When disaster strikes having your bug out bag ready at a moments notice will ensure your safety and security in the hard days ahead – right?
The answer to this is not as simple as we think. Bug Out Bags are just one type of Go Bag and may not be ideal in all situations. It’s not just about having a good bag with reliable gear. It is about having the right bag and gear for the situation you are about to face!
A great wilderness bag may have little application in an urban setting. A fully stocked bug out bag may slow our movement when seconds matter. Choosing the appropriate bag and gear for the unique emergency you are facing is essential to improving your survival odds.
We know it can be difficult to plan for the unknown – that is why RECOIL OFFGRID has partnered with ARC to give you the tools and knowledge you need to get your kit dialed in.
Combining ARC’s expertise with the latest technological innovations has led to the creation of a powerful tool that will help you build the ideal Bug Out Bag, WUSH Bag, INCH Bag, or Get Home Bag for the emergency situations you are likely to face in the area you are living in or operating in.
This tool goes beyond providing a generic packing list – it takes emergency type, expected duration, climate, threat level, speed of egress, and much more into account while putting together your ideal kit packing list.
Your Custom Go Bag List is Just the Beginning
Having an ideal Go Bag for your unique needs is valuable, but having the knowledge and skill to use the tools in your Go Bag in a real emergency will give you the edge you need to not just survive but thrive!
RECOIL OFFGRID has curated topic specific content to provide you with recommendations on gear, teach you vital survival skills, provide advice to enhance your mindset, and offer guidance to keep in you in peak physical condition.
Expert Advice to Trust Your Life With
Every aspect of this program has been created by industry experts with the intention of removing gimmicks and fluff to provide sound recommendations based on real world experience.
American Reconstruction Concepts was founded by Michael Caughran a U.S. Air Force SERE Instructor that has survived in the world’s harshest environments and hostile locations. Today American Reconstruction Concepts trains civilians, law enforcement organizations, and military professionals the art and science survival, evasion, resistance, and evasion.
The RECOIL OFFGRID team has a diverse range of skills deriving from military experience, wilderness and urban survival expertise, firearms instruction, and more. OFFGRID’s rigorous standards for gear testing and article content ensure the readers are getting the best in equipment recommendations and up-to-date survival knowledge in each article.
Grab Your Bag, It’s Go Time!
Are you ready to take the first step to becoming more prepared to handle the uncertainty of a chaotic world? Click the links below to learn more about different types of Go Bags utilize ARC’s free tool to build your ideal Go Bag. Remember, one bag can’t handle every situation. Use ARC’s Go Bag building tool to help you put together Go Bag kits for different situations!
Familiarize yourself with different bag types, learn more on how to properly utilize your go bag resources and see our recommendations for bags and the gear that goes into them!
Knives are among our oldest and frequently used tools. Not a day goes by that we don’t use one. Most of the knives we use have very specific purposes: chef knives, paring knives, butter knives, and utility knives dominate our daily life. Bushcraft knives, hunting knives, and field knives aid us outdoors. Some professionals utilize tactical and combat knives on a regular basis. With a wide range of design and functionality, most knives are designed for very specific purposes, but some are designed to perform a wide array of tasks and do it well. Custom knife maker Todd Hunt’s M18 is one of those knives.
The M18 is great single knife option for any wilderness kit.
Build Quality
The M18’s blade style is not something you commonly see. It bears some similarities to the Tracker design made famous by Tom Brown — though the M18 is far larger and packs several design elements not found on Tracker designs. The M18 is a monster of a blade coming in at an overall length of 16 inches with just over a 10-inch blade. Made from ¼-thick 01 tools steel, the M18 is built to take on every hard-use task you can throw at it. The blade itself has a forced patina, which will help reduce corrosion.
The M18 is available in both semi-custom and full-custom versions. The semi-custom version seen in this article has durable Micarta handle scales that provide excellent grip even when wet and can withstand the elements, extended sun exposure, and is resistant to most chemicals. Custom versions of the M18 often offer exotic wood handles that really make the M18 stand out.
The handle design itself was inspired by Ethan Becker’s KA-BAR, allowing for a comfortable full hand grip. There is enough room on the handle to choke up when doing detailed work or slide back when chopping. The blade guard is pronounced to prevent your hand from coming near the blade.
Sheaths for the M18 vary. This version has a thick leather belt sheath, while others may come with Kydex options. While the leather belt sheath is not designed for a snug fit, it provides a smooth easy draw that will keep the blade in place unless it’s held upside down. The M18 carries surprisingly comfortably on your belt despite its size and fits great in any midsized or large pack.
The M18’s thick blade stock combined with durable O1 steel ensures it can handle the most rigorous tasks.
Design Features
The M18 is more than a knife; it is a bladed multi-tool that is built for the serious outdoors craftsman, taking on the role of several traditional woodworking tools.
The size and weight make the M18 an ideal chopper and wood splitter, replacing the need to carry a stand-alone hatchet.
At nearly 2 pounds, the M18 is more than capable to felling sapling and small trees.
The curved portion toward the rear of the blade allows the M18 to be used as a drawknife to shave, shape, and carve wood.
The thick blade stock allows for heavy-duty wood batoning without concern of damaging the blade.
Despite the M18’s large size, it performs well in detailed work, and the front sharpened area makes a great chisel. Beyond woodworking, the M18 fills in several other outdoor knife and tool roles.
The cleaver-style blade makes the M18 an excellent option for camp meal prep or chopping large pieces of meat.
The rear tang of the blade has a textured strike face that can be used for hammering and other blunt striking tasks.
The thick blade stock and tough 01 steel allows for using the M18 as a pry tool.
The wide front edge can be used for digging tasks.
With several pinch points and jimping along the spine, detailed work in game processing is possible.
Final Thoughts
The M18 is a serious tool with a ton of versatility. If you need to head to the woods and plan on building a serious camp from nothing but what you would find in nature, the M18 is the tool you want to bring with you. Beyond its woodworking prowess, the M18 packs plenty of usable features to make it an excellent general camp knife and outdoor working tool.
The M18 is best suited for an experienced woodworker, bushcrafter, or outdoorsperson — but even if you don’t fall into one of these categories, you may want to be after a few minutes of using this beast of a knife.
Trinity is where it all started. At 5:29 a.m. on July 16, 1945, scientists of the Manhattan Project detonated the world’s first nuclear device atop a steel tower here, in the desolate basin the Spanish called the Jornada del Muerto, the “Journey of the Dead Man.” The blast vaporized the tower and fused the desert sand into a faintly radioactive green glass that came to be called trinitite, traces of which can still be seen at ground zero.
Today, a modest lava-rock obelisk marks the exact detonation point, reached by a quarter-mile walk, while a shuttle carries visitors two miles to the restored McDonald Ranch House, where the plutonium core was assembled. Ringed by the Oscura Mountains and miles of empty high desert, it is a place of enormous skies and sobering quiet, the birthplace of the atomic age preserved in open wilderness.
A lava-rock obelisk marks ground zero, where scientists detonated the world’s first nuclear device at 5:29 a.m. on July 16, 1945.
Survival Readiness
Trinity is far more accessible than a Pacific atoll, but it is still remote high desert and deserves respect. The site sits at altitude on an active military range with no shade and no reliable services nearby, so bring sun protection, layers, and plenty of water. The desert can be hot by midday and cold and windy in the early morning.
Radiation at ground zero is low, roughly 10 times background for a short visit, and the Army advises against pocketing trinitite, which is both mildly radioactive and illegal to remove. Cell service is unreliable across the basin, so don’t depend on it.
Two miles from ground zero, the restored McDonald Ranch House is where technicians assembled the bomb’s plutonium core the night before the test.
