Paul Helinski

Since we haven’t devolved into Prepper theory for a while, I thought today would be a good day. As I write this, the markets have just closed Friday, after Great Britain voted to leave the European Union. You are probably reading this on Monday, after our weekly GunsAmerica Digest goes out. Probably the markets are crashing, but I’m not a prophet. Our so financial and monetary system is so strung out, who knows if the end of the giant game of musical chairs game is today. But more importantly, our question here is, if you haven’t done the work of preparing for the collapse, is it *today* too late?

I think there is a huge difference between long term “bug-in” survival preparations, and short term “bug-out” survival preparations. Depending on your situation, bug-out might be your only option. As I explained in my bugout pack article, most of what you carry should be food. And though cooking may seem like a luxury for a survival situation, you’ll find that most inexpensive and calorie dense foods need to be cooked. You don’t want to carry a lot of water, when you can pick up water and cook dry food on the road. That means you should also carry a stove, and that stove needs to be light, efficient with fuel, and it should be able to cook your food in a reasonable amount of time. In my travels for this column I have covered a number of great cooking options, but this week I’d like to share my newest discovery that all of those qualities considered, I think might be the best for urban bug-out.

Sometimes for this column, I have to admit that I put things off that give me trouble. Such is the case for the Alladin Lamp. No, it’s not about the genie silly. If you have never looked into off grid living, probably you have never encountered what is considered the most elegant of kerosene lamps, but they are pretty nifty. You would think the Alladin is a pressure lamp, running on propane, but it is not. That white light comes from regular old kerosene, and it will likewise run just about any lamp oil, and even diesel fuel, with no appreciable loss, or that much of a smell in my experience.

You know what really chaps my ass? When I see a supposed “gun reviewer” bash a product online based on very limited experience. It is almost as bad at the ‘tubers who review a product positively, after putting a dozen rounds through it, because…drum roll please, they got a free one. As you’ll see in the video, my topic for this week is a followup review on a problematic Black Aces Tactical DT short shotgun. On first blush, the gun is junk. But at the same time, we’ve had a prior gun in that worked great. I’m not personally a huge fan anyway. It’s clunky and hard to rack. But I think that whenever you encounter a problem with a gun, it is important to try to figure it out, especially before you spreading bad information around the internet.

The point of this article is for when a friend who works at Starbucks asks you how cheap they can carry. Do you answer $300-$500 for a Taurus revolver? $250 for a Kel-Tec? Or do you answer just over $100 for a Cobra derringer?

Some survival topics seem to be a little more “out there” than others, and one of those is definitely canning food in steel cans, otherwise known as tin cans.

Communications is one of the few topics here that has no real end. After the collapse, or the big reveal as I like to call it, all of us are going to want for resources. You just can’t store enough food to last forever, and as great as “living off the land” might sound, it ain’t easy, even when you know what you are doing. At some point, whoever survives is going to want to connect with others who have survived. You are going to want to have an ear to the ground.

This one is a real head scratcher.  As many of you know, we have an extremely comprehensive Prepping 101 section here on GunsAmerica, and it isn’t to capitalize on the hype. If you look at the full picture of what is going on in the world, you just have to ask yourself, how long can [...]

I’ve recently learned something new that I think I should share with you. It is survival computing. In general I am not a big fan of power inverters, and I think you should run as much off of 12 volts as possible, but there are a lot of benefits to having a laptop available, and phones and tablets are priceless if you have kids. I’m also going to cover a $25 low voltage/low amperage computer solution that is currently being used to build perimeter security systems, remote listening posts, and even balloon lifted radio relay antennas. This is pretty cool stuff.