Home Front: Walled security?

One of the thoughts coming on from thinking about the Urban Preppers seen on National Geographic's "Doomsday Preppers" is what to do to prepare in the event of "bugging-in" to secure and if needs be, fortify one's location.This is our little house. I've shown this shot before. We have this little rendered weatherboard place, wide window frontage, white picket fence. The3re is a bolted wooden gate for access down the side of the house to the back yard, and along the street-facing side of the street, a single window with wooden shutters. The back yard has a falling apart wooden fence and a steel rolling gate set in concrete.

So, being the consummate scavenger and opportunist that I am, I have always kept my eyes open for alternate dwellings, should disaster strike, and we decide to "bug-in" locally, but not necessarily at our place. On a local street is this promising fenceline. Note the bluestone (basalt) fence abutting a red-brick type fence. Great coverage and security you may think.

The problem lies here. The edge of the solid frontage is another wood plank fence. There goes your unassailable castle-wall... Still, the height of the stone frontage, and the coverage of the treeline give you an "out-of-sight" advantage that our white picket fence does not.

Even the stone wall wont stop even the most average able bodied intruder, but it does at least present a physical barrier, and shelter from that front.

Just down the road a bit further is this gated and walled place, again, some gate is better than none, and the high stone walls gives that "out-of-sight" protection too. The gate is a bit of a problem in that regards, again, but some hastily applied scrim or boarding would solve that. 


Again, the problem is the side fence. You can just make out here, another wood-plank fence, but again, behind a dividing and obscuring tree-line.

So, what to do? well, having lived in hurricane affected Houston I have witnessed what storms like that can do to glass frontages like I have, so, for non-society breakdown triage, it will be boarding and taping of our place, and perhaps "bugging-in", to abandoned local places we are still scoping out.

Home Front: Preppers in the media

So, I've started watching the fun National Geographic docu-series "Doomsday Preppers" which I must say is falling right into the slot I pegged it at. It's not actively making fun of preppers, not making them out to be crazies, in fact the opposite, it is showing a fairly broad spectrum of people with a variety of outlooks, concerns and abilities.  Obviously they only televised the ones deemed "entertaining", and again, obviously, only filmed the people who consented to being documented.

That said, there have been some really interesting trends I noticed:

1) It was assumed that in almost every case, violent roving bands of marauders would need to be fought off with firearms, which were freely available to both prepper and perp.

2) A high proportion of urban preppers would endeavor to "bug-in" regardless.

3) A surprisingly high proportion of preppers were not in what I would call "good" physical shape.

I guess the things about these three points that caught me were that in my current situation, without a readily firearm equipped population, there wouldn't be as much emphasis on taking proportional force to the firearms level. That said, I have taken my first steps in this direction, albeit baby-steps, in getting my Paintball Marker License (yeah, really ...).

Secondly, the urban "bugging-in" (buggers-in seems to make me giggle) crowd whilst taking advantage of their ability to stockpile LOTS of supplies, didn't seem to do much to take into account the possibility of the physical location being devastated. Suburbs burn, and if mains water and Fire Departments were out, that could be a big problem. Maybe it was just my experiences with bushfires and big storms that made me worry.

Thirdly, and this is the most problematic personally, what do you do if you are less physically able, or members of your family are? We have little people to look after. Triceratops Girl and Tactical Baby are incapable of doing anything useful at 16m and 4y. That's a given. My partner Omega just had knee-surgery to repair damage from a fall. We have a house of people who are not super-soldiers. So, like the less than peak-condition people in the NG show, what do we do? The best we can.

The ideas behind disaster preparedness are to be ready to adapt and survive through the disaster that you are faced with. To some extent that means being stocked and supplied, partially to plan and have the forethought to have contingencies, and the rest is to be skilled and trained.

In my opinion, regardless of all the cool kit that I review, the key to being Equipped for the Apocalypse, is being mentally and socially prepared.

