You probably have already come across blog or forum posts where people describe using horse stall mats to make their own self-sealing targets. The following video discusses this, including a description of how the author made the targets and showing how well his work.
VIDEO: "Infinitely self sealing target companies are a scam."
Regular Guy Training LLC (8 min.)
My last AR build was a lightweight AR 308 rifle I put together about 4 years ago (see here and here). But I'm starting to look at another build--my wife forced me (I'm not exaggerating, either) to buy a lower receiver to go with an FDE upper I've had sitting around for years--so I thought I would refresh my knowledge of what I need to do. A few articles I located that I thought would be of interest to readers:
Since it is the weekend, that means another Weekend Knowledge Dump from Active Response Training. Lot's of good articles on self-defense, firearms, and prepping. Some that caught my eye in particular:
Tom has studied data released by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, and he has calculated that each year in the United States, there are more than 3 million burglaries, and about 260,000 result in physical harm to the resident. 40% of burglars, Tom says, walk in through unlocked doors. Another 10% gain entry through unsecured windows. As an armed defender, if you’re smart enough to lock your windows and doors, the next most likely way for an intruder to get into your home is by breaking through your front door. According to Tom’s calculations, that’s how 34% of burglars gain entry.
Just by locking your doors and windows, you can reduce the odds of a burglary by 50%. There was a string of burglaries in my neighborhood about 15 years ago--mostly thieves stealing power tools--where the burglars simply were entering through unlocked sliding doors or rear garage doors. I'm pretty sure that I didn't suffer any losses simply because my wife and I are always careful to keep doors locked, even when we are at home.
... According to the UNFAO, global rice production set a new record in 2021, the latest year for which data is available. All three of the three largest crop years occurred during the past three years. All five of the five largest crop years occurred during the past five years. All 10 of the 10 largest crop years occurred during the past 10 years.The article focuses special attention on rice yields in India, China, and Myanmar. However, the growth in India’s rice production is even more impressive than the growth in global rice production. India has absolutely smashed its rice production records six years in a row. In China, 2021 was the second-highest rice crop in history. All six of China’s highest-ever rice crops were produced in the past six years. Myanmar rice production is declining – an aberration compared to the global trend – but that is because of Myanmar’s horrible domestic political situation, not climate change. As reported by Human Rights Watch, “Since staging a coup on February 1, 2021, the Myanmar military has carried out a brutal nationwide crackdown on millions of people opposed to its rule. The junta security forces have carried out mass killings, arbitrary arrests, torture, sexual violence, and other abuses that amount to crimes against humanity.” Blaming climate change for Myanmar’s declining crop production is giving a pass to political brutality and human rights abuses.
It's almost like the MSN wants us to believe that increasing food prices are due to something other than inflation caused by the fiscal mismanagement of the government.
The heart of the AC180 is a bank of Lithium Iron batteries with an advertised life of 3,500 charge/discharge cycles and is warranted for five years. Integrated into the package is a charge controller capable of charging from a number of sources: 120 VAC house supply, car charger, or solar panels. It then is capable of supplying that stored power in a number of ways: various USB connections, a 12 volt DC cigarette lighter plug, a cordless charging capability, and four 120 VAC receptacles. The inverter necessary to convert the direct current stored in the batteries to the alternating current at the 120 VAC receptacles is integrated into the package as well.
It apparently has a full power discharge capacity of 1,152 watt-hours, which matches with his tests. He also discusses using solar panels with it and some tips and warnings about certain panels.
The author's purposes for such a network are:
- Mapping
- View and share detailed maps among team members
- Add notes, pictures, etc. to maps and share them
- Plan and share routes
- Share and manage documents/photos/videos
- Reference materials
- Manuals/Standards Operating Procedures (SOPs)
- Reports
- Intelligence
- Entertainment
- eBooks
- Videos
- Games
- Collaborate
- Notes, thoughts, observations, experiences, etc.
- Manage schedules and events
- Create, assign, and track tasks
- Communicate
- Text, voice, video
Although not mentioned above, education would be another purpose of such system. There are numerous e-books, software, and video for teaching not only academic subjects, but all sorts of skills; and these would work well for kids (or adults) with the ability to use multiple computers at a time to access the data.
