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Medical Improvisations: DIY Techniques for Survival First Aid & Hygiene

By
Patrick McCarthy
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0

The following article was published in Issue 36 of our magazine. This issue is available now in print or digital format.

We live in a world where established safety measures, if followed, prevent a lot of injuries. Unfortunately, they’ll never prevent all injuries. There were an estimated 45 million incidents of trauma in the U.S. last year that required an emergency room visit. Car wrecks, outdoor injuries, industrial accidents, and other mishaps contribute to a whole lot of hurt in good times. That leaves us to wonder: How would this change in bad times?

Let’s face it, people get injured and sick whether or not there’s a rescue helicopter on the horizon. Broken bones, bleeding, sprains, and other issues will need to be treated.

If the modern emergency system breaks down, is overloaded, or simply too far away, someone in the family or group will become the highest medical asset left. Certified or not, they’ll be the end of the line with regards to the medical well-being of their people. Without equipment and know-how, deaths will occur that could’ve been prevented with a good medical kit and knowledge of basic first aid.

People prepare for the worst by accumulating food, water, personal protection items, and more. The wisest of them also stockpile a good supply of medical equipment and medicines as well. In a short-term event, those with training and equipment will save many lives. But what happens when the medic bag is empty?

All is not lost. Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention. The resourceful will make do with found objects. A variety of items on the trail or in abandoned buildings can serve as medical supplies. All it takes is an instinct to explore, a good eye, and some imagination.

Before we begin, it should be mentioned that the medical improvisations below are stopgap measures for dire situations when traditional medical resources and treatment are not available — unfortunately, the current Coronavirus / COVID-19 outbreak may be one such circumstance, if it continues to worsen. Improvised methods are rarely as successful as modern technology and equipment (if used properly). Having said that, some of the strategies below might just save lives in times of trouble.

Water Bottles as Filters

You can last quite a while without food, but only about three days without water. Even when there’s a water source nearby, you can’t see the microscopic organisms that make you sick. In survival settings, more lives may be lost by diseases due to contaminated water than bullet wounds.

With a clear plastic PET (polyethelene terephthalate) bottle, you can make water safer. It shouldn’t be hard to find; approximately 500 billion are produced every year. Unless you have a purpose-built water filter like the Sawyer Mini or LifeStraw, you’ll need containers to: 1) filter out particulates that make the water cloudy, and 2) destroy disease-causing microbes in the water.

To improvise a filter, you’ll need the following items that you might find by scavenging, or in your medical kit:

  • Clear plastic bottles
  • Coffee filters or paper towels
  • Fine sand
  • Gravel
  • Small rocks
  • Activated charcoal or wood charcoal
  • Knife
  • Hammer and nail

First, use your knife to cut the bottom off of, say, a 2-liter bottle about a third of the way up. Using your hammer and nail, punch a hole in the bottle cap and screw it back on. Turn the top portion of the bottle upside down and place it in the bottom portion that you cut off.

Place a coffee filter or paper towel (or other barrier) in the neck of the bottle.

Use some activated charcoal (commonly found in a home with an aquarium) or wood charcoal from your fire to form the first layer. Place a layer of fine sand next. Add a layer of small gravel on top of the sand.

The last layer will be some small rocks. Place a filter, paper towel or cloth on top to catch algae, mosquito larvae, and other debris. Allow the questionable water to sit for a while before you use the filter. This lets material settle to the bottom as much as possible and makes the process more effective.

1. Supplies needed for an effective water filter. Use a hammer and nail to make a hole in the lid; add first layer (coffee filter/paper towel) in bottom.

2. Next, layer with activated charcoal added on top of the coffee filter/paper towel.

3. Add sand over the activated charcoal.

4. Improvised filter with sand and gravel layers completed. Turn the page to see how well the filter works on the dirty water on the right.

Above: Completed bottle filter in action; more than one pass may be needed.

Many variations on this method exist: some use grass as a layer, while others put a coffee filter between every layer. The key is to have a series of materials of different sizes. Be patient! It takes a while for the water to pass through all these layers.

Now that your water looks and smells relatively clear, it’s time to disinfect it. Use another clean, clear plastic bottle and fill it about 80-percent full of the filtered water. Screw the top on and shake vigorously for 20 seconds. Leave out in direct sunlight for six to eight hours on a clear day, or two days if it’s cloudy; ultraviolet radiation from the sun will do all the work. Placing the bottle on a reflective surface does an even better job. This is known as Solar Water Disinfection, or SODIS, and is used extensively in developing nations where clean running water isn’t available.

If the sun won’t cooperate or time is of the essence, you may have to go back to the old standby of boiling it. The CDC recommends a good roiling boil for one minute at sea level, with three additional minutes added for elevations of 6,562 feet (2,000 meters) or more. Unfortunately, it may take several pounds of wood to reach boiling temperatures.

Bleach or iodine will also work. Use eight drops of standard 6-percent unscented household bleach per gallon of water, but double the dose if it’s cloudy, colored, or very cold. Alternatively, add five drops of 2-percent tincture of iodine to each quart or liter of water; double the dose if cloudy or colored. Both bleach and iodine take a good 30 minutes to work their magic.

Once full, your plastic bottle can serve a very different purpose: as a way to apply pressure to a pelvic or abdominal wound. The weight of the bottle directly on the injury, secured in place with an elastic wrap pressure dressing, might help to slow down internal bleeding.

Pool Shock to Disinfect Water

Alternately, you may be able to get your hands on a bag of Pool Shock or similar product in many garages, or general stores in areas where residential pools are prevalent. Pool Shock (calcium hypochlorite) is a granular product used to disinfect pool water. It can be used to make a bleach substitute for the purpose of emergency disinfection. This is a legitimate option; it’s on the list of accepted emergency disinfection methods by the CDC.

To make a chlorine solution with calcium hypochlorite, add one heaping teaspoon to 2 gallons of water and stir. To disinfect water, add one part of the chlorine mixture you just made to 100 parts of water. If the chlorine taste is unpleasant, pouring the water from one container to another seems to help, especially if you wait a period of time before use.

Commercial Option:

Old Sheets for Bandaging

Dealing with traumatic injuries is part and parcel of being the off-grid medic. You’ll need bandages. An old cotton sheet is best — white is preferable, but take what you can get. Cut into long strips of at least 5 to 6 feet in length. You might consider varying the widths of your rolls, say, 2, 4, and 6 inches. Boil them to disinfect to lower the risk of infection.

The Handy Triangular Bandage (Bandanna)

Commercial triangular bandages, also called cravats, are valuable additions to any medical kit. Have them in quantity. When they’re eventually expended, however, those old sheets or bandannas become useful items.

To make your own bandanna/triangular bandage, cut some sturdy fabric into 40×40-inch squares and fold over — voilà, a triangle. Alternatively, cut the square in half diagonally to make two bandages. For storage, fold over several times to make a compact square. Forty inches may seem large to you, but smaller bandannas aren’t quite as versatile.

Above: Cut an old cotton sheet into strips for use as bandages.

The standard medical improvisation using a triangular folded cloth is the arm sling, but there are many other options that help treat a number of injuries. Here are just some of the ways you can deal with injuries using the triangular bandage and, perhaps, a few found objects:

Arm, Shoulder, and Rib Injuries
The classic sling helps support an injured arm, shoulder, or rib. Place your bandage lengthwise against the person’s body, with the point toward the injured arm’s elbow. The arm should be held in front and bent slightly about the horizontal plane. Lift the lower end of the bandage up over the uninjured side and behind the person’s neck to reach the upper end. Tie a knot. You can fold in the point of the bandage by the elbow, use a safety pin, or tie a knot for added stability. For even more stability, a second bandage can be used around the torso over the sling. For rib fractures, place a pillow under the “slung” arm.

Scalp Injuries
The triangular bandage can also take the place of a number of items that might have a more specialized purpose. For example, it functions as a bandanna to wrap scalp injuries. Holding a cloth, gauze dressing, or sanitary napkin on the wound, fold the long end and place the triangle so the tip reaches the back of the neck.

Then, wrap around the head over the triangle point and around to the front. Tie and pull down the triangle at the back to exert pressure on the top of the head. The tip can be folded over or left to guard the nape from the sun.

Eye Injuries
The triangular bandage can also work for an eye injury. With eye injuries, you should consider bandaging both eyes, if appropriate, as they move in unison. If one eye moves, the injured eye will also move, which is problematic if a foreign object protrudes from the eye. The bottom of a paper cup, some light padding, and a triangular bandage will provide sturdy protection.

Hand Injuries
A triangular bandage can also easily wrap a hand wound. When covering an injury like a burn, place a gauze or cloth with some petroleum jelly or aloe vera on the injury itself, then simply fold the triangular end over the palm, wrap around the wrist, and tie. When pressure is needed, place some pads or sterile gauze on the bleeding area, and then use a folded-over cravat like a roller bandage.

Ankle Injuries
Ankle injuries are usually dressed with elastic wraps, but a triangular bandage can also work in a pinch.

  1. Place on top of the foot, then fold over the bottom.
  2. Lifting the foot slightly, take both ends and cross behind the ankle.
  3. Cross both ends in front and under the bandage on each side.
  4. Tie on top of the foot.

Using the Triangular Bandage as a Tourniquet
Note: While improvised tourniquets may do the job as a last resort, every well-equipped medic should have several military-style tourniquets like the SOFTT, CAT, or SAM XT as well as the versatile SWAT, which can do double duty as a tourniquet, pressure dressing, sling, or splint stabilizer.

What about bleeding wounds? The bandage by itself can serve as a reasonable barrier for application of direct pressure on an injury. You can use one or several to pack into the wound, if needed. It also can be used as part of an improvised tourniquet similar to how it was used centuries ago.

Above: To improvise a tourniquet, begin by wrapping your bandage around the extremity 2 to 3 inches above the injury. Tie a knot after wrapping the gauze; place the “windlass” rod over this knot. Tie another knot over the windlass and begin turning to tighten the tourniquet until bleeding stops and pulse not felt. Secure the tightened windlass to prevent unwinding. Monitor for restart of bleeding after the tourniquet is secured.

Wrap the folded bandage (about 2 to 3 inches wide) around the limb at least 2 inches above the bleeding wound. Avoid joints; go above instead. Tie a square knot. Now you must add a “windlass.” This can be a stick, marker pen, metal utensil, or other sturdy item that’s turned to apply increasing pressure.

Place the windlass above the first knot and tie a second knot over it. Now, turn the windlass several times to achieve more and more pressure until the bleeding and the pulse beyond the level of the injury (that is, further from the torso) has stopped. Tie once again to secure the windlass in position.

Other Uses for Triangular Bandages Made from Sheets
Your triangular bandages are also useful as splint stabilizers. Let’s say you have a SAM splint in place, but it won’t stay there without some help. You can tie triangular bandages around the extremity to hold the splint in place and support the injured limb. No SAM splint? You can use branches, blankets, pillows, paint stirring sticks, rulers, and any number of other creative ways to provide support and stabilization for the injury. That depends, of course, on the location and severity of the trauma.

Besides dressing injuries, a triangular bandage can be used as a face mask in dust storms or as a stopgap in epidemic scenarios (it’s no N95 mask, though).

Bandana Pack at Amazon:

The Pillow Splint

Pillows can help stabilize a sprained joint with just a little duct tape. If you’re using two sticks or a commercial SAM splint to immobilize the injury, pillow material can still be used to wrap around as padding.

Above: Improvised medical supplies to stabilize orthopedic injuries with pillow, duct tape, and torn sheets.

Jackets, Blankets, and Chairs as Stretchers

On the trail, the shirt off your back can serve many purposes; one of them is to assemble a serviceable stretcher. For this, you’ll need two long branches or poles at least 2 inches thick and two shirts or jackets. With one person holding the end of a pole in each hand, a second pulls his partner’s jacket off over the back and onto the poles. The two then switch roles, with the first pulling the jacket off the second in the same manner. Zip or button the jackets to provide a relatively sturdy “cradle” for a victim in need of transport.

