Thank God you made it to your rural bug out location (BOL)! “Okay, I’m ready to work on the perimeter!”Although different catastrophic/emergency and disaster events require different strategies and appropriate levels of preparation, they all share a single concept.Security. Mahatma Muhjesbude is a former Spec-ops combat Vet, LEO, international security consultant, and private contractor. He has instructor level credentials and skills in various survival disciplines. He is a dedicated advocate of Liberty and Justice for all and a proactive defender of our Constitutional rights.He strongly believes that the best value you can give back in life is vital knowledge through experience, and that's why he's writing for Survivopedia, using a pen name to protect his real identity.
—One of the “as needed” tasks was to be the firebase “Mayor”. Working with the various elements on the base, we would plan in detail just how we would conduct. As all this was happening, I established a firebase defense plan and made. Adding Firebase and Google Play Services to the Android app. The client app uses the Firebase Realtime Database to store and sync messages and to record user-event logs. The client app uses Google Play Services to authenticate users with their Google account. In Android Studio, select Tools SDK Manager. At the top of the right pane, select.
You can send Mahatma a message at editor at survivopedia.com. Mahatma,How would you describe the kind of soil the VC built their tunnels in? Was it like the soil in any particular state? I’m thinking about what I’ve seen in movies here, since at my age of 18 the Draft reached 103, and my number was 109. I did see, on my own, the underground bunkers in Iraq (1990-91) dug into a gypsum-like “soil”. One seemed to be a perimeter bunker (all by itself) about 250 yards from a RG encampment that contained many housing bunkers, and a hospital bunker.
I was a non-combatant officer during Gulf War 1 accompanying ambulances with 1st Cav., and allowed to visit some sites a few days after the ground war. As I recall from reading a good book on the subject “The Tunnels of Cu Chi(?)” the soil was a hard clay type. These tunnels were cramped and took a long time to build (factor one cubic meter per man per day to dig).
But over time, the tunnels eventually stretched from the Ho Chi Minh Trail at the border all the way into Saigon.If your soil would not support this, you may fabricate a tunnel system by trenching and burying reinforced concrete sewer pipe large enough for you to move through. This would require extensive expense in material and equipment, and you’d need to do your own work for the tunnels to remain secret.You will also need to bear in mind the depth of the water table in your area. If the table is rather shallow, your extensive tunnel preparations will prove all but useless without a telltale bilge system. That’s correct, where I was up in the jungle highlands near the Laotian border the topsoil was a clay mixture. Red slippery mud during monsoon season and fine dusty red dirt in the hot season.
Deep in the triple canopy jungle it might have been a little different in terms of a less dense mixture but you had roots and large stones to deal with. Toward the coast, of course, it would get a more sandy mixture.You can get away much cheaper than concrete with those silver coreggated steel culvert pipes they use for water run-off for a good underground tunnel system if you stay less than 4 feet under the surface?
The larger diameters offer stand up room and I know a person who used one for a bomb shelter. The sides were formed up for a concrete pour, like a basement wall. And he used stacked window egress wells for the access door with a ground level undetectable top lid. It was all DIY and cost a LOT less than your standard commercial shelters. You have to be on serious chemicals to come up with all this garbage.
As if National Guardsmen aren’t Americans, that they’re trigger happy or don’t have a family & just enjoy the crap out of shooting people. I’m close to 70, spent some 3 yrs in Nam, in 2 different Engineer Battalions & an Infantry Division. Have never been this paranoid. If someone is this out of it they should just move to some cave in New Mexico or some other VERY fricking ‘ remote place eating old C rations while walking guard duty while wearing BDUs & loaded with Rambo gear!.
Wow Greg I didn’t realize you could tell so much from my short response. I too am a Vietnam “Era” Vet, entered USAF as Law Enforcement Specialist, and volunteered to go to Nam, but they did not send my class at that time 1972. Did my time then worked for 12 years Law Enforcement. Never got shot at, but had a couple of guns pointed at me. Reconhunted down armed criminals, no explosives though.
Hate beer, detest Sylvester, don’t do video games, mom lives in a trailer, love my Colt AR15LE, my DPMS.308 Gll, and my totally American made AK47 with American flag itched on receiver.Paranoidno prepared. I don’t live with my head in the sand, or head in the clouds, or suffer from rectal cranial inversion either. But I can see where my country is heading, I don’t like it. Being politically active doesn’t seem to help either, the politicians just do what they want whether left or right, allowing our Constitution to be dishonored and misinterpreted. Anyway, just wanted to let you know I heard you and your frustration.
