From the brain of an Australian Survivalist.

Brain and Australian in the same sentence?

You can grow most root crops in garbage bags, indoors, very easily.

Indoor growing is exactly the same as outdoor growing. The only difference is that we use light bulbs instead of the sun. The easiest way of doing this is to simply move your plants in pots from the garden into your house and place them under a growing light. That’s basically all the knowledge that is required to successfully grow indoors.

The reason that hydroponics is used in conjunction with growing under lights is that hydroponics is generally more efficient than growing in soil and soil tends to smell a lot when used indoors.

The easiest, and perhaps the best, hydroponic system for use indoors, are those rectangular planter boxes that are sold in Bunnings. They are made of plastic and have a cover over the drain reservoir. You simply fill these boxes with perlite, tip in your nutrient, and plant your seedling. You then come back and water them every couple of days by pouring a jug of nutrient into the box. I have found this the best system. There are many other systems for growing prize tomatoes etc, but for quantity and shortness of growth cycle, these are the best.

There is nothing else you need to know.

Electric lights.

The two standard bulb sizes are 400w and 1000w. I have always used the 400w bulbs as I can spread these around the room for better positioning of the light. These lights come with their own transformers and cost about $300 each. The kit will include a Chinaman’s hat reflector, a transformer and a bulb.

You will need what is called a metal halide bulb for the vegetative growth cycle of the plant and a high pressure sodium bulb for the blooming stage of growth. Each of these bulbs needs a different transformer.

A spare bedroom will need four of these 400w lights. I usually add a fifth, which is a small rectangular light that can be carried around the room and aimed at different dark spots among all the leaves.

Basically you will need:

4x400w light kits with four metal halide bulbs. You will need 4 high pressure sodium bulbs and transformers to suit these bulbs. Get a fifth light if you want to.

Room setup.

You will have to make two wooden beams in your room that you can hang your lights from. A chain goes over the beam and loops down to your light and is fastened with a dog clip. This way you can raise or lower your lights and slide them along the beam for better light coverage of your crop.

Hydro shops sell what they call double sided plastic. It is black on one side and white on the other. Hang this inside your window. The white goes on the inside to reflect light, and the black goes on the outside. This keeps away nosey neighbours. All they will see are blinds or curtains in the window and if they try to look any further they will see only the black of the plastic and think it is simply a dark room.

This plastic should also be used to cover your floor and stop nutrient spillages etc from getting onto your carpet. The walls of the growing room should be painted in a flat white paint which reflects light back at the plants.

In one wall you will have to put an extractor fan. When your plants are using 20 litres or so of nutrient a day, this water has to go somewhere. It is extracted by the extractor fan after it evaporates from the leaves and is carried away into the roof where it is diffused into the atmosphere.

You can buy a bathroom extractor fan from Bunnings for about $15. These generally last for one crop before they wear out and you have to buy another one.

The lights will also need a timer so that you don’t have to be home to switch them on and off in the morning and at night. These cost about $20 from Big W. You will also need things like double adapters, extension leads, small four-plug boards etc.

You will need a fan. This is placed near the door to your room and keeps the air circulating over the leaves of your plants. Plants also grow stronger stalks when buffeted around with wind which they need if they are to have a heavy fruiting cycle. The fan should also be aimed at your transformers to keep them cool.

That’s about all you need to know for setting up a room. Such a room will cost approximately $300 per quarter in electricity to run.

Safety - nutrient and electricity do not mix. If you carry a bucket of nutrient into the room and trip, causing the nutrient to spill into one of the transformers or electrical boards etc, you will be killed. Use extreme caution.

The bulbs also get very hot. Be careful when pruning etc not to get a hot bulb on the back of your neck or other part of you body. You will get a nasty burn and could cause the bulb to explode.

Growing.

You simply grow as you would outdoors. There is one difference however. It’s called photo period. In other words, how long do you leave the lights on each day? This varies from plant to plant. Plants do not have clocks in them. Many plants will only know that it is autumn and time to fruit by the shorter hours of light in the day. You will start plants off at say an 18 hour day. When you judge that they are big enough to bear fruit you cut the day back to 12 hours. The plant will then fruit. If you kept your plants on an 18 hour day they would keep growing and never stop, and never bear fruit either. But all plants are different. You have to study each plant and find out the lengths of day for the vegetative growth cycle and blooming cycle. All this information is available in books or on the Net.

Pests.

You don’t get many pests indoors. If you do give your plants a spray with House and Garden spray. Don’t use ordinary insect spray or you risk killing your plants.

Tip: don’t grow your plants too big. If you do, light won’t be able to get to the bottom leaves. Growing lights are good, but they are no replacement for the sun. Always maximise your light, don’t grow big plants. Turn your lights back early so that you plants go into the blooming cycle when they are one to two feet tall. They will keep growing bigger in the blooming cycle too.

Tip: Keep your lights at least a couple of feet away from seedlings. If the light is any closer it will burn the leaves.

Nutrient: Hydro shops sell two part nutrient in plastic bottles. You mix this with water and apply to your plants. This stuff is expensive but it is extremely efficient. Always follow the instructions on the label!!

There is nothing more that a beginner needs to know about indoor hydroponic growing. With a setup like this you can grow food. A whole house wired out like this will feed a family. I could give you a whole lot of advanced growing tips, but I thought I should keep these instructions simple, as hydro growing really is simple.

Do not listen to friends in pubs who give growing tips. Most of these people do not know what they are talking about and will only confuse the beginner. Advance a little bit at a time and add any piece of equipment or technique slowly and sensibly. Hydro stores will try to sell you the latest gadget or technique, but they only want your money. The above setup is one of the best available, and I’ve tried most of them. Such a setup is also mobile. You can carry boxes around and put them out in the garden if you get a lengthy power blackout. And this setup doesn’t have pumps or other gadgetry to go wrong. Always make it simple and keep it simple and you can’t go wrong.

The really important things with growing are:

1. Air extraction. Always be sure that air is extracted efficiently from your growing room.

2. Make sure your walls are painted white so that they reflect light back onto your plants.

The only other technique that is suitable for both the beginner and the advanced grower is the flood and drain tray technique. These are simply plastic trays, or one big tray, full of pebbles. A pump fills the tray with nutrient say for 15 minutes every hour and then switches off and allows the nutrient to flow out of the tray again and into a tank. This is a very cheap and efficient method of growing as the pebbles can be washed between each crop. With the perlite method of growing the perlite usually has to be thrown out after just one crop, and it is $40 per bag.

I generally favour the flood and drain method of growing. It is also pleasant to listen to the nutrient trickle into the tray and out again. Super plants can also be grown by this method.

You may also wish to get into cloning, tissue culture etc. If so read my other posts on this forum called ‘Growing Food.’ These posts describe basic plant biology and growing techniques which you should always be in the habit of studying.

Plants to grow?

Anything really. I’ve seen an apple tree grown indoors by the flood and drain technique, but the grower did it just for fun. He filled an old bath tub up with pebbles and connected a little plastic pump that filled the tub with nutrient and drained it every hour. I’ve never tried root crops but I can’t see why not. Leafy crops are always good to grow as are tomatoes etc. A good idea is to use up all your available light. If you have a corner of a room not being used, throw a pot there and plant anything you like in it.

Heating.

Your lights will add about 5 degrees C to your grow room in winter or summer. In winter you will have to use a heater both day and night. An electric heater is the most efficient, but really puts those power bills up. A good idea is to get a kerosene heater. These are not sold any more but you can still buy them in second hand shops. They are good because for every pound of kerosene they burn they produce three pounds of carbon dioxide which your plants just love. Alternatively you could use a gas heater which also produces a great deal of C02.

In summer, on a 40 degree day, your lights will bring the room temperature up to 45 degrees. This can be dangerous as your transformers could catch fire. I’ve never heard of it happening, but it is a possibility.. It is a good idea to switch your room off on such days.


Here are some rules:

1. Never tip unused nutrient or perlite down drains.

2. Always be careful of carrying nutrient into your grow room. Electricity and nutrient do not mix.

3. Never use tape to secure anything. Even if it is the plastic for your window, always use screws and batons. If that plastic falls off the window the police will think you are growing marijuana in your house and raid you. Heaven help you if you have anything illegal in your house when they come.

4. Always read labels on bottles and do things by the book. A common error with beginners when mixing nutrient is in using part A of grow nutrient with part B of bloom nutrient and wonder why their plants don’t grow properly. All steps are important, they can’t be skimped.

5. Don’t overdo things. Plants grow best when left alone.

6. Don’t get advice from guys in pubs. These people are idiots.

Happy growing!

Where the hell will you get power and fertilizers after the shit hits the fan?

The trick is to get as far from other people as possible, in a small group of people you will trust with your life, and hunt, fish, and gather.

Don't forget about pest control!

In this post I’d like to begin by talking about things that can go wrong. We’ve touched on this subject before but it is really worth several long essays. Here I will just stick with the basics, ie., bugging out, travelling, hiking, camping etc and all the things we are likely to do in almost any scenario.

Sometimes it’s good for us to realise, that even though we are survivalists, there are things we can overlook that might bring a sudden, or not so sudden, halt to our plans. I know from my own experiences that it is often the trifling detail that can make a success or failure of an operation, and when we are talking about survival ATSHTF there may be no second chances. The things listed below do not just happen to newbies, they can happen to all of us if we don’t think them through well beforehand and gain at least some experience in doing the things that we might be called on to do ATSHTF.

There are several good exercises. Eg., wait for a stormy night and take a bus 40 kilometers away and walk home through the rain. Take your rain gear with you and your webbing kit if you like, and take note of what happens eg., what vital piece of equipment didn’t you have? was your gear up to the job? what were the unforeseen events that you were ill equipped for? There will be a few surprises.

I’ve done this exercise in suburbia and here are some possible notes you might make after completing the above exercise.

1. Your boots had never been tested in the wet before. After five kilometers you have serious blisters and the skin has rubbed away on the heel of one foot. You have to terminate the exercise.

2. Your wet clothing causes serious rashes, especially to the groin area and make progress very painful.

3. Your webbing pack doesn’t have a drain hole and water sloshes around inside, ruining some food and a map.

4. Your route is too dangerous. There are places without footpaths or other safe routes away from speeding cars.

5. You can’t walk 40 kilometers. You are not fit enough.

Others might include.

1. I thought that I had packed everything, but I left my tea bags at home.

2. I could have gone on if I had had a couple of Band-Aids to put over a blister on my foot.

3. Why didn’t I carry a spare strap support for my webbing kit? I had to carry the whole lot home slung over my shoulder.

4. A hat would have been nice to keep the rain off my head.

The above represents a simple exercise. ATSHTF things are likely to be more complicated. You might not only have to walk that same 40 kilometers, but take your family with you and fight off thugs and dodge police patrols and evade snipers, and do it all with a piece of shrapnel in your belly.

