Folding Knives: By Sgt. D

I wanted to address some of the issues with folding knives.

I personally do not believe there is a best choice when it comes to what type knife you should carry.  As I have said before, I believe it is wise to carry more than one.  Here are my thoughts on folding knives.

Pro
Easier to carry.
Easier to hide.
Can have multiple blades or tools
Can be very useful with smaller tasks, that would be hard to do with a larger field knife.

Con
Can be weaker than a fixed blade knife.  The joint between the handle and the blade creates a weak point.
Can close unexpectedly.  (See warning below)

There are other points about folding knives that I believe are just my personal opinion.

The handles tend to be smaller than fixed bladed knives.  I think a thicker handle give greater gripping power for the user than the thinner handles do.

Because the handles have to be open to allow for the folding blade, they tend to collect dirt and are more difficult to clean.

There are those knives that do lock open.  This can reduce the chances of the knife closing unexpectedly; however it will not always prevent it completely.  One issue that I have found are with knives that use a "Liner Lock" to keep the blade in place.  This lock is used in knives that are intended to be closed easily with one hand.  The point where the liner comes in contact with the base of the blade can become worn or polished, and this allows the liner to slip out of position allowing the blade to close.

The other method of holding a knife open, that I am familiar with, is the "Buck" or "Spyderco" type of lock.  I have never had one of these knives, which were properly locked open, close on me during use.  The one issue some people have with this kind of lock is that they are hard to close with just one hand.

Become familiar with the tools that you intend to use in a survival situation.  The survival situation is going to be hard enough without having to learn about your tools at the same time.

Fore warned is fore armed.  IIHTF

Multi-Tools: By Sgt. D

One of the great things that have been perfected in the past twenty years has been the Multi-Tool.  They are made by a number of different manufacturers.  They come in many different sizes and costs.  Almost every military guy I know of carries one.  Most law enforcement types carry one as well.  When I was on the job it became one of the used pieces of equipment on my belt.

  I used a couple of different brands of Multi-Tools when I was in law enforcement.  Both did a good job.  It would be hard for me to recommend one over another because I haven't had a chance to test them all.  I believe that Multi-Tools are like clothes; you should look them over, try them on, and find the one that best matches you.  I personally like a larger one; one that uses heavy gauge metal, and has all of the following tools:

Pliers
Knife blades
Saw
File
Assorted screw drivers 
Can opener
Bottle opener

The one tool I can honestly say that I have not used is the leather punch.

I have said in prior posts, that I think it is important to carry more than one knife.  A Multi-Tool fits into that idea very well.  Both of my tools have a straight edge blade and had a serrated blade.  For those of you that don't know a serrated blade is much better than a straight edge blade to cut rope, web strapping or seat belts.

You also need to remember that one tool help maintain another tools.  The file can be used to sharpen axes and other metals to give them an edge.  

The pliers have many uses; I have used them for pulling hot pots or metals out of a fire.

A Multi tool should be considered it a very important part of you survival tool kit.  "Be Prepared" from us at IIHTF.

Survival Basics Part 2: By Sgt. D

We have talked at a very high overview of the following items:

Evacuation
Water
Shelter

The above items are what need to be considered when the stress is the highest.  Once these three items have been dealt with people will tend to relax, just a little.  This is survival in the very short term.  Now the questions comes up, "how long will this survival situation last?"  Most of the government information on the subject of survival never goes into the very long term. Remember the troubles in the former Yugoslavia.  What if food deliveries cannot reach your area?  What if government support agencies don't arrive for a long time or don't arrive at all?  One of the reasons that we created this blog was to awaken people to the possibility that society as we know it, may change dramatically, and for a long time.

Consider what it would have been like if the rest of the world could not come to the aid of Haiti, Pakistan, and the countries affected by the tsunami.  Those people would have had to survive some other way.  We want you to think along the lines that help may never come.  This type of thinking is essential to survival.  You take control of your life and your survival.

The next survival issues to be considered are long term in nature.  

Protection
Food
Fire
Tools

Protection:

If social order breaks down there will be no police.  You may have to protect yourself.  Now the idea of shelter has changed.  It has changed into protecting yourself from just protecting yourself from the weather; to also protecting yourself from danger or predators.    Study a little history; how did people in the past solve this problem?  There is no way that I can cover all of the possible solutions to the shelter problem that you might face.  I don't think that any survival book can anticipate all the issues that could be facing you.  But any preparation is better than no preparation at all.   (Read a survival book.)

Take inventory of what you have.

What can you move to improve the situation?

Can you move to improve the situation?

What can you use as a barrier?

Food:

There are several things to consider on the subject of food.

Storing food long term means you have some special issues to consider.

Remember to check the expiration date on canned food.

Dried or freeze dried foods can be stored for a long time.  However they require more water to become usable.

Can you obtaining food from area you're in? This may be a consideration once you have used up all your stored food.  A book on edible plants could be of major importance.  A book on how to hunt and dress game animals would be a great advantage.

