Category Archives: Emergency Preps

Anything that can be thought of as preparedness or preparedness related.

Sheriff Says to Fight Back

by Woodsbum

For those that don’t watch the news, there have been some really nasty things going on as of late. Terrorist islamic asshats have been killing people on American soil more and more now. There was a piece of shit that walked into a bar frequented by homosexuals and opened fire. He killed 49 and wounded 53. Now our own government is playing down the islamic connection between this jackass during his 911 call where he claimed responsibility.

Can you believe we are now living in a country where the Department of Justice and the White House downplay terrorist actions to make it easier to shift blame?

Here is an interesting video from a Sheriff where he basically tells people that it is time to start fighting back instead of constantly being victims.

I try really hard to be as unbiased as possible when I post things, unlike the media and White House. We are getting to the point in our country’s history where the tipping point between government control is going to overthrow citizen’s rights. There has got to be an end to this progressive, oppressive agenda. I just want to be left alone to spend time with my family, do things outdoors and live my life in a quiet and LEFT THE HELL ALONE manner.

Hopefully, something will shift the power away from these greedy bastards in office and allow Americans to no longer be slaves to politicians’ personal agendas.

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The Lost Art of Cut Shells

by Woodsbum

Back before slugs were produced, people had to improvise a bit. What they came up with was a great way to use bird shot and make it operate as though it was a slug. Watch the video:

If you watched this to the end you can see how the entire hull shoots out the barrel and keeps the shot together until it comes in contact with the target. As it was explained in the video, you have essentially created a 70mm Glaser shell.

As you can probably imagine, these would fire best out of a break action shotgun and would probably not feed too well. I wonder if some tape would hold the shell together long enough to feed through a pump, but powder escaping the shell would be a concern.

I can definitely see this as a great self/bear defense round in a coach gun and now wonder if I should consider getting one for just this purpose. This is quite ingenious, however. Little tricks like this make me quite happy.

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Making Black Powder

by Woodsbum

I was messing around online about burn rates of black powder and came across this video. Supposedly, according to this guy, in Florida it is legal to make your own black powder. I was under the impression that it was illegal to make your own black powder so I will have to do some serious investigation on this. Either way, this guy has a fairly decent video on the process.

Here is another video on the process. This guy’s use of the strainer really shows how it is granulated.

This last video is really nice because he explains what the dextrin is and he shares information on the ball tumbler.

I will reiterate that I am none too sure how legal it is to make your own black powder. From what I have seen, this is restricted by the BATFE guys. I find it interesting that these people are sitting here in full view of the camera making it if it were illegal, however.

*****************UPDATE***********************

I found several links and pages where it is supposedly LEGAL to make small quantities of black powder for your own use. You cannot give or sell it to someone else unless you have a special license and there are some restrictions based upon state/county/city ordinances. This particular link actually has a bit of summarized information on it, but I would suggest you check your local and state laws before you start buying components.

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PSA – Gun Cleaning

by Woodsbum

Consider this post to be a PSA (Public Service Announcement) about cleaning your guns:

This last weekend I finally got motivated and decided to do some gun cleaning and maintenance. I started off with my AR 15 platforms and as things went along, my mountain of work escalated. Let me explain a bit more in detail.

In field stripping all our AR 15’s, I found that there was an extreme amount of build up of carbon especially on the BCG. It was so nasty that even after scrubbing for about 15 minutes, I really was getting nowhere. In the end I was so annoyed that I disassembled the BCG and just tossed them into my ultrasonic cleaner. It took two 30 minute soaks with heat to get the carbon to finally release its hold. I also found that I had to soak the receiver and chamber in Hoppes 9 for about an hour to get the gunk to release from there as well. The caked on carbon had to have been from the reloads I got from someone. These reloads were not as accurate as I prefer and I noticed more sludge on the cases after they were fired, so I will just blame that for now. The real story is that these things were dirtier than I have ever seen an AR 15 or M 16 get, even after shooting blanks. Really, it was horrible.

Once these were cleaned up and looking less embarrassing I moved along to other firearms. Interesting enough, my S&W 629 .44 Mag was also quite dirty. That took a long while to get cleaned up and all the residue off the cylinders.

As time went along and more and more hours were dedicated to this project, I finally pulled out my new Mosin Nagant build and decided to clean up the barrel and action to make it all pretty. I took 600 grit emory cloth and used it to get rid of all the rust, dings and smooth out the worst of the machine marks. Once everything was cleaned up and smoothed over I blued the barrel, action and bolt assembly. It really made the whole thing look pretty good. Although I didn’t take pictures, you will see some later on when I got to the hills to shoot again. The rifle went from “meh” to “ahh.”