So the question is, how can survivalists increase their chances of things not going badly wrong? The answer IMHO is to look at detail. This is the thing that sets the amateur and the professional apart. Everything exists in detail - nothing exists in the form of a sketch. If you can say what you intend to do in one sentence, then you haven’t thought about detail, and there is a high chance that you will fail.

Here are some points:

1. Always check your facts. Most of us carry ideas in our heads which we assume to be facts, but they are not facts. I’ve learnt this the hard way on more than one occasion.

2. Try not to make any assumptions, whether positive or negative. We have to have a true picture of the situation. Assumptions are a condition of your consciousness and do not live in reality.

3. Always prepare for the big ones: cold, communications, food, maps, clothing, footwear and transport. These things, once organised, tend to be forgiving when other detail goes wrong eg., if a route is longer than expected, food and warmth will still save your life.

4. Always mentally rehearse all the details that can go wrong and prepare for these.

5. Try not to have too many elements in a plan - if one falls everything will fall with it.

6. Understand human nature. If your plan involves meeting someone at a crucial time, how do you know that person will turn up? If it involves calling a person on their mobile telephone at a crucial time, how do you know that they will have it switched on? Making assumptions here could cost lives.

... and never be under any illusions. Incompetent idiots are not the exception in any plan, they are the norm. A competent person is the extreme rarity.

ATSHTF there will be another element which is stress. Stress is an interesting thing which causes all kinds of bizarre behaviour. There will be complete personality changes in most people, mostly in a negative way. I’ve seen such stress aboard a motor yacht when it had gone aground at Stradbroke Island. The lesson I learned is that people do not behave the same way when they are under stress, and most often all their rational abilities desert them. Some freeze and are unable to do anything, others behave like madmen, others go into tantrums etc. This type of behaviour can be counted on, and any plan that may involve a future stressful situation must take this into account.

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Gourmet hour

I finally managed to buy 20 tins of Christmas pudding in the post Xmas rush!

How do you store your food? I don’t mean long term bulk storage which is already well covered on this forum. I mean the day to day storage of the food you are slowly consuming each day, such as opened packets of powdered milk, opened packets of sugar and pasta.

If you are mobile or roughing it in the wilderness this can be a problem. Sugar tends to spill, syrup tends to run down into your powdered milk and maps, and pasta tends to scatter all though everything and become a soggy mass that becomes moldy after a while. And once rats or mice start picking at a packet of food most of us don’t want to eat it any more.

Food should always be stored in an ordered way. This order might be nothing more than storing packets in cardboard boxes and all boxes are kept together. The food is then stored in a secure location away from animals, and especially rats and mice.

The most simple method of storing food is to do it in their original packets, but when opened a hair clasp is placed over the folded corner to stop it from spilling and to keep air and moisture out.

A better method is to buy plastic containers with screw top lids ensuring that each container can take a full packet of various types of food ie., one container for powdered milk, another for sugar, another for pasta and so on. I use only six containers as I’ve found that many foods already come in adequate plastic bottles etc.

Good containers for rice are 2 litre plastic juice bottles. These cost nothing. For other foods such as powdered milk you will need a more open container with a screw top lid so that you can put a spoon inside. Most supermarkets and reject shops sell excellent containers for this type of storage.

Plastic containers will keep water and air away from your food, and are rodent proof as far as short term storage goes.

Should glass jars be considered? Glass jars are excellent storage containers, especially those large ones with the wire clasp that seals the lid. They seem to be cheaper than the plastic containers and come in bigger sizes. The only drawbacks of course are in possible breakages and they are heavier. But I have two big glass jars for pasta - they hold several kilos each and cost $10 for the two at a reject shop.

Slumming it.

I went down to Parramatta last weekend and played a game of follow the Chinaman. Unfortunately many of them seem to have picked up Aussie ways, but thankfully, with the new arrivals, old ways die hard. Noodles are always near the top of the list, but there was one of them with glasses on who bought a whole load of tinned crab meat in the reject shop. It was 50 cents a tin and produced in Asia. There were noodles in the reject shop but he turned his nose up at these, and later in the supermarket he bought the No-Name noodles that were even cheaper.

I bought a tin of the crab meat and a packet of the noodles and tried to cook them up that night but I didn’t like them. I tried adding some pepper and some chilli with some improvement.

I decided to sit in the mall and see what people were eating and who was throwing out what. I noticed that lots of people only ate half their hot chips from Hungry Jacks or Macdonalds and threw the rest in the bin. Chips come with all the meals in the same quantity whether people eat them or not. I could have been very well fed on chips had I been inclined to get them out of the bins. Unfortunately chips are hard to preserve because of the oil they are cooked in, though they will store for a week or so in the refrigerator.

I decided to check lots of prices and stand near the supermarket checkouts to see what people were buying. I don’t know why people buy what they do. In many instances shoppers bought items that cost four times as much as less prestigious brands. Here are a few low and high prices. Pasta 50 cents -$1-99, bread 99 cents- $2-89, jam $1-29 - $2-89 and on it goes.

I drove out to a food processing mini plant at K.......le. Every day one of the workers wheels out a big bin of lettuce and other vegetables and tips them in the paddock for three cows. I didn’t see any tits so they must have been bulls. I walked up to them while they were eating, being sure to keep a wire fence between us in case they charged, and I just watched them. I thought they would have just gobbled it all down, but they were picking through the little heap looking for the most succulent pieces while keeping their eyes on me. This told me that they must be very well fed and there is probably somewhere else where the mini plant dumps the rest of their offcuts. There was. A big blue bin around the side of the plant.

There were lots of carrots in there, lots of lettuce and cabbage leaves. I took some of the carrots and a bag of cabbage leaves and I now have another source of supply. I cooked the cabbage leaves up with some tomato juice and garlic and it was very nice. I couldn’t find anything wrong with the carrots, maybe they ordered too many.

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What are the basics that you will need for bugging out? It assumes that you are already wearing street clothes when you have to flee into the wild.

Sleeping bag. Should be of the sub zero type.

Small tent or bivvy bag.

Billy can. This is used for cooking, boiling water, storing water, and collecting water. It should have a few metres of cord attached so that it can be lowered into streams or down wells.

Matches or cigarette lighter.

Hat

Sun glasses

Some food

If you are in dry country you will need transpiration bags, minimum of four..

Warm clothing ie., a trench coat, long underwear, waterproof jacket etc.

This list is as basic as it gets but these items will keep you alive if nothing too drastic occurs.

Some extras that you might be able to do without, but greatly add to your comfort and survival chances are:

An extra ground sheet. Can be used as a raincoat, as a collector of rain water and many other things.

Water storage containers. Minimum of 20 litres.

Soap

Toilet paper

Pistol and ammunition.

knife

A first aid kit, which should contain a pressure bandage, a pair of tweezers, a scalpel and some Band-Aids.

You will also need something to carry all this stuff in.

There are many other items that are desirable to have but are not absolutely essential eg., a compass, maps, water filter, full first aid kit, etc.

The most essential survival needs are food, water and warmth. The first list covers all of these. The additional lists cover those times when things go wrong or luxuries like soap and toilet paper.

Self defence - this is as basic as food and shelter and you must be prepared. I talk from experience. I wouldn’t be here today unless I had had a little friend in my coat pocket during a solo wilderness expedition two decades ago. Two legged vermin are real and they are out there. Do you want to know what happiness feels like? Holding something in your hand that makes a loud and terrifying bang and to see a couple of two legged vermin run away, or turn apologetic and plead for their lives, is the nearest thing to happiness I know. And it will be particularly satisfying in years to come to know that you purchased your life one day by having the foresight to be armed.

Don’t put it off any more. Arm yourself! There is nothing humane or trendy about being murdered in the wilderness. Don’t get hung up on calibres or styles. Any type of gun will do. Even if you never use it you will have peace of mind.

Sheeple

To be a prepared survivalist means to have resources. Resources mean a lot of things. They can be material (what you have), or intellectual (what you know), or social (who you know). But where do the sheeple fit in?

Mr and Mrs Sheeple live in an outer suburb of a city. They don’t own a car and neither has a driver’s licence. Neither own a mobile phone as they wish to put all their money into the mortgage. Mr Sheeple doesn’t own any tools, except for a screwdriver in a kitchen draw. They don’t have much food in the house as Mr and Mrs Sheeple prefer to shop daily as it is hard to carry food home from the shop. They don’t have Internet access, or a transistor radio - they are solely reliant on the telephone and the postman for all their communications. Mr Sheeple wanted to buy an air rifle once, but Mrs Sheeple threatened to leave him if he ever considered such a idea again (and threatened to tear up a book, if she ever saw him bring one home.). Neither knows much about anything, as they have never bothered to educate themselves in anything, especially anything that might force them to change their views.

Mr and Mrs Sheeple are basically f*ckwits, but of course they are opinionated f*ckwits who are in the habit of shouting loudly if they think that a sentence might contain an idea that they disagree with. They both think in clichés, and vomit up the same old sayings that they have been vomiting up since they heard their parents vomit up the same expressions before them.

These people are those corpses you see floating down the river after a cyclone hits. They are the people who fill mass graves after purges in various countries - unless they are given the job of filling the graves, which they will do with self righteous gusto to rid society of those criminal elements who might disagree with them if given the opportunity to finish a sentence.

These people are very, very, very dangerous types of people.

The rules for defending yourself against them are:

1. Have nothing to do with them.

2. If you are forced to interact with them, never help them; they will use your kindness against you.

3. Never give them any information that could damage you if it is passed to the authorities.

4. Never be too polite to them. They understand rudeness, but think polite people are hiding something. Be just a little rude, but at all costs keep them away from you.

In most SHTF situations these people will be your undoing.

Self Defence

Special Warning

Over confidence.

When planning any action never use the word 'just'. Those who make a habit of using the word 'just' are going to get killed. If you say I'll just elbow an assailant in the head, or I'll just use plastic sheet to obtain water in the desert, or just refuse to answer questions in a police interrogation, you should understand that most of the things you learn in serious survival publications are last ditch attempts when all else has failed.

What follows is a description of problems you are likely to encounter, and sometimes some possible solutions, but it is by no means comprehensive - you can only extract anything from it that might be of use to you.

Self defense in all of its forms is not really about shooting revolvers or performing head high kicks, it is about thinking things through clearly and logically and taking the appropriate action. Logic is a strange thing and has magical qualities, and is no respecter of class or education - if a plan is logical then it always works, it never fails. There is nothing any enemy can do about a well thought out plan of action - enemy empires tumble and armies are routed, and you will find that if you can think, very, very few can compete. Victory always goes to those who can think. To think clearly however you will need a real world understanding of tools, weapons, knives, food procurement etc. Clear thinking also extends to knowledge of other people's strengths, and weaknesses, and this will give you the ability to predict how they might behave in a given situation. Thinking and knowledge go hand in hand. You must constantly gain in knowledge.

If you only get one thing out of this manual make it this paragraph.

