Month: July 2013

When SHTF nobody told me how hard is gonna be and what things I will have to do to survive, there was no training or simulations, through most of the stuff I was going for the first time in my life, and I was hoping it is only temporary situation, it is not going to last for whole year.

Few events opened my eyes, and somehow make me survivor right at the beginning, and I can say I have luck to understand in very early stage how hard it is, and what it takes.

During one of the first bigger events of killing in the streets, I was out together with my friend who also was medical professional.

Fire from machine guns was on people who were standing in front of the main city bread factory, and people started to scream and run over each other.

My first impulse was to run to nearest cover but my friend got down to help some lady, so I stayed one meter next to him.

I was confused about my decision and not sure to stay with him or run. Bullets from machine gun hit him over his legs, and I saw how his knee cap exploded, it looked like some bad movie special effect.

He just looked at his legs, then at me, in silence. Even that was just seconds moments like this feel very long.

I took him by the hands and drag him some 20 or 30 meters to safety. Only there I saw that he was missing his leg under the knee. It stayed with dead lady on the street.

And only then he started to scream.

I used belt to stop bleeding, ambulance still worked in that period. He went to hospital and then evacuated from the city. He survived but never came back.

Lessons learned?

In moments of chaos always listen to your instincts and do not hesitate. Especially if you are involved in situation when someone is shooting at you with high caliber machine gun. Just accept that people will die, and you have to survive. To help others is great thing, to survive is even better, also I realized that human being is so fragile and easy to destroy.

Later I learned some things about weapons and how to use them, so I realize that more firepower does not necessary mean more dangerous and better chance to kill.

Owning a weapon is just absolutely necessary in preparing for a survival scenario, even more in urban survival. You just need to go and get as close as you can to the real stuff while you are doing the preparing and training for the SHTF, so it makes sense to go out and check your preps, to check your gear and yourself.

For example pair of boots that you bought and store for bad days will not be used for walking only, it will be use for running, squatting, jumping, in mud, junk, blood, guts maybe or just running trough a shallow river.

Everything that you have prepared and stored for SHTF will be pushed to the limits.

One thing is to go out into woods nearby and do recording of your weapon testing on some beer bottles with your friends, and after that concluding that particular gun or rifle is best for SHTF, and that you are dangerous dude because your accuracy rules. Some people gonna put that clip on you tube and go home convinced that they are ready and prepared.

In reality you do not know if you are prepared.

A lot of survival stores that sell things sell idea of buy this and you are safe. No you are not. Also you learn more about real urban survival scenario in my survival course and this helps you to mentally be better prepared but real deal when SHTF always comes as surprise.

When time comes again it gonna hit everyone like a hammer. Good news is that when you know you will get hit like that you can recover fast and use your skills, knowledge and preps to make best out of situation.

Using weapon in real life, in real survival situation is something absolutely different from shooting bear bottles, and if you could do some real training that is realistic that would be maybe going to camping with trash bag as a tent, being on camping for 10 days with 10 small cans of food, and 10 liters of water, walking every day for 10 km.

And then on 11th day run few kilometers and then shoot and see how accurate you are when your body is wasting away.

And still the most important thing is missing. While you are shooting at the beer bottles they do not shoot back at you in order to kill you.

During some of the first battles in city I was moving trough the building behind a guy, we both had rifles. He was sweeping the rooms and shooting, it was the closest urban combat as it can be. In the moment when he run out of ammo he used his rifle as something between spear and bat.

Now someone could say why he did not just switch to pistol? He did not have one, also he did not have time to look for ammo. But there I learned how it is useful to have folded stock of rifle when shooting and moving in very confined spaces.

Also I learned that rifle with pretty sharp parts at the barrel can be very handy. He stabbed guy to the cheek, ripping his face down and finishing him on ground.

One of the biggest misconception at the people who do not have fighting experience is what they need to practice.

It is all about pressure. You need to learn:

1. What your weapon can take

In terms of kicking, throwing, how often and when will it malfunction, and what the most common malfunctions are, and how to fix it, of course how to fix it in middle of fight. If you find yourself in the middle of fighting, and your weapon „jams“ do not be as we called “zblesavljen” or in English is probably looking like idiot.

I have seen that: guy is shooting and in the middle of fighting his weapon jammed, and he surprisingly look at the weapon in a „what the f#ck?“ state. And of course in two seconds he ends up dead.

You absolutely need to know how to manage small weapon jams without looking at the weapon, you need to look at the target while you are „repairing“ weapon (clearing the bullet, switching to other magazine etc.)

Other option would be to MOVE immediately when your weapon jams, move to cover in same second, or to dropping it on ground, or on your back, and switching to your other weapon. But you need to learn to do all of above without thinking. You need to train that this becomes automatic.

