Being a podcast listener as well as a podcaster, when I started to enter the world of EMS (Emergency Medical Services), I immediately went to iTunes and searched for EMS and EMT. There are a number of podcasts aimed at that market with really great people on them. But they are so advanced I was often lost to know what they were talking about.

On the other hand, I have been reading Kelly Greyson’s A Day In The Life Of An Ambulance Driverfor years now. I think I stumbled across it via some gun blogging something, but it was the stories that stuck with me.

So I got the idea of making a podcast about my experience as a EMS Newbie going through EMT-Basic class. I thought, “Wouldn’t it be cool if I had a mentor more advanced than I as I went through it who I could ask questions about what I was learning?” I immediately thought of Kelly, or AD as I knew him at the time. And if I’d like that kind of thing, I bet there are a lot of other EMS Newbies out there who would as well. What if I recorded our Q&A time and made a podcast out of it.

So Confessions of An EMS Newbie was born.

It is brand new and only one episode is up, but another is in the can and we are schedule to record a new one every weekend. The plan is to release episodes on Tuesdays. We aren’t in iTunes yet because you really should have 3 or 4 episode before you submit and you have to have album art.

There won’t be much in the way of EMT blogging here, because all of it will be on the new site, but I wanted both of my loyal readers to know about it.

The cool thing about it was this is actually how you do CPR. It is BLS (Basic Life Support) CPR but it is what you do.

Super Sexy CPR from Super Sexy CPR on Vimeo.

From my online CPR course:

“A” for Airway. Look-Listen-Feel for breathing by opening the airway using the Head Tilt-Chin Lift motion. Tilt the head with the palm of your hand, lift the chin with your fingers, and bring your cheek close to the victim’s face (don’t press your fingers under the chin too deeply). Keep your eyes on the chest to see it rise and fall (exercise shouldn’t last more than 10 seconds). Remember breaths may be faint and shallow and are not considered regular breathing.

The thing my buddy pointed out is they are wearing the two halves of each other’s lingerie. One has the black bra and the other the black bottom.

The author says Patriots is a poorly disguised survivalist manual. James Wesley, Rawles (can someone tell me why there is a comma in his name?) is the blogger behind the most popular survivalist blog, Survival Blog. He did later go on to actually write a survival manual How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It: Tactics, Techniques, and Technologies for Uncertain Times but Patriots will do a pretty good job of getting you to think about surviving.

The Survival Scenario: Economic Collapse

It doesn’t take much research to realize the US is in deep economic Shumer (to use a Patriotism). This book takes it to the extreme, with the US currency collapsing and with it all of society. Cities erupt in civil unrest because the police stop working. Eventually everyone stops working and we enter a new dark age, one without power.

The Book as a Book

This is the second edition of the book but it still feels like an authors first work. It is obvious that the point of every plot device – and many of the character’s existence – is just to teach something. We never really get emotionally involved with the character. The only time I really felt bad for them was at their deaths.

I listened to the book on audio but also bought it in paper so my wife could read it. We people read this book, they understand what it means to be a survivalist and want to do something. The book is very much about prepared people and not ordinary ones. Even characters who walk out of cities are survival minded by the time they cross paths with the main characters.

There are a few passages when it gets down right technical and was a hard listen. Description of the retreat’s door was hard to follow on audio.

Survival Lessons

There are too many lessons as part of this story, from how to fortify a house, set up and run an LP/OP, to how to do a person to person blood transfusion. This book really delves into Rawlesian survivalism, and make you want to have a survival retreat. The main characters, both those that live at the retreat in Idaho and those that bug out there show you how big an advantage it is to have a prepared, stocked place WAY off the beaten track.

It makes you want a survival retreat.

These people’s stock piles border on ridiculousness. I think after the first year they were supporting more than 10 people on just their stockpiles of food. I don’t remember any mention of growing crops.

You also learn if you are going to survival, you want to do it with other people. You want a group retreat, not just a solo one. You need more than 1 or 2 people to have a round the clock guard. You also realize again that certain skills will be of vital importance after a crash.

Conclusion

Like I said at the beginning, Patriots is the book others are judged by. If you want to learn survivalism this is the book to read. I find a few faults, it doesn’t have the writer’s polish of One Second After and I’m not sure an economic collapse would cause as much break down as they say, but you’ll get a good overview of all the things that could happen and enjoy the process.

In my intro to reviewing survival literature I talked about two kinds of survival stories. This book is a regular people story.

The Survival Scenario: EMP

The book starts with what appears to be an EMP attack. Everything electronic stops working, planes fall out of the sky, phones don’t work, cars don’t work.

