That's a pretty succinct description.  I agree.

As a former light infantry guy, yes GWOT type, some examples of the top of my head.

Hydration pack alone = hope for resupply

Hydration pack + 2 quart on ruck with iodine tabs = refill as often as possible.  Even if you don't have a 1 quart canteen on you, keep the cup and aluminum stove around to cook local food and boil water.  Used my canteen pouch and cup to keep my NODs from getting squished on my kit.  Good place for snivel gear too in order to get it out of pockets and keep the rattle down.

Speaking of snivel gear...you get really damn cold after a long movement as the temp drops of an evening.

Beanie, light gloves, and gaiter in your cargo pockets (or extra pouch) go a long way.  Oh, and that other cargo pocket or pouch?  Keep some snacks.  For real.  Same with keeping a woobie and poncho in/on the assault pack.

Speaking of poncho's.  550 cord and a good poncho = not getting wet while you sleep.  Poncho liner....well we all know why it's coming along. Anyway, learn to make poncho hooches.  Let's you leave the rain gear behind too.

Just rambling a bit 😂

We have one of those dome shaped ceramic and silver infused filters with 2 - 5 gallon buckets for the house. I have one of those Sawyers (can’t remember if it’s the squeeze or mini off the top of my head) in my ruck. I’ve had to use cloth and iodine tablets before, so I know I’ll be OK, but I still want to test it.

I was pre-GWOT light infantry. We carried 2 - 1qts on the belt, 1 - 2qt on the ruck, and a 5qt tied on the ruck frame. We’d get resupplied normally every day even with all that on us.

I completely agree on snivel gear. It’s why I still much prefer warm weather to cold weather.

I Remember Reading many years ago a report, if i recall correctly was from Op. Anaconda, maybe a 101st. Airborne report.

They had One hypotermia casualty, the only soldier that had carried only a poncho liner and a space blanket to sleep instead of the sleeping bag.

Layering is where it gets complicated and annoying with how much stuff is either proprietary, or just not compatible with what I’m trying to do.

Full Brit belt kit on low-pro yoke, plate carrier with integrated day pack is what I’ve settled on. It’s enough for ~72 hours worth of equipment, but compromises on the sleep system and additional winter layers.

Best solution I’ve found is tethering the bulkier parts of the sleep system to the yoke as a “bum roll” and to the side of the pack.

I don't trust hydration bladders.  I've seen far too many fail just backpacking.  Saying that, I do have them, they are nice to have.  I am playing with the nalgene bottle with sippy hose conversion.




*coughcough* you mean poncho and poncho liner in your buttpack on your beltkit, right?    

You should look into doing a sand filter.  You can use the filters you have in the bottom of the sand filter system, but the sand filter system is long-term sustainable + will extend the life of your filters.

Also, grab an extra sawyer filter and put it into storage.  They do eventually stop working + if they freeze while wet inside (having been used), they will stop reliably filtering all the bad stuff out.  And they are cheap enough to stock an extra or two.

This is going to be one of the most important things to discuss on here, how to integrate various layers of gear so that they actually work together.  And for specific gear setups.  ie, belt kit will be different than chest rigs.

And yes to the bum roll for sure.  That is a cool piece of kit the British came up with.

Is that an NVIS carrier?

Switch the word "gear" with "skills" and I think it is closer to the lightfighter concept. Your gear should be exploited by your skill set. Your limit, or line in this metaphor, is not your gear. It's your imagination.

The poncho, by itself, is inadequate as rain gear if you are on the move or it rains for more than an hour.

I consider the poncho a multi-purpose emergency use item.  Shelter, emergency raingear, emergency bivy-sack when combined with the poncho liner, etc.

I keep a rain jacket in a 'bum roll' attached to my pack.  If I drop the pack, I take the bum roll with me.  It has the rain jacket, food, etc.

I should have added the caveat that ponchos don't work for me where I am but may well be adequate for someone else where they are.

I have to carry a full rain suit regardless of anything else I may have.

The thing next to my Alice frame is an L3 Harris HF antenna (RF-1936 NVIS I believe).

I have a deep hate of that device. Add a GRA 50 or two and the back pain really starts.

Expensive, heavy and terribly inefficient. Just the way the government likes antennas. There are about 1,000 better options for a 1-30Mhz antenna for most situations. Fun to play with and take to events for others to play with. I am not carrying that ridiculous thing anywhere. I can pack a 33’ telescoping fiberglass mast and a wire that will work better and weigh nothing in comparison.

I'd run a slantwire of tripwire in the general direction of the target and get better comms.

Good times.

We humped the NVIS. It was a "wtf" era.

Well, within the context of an armed civilian, in a WROL situation, using the Lightfighter concept makes a lot of sense.  But in order to do that you need the auxiliary for logistic support (water, food, transport).  Your "combat" teams, aka guerillas cannot survive on their own without the direct support of the population.  

On LBE.  Some of this is personal choice, others are the weather and terrain.  Hot humid weather requirements are very different from dryer, colder climes.  Areas with plentiful water from arid regions.  Flat terrain, rolling hills, mountains.  Heavy forests, jungle, vs open terrain.  Everything you guys have mentioned would work in one area or another.