It sucks thinking we might have to prepare for things to go South. I’d rather spend all my time fishingless expensive.
Well, I am a Vietnam Vet and happened to carry one of those “cheap ass chink AK47s” when I was in country and it was FAR superior to the junk M-16s we were issued. At least they worked EVERY TIME! Time has moved on my friend and the current AR15s are good, but I still own modern AKs and not the AR.
At any rate, it is personal preference! Thanks for your service and sorry you and your wife are not prepared mentally or physically for what may be coming upon us in the near future! In case you have forgotten, there is a Radical Muslim in the WH and he is not our friend and we can rest assured that his friends will be invading us soon!. Why don’t you just sit back & get your rocks off with a cup of tea, & listen to Bach! I am 69 years old, & am disabled somewhat but I can still do a lot to protect my husband & myself when it comes down to the SHTF! Why don’t you just give up & die?
Too bad you don’t have the gumbos to try to give a damn! But with all sincerity I do want to thank you for serving our country, as there are so many who gave up on that war, & it was not fair to the people who did go over there per the persuasion of the GOVERNMENT!
Please don’t think that I am trying to persecute you, but I am trying to motivate you as I am not a spring chicken either, but I will go down fighting rather then to give up to the masses of drug crazed illiterates who want to take over everything when it comes down to that time. They have nothing to lose, because when they can’t get their drugs, or their food stamps (only meaning the one’s who really don’t need the food stamps, but use them because they don’t want to work). And there are a very large number of these people who do nothing but sit on their tush & do nothing for the rest of us. Yes I paid my taxes, & worked for over 57 years & paid into the system which these people are taking our money to give themselves a free ride. Now, I am not talking about the people who really need the SSI or the food stamps, but I am talking about the bums, & you know who you are, freeloaders, & not nice either. Like I said I am somewhat disabled, but I do not collect anything from the government for my disabilities, nor do I get food stamps! I refuse to be a person who is using other people to get what they want but do not need!
This country has become a “you owe me” type of individuals who do not belong on the programs that I have paid into all my life! As well as so many other Baby Boomers! So all of the people who do collect but don’t give anything back, well, you know who you are, & I hope that you can live with yourself taking from poor people & not feeling guilty about it. IN GOD WE TRUST, GOD BLESS AMERICA!!!.
Yeah, Greg, my friend, A lot of misinformed and simply ignorant people think that Guard and police will protect you and not violate your rights as in ‘police state’ like they’ve done many verifiable times in the past. Had a 23 year old corporal in the National Guard in my area answer my question about whether he would confine and quarantine persons from free movement during a disaster. “I would obey orders’, he replied.I’m surprised you don’t know any better, being a Nam Vet, Greg, you had to be exposed to some serious ‘reality checks’?
And you should never confuse paranoia with prudent emergency preparations. Even though it’s more emotionally stable to have a little fear about the government instead of always having so much “Fear of God” like so many people enjoy having.But I guess that’s what happens with old age. Hope you don’t wind up like my old neighbor who just got back from the doctor with some bad news and some good news.
The Doc said the bad news was that he had Altheimers. But the good news was that he wouldforget all about it!. I’ve have seen that same article about the NG man saying he’d follow orders about 10,000 times. He was making sure he’d be on ht next promotion board & the good news old news joke is about as old as my socks.
You forget one BIG rule of thumb; GI’s are not required to follow or obey illegal & immoral orders. Besides IF the SHTF, wouldn’t the NG be trying to protect their families also?
Sure there wacko types in every out fit. I’m more worried about the “Contract Psychos” than active duty or NG types!. Okay, Greg, It’s not my thing to get into snidely fights, and i guess my effort at a bit of levity didn’t land to close to you, so here’s the reality. People, people people! Greg, as a Viet Nam vet, I know you remember Kent State.Mahatma, if you live in Dallas, surely you recall the gridlock getting out of Houston when Ike came thru.
It was a lot more than 100 miles. I am a 68 year old disabled vet (1st Cav, hooha ha), and very thankful I don’t have to toil for my living anymore. I have already moved to my BOL, but only because I don’t have to work for a living, anymore.
