Video: Fire-Carved Log Furniture

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Having a place to sit down for a meal is a convenience we often take for granted — after all, urban environments are packed with tables and chairs. However, in the backcountry, it's not always so easy. A few sections of a large-diameter fallen tree can serve as improvised stools and a table, but anyone who has tried to lift a log will know that moving this camp furniture is going to be a workout.

Fire carved log furniture bushcraft survival camping swedish torch 1

A Russian YouTuber known as Advoko MAKES recently posted a two-part English-dubbed video series that shows how to use selective cutting, drilling, and burning to create “fire-carved” log furniture for your campsite. This process removes wood to dramatically lighten the logs, and creates cavities that can be used for storage or decoration.

The principle is similar to that of the Swedish torch (also known as the Swedish fire log or Finnish torch). Part one of the video series shows how to make the torch with four rip cuts to the log, and how to convert the torch into a four-legged stool:

In the second video, Advoko MAKES host Max Egorov shows his technique for creating oval holes in the logs by burning out short rip cuts. He also creates round holes using a hand drill with a large auger bit, and connects multiple holes to create a hollow table. We also appreciated the wood mallet he uses, which is cleverly bound together using recycled strips of plastic soda bottle that are shrunk using heat from the fire.

Although the original Russian-language channel has more than 850,000 subscribers, Max is just getting started creating English-dubbed versions of his videos, so this is the first we've seen from him. Based on these first two videos and his plan to post new content twice a month, we're looking forward to seeing more.

If you're interested in following Max's future projects, check out the Advoko MAKES channel on YouTube.

How to Survive a Financial Crisis

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In the fall of 2008, I gave a speech in San Francisco to a conference of fund managers, loan brokers, and bankers who were just beginning to realize the consequences of the collapse of the sub-prime mortgage and exchange-traded derivatives markets. They came eager to hear from quantitative wizards about the next trick they should try to continue to elevate their wealth. I opened my speech with this sentence: “Someone you know, someone you love, will be hurt because of what we have done.”

I went on to explain the extent of the systemic failure that had been loaded into the U.S. economy by a combination of industry and government actions. I ended with a prediction for some of the people in that room: It would be their last year working in the finance industry; that much like the collapse of Dot Com One in Silicon Valley a decade earlier, many of their firms would collapse and never come back.

For those who remained, onerous government regulation and compliance controls were inevitable and would constrain most of the wild profit-making practices upon which the conference attendees had enjoyed opulent lives. The end of the presentation was met with stunned silence and painful realization that their lives, and the lives of the people who had trusted them, would change dramatically. A systemic failure of the financial system — what many people called a rare and unpredictable “Black Swan” event had hatched.

Anatomy of a Manmade Disaster

A systemic financial disaster differs from other calamities in that everything in the infrastructure keeps running. What breaks is the ability of the population to afford to access the infrastructure. At its extreme, jobs, incomes, and even entire swaths of industries disappear for a statistically significant portion of the population, causing economic displacement. The power company remains, but you can’t afford to pay your bills. Costs of necessities, which may or may not have risen, become unreachable because, if you’re one of the ones affected by the crisis, you don’t have the money. People lose careers. Families lose homes. The stress destroys relationships. And some individuals commit suicide.

Above: In a world where technology is constantly displacing human workers, it makes sense to examine the future viability of the industry you’re in. If you’re a dentist, people will always need their teeth worked on. If you’re a cashier at a retail store, you might want to look at other career and educational options.

It’s a cruelly unfair phenomenon. Some people lose everything, some prosper to new riches, and others are barely affected. The constant in the calamity is that you have to be able to fend for yourself in the path of a financial perfect storm.

There are three core components to survivability, and they apply equally well to financial crisis survival. First, you need to know the nature of the coming storm. Second, you need to reduce your vulnerability and susceptibility to it. And third, you need to have a plan that has the flexibility to navigate a survivable path through the cycle.

Avoiding a Trap by Knowing it’s There

Finance is, even for a professional, an extremely noise-ridden universe. Separating normal noise — such as the fact that bond markets and stock markets naturally move in opposite directions and counterweight each other, going back and forth in a volatile manner — can be confusing to some. At the time of this writing, the global bond market was valued north of $82 trillion and the global equities market at just over $62 trillion; essentially, a nicely balanced seesaw.

The U.S. domestic bond market was valued around $35 trillion and the U.S. equities market at around $23 trillion. The difference in the ratio means stocks tend to react more to a change in bonds, with about 1.5 times more volatility. You now have everything you need to understand what every economist, pundit, and news anchor is cackling on about when they say the sky is falling. It isn’t. It’s just vibrating normally like a cat purring on your lap.

Don’t get me wrong. That cat has claws, and in a normally operating financial system there are plenty of cataclysmic wins and losses that could hurt you as normal volatility startles it in your lap. These cloud-lending fiascos and cryptocurrency bubbles come and go. All good fun, full of speculative hopes and dreams; but they don’t actually affect the overall global financial system. The vast majority of people remain unaffected by normal foibles. What you really need to worry about is what happens to you if the cat dies in your lap.

Here’s your lesson in recognizing “systemic risk.” Utter systemic collapse happens when both the bond and equity markets move in unison into unsafe, unsound, and unsustainable positions. No different than deer herds that multiply to the point that a bad winter starves all of them into a population collapse, the financial system is known to stupidly move in unison through a combination of misguided government policies, industry innovation that doesn’t take unintended consequences into proper account, and the greed-fueled exploitation tendencies of humans in the financial ecosystem.

Above: As the saying goes, if common sense were common, everyone would have it. Start looking at your income versus expense ratio now, lest you have to throw the keys to your life to those you owe money to.

In recent times, examples of these systemic scenarios have included the brick-and-mortar cases such as the globalization and outsourcing of the U.S. industrial base as well as financial engineering cases such as the 2008 “Black Swan” confluence of sub-prime mortgage lending, faulty bonds to absorb unsound loans, and toxic speculative derivatives that pretended to contain real risks. Both have displaced real people and real families, turning Americans into economic refugees in their own land. The thing is, it was possible to see both these disasters coming to a head for decades.

Learning From History

Globalization began in the early 1990s at the end of the Cold War. History called it a “peace dividend,” and it was accelerated by a cadre of business-school wizards who quickly figured out that investing in new plants in locations where labor was really cheap meant more profitability. This was even after taking into account the cost of the logistics to move raw materials, partially finished components, and shipping to final consumer markets. The arrival of an innocuous internet transmission technology known as SOAP-xml removed almost all the paperwork friction for material requirements planning so that companies could efficiently move offshore.

Today, global manufacturing and financial systems use these sort of technologies for transactions; something that often makes me wonder why you need blockchain general ledgers that basically replicate a stable and mature 25-year-old system, but I digress. Regardless, the U.S. economy converted from a manufacturing economy to a service economy, dependent on outsourcing for things as basic as telephones and T-shirts. Millennials have never known a world where there were local GM, Ford, and Chrysler plants, along with parts suppliers and job shoppers, dotting the landscape employing armies of American workers.

The 2008 financial crisis also began in the early 1990s with the demise of Drexel Burnham Lambert LLP. As part of the bankruptcy, the court sold copies of a deeply secret structured finance software system to anyone willing to write the court a check. Structured finance is what’s used to create something called a mortgage backed security, which enables a bank to sell off loans it’s made on the balance sheet in the form of bonds to a financial secondary market. It basically enables a bank to lend more, capturing the origination fees into its income stream.

Prior to the demise of Drexel, Wall Street was the only place regional mortgage bankers could sell their non-confirming loans, aka sub-prime mortgages, that the federal agencies like GNMA and FNMA wouldn’t accept. Wall Street, being Wall Street, took every last dime from the regional banks in these transactions. This made the incentive to find an alternative desirous. In my first year in the finance industry, coming out of a decade in the defense industry and not knowing any better, I helped a friend install one of these Private Mortgage Backed Securities at a tiny little bank in Pasadena, California, named Countrywide.

As early as 1995, when I finally understood what fixed-income analytics was all about, I had a wary eye about some of the practices coming out of the sub-prime mortgage sector as their bonds began to look less like agency pass-thru securities and more and more like the “junk bonds” that took down Drexel. And I wondered what the implications were from the Electronic Joint Venture system invented by Wall Street to replace the escape of structured engineering software by creating this thing called the exchange traded derivative — and eventually the toxic bond.

While I wasn’t the only one who made that mistake at that time — nor was I that integral to the nearly two decades of government and industry consequence that came from it until it all collapsed — I’ve always regretted being part of installing a material trigger into what would become the equivalent of an economic nuclear bomb. When I gave that speech in San Francisco in 2008, I very much meant “we” to that audience.

A lot of that was the doublespeak of MBAs and economists. I share the stories of the beginnings of these events to point out that systemic disasters often begin innocuously. Everyone loved the thought of global outsourcing and risk management engineering. From academic theorists, government officials, and practitioners in industry, people embraced new ideas and chased them with far too much enthusiasm across the entire financial system for too many business cycles. That’s the signal you’re looking for, the warning within the noise. When the smartest people in the world act like lemmings marching to the sea, that’s a sign of a systemic flaw, the birth cries of a Black Swan. No one sees or dares utter that the emperor is naked. It’s the forewarning of a potential financial crisis coming.

Above: While many operate on the “you can’t take it with you” philosophy, that won’t help you if you have nothing to fall back on. Look at savings account options. Smaller community banks welcome the business and typically have better interest rates than larger chains. 

Timelines to Be Mindful Of

It takes time to build to a nationwide systemic collapse in an economy like that of the United States. On average, about 25 years from the time the germ is planted, most likely inadvertently, to the time the contagion reaches critical mass. It took a around decade and a half for the sub-prime mortgage market to crater. You’ve some time to recognize what’s going on and prepare if you’re paying attention. The last three years of the prelude to collapse will be pretty obvious and when you’ll need to act before things hit the fan.

There’s also a well-proven timeline for how long it takes for an economy to suffer the throes of a financial collapse and recover sufficiently from it. That number is typically one three-year business cycle for the throes of chaos followed by two three-year business cycles to re-regulate and recover from the shock. In all, about a decade. If you wind up being one of the people severely affected by a financial crisis, you need to have a plan to survive that decade. More specifically, you need a plan for the first three years of pandemonium.

Preparing and Surviving

So you’ve seen the foreboding future and determined it’s going to affect your life. Prepping for a financial crisis is about reducing your vulnerability and generating options you can execute when the time comes. Start by repositioning your assets and expenses — and not just your physical assets, your human ones.

Let’s start with your skills. If your current way of earning an income is at risk — for example, because robotics and artificial intelligence are going to eliminate your service industry job — start cultivating future ways to make a living that aren’t vulnerable to systemic disintermediation. (That’s code for a machine replacing you and being laid off.) The time to think about this stuff is when you still have a living and not after you and a whole bunch of other people are scratching to find something new to do. In an economic displacement crisis, those who’ve previously invested in needed skills will make a living.

As a rule when looking for income alternatives, don’t be prideful — be flexible. It’s normal in the course of one’s working life to change careers over time, even if economic conditions are stable. In corporations and government service, one progresses through different jobs over time. In entrepreneurial careers, one changes projects on a regular basis. In blue collar and retail work, one follows the business cycles among multiple employers. The point is we’ll all experience change; an economic crisis-forced change is just one more change passing “Go” around the board game of life.

Above: Assume there are people at work right now trying to bankrupt the United States through artificial means of internet hacking and manipulation. See Dennis’ book review on this topic elsewhere in this issue.

