Archive for the 'Survival' Category

First of all, watch this video in its entirety.  I think John conveys a lot of wisdom in his talk.

This dovetails with a lot of what I have been thinking about the concept of the “bugout” philosophy.  I greatly admire folks like James Wesley Rawles, who made the decision a very long time ago to ensconce in the Northwestern redoubt, although I partial to the Appalachian redoubt being more in my backyard.

Folks like that made a huge decision to leave where they were, plant roots, create a life and lifestyle, make a family, and never leave.  But the problem is that most other people have deep roots too, wherever they are.  Elderly parents need help, children are part of your life, grandchildren need raising by grandparents, friends and family cannot simply be left by the wayside to “bugout” when the going gets tough.

I have a friend who once told me the reason he didn’t “prep” was that he knew where all the preppers in his area were, those who had ammunition, food, and so on, and he had guns and knew whose house to go to in order to find what he needed.

Note well.  He was telling me he would become just like a feral animal whenever the time arose, taking what he needed from his neighbors and leaving trusted folks to suffer in his place.  Now, I know the heart of the man who said this to me, and I know that he would never do that.  So if that man is reading this now, I know that it was all a lot of bluster.  How do I know that?  Because I know you.  You were just giving me excuses for not planning and preparing.

Any bugout bag you build is inadequate.  Do you have a pistol with a few magazines?  Good.  What is you need a CQB carbine?  Do you have that?  Good.  What if you need a longer range standoff rifle?  Do you have that, with all of the ammunition you’ll ever need?  Do you have enough food for you, your family, your neighbors, and your friends?  Can you get to where you’re going in one trip, or at all?  Can you survive without generators or solar power?  Do you have all of the medical supplies you’ll ever need?  Do you have access to professional medical care (you will surely need it at some point).

If you have a designated place to go, do you know that it’s secured until you get there?  Can you secure it when you do get there?  Do you have neighbors and trusted friends there that you’ll need for long term survival?  There are so many questions, issues and considerations attending an event like this that it’s unlikely you’ve thought through them.

The better option is to plan, prepare, purchase, pre-deploy, and practice.

My point is that like John, I don’t believe you’re going to go anywhere.  It may be true that there isn’t a perfect solution to hard situations like we’re posing, but just like it matters how a man lives, it also matters how he dies, and death isn’t the end anyway.  Most people reading this aren’t the kind of people who would run off and leave loved ones, family, friends, and neighbors to suffer if you can help it.  If you are, then you’re the kind of person from whom the rest of us are defending our loved ones, families, friends and neighbors.

Survival Blog:

Back in August, I warned SurvivalBlog readers about an upcoming FCC rules change.  Well, the ban did indeed arrive, on Monday. As of September 24th, 2018, the FCC banned the importation of some quite capable dual band models of inexpensive Baofeng ham radio handie-talkies:

     FCC Enforcement Advisory No. 2018-03

Because of this new FCC “enforcement advisory” ban, I predict that fewer and fewer these particular hand-held ham radios will clear Customs. Then, Amazon and eBay listings for them will soon disappear, probably in just a few weeks. The window of opportunity is closing quickly, folks!  Note that no license is required to buy these radios.

I strongly recommend that SurvivalBlog readers stock up on these dual band radios, NOW, while there are still some available at a reasonable price! Grab a five-pack, or perhaps two five-packs, so that you will have some extras available to trade at a later date.  Remember:  “Buy low, and sell high.”  As I’ve described in detail in the blog before: Bans almost always lead to higher prices!

JWR wrote about this earlier and I’ve been thinking about this.

The Baofeng radios he’s recommending come with baggage.  The real radio guys pan this stuff.  The clubs won’t go within a mile of it, and the scuttlebutt is that if you don’t buy after-market antennas for it, as soon as you walk around the next building you lose signal.  Parts fall off, the radios don’t work for long, etc., etc.

