Survival Trucks

My brother sent me some pictures of this seller while he was attending a gun show in Las Vegas, NV. I thought I would share them here. I have no affiliation with this company in anyway shape or form. I did visit their web site and they had some pretty clean looking vehicles.

Just thought I would share.

Cheap Alcohol stove

Thought I would try my hand at this little 15 minute project. One word? FAIL.

That’s about all I can say. I did a search online and found what I thought looked like the “best” type? kind? to try my hand at and something that wasn’t gonna take all day to make.

Well I followed the directions from here: http://www.mungosaysbah.com/2009/01/tutorial-on-how-to-build-coke-can-stove.html

Not to take away from the author, but my trial was a bust. I got about a 2 minute burn and then nothing.

I’ll wait and pick one of these up down the road. http://www.tatogear.com/

A very good experiment, multiple videos

Whether you like him or hate him James Yeager does put together some pretty decent video reviews and instruction. There is some “language” so don’t watch  or de-tune your ears. I’ll do a short review here.

What I found pretty cool about the series in all is the first video , one of the middle videos and in particular the last video.

James lays out all his equipment that he is taking on his bug-out experiment trip. And he makes it pretty clear that this experiment is a get from point A to point B nothing else. He is not setting up any illusions that his group is bugging out to survive in the woods. A totally impossible, unrealistic and delusional idea. The experimental hike is set on a 10 mile loop that I am guessing is located in a national forest of some sort. The terrain looks pretty undulating overall and pretty tough.

What I found VERY interesting is all the things we pack in our bags that we think we need, James also found out that a lot of stuff he hauled with him wasn’t not only not needed but wouldn’t be used or never used. One particular example, flints and matches versus a lighter!

Another take-away, a sleep system and a plain old GI poncho or tarp. Water, he mentions at the end that he never really drank enough water.  And lastly? Are you in shape? I think James found out he really wasn’t in as great of shape as maybe he thought? I dunno but he talked about it a number of times through out the video’s.

In all? some kernels of lessons learned that can be taken away for yourself.

I sat down on the front room floor last night and dumped everything I had out of my BOB, reorganized, and repacked into a smaller back pack. I didn’t loose any equipment in my repack and am pretty pleased that what I did have was not “extra”. It still weighs 30 + lbs. without a sleep system or water. But my thought is a good portion of the clothes I have in the bag will be used immediately as I change into a more comfortable kit to walk in.  If I were to bail and walk home from work? 64 miles one way. 4 days walk minimum. But that would be in total grid down situation. Otherwise I call for backup.

Hope you can filter and learn something.

Speed to fast update

Just a short update of the accident that WF and I witnessed a week ago.  Below is what was left of the Ford F-250 after the first responders got their shit together and finally started cutting the truck apart to extract the victim.

If you look at where the F-250 emblem is on the front quarter panel is, this is where the truck hit the tree. I initially thought the dash had come down on the driver’s legs but after looking at the pic the floor came up pinning his legs after the impact. I still don’t get what the firefighters where attempting to do when they had the spreaders and cutters out after they first arrived.

Last word we had from the drivers wife was he, the driver is still in ICU at a larger hospital facility to our south.