Feature Articles

This article is not for the faint of heart. Like many of the overview articles in this Prepping 101 series, the topic of solar systems is fairly simple, but you have to learn the basics to get started. With what is here you should be able to take action and get going while avoiding a huge learning curve and the pitfalls that such a complicated learning curve can entail. In our first article on solar we looked at a very simple do it yourself kit from Harbor Freight. For more than a few light bulbs, that kit is lacking the energy to do much of anything, and it doesn’t even come with a power inverter or battery. The other side of solar is the big money option. Houses are being outfitted with solar every day all over the country. With enough panels and controllers and batteries, you can run your whole house on solar for a totally off grid lifestyle. For preppers, this is not a viable plan. Part of what we are doing has to be kept a secret, because when the system breaks down, we don’t want people to know that we have food, water, radio, and even working lights.

The Reno Gazette-Journal looks at the 40 percent background check myth and confirms pretty much what gun owners already knew, it’s B.S.

I forget which zombie movie it is, maybe World War Z? One of the characters says something to the effect that if you stay put in one place, you die. That may be true of real zombies, but that will not be true of the zombies who surround us and who aren’t preparing for the collapse. For the most part, people are decent. And though they may be confused by the fog that their anti-depressants and reality TV put them in, when they finally figure out that one day late was too late, they are going to try to run to where they think they can be saved. That may be a rumor of where a FEMA truck is supposed to show up with food and water. That may be a distant relative that must be able to help them. Ultimately what it means is that the streets will be full of people seeking to get out, or just to find resources, and the street is where you don’t want to be for a long time. But survival is boring, and the food is bland. These are some tips that I thought of that make a lot of sense if you are compiling a bare bones prepper/survival list. They aren’t too expensive and they will add a certain “quality” to life that is 100% better than just surviving.

If you trace the evolution of the modern sniper rifle, it invariably leads you back to the Model 1903 Springfield. It served US forces in World War I, then soldiered on into World War II, through the Korean Conflict, and even appeared here and there in Vietnam. Several versions of the 1903 Springfield were used as sniper rifles, the most common of which was the 1903A4. It first appeared in 1943 and carried a Weaver 330 scope, mounted on a drilled and tapped Redfield base that was created specifically for the gun. The Weaver 330 later turned into the M73, and then the M73B1, and with its 2.2x not waterproof sniper scope, the 1903A4 is today the most classic of all US sniper rifles, but they are expensive, in the thousands of dollars for even a beat up one.

Over the past several years there has been an explosion in shooting competitions based on “as issued” military bolt rifles, or “service rifles.” Thousands of old ’03 Springfields and other bolt action battle rifles have left the confines of the gun safe after decades of non-use and have again become “working rifles.” The problem is, a lot of the shooters involved in these new service rifle competitions are great shooters, but have aging eyesight. Over a certain age, you really need optics to shoot well, but the 1903 Springfield isn’t the easiest gun on which to mount a scope. The receivers are extremely hard on most of them and difficult to drill and tap, and drilling and tapping them is a big decision as well. It is very rare if not impossible to find an ’03 that is all original, but they all have historical value and significance. Most of us out here with the guns are also history nuts and at least quasi-collector/accumulators, and we can’t just decide to drill and tap them for scope mounts so we can shoot them better. That is why, until now, they have largely just sat in the safe.

Ben Langlotz is a patent and trademark attorney with 24 years of experience working with the firearms industry. He is an author and educator intent on helping firearms business owners to navigate the minefields of patent and trademark law. Who better to offer some first rate advice about firearms nomenclature? Read on for Langlotz’s advice and learn how to keep yourself from sounding like an idiot when you write about firearms.

It is a rare day when you don’t hear something about the militarization and overreach of the police in America. Just this week Ron Paul came out with a statement about the police in Philadelphia, who have had a nasty habit of confiscating the homes of over 500 families whose children have been caught with controlled substances. If you live in any kind of city or suburb, you have already seen the militarized cops, replete with armored vehicles. As we are so careful at the range to not sweep anyone with a loaded gun, these cops are very happy to point loaded weapons right at innocent Americans, just because they can. We saw that after the Boston bombing, the residents of Watertown and Newton Massachusetts celebrated the boot jacked thugs who dragged people out of their homes and put their feet on their heads, in search of one, unarmed, man.

With the Russian/Ukraine conflict now going hot, we really need to return to the topic of radiation, since both of these are nuclear armed countries, with nukes pointed at us. In part one of this article we covered the basics of inexpensive Geiger counters and the basic need to have one. Radiation is silent. Without a way to measure it where you reside, you will never know if you are being bombarded by a nuclear event, or whether that mushroom cloud you saw in the distance was just a conventional explosion. Dirty bombs, nuclear reactor accidents, suitcase nukes and of course ICBMs are scary things, but with your own Geiger counter you will instantly know if you are in danger or if, for now, you are not in danger. In this article we will use the $80 Version II MyGeiger kit that I ordered pre-soldered ($12), and the $20 SBM-20 Geiger tube. We will take a look at the actual numbers when it comes to radiation, as well as the free logging software. And most importantly, we will discuss the only preventative measure that you an take to protect you from radiation poisoning. It worked on nearly 100% of those treated after Chernobyl. If a nuclear event is coming, those without this key inexpensive ingredient on hand will not be happy campers.

I was initially enamored with the RAAC MKA-1919, otherwise known as the AR-15 looking shotgun. It was the star of our 2012 SHOT Show coverage, registering over 80,000 readers within the first few days after release. Then I got a review gun, and in August of that year everyone got to read that the gun had some quirks. My review was one of the few that put the gun through its paces, and demonstrated that it failed more than it fired. But at the time, I was excited about a modification company that had exhibited with RAAC at SHOT. Guns can get expensive and the base price of the 1919 wasn’t that high. A couple hundred in mods I felt was reasonable for a niche specialty gun like this, assuming that it works well. That company never got back to me.

As you probably have surmised by now, this column is really about taking a global collapse seriously. Radio communication is one subject that I find taken for granted in most of the internet press and supermarket survival magazines, but if you don’t understand the basics of what radios can be used for what types of communications, and go out and actually buy them, you will truly leave yourself in the dark when all of the standard communications go down.