While you’re still working, start to cultivate that next dream career — one that isn’t vulnerable to the same financial crisis you’re prepping for, of course. Then, turn your goal to make it a viable option into an obligation to make it so. Force yourself to do what it takes to actually have a leg up on competing for that job when the time comes. Be mindful that you’re counting down to a crisis, and you don’t want to be caught lacking for options when it happens —act accordingly.

You think AI is going to take your service job in an army of expensive human resources? Become a member of the cadre the AI needs to run after it takes over the jobs of everyone in the building. You may want to cultivate something very different as a next career. Want to be a drone operator? Swarms of agricultural robots and fleets of self-driving cars are coming, and there’ll be a need to tend to their needs to organize and accomplish their functional missions. You may need to invest in additional education.

The time to do it is now and not when you’re desperately undergoing a severance benefit-retraining program. Yeah, it takes work to morph yourself — it's not easy.

OK, that’s your next dream job. Further increase your flexibility to make a living, even at a lower earnings level than you’re at now, doing something less prestigious but personally tolerable. Scour your mind for things you wouldn’t mind doing for a while to get by and, again, make it an obligation to do what it takes to make yourself viable in those job roles.

Teaching ballroom dancing at a retirement home is still a living and, if you like to dance, a tolerable way to carry on compared to hard labor on a road crew; although if you can get the certification to do that, potholes are an evergreen renewable resource. The point is to be creative in your thinking and discipline yourself to work to make these options feasible.

If you’re married and both of you have similarly vulnerable careers, you should both cultivate viable options alternatives. That doubles your potential to lessen the impact of a systemic crisis on your life.

Above: Thousands of people trusted Bernie Madoff with their money only to find out they’d been swindled. Think of how many others are out there right now engaging in similar practices. Here we see an auction of Madoff's property in Miami 2011.

Now to material things. If you own a home, ponder your housing situation with an open mind. As a general rule, over the course of a financial crisis, (a) you want what you owe on your house to always be less than the realizable market value of the property, and (b) the cost of servicing your debt on your home to be within the total of all income you’ll be able to garner during the duration of that crisis. These are basic creditworthiness criteria that you have to be honest with yourself about.

Crunch your numbers. You don’t want to be like the people from the 2008 crisis who leveraged their homes to the hilt, saw their property values fall below their outstanding debt, and lost it all. Familiarize yourself with options to manage your exposure. If you can, you may want to pay down your debt load. It's not the easiest thing to do, but some people strategically downsize to small, less costly homes. Some people even cash out completely and rent for the duration of the crisis if their numbers indicate that’s a preferable choice. The crisis always does end. When preparing for a financial crisis, you’re planning to get to that end.

Have an austerity plan. The law that income must be more than expenses is set in stone. In good times, it’s easy to live hand to mouth and, for the most part, get away with it. Some people barely get by, even if they have enormous incomes, because they have equally enormous expenses. This doesn’t work in a financial crisis when income interruption may be forced upon you. If you did your homework on alternative realizable income sources described earlier, you’ve an idea of where your expenses will need to be to stay within what you can realistically manage during a financial crisis. Embrace that number. You’ll literally live or die by it. Know how you’re doing to convert from whatever your lifestyle is now to your austere mode.

And don’t fool yourself. You don’t just snap your fingers and go from party animal to austere survivalist. Like your income side-goals-to-obligations discipline, the same progression of turning expense goals into personal obligations applies. You need a plan to arrive at the anticipated crisis onset date with your expense habits in balance for the turmoil and recovery phases of that crisis. Save any surplus in a rainy-day reserve fund for when the crisis storm clouds are thickest. Yup, make that an obligation too.

Build your support network before the crisis hits. Most people won't want to abandon their lives for a three- to five-year crisis — they’ll want to work their way though it where they are. That means you need to build your equity within your community; the people you’ll most likely lean on when things just feel bad. That also means valuing the community equity of others and being prepared to help them though the crisis to the extent you can.

But be sure to set your network’s expectations properly. You want it to survive the crisis, not fall apart leaving each of you utterly alone to suffer it in loneliness. As the crisis approaches, oblige each other to complete your goals so you enter the crisis strong and on parity. You’ll be bartering goodwill with each other. You’ll probably not be financially supporting each other. If you do, set up a company like an LLC so any money, barter, and services aren’t personal. It’ll be stressful enough; shifting the obligations and expectations to a business entity will help ease that stress.

Above: As Jim Rohn once said, “If you don't design your own life plan, chances are you'll fall into someone else's plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.”

Don’t be prideful. During a crisis, use every avenue of aid that can extend your ability to hold on. Refinancing extensions. Unemployment benefits. Welfare. The bottom line under such conditions is to do anything that increases income and decreases expenses. There’s no room for pride and leaving things on the table. Surviving and getting to the other side of the crisis should be your focus.

Finally, manage your expectations. If your finances crater, it’s OK to be poorer. Yes, really. It’s fine. You’re starting over. Remember, the admonition is that life has many natural start-overs, even if the economy isn’t crashing. This financial crisis is just an extra start-over. During a crisis, you aren’t passively waiting for it to end; you’re aggressively repositioning yourself using all the options you prepared to keep an eye out on where the opening in the clouds shows itself; then, moving on it first, before anyone else takes your spot in line for an exit out of the crisis.

What's In Your Mattress?

Enduring a long-term financial crisis isn’t something you do in isolation. You still have to interact with bankers, creditors, and your obligations; that’s part of living life. So don’t plan to cut your cord to your bank or brokerage just because a recession drags on. However, there can be short-term outages in your ability to access your finances. For that you need your “mattress” stash.

How much should that be? As a rule, the minimum rainy-day fund you need to keep in that mayonnaise jar is about one month of living expenses; two months is better. That amount changes over time, so it’s important to keep a budget if only to know what you're spending to maintain your lifestyle. Work up to having that cash in the only reserve currency that matters on this planet, green American money. Split where you store it in at least two places, both inconvenient to get to so you aren’t tempted to use the money. Then, forget about it until the day comes when you really need it.

How Viable is Your Current Job Industry?

Above: Although it may be a blow to your ego, anything that decreases debt and increases income is productive when times are tough.

Toys “R” Us recently joined the ever-growing list of defunct retail chains. With the proliferation of automation, e-commerce, and job instability in a world where employers are constantly focused on cost-cutting, it makes sense to examine figures about workforce sizes in various industries. Interested in seeing what industries are circling the drain versus which ones are growing? The Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks data by industry over time. www.bls.gov/iag/

About the Author

Dennis Santiago is a global risk and financial analyst. His national policy expertise includes strategic warfare, asymmetric warfare, and global stability. He’s a financial industry subject matter expert on systemic risks to the U.S. economy and the safety and soundness testing of U.S. banking institutions. www.dennissantiago.com

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Editor's Note: This article has been modified from its original version for the web.

RecoilTV: 2018 Gambler 500 Rally

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If you've ever shopped for a used car on Craigslist, you'll know it can be tricky to find a clean and reliable vehicle for under $5,000. Now consider consider how much more difficult that gets if you drop a zero off that budget and go shopping with just $500. And to top it off, it turns out you need to drive said beater over 500 miles of rough dirt roads in the backwoods. This insane task is known as the Gambler 500.

RECOIL's Iain Harrison has participated in the Gambler 500 for several years now — check out our video from last year featuring his modified Toyota minivan. This year, rather than taking on the adventure alone, RECOIL supported three other teams led by friends from the gun industry. Crews from SIG, Salient Arms, and Noveske showed up to try their luck on the rally course, and our film crew documented the journey.

SIG's team piloted a very heavily-used Ford Crown Victoria, while Salient built a literal land yacht. As for Noveske, they showed up with three cars — a '90s Mustang, a '70s Mustang, and an AMC Javelin that looked the part for a Mad Max film.

RECOILtv 2018 Gambler 500 offroad rally race adventure vehicle car truck bugout 1

Unsurprisingly, there were many breakdowns and struggles along the way. But other Gambler 500 participants lent a hand (and some beers) to ensure a great time was had by all. You can watch the full 30-minute video below, or click here to go watch more videos from RECOILtv.

Operation Dark Winter: Weaponized Smallpox

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Sometimes our worst fears are often chalked up to personal hysteria. There are times, however, when our dread is based off the horrible possibility of a very real event. The latter is the foundation of Operation: Dark Winter, a senior-level government exercise from June 2001 that simulated a bioterrorism attack in the United States using smallpox as its agent of choice.

Designed and controlled by key members of Johns Hopkins University and a company known as Analytic Services, Operation: Dark Winter (ODW) focused on evaluating the nation’s capabilities to respond to a massive smallpox attack on a major American city, namely Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. From there, the simulation’s scenario only grows worse, looking to test America’s resiliency to stand up to a coordinated attack by international terrorists.

Investigations have confirmed that organizations such as Al-Qaeda have already begun working on manufacturing bioterrorism agents, such as Anthrax.

Investigations have confirmed that organizations such as Al-Qaeda have already begun working on manufacturing...

The results of ODW’s efforts revealed a stunning reality that many Americans aren’t aware of — we as a nation are drastically ill-prepared for such an attack. Problems range from a lack of sufficient training, insufficient amounts of vaccine or drugs, or the ability to stop the spread of a potential pandemic in communities. ODW revealed many gaps in the nation’s preparedness levels enveloping a bioterrorism attack.

With advances in healthcare and government-sponsored preparedness efforts, America should be able to stand against such an attack today, right? To best answer that question, we’ve assembled a guest-panel of experts. Colonel Randall Larsen, USAF (retired), one of the chief architects of ODW, will be joined by combat psychologist Neal H. Olshan, Ph.D., and Dave Jones, Army Chemical Officer (retired), who has a background in nuclear/chemical/biological warfare (NBC). Here we delve deeper into the current state of affairs with the nation’s healthcare system to determine if we’re better prepared now than we were when the study was originally conducted or if the healthcare infrastructure has continued to deteriorate.

Panel Discussion

RECOIL OFFGRID: What was the intention of Operation: Dark Winter (ODW), and how would that intention look different now if it were to be conducted again?

Randall Larsen: We wanted to look at the United States and how well they were prepared in case a terrorist organization, in this case Al-Qaeda, would launch a biological attack on several U.S. cities. In this particular event, we chose to use smallpox, which is very contagious and kills about one third of the people it infects.

We looked at a lot of different issues for Dark Winter. It made us ask, are we prepared, how would we respond, and if we only have a limited supply of vaccine, who gets the vaccine?

About nine days after Sept. 11, we were asked to give a briefing to the White House to examine if Al-Qaeda, the people who just attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, would be capable of a biological attack? At the time, we didn’t know that Al-Qaeda had developed anthrax labs in Afghanistan and Malaysia, and the CIA clearly believed that they wanted an anthrax attack in the U.S. at the same time as the airplane attacks. They just didn’t get it finished in time. It was several years later, in unclassified sources, that Al-Qaeda’s anthrax laboratory in Malaysia was found to be much closer to success in being operational for that attack. So the possibility of delivering a bioterrorism attack is still very much alive today.

Dave Jones: We knew our butts were hanging out, and that’s why this tabletop exercise was conducted. As the memory of Sept. 11 fades in our collective consciousness, so does the perception of a threat. If there was an actual terrorist attack, they would not release it in one populated city. They would release it in as many as they can. We found out that once that happened, our stockpile would immediately be wiped out (after an attack). The actual number is classified, as is the location. Depending on where you read, we have between 12- and 20-million vaccines stockpiled, which is enough to inoculate for one outbreak.

There’s no good way to alert the public, even medical facilities, that an attack has happened. If you play the scenario out, some people will go to the hospital, many will not. The only way we’d know if something was wrong is in the case of a “hospital divert,” where a hospital cannot take anymore patients, and they notify their county health department, who then notifies the State and Federal governments. This isn’t necessarily a good alert system for the hospitals, because once the alert is activated, the incident has already happened. The hospital is contaminated and the people have already spread the infection.

