Survival Firearms - AK-47/AKM Accessories

For those of you with Kalashnikov's (AK-47 or AKM variants), US P.A.L.M. which is a division of SGC Global Industries is producing some very good enhancements and accessories.

Visit U.S. P.A.L.M. at http://www.us-palm.com/


One of U.S. P.A.L.M.'s newest products is a polymer 30 round AK Magazine, called the AK30.



AK30

This new 30 round magazine fits all AK-47 rifles that use detachable double-stack magazines. The AK30 is constructed of proprietary aerospace polymers developed by Tango Down. The AK30 sets itself apart from other polymer magazines with its purpose-built design and multiple unique features:

No Floor Plate. By eliminating the removable floor plate and bonding the body and end-cap produces a very strong magazine. There is a semi-floating follower that is slotted to allow for easy magazine cleaning. Just dunk the magazine in hot soapy water, rinse and invert to drain. Dry contamination easily flows free through the vented follower design.

Magazine Spring. The AK30 features a chromium-silicon spring that is heat treated, stress relieved and US Mil Spec corrosion resistant coated. Life expectancy for this spring is 100,000+ cycles.

Internal stainless cage. The locking surfaces are reinforced by a stainless steel cage that has been molded into the entire top of the magazine to further ensure reliability for years of trouble free service.

External. This magazine has aggressive ridges on the front and rear allow a positive purchase when seating the AK30 into the rifle. The deep waffle pattern on the magazine sides assist in rapid extraction from magazine pouches, and positive manipulation.

Upon shooting several magazines, we discerned no discernible wear on the surfaces bearing on the magazine. Although we love P-Mag's for our M-4's, we cannot say the same about them.


AK ATTACK RACK

U.S. P.A.L.M. also makes an AK Assault Chest Rig, called the AK Attack Rack.  This ain;t your momma's chest rig,......we have not got our hands on this yet, but appears to be worth looking at for anyone who owns an AK or AKM and has a hard time finding a rig for their 30 round magazines.

Urban Survival - Questions on Growing Crops

I guess that in this period of rising food costs, people (and not just survivalists) are growing crops on their property. Most of the readers of this site are sure to be familiar with the book "Square Foot Gardening" which is a great resource for efficiently growing vegetables in small plots.

I have receive a couple of e-mails asking me questions like: "what are you growing"; "what I recommended for certain climates or growing latitudes"; "how much room do I have to grow vegetables and what do I do to make the best use of the space as possible", and some other questions as well.

If you are reading this site then you are most probably prepping to survive a collapse,..be it an economic collapse, or some sort of terrorist event or anything that makes surviving very difficult without prior planning and preparation. I have been growing vegetables in my suburban location every year for the past five years for several purposes: 1 - it's cheap to do and good to practice growing crops even when you don't really need them; and 2 - in case an unexpected collapse hits then I have a jump start on growing vegetables.

In my backyard I am currently growing 6 Squash plants, 8 Cucumbers plants, 2 rows of Green Beans each six feet long, 2 rows of Corn each six feet long and 1 row of Onions in plant beds alongside my rock wall. I am now about out of space alongside my wall, as I also have a couple dwarf fruit trees, from which the Apricot trees are producing.

I also have a couple of bucket containers with squash and grapes in them and am planning on doing some square container gardening in a week or two, planting some egg plant, more squash, more onions and maybe some carrots or beets.

Every year I have included the "big three": Squash, Corn and Beans. This is the primary fare of first Pilgrims, taught to grow it from the local Indians they first made contact with.

I have lots of rice, macaroni, pinto and black beans stored. I plan on using the vegetables in different capacities to augment rice and pasta sort of like Jambalaya.

I use store bought hybrid and non-hybird seeds, saving my heirloom seed kits for when the SHTF. I have had good luck of any seed from Gurnseys and Ferry-Morse. Ferry-Morse, which should be available in your local Home Depot or Lowes, sells a 100% certified organic seeds that have a high percentage of sprouting.

I have some railroad ties used in my flower beds and landscaping. These are readily available not only to pull inside the house and use as small arms protection under the windows, but I can situate these in the back yard and turn my whole backyard into a survival garden. I keep some 1x4 inch boards in my garage to also use in this endeavor.

