Urban Defense EDC: The Drop Wallet

 h/t Zero

While this is probably an EDC item in NYFC, a Drop Wallet, AKA "Mugger Wallet", is a handy piece of gear to carry in urban areas, while travelling, or any time you feel the need, and per recent discussions over at Commander Zero's's blog, something not everyone has heard of.

The idea is to have a plausible wallet you can fork over, ideally by dropping or tossing, when getting stuck up for your wallet and other items on your person.

1) Get a decent wallet.

2) Load it up. Some people advocate a few real bills, . Personally, the amount of real money I'm prepared to hand over is $0, but you do you.

You can obtain, for $10 + shipping, a dozen cinematic US bills, totalling $372, 2@ of $1, $5, $10, $20, $50, and $100, all used in motion pictures (and clearly marked as such), from BezosMart. I'd rather do that, and salt it with enough to be convincing.

Looks real. Totally fake. Look closer.

Fake cash only gets you part of the way home though.

3) Lard the card slots up. How?

Grab a mittful of gift cards the next time you pass a rack of same at the store.

Cost: $0. Actual value: $0. Decoy value: Priceless. Make especially sure to get a couple with the VISA and Mastercard logos, and place them prominently up front.

A few higher-end merchant gift cards won't go amiss to pad the section.

4) Some people will tell you to put old picture IDs or driver's licenses in there too.

BAD idea. a) Why give someone a handle on your real identity? b) And BTW, if they have an old address on you, they can cyber-stalk you to your true address now for a little payback, for a few dollars. Why make that easy for them?

Instead, work a little harder. Get any number of fake I.D.s, again from online sellers (I'm talking the ones you can buy and have without doing 5 years in the pen, not teenager fake IDs, which if you buy online, you'll send the money, and never see the money nor the ID ever again.)

Try these instead.

Find a state that works for you. Then rework them with a fake name and address, change the details, and put in an old photo of yourself. Copy that in color and laminate it (FedEx/Kinko's is your friend here). In fact, make 5-10 copies, so you don't have to do all this again after you toss the first wallet. You want to be Fred Flintstone, Kelly Green, or Bob Sledder? Knock yourself out.

5) Throw in some random business cards and miscellaneous crap. 

Need family pictures? They sell those too. Go to any store with photo frames, and find some shots of "your" kids, wife, husband, girl/boy friend, etc. Photocopy to size, cut to fit, and now Bob is literally your uncle.

Carry the fake wallet for a while to break it in, wear and tear it, etc.

When it comes to every day carry, obviously, put it in a different pocket than your actual wallet.

Maybe put the fake in your hip pocket, and hide the real one somewhere else.

When need presents itself, hand it over, drop it, or even toss it, to create distraction, giving you the chance to beat feet, create a little more space between you and Mr. Robber, or misdirect them long enough for more active measures.

Dealer's choice there.

Bonus points:

A) Leave another one in your house, 24/7, especially when you're away/out of town. Ideally, right in front of that hidden 4K color nightvision camera, so you and the cops get a great look at the burglar who lifts it.

B) Put one of the new small GPS tags in it. Not so much to find the bad guy (though if they oblige by taking it all the way home, so much the better), but to give the detectives a great trace of the route the thief took, hopefully past some other people's surveillance cameras (Ring, traffic cams, etc.) on the way to wherever they dump it.

If you want to put OC powder, UV dye, or itching powder on the bills and such, we won't tell.

C) Given the price of cell phones, carrying an old dead one (or better yet, a really cheap crappy burner phone that was never activated, traceable to no one) to fork over, and keeping your actual one more concealed isn't a horrible idea either.

At any rate, you now have options that don't include getting robbed of anything beyond an old wallet, some movie props, and a junk flip phone, and giving any would-be stick-up folks a reason to split with the goods rather than hang around and screw with you, without giving them anything that would lead them back to you, and might lead the po-po to them.

Win-win.

Do what seems best to you.

Burning Desires

h/t Commander Zero's blog

A couple of weeks back, Commander Zero was visiting and revisiting certain redundancies in fire-making implements. I threw in a post-long comment in reply to one of them, and others joined in. Almost all the commentary there is useful, and the perspective is refreshingly wide-ranging without rancor.

One of CZ's takeaways is that while there are about a gajillion ways to make fire when you need it, for bog-simple DUH! factor, it's hard to beat the humble but ubiquitous Bic lighter in your pocket.