As to the scenario mentioned.  Very likely mission.  In my old unit we had 3 ART's per platoon.  Plus me and a Plt Sgt.  We would rotate these teams out on missions, where one is out there snoopin' and a poopin', one is getting ready to go in, and one is on stand down.  So for sure, at least 3 teams, with at least 4 guys could cover this mission.  But.  When the one team on stand down was resting up, doing maintenance, and re-supply, someone has to do the re-supply.  If your weather is temperate, and no special clothing or equipment is required, you can easily carry a 3-4 day load out, especially in an area with plentiful water.  Transportation up to an attack point would be ideal.  Even within the team, one guy could do the actual eyes on part, while the rest cycled through rest, eating, and other tasks.  That way the actual OP is always manned, but a mini basecamp is established behind this point.  

On actual rations.  We experimented with home made "LURP" rations.  Start with a #10 can of your favorite Mountain House freeze dried.  Break it down into one cup meals.  You can get 3-5 main meals for a lot less weight than equivalent MRE's or whatever.  Only take one stove per two guys.  You should be easily able to carry 3 days of supplies.  Up to 5 days with a little effort.

On transport.  When my buddy was in Robin Sage, his team caught a ride in the local garbage truck.  Went right through several check points.  This saves much walking and wasted energy.

My main point being you have to have local support in order to pull this kind of thing off.

I am seeing a lot of people trying to get away from plates lately. The 3+ SRT plates are wearable, even in summer heat, for 12+ hours. I know because I have done it. While there may be reasons why you think plates are unnecessary, in an urban environment, it's almost a must. Too many situations where not having them can cost you bigly.

If you don't want to use your plates in a carrier, you can still use the carrier itself to haul gear. The best way to look at this is scalable with the minimum amount of stuff you need to carry. You can go from a concealable carrier to a full combat loadout using the same gear if you're smart about it.

You're far too focused on food. Again, bugging in, in an urban environment, and you will probably not be out so long that food becomes a must have item. Water, yes, but hauling food around is probably a wasted effort. Look at all of the war zones where we fought in the last 20 years. I wouldn't say that food was a priority for the home team. They managed to eat. They didn't dehydrate.

I think you're overthinking this. 90% of the people won't be doing stuff 'outside the wire' so to speak, even if they are in the fight. Hasty ambushes and avenues of escape. Booby traps and IEDs. It's a long haul game and one of attrition. Anyone trying a the direct frontal assault here will pay in consequences. We're way too heavily armed, and trained.

The biggest danger for us is unconventional means.

Used my Sawyer squeeze on water from the rain barrel last night.

And doubled down by having Chinese for dinner

So far, so good.

There are ways of cooking alot of backpacking foods without actually COOKING them.  There's a movement in the thru-hiking backpacking community around cooking all their meals by simply boiling water and pouring it into a container of some kind, whether a pot or a sealable container like a nalgene bottle, to re-hydrate their food.  Some of the meals don't require even heating the water.  And I'm not just talking about mountain house type foods - I'm talking rice and such.  It's pretty fascinating some of the stuff they come up with actually.

And no one wants to talk about the importance of local support while talking about their WOLVERINES!! wet dreams.  Or the importance of a safe sanctuary area.  Or the importance of outside foreign support.

1.  Urban is a very different scenario than rural.  If you are in urban combat, plates start to make more sense.

2.  Ever moved more than a few miles on foot there in Florida, while wearing plates and a small pack, in the summer?








Why?  Plate carriers suck at load carrying, especially if you pull the plates out of them.  And they completely cover your torso, making your overheating issues even worse.  

Are you going to un-do all your molle pouches each time you decide to go from concealable slick armor to a full combat load?  If you are using a placard, why not just throw it on a chest rig instead?  Heck, by the time you buy all that extra gear you intend to swap around on that chest rig, you can get a fully set up chest rig - designed to be concealed or not - to go with your plate carrier.

Also, you are counting on having a safe harbor areas where you can continually go back and re-configure your gear, change outfits, etc. depending on your needs.  During sketchy times.  There is a serious chance that if it's bad enough that civilians are rolling around in plate carriers, you won't be going back to your gear stash to change stuff up.  (I'm not saying don't have multiple options for gear, I have multiple options, but it's something to think about)





Not at all.  




If society collapses to this level in the USA, food is quickly going to be an issue.  For everyone.  The way our food is grown, harvested, processed, and transported to the cities - and even most rural areas - is a MASSIVE MASSIVE critical vulnerability.  Most of the 3rd world shitholes we have been in over the last 20 years have had the rural areas largely able to supply their own food sources as a norm - we do not do this anymore.  And the US has stabilized their food supply so that the civilians would not starve.  IE, guaranteed that the food supply make it into the cities from the ports and such.  

