War Maps: An Introduction

maps are some of the most important tools the analyst has in their toolbox yeah sure we've all heard about how important it is to have a map for Land Navigation or land nav but beyond that what's the big deal are there other reasons to have maps on hand let's find out besides the obvious navigational use the main use for maps in Warfare is to create what we call a common operational picture or cop these go by a few different names by service Branch but are all really the same kind of thing the cop is simply a large map that can clearly show what's going on throughout the battle space however depending on what the mission is a cop can be set up in many ways ATAC for instance is basically a cop a map with the ability to drop overlays and see where everyone is located on a common map we've all seen this in movies some very large map with little Flags or other icons designating military units and with an assortment of Staff constantly moving these pucks around with their most up-to-date positions this we call battle tracking and we'll dive into this a lot more later but for now battle tracking is keeping the map updated with the most recent positions of units enemy locations critical intelligence gathered during the mission and so on this is a very important aspect of warfare and one of the main functions of the Tactical operations center or talk in the old days these Maps were physical pieces of paper hung on a wall or spread out on a table with operations staff and Intel analysts using clear sheets of acetate plastic to draw critical information on maps this ancient method of battle tracking is still done today during training and actually during real world operations but mostly just to keep that skill alive in the event that fancy tools like ATAC and other battle tracking software is not an option in an increasingly hostile and electronic battle space a cop that is set up purely for intelligence purposes is usually called a sip or common intelligence picture sometimes you'll see this referred to as a sip cop right referencing the two main staff directorates that work in operation centers intelligence and operations but usually at say Battalion size units or lower everything is mostly clustered together on the same map Blue forces red forces ipb stuff like key terrain and such all of this is going to reside on the same map usually on the prepared citizen side of things the average person may not be capable of or even interested in setting up a full-blown talk and that's fine but you would be surprised the talk like capabilities you'll have by Simply Having a map for me I go overboard with maps because of my role as a prepared citizen so I have to be careful not to let my personal fascination with maps cloud my recommendations for everyone anyone with military experience will tell you that many commanders sometimes view maps as a status symbol in the U.S military at least the size of maps sand tables and terrain models is often dictated by one's rank or importance the generals get super big maps that fill an entire wall or a whole wall of plasma screen screens I've seen some general officers literally have a personal cartographer who prints out big maps for them of totally random places just so they can have a random map for a meeting now I certainly don't fancy myself as any sort of military commander I personally am just not cut out for leadership but I do not ascribe to the idea that the size of the map dictates its importance it's what's on the map that matters but anyway I find having many different types of maps quite handy so what maps are needed first up is a local land nav topographic map the old standby of the usual classic right you always need to have a topographic map of your area I think that by now this is a fairly standard expectation that goes without saying but I did want to mention it anyway I usually prefer a standard one to twenty four thousand scale USGS quad map of the area that I'm going to be moving through if I'm going a long way it's a bit more practical to use a larger scale so that you don't have to carry so many different maps with a one to twenty four thousand Scale map it's great for seeing maximum detail and operating in a very small area but I have many times walked right off the edge of the map which is sometimes not a fun experience whatever you choose having a topographic map for navigation is vital but we've heard all of this before right besides land nav what other kinds of maps are useful the other type of map that in some cases is even more important than a topographic map is a simple road map that's right the ordinary roadmap you get for free at Stateline rest stops at least here in the U.S as strange as it sounds ordinary road maps have throughout history become an indispensable tool of warfare from World Wars to the modern day simple tourist road maps have been used to plan very large-scale military operations one more interesting anecdote that illustrates this comes from the defense of Berlin during the final days of World War II as the Soviet Army Advanced across the Polish Countryside towards Berlin the Iraq sphere SS himself Heinrich Himmler decided that his Grand military expertise needed to be put to use in the Northeast as commander of the hastily formed Army group Vistula setting his command post aboard his personal luxury train he established one of the worst Army headquarters in history along a railroad sighting in Schneiderman Poland having been assigned to be himmler's chief operations officer Colonel Hans Georg Eismann arrived at the rather inept SS Commander's train with an air of nervousness upon his arrival his suspicions were instantly confirmed he immediately assessed the situation as rather