Green Machine

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A while back, one of my vendors was closing out KE Arms complete polymer AR lowers. These things are the successor to the old(er) Cavalry Arms poly lowers that were available years back. I wound up going pretty deep on these things and have about 20 of them sitting here. If you shop carefully, you can wind up putting together a deliciously light carbine. My vendor was selling two different flavors – the basic black with mil-spec parts, and a OD green model with razoo trigger, ambi mag release, and a couple other nice features. I picked up two or three of those. Here’s the problem – I hate mismatched colors on guns. I fully understand that two-tone guns can look quite striking and cool…but when it comes to AR’s (or carbines in general) I really would prefer them to be one color or pattern. A green upper receiver on a black lower just seems so….kitchen-table-assembly ghetto. Yeah, its a snob thing. Sure, I could have just pulled an AR off the rack and had it sent to the guys at Blue Line with instructions to green it up, but I figured if I waited long enough I might find one.

Turns out that when it comes to getting a factory-produced OD upper made by a major manufacturer…its a stretch. Do a hunt for a colored AR AR of color and you’ll see that most outfits just color the furniture. Want a green AR? No sweat…everyone sells an AR with some OD Magpul furniture….stock, handguards, pistol grip…..but the actual lower and upper are still black. Not what Zero wants. Before you start commenting about how so-and-so runs off lowers in various colors, please not that Im not saying they arent out there. Im simply saying its not an easy thing to come across assembled uppers in ODG. (Aero, for example, puts out colored uppers but there are not assembled.)

However, patience pays off sometimes. I found a ‘take off’ complete OD upper made by SIG on GunBroker. I put a bid in on it and won. So…time to ‘assemble’ another AR.

 

 

Still reorganizing

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Still working on re-organizng,re-arranging, and re-evaluating the mountain of things I have in storage. Its a slow and laborious project but it needs to get done. Its also sort of a de facto way of inspecting pretty much everything I have.

Im kinda tired at the end of the workday, so Im not terribly likely to spend my weekday evenings doing this sort of thing, so that leaves just weekends. Thing is, weekends are when I have to do all the things I’ve been blowing off all week. So…weekends wind up being dang busy.

As I’m moving stuff around and re-arranging, I’m also finding things that are probably ready for retirement and replacement. For example, packets of batteries from ten years ago, bottled water from five years ago, things like that.

Its a pain in the ass, doing all of this, but I’m getting some satisfaction about my levels of preparedness in various departments. I’m also keeping an eye towards the quantities I have so I can determine what is and is not ready to be halved and shuttled when I finally get the Chunk O’ Nowhere in my portfolio.

Hows that coming, by the way? Slow. I am learning very quickly that western Montana is expensive, and eastern Montana is, comparatively, quite cheap. There are places in eastern Montana where I can get 160 acres for the same amount of money 20 acres costs me here. Problem is, eastern Montana is pretty flat, featureless, and open. I’m looking for something with a bit more features than what is essentially a grassy parking lot. But…I’m in no tremendous hurry. I’d really like to get the ball rolling on this in this year, but the longer I wait the more money I have to put towards the purchase, which translates into more options. But…I also dont want to wait so long that when I finally get what I want I’m too old to enjoy it and play with it. So, like everything else in life, the trick is timing.

In the meanwhile, though, I’m still working on getting what I already have more organized and ready. But, boy, when it’s time to split all this up and move half to the Beta Site it’s gonna be quite the adventure.

Continuing with the re-organization

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So I’m still working on this months-long project of straightening things up and organizing better in the area where I store all my stuff.  One of the things I have is racks of wire shelving where I keep my stash of canned goods. Although there’s plenty of different manufacturers of various can organizers, I usually wind up going back to the Shelf Reliance Cansolidator organizers. They are rather expensive for what they are, but, I have to admit, theyre quite durable and their modularity allowing them to be used to make long runs of cans is pretty sweet. But…dang theyre expensive. Yes, I could make my own with some 1×4’s and plywood but the Shelf Reliance versions allow me to reconfigure them endlessly as my needs change.

In addition to having to pick up a couple more of the Shelf Reliance uits, I also need to pick up a few more of the plastic black-n-yellow storage bins. CostCo has been selling the 27 gallon ones, and I have a stack of them, but it turns out CostCo is also selling the smaller 12 gallon ones as well, and theyre handy for stuff that you don’t have huge quantities of or are too heavy to fill a 27 gallon tote with.

And, in a final surrender to turning into a middle-aged man, I bought…a label maker.

Also, I discovered that the folks at repackbox.com no longer sell the cardboard box packaging kit for the long-term #10 cans of food storage. So, I need to head over to the LDS cannery some weekend and pick up some of the 6-can cardboard boxes.

