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Episode-624- Listener Feedback 3-15-11

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Time to get into another round of listener feedback.  Today we discuss we are running out of water for farming, the Japanese earthquake and tsunami, blind patriotism, heard mentality , the Saudis say they are about to hit peak oil, growing amaranth, storing loaded magazines, police scanner apps and more.

To submit content for this type of show send an email with “question for jack”, “article for jack” or “video for jack” in the subject line to jack at thesurvivalpocast.com  this new format will help me better screen and utilize your feedback.

Join me today as we discuss…

  • Cool give away from BulkAmmo.com – (Get Free Ammo)
  • Report on my trip to Arkansas and our quest for a TSP Office
  • Farmers in Texas see a return of the dust bowl on the horizon
  • Growing and selecting amaranth varieties
  • The mob mentality of blind patriotism around wiki leaks
  • The Saudis may be lying about how much oil they can produce
  • Storing loaded magazines, the good, the bad and the ugly
  • My favorite time wasting, day dreaming, land finding website UnitedCountry.com
  • Where are the Japanese looters, my thoughts vs. the media
  • Looting absent in Japan but not hording, here is why
  • The real lessons so far from Japan
  • Why you can’t possibly trust the media’s reporting about Japan
  • How your food was dying while people were concerned about a Aaron Rodgers interview – yes really!

Resources for Today’s Show

Remember to comment, chime in and tell us your thoughts, this podcast is one man’s opinion, not a lecture or sermon. Also please enter our listener appreciation contest and help spread the word about our show. Also remember you can call in your questions and comments to 866-65-THINK and you might hear yourself on the air.

Comments

Episode-624- Listener Feedback 3-15-11 — 40 Comments

  1. Great Show! Keeping calm and observe will assist in surviving, Your points, while at times a bit passionate and rightfully so, were pretty solid and direct.
    The part about helping others, fantastic.

    Keep it up!

  2. Being a soldier and a policeman for over 20 years I was of the belief you must rotate the mags. But around 1990 the gun reps would come to our range and spew data how these new H&K magazines have no memory.
    These new Clocks magazines can be stored forever, yada yada.

    Now I rotate my magazines when I go to the range every 6 months or so. No failires that I can attribute to a weak magazine. So now I am confused were they lying to sell their products or has the technology advanced to where the mag’s really don’t have a memory??????

    • @John L Snider Sr. Remember just because something hasn’t happened doesn’t mean it won’t happen. I personally feel monthly rotation of loaded mags is a cheap insurance policy vs. the alternative.

  3. I had to pipe up regarding your mention of how the media and government over-hyped the potential impact of the tsunami on the West coast of the US. While in most areas this was a non-event, there were areas where the waves were in the 6’+ range and caused millions in damage (Crescent City, CA for one). While it wasn’t a disaster of the scale it was in Japan by any stretch of the imagination there were small pockets where it was pretty bad.
    Having personally experienced the phenomenon of sneaker waves and having lost a friend to one, even a two foot wave that sounds like a non-event can definitely result in a personal level disaster.
    It drove me nuts watching the local news up here in Oregon at the time the waves were expected and seeing families on the beach just blew my mind. Yes, we aren’t going to get a 20-30 foot wave like they had in Japan, but why risk yourself or your kids that way. I’d say its Darwin at his finest, but it just isn’t funny when parents put their kids at risk like this.
    I don’t like contradicting you, but to say this was a non-event in the US with such emphasis minimalizes the personal loss of those who were impacted even by the small waves we did get in this country.

  4. A quick addition to my previous post: According to one source, there were also at least five people swept out to see attributed to these small waves in the US. Who knows if it really was due to the tsunami effect or just normal sneaker waves…

    Please don’t take this as an attack, I love your work. I just had to disagree with your opinion.

    • @Pukwudji – While I feel for your personal loss in the past a few boats being torn up in a few pockets from the recent waves isn’t really the point. The point was the US media literally slathering the entire thing into a frenzy. Compared to what they were saying what happened was well nothing.

      It was really a non event and I am sure people effected would disagree, but I can point to as much loss in daily commutes in just about any major US city. I never said anyone should take a walk on the beach at this time or anything like that.

