion that if you really want to meet folks, the best way is to observe and casually work up to broaching the subject with the new person. Today was a fairly good example….

My regular letter carrier (or as we used to call them, “mailman”) is on vacation. The little truck pulls up in front of the shop and a guy gets out. We make some small talk as he checks for my mail. I comment about how it sucks that he has this open-air cab and all he has to cool off is a fan. As I look in the vehicle two things jump out at me….the radio he has on the dashboard and a backapck on the floorboards. The backpack is a coyote, MOLLE-covered bag. “I like your bag”, says I. “Yeah, I got it from online from Botach. Its been a great bag, I can’t kill it.” Hmmm. We shop at some of the same places. I also notice the Sangean radio sitting on the dashboard isn’t one of the cheap models…this one has a few bells and whistles that would be of interest to folks like you and I.

So….shops at the same tactical gear places and appreciates the quality gear. So far, this sounds like it’s possible he’s on the same wavelength as me on a few things. Maybe next time I see him I’ll ask if he’s done any shooting lately…really? With what guns?….Ah, I have one of those too….etc, etc. Then after a while we do some more small talk about interests and soon you’re pretty confident about whether he’s on the same page as you. And that’s the point you decide if you want to pursue this further and bring them into your little circle of friends or not.

It takes a little time, yes. It’s not as fast as walking up to a strange and saying “Hey, you got an AR, some MRE’s, a stash of gold and a water purifier? How about that last election…who’d ya vote for? Cool..cool. Wanna see my bunker?”, but it’s also far less risky in terms of what information you put out there and, more importantly, what kind of impression you give other people. You tip your cards to the wrong person and they go and tell everyone back at work about the ‘crazy survivalist’ guy that is on their route….nobody needs that kinda headache.

Of course, this is just my opinion…maybe you’ve had a different and better experience doing it a different way. If so, I’d find it interesting to hear about it.

Bandoleer stuff

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Unsurprisingly, I had a bunch of loose .223 ammo sitting aound that really needed to be organized better. A cardboard box full of 1000 loose rounds of ammo is no way to show up for the apocalypse.

When I go to the range, and I’m shooting .223 (or 5.56 [and, yeah, I know they’re different]) I usually pack them in a plastic 50-round ammo box. Other than keeping things neat and tidy, it also keeps me from turning too much money into noise.

But…for packing ammo away for that rainy day, I rather prefer to store .223 in bandoleers.

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Classic four-pocket bandoleer set

If you’re not familiar with them, a proper bandoleer contains a cloth bandoleer, ammo on stripper clips, cardboard inserts for the bandoleer pockets, a stripper clip guide (‘spoon’), and a safety pin to hold the spoon to the bandoleer. This is pretty much how they’ve been packing the stuff since Vietnam.

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New-style four-pocket set

The idea is not, as some geniuses would have you think, to carry this stuff around and then load magazines from stripper clips in the heat of battle. The idea is that it’s a convenient way to stage and transport a basic loadout of ammo. Original bandoleers were seven pockets holding 20 rounds each, for a total of 140 rounds. Of course, that was back when 20-round magazines were the norm. Nowadays there are bandoleers out there that are four pockets holding 30 rounds each. I’m a bit of a worst-case-scenario kinda guy, so I go with the seven-pocket bandoleer but put three clips in each pocket.

The bandoleers, spoons, and stripper clips are quite reusuable and its the rare survivalist that doesnt have some of them floating around in the garage or in his junk bin. But those damn cardboard inserts….they tend to get lost, destroyed, and they’re kind of a pain in the ass to source out. Now, I’ve got a shopping bag full of stripper clips, a cardboard box full of bandollers, and no 3-clip cardboard inserts. What to do, what to do…….

Naturally enough, a quick trip to Amazon showed that, yes, you could get the 3-clip cardboards there. Gotta love that instant gratification enabling that is Amazon. Ordered ’em up and a few days later -voila-:

20150607_201414So what do you do with them once they’re loaded up? Well, I dunno what you do with ’em, but I pack ’em away in some .30 cal. ammo cans until the day when I need them. Then I can grab a rifle, a couple mag pouches of magazines, throw one or two of these bandoleers over my shoulder, and head for the hills.