If we have the kind of sketchy times in the USA, the electric grid will immediately collapse.  This will be a target for ALL sides.  Without the electric grid, transportation grinds to a halt in 24 hours.  Without transportation, food stops moving immediately, and the cities run out of food in 3 days  (that's the actual figure).  The military and the entire might of the Federal government cannot take up the slack on this - multiple government and military and independent studies done on this.  

The countries we have been in haven't had this issue.  Here it WILL be an issue.  

Additionally, you are completely leaving out the 95% of the land mass and the 100 million or so Americans who do NOT live in an urban environment in this country.  I live in the mountains.  I am 20 miles away from my nearest grocery store.  To get there on foot, it would take a day or two each way, without having to worry about trouble.  Around here, you WILL be carrying food with you if you leave your property.  And you WILL be leaving your property during those hard times - you cannot bunker up alone and survive the sketchy times.  





It's not about going out and 'doing frontal assaults outside the wire'  -  if it gets to the point you are talking about, even if you have a group of well trained, equipped dudes and all the supplies you need to last through all the hard times  (which will be years)  then you will STILL need to expand your presence outside of your yard.  You will need to, at a minimum, set up observation posts away from your mom's basement bunker  (for now on will be referred to as your  'command center')  so that you aren't surprised or simply surrounded and sniped to death from a distance.  The patrols Diz is mentioning above isn't about doing direct action hits, it's to make sure there isn't a band of a few hundred feral biker gang cannibals staging a couple miles from you so they can hit you in the middle of the night.  This isn't counting all the other things you might be doing - going to visit neighboring groups for whatever reason, all kinds of scenarios.  You don't think you will be away from your 'command center' for more than 12 hours under any circumstance?  

Alot of people think that they are going to be staging in their 'command center' with their bros, configuring their exact gear they need, loading up into their custom hilux technicals, rolling out in a convoy, going to the store to resupply, and coming back to high-5 eachother for another successful run to the store for more frozen pizza.  

If it gets to the point where civilians are having to do ANY of this stuff, then civilization has collapsed to the point where rule of law is out the window and most areas will end up in a serious serious collapse of electrical, transportation, and food supplies.  Again - the electric grid will be the immediate target for EVERYONE.  I'm going to quote you here:  "Booby traps and IEDs. It's a long haul game and one of attrition. The biggest danger for us is unconventional means."  -  what do you think this means if your quote is applied here in the USA?   The electric grid WILL be going down, and quickly.  Nationwide.  (It is too integrated, if one part goes down, it all comes down)  And it will not be coming back up again.   Which means no more transportation.  Or food resupplies.  ESPECIALLY for those urban areas you think you won't be needing to carry around food in.

Logistics wins wars.

So much of this is something I think needs to be addressed. We have had situations in this country where an entire grid collapse has happened. It has been localized. There's a lot of essential services that continued to function outside of the main affected areas, and contingency plans in place for events beyond our control. And believe it or not, we didn't immediately turn into a feral tribe of headhunters.

Most of the BS is being driven by the 1% and the people who can't wait for the great reset, or whatever they call it. For the most part, people around here help other people. Not everyone is an 88er or a hard line commie, and those people would never have gotten anywhere in all of this if the deck hadn't been that badly stacked. The most absurd part of this is the uni-party forcing Americans to choose between some playboy billionaire reality star who's all that, and some guy who can't tie his own shoelaces, regardless of what he used to see when he was somewhat in control of his own faculties, because that's what they think of us as being, and thank God for them.

I get the whole worst case scenario thing. I think we might have something to say about it before it gets to that point. At least, I'd like to think so, but then, alot of that is predicated on exactly who is actually in charge, and what they and the others under his command are doing on their watch.  

Besides, after actually doing things out there for close to 20 years, in this environment, I've had the opportunity to see quite a bit of what works, and what doesn't. I worked through 7 disasters. I have my doubts that shutting down America is as easy as flicking a switch, unless there's a whole lot of other people that are actually helping someone else do this. If that's the case, they'll probably be the same people that we'll most need to worry about, and TBH, we won't be too happy with them. Expect a proportional response. Not every city is Portland.

Yup.

And btw....I will be needing a sitrep on your condition tonight in case we need to send an emergency resupply of immodium to your location re: your filtered water.    



Seems like you're doing ok so far though!

Gruntproof on Youtube is of this mindset. He believes that there is a time and place for plate carriers - but it wasn't all the time.


Are talking about running a carrier w/o plates or like a BALCS system (soft armor - add plates when necessary)?


No plan survives contact with the enemy. Several vets point out that food is always important. As far as saving weight, MREs are generally pretty heavy but can be stripped down to save weight. Some ideas about extreme light fighting suggest taking just lard or peanutbutter and tortillas. By day three, you will feel it in your gut. To me that seems too extreme because you will be distracted by the knot in your stomach...but that is just me.


For most of us, we likely will be just defending our neighborhoods and not venturing too far out.

No it hasn't.  The closest that has happened was the Texas blackouts recently - and their grid didn't completely collapse.

We have had SECTIONS of a grid collapse, but not an entire grid.





