Thursday, November 7, 2019

trash for preps


TRASH FOR PREPS
Once again I was enjoying Commander Zero, and came across a great article on rejecting trash for preps HERE . Basically, if you are poor, you are poor, and feel free to use cleaned two liter bottles for food or water storage. But if you have the means, invest in the proper equipment. How can anyone argue with that logic? Not I. I would just like to cover a few things not mentioned, “devil is in the details” kind of thing. Matching your preps to your income might not be possible. Prepping poor is great practice for living poor. And, prepping poor might be a great way to stockpile much deeper.
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I don't wish to discount what the Commander had to say. His points are valid. By spending nothing, you get a much lower level of performance. He doesn't advocate buying the very best, which makes him much smarter than 95% of the Survivalist Guru's out there ( see what happens when you can write without needing to appease advertisers? ). He is merely saying to buy a properly designed item, one actually made for a specific task ( I imagine he would not approve of my butchering an AR to make a bolt gun and he would-mostly-be correct. It makes a terrible bolt action ).
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Two liter bottles are made for a specific purpose, which is to transport and store carbonated beverages relatively cheap. They work rather well for storing water and food, far more than you would imagine a one use disposable bottle would. They just aren't designed for that, which is Zero's entire point. My only point of contention is he comes across a bit condescending as he implies poverty is a choice. Sure, it was a choice. I could have chosen to disregard my child support order and dropped off grid and sold drugs for extra money.
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Or, I suppose I could have made my second job one I hated but which paid more. I could have chosen to move to an area with higher wages, even if it meant moving away from my kids. I guess you can choose to divorce the wife to get more prep budget. Hell, even I think that is a great idea. Yeah, read the book. Yes, despite the above sarcasm, you always have a choice. My only point is that sometimes choosing more money is retarded, when there are ways to live on a lot less. And if that means you pick frugal preps, so be it.
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Again, I have no bone to pick with the Commander. It was just a tone I picked up on, but that could be me being rather too sensitive. I get that way with people, and sometimes they don't deserve that. It isn't a crime to fail to see things from someone else's point of view. But sometimes choosing the “smart” way to survivalism is a terrible life choice. I have isolated paid for property, and am self-employed. The smart thing would be to live there. But I like being married, especially now that I have a wonderful wife. I choose the less safe way.
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Just like some folks choose to live close to a well paying job, even if the location is more diversified than is prudent. They enjoy living middle class. The prep budget is whatever can be squeezed from that. I don't agree with it, but I wonder how many former readers gave up on me when I made my current choice. “Not hard core enough”, was probably uttered as they returned to the Idaho Prepper who wasn't so frugal about his equipment advice.
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I would say that most months, I probably put more income toward preps than I do living expenses. That is the ideal, even if it is far from practical for most people. They signed up for a middle class lifestyle ( which to me means a car and a house, and if lucky medical insurance ), put the work in to get a job that supported that, and had a family. All of which means even cutting all the corners, there is simply too much going out in expenses to prep expensively. Cutting cable and even Netflix, taking no vacations and doing your own car repair, never going to Starbucks, STILL, you'll never have enough for $50 water bottles as a baseline in equipment.
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That doesn't mean you need to use two liter soda bottles, re-purposing trash. Hell, I don't use those. They simply take up too much room and won't last long enough. Between $50 bottles and $0 bottles, there are plenty of other choices. Middlin quality, rather than cheap junk or The Best. Certainly, even if scrounging, you can find a much better quality container. Or, say, you find a restaurant supplier that offers about the same thing, but cheaper because it isn't directed at preppers ( which always have a built in premium ).
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But my best reason for frugal prepping is that you simply get more of everything. Again, NOT trash. Not the very cheapest. The best bargain on decent quality. I had no problem spending twice what a Mosin-Nagant cost, or for that matter a Lee-Enfield no1, in favor of a Enfield no4. Everybody was busy at the time buying pre-ban AR-15's for $1500, and I'm the retard for buying war surplus “junk”? I have infantryman's rifles, real guns. Not “real” just because it was steel and wood ( the AK is, also ), but “real” because they were the last guns built to last.
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The Nazi's had the worlds premier bolt gun, know for accuracy AND built tough ( although NOT ergonomic, and prone to being allergic to fouling in the field. Accuracy came at a cost ), and by the end of the war they needed a replacement that was a heck of a lot cheaper to produce. Quantity over quality, a Soviet disease ( well, it does have its place, honestly ). Bean counters over engineers. Stamped parts and plastic. With the exception of the US M-14, everyone stampeded to cheaply made guns.
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I will give the M-16 its due, it was engineered brilliantly and was both accurate and held up well in the field ( when the proper ammo was used, thanks for nothing US Army, and corporate asswhores didn't cut costs-looking at you, dingus breath Colt corporate suits ). But it was still a cheaply made gun and disposable. It was NOT meant for hard use for a long period of time. And the round sucked, but that wasn't Stoner's doing. It was an industrial age gun, meant to be used as a lead slinger when ammo was cheap and widely available, and cheaply replaced from copious factories.
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It is NOT all that great of a post-apocalypse gun. It will have to do, but a tank of a WWII battle rifle it is not. Using an AR ( because of its widespread availability, dirt cheap parts, low up front investment cost, and accuracy to make your limited ammunition stockpile last longer ) for a post-apocalypse gun is almost like using a two liter bottle for a food storage unit. It works, but is doing something it was NOT designed for.
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A war surplus bolt gun is designed to last a long time, to withstand hard abuse in the field, to use primitive ammunition and to be used with bayonet back-up. Sounds like a much better fit to the apocalypse, rather than Nazi stamped and secreted parts. My point here being that if you are insisting on using equipment designed explicitly for a certain task, and won't cheap out or improvise, why are you using a modern gun that wasn't designed for after the Industrial Age or the Oil Age? HMMMM?????? Continued tomorrow.
( .Y. )
( today's related Amazon link click HERE )
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43 comments:

  1. I imagine the bolt throw is a pain in the butt on an AR converted the way you did. I got my kit for the beginning of a die off when targets will be thick. The intent is to take as many jerks with me as I can if need be.

    If I survive that and the population settles down, then I can grab my Enfield. Plus, I would rather see the AR go if confiscating starts.

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    1. Last sentence- thank you! I wasn't considering that fully. You are right. Bury ALL Enfields, two AR's. Excellent. Today only, Supreme Minion Brownie Points.

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    2. I can top that one. Use those AR-15s as a honey pot. Lay out the bait: booby trap those turdly implements so as to frag interlopers whom may be moths to flame, with that queer eye towards plastic assault rifle thingys.

      Hell, the boom in the night from a first contact activity, can allow you to work while sleeping, helping to thin the herd. Winning!

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    3. An entertaining notion, even if impractical.

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    4. Use air-soft replicators type of ar15s. Place in roadside grass that was tightly ranged to the m.o.a. of your kit. Few pounds of finger digit pull, Done.

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    5. Poisoned freeze dried. Laser print an official sounding label, repack in Mylar pouch.

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    6. AR's or Airsoft guns as bait...
      This is an old wartime trick, leaving valuables in an area where enemy might happen across it so you can shoot at a stationary target. Say you're on an extended get-home trip after being stranded far from home, or you're leaving home to go foraging. If you see obvious valuables in your path, RUN! It's a set up for a slow thinker to harvest whatever valuables you have on you (including your own flesh), or to eliminate competition for resources. I suspect it would probably be at least a month after a widespread grid-down event before people who didn't know this trick thought it up and started using it. The one-month time period is based upon the first month or three being so busy with random and targeted violence, desperately trying to stay alive until things quieted down and "Joe Average" had time to think.

