Good Training

 

I have some experience with this topic, and with being right. The proof came this week.

Preserving HIPPA and general confidentiality, suffice it to note that Some Unnamed Agency in SoCal was doing high-speed low-drag range training, during which, despite all good intentions to the contrary, bullet fragments went uprange at a high rate of speed instead of down range. And into people.

Bad ju-ju.

Did training end?

O no it did not! It simply transitioned from Weapons training to Casualty treatment and transportation training.

Bad news? Multiple GSW casualties.

Good news? All, thank a merciful deity, walking wounded, minor injuries, and discharged home same day.

Adopting The Other Ryan's trusty AAR format, we proceed with the particulars.

The Good

Pretty much everything.

Immediate training halt. All weapons safed/secured for patients and medical personnel. Multiple victims, swarmed by multiple TCCC-trained doods, treated and properly field-bandaged within half a minute.

OIC not only knew who/where it was, but made immediate telephone contact with nearest trauma ER, and spoke with on-duty MICN. Given somewhat extended transport time, and relatively minor nature of wounds, all victims transported Code 3 by black and whites to said trauma center, and probably well in excess of the speed of anything but a Lifeflight helicopter (which would have been ridiculous levels of overkill in this instance). All victims seen by MD within less than 30 minutes of initial incident. Which borders on best-case time, as the training range in question is 20+ minutes' travel time away on a good day at normal speed.)

Better still, had it been necessary, agency OIC was prepared to send escort unit to meet EMS and guide them to victims, had their direct contact number on speed dial, and knew the designated Lifeflight/EMS helo LZ, had the injuries been more serious. Quickest route out was well-briefed, and all units and patients arrived at ER in convoy.

The Bad

Not much. Multiple trained medics, but no designated medic per se. Fog of war also led to confusion on number of casualties. One turned out to be two, which turned out to be three. Oops. Adrenaline and small fragments will do that; minor initial wounds are easy to miss when you're young, healthy, and amped up.

Were I consulted, I'd suggest permanent or ad hoc Battle/Training Buddy Checks: everyone is paired up at initial briefing, and once there's an incident, each person checks himself, then his buddy. Designated medic(s) check each other, then triage, assess, and treat all ID'ed as wounded, and report level of injury. That's about the only thing they didn't do that they should have done, or something like.

The Ugly

Nothing. We should all be so lucky. And if you prepare in advance for just this type of thing like their OIC did, you too can be similarly "lucky".

Luck is the residue of diligent preparation.

BLUF:

If you shoot (including hunting*) regularly, at least one entire annual practice session should be a full casualty rehearsal, so that when it's real, you don't cock it up. Because if you do, you'll beat yourself up for years afterwards with coulda/woulda/shouldas, and it's too late to be wise then, and just jacks up your stress, blood pressure, and ulcers.

If you shoot in a group, it should be a group thing. Including updating medical info kept either by the group, or on each individual's person: blood type, last tetanus vax, medical history, allergies, surgeries, meds, doctors, and who to call (or not), and how to do that. And full hands-on practice victim treatment, including packaging for transport/transfer. (Which includes safety and security of all operable weapons - guns, knives, grenades, etc.!! - on both patients and all responders.)

And "MEDICAL" should be one of the briefed contigencies gone over at the beginning of any training/shoot day, even if it's just to say "The plan is the laminated card on top of the group first aid kit; the nearest ERs and EMS numbers are on the back of the same card."

If you shoot solo, you should use it to go through your IFAK/Oh Shit GSW/trauma kit, and update location info, emergency contact and transport/evac plans (P-A-C-E:Primary,Alternate, Contingency, Emergency) for the nearest EMS and ER locations. If you don't have that many, you're doing it wrong.

Train like you fight, so you fight like you trained. "Winging it" is not a plan.

*(That would include leaving a route plan/hike plan with a relative, friend, ranger, or under the visor on your vehicle - or all of the above - in case you go down in BFEgypt, and can't hobble back to the vehicle, so folks will know where to start the search.)

