Greetings Street Survivors. I do hope and pray that all good things are happening in your life, and your family is safe and sound. 

In our last column I touched on a few subjects from the old days that still have a lot of value today. These lost skills would be worth their weight in gold if the country went through a major electrical shut down. Have you ever been without electricity for an extended period, modern telephones, air conditioning or heat, medical care or even a newspaper to know what’s going on in the world? Seems like a very foreign concept, right? Unless you’ve lived in a war zone for months at a time or joined the Peace Corps and lived in a destitute 3rd world country some place, it’s highly unlikely you’ve ever gone without these modern conveniences.

Well, let me tell you about Phase 1 of the U.S. Army’s Special Forces Qualification Course. In this initial phase of the ‘Q course’, all candidates begin their training by parachuting into a very remote wilderness location in a very large National Forest in North Carolina. The candidates are dropped miles from each other, so they won’t run into each other during the training. For the next 30 days, there is no contact with the outside world, no news, no phone calls, no conveniences of any kind. You survive by eating whatever you jumped in with, which isn’t much, live off the land, eat whatever you can survive on that won’t kill you, find the freshest water, avoid the dangerous animals and plants like snakes, spiders, poison ivy and many others. 

Each night, you will travel up to 20 miles carrying a very heavy rucksack weighing more than half your bodyweight, to reach a pre-designated point by dawn, without using a light source. You will navigate swamps, rivers, and mountains while being tracked by “enemies” in helicopters, jeeps and even tracking dogs. If you’re captured, you’re out of the course. If you don’t make it to your objective by dawn in the morning, you’re out of the course. If you get seriously injured, you can set off a flare to be medevac’d. You’ll then have an option to quit or get recycled to start again at the next available Phase 1. During the day, you will hide, find something to eat (I brought a big bottle of hot sauce), try to clean yourself in a small stream and rest as much as possible, while taking care of any medical issues like huge blisters on your feet!  Sound like something you’d like to try?  What if you didn’t have a choice?  What if the electric grid was gone, with no idea of how long it would take to recover?  What if you had no idea what else was going on in the world, or how far this horror extended across the country, the continent, or the world?  If you had prepared by learning some survival skills, you’d have a huge advantage over those that live on their X-boxes and social media sites. If you had stored some food and water, you would be very far ahead of your neighbors. If you had learned how to defend yourself and trained with weapons, you would be so far ahead of the curve that you would likely be one of the few survivors in this horrible scenario. 

Recently in the news, an Australian man was found floating in his small catamaran over 1,000 miles off the coast of Mexico with his dog. They had started a sailing adventure and only 3 weeks into the trip, ran directly into a large storm that destroyed their electronics, including GPS navigator, satellite communications, etc. They survived for 3 months without knowing where they were or where they were going, on raw fish and rainwater. A fishing boat rescued them and brought them back to civilization. Timothy Shaddock age 54, and his amazing dog Bella are true survivors, tested to the limits of human and canine endurance and they survived. How would you have done in that situation? How long would you have been able to survive? 

These are great questions to ask ourselves from time to time, and your answer should include a plan to learn some necessary skills, personal medical training like the ‘Stop the Bleed’ course being offered by local Search and Rescue, Fire Departments, and some community colleges. Take a shooting course and try out different weapons to see what fits your needs and lifestyle. We will continue to look at some of these skills that our forefathers developed in hard times, so that we may be always ready.

Stay safe out there Street Survivors! 

Rick ‘Pirate Hunter’ Grover strongly believes we are all in this together, and the more we learn and train, the better we will be prepared for any eventuality. This makes all of us part of an amazing neighborhood team of American Patriots. God Bless America! ■