But, as with all things, even that simple choice can itself be improved upon.

So in line with our peanut-gallery comments to one post, we did a deep dive on the 'zon for "brass EDC items", and one of the things its algorithms sorted for us was this solid brass gem:

Brass Bic Lighter Sleeve

Yeah, it's 30 bucks. (Bic Lighter not included.) Buy once, cry once.

Solid brass (apparently), which takes the weight of a Bic lighter up modestly, but turns a couple of ounces of crushably fragile space-age plastic body into a much more crushproof T-rex trench lighter. Oh, and looks cool.

So we ordered one. And it arrived t'other day, and is herewith unboxed and suitably loaded.

Notes

In no particular order, about the good, the bad, and the ugly:

1) It's a tight fit. Good, because you don't want to have one half separating from the other, until you really want them to part company. Bad, insofar as after loading ours up, we're pretty sure we'll need a sturdy metal punch, or a pair of needle-nose pliers - maybe both - to get the dead Bic out of its shiny armored shell when the time comes.

We're okay with that.

2) Which explains the little hole at the bottom. Without it, you'd be trying to compress the air trapped at the bottom as you jam your lighter into place, which wouldn't work.

3) The lighter top is still exposed. Good, when you're using it. Not so much at other times.

Very Small Gripes

Things we wish the People's Number One Brass Factory had done:

a) If it was round on the outside, rather than oval, they could have had screw-threaded caps at both ends, to protect the gas switch from accidental depression when not in use, and seal the small air hole at the bottom once it was loaded into place, making the whole thing waterproof AF. A little more brass - and associated weight - for a lot better and more robust design.

b) A small pen/pocket clip on the body wouldn't have been amiss.

c) Alternatively, or in addition, neither would a small lanyard/key ring.

User hacks

1) We'll try sealing up both ends, either by overmolding slide-on end caps for top and bottom out of layered Plasti-Dip, or short pieces of epoxied folded over bicycle inner tubing. We may try both approaches, and see which method (if either) works acceptably, and if either one works better than the other.

2) As is, without any of that, it's the perfect size to fit inside an Altoid-tin-sized brass box (an assortment of which we ordered at the same time). It leaves enough space for tinder balls and whatnot else in that tin for a one-box pocket fire-making kit.

3) We may have a go at threading the air hole at the bottom, and screwing in a removable lanyard loop. If we can find/source such a thing with machine threads, and in brass, along with a suitable matching tap tool.

4) Being brass-bodied, it lends itself as an ad hoc spool center for brass snare wire, and/or  several feet of duct tape, one of the ancillary uses for which is as fire starting material(!).

5) Bonus hack: If, as we believe is the case, the Mini-Bics have the same plan profile as their full-length cousins, we might could fit one into one of these, and have space beneath it for two or more vaseline-soaked cotton ball tinder blobs, wrapped in plastic. When we get a second one of these, we'll try that out and let you know how it goes.

Otherwise, we're impressed enough with this as-is to get several more, and retro-fit Bic lighters in other kits.

You want to turn any plastic Bic lighter into a crush-proof gadget, with a minimal weight penalty? Get this item. WYSIWYG.

Gear - Do It Right

 h/t Zero

Commander Zero brings up the topic of match safes, including this fine example.

But it still needs work.

We respond:

The problem is that the lazy bastards designing these things don't go the full way, and have the wit to place the striker (or a pair of them) in a separate O-ring sealed screw-on compartment at the other end that's NOT where the matches reside, but bean counters are invariably penny-wise and pound foolish when it comes to making gear properly.

Public domain, bitchez:

First guy to take that idea and run with it gets my cash for the product.

BONUS: stick a mirror on the inside of the match end, and mount a decent button compass on the outside of either end, and a built-in shrill whistle at the other one, and go for the grand slam of survival implements. Lanyard loop with a woven paracord necklace or bracelet. What should be mounted on the outside long axis is a small bar of magnesium stock on one side, and another striker for metal edges. Both user-replaceable, like Swiss Army knife toothpicks and tweezers. Make the safes out of both anodized aluminum in a rainbow of colors, and alternatively a solid brass version, for maritime environments, and those things will be passed down for generations, fly of the shelves, and get bought by the metric shit-ton by Uncle Sam's survival equipment cages, gear whores, and Top Tier operators.

Once REI and Bass Pro find out about them, you could retire just on the royalties and live quite comfortably.

