No Money for SHTF?

A question was posed to the internet world; How do I prepare for SHTF with no money.  I thought about this for a while and here are the 4 things that you can do.


1) Exercise.  Think about some of the tasks you would need to do.  I'm not talking about fighting zombies but rather the mundane.  You will need to lift, carry and walk long distances and being out of shape increases the chance of injury.   It increases how far you can push yourself and in SHTF, your next meal will, at some point, come down to the man who can push himself a bit farther than the other guy to get it.
And if we do want to discuss fighting let me say that you never rise to your expectations; you fall to your level of training.  When I do tactical firearms training, I have people sprint 50 meters to the line and then take aimed shots to show them how hard it is to do anything when their heart is pounding.  This effect is reduced the more a person is in shape.

2) Plan/Learn.  In Military Intelligence we looked at 3 main factors over and over again; Weather, Enemy and Terrain.  Try to decide where you would go.  What are the challenges and routes to get there and what environmental conditions will you have to endure.  How will you get water?  What vegetation is in the area that can be used for medicine, poison or food?  What is the population density?  These things are all free to research and will give you a huge advantage over a guy who has lots of gear.  Gear is only good if you can employ it effectively.
The library is free.  Sit down on a cozy couch with your notebook and start reading about wilderness survival, land navigation, homesteading, small unit tactics, husbandry, home remedies and gardening.
Try travelling the route you plan to take or visit where you plan to go.  A time spent on recce is never wasted.

3) Network.  No man can survive alone.  You might have no money but having a group of friends can pay off.  The average gun owner (stats are outdated) owns 7 firearms.  In SHTF, like thinking friends can loan you what they are not using.  At the time of writing this, Specter Arms has 23 thousand dollars worth of firearms in inventory not including ammo or accessories.  You can bet that if a friend came to me during a collapse, I would gladly loan him stuff.

4) Re-purpose and Recycle.  I know a business owner that started out his business with $10,000 and collecting vital materials through the unglamorous art of dumpster diving.  He got desks, countertops, displays, file cabinets, shelving and furniture.  Even I have managed to get large sheets of lexan by not being afraid to walk over and grab it.  I have not needed, but have seen a lot of things that could help a survivalist out from backpacks, glass jugs, wood and metal. Old 2x4s make great firewood and they are easy to stack.
Try to fix broken things yourself.  I am not a mechanic but I managed to save about $600 by researching and changing my car starter on my own.  I have learned to sew up damaged garments. I managed to get a glut of MDF from a wood shop and I built my own shelves.  Yes, shelves, car starters and lexan don't help for survival but it teaches you to be practical and a creator rather than a consumer who is stuck in the work-buy consumption cycle.

These 4 things cost nothing and they will get you ready far beyond the person who "buys" thier sense of security.

Election Sign Defaced with Swastika

Let's face it, under national socialism (Nazis), everything that those in power disagreed with, was violently outlawed with draconian laws.  Fast forward to modern day liberalism.  Now everything that does not fit the liberal party ideology is violently outlawed.

Now, when I saw violently outlawed, I mean that the punishment is far more severe then what a reasonable, moral person would rate. 

Case law says that if you kill someone* you are likely to get one month in jail or 8 months house arrest.  But if you don't lock your guns in a safe? 18 months and years of a firearms prohibition.  Arguably a punishment that lasts for years beyond the person who kills.

No one was hurt in the second example but in the first one, a person is dead and  a family is mourning.  But to a liberal (or a Nazi) social engineering is more important.  Morality is irrelevant and replaced with a fanatical ideology.

If I have an unregistered handgun, it is automatically 3 years minimum in jail.  This is spelled out in the criminal code.  If someone rapes a child, there is no minimum sentence and typically punishments average at about 2 years.  Again, one crime has no victim the other ruins lives forever. 

The Liberal party, much like the National Socialists (Nazi) are anti-gun.  Alan Rock said "I came to Ottawa with the firm belief that the only people who should have guns are the police and military".  Compare that to Heinrich Himmler (Hitler's right hand man and main driver in the 'Final Solution') who said "Germans who wish to use firearms should join the SS or the SA, ordinary citizens don't need guns".