Neal Olshan: One difference is the internet. You have to add the variable of people going to the internet for information, which may not be valid. If this were to happen there would be more people who could die from a “fear pandemic” than the bioterrorist attack itself. The attack is only the first stage, but the fear pandemic that would follow could kill more. One of the things that happens when your heart rate goes up is that it takes over the primitive part of your brain, which is the fight-or-flight survival instinct that we get in those situations. Once your heart begins beating

at 140 bpm, you begin to lose 33 percent your peripheral vision. When it goes up to 150 bpm, you lose your fine motor control. But when you get up to 160 bpm, you can’t use logic. It shifts you into the primitive part of the brain and it becomes very instinctual. Decision-making goes right out the door. This is what you see during mob mentality. When it comes to things like bioterrorism, I believe that this is one of the things that hasn’t been looked at.

If something like ODW would happen, people could very well resort to this frame of mind and lock themselves and their families in their home in isolation. All of this shifts us into a survival mode, even to the point of violence. If an attack would happen, there will be groups of people who believe that other social groups shouldn’t receive any vaccine or treatment after an attack, or that they themselves should get it first. I think that the potential of violence is very great, especially with groups who have a smoldering anger toward the situation, the government, or others. No one has ever talked about a “fear pandemic,” which is a natural offshoot of an attack or disease pandemic.

Did you see any potential flaws with the exercise?

RL: One of the criticisms that others have written about, and I don’t think has great credibility, is that we used what is called an “R-nought.” In epidemiology terms, it relates to how many people would an infected person make sick. We used an R-nought of three, which means that one infected person would infect three people. Some people said that was too high. I just don’t think that it was. It was also certainly irrelevant. Our whole purpose was to see if the U.S. was prepared to handle something like this, and if not, what could be done to improve that.

We didn’t want to sensationalize this. During the exercise, only a couple of thousand died during the simulation. But as we saw during the Ebola incident in 2015, with only five cases in the U.S., how crazy things got. You can imagine how crazy it would be if 2,000 would die in a smallpox attack. Even with two-thirds of the people who’d survive smallpox, there would be horrible disfigurement and a good percentage would be left blind. It would be a frightful thing.

And you figure that a thinking enemy, if they’re attacking us with a pathogen, they are probably going to be putting out a lot of disinformation through social media and make our response much more difficult. It’s a great concern in terms of how we deal with it.

DJ: The exercise was very good and thorough. They came out with a great list of findings and a great to-do list. The follow-up, however, was not ideal. Priorities change and funding gets diverted. There are a lot of ICUs in this country, but not many isolation units. Take the 2015 Ebola cases in the U.S. — nurses and doctors received training in it, but if they don’t work in it, the training goes by the wayside. It’s very hard to keep that level of proficiency up. Ebola was a very small microcosm of what would happen with smallpox. A normal outbreak is one thing, but a deliberate attack is a whole other level. With a normal outbreak, we’d be able to handle it “well.” If there were a deliberate attack, I don’t see how it can be handled well at all.

NO: If you look at the major participants of the ODW program, I did not see any doctors or psychologists. I think that it is an inherent flaw that you don’t have frontline people in the first-tier of decision makers, especially in the role of mental health.

If someone wanted to destroy the U.S., all they would have to do is release a couple of infestations of disease, and the fear pandemic would take over and do the rest. I think that the worst fear is fear of the unknown. If you fear an invasion of another country, in your mind, you can deal with it because you can picture it. The same can be true of even a nuclear attack. But with a bioterrorism attack, the fear pandemic from an unseen disease will be much, much worse. Mental health professionals would play an enormous role in our response to an attack.

Do you think that the healthcare system has improved since the initial study?

RL: When I was the executive director of the WMD Commission, we did a report card that examined how the U.S., in January 2010, is prepared to handle a mushroom cloud over an American city, or respond to a bioterrorism attack. The grade that was given from that commission on our preparedness to respond to a pandemic was an “F.” There is now a bipartisan panel called the Blue-Ribbon Panel on Biodefense, and is co-chaired by Tom Ridge (former secretary of Homeland Security) and Senator Joe Lieberman. Their recent report concluded that preparedness efforts have improved very little, if any at all.

One of the reasons that we haven’t seen a lot of improvement, according to Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina, who is Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, is that about only five members of the 535 members of the U.S. Congress really understand the biological threat. And this is one of the problems. If the members of Congress really understood how serious this threat was, there would be a lot more done. But they don’t. And there’s no real lobbying effort for it being done. Unfortunately, there is no public health industrial complex that pushes Congress to spend a lot of money on this to get us prepared.

NO: I do not see it as doing any better. I actually think that it has the potential of being much worse. I also think that disaster information is often ignored because we haven’t found a good solution to dispensing it. The solution, in my opinion, is that we have to take a look at the basic structure of how we alert people that an outbreak has occurred.

When you’re dealing with a basic mistrust of government agencies, and you add in the internet, you fuel a perfect storm of misinformation and distrust. The internet may actually be the demon in all of this, and you may have internet-based organizations that may have certain agendas. That’s why I believe that in a few days after the attack, the government may have to shut the internet down or limit internet information that comes directly from them to help mitigate the spread of misinformation. When you read about the Black Death Plague, the fear that was generated (due to the combination of bad information and an atmosphere of fear) actually caused people to murder others and burn down homes with people in them. They thought those families might be infected with the plague, and they may not have actually had it. We haven’t grown much since then. It adds a whole new component to the fear pandemic that hasn’t really been thoroughly studied.

If you could implement a series of changes to improve the healthcare system to prepare for a pandemic, what would they be?

RL: What we need in this country to be better prepared to respond to a pandemic, whether natural or manmade are three things:

Rapid diagnostic capability: This is critically important! As with any disease, the sooner it’s diagnosed, the better the prognosis. Whether you’re talking about lung cancer or bioterrorism, if we can’t figure out what the disease is and quickly, a lot of people will get sick and possibly die.

Better medical countermeasures (vaccines and therapeutics): This needs to be one of the highest priorities of the country, much like the scale of the Manhattan Project. We need that level of attention. The government needs to work with industry to come up with medical countermeasures and therapeutics much faster and much more affordably than we do right now for a bioterrorism attack or pandemic.

Better surge capacity in our hospitals: If you went to any hospital during this year’s flu season, you could see how overwhelmed they were. This year’s flu season was worse than normal, and we saw flu tents in the parking lots of California hospitals, but it was nowhere near catastrophic levels. Imagine how we’d be today if it was the winter of 1918 where we saw thousands of Americans die from the Spanish Flu pandemic. More soldiers died from that influenza than did in WWI. We need to do better in hospital surge capacity, because they are just not at the level to handle that capacity of patients.

These are good investments in public health, national security, the safety of our citizens, and so there are great dual benefits, whether you are talking about bioterrorism or a naturally occurring pandemic.

Aside from public health problems the pandemic itself would create, when you combine that with misinformation, public fear can quickly get out of control and intensify problems well beyond the scope of a disease outbreak.

Aside from public health problems the pandemic itself would create, when you combine that with misinformation, public...

JD: Each hospital and healthcare facility needs to have a surge-capacity force with a plan to handle a large-scale incident and exercise the plan to ensure they are ready for the surge of people. They also need a three-day supply of equipment and a realistic refill plan, and think outside the box to secure the needed equipment wherever they can.

NO: I think that it’s going to have to come from the top, and it’s going to take certain people in the government to not feel that they have to have their name on something, and go through committee meeting after committee meetings. Someone would need to say, “This needs to be done.”

As far as the average citizen is concerned, what do you think we can do to bolster our preparation for an event that could overwhelm our healthcare infrastructure?

RL: The preparation that we do beforehand is key to surviving a pandemic, especially when it comes to having a supply of important medications. The most important thing to be prepared for any type of natural disaster or manmade disaster is to have enough prescription medications. Make sure that you have an adequate supply of it to last you several days or weeks.

I also think that it’s good to have a transportation plan. How do you plan to get out of your community if several roads are closed? If your kids are in school, and your wife works on the north side of town and you work on the south side, how do you plan to meet and evacuate your town?

Do you have a good communications plan? One of the things that we noticed on Sept. 11 is that all of the cell phones stopped working because everyone was trying to use them. How would you get in touch with your family if your cell phone service was down? It’s a good idea to sit down with your family to discuss how you would get a hold of one another during a disaster.

DJ: In this type of a scenario, isolation is going to be the answer for the average person. If they can pull off 2 to 12 weeks of isolation, it would do them well. You could start with three to four days and build from there. Do you want to have just enough to hold you over, or do you want to survive? If you’re depending on the government during a massive pandemic, your plan might be lacking. Hope is not a strategy. You may be on your own.

NO: I think that one of the things that’s imperative is that people have a plan, and one that involves their family, and wherever they’re at. No matter if it’s a natural disaster or a bioterrorism attack, one of the first things that people can do is address their basic survival concerns: food, water, and shelter. And as part of that, if you’re including a family, you’ve got to have a family plan. I think that anything that you can do, in terms of gaining knowledge and preparing needed survival supplies, will greatly reduce anxiety when an event like a bioterrorism attack or pandemic happens.

Part of the psychological aspects of off-grid preparedness is that you feel you haven’t given up control. You are trying to prepare, and that has a significant psychological impact.

About Operation: Dark Winter

Operation dark winter smallpox attack medical pandemic bioterrorism prepper shtf survival 1

Smallpox is one of the deadliest diseases known to man. Although considered eradicated, it’s still possible for pockets to display themselves in the world. Smallpox symptoms include fever and a distinctive, progressive skin rash. Most people with smallpox recovered, but about three out of every 10 people with the disease died. Many smallpox survivors have permanent scars over large areas of their body, especially their faces. Some are left blind. Picture courtesy Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Interested in reading the Operation: Dark Winter study in its entirety? You can check it out here: http://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/our-work/events/2001_dark-winter/Dark%20Winter%20Script.pdf

More info here: www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/our-work/events/2001_dark-winter/about.html

Visit this link to learn more about smallpox: www.cdc.gov/smallpox

Conclusion

The goal of terrorism is to exploit areas of vulnerability. Operation: Dark Winter serves as a stark reminder that our nation will always be under attack, be it with bioterrorism agents, explosives, or mass shootings. It also serves as a wakeup call to those who are charged with protecting the homeland and its citizens.

The question is, in the absence of an improved healthcare infrastructure, how can you better prepare yourself for an incident of this nature? Check out our piece “Outbreaking News” in Issue 12 to learn more about the government’s framework for outbreaks as well as how to vet reliable information and prevent spreading the disease.

Meet Our Panel

Colonel Randall Larsen

Colonel Randall Larsen, USAF (retired) is the CEO of Randall Larsen Presents. He also serves as the National Security Advisor at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security (a position he has held since 2004), and the CEO of Homeland Security Associates, LLC (www.hlsassociates.com). He’s a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the National Speakers Association. www.randalllarsenpresents.com

Dr. Neal H. Olshan

Dr. Neal H. Olshan is the developer of Evolution of Mindset and is a consulting psychologist for corporations and the sports industry for athletic improvement through the use of his Mindset program. He’s also a pilot, an award-winning photographer, an author of both fiction and nonfiction books, and the chief combat psychologist for LMS Defense. doctorolshan.com

Dave Jones

A 24-year veteran of the U.S. Army and retired Army Chemical Officer, Dave taught nuclear, biological, and chemical warfare defense to military personnel all over the world. Being recognized as a weapon of mass destruction expert, David was recalled to active duty six months after 9/11 occurred. He spent the next 22 months in the Middle East traveling to 16 different countries conducting vulnerability assessments on US interests in the area. His most amazing accomplishment to date was that he became a father for the first time at age 50. Learn more about him at wmdprotection.com.

