If You Could Only Have 5 Guns

Here’s a silly question I’ve asked myself dozens of times over many years: If I could only own five guns, what would they be?

Many preppers choosing survival guns come up with great answers, which usually go something like this:

1. A defensive handgun, often a Glock 19 or 1911
2. A defensive rifle, often an AR-15, AK-47, or 7.62 mm M1A
3. A 22 LR rifle or pistol, Ruger 10/22 is popular
4. A Shotgun, 870 Remington
5. A 308 or 30-06 hunting rifle, bolt action

That’s a well balanced collection for survival. You could defend yourself and hunt small game and big game. One prepper is simplifying his collection to include only common calibers. This is just so wrong on so many levels! Why should a shooting hobby suffer at the hands of prepping?

The more you’re into shooting sports, the more unbalanced your ultimate 5 gun collection will probably be. What if you shoot 10 meter air rifle? You shoot three-position rifle with a heavy 22 LR. You enjoy hunting upland game with a lightweight 20 gauge side-by-side. You hunt plains game with a 7mm Remington Magnum.

Already four of your choices look like this:

1. Obnoxiously expensive air rifle
2. Obnoxiously heavy 22 target rifle
3. 20 gauge side-by-side shotgun
4. 7mm Remington Magnum bolt action

With only one space left, we’ll add in a basic defensive pistol. From a pure survivalist standpoint, this is kind of a crummy collection. The first two seem totally out of place. The shotgun is a poor choice compared to a 12 gauge pump. The 7mm might have a place in a good survival battery. But isn’t the 308 Winchester more popular? And, if the shooter takes up trap shooting, preferring an over-under shotgun, forget about it. You don’t even have room for a defensive pistol anymore!

Which battery is the better one for survival? Sure, the first. Here’s another question: Which shooter is probably better prepared to survive a situation where shooting is a crucial skill?

I’d venture to guess the shooter with the second collection is better prepared. If you can hit small birds in the air, an intruder at the door won’t have much of a chance against the 20 gauge.

The years and years of practice with the first two guns on the list pretty much assures the average noob with an AR-15 won’t fare too well against the shooter with his 7 mm Magnum which holds only a few shots. Yes, you’d lack firepower against multiple opponents.

Your gun collection should grow organically to suit your unique needs and interests. Don’t eliminate calibers like the 38 Super in place of the common 9mm or get rid of a 257 Roberts just to “simplify” your collection. Don’t let prepping concerns interfere with your shooting hobby!

If you could have only five guns for the rest of your life, what five would you choose?

Charlie Palmer, author  -  The Prepper Next Door: A Practical Guide For Disaster And Emergency Planning

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Here’s a good article about “minimalist prepping,” focusing on the key things you need to survive, without cluttering your living room.

Here’s a good post about Dual Flush Toilets, those that use less water when solids aren’t involved.

Here’s a Youtube video I stumbled upon:

Superhumans-Byron Ferguson Ultimate Archer. He has 20/15 eyesight and can shoot an aspirin out of the air.

This is an episode of an interesting reality show, called Top Shot.  People who are great shooters with rifle, pistol, and shotgun can produce an audition video and apply. Win the show and win $100,000. Follow the link to see some of the Top Shot audition videos at the right:

End Of Privacy In America II (Opinion)

A few days after the news the NSA is tracking phone caller “meta data” throughout America, new reports prove the government is busy at work tracking our online associations too.

Sites included for eves-dropping include Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL (are they still around?), Skype, YouTube, and Apple. To summarize: Pretty much everything you do online is being monitored by the American government. The records will remain, indefinitely.

A whole parade of politicians and bureaucrats are endorsing the practice as no big whoop:

“It’s called protecting America,” said Senator Dianne Feinstein.

“The unauthorized disclosure of information about this important and entirely legal program is reprehensible and risks important protections for the security of Americans.”

“Information collected under this program is among the most important and valuable foreign intelligence information we collect, and is used to protect our nation from a wide variety of threats.” Director of National Intelligence

We are assured this information won’t be misused: Trust us, we’re told. The whistleblower who released this information has come forward. He didn’t feel Americans knew the extent to which they were monitored.

