Subject: Influenza Vaccinations
The 2010-2011 influenza (flu) season is right around the corner and the Government is recommending all citizens get a flu shot. Seasonal influenza kills an estimated 36,000 people in the United States each year. Flu vaccines are based on predicting which mutants of H1N1, H3N2, H1N2, and influenza B will spread in the next season. Separate vaccines are developed for the Northern and Southern hemispheres in preparation for the yearly migration of these influenzas.
This year, the vaccine in the United States provides protection against the three most concerning types of influenza: influenza A/H1N1 (Swine Flu), influenza A/H3N2 and influenza B.
The Government states that the best way to protect yourself and your family from these viruses is to get immunized against influenza, even though, again, it is based on last years virus. It is also very important to wash your hands frequently, shield your cough or sneeze with a tissue or your elbow, and if you are sick, stay home and remain at home until you have been without a fever for 24 hours.
Pharmacies and physicians have already started offering flu shots. The government makes this available to all employees and in fact in the military this is a mandatory shot. If you have concerns about whether you are eligible for the flu shot this year, due to age or existing physical conditions then please check with your physician.
The key is not to wait until the people around you are coming down with the flu. Get vaccinated early and stay healthy.
Now, having repeated the Party (Government ) Line in the above paragraphs, I have to admit that I do not get Flu shots anymore. I have not had a flu shot since I was in a position where they were mandatory as a "condition of employment". I have not been sick, at all, for almost six years, and during that time I have been exposed to sick people and other disease conditions. My personal view is that an exceptional healthy individual is better off letting his own immune system deal with any virus. However, everyone has to make their own decision. Good luck and hope you make the right decision for you and your family.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Friday, October 1, 2010
Urban Survival Equipment - 5.11 Items and Equipment
5.11 Tactical is currently offering Free Shipping on all orders of only $75 or more. We are big fans of their Tactical Pants and the 5.11 Tactical Duty Uniform (TDU) pants. Although we have camouflage uniforms, clothing in solid colors is less likely to project that "para-military" look if you need to avoid it but still have a pastal or earth type colors that are easy to blend into your terrain, be it an urban, suburban or rural environment.
We evaluated the 5.11 Tactical Pants in a previous post, to review this evaluation click here.
We recently had a opportunity to evaluate the new 5.11 Rush 24 and Rush 72 Backpacks, intended for stays of 24 and 72 hours respectively. Both make nice Survival Bug Out Bags. We are showcasing the Rush 24 here. We prefer smaller bags for Bug Out bags and intend to utilize molle compatible add on pouches to store more Survival Items essential to a Bug Out on the outside. We think the Rush 72 is much more than a 72 hour pack, and really an excellent pack for extended operations of up to 6 or 7 days.
Rush 24 Bag
Description of the Rush 24:
20" H x 12" W x 7" D
Water-resistant 1050-denier nylon
Flexible main storage compartments
Internal dividers
Compression straps
Hydration pocket
Fleece lined eyewear pocket
Sternum straps
Molle-compatible webbing on front and sides
Elastic keeper for strap ends
Name tape and flag holder
YKK® zippers
Three colors; Black, Flat Dark Earth and Tac OD
To shop 5.11 Tactical or to look around their product line, click here:
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Urban Survival Skills - Tactical Movement: Basic Reaction Drills
UrbanSurvivalSkills.com received an Anonymous comment on the Urban Survival - Tactical Movement on Foot post,……”Everyone should understand that the reason for the various formations and tactics is to minimize the possibility of an ambush wiping out the patrol/unit. To translate that; it means if you encounter the enemy and they see you before you see them the first awareness you will have is when they take out your point man or your tail man. The bottom line is there is no safe way to move through territory, woods or any terrain. There are steps you can take to mitigate the danger and other steps you can take to maximize the damage to your enemy but there are no "safe" movements through enemy territory. This means your sister or your brother or your brothers wife might die right in front of you. When the SHTF there is no safe".
UrbanMan Replies: Not only is the reason, for proper tactical formations and interval between patrol group members, to preclude getting a sizeable portion of your group or patrol wiped out in an ambush or chance contact,…. the formation and interval allows for your patrol to rapidly execute contact drills to either fire and maneuver on the threat or to establish a base of fire for other members can disengage or withdrawal.