Furthermore, it’s said that you must have your certification to use most of the frequencies on these radios.  Frankly, I don’t know what to think.  I believe it’s important to have at least minimal comms equipment, but I also believe that we don’t all have to be Ham radio operators in order to have this minimal capability.

On the other hand, these are fairly cheap, and getting your certification is said to be easy.  Furthermore, they aren’t going to be available for long.

So here’s a bleg for readers.  How about someone with some comms capabilities (Pat Hines?) weigh in and give us a lengthy assessment of this whole matter?  I’m not thinking about stationary radios.  I’m talking about highly portable comms equipment.

Via WRSA, GoV has a sobering take on the choices Europe (and eventually we) face.

Over at UTT, John explains why work to reform the FedGov is wasted effort.

Eleven years ago I sat in the FBI Washington Field Office with the Special Agent in Charge (SAC) of the Counterterrorism Division and one other agent.  I asked the SAC what she would do when the average American came to a deeper understanding of the Islamic threat than agents in the CT Division, and then those Americans, realizing they were left to fend for themselves, took matters into their own hands.

She froze, turned slightly pale, and told me she never thought about it before.  I had…a lot.

Today, America stands at that place.

The U.S. Islamic jihadi leadership displays gross animus towards America.  Islamic leaders:  openly call for jihad against our President; build weapons training camps for children to learn how to kill people in schools and hospitals knowing judges will let them walk; publicly call for the holocaust of all Jews and then feign shock and surprise when their comments make it into the public realm; teach jihad in Islamic elementary schools then sue the county school board if citizens dare protest; and on it goes.

In response to this, the Marxist party of America – Democrats – defend, support, and collaborate with these enemies while the U.S. Department of Justice sits on its hands.

Colleagues in the Counter-Jihad movement are threatened with death from sharia-adherent muslims (jihadis) while police and the FBI not only do nothing, they threaten the victims for daring to point the finger at muslims, despite facts and evidence.

Thousands of Americans are dead, killed by sharia-adherent muslims in places like Arlington (VA), New York, Shanksville (PA), Little Rock (AR), Boston (MA), Fort Lauderdale (FL), San Bernardino (CA), Orlando (FL), Denver (CO)….

The perpetrators of these acts of violence unanimously tell us they do what they do because Islam commands them to do it, yet most of our leaders tell us Islam is not the problem.

Our military generals/admirals and civilian leaders display no recognition they have a clue about the Islamic threat despite fighting – and losing – wars for nearly 17 years.  Some of our top military leaders – General John Allen for instance – apologized to our enemies for “offending” them when “Islamic religious materials” were mistakenly destroyed.

As of this day, the United States has still not defined the enemy in the global war in which we are engaged.

Catastrophic failure and criminal negligence.

Americans who still possess the ability to reason, discern, and process facts in reality realize the U.S. federal government is incapable of winning this war.

As Understanding the Threat (UTT) has said for over six (6) years, this war will be won or lost at the local level.

The goal is to get as many Americans to understand the threat as quickly as possible so local jurisdictions can organize and begin to dismantle the jihadi networks in the local area.

The infrastructure is crumbling, the inner cities are sewers crawling with drug addicts, homeless and criminals, hard working Americans are watching their ever dwindling wealth be raped by the government (remember that “The good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children”), and the printing presses in Washington roll off more paper money as if they can create wealth by fiat.

Prepare.  You know what’s coming.

From readers Richard and Michael, Foxnews:

An Oregon woman recently came home to an unusual surprise: a mountain lion, which continued taking a nap for six more hours behind her sofa.

The odd encounter took place on July 8 in the Ashland, Ore., home of Lauren Taylor.

After drinking from a pond in Taylor’s backyard, the cat likely entered her home through an open back door, she explained in Facebook. The post had garnered more than 17,000 reactions and shares as of Tuesday morning.

“This is wild,” she wrote. “The door was open and the room has huge plants and stairs built around real tree branches, so she likely didn’t even realize she was walking indoors until she was inside.”

