12 jan 2015

Made in America

by | posted in: Equipment, Gear, Prepping, SHTF, Survival, Uncategorized | 0

Test shooting the Ruger American rifle 30-06.

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On Sunday I was lucky to be invited to the local shooting range by my friend Martin. He was going to zero his rifle for some big game hunting ammo. The Springfield 12.0 g / 185 gr MEGA. But before he did I got the chance to test his rifle. The Ruger American 30-06 with a 22” barrel and a 4 round rotary magazine.

I had seen a photo of this rifle before but when I saw it in real life it looked even better. Simplistic and to the point. No unnecessary details and with a matte black finish both on the barrel and the stock this rifle looks like one that gets the job done.

Let me start by saying I’m far from a gun expert and this is not a scientific test in any way. These are just my thoughts on this rifle. I value having the best tools for any job. Like with my knife and my axe. I’m not a collector. I expect my tools to work and I buy them to use them. Sometimes you pay a lot to get the best tool for a specific job and it will last you a lifetime. Other times you pay a lot and it just doesn’t work for you. Other times again you pay very little and get a great tool that over delivers. This gun I guess is one of those tools. The best comparison I can think of is one of the Mora knives you can buy for as little as $16. You don’t get any knife that will serve you better than one of these unless you pay unproportionally much money to get that extra performance or the security of a full tang. And don’t worry the Mora won’t break by the way.

Now tell me how much rifle do you get for $635 / €536? And yes this is the price for it in Denmark. You can probably get it way cheaper in the US. Well you get quite a lot if you buy this rifle I think.

I was really surprised by how light weight and easy this rifle is to handle. And everything just works. From the bolt with a 70° throw that ensures an easy cocking to the trigger which has a perfect release in my opinion. And if you don’t like it, it is adjustable between 3 and 5 pounds by the way.

I was testing the rifle with pointed FMJs and it was really easy to shoot. It has quite a heavy recoil I think but I guess it is because the gun is so light weight in it self. It wasn’t something that bothered me  in any way though.

I understand that it’s called American because it is made 100% in America. But they might as well have called it American because it was made for the people. It’s like the Volkswagen of guns; Tough, simple and great value for the money. And I think it looks great too.

Website: http://www.ruger.com

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11 jan 2015

You thought making your own beef jerky was difficult?

by | posted in: Bushcraft, Knowledge, Prepping, SHTF, skills, Survival | 0

Here’s a simple recipe on how to do it

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A few weeks ago I tried making beef jerky for the first time. I ended up with 350 g of beef jerky from the 1.1 kg raw meat I bought. And it was much easier than I thought, so I just want to share with you how I made it and which recipe I followed:

Just starting out I had a lot of questions coming to mind. Do you need a special type of meat? Do you need special remedies? Will a regular oven do? And how long does it take to dry the meat? First of all I read a little bit about it. One of the things I found is that you need meat with only little or no fat at all. I didn’t know if you could only use certain types of meat or if anything goes that doesn’t have fat on it. So I went to our local grocery store and talked to the butcher. He didn’t know about making beef jerky either, but he suggested a cut for roast beef. 1.1 kg. to be exact.

It seems that any meat without fat will do. And I guess you don’t have to follow the recipe below unless you’re looking to add some flavour to the meat. Actually I think I will try a regular brine next time or maybe try to leave out this part of the process all together, since I love the pure taste of meat. I have a regular oven with a hot air oven functionality which I believe is recommended since it generates dry heat instead of moist heat. Anyway here is what I did:

I googled “Beef Jerky Recipe” and found this Danish recipe that I followed:

For the marinade you will need the following ingredients:

0,5 liters of ale beer
1 spoon of lemon juice
2 teaspoons of honey
1/4 teaspoon of dijon mustard or the like
2-3 spoons of soya sauce

Procedure:

Slice your meat into about 5 mm. thick slices.

Pour the ale into a bowl, add the rest of the ingredients and stir it all together. After that you add the meat to the marinade and leave it in the fridge for 24 hours. When you take your meat out the day after you turn on your oven to about 70-75° C. Then drain off the marinade for about 10 minutes and place the meat on the oven rack. Let it cook for about 3 hours. You may need to turn the rack around half way through. Also remeber to put a baking pan underneath the rack as a lot of moist will drip down from the meat. The recipe here suggests you check your meat every 15 minutes after one hour. I didn’t do that though. I started checking it after 2,5 hours. And 3 hours was perfect for my meat. Maybe I was just lucky.

Your beef jerky is done when it is crust enough to tear apart without breaking (It should maintain a certain elasticity otherwise you overcooked it).

After you take out your beeff jerky from the oven, you place it spread out on a piece of parchment paper and leave it to dry another 3-5 hours before you can pack it up. To do so you can use either plastic bags or jars. Try to store them with as little air as possible.

Storing beef jerky:
You can store your beef jerky for different lengths of time under different circumstances:

Outside in normal temperatues you should always use your senses to judge if it is contaminated.
In the fridge it will last about 6 months.
In the freezer it will last up to a year.

Good luck.

