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Survival and Preparations Long and short term survival and 'prepping'. |
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This is awesome...bring it on | 140 | 66.67% | |
I'll read it but wont participate | 34 | 16.19% | |
Eeh...too much effort and Scooby Doo is on | 36 | 17.14% | |
Voters: 210. You may not vote on this poll |
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#121
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I have a neighbor who can shoot and fix his own stuff tho..I spied him potting a crow with a crossman a few years ago..it was not an easy shot. He doesn't know I saw him. Figure him and his son are good for a lot. They're probably preppers. They have fruit trees in their yard. There are little clues that people drop that indicate they are not total sheep. I suspect that there are actually a lot more preppers out there than any of us realize. Hmm... all my favorite diving spots...Cortez, Osborne and Tanner Bank, the Matterhorn, Begg Rock Sta Cruz Island is big and has a scrubby little pine forest on top. San Clemente has some possibility. San Mig has fish galore (or had...last time I was there) Don't think I haven't thought about it.... Saaay, you wouldn't need a husband and wife with a couple of 1500 yard rifles, scuba, spear and line fishing gear would ya? We'd come with several thousand pounds of errr..."provisions" of every type. If the islands and banks are crowded, we can head north to a certain spot on the Mendocino coast where I have an unfinished bug out location with multiple outbuildings and a house. You got ship to shore radio? I have an EMP proof Zenith Transoceanic from the late 50s that'll run off "D" cells or household AC. We might need to stop off shore from Salinas to get our resident farmer. If we get him and his two sons, we'll never ever starve.....ever..not even if an ice age comes. He's six miles inland and he used to repair boats, weld pipelines, build rifles and make 1000yd shots with things like .45-120. I'd put ashore south of Santa Cruz by night and proceed to get him on foot or bicycle with NV, preferably during the new moon. |
#122
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Sorry, couldn't resist
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In Glock We Trust. Quote:
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http://www.calguns.net/calgunforum/s...d.php?t=737563 |
#123
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That was a great game. I got the chills when I first saw the chutes in the sky over the neighborhood and when the EMP popped.
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All things being equal... |
#124
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WEEK 3:
Well I sure miss going to TGIFridays for happy hour and appetizers. Been raiding the hell out of the Home Depot, as have a lot of other people. I put the old truck out on the street before I built the barricade and made a few trips down there. An operable vehicle sure attracted some unwanted attention. Got both windshields and a tire shot out on the third trip so no more of that. Floorboarded it home with a flat tire and parked it on the next street up. Apparently a half dozen or so older Ford Econoline vans pulled up my street and about a dozen men or so all tacticooled up poured out of each and started going door to door. I only saw three vans but others say there were six and one fellow up the hill said the place was absolutely swarming with armed men. The first thing I heard was shots about five doors down. They killed my neighbors’ elderly parents and took both their dogs and his SKS and pistols and emptied their pantry. The old folks were a bit squirrely with senility and paid the price. They also killed the local cat lady when she resisted and apparently took as many of her cats as they could kill. They were pretty sh*tfaced and mean. Definitely law enforcement and .mil types and they knew how to shoot and move. They had ballistic protection and helmets. Four hopped my fence and pounded on my door. I was slumped in an Adirondack chair with my feet up on a coffee table out in front beneath a shade tree half asleep. One of them kicked my chair over with me in it and I was instantly proned out with a carbine barrel stuck in the back of my head. They consificated a partially eaten Costco pack, 20 cans of ravioli, beans and clam chowder and about 10 pounds of rice. My stupid Husky-retriever mix decided to start barking and they shot her and hauled her carcass back to their van. I must’ve had about six beads drawn on me so I just stayed proned out. Bastards got my Mossberg with about 25 rounds of 00 Buck, and .357 with two boxes of premium hollowpoint that were leaning against the kitchen wall. I was laying on top of my freakin’ kimber with my floppy little paunch so apparently they didn’t see that or they’d have taken that too. The AR build was laying a few feet away in the shade leaning against some bushes. Guess they didn’t see it. My wife was proned out inside the house and freaked out after they left. My neighbor who lost his dogs was born in Yugoslavia some 60 years ago, so he knew what to do and had his stash of food, guns and ammo spread out. I suspected he was a survivalist type but not to that extent. See what growing up with communism does? The cat lady had two to the chest and one to the head. They missed a couple of cats. I’m guessing they took most of the catfood also. I salvaged a couple of cans and a small box of dry. The cats were too freaked to come out. I wanted to get one for my wife and give the other to the neighbors who lost their loved ones. Animals and laughter are great therapy and there’s less and less of either with each passing day. My two little dogs are seriously freaked out. They somehow had the sense to hide and not charge to the front of the yard barking like they usually do. I’m glad to see this display of intelligence…must’ve been the gunshots that frightened them because they usually have more balls than brains. That evening I hopped on the bike and pedaled to a roadside where castor beans grew. I collected about two gallons of castor beans. I also raided the Home Depot of springs, wire, clevis pins, mouse traps and pipe and a bunch of other miscellaneous fasteners and parts. At the neighborhood meetings, a lot of folks tipped their hands as to their preps. Most only talked of 3 week or one month supplies. All of us with pets expressed concern about their animals and I suspect someone at one of these gatherings was collecting information for future plundering…might be time to go hunting…but not now. Apparently the only doors that got knocked on and kicked in were those with pets or those who had bragged about their 90 day food supplies…Methinks we got a spy at the neighborhood meetings. A few neighbors any myself put some cars in neutral and pushed them to the entrance of our cul-de-sac street and very effectively blocked off the road to any vehicle traffic. Only a dirtbike could get through. We had a more realistic talk about what our future prospects really were. A few started crying in the course of my assessment. With all the abandoned houses, I started foraging and caching at night, with my PVS-14 and a small IR illuminator. I’m looking at multiple strategic routes of retreat where I can continuously fall back to defensible positions. The hillside topography and abundance of concrete foundations, cinder block walls and terraced yards make this doable. Staying and fighting is not an option...not with what amounts to a 60 member swat team. I am preparing a few unpleasant surprises for them however. If they decide to come back and take more of my lunch, I’ll have something for them to consficate; in the name of the greater good of course. There four swimming pools in the backyards within a half block of me. We set black plastic sheeting over them with lighter colored reflective tarps on top to retard evaporation. They’re great sources of water if we can keep them from evaporating in the long summer. Water is running low throughout the city so the park with its lake is filling up with people. I went down there at about 3 AM one night and the dark outlines of sleeping families were everywhere. The shoreline was solid with dark figures hunched over with rod and reel. An errant cast results in words being exchanged and lead flying. Bodies were floating bloated in the water. Feces and discharge was everywhere. The smoke is as thick as ever and the stench of rotting corpses is everywhere and I can taste it as much as smell it. More houses in my tract have burnt. Still can’t see more than a mile in any direction. No birds of any kind to be seen or heard. No squirrels. No sound of dogs barking. Fewer screams and wailing. There’s still gunfire near and far at all hours of the day and night. Well CalGunners, it’s the end of week 3. Any of you make it to your bugout locations yet? |
#126
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By the end of week three I'd be 17 days out on bicycle. I'd only be comfortable moving about 20 minutes before sunrise and 40 after. Low lifes just don't stay awake that long or get up that early. I'm content with 10 to 15 mile stretches at a time. If we feel good about the remote nature of our area we might walk 2 ot 3 miles in mid afternoon rolling the bikes like pack horses, but only after many hours of watching and knowing ahead where we are going. We probably made a good 75 miles first two days before the outlying rural areas starting getting sacred. We might be 300 miles into our trip. Probably a week to the bug out location. Closer we get the easier it will be. If I sense a need I can drop the bikes now and go 10 days way off road and get to my location. Once there I won't be hungry any more or feel like I don't have the fire power or be worried about running into the wrong people.