New Link - Badlands Fieldcraft

 h/t WRSA

Heads up: New link added to the Meatspace Training Opportunities gadget over there --->

Badlands Fieldcraft

Evidently located in the Dakota/Montana Badlands, or thereabouts.

Marine AFAICT. Just hit the blogosphere end of April this year.

Good info; great pdf links. (I found three worth grabbing in the first ten minutes. The WRSA-linked night fighting syllabus alone is a literal gold mine of lessons learned and prep tips!)

Check it out. If you can spare the time and ducats, and he's nearby to you, throw a bone his way, and take a meatspace class.

If not, take the time to thank the guy for putting in the links to good study material.

Highly recommended.

EMS Inside Baseball chatter...

Two to four years for this job? Admirable idea, unlikely to work, or happen.

EMS Artifact has a thought or two on requiring paramedics to get years of training instead of the current months.

My thoughts on that:

My hazy (from 30-years ago, when I looked at it) understanding is that paramedic certification is closer to 6 months training full-time, not anything close to a 2-year Associate's degree.
Clinical rotations may almost approach a year total from start to finish, but I doubt it, at least anywhere hereabouts.
(Obviously, individual companies/agencies my have other requirements.)

You might could expand paramedic to the level of LVN training, which is a solid year.

Two years is frankly overkill, on so many levels, and a bachelor's degree, while admirable, is ridiculous to even suggest.
(I'm biased there: I was told twenty-five years ago that in 10 years, all RNs would be BA/BS degrees. Over 25 years later, and I'm still working as many shifts a week as I want with my humble associate's degree, including at the magnet hospitals that require most staff to hold a BSN, and there are only three of those out of about 40, locally. Double Bonus: they all pay less than the hospitals that accept anyone even without a BSN, even with the BSN pay bump. And they can't figure out why they're always short-handed. Hmm. I wonder...)

If you have 2 or 4 years to work for your paramedic degree, which was suddenly required, why on God's green earth wouldn't you either get a nursing degree at either ADN or BSN level, tripling your pay and expanding your work opportunities a thousand-fold, or just gut it out a few more years after a bachelor's, to become a P.A. or M.D.?

Is more training a good idea? Sure. For anyone, from EMT to board-certified neurosurgeon.
Is it necessary for paramedics? Probably not. At least not initially, for entry-level. (What you do as CE is your business, but smarter and more trained is better, certainly.)
Is it cost-effective, or sensible, to turn a 6-month (or 9-month) cert into one that takes a year, or two, or four, just to ante in? Highly unlikely, unless someone else (other than the paramedic) is paying for it, and even then, every year you're in school, you're not working to feed yourself and keep a roof over your head.

And non-governmental agencies (which is most of them outside Megopolis) will go the other way: they'd rather have cheaper, less-qualified workers, and if they have to pay more, they'll just upgrade to LVNs/ RNs/etc., and paramedic will become a dinosaur profession, except for firefighters on the civil payroll.

Exactly like live-in indentured servitude diplomate-nursing has all but disappeared.
(That will also exacerbate the perennial nursing shortage, and/or provide a new pipeline from LVN to RN, LVN being a similarly limited-end job category.)

And as a subtle hint, there's not a lot of crossover between guys who want to put out fires, and guys who'll sit still for an ADN/BSN. They are pretty fundamentally different groups, overall. I like what I do in the ER, but slinging ladders and hosepacks, and chopping cars open, wasn't the sort of thing I was into, then or now. I got my fill of heavy lifting in the Marines, thanks, and if I were in a firehouse, I'd be a captain or higher royalty by now, or retired, as my back and knees remind me daily.

FWIW, the three biggest limits on nurses now is lack of qualified instructors, lack of program seats to train more, and lack of places for them to train.
All of those things cost even more money, by the metric buttload. If you see the J.C.s and state colleges firing their Victim Studies programs to expand their faculty in nursing, EMS, and the pre-reqs for either, or anything else worthwhile, give a holler. Out here, it's hard enough to get them to even teach college-level English and math, and find students who can pass the pre-test to enter the courses, let alone successfully get a degree.

