LIFE SKILLS | A Sharp Mind
Your most powerful weapon is your mind. It doesn’t need batteries and never runs out of bullets. We all know what mental focus is, but how is it employed in a fight for your life? There are the four critical elements of staying mentally focused under extreme duress: perception, awareness, decision, and commitment. PERCEPTION We are each born with survival instincts to rapidly detect and assess an emerging physical threat. At the very onset [...]
LIFE SKILLS | Increase Your Performance By Failing
How can you increase your shooting performance by failing? Make more mistakes. When in training, most of us try to do our best to either increase or maintain our shooting skills which takes commitment, time on gun, and hard-to-find ammo. It takes even more of the same to reach [...]
LIFE SKILLS | Your Best Defense During Civil Unrest
In today’s world of high-probability sporadic violence, it is important to stay ahead of the action-reaction power curve. Roman Philosopher Seneca (4 BC – AD 65) is credited with saying “The man who has anticipated the coming of troubles takes away their power when they arrive.” The sooner you can [...]
Let There Be Light — and Lasers
Keeping up with the latest technology is a lesson I learned long ago. Back in the Nixon era, I hung out with a pretty good group of buds at college. At a party the girlfriend of one of the guys brought along a friend, a stunningly beautiful young woman just [...]
Streamlight Protac 90
How many flashlights are too many? I can’t count that high. Living in the country like I do, I have lights stashed all over. Unless you’re a long step away from one, it’s too far to be handy! Streamlight’s new Protac 90 is triple-handy if you ask me. Aside from [...]
Streamlight Stylus PRO USB Penlight
People recommend many noble ideas, but few follow through with action. One such apothegm is, “always carry a flashlight.” Easier said than done. Until now. The Streamlight Stylus PRO is, quite literally, pen-sized, yet packs a wallop. The high mode beams 350 lumens for up to 1.5 hours while the [...]
Every Day Carry (EDC)
Everyday carry (EDC) gear options have exploded in recent years, offering fantastic innovation to those who like to be prepared — having the actual tools on their person at all times. Here we enjoy some thoughtful designs around ankle holstering, a flashlight well designed for pocket carry, a highly-engineered front-opening [...]
Gear Showcase: Safety and Security
My wife thinks I’m OCD about having back-up supplies for my personal consumable items. Perhaps I am, but she ended up pleased we weren’t caught short during the Great Toiler Paper Shortage 2020. She also liked I had extra packs of hand-cleaning wipes and similar items. Those planning skills (yes, [...]
The Fallacy of “Bugging Out”
One tactic constantly being thrown around during survival, self-reliance and preparedness discussions is the concept of “bugging out.” Simply put, this is the idea when a large-scale emergency or social disruption occurs, you will grab your BOB (Bug Out Bag), jump into your official Bug Out Vehicle, call in the [...]
Less Lethal: Talking Advantage Of New Technology
Tools For A Variety Of Situations And Distances. The oldest-known weapon used by man was an impact weapon, be it a bone, rock or tree branch. In this most-simple form, they were used, literally, to beat back early man. Today we have more modern options (we might call them batons), [...]
Project Triage
By Ben Douglas Life-Saving Tourniquets. On August 18, 2012, St. Croix Police Chief, Christopher Howell and his partner, Officer Elsworth Jones, an experienced SWAT officer, were working a recent armed robbery series when they responded to a robbery at a restaurant in a remote area of the island. They were [...]