Notes from JWR:

Economist Jim Sinclair noted in a recent e-newsletter: “November 15th is approaching quickly. It is this date where supposed real valuations, according to accounting standards, have to be made on value-less class 3 assets.” I think Jim Sinclair is right. Thursday (November 15th) may go down in history as a financial reckoning day. Given the presently very shaky US markets, these revelations could very well precipitate a stock market drop–if not a stock market crash–led by the financial sector stocks. I pray that the readers of SurvivalBlog have all taken my advice and have minimized their exposure to stocks and other US Dollar-denominated investments. We are approaching some very turbulent times!

Our first article today is from “SurvivalistSam”, the SurvivalBlog’s correspondent in New Zealand. He is a 15 year-old homeschooler that lives on New Zealand’s South Island.

New Zealand’s South Island Readies for “the Big One”, by SurvivalistSam

The whole South Island has been told to prepare for a massive earthquake in the near future. This is due to the Alpine Fault Line which is where the Australasian and Pacific plates meet on the West Coast of the South Island. The boundary between these two plates is locked and the pressure building up needs to be released. A release of such pressure would result in an earthquake about the size of a number 8 on the Mercalli Intensity scale. Such a earthquake would last for minutes, not seconds.

Canterbury University Associate Professor Tim Davies was quoted at a recent meeting as saying that, "The longer it goes before the next earthquake, the bigger the bang will be when the spring goes."

The shaking from the predicted earthquake would be felt all throughout New Zealand and may even be felt as far away as Sydney. Mr. Davies also emphasized that people should have food and supplies on hand to last for up to three weeks after a quake. Shaking damage and land instability from a quake like this would disrupt surface transport for months, tourists will be trapped, and distribution of vital supplies ( e.g. food, fuel) will be limited. Hydro stations will shut down immediately and may be slow to restart, power reticulation will be damaged. Only satellite phones will remain in use. Landslides into lakes and fiords may cause tsunami, as may the collapse of river deltas in lakes or the sea. Queenstown, Milford and Wanaka are likely sites of tsunami damage Tour bus operators are also urged to stock up on food and supplies for their customers who could likely be trapped for days in isolated locations.

Letter Re: Show Caution When Dispensing Charity

Jim–
Some years ago, we enjoyed a power outage when we were living near Tacoma, Washington. It occurred on Thanksgiving day, so everybody’s turkeys were slowly cooling in their ovens. Our next door neighbor, knowing we were into preparedness, called over (land line phones were okay) asking to borrow our Coleman stove so they could heat up water for coffee. I sent one of my girls over with the stove. After about 15 minutes, the neighbors called again asking for help in lighting the stove. It was an old stove and I was embarrassed that it might have given up the ghost. When I got there, however, I found them in their family room (housewife, pre-teen daughter and Mom and Dad) all huddled around the stove. Several burnt matches were in and around the stove box. To my surprise, the gas tank was still in[side] the stove body. I realized that had they managed to turn the red knob on, they could well have started a dangerous fire.
Mind you, the housewife was a school teacher and her Dad a physician, so they were not uneducated people.
My point: handing these folks, educated as they were, a surplus bucket of wheat or beans would be worse than useless–you lose the food, but they don’t get fed. Even if you gave them flour, honey, salt, oil, water and yeast, they still would not know what to do with it.

In a disaster scenario, they probably wouldn’t even have a can opener to deal with any canned goods you might hand them.
You’d better either: (1) prepare for woebegone beggars who will need/expect your continuing generosity/expertise, or; (2) plan to order needy folks to get on their way.
Worst case scenario: they circle the block and show up back on your doorstep, hungry children in the forefront. Now it’s one thing to threaten, perhaps even to have to kill a thief, but what will you do with the obviously desperate (no food/water for 24 hours) neighbors?
Thinking about all this made me realize that perhaps one charitable solution is a 6-pack or two of energy bars, plus a few liters of water as you send them on their way.
But doggone it, then they’re likely to pass the word to others who are needy and you are back to numbers (1) or (2) above.
Sure looks like urbanites and suburbanites who want to and/or have made some survival preparations need to also prepare a place away from home so they can G.O.O.D. and not have to face these unhappy choices.
On a different note: Some years ago, I read an article in a Farm magazine reporting that most large-acreage farmers didn’t have their own gardens. The article was praising the virtue of having a garden and quoted a few farmer’s wives waxing poetic about their little plots. I couldn’t believe it–farmers being encouraged to do a little self-help farming!
So, you may escape to your retreat only to find neighbors stopping by for a handout even there. Better start preaching self-reliance a little more vigorously, maybe an article in the local rag, free handouts on the local store bulletin board regarding 72-hour kit contents, etc. Maybe throw in a little scare about the economy and inflation. Good luck with that. – Bob B.

