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« Letter Re: The Pen is Mightier than the Sword |Main Monday December 7 2009Letter Re: Best Military Manuals with Field Fortification Designs?
Jim - JWR Replies: The basics describing and illustrating one-man and two-man fighting positions (suitable for LP/OPs) with overhead cover can be found in FM 7-8, Infantry Platoon and Squad. (An older edition is available online, sans illustrations.) But for greater detail, including some on larger and more elaborate positions, see FM 5-15, Field Fortifications. A very old edition, circa 1944, is available online.) One other excellent--but hard-to-find--manual is FM 5-103, Survivability. I recommend looking for used hard copies of these either at gun shows or from online booksellers. « Economics and Investing: |Main| Note from JWR: » Sunday December 6 2009Solo Survival in a Societal Collapse?, by Wry Catcher
When it comes to natural and man-made disasters, I’ve seen my share, and each was a learning experience. Although diverse in type, all of them shared a common factor: a dire impact on the human populations they affected. That impact, in turn, led to dangerous encounters with some rough criminals. Some people cannot cope, so they turn to ruthless behavior. Other people are selfish opportunists. While we may have pity for those who can’t cope with the stress of a survival situation, we should nonetheless remain vigilant for those who would do us harm in any way and for any reason. As my niece says, “It only takes one creep to ruin your life.” She is so right! We preppers and survivalists know by now that being part of a trustworthy and cooperative community will dramatically increase the odds for our survival. Whether surrounded by family, friends, or like-minded neighbors, having a support system in place during hard times is universally considered vital. Suppose, however, that circumstances preclude you from enjoying the benefits of a protective community. Perhaps your friends and family live out of town. Some of you reading this right now don’t know your neighbors, and don’t want to know them. Many of you live alone by choice. Or perhaps an event forces you to become isolated from your community. Bottom line: you’re on your own. You need to ask yourself some questions now, before the bogey man arrives. How can I maintain my sanity when chaos reigns around me? Strong faith in an entity greater than yourself is a true comfort in times of trouble. Having faith in someone or something will help you endure the solitude. As a sole survivor, how can I defend my living space? Consider having 3M Safety & Security film installed on the inside of all windows so that “smash and grab” is more difficult. Perimeter fences should be sturdy and climb-proof. Landscaping should discourage fires from reaching the residence. Turn a basement bathroom or a laundry room into a bunker and a well-supplied defensive stand. Abandon rooms that cannot be easily defended from within. Another old adage, “don’t put all your eggs in one basket” is good advice when it comes to stashing weapons and water. If you venture out, keep a low profile and don’t betray your location. A car can be a retreat in desperate times. It can also be a betrayer. Concealment makes the difference. Will I be able to survive without electricity if my “strength through imaginary numbers” plan cannot be implemented without it? Can I convince those who know or learn that I live alone to leave me alone?
Perhaps the best defense is to pretend to be absent. I have known people who hid in a secret closet or a basement bathroom while scavengers rummaged through their homes. When the thieves left, the homeowner returned to living as if nothing happened because their survival gear had been stowed with great forethought. Contemplate adding an underground or subsurface bunker to your home. If that is impossible, remodel an interior room to serve as a defensive position. Present an impenetrable exterior and a well-defended position so that those will ill intent will be inclined to go elsewhere. Your goal should be having a home and property that appears occupied, when that is your best defense, and unoccupied, when that serves your needs. The balancing act is a tricky one, to be sure. When at home, during times of trouble, keep a low profile. As you plan for survival, downplay each change to your home and your purchase of supplies. Your caches should only be known to family and trusted friends. Loose lips don’t just sink ships, they could sink your personal safety and security. Never hire the same contractor for two separate survival projects – don’t divulge the real reason or purpose of the work you are having done. Could I use a weapon against another human being, if necessary? Can I train to do so? Are your knives sharp? Can you keep them that way? Is your 4x4 always ready for a quick getaway if you must abandon your home? Most importantly, Do you have a G.O.O.D. plan if things get too dicey? Your weapons should be familiar to you so that using them is second nature. Ammunition should be securely stowed until needed. If your weapons use common calibers and gauges, bartering will be easier. Can you project a defensible exterior to your home while still presenting a comfortable residence during times of normalcy? This can be problematic unless carefully thought out. Landscaping can be defensibly practical and simultaneously attractive with little effort. Fencing, however, may have local restrictions and aesthetic considerations. Check local codes for current limitations, then work within those limits to create the best perimeter barrier. With a little work now, you can make a fence that can be easily reinforced at a later and more dangerous time. What you do to the interior of your house should be your business, so long as you keep it private and non-hazardous to your neighbors, you shouldn't have much trouble. [JWR Adds: See the blog archives for my admonitions about liability issues, including chemical irritants and trap guns.] Filled sandbags line the walls of your garage? Why not! The Bottom Line « Letter Re: Another COMSEC Warning on Social Networking Web Services |Main| In Praise of Betadine, by A. Woofer » Thursday December 3 2009Three Letters Re: Securing Bedroom Doors Against Home InvadersJWR, James Wesley; I am also considering installing a trap door in each bedroom that leads to the crawl space under the house so we can exit with weapons when needed. Trapdoor would be hidden under a small area rug with rug attached to door so when it is used and then closed, there is no evidence of the trap door. I love the wide variety of ideas your readers share. Regards, - Marc N. in Alabama In my opinion a bedroom door should be constructed like an [exterior] entry door. It is the last layer in a layered defense. For a balance between cost and security, I recommend a commercial steel door and frame, of the type commonly seen on the side walls of box stores, movie theatres, etc. (these doors are available with armor steel lining but the cost is very high- we are talking here of a standard 16 gauge door.) A door and frame, new, will run roughly $500. I suspect they are available much cheaper on the used architectural salvage market. Get one bored for a lockset and deadbolt., and a double deadbolt bore (two deadbolts) would be even better. Make sure both sides of the door stamping are welded together at the lockset and deadbolt areas. The supplier should be able to do this work. Usually they will come cut for three heavy duty hinges-use a top grade hinge and commercial deadbolt. A flat faced door is easiest to modify for appearance, anything from paint, to a solid wood veneer can be applied. They do come with a pressed panel look also. This door will not be a box store item, look for an architectural supply house. In regard to the poster's query, I would recommend changing the double doors for a large single door. It is much harder to secure a set of double doors, as the one anchors to the other-- to make it really secure, the first door will be anchored to the floor and top jamb, and be such a hassle to use it will never be opened anyway. Have the opening framed in for a 36" or 42" single door, this gives an opportunity to do the reinforcement of the framing at the same time. Block in between the studs with 3/4" plywood, glue and screw down the plates (bottom framing member) to the floor. Framing and contractors: Obviously the door is no more secure than the wall itself- some dry wall may have to be removed and plywood attached to strengthen it. Think about this- what you are trying to accomplish is two things, to prevent the door from being compromised by having it pushed out of position- either by having the jamb pried away from the door far enough to allow the deadbolt to release, or by having the stud the steel frame surrounds, pop or slip where it is attached to the rest of the framing. Plywood stiffeners between the studs will help with spreading, and making sure the framing components are screwed together will help to make sure it does not come apart. Some places may need a bolted in angle iron or similar to reinforce. Also make sure the hollow metal door jamb has wood blocking that backs up to the deadbolt pocket-no good having a solid door and framing if the jamb can be bent back far enough to pop the deadbolt free. Most contractors are going to be thinking in standard house terms. So instead, find one who will get the hint. This is probably someone who has worked on high end homes and custom jobs)--you want a door/jamb/frame assembly that will withstand a sledgehammer or a battering ram. It should buy at least a few minutes of time under attack- time to arm up, call the police, position yourself, and so forth. And as a side note-consider the access to the door-if it is tough to swing a sledge or use a ram, so much the better. Five minutes does not sound like a long time - compared to the mere seconds a standard door will resist attack, it is an eternity. Where the door is placed has a major effect on it's strength, and method of reinforcement. Some doors may be at wall junctions, head of stairs, etc where there is a lot of internal framing, and there may be no easy access through an adjacent wall. The worst would be a door in the middle of a flat wall, with no interior cabinetry- in such a case, Mr. Rawles pointed out, the wall can be easily breached through the drywall. In any such case, it may be easiest to attach 3/4" plywood over the existing drywall, then attach another layer of drywall or finish material over the plywood. There should be no "drywall only" walls within arm's reach of a door knob! It is too easy to punch through the drywall and unlock the door. Consider a small camera to cover the door, so you can see, from the inside , what is going on. And figure out what is next- the door will buy you time to wake up, and prepare-think about how you will use the layout of your space to best defend it. Also consider a "cage and door " type arrangement at the top of the stairs, made of openwork wrought iron or similar. This is common in some countries. Last but not least, make sure that you have a way to get out in an emergency. A house fire is one of the more likely "survival " scenarios! [JWR Adds: Yes, and far more more likely than a home invasion.] My condolences on the parting from your wife-may you be reunited in everlasting peace by our Infinite Creator. JWR Replies: I concur that "plywood, glue and power screws" are your friends when your goal is delaying home invaders. I must mention that I have had some consulting clients that took layered defense to extremes. For instance, one of them that lives in Central America had a house custom-built with the bedrooms located over a combination vault-basement. Not only didhe beef up the bedroom door, but the bedroom closets were reinforced to good "panic room" specifications, using two thicknesses of marine plywood on five sides, and steel exterior doors with three door deadbolts at the top, middle, and bottom. Both of these closets have trap doors and ladders to the basement. Imagine the frustration of would-be kidnappers to batter down multiple layers of plywood defense, only to face a blank steel plate trapdoor surrounded by concrete! « Economics and Investing: |Main| Pacific Coastal Living and Survival, by K.R. » Wednesday December 2 2009Letter Re: Another COMSEC Warning on Social Networking Web Services
James, Readers should be strongly cautioned that electronic communications are easily spoofed, intercepted, redirected and in many other ways rendered non-secure. Never trust electronic communications as if it were snail mail - for the moment, about the most secure way of sending information (other than to/from anyone in the military), unless you are face to face and have removed the battery from your cell phone. COMSEC is an important part of living in today's world of eavesdroppers, both the innocuous ones and those with evil in mind. Learn about COMSEC from articles in Survival Blog's archives or from other online sources and then practice good COMSEC, as if everything sent electronically is going to be intercepted by your worst enemy and shared with everyone else in the world. - Ted in Idaho « Economics and Investing: |Main| David in Israel Re: Distilled Spirits for Barter » Tuesday December 1 2009Two Letters Re: Securing Bedroom Doors Against Home Invaders
James,
I fabricated what visitors thereafter referred-to as my "bear bar." I cut a length of stout 2x4 about a foot longer then the door width. One end of the "bar" was drilled to accommodate a long 1/2" bolt, and a corresponding hole was drilled through the wall for the bolt. Poof: we have a hinged bar. On the other, opening side of the door I mounted a metal bracket to hold the bar when it was down and in place. It worked like a charm ... at least no more bears (inside). The simple system worked, and I suspect could be done for an inside door as well (but your comments about the vulnerability of sheet rock walls are quite valid). - C. « Letter Re: A Bulk-Buying Solution--Form a Buyer's Club |Main| Over-Planning: Get Thine Act Together! » Monday November 16 2009From David in Israel: Off Grid Alternatives to Utility-Supplied ElectricityJames The appliances you own for on grid use are not efficient. They are built to be inexpensive or if you are better off durable, even the fancy electrical appliances out of Europe with the Energy Star are in reality a big waste of power once you are paying by the off grid watt for solar panels and battery banks. There is no reason a normal family shouldn't consider an off grid option for their home. Even in a national emergency and societal breakdown it is very rare for supplies of diesel fuel, gasoline, kerosene, and LP gas to be unavailable for long periods at some price. Dryer - Enemy number one especially in a large family, a solar clothes dryer is under $5 at nearly every hardware store, ask for a clothesline. Folding indoor drying racks are very popular in Israel. Even in winter indoor drying can be assisted by using a fan, it will also keep the air humidified. After trying the above and finding you just can't make it there are LP gas heated clothes dryers, but these still need mains power for the drum motor. Oven/Stovetop - There is no reason to use electrical power for cooking. Excellent caterer grade ovens and stoves are available at most appliance stores which run totally on gas. Some may use an electrical ignition or thermostat but nearly all can be retrofitted either with a piezoelectric (no battery needed) spark starter or can just be lit with a match avoiding the danger of the old style pilot light since they now are equipped with a thermal safety. Most people find they actually prefer gas once they are used to it as it is a more even heat. We have had good success using MSR camping kerosene burners when the gas to our home was unavailable for a few weeks. Hot Water - Nearly any off grid home will benefit from the addition of a solar collector in addition to a well-insulated gas water heater. Think about turning down the thermostat or using a secondary gas instant heating system and low flow shower heads to stretch your hot water supply. Heating - Most stores and contractors can provide a wide variety of wood, pellet, gas, kerosene, or oil-fueled stoves and furnaces and space heaters. Insulation is key to keeping your alternative heat system from breaking your bank account. Power Tools - Some older large shop tools can be powered by a PTO shaft or belt system. The possibilities from a gas motor, to steam, to hydro and beyond are limited only by your imagination. Water pressure - In many areas there is not enough wind for a windmill to keep a water tower full so an electrical or gas pump might work better once all factors are evaluated. If your retreat is located below the summit of the hill it would probably be much easier to install a pool or cistern on the summit to provide pressure for firefighting operations even if your pump is destroyed, for every foot of elevation .433 pounds of water pressure is required for filling your tower or cistern and this pressure is returned when water is used in your home or property. Anyone living in a wilderness area should have in addition to a gravity fed water system of at least 1,500 gallons and a 300 gpm capacity, and at least one portable reservoir. There are portable swimming pools that are the same as US Forest Service uses for firefighting, and a gas powered portable pump for emergency firefighting. Descending water can be run reverse through some pumps generating electricity making it a very effective and inexpensive way to store electrical power once your battery banks are full. Refrigeration - Most readers if their inventory their refrigerator will find mostly leftovers or things which actually will last until consumption without refrigeration. There are high quality kerosene and LP gas powered absorption refrigerators, some with secondary mains power optional, available from a few suppliers even in the US. For those with the skills required to build and test a system which can withstand 250 psi anhydrous ammonia, copying the old Crosley Icy-Ball chest refrigerator-freezer is a thrifty option. Since anti-drug manufacturing laws make obtaining anhydrous ammonia difficult, an icy-ball can be built with drains on the absorptive water side to self distill ammonia from cleaning solution. A warning: Ammonia is a dangerous respiratory irritant and any homemade system should be used with caution and kept and recharged outside in case of leakage. One DIY design includes a shutoff valve to keep the ammonia from reabsorbing until the valve is opened allowing it to be stored in a charged condition. Before refrigeration people would buy eggs and milk fresh in the city or if they could have chickens and a cow or goat would produce their own. A chicken is easily consumed by even a small family once cooked, in less than a day. A water evaporation cooler cabinet is another very cheap option for keeping food. Lighting - Gas mantle lighting once found in most urban homes is not difficult to implement using either camping lamps and piped gas or better yet certified indoor lamps. While in college I worked in a gun and camping shop which sold a reverse fitting for refilling disposable Coleman LP gas cartridges from the older non-tip over shutoff bulk tanks making camp lights highly practical for hanging. It must be remembered that gas lighting presents an increased fire hazard so precautions including avoiding clutter and considering the floor and wall surface must be taken into account. Battery powered florescent and LED lights and LED nightlights are also useful for reading and small tinkering. Metal halide lighting is much more power friendly than incandescent if large areas require illumination for security purposes. Communications - Your radio communications system should have a redundant battery bank and power supply should your services be required in an emergency. It should be remembered the operating rule of just as much power as required and the usage of low power consumption modes like CW. Tube systems are notoriously wasteful of power and tubes have limited life so these should be kept as backup systems in most cases. Only power up satellite Internet systems after you have typed up all the e-mails and set them up to send immediately after going online. There are offline viewers which will call up all the web sites you normally visit and grab them all for later viewing. Television sets, satellite receivers, and large stereo systems are wasteful of electrical power if left on. A small notebook computer for occasional movies and an MP3 player for music will save many valuable watts. Unplug or employ a disconnect switch [or power strip with switch] on all electronics unless they are in use. This will protect them from power surges in addition to eliminating sleep-state power draw. [Also know as a "phantom load."] Telephone - If your retreat can obtain telephone service a secondary redundant system connecting you to selected neighbors can be set up in some areas by ordering an old style alarm or bell line to one central home, this is usually cheaper than a line with actual telephone service, and should work in most telephone systems even if the central office with its redundant power goes offline but the wires are still intact. The Telephone company will either splice the wire pairs at the neighborhood box or at the closest central office, officially only for alarm systems, it is possible to set up anything from long run Ethernet or simple voice lines with an old style "everybody rings" party line. This will not save off grid watts but is a good way to add redundancy to your retreat. Safety - Install at least two combo carbon monoxide sensing smoke alarms in your home in addition to a smoke alarm in every occupied room. In these alarms, install long life lithium batteries and check on the first of the month and every time you change to or from daylight savings. DO NOT use rechargeable batteries for your smoke and carbon monoxide alarms! Due to the higher fire risk using flame-based alternatives to electricity I even more strongly recommend installation of fire sprinklers in all rooms, flame hoods over all cooking surfaces with automatic sprinklers that have a manual activation, and at least two standpipe and hose cabinets with 100 gpm gravity flow minimum per standpipe, ABC-rated fire extinguisher, gloves, goggles, and Nomex face shroud. Install outdoor standpipes and stocked hose locker for wildfires, a charged mobile phone for 911 (BTW, you need not have an active calling plan to use a cell phone to call 911 in the USA) and if you have to retreat from interior firefighting. Most importantly have an evacuation and rendezvous family accounting plan and volunteer with the local volunteer fire department, learn when the fire is just too big to fight by yourself. With an engineering eye it is often possible to reduce your home or retreat electrical requirements to an inexpensive few hundred watts once alternatives are considered. Shalom, - David in Israel « Letter Re: The List of Lists |Main| Jim's Quote of the Day: » Thursday November 12 2009Letter Re: It Takes a Village for Perimeter Security
Jim: After reading your ‘Precepts’, I thought I would drop you a note. because I have always appreciated anyone that agrees with me. First, I am a retired cop and a retired soldier so I have studied people in one career and weapons and equipment in another. I have been to a number of Third World countries and learned that what we have now is unbelievably good and where we might be going is will be unbelievably, well, sad. I decided a very long time ago that the best place to live for my family would be a rural town. I did not want kids to grow up in an urban setting and having grown up myself in a suburban setting, I didn’t want to inflict that on them either. So we moved. It was a shock at first. The nearest fast food was almost twenty miles away in any direction and the nearest traffic light is seventeen miles away, even today, twenty-five years later. The town I chose was twenty miles from the nearest Interstate and even a couple of miles from nearest state highway. It is in the center of one the largest agricultural areas in the country and has its own grain elevator and storage business. That means at any time of the year, there are upwards of 5,000 tons of corn and soybean stored within the town limits. You know, "the perimeter". I had often thought that if given the means, I would like to own a house on a hilltop with cleared fields of fire and a view of the surrounding area. But that wasn’t practical and as time has proven, it wasn’t even smart. If you’re going to have a survival retreat, it would be best if you already lived there. If the necessity ever arose, I don’t think I would want to have to fight my way out of the city or suburbs. In "Patriots", you describe a survival group that spent a great deal of time preparing for the “what if?” I did the same thing but I chose was to have all those skills that you searched for and recruited all ready present. Farm communities already have a host of survival skills that are needed ready made. In our town, of less than a thousand, are welders (and equipment) fabricators (and their tools) food, fuel, military veterans, plenty of weapons and folks that have already spent a lot of times together dealing with blizzards, electrical storms, and power outages and all those things that bind a small community together. We have some good people here and should the occasion arise, I think we could make a pretty good stand. Organization is key, of course. To that end, I have been active in the town in the past , my last police job before going back in the Army was Chief of Police here. I made a pretty good name for myself and I continue to help out in the town whenever I can. Someone that I have absolutely no respect for once said, “it takes a village” and in this case, she was right. We are far away from the nearest urban areas, have food and water available and our folks every day work skills translate very quickly into survival skills. I wanted to share the thought because I think most people who are planning to attempt to escape from the urban areas when the SHTF may be much better served if they would make that escape before it happens. My very best to you, - JCH « Letter Re: Retreat Commo and Monitoring Suggestions from a Ham Operator |Main| Reader Poll Results: Your Favorite Movies with Survival Themes » Tuesday November 3 2009Letter Re: Some Ground Truth--The "Us" and the "Them" in a Societal CollapseMr. Rawles, Having worked for the Army for 27 years in a number of different failed countries I may have a unique perspective on survival that I would like to share with your readers. I believe most of the "survivalist community" is vastly underestimating the impact that other humans are going to have on their plans. Hunkering down and waiting for everyone to die off is a simplistic plan and I believe has almost no chance of working. You may be able to hide your retreat, but you can't hide the land it sits on. That land itself may become a scarce commodity if the US transitions to an agrarian economy. Food is the key resource. Most communities are at risk because they simply don't have enough calories stored to get them through any kind of crisis. But, storage is no more than limited capital to allow people time to grow more food. Food production requires land....if your retreat is sitting on farmable land, it will be a scarce resource. Carrying capacity of the US using non-petroleum farming techniques is far lower than most of your readers probably think. Also, most areas of the US, especially cities, don't have anywhere near enough farm-able land to go back to some kind of agrarian pattern. Without public infrastructure and modern transportation, we are going to experience a huge die-off caused mostly by starvation. In a total collapse scenario without immediate restoration of the economy, basically everyone who lives in a city is doomed unless they can take over some kind of farm land. If you live in an area without enough farm land, you will be a "have not". Period. I don't care how much food you have stored in your basement. Here is my key point. These teeming millions will not just starve and go away. I believe that anyone who thinks they can defend a working farm against raiders is deluding themselves. 1. People are dangerous. They are the most dangerous animal on earth. You can never lose sight of that! In almost any society breakdown scenario you can think of, you will be surrounded by starving predators that are much more dangerous than tigers. In the USA, every one of them (or at least the vast majority) will be armed with firearms. The ones currently without firearms will obtain them by any means necessary including looting government armories. These are thinking-breathing and highly motivated enemies. 2. Raiders, defined as "outlaw looting groups" may be a threat for a very short period, but I really don't see groups of more than 4-6 ever forming...they will be quickly replaced by much larger groups of "citizens" doing essentially the same things, but much better armed and organized. An Example: A few hours after Albania's political crisis in 1998, (which was caused by a national lottery scam), almost every adult male in the country procured an AKM from government stocks. Armories were the first targets looted. I flew into Tirana packing a pistol and a sack of money, naively thinking I would be able to move around the country and defend myself. What a laugh. Everyone had me outgunned, and the vast majority of them had military training of some sort. I never got out of the capital city. Every road seemed to have roadblocks every few miles, blocked by armed local citizens. 3. Without central authority, people don't just starve and go away. They form their own polities (governments). These polities are often organized around town or city government or local churches. They may call it a city counsel or a committee or a senate. The bottom line is, "We The People" will do whatever "We" have to do to survive. And that specifically includes taking your storage goods. 4. When (not if) a polity forms near you, you had better be part of that process. If not, you will be looked upon as a "resource" instead of a member of the community. The local polity will pass a resolution (or whatever) and "legally" confiscate your goods. If you resist, they will crush you. They will have the resources of a whole community to draw upon including weapons, vehicles, manpower, electronics, tear gas, etc. Every scrap of government owned equipment and weaponry will be used, by someone. Anyone who plans to hold out against that kind of threat is delusional. 5. The local polity that forms is almost certainly going to make mistakes. Some of them are lethal blunders. Odds are, the locals will probably not have given a lot of serious thought to facing long term survival. They will squander resources and delay implementing necessary actions (like planting more food or working together to defend a harvest). They may even decide to take in thousands of refugees from nearby cities, thereby almost insuring their own longer term starvation. A much better approach is to be an integral part of the community and use the combined resources of the community to defend all of your resources together. This would be much easier if a high percentage of the community were like minded folks who were committed to sharing and cooperating. Because any community with food is likely going to have to somehow survive while facing even larger polities, like nearby cities, counties or even state governments. Don't expect to face a walking hoard of lightly armed, starving individuals. Expect to face a professional, determined army formed by a government of some kind. A small farming community can probably support a few outsiders, but not very many. The community will need to politically deal with outside polities or they will face a war they can't win. Hiding the fact that you are self sufficient is going to be hard. You can't hide farm land. Defending your resources against the nearby city will be even harder. You may be able to save the community by buying protection with surplus food...if you have prepared for that. You may indeed have to fight, but stalling that event for even a year could mean the difference between living and being overwhelmed. In any case, your community needs to go into the crisis with a plan. You may be able to shape that plan if you become a community leader instead of a "resource". With Very Kind Regards, - R.J. JWR Replies: You've summed up some essential truths quite succinctly. Your points square nicely with the scenario in my first novel ("Patriots"). It also matches my premise of gemeinschaft kampfgeist, in the context of cohesion in the "we/they paradigm." « Letter Re: Comments of Storing Coffee and Grinding Whole Wheat Flour |Main| Note from JWR: » Sunday November 1 2009Letter Re: Retreat Security: I Am Your Worst Nightmare
I was thinking about the "I Am Your Worst Nightmare" post as I worked in my vegetable garden, preparing it for Spring. I wonder how long it would be until the Looters evolved their strategy Looter+1: Don't kill everyone, leave some alive to loot again later. Looter+2: Plan to scare, rather than kill, your victims, so that they can continue farming and provide for your needs later. Dead victims can't work. Looter+3: Claim a territory and collect "protection" money/goods from the people in your territory. Tell them that in return for only taking one-third of everything they produce, you will protect them from "looters" who will take it all and kill them in the bargain. Punish anyone who holds out. Looter+4: Call your loot taxes. You are now a government. Regards, - Bear JWR Replies: Your observation is astute. In many nations, there is not much difference between "the government" and the bandito "Señor Calvera." (You may remember the bandit leader in The
Magnificent Seven « Letter Re: University of California Disaster Preparedness Videos |Main| Note from JWR: » Friday October 30 2009Retreat Security: I Am Your Worst Nightmare, by Jeff T.
