Gun Blog Variety Podcast #37

Psst! Got 59 minutes? Want to be entertained? Then give us a listen.

• Adam and Sean do their hostly duties.
• Erin Palette gets us ready for tornado season.
• Nicki Kenyon discusses the possibility that the UK might drop out of the EU.
• Sadly, Miguel is leaving the show. He will be missed. 
• Special Guest Sebastian from Shall Not Be Questioned talks about how doctors are abusing their white coats by attacking the Second Amendment, and how we are fighting back.
• Barron B. is angry that some car companies are claiming we don't own the cars we purchased.
• And Weer'd talks about what the gun grabbers aren't talking about.

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Listen to the podcast here.
Show notes may be found here.

Getting out

With the change of the seasons, most of us in the USA are entering severe weather season. Tornadoes, hurricanes, and severe thunderstorms are common from March to November and can cause damage both local and widespread.

Earthquakes and tornadoes differ in the reaction to their occurrence, but cause similar damage. The standard teaching for an earthquake is to get out of a building or under something sturdy, while for a tornado we're supposed to get underground and find shelter in a corner or well built room. Getting out of a building that may fall down makes sense, as does getting underground to avoid flying debris, but what happens after the storm has passed or the earth stops shaking? If you've managed to survive the collapse of your house or business, you now have the problem of having what's left of your house sitting on top of your shelter. If you're inside when that happens, do you have what you need to get back out? There's a reason farmers built their storm cellars apart from the house or barn: it's easier to dig yourself out if you don't have a house sitting on you.

Every storm shelter should have some basic tools in it to help you get out unless you're happy with having to wait for outside assistance.

Tools you should have

• Saws- hand saws should be short to allow their use in cramped spaces. Have wood saws for wooden structures, and hack saws if you expect to run into metal reinforcing bars.
• Levers- crowbars, pry bars, and larger bars give you a mechanical advantage to shift large pieces of debris.
• Jacks- small hydraulic jacks or even salvaged automobile type screw jacks give a huge boost to mechanical advantage.
• Axes- hand axes are useful for removing small limbs from trees and can be used to cut timbers and boards into sizes easier to move.
• Hammers- small hammers will be useful for disassembling wooden structures, and larger ones (sledge hammers) will work to break up concrete.
• Shovels- like saws, short handles will make them easier to use in tight spaces.

Tools you should avoid

• Chainsaws or any other gas-powered tool. Chainsaw exhaust contains a lot of Carbon Monoxide, which is dangerous in small spaces.
• Cutting torches. Unless you are well-versed in the use of metal cutting equipment an open flame can be more of a danger than a help. Setting yourself or your shelter on fire is not going to help your situation, regardless of how bad it already is.
• Unless your situation is “ITLH” (Immediate threat to life or health), avoid tools that you're unfamiliar with. You're not going to be making the situation any better by adding to the list of injured.

If you are one of the lucky ones that gets through the storm/earthquake without serious damage, are you willing to lend aid to your neighbors? Do you have the tools needed to be of assistance? Unless you have earth moving equipment (back-hoe, skid loader, tractor, etc.) and the skills to use it, you're going to be limited to hands and hand tools. 

Before you think that hand tools are worthless, you should look into some of the things people have been able to do with less than we can buy in any hardware store. Pyramids in Egypt and Central America, the Burma Road, and Stonehenge are all good examples of what people are capable of without the use of power tools. Shifting the remains of a house off of a basement is a small job in comparison, and the more hands put to task makes the work faster.

The other problem that may pop up is if you're away from your shelter when it gets buried. If the supplies inside are what you need to live on for a while, you'll have to dig them out.

Suggestions

• Since you'll be working from the surface down or from the outside in, tools can be larger and able to move more material, quicker.
• Power tools will be more useful so long as you have a supply of power or fuel.
• Chainsaws are very handy to have around after a storm, since they can make quick work of clearing trees from roads and can make an opening in a wall with ease. Be aware of power lines when working around trees.
• Electric tools powered by generators can be a great help as long as you keep the generator exhaust away from the space you're working on.
• Cordless tools don't generally have the same power as a corded version, but could be very handy in tight spaces.
• Having a way to move debris away from the site is very important. A pickup truck, wheelbarrow, trailer, or small tractor will help clear the work area and allows faster work. The corollary to this is finding a place to put all of the debris (at least temporarily).
• A portable pump and some hose will help if you've got to work below ground level after a storm. The rains that accompany tornadoes can cause localized flooding and since most shelters are underground, they will fill with water fast.

These are just some suggestions on a subject that came up among friends a few days ago. We get tornadoes in my area most years, some years worse than others. I've seen houses and large sections of small towns completely destroyed in a matter of minutes, and the recovery time is measured in months or years. A large part of being prepared is thinking things through, and it is my goal to keep you thinking.

An Object Lesson!

After the Storm
5x7 Acrylic on Board

This past week, various of our contributors have been discussing the time change and using it to remember to check your BOB and GHB and other gear and make sure it's all up to date.

"Spring Forward" and all that, right? And spring has just made its typical flamboyant entry into Oklahoma's weather patterns.

Spring here means storms, and thunderstorms are common. You know what's common with Oklahoma thunderstorms? Baseball-sized hail and tornadoes! Yes, spinning winds in excess of 200 MPH, as Mother Nature starts PMSing to beat the band.

