The past 2 days have been spent working on my truck, and working on some jug lines for an upcoming camping trip. When I started thinking about how much time and effort I put into getting the juglines ready, I was a little set back.
After talking to my wife, I ...
A few days ago I asked the SurvivalistBoards Facebook group a question, "Name one thing a first aid kit is not complete without." Some of the answers were helpful, and some were not what I expected.
I would like to thank all of the subscribers for helping out with this list.
Anti-bacterial ...
Deer season is here, instead of grabbing a pack, throwing some random gear in and heading out to the woods, lets take a look at some items that should be considered. The way I look at it, your pack needs to contain everything you need to track a wounded deer, ...
This past weekend I decided it was time to organize the ammunition at the Bug Out Location. We had ammo stored in 3,,, 4 different locations, which made taking inventory a pain in the rear end.
My wife cleared off a wire shelf so I could bring it to the camp ...
In this article we are going to be looking at making noodles to catch catfish. This type of rig may not be legal in all areas, so check the local laws before you do anything.
Buy some noodles from the local china-mart. The noodles might be seasonal, and should be ...
Sean Penn talks about the Cholera outbreak in Haiti. By the latest number, over 250 dead and over 3,000 infected. Until people start getting safe drinking water, the problem is just going to get worse. Once Cholera gets into the drinking water supply, the water has to be chemically treated or filtered to remove the Cholera bacteria.
Cholera is a bacteria that causes severe dehydration and left untreated may cause death.
The question is, if a disaster like the earthquake in Haiti hit your area, how would you provide safe drinking water for you and your family?
I find it interesting that Taco Bell can create so many items on their menu by mixing and matching about eight different ingredients. There is the taco meat, sour cream, refried beans, tortilla shell, taco shell,,,,. But by the looks of the Taco Bell menu, it appears they have a thousand ingredients.
Its called utilizing available resources. And the same can be applied to survivalism.
On the flip side of the coin from Taco Bells minimalist approach, I find it interesting that survivalist stockpile so much gear. Certain survivalist think they have to have a special “bug out bag” that is separate from their standard camping / backpacking pack, that they need several rifles
Lets backup a few years, all the way to the early – mid 1980s. Back then I (Kevin), was in High School and was busy camping and exploring the marshes around the Bridge City, Texas area. My backpack at that time was about 14 inches tall, 12 – 14 inches wide, and maybe 6 inches wide. It could have easily been a school book bag, but it was OD green and made out of a canvas material. I had one backpack for all of my camping needs. At that time, that is all I needed. The pack was just big enough for a couple of cans of vienna sausage, or chili, can opener, small pot, matches, contact case, and maybe a spare shirt or socks.
By using a pack that could have doubled as a school backpack, the item was dual purpose. But I never took the pack to school, it was too militant looking, and the other kids in school thought I was strange enough without adding fuel to the fire.
The food that I brought on camping trips back in the early – mid 1980s was just regular canned goods – mainly because I did not know any better and because that is what my mom had in the pantry. So when it was time to go camping with my buddies, I just grabbed the food that was on hand at the time. Today, I have a few cases of MREs, and some Just in Case Meals from prepared.pro. Instead of the household food serving dual roles of camping food and family food, now I have 2 different types of food.
Yesterday evening while heading to the woods for a hog hunting trip, an interesting conversation came up between everyone in the truck – “where will you be hunting at this deer season?” My son and I are on a deer lase, so we have a place to hunt. But the other 2 people in the truck do not have a place where they can not. They have to rely on the kindness of other people to give them permission to hunt on their land.
This got me to thinking, where would you hunt in a post long term SHTF / TEOTWAWKI situation? If you do not have a place to hunt now, what makes you think your going to have one after the fact?
A lot of survivalist plan on “bugging out to the wilderness in a long term SHTF / TEOTWAWKI situation. So having a place to go and a place to hunt might go hand in hand.
If you do not own land, not on a deer lease (which grants you a legal right to be on the land), don’t have friends with benefits, or know where the public hunting land is, where will you hunt at?