More From Issue 28

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Editor's Note: This article has been modified from its original version for the web.

Daniel Lombard Spotlight – True Grit

Written by

Photos by Dobson Entertainment, Inc.

There’s a saying often attributed to John Stuart Mill that the subject of this issue’s Survivalist Spotlight is quite fond of: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” While we feel that’s a pretty self-explanatory statement, some may ask what makes a man good. Daniel Lombard has quite a body of experience to answer that question. His dedication to protecting others is truly limitless.

Lombard is a policeman in one of the toughest cities in the country — Chicago. He founded DAVAD Defense, a firearms training company that not only provides instruction to Chicago PD’s various units, but teaches the average citizen how to defend themselves. When Daniel has earned enough respect to be selected as an adjunct instructor by the likes of Kris “Tanto” Paronto of Benghazi fame, you know there’s something to be said for his integrity.

Daniel Lombard survivalist spotlight interview hunting poaching south africa guns shtf 3

If that weren’t enough, as a native of South Africa, he also took it upon himself to train local game rangers and assist in an ongoing struggle that has no end in sight — battling poachers. Even as rhino populations dwindle and poaching syndicates become better equipped than the native game wardens tasked with protecting them, that doesn’t discourage Daniel from taking an active role in the conservation effort.

We’re pretty sure that the world’s evil wouldn’t stand a chance with more people like Daniel Lombard in it. We sat down with him to get the inside scoop on the anatomy of the poaching underworld, what it takes to survive in the Africa bush and streets of Chicago, as well as the challenges he faces in his police work.

Our Interview with Daniel Lombard

RECOIL OFFGRID: Where were you born?

Daniel Lombard: I was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, but pretty much right after that my parents moved to Durban on the coast. I ended up moving down to the ocean there when I was about a year old.

What did you want to do when you grew up?

DL: When I was in school I ended up going to the university to study law. I was the first person in my family to go to a university. My dad expected me to be a lawyer, but law school didn’t quite pan out. I majored in history as well as constitutional law, so once I had my bachelor’s degree I decided not to pursue law. I think I got tired of being a student at that point.

Daniel Lombard survivalist spotlight interview hunting poaching south africa guns shtf 5

Daniel seen here in rooftop training exercise with fellow Chicago PD.

And you’re now a Chicago police officer, is that correct?

DL: Yes, in fact I just got done celebrating my 17th year on the job. Kinda strange, you’d think I would’ve gone to a warmer place [laughs].

What made you want to become a Chicago policeman?

DL: Because of my weapons background, I met a few guys who immediately told me I needed to get onto the police department. At the time you didn’t need to be a U.S. citizen, so that was fortunate. I thought, for lack of a better plan, I’d send the application and see how it went, and here we are.

What’s been your toughest experience so far as a policeman?

DL: The rules of engagement continue to change. Even if you’re perfectly right, public opinion seems to matter more than anything else.

Have you been in a situation where your life’s been threatened?

DL: Oh yes, I spent 12 years on the gang unit, so we’ve had some issues. I’ve never been involved in a shooting where I had to fire my weapon, but on our team I’ve certainly been in the line of fire.

Daniel Lombard survivalist spotlight interview hunting poaching south africa guns shtf 4

With all the gun laws that’ve been passed there, what do you recommend citizens do to stay safe in a big metropolis with such strict legislation?

DL: The funny thing is that you think Chicago has such strict laws. Chicago makes a lot of laws, but no one ever follows them and no one ever gets prosecuted. The issue we have is continual shootings, gang violence, etc., but all the people doing the shootings are a small minority that are basically repeat offenders usually on parole for gun crimes that end up doing another gun crime. Cook County is notorious for having a high bar to prosecution for anything.

As you know, I run a civilian firearms training company where we do concealed carry training. We offer training after that as well, because just doing the state-mandated legal stuff isn’t really good enough. If you’re in a big city like Chicago, obviously common sense, where you go, and what time of night is important, but if you’re proficient, capable, and legal it’s probably not a bad idea to carry a firearm. Last year in Chicago, there were more shootings involving concealed-carry holders than those involving the police department. We only got concealed carry four-and-a-half years ago; we were the last state to get it. Be proficient, be safe, and be lawful. Under the current climate in Chicago, you’re kind of on your own.

Daniel teaching a concealed carry course.

Daniel teaching a concealed carry course.

Tell me about your company DAVAD Civilian Defense.

DL: I’ve always had a background in training and trained police officers in South Africa. I was also a competitive shooter. Having been a consultant with DS Arms and working with a few training companies here, I’ve trained the guys on my gang team, because I had a lot of experience from South Africa. When concealed-carry came about, it was a new market and I saw an opportunity to not necessarily make money, but offer premier training for civilians. So if you decide you want to carry a firearm and go get your concealed carry permit, that in no way, shape, or form prepares you for anything. My idea was to provide the next level of training, similar to the stuff like Jeff Cooper and all these top trainers offer where you could truly be proficient and get the same if not better training than a police officer. And, of course, I focus on training police officers to a higher level too.

I train officers to basically be better at what they do when they come out of the academy, and I prepare them to try out for special units like SWAT. I will hone their shooting skills so that they can make their selection. I try and align myself with credible, real-world trainers, not just your Instagram warriors. I hosted Kris Paronto and Dave Benton, the guys from Benghazi. Kris is actually going to take me on as an adjunct instructor helping him out with stuff. We met when I was doing a video; a company out of New York saw a video I did on long-range pistol shooting. Being law enforcement, I went and did a video with Rudy Reyes, myself, Kris, Geoff Reeves, who is a Navy SEAL, and Ron Holmes, a former Recon Marine. So there were the five of us and we did this video for this shooting system, which was actually pretty good and so I was lucky enough to be put in that group of people and once I was there I kept in touch with all those guys.

What are some of the biggest misconceptions people enter your training with?

DL: They get caught up in buying stuff. They buy a gun or all this gear and they start thinking that if you spend money it will solve the problem, especially people who’ve been shooting before, but have never taken a class. Give me the new shooter who has never handled a gun before, and within a few hours I’ll have them outshooting the guy who thinks he knows everything because you don’t know what you don’t know.

Tell me about this show Zulu Land’s Rhino Warriors you’ve been working on.

DL: I met up with the owner of a company called DS Arms. The reason why I knew them so well is because my police-issued rifle in South Africa was the same one that they now manufacture in the USA. So basically 93 countries around the world adopted this FN FAL, and the owner, Dave Selvaggio, basically bought all the tooling from the Austrian government after the end of the Cold War and started making this iconic battle rifle — “the right arm of the free world.”

Through time, he asked me to help him out and do some demos for some smaller police departments. When he decided to take his business overseas, he asked me to come with him.

At Aquila Game Reserve in Cape Town, South Africa.

At Aquila Game Reserve in Cape Town, South Africa.

That grew and we started doing stuff in other South American countries, and during this time friends of mine who were working anti-poaching in South Africa kept asking me for parts to keep their weapons going. This particular rifle is the one that all the anti-poaching units use in Africa because it’s a .308. One thing led to the next, I flew to Nairobi, did a demo for the game rangers, and we sold a few hundred rifles to the Kenyan Wildlife Service. That’s what really got me interested in this. When I was there, they basically had one game ranger and two unarmed rangers who would follow this guy with the rifle around because there weren’t enough to go around. If he got shot, they’d just pick up his rifle, which was crazy. We got these rifles to them, and we started supplying logistics and support to my friends in the South African police who became game rangers.

I’d always known about it when I was there, but on my trips back I met with some people and realized, holy sh*t, this is a big, big problem. It’s way worse than I could’ve imagined, and the poaching had just spun out of control out of nowhere. When friends of yours who you grew up with tell you that they’re losing this war, then you take notice. I talked to Dave at DS Arms, and asked if we could sponsor some kind of equipment these guys needed like clothing, uniforms, holsters, slings, binoculars, and also training. There’s all these ITAR regulations you have to be careful of so it doesn’t seem like you’re supplying some army, so we decided to make a YouTube video on the poaching epidemic.

We reached out to Rick Dobson, who had gone with us to record a show in Peru and the concept was to pay for it ourselves, wing it, and we came up with the idea of doing a docu-series. The concept was that we went down and showed how things really were. I had the chance to go on patrol, interview a lot of people, and get a really good grasp of the problem. The people who saw the show loved it. It’s only been on the Sportsman’s Channel so far, and the idea was to try and get the message out about what’s going on and maybe get volunteers. We went to five or six different game reserves, and they showed us some rehabilitation of the rhino and got an idea how big the problem is.

Interviewing a veterinarian at the Tala Game Reserve.

Interviewing a veterinarian at the Tala Game Reserve.

It’s literally on the national consciousness there, and it’s everywhere you turn. We self-funded it, went down on our own expense, donated training to the rangers, and got them some gear. We did some things to highlight the problems logistically, and at the same time say, ‘Hey don’t just give money,’ because there’s a lot of corruption going on. We couldn’t just give money to the government. It’s a hard cause to raise awareness for, because there’s so many other causes flooding the social media feed.

We showed what it’s like being a game ranger, tracked with them, interviewed them, and showed what surviving in the bush is all about. What do you do at night? What do you avoid? What types of snakes do you have to watch out for? What do you do if you’re charged by a hippo? Basically it was just, let’s do something. It’s also about showing how guns can be used for something good and show the positive impact of what a company with a social conscience can do.

What’s the appeal of the rhino horn all about?

DL: The tragedy of this is that it’s nothing; it’s just keratin like your fingernails. It’s not like gold or something that can be used in industry, there’s nothing it can be used for. Its medical power is all a perpetuated myth. Trying to educate people about this myth is tough. It’s gotten so big, and there’s so much money involved now. One rhino horn could be worth a million dollars.

People risk their lives for it. We keep selling rifles to the anti-poaching units because they get involved in shootings on basically a monthly basis, those weapons get taken for evidence, and that case could take two to three years to wrap up, so in the meantime they have to replace those guns on the street. So it’s weird that there’s this crazy war going on over the rhino, which has no value whatsoever other than what’s been made up by man.

We were trying to focus on how ridiculous this whole thing is, but now it’s worse than ever. These are private game reserves, one of which we’d go to as kids, where rhinos were poached in broad daylight. The poaching that goes on is that they’re basically sneaking in, darting these animals with tranquilizers, and hacking off their horns while they’re still alive. It’s very elaborate crime syndicates that are doing this. They’re literally poaching them in zoos now, so it’s completely out of control.

Training a game ranger at Aquila Game Reserve.

Training a game ranger at Aquila Game Reserve.

The demand mostly comes from the Far East. You’d have thought that myth would’ve dissipated with Viagra, but then there are other myths about it being a cure for cancer. Vietnam is one of the biggest purchasers of rhino horns, because it’s a status symbol. It’s evolved from aphrodisiac to cancer cure to where it’s seen as something the richest of the rich have. There’s private funding for education that bring out a lot of children from Vietnam, Laos, and places like that have them stay on the game reserve for a week and try and teach them that these rumors just aren’t the case and rhino horn has no mystical power.

What do the local populations and government do to combat poaching?

DL: Most of the anti-poaching in the government game reserves is funded by the government; however, there are levels of corruption that run pretty deep, especially in South Africa. It’s always been known that there are government officials involved in this, because there’s so much money at stake. South Africa has the largest rhino population left in Africa, so there’s been police involved, government officials, etc. You think about someone poaching one rhino, and they could become a millionaire. It’s the most valuable substance on the planet today. Per weight it’s more valuable than gold and diamonds.

