Close Quarters Carbines, Square Ranges, CQB, Weapons Manipulation and Tactics

Max Velocity wrote an interesting post called The Great Tactical Training Con. I agree with him in some regards but disagree in others. This stumbles into something I have been thinking about for awhile.

Over the past few years or maybe the last decade the role of the rifle in close quarters fighting has changed.  What used to be considered almost solely shotgun territory has become dominated by AR's, AK's, etc all. These rifles hold 30 rounds and reload themselves which is pretty handy. Not taking anything away from shotguns but their primary benefits are low cost, legality in non permissive environments and versatility, not capacity or reloading. At the same time these rifles have come into prominence CQB (close quarters battle) has become the buzz word and all the rage. Though really SRM (short range marksmanship) is probably more accurate. There are all sorts of courses, classes, video's and such to teach you to be a super cool Sammy Seal type guy.

We need to realize that firearms training is a business. As a business the firearms training industry wants to sell people on paying money to take classes. They want to be able to offer classes in as many places as possible, with the lowest overhead possible, to as many customers as possible. Many of them are genuinely good people who want to train people to use weapons to defend their selves but they also like making money.

The average American range is probably a hundred meters wide and a couple hundred long. They have a safe backstop but limited capacity for movement and very little capacity for shooting in different directions. These ranges can support shooting from 0 to whatever meters strait downrange. People can move a bit left or right as long as they still shoot downrange. They can move forward and back also but still shooting must be in the same downrange direction.

Shooting in multiple directions while moving or static is significantly more complicated. Instead of needing a relatively safe backstop in one direction for a fairly narrow arc you need a lot of space. I'm talking roughly 2+ kilometers in any direction you will shoot in to support shooting rifles. Of course a backstop like a rock quarry or a cliff cuts that down a but but we are still talking a lot of space. Due to the lack of spaces that can readily support this type of training it is a lot easier to gravitate to what we call the square ranges. Folks do this because there are many more ranges that can be used for training that way.

CQB as the cool kids call it is simply using rifles to engage targets at close range, we'll say under 50 meters to keep things simple. Lots of ready up drills, turn and shoot, etc. Reloads are of course mixed into all of this. There is movement but it is usually limited to a few steps in whatever direction. This is good stuff. If you use a rifle for home defense you have to know this stuff (if you use a shotgun do the same thing with it).

A person who is not trained in this stuff can make huge strides in a day of instruction. Part of the business side of the firearms industry is that trainers can leave people feeling good about what they learned wanting to take another class. They can offer Cool Guy CQB Sammy Seal Classes 1-6 or whatever.

CQB is important. I have heard it described, I think by American Mercenary, as a survival skill set. That is true I think in that it's how civilians are going to realistically fight with a rifle. Joe the Engineer who lives in the Burbs or Frank the Farmer are not going to get into 300 meter gunfights. They are going to hear something that shouldn't be in the garage, grab their gun then check it out. People start moving and a 7 meter fight becomes a 50 meter fight but we are still within CQB ranges.

Like anything it is too easy to get overly focused in on one thing. The Tactical Tommy types can practice regularly andgo to 20 classes yet never shoot past 50 meters with a rifle capable of 400 meter accuracy. On the other end of the spectrum there are some high power types and sniper wanna be's who are hyper focused on long distance shooting.Which one of them is right? Neither of them are right. They are wrong on the opposite ends. The CQB Ninja needs to learn how to reach out and touch someone. Mr. High Power needs to learn to rapidly engage targets at close range.

There have been some interesting discussions by Mountain Guerilla and American Mercenary about how much of each skill set you need. In general I am a fan of balance. Instead of being great at either end of the spectrum focus on being competent engaging targets at close range quickly all the way out to putting accurate hate on folks a few football fields away. However if I had to get pegged into a more specific answer I would lean towards CQB for civilians whose rifle concept of use is defensive. The reason is that they are far more likely to fight up close than far away. Yes if you stand in the middle of the road in front of the house you can probably see pretty far, however the odds of you being there with somebody on the other end 400 meters away shooting at you are low. On the other hand getting in a gunfight with somebody in your house or trying to jack your car is considerably higher.

