Why Wound Cleaning is One of the Most Important Skills to Know

From DocRader over at Imminent Threat Solutions is an article about wound cleaning in the back country and its importance to wound healing.

Imagine you’re three days into a six-day hiking trip on the Yukon River. You’re taking some time out from hiking to explore the river and maybe try your hand at some fishing. As you approach the bank, you slip in some soft mud and fall to the ground. You throw your hand out and catch yourself on a large piece of flint, cutting your palm open to the fascia, before sliding into the organically rich mud.

Your buddy is a few dozen yards away and gets to you quickly. He immediately wipes away some of the gooey mud and you’re able to see some of the damage, including some of the white/silvery connective tissue. While you’re sitting there watching the blood well up, you begin to anticipate the inevitable pain. In addition, you’re immediately concerned about the contamination of the wound, given that you just noticed a pile of moose droppings right next to the rock that cut you.

However, you have an ITS Boo Boo Plus Kit, which you were smart enough to buy specifically for this trip. You pull it out of your pack and crack it open for the first time.

What Kind of Wound is it?

All external wounds share one common trait, they all damage your skin. Your skin is a very important organ, as it helps manage thermoregulation (as in helps manage your body temperature) and it provides a protective barrier to keep bad stuff out and good stuff in. When you injure it, you impede its function.

With respect to physical wounds, we can categorize them three main ways: low risk, high risk and functional or cosmetic risk.

Click here  to read the article at ITStactical.com.

Turning Anxiety to Action on the Cascadia Quake

From the Oregonian Editorial Board, Turning Anxiety to Action on the Cascadia Quake.

The New Yorker’s Pulitzer prize-winning piece on the massive destruction expected from a Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake understandably struck fear in the hearts of many Oregonians who immediately set to work stocking emergency kits. At least some of them did. For a while.

Then came the terrifying video from Multnomah County, showing how the Burnside Bridge could rumble, torque and collapse after an 8-plus magnitude quake. The destruction alone is devastating to watch – even if by animated simulation. But it’s almost paralyzing to listen to the narration describing how bridge debris will block cars, emergency vehicles, trains and ships needed to bring supplies and evacuate victims.

It’d be easy to shove another recent state report into that corner in your brain where the darkest worries hang out. But despite its jarring numbers, the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries’ assessment released last week hits a few bright notes…

No matter how far you go, at least start.

Read the entire article at Oregonlive.com by clicking here.

Related:

A Useful Online Tool for Line Of Sight (LOS) Communications

NC Scout over at the Brushbeater blog has a few words up about using online elevation tools to view your RF line of sight between two points.

ncscout's avatarbrushbeater

One of the responsibilities of the RTO in a planning cycle is knowing what tools will cover the distances needed during the patrol. You very well may LOVE license free FRS handhelds, only to get two klicks into the bush to realize they don’t work like you thought they would. These problems are some of the issues we cover in class- and flexibility rules the day. One of the planning tools that makes life easy now is an RF Line of Sight (LOS) tool. Using this will give you an idea of your radius on your terrain, and you can see roughly what you’ll need as far as antenna height and direction. It’s a particularly useful tool for those incorporating sloping vees or yagis into a signals package.

directional wire

And if you wanna take your small unit capability to the next level, get a jump start on your signals skills…

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CSG: GroundRod Primer, Mar. 24-25, 2018 – Prosser, WA

Combat Studies Group will be holding their GroundRod Primer course in the Prosser, WA area on Saturday and Sunday, March 24th and 25th, 2018. This is a two-day class. This class has moved from the Boise, ID location. Please sign up through the Combat Studies Group email address if you are interested in taking the class. The information is very valuable.

Details: https://combatstudiesgroup.blogspot.cz/p/courses.html

Class – Ground Rod Primer

Cost $400

Time Saturday and Sunday 8am – 5pm

Benefit – help limit your electronic footprint and learn how to protect your data and communications

GroundRod Primer  –  Internet and digital tradecraft

GroundRod Primer is designed to address the fundamental concerns of journalists, concerned citizens, activists, whistle blowers, missionaries and liberty lovers in general, with regard to digital security. Whether hackers, governments, criminals or acts of espionage; our privacy is in serious jeopardy.
You will learn to secure your devices and communications in the following ways:
Properly employ symmetric and asymmetric encryption
Create and safely store powerful passwords
Guard against common criminal and state level intrusion techniques
Recognize unsafe software you are using now and explore safe replacements
Surf the web anonymously
Explore the deep web
Transfer files safely
Communicate securely and privately
Understand and deal with malicious firmware
Crypto-currencies
Properly employ “burner” phones
GroundRod Primer is meant to take the uncertainty and guesswork out of digital security, give you a fundamental base of knowledge to grow from and get you up and running with the highest levels of security available TODAY.
Follow on courses will delve deeper into these subjects and address escape and evasion techniques and other tradecraft.
Gear Requirements
* Laptop
* Three USB thumbdrives (4-8 GB)
* Note taking materials
* extension cord

Kittitas County Democrats Settle AG Campaign Finance Lawsuit

From We The Governed,

Kittitas County Democrats settle AG campaign finance lawsuit for $28k in fines and penalties.