Because of the massive amount of money involved, Muslim terrorist groups have also been involved in rhino poaching. In Kenya, you’ve got the Somalians just across the border, and they would go in with military capabilities funded by Al-Qaeda, poach the rhino, and send it to Yemen. The Yemenese also use the rhino horn for ceremonial daggers for the very wealthy when their sons would have their coming-of-age party. That pipeline was basically funding a lot of terrorism. That’s basically symbolic, and again not something that was used for anything other than its mythical power.

Learning tracking techniques with local game ranger.

Learning tracking techniques with local game ranger.

What happens to a poacher who is captured?

DL: It depends on where you’re talking about. In Botswana they’re pretty much shot on sight. That’s why Botswana doesn’t have much of a problem, although they do experience some issues. In Kenya, it may also involve some sort of lethal force. Some of the rangers have been killed, and they have a court system. Not sure what their penalty is though.

In South Africa, the rules of engagement are pretty much if the poachers are armed it turns into a lethal confrontation. It also depends on if you’re on a private game reserve or not. If it’s the government that’s doing it, then they would make the arrest and charge them through the court system. Penalties are pretty severe. I know there’s easily a 10-year sentence for being caught with rhino horn, but the problem is just catching the low-level players, meaning the poachers themselves. You’re not catching anyone in the syndicates and the next level up.

How big and well-financed are these poachers?

DL: Very. I can’t verify this, but we know that they have state-of-the-art equipment, cell phone jammers, military-grade night vision, and are funded at the highest levels. They use big-game hunting rifles and very high-schedule drugs for the darting of these rhinos. They’re not shooting them with a rifle with night vision and a silencer; they’re hunting them with a dart gun and a highly restricted drug, which can only be sourced through backdoor channels in the veterinary circles. So there’s even corruption among veterinarians.

At Tala Game Reserve with rhino receiving veterinary treatment for a wound.

At Tala Game Reserve with rhino receiving veterinary treatment for a wound.

What effects do you think the disappearance of rhinos would have on the global ecosystem?

DL: Ecosystems might not collapse, but what’s next? The elephant for its ivory, then the lions for more mythology that their bones cure cancer, so where does it end? It doesn’t. I’m an avid hunter. I have no issue with hunting, but I don’t see the need to shoot an animal that you can’t eat or do anything with, so I’d be morally opposed to people hunting it for nothing. But if you see what people pay for hunting, it might be the only option to pay for some conservation. Apparently, social media isn’t generating any money for the conservation effort. The only people paying to come to Africa to do anything are hunters.

So you can legally hunt rhino over there?

DL: Yes, but it’s very expensive. It’d probably cost you over a million dollars. That would be a permit issued by the government that’d only be for an older rhino that couldn’t breed. Again, I think probably not too many people would sign up to shoot a rhino under the current climate, but I don’t know of any other way to raise money.

What can the average citizen do to support anti-poaching units?

DL: I wouldn’t recommend donating money because you don’t know where it’s going. I think the best thing you can do is educate others and shame them about possessing the stuff. Tell the truth that it’s just a status symbol and doesn’t have any medicinal purposes. There’s causes like Saving Private Rhino and Rave Rhino that will take volunteers who come out and put them in the field.
It may be difficult to arm them, but we literally have volunteers following around the rhinos 24/7 in the game reserves. Maybe if people came out and did that they could come back and tell their story. A lot of these places will accept donated equipment as well. If someone wanted to get involved, get on a plane, and go down there. That’s the conviction it probably takes.

Resting after a patrol at Aquila Game Reserve.

Resting after a patrol at Aquila Game Reserve.

So what does it take to survive in the bush down there if someone wanted to go do that?

DL: This is where it gets interesting. When it comes to working around rhino, you have to be careful where you’re at in relation to the rhino. Their eyesight is bad, but their hearing and sense of smell is really good. If a rhino charges you, it’s an angry 2,000-pound animal that can overturn a vehicle. You also have to be very careful of snakes. At least 70 percent of them are poisonous. You need to be able to identify what kind it is since some carry neurotoxins, others carry cytotoxins, and so forth.

The other thing is, at night, the most dangerous thing in the bush is the hippo. They’ve actually killed more people in Africa than any other animal. Generally your rhino and hippo congregate around the water holes, so they’re very large animals that can run very fast. Same thing with buffalo. There are also animals like lions in those game reserves, so you could easily end up being stalked by a lion. Everything wants to kill you down there [laughs].

The game ranger has to have good bushcraft and be able to stay out there overnight. He’s got to know his camouflage, he has to know the wind, keep an eye out for lights coming. The average game ranger almost has to have gun-handling skills above the average soldier or police officer, and combine that with all the fieldcraft. He has to know where the animals tend to lay down. It’s a litany of 101 things combined. It’s like a soldier combined with a police officer combined with someone who does counterinsurgency tracking. Plus, you have to have patience, sitting in one place for five or six hours without moving and looking over a vast terrain. If the rhino move, you have to be able to shadow them without spooking them and not fall afoul of the other wildlife. Not everyone’s cut out for it.

You have to be able to carry enough water with you. You can’t drink out of the watering holes like they do in the movies. You also have to know where to shade yourself. Insect repellent is huge. Some of these areas there are malarial. Rangers are generally equipped with a .308-caliber-or-above rifle and a knife. You’d also need a tourniquet, first-aid kit, and snake anti-venom. If you’re darting animals you’d need an antidote for the opioid in case you prick yourself with the dart. It can get complicated.

White rhino at Tala Game Reserve.

White rhino at Tala Game Reserve.

If you’re not running white light if you’re out at night, you’d need some sort of night vision. Always carry extra rope with you for darting a rhino. You’d use this for sneaking up behind them and slipping that rope over the back of their leg. That’s what will finally trip them, otherwise they walk around like zombies forever. They don’t drop that easily, and you want to be able to dictate where they fall because you don’t want them to aimlessly wander into a gully or fall into a river.

Has your life ever been in danger while working in Africa?

DL: Sure, when I was in the country for the African air defense in Pretoria. After dinner, not far from the hotel, I went to a local bar with the guys. As we were walking out I was struck with a metal bar above my left eye and grabbed by a number of individuals who continued to hit me in the head with the object. Hands went in my pockets, and they grabbed my phone.

I had a Cold Steel Tanto Voyager in my right pocket, but struggled to get it out and open as I was being held by guys behind me. I believe they were searching for my pistol. I eventually got it open and cut my thumb in the process, I was still being held, and I managed to get the blade into the crook of the arm of the guy holding me from behind and pushed in hard and out, slashing his tendons. At that point he screamed they all let go and ran away.

I received 18 stitches and the blood washed out my left contact lens. I lost a lot of blood and had two black eyes and severe vertigo for a few months. Next day, we found a massive blood trail and witnesses stated about six street people had attacked us. I got lucky, should never have happened as I shouldn’t have been arrogant enough to walk the streets that late and after a bar. Should never have separated from my group.

What do you think the rhino populations will look like in 30 years without intervention?

DL: I don’t think they’ll make it that long. I think we’ve got five at best if the current poaching rate continues.

About Daniel Lombard

Daniel Lombard survivalist spotlight interview hunting poaching south africa guns shtf 13

Age:
49

Family:
Virginia (wife), Daniel Jr., Andrew, Amelia, Rachel, (and Rebecca, not pictured) (children)

Hometown:
Durban, South Africa

Favorite movie:
Heat

Daniel’s required reading list:
Commando by Deneys Reitz
A Hunter’s Wanderings in Africa by Frederick Courteney Selous

Daniel's EDC:

Daniel Lombard survivalist spotlight interview hunting poaching south africa guns shtf 12

Glock 23
Cuda Bob Terzuola CQB2

Favorite firearm:
The right arm of the free world — FN FAL

Favorite quote:
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” — John Stuart Mill

If you could have lunch with three people, living, dead, or fictitious, who would they be?
Winston Churchill, Napoleon Bonaparte, and Teddy Roosevelt

URL:
davaddefense.com

Zulu Land’s Rhino Warriors
Check out the pilot of Daniel’s TV show here: https://youtu.be/2MZbZBia60M

More From Issue 28

Don’t miss essential survival insights—sign up for Recoil Offgrid's free newsletter today!

Read articles from the next issue of Recoil Offgrid: Issue 29

Read articles from the previous issue of Recoil Offgrid: Issue 27

Check out our other publications on the web: Recoil | Gun Digest | Blade | RecoilTV | RECOILtv (YouTube)

Editor's Note: This article has been modified from its original version for the web.

Review: Filson Mackinaw Cruiser Jacket

Written by

This gear review has its start back in the Vietnam War. My father, Chuck Schrader, was stationed at Elmendorf AFB in Anchorage, Alaska. He served as a medic caring for casualties who were being evacuated from Vietnam on their way back to the states.

“I wish I’d had this during my three winters in Alaska,” he told me. “It would have been warmer than my Air Force-issue parka, especially when the chill factor was -75˚F and I was working on an ambulance, or just walking from the barracks to the hospital.”

He’s referring to a legend in the outdoor community — a garment design that’s been endlessly imitated but never quite duplicated. He’s talking about the Mackinaw Cruiser Jacket from Filson. “Having grown up in northern Pennsylvania, and hunting deer since I was 14, I was accustomed to the Filson Buffalo plaid (red and black checks),” he said. “All of my uncles wore it. In fact, everyone I knew wore it hunting and even in general. I guess that’s why they called it the ‘Pennsylvania Tuxedo.’”

Filson Mackinaw Cruiser Jacket

A scanned page from the C.C. Filson Company catalog in 1922.

A scanned page from the C.C. Filson Company catalog in 1922.

The Mackinaw Cruiser was originally patented on March 3, 1914, as a pullover shirt that buttoned down to the sternum. Patented elements included a double-layer back with access from both sides that created a large, full-width pocket. Outdoorsmen would use it to store maps and charts, or anything else that was necessary to access quickly and carry on their person. The other signature element was the four snap-flap closure pockets on the front of the shirt. One was sized for a compass, and another included slots to hold small utility tools.

Made of 24 ounces-per-yard virgin wool, the jacket itself is not light. When you pick it up it definitely feels more like a piece of gear that’s going to be there to support your endeavors instead of just a random garment that you found in your hamper. In other words, there’s nothing accidental about the jacket’s details. When you look at it you can see that it was designed from the ground up to perform a certain function — to keep you warm and comfortable even when it’s cold and very wet. This even applies if, for example, you accidentally tipped your canoe over into a half-frozen river.

At first we weren’t sure how a garment designed more than 100 years ago would stack up in this age of microfiber fabric technology. These days, garments are designed on computers, produced on mechanized assembly lines, and incorporate synthetic materials with names that sound more like pharmaceuticals than fabrics.

Is there still a place for the old-fashioned wool jacket that our great-great grandfathers might have worn? After all, there’s a reason we bring satellite phones and GPS tracking on our outdoor adventures now — because the new technology gives us an advantage against nature. Anyone who’s ever worn one of these jackets is probably chuckling right now, because they already know that new doesn't always mean improved. The old ways often stand the test of time, especially in the wilderness.

The Advantages of Wool

Filson Mackinaw Cruiser wool jacket review coat wilderness outdoor bushcraft apparel 10

The jacket is available in Charcoal Gray, Dark Navy, and Forest Green as well as the classic plaid pattern.

As many of us have found out the hard way, some modern waterproof jackets can trap moisture inside and feel stifling, despite claims of selectively-permeable materials. The Filson wool, however, feels extremely breathable. The natural characteristics of wool provide air flow and keep the material feeling warm even when wet. This is critical because exerting yourself in cold weather can too often lead to sweaty clothes, which then freeze over and can put you on a dangerous path towards hypothermia.

