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22 Comments

  1. Excellent series, you have presented a huge amount of highly valuable information. These articles definitely get printed and put into my emergency information library. Thanks for your contribution.

  3. Your comment “custom freeze-dried meals that I create using ingredients from various #10 FD cans.” intrigued me. Is it possible you could explain this better and perhaps give some examples?

      1. Re: my custom FD meals – sure – for example, I take a cup of instant rice, a chicken bullion packet, a half cup of FD chicken, a half cup of FD green beans and put them all into a 1 qt. ziplock mylar bag along with an O2 absorber and vacuum seal it. To prepare it I tear off the top (above the ziplock), open and add the contents of the bullion packet, add 1 3/4 cups of boiling water, seal it, shake it and let it sit for about 7 minutes or so. I experimented a lot with different combinations, and the hardest thing to get right is how much water to add. I also realize that the ‘spoilage’ clock starts counting down as soon as you open the #10 FD cans, but I’ve eaten meals I put together like this 2 years ago and they’re fine.

        1. Thank you. You might consider taking tortillas. I have kept store bought flour tortillas in an opened package and unrefrigerated for a year and found them still good to eat. They are excellent for hiking. Good calories. Good bread replacement with considerably less bulk. I like to make PB&J burittos for breakfast, good with Nutella too. Good with a thick slathering of butter too. My lunch favorite is top ramen and one of those single serve packets of spam or tuna.

  4. Ramen spice packets are foil wrapped and come in many different flavors. To cut down on salt, I use only half a packet at a time, thus gaining a free unit every two meals. You build up a supply quickly and have a good choice of various flavors..

    Ramen packages are very light, and when combined with a protein (jerky) provides a pretty filling meal with lots of carbs. Salt for hot times – a hot liquid for cold = versatile meal, Very low cost too, A one pot meal that can easily be expanded for more.

  5. You may want to consider getting/using a Kelly Kettle for your hot water. The only thing I’ve seen beat mine is a JetBoil, and that only some times, plus my Kelly can use any fuel and still have hot water in jig time. Also, the Glock e-tool is quite light and very effective.

    1. Great idea. I love mine. As efficient as Kelly Kettles are, you shouldn’t have much smoke, anyway.

      Also, for (modern) tactical lighting, I’ll stick with green LED tactical lighting instead of the old red, or blue. Even the military has switched instrument panel lighting on aircraft from red to green, making it a little more compatible with NVD’s. You can actually be pretty bright with green LED lighting. Like all other camouflage techniques, no one expects to see green light in their mind’s eye.

  6. Please note I did not read any of the article, as I was formerly in the US Infantry, and I’m very familiar with actual patrolling, sans the half-ton of paper work and West Point Plan. The first thing that warned me off was the picture of all those guys on the road, and packed together so close that one grenade would kill all of them. That’s not a patrol, it’s a list of casualties. GI’s may love walking on roads getting from A to B, but the bad guys love mining those roads and any trail or other places that rookies love to explore. One of the hallmarks of a successful and aggressive patrol is to not booger it up with a million tasks and requirements of the West Point Plan, and just do it. Planning and briefing and debriefing are cogent and applicable, as long as it’s not to the 40th degree. Training for patrolling is very desirable prior to actual combat patrols, as anything can happen during them. Each patrol member knowing what to do is essential for mission success. My eyes glaze over when these things are done to death, as has often been the case at briefings. I have conducted fire team to platoon sized patrols and even when every mission requirement was made, Army officers were loathe to even let one attaboy slip, let alone simple acknowledgement that we did well. It seemed that no matter what we did, it was wrong. I made sure to let rank and file know that they did well, despite the West Point spinners. I fully realize that most readers here do not have the experience that I do in these matters, and that they should know as much as they can before stepping off on a patrol. But I have trained thousands of men, and simple is better than complicated. I’m here to tell you this because the actual combat patrols I’ve been on were simple and to the point, and I’m alive. Half and hour of training is better than a million words.

    1. “Please note I did not read any of the article…The first thing that warned me off was the picture of all those guys on the road”

      Wow. Talk about judging a book by it’s cover… Why would you judge an article that you didn’t read by a stock photo that the author didn’t have anything to do with? Read the article and then criticize it. Don’t criticize it based on straw-man arguments that have nothing to do with the article or the content.

    2. Hi Sean,

      After all of my U.S. Army experience (25 years total of Regular, Guard and Reserve Being born as 11B and retiring as an All Source Intell. Officer O3-E), I have to agree with a lot of what you’re saying, but HJL makes a valid point as well.

      You’re right. All that doctrinal, administrative BS pushed on you is one of the many reasons why I have to agree with a lot of military critics out there: That the U.S. military (talking U.S. Army here) is great at waging wars, but not good at winning them.

      Take for example the false narrative from the Vietnam War: That “we never lost a battle.” This has even been perpetuated by the U.S. gov’t itself, by having a lot of battle logs of just regular infantry units in the U.S. National Archives being given restricted classifications. Through the Freedom of Information act, historians have confirmed that even during the “good Army” years that S.L.A Marshall described (before Tet, the military collapsing due to drug use, anti-war GI activism, etc. – The documentary “Sir, No Sir” on YouTube is a must-see documentary), that entire platoons and companies got wiped-out in ambushes, due to poor prior planning, incorrectly assessing the enemy situation, etc. Granted, thanks to the Deep State at that time (the CFR in particular), the war was never meant to be won.

