Question of the Day- The Military and Preparedness
Commander Zero asked about my thought on…
The relationship, coinciding interests, practical applications, and relativity of military experiences in regards to preparedness. Or, put another way, what in the military is or has been applicable to preparedness.
Also, do you ever broach the subject with your comrades and if so what is their opinion?
TOR replies: To answer this question we have to look at what servicemembers do.
Let us say as a baseline a soldier is trained to shoot and maintain rifles and maybe handguns as well as basic individual stuff like pulling guard, searching prisoners and basic defensive and movement tactics. They have some exposure to first aid, map reading, land navigation, NBC (nuclear, biological, chemical) type (yes I know there is a new acronym, I think it is stupid and am keeping the old one as protest) events as well as a variety of other skills. Theoretically every soldier should be familiar with all skill level 1 common tasks in addition to whatever skills are required for their individual job.
An Infantryman should be very competent at all skill level 1 tasks and able to effectively use every weapon in the US Army up to (and depending on the kind of unit they are in including) mortars and have a solid understanding of Battle Drills and movement techniques.
Note that I used the phrases theoretically and should. Some folks are solid above and beyond their skill and experience level and others not so much. Sometimes this is individual and other times groups or units show trends. In particular I can say that land nav is pretty weak in lower enlisted and support type folks.
[Before continuing this I feel that it is worthwhile to give a bit of a disclaimer. I can speak about being a soldier, an Infantryman and an Officer in the US Army and make some reasonable generalizations about the Army and the Navy’s Army aka the Marines. The Navy, Coast Guard and Air Force are very different and while they all do great things a lot of what I am going to talk about does not apply to the vast majority of their service members. Also of course experiences vary among branches and occupational specialties. If I offend you it is not intentional.]
Most folks get some of these type skills to some varying degree in whatever branch or job they are in. Aside from what we could call basic soldier skills folks in support type jobs can learn other applicable skills. Medics, combat engineers, plumbers, electricians and diesel mechanics learn skills that are are clearly useful. Some folks are in such a position that their military experience, however valuable to our nation it may be, relates very little to survivalism. There are however some characteristics that military folks even an X Ray tech on a carrier or a an administrative type in the Air Force who hasn’t touched a rifle since basic training still seem to have.
The ability to deal with stress is a big one. For a lot of reasons military folks deal with ton of stress. Being able to think clearly and make sound decisions under stress is something military folks tend to be good at.
Physical fitness. The military in general (and far more so SOF and Infantry types) is a pretty fitness oriented culture. You see some very fit people in the most random support jobs.
Planning. Beyond dealing with stress this is likely the biggest general contribution of military service for most people. There are surely some more general traits but I can’t think of them right now.
As to the applicability of military service to preparedness. Survivalism and its better dressed more polished cousin preparedness could be broken down into a variety of different skill sets (each with logistical requirements but they don’t really apply to this) which support the endstate of being able to survive and thrive in an uncertain and difficult future.
One could, totally off the top of my head, break these down into: tactical, wilderness and primative living, food production and storage, physical fitness, medical, mechanical and building skills, communication and energy production.
It may be more useful to look at applicability by those skill sets:
In terms of tactical stuff Infantryman, other combat arms guys (and or course SOF) learn some pretty darn applicable things. While not a perfect stopping point these skills put them well beyond most folks. Other folks skills may be somewhat watered down and just give some basic firearms training or entirely absent.
When it comes to wilderness and primative living folks who spend a lot of time outside living out of rucksacks and in tents learn things. Typically these would be combat arms guys and those who go walk around with us.
Few folks learn much of anything to do with food production and storage. Cooks learn to cook but that isn’t really a weak area for most folks anyway.
In terms of medical stuff obviously medical folks like doctors, nurses and medics know a lot. Soldiers typically have a better level of first aid and particularly trauma training than average folks who take a first aid class or two. The more current versions of Combat Lifesaver and various other courses are pretty good and are often pushed down to the lowest level. This is one of the areas where we have really gotten our act together in the last few years.