Whistleblowers play a key role in exposing government wrongdoing. They expose corruption and misdeeds. Without honest people in government and business, more stuff sneaks under the radar.

What if a special interest inside a country wants to start a war that isn’t in the best interests of its citizens but only serves the agenda of some special interest? How do you do this?

The ploy is well known: You fabricate intelligence and leak it to friendly newspapers. The fabricated intelligence, provocatively reported, proves the country to be attacked is an immediate threat to your own country. The people become outraged, fearful, and they follow the script. Yes, we must attack!

What if somebody inside the intelligence agency knows the truth? What should they do? Should they let thousands of Americans die needlessly by keeping quiet or destroy their own career and life by exposing the truth? It takes a tremendous amount of courage to step outside of the machine and become a whistleblower.

Whistleblowers are a cog in the machine. If an intelligence agency can ferret out all whistleblowers and those who object to their agenda, they can operate in secrecy and with impunity behind the scenes manipulating a population.

Destroying this level of protection is a key goal for certain groups. In my humble opinion, total information awareness, PRISM, the “Big Brother” database, or whatever you want to call the newest program is all about snuffing out whistleblowers.

Here’s how it works: Something the government shouldn’t be doing suddenly appears on page one of the Washington Post. How could the “Big Brother” database be used? The reporter’s phone numbers are searched. All calls the reporter ever made are examined. All incoming calls to him are looked at.

If the whistleblower made the error of using his home or cell phone, he’s instantly exposed. If he made the error of using his credit card to purchase a prepaid cell phone, he’s exposed too. The government plans to track our credit card purchases, if they don’t already do so.

In the future, when databases get larger, even the cell phone you carry and don’t use could be used to track you. Even if you used a pay phone, you’d be exposed, if you carried your cell phone. The ping data from your carried phone could be used to find out who made the call. Lacking that, surveillance video around the pay phone, whose number was recorded, would trap the prey. Hey, whatever happened to all the pay phones?

Such a database could be used to pressure reporters by pressuring associates. The phone for the reporter’s boss is searched and the associated number of a hooker appears. It’s suggested the boss tells the reporter to kill further reporting of this topic or his wife will be angry. Toss in a possible IRS audit for extra emphasis. The reporter is fired. He never knows why.

Of course, most people haven’t worked for the CIA and don’t have inside information. Most of us aren’t reporters, exposing corruption and wrongdoing. Most of us have nothing to fear by the politician-approved databases. That’s what we’re told.

To show how harmless this information is, the politicians supporting this data collection scheme should make their personal phone records public. Every outgoing call and incoming call made, with the time of the call, and location data, should be released.

If a lobbyist calls Senator Dianne Feinstein on her private cell phone and they talk for half an hour, shouldn’t Americans know this? The senators would never vote for that! Public officials should have a much higher level of disclosure than the average American. If they have all our data, it’s only fair we have theirs.

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My Post: The End of Privacy In America

Prepper Book Review: The Survivors Club

Having been a prepper for over thirty years, I’ve read my share of survival books, survivalist books, and prepper books. Most of what I’ve learned, one way or the other, happened decades ago. I’ve read books on combat, war, wilderness survival, self defense, homesteading, and self sufficiency. I’m pretty much read out of the genera. As they say, there’s no new thing under the sun. Sure, I’ll learn something interesting here or there, but I seldom feel compelled to read a new survival book. The one group of books that still gets my attention are the books which chronicle true stories of survival. These books objectively ask the question: What separates a real life survivor from a non-survivor?

The Survivors Club: The Secrets and Science that Could Save Your Life by Ben Sherwood is in this class. Sherwood isn’t a survivalist. He’s a journalist. He approaches the topic objectively and without bias. He has no particular ax to grind or agenda to push. If you’re looking for a book to understand the basic psychology of survival, this is a great choice.

If you have extensive military survival training or other survival training, you’ll immediately recognize much of what’s in this book. Some of it will appear common sense. It’s interesting to see how this knowledge plays out for other people in different situations.

What are some of the book’s lessons?

1. In disasters, many people don’t panic. They freeze. They suffer brain lock. The way I remember this being portrayed is that when a person is confronted with something completely alien, their brain searches for similar situations to decide how to respond.