Letter Re: Recovering Salt from Hickory Chips

Mr. Rawles:
Your suspicion was correct. Boiling hickory chips will not provide quantities of salt sufficient to be detected by human taste senses. It is not feasible to use this method as a means of acquiring salt for consumption.
Hickory chips are used in the curing process for pork and other meats only when they are heated to the extent that they start to emit smoke. Normally the chips are wetted to prevent them from rapidly burning. The benefits of the process are as follows:
1) The primary benefit of the smoking process is that it coats the meat (most commonly pork) with a smoke residue that discourages flies. Flies are notorious for laying eggs on hams. These eggs develop through larval stages. The most widely known larval stage is, in the southern U.S., called the skipper. Skippers will readily ruin a country cured ham. Infestations of skippers are hindered by the process of smoking the pork in smokehouses.
2) The secondary benefit of the smoking process is that it imparts a delightful aroma and flavor to the meat that is enjoyed by many people.

Salt licks were, at one time, so critical for acquiring salt (and naturally attracting game) that they still appear on maps. Some towns even carry a name associated with salt, such as Salt Lick, Kentucky.

Letter Re: Military Surplus Versus Civilian Field Gear

Jim,
There is a plethora of gear on the market, whether it is nominated as ‘survival’ or ‘hunting’, etc. Through the years I have basically used military surplus gear as opposed to what the civilian market offers. This includes back packs, sleeping bags, clothing, etc. I have found that much of it is superior to what is offered on the civilian market as those products lack the necessary function, form and fit for day to day and week to week use. My Gortex field jacket is light years beyond the hyper-expensive Cabela’s type jacket my brother owns. With his, you stay dry but it is cumbersome, bulky and not designed to wear while conducting the myriad things one might otherwise find themselves doing on a daily outdoors basis.

However, there are some things that I use that are exclusively found on the civilian side such as footwear is an example. I’ve never owned military surplus boots because I just didn’t want to risk the investment when I had a winning thing already.

Here’s my question: ‘Over the broad spectrum, would you recommend military surplus gear over the civilian gear market?’ and ‘Over the narrow spectrum, where would you diverge from the military surplus and use exclusively the civilian market?’ I have the military bags but you recommend the Wiggy’s product, likely because of its weight, et cetera. Anyway, maybe your comments would be instructive and helpful for the readers. – Matt B.

JWR Replies: I generally prefer full military specification (“mil-spec”) gear or most applications like backpacks, clothing, and web gear. However, much like your preference for civilian boots, I consider sleeping bags a “special case”. I have found that Wiggy’s brand sleeping bags are superior to both military surplus and other civilian brands in a number of ways. Their greatest advantage is loft retention. Unlike most other bags, they do not lose their loft when stored compressed, even for long periods of time. Because of their method of construction, they have no “cold spots”. Since they are synthetic, they dry quickly. (Wiggy’s uses a proprietary synthetic insulation called Lamilite.) They are also more lightweight than military surplus bags with the same temperature ratings.

