Letter Re: Priority of Training?

Mr. Rawles:
After reading your novel [Patriots], I realize that I’ve lot to learn to get truly prepared. I’m especially worried about the Asian [Avian] flu. If a human-compatible form of it hits nationwide, I think that things are gonna come positively unglued in the big cities. (Just like the picture of the collapsing infrastructure that you painted in your novel.) We are living in a house of cards. The interdependencies are so far-reaching that they make the prospect of a collapse frightening. I’m getting my “beans bullets and band aids” lined up quickly, but what about training? What’s the most important class/course to take first? How about old timey farming knowledge? Thank you, H.L. in Knoxville

JWR Replies: I recommend that you take advantage of free local classes first. Take the American Red Cross First Aid and CPR classes. Don’t overlook free classes offered by your local ham radio club. The wealth of experience offered by those “Elmers” is phenomenal. Seek out other elders in your community for “old timey” skills like do-it-yourself canning. If you want to learn how to live through a depression or a banking panic, there is nothing quite like learning from someone that has already lived through one. Sadly, there are a lot of old folks that have been “warehoused” in retirement homes that would be happy to share what they know.

If you are worried about societal unrest and looting, then it essential to get top rate firearms training from a shooting school like Gunsite, Front Sight, or Thunder Ranch. (Even if you are prior military service, you’ll learn more in just a few days there than you learned from years of military service.)

Once you have acquired proficiency at your tactical skills, seek out some advanced medical training. If possible, make plans to attend one of the specialized Tactical Lifesaver Courses. The next will be held on April 15-16, 2006, in Douglas, Georgia. A Iraq war vet Physician’s Assistant (PA) will teach you a lot of skills that the American Red Cross doesn’t. (Such as: how to prep an intravenous infusion, how to insert and orthopharyngeal airway, wound debridement, suturing, how to treat a sucking chest wound, and much more.)  Don’t neglect taking this course. See: http://www.survivalreportblog.com/Tactical_Lifesaver_Course.html

Letter Re: Recommendations for Night Vision Goggles?

Mr. Rawles,
I wanted to say I enjoy your blog very much and look forward to it everyday. I am happy to contribute to your 10 Cent Challenge. Regarding your 20 February post on NVGs, I’ve looked at a few web sites just to see what is available. I have never actually put one of these models on so I may be out to lunch but it seems that most of the NVGs are built to cover your whole eye, allowing no peripheral vision, amplified or otherwise. I am currently an F-16 pilot in the Air Force and we fly quite a bit with NVGs. Our NVGs do not cover the entire eye and are more like a set of binoculars (without the amplification) positioned in front of the eyes. This is gives us the ability to glance down into the cockpit (a must in order to kill and not be killed) and have peripheral vision (though it is not amplified by NVGs of course). 40 degrees of NVG vision is not a lot and is akin to looking through a toilet paper tube. Having the ability to glance down at your weapon or detect movement out of the corner of your eye (movement, even at night, is best seen with your peripheral) is priceless. Once again, maybe I am wrong about the way they sit on your eyes but it not, then it is definitely something to think about. I would rather have 40 degrees of night vision and and still able to look down and have peripheral vision versus 40 degrees of night vision and nothing else. Once again thanks for putting such a great blog together. – Sterno

JWR Replies: Many thanks for your input. In my experience, the requirements for NVGs in ground combat are much different than for use in a cockpit. The biggest tradeoff is peripheral vision versus the risk of “raccoon eyes.” Let me explain: If you have the goggles set forward on a typical helmet mount to allow peripheral vision then they cast a bright glow on your face. This glow can be seen by someone in front of you for well in excess of 50 feet without NVGs, and for hundreds of yards with NVGs. That is one of the reasons that I prefer either NV weapons sights or NV monoculars with rubber eye cups (with the folding flap that opens only after your have pressed it to your face. To a bad guy in the distance, using any sort NV device without an eyecup looks like like you are shining a flashlight in your face.

