an intro to caching christmas list incredible leaders...

TACTICS AND PREPAREDNESSSKILLS AND SURVIVAL FOR ALL SITUATIONS DECEMBER 2013 ISSUE 2

AN INTRO TO CACHING CHRISTMAS LIST INCREDIBLE LEADERS HACKING

Tasers are one piece of gear that I believe EVERYONE should own.

They are a very useful tool for firearms owners and, in many cases, are a better

choice than a firearm.Let’s start with what a Taser is and is not.

Specifically, a Taser and a stun gun are com-pletely different and should not be confused with each other.

Stun guns are the tools that you see in sport-ing goods stores, gun stores and at gun shows in various configurations from stun guns dis-guised as pens, cell phones, batons and other items, they usually feature how many million volts they use. Stun guns work based on pain, require contact to work and generally perform poorly on drugged, drunk or deranged people.

Tasers, on the other hand, use an electrical pulse that is at the same frequency used by the brain to communicate with voluntary muscles in the body. There is definitely pain involved

with a Taser, but the effectiveness of the Taser doesn’t depend on pain.

Similar to how fighter planes use jammers to confuse incoming missiles and militaries use jammers to prevent communication by their enemy, Tasers jam the signals between the brain and voluntary muscles so that, even if an attacker WANTS to keep attacking you, the signal won’t get from the brain to their muscles.

A HUGE benefit to the Taser is that you can engage a target from 15 feet away with the ci-vilian version. The way this works is that a ni-trogen cartridge shoots out two barbed spears attached to 15 foot long micro-filament wires. This means that, unlike with a stun gun, you don’t have to wait until an attacker is right on you to use the Taser.

As a benefit, once the barbs are in, you have

the option of dropping your Taser on the ground and running away while the Taser de-livers a charge for the next 30 seconds.

What about “beating” the taser?It’s possible to shake off a Taser engagement, but it’s not common—kind of like hopped up dopers taking 12 continued on next page

BY: DAVID MORRIS

The Taser C2, compact to take

almost anywhere.

Tasers vs. sTun Guns

A stun gun made by Jolt.

ALL T

ASER

PHOT

OS BY

TASE

R. JO

LT ST

UN GU

N BY J

OLT.

TACTICS & PREPAREDNESS DECEMBER 2013www.tacticsandpreparedness.com2

TASERS VS. STUN GUNS

hAckiNG fiNdyoURSpoT.com, GooGlE ANd biNG

AN iNTRo To cAchiNG

chRiSTmAS liST

oN lEAdERShip: iNcREdiblE lEAdERSby col. RANdy WATTRandy was gracious enough to allow me to print a series of short pieces he wrote on leadership. Whether you are in a leadership position or not, it’s important to understand the traits, qualities and behaviors associated with great leaders. in the organizational vacuum after a major disaster, it’s critical to understand leadership, regardless of whether you’re leading, following, or getting out of the way. Randy trains primarily at Swanson Tactical Training center outside of Salt lake city, Utah and at Gunsite outside of prescott, Arizona and you can check his schedule and availability by going to SRWSplops.com.)

©copyRiGhT 2013 TAcTicS ANd pREpAREdNESS. All RiGhTS RESERVEd. ThiS pUblicATioN coNTAiNS mATERiAl pRoTEcTEd UNdER iNTERNATioNAl ANd fEdERAl copyRiGhT lAWS ANd TREATiES. ANy UNAUThoRiZEd REpRiNT oR USE of ThiS mATERiAl iS pRohibiTEd. No pART of ThiS pUblicATioN mAy bE REpRodUcEd oR TRANSmiTTEd iN ANy foRm oR by ANy mEANS, ElEcTRoNic oR mEchANicAl, iNclUdiNG phoTocopyiNG, REcoRdiNG, oR by ANy iNfoRmATioN SToRAGE ANd RETRiEVAl SySTEm WiThoUT EXpRESS WRiTTEN pERmiSSioN fRom ThE AUThoR / pUbliShER.

oUR lAWyERS iNSiST WE mAkE ThE folloWiNG diS-clAimER: you may die in an emergency, even if you fol-low this training to the letter. you might get hurt doing some of the exercises suggested, hurt someone else, or be subject to civil or criminal liability if you do anything mentioned in this newsletter. Verify that the actions men-tioned are legal where you are before even considering them. This is presented as a tool to help increase your chance of surviving natural and manmade disasters. While we guarantee your satisfaction with the informa-tion, we can not guarantee your survival or well-being. The author provides information about his experiences and preparations and gives general information. he is not an accountant, doctor, investment advisor or attorney and is not in the business of advising individuals on their specific situation. if you need specific professional assis-tance, please contact a local professional.

TACTICS AND PREPAREDNESS

01

04

06

10

14

CONTENTSrounds to the head and still fighting.

Anti-Taser vests also exist, but aren’t com-mon either.

What is more common is to spin and break the micro-filament wires, but this is also very uncommon.

In any case, it’s important that ANY self de-fense tool or tactic be a part of an overall plan and not viewed as a silver bullet. If you have to engage anyone with a Taser, you should have a plan for what you’ll do if it works and what you’ll do if it doesn’t work.

As an example, even if you shoot your Taser and miss your target or they break the micro-filament wires, you can still use the Taser as a contact weapon, like you would with a stun gun, if they close distance on you.

WhErE ThE TaSEr ShiNESI want to share a few scenar-ios where the Taser shines as a self-defense weapon.

Your outlook may be dif-ferent, but my general ap-proach to self-defense is to use the least force necessary.

1. Home Invasion/Robbery Let’s skip the lead in and go straight to a situation where you’re in your house ten feet away from a robber. You’re standing face to face, the lights are on, he hasn’t tried to attack you, and his hands are in the air. You’ve got a firearm and the robber is empty handed. You are alone, don’t have a phone in your hand and don’t know if there are more robbers in your house.

What do you do? Regardless of the legality, I personally don’t want to shoot a robber in my house. Besides the simple fact that I value life, it would open up a lifetime of moral, legal and ethical second guessing by multiple parties and it will turn my house into a felony crime scene.

Do you tell the robber to stay put while you go into another room to get a phone?

Do you approach them and attempt to re-strain them and hope that they don’t get the drop on you?