Knowing what you are capable of, knowing what your family is capable of, and having THEM steel themselves, can be your greatest advantage. Understanding the foibles of other humans is also a big part of this, and on this, I'll leave you with a quote from R.A. Heinlein, from his "Time Enough For Love" :
Never appeal to a man's "better nature." He may not have one. Invoking his self-interest gives you more leverage.

I'm looking forwards to more of NG's "Doomsday Preppers",to the next season of AMC's "Walking Dead" and to NBC's "Revolutions", when we get around to watching it

Review 5.11 Tactical - Taclite Pro Pants

Here are the pants I mentioned in my belt post recently, these are the 5.11 Tactical Taclite Pro pants, that I picked up form LA Police Gear, online. I got them in their mid-grey "Tundra" and the light sand "Coyote" colours. These are some pretty feature packed pants, and quite comparable with the Blackhawk Performance WarriorWear pants i reviewed not long ago. These are made of a lightweight 65% polyester and 35% poly cotton ripstop material, which have been treated with HT Teflon® Wear Resistant Finish for stain and soil resistance. Tefglon pants, how cool is that? Actually, its very cool. I've been sprayed with water and food several times thanks to the combined efforts of Tactical Baby and Triceratops Girl whilst in these pants and they have beaded and wiped clean on almost all occasions with ease. Water droplets just bead and roll off.

 Very impressive. Apparently that same Teflon® coated fabric dries 25-40% faster than untreated fabric,something I also put to the test recently as I sweated through several days of 39oC Influenza fever. These pants were actually comfortable to be in.

Lets have a look at the pocket options. On the right face, a reinforced open knife pocket graces the front of the thigh, ( keep my Gerber multitool on a lanyard in it) The left thigh features a hook-and-loop closed pocket, big enough for an iPhone or possibly a magazine. Two standard bellowsed cargo pockets sit down the thigh, also with hook-and-loop closures.

There is a brass clip D-loop on the front right belt loop, good for keys, phone or lanyards, I've found. The front hand-pockets are deep and well angled, and also feature reinforcing to protect against fraying from knife or flashlight clips that may be attached here. The pants themselves close with a press-stud snap, a hefty zipper and an internal button.

At the back you can see the hook-and-loop closing rear "slash" pockets. I'm really digging this style of pocket, over the more traditional "up and down" style. It gives me easy access for stowed items quickly and securely.Also on the back right side is the long reinforced cotton webbing utility strap, which would be a great place to sling items such as my Dead-On Super Hammer.

A couple of other really good features are the double knee and seat reinforcements. The knees have an internal inward facing pocket to allow knee pads to be added. The fully gusseted crotch is also a godsend, it allows for full range of movement, especially for us long-legged critters. Behind the belt line are a couple of built in elasticized patches on the waist, which give the pants a stretch point when bending,m kneeling or crawling, whilst not interfering with the sizing or comfort of fit. The belt loops are wide and broad, taking the 1.75" TDU Belt by 5.11 Tactical perfectly. The one problem I had with these pants were that the Coyote pair were somewhat TOO rugged on the inside seams, as I "go commando", this led to some uncomfortable chafing and me having to resort to boxers for a little while. I presume this is just due to their newness, as my other pair which I wore in a bit more, same sizing, gave me no problems.

Guest Review: #$%^ That Works - MSR XGK Shaker Jet II stove

I have the very great pleasure to introduce (some) of you to my old friend Tony. Tony and I have a combined passion for Japanese weapons arts, which is how we met, and subsequently realized we share some other exciting interests as well. I am only too pleased to bring you the first article Tony has to offer......

#$%^ That Works

Some time ago I offered my good friend Josh at Apocalypse Equipped a couple of articles. And due to being slack and an urban hippie I have not managed to get this done for him until now. Below is the first of these articles.

For some back ground I have travelled a lot and climbed the odd mountain and done the odd wilderness expedition. While zombies may be off my radar I have been in places where natural disasters had just hit or hit not long after I have been there it which is more luck than good management. So in an apocalypse situation you just want @#$% that works. It needs to possibly have been lying around for a couple of years untouched and you need to know that...

