Letter Re: The “Third Way” Approach–A Forward Base En Route to a Remote Survival Retreat

James Wesley:
With respect to “Marc in NJ”‘s comments posted on 3/6/07 – He recommends that if one is a bachelor, then getting an apartment/condo near work (in the city) to use as a forward base, then
have a truck to haul things. If you’re going to do that, why not go with a motor home/RV and rent a spot at a mobile home park ? No need to pack, just be on your way.
Might not work in really big cities where such places are hard to find, or you may have to do some interesting negotiations with a parking garage near work.
A smaller RV, something like a mini-Wini, wouldn’t be much less maneuverable than a pickup, would have more amenities and you could keep things organized in it better than a panic-packing of your condo into the back of a pickup.
You do have a trade off on the 2WD rather than 4WD issue. But if you’re in that much of an urban area, there isn’t that much unpaved out there. I do have to disagree with you a bit on the “Golden Horde“/”300 mile” rule. I think you’re right about people going into a mass exodus of the cities, but I think most of them are going to be trying to go to some destination – Grandma’s house, Uncle Fred’s place, etc. People being what they are, that will have them following major transport arteries.
I think being off of those by several miles will lead to “out of sight, out of mind” for most of the refugees.
Consider the pictures of WWII refugees walking along the side of the roads – when there’s wide fields nearby. They’re all following the road, heading for presumed safety, not spreading out over the country side.
I think folks will stay on the interstate or US highway until they run low on gas, then get off at the exit and try to refuel. If they can’t, they’ll start walking their original course for the place they’ll
think is safe, rather than spreading out at random over the countryside.
I agree that 300 miles from anywhere is safer, but I think that “a day and a nights walk for a couch potato from the interstate” is a decent buffer if you can’t get the 300 miles. If you’re 20-to-40 miles from the interstate, then you’re outside the distance that Mr & Mrs Joe Q. Video will walk after he runs out of gas in the minivan, and the DVD stops playing, and the kids start whining.
And, sad to say, they’re the most likely prey for Mabu & the Barbarian Horde… which means the Horde will mostly likely sweep 10-15 miles to
either side of the interstate to scoop up prey. Just my opinion – Take care, – Jeff

JWR Replies: It is not so much the refugees that worry me–it is the dedicated looters. (The members of what Kurt Saxon dubbed “Killer Caravans.”) The looters that are both clever and resourceful will be willing to burn up lots of precious gasoline looking for isolated houses and farms that look like easy pickings. (They won’t want to risk taking significant casualties.) By bursting through the doors of the “right” houses at o-dark-early, they know that they’ll A.) find at most two adult defenders, who’ll they hope to catch sleeping, and B.) they’ll find plenty of food and fuel so that they can continue their rampage. Statistically, a looter will probably survive no more than 4 or 5 such encounters, over the course of several weeks or months. So after six months or so, there won’t be many looters left in business. Picking a retreat that is 300 miles from a major metropolitan center and that is away from channelized areas or refugee lines of drift will drastically reduce your chances of ever having such uninvited visitors. In essence, it will be suburban NRA members that live closer to the cities that will be slugging it out with the looters. They will be thinning them out for you. I hate to sound Machiavellian about this, but better them than me. I want to live to a ripe old age and enjoy bouncing grandbabies on my knee.

Odds ‘n Sods:

Dr. Ralph mentioned this technology, that could forestall Peak Oil’s perils: Oil Innovations Pump New Life Into Old Wells

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We are happy to welcome uControl Home Security to our roster of Affiliate Advertisers. Check them out. This isn’t your daddy’s burglar alarm system. The uControl method offers great redundancy and resiliency through multiple communication paths.

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Net worth of U.S. households skyrockets. The article ends ominously: “One risk facing the economy is that the housing slump will take an unexpected turn for the worse, a development that likely would cause consumers to clamp down. That could spell trouble for overall economic activity.”

Note from JWR:

We had some fun here at the Rawles Ranch yesterday. Now that the snow is off, we are enjoying decent canoeing weather. (There is not a lot else to do during the early part of The Mud Season–at least not until the morels start to sprout.) We went down to The Unnamed River (TUR), which traverses the back end of our property. We ran a 120-foot length of army surplus 7/16″ “green line” (rappelling rope) across the river via canoe, to use as a one-rope bridge. (BTW, 120-foot coils of brand new green line are available from Survival Logistics, one of our advertisers.) The rope is secured to trees on both banks, with just a dozen feet rope to spare. (Just barely enough slack to allow us to tension the rope using a transport tightening knot arrangement.) It has been 27 years since I learned all this when I attended the U.S. Army Northern Warfare School, in Alaska. But some things you just never forget. As a pair of Bald Eagles circled above (pre-dalliance behavior, by the look of it), I showed the kids how to tie a Swiss Seat. Then The Memsahib gave the new bridge a try. Woops! It was time for more tension on the rope. (Green line is notoriously stretchy.) Otherwise she would have been in the water, which is a chilly proposition this time of year. We greatly enjoy a vigorous outdoor life.

