Speaking of driving, don’t be afraid to use the vehicle itself as a weapon. Your Ford pickup truck can deliver far more kinetic energy against human targets than any shoulder-fired weapon. Get away from Hollywood portrayals that never show people in a vehicle plowing through a hostile crowd to escape. If that’s what it takes, do it. Do not let your vehicle get surrounded.
Earlier this year, while returning home from Gatlinburg, we were forced to drive through a less than desirable neighborhood because the freeway had been entirely shut down. It was late afternoon, and numbers of questionable people were moving about on foot in the area. There were no police cruisers available; they were all tied up due that traffic accident and were busy sealing off access at other points to the freeway. I didn’t want to alarm my wife, but I withdrew the Kimber 10mm Model 1911 I was carrying in my fanny pack and slid it between my seat and the armrest without her noticing. For a period of time I drove with one hand on the wheel and one on the butt of the gun. Fortunately I didn’t need to brandish this gun, although its stainless finish would have gotten any malcontent’s attention, and we left the area without incident—but I made two decisions at that point. First, I need to travel with a pistol with more ammo, which is why the Beretta 92 or M9A1 is with me now. Second, my Del-Ton AR-15 was in the rear compartment of my vehicle during that trip and not within easy access. This led me to understanding the concept of a travel gun and carrying one of them in a compact case in the back seat for easy access, instead of in the trunk. I started out packing the UC9 carbine, which simplifies ammo supply, but I may switch to the Century International Folding AK or M1A1 Paratrooper Carbine. The M1A1 has better ergonomics, the AK more oomph and better ammo re-supply. We’ll see. Right now, as my torn up left knee heals after surgery, the M1A1 is easier for me to handle, but either way, this should serve as a lesson in how to think through various situations and how to remain flexible as life changes.
Teaming Up
As you can see, part of the tactics of going armed for dealing with a disaster include the mindset of wanting to defend you and your family and understanding the use of firearms and other tools if you want to survive. That leads me to the concept of teaming up.
They say there’s strength in numbers, and that’s so simply true that such a saying almost needs no explanation. The more folks you have on your side, the better off you are—at least in most cases. But, if you’re like me and don’t have a large family group in the immediate area—and by immediate, I mean within a mile radius—you are going to have to rely on not just trusted friends, but people you consider brothers and sisters. That is truly the level of trust you will need amongst each other.
The trust factor for those you team up with is of huge importance. I think there is another old adage that goes something like “If you want to know who your true friends are, go into business with them.” Under high-stress situations like that, which certainly require trust, you really will find out who your friends are. Imagine what you may find out when the situation involves life or death. Throughout my career as a law enforcement officer, I’ve made sure to ask myself, who would I want to have “go through the door” with me in dangerous LE situations. Conversely, who as a leader would I want to follow through the very gates of Hell? I’ve run across a few men I’d do that for over the years, and I’m here to tell you, there aren’t a whole lot of them. Concepts like that are what you will want to use to determine who is with you and who isn’t. Just because a person happens to be a neighbor in the literal sense doesn’t mean that they are the particular neighbor you would want to “fort up” with.
When you’re making such evaluations, you must ask, what do these persons bring the table in terms of how their presence benefit you? In one of the episodes of the Doomsday Preppers show, there was a fellow, actually kind of a hippy that never left the ’60s type of guy, who was on the right track for the most part. He had managed to purchase an abandoned nuclear missile silo site to live in and await the calamity he was expecting. He would have had a great thing going there were it not for two issues. First, the only firearm I saw that he had for defense was what appeared to be an old Mosin-Nagant bolt-action rifle hanging on a wall. When asked about the use of deadly force to protect his site, he, being truly a peace-loving hippie type, got very emotional and refused to talk about it. Clearly he wanted to rely on his isolated position, a tall chain link fence and gate, and security cameras to hold his excellent position. Kind of hard to do when people are pouring gasoline down your exterior ventilation system and lighting it to burn you out.
His other point of weakness wasn’t evident until the very end of the show. The people whom he brought together to fort up with were also a group of hippies without any useful skills, other than the abilities of a couple of the freeloaders (yes, that’s what I called them), whose claim to fame were that they were some sort of “spiritual advisors” to the group. These spiritual advisors would, in case of extreme calamity, lead the others in yoga and meditation exercises.
Folks, you can’t eat yoga, you can’t use it to repair equipment or grow food, and it is certainly not capable of repelling an assault on your facility. That is certainly why I would want my in-laws with us (familial aspects aside). My father-in-law is one of the most mechanically handy guys I know, on par with or better than my own late father. So, too, is my brother-in-law. My mother-in-law has expertise in areas of cooking and food preparation and is very expert in maintaining a household, as is my sister-in-law. I, on the other hand, stink in all those areas—but I’m pretty handy with firearms.
My Columbus Police survival expert, “Bill,” has some of the same ideas in mind. Although he has a home setup (when I saw it, I thought I had entered a combined grocery store, ammo dump, and gun/gunsmith shop), that one could live off for an extended period of time, and I mean for many months, he, like me, also stinks in the area of non-firearm mechanical know-how. If a disaster event involved localized issues, he would probably stay put. If it looked like a situation involving extensive, long-term societal collapse, he’d evacuate with his kids and as much gear as he can carry in his truck to fort up with a friend who is mechanically handy and also has a self-sustaining farm equipped with a hand-pumped well for a long-term water supply. Bill already has a number of his guns located at that site and he is never without heavy firepower to extricate himself from dangerous situations while away from home.