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How To Survive An Urban Environment
After A Societal Collapse – Kevin Reeve
Urban Survival
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Chet 1:
Kevin:
Chet:
Kevin:
Chet:
Dave:
If you are living in an urban setting, and are interested in urban survival, our next
speaker is someone you’re going to want to pay close attention to. Part of that is
because of the intro I’m about to give him. He’s got quite the few credentials,
and he teaches urban survival and a lot of other things, at his school over at
onPoint Tactical. This is Kevin Reeve, and he is the founder and director of
onPoint Tactical, the leading provider of training in urban survival and escape and
evasion.
onPoint has trained many members of elite military groups, such as U.S. Army
special forces, U.S. Navy Seals, MARSOC, Air Force pararescue, Navy and Air
Force SERE instructors, as well as members of law enforcement such as the DEA,
U.S. Marshall services, ICE … is that ice, I don’t know how to pronounce all of
these specialty group places … Secret Service, and the CIA.
In addition to urban skills, Kevin teaches wilderness survival, tracking, SERE, point
man training, scout and related skills. You’re probably starting to see he’s
possibly qualified for this topic. Prior to founding onPoint Tactical, Kevin worked
for one of the top tracking schools in America. He spent eight years as a director
at this program, and is responsible for the instructor staff there. Kevin also
worked at Apple computer for five years, doing organizational development and
executive coaching, as well as platform training and curriculum development.
Kevin has also been involved in scouting for over 35 years, including 25 years as a
scout master.
Kevin’s TV and movie credits include work on the film “The Hunted”, History
Channel’s “After Armageddon”, National Geographic’s “When Aliens Attack”,
Court TV’s “Trackdown”, “The Chase”, as well as features about Kevin and the
school on G4’s “Attack of the” … shoot, what does that say?
“Attack of the Show”.
The show … it’s misspelled on my notes here … as well as features about Kevin
and the school on G4’s “Attack of the Show”, and ABC News “Nightline”.
Welcome, Kevin Reeve, to the program. Welcome to the survival summit.
Thank you very much. Happy to be here.
Glad to have you. Also want to mention, my brother’s here with us. Hello, bro.
Welcome.
Hey, hey.
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Chet:
This is my brother, Dave Womach. This is one of the first presentations you guys
are catching, so he’s here as well. We are excited, Kevin. This is … I think you
possibly might be qualified. Some of these projects look like … I watched a few
of them. I know after “Armageddon”, I remember watching that one. I didn’t
realize you had quite the movie background before we lined up this interview, or
the TV background. I don’t know if we’ll have time to get into that, but … go
ahead.
Kevin:
We’ve done three or four shows for History, and it’s all been a lot of fun, actually.
Chet:
Very cool. What do … this is about urban survival, right? In societal collapse
situations … I’ve seen some of the stuff that you guys do over at onPoint Tactical,
and it’s very cool. I hadn’t seen some of the videos, but I am excited about
learning about this topic, and what … let’s just dive in, and I’ve got my pen ready.
Kevin:
Yeah, I’m ready if you are. I want to talk about priorities, just kind of want to get
people thinking about, in the event of an event, what should they be doing?
What should they be thinking about? How should they be prepared? We’ll start
off with two rules. Rule number one is, training trumps gear. That’s our
company motto. That essentially means that it’s better to be trained than
supplied.
Some people would take exception to that, but gear can be improvised for … you
can adjust your tactics to do without it, but you can’t do that with skills. You
have to be trained. Gear can be replaced; skills cannot. Training trumps gear is
our first assumption, and that is that you better get some training. Just having a
bunch of food in your basement isn’t … and guns and ammo … isn’t the same as
knowing how to use it.
Our second rule is that community trumps training. We have this perception in
our society that Johnny Rambo is going to … that we’re going to be the lone
survivalist, up in the mountains, fighting off a golden horde. It’s very difficult to
survive alone; almost impossible. There are too many skills for one person alone,
and too many hours in the day for one person to be doing all the work.
Chet:
There’s this thing called sleeping that has to be done.
Kevin:
Exactly. You can’t be on guard and cook the food and do the medical treatment;
you can’t do it all. Economies of scale are going to be very helpful. One of my
favorite books on this topic is “Defiance”, about the Bielski brothers in the
Ukraine. It was made into a movie with Daniel Craig. The point they make in the
book, which wasn’t really made in the movie, is that the large communities …
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Chet:
Kevin:
there were several other communities in the forest with them … and the large
communities survived where the smaller ones were overtaken or overwhelmed.
People who tried to do it alone, or tried to do it in small groups, did not survive.
The economy of scale helps you achieve safety and security.
Those are our two basic premises. Now we’re going to talk about priorities, I
think, if that’s OK. First …
If I could stop you for a second on communities. Is there certain minimum goals,
or certain amounts that are too many? People might be thinking … does a couple
of neighbors work in certain situations? When do you want to have that?
I made a list. If you would care, I can read the list of the people I would want to
invite to my retreat. I call it the dream team. These are not in any particular
order, but they are some set of concepts of what you need. I would say if you
were having … if you had a small community, you’d want a couple of experienced
special forces soldiers. I’d probably want some long-range recon experts, maybe
sniper … scout sniper and range sniper types. I definitely would want a doctor; a
general practitioner, surgeon, someone who can remove an appendix or
amputate a leg. I want nurses to provide care. I want a dentist. I want a farmer;
someone who knows how to grow food. I want a communications specialist …
somebody who knows how to prepare, store, can, dehydrate, smoke, freeze,
whatever. I want a rancher; someone who knows how to care for animals longterm, someone who’s good at animal husbandry. Not just a vet; a vet’s on the
list, too, but … A blacksmith, a gunsmith, a veterinarian, an inventor or a
scientist, a mechanic.
As you listen to this list you’re thinking, “That’s a lot of people.” Yeah. A
carpenter; I want a bootlegger … somebody who can operate a still. We might
need to create our own fuel. Somebody who can grow, harvest pain medicines
or drugs, such as opium, poppies and marijuana. I know that sounds strange to
some people, but the reality is, when the grid is down and there is no longer
Vicodin being manufactured, you will have long-term pain management issues
that you will have to address.
I would want a hunter … someone who’s an expert hunter and trapper … an
herbalist. I know this one sounds funny, but a sanitation engineer. When you
have 30 or 40 people all producing human waste, you have to have some way to
deal with it. You have to have somebody who can deal with dead bodies. A
seamstress, a leather worker, a cobbler, a butcher, a logistician.
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Chet:
Kevin:
Chet:
Kevin:
Chet:
Kevin:
That’s kind of an overview. If I were building a community, those are the people I
would want to invite. I put musician/comedian, too, just for giggles there.
Giggles help, though, I would imagine.
It does. You might not think that’s a high priority, but it really would be. Just
being able to maintain mental health helps. The community is a …
I was just going to say, what about going too big?
It’s hard to imagine you can go too big, simply … the only issue would be the
bearing capacity of the land. Can the land bear the people? Can you grow food
enough to supply them, and do you have enough food to last you until you can
supply them? If I were building a community, I would be on the lookout for the
people that I think could really help.
That was my thinking about it, in any event. It’s just a list of medical
professionals, defense professionals … and as we talk about the priorities, that
will make sense.
In any urban event … and it doesn’t really matter what the event is. The event
could be an earthquake, it could be the EBT card shutdown like we had here a
few months ago, or a few weeks ago. It could be … there’s any number of … just
a general loss of civility in an urban environment. With the density of
population, you’re almost certain if there’s a disruption in the delivery of goods
and services, to experience the loss of civility. Loss of civility is a government
euphemism for riots.