I agree with Max that most 'tactical training' is a bit square range  focused. However I look at it differently. This training is weapons manipulation. Teaching folks to engage targets, reload and clear malfunctions, etc. While some folks sell it as such this is not IMO tactics. It could be argued this is teaching you how to fight as a civilian in a close quarters situation to which I would agree. However if you want to remove some qualifiers, maybe add some friends and such you get into what I consider tactical training. How to move and engage targets, alone or as part of a team.

The two things are sort of different. Think of weapons manipulations as punching and tactics as boxing. Both are important. Weapons manipulations are essential but they sort of happen in a vacuum.  Tactics and small unit training like the stuff Mountain Guerilla and Max Velocity teach to be able to put use your weapons manipulation skills into the realistic environment of the two way range.

Anyway those are my thoughts on that.

React To Contact, Break Contact and Insurgent Operational Planning

I talked about Battle Drills awhile back. Recently Max Velocity talked about Reacting to Contact. We label the steps differently but basically do the same thing. I will get into it a bit but do not feel the need to write it from memory or get fancy paraphrasing FM 7-8. Either you know how to do it and I'm wasting my time or you don't and me writing about it for a couple paragraphs will not fix the problem so I'm wasting my time. For those without an Infantry or Special Operations background Max's book Contact (my review here) is a great starting point. In that mythical time when I have a hundredish dollars of preparedness money which is not spoken for picking up a few copies to hand out would be a good idea.

Anyway in the US Army React to Contact is a Battle Drill. It is the 2nd one according to the copy of MF 7-8 I'm looking at. Personally I think it should probably be number 1 because it is the most frequently used and more importantly it is the base for platoon/ squad attack and break contact.

React to contact is the classing 2 groups stumble into each other situation. To cover it very briefly the element in contact returns fire and seeks cover. Anyone who can see what is going on yells the direction, distance and disposition (CONTACT LEFT, 200 meters, 2 personnel in a ditch or whatever) so everybody in that element can put fire onto them. If people need to move (crawl) to a different location to put fire on this element they will. The patrol's leader will make the assessment of whether they can achieve fire superiority and maneuver on the bad guys or whether they should break contact. At this point they attack or break contact.

I would in fact argue platoon/ squad attack (as per the battle drill it's a hasty attack really, not a deliberate one/ raid/ ambush) and break contact are really just subsets of react to contact. Anyway moving on.

The decision to attack or break contact has a lot of variables. A cohesive well trained force that happens to patrol into an enemy element that is larger but unprepared or outright screwing off/ sleeping/ eating without significant security can defeat them. A squad wiping out a platoon in this fashion is not implausible.

As Max discussed sometimes a small element can not achieve fire superiority. Sometimes the other guy has more soldiers or bigger weapons or key terrain, whatever.  Conventional forces are unlikely to just break contact though they may adjust their locations. If they are unable to achieve fire superiority typically they will try to fix the enemy or at failing that hold up in a small area defense until reinforcement arrives via additional personnel or CAS/ CCA/ Fires.  The reason for this is that in a counter insurgency (COIN) type unconventional environment time is on the conventional forces side. Almost without exception (the exception typically being massed pre planned enemy attacks) they have more friends and weapons coming than the insurgents/ guerrillas do. The longer the fight goes the better it is for the conventional forces and the worse it is for the G's.

For guerilla's/ insurgents/ whatever the word of the day is the question is equally simple with the exact opposite answer. If I were a guerrilla small unit leader in the stumble into another force situation we would break contact probably 8/10 times. The only times we would not break contact would if the enemy force was very small and isolated (2-3 guys that clearly are not a point or security team for a larger element) or a situation that is too good not to exploit (a few enemy soldiers boozing it up in the woods, a high value individual whose vehicle broke down on the side of the road, etc).