The next step after your Survival Group becomes decent at executing Patrol formations; using arm and hand signals; crossing danger areas; conducting long term and short stay security halts, would be to develop, rehearse and get really good at contact drills.
Contact drills are the pre-executed maneuver and actions your patrol will take upon contact with a threat or a circumstance. These are typically called “reaction drills for chance contacts”.
Chance contact is defined as un-forewarned contact with the enemy, from any direction, during movement or a short duration halt. Usually specifically moving to make contact or break out from an area, the patrol will probably always attempt to break contact from any chance contact with the enemy, as your goal is survival and not achieving any military objective.
During normal movement (column formation), the greatest possibility of making chance contact with the enemy is walking into an enemy position or moving enemy patrol. One reaction drill is the "peel" method of breaking contact. Upon making contact with the threat the point man will initially hold his position, may not be able to give an arm and hand signal for the threat, then be prepared to immediately fire upon the threat in a design to make the threat hold their position so the patrol can break contact.
If the point man has to shoot, and upon completion of firing (several rounds) at the enemy, the point man will turn and run parallel down the axis of the movement formation, placing the patrol between himself and the threat if possible and not flag the fire of the other patrol or survival group members as he turns, peels and runs.
The point man will move to a location approximately 50 meters to the rear of the tail man and take a knee or assume the prone. This location is the immediate rally point. The second man/women in the patrol will also engage the threat with several rapid rounds just as soon as he/she can safely do so, then turn and peel following the point man. The rest of the patrol will also engage the threat then individually and in turn follow the man in front if him as he turns and peels.
The point man after gaining the immediate rally point will direct incoming patrol personnel to one direction, either his left or right, beginning to achieve a skirmish line. Upon the rear slack and tail man arriving at the immediate rally point, the patrol members will be positioned in a linear formation that is perpendicular to its original route of travel.
The patrol, from this linear position, can be prepared to engage fire and maneuver, bounding back to further disengage from the threat….or move forward to close with the threat or to recover a wounded patrol member.
This same drill can be executed with a chance contact from the rear like if a bandit group is trying to run you to ground.
If you are in a wedge formation, your reaction drill may look like the below picture, where patrol members just move up into a skirmish type line in order to bring all weapons to bear on the threat and be able to maneuver either forwards or backwards as directed.
UrbanMan Replies: Not only is the reason, for proper tactical formations and interval between patrol group members, to preclude getting a sizeable portion of your group or patrol wiped out in an ambush or chance contact,…. the formation and interval allows for your patrol to rapidly execute contact drills to either fire and maneuver on the threat or to establish a base of fire for other members can disengage or withdrawal.
The next step after your Survival Group becomes decent at executing Patrol formations; using arm and hand signals; crossing danger areas; conducting long term and short stay security halts, would be to develop, rehearse and get really good at contact drills.
Contact drills are the pre-executed maneuver and actions your patrol will take upon contact with a threat or a circumstance. These are typically called “reaction drills for chance contacts”.
Chance contact is defined as un-forewarned contact with the enemy, from any direction, during movement or a short duration halt. Usually specifically moving to make contact or break out from an area, the patrol will probably always attempt to break contact from any chance contact with the enemy, as your goal is survival and not achieving any military objective.
During normal movement (column formation), the greatest possibility of making chance contact with the enemy is walking into an enemy position or moving enemy patrol. One reaction drill is the "peel" method of breaking contact. Upon making contact with the threat the point man will initially hold his position, may not be able to give an arm and hand signal for the threat, then be prepared to immediately fire upon the threat in a design to make the threat hold their position so the patrol can break contact.
If the point man has to shoot, and upon completion of firing (several rounds) at the enemy, the point man will turn and run parallel down the axis of the movement formation, placing the patrol between himself and the threat if possible and not flag the fire of the other patrol or survival group members as he turns, peels and runs.
The point man will move to a location approximately 50 meters to the rear of the tail man and take a knee or assume the prone. This location is the immediate rally point. The second man/women in the patrol will also engage the threat with several rapid rounds just as soon as he/she can safely do so, then turn and peel following the point man. The rest of the patrol will also engage the threat then individually and in turn follow the man in front if him as he turns and peels.
