Archive for Articles
Jun
30
Practicool vs. Tacticool
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Model 629 44 magnum and Glock 19 9mm
A few days ago I was talking about my latest interest in firearms being that of the more practical variety. I thought I’d go flesh out that subject just a little more for today’s post. As we break into one of the hotly contested areas of prepping and before I tweak any one’s nose unnecessarily… I own firearms of both configuration and probably always will. It isn’t so much a case of one is good and the other bad or undesirable.
As a serious prepper for many years, I’ve had the opportunity to stock up when the price was right and more importantly in the FAT years as aposed to the relative lean years many of us are experiencing now. These stockpiles can reach great proportions over a course of time and that’s what happened to me. Don’t lose heart you younger or newer preppers your pile’s will grow too over time! So, this is where I found myself as of late, big piles of stuff and much smaller piles of bank account. What to do? Like I said before I concluded that a degree of soul searching was in order as to what my current priorities were going to be?
Marlin Guide Gun 45-70
I really didn’t know how my decision was going to come out… It would have been much easier to have just left everything as is, stored away for a rainy day sure to come along soon enough! I also was deliberating on a direction to take with my firearms collection, I’d been feeling that I may have the ratio of practical tool guns out of kilter with the more tactical in design? As you already know, I decided that I would focus a bit more attention and money on the practical preps that were lacking in my plans…
The good thing was a significant profit could be made if I indeed decided to sell off surplus stores of guns and or ammo. Well, like I said, I already told you the other day I did eventually decide to sell off a number of duplicates from my collection as well as a huge amount of ammo. It took me nearly 2 years of contemplation before I began to make the phone calls and visits to the gun shows to move all of this inventory. It wasn’t exactly easy to see these items go as I know in my heart of hearts that I will probably never again be in a position to purchase this quantity of these particular items again…
I decided that my focus would move more into the practical direction and I would use the profits to complete projects at the BOL and also add a few firearms to the battery. Obviously, practical is a relative term and means completely different things to each individual! My version of PRACTICOOL is a more broad approach, practical preps like woodstoves and practical guns like the Marlin pictured above. The woodstove speaks for itself but the Marlin may not. I’m looking at practical firearms as those that will fill their intended purpose on a more regular basis… Yes, I know that we all have our favorite AR or AK for the practical purpose of home defense against the MZB’s that WILL BE coming on one gloomy afternoon not to far in the future. Let’s agree that we’re on the same page about having a high capacity, round spewing rifle close at hand, everyone should! However, how much Zombie death have any of us brought in the recent years? Remember, it could happen but has it yet? For most of us, at least the preppers that I have been privileged enough to gain their confidence, have an unrealistic skew in our preps leaning toward the Tacticool! Let’s face it, AR’s are cool and lately there have been a gazillion (sounds like a number soon to be used to describe our national debt) companies popping up to sell us there version of awesome upgrades to an already great firearm… I venture to say that we all enjoy taking that favorite gun out of the safe and just holding it while we watch a favorite action movie. Come on, don’t try to blow smoke at me, you all know you do that!
These Tacticool guns are great and I will probably always have more than my fair share of them around somewhere but lets get serious… Is that AR going to go out into the woods and bring back a rabbit? AR haters will always refer to it as a “mouse gun” but is it really? Of course not and it isn’t a rabbit gun either! How about using an AK for bear protection? Yes, I’d use any gun I happen to be carrying to protect myself from whatever threat came along but some threats and or uses are going to be more common than others… While at my residence in the suburbs, the 9mm will probably be perfect for the most likely threats I could encounter but out in the sticks at the BOL…?
With the exception of the lapse of judgement the other day when discovering our BOL break in, I would be more likely to cross paths with a black bear or cougar than a hostile 2 legged threat. While my 44 magnum will certainly make short work of a man sized threat, my 9mm would be anemic against that same threat in the form of a hungry bear! Can you see where I’m going with this?
Marlin Guide Gun 45-70
With the exception of the lapse of judgement the other day when discovering our BOL break in, I would be more likely to cross paths with a black bear or cougar than a hostile 2 legged threat. While my 44 magnum will certainly make short work of a man sized threat, my 9mm would be anemic against that same threat in the form of a hungry bear! Can you see where I’m going with this?