1. You can pick it up and run and when you need it and it will just work.

And

2. It is field serviceable with a minimum of tools.

For me the best example I have of this is my MSR XGK Shaker Jet II stove.

I was reminded of this a couple of months ago we headed to the desert for a friends festival and one of the things on the list was cooking. I grabbed this stove out of my back shed filled it with mower fuel. Primed it and as you can see below viola first time it fired up and worked like a dream.

I first bought this shaker jet back in 1996 (some of the readers here are younger than this stove) in that time it has worked, worked and worked some more for me. It has had parts replaced over that time but the bottle and main unit are as is.

Advantages.

It is light at 500grams plus fuel

Efficient - I once cooked an entire month’s food hiking in Greenland on 1 litre of petrol

Rugged – works after being crammed into packs, on the back of yaks dropped, banged and just generally disrespected.

Field Serviceable – Pulled apart at 7000 meters at 20 below with the tools provided striped and put back together.

Versatile – I have run this successfully on diesel, petrol and white gas (and that was dirty dirty diesel)

Disadvantages.

Like its name says it sounds like a jet. You are not hiding from anyone using this stove.

It can burn a bit hot if you don’t know how to use it. (tip below)

Has taken my eyebrows off a couple of times priming it when I first got it.

The stove works off a simple principle of heating the liquid before it gets to the jet by passing the tube through the flame this vaporises the fuel allowing it come out as a gas. Obviously it needs to be primed and this should be practiced but once mastered you can do it with your eyes closed or a set of gloves on.

The shaker part refers to a small needle inside the unit that can be shaken up and down that breaks up any residue that might block the unit which allows for the use of very dirty fuel.

Packs down extremely small and with so many other MSR items is well made.

It can boil a litre of water in under 2 minutes and it can turn out some fine food including a nice salami, bean and risonni pasta that we did in the desert. The tip(as promised above) with not burning everything it is to drop a old can top on top of the cross beam of the stove body to act as a diffuser. Makes it less efficient but more versatile for cooking.

So after water and shelter this would be my next item on any list when it has hit the fan and as we discovered in the desert where it had not hit the fan but we where 50 very long KM’s from anywhere like civilisation that water and shelter then food and warmth where on the list.

This model has been superseded by the XGK EX which I have read and heard good things about. At $250 it is bit rich to just have lying around I admit. But as I said if I have to run for the hills or the power goes out for a week in the snow (as happened to a friend of mine) then this is one of the pieces of kit I definitely want around. If Josh lets me in the next couple of months I will put up a post on how to build a super efficient lightweight stove using some old cans.

Till then happy zombie hunting the urban hippie www.iamnotanurbanhippie.com

Review: Strike Industries - Vertical Loop sling mount

In my quest to build myself a lasertagger for the Stargate Lasertag LRP that I am involved in, I have been accessorizing the tagger that I already have access to, to add to the "look and feel" of the simulation that we do.  One of the things I've found is that most of our home-made taggers lack the kinds of built-in sling-mounts that one would find on a real firearm, which makes mounting a sling problematic.  The electronics-filled MDF bodies can still weigh quite a lot, and because we are cabled into both the sensors and the controller-box, its not just a matter of "putting the tagger down" to do something, you are literally tied to your tagger. 

Rather than drilling an additional hole to put an eye-bolt, or the like in, or going full-ghetto with cable-ties or webbing I wanted to see what I could find to do it "right".  Because we put rails on the tops of many of the taggers to add red-dot's and the like, I realised I could make use of one of the  Strike Industries - Vertical Loop sling mount to give me my attachment point!
This piece of hardware spans two of the rail "ridges" with a bolt securing it. Simple enough as a concept, but the proof is in the engineering, as the case may be.

The body of the mount is of a T6 6061 aluminium construction with a hard anodized matte black finish. The securing pin is steel, but the real utility comes from the mounting ring itself. This spans both sides of the Picatinny MIL-STD-1913 compatible rail and is split to allow it to be tensioned firmly to the rail.