How anyone's going to leap all three of those hurdles by significantly ramping up paramedic training is probably ten more thoughts than anyone inside EMS has thought through, IMHO.

Baby Steps

If you haven't been paying attention (and if you haven't, WTF not??), since last week, "Sam Culper" at Forward Observer has been giving you bite-sized chunks to bulk up on, in order to establish your own intelligence collection and analysis element for anything from a petty local annoyance to a societal meltdown.

You will see this material again, ladies.

BONUS: Whereas for humping a ruck, kicking in doors, and shooting people in the face, gray hair, flat feet, a beer belly, and years of life experience and "what-about-next?" wisdom are generally a detriment, for information collection, analysis, and intelligence production they are a positive boon.

Mission drives Intelligence; Intelligence drives the Fight.

And presenting yourself accurately as someone who can either collect, collate, prioritize and/or analyze multiple sources and disparate types of information, and determine critical gaps that need to be filled with the missing data, precisely assessing their reliability and relevance, and from them make accurate and verifiably logical assessments about what's happening, and what might happen (best case, worst case, middle case, likeliest case), and doing that in real time, is about as valuable to anyone or any group with an IQ above two digits as being able to can food, reload ammunition, or render treatment for traumatic injuries, in anything a community might experience, from a local brushfire to a civil war, and anything in between.

Get thee hence. Read. Learn. Do.

He's dropping rubies on the ground for you. FREE ones.

Four, so far, doubtless with more to follow (besides on-line and in-person training).
And I included his suggestions for gear whores (that would be approximately 99.9% of us), if you want to do this right.

Shopping List
One
Two
Three
Four

Intelligence production doesn't require military experience (though that adds another useful ingredient to your cake), just common sense and logical thought habits.

You can know and be able to find out what's going on; or you can stay "stuck on stupid".

And in unpleasant or spicy times, you will either be the master of intelligence, or its bitch, due to the lack of it. That can be a fatal mistake. Your very last one.

Your call, folks.

Another Gem Out There

This one on ruck march training by JCD over at Mason Dixon Tactical.

Getting from point “A” to point “B” with a heavy load on your back, has been a requirement for everyone from the military and hunters, to hikers and refugees. Understanding how to do this as efficiently as possible, is in and of itself an art form, and you can usually tell who’s been doing it for a while, and definitely, who has not! In the end, you just “Gotta suck it up and do it.” because no one is gonna carry it for you, right?
There have been plenty of good suggestions across the blogosphere on everything from the correct way to pack your gear, to ways to get yourself to the point you want to be at, from a physical fitness standpoint.

RTWT.

We'll get there. At any rate, you'll see this material again.
There's a reason MDT is on the "recommend" list of training over in the top of the right column.

New Link List - Meatspace Training

Right On Top.
Over There. ----------------------->>>.

Those guys should be booked solid, 52 weeks a year, with more students than they can handle, for months in advance.

They're not.

Some of us got some real good training courtesy of our Uncle.

But if you didn't, or you need a refresher, or you'd like to hear about what's what from subject-matter-experts, mostly in a hands-on, face-in-the-weeds sort of way in most cases, those guys, near as I can tell, are what there is. And mostly, they're all that there is, unless you have a friend or acquaintance who can pass on The Knowledge to you.

I suspect more than a small portion of this will be on your upcoming Final Exam.

If and as I find additional links/sites that look worth the recommendation, I'll update that list.
(Starting with adding traditional survival training sites, when I have the time. If you have direct firsthand experience with them or anything worthwhile, add the info in Comments, and I'll investigate further.)

Gear is fun, but something you know how to do lasts as long as your memory, and you only have to buy it once if you learn it right.

Whether you're doing it yourself, or going to one of those folks, you should be training and growing your brain, out in the weeds and fresh air. It's springtime anyways. May as well make good use of it.

But...WHY Is The Rum Gone?

The last post got some wide notice (my thanks for the link-love), and one private query:
Why focus on soft tactics?

Let me explain it thusly:
According to the specialists employed with your tax dollars in how to defend or subvert a given political system, there are some 17 levels of preparation involved before you get to "sporty".
Slitting throats and blowing shit up are at Level 16.