Filson Mackinaw Cruiser wool jacket review coat wilderness outdoor bushcraft apparel 5

This is likely one of the big reasons that the Filson Mackinaw Cruiser became a common sight in logging camps in the 1920’s, and by the 1950’s became standard issue for the United States Forestry Service (USFS). Simply put, guys who spent their days in the wooded backcountry realized that there was no better alternative. And after 121 years of service, the jacket is still Filson’s best-selling coat.

Regarding the fit, be sure to take good measurements and try to find one in a store to try on, if possible. Wool does not have a lot of stretch or give, and you want your shoulders to be able to move and swing freely as you hike. If in doubt, err on the larger side since you’ll probably be wearing more layers underneath the jacket. With that being said, Filson offers free shipping on exchanges — if you got the size wrong, all you have to do is ship the jacket back to them and they’ll ship out a different size to you at their own expense.

Conclusion

Filson Mackinaw Cruiser wool jacket review coat wilderness outdoor bushcraft apparel 4

With a retail cost of $395, this jacket is not inexpensive. In the same way that every detail of the jacket seems designed with a purpose, buying the jacket won’t be a random accident for most of us. It’ll be something we save up for and think about for a long time prior. But if you do choose the Mackinaw, you'll have a made-in-the-USA piece of history that will most likely last for decades of adventuring through the backcountry. When that happens, the jacket will be ready and waiting to be passed on to a grandson or granddaughter, to be there for them as they step out and venture into the unkown.

Who knows? At some point maybe my Dad will want to spend less time outdoors, and end up passing on his Mackinaw Cruiser jacket to me. Then again, maybe he won’t. Maybe I need to buy my own.

About the Author

Andrew Schrader is a licensed professional engineer and is certified by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as an Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) Structures Specialist. His company, Recon Response Engineering LLC, advises state and federal government organizations on the subject of urban search and rescue and building collapse. He recently assisted the U.S. Department of State’s Italian Consulate in the development of their post-earthquake response and rescue protocol. Website: www.reconresponse.com Instagram: @reconresponse

Issue 28 Gear Up

Written by

OFGP-181200-GEARUP-SLUMBERJACK-01.jpg

Make & Model
Slumberjack Roughhouse Tent

Weight
13 pounds

MSRP
$200

URL
slumberjack.com

Notes
Whether on a weekend camping trip with the family or enduring a more arduous trek in undiscovered country, venturing through Mother Nature requires reliable shelter. The four-person, three-season Slumberjack Roughhouse Tent is up for the job, and aptly titled. On the outside, it’s covered by a 66-denier polyester fly, while its stout, non-traditional shape helps it repel downpours and intense wind. Under the fly, two steel/fiberglass main poles and two fiberglass ridge poles maintain the structure around 61.8 square feet of floor space — though the $30 footprint is sold separately. There are four interior pockets for organization. Plus, a “front porch” vestibule can convert into a large shade awning. A six-person version is available for $259.

OFGP-181200-GEARUP-ARCTERYX-01.jpg

Make & Model
Arc’teryx Cerium SL Hoody

Sizes
Men: S through XXL
Women: XS through XL

MSRP
$349

URL
arcteryx.com

Notes
With the mercury dropping in the northern hemisphere, it’s time to think about packing an extra layer of clothing that won’t weigh you down. Thankfully, the Cerium SL Hoody provides a solution, at least when it comes to jackets. It’s extremely lightweight yet provides plenty of warmth as a shell during autumn and as a mid-layer during winter, thanks to its 850-fill-power goose down. The hoody is insulated, too. The Cerium SL (“superlight”) is highly compressible — fold, roll, or squish it into the included stuff sack to keep your loadout at a minimum. Though the nylon shell has a durable water repellent finish, the jacket is meant for dry conditions only. Available for men and women in various colors.

OFGP-181200-GEARUP-SWIFTSHIELD-01.JPG

Make & Model
SwiftShield

Compatibility
Various door knob types and swing directions

MSRP
$140

URL
swiftshield.com

Notes
The quickest way to end a lethal threat is to be the faster, more accurate shooter. But what if you’re in a classroom? Or inside an office building in a non-permissive environment? The SwiftShield is designed for such situations. Made of reinforced carbon steel, this one-piece device can lockdown a room in seconds. Just slide it over the doorknob and make sure the super obvious arrows with the “This side down” label is pointed, well, downward. The folks at SwiftShield say the roughly 1/8-inch-thick piece of steel can withstand “thousands of pounds of force,” including from rifle and shotgun blasts. Of course, it won’t solve the problem if your door is paper-thin or has a window, but when used properly on a standard entryway, it can act as a reliable barricade.

OFGP-181200-GEARUP-PHOOZY-06.JPG

Make & Model
Phoozy XP3 Series

Colors
Cosmic Black, Iridium Gold, Iridium Silver, and Realtree Edge

MSRP
$50

URL
phoozy.com

Notes
Don’t let the Phoozy’s looks fool you. It might look like a simple phone pouch and not much more, but the Phoozy folks say it’s the world’s first smartphone container to provide integrated drop, float, and thermal protection. The ripstop shell has UV and hydrophobic coatings to prevent fading and make it easier to clean. The interior has layers of NASA-inspired materials, including a chromium-infused thermal barrier to shield your phone from heat or cold. Other benefits include flotation on water, battery life preservation, and Mil-spec shock and impact protection up to 9 feet. For convenience, it has an internal pocket for cards, cash, and ID, as well as external loops to attach it to packs, lanyards, or carabiners.

OFGP-181000-GEARUP-HELLE-04.JPG

Make & Model
Helle Wabakimi

Overall Length
7.9 inches

MSRP
$199

URL
helle.no

Notes
The Wabakimi is the third collaboration between Helle (a Scandinavian company known for its survival knives) and Les Stroud (perhaps the world’s most famous survivalist thanks to his Survivorman TV show). This fixed blade dispenses with the flash and sticks strictly to function and durability. Its 3.3-inch drop-point blade features Helle’s triple-laminated steel (a high-carbon steel core sandwiched by two stainless steel layers), which gives you a lasting razor’s edge with reliable strength and corrosion resistance. Opposite the business end is an ergonomic handle made of curly birch. It comes with a quality leather sheath. While it won’t give you Stroud’s skills, the Wabakimi will definitely give you a fighting chance in the wilderness.

OFGP-181200-GEARUP-STREAMLIGHT-01.JPG

Make & Model
Streamlight Twin-Task 3AA Headlamp

Weight
7.6 ounces

MSRP
$75

URL
streamlight.com

Notes
Much like 9mm cartridges, the AA battery is ubiquitous. In a TEOTWAWKI scenario, you’re more likely to find a stash of this common battery type than, say, CR123 or 18650. Which is just one reason we like the Twin-Task so much. As its name implies, it uses three AA cells to produce a maximum of 300 lumens at up to 118 yards and has dual functions: spot and flood. In spot mode, it has three levels — 50 and 100 lumens in addition to the max 300. In flood mode, it offers a low of 125 and a high of 250 lumens. This headlamp can run on high for 4.25 hours and on low for 38 hours. The low-profile Twin-Task has 120-degree tilting, an IPX4 water-resistance rating, and a 2-meter impact-resistance rating.

OFGP-181200-GEARUP-OUTDOOR-05.JPG

Make & Model
Outdoor Edge ParaClaw CQD Watch

Case Material
Zinc alloy or stainless steel

MSRP
$80 or $135

URL
outdooredge.com

Notes
Just when we thought the paracord bracelet was played out, Outdoor Edge brings something fresh to this genre with the ParaClaw CQD Watch. It combines three essential survival tools: a paracord bracelet that can be disassembled for various lashing duties, a 1.5-inch stainless steel hawkbill blade that can act as a last-ditch self-defense tool, and a water-resistant timepiece that has several survival uses, including help with navigation. The watch comes in either a zinc alloy body or the more expensive stainless steel version. Both have Japanese quartz movement, mineral glass, and a titanium PVD coating.

OFGP-181200-GEARUP-KEYPORT-05.JPG

Make & Model
Keyport Slide 3.0

MSRP
Starting at $39

URL
mykeyport.com

Notes
While most everyday-carry gear has gotten slimmer, lighter, and smarter, keychains have pretty much stayed the same for decades. House keys, office keys, car key fobs — all bunched together on a ring that’s then crammed into your pocket. The Keyport Slide 3.0 aims to change all that. This compact device organizes your keys in a single rectangular device that allows for one-handed operation. To access a specific key, just slide it out by pushing on the color-coordinated button with your thumb. And because the Slide is modular, you can swap in optional tools like a blade, mini flashlight, or flash drive (though they’re sold separately). Available with either four or six ports for tools.

OFGP-181200-GEARUP-WAZOO-02.JPG

Make & Model
Wazoo Survival Gear Bushcraft Fire Starter Leather Necklace

Pendant Colors
Black, White

MSRP
$29

URL
wazoosurvivalgear.com

Notes
Wazoo Survival Gear makes some innovative wilderness tools that sometimes look good with your urban attire. Take the Bushcraft Fire Starter Leather Necklace for example. Wazoo updates the ancient flint-and-steel concept with modern-day aesthetics by attaching a small ferro rod to a white zirconia ceramic pendant using a 1/8-inch-round leather cord. Handcrafted in Texas, the necklace has a sliding double fisherman’s knot that adjusts from 14 to 26 inches. The result is a life-saving tool that’s disguised as discreet jewelry.

OFGP-181200-GEARUP-CESTUS-06.JPG

Make & Model
Cestus Security Services Stinger

Weight
2.6 ounces

MSRP
$40

URL
instagram.com/cestus_ss

Notes
No, this isn’t some strange spanner from the U.K. or prop from a sci-fi movie. The Stinger is a karambit-inspired multitool that has six functions: bottle opener, glass-breaker, hex wrench, multi-hex bit driver, the arrow-shaped slot can hold a tool bit (and held in place with rubber washers or paracord), and the hook can hold pots over a campfire or gear on a tree branch. The fact that it’s a single 5.1-inch piece of stainless steel with a retention ring also makes it great for a seventh role: improvised impact weapon.

OFGP-181200-GEARUP-RITE-02.JPG

Make & Model
Rite in the Rain Side-Spiral Notebook

Dimensions
4.625 by 7 inches

MSRP
$7

URL
riteintherain.com

Notes
In an emergency situation, you generally don’t want your tools to camouflage into the background — especially in a crisis when you might need them quickly. The same can be said about your writing instruments. Think drawing a map of your bug-out route, posting signs for search-and-rescue to find you, or leaving a coded message for your survival group. Rite in the Rain— the pioneers of waterproof ink and paper — recently released a series of notebooks with Blaze Orange Polydura covers. The tough, high-visibility covers help your pad standout if you accidentally dropped it at the jobsite, your campsite, or on the hunting trail. This Side-Spiral Notebook has 64 all-weather paper and an impact-resistant Wire-O binding that won’t lose its shape.

OFGP-181200-GEARUP-HEMISPHERE-04.JPG

Make & Model
Hemisphere Coffee Roasters Hunter’s Blend

Weight
12 ounces

MSRP
$13

URL
hemispherecoffeeroasters.com

Notes
There are few things the owners of Hemisphere Coffee Roasters love just as much as espresso beans. Hunting just happens to be one of them. As avid hunters themselves, the folks at this Ohio-based company decided it was time to roast up a brew that wouldn’t just taste good, but also fuel them for their next pursuit into the backcountry. Enter the Hunter’s Blend. This pick-me-up is roasted from responsibly sourced beans in a direct-trade business model, the company says, allowing them to acquire quality products in places like Peru, Kenya, and Indonesia while also helping to create hundreds of jobs in local farming communities. Available in whole-bean or ground-bean bags, the coffee is roasted in small batches to retain freshness.