Small things like how quickly you can put your rifle on your back and a switch to pistol can be difference between life and death, if you somehow „trip“ yourself while you are trying to put rifle on your back in order to take pistol you can end up dead.

2. What you can take

Remember this: while you are shooting at the bad guys, those bad guys will be SHOOTING AT YOU TOO.

So shooting at the beer bottles in the woods with your buddies will not really do all the training you need. I am doing it often, but it just not covering everything.

Fighting and surviving combat means constant moving and outsmarting the guys on the other side, you gonna need to run, squat, throw yourself in the ditch, lay down in all kinds of sh!t and shoot at the same time, and probably fix your rifle from jams, or switch to another weapon.

Do some basic weapon training and learn about line of sight and how to get out off it.

Very great percentage of shooting is done without aiming, just spraying bullets.

It makes sense to do some airsoft or paintball in the woods to check how constant moving change whole game, and what kind of moving makes sense in order to survive gunfight.

For example how often you shoot from your weapon with both hands, dominant and not dominant? In urban fighting you will need switch weapon around very often (moving through the apartments, rooms, around the corners etc.). When you are shooting behind corner, and you are having rifle in your right hand and corner is on your left side it make sense to transfer weapon to left hand. otherwise it is dangerous to stick your left part of body out in order to shoot form right hand.

For all you who have some military experience this all is basic stuff, but I have seen many guys who were killed in stupid ways.

Real gunfight is dynamic thing. Adrenaline is weird thing too, so people can do tremendous things while adrenaline is pumping, but also with lack of training and common sense guy can do tremendously stupid things. I have seen man who was pointing to something and he stood up from the cover, and got shot.

3. How to train yourself

Training is the key. You can not do anything else today except to train very hard.

You can not experience real stuff today of course, but you can take it as close to real stuff as you can. Go out with your friends and think about all possible scenarios. But think about worst case scenarios. SHTF is not gonna wait for nice and sunny weather, you gonna be maybe hungry, dirty. Maybe have to give up your shelter and food storage on second day of SHTF.

Or you gonna be forced to use other weapon that you are not used to. Maybe you gonna be forced to hide for hours hidden under a pile of rubble and then you are gonna be forced to jump out and „kill“ ten beer bottles. Sounds like fun? This is why resilience and mental strength is so important.

Maybe you are gonna be cold and thirsty and in the middle of the battle. One thing is sure – very rarely it goes the way that you planned. So just be ready for many options and do not panic when things go other way. Want to get some funny sounding advice?

Get good at suffering while still being able to work towards a goal.

4. What weapon, caliber, stopping power etc?

It is very hard question (that I get asked a lot). But think about fact that everything today is about mainstream and commercial. And somehow it is more about what other people say is good and not necessarily about what you need and what is good for YOU.

You and your hand kill, weapon is only tool. I have seen fight when man with knife is killing the guy with rifle. He had mastered fighting with knife and had will to kill. Other guy had a rifle only, and he ends up dead. I also seen more than once people shot with rifle bullets still fighting, running for good amount of time. Some of them were not even aware that they are wounded before someone else pointed that out to them.

What I am trying to say, do not expect miracles if you own weapon that is at the moment most popular, having great stopping power, cool reviews. It is about practicing , weapon mastering and correct bullets placement.

I said bullets for a reason, I have seen many things, but I did not see someone survive multiple shots in correct place at the body. Have weapon that is best for your case, and achieve perfection in using it. Do not expect that people will fly back if you shoot them with one bullet from some widely popular weapon and caliber (not talking about shotguns).

So I am not gonna tell you what is the best weapon because what works for me maybe does not work for you or others.

Having a weapon that is too rare, too good or too bad does not make too much sense for me. Do not find yourself in situation when you lose your weapon and pick someone else and then find out that you do not have clue about it, because your weapon was special and rare.

Just have what everyone else around you has, because of gun parts, ammo and you look like everyone else.

Your weapon is only tool to survive, be ready to lose it if you need to lose it, and pick some other from ground in the middle of fight.

I knew a guy who did some scary stuff with rusty shortened M48. He was old and poor looking dude, he played that part good, until he would take out this old gun from under his coat and rob and kill people. Simple strategy but it worked for him. So look around and think what works for you.

If you have experienced combat or heard what matters from veterans please share in comments

Lots of people wrote about George Zimmerman case that followed the shooting of Trayvon Martin.

To sum up story, Zimmerman was local neighborhood watch volunteer and followed Trayvon Martin who he considered suspicious. Then they got into fight and Martin was shot by Zimmerman.

There is much more to this of course but reading about this gave me idea for article today. About what my understanding of self defense is and how it changed throughout my year in war.