What if they’re a cool cat and simply turn around and start walking out of your house? Shooting an unarmed robber in the back isn’t a good option.

Check with an attorney in your area, but one

option might be to engage them with your Tas-er and either flee and call 911 or close distance and restrain them while the Taser is doing its work and during the hangover period after the 30 second Taser cycle ends.

It’s because of this that I have a firearm, Tas-er, flex cuffs and flashlight by my bed at night.

2. Alcohol consumption If you don’t drink, skip to #3. There are a few states where the blood alcohol limits are the same for carrying a concealed weapon as they are for driving, but it’s illegal in most states to have a beer or glass of wine at dinner if you’re carrying a concealed firearm. Even in the plac-es where it IS legal to have a drink or two and carry a firearm, the use of force expert witness-

es that I’ve spoken with have said it’s next to impossible to defend clients who use a firearm in self defense if they’ve been drinking.

While not as effective against mul-tiple attackers or against attackers who are more than 15 feet away, using a Taser may help you avoid some of the costly le-gal consequences that using a firearm to defend yourself could cause after you’ve been drinking. Check with a local attorney

3. Movie theaters and other non-permissive environments One frustration that many concealed carry permit holders have is that, as a group, we be-lieve in the rule of law. This gets frustrating where the rule of law collides with common sense, facts and history, as in carrying a con-cealed firearm into most movie theaters, some restaurants, some malls and some office build-ings.

One thing that you may want to check on

Taser X2 equipped with laser sight.

TACTICS & PREPAREDNESS DECEMBER 2013 www.tacticsandpreparedness.com 3

with a local attorney is the legality of carrying a Taser places where firearms aren’t permitted.

4. Apartments, hotels, trailers and RVs There’s a wonderful analogy that each and every bullet fired in a self defense shooting has a little attorney riding it and keeping ac-count of everything it does. There is a risk of over penetration and injuring bystanders in any self-defense shooting, but especially so in apartments, hotels, trailers and RVs.

Where a firearm will perform better against multiple attackers, the Taser shines in close quarters situations like these with thin walls separating you from friends, neighbors and children.

5. Church, office and school security One of the places where Tasers shine is awk-ward, in-between situations. As an example, let’s look at church security. A lot of people avoid church except for when they’re in the worst stretches of their life and have hit rock bottom emotionally, mentally and spiritual-ly—sometimes due to addiction, but usually just because of life circumstances.

Some of these people react with violent vocal outbursts and some, while not being violent people, can reach a breaking point and become physically violent or threaten violence.

There are clear cut cases where someone starts shooting a gun or stabbing people with a knife, but most times things aren’t quite so clear.

If you’ve got a large, strong, emotionally dis-turbed individual causing a disturbance and verbal de-escalation techniques don’t work, a Taser may be the best tool for the job. (Check with a local attorney and with your insurance company.)

If you use a firearm, you’ve not only got the legal, moral and ethical issues to deal with, you’re probably also going to have negative national news coverage.

If you have to go hands-on before law en-forcement arrives, there’s a good chance that bones, joints and other stuff will get broken in the process of controlling the subject.

But the smallest person working at a church or in an office can pull out a Taser and control someone the size of Steve Austin from up to 15 feet away—giving people time to get away from the subject, get out of the building and minimize the damage that the subject can do before law enforcement arrives.

It’s because of this that I offered to buy

Tasers for a local school after the Sandy Hook shootings and have strongly en-couraged the use of Tasers in all of the churches we’ve attended through the years.

6. Areas around childrenThis goes along with #5. When most people think of less lethal self-defense options, pep-per spray is one of the first tools to come up. I love pepper spray, and it has its place, but it’s not the best tool to use around children or peo-ple with compromised lung function.

This doesn’t apply to everyone, but if I’m awake at home, I either have a firearm or a Taser on my body. My boys are very physical and I like playing with them, crawling through tun-nels and forts, wrestling and doing other dynam-ic activities on the floor. When they start tackling me and I have a firearm on, I have to stop them and put my firearm up. But when they start tackling me and I have my Taser in my pock-et, its game-on with no interruption in play.

7. Babysitters and houseguests When we leave our kids at home with a sitter, we leave the sitter with a Taser and instructions on how to use it. We wouldn’t DREAM of do-ing this with a firearm, but we do with a Taser.

8. People who dislike firearms or know they couldn’t shoot a person No judgment here. I believe in the use of force to defend innocent people from vio-lence, but not everyone does.

A Taser provides a great tool because it al-lows people to do what they know they need to do without freezing or second guessing their decision.

so, hoW do tasers funCtion?Different models function differently. The C2 looks like a phaser from Star Trek and those are the models that we have. There is also the M26c that has a pistol grip and the x2 that has a pistol grip and two cartridges.

The M26c costs almost 70% more than the C2 and the x2 costs more than 4x more than

the C2 and so, I only own the C2 and only recommend the C2.

To use the C2 to deliver a projectile strike, you slide a protective cover on the top of the Taser with your thumb. This is the equivalent of disengaging the safety. There is an indicator light that turns on as soon as the Taser is acti-vated. There is no “charging up” sound when

the Taser is activated, but an aiming laser and a flashlight both turn on to help you aim the Taser and identify your target in low light con-ditions.

The Taser is fully charged and ready to go instantly when the light and laser turn on and there is no delay between pressing the button and the barbs shooting out of the end of the Taser.

Another great feature of the Taser is that, while the Taser is delivering the 30 second cycle, you can grab the person without getting shocked yourself.

One thing to keep in mind is that the Tas-er is a kinetic weapon. If a barb hits an eye, testicle, etc., it will do serious damage. That being said, insurance companies have gener-ally smiled on the responsible use of Tasers by law enforcement because of the liability that comes along with the use of a Taser vs. other tools and techniques.

I’d encourage you to consider getting one or more Tasers for yourself or the ones you love. I have confirmed that the “BIG20” dis-count code that I told you about on Black Fri-day is still working and should work through Christmas. This code will drop the price to within $5-$15 of my bulk wholesale pricing, so take advantage of it while you can. 3

TASERS VS. STUN GUNS

Tasers jam the signals between the brain and voluntary muscles. No signal = no fight.