You, and anyone you've ever heard of, are no farther developed than Level 3.
Cogitate on that.

And bear in mind that unlike anthropogenic globull warming, Dunning-Kruger is a real thing.

See below:

Building A Resistance Movement. (This embiggens).

This wisdom is excerpted cheerfully from a little book on doctrinal subversion that many of you have heard of, and some of you have studied, in a hands-on sort of way.
It's known colloquially as The Bible, and officially as FM 3-05.201 Special Forces Unconventional Warfare Operations, April 2003.

You should look it up.
In fact, you should probably download that pdf, print it out, and spend some goodly time dedicated to absorbing the wisdom therein, both for the intellectual exercise, and because there may be a practical exam at some point.

But despite any interest in leveling up, you're not ready for that, I'm not ready for that, nobody you know of is ready for that, and the proof is right there above, before your lying eyes. The fourteen layers of foundation missing between now and then are what everyone who imagines otherwise is missing.

That lack is the sort of thing that gets you nonsense like Bunker Hill, Harper's Ferry, and the First Battle Of Bull Run.

It gets your ass handed to you, wastes a lot of scarce manpower and material (not to mention goodwill), while gaining you ridicule, doubt, and disdain from exactly the people you'll need at Level 5. Recall, please, for the historically impaired, that without France, we'd be celebrating the Queen's Birthday, and not the Fourth Of July, and that without Britain and France's support, the South would be just another Lost Cause. (Oops, too late.)

This is the same reason Maduro and socialismo are still kicking Venezuela's ass; until they get their opposition sh*t in one bag, no one is going to send them the help they need to send the commies packing, in a hanging-from-streetlamps sort of way. Mind you, it should happen, and probably will, but they're going to have to get to that point before anyone will risk the shrieking condemnation for helping them help themselves. Or, they'll just wait until everyone's too weak from lack of food, and eventually people will die, and something better may spring up indigenously - in a generation or two. Or, not. (cf: Norkistan.)

So, a propaganda war is what you're in for (and what you've been in since at least 1929, whether you knew it or not).

Hence the call to finally wake up and smell the coffee. And the covfefe, for that matter.
The beauty is, there's some miniscule chance to affect things, even yet. Not by purely voting at the bastards, certainly,

but every thumb you can put on the scale - and in the Left's eyes, both figuratively and literally, when opportunity presents itself - before things degrade to open conflict is to your advantage. Undermine the hell out of anything you can on the Leftard side, especially while it's easy and cheap, let alone not something that'll get your head in a noose, right? It's helpful, it's a zero-sum (every one of them you convert, or simply demoralize, is one less you have to fight), and hell, it's FUN.

Learn lessons from history: starve the beast. The US Cavalry was purely ancillary with our Indian problem in securing the frontier. The business-end was the hunting out of the buffalo. You could look it up. So if you find the Leftards' buffalo herds, and turn them into rugs and burgers, you'll have a much more harmonious outcome.

By the by, there may never be any Great Cataclysm. Or, it may not happen in your entire lifetime. But how long and how gradual the slide into oblivion is may very well depend on how vigorously you kick them in the teeth as the trolls of collectivism and anarchy try to climb over the walls.

Life thus far hasn't been about shooting anyone in this country, by and large for nearly two centuries. But there have always been one helluva lot of hippies out there. And heaven knows, they aren't going to punch themselves.

Hence the exhortation to get busy.
Be happy in your work.

There Is No Such Thing As Knowing Too Much

Reference this thread at WRSA, based on these two from MDT.

What some folks think of as trivial arcana, whether we're talking military subjects, or any other field of subject matter, is frequently anything but useless, or trivial. Case in point today is the referenced subjects above.

Someone in comments at WRSA thought he didn't have a grasp on clearing landing zones, but that was OK, since he was never going to need it, nor have any friendly helos to need to clear LZs for.

Today's lesson:

Natzsofast there. Don't think two-dimensionally.

While you may not have helos, someone you someday don't like very well, and who has a hard-on for you and your tribe, might.

