Paul Helinski

I often get asked by people what gun they should buy to carry. My answer is always the same. “Buy the gun that you will actually carry.” For most people that means a gun that fits into your front pocket. I would argue that for every one person who carries on the belt, that are at least ten who carry in the front pocket. The same thing goes for women when you compare on the body carry vs. purse carry. If you carry on the belt, all the power to you, but most of us find to be a giant pain in the butt, or waist, or armpit, or wherever else you might carry a firearm besides your pocket or purse. The problem with both pocket and purse, though, is that neither of them are good at distributing weight. And in the pocket, the thinner you are and the more form fitting your pants, the more the gun tends to stick out. Also, though a gun may be small and light, the cartridge may be too powerful to shoot the gun confidently.

Have you ever been driving along on the highway and realized that everyone going slower than is an old lady and the everyone going faster than you is a maniac? It is the same thing with what you believe, at least when it comes to “conspiracy theories.” Anyone who believes less than you believe is “asleep” and everyone who believes more than you believe is a nut.

Fear is among the most driving of all human emotions. When you fear something, it is very easy to take advantage of the requisite call to action inside of you. That was the original point of this prepping and survival series, to cut through all of the crap the fear mongers are trying to sell us and get to the heart of long-term survival in the face of a genuine collapse, which many of us believe is somewhat imminent.

There is a lot of banter about the fall of the dollar and a collapse of our financial system, but historically, governments and the bankers who control them don’t let that stuff happen. They start a war instead. And an easy way to start such a war would be to burst a nuke 250 miles into space, creating what is called an EMP, or Electro-Magnetic Pulse. By available information and hypothesis, such an event would be devastating to our electrical grid, thereby cutting off our ability to talk, tweet and post poorly produced YouTube videos about any financial crisis, thereby allowing them to keep us enslaved to debt, totally hush hush.

“This is my rifle. There are many like it but this one is mine.” Do you remember that line from the movie Full Metal Jacket? The movie was lame but the point of that line should ring true for anyone who considers long term survival against all odds. Many gun writers have said this over the years, but something that many new shooters do not know is that there is no such thing as a powerful handgun. Even the whopping .44 Magnum pales in comparison to even a light rifle cartridge like the AK-47 round. In the game of survival, you have to at some point accept that fact that force will eventually meet force. You may be armed, but two weeks into any major disaster, everyone still standing will also be armed, and they won’t be that afraid of your .45ACP Taurus semi-auto pistola. Pop, pop, pop won’t be the sound that people fear. But a thundering BOOOM, coupled with their available cover being either seriously rocked or completely shot through, will put anyone and everyone on notice that the force they face is not worth facing, and it may be better to move on. A rifle is firepower like a handgun can never be, but the problem with rifles is that they are expensive to own and expensive to shoot. There is however one lowest common denominator with rifles, and for as little as $100, if all you own is a pistol, I strongly suggest that you go out and buy one of these powerhouse rifles today.

This is a cup-half-full, cup-half-empty product. It all depends on the way you look at it. First of all, what is InteliSCOPE? InteliSCOPE is a smartphone holder that mounts on your picatinny rail, allowing you to use your phone as a sighting scope while providing you the ability to record video. The mount physically holds your phone on the top of the rifle, and a standard Google Play or Apple Store app does the sighting through the camera on your phone. We tried the Android version with a Samsung Galaxy S4, and it does what it says it does, with a few important caveats.

The most difficult thing to set aside for yourself in this day and age is time. But unfortunately, when it comes to surviving the end of life as we know it, time is the one thing you will have to set aside if you plan to get serious. Disasters are easily survivable. Put away enough food and water, and you can ride out most storms, even lengthy ones. But if the food supply never comes back online, what do you do then? Gold and silver won’t be worth anything because, short of the tin pot dictator or monarch who eventually takes over, nobody will have any use for such trivialities. Eating will be everyone’s #1 long-term concern, and if you plan to survive, you have to learn right now how to grow your own food. Right now you have the luxury of making mistakes and still being able to eat. So figure it out! Where can I go, whom can I partner with, what resources can I put together that will give me a long term chance of survival? Since it is spring, and in many parts of America the planting season is around the corner, I figured that this is a good time to talk about seeds. Buying a “survival seed vault” isn’t going to cut it for you if you have never grown food before. You have to get out and get gardening this spring. Don’t be shy. An old farmer once told me that farming is nothing but problem-solving, so get out there and figure out your problems now, and how to solve them.

Back last fall, we did an article on Colt ARs with dipped patterns on them. One of the comments that came up on the article was, “Hey, have you seen these mag wraps?” What exactly are “mag wraps,” you ask? They are basically just stickers that you can put on your magazine to make them look cooler, or to just have people ask you why you have bikini models on your mags, and isn’t that silly.

Rarely do you see a really good product for the shooting world at a cheap price, but the stuff from MTM Case-Gard is always an exception. This is a shooting box that holds all of your cleaning supplies and tools and doubles as a work station for cleaning and working on your guns. MTM makes both a classic shooting box model and this one that comes with an extra insert made specifically for the .223 magazine well of an AR-15 and compatibles.

Water is the most crucial and diverse aspect of preparing for the breakdown of our society. Where do you get your water now? Is it from the city? Is it from an artesian well? A shallow well? Do you have lakes or streams near your house? Are those your sense of water security? Is your swimming pool an ever-available water backup? All of these pieces mesh into a fairly large body of possibilities, and points of failure. Those points of failure are what we most need to talk about. Once you understand the issues, and the types of methods to resolve them, water gets much simpler. The bad news is that if you live in a tightly packed area, or an apartment, you may have to make a decision now that eventually abandoning your home is mandatory (but not right away). Depending on where you live, your water issues may be complete scarcity, pollution, feast or famine seasonal rain and droughts, deep freezes and even deadly bacteria and viruses in the water. There are ways you can prepare for all of these potential problems, for both the short and long term.