      The problem isn’t that you disagree it is that you are disagreeing with a phantom.

    • I also never said the government hyped this, I said the media did and they did. Some of the claims

      “Well the wave is down to six feet but it could grow again” – I am sorry but WTF? How? Exactly how have the laws of physics changed so that this would be possible?

      “Once the wave hits the continental shelf it could grow, speed up and become more destructive” – Again, how the hell is this possible? Any wave has a given amount of energy that dissipates over time, this ignores physical laws.

      “This area in San Fransisco is only 42 feet above sea level, there are real concerns that it could end up under water” – Now just how the hell can that occur with a 6 foot rise in sea level, when did 6 foot of rise equate to 42 feet of elevation? Hell if this is the case with me being 5’11” I should with my massive 18 inches of vertical leap be able to do slam dunks on a 10′ basket with no troubles, move over Jordan I am the new king of the slam dunk right?

      Now all three of these statements were made

      1. After the impact in Hawaii and Guam both of which were clearly indicators that no real danger existed for the populated areas of our west coast.

      2. With in 5 minutes of each other

      3. By journalists that in my view should have been fired on the spot

      • If my above comments seem too hard on the media or not sufficiently concerned for the California coast may be this footage of the “impact” of the wave on the coast will drive my point home.

        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgQfLDi7Jq8

        Reminds me of Jacksonville beach on any given day really.

        Next here is one of a boat harbor where most of the actual damage occurred to of course boats, expensive ones that I am sure are insured. Total damages are now estimated at about 40 million dollars state wide, sound like a lot until you start pricing yachts. In this video you can see it is likely that 90% of the damage to the boats in this harbor were caused by one tool who failed to more his boat properly and it ends up washing out to sea, coming back in and slamming a lot of the other boats.

        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pp_jp5QIWzw

  5. In regards to Magazine springs. I believe there are two ways that a spring is likely to fail. The first would be through fatigue (repeated cyclic loading) at a given stress level. The second would be through creep–basically elongation of the metal under sustained load.

    Even though the Springs are cycled with use, I am doubtful that the springs would be failing in fatigue, because a properly designed spring should be able to sustain MANY (tens of thousands to even millions of cycles).

    So, it is likely a magazine spring would fail due to creep. That being said, both of these failure modes are dependent on the load the spring is under or more specifically the resultant stress in the material under that load.

    In both cases, the lower the stress, the less likely it will be to be damaged (have “memory”).

    So, while it is true that some springs may fail (or degrade) due to creep, it is not necessarily true for every spring. What I don’t know is what level of stress that a spring is under–how close it is to its yield strength. If it is quite far from its yield strength, then creep will tend to be lower. If it is close, creep will be more likely.

    So, the “memory” that a loaded magazine spring will experience can vary significantly. Also–while a spring may in fact be creeping, the rate may be extremely slow–such that it is insignificant.

    I think we’d need specific data on the springs to know how much of an issue this is. However, I believe it would be true to say that loading a magazine to less than full capacity would reduce the effect of creep for each round less below the maximum.

    So, if you want to mitigate the creep in your storage magazines, you could alleviate the problem a bit.

    Sorry if this was a bit boring.

    • Well written.

      Jack or anyone else, can any one actually produce some evidence showing that mags fail due to being preloaded for too long? Keep in mind these better be examples of quality mags failing, not some knock off. Until then it’s an urban myth.

      • @yep,

        Thanks. However, I think there probably is evidence of reduced force from springs that have been loaded for some period of time. What we don’t know (without seeing the spring design data) is which springs will creep and to what degree.

        It may be true that some magazines have springs designed that will have negligible creep even if fully loaded over long periods of time. Others may experience noticeable degradation. It all depends on the spring and material used.

        I’m not sure it matters if it is a knock-off or not, but you may be correct that higher quality magazines might have less tendency to have this problem.

  6. In regards to this Wiki-leaks issue. The effect of these leaks and the crime (if it is a crime, depending on who we are talking about) are two different (if related) things.

    If the Soldier (who if guilty is a traitor) ended up supplying me with information I find vital and valuable, it doesn’t make him any less guilty.