But this is an EMP attack on steroids. Even when you turn on something electronic that wasn’t effected they break. Including things like generators.

The story centers around one family, the Bannings, in Birmingham Alabama. They are an upper middle class suburban family with 3 kids. The oldest Dani, has just graduated college and landed a job as a reporter in Washington DC. Her and her father have just landed back in Birmingham when the lights go out.

The Book as a Book

The book is well written. Once I started reading it I couldn’t stop, which to me is the sole arbiter of how good a book is. The characters are well formed, if stupid on a number of levels, but I’ll get to that in a minute.

The plot has some interesting a subtle twists and turns. This is very much about a suburban neighborhood. There are no external threats in this book, but a very interesting murder mystery from the beginning.

If you go looking for the book, look in the Christian fiction section. I don’t think the book is all that Christian – yes the main characters are Christian and at one point in the book they decided to allow their faith to guide their post-apocalyptic lifestyle. Patriots characters are just as Christian, but since the book didn’t have a Christian publisher it doesn’t end up in the getto.

I don’t know if this is a mark of good writing, that is can evoke such a strong reaction, or bad, because I hated the character so. I hated one of the characters so much by the end of the book, I probably won’t read anymore in the series. About 3/4 of the way through the book I was hoping Dani would just get herself killed and put us out of our misery.

There is also very good social understanding in this book. Terri deals well with how people interact with their suburban neighbors, whom they hardly know. She deals with teenage rebellion which is a luxury we can afford in an affluent society. Issues of race were also well done with people on both sides understanding their own prejudices and trying to deal with them correctly.

Survival Lessons

This book taught me a couple of things.

Water

The suburb the Bannings live has its own lake, so they have a source of water. They don’t talk about purifying it much, but it is a source. This means that even though they didn’t prepare, they did have water.

But they didn’t have a way to transport and store it. They had to make daily trips to the lake and at first had nothing to put water in. Water is heavy and you need some kind of cart to carry it.

I live in a suburb called the livable forest and there are a number of streams within walking distance, but I wouldn’t want to have carry even 5 gallons – which I consider the amount one person needs for one day in the Houston heat – back to my house. I need a wheeled something, even a kids wagon would help. I’m thinking a gardening cart with 4 wheels. And of course I need something to hold that water in to put in the cart.

Bicycles

There is quite a bit of travel that happens in the book. There are often discussions of horses in a post-apocalyptic worlds, but the thing that fascinated me was how incredibly useful a bicycle could be. People could get most places in Birmingham on a bike. At one point someone road from Washington DC to Birmingham on a bike (over 700 miles).

If you think about it bikes are a great multiplier.

I generally think the average person could walk 20 miles a day. Maybe more. A runner can run a marathon in 4 hours, so a person should be able to walk one in 8-12 hours.

But a bike will multiply that by at least 3. The equivalent for bicycles of a marathon is a century, which is 100 miles. This guy did 2465 miles across America in 45 days. Avg 55 miles/day, longest day 126 miles.

Most people have bicycles, few have horses.

Conclusion

It was a good well written book about normal people and what they did after the grid went down. I came away thankful that my kids were not as big a brats as the Bannings were. And I know it is true because after Hurricane Ike we spend a week grid down, and my boys never complained or snuck off.

There are some good ideas about how you can deal with grid down situations even if you didn’t prepare, and you can see how somethings you could do now would make a big difference.

Fiction vs. How To

There are two kinds of books I’ve been reading. One are fictional stories about survival situations, the other are how to survive non-fiction books. Probably the best example of this are two books by the same author. Both by James Wesley Rawles Patriots: A Novel of Survival in the Coming Collapse and How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It.

While Rawles, the man behind the very good Survival Blog, says Patriots is a poorly disguised survival manual, it really isn’t a manual. Hence his creation of How To Survive TEOTWAWKI. Other examples of how to books are Neil Strauss’ Emergency: This Book Will Save Your Life(I’ve already reviewed Emergency) , and Fernando Ferfal Aguirre’s The Modern Survival Manual: Surviving the Economic Collapse. When reviewing how to books I have talk about how the information is presented, how applicable it is, what kind of disaster it is talking about and how accurate I think it is.

When it comes to fiction like, Patriots and books like Terri Blackstock’s Last Light and William R. Forstchen’s One Second After, you give some leaway for the how to aspects of it, and also have talk about how believable the scenario is. Plus the kind of characters that are in the books make a difference.

Prepared Vs Unprepared

When looking at fiction works, you have to take into account what kind of characters are in the book. Are they, like Patriots, hard core suvivalists? Or are they average middle class suburbanites taken completely by surprise, like in Last Light? Or is a small town in the middle of now where Kansas like Jericho?