desperate and the headquarters itself was only a shell of a military organization apart from himmler's complete ineptitude in all things military his command post was that in name only the lavish headquarters train was more vacation spot than headquarters as it only contained One telephone and only one map which eisenmann noted as being very out of date and not containing accurate information at all one can only imagine the moral laundry this presented here was a career military officer talking to one of the most infamous humans ever to have lived a man with extreme power who had done unspeakable things and he didn't even know what units he had under his command he had no idea of basic military unit sizes formations or anything even the lowest ranking Soldier would know a rather desperate situation indeed this was the headquarters of an entire Army group or at least it was supposed to be and the map situation was so desperate that Eisman had to use his driver's road map that he had used to navigate to this Command Post in the first place he literally had to go out to his car and get the map from the glove box though the history of this incident is not quite so clear it appears that for a Time the defense of Germany's Eastern flank was conducted by a colonel with a road map moving forward to present day another similar situation occurred within the U.S army during the U.S Invasion of Grenada a commonly told story is the case of military leadership ship planning operation urgent Theory using civilian road maps this was because Grenada was such a small nation of little military importance that when it became clear that the U.S would be using military force to invade the island nation military leaders were caught without adequate maps of the area understandably planning invasions involves an awful lot of people and there are almost never enough maps to go around for everyone this is the case even today I myself have helped plan military operations using old Soviet maps of an invasion long forgotten or even Garmin base camp or Google Earth even just a few years ago I myself was in a conflict Zone printing out homemade maps on an inkjet printer I ordered from Amazon it would be nice if we could all have nicely printed Maps but as always in war things rarely go to plan National Geographic Rand McNally and Michelin have been an unwitting member of many military intelligence briefings over the years as strange as it sounds ordinary tourist road maps have been and will continue to be vital for everything from road trips to planning invasions when it comes to specific road maps I personally like the more durable National Geographic adventure maps for the United States and Europe these are fairly cheap considering they're printed on a plasticized paper but if you want to reduce cost even further you can pick up your State's roadmap usually from visitor centers or rest areas for free these are usually much more up to date anyway as Most states come out with a new one every year but even if you do go the free map route I would strongly recommend picking up a regional map as well again these National Geographic adventure maps are divided up by region at least for the U.S with four of these you could cover the entire country at a scale that's small enough to read yet compact enough to carry I usually prefer standard maps that you can fold and put into a map case this also makes it easy to stuff a map into a bag and forget about it however the spiral bound road atlas is also a very important tool as well these are perhaps better are suited to remaining in a vehicle due to their size but since my own role is often in the information space I often find myself needing a fairly detailed map of rather random locations and a road atlas is great for that if you have the space to carry one I wouldn't want to backpack very far with a road atlas but if you are setting up a talk or something these are super useful to keep on hand I would definitely expect each vehicle you have to have a road atlas as well for locations outside of the US Rand McNally and Michelin are your best bet for Nations that might not have really nice Maps I navigated all over the Kuwaiti desert with a random McNally map because it was the only one that I could find in country that was in English in Europe things are a bit easier and there are a plethora of companies to choose from which offer many different styles of road map however if you are in Russia or China I'm afraid you are out of luck for the most part during the Cold War the Soviet Union knew the utility of road maps so they intentionally made them incorrectly distances between cities were just slightly inaccurate and some roads did not even exist or were slightly in the wrong place and of course many entire cities were simply left off the map entirely since the concept of the closed city was heavily used in the Soviet Union most road maps were just wrong enough for Citizens not to notice but if an American military unit were to capture one and use it to navigate and more importantly calculate fuel consumption the map would be incorrect enough to throw off these calculations thankfully with the collapse of the Soviet Union Russian road maps are a lot more accurate nowadays however there are some ghosts of the past on some road maps that you'll find throughout Russia in Russia you can never really be sure of anything especially the truth in today's world China being the predominant communist Society on Earth has carried this idea into the 21st century China's national GPS system is intentionally inaccurate by sometimes hundreds of meters this takes from the American idea of Collective availability back in the early days of GPS satellites the American government did exactly the