25 sep 2014

Why I’m not a prepper – and 6 reasons why I might become one

by | posted in: Prepping, SHTF, Survival | 0

Why would you bother preparing for a SHTF situation in Scandinavia?

Let’s face it, Scandinavia is not exactly the most dangerous place on earth. Surely we have natural disasters, thunder storms, flooding and snow storms, but we don’t have hurricanes, tsunamis volcanoes and people in general don’t carry guns – or even knives for that matter. Earth quakes are extremely rare, so a real shtf scenario is not really in near sight if you ask me.

Power outage? Okay but we don’t have an arms culture like the US, so I don’t believe that a riot scenario like we saw during Hurricane Katrina is likely either. Another aspect that reduces risk during a shtf situation is that population density is very low. Even the cities are quite small compared to the rest of the world. Also people here are normally quite accustomed to both the climate and nature in general. And poverty is also not as extreme as it is in other places. Okay I bring warm clothes for whenever I drive my car long distance during winter and stuff like that, but other than that I don’t see the need for prepping.

So why would you prepare anyway?
Well first of all; the world is changing – fast! And the life we have come to take for granted, is not laid out for us anymore. So here are a few scenarios that I could think of as likely enough to maybe prepare for. Please comment if you can think of others.

1. War / Terrorist Attack:
Russia is rattling the saber again, the prospect of a new cold war is lurking. And the nuclear threat is all time present. Scandinavia’s growing military presence throughout the world has also led to several terrorist attacks being attempted on Scandinavian ground. These attempts are very likely to grow.

2. Government break down.
Scandinavians have become so accustomed to living in peace that they can’t even imagine that their societies could fall apart. They take democracy and peace for granted. But many extremists are waiting to get a shot at it. Both left and right wing extremists, religious extremists, but even more likely, it could be inequality in society leading to a breakdown. Although the Scandinavian countries have a fairly equal distribution of wealth, the gap between rich and poor is growing and so is the gap between the politicians and the population. People’s freedom is continuingly being limited with new laws and technology.

3. Disease outbreak
The possibility of virus outbreak like we are seeing in Africa these days is likely. The Ebola outbreak has the potential to spread throughout Europe actually. But other outbreaks are lurking, such as the antibiotic resistant bacteria MRSA that is growing in numbers in Denmark.

4. Solar flare – EMP
This is a subject that is being discussed vigorously in prepper forums around the world, and one that Scandinavians can’t consider themselves free from.

5. Asteroid collision
Like the solar flare – this is also something Scandinavians can’t consider themselves free from. However if it happened I’m wondering, could you really prepare for it?

6. Climate change
The recent 3 years have shown that the climate is changing fast in Scandinavia (too). We are seeing way more cloudbursts, flooding and more.

With all this in mind, here is my conclusion:
The likeliness of any of these scenarios becoming a threat to me is much lower than the risk of me being run down by a car on my way to work, the risk of our house being struck by a lightening or me being struck by an illness. And I don’t prepare for these scenarios either because it wouldn’t matter if I did. Just like I don’t believe I can really increase my odss of surviving by preparing for any of the 6 scenarios above. Half of them (1, 4 and 5) would be pointless preparing for. Atomic bombs today are much more powerful than they were years back, and 4 and especially 5 are likely to wipe out all life forever on planet Earth anyway. The other half (2, 3 and 6) are scenarios that are developing over time. So you don’t need to be stockpiling food and drinking water for those scenarios. You just need to know when to g.t.f.o.o.d.

Let me know your thoughts – until then I will stick with bushcrafting and survival skills :)

17 sep 2014

Poverty is a state of SHTF

by | posted in: Prepping, SHTF, Survival | 0

What happens when the middleclass disappears? And how do you plan for it?

It is a rather well documented tendency that the middleclass is disappearing from society throughout the western countries. And especially in the US. People are getting poorer. Depending on the level of poverty we will see, it will undoubtedly call for survival skills of some kind.

A lot of factors play a role in this scenario, but I think it is fair to say that it is a very realistic SHTF scenario. It may not be something that will strike suddenly, but more likely something that will develop gradually over time as it already is in many places.

Jaron Lanier, a digital visionary says: “the Web kills jobs, wealth – even democracy”. Is he right? Is it the beginning of a society breakdown that we’re experiencing? Or is it the beginning of a new economy? One thing is for sure, jobs as we know them are disappearing. The big question is: What will replace them? And how do you prepare for a scenario like this?

 

Kodak_Tower_Commercial_Street

“Kodak employed 140,000 people. Instagram, 13.”

“At the height of its power, Kodak employed more than 140,000 people and was worth $28 billion. They even invented the first digital camera. But today Kodak is bankrupt, and the new face of digital photography has become Instagram. When Instagram was sold to Facebook for a billion dollars in 2012, it employed only 13 people. Where did all those jobs disappear? And what happened to the wealth that all those middle-class jobs created?” Jaron Lanier says.

http://www.salon.com/2013/05/12/jaron_lanier_the_internet_destroyed_the_middle_class/

 

 

 

Photo redistributed under creative commons license from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastman_Kodak#mediaviewer/File:Kodak_Tower_Commercial_Street.JPG