      Just in case anyone thinks this is a good idea that they might want to try, I'll remind you of Exodus 20:13 “You shall not murder." But, but, but, "Everyone else is doing it, and nobody will ever know! I have to survive at all costs!" Check out Isaiah 13:11 "Thus I will punish the world for its evil and the wicked for their iniquity; I will also put an end to the arrogance of the proud and abase the haughtiness of the ruthless."
      Romans 14:11

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    7. I think Baby Jesus will side with me on Tribe Specific Morality. I'm also reminded that Southern preachers could quote the bible in defense of slavery. No offense intended.

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    8. @wrench: Are you going to willingly let them have the AR? I don't want to act tough about it but I think I would resist violently. Maybe not if push came to shove. But once I get a place of my own, I am thinking of rigging some gas lines that could emit poison gas, which then gives me a chance to open fire when I would be outnumbered. If they have gas masks during the raid, I would have to plan for that. My friend says he'd give his gun just to stay alive, but would go out and buy one on the black market. I can be suicidal when it comes to armed tyrants trying to put me under their control, so I had better devise a system that will allow me to inflict maximum damages before I buy the farm.

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    9. "Murder" meant, "Kill one of your own tribe".

      Some of those airsofts are really hard to tell from a real rifle, and I've spent plenty of time around both so I'm pretty secure in saying this. You can also pick up those airsofts barely played with for 1/2 new price off of teenagers all the time because they want some other gun.

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    10. If you're absolutely bent on being suicidal you could just load 1 round per magazine. Can't get more frugal than that, especially if you only have 1 magazine.

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    11. Just steal a 16 yo female, strip her naked, and chain her to a tree on the perimeter within scope distance.

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    12. Good starting point on the baited trap.

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  2. Agreed. I have a pragmatic disdain for those prognosticators in the prep/survival sphere whom have to utilize article space to lay out their background credentials, and proceed to explain to readers how they came upon a nifty idea or product, that costs 'money', (outside a realistic budget, and at a stupid price point to the layman's thinking) AND is about as practical or useful as well:____ fill in the blank.

    I reference an article at *awles unicorn feeding trough, that imitates a web site. Valuable web energy and wasted viewing time is used for an article, submitted by an expert and field proven, to highlight a nifty "carry spare ammo on your ankle" idea (coughing-bull shit spittle coming up), that wait for it; also has a price tag, and leads a reader down a path of wasted time and resources over a nothing issue.

    Minions: Use your discernment and bullshit filtering gained through Bison's tutelage. Avoid time sinkholes, and other's so called wise and experienced advice to spend your money.

    That scavenger, re purposing ala' poverty reasons are why guy is going to be the one winning standing on the otherside metaphorically, looking back at corpses and idiots.

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    1. You know, thinking deeply on this subject, an Anal Carry is a free and easy way to carry a back-up mag. You just might want to seriously consider stopping at a twenty-rounder ( real men don't use a ten round hunting mag )

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    2. Damn, good one. Somebody is gonna try it now Jim, and do a write up thinking it will win prizes from unicorn gear vendors. Jeez, Jesus is crying from the frickin laughter at this show.

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    4. Where the heck did I read about someone smearing human feces on bullet tips? Fiction? Not sure. Anyway, there's another bonus of my proprietary system.

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    5. There was, once upon a time, a poster on www.reddit.com/r/vagabond who called himself Ka-Bar. He posted a fine, fine rant once on the kind of vagabonds/hobos who just have to have the neato store bought stuff, or worse, the ones who head out into the field without stuff at all, counting on borrowing or "borrowing". These last are called "streamliners" and are hated for good reason.

      But, the great Ka-Bar said, what if you have at last some morals so you buy a bunch of stuff before you head out, so you've got your nice MSR WhisperLite stove, fancy gear and blankets and all that .... it's all fine and good, until someone steals all your stuff and eventually, sooner more likely than later, you will lose all your stuff. Now you've just become a "streamliner"....