With my health, I don’t expect to be a survivor WHEN the SHTF, but I am doing everything I can to ensure my loved ones are. Being involved with your vote is what our Founders fought and died for.
Sadly, the way the machine is set up, your choices are pre made for you. Reps and Dems are just different legs of the same trousers. I am sure some people have felt this way since our Founding.
I pray, but don’t expect that I am as wrong as ‘they’ were. I agree, people can not live in 2 places at the same time. If you’er going into full t prep mode, then that is what you need to be doing 24/7. If you can only do it every now & then it ain’t going to work.
Where ever you have a BOL, other people know it & when you aren’t there, they’ll be ripping you off; taking every thing they can haul off, building supplies, generators, tools, any & every thing! You need to be on site as much as possible just to to not only improve your location but to keep it secure. Some people would take your fuel & then sell it back to you.
Trust no one!. I live on the south side of Houston and am a senior saint.
There are well over 5 million people in this region. Does anyone honestly think they’ll be able to safely exit the greater metroplex (it’s over 100 mile from one end to the other, north, south, east or west) and not get caught up in the gridlock that will ensue (unless they had 12-24 hours notice of the balloon going up)? Ain’t gonna’ happen.
And then hundreds of thousands of people are going to be fending off Obama’s disciples of everyone-owes-me-all-their-stuff mentality absent being in nothing more than their little car/truck/minivan, tent or, worse, on foot, rather than in the security of their house where all of their supplies and turf-knowledge are situated. And no, having a pre-determined and and well-stocked BOL is not going to happen except in a handful of extreme cases (and even those few locations eventually will be overrun by the hungry, violent masses if they weren’t already looted long before the SHTF). There are few woods, no mountains, etc. To hide out within several hours drive of here, and even those areas are close to other major metro areas (Dallas, etc.).
I’ll fortify my home and hold out as long as I can here, which is likely to be a much longer time than will ever be possible for me or the vast the majority of people trying desperately to survive out there no matter how well-prepped they are. Terry, WRONG, you’ll NEVER hold out longer or safer than someone with a SHTF rural BOL. NEVAAh, as they say down South.
You will be among the FIRST to die when all those Zombs you correctly described will FIRST come to your place and take you out. So if you are intent about giving up on serious pragmatic survival in a bad breakdown, don’t bother stocking up and playing Castle King, you’ll just die wishing you had spent the money figuring out a way to get out of Dodge when the ‘getting’ was good.The truth is that more Senior Citizens will survive relatively comfortable than anybody would believe.
But of course it will be mostly in the rural areas. But you have to be willing or able to make some changes.And you don’t really have to go out so far in the wilderness as to have Mother Nature more of a problem than an asset. I know the metropolitan Dallas area (but don’t know why anyone who doesn’t have to lives there, LOL) and it’s easier to get out of there–if you’re ready to go quickly–than it is to get out of L.A. Or Chicago that easily. But anybody can ‘make it’ –even seniors–with the proper planning, AND more importantly, with the proper mindset. Which obviously you are in absence of. So, over 5 million people in Houston would survive just fine if they could all just manage to get to their well-stocked, secret rural BOLs?
All but the rarest of a handful stand a chance trying to abandon their well-understood turf and fight it out in the wild. Very few of us can afford the luxury of having a second domicile secluded from other people and stocking it for survival, and even fewer will be able to fend off the hordes that will zero in on those rustic cookie jars full of survival goodies upon realizing it’s an easier task than trying to figure out which of the millions of houses in Houston to target and getting weeded out by the well-armed householder/neighbors in the process. Sorry, but I’m not buying the escape to a BOL when the numbers and the geography are so very much against it.
Terry, are you taking your ‘whoopie’ pills today?Nobody ever said anywhere on these forums that EVERYBODY will survive, even if they prep, an all out massive epic end times scenario. That’s the whole point!What you are suffering from now is called confirmation bias bias. Let me show you how i prove that. You mentioned in your comment that not everybody can afford to have a fully ready BOL. Away from urban chaos.Well, i agree.
But it’s not really ‘affordability’. It’s the mentality process. You’ve decided in your mind that you don’t have the inclination nor capacity for some reason to consider a BOL. So you try to justify that (confirmation bias) by turning the reality around so it makes ‘sense’ to you to try to ‘Survive-in-Place’.