    Further, it is my opinion (based on what I know) that this Assange twerp is a preening, self-important little piece of trash, who intends to harm the United States. It doesn’t necessarily mean I think he should be executed, but he’s not revealing these things to help people who might rather have more openness from their government–he’s doing it for his own purposes. I don’t believe for a minute that he’d have done anything different if this would have led to many deaths. Whether it led to deaths yet or will…I’m not sure we will even know.

    If someone’s intent is to harm my country (and that’s what I believe the case is here), I’m not going to look too favorably on that, even if it somehow provides me with some information that I can use to my advantage.

    Now that this has been done, it IS in fact an opportunity, but this fact does not forgive or make “good” the actions of the people involved.

    What’s most disturbing about this is that some Private in the military has access to Diplomatic cables and other things that I highly doubt are directly related to his job functions. Just another example of incompetence coming from government I suppose.

    • @KAM, I am not found of Assange but I am not really angry with him either at least on the scale of my anger. I am much more angry with my government than Assange.

      As to “intending to harm the US” making a person bad or evil to me that depends. Do they intend for it to harm us, the people, or them the government and ARE THEY RIGHT?

      Like I said what bothers me about the reactions to this are not those that are well thought out and reasoned such as yourself but the ignorant calls for death to Assange and the private because it, “cost US soldiers their lives” because IT NEVER HAPPENED.

      I will also say this, thus far of all the items I have head and read from the leaks, NOT ONE seems to damage the US in anyway that we don’t deserve to be damaged.

      Like for instance using the Fed to finance the world and forcing loans onto weaker countries and trying to strong arm them to keep them under the thumb of the IMF. We did it, we should NOT be doing it, we are guilty of it and I just wish more people were pissed off about it.

      Hiding information from the Saudis that they are LYING about oil reserves. This effects the entire planet, how does keeping the lie a secret protect America, did we do it, were we wrong, if it harms our governments reputation isn’t it justified?

      How about this we are in Yemen, President of Yemen, Ali Abdullah Saleh, told Gen. David Petraeus that he would continue to take the blames for U.S. missile strikes on suspected al Qaeda operatives in Yemen. “We’ll continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours” – Wow doesn’t that make you want to break out in song with the Star Spangled Banner? Doesn’t it make you proud that we are deploying assets to kill people with out the US citizenship knowing what killing is being done with their military? Isn’t that just great that we get the Yemen President to claim responsibility for this?

      How about the fact that the assclown promised to close Gitmo but didn’t do it? So to try to get rid of all the prisoners over time they basically have black mailed other governments, take one of these prisoners off our hands and you can meet with the president.

      SERIOUSLY The New York Times reports on pressure tactics used by American diplomats pressing other countries to resettle detainees at Guantanamo Bay prison, the closing of which was one of President Obama’s unfulfilled campaign pledges.

      The Times reports several diplomatic tactics used to unload the prisoners:

      — Slovenia was told to take a prisoner if it wanted to meet with President Obama
      — The island nation of Kiribati was offered incentives worth millions of dollars to take in Chinese Muslim detainees
      — Belgium was told accepting more prisoners would be “a low-cost way for Belgium to attain prominence in Europe.”

      Again are you not proud of our nation for this? (sarcasm meter pegged and broken) Seriously who are you more pissed off at over this? The government of the US or the private that gave Assange the CD?

      How about the FACT that the Saudis have been and continue to try to instigate the US to attack Iran and destroy their nuclear program. So we keep hearing about the Iranian threat but how much of it is due to our desires to please the Saudis for oil when, oh yea, they are running out anyway!

      I guess what I am saying is if anyone can point to anything in the wikileaks that I would look at and say, man I wish that never came to see the light of day I could be more upset with the leaker and the distributor.

      So help me out, show me ONE just one piece of information that I can proudly say as an American, that information is accurate, it should have remained secret and I am proud of my nation for doing it and keeping it secret for as long as they could have.

      Given all the hype, my request seems quite small. Again this isn’t to defend Assange and the Private just to point out the bigger criminals in all this are sitting in our own government.

      • @Jack,

        I’ve not stated that I’m proud of any of the things revealed here, but on the other hand, I guess I don’t see too much value in back-room diplomatic stuff being spread around either.