I am the leader of a band of 8-to-12 looters. I have some basic military training. We move from place to place like locusts devouring everything in our path. My group is armed with light weapons and can develop and follow simple plans of attack. We take what we want by force of arms. We prefer none of our victims survive because that could cause problems for us in the future. It has been six months since the grid went down. You and the other five members of your party have settled into what may be a long grinding existence. The every day tasks of growing and gathering have now become routine. The news from the outside is extremely limited but you don’t really miss it much. Life is simple but physically demanding. Although things may seem stable you will need to keep your team focused and alert. This is your first and most important layer of defense. You should hold an immediate reaction drill once per week. Keep things simple. Practice a specific response to such threats as injury, fire, attack and evacuation. Despite the challenges you must maintain contact with those around you such as neighbors for vital clues that trouble is brewing. Regular monitoring the radio will be critical in providing an early warning of trouble. You may be able to safely interview refugees with risking your party. Keep in mind the information you get from them may not always be reliable. While you have been farming I have been learning the best tactics to employ to seize your property and your goods. I have been refining them since we hit the road right after the lights went out. I have conducted eight “hits” so far and have been successful seven times. Here are some of my “lessons learned”. Intelligence gathering and target selection is critical to my success. Targets include those who have large quantities of fuel, food and other valuable supplies. My posse is constantly questioning anyone and everyone we contact searching for this our next victim. Anyone who has ever had knowledge, even second hand, of your preparations is someone of interest to me. I may approach them directly or indirectly. If anyone knows something I will find out about it. Who seems well-fed? Who still has transportation? Who has lights? Who was prepared? Where are they exactly? Somebody talks, either in person or on the radio. They always do. We search for victims night and day. During the day we are listening for the sounds of machinery, cars, tractors, gunfire or generators. Day or night without a lot of wind those sounds can carry for miles. At night I look for any sort of light. Even a small flash indicates somebody with electricity and that means a rich target. I always have somebody listing to the scanner for any news, leads or insecure chatter. Operational Security (OPSEC) is an important concept for your entire group to understand and maintain. If somebody outside your circle doesn’t have a real need to know about your plans, preparations or procedures then they shouldn’t know period. Develop a cover story and live it like was a bulletproof vest. It is no less important to your protection and survival. During an event you need to blend in with the surrounding environment. Carefully observe noise (such as generators and other engines) and light discipline especially at night. If you need to test fire weapons do it in one sequence to avoid a prolonged noise signature. Once I find and target you reconnaissance of your retreat is my next step. Only a fool would try to rush in and try to overwhelm a group of “survivalists”. We had a bad experience with that during our second hit. Now we spend at least a day or two trying to size up a large opportunity and the best way to take it down. I will observe retreat activity from a nearby-concealed position. I will get an idea of your numbers, weapons, routines and so much more by careful surreptitious observation. If your group seems alert, I will try and trigger a false alarm with a dog or child to watch your reaction to a threat. That helps me know how you respond, where you are strong and how to attack. I may also obtain a topographical map of the area to identify likely avenues of approach and potential escapes routes you will try to use. I may coerce your neighbors into uncovering a weak spot or access point or other important intelligence. I also have a Bearcat handheld scanner. I will be listening for any insecure chatter from your radios. Regular patrols at irregular intervals focused on likely observation points and avenues of approach could keep me at bay. You could put down sand or other soft soil in key choke points as a way of “recording” if anyone has recently traveled through the land. Dogs, with their advanced sense of hearing and smell are able to detect and alert you to intruders well in advance of any human. Motion sensing IR video cameras as a part of a security plan could play a part in your layered defense as long as you have power. A 24 hour manned observation point equipped with high quality optical tools is a must. It should be fortified and if possible concealed. It should have a weapon capable of reaching to the edges of your vision. Seismic intrusion devices, night vision and thermal imaging are phenomenal force multiplying tools. They can give you critical intelligence and warning. You should use them if you have them. Understand they are not fool proof and I can often neutralize them if I know you have them. These tools and techniques provide you reaction time. Time to plan your response and time to execute that plan. Recognize that a “defender” is always at a disadvantage. By definition a defender will be reacting to my attack. Modern warfare has emphasized the ability of the attacker to operate faster than opponents can react. This can be explained by the OODA loop. Below are the four steps of the classic OODA loop. These are the steps a defender goes through when under attack. 1. Observing or noticing the attack. 2. Orient to the direction, method and type of attack. 3. Deciding what the appropriate response will be. 4. Acting on that decision. As an attacker I will try and operate at a pace faster than you as a defender can adjust to. I will change my direction, pace, timing and method to force you to continue to process through the OODA loop. This creates confusion and wastes your precious reaction time. As a defender you will need to disrupt or reset your attackers timing with a counter-attack. When you are successful you become the attacker. Your defensive plans should utilize and exploit this concept. Here are a few scenarios: 1. Snipe & Siege I will begin the attack when I can engage at least half of your party’s military age personnel in one coordinated effort. I will infiltrate my team into concealed positions around your retreat within 50 to 75 yards. I will target any identified leadership with the first volley. Two thirds of my people will be engaging personnel. The other group will target communications antennas, surveillance cameras and any visible lighting assets. I want your group unable to see, communicate or call for help. The members of my band will each fire two magazines in the initial exchange. Two thirds of my group will change to new concealed positions and wait. One third will fall back into an ambush of the most likely avenue of escape. We will stay concealed and wait until you come out to attend to your wounded and dead. We repeat the attack as necessary until any resistance is crushed. Ensure you adjust the landscape around your retreat so that I don’t have anyplace offering cover or concealment within 100 yards of your residence. You can create decorative masonry walls that can be used to offer cover for personnel close to your residence. Fighting positions can be built now and used as raised planting beds and then excavated for use in the future. These can be extended or reinforced after any significant event. These structures or other measures such as trenching must be sited carefully to avoid allowing them to be used effectively by an attacker if they are overrun. 2. Trojan Horse For one hit we used an old UPS truck. We forced a refugee to drive it to the retreat gate. We concealed half our group inside the truck. The truck was hardened on the inside with some sandbags around the edges. The other half of our group formed an ambush concealed inside the tree line along the driveway. We killed the driver to make it look good and had one person run away. Those preppers almost waited us out. After nearly three hours they all walked slowly down the driveway. They were bunched up in a group intent on checking out the truck and driver. It was like shooting fish in a barrel. They could have worked together as group to sweep the area 360 degrees around the truck and they would have surely found us. A dog would have also alerted the residents to our presence. They could have taken measures to eliminate the vegetation offering us concealment on the road near the gate. They could have used CS gas or something similar to “deny” any suspicious areas. Lastly they could have done a “reconnaissance by fire”. Shooting into likely hiding spots, including the truck, trying to evoke a response. They should have established an over watch position with the majority of their group. This over watch group would have provided visual security and an immediate response if there were an attack. They were not expecting any additional threats. They didn’t consider that there might be additional danger lurking nearby aside from the truck and they died. 3. Kidnap & Surrender A few weeks ago we surprised and captured a couple of women out tending a garden. It was totally by chance. We were traveling through a very rural area on our way to another town when somebody heard a tractor backfire. We immediately stopped and I sent a small team to recon the noise. They bumped into a small party tending a field at the edge of their retreat. They seized two women and immediately dragged them back to our vehicles. We began negotiations by sending a finger from each one back to the retreat under a white flag. The rest was easy. This didn’t need to happen. Better noise discipline would have kept us from discovering their retreat. Some simple boundary fencing or tangle foot could have delayed us. The women should have been armed and aware of such a threat. If they has established an over watch for the garden they could have engaged us before we took our hostages or at least alerted the others that there was a problem. They also could have had a quick reaction SOP developed prior to this incident. That Quick Reaction (QR) force could have followed the kidnappers back to our vehicles and set up an ambush of their own. Rural retreat security is a full time job. If you snooze you may lose everything. 4. Fire and Maneuver I don’t like this option but sometimes the prize is just too tempting. We typically infiltrate quietly at night to prearranged start points. We begin our attack just before dawn when your senses are dulled by a long night watch or from sleep. Based on our reconnaissance we divided your retreat into positions or zones that need specific attention. We prepare for battle by using an air rifle to target any lights or cameras. Our first priority is to engage any LP/OP site and destroy or degrade them as much as possible. I split my forces into two supporting groups. One group keeps the target position under constant fire. The other group also fires and maneuvers, closing on the target and destroying it with gunfire or improvised weapons. Many times these positions only have one occupant and the task is relatively easy. Often these positions are easy to spot and are too far from each other to provide any effective mutual support. We will work from one position to the next. In the darkness and confusion most of the defenders are disoriented and ineffective. They fall like dominos. We have also used motorcycles to negotiate obstacles and speed through cuts in the perimeter fence. Then throw Molotov Cocktails into any defensive position as they roar past. If you fall back into your residence we will set up a siege. If we can maneuver close enough, perhaps by using a distraction, we will pump concentrated insecticide into your building or we may introduce LP gas from a portable tank into the house and ignite it with tracer fire. If there was enough warning time from your OP you could execute a pre-planned response. Your planned response should be simple, easy to understand and execute. Half your group occupies your fighting positions, two to a position. The rest of your party establishes an over watch and concentrate its fire at the enemies trying to fix your positions. If you had more than enough prepared positions the enemy might not know where to attack. It would also provide more flexibility in your defense based on the direction of attack. I would use Night Vision if available or illumination from flares or lights as a last resort. Rats hate light. Usually people keep main access points blocked from high-speed approach. Likely avenues of approach should also be blocked or choked and kept under observation. Remember though what keeps me out keeps you in. Typically the common techniques of parking vehicles in roadways will only delay my approach not stop it altogether. An ordinary 12-gauge shotgun, shooting slugs, can stop most types of non-military vehicles at close range. Don’t forget the threat of fire or other non-traditional weapons in your defensive plans. You could create the illusion of a “dead end” for your main access road by positioning a burned out trailer home or a couple of burned out cars at the false “end” of the road. Concealing the fact that the road actually continues to your residence. Lastly, develop a plan to evacuate and evade capture. When faced with a significantly superior force it may be the only viable option. This should include simple, reliable communications or signals such as three blasts on a dog whistle. Your fighting positions and barriers need to be constructed to allow coordinated withdrawal in an emergency. You should establish a rally point and time limit to assemble. I believe this should be a priority in your practice drills. During a real emergency you may be able to rally, rearm and plan your own version of the “snipe and siege” to retake your retreat. Key messages: Your rural retreat defense can be visualized as a set of concentric rings:
Remember:
Don’t underestimate me. Reading for further study: The Defence of Duffer's Drift, by Major General Sir Ernest Dunlop Swinton (1905) US Army FM 5-15 Field Fortifications US Army FM 5-103 Survivability « Letter Re: Using Direction Finding on Looter Bands |Main| Jim's Quote of the Day: » Monday October 26 2009Letter Re: Survival Notes from the Dominican RepublicJim, I've recently read several of your books and found them both interesting and educational. I would like to offer some personal insights based on my experiences from living in a small rural town one of the larger Caribbean islands. Most of my notes are cheap solutions used by people in developing nations all over the world. There may be better ways, but these work and cost next to nothing. Water: There is something especially disturbing about opening the faucet and hearing a sucking air sound. Not being able to shower, flush, or wash dishes is the worst. One or more 55 gallon drums and 5 gallon plastic buckets are essential items to have. When you see that hurricane on the news, put the barrel it in the shower and fill it up right away. Add a few capfuls of bleach to make it keep longer. Expect the quality of water from the town water supply to drop. Rainwater collection should be set up right away. If possible the roof should fill a large cistern with a pressure pump. A gravity tank should be put on the roof. Washing up from a bucket is easy enough. A small plastic cup and a five gallon bucket makes is easy. If the water is cold don’t try to heat up all the water. Bring a good sized cooking pot to a near boil and add it to the cold water. A person can wash easily in 2 gallons of water. Pouring about two gallons of water rapidly into a toilet from a 5-gallon bucket will flush a toilet. Washing dishes from a bucket without using gallons of water is tricky. It takes some practice to do it right. If you don’t stack your dirty plates and wash them right away, you only have one dirty side and no dried food. It is very easy to contaminate your water supply. Dirty bucket bottoms and careless bathing are common causes, be vigilant. Food: Our community is an exporter of meat, milk, eggs, rice, vegetables and we have a 365-day growing season. Most families have a garden plot to supplement household food. Storing food is always wise but not nearly the problem it is in some other locations. Much of our farming is done with hand work. Power: We have daily blackouts here and most houses have invertors with battery backups. Since we have occasional power most people do not have generators but just charge when the lights are on. Most businesses have diesel generators. A 2.5 KW inverter system with 4 deep cycle batteries will keep a few lights on, a laptop and a fan or two for about two days and costs about $2,000. The better systems run on 24 VDC. Here we are all very aware of vampire appliances [aka "phantom loads."]. All those VCRs, TVs, microwaves, wi-fi boxes, alarm systems, clocks, all pull a significant load. You need to learn your house circuits and unplug and turn off the breakers for things you don’t need. Low wattage bulbs are essential. Running a generator for about 4 hours will charge most battery systems. Your generator will need to be at least twice the capacity of your inverter. Operating like this you can have basic lighting for the cost of about 2 or 3 gallons of gasoline a day. Running a refrigerator off a battery backup system is just not cost effective. Many people have put up both solar and wind systems as a way to produce some additional power to keep the batteries topped off. A few simple solutions: Computer UPS systems usually operate on a 6 or 12 V battery. It is very easy to open one up and connect a large battery by running wires through the back of the case. This will give a much longer run time. While you have the case open, take a pair of pliers and crush the annoying power alarm beeper. The charger on these systems is very small and will take a very long time to reach a full charge. An off the shelf battery charger will speed things up. Alternativel,y your car can be used to charge the batteries (12 VDC only) Guns: While being armed is important, life is so much easier when there isn’t a conflict in the first place. Some people always seem to have problems wherever they go and need to pull out weapons while others seem to walk through the valley of death without a care in the world. Spend some time researching body language, and read books on interpersonal relationship skills. Besides improving your life right now, it could change a potential fatal firefight into a new friend. Police: When we have a crime wave, the police set up road blocks coming into and out of town. Rarely does this cause any real problems for honest people but you do need to have your paperwork for your car or firearms on hand. A smile and a friendly face makes things go much smoother. Acting aggressive or angry will get a messy and thorough search of your person, passengers and your car at a minimum. Knowing your local police makes a big difference. Sometimes we are asked to “help them out” which is code for a bribe. Either pay it with a smile, say sorry but you can’t today, plead poverty, or turn back. Fighting it just is not worth the trouble. Crime: Most traveling gangs are small and short lived. They rarely survive an encounter with police. It is very hard for a crime group to survive outside of their own neighborhood where they have local knowledge, a place to sleep and the support of family and friends. On the flip side the crimes committed by these people are usually the most brutal. Local criminals gangs are much harder to control. Often these are well-connected individuals or gangs who are very good at remaining undetected. Some of them are drug smugglers, cattle thieves or burglars. Persons who are well liked and respected in the community are usually left alone. If you see large gangs forming, seriously consider leaving the country as it is a no-win situation. Home Security: This is a very safe country, but it is safe because people here do no depend on the police and protect themselves. With that in mind I have noted some of the more common security precautions here. My experience here is that a house with lights on and occupied is the house that is left alone. Your best defense is to be the least interesting but hardened house in a occupied community. Vacant houses attract soft criminals and people who need a place to sleep. Most Dominicans always have someone home in the house. Night time home invasions are rare but they do happen. People who do this time of crime are extremely dangerous experienced and hardened criminals. Isolated houses are at the worst risk for the most serious attacks. A gated community, walled yard, electric gate, bars on the windows, dogs, even armed security guards are all common place here. Country people live in small groups of three or more houses with the fields surrounding them. Your most vulnerable time is being ambushed entering or leaving your home or car. When designing your landscaping, don’t build easy ambush points for attackers. This sort of thing doesn’t happen much in a small town. Protests/Strikes/Riots: Occasionally when the power or water is out too much, the citizens will organize a protest/strike/riot. Often the organizers are union leaders or other non-governmental community leaders. The usual format is to shut down the with road blocks and burning tires. Much of the bad behavior is more for show than reality but trying to pass the road blocks will result in getting your vehicle wrecked by the strikers. It is important to know why people are protesting and to be sympathetic to their cause (in many cases it is well justified). Their intention is to cause just enough of a disruption to get government the government to resolve the problem without getting arrested. Trying to pass the roadblock means that you are disagreeing with the reason they are striking. Know your local area for alternate routes and don’t try to travel during strikes. Dogs: Good dogs are essential. A pair of large dogs of a known breed are a very significant deterrent. Rottweiler, Doberman, German Sheppard, pit-bulls are recognized and avoided. Dogs differ widely in personality. Be sure yours matches your needs. Be aware and realistic of their shortcomings. I know too many people who depend entirely on a easily circumvented dog for security. Professional thieves routinely outmaneuver, poison, or shoot dogs. Don’t overlook the value of small "yippy" and intelligent dogs like Chihuahuas. They are light sleepers, a second set of eyes and ears and are cheap to feed. They often work well with the bigger dogs. Watch your dogs. If your dogs suddenly become sick, it may mean they were poisoned and you should expect a robbery that coming night or the following day. Look for your dog before you pull into your drive or get out of your car. If there has been an intrusion it may be hurt, nervous, missing or dead. This will often be your first indication of an awaiting problem. Community After a disaster (hurricane, flood, earthquake) the best thing for everyone is to keep the community together. Building a good reputation and personal relationships with neighbors and community leaders will make all the difference when resources are scarce and people are scared. The people who are capable leaders and community contributors often get first dibs on any help that does arrive and the right to make decisions on how goods are distributed. Filling sandbags, organizing relief, passing out information, providing power, clearing roads, etc will make friends and build relationships that are not soon forgotten. This sort of thing can really bring a community back together in a hurry. We all depend on each other and leadership through positive action is a great way to rebuild. Just as looting is contagious, when people see others working together and helping, they are apt to join in. I have seen this numerous times here. Transportation Propane is subsidized here and is significantly cheaper than gasoline. Many people have adapted cars and trucks to run on both fuels using a special carburetor. As propane stores well this is a good emergency option for transportation, cooking, and power generation. Additionally propane machines can run on biogas and syngas. While horses are very common here there would be a shortage if things really went bad. They did become proportionally more valuable as the price of fuel shot up. I rarely see wood gasification mentioned as a alternative fuel supply. (See the Wikipedia page on wood gasification) This is an excellent modification that was used heavily in Europe in the 1940s. In my opinion, for most people this is the best solution to combustion engine power after a complete breakdown. Both alcohol and biodiesel require working farmland and refineries. Post crash employment: Anyone who can provide alternative sources of food, power, fuel or light will do well. A little Google work will show what technologies work on a small scale and provide business opportunities both now and after. Additionally, people here who can repair things never seem to make much money here but they always have work and food on the table. Currency and hyperinflation: After a major bank failure here, the currency here devalued by a factor of four in about two years. As the slide begins there are lots of opportunities to buy up things at old prices as many people price things based on what it cost them, not what the replacement value is. As prices shot up, wages lagged way behind. Interest rates sky-rocked. Food prices shot up. Skilled labor prices went through the roof. The economy stopped dead because it becomes impossible to price things and nobody wants to work. At the end of the slide the asking prices for everything got just crazy high, and the bid prices so low that almost no transactions took place except as acts of desperation. Three years later, the currency has stabilized. Interest rates on loans are still slowly retreating. Merchants learned to price goods on replacement cost. Prices are often quoted in USD instead of local currency. Asking prices never really came down, but bid prices slowly rose up and as the spread reduces the economy starts to move again. Salaries are paid in local currency, but pegged to the USD for stability. I wasn’t expecting to write such a long letter but maybe some of this will help people prepare and know what to expect. Sincerely, - S.H. « Letter Re: Open Enrollment for Many U.S. Medical Savings Plans |Main| Letter Re: Survival Notes from the Dominican Republic » Letter Re: Using Direction Finding on Looter Bands
Dear Mr Rawles, While I agree with you that looters are unlikely to have the inclination, hardware, and talent to do direction finding (DF) on a retreat's radio transmissions, the reverse is not necessarily true. If the readers follow your suggestions and get involved in ham radio, it's quite likely that they may have the means to DF the looters. If you know where the looters are, you also know where they are not, and this could be very useful information. A retreat with a single DF antenna for CBs may not seem to be particularly useful, but bearings on the looters combined with a maps of the area might serve very well. JWR Replies: I used to do communications intercept and radio direction finding work, when I served as an Army intelligence officer. It is a skill that does take practice, but it isn't rocket science. As described in my novel "Patriots" If anyone wants to become adept at DFing in the field, I suggest that they get involved with a Fox and Hound group, organized by their local ARRL-affiliated ham radio club. It is great fun, requires only rudimentary directional antennas, and it will build a very useful skill. « Letter Re: Preparations for Eyesight & Hearing |Main| Note from JWR: » Saturday October 24 2009Noise, Light, and Litter Discipline, by Survival Ranger
“If I can find your MRE trash, I can find your patrol base!” A quote that has stayed with me, haunted me, and perplexed me throughout my military career. Who would have thought that simple traces of life could serve such a double edged purpose? The very fact that we could locate (almost better than a GPS fix on a position) an enemy encampment, an over-watch position, or cache by sight sound or smell is an amazing concept. But the fact that careless lapses in security on any of the above could compromise our own is a very harrowing one. Noise discipline –The practice of minimizing ones noise signature to a degree that it does not compromise mission essential actions is very important. This could range from a night raid on an enemy stronghold, to an urban reconnaissance of the local supermarket overrun with post-SHTF warlords, to retrieving water or utilizing the latrine at 3am in your secure perimeter. At night, as sight is diminished, the body attunes itself more towards the gathering of sound and touch. Simple noises that were previously background in the daylight are suddenly brought to the very real and close foreground at night. Am I saying to remain totally silent at all times? Of course not. That is both unrealistic, and not something that anyone would enjoy, accompanied by a jabber-jaw! I am simply stating that in times of necessity, such as a TEOTWAWKI scenario, noise discipline can mean the difference in being an advantageous target for a bunch of looters, or having a perfectly laid ambush in wait for them! Simple ways of improving your noise discipline are as follows: Light Discipline – The practice of minimizing or completely reducing ones light signature so as to mitigate all possible detection during hours of darkness. Light discipline seems like a no brainer, until you see a group of people trying to fumble their way around a forest in the dark! Even the smallest red lens flashlight can give away your position during hours of limited visibility. But how do we mitigate this?