There are no contingency plans for restarting the electric grid after a complete electrical grid shutdown or for distributing food and other supplies without a working electric grid.  You saying this means you don't know anything about how the overall electric grid works or what it takes to restart an electric grid - which is not a cut, hardly no one knows anything about it.

Electric grids balance producing just the right amount of electricity.  Too much flowing through the system and you will blow transistors and melt lines.  Not enough and you start getting brownouts.  So if part of the grid goes down, you have to cut electrical production in the rest of the grid, because that portion of the grid that is down isn't using that much electricity.  (This is why gas and coal power is important, btw.  You can easily and quickly ramp up and lower production of power to fine tune this balance.  This is why power cost so much to the people in Texas during their blackouts - they had to buy emergency production from the gas power plants that were on the national grid to make up for the solar and wind power plants that failed in the bad weather)

Our problem is the big transistors in the substations.  We have thousands of them scattered across the country.  When one of those goes down, you CANNOT send power past that point on the grid.  And we only have 3 or 4 replacements.  And a 3 year wait time to build one from scratch - and they are only made in Germany and China  (about 1/3rd of our transistors are Chinese btw)

If enough transistors go down, then we will have to start cutting power DRASTICALLY.  Which means shutting down power plants completely, as most of them cannot operate below a certain power output.  Nuclear cannot for instance.  Gas and coal too, but they can operate at much lower levels.  Solar and wind farms put out a steady output during their operation (in the sun and when the wind is blowing) and they will cause their own issues when they keep running  (ie, blow their own transistors then start to melt stuff inside that area they are still hooked up to)

Normally if a plant goes down, we just restart the plant after fixing whatever reason the plant was shut down for.  This is called a Black Start.  Hint:  we have never tried a Black Start in a total grid down situation.  Do you want to know why?  Because you cannot Black Start most power plants without massive amounts of outside power - more than a set of generators can provide.  The only system that can Black Start by themselves are the hydro power dams.  The rest of the power plants have to be hooked up to a working power grid to restart themselves.  

This is our problem - if enough of the transistors go down - and they are easy to shut down, we have had two recent attacks on substation transistors, one a year or two ago in NC.  Both times someone just fired a few rounds into the transistor and they caught fire (they catch fire VERY easily, they are surrounded by a cooling oil tank).  If enough of these transistors go down, it causes a chain reaction of power plant shutdowns that we won't recover from.  We cannot replace those transistors fast enough to stop food riots from breaking out.  And even if you do, you aren't restarting most of the power plants without the whole grid working.  And the ENTIRE country is combined in this fashion - no one, not even the Texas grid anymore - can operate independent of the rest of the national grid.  You only need about a dozen transistors to go down to collapse the grid.  

And there IS no contingency plan to restart any of it before rebuilding from scratch.

And NONE of this discussion has anything to do with what I mentioned above about the electric grid going down if stuff falls apart in the USA.  All it takes is a couple dudes deciding to drop the electric grid in their local area for whatever reason to do so.  There are dozens of ways of doing it, most of them really hard or impossible to repair without major long term effort.  If you think we are going to have serious bad times with anyone divided in the country - and no one is going to target the other side's electric grid?  Much less the issue that the WHOLE GRID has to be working to provide power from one place to the other....for instance, if California secedes, they will need to get power from the rest of the grid.  And if they shut down their grid, the rest of the nation's grid collapses.  

Straight up.  That movie Civil War?  Absolutely unrealistic.  The first thing either side would do (besides whacking leadership and doing grabs for nuclear weapons) would be to drop each other's electric grid.






Sure.  Same up here.  But no one is starving.  Give them 4 days without food - and most of the country doesn't have access to more than 3 days of food total without resupply from outside their region - and you will see how helpful people are.  





I've been directly in a half dozen myself.  Including 4 of the big hurricanes in Florida.  Been in a blizzard where most of the county was without power for almost 4 weeks.  I've also seen during these times how woefully unprepared most people are, how stupid they are, and in Florida, how quickly you run out of gas and have traffic issues during emergencies, even when everyone KNOWS you were going to have the emergency.





Not A switch.  A dozen of them for sure.  





Every city requires outside food supply.  And that food supply depends on a working electric grid.

So far so good

Not even a hint of a rumble

I should have taken a pic of the water before I filtered it. Clear-ish, but all sorts of stuff floating in it. These rain barrels have had water in them for probably 10 years.

The problem with MRE's is that they are very expensive for what they are + you aren't eating them on a regular basis, so it's hard to rotate them as regular food.  If you note my conversation about peanut butter and tortillas and such, I didn't JUST say peanut butter and tortillas, and I also said it's probably a good idea to have a case or two of MRE's around as those are pretty optimal for this stuff.

You ain't getting a resupply of MRE's from command as a civilian.  Sure, even if most of the time you are in a stationary position at home - heck I live in the mountains in a secluded valley full of good people, I'm not going anywhere - but occasionally you WILL have to go somewhere.  Even if it's just the 3 miles to the end of the valley to man a checkpoint stopping people from turning off the highway into the valley for one day each week.  Which is totally a possibility if things get bad enough.  Do you have enough MRE's to last you a year of doing just that?  I mean, I know people who DO have that, but dangit I don't have that kind of money.  So I've got a rotating supply of tortillas and tuna and peanut butter and other regular food that I CAN afford.  Which was the whole point.