Above: To make a stretcher with two jackets, hold a pole in each hand and have an assistant pull the jacket over your back. Slide the jacket onto the poles and button/zip. Pull a second jacket over the other ends of the poles and button/zip.

If you’re in an urban setting, almost any domicile will have blankets. These can make an even more solid and comfortable stretcher by simply folding it over two (solid) broomsticks or poles. A chair can also be used to safely transport a conscious and alert casualty.

Duct Tape to Close Wounds

Among its many uses, duct tape can serve as a reasonable butterfly closure for a simple straight laceration. Take a strip of tape about 3 inches long and cut into the form of an “H,” folding in the middle to make a non-adhesive surface to go over the cut itself. Apply tension while placing the tape to achieve closure.

Above: Duct tape cut into an “H” shape can help close a wound.

If you’re good at sewing, you can use other found objects to help close wounds. Curved needles are easiest to handle — thread them with silk or cotton thread or even unused monofilament fishing line, and they’ll keep that gaping wound closed. It’s important to remember, though, that many wounds incurred in survival settings will be dirty; closing dirty wounds is a recipe for an infection, despite what Rambo says.

Willow Bark as Pain Relief

You’re down to your last Ibuprofen tablet, and you have three people in pain from assorted injuries. What do you do? There are no opiate-laden poppies around, but if there are willow trees in the neighborhood, you might have an answer. The inner bark of willow trees contains salicin, the ingredient used to make the first aspirin back in the 19th century. Birches, aspens, poplars, and other trees also contain salicin, but in smaller quantities.

Cut through the dense outer bark to the inner bark. Remove some strips and make a tea (1 to 2 tablespoons of dried bark per cup) or just chew the strips themselves. You won’t know how much “aspirin” is in the dose, which could be a serious concern, but it’s an option for austere settings. Don’t use more than 4 cups of tea per day. The concoction will help with pain, inflammation, and fever.

Aspirin: The First Manufactured Drug
Although Hippocrates wrote about the use of salicin from natural sources in 400 BC, the word “Aspirin” was the original brand name given by Bayer to acetylsalicylic acid, first manufactured in the late 1890s. The “A” stands for “acetyl” and the “spir” stands for the Latin name for meadowsweet (spiraea ulmaria), an herb that happens, along with willow, aspen, and poplar trees, to also contain salicin.

Honey to Prevent Wound Infections

Another natural product that has medicinal benefits is honey, especially in its raw, unprocessed form. Honey is known for its antibacterial properties and has been applied to wounds for centuries to prevent and treat infection. Honey can decrease the growth of bacteria; it’s high in sugar and acidic in nature. Most types of honey also generate hydrogen peroxide when diluted, a substance that increases antimicrobial activity. Additionally, honey has been proven to last for centuries in sealed containers, so it can be safely stockpiled without concerns about expiration. In situations where there are no antibiotics, honey is a helpful tool in the medical woodshed.

Clean the wound with soap and water, then apply honey diluted in solution or by itself onto wounds and cover with a dressing. Many believe it’s simpler to place the honey onto the wound dressing itself. Besides open and possibly infected wounds, honey is helpful to treat burns. Apply directly and cover with a nonstick bandage.

Sanitary Napkins as Wound Dressings

At first glance, you might consider feminine sanitary napkins to be a poor substitute for conventional sterile dressings. According to a study published in the Spring 2006 issue of the Canadian Journal of Plastic Surgery, you might be wrong. Evaluation for microbes in both products found a number of sanitary napkin brands were as free of disease-causing bacteria as expensive sterile dressings. As a matter of fact, two of 20 sterile dressings grew bacteria, while zero of 20 sanitary pads did. The brands tested were Kotex, Always, Stay Free, and Compliments.

Above: Thick female sanitary pads can be used as padding or to cover open wounds.

Having said that, some sanitary pads are shaped for the area of the body that they’re intended for. Some have adhesive surfaces that can make them awkward for some other applications. They still make for useful padding for orthopedic injuries and to cover packed wounds.

On a similar note, you’ve probably heard the old notion that tampons should be carried as a means of packing gunshot wounds to stop blood flow. However, there are numerous reasons why they’re not ideal for severe traumatic injuries. Check doomandbloom.net/the-tactical-tampon for more on this topic.

Cardboard as Snow Glasses

Snow blindness can rob you of your vision when you need it most. To protect your eyes, simply cut two slits in some cardboard and, perhaps, an area to fit the bridge of your nose. Duct tape can be fashioned into reasonable eye protection against snow blindness as well.

Above: Cut slits into duct tape or cardboard to prevent snow blindness.

The 5-Gallon Restroom

Human waste is handled sanitarily during normal times, and you’ll keep your people healthier if you stay vigilant off the grid as well. A five-gallon bucket can serve as a portable restroom in times of trouble. There are few residences that won’t have one of these laying around, so put one to good use. If you have two, use one bucket for solid waste and one for liquid.

Urine from healthy people is acceptable for use in your survival garden and may even increase production. Although there are bacteria in the soil, few organisms in urine will transmit infections. Leptospirosis is one, but less than 200 cases are reported yearly (many in Puerto Rico) in a U.S. population of 330 million.

Above: The “Luggable Loo” helps turn your five-gallon bucket into a usable toilet.

For your “poop” bucket, you’ll want some plastic garbage bags and some sand, dirt, or kitty litter.

Place one or two garbage bags in the bucket and place an amount of fill in the bag. Add more with each use. Dispose of the bag when about half-full. Some feel that a dilute bleach solution would be helpful, but use too much and you’ll go right through the plastic.

A way to make this bodily function more comfortable is with the affordable plastic “luggable loo,” essentially a toilet seat that fits right onto the top of a five-gallon bucket.

Where to Get First Aid Training

American Red Cross first-aid training classes offer information and impart skills to help during many emergency situations. These are available online or in person. Check RedCross.org for the class nearest to you.

FEMA’s Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) program trains volunteers to prepare for the types of disasters that are most likely in a particular area. Through hands-on practice and simulations, CERT teaches response to various catastrophes. Contact your municipality or FEMA at FEMA-Prepare@fema.dhs.gov.

There are also many companies that offer wilderness first-aid courses. Do your own research and ask around to find a qualified instructor with a professional medical background.

It should be noted that even wilderness first-aid classes assume that, at one point or another, advanced medical care will play a part in resolving the emergency. As a result, many will focus on stabilizing the patient and signaling for rescue. The long-term survival mindset is different — you must prepare to deal with an injury or illness from beginning to end without the miracle of modern technology or the arrival of a medevac helicopter.

Conclusion

There are many additional items you’ll find in your travels that can be put to good medical use. Baking soda can be mixed with bleach to make Dakin’s, a cleaning solution used as far back as World War I for preventing infection in traumatic wounds and bedsores. You can also use baking soda to brush your teeth. Speaking of brushing teeth, smashing the end of a pencil-width green twig until it’s frayed makes a serviceable toothbrush.

Above: Improvise a toothbrush by fraying the end of a pencil-thick twig. 

There are more tools in the medical woodshed, even in tough times, than you might imagine. With attention to what’s available and a little ingenuity, medics will still be able to do good using outside-the-box strategies. When the commercial supplies run out, they’ll have to. As President Theodore Roosevelt once said, “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”

Ready-Made IFAK:

About the Author

Joseph Alton, MD, is a New York Times/Amazon bestselling author and a Fellow of both the American College of Surgeons and the American College of OB/GYN. He’s a member of the Wilderness Medical Society and certified as an Advanced Wilderness Expedition Provider. His books include The Survival Medicine Handbook: The Guide for When Help is Not on the Way, Alton’s Antibiotics and Infectious Disease, and others. He provides over 1,000 free articles, podcasts, and videos on his award-winning survival website doomandbloom.net.

Comparing Six Knife Sharpeners

By
Patrick McCarthy
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0

As the saying goes, a sharp knife is a safe knife. Struggling to cut with a dull blade leads to mistakes and injuries, while a razor-sharp edge slices effortlessly. This is why you should always take the time to maintain your knives, whether they’re being used for cooking, camping, every-day utility, or emergency survival. We’ve previously written about pocket-sized knife sharpeners that can serve this purpose, but a recent video from Project Farm focused on comparing six larger knife sharpeners. As with previous videos from this YouTube channel, a scientific and objective approach is taken to determine which tools might be worth your time and money.

Each of the six sharpeners was tested on a typical stainless steel kitchen knife that was intentionally dulled by repeatedly rubbing against aluminum pipe in a specially-designed jig. After the knives had been dulled and re-sharpened, they were tested using a BESS-certified sharpness tester — a device that uses a precise scale to measure the amount of force required to cut through a thin wire. Surprisingly, most of the sharpeners didn’t even get close to returning the knives to factory sharpness on the first attempt. However, a second more careful pass with the sharpeners produced better results, indicating that proper technique and patience are critical with any of these tools.

The knives were also placed under a microscope to analyze the edge’s smoothness, and the results were horrifying in several cases. Any knife aficionado can tell you that pull-through carbide sharpeners are hard on a blade, but these images show that clearly. Still, some look much better than others. To simulate how the newly-sharpened edges would hold up to real-world use, the knives were rubbed against a wood block and re-measured to gauge sharpness loss. Finally, the knives were severely dulled on an abrasive grinding wheel to see how well each sharpener could restore a severely damaged edge.

Check out the video below to see how these six knife sharpeners fared during the Project Farm comparison test:

RECOIL Build Sheet: Our Survivalist AR-15 SBR

By
Patrick McCarthy
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0

The following article appears in Issue 48 of our sister publication, RECOIL magazine. You can find it on shelves starting March 20th, 2020.

There seems to be a nebulous atmosphere of gloom and doom circulating in America today. Politicians and TV pundits claim our government is on the brink of collapse; Time magazine’s scowling teen slacktivist-of-the-year thinks we’ll all be fighting over newly formed beachfront property soon; keyboard commandos on social media are certain of a forthcoming civil war. Any rational person takes these pessimistic perspectives with a huge grain of salt. Still, it’s never a bad idea to insulate yourself from a variety of worst-case scenarios according to the essential mantra of preparedness gear, better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.

With this in mind, we set out to build a rifle that might serve as a one-size-fits-most tool for the types of situations discussed in RECOIL OFFGRID. It might need to fit the role of bedside home-defense implement, bug-out backpack gun, and/or a means of putting food on the table. We therefore decided to go with an SBR for maneuverability, a folding stock adapter for packability, and a silencer to save our hearing in settings where active ear pro might be a luxury we don’t have. Reliability with a variety of ammunition, with or without the silencer, was also prioritized to enable scrounging and scavenging.

The build began with a matched lightweight billet receiver set from Ascend Armory. It features numerous cuts and recesses to shave excess ounces, and comes with preinstalled ambidextrous bolt catch, billet takedown pins, and unidirectional threaded trigger pins. Both the upper and lower were laser-etched with the RECOIL OFFGRID logo. Ascend also provided a billet safety selector, but an apparent tolerance stacking issue caused it to lock up with the drop-in single-stage Velocity trigger; a Battle Arms Development selector nicely circumvented this issue.

Next, we sourced a Quickmount flash hider and titanium Shield silencer from Gemtech. This setup dramatically tames the report of the weapon without causing it to feel unwieldy.We selected an 11.5-inch carbine barrel from Sionics with the standard gas port size — unlike the company’s reduced gas port options, this enables the rifle to cycle just as reliably without the can. The crew at Sionics assisted with assembly, including installation of the M-LOK rail, which required light lapping of the indexing tabs with a diamond file to fit the billet upper. The upper was finished with a Sionics BCG with easy-to-clean NP3 coating and a VLTOR charging handle.