As to mechanical and building type skills folks whose job is in those areas like mechanics, electricians and carpenters or whatever obviously learn stuff. The rest of us not so much.
For communication lots of folks get what could be described as radio communication 99 and commo guys, forward observers and JTACs get more useful experiences.
Other than electricians and generator mechanics nobody gets much in terms of alternative energy applicable stuff.
Also, do you ever broach the subject with your comrades and if so what is their opinion?
Not really and even then not directly. However when you get to know folks you pick up on things (and they pick up things about you). Somebody who has a solid gun collection and keeps a good amount of ancillary stuff put away that is also fiscally modest as well as conservative/ liberty leaning probably has some stuff going on. With these folks I will offer a piece of advice in context. Example, somebody is talking about the rough price of magazines for their handgun, I might suggest that they should not pay more than $XX and that it is worthwhile to check out a website that has what they need like CDNN.
As I don’t mention this sort of stuff with folks who are not at least partially in the club and still keep the cards pretty close to my chest I don’t know how a lot of folks might handle it. I can offer my totally anecdotal observations. I would say there are some survivalists, more “preppers”, a LOT of gun nuts and the balance made up of pretty normal folks within the military.
Also there is an interesting coincidence. While survivalists as a group are not necessarily a high percentage of military members I would say that a very high percentage of survivalists have some military background. This is not suprising as middle and lower middle class conservatives from the rural/ small town West and South tend to be a significant percentage of survivalists and this group is well represented in the military.
Anway again if I offended anyone it was not intentional. If you have anything to add please comment. Lets not get into a service vs service thing and if you try to say that some random admin or logistics type job is super ninja JSOC rambotastic I might make fun of you.
Basics
When it comes to defensive and tactical stuff I think it is so important to focus on the basic stuff. If you really look at the difference between successful individuals and organizations and unsuccessful individuals and organizations it is the basics. For example people don’t generally lose gunfights because they are unable to do some cool move you saw on an action or instructional video. They lose then (at least in a CCW scenario) by being unable to fluidly and rapidly get their weapon into play and accurately engage targets. Reloads and rapidly clearing malfunctions are sure handy too. When it comes to rifle stuff it would be moving tactically in a variety of situations, engaging targets, reloading and clearing malfunctions. These aren’t particularly complicated things to do and it is probably more important to be able to do them with minimal flashiness and a lot of muscle memory than anything else. For example I could show 4 guys how to clear a room properly in a few minutes. The only difference between them and the best entry team out there are a few SOP’s (standard operating procedures: just a fancy way of saying little things they do in a standard fashion.) and hundreds or thousands of repetitions of practice. The kind of practice that lets them work out all the kinks and develop muscle memory. The kind of muscle memory that will let them fluidly and properly clear a room when they are mentally and physically tired and under the worst possible conditions.
The same thing could be said about combatives, navigation, physical fitness or just about anything else. People always want to do the cool high speed stuff, especially when it comes to anything defensive or tactical. What they fail to realize is that not only do you need to master the basics before you can do the sexy stuff but that doing the basics very well magically turns into a pretty darn sexy package.
Guest Post Book/ Movie Review of The Road
A Review of The Road By Cormac McCarthy or as I Like to Call it: How Not to Survive After A Disaster.
I read the novel The Road, by Cormac McCarthy and then after a few days of letting the story marinate, I watched the movie. Frankly, the book is better (it always is) but the director did a fabulous job with the movie. Obviously, large parts of the book were left out of the movie in the interests of time and flow, but the movie didn’t suffer for the editing. I am not going to lie, I cried like a little girl in some places. In other parts I wanted to jump right into the book and shake some sense into the main character, the man. In a survivalist situation, when you are doing everything you can to avoid being eaten by roving gangs of cannibals, who in their right mind makes nightly fires? Why not just stuff a moldy apple in the kid’s mouth, set him up on a platter and ring the dinner bell?