This whole discussion isn't whether tortillas and peanut butter is better than MRE's.  It is just to give options and ideas and alternatives that would still work if you don't have access to MRE's.  Just like with plate carriers vs. no armor.  Or chest mounted gear vs. belt kit.  There is no one single best answer.  Urban combat?  Plate carriers for sure.  Rural in the heat and humidity?  Naw man. Vehicle ops all the time?  Chest mounted gear.  Rural areas on foot?  Belt kit.  

This thread is to give different ideas and pass on knowledge about specific things that are used to support someone who is operating away from their base of supply, for whatever reason and for however long - whether it's going to the store during a full on Hurricane Katrina type event with your family, rocking your low-vis plate carrier....or the Chinese paratroopers are raining down and you have to head to the hills with your highschool buddies.  What kind of stuff will help support those guys in ALL of those scenarios.  What you need and are taking to the store with you will be different than what you need to fight off the Chicoms.  However, alot of it will be the same, with alot of overlap.  

As for peanut butter and tortillas, it's actually not that bad.  Obviously you want to supplement it with other stuff, but it's a staple of alot of backpackers.  I've done 3 months on the AT, and always had peanut butter and tortillas as part of my food supply (also, tuna packets, especially the bumble bee Thai flavored tuna, is great spread on a tortilla.  I'd SAY crackers, but crackers get crushed in backpacks.  Tortillas and bagels if you can get them are the best two things for bread type items you can get at the store.  But again.  Storage issues, especially with bagels)  (My basic food supply for 5 days goes something like this - tortillas, maple almond butter packets or peanut butter packets + honey packets, thai flavored tuna packets, payday and snickers candy bars, couscous / knorr rice packets / instant mashed potatoes + foil packets of chicken + something like packets of Parmesan or whatever.  Instant oatmeal packets.  I'll usually carry some kind of relatively fresh food the first day - a sub sandwich for lunch, frozen sausages to cook over the fire that first night, heck I know one guy that carries a frozen pizza to cook over the fire, he wraps it around a green limb that he skins the bark off of, which is then wrapped in aluminum foil.  slowly heats it over the fire, turns it into kinda a calzone thing.  On a stick.  There are usually a few other tidbits thrown in - hot cocoa mix, electrolyte powder, stuff like that)

I'd like to see discussions on the following things:
1.  Different sleeping systems for different situations.  Everything from actually how to do a ranger roll to full on sleep systems and their variations - tents, tarps, bivys, hammock systems, ideas, specifics, pros and cons, how-to's, how to camouflage them if needed.  Also long-term sleep systems, for in the field, in austere situations / emergency and you have to evac your house for whatever reason with the family in the car, grid-down, etc.  I figure there will be alot of overlap between the various military, backpacking, third world experience, redneck engineering vs. state of the art, oldschool vs. newschool, etc. that can be thrown around.

2.  Communications, for all the various scenarios.  Specifically for the individual or small team / family level.  This is something I don't know a whole lot about, other than just some basics.

3.  Individual support gear - the specifics that go into your BIG rucksack (or your body / 2nd line, etc.)  Cooking sets, field food storage, medical, boo-boo kits, foot care, etc.

4.  Individual SUSTAINMENT gear.  The optional stuff that you would like to have along during an extended emergency away from your base of supply, but might not end up having there.  Think like your A Duffel or whatever it's called in the military.  For civilians, think like this - 'you have to evac with your family because a train carrying dangerous chemicals crashed a couple miles upwind of you.  Each person can take a rucksack and a duffel bag or whatever container.  The rucksack always goes with you, the duffel goes into the trunk of the car and you may or may not be able to take it to your final destination.  What goes into the duffel bag?'

5.  Footwear and foot care.  Especially the foot care in austere, long term situations.

There's a TON of other stuff.  Leadership gear?  Alot of civilians don't know what in the field style gear that you would possibly carry in a leadership role.  Cold weather gear, long term in the field.  Stuff like that.

That's probably a decent test.  

Those filter systems are generally pretty good as long as you handle them correctly. Be sure to learn how to backwash them with that plunger thingy.  Also, it really helps to pre-filter the water before filtering it.  Even running it through a bandana or t-shirt if nothing else.  A Millbank bag is legit long term.  You can make a quasi-millbank bag that weighs basically nothing by getting one of those synthetic mesh cold brew coffee bags they sell on amazon and running the water through that before filtering.

Honestly each section could be it’s own thread.

Nothing stirs the lurking kill-joys of Arfcom like a communications thread. My lord. Lol. 99% of people who read it won’t do anything with the information. Every group of people I know that does extensive field training has a “comms” guy, if you dont have a group, you dont need comms. You need a group.

It tends to wind down various legal topics, which unleashes autistic cries that there are no laws when drinking SHTF Claws.