In order to make this SBR even more transportable, we installed a Law Tactical folding adapter. With the silencer removed and stock folded, this brings the gun’s packable length to less than 23 inches — just right for slipping it into a backpack or under a truck seat at the cost of an additional 10.5 ounces.

The VLTOR A5 buffer system was chosen as a means of fine-tuning the action, but it also has the pleasant side effect of smoothing out the recoil impulse. With the standard spring and A5H2 buffer, we experienced some occasional short-stroking. Before playing with buffer weights, we dropped in a Sprinco Green spring sourced through Sons of Liberty Gun Works, which eliminated the issue.

A Magpul MOE-SL stock keeps the rifle slim while it’s folded, and an MOE+ pistol grip houses a container of CLP for field maintenance. Up front, we installed an Ascend Armory billet AFG for added control. No home-defense-ready carbine is complete without an illumination device — for this build, we sourced an Arisaka Defense 300 Series light that produces a 325-lumen, 23,000-candela spot beam. Paired with an Arisaka inline mount, this light tucks in close to the muzzle. It’s also compatible with SureFire accessories, such as the Scout tail cap and SR tape switch seen here.

Finally, we knew the theme of this build required a versatile optic as well as an easily accessible backup iron sight setup. This Nikon 1-4x LPVO fulfills the first requirement, with an illuminated reticle that’s effective for close-range engagement. The second need was met by way of Magpul MBUS Pro Offset sights, which can be folded away to sit flush with the upper when they’re not needed.

Despite what clickbait blog articles may claim, there’s no such thing as an all-purpose SHTF gun. Even if you’re a distant relative of Nostradamus, you can’t predict the exact challenges you might face in the future, and even if you could, there’s no single weapon configuration that’s optimal for all of them. What you can do is make educated guesses about the most likely scenarios that apply to your location and lifestyle, build accordingly, and train frequently to match your hardware with the essential software. Nothing dispels gloom and doom faster than confident preparedness.

PartsMSRP
Ascend Armory Lightweight Billet Receiver Set$610
Sionics 11.5” Chrome-Lined Carbine Barrel with Low-Profile Gas Block$220
Gemtech 5.56 Flash Hider$100
Gemtech Shield Silencer$995
Sionics 10.5” M-LOK V3 Handguard$150
Ascend Armory Angled Foregrip$39
Arisaka Defense 300 Series Light$175
Arisaka Defense In-Line Scout Mount M-LOK$40
SureFire UE Tail Cap and SR07 Switch$174
Sionics NP3-Coated Bolt Carrier Group$190
VLTOR Mod 4 Charging Handle$53
Battle Arms Development BAD Ambi Safety Selector$60
Velocity Triggers MPC Straight with Finger Stop, Nickel Coated, 3lb$190
VLTOR A5 Receiver Extension and A5H2 Buffer$95
Sprinco A5 Green Spring (via Sons of Liberty Gun Works)$20
Law Tactical Folding Stock Adapter Gen 3-M$270
Ascend Armory QD End Plate and Titanium Enhanced Castle Nut$40
Magpul MOE-SL Stock$60
Magpul MOE+ Grip with Lube Bottle Core$39
Magpul MBUS Pro Offset Iron Sights$190
Magpul MS1 Padded Sling with QDM Swivels$116
Nikon Black Force 1000 1-4x24mm$400
Warne MSR Mount$137
Total:$4,363

Gear Up Issue 36

By
Offgrid Staff
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0

Fireside Outdoor Pop-Up Fire Pit & Heat Shield Combo

DIMENSIONS
24 by 24 by 15 inches

MSRP
$120

URL
firesideoutdoor.com

NOTES
The Pop-Up Fire Pit is a 2-square-foot solution for when you need a campfire quickly and want to leave a minimal impact. This portable pit can be set up in about a minute without tools, screws, or bolts. Made of aluminum and stainless steel, it burns with less smoke due to increased airflow. Once the fire’s extinguished, the 8-pound pit cools down in less than two minutes while leaving almost no trace of a fire. It also packs up smaller than most fold-out chairs in the included carry bag. While it’s most ideal for RV trips, camping, or tailgating, it can even be set up atop your lawn or wood deck because of its elevated frame and heat shield.

Good To-Go 5-Day Emergency Food Kit

SHELF LIFE
2 to 5 years

MSRP
$100

URL
goodto-go.com

NOTES
Anyone who’s ever eaten an MRE will know why it’s often called “Meal Rejected by Everyone.” Thankfully, Good To-Go is leading the movement toward prepackaged food that tastes yummy yet will remain shelf stable for years. Its 5-Day Emergency Food Kit is ideal for a home cache during a natural disaster, but could serve just as well during a road trip or weekend of camping. This box is filled with five breakfasts and 10 single-serving entrees — from Mexican quinoa bowl to herbed mushroom risotto. While some taste better than others, all the meals are calorie dense (important for survival), easy to prep (just add boiling water), and made from nutritious ingredients (with names you can actually pronounce) — and light-years tastier than canned meat and hardtack.

Pokka Pens Variety Pak

QUANTITY
Packs of 3, 5, 10, or 20

MSRP
Starting at $8.45

URL
pokkapens.com

NOTES
Let’s make this clear: These are not tactical pens. But what the Pokka Pen does offer is a compact, lightweight, durable, and affordable writing implement that’s easy to pocket. Because if it’s not convenient enough to carry daily, you won’t have it when you need it — whether that’s for something as mundane as jotting a list on a Post-it Note or for more dire situations like leaving a message for your survival group. The Pokka’s most attractive feature is that it’s just 3.3 inches long when closed, since the short barrel fits inside the long cap. To open it, just flip the barrel around and now you’ve got a 5.5-inch-long pen. Plus, the ink cartridges are replaceable. Made in the USA.

ZipStitch Laceration Kit

CONSISTS OF
ZipStitch, bandage, gauze pad, alcohol wipe

MSRP
Starting at $20 per kit

URL
zipstitch.us

NOTES
Imagine you’ve stumbled while hiking and opened a gash on your knee. Though it might not be life-threatening, you’ll need to stop the bleeding and get stitches. What do you do if you’re five miles from civilization, let alone a doctor? ZipStitch is an innovative alternative to stitches that you can apply to minor cuts in the field in seconds. Each ZipStitch features two 1.5-inch adhesive strips connected by four polymer zip ties. Place the strips on either side of the cut then pull them together by pulling the micro-adjustable zip ties individually, providing just the right amount of force to close the wound, increase healing, and decrease scarring. It’s a needle-free method of stitching up small lacerations.

Urban Armor Gear Plasma MacBook Pro Case

COMPATIBILITY
Various models of the 13-inch and 15-inch Apple MacBook Pros

MSRP
$80

URL
urbanarmorgear.com

NOTES
If we spend so much thought and money on a case for our $500 phones, shouldn’t we do the same for our $1,500 laptops? That’s why Urban Armor Gear has the Plasma Series, a lineup of armor for your MacBook Pro. Rather than two separate pieces with most cases, it features a clamshell-style design and impact-resistant bumpers to match the shape and function of your computer, allowing for a secure dual lock screen closure. The Plasma’s shell has cooling vents for smooth airflow, while its bumpers offer a tactile grip to prevent any slippage. But if your Mac does accidentally fall, the case meets Mil-spec standards for drop tests. The Plasma offers peace of mind when it comes to your most valuable (digital) assets.

Nite Ize Radiant 250 Headlamp

COLORS
Charcoal, Teal

MSRP
$30

URL
niteize.com

NOTES
The Radiant 250 is attractive for several reasons, but the two big ones are price and fuel. At $30, this headlamp provides solid performance at half the price of its peers. And because it runs on three AAA batteries, it won’t be difficult to find replacement batteries. As its name implies, the Radiant can put out a max of 250 lumens for up to five and a half hours or 38 lumens for 46 hours. It also has a flood mode to light up your nearby environment for up to 28 hours, as well as a red light (at 8 lumens) to preserve your night vision. The impact- and water-resistant body has intuitive controls and can tilt 90 degrees for easy beam adjustment.

Survivor Filter Pro X Electric Water Filter

WEIGHT
13.75 ounces

MSRP
$125

URL
survivorfilter.com

NOTES
Survival Filter says that its Pro X Electric Water Filter is the world’s first handheld portable electric survival water filter. Some luddites might be screaming, claiming that a reliance on batteries and more moving parts could increase your chances for failure. But this device is well built, pretty easy to use, and powered by perhaps the most common battery type available, AA. Plus, it can produce 17 ounces of water per minute, meaning you can set it up by a creek, hit the on button, and have drinking water by the time you finish prepping your basecamp. It filters out bacteria, viruses, and parasites to 99.999 percent and significantly reduces heavy metals — allowing you to safely consume water from most natural bodies of water.

Injinji Outdoor Midweight Crew NuWool

COLORS
Bluegrass, Bluesteel, Charcoal, Oatmeal, Ocean, Tomato

MSRP
$20

URL
injinji.com

NOTES
Technology has finally caught up to Mother Nature, at least when it comes to sheep’s clothing. Wool is a super fabric because it retains warmth even when wet, is naturally moisture wicking, and is odor resistant. But it causes itchiness and doesn’t last as long as, say, cotton. That’s why Injinji’s Outdoor Midweight Crew NuWool combines wool with acrylic, nylon, and Lycra to increase comfort and durability. Add a five-toe design, extra cushioning on the footbed, and a supportive band for arch support, and this sock provides superior performance for anyone who wants to conquer the outdoors but stay comfy at the same time.

Mission First Tactical Minimalist Wallet

MATERIAL
Boltaron

MSRP
$25

URL
missionfirsttactical.com

NOTES
If you’re sick of carrying a giant wad of leather and paper that’s called your bifold wallet, consider downsizing with Mission First Tactical’s Minimalist Wallet. Handmade by veterans in the USA from 0.08-inch-thick Boltaron (a polymer), the Minimalist Wallet is a holster for your financial EDC gear. It can fit up to eight credit cards and is very simple to use. The wallet is available with more than a dozen designs, from the U.S. flag to the DTOM banner. Each design is chemically bonded to the polymer to ensure that it’s wear and scratch resistant.

Helle Knives Kletten

OAL
5.3 inches

MSRP
$199

URL
helle.com

NOTES
The Kletten isn’t just an elegant gentleman’s knife. It isn’t just Helle Knives’ smallest model. It’s also a survival knife disguised as a little folding knife. The 2.1-inch blade features a laser-like Scandinavian flat grind that allows for both precise detailing as well as broad slicing, and its triple-laminated stainless steel offers both strength and corrosion resistance. The curly birch handle scales are reinforced with stainless steel liners and a super strong lockback locking mechanism. While it doesn’t have a pocket clip or a thumbstud, Helle’s first EDC folding knife does come with a classy leather lanyard and a polishing cloth. Kletten means “little mountain” in Norwegian — an apt moniker if ever there was one.

Uncharted Supply Co. The Zeus

DIMENSIONS
7.16 by 3.35 by 1.76 inches

MSRP
$150

URL
unchartedsupplyco.com

NOTES
It might look like a red brick of polymer, but the Zeus is actually a multi-tool. At its core is a portable jump starter. With 20,000 mAh, it has enough juice to jump-start large trucks multiple times. This heavy-duty power bank comes with battery clamps, eliminating the need for cumbersome 12-foot jumper cables and two awkwardly parked vehicles. Or maybe you have to pump air into tires instead? The Zeus has a cigarette power adapter to connect an air compressor. It also has two USB ports to charge your mobile devices. And if you require roadside assistance in the dark, it has a flashlight with three modes so you can see and be seen.