Whatever the event is … it could be natural disaster, it could be … within hours of
the issue … I want to say hurricane, but it was … they call it something else in the
southern hemisphere and it escapes me … that hit the Philippines …
Typhoon?
Yeah, the typhoon, thank you. I guess that’s what happens. There was looting.
There was people robbing. It was crazy; it was instantaneous. We live in a
society that has a very thin veneer of civility. Whatever the event is that causes it
to peel away, once it goes, it’s going to be a very dangerous-looking place to be.
Cities are not safe, because of the density. So many people competing for very
few resources. The stores have, at best, a few hours’ worth of supplies, in the
event of an event. The infrastructure … the ability to fight fires … may be
compromised if there’s no fire. There’s all kinds of possibilities. When you start
setting priorities, they’re based on a universal set of needs here.
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Chet:
Kevin:
Chet:
Kevin:
I’ll just jump in, if that’s all right.
Let’s do it.
First priority is your immediate safety. That means if the building is on fire, get
out of the building. That means if somebody is shooting at you, jump behind
cover. That means if someone is chasing you, you may want to run. Whatever
the immediate danger is that’s been presented by this event, you need to
remove yourself from. Get away, as quickly as possible, and get to some place
where there is safety. It might be behind a rock wall. It might be something, just
getting out into the street away from downed electrical wires, or a car.
I just saw a video of a multi-car accident that was so amazing, and because
nobody even remotely slowed down until they were 15 feet away, it seemed,
there was a huge pileup. I saw a couple of people standing on the side of the
road, get completely taken out by a car that spun out and slide over and just
wiped them out. I thought, “Well, getting to a place of safety means not
standing near danger. That means getting up on the hill to the side of the road,
or off the road entirely.”
This is a really important thing. You’ve got to protect yourself right off the bat.
First priority, get to safety. I would say there are some skills required here, and
awareness skills are probably the most important; that’s the ability to see and
sense danger. Secondly is what we would call an action bias, which is the ability
to react to a situation without what we call normalcy bias. Normalcy bias is the
inability to grasp that the situation has changed, and that you must act. The
third thing I’d say you need is common sense, which isn’t all that common; which
is the ability to respond in a reasonable manner.
In terms of equipment needed, legs are probably your most important priority.
You’ve got to be able to move. My second skill is to be able to do a medical
check. Once you’ve gotten yourself to a place of security and safety, you need to
run your hands up and down your legs and your arms and your chest, and see if
there’s anything sticking out that shouldn’t be, or any holes or leaks that
shouldn’t be there. In a really high-stress situation, you may experience an
adrenaline rush which will block pain receptors.
Isn’t that part of the military’s processes? After, I don’t know, an ambush …
forgive me if I’m forgetting terms and things.
Yes.
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Chet:
Kevin:
Chet:
Kevin:
Chet:
Kevin:
It’s … people are like, “That seems stupid. If I was hit by a bullet, wouldn’t I
know?” The answer is actually no, a lot of the time, they don’t know.
Not as often as you would think. You think you’re immediately safe, and reality is
… you think you’re OK, you probably won’t even be aware. You will have felt
something. I remember in “Forrest Gump” he talked about it being … feeling like
a bee sting. “Thought a bee stung me.” That was a bullet, but that’s how it
typically is.
I have a friend that was severely injured in combat, and had no concept. He was
focused on keeping everyone else alive. When he got them all to the aid station,
the nurse said, “All right, here’s your gurney,” and he said, “What do I need a
gurney for?” She reached down and picked up a mirror and held it up, and he
saw himself in the mirror and went out cold, right onto the gurney.
You really need to check that. Your medical skills are going to be very important;
basic first aid, advanced medical training. You need stress inoculation, to be
prepared for the horror and the gore of a gunshot wound. Most people … most
of us have only seen a minor cut bleed, and we really don’t have any concept of
what it looks like when two or three cups of blood pour out onto the floor. It’s
astounding, let alone …
How does someone go about preparing their mind for the stress inoculation?
Maybe you’re going to get into that, so maybe …
I think it’s really important that you expose yourself to realistic training. Really
good first aid training has what we call … when I was a kid, we called it realistic
first aid. When I was a scout master many years ago, I put my scouts through
something like that, where I set up a guy to be injured, and they thought he was
really injured. He had the … he had a piece of glass embedded in his arm, and he
was bleeding arterially with a little pump in his pocket, squirting out blood.
He was … sorry about that. He was laying on the trail, and they came running up
and saw him, and all of them about passed out. He was able to convince them
that he was seriously injured. It was a great learning experience for them. They
were exposed to that stress, and could not … they could not cope with that.
Where are places that people can go get that type of training, for those that have
no idea?
There are classes … we do a class every year called off-grid medicine, which
teaches those types of skills; teaches you how to do it. You can get any kind of
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Chet:
Kevin:
Chet:
Kevin:
combat medical training. There are a number of companies out there doing it,
and so I will say that there’s a number of places you can go to do it.
You’re looking for combat medical training?
That would be my guess, it’s some kind of … ours isn’t a combat medical course,
this is a grid-down course. It’s designed to teach you how to take care of
somebody when there is no higher care available, which I think is going to be
crucial when the grid goes down. We think, “We’ll just go to the hospital.” I was
talking to a medical professional in Los Angeles, and there are 10 million people
in L.A. County, and they have 93,000 hospital beds, according to this guy …
65,000 of which are filled at any given time. Which means for 10 million people,
you have a surge capacity of 30,000 beds.
If you think about that … if you think you’re going to go to the hospital and get
medical care, that’s a ridiculous concept. You need to be able to take care of
yourself in a grid-down scenario. You need to be able to do immediate
treatment, but you also need to think about getting some kind of long-term
medical training that would go beyond what you get. Essentially, EMT training or
paramedic training teaches you how to care for somebody, stabilize them, and
transport them to higher care. I’m talking about getting some training that
would include grid-down type medical treatment.
I would almost … would you say that, not that emergency medical training is bad,
because we currently live in a world where we can go get care, so you can still
save lives.
It’s absolutely great. I’m not denigrating paramedics or EMTs or their skills at all.
I’m just saying that … and they may be the very best people to have around when
the grid goes down, because they already understand physiology and what’s
going on with the body. I’m just saying it would be helpful to look at it from the
perspective of, “I don’t have any more pain medication. How can I help this
person manage their pain?” Or, “I have to … this person has been severely
injured. I have to amputate his leg. How do I do that?” Those are the kinds of
medical issues that I would suspect we’d have to deal with in a grid-down
scenario. Yeah, advanced medical training, I think is crucial.
The next priority; physical security. After you’ve gotten yourself back to a place
of safety, away from the immediate threat in the event of the event, and you’ve
checked yourself medically, now you have to arm yourself. It might be that you
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have to find an improvised weapon. You might have to bend down and pick up a
rock, because that’s all you’ve got.
Hopefully, if you’re in a state that still allows the freedom to carry a sidearm,
you’re able to take your gun out and you prepare yourself for defense if that’s
necessary. Once the grid goes down … once the event occurs … in certain areas,
there will be immediate response; immediate rioting, immediate looting,
immediate … it’s not going to be … in a lot of disasters, we go through kind of a
period of … a grace period of 24 hours, where people are pretty cooperative. In
certain low social cohesive neighborhoods, you’ll see instantaneous violence.
If you happen to be in one of those neighborhoods, you’d better be ready and
prepared to defend yourself; to provide physical protection to yourself.
From a skills perspective, I would say you need to have martial arts training,
blade skills, firearm skills. My question is this; if you are responsible for your
family’s safety, how can you in good conscience ignore their security needs? I
can’t. I can’t say, “I hope the police are here.” As everybody knows, when
seconds count, the police are minutes away.
