Hello again, everyone, and welcome back to the Underground. This is the Intel update for January 4th through the 10th, 2026. We are officially 10 days into the new year, and things are already getting spicy around the world, so let's get right to it. On the home front, the main story this week is rioting in Minneapolis and other major cities, which mostly revolves around the shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis after she attempted to run over an ICE agent with her vehicle. After this incident, protests broke out in most major US cities, but the more kinetic rioting so far has been mostly confined to Minneapolis and Portland, Oregon. The Portland riots are twofold. Portland is rioting mostly because it's an Antifa stronghold, and they have received their marching orders to cause chaos in solidarity with the Minneapolis shooting, but also because Portland had their own CBP-involved shooting yesterday, as well, which has granted Antifa the leeway to increase civil unrest operations in their enclaves. Around the world, tensions remain high, as always, but this week in particular has been spicier than most, as we're tracking multiple kinetic events overseas. The most unclear, but also the most important situation that is currently developing is the civil unrest that has broken out in Tehran, which we'll dig into at the end. In Europe, the war in Ukraine saw a very significant escalation this week, as well, which took the form of Russia using an Oreshnik IRBM to target an underground gas storage facility that provides natural gas not just to Kiev, but other European nations, as well. The battle damage assessment has not really been conducted just yet, but it looks like this facility was completely destroyed just based on the munition that was used, and the effects are already being felt. The mayor of Kiev has urged the city to evacuate due to the inability to provide heating for much of the city. As a brief aside, this evacuation order might have ulterior motives, as in this might be a way to quietly evacuate the city ahead of another major strike in the city itself. I have thought of this theory, so I wanted to mention it, but I think right now this evacuation order is indeed mostly about the cold weather. Those Ukrainian winters are legendarily brutal, so it's going to be extremely tough for residents to keep warm with Europe's largest natural gas facility knocked out. This week, force strategic movement has mostly been centered around the continuation of the tanker wars. The United States has seized several ships since last briefing, all of which have been associated with the ghost fleet, which is the colloquial term for the stateless vessels that travel around the world doing the dirty work for embargoed nations. Otherwise, in terms of actual naval forces, please forgive me, this slide is a little bit out of date, but suffice it to say the United States continues the very substantial naval deployment to the Caribbean Sea, which has expanded in scope to now include the wholesale seizure of oil tankers. So, overall, quite a busy week on the sea and land, at home and abroad. And speaking of home, there have been quite a few kinetic events popping off here in the United States this week. Right now, I'm tracking multiple active kinetic events around the country. As of this morning, we have civil unrest primarily focused in Minneapolis and in Portland. Less kinetic protests are also being carried out in most other major US cities, and in most cases, demonstrators are setting up for the long haul, so we're probably going to see more long-term protesting over the next few weeks. And also, separately from the more active kinetic events this week, we had a fairly standard gang shooting in Salt Lake City, which was not really out of the ordinary. However, the circumstances of the shooting and where it took place were noteworthy for other reasons, so I did want to mention it, and we'll get into that in just a bit. So, let's jump down into a more regional view, and let's take a look at Minneapolis, because that's the hot topic today. The situation in Minneapolis has deteriorated significantly overnight. Yesterday evening, protesters attempted to breach the Renaissance Hotel due to local Antifa intelligence networks identifying this location as affiliated with ICE operations. A similar story was also reported at the Canopy Hotel this morning for similar reasons. So, let me hop over to ATAC, and we can take a look at the tactical situation on the ground. Right up front, there are three main organizations that are carrying out the bulk of insurgent operations for the city. So, here on the map, I have all of the map layers and all the map data that I have for Minneapolis turned on. I know it's a little bit busy and confusing. I just wanted to show the general state of affairs in Minneapolis at the moment, including things like Somali safe houses, kinetic events that have occurred over time, things like shootings and stuff like that. So, just to clean up the map a little bit, I'll turn those layers off, so that we can have a better and more clear view of what's actually going on in the city in terms of current events. So, this is how the situation looks right now. Antifa is responsible for the usual standard. For the most part, at least down south, they have been the ones who are responsible for much of the unrest surrounding the original shooting site here at the corner of Portland Avenue and East 34th Street. Now, for the most part, they've been trying to do what they can to maintain control of this site. This is definitely some key terrain for them, and they have mostly been trying to cordon off Portland Avenue itself to try to in place obstacles here at the northern end and the southern end of the street, but for the most part, they haven't been able to do that, or rather, they have been able to do that, it's just the police roll in and tear up their little barricades, and they kind of move on from there. So, that's going to be kind of a constant battle, constant site. My guess is that they're going to set up more of a persistent monitoring or persistent demonstration site there, but who knows? It's really hard to say. Antifa is also responsible for some of the more kinetic events that are going on in the downtown area of Minneapolis, and also at the ICE facility down here by the airport, down here almost all the way to Saint Paul. So, this is where the ICE facility is located, and they've been causing trouble there. But, as you can see, it's kind of a spread-out area, so they're having to occupy and and conduct multiple operations across the whole city, really. As of this morning, in the downtown area, a state of siege, or riot, or whatever you want to call it, is currently underway at two main facilities. So, first up, we have the Renaissance Hotel, and also we have to the southeast, the Canopy Hotel by Hilton. These two facilities are currently being sieged, occupied, whatever. They're surrounding the buildings and trying to harass anybody who comes and goes from the from these structures, because their intelligence networks have determined that ICE agents and Customs and Border Patrol agents are currently staying at these hotels while they carry out operations around the city. Now, you might ask, how was Antifa able to figure out that ICE are located at these two facilities? Well, that is due to the next two groups, because they are a little bit more mobile and harder to pin down to one specific site or location on the map. The larger group is ICE Watch, which is a national group that has been organized to tail ICE convoys and figure out where they are going. This effort also includes battle tracking maps, which they use to document the locations of ICE agents, docks them, and so on. Another similar group, which is a more local effort, is the Defend 612 organization, which is basically the same thing as ICE Watch, but it's tailored for the local 612 area code, as in Minneapolis. This group is more cellular and way more hands-on, as the goal of this group, stated on their own website, is to directly intervene in ICE operations and generally take a more active role in preventing them from arresting criminals. You can pull up their own website and see that they encourage people and encourage their own members to take risks when it comes to stopping ICE in their area. So, this is a very kinetic group, very hands-on, very bold group in the Minneapolis area. Other groups which have made an appearance on the tactical map are the Somalis. Yes, several Somali clans have been given the go command, so we'll be on the lookout for when they decide to carry out operations and generally get more involved. My guess is that the Somalis don't exactly mesh too well with Antifa, so we'll see how that works out, but they are definitely a big faction, and there are many Somali clans in the Minneapolis area, as we all know from before this before this unrest got started. The Somali presence in Minneapolis is a staggering, so they are definitely a very big faction to keep an eye on as this unrest gets underway. More broadly, many people may be surprised at the level of organization that these groups have, but they've really been able to operate for many years without any natural predators or any sort of accountability whatsoever, which is a trend that continues to this day. Yes, Antifa do have extensive, well-organized, well-funded, and coordinated intelligence networks, such as ICE Watch. And all of these groups are kind of challenging to describe, because remember, far-left groups are often an amorphous blend of titles, names, clubs, societies, and so on. So, it would be inaccurate to say that Antifa is commanding ICE Watch. ICE Watch is more just like an adjacent group that just so happens to have most of the same members. That Venn diagram of membership of Antifa and ICE Watch is basically just two circles stacked on top of each other. Local Antifa cells, which have been conducting operations in the area since really the George Floyd years, and probably way before that, they are taking advantage of these ICE Watch operations, and they've been taking turns following around ICE agents all around the city, keeping logs and tailing all of their convoys. They are using salute reports and other more military tactics to organize efforts, and they regularly hold educational classes teaching members how to interfere with ICE operations just enough to cause problems, but also how to evade arrest. These guys are absolute pros at towing that line, and this is their main line of effort. ICE agents are, of course, wise to this. They know when they are being tailed. However, usually what they do is pull the person over, give them a warning, and let them go. Through these surveillance efforts, Antifa has been able to figure out where ICE agents are staying while they conduct operations in the city. This is now a tactic that has been normalized, and it is certainly a major factor in Minneapolis. And all of this context is going to be crucial for understanding what is going on right now in the city. Even though several videos of the shooting incident that started all of this, even though those videos exonerate the agent and very clearly show the woman smiling while directly looking at the agent and gunning the engine, the facts of the case don't matter anymore, and the United States is discovering the strategic importance of closing the gap, which is important in this case, and I'll explain what I mean. Remember, Antifa has been designated as a domestic terrorist organization, and their mission, going back over 100 years, has always been terrorism and violence. But, the feds have not closed the gap, and they are treated like normal citizens instead of the insurgents that they are. Antifa members are not being arrested solely for affiliation with this organization. So, intelligence analysts who are trying to develop the human side of Antifa networks can't get that valuable intelligence of who these people are, so that maybe a terrorist attack cycle can be interrupted. This is how the shooting occurred in the first place. Renee Good was a member of Ice Watch and had been dispatched by higher command to surveil Ice that morning. She was also a member of the defend 612 network, the network that I mentioned before, which has a similar goal. She and her comrade had been encountered several times that morning and been given a warning each time. At least that's what the story is from inside DHS on the ground. If she had been arrested on obstruction charges for tailing an Ice convoy multiple times, she might be alive today. Granted, this was exactly what the Ice agents were trying to do. That's what led up to the shooting. They had given her enough chances to leave them alone, and she was actively using her vehicle to block the Ice convoy from leaving the area. They finally had enough and to get her out of the car to arrest her on obstruction charges. At that point, they did not know that she was so ideologically motivated for her cause that she was willing to die for it. And what's more, there will be many more shootings like this. Looking at the video of the shooting, we are careful to observe that after the shots were fired, not one single person ran or even ducked for cover. Isn't that a little bit odd? One of the Ice agents fell down trying to get out of the line of fire, but none of the Antifa militants even moved. This tells us a lot both about how serious they are, but also how their decision-making capabilities are impaired so much that even basic survival instincts are affected. Now, is this due to drugs, ideological fanaticism, or mental illness? I don't know, probably all three. I know that the internet has a tendency to look at people like this and discount them because of how very obviously mentally ill they are just by looking at them, but this is your reminder to be cautious. You don't necessarily have to be SEAL Team Six to cause havoc throughout a city, and it turns out that a lot of the people who are barely able to function as a person in society, these people can still cause a lot of problems, which we're finding out right now throughout Minneapolis. But also in Minneapolis, on the other hand, in terms of severity and risk assessment, rioting and civil unrest are they're not nearly as strategically important as a governor openly threatening to command troops against the federal government, which appears to be a situation that is developing in Minneapolis that not a whole lot of people seem to have realized the significance of just yet. In short, a couple of days ago Governor Tim Walz had a press conference in which he answered this particular question in a particular way that gave himself exactly zero wiggle room in terms of what his intentions are. So, just so that everyone is clear and on the same page, I will insert the exact clip from this press conference, which was most concerning. And because the journalist who asked the question first did not have a microphone, I amplified her question as best I can so that we can hear what she actually said because it's that important. I will also put captions on the screen for her part because her questions add extremely important context. So, here's what he said. Governor, there is something Oh, sorry. Just to clarify, the intention of the National National Guard, is there any chance the National Guard will be deployed against federal agents to protect the citizens? I'm sorry. What was it? The National Guard, has the National Guard ever been deployed against federal agents to protect the citizens in that context of what happened earlier today? Well, I said this yesterday. We've never been at war with our federal government. Um Uh I think in this case that the National Guard is is their main mission. They have a dual mission. There's there's the federal mission when they're under Title 10 orders, and then they're under Title 32 orders. In this warning order, there's nothing officially been done yet. If I am to activate them as the commander-in-chief of the Minnesota National Guard, I will issue the executive order to the Minnesota National Guard, and then they will be put in state duty status. And as you've seen over the last few years, that could be flood prevention, that could be after a wind blowing, you know, uh storm up in the north, up in Bemidji, or it it could be COVID uh or George Floyd response. In this case, again, it doesn't necessarily change the mission. They're there to protect Minnesotans. They're there to serve Minnesotans. I I think the thing that is so challenging in the moment we're in is we don't see a desire to work with us on public safety. We hear a demonization of our state. We see people coming in who don't know our community, and we see this massive display for the TVs that we're trying to understand how is this coordinated? And some of you watched the videos on there. Total chaos. And And look, I have very limited work in this is is the training in the National Guard, but I've had a lot of training now to watch how our professionals operate. After this person was shot, federal agents milling around, touching the vehicle at a crime scene and things? I I I don't know what to tell you, and I I I don't quite know how to respond to the the question other than my primary responsibility as governor is the protection of the people of Minnesota, and you can be assured whether it's the State Patrol or whether it's the National Guard, their deployment is there to protect Minnesotans from whatever it is. If it's an act of nature, um if it's a global pandemic, or in this case, um if it is a rogue federal agent. I don't I don't know at this time, and I want to be very careful. It's unprecedented that we have the federal government already determined exactly what's happened here and the motives of an individual that we don't even know the name. They don't know the name. And that's very difficult, so I've seen a lot of media groups chop up this question, and I wanted to show the entire thing in its length. I know it's a long question, right? It's a long answer, but he says plain as day that Minnesota National Guard will be deployed against federal forces. That's pretty cut-and-dry. It's pretty clear, right? Now, the grand question is, was this just a posturing move? I mean, after all, it is Tim Walz. But honestly, that doesn't really matter anymore. While it's quite likely that Governor Walz is playing politics, this is still a very dangerous game, and if there ever were a situation where things might get squirrely really fast, it would be a governor becoming a commander of military forces in a conflict against the federal government, which is exactly what Walz has stated his intentions are. Whether he means it or not is irrelevant. He already made the claim, and in this world, in the realm of treason and rebellion, making claims is good enough. There is a huge difference between being upset about a shooting and creating command and control centers, forming a battle staff, and issuing a warno for military deployment. At that point, the shooting is irrelevant, and this is just merely the catalyst for strategic military deployment, right? Even though these comments were flippant and probably not that well thought out, statements like this also illustrate just how far the goal posts have moved. Far-left leadership and terrorists alike have been allowed to organize and announce attack planning efforts unchecked for so long that every time something happens, they have to one-up themselves the next time. And now, a governor has one-upped himself into the literal textbook definition of rebellion. In a broader sense, I understand the sentiment, but this rhetoric has become normalized to the point that very few notice how serious it has become, even though it increases the risk exponentially for all involved. This is why closing the gap is so important, and what I mean by that is not simply stirring the pot and walking away, which seems to be exactly the plan the feds are using, and this is exactly what led to the Renee Good shooting. President Trump designated Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization. They have already kicked the hornets' nest, but they haven't arrested hardly anybody. This is where the risk comes in to the average person and why we have to be aware of what's going on in our cities. There is a big difference between average street criminals and legitimate insurgents, but both groups have gotten their feet back under them after laying low during the early days after Trump took office. Far-left terror groups were devastated after he was elected, and the election itself blunted their beaks a little bit. What's going on in Minneapolis has confirmed that this honeymoon period is over, and far-left terror organizations have run rampant to the point that the risks are extreme since they have to one-up whatever they did last time. Now, it's become regular and routine for Ice agents to not be just harassed, but straight-up assaulted wherever they go with no arrests. And this applies to local police as well. Even the police chief of Minneapolis himself was personally assaulted in Minneapolis last night by rioters trying to attack him as he was exiting a press conference. Hopefully, this solidifies just how serious the situation is in Minneapolis. Not to doom and gloom on anything, the situation is 100% recoverable. It's just that the feds and even the state and even the city have to do what they're supposed to do, and right now they're not interested, so this is going to be a very risky time for people who live in Minneapolis at the moment. Again, the situation is absolutely recoverable, but it requires an iron fist, and that's going to have to be the approach with a lot of these organizations and and agencies. Yeah, the rioting is not good, but these intelligence networks and these operational centers and these organizations that are getting set up, and they've been set up for many, many years, no federal agency is taking the fight to them, and because of that, we have to be aware of the risks that are presented to the average citizenry. So, that's it for Minneapolis. Let's move out west and talk about another rather unfortunate incident, which has rapidly become rather important, which was a gang shooting that was reported at an LDS church a few days ago. Now, the sole reason for mentioning this is due to the cover-up that is actively underway on this case. Wednesday evening, a shooting was reported at an LDS church on Redwood Road in Salt Lake City. Two fatalities were reported and six others were wounded after an argument in the parking lot resulted in an altercation between two individuals and the subsequent shooting. At the time of the shooting, a large crowd was gathered at the church for a funeral memorial service viewing of a local Tongan man. This is where the investigation by local media stops and statements by everyone from the local TV stations to the police department themselves to politicians which have weighed in on this. They are all taking the perspective that this is another act of senseless violence at a religious institution in the United States and it's just a shame that this took place at this facility. Now, normally shootings at churches of all places are extremely important. They are important to me and I do want to focus more on these types of shootings because attacks on religious institutions around the United States are rampant these days and the media downplays these attacks all the time. So, whenever I hear about a church shooting or something like that or a church arson event or something like that, I focus more attention on it. However, that's not what happened in this case. This facility is literally a safe house for the Tongan [ __ ] gang. Videos from inside the funeral confirmed that this whole place was, as we say, Crip'd out and they decorated the entire venue with the blue bandannas the gang is known for. They even wrapped the coffin of the man who was deceased in the colors of the gang and they decorated the entire facility to let everybody know that this was a [ __ ] facility. They even had dudes show up to the funeral wearing ski masks and drinking alcohol inside the LDS Church. None of this has been mentioned at all by the media because this puts the media in a tight spot. The media are on an absolute blitz to sell the sob story of all involved during this shooting and to get the stories of everybody involved. The problem is everyone they interview is a Tongan [ __ ] One of the victim's spouses was interviewed by the media and she said point-blank that her husband, one of the two fatalities, told her not to go. To both me and every criminal investigator that has ever lived, this one line here is enough to establish probable cause for linking this person to gang activity. But, the journalist writing this article didn't think to ask, "Uh why did he tell you not to go? Did he know there was going to be a murder that night?" Which tells me they are either completely oblivious to this or they don't want to recognize the obvious due to the link to the LDS Church. This is obviously a very sensitive issue and pointing fingers at church leadership in Salt Lake City will end your career real quick. This is very uncomfortable, but this is the truth and we cannot avoid it. The LDS Church was aware of and allowed one of their wards to become a literal safe house for the Tongan Crips and directly enabled this over the years. There are some reports, I haven't confirmed this, but there are some reports that the local bishop was actually there that night during the shooting. So, they know about it. This is very clear and very open right throughout the church. This ward in particular is segregated in the purest definition of the word. Uh services are only held in the Tongan language. No English is used anywhere at this church, at least not for any of the services. You know, from an analytical perspective, it's never really a good idea to paint everybody with a broad brush, right? But, in this case, literally everyone at this church is affiliated with the gang. They are not former gang members who have found the church and turned their life around. That's, you know, decently respectable, right? That's that's a good thing. No, these guys are not former gang members. These are active gang members who openly confess to being in the gang on social media. And what's more than that is local authorities have stated that none of the ward members are assisting in the investigation as the entire congregation refuses to identify either of the shooters. So, that sort of torpedoes the theory that, you know, everybody here is just kind of bewildered. No, they're all actively collectively helping the gang. So, we can't even say, "Well, they're not all bad." No, at this facility, literally everyone is either a gang member or aiding and abetting a gang member. So, this has to be considered, especially since the media is tiptoeing around this one so much. They are ignoring the truth. Remember, there are two shooters who are at large and the local media keeps saying there is no further threat to the public. Ladies and gentlemen, that is the definition of a threat to the public. You have a mass shooting at a crowded venue, which just so happens to be a church, multiple fatalities, multiple wounded, and multiple shooters and the shooters have gotten away, yet the local police say, "Ah, no threat to the public." >> [laughter] >> That's that's just ridiculous. So, once again, the media is ignoring all of this. I mean, I I challenge you. I really do challenge you to go find a media group, find a a mainstream media source in Salt Lake City that mentions the Tongan Crips in relation to this particular ward. You simply will not find anything at all. The local police are playing dumb, too. They have still not confirmed it was a gang shooting despite the shocking footage uh of what is very clearly a Tongan [ __ ] gang. If you were to hop on a plane and fly to the island nation of Tonga, you would not find a Tongan [ __ ] presence more open and blatant than what's in Salt Lake City right now at this one church. So, with this one, the LDS Church has got some cleaning house to do and they got a little bit of explaining to do as well. I myself don't really have any problem with the LDS Church itself. I mean, that's it's none of my business, right? It's just that when you have videos like this come out and confirm the sheer level of control that a very, very violent gang has, this indicates to me that there are much larger problems under the hood and that is my business, right? It would be the same thing if these videos were taken in any other religious institution as well. So, my own goal is to be as respectful as possible when it comes to the, you know, the belief systems here, right? That that part is none of my concern. What is my concern is a gang using a church to conduct operations, dominate terrain, and run rampant without any sort of accountability because the police don't want to ruffle feathers with the church. That is not acceptable. So, I'm going to be digging around and see what I can find because my personal guess is that there are other locations which have the same problems. So, that's it for the United States. Let's jump overseas to another touchy subject, the Middle East. In Tehran, the situation is a bit spicy and the general mood in the air is revolution. Right now, it's probably too soon to tell, but this may indeed be the real McCoy. Of course, due to the perspective of all parties involved, it's hard to say what's true. To be frank, the United States, but especially Israel, has been looking at Iran like it's one of those big fat steaks from a Tom and Jerry cartoon. So, every time a protest pops off in Tehran, the propaganda machine start belching out stories that the Ayatollah is about to flee or the revolution is underway or something fantastical like that, right? Even if it's just like four guys protesting, that's what you're going to read in most media around the world. So, that's something to consider. Iran has faced many, many protests over the past few decades. They've weathered the storm before, but I guess the grand question is, are they going to weather this one? And that I don't know. All of this just means that it's extremely unlikely that these riots have started organically. However, if another Iranian revolution were genuinely on the menu, this is probably how we would find out about it, too. Things happen quickly in Tehran and right now, in factoring in outside influence and propaganda, Iranians themselves are a bit upset at the moment for a variety of reasons which has driven the mass protests that have broken out around the country over the past few weeks. Shortly after things kicked off, the Iranian government cut the internet and as of this morning, the internet is still shut off to the entire country. This has resulted in a very sharp decline in the videos making it out of the country. Right now, the only way to know what's going on is via people who have satellite internet connection or are otherwise able to get around the internet restrictions. There are some reports that the Iranian government has tried to jam local Starlink terminals within the country. However, due to the nature of how broad the Starlink network is and the frequency hopping nature of how each terminal communicates with the constellation, the Iranians haven't been able to jam Starlink in their country super well. So, people on the ground have still been able to get photos and videos out to the rest of the world. But, by and large, this is where we have generally what's called an intelligence gap, meaning that we don't have enough information to know what's going on. Protests continue, that is absolutely certain and can easily be confirmed by the videos that have actually made it out to the public. But, this is also indicated strongly by the Iranian government themselves. As long as the internet is shut off, we know that something is going on and they are trying to prevent not just the outside world from watching. They may or may not care about that so much, but really what they're probably trying to do is prevent internal communications and thus prevent organizing. Time will tell how this develops, but nation-states are falling like dominoes these days. So, don't be surprised if you wake up to a priority wire report detailing how the government has actually collapsed this time. Likewise, also don't be surprised if things simmer down and return to normal after a few days. It's going to be one of the two. Either this is going to result in the fall of the Iranian regime or nothing's going to happen in a week, right? In the Middle East, the situation could go either way, so we'll keep an eye out to see how this develops. So, that's all I've got for current events and arriving at this week in history, it turns out that this time last year we were kicking off the new year with a bang as well. The Palisades wildfire was devastating Los Angeles and we were battle-tracking that event as best we could. We also had the recovery of Hurricane Helene continuing throughout the South, mostly in North Carolina and Tennessee, and we were trying to work through some of the challenges of that at the time. And I think that both of these incidents form a really good bookend for today because they were active crises that needed to be responded to in real time and not just retroactively. You know, sometimes I think we get in this rut of just consuming the news, right? Just consuming the information and we don't recognize that this stuff is real life, right? In the case of the Palisades fire and the Hurricane Helene response, both of these incidents highlighted the need for real-world, real-time intelligence sharing and over the past year, these disasters have heavily shaped what I myself have been working on in terms of managing the information space during a disaster. Cutting back to the present day, these needs are extremely important. This year has already gotten off to a bit of a spicy start, so putting in a lot more work to improve the flow of information and general situational awareness is a good thing. As we can see by the events of just today, there are three separate insurgent groups working in Minneapolis to erode the very fabric of civilization itself. These groups are putting in the hours, they're organizing, and they're doing what they can to further their cause. So, those of us who just want to keep civilization going have got to be just as dedicated. As for me, I've been working on a lot of things, and some of you are aware of some of the projects I'm working on. And this year, I hope to build on some of those tools that I built last year so that prepared and dedicated citizens can be more informed and ready for the kinetic times ahead. And on that front, let's roll things up today with the Ghost Net reports and see what's been happening this week. From my spot, I didn't really catch much because I could only monitor for a short period of time this week. I only had time to dip in and out for just a short period of time, but that's okay. Time is short for everybody these days, so that's kind of what the net is built for as well. Either way, it's good to pop in every now and then and keep skills sharp, make sure everything works, and that we can all stay connected even if everything else fails. At least for me, that little bit of redundancy is both reassuring for the times ahead. So, that's all I have for today, everyone. As usual, don't forget to check out all of the links below if you're interested in learning more about anything I've covered today. I have all of my research and links listed on Obsidian, and all of my mapping data can be found in multiple places depending on what your needs are. If you want mapping data similar to what I've shown today, this can be found on my common intelligence picture map linked below. And I have an entirely separate map for tracking all kinds of migration-related issues, gangs, cartels, the works. And more importantly, I've also been mapping all of the NGOs that have been helping them. And of course, for the nerds out there who want my mapping data to pull into A-TACK, I have KMZs galore on my GitHub page, which I update frequently. These KMZs contain all of my map layers, both the locations of current events like shootings and ambushes and such, but also the more historical side of things like hostile safe houses, logistics hubs, stuff like that. So, check it out if you're interested. And with that, that's all I have for today. So, thank you guys for sticking around. Thanks for sticking with me. It's been a very busy week, I know. Busy times are ahead, but it's all right. We'll make it just one day at a time is how I plan to handle it, at least. So, thanks again. Thank you for all of your support, and I'll see you next time. And as always, abide in the shade.

Hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground. This is the intel update for May 24th through the 30th of 2026. This week seems to have flown right by as many different events have come to a head over the past few days. Around the world, all of the current wars continue pretty much the same as before. In Europe, the war in Ukraine has intensified once again as the yearly summer fighting season has resulted in major offensive and counteroffensive actions being conducted by both sides. Most of the war remains fairly stagnant in terms of the front lines actually moving, but major offensives are being conducted far behind the lines in both Russia and in Ukraine via drones and missiles. And the Ukrainian attacks in particular are striking a lot of Russian oil infrastructure, which is affecting the global oil market. As a result, the war in Ukraine has served to put the squeeze on Europe even more than the war in the Middle East already has as Ukrainian forces continue to strike targets that indirectly make Europe's fuel supply even more expensive. Similarly, the Middle East remains in a state of stagnation or stalemate, however you want to put it, with a few engagements being reported this week, both in the Strait of Hormuz, within the Persian Gulf War, but also within Lebanon and Gaza as the Israelis continue offensive actions along multiple fronts. The Israelis are expanding their operations uh to conduct their land invasion into Lebanon, but they're also looking to annex more of Gaza than they already have with Israeli politicians stating that they plan to annex roughly 70% of Gaza. So whether that will actually happen is debatable, but nevertheless, the situation in the Middle East remains tense on many different fronts. Most importantly for us, the global oil inventories have begun to approach minimum operation levels in some parts of the globe this week, mostly in Asia as the shock to the global oil supply continues to be affected more seriously. Closer to home, kinetic strikes continue on fast boats in the Eastern Pacific as the United States begins to accelerate the counter narcotics mission down south. But there are very few details on this. So there's not much to note other than that the strikes happened generally in the Eastern Pacific. Within the homeland itself, civil conflict in the form of street takeovers and routine crime continues as before with no real change from last week. The situation is still insane. These street takeovers are still occurring in dozens of cities around the country pretty much every day. So it's hard to keep track of all of these. But the deteriorating situation in Newark, New Jersey has once again emboldened the anti-ISE demonstrations and served as a good barometer for other unrest which might develop if so desired. So very much a busy week all around. On the strategic movement front, the major military movements for this week have remained much the same as before. No big changes from last week with the little caveat that Cuba is still a central focus. This week, US Southern Command announced that a meeting had taken place at the perimeter fence of Guantanamo Bay between General Donovan and a collection of cheery fellows from various levels of Cuban senior military leadership. Not a whole lot of smiles down in Gitmo, which is probably appropriate, but this meeting does highlight tensions in the region because it's not something that is normally conducted. These meetings like this are pretty rare, and this one's not really clear as to what it was all about. Per their post on social media, the reason for the meeting was very vague and only mentioned stuff like operational security and general perimeter security. Who knows what the real reason for the meeting was all about. Maybe it was just a PR event, more about conveying the seriousness of the situation. It's really impossible to know for sure, but the end result is keeping Cuba at the forefront of the news cycle and reminding us that American aspirations in Cuba are still being formulated, whatever they are. As of right now, there's not really a clear explanation of why the United States is interested in Cuba. Of course, there is the general strategic implications of having a hostile nation, or rather a nation which is more amenable to your adversaries, Russia and China. That makes a lot of sense. The Chinese have a lot of radio listening post down in Cuba. So, it would make sense for the United States to be interested in that sort of behavior and getting them to uh push the Chinese out of Cuba would probably be in our strategic interest as a nation or really any nation would have these strategic interests. But the United States has not made that argument. So I don't want to speak for the White House and make arguments that they have not made. And so far they have not articulated exactly why the United States is interested in Cuba. What what's the point? What do we want from Cuba? That has not really been disclosed other than the general uh consensus of well, they're just bad guys. Okay. Well, that's not really an explanation for anything, so we're just going to have to wait and see. But at the moment, the aspirations for Cuba, either control of it or some kind of influence operation or puppet state, I don't really know. I don't know what the point of this is, but that has never stopped us in the past. So, we'll keep an eye on it. Make sure that uh we prepare for any kind of impact from another war breaking out in terms of the economic situation. I don't know. It's too early to say if this is going to make that cross from diplomacy to actual warfare. these days, those uh two sides of the coin tend to blend together quite well. So, we'll just have to wait and see. But anyway, Cuba is still on the menu, and we'll have to wait and see how it all works out. Within the homeland United States this week, the theme has of course been an increase in horrific crime, man-made horrors beyond comprehension, and far-left riots in New Jersey. So, pretty much situation normal at this point. In New Jersey, the riots at the Delaney Hall detention facility have continued and remained fairly kinetic each night. Over the past few days, a full-blown encampment has been set up on site to help the riers with logistics and to provide them with material aid. This was a substantial effort with an entire party tent for like weddings and such being set up on site along with other tents and really your standard Antifa style autonomous zone kind of arrangement. I don't know if that's what they were calling it on site, but that's kind of what they were building over the past week or so. However, last night substantial reinforcements arrived. The New Jersey State Police have been activated and are on site to assist with security of the main compound and also to keep riers from breaching the perimeter. The state police also ordered these encampments to be removed. Uh so the state police is in invested in trying to get that area cleaned up. And as of this morning, the riers essentially just left a bunch of trash behind. Now, the situation is most certainly not over yet. The riots are certainly not over and protesters remain on site pretty much persistently. With the fences being put up overnight, the chance of the compound being overrun is much reduced. But these logistical efforts propping up immediately are an indicator that money is behind these efforts. If we were to zoom out the map just a little bit, we can see that the New York, New Jersey area is absolutely packed with safe houses used by illegal immigrants. And all of these yellow diamond symbols depict an NGO or an agency that is dedicated to helping illegal immigrants evade capture and commit crimes. Now, you might be asking yourself, "Hey, that's a lot of different safe houses of people that are openly committing crimes." Well, yeah, welcome to my world. I've got thousands of these on the maps, and I'm not even uh speculating here. I'm just using what these people put on their own websites. So, if you were to tap one of these icons on my maps and just put the address, the street address that I have listed for that facility into Google, you'll find out exactly what's at that facility. I can't put the name of the facility down. Uh but they can't uh copyright strike me with a mailing address because you can't copyright mailing addresses. So that's how I have to get around that for now. But by and large, all of these yellow diamonds on the map marked safe, that is the uh mill 2525 symbology symbol for a safe house. That's what I've used to settle in on all of these places where illegal immigrants are being staged and taken care of and provided aid and stuff like that. But anyway, I wanted to focus on Delaney because this is kind of an interesting one. This has been the site where a lot of politicians and congressmen and general big figures come to make speeches and rile the crowd up because it's really close to New York. So, of course, everybody's going to go there in grandstand, which is why this uh protesting started off to begin with. I believe it originally started with an alleged hunger strike at the facility among the uh inmates, detainees, whatever you want to call them, uh waiting deportation, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense because these illegals are not held here that long. Uh but maybe they are now. I don't know. Either way, it transcended into just kind of a big mess over the past uh week or so. And due to the close proximity to other things, again, why intelligence preparation of the battle space is quite important. If we see that they are within driving distance of a few dozen different uh milliondoll law firms and groups that are willing to provide them with free legal support and any kind of uh support they want. Well, now you see why this is kind of a big deal. You add in the fact that the White House is really really not interested in cracking down anymore after the whole Minneapolis fiasco and you get kind of a recipe for destruction. So hopefully now that the state police are on scene and kind of involved in this, this will simmer down quite a bit at this one facility. But again, there are many other places within driving distance. There are at least a dozen different federal buildings that these uh people can go cause problems at throughout the greater New York, New Jersey area, and there's not a whole lot that anybody can do about it but play whack-a-ole and just I mean you can't secure them all and these people have the numbers to uh dial up tensions to 11 if they so choose. So suffice it to say that this area has a lot of big money and the federal administration is really really desperate to avoid another Minneapolis. Once again, people get all been out of shape about how the immigration issue is on display in the street. Uh, but it's, you know, it's mostly boomers, neocons, normies, and people who don't understand how important crowd control really is. They may not understand looking at a crowd, reading the crowd, understanding what these people are doing, how they're dressed, what kind of insignia they're wearing. They they don't view the world through the lens of counterterrorism. So, they look at this and they just say, "Well, why are the police being mean?" Well, okay. They're they're trying to prevent somebody from getting killed here. And unfortunately, crowd control is a rather blunt instrument sometimes. So, the average normie Fox News watcher out there might not like it when Abua gets a little tearyeyed from the tear gas. But if it saves her from getting shot in the face because she threw a brick at a cop, then you know that maybe maybe there's a a place for crowd control. So either way, it's a delicate balance. Minneapolis showed that the federal government is not interested in maintaining their side of that balance, and Newark has confirmed it as well by being slow to react, by not using tear gas, by not using less lethal crowd control measures. And this is why we now have a thing to talk about. Right. Again, I don't want to focus on this too much, but when it comes to these counter ice things, this is a major concern. It is a much bigger concern than what's going on in Iran. It's a much bigger concern than paying almost $5 for gas, if we're being perfectly honest here. And so far, the immigration issue, specifically being heavy-handed at some of these riots, this is one of the only subjects where the White House actually cares about public perception and opinion, and they care about the public perception and opinion of their own political enemies, which is just an odd thing. But this is also why this minor policing issue has spiralled into a full-blown situation here. So once again, I don't want to make a molehill into a mountain over this sort of thing. This is one facility. This is in New Jersey because of course it is. And it looks like it's starting to simmer down now. At least the fences will make it a little bit harder for them to damage stuff. So there's that. But I haven't talked about immigration stuff in a while. And it's worth keeping these things on the back burner because as important as it is to understand what's going on around the world, it's even more important to understand what's going on here at home. So far, I do not know of a single agency, group, charity, whatever that has actually been shut down for encouraging these riots and for funding them. So, all it takes is the will and you know, just not seeing it. So, enough of that. Let's move to the Middle East for this week. And like a broken record, the situation remains about as tense as before. And let's start by working chronologically uh by walking through what chaos has unfolded in the region this week. Please forgive me if the details and timelines are a little bit off this week. The strangle hold on information has become much more substantial since the ceasefire went into effect. And it's harder to verify the timeline of events, but the general situation is that the war became kinetic again a few days ago, at least in a limited scope. Shortly after the announcements of an all but finalized peace deal last Friday that we discussed in last last weekend's brief, the United States carried out bombings within Iran on Monday, Memorial Day. During this series of strikes, the United States claimed to have taken out a few fastboats along with a SAM site and Bondara Boss. Sentcom did not acknowledge this series of strikes on their social media page. They have stopped providing press releases on engagements and no video was provided. The only reason that we know that it was the United States who conducted these strikes is because Sentcom spokesman Captain Tim Hawkins has been verbally confirming these strikes with reporters in mainstream media interviews. So after the American strikes on May 2526, the Iranians waited a day then launched their sort of proportionate response counterattack, whatever you want to call it, they launched their own attack again. This attack took the form of one ballistic missile targeting Ali Salam air base in Kuwait along with a handful of drones targeting Kuwait as well. At the time, the battle damage caused by this strike was completely censored and impossible to find out. However, as of last night, we now know that as many as five service members and a few contractors were wounded during this attack. So, casualties are still rolling in even from just one missile strike. Remember how I said that Sentcom is no longer posting their engagements on social media, or at least they're not posting all of them. They're just posting some of them. Well, this was quite handy because Sentcom did post about this Iranian counterattack on their page while pretending that the United States did not launch the first strike. They call this an egregious ceasefire violation and an unjustified Iranian aggression. But in reality, it was the United States which broke the ceasefire first by conducting the Memorial Day strikes. Interestingly enough, in this same exact post, Sentcom directly stated that Kuwaiti forces had successfully intercepted this ballistic missile, which might be a technically factual statement if we stretch the meaning of the word intercepted. However, it's also misleading because the missile actually hit the base anyway, wounding five people and damaging two MQ9 drones. So, it sounds like it hit an aircraft hanger. To me, this sounds like a cover for a failed interception. But that's my own personal opinion. I think they're just lying. I think the the missile actually did hit the base. But anyway, I just found this whole exchange completely baffling because believe it or not, propaganda works. In this case, all that needs to be done is to not disclose the fact that the US conducted strikes in Iran. And when the Iranians counteratt attacked, it'll be like the first time, which is exactly what happened. The US attacks on Memorial Day 1st. The Iranians counterattack on May 28th. And on that same night, the United States counter counterattacked the Iranians claiming to strike a drone that was about to be launched along with a few other undisclosed targets in Bond Abbas. Probably. This brings us to yesterday when President Trump posted this message on his social media platform, which contains a lot of information. President Trump outlined the rough criteria for what the United States would accept as part of a peace deal. But on the more tactical level, he also stated that the US would lift the American side of the blockade. Throughout the day yesterday, nothing much happened on this. And right now, it's hard to determine if this is the truth because no ships are transiting the strait due to what happened next. Yesterday evening, as everyone was trying to figure out what is going on, the UK MTO came in from the top rope with a pile drive to the peace process. For those who are just joining us now, the UK MTO or the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations Center is the leading authority for most maritime security issues in the Middle East. They cover other areas too, but the Middle East is their main focus. And they are like a British fusion cell run by the Royal Navy that works directly with US Navscent to help civilian ships know what security threats are present around the world. So, think of them like a British government agency that's like mostly civilian run, but they're still like directly tied into the government. They're not like a third party private company. So last night they published two advisory notes, both of which are incredibly interesting. The first one was an announcement that is comparatively rare and is not exactly good news. This was a notice of military operations being conducted north of the Musandam peninsula of Oman, which is this area of Oman, the peninsula that juts out north into the straight of Hormuz. So the UK MTO is saying that the US is going to be conducting military operations north of that. Well, that's in the middle of the street of Hormuz. Specifically, this notice warns of additional Iranian mine laying activity, and that US forces are on high alert. The notice also mentions that Iran continues to attempt to impede mine clearance efforts, which is the first public acknowledgement that the Iranian mines are indeed a threat, and that the United States can't exactly get in there to clear them. The notice goes on to mention that, quote, "Any vessel that does not comply with the direction of US forces may be determined to be an imminent threat and subject to proportionate measures of self-defense in accordance with international law." This sentence alone gives us a lot of information. Uh, for one, this further solidifies developments that took place last week, namely that the US is now conducting air strikes on Iranian vessels based on self-defense criteria. For the three of you who remember my anatomy of an air strike video from a while back, you may know that this is an indication that the US has completely revamped the concepts of kinetic targeting and the lines between deliberate targeting and dynamic targeting are not so clear anymore. Anyway, the US has now decided to allow target engagement authorities or TIAS, TEAS, at lower and lower levels of command to conduct self-defense strikes, which would normally be considered offensive strikes under all prior targeting doctrine as outlined by Sentcom's targeting guidance, JP360, and and a bunch of other long-standing guidance. This document from the UK MTO puts this in writing and is intended to warn the maritime shipping community that the United States will be conducting kinetic strikes in the strait very soon. The second document provided by the UK MTO is a warning that the blockade of Iranian ports is still in effect which takes the wind out of the sales regarding the lifting of the American blockade. So according to US Navent as in United States Naval Forces Central Command, the blockade is still in effect and this notice was published many hours after President Trump's announcement on social media. So somebody is lying about the blockade being lifted. In fact, these two notices are major indications and warnings of the war kicking off again soon and a primary focus is being placed on the straightup Hormuz. This notice directly states that the US Navy cannot guarantee the safety of neutral or merchant shipping, which seems pretty clear to me. And I don't think that any merchant shipping, at least any Western shipping, is going to go through the straight anytime soon unless they pay the Iranian toll. And if they pay the Iranian toll, then the US might pick them up, too. Because funny enough, as I'm recording this right now, I just see a notice come in from Sentcom stating that they disabled a non-compliant vessel in the Gulf of Oman to prevent blockade violation. So, I don't even know what's going on anymore. President Trump says the blockade's lifted. Uh, this looked pretty clear to me. Maybe I'm just stupid or something. I just can't read very well. And now Scom is saying, "Well, we're shooting at vessels which violate the blockade." So, I don't get it. Um, or maybe I do get it. Maybe I do understand it quite well. Uh because this type of well, we're going to let you go, but then when you get there, we're going to bomb you kind of mentality is really prevalent. I'm sure many of you have picked up on where this idea is coming from because there's somebody else in the world who tends to do this sort of thing. We're definitely not going to shoot. You can definitely go through this area. Oh, we bombed you. Okay. Yeah, now we see where this is coming from, right? At least that's my own general theory and I'll leave it at that. But anyway, I'll let that go for now. Uh maybe one day people will start reading between the lines and understand what's really going on here. But if maritime shipping needed any more reason to stay out of the straight this morning something else happened. Observers in Oman spotted a floating object that they assessed to be a naval mine which they say is currently floating to the west of the inshore traffic zone which is the new name that has been given uh to the alternative traffic separation scheme going through Omani waters. So there's a mine floating out there uh somewhere. what they think is a mine. Who who knows what it could actually be, but that's what they said. So, as of this morning, that's pretty much how things stand. We are on day 91 of the war, 3 months in, and the potential for peace remains very much off the menu for the time being. I would venture a guess to say that the hesitance to enter the straight of Hormuz from a western aligned vessel is roughly the same as it was during the height of the shooting. Otherwise, vessels are taking the Iranian route. They're paying the toll and they're just going on their merry way. I don't know if these vessels are being intercepted by the US Navy eventually at some point or what's going on, but right now the most hardest hit, the most affected vessels in the Persian Gulf that are stranded for 3 months now, a full quarter of the year are Western aligned vessels, American vessels, and tanker ships that are not aligned with the Iranians. Of course, things could change rather quickly. Uh, like I've said for months now and many others have said for months, the cleanest ending for this war, well certainly the quickest, but also the cleanest ending for the war is literally for the US to just walk away, declare victory, and privately cut a deal with the Iranians to give them whatever they want to open the straight again. So, we always have to consider the fact that that might happen. It could happen. We could just see a Trump social post one day and the Iranians confirm it that says the war is over. The straight's open, and we're all going to go home, right? That could happen. Those types of posts have been made several times before and they weren't true in the past, but it could happen. I don't want to neglect the fact that one day this could just be over. Personally, I don't think that's what's going to happen at all. I think that this war is going to drag on for a while longer, especially when we have a couple more months of strategic petroleum reserve left in the tank and the markets, the oil markets continue to be completely divorced from reality. some more mainstream sources are starting to catch on to what has been obvious for about 3 months now, which is that oil prices are not reflective of the situation at hand and that the bigger concern is the petroleum supply itself. As bad as prices are right now at the gas pump, it turns out that taking 20 million barrels per day out of the worldwide supply chain will eventually result in actual shortages of petroleum products. Uh the week before last, the United States has drained the strategic petroleum reserve at a higher rate than at any point in history. At least that's the claim that's going around. I don't know if the numbers actually match up, but it certainly seems to based on the charts. Gas is almost $5 per gallon in many places around the country, and this is actually artificially low. Like I said last week, gas prices should be much higher than they actually are right now. And one of the reasons that this has not happened is the wholesale draining of our strategic petroleum reserve. in addition to other nations doing the same from their end and a global tightening of the belt when it comes to petroleum products. So all in all, supply chain issues are seriously on the menu the longer this goes on. As we've known from the very start, time is a finite resource, and as of last night, there are even talks of extending the ceasefire by another 60 days. If that is the intent, we might be in a bit of a pickle because if we continue to drain these strategic reserves at the current rate of rise, we might not have that much time left before supply shortages begin and gas pumps in the US start running dry. Of course, this is not a major concern right now, even though it should be. But the Feds keep kicking that can down the road, and there's not a whole lot of uh expediency toward figuring this solution out. We're 91 days into this and there's not really a whole lot of interest in uh finding a solution anytime soon. It's like, well, let's schedule the meeting for two weeks from now. Well, okay. Uh but that's two weeks of very little oil making its way out of the region. So, not a super great look when the summertime travel season is just beginning right about now. And most Americans are going to be uh shaking their head at the gas pump unless something is done to fix this situation. And as of last night, it looks like many, many indicators are stacking up that point to the United States seeking more of a military solution rather than being interested in some sort of negotiation. But once again, a lot of this is going to be speculation. It'll be over when it's over, but right now it's not over. We just have to take it one day at a time and see what we can do on our end to be more prepared no matter what happens. So that's all I've got for today and let's wrap up with the Ghost Net reports for this week. Great net again all around this week and I think a lot of people are participating because weather is great this time of year. So I picked up way more people than I normally do from my own radio station. This week I heard quite a lot of people testing relaying messages around the world, testing other modes and frequencies. Some people trying to hit Australia, which is always really cool. I haven't hit Australia yet. That's pretty that would be pretty cool to uh do. It's pretty hard to hit Australia here from the east coast, but but otherwise, I saw a lot of people checking in to see who's up on the network and exchanging information completely off the grid. Radio networks like this one and others are really helpful when the power goes out, when the grid is completely down, and uh you have to operate completely offline, and maybe even in an environment where there's a lot of jamming. Resilient and capable communications are really helpful to have, especially when things are not going super well. So, that's all I've got for today. Thanks to all of you who support the work here on Patreon and thanks to all of you for sticking around as the summertime rolls in and everything gets more complicated. I have made some progress on the more educational material side of the house this week and I hope to have more at tech tutorials and more more well-rounded informational content out soon to help us navigate these strange and interesting times. There's never enough time in the day and I know that we're all trying to do our best. So, we'll continue on and try to stay one step ahead of the chaos as best we can. The goal of the Ghost Net and most of this other stuff too is to be an asset to the community even when times get tough and everything is collapsing around us. Hopefully things don't ever get that serious, but having these capabilities will be very handy and allow us to have the confidence to face whatever hardship comes next. So, let's get after it and I'll see you next time. And as always, fight in the shade.

hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground so as we move forward into a sort of colder time of year and as the election season gets closer um we thought we would throw together a sort of um top 10 list of considerations for uh civil unrest in urban areas in the winter time and some of the some of the unique considerations that winter and more inclement weather bring so we're going to go over a list as more than 10 but we're going to go over a list of things that people may not have thought about so without further ado let's just jump right on into it so first up the very first thing that we have to acknowledge before we talk about anything else is that in the wintertime and in colder inclement climates people are less likely to riot right you know the the sentence if someone were to say uh the sentence you know people don't write when they're six feet of snow on the ground you know that's not an untrue statement um it makes it so much more difficult to riot and and commit violent acts in mass in the wintertime as we know a lot of the more you know severe riots you know minneapolis new york city um chicago detroit some of those more heavily urbanized areas um they get quite a bit of snow and quite a bit of winter weather now granted uh in the wintertime your city cities like you know in florida any city in florida even atlanta you know which has been known for rioting as well um and you know southern california los angeles that's those areas are not going to be uh impacted as much because you know it doesn't really get that cold in the winter time but we do have to remember that in these northern cities some of these northern latitudes they're going to get a lot of inclement weather and it's going to present a lot of challenges not just for rioters but also for people like us who are trying to just survive through the rioting right now that being said people being less likely to riot that does not mean that there won't be riots it just means that the people who will be out rioting in the six feet of snow will be your dedicated hardcore um i hesitate to use the word you know elite rioters but that's essentially what it is you're more dedicated followers you're more dedicated people who are dedicated to violence and looting and rioting and things like that so if somebody or a group is out riding and you know a lot of ice and snow and and colder weather they mean business so but you know just just keep that in mind that you know while people are less likely to ride in the wintertime and in snow and things like that it's not a complete um it doesn't mean there's going to be a complete absence of rioting so up next one of the most significant factors is fewer hours of daylight um fewer hours of daylight is has is a double-edged sword right so basically when we look at some of the rides that occurred such as minneapolis the one that started all of this the riots really the riots started in earnest at around sunset or around you know shortly after sunset right or maybe even shortly before on the following days but we do have to remember what time sunset was you know sunset was at or around you know rush hour time so uh in a lot of cases falling after rush hour because the sun set you know after people had gotten home for the day as we start getting into the winter months our days get shorter and our night our hours of darkness get longer meaning our sunset comes earlier you know obviously this means that your sunset might be before rush hour in a lot of areas well what does that mean that means that a lot of people in these heavily urbanized areas you know instead of getting home turning on the tv and finding out oh hey there was there's a riot downtown they're going to be finding out about this at while they're still at work and so you're going to have a lot of people that rush of traffic you know during rush hour and in some of these major cities there really isn't a rush hour anymore it's just like a three to four hour period of increased um traffic so uh we do have to remember that uh some of these more heavily urbanized areas you're gonna have a lot of people you know sort of trapped at work or that the traffic is gonna get a lot worse and and yet as a theme you'll see going on throughout the rest of these sort of considerations is that they tend to compound on one another for instance less you know fewer hours of daylight also means your solar panels are not going to be able to be as effective as they were in the summertime meaning your night you're going to have fewer hours of daylight so for us at our latitude here in virginia that gets cut in half so um yeah the fewer hours of daylight it means means a lot of things it means that a lot of these you know crimes of riots are going to have a lot more darkness to play with a lot more operating hours right that's something that cannot be underestimated as we move forward into this winter season up next and this was a this is a big one and it is um the prevalence and difficulty of fighting fires in an urban environment in the winter time so i think that fire preparedness is one of those things that people tend to discount or they don't exactly know how severe it can be basically fighting fires is hard enough in the summertime but fighting fires in the urban and urban landscape in the wintertime is makes everything infinitely harder you know pipes and hoses freeze which means that you're going to have to drag hose a lot further you have to keep hoses you know keep water moving through hoses which creates ice you know you also have to remember that during the winter time people use space heaters and other flammable heat sources so your risk for having a fire spread throughout a city goes up anyway and that's not even with a riot right you also have to remember that firefighters endurance is also affected as well it is a lot harder to carry some of this equipment and operate in a winter environment because it's just so much more difficult you also have to remember that you know traffic is affected as well from you know snow drifts so fire trucks and and other first responder type agencies are going to have a harder and longer response time structures are also more prone to collapse from the weight of snow and ice so for instance you know fighting a fire if you've got you know three or four feet piled up on the roof of a building well that's a collapse hazard right there so it's another yet another thing to slow down the firefighting process you also have to remember that snow and ice also change the geographic landscape meaning you know snow hides swimming pools so when you're walking around on the ground and you don't know there's a swimming pool there you could walk in and and suddenly you know you're you're uh you're in trouble if you're a firefighter so you know snow hides things like pools you know stairs drop-offs embankments and and everything is suddenly an entrapment hazard which it wasn't before before the snow fell so there are a lot of hazards to fighting fires in the wintertime which once again slows down operations so it's almost you know a recurring theme like i said is things compounding on one another and you know it's just one of the paradoxes of this is kind of like a spin-off of you know murphy's law which is that you know the harder and the more uh the harder the situation is and the the more desperately you need something the harder it is to get so this is definitely the case with firefighting the hard the more you need a firefighter in your firefighting entity to be to get to your location the harder it is going to be for them to do so just one of those things that tends to happen up next are considerations for personal defense and this one's kind of a longer list because um i don't think people quite take into consideration a lot of the the the winter warfare uh type things that that go into a uh even not even just like an alpine or a snow environment such as you know on the slide here but really even something that's just moderately cold these things can affect you know weapons personnel all kinds of things and very very interesting ways um so you know first off how many people out there can you know accurately and quickly and reliably fire their weapon while wearing gloves you know when heavy winter gloves you know so that's one of you know one thing that not a whole lot of people i i haven't seen anybody practicing that at the range and yet you know we get a decent amount of snow here every year and it's it's certainly cold outside and we all wear winter gloves here in virginia in the winter time even though it's not as cold as like michigan or maine or something like that it still gets pretty chilly here and you know if you're concealed carrying can you draw and reliably accurately and uh and easily engage a target while wearing gloves so that's another consideration people don't quite um think about another thing that people don't quite think about is just the whole concept of sort of aftermarket parts and and um these cool gucci add-ons to their carry weapons and really all you know any of their weapons you know we of course are you know guilty of this as well you know everybody likes a cool looking you know weapon system but how many of those weapons how many of those cool weapons accessories were made with cold weather in mind you know you know i i don't i'm not sure of any sort of ar pistol stock that is or pistol sorry pistol brace i don't have any sort of ar pistol brace that is made and uh tested to extreme cold weather standards whereas the normal you know normal m4 weapon stock is right so that's something to keep in mind that you may not even though granted you know mill spec isn't certainly not a metric for any sort of quality it does indicate in some cases that certain testing was done on certain things whereas a civilian market may not have that problem right another issue that we see a lot of people not really take into account is wearing body armor on top of their winter clothing so a lot of people are you know into wearing plate carriers and things like that but you know even in the military we see the problem of of people wearing body armor on top of their winter clothing and that body armor is you know sitting now instead of sitting flush up against your skin it's now an inch or even two inches in some cases away from your body so the further your body armor is away from your body the less area it covers so you might have you know some things to do with that so you know make sure that you can actually wear your body armor effectively over your winter clothing because as we all know the gucci thing to do nowadays is to have smaller and smaller sized plates another thing is you know physical fitness like in the cold and in the in the rain and the snow and in the sludge and the mud you know how far can you run what are your physical standards right you know it's hard enough to run out with a with a heavy load on flat ground you know carrying something heavy that's hard enough as is and it becomes exponentially harder when you're trying to do that uh in the snow i mean running in the snow is just torture in some cases right depending on how deep the snow is and then not to mention the fact if try running on black heist guess what you're just gonna hurt yourself so uh you know that's another consideration as well is that we have to realize that our transit times if we're trying to go somewhere on foot might heavily be infected you know affected and sort of getting back to the personal gear type thing we have to remember that a lot of you know weapons uh type of lubricants don't necessarily work that well in the cold as well and a lot of people haven't quite thought of this because let's face it you know if anybody's going to carry a gun most people who carry guns outside their home do so concealed in america right and when you have a concealed pistol or something like that it's up against your body so your your body heat is keeping it warm okay well what about if you have to go outside with a rifle now now your rifle is outside it's outside your clothing and it is you know definitely more more susceptible to cold than say your concealed carry pistol so you know a lot of people you know use stuff like um natural like cleaners and clp sort of like frog lube and um you know despite the fact that there's you know of course your youtube backyard scientists out there but just us personally we haven't really had any good experiences using froglube in the cold weather especially if you if your weapons system likes to have a lot of lubrication froglube just ends up freezing and sticking whereas other types of weapons lubricant are perfectly fine but you wouldn't know this unless you actually are you know training in the cold which not a lot of people have the opportunity to do and then we also have to remember things like if you have an optic on your weapon guess what you know cold temperature dramatically affect battery life you know not so much with your lithiums right your lithium batteries but if using like rechargeable batteries or some kind of oddball battery or like an aimpoint battery which is like a you know 2032 better a little watch battery you know your your um your battery life is going to get impacted severely especially with things like nods because a lot of nods nowadays are running off of double a's and which is great because every you know double a's are so common but double a's if they're not lithium you know if they're like a rechargeable double a they're going to have a severely shortened um battery lifetime and it's significant it's sometimes upwards of fifty percent we've just noticed with our own uh own devices and things and then of course you know your flashlights as well so um that's sort of you know a consideration moving forward with you know how many batteries you're gonna carry with you and where you're going to store them right another thing that people don't quite think about in this personal defense category is the sort of crash or the bump in the night preparedness right so i think that everybody or a large portion of people out there who listen to our podcast are have thought about or and are you know pretty pretty well prepared for the bump in the night well what happens if that bump in the night is a riot outside your house and it's you know 17 degrees below zero outside you know are you going to be able to grab your grab your go kit grab your bag eagers from the area and because i'm pretty sure everybody doesn't sleep in winter clothing are you going to have winter clothing in your uh egress system or you have wind good winter boots good socks and things to change your clothes in if you get wet you know that's a huge consideration and we'll move into that when we talk about other stuff but you also have to uh think about can you fit your winter you know winter gear in your go bag like uh one of our guys here uh he he rocks his bag and uh he cannot fit his sleep system inside his bag he has a strap to the outside but his summer one his summer system fits inside the bag but the winter system doesn't because it's such a bulky bag and you know it's a it's quite a consideration considering how much bulk a lot of this winter type gear has another thing to consider is the the nature of of some kind of conflict at night the winter landscape provides a lot of different things one of the things that is pertains to warfare specifically is sound so sound over well-crusted snow where it's you know had a chance to settle down freshly fallen snow tends to absorb sound a lot of times but snow that's been there for a while old snow is crusted over frozen melted and re-frozen that snow sound tends to carry pretty well over that much further away than on normal standard dirt or grass or some kind of other terrain so that's a consideration if you're trying to you know listen for activity that's coming from a long way away or if you yourself are trying to move about without being detected as the sound carries along a long way you also have to remember that snow is obviously white and if you've got a full moon out there well guess what moving around at one or two o'clock in the morning is going to be pretty hard to do if there's a full moon because it's going to be like daylight because that sunlight is going to reflect all that light so if you're trying to move tactically secure your property do whatever you got to do remember it's going to be a lot harder to do in the snow plus i'm not sure of very many people even people who live in in more alpine type environments i'm pretty not very sure how many people have uh winter type camouflage so you know it's we've got to start thinking about these these things that the military has been thinking about for a long time like what like i mentioned with their mountain warfare schools another consideration for the in the personal defense category is wounded wounded personnel so if you get injured if you slip and fall on some black ice or something which is likely to happen or you know god forbid somebody gets shot or injured and you know critically injured in some way well guess what it's going to be a lot harder to evacuate you because uh it's going to be harder to create things like hlz's helicopter landing zones it's going to be harder to to get you you know out of that area right so you know the old adage of you know once again the more you need it the harder and more impossible it will be to get comes into play so um you know medevacs and and and things like that are a huge huge consideration for for something like that so um you know coming back to the topic because i forgot to mention it with the uh the snow light being bright and reflecting light that also enhances people's night vision that don't have nods so for instance on a moonless night with with no snow on the ground and with no city lights in the distance like you know even you know somebody like me with nods is going to struggle to get a good picture of what's going on and somebody without nods and that stitch in that scenario is going to be totally blind like they're not going to be able to see their hand in front of their face you start adding things in like you know a little bit of moon illumination a little bit of star light things like that you're going to start adding that back in and suddenly you know my nods are working at their peak efficiency and you know maybe a human being can have some level of night vision well if you add in snow to that factor guess what you are greatly reducing you're greatly reducing the barrier and the sort of disparity between uh somebody with nods and somebody without nods so and this could be a good thing or a bad thing if you don't have nods guess what you're going to be able to see a lot better in the winter time where there's snow on the ground and when there's ice on the ground well mostly snow but if you have nods guess what everybody that doesn't have nods can now see you better and your uh capabilities aren't increased that that much at all um so that's a huge concern because it looks the snow levels the playing field a lot between people who have nods and people who don't so that's a huge consideration for personal defense and i know this was a kind of a big category so we split it up into uh the next category which is a perimeter defense so one has to remember that with snow and ice on the ground you know all of your security cameras all of your your your motion sensors motion detectors for lights and things they can become obscured by um snow they can also be you know water can get inside them and and freeze them and the glass that's usually pretty cheap because security cameras in america are usually made in china so they're all pretty cheap quality they could frost over pretty easily and things like that so your defenses can be easily hampered or hindered by um snow and things like that you also have to um consider things like you know doors and locks you know sticking or freezing shut um which can create an entrapment hazard so i i know that even here in virginia this happens about maybe once a year or so during the coldest part of the year we'll have you know sticky locks we'll our our car doors will be frozen shut or something like that maybe our back doors got a little sticky but hey if there was an emergency yes with that sticky lock you know that's normally not a big issue suddenly becomes a big issue so snow and ice and well really just mostly snow this is from more northern areas but snow piled up you know can also allow people to get over obstructions like fences and even things like concertina wire you put concertina wire down on the ground you know and which is you know about 18 to 24 inches in diameter and you get a couple feet of snow guess what you could you could walk pretty much on top of that if it's compacted down enough you could walk on top of that and not be bothered by it at all so you know snow drifts love to congregate up against houses and fences and those can easily be used to step up and over should a riot head your way the sort of traditional defense methods of you know going out to you know check your property and things like that those become hindered as well um because let's not forget that you know during in our own experiences when we had our own riots locally um we had one of our guys had to um he basically turned off his air conditioner opened up all the windows in his house and i was very quiet for several hours that way this is one of the things we did so that we were able to hear what was going on because you know an air conditioner for those of you that don't know is quite loud and if you shut your air conditioner off and open up your windows if the the climate is um permissive to this you can hear protesting and rioting from a long way off so that was a huge force multiplier just being able to do something as simple as that well that might not be possible in the winter time if it's you know you know 30 30 below out there you might not be able to open up you know your windows and things like that because it's just simply too cold to do so so that's something to to definitely keep in mind and then going on uh to the next topic which is uh not really a sort of you know combat defense type topic is the food supply so ordinarily food supplies are usually impacted and impacted in the wintertime though usually not severely you might have the occasional grocery store tractor trailer flip over like this one um but you know combined with rioting and shortage and and food shortages in the winter these impacts will be made infinitely worse you know by bad weather so you know we also have to remember that the colder weather results in people tending to consume more calories right um we all know people even our even our us ourselves you know put on a few extra pounds in the winter time which is a combination of you know rich type holiday foods and you know a sedentary lifestyle that people not get outside to to to work out and things like that so you we have to remember though that during the winter time is naturally just throughout the history of humanity winter time has been the time where foods where food shortages are most likely to occur anyway right we've all heard even you know nursery nursery rhymes and children's stories talk about you know the you know stocking things up and saving things up for winter saving things up for a rainy day right so just just naturally what happens and you combine that with the fact that we already have food shortages due to the the sort of covid crisis and uh combined with rioting it's just a it's just a perfect storm of vulnerability right there with our food supply so you know there are a lot of people out there that are already saying that hey we're going to have a huge food shortage you know we can't say if that's true or not but hey it doesn't hurt to prepare for it because we've shown we've shown that it is possible you know and especially considering that in the winter time it's a lot harder and it almost impossible to grow food in a lot of different areas so you know even for us even like right now um and you know come as we come to the end of september we're you know our own personal little gardens are starting to get a little chilly so we're having them you know make preparations for our you know winter crops which is something that it just takes a lot more money to do it you have to run power out there you have to have heating elements in a lot of cases if your stuff's outside you know protecting things from the elements you can only grow certain crops and things like that so you know once again just yet another dimension to the whole perfect storm of vulnerability with the food supply and then moving on to the next one which is cut which is directly tied to this one is the water supply you know you know as one might expect you know water is also a huge consideration in the wintertime because as we kind of touched on it with the fire scenario pipes burst pipes burst and and things happen not just with you know your own residential type water setups but with the city as well and you know municipal uh water supplies so you know pipes bursting are sort of a mainstay of of winter you know winter weather you know if you've ever i remember growing up if you've ever lived in a house where you um where you have a sort of water pump a pumping station a little uh water pump outside it's got a little you know little hud over it or in a lot of cases people put fake rocks over them right you know i guarantee you if you have one of those um you've put a a light bulb or some kind of heating element out there around those pipes and uh it's just so that the pump itself and you know the uh the pipes don't freeze and burst you know i can remember doing that i think probably every year i've had to do that that i wasn't living on city water or something like that um but yeah what are you gonna do if you don't have power though you know so do you have a way to keep your pipes from bursting without using some kind of power and i know a lot of people don't have that uh that don't have that luxury right so um we have to remember that electricity is a huge one as well which is what you know sort of directly segues into our next category which is power outages you know just like i mentioned you know power outages are already extremely common in the wintertime in a lot of areas you know even areas where winter weather is not necessarily a a huge problem so for instance you know one of the one of the things that you'll that the people will notice who've lived in different you know climates around the united states is that you know you live up north and you know you get three feet of snow on the ground everything's fine it's a normal it's like a tuesday right but you know down in virginia or in texas or you know occasionally in like northern new mexico or some you know states like that which aren't really known for getting snow if they get like a freak you know blizzard come through and they get like maybe a quarter of an inch of ice not even snow just quarter inch of ice or something like that the whole state will shut down you know that people have no idea how to drive because they're not used to it you're ho you're gonna have instead of one or two power lines coming down you're going to have a whole city down and it's because they just don't get that you know thing so you they don't get that much snow every year so you know even though you'd think that some of the bigger risk comes from the areas like in the northern states where they do get a lot of snow actually from what we've seen is that there's still a lot of it may not be most risk but you still get a lot of risk and a lot of bad things and unfortunate things happen in in states and in areas which aren't known for snow but may get that one occasional storm and you know what if that one occasional storm was during a riot right and you know bringing the rider element into this if you know if rioters or other more serious malign actors like actual domestic terrorists and not just like unorganized rioters um if they were to capitalize on you know naturally occurring power outages we could see city-wide blackouts that last for a long time and it's not that hard to impact the power grid and it's only a matter of time before these people figure it out and you know once again bringing back the theme of hey everything compounds on something else you know without power to electrically heat homes you know more people will rely on more hazardous forms of heating which exponentially raises the risk of residential fire so you know your power goes out and people get cold they start you know burning things or using you know oil or kerosene space heaters and you know propane start using their gas stove and then suddenly you've got you know risk of gas explosions you've got risk of carbon monoxide poisoning from your neighbors you've got a lot you've got a lot of stuff risk that piles up just because of a power outage so um you know you also have to remember that power being out also means that most security systems will be down as well you know same thing with you know your security lighting and things like that unless you have like battery powered uh lights which are fairly common but there's nobody out there that i know of that has battery-powered security cameras unless it's a dedicated system and even then it's only a like a a ups so that it can safely shut down i don't know if any system that's a residential system that has a whole bank of batteries to keep it going when the power goes out that might be something to look into but you know this of course increases the risk of damage and you know looting and rioting and just general theft it just increases the risk exponentially right and then moving on to the next one this is kind of a different topic one of the a big consideration is complacency we tend to underestimate the impacts that you know normal winter weather has on operations you know we just tend to underestimate that no that's not even counting the rioting and protesting and things you know as such we drastically underestimate the impact of rioting and bad weather uh that those two will have when combined together right and it's something that's very hard to predict i can say the only really good thing about you know the weather is that it's it's universal and it's random in its impacts right everybody's affected pretty much equally and also randomly we don't know exactly how much snow is going to fall we don't know how much ice is going to fall or how much damage it's going to do until it happens so by default the people that are more prepared before bad weather will have an advantage over those who aren't prepared so you know one of the things that that is perhaps a good thing is the lack of preparation on the rioters part for instance just looking at some of the riots and the and the more violent um uh demonstrations around the us the people that are doing them aren't exactly preparedness-minded so i doubt i highly doubt that you're going to have hundreds of riders in the streets all with you know layered clothing waterproof boots changing their socks every half an hour um you're just they're just not going to do that right so they're they're not going to be prepared for winter weather they're barely going to be hanging on just being outside whereas um people like police military and more uh more conscientious and and prepared uh type people will be able to be comfortable outside so you know we have to factor that in as well because these riders are good no they're not going to be even if they're going to go on riding cold weather they're not going to be truly prepared for cold weather they're not going to be hydrating like we all know is a huge thing with cold weather you need to hydrate almost more than in warm winter because you're going to be sweating a lot they're not going to be removing layers when they do start to swim all these other traditional winter weather basics that we all know the writers they're not just not that personality type so moving on to the next one is communications and this is a big one so as one might expect power outages like i just mentioned affect communications greatly you know obviously but when combined with rioting and civil unrest the the impacts are amplified