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#127
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I just read evrysingle post.....this thread needs to be added to the book list
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#128
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Failure to prepare is preparing to fail. |
#129
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Week 4
Well, I had a refugee show up at my door all emaciated and incoherent. My teenage nephew made the 8 mile walk and it took 3 days because of all the two-legged predators out and about. He hadn’t eaten for a couple weeks and was practically unrecognizable but had enough sense to empty a few toilet tanks of potable water on the way and was able to stay alive. Guess watching all that Bear Grylls and Survivorman came in handy. We have him on vitamin supplements and electrolytes. He’ll need a week or two to recover. The in-laws had three weeks of food which turned into one week’s worth after they shared it with the neighbors. They are no more. Talked with the folks still in the neighborhood. I sense that they have preps for 90 days or maybe even six months. Everyone is somewhat coy about what they really have. We all understand what is up now. The focus is on getting food growing in the upcoming rainy season. I have parsnips, potatoes, fava beans, and various types of onions and garlic for cool season staples. With the seeds I pillaged from the Home Depot garden section, there’s no reason for anyone to starve next year if we do everything right and make no mistakes. It’s the third week in July now. An October planting will yields harvests as early as January. Radishes pop up and are ready in 60 days. Parsnips in 120. Fava and bell beans in 90 to 120. July is really not the best time of year to plant but time is not on our side so we gotta experiment. Several households have indeterminate tomatoes in their yards right now. They grow like weeds at my place. I used to tear them out. Now each one is more precious than a truckload of 100 oz Englehart bars. The fig trees will be bearing come August and September. Lots of citrus trees in the neighborhood and they are prolific so at least everyone gets their vitamin C. That will buy us all some time. Those who intend to survive had better have enough provisions to make it to January and they’d better hope we get a good crop. I hear that the beaches and piers are full of folks casting lines into the water and they ain’t catching enough to stay alive. Those who do catch something get shot between the shoulder blades and their catch is taken. Apparently predators have been hiding behind the shore and are watching the fishermen with binocs. A good catch is a death sentence. Those with guns position their families behind them to stand guard…..and still their families slowly starve to death. All those big houses on tiny little lots with no room for even a lemon tree ain’t conducive to survival. More folks are leaving their houses. I’d guess 90 percent of the houses in my tract are vacant now. A lot of folks have just given up and are dying quietly in place. Its been a month now and all the swimming pools that used to be well tended are going without treatment and the mosquitos are breeding. I know where to get mosquito fish about three miles away in a County park. Didn’t have time to do it this week. Never thought the end of civilization would be so much work. Being on 1200 calories a day doesn’t help but I’m faring a lot better than most. Been taking atmospheric radiation readings. Normal baseline with my Anton CD700 is about 3-6 counts per minute. Wednesday I started getting counts of 20- 36. That’s higher than my highest reading when the Fukushima fallout hit the west coast. Somebody somewhere got nuked. We’re flushing our toilets and filling the tanks by bucket with water from the local lake. It’s getting crazy down there and we’ll be constructing an outhouse and pit latrine because having flush toilets ain’t worth the risk of going anymore. The shoreline is jam-packed with fishermen but there are no more fish to catch. They just sit there in silence. I can hear the dying moaning and whimpering. There are aged corpses everywhere and they’re skeletizing rapidly in the July heat. There are no fresh corpses. It’s unmistakable now: people are eating each other even though there are enough cattails to feed them. They don’t recognize all the food in plain sight. Families show up delirious with dehydration and practically jump in to drink the contaminated water and their fates are sealed. People are writhing in agony and their misery only ends when someone else slits their throat and proceeds to butcher them. There are firepits and lots of charred limb bones in the areas surrounding the park. One month in and some folks have become dedicated cannibals and prey on those too physically weak to fight back. At some point in the next few months we are going to have to go on organized predator hunts. We may have to eat what we catch. I’ve pedaled down there alone for the last time. That last recon in the surrounding neighborhoods was…creepy, as in hair standing up on the back of the neck creepy and I ain’t easily creeped out. The last thing I grabbed from the lake was a two-gallon bucket of feces and discharge to modify some birdshot shells. Stuffed enough paper into some ¾” iron pipe to tighten up the bore and put some 12 gauge rounds in behind a plug of biological filth from the park and set up a few man-traps in case we get another visit from the operator guys. Purified some ricin from the castor beans and have it stored in a fridge running part time off the photovoltaics. It will be mixed with trail mix and chips since it is so heat labile; anyone who confiscates any more of my food by force will get those assorted nasties. I move my sleeping quarters from place to place each night as do the others. There are a few good abandoned houses that have brick or cinderblock construction and offer good vantage points for observation and social work. Wanted to machine cans for anything I have with threaded barrels but as soon as I had the time, It got overcast and the photovoltaics didn’t generate enough current to run the lathe or mill. Boarded up the windows at my place with whatever I had laying around. Threw white primer on the wood so it’d warp less in the elements. There are a couple of houses on corners, lower down on the hill set up as bait. The places are vulnerable by virtue of layout and topography. Set enough fuel in the fireplaces to generate a little heat to warm the window panes and give them a thermal signature. Any predator utilizing FLIR technology will find them interesting. I also have a few little lamps put together from batteries and enough LEDs of various colors wired in series to show up both to the human eye and NODs. Stuck some red leds in because nightvision doesn’t always pick up the cooler spectrum bluish LEDS so popular now. I cannibalized the LEDs from the Xmas decorations. The “bait houses” light up at night to all manner of observation. I sleep in “darker” places with a good field of fire onto the bait houses. A nice criss-crossing array of 12 gauge zip guns are setup and strung to monofilament line. It only takes one feces covered pellet of birdshot to find its way past all that Kevlar and titanium and nomex to ruin a predator’s life. The neighbors and I have blocked more streets and intersections with more cars so that it’s pretty hard for any vehicle to get within three blocks of our tract. If the sheepdogs turned wolves come back, they’ll have to dismount and proceed on foot. Their numbers are due for a thinning. We started to string up trip lines out of monofilament fishing line around a larger perimeter. Empty tin cans filled with rocks and hub caps and pie plates are the noisemakers. The trip lines are slack by day. We tighten them up at night. We have a 24 hour watch between all the remaining neighbors. The dogs are confined to certain fenced areas where they can pick up on movement. We’ve given quite a few unruly persons dirt naps in the last week. They just filter through. They don’t all look like criminals. A lot of ‘em look like formerly well off folks who are just desperate to survive and have decided that they will kill and steal in order to do so. Nonetheless, we drag their corpses to the periphery and leave them out as a warning. No way am I going to waste the energy digging holes to bury them. As time goes on, the predators will be sorted by natural selection and those who happen by our neighborhood will become smarter and deadlier. Dealing with them will become more and more difficult. We may at some point have to perform organized exterminations. The suspected “spies” at the neighborhood meetings disappeared and haven’t been seen since the “SWATting” as we now call the incident last week. There is less smoke in the air. It is quieter now very little gunfire and most of it comes from us. The nights are pitch black with the moon waning. The flies, mosquitos and smell of rotting corpses are worse though. So CalGunners, It’s the end of week 4 since the electricity died. How’s life treatin’ ya? |
#130
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Week 4,
Been out at sea running the 100 mile line of reefs and tacking back and doing it all over again. On calm days we heave to and deploy the sea anchor. PT is swimming around the boat and sharing the one standup board to maintain some upper body condition. Watches are 5 on and 19 off. Hard to sleep during the day. It is getting confining and the teenagers are going nuts. We have about 45 days of propane left for the smoker, then we need drift wood. Stove runs on diesel, been using the 5 5gal jugs from home and the main tank is still full. One of the Islands was on fire in the dark of night, dumb chits. We have decided to wait another two weeks before getting close to people. I am hoping the HAT with 1970's 8v71's made it out with 1000 gal. of diesel and dive compressor. Pretty sure Doc's boat failed with the ECM's fried but hopefully his buddy's older plane flew them out from SD, we saw a single engine dip its wings over our route last week, hope it was them. We will know in another two weeks if the plane made it and hooked up with the HAT. If we make the merge, we will be a force to be reckoned with. Soon we will put ourselves in harms way see whats happening on the mainland and try to pick up radio or tv signals. I sure miss my daily exercise, glad I stripped the lime and lemon tree before leaving, rice and fish is old. Cannot wait to step on dry land again. I miss my dogs, left them with the neighbor that I hooked up with my sea sick chp buddy, left grandma, no blood thinners out here, my wife will hold that against me until the day I die. We are blessed with a calm summer but it is imperative that we get settled on a piece of land before the winter storms start, too many people on board to play that game. I assume the mainland has some kind of Marshall Law so we should be able to pickup some communications next week as we get closer.
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"The California matrix of gun control laws is among the harshest in the nation and are filled with criminal law traps for people of common intelligence who desire to obey the law." - U.S. District Judge Roger T. Benitez |
#131
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Week 5, stuck in Hell Angeles after TEOTWAWKI.