Consequently, you have to think about “What do I need to defend myself?” I
carry materials in my car that are essential to protect myself when I’m out in the
car. I had an occasion a week and a half ago to get caught in the Virgin River
Gorge during a snowstorm accident. We were in our car, parked in the middle of
the road, for 10 hours, in sub-freezing weather; almost sub-zero weather. It was
very interesting, because while we were sitting there, I said, “Let’s do a quick
assessment of everything we have.”
We had bug-out bags that had everything we needed; sleeping bags, shelter,
cooking supplies, dehydrated food, water. We had weapons. We had a lot of
armament. We were prepared for whatever happened. As I walked … there was
a couple of guys walking around during this event in shorts and wearing flipflops. I was thinking, “It probably isn’t going to go real good for them if we’re
here for a long time.” Several vehicles ran out of gas, because they just ran their
engine to keep warm.
Those empty-hand skills, those blade skills, those firearm skills, and the gear
necessary for physical security, I think, are our responsibility. I don’t think we can
defer that to anybody else.
Our fourth skill has to do with communication; our ability to transmit information
to those who need to know. This is a security … this is really a making people feel
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Chet:
Kevin:
Chet:
Kevin:
Dave:
Kevin:
good kind of thing. In an emergency situation, morale is greatly affected by
communication. Your ability to stay calm and communicate clearly become very,
very important. Knowledge in various communication mediums; I have a HAM
radio I carry with me whenever I travel, and have little FRS radios for tactical
communication.
We have a communication plan set up that says, “Every night between 9 and 9:15
we’ll be on the following frequencies, so please monitor those.” At least you
communicate with family, loved ones, or whoever we need to establish.
Communication skills are very important, and the equipment needed are radios;
in this case, HAM radios.
We have a grandfather who was in World War II, and when we … when he shared
stories from back then, he was … the recurring them is that, “Boy, I wish we had
better coms, because we were just out in the dark so much of the time, not
knowing what was going on.”
Yeah, you get caught on the end of a line, or you have no idea what’s happening
back in the … it’s very, very frustrating. It’s very hard on …
Are you being told to run, or not, or where is the bad guys, right?
Yeah, exactly. “Hey, we got contact on the left side, but we’re on the right side,
so don’t worry. He’s got a flank on the …” It’s really nice to be able to
communicate tactically. From a morale perspective, it’s really nice to be able to
get in touch with the loved ones and tell them, “Hey, there was an event here..”
I was just down in L.A. for a couple days, and essentially was making
communication every night with family and saying, “Hey, here’s where we are.
Here’s what’s going on. Everything’s good.” If there were a disruption,
everybody would want to know. You can’t necessarily depend on your cell phone
for that, as much as you would like to.
I’m going to ask that, too. This is Dave here. We just had a really weird incident
in northern Idaho, where our cell tower and Internet was all shut off. I didn’t
know … I had no way of knowing if we were isolated or not. I turned on the HAM
radio, didn’t hear anything. I pulled out my satellite phone, and was able to call
my brother, who was a few hundred miles away, and find out that you guys
actually had signal. One more thing to maybe add to that is a satellite phone,
depending on your area.
That’s probably a little scary, isn’t it?
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Dave:
It was really weird. We couldn’t reach anybody, couldn’t check Facebook,
couldn’t go on line to entertain ourselves while we waited for this to get by.
Everything that we had become so accustomed to was shut down in a heartbeat.
I was like, “OK, is this the real deal?” Making one call on that satellite phone
made me realize, “OK, I don’t have to bug out. We’re good.”
Kevin:
You were unpacking your truck. One of the … I can’t underestimate how
important I think it is to morale to be able to communicate. I think a lot of us will
be suffering from severe Internet withdrawal, if that ever goes away. That will be
an issue; something to think about.
That’s our fourth priority, is being able to establish coms. Next, we need to think
about our physical well-being. By that I mean, do we have shelter? Do we have
water? Do we have warmth? Do we have food? These physical skills; can you
make a shelter if I give you a piece of tarp, or can you make one without
anything? Can you just go gather material from the land and do it? Can you find
an purify water? Can you start a fire? Can you obtain and prepare food? Those
physical skills are going to be important.
In an urban environment, you’re going to need some additional skills, I think.
These are kind of the basis of the urban escape and evasion class, in terms of
skills. You need to be able to escape from unlawful custody. Somebody is
holding you against your will; can you get away from them? How do you get out
of handcuffs or flex-cuffs or rope or wire; whatever you’re being tied up or
detained with … or duct tape, or any number of other things. Can you escape?
Second thing is … second skill that we teach in the urban classes, is lock-picking.
It’s not the second, but it’s one of the main ones. How do you get out of a
building that’s locked? How do you go through a building that’s locked? We
have a saying that everything I need to survive is in the city. In other words, if I’m
in L.A., I don’t have to go to San Diego to find survival stuff. It’s there, it’s just
locked up. When the grid goes down, being able to pick locks will be an essential
skill.
Chet:
Especially in more urban, right? There’s only more locks.
Kevin:
Yes, the more urban it is, the more likely it is. I’m not suggesting you have to
check your conscience. I try to live a very moral lifestyle, and consequently if
somebody … if I require a piece of gear that belongs to somebody else, I’m either
going to pay for it or return it to them. If I’m in a situation where I need a bike
and there’s one chained to the curb here and I know how to pick the lock, I’m
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Chet:
Kevin:
Chet:
Kevin:
Chet:
Kevin:
going to pick the lock and take the bike, and then return it when I’m done, if
possible.
I certainly wouldn’t steal the powered wheelchair from a guy who needs a
wheelchair; that’s not ethical.
You’re not going to hit the guy on the bicycle with a baseball bat and then take
the bicycle.
No, I’m not going to carjack somebody. There may be situations where that’s
appropriate but this is … a grid-down scenario probably would not be it.
I had a friend in Iraq who was surrounded by a … in the process of being
surrounded by a hostile crowd. He basically carjacked a guy, and made him drive
him to the green zone. When he got there, the guy he’d carjacked at the point of
a gun … his hands were shaking. He had wet his pants, and he was just … my
buddy was terrified … horrified … that he had caused this guy so much fear. The
funny end of the story is, he took out a $100 bill from his wallet … an American
$100 bill … and gave it to this guy. The guy looks at the $100 bill, kind of comes
out of his shock, and says, “I pick you up tomorrow. What time? I drive you
where you go tomorrow. What time I pick you up?”
That’s great.
I thought that was pretty … he got out of a very sticky situation. That’s an
extreme situation. I’m not suggesting that that’s what you need to do. I’m
suggesting that you may … if you were being surrounded by a mob, you may have
to do something like that.
It also brings up a point. I know this isn’t necessarily escape and evasion, but I
guess that is … Chance Sanders was on talking … during another presentation
here on the survival summit, on escape and evasion, going into more details on
route planning and things of that nature. One thing he didn’t mention, that
seems to make sense here, is like the lock-picking could help you avoid that
hostile crowd. If you can go in one building and exit out the back …
Yes, and that’s exactly what I … I got asked once by a police officer. He said, “Hey,
you’re teaching people to break in.” I said, “No, I’m teaching them how to break
out.” If they use it for breaking in, I can’t help that, but the purpose of my
training these people, is to get through locked facilities; to get out of locked
facilities, to be able to transit through hostile environments without exposing
themselves.