We’ve been in a position a couple of times in the last 10 years where we wanted to move, but didn’t know where we wanted to move to.Eight years ago, I found a site called Fin-

dYourSpot.com. Find Your Spot runs you through a survey that takes 10-20 minutes with questions about what you’re looking for in terms of climate, terrain, activities, popula-tion density, taxes, regulation, education, cost of living and more.

When you’re done, it gives you a detailed list of the top cities and towns in the country that fit your criteria.

It’s eye opening, and has been a valuable tool for us and for dozens of friends.

BUT, there’s one big downside of FYS, and that’s the fact that you’re giving them SO much personal information. As far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t really matter what they SAY they’re going to do with your survey an-

HackinG FindYourspoT.com, GooGle and BinG

PHOTO BY MICHAELHENRY @ FREERANGESTOCK

Their servers could get hacked, they could change their privacy policy at some point in the future or the information could get compromised in other ways....

THE SURVEY TAKES 10-20 MINUTES wITH qUESTIONS ABOUT wHAT YOU’RE LOOKING FOR IN TERMS OF CLIMATE, TERRAIN, ACTIVITIES, pOpULATION DENSITY, TAXES AND MORE.


hAckiNG fiNdyoURSpoT, GooGlE ANd biNG

swers. Their servers could get hacked, they could change their privacy policy at some point in the future or the information could get compromised in other ways.

So I’m going to share two methods of hacking FYS that will not only work on FYS, but also on many other sites as well.

the first MethodAfter you complete your survey, FYS sends you a link via email to get your results. I don’t want my survey results associated with my name or email address, so I use tem-porary, throw away, email accounts. One so-lution is to set up a new email address that you only use for FYS. This could be a Gmail, yahoo, or Hotmail account, or it could be one of the sites that offer disposable email accounts like mailinator.com.

If you’ve already got a Hotmail, msn or outlook account, you can set up throw away accounts called “aliases” by logging in, click-ing on the “gear” icon in the upper right hand corner, selecting the “add an alias” op-tion and picking your new email address.

Then use your new “alias” email address (and possibly a pen name) when you fill out your survey and you can delete the entire account at any point after you receive and save the link with your survey results.

You can use these techniques on any site that requires an email address to ac-cess content that you want to see, or survey sites where you don’t want your answers as-sociated with your name or email address.

the seCond MethodFind Your Spot has some great reports on towns and cities around the country, but one thing that we found is that if we had access to one set of reports and then we modified our survey results and got another set of results, and we’d lose any city reports that we wanted to see again.

What I’m going to share with you now is a tool that’s incredibly powerful and use-ful. Let’s say you have gone through the survey and you really thought that Missoula MT would show up in your results, but it doesn’t, and you’d like to see the report on Missoula.

All you have to do is use the “site:” feature in your favorite search engine. What you

do is go to your favorite search engine, like Google, Yahoo, or Bing (I use DuckDuckGo) and enter the following into the search bar:

site: findyourspot.com Missoula

This will also allow you to skip the survey entirely and go straight to the city reports. It will focus the power of your favorite search engine on a single site. It’s important to note that you should be aware of the terms of service on the sites you visit, to make sure that you’re not violating them.

As another example, let’s say that you remember that I wrote something awhile

back on SurviveTheComingCollapse.com about my recommendation for a precious metals dealer, but you don’t remember who it was. Simply enter the following search query into your favorite search engine:

site:survivethecomingcollapse.com gold dealer

This will work on almost any website and is especially useful on sites that don’t have a site search feature or where the site search is sub-par. You may have to scroll down the list of search results to find the entry you’re looking for. 3

THE “SITE:” FEATURE IN YOUR FAVORITE SEARH ENGINE IS A pOwERFUL TOOL.

If you’ve already got a Hotmail, MSN or Outlook account, you can set up throw away accounts called “aliases.”


The following article is a segment from my upcoming book on Caching, which you’ll receive for free as a member of Tactics and Preparedness, but I don’t want you to have to wait to start benefiting from the information.

Caching is one of those activities that are both incredibly practical and incredibly

sexy. It’s something that elite military units, super spies and super criminals do in movies and books.

It’s also an activity that can help you get back on your feet if you have a house fire to-night, if a flood, storm, wildfire or chemical incident wipes out your neighborhood or (go-ing a few steps down the rabbit hole) if you find yourself in a post-disaster situation and have to bug-out to a retreat.

Along those same lines, caches can save the day if you come home to find that your house has been wiped out by robbers or looters.

Caching can also be fun, necessary and a lit-tle bit of super-spy/secret squirrel combined with hard-core reality!

Before I continue I just want to share a quick story with you. I realize that most peo-ple have Readers Digest, Time or People maga-

zines readily available when “nature” calls, but a Spec Ops Veteran and good friend of mine has a different kind of reading material next to his throne.

He chooses to keep different military and tactical field manuals and technical manuals there. If you question him he’ll tell you that, “Those gossip magazines don’t save anyone’s life, but if you read an Army manual (or look at the pictures in a Marine manual) you are guaranteed to walk away knowing something you didn’t know before.”

Now, not only do I agree with that, but like my friend I agree that the military has done extensive testing and research on topics that keep our troops alive and I am not one to try reinventing the wheel. Some of the informa-tion you have and will read in this report can be found in ST 31-205 “US Army Special Forc-es Caching Techniques.” In my opinion the manual (and TC 31-29A, which is pretty weak,

but still a good primer) covers many of the basic techniques and lays out the guidelines for us to see things that have worked for years and that we can build on.

I have included these documents in the members’ area of Tactics and Preparedness.

I don’t pretend to know more than the combined history of military cachers and cache finders, so I have included these manu-als as appendices. That being said, since they were designed to be texts to supplement in-structor led classes, I extrapolate many of the concepts or fill in some of the finer points whenever I am able to add value by doing so.

CaChe 101How do you pronounce this darn word?

Cache can be pronounced like “Cash” or “Cash-A” but technically, “Cash” is correct. If you’ve heard me speak on the subject, you’ll notice that I go back and forth between the

AN INTRO TO

CACHINGCaChes Can be any kind of Container that Can safely store valuables, suCh as these aMMo boxes.


two. Frankly, I don’t care how the word is pro-nounced as long as nobody else finds mine.