Well folks, it’s the first week of August and summer is definitely here. Started one helluva garden..better late than never. Not like it freezes in Zone 24 anyways. Keeping the garden and fruit trees watered is a chore. Summertime is stupidity time: we had a friendly fire death Sunday evening. Idiot on the second street up from my old house fell asleep on guard duty, woke up and put a rifled slug through neighbor kid above the hipbone. Poor kid bled out and died within the hour. Jerk. I did a lot of strenuous gardening work the next couple of days. I was too hot under the collar to hunt preds. Gotta be frosty to hunt preds…sometimes I’ll move only fifty feet in an hour… just creeping slowly through my AO. Speaking of preds, been shooting a lot of interlopers and some of them are what I’d call dangerous game. Wednesday at around 4 AM I saw a fellow all geared up take a position in front of one of the bait houses. He had a real honest to goodness M4 and NV and was giving hand signals to somebody whom I couldn’t see. Dude just sat there for the better part of an hour casing the joint, nearly motionless. I stayed frozen, keeping that red chevron on his cheekbone. He finally signaled and two others ran up to the house and took positions by the side of the front door. This wasn’t looking so hot. If the two kick in the door they’d get a face full of biohazardous birdshot. If they didn’t, I don’t think I could get all three before taking a dirt nap myself. Well, maybe I could but the odds weren’t 90%. Happily, they decided to kick in the door. When the zip guns went boom, That little red chevron on the first guy’s cheekbone turned into a big red splotch and I rolled behind higher cover and got the hell out of there so fast I didn’t even see what happened to the two door-kickers. The corpse was still there an hour later and we gingerly approached it to loot the goodies. A couple of blood trails led from the house back the way they apparently came. My concern was that there could be more and they’d be working as a team. In the early morning hours, live humans still thermally stand out against their surroundings so a couple of us scanned the area and we even got out the beagle on a long leash and let her use her nose. When we had to peer around corners, we used small mirrors with long handles. No further danger detected…..which don’t mean it ain’t there of course…. We found a handheld thermal imaging unit. They’re hunting us survivors like we used to hunt hogs…thermal for the detection, NV optic for the kill, except these folks had decided to wait until very early in the morning….when folks would most likely be asleep. The two door-kickers will probably wish they’d been killed as quickly as their buddy when that sepsis in their faces and groins get going. Some of the zip guns had been set at neck and shoulder height and around 12 feet from the door. The others were set at crotch and thigh height. The park is so dense with people waiting to die that the sheer population pressure pushes them out into our area. There is a large storage facility nearby and we think a lot of them are living in that structure. We’ve begun siphoning gas out of the remaining vehicles we see in order to do a little predator control. We’re thinking of burning a buffer strip a block or two wide around our tract. Most of it is multifamily housing or older tract housing with a few concrete tilt ups. Salvaged a solar hot water heater and a couple of tanks off of them. Will continue to salvage select materials as we see fit. Winter is still months away but now is the time to start thinking about greenhouses and plant propagation. For that we’ll need to pull lots of intact windows out of a lot of buildings. The lake also has insane amounts of cattails which don’t taste so hot but they’ll keep body and soul in the same spot. Those cattails cover a lot of area down there and would keep a lot of people alive. They’ll need the living crap cooked out of them seeing as how the water in which they’re growing is full of corpses and feces tho…its either that or eat long pig. Going to the lake is a dicey proposition now. It’s only a half-mile round trip but that place has become the 9th circle of hell. Found a Koi pond in a backyard and it had some mosquito fish and minnows and some small bronze colored goldfish gasping for life in the last little puddle at the bottom. I netted them all out and transferred them to a swimming pool that was crawling with mosquito larvae. Tossed a few aquatic plants in there as well. That was a good find. We’ll have permanent vector control as well as carp to eat when they mature and start breeding. Been air-layering a lot of fig tree suckers…they’ll be good to transplant for spring I hope. Some are pretty large. Wish I could find olive trees. Took some chicken wire and mortar and started to block off selected storm drains in low areas. These low spots are going to become engineered wetlands and ponds and we will actively manage them for waterfowl, cattails, taro and carp. One good rain and it’s 10 foot deep water covering an acre and a half: an urban hill-pond. It’ll be cattails and taro in the anaerobic mud, fig trees on the periphery where the soil is not constantly wet and citrus and avocado above that…we’ll have a nicely zoned agroforestry set up; if we can last that long. Sure wish we could find some chickens somewhere. Wish I’d had some. I’d have kept them in a cinderblock reinforced garage for breeding stock for the future. Its not just the eggs and meat…they have other uses as well like pest control, fertilizer, soil aeration… Only about 10 or so houses in our tract of several hundred are occupied now. Better make that eleven actually. A Chippy and what’s left of his family showed up armed and with provisions. They tried to bug out on some older motorcycles after the second week but apparently the highways out of the area are linear ambush zones and practically no one survives past Santa Clarita. The CHP fellow lost over 85% of his party…four extended families numbering 33 people had set out with guns, gear and enough astronaut food to make it to their bugout location in the Sierras. Only four survivors staggered by our neighborhood on foot..actually five; they brought us a German Shepard. The vote to accept them was unanimous. I’ll be kicking in some of my hoard for them. Did a little recon on the bike. Lots of corpses out skeletizing in the hot summer sun. Lots of flies attending them but no dogs or crows chewing on them. No crows to be heard anywhere. No music, no vehicles, no aircraft…everything is as silent as the desert. Mosquitos are everywhere at night and they’re eating us alive. Well CalGunners, y’all staying frosty? Well, are ya? |
#132
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Well the good news is we live about 1/4 mile from the grocery store,
And if it was one of the 3 or 4 times a year I shop then thats where I'd go. Its a short walk home but it was 100 degrees - no electricity and no air conditioning - and no TV which means my wife will spend her time *****ing to me about the situation we're in - like I had some say in what happened? Luckily I am stocked up on booze cause its gonna be a long week! I'd probably go home tell me wife to NOT open the fridgerator cause there's no electricity - open the safe and start loading magazines - then I'd grab a cool one and go talk with the neighbors for a couple hours. After that I'd probably hunker down and wait and see what happens. We have enough food but no power and 100 degree weather takes the fun out of not going to work. |
#133
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Week 6 in Hell-A since that EMP whatchamacallit:
One thing I’ve noticed is that we’re keeping our strength and immune systems up and the folks we’re shooting are emaciated, spastic and sluggish. They smell like ammonia and piss. I can smell them when my sinuses are clear. The dogs can distinguish them from us and my Poo-triever quietly points when she spots one. At some point, I expect the hard-core dedicated cannibals will be coming our way and they will be fat and sassy and clever. We really really really should be eating the raiders we kill but none of us have screwed up the commitment yet…so long as we have preps and some minimal agricultural production, no one wants to cross that moral Rubicon. We have a no-man’s land right adjacent to our tract now. The storage facility and some apartment buildings are full of snipers. No fresh corpse left out at night is there in the morning. The storage facility is built of steel studs, fire resistive drywall and reinforced cinderblock. I remember seeing the materials when it was built. Clearing that out is going to be a problem. It’s a strong structure with very little combustible material. It’d be useful to control if we had the manpower. We could clear out a large part of the park from there as well. One of us needs to reconnoiter the front of the place and try and get an idea of what’s there. Everyone left is a prepper and they tend to be nurses, scientists, engineers, law enforcement, .mil, in construction or some other field requiring logical thought. We have a good skill set between the fifty of us. Those with children live in a central well defended group of houses while the rest of us alternate between various hidey-holes that offer coverage of the approaches and the bait-houses. The kids are learning the ropes…shooting, scavenging, gardening..their childhood stopped when the electricity died. We’ll need those kids at the rate us older guys are dying. Couple of our folks got killed because they didn’t scoot after they shoot. They just stayed put, kept firing and got flanked or caught a round. I try to tell people to make the first shot count and then get the hell out. The distances run from 20 to 150 yards so it’s not hard. People just don’t listen. Or maybe they forget in the heat of battle. I keep forgetting that not everyone responds the same way when lead is flying at them. Speaking of lead, that idiot who killed the kid offed himself. He was separated from his own family by about 1500 miles and just didn’t want to live after killing an innocent I guess. Smart guy too. Well, book smart. Common sense, not so much. I worry constantly about getting a friendly bullet up my a** because too many folks here can’t think when the adrenaline is dumping. His suicide makes three of us or 7% total casualties this week. At this rate, fourteen more weeks and none of us will be left alive. Folks don’t know how to move either. They just waltz up and down the streets with rifles slung over their shoulders or all tacticooled up but walking three or four abreast. Either that or fear paralyzes them and they just sit in one spot peeking out. I’ve been hunting (I mean, patrolling) alone since the get go. Sometimes it’ll take me an hour to move 50 feet. I crawl on my belly through dead landscaping and foundation slabs buried under charred remains of buildings or skulk through crawl spaces to peek out the vents. It’s like hunting, only for dangerous game and you don’t want anyone to see what you’re doing. The figs are starting to ripen in numbers now. We built a food dehydrator out of scrap lumber, window panes, a 12 volt muffin fan and a 5watt solar panel from Harbor Freight. We are going to try and dry as much as we can. Oranges and tomatoes are coming on as well. Been the coolest summer I can remember. Gonna gamble and start the cool season stuff early. It’s a blessing in a most unblessed year. When I say cool season stuff, I don’t mean lettuce and arugula and crap like that…survival gardening don’t mean growing negative calorie crap, it means growing potatoes, fava beans, garlic and onion and winter wheat. Too many folks out there think they can survive off of salad greens and I’m sick and tired of having to tell everybody this ain’t Wolfgang Puck’s, this is the end of civilization! Got a little action midweek. Went to whats left of a paint supply store to try and find the ingredients for thermite. Heard those vehicles again. I think they’re working their way around the city systematically. Found some aluminum powder and iron oxide but didn’t have time this week to fool with it. Saw something I really covet: a 10 x 12 greenhouse like they sell at Harbor Freight sitting in someone’s backyard and all full of dead orchids. Getting it will take a few trips. On my first trip just to disassemble it I took an old Belgian BAR in 7mm Mag with a 3 x 9 Bushnell on it. Yeah I know, not tactiKewl but so what, bite me. Heard those vans in the distance and got to the west of where the wolves were and got prone behind a curb in front of their convoy as it stopped in an area. Had a clean view through a dried up hedge behind a long gentle rise in the pavement. They were just over two blocks away and it was the long axis so each block = about 500 feet plus the width of the streets….lets just call it 400 yards. Saw one get out and held about a foot and a half high. Didn’t see him fall but saw the red on the car behind him. Got two more shots off: one into the window of the lead vehicle where I figured the driver would be and another into the radiator. Aimed a foot and a half above where the top of the dash would be In case the driver was hunkering down. Put a hole in the windshield and got the hell out of there. Headed away from my area on a 20 mile round trip detour. Pedalled at top speed and saw a lot. Wish I had less knobby tires. A bike with knobby tires makes a lot of noise. Note to self: put commuter tires on ASAP. Needless to say, I’ll wait a few weeks before going back for the greenhouse. Of course, I had a hunch this might happen. That’s why I took the BAR. Don’t know If I cracked the engine block tho…the lead vehicle was a Loomis armored truck. Could tell from the burgundy and black paint job. Against these really tough raider types, Fabian tactics are the order of the day..if every little group of survivors would kill or injure just one, the problem would be gone in a month. Logistics gotta be a beeyotch for them as well..how do you feed the equivalent of a 60-100 man swat team along with families by just stealing 90 days of preps from the odd household here and there? Went through Old Torrance past a larger brick building of about three stories and saw lots of human limb bones. Stood on the pedals and haven’t gone back since….another place that’ll need a good cleaning someday. Checked out a couple of local urban wetlands as far afield as Gardena for cattails and whatnot…just sped by and did not linger. There’s too many people-eaters out. Speed and silence are my friends. On the way home from that crapfest I stopped and dug up about a dozen Taro plants from a yard that had tropical landscaping. Found some Pyrodex cans scattered about a looted neighborhood as well. Saw a kid..12 or 13 maybe? He went up to a bait house and pounded on the door. No answer. The kid went around back and climbed in through my access window and ran off with a little Ziploc bag full of my special trail mix…sucked watching that. Sucks thinking about it now. That trail mix is supposed to be for real evil mofo’s..not starving kids. What if he was taking it to his mom? Or a younger sibling? What if his parents got killed and now he’s foraging for his family and we could’ve taken them in? Man this s**t sucks! I’m tired of it. So CalGunners, how’s your summer going? Been dishing out any doses of Vitamin Lead? “Deserves” got anything to do with it? |
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Week 7 in what remains of Los Angeles, California, land of the freaks, home of the crazed.