same thing citing national security reasons for the intentional degradation of GPS accuracy China has taken things one step further and with the cooperation of Google has also skewed the satellite imagery of the entirety of China as well in other words if you are in China using Google Maps from a smartphone you will appear to be in the right place but you don't know that both the Communist party and Google are working together to make sure that you never really know the true GPS coordinates of where you are standing at least until China outright banned Google Maps from within their country which seems to flip-flop back and forth quite a lot these days but this also applies to stepping up their Crackdown on accurate GPS receivers this is also why Coca-Cola got into some hot water with China back in 2013 since they put GPS units in their trucks for delivery drivers local Communists found the devices in Coca-Cola trucks which triggered a complaint and expanded into a full-blown investigation this is why no one in China truly knows where anything is with any accuracy unless you break Chinese law and take a handheld GPS to China specifically a GPS unit that uses one of the non-chinese satellite constellations you will always be dozens or sometimes hundreds of meters off the same thing applies to simple paper maps they can be quite inaccurate again with post-soviet Nations this is becoming less of a factor but you can again spot some holdovers from the past on Modern Maps however some Nations like India are locking down even more India does not scramble or Jam GPS data yet as far as I know but they do treat map making as a state secret with only pre-approved Indian companies being able to make any sort of map within the borders of the nation it is with this in mind that we must remember that Any Nation who possesses GPS navigation satellites can decide to one day turn that service off or degrade it significantly we have discussed how rare this scenario is in our video on satellite Communications but it is always technically a possibility it doesn't necessarily mean that we have to stop using GPS altogether right it's still a very powerful tool but it also brings modern vulnerabilities with terrestrial GPS jamming becoming a basic fundamental of Modern Warfare returning to a more traditional paper-only navigational method might be worthwhile not just as a backup but as a primary means of navigation all of this is important to consider no matter what map you choose you think you're just going to go buy a roadmap off the shelf and that might work for you but it also might be highly inaccurate some Nations might not appreciate accurate Maps being made of their country and some private companies are eager to bend over backwards to sell their customers a Lie by making a map that is not accurate another map that's helpful to have is a pocket atlas of the world the explanation of why a pocket Atlas is important it goes back to the original question of why maps are so important for the analyst or for anyone operating in the 5th generation battle space one thing that will assassinate your credibility really quickly is if you don't know where something is but somebody else does if the person you are briefing knows more about the geography than you do you probably should not be briefing but rather having a two-way conversation to exchange the information you have geography is not something that is commonly studied and analysts deployed around the world doesn't usually do too much pre-deployment work or study they're supposed to but it doesn't happen that much in the professional world because most people have the mentality of learning when they get there every single time I've deployed this has been a major issue that I've seen people being in country and not even knowing what district they're standing in that's fair enough for the average Soldier who's fresh out of basic training and got a lot of other Soldier stuff to know I can forgive them for not knowing every District in a province by heart on their first day but for the analyst you better know that country more than your own hometown no there's not much value in knowing the provincial capital of a province way over on the other side of the country but if you don't know it you'll look like an idiot analysts are supposed to know this stuff or so people think that's the curse that analysts are faced with constantly a good chunk of the learning curve for analysts is simply knowing geography anyone who studies geography and history is automatically miles ahead of their peers when working in a job that requires really any kind of analysis but say you don't want to be an analyst sure you might want to keep tabs on things and have kind of a general Intel picture of your area but you don't want to make this your full-time job right is a pocket Atlas still useful I think so yes for one it's something to study even at a very broad level knowing where certain nations are on this Earth is pretty important if nothing more than because of how our modern news Cycle Works most Americans get their news from alternative media sources these days sources which even though they're vastly better than mainstream Legacy Media they might not know this significance of an event in other words you might see a headline that reads Chinese bomber sighted off the island of Luzon if you don't have an atlas you might gloss over that headline or just not really know what's going on because you know China is always in the news with Taiwan and all kinds of stuff right but if you had a map to show you the context of where this location is you might be able to conclude that oh this is in the Philippines this might be something pretty big right this is not just your standard Taiwan