Part 1 is an overview of the purposes of such system (why you might want one) and some of the hardware you will need to buy. Part 2 is mostly about physically setting up the Raspberry Pi. Part 3 is about plugging together the equipment and connecting to the Internet. Part 4 is about setting up the Cloud Server. And Part 5 goes over the final steps to setting up the software for the Cloud server as well as some other applications that you might want to use.
Both Libyan and international officials said the deaths were difficult to count because the city of Derna was so heavily damaged, the security situation in Libya remains perilous, the country has no national government, and many of the dead may have been washed out to sea.The health minister of the eastern Libyan government, Othman Abduljaleel, told reporters that divers have been deployed to find bodies offshore. Other teams are searching for bodies in the rubble of Derna, having largely given up hope of finding survivors.
And then there is the fingerpointing:
The day before Mediterranean Storm Daniel struck Libya, Mayor al-Ghaithi told a news conference that the area around Derna’s rickety dams should be evacuated, but the Interior Ministry of the Tobruk government ordered curfews instead.The mayor’s office said the dams, which were built in the 1970s, had not been maintained in years, even though audit reports found millions of dollars allocated for maintenance. Tripoli-based PM Dbeibah cited the poor maintenance record in his call for an investigation.The attorney general for the western government, Mohamed al-Menfi, threatened consequences for “everyone who made a mistake or neglected either in abstaining or taking actions that resulted in the collapse of the dams in the city of Derna.”The speaker for the Parliament of the eastern government, Aguila Saleh, insisted that no one should blame Tobruk for the horrific death toll.“Don’t say ‘if only we’d done this, if only we’d done that.’ What took place in our country was an incomparable natural disaster,” Saleh said.
The main difference is this.. Tuna in oil has about four times as much fat as tuna in water. Consequently, tuna in oil contains more calories than tuna in water for the same size can.
If you’re here viewing this from a calorie-conscious point of view (e.g. watching one’s calories), then tuna in water is your likely better choice. Though you probably instinctively already knew that.From a prepping and preparedness point of view, in my opinion, tuna in oil is a better choice than tuna in water. That’s because one factor we’re looking for is calorie density for what’s on our shelves (storage efficiency). Unfortunately for me, my issue here is that Mrs. J prefers tuna in water. Oh well.. Happy wife, Happy life..
The author goes over calories in more detail as well as some other reasons to pick one over the other. One of the comments also points out that you might want the tuna oil for other reasons/uses.
It's been a while, but I have a new guest post from The Realist. He writes:
Disclaimer: All products mentioned in this article were purchased by myself. I did not receive free samples, evaluation models, or other compensation from any manufacturer or retailer. I have no formal relationship with any manufacturer or retailer mentioned in this article - I have only been an arms-length customer. All brand names and product names used in this review are the trade names, service marks, trademarks, or registered trademarks of their respective owners. Nothing in this article is intended to be legal advice. If you have legal questions regarding some topic discussed in this article, contact a licensed attorney in your jurisdiction. Further, this article reflects my unique circumstances and subjective opinions with regard to performance and other characteristics of the products discussed. Your mileage may vary. |
Post apocalyptic movie theater inside an abandoned building. (Bing AI Image Creator https://www.bing.com/images/create/) |
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AAXA P7+ Projector with accessories in a Harbor Freight hard protective case. |
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Improvised projector screen. (Source |
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Modified Nintendo Gameboy Advance with four feature-length movie cartridges. Not shown is the special cable that plugs into the GBA to provide composite video output. |
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Sound system composed of two bookshelf speakers, class-D amplifier and its power supply, and audio cables. |
Today's selection is a video from the Lord Spoda channel taking a look around Gary, Indiana, including checking out the interior of a cathedral-like church building that has fallen into ruin. Gary was at one time a bustling suburb of Chicago, home to U.S. Steel. Now it is but a crumbling shell of its former self. Besides holding the number 1 or 2 position for highest homicide rate in the nation, Gary has also seen its population fall to less than half of what it was 50 years ago. The result are whole sections of abandoned houses and commercial buildings. While Gary's demographic decline was due to the destruction of the local economy due to the offshoring of steel production, the declining property values, rows of abandoned buildings, and crumbling infrastructure will be the future of most every country over the coming century as populations decline.