What is a CaChe? In simplest terms, it’s a hiding place for sup-plies that you might need in the future. In media, the word is mainly used to describe captured weapons caches and memory cach-es on computers.

The caches that we’re going to cover are physical caches that are primarily used to hide preparedness items from thieves and looters, to resupply yourself along a planned evacua-tion route when you plan on having to travel light and to keep supplies for an isolated re-treat location from being found by looters or curious people.

For the purposes of this series, we’re only going to cover caching legal items. I’ll talk about martial law a few times, but we’re go-ing to spend most of our time and energy on higher probability events.

Why have CaChes?There are a few important reasons for smart preppers to use caches to hide food, weap-ons, fuel and other supplies. The two main reasons why you might want to cache sup-plies in preparation for a disaster are to pre-vent theft or loss and to help with fast and light movement.

It’s helpful to go into a little more detail on this. Here are ten reasons why you must have caches:

1. Robbery & Home Invasion According to statistics from the FBI, there are 5,000-8,000 (6,500 avg.) home invasions per day in the United States or 1.8-3 million per year.

According to the NFPA, (National Fire Pro-tection Agency) there are an average of 1,000 house fires reported per day.

So, you’re 5-8 times more likely to experi-ence a home invasion than a house fire. Since that’s the case, it stands to reason that you should take simple, prudent steps to protect yourself in the event that you become the vic-tim of a home invasion.

I have to admit, after seeing the numbers above it really made me think. I have wit-nessed countless house fires: in person, in the paper and on the news. Imagine then, how many home invasions occur each and every day around our communities.

2. Natural Disaster: Let’s face it; there hasn’t been a shortage of these lately. Obviously caches won’t stop any of these things from happening; however, they can help you and your loved ones to sur-vive easier until the “cavalry” arrives at your location.

If you live in an area that is prone to natural disasters like tornadoes, hurricanes, wildfires, flooding, earthquakes or tsunamis, etc. you could benefit from having your supplies split up so that some of them would be likely to survive whatever natural disasters your area is prone to.

That way, if your house gets wiped out, you wouldn’t be completely wiped out.

The obvious problem with having your gear in three places is that it DOES increase the chance that you will experience a loss, simply because of having multiple potential targets. That being said, no single loss would

be catastrophic since you would only lose the contents of a single location.

3. Caches…because safes look like a big cookie jar to criminalsMany people—possibly including you—have taken the prudent step of buying a safe or fire safe for your firearms, precious metals and valuable documents. This is good, but con-solidating all of your most important items to-gether makes them an easy target for thieves.

On top of that, when have you seen a safe in a house and thought that it might not have anything of value in it? Almost never, I bet. There’s a little bit of treasure hunter in every one of us and all it takes is the sight of a safe to get the imagination going.

For obvious reasons, there aren’t exact statistics on the percentage of safes that are bolted down, but from personal experience and talking with others over the years, I’d es-timate that if you do have a safe, there’s an 80 percent chance that it’s not properly secured to the floor. Although most safes are heavy, if some creep thinks that your contents will be worth a little sweat, in a robbery that safe will definitely grow legs and make it out your front door or through a wall.

AN iNTRo To cAchiNG

5,000-8,000hoMe invasions

1,000 house fires

you’re 5-8 tiMes More likely to experienCe a hoMe invasion than a house fire.

in the event of a natural disaster, you Won’t get CoMpletely Wiped out if you store supplies in CaChes.


AN iNTRo To cAchiNG

Remember, a chainsaw, a pickup and a cou-ple of winches can QUICKLY remove safes from houses.

In addition, if your thief happens to have watched any of the 10,000+ videos on You-Tube on SIMPLE safe cracking, your stuff isn’t really secure in most entry level safes. In re-ality, most household safes will only protect your stuff from dumb, drugged or lazy thieves.

I once heard a police officer on a news re-port say, “The safe in your home will protect someone from getting to your valuables as much as a fridge door will protect your milk from someone drinking it ... it just takes a bit longer.”

Don’t get me wrong. Safe’s are great, but thieves will see them as oversized cookie jars, worthy of time and effort. In addition, during a home invasion, if you aren’t able to get away immediately, you WILL be forced to open your safe. If it has all of your firearms and valuables in it, then you’ll be wiped out. If, on the other hand, you keep some valuables in your safe and others well hidden in other places, then if you are faced with a home invasion, you can quickly give up the contents of the safe know-ing that you have backup supplies.

To put a little finer point on it, if you’re any-thing like me, you’ll relate to the fact that if I ended up in a situation where I had to give up the combination to my safe to keep my

wife or kids safe, I’d give it up in a heartbeat. If I thought it would keep them safe, I wouldn’t hesitate for a sec-ond. These guys are already in our home without permis-sion, I don’t want to be the one who finds out what else they are willing to do.

Caches take care of both of these problems, but if pos-sible you’ll want to have cach-es both at your home and to have items cached away from your house.

Caches that are away from your home and are somewhat difficult to access are particu-larly valuable in a home inva-sion situation. This is because you can’t give them up as eas-ily as one that’s in your home AND because if your captors force you to take them to your remote caches (even a safe deposit box), you could

have more opportunities to take them out or get help.

4. What friends, relatives, babysitters, neighbors and your kid’s friends don’t see won’t hurt you. The less food and preparedness supplies peo-ple see, the less likely they’ll think of you after a disaster when they’re hungry.

They’ll also be less likely to talk with other people about your preparations. Remember, you may trust your friends, but you don’t con-trol who they talk to or whether their friends are willing to steal now or willing to steal later.

If you have a teenager in the house, they might have a dozen or two friends over be-tween now and when a disaster happens. In that time, you don’t know how many will stay on the straight and narrow, how many will join a gang, how many will start stealing to support a drug habit, etc.

In a shortage situation, if neighbors have never seen stockpiles, they’ll have no reason to expect that you have any.

In short, if you’re like me, you like having friends in your home. We like having friends and family over and we encourage our boys to invite friends over to play. We also like having professionals like carpenters, plumbers, elec-tricians, HVAC, babysitters etc. do work from time to time.

