ESEE-3 Attached to SpecOps T.H.E. Pack

Dude on Bladeforums wanted to see how a ESEE Cutlery MOLLE Attachment looks on a pack.

The sheath has a MOLLE backing attachment.

The pack is a bit sagging because I just unpacked it after the camping trip the other day and I'm in transition to morph it back into emergency gear for Wintertime for use in the car.

More Lessons Learned...

Other lessons learned on this simple camping trip include...

"Hefty" and "Ziplok" Brand sealable containers (not bags but the tupperware-like containers) are not to be trusted. They are a tempting purchase and okay for home use but for use in a cooler that might get tilted or otherwise jostled around being moved in and out of a vehicle, etc., not too good.

Raccoons like to lick the remnants of Starbuck's Instant Coffee from the bottom of a metal canteen cup at 3:30 A.M. The raccoon's tongue leaves a resounding "DING!" on a metal cup - SLUUUURP-DING!, yeah, just like that.

Petzl Headlamps are not just for spelunkers, miners and crazy gynecologists, they are absolutely invaluable for camping, hiking and general outdoors activities. I resisted them for years because they looked more than a little dorky and also looked uncomfortable. Now that we have advanced LED technology, you can get one of these excellent little headlamps for about $40.00 and they run on three "AAA" batteries for hours and hours. And hours and hours...

They are so comfortable that you will forget you have one of them on your forehead. Mine has a high and low setting as well as strobe and then has a red LED with two settings, on and strobe. Throw in a low battery indicator light and you have a great little package that once you use a few times, you will not want to be without.

SO! Here is to my Petzl Tikka Plus 2 LED Headlamp! One of the best pieces of gear I have ever purchased. More on flashlights to come...soon...I had all of them out there with me testing them out!

ESEE Cutlery once again comes through with my whittling desires and food preparation and a host of other duties. The Izula is just an outstanding little knife to hang around your neck when camping and, like the Petzl headlamp, once you carry one around, you will find it a comfortable and very, very valuable companion to have. The H.E.S.T. and ESEE-3 are also must-have items for people who like rugged cutlery that performs great.

I didn't clean three dozen squirrels and a cottontail with them, I didn't gut a squalus with it. Much more mundane stuff but I hope to put them to good use on some fish and small game in the future.

As I mentioned in the post below, the ground does get harder every year.

Thermarest pads are excellent.

The Eureka(!) USMC "Combat" Tent is the best tent I have ever owned, hands down.

Dinty Moore Beef Stew, cooked right in the can over an open fire and lifted out with pliers, is still one of the greatest things in the world and I actively encourage you to partake of some as soon as you can.

Peace and Tranquility

Man, who can beat the bliss of sitting next to a campfire on a chilly night, cooking and eating food cooked over it...sleeping outside. As Ken has reminded me, and it has held very true, the ground seems to get harder every year. At 42, the ground is pretty hard for me! But there is nothing like it really. I can still sleep well on a Thermarest Pad, so, I'm going to keep doing it for as long as I can.

I have a neighbor and we were talking about camping a little bit and he said, "Man, I had enough of that shit in the Marine Corps, practicing to be homeless..."

Another acquaintance remarked, "'Roughing it' to me is a hotel with no room service..."

My Dad hunted the week after Thanksgiving, camped in a tent, every year until he was about 50 years old. I think he finally bought a camper in 1975 and said he had enough of the tent in the late Autumn / early Winter.

I remember back to 1990 through about 1994, I had a pickup truck and I would just take off wherever I wanted to on my days off. A nasty USGI sleeping mat and a USGI mummy bag and a poncho liner, too, and I was off! I had a tent but sometimes I would just stretch a tarp across the bed of the pickup truck, rig it up so that if it rained I would not get wet then I would peel back half of it and sleep under the stars. A nice fire and a can of Dinty Moore Beef Stew is generally all that is required for a young man to have a good time under those conditions.

I like surplus military gear, "USGI" (United States Government Issue for those that don't know...) gear is good gear, from the lowly and brilliant P-38 can opener to the mummy bags and mess kits...and that mess kit spoon which you could almost use as a shovel...there is a lot of good stuff to be had from The Quartermaster!

The USGI Poncho Liner of old, along with the even older military wool blankets, is still a favorite piece of gear. It is so lightweight. You can roll it up until it is nothing and it's a really great, warm piece of gear. My Eureka(!) USMC "Combat" Tent is the best tent I have ever owned but it would be a bit heavy to carry on some type of extended hiking trip. Although you could split it up between two or three people and everything is just fine.

Here are some more pictures of the last trip for you to look at. Hot fire, tent, scenery...peace and quiet. I need more of this. I think I am going to make The Halloween Camping Trip a Tradition now. SAMHAIN!