Litter Discipline – The practice of cautiously monitoring, and properly disposing of your waste. This can range from a candy bar wrapper, to entrails of a gutted deer, to footprints, or even human waste. In the tracking community this is called “spoor”. (An Afrikaans word, from the Dutch word for tracking.) This is classified as generally anything that is unnaturally occurring in the given natural environment. Examples would be footprints or broken limbs in a vegetated area. Water drop trails on concrete, Gum wrappers on a nature trail, etc. Simply put, this can give away your position, trail, or if the tracker is very keen, your exact rate of travel, and last time at that given location. Some ways to mitigate carelessness with litter are:
There really is no end to noise, light, and litter discipline. You can take it as short or as extensive as you want, but keep in mind the consequences of each of your actions. Hopefully you will never need to use any of this knowledge, but for a fun time, try to practice one thing a night for a week, and see just how challenging some of these things can be! Take the family camping, and instruct the kids to only disturb what is necessary and fix everything when you leave. When the sun goes down, there is no more light. During the day, try using hand and arm signals to talk. It’s a great bonding trip, and is an invaluable lesson to all. You will also have a much better appreciation for nature, and the secrets it hides when it is tended to, and the ones it reveals when it is not! Stay safe, and practice practice, practice! « Letter Re: Should I Rent, or Should I Buy Property? |Main| Jim's Quote of the Day: » Wednesday October 21 2009Three Letters Re: Storing Food in Commercial Storage Spaces?
Mr. Rawles, I do not consider this a long term solution, but at $20 a month it is an insurance policy that almost guarantees I will not have to be walking to my retreat. I'm sure you can find many testimonials online from people who had to evacuate Houston and Brownsville last year due to increased Hurricane activity in the Gulf. Many places were completely sold out of gasoline, food and water with in the first six hours of evacuation activities. Do you consider this a good stop gap solution when it comes to utilizing self-store units? I understand that this is no excuse for procrastination or apathy. I am not diluting myself into thinking it has long term security for more than 24-to-48 hours of storage pending a catastrophic event or break down of civil service. Thank you for your time and advice. - Matt in Texas
Among my tenants I can count about a dozen or so who are also preppers. They consider this a safe place to store their preps while they are finding land to move to. I am always happy when one comes in to give notice that they are moving to the country (as they say). We (my staff of two, and I) have a written plan in case of a situation and after practicing it and working out the bugs; we can lock this place down in less than five minutes. If I am here by myself it takes about 7 minutes to secure the premises and have my weapon and clipboard in hand. I realize that my tenants will want to come get their possessions as quickly as possible and that is part of our security set up, thus the clipboard with tenant info. If any of your readers are thinking about storing their goods at a self storage facility here are some suggestions to make sure their items are secure. 1. Check out the location: in person and check with the local police force to see if the facility has had break-ins. Mr. Rawles, thank you for being a guiding light for so many of us. You and your family are in my prayers. Blessing to you and yours. - N.J.
The drawback is that still just an emerging market, and hence climate-controlled units are not available in may rural areas. However, they are much more common the past few years. I just added climate control to a facility right here and though the facility in an area that is mostly farmer’s fields. I also know that the little town of Haley, Idaho has a storage company with climate controlled space. I also know of climate controlled storage scattered [in small numbers] across across Utah, Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho. Readers might not be able to find one right where they are going, but for the general public’s knowledge – climate control is out there and becoming more available all the time JWR Replies: I wholeheartedly agree about spare keys! In addition to the key that you keep on your daily-carry key ring, put one in each of your main bug-out bags, and one in the glove box of each of your vehicles! Someday, you might have to hurriedly depart for your retreat in unusual circumstances. « Letter Re: Where to Store Food When There is No Simple Answer |Main| Heating With Wood, by SGT B. » Sunday October 11 2009Letter Re: How to Make Your Own "Black Out" OPSEC Window Panels
James, Basically Reflectix is bubble wrap with aluminum foil bonded to one or both sides. I have used it to make thermal drapes for my home, and know that it blocks all visible light. You can buy it at most Home Improvement centers. It commonly comes in 25' rolls that are 16", 24", or 48" in width. Last winter I bought a 4'x25' roll and had enough to do my entire house. (9 windows of various sizes) the cost was about $40. Manufacturers claim that reflects up to 97% of all radiant heat, so not only will you save some energy, I would expect it to be somewhat effective against infrared and thermal imaging. While I made my blinds so they can be rolled up during the day time, it would be very easy to find some way to anchor them on the sides and at the bottom so they would completely block all light at night. « Letter Re: How to Make Your Own "Black Out" OPSEC Window Panels |Main| Note from JWR: » Friday October 9 2009Where You Live Matters: How to Assess Your Location and Develop Scenarios, by Brendan S.
A little foreknowledge will prevent you from becoming a victim. Most people don’t think about what they will actually do in the case of an emergency. One just has to see what happened after Hurricane Katrina to see how ill-informed the masses are. They simply expect the government to take care of everything. They meander like zombies to some location and wait to be fed and cleaned up after. Not me! I know what I’m going to do when any disaster strikes.
When disaster strikes where will you be? How well do you know the place where you live, work, or the space in between? Chances are that when a disaster occurs you will be either at home or at work or commuting in between. You may be ready to deal with things at home on a sunny afternoon, but what if you’re on the road in a downpour? The main occupation of think tanks is to devise scenarios of whatever their specialty is; oil, food, military or political events. The same tactics can be done on an individual scale to find out what your reactions might be to disasters or events. You can plan out your reactions to events by knowing what your assets are at the time and how to be ready for any variables. Planning is simply about not being surprised. “When I am in situation 1, I will do X. When I am in situation 2 I will do Y.” Simple yet effective. ASSESS THE SITUATION A scenario doesn’t need to be the end of the world as we know it (TEOTWAWKI). Natural disasters are just as important and deadly. Not just in the initial disaster but also in the aftermath. Actually more people usually die after a disaster. Living here in Northern California, earthquakes are an ever present fear and so ill prepared by people and neglected by the elected officials, city planners and developers. People’s houses might be able to take a moderate earthquake with little damage, but what about the roads, highways and overpasses? Chances are fire will spread unabated killing more people than the initial damage. Or, with the cops busy, looters will think it’s open season on home shopping. So where does your house stand in the general theme of threats? TASK #1: List the dangers that might affect your area. Living where you do, you should already have some experience with some disaster inducing events. The United States has a very large variation in weather and its effects can be devastating. Floods near rivers, hurricanes near the coasts, blizzards up north, heat waves almost anywhere, earthquakes out west… the list goes on. You have probably dealt with something already. Growing up in the Midwest we were always in danger of tornados cutting a swath through our neighborhood. Then in winter we had to worry about blizzards. But the situation doesn’t have to be devastating. What if a thunderstorm simply cut the power for several days? What if the basement floods? What if there’s an escape from a prison? Could the effects be temporary or long lasting? Is it just power lines down or a blackout covering several states? Do striking rail workers mean food shortages? Is the riot from a basketball game or did Oakland finally collapse into chaos? ASSESS YOUR LOCATION TASK#2: Know your city. As a pilot I know a lot about terrain. All day long I see the land rolling underneath me. Here in Northern California, from the air, I can easily see how land is managed and how cities and towns are developed. I see how many roads go in and out of town centers, suburbs, business parks and so on. The place I live in is a small town in a valley with only a few roads leading in and out. If there was an earthquake along the Hayward fault line like the “big one” that is due to happen here any time now, and most of Oakland, Berkeley, San Francisco were apocalyptic hellscapes, the bridges might be knocked out and it would hopefully prevent refugees from setting up camp in our open land. We have a route to safety toward Sacramento if needed. And we have arable land that can be turned into farms quickly. How dense is the population where you live? Do you live in a dense populated city? A suburb? In the center or on the edge, close to farmland? If there was a disaster, where would most of those people head? You don’t need to fly over your area to assess it, Google Earth will do just fine. Take a good look at the main avenues of traffic and housing. Where is the most dense? Where do you not want to be? Where does the suburbs taper off finally into farmland? If Hurricane Katrina is any indication, people will congregate in a large open space like a stadium, park, school or the like. If you were a FEMA organizer, where would you tell people to go? Where are the nearest hospitals? When something happens these are most likely going to be the first place that people head for. There is medical attention, food, warmth and light. If you are uninjured, do you really need to go there? Would it be more dangerous? When the hospital gets overloaded after a disaster and turns into a triage; giving attention to the worst cases first, do you think that panicked people are going to simply wait calmly in the waiting room? Or will they start fights, demand attention maybe at gunpoint? Better to avoid it at all costs. (Or be the very first to show up through the emergency room doors!) Is your home prepared? Most time spent by people like us is in preparing our home for disaster, so this is well covered elsewhere and too vast to talk about here. But don’t just look at the stuff you have in your house. The wall of freeze-dried food will get you through the initial catastrophe, but then what? How adaptable is your house? Do you have a yard that can be turned into a garden with a little work? Where can you get more water? Are you near a stream or lake? Is your neighborhood safe and secure? You don’t have to live in a gated community to be safe, but how far off the main roads is your house or apartment? Would big city gang-bangers find it accessible and tempting? This fear goes up as the powered lights go out at night and all you can see is darkness out of your front door. Even temporary power outages cause hoodlums to go outside and behave like jackasses. How well do you know your neighbors? What would your kids do if you were stuck at work and they were home from school? Do they know your plan of action? Which neighbors could they trust? Which neighbors might want to come together but really are there to deplete your stockpile at twice the rate? ASSESS YOUR WORK AND COMMUTE TASK #3: Know your place of work. If you are stuck at work how long could you last there? You could always sleep at your desk overnight but what about food? Do you think your boss would be ready or willing to provide for you and the other employees? Probably not. It would probably turn into surviving out of your car, especially if your place of work is damaged. What would you do if stuck on the highway? The cars are stopped because of an earthquake, flood, jack-knifed chemical truck, etc. Could you pull off and hike on foot? Which way? When I lived in Tokyo we had to have a plan ready for commuting by train and an earthquake happened. I carried a small street map book so I could walk back to my home when the roads and train lines were disrupted. (Even harder for a foreigner.) The Japanese are far better equipped for disasters from typhoons to earthquakes because of simple occurrence. They know it is just inevitable that something is going to happen. There they can trust their government and employers to help though. Where are your loved ones and do they know what to do? Does your spouse know what you might do? Don’t expect your cell phones to be working. I have an agreement with my wife not to come looking for me. I will either go to work or home and she will do the same. ASSESS THE VARIABLES TASK #4: Game out some variables. Once you have a plan of action and know what you want to do, you have to be ready for any changes. The emergency situation probably won’t stay static, but either gets better with quick action from authorities or more likely get worse through inaction and incompetence from them. If rising flood waters block the road that lies between you and your loved ones, do you know the alternate routes? Where is the higher terrain versus lower? Once you know what you want to do, head straight home for example, what variable might change that course of action? Snow too deep. Flooded bridge. Tremors sending rocks to the road below. Pinhead cop telling you the road is closed. Are you ready for the extremes? Are you ready to spend the night in your car? Or several nights? You can find lists of things to have to make your car into a temporary shelter, but the main thing is not to be surprised and get taken by panic. Simply be ready to tough it out for a while until the situation is to your advantage. If you plan to stay at work, how long until you want to head home? In conclusion, being prepared for emergencies is not just about sitting on top of your stockpile of food with an AR-15 and waiting. You have to know the game plan and how to implement it and expect it to change. As a pilot, I am always ready for an emergency situation by being mentally prepared for it and never panicking when it doesn’t go the way I’ve practiced. You can do the same for any situation. « Influenza Pandemic Update: |Main| Where You Live Matters: How to Assess Your Location and Develop Scenarios, by Brendan S. » Letter Re: How to Make Your Own "Black Out" OPSEC Window Panels
Sir, Product is called Duvetyne, it's a very, very heavy black cloth. We even use it for flags and cutters, which are light-blocking pieces that we put in front of lights as big as 20K (20,000 watts) to deflect and control stray light. This stuff works great. Here is a supplier of Duvetyne. Has it for $8.25 per yard (60" wide), so it really is cheap as dirt. You can buy a 50 yard roll for a little over $400, which has got to be enough to do the windows on two or three average houses. At that price I wouldn't want to be using old rags and what have you. I hope that this helps. - Adam « Letter Re: Getting Self-Sufficient in Wyoming |Main| Hard Love Preparedness Upbringing, by FBP » Thursday October 8 2009Letter Re: How to Make Your Own "Black Out" OPSEC Window Panels
Mr. Rawles, « Letter Re: Amateur Radio for the Rest of Us |Main| Notes from JWR: » Wednesday September 30 2009C&R FFL, Milsurp Firearms and Your Survival Battery, by The AlchemistThe C&R FFL, Milsurp Firearms, and Your Survival Battery, by The Alchemist The survival battery is a key issue for any prepper, as one of the biggest short-term concerns in a SHTF scenario is security. Stored supplies and learned skills are all for naught if you can't protect the supplies from theft or survive to put those skills to use. While I would love for everyone to have a chance for a top of the line Main Battle Rifle (MBR), they do not run cheap, nor is the ammunition cheap these days. While modern rifles have undoubted advantages, there are also a large number of older weapons that remain capable, and which most citizens can buy online with a little paperwork. To trade firearms in interstate commerce, one must have a Federal Firearms License - an FFL. Once upon a time one could acquire a Type 01 FFL (also known as a dealer FFL) as a "home FFL" at a reasonable price and without too much trouble, but since about the Clinton administration they've become much tighter - looking to allow only those selling firearms for a profit. One option still remaining to us mere citizens is the Curios and Relics (C&R) FFL or 03 FFL) is a "collectors" license which allows you to purchase firearms on the C&R list in interstate commerce. This means that you can buy C&R handguns out of state, or can buy online and have them shipped directly to you through a "common carrier". A purchase at a gun show or dealer on a C&R FFL can legally dispense with all the paperwork and checks normally required - a signed copy of your C&R and payment is all that is needed. The C&R list is comprised of all firearms over 50 years old as well as firearms determined by BATF to be of special collector value. Some short-barreled firearms and large caliber "destructive devices" have been released from NFA status on the C&R list. Others (including all machineguns to my knowledge) remain NFA items despite their C&R status. Why would a survival prepper want C&R firearms? Despite their age, there are some very capable firearms on the C&R list. If you're looking for a nice bolt-action rifle there are plenty of WWII era rifles that are both affordable and extremely accurate, such as the Mosin-Nagant (Russian WWI and Soviet/Finnish WWII), the Mauser (German WWII and Czech post-WWII), and the [Schmidt-Rubin] K31 (Swiss). If you're looking for an MBR on a budget you can look for an SKS (7.62x39), an FN-49 (multiple calibers including 8mm Mauser, .308, 7mm Mauser, and 30-06), or an M1 Garand (30-06), all of which are reasonably capable weapons even today. In many cases these are almost new (or totally new) rifles placed in storage before being replaced with newer models. For a reasonable price (and a little cosmoline cleanup) you can have a durable, high-quality rifle. For pistols, I like the the TTC/TT33 in 7.62x25 Tokarev as a rugged "beater" pistol for cheap target practice (how can one beat 11 cents per round these days?), and at 1,400-to-1,600 fps, full metal jacket 7.62x25 can often penetrate NIJ Level II body armor. For a nice little plinking pistol I like the CZ-82 in 9x18 Makarov - a nice $200 pistol in a reasonably capable cartridge. While I wouldn't recommend it as a primary sidearm, its capable enough to stash one with 1,000 rounds or so in a burial tube or a pre-positioned store, or simply to get some target practice with more recoil than a .22 in a low-cost package. You can find .45 pistols (including WWII era M1911s) and 9x19s as well, though demand has often pushed the price up near the new cost (or above for true collectors' items). With a military surplus ("milsurp") C&R gun of the right caliber you should be able to take advantage of available surplus ammunition to reduce training costs. For the price of 400 rounds of .30-06 I can buy a Mosin-Nagant bolt action rifle with 1,200 rounds of 7.62x54R ammunition (or 400 rounds and four Mosin-Nagant rifles). Once I have the cash I can add a "Dragunov" type (usually a Romanian PSL) as a longer-range MBR in the same caliber to round out the armory. And since this isn't a "pistol" caliber, you can purchase all the Armor Piercing (AP) or Armor Piercing -Incendiary (API) ammo you want. Sure, it isn't quite as sexy as a more modern solution (FAL/HK/M1A + .308 bolt action), but it'll save you $400 or more on the rifles alone. And don't discount the lower ammo costs - ammo turns money into skill. There's little point worrying about 2.5 MOA vs 1 MOA accuracy if your training limits you to 4 MOA. The availability of modestly priced weapons also gives added flexibility when considering how to arm "guests" or how to have firearms available for trade in a SHTF scenario. A few bolt action rifles, battle carbines, or surplus pistols held in reserve can allow you to make guests useful in security or hunting without degrading the armories of the principal preppers. The more paranoid may also make sure that any new arrivals are using only "obscure" or "oddball" calibers (that you've stocked in some quantity) to encourage their loyalty - if you're the only source of ammunition for a particular rifle it remains most valuable when you're working in line with the goals of the primary preppers. It would certainly be preferable to only work with trusted individuals, but we do not control every situation we find ourselves in - only our reactions. One can have an option and not use it, but you can't use an option that you haven't given yourself. Don't want a Federal FFL on your record? You can do almost as well by making friends with a C&R holder. A C&R is not a dealer license - you are not permitted to run a business on it, although incidental profits on sales are acceptable. A C&R holder may however purchase multiple firearms of the same type looking for a particularly high quality specimen - and as a friend you could offer to buy an uglier gun that's merely a "good shooter" from them. You both win in such a case - you get a nice firearm with little paper trail at a good price, and the C&R holder gets a better quality rifle for their collection. It should also be noted that as a C&R holder you do not need to go through an NICS check nor file form 4473, since the transfer is between FFL holders. Additionally, unlike a dealer FFL your bound book is your own, and does not need to be surrendered if the FFL expires. The ATF can request an inspection once per year while you hold the FFL, but cannot drop in randomly and must allow for off-site inspection of the firearms in the bound book and the bound book itself. I would highly recommend that preppers consider a C&R license and firearms, particularly the military surplus weaponry, as a valuable resource. Cheap and rugged weapons together with lower-cost surplus ammunition make an attractive package - even if they're not your primary tactical weapon, they're perfectly functional as a secondary arm for hunting, scouting, or other such tasks. They're also very attractive for an emergency cache or a pre-positioned store, as the lower cost enables you to purchase more weaponry for your investment. This is one of the few crumbs the Feds have seen fit to leave us mere mortals - we may as well take advantage of it while we can! « Economics and Investing: |Main| Note from JWR: » Saturday September 26 2009Small Breed Dogs--Nature's Leatherman Tool, by B.C.
Allow me to begin with a request. Close your eyes and conjure up an image of a small dog into your mind. Is it snarling viciously? Straining at it's owner's leash pointlessly while they offer empty apologies for its behavior? Perhaps it's groomed in a ridiculous fashion, poking its timid head out from a large handbag in an L.A. Salon. All of these things are, of course, absurd applications of an otherwise useful creature. Small dogs were bred for very specific working purposes long before they were adapted as fashion accessories, becoming the misfits of the canine world. Please keep in mind that they are every bit as trainable as their larger counterparts. The sad fact is that large dogs are generally trained due to the potentially dire consequences if they are not trained. On the other hand, the vices of small dogs are rated by their owners as easier to live with than the alternative (i.e.: training them). As prevalent as this condition is today, it is a fault of the modern owner, and not the dog. Remember that the small dogs were hunting rats, rabbits, and other vermin on the farms of your ancestors long before Paris Hilton ever stuffed one into her over sized Gucci purse. With that rant having been voiced, I'll start with a summary of the reasons you'd want a dog in the first place The greatest of them is companionship. Try to reconcile with the fact that when the SHTF your friends (presumably unprepared) will be far away (assume by foot) and unreachable (assume by mobile). Would they follow you out of the city anyway? Probably not. So when you're 20 miles past town limits, alone and exhausted, you will be running out of something you can't pack into a go-bag. Morale is the canine's best asset. Dogs do not mourn for the loss of a home, car, job or wide screen television. On the contrary, they will be overjoyed that you now have all the time in the world to spend with them. Their perspective is always “glass half full”, and it will carry you a long way. Even during hard times, my dogs have lifted my spirits immeasurably. In a SHTF situation i would consider their company invaluable for this reason alone. Regardless, that's really the tip of the iceberg. Here are the more obvious reasons that dog has been man's best friend for millennia. They are a great early warning system, not only against human intruders, but wild (or formerly domesticated) animals. Think about it. Are feral dogs a threat? Sure. But that raccoon that steals your food in the middle of the night may prove just as deadly in the long run. They can smell opportunity as well as danger. Keep them hungry (not starving) and they will find food sure enough. After all, dogs are natural scavengers, and so might you be if worst comes to worst. They are also natural hunters. Sure, some breeds excel at it by birthright, but for other breeds it's just a matter of training. The capabilities of an intelligent dog are capped only by the limits of the owner's imagination. They are loyal. Often to the death. How many of your friends can you say that about? Keep them from starving and they'll stick to you like glue. Finally, I'll add that they are excellent guardians when push comes to shove, though this can also be a drawback for reasons I'll discuss later. The question is, why a small dog rather than a large one? As an early warning system the two are more or less deadlocked. Breed by breed you might find one better than the next, but my Maltese Cross is every bit as aware as my Retriever, and less lazy about voicing his concerns (for better or worse). For purposes of scavenging they are deadlocked again. A small dog can find anything a large dog can. If anything, a small dog can go through an abandoned car with far more ease, and will eat far less of what's found. Hunting? You could go either way, but assuming you're on the move there's no point in bagging a deer when a rabbit will suffice. The question once again is “how much of the kill is going to Fido?” Besides, small dogs often have the edge against small game, as they can more easily stalk their prey and can also shift their momentum swiftly if a chase ensues. I can attest that my Maltese cross is a terror to the local rodent population. My Retriever is not. (On this note, never assume you will not be lowered to eating vermin. It's called Survivalism. Not Thrivalism.) Regarding loyalty, a dog is a dog. I'd have trouble naming a breed that will abandon a loving owner in their time of need. In terms of defending yourself, the big dog has the edge. But! If you're approaching a group of strangers or a checkpoint, your growling Rottweiler may get you both shot. A small furry head poking out from the top of your shirt will only endear you to strangers in an instant. Yet I hear you say “I'm manly and tough. I think I'll stick with the big dog thanks.” Well consider the following. 1. The small dog (with regular walks) can live happily enough in an apartment. He'll provide a vocal deterrent to intruders, which is often encouragement enough to find a different target. Conversely, large dogs and apartments do not mix well... Picking a breed of dog is an important decision, but remember to research these key points. 1. Energy levels. Some dogs need 10 miles a day underfoot or they'll turn your furniture into scrap. Others will groan at having to spend five minutes on a treadmill. If/when the SHTF you'll want a short-haired dog. Keeping it warm is easy enough, and doing so is a welcome alternative to pulling burrs from the fur of long haired breeds (not to mention locating ticks). Also, avoid breeds that do not have a working history. They're usually bred for their visual “assets” and will not serve as well as time honored breeds do. If I had to recommend one, it would be the Jack Russell Terrier (check it on Wikipedia if you care to). They're a working breed, highly intelligent, and extremely durable. I've personally seen one fall (not jump deliberately) fifteen feet onto concrete, get up with a huff, and walk away fine. That said, this is a very challenging dog to own and train. It is not for the faint of heart, but then again, neither is survival after the collapse... I wont go into details about training dogs. I would wear out my keyboard in the process. If i give just one piece of advice in the matter, it's this; Dogs are a pack animal and should defer to you as the pack leader in all things. They do not walk in front of you. They do not eat or drink before you eat or drink. Even the simple act of sitting on your lap gives the dog the idea that “it owns you” (it can stay there as long as you rest a hand on top of it). Attain dominance and everything else will fall into place. A recommendation. If you choose to buy a dog, get a copy of the Dog Whisperer DVDs with Cesar Millan My experience is that responsible dog owners never regret the journey they embark on when they acquire their first canine companion. After all. Who else in the world values table scraps more than gold and silver :) - B.C. « Letter Re: Some Travel and Bug Out Gear Recommendations |Main| Jim's Quote of the Day: » Monday September 7 2009Letter Re: Lessons from a Brief, Opportunistic Burglary
Dear Jim, Last Friday, William (not his real name) went off to work as normal. Kids went off to school. Wife was home. She left the house at 11:15 for a quick errand. She got back about noon. Only 45 minutes. On her return, she noticed the front door unlocked. She did the correct thing and did not enter the house. She called the local police from inside her car parked across the street. They cleared the house and noted that it looked like a quick search had occurred. Drawers were piled by desk, freezer contents were thawing on the floor. As soon as the safe was found by the bad guys, the hasty search stopped to concentrate on it. [JWR Adds: Perhaps it is worthwhile to leave a small "bait" vault that is bolted down in the master bedroom closet, while your main gun vault is hidden behind a false wall.] Unfortunately, it was only a "fire safe"--mostly plastic, bolted to the floor) which can be popped open with a pry bar. Bad guys opened it quickly, took $16,000 in paper money, jewelry, etc. and were gone in a few minutes. In contrast, a $1,000 gun safe or a small floor safe set in concrete would have frustrated average thieves for at least an hour, if not completely. The cash will not be covered by insurance (excluded in the policy), and the house policy will only cover about $4,000 of the documented jewelry. No one expects recovery or conviction, nor any significant investigation since "only property" was lost. Details that I didn't have were about household help (carpet cleaner, maid, yard service, plumber, etc.) who might have tipped off an unsavory buddy about the number of people in the house, entries/gates/dogs/alarm systems, vehicle details, coming and going timing and regularity, observed portable wealth, etc. Lesson: A small "fire safe" for papers should be secured in a "real" safe or vault that household help do not have access to or knowledge of. Expect casing of better neighborhoods that are nearly empty during the work-week. Short shopping trips are plenty of time for Breaking & Entering, but the bad guys know that the clock is ticking from their first knock on the front door. Delay (a well-concealed stout safe) is a homeowner's best asset, followed by professional armed response. A well-concealed video camera feeding to a hidden recorder would greatly encourage the local police to pursue prosecution, or help your investigator. [JWR Adds: Concealed web cams feeding motion-capture images to an off-site server are now quite affordable.] Concealed carry for the lady of the house may have made her feel more self-assured during her retreat back to the car. Best wishes for your family. Sincerely, - Karl K. in Oregon « Odds 'n Sods: |Main| An Instructive Survival Story from the 1930s » Sunday September 6 2009Letter Re: Surviving an Expedient Ambush Roadblock While Traveling by Vehicle, by M.W.Mr. Editor, Do not stand leaning over a vehicle[, thinking that it will provide ballistic protection.]. At 200 yards .30-06 FMJ will penetrate 20 inches solid white pine. It will just as easily penetrate the sheet metal of a vehicle and you. See Hatcher's Notebook.
