We will be posting complete firearms training curricula on this site. Here's why. Lawless, violent threats to U.S. citizens are mounting. Violent crime rates that began a long decline from earlier highs in the 1990s are once again climbing rapidly in much of the country. These increases are much more pronounced in urban areas, where illegal drug tr...

Security Analysis provides a foundation for all forms of planning, preparedness, and security in the face of threats to our well-being. It calls for a hard and disciplined look at our surroundings, which helps us to anticipate threats, recognize them when they appear, and prepare in advance to manage or defeat them. Security Analysis has several co...

A Site Survey characterizes a defined location (for instance a home, neighborhood, or business), looking closely at factors that are generally under your direct control. Boundaries, barriers, access and egress, routine activities and profiles, everything that constitutes a potential vulnerability or an element of security, is inventoried and assess...

An Area Study is a collection and analysis of broad-spectrum information on a defined area, to support your planning and build situational awareness in advance of the need. It will profile both the human or social environment and the physical factors that can impact your security. The area study can never be static; it is not an exercise you comple...

Our previous article in this series, THREAT ASSESSMENT: The Concept, introduced a five-step process for this first phase of risk management. This post will discuss that process in greater detail.   Our Threat Assessment method has five steps: Describe the target: what is it that you seek to protect, and under what conditions?List all threats.C...

Threat assessment is a disciplined process by which we characterize and prioritize threats to our well-being, and allocate our finite resources and efforts to avert, avoid, or mitigate them. To be useful, a threat assessment requires open-mindedness, focused research and intelligence-gathering, and deductive analysis. The U.S. Department of Homelan...

An Assets Evaluation is a more detailed development and analysis of information compiled during your Area Study; or it can be conducted independently. Here you classify and characterize persons, groups, enterprises, and agencies that are beyond your direct control, but might contribute to your security against a variety of threats. Assets in this s...

One essential skill needed in preparation for protecting a community is tactical tracking. Linked intimately with patrolling, tactical tracking will provide intelligence on any movement around the community and allow patrols to interdict potential aggressors. After establishing the community's perimeter, knowing who is moving around it will be a vi...

If a phone, tablet, or laptop only store 24 hours of communication then how useful is that to the enemy? In contrast, how useful are months or years of someone's private messages? Many have their own favorite ways to communicate securely on messaging apps, but all will agree on this basic concept - encryption really works. Encrypted messaging, stor...

"Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy." —Perth, Scotland, 28 May 1948, in Churchill, Europe Unite: Speeches 1947 & 1948. Socialism's benefits are touted as nationalization of key industries (i.e. free healthcare etc), redistribution of wealth (through taxation), social security schemes, minimum ...

Reminder: Components of Situational Awareness: Observation Perception Description Memory Human Behavior Deduction By now you should have a good handle on how to work on the skills of Observation, Perception and Description. Feel free to re-read our last article before diving in here. a. Memory. i. Tier One observation skills will not help you much ...

In this day and age, cars figure prominently in all aspects of life in America and that includes criminal activities. Whether in use by the criminal, the intended victim or just parked on the street, cars will be around most shooting incidents outside and the prudent practitioner of armed self-defense would do well to recognize this fact and take s...

August 16th was Primary Election Day in Wyoming. From our perspective, of the imminent crises facing the state, the nation, and the world, we draw several conclusions. For readers who are not residents of Wyoming, the political reality here, broadly drawn, is this. The state is overwhelmingly Republican. Most elective state and local offices are de...

"The most important factor in survival is neither intelligence nor strength but adaptability." — Charles Darwin Thinking back to part 1 and our rule of 3's, the importance of establishing a shelter, in anything but the most temperate of climates, is unchallenged. Pay attention to the site selection considerations from part 1 particularly if you ant...

Many people, when they first dip their toe into the world of prepping, find themselves particularly attracted to one or two subjects and run with those for a good while before branching out. It is all too easy to find food preservation and storage fascinating and all engrossing. The same with planting a garden or getting your first chickens. Ditto ...

Sitting in one of my undergraduate classes at a much later stage in life than my fellow students, I was confused when the professor explained the tests we would take during this semester. What was an open book test? A young lady sitting next to me explained "It's a test you can use your text book for…" I was still confused, "What do you use the tex...

A Vulnerability Assessment (VA) is the final step in a Security Analysis, based on information developed in all the earlier stages (Site Survey, Area Study, Threat Assessment, and External Assets Evaluation). It requires honest qualitative evaluation of strengths and weaknesses against various threats, from which we identify upgrades worth pursuing...

"The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you can see." - Winston Churchill   With the tearing down of statues and the "cancelling" of books, tv shows, monuments and music, the unhinged Left has fully begun to rewrite history and create a disingenuous record of the past. They are emboldened by our continued silence and willingnes...

This is difficult to write, as it may be overcome by events before it is ever read. Si vis pacem, para bellum. The increasing pain and downside potential of what started as a limited, regional war in Ukraine between a second and a third-rate power include, as we've previously discussed: The backfiring Western economic sanctions against Russia;Massi...

There is a scene in the movie The Bourne Identity where actor Matt Damon reels off a bunch of detailed facts about people sitting in a restaurant to the female lead actress ("our waitress is left handed", "the guy at the bar weighs 215 pounds and knows how to handle himself etc). In another restaurant movie scene, actor Robert Downey Jr as Sherlock...