DOUBLE BONUS: Make a matching single CR123 light with a pill safe at the end for water purification tabs (perhaps a stackable pair of compartments for a second pill item (anti-malarials/Immodium/whatever*), and a built-in nylon-lined spool for 50' of snare wire (or fishing line, or both) as a matching companion.

Victorinox, Gerber, and Cold Steel should be writing this down verbatim if they had a small clue.

*(Make compartment #2 deep enough to alternatively hold a couple of silver dimes, or 1/10th oz. gold coins. Not included as OEM, obviously, but user-selectable.)

Chances anyone with the means will actually do this are about 1%, but I'll happily be proven wrong by buying them if anyone ever finds a clue and does it.

{Please, don't anyone refer me to the half-assed cheap chinesium plastic Stansport toy, or most of the similar Coghlan's crap. 

That's exactly the $5 cheapskate dreck that pisses me off. Build or find what I'm talking about, the right way, to last, and get back to me. "Good enough", for personal survival, usually isn't. "Buy once, cry once" is.}

Housekeeping

 

Not mine; just for reference.
FTR, mine was worse than this.

Somewhere in my travels, I acquired yet another GI canteen cup to put together as part of an entire Go bag of useful items.

Except this one was rusted as shit. Inside and out.

I bought it at the time, because it was the only GI-style one they had (which was what I wanted), and I knew it was salvageable. Plus the rust knocked a few bucks off the asking price.

I have no idea how some stupid sonofabitch managed to rust up a stainless canteen cup, but the orange patina inside and out was unmistakable. I suspect the miscreant private somehow fornicated it up, and was too lazy to fix it, and too frightened of the obligatory platoon sergeant ass-chewing he had coming, so he palmed it off into the surplus world, until it came to me.

Much like the story of eight Marine privates locked in a room with a sandpile and eight crowbars*, this piece of kit proved that nothing the military issues is idiot-proof, because idiots are so ingenious. (Or maybe his doctor just told him to get more iron in his diet. IDK)

It has sat on my shelf in plain sight for some months, daring me to remedy its condition, until today.

I too am lazy, but only in the "I ain't got time for this noise" version of "I'm not going to sit here for five hours with steel wool, Ajax, and CLP scrubbing like hell until this thing is serviceable."

We are older, and now have tools to do the sweating for us.

We pulled out the Dremel 4000, having also recently acquired an assortment of flat and cup brushes (brass, carbon steel, and stainless) to undertake the task.

After selecting the brass cup brush, and tightening it into place (and wearing eye pro, naturally; if you'd seen how many tiny brass bristles were strewn about afterwards, none too friendly to corneas, you'd understand why) we began the effort.

Ten careful minutes later, after staring at it untouched for several months, we have now a shiny newly rust-free stainless steel canteen cup again.

(Work tip: the cup got hot wherever we were working. The shaft of the cup brush hotter still, and we gave it a little breather halfway through.)

We'll keep an eye on some of the darker spots, lest they return to their former state, but we can now put the cup into the stove, put the canteen in the cup, and slip the steel cooking cover behind it, and fasten the whole to the incomplete Go bag, now including water, a means to boil it, and a way to cook almost anything, anywhere, with sticks of wood or a fuel bar.

The sins of Private Smuckatelli have now been expiated, and the Go bag is the better for it.

*[Revisited an hour later, the privates were intact, but two crowbars were broken in half, two were bent double, two were inseparably fused together, and two were completely missing, even after sifting the sandpile. True story.]

Spiffy Gadgetry

Time was, you could find these everywhere. Now they're like hen's teeth and unicorn antlers. The set, above, set me back fifteen bucks for all three at the 'zon. ($7-8@ if you buy them individually.) They're Chinesium stainless. IDGAF. They work, and they're handy sizes. What's more, you can cook under them and heat or even boil water inside them in a pinch, with a bit of care (i.e. hang them from the rim, so the heat-expanded friction-fit rings don't collapse the endeavor). 2.5, 5, and 8+ oz. And they're handier than a canteen cup or Sierra mug. The only thing they lack is a ring handle, precluding any Doc Holliday cup twirling exhibitions. But the set gives me one apiece for the car, a pack, and a pocket. The smallest one's about the size of a roll of electrical tape. The largest, a hair over 3" across, is a little bit bigger than a hockey puck, and far more useful (the cover even makes a small but useable mini-bowl.) Being steel, they don't travel well through metal detectors, if that's a problem for you. YMMV.