Getting There
Trinity opens to the public only twice a year, on the first Saturday of April and the third Saturday of October (October 17 in 2026), with no fee and no advance registration for the standard open house. All visitors enter through the Stallion Gate off U.S. Highway 380. From the west, exit I-25 at mile marker 139 near San Antonio, New Mexico, and head 12 miles east; from the east, take U.S. 380 west about 53 miles from Carrizozo.
A government-issued photo ID is required for everyone 18 and over, along with vehicle registration and proof of insurance. Crucially, do not trust GPS out here. It routinely misdirects drivers, so follow the posted directions and fill your tank in Socorro, Carrizozo, or Truth or Consequences before you go.
Open-house crowds tour the McDonald Ranch House, preserved much as it stood in the summer of 1945.
Local Perks
The journey pairs naturally with some of New Mexico’s best high-desert country. Nearby White Sands National Park offers surreal gypsum dunes worth a day of their own, while the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge draws huge flocks of sandhill cranes and snow geese in the cooler months. The towns of Socorro and San Antonio serve up classic New Mexican green-chile cooking, and the White Sands Missile Range Museum and missile park add depth to the history. For travelers chasing the
There’s a certain value in gear that simply works with no learning curve, no overthinking, just a straightforward solution to a common problem. The Plano GoNow 30L Camp Kit fits squarely into that category. Designed as an all-in-one camp kitchen and organization system, it’s built for those trips where convenience matters, but you still want a setup that feels thought out rather than thrown together. At its core, the GoNow is about efficiency. The 30-liter capacity provides enough space to consolidate essential cooking and camp items without becoming bulky or difficult to manage. Instead of digging through multiple bins and bags, everything goes into one organized system. Plano’s reputation for durable storage is evident here, with a rugged exterior that holds up well to the bumps and scrapes that come with vehicle-supported travel. It’s clearly intended for car camping, overlanding, or basecamp-style setups where reliability and accessibility take precedence over shaving weight.
What stands out most is the integrated approach. The kit typically includes core camp kitchen components such as cookware, utensils, and food-prep essentials neatly organized within the container. This not only streamlines packing but also reduces the chances of forgetting critical items. The interior layout keeps gear secure and easy to access, allowing you to set up and break down camp with minimal effort.
For those who value repeatable systems, this kind of organization goes a long way toward making trips smoother and more enjoyable. In the field, the GoNow shines in its simplicity. Setup is quick, and the structured storage means you’re not wasting time searching for the right tool when it’s time to cook. The compact footprint also makes it easy to stow in the back of a truck or SUV, earning its space without demanding special consideration. It’s not designed for ultralight travel, and that’s entirely the point. This is gear meant to enhance comfort and efficiency when mobility is supported by a vehicle.
If there’s a trade-off, it’s that preconfigured kits may include items you wouldn’t have selected individually. However, for many users, the convenience of a ready-to-go system outweighs that consideration, especially for quick trips or those just beginning to refine their camp setup.
The Plano GoNow 30L Camp Kit isn’t reinventing the camp kitchen. It’s about simplifying it. For anyone looking to streamline their gear and establish a dependable, repeatable system, it’s a practical addition that earns its place the moment dinner rolls around.
Nuclear War, a Last Stand in the Woods, and the Rifle a Son Inherits
Helmet, pack, and everything his father taught him.
My name is Johnny Williams. I’m 13.
Most of the time when I was with my dad, I was learning something. Being in the woods, how to work with people, how to be a better teammate. Sometimes it was football. Sometimes it was shooting. Sometimes it was just paying attention.
On the day it happened, my mom and my two older brothers had gone to see my grandparents on the other side of the state. It was just me and Dad. We were out cleaning up his shop. He wanted to turn it into an office and a place for us to hang out.
We were halfway through cleaning when it happened. A nuclear weapon detonated in Chicago. Our phones were getting emergency alerts. Then, the sirens started.
Dad didn’t say much. He just moved. He grabbed a helmet and a gas mask and threw them to me. “Put it on. Now.” I did it without asking questions. I could tell by the way he was moving that this was very serious, and we might be in trouble here. I’d never seen him like that before. We ran for the house. He told me to go straight to the basement.
We stayed in the basement for about a week. No word from my mom and brothers had us both really worried. We had water, food, board games, sleeping bags, everything we’d need if we had to stay down there for a while. Dad said that he’d not planned for the two weeks required to let the dangers of nuclear fallout settle. He had food for plenty more time hunkering down, but not water. We were rationing water as best we could. Water is more essential than food is and it takes a lot of room to store because you can’t compress it like you can food.
We’ve had tornadoes in our area every year for a long time, so we always had the basement prepared to be able to stay down there for a few days. On the eighth night we decided to head out to find more water, see what happened, and check on our neighbors. He grabbed a small bag with his dosimeter, night vision, thermal, radios, and extra batteries. He always kept it packed a certain way. Said it would protect everything from electrical damage. I never really understood how it worked. I just knew it mattered. He checked the dosimeter and said we didn’t have to wear masks outside. It was the first time all day I knew he was relieved. I couldn’t see him well in the dark, but I could tell from the sound of his voice. The night vision turned on.
The inheritance: an FDE Sons of Liberty M4 L89 chambered in 6mm Max, wearing a Burris XTR PS up top and a SilencerCo Scythe-Ti out front.
He picked up his rifle. It was my favorite one he owned. An FDE Sons of Liberty M4 L89 with a scope, suppressor, and sling. This was a special rifle for him. It’s chambered in 6mm Max. He talked a lot about how it was like the 12-gauge of AR-15 rifles. It will shoot bullet weights from the 50s up past 100 grains, out past 1,000 yards, and flatter than his .308. I always thought it looked cool. He put on his belt with his pistol like it was just another normal thing. I told him I wanted to go with him and that I didn’t want to be alone. Surprisingly enough, he didn’t tell me to stay here.
Dad didn’t say much after we left the house. He never did when he was thinking. The neighborhood looked different than it had just a week before. Some houses were dark. Others had candles glowing through the windows. Cars were parked in strange places, some with doors hanging open. Garbage cans had been tipped over. Somebody had ransacked the house on the corner. The front windows were gone, and a bunch of stuff was pulled into the yard. Nobody was outside. Dad said that wasn’t a good sign. “The good people stay hidden after dark,” he whispered.
“What about the bad ones?” I asked.
“They come looking.”
That was the last real conversation we had.
We checked two houses. The Underwoods were gone. Mrs. Cypher answered the door carrying a shotgun. I had known her my whole life. She looked 20 years older than she had a week before. She recognized Dad and relaxed just enough to lower the barrel.
“You shouldn’t be out,” Mrs. Cypher scolded.
Dad replied, “We’re checking on people.”
She looked at me and said, “Take care of your boy.” Dad nodded once, and we kept moving.
The “Iron Man optic.” Burris’ XTR PS floats a heads-up display inside the glass. Bubble level, angle compensation, and dialed range are in the same window as the target.
Instead of walking down the road, Dad cut behind a row of houses and into a strip of woods that connected several neighborhoods. We’d walked these trails for years looking for deer sheds and turkey feathers. I knew every bend.
Dad slowed. Then, he stopped. I almost bumped into him. Without looking back, he raised his fist next to his head. I stopped immediately.
His head turned slowly from left to right. He wasn’t looking at anything. He was listening. After almost a minute, he quietly said, “Something’s wrong.” I looked around and didn’t see anybody. He slowly reached back and touched my shoulder and said, “When I move, you stay right behind me.” I nodded. He took three more steps. A rifle cracked. The bullet smacked into a tree 20 yards ahead. “STOP!” cried a voice. Another called out from a different direction. “DROP YOUR WEAPONS!” Yet another, “HANDS UP!”