stuff because that alone makes it pretty handy you increase your knowledge of the world around you simply by every time you see a news article that references a location that you're not familiar with just pull out your Atlas and see where it's at you can't usually get historical or cultural context from a map but you can get geographical context which helps if you are really lost in the sauce and thrown into a situation where you've only got your fuzzy memories of Pub trivia and 8th grade social studies to help you having a map on hand makes your life a lot easier it sounds like a really specific situation to prepare for but I myself have seen this happens so many times I'm inclined to think it's more routine than we might think after all Fubar and snafu situations are the norm not the anomaly especially in a fifth generation war with all that's happening around the world constantly it seems like it's endless right the last thing we need is to not know where things are happening and a low-cost compact pocket Atlas can help with that another useful type of map to have are aeronautical charts these are usually also called VFR sectionals these are very useful for understanding when aircraft are outside of standard traffic routes these are also useful for getting local airport frequencies again another very specific type of thing to be concerned about or prepared for but I have noticed a lot of changes within the commercial Aviation Community since covet changes which do not reassure me as a passenger from Pilots dying suddenly and Airlines exploring the idea of flying with only one pilot due to Pilot shortages and maintenance issues in parts shortages my gut feeling is that the risks associated with commercial airline travel are much higher than in the past I'm sure the aviation Community would disagree and assure that everything is just as safe as it's always been that's fine I guess but I don't want to be the statistic that proves me right and one of my own personal habits goes back to an old Aviator saying any land you fly over you may have to walk over and in many places on Earth the walking isn't good likewise anytime I am trusting someone else to transport me from one place to the next I always carry a map or usually several maps of the route we should be taking just in case I will admit in the rare occasion I fly commercially I Don't Take Along aeronautical charts of the whole route that would mean bringing along a lot of maps but I do like to have something from a military perspective on the ground I think it should be mandatory for most military units to have civilian aeronautical charts of their area of operations let's face it an awful lot of civilian air Liners in the past have been shot down by mistake by military forces around the world if a military unit plans for civilian aircraft to be in their area they need to have the aeronautical chart that the civilian pilot is using relying on civilian planes to constantly monitor 121.5 megahertz the the international emergency frequency for aircraft relying on them to monitor this is a farce because they just don't do it a lot of the time even though they're required to right but what pilots absolutely do monitor is the frequency for the Tower or controller in their area which is listed on the map the map gives you the frequencies of every tower that is in American airspace at least bottom line is that if you absolutely need to talk to an aircraft or listen to one in a life or death emergency and you need to be 100 sure that they are hearing you you need to know the frequency they are most likely to monitor which is on the map I know that for me personally I monitor all Aviation radio air traffic around me pretty much at all times certainly if there seems to be increased levels of military traffic or something strange is going on or there's a national event underway this is a very deep rabbit hole that will make a lot more sense when we cover this topic specifically so don't get all bent out of shape about it just yet for now in the middle of the woods out of cell service range really the only way you'd know the local frequencies to monitor is if you have a scanner or a scan function on your receiver or if you have the map with the frequencies on it again a really specific scenario to prepare for and it's probably not helpful for most of you but it may be for some so I thought I'd mention it sort of along the same lines as Aviation Maps nautical charts may be helpful for some or a waste of time for others when I lived by the coast I always had nautical charts on hand of the immediate area nowadays I don't really use them so much rather than using these to get radio frequencies my biggest use of nautical charts was simply navigation nautical charts list all of the navigational markers along waterways which is helpful to know if you find yourself taking fairy rides a lot certainly if you have a boat yourself nautical charts can be pretty helpful to have just in case for me since nautical charts aren't really a priority at the moment I load them onto the GPS I use daily it's a lot easier to do these because usually these are kind of a one thing you buy them and download them or get them for free and you're done whereas loading aeronautical charts Aviation maps onto your handheld GPS is a little bit more difficult because those are usually subscription based so either way nautical charts are something you could easily just you know one time one and done because the geography of the earth doesn't change that much whereas aeronautical charts they expire after a certain period of time they're not good permanently they're only good for I think six months at a time but they don't usually change that much when it comes to nautical