So you now ‘defend’ that as a better choice to support your made up mindset.But i’ll bet your going to be surprised when you see more neighbors than you ever though possible bugging out quickly and successfully at the first scent of a really bad situation?And it’s not just the numerical reality of the chances of you getting home invaded during anarchy. Even if your ‘odds’ are ‘Powerball’ lucky and the systematic roving gangs of looters–or your own neighbors– don’t take you down, guess what else will? Which won’t be that much of a risk if you are a little more ‘remote’ in your location.There will be no more of anything you need.
Except much more of what your nightmares never imagined. If it’s an outbreak initially, you won’t even outlast your food and water supplies. But after that’s gone, if they haven’t hit you yet, cholera, fires, and other sanitary born diseases plagues will finish off just about everybody in the city who didn’t get out.Well that settles it. I’m going to have do a tutorial article on how the least and most successful way for almost Anyone to get out of a major city fast in a really bad case scenario. Maybe next month.I wish you luck my friend, in any case.
That argument works both ways. You’ve decided in your mind that you don’t have the inclination nor capacity for some reason to consider a Bug-In-Location. So you try to justify that (confirmation bias) by turning the reality around so it makes ‘sense’ to you to try to ‘Survive-Away-From-Your-Natural-Home’. So you now ‘defend’ that as a better choice to support your made up mindset. A one-size-fits-all SHTF solution is a fantasy.
I’ve weighed my options and made the best choice for my circumstances. You’ve done the same. Good luck to both of us. Confirmation bias is also similar to a solitary confinement prison. Unless you free yourself you will begin to lose all perception of solid reality and positive logic.Then your confused mind begins to filter out any facts that don’t contribute to your intransigent thought process and you become ‘defensive’ to preserve that prejudice in your personal comfort zone. Jerry,The great visionary Framers created a process for that. VOTE these treasonous tyrannical Nazis OUT!
Aka Fire their feckless asses. Then demand the new ‘probationary’ hired hands change the law two only two terms for every politician.
One office, and one in Jail if they don’t follow our instructions.And I don’t mean just re-casting them with the same old B grade professional political actors in one or the other of only two long playing disaster movies, Republicans or Democrats.We need to forget about prioritizing our personal agendas, delusional philosophies, and intransigent allegiance to out of control organizations. We must embrace the single most important aspect of this country that makes it better than anywhere else in the world to live. The Secular Egalitarian paradigm that the Founders created and implemented for us.And align together, regardless of our past affiliations, and vote for the candidate most likely to follow the true meaning of the Law of The Land, which is True Liberty and equal opportunity, and equitable justicefor All.Otherwiseit all gone! For ALL of us.
As a voter and a patriot doing my part, and making sure my family is prepared. I thought we did try to do just what you said “send new faces and minds to Washington” in the last election.
Then, just as soon as they got off the plane, bus, train, minivan, and the Washington crowd picked them up in the limo’s, took them to the finest food establishment and watched while the new arrivals drank the Washington Kool-aid. Then once under the influence of the “drink of enlightenment” took them out back and neutered them. Just to make sure nothing changes and the representatives “We the People” sent to change things. Don’t, can’t, won’t. I really don’t see how sending another round of fresh minds / faces is going to change anything.
I guess I’ve already lost hopeHere’s to remembering all those who have served our founding fathers vision for these United States of America. The way it was and is supposed to be. Not this mutant cluster we have now.
Yup, you’re absolutely right, RS, they failed us by letting themselves get sucked right into the corruption. I guess we’re lucky they at least–so far anyway– didn’t let the current regime’s gun nazis get their confiscation laws completely passedAnd yes, it seems useless and i’m depressed as well about it. It’s like all we’re doing is trying to put a bandaid on a gaping shotgun blast wound by have elections that amount to nothing more than trying to choose ‘the lesser of two evils’?I often feel like just saying, the hell with it also. But I have one of those ‘psychological disorders’. I can’t walk away from it without doing something. Especially in such a critical time in history where we really do have everything to lose in our livesI don’t even know how to ‘give up’.
Never learned it.So I keep trying, this time maybe we’ll get complete ‘outiders’ in. That should at least shake up the ‘status-quo’ a bit for some small, but ‘real’ change.