It never goes well and it isnt because people dont try their honest best to be helpful.

In this context, I can think of two considerations that aren't often discussed: power efficiency and ease of recharging batteries.

Power efficiency plays directly into size/weight constraints. A more efficient radio will require fewer/smaller batteries for the same runtime. This has gotten better in the last decade or so for high-end radios.

Some radios are available with native USB charging, others have USB-charged batteries available. This is my preference over cradle-style chargers, which are relatively bulky and require 12V DC (car chargers) or 110V AC  to operate. It would make sense for each person to carry two USB-compatible radio batteries and a USB power bank - charge one battery while using the other. Maybe have one cradle charger and appropriate adapter per team, and stowed in each vehicle. Also don't discount battery eliminators to directly power gear off whatever 12V DC power you can find.

Another consideration is monitoring/scanning, not just of public safety but the various license-free services as well. When most people think of radios, they default to FRS - the amount of miscellaneous traffic there would surprise you and it can be very useful for general situational awareness.

Mobile and base station radios with a proper antenna system are far more efficient than portables and perform better in all categories except, well, portability. It would be well worth including them in your capability set.

There's a LOT more to discuss in this category as the thread progresses.

I will definitely be looking into a pre filter set up to add to my kit.

Get one of the coffee bag ones for your pack's water kit.

One of the canvas ones for longer term base camp use.  Helikon makes one.  Or you can make one yourself with a small piece of canvas and a sewing kit or sewing machine.

Agreed.  However, we can talk about how to integrate this stuff into your gear, touch on overall view of each subject, link to longer threads or other pages, etc.  





Definitely with the group thing.




Yea I hate that.  Ya'd think passing on knowledge on your subject you love would be a good thing.

There are lots of things around this subject we CAN talk about without laws being brought into things - for instance, the battery / radio discussion above.

The charging comment brings up another subject we should talk about - charging stuff in the field, solar charging stations for base camps, etc.

That is one of the biggest changes in the last 25 years. Every soldier now has electronic gear that needs batteries on a regular basis. Radios, night vision, thermal, lasers, scopes/red dots, flashlights, the list goes on. Definitely a major hole in my field kit is any way to recharge batteries. I currently have what I THINK is a week’s worth in my ruck, but what then?

However, the first hole is I need solid wet weather gear. What I have works, buts it’s a cheap set up that would be destroyed walking in the woods.

There is so much to cover here; difficult to hit all the points.  There was some literature back in the 80's and 90's about survival issues.  A guy named Ragnar Benson wrote several books, or pamphlets really.  In one he proposed the idea that you research what the local Indian tribes did in your area, as a starting point to what foods you could reasonably expect to grow and cultivate in austere conditions.  Also I think Mountain Guerilla posted a recipe for field rations used in the Civil War.  The idea was to have some kind of meat product (jerky, hard tack), and some kind of meal that you made biscuits and such from.  Think of the old timer "grub stake" or year's supply of food, supplemented with game.  Yes, this is austere living but your ancestors pulled it off; so can you.  

The idea for me is to lay in enough "mountain House" or whatever to get you to the first big harvest, where you then switch over to home grown rations.  This would include easily packable, and long storing foods, for those of us out on the fringes protecting the group.  We just have to re-discover how this was done.  

The area where you find yourself.  Guys this is a very contentious issue, but it all boils down to population density.  The closer you are to dense population centers, the more danger you are in.  The farther away from them, the better off you will be.  Getting west of the Mississippi is your best bet.  Getting into a small town that can mobilize, to be mostly self-sufficient, and protect itself is ideal.  

On load bearing equipment.  A lot of guys have almost no frame of reference for selecting their own kit.  They've only seen what's in popular media.  Most of what I've posted over the years has focused on what you would carry in a mostly rural area, and in the deep woods or forests.  Because frankly that is where I plan on being, and encourage others to consider.  The Diz rig was optimized for exactly this scenario.  Not to mention the packs that go with it.  Which is not to say you have to buy CF stuff, but look at the basic concepts that guide it's designs, and carry on from there.  You will notice I haven't designed a plate carrier nor modern gun belt.  That is because that is mostly urban-centric kit, where extra protection can replace sustainment weight.  And that's the crux of the issue; you can only carry "X" amount; what that consists of depends on you and your situation.  

Lots of folks seem to think I'm a one trick pony and only pimp out what I make.  This isn't true.  If you are in a large urban area, or just doing local force protection in a small town, for sure you want a PC, gunbelt, and helmet set up.  If sustainment is local and at hand, you don't need to carry it.  So for sure I own all these items, for the right times and places for them.  But the idea being you want to patrol as far out as possible around your area, to interdict anything coming your way, as far from home and hearth as possible.  For this you need a different set up, and that is what I focus on.  