Dad didn’t even hesitate. He shoved me behind a big oak and told me to stay down. Another shot snapped over our heads. Dad looked once into the woods, then back toward the neighborhood.
I watched something change in his face. He understood. This wasn’t just one or two men. They’d planned this. There wasn’t a safe way out. He leaned down close enough that only I could hear him, “Listen to me.”
I looked at him.
“When I leave, you stay here.”
“No!” I cried.
“Johnny.”
Desperation filled my voice, “I can help!”
He grabbed the front of my jacket.
“No!” I pleaded.
His voice wasn’t loud. It was the calmest I’d ever heard him, “I need you to do exactly what I taught you.”
I couldn’t answer.
He squeezed my shoulder, “If you hear shooting, you stay here.”
“I don’t want to,” I said sadly.
“I know … if I don’t come back …,” He stopped himself. Then smiled just a little. “You already know what to do.”
No extra weight, nothing bolted on that hasn’t earned the ride, the L89 stayed lean on purpose.
Before I could say anything else, he pushed me down behind the log. Then, he stood up and ran. Not away from the shooting. Toward it. The first man stepped out from behind a shed. Dad fired once. The man disappeared. Another muzzle flash lit up a second-story window. Dad never stopped moving. He crossed 20 yards before another shot came from somewhere deeper in the neighborhood. Then another. Then another. Three directions. Maybe four. The woods exploded with noise. Dad kept moving deeper between the trees.
The voices followed him. “There!” shouted a man’s voice. “He’s running!” came the reply. “Go!”
Every one of them chased him. I stayed where I was. Every second felt wrong. Everything inside me wanted to run after him. Instead, I counted. One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Just like he’d taught me when we hunted. When you’re scared, slow your breathing. Think. Don’t move because you’re afraid. Move because it’s the right time. The shooting lasted less than a minute. It felt like an hour.
Then … nothing. No voices. No gunfire. Only the wind. I waited. Five minutes. Maybe 10. I don’t know. Finally, I stood. The woods looked different now. Fresh branches covered the ground. Leaves had been torn from saplings by bullets. I found the first body lying beside a fallen tree. His rifle was still underneath him. Twenty yards farther was another. He’d never even gotten his magazine seated all the way. There was blood leading farther into the woods. Someone had survived. I kept following the broken branches. Then, I saw Dad.
He was sitting against a big maple tree. His rifle resting next to him. His pistol was at slide lock in his left hand. He looked like he was waiting for me. When I got close, I knew. I didn’t say anything. I just stood there.
The woods where he’d taught me to shoot, to track, where he’d taught me how to build a fire in the rain. This was where he made his last stand. Not because he wanted to die here. Because he knew they would follow him. And because every step he took deeper into those trees was one more step farther away from me. Even then, he was still teaching me how to survive.
I waited for him to move. He didn’t. I don’t know how long I stood there. It felt like a long time. Eventually, I knelt down. I didn’t touch him right away. I picked up his rifle first. It was heavier than I remembered. I checked the way he showed me. Made sure it was loaded. Made sure it worked. My hands were shaking, but I still did it right. Then, I just held onto it for a minute. I didn’t cry. I thought I would, but I didn’t. I just felt … empty. Dad always said tools don’t matter if you don’t know how to use them. Standing there, holding his rifle, I realized something else. Sometimes knowing how to use it is the easy part.
I stayed there longer than I should have. I didn’t want to leave him, but I knew I couldn’t stay.
Rifle at his side, pistol run to slide lock. The last stand was never about winning, it was about distance.
The rifle was one of his go-to setups. He loved this rifle because it was so versatile. Dad put suppressors on almost everything. He had a SilencerCo Scythe-Ti dedicated to the 6mm Max. He didn’t like swapping cans around to different guns. The optic was a Burris XTR PS. He called it his Iron Man optic. The scope had a heads-up display inside that showed a bubble level, an angle compensator, and the distance you dialed on the elevation knob. I know it did more, but I never got that far with it. His favorite sling was his Orion Design Group R.A.D. Slings are always somehow in the way. Adjustability and the speed of the R.A.D. were what made it my dad’s favorite. He kept it simple on purpose. No extra weight. Nothing hanging off it that didn’t need to be there.
He always said if you’re going to rely on something, you need to know how it works. Not just when everything’s perfect, but how it works when you’re tired, cold, and thinking about something else and especially when you’re scared. This one wasn’t complicated. I’d shot hundreds of rounds through this rifle and probably a couple thousand through his other ARs combined.
I remember him telling me once that a rifle like this isn’t about power. It’s about consistency. Putting rounds where they need to go. Every time. No guessing. This wasn’t just something he carried. This was something he trusted. And now it was mine. I didn’t stay there much longer. I knew I should have. I knew I was supposed to. But I couldn’t. Dad wouldn’t have wanted that. I looked back at him one more time before I turned away. I kept expecting to hear his voice. Telling me to take my time, to be careful.
But there was nothing. Just the wind.
Trails Johnny knew every bend of. Familiar ground isn’t the same as safe ground.
I made it back to the house and shut the door behind me. Everything felt different. The house didn’t feel like home anymore. It felt like a place I needed to leave. I went back down to the basement and sat for a while. I thought about my mom. My brothers. I tried to convince myself they were OK. That they’d come back. But deep down, I knew. If Dad didn’t make it back, they probably weren’t going to either. I didn’t cry. I wanted to. I just … couldn’t. It felt like there wasn’t anything left to come out. After a while, I stood up. I checked what we had left: water, food, batteries. I went through everything the way he showed me. Slow. One thing at a time. No rushing.
Before I left, I took one last look around. This place used to feel safe. Now it just felt small. I slung the rifle over my shoulder and adjusted it the way he taught me. Checked the mask. Checked my pockets. Everything had a place. Everything mattered now. I opened the door and stepped outside. I didn’t look back this time.
There’s a certain energy in a room full of people who’ve decided not to get caught off guard. I felt it the second I walked into The Hive, Sneakreaper Industries’ new San Jacinto headquarters, on opening day.
On Saturday, August 22, Sneakreaper Industries opened the doors of its new San Jacinto headquarters, and I drove out to see what Ed Calderon and his crew had put together. This isn’t a store, an it isn’t a gym or a studio either. It’s a gathering point for people who take self-reliance seriously, and it sits within easy reach of the millions of Southern Californians who’ve been looking for exactly this kind of place.
The store has everything you need to arm yourself and represent Sneakreaper Industries.
The concept behind the name is simple, and objectively great. Members of The Hive go out into the world like bees gathering pollen, collecting knowledge, skills, and hard-won wisdom, then bring it all back for the good of the collective. In a world that gets more chaotic by the month, that pooled experience is what raises everyone’s odds. You learn something. You carry it home. You share it, and the whole hive gets stronger.
Patches galore for sale at the merch store. And like snowflakes, no two on this wall are the same.
What Opening Day Looked Like
The grand opening ran two days, and the first was built for the public. The parking lot was ringed with like-minded vendors, OFFGRID among them, each set up under canopies with gear, tools, and know-how to share. Tacos Clandestino kept everybody fed. An ice cream cart handled the August heat, and Ed himself worked the crowd all day, ready to talk shop with anyone who walked up. The whole thing felt like a block party thrown by people who happen to be very good at keeping their heads when things go sideways.
Birds of a feather flock together, and everyone at The Hive vibes in the best way.
The vendors were there for more than a booth. Instead of paying a fee, each one donated an item, gift certificate, or service to a charity raffle, and the proceeds went to a chosen cause. That tells you something about the crowd this place pulls.