charts I've I usually load them again onto my personal GPS that way I've got them if I suddenly find myself in coastal waters for some reason but again it's not going to take up any space in my bag because it's on my GPS if I was using charts more heavily for actual navigation or if I was located near near the coast I would absolutely have a paper copy on hand to supplement the GPS right another rather specific kind of map you might find interesting are the nifc fire Maps these maps are produced by the National interagency Fire Center and are really meant for firefighting Pilots responding to wildfires throughout the western United States these are really useful for monitoring firefighting operations in your area they're also handy for identifying potential hazards to Aviation firefighting aircraft and firefighting Pilots have a very unique Mission they fly at low altitude usually in very remote areas sometimes in poor visibility all in support of forces on the ground so they need a map that primarily shows everything they could potentially fly into while working a fire as a result these Maps kind of bridge the gap between aerial operations and people on the ground it's not not quite an aeronautical chart but it's also not quite a topographic map either it has elements of both which I personally find quite useful the downside is that these maps are really only available for the western United States where wildfires are more of a we're large and you know Crown fires are more of a problem right so if you live outside those areas you're you're kind of out of luck at the minimum if you didn't want to print out the map for your specific area you can easily print out the overall map of Aviation frequencies used by Wildfire responding agencies handy to be able to monitor firefighting operations in your area again if there is any kind of government agency operating in my area I want the same map that they have as a brief side note regarding you know monitoring frequencies and things like that over the years Emergency Services have made it abundantly clear that they don't want any help from citizens so I personally would never transmit on these or any government frequencies even in a life or death emergency same idea behind why many people won't do CPR on a stranger anymore the the financial liability is too great for many people things are getting nasty out there it shouldn't be the way the world works but it's just one of the things that it's a sad illustration of of the way the world is now so all of that being said I the private citizen want to be on the same sheet of music as whomever is in my neighborhood for monitoring purposes sort of along the same line are U.S forest service road maps these are handy to have if you are operating in or near federal land in the United States I personally am not too big of a fan of these but they may have some use for you so I wanted to mention it one of the biggest downsides to these is that they are not free even the digital versions you have to pay for there are no free downloads at all as far as I can see which is odd considering the U.S forest Service is entirely funded by tax dollars but anyway these maps are unique in that they show a lot of trails and logging roads that are not on other Maps these are of course only available for national forests though and sometimes they're out of date by a couple of decades I've seen of some maps in the past tasks that have not been updated literally in 30 years so these Maps can be helpful for you but one important note is to check various sources for kmz files of your local area who knows somebody may have converted these trails to a kmz for your GPS which you might be able to download for free GPS file depot.com is a good resource for this as people can download a lot of trails in their local area for free not a perfect solution by any means but it's worth checking out before purchasing anything up next another very specific kind of map but underground maps maps that detail the Subterranean environment this is something more specific to those who live in cities with underground Transportation maps of subway tunnels are critical for the urban landscape most cities publish their Metro tunnels on City or County GIS websites so if you make your own maps you can easily incorporate that data knowing where underground tunnels are located is pretty handy for when a volcano erupts in the downtown area or if a slightly more likely to disaster occurs such as a gas main explosion or a sinkhole forms the other side of the coin is that Subterranean combat is a staple of urban Warfare which is something that has become a higher priority for the US military over the past few years large training schools have been stood up to accommodate the future of underground Warfare though it's probably pretty unlikely for citizens to take to the City sewers to fight crime in some parts of the world Metro stations and tunnels have been a vital Lifeline for citizens from the Battle of Britain to modern day Ukraine citizens instinctively seek protection Underground when the bombing starts so having a map of the tunnel you may be Sheltering in is a wise forethought if you think Urban combat is likely in your area I personally would also include sewers drainage basins or large underground electrical hubs as well really any location where a person can fit underground that might offer protection from above knowing where that manhole cover in the street goes is pretty important for survival in the a very rare occasion you have to do something like this for me I do not live anywhere near any kind of underground transportation system but since I again often feel a more analytical role I try to keep on hand maps of the most famous Metro systems