        Perhaps I should start by saying that while I love my Country, I’ve never assumed we are Angels. International affairs is a dirty business, so while I can’t say I knew of any of these specifics, I guess I’m not surprised.

        But let me restate my main point: Whether or not this information is valuable to me, or not doesn’t change my opinion of the actions of Assange (or the Private who stole the information). The content of what they exposed does not make the act right or wrong. It is right or wrong independent of that.

        If our government officials are the “bigger criminals” as you say (and I’m sure some are), then great, let’s see them get what’s coming to them as well. I doubt that will happen, however.

        I’m not particularly “angry” at Assange about this, but I still think he’s a piece of trash. I think he’s being held up by some (not you), and portrays himself as some champion of justice and right, and he isn’t. He’s nothing of the sort, and it is my belief (can’t prove it) that he doesn’t give a darn whether or not Americans (or anyone) is harmed or not. I guess my point would be not to cast him as a villain, but to make sure he isn’t cast as a hero.

        I should perhaps have stated that I’ve not called for any action to be taken against Assange at all, but I do believe that the Soldier should be prosecuted as a traitor and have his guilt or innocence proven.

        I can’t really explain why, but the CONTENT of this doesn’t really anger me either–again, likely because it isn’t a surprise to me that this sort of smarmy arm-twisting takes place. I’ve got plenty of Non-Secret stuff that outrages me coming from our government. I can’t afford to get angry about yet another outrage, or I’d spend my time doing nothing else.

        I could wave that around as evidence that the “change” we were all promised is a bunch of BS, but to what end? That’s not a surprise to me either, and anyone who believed otherwise, it probably wouldn’t matter anyway.

        Sorry this is going long, but perhaps this is an exercise in our circles of influence. Nothing exposed here is anything in my circle of influence (which says a lot of bad about our Republic I guess).

        • @KAM you seem far more tollerent in giving our government a pass on this than I am. I have to disagree with this excuse you made for them,

          “International affairs is a dirty business”

          My view is only because we have chosen to make it so and no one is quite as good at being dirty as we are, well may be the British who really taught us most of this stuff after and during WWII in the first place.

          I get your points, I understand your view and like you I don’t think Assange is a hero but again I am far more angry with my government then Assange.

          I would also ask if this is what we learn from one CD how bad is it really. I personally am ready for people to know the truth and decide if we really want to keep playing the game this way.

        • @Jack,

          I’m not intending to forgive the government for engaging in “dirty business” nor be tolerant of it. I’m really just acknowledging reality.

          I don’t fault anyone for being angry with our government in the way they handle things. However, as I mentioned, none of the things I’ve heard about from this are really more stunning or problematic than the things they do openly. I’m disgusted with all sorts of things our government does that they proudly proclaim.

          Our government disregards and tramples the Constitution daily–openly and eagerly, so I guess what I’m saying is that some dirty-dealing with other nations behind the scenes isn’t more important to me than these other things.

          This whole thing starts to get into “the ends justifying the means” at some point. While soldiers have an Oath to the Constitution, and I WANT them to disobey illegal orders, I’m don’t believe what this soldier did is in that category.

          You said you’re ready for people to know the truth. Ok, fine, but that’s for us as a people to decide and demand from our government. Who appointed Julian Assange and Pvt. Bradley Manning the arbiters of what should and shouldn’t be kept secret in our diplomatic interactions? If we as a people in a supposedly free Republic refuse to oversee our own government in this way, then we are to blame.

          I agree that these things reveal MORE problems, but the problems didn’t start here, and they aren’t going to be solved by releasing a bunch of documents. Maybe it makes us aware of some specific things, but I think we already knew the root problem existed–and that’s what needs to be addressed. I guess that’s what I’m saving my outrage for.

        • @Jack,

          Just to clarify. When I say “we are to blame” I’m speaking in broad terms working from the idea that the people as a whole are supposed to dictate to our government what we are and do, not the other way around.

          I know you understand that, but I think we as citizens have been drawn away from that by politicians. I think we want the same things here, but I’m just trying to say that this Wiki-leaks thing is just a small piece of a much larger problem–that being that the citizens have lost effective control of our government. They are no longer answerable to us in any real way.

