SurvivalBlog presents another edition of The Survivalist’s Odds ‘n Sods— a collection of news bits and pieces that are relevant to the modern survivalist and prepper from “JWR”. Today, we look at so-called Doomsday Bunkers being constructed by ex-pat millionaires in New Zealand.
Doomsday Bunkers in New Zealand
Hunting the One Percent’s Doomsday Bunkers in New Zealand. JWR’s Comment: The documentary film maker takes 28 minutes to show about 10 minutes worth of interesting content. And there is the usual liberal hand-wringing about “the shortage of affordable housing.” Only a committed socialist would complain about hundreds of millions of dollars invested into a local economy by mostly absentee neighbors who use hardly any public services. But this is still worth watching.
Subterranean Survival?
Reader Paul B. sent us the link to this interesting Yahoo News Australia article: The only way is down: subterranean survival warning
New SurvivalBlog Advertiser: DISH TV
You may have noticed a new advertiser on SurvivalBlog. In addition to selling HughesNet satellite Internet systems, they are also a re-seller for DISH-TV. Now, nearly anywhere in the United States, you can get hundreds of television channels. Even with just their “basic” 190-channel package, you can watch a huge variety of movie channels, 28,000 on-demand titles, and in the lead-up to the 2020 Presidential election watch incisive conservative news and commentary from NewsMax TV and Fox News; get weather updates from The Weather Channel, and Weather Nation; and watch documentaries on The History Channel, The Discovery Channel, Home & Garden Television, Recipe TV, NASA TV, and The Learning Channel.If you sign up, then you’ll indirectly support SurvivalBlog. Call today to order DISH: (800) 581-3005. Remember to use Tech ID: 0634 to save when you sign up and to ensure SurvivalBlog gets credit for the referral.
Preparing for The Perfect Storm
B.B. sent us a link to a lengthy, well-written piece on preparedness by Doug Lynn, over at The Burning Platform: Preparing for the Storm: The Perfect Storm. It is primarily directed at preparedness newbies, but still worth reading. Here is a key passage:
“We will also need to defend against any pirates and all that entails. Think it through.
And how do we get better at anything? Practice. Drill. Rehearse.
All prepping will vary according to one’s particular climate and geographic location, but the time to plan, buy, stock and store is all but gone; because the ship has all but sailed. Still, even “Baby Steps” in the right direction will provide at least some element of protection in the forthcoming perfect storm.
Remember, something is better than nothing and what you don’t use, you can barter. Now is the best time to turn your fiat cash into things you will need. Search the web using terminology like “best barter items”, or “bugging out”, or “urban survival”, or “basic prepping”. Then, plan for the forthcoming hard times like you would an extended camping trip.”
Max V. on Team Patrol Formations
The latest tabletop training video from “Max Velocity”: Team Patrol Formations. He describes it as: “A look at Team Patrol Formations, and the advantages and disadvantages of various formations for patrol movement and advance to contact.”
Little Utility in Hellfire Triggers
I had a reader recently write to inquire about Hellfire brand trigger actuators. He asked if they had any practical utility. My reply was as follows: “There is no comparison between a binary trigger and any of the various trigger actuators. With a binary trigger the sights are quite usable. But with the various actuator gadgets (Hellfire, Hypergat, Autoburst, the now-banned bump-firing stocks, et cetera) you essentially lose the use of your sights. So all that you are left with is an ammo-eating noisemaker. I should mention that the Las Vegas concert shooter was successful in his dastardly act of terror only because he had an area target. I recommend that you save your money for a while, and buy a binary trigger.”
Unintentional Jamming in Ohio
Reader Tim K. spotted this odd news from Science Alert: Car Keys Mysteriously Stopped Working in This Small Ohio Town, And We Now Know Why. A quote from the article:
“Despite those early suspicions, an intensive door-to-door investigation led by local authorities determined it was indeed just one rogue device behind the town’s radio transmitters going dark.
The culprit, it turns out, was a home-made device invented by a local electronics enthusiast. He’d designed a specialised gadget to inform him if anybody was upstairs in his house while he was working downstairs in the basement.”
North Korea: Severe Food Rationing
North Korea faces food crisis after poor harvest, U.N. says. The article begins:
“Four in ten North Koreans are chronically short of food and further cuts to already minimal rations are expected after the worst harvest in a decade, the United Nations said on Friday.
Official rations are down to 300 grammes – under 11 ounces – per person per day, the lowest ever for this time of year, the U.N. said following a food security assessment it carried out at Pyongyang’s request from March 29 to April 12.