Even the vendors had a chance to train! Brandon Conde (left) of Conde Armory hones his Libre Knife Fighting skills against Jon Bahlatzis (right) of Kopis Designs. With beards this epic, it’s impossible to tell who would win in a real fight!
Walk inside and you find three things under one roof. A Sneakreaper merch store, a podcast recording studio, and a sparring gym. It’s a headquarters in the real sense, a place to buy the gear, tell the stories, and put in the reps.
The grand opening of The Hive was packed, and some participants had to train off of the sparring mats and on the store floor space.
Training is the Point
Good tacos and cool merch get you through the door. What keeps you coming back is the instruction. Ed’s rolling out his signature lineup, improvised weapons, Libre knife fighting, counter-custody and escapology, plus a stack of other courses built to give ordinary people real street smarts and genuine capability. If you know Ed Calderon’s work through Ed’s Manifesto or the Libre Fighting System, you already know the flavor. Grounded. Unglamorous. Relentlessly practical. The bare-bones approach is the entire philosophy.
Training kicked off with a primer to Libre Knife Fighting taught by retired World Champion and UFC veteran, Dave Velasquez. You can also train with Dave in San Jose, California at the Dark Horse Gym.
The energy carried into a second day. On Sunday, The Hive hosted a free Libre and combatives training event with several instructors sharing the mat, burgers and hot dogs off the grill at lunch, and hours of hands-on work and networking for anyone who stuck around. That’s the model in miniature. Show up, train, connect, take it home.
Training wasn’t just for dudes with glorious beards, men and women of all ages were present and having a great time.
How to Get In
The Hive is open now, and classes are getting scheduled. If any of this is sounding intriguing to you, go see the place in person. The headquarters sits at:
1073 Investor Pl San Jacinto, CA 92582
And the store, gym, and studio are all worth the walk-through. From there, dig into the class schedule, because Ed’s lineup is where the real value lives. Find a course, get on the mat, and start building the kind of capability you can’t buy off a shelf.
For everything else, head to sneakreaper-industries.com or to edsmanifesto.com to browse gear and learn more about what they’re building, then follow Sneakreaper and Ed’s Manifesto on social so you don’t miss the next class drop or event.
The Hive is up and running, and the collective is growing. The only question left is what you’ll bring back to it.
FAQ:
What is The Hive by Sneakreaper Industries?
The Hive is the new headquarters of Sneakreaper Industries in San Jacinto, California. It brings a merch store, a podcast recording studio, and a sparring gym under one roof, and it works as a training hub for Ed Calderon’s self-defense and survival courses.
Where is The Hive located?
The Hive sits at 1073 Investor Pl, San Jacinto, CA 92582. It’s about 45 minutes from Ontario International Airport and roughly 50 minutes from Palm Springs International Airport.
Who runs The Hive?
The Hive is headed by Ed Calderon, founder of Sneakreaper Industries and Ed’s Manifesto and a longtime instructor in the Libre Fighting System. His work centers on practical, real-world self-defense drawn from the threats he studied in Mexico.
What classes does The Hive offer?
The lineup covers improvised weapons, Libre knife fighting, counter-custody and escapology, and other courses built to give ordinary people street smarts and hands-on capability. New classes are getting scheduled now.
What is inside The Hive?
Inside you’ll find a Sneakreaper merch store, a podcast recording studio, and a sparring gym, all in one building designed for buying gear, recording, and training.
When did The Hive open?
The Hive held its grand opening on Saturday, August 22, 2026, with public hours from 10 AM to 6 PM, followed by a free Libre and combatives training event on Sunday, August 23.
Can I visit or join The Hive?
Yes. The Hive is open to anyone interested in self-reliance and self-defense. Stop by the San Jacinto headquarters, check the class schedule, and follow Sneakreaper Industries and Ed’s Manifesto online for upcoming events and course drops
Reiff Knives has been very busy this year, releasing updated versions of their existing line up of outdoor and survival fixed blades, relaunching the Vicon Tactical Field knife, and now adding the brand-new bird and trout style knife the Drake.
Bird and Trout Style Knives
The Drake is a departure from Reiff’s usual robust fixed blade style, but it is a welcome addition to their family of outdoor adventure knives. Bird and trout style knives are compact lightweight knives that were originally designed for hunters and anglers to process small game animals and fish. The compact nature of bird and trout style knives allow for detail-oriented work when processing small animals and fish, with the bonus of being easy to carry.
While bird and trout style knives, may have originally been designed for hunters and anglers these compact fixed blades make excellent utility knives both around camp and for everyday use.
Premium Materials
With the Drake, Reiff Knives combines all the best features of bird and trout style knives and combines it with the premium materials and top-notch American made production quality to create a functional compact fixed blade that proves useful to sportsman and everyday alike.
The Drake is made from premium CPM-Magancut steel providing best in class corrosion resistance and edge retention. For sportsman this means less time maintaining and cleaning their blade and more time getting out their and doing what they love. Everyday users get the same benefit unhindered by wet environments or cutting corrosive materials.
Like all knives in the Reiff Knives line up the Drake is available in a variety of Micarta or G10 materials. Both materials are known for durability, having exceptional impact and chemical resistance and will hold up well in the harshest environmental conditions while providing excellent grip retention.
The Drake’s sheath is made from durable kydex with a removeable belt attachment and adjustable retention allowing the user to customize how they carry the knife to suit their individual preferences.
Versatile Design
The Drake’s design packs in all the elements that make bird and trout style knives incredible functional and versatile while remaining light and compact.
The Drake’s drop point blade is just is .1-inch thick. The thin blade stock combined with a full flat grind makes the Drake ideal for slicing tasks. The blade is just shy of 2.8 inches long allowing for exceptional control in detailed work but provides more than enough cutting edge to tackle everyday tasks.
The handle is 4.3 inches long, allowing users to utilize multiple grip styles and maintain control when it matters most. The thin handle is easy to manipulate in the hand and provides a good grip on the tasks it was designed to do.
The Drake weighs 1.6 to 1.8 ounces depending on handle material making it lighter than many folding knives – making it a lightweight addition to your hunting or fishing kit and an easy to carry companion for everyday tasks.
A Worthy Companion
While the Drake isn’t a robust do all survival knife, it is a welcome addition to any outdoors kit. The lightweight design and compact size make it easy to carry and provides unparalleled versatility in detailed tasks that larger fixed blades simply can’t perform. For those looking for a lightweight utility oriented fixed blade the Drake is an excellent option for easy carry and legality in many jurisdictions.
The Drake will be available for purchase directly from Reiff Knives starting August 28, 2026
This article is based on ORNL-5040 (Corrected), “The KFM, A Homemade Yet Accurate and Dependable Fallout Meter,” by Cresson H. Kearny, Paul R. Barnes, Conrad V. Chester, and Margaret W. Cortner, published by Oak Ridge National Laboratory in January 1978. The full document, including scale-accurate patterns, is in the public domain and freely reproducible.
There’s a piece of survival gear so effective that Oak Ridge National Laboratory spent years testing it, proved it in the hands of untrained families, and then gave it away for free. It measures nuclear fallout radiation about as accurately as the $600 commercial instruments of its day. No batteries. No electronics. A shelf life measured in decades.
You can build one from an empty Pringles can, some aluminum foil, a strip of drywall, and a roll of Scotch tape. That’s the Kearny Fallout Meter, or KFM. Cresson Kearny and his team developed it at ORNL in the 1970s to solve a real problem: In a nuclear emergency, almost nobody would have a working radiation meter. Civil defense gear sat in storage in the cities. Radio broadcasts would report averages from miles away. The people who most needed to know the radiation level around their own shelter would be flying blind. The KFM fixes that. You can build one in an afternoon. I did, and I’ll pass along the places I stubbed my toe, so you don’t have to.