Jim’s Quote of the Day

"How a politician stands on the Second Amendment tells you how he or she views you as an individual… as a trustworthy and productive citizen, or as part of an unruly crowd that needs to be lorded over, controlled, supervised, and taken care of." – Texas State Rep. Suzanna Gratia-Hupp

Letter Re: All-Wire Rabbit Hutches

Mr. and Mrs. Rawles,
I’m immensely enjoying your Blog. Thank you for the time and effort you place into your blog. I was reading into the archives trying to catch up and in the August 8th replies you had a reference to the wooden cages. One way that will help mitigate the problem of chewing and weakening of the wooden structure of the cages. You can use metal corner bead over the edges of the exposed wood inside the cage. It would be better as you stated to use all wire cages, they are by far the best. But the truth is that some people will use wood because they can’t afford wire, they have the wood already or because it how their father and his father did. Just a thought. All the best, – C.K.

The Memsahib Replies: When we first got rabbits, we got a bunch of free wooden hutches. We planned to upgrade to wire cages as money allowed. We up graded a lot sooner than planned because we discovered porcupines in Idaho have a special fondness for wood legs on hutches because of the minerals that soak into the wood from the rabbit urine. Of course upgrading isn’t always possible. Thanks for the good suggestions.

Letter Re: Advantages and Disadvantages of New Zealand

Hi James,
I would like to clarify a few things that J.G. from Auckland stated. Magazine capacity is limited for those with “A” category licensing only. Those with “E:” category license can have center fire or rim fire magazines for the “E” category weapons (military style semi automatic) that are unlimited in capacity. Pistol ownership merely requires that you join a pistol club, install an adequate safe in your home for pistol storage, obtain a “B” category license and attend 12 club shoots per year which is not much if you intend to shoot competently. 

Our country has troops currently in Afghanistan and in the past sent combat engineers to Iraq.

J.G. correctly points out that we in New Zealand are uniquely blessed with a land that has more food units than people and is still largely agrarian. – B.W.  from the Bay of Plenty.

JWR Replies: Things are quite a bit different here in the U.S. Of course the State laws vary widely. We don’t have a unified “Country Code” like the Commonwealth countries. Outwardly, out patchwork of laws looks a bit chaotic, but it has its advantages.  One of the most notable of these is that if a state gets too intrusive we can “vote with our feet” and just move to a different state. (Witness the current out-migration of conservatives from California to States like Idaho, Montana, and Nevada.)

Re:  “Pistol ownership merely requires that you …”   Your description seems like a lot of “flame filled hoops” to me. In many states (such as the aforementioned Idaho, Montana, and Nevada), if an adult wants to buy a pistol from another citizen that lives in the same state, he just opens his wallet and buys it, with no government intervention whatsoever.(No registration, no competency tests, no licensing, no storage requirements. Nothing!)  Needless to say, gun shows here are a lot of fun!  Our newspaper classified ads have lots of private party gun ads.

There are far more paperwork requirements when one buys guns across state lines, or any transaction involving a Federally licensed dealer.  But thankfully, private party gun sales are the last bastion of privacy here in the States. We like it that way.

Letter From Mr. Bravo Re: Money Belts, Large Bills, and Gold for the Grid-Up Bugout Bag

Jim,
I don’t know how recognized a Euro note would be in a U.S. crisis, especially the premium of the dollar. (“Funny money” may even be assumed to be devalued, as if Canadian.)

The real concern about large Euro notes is that of presumed counterfeiting. A British friend recently told me that 500 Euro notes are essentially not legal tender for most commercial transactions, due to widespread counterfeiting suspicions. You can take them to a bank, but that is about it.

Unless you need to carry substantial wealth that will be put in an operating bank at your destination, I’d stick to dollars or precious metals. FYI: US currency weighs about one gram per bill. Which means that a stack of $20 bills is presently nearly “worth its weight in gold!” That means that gold over about $3000/ounce would be more portable (and far more compact) than our largest [piece of] currency. I prefer the more romantic notion of a vest with gold pieces sewn in. A man could wear a vest with nearly 400 one ounce gold coins sewn in (single layer) that would weigh nearly 30 pounds, and be worth about $250,000 at current prices. Now that is “bug-out wealth”! – Mr. Bravo

Odds ‘n Sods:

