SHTF

The Tristar folding shotgun is ready for your wilderness adventures

The need for a lightweight, easily portable, but powerful weapon is one outdoors folk regularly have. Be it camping, hunting, or just a bit of adventuring anytime you step outside of civilization you should want a weapon that can bring you back. This Tristar folding shotgun fits the bill for me, and I was pleasantly surprised at how well made and how handy the weapon was. I purchased the weapon second hand after seeing it on a local ad. I could only find scant information on the shotgun, but the seller told me it was a prize to be won at the National Wild Turkey Federation Banquet and that is where he acquired it.

The shotgun is a single shot, folding weapon that is light, handy, and chambered in the powerful 12 gauge. The shotgun can chamber 3-inch shells and has a fixed choke. This shotgun is extremely lightweight, I don’t have an exact scale, but on a basic bathroom scale, the shotgun weighed right under 4 and a half pounds. That’s lighter than my 80 percent lower build AR pistol.

The shotgun has very few markings, and it’s branded Tri Star. The weapon says made by Artemis and a google search for Artemis shotguns gives me Khan shotguns, a Turkish firearm manufacturer. A bit of browsing at Khan’s single shots and I found some very similar models. These shotguns are known as the K100 and are made with sportsmen in mind. The shotguns feature ribbed barrels and wooden furniture, but they remain the same basic design, with the folding mechanism. The weight listed for these shotguns are right around 5 pounds, so under 4 and a half is pretty accurate for this bare bones model.

The shotgun is light but built like a tank. The barrel is quite thick, and the receiver is way thicker than necessary. The overall design is very simple, with an internal hammer and a 20-inch barrel. The safety is a simple push-button near the trigger guard. The finish is actually parkerized, which is impressive, and a desirable feature on a beat around shotgun. The sights consist of a small gold bead and a small little indent at the top of the receiver. The furniture is a very simple polymer material. The stock is actually hollow and can be used as a compartment for survival supplies, or it can hold 10 2 ¾ 12 gauge rounds. This also makes the shotgun capable of floating.

The shotgun, when folded, fits in my small Alice pack, a common companion on my outdoor excursions.

You pay for that lightweight when you start shooting the weapon. You get the full force of a twelve gauge round into your shoulder, and it is far from pleasant. Even with heavy steel loads you are going to feel some pain. Buckshot is pretty rough, and I fired slugs in two round strings, but that was enough to judge the slugs were quite accurate. A slip on recoil pad would be a welcome addition to the weapon. The basic gold bead works fine and the shotgun patterns well. The trigger is somewhat stiff but very short.

The folding shotgun patterns and accuracy

I’d talk about reliability, but it’s a single barrel shotgun, it’d be more impressive if it wasn’t reliable. The weapon has an extractor that pushes the shell out positively and makes it easy to grip and rip from the chamber. It reliably shot and extracted birdshot by Federal, 00 Buckshot by Federal, Remington, and Fiocchi, No 1 Buckshot by Remington, and slugs by Remington and Winchester.

There’s a serious problem with most of your ‘survival vehicle’ plans…

Although I spent the better portion of my twenties running around the world with a fresh fade and my boots bloused, the line of work I was in both before and after serving in the Marine Corps was in the racing industry. Most folks might be surprised to know that there are some real parallels between racing and military service – the aloof and pretentious drivers (officers), the salty old enlisted guys with decades of experience (master mechanics), and the ever-present tension between the folks that bust their asses in the air-conditioned offices, versus the folks that busted their asses on the tarmac.

Yeah, I said some folks busted their asses in the air-conditioned offices. Having worked on both sides of that divide, I can honestly report that changing tires on a scorching hot day in black Dickey’s is rough, but so is trying to survive budget cut meetings in a pair of Khakis. The misery comes in different forms, but it’s there nonetheless.