Nobody's invented a substitute for a cup yet, and one that folds down to pocket-size is about as handy as that item can be made.

Useful & Useless Kit

Moron Alert: This is not a Ukraine post. 

When things go sporky anywhere, these lessons will remain important. Especially in any situation where Uncle Sugar isn't flying in pizzas, porn, and beer by the metric fuckton to keep the troops happy. Learn a lesson.

Spring Cleaning

Upsides:
I can see areas of floor I haven't seen in months.
The Cat has the rips, because there is now a runway through one room that used to be piles of piles.
I've got stuff I forgot I had.
Including my ARRL study guides. This year I start working on tickets, I swear.

Downsides:
I'm not 18 any more.
Neither is my back.
I'm running low on Motrin today.
Tomorrow, I'm going to pay for this. Heavily.

Random PPE Notes

In regard to CA's ongoing "15 Fighters"* series at WRSA, this response regarding sundry PPE:

Latex is a fool's errand for gloves.
1) You risk a severe and permanent dermatitis any time you expose yourself to it. No one uses it professionally if they can help it.
2) It starts weakening and breaking down starting the day it's made. After several months, even under best storage conditions, the product is generally worthless. If you bought low-budget shit, a lot shorter timespan than that. Including pinhole gaps, which means you're wearing latex mesh pantyhose, not a fluid barrier, and will find out in the least fun way, when it counts.
3) Nitrile is what you want: it lasts longer, and avoids the latex allergy problems, for minor incidental contact.
4) For those with prior service in the dot mil, no points for knowing that the CBRN overgloves were heavy butyl rubber.

Those are for serious chemical problems, and should be worn inside an oversized sacrificial pair of heavy leather gloves, lest you puncture them while working with anything sharp or high-stress.


N95 masks are a minimum, and will work for TB and ordinary minor exposures like colds and flu.
If anything more serious is about, you want N100/P100 filtration, followed if necessary by a mask rocking a combination acid gas/organic vapor cartridge.

In some environments, the half life of your filter may be measured in minutes, and nothing but a dedicated air SCBA will suffice.
If you aren't going to learn enough to be your own NBC NCO, you're setting yourself up to fail, in a situation where fail=die.
Possibly twitching and jerking in convulsions, or a slow, agonizing debilitation from a hemorrhagic fever.†
You can't half-ass that stuff, unless you have a death wish.

Unless they're factory sealed, military charcoal suits are Airsoft window dressing with little effectiveness. Use one for practice, but know that it provides virtually zero protection for CBRN or BBP.
Tyvek overgarments work for BBP, as well as nuclear fallout protection.
(Radiation and problematic chemical gasses, not so much.)
If you have more money than sense, you can go all the way up to a Level A Encapsulating Suit, but they require testing annually to verify that they're still working properly, and they go for $800-$2K@. And don't include the requisite PAPR or SCBA to breathe, which is another $500-$1K.
They're also bulky, hot, and will overheat you anywhere but above the Arctic Circle in about 30 minutes of average use, or 10 minutes of heavy work.
Like patrolling with just a weapon and LBE.

If fluids and blood-borne pathogens are your worry, wearing a full-face flip down shield, like you should always use for welding or metal grinding,

is a great idea for splash protection, which is exactly why they wear them in trauma work and the OR, especially if power tools are being used to cut things (like bones).
Spurting arterial bleeding or bone fragments in the face (or entering mucous membrane orifices like your mouth or nose) aren't funny, unless they bounce off your full-face deflector screen.
If you have a spare set of eyes in your medical kit, disregard the previous.

Not to mention they come in handy for urban SAR work where debris is a problem, in conjunction with other PPE, like breathing gear.

Oh, and kneepads always move around when you need them most.
Sew permanent pockets for oversized (in length and width) ones inside your trouser legs. You can cut up an old OD military closed-cell mattress pad, or a new extra thick yoga mat from Wally World with a utility knife, and make knee pads that will never be out of place, and provide as much cushion as you need, for generally less than the price of the tacti-cool pads that snag, pinch, cut off circulation, overstretch, shift, and fail just when you need them. You can also glue on jeans material or patches to the front side of your pads for abrasion resistance, and if you're a belt-and-suspenders guy, epoxy a square of velcro loop to your  pants, and Velcro hook to your pad, inside those pad pockets, so when you put it somewhere, it stays there until you take it out.