SurvivalBlog reader “Rourke” mentioned a great alert site in Hungary that was recently mentioned on the Aussie Survival discussion board: http://visz.rsoe.hu/alertmap/woalert.php?lang=eng

  o o o

SurvivalBlog reader H.P.F. recommends three interesting sites: 
1.) http://www.netcastdaily.com/fsnewshour.htm  (listen to “Hour Two”),
2.) http://www.finance.messages.yahoo.co…mid=648143 NEWS BRIEF: “Americas Foes Circle Wagons”, by Claude Salhani, UPI International Editor, reprinted in Raiders News Updates, February 16, 2006 and,
3.) http://www.countercurrents.org/p…180206.htm  — a piece titled Peak Oil – The Great Tsunami, by Michael Payne

  o o o

I might have mentioned this one before… A handy tool for calculating the effects of monetary inflation (in the U.S.): http://www.westegg.com/inflation/

Note From JWR:

I would appreciate your help spreading the word about SurvivalBlog. Doing so is in your best interest. Why? Because each neighbor that you convince to prepare will be one less person that you’ll find begging on your doorstep, come TEOTWAWKI+1.

Rifle Recommendations for Canada

I’m often asked by SurvivalBlog readers in Canada which rifles I recommend. Sadly, the C.96 semi-auto rifle/magazine ban in Canada didn’t leave Canadians with a lot of options. Since there may be more bans in the future, I’d recommend something in the Lee-Enfield bolt action family. There are so many of those rifles in circulation in commonwealth countries that they will probably be exempted from any bans on rifles with detachable magazines.  (Notably, SMLE 10  round magazines were *specifically exempted* in the Canadian C.96 “any rifle magazine over 5 round capacity” ban.)   Yes, I know what you are thinking… Just give the politicians time, they’ll get around to banning anything that will even accept a detachable magazine. In fact, they won’t quit until the have you down to archery equipment… We have the same problem here in the U.S. The only difference is that the politicians aren’t in as much of a hurry.

Depending on your ammo sources, I’d recommend either a SMLE .303 or  perhaps an Ishapore IA1 .308. (Assuming that their magazines are exempt under the Canadian 5+ round magazine law, too.)  Make sure to get a half dozen spare magazines to allow sustained fire.

If you are an optimist, you might buy a U.S. M1 Garand semi-auto rifle. Because of their 8 round expendable en bloc clip, there was a special grandfather clause included in the law. That makes it the highest capacity centerfire rifle that is legal in Canada.  (Aside for law enforcement officers and a few rifle team members, that can possess rifles such as M1As and L1A1s, and high capacity magazines.) Being a pessimist, I predict that the M1 Garand will eventually be banned in Canada, as well.

Letter Re: Recommendations on Body Armor?

James:
I’m a newbie at preparedness. I have some nitro-packed storage food and I’m working on buying a few guns and getting training.  I think I’ll start with a course at Front Sight. But for immediate needs, I’m about ready to buy some body armor for “just in case.”  Are the mil surplus flak vests that I see advertised for +/-$80 a good deal? – T.Y.

JWR Replies: I highly recommend the training at Front Sight it is top notch! About body armor; first things first: Forget about the older-vintage military surplus “flak” vests” that you saw advertised. These are primarily designed to stop shrapnel, but not bullets. Most of the pre-1985 military issue vests would barely rate Class IIA.(Which is lower than Class II, if you aren’t  familiar with the rating system–that numbering system confuses a lot of folks.) I do not recommend them. About their only advantage is that some have a collar, which provides better neck protection than typical law enforcement (concealment) vests. IMHO, you are better off buying a law enforcement trade-in vest, Class II or higher. (Which would be: Class II, Class IIIA, or Class III.) Used Class II vests start at around $200.

My personal approach: For myself, I bought a pair of slightly used Class II vests, with one of them slightly larger than the other, plus a trauma plate. This cost less than buying a new Class III vest, and they are more versatile than a single heavy-weight vest.  I can wear either of  them alone for concealment, or I can wear *both* plus the trauma plate in between when the Schumer really hits the fan. This will provide better than Class II protection.

BTW, the Memsahib has a Class IIIA vest, contoured for ladies. It also was a trade-in vest, which she got for a bargain price at a gun show.