As previously noted in SurvivalBlog, I prefer the Wiggy’s brand FTRSS. (A two bag system, where you can use either the inner bag or the overbag separately, or zip them together for the coldest weather.) We have five sets of FTRSS bags here at the Rawles Ranch, and they have served us very well for many years. I have probably spent more time sleeping in a Wiggy’s bag than even Jerry Wigutow. (The president of Wiggy’s.) Because I had a very bad back injury in a black ice vehicle rollover accident in 1994, I ended up sleeping on the floor in a sleeping bag with just a thin pad. (Sleeping on any bed put my back into spasm.) In fact, it has only been in the last year, after I built a special bed–that is topped with a piece of plywood and a thin memory foam mattress–that I was able to stop sleeping on the floor. So for more than 10 years I slept every night in a Wiggy’s sleeping bag. That was the equivalent of three lifetimes of normal field use for a sleeping bag belonging to an avid outdoorsman. (If I had anticipated that I would have been using the bag every night for so many years, I would have kept track.) Through all that use, the Wiggy’s bag held up amazingly well: No clumping, no loss of loft, and no broken zippers. It was simply amazing. I lost count of how many dozens of times the bag was machine washed. Both halves of the FTRSS that were used in the “10 year test” are still quite serviceable. That is a testament to their excellent design, materials and workmanship. Lastly, unlike virtually all of their competitor that have outsourced to China, Wiggy’s bags are still made here in the United States. That is commendable. If this sounds like a gushing endorsement, you are right. I would never own a different brand. And given the amazing longevity of Wiggy’s bags, I don’t think that I’ll ever have to.

Odds ‘n Sods:

Frequent contributor DV sent us this piece of news, which hardly came as a surprise: Currency Controls Return as Central Banks Fight Dollar Freefall

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Eric. S. suggested this article from MIT ‘s Technology Review: Oil from Wood–Startup Kior has developed a process for creating “biocrude” directly from biomass.

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Courtesy of the folks at Swiss America (one of our loyal advertisers); comes the link to an article by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: Gold eyes all-time high on currency crisis.

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Thanks to Richard at KT Ordnance for sending this article by Dan Dorfman at The New York Sun: Talk of Worst Recession Since the 1930s. It includes this snippet: “Balestra Capital Partners, Jim Melcher, says he’s “worried about a recession. Not a normal one, but a very bad one. The worst since the 1930s. I expect we’ll see clear signs of it in six months with a dramatic slowdown in the gross domestic product.”

Mass Inflation Ahead–Save Your Nickels!

I’ve often mused about how fun it would be to have a time machine. I would travel back to the early 1960s, and go on a pre-inflation shopping spree. In that era, most used cars were less than $800, and a new-in-the box Colt .45 Automatic sold for $60. In particular, it would be great to go back and get a huge pile of rolls of then-circulating US silver dimes, quarters, and half dollars at face value. (With silver presently around $15.50 per ounce, the US 90% silver (1964 and earlier) coinage is selling wholesale at 11 times face value–that is $11,000 for a $1,000 face value bag.)

Bad Money Drives Out Good

The disappearance of 90% silver coins from circulation in the US in the mid-1960s beautifully illustrated Gresham’s Law: “Bad Money Drives Out Good.” People quickly realized that the debased copper sandwich coins were bogus, so anyone with half a brain saved every pre-’65 (90% silver) coin that they could find. (This resulted in a coin shortage from 1965 to 1967, while the mint frantically played catch up, producing millions of cupronickel “clad” coins.

Alas, there are no time machines. But what if I were to tell you that there is a similar,albeit smaller-scale opportunity? Consider the lowly US five cent piece–the “Nickel.”

The composition of a nickel hasn’t changed since the end of World War II. It is still a 5 gram coin that is an alloy of 75% copper and 25% nickel. (An aside: Some 1942 to 1945 five cent coins were made with 35% silver, because nickel was badly-needed for wartime industrial use. Those “War Nickels” have long since been culled from circulation, by collectors.) According to www.Coinflation.com, the 1946-2007 Nickel (with a 5 cent face value) presently a has base metal value of $0.0677413. That is 135.48% of its face value. Hence, even at today’s commodities prices, you will start out with a 35% gain by amassing a stockpile of nickels.)

The Root of the Problem

Any country that issues a continually-inflated fiat paper currency will run into a problem: Their coins will develop a base metal value that exceeds their face value. This is almost inevitable. When this happens, it is one of those embarrassing “emperor’s new clothes” moments. Unless a government takes the drastic step of lopping off a zero or two from their currency, this coinage problem is inevitable. In essence, we were robbed by our own government when silver coins were replaced with copper sandwich coins in 1965. I predict that essentially the same thing will soon to happen with nickels.