The book and movie should certainly not be taken as a manual on how to survive in the aftermath of a global cataclysmic event. As a piece of literature that explores issues of humanity, father and son relationships and questions our morals and ethics in the face of tragedy, it is a good read and may even get you thinking. It will certainly put you off light colored meat for awhile and have you hoarding all the fruit salad and ammo that you can.
From a preparedness point of view, this novel is incredibly disappointing. Through flashbacks, the reader is given multiple glances into the lead up to the disaster, as well as the time immediately following it. The man is knowledgeable enough to know that he needs to fill the tub with drinkable water before it is shut off, but doesn’t seem to do much disaster planning. The boy is born just after the disaster and the story begins when he is about nine or ten. One of the flashbacks shows the family still at their home and the child is about seven years old. We aren’t told what they have been doing in the interim, except that they have used all but two of the bullets in their one gun. They have a home with food and clothing and creature comforts that they leave for an unknown reason, yet they haven’t banded together with any of their neighbors or friends?
They even stumble upon an emergency shelter loaded with clean food, water and shelter and leave it to continue on his quest for the coast. In the presence of such a hoard of food, I find it incredibly difficult to imagine that a starving man and child would be able to walk away from it. As a literary device it works well to show how humanity can snap back in place when essentials aren’t in scarce supply, however, common sense dictates that he would make camp in the area and continue to forage food and supplies to ensure that he and the boy built up their immune systems and energy reserves. The shelter is stocked with bullets that do not work with his gun, so he leaves them there, rather than cart them along as items to barter and trade or use in an improvised fashion for self defense.
Rather than continue to rag on the book for what it didn’t do, I would rather focus on three things it did do that put me into quasi panic mode and made me reevaluate my plans.
1. Made me conscious of how little I have prepared myself for life without verifiable maps and the ability to navigate without a GPS. The Man and the boy follow the highways and open road on their quest to find the coast. This is incredibly dangerous as it leaves them open to attack from all of the threats present in the book. They do not seem to have a choice as their shopping cart could not make it through the brush of the forests. I had to question how I would have handled it differently. Would a simple plank frame sledge dragged through the forest be any better? It would leave tracks and be easy to follow and difficult to handle. Would a compass still be a viable guide?
2. Kill or be killed? Is holding on to their morals really the most appropriate way to survive? When they meet up with other people on the road, they often give the strangers the benefit of the doubt, leaving themselves open to attack. Why didn’t they form an alliance with at least one other adult for protection? That way they wouldn’t be sleeping unguarded at night, the boy wouldn’t have had to remain alone unguarded while the man foraged for wood and food and they would have had far more options for self defense.
3. In an apocalyptic situation, is survival really the only consideration? What about rebuilding a civilization? The book mentions communes and cannibalistic tribes as well as nomadic gangs of men and permanent homesteaders farming people. But are there no groups of like-minded people with knowledge and skills available to create a safer community of refugees? By merely surviving are they in fact ensuring their extinction? In living a day to day hard scrabble existence, they cannot plan for the future. How is the man such a dead shot when he has been carrying around two shots in his gun for over three years without shooting it? Practice is essential for any type of specialized skill. Gardening and animal husbandry are impossible thanks to the bleak conditions and the need to continually move along. How has this scenario changed my preparations for potential disasters and emergencies? Hugely; I am rethinking most of my plans and reassessing my viable skills.
All in all, both the movie and the book got me thinking long and hard about the steps I have taken so far to prepare and the things I still need to do. The biggest item I am lacking is knowledge. Educating myself more about homesteading practices, basic outdoorsman-ship and personal health care and protection would be far more useful than a majority of the gadgets that I have stockpiled. I may end up somewhere far from my stash, but I will always have the training in how to create a natural water filter or know which potential vegetation is edible and which is akin to hazardous waste. The book and the movie are certainly not for the faint of heart and will not help you sleep better at night, but they will get your brain working and inspire you to do a better job of prepping for the potential future.
Lucas Gregson is a Personal Security Plan specialist with a keen interest in prepping and home security. He advocates for sensible self defense training and the enjoyment of a good book but not at the same time.