Third week in August and it’s hell hot. Another suicide. A lady that lost her husband last week wigged out and ate a 12 gauge lollipop. Her son was the friendly fire casualty as well. Damn! Get flutterguts just thinking about a string of luck that bad. Fall rains may or may not show up in a month but we’re salvaging rain gutters from some structures and putting them up on others and diverting the downspouts to swimming pools and collecting basins. Some lawns were level enough that we simply dug berms around the edge and those will become percolation basins to charge the groundwater. A fruit tree, like any other can send roots hundreds of feet in search of water. We intend to make those trees’ jobs easier. Been keeping a list of bee colonies that I find on my travels. Found five colonies so far. Found a really big one shacked up on the north side of the ruins of a gas station..go figure. Gonna build some trap hives and set them out. I have a Langstroth kit and about a dozen sheets of foundation at my old place. I made a foundation press out of FixitAll so I can just collect beeswax, melt it in the solar oven and cast new foundation for new hives. The hives themselves can be built off my pattern out of any old scrap wood laying around. We shall now have honey and pollination! We’ll situate the hives along some strategic approaches and that’ll keep folks away during the daytime. I don’t care how much body armor a fella’s wearing, he ain’t gonna want to run a 50 yard gauntlet full of beehives every ten feet, especially seeing as how these gals are probably all Africanized strains. Gonna make some more beekeeper veils out of old window screen. A smoker can be made from a tin can full of partially dried pine needles.. An oil filter wrench will make a nice handle. All the dead and dying landscaping is used to make compost. It just gets piled high in certain areas. It’ll decay nicely when the rains come. I got plenty of compost inoculant from my old piles. Should probably compost the dead predators as well…any source of N, P or K would be welcome. Radiation readings with the beta window open are around 18-40 counts per minute..kinda high but not problematic yet. Wish I had an alpha scintillation probe. With the ionosphere heating up, the neighborhood HAM guy is getting some interesting news. Supposedly every nation on earth was hit. There were 20 simultaneous detonations over all continents and several major island groups…seems far fetched but it is what it is. He says that US Carrier groups are still out there somewhere, as are the boomers and forces based on out of the way places like Diego Garcia which apparently escaped damage. Rumors are that India and Pakistan got into it with 200 Nagasaki sized nukes. If they did it could mean a cold winter. The HAM operator has a big azz antenna about a mile and a half from my old place. Yeh…my OLD place..still standing it is. I just don’t sleep there anymore. All my useless stuff is still intact. Anything important was long ago dispersed and cached. That don’t mean it ain’t guarded tho. I sleep in different places each day and each night…usually in the crawl spaces under houses or under hollowed out piles of charred rubble. Deep in in a pitch black recess in that pile of rubble there is a multicoated lens. Behind that multicoated lens is where I sleep. Anyhoo, back to that HAM operator, one of us discovered him while DXing one night and there’s another group of households centered around him. We’re sort of looking to set up a mutual aid group but there’s a lot of distance between us that has hostiles in it and our manpower is low. They’re mostly holed up in a concrete tilt up industrial building. They put a cinderblock wall in front of the doorway and windows and fabricated a door out of quarter inch steel plate and tubing for the rear loading dock. You can only access the building via a ladder to the top of the roof parapet and then down a skylight via another ladder. They forage and grow stuff and have preps like we do. He’s a hardcore dude like myself so they ain’t going hungry for a while. He also has one thing I’d always thought of as utterly retarded: a 37mm Cobray launcher that fits underneath an AR build. He has some fireworks and smoke rounds that could be very nasty if fired into an occupied structure through a window….hmmm…cannibal clearance! Speaking of people-eaters, none of us has screwed up the balls to reconnoiter the front side of the storage facility… too much work just gardening..no time or energy to do anything but work to feed our own this winter. Dug some swales in sloped areas to trap water and slow runoff. Useless ornamental trees take water from our food producing plants…might have to cut ‘em down. Gotta think this through tho…ecosystem services come from unexpected places. This permaculture thing …it ain’t always so intuitive. Stuff like lavender and sage for example, we can’t eat… but the bees can and they turn it into honey and wax.. Feeding our own just got a lot easier. That’s ‘cause six of us took a dirtnap. Yep. Six of our folks all bunched up while under fire and all six got shot. Five killed instantly and the last one died two days later. They bunched up in the very corridor that was designed as a kill zone for bad guys. That’s what. 12% casualties this week? At this rate we’ll be all gone within a month and a half. Fell asleep on guard duty one morning. Woke up and heard sparrows calling. Problem is, there are no sparrows: everything larger than a grasshopper has been eaten by whats left of humanity here. It was five tacticool doods all decked out wearing their plates and stuff communicating with each other as they skulked through the bushes to surround and break into a bait house. When I woke up, they were only 100 feet away. No way could I engage all five and live to tell about it. Two got sprayed by the zip guns as they entered the front door. Two others climbed into the windows. One stayed outside and kept an eye out. There were possibly others across the street out of my field of view so i figured I was surrounded. They took the chips and trail mix. Should’ve mixed ricin toxin in with the birdshot pellets…that’d be a more effective way than through the digestive system. The two that got sprayed had bloody messes for faces and groins. Guess their eyes got shot out. Took all the self restraint I could muster not to shoot the last one in the back as they retreated but discretion is the better part of valor. They holed up in a vacant house about 5 doors down from the bait house…saw their heat signatures the next evening. We kept a watch on them for three whole days. They never left. We found three curled up with blood stained pants and their heads in pools of vomit. The two that were blinded must’ve died from dehydration. They didn’t have much left in the way of faces. F**k that’s a wicked death! I feel bad for them. I know its “us or them” and all that but damn! Still beats engaging in a needless firefight tho. It gets even sicker tho…we looted their corpses for the goodies and found military IDs, letters from home and other personal effects... Just a few months earlier, these were American heroes serving our nation overseas. They must’ve stayed together as a unit. Now there is no America to serve….No Iraq. No Afghanistan. No Europe. No Japan…nothing. Maybe they were trying to get home? Maybe they shipped to San Diego and were working their way across the continent to get home? Not everyone out there entering our buildings necessarily has to be a bad guy...If I was in their situation, what would I do differently from them? Or that little kid from last week? With our diminishing numbers stretching our supplies, we could’ve fed them. They’d have found wives and our widow’s would’ve found husbands…Or they could have slit our throats and absconded in the night with provisions…who knows? Hardly any refugees pushing bicycles or shopping carts anymore…not by day and not by night. Just men scurrying around in the dark like rats that know they’re being hunted. No edible weeds. They all dried up in the summer heat. California summers are like winter everywhere else on the continent; life just shuts down. The hills turn brown and the plants drop their leaves and turn gray…only the sources of surface water have activity. The surface water here is ringed with cannibals. Glassed a family of three in the distance pushing a cart early one morning and heard three shots. They dropped like stones and about a half dozen figures scurried out of the park and dragged them and their cart back into the shade. So how’s week 7 goin on your end CalGuns action heroes? tried any recipes for long pig yet? |
#136
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Glad this is still going.
My wife and I would have made it too our BOL between week 5 and 6. Once we get around Reno we're good to go. In fact I probably took an extra week to give Reno a wide birth because we are talking about week 4 in the equation and I don't want to be around that many people. Arriving at our BOL would be a huge sigh of relief. Someone would have to get a vehicle running to get here or come like we did on bicycle \ horseback. Its hot here in July/August but we've got tents burried, an SKS, 10/22, and a bird gun (12 gauge) with plenty of ammo for all 3. Seed would be my first priority. Over the years we cleared spots for several gardens near springs and creeks. I need a growth spurt in before winter. I'm going expect my brother and his 4 followers to arrive in 3 or 4 weeks the same way I did - the hard way. I'll plant for them regardless as he would have done for me. I'll want to go hunting soon, but got to set up shelter, water filter, and dig a hole for the crap. Lots to do.....I'm not planning on leaving this area so there is plenty of time to do it. |
#137
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I'm reading it now. It supports much I've said about an extreme disaster of any sort.
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Things usually turn out best for those who make the best of how things turn out. |
#138
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Do you really think you'd make it there without being shot by some thug who'd take all your stuff?
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Things usually turn out best for those who make the best of how things turn out. |
#139
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You'd have to constantly drive around all the other cars that're sitting idle on the streets and buying gasoline would be a BIG problem. You'd notice alright.
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Things usually turn out best for those who make the best of how things turn out. |
#140
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Absolutely
Most definitely. I had said leave at about 5 days. I think the thugs around Oakdale won't have it figured out till day 10 and I'm well past there by then. We only aim to travel a few early hours in the AM....thugs are still sleeping and hung over.
Like I said....get around Reno and it's home free |
#141
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Ok here we go. A little bit of information first. I live in the sierra foothills and have little experience in survival so here it goes.
Upon realizing what has happened, I go back to the market I just exited and buy out all their 12 gauge and .22 ammo (roughly 2 boxes .22 and 80 rounds 00 buck. I start my roughly 1/2 hour walk home, from there I proceed to fire up my dirtbike 85 cr500(kickstart with a magneto, not battery to fry) and head Down the hill to the nearest big town to search for ammo and water and canned foodstuffs. After leaving my brother and stePdad in charge with the 10/22 and my remington 887 I head down the hill. Upon reaching town I proceeded with bartering up what little canned food and water I could after I spent most of my money on 7.62x54r and more buckshot and then returned home(roughly 50 miles roundtrip). At this point I was going to wait it Out until help arrived as I do not have any longterm plans for survival. Lock the doors and have a normal nights sleep hoping all will be back to normal soon. |
#142
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Week 8 since Armageddon executed a no-knock raid on civilization.
