You may have noticed, many of these PDFs are related to nuclear preparation. As Gaza and israel are bombing each other, its only a matter of time before other countries start taking sides; we may be seeing the beginning of a new major global conflict. These types of shelters will protect you not only from nukes, but a wide range of heavy artillery, EMPs and even heavy storms. These types of shelters can be very valuable and even double as a root cellar. Keep in mind you never want to build an underground shelter in a flood zone. If you ever want to see how fit you are, try digging one of these by hand, it's a great work out.

Techniques and skills for nuclear fallout survival

What is a root cellar?

A root cellar is a structure, preferably below grade, used to store perishable goods as a natural refrigeration. A good root cellar will be able to stay 40°F cooler than the outside air.

What do you need for a good root cellar?

-Ventilation
-Earthen Shelter
-Darkness
-Humidity

The most efficient way to dig a root cellar is to put it below grade, using the earth already available and compacted. Sometimes digging can be very difficult due to rocks or quite literally, roots. There are machines you can use to break everything up. But what if that isn't an option?

A quick reminder to avoid cheap Chinese products.

It has recently come to my attention that the quality of consumer goods manufactured in China is marginal (Shocker). Commonplace things such as shoe inserts, pens, and bracelets. Marketed under the guise of "healing negative ionization", these products will be anything but beneficial. But with a little scrutiny and gamma spectroscopy, the true nature of these wellness products is revealed.

These products contain thorium dioxide; emitting gamma wave radiation, the same short wavelength used in nuclear medicine. Also the same type of radiation that destroys blood cells, and inhibit your bone marrow from creating more; rotting you from the inside out.

Now while you are very unlikely to receive a deadly dose of radiation from these products, does not eliminate the danger at all. From a study conducted by Kai Rothkamm and Markus Löbrich in 2003:

When gamma radiation breaks DNA molecules, a cell may be able to repair the damaged genetic material, within limits. However, a study of Rothkamm and Lobrich has shown that this repair process works well after high-dose exposure but is much slower in the case of a low-dose exposure.

In short, your body is less likely to rectify damage dealt by the aforementioned gamma waves. Down the road, its a crapshoot as to what the long term effects will be.

Using thorium dioxide (which is a byproduct of uranium production) appears to be by design. Steps to take in order to avoid the health risks include:

-Avoiding chinese products outright. If the gamma radiation doesn't get you, the carcinogens will.
-Purchase a Geiger counter. Avaliable at Walmart for $83
www.walmart.com/ip/GQ-GMC-300E-Plus-Nuclear-Radiation-Detector-Geiger-Counter/100061707?wmlspartner=wlpa&selectedSellerId=1621
-Spread the word. Negative ionization is dangerous no matter how you word it

Just for reference, gamma rays are capable of passing through material as dense as lead.

The most likely damage you'll receive from gamma radiation is in your body's rapidly dividing cells.

The area in the body where this occurs the most is your gut.

Absorbing Gamma radiation is likely to cause stomach cancer, colon cancer, liver or kidney cancer, digestive problems, or worse.

The accepted dose for radiation by the NRC is 2MR (millirem) per hour.

Where you will exceed this is airports, areas with high elevation, and of course background radiation from industrial products we are told pass "safety".

Damage from gamma radiation is never really healed. Your DNA can be damaged permanently. It is important to be aware of emergency safety protocols for radioactive contamination if you live in a place like Phoenix which has nuclear power.

Ensure your gas mask NBC NATO filters are functional and aren't expired.

Ingesting an alpha particle will kill you quickly and if you don't die you'll wish you were dead.

Wear hats, avoid going out into the sun during the brightest hours of the day especially if you live in high elevation.

A lot of people have died from skin cancer. Avoid using industrial petroleum based skincare products.

So let's talk briefly about 3D Printing. It's very easy to get into with no experience and with a little patience you can really do some incredible things. Two things you'll need:

1. 3D Printer ( I use an Ender 3D Printer). Mine was around $300 when I got mine and you can do A LOT with it. I had to assemble mine but unless you're more than 80% autistic you won't have a problem with it. Follow the directions, use an adjustable wrench, and before long youre set. Once you've got it put it in a place where there's not a lot of draft because that could cause warps. With PLA its not so much an issue but with ABS its PARAMOUNT but I hate that filament with a fervent passion. More on that later.

Thingiverse is your friend in the beggining. You essentially download models from that site and plug them into whats called your slicer, the Ender comes with one. You take the file then upload that into creality, enders slicer, that then makes a model you plug into your printer so it knows what to print. Those are called G-Codes.

The first thing you'll want to do is level the bed. Without that your prints will fail more often than not. Again, its very easy and online videos are your friend. Thingiverse has a lot of good ones.