          From listing to/reading you, it seems that you consider this wiki-leaks example as one that can be used to foster this change. Maybe that’s true, and if some positive reform came from that, I think it would be great. That being said, we (the Citizens of the USA) tolerate and ignore all sorts of abuses of power and trampling of the Constitution daily, and apparently happily. Knowing that, I have serious doubts that some “dirty dealings” being revealed are going to change that.

          Unfortunately, changing people’s minds about their citizenship is hard to demonstrate and getting our nation as a whole to hold government accountable is next to impossible–Again a bad sign for the future of a free Republic.

          Too many of us are effectively serfs now, instead of free citizens. Many things you advocate (if followed) will help reverse this trend, and I can only hope that eventually yields more responsible citizens who can and will hold government accountable.

        • @KAM, actually I fear you are correct and that no one gives a shit and this is all for nothing. Most Americans are to myopic to bother to even look at what came out of Wikileaks, they just want someones head because Fox News, CNN and MSNBC say they should.

          My hope is people with a voice will spread this stuff and let people know so some of them will care. I won’t bet the farm on it but a man can hope. If this thing wakes up even a dozen new people to reality to me it is worth everything it supposedly but didn’t cost us.

        • @Jack,

          I admit that I’ve got this urge to “run away” which is a reaction to being frustrated at not having my voice heard, but that is a bit of a fantasy. I think all we can do is minimize our need to depend on government (like you advocate), and be active in our circles of influence as best we can.

          About people “waking up.” Big splashes like wiki-leaks and the latest disaster (like the Japan Earthquake/Tsunami/Nuclear Reactor problems) make people pay attention…until the next thing comes along and then they forget.

          The bright side is that there are probably a few every time that DON’T forget and move towards something better.

          All we can do is keep going. Thanks for what you do.

    • On the whole it isn’t just the fact that there is a service member who released this stuff. It is Wikileaks just releasing all the raw data to the world. I have no problem with a reporter researching the files, interviewing, actually working and then writing one or a series of article disclosing some of these wrong doings. The world has no reason to know which locations in the world are considered important and which we (= the US .gov) think are critical.

      Anyone surprised that these things happen in the world or anyone who thinks that diplomats etc. are nice people is living in under a rock. Politics suck, international relations suck, we do it to them and they do it to us. Get on with it.

      Should that service member be punished? Yep.
      Did the release cause the death of service members, I don’t know and nor does Jack or anyone else without insider info.
      Will Americans lose their lives at some point in the future because of these releases, yep, probably. Some potential militant (either homegrown or foreign) is sitting behind his/her computer getting pissed off over what our government is doing to our own citizens and what we are doing elsewhere in the world and eventually he/she will do something stupid.

  7. Jack – you’re totally on about the Japanese and honor. My dad was a non-combat drafted soldier in WW2, and he would tell us how the Japanese prisoners were extremely obedient, compliant and polite.

    My uncle was a high school teacher in the 80s and took students to Japan. He told us how on a Japanese subway everyone would be standing and all the seats would be empty b/c each person thought just in case someone might need their particular seat. Centuries of generations being taught to be respectful and hold personal honor in high regard lives on.

    As an aside, my uncle married a Japanese woman and lives there now. They do not have stores, and now are having to find alternate sources of water b/c the water system is messed up. Even though they weren’t directly affected by the tsunami where they live, the systems they count to provide their needs were. Food for thought…

  8. To keep magazines loaded in storage does nothing to effect the reliability of the mag. The only way a spring is “fatigued” is by repeated movement of the spring. If you compress a spring and hold it there, for 100 yrs, it will still operate normally when released baring any corrosion or physical damage to the spring. The so called “memory” issue is when a spring is stretched, not compressed, and is stretched so as the spring in pulled from it’s normal shape. I have seen test results from magazines kept loaded from 5 – 20yrs, even 50 yrs with no spring problem. If you shoot as often as you should to be proficient and rotate your mags when you rotate your other stores, you shouldn’t have a problem. Most magazine issues that are perceived to be spring related are in fact dirt/buildup in the mag body. As far as the clip versus magazine debate, for those who care it’s simple- A clip doesn’t have a spring, a magazine does. That’s all there is to it. The reason they call the M1 Garand clip a clip is because it has no spring. That clip is then inserted into the internal “magazine” of the rifle, that indeed does have a spring which it uses to feed and eject the “clip” out of the weapon system. Good show as always. Thanks Jack.