Is this superior to storing your ammo loose in an ammo can? I think so. For one thing, it makes an easy and quantifiable amount…one bandoleer is 210 rounds. (As opposed to a couple fistfuls of .223 which may or may not be enough to fill all your mags.) The stripper clips keep things nice and tidy, and load mags a heck of a lot faster than by onesies.

For range trips, I still use the plastic ammo boxes..but they don’t fit into BDU pockets very well, are noisy, and still require you to load your mags one cartridge at a time…all things that arent really a big deal at the range. I suppose some might question the utility and practicality of the bandoleers but I find them to be a convenient way of grabbing a ‘pre-measured’ amount of ammo, and also a convenient way to carry it.

Back into the breach with MH

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Much like the slapped-around trailerpark housewife who goes back to her drunk, abusive husband I have renewed my dealer account with Mountain House.

Years ago I got dealer status with them to punch up my food storage. The plan was simple – sell enough of their product that it would finance my own acquisition of that product. It actually worked pretty well. But then…MH came home drunk one night and things got dark.

More specifically, there was a period a few years back where MH stopped selling to small-time dealers. The thing that was especiialy hard to find were the #10 cans. There were all sorts of rumours swirling about trying to come up with a reason for MH freezing out its small-time dealers. The most popular rumour was that MH had gotten some big .gov contract and was purposing as much of their production as possible towards filling those contracts….thereby leaving the little guys out in the cold.

MH denied the .gov contract angle, but then again wouldn’t the terms of any .gov contract require them to keep hush-hush about it anyway? So for a year or so MH was in high demand in the preparedness community and in low supply. Eventually, MH started shipping again and things resumed an even keel….except with me. I was kinda annoyed with MH for their actions.

A year or so goes by and, lo and behold, I discovered this.  (Here’s the complete post.) By that point I had a pretty good amount of MH on the shelf and was branching out in the much broader variety of Augason Farms.  I figured my needs with MH had been met, so I didn’t take any steps to keep my dealer account active with them. Then, the other day, I was up at REI and I was perusing the camping food section (because….why not?) and I saw some new things. Specifically, these. The Italian Pepper Steak, especialy, caught my attention.

So I called the guys (gals, actually) at MH and asked if my account with them was still valid and could be brought up-to-date. (See, MH really tightened up their dealer policy a while back and getting dealer status with them nowadays is a bit trickier.) They said they could do that and, by the way, we’ll send you some samples of those new products.

And then FedEx came by today.

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Yay for free samples! Maybe..maybe he’s really sorry this time! Maybe I’m being to hard on him…maybe….

We shall see. In the meantime, I’ll be getting together with my local cadre of like-minded individuals and see if we can’t all pool our resources and needs to put in one big group buy.

Link – The Little Can That Could

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Wonderful post about the history of the jerrycan.

During World War II the United States exported more tons of petroleum products than of all other war matériel combined. The mainstay of the enormous oil-and-gasoline transportation network that fed the war was the oceangoing tanker, supplemented on land by pipelines, railroad tank cars, and trucks. But for combat vehicles on the move, another link was crucial—smaller containers that could be carried and poured by hand and moved around a battle zone by trucks.

I’ve given up on anything other than the ‘NATO/Euro’ style cans for gasoline storage. They are more expensive, and sometimes hard to find, but I believe they are worth it.

Turning a .45 into a 9mm

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Well, it took three months, but I turned this:

20150105_203119into this:

20150306_125613Thats the G21 with one magazine I purchased aobut three months ago. I maneuvered an arrangement where I got rid of it and wound up with a G34, box, docs, and three mags. Oh, and one of those “I-Just-Shot-Myself” Blackhawk holsters. (Yes, I know you’ve been using a Serpa holster for years and that its just a matter of trigger finger control, etc, but I’m gonna stick to something less ‘learning curve’-y.)

So….9mm logistics train back on its tracks, and the orphan .45 Glock is in someone elses hands. Win-win.

10/22 mag prefs

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If you had to pick one .22 rifle as ‘the survivalists .22 rifle’ it would be highly unlikely that anyone would strongly disagree with the choice of the Ruger 10/22. Having been around for around fifty years, pretty much everyone makes accessories for the gun and if there’s a gun shop out there that doesn’t carry 10/22 rifles or accessories, I haven’t seen it.