Letter Re: Which Band is Best for an Unlicensed Handheld Transceiver?

Mr. Rawles:
We would like to purchase a weather band radio, plus several walkie-talkies. We want radios that don’t need a license, for use around our house and around town, as well as for up at our cabin in the U.P. [Upper Peninsula] of Michigan, which we are stocking for a retreat. (My husband is a part-time building contractor. Last summer, we made a fairly narrow windowless utility room in the cabin “vanish” by removing its door and molding and sheetrocking it. The only entrance to the room is now via a secret door at the end of a paneled closet in an adjoining bedroom.) We have some low power [500 Milliwatt] walkie-talkies, but they don’t have the power to talk between our [Ford 4WD] Excursion and our Winnebago RV when we “convoy” on our trips to Michigan. What do you recommend? What band is best for walkie talkies? CB? MURS? Is MURS in the same band as a weather radio? Thank you for your time. – Alice in Akron

JWR Replies: Unless you want to go to the trouble of getting license, where 2 Meter band and GMRS have advantages, my advice is to get several MURS band hand-held radios. The MURS band is near the NOAA weather band, but in different allocated frequencies. NOAA weather alert radio stations all broadcast in a set-aside small band allocation from 162.400 to 162.550 MHz. Local frequencies can be found at a NOAA web page. Most police scanners, MURS radios, and 2 Meter Band radios can receive in the NOAA “WX” band. Dedicated WX band receive-only radios are available from Radio Shack for less than $30. As you might expect, broadcasting by anyone other than NOAA in this band restricted. Most MURS hand-held have four times the power of your current walkie-talkies. BTW, if you can order one or more MURS hand-held transceivers from $49 MURS Radios, they can program your local NOAA frequency (in receive-only mode) upon request. BTW, they can also program them to use a Dakota Alert “driveway alarm” intrusion detection system frequency. (These also use the MURS band.) That is exactly what they did for us, for the three MURS hand-helds that we recently bought to use here at the Rawles Ranch. BTW, I recently found a link to a useful FAQ on MURS. Among other things, the FAQ describes some of the advantages of MURS over FRS and 27 MHz CB, and spells out the FCC limitations on MURS external antennas, which are thankfully quite generous.

Letter Re: Counter-Sniper Rifle Advice

Shalom, Jim:
I am interested in purchasing a rifle for sniper and other long-range purposes. I was looking at a Savage Model 12 chambered in .308, with the varmint, long-range barrel. I have several questions for you if you don’t mind:
1.) Can a rifle chambered in .308 also shoot 7.62 NATO rounds?

2.) What make and model of rifle do you recommend for this type of shooting?

3.) Do you currently have a weapon that you would use for sniper purposes, if necessary? Or is a long-range, sniper rifle even a necessity for a retreat scenario?

Thanx for your input! Baruch HaShem Yahweh (Blessed is the Name of Yahweh) – Dr. Sidney Zweibel

JWR Replies: In answer to your questions:

1.) Yes, as already discussed in SurvivalBlog, it is perfectly safe to shoot 7.62mm NATO in a bolt action rifle that is chambered for .308 Winchester. (Although the reverse is not always safe, since .308 Winchester commercial loads typically have higher chamber pressure than military 7.62mm NATO FMJ loads.)

2.) The Savage is a fine choice. I prefer the models with the pillar-bedded synthetic stocks. Dollar-for-dollar, they are in my opinion the best buy in very accurate centerfire rifles. For roughly half the price of a Steyr SSG, you can buy a rifle that is just as accurate. (They consistently shoot 1/2″ groups at 100 yards with Federal .308 Match ammo.)