Especially if they don’t ‘need’ money anymore in life so they can’t be bribed by that.But I’ve got to get going and keep going with the proactive political message for true reform and preservation of our Constitution otherwise i can’t call myself a true Patriot.Because what have we got to lose?Everything.Here I go. The EXTENT of any ‘collapse’ always depends upon the severity and physics of it. And of course, how much control the government still has in terms of para military police state power.Economic disasters ones are slower than catastrophic meteors for instance or the Yellowstone Caldera going off. Like in Venezuela right now. It’s been dragging and dragging but steadily getting worse and pretty soon all hell will break loose and a violent revolution will emerge.The only thing is which side will win is up for grabs because the government already figured it out and issued confiscation orders after making ALL civilian gun ownership illegal in Venezuela.
(enter the CIA, no doubt, now)“EBT Blackout”! Hahahahh, that was a good one old gunner! But i’m ‘afraid’ you’re absolutely right. In this country, though, it would be all out civil war if they cancelled food stamps.
Some of the article was funny. My credentials during Nam? I was watching scooby doo since i was five years old or so. I think most folks live with the idea that their neighbors have about the same values and wishes for themselves.Many will die if stepping outside is an iffy thing. Looking poor and of no interest could go a long way.(not hard to do nowadays) Chickens or a dog(even a small one) could be good for warning you. To bad most houses are not bullet proof. If you are not already at the location you would be at in a SHTF Time,than you will regret it.
Cities will become the new killing fields. I find it interesting how some people are quick to criticize someone offering potentially helpful suggestions when the one being critical has never lived through the experience themselves. I like to read the blog written by a man who uses the pen name selco who survived the civil war in bosnia as his experience is much different from my own so i try to learn from him. While i may disagree on a singular topic on which he is speculating, i don’t criticize him as he has a much different perspective than mine, so i read his thoughts, use what i want, thank him for his comments, and go on with life. I see no reason to resort to ad hominem attacks on someone with whom i may disagree, nor do i respect those who do.
Contents Components during Vietnam WarFire Support Base Danger, headquarters of an element of the, Dinh Tuong Province, Vietnam, 1969.FSB, 23rd Artillery Group, Vietnam, 1971A fire support base was originally a temporary firing base for artillery, although many evolved into more permanent bases. Their main components varied by size: a typical FSB usually had a battery of six 105 millimeter or 155mm, a of permanently on station for construction and maintenance projects, at least two landing pads for helicopters (a smaller VIP pad and at least one resupply pad), a , an staffed with, a communications, and a of serving as the defense garrison. Large FSBs might also have two artillery batteries, and an infantry. Under the original concept of the artillery fire support base, a six-gun battery set up with one howitzer in the center to fire illumination rounds during night attacks and serve as the base's main registration gun.
The other five howitzers were arranged around it in a 'star' pattern. Smaller FSBs tended to vary greatly from this layout, with two to four howitzers of various calibers (usually 105mm and 155mm at battalion level) located in dispersed and fortified firing positions. These smaller bases arranged their guns in square or triangle patterns when possible.One of the first fire support bases constructed by U.S. Troops was built in October 1965. Designated Bill, it was built by the First Cavalry Division in Pleiku Province soon after the division arrived in South Vietnam. Based on the original concept developed by that division, firebases would move about every two days, minimizing the amount of security and semi-permanent construction they would need. Over time this changed, and firebases evolved into small forts with all the defensive measures those required.was a United States firebase constructed in Vietnam in 1968 by the., constructed by elements of the, was more typical of smaller fire support bases.Use in AfghanistanFirebases have been set up in Afghanistan since the began in 2001.
These bases provide fire support to Coalition forces in the search for fighters along the Pakistan border. Kunar Province. Helmand Province. Nangarhar Province. near Char Chiehna.
Formerly FOB Cobra.See also.Notes. Retrieved 2012-08-06. Coleman, pp. 113-114.
Nolan, p. Nolan describes FSB Mary Ann's layout. Ott, p.
59. Stanton, Shelby. Anatomy of a Division. 218.
Coleman, p. Retrieved on: November 11, 2007., NPR, June 10, 2009.Sources. Coleman, J.D. Pleiku: The Dawn of Helicopter Warfare in Vietnam.
New York: St Martin's Press. Nolan, Keith William (1995). Sappers in the Wire: The life and death of Firebase Mary Ann. Texas A&M University Press. ISBN. Ott, Maj.
David Ewing (1975). Washington D.C.: Department of the Army. Stanton, Shelby L.
Anatomy of a Division: 1st Cav in Vietnam. Novato, CA: Presidio.External links. Chapter 3 deals with the FSB concept from the field artillery viewpoint.