(If you apply an extra abrasive-resistant layer to your outback play togs, at the points on the legs where your legs push while low-crawling, and on the arms where your arms do the same, you'll triple the life of the garments for a modest expenditure of time, and a slight weight increase. You're not in the 3rd Infantry Regiment on post at the Tomb of the Unknowns. Customize your field gear for utility, not absolute parade-ground uniformity.)

The same fix on the outer leg and inner side of a pistol holster or leg pouch also makes a drop holster stay put, instead of becoming a dick-banging castrating jockstrap when you run.
Hint: Don't use the stickum 3M counts on to keep Velcro patches where you want them.
Use clear Shoe Goo. (About $5/tube@ WallyWorld.)

It will outlast your garments if you press it in with a C-clamp overnight before you use it.
I have constructed entire garments using this, and then five years later, gone back and sewn the seams with a machine. The Shoe Goo was still bonding the fabric like it did on Day One.

And BTW, if you don't have heavy duty sewing tackle (including sail-mending gear), heavy thread in earth tones, buttons, an assortment of brass safety pins, plus some duct tape, Shoe Goo, cyanoacrylate glue, etc. squirreled away somewhere in your LBE/pack in a roughly fist-sized kit, for on-the-spot repairs of clothing and gear, you're doing it wrong.
Just saying.

Read the original post (hell, the entire series) at WRSA, and probably 75% of the comments (i.e. the ones from the non-knuckleheads not stuck on stupid). I didn't address normal work gloves in this response, because others covered it just fine. FWIW, my personal preference are leather Wells-Lamont gloves, by the dozen. YMMV.





*(This is fifteen guys doing, ahem, "community security work", etc. not 15 guys working in the woodshop, the ER, or anything like. But that work may encompass local clean-up, and not just infantry combat after the radioactive acid-rain nuclear apocalypse where Bladerunner meets The Road and The Book Of Eli by way of The Walking Dead.)

†( Nota bene: This is not intended as an Ebola-environment comprehensive load-out. Refer to the relevant WHO and MSF/DWB guidelines [look them up your own damn self] on proper equipment required and suiting up and de-suiting procedures for working in Ebolaville in the Hot Zone. If you don't do that, you're an idiot, soon to be a dead idiot.)

Void where prohibited by law.
May contain peanuts.
Remove shirt before ironing.
Wearing cape does not allow user to fly.

Big Black Cadillacs

WRSA is doing a piece on boots.

"Conan: What boots are best in life?"

Location, location, location!

 Where are you using those boots?
For what?
When in the year?
What's the weather like?

Answer that, first.
Make triple-damned sure you got them in the correct size, and get fitted by someone who knows WTF they're doing, if you can't work it out for yourself.
Assume resupply will be a fond dream of happier days.
Then, buy six pairs. Per person.
Yes, REALLY.
Because in SHTF times, a man with one gun probably knows how to use it, and a man with one pair of boots is going to be barefoot in short order.
You have no idea how fast boots wear out until you blow up a pair.
Let alone your last pair.

Then break each pair in, in rotation, one day at a time.
And replace the laces for all of them with actual multi-line-stranded 550 cord, in the appropriate color.

Boots with the wrong socks are a disaster waiting to happen.
You're buying a walking system, not "a pair of boots".

Socks in layers. Enough to change multiple times per day. (Minimum 3x).
Cotton kills. It also blisters.
Wool is king.
Good wicking synthetics are queen.
And with 6 pairs of boots, you should have about 20 pairs of socks, of any and all types.

A full care, clean, and polish kit.

Both boots and socks need blow-out kits:
Shoe Goo is worth its weight in gold.
Spare 550 lacing (buy bulk reels).
Leather awls and heavy upholstery lacing for repairs.
Sewing kit for socks.

And your boots aren't broken in until your feet are broken in, and your body, especially muscles and tendons from your quads down.

Your blow out kit for feet is called Spenco blister gel pads.

And Moleskin. Not "molefoam".
(Get the industrial-sized 4-yd. tube roll, not the overpriced little pussy squares they sell at Le Boutique Targét and WallyWorld, if you have any ability to do so.)
And small, sharp, precise set of scissors or two to trim the moleskin.
New Skin.
Foot powder or corn starch.