Survivalist camp bug out location
Private Property – Owing land in a rural area might the ideal situation for most survivalist, but for a lot of people, is just not realistic. The majority of the people live and work in the city. So if they own property in a rural area, they have to maintain the house they live in, and maintain a remote camp.
There are a lot of considerations for having rural private property – what kind of disasters is the area prone to, how far from your home is the location, is the land farmable, what is the source of drinking water, is the area secure, what types of wild animals are in the area, how easy is it to access the land,,,,,,, just to name a few.
Once the land is obtained, is it close enough to your home to maintain a workable farm, how much gear and supplies are going to be stored there,,,,,.
For hunting considerations, oak trees, maybe a field for crops, and some kind of water source would be nice to have. Der do not need a “lot” of land to live. Their related to the goat, as in deer are grazers – they just walk along and “graze” off foliage. Deer, squirrels and wild hogs love acorns. So having oak trees on the property is a prime consideration.
One of the benefits of having private property, permanent structures can be built and supplies can be stockpiled. But anytime supplies are stockpiled, then comes the question of security.
Here in the good ‘ole USA, do to the massive amounts of chlorine that we put in our water, waterborne diseases are pretty rare. Sure there might be the occasional case of Cryptosporidium, but cases of Cholera, Polio, and Typhoid fever are pretty rare.
So what brought the topic of Cholera up? It was an article on CNN about how fast Cholera can be deadly. This is news to me, I would have never thought that Cholera could turn deadly in just a few hours. I thought that just about all waterborne infections took 3 – 10 days for the first signs to show up, then a few days for dehydration to take place, with death finally occurring. With my understanding of how Cholera progressed, death would occur 7 – 14 days after infection. But after reading that article from CNN, Cholera has earned a new level of respect and fear.
From the CDC website:
An estimated 3-5 million cases of cholera are reported every year
100,000 people die from cholera every year
A person can get cholera by drinking contaminated water or eating contaminated food
I first learned of Cholera and Typhoid in a American Survival Guide article sometime around 1994, 1995 or 1996. I’am not sure if I still have the issue with the article in it, but it was an excellent read.
More recently, we have seen how diseases like Cholera can take its on a population, like in post-earthquake Haiti. The bacterial infection has been blamed for 138 deaths, and another 1,500 other cases have been reported.
The WASR-10 AK-47 is a Romanian variant of the Russian AK-47 rifle. The rifles uses a receiver made in the USA, unlike the SAR series that use a Romanian made receiver.
The equivalents with Russian models are:
* AKM: WASR-10 (7.62×39)
* AK-74: WASR-2 (5.45×39)
* AK-101: WASR-3 (5.56×45)
The WASR-10 rifles are made with stamped receivers and were originally intended for single-stack magazines. After the so called “assualt rifle ban” expired, the receivers were milled to accept a double stack, high capacity magazine. WASR-10 rifles feature a chrome-lined barrel and wooden stocks. The WASR-10 rifles are imported by Century Arms Intl. It is at the Century Arms Intl. factory where they widen the magazine wells and install Tapco-compliant parts.
I’am looking for a 308 semi-auto rifle – its to be used as my primary hunting rifle and survival rifle. This will be my “go to” rifle in the event of a disaster. Currently I have a Bushmaster AR-15 223 / 5.56mm, WASR-10 in 7.62X39, Ruger 10/22, SKS and Remington Model 700 Mountain Rifle in 280/7mm Express. The goal is to have something with a little versatile then those rifles. Something that is rugged enough to take take wherever I want, but accurate enough to make 100+ yard shots and hit a baseball sized target without a bench rest. Ideal accuracy would be a 1 inch group “Minute of angle MOA” at 100 yards. But some military rifles are just not designed to have the accuracy like a bolt action hunting rifle, or the AR15.
During hunting season the purposed rifle is going to be my primary hunting rifle. I need something that is compact enough to move around a deer stand with, or use a climbing stand with, but but with a barrel long enough that accuracy is not affected. Something with an 18 – 22 inch barrel would be ideal.