Two body armor dealers that I recommend are: Y2K Body Armor (which is operated by T. Allen Hoover) and BulletProofME.com Body Armor.  Of the two, Terry Hoover seems to have the best prices. He specializes in vests that come from police academy wash-outs.  These are “low hours” vests that are in great shape and very reasonably priced.

Letter Re: Recommendations for Night Vision Goggles?

JWR:
Are you going to do a post on [Starlight] Night Vision Goggles, where to buy, and what type of NVGs is the best? – K.T. [of KT Ordnance]

JWR Replies: The light amplification NVG market has become crowded in recent years, primarily with junk that is prone to failure. I most strongly recommend that you you buy only good quality scopes. This generally means American or Israeli-made, not Russian.

If you can only afford one piece of starlight gear, then make it a weapon sight. You can always use a weapon sight dismounted (as a monocular), but you cannot mont a monocular or a pair of goggles to a weapon. (Yes, I know, you can use NVGs in conjunction with a laser aiming light, but that is adding another layer of logistics complexity.) I would rather have one reliable first generation (“Gen 1”) or second generation (“Gen 2′”) scope such as an AN/PVS-2 than I would three or four fragile, unreliable Russian scopes for the same amount of money.

If you have a lavish budget, go for broke: buy a redundant set of two or three Gen 3 scopes (such as AN/PVS-4s) and two or three NVGs (such as AN/PVS-7s). If you have bagoodles of money, you might even consider getting a few AN/PAQ-4 laser aiming lights and perhaps even one of the new Raytheon Gen 2 “Warrior” IR-50 thermal weapon sights that are just coming onto the civilian market. But hang on to your wallet… The IR-50s currently cost around $20,000 each!

When selecting any starlight gear, buy only equipment with guaranteed “low hours” U.S. full military specification tubes that come with authentic data sheets specifying their actual measured number of line pairs.  If you have the opportunity to do side-by-side night-time comparisons, pick a device that has minimum scintillation (a.k.a.”the sparklies”), a maximum number of line pairs, and the best possible optical clarity.  Lastly, and perhaps most importantly for someone who is looking at the potential of  a “long term worst case” situation, you should buy only equipment that is compatible with standard “off the shelf” rechargeable NiMH batteries. As David in Israel is fond of mentioning: “Remember, you are not the U.S. military with a huge budget and a long logistics tail.”  Plan and make your purchases according.

Three night vision gear vendors that I know and trust are JRH Enterprises, Ready Made Resources, and STANO Components, Inc.  All three of these firms are competent, trustworthy, and will go to the extra effort to make sure that you are completely satisfied.

Letter Re: The Demise of Winchester and Request for Suggested Brands for Bolt Action Rifles

Jim:
It’s kinda sad that Winchester is going out of production. I’ve owned a couple over the years and they gave good service. My Model 70 .308 is still a favorite gun. Light, accurate, pretty, tough. What more can you really ask for?  I don’t have Boston’s Gun Bible at this location so I can’t remember where he came out on the Remington/Winchester scale (and of course
there are Browning/Savage/Ruger/Sako/Weatherby/Tikka arguments to be made – not to mention surplus guns. I wrote the homage to the Mosin-Nagant last week)… but no matter where your loyalties were seeing another finely crafted American icon bite the dust can’t be good. Turns out they are owned by a Belgian company, the same one that owns F.N. and Browning. They make guns in Belgium and Japan (A-Bolt and the Winchester 1895 clone.) But there license to use the Winchester name is timing out next year, and sales are down (only 80,000 rifles a year). And the license to manufacture the Model 1894 lever gun, the Model 70 bolt action and the Model 1300 pump guns that were made at this factory are owned by the union, so the plant closes, the guns stop production and the [Winchester] name goes back to Olin (the ammo manufacturer) So where is a Winchester guy to go now? The H.S. Precision rifles look real nice, but are three times the cost of a new Winchester. I guess that Remingtons are the obvious choice. Opinion? Comments on the passing? – K.T. [of KT Ordnance]

JWR Replies: I personally lean toward the synthetic-stocked Savage 110 for a reasonably priced precision bolt action rifle. The inherent accuracy of the 110 design is amazing. The 110 barrel nut is admittedly ugly, but quite practical.

