A Quick Run Around the Web: July 11, 2015

A selection of survival and self-defense related articles:

• First off, I would remind readers of Active Response Training's "Weekend Knowledge Dump" for this weekend, which has a number of useful and/or interesting articles. While you are at Greg Ellifritz's site, you might want to also take a look at a guest post by Dr. Lauren Pugliese, a veterinary surgeon on veterinary/health considerations for cats.
• The author of the Alaska Escape and Evasion website/blog recently posted about painting a camo pattern on his rifle. He indicated he has had some good success with Hunters Specialty brand paint from Cabelas over other types of paint (such as Krylon). He used Army Olive Drab and Marsh grass yellow stripes and a over spray of brown and OD to blend it up, followed up with several coats of clear matte finish to protect it. One thing he specifically notes is that he did not use any black, trying to get the paint to match natural colors and shadows. In that regard, I would also note that there are no defined edges--i.e., no taping or marking off the different colors. It doesn't cost anything to sign up for his blog, so go over and check it out.
• The End of the American Dream blog writes about "10 Very Strange Things That Have Happened In Just The Past Few Weeks." (H/t The Survival Place).
• The Daily Mail reports on a woman who (barely) survived being stranded for two weeks in the desert of southern California; her husband was not so lucky, dying after the first week. Coincidentally, I also came across an article at Survivopedia entitled "Surviving The Heat, Surviving The Desert." While the article has some good, common sense advice, it does repeat the somewhat standard advice on building a solar-still to collect water from soil and/or plant material using a plastic sheet spread over a hole in the ground. For a long time--basically since I read about the technique in a Hardy Boys book when I was a kid--I thought that this was a really clever way to collect water. Unfortunately, it is not very efficacious under most desert survival circumstances because you will lose more water through sweating while you dig the hole than you could ever reasonably recoup through the technique.
• Ancient Pathways provides a review of the 5.11 Rush 24 pack after having used it for a year.
• Although published a bit over a year ago, I would point out this article on "6 Strategies to Lighten Your Bug Out Bag."
• Earlier this year, Dave Canterbury published a nice article on different fire starting techniques and what was needed for each in types of materials, skills, and conditions. The idea was to allow you to make a better informed decision of what is more realistic for the user. For instance, he notes that the high skill level and nearly ideal conditions needed for friction methods of starting a fire make it less than ideal; whereas using a magnifying glass (or, I would add, a fresnel lens) doesn't require as much user skill and more forgiving as to conditions and fire starting material.