Things started out quiet enough this week. Was digging around my old place and rediscovered a paper on how the Israelis were trying to cultivate Peruvian Apple Cactus as a food crop. I used to eat the fruit when I was a little kid and found them on my grandmother’s specimens…think the Indians used to call it “pitahaya” or something like that. I got one in my yard but it doesn’t flower very often, maybe it needs more light. The things are pretty common as landscape plants in So Cal, well, as common as a cactus can get; there’s usually one on every block or so. We decided to start rounding some up and do a plantation sort of thing in dry sunny areas. The plants weigh a ton and none of us have strength and energy like we used to so all were doing is taking very large cuttings and rooting them. This winter should give us a good head start…again, if we last that long. A couple of little kids, a boy and a girl…said they were 10 and 12 years old showed up on our doorstep. Said their parents were killed in a raid yada yada yada…and begged to be let in. Since we took enough casualties that our food supplies were adequate, we sort of decided to take them in. 12 years old is old enough to help out with light gardening chores and some foraging so its not like they’d be a total burden. They certainly had enough to eat…unlike a lot of children I’d seen wandering around with distended bellies and rib cages all sticking out with the accompanying adults no better. Well two days later the little s**ts absconded with a wagon full of provisions. They cleaned out one household completely…well, what they had on hand. Everybody had already divided their preps and cached weeks ago on my advice. Still, it amounted to about 70 pounds of food which was a half of their remaining food supply, plus several boxes of 9mm, solar battery charger, batteries and a wagon to haul it off in. We have no idea of where they went. Methinks it might be a group of gypsies out there…that is certainly a SOP among the type and the kids put on a real good act. I’m worried about what sort of intel they gained. Oh sweet Jeebus, that could come back to bite us. Wednesday things got scary. The Santa Ana winds kicked up. Knew it was coming sooner or later. The city burst into flame again. It was sporadic tho. The winds pushed the fires from the mountains all the way to the beach cities. I could see pillars of smoke up against the San Gabriels some 40 miles distant and two and a half hours later a 90 foot wall of flame reared up a half mile from us in a stand of pine trees and raced up the Palos Verdes Peninsula and just incinerated everything. There were a few spots that didn’t burn but for the most part it was near total devastation. We set backfires and we broke out a few gas-powered chainsaws and removed some pine and eucalyptus and anything else that had died and dried up. A tree here and abandoned house there burnt but nothing devastating really came our way. Maybe because so much around us had burned weeks earlier that there was not enough of a fuel load to really carry the fire. I figure we lost five more buildings in our tract and parts of the park burned. Don’t know if any cannibals got burnt out tho..couldn’t deal with them and our own issues at the same time. We were pretty vigilant tho and we must’ve put out at least a couple hundred spotfires with 5 gallon buckets of water, our hands and a few hand pumps. The embers just rained out of the sky and were everywhere. The less physically able folks had garden sprayers pressurized by hand and they sprayed down eaves, attic vents and crawl spaces at close range. The stronger kids hauled buckets of water on dollies to resupply the folks with the sprayers or maybe they carried ladders. We figured “why carry it when you can haul it on wheels?”. Lifting a 5 gallon bucket that weighs 40 pounds is harder than it looks when you’re on 12 to 1500 calories a day. Another fellow rigged up some 12VDC pumps to push water but the range was severely limited. Even my 600 gph submersibles were not that impressive and they had zero portability because the photovoltaic array that supplied them was the size of a small house. I think we dodged a bullet and a proactive management of flammable tree species and rubble is our next big project starting ASAP. Every day and night for the next four days we scanned each and every building in the attic, crawlspaces, rubble piles..everything with thermal imagers looking for hot spots…found dozens of them everywhere…embers entered the attics of otherwise flame resistant stucco buildings through the vent screens and just smoldered, waiting for a light dry breeze to kick up. Its pretty hilarious that little kids’ toy supersoakers proved to be darn near the most effective tool in the absence of municipal running water. It was real easy to aim them where leaves were smoldering and the stream held up a little better in the wind which was gusting pretty heavily at times. Dried leaves in rain gutters or valleys of hip roofs were a death sentence to a building. The wind just threw the water from my sprayer so it was easier for me to just cup my hands and toss water on a hot spot the old fashioned way. Goddam! Firefighting is hell hard on reduced rations…. Even climbing a ladder to get to a roof feels like running a marathon and I was coughing up black phlegm for the next four days straight. Got a splitting headache from all the chemical crap burning here and there. Anything made of plastic or Styrofoam just burns nasty. We broke out the Spam and Dinty Moore that day. To hell with rice and beans. Found the charred remains of a family who had encamped in a thicket of vegetation at the other edge of our AO. Don’t know how long they’d lived there. We’d never detected them. They picked a good spot to hide from bad guys but a bad spot to hide from fire and I’m guessing the smoke got ‘em before they could wriggle out of there. There were charred guns, cans of food and metal remains of camping chairs and stuff.. nothing else left. The fire made a lot of hillside preppers homeless and they started filtering off the Peninsula to the surrounding flatlands. We made contact with more than a few and took in about 30 new residents. Others that didn’t appear to have much in the way of preps on hand or skillsets were told to just keep moving. One group sort of offroaded it out of there by driving their 63 Ford pickup onto the curbs and somehow made it the few miles past utility poles and street trees. Their front bumper and grille was utterly trashed from smacking down small obstacles like stop signs and pushing stalled compact cars that blocked the odd driveway here and there. They brought food, ammo and expertise. Needless to say, they joined our tribe. It was an easy sale once they saw what we had going. Another group came out on old Yamaha Enduros just like my dad used to have..same color and everything! They stayed. We heard the dull “potato-potato-potato” of some older Harleys and a couple of doctors came out armed to the teeth with side cars and trailers full of provisions…don’t know how those Hogs’ trannies liked pulling the trailers but they did...and got their riders to our place. Another family rolled out in a very early Suburban towing a horseless horse trailer full of goodies. They had three hens and a rooster which they’d kept hidden in an interior panic room to avoid attention. They had horses but none survived the depredations of hungry neighbors. There wasn’t a horse left anywhere in Rolling Hills Estates. Too bad. Draft animals would come in handy now that the oil stopped flowing. Once the last gallon of gas is siphoned from the last abandoned car, the internal combustion engines will breathe for one last time and then sit and silently rust to death. One particularly impressive convoy of three older pickup trucks and an H1 had personnel riding shotgun with some Barrett 82A1s…donno how they’re gonna hold them steady enough to shoot while their vehicle is moving…but still, it’d be nice to have those. The H1 guy followed the 63 pickup truck people out by simply “widening” their work..heh heh, sounds like fun actually. The H1 folks had it in their heads to make it to the mountains and then to Colorado. They seemed well enough equipped tho and we couldn’t persuade them otherwise. They kicked a couple and two other adults and an older teenage kid off their vehicle and threaded their way past abandoned vehicles towards the freeway. “G’luck with that” I said. Well the folks they kicked out were a real piece of work…first they beg and the woman and kid are crying and bawling…which is just annoying, but then the men start in with the same crap. They don’t seem to have any real skillsets and they never really answer my questions. They have a little food which they pull around on wheeled luggage. The men say they served in their military but don’t know the first thing about firearms or “what their specialty was” or anything. They seem like shifty little bastards. Once it was clear that they don’t know how to garden or prune fruit trees or do anything worth a crap they start going off on how they’re related to royalty back in their native country and how they’re in a high caste and how we’d be untouchables in their land blah blah blah.. One of the males brings out a bunch of Rolexes and tries to barter a place to stay but I’ve no need for a Daytona or two tone sub anymore. A few Krugerrands are thrown into the pot and then some 10 oz Pamp Suisse bars.. unfortunately, none of that stuff has any use now so we just tell them to GTFOutta here and do it now. This went on for three hours in the hot sun and they just wouldn’t take no for an answer. Then one of them did something really stupid. He pulled his nicely tailored coat back and flashed a small nickel plated pistol tucked into his waistband. I executed all five on the spot…one 185 grain hollowpoint to each head. I realized later that they’d probably thought I was unarmed and probably stupid looking to boot. My Kimber was hiding under an untucked long sleeved shirt and I was toting a big plastic pink and yellow supersoaker from the .99 cents store the whole time. Well, gotta go now. Them spot fires ain’t putting themselves out and the old ladies at the front need more buckets of water.. All righty mighty calgunners, got your firefighting game up? |
#143
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Like pretty much everyone else said, head back in to the store and try to procure more food/supplies.
Walk the 1/4mi back to my house. Open the safe, load up the mags, prep the holsters/slings. Do a quick PCC of the BOB and vehicles. Try bump starting my Tacoma (probably won't work, but worth a shot), fuel up the 2 stroke dirt bike and ensure it runs. If the bike doesn't run, I'd try the other ignition module I have in the parts bin. Initial plan would be to get to my sister's house. Gather her and her husband and head to my buddy's house. Secure the families, and try reporting to my reserve unit. We have some standing orders in case of some kind of emergency. I'm still debating on traveling in uniform, could be a benefit or a huge fault. Ultimate worst case plan would be to BO to my mom's ranch, but that's a few states away. I don't know how many of the original group would actually make it. |
#144
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Hmm search is a bit wonky.... will a safe with an electronic lock get screwzored by EMP like I'm thinking it would?
I have a case of MRE and a case of water but all my ammo and weapons are usually locked up except one handgun which I have on my desk when I'm home. Lacking an LTC, everything is in there when I go to work... so I'd be in trouble self defense wise if I couldn't get my safe open. I have a few hundred bucks in various denominations in the safe as well. So I would have food, water for at least the short term. My first step would be to grab the go-bag and my second line gear which is next to the safe. Fill the bath tub just in case I might need more water then likely be kicking my safe and trying to cut open the side with a crow bar or bolt cutters lol.