So there I was, in the middle of taking apart my Bug Out Bag to bring it up to date for the new season, and what do I hear? I hear tornado sirens going off from several directions. With my BOB in shambles, and gear spread all over the place, and both dogs going crazy because of the sirens.

It's amazing how rapidly you can throw a BOB back together again when the sirens go off and tell you to duck and cover!

Fortunately the tornado warning was called off fairly soon, and I didn't need my BOB. We've also been lucky enough to befriend our next door neighbors, who happen to have a storm cellar in their back yard. It's only 100 feet from our back door, and we are invited to take shelter in it should we see a funnel on the ground and headed our direction.

Of course, the rule of thumb with a tornado is that if you can see it on the ground, you probably don't have enough time left to seek shelter - which is why we pay attention to the sirens when they go off!

Its no joke, folks. Don't put off seasonal changes to your bag. Don't put off making sure batteries are in good shape, all your necessary medications and such are easy to grab or already in there, all your paperwork is backed up and secured inside. Don't wait until you're in the teeth of a storm to remember that you need to throw a few things together.

Because if you wait until you're most likely to need it - you probably won't have time to actually get it done.

Hurricane Preparedness: Lots of Scary Facts

Not actually Erin.
Picture by KJ Photography
& is used with permission. 

Last week, I talked about the evacuation ("bugging out") side of hurricane preparedness.  I originally intended for this week's article to be full of advice on how to make sure your home is ready for a hurricane strike, but I got a bit sidetracked.

Folks, I am absolutely astounded at all the people who seem to think they can weather a storm and end up paying the price for it. Therefore, before I talk about the actualities of bugging in for a hurricane, I'm going to try to scare the crap out of you so that you take it as seriously as I do.

Make Sure Your Home Can Take It
If you're a Floridian like I am, you're golden in this regard: as of 2013, we have the highest safety rating (95%) for hurricane-rated buildings and their associated code enforcement. However, if you live in other states, you might just be in trouble:

http://goo.gl/dt2xQF

However, just because your home is hurricane-rated doesn't mean that it will survive a direct strike. While Florida homes may be built on the assumption that once every 50 years they will experience winds over a hundred miles per hour (115 mph in North Florida, 180 in the southernmost Keys), keep in mind that a Category 5 hurricane, according to the Saffir-Simpson scale,  is a storm with wind speeds "over 157 mph". Kindly note there is no upper limit there. Back in 2008, a wind speed of 211 mph was recorded as Hurricane Gustav passed over Cuba -- and that speed broke the instruments.  There might have been stronger winds; we simply can't know. 

Also, the duration of the winds is as important as intensity: a home might be able to withstand a 180 mph gust for a few seconds, but what about minutes? What about storms that last for hours?  To quote Robert Simpson (of the aforementioned Saffir-Simpson scale),

"...when you get up into winds in excess of 155 mph (249 km/h) you have enough damage if that extreme wind sustains itself for as much as six seconds on a building it's going to cause rupturing damages that are serious no matter how well it's engineered."

And Then There Are the Tornadoes

It's been proven that hurricanes spawn tornadoes. Fortunately, the tornadoes that spin off from hurricanes and tropical storms are usually weaker than their great plains counterparts (usually EF0 or 1, and rarely exceeding EF3). However, the key word there is "usually"; there are two recorded instances (Hurricane Carla, 1961, and Hurricane Hilda, 1964) which both spawned EF4 tornadoes.

http://goo.gl/2dv662

Did you know that EF4 can get as high as 200 miles per hour? And that there is, in fact, an entire category beyond that called EF5 which is basically meteorologists throwing up their hands and saying "We have no idea how high this will go"?  A force 5 tornado is basically a town-killer. I sure don't want to be dug in on the day that a Cat 5 hurricane decides to get freaky and start tossing out EF4 and 5 twisters. 

Don't Forget the Storm Surge

"Storm surge" is a fancy way of saying "hurricanes also flood areas."  Storm surges are actually responsible for the majority of deaths in hurricanes, either from drowning (six inches of fast-moving water can knock a man off his feet), debris (a foot or so of the same fast-moving water can knock buildings off their foundations, causing them to crumble), or good old exposure, aka hypothermia. While not as impressive as the flooding caused by tsunami, they're a close second in terms of death and destruction.

http://goo.gl/ELRpdd

Note here how even a Category 1 hurricane can produce a surge deep enough to drown children and many adults, and how a Cat 2 is over the heads of all human beings. Now think about what happens if all that water decides that you are in its way... well, you're going wherever it takes you, and if it decides to smash you into a building or dump some debris on you, then you really have no say in the matter. 

Fortunately, water behaves in rather predictable ways when it comes ashore, and there are definite precautions which can be taken to protect a house and its occupants from flooding.  Just don't try to wade across it if it's moving quickly, and don't try to drive across a flooded section of road!

Have I scared you yet? Good.

Folks, I am not kidding when I say "If they tell you to leave, then get the hell out of town." Nature is a mother.  Therefore, all posts after this will assume that you are attempting to ride out nothing more than a Category 3 hurricane.

Next week (as this article has already gotten quite long) I will talk about what you can do to make your home safer from wind and water.