An observation about caching

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I stashed a Monovault full of supplies and gear at the Beta Site ‘just in case’. Seems a reasonable thing to do, yes? When packing gear for something like that, I use the scenario “I’m dropped in the middle of nowhere, naked, at night, in the winter. What do I need?” And that pretty much covers the ‘worst case’. I mean, it may be a warm, sunny summer day when I have to beat feet with just the clothes on my back. Or I may have the luxury of rolling up with everything I need packed in the truck. But since I don’t know, I have to assume the worst case…the dark and stormy night.

As such, I was imagining the wet, cold, muddy scenario and it occurred to me that when you have a tightly packed stash of gear and goodies, the items you may need immediately might not be on the top. Since you dont know the circumstances under which you’ll be accessing this cache, you cant really predict what to put at the top of the pile. You may have to dig down through several layers of gear to get to what you need immediately. And, as your digging down through your stash of gear, where do you put the gear that you are digging down through? I mean, clearly the scene would be you huddled over your cache, pulling items out to get to the one you need immediately. And that gear youre pulling out…where are you putting it? Youre just putting it next to you on the ground…the wet, muddy, snowy, icy ground. Where it sits and gets snowed and rained on as your working your way through your cache.

Which got me to thinking that I need to re-arrange things so that the very first thing on top of the pile in the Monovault is either a rubberized poncho, or a waterproof backpack, so that as I pull stuff out I can keep it dry and protected as I unpack the Monovault to get to what I need in that moment. (well, that and a flashlight.)

And, as an aside, I packed an empty large backpack in there specifically because just because you’ve made it to your cache doesn’t mean youre going to be staying there. Might be a circumstance where you need to grab your gear and keep moving along…in which case being able to shove it all into a rugged bacpack will be a handy option….because trying to juggle all that gear in just your bare hands while running through the woods is no ones idea of a good time.

Bargain – T3 Gear…sitewide 50% off

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Got a notice in email of a 50% off sale at a vendor I like. Passing it on to you guys.

A small shop that makes a couple items that I very much like. The first is their T3 Bolt Bag, an ‘active shooter’ style bag. Carries spare rifle mags on a removable panel, has pass-through on either side of the bag to access a holster, and is lined with velcro for things like mag pouches and whatnot. I have one of these for each ‘ready rifle’, and it holds mags, a Glock, spare mag, Stop The Bleed Kit, and a few other niceties for when bullets start flying. I’ve got one for the AK, AR, and HK91. At 50% off, these are a good piece of kit.

Other item is this buttpack. Used in conjunction with a ‘battle belt’ and suspenders, this is a nice way to carry essentials in the field. It also has D-rings so you can use it as a sling bag, but it really shines as a buttpack. Again, at 50% off…totally worth it.

I’m passing this along to you guys because I find these two pieces of gear to be quite handy and well-thought out. I’m getting no piece of the action on this, so my motivation to pass this along is strictly out of ‘satisfied customer’.

Discount code is: THISISNOTADRILL

Weather or not

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Montana is one of the most unpredictable climates I have ever been in. This state holds the world record for biggest temperature swing in the one day..over 100 degrees. Going from -54 to 49 in the span of 24 hours. We also had an honest-to-Crom blizzard on the Fourth of July. The point being that weather, in this state, is so unpredictable that I genuinely believe local news weather forecasts could be like this – “And now todays weather. Might be sunny, might not. Back to you, Ted.”

Here’s a gamecam shot from a week ago:

And a week later:


Thats a 50-degree change in less than a week. I’m hoping that the roads are now in such a condition that I can get up there in my truck rather than having to take the SxS. I’ll head up there this weekend in the SXS and see how the roads look. If theyre good, then the weekend after I’ll go up in the truck and take some camping gear and spend the weekend out there.

So that’s done….

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“Remember this Saying, That the good Paymaster is Lord of another Man’s Purse. He that is known to pay punctually and exactly to the Time he promises, may at any Time, and on any Occasion, raise all the Money his Friends can spare. This is sometimes of great Use: Therefore never keep borrow’d Money an Hour beyond the Time you promis’d, lest a Disappointment shuts up your Friends Purse forever” – Benjamin Franklin

I had mentioned a while back that when I purchased the Beta Site in December I was a wee bit short and had to borrow $30k from someone. They were very generous and supportive, and loaned me $30k for three years at 6%. No paperwork, no signatures, just a handshake and a solemn promise. Clearly someone had some trust in me…which kinda surprised me, but whatever.

And…paid the last of it today…31 months ahead of schedule.