Foot first aid:
 a frickin' foot surgical kit to trim nails, shave calluses, etc.
That'd be the big toenail clippers, a smaller pair, big cuticle scissors, metal nail file, couple of pair of small (5") mosquito hemostat to dig out pieces of ingrown nail or embedded small splinters and foreign bodies, pumice stone, a few straight needles for draining blisters, and Betadine© or generic povidone-iodine to clean and disinfect blisters, ingrown nails, cracks, etc.
A 1" roll of cloth first aid tape to buddy-tape broken or banged up toes to their healthy neighbors.

And yes, even duct tape.
Works on boots.
Works on feet.

Anything else that works for you to treat your feet properly, such as:
Footwash basin
Lotion
Bag balm
Epsom salts
etc.

If your feet, socks, and boots aren't working together, you're screwed.
And if you can't maintain them and care for them, you're going to be.

You can no more get by with "just boots" than you can get by with "just a rifle", without any magazines, sling, optics, cleaning gear, lubricants, spare parts, tool roll, and ammunition.
Systems, not items.

Advanced Class:
How to put a lot of your EDC survival items into your footwear, including hidden or custom pockets.
Things like a button compass.
A razor or other very small blade.
A few fish hooks and line.
Snare wire.
Flint/steel.
Handcuff key or lockpick(s) or shim(s).
Short length of hacksaw blade
A gold or silver coin or two, and/or a couple of greenbacks rolled into a section of drinking straw.
Etc.

I'm not talking about turning your boots into a fireman's turnout coat cargo pocket with a 77-pc. Craftsman tool kit and getting ankle and knee injuries from the weight, but a few, small, nearly weightless items that might save your life is always a great idea.

Basic Training - Fieldcraft: Gear and Levels



1965 iteration. Ask me how I know. And still pretty damn
functional 50+ years later. Read on.                                   

Anybody who studies history, especially during or after military service, learns one immutable fact: there is nothing new under the sun.

The lists and layout of military gear from Caesar's legions to tomorrow have been, and will always be, remarkably similar, even as they differ in the particulars and details.

Don't take my word for it, the UK Telegraph did a remarkable piece covering British soldiers' kits from 1066 to 2016, spanning a paltry 950 years. They're similar because the basic unit of issue for all armies is one soldier, human type, bipedal. We all need the same things: water, food, shelter, clothing and armor for protection, and the tools to both survive afield and wage war on our perceived enemies. All that has changed across the span of millennia is the current technology available to us. And in some cases, it hasn't gotten all that far. There's no infantryman today who would be more poorly served by a Roman field spade from 40 B.C. than by a modern entrenching tool, and a canteen of water is still a canteen of water. And curiously, they have almost infallibly been right around 1 quart capacity in size.

But all that kit can be broken down into components, and summarized under the following categories.

0) Clothing: "So obvious it's before 'first-line' gear", i.e. underwear, shoes, boots, hat, and everthing in between, based on the climactic conditions where you are, and any needs for being anything from camouflaged to merely non-descript.

1) Survival load: "First-line gear", i.e. the stuff you should have on your person 24/7/365, even if your pants are around your ankles answering the call of nature.

2) Fighting load: "Second-line gear", i.e the things you need to move into battle and fight there.

3) Subsistence load: "Third-line gear", i.e. the things you carry on your back to feed, clothe, clean, and shelter yourself, and sleep in far from the creature comforts of normal civilization.

4) Administrative load: "Fourth-line gear", i.e. the things packed, on animals,vehicles, etc. that are nice to have, while not absolutely essential, or to extend the abilities of you beyond levels one through three.

5) Mission-specific load, the things you may need once, but not every day, nor all the time, in order do a given thing.

6) Everything else. Ranging from "this is cool" stuff to the "Gucci gear whore Hall Of Fame" to all the crap you own, and the place you keep it.

A cache (it's pronounced "cash" like "cash money", not "cashay", ever. People who say "cashay" are the same level of illiterate halfwit f**ktards as people who talk about "nucular weapons". You've been put on notice.) may (and should) contain gear from any of the above levels, so is not strictly assigned to any one of them.

What belongs in each of them, for you?
Depends.

No, not these:

I mean, it depends on what you're doing, or envision having to do.
In short, you have to use your head, as well as your back, to select and carry the stuff required, because that changes, and will do so, all the time.

We'll cover First-line gear in a few days, when we get to Survival.
Second line gear can be summarized:

1) Primary weapon.
This may be a modern carbine or fighting rifle. It may be only your CCW piece. Depending on where you live, your CCW piece may be nothing more than OC spray, a bright flashlight, and a Swiss Army Knife/multitool. Think about it, and give due regard to where you may be and what you're doing; don't assume.