If Martin was beating Zimmerman and smashing head into ground then what should he do? Wait until his head opens up?

I think world is going to hell very soon, and most of people are kinda idiots, brainless media blinded puppets.

I cannot see any sense in following big headlines and news about what some „famous reality star“ said about shooting and who is right and who is wrong.

When exactly we started to wait for statements from empty celebrity heads like some kinds of messages from Messiah?

Am I supposed to form my opinion based on her or his opinion just because she has public videotape of having sex with someone, or he can rap about throwing money in the air?

We have some wrong idols, and s. gonna hit the fan very bad, and if you look at humankind mostly we are deserving it.

Every lost life is tragedy, especially young life. Being in war I have seen many many people killed, young and old, innocent and guilty.

Some things never gonna change, there is always gonna be violence and stupid people.

Self defense for me was when I did not have any other option left and when only option was to shoot and kill. For example if I could not run away, or hide very good not to be seen. I would use any other option first, last option was to shoot.

Attacking them meant when I shoot first, even if I had other options to use first. In reality if I wanted to confront them I would attack them, if I did not want I would use any other option (go away, hide, or sometimes negotiate) then use force as a last option (self defense)

Real life example was two (drunk and high) guys going from house to house and killing and setting houses on fire, clearly self defense (as I understand it) because there is no sense of talking with them and leaving house was no option too. If you hear or see them murdering others, you are not going to be first person to talk sense into them.

When you shoot and kill the man, later you always think „Did i have to do it? Was there any other option?“. But yeah, in the beginning period, I mean when you are driven mostly by fear and adrenalin you tend to shoot too much. Like „shoot first and then ask“ stuff.

But man in my neigbourhood put like 20 bullets in his own brother just because his brother wanted to scare him (as a joke) while he was guarding their house. That is joke gone very wrong.

When you are new to survival situation most people do not understand all options they have. After some weeks and months you get familiar with your options and shooting is just one of the options.

Self defense changed troughout my year fighting for survival in two ways. First when people realized that SHTF for real, and there is no law it was like if you are smart and practice „self defense“ you would stay home, hidden and shoot at anyone who comes to you. That was self defense.

People on street were practicing something like „fun“ with weapon, like shooting and having fun, so nothing like real reasons for attack or self defense. Later when folks realized that it is becoming easy to get killed, and hard to survive, more people tried to stay „put“ and move out of way of other folks.

Self defense & carrying a weapon

Carrying weapon is not only about caring that gun, it is much more. It is about understanding the fact that you are ready to take someone else life, kill him, destroy his family.

There are not too many people who can live same life after killing someone, usually their life is destroyed too. They suffer slowly for the rest of their lives.

In short it is about understanding that and all consequences. People who can not understand it, should not carry weapons.

If you are right man then you are gonna be much more careful where to go and what to do after you start to carry weapons. You are not gonna look for trouble.

In terms of SHTF weapon have strange power not to transform man, but rather to remove mask from him. So you could see how weapon „turn“ someone to monster, or other guy to good and „righteous“ dude.

Actually weapon just „pushed“ them a little to show their real face.

When people seen that rules are gone, weapons were kinda used like firecrackers, so you could see people just having fun shooting at others with assault weapons, or killing each other because of minor fight.

But as I said those were specific kind of folks.

Smart self defense was that we just avoided all the time situations where we had to use weapon. And when we found ourselves in events when we had to use it, it was used with deadly force, not to demonstrate something, rather to kill.

If you miss it sends message too but when you shoot you shoot to kill.

How action movies kill people in survival situations

Lack of knowledge in the beginning days made people do stupid things, so people were killed in great numbers simply because they did not have clue about weapon and combat, so they use it a lot, and act like they had super powers.

Also lack of knowledge can be used to your advantage. I knew guy who used to shoot from his rifle using the old exhaust from his woodstove as a something like sound amplifier, so when someone attack his house it was like „what kind of weapon is that?”

Smart. More stuff like this in my course.

Pretty soon people realized that it is very easy to get killed so they become „smarter“ with weapon use.

When S hits the fan next time, on some global level, i believe it is gonna be very bad (or if you have very dark sense of humor funny), one of the reasons is because generations are raised and „thaught“ about weapons and shooting from action movies and music.

So it is almost like it is romantic and fun to use weapon. People will die in stupid ways again.

Weapons are not for everyone, and understanding of self defense can be different from man to man. I am using term „survival mode“.

In reality, today, fact that I carry weapon does not give me excuse to go in the middle of the night to the part of the town where I can expect trouble if I do not really need to go there.

I ll do lot of things in order to avoid the need to use weapon, some of those things you may call stupid, or cowardly, but I know how it is to use weapon to shoot to kill.