Survivalists – while I’ll admit to considering myself – are often very hard to stuff that happens in non-survivalist literature. Hence why I wrote my article “In Defense of Jericho“. Non-survivalist will act differently than those prepared.

Also in general survivalist have an idea of how things will go that non-survivalist may not have. Which needs to be talked about.

Realism

Talking about how I think things would have gone. What I think is realistic is a bit of an exercise in futility. Not because I don’t have ideas, just like the authors of the books, but because no one really knows. Every situation is different, every place is different, and people are different. So saying something won’t happen like this is really just opinion. Its opinion when the authors say it and its opinion when I disagree with them. But we can all learn from each other’s perspective.

That’s where I’ll be coming from as I review first Rawles books and Blackstock’s Last Light over the coming weeks.

Here’s the best gear I’ve got, ie, the ones I carry daily.

Gun

“The best gun to carry is the one you will have with you when you need it.” I have a CHL in Texas and carry from the time I get dressed until I go to bed. If I have my pants on, I’ve got a gun on my hip.
I carry a Springfield XD 45 “Compact”. This works for me even though it is a pretty big gun. I carry in an Inside the Waistband holster from Houston’s own Comp-Tac. Luckily right now fashion for men makes wearing your shirt untucked fashionable, though the IWB allows me to tuck in my shirt if I have to.

It may seem crazy to talk about fashion in a blog about survival. But the fact is I’m much more likely to be in a social situation where looking like Joe tactical isn’t the best thing for my success, which impacts my survival long term. Business guru Dan Kennedy has an interesting maxim when told that you shouldn’t be judged based on how you dress. He agrees to the idea and then says, “Would you rather be right, or rich?” Wearing a suit, or fashionable shirt will make people react to you differently. Isn’t that worth changing your behavior in an ethical way?

I learned the carry all the time philosophy from Ignatius Piazza of Front Sight. He once discussed the idea some people have to hide guns all over their house or place of business so one would be at hand wherever you needed it. But there are problems with having guns hidden all over the place.

1. They are hidden. You have remember where they are in a crisis situation.

2. They aren’t necessarily really at hand. Even being 4 feet from where you are standing means you have to move to get them.

3. Someone else can find them too. It could be a bad guy who duck behind you desk in a confrontation and discovers the gun you hid there. It could be a visiting 5 year old playing hide and seek.

The easiest way to have a firearm at your finger tips is to have it on your hip. This also allows you to practice your draw and know it is going to be in exactly that place any time you need it.

In discussions with co-workers I have found other people change clothes when they get home, generally into very comfortable pants – like sweat pants or pajama pants – that don’t have a belt to handle the weight of a pistol. It is something to consider.

At first it was a little strange to have that weight there when doing things like watching TV, or laying down reading a book, but you get used to it quickly.

Knife

It is amazing how much you will use something when it is readily to hand. I started carrying a pocket knife years ago. First I had tiny pen knife on my key chain. I’d use it to open packages, and cut things with the tiny scissors.

Then the TSA confiscated this highly dangerous piece of hardware and I was in the market for a new knife.

I started carrying a “real” pocket knife, a Kershaw with one handed opening. This made it even easier to get the knife out and use it, so I did. The little locking piece of plastic on the back the knife that is suppose to hold it closed in your pocket kept breaking off – they fixed it for free, but I still had the fear of the blade coming open in my pocket and slicing into the artery that runs down the front of my leg.

When I decided to get a new knife my friend and fellow preparedness person Hsoi suggested the Leatherman Wave. I bought it and always carry it now. It is a little big, but oh so useful. I’ve used the knife often, plus having pliers and scissors has been priceless. I don’t clip it to my belt because I don’t like stuff on my belt, but I clip it to the top of my pocket so I don’t have to dig for it. Takes a little experience to remember how to twist it in your hand to get the standard blade, but you can open it one handed.

Flashlight

Again my friend Hsoi recommended carrying a flash light, and my training at FrontSight also said you needed one with the button on the back if you get in a gunfight at night. But again I don’t like carrying stuff on my belt. Shopping for lights was also confusing and expensive and I always wondered if I was getting the right thing.
Last November we were looking for something a dark car when my wife pulls a tiny flashlight out of her purse. It was a little over 3 inches long, made of metal, fit into her hand and came on with a click of the button on the bottom. And it was bright, filled the car and blinded me if I looked directly at it.

“Where’d you get that? How much did it cost?” were my first questions.

“At the auto parts store. About $10.”

“I know what I want from the boys for Christmas. Buy 3.” Which is exactly what she did. These may not be the best lights out there, but they were cheap enough I have multiples.