Lessons Learned...

Lessons Learned from a simple two-night camping trip.

A regular sized whole chicken, clean any gizzard/heart/liver package or clump out of the center of it, rinse it out. Place that in a three layer bundle of the Reynold's Brand Heavy Duty Aluminum Foil that is marked for use on grills. It's not regular Reynold's Brand Foil. One-quarter to one-third stick of butter on it, spice it up as desired and wrap it up. Wrap the first layer, just folding the ends over the top, then repeat for the second layer and then the third.

Have a very hot fire for 2-3 hours so you have a good bed of coals. Then put more wood on one side of the fire to keep it going and place the aluminum package of wholesome goodness on the coals.

Don't be alarmed by all of the sizzling and think it is going to burn, it's not.

Using a pair of heavy duty work gloves, every 30 minutes, rotate the chicken a half turn so the tail takes the place of the head area, repeat until you are about at the halfway mark (2.5 hours overall) then flip the chicken upside down, the top will be on the bottom. Then 30 minutes later, rotate as before by picking it up and rotate so the tail area replaces the head area, or vice-versa.

When you flip it upside down, liquified chicken fats and the small amount of butter will seep through your three different folds and flames will gather at that area and burn hotter, you will see this plainly. Don't panic! Everything is as it should be.

Right at about the two and a half hour mark, you should be good to go! Pull it back from the flame area and off of what will now be the extremely hot ash bed that was once glowing coals and let it sit back there for about 20-30 minutes.

Put it some place safe and open it up!

Here are some pictures to give you an idea of position in the fire area, etc.

In one of the pictures, you will see a single chicken in foil pulled back out of the hot ash and coal bed and away from the fire while the other one is being pulled apart at a table. The pictures should show the positioning and type of fire, etc., clearly.

While I Motivate Myself To Write More...

Don't forget to scroll down and read the older posts. 8-)

A Modern Rendition of The Classic OSS Escape Aid

Made by Mickey Yurco, Police Officer and Custom Knifemaker.

Mickey doesn't make the hollowed out coin, I just thought I would add that in for a bit of flavor. Interestingly, U-2 Spy Plane Pilot Francis Gary Powers is reported to have carried a hollowed out silver dollar with a neurotoxin-treated stick pin for committing suicide to avoid capture by enemy forces. Obviously he didn't utilize it.

Here is a shout out for Jenkins, Kentucky and Pound, Virginia, SAL-OOT!

Hollowed out coins were also used for smuggling microdot and other interesting espionage activities.

Getting back to what Mickey does make, the Kennedy (Silver) Half Dollar is an excellent modern day rendition of the classic OSS Coin Knife.

They are $100.00 each, a high-quality item and, as Mickey reminds me, you get a $1.00 instant rebate on the dollar coins and a fifty-cent rebate on the halves.

It really is a quality item.

Two Watches and a couple other things...

Yeah! Since Image Shack is on the fritz...guess what?

Three Compasses

Someone wanted to see my Military (genuine, Swiss-made) Silva.

When you put that big old USGI Waltham Lensatic up next to the Recta DP-2 and the Type 3 Silva, they try to go their separate ways. (joke)

America In Survival Mode...

Interesting read...to say the least...

America In Survival Mode by Kilburn Hall.

Making Emergency Shelters out of pallets...and more...

Looks like an interesting little blog.

Tiny Pallet House Dot Com.

How much are your coins worth?

Measuring the intrinsic metal value of coins from around the world and updated daily - "Coinflation.Com."

McCarthy's "Road" coming soon to a neighborhood near you?

I am not saying that I believe this is going to happen. I found the link over on James Keating's wonderful site, MAAJAK WORLD. It is well worth a read, however. You just never know. I mean, the people at Pompeii didn't know when there last day on the planet was going to be, either, now did they? It wasn't the end of the world, but it was the end of their world.

British Petroleum and The World Killing Event.

I Got A Rock...

Man...

The (Verizon) Casio G'zOne "ROCK."

The (Verizon) Casio G'zOne "ROCK."

The features I happen to like:

Mil-Spec on shock and vibration resistance, water and dust resistance, immersion in water, exposure to salt fog and extremes of altitude, high and low temperatures and solar radiation.

Bluetooth compatible
Camera
Music/MP3 Player
Removable Memory / Micro SD Card
Speakerphone w/ dedicated speakerphone key
Mil-Spec requirements for exposure to the elements and abuse
Emergency Flashlight
Earth Compass
Walking (Pace) Counter
Thermometer
Tides
Sunrise and Sunset
Astro Calendar
Speech recognition w/dedicated voice dial key & Voice commands
Alarm clock
calculator
calendar
stop watch
Phonebook / 500 entries with multiple contacts
Battery and Data/Charging Port Covers have gaskets!