2) Carrying apparatus for everything else.
A sturdy belt and multiple pockets, all the way to a full MOLLE vest, etc.
It has to accommodate everything.

3) Water. And food.
The more the merrier. The lunch you're carrying (or, not) may be the only meal you get today.

4) First aid supplies.
May be just a TQ and an IBD. May even just be band aids, tape, a handkerchief, and some Tylenol/Motrin. Should always include any personal/Rx meds, like epi-pens, asthma inhalers, etc. (Duh!) That's for you to figure out. Just remember, in tough times, I'm probably only using what you brought, on you. So, how much are you worth, to yourself?

5) Resupply/logistics for #1, above.
Bullets, maybe. Cleaning kit, as appropriate. Maybe just another OC can, spare batteries for the bright blinding defense light, and a sharpener for your pocketknife/multitool. Work it out.

6) Any other handy weapons or tools you need all the time, at minimum.

If you want to get an idea of how much we're talking about, turn to page 74, i.e page 3-1, Table 3-2, of  FM 21-18 Foot Marches April 2017, and note that for the average soldier in the Army right now, the notional typical fighting load is nearly 70 pounds, and even without the protective vest and SAPI plates, it runs over 56 pounds, before they even put on a pack.
(See if you can cleverly deduce thereby why this is not a game for the weak, the infirm, the elderly, nor women of any kind. But I digress.)

We're going to stop here. If we've just weeded you out, because you can't hack the next steps, you have two choices: either suck it up, PT harder, and get rid of the 50 pound midsection you're already carrying, so you can carry a fighting load;
or
start reading up on John Mosby's (see column right) lessons on the Auxiliary and the Underground, because that's where you've just been de-selected to for any form of productive service.

Cooks and radio operators are every bit as vital in tough times as trigger-pullers, probably more so, frankly, and there's no shame in undertaking those functions. You should still be the fittest gorram cook or radio operator ever seen, unless you're physically incapable, or else you're still a fat douchebag for not even trying.

And you might still follow along, because to do even those jobs, it will help greatly for you to understand the needs of those doing what you cannot. Without you, they won't be doing much either.

Gear Tip: Your Friend Velcro

A decade and more out of the .mil, and finding out to my chagrin that running around pulling security on the southern border for what became several years would require me to gear up and ruck up in an epic grunt flashback, one of the new iterations of weapon carriage I tried was the drop-leg holster.

Ignoring completely the Tactically Cool Tactical Operator Operating Tactically and CDI (Chicks Dig It) factors, there were practical considerations, in that it's much easier to get it down below chest and vest gear rigs and body armor (and yes, with cartels dumping entire magazines into the faces of downed Border Patrol agents nearby, you can damn betcha we wore all that, even for mending fences, when only 10 yards from Mexico), and easier to deal with jumping into and out of vehicles day and night, and still being able to reach and draw the weapon, should it become necessary.

But, like with spawn-of-satan single point slings (don't get me started), the bane of the existence of drop-legs is that sooner or later (sooner if you run, even briefly) they inevitably end up smacking your weapon(s) right into your junk. By malign design.

Ow.

And I've tried them nearly all, so don't bother suggesting Brand X or Tacticool Overpriced Widget Maker Y in comments. They all do it, because anatomy.

This is because no matter if you tighten them to tourniquet levels of adjustment, your leg is a cylinder, and things will go where they will go, usually at the worst time, and in the most uncomfortable way.

The same is true even for unsecured belt holsters. Heavy things gravitate to your middle when you move, because they can. Where they'll gore your junk, eventually. Even if you're Indiana Jones.

My solution was simple: I switched back either to a Bianchi GI issue holster and belt carry, clipped in place nigh-immovably, or used either the old- or new-school versions of GI shoulder holster, and the pistol is where I left it, no matter what I do.

But some people haven't learned their gear yet (which is the bigger take-away lesson, IMHO), and I've seen a couple of folks, even those on duty, and in courses still trying/using the drop-leg. Some of them because of agency policy. With the same painful short-comings. So for those who're still enamored of them, this tip.

