Category: Survival

Situational Awareness

Another MavPhil public service message:  Don't walk around with your head up your app!

You're a dumbass with a smartphone if you don't understand that it is perhaps the greatest enemy of situational awareness. 

And if you pack heat, bear this in mind: if you have to go to guns, there's probably been a failure of  situational awareness. (Steve Tarani)  Head on a swivel! (Sebastian Gorka)

Memorize and implement Colonel Jeff Cooper's situational awareness color codes!

Don't be a pollyanna.  (And don't confuse her with polyanna, an Anna with multiple personality disorder.)

Gun Semantics

Under 14 minutes, by Massad Ayoob, one of the best. Words mean things, especially in a court of law. Precise, penetrating, and practical. As civil society collapses around us, and more and more of us must look to our own physical defense, you must also know how to avoid verbal entrapment by the prosecutorial shysters of the Left. 'Shyster,' as you know, is from the German sheissen, to shit. (I shit kid you not.)

Rod Dreher on Critics of the Benedict Option

A re-post from 20 July 2015.  Things are falling apart so fast that July 2015 seems  like a long time ago, even to an old man for whom tempus fugit is an understatement. The original posting occurred roughly four and a half years before the annus horribilis of 2020. And here we are more than half-way through 2022. The Amerikan police state is metastasizing as we speak. 87,000 new IRS agents armed with semi-automatic pistols and carbines to persuade the hyper-lawyered billionaire fat cats to 'pay their fair share' — to ape the idiom of Fauxcahontas Warren? Think again you of the ovine and bovine and usefully-idiotic persuasion. It is one of the several modes of what I am now calling the Assault on the Middle. More on this, anon.

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Excerpt:

You keep talking about the Benedict Option, but you never say what it is. Give us the formula.

I keep telling you that there is no formula! We are going to have to be experimental, because we have never faced a post-Christian culture. The first point is for Christians to wake up and face reality. There will be no “take back our country” moment, because we have lost, and lost decisively. We are rapidly de-Christianizing. True, we have a long way to go before we get to European rates of secularization and religious indifference, but the trajectory is the same. Rather than change the world, the world is changing the churches. The power of popular culture is overwhelming, and in ways that many Christians scarcely grasp — and this, as MacIntyre says, is part of our predicament.

Granted, there is no formula:  there are different ways of implementing the Benedict Option.  But there ought to be discussion — not provided by Dreher in the above-referenced piece — of a potential problem with one form of the Option's implementation.  

Suppose you and yours join a quasi-monastic community out in the middle of nowhere where you live more or less 'off the grid,' home-school your kids, try to keep alive and transmit our Judeo-Christian and Graeco-Roman traditions, all in keeping with that marvellous admonition of Goethe in Faust:

Was du ererbt von deinen Vätern hast,
erwirb es, um es zu besitzen!
 
What from your fathers you  received as heir,
Acquire if  you would possess it. (tr. W. Kaufmann)

So now you are out in the desert or the forest or in some isolated place free of the toxic influences of a society in collapse.  The problem is that you are now a very easy target for the fascists of the Left.  You and yours are all in one place, far away from the rest of society and its infrastructure.  All the fascists have to do is trump up some charges, of child-abuse, of gun violations, whatever.  The rest of society considers you kooks and benighted bigots and religious fanatics and won't be bothered if you are wiped off the face of the earth.  You might go the way of the Branch Davidians.

Is this an alarmist scenario?  I hope it is.  But the way things are going, one ought to give careful thought to one's various withdrawal options. 

It might be better to remain in diaspora in the cities and towns, spread out, in the midst of people and infrastructure the fascists of the Left will not target.  A sort of subversive engagement from within may in the long run be better than spatial withdrawal.  One can withdraw spiritually without withdrawing spatially.  One the other hand, we are spatial beings, and perhaps not merely accidentally, so the question is a serious one:  how well can one withdraw spiritually while in the midst of towns and cities and morally corrupt and spiritually dead people?

And then there is the vexed and vexing question of armed resistance.  This is especially vexing for Christians.  Should we meet violence with violence, or let ourselves and our culture be destroyed?  On Christian metaphysics, this world is not an illusion.  It is not a dream one can hope to wake up from.  On the other hand, it is not ultimately real: it, and we who sojourn through it, are in statu viae. What then should be the measure and mode of our defense of it?

If you think violence is to be met with violence, then I advise you to remain in diaspora in the cities and towns, spread out, in the midst of people and infrastructure the fascists of the Left will not target.

We are indeed living in very interesting times.  How can one be bored?

Go Gray!