Urban Carvers Breakaway

LENGTH
3.25 inches

MSRP
Starting at $25

URL
urbancarvers.com

NOTES
Standard pull-apart keychains kept failing Dustin Bean. So, the rock climber and tree service owner decided to design his own. Enter the Urban Carvers Breakaway — a quick-detach double keyring on steroids. Each one features no moving parts, a solid yet lightweight two-piece construction, and N48 neodymium magnets with an incredibly strong 12-pound rating. And it comes in a variety of styles, finishes, and quality materials. For example, the Black Out version ($25) is made of Delrin (a copolymer) with steel rings, the Atomic 13 ($38) is composed of 6061 aluminum with titanium rings, and the Ti Grooved Anodized ($75) is built from solid GR5 titanium with titanium rings. The Breakaway is durable, functional, and aesthetically pleasing. Made in the USA.

Brady Pesola Spotlight: Ensuring a Safe Passage for Veterans

By
Patrick McCarthy
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0

Studies have indicated that around 17 to 22 veterans die by suicide on a daily basis. According to a recent piece in Military Times, “Veterans are 1.5 times more likely to die by suicide than Americans who never served in the military. For female veterans, the risk factor is 2.2 times more likely.” Think about that. As you read this almost two-dozen family members may have received a call today from someone who started off the conversation by saying, “We regret to inform you that …”

It seems like an almost insurmountable problem. That is, until you meet people like Brady Pesola who care enough to deal with it proactively. As a fellow veteran, he’s lived through it and seen his share of those in the armed forces who’ve fallen on hard times. Rather than just assume someone else will come up with an effective solution, he took it upon himself to found Triple B Adventures to help give his brothers and sisters, as well as their families, a safe path to escape the hopelessness many feel after they rotate out. And by that same token, their involvement has inspired them to pay it forward for others who may also be sitting around feeling unwanted and wondering if there’s any reason to keep going.

While there are lots of survival instructors out there, not many use that instruction as an opportunity to help those survive one of the darkest places they might ever find themselves — their own mind. What began as a simple passion for the outdoors and an understanding of how to navigate its dangers has blossomed into an effort to help veterans find a purpose again, build a community of like-minded individuals, and make peace with the trauma and isolation they’ve endured.

Brady isn’t a what’s-in-it-for-me kind of guy. He doesn’t expect to be famous, nor would he ever step on others to flog his own self-importance. His reward is in helping those who feel forgotten or helpless, and serving a purpose greater than himself. After all, that’s what being in the military is about.

Our Interview with Brady Pesola

RECOIL OFFGRID: How did your childhood influence your interest in teaching survival?

Brady Pesola: I grew up in the north woods of Minnesota. I learned how to hunt and spent a lot of time outdoors trying to make my own traps and shelters. For most kids growing up in that kind of place, the outdoor life is something you’re automatically a part of. They come into your school in the sixth grade and teach hunter safety. When you’re at home, you’re out in the woods running around with your friends building forts, shooting, fishing, and doing something outdoors. My dad taught me some common-sense things so he wouldn’t have to worry about me, like navigation, how to start a fire, and how to build shelters, which came from watching him build deer stands. I got pretty good at it, and it got to the point where he’d use what I made for hunting.

I always like being in the woods. Growing up, times weren’t easy, and I didn’t have a lot of friends in school, so I spent a lot of time in the woods. I always go to the woods to find peace. My way of calming down after a rough day or week is to strap on a pair of boots, put on a pack, head out, and get lost in nature. A lot of me going out into the woods and learning survival is just mental health and getting away from it all. I grew up as an only child on a farm, so I was kind of used to being alone as a kid. For me, that’s where I find peace. Knowing I can handle myself in nature is really cool.

You say you didn’t have a lot of friends. Why’s that?

BP: Growing up I was kind of a loner. I was a skinny kid and had a really cocky attitude I got from my mother, so I didn’t get along really well with other kids in school. I was always very socially awkward and didn’t fit in much. I got picked on here and there and got in a few fights.

On their way to a daddy/daughter day out climbing and hiking in San Diego.

What made you want to join the Marines?

BP: I grew up in a small mining community and didn’t get along with a lot of people up there. My senior year is when the World Trade Center was attacked. What’s strange is we were getting our class picture when the towers were hit, and when we came back inside there was all this chaos. We spent most of the day watching the news. A couple weeks later I saw a C-130 dropping Rangers off the back of it on the news and thought that was pretty cool.

The Army had already talked to me, and I was like, “No.” The Navy talked to me, “No.” The Marines got through to me because they really built themselves as the best branch out there — the strongest and the toughest. Being someone who was skinny, weak, and always got picked on, that appealed to me because if I was going to join the military, I wanted to be a badass and thought the Marines were the way to go. I don’t regret it to this day.

What did you do during your time in the Marines?

BP: Nothing crazy, I was a radio operator with a field artillery unit. I went on a lot of exercise deployments, but nothing combat related. I made a lot of friends and went to a lot of places like Thailand and Australia, but artillery is like a whole different kind of thing. It’s a weird MOS (military occupational specialty). In the military you, have CO versus grunt. Artillery is like that transition. We do grunt work, we go out and shoot machine guns, do a lot of dig-and-fight holes, and shoot artillery. We’re always out in the field and a combat arms MOS, but not a frontline. We’re about 15 clicks away shooting big rounds at the enemy when the infantry calls us. As a radio operator, I got to go experience time with the forward observers, different batteries, and see some cool things, but artillery can be fun. It’s what you make of it.

Trout fishing with fellow veterans at a Triple B Adventures to the Sierras. First trout of the day!

How long were you in for?

BP: I did four years from 2002 to 2006, got out, and was recalled back into service around 2007 and took orders till 2008. They recalled a bunch of us and made us base MPs (military police). It’s one of those despised MOS’s, but once I was there I made the most of it. Being an MP really wasn’t my favorite thing.

You had a lot of calls to investigate suicides during your time as an MP, right?

BP: We responded to a few in the barracks, and it’s just part of the program there. You see a lot of different things and kind of the dark side of the military that most people don’t see, from domestic assaults to people doing dumb stuff and hurting themselves to gangs. It’s things you don’t think you’ll see in the military. When you’re in a unit, you see people doing dumb stuff, but as an MP you see the bad things on a whole other level.

You see some guy who got back from combat and his wife’s pregnant with someone else’s kid or someone’s having a bad day and takes it out on their wife, or the wife has a bad day and takes it out on her husband. When you see gangs in the military, you’re surprised. You’re like, why? Why are there gangs in the military? Being an MP opens your eyes to the sh*tbags that exist in the military.

How do you think those experiences affected you?

BP: It made me appreciate what MPs do. A lot of people come down on MPs. It’s not a great MOS because the military looks at MPs as “blue falcons.” Those are snitches. In the Marine Corps it’s all about brotherhood and having each other’s backs, but when you become the MP your inherent job is to enforce the UCMJ (Uniform Code of Military Justice). Granted, Marines shouldn’t be doing dumb sh*t. When you go out and see them getting in trouble with DUIs or running people over, how can you have a Marine’s back that just outright hurt someone doing something stupid?

It made me understand the MP culture a lot more. There are different cultures in the military. Artillery has their own culture, infantry has their own, air wing certainly has their own, Recon, every MOS has their own culture. They’re all very different, and it’s interesting to see. Maybe I’m more objective in my view, not in a bad way, but by seeing all different sides of the military you realize it’s a big place. A lot goes on.

On the local news talking about an upcoming event and gear for the backcountry.

When you finished your career in the military, did you know what you wanted to do going forward?

BP: I still don’t know [laughs]. When I got out after my recall, I took a few months off and signed up for a police academy in San Diego. I went in as an open enrollee with the GI bill and put myself through a six-month academy. It was a good time and interesting. I learned a lot about law enforcement and thought I wanted to be a cop, but it didn’t work out. I applied and got rejected a couple times for stupid stuff I did back in the day as a Marine, so I figured it wasn’t for me, but while I was in, I started going to other classes and continued applying. That’s when I started going outdoors in nature and hiking more, shooting little videos here and there.

I began to see how a lot of people in the San Diego backcountry would be making mistakes. A lot of money is spent by the county on search-and-rescue, and they don’t charge for that. People were getting themselves hurt and doing dumb things because San Diego is hot, and people take the front trails for granted. They’d buy a Starbucks, not bring any water, head up at noon in all-black spandex, and then be overcome with heatstroke.

I started thinking to myself how I could prevent that. How could I do something that teaches these people not to get injured outdoors and do stupid things? That’s when I started teaching outdoor education and survival. How to bring water, pack the right gear, wear the right clothes, and best practices for going out hiking rather than going out at noon in August, which isn’t the brightest thing to do.

You also work in private security, right?

BP: Yes, I’m a security contractor. It’s fun, but I definitely use a survival mindset when it comes to security contracting. Attention to detail and surveying my environment, whether it’s executive protection or as a private investigator. If I’m on a protection detail, I’m looking at and studying people. I’m looking at behavioral patterns. I’m looking at possible threats. My job is to avoid a situation before it happens. It’s my belief that anytime I’d have to pull my firearm or put my hands on somebody then I haven’t done my job correctly by paying attention to my environment.

How would you describe the type of survival instruction you provide?

BP: I look at survival instruction as a complementary skill on top of the outdoor skills one should already have. Survival has gotten really popular with TV and all that, but TV has made survival look like this advanced skill that only Special Forces people and guys living out in the woods know. It’s really not that hard of a skill. Survival is just problem solving.

Brady teaching youth to shoot a bow at Triple B’s fundraiser called the Modern Man Mountain Rendezvous (3MR).

People make it out to be this intense, crazy thing because TV has really bastardized it and made it look like this austere skill where you have to be this bushcraft hippie ninja, and that really isn’t it. It’s simply just going out in the woods and learning if you take this stick and this stick, of this type of material, and do this type of action, you can make a fire, build a shelter, or do something else. It’s utilizing Mother Nature to withstand whatever Mother Nature throws out at you.

You’d mentioned taking hunter safety in elementary school. Things like that used to be commonplace, but now seem to be predominantly missing from the educational system. What do you think kids need to be taught about survival?

BP: Parents should teach their kids about navigation, water, and common sense. Stay on the trails unless you’re confident in navigation. Bring water with you all the time; always have first aid. Survival starts before something happens. Study the trails you’re going to hike. Know what the weather will be like before you head out there. Know where you’re going and how to get back.

People look at survival like it’s this event that just randomly happens. Survival doesn’t happen until after a catastrophic event, like a plane crash, falling off a cliff, getting lost, or having a hunting accident. It’s generally after an injury has occurred, but survival really starts before the situation happens by being prepared. That’s why I think parents need to teach their kids to always be prepared and have a mindset of being aware of your surroundings or thinking ahead about what they should do before they perform that action. So if they’re going into the woods, they should prepare themselves with proper gear like hiking shoes, a good pack, a first-aid kit, water, food, a compass, or GPS. That’s where survival starts. It’s just common sense.

How do you discuss survival with people who have misconceptions about it and convince them it is common sense?

BP: I start by calling it something else. Whenever anyone hears “survival” they think of some overweight backcountry redneck who wears camo and uses old military gear. That’s not a survivalist. That’s just a country boy. When people call me a survivalist I kind of cringe and am like, “Don’t call me that.” It’s problem solving. That’s all it really is. It’s being out in the woods and you’re cold. OK, what’s the solution to that problem? Build a fire. OK, how do you build a fire? You bring things with you where you can make a fire if you get lost. I always have a necklace that has a ferro rod on it with me wherever I go. As long as I have something sharp, I can scrape that and make a fire no matter where I go. Fire increases your survivability exponentially. I carry something on me that’ll increase my chances of survival no matter where I am or what I do.

When I tell people about “survival,” I don’t really call it that. I call it wilderness problem solving. The philosophy of problem solving can be finessed so you have a problem-solving mindset. Problem A requires solution B. OK, so what do I need to get done? If you have that mindset you can apply that to any situation you come across: tactical problem solving, wilderness problem solving, life problem solving, urban problem solving. The same kind of mentality used to change a tire is the same type you can use to build a shelter in the wilderness. I want people to know that survival is just a complementary skill that you should know on top of the common-sense skills that you should already have.