The Federal Reserve will inflate their way out of the current liquidity crisis. through artificial lowering of interest rates, massive injections of liquidity, and monetization of the Federal debt. That can only spell one thing: inflation, and plenty of it. Mass inflation will mean much higher commodities prices (at least from the perspective of the US currency.)

I predict that for at least the next six months the US Mint will continue to produce nickels with the current metals composition. This is an open window of opportunity, during which time SurvivalBlog readers can salt away countless bags or boxes of nickels.

Nary a Ripple

Within just a few years, the base metal value of a nickel is likely to exceed two times (“2X”) its face value. (10 cents each.) The nickel will then begin to disappear from circulation. (Gresham’s law is unavoidable.) Unlike the mid-1960s experience, the missing nickels will not cause a crisis, since pennies will suffice, and most vending machines now use dimes as their smallest purchase increment. Meanwhile, most bridge tolls and toll roads have inflated so that tolls are in 25 cent increments. The demise of the nickel will hardly cause a ripple in the news.

Unless they decide to drop the issuance of nickels entirely, the US Mint will within the next three years be forced to introduce a “new” nickel with a debased composition. It will possibly be zinc (flashed with silver) or possibly even aluminum.

Why Not Pennies?

You may ask, why not accumulate 95% copper (pre-1983 mint date) pennies? They already have a base metal value of 2.2 cents each. Unfortunately, pennies have two problems: confusion and bulk. They are confusing, because 95% copper pennies are now circulating side-by-side with 97.5% zinc pennies. They are also about four times as bulky (per dollar of face value) as nickels.

With nickels you won’t have to spend time sorting out pre-1983 varieties. At present, sorting pennies simply isn’t worth your time. Although I suppose that if someone were to invent an automated density-measuring penny sorting machine, he could make a fortune. As background: The pre-1983 pennies presently have a base metal value of about $0.0226 each.) In 1983, the mint switched to 97.5% zinc pennies that are just flashed with copper. Those presently have a base metal value of about $0.0071 each. Pennies are absurdly bulky and heavy to store. Nickels are also quite bulky, but are at least manageable for a small investor’s storage. (Storing pennies would take a tremendous amount of space and constitute a huge weight per dollar invested.)

Too Bulky and Heavy!

The biggest advantage of nickels over pennies is that there is no date/composition confusion. At least for now, a nickel is a nickel. Even the newly-minted “large portrait” nickels have the same 75/25 cupronickel composition. But that is likely to change within just a couple of years. The US Mint cannot go on minting nickels at a loss much longer. My advice: start filling ammo cans with $2 (40 coin) rolls of nickels. (The .30 caliber size can is the perfect width for rolls of nickels. Any larger containers would be difficult to move easily. Cardboard boxes are fragile, and lack a carry handle. But ammo cans are very sturdy, have an integral handle, and they are relatively cheap and plentiful. They are available at military surplus stores and gun shows.)

Return On Investment

Right now, you are effectively getting Nickels worth 6.7 cent for 5 cents each. (Or think of it as $135 for each $100 invested in 50 rolls of nickels.) That might not seem like much of a gain. Someday, however, when nickels are worth 4X to 8X their face value, your children will thank you for it. Consider it an investment in your children’s future.

In December of 2006, the US congress passed a law making it illegal to bulk export or melt down pennies and nickels. That will change once the old composition pennies and nickels are driven out of circulation. In fact, a bill now before congress would remove pre-1983 pennies from the melting ban. Once the base metal value exceeds face value by about 3X, an investor’s market will surely develop.

What if Uncle Sam Decides to Drop a Zero?