John Mosby has debunked the .308 battle rifle 'far ambush' fantasy such that I do not need to talk about it. His point that infantrymen win fights by closing with and destroying the enemy is correct and valid.

In my opinion guerilla's should only fight if they have no other choice or are confident they will win. Guerilla's need to fight when their advantages can be used and their weaknesses mitigated. If a guerrilla force makes contact with the enemy in any situation they are not sure they can win with few to no casualties on their side and a clean get away they need to break contact.

Furthermore coming back to something I have touched on before it is my personal opinion that guerrilla's should not only fight when they can win but when it serves a purpose. Guerrilla's are very often outnumbered, their medical care systems are poor and getting trained replacement personnel is problematic. My point is that G's shouldn't be doing ambushes for the sake of ambushes. Guerrillas can not trade 1-1 casualties with the enemy, they will run out of men and lose by default. Guerrillas should be conducting operations to deter the enemy from patrolling their safe haven areas, gather intelligence, attack key (military) infrastructure or supply/ log convoys to put pressure on the enemies logistics or whatever.

My point is that guerrillas should only fight when they can win and that win serves a greater purpose. Anyway that's my .02 cents on that. As always input is welcome.

An Interesting Discussion on Load Out's Part 1 of 2

Recently there were some very useful articles about packing rucks and living in the field by Mountain Guerrilla HERE, American Mercenary HERE and Max Velocity HERE. I have not written my own to go along with them because the overlap is so significant. It would not really bring much value for you to know I like 5 pair of socks instead of 4, carry lots of baby wipes and make sure to have a fleece watch cap even in the summer. Instead I want to look at it from a different angle. Today I want to look at ways to tailor a load to meet your needs for a particular scenario/ mission. 

As you see by reading the previously mentioned articles there are more commonalities than differences. The way I think of it is like bread. The differences between one and another are generally smaller than a non baker would suspect. A slightly different type of flour, maybe some cinnamon and butter, you get the idea. The point of this is that if somebody is making bread with 3 pounds of dried beans, pepper and pickles I will not be lining up for a slice. 

So we need to look at the reasoning behind different load out's. In the most simple sense we could break variances down into environmental conditions/ mission and personal preference. So let us talk about them both in turn.

Environmental Conditions:

Weather is an enormous factor that you cannot ignore. Without the right gear in cold weather you will die. A poncho liner to sleep in is fine for winter in Florida but in Michigan you probably will not make it through the first night. Often a summer load out and a supplementary heavier winter load out makes sense. 

Local conditions matter significantly. For example it might be hot in both Georgia and Arizona but one has lots of water and the other hardly any. Down here in the Southwest and in the dry parts of the inland west water is a serious consideration. A man on foot will have a very hard time carrying enough in many places. Best case without significant local primitive knowledge a person is stuck to fairly defined routes between reliable sources of water. This was the case for the US Soldiers during the Indian Wars. Folks who are stuck to a clearly defined path are easy to avoid or ambush at ones choosing.

The environment is also a consideration in terms of how much food one could reasonably collect and how easily they could collect it.  

Mission:
This is definitely where we are going to see our biggest variances (that make sense).

I might be slightly off on the facts here but somewhere after WWI the Brits, French and Germans did independent studies on the load soldiers can sustainably carry while remaining combat effective. They all came to the conclusion that it was 1/3rd of body weigh. Call an average guy 180 pounds and that gives about 60 pounds to work with. (For ladies I think it is more like 1/4 of body weight.) To be candid this is talking about young, healthy military aged men. I doubt half of the folks reading this could walk with 1/3rd of their body weight (1/4 for ladies) all day long then fight afterwords. 

The point here is to figure out what your fundamental goal is and move from there. If you are going to be fighting people then carry the stuff to do that, if you need to gather enough food to survive then carry the stuff to do that. You get the idea.

