Hey That is MY stuff you’re eyeballing!
Lately there has been so many different scenarios played out for SHTF. EMP, Rogue Government. Toxic release of viruses, bacteria, radiation. Asteroid strikes. Yellowstone blowing up. New Madrid fault opening and swallowing St. Louis. UN. Russians Chinese attacks. Oh and don’t forget the Zombies. Oh! Almost forgot. Good old fashioned Armageddon, Rangarok, what ever is your preference for the end of the world.
It has happened.
You survived!
You have your gear, your family. Shelter, I food water all the things you scrimped and saved to prep for this day you had. You and the entire family were camping together when SHTF. Everything is good to go. You and the family remembered all the drills, weekend classes on first aid water finding food shelter. You are good to go!!! You have your poop in a group and it’s wired tight.
Ummmm what about those Mad Max looking goons that are heavily armed shouting real scary things about your wife and daughter?
You did take that class on how to set up perimeter security? Weapons placement? Defensive hand gun and rifle classes?
Umm you forgot to. Kind of low on the list.
This was inspired by my friend Cat Ellis the Herbal Prepper. She asked me how to secure her families homestead in an undisclosed secret location 😂.
So this newsletter is going to have input from yours truly, and from experts in other topics. Army and Marine infantry. Combat firearm instructors, other survivalists and preppers. Each will have a different point of view on one question.
How do I protect my location, my supplies and my family.
I was a medic. My grunts covered my butt. But I did learn a few things from them. Expose all avenues of approach to your location. Keep someone on watch. A person who can sound the alert is a real lifesaver.
You do have your main area fenced right? And far enough from your home base to allow fighting room? Brush is cleared. We cant expect a 20 acre property to have double electric wire fencing gun towers and LED lighting. But you can set up basic protections for your property and family. And a fence is an obstacle a potential enemy will have to cross. That buys you time. Walk out side your bug out area. Look and think, “Hmm if I wanted to steal food, how would I get in and out. Unseen preferably ” Look for cover and concealment items that YOU may have dropped. Say you were cutting trees on your property and left the slash lay. ” For homes for woodland animals” Or to decompose . You just left places where an intruder can hide, observe and attack. Do I mean to clear cut your land? Gods no. Just clean up your messes you make. This is me. On our land we have 100 meter area that is clear with “head” sized rocks painted white with numbers on them. That number is the range to that rock. There are others out past the cleared area also.
From my time in the military we used something called a Range Card. It was a drawing of your area to your direct front and about 30 degrees or so to each side. On it you drew EVERYTHING of importance on it. With the azimuth to it This way you had a map for day or night use.
The example is a standard range card. This is designed for heavy machine gun since the ranges are greater than 1000 meters.
A range card needs to contain the following:
Sectors of fire.
Target reference points.
Dead space.
Maximum engagement line.
Weapons or gunners reference point.
Weapons symbol, left and right limits, and north seeking arrow.
This seems like a whole bunch of stuff to have. But let me tell you from experience. One of these laminated or stuck in a zip lock at a designated firing potion cuts your reaction time in half. Wait firing positions? Who said anything about firing positions. What you thought you were just going to grab your rifle and get behind the first tree like they do on The Rifleman? This works if you set upon while moving. But this is home. You’re spouse and kids live here now. This is all you have left in the world. Not money but supplies. Food. Medical. Everything. Everyone needs to know where to go what to carry and what to do. This takes training. And practice that training.
Filling out your card. From Army FM 3-21-9 Infantry Rifle Platoon and Squad here is the direct instruction on doing your card.
Sector of fire, this means the area you are responsible for.
Target reference points. 1 person, normally the leader designates names for reference points. This keeps everyone on the same sheet of music. Designating a structure some may day barn, some say shed others say outbuilding. By designating the name all will know a structure by makes it easier. Same applies to natural objects.
Dead space. These are areas that you do not have line of sight to. Holes ditches, arroyos, ravines things like that. Areas that someone with the intention taking your stuff can hide in and move somewhat freely in that area.