This is where the Lightfighter concept comes in.  It's how your ancestors patrolled around their areas, looking for French or Indians, or whatever might come their way.  I think it is a vehicle to learn how to distill your needs down to a set up that is usable for accomplishing your mission, yet light enough to not grind you down in the process.    With this in mind, I think we have to really look at all the new technology and ask ourselves, how much is really needed, vs just convenience or whatever.  For example, does everybody on a patrol need a radio?  Or do you just need one radioman to communicate with your base.  Do you really need helmets, body armor, and gas masks?  Or if you really want to get crazy, do you need night vision, thermal, and host of other electronics that require a constant supply of batteries.  I know heresy to some.  These are all hard decisions you are going to have to make.  

I know some folks might say old Diz is just being retro for old timey's sake, but I think it's actually a viable course of action to consider.

No they don't.  Logistics certainly can help win wars, but by itself, it most certainly doesn't win.  If it did, we'd have won handedly in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.  This, or related opinions get thrown around a lot, but all that does is encourage thinking that having enough "stuff" is the answer.  The reality is, of course, that the stuff is just a small part of what is required.  Skills, experience, mindset, planning, etc are as important, and probably more so, than having the stuff, and being able to supply yourself.


A solid logistical support system is important, but just one part of the winning team.

Yep, they go hand in hand. Flexible/foldable panels are likely the way to go, charging rugged batteries with a variety of I/O options. I like to have USB and 12V - between those two you can power just about anything you're likely to carry. I've got one of the Renogy 72mAH packs (recommended by a POTA/SOTA Arfham) and a 240Wh Jackery pack. The Renogy unit is far more suited to dismounted carry and makes a great team item.

Radios themselves are just as situational as load-bearing gear. Urban security guys might want Motorola DTR 900MHz freq-hopping radios while deep woods guys would be better served by more conventional digital VHF radios and a team HF unit. I personally carry a UHF portable that can be used to access three separate linked repeater systems from my home, interoperate with lowest-common-denominator FRS gear, monitor some LE and interop comms, and push secure voice/data over business band. That's in addition to a mesh radio - I didn't expect those to be as much of a game-changer as they turned out to be. Having real-time blue force tracking independent of cellular infrastructure is great, plus cursor-on-target and messaging can still be used even in a GPS-denied environment.

Specific hardware selection should be influenced by what's already in use in your area for monitoring and interop purposes, as well as terrain considerations and budget - most people don't use their gear enough to justify a radio that costs as much as a high-end rifle.

This is where I get off the  'don't use multicam' boat and say shop around for new but cheap military surplus raingear.  You can still avoid multicam here too - the PCU kit is in earthtones, and there are good solid European rain gear sets for cheap out there.  British, German, French, etc.  I saw some new British goretex camo pants for $30 the other day, almost picked up a pair as a spare.  

Rain gear is super important.  This should be a high priority for everyone to have a set for each member of their family.

Other good options to look at if you are running a British style smock, btw, are Arktis and their rain liner.  And Redledge makes a decent rain jacket that is similar to the Arktis one.  I hear their pants are decent too.

And entry level standard go-to commercial product is the Marmot Precip jacket and pants.

Any of those will get you up and running.  But I'd probably look at the surplus PCU stuff, as it's not camo and it's solid stuff for the money.

So I've got a creek that runs along the backside of my property and several very basic water purification systems.
I believe it's a spring-fed creek.  How can I go about testing the water before and after filtering?  What should I be looking for?  We are near the top of a hill so I don't think runoff from nearby farms or roads is an issue, but I'd hate to try it and find it's too contaminated.

Yes.  Eventually I'm down to go back and edit my last post and put links to specific threads or other pages with more detailed information, and use this thread as an overall view, a compendium of information, and a place to shit-talk eachothers stupid ideas on this stuff.





I've seen him also mention before that alot of time he will just carry a bag of white rice and live off of that for short periods of time.  That he had settled on that as a solution for long-term field ration supply in emergencies, as it can be stored and is dummy cheap.  Obviously he intends to supplement it with other stuff - but that rice was the bulk calories.  He's not wrong.  It's one of the few foods you can store super cheap, for decades, cook quickly-ish (if you know how to pre-soak the rice ahead of time.....), and is easy to carry.  And you can add literally anything and everything to it to make it healthier and taste better.  Everything from wild foraged stuff to a can of campbells chunky soup.  Oatmeal is kinda like this too.

The Jerky / hardtack combo / biscuit mix is another route too.  A bit more pre-made and less shelf life, but long-term, this is a possibility for sustainable mobile supply.

I'm not trying to harp on food stuff, but you really should be putting SOME thought into what you intend to do for mobile rations after you run out of MRE's and mountain house.  It doesn't even need to be a complete plan.  Maybe gather some basic recipes for hardtack and such at a minimum.








The Mountain House option is the easy, 'just go out and buy it' option.  

And yea, surviving the winter to your first harvest is the key.  Bonus points if you have enough to make it through a 2nd winter.





Technically you're right on population density, but it's more than that too - it's that + how sustainable the locale is + what kind of people live there + potential outside threats moving into your region, including masses from nearby-ish cities, cartels, etc.  But yea.

Going west of the Mississippi isn't the only other option - the Ozarks and parts of the Appalachians are solid options.  