What about thought crimes?  The Liberals set up Human right Tribunals which are used to attack those who have a different perspective then the Liberal party.  The punishment?  Often severe to the extreme with punishments of around $5000.  The Nazi's would put you in a concentration camp for disagreeing with their ideology.  But really, who has $5000 lying around to pay that fine?  Non-payment is not an option so you probably would face wage garnishes and in extreme cases, jail time.  How is that different from the Nazis?

Liberals champion diversity as long as that diversity is exactly like them.  They are the most bigoted, myopic, hateful, violent people ever because they do what they do with the blessing of their own conscience.

Ayn Rand said "The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities."

The Nazi party hated the Jews. The leader of the Nazi party, Adolph Hitler, made no secret of this while the current leader of the Liberal Party, Justin Trudeau, has openly said that "Evangelical Christians are the worst Canadians".  Much like the Nazis made the lives of the Jews a nightmare, Justin's Human right tribunals are making it a nightmare to be a Christian who is vocal of his faith, ideals and morals.  It is not as bad as it was in Germany.... yet.

So, to sum up; does this person deserve a swastika on her sign? you are damn right she does because that is the ideology she supports.  It is the ideology of every liberal with their freedom hating, pretend- diversity, arrogant 'i-know-best' mentality.

* In Edmonton a drunk driver careened off the road killing a 2 year on the patio of a restaurant.  He got one month in jail as a punishment.

*In Manitoba, a drunk driver killed a pedestrian and got 8 months house arrest as a punishment.

Single Shot Wilderness Guns - A Recipe for Death

There are a lot of single shot, folding, break-action wilderness shotguns on the market.  They appeal to people because they they typically sell for less than $200.

These guns are a terrible idea.  They instill a false sense of security which in turn encourages people to take more risk in the wilderness.

When a person is under stress their heart rate goes up.  Their vision becomes narrow and they lose fine motor control.  To simulate how well you would actually shoot in a life or death situation, sprint as hard as you can for 50 meters to get your heart rate up and then shoot.  You'll feel like a Star Wars Imperial Storm Trooper with shots going all over the place.

It is arrogant to assume that when you are under stress being charged by a dangerous animal that you will hit on the first (and only shot).  And if you do hit, you are making the gross assumption that it will stop it;  it may not.

The only intelligent thing to do is twofold:
1) Train.  You NEVER rise to your expectations.  You only fall to your level of training.
2) Get the right tools.  Here is my suggestions:

AS41

AS44/41

Fake News

This is not a firearms or survival related post so it is a bit out of the ordinary for me but I'd like to address "Fake News".

A lot of people have been using this term to describe things that they don't like.  In the gun world CBC is defined as Fakes News but that is not really true,  Heavily biased and poorly researched yes but not really Fake News.

Fake news can be identified by using the following checklist:

1) Is the page predominately advertising?
Web pages will create fake news stories and pay for it to be disseminated on facebook,  The ads give the page owner money each time someone opens it.  As people share it, the page owner is rewarded for his false news

2) Is the page something that is designed to evoke a strong emotion or to confirm a bias?
People are more likely to share something that they feel is unjust, confirms a strong world view or has shock value.  Any story that threatens or strongly affirms a persons money, ideology conscience or ego is more likely to be shared.

3) Do you need to click "next" a whole bunch of times to get the entire story?
Again, each time a page with ads is visited, the page owner makes money.  Clicking 'next' multiples revenue for the page owner.

4) Have you heard of this website or organization disseminating the news?
There are alternative news sites you may not of heard of but if #1-3 is true, it is probably not an alternative news site but a fake news one.

Another Thief

I am tired of rip off artists who steal the hard work and innovation of others and market it as thier own.  Its one thing to take an idea and make it unique or better; that's innovation.  But to openly steal a concept is morally reprehensible.

The main victim of this thievery is a fellow in Texas who innovated the SKS magazine adapter... something that is interesting but not a game changer in the USA but is very valuable in Canada where our laws require clever loop holes to enjoy our sport.  His idea was ripped off by no less than 3 people.  Finally a Canadian company sought permission to use the design and produced their version of the magazine adapter.  In a feat of intellectual honesty, they credit the inventor.  When I am asked to do magazine conversions for the SKS, I only buy the authorized, honest version to do those modifications.

Now both the fellow in Texas and myself have been victims again.  Specter Arms has existed since 2008.  We are located in Edmonton.  Right next door to my city is a place called Sherwood Park.  A new business has started there and has taken a name that is almost the same as my company.  Maybe it was an honest mistake?  A google search and a bit of due diligence would of revealed this problem.  Lazy or deliberate?  Take your pick.  As far as I am concerned it does not matter which; both show a negative quality in this company.

