Odds ‘n Sods:

Some good news! The US military’s “fired brass destruction” policy change turned out to be very short-lived. It has just been reversed. To begin with, the policy change was intended only for military brass that is OCONUS, not in CONUS. (If you have a fast Internet connection, then see this PDF., but was apparently over-applied ) I also got some information from Gary Marbut, president of the Montana Shooting Sports Association (by way of a SurvivalBlog reader up in Montana): “I just received a phone call from the office of U.S. Senator Tester of Montana to inform me that at 5:15 (EST) today [Tuesday, March 17th] a letter cosigned by Senator Tester (D-MT) and Senator Baucus (D-MT) was faxed to the Department of Defense asking DoD to reverse its new policy requiring destruction of fired military cartridge brass. At 5:30, I am told, Tester’s office received a fax back from DoD saying that the brass destruction policy IS reversed. Others report to me that they are already seeing evidence of this on the Websites of entities that liquidate surplus DoD commodities. Our thanks go out to Senator Tester and Senator Baucus, and their staff, for getting on this problem promptly and making the reversal happen.”

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Ready Made Resources just got in another small batch of 1000-foot long rolls of WF-16/U (2-pair) commo wire.This type of wire is fairly scarce on the surplus market. It can be used with TA-1s, TA-312s, and the newer TA-1042 (DNVT) digital field telephones.

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The UK television series Survivors is moving filming location to Birmingham for Season 2. (What is unspoken in the cheery article is that Birmingham is an industrial city with portions in advanced decay, making a good post-apocalyptic backdrop.)

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“D” found a web site on non-electric cooling and refrigeration. The site also has some solid information on drip irrigation. D.’s comment: “I find it ironic that we teach people in Africa these technologies and yet there is such a paucity of these skills here at home.”