And now some prepping/survival articles that have been collecting in my in-box:
Snakes are very easy to clean and prepare for cooking, and snake meat can be roasted, dried, boiled, fried, or even cooked in a pressure cooker.
Snakes really only have three internal organs, a heart, a brain, and a tube that handles just about everything else. That means gutting a snake is fairly straightforward; just remove the tube, being careful not to tear or puncture it. Snakes do have a lot of bones, though; deboning a snake is similar to deboning a fish. Once you’ve removed the skin, organs, and bones, you’re ready to cook!
The article links to a few videos on snakes, including one on cleaning and cooking copperheads and another on cleaning and cooking rattlesnakes.
Releasing what it calls a comprehensive synthesis of Burmese python science, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) announced early last month that the giant invasive snakes have now spread beyond their core range in the south Florida Everglades and into places like West Palm Beach and Fort Myers, Florida. The study calls Florida’s python invasion “one of the most intractable invasive-species management problems across the globe.” And it says that, as the snakes continue to spread north, leaving a trail of ecological devastation in their wake, eradication of the species is impossible with existing tools.
Ever since the collapse (and perhaps before, I never visited previously) thrift is a way of life. Here, you don’t always have hot water. You have to turn your water heater on about 20 minutes before you need it. This saves on electricity because you’re only heating up the water for 20 minutes a day. If you’re careful, enough water will remain in the tank for you to wash your dishes and have at least warmish water for handwashing during the rest of the day.Nobody has dryers and every street you walk down has laundry on lines flying like flags from apartment balconies. There’s no HOA nonsense here. Every balcony is loaded with laundry, tomato plants, and herbs. Rooftops have solar panels and water tanks. Electricity is used in the smallest amounts possible at all times.Part of this is that the price here has skyrocketed. Now, it’s all relative. I was pleasantly surprised when my first electric bill was just 43 Euros ($46.50 USD), but if I only made 800-1000 a month, the typical wage for a Greek, that would be pretty devastating.If you were to leave your water heater on all day or your heat or air conditioner on while you stepped out, locals would look at you as though you’d completely lost your mind.
However, there are some things that people should do anytime they venture into avalanche terrain. Those include not going out alone, carrying an avalanche transceiver, a probe, a shovel and also knowing how to use these important safety items.
Last year I ended up paying $85 for seedlings because my starts were too runted and diseased to use. It was an excellent investment, however, paying off in food more than 10x my investment. So buying is a viable way to go.Starting your own seedlings, however, is much cheaper, plus you get to choose your exact desired varieties. Garden centers will have varieties that grow well in your area, but if you want to try anything a bit more exotic, they can’t help you. Also, if you’re making an emergency run, as I did, you get to pick from what they have left. Starting your own means, you get to pick what you want.
Spring is the best time to plant trees because spring planting allows trees to get established earlier, grow more, and do better when hot weather arrives. Spring planting is especially important for bare root stock. Most containerized and container-grown stock, as well as balled and burlapped trees, can be planted throughout the growing season, but benefit from spring plantings.When transporting trees, protect them from excessive wind, drying, and rough handling. Planting holes should be dug at least two feet wider than the size of the root system. Trees should be planted an inch or so higher than the depth they grew in the container or nursery to allow for settling. Air pockets should be eliminated through watering and tamping after planting. Fill in the hole with a mixture of existing soil and soil amendments such as organic material or loamy top soil.
A lot more advice on tree planting at the link, so be sure to read the whole thing.
Yes, you can survive by eating ants. Though tiny, ants contain lots of protein and a good assortment of vitamins and minerals. However, you’ll have to catch a bunch of them in order to make a sizable portion of food.
A lot more on collecting and eating ants at the link, including the important questions like should you cook them or eat them raw, what they taste like (it varies), and more.
Grams of protein needed each day:WOMEN age 19+ (46 grams)MEN age 19+ (56 grams)Children1 – 3 (13 grams)4 – 8 (19 grams)9 – 13 (34 grams)Girls ages 14 – 18 (46 grams)Boys ages 14 – 18 (52 grams)
The article contains more information about protein and why it is important, as well as information on the protein available from different types of foods.