BTW I saw a episode of [the television series] Jericho JWR Replies: I concur! To amplify on your advice: If you are ever in the unenviable position of being caught in the open, with only a car or truck to provide marginal cover, then make the best of it. Getting down prone will reduce your target signature by 80%. And if you have no available intervening terrain that will provide cover (i.e. you are an open, forward slope), then get as low as possible, positioning yourself so that both a vehicle wheel and the engine block between yourself and los hombres malos. Tires and tire rims are actually fairly difficult for bullets to penetrate intact with any regularity, so they too afford marginal protection. If you are returning fire from a prone position behind a car, keep in mind that it might suddenly take a 7 inch drop, when a tire is punctured, so do not put any part of your body under a vehicle while in the midst of a firefight. « Influenza Pandemic Update: |Main| Note from JWR: » Saturday September 5 2009You're Not (Yet) Prepared, by Ted B.
You saw the warning signs years ago and decided to be the ant, not the grasshopper. You found and purchased the home on land that is now your residence as well as your retreat. You’ve gathered the materials to survive, perhaps even thrive, during the coming storms of political upheaval, food shortages, social disorder and economic distress. You took courses on weapons use and feel confident in your ability to defend home and kin with any of the weapons in your personal armory. You assembled canning materials and learned how to use them. You consume, replenish and rotate those foods regularly, not just watch them age on the basement shelves. You have the house wired for 12 VDC as well as standard 120 VAC. Your solar panels, batteries and backup generator are all positioned and tested. The neat stacks of silver rounds lie nestled in protective containers, waiting to be used for purchases when the dollar is finally recognized for the worthless paper it has become. Medical supplies are all labeled and stored in easy to reach locations in the house, barn and bunker. Manuals on survival techniques, emergency first aid, growing and preserving your own food, and a host of other critical topics are carefully filed away for future reference in an Internet-limited world. Stabilized gasoline and treated diesel sit quietly in sturdy underground drums. Your communications gear includes CB, ham and FRS radios, and you rigged up wired field sets between the main house and outbuildings. You even took some steps not normally included in the various “Preparation for Apocalypse” articles that flooded the media and which were read by millions. You measured the firing distance to each property landmark visible from your home and wrote up landmark-specific bullet drop tables for the calibers of rifles you will use in defense. You got part of a fresh animal carcass from the local country butcher and practiced your wound suturing skills on real flesh. You picked up and squirreled away various strengths of reading glasses that you don’t need now but may need in years to come. You gathered moderate quantities of several multi-use chemicals and a book that shows how to make simple mixtures such as match head material, flash powder, and smoke grenade filler. When buying and storing your paper goods, you didn’t just lay up three years worth of toilet paper, you also remembered that "If The Momma Ain’t Happy, Ain’t Nobody Happy" and, setting aside your embarrassment, you bought and carefully stored away a generous stash of feminine sanitary products. You knew that having beans and rice for months at a time potentially could be considered a fate worse than starvation, so you added hard candy, plenty of dried fruit and other treats to the pantry. You feel a sense of accomplishment and confidence as you fine-tune your checklists and provisions. You can’t plan for absolutely everything, but you feel you’ve done all you can to get ready for the majority of scenarios that might come about. You are prepared. Or are you? A vital component that many people forget is preparation as a community. Self-sufficiency tends to lead to some amount of isolation. My own little slice of heaven in North Idaho is a prime example. Almost every resident of my small rural town is independent, largely self-reliant, skilled, practiced and ready for everything from extreme weather to MZB attacks. Each of us knows the neighbors who are in our immediate vicinity, and within that small area we all share goods as needed and assist when the situation calls for it. But until very recently, no one but the Postmaster could say he actually knew the majority of people in our community beyond a wave and a hello as they drove past. Each micro-community, composed of anywhere from three to a dozen families, had social interaction at backyard barbecues, fireworks displays and 4H meetings, and teamwork interaction at such events as road clearing sessions after a big windstorm or snowstorm. But these individual micro-communities did not interact regularly, did not know what skills or provisions each could contribute in times of widespread emergency, and most importantly did not know whom to call to rapidly disseminate important, time critical information about events that could impact the entire region. We had no phone tree, no list of skill sets available within the town, and no plans for assistance beyond what each micro-community did as a matter of practice, informally developed over the years. We were not truly prepared, even though most of us thought we were. While it is still an ongoing process of refinement, as all preparations tend to be, we took an approach that may well serve your own community. First, we advertised a community preparedness meeting, with enough advance notice that people could get it on their calendar if interested, but not so far in advance that it was forgotten by the time it arrived. The invitation, via signs at the Post Office and Fire Station, and distributed via flyers, had three key elements: It was to be an informal meeting with no governmental spin or involvement; it was to get folks talking about community preparations for a variety of situations where we could help each other out effectively, while maintaining our privacy and independence, and finally it would include some refreshments. You’d be surprised how many people are drawn by the prospect of home made brownies, fresh coffee and Huckleberry lemonade. The meeting itself stressed that the purpose was to:
Also mentioned up front was that the meeting was not called in order to: We reminded attendees that planning was important now: - So that preparations can be done when we have time, resources, good weather, low stress levels We talked about the various scenarios that might require the community to band together instead of trying to deal with the issue on our own, including wildfire, extreme weather, a major transportation interruption, a large scale natural (or man-made) disaster, economic meltdown or further acts of governmental tyranny. We discussed the focal areas that might be established to get people with specific knowledge or skills involved on teams of resource planners/coordinators to allow the best response to the situation:
We asked attendees to sign up, voluntarily, for areas where they felt they could add benefit by thinking and researching, providing leadership or just helping out on a time available basis. We established a web site where residents can find out – at their convenience – about meetings of possible interest; tips from others on various topics such as food preservation, animal husbandry, and ammo reloading; updates to community contact lists; and other information that may be of value but does not warrant continual phone calls or E-mail messages. We created a phone tree that allows any person to make as few as three calls and be confident that within 5-10 minutes the vast majority of residents had either been personally contacted or had a message left on their phone machine. The mechanism is simple: The close the loop step ensures that the community phone tree has been activated, at least partially, from top to bottom and allows cross-trunk communication if the line is severed unintentionally by personal or electronic difficulties. A community of >1000 people can be reached in just five vertical steps if each person makes just four phone calls without duplication; six steps if only 3 calls per person are made. For events requiring continued updates, such as wildfire location or direction of approaching zombies, the web site can then be used to stay up to date without tying up the phone lines again and again. To ensure that the phone system itself does not cause a breakdown in communications, the community should have backup schemes as many layers deep as necessary, including CBs or other pre-established radio lines, “pony express” mechanisms using car, ATV, snowmobile, horse, dogsled or whatever makes sense in your region. This one step alone can dramatically improve your overall preparedness as you will have hundreds of trusted eyes and ears scanning for dangers, hundreds of hands and minds that may be applied to a situation that would overwhelm your own family’s abilities, and a means to call on resources beyond your own wealth – as long as the spirit of give and take is kept balanced and not abused. Beyond these steps, you might also consider establishing an appropriate number of recurring activities or meetings, whether they are weekly or quarterly as prescribed by the level of availability and interest; fleshing out or refining your community preparedness plans based on detailed threat scenarios that seem likely for your area; establishing response plans, including identification of leaders and supporters; and holding community response drills to see what holes you’ve missed so they can be corrected before a real crisis comes along. As a final thought for consideration, a hand-cranked 110 dB siren suitable for notifying all locals within a considerable distance that they need to get on “the community net” can be had very affordably on your favorite auction site… Now you can go clean your M1A again while gazing fondly at your stuffed pantry shelves, secure in the knowledge that you probably are about as ready as you’ll ever be. « Letter Re: A Practical Use for Post-1982 US Zinc Pennies |Main| Notes from JWR: » Wednesday September 2 2009Guest Article: Disaster Preparedness--Principles of Self-Sufficiency, by Don McAlvany
1. Change the way you look at everything. Rethink your entire lifestyle. - Don McAlvany, Editor, The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor « Influenza Pandemic Update: |Main| Letter Re: A Practical Use for Post-1982 US Zinc Pennies » Letter Re: Advice on Camouflage Covers for LP/OPsJWR, JWR Replies: Semi-permanent OPs should be custom-built, to as closely match the local vegetation, as possible. Any store-bought camouflage is a compromise, at best. Ideally, you should grow local vegetation over the top of an excavated position, for the ultimate in undetectable camouflage. Nothing mimics nature like nature itself. (Anything else that you use won't look quite right, and of course it won't gradually change colors to match, seasonally.) See "Patriots: A Novel of Survival in the Coming Collapse", for details on LP/OP construction. For truly temporary OPs 48 hours or less), I prefer using an oversized poncho of very rough-textured ghillie-type camo materials. Again, try to get materials that match the local vegetation colors as closely as possible. « Letter Re: Old Boy Scout and Girl Scout Handbooks are Available Online |Main| Notes from JWR: » Tuesday September 1 2009Developing Our Family's Survival Strategy, by FBP
We started prepping about 18 months ago. I have felt like a chicken with its head cut off, going wildly in all directions. I’ve learned a lot about a lot, some by research, but have learned most from doing. Being prior military (I served six years in the Army Captain, and as a civilian, I was a financial planner), I started identifying mission statements and initiating plans, backwards (aka backwards planning) in order to get them accomplished on time. The first mission: “How do we survive hyperinflation?” My readings led me to believe that the best protection is to plan on not needing to spend money on stuff and save money for taxes. The question is how to accomplish that! I concluded that becoming as self-sufficient as possible and inter-dependent and mutually supportive with other like-minded persons. Another mission: “How to survive societal meltdown with options and strategies.” We determined that we needed to prepare in-place in our current home while we simultaneously worked to identify a homestead, but one that also optimized our security needs under a societal meltdown scenario. We had to define those security needs and defensive goals. We also decided to initiate some basic security in-place. What kind of retreat? What does one need for a retreat and where? Our pursuits included looking at everything from two perspectives, the retreat and the in-place strategy. We have decided that if we haven’t relocated, that bugging out would entail leaving the majority our resources and is not a viable option. We will defend in place if we don’t get relocated before TEOTWAWKI. My research indicated that to be fully self-sufficient where we not only grow our own food, but also that of our livestock, that we would need around 15 acres. Notably, a 5 acre homestead would do a lot! In researching homesteading and agriculture in-place alternatives I found out that Cubans grow 70% of their own food in the cities! I found that there are several cases of very small acreage homesteaders of an acre or less growing nearly all their needs! I recently discovered that I wouldn’t need to preserve so much if, instead of a huge garden once a year, I maintained a year-round greenhouse and grew what we needed on a staggered rotation basis inside the greenhouse with fresh food all the time! This year a summer thunderstorm hail storm wrecked a good portion of my garden and reminded me of the need for having a storage pantry! I will be doing a bit of both, for safety. Other factors which have bearing on the retreat are: [JWR Adds: Finding a property with sub-irrigated pasture is great, as is finding a property with micro-hydro development potential. But finding a parcel with both is a genuine rarity, because land that is sub-irrigated is almost always dead-level, near a stream or river. But for good micro-hydro power, you need a fast-flowing creek or river, with plenty of "fall" that you can exploit. For that, you need hilly property, not "bottom land." So those two goals are almost mutually exclusive, unless you buy a huge parcel that has both features.] How does one survive hyperinflation? Research includes Harry Figgie's book Bankruptcy 1995, in which Chapter 8 spells out the history of hyperinflation. I figure that the US didn't go Bankrupt in 1995 because it has been spending Social Security funds for operating capital. Can you spell Ponzi scheme? Other research included the hyperinflation of the Weimar Republic 1923, Argentina 2001, and Zimbabwe today. I have obtained an actual 100 Trillion Zimbabwe dollar note, worthless and no longer a currency, as a reminder of where we are headed. The Zimbabwean people have to pan for gold to buy bread. With worthless currency, the population (will that be us?) cannot get paid enough to keep up with the ever increasing costs of things and cannot afford heat, or food. It is my belief that hyperinflation can be survived primarily through Homesteading and Self-sufficiency and/or inter-dependence in a tight-knit group. Essential Elements for self-sufficiency and which I/we have done include: How do we survive a melt-down crisis? In addition to food, we wanted a year’s store of normal shopping of household supplies: toilet paper, aluminum foil, plastic wrap, (handkerchiefs instead of Kleenex tissues), (towels instead of paper towels), laundry soap, bar soap, shampoo (sure we could make it, but we’d need “fat” and “hardwood ashes” to make it ourselves), medical supplies for general medicinal and also for emergencies: bleeding, dental, disease / quarantine supplies (masks, gloves, antiseptics), etc. We also anticipate that the banking system will not be available, i.e. there will be no operational ATMs, no open Teller Windows, and credit cards will be declined/inoperable. We set aside an amount of “cash”, today’s currency, for our crisis operating capital, and some in silver. We liquidated some IRAs to obtain the assets now. To us, these assets are better now to get prepared and are better than having more, but worthless currency in the future. The saying, a bird in hand is better than two in the bush, comes to mind. We have researched the metals markets and deemed them manipulated but with lots of upside (see Ted Butler's commentaries). We feel that one of the best investments is agricultural real estate. We are debt free and hope to stay that way. We own our own home free and clear. This is not to brag or make someone feel bad, but rather to motivate you to wonder how. It is by not being a ‘consumer’, but by being balanced and frugal, buying what we needed, foregoing vacations, doing without ‘designer labeled jeans’, without landscaping, however we did invest in having a dump truck load of dirt dropped in the backyard for the garden since all we had was rocks for soil. We have several original household appliances and fixed them when they broke instead of getting new ones. We buy good used cars, maintain them well and keep them for years as long as they meet our needs. I believe that there is a game of keep-away when it comes to how to get and stay ahead financially. The banks and others profit more by people remaining ‘consumers’ and participating as a throw-away society. Massive disinformation exists to misdirect and profit from the populace efforts. A lot of wealth for others is made and maintained by keeping the populace misinformed about financial tools, how they work and what they are used for correctly. However, ‘financial tools’ (CDs, Stocks, Insurance, Loans) are exactly that, “tools”! Tools can be an incredible resource and can help us build monuments, or can be deadly weapons that can destroy us. Financial success starts with you. Identify your ‘needs’. Spend to meet your needs, not to ‘save’ on an on-sale item that you truly didn’t ‘need’. Shop wisely. Will second-hand merchandise meet your needs; can the item be repaired, etc.? Take care of your things and you don’t have to replace them so often. You need to shop and learn about financial tools to meet your goals. The first is the placement of your savings (short-term, mid-term, long-term). There are numerous options with a few listed below. Banks ‘are not your friends’! They are a ‘Tool’! They are a place to situate your short-term cash--your working capital that is used to pay bills. Loanership dollars where you loan your money for a rate of return to you (interest): Banks (CDs), Money Markets, Insurance Companies (annuities), Corporate (Bonds), Municipal (Bonds), and Government (Bonds). Ownership dollars where you invest your money and accept ownership risks (of loss or gain): Insurance is a “Tool”! You need insurance to cover the calamity expense/risk(s) which you cannot afford, only! Often, you are not informed that your premium would be much lower if you accepted a higher deductible. It might be inconvenient to have to pay $1,000 if your car was wrecked or your home damaged, or a major medical claim, but the insurance would cover a catastrophic loss! A home loan is a tool too. The structure of a loan is important, fixed or variable. Variable contains a ‘gamble’ element. Unless it is stipulated otherwise, most home loans can be prepaid, or accelerated. You have the ability to pay an extra amount above the mortgage payment. This extra amount can be applied towards principal, which you need to specifically specify ‘apply to principal’! Pre-paying a mortgage, especially in the early years of a loan is one of the greatest savings rates a person can achieve! We actually paid our 30 year mortgage off in about 12 years. Admittedly, our friends drove newer cars, went on vacations, have better furniture, prettier lawns, fancier clothes, and went out to dinner and the movies more than we did. However, we are debt free. Yes, we are still worried about tight finances and the world situation, but our current position is a lot less stressful than being loaded with lots of debt. It can be done, with sacrifices! It is an imperative for Americans to educate themselves, to not trust the system. Find out about things. Get inquisitive and broaden your horizons. This year I have eaten cooked nettles. Yes, it was very good. It was similar to spinach and no nettle burn! I had Yak meat at a local restaurant and now want to pursue having Yaks for livestock. Learn new things and hard skills. Become creative and inventive; how else can it be done? Become flexible, find alternative ways of getting things done, adapt! We have a small group of friends with whom we meet regularly, try new projects and explore ideas. Our daily ‘walks’ have helped us meet our neighbors. Our friends suggested that we hold a ‘Meltdown Neighborhood Tea Party’ Potluck get-together. That sounds like a good idea to meet our kind of people. I believe we can do anything we put our minds to, especially if we work together. « Two Letters Re: A Method for Storing Fresh Eggs up to Two Years |Main| Note from JWR: » Friday August 28 2009Know Thy Neighbor, by "The Old Salt" in VirginiaIn reading “Preparedness Beginnings” by Two Dogs it struck me that I had been missing a vital part of basic preparedness . . . I was doing it naturally, but I realized how many post I had read that left it out or put it as “I will need to do this when . . . “. My title tells the story, but let me digress a little and put some background to it: Like “Two Dogs”, who is a retired Marine Corp Officer, I’m a retired Naval Officer who drug his family around the country through nine moves in a 30 year career . So getting to “know” new neighbors was something we just took for granted, what I would like to do is share a few thoughts on the process and ideas to get you started (if you need it). We are not new to the “preparedness game” since we bought our first retreat property in 1973 in central Texas, have lived through 2 major hurricanes in Florida and 1 in Virginia, 1 major earthquake in California, and have lived and seen the third world up close and personal . Because of what we have seen and lived through, we currently live at our retreat full time in western Virginia. « Economics and Investing: |Main| Surviving an Expedient Ambush Roadblock While Traveling by Vehicle, by M.W. » Saturday August 22 2009Letter Re: Cattle Rustling on the Rise
James, Secondly, one of my cattle buyers, corroborated by one of my truckers, has informed me of some signs-of-the-times, unconfirmed via regular news outlets so far, cattle rustling in Pennsylvania is on the rise, including something not usually seen, carcass remnants. Several barns/pastures have cattle missing, one load of which was recovered at a sale barn, and at least a half dozen reports from different farmers finding carcasses, with primals cut out, in remote portions of hill pastures. I also found this news article and this ABC News video clip. We all saw the report from Florida about horse butchering, but this is slightly different, IMO. We run cattle on quite a few different operations and are concerned at this potential loss of wealth. We have invested heavily in livestock to preserve wealth, reproduce wealth, insure a food supply and, well it’s also our business! We are holding our first “cattle works” in a few weeks and will be branding all our horses and cattle. It may not solve/reduce all the problems, but we believe it will help. Thanks for your efforts, you are performing a valuable service. - Trent H., in a Rural Corner of Pennsylvania « Letter Re: Preparedness for Living on a Chesapeake Bay Island |Main| Note from JWR: » Friday August 21 2009Camouflage: The Art of the "Liar", by T.W.P.