Problem is,as with just about any semiauto, some mags are good and some are crap. My experiences have been that there are a handful of good magazines out there and plenty of bad ones.

For an amazing amount of time, Ruger only offered the 10-rd mag for the 10/22. Thats fine, theyre really really good mags. But, they are limited to ten rounds and sometimes you just dont feel like swapping mags all the time. Ruger eventually introduced some 25-round factory mags but, interestingly, they have a mixed reputation….a very rare case of a factory mag not being as good as the aftermarket mag.

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If your needs can be met with a 10-rd mag, the factory Ruger 10/22 mag is pretty much the best and only way to go. These mags are several years old.

For aftermarket Ruger 10/22 mags its pretty hard to go bad with the Butler Creek stuff. Sure, your mileage may vary, but my experience has been almost uniformly positive. The Butler Creek mags come in two flavors: Hot Lips and Steel Lips. The Hot Lips are mags with plastic feed lips and the Steel Lips are the mags with…well, you can figure out.

Back in ’94 I grabbed as many Hot Lip mags as  I could and used them for the next ten years, as Slick Willie’s repulsive ‘Assault Weapons Ban’ made making new mags holding ten rounds a crime (unless, of course, those mags were for the cops or military…in which case they had to be marked as such.)

So, for ten years I had about a dozen Hot Lips mags to use. They held up quite well but they eventually started having problems. But, it was a good opportunity to learn just how much life you could get out of a $15 magazine before it needed replacement. The answer, it seems, is about ten years.

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Ca. pre-1994 Butler Creek Hot Lips mag on left, new Butler Creek Steel Lip mag on right. Note the plastic feedlips on the Hot Lips mag showing wear and fraying from years of use.

The Steel Lips magazines, obviously, were a good bit more durable in the feed lip department than the Hot Lips mags. They charge a bit more for the Steel Lips magazines but I’m of the opinion that it is very much worth it. I still sock away the Hot Lips mags, but if I come across a good deal on the Steel Lips I’ll go ahead and get as many of them as I can.

Now that Ruger has re-introduced their Charger 10/22, and brought out the American Rimfire, both of which take the 10/22 magazine so it’s really not a bad idea to get the most durable mag possible. Ten years of regular usage showed that the plastic Hot Lips mags could serve well, but I think in the future I’ll be socking away the Steel Lips more than the Hot Lips.

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New BC Steel Lip mag (L.), pre-1994 Hot Lips mag on right shows signs of wear and age from being used frequently during 1994-2004. Mag still functions but it best saved for ‘range use’ or non-critical usage. A replacement is about eight bucks….for now.

The only other aftermarket non-BC mag for the 10/22 I’ve found that was any good are the Eagle brand mags. These are also a plastic-lip mag but they can usually be found in bulk at bargain prices…sometimes around $5-6 ea. They’re good for using at the range and otherwise taking the pressure off of your stash of Butler Creek mags…but for packing away a rifle, case of ammo, and a dozen mags, I’ll stick with the Butler Creek mags.

The best sources I’ve found for deals on the BC mags are either CDNN, MGE, or GAS. You 9or your dealer) will have to subscribe for their email specials but usually once or twice a year they’ll have specials on the 10/22 mags. When they do, don’t cheap out and buy five….get as many as you can afford. They’ll always have a good value and if there’s another magazineban they’ll really be worth their weight in silver.

For carrying magazines, there’s a couple outfits that make single-pouch mags that ride on your belt and, if you don’t mind looking a little like Carl Spackler, there are some chest rigs out there as well. When the gophers are about to overrun your position, and the haze is too thick for air support, a rig like that might save you from being pounded into the dust by thousands of tiny feet.

“License to kill gophers by the government of the United Nations. Man, free to kill gophers at will. To kill, you must know your enemy, and in this case my enemy is a varmint. And a varmint will never quit – ever. They’re like the Viet Cong – Varmint Cong. So you have to fall back on superior intelligence and superior firepower. And that’s all she wrote…” -Carl Spackler

So, just my two cents worth, but if you’re gonna go with the 10/22 for most of your .22 rifle needs you’d be doing the smart thing to go heavy on the Butler Creek mags.