And it fits in my pocket. Which means it is much better than a bigger, more rugged light because it is with me all the time.

The only thing I have against it is black. I don’t like gear that is black because if you drop it in the dark it is nigh impossible to find. When I opened the pack she had already wrapped the center in white electrical tape. We do this often with black gear.

Camera

“The best camera is the one you have with you when you want to get the shot.” Is a camera a piece of survival gear? I don’t know, but once everyone started having them in their phones pictures proliferated.
I use my camera phone to remember all kinds of things now, books I want to come back to, people I just met, places I have been. At the last gun show I went to I took pictures of ammo prices and the banner over the booth so I could compare them and know where to come back to later.

Matter of fact there is an iPhone app from photographer Chase Jarvis called Best Camera because for most photographers the camera you have with you is the one in your phone. I’m a professional photographer with thousands of dollar worth of camera equipment, but more than likely the camera I’ll have when I need to take a picture of something important will be my iPhone.

The one thing you don’t have on most camera phones is any kind of optical zoom. If you want to reach out and take an image that’s what you need – and it is an improvised telescope/binocular. You can find optical zooms on most compact digital cameras. Something the size of a pack of cards will fit in your pocket is something you will carry, and hence the best camera.

Conclusion

If you carry the four things I talked about you will find you use them a lot. Even if you don’t everyday, when you do need them they will seem the greatest thing ever. Try carrying any of these for 30 days and see if wonder how you did without them before.
Lastly, remember the best gun, flashlight, knife, camera, you’ve got are the ones you have with you when you need them. So think about carriablilty when purchasing equipment. Especially stuff you may use on a day by day basis.

Pt 1

Pt 2

Pt 3

I heard about it via an article on Viceland interviewing the author Dolly Freed, who went on to become a rocket scientist. The story of how she became home schooled is priceless.

One of the keys to getting it done was deciding what I wanted it to do. I’m not preparing for the end of the world as we know it even though I am reading SurvivalBlog.com’s book How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It and listening to his novel Patriots: A Novel of Survival in the Coming Collapse. Actually one of the things I learned from reading those books is I’m probably better off hunkering down than try to walk somewhere unknown. Also learned this trying to evacuate for Rita.

What am I preparing for? Getting stranded.

There are two probable scenarios my bag is intended to help with. One is having my car break down and have to walk somewhere or stay with it. The other is getting stranded unexpectedly while traveling, for example on the day trip where I go to pick up or drop off my son in Austin. What if my truck broke down in some town in between and I had to stay overnight?

That clarifies a lot of stuff. So here is some of what I did, it is in the order I did things, not necessarily the order of importance. I had a list I’d been building in my head and Evernote. I realized when I woke up early I could get it done in just a few minutes if I just did it. I’d say it took 15 minutes tops to get things together and in the bag.

The Bag Itself.

It is a backpack that I used to use to carry my laptop back and forth to work. It is years old, but in great condition. When I bought it the guy who sold it to me at an outdoors store told me you could put a hose up to it and water would bearly trickle through. I don’t carry a laptop anymore, so it was just sitting on the floor of my office. I took out the laptop interior case and had a great back pack. I chose a backpack in case I have to walk somewhere with it.

A Complete Change of Clothes.

First question, what kind of clothes? Many preparedness people are focused on staying warm. Frankly in Houston that is rarely a problem (for instance it is 76 degrees in mid January), and if it is cold I will be wearing a coat, which is all I’ll need.

Which brings up another point I thought about. What will I already be carrying? There are some things I will almost assuredly be carrying, my gun (Springfield XD 45 Compact), my Leatherman Wave, and my flashlight. Also my truck already has a lightweight jacket for handling unexpected rain.

Back to clothes. I grabbed a pair of lightweight cargo pants from my closet. A change of socks and underwear, and a “used up” pair of running shoes. I run in a pair of shoes for about 300 miles, then they aren’t really good to run in, but they are still serviceable for walking and general wear. I had two pair sitting next to the door to be donated. Pulled a pair out and put them in the bottom of the bag with the socks stuffed in one and underwear stuffed in the other.

Then I went looking for a shirt. I was just going to throw in a T-shirt, but opened my running drawer and saw I had a bunch of “technical” running shirts. Which are made to keep you cool and dry in warm weather. So threw one of them in.

Food and Water

Clothes taken care of, my next thought was food and water. I grabbed a couple of South Beach Bars, each 180 balanced calories. They were good enough for my half marathon run, they would be good enough for sitting on the side of the road for a few hours.