Human Perception - from an artist’s point of view. Have you ever sat down and watched a movie? Sure you have. But did you ever stop to realize that everything you were watching was a lie? Most likely not, even though you do understand that intellectually. Most movies cash in on the concept of “suspension of disbelief” which means “you know that what you are watching is not real or true, but you are willing to pretend, accept that it is real or true, for sake of entertainment.” It is an implied contract between you, and the makers of that movie. The producers of that movie have an obligation to you - and that obligation is to make it “look” so real, make is so convincing - that you are able to believe it when you see it. A “Special Effect” that you noticed and commented on, saying “Wow that was a great effect, it really looked real” is actually a badly executed effect. If you recognized it as an effect, it was not a successful effect – because you recognized it – it drew attention to itself. A real special effects artist covers his tracks so well, that you believe that what you saw was real, and do not question it or recognize it as an effect – you accept it at face value – and that is what camouflage is really all about – tricking your opponent into accepting what he sees at face value, and not even thinking to question it. For the past 28 years, I have been employed as a professional sculptor/artist in the entertainment industry. What that means is that for those years, I have been paid to lie to you. That statement is not meant to give offense. It is meant to draw your attention to a point that I think could save your life. Camouflage is, quite simply the skill of lying. Think about it. You goal, your desire is to create an illusion, a deception, a trick of the eye with such skill that your enemy does not see you, or realize that either “you” or “it” is actually there at all. Your enemy thinks it is just a rock, a bush, and clump of dirt, - he has no idea that there is something there at all. He is at ease, relaxed; he feels safe and does not see any booty to snap up for himself, or any enemy to threaten him, because he sees nothing but the environment around him. That is your goal – right? So, to achieve that goal, you need to become a great liar! You have all seen paintings, photographs, “art” of many kinds. But the things you see are not what your mind tells you they are. Thus, your mind plays tricks on you, it “interprets” or “translates” the images it receives by way of your eye, into concepts; and then you react or respond to those perceived concepts. But the concepts your mind’s eye creates by way of its interpretation of visual stimuli, may not be accurate with respect to the objective environment, as any one of a million playfully entertaining optical illusions can clearly demonstrate. Your mind can be easily tricked into believing something that is not real or true. In general, there are very few straight lines or repeated patterns in nature. Exceptions to the rule do exist, in such things as sedimentary strata that is uninterrupted by geological events beyond its original “manufacture”, or the magnificent rhythm of sea shells, and a few other things; but as a rule, regularity and repetition, rhythm and pattern, is rather hard to find out in the bush. However, in contrast to the “randomness of nature” the human mind, tends to seek out regularity and pattern, rhythm and harmony. (Bear in mind that the eye does not “see” anything. It is merely an organic structure designed to collect and receive light from the outside world, and transfer the image to the mind for interpretation. It is the human brain that actually “sees” what is going on out there, by way of interpreting the information given to it by the eye.) Our modern definition of beauty to a very large degree stems from this perception of “visual harmony” and we seek out balance and summitry as a means to define beauty in others. In other words, the left and right eye are “balanced” with respect to each other. The nose is centered on the face, and if a sentient line or center line were drawn through the middle of it, both half’s of the nose would be in balance. In the male, if this balance and cemetery is hard and “chiseled” he is considered handsome or good looking. In the female, if this harmony of features or balance is soft and delicate, she is considered beautiful. There are occasions when a “crooked smile” can be considered quite attractive – but the very reason it is considered attractive, is because we recognize that it is “crocked” as compared and contrasted to our traditional interpretation of beauty, which seeks out that straight, balanced harmony radiating from a center line, and it becomes that consciously recognized exception to the rule that we find attractive. Because we tend to seek out rhythm and balance, we automatically create a repetition or pattern in our physical actions. But then this very pattern, this rhythm is precisely what our eye seeks out and recognizes. So, to truly disappear into your environment… Rule # 1 = never repeat your pattern or your placement of color or item. Become deliberately random. Consciously pay attention to your natural tendency to become rhythmic and repetitious, and willfully violate that natural tendency by placing things at deliberately irregular intervals. Test yourself on this. Take a sea sponge and dip it in paint, and then casually dabble that paint loaded sponge on a wall or plywood board. Then step back and look at your work. Odds are, you will see a rhythm, an equally spaced, even and regular pattern of sponge pats on the wall. In fact, you could almost put a tape measure to each sponge splotch, and they would all be within a ¼ of one another. This is exactly what you want to take note of – and avoid when seeking to camouflage yourself or your stash! If you see a pattern, so will your enemy. Remember – rhythm and regularity = presence of man – weather your opponent consciously recognizes this fact, or not, he will “perceive it” and gravitate towards this regularity. “Composition” is something you will hear artists speak about frequently. This refers to the placement of colors and images within the frame of the work. (And the negative space – the “empty” space around objects, between objects, within objects – is also an element of the art work – and something you need to pay attention to). This concept of composition is a format artists use to guide the viewers eye along a specific path to enhance interest and visual pleasure. (the eye can be directed along a specific and predetermined path – guided by the skillful artist to “look here, not there” - hint, hint). But again, with physical objects, (in the case of a painting, for example, a pile of rocks) even numbers of elements represent regularity and pattern, and regularity and pattern means man, not nature. Rule #2 = odd numbers work better than even numbers. Place colors or elements in groups of 3, 5, 7, et cetera. Starbucks, like every retail food outlet, offers three sizes of drink cup. They don’t call it small, medium and large, they rename it so it sounds fancy and costs more - Tall, Vente, and Grande, but it is still small, medium and large drink cup size no matter how you slice things up. But if you stop to think about it, a small one, a large one, and one that is exactly in the middle of those two - - is regular, predictable, rhythmic and repetitious. It is contrived. It is according to the rules of pattern and harmony. What that means is – to camouflage yourself and your stash, you need to be aware of this, and violate that thinking. In composition, (placement of items and colors within your framework) arrangements that are odd numbered work better. Arrangements like large, large, small - or small, small, medium. Remember – odd numbers (3,5,7), and odd arrangements (L,L,s). Rule #3 = selection of object sizes and placement relationships with one another, should be as random and irregular as the arrangement of item groups within your overall framework. You have all seen Leonardo De Vinci’s masterpiece “The Last Supper” But I invite you to revisit that work with a new understanding. Notice, as you view it, that each of the Apostles are in groups of three, (odd number) and that each group is slightly separated from the other groups. Notice also that the eyes of all Apostles (save Judas) are facing towards Christ. Notice also that the building in which they sit, is rendered in what is called a single point perspective, with a single vanishing point – all things converge on that vanishing point, and Christ is at the center of it. In other words, everything in that picture, from foreground to background to the stitching on the tablecloth - commands, forces, directs our eye to our Lord, Jesus Christ. You have no choice but to look upon Him. Da Vinci skillfully directed you to look where he wanted you to look, and you naturally obey. Bearing this in mind, you can also misdirect your adversary by employing branches, sticks, or a carefully placed “line” of items, all pointing where you want him to look. See what you want him to see. You can actually direct his path, even make him literally walk right where you want him to walk, by placing well crafted “arrows” that point along your chosen path (providing you do do not make it obvious - - another rule of art is that often - less is more, so don’t forget the first three rules). Rule #4 = item arrangements can direct the eye along a predetermined path. Knowing this, gives you the power to control that path and direct your adversaries attention to a point you chose. As a sculptor, on occasion I will accidentally chip off a chunk of material that results in what we call “the happy accident.” It usually happens because I am working quickly. While this break in material was not designed, expected or intended, nevertheless it often yields fantastic results, and is incorporated into the work, if at all possible. However, being human, we tend to seek order and harmony – we desire to have control – and we also tend to work that way. We tend to work meticulously and deliberately, with care and consideration towards our goal. But again, this is not how nature works. Haphazard and disorganized is natural – and the best way to achieve this “look” is not to be too careful, too controlled or to focused on what you are doing. Rule #5 = Deliberately work with haste and speed (until you master the first 3 rules) to allow for the haphazard ‘happy accident’ that more accurately reflects a natural environment. Force yourself to do it fast until you get good at it, then you will do it fast because you are good at it. Those professionals who make their craft look easy are those who have done it so many times, that they don’t have to stop and think about it anymore. This deliberate under pressure, with speed technique is the first step in teaching a student to be a sculptor – because his natural tendency is to start detailing from one end to the other, rather than establish the overall “anatomy” first. Most people see only the surface, the final detail and finish, and neglect to recognize the more important underlying structure – bones, muscle, balance, etc. The foundation upon which your details are built - is more important than the details themselves. You “see” the frosting on the cake – the surface detail - sure, but don’t forget the frosting is on the cake. Another trick of the trade is a bit more tactical, and goes hand in hand with rule #4. Diversion and distraction. In my profession, we often employ a technique called “the purple flower.” Art directors, having already designed and blueprinted or sketched the look of the movie on paper are - technically speaking, no longer needed on the payroll. They design it, send it to me and I build it, according to design. Simple. However, would you want to walk away from a $5,000 per week paycheck? So, what would you need to do in order to justify your continued employment? Make changes! Well, we know they are going to make changes. So – we give them something to change. We deliberately introduce into the project, something wrong, something noticeably out of whack. Naturally, he will see this, and demand we “fix this immediately,” to which we promptly reply “yes sir!” He has corrected our mistake, justified himself on the payroll, and is happy, and yet, he has not messed up all our work, because we directed and controlled his “change” by giving him something to change. (Please don’t let the cat out of the bag by telling others about this – especially if you are under a chain of command. The C.O. cannot find out what you are doing or the game is up.) In other words, your adversary is looking for something – anything that will tip him off as to your presence. Give him what he wants. But under your control, not his. Rule #6 = Now that you know some of the rules, (and you do need to master them first. Foundation, remember?) learn when to throw the rules out and go right back to doing what you should not do. Remember, the odds are, your adversary does not know the rules to art, or how to control human behavior through visual stimuli – so take advantage of his ignorance - - today’s marketing and advertising agencies do this to you every day of your life. Camouflage patterns on military uniforms have, for decades been defensive in nature. Their goal was (obviously) to break up the human form or silhouette, using colors found in nature and irregular patters. Their intent was to make the wearer “fade away” – “disappear into the surrounding foliage” or simply put - “hide.” Today’s digital camouflage pattern is quite the opposite. It is a deliberately ‘in your face’ offensive pattern (psychologically speaking). If you look closely, it is composed of colored squares – which as we all know are shapes that are exactly equal on all four sides – i.e. regular, mathematical, and thus, easily discernable in a non-mathematical natural setting (or so one would think). However, this new pattern is designed around the manner in which human perception functions and operates. The designers understand how the human eye perceives color, shape and line, and how the human mind translates the visual stimuli brought to it through the eye to formulate perceptions and concepts. Thus, digital camouflage assaults your brain’s natural perceptive methodology – which makes it more effective than the traditionally defensive camo pattern. (The colors are more subtle too – prone to emulate the tones on a bright sunlit day). What happens is that your mind blends, interprets, or translates those “tiny little squares” into fuzzy random, totally innocuous natural shapes. There is no “edge” to separate “this” shape from “that” shape and thus identify it as a printed pattern – so it all blends together into something else. Next time you see the digital pattern, try squinting your eyes as you look at it, and you will see how it effects you. You fill in the blanks. You “participate” (albeit, without your conscious knowledge) in the camouflage of the digital patterns now worn by our military. Thus, as exemplified by Edgar Allen Poe, and Sherlock Holmes – on occasion, the best possible disguise is right in front of your eyes. Naked. Exposed. Right there – which is the last place anyone would think to look. A cop, searching for an escaped convict, probably would not think to search the police station’s basement. Remember, your opponent is expecting you to try and hide it. Rule #7 = Sometimes, right out in the open, in plain sight is the best possible place to “hide” it, simply because they are expecting you to hide it – looking for where you hid it, and not expecting, or looking for the obvious. (This tactic can also serve well as “bait for the trap”). There are a number of additional ‘rules of art’ but the best teacher is observation and practice. Wonder around in nature and really stop and “look” at it. Most beginners, if I instructed them to sculpt a rock, would create something that more closely resembles a potato than a rock. This is not because they are incompetent (per se) – so much as because they “think” they know what a rock looks like, and as a result, have never actually stopped and looked at a rock. They assume they know what they know they don’t know – to their determent. So, go out and really look at your environment – study it. Take notes as to what you see – and why it is the way it is. Take a few minutes to read a book or two on art and learn what defines it, what categorizes “good” from “bad” art. It will help, not to mention expanding your horizons and affording you a new found “level of cultural enlightenment and appreciation.” Note: Considering what I just said, I have to add that the Accredited Fine Arts Academia today - is a socialist/elitist, self glorifying pompous joke. I know many people with degrees in art – but I have never met one on the job site. “Those who can – do. Those who cannot - go back to school and teach.” Be that as it may – learning something about art is not going to hurt you. In fact, it may grant you a little more insight as to how “you” function in your environment. In the meantime, don’t necessarily buy a bunch of expensive ghillie suits and nets and stuff at Cabela’s (however ‘cool’ they might be). More often than not, your best bet is to use whatever is there, within the environment you are trying to hide in. You want to blend into “it” – so use “it.” Procedure: So, say that you want to hide your truck or your pile of MREs in such a way that you can retrieve them quickly and easily, whatever. How do you go about it? For first time ‘artists,’ hesitation, fear of a mistake, self consciousness and insecurity must be overcome. And anyone trying something new, for the very first time, is, naturally, going to be self conscious and hesitant--afraid of messing it up. However, if you are afraid of making a mistake – you will. And, there is nothing that cannot be changed, amended, altered or adjusted to correct a ‘mistake.’ There is no such thing as a mistake (unless you are on a deadline and getting paid). Further, very often, those perceived mistakes actually further your goals –so allow for them. However, to break through that barrier of self hesitation and insecurity – force yourself to work fast. Reflect on your goals (camouflage) - – then reflect on the general rules of art - - then stop thinking and attack what you are doing with boldness and power, confidence and positive self-assurance. Throw yourself at it whole heartedly. Loosen up – relax. “Play” at it. Then, when some progress has been made, pause and take a step back. Review. Ask yourself:
The answers to these questions will give you information, and it is the information you receive from your work that will dictate your next action. (It sounds a bit “Zen” but the only way I can describe this is to “let the work speak to you – and learn how to listen to it.”) Then – attack it again, boldly, powerfully and quickly. But, know when to stop fussing with it and put the tool down. Know when to say ‘when', and walk away – because it is all too easy to “overwork” something, and destroy the point to your efforts. Very often, less work yields a more effective result – as we have pointed out, less “attention to detail” commands and requires the viewer to “participate” in the work – to fill in the blanks himself – and that is what will trick him into thinking it is simply a bush or a pile of rocks – so learn how to use your opponents own mind against him! Proviso: If you are doing this in the safety and comfort of your back yard - to practice and learn the some of the skills – you may find you are having some fun. Do not let your spouse figure this out, or they will take it away from you and replace it with a “honey do” list. ‘God’s speed’ to one and all. - T.W.P. JWR Adds: Keep in mind the classic military observation cues when you are designing camouflage:
Take a look at this series of photos of Swiss Army bunkers, and then this montage, and answer this: what did they do right, and what did they do wrong? Do you see the straight lines? Now take a look at this series of photos. (If you can't mimic nature, then mimic man! Note that the "windows" are all just painted on the reinforced concrete.) Ach! Those same clever SwitzerDudes that invented the Swiss Army Knife. You have to admire them. OBTW, a stack of cordwood can hide a lot of things, including a bunker entrance. My favorite hidden bunker door is in the second photo on this page. (It takes a while to spot the door hinges.) For additional reading, I recommend these two books: The War Magician « Economics and Investing: |Main| Camouflage: The Art of the "Liar", by T.W.P. » Letter Re: Preparedness for Living on a Chesapeake Bay IslandMr. Rawles, JWR Replies: A few things come immediately to mind:
Your situation is unusual, but not unique. Make the best of the local resources, and organize with your neighbors to provide a common defense. One could safely predict that in the event of a "slow slide" depression, you may see a situation develop similar to that of present-day Roatan Island (off the coast of Honduras), where burglars and even home invasion robbers commute to the island from the mainland via ferryboat. « Letter Re: Fireproof Document Boxes, Mold, and Rust |Main| Jim's Quote of the Day: » Thursday August 20 2009Letter Re: The Usefulness of the AK-47 as a Survival Rifle
Dear SurvivalBlog Readers: The AK-47 is a legendary weapon, known for its ability to fire under incredibly challenging circumstances. While some rifles may require regular and frequent care to keep them running properly, it is a commonly-held notion that the AK platform requires only ammunition and a clear chamber to function reliably. Of course, the rifle will perform better and will be far more durable if properly cared for, but if one should find himself engaged in a protracted struggle and without the room, tools, or time to safely maintain the weapon, the owner of an AK variant is going to find himself very satisfied with its performance even if several days, weeks, or months pass without cleaning or lubricant application. This is the core of my survival philosophy: “My weapon must fire every time, without fail, without an excess of labor on my part.” While I will regularly strip, clean, and lubricate my rifle, it should not be picky or prone to jam should I fail to do so for a longer period of time. The Kalashnikov family of weapons has absolutely proven itself in this arena for several decades. Where else can one find a massive stock of .30-caliber rifles in a military configuration for under $600 each? Certainly not in an AR variant platform. While I heartily endorse the rough and ready nature of the ROMAK WASR-10, the only alternative for a shooter who wants a full-power cartridge in a semi-automatic, magazine-fed rifle is the Saiga line, in which the discriminating shooter can find .223, .308 Win, and 7.62x39 rifles which fit within the budget restriction. However, I always recommend a WASR on the grounds of parts commonality. The Saiga line of rifles uses a different magazine well, requiring modification to use military surplus and commercial 30-round magazines - and their proprietary magazines are expensive. My number one reason for recommending a WASR over a Saiga is the availability of replacement parts and aftermarket accessories. The AK parts market is a leviathan in our country, with numerous small shops dedicated to crafting excellent quality parts for Kalashnikov rifles. The rifle is ubiquitous enough that most gunsmiths will have an easy time modifying just about any part of the rifle or adding any part you might come across. As a last aside, I've never attended a gun show at which AKs, ammunition, and parts were not available. If you anticipate that a TEOTWAWKI scenario would shut down some of this availability, you may rest assured. Plans for the AK are available online (print and laminate a set today) and any talented machinist should be able to design, build, and test replacement AK parts with minimal difficulty or investment. If your chosen machinist is outfitted with alternative power arrangements, he or she should have no problems replacing worn parts - or even stamping entirely new receivers – during or after a crisis or SHTF scenario. A shooter who doesn't have the $1,200-2,000 required for a high-quality full-bore rifle and glass may just find that an AK and good scope will fit better into a smaller budget, and offer comparable battlefield performance to a trained marksman. Above every other consideration, the quality of the shooter and his or her training is paramount. While a life-long, talented and devoted shooter may wring every last bit of potential from his or her rifle, the vast majority of us will be incapable of getting the best possible groups with our rifles until we’ve had significant range time and quality, professional training. In most cases, the AK offers an opportunity to acquire rifle, glass, ammunition, and ample training for the price you’d pay to get rifle and glass in some of the AR-15 or M1A designs. As with all things in life, we take the good with the bad. The AK platform does, clearly, have some of the latter. If not, wouldn't everyone be an AK shooter? First, an out-of-the-box AK will not have tack-driver accuracy. Nor would we want it, if it did. A "new" AK rifle, fed the most economical Wolf-brand commercial ammunition, will generally deliver a 2-4 MOA (MOA =[Roughly one] inch at one hundred yards) performance. For most AK owners, the knowledge that they can hit a circle averaging 3" in diameter at one hundred yards is plenty. These shooters always aim center-of-mass, and rely on the power of the 7.62 x 39 cartridge, which is fully capable of taking down the particular kind of big game for which it was designed. There are a few AKs out there which possess better-than-typical accuracy, and which in the hands of a good shooter can produce 1-2 MOA groups. However, the vast majority of AK owners will never tune their rifles to the extent necessary to get this tight, because the steps necessary to wring this performance out of the rifle will also have a deleterious effect on the reliability of the firearm. Imagine that you have a two-ended spectrum; on the left, you have "looseness" or reliability, and on the right, you have "tightness" or accuracy. The AK-47 may be tuned to for either purpose, though the platform has a natural affinity for the reliability side of the spectrum. The other negative with the rifle platform is the perception it engenders in civilians and in professional shooters. Non-shooter civilians will tend to recoil at the sight of an AK-47, as though it were possessed by the demons of the old Soviet Union. It has strong associations with our old nemesis, as well as revolutionaries, rebels, and terrorists. This is mostly because it has been a cheap, reliable rifle for people too poor or too politically isolated from the US to buy the M16 and other Stoner-derived weapons. Professional shooters such as soldiers, mercenaries, and police will generally recognize the distinctive silhouette of the AK and the sound of its report, and have a tendency to associate both with a hostile force. This is largely because they and their allies carry the US-designed platforms, while the gang members, rebels, insurgents, and terrorists they've been fighting often carry the Kalashnikov. Overcoming this prejudice pre-TEOTWAWKI is more a matter of common sense and restraint (not carrying openly except when at the range), while post-TEOTWAWKI few will encounter discrimination against someone willing to carry a rifle and help defend the community. In conclusion, the Kalashnikov pattern deserves consideration from two groups of survivalists: those who can't afford to properly outfit an AR-15 or M1A or equivalent, and those who perceive rock-solid reliability as a paramount feature in a firearm. Even in the case of those who can afford a “better” rifle, the AK offers economy of savings which can be hard to ignore. It carries only the drawbacks of larger shot groups and perceptions among the general population, which can be overcome through practice and some wise decisions regarding the presentation of the weapon. - Z.M. « Letter Re: Burros for TEOTWAWKI Transport |Main| The Open Carry Debate Catches Mainstream Attention » Wednesday August 19 2009What Divides You from The Sheeple? Plenty!Nearly every week, I get at least one frantic e-mail from a new SurvivalBlog reader, stating that they feel woefully under-prepared. The gist of these e-mails is: "I'm behind the power curve! How can I possibly get prepared in time?" Fear not! Just by reading SurvivalBlog and taking some small, gradual steps at preparedness, you are miles ahead of your sheeple neighbors. And even with just modest preparedness measures, you have already substantially increased your chances of surviving most scenarios. As I see it, here are your advantages: Awareness Skills and Knowledge Networking Tools Planning Logistics Locale Communications Capacity for Charity The Bottom Line « Economics and Investing: |Main| Note from JWR: » Sunday August 16 2009Letter Re: Viability of a Well-Stocked Suburban Retreat?Good Morning! Attached greenhouses are wonderful for situations where there isn't much home invasion crime, but they are a huge security risk in inimical times. I recommend that you hedge your bets by pre-positioning some of your supplies with your friends, in anticipation of worst-case grid down collapse, where the municipal water will not be available. This is not a major issue for you, since you have an abundance of stored water, and rainwater collection system. But "grid down" will be a true disaster for your neighbors within just a few days. They will likely abandon their houses, leaving you by yourself to defend against large numbers of very desperate looters. You mentioned that you have a five year food supply --which is quite commendable--I'd recommend that you store up to half of it with your friends in the country. Keep in mind that you may only have the opportunity to make one trip Outta Dodge, so it is important to have some crucial logistics stored at your backup retreat. « Economics and Investing: |Main| A Primer on Gold, by Javaman » Saturday August 15 2009Letter Re: Correction on Sniping Record for Afghanistan