This for sure.  I'm working with a couple young guys, getting their kit squared away, doing some odd pouches for them and such.  And they want all the bells and whistles and the newest, greatest plate carriers and it ALL has to be in matching camo, period, not caring about support gear  ('oh, what, I don't need a winter jacket yet, I can get that later!  I know I live in the rocky mountains!  But I need that plate carrier first!'), etc.






Most people out there can't afford even an entry level NVG setup, much less all the rest.  You are going to be lucky if even a few guys you are around end up having a rifle with a dozen loaded mags, some form of LBE, a backpack with sleeping bag, rain gear, and a baofeng radio.

I think a good way of describing what I'm trying to get at here, is are you capable of safeguarding your family while you successfully and effectively deploy into the field for a couple weeks without outside support, in cooperation with other people, stay effective in the field, and get back....and then be able to do it again soon afterwards.  All in the weather extremes in your AO.  

What all do you need to be able to achieve that goal?

This will answer alot of questions.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CDD82YLV?tag=arfcom00-20

What kind of filter systems do you have?

Do you think our logistical support was better than the home teams in those conflicts?

I’d offer that our gear and training was light years beyond them, but the actual logistical support available to them was far beyond what we could do.

Back on the topic of rain gear, I’ve never been super impressed with Gortex or any of the “breathable” rainwear. It gets to a point where it lets water through and I get wet anyway. I’m OK with that in warm weather, but in the cold that’s a death sentence. Has the modern stuff gotten better?

I took some photos of my backpack HF radio setup in the field today…….. but it seems the photo resizer thing on Arfcom is not working on Android…… just Apple on my end and the photos are too large. Maybe I will figure out how to transfer them off that device later.

When you go to upload, hit the options button and select the size you want it to be.

Attached File


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Our logistical support was actually better in every way in those conflicts.  But that has been part of our downfall in some ways.  Let's look at the conflicts:

Korea - The North Korean army that initially came south was actually quite decent for what they were.  However, they outran their logistics tail as they got close to the very south of the Korean peninsula.  Our air campaign against their logistics train wrecked it even more.  We rolled them up pretty quickly.  Our issue came when we did the same - we got into the North, which had significantly worse infrastructure than in the South, especially so in the north, where the terrain was really rough and not designed to support our motorized logistics tail, especially with the supply-heavy American style of war.

Then we were surprised by a couple million fanatical Chinese troops who were all veteran light infantry with little artillery support and an oldschool animal-train based supply train that had been used to fighting in China where infrastructure wasn't a thing.  They hit our spread out, end of the logistics train units who thought the war was basically over as the North Korean military had basically ceased to exist.  

While we ended up being pushed back to the South - remember, where infrastructure existed to support our military - we still SLAYED and STACKED chicom bodies.  Sure, we got our ass handed to us and were pushed out of the North, but we were far too aggressive, ignored blatant warning signs, and had pushed past our logistics train limit.  


Vietnam - our logistics tail was far superior to the North's.  However, our losing the war was completely laid on the inability for us to prosecute the war in the North.  We could have ended the war in a matter of months early on if we were willing to take the war into the North.  Instead, we gave the Viet Cong sanctuaries - North Vietnam, Cambodia - where they could move supplies - via bicycle - to keep the war going.  With Chinese and Soviet support, the North was able to keep funding and supplying their viet cong units in the south.  

We won every battle, but lost the war because of our lack of willpower to take the fight to the enemy.  However, again, I will point out that the North was able to keep all of it's insurgency units supplied and fed during the war.  They had their own logistics system.  Same as the Chinese in the Korean war - they had their troops well supplied and fed for the kind of war they were fighting.  

Iraq / Afghanistan - Definitely our logistics support was far superior.  We had a large portion of troops living in A/C'd FOB's with catered food for god's sake.  However, again - this wasn't a war.  (NOT A CUT ON THE GWOT GUYS.  I'm walking a fine line here. Yes I know yall went off to war, that's not what I'm saying.)  We were fighting an insurgency after the initial invasion.  

We lost the war from a lack of guidance and leadership that got us into an insurgency war in the first place, then a lack of will to actually finish the war - because, to be honest, we are Americans and what it would take to eradicate a muslim insurgency isn't something we would support.  We are seeing that in Israel / Gaza right now.  

However, for the logistics support - the other side definitely had their own logistics support.  They had their needs supplied, even with the great attempts we were doing to stop their access to things like explosives and such.  You have to realize it comes down to that there are differences in what each side needs logistically.  We fight a VERY heavy logistics tail style war.  The other side not so much - especially the Afghans.  They acquired a large part of their logistics locally, especially in the rural areas + the huge stockpile of ex-soviet weapons they had stored up from the Soviet withdraw.  

Neither of these wars revolved around lack of logistics, other than the Korean war when both sides pushed too far north and south.  Both sides had adequate logistics to support what they needed.  Our issues in Vietnam and the GWOT was getting involved in an insurgency based war in the first place, then not having the will to....do what was needed to end the insurgency.