just so that when an incident occurs I can know where that particular stop is maps of New York City Washington DC Tokyo Paris London all of these are fairly handy to have on hand especially as Terror attacks have been a norm for a long time for those of you looking to expand your repertoire and study the geography of an area a bit more thoroughly than just looking at a map I can recommend a couple of different books first of all is the CIA World Factbook yes it comes from a very Infamous agency but a lot of people love this publication so I thought I would mention it I personally don't really find it to be that useful honestly Wikipedia is a much better source for understanding a country so that should that should tell you enough right however the CIA World effect book and maps go hand in hand at least in military circles this publication is mostly displayed online for free but you can buy a physical copy which is published every year the print copy looks a lot like a phone book though and it doesn't have any Maps but many people begrudgingly myself included have spent days pouring over the Factbook sections on the nation I would soon be going to this is a bit of an old school way of doing things but with this book and a good map of the country you're going to this can set you up pretty nicely if you don't have access to the internet but again it's not my favorite resource the information is really lackluster and and very simplistic in most cases I would much rather go with the next resource which are the Lonely Planet travel guides again travel guides are more of an old school thing but they're chock full of very useful information about a particular country or area travel guides like the Lonely Planet guides usually contain a lot of maps which in conjunction with historical and cultural context that's really really valuable maps and geography in general are only one half of the puzzle you need to know what happened on that land and why culture developed the way that it did in a particular area though a lot of very powerful people are trying to rewrite history to fit a narrative in most cases today culture history and geography go hand in hand to paint a picture of an entire country right simple tourist travel guides are pretty much the best Publications we have to help bridge this Gap and supplement our knowledge of a region yes it is true that these guides along with every other travel guide no matter what brand you want to go with they're written for the tourist someone who's on vacation or traveling for leisure and not really planning for or defending against an invasion for instance so there's a lot of information that isn't necessarily directly useful from a prepared citizen perspective on the other hand the truth is that if the average tourist knows more about a country than a military organization does that organization is not likely to be very successful this is all the more important for City citizens living in countries where their own government is trying to kill them for people living in those situations simply being familiar with political or jurisdictional boundaries can be important for survival it is for these reasons that I personally like to plan for the worst case scenario and plan for the situation of having to leave whatever country I'm in on foot I want to have the maps travel guides and knowledge on hand so that if I had to I could walk to the nearest international border and know a little bit about the country I might be egressing too is this overly paranoid probably but sometimes paranoia is your subconscious mind's way of alerting you to Danger that your conscious mind hasn't noticed yet this little trick in particular I picked up from my time overseas call it an insurance policy for if I had to make my own way home on foot before we wrap things up I really briefly wanted to touch on what I know a lot of people are going to have questions about which is the debate of paper maps versus digital copies or mapping applications on your phone or GPS personally I think there is a lot of value in both but I all always want to have a lot of physical paper maps on hand if I can especially Maps which I believe would really be only used in a situation where technology is not going to be an option so paper maps will always have a place in my gear however I can't carry every map that I may need that's just not realistic with a handheld GPS I can carry maps of the entire planet for zero additional weight or packing space so it's all a balance paper Maps GPS units and even smartphone apps all have their place with each one complementing the other I like to have every single map possible on a handheld GPS but I also prefer to have at minimum a paper topographic map if on foot along with a basic roadmap and also a more Regional map as well paper maps are easy to spread out on the hood of a car and figure out where you're going you can't really do that with a phone or handheld GPS also in some parts of the world the only Maps you might have are paper ones I myself had to resort to using old Soviet maps for Mission plan and travel all over Southwest Asia simply because nobody had bothered to make a fresh map of the area since the Soviet Union collapsed sure the srtm elevation data is available globally which is why we have global maps but in some of the more remote areas on the planet the most accurate maps to navigate by are paper maps from decades ago sometimes you can digitize a paper map to create an overlay for your GPS I've covered this neat trick in our video on ATAC overlays so check that out if you want to learn how to do this creating overlays is really for smaller scale Maps like building floor plans city parks or other comparatively small areas once you