Purchasing priorities

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It’s easy to get distracted by the goings on these days about guns. Firearms are, of course, a large part of preparedness but they aren’t all of it. There’s still plenty of other details to be hashed out, geegaws to be purchased, food to be stockpiled, fuel to be put back, electronics to be gotten , tools to be acquired, etc, etc. But…with a few exceptions, firearms are the most heavily regulated (and thus susceptible to elimination) items we could purchase.

I don’t know about you, but from time to time I read about people who, in their great scheme to acquire everything they need (or think they’ll need), make lists and set priorities for getting the things on that list. While I appreciate that, I think that when prioritizing you need to consider the potentially ephemeral nature of some of the things we want, and plan accordingly.

Let me give you an example. A fella was in the shop the other day and we were chatting about, naturally, the current state of gun buying. He said that he really felt he needed more magazines and at least two more AR’s, but he also needed more food and water storage. I asked him what he was going to do. He said that he had enough money to do one or the other at the moment, but not both. However, in six months he’d have enough to do whichever one he didn’t do now. He figured that he would buy the food and water storage now and then in six months get the AR’s, figuring that the prices might be lower after the hysteria dies down. Not an unreasonable course of action but while it would make sense with just about any other product, it doesnt make sense with guns. Look at it from this perspective…lets say his choice was storage food/water versus new tires for his BOV. To me, thats sort of an apples-to-apples situation…I’d get the food/water and then in six months, when my wallet has healed, get the tires. But guns are different…no one is proposing to neuter, ban, register, confiscate or prohibit tires. The odds are quite good that in six months, heck even six years, you’ll be able to buy those same tires. Not so with guns.

In six months the laws may (or may not) change to the point where what you have right now is all youre allowed to own. Back to his choice of food/water versus another AR and mags – which one is more likely to be just as readily available in six months? The food and water, of course. So while the food/water may be a higher priority, it’s fairly certain future availability makes it take second place to the possibly (or not) unobtainable-in-six-months guns and ammo.

Of course, things could go the other way as well. Tomorrow there may be a terroristic threat to the national food supply and distribution chain and the price/availability of food/water is completely blown away from what it is now. But which is more likely?

I have a ton of more crap that I feel we need around here. More food. More batteries. More clothes. More gold. More silver. More medical supplies. More dog food. More fuel. And…more ammo, guns and mags. But everything on that list is, I am certain, going to be just as available in six months, a year, eighteen months, as it is now…I cannot say the same for the guns and ammo. So…the items most likely to become unavailable get bumped up on the priority list.

Some  folks have been asking me what I think is ‘going to happen’ vis-a-vis new gun regs. Dude, if I had any ability to accurately predict the future I would be in Las Vegas right now working up to owning a casino. I can’t tell you what’s going to happen specifically, but I can make some sweeping generalizations: the adminstartion needs to get its ‘pound of flesh’ from the gun lobby. I suspect that will be in the form of a magazine ban. It’ll be the guy kicked out of the sled to slow down the wolves. The administration can point to it’s 23 executive orders and say they did plenty to show the gun lobby who’s boss, and when further regs fail they’ll be able to blame that on Republicans and say they ‘did all they could’.

Of course, I could be wrong…I often am. But…the assault weapon ban ended over eight years ago so if you havent gotten most of what you need by now, eight years later, you may want to examine just how seriously flawed your purchasing priorities might be.

 

FMJ v. (premium) JHP

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Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.

Ammo is, naturally enough, a topic that comes up in the preparedness forums fairly often. Skipping past the usual “what caliber should I have for my SHTF pistol” nonsense, one of the more common questions is what type of ammo to keep around. Should you go long on the FMJ/Ball ammo or stock up on the JHP and ‘Personal Defense’ stuff?

I go long on the FMJ/Ball stuff, and keep a very small fraction of our stockpiled centerfire ammo as JHP’s.

Most military ammo is FMJ, right? So for the calibers where surplus military ammo is available we wind up with a lot of FMJ. Nothing wrong with that. Pretty much any rifle bullet, FMJ or not, traveling at a couple times the speed of sound will radically change someone’s immediate plans. In handguns the majority of our autopistol ammo is FMJ with probably less than 20%  as JHP or ‘defense’ ammo. Why? Couple reasons.