3.) We have a Savage Model 10FP-LE2 Tactical bolt action here at the Rawles Ranch that is chambered in .308 Winchester, and we shoot it regularly. It is a bit heavy for hunting, but great for its intended purpose. It is it topped with Trijicon 3-9X Trophy Point scope. (With a tritium-lit reticle.) It is also equipped with a medium height Harris bipod and a Holland’s cheek piece/zippered stock pouch. Ours is essentially a “stock” rifle, except that I had Holland’s thread the muzzle with 1/2 x 28 threads. (The same threading used on AR-15s and AR-10s.) Like all of the rest of our centerfire bolt actions, it normally wears a Holland’s of Oregon muzzle brake, but we also have Smith Enterprise Vortex flash hiders for them, in case of TEOTWAWKI.

Is having a counter-sniper rifle in your battery a necessity? In open country, yes, definitely. There could come a “worst case” day when muy malo hombres try sniping at retreats, to thin out the defenders before attempting a stealth blitz or a frontal assault. So you need to be prepared to defend yourself at long distance. You must be able to at least match your opponents in long range shooting capability, and preferably out-class them. (Both in terms of training/proficiency and equipment.) A long distance-capable rifle can be both a defensive and offensive asset. And speaking of training, I highly recommend that at least one member of each retreat group take a rifle course at Front Sight or at one of the other major shooting schools like Gunsite or Thunder Ranch. That individual can then come home and share that expertise.

Odds ‘n Sods:

While it is surely no substitute for writing letters to your congresscritters, there is now a “No to H.R. 1022” (semi-auto and magazine ban) petition, with the goal of one million virtual “signers.”

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Michael Z. Williamson and Tim. L. both mentioned this news story: Blues Traveler Frontman John Popper Gets Popped. Mr. Popper has pretty good taste in guns and gear. In the photograph, notice the pair of Steyr Scout rifles, the stainless Mini-14 and the PVS-7 night vision goggles. Mike’s comment: “Preparedness is no good if you get busted for speeding and drug possession.”

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Special note to SurvivalBlog readers in Illinois the pending “Assault Weapons Ban” (SB 16) has passed out of committee, and will soon come up for a vote before the full state senate. This one is bad: It would prohibit the sale, transfer, and ownership of umpteen named “assault weapons”, .50 BMG rifles, and any magazine that can hold more than 10 cartridges. Illinois residents would have just 90 days to register them or face felony charges. Call and write your legislators! Call (217) 782-2000 and ask the switchboard to connect you with your senator. Or go on the Internet to: www.ilga.gov and use the “Legislator Lookup” feature in the lower right hand corner to identify your senator and get their phone number.(A hat tip to John T. for alerting us on this legislation.)

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Meanwhile, also in the People’s Republic of Illinois, folks are getting harassed for running their cars are waste vegetable oil. Gotta pay that road tax, donctha know…

Note from JWR:

The high bid is still at $330 in the current SurvivalBlog benefit auction for a brand new Schecter “Warthog” Electric Guitar. This is an awesome guitar that is decorated in a military aviation theme, from Schecter’s Tempest series. It has a $729 retail value. The auction ends March 15th. Just e-mail me your bid. Thanks!

Letter Re: Honeybee Colony Collapse Disorder Continues to Spread

Jim,
We opened up our hives this week. This Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) has hit us. I’ve ever seen anything like this. We have been told that in the late 1950s and early 1960s there was “Absconding” going on. Just a rough look thusfar leads me to believe that we have 80% losses [of our hive population.]. We are still looking at hives, trying to figure next step. As of today, we are no longer “migratory” beekeepers. We’re gonna need bees here [in North-Central Idaho] just to pollinate the local berry, apple and plum crops. The big orchards in Washington State seem to be in trouble too. Take Care, – The Bee Man, in North-Central Idaho.

JWR Replies: You are in our prayers, Bee Man! Those of you that have read my novel “Patriots” may remember a character in the Barter Faire chapter called The Bee Man. He was based on a real life individual, who is indeed a “real character.”

The full implications of CCD have yet to sink in with both America’s grocers, and America’s grocery shoppers. The humble honeybee pollinates most of our fruit, berry, and nut crops. Come next Fall, there will doubtless be pitiful crop yields and consequently much higher prices at your supermarket. So stock up on nuts that store well, such as almonds. Ditto for canned fruit, fruit preserves, jams, and jellies. Also buy some two gallon buckets of honey. It stores literally for decades. I predict that the price of honey will soon more than double, as the available inventory dwindles. You might as well buy your family a 12 to 15 year supply now, while honey is still relatively cheap and plentiful. Honey was probably already on your “stocking up list.” In light of the news on CCD, this purchase should be bumped up to the top of the priority list.