Working in the racing world gives you a different perspective of the vehicles we drive around in every day. The exotic cars that most of the world sees as precious and fragile tend to get the farm equipment treatment in the warehouses I worked in, for instance. Dodge Vipers, Porsche 911s, BMW M3s – all really cool cars, but working on, in, and around them all day tends to knock them off of the kid’s poster-pedestal and squarely into the “stuff I bitch about at work” category.

Viper’s side pipes run god damn hot, so prolonged highway driving is sort of like going places inside an Easy Bake Oven. My size 13 shoes make it so I can either press all the pedals in a Porsche, or none of them at all – so I usually had to drive them barefoot with my toes. These aren’t things that make me not like these cars, they’re just the stuff that widdles away at their legendary status until you start to see them for what they are: pieces of equipment with a specialized purpose – just like a rifle, a plunger, a forklift, or an Apache gunship.

A room full of tools for different tasks.

This distinction is an important one to make for a number of reasons. In the realm of survival preparation, where my professional experiences turning wrenches meets my professional experience slinging lead, knowing that those awesome pieces of equipment you pine for are going to break down, need repairs, and in tough circumstances, require a whole lot of love informs the type of vehicle you want to bring with you into a fight for your life.

As awesome as this scene in “I am Legend” is… a Mustang isn’t actually very practical for getting around after the apocalypse.

My brother, whose racing pedigree runs far deeper than my own, buys cars the way I buy guns: sometimes because it’s one he’s always wanted, sometimes because it serves a specific purpose, and sometimes, because he found a great deal. While I drive around in a beat up old SUV, his mountain garage houses an SRT-10 Viper, a Dodge Charger Hellcat, a supercharged 350Z, a turbo-diesel Ram 2500, Audi S4 and so forth… It’s like pulling up to a car show whenever I stop by at his house, and if I’m honest, I wouldn’t actually want most of his incredible rides to be my primary mode of transport in a disaster.

Although my brother and his son will likely be riding in matching style.

Modified cars, like cars built for the race track, are pretty touchy. Forced induction (which can come in the form of superchargers, turbochargers, and in practical effect, nitrous oxide sort of serves the same function) requires the careful management of the air to fuel ratio to ensure the engine doesn’t start running too lean or too rich. High boost or compression situations requires the use of extremely stable fuel (as measured by octane rating) and unless you’re near a race track, it can be tough to find gas with better than a 93 octane rating (fine for most unmodified forced induction applications, but not for those of us with a boost controller and the Fast and Furious on DVD).

Have you ever changed a tire? I don’t mean pulled the lug nuts and then swapped a tire and wheel onto your vehicle, I mean, have you ever used a machine to separate the rubber from the rim, then put a new one on, inflated and balanced it? If you haven’t, it’s honestly not a terribly difficult job… until you have to do it with 350mm wide, low profile performance tires on a 20 inch rim (like you’ll find on most high performance vehicles nowadays). If the equipment you’re using is old or cheap, it may not even be able to support wheels that big. And, of course, that’s assuming you have access to equipment at all.

These aren’t the only problems you’ll run into when driving your freshly claimed Corvette ZR-1 through the post-apocalyptic wasteland. Ground clearance on high performance cars would undoubtedly mean you wouldn’t get far anyway, so you may not even get to having to worry about finding enough synthetic motor oil for the frequent fluid and filter changes you’ll need to do to keep the stressed-out motor happy, or the fact that supercars like Ferraris often require things like an entirely new clutch to be installed every few thousand miles.

By now, you may be thinking, “okay, so I can’t drive around the apocalypse in a souped up Supra or a even a bone stock 488 Spider… but that’s not what I’d want anyway. THIS is what I want!”