After entering the home, the cat was startled by Taylor’s roommate, who screamed upon seeing the mountain lion. This prompted the wild animal to hide behind the sofa, where it snoozed for several hours.

Taylor made a noise to wake the feline, but then “gazed lovingly into her eyes, and communicated using feline-speak eye blinking to calm her,” she wrote.

“It was amazing to realize that this worked. I gazed lovingly then blinked hard and then she did it back,” Taylor continued, adding that the cat then went back to sleep. “She clearly felt safe and she showed no inclination to leave.”

When the cat awoke a second time, Taylor said she “again connected in a loving gaze and communicated trust through blinking.”

With just “a couple hours to dawn,” Taylor decided it was time to “prompt her to leave without alarming her so much that she panicked.”

The Oregon woman then used a drum to encourage the lion to exit the home.

“She roused and knew just what to do…. walking out through the open doors, through the yard, across the creek, and through the empty field behind us exactly as we had shown her,” said Taylor, adding she has “extensive experience working with energy and animals.”

“It was a perfect ending to a blessed encounter that could have been dangerous if approached from a lower frequency,” she continued. “May she stay safely in the hills to enjoy a long life as a wild and healthy lion.”

You can go check out the pictures and video yourself.  I just don’t know what to say.  Honestly.

Read again.

Taylor made a noise to wake the feline, but then “gazed lovingly into her eyes, and communicated using feline-speak eye blinking to calm her,” she wrote.

When the cat awoke a second time, Taylor said she “again connected in a loving gaze and communicated trust through blinking.”

“It was a perfect ending to a blessed encounter …

Lovingly.  Calm her.  Trust.  Blessed.

She’s fortunate the lion didn’t scalp her and eat her brains out of her skull.

Fox News:

A Texas man is recovering after he claims the head of a rattlesnake bit him — moments after he had just cut it off.

Jennifer Sutcliffe’s husband was reportedly bitten by the beheaded snake on May 27 at his home near Lake Corpus Christi.

Sutcliffe told KIII-TV the two were doing yard work when she came across the four-foot rattlesnake. She said her husband used a shovel to behead the snake, but when he went to dispose of it, it bit him.

Corpus Christi man bitten by severed rattlesnake head https://t.co/Pstjhg4Yvy pic.twitter.com/XYMa2TFM1P

— KIII 3 News (@kiii3news) June 6, 2018

The snake, Sutcliffe said, “released all its venom into him at that point” because it no longer had a body, and her husband reportedly began immediately experiencing seizures and internal bleeding, and lost his vision.

The man was transported via helicopter to a hospital, where doctors said there was a chance he wouldn’t make it.

“A normal person who is going to get bit is going to get two to four doses of antivenom,” Sutcliffe told the news station. “He had to have 26 doses.”

Her husband is now in stable condition but is suffering from weak kidney functions, Sutcliffe said.

I’ll tell you what, snakes can lay a wallop on you.  I don’t expect this is something that many folk from the far north can understand, but down South and in the Southwest, you’ve got to be very careful where you step and where you reach.  I’ve been bitten by a Copperhead, and so has my dog.

They usually aren’t deadly if treated, but you can lose fingers, hands, toes, feet or whatever if not treated.  A Cottonmouth (Water Moccasin) is worse, but the king of the pit vipers in America is the rattlesnake.  The worst of them (most venomous pit viper in America) is the Eastern Diamondback, and not far behind is the Eastern Timber.

Be careful out there this summer.

Puerto Rico today:

All of Puerto Rico has lost power after deadly Hurricane Maria swept through the island on Wednesday – with winds that blew the roofs off homes and flash floods that turned roads into rivers.

Leaving at least nine people dead in its wake across the Caribbean, Hurricane Maria blew ashore in the morning in the southeast coastal town of Yabucoa as a Category 4 storm with winds of 155 mph.

While the eye of the storm has since moved off the island and weakened to a Category 2 hurricane, it’s expected to continue lashing the island of 3.4million with life-threatening winds, storm surge and rain through this evening.