If you’ve got a house full of preparedness items, it’s smart to keep these people from seeing them. It’s better not to be known as “the family with lots of guns,” “the family with lots of food” or “the house where we’re going if things get bad.”

As hard as it is to believe, your friends and family might just come take advantage of the situation if they themselves go into survival mode. Best case, if they know you’re prepared and they’re not, they’ll quickly cut your year of emergency food down to a few months or even a few weeks, depending on how many of them show up.

We used to live in a very nice, quaint, professional, older Norman Rockwellesque neighborhood with lots of young families. Over the course of the six years that we lived there, three housewives within a couple hun-dred yards of our house got hooked on meth.

You just never know who’s going to turn into a rotten apple, but it’s no fun being dis-trustful and standoffish.

This is where caches come in. If you can fig-ure out places to put your preparedness items where people aren’t likely to see them, you’ve made yourself much less of a target for thieves and looters.

It isn’t that we don’t want to be able to help our friends and neighbors in a disaster, but let’s make that an option instead of an ob-ligation once our own family is safe, protected and provided for.

5. You Can Let People Call Your Bluff If a neighbor pushes you for food, and you have your supplies well hidden, you can call their bluff and walk them through your house and show them your empty cupboards.

6. Caches Facilitate Fast and light movement If you have to relocate fast and light over a long distance, pre-positioned fire/shelter/wa-ter/food caches will allow you to focus on car-rying weapons and other valuables. If you can focus on your family, your time getting out of danger will drastically improve, which in this case could be a life or death decision.

If you have an isolated retreat that’s normal-ly unoccupied, caching supplies outside of the retreat will keep you from getting wiped out by someone breaking in and helping themselves. This also means you won’t have to carry as much when you’re traveling to the retreat location.

Cross-caching items at trusted friends’ hous-

safes are like big Cookie Jars to burglars, as this hoMe oWner disCovered. luCkily, the burglars Were unable to get in. but the oWner Couldn’t get in afterWards, either.


AN iNTRo To cAchiNG

es can give you a fallback in case you have to abandon your primary shelter immediately or if you have a long way to travel home if you’re working when an event happens.

This method can be extremely effective, but you need to think of the difficulty to get to that location if needed. Also, do you know for certain that you will have your supplies there and that your friends are as quiet as you are with sharing information with friends and family? We’ll dig into this and I’ll share several examples in a few pages later on.

7. Safe Deposit Boxes—good, but not greatI get a free safe deposit box with my check-ing account, but I don’t like it. Why? Because I can be denied access if there is a banking holiday. If my bank is subject to an FDIC take-over and a healthy bank doesn’t purchase the assets, I might not get access or have a limited amount of time before my box is drilled and the contents auctioned.

This isn’t paranoid thinking. In September, 2008, the US was MINUTES away from a de-clared nationwide banking holiday.

More recently, citizens of Cyprus who had safe deposit boxes faced waits of up to and beyond two weeks to access their boxes. In fact, Barclays and other European banks have gradually been telling box holders to come in and remove everything from their boxes and are no longer going to offer safe deposit boxes.

Want something closer to home? I was shocked to hear that not too long ago in Cali-fornia, people with safe deposit boxes that were paid in advance and who were living close to their bank, had their boxes drilled and the contents sold at auction without no-tification.

Safety deposit boxes do serve a purpose, though. If you’ve got a free bank safe deposit box, it’s not a bad place to keep copies of im-portant documents. Just keep in mind that, at a minimum, your accessibility to the contents is regulated by the banks hours.

“Private” safe deposit boxes are an option, but you may have to travel hundreds of miles to one of the few private “vault” locations in the US, and if you decide to go the “secure wine storage” route, you’re looking at $50-$100 per month in storage fees.

8. Most caches don’t need electricity and the batteries don’t die. One huge advantage of caching is that in the

event of an EMP or a breakdown of the elec-trical grid, banks and paid storage facilities may not be available. Your electronic safe may not work, and you may still need or want ac-cess to items that you’d normally store there.

9. Caches provide protection from illegal confiscation. What about martial law and gun confisca-tions? Well, here’s my thought on that: Our military has LOTS of fresh experience finding caches since operations began in Iraq and Af-ghanistan.

Federal and local law enforcement have lots of experience finding caches and recent events show that they don’t hesitate to use backhoes. Other forces like China and the UN have years of experience finding weap-ons caches.

In other words, you probably can’t hide anything close to your home from a govern-ment organization with time, experience and resources. You’re much better off having “throw away” guns and ammo that you can give up in the low probability chance that you will experience an illegal firearms confis-cation.

I realize Martial Law may seem an unlikely probability for many of you, but I have always been one to hope for the best and prepare for the worst.

10. Caches Let You Leave Home With Peace Of Mind I’m a firm believer in living life to the full-est and not becoming a prisoner to your preparedness. What I mean by that is that I believe in creating a life where you don’t have so much critical and valuable “stuff” in your home that you feel like you can’t leave it and go on vacation. Remote

(out of the house) caches help with this.The idea is to have your critical items in a

few locations. Let’s take food as an example. Let’s say you’ve got a 12-month backup of food stored up. Instead of keeping it all in your house, one option would be to keep four months of it inside your house, four months in a cellar (if appropriate) and four months in a storage facility.

Keep in mind that in a “pure” cache enthusi-ast’s mind, none of the above are real caches.

A “real” cache would require hours of dig-ging in the woods somewhere in the middle of the night with perimeter alarms set up. I don’t disagree with this, and I’ve had caches set up in the woods before, but realistically, I’m trying to give you ideas that you can im-plement and have 100 percent in place with-in 24 hours of reading this; things that you can do with what you already have, to get SOME caches in place without delay.

***No matter what level of preparedness you plan to be at eventually, everyone can agree that by having any caches set up, your options and survivability improve drastically.

I spent as much time going through the “whys” of caching as I did for three reasons. First, I wanted to expand your vision for what and how you might cache. Second, I want to give you the tools you need to defend your decision to cache to a spouse, friend or other loved one. And third, I wanted to motivate you into action, both with some carrots, and with a healthy dose of fear.

What I want you to do between now and next month’s issue is to do the following:

1. Start thinking about what items you’d like to have cached and make a list. Put a “W,” “M,” or “Y” next to each item, depending on whether it’s something that you think you’ll need access to within a few weeks, months or years.