uh you know like everything else we've talked about so far you know a a if you have sort of a unique setup which is becoming popular now which are attic antennas you've got to remember that if you've got a foot or two of snow on your roof that's definitely going to reduce the range of you know attic-based antennas and if you have an outside antenna like the one here on the slide guess what you get even just a small amount of ice build up on it it's going to bend and break um so you have to remember that that the weather definitely impacts your ant and antennas you know you know we also have to remember the technology itself is vulnerable you know from ham radios to cell phones it is rare to find a communications method that is truly weatherproof um you know connections get wet and freeze you know antennas collapse and break under the weight of ice and you know cold temperatures impact electronics of all kinds and just like i mentioned battery life as well you know as such at a time where communications are most needed you know during a time of unrest and rioting and during you know inclement weather is exactly when communications of all types are the most vulnerable you know after all if your communications plan works when things are you know just peachy outside it doesn't really matter that much but if your communications you know fail when things are going badly that can and most likely will have a severe impact on you know your situation so i think that we cannot underestimate the power of communications um so another thing that uh is isn't impacting uh communications are things like transportation which is our next topic so uh this is kind of indirectly related to communications because in a lot of times you know the the old-fashioned uh runner you know messenger is your classic um and timeless way of communicating and in a lot of times where if your cell towers are down your radio is not working because the snow and things like that you're you know this is going to be being able to move from one area to another with a person is going to be crucial and if your roads are shut down too well now you've just eliminated your last most reliable form of communication if that's part of your comp plan but one thing to to remember in this sort of category that goes along with communications is tracks you know tracks are left behind in snow right whether you're driving or walking right so if you're trying to covertly move somewhere it's going to be next to impossible to do on you know fresh snow with fresh snow on the ground if it hasn't been filled in by you know more you can move during snowfall it's fine the tracks will be covered up pretty easily but if it's just snowed and it stops snowing guess what you're gonna leave a huge trail this matters for communications because what if you're trying to go out what if you've got a covert antenna outside one of the big things in the ham radio community is covert antennas right being able to put up an antenna somewhere where your maybe your hoa doesn't approve of you having a ham radio antenna or maybe you don't want you know some kind of federal agency to determine to figure out you're using a radio antenna or have some kind of communications method like that so covert antennas are popular we use them all the time but the point is is that if you have to go out there and service that antenna and get the ice and stuff off of it and check the connections and and dry out the connections well you're just gonna you're gonna lead people right to it if you're walking through snow so that's another huge consideration as well we also have to remember that you know just like i mentioned earlier winter weather in your in your bug out bags and your go bags or whatever you want to call them the kit you carry even the stuff you just take to work every day if you're going to carry winter gear in them just like i mentioned it's going to get bulky and it's going to get a little heavier but another thing is is how you pack your your bug out bag as well you know for instance it's not just as simple as taking out your summer sleep system putting in your winters and putting in your winter sleep system or taking out you know your mosquito netting and putting in an extra thermal layer it's not quite as simple as that because there's and and this is up for debate so just take it for what you will but you know i just me personally what i do is during the summer time i have things the heavier things in my bag higher up and closer to your back like the classic backpacking trick that everybody's talked about for a long time so if you've got a something really heavy like water it goes up right up next to my back as high in my pack as i possibly can can make it it just makes it a lot easier on me and it allows the load to be transferred more efficiently to me personally now the winter time that changes in the winter time i put my heavy stuff at the very bottom of my pack as close to my body as possible that's because i want the center of gravity for my body to be lower so if i'm using skis or snowshoes or something like that i can actually have a better center of gravity better balance and things like that over uneven terrain or like i said with skis so that's something to uh something to factor in as well if you're in that sort of environment even if you're not in an environment where you actually have skis or something like that you know i still do it because things get slippery out there even in the mid-atlantic even as far down as you know the south and you know the the west um you know out west it gets it gets pretty cold out there and you might have some black ice and things like that so that's what i tend to do in the winter time so it's not just what you pack but it's how you pack it changes in the winter time as well and also in the transportation method transportation category we have to remember that snow like i mentioned earlier sort of sort of alluded to snow fills in things like ditches you know it makes it very uh likely for you know you to actually accidentally drive off of the road surface and into a ditch and then that of course once again compounds uh by making it very difficult for you to get your vehicle out of the ditch in the wintertime so you know and then guess what you know if that happens you're stranded in the cold uh in an inclement uh situation where your vehicle is stuck and now now the situation's just gotten quite severely worse so moving on to the next topic this uh another thing that people tend to discount not just in the wintertime but this is also a summertime thing as well but as the morale and you know the mental impact the weather can have um you know being cold and wet is miserable i don't care what culture you are where you grew up or or whatever you know unless you grew up in the you know remote regions of siberia you're gonna human beings have a pre uh a preconceived um a predetermination to being cold and wet it's just miserable right doesn't matter where you're from you know and it's even more miserable if the reason that you're in the reason that you're cold and wet is because you've got to stand outside or stand watch and make sure that people don't destroy your stuff right so that's you know you're already in an angsty situation where you're emotionally invested in something and now you're cold and wet you see how that affects morale it makes you feel pretty bad or it changes your mentality in ways that you you know are situation dependent but you know in cold weather we also have to remember not not just you know mental capacity um of of being you know you know uh sour at the cold weather but um your mental capacity is directly harmed as well in cold weather even the simplest of tasks things you've done your entire life require considerable considerable brain power just like i said in cold weather even the simplest of tasks it requires a lot of brain power and requires a lot of dexterity which is impacted immediately as soon as you step into a cold weather situation and is made worse the longer in that situation so you know we also have to worry about things in the winter time of long-term issues like trench foot or immersion foot or or other cold weather maladies you know dehydration even hyperthermia hyperthermia where you get too hot whereas you know when somebody's next to you know next to a fire on that line they get too hot so that's something to uh to to factor in as well something that we can't quite uh overlook and then finally our last topic which is perhaps the most uh most unfortunate one is things like cbrn concerns cbrn seburni basically riots are going to continue and law enforcement agencies around the us are continuing to use tear gas like it's going out of style tear gas riot control agents pepper spray you name it it's being used and you know however you feel about that the fact of the matter is is that a lot of innocent a lot of innocent bystanders have the have the capacity to be hit or impacted by these things we ourselves have been close enough to rioting and of course not partaking in it just riots happening near our house and we've even felt that familiar sting of tear gas you know just standing on our own uh center on our own property so um it's you know things get things get real close and you know just imagine um you know sitting at mop level you know infinity right where you literally got all your mop stuff on yours way more stuff that's probably necessary in the freezing rain in the dark you know with spotty comms because the power is out you know and a gun that may or may not jam because it's cold and it's kind of sticky and you know with a fire on the next street over you know riders right there at your front door you know you see how all of this compounds together i think that's probably the the the theme for today is that winter time is miserable uh for operations like this and unless you're a military unit which is spent decades training and and trying to impact and and not just survive but actually be an asset during a winter condition you know a lot of civilians especially us are not going to be able to um we're not going to be able to be quite the level of the asset that we hope to be but we can still plan and hope to not be a liability and that's sort of the goal out there so as we move into finishing up here today i hope this has been helpful these are just some of the things that we've kind of been uh working around we've all kind of pitched in two or three of these ideas of hey you know what are some of the considerations for wintertime warfare and winter time you know riding because in a lot of cities they look just like this it's it's a it's a war zone out there in a lot of these situations and um while you know like i mentioned in the very beginning it did you know winter weather does mean that riding is probably going to quiet down but this riots that do survive are probably going to be pretty severe so hopefully this helps trigger some ideas as people who have been listening to us for a while now know really all our businesses is triggering ideas and providing some good information that can help save some lives out there and that's certainly what we hope to accomplish today so that's all we have for today and as usual make sure you go check out our other platforms we have you know some some social media sites out there if you guys still got instagram up we've got our website teespring if you want to support us that way if you're listening to us on youtube we have a we have a podcast if you didn't know already and if you're listening to us on the podcast we also have a youtube channel which we have basically mutual content on both of those platforms we're trying to spread out as much as possible but we do have we host different things on on different platforms so make sure you check all of our stuff out we also have our key base server where we do you know live updates from time to time and uh you'll you'll be able to hit us up there if you have any questions you know also our emails and things like that are also linked below so hopefully that has helped been helpful once again and we'll be coming back at you with another episode talking about more preparedness for the upcoming um sort of insanity that the election season is going to bring on us um very soon so so hopefully we'll not only be able to fight in the shade but also fight in the darkness as we get closer into the winter time so hopefully we'll see you all guys next time and s2 actually out

[Music] [Music] we all know the scene Krusty General's stand hunched over a map table contemplating their next move while their team buzzes about shoving the latest Telegram in their hand and constantly updating the little Flags marching across the battlefield much like the concept of the Tactical Operations Center Hollywood has put these images in our minds to demonstrate a very important task of a higher headquarters element battle tracking so what is battle tracking and is this something that might be helpful for the average citizen living in today's strange and confusing world let's find out at its simplest battle tracking is simply putting information on a map mostly pertaining to tracking military units as they move across the battlefield going back as far as Antiquity to the origins of warfare itself battle tracking was quite literally done in person from a Hilltop adjacent to the battlefield the generals could use to visually see the battle space below of course as time went on and we moved through the generations of warfare commanders who might have been at a disadvantage in numbers began to use terrain to even the odds the cunning use of terrain is one of the major reasons why Alexander the Great was able to conquer most of the ancient world terrain was also the main reason that Wellington outfoxed the emperor himself in defeating Napoleon Bonaparte at the infamous Battle of Waterloo so terrain is very important but from a command and control perspective using terrain can lead to a lot of problems in short if your general cannot sit on a hill and directly see your unit's Penance your general does not know where you are or how things are going so what else is therefore a general to do but use Ford observers to find out where his own troops are where the enemy is and plot all of this information on a map over time as more and more battles began being fought in terrain that restricts direct view of troops Maps were used to show where everything was on the battlefield as the technology of warfare developed and World War One brought strange new Horrors to modern war maps increasingly took a much larger role over over the direct observation of troops and thus the concept of the General's camp on a Hilltop shifted more to an underground or fortified Dugout from which generals could use maps and telephones to conduct the war away from artillery from this we can see the beginnings of the Tactical operations center and really starting with World War one we can see the battle staff emerge with various staff members being tasked with updating the General's map constantly as the front lines shifted during battle though this is certainly more of a military subject as we have seen over the past few years of riots and actual open Warfare in the streets the concept of battle tracking is desperately important for local citizens to understand this is something that every prepared citizen needs to be capable of Because by the time the average person needs to battle track life-changing events in their area it will already be too late to learn these skills as such one might think that the first step to modern day battle tracking is to get a map which is actually the Second Step the the first step is to memorize a lot of boring stuff mostly the symbols you're going to put on the map right up front before the crisis know your symbology this is the hardest part because you basically have to memorize a lot of different shapes markers and icons but as boring as it is you need to know at least the general outline of how things work your battle tracking skills are of no use if no one can understand the information on your map generally speaking here are the basics of the American Mill standard 2525 this is the most common set of standard shapes and markers that are used throughout the world this standard has been in place for many many years generally speaking blue rectangles are friendly units red diamonds are enemy units green squares are neutral units and yellow Clover shapes are unknown or sometimes civilian units as we can see there's a few things going on here we've got the shape and the color and they both matter this is important to remember as we move along because even though this is a rigid standard in practice there is a lot of variation to these symbols within the shape inside the shape we have indicators of what kind of unit this is the most common are infantry units which are designated with a large x in the middle of the shape and of course this can change this is what a medical unit looks like and here is an armored Cavalry unit and so on it's up to you to memorize these on your own which is why I would highly recommend purchasing a physical copy of the battle staff smart book this book has all of the major symbols within it and it's very easy to study but anyway we can see that the interior shapes whatever they are do not change based on Allegiance for instance here is a friendly mechanized infantry unit and here is an enemy mechanized infantry unit same symbol on the inside but the exterior shape and the color has changed now here's something that complicates things a bit more that shape that that rectangle that we've been talking about that is meant to designate Ground Forces but what about aircraft or naval ships or spacecraft well the shape changes for that too so here are a few examples as we can see the top of the shape reminds us of whether the unit is hostile or not and the bottom of the symbol helps us remember whether or not it's a ground force Aviation navel or whatever and of course remember the interior symbols remain the same no matter how the exterior shape or the color changes this takes a while to get kind of used to but it's pretty simple once you understand the basics of it but let me throw another wrench into the engine here and we'll confuse you a little bit more speaking of that exterior shape sometimes military battle trackers break the rules and confuse things so let me explain in case you happen to see something different we already know that a blue rectangle with an X in the middle is a friendly ground infantry unit pretty easy right now what about this unit what's going on here well in practice it's sometimes easier or it's usually easier to draw a rectangle instead of a diamond so throughout many military Publications and throughout a lot of historical Maps as we can see you will find all ground units being designated by rectangles with their color designating Allegiance therefore the rule of thumb is no matter the shape the color always takes precedent if it's red it's bad guys if it's blue it's friendly I personally always try to go by color and shape the way you're supposed to based on the standard but a lot of US Army Publications don't do this so just be advised that if everything on your map is a rectangle you have to go by color so let's practice a little bit you can pause the video now and we'll begin talking about each of these symbols so first up we've got kind of a familiar shape right we've got the the blue rectangle with an X in the middle so we already know that this is going to be some kind of infantry unit net that's friendly but down here in the center uh center of the shape at the bottom we have what's called a modifier so we know that this is a friendly infantry unit but what kind of infantry in this case we have the little uh seagull shape a little bird shape right so we know that this is going to be a friendly Airborne infantry unit and if we're looking for size we can look at the very top and see the echelon modifier which tells how big this unit is in this case uh the two vertical lines there dictate a battalion so this is a friendly Airborne infantry battalion up next is a little bit of an easier one uh this one we have a square which is green so we know that this is going to be a neutral unit and the symbol in the middle is just the letters MP so this one we can kind of easily remember as military police so this is a neutral military police unit of ununknown size because we don't have an Echelon modifier moving on down the line the next one is a little bit more difficult we know that this is hostile right because we have the diamond shape and the color red so we know that this is a hostile unit of some kind but what is this symbol what is this this large m shape or a zigzag line however you want to describe it this one you're really just kind of have to memorize this is a pack animal like a mule or a horse or something that's going to be transporting cargo so this is a hostile pack animal and finally we have another kind of confusing one that ordinarily you would never be able to really see but if you followed our briefings on a recent incident of geopolitical Interest this one might be a little bit more familiar to you so we know for instance right up front that this is a hostile unit because it's red so it's going to be hostile no matter what right but it's not a diamond shape or rather the diamond shape is on the top so we know it's not a ground unit from the vertical lines going down to the bottom of the shape and the lack of a line on the bottom just kind of like an open bottom we know that this is going to be an aerial unit so this is an enemy aerial unit and you might have guessed from the symbol on the inside this is a lighter than aircraft a a balloon so this is a hostile aerial balloon pretty neat little symbols that uh have gotten a lot of use slightly once you practice this a bit it will become second nature of course keeping a guidebook on hand is important just in case you stumble upon a really weird or rare symbol that you haven't memorized yet as a side note if you happen to use really rare or obscure symbology I would recommend writing a note in plain English next to the symbol helping people know what it is combat is not the time to be playing Stomp the chomp and nobody is going to be impressed with you for knowing an obscure symbol the goal is to have a transparent view of the battle space with no confusion and you don't want your commander to have to break out a book and look flip through pictures to figure out what the symbol means so if you have to bend the standardized rules a bit by placing a few labels so be it but now we can move on to the map which is how we're going to start tracking now we can can see why having good maps is important we need maps of a scale appropriate to the area that we're trying to battle track in if there's a riot in a city we need to have a map of the whole city if there's an invasion of some kind or some kind of lockdown scenario throughout a region we need a map of you guessed it the whole region even if we're in a small observation post we can use a spare range card to battle track if need be but at this small level we probably should be focused on observation and security but again it depends on the mission at hand this is why I like to have maps of varying scales available like clockwork Murphy's Law strikes win least desirable so whenever you need a map you either won't have one or my personal favorite it will be at the wrong scale so we've got our map but before we get into the meat and potatoes of battle tracking a quick note on ipv or intelligence preparation of the battle space A lot of times I would say probably most of the time an event is going to go down somewhere in the world that's going to require you to battle track it and you're not going to have any ipv products pre-made for that area you can get your map set up but you are probably not going to have studied this area before so quite literally all you have is a blank map if you have that that's okay we can build this out as we get familiar with the area we don't necessarily want to use the cop for our ipb work but we can make helpful additions as we find out information to the situation at hand but for now since we're probably in a hurry let's move right to Blue Force tracking this is exactly as simple as it sounds tracking blue forces tracking friendly forces it's just putting all of your friendly units on the map and constantly updating their positions as they move across the battle space back in the day this was done automatically on a completely dedicated system called a blue Force tracker basically a computer system installed in vehicles and command posts that allowed units to track each other this system is still very much in use today but back before the days of modern system items the bft was an impressive development in the field of warfare even if soldiers remember it being a constant headache to work with these days the high-speed low drag tactical solution is ATAC ATAC has replaced traditional bft systems in a lot of units but a lot of units are still using old-school bft trackers for the most part but the future is definitely ATAC which automates Blue Force tracking so that nobody has to physically move an icon across the map so Blue Force tracking sounds pretty simple just put your guys on the map right well in the real world it gets a bit more difficult than that which we'll get into in a moment the other side of the coin is red Force tracking This Is The Stuff Intel guys should be doing this is why having an intelligence function is important and by default why it's important to have reliable information sources think about how many people on the internet have been battle tracking the Ukrainian war and how many of them have been incorrect myself included that's because open source intelligence can only get you so far and that is the only type of intelligence that is going to be available to the general public so battle tracking an event where you don't have reliable information is kind of a farce I get it it's not easy especially in a world where most open source Intel is heavily skewed if not outright faults no matter the case sometimes our best simply isn't good enough so we have to account for that when battle tracking when battle tracking more local events things that you have you know more of a stake in things don't necessarily become easier but the ability to collect information yourself it's on the table now collecting your own information via radio scanner software-defined radios or sdrs or even small quadcopters or other drones or even just a straight up observation post this organized intelligence collection is usually a lot more accurate than anything you'll find on the internet again in every single operations center I've worked in both Blue Force tracking and red Force tracking fell on the S2 shop because Ops didn't want to do it since Intel is regrettably sometimes a redheaded stepchild of the the battle staff the S2 guys get saddled with work that isn't technically their job but anyway though my team constantly grumbled about it I never really minded this personally because if the S2 shop didn't track everyone all at once the S3 would task a random soldier with it who probably wouldn't do it right so tracking everyone all at once was pretty much what I've had to do in the past this is important to mention because tracking red forces is not easy the bad guys don't radio in their position to your talk you have to go find them or at least guess where they're at or what they're doing that's why that big purple K tends to get slapped everywhere on maps the icon for key terrain though key terrain gets way overused and used improperly it's a very quick way to say hey this would be a great spot for activities either for the bad guys or for us this terrain is key now let's break this down a bit further when it comes to physically putting things on the map there are a couple of ways you can do this what we do not want to do however is draw directly on the map for many reasons I guess technically you could use a pencil and just erase your markings if you need to move something around this is historically what has been done many many years ago before we had the invention of things like Plastics right historically using a pencil to write on a paper map has been done however we've got better ways of doing things today usually what we want to do is use an overlay of a thin sheet of plastic like I mentioned earlier this is mostly what the military does overlays the map with a clear sheet of plastic so that your nodes and scribbles can be erased and it allows you to use colored markers as opposed to using just a pencil which is going to be you know just one color if you're going to draw on an overlay there are a couple of things that can help for one you can get yourself one or two of these kinds of stencils you can find these online rather overpriced but they are quite handy for drawing neat little boxes this one right here even has the features of a goo horse stick for all of you old school folks out there who remember those one thing to remember when buying a lot of this stuff is that terrain model gear tends to be Chinese made and in classic fashion the Communist manufacturing sector is almost entirely based on stealing other people's designs this becomes hilarious because they don't often know or understand what something is used for when they copy things so for instance sometimes the stencil shapes will be backwards or the labels will be on the wrong side so you've got to constantly flip back and forth if you're trying to make everything be correct a lot of times the proportions will be wrong or the stencil holes will be too small for any riding Implement because remember they are making these off of bootleg photos from products that were originally issued by the government or sold in the PX on base so just be aware of that when you're looking around you might have to buy several of these until you find one that actually works as for me my bootleg Chinese grade stencils work okay enough for me another helpful thing you will obviously need are markers for battle tracking purposes I prefer wet erase markers so that the riding is a bit more durable and just won't wipe away I also like to either write on or use a label maker to label the colors of each marker so that I can pick them out under red light conditions speaking of red light conditions you might want to select a marker for red forces that is a bit off red or just use black because under red light red text is invisible right so if you're going to be switching back and forth between normal white light and red light your map icons disappearing can be pretty frustrating for flexibility purposes I usually prefer the other main way of putting icons on the map unless of course I've got to remain mobile if I'm working you know out of a vehicle and I've only just got my map board to work from of course I'm going to be drawing on that map board drawing on the Plexiglas you know like like you're supposed to right but for a fixed position where you can lay a map out on a table I like to use laminated icons that I print out myself any good S2 shop should have a shoebox full of these but you can easily make your own on the back of each little marker I like to glue either a penny or a small magnet the penny helps weigh down the small slip of paper so that it won't blow away easily in the wind or in case you know somebody walks by the map table and like their shirt catches the edge of the map or something you don't want all of your your symbols just you know kind of blowing away gluing a magnet on the back will do the same thing but also make it so that you can stick these symbols to a magnetic white board this is pretty helpful for wargaming or for practice or whatever the reason you might want to go with a penny instead the the non-magnetic option is if you have to place a lot of these symbols right next to each other the magnets might want to stick together and generally just might be kind of frustrating to use whatever you choose both the magnet or the penny help Elevate the symbol so that it's easier to grab and pick up off the table instead of laying flush on the surface