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Chet:
Kevin:
Chet:
Kevin:
Chet:
Kevin:
Chet:
You also brought up a point that seems to make sense, is you might want to have
some tools on hand for those extreme … that $100 bill, for example. Those
bribery tools … I know that whenever I go to California, and I’m not … I live in
Washington State, so I don’t the concealed carry permits and all that. It’s down
in California. I make sure that I bring a couple silver coins, a couple gold coins,
and a little extra cash so that I could bribe my way onto whatever needs to be
bribed onto.
I carry … the stuff that I carry in my pockets; I have multiple knives. I have a
multi-tool. I have two or three different lock pick sets, because I think that’s one
of those things that I just use all the time. I carry a compass; I always have a
compass on me. I carry a lighter everywhere I go; I don’t go anywhere without
that. I carry a Chapstick. Ironically, Chapstick is good for keeping your lips soft,
but it’s also a fire starter, and a number of other things. I always carry $100 in
emergency cash. Frequently, my tier two bag … the bag I carry with me all the
time … has junk silver in it as well.
In terms of California, I can’t carry a gun there, which makes me feel very
insecure. I compensate by carrying knives.
Would you be able to shed some light real quickly on what your … what kind of
lock pick set you could recommend to people?
Yeah, I buy from a company … if you don’t mind the plug … me plugging them …
I don’t.
… called Southern Specialties, and I don’t know their Web site address, but if you
Google Southern Specialties, you’ll find it. They have a little folding jackknifetype set that I really like. They … people sometimes buy these 64-piece lock pick
sets and show up to class and go, “Check this out. I got 64 lock picks. Look at the
kit.” I’ll say, “There’s only four picks in here that show any sign of ware.” They’ll
go, “Yeah, those are the only four I use.”
I carry two picks and a tension wrench in my wallet, because I don’t need
anything else; that’s it. I carry a hook and a carry a rake.
Is there someplace that you can recommend people to get that kind of lock pick
training? Something I’ve been really interested in for a little while, but [inaudible
00:35:46] as of yet.
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Kevin:
Chet:
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Kevin:
I don’t know where you can get it stand-alone, but it’s part of the urban escape
and evasion class that we teach. We do a day of … about a half a day of lockpicking. It’s a really fun skill to learn.
How long does it take for somebody to learn just the basics, or enough to say … I
guess I shouldn’t say it’s the basics … but enough to be able to access 50 percent
of the locks?
By the time you’re done with the class, you’ll be opening about 80 percent of
what’s out there. It’s pretty interesting, because … I don’t want to denigrate
particular locks or types of locks, but the majority of locks … 80 percent of the
market … is controlled by a couple of lock companies, and those locks happen to
be very easy to pick.
That brings up a question, not that lock-picking is a skill that’s prevalent in our
society; or maybe I just … it is, and I don’t realize it. I suppose criminals would. It
brings up a point, since this is urban survival, is there a brand of locks that’s really
hard to pick, that maybe people should consider?
Yes, and I will not mention the locks that are easy to pick, but I’ll tell you that
whatever padlocks you have on your shed, and on your gear; replace them with
American Padlocks; American brand padlocks.
Is that the brand? They’re called American?
Yes. I have been working on American padlocks for a long time. I’ve picked a
few, and I have a friend that’s really good at picking them, but it’s still …
regardless of who … how good you are at picking, it still takes you 20, 30 minutes
minimum to get that done. That’s a long time to be exposed, picking a lock.
Whereas most of the other padlocks on the market, I can open in 15 seconds, at
most.
What about on doors of your house, and stuff like that?
Eighty percent of the locks in the country are one type brand, and most of the
time they get replaced after the burglary. There are … if you wanted to be very
high security, you would use a Medeco lock, but just a good Schlage lock that you
can get at Home Depot; they’re $40 or $50 versus $8 or $10 for the cheap ones.
It’s certainly worth the investment in a little bit better quality lock. If it takes me
five minutes to pick, versus 30 seconds, is probably worth … if I … if you’re
picking a lock, you’re exposed. You have to be where people can see you.
Consequently, you don’t want to hang out there a long time.
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Chet:
Kevin:
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I would imagine that you … if you were picking a lock … that you might know
something about locks, and you might move on to the next house that doesn’t
have the harder one to pick.
Absolutely. If I come to a house with Medeco lock, I think two things. I think,
one, he’s either got something really good locked up in there, or two, I’m just
going to move to the house that’s not. That’s the whole key of any kind of
security system is, harden the house to make it harder, so they move on.
There’s a lot of skills. Another skill that we teach is how to defeat the ignition of
cars.
Sorry, can I stop you, because you mentioned something else, before you go on
there. Sorry to interrupt you there.
No problem.
You mentioned the knives. There are ten knife reviews in every magazine I ever
read, and I know nothing about knives. I know a lot about firearms, but not
much about knives. For newly initiated to knives, what suggestions could you
give on what to look for? Maybe either your favorite brands, or the different
options that people should really think about, so they don’t waste money and
they make sure to get something of high quality.
Sure. I have a couple of … I’ll just kind of go through some stuff. I carry a neck
knife, made by Spartan. Spartan Blades, I think they’re one of the best
manufacturers out there. My pocket blade … I carry a folding pocket blade … is a
Spyderco. My criteria is that it has to be very thin, so that I can fit my hand in my
wallet while it’s clipped on my pocket. That’s just a funky priority, but it’s a utility
blade. It’s not necessarily a specific combat blade.
I carry the cold steel Braveheart behind my belt … behind my back … in my belt,
tucked in. I carry a CRKT Hissatsu, the folding version, which is a very effective
combat blade, in my left rear pocket. I have access with either hand, to a blade.
That’s four blades; that’s typical. Some people go, “You’re crazy.” I hear people
say, “You are so paranoid.” I go, “Yeah, I really am. Is there a problem with
that?”
I heard recently, too, that people have this false belief … it’s an illusion … that we
live in a society that’s civilized. I thought that was kind of a good reference to
have, that people …
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Kevin:
Look at it; I just read an article in “Rolling Stone” about Camden, New Jersey,
which is one of the worst cities in the country. What strikes you as you read it is
that the only reason people are not completely anarchic … why it’s not anarchy
there … is because there is a police force. If you remove fear of punishment from
our society, like happened in New Orleans after Katrina, when all the NOPD …
when a lot of the NOPD guys went home to take care of their families … which by
the way, I don’t blame them for. That’s what I would do. If there are no police,
and there’s no fear of punishment, what do people do?
That’s when acting out starts. That’s when the chaos and anarchy begins. L.A.
County again … I use this as … I do a lot of classes there, so I use this as an
example … has 10 million people. They have, counting everybody and every
police force that carries a shield, they have 22,000 sworn police officers. In that
same county, and among that same 10 million, there are about 160,000 to
180,000 gang members; 22,000 cops, 180,000 gang members. What’s going to
happen when that veneer peels away? Are you going to be able to call 911 and
get help? No. If you can’t provide for your own security, you are in deep trouble.
Chet:
How quickly did the police force go home in Katrina, for a reference?
Kevin:
About the day that they left, right before the hurricane hit, most abandoned
their posts. You say, “How could you do that? You’re sworn to protect.” They’re
not paying you enough to sacrifice your family. I’m not going to stay and defend
… I’ll use L.A. as an example. I’m not going to stay and defend the Rampart
Station or some police station in South Central, if my family’s in danger.
Chet:
I’ve also read that there’s roughly ten laws on the books that basically state that
even though law enforcement is sworn to protect, there’s about ten laws that
state that they are not legally required to, in one way or another.
Kevin:
Yeah, their job is to maintain the peace. It’s to keep society calm. It’s not to
protect me, as an individual. They have no obligation to protect me. If there’s a
burglary in my house, they are not obligated to come in and shoot the burglar.