So that means the Beta Site is 100% mine..so Ive got that goin’ for me, which is nice. But more importantly, it means that it frees up the money that I’ve been throwing at it every week. Think about that for a minute..how fast, and how well, could you appoint a piece of bare land when you have a chunk of money every week to put towards it? And, that was the only debt I was carrying sooooo…..a good bit of freedom to spend as I see fit.

I try not to pat myself on the back because I know my history has more than enough failures to keep me humble, but I am a little pleased with myself in this particular episode.

Video – Building the ULTIMATE 4-Season Tiny Shelter (Packed with Survival Tech!)

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Once in a while I get email from readers pointing out things that they think I might find useful or that I might want to be aware of. Interestingly, many times its something that I just recently became aware of myself. Rarely, I get multiple emails from different people all pointing me to the same thing. That just happened this week. The item brought to my attention:


An interesting product, to be sure. If someone were looking for, literally, just a ‘lifeboat’ sort of thing to hide in the middle of nowhere, this might fit that need. It appears to be constructed of rigid foam. This would seem to suggest that the insulative qualities of this thing would be rather high. When you’re hiding from something in the dead of winter, that could be pretty important.  What I find a bit of a turn off is that…it appears to be constructed of rigid foam. While there is some utility and handiness in terms of insulation and lightweight portability, I am not keen on trusting my safety to what is essentially a large beer cooler.

I suppose that you could build a ‘doghouse’-type structure to slide this thing into in order to afford it some protection from the elements and things like falling branches, but I’d still have some concerns about durability. However, the more I think about it, the notion of ‘sleeving’ this thing within some hard, protective shell has some interesting appeal.

However…the idea thats presented here in the video has some value and is worth consideration. That idea being that a small, easily hidden four-walls-and-a-roof that can keep you warm and sheltered. This might be a very good ‘turnkey’ option for someone who doesnt want to go through the expense and hassle of building something.

Additionally, once you get past the shelter itself, some of the things shown in the video, used in conjunction with the shelter, are very interesting and worth me following up on. Most notably the heat system.

I want to thank the several people who sent me a link to this. Although I don’t think its something that exactly fills my needs, it does send me thinking in a different direction than I was before…which is useful.

Movie Trailer – The Dog Stars

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I had no idea this was being made into a movie. I first read this book when a generous reader sent me a copy in 2020. I enjoyed it immensely for how relatable it was in terms of dealing with loss, grief, and loneliness. It was about going on after everything you’ve loved has left and died, and you’re still here.

The movie, if the trailer is anything to go by, will clearly deviate from the book. Most notably, there are virtually no scenes in the book that involve more than seven people in the moment at once. The trailer clearly shows groups and gatherings of much more than that. However, I understand that you have to tweak out the source material if youre gonna put meat in the seats at the Odeon.

I am curious how Brolin does conveying Bangley’s taciturn lethality, and how Pops, the other lethal old timer, will be represented. Clearly theres already been a cast change since Jasper, the dog, was a beagle in the book and in the trailer appears to be a Malinois or similar.

Also, its directed by one of my three favorite directors, Ridley Scott. (Michael Mann and Luc Besson  being my other faves.) Scott has had some stinkers in his career, but when he succeeds, he succeeds in a big way. I’m willing to see a movie of his even if I’m not sure I’m interested in the story.

Still, I’ll go see this and hope it doesn’t colour my enjoyment of the original material.

Patriots Day = Range Day

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Today is Patriots Day. A day that is the perfect reason to go to the range and practice with your favorite freedom-securing device. As our buddy Heinlein said, the price of freedom is “the willingness to do sudden battle, anywhere, any time and with utter recklessness”. What does that mean? Let’s ask the AI:

“Robert A. Heinlein famously defined the price of freedom as “the willingness to do sudden battle, anywhere, any time and with utter recklessness”. This recurring theme in his work, notably in The Puppet Masters (1951), emphasizes that liberty requires active, often violent defense, rather than being an unalienable right.

Key aspects of this philosophy include:

  • Active Defense: Freedom is not free; it is paid for with the willingness to fight.
  • Individual Responsibility: True freedom involves being personally responsible for one’s actions, often requiring hard choices and vigilance.
  • TANSTAAFL: Popularized in The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, “There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch” implies that everything, including freedom, has a cost.
  • Vigilance: It mirrors the sentiment that liberty is maintained only through constant vigilance.

Heinlein’s stories, such as Starship Troopers, often tied the right to vote to the willingness to serve and sacrifice for society.”

Sounds legit.

So, let’s hit the range today and put some metal in the air.

I used to know someone who would buy a new gun, stick it in his safe, and go for months, or even years, without shooting it. I used to tease him about it and now I have become that person. I have a small mountain of guns here that I need to take to the range and get set up. Todays range trip was a CZ .22, the Marlin .45-70, and a pair of Rugers.