The first rule of survival.

You've been dealing with the average citizen all your life, but the chances are very high that you've never come to know him. You've dealt with him in an ordinary way doing everyday things and you've come to imagine that he isn't too bad. You've never had to deal with him in stressful and dangerous situations - ones where his safety and life are at risk. It is these ordinary people whom you will also have to deal with in survival situations, be it a downed aeroplane or a totalitarian regime, and it is these ordinary citizens who will be the most danger to you - more dangerous than the elements or the secret police.

The average citizen cannot think. 80 per cent of the population cannot understand the simplest concept or the story-line in a cheap television serial. The government find them easy to manipulate - their decision making processes are based only on pleasure and fear, but especially fear, and it is through fear that these ordinary people will staff the concentration camps, inform on their neighbors, become the cannon fodder for war, and generally do anything that the more powerful want them to do.

Never be under the illusion that the ordinary citizen will not allow an injustice to happen. He will allow anything to happen for any small and temporary advantage. The ordinary citizen is greedy, stupid, immoral, selfish, cowardly, and dangerous to anyone whom the government or more powerful don't like.

If the government ordered your death tomorrow, or even if the government withdrew the censure of the law in killing you, you will be dead - and it won't be by some specially trained assassin, but by your next door neighbor who'll opt for the cheap way out and cheerfully beat you to death with a shovel. This happened under the Nazis in Germany and in just about every country they occupied. There was never any shortage of these cowards volunteering to beat people to death with shovels in order to impress the Nazis and achieve some advantage or gain, even if only a cup of soup. You must understand this mentality!!!

In other countries this is the type of behavior the government expects when it declares some person an outlaw - and an outlaw has never lived for long

Where does this leave you, the survivor? It is all negative. You must not trust the average citizen, or rely upon him, or assume that he will behave with elementary decency if the government tell him to behave otherwise. You are on your own, full stop. Rely on no one except yourself and any individual who has proven himself to be other than an ordinary man. This is the creed of the survivor. Depart from it and you are a dead man, or in prison where you might as well be dead; live by it and you might survive.

Part I.

Guns.

More chaff is written about guns than any other area of self defense. Frank Hamer, the pig who shot down Bonnie and Clyde, once said about a pocket pistol that a man was carrying, "If you ever shoot me with it, and I find out about it, I'll have a stern talk with you." But in real life if he had been shot with it, he'd either be dead before he hit the ground, or lying on the floor in a grim struggle for life.

The rule in any type of armed conflict seems to be that if you are shot, then you are either dead or out of the fight, regardless of the caliber of weapon used, and that those who fire first nearly always win the confrontation. The exceptions to these rules seem to be extremely rare.

Any type of gun is a very deadly thing and great precautions must be taken to avoid any situation where a gun might be produced. This is how all professionals operate, even though they are well armed and trained, and you must do the same - avoid any type of armed confrontation unless the odds are heavily stacked in your favor.

To confront any skilled gunman, whether amateur or professional, and that gunman has the initiative - i.e., is prepared for you - is a death sentence. You must have the initiative in any encounter, which means that you must be prepared while your target isn't prepared. A gun should be considered an offensive weapon, not a defensive weapon - it is too late to do much to defend yourself after you have come under fire, or been bailed, up by a skilled (or not so skilled) gunman. If you analyze any shooting incident you will see that this is the case. Guns are primarily assassination and murder weapons and have never been much good for self defense against armed assailants.

** Remember that being shot with a .25 caliber is the same as being run though with a quarter inch diameter spike. It is a serious matter.

If you decide to own a gun I recommend these:

M98k - this is the thoroughbred of bolt actioned rifles. It was the standard issue of German soldiers during W.W.II. It is based on the older 1898 Mauser design of which almost every modern bolt actioned rifle is a copy. The sporterized versions come with synthetic stocks, telescopic sights, Shilen barrels and sometimes adjustable triggers. What's more they are reasonably priced and look good. Using sniper tactics this is probably the most formidable infantry weapon available.

Handgun: Get a .357 magnum revolver. They are reliable and powerful. The .357 using 125 grain hollow points has the greatest stopping power of any handgun.

Safety with guns

1. Have a gun for self protection, but the general rule is, for God's sake don't shoot anybody with it, just don't.

2. If you must keep a loaded gun, avoid leaving a round in the chamber.

3. Never dry fire any gun. It might be loaded.

4. Wherever possible don't leave a loaded gun around.

5. It should go without saying but, positively identify any person you intend to shoot. Many times a person has mistakenly shot a family member thought to be a burglar, or soldiers have shot friends while on perimeter duty. Always use the words, 'Halt, who goes there?' Avoid using guns in dark places. Policemen have been shot in dark places by other members of a stakeout party.

Unarmed combat

In the following when I refer to martial artists, I mean a suburban black belt who attends class once or twice a week and has maybe spent a year studying in Japan, but who does not have years of experience. When I refer to dangerous assailants I mean a street thug who is probably a fist fighter of natural talent who has also picked up a few tricks along the way.

1. Most martial artists are not fast enough. Most have never fought on the street or anywhere else and do not understand how fast some fighters can be. Few realize that before they can block one punch they can be hit twice more.

2. All martial artists rely on weight shifting and forward movement of their opponent as a base for defensive action, but many fist fighters do not shift their weight forward or move forward when throwing a punch, it is simply snapped forward and turned into a pile driving action by straightening out the elbow and shoulder, and unless they are a lot faster than the snapped punch they are going to get hit, big time.

3. Very few, including muggers, bouncers, policemen, security guards and others, can fight to save their lives. The average standard of street fighting is very, very low. It is easy to gain a big reputation as a street fighter on very little. Therefore it is useless to base your choice of martial arts style on street fighting successes of that style. If you know how to swing a right punch or poke someone with an umbrella you will win most street confrontations. It is the one in a hundred fighter you have to watch for and any self defense style should only be judged against these.

If you choose an unarmed combat method because say, the L.A.P.D. use it, you have to remember that in 99 % of cases they are defending themselves against drunks who can hardly stand up let alone fight back. Fighting some big fearsome opponent who has spent six hours a day for the last fifteen years working out in a gym is another matter and it is these you will sometimes meet in the street. Because unarmed fighting techniques work 99 % of the time means nothing as 99% of street rowdies aren't dangerous and can't fight. It is another matter to fight an opponent who is big and tough and who can punch hard.

4. There are no reliable defenses against some style of attacks that are common on the street or in bars. eg., knife attacks, attacks with fence palings, broken bottles, nunchakus, broken beer glasses and many others. There are certainly no defenses against machetes, except to run for your life as any martial artist would. Remember also that a machete, a broken beer glass or bottle can be thrown at high velocity.

* I've heard of baseball bat attacks coming silently from assailants on racing bicycles who ride up behind their victim on the street late at night, swing the bat towards the head then dismount and continue the attack. Beware of this one.

5. Most martial arts as taught to members of the public is at best of minimal use in a self defense situation. Such training often does more harm than good in that it gives those who will never become skilled fighters a confidence that they shouldn't have and one that can get them beaten up or killed. A 250 pounder with fists flying can be an awesome opponent and no matter how much training one has had it is likely that you will get badly roughed up.

6. Most martial arts styles are good in defense but poor at attack. You must learn attack techniques.

7. Many attacks do not fall into any category that you may have trained for in the dojo. In the street an assailant can jump on your back and hang on piggy back fashion until you are worn out, then pound your head into the pavement; you can be sitting in a restaurant cubicle, unable to get out of your seat, when an assailant smashes your head repeatedly into the table or you can have a pay phone smashed into your head.

8. Cowardice is the normal reaction in any type of conflict. There is rarely a hero. If the attack is violent enough the normal reaction, whether they be citizens, police, security guards etc, is to run, lie low until the danger is past, escape the scene and his duty to protect by running for help etc. A deadly style of attack is so shocking to the nervous system that cowardice is the norm. Government departments, the media etc rarely report this cowardice; at most they say that the poor bodyguard's revolver jammed, or that the victim was running away to draw fire away from his wife etc.

I have used the word cowardice because it is the only word I can use, but in fact such behaviour has nothing to do with actual courage or the lack of it. The victim's nervous system takes over and there is nothing he can do to overrule it. The only way of overcoming this is to train your nervous system through experience. Second best, but the only available option to most, is rigorous training and practice. Training means gaining knowledge of what is and what isn't a dangerous situation. Training is also about the appropriate course of action to take in genuinely dangerous circumstances and then drilling yourself in routines relentlessly. To the professional there is no such thing as courage or the lack of it. It is all knowledge and technique soundly instilled.

And finally, if you've been involved in a situation in the past where you didn't exactly turn out to be the shining hero you thought you might be, don't feel bad about it, learn from it. Take a professionally detached view of your actions to gain insight into how your techniques of controlling similar situations can be improved. Remember, a coward is the person who doesn't turn up in the first place, not the one who turns up but has a bad day!


What is to be done about all this?

Overwhelming superiority

This should be your intention in any likely scenario. To put it bluntly, if someone attacks you with his fists you defend yourself with a .357 magnum. If he attacks you with a baseball bat defend yourself with a Ruger Mini 14. If he is likely to attack you with a machine gun get in a week early and put a **** under his car. These are the facts of life as far as self defense goes. Let your opponent make the mistake of turning up to a gunfight with a pair of boxing gloves. The pigs call this principle 'the edge'. The pigs must always have the edge before engaging in any encounter and you must do the same. Never fight fair. Always try to be better armed than any likely attacker. This can't always be done due to legal or other restrictions but you must always be as well armed as you can be.

Getting Prepared

1. Carry only what you need to carry in your pockets. Have as few keys as you need, no good luck charms, tickets, coins etc. If you are chased down the street by a gang you don't want to fumble with your car keys when the gang is fifty yards behind, and closing fast.

2. Clothing.

Shoes and boots.

These should be of sturdy leather construction. A kick to the knee or groin with a solid leather boot is much more devastating than a kick with a soft shoe. You can also take advantage of the US Marine style stomp to the head if lethal force is necessary

Shirt.

A shirt should be of the type that can't be pulled over your head. A strong cotton shirt with buttons is to be preferred. The buttons might tear off but there is not much your opponent can do to tangle you up in it.

Tie.

A traditional tie must be avoided as it can be used to choke you. If you must wear a tie wear one which is held around your neck with an elastic band.

Trousers.

These must be made from stretch material otherwise you won't be able to knee your opponent in the groin.

Self Defense Techniques.

Run away

In most self defense situations where you have no one to protect but yourself, run away. This is the best self defense technique there is which will work in about 90 % of cases. This is also the first line of defense taught in all self defense schools.

Fighting.

In situations where you must fight, e.g., you are cornered or you have somebody else to protect you need some basic fighting skills. I don't have space to cover these here but you can learn them over a few months at any self defense or martial arts school. Topics you should cover are the basic defensive skills listed below:

Punches in their various forms.

