Foreign Ammo Energy Conversions

I ordered myself a few boxes of Prvi Partizan 44 Magnum 300gr SJFP Ammunition, this evening, from Palmetto State Armory. I placed the order in anticipation of me soon to be acquiring my new Ruger Redhawk 44 magnum revolver. The gun has been shipped to my dealer and my guess is it will arrive on Monday. I will pick up a box or two of ammo from the gun store but also wanted to get a few more online because it is quite a bit less expensive than what is available locally (but make no mistake about it, 44 Mag is expensive handgun ammo).

 

I took a look at the PSA website and they offered zero additional info on the ammo other than what it is and how much it costs. I then went over to Target Sports USA's website. I knew already, they did not have it in stock because I checked earlier. I also knew that while they still showed it on their site as an out of stock item, they also had information like muzzle energy and muzzle velocity listed for it. According to the info at Target Sports USA, the muzzle velocity is 1279 FPS and the muzzle energy is 1059 foot pounds. That is pretty impressive but I wanted to make sure they got it right so I also visited the Prvi Partizan website. Prvi Partizan had some different numbers up for this ammo showing a muzzle velocity of 390 m/s (meters per second) at 0 distance, and Energy [J] at 0 distance (or in other words probably at the muzzle) of 1479.

Hmm, what the heck did all that mean. It meant I needed to get some conversions figured out. I went to my favorite conversion website, US standard & metric unit converter calculator by Science Made Simple. I was easily able to discover that 390 meters per second is equal to 1279.5 feet per second. Target Sports USA was just essentially spot on for the muzzle velocity, only off by .5 FPS. So I am guessing that when Prvi Partizan says that the Energy [J] at 0 is 1479, they mean at the muzzle. As for converting the muzzle energy from Joules to foot pounds, that site also did it for me. Muzzle energy of 1479 Joules equals 1090.85 foot pounds. That is a bit different than what it says on the Target Sports USA website for the same ammo but I will settle for either the 1091 or 1059 because either way that is going to be one heck of a hammer blow to a Brown Bear's skull or spine if Brendan and I need to defend ourselves from one during our Alaska trip. After I did those calculations online, I was using the calculator that came with Windows whatever version I have) and found out that I could have used said calculator too since it has a conversions mode.

As for the Brown Bear defense aspects of this ammo, I have done my homework to some decent degree. This ammo is in essence going to be practice ammo because I intend to buy 300 grain ammo with hard cast bullets to use when we are in the field as opposed to this ammo with its semi-jacketed flat points. If I cannot find any by the time of the trip then this Prvi Partizan stuff will have to do. In doing that homework I just mentioned, I also came to learn that bear spray is a much more effective way to handle a charging brown bear and results in less injuries and deaths (to the people) than when only using a firearm. Bear spray, from what I can gather, is an absolute necessity in brown bear country and we will have that too. I have to wait until we get to Alaska to buy it or at least to pick it up at a store after ordering it online from down here. There is no way you can legally take that size a can of pepper spray onto a plane - not in carry-on or checked luggage but I have digressed.

Getting back to the subject of this post, the info about where you can do conversions, for foreign muzzle energy and muzzle velocity measurements, is all good to know if you are buying ammo from a foreign maker who lists its ammo energy in Joules and lists its velocity in meters per second.

All the best,
Glenn B

Everyman's Evening Eyeful

All the best,
Glenn  B

Emergency Food Larder Rotation - How Often Is Often Enough

I have some emergency food on hand in case of whatever. Maybe whatever will take the form of a hurricane with power outages and roads closed, a nationwide strike of leftists, civil unrest, and earthquake (even NY lies on a fault line), a military invasion, terrorism or a fucking zombie apocalypse (who knows what the future my hold and it may be as weird as that last one). t's not a lot of food, really it is not. I have enough on hand for my immediate family for maybe a month (or two if we stretch it). Every now and then, I buy something new and throw it in with the rest. Sometimes I remember to mark it with the date I figure it would best be used by. In the past, I wrote down a date a few months before the best used by date on the packaging; now I don't pay that nearly as much mind as I used to. You see, I forgot to label something back in 2011 or was it 2012. It had a best used by date of around may 2013. I found it a few days ago - a case of can chicken - whoops. I was hungry so I opened one of them but only after throwing a badly dented one in the trash. Yeah, it was probably good but I remember when I was a kid that dented cans often meant the seal got broken but that was back then. Nowadays, I think they seal them better but why take a chance, so out it went. Anyway, I put can opener to tin, gave it several twists of its handle, and I had myself what looked and smelled like some wholesome, if not delicious, canned white meat chicken.

I made myself a bowl of chicken salad by tossing in about 4 or 5 tablespoons of mayo (or more), a small handful of dried onion flakes, some garlic powder, a goodly amount of black pepper, some few dashes of sea salt, a nice dollop or three of Bauer's mustard and some Japanese green mustard sauce. It took me a big mouthful or two to realize it was excellent. I had it with a single slice of heavy rye bread (I am on a sort of on a spinoff of the Atkins diet - cutting back on carbs but eating almost everything else). That I am still here today testifies to the fact that it did not kill me. Heck, it didn't even make me belch or fart.

I can't wait to have another can of that stuff (not that I am big on canned food but I eat it when convenient). I am in no hurry though and should that chicken sit around for another year or two, I probably would not hesitate more that to give it a quick sniff and look before glomming it down. I figure it has got to be good in those cans for at least 10 years, maybe more. Hell, if I was starving after a zombie apocalypse or the devastation of a nuclear holocaust, I would eat it if it was 20 years old and still sealed. I don't know if I would go much beyond that but then it is emergency food after all.

Now, normally such is not the case with me and I usually rotate what emergency food supplies I have on hand as time goes by. As I think I wrote up above, I normally mark a date on the outside of the packaging - a date by which I figure I should use it, but it is no longer a date prior to the best if used by date. Now it is a year or two, maybe even three, after that date. If I see that the food is getting close to the date I wrote on the packaging, then I break it out and eat it. Well, I may not eat it but it does get eaten. In the case of canned green beans or corn kernels, I feed that stuff to my tortoises. They love it. When it comes to caned tuna, the whole family will wolf that down, my son will probably eat some of the chicken, maybe even my daughter when she visits but I doubt my wife will touch it. Something else, that I know my wife will not eat, is Spam. No worries there though, my son and I both love it. Of course, if it truly was a SHTF situation where food was low, everyone would be glad I had it stashed away. If it comes to TEOTWAWKI, heck they would be happy not only to have it but to fight for it to protect it from vandals, thieves, scavengers and berserkers (or in other words from leftists). Still though, I am guessing it would be best to rotate what emergency food stores one has in stock about no more than within a year or three of the expiration of the best used by date. I know, it doesn't say "expires on" or "must use before", it says "best used by"; so it will almost certainly always last loner than that, but why take too many chances.

Luckily, we don't have to depend on an old man in a cave to tell us whether or not the food we have in store is bad or good; I use my nose for that and if worse came to worse would use a Geiger counter. Then again, it might not be such a bad thing to have an old geezer watching out for you!
 

All the best,
Glenn B