2: Filament
Now there are A LOT of people with way more experience than me but until you get guud with PLA dont attempt ABS. PLA is way easier to print with and you dont even need your bed to be heated most of the time if not at all. ABS is way more finicky with temps and unless you build an enclosure for the ender, gonna do one for mine soon, its a pain in the anis to get it to print right without warps. Again I'm still an amateur.

Failure is your friend. Ive learned so much from failed prints tbh and the spools of filament are cheap enough to where it doesn't hurt the pocket book. Start off with making models and then build your way up to the fun stuff. Ive only made some peripheral gun stuff like BAD levers and mag accessories but its fun to use.

If you've got the money to spare its a GREAT tool to have. I miss reloading ammo but printing reminds me of it. Dammed components not being in stock...

I learned two things today... the Daly 16s 250 Smart BMS can be powered up by putting a push button switch between pins 1 and 3 on the "light board" plug. You can ID pins 1,2,3 by measuing voltage 1=ground, 2=3.3v,3=batery voltage (48v). Touch the 48v pin to the ground pin. You see the BMS can be booted initially by touching P- to the negative terminal on your battery, but if it goes to sleep with a full tummy (lol...), you can't wake it back up. So the PROPER way is to use the switch on that light port.

The connector is an 8 pin female JST PH 2.0mm pin spacing. YOu can find them on amazon and ebay with 8" wires already attached.

Now my bad news... I have a chargery BMS on one of the batteries that is running my house and decided to break the battery in 1/2 by removing a buss bar in the middle of the battery. That way if my wrench touched the main positive and main negative there would be no sparks. All went well until I actually did accidentally touch the positive to the negative with my wrench while the BMS was still connected to the 16 sensing wires. Apparently this lets the magic smoke out of the balancing mosfets. So if you need to work on a big battery:1) power down the BMS and disconnect the balance wires, 2)wrap all wrenches in electric tape, 3)break the battery in 1/2 by removing a bussbar. You see, I only did ONE of those three things. And now I get to wait for another BMS from chyyyyynaaahhhh....

Neat little harvesting tool. Personally, I've always been a fan of the twist and pull method. Not sure this quite reaches 'revolutionary' status. Let me know what you think in the comments

You may recognize this man from the show Alone, where people are challenged to spend 30 days in the bush. Television always has some sort of hidden fakery, but a cool show nonetheless. I much prefer the mans youtube channel, he has tons of creative and informative content, well worth supporting


https://youtu.be/oxyXg2Hq9y0

Lithium Battery conversion for a 48v golf cart.

I know this isn’t exactly a gun group, but sometimes we can delve into weapons. This weekend I had two new toys to play with.

One of my toys is PSA brand trigger group for an AR. Highly recommended. Not as good as a Geissel $280 trigger which has a spring loaded trigger vs most trigger groups that the trigger connects directly to the sear. I tend to take very careful shots at longer ranges and really hate the standard trigger on most AR’s. I can feel them creep as I squeeze. The PSA trigger is https://palmettostatearmory.com/psa-custom-ar-3-5-lbs-match-grade-drop-in-trigger-flat-116055.html

The other toy is a crimson trace 56mm 24x scope. First focal plane reticle, adjustments in 1/10mil. Great features, but it wouldn’t focus. At full zoom, I couldn’t quite make out 1” high numbers 100m away. I have a 50mm 24x Leupold scope and I can easily read those letters. When I back off the zoom on the crimson trace to 3x, only things about 25 yards away can be made to be in focus by messing with the parallax knob. Shouldn’t be that way. So it’s a big NO for an $800 crimson trace scope.

For the uninitiated, a 2nd focal plane vs 1st focal plane scope means the reticle stays the same size while the image zooms OR the crosshairs zoom with the image. First focal plane scopes have a reticle that zooms in sync with the image. Second focal plane scopes have a reticle that always stays the same size to your eye while the image in the scope zooms in and out. Why is this important? Because with a mil-dot scope you can measure distance to distant objects or easily establish a holdover to targets beyond your zeroed range. A mil-dot is 10cm at 100meters (3.9” at 100yards).

So if you use a 2nd focal plane scope there is ONLY one zoom power that the mil dots are calibrated. This is why I have 1” high numbers on my target backboard... I made a mark every 10cm and use those marks to figure out what zoom power my 2nd focal plane scopes calibrate at.

With first focal plane scopes, the mil-dots alway match the image size at any zoom level. The one disadvantage of the FFP scope is that when you zoom out the reticle gets so small it may be difficult to see.

Here’s an example of measuring distance with a mil dot scope. A car license plate is 12” wide. That’s 30cm. If you see a license plate on a car that is two mil dots wide, you use this formula : (30cm / 2 mil dots) x 10 = 150meters. In English units the formula is a little more difficult in your head. 12” / 2 mil dots x 27.77= 166yards. Metic is just so much easier which is why I zero all my stuff at 100meters (109 yards).