Maximum engagement line. This is optional to most preppers. Its a line drawn on your card that is a no shoot zone. It is normally another units area of responsibility.
Weapon or gunner reference point. This is something that is optional for the average prepper. But if you have a larger group its useful when all the positions are and placed on a larger map map of your area. IE Rifle 1 is 20 yards from the wood pile on an azimuth of 54 degrees.
Right and left limits. This is important. These lines are drawn on the card and connect to a well defined object. These serve to prevent overlapping fire from endangering a friend or family member on your right or left sides. The magnetic north arrow is vital. This gives a direction the the card can be orientated.
The card in the example is for a M2 .50 cal machine gun. The ranges are far longer than the preppers average weapon. Say you are armed with a Mini 14. 1500 yards is way out of your range. So where it is noted, say your circle size is 50 meters.
Column 1 this is the number you assigned to each terrain future you noted on your card. The next column that says deflection direction. That is for machine guns on a tripod. For preppers you can use this to put in the azimuth to the feature. Next we come to the column that says elevation.
This is optional….to a point. This tells you how much higher or lower the feature is than your position. Next is range. How far is it to the feature. If your Mini 14 is zeroed for 150 yards and your target is at the 300 yard line you know from sighting in your rifle how much to hold over your target to ensure hit.
Wait you DID figure out hold over and under for your weapons? The next is not needed for preppers. Unless, you have special munitions! Last is vital. Description. This is where you say feature 1 is a windmill.
A lot for a prepper to know and do? To be blunt. You better learn it. Or people like me will cone and take your stuff!😀
This is the compass I use. I really like it. Its tough accurate and is easy to do long azimuths for ladnav courses. I keep a bunch of these compasses on hand. One on each vehicle and each pack. They are cheap, have decent accuracy and any compass is better than no compass. Also here is a link for range card pdf file.
The reason I am writing this instead of medical or herbal how to, is we don’t talk about this enough. We talk about storing beans and rice. Bandages and bullets. But rarely how to protect your stuff and family. I am NOT an expert. I know enough to whistle the tune and dance a couple of steps to keep my family safe and alive.
We never talked about communication. YOU. CAN NOT MOUNT AN EFFECTIVE DEFENSE with out good communication. Communication means a plan on who what and when to do each task. It also means being able to communicate during trouble. To be able to be told or to tell someone to move to fall back to go help or come help.
There are dozens of radios. For inexpensive FRS walkie talkies. To hundreds of dollar units. For the money the Baofeng series of radios are a good value. They have a HUGE frequency range.
Now being a ham operator I will inform you it is illegal to transmit on ham frequencies with out la license. It is also illegal to transmit outside of the bands that your license allows.
The radio is great. Its tough easy to use. (Program it on a computer. Doing one by hand is……..entertaining) They come with a OK headset. By adding a good ear bud and throat microphone a stubby 1 inch antenna, the VOX feature and using the low power mode you have a great, dare I use the word, Tactical radio.
Here is the Baofeng UV5R. A nice compact fully functional radio. And the stubby antenna that works great for short range communications The throat microphone set so your hands are free.There are times when you need to extend your range. The Nagoya 15.6 inch antenna will help bring in the far stations on your net. The Baofeng UV82 (Pictured) is a modernized version of the UV5R. The case is more comfortable in the hand. Its a little larger. So it fits a larger hand better. The Yaseu and Kenwood Hts are great radios. But at ten times the cost of a Baofeng. They are quality radios but if your drop one in a stream you are not out 300 bucks. One word of caution with the Baofeng. Make sure ALL functions work. There was lot a few years ago that had some screwed up firmware. Amazon did replace them but it could have been bad if things went bad and the radio did not work.
So that is out of the way. There is so much to still go over. So that means this will be a multi part news letter. Next time we’ll have a firearms instructor and Marine Infantry officer. ( Don’t hold it against him he was a Sergeant!) Give their different points of view, and training and tools needed to defend your shtf home. This is a newsletter work in progress. There are some mistakes here. Your mission is to find them! (OK A cheap way to get comments!) Seriously There are many different solutions. We need to be proficient in as many as we can be