I have a green house kit, still in the box, and will get that up and running when the need to grow crops during the colder months becomes apparent.

So in summary I guess I saying that squash, corn, beans, cucumbers and onions are my mainstay crops. I think everyone needs to grow now to get those lessons learned. I think everyone also needs to think about how are they going to eat during the colder months. Use up all your stored foods? Better to learn to can or preserve what you grow and look into running a greenhouse. Last suggestion would be to buy the book "Square Foot Gardening" - this is a good asset to have in your survival bookshelf.....but read it before you need it.

Survival Chronicles of Jim - Chapter 24 Dry Run

I have been working on the Survival Preps upgrade that UrbanMan recommended I do over a month ago. I purchased more .22 LR, 12 gauge and Mosin-Nagant rounds and six collapsible one gallon water containers from Wal-Mart.

If you remember, UrbanMan told me to replace the basement door and put on better locks. Well, about two weeks ago I was downstairs moving things around and had the basement door open but the screen door closed. I noticed about 10 teenagers hanging out by the base of mountain I live next to. I watched them for a minute or so two and determined they were no threat so I went on abut my business, but no longer than maybe one minute later, I looked up and several of them were there at my screen door asking for water.

The fact that these teenagers close the distance to my door and the fact that the only thing between them and me if they intended bad things was a lousy screen door. I had the door replaced two days later. I have not installed a solar powered motion detecting light over this areas,....yet, but will here in a couple days, as well as get those battery powered motion alarms that UrbanMan told me to get from Radio Shack.

But the latest stunt that UrbanMan pulled on me was a call yesterday and he said: "Jim, the news just said that a metorite was heading to earth, and would impact in three hours twenty minutes (3h, 20m) from right now. It, with it's massive EMP, is projected to wipe out all electronics, computers and everything in the U.S. What are you doing to do?"

I said: "Are you for real? I'd go get my son at college. I think his car is still in the shop." UrbanMan replied: "After that, what? It will take you maybe 2 hours to get him and return. You have maybe one hour and 20 minutes to gathered up last minute supplies and material. What are you going to get?"

I realized this was a game,...bad word,....okay it was an exercise. UrbanMan said he would call back in 10 minutes. So I had 10 minutes to determine my plan. This is what I came up with:

Call my son and tell him to get ready for pickup, but to also go to the corner store and buy all the bottled cases of water and canned goods he would get on the credit card I have already given him for emergencies.

After I pick him up, we would return to the house but stop and buy as much water and canned goods as we can, primarily from Wal-Mart, but if Wal-Mart was too busy I would hit the local Family Dollar store just down the street. I would also load up boxed rice dishes, crackers such as Triscuits, Wheat Thins and Saltines, then stop at the local Chevron and fill up my car and empty gas cans I have in the garage. I would have liked to stop in at the sporting goods store of a gun shop and buy another gun, but I don't think I would have the time to make it home before the EMP hit.

UrbanMan called back and I told him my plan. He said "Jim, here's the deal,... ...when notified of an impending disasters, many people will panic,..some will sit still for awhile before they panic,...and some will resort to substantial mob rule...which will make last minute procurement a dangerous event. You still have not placed the intruder lights and alarms in your home, upped your first aid kit, nor bought a second pair of good boots. Trying to buy another or better gun or even ammunition, when everyone knows TEOTWAWKI is here, is probably too late. The purpose of this exercise was to determine what you need and make it a priority to procure now, instead of waiting until the last minute. You and everyone else are probably always going to use some of the last minute time to stockpile food and water. "

Point taken Urban Man,...I am not as prepared as I need to be.

Survival Preparation - Is the Army Preparing for Food Riots?

Much like the FEMA Camp issue, there are many people who believe that the U.S. Army (Active Duty) as opposed to National Guard, are preparing for deployment inside this country to respond to riots and anarchy such as what would be caused by food shortages or economic collapse.

I have been e-mailed reports that Army units are stockpiling riot control gear to include OC sprays, OC hand tossed munitions and projectile OC munitions.

