Body Armor Guide For Dummies – Suburban Prepper

Body Armor Guide For Dummies – Suburban Prepper.

Disaster Preparation: Getting Started

RealDefense

Here are some pointers for getting started in preparing yourself for a disaster.

Staging Your Supplies

One of the most important concepts to understand for disaster readiness is staging your supplies in multiple locations. The locations and circumstances in which you stage your supplies will be dictated by what you can store in that particular location.

• Home
• Close friend’s house
• Family members’ homes
• Vehicle
• Traveling to Work (if you take the Metro)
• Workplace

From DHS’ www.ready.gov

KIT STORAGE LOCATIONS

Recommended Supplies List (PDF)
Recommended Supplies List (Text)

Be Prepared For Emergencies While Traveling
Download the Transcript here

Since you do not know where you will be when an emergency occurs, prepare supplies for home, work and vehicles.

HOME

Your disaster supplies kit should contain essential food, water and supplies for at least three days.

Keep this kit in a designated place and have it ready in case you have to…

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Helpless?

I drive 128 miles a day round trip to work everyday. I see some pretty wild stuff on the interstate. Mostly mundane stuff, and stupid drivers. But for the most part, mundane driving.

During my commute I listen to a number of podcasts. Some good, some bad, some in between. One of the latest ones I picked up on is one by Jack Spirko.

This latest of the episodes he talked about teacup children. That is a new term I had not heard of. Basically, we (and I use that term collectively) have raised a generation of children that are afraid to get dirty, get sick, get injured, or do anything unless they have help. In other words these young adults and children are fragile. Unable to do for themselves.

Today, driving home I passed three different vehicles that had flat tires. The first, four twenty some-thing adults standing around their vehicle looking at each other with total looks of bewilderment on their faces. The second a SUV, thirty something male on the cell phone calling for help. The third vehicle? two guys pulling out the spare and jacking the car up.

Teacups? What would happen if the cell towers where down? After hearing Jacks podcast on the way into work this morning and seeing the flat tires this afternoon it was totally crazy to see people standing around waiting. I was dumb struck.

I have changed a tire in the rain, in the heat, in a suit in the rain, and halfway buried in a snow drift. My first thought always was how am I going to extract myself from this predicament without help. Call it pride, or some sick sense of self reliance.

Years ago I was in a bicycle race and fell down, more like launched off the end of a cliff and fell twenty six feet down into a stream below. I compound fractured my left tib and fib. When I came to after having the wind knocked out of me, my first task was a self check.

Broken leg, check!

crushed vertebrae, check! (found that out later),

crushing headache, check!

very, very cold water I am laying in, check!

I am not a brave person or some Rambo type. My thoughts were about getting out of that gorge and I’ll be damn if I am calling for help.  Funny thing was no one saw me go off the edge. Well, after attempting to climb up the 45 degree walls of the gorge with bones poking out of my leg I gave up and slid back into the water. The buoyancy of my now separated lower left leg felt so much better floating than it did dragging. I called for help loudly. Luckily another biker heard me, turned around and found me sitting in the creek below.

Now there is a tragic comedy of errors that follow the rest of the story and after drinking a few beers I have most people roaring with laughter at my drama. But in hindsight, keeping calm and thinking instead of panicking helped in saving my leg. Just before I was found I was figuring out how to splint my leg and make a second go at the gorge walls.

The doctor told me later that keeping my leg in the 40 degree water probably saved my foot. I lost blood circulation and the water kept my leg hypothermic thus kept the tissue loss to a minimum.

I don’t tell you this story to thump my chest and say look at me, I tell you this story to say, slow down, do a self check, look at your situation, and use your brain. Get out your jack, tire iron and change that damn tire yourself! It is ok to ask for help, just don’t make it your first option and expect someone to come and find you just because.

Not once did I think I was going to die. I was motivated to get out and that’s all I thought of.

A couple side notes. I still have a pin and a screw in my leg twenty years on. The picture above is not my leg but it is pretty close to my own X-ray.

And you must be thinking, why didn’t I stop and help the flat tire people? I was northbound and they were southbound. Besides they were calling for help.

Smith & Wesson Shield update

At lunch today I ran over to the range to shoot my Shield for the second time. The first time I pulled the trigger was about a month ago. I have to say that I am disappointed. So far I have put about 2 boxes of 40 cal through the weapon and each time I have pulled the trigger it has been a less than satisfying experience.

Why? Well it is not the size, I can get my meat hooks around the grip fine, even with the 5 round magazine. The 7 round magazine gives me a bit more control. My problem is not with the ergonomics, the size, the shape, the trigger, or anything else mechanically. What kills me is the 40 caliber round.  I cannot not hit the side of a barn with this thing. At first I thought, well maybe its the sights, then my grip, then my trigger pull.  I know I anticipate the boom every time when shooting a hand gun, and I hate it. I wish there was a why to break that habit.

So I stood about 10 ft from the target and I was still getting a 8″ spread from where I was aiming and where to hole appeared on the paper. The farther back I stood the worse my shots became. Now my co-worker came along and was standing behind me and observing. After about shooting half a box of dirt kickers, he handed me his Ruger 9 mm and I was punching holes in a pretty solid pattern. Back to the Shield for another magazine, same distance, same stance, same everything. I was all over the place. Mostly down and to the left. Yes I know that’s anticipating and trigger pull. Handed me his Kimber 22, 1911. dropped every round in a 4 in. circle.

 

Now I am going to back up a couple of weeks in my story. I have a number of cops in my unit. So I was talking to one that carries a Shield. I know this from previous conversations. I mentioned to him I bought the 40 cal. His first words were, get the 9 mm. That 40 cal. jumps all over the place.  Fast forward back to today. As I was checking out of the range I talked to the owner about my experience. He said the exact same thing as my cop friend. “that 40 cal. jumps all over the place” “I have had a number of customers say they have a hard time shooting the Shield 40 cal.”

Ok, I get it. The Shield is not for match shooting, or really target practice. It is for concealed carry and self defense. But my reluctance with this handgun is the thought that if I have an assailant beyond 10 ft my shots are all gonna drop, and the farther out I am the bigger dirt clods I am going to kick up. I might as well just throw dirt clods at him/her thinking more about it.

Or I could quit gripping and just let an assailant just close to 10 ft and unload the magazine into him or her.

On the way out of the door from the range, I looked at the Glock 26, the Springfield XDm compact, and the Smith & Wesson M&P9c – Compact Size, Magazine Safety.

Each has their pluses and minuses, most notably the 9 mm models carry more rounds in their magazines. Stay tuned, I may just do a trade here in the next week or so.