They have no obligation for that. That is not part of their … the charter is to keep
society calm. It’s to maintain the peace.
Chet:
I think that’s another illusion we all … sorry to interrupt you.
Kevin:
We operate under the illusion that the police are there to protect us. There are
many who would … I have a number of friends in law enforcement, who are the
first to run towards the sound of gunfire. They’re good dudes, and that’s not
who I’m … I’m not denigrating them. I’m just saying, in a breakdown, don’t
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expect the police to be even capable of responding to the types of things we’ll be
facing.
You need to be able to take care of your own … yourself and your own people.
Part of that is having those physical skills. The physical skills, the preparedness
skills, and having some basic gear. I carry lock picks everywhere I go, but if I don’t
have lock picks, I can make lock picks out of a couple of paper clips. I can pick the
same locks, just not as fast. Once you understand these things, it becomes quite
easy to make it functional, to make it work.
Next, is transportation. I’ve got to figure out how to get from where I am, either
to my home, or to a bug-out location, or some other place of greater security,
whatever that is. Part of that is knowledge of terrain. That means you really
need to have maps and know routes and know neighborhoods. You need to
know demographics, and you need to be able to look at a particular
neighborhood and say, “You know what? That’s probably not the best
neighborhood for me to transit.”
If, for example, I was in Santa Monica … let me go further south. Let’s go to
Marina Del Rey, and I needed to get to I-15, through L.A.County. If I go straight
east to I-15, I have to go through South Central L.A., and then East L.A. The
problem is, I don’t blend in that neighborhood. It’s not a good choice for me. A
good choice for me would be to go north through Hollywood Hills and over
through Pasadena to get there, because I’m far more likely to fit in those
environments.
I had a couple guys in the class recently, one of whom was African American, he
said he could go through South Central. He might have more problems if he … he
could go through South Central, because that’s a neighborhood he could blend
in. You have to have knowledge of terrain. You have to know the areas in the
neighborhoods that are safe, not safe, and high-crime areas, and so forth. That’s
very important, understanding …
Chet:
Are there resources available that let you know where those are? For example, I
go up north to Seattle often, and I don’t know the demographics of all the
neighborhoods.
Kevin:
Let me give you … let me tell you, you have to Google this to find it. It’s called
taxonomy of transitions. If you go, and if you Google that, it’ll take you to a
Tumblr Web site, and I don’t know the Web site number or address or anything.
If you Google taxonomy of transitions, you’ll find the Web site.
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Chet:
Kevin:
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This Web site has a scattergram based on census date, so people self-identified
their race by location. It shows you the demographic maps of every major city in
America. I shouldn’t say every major city; pretty much every large city. It would
be pretty much every large city in California; you’d have L.A., San Diego, Fresno,
San Jose, Fremont, Oakland … you have all of the major areas, and it shows you
the demographics. It shows you … blue neighborhoods on these maps represent
predominant … represent neighborhoods where people have self-identified as
being black. Asians are identified in green, so you can see Chinatown very clearly
in the San Francisco map.
You can see … what’s fascinating is to look at a city like Chicago, or even Detroit.
Detroit’s probably the most stark of any city … and see how bifurcated the city is
based on race. In Detroit, if you look at the map, there’s a street called Eight
Mile. North of Eight Mile is entirely red, which is the white demographic. South
of Eight Mile is entirely blue, which is the black neighborhood. It is as stark a
separation as you can imagine.
Having knowledge of demographics can be a huge aid in planning a route. That
taxonomy of transition is a great place to look for help. You also need road maps.
You need to understand the transportation systems. You … another skill we
teach in the urban class is how to defeat the door locks and ignitions on cars, so
that you can appropriate a car when you need it.
Again, I have issues with taking … stealing cars … without making sure that the
person is compensated, or understands that I’m doing it. In the event of an
event, and I have to get home to my family to protect them, I might be willing to
find an old car … maybe one that’s a little bit easier to start than the current …
newer cars are impossible, so you have to pick an older car … and requisition that
for the time.
That’s … I consider that to be another important urban skill. Again, if I’m being
pursued by a mob and I can grab a car and run, I’m going to probably do it. I’ll
make good on it later.
Yeah, it’s not like you don’t have the license plate. You can look them up, right?
Yes, take it back when you’re done. Transportation is really important. Being
able to move through the city and locate shelter as you need it; very important.
How … what are the things people should look for as they look for shelter? Are
there better ones, worse ones?
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Kevin:
Chet:
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Kevin:
We spend a fair amount of time in the urban class looking at the urban
environment. One of the things you look for is abandoned space, or dead space.
Places in a building that is … parking garages, for example, sometimes have
construction space that by the virtue of the layout is never utilized. There’s just
dead space. Sometimes it’s empty industrial space. A lot of times you’ll find
that; like in Philly, we have a row of about 10 miles of empty factories along the
river, and empty warehouses, which can provide you with good shelter. Again,
lock-picking will be essential for getting into those spaces.
Is there currently … I don’t know … a homeless population that lives in those
places? I’ve seen documentaries …
One of the issues with abandoned buildings is that they’re seldom abandoned.
We were doing an advanced urban escape and evasion class in Philly a couple
years ago, and we came to a factory that was locked up. It had a chain through
holes drilled in the door. It had chain and a lock. We picked the lock, went
inside, and reversed the chain so that the lock was on the inside, and spent the
night in that building.
During the night, someone came to the building expecting to be able to get in,
found their lock reversed and realized somebody else was in there, and they
were disgruntled. They were not happy that somebody had invaded their space.
Yeah, you … one of the issues … and the homeless populations are a great source
of information. Any advanced urban escape and evasion class that we run in L.A.
and Philly, one of the requirements is that you go talk to homeless people, and
find out where they go, how do … where do they like to sleep? Where do they
get food, and where do they find restaurants, and where do they … so that you
have some understanding of how the people who are already on the street, are
doing it. It’s really helpful.
Any tips you could offer in that, or lessons you learned in talking with the
homeless, whether some aren’t right in the head, and should be avoided?
Yeah, one of the things I always suggest is that you put something solid between
you and the person that you’re talking to, because they are … there are a lot of
drug-addled and just mentally ill people. As you approach somebody and engage
in conversation, I usually walk up … some of them pan-handled me, and I’ll give
them 50 cents and I’ll say, “Hey, you know what? I’m just out on the street
myself. Where do you go?” If they’re not addled, you’ll know. If there’s any
question in your mind, I always put a newspaper box or street pole or something
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Chet:
Kevin:
kind of between us, so that I have enough reactionary gap … a large enough
reactionary gap … that I can counter whatever they have in mind.
You do have to be very careful. We were just doing work in Santa Monica, which
has probably the largest homeless population of any city in America. We were
out at 10 o’clock at night, and the homeless people outnumbered the regular,
not homeless, about four to one. At 2 o’clock in the morning, they outnumbered
them about 16 to one. That’s it; that was all that was out. It’s really intriguing to
spend time in that environment, and see how these people live, and learn that.
A great source of knowledge.
Do you ever … do you teach blending in with them, as a way to get more
cooperation? Or are they just pretty cooperative people?
Again, part of the urban class is about how to blend in an urban environment.
We talk about three different types of kind of disguises, if you were. One of
them is what we call the untouchables, which are the homeless people; the
panhandlers, the crack heads, the people who live on the street. It’s a really
good way of disguising yourself, if you can do it. There’s a lot to it. If you can do
it, it’s a good way of disguising yourself, but it limits your access. Homeless
people are not welcome in stores or restaurants or hotels, so there’s a lot of
places you can’t go.