I’ve driven a fair number of expensive Mercedes in my life, but admittedly, I’ve never driven their 6×6. Nonetheless, I can glean a number of things simply by looking at this picture:

The suspension travel of this vehicle will require one hell of a jack to get one of these wheels off the ground, and before you say, “it can raise its own wheels off the ground electronically!” I remind you that nothing works the way it’s supposed to three years after the world ends.
Simply swapping out a wheel and tire on this will require specialized tools that almost certainly come with the vehicle when you buy it, but may not when you “liberate” it from a suburban neighborhood crawling with zombies.
Finding replacement parts for this vehicle will be damn near impossible.
When you high-side this thing, it’s going to take one hell of a truck to get it un-stuck.
It is… honestly pretty rad anyway.

Listen guys, I’m not saying that exotic and modified race cars aren’t cool (in fact, I love them) nor am I saying that you shouldn’t buy that Army surplus M939 6X6… I also love those… but remember that a survival situation, by its very nature, is brutal and unforgiving on not just you, but your equipment as well.

An Ar-15 is a valuable tool in a survival situation, but none of us would be surprised to learn that its value begins to drop significantly if you don’t have the means or the know-how to properly maintain it. Without proper maintenance and a steady source of ammunition, your AR-15 quickly becomes a club, and without replacement parts and the ability (both in terms of equipment and knowledge) to maintain your vehicle, it too quickly becomes useless. In a survival situation, it’s not about what will work best in the next three days… it’s about what will keep working for the long haul.

You’re better off with your old Jeep Cherokee, assuming you know how to change its oil and its running standard sized (and easy to find) tires, than you are with an up-armored Humvee you couldn’t replace a ruined tire on even if you had a spare. In a long-term survival setting, you’ll probably see me tooling around in a just about stock Toyota Tacoma that’s not much younger than I am. After all, if the world’s already ended – who are you trying to impress?

Feature image courtesy of Pexels.com, all other images courtesy of the author unless otherwise noted.

5 Ways to Up Your Prepping Game

If you’ve been prepping for a little while, you’ve probably got the basics covered. You have a bug-out bag, a decent stash of MRE’s or #10 cans of freeze-dried food and a plan to keep it all secure once you’re hunkered down. What’s next? Besides piling up more supplies, what else can you do to further prepare yourself for a disaster? Here are 5 ideas you may find useful in going from beginner to intermediate prepper.

1. Bug out picnic/range day/camping

This is a great way to include the family. If we’re having a slow weekend day and want to have a little adventure I’ll yell “bug out picnic!” and give a time limit for when we’re driving away. This helps with organization, prioritization and delegation of tasks. These little adventures are also a good way to cycle out older supplies and shake down your gear for deficiencies.

2. Skill-of-the month

Reading through accounts of people who have survived through terrible circumstances, you will rarely (if ever) find someone who says “I didn’t know crap but I sure spent a lot on supplies”. It is a widely held opinion that the most important tool is between your ears. So, try your hand at a new skill once a month. I’m not saying go out and buy a full reloading setup to get familiarized; I’m saying once a month you should take a crack at a new skill that you may find useful to add to your mental arsenal. Don’t just stop at an instructional video or book, get hands-on experience to drive home the lesson. Some ideas are: lock-picking, primitive fire starting, small game trapping, food preservation techniques, first-aid instruction or celestial navigation.

3. Spice up your food preps

Look around for new and tasty additions to your foodstores. Living off a 50 lb bag of rice will get old quick and it doesn’t take much to change up the menu a bit. Search for foods with a long shelf life that are different than what you’ve got a lot of. Smoked wild Alaskan salmon with a shelf life of up to 10 years? Count me in. Honey, bouillon and salt are all essential and have extreme shelf lives. Some Johnny’s seasoning salt and Tang drink powder are cheap and easy products to literally spice up your meals. Not to mention sustainability years after the apocalypse- throw some seed packets in your cache to offer fresh foods if possible to the end times.

4. Challenge a friend

There’s safety in numbers and much to gain with a little friendly competition. Challenge a prepper friend to improve their game in one particular aspect. Start saving up so you both can attend a shooting school or go on a primitive camping trip. Even if your friends aren’t preppers, you should be able to find a way to challenge them in a manner that will prove productive for your mental, physical, or logistical preparedness. A few ideas are: race to increase supply stores by a certain percentage, compete together in a shooting or fitness competition, or go over each others disaster plans to find weak links.