On the other hand when I judge that I really need to use weapon, I will go into „survival mode“ I will use it without mercy and hesitation, and I will use it with deadly force. And I will live with it.

If you can not swallow your pride sometimes in order to avoid the fight do not carry weapon, also if you are not ready to pull it and kill in moment do not carry it as well.

So these are my thoughts on self defense and I do not need false idols to teach me when to use weapons and when not.

I appreciate readers here, because somehow it seems what I write attracts more “true survivalists” and less rambo movie survivalists who live in dreamworld. So what are your thoughts on this case and self defense?

When someone says „survivalist“ or „prepper“ most of the folks see man with whole bunch of weapons. Lot of people see us as a guys who are „trigger happy“ people.

To some point it is true, and I strongly believe that preppers and survivalists need to be armed very good, and educated about use of weapons too. They are tools for certain situations.

But using violence is completely different thing, or to be more accurate decision to use violence and to what extent is big thing, and very often usage of weapon can mean death to you too, so choose wisely.

To be ready to use violence on fast and efficience way requires lot of things, things like training, choose of right weapon-force, will to use it and also need to use it.

I have seen many situations where people get killed simply because they choose to use violence in situation when violence was not only option, or was not best option. Simply situation could be solved with other means, not with weapons and violence.

It is about survival, and when there is a risk of losing your life if you choose violence, be ready to look for other solutions.

It may sound to you maybe like „weak“ thing but point is to have your weapon ready, but to look first for other options of solving the problems.

Consider what you and the other side can win or lose

When SHTF conflicts with people were everyday thing, and if I chose to solve everything with violence I would not be here to write about it. It is simple matter of numbers and chances. Remember you are not Rambo and it is not a movie.

It is simple bargaining, what you can win and what you can lose. Other side too.

I remember more than once that I „talked out“ guys from my door by „showing“ them how many of them gonna die if they choose to attack me.

First impulse was to shoot of course, but it is cheaper to try with words. Of course sometimes did not work, and that is what is weapon for.

Be trained and ready, but not trigger happy

Weapon is nothing without your hand to operate it. So learn how to use weapon in closest conditions to real one. It is not about target practice only. It is about tremendous stress and messy situations.

Forget about scenes when two good guys shooting from assault rifles at bad guys and talking about what they had for lunch with big fat smiles on their faces. It is movie.

In real life it is messy, loud, often confused and most important is that good guys getting killed too.

What is wrong with world today?

Clearly something is wrong with everything today no matter where you are living. And if you are prepper you are definetly aware of that fact, and you are aware that it is probably going to get worse too.

What you can do? You can be prepared, armed, stashed with water, food and ammo and everything else.

But also you can do more, you can talk with the people about what is wrong. You can try to solve some problems maybe, you can get some sense in your family member or in your good friend maybe.

Why we are ruled by idiots (mostly), why crime rate is rising, why there is a more unemployed everywhere.

I am not talking here about going out and saying to the folks that you are prepper, I am saying about going out and talk with the folks about making some changes maybe. To raise awareness that something is wrong and get them out of their “bubble”.

Armed revolution

I know many of you have little trust in government. I also dont trust them. Recent poll in the US showed 29% of people even think about armed revolution and that it is necessary.

I also believe as prepper and survivalist in every situation knowing more options is better. That’s why I recommend you read “From dictatorship to democracy”. It is free book by Gene Sharp, who was nominated for Nobel peace price, that shows step by step how to undermine government and start non violent revolution.

It served as blueprint for many non violent revolutions in recent years. You can also find documentary about it online.

It is about getting educated and knowing more and later having more options. I try to share my knowledge here on blog and in my course, and later on once SHTF people like you who learn more now have big advantage.

In this book there is much about how to create a movement, something that can become useful even in local community.

You do not have to agree with all things in this book, I do not, but knowing it gives you more options.

More flexibility to think and that makes you stronger and increases chances for survival for you and your loved ones.

Violence yes or no?

Violence is not the solution. It is the last resort. Do not get me wrong, I have seen way too much violence, and did too much too.

But it is survival. Does it change anything? Well I am alive and ready to do more violence, and how all looks everywhere I will probably need to do it again.

I am saying that maybe there is a way to break endless circle of that violence with educating ourselfs to look and reckognize what is going on around us.

We are living in the world where we are bombarded from media that violence is kinda normal way of life. But if you stop for a moment and think about it you ll see that violence can not be normal.

At the end, again do not get me wrong I am perfectly ready and I will blow brain of some gang member or drug addict out who attack my home and my family, SHTF or no SHTF.

I just trying to check is there are other solutions to move that drug addict, or gang member far away before they reach my home, or to make SHTF hard to happen if you like.

How do you think about using violence?