The second category we call the invisible man, and these are people who belong
in the urban environment; the delivery guy, it’s a bike messenger, it’s the broom
and dustpan and apron person. It’s the building supervisor, it’s the construction
worker with his orange safety vest and hard hat. There are dozens of … we call
them anonymous authority figures; people who have some reason for being
there, that we just don’t question. Consequently, they’re invisible to us.
I have used a hard hat and a safety vest dozens of times, and never been
challenged, and gone and done penetration testing on buildings and so forth,
and nobody ever looks at you. We had a couple of guys in a class walk through a
construction site, pick up a hard hat and a vest … each of them, from the site
there … they had a big box of them there for people who were coming onto the
site … they walked through and out the other side of the building site. It was a
skyscraper being built. They had a … one guy had a radio, the other guy had a
clipboard. They walked into a building … the largest, tallest building in this city …
and told the receptionist they were there to inspect the elevator.
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Chet:
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The receptionist gave them the key to the elevator. They went over, took the
elevator up to the elevator shed on the roof, and have pictures of themselves in
the hard hat and safety vest, with the city in the background.
That’s a great story. Obviously, there’s a lot to this, but it really helps open up
people’s minds. You think urban, and you’re like, “Oh no, I just … I’m trapped.”
Not so, if you just know a lot of this.
I’ll tell you what; if I lived in the city anymore … I don’t now … but I would carry a
hard hat and a safety vest in the trunk of the car, and some work boots; throw
that on, and people just ignore you.
That’s … I said the seventh skill is the ability to establish community. This is social
skills; to motivate others and give them hope, to listen to their needs, to make
hard decisions when the time comes. There’s great examples of great
communities out there, but it’s tough to learn. It’s about emotional intelligence.
Did I … I’m sorry here. Did I miss the third type of disguises? There’s
untouchables, the invisible man …
Yeah, the third … I’m sorry … is called the gray man.
Thanks.
The gray man is the person who is so ordinary that they don’t stimulate anything
in your mind, because you don’t notice them. This is the hardest to do, but it’s
the most effective. There are people who move around the edge of our
consciousness in an urban environment … people who walk down the sidewalk
all around us, all the time … there’s not a ton of them, but there are people who
we never see, because there’s nothing remarkable about them; nothing that
stimulates us to notice them. It’s … they’re hard to discover, but once you see
them, that’s the most powerful disguise.
What kind of characteristics would you suggest for somebody who wanted to try
to be the gray man?
I am … I can’t do it, because I’m 6’2” and I weigh 245 pounds. I’m too big.
People remember big; “That’s a big dude.” Average size; 5’8”, 5’9” maybe to
5’11”, average weight 160 to 175 pounds. Nothing remarkable in their hair, they
don’t have a big nose, they don’t have ugly teeth, they don’t have anything that
anybody would remember. Tend to be typically males in their 30s and 40s, make
the best gray man. There’s a … they dress in grays and browns. They dress in
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Chet:
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earth tones; nothing … there’s nothing fancy, there’s no bling, there’s nothing on
them. They’re not wearing a Rolex; they’re just normal, 100 percent.
Once you see them, you’re just astounded that they are there, and that you’ve
never been able to really notice that person before.
Very interesting.
Those three are your best hopes for blending in and moving through an
environment. Of the three, the gray man’s the most powerful, but the hardest to
pull off.
A lot to think about.
Yes, a lot to think about. If you can establish community, if you can be a leader,
chances are you’ll be able to pull things together and survive. The big issue in
the urban environment is knowing when to go; when to get out. If it’s a slow
descent, and you have warning, then you get out ahead of it. If there’s a mass
evacuation, your chances of getting out are pretty slim.
When you say … sorry, go ahead. I must have a delay on my end. I feel like I’m
interrupting everybody.
No, go ahead, please.
When you say … you said something about it being … if you’re in an urban area,
and it happens slowly, get out; what does that time frame look like? I recently
got back out of Orlando, because I felt like it was slowly getting much worse, and
I was isolated there. I wanted to be back in a good area. How … what is the
time line for somebody, when you say slow versus fast?
If it’s an event, like … I’ll give you an example. Hurricane Rita hit …it was right
after Katrina … it hit Houston; Galveston and Houston, as I recall. Everybody
waited until the morning the hurricane was scheduled to hit, and then tried to
get on the freeway and leave Houston, which turned the freeway between
Houston and Dallas into a parking lot the entire way. People sat in their cars for
about three days … two to three days … because there was nowhere to go. There
was gridlock up ahead. People sat in their cars, they ran all the gas out of their
cars, because they were hot and the air conditioning … they needed air
conditioning. Once the gas was out of their cars, then the road was blocked. It
was a disaster. It was the worst evacuation you can imagine.
You know what? They knew for three days that Hurricane Rita was coming. They
just chose to wait until the third day. If you have … if I hear there’s a hurricane
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Chet:
coming, I might just take a little vacation and go visit Aunt Mildred up in Dallas, if
I’m in Houston.
I had a couple of students in the class who waited until the third day, but they
had purchased almanacs … state almanacs that had county roads and secondary
roads, tertiary roads, and they developed a route that took them out through the
country, on dirt roads; they had to ford a river, a stream. It was certainly not
main highways. They made it to Dallas in four hours which is, on a good day,
that’s a good time; when everybody else that took the freeway, was stuck on the
freeway. These guys figured out enough routes … they did a good enough job of
route selection to have made it out. If they’re going to evacuate, you probably
want to do that in advance. Check out a good route.
The answer to your question, which is “How do you know when a neighborhood
is getting too unsafe?”, you’ll probably have a pretty good idea. You had some
idea that things were not going well in Orlando, I assume, right?
Yeah. For me … this is for people, I guess, to compare it to … I went to the gas
station a mile from my house, forgot my wallet, turned around and grabbed the
wallet and went back to the gas station. Because I forgot my wallet, I walked in
about 30 seconds after somebody tried to rob the place, dropped their gun,
picked it up and freaked out and ran. I walked in; you could feel something
happened, so I asked. This lady looked like a teacher, and she was freaked out.
The guy behind the counter was like, “Oh no, it happens all the time.” I was like,
“OK, well, if it happens all the time a mile from my house, it probably shouldn’t
be good.”
Another thing we had … my wife and I had just had our child. This … you talk
about knowing your neighborhood, and we had a black girl come by. There’s not
a whole lot of black kids in the neighborhood, but there’s some. I hadn’t ever
seen this girl before, and she said, “Can I come in to use the bathroom? I’m
pregnant.” I thought, “That’s kind of weird.” Having just gone through the whole
pregnancy thing, I get that when you’ve got to go, you’ve got to go. I also get
that when you’ve got to go, you just … my wife just wouldn’t go wherever she felt
like going, because she knew nobody was going to give her crap.
I thought that was kind of weird. She looks down at my great big German
Shepherd, and kind of looked back at me. I was like … I looked at her and I said,
“Are you serious?” She’s like, “Yeah, I’m … it’s … I’m still too far from the next
bathroom.” I’m like, “You know, I’m sorry, you need to leave. This is just kind of
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weird.” I shut the door, and I went in and told my wife. I almost cried; I’m like,
“Am I that much of an asshole? Did I just really turn away this pregnant chick?”
Sure enough, she tried the same scheme a few houses down. Nobody was
home. They broke in, and they stole everything. That was …
She was what you would call the forerunner there. She came over to check out
the house, see what you had inside, and then they do a strongarm on you. Yeah,
that’s a real common scam yeah. Orlando’s a crazy place. We ran a class down
there for some guys from the special ops community, and had a really funny
experience there, and then a really scary experience.