A rifle, ammo and body armor get heavy in a hurry. At the risk of guessing my fighting load is between 15 and twenty pounds without body armor or 30 and 35 pounds with it.That is a pretty basic setup too: rifle w/ 8 mags, an IFAK, a small utility knife, my Glock and a spare mag or two. A setup with more mags, a day or two worth of food, some snivel gear, a poncho/ liner and whatnot could easily weigh 30+ pounds before armor. 

That means if I want to carry a full fighting load there are about 30 pounds left for sustainment. That means for all but the shortest trips in the mildest climates we are looking more towards not starving or freezing to death than full bellies and comfort. Not a bad thing necessarily just something to remember. It sort of sets you up to make the packing easier.

On the other hand depending on the scenario you might not need or even want that much fire power. I know it's sacrilegious (and can't see myself doing it but then again I can pack the weight) to even say that but if the overall risk is low and you need the weight for other essential life sustaining stuff that might be worth thinking about.

In general short trips tend to favor carrying mostly consumables such as food and water. At some point as trips get longer there is a gradual tipping in favor of tools and things that can produce food vs consumables. Granted we could take a hard look at the practicality of 300 mile trips on foot, let alone playing Batman in the Boondocks but that isn't what we are talking about today.

 I've completely lost focus on where this is going so for today we are going to wrap it up. More will come tomorrow or later in the week


 

9 Considerations for the Lone Wolf

Max Velocity started the topic and then American Mercenary added to it. Time for me to toss .02 cents into the topic.

1) You do not want to fight. It doesn't matter if you retired yesterday as an E-9 as a JSOC Jedi from the coolest Tier 1 unit. Five rednecks with rifles probably have your number, if not today then next week.

2) Force multipliers matter even more when you have less force. I would call a guy with a NOD equal to 2 or 3 guys without them at night. If you can possibly afford it get body armor and NODs.

3) Ex filtration is probably more important than the actual operation itself. One guy can't shoot his way out of much and there is nobody to drag you off should you get shot or break an ankle. You can miss shots/ have bombs fail or whatever all the time if you can get away. Sure it sucks but you can always try again. On the other hand if you kill a tank then get blown up trying to get away you are dead. If you cannot figure out a very solid exfil plan it's probably better not to run the op. Live to fight another day is the optimal phrase.

4) Have a realistic op tempo. The reason cool JSOC guys or even plain old Infantryman can maintain the operational tempo's they do is that they have a bunch of support. People are gathering intel for them, others are planning operations, some more folks are fixing their vehicles, others are doing logistics, making food and such. Since a lone wolf does not have people doing any of those things they have to do it them self. Remember that gathering intel, planning, caching weapons, doing necessary maintenance and dealing with logistics is the stuff that lets you do the more gratifying part.

5) Be realistic about what you can and cannot do. Like AM said you probably want to lean more towards assassinations than harassment. No point getting offed trying to shoot some Joey. On the other hand doing a 1 man infiltration of a Brigade sized FOB to kill a General Officer probably is not realistic either. (Remember #3 Exfil)

Put in the time and do pattern and link analysis. In doing it you will probably find there are some good targets that are not very well guarded. Whacking the proverbial lynch pin is less sexy than offing VIP's or blowing up tanks but it is arguably more effective and certainly more realistic for a lone wolf.

6) Do not set patterns. Keeping a little threat wheel of your actions is a good way to avoid setting patterns. Also taking a couple months off of kinetic work is a good way to get other things done, plan, rest and let the enemy forget about you.

7) Have a reason to be wherever you are as much of the time as possible. Maybe you like running and use that to do some recon. Maybe take up bird watching to explain always being out in the middle of nowhere with bino's and a sack lunch. The point is to be able to explain why you are where you are in a way that is sufficient to the casual contact with a member of the other side's security apparatus.