The Casio ROCK is a clamshell/flip phone that also has Push To Talk (PTT) capability...which I have absolutely no desire to have!

Interesting though, Casio is a cool company and they did something really neat with that PTT button if you do not have the PTT service on the phone. Most companies would just have that button there, doing nothing. Casio did it right, you can assign that red PTT button as a hot key to some other feature on the phone of your choice. This is wonderful as I have the MP3 Player on tap via this red hot key so the Black Sabbath is only a touch away.

Being a clamshell/flip phone/communicator, this one has a neat switchblade feature. There is a coil spring in the internal area of the hinge and when you push a silver button on the side of the hinge, VOILA! it opens right up for you!

It can also be opened manually in typical drone mode.

Another hot key on the bottom of the phone is for all of the Casio G'zOne G'zGear features such as the Earth Compass and Thermometer, etc.

I am quite pleased with it so far. It is my first departure from Motorola. My first phone was a Motorola E815 and then after two years I "upgraded" to a Motorola Razor...some would say that was a step down...even though I have stepped away from the Razor, I still cannot decide if I ever really liked that phone.

This Casio Rock Thing? Yes...it is to be enjoyed...so far.

The MP3 Player, playing it with the speakerphone on is actually a cool little device!

Survival Kit Contents from Salvaged Aircraft

A friend of mine works for an aircraft salvage company. He was kind enough to send me a few items that were still in good condition in an otherwise ruined survival kit from an aeroplane.

The compass is an all-but-exact copy of a Brunton Trailbuster compass.

The whistle is very flat and suitably annoying to be acceptable as a survival whistle.

The snare wire is quite stiff. It's as stiff as steel but appears to be anodized aluminum...

The pencil is...well, it's a pencil!

A small instruction sheet for the compass and a decent little pamphlet of survival instructions and "mirror" inserts in the center of the book that appear to be Mylar, used as an improvised signal mirror.

The cord on the whistle appears to be quite tough and could serve other purposes.

The pocketknife is quite a find! It's basically a small version of the classic "Hobo" Knife. Folding Hobo Knives are generally quite large, this one is a great little pocketknife made by Colonial.

Knife blade, can opener, fork and spoon, great little knife! Not quite the quality of Victorinox...

New Survival Food - Emergency Ration Bar

They taste pretty good, too! Very Earthy and wholesome tasting. Here is The Bible Bar next to a full-size MetRx Bar, Blueberry Crisp Clif Bar and a package of Raspberry Gel Blasts from PowerBar...just for size comparison.

"There's something about a train that's magic..."

Old AMTRAK commercial! What a jingle!

This entry is about freights and not passenger trains. It is also about O.T.T. which stands for, "Old Time Tough."

Enjoy.

There is a massive amount of information to be found on the "North Bank Fred" website. You can find it here.

Mainstay Rations

This is a very simple review indeed. The question is, if you had to eat this type of "Survival Ration," would it be an unpleasant experience for you and your family? The second part of that question is, how about young children who are picky eaters?

This ration is almost too good to be true. The Mainstay Survival Rations actually taste good, they taste great, actually. I think they taste like a slightly weakened Archway Lemon Frosted Cookie, my Wife does not think they even taste that "lemony" but she considers the individual portions to be large, shortbread cookies, after reading the ingredients information on the package and tasting them.

In an emergency, anyone can suffer from more than a little anxiety, especially children. Having something tasty to eat instead of lightly-flavored cardboard should pick up even the most dour person's spirits for at least a few minutes, right?

True to the company's claims, they do not make you thirsty, another thing that amazed me.

These rations are well worth the price. They are an incredible value.

The manufacturer sells these packs of Mainstay 3600 bars, each package has 9 individual bars in it and each bar is 400 calories. A case is ten (10) of these packs. They sell them for just under $50.00 per case. It doesn't take a mathematical genius to arrive at "$5.00 per pack."

Excellent price! You can really afford to put in a lot of these into your emergency food supply!

A word of caution now. At the risk of being considered a "liberal" or a "communist" or "anti-capitalist" or "anti - free market," I have to warn you that there are companies out there selling a case of ten of these packages for almost $150.00 Yes, you are reading that correctly.

I'm sorry if I offend some of my readers by saying this, but these people are scum. They take advantage of people, it's incredible.

The packaging is quite tough and should protect the rations for a long, long time. Also, when you open the rations, you can use the package for other survival tasks like carrying water or wild edibles like wild onions, garlic, black berries or mulberries.

Here is the generic description/information you can find out about Mainstay Rations online, on various websites that sell them.