Bushmaster CAR15 .223
The same logic could be used while looking at the the to do list… Yes, a 10,000 round stockpile of ammo is AWESOME or at least more than adequate in most people’s minds but will it keep me warm when the power goes out? What if the power goes out and stays out? Can I eat it or would I be better off having a large woodpile to feed the stove while I dig through my bursting pantry deciding what the “Prepper” family will have for dinner to go with the rabbit I shot while doing my afternoon perimeter inspection? I say of the most likely scenarios I see on the horizon, I’d be better off with the wood and pantry… Am I wrong?
Something else that has me concerned is the “Preppers” that have only prepped the Tacticool way? Often, we preppers don’t know alot of others like ourselves from anywhere other than the internet. If those guys on the internet forums and even other supposed DOOMER blogs are any indication of what a prepper is suppose to look like… All guns and no food will make Prepper Pete a very hungry boy… I also believe that with a more balanced approach we serve our own survival needs much better. When we have adequate food and or the proper equipment to grow or gather more, we have a far greater chance of survival than if we are limited to attempting to take it from others…
Alright, you say that this doesn’t apply to you as you wouldn’t ever try to take from someone else… Besides if all you have is an AK, it will take down a deer for you, right? It might under ideal circumstances… I don’t expect that we will be able to count on ideal circumstances and when you’re hungry I believe you will no longer have the moral fortitude to starve before you attempt armed robbery!
As usual this post is nothing more than one preppers opinion and attempted justification of my own actions… I do think that my final decision to liquidate some overstocked items in favor of a more balanced survival approach will turn out to have been a wise decision, only time will tell! I’m willing to bet that there are others out there in our community that have been or maybe should be having these same conversations with themselves. If this post is nagging at you or causing you to think about something from a new perspective, don’t ignore it – act on it! You may find that you’re all set and no corrections need to be made but from my research there are far to many Tacticool survivalists and far to few of the Practicool variety!
Prepper
Bushmaster CAR15 .223
Apr
09
Mutant Zombie Bikers… When all was quiet
Posted by: | CommentsYou heard the murmurs but couldn’t make out the exact words… The crowd parted as you continued forward to what felt like an appointment you had on the bleachers. It was almost as thought the crowd had needed to see something done to awaken them from a sense of being powerless.
You and your family had been feeling the beginnings of this powerlessness and you had been prepared for this disaster better than 99% of the folks around you. Your wife had been successful in keeping the feelings at bay by finding ways to occupy all of your minds. Many of these people standing around you had no such hope. They had made no preparations for a change in their reality. Even the things you had done over the last several years were looking like they would not be nearly enough. The situation had started small and exciting but it was becoming clear that the solution to this problem would be slow in arriving, if it ever did get resolved!
Without much of anything to say in the way of addressing this crowd you stepped up on the lowest level of this section of bleachers. Your voice sounded weak, at least in your own ears. You made a quick, curt introduction as a member of the neighborhood but left off the specifics of what home and street you lived on. The crowd listened quietly as you apologised for the harsh treatment of the man but his continued interference was going to do more harm than you dealt out on him. Everyone was called to a meeting and you suggested that it get underway. You were tempted to add that if there were any further disruptions before the speakers were allowed to finish that you wouldn’t go as easy a second time. You decided that it would be better to keep those thoughts to yourself. With out anything further, you stepped down to the ground and moved off to one side indicating that you were going to wait for the speakers to get the show on the road.
As your adrenaline was still working its way out of your system, everything seemed to be moving in a degree of slow motion but you stood your ground. Out of the corner of your eye, you could see the bleeding man and his wife standing behind the crowd. It appeared that everyone was ready to settle down and hear the stranger out. No one seemed to be showing particular interest in you anymore and even the nearly silent private conversations stopped as the man stepped up further on to the bleachers and introduced himself.
As it turned out he was the brother of one of the original residents in this neighborhood. His brother was a retried man that lived a few streets over from you and appeared to be a well respected member of the community, except by the small group of trouble makers. You hadn’t ever met the man’s brother but did know which house was his as it was diligently and carefully landscaped. The story began to unfold and the man explained the events that had let up to his arrival here among us…
This man had been living inside the city limits and with few exceptions the story from his neighborhood was similar to that of this one. The first week saw people begin to run out of food and then fuel. Just as you had seen over the last 24 hours, the stress levels began to elevate. One night the sounds of motorcycles had awakened him and probably everyone else within a mile around. Originally the sounds were just loud but not directly outside his home. As the minutes past the roar grew louder and then around the corner came a dozen bikes. The riders were a motley crew of rough looking men and even a few women. These women weren’t the type an average man would want to tangle with, much less ask out on a date.