Although we have a decent amount of thundertoys on hand, there is no guarantee that the guns we’ll have will be our own guns. Might pick up a 1911 someone trades to for some freezedrieds, might come across an SKS in someones garage, might find a repairable Mosin Nagant in the back of a wrecked pickup truck. In short, you never know what guns you may stumble across. FMJ or Ball ammo is the ‘Type O-  Universal Donor’ of bullet styles. If a gun won’t work with quality FMJ ammo it probably won’t work better with anything else. (Of course, I’m sure there’ll be comments from folks saying they used to own a gun that bobbled every FMJ but shot hollowpoints perfectly. May be, but broadly speaking if a gun can’t handle FMJ it’s probably not going to do great with the more unusual bullet shapes like the hollowpoints or softpoints.)

“But..but..if you use FMJ ammo you’ll be giving up stopping power!” Well, maybe. But while FMJ may (or may not, depending on whose studies you review) have less stopping power than an FMJ, I can guarantee you that FMJ has more stopping power than JHP that nosedived into the feed ramp.

Interestingly, there is a happy medium in this ballistic mess. Years ago Federal came out with the very odd concept of an expanding FMJ. A contradiction of terms? The bullet has the profile of an FMJ but the front of the bullet, under the jacket, is filled with marshmallow or some similar gunk. The round feeds like an FMJ but when it hits something it compresses and expands like a softpoint of JHP. Very cool. Sadly, not something I can afford to stockpile in bulk. However, it seems like a wonderful choice for folks who are shooting something that can be finicky about bullet shapes. Cough*1911*cough.

The personal defense grade handgun ammo isn’t cheap. Where I can stock 9mm FMJ all day long at around $0.12@, stuff like HydraShocks, SCT, XTP or even Silvertips are going to be prohibitively expensive for anything other than a few hundred rounds. For carrying around day-to-day, I have some snazzy hollowpoints in the Glock, but once they’re gone it’ll be a diet of 115 gr. FMJ. On the other hand, to have shot off all the defensive hollowpoint ammo would mean that there must have been one amazing post -apocalyptic episode.

If I had the money, I’d do an even mix of FMJ and JHP. Hmm…lemme grab a catalog and do some comaprisons….

  • Federal American Eagle 9mm is $0.22@ vs. Federal Hydra Shock 9mm at about $1@…
  • Win. USA Brand 9mm is $0.34@ vs. SX JHP at $0.76@….
  • Rem. UMC 9mm is $0.32@ vs. Golden Sabre at $0.96@…
  • Speer Blazer 9mm is $.021@ vs. Gold Dot @ $1.05@….

So at its most generous, youre looking at around 2x the price for defense-grade pistol ammo and in a worst case almost 5x the price. Or, put another way, five cases (5000) of American Eagle FMJ will cost you one case (1000) of HydraShocks. So, for my money, I could have 1000 rounds or 5000 rounds. Easy to say I’ll take the FMJ when you put it that way. But, honestly, I would go for a mix of something like 20:80 of premium JHP:FMJ.

Now, where it gets really interesting is when you start reloading. I’ve a lovely Dillon 1050 and delaer pricing with the bullet companies. My cost difference on 5000 JHP for reloading versus 5000 FMJ for reloading is about, mmmm, maybe seven cents a bullet…meaning that to assemble a 9mm FMJ is $0.12 versus about $0.20 for a quality JHP. Or, put another way, I can reload JHP ammo with ‘brand name’ defensive hollowpoints (Gold Dots, XTP, etc) for about the same cost as buying loaded FMJ ammo.

Even with those numbers, I tend to stock FMJ in far greater quantities than JHP. My two reasons are primarily concerns about functionality in a very wide variety of platforms, and getting the most ‘bang for my buck’ – I want to maximize the amount of ammo my dollar gets me. At the same time, I recognize that ammo performance isnt to be disregarded and try to keep enough high-end ammo on hand to keep our favorite daily carry guns stoked for quite a while.

There ya go. Your mileage may vary.