An hour at 400 degrees F drives the water out of gypsum and leaves anhydrite, a desiccant that drinks moisture the moment it cools. Without it, humidity bleeds the charge off the leaves before radiation ever gets a vote.
How It Works
The KFM is an electroscope, one of the oldest radiation-detection instruments there is. The concept is simple. Inside a sealed can, two tiny leaves of layered aluminum foil hang side by side from insulating threads. You charge those leaves with static electricity, the same charge you build rubbing a balloon on your hair. Because both leaves carry the same charge, they repel each other and spread apart. The bigger the charge, the wider the spread. When gamma radiation passes through the air in the can, it knocks electrons loose from air molecules. Those charged particles bleed the charge off the leaves, and the leaves drift back together. The faster they close, the higher the radiation level.
You read the meter by looking straight down through a clear cover at a millimeter scale. Measure the gap between the leaves before and after a timed exposure, subtract, and look up the result on a chart. That gives you the dose rate in roentgens per hour. No power, no calibration against a radiation source. Built to spec, the geometry and weight of the leaves set the calibration permanently.
Step 1 starts at the scrap pile. Peel the paper facing off half a square foot of drywall and break the core into pieces no bigger than half an inch. The most important component in the build is one you’d otherwise throw away.
Skip the Soup Can
The original instructions call for a standard 8-ounce steel can, about 29⁄16 inches inside diameter. Good luck. Cans have gotten bigger since 1978, and the scale patterns in the old report no longer line up with anything on a grocery shelf.
Here’s my fix: a single-serving Pringles can. The diameter lands close to the original spec, and the part that sold me is that the clear plastic lid is exactly the rigid, see-through cover the design needs. No stretching thin film over the top (Saran wrap is far too flimsy), no hunting for a scrap of Plexiglas or sacrificing a piece of Tupperware. The can’s foil-lined interior does the job of the metal wall, so you don’t need to line it with anything. One container solves two of the hardest sourcing problems in the build.
Where the Pringles can pays for itself. The rigid, clear lid takes the millimeter scale directly, zero centered over the point where the leaves touch. No film to stretch, no Plexiglas to scavenge.
What You Need
Most of this is already in your house. For the meter: • One single-serving Pringles can, emptied and wiped clean — lid included • About 2 square feet of standard aluminum foil. Regular, not heavy-duty • 6 inches of doorbell wire or any thin insulated wire • About 3 feet of the thinnest, clean thread you can work with. Fine twisted nylon or unwaxed nylon dental floss is ideal. (More on thread below — I learned this one the hard way.) • A piece of drywall (gypsum wallboard), about half a square foot, to bake into your drying agent • Tape: cloth duct or masking tape for assembly, plus a roll of Scotch Magic Transparent Tape for charging. A little Band-Aid tape or other thin, flexible tape for small joints. • A wooden pencil, a toothpick, and two strong rubber bands • Glue, if you have it. One-hour epoxy is best; model airplane cement works. • Nitrile or latex gloves
For charging: a roll of Scotch tape, wide packing tape, or a piece of hard plastic (ruler, draftsman’s triangle, Plexiglas, etc.) plus dry typing paper.
Tools: 12-inch ruler, scissors, a large sewing needle, a small sharp knife, a hammer, pliers, and a small nail you can sharpen to a point. You can also use a small drill bit instead of making holes with the hammer and nail.
Step 1: Make the Drying Agent
Start here. It takes the longest, and it’s the single most important part of the build. Don’t take my word for it. When I first assembled my meter, I tried charging the leaves before adding any drying agent. Nothing happened. Not a flicker. Then, I baked a batch of gypsum, dropped it in, gave it 15 minutes to pull the moisture out of the can, and tried again. The leaves snapped apart on the first pass. That’s how much this matters.
Here’s why: The foil leaves have to stay bone dry. Humidity conducts electricity and bleeds the charge off the leaves before radiation ever gets a shot at them. The fix is anhydrite, a desiccant you make by baking the gypsum out of drywall.
Cut a piece of drywall about 12 by 6 inches. Peel or soak off the paper facing. Break the white gypsum core into pieces no bigger than half an inch. Spread them one layer deep on a pan or a folded foil tray, and bake at your oven’s highest setting, 400 degrees F or higher for one hour. (No oven? Heat them in a pan over a flame until the pan glows dull red.)
The moment they come off the heat, the pieces are anhydrite and they drink moisture fast. Seal them in a Mason jar while still warm — every minute of air exposure costs you drying power. Never substitute calcium chloride; it’s corrosive and will eat the foil.
Step 2: Prep the Can
Wipe the can clean and dry it. You’re not lining or wrapping anything; the foil interior is your chamber wall. You need four small holes for the stop-threads: insulating threads strung across the inside of the can that keep the charged leaves from swinging into the wall and dumping their charge when the meter gets bumped. Place them symmetrically around the can, an inch or so below the top rim. Two holes opposite each other for one thread, two more at 90 degrees for the second. The old report includes exact-scale patterns, and they’ll get you close, but on a Pringles can I gave up on the wrap-around template and just eyeballed the placement. It’s forgiving.
Punch each hole with a sharpened nail or use a drill, bracing a stick or wooden handle inside the can so you don’t crush it. Make the holes barely big enough to pass a needle, then work the needle around to fold the sharp edges back. Run one clean thread through all four holes to form two crossing stop-threads. Tie tiny wooden toggles (3⁄8-inch slivers of wood) to the ends on the outside to lock the tension, and tape over the holes to seal out air. One rule runs through this whole build: Never touch the parts of any thread that live inside the can. Skin oil wrecks the thread’s insulating value and drains your charge.
Making the leaves, from raw foil to finished pair: standard-weight foil folded to eight plies, squared, traced from the pattern, cut, and hemmed for the suspension thread. This is where most first attempts die. Read all of Step 3 before you make the first cut.
Step 3: Make the Aluminum Foil Leaves
This is the fussy part, and it’s where most first attempts fail. Read it all before you touch the foil. You need two identical leaves, each eight plies of standard foil. Cut a piece about 4 by 8 inches. Fold in half to 4 by 4 (two-ply), again to 2 by 4 (four-ply), and again to 2 by 2 (eight-ply), lining up the edges exactly on that last fold so one corner comes out perfectly square. Flatten the stack with your fingers until it looks like a single sheet. Lay your leaf pattern on the foil with one corner on that square corner, trace it with a sharp pencil, and cut it out. Along the thread line at the top, fold the edge up to vertical, then back down into a flat hem. That hem is where the suspending thread rides.
Now the thread, and here’s where I’ll save you some grief. I used the innards of 550 paracord for mine and regretted it. Those little strands cling to each other and fight you the whole way. Use the thinnest thread you can manage. Fine twisted nylon or unwaxed dental floss. Thinner is always better here. Cut an 8.5-inch piece, lay it along the thread line, and secure it with tiny pieces of Band-Aid tape or a dab of epoxy on a toothpick. The thread should exit both upper corners. Do not touch the inch of thread on either side of the leaf. Repeat for leaf two.
Step 4: Install the Leaves
Hang each leaf inside the can by draping its thread across the rim to the opposite side. The hem side faces out toward the wall; the smooth sides of the two leaves face each other. Uncharged, the leaves should hang side by side and touching, upper and lower edges level. Look straight down: You want to see a single thin line, no gap, no curl. If they don’t look right, remake them. This is the part that decides whether the instrument works.
Tape the threads to the outside of the rim only — never inside. Then, make the “seat:” cut a 1-inch length of pencil and tape it to the side of the can, just below where the lid grips, with its top about ¾-inch below the can’s top. That’s your ruler rest for taking repeatable readings.