But a helo without an LZ/DZ is a wasted trip. Read anything about Vietnam from the first battle of Ia Drang in '65  ( We Were Soldiers Once, And Young, etc.) up through the Easter Offensive of '72, and nota bene how things worked for the US when Mister Charles had all the nearby LZs covered with interlocking fields of HMG/AAA fire. (Total US helo losses in Vietnam were nominally 43% - 5,086 birds out of 11,827 deployed there - but actually much higher, because many helos were shot down, salvaged, flew again, shot down again, salvaged again, etc., so that as long as they eventually flew again, they were not counted as destroyed. So we may have lost more total birds than we had on paper in the course of 10+ years of the Southeast Asia War Games.)

Point to all that being that while there's precious little jungle in the States, there's one helluva lot of impenetrable forest, as anyone in the PNW, or who served at Ft.s Bragg, Benning, Knox, etc., knows very well.
And if you can't land birds, drop troops, parachute in supplies, etc., and the only road access is easily blocked/degraded dirt forest service roads, you take a 21st century mechanized military, and turn them into 2d C. B.C. Greek hoplites, marching in on foot, carrying everything on their backs, and forced to evac casualties the same way. {Hint: for the hoplites in question, the Suckage Factor zooms up into the red zone at this point.} Which puts a militia (like raggedy-ass Afghanis, or Vietnamese peasants, for example) back on parity with the .Gov hoplites.

So you might should want to know how much room in square feet they need to get in every helo in

current inventory; how they plan to clear LZs, and where, and where the current LZ/DZs are; as well as the road grid down to goat paths in your AO. And how to deny or degrade them.

Again, not much good in Kansas, but in mountain and forest terrain, which is one helluva big piece of the country, pretty damned useful info to have in your head, and an area notebook.

Make buddy-buddy with the local LifeFlight, wildfire, FD/PD etc. guys.

(Because, for one example, your group is nominally a volunteer wilderness SAR organization. Which coincidentally gives you a reason to have medical supplies and training, feeding and base camp supplies, robust comms, and do helpful wild country exercises, and actually do good, while getting trained, and having a beautiful means and reason for recruiting some hard-assed like-minded folks. Just saying. And you can always swap walking staffs for something black, loud, and semi-automatic, come the day. So now you're not somebody the media's going to tag as racist survivalist Rambo nutjobs. You're the nice quiet local folks who find Suzy Dipshit and Bruce Nancypants from Dumbass City when they go hiking but forget things...like a map, compass, and clue, and then get lost and run out of tofu and soy latte on the backside of Mount Sonofabitch. Now you're little damned heroes.)

There are surveyed and pre-planned LZ/DZs in most limited access areas down to the county level, so they know where they can bring in a wildfire hotshot team, paramedic rescue, SWAT team, etc.

This is also true in urban areas. The FD, PD, and EMS already know they can't drop birds in everywhere, because of wires, towers, and other obstructions, so they have lists and maps of the same pre-surveyed contingency helopad/LZs.

And as we currently live in a relatively open society, such maps are not considered the tactical intel goldmine they would be and become in a time of more existential sportiness.

So there you go: military subjects, Greek hoplites, the Vietnam War, altruism, subterfuge, and John Pinette, all effortlessly rolled into a nice Sunday confection. Have I mentioned that I'm a huge fan of James Burke?

Thus endeth the lesson.

Schoolhouse: Lesson One

Common sense...isn't.

And here's proof, in living color:

"I’m throwing the BULLSHIT flag on you Aesop. No one has to train initially in “ideal conditions”… that just isn’t so nor does it produce a better warrior or whatever you are training for. You train initially and advanced in whatever conditions are present and in fact, in advanced training you intentionally make it increasingly more difficult.
For all this initial training under ideal conditions pablum… you get the participation trophy for last place.
There is always a good reason to train in difficult conditions even initial training, because when presented with the real situation you’ll fall back on your level of training and ultimately that was [the] point.
[Sumdood] is exactly right… and I’ll add “your not doing it right” if you aren’t cold, tired, wet, hungry and under pressure. And the “under pressure” is the most important part."