But I'm inclined to go with deliberate.  You see they also have been stealing designs including the SKS duckbilless adapter.  Developed by, the innovative but often victimized, guy from Texas.  I hope he sues.

I've been working on a project called the S7 for about 2 years now.  It is a low priority project but last month, someone beat me to getting their version of the S7 out to the public.  Not wanting to seem like a copy-cat, I altered my features so I don't compete with the same demographic or appear to commit the sin of being a thief of intellectual property.  That is integrity, something that name-thieves and product-thieves can not hope to match.

I have been careful not to make enemies in this business, but this thievery has to stop.  I call upon everyone to take the moral high ground and not do business with those who have no business ethics.

Are you with me?

The SKS - Not a $220 Rifle

I get angry when I read about people who dismiss the SKS as a junk rifle;  They equate price with value.

The rifle was exceptionally designed.  It was in every sense of the word, a winter warfare rifle.  The stock was short because it was designed to be worn with a thick winter coat, the ammo was corrosive because non-corrosive offerings might not reliably ignite in -30 weather.  As I will detail later, it was over-gassed to compensate for ice.  In a climate such as Canada's I would put my faith readily in the venerable SKS.

If we were to manufacture a SKS today it would cost about $600 to manufacture with the materials, labor and machine time.  The industry standard is a markup of about 20% from the manufacturer and another 20% if it comes through a distributor.  That means if the SKS was manufactured today it would retail at around $800.

The next complaint is accuracy.  You need to understand why the SKS is not very accurate.  The big reason is the gas system.  The gas port is much larger then what is actually needed to cycle the gun.  Its ejections are forceful.  This is to compensate for potential reliability issues from mud, dust, ice and other messy battlefield conditions.  Just look to Canada's WW1 rifle, the Ross; it was a great, accurate rifle but when exposed to dirt and mud, it failed miserably putting lives at risk.  The SKS will work when it needs to work.  No questions asked.

But there is also the cultural difference in definition of accuracy.  In the west accuracy is defined in groups.  So-and-So rifle is a 1.5 MOA rifle, this-and-that is a 2 MOA rifle.  Soviet accuracy is based on the realistic expectation that it will hit a man sized target at infantry ranges.  For a rifle of war, what can you reasonably expect?  It does exactly what it needs to do.  The Soviets did not build it so Canadian and Americans could use it to "dick measure" with their arbitrary bench shot, MOA measured, groups.  MOA is irrelevant in the real world.

The ballistics of the round are similar to a 30-30.  Nobody expects the 30-30 to be a sniper rifle or to shoot distances over 200m so I find it disingenuous that people get angry that the SKS can not.

The SKS was replaced in all the militaries that adopted it...with a similar gun.  The AK47 in Russia and the Type 81 in China.  Both the AK and T81 were made with the same thoughts in mind as the SKS; the main difference between their old rifles and their new ones was detachable magazines, cheaper to build and ergonomics.  Arguably all things that are available after-market for the SKS nowadays.

So the SKS is not a "cheap" rifle.  It is a steal for what you actually get from that low price tag.

Quebec Now Has a Gun Registry

I will get straight to the point: to those of you who live in Quebec I have this to say:

1) If you want to buy a gun from me, I am in no way going to bow down to your provincial government.  I will continue to respect your privacy by not recording or reporting sales information to Big Brother.  (I still need to verify a PAL as per the law).  You can make your own decision whether you are going to comply or not.

2) Once you do register your guns, a few years down the road they will force you to pay a registration fee like they do for cars (probably a yearly fee of $100 per gun).  They will break you financially to force you to give up your hobby. It is not inconceivable that they create several registration fees, perhaps $300 for semi-autos or $400 for a prescribed list of scary non-restricted guns like the VZ58.   Who can stop them from doing it?  The law is in place and everything can now be done with the bureaucracy.   The average gun owner owns 7 firearms…. How many do you own?  What will your yearly costs be for compliance?

3) Anti-gun people are never going to be happy until your guns are destroyed and you are dead in a gas chamber.  Consider that when you make decisions in the next few weeks.

4) Specter Arms continues to stand by the wrongly persecuted people of Quebec.