Hi, The second longest was Master Corporal Aaron Perry (also PPCLI in Operation Anaconda) at 2,310 meters. None of this is to take away from the brilliant work by Cpl Reynolds, but just to keep the Daily Express honest in their reporting. - Anon. Lima « Three Letters Re: Acquiring Pre-1965 Silver Coinage |Main| Note from JWR: » Wednesday August 12 2009Preparedness Beginnings, by "Two Dogs"I am a retired Marine Corps officer and Naval Aviator (jets and helicopters), commercial airplane and helicopter pilot, and most recently, an aircraft operations manager for a Federal agency. I graduated from numerous military schools, including the U.S. Army Airborne (“jump”) School, U.S. Navy Divers School, Army helicopter, and Navy advanced jet schools. In addition, I have attended military “survival” courses whose primary focus was generally short-term survival off the land, escape from capture, and recovery from remote areas. Like most Marine officers, I attended The Basic School, an 8-month school (only five during the Vietnam era – my case), which is still designed to produce a second lieutenant who is trained and motivated to lead a 35-40 man platoon of Marines in combat. This course covers everything from field sanitation to squad and platoon tactics, artillery and other ordnance delivery, communications, reconnaissance, intelligence, firearms training, and much more. Later, I attended the Marine Amphibious Warfare School and the Command and Staff College, both follow-on schools and centered upon the academic study of tactics and strategy as they applied to the missions of the Marine Corps. I flew helicopters offshore in the Gulf of Mexico and across the U.S. I found out first hand how thoroughly corrupted is the federal bureaucracy and the government, in general. Not a pleasant experience. I’d rather have been flying. I have bachelor's and master's degrees. As a result, my wife of forty years and I seem to have been moving endlessly from place-to-place. Nevertheless, I have tried in each place to do what I could to maintain a level of self-sufficiency for my family that varied greatly with locations and personal finances. My intention here is to try to share some of the less-than-perfect ways that I have tried to accomplish that end. Only in the last few years, primarily as a result of the political and fiscal situation in the U.S., have I begun reading some of the huge amounts of literature about how one can prepare for serious long-term off-the-grid survival. I have found that the preparation required to be ready for that contingency seems to be endless. I do not want to talk about all of those preparations. Others have done so very well, and besides, I’m not there, yet. What I would like to do is to talk to those, perhaps like me, who are not true survivalists in the commonly referred-to sense, but who are genuinely concerned about the future of this country, and might desire, like me, to begin to prepare. Perhaps my elementary and simplistic efforts might be of help to someone else who is beginning to think about the subject of preparedness. There are many scenarios that might require this, but the two that I am thinking most about are economic collapse and electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack. I’m building small Faraday boxes, but not doing much else for EMP. My thinking on begins with my own estimation of the basic problems: shelter, water, food, fuel, and security. I view these as the most critical needs, whether living in a tent or other outdoor shelter or here in our rural home in West Virginia. Here I have and often take for granted what I have -- shelter, well water, a small stream, a pond, a rain barrel; canned, dried, frozen, and freeze-dried foods; fuel for the generator and portable stoves, kerosene heater and lanterns; factory-made and reloaded ammunition for any one of several firearms. Edible plant books. Gardening books. Encyclopedia of Country Living-type books. Reloading books. Hunting books. Tracking books. A few novels devoted to the “what ifs” of the future, including Jim Rawles' excellent "Patriots:
A Novel of Survival in the Coming Collapse" Those are the basic things about which I think. I have been thinking about them for quite a while, in fact, longer than I even realized. Perhaps I’ve been thinking about them ever since I was a young lad. For example, my very first “survival book” was the Boy Scout Field Book, the original of which I still have (circa late-1950s edition). It is still a great reference if one is looking for an all-in-one manual for starting fires, making simple shelters, recognizing game tracks, tying knots, and much more. I note that it is still available on Amazon.com. (It’s probably been scrubbed to favor the politically correct, but don’t know [JWR Adds: Yes, I can confirm that unfortunately it has been made politically correct--with the traditional woodcraft skills showing any injury to innocent and defenseless trees duly expunged. So I advise searching for pre-1970 editions!] ) One does not necessarily need the SAS
Survival Handbook I think that my first education in “survival” came at about fourteen. That’s when I first shot a .30-06, an old [Model 19]03 Springfield. It pretty much rattled my cage. Mostly, my older brother and I used to track and shoot small animals in the deep woods of Missouri as youngsters. We were “issued” ten rounds of .22 LR ammo by our father, a retired USAF pilot, to be used in a bolt action, single shot, .22 rifle with open sights. One would be surprised what that meager handful of loose ammunition could do for one’s choice of shots, one’s ability to be patient in waiting for the shot, and for one’s great satisfaction at having brought home six or eight squirrels for the cooking pot, having used just those ten rounds – and sometimes, but not often, less. My point is that the knowledge of firearms is, in my view, basic to the notion of preparedness and in surviving in the wild. And it need not be exotic or overly complicated in nature. One can surely attend modern schools that will teach one to double-tap a cardboard target or silhouette at seven yards with a semi-auto pistol, as well as basic and advanced tactical rifle courses, but very basic survival skill with a rifle can be had without much cost if one is committed to learning the skill and if one disciplines oneself. Start with only one round, and work up from there. As Col. Jeff Cooper used to say, “Only hits count.” In a purely off-the-grid survival scenario, I can envision that .22 LR rounds would be very precious, indeed. Consequently, and even though I own handguns and rifles that will shoot .45 ACP, .44 Magnum/.44 Special, .357 Magnum/.38 Special, .380 ACP, .223, .25-06, .270, 7mm-08, .308, .7.62x39, .30-30, .30-06, and .45-70/.457 WWG Magnum (a wildcat), I shoot a .22 rifle and pistol more than all of the others, combined, and normally at least twice a week. And I’m hoarding them, as well as shooting them. I have the capability to reload all the calibers (except .22 LR/Magnum, of course) above, as well as shotgun ammo in 12 and 20 gauge. I wasn’t really thinking of “survival” when deciding to do this about twenty years ago, but was interested only in having the capability to shoot more, and to do it more cheaply. Yet it appears that much of that ammo could be used for barter. I had never even considered this until reading some of the recent “survival novels.” My apologies. I’ve wandered into the weeds here, as I could do forever on my favorite subject. Suffice it to say that whatever firearm one chooses – and make no mistake, one is necessary in my opinion -- there are all kinds of reasons to choose one over the other, depending on the situation and the person. One must endeavor to shoot it well. Owning a firearm is of almost no consequence, at all, unless it is properly employed. Personally, I prefer a M1911 .45 ACP pistol and a 7.62 M1A SOCOM, while my wife is comfortable with the milder .38 [S&W] revolver and 20 gauge. pump shotgun. I won’t even begin to get into the debate over .223 vs .308 and 9mm vs. .45 ACP. Suffice it to say that in Vietnam I had the opportunity to see the effects of all of these, and I chose for my own security the .308 and .45 ACP. Having got my favorite subject out of the way, I’ll talk about one that is likely even more important. Water. It is amazing how complicated this can be, and how many choices one has to solve this problem. I have not yet solved it. I have put up a rain barrel, and plan to get a couple more. It’s amazing how rapidly a 55 gallon barrel will fill in even a moderate thunderstorm. I got mine from Aaron’s Rain Barrels. http://www.ne-design.net/. I’ve camo-painted the first one to make it recede into the bushes that surround it. We have a very shallow stream down the hill that I need to dam so that it keeps only about a foot-or-two deep pool for gathering some water. It flows into a large pond, of which we own half (The owner of neighboring property owns the other half.). But that’s over a hundred-yard trek downhill with empty buckets, and the same distance uphill with full ones. Now, while that is okay for a backup, in my thinking, because I’m going on 63 years, I prefer to have something closer. So my next “big” purchase will be a Simple Pump that allows one to drop a pump and pipe though one’s existing well casing down to below water level and extract water by means of a hand pump or DC motor attached to a battery which, in turn, will connect to a solar panel. This is much, much cheaper than a Solar Jack. At $1,200 for the hand pump capability (I’ll add on the DC and solar later), it’s a bargain, for me. See: http://www.survivalunlimited.com/deepwellpump.htm. I’ve also started collecting clear plastic soda bottles for use in Solar Disinfection (SODIS), see; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_water_disinfection. I’ve set up a rack for putting out the bottles in a sunny place. Again, that’s a backup, but I’ll use it. I have bought three different water filtering devices, the best of which is the Swiss-made, all-stainless Katadyn Pocket Microfilter. It works wonders in that shallow stream and pond down the hill.. [JWR Adds: The same Katadyn filter model is available from several SurvivalBlog advertisers. They deserve your patronage first, folks!] With the exception of the Simple Pump, these solutions are relatively cheap and effective, if not producers of great volume. So far, they are what I’ve come up with. I won’t go much into the food problem. It isn’t quite as complicated as the water problem. I’ve either got to have it [stored], grow it, or kill it. I’ve started storing all kinds of Mountain House freeze dried #10 cans (with expiration date dates in 2034), two-serving meals from Mountain House (expiration dates circa 2016), and numerous grocery store-type canned foods (expiration a couple years), in addition to dried beans, rice, Bisquick (sealed in plastic bags with desiccant inside), salt, sugar (Domino, which are sold in one-pound plastic tubs), olives, peanuts, wheat, etc. Basically hit-or-miss, so far. I need to get this “food problem” organized and do it right. But it’s a start. I think we’ve got only about a 60-day supply now, for two. I’ve got two Coleman two-burner stoves. One is a butane stove, and the other a dual fuel (white gas or unleaded gas), as well as several small backpacking stoves, the best of which is a MSR Whisperlite International Concerning backpacking stuff, I can recommend a book that I read back then called The Complete Walker, by Colin Fletcher. I haven’t read it in at least a decade, but its import is such that I remember much of it. He emphasizes simplicity in gear. That is to say, don’t pack a tent if you can get by with a tent fly – which you cannot in cold weather. I’ve still got my old three-season tent, but am saving up for a four-season. And he emphasizes: don’t worry about pounds – worry about ounces. That is to say, if one is packing tea bags, remove the labels from the bags. Ounces. Remove all packaging material unless it is absolutely necessary (usually never). Don’t carry a “mess kit,” nor a knife, fork and spoon set. A spoon will do (I’ve done it) along with a pocket knife. Now I have so many knives of so many types that I can’t remember them. Personally, I’d go for a multi-tool. But it’s heavy. I never used to carry a weapon while backpacking. Of course, it was (and is) illegal in Hawaii, but I think one would be remiss in not doing so today. There was so much good advice in that book that helped me in the USMC, if nothing more than when packing my helicopter before a mission, or a car, trailer, or truck to move across the country. “Think ounces, not pounds.” I always think about Mr. Fletcher’s advice when I pack. Anyway, I think I’ve got the camping stove angle covered in spades. That is, until the fuel runs out. Same goes for kerosene heater and lanterns (5). My plan is to pull out our pellet stove and replace it with a free-standing wood stove. Pellets are nice, but they must be bought, and the price is getting exorbitant, according to my pocket book. They likely will be non-existent in a crunch. I connected a 12,000 Watt/50amp gasoline generator when we moved into this house nine years ago, as I have with every house in which we’ve lived for the last two decades. I’ve got it wired through a transfer box to the circuit-breaker panel, a job that I did myself. It works, and it’s safe. The main reasons for having this were to run the 220V[olt AC] well water pump and to run the refrigerator and our free-standing freezer during power outages. But I’ve got it wired, anyway, to nearly every circuit in the house, except the other 220V appliances – water heater and heat pump. It is somewhat selectable. That is to say that I can choose which circuits I want to power by engaging or disengaging the switches on the transfer box. The problem is that it uses gasoline. So in a long-term outage it would soon become useless. I’ve had the propane gas company come out to estimate what it would cost to get a dedicated 100 gal propane tank for the generator. It would be about $500, but then, in addition to the 50+ gallons of gasoline, butane tanks, and white gas that I keep stored in a separate outbuilding, it would make a great explosion when hit with a tracer round. Which brings me to the subject of security. We live in a split-level home on about ten acres of forest. The property is surrounded by other similar-sized properties of seemingly like-minded individuals. I gleamed this because everyone out here shoots. The sweet sound of gunfire can be heard at times in a full circle. West Virginia, at least, has still got its priorities straight in this regard. But I digress. This is a frame house with half of it below ground in front, but framed in back, which faces the forest. The forest, itself, is a maze of downed pine trees blown over by the wind, interspersed with small saplings, vines and low brush. Not a likely avenue of approach for anyone but the most determined. For those who are determined, the downed trees would make excellent cover and concealment. So I have a security problem to solve there, as well as at the front. I’ve started buying rolls of barbed wire and baling wire. Unfortunately, I do not have access to dynamite, which we used to be able to buy in a hardware store in the 1960s. We used it back then to blow stumps while clearing the land for our house. I am thinking of buying a bunch of used railroad ties to build cover in the back; I’ve thought also of bricks and sandbags. Problem is we’re reaching the point in all of this where the house would begin to look like a fortress, of sorts, to all but the most ignorant observers. So there’s a line here concerning security versus “normalcy” that I must cross sooner or later. Inasmuch as my wife is a few years older than I and is on constant medications, I’m afraid that finding a retreat (if we could even afford one) would be out of the question, as access to doctors, hospital and pharmacy are a necessity. Nevertheless I’ve got the bags packed and gear ready to throw into the pickup (Toyota 4x4 – like to have one of those older model American trucks, but I think they are getting rare, at least around here. And what there are will likely go to the Cash for Clunkers Program….grumble, grumble. What will they think of next?). So it looks to me as if we are here for the duration of the crisis, or sooner, if they try to take the guns from my cold, dead hands. Speaking of, I still have to build a cache or two for guns and ammo and a few other necessities. And since I’ve more-or-less made that decision (here for the duration), I’ve thought of organizing the apparently gun-loving neighbors. I’ve begun to buy walkie-talkies, if not field phones and commo wire. I’ve got solar panels and several batteries (need to get a mega deep cell or two, however) to run the small battery chargers and the CB radio. My shortwave is up and running. I will have to wait to talk to the neighbors, whom I rarely see, much less know. I can just imagine the words that would come out of their mouths if I were to mention to them the notion of forming a security “company” and establishing a perimeter. “That old retired Marine down the road is nuts!” So that’s what I’ve got to say. I do hope it at least stimulates some thought for those who are starting out trying to prepare, as I am. All of this shows me that one “problem” in this “survival” business leads to several more, and they in turn lead to even more problems. Lots to do. So I’m glad I’m retired. I’ve got time to think about it. If I were rich, I could do a lot more and likely in a far away place, but as it is, we do with what we have. I have to use the lessons taught to every Marine: Improvise, Adapt, Overcome. Long Live America. Keep the Faith. - “Two Dogs”, Col. USMCR (ret.) in West Virginia « Letter Re: The Virtues of Fasting Experience for Well-Rounded Preparedness |Main| Note from JWR: » Tuesday August 11 2009Letter Re: Surviving 90 Miles from the US -- A Cuban-American Exile's ViewA brief background of myself. I am an Telecommunications Engineer, I served three years in the Cuban army as an Engineer in several units (it was mandatory unless you were integrated with the system, in which case you will get a better civilian job). After I served my time they did not want to release me (basically no one wants to stay unless you are willing to do their bidding) so they offered 2 years to a very harsh unit that stays in the mountains for months end ready to be sent anywhere, or stay for 20 years in very comfortable position as an Engineer, I sucked up the two years (30 months The government controls everything, I mean everything, from health, to communications, from commerce to defense. When government controls everything there is absolutely nothing you can do. They determine what is legal and sometimes they let you get away with it, as long as you do not mess with the regime. They can take you to jail for anything because as I said everything is illegal. You cannot legally sell a house, only cars that were in the country before 1959 can be sold legally, [Owning a] DirecTV [satellite television receiver] is illegal. The list goes on and on. In order to survive you must depend on the government or go black market. There is something called the Comite de Defensa de la Revolucion (CDR), basically is an organization at community block level that monitors everything that happens and reports to the government, it is completely volunteer, but it tells you how low citizens will go. Electrical Power is obviously controlled by the government, and they impose restrictions so you will have times that power will come on for only a few hours a day, people have converters because generators are hard to get and even harder to get gas for them (it is expensive, a gallon goes for about 8 dollars a gallon last time I heard), to use the converter you hide in a room to watch some TV, have a fan for the heat and that's it. You must try to hide, as much as you can, the things that you have, because you might get robbed. Being robbed at home is nothing new, you try to be as modest Water is also government controlled, it does the same as with the electrical power, you can go days without water, so every house has water tanks to store water, even in buildings people will have water tanks in the bathroom. Drinking water always needs to be boiled. People will raise pigs in a bathtub in the bathroom or if you are lucky to have a small backyard and someone to watch over it because it will be stolen. Pig will give meat and the fat you need to cook. People that live in the countryside can raise animals and food, they can sell it under government supervision, they cannot become wealthy because government will intervene and accuse them of "exploiting" others. It is illegal to kill a cow or a horse, as the government has a strict control. [If you slaughter one without prior approval and are caught,] you will serve the same time as if you killed a human being. People will slaughter a cow and dispose of it in two hours and "disappear" the remains by burning it with car tires because it burns very hot. And then you have to be careful how to transport [the meat] because they will have checkpoints. They can stop you anywhere, anytime for any reason and ask to search your vehicle. You have to be extremely careful on who you trust, because they could be a government informer. (Did you see how our government is asking [their allies] to report when they see something "fishy" about [opposition to socialized] healthcare? That scares the h*** out of me.) Not everyone can move to the countryside because the government controls that, they control movement within the country, you just can't pick up your stuff and decide to move, so you have to make a living where you are. In the countryside you'll have more food but they will cut electrical power more often. I used to install alarms (on my own, I refused to work for the government) for farmers that had pigs, pigs are raised in jail-like cages to avoid thievery, so I would install an alarm with battery backup because they had so much power shortages. It goes without saying that [privately-owned] guns are illegal. I just wanted to give an idea about how people live under a [total] government-controlled country. They will slowly take away your liberties and you will find out one day that you have nothing. And your fellow citizens will go as low as they can to survive. Government would threaten their family and force you to do what they say. This is always under the [mantle of] "we are doing it for the benefit of the majority, and only because we are in a crisis", but there is always a crisis. They will say that you do not want to work for the improvement of the country, that you are against your people, they will make things up, and suddenly you will become a pariah. Does it sound familiar "... these mobs against health care are destroying the democratic process..." Next it will be "they are organized by the enemies of democracy" and suddenly "we need to eliminate this threats to our democracy". Never think it cannot happen [here in the United States]. Sincerely, - Ignacio « Note from JWR: |Main| Jim's Quote of the Day: » Sunday August 9 2009Two Letters Re: Advice on Storing Precious Metals
Sir, Our prayers for you and your family continue daily. My grandfather has six 12"x12" square wooden posts on his farm house's front porch. Each one has held various caches for over 55 years and no one has ever been aware. It was not until 20 years ago that I was painting the posts and felt the need to replace a split board that he let me in on the secret. By the way, if a cache needed changing, it was usually done every few year as the posts were scraped, primed and painted along with the porch. For almost 16 years, our home has had PVC pipe caches inside our aluminum porch pillars/posts. Similar porch posts can be easily purchased at home supply centers or you can make them from wood like Pappy's porch on the farm. I realize this is not necessarily convenient for frequent changes in contents and they're not perfectly secure from fire or tornadoes, but they have been effectively hidden from hundreds of people: family, strangers, etc. who have climbed, leaned, touched, and passed by them unaware, for years. Better than a safety deposit box so far and I personally know of no one else than Pappy with a longer, successful track record of hiding and accessing caches. Please withhold my name and email as I'm giving away a family secret after much prayer for the benefit of others. Sincerely, - S. in Ohio Jim, JWR Replies: Your comment underscores the importance of letting trusted family members know the location of keys, caches, and vault combinations. The large number of abandoned safe deposit boxes each year is indicative that too any people err toward too much secrecy within their families. Ditto for caches of cash found in walls or found in attics, often decades after someone passes away. And who knows how many hidden (but undisclosed) valuables have ended up in landfills. « Letter Re: Hard Times at Here--Are You Ready? |Main| Note from JWR: » Saturday August 8 2009Underground Survival Shelter Construction and Security--Learn from My Mistakes, by B.B.In the summer of 1995 I decided to build an underground multipurpose survival shelter. I purchased the book Nuclear War Survival
Skills by Cresson H. Kearney and went to work. If you want to know about shelters and what it will be like living in one, then purchase his book. My brother helped me for a while with the construction, but I did the majority of the work alone and it took me two years to complete the project. Let me say up front that I’m an amateur who used a brilliant book to build a shelter. Along the way I made many mistakes and had some unanticipated problems. Hopefully if you decide to do something along these lines you can learn from my many mistakes.
Lessons I have learned: [Some information on another topic deleted, for brevity. It will eventually be posted separately.] JWR Adds: I've heard may similar tales about unoccupied retreats being ransacked. BB's experience underscores the oft-repeated need to either:
Anything less than that cannot be relied on! There is some utility in motion-queued web cams, but there is no sure substitute for the Mark I Human Eyeball. I consider web cams just a good backup, and a means to capture images of would-be burglars and their vehicle license plate numbers. Given enough time, miscreants can reduce just about any obstacle to entry to an unoccupied and unobserved structure. They will come back with a cutting torch or even a backhoe, given enough time! « Influenza Pandemic Update: |Main| Hard Times at Here--Are You Ready? » Thursday August 6 2009Letter Re: Advice on Storing Precious Metals--Are Safe Deposit Boxes Safe?