The bikers didn’t appear to have arrived on this street randomly. They pulled up in front of a home just a couple of doors away from his. It wasn’t the kind of arrival that would be welcome as these jokers parked not only in the driveway but on the lawn too! All but one of the riders had gotten off the bikes and proceeded to force their way through the front door to the house. He explained that much the same as in your case, he knew few of his neighbors well enough to do more than wave a greeting. However, this house was the home of a friendly young family. A young couple and their 3 children lived there, these bikers didn’t fit with the lifestyle that the couple exhibited. It was pretty clear that these guests weren’t expecting a warm welcome and several weapons were seen as the party entered the home.
The man had hung his head on a couple of occasions during the story that he continued to tell… Since the electricity was out of course the neighbors lights hadn’t come on but he knew there were faces in all the windows up and down that street. As he watched the scene unfold, the sound of muffled gun shots were heard. Next a group of the bikers began to exit the house carrying boxes in their arms. Several groups came out and the contents of these boxes were loaded into saddlebags strapped to the sides of most of the bikes. The single biker that had stayed outside was a short distance up the street in a over watch position. He didn’t say he had seen a firearm but it was clear he remained behind to protect the group from any well wishing neighbors. Sadly, the man continued the story explaining that shamefully not a single man came out of his house to try to help this family…
The bikers had only been in the home for 5-10 minutes and then after packing their bikes were gone as quickly as they had come. The way this story was relayed had kept a strange hush over everyone and the way he described the silence that followed after the bikers left had a very eerie undertone that all present could almost feel for themselves, right then!
His story continued as he came to the conclusion that since no one else was moving, he would go investigate. He dressed quickly and soon found himself carefully approaching the home. As he came to the driveway, he admitted to having second thoughts. He even said that he was afraid of what he would find. Several times he turned to see if anyone else was going to come outside… No one did. He saw curtains drop back down into place as his gaze almost caught the neighbors that he knew were watching. His conscience was already doing a number on him for not coming to these people’s aid. He knew he couldn’t turn back now…
Slowly he approached the front door to the house. The door was open but of course the home was dark inside. He stopped to see if he could hear anything but was only met with a deep silence. As he reached the doorway he noticed that the door jam was broken, it had obviously been forced open. Almost out of habit he reached inside and tried to locate a light switch. After a lifetime of electric lights a flip of a switch away, this habit would die hard! When he was of course rewarded with no response to his flipping of the light switch he stepped inside.
Just a few steps inside the door and there was a new level to the darkness. No moonlight was reaching into the home now and he only knew he was approaching the homes hallway because he was familiar with the floor plan. He again stopped, he had to try to quiet his heavily beating heart so he could hear if there was any other sounds coming from the darkness. Only then did he hear it…
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Prepper
Apr
06
Mutant Zombie Bikers… Choices
Posted by: | CommentsAgain, I apologize for the lack of regularity in the posts right now but they should begin to level back out to 4-5 a week in the near future. I do appreciate the inquiries into our well being! It’s nothing like that, just the reality of additional hours needing to be worked to try to keep a regular payday coming in. The Western Washington real estate market is taking it’s time deciding if it wants to make a come back or just roll over and die. Until it decides, it’s extra hours for me! Oh well? I have another post on the status of those MZB’s for you today…
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Ignoring the pleas your better judgement continued to make, you walked on. Angry words in the distance gave way to the view of a crowd of at least 150 individuals, many of whom you couldn’t recall having seen around the neighborhood. They all were interacting as though they were indeed your neighbors though. They had the casual familiarity of people that knew each other but all was not well!
As the group you were with, for lack of a better description, approached the back of the crowd the words became more clear. There was a loud disagreement between someone near the front and the apparent ring leaders of this circus. What exactly was in dispute was not immediately evident. The crowd had formed around the baseball diamond and the bleachers were being used as a podium of sorts. For the next few minutes you listened to the bantering and bickering to try to get a feel for what was taking place.