Another firearm that I took some time with was my Ruger Single Six. The first and last time I took this old pistol out I noticed that it was shaving copper and lead off the bullets when fired. It actually was doing it on all sided of the forcing cone so I spent quite a bit of time scrubbing years and years of neglect away. The first couple rounds with the Hoppes left several paper towels just soaked in black goo. It was quite disgusting to see how badly this pistol had been treated over the years. When I finally got done I had been forced to rotate 3 different cleaning brushes through my ultrasonic to clean them back up for use. Sometime in the near future I will be sending this back to Ruger to get a spa treatment, outfitted with a transfer bar and get the second cylinder so I have both the mag and lr as options.

I even took the time to rip the VZ25 BRNO 8 mm I acquired all the way down to parade rest and remove all the years of neglect from it. At that time I also replaced the magazine spring and found out that I will need to replace the top section of wood on the stock. It seems to be burned around the receiver and is very dried out and crumbling up to the band.

The overall process for my firearms took almost 7 hours of straight scrubbing and cleaning. It was very nice to get everything back up and into a respectable level of maintenance.

Seeing as how I billed this as a public service announcement, I will add a couple of important things that you should be aware of and not take for granted like I tend to:

  1. Used guns NEVER come clean.
  2. Used military guns come dirtier yet and you have to get the grime of war off them, it seems.
  3. Fine emory cloth and gun blue is your friend in removing surface rust here in the land of slugs and mold.
  4. Don’t be a lazy ass like me. Do your gun maintenance a little at a time rather than needing a full day to complete it.

Good luck everyone. I will probably do another round of cleaning in a month or two just to make sure I got everything properly cleaned and maintained. Consider this part of your own Spring Cleaning regiment.

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EMP and HAM Radios

by Woodsbum

This forum post was sent to me the other day. It covers the science behind EMP and Ham radios. The way that it is presented and all the science behind it are actually quite well presented.

This link is from a post on AR15.com.

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So a whole lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth has occurred lately over in prepper land about EMP. I attribute this mainly due to survivalist authors looking for some easy national/global catastrophe scenario to hook into without really having much if any understanding of it. I won’t criticize specific books as some are more accurate than others, but the net result is there is a TON of disinformation out there on EMP IMO.

I am not an expert, but I am literate and do have a few letters after my name and I am an amateur radio operator with a basic understanding of physics and electronics. There are likely people on this very forum that know a shitload more about this than I do, but since no one has stepped forward to do this I’ll take a stab at it, and if those knowledgeable individuals want to correct anything I post along the way please do so. My main source of information is the following document prepared at ORNL which I will reference, since they are the experts, not me.

Big long detailed report by actual experts

So to start with:

We are talking about a very specific phenomenon known as E1 HEMP which is generated in the first few nano-seconds of a nuclear blast. This will generate a large electromagnetic field over a wide frequency range, but the worst from about 1mhz or less to about 1ghz where it really starts to drop off (Page 2-7). It is also very similar to a what happens during a lightning strike (which is actually more powerful) so a lot of measures that help with lightning strikes can also help with E1 HEMP.

One thing to clear up E1 HEMP is mostly yield independent. You don’t need a huge nuclear device to generate it, the examples in the book are 500kt (2-11).

What determines the coverage of an EMP is its height above ground, obviously the higher it is the more it affects. However the higher it is the weaker it is. The “optimal” height above ground is typically less than 100km, in their example 75km is optimal. Total coverage at that height is about 800-1000km (2-14). So it’s a fairly large are, but not the whole US by any stretch of the imagination. Also, what isn’t covered by any of the models used in the study are local terrain effects, like shadowing or reflection. These will be important locally however. So if you are in a valley and “can’t” see the nuke at 75km high, you will have some protection.

The next thing to get an idea of is how “strong” the E1 HEMP is. As with any sort of electromagnetic phenomenon it follows the inverse square law. So that means it gets weaker the further you are away from it very quickly. For comparison they use an EM field generated by a FM radio station for comparison. At 1 mile from 10KW transmitter, the peak field is .68V/m, a peak field at ground zero (directly below the nuke) will be 50,000 kV/m (its a lot), however since this falls off very rapidly with distance, average exposure will be 6.21 Kv/m (still a lot, but its not 50,000 Kv). The example states that a 10cm conductor at ground zero (50,000kV) will have an induced current of 5kV. So using the 6.21 kV average field that same conductor will have an induced charge of 621 Volts (2-35).
You can see this effect on their charts 2-29. If you have the nuke over Omaha, it F’s up Omaha, but the effects near Chicago, Denver, or Dallas are fairly minimal only .5% of the energy in the 10-100mhz range makes it out that far.