Hurricane Katrina — A First Hand Bugout Account from August 2005

The following anonymously-posted account is re-posted with permission from Mel’s Riser’s “My Solar Village” blog (http://mysolarvillage.blogspot.com.) Some of you might find this account is eerily reminiscent of my novel Patriots:

The craziest thing about the whole Katrina fiasco was that my father in law (technically he’s just my girlfriend’s dad, but we’ve been together long enough that this is what we call him.) I always make fun of him because he keeps his garage stocked with something like 100 gallons of water, a bunch of big jugs full of treated gasoline, food, etc. He also owns quite a few guns. So I picked on him a lot for being borderline nuts even though he’s fairly normal. So when Katrina rolled around I ended up evacuating with them since the woman wanted to be with her parents. It took us 35 hours of nonstop driving to drive to Dallas. It’s usually a four hour drive or so. About twelve hours or so in you had to drive around a car that had run out of fuel every fifty feet or less. They were everywhere. It was hot, too, and we saw hundreds of families standing on the side of the road sweating. A lot had infants and little kids. Even if you somehow did find a gas station that wasn’t sold out of gasoline (probably 9 out of 10 were sold out) the line was literally miles long. About 20 hours in, or a little over halfway to Dallas, we noticed the convenience stores were being looted. The people busted out the windows (we didn’t see who, but they were busted out) and we saw people coming out with any drink they could find. It was pretty much chaos. There was one cop on the scene and he wouldn’t get out of his car. He just sat across his street with his lights swirling and people ignored him. By this time there were so many cars broken down that we spent a lot of our time driving off road. We had a big tarp on the back of the truck with all the gasoline but we were forced to fuel up in front of people. We had enough fuel to fill up our two vehicles three times which turned out to be just enough to get us to Dallas. As we were fueling up crowds of not-so-nice looking folks with empty gas tanks were staring us down. We gave one guy five gallons of fuel because he had two little kids. We were approached the second time we fueled up on the side of the road by a pissed-off bunch of people asking for gas. We told them we needed it. They didn’t care obviously. One younger guy went towards the back of the truck and said something like “I’m taking one, call the f**king police if you want.” and my father in law had to use his pistol to convince the guy otherwise. We were then standing there, funnel in the truck, me trying to pour gas in, him with a pistol in his hand, my girlfriend and her mom crying, and all of the gas-thief’s buddies looking real tough. He just stood there like some sort of tough-guy a**hole. I got the cap back on the jug and we got out of there with our nerves really frazzled. I kept my pistol loaded after that. We went through a LOT of water. It was really pretty hot out there. I slept in little two or three minute bursts when traffic was stopped which it almost always was. Sit for a few minutes, move ten feet. Repeat a thousand f**king times. My leg actually cramped up from break/accelerate/breaking so many times and I had to pull over. This happened to pretty much all of us. It sounds melodramatic but driving actually f**king hurt at that point. To save on fuel I didn’t run my air conditioner so I was also sweating the whole time but we thankfully had a lot of water. At close to 30 hours people got fed up with the traffic and we started seeing cars zipping past us on the southbound side of the freeway, heading north the wrong way. There were still quite a few emergency vehicles heading south so this was a dangerous idea. It didn’t take long until hundreds of people switched to the other lane and headed northbound on it. A half mile or so up we saw the first head on collision. A family headed north had struck a police cruiser heading south at the crest of a hill. They’d never seen each other until the last second, I guess. We saw a lot of these accidents. The swarm beat the police,though, and we were out in nowhere, Texas anyway so there probably weren’t that many police to respond. Eventually the entire southbound lane was just as clogged as the northbound. More so, really, because there were the head-on accidents. The police couldn’t go south or north now so it was a kind of weird feeling of being on your own. So many people were broken down now that you had to swerve not to just hit the people who were out lingering. They had nowhere to go. Our big tarp-covered pickup drew a lot of eyes, too. We again had to fill up in front of hundreds of people. He again had to use his pistol as a friendly reminder that we didn’t wish to be robbed. He never actually pointed it at anybody, he just took it out and held it as a reminder. People just stared at us with hate. I can’t blame them, I guess. But he was watching out for his wife and daughter and I was watching out for her as well. Most people would do the same.