The car of a neighbor sports a bumper sticker: "I vote pro-gun!"

I say go gray.  Never advertise your political views when you are out and about in public.  These are dangerous times as polarization peaks and comity collapses. You must of course speak out, stand up, and prepare.  I am not advocating timid withdrawal from the fray. But there are more and less prudent ways to proceed. Prudence, you will recall, is one of the cardinal virtues.

I have more to say on this topic at Substack in Are You a Gray Man?

What is the Greatest Threat to Situational Awareness?

The 'smart' phone. Every day I see people rendered deaf, DUMB, and blind  to their surroundings by their phones.  Don't be a dumbass with a smartphone!

Don't even think of packing heat in these days of rampant, Dem-induced, crime until you have thought through the whole business of situational awareness.  Here is a video for you. 

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A reader familiar with these matters comments:

I agree with almost everything Ken says in this video. You've got to see it coming or your weapons will do you no good. Where I think he goes wrong is when he talks about situational awareness giving you time to decide. No. There is no time in the event for deliberation unless the threat is far away. Then you consider whether to engage or flee. But there is no running away if the threat is a few feet away and coming at you. And no time to decide what to do. You need to react with your weapon by trained reflex. It should actually surprise you how fast you draw and shoot. With practice you can draw and shoot a lot faster than you deliberate. At the gas pump always have your cc in your left hand and your right hand on your weapon. If someone jumps out from behind your car or the pump, bring you gun up across your chest into a close point and shoot. Practice this until it happens very fast, by reflex.
 
Deliberate now how you are going to train yourself to respond to a threatening sit. In the event surprise yourself by how fast you respond.

Are You a Gray Man?

In contemporary Internet lingo, a gray man is typically a prepper who seeks to be unobtrusive and to blend in.  He is 'gray' in that he tries not to call attention to himself, his beliefs, and his stock of guns, ammo, food, and other survival supplies that he hopes will see him and his family through a collapse of the social order. His 'bug-out bag' is at the ready should he need to split for his hideaway.  He worries whether he can make his escape without drawing attention to himself.

Grasshopper and Ant _by_Charles_H._BennettIt is the old Aesop tale of the Ant and Grasshopper revived and updated. The Grasshopper spends the summer in the pleasures of the moment, dancing and singing, giving no thought to the future. Comes the winter he must beg the Ant for provender, whereupon the And delivers a stern rebuke, telling the Grasshopper to dance the winter away.

The latter-day Grasshopper does not beg; he demands, in concert  with others of his shiftless ilk.  He cannot be reached by any rebukes or sermonizing. He is a dangerous hombre who poses a lethal threat.  The latter-day Ant appreciates the threat and seeks to meet it by being both armed and unobtrusive.

He who provokes an evil-doer bears some responsibility for his evil-doing.

The gray man is the opposite of the 'tacti-cool' dude who foolishly flaunts his preparedness and advertises his tools.  His truck sports NRA, Sig Sauer, and other decals. A bumpersticker reads, "I'm your huckleberry." The 'tacti-cool' dude carries open or with inadequate concealment. His T-shirt is tight so that you can admire his marvellous pectorals, but he 'prints' like crazy. If questioned, he insists on his Second Amendment rights. He is right to do so, but nonetheless imprudent. 'Liberals' have no respect for the rights he invokes, and there is no reaching them by any appeal to reason.

Imprudent advertising leads to pointless conversations and worse. Years ago, a man questioned my open carry deep in the Superstition Wilderness, claiming that guns are illegal in a National Park. I pointed out that we were in a National Forest.  I don't think I got through to the idiot. But I did marvel at his foolishness in arguing with an armed man in the middle of nowhere.

There are foolish people who don't know what 'brandish' means. They see a man with a gun strapped to his belt and they call the cops claiming that some guy is 'brandishing' a firearm. This can lead to an unpleasant encounter with law enforcement. The wise man, understanding human nature, avoids contacts with cops, knowing full well their propensity for arrogance and overreach. Power corrupts. Power suborns moral sense.  I say this as a hard-assed law and order conservative who believes in the death penalty.  I believe that said penalty is not only morally permissible, but also in some cases morally obligatory.

And then there are the bad guys who, seeing an armed man, will calculate whether they can take his weapon from him. Or they may be planning an attack of some sort. The armed citizen, seen to be armed, will be the first target.

So I advise a certain grayness in these and related matters.  Exercise your rights, but do not flaunt them. Stand on principles, but don't sacrifice prudence to principles.