I have also been told my other sources that the Army maintains one Brigade, around 3,500 soldiers, ready to deploy within the U.S. to effect crowd control/riot control.

There are many sources on-line with pictures and stories on Army units conducting riot control type training. The picture below is one that someone has sent me recently depicting Army soldiers training in Riot Control. Sometimes the storyline will talk about preparing for deployment to and for crowd control in active theaters (Iraq and Afghanistan). However, this does not make sense since this is a lose-lose situation for the U.S. not to mention the service members. The preferred method is to use soldiers and units from that country. So I am not convinced that Army is only doing riot control training for overseas deployments.

I have posted other articles on reported and alleged Government plans to prepare for large scale riots or disorder. My opinion is that it is probable the U.S. Government is prepared at some level to employ the military inside the U.S. However, I do not think the objective is as dark as some people make out. But everyone has to make up their own minds.

The article below is edited for length. The entire article can be read here:

Obama Orders Military To Prepare For Spring Food Riots

Posted by EU Times on Jan 13th, 2011

A grim report prepared by France’s General Directorate for External Security (DGSE) obtained by Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) states that president’s Obama and Sarkozy have “agreed in principal” to create a joint US-European military force to deal exclusively with a Global uprising expected this spring as our World runs out of food.

According to this report, Sarkozy, as head of the G-20 group of developed Nations, called for and received an emergency meeting with Obama this past Monday at the White House wherein he warned his American counterpart that the shock rise in food prices occurring due to an unprecedented series of disasters was threatening the stability of the entire World and could lead to the outbreak of Total Global War.

The fears of the French government over growing Global instability was realized this past week after food riots erupted in Algeria and Tunisia and left over 50 dead. So dire has the situation become in Tunisia that their government this morning rushed in massive amounts of troops and tanks to their capital city Tunis and instituted a Nationwide curfew in an order to quell the growing violence.

The United Nations, also, warned this past Friday that millions of people are now at risk after food prices hit their highest level ever as Global wheat stocks fell to 175.2 million tons from 196.7 million tons a year ago; Global corn stocks are said may be 127.3 million tons at the end of this season, compared with last month’s USDA outlook for 130 million tons; and Global soybean inventories will drop to 58.78 million tons at the end of this season, from 60.4 million tons a year earlier.

Robert Zoellick, president of the World Bank, further warned this past week that rising food prices are “a threat to global growth and social stability” as our World, for the first time in living memory, has been warned is just “one poor harvest away from chaos”.

Important to note about how dire the Global food situation has become is to understand the disasters that have befallen our World’s top wheat growing Nations this past year, and who in descending order are: China, India, United States, Russia, France, Canada, Germany, Ukraine, Australia and Pakistan.

Not only have the vast majority of our World’s top wheat producers been affected, but also one of the main grain producing regions on the Planet, South America, has been hit by disasters too where an historic drought has crippled Argentina and Bolivia, and Brazil, that regions largest Nation, has been hit with catastrophic floods that have killed nearly 400 people in the past few days alone.

Even the United States has been hit as a catastrophic winter has seen 49 of their 50 States covered by snow causing unprecedented damage to their crops in Florida due to freezing weather, and record setting rains destroying massive numbers of crops in their most important growing region of California.

And if you think that things couldn’t get any worse you couldn’t be more mistaken as South Korea (one of the most important meat exporters in Asia ) has just this past week had to destroy millions of farm animals after an outbreak of the dreaded foot-and-mouth disease was discovered.

To how horrific the Global food situation will become this year was made even more grim this past month when the United States reported that nearly all of their honey bee and bumblebee populations have died out, and when coupled with the “mysterious” die-off of the entire bat population in America means that the two main pollinators of fruit and vegetable plants will no longer be able to do their jobs leading to crop losses this report warns will be “biblical and catastrophic”.

And so today, as agricultural traders and analysts warn that the latest revision to US and Global stocks means there is no further room for weather problems, a new cyclone is preparing to hit Australia, brutal winter weather in India has killed nearly 130, and more snow is warned to hit America, and we’re not even two full weeks into 2011… may God have mercy on us all.....especially if the Army is deployed inside the U.S. to maintain order.