      The true old-school hobo way is to know how to make your own stuff. Take a blanket or tarp and turn it into a backpack or at least something back-packable. Make cooking gear out of coat hanger wires and #10 cans. Scrounge, or at least know how and where to find certain things and materials so when you need 'em, you know where to get 'em.

      Jim - smearing hooman feeseez on bullets it old-old tech, modern bullets get hot and sterilize themselves and the extra toppings will throw your accuracy off. Feces go on punji sticks, silly goose.

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    6. Pistol velocity bullets? It bothers me I can't remember where I read that.

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    7. “You just might want to seriously consider stopping at a twenty-rounder ( real men don't use a ten round hunting mag)”


      You’re not a real man. Richard Simmons can easily accommodate a 100 round banana clip without so much as a whimper :D

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    8. I thought it was a drum mag? LOL

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  3. 2 things. I get 2 quart food-grade plastic screw-lid jars from Dollar Tree. If you have one local, and they don't carry them, you can have a case shipped to the store for free. I seal them with a bead of rubber cement on wax paper. Withing a day, the seal is taught over beans, pasra, rice, and cream of wheat.

    Second is ammo. You might try Traget Sports. Prices are similar to SG Ammo but with free case lot shipping.

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    1. Ahem, TARGET Sports ( you're as bad as me transposing letters ). Yes, agree, close enough not to matter on the price. But SG is the same price AFTER shipping fees. Like the Dollar Tree idea-alas, they opened a second Family but not a Tree. Still without a dollar store even after something like six or seven years. I'll be pissed if they wait until hyperinflation to open one here.

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    2. Select your primary vendors and stay with a very, very, few numerically. Spreading your data in search of merely saving coins is overexposing ones self. Keep your footprint as small as possible. This avoids tripwires from financial frauds, doxing by sjws-red cadres, cartels or home boys home invasions, etc etc, all just because your a gun slut, whoring around all over the internet.

      And no, Nancy, firewalls, norton-lifelock queerz, sleeping with a Magnum, (firearm, not appendage) barking dogs, etc ain't gonna cut it

      Just saying.

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    3. An ounce of prevention. Good points

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  4. Wanting cake and eating too, mentality.

    Prepper culture adherents whom are nowhere near prime time ready for "survivalism" and "apocalypse" living.

    They are dwelling in a blue hive or compromised locales, with a mortgage, other system slave chains, as well as a laundry list of associated shortcomings. They cling and hold old belief carryovers of capitalistic yuppie disdain for things frugal or appearing beneath community standards.

    Hanging out a shingle claiming smarts or typing on full auto burst to the internet does not make one superior in 'opinion'.

    Come time, it will only be: run with what you got, in hand, then and there. So.....

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    1. Because they want to "THRIVE"!!! Barf

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    2. Nice rant! The survivalists I know and spent time with would starve w/o CostCo and Safeway etc. When I left I thought my food bills would go up but they didn't, as I was able to cook more thriftily on my own. The owner of the place is dependent on FedGov all the way, as he's out of work if a large gov't agency goes T.U.

      He also tells everyone and their dog "come over if things get rough, I'm a survivalist!" goes to Burning Man where I suspect he tells all the scum who go to that thing, and essentially tries his best to be the opposite of "the grey man". I'm fairly certain he uses the word "THRIVE" a lot.

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    3. Damn Pretty Princess Preppers giving "survivalists" a bad name. Like they need any help :)

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  5. Over in Eugene Oregon, I was at Neilsens, the family-operated fastener shop, getting more boxes of bolts-n-nuts for the farm.

    Neilsens is behind a Hawaiian restaurant.
    Behind the restaurant is a typical chain-link enclosure for Dumpsters™.
    That enclosure has five-gallon buckets stacked twenty high... probably several hundred empty (apparently food-grade) buckets.

    My first thought:
    'Should I share this tidbit of information with Bison?'