Several inches of doorbell wire with a right-angle bend and two adjustment threads, one bare, one flagged with tape. After charging, the wire parks up near the lid. That gap is what keeps the charge from leaking back out.
Step 5: Cover Scale and Charging Wire
This is where the Pringles can pays off. The lid is your cover, so there is no film to stretch, and no skirt to trim. Cut the paper millimeter scale from the pattern and tape it to the top of the lid, centered over the leaves and perpendicular to them, with the zero mark directly above the point where the leaves touch. This scale transferred to the lid with no trouble. (The dose-rate table won’t wrap a Pringles can cleanly the way it did the original. Just print it and tape it to the side or keep it next to the meter.)
Make the charging wire from your 6 inches of insulated wire: Strip both ends and put a small right-angle bend at the bottom. Tie two 2.5-inch adjustment threads to a point about 2 inches down from the top. One bare, one with a small sticky flag of tape. Punch a hole in the lid ½ inch from the rim, directly above the centerline between the leaves, and push the wire through until its bare lower end hangs about 1⁄16-inch above the leaves. Finally, drop your anhydrite in. A single layer on the bottom, no pieces stacked, none tall enough to touch the leaves. Snap on the lid. When you’re not using the meter, store it in an airtight jar with extra drying agent; humidity creeps through over time.
Charged, the leaves repel and spread. Though, in this frame, the charging wire hadn’t been parked yet, and it was already bleeding the charge off. The gap was visibly closing by the shutter click. Consider it a live demonstration of the rule: lift the wire after charging, or lose the reading.
Charging the Meter
Two methods. Tape is faster.
Tape method: Set the charging wire so its lower end sits about 1⁄16-inch above the leaves, held by the sticky adjustment thread. Pull a roll of Scotch Magic tape from its dispenser and hold it an inch or two from the meter. Quickly unroll 10 to 12 inches. Holding the unwound tape taut and perpendicular to the wire, slowly sweep both hands to the side, past the wire, over about 2 seconds. The static charge jumps a spark gap to the wire and runs down to the leaves. You may see or hear a faint spark, and the leaves spread. Aim for at least 15mm. After charging, lift the wire up via the adjustment threads so it parks near the underside of the lid. That gap keeps the charge from leaking back out. Don’t touch the wire.
Plastic-and-paper method: Fold about 20 sheets of dry paper into a 4-inch square. Pinch the outside firmly and rub a piece of Plexiglas or a plastic ruler briskly on the inside fold, keeping your fingers off the edges. Pass the charged end slowly past the wire, ¼ to ½ inch away. Repeat until the leaves spread. This method dies above about 85 percent humidity. The tape method holds to about 90 percent. Above that, you need a dry-bucket.
The Dry-Bucket
A dry-bucket is a large plastic-covered bucket with a cup of anhydrite in the bottom and two bag-lined hand holes you reach through without breaking the dry seal. It lets you charge the meter when outside humidity would otherwise stop you. It takes about an hour to build. The original ORNL report walks through it in full.
Reading and Using It
Set the meter on a flat surface. Stand a 12-inch ruler on the seat, touch your eyebrow to the top of it, and look straight down. Read where the lower edge of each leaf falls on the scale and add the two numbers — that’s your reading. Never read a leaf touching a stop-thread and never use a reading below 5mm.
To measure a dose rate: Charge the meter and record the reading. Expose it for one of the timed intervals in the table, then read it again. Subtract the after-reading from the before-reading, find that difference in the table, and read across to your exposure time. That’s your dose rate in roentgens per hour.
Example: Before exposure, 17mm. After a 1-minute exposure, 5mm. Difference of 12mm over one-minute equals 9.2 R/hr.
Outdoors, hold the meter about 3 feet off the ground. If the difference comes out under 2mm, recharge and use a longer interval. If the after-reading drops below 5mm, recharge and use a shorter one.
What the Numbers Mean
A few reference points from the ORNL guidance for a healthy adult with no prior significant exposure: • 6 R per day can be tolerated for up to two months without losing the ability to work. • 100 R in a week or less is unlikely to cause serious sickness. • 350 R in a few days is likely fatal when medical care isn’t available. • 600 R in a week or less is nearly certain to be fatal within weeks.
The encouraging part the researchers stressed: Fallout fades fast. A spot reading 2,000 R/hr an hour after a nearby nuclear disaster drops to roughly 200 R/hr seven hours later and under 20 R/hr within two days. A shelter with 2 to 3 feet of earth overhead can cut your exposure enough that most people in hard-hit areas could ride out the first two weeks and then step out into tolerable levels. The KFM is the tool that tells you when that window opens, and how long you can stand in it.
The completed instrument. Everything that calibrates it — leaf geometry, leaf weight, can diameter — is locked in at assembly, so there’s nothing to zero, drift, or die. Storage is an airtight jar with spare drying agent.
A Few Critical Reminders
Your drying agent is doing its job if the charged meter, sitting idle, loses no more than 1mm over 3 hours. More than that, swap the anhydrite.
Keep every thread clean and never touch the sections inside the can. Contaminated thread drains the charge and gives you garbage readings. Thinner thread beats thicker every time. Again, skip the paracord guts. Build one now, in calm conditions, and practice charging and reading it before you ever need it. Then, build a second. In ORNL’s field tests, the families who succeeded were the ones who practiced.
For thirty-eight and three-quarter days, the ocean had mostly left them alone. Then, with the finish line close enough to see the lights on shore, the Pacific decided to test their commitment to the cause.
The four men of Foar the Brave had already called their families. They were three miles out, cruising in at three knots, and a jubilant crowd on the beach had a steak dinner waiting on the table. Joe and Ian ran a shift change and figured they would be standing on dry land within the hour. Ten minutes later, they were faced with the most intense fight of the whole crossing.
As they rounded the point, the current shifted and shoved them toward shore, where the waves stopped being swells and started sounding like a freight train. Ian looked over his shoulder mid-stroke and saw mist, a wave detonating behind him. He raised the alarm, “Hey, Joe!” And then a rowboat was surfing down the face of a breaking wave. They hit a reef, and the rudder cleat sheared clean off. Just like that they were rudderless, dead in the water, a hundred yards from the shore they had been rowing toward for over a month.
Foar the Brave crossed the Pacific in 39 days, 3 hours, and 19 minutes, and took second place in the World’s Toughest Row. To hear them tell it, none of that, not the forty days and not the podium, mattered as much as the last two and a half miles.
Foar the Brave conducting their final inventory before launching out of Monterey Bay in California.
The Team That Willed Itself to the Start Line
You are supposed to spend one to two years getting ready to row an ocean. Foar the Brave—the name spelled that way because they are, in fact, in a rowboat—came together late and pulled off in nine or ten months what most crews take twice as long to attempt. That alone tells you something about them.
The crew was an odd, perfect mix. Joe was the skipper and the driving force, a former Green Beret who had already rowed the Atlantic, a crossing that, he says without drama, saved his life. Ian, his old Special Forces teammate, was the Executive Officer, twenty-seven years in the Army and twenty of them in special operations. Steve came from the FAA, air traffic control, widely regarded as one of the most stressful jobs in the world, and would turn out to be the only man on the boat immune to seasickness. And John was Joe’s friend of thirty-odd years, a man who had never really been tested and wanted to find out what he was made of. He found out.
The training was its own proving ground. To be eligible, the team had to log a hundred and twenty-plus hours on the boat, one of them a continuous 36-hour row, and a mandatory 24 hours of it at night. Some thirty separate proficiencies, from deploying a para-anchor to man-overboard drills. Courses in seamanship, safety at sea, navigation, and first aid, all verified by a race committee in Europe through GPS tracks and drill videos. To build cohesion, they rented a house and rowed eight-plus hours a day for a month, grinding through the coursework together. All four of them had to complete this training together, and if anyone backed out and had to be replaced, they had to start all over from square one.