2. Figure out the general location where you want the items: in your home, on your property, at your work, at anoth-er home or anywhere else.

Next month, we’ll get into some of the spe-cifics of how to place caches, as well as best (and worst) practices direct from Iraq and Af-ghanistan.

If you want to start placing caches, go for it! Just remember to start simple. As an example, I’d rather you start burying a couple five gal-lon buckets with only one foot of dirt on top of them than do nothing because you don’t have the time to dig an eight foot hole to bury a 55 gallon drum. 3

if your CaChe relies on batteries to open, What happens to your aCCess When they go bad?


We’re on the home stretch to Christmas and I want to recommend a handfull of items that I personally own and am very comfortable endorsing. There are a couple of things in here that

you’ll probably ONLY see me endors-ing in the Journal of Tactics and Prepared-ness and not in the weekly newsletter.

I’ll start out with books. These aren’t necessarily my all time favorites, but they’re all ones that I’m confident that you’ll enjoy.

Fiction—I love reading a few chapters of fiction at night before going to bed and end up reading 2-4 novels per month. Here are a few great recommendations for you:

any of the “Joe nobody” books froM the “holding their oWn” series. This is a great series of post-breakdown novels that I have really enjoyed.

If you’ve got tolerance for a MUCH grit-tier book, check out the Marcus Wynne se-

ries. Marcus and I have several common friends who are tip-of-the-spear black ops types and this series is based on some of their make-your-stomach-queasy experi-ences. I wouldn’t give this to women, kids or anyone who’s easily offended, but Mar-cus is a solid guy who knows his stuff and includes a lot of snippets of tactical educa-tion in his writing. He also goes into the psychology of the guys who live this life and he makes it clear that some people are built for it and others are not.

“one seCond after” by WilliaM forstChenI believe this was the first Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) novel, and I’m very thankful for it and for the other novels in the genre that it’s inspired.

cHrisT

mas

lisT

Last minute

gift ideas,

or something

for yourself

with your

Christmas $

Here’s some excellent fiction for readers who enjoy post-apocalypse survival reads.


chRiSTmAS liST

“luCifer’s haMMer” by larry niven and Jerry pournelle This was released in 1977 and is one of the pioneer end-of-the-world novels. It’s about a comet that impacts the Earth, it’s impact, and how people reacted to the electrical grid, supply chains and social order collaps-ing around them.

Here a few great non-fiction books I highly recommend:

“terror at beslan” by John giduCkThis book is not a light read and I wouldn’t recommend it for anyone under 21 (unless they’re headed off to war) or squeamish people who are closed minded to the possi-bility that there might be evil people in the world. This is the after action analysis of the 2004 massacre of more than 300 children and adults in Beslan, Russia by Chechen Muslim Al Qaeda Terrorists.

It IS a book that should be required read-ing for anyone who’s in law enforcement or education. There is a general belief that ev-eryone in the world is inherently like Ameri-cans and that they view other humans with as much value as is the norm here. One of the things that Terror at Beslan details is how Chechens as young as eight and who live in extremist villages are forced to watch torture and executions and start participating shortly thereafter.

Exposure to and participation in these kinds of activities during the formative years allows people to more easily do things that normal Americans would consider unthink-able. Simply getting a snapshot into the for-mative years of our enemies is very valuable.

“taCtiCs of the CresCent Moon” by h. John poole(reviewed in the No-vember issue) Think “Art of War” and “The Book of Five Rings” meeting AK-47s, IEDs, and the inter-net. This book details the mindset, thought processes, strategies and tactics of militant Islam throughout the centuries. Based on the fundamentals of un-conventional warfare, Poole covers how the central core thought processes that we’re seeing in Iraq and Afghanistan are the same

effective strategies that have been used since bows and arrows ruled the battlefield.

“hoW to survive the Most CritiCal 5 seConds of your life” by tiM larkin and Chris ranCk-buhrI know Tim and Chris and think the world

of them, but even if I didn’t, I’d say that this book is a true treasure. One of the problems with polite society is that most people as-sume that they can use words to talk down someone who only understands violence and has decided to use it. Tim and Chris cover practical, usable steps for sane, rational, mor-al people to be able to go from living their normal life to being able to flip the switch and quickly take out a violent attacker. This is stuff that only “nice” people need to learn. Psychopaths and violent criminals don’t need anyone to teach them how to psychologically go from 0 to 11. In short, if you’ve ever won-dered whether you could REALLY flip the switch and defend yourself with martial arts, a bladed weapon or a firearm, you owe it to yourself to read this book. You can get it for free through a special offer at surviveinplace.com/targetfocustraining

Other items:

long range shooting siMulator froM shooterready.CoM I’ve bought two versions of this software and consider it to be a vital tool for anyone who is interested in long range shooting or tacti-cal marksmanship. I’m not a professionally (SWAT/military) trained sniper, but I LOVE

long range shooting. To me, anything that lets me use a slide rule and a calculator under stress along with things going “boom!” is fun.

There are three big components to long range shooting: Physical, math, and DOPE (data on personal equipment). If you’re weak in any of these areas, you’re not going to get consistent hits on target at any real distance.

The sad and frustrating part of this is that normally learning long range shooting takes firing lots of rounds downrange, which is expensive. With the Long Range Shooting Simulation, you can do training that would take hundreds of dollars and tens of hours of range time in the comfort of your own home.

Long range shooting simulation will let you train with multiple calibers, multiple recticles, different wind speeds, different wind angles, shooting at higher/lower elevations, timed targets, moving targets, partially obscured targets, desert and urban environments and targets at unknown distances.

If you’re using a Mildot Master (another great gift), a typical scenario would be like this:1. A scenario comes up on your screen

with a windsock and a target of known size at an unknown distance.

2. You read the windsock to determine wind speed and direction.

3. You use your recticle (I use oval Mildot) to range the target. You will need to compensate for zoom depending on whether you’re using a 1st or 2nd plane zoom lens.

4. Line up your target size and the size of the target in mils (mili-

cHrisT

mas

lisT


chRiSTmAS liST

radian) to determine the range.5. Use your DOPE or bullet drop chart to

determine bullet drop at that range.6. Using the Mildot Master, figure out your

elevation adjustment and either dial it in or hold-off appropriately.