Brady with Governor Mike Huckabee on the Huckabee Show to talk about Triple B and what they do with veterans.

How would you describe your National Adventure School endeavor?

BP: It’s going to be a bit different than most outdoor education schools. National Adventure School is not only going to have classes that teach outdoor education along the lines of wilderness problem solving and survival, but also along the lines of really learning your gear. Focusing on being prepared for that trip and how to use that equipment during that trip.

We also teach things like astro-photography. I have a friend who is an astro-photographer and astronomer, and we want to bring that fun back into nature again. We want to teach people how to take that really cool photo at nighttime where you see the constellation. It’s not that hard, so we want to teach people how to do really simple stuff like that. We want to bring that kind of wonder back into it. People wake up, go get a coffee, and go hiking, and there’s nothing wrong with that. There’s people who look at a map of the backcountry and want to go explore it. We cater to all those kinds of personalities.

What was it that compelled you to work with veterans?

BP: When I was teaching outdoor education with the San Diego School of Survival I was bringing veterans out with me. I didn’t have the network I do now when I started. Every time I’d meet a veteran they’d be like, “That’s so cool. You get paid just by going out in the woods and teaching people?” I’d tell them, yes, and I figured out a way to apply my skills, knowledge of the outdoors, and how to monetize it. Or there’d be vets who’d call me because they wanted to get out and go for a hike in the woods, and maybe I’d be teaching land nav that weekend and I’d offer them a chance to come along with me and earn some cash as my assistant.

We’d be out there in the nice, cool weather. The sun’s coming out just enough to warm your back. The wind’s blowing through trees, and you’re watching clients walk through the woods with a map and compass trying to find their target. Your whole job that day is to answer questions and make sure they don’t get lost. That’s a really fun experience and people who come with me see that. They feel like they’ve had a good day just getting outdoors. I can see that, especially with people who’ve been in combat, being out in the woods in a different environment was really helping them out. You can see a certain weight come off their shoulders. They’re out in the woods with another veteran, having a great conversation, and getting paid. You can’t beat that. Just being outdoors like that creates a special feeling that’s a different sort of relaxation.

When I started doing that, I could see that being outdoors was really affecting them. And then I started taking buddies camping out in the desert, having a fire, having a few beers, a steak, climbing around the boulders, and doing some hiking. People would come up and thank me, saying it was just what they needed; that they’d just wanted to get away and get their mind off things. That was pretty cool. I started meeting more veterans at outdoor-related functions. The more I met, the more I saw that they had business leads and ideas for being a veteran in the outdoors, and they helped me create Triple B Adventures. It’s a whole group of us who really set it up. Triple B Adventures started in 2016.

We’d done something called the Modern Mountain Man Rendezvous that same year and that’s where I met a whole group of veterans, and we talked about fulfilling this dream of making money and working in the outdoors. One of them runs an outfitting company. A bunch of them had done different things, and we all came together with this idea of getting veterans outdoors and creating this network of vets in the outdoor industry.

In November of that year, a bunch of us went out camping and had a good time sitting around the fire, telling stories, having a few beers, getting things off our chest, and enjoying each other’s company. It was a really good time. At that point, it began as Triple B Adventures, which stands for beers, bonfires, brotherhood. It started there, and I talked to my friend Colin and asked him to be my assistant director. There was a financial attorney there who was a vet, and I asked him to be my CFO. He filed the paperwork for the nonprofit, and we became Triple B Adventures.

Tell us how Triple B Adventures has evolved since then.

BP: Triple B has evolved from starting out small to creating this network of vets. There are a lot of people around here in San Diego who know what Triple B is. Not everyone gets outside with us because not everyone likes to go camping, but the ones who do really seem to enjoy the time out there, the camaraderie, and the fun we have. We take veterans outdoors every month without fail. Every month we either take them out camping, hunting, hiking, fishing, or shooting. A lot of them seem to like it, and we’re always there for someone who says they need to get outdoors. We tell them to come out with us, and it’s free. It doesn’t cost anything. People can donate, and we can pay for the food, campsites, gear, and stuff like that. It really is a lot of fun. It can be stressful at times, but the payoff is seeing veterans being helped.

With the network we’ve created we’ve been able to help get jobs for veterans, places for them to live, help them get money, mental help, or help with the VA. It’s more than just going outside; it’s developing a network of other veterans who can help and want to help. Veterans who we’ve helped in the past want to pay it forward and help other veterans out. Part of it is being outside, but part of it is what we do with the outreach, communications, and interaction with other veterans.

What do you think those who haven’t served in the military should know about veterans and the common struggles they face after their service is over?

BP: I don’t know. I never really think about it from that view. I’m always concentrating on what veterans need to know when they get out, not be a victim, and not be broken. Stay the lethal person you were when you were in. Don’t let anxiety set in. Fight it.

Many can’t comprehend how difficult that struggle is when transitioning from service back to civilian life and they just expect veterans to figure it out and handle their problems without incident. What do you say to that?

BP: Don’t get offended by veterans. When we get out, we have a certain mentality that people just don’t get. If we say something off the cuff, give us the benefit of the doubt. We’re not trying to be malicious. People look at us like we’re these broken sociopaths, and we’re not. We just have a different way of thinking. It’s not that we don’t have empathy. We just reserve empathy for people who actually are victims of something. We look at people who do dumb stuff and have that oh-woe-is-me attitude like, no, it’s your fault and your responsibility. We tend to look at personal responsibility as a huge part of our lives. If we do something stupid, we don’t expect people to pay for it. We pay for it ourselves.

When we go into college or jobs, we may seem rough around the edges, but we’ll always have your back and be the first person to step up to fight for something. We’re always the first person to volunteer and stand up for what’s right. Don’t look at us like we’re damaged. There are veterans out there who may give that image, but the rest of us are just trying to fit in with society. We don’t want to be the abrasive veteran. We want people to know we’re not that different. We’re not all victims because a few people act like that. We’re civilians with military experience, so ask us questions. How can we help you? How can we help your business? How can our experience help? We have that leadership and strength. Spend time with veterans and talk to them. Get to know them.

Not everyone is this medicated, disgruntled person. I call those guys the Uncle Ricos of the veteran community. They’re always trying to live in their glory days. It’s time to move on, adjust, integrate back into society, look at the skills you have, and use those to better yourself and those around you instead of living in the past.

What do you think the government could or should be doing to better assist vets after they rotate out?

BP: It starts with rotating out. The military’s whole purpose is mission readiness. It’s to go out and cause hate and discontent for the bad guys. When you get out, you still have that mindset. I think they need to readjust their exit procedure for veterans. They need to be successful when they get out. I think the military needs to refocus and revamp. You’ve got 70- or 80-year-old guys trying to tell 22-year-old guys how to do their résumé. There’s a major gap there. People are teaching antiquated ways of adjusting to their environment and getting out into the civilian wilderness, as I call it. It’s tough to survive the civilian wilderness. With one week of training before you get out, it’s kind of just a checklist. It’s like, here, go get this done and then report to formation. The military really doesn’t focus on people’s lives when they get out.

But it’s also a double-edged sword, because why should they? If you want to get out, it’s on you, but if you did a few years of honorable service they should be asking, “How can we get you best integrated with the environment?” I think the government could do good by aligning certifications that are reciprocal to civilian work forces. Like police officers. When military police get out, they have to go through another academy again. I think your time and service should apply to something. It should count for more.

Instead of having to go through an academy and start over, there should be an in-service training. I think the professional certifications you had in the military like IT, fire, and police should transition better. There are jobs that, when you get out, all of a sudden they require a degree. The government should be able to somehow quantify or equalize those professions to allow you to start into a job right away when you get out rather than go back through a training procedure and start from the ground up again.

I’m sure you’ve heard a lot of stories from vets about wanting to feel needed and find stability and happiness in their lives again, especially after the horror many have experienced in combat. What would you say to those sitting around in silence wondering if their life is worth continuing?

BP: The whole reason why we join the military is to serve a purpose greater than ourselves. I grew up in a poor town and wasn’t great at school and the Marine Corps was my escape. I also wanted to do something because I watched the towers fall. We all join to serve. If you didn’t join to serve, at a certain point in your career you figure out that you were there for a greater purpose and that was the military. When you get out, you’re so used to serving an entity that meant something. In the military you feel like you belong. Like you mean something and everything you do has a purpose. When you get out, you feel like you don’t have a purpose anymore.

I think a lot of veterans are scared about falling into that background of mediocrity. When you’re in, you’re not mediocre. You’re something special. You’re well trained. You’re a good shooter. You’re something that’s different and that sets you apart. When you get back out, you don’t stand apart anymore. You fear working that 9-to-5 office job, wearing a stupid tie and listening to some chick from HR or some guy named Todd who’s talking about that barbecue on Friday. You’re asking yourself if that’s all you have to look forward to. If it is, we get scared of that and go into a depression because we realize we’re not as lethal or cool as we used to be.

It comes down to the cool factor really. Saying you’ve been in the military has pride. When you get out, you’re no longer a part of that community and you miss your friends. You get worried that you’ll just fade away in the background, and it’s scary. You feel depressed because every day you woke up you were awesome. You PT’d, you were awesome. You shot, you were awesome. Your whole life was awesome, and you were a lethal person. Your mind was lethal, your body was lethal, your whole presence was just about lethality and taking the fight to the enemy. You feel like you just don’t have that anymore.

I would tell veterans not to lose their lethality. Stay fit. Keep your mind sharp. Go to school. Connect with friends and people. That’s hard too because when you go to school you realize the people around you in class aren’t the same people who’d have your back, take a bullet for you, or shoot at the enemy for you. That’s why you seek out other veterans in the classroom because you know no matter what branch they were in, you share some commonality. You share some principles that you can identify with and you can rely on them. All the rest of the civilians in class, you can’t rely on them or at least you feel like you can’t.

There are some exceptions to the rule though; there are good people who didn’t serve who’d still have your back. But the fear is you’ve put a lot of emotional investment into these other people, whereas you see someone else in the military and you already feel that emotional investment and love you had. With a civilian you have to start that over again, and it just takes time. A lot of us don’t feel like we have that time. We’d rather hang out in the background, and unless you’re a veteran, just not talk to you. That’s a bad thing.

Veterans should get out, and meet new people, and integrate. You can still be that wolf in sheep’s clothing — that lethal person. You don’t have to be that crazy veteran; you can integrate. You can reach out, go hang out with friends, and find civilians you share things with.

Do you think feeling like an outsider as a kid gave you some perspective that helped you relate to other veterans better?

BP: Most of us veterans are outsiders and look at ourselves as outcasts of society anyway. We get out of the military, look at society, and we know we’re different. Some of us think we’re better than others, some of us think we’re not as good as civilians, and some of us look at civilians and say, “Those aren’t my people. My people are back in the military.”

The problem with that kind of mentality is that it causes that isolation and loneliness that creates depression, anxiety, and eventually suicide. Being in the military has allowed me to find my family in the veteran community. I think most of us who were outcasts in school have joined the military because it was a way of escape, finding our own family, and feeling a sense of inclusion.

About Brady Pesola

Age: 36

Status: Married with one daughter

Hometown: Hibbing, Minnesota

Favorite movie: Jeremiah Johnson

Favorite knife: Anything by Uncle Jed

Childhood idol: Kirby Puckett

Required reading list:

  • Hatchet by Gary Paulsen
  • The Cry of the Wolf by Melvin Burgess
  • Touching the Void by Joe Simpson
  • 101 Skills You Need To Survive In The Woods by Kevin Estela

Favorite Bond girl: Michelle Yeoh

Best advice you’ve ever gotten: “Shut up and listen.”