A boulder weighing more than 40 tonnes sits on the sand high above the ocean. Dwarfing every other rock in view, it is conspicuously out of place. The answer to how this massive outlier got here lies not in the vast expanse of the Atacama Desert behind it but in the Pacific Ocean below. Hundreds of years ago, a tsunami slammed into the northern Chilean coast—a wall of water 20 meters high, taller than a six-story building, that swept boulders landward like pebbles.The tsunami that lobbed this behemoth happened before written records existed in Chile. But we know about it today thanks to the detective work of a small group of researchers who are uncovering the signs of ancient tsunamis around the globe. Using a diverse array of scientific techniques, these paleotsunami researchers have found evidence of previously undocumented colossal waves. In the process, their work is revealing that coastal communities could be in far more danger from tsunamis than they realize.As scientists expand their search, they have continued to find ancient tsunamis bigger than those found in historical records, says James Goff, a paleotsunami researcher at the University of Southampton in England. The implications are clear: if a huge tsunami happened once in a given location, it could happen again. The question is whether we’re prepared for it.
I'd read somewhere that a lot of cities founded in ancient times--e.g., Athens, Rome, Paris, London, Tokyo, etc.--are located well inland from their harbors, and the author speculated it might have been because of experience with ancient tsunamis.
The BBC and the mainstream media regularly frighten everyone with the latest climate disaster news with pictures of floods, fires and hurricanes, always followed by scary predictions that things will only get worse unless mankind mends its irresponsible ways.My alma mater Reuters, the global news agency, used to be above all this hysteria and would relentlessly apply its traditional standards of fairness and balance, but even this mainstream outfit seems to have sold out to the hysterics and axe grinders.The trouble is, many if not all of these disaster stories, far from being another step in a worsening scenario, are often nothing of the kind. In a recent book Unsettled. What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, And Why It Matters, Steven Koonin uses the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change data to show that if reporters took the trouble to do a minimum amount of checking, most of these incidents would appear to be natural disasters, yes, but not part of some ever worsening syndrome.Economist Bjorn Lomborg has been pointing out for years that humans are having an impact on the climate, but technology will be a match for any problems. Current Government plans to combat climate change will squander massive amounts of taxpayers’ money and achieve very little in terms of stopping rising global temperature, Lomborg says.Warmist politicians and lobby groups regularly trash the work of a significant group of climate experts, insulting them with unfounded accusations that they can’t be taken seriously because they have barely perceptible links with ‘Big Oil’ and are ‘climate change deniers’. Criticisms are mainly personal and not aimed at their work. Koonin and Lomborg also suffer the unethical ‘denier’ slur, so let’s destroy that canard first.Every scientist knows the world’s climate has been gradually and occasionally irregularly warming since the last Ice Age over about 10,000 years. Nobody denies the climate is changing. The ‘denier’ charge is nonsensical. But it performs the useful function of making clear the user knows nothing about climate science. The argument is about the ‘why’ not the ‘if’. Warmists say all the warming is because of man’s activity. The rest say some, a little or none.Education is another area where balance has been replaced by hysteria-inducing propaganda. Children shown demonstrating on the news are often borderline hysterical. No doubt their teachers didn’t bother to tell them that man-made global warming is a theory not a proven fact, and that it’s okay to talk about different opinions.If you wonder why much of the mainstream media seem united in accepting that the world will soon die unless humans don hair shirts, freeze in winter and walk instead of driving, you need to know about websites like Covering Climate Now (CCN).Reuters and some of the biggest names in the news like Bloomberg, Agence France Presse, CBS News, and ABC News have signed up to support CCN, which brags that it is an unbiased seeker after the truth. But this claim won’t last long if you peer behind the façade. CCN may claim to be fair and balanced, but it not only won’t tolerate criticism, it brandishes the unethical ‘denier’ weapon with its nasty holocaust denier echoes. This seeks to demonise those who disagree with it by savaging personalities and denying a hearing, rather than using debate to establish its case.CCN advises journalists to routinely add to stories about bad weather and flooding to suggest climate change is making these events more intense. This is not an established fact, as a simple routine check would show.I asked CCN about the nature of its dealings with Reuters and the likes of Bloomberg. Was it to thrash out a general approach to climate change reporting or to be more partisan?CCN hasn’t replied.
