Our weekly Snippets column is a collection of short items: responses to posted articles, practical self-sufficiency items, how-tos, lessons learned, tips and tricks, and news items — both from readers and from SurvivalBlog’s editors. Note that we may select some long e-mails for posting as separate letters.
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Video: Abandoned Underground Bomb Shelter Sealed For 50 Years Under My Grandparent’s Garage! (You may want to skip forward to the 9:40 mark, for the actual opening.) JWR’s Comments: I saw and heard about a lot of similar shelters when I was growing up in Livermore, California. Many of them were around 200 square feet. Their popularity in our town was certainly because nuclear weapons were designed at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory (LRL) — later renamed Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). My father started there as a cyclotron technician and retired as a particle physics administrator. Many of our neighbors were physicists. When I saw the home shelters in the 1970s, many of them were still stocked, but sadly, many of them had been converted into rumpus rooms. In this video, it is amazing to see a shelter in Florida that is still “dry and tight” after 64 years! Now, he needs to restock it!
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And here is another one, built circa 1961: Albuquerque’s Cold War Blast Shelter. JWR’s Comments: I have an identical Bendix pen dosimeter, pen ratemeter & charger kit that I inherited from my father. (Mine is minus the nifty box, that was lost long ago.) Insert a fresh D-Cell battery, and it still works just fine...
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$2,000,000 Drive-In Bunker from Atlas.
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Reader L.E. wrote us:
“After having thrice failed to decently clean out my (closed top, tiny bunghole type) 55-gallon white plastic water barrels enough to avoid them almost instantly becoming fouled again with blue green algae once filled with clean water and colloidal silver, I gave up and had them cut in half and will make them into potato planters next spring. By the way, these type of drums/barrels are much harder to find, I think more folks are using them for this very purpose.
Possibly more can be obtained from car wash facilities as they use them to hold their soaps, or from factory food production facilities. Once cut in half by an obliging relative and the edges ground smooth [and after they are thoroughly pressure washed several times] they make excellent large planters. Because our weather is extremely hot in summer, the white plastic reflect more heat and doesn’t “cook” the plants roots the way the black planters would.”
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New bio-inspired medical glue seals bleeding wounds in seconds. (Note: Ignore the AI-generated illustration.)
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J.R.H. sent us this, on air rifles:
“I read the August 21st submission by Lodgepole and thought it was very good. I am also a fan of spring piston (break barrel) air rifles and can agree they would be effective small vermin eradicators on a homestead. My Brother had a racing pigeon loft many years ago and we had to remove mice, rats, and a few opposums from predating the confined birds. A scoped RWS 45 .177 pellet rifle was just the ticket for this, back porch hunting at dusk was a common year-round activity.
The metal spring (not gas) strut left cocked for long periods of time will develop a ‘set’ which causes power to slack off. So when carrying about, a loaded pellet in the chamber but not yet loaded for a shot is worth consideration. The excessive weight that Lodgepole mentioned is true – the only spring piston rifle I am aware of that is lighter is the long-discontinued Beeman C1 carbine. That is about 6 lbs in weight. Most spring piston rifles are at least 8 lbs. or more, due to very stout steel construction. And the effort to load the barrel in a magnum-powered air gun is considerable – the effort will require some practice. I like to rest the top of the stock inside my left thigh while levering the barrel with my right arm straight down.
The pneumatic pump-powered rifles should be considered. Louder in report and not as fast, the variable power has some major benefits. When my Brother and I would go to the ranch house, we would always find some mice had moved in the nonoccupied residence. A single pump in the Sheridan Silver Streak or Benjamin would be used to move them out with little chance of ricochet or damage. If more power was needed, then more pumping. The rifles are much lighter than the spring pistons too, about half the weight of the spring pistons. For a camper–hiker, one of these would be much easier to carry. And these can be kept in loaded condition for long periods of time – in fact many recommend a single pump be maintained, to keep the seals tight.”
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Reader M.J. writes:
“A prepping annoyance right now is that Federal Express (FedEx) won’t deliver to U.S. Postal Service P.O. box addresses. That means I can’t order any more cases of Keystone Meats unless I give my physical address, which I am deeply reluctant to do, for OPSEC reasons. I used to have them delivered to my work address, but my employer vacated that office and has not chosen another one yet. Local grocery stores and WalMarts don’t stock Keystone Meats.”
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At Adirondack Hub: 10 car camping hacks you wish you’d thought of!
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Janet W wrote:
“Marjory Wildcraft on the Grow Network just did a post on exposing mushrooms to sunlight. Mushrooms have a Vitamin D precursor that turns into actual Vitamin D when they are exposed to sunlight for fifteen minutes or so. Any variety of mushroom will do this. One point not mentioned in Marjory’s video: The mushroom gills have to face up in the sunlight to get the Vitamin D.
Please Send Us Your Snippets!
Please send your snippet items for potential posting to JWR. or AVL. You can do so either via e-mail or via our Contact form.