How do you take your eggs? Over medium

Most embarrassing moment: Took a buddy and his son out hiking. Was teaching them about survival and talking about how to use sap. Grabbed what I thought was a glob of sap, and it grew legs and started moving. I’d grabbed the fat end of a big spider and freaked the f*ck out. I threw it and started shaking my hands like a little girl.

URL: www.tba.vet; www.nationaladventureschool.com

Video: LifeStraw Tested Under a Microscope

By
Patrick McCarthy
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0

Unless you’ve gone through life drinking nothing but Perrier delivered by your personal butler, you probably know better than to drink straight out of the first stream, pond, or gutter that you come across in an emergency. Even crystal-clear, clean-smelling water can contain millions of tiny bacteria, protozoa, and other waterborne pathogens that are invisible to the naked eye. And if the water you drink contains substantial amounts of those pathogens, you’re going to be in for some serious misery. Passing the water through a filter such as a LifeStraw can strain out these harmful microorganisms — the YouTube channel Sci-Inspi shows the results of this filtration at 1000x magnification through a microscope.

After leaving some decomposing leaves, dirt, and water in a beaker for a few days, the Sci-Inspi video shows a sample of the dirty water under the microscope. Even at a relatively low 40x magnification, the results will make your skin crawl. Under higher magnification, the water is absolutely teeming with life.

This water is then drawn through a LifeStraw filter using a sterile pipette, and the results are clear — literally. Although this isn’t a by-the-book test that precisely quantifies the number of remaining microorganisms, as required by NSF/ANSI test protocols, it does paint a general picture of why water filtration matters. Watch the 5-minute demonstration below, and keep this in mind next time you’re tempted to drink some questionable water in the woods.

For an overview of some of the options for water purification in a survival setting, refer to our previous articles:

Review: Double Tap Snap Gun from Sparrows Lock Picks

By
Patrick McCarthy
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0

Photos by Ed Calderon and Courtesy Sparrows Lock Picks

You may have heard the term “snap gun” or seen one of these strange-looking tools in photos before, but you may not have been sure what they were or how they work to pick locks. Pick guns operate on the same principle as a game of pool. If you have two balls touching each other and hit the first one, it stays put while the ball behind it is knocked away. This is what a pick gun does with the top pins and the bottom pins in a lock. When it strikes the bottom pin, the energy is transferred to the top pin, which ideally bounces above the shear line simultaneously with all of the other top pins, enabling the lock to be picked.

Strangely, many locksmiths seem to scoff at most of the stuff the “tactical” community loves. It’s a very weird thing where pros actually use worse equipment than hobbyists. Newer guys like tools such as padlock shims and sesame decoders. After a few years, everybody realizes those things are too much trouble because they’re too specific to certain lock models and brands, and they just start using bolt cutters. Locksmiths have known about bump keys since the ’90s, but I’ve never met one who used them regularly. It was more something they fooled around with in the shop when they got trendy, but found them to be pretty useless in the field.

As a rule, locksmiths don’t have handmade high-end picks. They buy HPC picks for $1.50 each and use them for a couple years till they break. The fanciest pick I ever saw anyone use was a Rytan pick, pretty much a regular pick with a big plastic handle for comfort. Most smiths have two to three picks and a couple tension tools. I picked an average of two to three locks a day for 15 years and used three different picks. I’ve gone through three pick guns in my time. The last one I left at the job when I quit.

In the past, none of the pick guns I used felt like they were well-made. They all felt like they were made in China out of cheap metal and slapped together. You can actually make a crude pick gun out of a wire coat hanger that sorta works — it’d be fun to show off at an escapology class as a novelty. However, there are groups of people who don’t have much time to invest in these skillsets and need ready-made and functional tools for covert entry. In these cases, commercially made pick guns come into play.

The Sparrows Pick Gun

Above: The Double Tap comes in a well-appointed case with tips and tension wrenches included.

You have to appreciate the packaging. The case it comes in features a nice fitted compartment, not just for your gun, but for the accessories that come with it, including tensioners and extra picks for the gun itself. Everything is in its place. The quality and extra attention to detail they put into the case alone is apparent.

The package includes five different types of tension wrenches with different orientations and widths of tensioners on them. This provides a good selection and sampling of what you might need out there in the field. It also comes with a selection of five pick attachments of various types. Again, they attempt to cover most of the needs people will have out there in the field. The gun itself is ruggedly built and definitely meant to last. Unlike most cheaper options that are made out of two pieces, these feature heavy metal construction held by screws. This allows the end user to repair and maintain the tool — which isn’t possible with other options on the market.

Double Tap Snap Gun Specifications

Price
$50

Includes:

  • 1 x Sparrows Double Tap Snap Gun
  • 3 x tension wrenches of varying widths
  • 3 x standard needle picks
  • 1 x bent needle for low and tight working areas
  • 1 x long needle
  • 1 x hard case

URL
www.sparrowslockpicks.com

Features

The tension is adjustable, but you’re usually fine just leaving it in the middle. The selection wheel is pretty well-made; I typically just give it a full single rotation after setting it to zero. This helps me open most things that I’ve encountered. It has nine other tension settings. The finger-tightening knob on the pick attachment point is fantastic. It allows you to quickly attach and detach any of the optional picks that come with the toolset without a screwdriver or any other extra tools — a must-have if time is of the essence in whatever game you’re playing.

The pick arm itself moves directly up and down inside of the housing, contrary to most cheaper options out there that move in an almost arch-like manner. The vertical motion results in uniform hits on the internal pins of a lock; plus, it has a double-strike feature. This allows you to hit the pins twice on a single pull of the pick gun’s trigger, again making things easier for you if the pick is correctly aligned in the keyway.

These guns look pretty unique: They’re black and gold. They look like something that John Wick would carry, and that’s actually kind of cool, although maybe not the most discreet. If you’re using it for any sort of covert-entry-type applications, be sure to apply some Loctite to the screws — you’ll thank me later. Also, be aware that pick guns produce a very unique sound with each of the clicks that might negate noise discipline, if that’s important for what you’re doing.

Using the Pick Gun

To use it, hold it loose in your hand and, as much as possible, try not to let the needle scrape against the sides of the cylinder. Adding some grip tape will allow for a bit more dexterity in the handle.

Apply tension with the wrench like you’d with a standard pick. Fire in rapid bursts of 10 to 20. If the cylinder doesn’t turn, release the tension wrench, listen for the pins to drop, and start over.

Summary

The hardest element to master is ensuring the needle strikes all the pins. Most residential locks have five, while commercial locks have five to six, so if you don’t insert it deep enough you won’t hit all the pins and it won’t work. However, if you shove it in too deep, the needle might end up striking the back of the cylinder and not bounce the pins at all.

Don’t be afraid to mix up picking techniques. Pick a couple chambers with a standard pick and hold the tension with your wrench, then break out the pick gun and finish it off.

Pick guns work very well on locks mounted right-side-up. They’re usable, but awkward, to use on lever locks where the keyway runs sideways. They’re pretty much useless on locks mounted upside-down. There’s a learning curve, and it’s a skill you have to develop — this isn’t a master key, so it’s not a tool that’ll solve every problem. But it’s a useful tool in your arsenal.

If you’re looking to learn more about these tools and their applications, I recommend Matt Fiddler from Serepick. Definitely seek him out if you want to learn more about this type of thing.

All in all, the Double Tap Snap Gun is a great product with some very unique design elements and user-friendly features. And it’s definitely competitively priced. If you need a pick gun for hobby or work, I definitely recommend you pick one of these up — it’s a solid product.

Start Dull to Stay Sharp: Self-Defense Knife & Trainer Buyer’s Guide

By
Patrick McCarthy
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0

When you know you’re about to face a challenging situation, what do you do to prepare for it? In school, you’d be foolish not to take notes and study hard before an important final exam. In a professional setting, if you were tasked with giving a presentation to the board of directors at your company, you’d certainly create an outline of key points and commit your speech to memory prior to the big day. Athletes spend months or years practicing with their teams before a championship.

Consider how ridiculous it’d be to assume you’d pass that test because you brought a freshly sharpened pencil, ace the presentation because you installed the latest version of Powerpoint, or win the big game because you just bought a brand-new pair of cleats. This line of thinking sounds absurd, but it’s all too common in the self-defense field. You might have a high-end carry gun and a top-of-the-line holster, but that hardware is worthless if you lack the software to draw and hit a target reliably. The same can be said of edged weapons — you might have a knife that’s marketed as a combat tool, but have you ever actually used it in that manner? Are you positive you can deploy it consistently, or will you be fumbling with it as an attacker brutally shanks you with his own blade? The only way to answer these questions definitively is through practice, ideally in the form of sparring with a training partner.

Photo by Conrad Bui

Now, there’s a caveat to knife training. Your buddy probably won’t like it if you keep sending him to the hospital with gashes and puncture wounds. This is why we use trainers — dull replicas of knives designed for the purpose of safe practice. A generic rubber trainer is better than nothing, but the best combat-oriented knives are available with dull metal trainers that closely replicate their size, shape, weight, and deployment method. In this way, you can create drills that mimic real-life defensive situations, and establish the muscle memory and confidence you’ll need to deal with an actual threat.

We picked up seven trainer and live blade sets in order to gauge each design’s effectiveness as a tool for self-defense, and also determine how accurately the trainer represented the live blade’s characteristics. Five of these sets are fixed blades while two are pocket-friendly folders.

This raises an important point — fixed blades are generally the mainstream choice, since the added complexity of a folder means added steps during the draw stroke. However, concealed, combat-oriented fixed blades aren’t always the best tools for everyday tasks, and a folder can split the difference by serving as both a utilitarian pocket knife and defensive implement. Just know that if you choose a folder, the bar will be set even higher and continuous training will be all the more important.

If you’re ready to spend some time sparring to ensure your edged-weapon skills are grounded in reality, read on to see if one of these live blade and trainer sets is right for you.

Boker Plus Wildcat

Overall Length
7.3 inches

Blade Length
2.8 inches

Weight
4.4 ounces (live blade) / 4.6 ounces (trainer)

MSRP
$233 ($133 for live blade; $100 for trainer)

URL
www.bokerusa.com

Notes
This modified-karambit-style flipper was designed by Boris Manasherov, a Krav Maga practitioner who has been teaching combatives to Israeli military units since 1985. Unlike the continuous curve of a traditional karambit, the Wildcat features an unusual shape one might describe as a recurve tanto with an upswept clip-point. The end result is a design that’s effective for piercing and slashing. The live blade is constructed from D2 steel with a liner lock and black G10 handle scales; the trainer is identical except for bright red scales and a blunt 420 steel blade. Holes in the trainer make its weight virtually identical to its sharp counterpart.

Deployment is the Achilles’ heel of this design. While drawing it into a reverse grip with index finger through the ring, the simplest way to open the blade is to make an “OK” gesture, reaching down with the thumb to hit the flipper. This feels awkward and sweeps the tip of the blade close to the other fingers as it opens. Attempting this in a forward grip is even tougher. Fortunately, two-handed opening is easy, and the knife feels extremely secure in the hand once it’s deployed.

Pros:

  • Equally effective for slashing and stabbing; the finger ring can also be used as an impact tool with the blade closed
  • Handle shape and curvature offer a secure, comfortable grip
  • Trainer is a good live-blade analogue, with the same lock mechanism and a 0.2-ounce weight difference

Cons:

  • All opening methods require fine motor skills, which might lead to fumbling during a stressful situation. This knife desperately needs some kind of pocket-opening feature.