Letter Re: Restoring Older Shortwave Receivers

James:
A note on the Zenith Trans-Oceanic [tube-type general coverage receiver]s: I’ve been collecting these and refurbishing them on bad weather days. I replace all the paper and electrolytic capacitors, check the tubes, clean them up, and tune up the coil tower with an old tube RF signal generator. The paper capacitors are very prone to failure. Then I construct a replacement battery pack using ten 9 V batteries and 5 “D” cells. I plan to make a 12 VDC charger for these that I can run off my PV panels. So far I’ve done nine of these. I am putting them along with instruction manual, schematics, battery pack into Space Bags with a desiccant pack and storing them. I figure these will be more valuable with time. Now: the special high frequency pentagrid converter tube for these, the 1L6, is getting really scarce. I’m buying all I can on eBay if the price is right. There is a US Army manual of Korean War vintage with complete instructions on repair. There is an interesting variant of these, sold for only one year, the “Meridian” that is a general coverage shortwave receiver with the same tube set. These are rare as hen’s teeth. I’m refurbing my second right now. Next one I see on eBay, I’m getting it. Regards, – Doc Holladay

Letter Re: The Jericho Television Series — A Review

Dear Jericho Staff,
So I’ve read others comments online about the TV show Jericho. I decided to watch it via the CBS.com web site and see if there was more value than my initial dismissal from the original pilot. My feelings are

On the one hand, it’s nice that someone had the guts to put a survival drama TV show on the air, in prime time, and have the guts to tell the more palatable survival-apocalyptic stories set here in the USA. Points for that. Each episode talks about a couple different survival problems. Each deals with a few new harsh realities for the population,

There’s more than a few minuses however, on the realism side. It took the heroes eight weeks to decide to form any defense against bandits. Eight long weeks. Nobody carries a handgun, no communications network is set up for a perimeter, and people are still wasting gasoline like nothing has changed. Is that how long a back supply of antidepressants they were working through? Their behavior is irrational and rational begins when the power goes out and the food starts to rot in the fridge, which is when the EMPs hit. So what have they been doing all this time?

Another question I have for them: the men don’t have beards, which means they can shave, which means that there’s hot water despite being grid down. The women wear makeup. Nobody complains about a lack of soap, or the stink of their neighbors. The blonde shows the same amount of roots at the beginning of the series as she does at the end. Wouldn’t women be letting that grow back out, or dye it one color for the sake of modesty, to prevent fights with the other women, all of whom feel self conscious about not having irreplaceable cosmetics and beauty products anymore? That particular event would make a good episode, dyeing their hair from blonde and other fancy colors to their real brown. I’m not holding my breath for that. They all wear clean clothes, and despite showing some pitiful examples of hand washing, nobody doing the washing looks angry, which when you hand wash, you definitely develop, particularly if you’re washing someone else’s clothes. Its hard work, irritating, and it does not lend to a kinder and gentler attitude.

Naturally, the children in this show are all retarded -sorry, developmentally disabled-. I’m not sure about you folks, but when a retarded child runs into a burning building to die, my first inclination is not to follow them in and join them in the Great Beyond. Darwin is our friend, and we should respect his wisdom. A child that wants to die that badly must be allowed to follow their fate. Of course, in the real world children don’t actually behave like that in a disaster. They usually have cooler heads than their parents do, and seem instinctively inclined to basic survivalism. They back away from the fire, sit down quietly somewhere safe, and wait until they’re needed or directed elsewhere. Real children are terrifyingly smart when it comes down to the basics, especially children who are mentally stressed with just a tad of shock. They’re like survival robots. 133,000 years of evolution did not go to waste. Adults could learn a lot from them.

The teenagers in this show are apparently retarded, too. Presumably, the authors have bad memories of high school and this is their revenge. It’s not well written revenge, sad to say. Few of the townspeople seem to have IQ’s over 90, nor be able to say more than “I want”, something any two year old can do. Rather than blame the actors, I’m going to put blame squarely on the writer(s) and director. I know it’s not possible to write characters smarter than you are, but the hero, Jake, isn’t much of a mental titan himself. Any fool willing to risk his life consistently because the other townspeople are too weak and too meek… well, he should be thinking about a few sick days. There’s a limit to kindness and he’s well past that line. When stupid people opt for stupid actions, and your authors aren’t smart enough to jump that idiocy and get into the meat of the problem, you slow down the progression of the plot and make the audience dismiss you as morons. You hurt yourselves writing this poorly. Compare this to a cheesy sci-fi remake like the new Battlestar Galactica. That has good dialogue which never falls into the “I’m explaining what I intend to do so you can be excited” cr*p Jericho keeps doing… Do I need to draw you a picture? The authors of Battlestar Galactica are from Star Trek, if you can believe it.