Front and rear headlock

Choke hold

Kicks in their various forms

Basic grappling

Knife attacks both ice pick and hammer grip

Basic street fighting situation, eg., grabbed by the shirt etc.

Defenses against a powerful two fisted attack ie., a street slugger.

Attacked by two or more opponents

*It is important to study defenses to types of attacks prevalent in your area.

Knife fighting.

The most common mistake in knife fighting is in assuming that an opponent has to be stabbed in the body. The only action needed to disarm and incapacitate a knife fighter is to slash him anywhere on soft, fleshy, inside part of the arm. When your attacker tries to stab you, punch you, or otherwise poke out his arm at you, one quick slash with a razor sharp folding knife is enough to immediately incapacitate him.You can be much further away than you would be if stabbing to his body, and unless your attacker knows this trick, which he probably won't, you will win the fight.

Your knife must be razor sharp to inflict the deepest cut possible with the least effort. He will probably permanently lose the use of the slashed arm.

An experienced knife fighter won't lead with the knife hand but keep it tucked into his body. With the other hand he will push, shove and set you up to be stabbed by the knife hand. Slash the arm he is shoving with, as this will cause him to lead with the knife hand. When he does slash this arm as well.

Unarmed defenses against a knife.

There are no reliable unarmed defenses against a knife. Your chances of dying are very high even if you are well trained and your assailant isn't. But here are some actions you can take.

1. Run away if you can. If you are a faster runner than your assailant your chances of survival are good.

2. Most knife attacks are not lethal encounters. For every determined killer there might be ten who only wave a knife around to show you how angry they are, and perhaps gain sympathy from onlookers.. The real killers will usually stab you before you even realize you have come under attack. But again, you won't know what the intention of your assailant is so run away if you can.

3. If you can't run away and you must defend yourself, a thrusting kick to your attacker's knee is your best chance, especially if done from the side.

4. You might be able to block knife thrusts with sweeping blocks using your arms and driving your palm under the assailant's chin etc., but this type of defense taught in martial arts schools doesn't seem to take into account that knife thrusts can come in at unknown angles and circular sweeps etc., many of them very difficult to predict or block, and often done at lightning speed.

For these reasons the best generic defense is:

1. Avoid being grabbed by the attacker's free hand as once this happens your chances of being stabbed are almost certain.

2. If the attacker is holding the knife in his left hand, move left, if held in the right hand circle right. If you can get to one side, deliver a thrusting kick to the side of the knee. Do this by raising the foot up, chambering, then deliver with maximum speed and force. If it connects he will finish up on the ground. You must follow up with kicks to the head or throat until he is unconscious or dead.

The self-defense knife - although not good for your image a high quality folding knife is most desirable. A stud for opening with the thumb is essential in a self defense situation. When open, the blade must lock securely and when closed it should stay closed. The blade must be capable of taking and maintaining a sharp edge and withstanding a lot of abuse if you also intend to use it as a survival tool.

Baseball bats - most know that a baseball bat can be a fearsome weapon and many have them in their homes or cars for self protection, but most don't know how to use one and as such these weapons rarely do much good.

The most effective way of using a baseball bat is to swing it with one hand and hit your attacker on the knee. If attacked with a baseball bat, your assailant will probably hold it with two hands and bring it straight down on your head. Criminal debt collectors use this method as they know the victim will bring up his forearm to block the blow which will result in a broken arm.

The defense is to stay in close, step forward and at forty five degrees to the opponent, knocking his arm away and then driving an open palm under his chin.

* Take caution though. Many street thug types custom make extra long bats on garage lathes!

Machete - the machete is such a terrifying weapon that when confronted with one most run for their lives, just as you should do if confronted with one. This is the ideal weapon to defend yourself against any number of unarmed or lightly armed attackers. Run around and chase people with it. If you get a stubborn attacker who doesn't run with the rest make like you are going to throw it at him as even the drunkest or bravest will turn and run.

Umbrella - this can be a formidable weapon if used correctly. With both hands thrust with it into the solar plexus, face, eyes or groin. Others can also use the umbrella to conceal guns or swords, be cautious!

Rear choke hold.

This is a most dangerous hold. Carry a small folding knife in your right hand trouser pocket. Try to loosen the grip with one hand and with the other reach into your pocket for the knife. Open the blade with your thumb and place a deep cut in your assailant's arm. You should always carry such a weapon in your pocket. This method is also my first choice of getting out of a headlock.

*This type of knife is the same as described above but has a 1 ½ to 2 inch blade and when folded is easily carried in your left or right front trouser pocket.

The Street Bum

Most fights will be against the street bum i.e., those who can't fight at all but still have the confidence to attack you. Good ways of finishing fights quickly against street bums are:

1. A fast kick to the shin, followed by another and another. It won't matter how big he is, he will probably crumple on the first kick.

2. If you are big, punch him in the head with a powerful, well-timed right and repeat as necessary. Make sure you bring him down, strike hard with your boot, then make your escape. Remember, these bums run on ego and often thrive on admiration from the locals - he will turn nasty and could pull a knife.

3. Block a punch with one arm and with the other elbow him in the head, or if the assault is vicious, elbow him in the throat, punch him in the stomach and kick his legs from under him. Get away fast, he is now out for revenge! His mind may shift to what he can throw at you. This may be a simple pocket knife or a crude homemade throwing star.

4. A simple kick to the knee will take the bum out of the fight and this even works on skilled fighters a lot of the time.

*It always pays to wear steel capped boots or shoes, as kicks with such boots are devastating. These boots or shoes need not look out of the ordinary as many brands have been designed for smart casual dress.

Boxer

Dive down and put your right shoulder into his groin and your arm around his waist and drop your left knee to the ground. He will finish up on the ground where his punching skill is of no use to him. Sit on his chest and elbow him a couple of times in the head. When getting off it is best to use the Ninjutsu roll so that he can't grab you. This is a simple forward roll from the crouching position.

Dealing with the Local Black Belt.

I've found these methods work well:

1. In the dojo I've found that most skilled fighters are suckers for the snapped kick to the knee. This is where your front foot does the kicking and you fall towards your opponent as the kick lands. These kicks are illegal in karate so if you want to practice them you'll have to join a street fighting style of club. There are easy defenses against such kicks but very few fighters are fast enough to make use of them. To prevent someone from doing this to you always put your leading foot inside your opponents leading foot when getting close to strike etc.

2. I have yet to meet any martial artist who can do much about a fast two fisted assault, if he is the one attacking. One they find especially annoying is simply a straight, well-timed right to the head repeated as many times as necessary. Most martial artists say that even a beginner can handle these but in real life most will be defeated by this style of fighting. What they overlook is the speed of the punch which is usually much faster than they can parry it. However you must be better than an average puncher to do this.

The laymen's guide to powerful punching is to try to push yourself off your opponent when the punch has connected, this will automatically turn your punch into a pile driving action.

A fast punch by a skilled puncher will take about 1/30th of a second. Remember this when your dojo instructor tells you to step back, parry, duck under etc.

Most martial artists that I've met have such strange ideas of the speed of punches that it is common for them to mistake slow motion punches done for demonstration purposes as a full speed attack.

3. Throw a punch at the martial artist without much forward movement of your body. Make it pretty slow. He will block it and try to punch you in the body with his other arm. After he has blocked it, but before he has thrown the punch, punch him under the bicep of his outstretched arm. This one may only work on inexperienced martial artists.

4. If you are bigger than the martial artist, jump on him and hang on, hugging him tightly. When he is completely exhausted, let go of him and kick him a few times in the head as he is lying on the ground. If you have a short bladed knife in your pocket, and it is a deadly situation, cut his throat before getting off him.

5. Carry a length of wood with nails sticking out of it and hit him with it. Whether or not he puts up his arms to block the blows, he will be seriously injured. Be prepared to use this one hard - people are smart-asses and may not have the brains to be scared.

6. If you can, catch one of his feet and up-end him. Then walk backwards slowly with the foot in your hands and keep kicking him in the testicles and tailbone.

7. Watch for the head butt. In a standing position he may or may not first put his hands around the back of your head. But as soon as his head comes forward strike him with an elbow on the crown of the head, and quickly follow it up with a kick to the knee. (Note: if he is within head butt range your fingers should already be deeply embedded in his eye sockets.)

The head butt is the favorite of British football hooligans - don't get too close to anyone.

8. Head high kicks are easy to block and only fools throw them. If he does, block it and break the leg he is standing on with a falling kick from the front foot.

Some don'ts.

1. Never get in close to any trained fighter. If you have a firearm, present it well before getting to within arm's length.

2. Unless you are a skilled puncher, don't throw punches.

3. Always take the high ground, never allow your opponent to upslope you. This increases his reach and power.

4. Always stay off his centerline. Fighters can find it very difficult to attack a person who is not directly in front of them.

Note: Learn only a few moves and blows but become good at them. You will notice that I haven't provided many examples of unarmed fighting techniques. The reason is that you shouldn't ever get into clashes where you don't have the edge ie., a weapon, and in the odd instance where you are unarmed, the above is all you'll need in most cases.

Fighting an Expert

What to do if confronted by a highly experienced martial arts expert or 250 pounder with fists flying. You find yourself under attack or under imminent attack by some fearsome opponent that you are no match for either in skill, size or the sheer ability to inspire terror. How do you cope?

Here are your chances using different fighting techniques if you are of average weight and average fighting skill..

1, Defensive slashes to your opponents wrists or arms with a razor sharp folding knife as earlier described. 80 %. (your opponent is likely to bleed to death before he reaches hospital.)

2. Low kick to the knee with your weight falling forward at the same time, if done by surprise at the beginning of the encounter. 60 %

3. Eye gouge 20 %

4. Punch to the testicles. 10 %

5. 25 baby Browning. 100 % (Use a spray of bullets.)

6. Palm under nose or chin if done by surprise at the bullying stage of encounter.20%

7. Broken bottle or glass punched into opponents face or throat. 60 % (known as the Glasgow kiss.)

8. Broken bottle or glass thrown at high velocity to you opponents head. 80 %

9. A knife used for stabbing to the body. 40 %

10. Censored for AU.

11. Oven cleaner pressure pack aimed at eyes. 10 %

12. Punch to the throat. 5 %

13. Edge of a fry pan to head. 70 %

14. Axe. 20 % Tomahawk 60 % Throw from just outside his reach towards the head.

15. Engineer's hammer targeting the head area. 40 % (known as the Hungarian kiss.)

16. Censored for AU.

17. Pepper or tobacco dust thrown at eyes. 70 %

18. Cane sword. 50 %

19. Knuckle dusters with sharp jagged edges. 30 %

20. Saucepan of boiling water thrown over attacker. 90 %

21. Punching and gouging to face with keys between fingers. 20 % (this is a police approved technique).

22. Nunchakus made from hardwood. 40 % Nunchakus made from stainless steel tube. 60 %

23. Spiked mace (ball attached to chain). 50 %

24. Samurai sword 97 %

25 Throwing a rock 40 %

26 Iron bar 30 %

27 Censored for AU.

28. Slashing throat with a razor blade or box cutter 40-80 %

29. Side-handled baton 50 %

30. Aluminium baton strike to kneecap 50 % (weight the tip with a few ounces of lead)

31. Threaten to attack with hypodermic needle - 95 %

32. Capsicum spray 30 %

33. Standard .22 zip gun made from a car aerial 70 %

34. Home made shotgun pistol 100 %

35. Edge of dinner plate 50%

Remember these figures are only if your assailant is unarmed.