Krudo Knives SNAG X

Overall Length
7.3 inches

Blade Length
2.5 inches

Weight
7.1 ounces (live blade) / 7.6 ounces (trainer)

MSRP
$290 ($155 for live blade; $135 for trainer)

URL
www.krudoknives.com

Notes
After reading an article in 1997 about the history of the Indonesian karambit, Louis Krudo set out to create his own spin on this ancient and versatile tool. The Krudo SNAG has gone through several revisions since then; the SNAG X is the latest in this line. It features a curved handle and finger ring derived from its inspiration, but pairs this with a crescent-shaped 9Cr18MoV blade that curves sharply upward. Other distinctive elements include an extended spine that serves as a striking point when the blade is closed, two more striking points on the end of the handle and finger ring, and a folding thumb ramp that offers additional leverage. The SNAG X can be deployed in a single motion using the D.O.T. feature, a tiny stud that catches on the pocket hem as the knife is pulled out.

The matching SNAG X Controller is an accurate trainer, but also serves a secondary purpose as a pain compliance tool. Like the live blade, it can be used closed for punches and hammer-fist strikes, or the curved steel “blade” can be opened to hook around limbs or joints. Krudo demonstrated by placing it over this author’s collarbone and pulling downward, resulting in instant discomfort and an inability to stand.

Pros:

  • Doubles as an effective impact tool
  • D.O.T. feature makes it simple to draw quickly and, more importantly, reliably
  • The Controller trainer is more than just a sparring tool and might be an asset in places where carrying a live blade isn’t allowed.

Cons:

  • Extreme reverse curvature is more effective for slashing than piercing and limits the knife’s reach.
  • 9Cr18 is a budget-friendly steel that seems a bit out-of-place for a knife at this price point.

Bastinelli Knives Pika

Overall Length
5.2 inches

Blade Length
1.7 inches

Weight
1.4 ounces (live blade) / 0.7 ounce (trainer)

MSRP
$173 ($125 for live blade; $48 for trainer)

URL
www.bastinelliknives.com / www.dougmarcaida.com

Notes
Even if you’re not involved in the combatives world, you’ll probably recognize the name Doug Marcaida. He’s one of the hosts of Forged in Fire — yes, the “it will keal” guy — and was the subject of our Survivalist Spotlight interview in Issue 29. The Pika is a collaboration between Marcaida and Bastien Coves of Bastinelli Knives; Bastinelli created the design with Marcaida’s input and final approval. The production blade was then manufactured by Fox Knives in Italy.

Marcaida’s style of Kali is influenced by a variety of Southeast Asian martial arts, so it’s no surprise that the Pika is a karambit. However, rather than adding bells and whistles to that classic design, the Pika distills it into a minimalist form. It’s constructed from one piece of N690Co stainless steel, with a finger ring and chisel-ground curved edge. This curvature makes it possible to be used in a forward punching motion to pierce, or in arced swings to slash. A tight-fitting Kydex sheath and belt clip are included. Bastinelli only sells the Pika live blade; Marcaida sells the aluminum trainers through his own web store with options for paracord or leather handle wraps.

Above: Marcaida and Bastinelli also collaborated on Le Picoeur, a similar knife with a straight handle and scalpel-style blade that some users may prefer. However, there’s no trainer available for Le Picoeur.

Pros:

  • Simple, light, and brutally effective — doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel
  • Kydex sheath fits like a glove and makes the knife easy to conceal, although we prefer the low-profile UltiClip that comes with Le Picoeur to the Pika’s standard belt clip.

Cons:

  • The aluminum trainer doesn’t fit the sheath, so it’s not possible to realistically practice drawing from retention.
  • This strong forward curvature requires a different technique than a straight blade and leads to a steeper learning curve (no pun intended) for users who are new to this style.

Greg Moffatt Knives / Direction of Force Thick Bastard

Overall Length
7.3 inches

Blade Length
3.4 inches

Weight
3.4 ounces (live blade) / 1.1 ounces (trainer)

MSRP
$280 ($220 for live blade; $60 for trainer)

URL
www.gregmoffattknives.com

Notes
Greg Moffatt’s handiwork was previously featured in the Pocket Preps nonmetallic weapon guide in our previous issue — in addition to covert G10 blades, he also offers a wide range of sharp and pointy steel implements. The ironically named Thick Bastard is part of an ongoing collaboration series with Direction of Force, a close protection and combatives consulting firm. We say ironically named because although this knife starts as a piece of 1/4-inch-thick stock, it tapers down to a tip that’s literally as fine as a needle. The straight Wharncliffe blade is supported by a sturdy spine and terminates into a handle with textured G10 scales (cord wrap is also available by request). The standard knife is made from 1095 high-carbon steel finished in gray Cobalt Cerakote; an S35VN stainless steel version is also available for an additional $30.

The Thick Bastard trainer is sold separately and constructed from 3/16-inch aluminum with a bright red finish. It lacks handle scales, though it does include holes for adding a cord wrap — it might be worth undertaking that DIY project for a closer approximation of the live blade’s handle thickness. Unfortunately, the trainer doesn’t fit in the sheath or include one of its own, so you won’t be able to practice draw stroke drills.

Pros:

  • Ridiculously sharp tip pierces multiple layers of fabric with ease
  • Wharncliffe blade is also effective at slashing cuts, and offers a longer reach than other knives in this guide
  • Long, straight shape is easy to conceal, especially when tethered inside a pocket

Cons:

  • Aluminum trainer matches the length of the live blade, but feels different in the hand due to the light material and lack of handle scales. It also doesn’t have a sheath.
  • It’s impossible to make a tip this thin without raising concerns about durability.

JB Knife & Tool Ditch Pik

Overall Length
7.5 inches

Blade Length
3.5 inches

Weight
1.7 ounces (live blade) / 1 ounce (trainer)

MSRP
$255 ($175 for live blade; $80 for trainer)

URL
www.jbknifeandtool.com

Notes
If you’re carrying a blade exclusively for defense, it’s wise to look at it as a one-time use item. Aside from the fact that fighting with a knife can damage it, it may end up in an evidence locker after taking a ride to the hospital or morgue with the bad guy it’s embedded in. The name of the Ditch Pik came from this use-it-and-lose-it concept. JB’s original Pik knives are made from 1/8-inch-thick O1 tool steel, but Ditch models take that down to an ultralight 1/16-inch stock. The metal is acid-etched to a blackened finish.

These knives are made by hand to custom-ordered specs, with the buyer’s choice of a standard edge, reverse edge, double-edge, or full edge on one side and half on the other. Our sample features a double-edge. The handle can be clad in G10 scales with stainless, brass, or copper hardware, or wrapped tightly in cord that’s lightly coated in hard epoxy. Every knife comes with a Kydex sheath, which can be ordered with a soft belt loop or Ulticlip Slim. G10 trainers are available by request, and each comes with a cord-wrapped handle and fitted Kydex sheath.

Pros:

  • This isn’t a run-of-the-mill paracord wrap, and we like that. It’s extremely grippy, even when wet, and maximizes concealability while minimizing weight.
  • Double-edged grind and narrow tip make this knife suitable for a variety of techniques and fighting styles — forward or reverse grip, stabbing, or slashing.

Cons:

  • We’re not baller enough to ditch a custom-ordered blade that cost $175 without a second thought.
  • If you want one, you’d better be patient. At time of publication, average order lead time for a Ditch Pik is 16 weeks.

Red Meat Steel Rib Tickler

Overall Length
7.1 inches

Blade Length
3.4 inches

Weight
4.1 ounces (live blade) / 2.5 ounces (trainer)

MSRP
$275 ($200 for live blade; $75 for trainer)

URL
www.redmeatsteel.com

Notes
The original use of the term rib tickler refers to a joke that really tickles your ribs by making you laugh. Eli of Red Meat Steel took the term more literally and applied it to a tool that can do a lot more than tickle. This sturdy everyday-carry knife is composed of 3/16-inch-thick AEB-L stainless steel with a dark acid-etched finish. The drop-point shape makes it one of the most practical designs in this guide for purposes beyond combat — it’s “designed with meat in mind, but still more than capable to peel open a tuna can,” as the product page states. The blade tapers into a point that’s effective for piercing. A contoured, slightly arched handle is sandwiched with G10 scales offered in black, OD green, or coyote tan. Each Rib Tickler includes a Kydex sheath with a reversible belt loop that’s set up for horizontal carry.

Trainers aren’t generally listed on the Red Meat Steel web store, but they’re available by request. Each is made from 1/8-inch-thick aluminum with red G10 scales and comes with a red Kydex sheath featuring the same hardware as its live blade counterpart. Although this trainer’s dimensions vary slightly from the real deal, it’s certainly close enough to be an accurate tool for sparring and draw stroke drills.

Pros:

  • A well-rounded design that could easily be used for defense or everyday tasks
  • AEB-L is a great steel, even though it’s one we don’t see too often. It was originally designed for razor blades, so it holds a keen edge.

Cons:

  • Our sample’s handle felt a little short for a full grip, especially in comparison to the trainer’s 1/4-inch-longer handle. However, both are handmade, so some variation is to be expected.
  • The angular butt of the handle isn’t ideal for thumb placement in an icepick grip.

Pinkerton Knives Active Response Karambit

Overall Length
5.5 inches

Blade Length
1.5 inches

Weight
1.5 ounces (live blade) / 1.5 ounces (trainer)

MSRP
$50 (not sold separately)

URL
www.pinkertonknives.com / www.comprehensivefightingsystems.com

Notes
The Active Response Karambit (ARK) is a design cocreated by two knife experts — Chad McBroom is a RECOIL network contributing writer and combatives instructor at Comprehensive Fighting Systems; Dirk Pinkerton is a knifemaker with 18 years of experience in the private security field. The ARK was devised as a tool that could be used alongside a firearm, with its middle finger retention ring intended to keep the user’s index finger and thumb free. This allows for seamless transitions from gun to knife and back to gun without dropping or losing control of either weapon.

The ARK is made from a solid piece of 8Cr13MoV steel and available in standard (edge away from user) or Reverse (aka pikal, edge toward user) versions. See recoilweb.com/?p=130895 for an explanation of the two styles. We tested both and prefer the Reverse for its more-linear shape suited to icepick stabs. Each blade comes with a Kydex sheath and neck chain; various belt clips can be adapted to the holes in the sheath if you prefer that style of carry. Every ARK also comes with a trainer, which perfectly replicates the live blade (minus the sharp edge) and fits the sheath.

Above: The standard version of the ARK features a more traditional karambit shape, with slight forward curvature and its edge facing away from the user.

Pros:

  • Fifty bucks gets you a knife, trainer, and Kydex sheath. That’s impressive value.
  • Middle finger ring works as intended to retain the knife and maintain the user’s dexterity
  • Available in standard and reverse versions to fit your preferred fighting style

Cons:

  • Make a fist and check the alignment of your knuckles. Closing a fist around this handle pushes the middle finger out of line from the other three, which feels slightly unnatural.

Jared Wihongi on Martial Arts vs Practical Tactics

By
Patrick McCarthy
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0

There’s often a big difference between traditional martial arts and practical self-defense tactics (sometimes called combatives) — these two fields have a lot of crossover, but there are critical differences. For starters, when was the last time you saw someone bow to their opponent or wait for a referee to arrive before a street fight? It doesn’t happen, because the goal of a street fight is not to honor tradition or earn points in a competition, it’s to end the threat and survive unscathed. However, that’s not to say that martial arts can’t help us improve our self-defense skills through physical and mental conditioning. OFFGRID contributor Jared Wihongi is well aware of this dichotomy, having studied a wide variety of martial arts and dealt with down-and-dirty hand-to-hand combat in a law enforcement role.

Former OFFGRID editor Patrick Vuong recently interviewed Wihongi as part of a new Tiga Tactics YouTube series called The Way I See Things. This series will feature Q&As with various combatives instructors, picking their brains on helpful tactics, valuable lessons, and common mistakes they see students making. In this inaugural episode, Wihongi talks about how he first took an interest in self-defense, martial arts he has studied, what works, and what doesn’t.