5. Start living it now!

There is no experience like hands-on experience. Live the prepared life now and you won’t be caught short when the SHTF. When you’ve found skills you enjoy using, keep after them! Raise chickens, learn (and use!) local foraging, brew wines and meads, can your own foods and start a garden. Even if the best you can achieve in any of these examples is a tiny version (single tomato plant, brewing beer in a class at your local brew-shop), the level of learning with hands-on experience is tenfold that of lessons memorized from a book or internet article. I feel time spent gardening and camping are essential to this step.

Read by the light of your handmade candles and live the prepared life ready for disaster, not afraid of it.

Survival Food and Prepping: Living off the Land is Harder Than it Looks

You often hear people say that if the SHTF that they will simply “live off the land”. I am here to tell you that it is harder than it looks, especially if you have more than just yourself to feed. I had the opportunity to test my skills on the TV show “Alone” on the History Channel (we were dropped off solo and self-documented our journey – – no camera crew). I’ve been asked a lot about what I ate when I was solo on Vancouver Island for 57 days fending for myself.

On the show, you mostly see me eating salmon. I caught 5 or 6 (can’t recall) during my time there, but I ate 25 other species as well. Here is my list of the 26 species I ate while on the island. The inter-tidal was indeed abundant and provided the most consistent source of food for me. Fish other than salmon I caught on my lines.

Limpets
Chum salmon
Spiny dogfish
Kelp bass
Blennie eels
Mossy chitons
Red rock crabs
Marine isopods (sea lice)
Banana slugs
Admiral boletes
King boletes
Chanterelles
Spiny wood fern roots
Silverweed roots
Plantain
Yarrow (mostly in tea, for medicine and under my arms)
Spruce and hemlock needle tips (for Vitamin C in tea)
Licorice fern roots
Enteromorpha (green algae)
Fucus (rockweed)
Nereocystis (Bullwhip kelp)
Macrocystis (Giant kelp)
Salal berries
Huckleberries
Hemlock Tree cambium (not so tasty and careful on how much you eat)
Salicornia (Sea Asparagus)

In addition, I used Usnea, Yarrow, Plantain and Western Red Cedar bark as medicine. Mussels and clams were off-limits due to red tide and the barnacles in my area were too small. Otherwise they’d have been in the pot as well.

How does this relate to prepping? Food procurement in the wild is hard, especially in the fall/winter. The best bang for your buck is passive food (gill nets, trot lines, traps) – things that work for you while you sleep. Foraging plants, mushrooms and animals that can’t run from you is also a calorie-efficient way to harvest food. If I’d had a gun out there and didn’t have to follow local hunting regulations I would have been able to secure more food. That said, prepping your land with a food and medicine garden, fruit trees and domestic animals is certainly the way to go. If there really is a need to only live off the land having these ways to do it, coupled with a lot of food storage, is your best bet.

I am thrilled that I got to test my survival skills in the wild. Not everyone gets the opportunity to live alone in the woods for 2 months and I feel lucky and blessed to have had that time to see what I was made of. What am I made of? Apparently 26 species of wild foods. Thanks for listening and remember to prepare!

by Dr. Nicole Apelian

Survival Foods and Prepping: Living off the Land is Harder Than it Looks — Dr. Nicole Apelian

About Dr, Nicole:

Dr. Nicole Apelian is a scientist, mother, educator, researcher, expeditionary leader, safari guide, herbalist and traditional skills instructor. A leader in the field of transformative nature education, Nicole is excited to share her knowledge and expertise of nature connection, indigenous knowledge, natural wellness and survival skills with the world.

Growing up in Massachusetts, Nicole connected with nature at an early age. Her stepfather was an enormous influence, offering constant support, teaching her to play guitar, and mentoring her through outdoor activities. Nicole’s first exposure to true wilderness living began while working as a field biologist in Botswana.