* Note: Censored for AU.

** (All of these techniques rate at 100 % if your assailant is not a fighting expert.)

Part of the percentage figure is made up of the damage you can inflict and another part is made up of the fear factor, how likely is he to retreat and call off the attack. The edge of a fry pan to the head is 70 % and so is the likelihood of killing with a samurai sword but your attacker is more likely to retreat at the sight of a samurai sword and so it is rated at 97 %. On the other hand censored for AU ... has almost no scare factor yet it is still rated at 90 %, a formidable weapon indeed, while others like the baby Browning is 100 % effective whether the attacker retreats or not.

Putting it all together, for conceal ability, the fear factor, how much damage can actually be done the most effective weapons are the gun, the folding knife and ... Censored for AU. Others such as censored for AU ... takes up precious moments after an attack has commenced yet its fear and actual damage factors are near 100 %.

If your attacker is under the influence of drugs the effectiveness of many of these techniques is reduced and in some cases eliminated, due to fear and pain factors being absent. However the effectiveness of these techniques will be greatly enhanced if you attack your opponent by surprise.

You cannot use any of these weapons halfheartedly. They are not magic wands, they are only as good as your determination to use them. If not used as intended they can be taken away and used against you. It is better therefore to fight an opponent without a weapon than to use any of the above weapons indecisively.

Other weapons:

You might also get lucky with these weapons

1. Pen or pencil used to stab at face and eyes.

2. Heavy ashtray.

3. Heavy pay phone. This is smashed into your attackers head repeatedly and savagely.

4. A sock containing a weight such as a block of wood.

5. A large ring on a finger will greatly increase the effectiveness of a punch.

Note.

When watching martial arts movies it is easy to think of martial arts experts as philosophers and wise men. In the real world however a large proportion of them are vicious hoodlums who often subtly goad others into attacking them as an excuse for a vicious assault which sometimes results in the death of their victim. The rule is, be aware, never allow anyone to goad you into a fight, and always have the edge at all times.

Legal use of force.

The attitude of the law regarding violence and self defense is based on common sense. You may only use force to prevent an immediate attack from occurring. If you have already been attacked and the attacker is running away, you may not attack him. This is punishment, not self defense.

You may only use the minimum force required i.e., you can't elbow a drunken old man in the throat who is swinging punches at you but can't do you any harm; you may however put up your arms to block the punches. You can't shoot somebody who attacks you with a rolled up newspaper, especially where the attack isn't particularly skilled. If you do defend yourself and manage to knock your attacker over, you can't kick him in the head - this again, is punishment, not self defense.

You can't hit somebody who verbally abuses you, sticks his tongue out at you or even spits at you - all you can do it report the incident to the police, or at most make a citizen's arrest. Most criminals are experts at the law regarding assault and will often try to get you into trouble with the law. Be aware

The first rule is never get involved in a fight of any description. You will be in a much more complicated self defense and legal situation than you think. If you go to a dance hall and some skinny jerk offers to fight you outside to defend a lady's honor, run a mile.

Why not fight the skinny jerk?

1. You obviously can't break his legs and eye gauge him, but if you fight him in the old tried and true tradition, you might well find that he is a martial artist and the only reward you get for throwing a gentle right swing at him is a palm under the nose and a hammer blow to the throat.

2. Fighting is against the law and if caught, you will be charged.

3. If you win the fight, even though you have obeyed all the etiquette of dance hall fighting, and the police find out that you are a martial artist, it won't go well for you in court. The court may look on you as a thug.

If the jerk is swinging punches at you, and your arms are longer, put out an arm as you are walking away and your attacker won't connect. Keep walking until you are out of range and go home. Under no circumstances throw a punch or any other kind of blow at such an attacker, especially to the head area. Punches can kill. Kicks to the lower part of the body can cause a great deal of damage. Even if he connects with punches to your head he is unlikely to do you any damage.

If he is swinging punches from close range, or looks like he is about to, put your hands unobtrusively on his biceps as this will prevent him from suddenly punching you, and will make head butting harder. If you can feel a sudden weight shift, he may be about to kick you in the legs, so push him away quickly as this will break his balance.

5. Walking backwards is a good defense against punches. No untrained fighter will be able to connect.

Demeanor - This is an area that possibly more mistakes are made than in any other area of self defense. The mistake is that if a man doesn't look violent then he isn't. Violent men sometimes do look violent, but most often they look nothing like a violent person. We also think instinctively that there are certain classes of person that are not a threat eg., a 14 year old school girl. But can't a 14 year old school girl throw a broken beer glass just the same as anyone else? Even if you have a black belt and weigh 260 pounds won't you be seriously injured if hit by a broken beer glass thrown by a 14 year old school girl?

What it all comes back to is this: what a person looks like, what he talks like, whether he carries a Bible, or just simply because he doesn't have a hair style like Clint Eastwood, is absolutely no indicator of potential violence. Much more important is the history of that person going right back to the day they were born, and this is something we cannot see.

Remember - every hitch hiker ever murdered thought the car looked safe to get into, every housewife murdered by somebody she let past the front door thought that person looked safe, every policeman gunned down after pulling a car to the side of the road thought the occupants of the car were not violent. Appearance, demeanor, age, sex, speech, none of these are indicators of a potentially dangerous criminal.

Personnel history, criminal experience, emotional makeup, ideology, and whether they live by a moral code are what counts, not appearance or demeanor, and these are the things we cannot see. Criminals are not responsible for the shapes of their noses, their complexions, whether their hair blows out of shape in the wind. And believe it or not most policemen and others who should know better are fooled by these false indicators every day. These false indicators are very powerful psychological persuaders and it is almost impossible to see past them.

Consider the teenage girl who shot dead two Coffin Cheater motorcycle gang members in Melbourne in 1982. They didn't see that coming, and unless you take this warning seriously you won't see an attack coming either.

Common mistakes in judging demeanor.

1. That a person's eyes give a liar away. The eyes are only another organ of the body and truth and falsity can no more can be judged from them than from looking at his toe nails. And as for being able to look someone straight in the eye, any actor will tell you that this is a skill that can be learnt in two minutes in front of a mirror.

2. A person who is talking calmly doesn't have violence on his mind. The demeanor of a person is irrelevant and this includes the way he talks or whether he appears calm or not.

3. A person with a sense of humour can't have evil intent. This is all pretty subjective but it is quite likely that it is not an indicator. It is also likely that many victims of violence are the butt of a criminal's joke.

4. That because a person does very human things that we all do he must be the same as us. Because he eats peas with his knife, likes The Simpsons and makes jokes about feminists and Sumo wrestlers does not mean that person isn't dangerous.

Self defense and reality.

All of us have watched action movies and we think that there is a certain class of persons who are tough guys or heavies. In reality there is no such thing as a tough guy.

In reality the skinniest, weakest, most pathetic weed can, and often does, win the confrontation because he is prepared to step outside the cultural assumptions we have about violence. Indeed it is essential that such people do step outside cultural assumptions as they couldn't hope to win a confrontation otherwise.

How much of a tough guy does it take to walk up to a car in traffic, ... censored.? It is easy to do, the one doing it needs only motivation and the victim is history.

There are indeed thousands of scenarios that could happen and that have happened. You can walk into a room and be hit in the head with a fry pan by an irate teenager - you might well be history; you can be stabbed or shot in the back while waiting in line at McDonalds, you can be run down while walking along the pavement. The general rule is that if anybody wants to get you enough they will get you - it doesn't matter who you are and who they are.

The only defense against this is to never rub anyone the wrong way. Never treat anybody with contempt, especially the powerless. Don't instigate negative emotion in anybody, even if you have to defend yourself against them. Don't engage in any kind of violence if you don't absolutely have to. There is nothing like violence to instigate hatred. You cannot win with such emotions against you.

To listen to some martial artists you would think that they can kick, punch, maim and kill on the flimsiest of pretexts and somehow their victims will never come back to haunt them. In reality such killers wouldn't last long - their life spans would be very short indeed. The power of emotion is astonishing and very long lasting.

Do some general reading to see how many policemen have been murdered by small, seemingly insignificant people, then think how easy it would be for anyone to kill or maim you by doing something they are not supposed to do. Self defense experts teach only about a very narrow band of possibilities, it is up to you to avoid confrontation in the real world by keeping hatred and other negative emotions as far away from you as possible.

City Survival

Holding up in your apartment

The type of equipment and supplies you'll need depends on the type of emergency. An emergency could be a plague, war, riots, etc. Surviving in an apartment has its advantages in that you can stock it up, you can make it secure and you already have some conveniences. Apart from the things you already have in your apartment here are extra things you will need.

1. Several boxes of candles.

2. A fuel stove and 5 gallons of fuel.

3. A battery radio, preferably capable of receiving local stations and short wave signals.

4. 300 gallons of water. This can be stored in garbage bags tied in knots and placed under beds or wherever space is available. You must also fill your bathtub and lots of plastic containers.

5. A flashlight and several changes of batteries.

6. A pistol of heavier caliber such as a .45 and at least 400 rounds of ammunition

7. A ladder. This will come in handy in a variety of ways,

8. A basic tool kit.

9. A comprehensive first aid kit.

10. Extra blankets.

11. Several rolls of duct tape for sealing windows etc. Duct tape is also good for stopping bleeding by using as a pressure bandage..

12. A supply of food for six months.

13. A length of rope about 10 mm and 100 metres long.

14. A bullet proof security door made from clear bullet proof plastic which goes in place of your screen door.

15. Several dozen garbage bags for storing body wastes.

16. You must have maps of your city such as a street directory and maps of the surrounding countryside as well as a nation wide touring map or directory. If escape becomes possible you must know where to go and how to get there.

17. If you have a car you must store gasoline for it in case escape becomes possible

18. If you have a telephone that must be plugged into an electrical outlet, you must buy a cheap handset that doesn't require a power source to operate.

19. In a civil disturbance there are likely to be snipers scattered throughout the city. In such a case you must avoid leaving your apartment for anything and windows must be covered with curtains, but not with paint or newspaper, as this will advertise the fact that your apartment is occupied. It is strongly advisable to cover the windows of at least the most populated room with bullet proof metal sheet.

20. A pair of earmuffs or earplugs will also come in handy if you have to use your weapon inside your apartment, otherwise you will, in all likelihood, do permanent damage to your hearing.