I went out to our back up fridge to grab an unopened bottle of water and noticed I had a case of Gatorade G2. Gatorade has all the advantages of water and then some. It is made to help you not get dehydrated, so why carry just water? I ended up adding one of each. I put the water bottle inside and the Gatorade in a mesh bottle pocket on the outside. Didn’t want red Gatorade to leak all over my clothes if something went wrong. I might need water to clean a wound or something.

First Aid Kit

Speaking of wounds, the next thing on my list was a first aid kit. I remembered I had a little one in a red nylon bag. I found it and opened it to see what was in it. Turns out it was mostly a crushable cold pack, and that pack was broken and had leaked into the bag. All the bandages and medicines were discolored. So I ended up tossing everything in the bag and just keeping the bag. I’ll pack it from my home first aid kit when it dries from cleaning.

Ammo and Extra Mag

I also went to my range bag and pulled one of my loaded magazines for my XD. It is the long 13 round mag. I carry a 10 round shortened mag in the XD to make it more concealable. I also don’t carry an extra magazine on me because it’s bother to need ratio is too high for me. But having one in the truck is was botherless.

Knife

Even though I will probably be carrying my Leatherman, I wanted to put a knife in the bag. I went an found my old Kenshaw folder I used to carry and put it in.

Toiletries

Now I was adding smaller stuff and started thinking toiletries.

We have a huge stash of hotel supplied toiletries, so I grabbed a bar of soap and asked the Mrs about a toothbrush. She went and found a little kit from a airline gift. It included a toothbrush, toothpaste and comb. Dropped that in a pocket of the backpack. Strangely I didn’t drop one of the bazillion shampoos in there, need to do that.

Flashlight

I’m going to add another flashlight when I buy some more this weekend. I’ll post about my flashlight next week.

Money

Need to have some extra money in the bag as well, but I’m waiting till this weekend to do that.

Conclusion

The single most important thing I did was just do it. Even though it really isn’t finished, it is in my truck and if I get stranded on the side of the road tonight, I’ll be prepared.

The book was not what I expected.

Let me back up a second. As you know I greatly like Neil’s book The Game about the secret underground of Pick Up Artists. Most people say it is about how to pick up women. Really it isn’t. It’s about his experience living in the world of pickup artists and becoming one. But along the way you learn some of the basic structure and technique.

Emergency is to survivalism, what The Game is to pick up.

Despite the subtitle, “This book may save your life”, it is unlikely to…unless it inspires you to go on the same journey Neil did. There isn’t a lot of technique in it, probably less than in The Game. Most of the actual technique is in the comics between chapters. I do want to try using a soda can to unlock a Masterlock.

So if you don’t go into the book expecting a survival manual, is it a fun read?

Mmmm….that’s a tough one, but I think it would be a good read for a lot of people. But some won’t make it through the first section. Let me explain.

Turns out left wing wackos can become just as attracted to survivalism as right wing wackos. Basically the book starts with Neil becoming paranoid as a result of the Bush administration, and ends with a party in a foreign country because Obama was elected.

If America is becoming a totalitarian/oppressive/fascist/socialist country, – both sides of the political fence believe this is happening, just in different ways – then the obvious solution is to move to another country. But when I ask myself where to go I can’t find a good answer.

Neil searches for one and finds it. By applying for citizenship on the island of St Kitts, ultimately becoming a duel citizen.

You can see how many survivalism orient people would find this disturbing, myself included. Abandoning America for another country?

I’m not going to go more down this path because I don’t want you to think I’m negative just because of the Neil’s politics.

So after searching for another country to run to, Neil starts wanting to learn skills to survive here, and to me that was where the book started getting good. He ends up getting lots training in various places in everything from guns, to tracking, wilderness survival, urban evasion, to becoming an EMT.

This is where a survivalist can learn from this book.

Sometimes I think most survivalist start with guns, stockpiles, bugging out and end there. If you got 10,000 rounds of ammo for all 10 of your guns you’re ready to survive the apocalypse. Since Neil doesn’t come from gun culture, he takes a more practical approach we could all learn from.

One thing I want to do is go through the book and make a list of all the skills and training he ended up getting.

In The Game you learn that to some extent pickup is about personal development. A guy has to change and grow in order to become the kind of person who is interesting to women. Neil carries that into survivalism.

He becomes the kind of person who will survive.

That to me is the theme of the book. How he must change in order to become a survivor. And he ultimately learns that you aren’t going to survive on your own. More than that, once you become a survivor, you will become drawn to being a servant. Or to use survivalists favorite metaphor, you become a sheep dog.

If you can get past the politics, and there is a lot to learn about just how controlling our government has become in that section, Emergency is a good book about an interesting journey. Its not a survival manual by any stretch of the imagination, so do go in looking for that.