As previously noted in SurvivalBlog, inflation of the US dollar has been chronic, cumulative, and insidious. Have you hear the turns of phrase “penny candy” and “its your nickel” (to describe the cost of a call on a pay phone). They now seem quaint and outdated. When inflation goes on long enough, the number of digits required to express a price grows too large. (As has been seen with the Italian lira, the Zimbabwean dollar, and countless other currencies. One whitewash solution to chronic inflation that several other nations have chosen is dropping one, two, or even three zeros from their currency, in an overnight revaluation, with a mandatory paper currency exchange. The history of the past century has shown:  Most governments re-issue only new paper currency. But they leave the old coinage in circulation, at the same face value. (This is because the sheer logistics of a coinage swap would be daunting.)

Typically, currency revaluation exchanges leave the holders of coinage as the unexpected beneficiaries of a 10X, 100X.or even 1,000 gain of the value of their coins. Governments just assume that most citizens just have a couple of pocketfuls of coins at any given time. So if this were to happen while you are sitting on a pile of nickels, you would make a handsome profit. You could merely spend your saved nickels in the new currency regime.

How To Build Your Pile of Nickels

How can you amass a big pile-o-nickels? Obviously just saving the few that you normally receive as pocket change is insufficient. Here are some possibilities. Some of these will work even after Uncle Same announces the discontinuation of minting Nickels:

  • If you live in a state with nickel slot machine gambling?  (Such as Nevada or New Jersey). Or do you live near an Indian tribal casino with nickel slots?  Then go to a casino frequently. There, buy $50 in nickels at a time. Do your best to look like a gambler when doing so. Carry a plastic change bucket with a few nickels in the bottom.
  • Obtain nickels in rolls from your friendly local bank teller. Ask for $20 or $30 of nickels in rolls each time that you visit to do your normal banking deposits or withdrawals. It is best to ask for new “wrapped” (fresh Federal Reserve Bank issue) rolls. If the tellers ask why you want so many, you can honestly tell them: “I’m working on a collection for my children.” (You need not tell them how large a collection it is!)
  • If you know someone that has a machine vending business, offer to buy all of their excess nickels once every month or two, by offering a small premium.
  • Say you operate a “mom and pop” retail business with a walk-in clientele. Just put up a small sign next to your cash register. Have it read: “WANTED: Rolls of nickels for my collection. I pay $2.25 per 40 coin ($2) roll, regardless of year!” Once the nickel shortage develops (as it inevitably will), you should raise you premium gradually, to keep a steady stream of coin rolls coming in.

Commodity price inflation will outstrip the prevailing interest rates for at least the next five years. The circulating Nickel as we now know it will be history in five years. It will be treated with nearly the same reverence that we now give to pre-’65 silver coinage.

Learn From History

In 1965, teh U.S. Mint began to produce clad copper dimes, quarters and half dollars. That caught most Americans by surprise. We should learn from history. Something comparable will very likely soon to happen with nickels. You, as a SurvivalBlog.com reader, are now armed with that knowledge. You can and should benefit from it, before Uncle Sugar performs his next sleight of hand trick and starts passing off silver-plated zinc tokens as “nickels”. – James Wesley, Rawles — Editor of survivalblog.com

(Note: SurvivalBlog grants permission to re-post this entire article. You must re-post it in full, with proper attribution to James Wesley, Rawles and SurvivalBlog, and you must preserve the included links.)

Letter Re: An Aftermarket “En Route” External Fuel Tank Filling Apparatus

Jim:
Have you seen this “Freedom Fill” apparatus? It is for trucks that have extra fuel tanks in their bed and it feeds fuel directly to their main tanks. No need to stop for a refueling at an unsafe location. What do you think? – David K.

JWR Replies: Other that its general high level of complexity with multiple points of failure–most notably that it uses EMP-vulnerable microprocessor–it looks captivating. Call me a dinosaur, but I prefer the traditional auxiliary fuel tank plumbing methods. OBTW, just think how long the O.J. Simpson “slow speed pursuit” could have gone on if the White Bronco had been equipped with one of these?

Odds ‘n Sods:

I was saddened to see that the BOGO acronym has changed: It started out meaning “Buy one, give one”–a form of charitable giving–with the Bogo Light campaign. (Wherein someone buys a solar-powered flashlight and the manufacturer also provides one as charity to an African villager. This commendable program is still going on.) But I’ve noticed that BOGO has crept into the Internet marketing lexicon in a perverted form. The Madison Avenue advertisers have turned it into “Buy one, get one (free)”–nothing more than a 50% off sale.