So Funny Story
A couple days ago I went out on a land navigation course. Didn’t bother to use a compass and just terrain associated. On this course it worked fine, even at night. In deep Georgia woods or flat plains it wouldn’t but in a relatively open area with lots of terrain it does.
On the day course about 30 minutes from the end time a Sergeant (E-5) walked up to me. It is fairly standard for a person (who is maybe a bit lost) to ask if they are where they think they are or if there is a point in the area or if you think the intersection they are standing at is the one they need or whatnot. Technically it isn’t authorized but it has happened on every course I have been on and involved all ranks (E-1 to 0-5).
A little bit of background. This course in particular is self correcting. That means the points all have their exact location written on them. So if you are looking for ET 1234 5678 and you get to where you need to be then see a point you check if it says ET 1234 5678. This makes it a bit easier to navigate successfully but mostly cuts out the ‘is this my point’ sort of questions. You know 100% it is your point because it says so.
In any case the Sergeant asked “if the numbers written on the points were supposed to be the same as on your sheet?” I told him that they were in fact supposed to be the same and he said “shit” then just walked off.
Winter Does Not Forgive
People talk about harsh environments and I think a cold snowy winter beats pretty much anything out. It at least ties with the desert. One could think long and hard about the pro’s and cons of each but I don’t feel like doing that. In any case simply put a cold snowy winter leaves little to no margin for error or bad luck.
Last night during land navigation a young man almost died.
We were supposed to be back by 8 o’clock. The young man in question has not back by 9:00 so a search party went out. At 10:00 higher ups started getting alerted. At 11:00 everybody lined up so we could walk the entire course at double arm intervals with white lights. Exactly like you see in the movies and on TV. Some folks found this guy at about 11:30.
What happened was that he got a bit wet. Somehow or another he got into some water that was moving and thus not frozen. At this point he started going into shock. I believe he failed to realize the severity of the situation he was in and went to get his last point before heading back. Personally I would have ran back to the start point. The course is roughly 4000m X 4000M and bordered on all sides by two lane hardball roads. You could not cross one by accident.
He was found about a mile out of the course. They found him face down in a snowy field. He was conscious but not verbally responsive. They got him to a hospital and there will be no effects which last more than a few days.
He was wearing the right gear. People knew he was out and when he should return. We had a pretty good idea of where he should be. He knew how to land nav. Heck a guy who could run decently wasn’t 15 minutes from a gas station or a fast food joint.
If nobody knew when he was supposed to be back or in what area he was he would be dead. If there hadn’t been a whole bunch of people right there to look for him he would be dead. Tonight it is a lot colder than last night. Had it been low 20’s instead of 28-32 he would likely be dead.
The winter does not forgive.
This was a
GPS Awesomeness.
So I have written a bit about our GPS. It is one of the car navigation ones. Got another more suited to land navigation but that doesn’t have much to do with anything. Mainly that one just sits around as I am a map, protractor and compass sort of guy. Anyway I don’t have enough good things to say about the Garmin Nuvi275T.
Today we decided to go check out a couple of nearby downtown/ shopping areas and get some dinner afterwords. When we were leaving home we just entered the address of the restaurant and it took us there. Then we went exploring for awhile. Parked the car and walked around for awhile just checking things out. Then we wanted to go to another place we have been before to look at designer purses (Wifeys birthday is coming up). We knew how to get to both places but not so much from one to the other. It took us right there and then after much looking and handling and examining we decided it was dinner time. Going back to the restaurant was too easy.
On the way home we were talking and missed a turn. No worries because Sarina has got us covered. [We chose the voice of a British woman and named her Sarina] She took us off the highway at a place where it was easy to turn around and go back. This is useful for a variety of reasons. First if you are reading a map or have mapquest directions and miss a turn then you are jumping around trying to get back to that route. The navigation system just adjusts the route to get you there as easily as possible.
Navigation systems aren’t for everybody. If you are one of those folks who has lived in a 30 mile circle of work, home, a relatives house, a pizza place and a local watering hole for 10 years you don’t need one. However for folks who regularly drive long distances or just enjoy going to new places I think a navigation system is really money well spent. Ours is so simple that anybody could use it and it takes us exactly to where we want to go.