More From Issue 28

Don’t miss essential survival insights—sign up for Recoil Offgrid's free newsletter today!

Read articles from the next issue of Recoil Offgrid: Issue 29

Read articles from the previous issue of Recoil Offgrid: Issue 27

Check out our other publications on the web: Recoil | Gun Digest | Blade | RecoilTV | RECOILtv (YouTube)

Editor's Note: This article has been modified from its original version for the web.

Video: Distilling Water with Two Glass Bottles

Written by

Finding a source of potable water is one of the top priorities in any survival situation, but this is especially challenging in coastal areas, on small islands, or at sea. Drinking seawater is extremely harmful to your body as a result of its high level of dissolved salts, and boiling seawater will only concentrate its salt content. The most practical method of processing seawater into drinkable fresh water is distillation.

Photo: Alessandro Caproni / Flickr

Distilling water traps pure steam as condensation, while excluding minerals such as salt. Since distillation is accomplished boiling the water, it's also an effective method of destroying harmful bacteria, protozoan cysts, and viruses that may be present in the water. For more information on the waterborne pathogens seawater contains, refer to our article “Debunked: Preventing Infection by Rinsing with Seawater”. Distillation can even be used to produce drinkable water from urine, unlike most other filtration and purification methods which cannot remove the dissolved salts.

Distill water seawater salt ocean survival purifier glass bottle 1

An example of a simple copper still that can be used to distill water or produce moonshine.

When we think of distilling water, we often envision the large copper stills and networks of coiled tubes used to produce alcohol. These would provide an ideal way to distill water, but it's unlikely you'll have access to such equipment, especially in a survival situation. Fortunately, it's possible to distill water in smaller quantities using scavenged items.

Distill water seawater salt ocean survival purifier glass bottle 4

In the following video, YouTuber NightHawkInLight shows how to distill water using two standard-sized glass bottles. He also adds metal trays and some sand to help act as heat sinks — this keeps the hot side evenly-heated and dissipates heat from the cool side. However, these additions aren't strictly necessary. Check out the full video below:

Review: PWS MK107 MOD 2-M 7.62×39 Pistol

Written by

For those living the prepared lifestyle, ammunition shortages during a time of crisis are one of the biggest concerns. It’s ideal to have stockpiles of ammunition on hand prior to such events, but if the situation is bad enough, those stockpiles will eventually be depleted. You could find yourself scrounging for whatever ammunition you can find. Having a gun that runs on a food source that’s highly available and effective for survival use will up the odds in your favor should the SHTF.

5.56 NATO is plentiful and easy to find in the United States, but it has some disadvantages. Although the 5.56 NATO has a flat trajectory and is fairly accurate over distance, its energy bleed-off limits its application to smaller game. Barrier penetration is also limited with this light and fast round, and ballistics suffer when used in a short-barrel weapon, which is probably what you’ll want in a SHTF scenario where mobility is key to survival.

Having originated in the former Soviet Union as an intermediate cartridge, the 7.62×39 is one of the most used cartridges throughout the world today. Ammunition is plentiful and ranges from steel-cased, FMJ surplus to high-grade, polymer-tipped variations, with bullet weights ranging between around 122 to 150 grains. Many excellent 7.62×39 loads, including hunting and defensive rounds, are available — please see Issue 26 of RECOIL for a buyer's guide.

The 7.62×39 has been highly regarded as an excellent close-quarters round. On average, the 7.62×39 produces about 220 foot-pounds more muzzle energy than the 5.56, giving it a distinct advantage in kinetic energy delivered on target that continues out to about 200 yards. It also offers better ballistics out of a short barrel and a lot more power for penetrating barriers, making it an effective round for close-quarters combat applications.

IMG_7260.CR2

Primary Weapons Systems (PWS) has combined the usefulness of the 7.62×39 in a compact and trusted platform with their newly upgraded MK107 MOD 2-M Pistol. With its potential as a grab-and-go weapon that packs the punch of a .30-caliber projectile in bountiful supply, the “Diablo” as it has been nicknamed, demanded our attention. Here are our observations and what we learned when we put pin to primer.

Receivers

The MOD 2-M upper features a forged 7075 aluminum receiver with handsome aesthetics. Forged aluminum is stronger than cast or billet because of the continuous grain structure that results during the forging process, so this is a definite plus for the MOD 2-M.

The 7.75-inch Isonite QPQ-finished chromoly barrel with a 1-10 twist is capped off with a PWS CQB Compensator. The CQB Comp was developed for military and law enforcement units operating indoors and in close proximity, and specially designed to redirect sound forward rather than to the side like most compensators. This feature not only improves overall weapon control, but also keeps you on speaking terms with your friends and teammates when you have to shoot next to them.

The barrel and piston system are housed inside a free-floating handguard that incorporates Primary Weapons Systems’ PicLok technology. This unique handguard design provides M-LOK mounting capabilities along the sides and bottom with integrated Picatinny rail segments on the forward portions for direct mounting of hard products. This keeps the handguard very sleek by having rail where you need it most, while offering room for expansion as needed.

The forged MOD 2-M lower receiver is enhanced with recessed ambidextrous controls that are thoughtfully placed in intuitive locations. These include a left-side magazine release lever located just in front of the trigger guard and a right-side bolt release placed slightly above and to the rear of the magazine release. A Radian Talon ambidextrous safety selector completes the ensemble with a modular short/long throw lever that can be modified from the standard 90 degrees to a 45-degree short throw.

A disassembled view of the MOD 2-M reveals the configuration of the PWS long-stroke piston operating system.

A disassembled view of the MOD 2-M reveals the configuration of the PWS long-stroke piston operating system.

The driver seat of the MOD 2-M is a BCM Gunfighter Grip Mod 3, which offers a reduced angle and high-rise beavertail backstrap for improved ergonomics and trigger control. A BCM polished nickel teflon enhanced Mil-spec trigger assembly offers a crisp pull and clean reset with zero over-travel. PWS also went the distance and eliminated the traditional pinned AR flat trigger guard in exchange for a solid, oversized trigger guard.

The buffer tube is covered with a Pistol Mounted Solutions Pistol Storage Device, which can be configured to store a variety of items, such as a secondary magazine, tourniquet, IFAK, etc. According to a BATFE ruling, it doesn’t change an AR pistol’s classification to a short-barreled rifle (SBR), even if used to brace the pistol against the shoulder.

Operating System

The MOD 2-M uses the PWS long-stroke piston operating system. For those who might not be familiar with this type of operating system, it's similar to the direct impingement system found on most AR-style rifles. However, rather than being channeled through a gas tube where it proceeds to act directly upon the bolt carrier, the hot gas created when the weapon is fired moves into a gas chamber, where it acts upon the front of a piston to drive the bolt carrier to the rear.

Intuitively placed ambidextrous controls improve functionality for right- and left-handed operation.

Intuitively placed ambidextrous controls improve functionality for right- and left-handed operation.

The MOD 2-M has a three-position adjustable gas system to function correctly with gas pressures that can vary with ammunition and suppressor use. Position 1 is the default position used when firing unsuppressed. Position 2 is for running low-power ammo through a suppressed barrel. Position 3 is for normal suppressor use with standard-power ammunition, or when running high-powered ammunition. This feature allows you to fine-tune the gun’s gas system for optimal performance.

What might be one of the best features on the entire gun is the enhanced buffer tube with a ratcheting castle nut. The castle nut is a weak point on the AR platform. It keeps the buffer tube and the lower receiver end plate in place. With this design, the castle nut ratchets against a detent, eliminating the need for staking.

Rounding out the ambidextrous design of the MOD 2-M is the Radian Raptor charging handle. The Raptor allows you to cycle the bolt using your palm or thumb-and-finger from either side of the gun, while its V-shaped design is less likely to catch on your kit than some of the other upgraded charging handles on the market.

The 20-, 28-, and 30-round 7.62x39 magazines from C Products Defense provided a reliable feeding system for the MOD 2-M.

The 20-, 28-, and 30-round 7.62×39 magazines from C Products Defense provided a reliable feeding system for the...

One thing AR enthusiasts are sure to notice is the elimination of the forward assist from the MOD 2-M receiver. While this is sure to stir controversy among die-hard SPORTS fans, PWS concluded after over 10 years of piston system testing that the forward assist is unnecessary. Most schools of modern gunfighting have gotten away from the tactic of forcing the bolt forward in favor of a more diagnostic approach, so the absence of a forward assist shouldn’t be an issue. For the occasional press check or to quietly chamber a round, the bolt carrier can be assisted into battery using the original AR forward assist, the thumb notch on the bolt carrier group.

Rounds Downrange

We paired the MOD 2-M with a Vortex Crossfire 2 MOA red dot sight before heading to the range. This proved to be a good match, as our windage was almost centered right out of the box. All we had to do was come up 4 inches in elevation, and we were dead on at 25 yards.

The MOD 2-M shot groups under 2 MOA at 50 yards and 2.5 MOA at 100 yards out of its 7.75-inch barrel using 123gr Hornady SST.

The MOD 2-M shot groups under 2 MOA at 50 yards and 2.5 MOA at 100 yards out of its 7.75-inch barrel using 123gr...

Hornady sent us a few hundred rounds of their premium 123gr SST Black ammunition, along with some 123gr SST Steel Cased ammunition to use in our testing. Both yielded excellent accuracy results out of the MOD 2-M. At 25 yards, we consistently shot one-hole, five-round groups that measured 0.5 inch at worst. Those groups widened just a tad when we moved to 50 yards, our worst group holding a 1-inch spread.

After moving back to the 100-yard line, we dropped our elevation 6 MOA to put us in the bull’s-eye and shot numerous five-round groups. Accuracy at this range held at roughly 2.5 MOA. Given this weapon’s configuration, we were plenty pleased.

Although the gun itself shot and functioned very well, the weakness in the platform is definitely the ammunition source. The 30-round Ammunition Storage Components magazine provided with the gun had some issues right out of the gate. Fifteen rounds was the most we could comfortably load into it.

The MOD 2-M in full bug-out configuration with the Vortex Crossfire Red Dot sight and C Products 20-round magazine for tight urban movement.

The MOD 2-M in full bug-out configuration with the Vortex Crossfire Red Dot sight and C Products 20-round magazine for...

With a lot of persuasive spine-tapping and brute force, we were able to cram 25 rounds inside, but the magazine didn’t like that one bit. The spring and follower would bind up, allowing rounds to fall freely out of the magazine. As a result of these magazine issues, the gun experienced multiple failures to feed during initial live-fire testing. PWS was quick to replace the bad magazine after we notified them about the problem. The two new ASC mags they sent loaded to capacity and ran pretty well aside from an occasional failure to feed that was quickly remedied with a tap and a rack.

Running 7.62×39 out of modified AR magazines has posed a significant challenge over the years with these types of 7.62×39 ARs, undermining confidence in them for defensive or survival use. One of the problems that doesn’t want to go away is the tendency for the cartridge rims to hang up on the extractor grooves of the cartridges below. Giving the mag a couple of good raps on the spine during loading to seat the cartridges all the way to the back helps prevent this issue. Some new mags require a break-in period before they'll hold a full complement of rounds. Even afterward, depending on the individual magazine, 28 rounds might be the max functional capacity of a 30-rounder.

To be as thorough as possible, we obtained three additional magazines from C Products Defense, one of the only other manufacturers of 7.62×39 AR magazines. They sent us a 30-, 28-, and 20-round magazine. These magazines performed exceptionally well with the MOD 2-M. Each one loaded smoothly and to full capacity right out of the box, running without a single malfunction. They would definitely be our magazines of choice for this particular platform. Stock up on them — you won't find a lot of these mags as battlefield pickups, so you'll need to hang on to and take care of them in a crisis situation.

