(From the article)
The first lesson
During one of the first bigger events of killing in the streets, I was out together with my friend who also was a medical professional.
Fire from machine guns was on people who were standing in front of the main city bread factory, and people started to scream and run over each other.
My first impulse was to run to the nearest cover but my friend got down to help some lady, so I stayed one meter next to him.
I was confused about my decision and not sure to stay with him or run. Bullets from machine gun hit him over his legs, and I saw how his kneecap exploded. It looked like some bad movie special effect.
He just looked at his legs, then at me, in silence. Even though it was just seconds, moments like this feel very long.
I took him by the hands and dragged him some 20 or 30 meters to safety. Only there I saw that he was missing his leg under the knee. It stayed with the dead lady on the street.
And only then he started to scream.
I used a belt to stop the bleeding. The ambulance still worked in that period. He went to the hospital and then evacuated from the city. He survived but never came back.
Lessons learned?
In moments of chaos always listen to your instincts and do not hesitate.
Especially if you are involved in a situation when someone is shooting at you with a high caliber machine gun. Just accept that people will die and you have to survive. To help others is a great thing, to survive is even better.
Also, I realized that a human being is so fragile and easy to destroy.
You must practice with your gear.
Later I learned some things about weapons and how to use them, so I realize that more firepower does not necessarily mean more dangerous and better chance to kill.
Owning a weapon is absolutely necessary when preparing for a survival scenario, even more so in urban survival. You need to go and get as close as you can to the real stuff while you are doing the preparing and training for the SHTF, so it makes sense to go out and check your preps, to check your gear, and yourself.
For example, that pair of boots that you bought and store for bad days will not be used for walking only, it will be used for running, squatting, jumping, in mud, junk, blood, guts maybe or just running through a shallow river.
Everything that you have prepared and stored for SHTF will be pushed to the limits.
It is one thing to go out into the woods nearby and do a recording of your weapon testing on some beer bottles with your friends, and after that concluding that particular gun or rifle is best for SHTF and that you are a dangerous dude because of your accuracy rates. Some people gonna put that clip on YouTube and go home convinced that they are ready and prepared.
In reality, you do not know if you are prepared until it happens.
A lot of survival stores that sell things sell the idea of ābuy this and you are safe.ā
No, you are not. You can learn more about real urban survival scenarios in my survival course and in my book, The Dark Secrets of SHTF Survival . This helps you to mentally be better prepared but the real deal when SHTF always comes as a surprise.
When the time comes again it gonna hit everyone like a hammer. The good news is that when you know you will get hit like that you can recover faster and use your skills, knowledge, and preps to make the best out of the situation.
Using a weapon in real life, in real survival situations, is something absolutely different from shooting beer bottles.
And if you could do some real training that is realistic that would be maybe going camping for 10 days using a trash bag like a tent, with 10 small cans of food, and 10 liters of water, and then walking every day for 10 km.
On the 11th day, run a few kilometers and then shoot and see how accurate you are when your body is wasting away.
And still, the most important thing is missing. While you are shooting at the beer bottles they do not shoot back at you in order to kill you.
During some of the first battles in the city I was moving through the building behind a guy, we both had rifles. He was sweeping the rooms and shooting, it was the closest to urban combat as it can be. At the moment when he runs out of ammo, he used his rifle as something between spear and bat.
Now someone could say why he did not just switch to the pistol? He did not have one, also he did not have time to look for ammo. But there I learned how it is useful to have folded stock of rifle when shooting and moving in very confined spaces.
Also, I learned that rifle with pretty sharp parts at the barrel can be very handy. He stabbed a guy to the cheek, ripping his face down and finishing him on the ground.
One of the biggest misconceptions that the people who do not have fighting experience is what they just need to practiceā¦
(Not the whole article, click link to read full article)