The Rugers were a pair of PC 9mm guns. The first was a takedown PC Carbine I picked up a few weeks back and rehoused into a new Magpul Backpacker stock. The other gun was a factory SBR’d PC Carbine from Ruger. Just recently Ruger has started offering a few SBR’d guns that are coming straight from the factory as SBR’s.

I dropped an AR-180-style folder on it, a tri-lug adapter to allow me to drop one of my Obsidian 9 cans on it, and tried out the new Olight Osight.

For me, the attraction of these two firearms is that they can be broken down into compact packages that stow away nicely for when you need some firepower but space is limited…..bugout bags, caches, vehicles, etc.


When you take the SBR and break it down into it’s smallest configuration, it isn’t much larger than my Glock 17.

The SBR literally fits in the bottom drawer of my desk at work. No substitute for an M4 or similar carbine, but better than just a pistol.

One of the other guns I shot today was the Marlin .45-70 I picked up in an estate a few months back. The gun came with a bunch of reloaded ammo which I figured Id use to get on paper and build up a supply of empty cases to reload. I had forgotten how thumpy a rifle can be when you’re launching a 400 grain bullet. Ow.

I had removed the barrel-mounted sight, which was a Rem 700 sight someone had bolted on there, and replaced it with a receiver sight. At 25 yards it was shooting almost two feet low. Adjusting the rear sight accordingly was a bit of a stretch and left the rear sight sitting rather high above the receiver. Clearly a replacement front sight, with a lower profile, is called for. I ordered a few replacement front sights with different heights and I’ll swap them out as necessary until things are where I want them. I’d like to use some hardcast bullets for their penetrative properties, and I have some gas-checked RCBS 300- and 400-grain FN gas-checked bullets to use.

And the CZ? Shot wonderfully. I know everyone has their favorite bolt .22, but I genuinely think that you can spend a lot of money and not gain any advantage over one of the nicer CZ bolt .22’s. I have two of these guns and I really, really like them.

So…nice day to go shoot.

Article – In Trump era, fearful left-leaning Americans turn to guns

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The semi-automatic weapon in the 38-year-old’s hand is the first he has ever owned.

He is one of many left-leaning Americans who are embracing guns because of their fears about President Donald Trump’s administration — upending conventional wisdom about who owns firearms in the United States.

“I feel a lot more threatened by my government than the citizens around me,” said Collin, who asked to be only identified by his first name for privacy concerns.

Change a couple words in here…..’left’ to ‘right’, ‘Donald Trump’ to ‘Barack Obama’, and you have pretty much the situation from almost twenty years ago. And you were called a right-wing, racist, militia-wannabe.

When you do it, it’s ‘reactionary’ and ‘paranoid’….but when the other side does it, it’s a different story.

Here’s the money shot: both sides said the exact same thing – I’m doing this because I don’t trust my government and I want to be able to protect myself from them.

Funny, you’d think that sort of thing would be something that could unite, or at least bridge some differences between, the two sides. The irony is pretty pronounced.

Long strange road

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ETA: And I just noticed that ,Rawles posted on his SurvivalBlog that  “Today, April 15, 2026, is the 23rd Blogiversary of my buddy Commander Zero’s Notes From The Bunker blog. Congratulations!”) Glad he, and a few other folks, remembered because…I didn’t. Too much Beta Site on my brain.

I was reminded by someone in the comments that today is the 23’rd anniversary of the blog. Thats a long time to be rehashing the same subjects over and over…yet here we are.

It would not be a blog anniversary post without me gently needling Friend Of The Blog ™ ,Rawles over at SurvivalBlog that I predate him by about three years. But, giving credit where its due, he posts far more frequently than I do so while I’ve got him in terms of years, he’s got me in terms of quantity (and views).

A lot has changed in those years. Notably me. Those grey hairs come fast, man. But I’m still in reasonably good health and temper. Among other things, the hand-to-mouth nature of those early days has changed. I’ve a lot more money to do what  I want with than when I started this adventure.

If you roll back far enough in the blog, you can see the first mentions of the Beta Site. Took a bit of time to finally acquire it, but acquire it I did. Hopefully it won’t take another twenty years to get the place appointed the way I’d like.

It’s tough to rechew the same topics over and over for twenty years. One of the things I’m going to enjoy about the Beta Site is that it’ll give me some new adventures to document and ideas to expand upon.

So there you go, kids. Twentythree years of brain droppings. If you’ve enjoyed any of it, feel free to swing by Patreon and put a few bucks into the Beta Site Development Fund…the barbed wire and sentry guns ain’t gonna pay for themselves.