This is what I have come up with so far:
Century Arms Cetme – @ $500
Barrel length: 16.5″
Overall Length: 37.75″
Stock: Black synthetic
Weight: 9.7 lbs.
Saiga AK 47 .308 Rifle – @ $529
Barrel length: 16″ – 20″
Overall Length: 37.3″ – depending on model
Synthetic Stock
AK-47 style safety
Is the AR-15 a good survival rifle? The simple answer is, “it depends.” The M16 223/5.56mm was original developed as a replacement for the M14 and the 308. The mindset was to develop a lighter rifle and lighter ammo so that soldiers could carry the rifle further and carry more ammo. The drawback, instead of shooting a 150 or 180 grain bullet like the 308 Winchester / 7.62 NATO, the 223 / 5.56mm shot a 55 grain bullet.
Lets talk about some of the pluses and negatives of the 223/5.56mm:
1. To compensate for the smaller bullet diameter and lighter weight, the 55 grain 5.56mm is supposed to “tumble” after it hits flesh. The “tumbling” creates wounds and does quit a bit of damage to flesh.
I see a couple of issues with the “tumble” theory:
How does the bullet know whether its hitting a wall and should punch through, or flesh and tumble? When the bullet is made, is it granted with magical powers that tells it what the bullet is about to hit, and whether it should tumble or not?
All phun aside, the 223/5.56mm has problems getting through walls. Once the bullet hits something, and it tries to tumble, it loses its energy.
The other day, my wife and I were walking around one of the local big-box marts when I saw this late teens – early twenties looking fellow. From the sight of him, I doubt he has ever done more then a weeks worth of hard labor in his life. He might have been around 5 feet 9 or 10 inches tall, and must have weighed between 250 – 300 pounds, and not a single ounce of that was muscle. If there was muscle, it was buried under the layers of fat. I might be being a little hard on the guy, but what do you really expect? In their late teens, early twenties, kids should be in their prime of physical fitness. This is when their supposed to be going camping, playing sports, running track,,,, doing something to get in shape and condition their minds and bodies for the rest of their life. But instead, todays generation seems to be more interested in texting, and working their finger muscles.
As I watch todays generation spend more and more time on their phones and computers, and less time in real life, I have to ask how many people to the younger generation are really living life?
Before I took this desk job as a computer tech, maintaining a level of physical fitness was not a problem. Working as a fitter in a welding shop for 8 – 12 hours a day does enough. I remember fitting a 2:1 elliptical head on a shell, it taking 2 hours to get the job done, and a lot of that I was swinging an 8 pound hammer. One tower I built going to Saudi Arabia was 1 3/4 inch thick, about 11 feet in diameter and the head was 2 inches thick. Instead of using a hammer, dog and wedge, I had to use a 50 ton port-a-power hydraulic jack. The hydraulic jack probably weighed 30 or 40 pounds – I had to pick it up, set it down, pick it up, set it down,,, for 12 hours a day, and for an entire week. Then there was the walking to get the parts for the job I was working on. 1 welding shop I worked at, it was 1/4 mile long, another shop was close to 400 feet long, another shop about 800 feet long. It was not uncommon to walk the length of those shops several times a day.
Before I went into junior high school, mom and dad put my brother and I in little league baseball and football. Our coaches made us do drill after drill after drill,,,,, and run laps around the practice field. The training that I received at such an early age has stayed with me later in life – even though I do not use it anymore. At the very least, I had the concept of training drilled into my head.
Just imagine a day when you can use your own personal hydrogen refueling station to recharge your hydrogen car or motorcycle. Seems like science fiction? Maybe for right now.
A company called Horizon Fuel Cell Technologies is working on a solar powered device that can extract hydrogen from water, convert the hydrogen into electricity, the electricity is then stored in solid fuel cells.
With a unit big enough, it might be possible for people to have a personal hydrogen refueling station for their cars.
Wouldn’t life be much nicer, and cleaner if we could finally break the bonds of fossil fuels? No more oil spills, no more benzine exposure at the gas stations, a cleaner world for our families and grand children.
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