Kittitas County Democratic Party State Committee members (source: Facebook)
Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson

Last week, the Kittitas County Democrats settled a lawsuit filed last July by the Washington State Attorney General’s office for a wide variety of campaign finance violations.  The final settlement included payment for $6,740 in AG attorney fees and costs, forfeiture of $5,217 of illegal anonymous contributions, and a fine of $15,825 (with half suspended for good behavior for the next few years).  It also appears that a previously suspended $400 fine imposed by the Public Disclosure Commission was forced to be paid last year by these complaints and this lawsuit since the Kittitas County Democrats were still not complying with the state’s campaign finance laws (see previous PDC fine/letter linked here, and Reported payment of suspended portion of that fine linked here)

Click here to continue reading at We The Governed.

Disease Increasing in Venezuela

From a post by a Venezuelan citizen at Organic Prepper, Venezuela Faces the Return of Forgotten Diseases

Forgotten diseases are returning

Recent reports from these last few days have been, for someone who understands the importance of the endemic diseases that had been under control, spreading quickly.

I am talking about serious stuff: Tuberculosis, Diptheria, Leishmaniasis. There have been adults and children who died because of these things. The diseases themselves, under normal conditions can be healed. But without the appropriate medications and proper nutrition, they become deadly…

Click here to read the article at Organic Prepper.

CSG: New Items Coming to Store

Combat Studies Group has announced some new items coming soon.

We have been hard at work over the last several months developing new tools to help secure your digital life. We continue to refine the Sepio Secure OS and expect to release the Sepio 2 this summer. Other items that are coming soon:

 Sepio-Offgrid Rugged Laptop

– Offers the same level of rugged MILSPEC protection as the famous Toughbooks
– 14 inch HD screen
– 8-32GB RAM
– 128GB -1TB SSD or HDD
– i3 CPU (non vPro)
– Sepio Secure OS
– Optional packable solar panel/battery combo for field use
– Estimated Price: $1600-2000

The Libertas XL

– A 9 inch rugged tablet with:
– Dual-core 64bit CPU
– 2GB RAM
– 16 or 32GB storage
– Estimated price: $650

Sepio-Micro Desktop

– A full featured Sepio desktop not much larger than your hand.
– Plug in your own keyboard, mouse and monitor
– Estimated price: $750

Graybox Secure Router

– Router, Access Point, Bridge, Firewall, Intrusion detection and VPN all in a small package.
– Estimated price: TBA

Home Theater System

– This would replace your Roku, AppleTV, Chromecast, AmazonFire, etc media devices. It will have the same functionality – streaming of your favorite shows, music, etc, but without the spying.
– Estimated Price: TBA

GrayMatter VPN Service

– We have been testing the beta of our very own VPN service. What will it offer?

– Servers in jurisdictions that are respectful of privacy rights
– Servers setup with same security you would find in the Sepio
– No logging of customers
– Anonymous account creation and payment support
– Wireguard, TOR, OpenVPN and Shadowsocks
– Multihop support
– Secure, non-logging DNS

– Estimated Price: $6-10 monthly


 I should mention that all of our products are fully patched against the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities. 

CSG is also holding a GroundRod Primer course in Boise, ID on March 24-25, 2018. The GroundRod Primer is an intensive digital security course of instruction.

Gun Control is Bearing False Witness Against Your Neighbor

From Kenn over at Black Man with a Gun. Full podcast below quoted text.

You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. Exodus 20:16

It is exactly what prohibitionist, and anti-rights do when they push for gun control. The people, you and I that are affected by the changes in laws not the criminals, the insane, the evil or the terrorist.

To be a false witness against our neighbor basically means to falsely accuse someone else of wrongdoing. In the Torah, false witnesses were dealt with very harshly. We see in the above verses that if a person was found to be bearing false witness against another person, they would be given the punishment that the other person would have received if the witness was true! With such a righteous law, we can understand why ‘by the mouth of two or three witnesses’ every matter truly was established. If anyone rose up as a false witness, they would be given the same punishment they thought to give to their neighbor…. risking their own life! With such a thing facing them, they would be very careful, yes?

Glen Morgan of We the Governed to Speak at April 12th LVA Meeting

Glen Morgan will be speaking at the April 12th, 2018 Lower Valley Assembly of the Whole in Prosser, WA.