Fire:

Fire is one of the major advantages that people have over animals. Your use of fire helps you modify things to make them more useful to you.  Fire provides light, heat and protection at night. With fire you can boil water to make it safe to drink.  With fire you can make some plants into a better food sources. With fire you can make meat safer to eat.

Fire can help you make tools.  Fire hardened sticks can be very useful.  Use fire to bend larger pieces of metal into useful shapes. With fire you can signal people over large distances. 

One issue with fire is how to start one with no matches.

Tools:

A knife was one of the first tools that ancient man developed.  Luckily in most survival situation you will either have a knife or access to metal to make a knife.  If you have thought ahead you will have some basic tools available and little knowledge about how to use them. If you are caught in a situation where you do not have these tools ready made, think about how to make or obtain them.

 

Have you detected a theme though this post.  It is to think about the survival situation before you have to face it.  That thought process is the greatest advantage that you can give yourself
Be Ready from all of us at IIHTF Blog.

Flashlights: By Sgt. D

Flashlights

The ability to see in the dark and to signal at night, without using fire, can be a tremendous benefit in a survival situation.  This usually means some type of flashlight.  When I was a police officer, I learned to always carry a flashlight.  I can't count the times, on day shift, were I walked into a building/house on an information call, and then ended up needing a flashlight to see something, or in a confrontation with someone in a dark basement or room. 

Now the technology of flashlights has changed dramatically over the past few years.  Some of the new innovations have really improved their suitability for survival situations.

LED (Light Emitting Diode)
The Diode itself can last up to 100,000 hours.
The diode is much tougher than older flashlight light bulbs.
The Diode uses much less power for the same amount of light.

Lithium Batteries
Have greatly increased the time that you can store batteries.

Circuitry
Has given modern flashlights the ability to perform in several different ways. This is usually a very bright mode, flashing mode, and a power conservation mode.

Magnetic Induction Flashlight
Has provided a partial solution to the need to replace or recharge batteries.  These are the flashlights that you shake or turn the crank to create the power to be used.
(I have not found one that is really bright yet.  Much better than no flashlight at all, but it has its limitations.)

Flashlight Construction
Many modern flashlights are made of very strong aluminum or polycarbonate.
 Historical Perspective
When I was young, flashlights were either those flimsy silver sheet metal D cell ones, or the huge plastic ones that had a battery about half the size of a toaster.  If you were lucky you had a plastic army flashlight.

 The question is now what kind of flashlight and how many.  I believe you should have at least two.  One that is fairly small that is easily mounted on your head or that you can hold between your teeth to allow you to have both hands free.  The second flashlight should be a larger one to see a greater area with and to signal with.

A second consideration is to make sure that the flashlight is easily attached either to you or your gear.  You can attach them by a cord or clip or some other device.  I don't like holders/holsters, when I was a police officer, unless the holder had some type of secondary method to keep the thing in, I have lost it during vigorous physical activity.

Become obsessive about your tools.  Many of them, like a flashlight, you will not have the ability to reproduce yourself if you lost the original.

Because you are reading this on the Internet I am assuming that if you want to know more, you have the ability to do searches on many of these terms and ideas that are mentioned.    

 Good Luck from us at "If It Hit The Fan".

Survival Basics Part 1: By Sgt. D

There is a lot of information in this topic. So I decided to break it up into a more easily handled size. Here is part 1.

When I worked in law enforcement I tried to anticipate the things I would need to consider when I responded to an incident. The important thing is to have a plan ahead of time. This plan for natural disasters can be used for large groups of people or just for yourself. From my experience this is a good order in which to consider the different issues. (I am sure others will disagree with me about what should be considered first).

Evacuations:

-Uninjured People
Get those people, including yourself, who are not injured to safe locations to prevent them from getting injured. Uninjured people are much more mobile and easy to deal with than injured people. They require less assistance.
-Injured people
Can they be moved without aggravating their injuries?
How much risk do they face in their current location?

Once you have taken measures to deal with the at the moment life threatening problems, you now need to consider some of the long term survival basics.

Water:


The truth is that you cannot live long without fresh water. The hotter your climate, and the more work that you are doing, will increase your need for water.

In terms of water consider:
How much fresh water do you have access to right now?
Don't forget what is stored in toilet tanks, hot water heaters, and the pipe system of a house or building.
Can you easily access more fresh water?
How long will it be before fresh water supplies will be restored?
What do you have to store water in?
What do you have to make bad water into good water?

This is by no means a complete list, but it will start you thinking about the issues involved with water.

Shelter/Protection:

Do you have buildings, houses, or other places to get out of the elements and to provide a safe place to rest? Finding shelter will help keep people from getting sick or sustaining heat or cold injuries.

This also involves clothing as well. The ability to retain body heat can be a life saver.

These are three very important topics to consider in the first few moments of a survival situation.

We will consider more tomorrow.

There are some great books out there about survival. Once you get motivated about how important this topic is, these books can provide a lot of help in getting ready, and can be a great resource once the situation occurs. Think about having several around.

Plan for survival from all of us at "If It Hit The Fan".