start overlaying larger Maps the map datum and coordinate systems start becoming a problem because they have to match what your GPS is using this is not a problem that's easy for beginners to solve and can seriously confuse navigation efforts so I would recommend staying away from homemade overlays that are very large and cover a large area but for stuff like drone imagery or floor plans it's a pretty cool feature you can take advantage of on pretty much any handheld GPS one of the main advantages of studying maps and becoming more familiar with your area it's a pretty serious topic locals will always know their environment better than someone from a large and Powerful organization that might be hunting them some Stasi agents sitting in a field office isn't going to be studying Maps that's for sure and even if they are they certainly will not be able to know as much as they need to knowing the land is one of the very few advantages that prepared citizens have in our modern times knowing the geography of your area might not save you from the gulag but not knowing your area makes that trip a guarantee this is why stuff like ipb is so important but it's way more than just studying the local Terrain in your immediate area if you hope to have any maneuverability in our modern world or if you have to make a run for the Border or something else you need to do more than just memorize your local area but since no one can memorize thousands of miles of terrain Simply Having a general over overview of the region around you is helpful should the worst happen on the less foreboding side of things I've found that usually the time where I need to do land nav the most is when I was not planning on doing land nav sure there are a lot of times when I'm hiking through the woods or otherwise planning to use a map and Compass to get where I'm going but there have been times where I'm in a vehicle and suddenly find myself having to navigate on foot it's never Pleasant to have a mechanical breakdown and have to hump it out on foot but over the years I've found myself needing alternative foot-based transportation quite a lot a friend drops you off across town but they can't come pick you back up again for a few hours your company bus breaks down and you've got to walk to your shift on foot the airport shuttle hasn't arrived so you've got to walk from the parking area the Convoy That was supposed to come back to you didn't arrive or it's too full so you've got to go back to base on foot okay maybe that last one is a special situation but all of the rest of these are situations that are fairly common scenarios that without a clear understanding of where you're going could turn into to a much more serious problem we may not be navigating miles through rugged mountains every day but sometimes we have to walk around an unfamiliar City for a couple of miles a map that can be discreetly referenced would be nice to have on the other hand having clean professional Maps can make your job a bit easier if you work in certain career Fields I know not everybody wants to be an analyst but man is it really slick to be able to walk into your boss's office put a map board in front of them and give a two-minute briefing on a topic people are much more likely to listen to you if you are prepared and having appropriate and professional maps to illustrate what you're talking about is fairly convincing throughout my career I've got away with a lot more than I probably should have by doing just that of course that's my own personal experience and not everyone is going to benefit from something like that but I would find it quite refreshing to see more of this in the prepared Citizen Community in that case a professional common operating picture would be great for working with others if I roll up to someone's talk and and they have one in the first place that would be great uh bonus points if they actually have accurate and helpful maps to display important information but the best part it doesn't even have to be a talk I've walked into friends homes as they prepare to defend against a riot to find the dining room table has become an operations room to me this is so much more impressive and motivating than a full-blown military talk our nation was founded and defended by dudes with maps on their dinner table so the average guy who works a day job but at night turns his kitchen table into a talk that's A-Okay in my book average people using the tools they have to work through a problem maybe that's not so average after all that signals to me that this person is ready to go to work and is prepared for problems that don't require a rifle to solve as always our goal here is to look at things from the perspective of the prepared citizen living through our Strange and pretty tough times and a lot of the time the tactics used and developed by the military are sometimes not a good fit a lot of this military Doctrine might as well be a foreign language to a lot of people which is completely understandable that's why skills like this are important having maps on hand to get everyone on the same page track events in a local area and even have a general idea of what's going on outside your local area these are important things for every citizen to be familiar with these days even if the internet doesn't think it's cool yet so try it out and see what works you'll never get any better if you don't try and it always seems to be the everyday emergencies that become life-altering events when more serious things occur speaking of my own experiences I've never regretted carrying multiple maps with me but there have been several times when I wished I had one and having one less thing to worry about would really help if you have to fight in the shade