The repeated malfunctions with the original defective magazine gave us a chance to operate the ambidextrous controls to their full extent. The ambi controls are placed to give the left-handed shooter the luxury of operating the gun in a manner that closely mirrors right-handed operation, providing optimal ergonomics no matter which hand you use. Ripping the magazine out can be done with one hand if necessary, since the left-side mag release is located in front of the trigger guard, midline with the trigger. This makes for an easy transition from the bolt catch (left side only) to the mag release when locking the bolt to the rear during a malfunction, since the right hand is occupied with the charging handle.

IMG_7211.CR2

Conclusion

The PWS MK107 MOD 2-M Pistol is an excellent choice for a grab-and-go weapon. Paired with a discreet carrying case like the Hazard 4 Dropshot “tennis racket” case, the MOD 2-M Pistol can be easily carried through an urban setting without drawing unwanted attention. Once you get your magazines sorted, the terminal ballistics and abundance of 7.62×39 ammunition, the reliability and ergonomics of the trusted AR platform, and the quality delivered by Primary Weapons Systems are a hard combination to beat when all hell breaks loose.

Whether you’re looking for a compact weapon to have on hand as part of your bug-out supplies, or a trunk gun to add some additional firepower to your get-home plan, take a look at the MK107 MOD 2-M Pistol.

Specifications

PWS MK107 MOD 2-M

Caliber
7.62×39

Barrel Length
7.75 inches

OAL
24.75 to 28.25 inches

Magazine Capacity
30

Weight
5 pounds, 10 ounces

MSRP
$1,850

URL
primaryweapons.com (also available at fortresstactical.com)

Magazine
C Products Defense – cpdmags.com

Case
Hazard 4 Dropshot – $140 – hazard4.com

More From Issue 28

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Pocket Preps: Individual First Aid Kits (IFAK)

Written by

WARNING: This article is intended to be a quick overview and not a detailed guide on emergency medical treatment. Before relying on any IFAK, tourniquet, or other piece of medical gear, you should thoroughly research its efficacy and seek training on its proper use. Always seek professional medical treatment first before attempting any trauma care techniques.

According to BleedingControl.org, a federally sponsored medical education campaign, uncontrolled bleeding is the number-one cause of preventable death from trauma. In situations where a traumatic injury has occurred, the ability to slow blood loss often makes the difference between life and death. This outcome may be decided in three to five minutes before professional medical personnel can arrive on scene, and that’s why it’s essential for individuals on-site to control bleeding as soon as possible.

Whether you’re dealing with a badly broken limb while hiking on a remote trail, a gunshot wound at the range, the aftermath of a violent car crash, or a mass-casualty terrorist attack, you certainly won’t want to do so empty-handed. An individual first aid kit, or IFAK, can give you the tools you need to stop blood loss and save lives — including your own. IFAKs are available in a variety of sizes and configurations, but given the everyday-carry–oriented theme of Pocket Preps, we’ll be focusing on ultra-compact kits.

We collected and evaluated six premade kits for this guide. At a minimum, each of these kits contains a tourniquet, which will serve as the most important tool for stopping life-threatening blood loss as a result of wounds to extremities. The kits also include ancillary items for treating serious wounds, such as hemostatic gauze to aid in clot formation and elastic compression dressings (often referred to as Israeli bandages) to maintain pressure.

Although no one wants to encounter a situation where these items are necessary, you’ll be glad you have them if that catastrophic day ever comes. Read on to see if one of these IFAKs has a place in your EDC loadout.

Blue Force Gear Micro Trauma Kit NOW! Basic

Blue Force Gear Micro Trauma Now IFAK

Dimensions
5.2 by 3.1 by 2.6 inches

Weight
9.7 ounces

MSRP
$129

URL
blueforcegear.com

Notes
This kit is available with either a nylon belt-mount pouch or MOLLE-compatible pouch in your choice of several colors, and with either basic or advanced medical supplies. We opted for the basic belt-mount kit. This configuration includes a Tourni-Quik TK4, a minimalist elastic tourniquet that has been deployed with the U.S. Marine Corps and Special Forces. (For those who wish to also carry a standard C-A-T or SOFTT, Blue Force Gear offers a matching Tourniquet NOW! carrier.) The kit also has a hemostatic gauze dressing, a compression dressing, six strips of medical tape, and a pair of large gloves. These contents are housed in a quick-deploy insert, which can be removed from the belt carrier by pulling a tab on either side. The exterior panel features a laser-cut cross symbol with three interchangeable inserts — glow-in-the-dark reflector, red, and black.

OFGP-181200-POCKET-02.jpg

Pros:

  • Removable insert provides fast one-handed access to contents
  • Nylon belt carrier is well-made, and its belt loops can be removed if you prefer to carry in a pocket.

Cons:

  • Supplies aren’t pre-loaded into the carrier
  • The carrier is too small for a windlass tourniquet, and even the TK4 is a very tight fit. Per the instructions, its plastic wrapper must be removed.

Tactical Medical Solutions Pocket Medical Kit (PMK)

OFGP-181200-POCKET-09.jpg

Dimensions
6 by 5.2 by 1.4 inches

Weight
10.1 ounces

MSRP
$53

URL
tacmedsolutions.com

Notes
TacMed Solutions was founded in 2003 by a Special Forces medic who created the original SOF Tactical Tourniquet (SOFTT). That tourniquet is one of two windlass models approved for use in combat by the Department of Defense and the Committee on Tactical Combat Casualty Care (the other is the C-A-T). TacMed Solutions’ Pocket Medical Kit includes the Wide variant of this tourniquet, the SOFTT-W, with a high-visibility rescue orange strap. It also contains an Esmark elastic compression bandage, a Beacon chest seal, gloves, and compressed gauze. For $99, the kit is available with Combat Gauze instead of the non-hemostatic variety. The entire kit is tightly sealed in a plastic pouch and slips easily into the pocket on a pair of pants, a shirt, or a jacket.

OFGP-181200-POCKET-10.jpg

Pros:

  • Flat vacuum-packed kit fits comfortably into the back pocket of a pair of jeans.
  • With a wide strap, quick-release buckle, and metal windlass, the SOFTT-W is an excellent tourniquet choice

Cons:

  • Unlike other compression dressings discussed in this article, the Esmark bandage doesn’t contain an additional absorbent sterile pad.

MyMedic Solo Advanced

OFGP-181200-POCKET-03.jpg

Dimensions
6.5 by 4.3 by 1.7 inches

Weight
13.9 ounces

MSRP
$70

URL
mymedic.us

Notes
Bridging the gap between an IFAK and a wilderness first aid kit, the MyMedic Solo includes a wide range of items for life-threatening and non-life–threatening scenarios. A $40 Basic kit is available, but we chose the Solo Advanced. It features a RATS tourniquet, which uses a metal cleat to lock the nylon-covered rubber strap in place around a limb. It also features a stainless steel Readyman Medical Card with breakaway fish hooks and other micro tools, as well as a vial of Liquid Skin cut sealant. The other contents, which are common to both Basic and Advanced kits, include adhesive bandages, pain and allergy meds, antibiotic ointment, burn gel, and sunscreen. There’s even a whistle and 10 feet of paracord. The supplies are contained in a waterproof polymer case. MyMedic also offers the kit in a soft pouch.

OFGP-181200-POCKET-04.jpg

Pros:

  • Contains a tourniquet plus many other helpful supplies for less-dire situations
  • Waterproof case is durable, reusable, and spacious enough for a few extras (e.g. water purification tablets).

Cons:

  • Lacks gauze and a compression dressing — this kit is clearly geared toward minor injuries rather than life-threatening trauma
  • Too large and rigid to fit comfortably in most apparel pockets.

North American Rescue M-FAK Basic with Combat Gauze

North American Rescue M-FAK IFAK

Dimensions
6.2 by 3 by 3.5 inches

Weight
13.2 ounces

MSRP
$160

URL
narescue.com

Notes
North American Rescue is a leading name in bleeding control products for military, law enforcement, EMS, and community preparedness applications. The company offers numerous medical supplies, including the ubiquitous Combat Application Tourniquet (C-A-T), which has been the official tourniquet of the U.S. Army since 2005. Unsurprisingly, the NAR Mini First Aid Kit (M-FAK) is centered around a C-A-T tourniquet. The kit also includes the company’s Emergency Trauma Dressing, a twin pack of chest seals, and a pair of nitrile gloves. The standard kit includes plain rolled gauze, but we opted for Combat Gauze. Each M-FAK is housed in a zippered nylon pouch. A staple and stand out IFAK.

OFGP-181200-POCKET-06.jpg

Pros:

  • The C-A-T is currently standard-issue for the U.S. Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, and Coast Guard.
  • Chest seals enable you to deal with gunshot wounds and other penetrating injuries.

Cons:

  • The cylindrical pouch feels bulky in a cargo pocket, and should ideally be carried horizontally on belts up to 3 inches wide or vertically on MOLLE-compatible packs.

Rescue Essentials Public Access Bleeding Control Module

OFGP-181200-POCKET-07.jpg

Dimensions
7 by 3.6 by 2.8 inches

Weight
9.9 ounces

MSRP
$55

URL
rescue-essentials.com

Notes
This IFAK was designed to comply with the Department of Homeland Security’s “Stop the Bleed” campaign, which aims to educate and equip members of the public to save lives in emergencies and mass casualty situations. As indicated by its name, the Public Access Bleeding Control Module is intended to be simple to use and includes clear instructions for inexperienced users. It contains a C-A-T tourniquet, PerSys Medical WoundStop pressure dressing, two packs of compressed gauze, nitrile gloves, trauma shears, and a Sharpie marker for marking the time when the tourniquet was applied. These items are contained in a clear plastic wrapper with expiration date label (our sample read June 2025).

OFGP-181200-POCKET-08.jpg

Pros:

  • Instruction sheet with clear diagrams makes this kit usable by anyone, regardless of training level or experience.
  • Sharpie marker is helpful, and beats the alternative of writing TQ application time on a patient’s forehead in blood.

Cons:

  • Lacks hemostatic gauze option
  • Rescue Essentials’ site doesn’t give kit dimensions, and weight is incorrectly listed as 1 pound

The Tactical Medic Micro Kit Mk-2

OFGP-181200-POCKET-11.jpg

Dimensions
6.1 by 2.9 by 1.3 inches

Weight
5.5 ounces

MSRP
$30

URL
thetacticalmedic.com

Notes
At roughly the same size as a standard AR-15 magazine, the TTM Micro Kit lives up to its name. Three variants are available — we selected the Mk-2 kit, which adds a TK4 tourniquet. If a chest seal is desired, you’ll want the Mk-3. Each kit also includes a pack of QuikClot hemostatic gauze, a PerSys Medical WoundStop pressure dressing, a roll of tape, and a pair of gloves. By default, the kit comes in a sealed clear plastic container that’s ideal for standalone pocket carry. If you prefer to carry on a belt, TTM also offers a simple nylon pouch with hook-and-loop closure for $10 extra.

OFGP-181200-POCKET-12.jpg

Pros:

  • Smallest and lightest of all the kits in this guide
  • Slim rectangular shape is convenient for carry in a pocket or standard magazine pouch

Cons:

  • While the TK4 makes this kit extremely compact, it’s a compromise. We’d much rather rely on the ease of application and consistent results of a standard windlass tourniquet.

More From Issue 28

Don’t miss essential survival insights—sign up for Recoil Offgrid's free newsletter today!

Read articles from the next issue of Recoil Offgrid: Issue 29

Read articles from the previous issue of Recoil Offgrid: Issue 27

Check out our other publications on the web: Recoil | Gun Digest | Blade | RecoilTV | RECOILtv (YouTube)

Editor's Note: This article has been modified from its original version for the web.