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"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government." -- Thomas Jefferson 9mm + 5.56mm = .45ACP + 7.62 NATO = 10mm + 6.8 SPC = Et Verbum caro factum est et habitavit in nobis; Jn 1:14 Last edited by Uxi; 09-02-2011 at 3:46 PM.. |
#145
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Chaparral - With the new SHTF tv shows like Falling skies and that zombie one on A&E, have you thought about writing/selling a script for a tv show or movie?
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Shop Amazon and contribute to CGF! click this link before going to amazon.com http://www.shop42a.com www.appleseedinfo.org "Everyone has a plan, till they get punched in the face." -Mike Tyson |
#146
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BOL Distance \ Travel
To be honest if my neighbors old truck ran after an EMP I'd hand him a gold krugerand and be off on day two, but I don't think it or many will. Vehicles will make a "lot" of noise particularly old one's and "government" types will feel "entitled" to try and take them. Like I said I'd be tempted to take one late on the first day if I could barter for one and make the run....but for this story I opted for bicycles...
I have exactly 455 miles to the corner of my BOL and to be ultra safe I doubt I make more then 15 miles a day. Most of that I perceive to be just a few hours of riding in early AM hours (5Am to 7AM). Perhaps some "mule pack" type walking the bikes if the area is void of people which a lot of my travels would be later in the day. Am I up to a 455 mile bike ride over 30 or 40 days.....yeah I think I can.....I think my wife could too and it'd just be the two of us. I have some family I'd like to include but know they couldn't do that. Quote:
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#147
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Quote:
Based on my research, most newer (last 20 years) cars will continue to run once you try and restart them. The digital watches and small electronics that are battery powered and do not have an antenna would likely be safe as well. Most items that are connected to long conductors (wires of any type) and those particularly sensitive to static shock, will be affected to varying degrees. Given the data out there is very technical and the tests are simulated at lower levels and then calculated up, there is no hard and fast lists of what will be affected.
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All things being equal... |
#148
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Quote:
Quote:
If the gov't were to get serious about EMP or whatever, I suspect that a policy of shutting parts of the grid, maintaining spare transformers and hardened electronics for select applications would render the actual situation kinda like Y2K. It could be a disaster but because everyone took it seriously and made the appropriate fixes, it wasn't. BTW, check your PM Chief. |
#149
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Ok, now I'm a week and a half behind schedule with this but better late than never
Week 9. We are enforcing thermal discipline. Any occupied buildings that have anything we cherish are to appear no different than their surroundings. That means no fires on cold nights. It means blocking the windows with pieces of insulation so that no warmth is to be seen radiating through. If a predator with thermal imaging scans the area, he would see nothing that stands out of the environment…except the bait houses. We’ve decided to set up a fortified bait house: that is to say, a place that by day or night screams “preppers live here”…complete with a few photovoltaics on the roof and conspicuously green landscaping. I had a number of dwarf orange trees in containers and we’ll be using those as props. We modified the points of cover and concealment along the approaches so that anyone hiding there would be in the line of fire from select points. We made sure that there was plenty of cover and concealment from the house itself so that predators would be tempted to gravitate to where we wanted them to. As the surviving preds get more intelligent and cunning and dangerous, so must we. I scrounged up an emergency blanket and made a FLIR-blocking hoodie out of it as well as gloves. I also got a small sheet of clear plastic to put over my hidey holes. Thermal is line of sight and a plastic baffle will effectively block it just as surely as a wall of brick. Still gotta make a face veil out of some more material when I can scrounge it up. All this has to be worn under an outer layer of clothing because a person scanning a mylar hoodie will get their own reflection right back at them and that in itself says that “something reflective is here and that might be interesting..lets shoot it and see if it moans” The concrete and asphalt of the city radiate the late August heat into the night air for quite some time so there is a high noise to signal ratio when scoping out an urban environment with thermal until the early AM hours. As the nights cool or there’s more trees and grass it becomes easier to see warm blooded predators. Tree trunks also hold heat and stand out behind the cooler atmosphere and more than a few times I thought I spotted the night’s kill through foliage only to see that it was a tree trunk radiating the previous day’s absorbed heat. All this was triggered by another team of geared up zombies that had a very nice AN/PAS-19 in their possession. One of the neighborhood kids on patrol saw a group of ten or so bad guys and radioed what he saw rather than engaging them…glad common sense is finally taking hold amongst the grass-eaters. I was clear on the other side of the neighborhood up at the top of a hill. Got the drop on four of them all Charlie-Foxtrot up along a wall while a couple more of their buddies scoped out the front of a bait house. Since I was a near perfect 600 yards away with the Grendel, I just poured 21 rounds (my magazine only holds that much because that cheap home-made follower I carved out of a piece of red oak is larger than it should be) into the four of them as quickly as I could get the reticle back on the target. Our man watching the bait house got two more. The other half of them must’ve ske-daddled. Apparently they made no effort to help their buddies or salvage their gear. There is no way one of us could have handled all of them from our normal hidey holes. I was just in the right place at the right time I guess…I like that place because I can watch a lot of different things from there but there’s too much work to do everywhere else so I’m hardly ever at that spot. By the way, I really like my new AN/PAS-19. Between all of us, we managed to scrounge up a half dozen walkie talkies of varying vintages from steel boxes and metal storage sheds here and there. I have my late 1970’s vintage Kraco which is the size of a brick. I like the external antenna that I can place atop my hidey hole while keeping the radio underneath by whatever I happen to be using as a pillow. We have the folks who are keeping an eye out on things radioing in what they see or don’t see and all the landmarks in our neighborhood have nicknames so an outside listener/observer won’t easily figure out what we’re talking about. Discovered another blessing from last week’s Santa Ana winds. We have plenty more material to build soil. The “devil winds” blew a lot of pine needles and dead leaves off the trees so sweeping huge multi-cubic yard piles of them was pretty easy. Someone had a 1950’s vintage pickup truck in their garage and it ran (So Cal is chock full of old cars in varying stages of restoration..its a hobby for a lot of folks here) so they used it to transport about 3 cubic yards of tree debris at a time to several compost piles. We started watering the piles at night to speed up the decay and curing process. The things look like glowing piles of lava at night through a thermal imager. Hopefully we can cure the stuff by February for use in next Spring’s planting. With the new moon, I decided to take a circuitous route around the park and glass it from some alternate high ground, specifically the 160 foot tall cracking tower of a nearby oil refinery. I left at four in the morning and took a spotting scope, the Grendel build with 25x Leupy, NOD, thermal and extra batteries. On the way there I saw another group moving through some empty buildings at the edge of the neighborhood one night with flashlights…problem is, their flashlights only showed up in the NOD, not the naked eye…so someone else had their NV goodies in a steel cabinet when the EMP hit. I didn’t stop to engage tho..had other fish to fry. Whoever was on watch in that section…that’s their job. I just hope they can do it. Spent a whole day and half a night atop the hydrocracker and what did I see but the H1 convoy of the Barrett Brigade..stuck on an elevated part of the freeway less than two miles away. Don’t know what the hell they were doing there but it probably was surprisingly defensible given the concrete retaining walls and limited avenues of movement. Saw the vehicles anyway…didn’t see any people around them. Saw surprisingly little in the other directions as well. Got heat signatures from a few spots in the early morning hours…there’s fires and stoves down in the trees.. Saw a rocket stove. Someone knows how to conserve fuel and pasteurize water. No stinking corpses, just bones black with rotted tendon and ligament still adhering. A large area burnt, no doubt due to an escaped cooking fire and that deprived the park residents of much of their concealment. Much of the park vegetation is trampled and in bad shape….It’ll be easier to clean this place out than I thought. It’s hard to tell if anyone is eating cattails. There is riparian forest to the north and east that used to be full of homeless back before the electricity died. Couldn’t see into there. The golf courses are brown and dead. See a sand trap that’d be a nice place to shoot from. See a concrete overpass that looks dangerous. Freeway is a parking lot. Downtown LA sits silent and somehow disfigured in the distance. The Hollywood sign is still there. San Gabriels are clear. A few fires are burning here and there so there is a slight haze hugging what looks to be the 6000 foot level in the mountains. The street in front of the storage unit is empty and I can see what looks like solar panels lined up on the roof. Everything appears deserted yet there are people down there and now and then I see one moving here or there. Guess all the fishermen got eaten. Didn’t see anyone go down to fetch water from other areas the whole time. Didn’t hear any shots either…It’s been 68 days since the power went out and easily 95% + of the population has died or fled. Heck, out of the original 1000+ in our neighborhood, barely 29 original residents survive. That’s a 97.1% dieoff. Probably find more neighborhood dead when I get back, no doubt due to stupid crap like friendly fire or negligent discharge….and without fail, its always the folks who weren’t raised around guns that end up doing the really stupid crap. Saw a small forest of corpses impaled on poles along one approach. A huge mound of rotting skulls was piled up on another. Ugh! It's like they're staring at me! No fun having to look at that for a whole day straight..now that I think about it, we should’ve done that as a deterrent. A question occurred to me while sitting atop that hydrocracker: If one is in the business of hunting people to eat them, would they pile up remains to scare others off, or would they try and make their environs inviting as possible? There are too many unknowns here and the unknown is creepy. At least if I knew they were predators I could assassinate one or two each night from different spots but I can no longer ascertain who is there from this vantage point and something tells me that shooting first and asking questions later might not be the wisest course of action. We need HUMINT. So brave CalGunners, it’s the end of week 9. Do you know what’s making that rustling noise in the leaves behind you? Or was it just the wind…. |
#150
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Well I got lucky. Because I happen have the following in my trunk at the moment. Normally the guns would be at home.