Slowly the story became clear. The “leaders” who called the meeting were up on the bleachers along with their relative that had brought the news of the coming threat. Opposite them was the “crowd”, this group made up of neighbors from your subdivision as well as some from the surrounding homes. While these other individuals weren’t part of the neighborhood they couldn’t exactly be seen as outsiders. The rational for including them was sound by your estimation as the threat would certainly effect them too.
As close as you were able to come to a full understanding of the argument was that it unfolded something like this… The leaders had called the meeting to alert their friends and neighbors. The logical urgency had already been felt by most of those that had become privy to the details over the last 24 hours. They had in turn been the ones to start making the initial defense plans and preparations. This however was seen by some of those in attendance at the meeting as a sign of the leaders disrespect for the groups ability to come to a single conclusion before anything was done that effected the entire neighborhood, such as the barricades that you had just seen being constructed.
The meeting hadn’t even officially come to order before the infighting had begun. The folks that were leading the meeting had not even been given the opportunity to deliver the message and you for one wanted to have the details before you were forced to chose sides. You noticed that it appeared to be a single voice of opposition that could be heard above all others. This man was among those you hadn’t seen before and his language and demeanor wasn’t setting a very good tone for a friendly meeting of neighbors coming together for the common good. The longer you listened to this guy spew his noxious attitude, the closer you were coming to inserting yourself into this situation. If nothing else you could sit on the guy long enough for the information to be disseminated.
Without fully realizing what you were doing you made your way through the crowd of people and found yourself coming up behind the loud mouth. Several of the group he appeared to be with or maybe representing noticed you but he hadn’t. He continued to argue and talk over the relatively calm “leaders”, who clearly had called the meeting in a genuine effort to be helpful. You could read the emotions on their faces, they were frustrated by this clowns behavior. It was clear that they were wishing they hadn’t even bothered.
You quickly sized the crowd up and concluded that the majority of the people were just like you, looking for information and nothing more. The behavior from this small group of individuals, mostly just the one man, was making many uncomfortable to say the least. The faces of those around you were growing impatient and if something wasn’t done quickly to remove this provocateur the crowd would disperse before they could hear from the man who had come to deliver the information.
Thinking quickly for the first time since you had left your back door, you came to the conclusion that attempting to verbally persuade this joker to shut up and calm down would be fruitless. Having no formal training in hand to hand combat you also could conclude that a straight up fist to cuffs wouldn’t be in your best interests either. The man had several years and 50 pounds on you, the only alternative would be a sucker punch. Without further thought or strategising, you grabbed the mans shoulder and spun him around. With a quick solid punch to his mid section, you succeeded in knocking the windbags air out of him.
The man had obviously been taken off guard and crumpled gasping for air. His eyes met yours and you could see he was trying to make sense of this assult. A second passed as he was looking at you and then you saw it… The spark of anger returned to his eyes, you weren’t done yet. You had been prepared to see that anger and followed the first punch with a second but this time to the bridge of the mans nose. The blow had easily broken it. It wasn’t as if that was the effect you intended but it was enough to take the fight out of him. His eyes welled up with tears and blood streamed out from around his hands as he grasped his broken face.
Another man who had been standing beside the first guy moved as though he was going to grab you. As you turned to face off with him, he ducked to the side and moved away into the crowd. The only person that remained standing next to “loud mouth” was a woman, you assumed it was his wife. She glared at you but didn’t say a single word. Your adrenaline was still pumping hard and the sound of the crowd had all but died in your ears. You took a few steps away from the bleeding man, making your way toward the bleachers.