Good Morning. JWR Replies: No, bank boxes will probably be unavailable, since in bank holiday, bank lobbies will be closed to the public. In fact, the "worst case" for hard money preppers would be the combination of a bank holiday and a simultaneous gold confiscation a la 1933. I can foresee that you would only have access to your safe deposit box under the watchful eye of a sworn officer, on your first deposit box access following a gold seizure--either by executive order or by an act of congress. So your options include private (non-bank vault companies--very few and far between, unless you live in Las Vegas), or hidden storage caches at home. I prefer the latter. For details, see this piece that I wrote about wall and door caches in SurvivalBlog. Coincidentally, reader Mike O. recently sent me the link to this LifeHacker article: Where and How to Safely Hide Cash in Your Home. And soon after, reader Andrew D. sent this: Seven Secret Places to Hide Cash in Your Home. You gotta love synchronicity. « Two Letters Re: Here Comes Winter! |Main| A Vault Full of Hedges: Tangibles, Tangibles, Tangibles! » Monday August 3 2009Letter Re: Increasing Security for an 1870s HouseHello Jim, I'm well aware of the prospect of smash-and-grab burglaries, especially in houses with large windows such as this one has, but I wonder what kind of modifications could be made to the windows and doors that would minimize the break-in risks. Would it be practical to add reinforced (possibly even bulletproof/brickproof/etc.) glass behind the picture window, and could you suggest possible modifications to the front door as well? I'll add that there are several points inside the house where increasing levels of security leading to a safe room can be established without affecting the historic nature of the structure itself. JWR Replies: Windows that large were not made in the 1870s for middle class houses, so that very large picture window that you described surely must be from a much later retrofit. (Six pane sash windows were the norm.) Even with historic preservation codes, you could easily go back to a smaller traditional sash window, and put a pair of "storm" shutters on it. (Hint: See my novel "Patriots" for details on ballistic shutters.) Just so long as it "looks" period, you should be okay. Ditto for the door. You can have one custom built without a window (or just a very small, high window), out of 4" thick solid oak. Convincing the county clipboard minions just takes some historical research. At your local library or online, find pictures that were taken before 1900 of houses built in the 1870s. Be selective, and find pictures of houses with small windows, storm shutters, and stout doors. These photos will be your leverage needed to get permission to restore your house to an authentic 1870s appearance, and that should make the Historic District Authenticity Gnomes happy. Good luck with your upcoming move and security upgrade project! « Letter Re: An Outward Bound Prepper's Perspective |Main| From The Memsahib: On My Bucket List--Looking for a Wife » Wednesday July 29 2009Letter Re: Shoot or Don't Shoot--Moral Implications of the Split-Second Decision to Take a Life
Hi James, Thank you for the work that you do. In reference to this quote:
I believe your contributor is referencing a video [on the Tueller Drill] by Massad Ayoob. It has been awhile, but I believe the key point was about justification for lethal force when there is a perceived imbalance of power (a knife at a distance versus a firearm). Basically, by going through the drill, the people in his class new for a fact that a knife was a lethal threat at a range of 21 feet and hence there were justified in their minds by taking the shot. If you should find yourself in a similar circumstance this would be an interest topic to cover with your attorney... not with the police or prosecutor. - Scrod « Economics and Investing: |Main| Distance Traveling by Waterways, by Jason C. » Sunday July 26 2009Letter Re: Shoot or Don't Shoot--Moral Implications of the Split-Second Decision to Take a Life
Hello, I work as a Pharmacist in Philadelphia and was involved in an attempted armed robbery, six years ago. Two armed men came in the store early that morning attempting to obtain narcotics. I was able to see them early enough that they didn't get the drop on me. (Situational awareness!) The man in front had a .44 Magnum revolver with the hammer cocked. He announced "Get the f*** down, this is a stickup!" as he walked at me. I fatally shot him and wounded the second man (although he fled and was never found). The entire incident happened in about 5-7 seconds and before there was any time to get afraid or ponder the options. My arms were tingling for two hours after though, from adrenaline! It was an instant self-preservation reaction. This is why you must square up any moral concerns well beforehand as there will be no time during. Know what you will do! I had mentally rehearsed scenarios like it happening and would practice the draw stroke which I think made everything so smooth. My technique wasn't the best as I shot one-handed and kind of point shot where I knew he was. He was about seven feet away when he was hit. The first shot hit him in the right eye, and the second somewhere else in the face, according to police). He literally died in the fetal position still holding the cocked gun. The entire thing seems surreal, like a quiet dream when I remember it even though I emptied the magazine. I think that mental preparation like Jeff mentioned is so important (in any training) to things working in your favor. I had to sit in homicide department for about four hours total until our lawyer showed up and we gave a statement. I think it is important to have one there with you before you make any statements. You will be shook up, like Jeff said, and will benefit from having someone there with you. He advised me not to say anything to the media. Even though the police were praising me and saying it was obvious self defense I was concerned about the reaction from his family, et cetera. Supposedly they knew he was into "bad things". I had to call regularly to find out information on the incident as nobody ever got back to me. I later found out that I had been exonerated. You think they would have let me know! It took me two years to get my gun back! They kept saying that it had to go through forensics for some reason. I know Philly isn't the most efficient place in the world and has lots of other crimes to deal with but what the heck? I couldn't believe it! Jeff's advice is important to follow on dealing with the aftermath as you ponder how things could have gone differently and the consequences if they had. James, thanks for all you do! Be aware out there everyone! - S. in Philly « Letter Re: The Quasi-Reality Television Show "The Colony" |Main| Note from JWR: » Friday July 24 2009Shoot or Don't Shoot--Moral Implications of the Split-Second Decision to Take a Life, by Jeff R.It doesn’t have to be TEOTWAWKI for a person to be faced with the choice of shoot or don’t shoot. Everyday in the United States a police officer somewhere makes that choice (sometimes they choose “don’t shoot”). All too often, average Joe or Jane Citizen must make that choice. Hopefully dear reader, that day will never come for you, but if it does, here are a few things to help you not hesitate when necessity requires that you pull the trigger, and to help you live with the consequences. Decide now that you will shoot another person if it becomes necessary. Pondering the morality, worrying about the legal ramifications, hoping you’re making the right decision--these are all tasks that should be resolved now, before the time comes to shoot. There is no way around the cold, hard fact that launching a copper-jacketed ball of lead into another person’s torso will cause serious bodily injury or death. Not to be harsh, but that is the whole point of the exercise. Resolve these issues now: What are the legal justifications where I live for taking a human life? More importantly, what reasons are not legally justified? Self-defense, defense of others, and defense of property are generally accepted to be valid reasons for using deadly force (use caution in some jurisdictions with the defense of property). In Texas, most law enforcement agencies won’t blink when a citizen kills an intruder or an attacker. The Texas Penal Code even has an affirmative defense for the use of deadly force to prevent the consequences of theft after nightfall. Know the laws concerning the use of deadly force where you live. Don’t just know about them--know them. If you are unclear about the meaning of the laws, ask your district attorney’s office--or better yet--your state’s Attorney General’s office. Often the AG of a state will have already published opinions on these issues. Asking a police officer may seem like a good idea, but they have different justifications for using deadly force, and citing one officer’s opinion is not likely to dissuade prosecution. For example, a police officer can appeal to the court decision of Tennessee vs. Garner after shooting a fleeing felon, but you probably will not be able to use that justification with success. Another benefit of consulting the district attorney’s office with your questions about deadly force is that it is the district attorney’s office that decides who gets prosecuted and who does not. A shooting that occurs with reasonable legal justification that is further supported by the legal opinions of the district attorney’s office would be an unlikely candidate for prosecution (YMMV). Here again, know you local laws well. Familiarity with temperament of local law enforcement and the district attorney’s office concerning the use of deadly force by a private citizen is also helpful. The observations and opinions of individual law enforcement officers is a good place to get this information. If you are involved in a shooting and it appears there may be an official inquiry, forget flashy, emotional phrases that uninformed people throw around, such as “shoot-to-kill,” “shoot-to-wound,” or “shoot-to” anything. Facts, not flash, will win the day. You didn’t shoot to do anything other than to stop the action and end the danger to yourself and your family. The old shoot-to-kill question is a trap that has been used on police officers in court; “if you shot to kill, why could you not shoot-to-wound?” Anybody familiar with defense shooting knows that close quarters shootings involve little more than shoving the gun at the target and firing. Likewise, nobody involved in a shooting has the luxury of time to ponder nonsense questions like the above. What are the reasons I personally believe are justification for taking a human life? Your own life and limb, and that of your family are givens--at least they should be. I doubt any reader of this blog has an issue with that. Deadly force to prevent theft--even though it may be legal--will likely present a moral dilemma. I would not kill to prevent the theft of my car stereo. In my mind, that is not a reasonable use of force. Somebody trying to steal supplies vital to my family’s survival is another issue. Now a simple theft has become a potential threat to my family, and deadly force becomes a reasonable option. Know your personal boundaries in the use of deadly force as well as you know the laws that govern its use. What are my religious convictions or personal concerns about killing? I can only speak to this issue as it relates to Christians, although any moral person must wrestle with these questions and come to their own conclusions. When the time comes to shoot, understand that: 1. Your target made the choice that has placed them in your gun sights. They understood the dangers and ramifications of their scheme before they did it. They are expecting you‑‑their potential victim--to be too weak, frightened, or morally conflicted to resist with violence. Disappoint their expectations. 2. By killing them, you are not sending them to Hell. They have made their life choices that have brought them to this moment. God is the judge--he will decide their eternal fate. You are simply deciding that your fate and the fate of your family are not to die at this person’s hand. Contrast your concern for this person with this biblical admonition to the head of the household: “But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.” (I Timothy 5:8). “Provide,” as it is used here, means more than just bringing home the bacon. It encompasses all facets of provision--food, shelter, and safety. It means literally, “to take thought for; to care for.” One of your Christian duties to your family is security. 3. Killing is not always murder. God of the Old Testament who issued the commandment “Thou shalt not murder” also instructed the Israelites to kill many times during their conquest of the Promise Land. Many righteous people of the Old Testament drew blood. As odd as this may sound, righteousness and killing are not mutually exclusive. And while one may choose to debate its meaning, I interpret Jesus’ instructions to the disciples in Luke 22 to sell their cloaks and purchase swords as divine justification for the deadly force option in self-defense. 4. Having to kill is a traumatic experience. Should you have to make the choice to shoot, be prepared for the emotional turmoil that will inevitably follow. If it isn’t TEOTWAWKI, seek out counseling if necessary to work through the trauma. Whether it is TEOTWAWKI or not, remember that at the time you made your decision to shoot it was a clear-cut issue, and you acted decisively. Second-guessing yourself will only add to the turmoil. Reflect on the positives--you saved your life and the lives of your family or other innocents. Defense of the weak or defenseless is a noble thing. Don’t beat yourself up. By preparing for the worst ahead of time, you can find peace after making one of the hardest decisions a human being can be forced to make. About the Author: Jeff R. has bachelor's degree in Pastoral Ministry, and has served as a youth pastor/associate pastor at churches in two states. He has also served for several years as a law enforcement officer and is now emplyoed by a major metropolitan police department in Texas. « Letter Re: Wringers for Hand Washing Clothes |Main| Medical Insurance for Prepared American Families, by Pat C. » Wednesday July 15 2009Letter Re: The Utility of Horses and Horse Theft Prevention in Hard Times
Hi Jim, Here is our dilemma: We have four horses and want to grow our own hay to feed them. How does one find a property that is remote and hidden but still with enough flat, fertile land to grow hay (5-10 acres per horse!)? Our horses are all small and hardy breeds but still need to eat! In a TEOTWAWKI scenario, do you consider horses a positive for transportation, pulling/plowing power? We are preparing for a worst case scenario -- no gasoline to import hay, closed roads, Golden Hordes, unlimited government regulation of farming/production, hungry horses, et cetera. JWR Replies: Owning well-trained horses is highly recommended, particularly in a long-term situation where gasoline is either unavailable or prohibitively expensive. I recommend that you locate your retreat in both good pasture and haying country that has reliable rainfall and fertile soil. Plentiful water in the absence of grid power will be the first and foremost consideration. Assuming that you have a pair of horses that have worked in harness, find an old-fashioned horse-drawn hay mower and a large hay wagon, so your horses can earn their keep, by bringing in their fodder. Training of both horse and rider is crucial, if nothing else than for safety. As our family has learned, a horse can do a lot of damage in a hurry, even if they are at a standstill. Get the best training you can afford. For draft horses, Doug "Doc" Hammill up in Montana is one of the best. There are of course hundreds of trail horse trainers, but for practical versatility I recommend that you also search out the best working horse trainer in your region. (Even if you don't own cattle now, you may someday in the future.) OBTW, I recommend watching the DVD "Clinton Anderson: On the Road to the Horse Colt Starting". Unless you find an exceptionally isolated property, security will be dependent on having neighbors that you can trust and in having enclosed stall space where you will secure your horses every night. You will of course need perimeter electronic security. Get a Dakota Alert infrared intrusion detection system, at the minimum. If and when you relocate, try to buy a parcel that is essentially landlocked--but I mean this in the good sense of the term--namely a parcel with a neighboring ranch between you and and the county road. Ideally your property should have just one private deeded right-of-way lane for you to watch. (Your property should sit at least one "40" back from any public road.) That will distance you and hopefully shield your stock from line of sight, and it will greatly simplify your security arrangements. Limited avenues of approach will considerably reduce the requisite security man hours and also greatly reduce your stress level. « The Case for Accumulating and (Eventually) Using Silver Coins |Main| Note from JWR: » Thursday July 9 2009Survey Results: Your Favorite Books on Preparedness, Self-Sufficiency, and Practical SkillsIn descending order of frequency, the 78 readers that responded to my latest survey recommended the following non-fiction books on preparedness, self-sufficiency, and practical skills: The Encyclopedia of Country Living by Carla Emery (Far and away the most often-mentioned book. This book is an absolute "must" for every well-prepared family!) The Foxfire Book series (in 11 volumes, but IMHO, the first five are the best) Where
There Is No Dentist "Rawles on Retreats and Relocation" Making
the Best of Basics: Family Preparedness Handbook The "Rawles Gets You Ready" preparedness course Crisis Preparedness Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Home Storage and Physical Survival Gardening When It Counts: Growing Food in Hard Times by Steve Solomon Tappan
on Survival Boston's
Gun Bible Seed
to Seed: Seed Saving and Growing Techniques for Vegetable Gardeners Survival
Guns Boy Scouts Handbook: The First Edition, 1911 (Most readers recommend getting pre-1970 editions.) All
New Square Foot Gardening When Technology Fails: A Manual for Self-Reliance, Sustainability, and Surviving the Long Emergency Back
to Basics: A Complete Guide to Traditional Skills, Third Edition Preparedness Now!: An Emergency Survival Guide (Expanded and Revised Edition) Putting
Food By First
Aid (American Red Cross Handbook) Responding To Emergencies Making
the Best of Basics: Family Preparedness Handbook Nuclear War Survival Skills by Cresson H. Kearney (Available for free download.) Cookin'
with Home Storage Root
Cellaring: Natural Cold Storage of Fruits & Vegetables Stocking Up: The Third Edition of America's Classic Preserving Guide The
American Boy's Handybook of Camp Lore and Woodcraft Emergency
Food Storage & Survival Handbook by Peggy Layton Seed
to Seed: Seed Saving and Growing Techniques for Vegetable Gardeners Emergency: This Book Will Save Your Life by Neil Strauss Five Acres and Independence: A Handbook for Small Farm Management Essential Bushcraft The Survivor book series by Kurt Saxon. Many are out of print in hard copy, but they are all available on DVD. Here, I must issue a caveat lector ("reader beware"): Mr. Saxon has some very controversial views that I do not agree with. Among other things he is a eugenicist. How to Stay Alive in the Woods by Bradford Angier The New Organic Grower by Eliot Coleman Tom Brown Jr.'s series of books, especially:
Total
Resistance Ditch Medicine: Advanced Field Procedures For Emergencies Living Well on Practically Nothing The Secure Home Outdoor Survival Skills The Last Hundred Yards: The NCO's Contribution to Warfare Camping & Wilderness Survival: The Ultimate Outdoors Book by Paul Tawrell Engineer Field Data (US Army FM 5-34) --Available online free of charge, with registration, but I recommend getting a hard copy. preferably with the heavy-duty plastic binding. Great Livin' in Grubby Times Just in Case Nuclear War Survival Skills by Cresson H. Kearney (Available for free download.) How to Survive Anything, Anywhere: A Handbook of Survival Skills for Every Scenario and Environment Storey's Basic Country Skills: A Practical Guide to Self-Reliance Special Operations Forces Medical Handbook (superceded the very out-of-date ST 31-91B) Wilderness Medicine, 5th Edition Four-Season Harvest: Organic Vegetables from Your Home Garden All Year Long Back to Basics: A Complete Guide to Traditional Skills, Third Edition Government
By Emergency The Weed Cookbook: Naturally Nutritious - Yours Free for the Taking! The Modern Survival Retreat Last of the Mountain Men Primitive Wilderness Living & Survival Skills: Naked into the Wilderness LDS Preparedness Manual, edited by Christopher M. Parrett The
Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging
Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century Principles of Personal Defense - Revised Edition The Winter Harvest Handbook: Year Round Vegetable Production Using Deep Organic Techniques and Unheated Greenhouses « Letter Re: Last Minute G.O.O.D. Versus Well-Considered Early Relocation |Main| Note from JWR: » Sunday June 28 2009Security at Places of Worship: More Than a Matter of Faith, by Scott Stewart and Fred BurtonIn recent months, several high-profile incidents have raised awareness of the threat posed by individuals and small groups operating under the principles of leaderless resistance. These incidents have included lone wolf attacks against a doctor who performed abortions in Kansas, an armed forces recruitment center in Arkansas and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. Additionally, a grassroots jihadist cell was arrested for attempting to bomb Jewish targets in the Bronx and planning to shoot down a military aircraft at an Air National Guard base in Newburgh, N.Y. In addition to pointing out the threat posed by grassroots cells and lone wolf operatives, another common factor in all of these incidents is the threat of violence to houses of worship. The cell arrested in New York left what they thought to be active improvised explosive devices outside the Riverdale Temple and the Riverdale Jewish Community Center. Dr. George Tiller was shot and killed in the lobby of the Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita. Although Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad conducted his attacks against a Little Rock recruiting center, he had conducted preoperational surveillance and research on targets that included Jewish organizations and a Baptist church in places as far away as Atlanta and Philadelphia. And while James von Brunn attacked the Holocaust Museum, he had a list of other potential targets in his vehicle that included the National Cathedral. In light of this common thread, it might be instructive to take a more detailed look at the issue of providing security for places of worship. Until there is awareness of the threat, little can be done to counter it. In many parts of the world, such as Iraq, India and Pakistan, attacks against places of worship occur fairly frequently. It is not difficult for religious leaders and members of their congregations in such places to be acutely aware of the dangers facing them and to have measures already in place to deal with those perils. This is not always the case in the United States, however, where many people tend to have an “it can’t happen here” mindset, believing that violence in or directed against places of worship is something that happens only to other people elsewhere. This mindset is particularly pervasive among predominantly white American Protestant and Roman Catholic congregations. Jews, Mormons, Muslims and black Christians, and others who have been targeted by violence in the past, tend to be far more aware of the threat and are far more likely to have security plans and measures in place to counter it. The Jewish community has very well-developed and professional organizations such as the Secure Community Network (SCN) and the Anti-Defamation League that are dedicated to monitoring threats and providing education about the threats and advice regarding security. The Council on American-Islamic Relations has taken on a similar role for the Muslim community and has produced a “Muslim community safety kit” for local mosques. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) also has a very organized and well-connected security department that provides information and security advice and assistance to LDS congregations worldwide. There are no functional equivalents to the SCN or the LDS security departments in the larger Catholic, evangelical Protestant and mainline Protestant communities, though there are some organizations such as the recently established Christian Security Network that have been attempting to fill the void. Following an incident, awareness of the threat seems to rise for a time, and some houses of worship will put some security measures in place, but for the most part such incidents are seen as events that take place elsewhere, and the security measures are abandoned after a short time. Permanent security measures are usually not put in place until there has been an incident of some sort at a specific house of worship, and while the triggering incident is sometimes something that merely provides a good scare, other times it is a violent action that results in tragedy. Even when no one is hurt in the incident, the emotional damage caused to a community by an act of vandalism or arson at a house of worship can be devastating. It is important to note here that not all threats to places of worship will emanate from external actors. In the midst of any given religious congregation, there are, by percentages, people suffering from serious mental illnesses, people engaged in bitter child-custody disputes, domestic violence situations and messy divorces. Internal disputes in the congregation can also lead to feuds and violence. Any of these situations can (and have) led to acts of violence inside houses of worship. An effective security program is more than just having physical security measures in place. Like any man-made constructs, physical security measures — closed-circuit television (CCTV), alarms, cipher locks and so forth — have finite utility. They serve a valuable purpose in institutional security programs, but an effective security program cannot be limited to these things. Devices cannot think or evaluate. They are static and can be observed, learned and even fooled. Also, because some systems frequently produce false alarms, warnings in real danger situations may be brushed aside. Given these shortcomings, it is quite possible for anyone planning an act of violence to map out, quantify and then defeat or bypass physical security devices. However, elaborate planning is not always necessary. Consider the common scenario of a heavy metal door with very good locks that is propped open with a trashcan or a door wedge. In such a scenario, an otherwise “secure” door is defeated by an internal security lapse. However, even in situations where there is a high degree of threat awareness, there is a tendency to place too much trust in physical security measures, which can become a kind of crutch — and, ironically, an obstacle to effective security. In fact, to be effective, physical security devices always require human interaction. An alarm is useless if no one responds to it, or if it is not turned on; a lock is ineffective if it is not engaged. CCTV cameras are used extensively in corporate office buildings and some houses of worship, but any competent security manager will tell you that, in reality, they are far more useful in terms of investigating a theft or act of violence after the fact than in preventing one (although physical security devices can sometimes cause an attacker to divert to an easier target). No matter what kinds of physical security measures may be in place at a facility, they are far less likely to be effective if a potential assailant feels free to conduct preoperational surveillance, and is free to observe and map those physical security measures. The more at ease someone feels as they set about identifying and quantifying the physical security systems and procedures in place, the higher the odds they will find ways to beat the system. A truly “hard” target is one that couples physical security measures with an aggressive, alert attitude and sense of awareness. An effective security program is proactive — looking outward to where most real threats are lurking — rather than inward, where the only choice is to react once an attack has begun to unfold. We refer to this process of proactively looking for threats as protective intelligence. The human interaction required to make physical security measures effective, and to transform a security program into a proactive protective intelligence program, can come in the form of designated security personnel. In fact, many large houses of worship do utilize off-duty police officers, private security guards, volunteer security guards or even a dedicated security staff to provide this coverage. In smaller congregations, security personnel can be members of the congregation who have been provided some level of training. However, even in cases where there are specially designated security personnel, such officers have only so many eyes and can only be in a limited number of places at any one time. Thus, proactive security programs should also work to foster a broad sense of security awareness among the members of the congregation and community, and use them as additional resources. Unfortunately, in many cases, there is often a sense in the religious community that security is bad for the image of a particular institution, or that it will somehow scare people away from houses of worship. Because of this, security measures, if employed, are often hidden or concealed from the congregation. In such cases, security managers are deprived of many sets of eyes and ears. Certainly, there may be certain facets of a security plan that not everyone in the congregation needs to know about, but in general, an educated and aware congregation and community can be a very valuable security asset. In order for a congregation to maintain a sense of heightened awareness it must learn how to effectively do that. This training should not leave people scared or paranoid — just more observant. People need to be trained to look for individuals who are out of place, which can be somewhat counterintuitive. By nature, houses of worship are open to outsiders and seek to welcome strangers. They frequently have a steady turnover of new faces. This causes many to believe that, in houses of worship, there is a natural antagonism between security and openness, but this does not have to be the case. A house of worship can have both a steady stream of visitors and good security, especially if that security is based upon situational awareness. At its heart, situational awareness is about studying people, and such scrutiny will allow an observer to pick up on demeanor mistakes that might indicate someone is conducting surveillance. Practicing awareness and paying attention to the people approaching or inside a house of worship can also open up a whole new world of ministry opportunities, as people “tune in” to others and begin to perceive things they would otherwise miss if they were self-absorbed or simply not paying attention. In other words, practicing situational awareness provides an excellent opportunity for the members of a congregation to focus on the needs and burdens of other people. It is important to remember that every attack cycle follows the same general steps. All criminals — whether they are stalkers, thieves, lone wolves or terrorist groups — engage in preoperational surveillance (sometimes called “casing,” in the criminal lexicon). Perhaps the most crucial point to be made about preoperational surveillance is that it is the phase when someone with hostile intentions is most apt to be detected — and the point in the attack cycle when potential violence can be most easily disrupted or prevented. The second most critical point to emphasize about surveillance is that most criminals are not that good at it. They often have terrible surveillance tradecraft and are frequently very obvious. Most often, the only reason they succeed in conducting surveillance without being detected is because nobody is looking for them. Because of this, even ordinary people, if properly instructed, can note surveillance activity. It is also critically important to teach people — including security personnel and members of the congregation — what to do if they see something suspicious and whom to call to report it. Unfortunately, a lot of critical intelligence is missed because it is not reported in a timely manner — or not reported at all — mainly because untrained people have a habit of not trusting their judgment and dismissing unusual activity. People need to be encouraged to report what they see. Additionally, people who have been threatened, are undergoing nasty child-custody disputes or have active restraining orders protecting them against potentially violent people need to be encouraged to report unusual activity to their appropriate points of contact. As a part of their security training, houses of worship should also instruct their staff and congregation members on procedures to follow if a shooter enters the building and creates what is called an active-shooter situation. These “shooter” drills should be practiced regularly — just like fire, tornado or earthquake drills. The teachers of children’s classes and nursery workers must also be trained in how to react. One of the things the SCN and ADL do very well is foster security liaison among Jewish congregations within a community and between those congregations and local, state and federal law enforcement organizations. This is something that houses of worship from other faiths should attempt to duplicate as part of their security plans. While having a local cop in a congregation is a benefit, contacting the local police department should be the first step. It is very important to establish this contact before there is a crisis in order to help expedite any law enforcement response. Some police departments even have dedicated community liaison officers, who are good points of initial contact. There are other specific points of contact that should also be cultivated within the local department, such as the SWAT team and the bomb squad. Local SWAT teams often appreciate the chance to do a walk-through of a house of worship so that they can learn the layout of the building in case they are ever called to respond to an emergency there. They also like the opportunity to use different and challenging buildings for training exercises (something that can be conducted discreetly after hours). Congregations with gyms and weight rooms will often open them up for local police officers to exercise in, and some congregations will also offer police officers a cup of coffee and a desk where they can sit and type their reports during evening hours. But the local police department is not the only agency with which liaison should be established. Depending on the location of the house of worship, the state police, state intelligence fusion center or local joint terrorism task force should also be contacted. By working through state and federal channels, houses of worship in specific locations may even be eligible for grants to help underwrite security through programs such as the Department of Homeland Security’s Urban Areas Security Initiative Nonprofit Security Grant Program. The world is a dangerous place and attacks against houses of worship will continue to occur. But there are proactive security measures that can be taken to identify attackers before they strike and help prevent attacks from happening or mitigate their effects when they do. - Scott Stewart and Fred Burton, Stratfor « Influenza Pandemic Update: |Main| Security at Places of Worship: More Than a Matter of Faith, by Scott Stewart and Fred Burton » Letter Re: Last Minute G.O.O.D. Versus Well-Considered Early Relocation