There are some great quotes to remember in this video — here are a few of our favorites:

  • “You cannot win a lethal confrontation through defense. At some point there has to be an offensive undertaking, and the sooner the better.”
  • “The fight you’ll always survive is the one you avoided altogether.”

For more content from Tiga Tactics, give them a follow on Facebook or YouTube. You can also learn more about Jared’s Pekiti Tirsia Kali courses, go to Pekiti.university.

One Track Mind: Magellan TRX7 CS GPS Navigator Review

By
Patrick McCarthy
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You’ve read many articles in the pages of this magazine about the importance of basic land navigation skills — being able to read a map, work a compass, and navigate from point A to point B. But from a practical standpoint, this is one area where technology makes things so much easier. Satellites orbiting the earth allow GPS receivers to pinpoint your location instantly. And computing power that used to fill a room is now available in the palm of your hand. Combine the two, and you have no- fuss, no-muss navigation.

So, while it’s essential to master the fundamental skills, you might as well save time and effort by taking advantage of modern technology whenever it’s available. Purpose-built portable navigation devices were once a booming business, but GPS-enabled smartphones have gotten so powerful and ubiquitous that they drove sales of dedicated devices in North America from almost 18-million units in 2009 down to just over 3-million in 2015, according to the research firm Statista. These days, iOS and Android boast feature-laden navigation apps that take advantage of their beautiful high-density displays and your existing data plan to adjust your recommended route based on real-time traffic data, road closures, and other factors. Someone can text you an address, and you can simply click on it to immediately start navigating on the fastest possible route based on current conditions. This has greatly reduced the appeal of dedicated navigation systems.

However, Magellan, which created the first commercial handheld GPS receiver in the late ’80s, still believes they have a purpose. With smartphones dominating regular street navigation, their product lines are now focused on off-road and fleet/municipal applications. It’s easy to see how the latter could make sense for companies and organizations, but what about the former for individuals like you? We mounted up Magellan’s flagship TRX7 CS trail and street GPS navigator to see how well it performs.

Hardware

Magellan TRX7 CS Trail and Street GPS Navigator

Dimensions
5.25 by 8.6 by 1.1 inches

Weight
1.2 pounds (excluding mounting hardware)

MSRP
$550

URL
magellangps.com

The TRX7 CS is essentially a 7-inch Android tablet in a rugged, weatherproof housing. It features an A33 quad-core Cortex-A7 CPU, 16GB of internal storage, 5-megapixel rear camera, built-in lithium-ion battery, and a microSD slot. The touch screen display is an IPS LCD panel with 1,024 by 600 pixels of resolution. Ports include one mini-USB, one USB-A, a headphone jack, and a proprietary connection on the back for the cradle mount. If none of these specs sound exciting, consider that it’s running version 4.4.2 of Android, a version of the operating system first fielded in late 2013. This combination of hardware and software is hardly cutting edge and feels positively archaic alongside the constantly evolving smartphone industry standards.

All the ports and buttons have rubberized covers, and the device is rated IP67 for water and dust resistance, meaning it can withstand continuous dust exposure testing for 8 hours and be immersed in up to 1 meter of water for 30 minutes. This should be plenty for most vehicle-mounted applications, unless your ride is James Bond’s submersible Lotus. As a comparison, the older iPhone 7, 8, and X are also rated IP67, while the more recent iPhone XS and 11 have a higher IP68 rating. Tablets don’t usually have this sort of weather resistance, though it’s not hard to find an aftermarket case to match (or exceed) the Magellan’s ruggedness at the cost of some convenience.

In addition to the retro mini-USB cable, Magellan includes a cradle mount that the tablet conveniently clips into, so you don’t have to fuss with plugging in and unplugging cables. It powers the unit with a fixed USB-A cable and screws into the supplied RAM double ball/socket mount with a twist-lock suction cup base. RAM Mounts is known for its high-quality and secure mounting solutions, a fine choice for Magellan to bundle with the TRX7 CS. The double socket arm has sockets on either side with 1-inch ball mounts for the cradle on one end and the suction base on the other. It allows articulation in almost any direction you might need; a thumb screw in the middle clamps down on the socket arm, securing everything in place once you’ve configured it to your liking. It helps to have a third hand when doing this for the first time. Alternately, you can use the included aluminum U-bolt base to attach to rails or roll-bars between 0.5 and 1.25 inches in diameter.

Finally, the Magellan also comes with an AC adapter and 12-volt cigarette lighter adapter to provide your device with juice. Both output 10 watts, the AC adapter to a hard-wired mini-USB plug and the vehicle adapter to a USB-A socket.

Rolling Out

Given the length of the base and the arm, depending on the size of your windshield and the depth of your dashboard, you’ll need to experiment to position the device exactly where you’d like for convenient access and to avoid obstructing your view while driving. Due to the windshield and dash in our Jeep, we ended up positioning the RAM mount on the bottom left corner of the windshield for longer-term daily use to minimize interference with controls and our view. Ideally, we’d have preferred a spot on the right side of the steering wheel, to allow right-handed use and easy access by passengers. The provided components are compatible with RAM’s B-size accessories, so you can tap into their wide range of accessories to fine-tune your installation.

The cradle’s power cable is 6-feet long, sufficient for routing directly to a USB socket in your car or the cigarette lighter adapter, but too short if you wish for a more permanent install. For this, you’ll need to run an extension and tap power directly from your vehicle’s fuse box, as Magellan doesn’t offer a direct-connect kit.

Once your install is complete, the tablet snaps securely and easily into and out of the cradle, in case you need to remove it when parking in public.

Setting up the TRX7 CS is straightforward for anyone who has a smartphone. Power it up, connect to a Wi-Fi network, update the software and maps, and (optionally) create a Magellan TRX account.

There’s an App for That

Turn-by-turn trail and street navigation is provided by Magellan’s TRX app, which is pre-loaded and automatically launches upon startup. It boasts more than 160,000 four-wheel-drive, ATV, motorcycle, and snowmobile trails, high-resolution 3D terrain mapping and 2D topographic contours, and lifetime map updates. Enabling satellite imagery on the map, however, requires a $30 per year subscription fee. You can track your route, drop virtual breadcrumbs, and memorialize your activities with photos and audio recordings. Connect to TRX’s on-line services and you can share your achievements, link to your social accounts, and tap into additional crowd-sourced tracks and commentary.

During our testing in Southern California and Arizona, the Magellan had accurate trail maps and functioned well when guiding us on a route or simply recording our tracks. When camping and off-roading in Arizona, we found our desired trails and waypoints in the TRX database, and the GPS tracked our movements accurately. However, compared to recent smartphones, we couldn’t help but notice the Magellan’s older hardware. The tablet was reasonably responsive, but almost always exhibited a slight lag. Apps took a few extra beats to load. You can pinch to zoom and drag across the map, but the display responded rather lazily, stuttering as it redrew the map. The 1,024 by 600 resolution across seven diagonal inches made us feel like we should still be using an AOL email account. It was bright enough to view in direct sunlight with the Jeep’s top down, a tough ask for any display, but it’s still not as bright as the latest OLED displays. Magellan offers an optional $20 sun shade to help with glare and visibility.

On the streets, though, the relatively simple functionality of the TRX app’s navigation paled in comparison to the razor-sharp features of Waze or Google and Apple Maps, with the gap widening to a chasm with their real-time traffic integration. In fact, we’ve used several other dedicated GPS units that offer better street navigation. While the Magellan’s street maps were accurate and the recommended routes conceptually sound (you can choose between options for the fastest, shortest, least highways, and most off-road route), street navigation clearly isn’t its forte. It harkened back to the days when you’d plot a route at home using MapQuest without the benefit of traffic data. We’d like to have seen an option for speed-sensitive zoom on the map display, so that the view would zoom in or out based on how fast you’re traveling. The text-to-speech prompts sounded OK, but not as natural as smartphone apps. You can set brightness to adjust automatically based on ambient light, but the TRX app wouldn’t go into an inverted night mode on its own.

In addition, if you download offline maps in advance, most smartphone navigation apps can continue to function even without a signal, and there are plenty of apps designed for off-road use as well.

You’d expect a purpose-built navigation device to provide a smoother experience than a smartphone when it’s installed in a vehicle. For example, if you use your iPhone for navigation, whenever you get in the car, you need to pull it out of your pocket, pop it into a cradle, plug it in, and launch your map app of choice. If you’ve permanently or semi-permanently installed your Magellan and left it in its cradle, when you start up your car, it automatically powers up and launches the TRX navigation app. In our tests, it took almost 55 seconds to boot up and automatically launch the TRX app, a bit sluggish for our increasingly impatient taste in today’s market of ultra-fast smartphones.

Furthermore, when the Magellan loses power, such as when you park and turn off your vehicle, it simply switches to battery power. This is great if you want to keep using it, but it’s easy to forget to turn it off and leave it running to deplete its battery when you don’t. The tablet can be configured to go to sleep after a designated period of time, but for obvious reasons this is disabled while in the navigation app. It’s pretty apparent if you forget to turn it off at night, but less so during the day, leaving your device with its display on and perpetually awake like a Snickers-fueled toddler. We recommend that Magellan add a user-selectable option to automatically turn off the unit when it loses power; it could default to a countdown timer when power is lost, with a certain amount of time to tap on a confirmation to keep the unit on or else it turns off. This would go a long way to making the Magellan feel like it’s integrated with your vehicle.

Additionally, while you can connect the Magellan to your vehicle’s audio system with Bluetooth, it connects as a regular audio device, not as a hands-free device like a phone. So, in order to hear navigation prompts on your car’s speakers, you need to select its Bluetooth audio input. Thus, you can’t listen to the radio or any other audio input at the same time. We’d like the Magellan to be able to broadcast its turn-by-turn directions as a hands-free device, which would momentarily interrupt whatever you were listening to.

Since the TRX7 CS is built on an Android tablet, it offers various additional functionality — a web browser, calculator, calendar, camera, email, file manager, music player, contacts, audio recorder, and video player. If you dislike Google, you’ll appreciate that they’re all generic apps, not the typical Google suite you might expect on Android. And since Magellan didn’t integrate the Google Play store on the tablet, you can’t easily install additional apps, blunting the versatility of having an Android tablet. Fortunately, if you have a bit of computer-savvy, you can side-load Android apps. It’s not convenient, and not all apps work without Google Play, but at least you can load more apps this way.

For example, some of our staffers swear by the OnX Hunt app. After tracking down an APK for OnX, we attempted to side-load it on the Magellan — but we were foiled because it requires a minimum of Android version 5. It’s not compatible with the dated operating system on the TRX7 CS.

Waze, however, worked great on the Magellan after we side-loaded it. And putting our phone in hot spot mode allowed it to retrieve real-time traffic data as well. This became our choice for street navigation.

Conclusion

Lest we sound too critical, it’s almost unfair to compare a humble portable navigation device against smartphones bristling with the latest technology, honed to near-perfection across hundreds of millions of units sold and heralded as the drivers of astronomical market capitalizations of tech giants. Plus, you’ve probably already sunk a sizable chunk of cash into your smartphone. Still, there are some clear advantages to a dedicated navigation device. It’s guaranteed to work where you don’t have coverage; you have to remember to download off-line maps to your smartphone, and you might not have the opportunity if there’s an unexpected service outage. It also frees you to use your phone for other things, and avoids thrashing it with continuous GPS usage and draining its battery. The farther off the beaten path you get, the less valuable connectivity is, as useful traffic data is dependent on having a bunch of users to provide it. Plus, the Magellan’s large 7-inch display is easier to view than most smartphones.

If these factors appeal to you, making a purchase decision on the TRX7 is straightforward. Download Magellan’s TRX app from the App Store or Google Play and give it a test drive on your smartphone. See for yourself and decide whether you’d like a ruggedized 7-inch tablet with it as its centerpiece.

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