The point man after gaining the immediate rally point will direct incoming patrol personnel to one direction, either his left or right, beginning to achieve a skirmish line. Upon the rear slack and tail man arriving at the immediate rally point, the patrol members will be positioned in a linear formation that is perpendicular to its original route of travel.
The patrol, from this linear position, can be prepared to engage fire and maneuver, bounding back to further disengage from the threat….or move forward to close with the threat or to recover a wounded patrol member.
This same drill can be executed with a chance contact from the rear like if a bandit group is trying to run you to ground.
If you are in a wedge formation, your reaction drill may look like the below picture, where patrol members just move up into a skirmish type line in order to bring all weapons to bear on the threat and be able to maneuver either forwards or backwards as directed.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
UrbanSurvivalSkills.com received the following comment/question: "Anonymous said... ....Dear Urban Survival Skills, I was going to make a comment on the firearms training post, but I'll make it a question here. I read and hear the term tactical all the time like tactical firearms and tactical shooting. What does this mean and what do I need to know about this other than going to one of those weapons schools you recommended?
UrbanMan replies: Boy, you mentioned a topic that I have long planned to write on an article on and that is the word "Tactical", an over used and misunderstood term. You see "tactical carbine", "tactical handgun", "tactical knife" over and over.
What "Tactical" means to me is the employment of tactics within a series of skills. If you are on a flat range shooting at a target, even doing some advanced skills like "tactical" (there's that term again) re-loads, shooting at multiple targets or doing failure drills, I suggest that you are NOT being tactical, you are just doing some firearms training, alebit maybe more advanced than some.
If you are shooting and moving to cover, shooting from degraded positions, adding multiple tasks such as communicating on a radio, scanning and checking your six, communicating to and/or directing other members in your survival group to bound, move or to give you supressing fire as you move,......then you are starting to add tactics to shooting and therefore doing some tactical shooting/tactical training.
Determing which cover is best; shooting and moving (3 - 5 second rush) to other cover; low crawling from cover to cover; not getting sucked into cover but using it as a protective obstacle between you and your adversaries; practicing exiting your vehicle and engaging targets; setting up "shooting problems" to solve as you expect to encounter in real life based on your environment; using white light or shooting with night vision goggles; role playing (with no live ammunition) to simulate what goes wrong in one on one and one on many situations....this is stactical training.
When we start to do these things we are getting into the "tactical" world and better preparing ourselves to survive the coming collapse. The Army uses "Training Principles" - my two favorites being "Train you as Fight,....Fight as Your Train", and, "Train Using Realism". If we employ these principles well, then we are so much the better when we come to the point of relying on ourselves for surviving.
UrbanMan replies: Boy, you mentioned a topic that I have long planned to write on an article on and that is the word "Tactical", an over used and misunderstood term. You see "tactical carbine", "tactical handgun", "tactical knife" over and over.
What "Tactical" means to me is the employment of tactics within a series of skills. If you are on a flat range shooting at a target, even doing some advanced skills like "tactical" (there's that term again) re-loads, shooting at multiple targets or doing failure drills, I suggest that you are NOT being tactical, you are just doing some firearms training, alebit maybe more advanced than some.
If you are shooting and moving to cover, shooting from degraded positions, adding multiple tasks such as communicating on a radio, scanning and checking your six, communicating to and/or directing other members in your survival group to bound, move or to give you supressing fire as you move,......then you are starting to add tactics to shooting and therefore doing some tactical shooting/tactical training.
Determing which cover is best; shooting and moving (3 - 5 second rush) to other cover; low crawling from cover to cover; not getting sucked into cover but using it as a protective obstacle between you and your adversaries; practicing exiting your vehicle and engaging targets; setting up "shooting problems" to solve as you expect to encounter in real life based on your environment; using white light or shooting with night vision goggles; role playing (with no live ammunition) to simulate what goes wrong in one on one and one on many situations....this is stactical training.
When we start to do these things we are getting into the "tactical" world and better preparing ourselves to survive the coming collapse. The Army uses "Training Principles" - my two favorites being "Train you as Fight,....Fight as Your Train", and, "Train Using Realism". If we employ these principles well, then we are so much the better when we come to the point of relying on ourselves for surviving.
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