seems like it's really not worth mentioning but man and this is frustrating and so really putting anything on the back of these pieces of paper adds a little bit of thickness so they're easier to to pick up I also keep a lot of plain symbols without anything on the back just in case I need to improvise something on the Fly it's easier to staple these to a popsicle stick and you know stick them in the ground rather than having to peel off a magnet or something I like to keep these stored in my map case which has a three ring binder to accept these sheet protectors that are meant to store like baseball cards I use a label maker to label each pocket so that if I have to yell across a talk for somebody to hand me a symbol they can find it easily it also helps me when I'm not thinking too clearly or are super tired you know the drill gross motor movements are key and labels help prevent any confusion you don't need to make thousands of symbols just a couple of sheets of the most common symbols will do you don't need to go absolutely crazy and print out all you know 50 000 of these symbols anything special can be improvised on the Fly by drawing on blank symbology icons this is what I do most of the time anyway if I'm not making custom symbols myself I usually just use the blank ones and then fill in the interior as needed so you might ask okay where do I get these symbols hasn't somebody already done this the answer is yes uh active duty folks have access to what we call the moag the mother of all Graphics this is a rather Infamous PowerPoint file that has pretty much every battle tracking graphic pre-made this makes it easy to cut and paste into your own PowerPoints now if you search around the internet you will probably find various versions of this PowerPoint but it's not widely available to we lowly peasants you need to have a login to be able to get to get to this PowerPoint it's mostly just hosted on nippernet sites so unless you're you know in the military you're not gonna have access to this the good news is that we have something better I prefer to use this website spatial Illusions this comes from a soul developer who has created an online tool to generate symbology icons all for free if you want you can support the developer by donating and if you donate 40 Euro you get a license code to run this entire website offline very handy for non-networked computers so that's basically where you can get your symbols to print out at home you can find or make your own version of the moag or you can use the free spatial Illusions tools it's up to you I use the spatial Illusions generator and just paste the icons into a PowerPoint slide so that it's easy to print out and so that I have it for the inevitable PowerPoint briefing anyway other stuff you might want to have in your terrain model kit includes the following like I mentioned earlier popsicle sticks are pretty handy mostly for terrain models so that you can stick them in the ground but you can also use them to outline roads show points of interest and so on various kinds of string or yarn can help delineate front lines key terrain fields of observation stuff like that usually you're going to need at least red or blue probably black as well to outline stuff like roads and purple for key terrain sometimes you'll see yellow for fires kind of stuff you know for targeting sort of stuff and orange as well for stuff that are like obstacles but there's really no standard for what different kinds of colors mean other than kind of like the generic red and blue so just get a multi-pack of whatever kinds of yarn you want and just be clear to delineate what these are you can use Little slice of paper to to label what the yarn means once you have it on your map some kind of pointing device so that you don't have to you know lean all the way over a map and point with your finger at something I used to love laser pointers uh these used to be the industry standard when I was working professionally as an analyst everyone had a green laser pointer in their pocket nowadays and towards the end of my professional career I found that laser pointers are just too distracting for the masses these days uh basically I started having an entire audience of cats with zero attention spans so since then I have switched back to the old standby and now use just regular collapsible pointers a map protractor is pretty helpful uh just because nobody tends to have an extra one on them when it comes time to make the map or make the terrain model so having an extra is always handy make sure you get the ones with dual scales for one to twenty four thousand and one to twenty five thousand uh so they work with civilian Maps as well as military Maps remember in the civilian World we're probably not going to be using military Maps we're going to be using like USGS maps which are one usually one to twenty four thousand various construction tools like nails screws push pins thumbtacks duct tape stuff like that all of this is very helpful to improvise various things on the fly or to help attach Maps or markers of some kind to a you know wall if you wanted to hang things vertically I also keep a stapler handy just because you're going to need one and even this tiny one is a little bit too bulky for my map case so it kind of lives in the terrain model stuff it's also really handy for stapling icons to popsicle sticks if you wanted to do that for like a Terrain model spare range cards are pretty handy to have because you can ask your dudes to bring along their range cards for from their positions and you can copy down that information to your own range cards which makes it really helpful to be a lot more accurate when depicting fields of fire on your map a rather odd Edition are random blocks of wood these are basically squares of two by fours cut off to make blocks that represent buildings obviously this is for a large scale terrain model and not so much a map table so I personally do not use these often at all but we do have a box of these in the office just in case I need to make a larger scale terrain model on the ground or something like that this is really more of a special case thing that I keep separate from the rest of my small scale terrain model stuff and finally a lot of pre-made icons have usually found a home in my kit over the years you can buy terrain model kits online and for the military guys they are sold at every PX at least the small scale ones are these are way way overpriced and I do not recommend them it's better to just make your own but despite this I have found myself sometimes unprepared over the years and needing to buy a pre-made kit so I tend to have a lot of leftovers from Scavenging other kits you don't need to nerd out on this stuff too hard you'd be surprised at how little you need to battle track a small Ziploc bag of small laminated paper icons will get you a long way and it takes up almost no space or weight these are a great addition to pretty much any map case now we can see that a plan is coming together we should have a fairly full map that is constantly being updated by all parties involved a map showing where the good guys are and where the bad guys are likely to be but battle tracking is a little bit more than just that in addition to doing this stuff on a map you might want to consider having an event log if you have the time and Personnel to dedicate to this it would be a really good idea to have a chronological log of events this is usually super simple it can be an Excel spreadsheet or it can be a physical paper log like a deck log or a staff duty log all that goes into this is the time of day and whatever event occurred you can be as in-depth or as simple as you like but really this event log is used for two purposes one so that commanders and people in leadership positions can at a glance see what has happened since they stepped out of the talk the other main use is to remind people in the talk of what time something happened it sounds stupid simple and it really is but you'd be surprised at how many people will forget when a Medevac call dropped or when an engagement happened in the Heat of the Moment nobody is looking at their watch so it's helpful to dedicate one person to write all this stuff down as it happens another use of an event log is more forensic in nature sometimes when things go sideways and there's going to be an investigation later we need to have a detailed down to the minute log of exactly what happened we need to know what everyone knew at that time and how information flowed throughout the operation usually the person dedicated to do this will be the assistant to whomever is on radio watch usually you want at least two people manning the radio so that one can do the talking and another can do the riding so it's not too much extra work to just keep the log and a format that everyone finds useful not just for radio stuff however again in the real world this often doesn't get done and a lot of time the operations out of the house can't or won't spare an extra person to keep an event log so sometimes this job falls to the Intel dudes who usually have a lot of extra white boards and large format paper to display the data anyway so we can see that this is a very fluid process it's constantly changing and it is going to change a lot based on the skills of the people that you know you have around you right if people are just not really up to the task of doing certain things it doesn't matter what the manual says it's got to get done somehow and sometimes the people who are not best suited for a job have to do the job anyway everyone has their own personal battle tracking habits but I will share some of mine in case it helps one of the major things that I do because very few other people do it is constantly search for hlz's or helicopter landing zones even though this is part of the mission planning process as part of met TC right I am always on the lookout for helicopter landing zones as close to the Ground Force as possible of course you need to have a lot of knowledge on this it's not as simple as finding a large open space that you think a helicopter can land at you need to consider altitude above sea level and know the general characteristics of your helicopter's engines to know if it's even possible to fly there with a certain amount of weight and fuel you need slope analysis of the potential hlz to determine if a bird can land there or if this is going to be a pinnacle Landing or even worse a hoist if it's a hoist Mission you need to consider obstacles visual aids for the pilots to to look at as they're trying to hold hover and as an Intel guy you need to consider line of sight analysis from the altitude above ground that the helicopter is going to hover at so that you can tell if they're going to hover at this altitude at this location at this grid who's going to be able to see them or shoot at them if it's a small hlz you need to think about the security of the orbiting sister ship that's going to have to orbit are they going to get shot at because they're you know doing donuts in the sky up there and they're a fat juicy Target so are they going to have to hold station a couple miles away that adds in more fuel consumption adds in more time and it's another place wherever they're going to have to orbit that's a whole other place that you've got to do analysis for to figure out where the bad guys are at on the ground I'm constantly thinking okay once the ground force gets to this tree line here the only Medevac that can be done is Hoist if that but if they take contact from this building over here that Medevac hlz that we plan for can't be used so we need another one like right now as we can see this is a very big thing to think about and it happens quite a lot this is a constant thought process and I personally tend to obsess over finding suitable hlz's it's just a habit that I've developed that probably isn't that useful for me anymore but now I also do the same thing with eager address routes by land we've all heard the phrase never enter a room until you know how you're going to get out of it again same thing applies in the woods or really any place where World War III is currently being fought so this is always at the front of my mind to update as a ground force makes their way through an area always keep looking for a way out just in case you need it directly related to the previous bullet point always keep Medical on the line nobody keeps the medical folks updated on the mission as it goes on so if you are in a talk and you have dedicated medical personnel that need to be informed get your rear end out of your seat and go brief them intelligence and medical needs to be in lockstep with each other and I honestly don't know why this relationship always tends to get neglected in the military but it does many times I've had to run out to the parking pad to give dust off Pilots a heads up that the ground force is getting ready to go into a pretty hairy area they always appreciate the heads up because most of the time the Intel picture that the medical guys have can comes from monitoring the radio which is not even a fraction of the whole picture during an operation when the operations guys go to work the Intel guys for the most part are pretty much done except for battle tracking and stuff like that unless something goes sideways really badly Intel should really be just invested in monitoring changes because the bulk of the S2 Shop's work is done since this is the case it makes no sense to neglect medical these guys need to know what's going on which routes to take where the bad guys are at if helicopters have been a priority for them do the bad guys do we think that they have night vision now or thermal or stuff like that and so on from my own experiences overseas many lives have been saved by simply an Intel guy walking out of the talk and out to the Medevac birds and casually chatting with the pilots and the crew chiefs for a minute or two it sounds like it wouldn't be that big of a deal but in the medical world seconds count and these guys can use all of the advanced warning they can get on the prepared citizen side of things this is even more important I don't know about anybody else but I don't have a Medevac Chopper on standby for when I go out into the woods so everything becomes more casual and simple but even more important if you are planning for a riot to break out in your city or even a major military action like a lockdown or something a key part of your team will be medical personnel and by that I mean anybody that isn't fighting but is otherwise physically capable is a stretcher Bearer again pointing to the importance of those whose role is not in combat friends and family who aren't physically able to fight or they have to care for children or otherwise are not on the front lines these people can certainly feel very important roles like medical as we can see this goes beyond the scope of battle tracking as medical personnel need to be kept in the loop regarding enemy tactics too if enemies in a local area are known to use certain kinds of weapons like chemical weapons white phosphorus red phosphorus or even incendiary Munitions cluster Munitions things like that the Medics need to know this so they can plan and equip themselves accordingly so that they have an idea of what kinds of wounds or injuries to expect so if you've got an improvised Clinic set up in your kitchen it would be a good idea to keep everyone including those tasks with medical needs on the same page moving back to the more battle tracking side of things it would be very very helpful to make notes reminding yourself to check positions of units if you don't have any way of tracking units automatically a lot of times friendly units will not explicitly State their position and they get annoyed when some Pogue back in the talk asks them where they're at on the radio what they don't know is that Pogue in the talk is plotting their grid pre-planning a Medevac hlz for them as they move in case something happens a lot of times talk people look out for the ground force way more than the ground force realizes and all of this is dependent on the ground Force's location I've seen some pretty bad stuff happen to units who did not report their position for a while and suddenly they're in a troops in contact or a tick situation equation now back in the talk we've got to figure out where they are find them a Medevac route let the Medevac people know the Hasty situation and generally be more unprepared than we otherwise would have been if the dang Ground Force told us where they were considering most prepared citizen groups will not have blue Force trackers and probably will not be using ATAC in a network keeping the talk updated with position data is very important and since that probably won't happen anyway it's the Talk's job to pull that information whenever they can you don't need to annoy the ground force every 60 seconds asking for a position report but hey if you know 10 minutes goes by and they haven't said anything you need to figure out where they're at another thing to remember is to not forget other domains looking at a map of the Earth's surface it is easy to forget the air sea and even space some information relevant to battle tracking it cannot be tied to a specific GPS coordinate so having a supplementary information board off to the side of the main map this can help with a lot of pertinent but generalized information so you can have your main map and then off to one side you could have your event log and on the other side of the map you could have just like General stuff that people should probably know this is especially important for keeping tabs on what we call the enemy electronic order of battle or EOB unlike a traditional order of battle which is basically just a list of all of the equipment and forces a unit has and EOB is more capabilities focused jamming GPS spoofing and other electronic warfare capabilities they need to be accounted for here too even if we can't physically put them on the map another topic which is honestly more of a debate but it needs to be addressed when we talk about battle tracking and that is the idea of decentralization generally decentralization can help but be careful right up front I want to say the decentralizing battle tracking efforts is generally a bad idea and can lead to very very bad things happening but it happens anyway and it might not be all that bad in the end this is pretty confusing so what does this mean decentralizing a common operational picture into several different maps in different areas sometimes happens generally you want a common picture right literally everybody sharing one large map if you've got multiple tracking Maps one map for blue forces one map for red forces it is easy to get confused and for unit positions to be out of date or be called into question it's just a horrifically bad mess but decentralizing the battle tracking happens anyway for instance people in different observation posts might be off the hook for what event is going on but they might start tracking the battle from their position I know that for me due to my role I battle track from wherever I am sometimes it's not effective but I do it anyway if I don't have a job to do if I'm stuck in the back of a vehicle away from the Talk's main Maps I'll battle track on my own map boards sometimes even a handheld GPS back in the day Garmin GPS unit served as my my team's own personal little battle tracking tool far more than I'd like to admit if you're going to decentralize battle tracking efforts to spread around the workload I would strongly recommend against splitting up red and blue forces this is something I saw in the Navy an awful lot and I understand why they do it it's just something that I personally just kind of Revolt at I always keep red and blue forces on the same map no matter what if you split them up you're going to have a bad time if you're going to split things up here's how I would recommend you do it you can track operations at different levels for instance if your city if your whole city was being invaded or locked down or whatever the talk can track the entire city the keeping you know larger unit sizes on the map so the talk is not going to track anything lower than like a battalion maybe a company right but if your cop is the size of an entire city you're not going to be putting down icons of individual vehicles or individual tanks right but the Hasty talk that's being run from somebody's living room they might want to take note of that because at their level their map is going to Encompass probably just their street and maybe the immediate surrounding area this is where decentralizing can be helpful and why we have talks at multiple levels of command a higher level very high level talk is not going to have some of the smaller units and a talk at the very lowest levels of command they're going to have a smaller area of operations a smaller talk at a lower level even if it's just one guy like me in the back seat of a car that one-man talk or observation post can report back to the larger higher level operations center they can report back with anything pertinent while at the same time battle tracking their very small view of the world nowadays I've upgrade related to various map boards to help my effort in addition to computerized options this way I can walk into any sized Operation Center from a from a very large headquarters element with hundreds of people in the talk down to a small Squad level room in somebody's house right so I can Flex depending on which size of operation I'm going to be working with right most of the time nowadays you know as a ordinary citizen I really go with much smaller level operations but I'm always prepared for if somebody out there is more organized than me I can easily plug into their system like With Disaster Response or something so all in all we can see that this decentralization may have a lot of use even if we don't want to admit it sometimes the people in the seat aren't the best people for the job and sometimes the talk the big headquarters talk just doesn't battle track very well water Finds Its Own level and I've seen people migrate to specific individuals offices because one guy in the back of the headquarters building was tracking the battle all better than the entire talk it sucks but it sometimes happens for me I tend to keep a sip a common intelligence picture separate from the main cop this is probably actually this is almost certainly a bad habit on my part but it's often necessary because I have so much information that is not necessary for the main tracking map my maps are a mess they tend to be quite cluttered I mean organized but still very cluttered with information and notes which isn't the best for a battle tracking map that should be as simple and accurate as possible but again you must remember that if you keep a separate tracking or planning map you cannot forget to update the main cop if you have something operationally meaningful too many people have died because some Intel weenie forgot to share life-altering intelligence don't be that guy that knows about the machine gun on the ridge but doesn't put it on the map another big debate in the battle tracking world is the idea of analog versus digital battle tracking with all of the tools at our disposal in today's world the question often comes up can we do all of this on our computers or phones in fact a lot of modern battle tracking has to be done on a computer or a phone because of how constantly data is updated a great example of this like I already mentioned is ATAC which takes care of Blue Force tracking automatically this can't be done on a map with a marker I mean it can but it requires a human to do it you know every 60 seconds dropping a new PIN right the dod at large has spent a lot of your tax dollars investing in Technologies like the old school Geeks dcgs palantir Gotham or palantir uh spin-off Gaia all of these are used to battle track among other things the dod is trying to make paper maps a thing of the past which in today's world is perhaps not entirely a bad idea except that in today's world it is a very bad idea as technology becomes more of a component of War Fair it also becomes a vulnerability yes stuff like ATAC is a huge benefit on the modern counterinsurgency battlefield but in GPS denied environments or places where a radio signal results in an artillery strike these tools that have so much power in the counterinsurgency world might end up getting us all killed if the situation is a little different as always everything is a balance and we don't need to completely change our entire Doctrine based on a case study or two I personally prefer to use both methods if the battle space permits and most importantly if people are actually using it ATAC is a great option I can tie a whole team together and know where everyone is at a glance that makes it easier to automate Blue Force tracking so that I can just focus on where the bad guys are however I also keep my physical paper maps updated too that way if I have to ditch my phone for some reason or if I have to go into a controlled space where cell phones are not allowed or it would generally be a bad idea to bring one in paper maps allow me to take my data wherever I need to is this duplication of effort yes is it necessary also yes a lot of the time I prefer doing things the old school way if possible not really for Nostalgia reasons but for the reasons that look if there's an old tactic that you still know about and is still you know decently popular the reason that that tactic has remained a commonality for such a long period of time is because it's it works of course we can't let Nostalgia let us make bad tactical decisions or lose capabilities simply because we want to to use an older way of doing things that may not be the best but I found that on the civilian side of things on the prepared citizen side of things where everything is analog anyway battle tracking with a map and a marker is about the same Effectiveness as some of the more high-tech options and sometimes that's all you've got even in 2023 it is like pulling teeth to get any prepared citizen to buy a radio and if we add in stuff like meshtastic and ATAC which is a little little bit more advanced than just you know buying an FRS radio or something like that that's just a bridge too far for a lot of people for for many reasons that are perfectly understandable like you know stuff breaking or not really being easy to set up but some reasons are really just laziness either way it's a reality and tracking an incident using digital methods while obviously offering a lot of capability they're just sometimes not an option in the civilian world as much as we might want them to be as a prepared citizen we have to work at the level of the lowest common denominator and sometimes that requires giving up capabilities it sucks but until more people become serious about being a prepared citizen in today's world until more people start stepping up we have to accept that the tip of the spear is sometimes a lonely place as for me I would recommend using technology as much as you can but don't let it become a liability and of course always be prepared to revert back to simple tried and true methods in case you have to all right everyone let's take a look at what a lot of these processes and stuff might look like in the real world using a real world example in a more unfiltered and raw kind of way so many of you understand and kind of know about what's going on in Niger right now uh and uh really throughout the whole West African region but I wanted to take this as and use this as an example because it's something that people are very unlikely to care about and it's something that is a little bit easier for me to both learn myself and test some of my own skills but also it's an easier way to show what a lot of this looks like in real time basically this is also a great example because I myself know very little about Western Africa I'm not an Africa expert by any means I uh only barely know about the United States involvement in Niger from a counter Insurgency perspective you know a lot of counter Isis counter Boko Haram actions going on in the north of the country and we have a very large uh drone base there but other than that it's a foreign topic to me so again I thought it would be a very good exercise to see for me what this more organic battle tracking would look like and and uh see if we're going to give up any capabilities so as we can see this is really just a good exercise all around and one of the ways this is a really good exercise is that I don't have the resources I need in typical fashion we have to sometimes battle track with the with the resources that we have and I don't have even half of the gear that I need my maps are not correct I don't have a lot of the instruments that I need to be a little bit more professional looking so this is exactly what somebody like me might do if they just grab their map case out of their rucksack and they're forced to kind of sit down and battle track an event especially one that is as large if we're talking like an international kind of event like this so so let me explain what I mean uh as we can see starting out fresh I have uh basically just my West African road map here now this is just as simple Michelin road map it's not the right scale this I don't even know what scale this is but it's in the millions I'm sure either way it's a very large scale map I need a much closer scale of a much smaller scale so that I'm not looking uh that this entire map is basically the battle space uh right now most of my icons and battle tracking efforts are

hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground so as you can probably guess we've got some pretty big news today um today we are launching our youtube channel so this is something that a lot of people have been asking us to do for a long time um we have had a podcast for quite a few months now and it's been working out quite well but we understand that some people aren't really about the whole podcast format and don't necessarily like um like just listening to someone they're more visual learners so we thought that we would create a youtube channel that helped us host some of our more visual content so today we are launching that youtube channel with this with the topic of workplace safety more specifically how to egress from a building so if you're watching this on youtube you'll be able to see uh this this powerpoint that we created you know we're analysts so of course we had to revert back to a powerpoint for our first video but if you're listening to this to the audio of this on the um on the podcast we'll try to do our best to visualize what's going on on the screen but if you're listening to us on the podcast we highly recommend you go over and check us out on youtube because then you'll be able to sort of understand what we're talking about we wanted to pick a topic you know that's once again a very visual thing that we can't exactly explain in a podcast format so workplace safety why are we talking about workplace safety um well for one this is sort of a topic we've been working around internally for a long time now because it's a topic that is not often talked about right it's very rarely mentioned in the military community it's very rarely mentioned in the prepping community it's really not even mentioned in a sort of taboo a lot of times to talk about within the emergency preparedness community because a lot of times the emergency preparedness community is based off of existing government guidance and as we'll find out that's not necessarily the best thing to resort to in a time of crisis like this so our goal here is to have a data-driven approach um we are going to tackle quite a few uh questions and problems we're not um going to try to theorize whether or not you should evacuate or or how you should handle things in your own uh life mostly because we're not experts right so we're trying to create a process we're trying to examine things from an empirical standpoint and figure out how we can best point out things that you maybe haven't thought about yet basically this whole video is going to be about different considerations that you can go about right so you know as we stated you know this is not going to be a strictly a gearless video we're not going to list out a whole bunch of gear that you are going to need this is more of a considerations type video we will cover gear of course but we're not here to sell a product we don't get endorsed by anybody and for the most part that's going to be on you you're just going to be on you to figure out how to address the problems that we're going to lay out so once again like we said we're not experts not by any means but we do have some common sense right we're not able to perhaps contribute to producing a peer-reviewed scientific journal article on you know emergency escape and and things like that but we are able to use some data right we don't have to be scientists to understand the scientific method and sort of loosely use that as a guide for how to be just be better about preparing for these types of things right so that's really our goal is to not necessarily use you know it would take years to go through a a scientific study of all emergency situations and and then dissect them all and then figure out what's going on with each one of them and then provide recommendations so we're sort of applying both some scientific knowledge and some historical knowledge as well as a lot of common sense and what we think works so that's why we're going to kind of weave back and forth between historical records and what we think so and this is why one of the big things that we've run into is that a lot of research you know hundreds and hundreds of of pages and and hundreds of journal articles have been written about even just minute emergency situations and disasters everything from terrorist attacks to hurricanes have been researched heavily in depth the response has been and the research has been conducted by experts as as it should right the research has been conducted by experts in the field and it's for experts so it's conducted four experts by experts um research has also been conducted by experts to help civilians chances of survival so you've got experts trying to determine what's best for a civilian to figure out uh their way and you know how can the lay person better understand a complex situation some such as some of these emergencies that have come upon us but very very little very little uh research has been conducted by individuals on an individual basis to help their individual chance of survival so that's what we kind of hope to tackle today we're laypersons when it comes to emergency management we do have a little bit of experience you know community emergency response teams cert teams you know so various medical training throughout the you know over the years as well as austere environment medicine so um we're not exactly um strict newbies but we're not experts in any way we cannot give a lot of the advice that has been given by experts on this so we're just going to take you through our thought process and sort of what we do now that of course is going to vary right so we're our goal with this is once again to trigger thoughts and considerations for you so one of the good ways to do this is the good old risk management matrix now i know a lot of you are probably going to be triggered by this graphic as well you should be because it's kind of a thing that gets annoying over time but it's a really good way for examining risk so for those that have not um sort of figured out what this is you can research it on your own time but in short it's a chart that describes the likelihood of an activity on a scale of one to five uh you know from rare to almost certain combined with the consequences or the impact of that thing happening such as once again on a one to five scale such as from insignificant up to catastrophic so let's put this into a format that we can all kind of understand so this was our sort of risk management matrix um this is this one we created just for this video but this is similar to what our daily lives were like uh when we when we lived in the remote coastal pacific northwest area so we we lived there for a few years up in the [Music] washington state area and as you can see a few things were more prevalent than others for instance we can look at landslides for us in our specific area landslides had a medium impact but the likelihood that they would happen was very very high because we were in a remote area so as such the risk for a landslide happening would be high so when we when we understand that um when we put these sort of disaster scenarios and and um and circumstances on a chart like the risk management matrix we realize that things shift around a lot so depending on where you're at things could be a lot different such as when we move to the urban coastal mid-atlantic area so as you can see from the chart all of these things switched around a lot so suddenly landslides became a very low likelihood and also a low impact if they were to happen because we're not in a mountainous area and there's so many roads that it's almost it's extremely unlikely that any uh that our transit would be totally cut off whereas in the pacific northwest landslides could take out the only road going back to our house so um that's sort of what we are are focusing on now as you can see uh in the upper right hand corner of this chart the uh the thing that that we're sort of most concerned about now is uh civil unrest the likelihood that will happen in our specific area is very very high and the impact that it could have is very high so for us civil unrest at this point in time is an extreme risk now that's also uh leads into the point that over time these things change you know risk and the things you need to prepare for changes sometimes on a daily or even hourly basis right so like for instance you know two hours before the minneapolis riots kicked off two hours before those videotapes were released and just using minneapolis as an example the threat of civil unrest was extremely low right but as soon as those videotapes were released and that night fight and that night fell on that same exact day things got really really bad so that goes to show that there's a lot of variables that go into how risk works and once you get kind of an understanding on that once you sort of start thinking in the terms of risk management right it it helps you prepare your response and of course we don't you know that's not to say that you should just memorize the earth's management chart and then just be a a government robot like a lot of us are taught to be when it comes to osha and things like that you know that shouldn't happen as well you should you know think sometimes things aren't going to be on the chart right and sometimes sometimes you need to prepare for things that exactly that don't exactly have a risk they can't you know be be categorized by a number or a color or a chart so that is you know the one caveat to the risk management matrix and so then we come to this um this is of course an image that many people will be familiar with and this is the world trade center uh collapse so we're not going to get into the conspiracy theories or anything like that today we're just talking about the actual result the the actual uh result of the collapse and the reason that we're using the world trade center disaster as a good bench point for a lot of this is number one we have a lot of data we have so much data that it's almost impossible for one person to analyze over a period of time so the world trade center has been heavily studied by literally thousands of people from dozens of agencies and so we have a lot of understanding as to what went down when it comes to the actual impact of the planes the impact of the fires things like that so that's why we're using the world trade center as a good good jumping off point because a lot of the deaths that came from the world trade center by a lot of the reports that came out afterwards were definitely preventable so obviously the people that were living in the direct impact zone of the aircraft that was not a survivable situation but a lot of this a lot of the casualties that occurred we're not entirely sure how many right but we can say that the number of people that could have been saved but weren't is significant so um but you know once again we're not just prevented we're not just talking about you know 911 the absolute worst case scenario a complex multi multi-layered um covert attack on u.s soil that no one was expecting we're also talking about things like the grenfell tower fire of 14 june 2017 in the uk that was a simple a fire residential fire in an apartment building that started when a refrigerator caught fire but that fire spread very very quickly to the rest of the building almost immediately and it resulted in 72 deaths and only 223 people escaping now if you look at the ratio of deaths to escapees that's a very high number of people that died from this tower and the investigation is still ongoing because it turns out that a lot of the cladding on the side of the building played a big impact on it and as you can see here um just a simple peruse of wikipedia can find out that uh a lot of other fires have been started a lot of them resulting in fatalities due to the exact same construction features the exact same uh violent safety violations that occurred in grenfell tower also started fires in other buildings around the world from you know south korea to new jersey the same the same construction technique and the same factors that led to the casualties in the grenfell tower are present around the world so that just goes to show that we're not necessarily planning for a complex multi-layered massive terrorist attack but we're also planning on something that's a little bit more likely even just just the other day one of our writers sent us a message saying hey look my refrigerator caught fire in my house i mean literally you know there was some kind of leak it was just sitting there in the kitchen and i was working at the kitchen table on a report i was writing and i turned around and i smelled something like a you know like like rubber burning it turned around and there's smoke coming out from behind my refrigerator so these things can happen to you every day we don't necessarily are trying to say that 911 is something we should be prepared for every day we're also trying to prevent normal things like building fires so as one might expect this this video is really heavy uh on the fire and that's for a few reasons um we've become i suppose the word is slightly more paranoid after our local riots swept through our area and it's because of fire um so we can defend ourselves against you know armed invaders we can defend ourselves against you know people throwing rocks and bricks and stuff but one of the things that cannot be stopped by us alone is fire right so we're heavily reliant almost totally reliant on the fire department um to help us out with that and we as we saw in our local area and it was widely publicized in not just our area but also in minneapolis where it all started but also in new york atlanta california firefighters being attacked with bricks and molotov cocktails because they were trying to put out fires and the rioters were trying to burn as many things to the ground as possible so for us fire is a huge deal and as a result we learn we learn a lot from firefighters themselves right firefighters are are extremely good sources of information because fires have been going on for quite literally millennia and as such the technologies and firefighting and the especially the personal escape procedures have trained have changed radically so as we see here in this image we have a firefighter that is practicing egressing from a window on an upper story building and that's where we're going to spend the bulk of our time talking about our system for that because one of the things that not a lot of people are talking about we haven't seen anyone talk about this within the sort of um prepping type emergency preparedness community with the exception of one source has mentioned it and we'll talk about that in a second but this is a thing that goes on in every fire department in america and it's firefighter egress systems basically this is a a rather large pouch that they put in the pocket of their turnout coat that basically allows them to within just a few seconds escape a room and rappel down to the ground from a window and it's something that's very interesting to study and worth looking into more so if you want more information about this i highly recommend you look up firefighter egress systems it is a very very fascinating subject to delve into even if you you're not a firefighter it's something that's very interesting to do if especially especially if you work or live in a building that's say two or three stories or even taller than that um which you know we do we live in air and work in buildings which are more than one story so it's something to keep in mind especially for that so so this is essentially what the goal is and this is a photo of a firefighter that's egressing from a structure that's on fire he was unable to egress out of the room any other way and he's forced to use his last resort which is to go out the window and we don't want to see the repeat of you know the very infamous people that have been videotaped and photographed jumping from high-rise buildings because the fire was just too much we don't want that we we want to have at least some last ditch it may not be survivable right as you'll see when we get into this the firefighter escape system and egress package that we've sort of created is not foolproof by any means it is not something that you train on unless you are in a very controlled environment it is a very very much a last-ditch method but it is infinitely better than simply just jumping out the window and hoping for the best so uh one of the big things that we're also thinking about that no one seems to be talking about are the covid procedures and mitigations so one of the big trends that's going around in literally every single profession is these coveted barriers so as we see here in this image this is a a gem that has become very famous for setting up individual workstations uh workout stations that have you know they're basically just cubes of pvc tubing with plastic um set up all the way around them and to in order to for people to be able to work out without wearing a mask or something like that now on the face of this this may sound like a you know you can debate whether or not this is a good or bad thing however no one seems to be considering um that this is in fact a um very big fire risk um so let's just take this image here and let's darken it for a second so imagine that you're in a fire and of course the power is going to go out because the fire department the first thing they're going to do is cut power to the building so your lights are going to go out all right so it's going to get darker okay well now let's add in some smoke well you see how hard it is to be able to locate the doors and exits much less having to deal with you know multi-mill plastic that you can and plastic tubing that you can get entangled in so that's a big concern especially considering that our children are now being affected by this so this photo shows a lot of the procedures that classrooms are taking now we could not find an actual photograph of our local elementary school and primary schools which have the actual full cages around the children but we do have this artist's rendition of you know the new procedures for basically doing the same thing with these little cubes and sort of cages put around each child's desk and the child goes inside the plastic barrier and they are able to you know do their schoolwork without a mask on well here's the thing um this this plastic sheeting is not easy to tear through with your bare hands like you need a knife to cut through it especially if you can't get a good purchase on it if you're in duress if you can't see if you're panicking if you're already tired and sleepy you know sleep deprived you're already fatigued from having to run down multiple you know stairwells it's not going to be easy to to to cut through a lot of this stuff and then we also see which this image shows um a lot of the a lot of grocery stores and a lot of workplaces and businesses are now barricading their doors right if you've gone to a grocery store in america or even you know canada or you know with our brothers across the pond um over in the uk or in europe chances are you go into a grocery store they're going to tell you to go in one way and exit one way and in this case in this image of walmart they've actually stacked carts up in front of one of the doors to prevent entry and exit from it you know so that you can only enter one way well what happens if that door becomes suddenly an emergency exit can people run through that barrier of carts no they can't right so you create a bottleneck at the door and that just leads to more fatalities so when we go to our grocery store and we look around and we see that they've you know they've actually moved a lot of the grocery store aisles to um cover up a lot of exits and allow and not allow freedom of movement within the store we think you know how is this not a fire hazard and um it turns out that fire departments agree with us a lot of fire departments well i wouldn't say a lot of fire departments but several fire fire districts and fire commanders around the uh around the us have put out have put out social media posts citing that you have to make sure that you're still abiding by the fire code with all of these coveted procedures so this particular fire department put out a facebook page that said you know that says hey you know shower curtains guess what they're extremely flammable and prone to entrapping people so that's a that's a big concern for us right because this plastic sheeting is everywhere and here's the plastic sheeting that we're talking about a lot of this plastic sheeting is actually made can be bought at lowe's as you can see right here from the screenshot but you can also tell that it's made out of this little material called polyethylene and if we bring up our old magic google machine we can find a lot of different research that finds out that plastic sheeting made from polyethylene will burn big time when it hits by when it's hit by flames so the polyester the polyethylene plastic sheeting that is used in a lot of places is extremely extremely flammable so you've got a lot of times with these covered procedures plastic sheeting it's an entrapment hazard that's also flammable oh and burning plastic also sticks to your skin and you're now creating a an entrapment hazard combined with another fire hazard so that's kind of a big concern for us that we haven't seen anybody talk about within the community so we just wanted to kind of share that and get you thinking about these things because it is a big concern right and another concern that we sort of can't ignore is um conflict right so this is um more addressed to those um workplace concerns and a lot of the things that we're drawing on for this particular bit is the a study that was done by the university of sussex entitled the mass psychology of disasters and emergency evacuations a research report and implications for practice it was written by and compiled by dr john drury and dr chris cocking of once again the department of psychology university of sussex and a lot of the data we recommend you go ahead and download this and read it i think it was written in 2007 so it's not the newest information done on this but it does show and it does bring up a lot of interesting points and one of the interesting points it brings up is how to better communicate with people during a disaster if you're the government agency that's responding to a disaster how to communicate with people in such a way that they'll believe you because as we can see here by this article one of the big concerns on 9 11 this article was written by the way i think two days after 9 11. one of the big concerns were people being extremely angry the survivors of it were being were angry after not immediately after 9 11 because the port authority uh told everyone to go back inside the building because we have to remember what actually happened during 9 11. one you know the world trade center uh when the first tower was hit there were a lot there was a lot of debris falling from that first tower so people were told to stay inside because it was the conventional wisdom was that even for a plain impact on the world trade center it was safer inside the building because people had already been killed that morning from falling debris and big shards of glass and and steel girders that were falling that were the size of vehicles so the port authority and a lot of the fire chiefs and a lot of the authorities that were responding to the initial aircraft impact were telling people to go back inside we have multiple multiple stories i'll just read this one right quick um but he told the observer that as he ran downstairs i heard people being told the building is secure the safest place is inside stay calm and do not leave that's what they were saying they were telling people to go back up to their offices and their desks like the building was not in danger right so that's just one story of many in fact here's another story this is more well known um this is the story of um stanley primeknith which i'm sure butchering that name but um that's how i believe it's pronounced um and we'll just read that one right quick for those listening on the podcast that primeknit had initially evacuated the building after the first plane had hit the north tower but was told to go back inside once he had arrived back at his office on the 81st floor he was on the phone when he noticed the second plane coming right at him he screamed and jumped under his desk as the plane was hitting the building after the impact primenoth found himself alive under his desk with only minor injuries stanley primeknith was a hero that day because he helped a stranger get egress out of the building because after that happened he of course egressed and you can read his story on your own but the point is is that he was he was outside the building he was on the street right he was safe and they told him to go back inside and he made it up 81 floors while there was a major terrorist attack in progress because he didn't know any better right and he was a very very lucky man that day because the plane hit below him and he was able to egress down past it during through the one staircase that had not been completely destroyed so um just little things like this are things that we're trying to to help people to think about so and that sort of leads us to this point of you know thinking do i need to evacuate even though my boss and the police say not to and that's something that you're going to have to evaluate for yourself because as we all know despite what people write in reports and despite what people say on tv and and romanticize things afterwards um we do have to remember that not every employing agency abides by osha right they do not and even osha themselves don't enforce a lot of things that they should um i can remember quite a few i think every single job i've ever had you know outside the military inside the military there's been some kind of osha violation that was a serious safety hazard right and you couldn't report it because if you reported it they'd know it was you and if they knew it was you they'd make your life miserable so um that's something that you're gonna have to kind of figure out how to get around yourself uh we haven't really found a good way to do that we can certainly google ourselves and you know tell you guys to google like how do i confidentially report osha violations and things like that but really i think the the best method is to just be aware and to take measures uh if you're if you're working in a company or in an employing agency and you know that there's no way on earth you're going to be able to egress out of your building if something goes down i mean like for instance you think there's no way you're going to be able to talk your boss into being able to let you evacuate because oh that fire alarm's going off oh it's just a drill you know i can't tell you how many times i've heard that myself so um yeah it's it's a it's a big concern i can't tell you how many times i've had to stay inside a skiff while the building i was in was actually on fire only to have a fire axe come through my skiff door because they were trying to get people out of there and hadn't realized that there were still three of us in the skiff because we were told to stay by the lieutenant commander navy lieutenant commander who had left himself so we realize these situations exist we're not going to ignore them and we're not going to sugarcoat them like a lot of these government reports will do but we do need to say that we don't have a good solution for you we just need you to to think about what you can do and if you're in that situation you're going to have to take a lot more preparations than what we're what we're going to recommend and what we're what we do so that's just something to consider another thing to consider is the longevity of of a disaster as we can see here in this image we have the the world trade center and um just how look how many floors were affected so that on the on the uh wtc2 the south tower the the impacted zone was from the 85th floor down to the 77th floor that's a lot that's a huge distance and likewise on the wtc one uh on the on the north tower it was from the 99th floor down to the 93rd floor so that is a very long distance right even the systems that we have would not have saved us have we been above those above the impact zone but really what we wanted to call your attention to is at the bottom of the screen here um it the wtc 2 collapsed after 56 minutes and wtc one collapsed after 102 minutes so these are not immediate things uh a lot of the a lot of the casualties that um were injuries or the or the survivors or the people that basically were in the towers but made it out in some way um a lot of them were able to make it out because there was plenty of time we're talking at you know we're talking you know almost an hour for the shortest time you know in over an hour and a half for the other tower they had plenty of time to egress and get out of there so we just want to stress that you know what you know the the tower collapsed at minute 102 right so at minute 101 people were still in that tower debating well should i go down you know they're still stuck on like the third or fifth floor you know third or fourth or floor or they're still stuck up god forbid above it you know so up until the minute it collapsed no one thought that those towers would collapse so that's just something to remember as well is that yes you may have time but you don't know how much time you might have and we have this concept of complacency that happens over time for instance you know the longer a disaster goes on without a change in in severity um the more likely people are to become complacent so that that did happen a lot at the world trade center disaster because you know well it's been up in the you know it's been uh half an hour since the plane impacted it and the building's still going strong there's no reason to think it'll fall right that kind of mentality cost a lot of lives that day so that's something to keep in mind as well and you know once again this is kind of a schematic of of what the wtc one the actual visual evidence of fires these are the windows that you could see fire in from the ground and from the air and as you can see this would have been very very very hard to survive had you been working or been located above the impact zone we can theorize about wtc all day long but the fact of the matter is is that even the systems that we have created for ourselves are not foolproof right it would be very very hard to do so and then likewise with wtc2 this one is a little bit different because this one of course it's always debatable but you can see the difference there's much much less fire in wtc2 and there was there was no visible fire on the west face so um that just shows you a a a difference between the two um and basically how even the same disaster can be very very different buildings which are have essentially the identical structure and they were hit with essentially the the the same attack can be very very different uh depending on just a few different factors so um and then moving on to you know this is the uh nist report nist report that was put out there have been hundreds of reports put out about 9 11 but one of the big ones was one of the big takeaways that we got from this report at the time was the milling about right one of the things that hampered evacuation was um as it says here i'll just read it out for the podcast listeners that you know normal response to uncertain but urgent circumstances involving information seeking information exchange and observation basically that boils that uh boiled down that means that people knew something had happened but they didn't know how severe it was and they couldn't see anything right they knew there was a fire they knew that the people in the second tower knew that a plane had hit the first tower because that that was um very obvious from the very start but people in the towers it took them a little bit to find the information about what had exactly happened had a bomb going off as it happened before and they had trained for and things like that and then another concern is here on the slide this is preparatory behaviors gathering materials phone calls making phone calls computer backups and shutdowns things like that basically people tidying up their desk and and closing things down for work just like they're going home for the day and that is a common theme among pretty much every disaster that hits a workplace people people report revert to habit people also don't have the the idea of i need to get out of dodge now and it's difficult to convey a sense of urgency plus we have to remember that uh that you know as it says here on the slide that no first responder interviewed by nist uh thought that the world trade center towers would collapse not a single first responder out of thousands of first responders that were there none of them thought the towers would collapse so that goes it goes to show you that your disaster might be a new one in the book right our disaster prevention guides and textbooks and all of our doctrine for emergency response whether it be something like the world trade center or something like a terrorist attack guess what all of that doctrine is based off of the last disaster it's based off of sometimes 10 20 30 year old logic and a lot of times that's not good enough in the case of the world trade center it was definitely not good enough um i think that you know this is not to of course this is not to demonize anyone or or or put down anyone who was there i you know we can talk all day long about how how awesome the response was and how you know i think that 9 11 was the most patriotic day that we can remember in u.s history but we do have to recognize that despite the fact that all of the first responders did the best they could and even did better than they should have considered the circumstances we've got to remember that it's not good enough we should always strive to be better and one of the big other takeaways here on the slide is it says in the upper right hand corner there was a quote from one of the survivors of tower 2 and the quote reads i was there during the 1993 bombing i did evacuate with a group of people who had no clue as to where we were going what i learned from that experience was to not trust the port authorities announcements had i not experienced that i might have listened to the port authority announcement and stayed put right so throughout the disaster the port authority was you know putting out announcements that says hey stay here um they they frequently you know i think one of the first ones was for everyone to go to the 60th floor go back up inside the building to the 60th floor where