    • @Matt, I have to say I have seen mags that have gotten weak, so I can’t agree with this claim.

      On the clip vs. mag debate I just find it funny how many arm chair ass cracks rip into a guy on YouTube if he calls a clip a mag. I find it to be one of the most pointless pieces of minutia around today. Your explanation is 100% accurate of course but my point is if we are going to worry about slang the X-Box crowd that does this on every misspoken review on YouTube has a lot more slang based conversational issues than this one they get right from playing Call of Duty or what ever is popular now.

      On some rare occasions I have referred to a mag as a clip and vice verse. The thing is I know the difference in reality though I just don’t care. Some assclown sent me one of my daily hate emails saying,

      “You are such a moron if you think this doesn’t matter, what if we are in a fire fight and you yell to me to toss you a clip when you really wanted a mag you would be F’d big time then and so would I”.

      Such ignorance is why I occasionally bring up the topic and mock such people. I simply asked this guy who claimed to be part of the “real militia” if he and his people routinely carried say and SKS and an AK47 at the same time. He responded with

      “No we have standardized on ARs not those commie pieces of shit, what does that have to do with anything anyway?”

      My guess is he still can’t answer his own question ;>)

      And yes I get such emails and other similar things daily. I just don’t understand why such people bother to listen to me in the first place.

    • @Matt,

      I’m not a spring expert, but from my recollection, a helical coil spring is really just a torsional spring in a different shape. While the spring itself may be compressed, the spring bar is experiencing torsion. A quick look in ‘Machinery’s Handbook’ in the section on Compression spring design talks about allowable stresses to avoid “set.”

      So, I believe, depending on the spring design, it is certainly possible for a spring to experience degradation under load. But without knowing more about the specific springs, we don’t know the degree.

  9. After listening to the podcast about Haiti I was wondering if there are any small organizations doing work in japan. I was all for the red cross before but now am wary of putting my money in there based on that podcast and the comments made about how little money it took them to effect REAL change in contrast to the millions that poured into the red cross for little to know effect. I would love to contribute to a small organization of people actually doing something. If anyone has any information that would be great.

    Thanks, Nick

    • @Nick I feel the same way, I would love to know a charity that will allocate the money to Japan and not to a general fund. Dorothy found some charity with “Mercy” in the title and they checked out okay so we did them instead.

      If anyone have a solid group we can donate to that will guarantee that the money will go to Japan if donated for Japan, please let us know. I will back them myself and personally endorse them on the air.

  11. Just have to say, the rant about blind patriotism and wikileaks was priceless. Ignorance in all forms is ignorance, even patriotic ignorance.

  13. Media hyped up the danger to the west coast, but then you have individuals who take what the media says and imagine it to be much worse. Example is a young mother in California who gets a call from her frantic mom at 3AM saying, quick, pack up and leave, get to higher ground, tsunami is coming. Forgetting there was a mountain range between her daughter and the coast.

    I’d hate to see how these easy to panic individuals would handle emergencies in their own local area.

  14. For some reason the Government and responders (as well as responding orgs) seem to think that when something bad happens everyone will turn into raging Zombie mobs playing Road Warrior. Rather than what we see happen 99% of the time: people helping each other. 2003, the whole north east went dark. NYC, Boston, Philadelphia, Cleveland, etc. How many riots? Zero. Looting? Nope. People helping each other get home? Yup, I was in NYC and watched store owners handing out bottles of water to passing people, letting them refill from larger jugs, people taking turns pushing a lady in a wheelchair (who they did not even know), etc. Right after an earthquake people start helping everyone else.

    I was in a small town that got hit by a tornado, took out a lot of homes. Everyone not hurt started helping others. After the responders arrived with the heavy equipment we shifted to getting food going, water, recovering personal belongings, setting up a collection fund, etc. Never saw raging mobs looting peoples homes after a disaster if the area was not prone to large scale theft to begin with.