I mentioned frequencies earlier and that is both significant and important. The highest energy range is 1-10mhz. So as HAMS you should understand that means it covers the 160-30m bands the most and then drops off as it approaches UHF frequencies. It’s the wavelength that’s the concern. So most of the energy in the E1 HEMP will want to couple to things of a similar wavelength just like a radio antenna. So its typically things like cabling attached to devices (antennas, power cables etc.) that is the major concern (2-35) So unplugging your radio from the antenna is a very good idea if you are worried about this (2-38). If the device is powered chances of damage are higher (2-36), there are also other post nuclear blast effects, TREE effects (radiation) that can also damage electronics but these aren’t E1 HEMP.
When it comes to shielding against EMP, there are a lot of things discussed, but how E1 HEMP couples to things is very important and more importantly difficult to predict (2-37).

So things that EMP will couple very well to are going to be metallic things that are 30 meters long (10mhz) and longer. So power lines, telephone lines, railroad tracks and the like. Most of the report is focused on what exactly is going to happen to the electrical grid and telecommunications, because that’s where the largest vulnerability is (2-45). And ironically enough high voltage power lines aren’t actually super problematic since they are designed to withstand lightning strikes, and EMP coupling doesn’t really scale past 1km or so.

Peak current on a power line.

Peak currents on a 5M long vertical antenna (below)

EMP and HAMs
What about the stuff you as HAM care about, a radio for example… First of all many devices, and especially radios are shielded against EMI already (2-44), which isn’t exactly the same as E1 HEMP, but it can help, there are often RF shielded modules in most radios. As I mentioned earlier, the best thing to do is not have the radio connected to the antenna when not in use, and I would argue have the antenna feedline grounded. In fact there is a huge amount of similarity between E1 HEMP and lightning strikes, so all that stuff the AARL tells you to do when constructing a shack is pretty useful when it comes to E1 HEMP.
There is a lot written about faraday cages Wiki, but I think this must be placed in the context of the frequency range you are talking about (look, they have big ass holes sometimes). The principle of waveguide cutoffs is a good one to consider (2-42), your faraday cage, and lets use the example of a metal trashcan, is probably a good and cheap EMP defense, first off its much smaller than 30m, so that big pulse isn’t going to couple to it too well, but some of the energy will be at the 1m wavelength, but that’s pretty far down the slope of the energy curve so there will be some coupling. Well what about holes or small gaps in the trashcan, yes it helps not to have them, but looking at the frequencies that will get through a 1mm gap is a 300GHZ, well above the energy generated by E1 HEMP which mostly drops to zero by 1GHZ or 300mm or about 11 inches. Also the trashcan is made of relatively (thick) metal which it needs to not be permeable i.e. skin depth (2-40) and why I would seriously doubt that ESD bags marketed for the purpose would actually be effective (no skin depth).

Myths
Finally there is a “myths” section in the very last appendix that will likely be helpful.
Cars dying: small fraction is possible (turns out your car will act as faraday cage if its made of metal) and cars are EMI shielded
Wristwatch dying: Too small to be affected by E1 HEMP.
Electronic devices that are turned off will likely fare better (true)
Conductors. Shorter is better since it will couple less with the EMP.

Conclusions
So, is EMP a viable existential threat? And the answer I think, is that its really hard to say. I think the idea of a 1 bomb EMP taking out the US is pretty non-sensical. However a 1 bomb scenario could still do significant damage to localized areas i.e. a large metro area, or for example the northeast united states. And as is mentioned in the report, EMP is largely yield independent, so even a fairly reasonable 500kt weapon could do a lot of damage. A bomb detonated above say NYC would likely take out Boston, NJ, DC etc. and the associated infrastructure. That being said, a coordinated strike involving several warheads detonated roughly around the same time could in fact take out most of the US power grid. As mentioned in the report the primary vulnerability is the power grid and telecom systems, since of course antennas will be connected to radios when the bombs go off. Smaller electronic devices are primarily vulnerable if they are plugged in at the time since the power cords can couple to the EMP and produce high voltage. Protection against EMP is a faraday cage, and probably the cheapest and best option IMO would be the famous metal trashcan example. Alternately if you need something smaller an Ammo Can would probably work just as well.

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This guy really does do a great job explaining how EMPs will affect electronics and HAM radios. It actually makes me do some thinking about how I should plan for possible EMPs for such equipment as my motorcycles and my truck. Since EMPs are not just isolated to high altitude nuke blasts, preparing for such phenomenon is probably not the worst idea. Considering how bad my luck is I should be planning for a lightening strike that melts the ECM in my old Dodge. I could probably get enough parts from the junk yard to cover me for less than $200.

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