It found that 10.1 million people were suffering from severe food insecurity, “meaning they do not have enough food till the next harvest,” U.N. World Food Program spokesman Herve Verhoosel said.”
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You can send your news tips to JWR. (Either via e-mail of via our Contact form.) Thanks!
@ New Zealand bunkers – For years I have been reading articles about how rich and wealthy people are interested in NZ as their get-away place. With the recent gun control laws there, I wonder how that is going to impact the idea of NZ as a great survival location. Will only certain people be banned from owning certain types of firearms? Will this require a special kind of license that only rich people can afford? Or, will the gun control impact everyone but government?
In New Zealand gun permits for the rich will most likely follow the trend here in large urban cities, If you are a politician, donate to same, and are rich you can get permits in NY City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, etc. One set of laws for the elite, another for we the peasants.
I tend to agree with you here, Joe. This has been a trend for a long time, not just with firearms. What this says to me is, the more successful I am in a political system (financially), the more rights I have. In turn, rights are only rights depending on how much you pay for them. This process is even mentioned in the video linked about New Zealand.
Unintentional Jamming in Ohio:
Praxis: Guerrilla Gadgets
Sunday, May 12, 2019
http://comeandmakeit.blogspot.com/2019/05/praxis-guerrilla-gadgets.html
Guerrilla Gadgets
Posted on May 13, 2019
Western Rifle Shooters Association
https://westernrifleshooters.wordpress.com/2019/05/13/guerrilla-gadgets-2/
I have had Dish TV basic package, you will discover that very near half of it’s programming is infomercial programs. They also offered a wiz bang deal of a very small starting price for the first year then it goes to their normal price, that is fine because you are aware of it, what you are not aware of is the never ending price increase almost every month so you never know just how much you need in your budget to pay for it. Guess I just did not have a good experience with them, just be aware with wide open eyes. Another thing to consider when using a dish, when there is heavy snow you will have to brush off the dish to get reception, in Northern Idaho the snow will get heavy and it is difficult to traipse the hip high snow for that brushing. So if you do get a dish have it installed on your house near the door for easy maintenance. Just a thought.
I had Dish for a dozen years, and then called them to cancel service because our original $40/mo rate had doubled to $80 for the same package. When the rep asked for the reason why, I politely informed her that I can now obtain all my shows and movies online via much cheaper (or free) streaming portals, so there is no need anymore to pay for their bundling service. She immediately offered to cut our rate to $12 for a year, after which it will settle at $30, if we’d please remain a customer. I accepted because Dish is still my wife’s preferred source due to the DVR, and saving several hundred dollars per year is a win for us.
The bundlers know the industry is changing, and their (once dominant) service is no longer the only game in town.
I tried this with Fios (Frontier). The rep said “Do what you feel you need to do. We’ll send you boxes to return your set-top boxes.” this is after my monthly bill DOUBLED.
Frankly, I feel TV will go down in history as one of man’s most destructive inventions. I’d rid my house of it in a heartbeat… if it weren’t for the missus…
Yup, I hear you. I enjoy certain shows, but prefer to be outside. Those programs I do watch, I can get for free online. The only reason we still have TV is because my wife still wants the Dish setup for convenience.
Still, I figure I’ll now be saving about $50/mo over what I was previously paying, due to Dish’s offer to keep us as a continuing customer. I think they know the writing’s on the wall and their business model is going extinct soon. It’s simply the result of changing technologies and their lack of foresight to adapt. Like what happened to Radio Shack, Sears, Mervyn’s, etc. The original leadership innovates, prospers, and eventually passes the torch to their successor(s), who simply inherit and weren’t part of the innovative spirit. That’s where many companies begin to become irrelevant and die off.
Apparently Kim Jung Un is not suffering from a food shortage.
About the food shortage in North Korea, its famine in the 1990s has resulted in a serious difference height difference between North Koreans and South Koreans, people who share the same gene pool. Think of this as being akin to results from using a test group and a control group in a double blind clinical trial.
The average North Korean adult is as much as 5 inches shorter and about 14 to 27 pounds lighter than South Korean adults.
The average new recruit in the North Korean Army is about 4 feet, 6 inches tall. In 2010, the military lowered its height requirement to about 4 feet, 5 inches because of the difficulty in filling its ranks with those who met height requirements.
