How to Keep the Crew Warm and Full of Coffee, by GuerrillaLogistician
Reference – 12A
by GuerrillaLogistician
@GLogistician on X.com
Location: an undisclosed G-Camp
Date: 276 days after the collapse
Chris walked down a very narrow set of steps and rounded the corner before pulling open a plank door, followed by the three others of his four-man scout team. The Multicam alpine scrim from Wendigo Works was dusted with this year’s freshly minted snow. A month ago, this small group was displaced from their homes after the new law enforcement had replaced the now-dead Sheriff Coltan, who defied unlawful rules, and draconian curfews were being enforced. The new sheriff had been making sure everyone was forced to redistribute any hoarding supplies, all under a modified Defense Production Act of 1950 and the absolute stretching of 50 U.S. Code § 4512 – Hoarding of designated scarce materials. Everyone from Clinton, Obama, Biden, and Trump had used this Act, and the Chrises community wasn’t stupid enough to trust anyone with their stores. The hunting property had cash spots, and materials had been secured, so when the new sheriff came in, everyone looked like good little collectivists and freely gave up their very little excess. Now, Chris and his friends had been so busy keeping the new government in a constant sheriff-hiring cycle that it seemed like no one, but the good old Sheriff Coltan could keep the region from being lawless.
Already sitting around the Samovar heater a few of his friends were maintaining the heat with wooden sticks and adding water to the little stove heater. Because it was a buried structure, the little area had been cleaned up with wooden floors and walls, just like many of the little outposts they had made throughout the region. Sheets of metal were placed on the wood floor to protect it from possible embers dropping onto it. The water around the Samavor radiated the heat without the need or large amounts of wood unlike a normal fireplace might have. Also the fire could go out and the water would resonate the heat for a while as well. One of the guys had been installing everything from fireplaces to cast iron stoves and had built an insane exhaust system that distributed the heat out of rock and a custom pipe system along with artful use of tree and brush cover. No one knew for sure if it would really hide their location from a good thermal system, but from the ground, it looked like a prairie dog network at most.
Chris grabbed a 5-gallon bucket with a pour spout marked unpurified over to the Samavor that quietly burned the wooden coals, radiating a comfortable heat into the small underground structure. Everyone in his crew got hot water and started making instant hot coffee, tea, etc. After everyone got their fill of hot water, Chris filled the Samavor and replaced the unused contents of the 5-gallon bucket back to its rightful place. As they warmed up both from the radiated heat and the sterile drink, they debriefed the other men in the shelter, and the radio in the corner quietly hissed with static. The only good thing about the cold snap and snow was the enemy was not acclimated to the rigors of the cold and rarely ventured beyond the roads. Between the small Kelly Kettles and modern Samovars strategically placed, the men who wore the razorback patch stayed warm and were able to hide while still fighting back. Each time the new sheriff was appointed and began to squeeze the freedoms of the people, more men filtered out of the small towns and joined the Razorbacks.
After warming up around the Samovar and having a dehydrated meal most of his team went to bed as Chris finished his intel report to send out to the razorback partisans. As he had finished, the radio began to almost vibrate with the digital noise from a transmitter hundreds of miles away from them. The digital message rolled onto the laptop’s screen connected to the radio. One of the men standing nearby picked up a pen and began writing down what the computer was displaying, which looked like a bunch of random numbers. After a couple of minutes of decoding from the OTP, the operator looked at Chris and frowned, “We Just got an Under Report, and it looks like you guys are going to need to do an out and back for a cashe drop.” The RTO was writing some information as he continued to talk to Chris, “Grab what you need for an overnight, and I will see if I can get the farmer’s cart and 4-wheeler.”
Chris groaned, knowing they were short on manpower right now, but this should be a milk run for the boys. Stretching, he got up and walked to the little side dug out where most of his guys had gone to take a nap. “Alright, gentleman, no rest for the wicked, grab your long-range civilian gear. Were going to get beans and bullets.”
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For most of our lives, we try to stay cool, keep in the shade, and not burn to death doing labor in the sun, but winter comes, and we are trying to bundle up and stay warm. As we discussed in the COTS podcast, surviving the winter months can be an effort in the first place. There are so many ways to tackle the subject of the cold that the topic could be nearly endless, from old cast iron stoves to turning a ceramic pot over the top of a candle to produce a heat radiator. That said, we just did a podcast on COTS about the cold, primarily based on the start of this article. I want to expand on