NOTICE

130 R.J. GODLEWSKI/INERT
own country where thievery or displacement aren’t
nearly as expected as within foreign countries.
Since you aren’t planning on being a
mercenary soldier fighting overseas in some
restrictive semblance of an army, I don’t see the
need to skimp on your purchases – so long as you
have reasonable control over your arsenal. If
there’s even the slightest chance that you won’t be
able to secure your inventory for, say, the next five
years or longer, then by all means avoid making
expensive purchases. That much is common sense.
So, too, is getting the best weapon available.
When I drove within the household goods
industry many years back, I once made a purchase
of an awesome looking ‘survival knife’ fashioned
pretty much after the one featured in First Blood.
Being required to move people into and out of
some of the most notorious cities in the country, I
felt decidedly more protected with its 12 inch blade
hanging from my hip. Inside the handle were
matches, a fishing rig, a wire saw, and the cap
contained a compass – important items to have for
all of those Western and Northwestern runs we
made.
My knife was not cheap, but it wasn’t handcrafted
either. Not in the sense that some
craftsman staked his reputation on its quality
leastways. The blade served its purpose as a
deterrent well – people used to cross the street to
avoid walking near me when they saw it – and
sliced through boxes and packing tape efficiently.
It was when I had to use the knife in its ‘prying’
mode that I realized how damn cheap the
instrument truly was – the blade simply bent with