there is a an emergency staging area and you know that that cost a lot of lives that day so one one must remember that yes this research that's done by experts is probably the best research we have because you know research is better than no research at all but you also have to remember that common sense dictates a lot of things and we can't arm share a quarterback the 911 incident but we can say that we can arm share a quarterback our own disasters during the time that they're going on we can certainly say hey they're telling me this i need to do this that's perfectly fine that's what we're encouraging to do but once again it requires a lot of a lot of extra factors that we'll go over in a second so like i said this topic has has not really been touched on by a lot of people i think one of the the the good resources on youtube that's the more famous resource is the urban prepper i'm sure a lot of our uh listeners and and followers and people that are you know sort of in our network are aware of the urban prepper um the urban pepper you know is a guy who lives in pacific northwest um puts out a lot of videos on youtube and is you know an extreme um extremely organized he's well known for one his urban content right his urban you know bug out bags and uh disaster preparedness he's known for his little kids he's got i think he's got a kit for pretty much everything but he's also known for extreme organization so if you want to learn more we highly recommend you checking out the urban prepper by no means not a perfect resource but you know what it's got a lot of good information out there so if you're into that sort of thing that's a good resource to follow up on because we're certainly not experts in the field but you know he's got a lot of good points about things and i don't think any prepper is really an expert in the field i think that we're all doing the best we can because you know prepping and emergency preparedness and just having a generally good situational awareness and and thought process and plan that's not exactly that's not an exact science by any means right um so we're just trying to do the best we can and i think um you know this is one of the very few resources is actually talked about it um but unfortunately when we start going down the prepping road this is where we have to bring up prepping and immediately bash it is that prepping usually has a few stigmas associated with it which we'll talk about in a minute but one of the big things people get hung up on is the gear the gear the gear the gear we've done it ourselves i think i spent probably the better part of my boy scout days amassing a collection of military surplus gear and all kinds of things that are you know cool little gadgets and knives oh my gosh i probably got you know 100 knives and a drawer somewhere in my house but yeah we tend to get hung up on the gear a lot of times and that's not necessarily what we're going for right sure there is an interesting matrix um i couldn't find it for this video but um there is a matrix i think it was sort of talked about first by dave canterbury and the the logic is is that the more knowledge you have the less gear you need with you likewise the less knowledge you have the more gear you need to make up for that lack of knowledge that's why um bushcrafting is such a big hobby amongst people because bushcrafting the idea right is of course you know self-reliance and things like that you know bushcraft type setups and you know you just google the term bushcraft you know camping or bushcraft hiking or just bushcraft in youtube and you'll find a bunch of people you'll know exactly what style it is you know and it's not about um taking you know highly complex gear into the woods it's about doing more with less now likewise consequently we do have to have gear right there's no amount of knowledge that can save you from jumping out of a building there is no amount of knowledge that can protect you from breathing and fire right so we do have to have some gear but we also have to remember that it's not just about the gear and we ourselves have a hard time sometimes uh remembering that because we're definitely um definitely gear heads here we definitely like our gear and like our cool gadgets and you know as soon as our paycheck lands guess what it's probably getting spin on some camping gear or something or a gun part or something but but yeah it's just to remember that we don't want to fall into the trap of building kits right we don't want to fall into the trap of building bags right we want to get into the mindset of knowledge above everything else so that's where we're going to start if you want to start with the whole line system kind of going back to the urban prepper i'm not sure if he's the one who invented it but he definitely talks about a lot of his earlier videos and it's become basically a lot of doctrine nowadays of different lines right you know line one being the things you have the gear and the things you have in your pockets and on your person line two is you know like on your your your play carrier your chest rig or whatnot and line three is like your backpack right and you go on from there but we're going to start here we're going to use that as a rough guide right but we're going to start with line zero and that's the stuff that's inside your head right um and one of the big things if we're if we're going along with you know the fire theme here we're very heavy on fire this uh this particular episode because it's such a big concern for us just knowing where your fire exits are you know how many people just think to yourself right now you work in an office if you work in an office your office is required to have a fire evacuation plan okay well are do you know where that is do you know where that placard is on the wall because it's required to be posted do you have a picture of that evacuation plan on your phone that you can show to a firefighter and tell them hey my co-worker the last time i saw them was here do you have that and if not you probably should take steps to correct that likewise when you stay in a hotel how many of you take a picture of the fire evacuation map when you get into your hotel because a lot of times you know hotels at least in the united states are required to have the evacuation map like on the back of the door or something like that but i've stayed in many many hotels in southeast asia that don't have that at all so that's something to keep in mind as well you know either the placard is gone or it's just a bad hotel and you know trust me these things tend to compound right so if your hotel is not following the code by posting your evacuation plan from your room to the emergency exit chances are they probably skimped on some of the other fire protection methods as well so that is once again something to keep in mind so another thing is know where your first aid slash fire equipment is at we're not talking about strictly fire things nowadays because in a lot of workplaces and a lot of public places a big concern nowadays is active shooting or some kind of altercation or or something involving a gunshot wound so a lot of places a lot of workplaces are implementing these bleeding control kits as we see here in an image um and a lot of people they're new right so everyone you know pretty much everybody can roughly guess where their fire extinguisher is but then do they know where the bleeding control kit is for their workplace something once again to think about another thing to think about is um do i the status and the exact layout of your offices workplaces the place you spend your time that's not your home what is the sprinkler situation is there do you have a sprinkler do you have stand pipes outside that the fire department can hook up to do you have automatic sprinklers do you have no sprinklers at all but you do have reliable alarms something to you know be very considerate of because a lot of this stuff matters and then another thing to be considered about to think about is not necessarily fire but also flooding right so this here is a map of a flood area not a whole lot of people know and you can google this yourself but fema has a flooding map that you can actually type your address in and find your workplace and it will tell you whether or not your workplace is in a flood zone and news flash pretty much every building on earth is in a flood zone the question is what has to flood first so for instance our work center is not so much a huge risk for flooding but um considering it's it's like a hundred feet above sea level i think so basically if our office building gets flooded and in our house is even higher than that so um if our workplace or our or if our house gets flooded um basically the whole east coast is gonna be under water right it's gonna be an apocalyptic scenario right so this is not something you can exactly prepare for however the route that i have to drive from my house to my office is under sea level it is def it definitely goes right through a flood zone and there is no way i can get back to my house from my place of work if there if a flood happens because literally my house sits on uh my little geographic area the the general area which i live in is in a um area it's in a uh on a hill same thing with my office and though basically if there's a flood in my area guess what my office will be an island my house will be an island i can't get to one of the other if there's a flood so that you know that prior knowledge that prior research can save you a lot of time and uh it is something to consider so for instance if if you know if i'm at work can i get a notification that says hey heavy rain is expected within the next few hours and i just research it more and find out oh dear there's a flood warning for you know for a flood watch on until like 9 00 pm tonight guess what i'm going to pull chalks i'm going to leave work and go home early if i can and that will allow me to make sure that i'm at least at my place of place of residence before the flooding starts now if you don't have that flexibility if you have to stay at work basically until your building catches fire and then even then a few minutes afterwards to tidy the place up a bit if you live in and work in that type of environment we've been there with you trust me i i feel for you but you're gonna have to have a lot of you're gonna have to be have the capability of staying at your work or staying nearby the places you can walk to if you can't make it back to your house um and and this kind of you know to ending on the knowledge note we wanted to bring up kind of an interesting facet of of you know practicing with your gear right um it's become sort of white well not so widely known but widely known throughout the the um commercial survival uh industry that um we have the case study here brought up that the you know the famous uh captain sully landing on the hudson you know u.s airways flight 1549 um there were 150 people on board right they were landing in the water so basically that safety brief right that you get when you fly like people who have never flown before had never set foot on an airplane but have seen that in movies they've heard comedians talk about it they've seen it in popular culture like somebody it's so pervasive throughout society and so taken advantage of by comedians in the late 80s early 90s that everybody knows what generally what the safety brief is when you get on an airplane even people have never flown before but despite this there were 150 people on board that air aircraft only 33 of those people managed to take their life vests with them after the plane had come to a stop and they had begun evacuation procedures and of those 33 only four people were wearing their life jacket correctly so despite the fact that they had been lectured on this literally less than half an hour before right because the the incident took took place after takeoff it was immediately after the safety brief and they still failed to do it only four people out of 150 were able to take that knowledge understand it know where the life jacket is and be able to put that into use during an actual no kidding textbook survival scenario right so if you cannot do that if you cannot fall back on your knowledge right because we remember we fall back on the most basic level of knowledge right and for a lot of people grabbing their life jacket when they get off the airplane that's not uh base level base levels just get off the aircraft that's their highest level of training so we have to remember that training training training is the key here you have to remember that even though you know something even though you've read something when a disaster goes down you might not be able to put it into practice so that's sort of um a very very important topic that we cannot emphasize enough but moving on to line one this is the stuff you're wearing and carrying on your person now the first thing we have pop up here is a cobra belt with a cobra riggers belt with a d-ring attachment this is kind of essential right if if you work in a job where you're able to wear a web belt i.e in the military you better do so because this type of thing is pretty much mandatory if you don't have this you're not you're not going to be able to get very far now likewise if you have a job where you can't wear a belt like that you can also get which is what just popped up on the screen here one of these um simple bdu utility belts that cost about five bucks you can get them and they usually come in one size you just cut it to length and it rolls up extremely tightly and you could just put it in your bag and not worry about it and it will work just fine of course it doesn't have the d-ring loop and of course it takes a few uh extra seconds to don vice a belt you're already wearing but it will do in a pinch right so that's something that we're going to be relying on heavily here in a second up next is the pants you're wearing right or the clothes you're wearing so not a whole lot of people are um take advantage of the things they have and as you can see here in this pair of pants i'm sorry for our podcast listeners it's kind of hard to to illustrate but um uh these dotted lines going from the waist belt all the way down to almost the end of the ankle that's how we have rigged up a small short strand of paracord so you can take a paracord and you can loop it around your belt and then feed it down inside your pant leg so that it's almost reaching the floor and you can actually double it up and get upwards of 15 20 25 feet down your pant leg and it's practically unnoticeable for the military guys out there and for some of the civilians who w

hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground so today we've got the launch of a new mini series and uh today we're going to kick that off with the first part of that mini series so this is kind of a a branch off on on the topic uh the american troubles that we've talked about a couple of times before we've had a podcast on it a youtube video on this subject and now we're going to be talking about part three which will branch off into its own series on escape and concealment so as everyone knows usually we like to start off with the why or the mentality or philosophy behind why we're trying to talk about this topic but this time around we're going to start off with a disclaimer so of course we have to have this kind of disclaimer on this topic because this is kind of a little bit more gray area than we have talked about before so let me just go ahead and read this out so this information is provided only for legal lawful use the ester general project cannot be held liable for any misuse of this information currently the concept of sharing knowledge is a constitutionally protected right and as such no further reason is needed to explain why we are sharing this information in short the first amendment talks about covers our ability to talk about this information there's no such thing as protected information uh the only thing that kind of comes close to this is the concept of classified information but once again nothing in this series will be classified none of this information will be proprietary and none of this information will be derived from any federal state or governmental force this is all just our own private knowledge and experience gained over years of of dealing with this stuff in the field so despite the fact that we have the disclaimer we have to have another one the disclaimer to the disclaimer essentially what we mean is don't be stupid don't break laws our constitutionally protected rights are infringed on every day by various groups agencies and entities so we fully expect that certain entities will attempt to stop us from sharing this information but if they do they're going to have to take down every other lock sport enthusiast in the us lock picking is a hobby is very large in the united states and around the world to be honest and there really aren't that many laws that cover it especially what we're going to talk about today which is illegal restraints so i know that's kind of boring i know that people really don't like when we have to do disclaimers but honestly to ensure the survivability of this video series we have to kind of put this disclaimer in there to say that look this is for illegal restraints i will caveat that and say that that this is the third time we have filmed this we have 37 slides of the why behind this sort of project but we decided not really to to go down that road and just simply say look it's all right to talk about this stuff so we're going to talk about it because we think it's information that people need to know and we're just going to leave it at that now when we talk about the concept of restraint escape we really jump to the only field and the only doctrine and the only subject area in the world that really talks about this sort of thing from a practical standpoint sure as we mentioned the whole lock sport entity is is great and and the whole lock lock-picking hobby is great um but to be honest that that hobby doesn't really encompass too many um people talking about restraint escape and that's uh that's sort of what we're kind of gearing towards today which is restraint escape really the only thing that talks about you know someone's got you locked up be it a terrorist or a foreign government or something like that someone's got you locked up and get you tied down how do you get out of that and get back home well there's one field of study that is specifically meant for that and that seer the survival evasion resistance and escape doctrine from the us military um all branches have some version of this there's all different kinds of courses from the you know the you know two hour long uh online course that everybody has to take before they deploy to the actual like you know several day long you know like the week-long course uh that actually puts a lot of this stuff into practice now there are also a lot of people out there who talk about restraint escape and um they build like survival kits like sear kits like google the term sear kit and you will find a lot of companies out there a lot of small companies out there that are building these surrogates with all kinds of little goodies inside them to help get you out of an illegal restraint situation now that's great and we think that a lot of these you know private companies doing this sort of thing they you know this technology would not be available to civilians were not for private civilian companies coming up with this stuff but we also have to remember that seer as a concept isn't quite the same as escaping from a restraint situation as a civilian so let's talk about that for a little bit and i know a pretty text heavy slide but in short cyr assumes a lot of factors that are not not exactly applicable to civilians so i'll just go down the list here first of all you know sear assumes that a nation state will use every possible resource to recover a single person so in other words in the concept of seer the whole overarching dark doctrine is there will be a nation helping you um we're you know an entire military group an entire military division an entire command has been set up specifically for recovering personnel right we have satellites in space that are meant specifically for helping our you know downed aviators lost troops captured capture soldiers and and whatnot get back to civilian or get back to you know their own military's lines civilians don't have this civilians have zero resources the only resources a civilian has when it comes to escaping an illegal restraint situation is yourself right there is no team coming to get you um usually there's going to be no like nation state that's going to try to you know help you escape from these situations uh and sort of to go along with that uh seer the you know military doctrine allows for personnel to have classified military gear there are whole radios out there like the the c-cell radio is the newest one i think and other rfid tags and tracking devices and things sewn into clothing and stuff like that that the military and service members can have access to which can aid in recovery whereas civilians don't have this the civilian civilian infrastructure you know does not have the ability to classify technology from the government whereas the government can of course classify things from us so there's no such thing as owning a secret technology right the government is going to know about it one way or another another factor is that seer is a doctrine it is very heavy on assuming the capability of an aerial recovery i.e a helicopter coming to get you civilians almost never have this capability i'm sure it's possible but you know there's it's just so remote of a chance it's not even worth considering in your plan also sort of along those lines is seer as a doctrine assumes a vastly superiori superior firepower capability during recovery right so when we think of syria in the military we kind of maybe have this over romanticized viewpoint of like you know an owen wilson behind enemy line situation where the you know good guys swoop in with you know five or six helicopters and just you know lay waste to all the enemy bad guys where the you know good guy makes a jump to recovery right well civilians don't have this capability at all you know granted you know that's not exactly a realistic example but during you know a hostage recovery or during it you know some kind of you know hostage rescue team sort of incident there's they're going to be vastly out gunning the captors usually in that situation civilians can't begin to compete there's no way that civilians now in the year 2020 can outgun the government uh or or any other sort of source right civilians can barely outgun each other right as we keep finding out in the news but so if you're assuming that your rescuers are going to be able to outgun your you know captors well that's not going to happen even if it's you know like a terror cell or something another thing that people tend to tend to ignore is the criminality aspect to this so in seer if you know no criminal activity or mistakes to be charged for afterwards basically if you are in or if you are a lawfully sort of uh captured combatant in a foreign nation you know serving under you know your nation's military and you escape from that situation and you kill a guard during the escape well guess what your host nation is not going to kill you it's not going to um charge you for killing that guard right your your own nation now the nation you escaped from might but the uh your own country is not going to charge you for murder for killing a guard during an escape good luck doing that in the united states even if it's in a sort of self-defense situation even if you're being held against your will by another civilian guess what you're probably going to get some kind of charge against you the whole idea nowadays in 2020 the whole idea the whole concept the whole ideology of self-defense is up for debate right so especially from you know everybody from you know governmental agencies to uh the general public right everybody is trying to debate what this what this term self-defense really means so we don't have that luxury of you know civilians of being able to escape from a situation and causing harm to somebody else to do so another uh situation is that uh civilian or military forces have the ability for a diplomatic recovery civilians don't have that luxury uh you know no amount of negotiating with a a a domestic terrorist no amount of negotiating with say a rogue governmental agency is going to result in your release once any kind of sort of rogue governmental agency or or group gets their hands on you your there's no way they're going to let you up also there's no there will be no oversight by agency such as the red cross i mean think about from the normal criminal aspect how many times does the international red cross come in and inspect our you know disaster camps like you know after a hurricane well they don't how many times does the red cross go into canada and uh check out their sort of their uh quarantine camps right not really that many you know we can't find any documentation uh suggesting that's ever happened another aspect of you know formal cr doctrine is that it focuses on avoiding urban centers and avoiding pretty much all contact civilians basically you read any seer sort of handbook from sort of the 1970s when the concept of sir was created until today the whole chapter is basically going to say look you know avoid urban areas because if you come in contact with civilians they're probably going to turn you in or it is going to be a very rare situation that you're going to come across another human being in a serious situation and it's going to work out in your favor in the civilian sector we don't have that option usually if there's going to be a seer type of situation you know most most people in america live in or near a heavily urbanized area you know we don't have the luxury of being able to walk for for um you know tens and and you know tens and dozens of miles without seeing a road right in certain areas of the nation certainly you can like out in the midwest now you know pacific northwest and places like that you can walk for days and not see another road or another sign of a human being but on the east coast where we're located just as a concern for us personally you can't walk you know five or six miles in any direction without walking across three or four roads so even the most remote areas of the united states are having this impact come in and you know syria kind of it kind of doesn't really provide any information for that also and lastly and most importantly by far is the concept that seer as a formal doctrine relies on the ability to escape and evade back to friendly territory seer assumes you are in a hostile area and you can cross a line and be suddenly behind friendly lines right in the civilian sector in the united states we don't have anywhere else to go civilians simply don't have anywhere else to defect to there is despite all the all of the shortcomings in the united states right now there is nowhere else to defect to the united states is still the freest and it's really not that free to be honest as we all really know by now um you know civilians are going to have to make the choice of do i need to escape from my home right you're not talking about someone's you know having to eject over hostile nation halfway around the world and you know having that hope factor of driving themselves to get home well guess what civilians are home what do they do now right so this is kind of a lot of things to think about when it comes to seer and you know despite all of this sort of bad stuff that we've just talked about seer is not a perfect solution but the overarching doctrine you know might not be a good solution to the problems we face but the individual skills are sound really the only factor that that kind of changes with sierra for the civilian sector is that for civilians everything is going to be significantly more difficult require much more preparation require much more money at practice and gear so uh basically it's just going to be that you know sear is going to be a lot harder for civilians to do in or or even for service members to do while conus you know that's going to be that's going to be very hard to do because the sierra jogstream is is focused around a hostile nation and getting back to friendly lines or getting back to a point where you can be extracted well in the civilian sector who's going to extract us and where we're going to go right so these are just some things to think about that when we talk about this sort of seer stuff when you see all these seer kits online is it like yeah i mean that's all well and good essentially it's just restraint escape when we're talking about this stuff because you know where are you going to go right so before we get into restraint escape here's a few other things to think about that not a whole lot of people are thinking about right now when they talk about seer first one is money like i mentioned before if you're ever in a situation where you find yourself uh needing to use your seer skills conus you're going to need a lot of money because the money and money and funds funding is going to get you uh 99 of the way right you're also going to need a long-term support network you know it's not like we can evade for a couple weeks at the max until we can get back to a friendly or even a neutral nation in the united states we might have to wait months before any kind of thing calms down you know we're also going to have to need if we have to use these skills conus is the ability to leave everything behind you might not be able to return home you know if you find yourself sort of imprisoned in your house right and you need to escape or else something bad's going to happen to you right you also have to have the ability to have really no family or friends or the ability to bring them with you and that's a huge clincher for a lot of people you know another thing you're going to need is a new identity the the thing is is that like look you cannot be a person in you know really most nations without an extensive identity not just some cheap you know plastic fake id you know fake driver's license that high schoolers you used back in the day right we're talking about an entire identity an entirely new person new social security number new a passport new driver's license a a a career a whole set of really a whole life right and that's going to be impossible for 99.999 of everybody out there the people that can afford it probably not going to be watching this video so that's just something to keep in mind as well and then lastly which is kind of something that we're very really hesitant to talk about is the legality of all of this stuff right if you find yourself in a situation where you are going to have to escape from a situation what would a jury think and we we must remember that at the how do i put this at the at the risk of going off the deep end and sort of losing credibility immediately we have to remember that history matters right and if we look back over history we must remember that the things that human beings have done to each other the atrocities on a mass scale right pretty much every every example of genocides over time every example of totalitarianism authoritarianism basically the worst parts of every dystopian fiction novel you could possibly imagine those scenarios coming true if you know when they have come true in the past guess what that's all been legal right everything that happened during you know in in germany and poland during world war ii that was all legal under the german law because they made it so everything that was done in rwanda during the genocide there in the 90s guess what that was also all legal you know same thing with some of the crimes going on you know right now in belarus with um uh you know uh president lukashenko uh locking down and you know torturing his own civilians and things like that you know guess what it's legal because he's a dictator he's declared himself to be so so we must remember that if you're going to be using these skills you're probably going