The Mosin-Nagant 91/30: By Mr. H

Powerful, affordable and reliable. The Mosin-Nagant 91/30 is a Bolt Action Russian surplus rifle that served in various forms from 1891 until the 1960s in many Eastern European nations. Chambered for the 7.62x54r rifle cartridge, the Mosin has more than enough power and accuracy for hunting, self defense and sporting applications. 

The Mosin has a 5 round internal magazine that can be loaded via stripper clips or by individually loading cartridges into the magazine. Ammunition for the Mosin is very inexpensive, a surplus Russian sealed tin or "spam can" of 440 rounds can be purchased for $79 to $139(plus shipping). Links for ammunition: Ammunition To Go and Cabela's.

 

The Mosin-Nagant can be purchased for $99 to $159 in most sporting goods stores like Big 5 and Cabela's. They also can be found at gun shows, pawn shops and most gun stores.  Keep in mind the Mosin can be fitted with optics and refurbished and/or polymer stock kits. I even found a website with a bull-pup style stock kit: Center Balanced Systems. I prefer to keep my Mosin stock.

This particular Mosin was manufactured in Izhevsk, Russia in 1933. It has an Octagonal, or more commonly referred to "hex" receiver and brass fittings. Most Mosins come with a sling, bayonet, tools, oil can and two belt pouches for stripper clips.

 

The Mosin can be field stripped for cleaning quickly, by opening the bolt and pulling the trigger while moving the bolt out of the receiver, then removing the bottom of the magazine.

Our choice for your first survival rifle the Mosin-Nagant is an extremely powerful, affordable, reliable and functional piece history. Go and get one of your own! Thanks from us here at "If It Hit The Fan".

It Could Happen To You: By Sgt. D

In my years of living I have come across people who seem to have this strange ability to not believe that bad things can happen to them. Unfortunately these people seem to pass this trait and attitude on to others around them. It seems to be the thought "Oh this won't happen to me/us. It only happens to others."

To help visualize the problem lets list some disasters both natural and man made.

Automobile accident far from civilization
Major Snow storm
Flooding
Crime
Katrina
Mexican Drug Wars
Haiti Earthquake
Russian Forest and Wild Fires
Mount Saint Helens
Chinese Earthquake
Tsunami Southwest Pacific
Drought in Africa
Riots in American cities
World War 1
World War 2
Spanish Civil War
Soviet Revolution
Finnish War of Independence
San Francisco earthquake
3 wars between India and Pakistan

There are thousands of other examples large and small, ancient and modern that I could list. One example that happened to me was a major snow storm which knocked out all electrical power for seven days. It took a long time after that for the roads to become passable again. A second was when I was trapped in a hotel in Hong Kong during the communist riots in the 1960's.

Now I was very lucky that my parents were the descendants of American pioneers who moved out west in the early 1800's. We always had food set aside for emergencies. We always had a tent, sleeping bags, weapons, and the attitude that "you better be able to take care of yourself, because other people may not know you're in trouble, or may not care what happens to you".

I believe it is important to promote the survival attitude to help my family, friends, and others get through the hard times. When you believe that it can happen to you, then you can survive, because you are prepared. Without this attitude you are allowing yourself to be a powerless victim of circumstance.

May wisdom be with you; from the folks here at "If It Hit The Fan".

The Knife - An Important Survival Tool: by Sgt. D

In order to keep as wide and audience as possible, we will rotate the topics that we talk about.  We also believe in providing information in bite size chucks.  I have been training people for decades, and it is easier for people to learn and retrain information in smaller amounts.

One of the most important tools for survival is a knife.

My opinion is that you should plan to care more than one.  How many knives your decide to carry is up to you and your situation.

Knives can perform to a number of different survival related jobs.  We will explore these later in later posts.  We will just talk about the basic design of knives for now.

Remember: Look for quality and value in the tools you choose.

There are basically two major categories of knives:

Fixed blade knives
Can be stronger that a folding knife.
Requires some kind of sheath to hold it when not in use.

 


Folding bladed knives
Can be easier to carry, because it does not require a sheath.
Some folding knives have a lot of tools that could be useful.
May require two hands to close.
Can be more dangerous to handle because it could close unexpectedly.

Note:  Multi-tools will be discussed in a different post.

One of the next considerations should be weight.  If you are stationary it is not much of a consideration.  If you have to go mobile then the questions of weight starts to become more important.  If you have a vehicle, it becomes a question of how much space you have, and how much cargo you need to move.  This question of weight really becomes important if you are carrying everything you need.  So keep this factor in mind.

Start thinking about your survival knife, so you will be ready "If It Hit The Fan".

Planning: By Sgt. D

You have to invest in your preparation.  But you may not realize that some of the most important preparation needs to take place in your mind before you spend a single dollar.  

Your plan must fit your life.  Here are some questions to consider when making your plans. 

·        Where do I currently live?

·        How much money do I have to spend on preparation?

·        How many people am I preparing for?

·        Are there special needs that must be considered?

We will discuss these questions and others as we go forward.  Please invest a little time in thinking about your current situation, and what you will need if "If It Hit The Fan".