This video is a bit different than most because the intro and outro show what the stores were like in their heyday, and gives you some background on the Ames chain. A couple things in particular to note once it gets to exploring the department store. Because of the limited amount of glass around the entrance, the store is much darker than, for instance, an abandoned grocery store that we looked at several months ago that had windows down the entire width of the store front. Also, and we've seen this in other larger retails chains, is the distances inside the building. This can be a factor both in whether your flashlight can cast a beam far enough to pick out details on a far wall, or, in a post-SHTF, you had to use your weapon against an attacker or vicious animal that happened to be in the structure.
1.Freeze-dried Food2. T.V. Dinners (referring to the smaller shelf-stable offerings by Hormel similar to an MRE entree).3. Peanut Butter4. Instant Oatmeal5. Cereal6. Powdered Milk7. Pop Tarts8. Crackers9. Instant Coffee10. Tea11. Drink Mixes12. Honey13. Granola / Energy Bars14. Candy15. Nuts16. Canned Vegetables17. Canned Fruit18. Canned Beans19. Instant Rice20. Instant Potatoes21. Canned Chicken22. Canned Tuna23. Spam
No, the majority of batteries will not be affected by an EMP of any size. This applies to lead-acid, alkaline, nickel metal hydride, and lithium-ion batteries. Any electronics attached to the battery, such as a charge controller, will be ruined.
The disadvantages to bugging out are many. First, though you may miss your bug-out window if you delay, historically true bug-out events are relatively rare. I lived in a large urban area during the food shortages, increased crime, civil disorder, and protests of 2020, but none of these events ever approached the need to bug out from our residence. The threat was present but did not outweigh the advantages of sheltering in place.Your residence’s resources are the next consideration. Before you leave your home, recognize the advantages that will be lost bugging out. Even without services, your home provides shelter, space, a familiar defensible location, large storage capacity (food, water, medical supplies, clothes), beds, and some waste management and cooking supplies. The decision to bug out takes your entire residence’s resources and familiarity and reduces them to what you, your family, and (if included) your vehicle, can transport.
There are four stages to building a fire: fire preparation, fire starting, fire maintenance, and fire extinguishing.Fire preparation is the act of locating a spot to build a fire, clearing debris from around the central hearth that could accidentally catch, and assembling all the components you need prior to starting.Fire starting is the act of striking a match, scraping a ferro rod, catching a piece of tinder on fire, or otherwise initially igniting your fire. Fire starting is where the three requirements for fire, heat, air, and fuel must come together in the right ratio to burn properly. These requirements are often referred to as the “fire triangle” and when a fire is not burning well, you can troubleshoot which of the components is lacking.Fire maintenance requires you to stoke the fire, add fuel to it as necessary, position logs to achieve more or less flame, and otherwise keep the fire going as long as you need it to burn.
Fire extinguishing is the process of dowsing your fire, moving the firewood to the outside of the fire ring, making sure there are no hot spots left behind, and making sure the fire is no longer burning. Your fire should start with an understanding of the final stage first as it is not wise to build a fire you cannot put out.
The article goes on to discuss different types of fire lays, fuel, different tools for starting a fire, common mistakes, and more.