  15. I hope you are right about the nuclear disaster for Japan’s sake, but if you leave uncontrolled fuel rods exposed for 24-48 hours then you are at the point of no return. They are melting and will probably get far worse. For some reason the Japanese gov’t/IAEA is downplaying this. These units are done and they are trying to minimize the melting at this point, if possible. This is already far worse thn Three Mile Island and not far from Chernobyl if they can’t relieve the pressure/cool it (without it relieving it’s self).

  16. I heard a great one from a reporter today. She called the nuclear reactor “unprecedented.” I guess if she meant a natural disaster causing a major meltdown is unprecedented ok but she then asked a talking head, “expert”, if this would be as bad as Chernobyl. I have heard the term unprecedented used so often by the media that I am starting to wonder if they understand it’s meaning, oh well… when in Rome.

    On the mag springs I would, and do, rotate them. I don’t know if they degrade or not but when I was having jamming issues with a new SA 1911 A1 I was told to try two things. First was to gob oil all over the slide rail when I got to the range. The second was to keep the mags fully loaded for a couple of months. The oil didn’t help and I had already played with ammo types so I just left the mags fully loaded, Chip McCormicks(sp?) and Wilson Combats. About a month in it got better and by three months the thing was eating everything I put in it, except CHEAP hollow points but that was expected.

    • Accidentally submitted before I was done. If the springs were overly tight and leaving them loaded for a while fixed it then that would lead me to believe there is a “memory” issue. I don’t know if it would be enough to cause a malfunction but why risk it?

  17. I was struck when you said at the end of the show “prepping’s going to be cool for 15 minutes”. I had the exact same idea, and thought I would use the opportunity to try to raise awareness of prepping on some websites I frequent. I suggested that while nothing could have helped some of those poor souls in Japan, this event showed the need for us all to have some food, water, basic medical supplies etc. What I got for it was a barrage of mockery, I was told I was crazy, hysterical, paranoid, a “hoarder”, “one of those people cleaning out supermarket shelves” and even that I was weak for not just dealing with things as they come.

    I don’t care about being mocked, and maybe I went in too hard too early: but it was still dispiriting that even in the aftermath of events like these, people can’t break out of the mentality that says “bad things only to happen to other people”.

  18. In regards to the spring issue, I’ve also heard the same exact advice that Jack gave on the podcast. Unfortunately I presently believe that advice to be outdated.

    The latest I’ve read is that magazine springs take a ‘set’ where they will get a little shorter and weaker under compression, but once in this zone, they can be stored indefinitely and will perform fine. It is the repeated compression/release that ‘wears’ a spring. Just like your recoil spring needing to be replaced after X number of rounds fired or spring cycles.

    I would not recommend people ‘cycle’ their magazines purely for the sake of the magazine spring. They should do it to check the ammo and clean the lint off of their carry gear. If you keep a go-bag or a stash of magazines in your safe loaded for emergencies, I would have no problem keeping those loaded for a few years if kept clean.

    I wish I had a handy reference to a definitive answer from a spring manufacturer, but I believe anyone interested can do a quick google search.

    I believe that “keeping it loaded is OK” is the current doctrine.

    • @Cuchulain, There is no doubt some terrible things went on during Katrina and a lot of looting as well. However, there is also no doubt that it was sensationalized by the media and a lot of what was reported to have happened, didn’t, specifically inside the Super Dome.

      Of course the biggest atrocities in Katrina were committed by the Government via Law Enforcement and Military taking away guns from private citizens in legal protection of them.

  21. @Cuchulain

    I haven’t read the book he’s quoting, but I would be careful of placing much faith in Johann Hari. The Independent is a pretty radical left-liberal rag, and Hari is one of the biggest left-liberal rent-a-gobs around. A paper and a writer who have a real hard time admitting that police are needed to maintain order, that owning guns might be a good idea, that rich white people don’t cause all the problems in the world, and that black people do bad things. (Not saying they’re inherently any MORE likely to do bad things than anyone else, just no less likely.)

    He’s not a writer who will like the lessons that a lot of us took from Katrina.

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