7. Dial in or hold off for windage.8. Press the “Fire” button and see how you

did.

A strength and weakness of this system is that the ballistics of every round are identical,

wind is consistent from crown to tar-get, and every trig-ger press is flaw-less. This is not the real world, but isolates one par-ticular set of skills that are vital to long range shoot-ing so that you can master the skills much quicker and cheaper than you

can throwing rounds downrange. You can get the Long Range Shooting Simulation at ShooterReady.com and the Mildot Master at Mildot.com.

sniper flashCards froM sniperflashCards.CoM This gift complements the Long Range Shoot-ing Simulator and is a tool that allows a be-ginning shooter to acquire a target at an un-known distance between 300 and 500 yards, develop a firing solution without taking their eyes off of the target and deliver a combat ac-curate shot within five seconds.

Normally, the process takes MUCH longer than five seconds and includes using a rang-ing scope, laser rangefinder, and/or multiple calculations.

The system was created by Victor Aguilar. I’m not sure if Victor says where he was born or if he wants it known, so I’ll only say it was

Eastern Europe and he watched the Soviets come in and take over. As an adult, one of his passions is to make sure that nothing like this will ever happen again and Sniper Flash-cards is one of the tools that he created to help Eastern Europeans have a cost effective way to train up civilians to defend themselves from hostile military takeovers.

I don’t know whether or not this will ever be a concern in America, but I do know that I’ve used the lessons learned from train-ing with Sniper Flashcards to blaze through timed long range target courses.

As a note, Sniper Flashcards will allow you, with practice, to make 300-500 yard combat accurate shots using extreme hold offs. But “combat accurate” does not equate to a clean kill required for hunting and should never be used for that purpose.

50 titaniuM Cr123 batteries froM batteryJunCtion.CoM BatteryJunction.com is a GREAT source for batteries-especially expensive batteries. If you use CR123 batteries in lights or other gear, you might seriously want to consider ordering some Titanium 1400 mah batteries. In the tests I’ve done and tests I’ve read, these batteries perform equally or outperform al-most every CR123 battery, including batteries from Surefire. What really tipped the scales for me is the fact that I can get these batter-ies for less than a buck apiece at BatteryJunc-tion.com. Since these are lithium ion batter-ies, they’ve got a shelf life of up to 15 years!

lithiuM aa & aaa batteries Jumping off from the previous recommenda-tion on the CR123 batteries, if you’ve got a good supply of alkaline AA and AAA batteries, you might want to consider starting to buy lithium ion AA & AAA batteries. Depending on the temperature and load, they have three times the capacity of alkaline batteries, weigh less and have a longer shelf life. The main place where we use lithium ion AA batteries is in my handheld GPS.

gerber lMf ii fixed blade knife This knife is a workhorse. I’ve been beating the snot out of mine for about a year and a half and it’s never let me down. It’s not tech-nically the best knife in the world, but at $60-$70 on Amazon, you can own 2-5 of them for the same price as one “premium” knife.

2 Mini-survival kits (one to use, one to Carry) My favorites are the Lifeline Ultralight it and the Adventure Medical Kits Pocket Survival Pak. Both are small and available from REI. I

suggest getting two with the plan of pulling everything out of one of them and practicing with the contents until you’re positive you’re comfortable. In the probable event that you don’t get stuff replaced after using it during testing, your second kit will be 100% ready to go.

The Gerber LMF is an excellent hard-use knife for the money.

The Mildot Master can be an invaluable tool (and a great gift for a firearms enthusiast).

above: The Adventure Medical Kits Pocket Survival Pak.

right: The Lifeline Ultralight. Both kits are excellent pre-made kits so you don’t have to start one from scratch.


chRiSTmAS liST

petzl zipka 2 & zipka plus 2 headlaMp: This is the headlamp of choice for myself, my wife, my parents and everyone else who we’ve given one to. I’ve had the original gen-eration 2, and have a handful of the Plus 2s. They’re tiny, lightweight, run on AAA batter-ies and will easily attach to your head, wrist or almost anything else that’s smaller than your head.

The Zipka Plus 2 (the only one I’d rec-ommend) has five modes: bright white, dim white, white strobe, red and red strobe. We use the red setting every single night for reading in bed, checking on the kids, and for pretty much anything during the night where we need light.

You can find them at Amazon, REI and oth-er retailers.

propane adapter to go froM big (grill size) tanks to CaMp stovesThis is only useful if you have a propane camp stove or propane camp lantern, but if you do, it’s really nice to be able to run them off of full size propane tanks in addition to being able to run them off of the little por-table camp size propane tanks. You do need a plan to stabilize your camp stove or lantern, but once you’ve got that figured out, you’re set. You can get them at REI and most out-door retailers.

volCano stove These are great little stoves and you can get them off of Amazon or from BePrepared.com. They have a couple of great features, one of which is that they will run off of pro-

pane, charcoal or wood. The other is that they are very effi-cient at transferring heat from your fuel source to the cook-ing surface so you can cook with a minimal amount of fuel.

solo stove This little stove is a combina-tion of a highly efficient gas-ifier when you’re using twigs and debris and an alcohol stove when you add the alco-hol burner. It’s truly an awe-some piece of kit. One tip for the alcohol stove is if you’re using a sparker to light it. I car-ry cotton balls or Q-tips that I fluff up to convert the spark into a flame that will light the alcohol easier. This little trick is progressively more and more valuable as the tempera-ture drops and worked quite nicely at -5F a couple of weeks ago.

kabar tdi ldk LDK stands for “Last Ditch Knife” and that’s a great description of what this knife is. In the included sheath, it’s about the same size as a credit card and only 2-3 times thicker, mak-ing it very easy to conceal. It’s made to be integrated into the laces on boots, worn as a neck knife or kept on you anywhere and any way that you could get access to it in a last ditch situation.

I haven’t found myself in a life or death situation where I had to use it in a last ditch fight to the death, but I use the little bugger almost daily for opening mail, boxes or other normal light duty knife tasks. I’ve found that if I’m around squeamish people this knife doesn’t freak people out nearly as much as my folders. You can find them for around $20 on Amazon and at many other retailers, but make darn sure that it’s legal before you start carrying it with you. 3

The author’s Solo stove heating up in the cold.