What was required of survivors in this situation? Everything, one might assume.Roberto Canessa summed up the essentials:Team spirit, persistence, sympathy for others, intelligence and, above all, hope.Their situation was parlous. They were in this dreadful situation because of pilot error. The navigator was at the back of the plane playing cards, the pilots were over-confident, and did not bother to check the one instrument which would could have saved them: their wristwatches. Had they done so they would have realized they were turning North far too soon, and had not allowed for the headwinds against them. They had not yet gone far enough West, were not yet out of the Andes, and mistakenly descended North into the high mountain peaks. After hitting a mountain which tore off the wings, the fuselage careered down a glacier and slammed into snow.They had many dead, and many injured they had to care for. It was reasonable to believe that planes would come to search for them, and some of those planes could be heard and seen overhead for the next 8 days of search, though they found nothing. Temperatures went down to -30 Centigrade at night, so to keep from freezing to death was essential. Body warmth was their sole source of heat as they huddled together in the remains of the fuselage. Most of them had never seen snow, and had no idea how to survive in high altitudes.Some days later, when a small group ventured out into the snowy desolation, they all suffered from the bitter cold, one went snow blind, and the lack of implements to help them through the snow showed how helpless they were. Not encouraging. Staying put and waiting for rescue seemed better.How to survive?Intelligence is what you use when you don’t know what to do. (Carl Bereiter).To provide drinking water, Fito Strauch worked out that snow collected in an aluminium shell would catch the sun’s rays and provide a trickle of meltwater, which they shared in very small gulps. He also designed improvised sun glasses to combat snow blindness. They used seat covers as protective clothing and footwear.Roy Harley improvised an antenna so that a transistor radio they found hidden in a seat could provide them with news, the first being that the search had been abandoned. He also tried to get the batteries and remains of the radio receiver to build a transmitter, a task which understandably proved impossible. The batteries they found were of the wrong voltage to power the available equipment, even if they had been able to assemble it.The survivors who had found the rear of the fuselage came up with an idea to use insulation foam from the rear of the fuselage, sewed together with copper wire, and waterproof fabric that covered the air conditioning of the plane to fashion a sleeping bag. Nando Parrado and Carlos Paez led the work on this.Those with medical knowledge did a triage of the wounded, including removing a shaft of metal from a person’s intestines.In short, when they did not know what to do, they improvised, and innovated. Such knowledge as they had of medicine, mechanics, navigation and engineering was put to good purpose.When Nando Parrado, Roberto Canessa anid Antonio Vizintin set off on their final rescue mission, they had no technical gear or clothing, no compass, and no climbing experience. Vizintin went back after 3 days, because there was not enough food.As a matter of painful observation, and guidance from the few who had medical knowledge about the Krebs cycle (the body can convert protein into sugar, and fat into protein, so that on a meat only diet they could survive without malnutrition), it was obvious to the starving survivors that they needed to eat energy rich protein to survive. In ordinary conditions, warm temperatures at sea level, 2000 calories of food would be sufficient. Under sedentary conditions in the cold high glacier, 3,600 to 4,300 calories would be needed. For highly strenuous work in the cold, like climbing up a mountain, 4,200 to 5,000 calories would be required. (British soldiers training in Norway get 5000 calories, and an officer told me “You have to stand over them at breakfast to make sure they eat it”).The fact that the world had abandoned them within a few days made them better able to feel justified in abandoning the taboo about not eating human flesh. Initially they spoke about this in whispers, then in small group deniable hypotheticals, then finally in open discussion. Not all agreed, though the lack of any rescue plans was an eventual clincher for most. For everyone’s protection, a small group made the first cut in the actual bodies, and gave it to others to further cut and dry the flesh strips in the sun, so that all could eat without knowing whose flesh it was.So, survivors needed to solve an existential calculus: they could live only on the bodies of the dead, their only source of fuel (and protein). In order to just wait for rescue, and to do the daily tasks on which their immediate survival depended, they needed about 4000 calories each. They had to count the bodies, count the survivors, and count the days. When there were more survivors, before the avalanche which killed 8, each body supplied food for three days. (One survivor was 85 kilos before the crash, and below 38 Kilos when rescued, a typical drop in body mass). To complicate matters, the escape party needed 5000 calories each per day of travel, extra clothing taken from others, and relief from doing daily tasks as they built up their strength.Every day of preparation depleted combustibles, but every day they waited reduced the chance of snow falls, and improved conditions for the escape party. One survivor had said that it never snowed in December, but in the early days of that month there was a massive snowstorm, which did not seem a good omen. Canessa argued for a postponement of another week. There were 16 alive and 27 dead when the three-person team set off on 12 December.At all stages, the group tried to reason their way out of the life and death puzzle box in which they were incarcerated. For example, they selected those they though most likely to survive the journey, (based on physique and, crucially, strength of character) and altered the selection as circumstances changed during preparations.