Most larger Wal-Marts, and sewing-type craft stores, sell the two items you need: a wide swath of Velcro strap, and Shoe-Goo. Glue a 3-4" long section (or two side-by-side if they're narrow) of the widest hook piece you can obtain (If you find 3"x4" or 4"x6" pieces now because Internet, even better) to the back of your holster. Leave the loop attached, and press it into place at least overnight with bricks, books, weight plates, etc., after stuffing it to its normal dimension with either the (safe) weapon in place, or newspapers/rags stuffed in to approximate the normal profile.

Do the same thing in reverse: Shoe-Goo the loop section (make sure you get this right, or you'll have two Velcro pieces that won't lock together) to the trouser leg(s) you're likely to be wearing when SHTF, in the corresponding location where you want the pistol to stay on the side of your leg, versus digging into your wedding tackle.
Again, press into place, and weight it down with heavy items, and let it set overnight, if not for a full day.

The ambitious can use C-clamps and boards in either or both cases instead of weights.

Then when you wear drop-leg with trousers, it gets stuck where you want it, and stays where you put it, in perpetuity. FTR, I have sewn entire garments and repaired shoes with Shoe-Goo, and in every case, the Shoe-Goo outlasts the garments/shoe you repair with it.

If you do this, the prospects for you someday having children, and not screaming like a girl at an inopportune moment, will respectively increase/decrease, to your great relief.

Tips and Tricks Of The Trade: Prepper Resource For Gear

Having shared this info/idea in a post comment I dropped over on the DTG blog, realized I hadn't shared this one here. Doh. And free Saturday post for me.

Some/many/most of you may have, do have, or will have, various and sundry kits.
Loaded, of course, with various sundries.

A couple of common themes with those are
How do I consolidate all the fussy bits of Kit X? and
How do I keep said fussy bits from falling out and leaving a breadcrumb trail of gear?

The answer, gentle readers, is found at The Container Store (80 brick and mortar US locations, and online for everyone).

Their tubs, tubes, tins, and other bits and bobs are some of the most fantastic collection and selection of problem-solvers available, some of them for problems you didn't know you needed to solve.

For one example: the Double-sided pill box (US$1.99@)

It can be used (Duh!) as a double-sided pill box. For personal meds, or your IFAK pill kit.
But it also works slicker than snot for making an O Sh*t! Kit, keeping the most frequently broken/lost pins, springs and little parts for the AR-15 series of rifle ready to hand.
Or as a mini FAK in itself.
Or for a survival fishing kit.
Or a mini survival kit.
Or a sewing kit.
Or a fire-starting kit.
And on and on.

If it rattles, pack the extra space with cleaning patches, Q-tips, toilet paper (for the obvious, or as tinder), thread/fishing line/dental floss wound onto index cards in plastic bags*, etc. If it ain't so full it's silent, you aren't trying hard enough.

This one is 2 3/8" x 4" x 1 1/8", so whatever you put into it, it fits in just about any pocket.

Then there are these: round food keepers (4 0z., US$1.26@)

That'd be the little empty one at the bottom of the pic.
Why?
Because medical tape rolls get grungy, dried out, and die left exposed to air.
But a standard 1" wide roll of tape fits inside this mini-Tupperware style tub, which keeps it factory fresh, clean, and not sticking to everything else in the kit. Brilliant.
(Bonus: you can find a smaller sealing tub to fit inside the tape roll central spindle, and fill it with sunscreen, Neosporin, etc.)
You can also dip 100% cotton balls into melted petroleum jelly, let cool, wrap in two flat pieces of aluminum foil, and then squash each one flat, and stack a bunch in this tub, and have a ready stack of combination firestarters/kindling/candles stored so it stays ready to light, unmolested, and without oozing Vaseline onto the rest of your kit.

I've used various containers they sell, to resurrect and restock gutted mil-surplus aircraft first aid pouches, with water-/crush-proof item boxes. I've found tubes suitable to keep IV catheter needles from stabbing me in the back while packed into field kits. And still other items just to hold my salt, pepper, and steak rub, as designed.

If one of their retail establishments isn't someplace you've visited, but you could, go.
Take money. Lots of money. They only have another 50,000 or so items to pack, store, carry, or consolidate all the crap you own, and some of them are genius.

If not, go online and browse, but remember to come up for air.
If you can't find something there you need, you're hopeless.
If you have an idea for something you need, and you can't find something close there, you haven't looked hard enough.




*(You should already have known about the little 1"x2", 2"x3", 3"x5", and 4"x6" wide Ziploc-style baggies for holding/consolidating/waterproofing all sorts of things, found at WallyWorld/Michael's Crafts/etc., right? Right??)