‘Once we’re able to go outside, we’re going to find our island destroyed,’ said Abner Gomez, Puerto Rico’s emergency management director. ‘The information we have received is not encouraging. It’s a system that has destroyed everything in its path.’

It looks like dystopia, doesn’t it?

Two weeks ago it was a hard week trying to prepare for Hurricane Irma.  We managed to find a Generac 5500 generator when almost all generators had been sent to Texas.  Gas lines were long and prices were elevated, and gas cans were triple the cost from a month prior.  And then they were gone.  So it didn’t matter whether you could buy gas – you couldn’t store it.

We had to think about batteries, perishable food, trying to get non-perishable food, potable water, dog food (have you considered your beasts in the event of something like this?), and on and on the list goes.  To some extent we had the non-perishable food situation handled, but not well enough for my future comfort level.

I lived through Hurricane Hugo, and was without power for two weeks.  I wasn’t prepared for it either.  At the time it rolled through I was preparing for the engineering PE examination.  The exam date in October wasn’t going to change because of the storm, so I had to redeem the time.

I lined my kitchen table with candles and worked PE review problems for two weeks by candlelight (old school, pen and paper).  But I wasn’t going to relive my Hugo experience unprepared, so we worked hard to prepare.  I consider Hurricane Irma yet another warning shot over the bow.

For the future, we need to be thinking about more than just guns and ammunition (although that’s first on the list).  We need to think long term survival in the form of food caches, freeze-dried foods, large scale water filtration rather than the small scale I currently have, and you could probably add endlessly to this list.  Feel free to do so in the comments.

I am of the considered opinion that a hurricane is the least of our worries when considering the ills that may befall us in the future.  Puerto Rico won’t rebuild for years, and won’t have power for more than half a year, if then.  Are you prepared for an attack on our electrical grid?  For civil strife and/or civil war?  For contamination of our water supplies?  For a run on the banks and a completely devalued dollar?

No, neither am I.  Not as well as I ought to be.

Fox8:

GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS NATIONAL FOREST, N.C. — A Tennesee teen last seen more than 10 days ago was found Tuesday afternoon after walking out of the Great Smoky Mountains, WLOS reports.

Austin Bohanan was found around 2:30 p.m. after walking out of the remote backcountry area near Tabcat Creek in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, according to a National Parks Service statement.

He was taken to Blount Memorial Hospital in Maryville, Tennessee.

Bohanan was reportedly last seen hiking off-trail in the remote southwest corner of the park on the evening of Friday, Aug. 11, 2017. He was reported missing around 6:30 p.m. on Sunday, Aug. 13 to Blount County authorities.

On Tuesday, four search teams consisting of rangers from the parks Search and Rescue team, officers with Tennessee Wildlife Resource Authority and individuals with the Backcountry Unit Search and Rescue team (BUSAR) had a total of 19 people searching the area. The search continued with canine teams and other special search teams.

Bohanan “had light food and water and was not anticipating spending the night in the park,” according to park spokeswoman Jamie Sanders.

He spent eleven days in the Southern bush.  He was unprepared for what faced him and he’s blessed to be alive.  The rescue team made an official statement, to the effect that “From day one, we treated the search for Austin as an emergency and appreciate the resources from across the region that came to our aid to help us actively and aggressively search through extremely tough terrain,” said Park Chief Ranger Steve Kloster. “We faced multiple challenges, including a moving target in dense conditions, but our search teams never gave up hope.”

But it was Austin who self-rescued.

On Tuesday morning, rangers explained he woke up on a ridge and saw a boat and some kayaks on Abrams Creek below. He scrambled down to the water and waved to the boaters, who picked him up and gave him a ride to safety.

That’s not to diminish the efforts of the rescue team, but the higher probability rescue in this circumstance is self-rescue.  Even the rescue team had to have water and food assistance from the community to keep going.  The search area was 6700 acres, which is 10.469 square miles.  This may not seem like a lot, but in the back country in the South, it is an eternity of land.

