Now that youve bought all that strange stuff what are you going to do with it? Prudence says you should try out some of these things at your leisure before you might HAVE to use them. (Prudence *is* a nag, but then she does say something once in a while worth listening to.)

---

Some suggestions for practicing Personal Competency Skills. *USE CAUTION* in ALL of these exercises. If you havent tried these activities before be aware that you CAN hurt yourself. That is why you are practicing - to learn how to do these things and to do them safely.

1. Heating / Cooking  Do this entire exercise outside. Even better if its windy. Get out the Coleman stove. Go outside. Fuel it up. (What? You dont have that little 97-cent funnel that makes fueling so much easier?) Make a makeshift table to set it on or even better set it on the ground. Crank it up. Adjust it. Play with the flame height. Shut it down, let it cool. Put all the stuff back up.

2. Heat some water (on the camp stove) to boiling. Dip some of this water out and make a cup of instant coffee or tea. Now put it all away. (Remember to let the stove cool off.)

3. Bathing  Go without bathing as long as you can stand it. You really need to feel *nasty* for this to work best. If you havent done so by now, go do exercise 1. Put you bathing water in a pot or bucket. Put the bucket in/near the bathtub. Bath via the sponge bath method. No fair cheating by using any running water.

4. Power - Go 24 hours without using any electric power. No, dont cut the fridge or freezer off. This is only a practice. But do try everything else you normally do during a 24-hour period. (Watching TeeVee may get a little boring.) Ideas: mix and bake a cake or biscuits (what? You dont have an over for that Coleman?) Cook and eat a meal including washing the dishes. Reed a book after dark with only that kerosene lamp or candles. Extra points if you cook using home ground flour or food only from you stored food.

5. Go for 1 week using only your stored water. Which sort of forces you into exercise 3. Dont combine this exercise with 1 or 4. Try to take these a little bit at a time.

6. Black out one window of you dwelling. Go outside on a dark night. Get you eyes accustomed to the dark. See if you can see *any* light coming out through the window. (Dont forget to turn the lights on in the test room.)

Really Serious Exercises for the Determined

7. Fire - Find a safe place. Start a fire using NO matches or lighters. Extra points if its windy. (Be careful.) Losta extra points if you use wet wood or spray the wood with water first.

8. Washing - Wash and dry a load of clothes using NO electricity or appliances (like the water heater).

9. Tell a friend to call you at some random time some weekend and give the start signal. You now have 10 minutes to bug out. (No fair doing extra packing ahead of time.) Pack the car. Leave. Go somewhere and campout using only the stuff in you bug out bags. Extra points if you dont use any major roads.

10. Pack a Backpack. No more that 30 lbs max. Weigh it - no fudging. Carry this pack a good distance into the woods. Use only whats in you pack. Camp overnight. Cook and eat at least 3 meals. Extra points for multi-day camping. Mega extra points if its raining the whole time.

If you read any/all the above and say no big deal because you have *done* these things, the you are better prepared that average. Now go help teach someone else.

With each of the above exercises conquered you gain an increasing sense of achievement that by gosh, I *can* get along by myself if something bad happens.

Some of the more weird types actually enjoy this kind of stuff 8<)

-Greybear

-- Get Ready.

-- Greybear (greybear@home.com), July 12, 1999

Answers

Don't forget to practice self defense drills too (safely!). And I mean under realistic conditions, not just doing well at the target range, or on a heavy bag.

For example, I sleep with a 12 gauge shotgun under my bed. I am making a resolution, right now, to practice grabbing it in the dark and being ready to use it in minimum time (safely!).

-- Jack (jsprat@eld.net), July 12, 1999.

Thanks Greybear and Jack--

This is a life and sanity saving practice session(s). I would add practicing your route(s) for leaving your prime area. Things will be confused and dicey *if* it comes to this. Practice will allow you experience in timing, and alternates to safe passage to your destination.

Try to think of possible road blocks to your journey. Develop plan B,C's as many as you deem necessary. Plan on having at least one uncooperative participant, and how you might handle this. All your plans are at risk if you are suddenly trapped in a zone of turmoil.

-- Michael (mikeymac@uswest.net), July 12, 1999.

Or, Michael, alternatively, digging in. Banding neighbors to block roads, etc. (which is much more applicable to my setup, which is on a mountain top with one very steep dirt road leading up).

-- Jack (jsprat@eld.net), July 13, 1999.

It's hard to start a fire in the rain. The wood is wet, your fingers are chilly and stiff, etc. etc. I learned something on our honeymoon camping trip in N. Minn.

Three days of rain followed some nice weather. (We didn't have any sort of stove with us...won't do that again.) I had dry matches but all the down wood was soaked. I found that dead aspen branches make good kindling so long as they haven't fallen from the tree. Any branch or twig on the ground was useless, but dead twigs and branches broken off the tree worked fine.

Once the fire's going, you can dry out whatever damp wood you pick up enough to burn.

In the high plains dead mesquite (root and branch) is always ready to burn. In the desert, greasewood.

-- Tom Carey (tomcarey@mindspring.com), July 13, 1999.

Tom,

Mother nature has provided me with a similar learning experience. (Well, not the camping honeymoon part.) It's one of the reason you will never catch me without several means of building a fire.

A buddy and I had flown down to the Alaska peninsula for a camping and hiked about 3 miles from the plane (not even any gas from the plane available). We spent a couple of wet miserable days. We were both fairly experienced campers. Both of us determined we would not be defeated by a pile of wet wood. We were.

I included this in the practices due to the subtle nature of the problem. Many would think "I've got matches so that wet stuff should be no problem". Mother is out there patiently waiting for you. She will be glad to teach you about fires.

BTW, Tom, if that girl didn't leave you after that experience, I think you've got a "keeper" 8<)

-Greybear

-- Got Road Flares?

-- Greybear (greybear@home.com), July 13, 1999.