For most of us, in most disasters, we don’t have experience or a mental script to fall back on. Most people haven’t been in a crashing airplane, a burning building, or attacked by a psychotic with a knife. Our mental search draws a blank and we search the mind again, risking putting us into an infinite mental loop.

Some people want to deny the reality of the situation they find themselves in. The book does a great job of discussing this.

The corollary to this is that if you know you might confront a particular emergency, it’s best if you have some training. The training will give you a blueprint of how to respond. The blueprint will never exactly match the situation, but it’s a start. Sherwood describes how he, as an author, got access to participate in Navy helicopter crash training. As part of the book, he participates in commercial airplane crash evacuation.

2. Situational awareness is crucial. Situational awareness encompasses many things. It means you appreciate the risks you face. You’re as aware as you can be of the situation you find yourself in. You’re aware of your resources and limitations.

An important example Sherwood talks about is a professor who studies “inattentional blindness.” This means we can only visibly focus on a narrow range at one time. To take in more of what’s happening we need to look around and pay attention. As many drivers know, we should constantly be visually scanning for threats. The eyes should be moving. The professor makes it a point to consciously scan a traffic intersection for those nefarious drivers who run red lights and cause many accidents. Sherwood writes about this in the context of accidents and luck. Many accidents can be prevented by extra awareness. You’ll have better “luck” in life if you pay attention.

Another good example is counting seats on an airplane and knowing where the exits are. As Sherwood experienced in his crash training, a plane could be filled with thick smoke and you might not be able to see your hand in front of your face. Where is the nearest exit? If you’ve counted seats, you could move seat to seat with your hands as your guide.

3. The role of active passiveness is important. Just because you aren’t active, doesn’t mean you aren’t thinking and formulating a plan of action. You’re mentally scanning for opportunities before you seize on one.

I’ll take an example, not from the book, but from the news. The terrorists who bombed the marathon car jacked a guy. When one car jacker went to get gas and the other put down his weapon and started playing with a GPS device, the hostage made his get away. If you’re ever in a situation like this, there is a huge difference between being passive and being actively passive. See, too, the role of situational awareness. You want to take in all the information you can and seize the best opportunity.

4. You need to make good decisions. Sometimes your decision will be made instinctively and other times analytically. Sherwood tells the story of a lady who fell onto a knitting needle that entered her heart. She realized that pulling it out was like taking a cork out of a bottle. She left needle removal to the doctors. This was credited with saving her life. Ironically, the book says famous crocodile hunter Steve Irwin did the exact opposite when he was stung by a bull ray. He ripped out the stinger, possibly severing his atrium, killing him.

5. If you want to live, you need to keep fighting. We won’t all make the right decisions in every emergency and it can kill us. So, too, some situations aren’t survivable. But if you really want to live, you can have much more impact than you might think.

In one of the saddest stories in the book, a troubled young man jumps off the Golden Gate Bridge. Deciding he wants to live, on the way down, he makes it a point to right himself so his legs will enter first. On impact, his arms, legs, and much of his body is smashed and he’s forty feet below the surface of the water. Had he landed head first, he would have died instantly. But he can’t swim due to his injuries, and he prays for God to help him. A sea lion nudges him from underneath and gets him to the surface.

For those people who like taking online tests, the book ends with a “Survivor Profiler” test you can take online.

Review by Charlie Palmer -author, The Prepper Next Door: A Practical Guide For Disaster And Emergency Planning
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The End Of Privacy In America

The news is abuzz with the information that the NSA is working to build its “Big Brother” database, which is part of the Orwellian-named “total information awareness” program.

If you use Verizon, the government is linking your phone number to other numbers you called and which called you. This is done to build a “known associates” list. These lists are supposedly used to track down terrorists.

To track down fugitives, police use “known associates” to know where a felon can go to get help. The idea is that if the government knows everybody you’re in contract with, if you turn out to be a terrorist, they’ll be able to nab all of your terrorist friends too.

Doesn’t this seem to violate citizen privacy? I believed the NSA was supposed to only operate outside America. This has the potential for abuse.

There is a trend today to store personal information in “The Cloud” rather than on your own hard drive. In the far future, all information will probably be stored in “The Cloud” and computers will be boxes that can only access this information. There won’t be hard drives. When this happens, all personal information you keep on your computer will be available for instant access and analysis by the government.