They also made a deliberate choice about why they were out there. Some crews approached the race like elite athletes, on the rowing machines by dawn, drilling their stroke for hours. Foar the Brave came for the adventure and the cause, and they never pretended otherwise. “That just seems like a lot of energy to use before we row for a month,” Joe says, only half joking. It is worth remembering how that bet paid off. Several of the boats that breezed past them early, national-champion crews among them, would finish behind them.
They packed for the long haul and packed heavy. Along with the required food and gear went a stash of quick calorie snacks like a bag of Skittles big enough to double as ballast when the boat needed leveling. Leaving Monterey Bay, they watched most of the fleet pull ahead, including a three-woman crew who were sure these four would never make it. They were wrong. The plan had been to row three at a time to punch off the coast, and when that did not click, they adapted, settling into a two-up, two-down rhythm that was theirs alone. It was not the textbook stroke of the champions, and yet it carried them across an ocean.
Life, Distilled into Two-Hour Blocks
The first week nearly broke them, and it had nothing to do with the finish everyone remembers. It was cold, and it rained, and they were in full foul-weather gear, shivering, fighting a super El Niño that pushed them back toward the coast while they clawed to get off the continental shelf. Thirty-to-forty-foot rollers, twenty-to-thirty-knot winds, a boat crawling forward at less than half a knot. “The first week was ten times tougher than the Atlantic,” Joe says.
Seasickness arrived around day three and stayed. Two men would be over the side at once while Steve, sick-proof and insufferable, filmed them and lovingly pronounced them weak. John, eating more than 5,000 calories a day, still lost fifteen pounds. The body burns something like 6,000 a day out there, and each of the crew came home nearly thirty pounds lighter. What set this team apart was that nobody stayed down. On other boats, rowers were out for days. Foar the Brave learned to be sick and get right back on the oars, and that refusal to quit put them in first place for a stretch.
John found the phrase for what the whole thing became. “Your life is just distilled down to a series of two-hour blocks.” Not tomorrow, not tonight, just the next two hours. The team had a blunter name for it, “F you, pay me.” You’re tired? F you, pay me. Didn’t sleep? Chaos at home? It’s one hour and fifty-nine minutes, and then you’re back on the oars.
And there was real chaos at home. Mid-ocean, Joe took a call from his daughter in Italy. Someone was trying to break into her hostel, the scene straight out of Taken, and he could do nothing but listen from a thousand miles out until his clock ran out and he could coordinate with his wife. And then went back to the oars. His daughter got out safe. Steve’s stretch was harder. His mother-in-law, his wife’s best friend, had a stroke on a cruise, was found to have stage-four cancer, and died on Steves’s birthday. The crew marked the birthday anyway, everyone working around the pain, because out there you could not stop.
The “F you, pay me” was not cruelty. It was the only mercy available. “I can feel empathetic once I get in there and come off the oars,” Joe says, referring to the two, small one-man cabins fore and aft of the thirty-by-four-foot boat that they called home between rowing shifts. “But right now I need you to get out here.” You carried your grief to your seat, and you rowed it.
Although the physical endurance was brutal and grueling, there were moments on the ocean that were profound and meaningful.
Ricky the Bird, the Flying Hammer, and Other Survival Tools
If the ocean was going to strip their lives down to nothing, the crew filled the nothing with each other, mostly by being relentlessly, lovingly awful to one another. This is not out of malice, rather, it is heartfelt way of coping with stress commonly used among the Military’s combat arms units, and First Responders.
For long stretches there was no wildlife at all. Then the flying fish came, thirty or so dead in the boat every morning. A bird started trailing them, so they flung fish for it to catch. They named him Ricky. He was probably ten different birds over the span of the voyage, and they were all Ricky. One fish caught John full in the face at freight-train speed, and he smelled fish in his hair for a day.
They razzed each other without mercy. Joe once threw a hammer into the cabin at a sleeping teammate, the “flying hammer,” a decision no one, including Joe, can explain. And then there was the infamous bucket. Going to the bathroom meant a teammate coming off the oars, and a five-minute production while the boat crawled and the miles refused to tick off. Ian, at one point, dispensed with the ceremony entirely and produced a technical marvel involving a gallon bag and considerable core stability on undulating seas, the first time billed as an emergency, the rest, by unanimous testimony, not.
It sounds like chaos, and it was, but it was also the mechanism. “I didn’t really know John,” Ian says, “and we gelled so well, so quickly.” The gallows humor got them through, and every one of them knew it.
Exposure to the elements and the saltiness of the Pacific relentlessly took its toll on everyone.
The Last Two-and-a-Half Miles
Which brings it back to the reef.
With the rudder gone, John and Ian on the oars had to physically turn the boat while it scraped bottom and work it north into deeper water, the single most important move of the whole expedition, because nothing else they tried would have mattered without it. It was the closest they came to tipping over all trip. A hundred yards from shore, hit sideways, John tangled in a safety line and aware that in water this shallow a capsize might not right itself. Steve and Joe were sealed in the cabins, able only to call out ideas over the crashing water.
Now they had no rudders and no backups, roughly two-and-a-half miles from a finish line thirty-nine days in the making, and the committee boat pulled alongside with a hard choice. They could fight to make it themselves, or take a tow and be disqualified.
For a moment, Joe quit. He will tell you so plainly, not that the team quit, but that he did, his lowest point of the whole crossing. Charlotte, the media operator filming it live, told him afterward that it was not his lowest point at all but his most triumphant pivot in mindset. A half-second later, when he said “okay, throw the drogue out” and started working the problem, the entire team began to dig deeper than they had over the last 2,798 miles. A lot of teams, she said, would simply have taken the tow.
The solution to their rudderless plight came from a single half-remembered slide in an eight-hour safety course, the one that said, if you ever need it, which you never will, you can throw the drogue out and steer with it. A drogue is basically a small parachute or cone that you drag behind a boat in the water on a line. They threw the sea anchor off the back, and suddenly they had steering again. It was clumsy, like rowing while dragging a bucket, but it was steering. And they rowed.
They rowed the last two and a half miles for six hours. John, at the helm, kept telling the guys the shore was a quarter mile off. It was not, and he knew it, but it was the kind of good lie that keeps a team rowing when the truth would sink them. Somewhere in there, John, who a week earlier had admitted he had lost his why, found it again, as if the ocean had called his bluff. And all at once he cared more than he had the entire trip.
Finally, they crossed the finish line on nothing but that. Stepping onto the pier, they had to hold onto each other to walk, because a month of sitting had stolen their legs, and they came off the boat unsteady and laughing and spent, with everyone on shore cheering.
“Anybody can be at the helm when the seas are calm,” Steve says. The last six hours were when they were not. “Whatever soup mixes up our personalities,” John says, “I honestly don’t think we come out of that cauldron if we didn’t have the exact mix we had. We couldn’t have planned it. It just kind of worked.”
While gone over the 4th of July, the team celebrated America’s 250th birthday in their own way.
The Why
They did not row across the Pacific for the podium. They rowed because Joe has lost soldiers under his command to suicide over twenty-five years, because the number of veterans still slipping under is unconscionable, and because a rowboat crossing an ocean is a very hard thing to look away from.
Foar the Brave is a 501(c)(3), and its fundraising goes toward veteran mental health and suicide prevention. Raising the money was brutal at first, ten dollars here, fifty there, but something about the mission reached people. A woman in a New Jersey bar talked to John for five minutes and wrote a check for twenty-five thousand dollars on the condition that no one ever learn her name. Small donors saved gas money to give ten bucks. “Those two ends of the spectrum,” Joe says, “are what regain your faith in humanity.”