Grasshopper by Lefebvre

Wikipedia, The Ant and the Grasshopper:


Because of the influence of La Fontaine's Fables, in which La cigale et la fourmi stands at the beginning, the cicada then became the proverbial example of improvidence in France: so much so that Jules-Joseph Lefebvre (1836–1911) could paint a picture of a female nude biting one of her nails among the falling leaves and be sure viewers would understand the point by giving it the title La Cigale. The painting was exhibited at the 1872 Salon with a quotation from La Fontaine, Quand la bise fut venue (When the north wind blew), and was seen as a critique of the lately deposed Napoleon III, who had led the nation into a disastrous war with Prussia.

Why No Talk of the EMP Threat?

'Sheltering at home' is no big deal with a functioning grid and all that it makes possible such as working at home and ordering goods and services online.  Would it be 'racist' of me to suggest that the Chinese might want to destroy our grid with an electromagnetic pulse attack?  

Leftists are not very good at threat prioritization. Obama, you will recall, pointed to 'global warming' as the numero uno threat to humanity.  I understand that this 'threat' did not stop him from investing in beach-front property. 

And what did Obama and his bunch do about the EMP threat? Precisely nothing.  Unlike Trump.

The Chinese Virus Wake-Up Call

Good will come of the current pandemic. People will learn how to be more self-reliant and less reliant on government.   They will learn how to prepare for emergencies.  They will learn how to slow down, prepare their own meals, stay home, travel less, read books, be more thoughtful and introspective, repair things, and anally cleanse without toilet paper. (No, I am not advocating a return to the Roman tersorium!) They will finally learn some life skills. Or so I hope.

But most important: we are now in a position as a nation to learn not to rely on enemies for our well-being.  I now hand off to John Moody:

For instance, with China’s economy still reeling from the economic impact of the disease, maybe it’s time for America to rethink our insane over-dependence on China for everything from clothes, to computers, to smart-phones, to even the medicines we need to combat corona—which, despite politically correct howls to remain mute about it, started in China!

Yes, China makes things cheaper than Americans choose to make these days. Yes, China, when it is not busy imprisoning political dissidents and stealing our technology, has made huge advances in its manufacturing capabilities. And yes, it has proven to be a trading partner that takes advantage of us, but keeps pumping out the cheap consumer goods Americans love nearly as much as their freedom. 

Attention, America: that freedom is at risk. The massive shutdown of China’s industrial output in response to the corona scourge has demonstrated just how thoroughly we have outsourced our manufacturing might in the name of saving a few bucks.

Read the rest.

The leftist scum who are attempting to use the current crisis to attack President Trump are attacking the very man who alone has the courage to oppose the globalist, borderless madness.

Beware of Projecting . . .

. . . your values and attitudes into others. We are not all the same 'deep down,' and we don't all want the same things. You say you value peace and social harmony? So do I. But some are bellicose right out of the box. They love war and thrive on conflict, and not just verbally.  

Liberal 'projectionism' — to give it a name — can get your irenic ass killed.

Survivalism

Many survivalists are extremists. But extremism is everywhere, in the longevity fanatic, the muscular hypertrophy nut, and so on.

That being said, a  wise man, while hoping  for the best,  prepares for the worst.  But the prepping is kept within reason, where part of being reasonable is maintaining a balanced perspective.  A balanced approach, for me, does not extend to the homemade rain barrels that some recommend.  But I do keep a lot of bottled water and other non-alcoholic potables on hand.  Here are some questions you should ask yourself.

1. Are you prepared to repel a home invasion meeting deadly force with deadly force? Are you prepared for a break down in civil order? 
2. Do you have sufficient food and water to keep you and your family alive for say three weeks?
3. Do you have the battery-operated devices you will need to survive the collapse of the power grid, and enough fresh batteries?
4. Can you put out a fire on your own? 
5. Do you have a sufficient supply of the medications you will need should there be no access to pharmacies?

These are just some of the questions to consider.  But how far will you go with these preparations?  Will you sacrifice the certain present preparing for a disastrous future that may not materialize?  Wouldn't that be foolish?  Wouldn't it be as foolish as the ostrich-like refusal to consider questions like the above?

And then there is the question of suicide, which you ought to confront head on. Do you want to live in the state of nature after the collapse of civil society?  Under what conditions is life worth living?  Civilization is thin ice, a crust easy  to break through, beneath which is  a hell of misery.  (Yes, I know I'm mixing my metaphors.)  When the going gets unbearable, could you see your way clear to providing your spouse with the means of suicide and then killing yourself?  Are there good moral objections to such a course of action? 

Think about these things now while you have time and enjoy peace of mind.