James - I read the entry on your site today about the fellow who intends to travel ore than a thousand miles in a blink of an eye, and use this blur to make a life-changing decision based on distorted glances at sixty miles an hour. Though I agree with essentially every bit of advice regarding location considerations, and in particular what to avoid, perhaps you should suggest to this fellow to split his trip into two or three, perhaps even four excursions so he can really evaluate what he is looking at. I've lived in the west my entire life, a witness to the destruction of Colorado as we finally fled the far reaches of the West Slope for here. Knowing that one simple mistake in terms of selecting a location can be fatal in and unto itself, we began looking in 1993 and through 1994 before making our selection. Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana. Distance from population centers was number two on our criteria list, but as you well know, the number one priority must be water. People in the cities haven't really a clue as to its relative scarcity. Turn on the tap. Our criteria was "live, year-around creek" on the prospective dirt, or it was scrubbed from the list. At 8.37 pounds per gallon, you can't realistically haul enough any distance for survival if survival means growing food if TEOTWAWKI actually occurs. Maybe not enough to use just to satiate thirst if you are too far from the source. Let's face it. If people have to actually "Bug Out", the "End" is happening, right there and then. Think: water, water, water, and location, location, location. I wrote a piece about "relocation" a few years back for a Peak Oil web site that generated several thousand comments, the vast majority of them were positive. The negatives were from the Gold's Gym-type jerks who thought I was trying to come off as some kind of tough guy, which I wasn't. "Realism" offends people. You cut one cord short on firewood before winter and the snows get hip-deep, you are dead. Sometimes you have "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" with large critters equipped with teeth and claws. I killed a damned lion at six feet inside my barn who was upset that I was upset that he had killed my milk goats. A bear at thirty feet on top of one of our sheep who was none too happy with me either. The wolves are here constantly, and that's just a time bomb waiting to go off. We've had jerks from cities show up on the place acting, and to be kind here, just a little "weird". Occasionally and unfortunately what followed were "in your face" armed confrontations, required to convince them getting the hell out of here was a damn good idea. Which leads to another situation that is always notably absent from writings about "Getting out of Dodge". Why isn't it mentioned that people are already "out there", and even if a person chooses to relocate before the fan is blowing manure that it takes a couple of years before the indigenous outlanders accept your presence. These pre-existing folks, as you well know, traded off the easy living the cities offer for a harder lifestyle that almost guarantees austere living. The F.N.G. is a newcomer, and no one knows whether her/she is a curse or a blessing. The number of drug-laden scum that has floated in and out of here over the years is pretty amazing, let alone the flood of retirees who ain' t worth knowing. A third of them want sidewalks along Forest Service Roads. And then when things go south, some guy, regardless of what color collar he wore to work, abandons his 52" widescreen HDTV, his Budweiser and the N.F.L. Package, throws his "Git-R-Done" stuff in the 4-Runner. Off he goes, carrying just enough with him to guarantee that where he ends up, thieving and murdering is going to be happening. Why? Because he's in a panic regardless of how "cool" he thinks he is. In truth, if you don't already live "out there", you aren't prepared. City folk are waiting to run, and they are running to nowhere. For that matter, half the people who are already "out there" aren't really prepared. But City Folks simply cannot take with them what is needed long-term to survive, and even short-term if winter is upon them. So, he is going to become a thief and a murderer. Where he's headed he doesn't own dirt, has no roof over his head, and he hasn't got the food to last a month. The most moral man in the world will become the worst of sinners when facing starvation. Add a man with his woman and a passel of kids, and you've got a desperate man. "Honey, I starved the kids!" I don't think so. So, what do you think folks around here are thinking anyway? Putting out the "Welcome Wagon" for an exodus of people who refused to sacrifice ahead of time? Those who have been living easy and going to Applebees every Friday night? The wife blowing money at the mall every Saturday with the rest of the "girls"? People who thought, "I'll stay here doing the 9-5 because the woman insists, and then we'll go if we have to." Here's another good one: "We didn't want to move and have to change schools. The kids really liked it there." The foregoing mean that the "Old Lady" and the "kids" have been dictating his life anyway, right? You ever seen these women go through "Mall Withdrawal"? Good God, it's a terrible sight to behold even under good conditions! At least when things are "normal" they can head over the pass for a methadone-like "Mall-Fix" up in Missoula or head to Idaho Falls. Shoot, you go and "Cold Turkey" a mall-dependent woman and h**l doesn't even begin to describe the price that must be paid! It's viral too, I swear. Seriously though, is there some assumption that such "exodus scenarios" aren't discussed by the locals down at the cafe's in Salmon, Challis, and Elk, Bend, and North Fork over morning coffee, as well as at the Sheriffs Departments around here? My understanding is that the roads in and out of here are to be closed, which is fine by me. There isn't much bounty here to begin with, and adding a bunch of instant vagabonds will simply be making meager pickings that much slimmer. Fools rushing for the hills. There's a steep learning curve and most aren't going to make it. Best regards, and keep up the good work - John M. « Letter Re: Dealing With Local Building Inspectors |Main| Jim's Quote of the Day: » Friday June 26 2009The Meme of Crushroom: A Key Retreat Architecture ElementOne bit of retreat architecture that I've often recommended to my consulting clients who are designing (or retrofitting) retreats is the inclusion of a protruding entryway foyer, that I call a crushroom. Passing this advice along to you gives me the chance to employ one of my horrible puns: The Meme of Crushroom. A crushroom is a controllable confined space, typically an entry foyer, that can be covered with small arms fire or subjected to irritant or obscurant smoke or sprays. The outer door (or barred gate) to the crushroom is normally left open, but has a spring loaded self -closure device, and an automatically-engaged remote-controlled lock release mechanism. Think of it as a box trap for Bad Guys. Have you ever visited a Big City apartment with a communal door where you need to get "buzzed in"? In this case, the Bad Guys will have to be buzzed out of your crushroom The home invasion threat can only be expected to increase in coming years. I anticipate greater use of dynamic-entry tools by home invaders. For instance, they will soon use commercial or improvised door-entry battering rams and Hallagan tools—like those used by firemen and police entry teams. This means that standard solid-core doors by themselves will be insufficient. In a worst, case, thugs might even use vehicle-mounted battering rams. In such circumstances, it will be wise to have the extra layer of protection afforded by a crushroom. You should position the outer door to your crushroom one of its side walls, rather than lined up with the entrance door to the house. Having this 90-degree turn and allowing just a four foot space in front of the house entrance door has several advantages: First. it makes it impossible to use a long battering ram--since it limits the length and "throw" of a battering ram. (Even a very stout door, hinges, and doorframe will not withstand the impact of a 10-foot-long battering ram that is manned by a team of thugs). Second, it removes direct line of sight into your house. This is useful for light discipline, in a grid-down situation. (When you are likely to have electric lights in your house interior, but your neighbors won't.) Lastly, the crushroom wall opposite your front door provides another layer of ballistic protection--it would have to be knocked down before your front door could be attacked. Picture this: With your intrusion detection security system, you see one or more thugs approach your house. They are acting "hinkey", or outright aggressive--perhaps rushing in to conduct a home invasion robbery. Then they proceed to try to kick down your front door. But lo and behold, they don't succeed, because you've built your door and barred it to Rawles specifications. (Strong enough to resist even a small battering ram, and armored against small arms fire.) Using your intercom-loudspeaker, you sternly warn them away. But since they have bravado to spare and have never before encountered a door that they couldn't kick in, they persist with their futile leg exercises. At that point, you already have your telephone in hand, and have dialed 911. (That is assuming your are in pre-Schumeresque circumstances, when there still is a police or sheriff's department willing and able to respond.) You then flip the switch, releasing the crushroom's outer door. It slams shut, and locks. Now, the thugs feel trapped, crowded, or crushed in the close confines of the foyer. They will then almost surely turn their attention to kicking at the outer door (or barred gate). At this juncture, you have several "continuum of force" options: A.) You shout a stern warning and then hit the switch releasing the outer door and "buzz them out." This is effectively just letting them go,, with a warning. Such a course of action is recommended only in current day "peaceful" circumstances. B.) Using your exterior loudspeaker, you spend five minutes sharing the Gospel with the thugs, then you hit the switch to release the outer door. C.) You pull a wire that is attached to the pin on a smoke grenade in the decorative "overhead light fixture" in the foyer, and simultaneously start playing your retreat's PSYOPS tape over your exterior loudspeaker, at around 60 decibels. This combination (especially a violet smoke grenade and a tape of Jimi Hendrix playing Purple Haze) is sure to make the thugs think twice about coming back. D.) You pull a wire on that is attached to the pin on a CS tear gas grenade, and simultaneously start playing your retreat's PSYOPS tape at around 90 decibels. This, (especially a tape of Credence Clearwater Revival singing Bad Moon Rising) will probably make the goblins soil their trousers and reconsider their life of crime. E.) You slide open an armored gun port, and protrude the muzzle of your favorite large-caliber lead dispenser. F.) Any combination of options B, C, D, or E, in whichever sequence seems apropos, given the day's relative Schumer Index and the prevailing exigency of the circumstances. Alternatively, your crushroom could normally be kept locked from the outside. This will provide a valuable delay for even the most ambitious dynamic entry by home invaders. It will also provide you a safe place for you take delivery of mail and packages with some "stand-off" distance. Four Important Provisos: 1.) Only build a crushroom if you are also going to first upgrade your front door and doorframe to very stout specifications, and the surrounding wall is of similarly stout (i.e. masonry) construction. The last thing that you want to experience is a bunch of enraged bad guys actually entering your home. 2.) Do not mention the purpose of your crushroom to friends, neighbors, or even relatives. It should outwardly just look like either a "mud room", a "weather airlock", or perhaps a "Spanish style" foyer, with "decorative" heavy wrought iron bars. If you are indiscreet, word of it may get around, and then at best you'll get labeled as the local survivalist whacko. Or at worst, word will get as far as the local band of goblins, and whilst sharpening their knives they will deviously plan to bypass your crushroom entirely. They may decide to either bushwhack you while you are out splitting wood, or invade your house via your roof, with a chainsaw or a fireman's metal-cutting rescue saw. 3.) I most strongly encourage readers to use your crushroom's outer door as a mantrap (and any of the other active measures that I've mentioned) only in truly post-TEOTWAWKI circumstances. As I've noted many times before in SurvivalBlog, we live in an extremely litigious society. Displaying the audacity to actually hold bad guys in place until the gendarmes arrive could be grounds for civil lawsuits (for false arrest, excessive use of force, mental distress, etc.,) and possibly even criminal charges. In essence, if you hold someone in a citizen's arrest in excess of what a jury of your peers deems justifiable and reasonable, then you could conceivably be charged with felony kidnapping. Here, the "Reasonable Man" standard will probably be applied. (Black's Law Dictionary defines citizen's arrest as: "The apprehending or detaining of a person in order to be forthcoming to answer an alleged or suspected crime." See: ex parte Sherwood, (29 Tex. App. 334, 15 S.W. 812). 4.) Be sure to provide yourself a way out of your crushroom, in the event that the outer door closes unexpectedly when you don't have a door key in your pocket. Perhaps a spare key that is very well-hidden behind some molding. For further background, see this letter in the SurvivalBlog archives on "man trap" architectural features. Some Suggested Suppliers: Door closing springs. Check your local Yellow Pages for "Fire Door" hardware suppliers. Your local locksmith probably knows of a supplier, or may have a pile of used one in his back room. For a man trap, the faster the action of the door closure, the better. Hence, a traditional coil spring action is preferable to the more modern, slower pneumatically-dampened springs. Think in terms of cattle chute hardware, rather than what you'd likely see on shopping mall doors. Door release solenoids. (You've probably seen these on fire doors at hospitals and other public buildings.) Note that in circumstances where grid power is iffy, you can substitute a mechanical release, activated by a simple pull-cable and cotter pin. Door lock & release solenoid ("buzzer lock") mechanisms. Search for local suppliers with a the web search phrases "mantrap" or "common door buzzer lock". To provide sufficient "hold the goblins in place" strength, you may have to use multiple locking solenoids--at the top, middle, and bottom of the door--that are engaged and disengaged simultaneously. CS tear gas grenades. These are available from police supply houses. In most states it is not illegal for citizens to possess them. But by their company sales policy, most police supply houses will only sell these to orders placed on police department letterhead. But I've occasionally seen gas grenades sold at at gun shows, and they also come up from time to time on firearms auction sites like GunBroker.com and AuctionArms.com. For example, see this current GunBroker auction. Be sure to consult your state and local laws before buying these or similar pyrotechnic devices. Gun Ports. You might luck into some of these at a scrap yard (from a retired bank armored car), but more likely you will have to fabricate these yourself, or have a welding shop make them for you. Remember: Gun ports work both ways, so you will want a thick, well-braced, sliding backing plate that latches securely. Specify everything for the ports very thick and very stout. Any exposed hardware should be large-diameter and welded in place, once assembled. Exterior (weather resistant) loudspeakers. Rather than buying new (and expensive) speakers, try placing a "wanted" ad in Craigslist. It is amazing to see what people have salted away in their garages and attics. « Letter Re: DIY Baking Powder Solves a Shelf Life Dilemma |Main| Note from JWR: » Thursday May 28 2009Letter Re: Advice for Newcomers in a Community--Overcoming the We/They Paradigm
Good evening Mr. Rawles, What would be a good way to approach my neighbors? Sincerely, - Ignacio R. JWR Replies: I recommend that you do your very best to get to know your neighbors, and make it clear that you are are part of the community. Get involved in community activities. For example: join the local volunteer fire department (they offer great training, by the way!), make the effort to introduce yourself to your neighbors, invite them over for barbeques and other social events, join the local church, Rod and Gun club, ham radio club, and so forth. I also recommend joining (or forming) a local Community Watch organization. It takes time, but with effort, you can make yourself an insider in a community. I am confident that you know in your heart that you are "an okay guy", but you just need to demonstrate that to the folks in your new community. If you work hard enough at it, they will consider you not just a neighbor, but an indispensable neighbor and a genuine "go to guy". Several times in SurvivalBlog, I've mentioned what sociologists call the We/They Paradigm. The bottom line is that you need to immerse yourself into the collective "we" (insiders), so that you aren't seen as part of the "they" (outsiders). In my experience, race and even religion need not be barriers to becoming part of the "we". It is clear from your letter that you love our Nation. Just make it clear to your neighbors that you love your community, just as much. Cementing your relationships with your neighbors can take years. Or, in the case of South Florida, just one hurricane season. If a time of deep trauma or deep drama comes up (such as severe weather or wildfires), then jump in and help out with disaster relief, starting with your nearest neighbors. Check on every one of them, and ask if there is anything that you can do to help. Based on what you demonstrate of your character, your neighbors will quickly learn that you are someone that can be trusted when the Schumer Hits the Fan. And, BTW, it will give you a chance to size them up, as well. « Letter Re: Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and Difficulty Racking Pistol Slides |Main| Note from JWR: » Tuesday May 19 2009Unconventional Wisdom for CCW Permit Holders, by Mike U.Personal Background: Legal Considerations: Rule Number Two generally involves weapon choice - revolver versus semi-auto.
Depending on who is on the soap box at the moment, myriad reasons will be Rule Number Four deals with the How and Where to carry. The vast majority of
gun writers/instructors teach/preach strong-side hip, preferably in an inside
the waist band (IWB) holster. This is an excellent choice. But as with Rules
Two and Three, one size does not fit all. There are numerous reasons why this
may be a less than optimum method of carry, depending on specific circumstances
at the time. Rule Number Six is to always use "aimed" fire by focusing on your front sight. Rule Number Seven is the true weapon isn't the gun; it is the person holding
it. I personally "honed" my gun handling skills in the days before it
became common knowledge that "pointer fire doesn't work." My "test
fire" procedure
for any new carry gun is six full loads (magazines in a semi-auto or cylinders
in a revolver) at a standard silhouette target 21 feet down-range. I use 21
feet because contact to 21 feet is the distance at which the vast majority
of actual
gunfights take place. My first load is aimed fire, center of mass. My second
is aimed fire, head shots. My third is slow and deliberate strong hand pointer
fire. This is followed by the fourth load of rapid fire strong hand pointer.
The fifth and six loads are slow and rapid weak hand pointer fire. If I cannot
consistently keep all of my rounds on target at 21 feet, I
don't carry that gun. I do the same basic drill whenever I add laser grips
to a new carry gun,
with
two modifications. I eliminate the two rapid fire sequences and move the target
back to 25 yards. All "sighting" is then done using just that red
dot on target. It should be obvious, but I will say it anyway. Pointer fire
becomes
even more effective if you have the added visual benefit of a red dot on target. I have already mentioned the difficulty of drawing from a strong side hip
holster when buckled up behind the wheel of a vehicle. You can encounter similar
problems
when seated at a desk, even without a seat belt. If you are sitting close to
the desk (legs under the desk, hands and arms on the desk), the gun barrel
will come up under the front edge of the desk when you draw it, unless you
first push
yourself back from the desk to give yourself adequate clearance. Movement: The preceding are just a few thoughts and ideas from an old Maverick with close to half a century of walking heavy. Always remember Rule Number One - and do it in a way that works best for you and not what someone else who doesn't know your circumstances tells you is "the best" way to go. « Letter Re: Learning the Details of Self-Sufficiency |Main| The Mexican Flu and You » Sunday April 26 2009Letter Re: Atheism and Choosing Your NeighborhoodJames: Atheists are not barbarians, without morals. I help my neighbors, I work hard and believe in self reliance and preparedness. I am trustworthy and respectful. I have encountered many so called "God fearing" believers who I cannot say the same for. God may not be a driving force in my life, but I still know the difference between right and wrong. I will not try to convert you, I am not one of those loud atheists who will try to tell you how wrong you are. I believe in everyone's right to believe what they may, and I ask all to give me the same courtesy. Religion and morals are not the same thing. I don't need to believe in a supreme power to have morals and know what is right and wrong. I just wanted to clear up these misconceptions. I really hope you post this. Thank you for your work, SurvivalBlog is a great knowledge source, - J. in Michigan JWR Replies: The comment in my Precepts page that you mentioned is not a question of individuals, because there are indeed exceptional individuals, and I'm confident that you are one of them. Rather, this is a question of averages. On average, people that have the moral underpinning of the Judeo-Christian religious ethic are less likely to commit property crimes than those that don't, and statistics bear this out. For example, look at the "Property"crime rates for particular counties in California (The City and County of San Francisco, for example, has one of the lowest church attendance rates in the country). Compare that to the more religious counties of North Dakota (a "Bible Belt" state). This map is quite an interesting starting place. Sorry, but facts are facts. Property crime rates are generally higher in communities with a low ratio of church attendance. My choice to live in a tight-knit religious community is not a reflection on you as an individual. It is just a conscious choice, based upon statistical correlation and my strong conviction as a Christian, to do so. FWIW, please consider that a religious community is also the safest place for you--an atheist with morals--to live, too. If I hypothetically had to live in New York or New Jersey, then I'd probably pick a small town with a predominance of Christians or Orthodox Jews for neighbors. « Letter Re: It Takes a Tiller |Main| Jim's Quote of the Day: » Thursday April 23 2009Letter Re: G.O.O.D. Advice for College StudentsJames, JWR Replies: A college that is just a 1-1/2 hour drive is
probably close enough, especially if she has her own car. But living in Southern
California--with both earthquake risk and a high crime rate--be sure to identify
and practice driving several alternate routes on surface streets and back
roads, just in case she must "Get Out of Dodge" (G.O.O.D.) Oh, and as previously mentioned in the blog, I recommend that the first two years of college credits be obtained by a combination of CLEP tests and on-line courses. Not only is this less expensive than resident on-campus classes, but it also will keep your child safely at home for a couple of extra years. « Economics and Investing: |Main| Letter Re: Highly Productive Home Gardens » Tuesday April 14 2009Letter Re: Good Fences Make Good Neighbors: Reinforcing Your Retreat for Long Term Survival on the Cheap
Jim Russian olive is another cheap to buy, fast growing fence plant that will also spread in ways you won't like. So be careful and choose wisely. - Jim Fry, Curator, Museum of Western Reserve Farms & Equipment, Ohio « Letter Re: How to Spot a Front Sight Graduate |Main| Note from JWR: » Saturday April 11 2009Good Fences Make Good Neighbors: Reinforcing Your Retreat for Long Term Survival on the Cheap, by Q.T.
« Letter Re: That Leaking Body in Your Living Room |Main| Letter Re: Preparedness Mindset and Logistics Pay Dividends » Tuesday April 7 2009Letter Re: Bastion Structures and Vauban Architecture
Jim, « Letter: Re: Storing Emergency Supplies in Plastic Tote Bins for Rapid Evacuation |Main| Letter Re: Bastion Structures and Vauban Architecture » Letter Re: That Leaking Body in Your Living Room
Sir, There have been innumerable discussions on this web site, and others across
the internet, about the mindset, preparations, training and physical responses
to the use of deadly force. Every gun owner (or would be owner) has had to
ask themselves if they have what it takes to kill another human being. We
all know the argument. When it comes down to life or death, you or them,
could you pull the trigger? Let's assume, for the sake of this segment, that
your
answer is yes. Now let me present you with a hypothetical situation: Oh, and there's one more little detail you may have overlooked. There will be no coroner to call. . There will be no trained, experienced, seen-it-all-nothing-shocks-me-anymore medical examiner to rid you of your recently deceased criminal mastermind. So, what do you do with the dead guy in your living room? Honestly, how many of us have ever actually gone so far as to consider the
possibility that one day we may find ourselves in a situation like this? An
intruder in the home, certainly. A firefight, probably. Taking a life, likely.
But who has actually come up with a plan for dealing with the aftermath, the
body growing cold between your comfy chair and coffee table? I highly doubt
your spouse and children would be keen to leave it where it is, playing the
role of "lumpy, rather morbid area rug/ottoman." And that would be
ignoring the fact that corpses have this annoying (and stomach-churning) habit
of, well, evacuating on themselves. And rotting. Never forget the rotting.
So what do you do with it? I do not have the answers to these questions. I know my own self, and how
I react in a situation not all that dissimilar. This is one of those rare things
you really can't properly train for, unless you happen to be coroner or mortician
by trade. There are precious few opportunities to be near the recently deceased
for the rest of us (for which I am profoundly grateful), and I doubt you will
find a mortician willing to loan you a body to practice with. If you do, I
suggest you report them to the authorities. That's just not right. JWR Adds: While it is difficult to predict post-SHTF circumstances, and even more difficult to predict how long they might last, it is safe to assume that eventually things will get back to some semblance of normalcy--hopefully within weeks or months. At that point, there will be some backtracking, to account for what crimes transpired during the emergency, and to insure that everyone is living at property that is legally deeded to them. Therefore, in the sad event that you are forced to take a life to defend your own, or to defend the lives of your loved ones, it is important to "cover yourself in paper" before you go burying any bodies. It is crucial get an official--preferably a sworn law enforcement officer--but failing that, any official to sign an affidavit of the circumstances of the shooting. Even if the only "official" that you can locate is a retired police officer or a dog catcher or the head of the local water district, get them to sign an affidavit, and have it witnessed by by at least three or four neighbors who will also be walked-through the scene--and be presented the "play by play" after-action report. (Relying on just one or two witness signatures might be a mistake, since people are likely to relocate or assume room temperature in large numbers during a crisis.) Also, before touching anything in the room(s), be sure to take pictures showing the location of the body (or bodies), weapons, spent brass, bullet holes in walls, et cetera. Also photograph the body in the grave, before you back-fill it. « Economics and Investing: |Main| Old Frontier Forts as Alternative Bug Out Locations?, by R.D. in Wyoming » Monday April 6 2009Three Letters Re: Some Practical Lessons with Daily Concealed Carry
Jim, Jim: I got this
NYPD training image awhile back and gives great advice and common
pitfalls of people that conceal carry.
Check out this interesting piece at the US Concealed Carry web site: A Concise Primer on Concealment Holsters, by Dr. Bruce N. Eimer, Ph.D. Regards, - Chester « Two Letters Re: Bug Out Vehicle Cooling Systems for Extreme Emergencies |Main| Is it Enough?, by Axman » Saturday April 4 2009Letter Re: Some Practical Lessons From Daily Concealed Carry
Jim, Third lesson: Have extra ammo in your car or anywhere you might need it. I
have a spare loaded magazine and a box of ammo in each vehicle. My wife carries
a .380, so I have .380 ammo in my truck, just in case. I also have extra magazines
and ammo at work and, of course, at home. Fifth lesson: Never tell anyone you are carrying. You may know when to shoot
and when not to, but that does not mean the idiot you are with does. They will
get you in trouble or possibly shot. If you cannot avoid stupid people, you
can at least avoid telling them you are armed. That is one reason I am not
enamored by fanny packs and photographer vests; they broadcast that you are
carrying. That means the bad guy will shoot you first, before you get a chance
to realize what is going on. Better to be low profile. Seventh lesson: Learn to swallow your pride. When you are carrying gun, you
have to ignore every insult, every middle finger, and every rude comment because
you have an added burden of responsibility to avoid trouble when you carry
a gun. If you escalate a verbal argument into a physical confrontation, you
could be liable if you have to shoot the other fellow, even if he pulled a
knife on you. Be prepared for the aftermath as well. That means, find a good criminal lawyer
who knows what an affirmative defense is before you are in a situation where
you could be arrested. Know what you will say in, during and after a confrontation.
Know what you will
say when you call 911. Know what you will say to the responding officers (preferably
as little as possible). « Two Letters Re: TEOTWAWKI Medical Skills: Thoughts on Becoming a "Woofer" (Wilderness First Responder) |Main| Notes from JWR: » Wednesday April 1 2009My Initial Experiences with Concealed Carry, by AceHigh
As I started my journey into preparedness, one of the areas I pursued was getting
my Concealed Carry Weapons (CCW) license (sometimes called Concealed Handgun
License (CHL) or Concealed Carry License (CCL)). I thought it might be helpful
to Survival Blog readers to share my recent experiences related to obtaining
my CCW license and getting to a point where I felt comfortable carrying a
concealed weapon in public. I know there is some concern regarding obtaining
a license that puts you on record as a gun owner/carrier, but that is the
trade off of being able to legally defend yourself and is a decision each
of us must make. One of these gray areas involves protecting others. Of course, there is no
question regarding protecting my family who would get a higher priority than
even myself. My personal decision is that I would also use deadly force to
protect my friends. Here is where it starts to get gray. Do you protect acquaintances
or strangers? While it would be very difficult to stand by and let someone
be harmed or killed when you could have done something to stop it, the real
issue is: Do you know enough of the circumstances about the event? How do you
know for sure who the bad guy is? Is the person holding the gun seeming to
threaten someone an off duty cop or even another CCW who is restraining a bad
guy? You certainly cannot count on presenting your weapon to get everyone to
stop until it can be sorted out. Chances are pretty good that the bad guy (or
the off duty cop) holding the gun will not surrender and you will either be
shot or have to shoot them. After attending the Front Sight class, I made the leap and started carrying
in public all of the time. This is where you start to figure out the type and
manufacturer of holster which is going to work best for you. Most people end
up with a drawer full of holsters since it is difficult to evaluate a holster
without wearing it with different clothing options and sometimes in different
positions for some period of time. Again, the defensive handgun forums can
provide a wealth of opinions regarding the variety of holsters available. Some
holsters are adjustable for height and/or cant, which make them more versatile
but also extend the time to figure out the most comfortable concealed position.
I could write many pages on all of the options and types of holsters available
since I did considerable research and tried many of them personally. | |