Replacement spring

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So in taking apart the Glock 19 I acquired today I discover it has the godawful New York Trigger (#2) in it. Removing it, however, means that you then have to replace it with a normal Glock trigger spring. For the majority of people that means putting up with the crappy NY trigger unit until they can have a new spring sent to them.

Or you can be like me. Remove the offending unit, get out the Box O’ Spare Parts(tm), and replace it with an OEM Glock trigger spring. Moral: have the spare parts you need onhand before you need them.

Had five extras, now have four. Will order up another five Monday. Price? About $12.50 for all 5. Ability to replace and modify parts in your pistol as needed whenever you want? Priceless.

Batteries

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I see by the note on the refrigerator that its time to buy more batteries. For the longest time I’ve tried to standardize batteries. The commonly used sizes are AAA, AA, D and 9v (which probably do have a letter designation…Im just not feeling its particularly necessary at the moment). Theres also those nifty little lithium batts which are, I believe, designated CR123. (And, yeah, theres the AAAA and other size batts but the operative word here is ‘commonly’.)

I have tried to streamline my battery needs to just ‘D’ and ‘AA’. There are things in the house, such as tv remotes and smoke detectors, that run on different sized batts but for the preparedness stuff I try to limit it to those two sizes. (The one glaring exception is the damn Seismic Intrusion Detectors which run on 9v. but I could always rig something up, I suppose…) Makes it easier to store spares and allows more interchangeability if I have to ‘borrow’ batteries from one device to run another. (Which has happened…a few months back I discovered my GPS batts were dead and I took the 4 AA’s outta my Streamlight. Since then, I carry six spare AA batts in my bag. An empty Altoids tin, lined with bubble wrap, holds six spare AA batts securely. The bubble wrap keeps em quiet and keeps em from grounding out on the metal case.)

Unfortunately, my perfect world of Only Two Battery Sizes has been disrupted by the need for the lithium CR123’s to power me and the girlfriends tactical lights. On the bright side, they don’t need replacing that often since they are infrequently used and the spares will keep a nice long time.

I’ve been very taken with the lithium AA’s and use them in my GPS and radios. Flashlights get along just fine on run of the mill Duracells. (Esp. with the LED models of lights that have lower power requirements.) Being much more tolerant of extreme temperatures, they are an excellent choice for flashlights that youre going to leave in your truck all summer/winter. Lithium 9v can be found at Home Depot for use in smoke detectors. Still having difficulty finding lithium D’s anywhere but online. And, yeah, theyre spendy but they have a shelf life of ten years with minimal power loss and can handle being left in a glove compartment all winter…that’s worth it to me.

I’ve been buying Duracell AA and D batteries up at Costco in 36 and 24 packs, respectively. I try to keep at least one or two packages on hand at all times and as I go through batteries, I use up the stored ones. In this way they get rotated out and I always have at least one pack of reasonably fresh ones available.

Rechargeables are, of course, an option. Rechargeables, however, are only a good idea when you have a means to recharge them and most circumstances when Im likely to be going through batteries are circumstances where electricity is probably not available. Fortunately the internet is full of DIY solar battery charging plans and these are in the future at some point. Then again, I’ve got several Baygen radios and lights stocked away as well so battery recharging is a fairly low priority. For extended power loss situations its worth getting into, but for the short term (less than a week) I figure Im served with a couple dozen extras.

There are also, by the way, battery ‘inserts’ that let you use a smaller size battery in your gear. They let you use C in a D, AA in a C, etc, etc. Usefull for when youre scrounging batteries but a simple grasp of basic electronics tells you that some wire and electrical tape will let you rig any AA, C, D or 9v. device to run off different batteries.

Fortunately, most of the really cool toys run on AA or D…big MagLites, MiniMags, FRS radios, portable AM/FM radios, etc, etc. The small Photon microlights run on small ‘coin’ batteries but I’ve yet to actually run down the battery in one. At $5 per light its almost cheaper to just have extra lights rather than extra batteries for it. On the other hand, I could always cannibalize batteries for it out of a digital watch.

So, if you’ve got a handful of ‘essential’ electronic gizmos that run on batteries you might wanna think about getting them all on board in the battery compatability department.