There are certain scenes in this story which really stick out. In episode 3, radioactive rain somehow removes the radioactivity. When the rain stops after a 12 hour storm, or less, they just walk out into the wet and there’s no problems. No iodine gas, no strontium 90, no thorium or cesium decaying and giving everyone fatal radiation poisoning. Nope. Somehow rainwater just cures radioisotopes. Is it because hiding underground for 14 days just isn’t sexy for their imported Hollywood stars? In episode 5, a Blackwater(equivalent) experienced combat veteran soldier sprays and prays with his only magazine of ammo out a window beyond effective range, twice. He hits one guy, and misses others he’s sworn he’d kill. Does anybody here believe that as plausible? Not I. In episode 7, an entire town of militia volunteers defends a bridge armed with shotguns (with a range of 70 yards) from a backstop of unreinforced cars at 125 yards distance from their roadblock and only one of them, the Smart Guy, owns a rifle and knows how to use it. Do you believe that? Not so much. Having lived in small towns, pretty much everybody owns and operates a deer rifle and a 200 yard head shot is easy, a matter of a few seconds effort. In the real world, 30 men armed with scoped deer rifles against 12 Blackwater troops standing without cover… that’s a very short fight. Seconds. Their armor won’t stop an ’06 or .270 bullet, and at 125 yards that’s not even a challenging head shot.

Which brings me to another point: are we honestly meant to believe these small town people don’t comprehend murder? Hoodlums threaten and they want to talk about it? Not any of the small towns I’ve known. Murder of hoodlums is the default answer. Talking is more of a courtesy than anything else. If it weren’t for threat of the sheriff making arrests, most small towns resolve hoodlums very quietly: shotgun, shovel, and silence. It’s in use today across the countryside. This is why I’m always on my best behavior around ranchers and farmers. Self preservation. With no sheriff, hoodlums get hung very publicly, and their carcasses stripped. The coffin maker stays busy. San Francisco, during the Gold Rush, had a well-earned reputation as a very rough town, where Vigilante justice hung all sorts of bad men, the day they’re caught, if not the hour. When I observe the hoodlums allowed to run around the mythical town of Jericho, and the lack of “Preventive Killing” to deal with these hoodlums… I think the authors are a tad weak in the head. At the very least those who are bullied, like the kid who owns the grocery store, would be killing a lot of these punks openly, and daring anyone to give him crap about it. He has the food. They can’t eat without him. He’s not killing everyone, just a murderer and I can easily see him being offered the right to do as he pleases. Not exactly Democracy, but the way the Mayor’s office works in this mythical town,

Like I said: points for making it at all, but don’t they think they should ask someone who gave it a little thought? Or even talk to someone in a small town so they don’t grossly mischaracterize the sort of brutal efficiency that actually exists, instead of the stupid tripe that passes for “characterization” in their TV drama? I dunno. For the sake of better ratings, maybe. Wouldn’t a more realistic drama sell better commercials dollar value, and keep the show on its stated date and time? They’ve invested in the sets, trained the crews, established their characters, trained their actors, gotten used to hauling in extras, and setup this machine to make money. They’ve also managed to mostly disgust the very people they’re trying to sell this tripe to: us. Fix your junk, guys. It’s really not that hard.
Sincerely, – InyoKern

Odds ‘n Sods:

From The New York Times: Mortgage Crisis Spirals, and Casualties Mount. I don’t hesitate to call the sub-prime lenders what they really are: contrapreneurs.

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S.F. in Hawaii sent this: N.Y. Amish Man Robbed At Gunpoint. Oddly, the goblins used a muzzleloader. That is most unusual. Hmmm… An anachronistic weapon chosen to prey on an anachronistic victim, I suppose. Good thing that they didn’t try this out West, where I’ve met a few men who wear Amish style beards (sans mustaches), but that regularly pack pistols.

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1-800 GET LENS (one of our Affiliate Advertisers) has announced a special sale through the end of March: free shipping and $5 off, on all orders of $149 or more. Use coupon code FIRST-18GH. And don’t forget that a revised Federal law extended the use of 2006 Flexible Spending Account funds through the end of March 2007.

Note from JWR:

Today we welcome a new international correspondent, Mr. “FerFAL”, in Argentina. See his Profile, below.(I will be adding this to the SurvivalBlog Profiles archive.)