8) Caches. A lone wolf is going to be living at home, probably still going to work and all that. Some caches are to spread out your proverbial eggs. Others are more operational in nature. In North Ireland the IRA were great at this. Their shooters would just be some guys in a truck until they grabbed their guns/ explosives from a pre planned cache a couple minutes before go time and went into action. Almost immediately after they ditched the guns, probably in another hiding spot, and vanished into the population. For a lone wolf maybe this would mean stashing a pistol or a rifle in a good spot, grabbing it and going into action then either hiding it again or worst case ditching it. Especially if he takes some steps to avoid fingerprints, gunpowder resin, etc and gets out of the immediate area a lone wolfs odds of getting away are pretty good. Certainly far better than if he tries running off wearing cammies and carrying a rifle through the street or woods.


9) Make some friends so you can stop being a lone wolf. Do this now. Get out of your shell and meet some like minded people.

Book Review: Patriot Dawn The Resistance Rises by Max Velocity

Today I am pleased to be reviewing Max Velocity's newest book Patriot Dawn: The Resistance Rises. The basic plot is as follows. A veteran and his family in the DC/ Northern Virginia area find themselves in a grid down collapse type scenario and simultaneously faced with an oppressive regime. They have some misadventures and end up involved in the resistance against said oppressive regime. Any further than that will get seriously into spoiler territory. To the usual format.

The Good: A plausible scenario is always a good start. Some of Max's book ready like the news these days. The book offered some seriously great advice for anybody looking to fight a guerrilla war against an oppressive regime. Without using buzz words to sound knowledgeable Max laid out some very good information. It would be difficult to overstate the amount of good information that is in this book. To put it into perspective I have been in the Army for awhile, done a whole lot of training, deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, read bunches of books and I got a lot out of this book. Just maybe some day having a hard copy of this book around could be handy.

The Bad: The characters were a bit flat and at times they related to each other in ways that needed to be better developed to seem superficial and could have been better developed. I took this with a grain of salt for two reasons. First Max is not a professional fiction author; expecting him to write like one would not be realistic. Secondly the parts these parts did not really detract too much from the book. Sort of like Patriots it is halfway a how to wrapped in a fiction novel so the lessons aren't lost because Bob and Sue's dialog wasn't perfect.

The Ugly: About a quarter of the way into the book there was a scene that was ridiculous. I do not want to spoil the details but the main character and his family somehow killed several guys who had better weapons, superior positioning, initiative and numbers on their side. It was ridiculous and in my experience totally implausible. If it would have been hammed up a bit more it could have been a scene out the The Survivalist; all they would have needed is to have the main character dual wielding stainless Detonics Combat Master 1911's while riding a Harley and smoking a cigarillo.

I got pretty annoyed and almost stopped reading the book. Figured if this was going to be the way it went why waste my time. However thankfully I continued reading. There were no parts like that and the rest of the book was awesome.

Overall Assessment. I found this book enjoyable and very informative. Strongly suspect you will also find it a worthwhile read. It paired with Max's nonfiction book Contact would give about as much of an edge in surviving a nasty situation as two books can. If you can find a sale that is cool but don't hold off to find one. Get yourself a hard copy of Patriot Dawn sooner instead of later.

For the sake of full disclosure I received a copy of this book to review.

What Did You Do To Prepare This Week and EDC Contest Voting Begins

I ordered a Burris MTAC 1-4x scope and a La Rue mount to go with it. Hopefully they will get here in time to shoot this weekend. Did some dry fire practice and some decent PT though I failed to lift any weights because I am lazy and weak.

Set up a clothes line for Wifey and stashed enough stuff to do a couple more just in case. Got a few odds and ends of stuff to put in the pantry. Also I got a detachable carry handle/ A2 sight for a rifle. It's previous rear sight was lost or misplaced in one of the last many moves. Going to zero that suckers windage before painting it.

Finished reading Max Velocity's newest book Patriot Dawn: The Resistance Rises.