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Lessons From Dateline’s “Against All Odds” (& Cold Weather Survival)

The TV show Dateline featured a survival story “Against All Odds” about a couple that got stranded in their vehicle during a winter storm.

I bet most preppers who watch a survival story like this immediately see several lessons that can be taken away. Many of the lessons are well known. As preppers we’d already have taken steps to be better prepared if we found ourselves in this situation.

Here is the episode on Youtube (it was posted as a six part series):

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Part 4:

Part 5:

Part 6

Spoiler Alert: Watch the videos before continuing.

Without further ado, here’s what I took away from this:

1) If you take a road trip, tell somebody where you’re going. Let them know when you’ll return. If you change your plans, call them so they’re not worried. Select a reliable person who cares about you. A good choice: Your mother. A bad choice: Your ex-wife who’s living with her new boyfriend in California.

2) Don’t trespass into areas you don’t belong. In the story, the couple bypassed a road closed sign because the guy wanted to test the off-road capabilities of his vehicle. If a road is closed, it’s closed for a reason.

3) Be prepared. If you’re traveling in isolated country in Winter, assemble a basic winter survival kit for your vehicle. If you’re traveling in desert conditions, assemble appropriate gear.

Keeping warm in severe winter cold comes down to having adequate clothing. You can take this as far as you want. There are people who make expeditions to arctic regions who need to function continuously in horrible cold, ten days forty-five below actual temperature sort of cold.

At a minimum, you should have:

a) A warm jacket or parka
b) Snow pants (or full snowsuit, if you prefer)
c) Warm gloves
d) Warm hat and neck and face protection
e) Insulated boots and good wool socks

People photographing the Northern Lights, sled dog racers, and extreme North climbers must rely on the best clothing.  In the arctic or up a mountain, you can’t just build a fire. There isn’t fuel, and if you somehow managed to start a fire, the wind would blow it out.

You actually have a great heater: Yourself. Your body will shiver and generate heat to warm you. Adequate clothing will keep this heat from being lost. You’ll also need plenty of high-calorie food: You’ll burn far more calories as your metabolism heats up.

Younger children, smaller people, and the elderly are at the greatest risk of not being able to generate adequate heat. As an emergency heat source, you can carry chemical hand warmer packets to defrost your toes.

One point about clothing was made clear: The young lady was terrified of drizzle, because she knew her clothing wasn’t waterproof. In the arctic where it never drops below freezing, waterproofing isn’t the same concern as it is in most environments. Since most of us face freezing rain that can soak our clothing, we need an outer waterproof layer.

If you want to learn more about extreme cold weather clothing, who better to learn from than Norwegians?

4) Learn a bit about basic survival in your environment. This is closely related to point 3 above. Your supplies and knowledge interweave. In the story, the young lady decides she must seek help. The snow is so thick, she can’t walk. She can only crawl.

Almost nobody carries snowshoes in their car’s winter survival kit. That would be excessive for most of us. But if you learned a bit about winter survival, you’d at least have some ideas about how to improvise a pair yourself.

5) Pay attention to weather reports. Storms can come up fast. Tornadoes are especially sudden. Other storms like hurricanes are predicted very early. It’s good to know what’s in the forecast.

6) Ask: “What If?” In the story, the guy wants to test drive his Jeep off road. What if it gets stuck or breaks down? What are the possible consequences of something going wrong? Am I prepared if this thing happens? What options do I have? Start a conversation with yourself.

7) Spoiler Alert. You never know what skills you’ll need to survive. You never know what factors might conspire to save you. The lady wouldn’t have been able to crawl to safety through the deep snow. But, by miracle, her brother was searching for her in the right area. His truck wouldn’t make progress up the road. But he saw a dump truck and, as luck would have it, he had driven tanks in the military, and the keys were in it. He was able to find her.

Whenever you watch or read a survival story, make up your own short bullet point list of important lessons that can be taken away from the story. Learn from the experiences of others. I bet many of you already do this.

Charlie Palmer -author, The Prepper Next Door: A Practical Guide For Disaster And Emergency Planning

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There is a great article about hurricane preparedness at ifithitsthefan.blogspot.com