21.The type of food that you choose to store is important. Don't store frozen food as this will go bad when the power goes off and if you cannot step outside to get rid of it the food will cause such a terrible odor that you might have to evacuate the building anyway. Store only canned food, packet food, and grains, and anything that needs the shortest cooking time, also store enough prescription drugs to last for several months and have a stock of books - you will need them.

22. If venturing onto the street your main worries in a civil disturbance will be snipers and bombs, especially snipers and machine gun fire where there has been a curfew put in place. Remember to always play by the rules whatever they are and whoever has put them in place. If there is a curfew, stay inside, if you will be arrested or shot for carrying a gun, don't carry it, or think about it twice. Your chances of survival are always greater if you obey the rules.

Try never to go into no-man's land or stray across sectors, sniping activity and machine guns are always busiest in these areas. If there is a sniper present, try to work out his position and direction of fire and always try to move at ninety degrees to the line of fire as you will be a much harder target to hit. Run in short hops from cover to cover and try if at all possible to move behind anything that gives cover or concealment.

23. In an area of civil unrest there will likely be house to house searches by troops or paramilitary organisations looking for illegal weapons or terrorists or any evidence to link you in any way with their enemies.

Don't have any subversive literature, no matter how mild, or anything that could seem like subversive literature to troops who may lack general knowledge, even a camping manual could seem like a military manual to such people.

24. A good place to hide your pistol, or indeed anything else, is to cut as hole in an interior wall, place the article into the cavity, reinsert the cutout, replaster and repaint it and do it near the bathroom as the bathroom will have lots of pipes that will confuse a metal detector. A good deal of food can also be stored in wall cavities near the beginning of the civil disturbance as troops may come looking for food.

Always keep some food in your cupboards so they will know what you've been living on and may look no further. In times of food shortage, even if you have a lot of food, lose weight. If everyone else in your city has lost fifty pounds, you'd better lose at least forty or there'll be plenty of people wanting to know where your food stash is..

25. In any dealing with troops always think about impressions. These impressions may be based on something shallow indeed but it is impressions that will pacify the enemy and allow you to survive. Walk right through your apartment often as if you were a soldier who has just entered and is searching from room to room, and adjust anything that will give you away or create even a question in the soldier's mind. And remember, familiarity breeds contempt. Because you have been looking at your apartment for years might make you unconscious of the impressions somebody looking at it for the first time might have.

The questions that goes through a soldiers mind might be, "He said his daughter sleeps here, why then is there only a bed cover but no sheets? Why can I smell tobacco when it hasn't been available for three months? How is it that this apartment always looks the same whenever I inspect it, even that cardboard box is in the same position on the floor?"

In times of great stress and fear these instincts will be further heightened, allowing them to think three or four steps ahead instead of one or two, and deception will be much harder. Always assume that such people follow no social conventions, and therefore are unpredictable. Also beware of women and children as they often have less social inhibitions than men and are more prepared to ask awkward questions that don't readily have convenient answers.

Also think constantly of worse case scenarios and ask yourself what would happen if such and such an article was found or if such and such a suspicion was aroused. How would you answer? what facial expressions would you use? e.g.., a soldier searching your apartment looks up at the ceiling and asks suddenly, "What is that ventilation shaft for, none of the other apartments have one?"

And just because you have gotten away with some deception a hundred times before doesn't mean that you can do it again. If anything, try even harder, never get lazy, as laziness or overconfidence will get you arrested or killed.

26. Don't appear to have any areas where something could be hidden, or if you do, make access easy for casual searchers. Always constantly think six steps ahead, i.e. if this happens it would cause this, then that would make a possibility of this happening, and if that happens it could lead to this or that, so I better do this as insurance against that happening etc.

27. Be careful of positive image makers such as an open government newspaper on your coffee table, or a picture of the dictator on your wall, as there is a high chance that whoever sees it will dislike your pretended politics, or hate the dictator, or if you scatter around beer cans in your apartment hoping to pass yourself off as a boozer, that person who is also a boozer knows that beer cans never scatter randomly.

Remember, deception is a twenty four hour a day game and is hard work.

Never make assumptions about people. E.g.., you put an empty bottle of nitric acid into your trash can which is also used by an old lady, but you don't worry about her, because you ask, how could that old lady know what this stuff can be used for?

But that old lady might have worked for counter terrorist intelligence for the last forty years for all you know, or her son in law might work for the pigs and she casually mentions to him what she saw in the trash can. Treat everybody as if they were the worst possible person to be present in any given circumstance. Assume that the old lady is the chief investigator in guerilla munitions manufacture, as indeed she might be.

Remember - you only get one chance but there are thousands of ways you can be captured or killed. Be paranoid!

Maps - a map is a classified document whether it's a street directory from K-mart, a contour map from the surplus store, a handwritten map, or an aerial photograph or any other kind of map. To unfriendly eyes any map in your possession will tell them the area you intend to travel to and perhaps how you intend to get there. Never draw on a map, or mark it in any way as this will tell the enemy your destination, you rendezvous and a lot more possible information. Maps are for your eyes only and whomever else you choose to authorize.

Here are some things you can do that will greatly increase your efficiency and therefore your survival. The police can do them which is why it only takes one pig to keep 1000 civilians in line.

1. Turn up on time. If you are to meet somebody don't even be a minute late. Arrive half an hour early if possible so that you won't be even a minute late

2. Be reliable. If you promise something, deliver.

3. Be knowledgeable. Have a wide knowledge base. Read magazines, books on unusual subjects and talk to interesting people whenever you get the chance.

4. Always have your kit with you.

5. Always have the latest communications devices - a cell phone, a home phone, Internet access, and understand call diversions, answering systems etc. Make sure any friend can contact you at any hour of the day or night.

6. Your car must be in good shape.

7. Make a habit of knowing your way around. Study the street directory and explore the routes in your car.

We come to an area now that may not only save your life but in most cases will prevent it from being in peril in the first place. That is being competent at small things. What this means is that you mustn't overlook seemingly insignificant detail. This often happens with tragic results. What happens for example if a friend who lives two miles away calls you because he is under attack by a gang. So far so good, except for the fact that you can't remember where you left your car keys; was it on the sofa or on top of the refrigerator? or are they in the pocket of a pair of jeans in the washing machine?

Many have died in house blazes because the key to the deadlock couldn't be found, others have found themselves in life or death situations because they left their cell phone at home and didn't have a coin for the pay phone.

Others have left home to drive long distances to find when they came to fill up that they had left their wallet at home. Countless numbers of soldiers have died because somebody scribbled a note and the recipient couldn't tell a 6 from a 0 or a 1 from a 7 and artillery was aimed at the wrong area.

All of this is bad enough, but when people are under great stress incidents of these kinds multiply. It is much better to become proficient in small things than have a black belt and an M16; such competence will save your life and of those you care about far more often.

Murders and assaults rarely happen out of thin air . There is usually a string of events that lead up to an assault or murder beginning with some minor oversight. This can be losing your house keys, being given the wrong location to meet your spouse, your car breaking down and having no means to get assistance, losing your bus fare and having to walk home through unfamiliar streets.

After losing countless lives to these type of blunders the military have developed systems to try to overcome them. These systems must also take into account the biggest contributor to these oversights and blunders which is stress.

1. Always write things down and never rely on memory if you can possibly avoid it.

2. Carry a small calendar. If Monday is a public holiday it is easy to think that Tuesday is a Monday when it is the first day of work week. You go to meet someone you always meet on Monday to find out that they are not there and neglect to pick up your kids from school. Your kids are waiting outside the school gates until 6 PM. Sound dangerous? The same mistakes can be made on a changeover to or from daylight saving time.

3. Don't walk around in a dream. If you lose only money and time you'll get off lightly. If you don't it could easily finish up in murder, rape, serious assault, robbery or many other unpleasant and unnecessary experiences.

SPECIAL END NOTES

A notice to survivalist mockers.

To survive and operate in the real world you have to be tough. Toughness means being physically, mentally and emotionally able to operate in a huge range of circumstances without falling to pieces. When you come up against the real stuff middle class trickery won't work, finding a civilized human being to leech off won't work, last minute push ups won't work and stealing might get you killed.

Realistically assess yourself. Can you fight? Can you use tools? fire a gun? reload magazines with cold fingers? find your way out of a jungle without a compass? start a fire? Do you have the guts and the skill to break both legs of an attacker before he even lands a punch, or to survive an interrogation, escape in an urban or wilderness environment, face a savage dog - and all done under a lot of pressure?

Basically, do you have any brains? If you've never read a book, don't know how to change a tire, don't know which is the safe end on a firearm and don't know where China is on the map, don't get involved with tough men, they will eat you. You stand no chance of survival. There are many situations where even most of the tough men won't survive and there are many, many types of individuals out there who will beat you, rob you, pour gasoline all over you and light you, kick your teeth out, or beat you to death with a baseball bat just because they don't like you.

If you are one of those who won't venture out if it is raining, will fall to pieces when a workplace bully pokes his tongue out at you, will not own a gun, the only tool you own is a screwdriver in the kitchen drawer, and your first reaction in any stressful situation is to call the police, then it is all over for you. All I can suggest is to elbow women and children out of the way at a food queue, or contact some Christian organization who may be able to feed you.

The nitwit will not survive and shouldn't survive.

Rules. .

It is a mistake to assume that big drug cartels operate on completely different planes of morality than other people. They look on the murder of the innocent just as you or I would and kill only when others have broken the rules. No organization can operate without rules and those who break them know what the consequences will be.

You will have to look pretty hard to find any person who has been murdered by a drug cartel where they obeyed the rules. They will even tolerate a certain amount of theft, and even give repeat warnings to Mr. Average types who have been turned into monsters through greed, but in the end, drug lords will kill without conscience those who have broken serious rules.

This isn't an apology for drug cartels, but rather an illustration that in any situation rules govern interaction with others. Every group has rules, from drug cartels and prison populations to police departments and citizens groups, and even hobos living under bridges have rules. Understanding and keeping rules is freedom, ignoring them, at the very least, will mean finishing up on skid row.

Some life long principles of survivalists are:

1. Always arm up, never arm down. Never think you don't have to be as formidable as you are. Always increase training, increase overall resources and increase preparedness, not the opposite.

2. Never let others know how formidable you are, whether it be how well armed you are, or how much training you have. Pretend to be just another guy in the street. The less formidable people think that you are the less caution they will have in attacking you which will give you a big advantage.

3. Obey the law . Nothing can help a habitual law breaker or nuisance. Mostly you won't be persecuted by the system if you obey the law.

4. Don't make enemies needlessly. E.g.., why make an enemy of a prison heavy when his strong arms can be better employed digging an escape tunnel? Why make an enemy of a street gang when they might just as well be used as a source of weapons or information?

5. Don't take revenge just for the sake of it. Always run at a profit. Why throw a brick through a window to get even if you can steal fifty gallons of gasoline from the same premises?