Also unrelated to my weeks preps as you can see by the widget on the right side of the blog voting has started for our super awesome EDC Contest. It is going to run for a week ending on Sunday. Any ties will be broken by me. If the results are totally shotgunned out so the first place is just a vote away from second, third is 2 votes behind, 4th 1 behind that and there are 20 other entries within a couple votes I reserve the right to use this round of voting as a run off. However I do not want or plan to do that.

Anyway please vote (once) for the entry you think is best. I will be reposting the EDC Contest Roll Up throughout the week so it stays easily accessible. Moving back to the topic at hand.

What did you do to prepare this week?

What Did You Do To Prepare This Week?

Yeah it is Wednesday. I sort of forgot to do this earlier in the week. PT and the usual stuff happened. Some dry fire training also. Picked up a few extra household items to stash away. Also got another 200 rounds of CCI Mini Mags which is nice. Can never have too many good .22 shells.

At the store I stumbled into 2 more of the Energizer LED lanterns that we just love. These came with inserts to run on AA's instead of D's. This is significant because it should mean we can run AA's in the D inserts with the other ones we have. I have got to test them and see if they work with rechargeable batteries.

Been fiddling with the loadout for my HPG Kit Bag. I use it rucking and trail running more than I planned so have lightened it up a little bit. Still reading Max Velocity's book Patriot Dawn: The Resistance Rises. It just keeps getting better. Almost done and a review will follow shortly.

Anyway that is what has been going on here. What have you been up to?

A Great Book and a Terrible Light

I have been reading Max Velocity's new book Patriot Dawn: The Resistance Rises. I am very impressed, the book is downright awesome. Will do a full review but to save you some time just buy it. Onto a less pleasant subject.

The LED Lenser P3 AFS flashlight I have been carrying around. I didn't link to it because somebody might not read this carefully and end up buying this piece of junk. I got the small 1 AAA version which in fairness may be part of the problem.

The only nice things I have to say about this product are that it is small and looks like it's well made. However looks can be deceiving.  This light has a lot of show and very little go. Maybe if they put a bit more energy into making the light actually work instead of making it look like a quality product this review would be different.

The run time could be measured in seconds. Also the darn thing will just run out of batteries spontaneously without even being used. Can't count how many times I have grabbed it to use and found it dead. There are more problems.

The pocket clip has fallen off leaving it floating in my pocket. The darn adjustable front piece somehow worked its way off once. Basically pieces fall off the darn thing randomly.

I would use it as a backup but since it (even turned off) goes through batteries like Charley Sheen through coke and hookers it wouldn't even work to live in the glove box of a car or something.

My expectations would be very different if it was a $15 light but it isn't. This piece of junk cost me about $40 (can't remember exactly) which puts it in range of a lot of many Streamlight and a couple Surefire offerings. Offerings I should have purchased instead. At this price point for a stupid flashlight it should frickin work.

Can't say everything made by these folks sucks thought I will be avoiding it all. In any case I can say the LED Lenser P3 AFS definitely sucks a lot. This is a firm do not buy.

Does anybody have a smallish flashlight with a pocket clip they have been using for awhile that actually works? In a perfect world if would be reasonably affordable.

From The Web

Brownells sold 3.5 years of magazines in 72 hours. I helped with that myself by making a last minute PMAG order.

A teaser chapter for Max Velocities new fiction piece Patriot Dawn.

Body Armor: A Tale of Two Vests

Well my rifle plates finally arrived yesterday from Spectre. From  making the order to my doorstep took a day short of 7 weeks. The plates are covered in this thick foamy stuff which isn't a bad thing.

In the meantime I kinda stumbled into a nice set of soft body armor.

I was going to write a post about body armor but realized I have already done that. We will hit some new points and rehash the older ones.