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I just heard that Ready Made Resources is now down to less than 800 infrared chemical light sticks remaining in inventory. With the recent State Department ruling, there will be no more of these produced for the US civilian market. Stock up now, while there still some available at a reasonable price. When used with surface trip flare actuators, these are ideal for perimeter security. Since these are infrared wavelength emitters, they can only be seen through starlight scopes and night vision goggles–the bad guys won’t know what hit them! OBTW, one technical tip, which was suggested by The Gun Plumber over at The FALFiles: “After the light stick is expended, cut the end off, dump the liquid and glass ampule [and discard safely], then tape the plastic tube to your MiniMag flashlight to make a IR wand–the plastic tube is the IR filter!”

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Thanks to RBS for sending this Bloomberg article: Bankruptcy Law Backfires as Foreclosures Offset Gains

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The high bid is still at $400 in the SurvivalBlog benefit auction, for four items: a Baygen Freeplay Summit AM/FM/Shortwave digitally-tuned radio, and a Baygen Sherpa hand crank flashlight. These were kindly donated by Ready Made Resources, one of our most loyal advertisers. Also included in the auction lot is a copy of my “Rawles Gets You Ready” preparedness course, from Arbogast Publishing, and an autographed copy of my novel “Patriots: Surviving the Coming Collapse”. These four items have a combined value of more than $350. The auction ends on November 15th. Just e-mail us your bid.

Jim’s Quote of the Day:

"The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. … The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. … We cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude. … I am convinced that life is 10 percent what happens to me and 90 percent how I react to it." – Charles Swindoll

Note from JWR:

Today is set aside in the United States to honor our military veterans. For those of you are are veterans, thank you. And for those of you that have family members, friends, neighbors, church brethren, and co-workers that are veterans, I encourage you to make the effort to express your thanks and to welcome them home.

Please give tangible support to those that are currently serving on overseas tours, and keep them in your prayers. I highly recommend the Any Soldier letter writing and gift-giving program.

Letter Re: Comments on FAL Rifle Gas Regulation

Mr. Rawles:
These sage comments on FN FAL gas adjustment from my friend and colleague, John Krupa, Director of Training for DSA [an American maker of FN FAL clone rifles. The following is re-posted with the permission of DSA]:

“Not knowing that one can control gas-flow on this weapon has led to countless customer-service calls to DSA, complaining that the rifle ‘doesn’t work.’ The following is laid out in great detail in the Owners’s Manual, of course, but we are happy to explain to each owner how the gas-regulator works and then walk them through correct gas-regulator adjustment. Invariably, when we’re finished, like a miracle, the rifle suddenly runs fine!

(1) The gas vent is directly behind the base of the front sight. We start the process with the gas-regulator set to the full-open position, which is # 7 on the gas-regulator dial. The vent-hole will be visibly open all the way. Next, we start to close off the gas-regulator vent by turning the dial clockwise two clicks, which will place it at # 6. You will now see that the vent hole is partially occluded. From here, we can start our live-fire, function testing.

(2) Charge a magazine with a single round of ammunition. Insert the magazine into the rifle and chamber the round. Holding the rifle in a normal, standing position (bench-resting is not recommended) aim into the impact area and fire one round. When the bolt fails to lock back, [we can conclude that] not enough gas is driving the piston into the bolt group for a complete cycle of operation. So, close the gas regulator another, single click, which will put it at 5 1/2, and then repeat the one-shot drill. Continue to close off the gas-regulator, a click at a time, until consistent (three in a row) bolt-lock is achieved

(3) When the bolt thus consistently locks to the rear after firing a single round, insert a magazine charged with five rounds, load the rifle, and fire all five in rapid succession. Once again, the bolt needs to unfailingly lock to the rear as the last round is fired.

(4) Once your rifle passes the ‘five-round test,’ close the gas-regulator two more clicks! The gas regulator is now ‘set.’ Just about all rifles we issue for student use have a final set at 4 to 4 . That is pretty standard.