Stress.

If placed under even moderate stress it is impossible to do many things that you take for granted. You may not be able to add up a single column of figures, you won't remember how, you can lose your voice and be unable to communicate.

The ways to overcome the problem of stress are these:

1. Train, train and train some more. Training involves discipline - laziness is the enemy of discipline. Be relaxed, be cool, but disciplined, not lazy.

2.Keep everything ridiculously simple

Never rely on complicated procedures to get you out of trouble. Don't even rely on your ability to read simple instructions or carry out a sequence of actions that require any thought at all.

3. Always have the equipment you need which must be of the highest quality consistent with simplicity of use. Do not put any new item into commission until it is fully tested and you are sure it works and you can operate it.

4. Train for every possibility. Can you load a magazine quickly with cold fingers? Can you pull a hammer back with a wet thumb? Can you operate a radio amid the panic and screaming of a hundred people as an airplane is sinking in a lake

Amen to that, brother!

A lot of good information...however your chances of growing enough food inside the house to stay alive is bordering on ridiculous.

Just to assume you are going to have electricity WTSHTF is a bit of a stretch, better to invest the money in a food cache.

On the slim chance that you still have power, you would be better off growing marijuana with your investment of lights and indoor gardening and trading it for food...a lot more bang for your growing dollar.

lol

Further sources of food.

In western countries we rely on about ten plant species for most of our energy needs. And nearly all of our diet relies on about thirty plants. We are so conditioned culturally that we generally ignore the many thousands of other plants that haven’t come into our culture. The general attitude is that these other plants are not ‘real food.’

Even today many regard such foods as tofu, one of the major foods of the world, not ‘real’ food. A hundred years ago Australians regarded pasta and sour kraut, not to be real food. A hundred years before this many of Australia’s first settlers didn’t regard the fish caught in Sydney Harbour to be real food, and many regarded starvation as preferable. There are also stories from Ireland that during the potato famine a lot of people refused to eat cattle feed. The situation was the same in some parts of the Soviet Union during the famines of the 30’s.

Ask anyone nowadays how much edible food grows in the Australian wilderness and most would answer that the amount is negligible. They answer this way because of the way they have been conditioned. While they enjoy such things as prawns they will turn their noses up at witchetty grubs - what makes one delicious and the other repugnant is just culture and habit.

The amount of food growing wild in Australia is in fact much greater than many suppose, and in many areas it would be difficult to starve if one has the knowledge of what plants are food. There is sufficient species of plants in fact, growing along Sydney’s drainage canals, to support life, quite easily. Some of these plants are native and many are exotic. Eg., Bullrush is prolific along and in drainage canals and the roots can eaten. This plant made up part of the Aboriginal diet. And though not very tasty it will certainly supply a lot of carbohydrates. Some of the exotic plants include common weeds such as dandelion and blackberries.

Other good sources of food can be sand dunes, swamps, bush and suburban gardens. Many food plants also grow beside roads, especially highways that aren’t sprayed for weeds by council workers. There is an abundance of plants here because seeds have been spread by truck tyres and dust blowing from loads, and car travellers spreading all types of discarded food, mud and dirt.

You must be able to identify food plants, and the only way of doing this without direct instruction is to collect a small library of books that describe and provide pictures. Some books will even provide cooking instructions.

It is interesting to note that in the days of Captain Cook many wild plants provided food for sailors in Australia, all of which still are to be found growing along our shores - some of which even the Aboriginals didn’t know about.

However, I’m not going to make all of this too easy by providing locations and names of plants. The reason is that there will simply be not enough to go around ATSHTF. There are about six good books on this subject published in Australia that have most of the food species of native plants - but not all. This subject is worthy of a major study. That’s all I have to say!!

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Straightening rifle barrels.

Occasionally through some misfortune a rifle barrel will get accidentally bent. You can re straighten it, though this is not something that should be done routinely, eg., to get better accuracy or something. Removing a barrel from a rifle should be considered a major job.

Step one is to remove the barrel. To do this put the barrel in a leather padded vice and turn the receiver with any means of mechanical advantage you can find. To get the barrel screwed in later to where it was, a small alignment mark should be made.

After the barrel is unscrewed place it in a pair of V blocks. Get a magnetic dial indicator and measure how far out of alignment it is. Once you have measured how much it is out and the direction of the bend you hit it with a brass hammer to straighten it. You won’t be able to get it 100%. You won’t have to. Barrels from the factory are not perfectly straight - accuracy comes from consistency, not perfect alignment. Once this is accomplished, screw the barrel back in the receiver and check for head space.

This isn’t a quick operation. It can take two days or more to get a barrel straight. The more time you spend, the straighter it will get.

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Dented magazines.

Drill a hole in the magazine on the opposite side of the dent. Put a pin through it and hammer the dent out. You can leave the hole where it is as it won’t do any harm to leave it there.

Bullets

High powered rifle bullets are hard to make. It can be done but a lot of equipment is needed. Lead casting won’t do the job as lead is not strong enough to withstand the shock and temperature involved in being forced down the barrel at high speed. You should stock up on bullets. Ex military bullets are pretty cheap, and certainly accurate enough for most shooting you’ll ever do.

Reloading manuals.

You should collect these. Have about 10 or 12 of them in your library, old ones as well as new ones. ATSHTF you might finish up with many odd powder/ bullet combinations and it is handy to have data for them.

Gunsmithing items worth purchasing.

For improvised manufacture:

9mm chambering reamer.

A set of go/no go head space gauges for 9mm.

Adjustable reamer for barrel manufacture.

Length of barrel in any caliber that has the twist rate you require. A lead slug can be inserted in this as a guide to rifling other barrels.

Spring wire in different gauges for magazine springs.

Inert 9mm rounds for checking action..

Set of fractional drills.

Dremel tool, and start collecting different bits for it. Don’t buy them, just collect them, eg., at garage sales, because these bits are very expensive.

Silver solder.


General supplies

Set of reloading dies for each calibre you have.

Start collecting taps from different gun makers.

And nobody borrows this stuff. NOBODY!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Cures for common ailments.

Listed below are cures for a few ailments that doctors don’t usually get to the bottom of.

Mysterious pains in the stomach and abdomen, often agonising, and you always tend to get them in summer. ---- You are probably sleeping with the air conditioner or fan blowing on your bare skin, and this causes muscle spasm. Don’t have air blowing directly in you, and take Buscopan tablets to undo the damage already done.

Pains up the legs reaching into your back and even your neck. ---- You are walking on rounded heels. Buy a new pair of shoes.

Pains in knees and elbows. ---- You are buying food products that use cheap food colourings eg., jelly beans, soft drinks etc.

You have piles. --- You are eating too much fat.

You are getting too fat. ---- You are a guts and you don’t get enough exercise

Top thread!

Lol. Can guess where you hail from. And pretty soon you'll be wishing you lived here. Retard.

Haha, not as much of an oxymoron as brain and American in the same sentence.

Obviously you've never seen The Chaser's Charles Firth asking Americans questions.

This is a good thread. Thanks OP, I've been looking for information on what you can eat to survive in Aust.

One tip: If you use a baseball bat, cricket bat, or bit of poly-pipe as a weapon, drill a hole through one end, tie a bit of rawhide thong through it and wrap it tightly around your wrist. That way your opponent cannot rip it out of your hand.

Unfortunately I failed and quoted the wrong person. I meant to quote the original yank idiot. Yeah Firth asking people where North Korea was is golden.




That will learn ya's

Interesting he talks about firearms and not allowed to own one. Much of his advice about firearms is ... of limited value. It is of value to those prohibited from ownership. That is something they are attempting to pass here and MUST be carefully watched to be prevented.

It is possible to go most anywhere here and find those ignorant, regardless how much is spent on education. One can lead a horse to water and can not maker it drink unless, .... you are willing to suck its ass.

oxymoran. lol

Thanks for an excellent thread, OP. This is the best posting I've read in many weeks here at GLP.

Dedicated to the Sheeple:

so...



- Project for our Spanish 4 class. -

You are missinformed.
We are allowed to own firearms.
Just not semi auto rifles or pump action shotguns without a good reason (Primary producer.)

How far can an average person comfortably walk in a day with a minimal load? The traditional answer to this, taken from history, is 20 kilometres. On a flat hard surface the answer is probably closer to 30 kilometres. Pushed almost to the limit an average person (whatever that is) can walk 60 kilometres in 12 hours, but would need several hours rest before being willing to continue.

Where surfaces are not flat, hard and even, such as a bush track the above figures can be halved.

The above figures also don’t sound much until the distances are comprehended. They mean that an average person could walk from Sydney to Newcastle in 48 hours, from Sydney to Gosford in a day etc.

For long distance walking a two-wheeled push cart can be used to carry supplies and would give a person a very good range eg., a person could cover over 200 kilometres in a week without trying very hard. Very long distances however cannot be practically covered by walking. Eg., it would take even a very fit person about 3 months to walk from Perth to Sydney.

5 kilometers per hour is a good average walking speed. In hilly terrain this can be lowered by ½ kph. On hot summer days this can be lowered by another ½ kph. If carrying a heavy pack this can be lowered by another ½ kph.

Don’t overestimate how many kilometres can be walked in a day, but don’t underestimate how far those kilometres can take you. In the real world distances between places are shorter than imagined.

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I have now been living for a month by spending only $14 per week on food. To do this I have shopped only at the local reject shop and do not spend more than 50 cents on any food item. Packets of cream biscuits, packets of spaghetti, tins of soup etc. Would I like a Big Mac meal? Yes I would. Have I lost any weight? - from 110 kilos down to 109 kilos. Am I hungry, yes, a little bit all the time.

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If anyone would like me to write a six part series on navigation, let me know. If there is little interest I won’t bother because there’s lots of work in it. But I can give a complete course in celestial navigation with or without instruments which will enable you to navigate a boat anywhere in the world, and I’ll do at least one section on land navigation. I will make it easy to read and easy to follow with all the b/s removed. So let me know guys.

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The best GPS to get is a cheap Garmin. They are the only ones (that I know of) that don’t have internal back-up batteries. These only last ten years or so before you have to throw your GPS away, but the cheap little Garmin just goes on forever.

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What do you do if you run out of petrol 300 kilometres from home but have no money. You don’t go up and ask a service station operator if he will let you fill up on the security of your mobile phone, because he will say no. You fill up first and then offer your mobile phone as security, with the old ‘lost wallet’ story. If he still says no, then at least you have found secure parking for your car until you get back with the money.

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How do you overcome fatigue? Up to about 60 hours you don’t need sleep, though your judgement will be badly affected and you will hallucinate. Don’t eat any meals. Drink coffee, take No Doze tablets (these aren’t very good), talk to somebody if possible. Fatigue will come in waves, if you can get over these waves you can go for hours more before the next wave. After about 24 hours without sleep don’t try to do anything important, like fight a battle.