Following a job as a game warden with the US Peace Corps, she began tracking and researching lions in southern Africa. Nicole immediately fell in love with the African landscapes and the San Bushmen’s way of life, and later, while working with the San Bushmen, Nicole completed her doctorate, focused in Cultural Anthropology within the field of Sustainability Education. Years of visiting the San Bushmen and developing strong relationships within the tribe allowed Nicole to learn many of the primitive skills and ways she practices and teaches today.

Nicole was also a challenger on the second season of History Channel’s TV series “Alone”. She thrived in the wilderness totally solo for 57 days with little more than her knife and her wits! Learn about Nicole’s experience on the show here.

Nicole continues her work with the San Bushmen to help them find strategies to preserve their traditions and is currently cataloging indigenous plant uses with a community of Naro Bushmen who regard her as family. At her home in the Pacific Northwest, Nicole makes her own herbal medicines from local plants and enjoys time in nature with her two sons and wonderful community.

You can train with Dr. Nicole through her website. She teaches a number of “Survive and Thrive” outdoor classes. The most popular class is the Every Day Carry Preparedness Workshop. Learn what you should carry at all times for emergencies to provide water, shelter, fire, food, medical and signaling.

With Eco Tours International, you can travel with her to the Kalahari Tracking and Bird Language Expedition, a transformational journey with the Naro (NHARO) San Bushmen community in Botswana, Africa.

https://www.facebook.com/nicoleapeliansurvival/

*Photos courtesy of the author

The glaring problem with your ‘dream’ survival rides…

This distinction is an important one to make for a number of reasons. In the realm of survival preparation, where my professional experiences turning wrenches meets my professional experience slinging lead, knowing that those awesomepieces of equipment you pine for are going to break down, need repairs, and in tough circumstances, require a whole lot of love informs the type of vehicle you want to bring with you into a fight for your life.

As awesome as this scene in “I am Legend” is… a Mustang isn’t actually very practical for getting around after the apocalypse.

I’ve driven a fair number of expensive Mercedes in my life, but admittedly, I’ve never driven their 6×6. None the less, I can glean a number of things simply by looking at this picture:

The suspension travel of this vehicle will require one hell of a jack to get one of these wheels off the ground, and before you say, “it can raise its own wheels off the ground electronically!” I remind you that nothing works the way it’s supposed to three years after the world ends.
Simply swapping out a wheel and tire on this will require specialized tools that almost certainly come with the vehicle when you buy it, but may not when you “liberate” it from a suburban neighborhood crawling with zombies.
Finding replacement parts for this vehicle will be slightly harder than finding a boyfriend that will put up with Taylor Swift.
When you high-side this thing, it’s going to take one hell of a truck to get it un-stuck.
It is… honestly pretty rad anyway.

An Ar-15 is a valuable tool in a survival situation, but none of us would be surprised to learn that its value begins to drop significantly if you don’t have the means or the know-how to properly maintain it. Without proper maintenance and a steady source of ammunition, your AR-15 quickly becomes a club, and without replacement parts and the ability (both in terms of equipment and knowledge) to maintain your vehicle, it too quickly becomes useless. In a survival situation, it’s not always about what will work best in the next three days… it’s about what will keep working for the long haul.

After all, if the world’s already ended – who are you trying to impress?

Feature image courtesy of Mercedes Benz, all other images courtesy of the author unless otherwise noted.

Originally published on SOFREP

Watch: Water Filter Comparison

We have covered several water filter systems here in the Loadout Room. Everything from the smaller portable filters to the larger family size filter systems. I typically have some type of emergency filter in my pack when out on the trail or in the woods. They are a nice option to have if you run out of water and don’t have the time to start a fire to boil water. Dave Canterbury of Self Reliance Outfitters covers a few different options and gives his professional opinion on each.

*featured image courtesy of DVIDS