Some folks folks argue that armor slows them down. Sure there are some situations where you are best off with a rifle, camelback, 2 spare mags and an IFAK but those are few and far between. Long fast movements with a very low probability of contact like say an old school foot messenger in a pretty safe area would be a good example. To put it into perspective a PC with a set of plates weighs about 20 pounds. Assuming you are of a healthy weight and in shape it is pretty doable for most situations.  Everyone makes different choices but there are few situations where I would choose not to wear armor.

It is true that body armor will not stop everything. It is not a magical talisman that prevents being shot in the pelvis, face or extremities. That being said it is the best compromise between protection and mobility for most scenarios.

A plate carrier with rifle plates is a good option for a rather crazy scenario. They probably would have sold really well during the LA Riots or Katrina. Max Velocity said something worthwhile on the subject "Overall, I feel that anytime I am going to be carrying my battle rifle, for whatever reason, I want to be wearing at least a plate carrier with load out to carry my first line ammo scales plus IFAK and ancillaries. I could be wearing that in the low profile way I described, or openly in a tactical way."

 Anyway here is the Shellback Banshee PC with plates. To put the cost issue into perspective I am into this PC and plates for somewhere between $450 and $475. Not cheap by any means but doable with a bit of planning or by selling a gun that has been collecting dust in the back of the safe.

I think the reason body armor gets no love from a lot of the survivalist community is that it isn't sexy. Folks have no problem spending 300-500 dollars on a gun. Heck some folks do not have a problem spending that much on accessories for a gun or even on a new knife.  A blog friend of mine who no joke has well over 50 grand in guns described body armor as "ruinously expensive". He would be infinitely better off selling a couple guns and getting a PC for every family member.

As shown it is currently wearing a Condor double Kangaroo pouch because the cost was less than half the price of a set of HSGI double taco's. This is set up for home defense. (Yeah my load out is 3x rifle and 3x pistol mags. If I can't handle the job with that it's not getting done.) Not shown are a pair of pants with a holster and an IFAK stuffed in the cargo pocket. It is easy to take off that pouch and I am still kinda fiddling with whether the mags are best suited on the PC or belt.

You aren't going to conceal a PC with a bunch of pouches on it though a slick one is relatively doable. Worn under a sweatshirt or wind breaker (obviously in appropriate weather) somebody would have to be looking for body armor to see it. Keeping your mags and such in a chest rig lets you go slick PC, only mags/ kit or both which are options that suit a lot of scenarios.

The soft armor's role to me is for a variety of more mundane scenarios. Stuff like buying/ selling things or otherwise carrying around large amounts of cash. Maybe a trip to a stop and rob to get a few things when the situation is a bit iffy. There are a variety of scenarios that fall short of running around with an M4 and a full OEF style load out but aren't quite normal either. A glock, soft armor and a couple 33rd Glock mags in the cargo pocket or murse would be about as ready as you can be and still look fairly normal/ fit into normal society.

A line I wrote that Commander Zero quoted is worthwhile in terms of where body armor falls in the grand priority list. "There is a time for everything. If somebody asked me whether they should get a couple hundred rounds of buckshot and pistol ammo for guns they have less than a hundred rounds for and put the remaining bucks into a currently empty pantry or get a plate carrier I would say food and bullets. On the other hand if they were looking at getting a 4th handgun/rifle/whatever or a new optic vs body armor I would say to get the armor for sure. That 4th handgun/ rifle could certainly be useful but a plate carrier could save your life.

Finally to close I will paraphrase John Mosby aka Mountain Guerilla “If you have 6 AR’s in the safe but not body armor and night vision you’re screwing your friends and buddies."
 
Where does body armor fit into your defensive setup?

Are you one of those guys we talked about with a safe full of guns but no body armor? If so why?

Tab Clearing

Interesting tips on frugal living by Patrice at her excellent blog Rural Revolution.

A short fiction piece about a patrol taking contact by Max Velocity.

Some actual good news with a big hat tip to SHTF Blog. There really are good people out there.

Linkeage Update

Updated the old Blog Roll to include
Combat Studies Group
Max Velocity Tactical
 Both of these guys have really added some value to the conversation recently and are worth checking out.

