It’s the End of the World as I Know It….(and I feel Fine)

You know as of late, there has been ALOT of chatter on forums and in barber shops about all this unrest in the Middle East being the BEGINNING of the END. Now, this articles aim is not Religious or Political in nature, not because I am a man of unbelief or callous to US foreign affairs, but because I think folks are missing the truly big picture. You see, living as long as I have and seeing alot of the World as a whole, I have come to realize some unchanging truths about human nature. When things like this happen, inevitably there is always the same knee jerk reactions from people. I have named these folks by category for your reading pleasure.

1. “The Lazy, Ignorant or Mis-Informed”

These folks make up the majority not surprisingly, typically the first being the most predominant. I don’t think we need to expand on laziness..do we?  The ignorant are not just the idiot, but the person who does not take the time to find out the real truth on anything, but just regurgitate the talking heads on TV. The Mis-Informed are people who have bad information and just need re-direction.

2. “The Chicken Littles”

These folks are a hybrid of the Mis-Informed…At the first whiff of trouble, they break into a general panic and encourage everybody else to the same….they are the ones that head out to Wal-Mart and their local gun store and start buying batteries and ammo to prepare for another Ruby Ridge or Y2K. As a general rule, “tacticool” type stores and gun shops LOVE these types of people and market to them heavily….peruse your latest edition of Cheaper than Dirt and you will see what I mean. The sad part about these folks is they are going in the right direction, but wasting alot of time and MONEY and achieving (and learning) nothing in the process. It is kinda like the “hamster on a wheel” analogy….you know that furry little bastard thinks he is really doing something in there, and his brain is so small it virtually has no long term memory, so every time he gets on that wheel, it is a new experience. These folks never learn from past mistakes, so they repeat them over and over again.

3. The Civilian Operator

These folks through experience, training or both, have learned that the key to it all is PREPERATION. If you have your preparedness level to a certain water mark..you can act..(not react) to the situation, and be ahead of the curve. A great example of this for me personally was Hurricane Katrina/Rita. I learned through this experience where my shortcomings were..I learned from it, made a plan and acted…when Hurricane Ike hit, all we had to do as a Family was follow through with our plan (because everything was already in place and prepared) and everything (almost) went off without a hitch.

Often when people talk about being prepared, they are talking and thinking about their gear& guns only…whats worse is they spend most of their free time talking about it on forums! As I stated before, gun manufacturers and tacti-cool outlets LOVE these people..they pay for their expansions and their new houses!!

What we really need to be talking about is our PLANNING and our TRAINING, not our gear and our guns. The old saying holds water: “Amateurs talk Equipment, Professionals talk TACTICS.” The best training out there is always going to be FIGHT not WEAPON focused, because in the end, the brain is the final weapon. Having an assault rifle and 1,000 rounds of ammo solves nothing unless you have a plan to plug into it. Now, ultimately being a realist, you have to understand, a man cannot plan for EVERY possible scenario OR expect every plan to work when the poop hits the oscillating device; still, we have to PLAN and TRAIN for the WORST possible scenario imaginable and do it FREQUENTLY.

Notes to Self 

Instead of re-hashing old advice or trying to cover every aspect of being prepared, I thought I would share with you some of my notes from past experiences..take them with a grain of salt, most are common sense.

1. Water is King 

People make too big deal about storing up food…store up water..lots of it…plus have a way to filter water.  A person can survive a while without food but not 24 hrs without water. In the last Hurricane, our water supply got tainted and was out of service, luckily we had saved about 50-60 2L bottles and filled them with filtered water. We stored them in a spare refrigerator on the back porch. It was a life saver, literally. Yeah, FEMA was handing out cases of water 4 days after the hurricane hit us, but what about those “in between” times?? NEVER DEPEND ON ANYBODY BUT YOURSELF!!!!

2. Grab and Go

Plan what you are going to grab if you have to evac or fall back in a hurry..this is where packing your essentials in go-bags is KEY. I break it down like this for simplicity:

•  Rifle and Pistol
•  Way to Carry Mags for both (Vest, Chest Rig, Bandolier, Rifle Bag, etc.) There is no set number and you can never have enough ammo, but 8 (30 round) Mags for Rifle and 5 Hi-Cap Mags for Pistol is Solid.
•  72 hr GO-Bag for 4 People (Medical, Food, Water, Tools, Clothes)
• Take into consideration weight…you may have to edit ammo capacity or other things to aid in mobility..if you can only move as fast as a turtle, drop weight!

3. Vehicle/Truck– SHTF Bag

Always keep in your vehicle a bag with BASIC 72 hrs (for how ever many people in your home) of Food, Water, Medical, Clothes, Tools. This serves as a fallback bag in event you are not at home when SHTF. Some people keep weapons with these.I choose not too; weapons (at least my pistol) stay on my person. I can fight to my rifle if need to with this. Truck Guns (small, compact rifles) are great ideals, but legality and theft are big concerns.

4. Minimize and Maximize

I learned this lesson during the hurricane; when using a generator, you first have to prioritize what you are going to power: deep freeze, lamps, Window AC Unit, etc. Then you have to Minimize your space; instead of lighting or cooling the entire house, which will cost you a small fortune in gas and time filling the SOB up every 3 hours;  seal off a room of the house, say a bedroom and live/sleep there. You can run a small window AC unit to stay comfortable, dorm room size fridge for essentials, a couple lamps and a Coleman Stove and boom, you are in business. That way you can get a good 8-9 hours off a tank of gas in the generator and maximize your fuel dollars and energy spent filling the SOB up!!

5. Invest in Portable Shelter

Having a pop-up camper or RV to fall back into or take with you is smart. Often, a small pop up camper can sleep 4 fairly easily and a Generator can run everything, including the AC/Heat unit on an 8 hour tank of fuel. It is no wonder that the guy with the RV is the most popular guy in any Apocalyptic type show or movie (think of Dale in Walking Dead…the RV also served as a nice over-watch platform!)

These are just a few of my notes…more to come later.

Stay Dangerous.