Male high school graduates in North Korea average 4 feet, 3 inches. In South Korea, they average 5′ 6″. https://www.wisegeek.com/how-do-north-and-south-koreans-compare-in-average-weight-and-height.htm
I seem to recall that soldiers in the Japanese Army in WWII averaged 5′ 4″ tall and 145 lbs. I heard on the radio in the 1990s that the average 27-year-old Japanese male was 3 inches taller than his father. I am confident that the difference was the result of an improved diet for the younger generation.
Almost 15 years ago now, I needed to meet in Orange County with a Vietnamese fellow in a public setting. (There is a very substantial Vietnamese population in Orange County, CA.) In a phone call where we discussed where and when we would meet, I asked how I would know him. He responded that he would be the only 6′ 4″ Vietnamese guy I would likely ever meet.
He explained that when Saigon fell, his father was able to commandeer a Vietnamese Air Force plane and to make their escape that day with him and his sister. His mother and his other two siblings were shopping in Saigon and were left behind. For reasons he didn’t explain, he and his sister were raised by foster parents on a Nebraska farm.
Years later, his mother and siblings escaped from Vietnam. His siblings are much shorter now than he or his sister are. He attributed the high dairy and meat diet on the Nebraska farm to his and his sister’s greater height.
My “survival takeaway” here? Setting aside abundant quantities of rice for tough times is certainly advisable, but setting aside plenty of protein-rich food and maintaining a healthy intake of vitamins will be important if society ever suffers a major national calamity and access to well-stocked supermarkets becomes only a fond memory.
That is a fascinating story! Thank you so much for sharing it!
This question is off the beaten path of Odds and Sods, but many yrs ago at Ft L Wood Mo, The people / instructors told us that when we sight our weapons in a 25 m /yds, that we have battle sight setting of 250 m /yds with a .30 cal firearm. My question is ” does that still hold true with .223 5.56 firearm? Anybody out there have an idea about that or knowledge about said question ? JWR?
To the best of my knowledge, the U.S. Army still uses a 25 Meter zero, even with the later 62-grain 5.56mm ammunition.
If you zero at 50 yards from a 16″ barrel with 62 grain 5.56×45 ammo, you should be 2″ to 2.5″ high at 100 yards and zero again at 250 yards.
In my experience, a 25 yard zero, not meters (I don’t see distance in meters), with 7.62×39 and 556 will work with the same POA out to 300 yards. Be a tad high at 100, but with a red dot or irons, not enough to make a difference. With .308, open sights, I use a 200 yard zero. With magnified optics, I always use a 100 yard zero.
In regards to the articles about bunkers and underground places. = People don’t like to live in rooms without windows to the outside. Typically, underground places are called ~ Dungeons.
SurvivalBlog has some good articles about greenhouses, and their use when living in a remote area, such as the Redoubt Region. [It’s unlikely the super wealthy in the USA will live in a dungeon.]
Canada currently has a ~thriving business community, growing >vegetables in commercial greenhouses during the winter months. … Hopefully, the ‘underground’ farmers will NOT be subsidized by US Taxpayers. >Typically, in the USA, even commercial mushrooms are grown in above-ground warehouses.
‘Bunkers and cellars’ in the USA are used for Wine Storage. = That might be a ‘prepper opportunity.’ Build a large underground facility for other people to store their wine. … Then it might be possible to wait-out the return of civilization, while enjoying a supply of good quality wine.
FYI: I don’t drink. But, people seem to enjoy alcohol, when consumed in moderation. [Supposedly, the Pilgrims traveling to America drank a low-alcohol beer, because it was safer than drinking out of kegs of water.]
To be serious, a good greenhouse is an excellent prepper item. SurvivalBlog has some information about building and using a greenhouse. = They work, and extend the growing season.
According to Joel Skousen, it would be a good idea for anyone planning to retreat to New Zealand to learn Chinese, in order to better communicate with the government that New Zealand will have before the end of the 20’s.
China is not going to leave New Zealand alone once the war starts. Or Australia. Buying a retreat there is going from the frying pan into the fire.
I am a patriotic Kiwi. We have one of the most open, free markets in the world, and we rank highly in terms of freedom of international trade (number 21 on the ICC index, USA ranks 40th). What really grinds my gears is when there is a lack of transparency in government. What Kiwis want is a level playing field, where foreign buyers don’t get a backdoor pass to citizenship or buying up our real estate because they throw lots of cash around. I am far from a socialist, but If that is your style of capitalism, you can keep it, I don’t care if your Chinese or American.