 Also My Family Survival Plan

 Seasoned Citizen Prepper is a site run by John Rourke of World Survival Online that deals specifically with issues for older folks which has value as we aren't getting any younger. I touched on some of these issues in a recent post.

What Did You Do To Prepare This Week?

I got some trigger time which was cool. Stumbled into a bunch of camping gear which is pretty awesome. Also I read Max Velocities book Contact: A Tactical Manual for Post Collapse Survival as well as the new Jim Rawles fiction book Founders. Picked up some interesting ideas from both.

Also while moving stuff I did some informal ammo inventories. On the plus side we have more 7.62x39 and shotgun shells than I thought. On the downside we have only about 150 rounds of .357 magnum ammunition. It is not totally critical as we have a decent stash of .38 special but I would like to get the most out of those big revolvers. In any case that will have to be remedied in short order. A few more bricks of .22 and some small game  loads for the 12 gauge would be nice though they aren't critical. Heck 2 more cases of each caliber we stock would be great but unfortunately resources are finite.

Anyway what have you been up to this week?

Book Review: Contact by Max Velocity

Today we will be reviewing Contact: A Tactical Manual for Post Collapse Survival by Max Velocity. Max has a background in both the British and American armies and has deployed multiple times. Certainly he seems to know what he's talking about. The basic premise of this book is just what the title says a tactical manual for post collapse survival. In this regard I would say it is an overall success.

The Good: If I had to give someone a single book to train them to fight and survive this would be a really good candidate. I appreciate that this book sticks to it's purpose not trying to be another everything in one book type survival manual and also hit on food storage, lighting, sanitation, etc all. The guy knows his strengths and sticks to them instead of getting over his head in different subjects. I sure appreciated that.

The basic concept of distilling military manuals and tactics into plain and simple language for a militia or survivalist audience is not particularly new. Max does it better than most and all in one place. The resulting book is a solid resource. Most folks would get bogged down in FM 7-8 and lost with acronym's and considerations for non applicable threats like attack aviation or technology typical civilians do not posses.

I particularly liked the chapter on vehicle movement which is available more or less in it's entirety at WRSA. It is definitely worth taking a hard look at potentially with some action to follow. Many chapters have interesting little pieces based on likely survivalist scenarios that relates them to military tactics. Seriously good stuff.

The Bad: The book gets a bit excessive in terms of 'translating' terms and acronyms into plain English. At times it seemed this was being done just for the sake of itself without really relating them to anything survivalists would need to do. Probably 7-10% of the book could be removed by cutting this unnecessary  stuff out.

Additionally while the book stays out of having the obligatory food storage, sanitation, communication and maintenance chapters that are almost totally generic it slips into firearms training, medical and some other areas. The piece on shooting which is 2-3 pages without pictures or diagrams (we will revisit this) is awkward and not helpful. The piece on casualties aka medical is a confusing mix of explaining US Army trauma care, partial lists of components for various kits and brief description of how to treat various injuries that is particularly painful. I am not entirely sure what the answer is. Maybe more space could have been put to these areas if other parts (like explaining needless acronyms) were omitted. Maybe fewer such areas could be covered at more length. 

The Ugly: This book is sorely in need of pictures. The parts on mounted and dismounted movement were explained with some basic sketches. The usual dot people and vehicles moving with arrow type stuff. The rest of the book would have really benefited from pictures.

Overall Assessment: If you want a book that breaks down a lot of useful Army type stuff into civilian this is a good option. In fact it is the best I have seen to date. I can't think of a better single book for a survivalist without a military background to use to train and plan from. That being said it probably isn't for everybody. Folks with a solid combat arms background probably don't need this book for their own purposes. They would be better off referring directly to applicable FM's or TM's. For twenty bucks one could have a good hard copy reference that translates basic military tactics into civilian which could come in handy some day.

Anyway if this book interests you it can be purchased here.