I went into a neighborhood on my way … I was just transiting from Orange
Blossom Trail Boulevard, and I ended up going into a neighborhood they call the
OBT.
I know it.
Apparently, that’s not a good neighborhood.
No.
We pulled up on the corner there, and everybody started asking me if I wanted
to buy crack, and I went, “I’m in the wrong place.” I got out of there as quick as I
could. We were driving down Orange Blossom Trail … we had just captured one
of our students during the exercise, and had handcuffed him and put him in the
trunk. We were stopped in front of the Florida Mall, and it’s five lanes across in
each direction, and I’m surrounded by 100 cars.
All of a sudden, the trunk pops open, this guy climbs out with one handcuff
hanging off his wrist, slams the lid, looks in the rear view mirror, and flips me off
and takes off running, and leaves me sitting there with this other guy that was
helping me run the class. I said, “Well, I hope you have a lawyer, because we’re
going to jail.”
He took off running, and he made an escape. That was the way the game was
played. In that particular setting, I was pretty sure we were going to get phoned
in. Nobody called it in.
Was that at the Magic Mall, right across from the sheriff’s department?
Mmhmm.
That’s not a good area.
Yeah, there was law enforcement all over the place. Nobody called it in.
That’s very weird.
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Kevin:
You see a guy get out of the trunk with a handcuff on, and run away, and you
don’t call it in? Wow. We were pretty surprised, because we thought for sure we
were going to have to explain ourselves, but no.
Chet:
That brings up a question I wrote down, and you mentioned it way early on, and I
didn’t ask it. Since it’s right here again … you mentioned the first skill … I don’t
know if it was the first, or maybe it was the second … was being able to
overcome the normalcy bias. You just described that no one was able to
overcome it. They’re like, “That can’t have just happened,” and so no one called
it in.
Kevin:
That’s it.
Chet:
What I meant to ask was, how can people help to … themselves … overcome it? I
know personally for me what it was, was when I started concealed carrying, and I
realized that I actually could do something about the things around me. I started
paying attention to those things, where before where I really knew I couldn’t,
because I’d never trained myself any skills to be able to handle anything anyway,
so why pay attention? Kind of was where I was at mentally, before I was conceal
… decided to …
Kevin:
That’s a great educator. Suddenly you realize, when you’re carrying concealed,
that you have a tremendous responsibility, that you may not have otherwise,
because you have the ability to help and intervene. That’s a serious thing. You
have to take that seriously.
The answer to your question about normalcy bias is that the key is situational
awareness. They key is paying attention to your environment to the degree that
you see the changes, before they actually go. We call these concentric rings. Any
time there’s an event, there’s some kind of an indicator. It’s a shock wave that
goes through the environment. If you are attendant to the shock wave, as that
event begins to unfold, then you are prepared to respond.
Most of the time, people are so involved in … one of the main security lessons
that we teach is, to put your cell phone away anywhere but in your home or in
your office. When you’re in any kind of transition, going from the hotel lobby to
the car park, or from the … to the taxi stand, for businessmen in particular …
you’ve got … you can’t be texting, because you have no situational awareness.
You can’t be talking on the phone, because you have no situational awareness.
The answer is … one of the most important things to do is learn how to stay in
the moment; to stay focused on what’s happening around you, so that you see
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Chet:
Kevin:
Chet:
Kevin:
Chet:
Kevin:
those concentric rings, those disturbances, as they radiate out from the source.
That helps you overcome normalcy bias.
Do you have anything … my brother and I like to play a game with each other to
help us keep on our toes where, when we are in an environment, one of us will
randomly say, “All right, where are the two exits?” or things like that, that just
help you stay on. Do you offer … we just came up with that. I don’t even know if
it’s a good idea, but …
Yeah, we play a game in class called Kim’s game; which is, we’ll flash a picture up
on the wall and say, “What happened here?”, and you get five seconds to figure it
out. Then you have to give me an analysis, and it forces you to do a really quick
assessment. Is there danger here, or is there no danger? What’s the event that
just occurred? Why are the people moving in this direction? It really helps, over
time, to play that game and really gets you noticing things that you would not
notice before. Kind of a …
There’s a scene in the very first Jason Bourne movie where he’s sitting in a
restaurant with Mila, and he starts talking about all the things he’s noticed.
That’s kind of the objective, is to get you to the point where you say, “Yeah, this
guy can handle himself. There’s an exit here, so …” Part of situational awareness
is doing threat assessment. Part of it is studying the exits. Part of it is paying
attention to disturbance and interaction. There’s a whole thing.
I wrote an article about it not too long ago on my blog, and it really addresses
kind of the basics of, how do you pay attention?
Great. That brings up a … I remember that scene, so I have a question for you. It
also brings up in mind, maybe besides the exits, Chance Sanders was talking
about the best types of cars that you could hijack, those sorts of things. When
you pull into a parking lot, trying to find that one that you could best hijack, if
you needed to, just as a way to stay on.
In that movie, one of the things that he says is he knew the best car that most
likely had a gun stashed in it. Do you happen to … was that just movie theater, or
do you look for the …
Look for the Texas license plate.
Texas license plate.
I’m just kidding; I don’t know. It’s … here in the states, it’s a hard … that’s a hard
question. I don’t know. Certainly in the area that I live in, there’s a good chance
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Chet:
Kevin:
Chet:
Kevin:
Chet:
Kevin:
that any number of vehicles will have a pistol in the glove box. That’s a common
thing.
Maybe just kind of thinking out loud; look for the ones that have an NRA sticker
on the back, or …
For sure. I do the same. One of the things I try to encourage people to do is not
advertise those kinds of things on their vehicle, because it draws attention, first,
of law enforcement, and second, of people who think, just like that, that “That
guy’s an NRA guy. He’s probably got a gun, so I’m going to go break into his car.”
This is part of being the gray man. Part of being a gray man is not drawing
attention to yourself with bumper stickers. You might think those kinds of things,
but it’s probably not a good idea to advertise it.
Right. Getting back real quick to skill sets and developing here, I’m actually
looking at LockPickTools.com, and trying to get a little bit more of an
understanding of that … I guess whole area … and to particularly look at
handcuffs. Is there one particular type of handcuff key that you would
recommend somebody keeps on them, or would you recommend that they
have?
Another Web site I would recommend is called SerePick … S-E-R-E Pick.com. It’s
run by a good friend of mine, Matt Fiddler. Matt is … he is just an amazing lock
picker. He sells nylon handcuff keys. They’re some kind of composite handcuff
keys that you can sew in your clothing as a button that you can hide. They’re
non-metallic, so they don’t show up on metal detectors. They’re very, very
effective at hiding … at being hidden on your person.
He has a bunch of other escape from custody stuff that’s just remarkable. Most
…more than likely, you’ll say … handcuff keys are standard. The handcuff keys for
my Peerless will open my Smith & Wessons, which will open my Hiatt-Thompson
handcuffs; they’re all the same. All handcuff keys are identical. If you have a
handcuff key of any kind, you’re good to go. I carry one on my key ring all the
time. But …
I know they’ve got some that are long and stick-like, versus the traditional
handcuff key, and I didn’t know if there was any advantage to one.
Yeah, but the mechanism’s the same. It’s just made to look like a [inaudible
01:14:221] to fit in your pocket a little differently. Most of them … the
mechanism’s always the same. The nylon SEREPick ones are easy to hide, and
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keep hidden. He has a bunch of products that he develops for special operations
folks that he doesn’t offer publicly, but they’re essentially those kinds of things
that are really well hidden. He’s definitely worth looking at; SEREPick.com. You’ll
see some pretty cool stuff, for escape.
Chet:
I’m looking at it now, and this is very, very cool.