Mainstay 3600

5 year Shelf Life

Non-Thirst Provoking

Withstands Temperatures of -40° F to 300°F (-40°C to 149°C)

Ready to Eat: Each package contains 9 pre-measured 400 calorie meals.

Individualized Portions eliminate the messy breaking-up that occurs with other bars

Allows for on-land emergency consumption in a high-stress active situation.

Contains no cholesterol or tropical oils.

Meets the US Coast Guard standards (160.046/23/0). It's new modern packaging even meets the stringent guidelines set by the Department of Defense (SOLAS 74/83).

Enriched with vitamins and minerals exceeding the RDA requirements.

Pleasant lemon flavor which appeals to everyone.

Mainstay™ is Kosher and it meets the dictates for Halal.

When disaster strikes, you will know where...

A most interesting website. Breaking, worldwide news on disasters...

Rite-in-the-Rain Paper, does it really work?

Yes it does! It's marvelous!

So, I decided to try a few different writing instruments.

A PILOT Razor Point - total failure. It did not want to stick to this paper and when I placed the paper under the bathroom faucet, it washed the ink off as if it were dirt on the paper.

A PILOT G2 Gel Ink Pen, which happens to be my favorite pen when I have to do a lot of writing. It did not want to write on this paper but as you can see from the photographs, it did not wash off the paper as the other PILOT brand pen ink did.

Pencil was, as expected, just fine.

Sanford Sharpies are just great markers. The top-most text in black and blue Sharpie was five to six minutes old (dried), approximately, when placed in the sink. The lower black and blue text was under two minutes old when placed under the water.

I could not believe it! It is the paper because Sanford Sharpies will smudge on a host of papers and boxes, etc. Not on this stuff!

Then I deliberately tried to smudge the ink on the paper with my thumb, it didn't smear.

This excellent product line can be found here: Rite-In-The-Rain.

Huevos Rancheros Uno

My El Cheapo-Norte Americano Huevos Rancheros

However many eggs you wish to cook and however you wish to cook them. I prefer scrambled.

One (1) can of Mild, Original or Extra Hot - RO-TEL.

Three (3) cans of Del Monte sliced (pre cooked) potatoes or Hanover (whole, small) New Potatoes.

One (1) Chorizo per person.

Find a can opener or you will thtarve!

You desperately need a can opener to open the RO-TEL and canned potatoes.

If you don't have the can opener, you will thtarve...errah, you'll starve.

Or you will have to pound the can on the ground or perhaps use an axe or hatchet to open the can.

It's easier to use a P-38 Can Opener or a Camillus "Demo" Knife or Cub/Boy/Girl Scout (Camillus) Knife.

Or, you could make a deal with the mouse, see if that works. It usually doesn't work and results in being electrocuted when you stick your hand in the wall through the mousehole or all of your hair being blasted off of you when you try to blow the mouse up. If you are a duck, you will usually have your bill spun around or have to pick it up.

Huevos Rancheros Dos

Scramble your eggs.

Fry the potatoes and add black pepper, garlic powder and onion powder to taste. Just use a little bit of butter.

Fry the Chorizo.

On the plate, add Ken's Cajun Seasoning. Oh, you don't have any, do you? That's a shame!

Survival Product

I picked up a container of this Instant Chicken Soup, very good!

If I remember correctly, it was about $5.99 and the container lists 67 servings.

Drawbacks? It has MSG in it, so if you are sensitive to that chemical, you need to avoid this or use it minimally.

If I eat at the wrong Chinese Food Carryout, my ears will look like they are ready to burst into flames, some people end up in the emergency room over MSG.

I had one cup of this instant soup last night and a cup about 15 minutes ago, don't feel bad at all. I guess the Chinese Food Carryouts really pile the MSG on...

OSEM Chicken Consomme / Instant Soup

Ingredients: Salt, Corn Starch, Sugar, Dextrose, Spices, Flavor Enhancers (Monosodium Glutamate, Disodium Inosinate, Disodium Guanylate), Maltodextrin, Hydrogenated Palm Oil, Dehydrated Onions, Yeast Extract.

Now, say you have your little alcohol stove made from a soda or beer can, you have you some HEET (Methyl Alcohol) and you have your steel cup and some water and a package of this instant chicken soup. You're cold and you're trying to get warm...and this will go a long way towards making that a reality.

Gerald Celente's Article on Neo-Survivalism

Posted with the permission of Gerald Celente: Trends Research - Gerald Celente - Neo-Survivalism PDF - Click here to download or view.

Listerine

I'm always on the lookout for multiple use items, I guess we will have to stock up on Listerine at Casa de Rariko.

Six Alternate Uses for Listerine