The thoughts were again running through your head… “Did I act to rashly? Was that the right thing to do? He deserved what he got and more!” All of these things and more ran through your mind, seemingly all at once. It was to late to change the direction this afternoon was taking but you had come to hear some one talk and it hadn’t been that windbag from who knows where! It felt as though you had a case of tunnel vision and all you could see was that you were almost to the bleachers and whatever would come next…
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Prepper
Apr
05
Business Opportunity? 2
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Mass Hypnosis
Posted by: Prepper | Comments (1)Lately I’ve had additional time to ponder the meaning of life and what the future might have in store for us… (I did say additional time, I know that at least a few of you are wondering why I’m so delinquent in getting posts up if I have the additional time? The truth is I spend a great deal of my day behind the steering wheel, time to think and time to write are two very different things). When I say what the future might hold, I’m of course thinking big picture, the economy and freedom erosion, etc…
It was during one of these lost in thought moments that I nearly ran over a bicyclist. Yep, that’s right, I was in down town Seattle and the bike was weaving in and out of traffic and had I not snapped out of my trance I would have plowed into this moron. Instead I get the finger and some choice words about sharing the road… The following thoughts are what stemmed from my near collision…
When we look out at the society we live in currently, at least I think that most of us live here, what do we see? It would appear that most everything is counter intuitive any more. Women dressing as men, more scary – men dressing as women. The few with more rights and protections than the many? I recently heard or read, I can’t recall which, the story about a law suit filed against a mexican restaurant chain. In a nutshell, the restaurant was sued over there marketing slogan – “The Chipolte experience”, this particular restaurant is basically fast food and the meal is prepared to order while you watch. The suit was brought by a disabled patron in a wheel chair. Their complaint was that they were being denied the “Chipolte experience”, because the restaurant didn’t make a provision to allow the disabled to view their food being prepared? I don’t believe that the dollar amount that exchanged hands was disclosed but the restaurant did settle out of court with this individual. Does this make your blood boil or is it just me?
I’m sure that I’m not alone in the way I usually cope with this? Turning a blind eye to the things that just don’t make sense as it is much easier than allowing yourself to be driven crazy by this madness… While I’m not going to advocate violence, I do adhere to the belief that a little healthy fear in a society isn’t always a bad thing.
When I was a kid I recall that there were neighbors yards that I made sure to never set foot in as the owner was suppose to be a wacko or something. The point wasn’t that I had a wacko living in the neighborhood or not but that the fear of what going in someone else’s yard might mean kept me from doing it. How about the old corporal punishment in the schools? I know that my father explained that if I was ever to receive “swats” at school from the principal, I would receive twice as many from him when I got home. Knowing that Dad meant it, I steered clear of a lot of trouble on the play ground if it looked like it could be blamed on me!
What would a healthy level of fear look like in my ideal society? How do you describe what should just be a natural state? If you’re a female maybe you think twice about parking in that dark parking structure when your be yourself, instead of believing the police will be there to protect you? How about if you were to trespass on someone else’s land, the seed of doubt bubbling up in your mind that you might be shot? In addition to possibly getting yourself shot the knowledge that the law would be on the side of the land owner might make a person think twice…? I think that my ideal society is the same society we all lived in, up until several decades ago. That is at least in America!
A healthy level of fear would do more to protect us than it would to scare us! My wife and I have been doing a little hiking lately and we frequently see single women out on the trail. Single meaning alone, not necessarily unmarried of course. Women in the woods all by themselves? My gut reaction as a modern American would be, “well of course, why shouldn’t a free American women go anywhere she wants, the same a man?”. Just like the wheel chair customer thought about being denied the right to see their food being prepared at Chipolte, we’re all equal and should be able to have exactly what the other guy gets…? HOGWASH!
In reality this unhealthy belief or over confidence will either get that women in the woods hurt or possibly worse. I think as a society we have brainwashed ourselves from the top down that we can do whatever we feel like doing and there won’t be any consequences. Wrong, there will be consequences and they are going to be much worse when the day of reckoning comes, the longer we behave as if they don’t apply to us. This eventuality applies to us personally as well as collectively as a nation. The government as of late has been running wildly off further and further into left field with their actions and responses to the current problems we face economically. Whoa to the unprepared when this all unwinds, we will all know the truth but in this case I doubt it will be setting any of us free!
That bicyclist in down town Seattle is just another good example of what has become of common sense these days. A man on a bike that thinks because society says riding a bike to work is a good idea means he is immune to the forces of nature? Weather it comes in the form of nothing more than gravity or ends in the crippling effect of metal on flesh, this wrong belief could very well get him hurt or even killed. Then of course there’s the age old gun control debate… We don’t need guns to protect ourselves, that’s what the police are for – right? The fact that we even have to defend against this ass-hattery is proof positive that we are living in a age of mass hypnosis!
Is there hope for a civilization that no longer has the understanding that the rules of the universe require there to be an iron clad relationship between cause and effect? I don’t think that we will have to wait much longer to find out the answer to this question? Stay tuned in to the world around you and see if you don’t start spotting the blatant disregard of all things logical going on all around you everyday!
Food for thought!
Prepper