Kevin:
He’s been through my training, and he and I were on … we worked on a TV show
for History together, and he’s just a great guy; super guy.
Chet:
Kevin, I know we’re running towards the end of our time here. What … any final
thoughts you’d like to give people? I’m not looking at your outline, so if you have
a point or two, or …
Kevin:
Yeah, what I want to say is, the responsibility for caring for your family ultimately
falls upon you. Nobody else is going to do it. The government is not interested
in preserving your family. They’re interested in preserving society. To be honest
with you, they’re interested in preserving a tax base. If you are in a situation …
and it doesn’t matter if it’s a personal event, or if it’s a nationwide event … it
could be just a city event. Whatever the event is, you need to be prepared to be
self-reliant. You need to be prepared to take care of you, and take care of
yourself and transit yourself back to safety with your family, and take care of
them.
Don’t expect the government to help you. I love the … one of the great lessons
of Katrina was that there were 60,000 people who went to the Superdome
expecting salvation. They didn’t get it. They got not good treatment, and I … it
was a bad scenario, a bad situation. If you put yourself … so, one of our rules is,
never go to the Superdome. No matter what the situation is, don’t go to the
Superdome. It won’t go well for you.
That means, if you leave yourself at the mercy of the government, you’re at the
mercy of a faceless bureaucracy who cares nothing for you as an individual. If
you’re going to be responsible, be responsible for yourself and your family.
Chet:
Great advice. I have one question that I probably should have asked earlier, but
that seems like it would be a good one, maybe. It’s always good in my head,
though not always when it comes out. As far as surviving in urban settings,
getting access to clean water … I know this is coming at the end of the
presentation, I should have asked it earlier … but any advice that you can give to
people on that. I’d imagine, what are the creative sources that people don’t
realize about? Obviously, they could stockpile some filters on their person.
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Kevin:
Chet:
Kevin:
Chet:
Kevin:
Anything that you want to add to that, and possibly even the procurement of
food, too. If you could touch on those two things as a final point.
There’s a lot of sources of water in the city, and a lot of sources of food. If you
walk down an alley, you’ll find a spigot. If there’s water in the system, that’ll be
available to you. If you can find a low point in the city, I guarantee you that there
will be … fire hydrant lines will have thousands of gallons of water under
pressure. If you can open a fire hydrant, you’ll have access to all the water you
possibly could use. Especially, like I say, a low point, a low area, where the gravity
feeds the fire hydrant, it will be available. That's when all the other sources of
water are out.
I would suggest that whatever you get … you can get water from fountains. You
can get water from rivers, streams, whatever … is probably not going to be
potable at that point. If you … you have three choices. You can filter, you can
boil, and you can chemical treat … chemically treat.
Boiling water is the simplest, it’s the easiest. It removes the biological poisons.
Bring the water to a boil and let it cool; it’s good to drink. That is … after Katrina,
that wouldn’t have been the case, because there was raw sewage and chemicals
and all kinds of other … besides biological contaminants, there was lots of
chemical pollution, so you would have to filter that to get rid of the heavy metals
and the chemical stuff.
Filtration; I carry a Katadyn pocket filter in my go bag. It does, I guess, 13,000
gallons, and it is probably the best filter made. Then chemical treatment; iodine
or bleach both will remove biologic contaminants from water, just a couple drops
per quart. The iodine doesn’t make the water taste very good, so that’s
something that a lot of times you’ll see in medical kits, first aid kits and so forth,
they have water Kool-Aid type drink supplements.
Possibly having … obviously, if you’ve thought this ahead of time, just go get
yourself a filter. Foraging for bleach in a caught-off-guard situation might be …
foraging or bartering or whatever you want to call it …
You’d probably find it at a grocery store or … and, or at the drug store. You can
get iodine at the drug store, and that works.
Or at gas stations, with that cleaning supplies for their bathrooms?
Yeah, lots of times if you go into a building … an office building … and look in
their janitorial closet, you’ll find a gallon of bleach, or some bleach product.
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Chet:
Kevin:
Chet:
Kevin:
Chet:
Kevin:
Probably the best that you can store for long term is pool shock, because it’s in
powder form and it doesn’t … the shelf life of regular Clorox is about three to six
months, but the shelf life of powdered pool shock is pretty indefinite.
Sounds good, cool. Any thoughts you wanted to add to food, or it’s everywhere
if know how to pick locks?
Food’s everywhere. One of the things we do in the urban class is, we teach you
how to catch urban chickens, which are pigeons; abundant … there’s abundant
fowl in the city, lots of pigeons. They’re pretty decent eating. You also have
sources of food through dumpsters. Dumpster diving is … and the homeless
people have really figured it out.
I had a guy in a class who was a vegan, and only wanted to eat … and this is an
advanced class. He went to Whole Foods and dumpster-dived at Whole Foods,
and got strictly organic, sort of quality vegan food. I got a kick out of that. I
thought it was pretty dang funny that he wasn’t going to lower his …
Depending on the length of the event, though, that food would eventually be
bad, and the pigeon sounds like it might get you through past the dumpsterdiving stage. Could you give us the … for a final thing here … some advice on
trapping pigeons, for people?
We use what we call a pigeon hook, which is a … it looks like a shepherd’s crook,
but it’s a coat hanger fully extended, and then it has a hook on the end that is
fairly tight, like about a half inch wide and about four inches long, so that the
return part comes down about four inches, but it kind of widens out a little bit.
You just put it down on the ground and toss the seed out; toss something out, a
piece of bread out, and they come walking over, and you just hook their rear leg.
You slide it over their rear leg. It slides up on their foot; they can’t escape, and
you just grab them.
It’s super simple. In the last class, there was a girl who became obsessed with
catching pigeons. She was out catching them all day; catch and release, just to
see if she could do it. She caught 20 or 30 pigeons, probably, before the day was
over.
Wow, and they’re everywhere in the city, so an abundant food source, right?
Yes, they are quite abundant. There’s other things, too. If you know edible
plants at all, you can walk through a city park and find a dozen plants that are
good for eating.
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Chet:
Dave:
Kevin:
Dave:
Kevin:
Chet:
Kevin:
Chet:
Kevin:
We have another presentation on that type of foraging for plants in city
environments, Nicole Telkes, who is presenting on that here at the survival
summit as well for people as something else to consider.
Yeah, cool ideas; I love it. Any … let’s see, I think you kind of already gave your
final thoughts, but Dave, any final questions you’d like to ask before we let Kevin
go?
I think, at this point, it’s just time to go shopping, get some lock picks, and go
practice, for me.
Absolutely.
I’ve got to get some time training. Yeah, this has been a really good, informative
presentation. Thank you.
I’m glad you enjoyed it. I had a great time. Thank you very much.
No problem, Kevin. A final word; if you could give a final word, on just where
people can find what you do, and just a quick plug for you, so people know
where to find you.
Where at OnPointTactical.com, one word OnPointTactical.com. You can probably
find us on Facebook, same name. We have classes all over the country. We
travel, we do L.A., Seattle, Portland, San Jose, Salt Lake City, Denver, Phoenix,
Dallas, Houston, Kansas City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Atlanta; we travel all over the
country, so that you can get the training; it’s hard to get the training.
Urban escape and evasion is our flagship class, but we do a number of other
classes as well, including the off-grid medicine. Keep your eyes open, and find
something close to you, and see what you want to do here. It’s a great
opportunity to get some first-rate training.
Very cool. Kevin, thank you so much for spending the hour and a half with us
here, and wish you the best, and look forward to coming out and taking one of
your classes here in the near future.
All right. We will look forward to seeing you. Take care.
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