Its a long process, but a deeply overdue one, doing this bit of reorganizing but its quite necessary. At some point I’m going to get that stupid land purchase crossed off my list and I’ll need to transport half this stuff there. It’ll be nice to have it organized enough that its a simple matter to just grab all those plastic totes and ammo cans and go.

Gotta say, though, I’d rather spend my weekends out at the range or something but when society descends into (further) chaos I’ll probably be glad I traded weekends at the range for getting my supplies and gear sorted out.

 

Video – The History and Components of The US Military’s ALICE and LINCLOE LCE Systems

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A rather dry but informative video about the history and development of the old ALICE gear system used by the US military.

Older and wiser heads than I, who actually used this stuff, will have their own opinions, no doubt, and thats as it should be. ALICE gear is another bit of legacy gear that is fairly common in survivalist circles. The stuff was so ubiquitous and abundant that I doubt there’s anyone who doesnt have an ALICE pack, mag pouch, our other component sitting in their gear. It may not be ‘Tier 1’ stuff these days, but for the price it’s not a bad choice for certain usages. I find the ALICE packs, with an upgrade to the shoulder straps, to be a fairly competent piece of kit for an emergency bag. Since the market abhors a vacuum, there are several companies that make bags to go on the ALICE pack frame. My emergency gear in the truck is in a Spec-Ops Brand bag on an ALICE frame and I like it alot. Theyre stupid expensive these days but I think I got mine on closeout a few years back for around $75 each. I love Spec-Ops Brand gear but they seem to be perpetually on the brink of going out of business. They used to have all sortsa cool, well-thought out, and well-made gear. Now it seems they just have a few items and not much else. A shame, I really like their products.

Back in the day, ALICE gear was pretty much what every survivalist started with. Nowadays its more MOLLE/PAL webbing and gear. Good stuff, no doubt, but sometimes I like the nostalgia of the old green ALICE gear.

Because of the huge amount of ALICE gear out there, there is a thriving industry in upgrades and accessories for the ALICE system…adapters to let you use MOLLE pouches and vice versa. Replacement packs for the ALICE frames. Things like that. I personally think much of the ALICE gear is inferior to what we have now with the MOLLE stuff, but I really do like the upgraded bags, like the Spec-Ops, on the ALICE frame. The newer plastic MOLLE pack frames are alright, I suppose, and I do have some, but for ruggedness and versatility I really like the ALICE frames…especially when combined with the cargo shelf for carrying things like fuel/water cans and cases of ammo.

Anyway, an interesting bit of history about some legacy gear that many of us still have in our stockpiles.

 

Pony/JAKL hybrid

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I had mentioned, a few posts back, that I impulse picked up a Poverty Pony lower that had been registered as an SBR by the Iron Mountain guys out in Potomac. Since I had a ‘wrist braced’ JAKL ‘pistol’, and the the JAKL uses a 95% (have to use a slightly modified bolt release paddle) standard AR lower, this seemed like a good opportunity to turn the wrist-braced-pistol into what nature and man intended it to be – a stubby carbine with a real stock. And thus, this happened:

Pretty cunning, innit?

The JAKL (and the AR-180) [and by extension the Sig MCX] are interesting guns from a survivalists perspective because the have almost all of the AR’s ergonomic benefits and modularity, while removing one of the AR’s (questionable) liabilities – the buffer tube making folding stocks impractical.*

Unless youre driving around in a GMC van with three of your war buddies, dodging the military police for a crime you didnt commit, the utility of being able to fire your carbine with the stock folded is something that doesn’t seem like a frequent need. Not saying it won’t happen…hallways and stairwells exist, but as a general sort of thing…not a frequent need. However, being able to reduce your carbine to a compact, easily storable, portable package…well thats a different story. This particular package will just barely fit, assembled and ready to shoot, in my Bag O’ Tricks ™ (admittedly not leaving me room for much else).

I'[ve become rather fond of SBR/SBS’s in the last year or two. Their compactness and handling of a short barrel, combined with the steadiness and rigidity of a ‘real’ stock (as opposed to wrist brace), just feels quite good in the hands. Obviously there’s a tradeoff with a shorter barrel, but for the distances at which such an arm could reasonably be expected to be employed the differences in exterior and terminal ballistics will be niggling.

First choice for running out the door when Der Tag kicks off? Nope. But when that time does come its a nice choice for keeping in the truck when quick handling goes from ‘nice to have’ to ‘best practices’.

And, as you can see form the picture, I’m starting to drop red dots on pretty much everything, although iron sights for backup are a non-negotiable.

*= Keywords here: impractical and practical.