The loop itself is very cleanly machined, with no places to snag or catch, and is amply dimensioned to accommodate the paracord loop or harness snaps of a variety of sling attachments. Here I have it attached to my 215 Gear Sling.

Being completely adjustable, it is possible to move and reposition this sling mount anywhere that features two rail ridges.


This is a low profile, light and sleek accessory, perfect for what I needed, and is certainly fit for purpose.

I look forwards mounting it to my purpose built laser-tagger, once it's built.

Review: 5.11 ATAC A1 flashlight

Along with the cool belt that I got free-bee'd with my recent pants purchase, I also scored a handy pocket flashlight, in the ATAC A1 flashlight from 5.11 Tactical. Now, we've had something of a moratorium on me buying more lights, as I have QUITE the collection (in my tent peg, IR flashlight, LazerBrite LED glowstick, Packlight LED Strips, Surefire 6PX, and various keychain fobs, so when one just magically falls in my hands, I'm always happy.

This aluminium bodied, 87g (3.1oz) light, with a max 103 Lumen Cree-XP-E LED powere3d by a AA battery, packs quite the punch for its pocket-size. The lens end has quite broad crenelations for heat dispersal and ouchy-wackiness for those close-encounters .

The rubber end-button allows for silent "momentary-on" and by sequentially tapping it, give you access to the three modes: High / Low / Strobe. The "High" being the 103 lumen setting, with a purported 50 minute runtime, and "Low" having a 11 lumen output with 28 hours of runtime, whilst the strobe again packs 2 1/4 hours of 103 lumen razzle-dazzle. 5.11 Tactical report a 99m throw at "High" and 32m at "Low".

The tail end also plays host to three additional features; a steel clip for belt and pouch retention, nothing special here but it'd nicely made and mated. There is a squared ring of rubber projecting from the base, which gives you no-clank, anti-roll functionality. A drilled lanyard hole connects to 5.11's Break-Away Lanyard, the lanyard of which features a no-slip rubber slide, and the Break-Away component is sturdy and rugged, requiring quite a yank to pull loose, but certainly less than arm-trapping amounts. No accidental de-luminations here.

This is a petite light,as matches its single AA power source, as seen here beside the 2 CR-123 Surefire 6PX. This makes it ideal for off-hand use, pocket or EDC stowage, or in your car. I found the momentary-on mode-switch a little fiddly to use, and had to practice to get from "High" to "Strobe" smoothly, but with everything, practice, practice, practice.

Review: 5.11 Tactical - TDU belt 1.75"

A quick one today. I got some pants from LA Police Gear recently, and a tasty treat was thrown in with each pair, a colour matched belt! At first I was skeptical. The pants themselves were already on special, what kind of belt would just be thrown in for free. Well, let me show you the TDU Belt from 5.11 Tactical.

The belts are 1.75" (about 45mm) wide and made of a really heavy nylon webbing, stiffer and thicker than seatbelt material. A very sturdy polymer buckle sits low and flat, with only a slight tab protruding from the belt-facing side. Being a non-metalic polymer, this buckle will be metal-detector safe, meaning it's one less thing for me to take off when I visit an airport. I have yet to fully field test it with my partners, but initial studies indicate that being of a more traditional style, it not as tricky as a Cobra buckle to undo at first pass.

The webbing is triple stitched, with a broad bartack, giving it a stiff connection to the buckle, without adding any more bulk. The tongue of the belt is heat-cut at an angle, for easy feeding through the buckle, with plenty of slack at the size I have to double-back for extra security, a habit I picked up both in SCUBA and rock-climbing.

This is a lightweight but very sturdy belt, simple in the extreme and made to last. Even though I've had no problems going through metal detectors with my Ultimate Riggers Belt, the all-plastic look of this one would make it less of a drama.I'm really happy with this, and it (and its tan-coloured counterpart) give me a couple more belt options to add to my collection. Having your pants fall off at the wrong time is BAD for survival.