(5) When the rifle gets hot, dry, and dirty, and starts short-cycling, you
can use the gas-regulator dial to quickly make incremental increases in gas
pressure, instantly restoring the rifle to normal functioning.

I don’t recommend closing the gas-regulator completely, as you suggested in your last Quip, unless absolutely necessary. What concerns me is not excessive wear-and-tear on the rifle. The DSA/FAL is a robust, military rifle that is designed for heavy use in hostile environments. It will take whatever you can give it! Nor is my concern with accuracy. Practical accuracy is unaffected by gas-regulator adjustments. Nor is my concern with recoil attenuation. Soft recoil is nice, but we can all handle recoil. The real problem is with case-extraction that is so violent it may result in cases being literally pulled apart as the bolt moves to the rear. The front half of the case may thus be left in the chamber, resulting in a stoppage that cannot be corrected
in the short term.

With regard to ammunition:
Ammunition quality is all over the map! Ammunition from dubious sources, reloads for example, typically exhibit inconsistent head-space and inconsistent pressure. DSA, of course, recommends against the use of such poor-quality ammunition, except in exigent circumstances.”

Comment: John Krupa is the resident expert, and I will surely defer to his judgment on this issue, and my advice to FAL owners is that they adhere to his,
foregoing instructions. The thorny issue is, of course, “exigent circumstances!” When I have my FAL, some magazines, and a supply of ammunition about which I know little,
and I’ve been invited to participate in a fight that is starting immediately, best bet is to begin with a rifle whose gas-regulator is closed off. I’ll put up with recoil, and I’ll take my chances with case-separation, just as long as I can be assured my rifle will complete each cycle of operation. Conversely, when I know what ammunition I’m going to feed it, and I have time to go through the foregoing gas-regulator adjustment routine, and a range where I can do the mandatory live-fire, I will surely tune my weapon to maximum advantage. No contestation there.

Of all dubious ammunition, the most suspect is reloads. Cases that have been reloaded multiple times are stretched, weakened, and thin in spots. They are the ones most prone to case-separation, described above, and inspection may not be helpful. From the outside, one can seldom tell if a case wall is dangerously thin. “Once-fired-reloads” is a commonly-used platitude, but how can anyone really know how many times a particular case has been reloaded? Reloads are thus not recommended for use in any autoloading rifle. – John

Letter Re: Two Book Recommendations

Mr. Rawles,
I have just finished “Hard Times” by Studs Terkel, an oral history of the Great Depression, and recommend it to SurvivalBlog readers. It is a fascinating chronicle, a series of narratives from people who lived through it from all walks of life, and it really communicates a sense of what desperate times can be like. Most Americans have forgotten this and little is taught in schools. For example, there are several narratives that dealt with a farmers uprising in Northwestern Iowa. Apparently a local judge was too quick to bang the foreclosure gavel and a mob had his head in a noose before being talked down. The book also gives some rather harrowing accounts of what a financial collapse is really like and how it affects folks.

I am also in the process of reading “My Side of the Mountain” [by Jean Craighead George] to my seven year old son. I’d forgotten how wonderful this book is, chronicling the efforts of a 12 year old boy to live off the land in upstate New York. It provides a lot of information about edible plants and ways to get by in the wild, and has really captured my son’s imagination. One interesting thing I had not recalled: the protagonist is able to derive salt by boiling hickory chips. Are you familiar with this method? I might give it a try, living in a region with few natural sources. Thanks, and keep up the good work. – Charlottesvillain
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JWR Replies: That lore on hickory chips may or may not be well-founded. At first glance, I would think that the natural concentration of salt in hickory wood or bark would be so low that it would take a huge volume of hickory to boil down just a small quantity of salt–hence highly labor intensive. I have read that hickory is used in preserving some hams. Perhaps what the book’s author referred to was lore about a method that had been used to recover salt, after salt-curing hams. That seems quite plausible. If any readers can either amplify or refute the foregoing, please let me know via e-mail, and I will gladly post it. (I highly value the vast breadth and depth of knowledge that is collectively held by SurvivalBlog’s readers!)