- A BoB (Bug Out Bag) with at least 3 days worth of MREs, Israeli medical kit, standard compass, leatherman pocket tool, surefire light, empty water bladder, change of clothes, waterproof jacket, map, and misc survival gear. - A pair of cross training style hiking boots. - An ammo can filled with 150 rounds 223 and 150 rounds 9mm. - A Glock 17 9mm + kydex holster rig + 3 magazines. - An M4 + kydex thigh mag rig + 4 magazines (one is a 10 rounder). - A case of bottled water. - A sleeping bag and pillow. My wallet is empty, but I have a full tank of gas. That is what is immediately at my disposal. Now...lets start the scenario. I would approach it two very different ways depending on whether or not my car will start. IF MY CAR WILL NOT START... I would assume I don't have time to swap out the spark plugs, battery and/or rebuild anything. So I prepare to leave the car behind. It is only a matter of time before things get ugly. The very first thing I would do is go to my car, open the trunk, put on more comfortable/appropriate clothes if I am dressed up and then slip on the gun belt rig, load the Glock, press check it, and holster it. Given my shopping habits the food I just bought is a bunch of frozen dinners and bottled drinks. I would spend about 10 minutes trying to sell off the frozen dinners assuming there is no immediate threat around to get cash. If I couldn't sell them, I would toss them and move on. Any non-frozen food would go into my Bob. If I am hungry at that moment. I would eat something. What comes up later is going to require I have my strength. The bottled drinks would be stuffed into roll-up drop pouches on the sides of my BoB unless they were glass, in which case I would consume one of them immediately. I would then transfer their contents into the empty water bottles I am about to create and then use duck tape (which is in my BoB) to ensure they are sealed shut before putting them into the dump pouches on my BoB. I would fill the bladder with bottled water and use the empties as described above. I would remove the bullet button from my AR, and then put it back into the case. It's not yet time to walk in the streets with an exposed rifle. My AR magazines and thigh rig would stay in the rifle case as well until things start getting more dicey. The spare ammo goes into the BoB. The sleeping bag stays behind, but I would try and rig my pillow to the top straps of the BoB. With my comfortable clothes, BoB on my back, rifle case in my hand or on my back, and Glock on my side, I would start the very long walk to my father's vineyard where I have all the supplies I need to wait this thing out. By car it would have been a 2 hour drive. Not sure how long it would take me on foot. But I have at least 3 days worth of food and water. I have everything I need to make my journey safely and pretty much maxed out what I can comfortably carry. So I would not head home first. I would head straight for the vineyard. IF MY CAR STARTS... I still put on the Glock, but then I head home. I'd load up the car with dried food, more water, more guns, more ammo, clothing, toiletries, medical supplies, jewelry, cash and other items that are as good as cash. Then I head to my father's vineyard where again I have all the supplies and resources I need to last this thing out and then some. The M4 (bullet button removed) would be in the front seat loaded up and ready to go. The Glock would be in my holster and the 1911 would be sitting in the open center console. I would avoid the freeways as much as possible, and rely on a paper map. Last edited by tacticalcity; 09-08-2011 at 1:39 PM.. |
#152
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Tacticalcity: but but but that's illegal when you take off the bb
Great stories. Keep em' comin guys. I've just watched the shows on the history channel 'the nostrodomus effect' 'armegeddon' 'day after'. Good films to watch for brainstorming shtf end of world planning.
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"Screw U guys, I'm going home"...:the great Eric Cartman 10mm. Because .45ACP just doesn't cut it anymore. <Trailerparktrash> |
#153
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I wonder how many of these have sold after reading Chaparral's posts.
http://www.amazon.com/EMP-Survival-P...5794945&sr=8-8
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Shop Amazon and contribute to CGF! click this link before going to amazon.com http://www.shop42a.com www.appleseedinfo.org "Everyone has a plan, till they get punched in the face." -Mike Tyson |
#156
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Week 10 on my new job as a subsistence farmer.
Started a second round of cool-season crops in flats. Give the seeds about a month and they’ll be ready to transplant. Mostly fava beans, bell beans, peas, oats, wheat, radishes and lots of potatoes. We’re starting potatoes in 2 foot square raised beds. Routed the boards on a table saw and then hit them with a few coats of spar varnish. As the potatoes grow, we add another six inches to the height of the bed and pile more loose, friable soil on top. We’ll see how this goes. The yields should be stratospheric: 200 times greater than the traditional row-gardening yield. I had a half dozen different types-Idaho Russets, Red LaSoda, Blues, Yellows…variety is good. When the current batch of seedlings is transplanted we’ll start another batch and just rotate every 12 months. They’ll need lots of fertilizing tho….we’re gonna have to dredge up nutrient-rich mud from the lake or grow special compost crops when our current supply runs out. Luckily I planted nitrogen-fixing alfalfa and berseem clover in a forgotten corner of my yard. I’ll collect seed when the stuff flowers. The inoculant is in the same soil that those plants are now growing in. We’re also composting our own poop in special pits. That stuff will not be used on the raised beds where it could contact root or leaf crops, it will be used instead for trees and bushes like my blackberry or boysenberry vines. We have 67 people, six dogs, five cats and four chickens and three parrots alive and kicking in our tract. If we cannot grow enough food to replace our provisions, more are doomed. So Cal is a desert after all. The carrying capacity is lower here. I figure with the best permaculture technique we’ll need around 2000 square feet per person or roughly three acres devoted to raised beds to feed everybody. That does not count the existing fruit trees. Gotta have margin for error. Those three acres are going to take a lot of water and fertilizer. Wish we had cattle and goats….We’re not eating any chickens. Those are breeding stock for the future and we started a crash program to increase their numbers. Its unanimous, we ain’t eating no dogs either. Those are force multipliers for human society. Their eyes, ears and noses take up where my NV and thermal imagers leave off. Wish we had breeding pairs of beagles..we use mine to follow scent trails and she goes full canine drama queen when she gets near something. By the way, them parrots make good watchdogs- they got good eyes and ears and they alert the entire neighborhood. Can keep em fat and sassy on rice, bugs and mushy fruit too. Whoops! Make that 66 peeps…one of the ladies was shot by a prowler in her yard before her teenage daughter did a 30 round mag dump into his face. The neighborhood borders are still pretty porous. It’s hard to adequately patrol the area with limited manpower. The fact that people aren’t willing to skulk through rubble and crawlspaces and sleep and eat there while watching doesn’t help either. It also means that we have to be in condition orange no matter where we are. There is no safe house and there is no safe yard. Having barricades with people to man them is useless. Prowlers would just go around or shoot the guards from the shadows. Make that 77 peeps. That dude with the H1, Barretts and convoy of 60s era pickup trucks came whimpering back. Freeways and surface streets were impassable parking lots and they took lots of fire. Apparently this town is still a zoo even after a 95% die off. They came back to our AO one night on foot with shopping carts full of their stuff. All four of their vehicles got their engine blocks shattered. Someone opened up with a .50 or something and none of them could get a handle on where the fire was coming from so they took cover behind the concrete berms of a freeway overpass until they could regain their wits. They also took 50% casualties and the other dozen of them received a Christian burial somewhere in the CalTrans landscaping. At least they brought preps which included food and the Barretts. They only had seven lousy rounds of .416 left. There’s a couple hundred spent cases a few miles away on the Harbor Freeway. I’m gonna go pick them up off the pavement and make myself some lathe-turned solids for those suckers! That is, after I win the Barretts in a poker game. This guy seems like he’s too smart to know he’s dumb so it’s only a matter of time. Found another couple of hidey holes where I could scope out the storage facility and park. Both make excellent sniper hides seeing as how there’s multiple places where one can hide in a dark room at the rear of one building, shoot entirely through the open floor area of another and hit bad guys in the storage place. They’re all 600-700 yard shots tho..but we’re ok with that. Set up an OPLP with a handheld directional mic…nothing special, just a 50 dollar cheapie..so called Super Ear that I bought as a teenager and discovered I could hear just as good without it. Well, that was 25 years ago. Now I can hear better with it….but not by much. The old Yugoslavian guy dragged a corpse he’d just ventilated to that edge of our area and I waited to see who’d come and eat it. Funny thing happened. A couple of guys came out of the storage facility. They’re living on the top floor. Saw where they came from and which stairs they walked down. Had a clear shot for a good three minutes or so. They tossed the dead pred onto a wagon and a third hauled it off towards an empty parking lot. It looks like they ain’t eating our kills, they’re hauling them off because they don’t want the flies or stench. Saw them later on loading some buckets on a wagon and go down to the lake. They know how to move. Two pop out the door and take up positions. Then another two. Then two more. Then the bucket dudes and their wagon. My view was partially obstructed so I couldn’t watch the whole choreography. Saw someone covering them from the roof as well. Hard targets these folks be. Looks like they’re getting their water from there. Saw people at the lake also. Didn’t look like a free for all. Folks moved purposefully and slowly….like they’re all dog tired from famine and heat and endless work of pasteurizing water. Guess we’ll need to make contact somehow…without either side getting ventilated. Was staring at the lake for a while. Didn’t move. Just watched. A number of groups came and went. Some talked but with the cheapie mic, I couldn’t understand anything. Wished I had one of those 500 dollar parabolic jobs.. No violent altercations. Saw a couple wading in the lake holding a screen between them. First thing I’d do is get an old excavator running and dredge that sucker deep and wide..then stock it with fish. Block a few storm drains and let a few sumps silt in and we’d have something.. clear a path to the port and we’d get tidal flats and saltmarsh and shellfish. Heard one of the people down there yell and everyone scattered back into the shadows…Saw kids and adults both running. They’re afraid of something. Tomorrow We’ll initiate a little diplomacy. Our provisions won’t last the winter. Some of us will starve unless we can get to those cattails. I’m not the sort to make a good diplomat but I’m sure one of the ladies of the neighborhood could be our voice. So merry CalGunners, got that feeling you’re being watched through three buildings and a line of trees? |
#158
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Week 11.