Well played.
I recant.
No one should ever initially learn how to do something under ideal conditions.
Everything should initially and always be done in the rain, at night, during winter, while cold, wet, hungry, tired, and in mud.

This is why all those artillery simulators are used to teach kids the alphabet. It's hard to sing your ABCs with the constant explosions, but the stress, plus having 5-year olds pissing themselves is how you gotta train them if they're ever going to write paragraphs. Nothing less works.
It's why they only teach driving in traffic circles in Tijuana, during cartel gunfights.
And why medical students learn anatomy during live IED explosions.
And why basic recruits are taught primary weapons disassembly on their faces in the mud, at night, with live machinegun tracers snapping over their heads. After undergoing BUDS Hell Week, to weed out the pussies.
And why EOD techs train on live, ticking bombs on Day One. In shopping malls, at Christmas.
And why fighter pilots are initially trained in current-generation front-line combat aircraft with instructors shooting live bullets at them during high-speed 1 vs. Multiple-enemy high-G engagements, just like always.
Only total candy-ass losers do it differently.
It must be true, I read it on the Internet.

Oh, wait,...none of that happens.
I repeat, NONE OF THAT EVER HAPPENS.

In fact, exactly as I stated not once, but twice, on the offending thread, you, me, and everyone you've ever known, read about, or heard of, was trained under the most ideal conditions initially, while well-rested, fed, and in bright, well-lit classrooms and lecture halls, SO THEY'LL HAVE SOME IDEA WTF THEY'RE DOING LATER when they increase stress and realism, let alone under actual real-world conditions.

Like has been done for thousands of years of recorded history, for everything from learning your letters to defusing bombs to flying jets.

Anyone who carps about that being soft is a functional moron when it comes to instruction, and a Wannabee Hardass with an insecurity complex about their own bona fides, whether in teaching, training, or anything involving the more martial arts.

Observe a brief lesson:

So, class, did a modicum of stress make the pupil above perform better, or worse?

No screaming eagle shit, Cochise. It made him far worse, in fact, barely functional at all.
And why?
Because he wasn't trained properly in the first place, under no-stress conditions.

Hence the admonition in the film "Train them properly, Major."

And the hoary but balls-on-accurate mantra: "Crawl, Walk, Run."
Long before you ever run under really shitty conditions with simulated (let alone life-and-death real) stress levels introduced.

Anyone who can't grasp this without a map and being led by the nose is too stupid to be teaching anyone anything (and probably not bright enough to learn the initial lesson themselves). It doubtless goes without saying that the number of people they've actually taught to do anything is probably a whole number less than 1, including themselves. If somehow anyone near them learned anything more complicated than shoe-tying, it will invariably be due to the innate intelligence of people to overcome the failings of their instructors, in much the same way that some public school graduates in this country can nonetheless read, write, and do sums. That's not a model to emulate.

So let's try that opening salvo again, this time with the brightness knob turned up to an IQ of 100, which is textbook average, instead of a Neanderthal level of 60:

"Well said, Aesop. Everyone has to train initially in “ideal conditions”, so you can produce a better warrior or whatever you are training for. You train initially slowly, simply, and with minimal interference, then in advanced training you intentionally make it increasingly more difficult by steady progression.For all this initial training under ideal conditions is what produces the repetition, muscle memory, and what have you so that when shit gets real, you don't get the participation trophy for last place.
There is no good reason to train in difficult conditions in initial training, because when presented with the real situation you’ll have been taught under increasingly realistic conditions such that falling back on your level of training means you'll still succeed, and ultimately the point is to be able to do it in real-world worst conditions.
You're exactly right… and I’ll add “you're not doing it right” if you're trying to do it from the get-go while cold, tired, wet, hungry and under pressure. That's max stupid. And the “under pressure” training is the last part you add, and only when you can do things right every way short of that. The way to Carnegie Hall is practice, practice, practice. No one plays Mozart and Beethoven until looooong after they mastered Chopsticks."

Class dismissed.

(And you, Stinky: pick up your bullshit flag, and use it to cork your piehole until you can flag down a clue. Real life grades much harder than I do. Just saying.)