Of course you do want to use COMMON SENSE. Don’t take a route just because the GPS/ navigation system says to take it, especially in the mountains during the winter. I don’t know exactly what route that fellow took through the Cascades to get from Central Oregon down to the Willamette Valley. In any case I assume it was not one of the major ones. Not blindly relying on any one instrument is good advice that verges on common sense. .
Anyway navigation systems have came down in price a ton in the last couple years. They are now reasonably priced and they are very useful. Many of you would be well served by one.
Navigation System- An Early Christmas Present
It is amazing how the market economy works. I remember we seriously looked at getting a navigation system before our drive across the country a bit more than a year ago. They cost about $350 and you had to purchase a monthly subscription to go along with it. They have came down so much in price over the past year and that is because more people are making them and they are selling well.
The one my awesome Mother in Law got us for an early Christmas present costs about $200 and there is no subscription fee. It is a Garmin Nuvi275T. I am very impressed with this system. It is pretty much completely idiot proof and we got it working in well under 5 minutes without consulting the manual (thin manual is a good sign for simplicity). You are able to choose the voice and the icon and all sorts of stuff. Our icon is a monster truck and we are guided by Serena who is a nice English woman.
I think these could have some real uses for preparedness. Admittedly they are not cheap and it would be wise to take care of some other more practical stuff like beans bullets and bandaids first. However being able to get turn by turn directions from anywhere to anywhere else is huge. Also you can choose to avoid certain types of roads and such and get detours by touching the screen.
Of course one of these will not work if the GPS system goes down. However unless China starts shooting missiles at our satelites or someone decides to test for real what high altitude EMP bursts will do or our entire country falls apart and nobody maintains anything these satelites will work. In almost every realistic situation the GPS system will work just fine.
Also contrary to what some tin foil hat wearing whacko said to you in some forum GPS’s do not transmit, they only recieve and thus tracking them would be as practical as radio direction finding some guys with a boom box listening to Country music in his trailer.
While I don’t think you should scrap getting maps and such I think folks who can spare a few bucks would do well to look into one of these.
Cleaning and Fiddling With My GPS
Today I woke up a bit late Had a nice leisurely early afternoon of cinnamon rolls and coffee. Spent a good chunk of the day doing some house cleaning that was a bit overdue. I also got to a long overdue project, the GPS. Mine is a Magellan Meridian that was purchased in late 2002 and has been essentially mothballed since then. I put some way points on it back home but didn’t really use it much. To be blunt I prefer the Garmin Etrex series but this is the GPS I already own. Potentially replacing it is not even on the long list. If it breaks I would get another one; other then that I will stick with this one.
Nowadays I do a lot more land navigation and being able to confirm exactly where I am would be quite useful. The first thing I did was to get it out of the box, put some batteries in it and turn it on. The thing worked which was a very good sign. It took some fiddling to get it to orient to our current location but it was nothing too bad. Next I put it to give me the location coordinates in MGRS instead of Lat/Long . We use MGRS in the Army and it is what I understand and am confortable with. Switching it was pretty easy for me. Years ago when I was far less technologically capable (since then I’ve upgraded from a tech IQ of 27 to a tech IQ of 58) trying to do this pissed me off for a couple hours then I mothballed the thing. My last task with the GPS is to mark our residence as a waypoint. This means I can get a bearing and distance to our residence from anywhere. That is a good thing.
After completing this task I turned it off and put it back in the box in the closet, ready for use. Next in my list of electronic tasks is fiddling with the new radio. I will try to get to that sometime this week.
quote of the day
“I may not be good at land nav but I am really fast.”
-2LT S (my co worker)
He has some minor issues finding what he is looking for in terms of land navigation but being able to run fast for a long time (all day long, he does Iron Mans) goes a very long way toward helping him return somewhat quickly with almost all of his points. Note that if he had more significant issues being fast would not make up for them.
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