The mission got real in the worst way mid-ocean. One of Ian’s friends, a soldier he had served alongside who was struggling with a divorce and a drifting sense of purpose, took his own life while the team was on the water. Ian recorded a video afterward and was overcome. Everything they were rowing for turned suddenly, unbearably concrete.
Ask them what they would say to a veteran closer to the edge than anyone around him knows, and the answer is immediate and unanimous. Call your buddy. Make the phone call. “Being brave enough to say, ‘Hey man, I’m done,’ that alone probably saves your life.” And here is the warning they want every friend to memorize. The word to listen for is not “done.” It’s “I’m tired.” It’s “I’m exhausted.”
“If you hear those words,” Joe says, “you need to get on a plane and go grab that guy in person. That’s past anger. Once you reach that point, it’s not going to be good.” Make it to the next day, they kept telling everyone watching. This too shall pass. It may take a while, but it gets better.
After finally making landfall 2,800 miles later in Kauai, the team has an incredible story to share. Compared to their demeanor in Monterey, they now carry themselves with a confidence and wisdom that only true hardship can impart. (Photo Credit: Nastaran Khademi)
Sometimes healing looks less like a hotline and more like a deer stand. Every year Joe and Ian run what they call the Rocky Ridge Recovery Center, a “hunting trip” on which, in ten years, not a single deer has died. There is bourbon, there is storytelling, and once there was a man who had not told his story in years finally screaming it into the dark while his brothers let him, until he stopped, said, “I think I’m good now,” and sat back down. That was the whole treatment, being broken, out loud, and accepted anyway.
They know they did not save everyone. But a childhood friend told Joe those videos seemed like they were about him, and got help. Another called and said he thought they had saved his life. A man Joe had not spoken to in thirty-five years texted to say he wanted to try the ocean row himself. “We only know of a couple people we know we’ve helped,” Joe says. “I hope there’s more.”
There almost certainly are, because the thing spreads. A 2023 crossing inspired a Ranger crew to row, that crew raised millions and inspired others, and Foar the Brave rowed this year on seats borrowed from them. “The cumulative effect of being the catalyst,” John calls it. You never learn its full reach, but every so often someone tells you that you were speaking to them.
The journey ended. The mission continues. Foar the Brave is already looking for the next team, veterans or a mixed crew, Atlantic or Pacific, to shepherd through the whole gauntlet, from the training to the fundraising to the lessons learned the hard way. They will help them get to the start line, which Joe swears is the hardest part of the whole thing. “This is not a burden,” Joe’s wife would remind him back when wrangling four grown men and their four complicated lives had him ready to quit before they had even launched. “This is a privilege that you get to do this.”
Two and a half miles from the end of the World’s Toughest Row, with no rudder and no reason left to believe, four men decided she was right.
If you or a veteran you know is struggling, reach out. Call your buddy. In the U.S., the Veterans Crisis Line is available by dialing 988 and pressing 1, or texting 838255.
Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands, a ring of palm-fringed coral in the central Pacific where the United States detonated some of its largest nuclear weapons, leaving a sunken ghost fleet beneath a turquoise lagoon.
Adventure Appeal
Bikini Atoll is the most storied nuclear landscape on Earth. Between 1946 and 1958, the United States conducted 23 nuclear tests here, including 1954’s Castle Bravo, the largest device the U.S. ever detonated, which vaporized islands and gouged a crater into the reef. The Bikinians were relocated before the first test and the atoll remains uninhabited, which has left it a strange paradise: empty white-sand islets, coconut palms, and a lagoon teeming with reef sharks and coral. The real draw lies underwater. The lagoon floor holds the “Ghost Fleet” of Operation Crossroads, target vessels sunk by the blasts, including the aircraft carrier USS Saratoga, sittable upright and divable, and the Japanese battleship Nagato, which led the attack on Pearl Harbor, resting upside down in the deep. Few wreck dives on the planet combine this much history with this much marine life.
Decades after the last detonation, Bikini’s lagoon teems with coral and reef sharks. A thriving ecosystem grown over one of the most heavily bombed places on Earth.
Survival Readiness
This is not a casual trip. Bikini sits hundreds of miles from the nearest services, and visits happen only through organized expeditions that handle boats, fuel, food, and safety. The wrecks lie deep, often beyond recreational limits, so diving here demands technical training, redundant gas, and disciplined planning; this is advanced diving in a place with no recompression chamber nearby. Residual radiation on land is low enough for short visits, but the islands remain unsafe for permanent habitation, and visitors are advised not to eat anything grown locally, as radioactive cesium persists in the soil and food chain. Bring everything you need and assume zero infrastructure — no clinics, no stores, no quick evacuation.
Getting There
Reaching Bikini is half the adventure. Travelers route through Majuro, the Marshallese capital, typically via Honolulu on the island-hopper flights that connect the central Pacific. From Majuro, the atoll is reached by long boat charter or chartered light aircraft as part of a pre-arranged expedition. There is no scheduled service and no turning up unannounced. Trips are weather and logistics dependent and can be scarce, so flexibility and patience are essential. Permissions are coordinated through the Marshall Islands and the Bikini local government, and expedition operators handle the paperwork as part of the package.
Local Perks
Though Bikini itself is uninhabited, the wider Marshall Islands offer warm Marshallese hospitality, extraordinary diving and snorkeling across dozens of atolls, and a living World War II and Cold War history. Majuro and Kwajalein hold war relics, museums, and the relaxed rhythm of island life. The Bikinian community, now living mostly on Kili Island and Ejit, keeps the memory of their homeland alive, and any visit carries a responsibility to honor their story of displacement and resilience. For travelers willing to make the journey, the reward is a corner of the planet almost no one ever sees.
The comeback a lot of people were rooting for looks like it’s happening. Aero Precision, Ballistic Advantage, Stag Arms, and VG6 have new owners, according to a company statement confirmed by internal employees. White Wolf Capital, the private equity firm that held the brands through their hardest stretch, is out entirely. A private family investment group is in.
The factory floor is getting spun back up.
The new group is not part of the firearms industry, per the statement, but the people behind it are described as firearm and outdoor enthusiasts, Second Amendment supporters, and backers of the military and veteran communities. They’ve chosen to stay private, and the company has asked everyone to respect that. Fair enough. The four brands now sit under one entity, Aero Ballistic Holdings LLC, and each keeps its own name and identity.
First, some background. Aero Precision and Ballistic Advantage were placed into general receivership in Pierce County, Washington, on May 5, 2026, with J.S. Held LLC appointed as receiver. Stag Arms and VG6 sat under the same ownership. Through the summer, court filings and trade coverage told the same story. Slowed production, thin inventory, and a pile of unfilled orders while the receiver worked toward a sale. Receivership is not bankruptcy, though, and the companies kept building and kept honoring warranties the whole way.
Now the stated plan is pretty straight forward. Just get these companies back to doing what they did well. Manufacturing is ramping back up, supply chains are being reestablished, and the teams are working through the backlog toward real availability. Core products return first, per the company, with new launches to follow.
For the self-reliant crowd, the practical read boils down to renewed availability. These four brands feed a huge share of the AR parts, barrels, and complete rifles that builders actually depend on. Ballistic Advantage, Aero’s barrel arm, is a known quantity on its own. Funded, full-speed production means proven components back on the shelf instead of stuck on indefinite backorder. That’s good for anyone who cares about American-made gear and a supply chain that doesn’t fold under pressure.
None of this erases the last few years, and the new owners know it. There’s trust to rebuild with customers, dealers, and vendors, and that doesn’t happen in a press release. But the brands made it through because a lot of people kept believing in them, and that counts for something. A full statement is expected later this week.