to be breaking the law and that's where we kind of get into a very gray area and that's why not a whole lot of people out there are talking about what we're about to talk about normally what people talk about is just simple restraint escape like duct tape zip ties handcuffs you know your basic handcuffs right that's pretty much all they leave it at because that's pretty much you know they don't want to offend anybody or get on anybody's radar screen by talking about something more serious but we think and this is the whole crux of this sort of video series is that like look talking about how to escape from duct tape is is drastically under representative of the skills the situations the the tools and the the circumstances that are out there in the world today right it's not like we're talking about you know a 1970s airline hijacking where they just duct tape everybody on board you know those days are gone these tools that we're going to be talking about today all of these tools were purchased by us using civilian credentials which is to say an email address and you know paypal or a credit card or something and they're all shipped right to our house none of the things we bought today and most importantly none of the knowledge that we've learned today is any remotely controlled so if we can buy it bad guys can buy it too and that's why we wanted to talk about this is because not a whole lot of people are talking about some of these more extensive restraint type systems so without further ado let's go talk let's start talking about illegal restraint escape and some of the themes and things we need to think about when preparing for this kind of situation so the themes that we're going to talk about today there are really four main points one is that preparation is crucial now some of these restraints we're going to be talking about are pretty much impossible to get out of unless you have prepared for prepared for them ahead of time most of these are like that some of these you can get out of them a few different ways but mostly if you don't prepare ahead of time you're not going to be able to get out of any of this stuff so preparation is crucial right and we're going to be talking about preparation in a separate video following this talking about all the gear you need so i know that everybody's probably going to be tuning into that one more because we all like gear don't we um but this one is the how to and the next video is going to be the gear just so you guys are aware and number two is take advantage of vulnerabilities we must remember that we're plo you know restraint escape a lot of times is like a poker game right you're not you're not necessarily playing the cards you're not necessarily playing against the tools you have you're playing against the person using them right so when we get into a lot of these restraints we're going to talk about how the human factor can sometimes be used and most importantly the laziness and complacency factors can be used to our advantage against an illegal restraint situation and then lastly think outside the box now this is something that is kind of hard to teach well i would think that's probably very impossible to teach but hopefully we're going to encourage people to sort of think outside the box when it comes to these restraints because a lot of times you've got to be very creative with how you get out of them and let's see here number four creating space during application now this one is crucial when it comes to restraints that aren't necessarily like handcuffed type restraints so uh when it comes to things like uh the first set we're going to talk about flex cuffs duct tape zip ties rope all that kind of stuff you can create space during the application process and that will aid in your release because if you're able to the way just the way you're holding your hands will prevent you from being tightened up to the point where you can't move at all you want a little bit of wiggle room inside all that and we'll talk about that here in just a second and we also have to remember the goals of the restraints themselves what are the restraints trying to do and really temporary control as any routine police officer really in any nation in the world will tell you uh restraints are temporary all restraints are temporary that's why usually there's a lot of things that go into restraints and the number one thing is never leave anybody in restraints alone it's because restraints all of them can be overcome with time and if they can't be overcome with time goals can still be accomplished so for instance even some of the most high security handcuffs in the world that cannot be picked that while you're wearing them at least they cannot be gotten out of while you're wearing them uh guess what you can still use them to assault someone and that can be uh be a goal for someone in restraints right so all restraints are temporary right we also have to remember that one of the main goals of restraints is really not to completely stop someone from escaping that's not their goal at all their goal is to slow down and escape so that by the time a subject has figured out how to escape from restraints they're already in a higher security area or they've already got higher uh they've already been swapped out for higher security restraints right um so that's something that we have to remember um as well and this is what we call uh um progressive security i'm not sure if there's an actual term for this but this is kind of the term that we think of it as it's kind of the thing we've coined ourselves so let's talk about that concept of progressive security for a second now when we're going to talk about progressive security we're going to use for an example these style standard police handcuffs now these are the smith wesson model 100 handcuffs by far the most popular and widespread uh most common commonly used handcuffs in the united states they can be bought for about 20 to 30 bucks on amazon they can be bought pretty much anywhere and shipped anywhere and they're used by pretty much every police department in the united states now these handcuffs are probably some of the least secure on the market when it comes to the features that they have and the ways to overcome them but this concept of progressive security can make these small handcuffs these cheap non-uh high security run-of-the-mill standard handcuffs uh completely unescapable and we'll go by talking about the different ways that you can escape from these handcuffs there are five main ways i'm sure there are more but these are the five that we have come up with and these are the five we have personally tested and can confirm work for this particular model so first up is a bobby pin you can simply take a bobby pin and use that as sort of like a the ability to disengage the locking pole right we'll talk about that a little bit more in depth when we get to the how to escape from these specific handcuffs but a bobby pin being used can simply be uh really discouraged by a double lock right so of course bobby pins can be used to defeat the double lock as well but guess what it's now you've doubled the things you have to do rather than using the bobby pin to sweep one way to open the locking pole you have to sweep the other way first to disengage the double lock then sweep back and and disengage the locking pawl that doubles the time that's required to get out of those handcuffs so next up is a hidden key and this is probably one of the easiest ones to identify is that guess what you know if you have a hidden key on your person which all of us do pretty much 24 7. really the easiest way to make sure that nobody has a key on them is a search right so if you search a person you search them thoroughly you do a a very thorough strip search and all that kind of stuff you can detect most hidden keys especially considering that a lot of these like you know people that are prepared for escaping from illegal restraints that people are going to have the plastic handcuff keys and things like that guess what usually they're not prepared they're usually not staged in scenarios so you're going to have all your escaping of asian equipment in a nice little plastic box or a nice little plastic bag in your pocket and all you know somebody has to do is stick your hand in your pocket oh look those are 100 of your escape tools nobody usually has them layered on their person day-to-day they only do it when they're in a situation which they might get taken right so we have to remember that even though we may have all this gucci gear we've got to take steps to make sure it's not found during a search immediately right at least by an adversarial force is not going to search that hard also being a hidden key can be overcome by putting you in a secure vehicle if you're thrown in the back say somebody's got like a like an old police car or something right and they're able to uh you know slap you in handcuffs put you in the back like even a criminal right let's just think of it in terms of a criminal trying to escape look even if they get out of the handcuffs in the back of a police car which happens by the way all of the time even if they're able to get out of the handcuffs in the back seat they still can't get out of the vehicle so so that's you know something to keep in mind as well is that like look you know and one of the reasons why progressive security just is one of those things that's easy to do uh up next is a chain break right breaking the chain and and um we'll of course talk about more talk about this more when we get to it but breaking the chain between the handcuffs is fairly easy to do especially after if you're handcuffed in front um you're gonna be able to do that about two seconds flat but an easy way to get around that is a blue box and we'll talk about that in a minute or really at the end of the series out here so that's one way to clearly make sure that nobody can break the chain and also placement if you put the handcuffs on behind somebody's back it's a little harder to do the chain break thing and all it's about is making it a little bit harder so if you double lock the cuffs put somebody in a vehicle put a handcuff behind their back you know you're really starting to to increase the security of these simple little old podunk you know really easy to get out of handcuffs another thing are shims right well shims can easily be defeated by double locks end of question there's no way to get around that right and another thing is these little these cool little micro escape saws that they can like you know they're either made of diamond or like a little tiny saw blade they can cut through even the hardest metal on the planet yeah those work and those can cut through these cuffs but it takes time and that's one of the things that you when you start adding all these things up if you slap some if somebody were to illegally detain you slap some cuffs on you double lock them put a blue box on them put you in the back of a secured vehicle and then watch you guess what you're not going to be able to get out of there because you also have to remember that being put in the back of a vehicle right impacts that as well and then also like i mentioned earlier the concept is you're never alone in handcuffs and we also have to remember that other things can be added as well putting a hood over your head like how many people out there practice restraining escape with uh with you know their eyes closed you know not that many and then how many people also have you know even own a set of like leg irons right those can be easily purchased online but not many people have them because well different reasons i guess i just don't think it's worth it but guess what instead of having to pick two locks or really just one lock if you're like us and if you're in this real situation where you have to escape you're not going to bother with doing the other handcuff just you know hang up handcuff it to your own wrist right uh so that you can get away uh who's going to go out and and do another set of leg irons right it takes time it's all about increasing the amount of time required to get out of the restraints that's all really these high security devices do is increase the time that it takes for you to get out of them increase the time so much so that by the time you figure out how to do it you're in another situation you're in a different set of restraints you're in a different holding area or whatever right because we must remember that most of these restraints are made with criminals in mind right but they can be used and are often used against regular civilians illegally as well alright so we finally arrive at our first type of restraint and these um this this is a sort of um category of restraint really that's not really worth breaking out and talking about separately because honestly these are are um while some of the most common improvised restraints honestly you can get out of these with enough time and with zero skill and zero practice so some of the things that a lot of people online and a lot of other far more qualified people in this subject area have talked about before are there strengths such as duct tape zip ties and rope those are the three most commonly used restraints by like home invaders or or terror groups or things like that and of course it is worth practicing getting out of these however once you've sort of figured out how to do this and once you've taken steps to prepare and you and and chances are if you're going to be taken captive by a group or an entity that is going to only use these tools to restrain you well then chances are they're not going to conduct a thorough search of your person and you can have so many tools at your disposal so that's why this this genre this category of escape restraints not really worth talking about far more people have already covered it already and honestly it's pretty simple to do so one thing that is slightly more worth talking about are things like heavy duty police grade military grade or whatever words you want to choose to describe very tough flex cuffs now we had originally talked about trying to demonstrate this but honestly it's really not worth it because trying to get out of these even the most um police grade uh commercially produced uh flex cuffs are still quite susceptible to this just using a buzz saw type action that pretty much every quote unquote seer expert on the internet has already shown everyone how to do this is such a common way to get out of this you can also use the popular v cutters which we'll talk about when we get into the actual kit building part of this series you can even use your boot laces you don't even really need kevlar cord if you have strong enough boot laces and they're thin enough like a normal set of military style boot laces that'll work as well paracord the the inner strands of paracord works astoundingly well even against the most thick of flex cuffs so that's kind of why it's like you know we wanted to dedicate our time to figuring out and showing how to get out of more tough to get out of restraints that hasn't quite been covered in such detail before so while yes we do use use these tools and and practice getting out of flex cuffs and things like that uh one must remember that that's once again the easiest restraint to get out of so if you're practicing the easiest thing all the time well how are you going to face the more difficult restraints so that's why we move on to more handcuffed style restraints which we're going to be talking about next all right so before we move on to regular handcuffs we must talk about kind of what i alluded to before we showed how to get out of flex cuffs is that there are a lot of different ways you can restrain somebody with handcuffs in fact just using the smith wesson model 100s or the peerless model 700s as an example there are eight different ways that these handcuffs either one of these handcuffs can be used to restrain someone and by far the most difficult one is the eighth one where you have them locked behind your back the cuffs are double locked and the key way is facing away from your hand right so up towards your arm away from like your palms and that is by far the hardest way to get out of really any handcuff and we must remember though that even though this is the hardest way that's the way we're going to show how to do it there are easier ways right people are lazy that's just a general rule out there so if you can take advantage of people being lazy and like i don't know not double locking the handcuffs well guess what your escape just became that much easier and chances are if anybody is going to be using this information that we were talking about if anybody is going to be using that information to escape an illegal type restraint chances are your person who's going to take you going to be taking you captive is not going to be looking at you with a um you know with a microscope right they're going to be probably going to be rounding up a lot of people at once and not exactly concerned about one person in particular right so that's just something to keep in mind so even though we're going to talk about the hardest way to get out of all of these there is still going to be a a good chance you're going to have the easier way of getting out and also before we move into it some of these ways you can't like with any pair of handcuffs there are eight different ways to get eight different ways to lock them on your person but for instance if you have a set of rigid handcuffs that are locked to the rear they're double locked and the key was facing away from your hand guess what there's no way you can get out of that so there are certain ways that you know unless you are a gymnast and are exceptionally flexible and unless you're able to get those cuffs to the front of your body which is what we recommend there's some ways you can't quite get out of them at all right and we'll talk about that when we get to those more high security handcuffs but right now we're talking about smith and wesson model 100s and peerless model 700s and this is what they look like so the smith and wesson on the left and the peerless on the right now we're only going to we're talking about these both at the same time because they're essentially both the same exact handcuff the only difference being kind of the general shape and the fact that peerless keyhole is in the center of the cuff and not on the on the side right with smith and wesson's now this is interesting because on the smith and wesson's that keyhole placement makes it a lot harder to get out of that keyhole being over here on the side and this other hole over here for the double lock that makes it so much harder to get out of because you can't just put your finger on the cuff and then feel around in this one area because on a peerless cuff guess what you put your finger in the center of the cuff and you're either going to feel something or you're not going to feel something right and that means okay if you don't feel anything if the side of the cuff is smooth guess what there's no keyhole there flip it over you feel on the other side oh i feel a little bump right in the middle that means or you know a little jagged piece a little a little depression in the metal guess what that's the keyhole on smith and wesson it's a lot harder to do because for one that double lock window is on both sides it goes all the way through the cuff so you've got holes on both sides and let me tell you unless you've practiced with this a lot when you're feeling around for the keyhole there is that double lock hole and that keyhole feel a lot alike you have to practice many many many hours before you're able to determine and feel the difference between the two once you've once you've practiced enough and you keep practicing you're able to feel it instantly and know instantly what it's which what is one but i remember all of us here looked like complete idiots because we spent hours trying to shove a key into that little uh double lock hole so uh that's why we're not going to talk we're not going to show you how to get out of the peerless ones or for the sake of time we're just going to go right after the hardest ones to get out of which are the smith wesson model 100s and the position that we're going to be using is a handcuff to the rear like normal right they're going to be double locked so it requires two key turns to to open them and we're also going to have the keyway facing away from the hand thus making it even harder to get that grip with a very tiny plastic key so let's go take a look at that video and i'll narrate through that all right welcome back everyone so here we are on the tabletop and we're going to be taking a look at the smith and wesson model 100s so like i said before these are some of the most commonly used handcuffs in north america by everyone from criminals to your local police department as it stands these are also some of the easiest to get out of so a lot of people get kind of caught up in the trap of trying and practicing to get out of these handcuffs and which is why you see these tutorials all over youtube and all over the internet talking about how to get out of these specific handcuffs and we're going to start off with that but the reason that we had this whole series is because these while they are the most common they are not the only ones and also they're some of the easiest to get out of so we run into kind of the sort of trouble that a lot of people in the sort of lock sport or beginning to get into the hobby of lock picking get into but like to buy their first lock pick set they'll they'll buy their first padlock and they'll start to pick it and then they'll they'll realize they'll figure out how to pick it and they'll be like oh cool this is awesome i can now pick locks well if you're practicing on a master lock which is the most common you know padlock to practice on well that's actually one of the most you know easiest padlocks as a really easiest brand as a as a company to get around in terms of lock picking they're basically the easiest locks to get out of so you know we all know the sort of analogy of you know you train to your you know lowest level you perform to your lowest level of training so uh meaning that if you could pick the easiest lock well what about the harder locks so same thing with this if you can pick these that does not necessarily mean you know how to get out of handcuffs or illegal restraints at all it just means that you you're good at one of the easiest ones now we're talking about now that that being said what we're talking about the smith and wesson model 100s because they are of the two most common handcuffs in america uh the peerless and these uh these are harder than the peerless so we're not even going to show the peerless because it's easy the differences between the two let me grab a shim right quick and i'll show you the differences uh the differences between the two is that on the pureless the key is right here key is right there in the center and that's what makes it easier because as i mentioned earlier you don't have this double lock slot here confusing your fingertip with the keyhole so that's what makes them easy and the peerless locks they uh double lock here with a with a pin so that you can take the back of the key [Music] and poke it and that will lock double lock the peerless handcuffs it also makes it harder to figure out if you've actually succeeded in picking the double lock because now right here on on this with the lessons you have a nice little window and you've got that nice little slot right there that shows you that little piece of metal that shows you uh these handcuffs are not double locked as you can see they're not double locked so like i mentioned uh before the easiest way by far to get out of handcuffs is with a key and there are many different ways of getting out of these um and uh the way we're going to show today is with the bobby pin so this is one of the most common ways to do it here's the thing with bobby pins uh with handcuffs in general um a lot of people get bent out of shape trying to figure out how to do handcuffs with these and this is of course a valuable skill that's why we're going to show it today but you also have to remember that look at what handcuff keys look like now look how small they have become this is a titanium one since the delta key of course this is the tiny inconspicuous handcuff key our personal favorite here and this is another generic [Music] i think this is a shomertech key plastic key that's been cut down it was circular but it's been cut down to be even a little bit more small so if you can get away with having this you can absolutely have this uh there's no reason why if you're able to retain a bobby pin on your person and your kidnapper or captor or whatever doesn't take this or any other small piece of metal paper clip or whatever there's a reason that they can't find this plus you've got to remember this is metal these or at least these two are plastic and don't uh cannot be found by metal detector they can only be found by physical search so honestly when it comes right down to it all of us here sure these are good to have on your person not only because they can get out of handcuffs with them but because they are can be used to fashion other tools as well but honestly if you get out of handcuffs just keep the key there's no reason to to work harder when you don't have to especially in times of duress and trust me getting out of these handcuffs with them behind your back and double locked with a hood over your head where you can your breathing is restricted guess what this is going to take a while whereas this is going to be a lot quicker so um yeah let's just go ahead and show some of the methods we could use to get out of this handcuffs so obviously the first method is using a key right so plastic key now one thing you must note about plastic keys and this is actually kind of an interesting exception right here the showmertech key here on these particular handcuffs is kind of sticky as you can see there it's a little i'm trying to push up my thumbnail it's a little sticky it's kind of hard to convey because you can't quite feel it but as you can see i'm running past a little bump there whereas if i take it's even hard to get out a little bit if you take the tiny inconspicuous handcuff key it goes in smooth but there's also a little bit of resistance right there if you take the delta key here let's just put that in there there's no resistance at all swings really smoothly [Music] and does that really well so one must that one thing you must keep in mind this is not a factor for the delta key at all but with these plastic keys you've got to be careful of the torque so if you torque that key too hard you could snap it off in the keyway that's something nobody talks about if you snap a key off in the keyway like in a in an emergency or you're trying to escape these illegal restraints uh you're gonna be in some serious trouble uh you're gonna be in some serious trouble if you're just practicing and break a key off in the keyway which we have done uh several times but yeah that's something to to keep in mind is your key strengths you're going to want to practice this kind of thing you're going to want to practice it's all based on touch and feel how how much effort is required but you know obviously you guys didn't come here to figure out how to use the key for the lock because that's not exactly getting out of it that's just bypassing really honestly or not even really bypassing just using the key for the lock you came to figure out how to use one of these bobby pins and this one i've already pre-made so let's go ahead and grab one here all right so here i have our brand new right out of the package bobby pin sorry if that's a little blurry for you guys the focus doesn't sound those cameras aren't that great so what we're going to do is separate it like this now you don't want to bend it all the way back because then it'll just snap and you need this little bit right here to hang on hang on to because you're going to have a considerable amount of leverage now i left this one like this because as you can see here there are little plastic bits on the end to protect people who use this for their hair right well if you see you've got to get those off right at least on this the straight side here and i'm just doing this and i can't using my fingernail i cannot pull that off so i have to use my teeth or another tool here so uh that is something to take in mind because guess what if you've got these behind your back can you you can't you're gonna be able to put this in your mouth to um uh use your teeth to do that so that's just something to keep in mind you might want to pre-stage these and practice this ahead of time so what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna turn this a certain way because i know that this way works a lot better for me i'm going to insert this thing into the lock now a lot of people screw this up and they'll put this in and they'll push it all the way in no no no don't push all the way in just just a little bit and we're going to bend it just like that that right there that is perfect i don't know if you can see how much that bent or not but that bend is perfect let's see i've got a couple others over here this is too much this one also works but it's not perfect this one is perfect so i'm going to stick it back in there and bend it just a tad bit more there we go and basically we're turning the handcuff into our own tool to help us bend that by doing that so what we're going to do is we're going to sweep the lock we're basically putting this in trying to get it to where it's like that and then slowly sweep this way right and until we feel that locking pawl disengage so i'm going to do put it right in there and look at that just that easy that's what happens when you have the right tool in the job for instance i can try this one over here and you know this like i'm doing this i'm able to look at this handcuff keyway imagine not being able to imagine having to do this with your eyes closed with this behind your back it's going to be very very difficult to do a lot of people think i'm just going to keep bobby pins in my waistband and i'm i'm good to go right no it's going to take you half an hour to figure out how to do it so having the luxury of sight just for the demonstration here you can see how easy this works just come back in here of course it's not going to work the second time you go in there you sweep there you go locking paul disengaged and just to show you what's going on inside the lock here see if i can do this easily yep there we go i'm going to push this in sweep around and you see how that locking ball drops that locking pole disengages let's go with the teeth and there you go so that's how you get our handcuffs with a bobby king bobby pin i'm sure there are dozens of others that have shown this on youtube and easier how to do it oh before i forget uh the double lock so let me grab the key [Music] somewhere around here i've got one because you have to have the key to engage the double lock so [Music] ah here it is all right so same way with the double lock so as you can see here i'm gonna put in the background so you can see there's a little piece of steel right there that means these are single locked i'm going to put that in there and push that feeling you hear that big click and then now that piece of metal has been moved into here that shows that these keys these cuffs are in fact double locked right so go in and they won't go out so what you're going to do is the same exact motion but on the opposite side so if you're double locked you've got to sweep this way all right towards the outside of the cuff you got to do it with a pretty good amount of force okay almost all right boom so i swept all the way around the edge of the cuff and as y

…Dorado area uh noticed a Russian helicopter landing in a field uh just off of Old theer Mill Road obviously freaking out a little bit they contacted the sheriff raised the alarm uh meanwhile the dudes…

…s along as well and mills as well if you need that sort of thing so that's that's kind of handy to have so this tells us that road is in fact 13 feet…