Looking around.

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I found a vid.  Commando Survival Skills, is how it was billed.  I... didn't have to look.  But... I... had to look.  I always have doubts.  Though, after viewing it, I suspect it was legit.  The thing is, it was based on being in the military, in the main, and having gear and components that civvies really don't carry as a general rule.  Oh, there are tradeoffs.  If you don't have facepaint, perhaps you have lip balm (I usually don't carry either).  Actually, I don't carry anything which could fit that bill.  For use as a firestarter.  If traveling a bit, I generally like to have several means of igniting a fire.  But, usually, not including chemicals or fats.  Not sure I trust those for cooking, or believe they would do better than just standard dry kindling and starter.  Mostly.

I won't say it is completely obsolete, to my life.  But, pretty much, and in the main, both the methods and equipment are no longer in my lexicon.  I might end up doing similar things, but I wouldn't do them in the same way, save as an absolute last resort.  Still, it was interesting to watch.  I am sure, if from a Navy standpoint, I was taught many, most, perhaps all those things at some point.  But never used... well, perhaps used a few.  But... more for shiggles and gits, or in some class or exercise or group review of these things.  

I think we had to take off our dungarees, tie them off while in the pool, blow air into them, and use them as flotation devices, while in bootcamp.  But, I'm telling you, that... didn't work well.  I'm pretty sure it was a net negative.  Only one small subgroup of the men would have found any good out of that, because they couldn't swim to save their miserable lives.  Then again, I don't think they would have survived to create those improvised buoyancy devices.  Sank like rocks.  Panicked on the way down.  I loved watching them.

I just had to look.  And laugh a bit.  Oh, sure.  Some of them could work.  But not only expensive and wasteful, if who cares on Uncle Sam's nickel to a degree, but cumbersome and not terribly effective.  Then again, I think the idea wasn't to actually, necessarily, use these?  I am thinking, the idea was to create the idea of seeing what needed done, and doing it.  In the "drink" (drink = ocean, sea, big body of water)?  Find flotation.  Then find something for warmth perhaps.  Then find flares or signal devices, etc.  More to get you to think about what is needed, and how most efficiently to obtain what is needed.  But to triage the problems.  Are you going to drown or freeze first?  Take care of the biggest, most dangerous, problem first.

Boy Scouts stuff.  Or... when Boy Scouts weren't queer fodder... or outright female.  Be prepared.  All the badges were there to give you ideas, get you to form ideas, about how to stay alive, what is right and wrong, who to befriend and avoid, and such.  Only, more aimed at grownups who hadn't had that experience?  I had, for a while.  But, moving every year, with only one parent often, made that... improbable.  Just being from a single parent home, at that time, sort of excluded one from social acceptance.  Just the way of it.  Still, I learned my own tricks, for my own reasons.  Had to.  Everybody does.

I suppose I could show it, in that light.  But, really?  I'd rather find a more practical, civilian, video.  Which uses not .mil gear, but household gear.  Have to leave your area, for raiders?  What small things to pack and take, to live a bit better.  Look, life on the run will not be nice.  Get over that.  It will merely be a hope.  Not even a guarantee.

And, with Biden damaging gasoline vehicles, with more ethanol (which honestly isn't recommended to start), you might not even have vehicles in a bit.  Unless you can afford electric.  Though... getting them charged, in rolling brown and blackouts?  I... have doubts.  Everything is planned to keep you penned in with the animals they are loosing, while disarming you.  Shit will get real.  Laugh, but it isn't coming, it is here.  In your neighborhood?  Yet?  It will be.  Even mine.  No doubts, if this continues, or gets worse.  A nuke, or extended Ukraine thing, or expanded to a few other nations which wouldn't surprise me.  Seems to be what both sides want, and are pushing for.

Anyway.  Be thinking.  What could I take, what do I need, what would work if this failed, that failed, or everything fails?  Be ready for hell or highwater, maybe both.  And, heck, look up that or other videos like it.  But if it gets that far, and you don't have resupply caches/dumps?  Fuggetaboutit.  Just surrender to whoever comes pounding on your door?  If I would guess fighting, even if you are going to lose, might be the more humane way to go out?  Dunno.  But it is well on it's way.

Something to think about?  Have you read, in the bible, when it suggests the gates of hell will not prevail against you?  Do... you fully grok that?  It isn't... the gates of earth, or heaven, will keep you or them out, but that the gates of hell will not keep "you" out.  Think on that, as an easement to your worried mind.  Now... who would wish to enter hell, what would they do, and what would induce them to enter hell?  Still, that you have charge over that... means something.  Something terribly important.  Remember who you are.