Inside the Zipka Plus 2.The volcano stove can run off propane, charcoal or wood.

The Kabar TDI is a last ditch, hide-anywhere weapon.

Small and lightweight, the Zipka 2 runs on AAA batteries and attaches to most anything.


I’ve had the privilege of working for some incredible leaders in both law enforcement and the military. But the word “incredible,” defined in my desktop dictionary as “so ex-

traordinary as to seem impossible or unbeliev-able,” can be used to signify polar opposites. Some of the incredible leaders that I’ve worked for were examples of everything right in lead-ership. They are accomplished and successful men and women to be emulated by those of us looking for the ability to succeed in ever in-creasing positions of responsibility. Men like Colonel (ret.) Joseph D. Celeski, former com-mander of the 3rd Special Forces Group (Air-borne) and the man responsible for the com-mand of all special operations in Afghanistan during the majority of my time there. If Col. Celeski went by today with a bucket of water in each hand and said that he was “charging Hell,” I’d ask if I could carry one of the buck-ets. Colonel Alan Walker, former CO of the 19th SFG(A) was cut from the same cloth, as were some others who put time and effort into men-toring young soldier leaders. Others, like As-sistant Chiefs A.K. Greenwood, Steven R. Turn-er and Marlin D. Balls, were law enforcement leaders whose impact on my service and the department were of the highest order. What a privilege it has been to have been mentored by men like these.

Then there were other leaders who were “in-credible” for the opposite reason. They will re-main nameless, for to state their names would be to almost honor them, which would be a travesty. Suffice to say that the only reason we ever followed them was out of a morbid sense of curiosity. I don’t know how many times I participated in a conversation like this, “What’s that idiot going to do next?” “I don’t know, but let’s go watch, it should be fun.”

In between the polar opposites of “incred-ible” is the largest portion of the group of past leaders for whom I’ve worked. Let’s just call this group by what really defines them: medio-cre. Mediocrity in leadership is the norm and, unfortunately, exists at all levels. Most leaders are able to accomplish enough to get by, but not enough to have true impact on their orga-nizations. Leaders come and go on a regular basis and the reality is that I have to think really hard, or find past personnel rosters, to remem-ber many of them. Why? Because their impact was minimal.

So why the difference? All of these men and

women had similar backgrounds and training and had risen through the same organizations. Some were highly successful, others were highly entertaining, while the most were just there. Why doesn’t the system that produces great leaders in a few instances, produce great leaders on a regular basis? I think the key is the nature of the individual in the leadership position. One of the best ways to determine why some leaders are highly successful, some are abject failures and most are neither, is to look at the lives of those whom we believe are examples of great leadership and identify the commonalities.

Both through formal leadership training and through self-directed activity, I have studied the lives of numerous persons whose leader-ship impact has been worthy of recording. As a result, I think I have identified some common values which a developing leader may harness in order to become a great leader.

First, a sense of honor. Nothing is more im-portant to these men and women than serving with honor. They are committed to living lives that are exemplary, lives which will stand the test of time. Their ethics are rock solid, regard-less of potential personal consequence. The foundation of their actions is a moral bedrock which sustains them through any crisis. They do the right things, regardless of the situation, because they are incapable of doing the wrong things. They are human, they suffer from some of the mortal frailties that the rest of us face, but they would rather perish than be found to have been dishonorable. They make mistakes, but are willing to be accountable for them. They stand on principle, the words “compro-mise” and “appeasement” are not in their lexi-cons.

Second, they are committed to excellence. In the world of special operators, they live the creed of “don’t tell me, show me.” They are the embodiment of Dr. Albert Schweitzer’s words, “Example is not the main thing in influencing others, it is the only thing.” Their individual ef-forts are replete with achievement, their team efforts are marked by selflessness and sacrifice. They don’t care about credit, they care about team success. They get up earlier, work harder, stay later and suffer longer than anyone else on the team. Nothing stops them. Obstacles are surmounted, regardless of the effort. Positive results are the marks on their scorecard. Meet-ing challenges and overcoming adversity are

seen as opportunities for continued develop-ment. They are the most experienced people on the team, not the ones that have been there the longest.

Third, they truly enjoy working with other people. Leadership requires that there are fol-lowers. To have followers, the leader must create trust. To create trust, the leader must abound in interpersonal skills, skills that cre-ate environments where people can aspire to greatness. In order to have those interpersonal skills, the leader has to enjoy working with people to accomplish great things. No leader, in history or modern times, who didn’t like working with people has been successful.

Fourth, they are highly disciplined individu-als. They create success through good order and discipline. They know that undisciplined organizations fail. They manage time, schedule commitments, complete assignments and or-ganize their whole lives around the objectives necessary to be successful. They are very phys-ically fit, they shoot well, they are technically and tactically proficient and they lead from the front. They are the busiest people in the organization, but it is a busyness tied to accom-plishment. While some on the team lament “I’ve got too much to do to work out,” the great leaders just smile and get it all done. Their self-discipline is the tool by which they become the best they are capable of. They are “quiet professionals” who, in reality, could be arrogant and boastful of their accomplishments because they’ve earned it, but they are not. Their per-sonal humility is another trademark.

Last, they lead balanced lives. Their lives are often faith-centered, their family relationships secure, their social circles extend beyond the job and they are revered among their com-munities. They have detractors, those who are vociferously aggressive in their attempts to discredit them, but that is because of what the great leader represents. Moral courage is another pillar of their success and that breeds animosity from lesser men. As Albert Einstein once said, “Great spirits have always found vio-lent opposition from mediocrities.” They strive not for popularity, but for respect. They realize that, no matter how hard they try, not everyone is going to like them. But they don’t care, they just quietly drive on with their success.

How are you doing in your leadership? Is a little emulation in order? Are you succeeding? Don’t tell me, show me. 3

O N L E A D E R S H I P

INCREDIBLE LEADERS BY: COLONEL S. RANDY WATT, COMMANDER, US ARMY 19TH SPECIAL FORCES GROUP

an intro to caching christmas list incredible leaders...

Documents