This is what Austin and his rescuers faced.

Steep terrain, dense vegetation, deadfall, blowdown, and almost impenetrable bush.  But we’ve discussed in detail what you should carry with you even if you’re going for a day hike thinking that you’re not going to be far from the beaten path.

(1) heavy rubberized poncho, (2) 550 cord, (3) gun, (4) tactical light, (5) fire starter [redundant means], (6) knife [serrated edge], (7) water and fast food energy, and (8) parka.

I carry this in a day pack.  For eleven days, you can add to this list a container with which you can boil water.  With the rubberized poncho and cordage, you have shelter.  With the gun and tactical light you have protection.  With the knife you have virtually everything (never leave home without a knife).

In the South he could have encountered problems with Copperheads, Timber Rattlers, black bear, feral hogs and Coyotes.  Coyotes in the West may still travel as lone predators, but in the South they have learned to travel in packs.  Many hunters in these parts have gone out at dusk only to find five or six pairs of eyes staring at them and encircling them closer and closer.  Retreat is the best option at that point, but if Austin couldn’t have retreated, he would have needed a firearm, and possibly more ammunition.

If this seems like overkill, just remember when you go into the bush.  You’re not in control of everything – the bush gets a say.  Try to be wise about the things you do control.

I’ll leave it to readers to fisk this event.  This man is blessed to be alive, as far I can tell.

LA Times:

The snow was at least 3 feet deep and still falling when Tracy Glover and two other men came upon the fee booth at the North Rim entrance of the Grand Canyon.

The door to the booth was always unlocked, according to Glover, the Kane County, Utah, sheriff. Inside were sleeping bags, food, water, matches — items that Karen Klein could have used on this particular Christmas Eve as she and her family found themselves stranded in a remote region of the National Park near the Arizona-Utah border. It was an oasis of warmth within a freezing forest.

I don’t care is she was superwoman.  She was unprepared for this, at this time, in these conditions.  We have discussed the bare minimum for being out in the bush: (1) heavy rubberized poncho, (2) 550 cord, (3) gun, (4) tactical light, (5) fire starter, (6) knife [serrated edge], and (7) water and fast food energy.

In these conditions, you can add the right kind of boots (very expensive and not routinely taken on car trips), wool clothing, Gore-Tex, insulated cover (e.g., wool hat), heavy insulated gloves, and eye protection (Goggles and perhaps sun glasses during the daylight hours to prevent snow blindness).

I’m not a big fan of staying where you are, and I’m a much bigger fan of taking what you need or may need.  But in this case, the woman should have stayed where she was.  She’s no good to her family dead.

Outdoor Life has an interesting list of 26 survival myths that can get you killed.  It’s well worth reading all of them.  This one in particular struck me.

14. A big fire beats a shelter
Large-log fires have kept people alive in the cold, but that doesn’t mean you can afford to skip building a shelter. What if it rains or becomes really windy? You never want to sleep out in the open if you can help it. Take the time to build a shelter. It will pay you back every time.

Well yes, there’s the issue of rain, which will kill you if you attempt to sleep in it all night.  The wind is another issue, and is related to the primary reason I would recommend building a shelter.

There are four types of heat transfer: conductive, convective, radiant and evaporative.  In the absence of survival gear, you need to build a bed of pine bows, straw, leaves and other things to lift you off of the ground to prevent conductive heat transfer (which occurs when two bodies are in contact) from your body to the ground.

If the wind is blowing, that means that convective heat transfer is occurring.  But one often overlooked reason for a shelter is the fact that the universe becomes an infinite heat sink at night.  Your body is radiating heat to the universe without a shelter over you.

Even if you only bend branches and use saplings and construct a hemispherical cage over which you throw leaves and mulch (a common emergency shelter in the South), you need to have a shelter at night.  Never travel so long and so far that you forego the construction of a shelter to keep you alive until morning.