Glen is currently the Executive Director of the Citizens Alliance for Property Rights. Glen Morgan was the Grassroots Director and the Property Rights Director at the Freedom Foundation from 2011 until January 2015. He enjoys creating videos documenting Big Government’s abuses of citizens – particularly on property rights issues.

He is a frequent writer and speaker on property rights, the environmental movement, Big Government, and the importance of citizen activism. In 2014, Bill Whittle called Glen, “The ascended high master of political messaging.” Glen doesn’t consider himself a high master of anything, but he enjoys exploring policy issues in local government and exposing government corruption and incompetence which impacts all of us.

In 2015, Glen was honored with the annual Rodney & Laurel McFarland Award presented by the Citizens Alliance for Property Rights (CAPR) “for exemplary performance in preserving and protecting property rights for the year 2014.”

Glen’s articles have been reproduced in publications ranging from the Heritage Insider to local blog sites. He has also appeared on King5 News, KOMO News, Fox News (Q13), KUOW (NPR), The David Boze show, Todd Herman (Seattle -AM 770)and a variety of other television and radio programs. He frequently testifies on property rights issues at local government hearings and at the Washington State Legislature.  Glen is also known for writing opposition statements in the official voter’s guide for voter-approved tax increases. Recently, Glen has also been involved in attempting to address campaign finance reforms to make the process easier and simpler for beginners to be involved in the process.

Glen is also an investigative citizen journalist who frequently meets with anonymous whistleblowers from various state agencies, local governments, and political parties who want to expose wrongdoing where they work.

As a former elected School Director in the Rochester School District from 2011 to 2015, Glen has also been involved in his local community.  He is also a current board member of the Thurston County Farm Bureau, and has served on the State Policy Board for the Washington State Farm Bureau.    Glen was a candidate for the Thurston County Assessor’s office in 2010, when he received 48% of the vote.  Glen was the Project Manager for Stop Taking Our Property (S.T.O.P.) Thurston County, a Freedom Foundation project, and he is always engaged in various policy and advocacy issues throughout Washington State.

As a fifth generation Washingtonian, Glen’s roots run deep in Washington State. His great-great grandmother helped start the Pike Place Market,  where multiple generations sold flowers in Seattle for many years. His great-Uncle Ed Dalby installed the first power-generating waterwheel in Union, WA in the early 1920s. Glen’s father helped found the City of Newcastle, and his father served as a City Councilman in that city for years.  After graduating from college with a BA in political science from Columbia College in New York City, Glen returned home and worked for small start-up companies and local manufacturing businesses.  He currently lives on a small tree farm in Thurston County with his wife and their four children.

WA Gun Owners Action League Update, Mar. 9th, 2018

From the Washington Gun Owners Action League:

Legislative Update from Olympia 9 March 2018

SINE DIE

48 GUN BILLS FILED IN 2017-2018 BIENNIUM

GOV SIGNS BUMP STOCK BAN

2519, 5553 AND 6298 TO GOV

PHOTOS ON CPLS?

MISSED ONE – AMMO BAN

WHY ONLY FOUR BILLS PASSED

INITIATIVE

LAST GOAL POST OF 2018 — HOPEFULLY

It’s over!The fat lady has done her part and has waddled off the stage,
and our legislators are packing up and heading home from Olympia.At this
point there is no talk of the need for a special session, unlike the
three special sessions we had last year..

The 2017-2018 biennium set a record for the number of gun related bills
filed: 48, 25 anti-, 20 pro- and three neutral.But as foretold in the
Book of Matthew, “Many are called but few are chosen.”Only four of the
48 managed to make it to the governor’s desk:None of the pro-gun bills
made the cut in the Democrat-dominated legislature, surprise,
surprise.HB 2519 and SBs 5553, 5992 and 6248 were the chosen few.SB
6620, the last minute “assault weapon” bill, failed to get a vote on the
last day of the session (given the time allowed, it was unlikely to pass
the House anyway).

On Tuesday, 7 March, Governor Inslee signed SB 5992, the “bump stock”
ban.In its final version, it only applied specifically to bump stocks
and not to other “trigger devices,” and allows for a one-year buy-back
period to be set up by the Washington State Patrol.Your reward for
complying with the law is $150.(As far as I can tell, nothing prevents
you from shipping or selling them out of state, as long as the
transaction occurs out-of-state).

HB 2519and SBs 5553 and 6298 sit on the governor’s desk awaiting his
action.He has three options: sign the bill(s) as is, section veto
portions he doesn’t like allowing the remainder to become law, or let it
sit without his signature, at which point it will become law.Unlike the
president, Washington has no provision for a “pocket veto” (no
signature) to kill a bill.I expect the governor to sign all three bills,
as he did SB 5992.