    I don't know. I just don't know.
    I'll let you know my decision.
    Any day now...

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    1. I shouldn't complain about lack of buckets here, since at least I have a feed store. I think the larger LDS population here gets all the buckets in "insider" deals.

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    2. I was wondering if you would like to do an article on water filters (not attached to a faucet).

      Yesterday I was looking at portable water filters on Amazon. Most were rated 4.5 stars. But all of them had a few one stars with complaints that would be deadly in hard times if the water is polluted.

      Complaints included cracked pump handle, O-ring breaking, pressure bag breaking, hard to pump, hard to suck on straw, very little water flow, and more.

      Plus there were big differences in micron filtration size from 0.20 to 0.01. (Smaller means cleaner water to drink.) The smallest micron size will filter out viruses.

      I ended up buying a gravity water filter. But none were a good choice.

      I think if your life is depending on cleaning water so you don't die of dysentery, you should buy at least 2 water filters. Even better would be 4 filters with 2 of one brand and 2 of another brand.

      Plus in reading the reviews, if you buy one with a troublesome O-ring, you should pack extra O-rings in your water filter kit.

      And be sure to pre-filter your water with a coffee filter, cloth, screen, etc. Your filter will last longer.

      And there are homemade bucket kits you make with play sand, tiny gravel, larger gravel that are good. And having extra activated charcoal is always good.

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    3. I won't be primarily depending on a filter-it is there as just one of many methods. I think boiling is best. As for what isn't filtered out, well, the Earth could be a very polluted place ( primarily nuclear plant waste ). Whether it is more, or less polluted than now is an open question. For instance, you are probably drinking chlorine and herbicides/pesticides right now. We can't live in a bubble now or then. Past common sense habits, little we can do.

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    4. Nice find Large Marge. Being a casual prowler of alleyways and dark dumpster habitats, I spied 20 rectangular bales of hay stacked out back of a grocery store. Leftover fall decor. I made a point of asking manager, he said help self. Hay bales big money in my part of the country.

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    5. Paint filter (nylon?) mesh that fit over 5 gallon and one gallon cans are finer mesh than screen and hold up well.

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  6. So the Commander is a certain per cent smarmy suburbanite "I've got mine because I'm morally better than you". If you want to get away from that, you'll have to get away from the US; far, far away.

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    1. Nothing smarmy about commander Zero. He prioritizes survival gear and skillls, he just likes the really good stuff in selective categories. His article was about people with 6 figure salaries getting by with recycled trash for survival needs. His point was adjust your priorities and get quality gear if you can afford it.

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    2. I have to agree. He is the most well adjusted Yuppie Scum Survivalist I know. Which is why I read him and not so many others ( cough, Idaho gurus, cough )

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  7. No, CZ lives in rural Wyoming.

    But he's still wrong.

    And he did, in a round about way, take a shot at Bison.

    And where do you find new water barrels for $40? Did he forget the shipping too?

    MICoyote

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    1. Um, pretty sure he keeps saying "college town Montana". He might be lying for OpSec, but on the face of it he is Montana. I don't mind his "round about shots". I take them myself. CZ doesn't take it personally, so we can have a civil debate. Or, I could be on his Enemies List and I'm hosed. Time will tell :)

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  8. For people with not enough guns (don't have a carbine at all, not "have room in the mega-safe"), Mossberg MVP in 5.56 using AR magazines is a decent bolt action. The MVP in 7.62 uses M-14 magazines, if you are in the great wide open.
    It's prabably not as fine overall as an Enfield in minty condition, or a Mauser, but you must consider that Uncle has TRILLIONS of stockpiled rounds that provide indirect resupply via cooling Agents of the Uncle.

    He with Great Hair has put forth the best most likely strategy of "hiding & waiting" to have the advantage of having ammo after most opponents have demonstrated their knowledge of Mass Fire infantry strategy until out of ammo.

    pdxr13

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