We got a little rain and I couldn’t believe how much roof runoff a lousy eighth of an inch generates. That was a godsend for the gardens. We have the fast germinating stuff just exploding out of the ground. It also made me realize that all our buildings are on borrowed time. Every little bullet hole in every little roof allows moisture and fungus and termites to enter and start consuming the structure. We had yet another meeting and decided that the first chance we get, we have to raid what’s left of the local Lowes and Home Depots for roof repair goop, paint, primer, caulk….whatever it takes to keep a building standing for 30 years. No more oil is being pumped out of the ground so no more benefits of petrochemical based civilization…we are the stewards of infrastructure, until someone can start pumping energy out of the ground again…. The main thing this week was finding out what the h-e-double toothpicks is living around the park and storage facility. One of the kids scooted down quick and silent on his bike and left baskets of oranges and figs. One in front of the storage facility, the other at the lake. I covered him the best I could but if someone wanted him, he was dead. I’d just shoot the cannibals when they tried to retrieve the body. He made it there and back no prob and left notes on them to meet in a vacant lot within easy walking distance of all three places. Snipers could cover the area from our little enclave as well as the storage facility. The lake folk don’t have any high ground. Informed the HAM guy and his tribe of what we’re doing. We keep him and his in the loop and supplied with intel. Got our answer the very next day. Sent a few folks down with coverage and had a little intro. I could see through my scope but was waaaay to far to hear anything so I just sat on my butt keeping cross hairs on centers of mass for a few hours while my spotter looked around (actually, I fell asleep in the afternoon sun, sorry ‘bout that). Apparently a couple of families and miscellaneous joiner-uppers had holed up in the storage unit when they couldn’t bug out and their own houses were indefensible. Most had some provisions of their own to bring in addition to their bugout bags and one of them had a couple years provisions for three people and all sorts of cool gadgets in the storage units, including an aquaponics setup. They had pumpkin seeds and bluegill instead of tilapia….still fine by me altho tilapia tastes better, the native perches don’t need heated water in the winter. The photovoltaics they rigged up on top of the roof and that provided light and power to the air and water pumps. They had a nice little crop of radishes and some other stuff..but it was only 4 weeks into their growing season and the fish were miniscule so they were still eating freeze dried stuff. They even had a little Peltier-based cooling unit that pulled 180 watts worth of 12 VDC…like half the preppers in the world it seems, they also had everything electronic in a steel GreenLee toolbox. There were 15 of them out of 18 originally. They had lost only 3 in the process of setting up shop and culling cannibals. Luckily their aquaculture guy survived. The lake folk were holed up in various strong fire resistant buildings. Two families had holed up in a cinderblock Walgreens. I remember seeing that place go up too...thick cement filled cinderblock with at least 5/8 to ¾ inch rebar every foot or so on center…that sucker ain’t going nowhere. The lake residents were able to provide overlapping fields of fire for each other and were subsisting mostly on cattails and uhhh…raiders. Some of them had some provisions but had taken on refugees that provided some utility by virtue of their knowledge base and skillset. There were 60 of them surviving out of 300+ originally. They did the bulk of the work shooting up the people-eaters. Not a single family there was without casualties. Nobody was aware of the Sheepdogs turned Wolfpack that jacked my neighbors and little old me. They all showed up in the days and weeks following that episode. The odd refugees still trickled in, especially after the fire burnt out the peninsula residents. None of them had ventured into our tract because apparently, all the corpses with single holes in their heads that kept piling up on the main cross streets had a somewhat intimidating effect. So on balance, our provisions are stretched even tighter, but we have access to cheap, nasty starch in the form of cattails, rich organic lake bottom muck for our gardens and lots of human capital. They have access to vitamin C and other materials and our skillsets and manpower and I’ll be sharing some more of my own food. Three months in and we’ve got the basis for a village with real division of labor and trades. Ammo is definitely not as plentiful as it has been in the past and we’re gardening like our lives depend on it. One little Intel gathering op set in place the diplomacy that enabled everybody to get all this without firing a single shot. With the resources of the park and the fruit tree inventory in our tract, as well as the unexplored areas farther afield, no one has to starve this year. Next year is another matter and it’s less than three months away. We’ve scheduled a big pow wow on what to do about our collective protein needs…there’s a lot of growing kids among us..and a sporadic trickle of predator carcasses…..course that’s not my problem tonight, because I shot a monstrous rat off the power lines..saw it silhouetted against the moonlight. A friend of mine by the name of Gamo Whisper had been keeping me company for just this sort of exigency. The rat tasted bland…probably because I cooked the ever-living s**t out of it. Don’t know what parasites those things carry so I figured I’d forgo the culinary experience in favor of microbial safety. Well CalGunners, what did you eat tonight? |
#159
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Week 12.
Well, I harvested my first leaf of lettuce this week. I cut it in two and set each piece in a cool spot on the north side of some garden beds and checked each night for snails and slugs. Collected a bunch each night until the lettuce was all gone and then fed them on more lettuce for a couple of days until they were good and clean. Then I sautéed the little bastards with some canned mushrooms and sauce and ate em. Can’t believe I paid 16 bucks for this as an appetizer at the Firehouse in Old Town Sac a few years ago. Hah! And I thought lettuce wasn’t worth growing because it’s one of those negative calorie foods. Heard my beagle whimpering. That means danger is approaching. Then she got loose and charged through the dead landscaping and I heard her screaming in the distance like she was being put into a chipper shredder feet first. Well, she always sounds like that…what do you expect from a beagle? She had apparently cornered an old man and two little kids. They had come into our area from San Pedro. The other members of the family had all died in firefights and it was just those three who decided to hit the road after they laid the last able-bodied family member to rest. They travelled by night and foraged locally by day. They had some food in a shopping cart but had pigged out on seeds from a big Coyote melon plant growing where they revegetated some land along Gaffey St…I remembered that plant as I had planned on eating those gourds had the need arose. I’m calling the old man “Obi Wan Kenobi Dude” because he reminds me of that character. He said he was 88 and he defected from the then Soviet Union during the Kruschev era into Canada and then ended up here in the late 70s. He was no stranger to travelling at night, crossing no-mans lands and eating grubs and rotting onions to survive. He was six years old when the Holodomor occurred and fifteen when the Panzer divisions rolled across the Ukraine. He said we have it easier with the EMP than his folks did against Stalin. At least we can shoot back, we immediately recognize the enemy and we’re a hard core, ballz to the wall “git ‘er done’ culture in this country, or at least those of us who survived are. Heh…Obi Wan Kenobi Dude has some pretty interesting stories and for a man that old, he’s in pretty good shape. Him and his great grandkids will be eating roasted cattails and snails tho..and they’ll be working in our gardens if they want to continue to eat because we cannot afford the luxury of subsidizing them for free. The H1 Barrett Brigade leader is a different story tho. I’m calling him alpha-dick-wagger dude. Like I said earlier he’s too smart to know he’s dumb. Everyone in his party is a good shot and on balance, the whole group is an asset but Jeezus, this guy has no social graces. He wants to be the alpha male and the rest of us don’t really go out for that nonsense. He hasn’t lifted a finger to help with the food production tho…just patrolling, setting up really obvious defensive positions that could actually serve to funnel bad guys INTO the areas where the children sleep and spending precious energy on things that I really can’t see us needing with 95% dieoff already. His arrogance is flat out counterproductive. I forsee some fistfights at neighborhood meetings and maybe worse. We’re dealing with raiders, cannibalism, disease, fire, drought and starvation. We do not need this interpersonal nonsense. I notice that the others in his party kind of flinch when he comes around….it’s subtle but it’s there. We also crossed the moral Rubicon this week. We’d taken too many refugees and planted not enough garden or had enough food provisions to last through February or March. The folks down by the lake potted a predator that had come in and almost absconded with a child. Apparently the fellow swept in fast and silent on a mountain bike with those quiet commuter tires, garroted a four year old child and swung the kid over his shoulder all in one smooth motion that took less than five seconds. Someone was farther afield and put a dozen hollowpoints into the guy’s groin as he fled with his prey. Ouch. The folks at the lake skinned and butchered him before he had even finished bleeding to death. By the time I wandered over to watch, the legs were already butchered into thin slices and sizzling on a grill. One woman slid her knife between his shoulder blade and head of the humerus and neatly removed an arm and then took the hand off at where the carpals join the radius and ulna. Then both racks of ribs were separated. A few minutes later there was literally nothing left. A few dogs wolfed down the entrails; feces, stomach contents and all. The inside of a human doesn’t look that much different from anything else I guess…. There wasn’t a whole lot of debate on the matter either. These folks had bore the brunt of the casualties and they were of the attitude that the predators forfeited their humanity when they became predators instead of prepping. I can understand that. But still, I’d rather head over to the ocean for my protein…wonder if I can make it over there without getting killed? They did the smart thing tho…they probably got 60 pounds of usable protein and that stretched everyone’s provisions by a day or so. Some of the bones went into a stew. It was pretty somber. No one was bragging about it. Meanwhile, I will go scratch up a dozen or so garden snails and if I’m lucky, another rat to overcook. Well CalGunners, got any good recipes for escargot? |
#160
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Some place that sells survival /prepping gear needs to sponser you and have you blog for them.
__________________
Shop Amazon and contribute to CGF! click this link before going to amazon.com http://www.shop42a.com www.appleseedinfo.org "Everyone has a plan, till they get punched in the face." -Mike Tyson |
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