As I reported earlier, HB 2519 was amended in the House to allow issue
of CPLs to current and former military members aged 18-20.That amendment
was pulled by the Senate Law & Justice committee.The conference
committee also amended the final version of the bill added language that
allows the issuing authority to require a photograph be submitted with
the application, and that photograph to be embossed on the license.This
was discussed by the Department of Licensing more than ten years ago but
never implemented.It is solely up to the issuing authority to require
it.Some states have photo CPLs, other do not.

It appears in my rush to head for Las Vegas in January for the annual
Shooting, Hunting, Outdoor Trades show, I missed an anti-gun bill
filed.HB 2805 (Rep. Pollet, D-46) would ban the sale of exposed lead
projectile ammunition to those 18-20 years old.Concerns about lead
poisoning among the young, according to the bill language.Maybe Chicago
should consider such a bill.

Given the fact that for the first time in several years Democrats
control both the House and Senate as well as the governor’s mansion, why
so few anti-gun bills passed?One or two pro-gun Democrats in each
chamber helped us, and 2018 is mid-term election year.Had they passed a
slew of anti-gun bills, they likely would have lost perhaps several
rural-area legislative seats in November.Expect them to come back in
January, 2019 with blood in their eyes for gun owners.

By failing to address the “assault weapon” issue, it opens the door for
an initiative later this year that is likely to go well beyond simple
registration and/or age limits.And as we’ve been hearing from Florida
over the past week, where the Republican-majority legislature just
raised the age to buy long guns to 21 AND imposed a three-day waiting
period because of the Parkland school shooting, there are far too many
gun owners out there who don’t like “black rifles.”Or as we call them,
Elmer Fudds, “As long as they don’t come after my wabbit gun, I don’t
care what they do about other guns.”

Continue reading “WA Gun Owners Action League Update, Mar. 9th, 2018” →

Communications Academy, April 14-15, 2018

The Communications Academy will be held at South Seattle College on the weekend of April 14th and 15th. Keynote speakers for 2018 include the Director of Washington Military Department’s Emergency Management Division (EMD) and ham radio author and editor Ward Silver (N0AX). There are six sessions designed for ham radio beginners:

  1. ) Session #5 Radio basics: How to Choose Your First Radio – Carl Leon, N7KUW
  2. ) Session #11 Radio basics: I have my Radio – Now How do I Turn It On? – Joel Ware, KD7QKK and Bill Thomassen, N6NBN
  3. ) Session #15 Radio basics: Radio Safety for Beginners – Jon Newstrom, KL7GT
  4. ) Session #22 Radio basics: But I am Afraid to Talk into the Microphone – Alan Jones, KD7KUS
  5. ) Session #27 Radio basics: This is Fun – What’s Next? – Don Marshall, KE7ARH
  6. ) Session #31 Radio basics: Where Do I Go from Here? – Carl Leon, N7KUW

There are also sessions on the incident command system, ham radio IP networks, Winlink, Hurricanes Harvey and Maria response, and much more.

Communications Academy is a non-profit coalition of volunteer communications teams to provide a high quality, professional-grade training opportunity for the various emergency communications teams around the Pacific Northwest. By providing a once-a-year large-scale venue for training, volunteer communicators are exposed to topics in emergency management, communications techniques and protocols, real-life emergency responses, and other pertinent subjects, which might not otherwise be available to them.

In past years the academy has been able to attract several nationally known speakers for the keynote sessions.

The Communications Academy is open to anyone with an interest in emergency communications, volunteer or professional. The presentations are designed to promote the development of knowledgeable, skilled emergency communicators who will support their local communities during a disaster or emergency response.

Click here to view the Saturday schedule
Click here to view the Sunday schedule

Managing Pain in a Pinch

americancivildefense's avatarthe american civil defense assn.

Pills in woman hands.

by Cynthia J. Koelker, MD

Excerpt from Armageddon Medicine, How to Be Your Own Doctor in 2012 and Beyond

The daily queue of suffering seems endless. Toothache, stomachache, headache, earache, back pain, leg pain, joint pain, neck pain, sore throat, sore feet, sore muscles, sore eyes. People come to you seeking relief – relief from their pain, and relief from fear. Are you up to the task of helping others, or ready to run away? Becoming a healer is not for the faint of heart.

If and when the medical community collapses, those left to carry on will need an armamentarium of tools to deal with pain. Even if it’s only your own problems and those of your family that you’ll be facing, learning how to relieve pain now, before you’re in the midst of crisis, will spare you needless worry. Pain is the #1 symptom that drives patients to physicians today…

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