      Off the top of my head, in the case of Iraq, the treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, etc. turned the entire Muslim world against the U.S. In addition to that, supply convoys always being given the same repeated route, etc.

      I think this has been an excellent series. I only have one caveat, though. We also need to remember that we are already in a state of slow, civilizational collapse. We also need to focus the here-and-now. For instance, the next time all those houses in your neighborhood become vacant (such as the 2008 financial collapse), how are you going to get rid of the drug dealers squatting in one of them? I can vouch for having used creative means of area denial and harassment operations to get rid of them.

  7. Sean – the picture was just mean for visual impact, not something meant to illustrate or recommend any actual patrol practices. One of the points I tried to make in the article was that patrolling post-SHTF wouldn’t be like it currently is in the military – it would need to be much more focused and practical, without all of the ‘organizational dynamics’ that currently exist in the military. That being said, I also believe that you need to do some structured planning, prep and post-mortem in order to make sure patrols accomplish the desired goals with while minimizing the potential for problems.

    Given your background I’d appreciate any additional comments or recommendations you might have on the content.

  8. Thank you for this series of articles. Any article that helps open peoples eyes to unfamiliar topics is greatly appreciated. As always your results may vary from man to man and situation to situation. Keep up the good work.

  9. With no offense to the author, as with most other blog articles or survival forum discussions on patrolling the suggestions here are both one-sided and myopic in terms of contact with other survivalists patrolling or those defending their retreat. Stealth (camo, night ops, hidden OPs) and deception (contact specialists) may sound like great ideas for a patrol to employ, until they’re observed or their ruse discovered, then they appear as a threat. Would the author’s advice be that we just need to be more sneaky and deceptive than those we encounter?

    The suggestion in the “Contacts Obviously Armed” section of part #3 of “asking” a smaller or more lightly armed group to disarm because his patrol wants to approach and talk to them is also troubling, he has no authority to make such a request except greater numbers and force of arms. And, what’s his RoE if someone(s) asks his patrol to do the same?

  10. SamlAm – you’re absolutely right – my article is pretty narrowly focused and assumes some conditions, but I’m also limited in how many scenarios I can cover in one article. How you approach it would depend a lot on current conditions – if you believe there are potential bad guys in your AO then using stealth makes sense. I would also hope that if you encountered another group of folks patrolling that both sides would be level-headed enough to make it a peaceful contact and that your RoE isn’t ‘shoot first, ask questions later’. I honestly believe that a post-SHTF world will harbor a lot of potential dangers for quite a while after whatever event caused it, and patrolling provides both the ability to gather intelligence on potential issues as well as opportunities for like-minded folks to meet and cooperate.

  11. I would suggest that if you encounter another patrol, post-SHTF, that you grab some cover immediately, make sure your patrol does the same, and call out to the other patrol that you’d like to “parlay”, talk, a bit. Then be sure and pass whatever information you have about the other patrol, how many, armed with what, etc, to the rest of your patrol. I’ve done this in combat patrols, where we encountered others who didn’t even speak good English, and it works. YMMV. Anyway, it beats all hell out of just blazing away at one another without even knowing why. When talking with the other patrol, just speak in generalities, like, “I’m just checking over the neighborhood” (notice: not MY neighborhood, as this would tell them where you are), and ask if they want a face to face on neutral ground. If your entreaties are returned by gunfire, well, you know you’re up against it, and do your best to extract you and your patrol from the area. Or, you can just remain concealed, make a salute report from what you see, and head for home. I did that once when with a sniper/radio recon team,(eight guys) and we sat and sweated and watched 75 NVA regulars go trooping by. It’s enough to make you old.

    2. Sean – LOL. Good stuff.

      In my case of actual (post-SHTF) patrolling, it would probably just be Yours Truly, at night, and in constant coms with the Misses through our MURS base station.

      If anything, focusing on the SALUTE format is critical. In my case, I’d mainly just be concerned with any threat to our house – There’s no community where I live (when you’re the only one who shows for a Neighborhood Association meeting AND you’re an admittedly recluse Survivalist, yeah, there’s no community). If for instance I come across some people who don’t look right (obviously armed, backwards hats, tattoos and earings in weird places) and I’m unnoticed, and I have the advantage (NV, suppression, etc), I’ll just leave the rest up to your imagination…

  12. I would not disarm to parley. I also would not speak to other patrol leader in a way that he/she could see me. The disarming stuff is for the birds and fairy tales from holly wood movies. Any suggestions by the other group that includes disarming to talk should be regarded with extreme suspicion. If they want a later sit-down, maybe over a meal in neutral land, it will have to be covered by your security force, but still armed, and the other group unable to physically see you. Only after a passage of time and events will you be able to meet with them face to face, and that is something each leader must decide on their own. The first parlay with the other group should be done with your second-in-command.

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