Overcoming fatigue is one of the key skill areas in survival.

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What is the silent equivalent of a slide hammer? It is a piece of threaded bar, about 6 inches long. On one end of this are two nuts. One nut is welded on, the other is just screwed on. On the other end a self tapping screw is welded on to the threaded bar. You insert the threaded bar through a piece of tube. You insert the self tapper into a lock and turn the welded nut with a shifter, making sure the self tapper goes right into the lock, then you turn the other nut, extracting the tumbler of the lock. I tried it out this afternoon on a few old locks and was horrified at how easy it is to use. My invention as far as I know!

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G. Was telling me tonight that he knows of a criminal who has a new racket. He goes around and offers to mow old people’s lawns and clear their gardens etc. The old people usually invite him indoors at some time or other. When he goes inside he casts his eyes around for anything that’s valuable eg., an old grandfather clock, and he turns around to the old people with a complete mood change and says, "What the f*ck is that! You don’t need that! What the f*ck do you need that for?" The old people become so frightened that they usually tell him that he can have it. And the criminal hasn’t really broken any law.

We both agreed that such a person as this criminal should be taken out and shot. Beware of the tricks these criminals use!

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G. Was telling me about another trick this criminal used once. He befriended a couple of back packers in a hotel and invited them back to his home where they watched videos etc. It was getting late so he invited them to spend the night. In the morning, they had a cup of coffee and the back packers said they were going to Darling Harbour to see a show. The criminal said, go on, go ahead, see the show. Leave your back packs here, and you can pick them up this afternoon. When the back packers returned (they were driven back there by a friend) they pulled up out front of the house. The criminal opened the door and started throwing screw drivers at them. He apparently kept them in a bucket behind the front door for this purpose. One screw driver hit the car, another hit one of the back packers in the leg. The back packers retreated, leaving their property at the house.

This criminal uses very crude methods, but they are very effective.

G. was telling me also that this criminal is used by other criminals to collect debts. He is a very violent individual. Survivalists should be aware of these types - if not they are sheep to the slaughter.


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Aussies are the kings of practicality

Water.

The most reliable way of obtaining pure water is with a still. Water is boiled in a container and driven through a tube - as the steam condenses it runs down the tube and into a container. Provided you have a still, water and fuel you will have a water supply. You will have to add some salts as distilled water is too pure to drink.. If you distilled sea water for example you’ll have to tip a little sea water into the final product to make it drinkable. If you don’t have sea water add any type of salts or salt that you have. Half and half sodium and potassium chloride will usually do the trick. You can buy this in the supermarket.

The other problem with distilling water is that it takes a lot of energy. Only a few litres of water will take a large pile of wood to boil off. You can only do it where a large amount of fuel is available. In a ruined city or the wilderness this might not be a problem, but in most other situations a still is not viable for this reason. My own still took about 5 kilos of wood to make one litre of water. It is not as efficient as it could be but about as efficient as a survivor could make under primitive conditions.

The tube must be metal, preferably stainless steel. You won’t be able to drink the water if it has been distilled in a rubber hose, as it will taste awful. Without a condenser the tube will also need to be about forty feet long and even then you will need to pour cold water on it to help the steam condense. The steam going through the tube is surprisingly hot; even a two litre kettle on a small fire will put off so much steam as to make 20 feet of hose too hot to touch all along its length..

I recommend using a condenser if you can make one. This simply involves running the tube through a water jacket.

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A trip to a scrap metal yard.

Find a scrap metal yard that specialises in stainless steel. These yards often get scrap from breweries and milk processing plants. Tube and fittings that would cost a lot of money to buy new can often be picked up for $4 a kilo or less. Very often they sell new sheets of stainless steel for scrap prices and you can make water tanks from this complete with all the fittings. You’ll also find many other useful metal items in these yards, including beer kegs, coiled tube, stainless mesh, taps etc etc.

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What to do in a tornado.

First you must look at the things that might occur. Winds will be very strong. I was sitting in a car at one time during a cyclone and the car was blown down the street. It was in gear and the hand brake was on. There might also be a tidal surge if you live near the sea. This often happens when the tornado strikes during an already high tide period.

So what do you do? And what are the dangers?

The big danger if you are out of doors is being hit by flying debris eg., sheets of roofing iron fence palings etc. The danger indoors is that your house can be destroyed with you in it. Even if you take refuge in your basement it could be flooded if there is a tidal surge. This is a big danger, especially if your house is only a metre or two above sea level. These storm surges can be pretty scary. They will be worse in some sort of enclosure like a bay.

Other dangers are electrocution from downed power lines or damaged domestic lines, fires and drowning.

So, what are the options. Have a look around for a place of refuge. It should be at least five metres above sea level and something strong like a concrete enclosure often found in places like freeway overpasses, or under concrete bridges etc. Failing this dig a hole and put something over it to stop flying debris.

Cyclones and tornados don’t last for very long, often only a hour or less, and your real problems may occur after it is over through shortages of essentials, especially water where infrastructure has been damaged.

During cyclone Tracy there was widespread looting and people were killed by vigilantes, including innocent people. One man who was fixing wiring on the roof of his house was even shot by a vigilante and killed. So it’s a good idea to stay off the streets!! And if you are lucky enough to get 24 hours warning, you should take it. You can travel a great distance in this time.

Remember also, that it’s extraordinary the things that will blow over in such strong winds. I saw heavy steel objects such as crane gantries, steel poles etc blown over and in some instances become missiles at wind strengths below a cyclone level, so be careful what you hide behind!!

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Earthquakes

You will only have to worry about these in Australia where your house is built on mud. However this involves large areas of the coast. Very often a whole peninsula will be made of mud and the rock will be a 100 metres or so below the mud. This mud will act like jelly in a bowl - shake the bowl only a little and the jelly shakes a lot, far out of proportion to the movements of the bowl.

Old timber houses will often wave a couple of metres each way like a fruit box with the top and bottom cut off and may escape relatively unscathed, but houses made of stronger materials may collapse.

If you have time get outdoors, well away from objects that could fall.

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In any disaster your main enemy will be other people. Natural disasters are manageable, but the reactions of other people will make the disaster ten times worse. This is usually caused by ‘scapegoating.’ The origin of this word is found in the Old Testament where the ancients Jews, in order to free themselves from sin, would place all their sins on a goat and release it into the wild. It means that people have to have people to blame, even if it was a natural disaster. Even if the aftermath of an event is completely orderly, looters will be invented and shot, murderers will be found and executed, even if there were no murders. It always happens and you must be prepared for it.

The rumors of looting and murder will lead to more murder and those murders will lead to more.

It is more than likely that the authorities such as the police and emergency workers will be at the forefront of finding scapegoats. The trick is to beware and avoid everyone if you can, and for god’s sake, never hang around anywhere, get from A to B as quickly as you can, and above all, don’t irritate anyone.

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Most of us who live in cities and towns have never seen real darkness because there is always light coming from somewhere - street lights, neon signs, shop windows etc. But after a major catastrophe at night time, your city and town is likely to be plunged into complete darkness. If you’ve never seen this, it is when you can hold your hand in front of your face and see absolutely nothing. There is no light at all, not even from motor vehicles ie., during a flood or after a nuclear explosion nearby.

This means that you have to have light, and as much of it as you can, or you can do nothing or go nowhere. Imagine if you were in a city when such a disaster happened - how would you get home? How would you get out of an underground railway during a blackout?

You need lamps, candles, flash lights etc, but it is also good to acquire things that can put out a great deal of light such as search lights, power beams, and even generators if you can. Rechargeable batteries are no good without a mains power outlet, so you must find substitutes such as solar panels etc. For personal emergencies you must also have a key ring diode torch.

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As survivalists we often think that we are God’s chosen ones and that certain problems could never happen to us. Unfortunately, a great many people lose their lives by seemingly minor oversights or a refusal to look at detail. Women have lost their lives in burning buildings because they have refused to jump - the reason? they weren’t wearing panties and were too embarrassed! People have drowned in water only a few feet deep because they thought the water was too deep to stand upright.

There are many ways one can meet ones end, and just because thinking about such possibilities does not flatter us is no reason to ignore them.

1. You live on the third floor of a block of flats. One night you go to the bathroom. When you attempt to exit however you find that the door handle doesn’t work. You can’t kick it open because the door opens inwards. You go over to the window - it is 18 x 18 inches, and stick your head out, it is 60 feet to the concrete below. You try and kick a hole through the door but find that the door is very strong and well made. You could stick your head out the window and call for someone walking past, but you just remembered that you left your handgun on the coffee table. Any rescuer will see it upon entering the flat. What do you do?

2. You go to a shopping complex. You can’t be bothered waiting for the lift and decide to use the fire stairs. However, when you get to the level you want by way of the stairs you find that the door is locked. You go back up to the door where you entered and find that that won’t open from the inside. You try every door with the same result. You decide to wait by the door until somebody opens it. You are waiting for 14 days.

3. You live in a city. After dinner you decide to take the kids for a drive up in the mountains. You’ll be back in a couple of hours. Your car breaks down on a mountain road, the kids are scantily dressed. By midnight it will be below freezing with a 30 knot wind. By morning you will probably all be dead unless you take immediate action.

4. ATSHTF you join the traffic queue of refugees leaving the city. The traffic has come to a standstill so you decide to do a U turn over a median strip. You become bogged in a flower bed. There are plenty of people around but none are willing to help.

These types of incident can take you out just as surely as those things traditionally regarded as dangerous. There are thousands of such possibilities and the chances are that you will meet at least one of them. Always look at detail, detail ... detail!!!

You can prepare for years and spend thousands on very well thought out survival gear, but none of it will be of use when the time comes to evacuate if your car won’t start due to a wet distributor, or won’t go due to a flat tyre caused by a faulty valve.

Always prepare for the most common types of emergencies first and the types of plain incident that can happen to us all.

Quoted:

If anyone would like me to write a six part series on navigation, let me know. If there is little interest I won’t bother because there’s lots of work in it. But I can give a complete course in celestial navigation with or without instruments which will enable you to navigate a boat anywhere in the world, and I’ll do at least one section on land navigation. I will make it easy to read and easy to follow with all the b/s removed. So let me know guys.


I like to read about this one too!!!

I saw an aborigine squeeze a toad for water once on the telly.

I'm thinking that maybe I won't go all the way to Austrailia, instead, I will go to Bamfield, where you can live well off the fat of the land.
I could eat smoke salmon as a staple food every day. I love the stuff. Shrimp, crab, clams, easily grow stuff there, or eat right out of the bush.
Fiddle heads, mushrooms, berries, the native Indians are still there doing that.
Halibut, cod, deer.
Even rock bass and cod.
You can catch a rock bass as easy as pie they are so plentiful.
But of course ling cod or salmon are a better choice.

Give us the navigation if you get a chance.
Always anxious to learn about this stuff.
I have a Masters in Armageddon by I am working on my PhD.

I''l begin work on it then.