Tubes of silver

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My buddy at the coin shop made a massive buy today and offered me Krugerrands at spot…but I was in no position to take him up on it since I kinda shot my wad with those Swiss francs last week. But, he did have something of interest. I walked in and he reached under the counter and handsed me what certainly looked like a pipe bomb. But, no, it was something else entirely:

It was a PVC pipe made to fit 100 1-oz silver rounds. Tell me youre a survivalist without telling me youre a survivalist. The backstory is that with gold and silver being pretty up these days, this guy decided to come in and sell some of departed dad’s stuff. When a guy packs his silver away like this you can sorta get the impression that he’s on the same page you are.

I had to take a pass…..need to recover from the gold purchase. But it was still pretty cool to see. And seeing tubes full of krugerrands is always a nice reminder of Life Goals.

For those who havent been keeping up, gold has passed the $3000 mark. Infer from that what you will.

Scenes from CostCo

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First time I’d seen these at CostCo:

CostCo, I would think, doesn’t order things that it does’t see or anticipate a demand for. If that argument is valid, then when CostCo has things like Mountain House freeze drieds, water filters, solar panels, etc, it anticipates a need for them. So…whats the need? Is CostCo suddenly offering canning jars because they’re suddenly aware that people are growing food and might want to preserve it? I suppose, but why would CostCo suddenly come to that conclusion now? Or is CostCo anticipating an economic shift that will increase the demand for canning supplies as people try to squirrel away food against the upcoming Uncertain Future? Or did they just get a smoking deal from Ball? Beats me. Perhaps its a test market thing.

I haven’t checked prices on canning supplies this year because I’m pretty well set for jars and lids, but if this is a decent deal and you needs some jars…might wanna see if your local CostCo is carrying ’em.

Guns? Sure. But food…ah, thats another story

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Re-organizing my stuff, especially the long-term food, has me musing about the classic have vs. have-not conflict that we will see when the wheels fly off society…and that, to some degree, we are seeing now.

The apocalypse is going to come in several different flavors…civil war/disturbance, economic depression, huge natural disaster, pandemic, stray nukes…and it will, no doubt, at some point require that you be ready to maintain the safety and security of your loved ones and your home. But you know what happens far more often than the need to point a gun at someone? The need to eat.

I’m an old-school survivalist – being armed is right up there at the top of the list of things to be ready for. But I also have dang near thirtyfive years of being that old school survivalist behind me. In all that time, I have needed to eat far more times than I’ve needed to point a gun at someone. Not saying it wont happen…simply saying that, statistically, youll be more likely to be patting yourself on the back over your food stash than your gun and ammo stash.

In addition to keeping you from, y’know, dying, food has an excellent moral and motivational (Motivatory? Motivary?) effect – as the graphic on the MRE entree says: food is a force multiplier. Well-fed people are going to perform better than starving people. And starving people are desperate people who do desperate things..and doing desperate things is a great way to become someone who doesn’t need food at all…forever. So dont be a starving person who takes crazy risks out of desperation, and don’t be around starving people who are unpredictable and dangerous.

Having that resource of food also makes you a target. Truly desperate people…people who are cold, who are hungry, who are hopeless, who are watching their loved ones miss meals…are dangerous and unpredictable. Don’t be one of them and don’t let them know you’re there.

Right now we live in a world where people will literally kill you because they want your sneakers, think you cut them off in traffic, or simply want your cellphone. And thats in a world with 911, electricity, cops, and a somewhat-functioning society. Now imagine what it’ll be like when the only mechanism to keep the foot on the brake pedal of social chaos is whatever you’ve got in your holster or slung over your shoulder.

In a situation like that the person who can sit at home, safe and secure, and not have to venture out into the chaos looking for food and supplies has a tremendous advantage. Exponentially so if he’s there with his equally well-fed and well-armed family and friends.

It used to be that people first getting into preparedness/survivalism started off with a wild binge of gun and ammo buying, and everything that came after was done with far less rigor and enthusiasm. I have encountered quite a few people who had guns and ammo aplenty but put virtually no thought into food. A bunch of 2-liter pop bottles filled with rice and beans is better than starving…I guess. But you really should aspire for better than that.

And for the love of Crom, stock up on ‘regular’ food….the canned fruits, the jarred sauces and soups, the bags of pasta and rice, etc, etc. Expensive freeze drieds are awesome but when I suffer a small-scale EOTWAWKI like a job loss or 48-hour power failure, I’m going to be really reluctant to break into the $30 can of Mountain House Chicken and Rice and more likely to grab a $2 jar of spaghetti sauce and a $3 bag of pasta off the shelf.

Guns and radios and fuel and all the other sexy stuff is important, no doubt, but water and food are always going to get more use and demand than pretty much anything else you can store. It’s absolutely worth thinking about what youre stocking up on, how much of it you’re putting away, and how youre going to use it. Certainly thats where my mind is these days.