10 Survival Lessons Learned In Combat

via http://personalliberty.com

July 15, 2013 by Thomas Miller

My time in the Army taught me many things, from the “proper” way to make a bed all the way to how to correctly assault an enemy stronghold; and while every lesson is a valuable lesson, some seem to rank higher on the importance scale. Perhaps the most valuable lessons that I ever learned were the ones that peppered the 30 months of combat that I served in the Mideast. Most of these lessons pertain to sustainment of life and survival.

Lesson No. 1: Train As You Fight

Everyone fights differently. Some people, when faced with a fight, will go to extreme measures to avoid conflict; others will flare up with minimal coercion. Taking the time to train and to train realistically (training how you will fight) will maximize chances of surviving a conflict or time of difficulty. This can be any type of training, from the use of firearms to loading out and leaving home prior to a major natural disaster. Training will also develop muscle memory, the state in which your body and muscles will react from memory when performing tasks. This is essential when the time your brain has to process actions is limited.

Lesson No. 2: Invest In Equipment That Will Endure And Sustain Life

The last thing that anyone wants to have happen is for a piece of gear to fail in the middle of using it. This is particularly true in combat, the ultimate survival situation. Any piece of gear that is good enough to go into your kit should be good enough to have your life rely on it. Preparedness gear should be sturdy. Ask yourself if it can be dragged through the mud, dropped or used as a hammer and still function as intended. It should also be able to serve multiple purposes if possible. Survival scenarios will push equipment to its limits, so make sure to keep redundancy in mind or be able to make on-the-spot corrections and repairs on the equipment you choose to carry.

Lesson No. 3: What You Have Is What You Get

Sometimes, you end up alone and with what is in your pockets. When you end up in such a situation, the equipment or items that you left in the vehicle or back at the base are useless to you. If there are items that you need, keep them on you. The simple solution to making sure that you have all the items you need is to make a habit of carrying these items every day and everywhere you go. Many in the survival community refer to these items as an everyday carry or EDC kit.

Lesson No. 4: Plan For What You Will Face

Take the time to determine the inevitable, likely, possible and improbable threats you may come across. This applies to prepping and planning to survive. If you live in Central Canada for example, it is somewhat pointless to make preparations to survive a hurricane that will, with most certainty, never happen. While on the other hand, if you live in Miami, you would need to be a fool to not make such preparations. Determine what the threats are and appropriate reactions to each threat. This can include evacuation plans, equipment to obtain, remote caches to place or even who a good strategic survival partner could be.

Lesson No. 5: Mindset Is Everything

The mind of a champion is very similar to the mind of a survivor. Those who think to themselves that they will survive no matter what are often the ones who will survive. This can be accomplished through perseverance, difficult decisions and hard rights over easy wrongs. The common thread is to be smart and maintain a positive outlook. Maintaining a survival mindset also involves knowing individual and group limits and sometimes means having to push even harder, even when you think you have no fight left.

Lesson No. 6: Only Take What You Know How To Use

I have seen this lesson learned the hard way, over and over again. There is never a good outcome when a person — or group of people — places his life or well-being on a piece of equipment that he is not familiar with. If you are lucky enough, you will escape unscathed; but I doubt you will make this mistake twice. With that being said, you can avoid making this mistake altogether by putting in survival bags and kits only equipment that you are familiar with and know how to use. If you want to integrate new gear into preparedness kits, make sure to take it out of the packaging, read the directions and test it out to make sure it works.

Lesson No. 7: Maintain Situational Awareness

The modern era conflicts that have occurred in the Mideast are not conventional wars and have not occurred on a linear battlefield. As a result of this dynamic, there are no secure areas other than what you and your fellow soldiers ensure is secure. There is not a specific area that can always be counted on to be secure. With this in mind, it is imperative to always be aware of what is going on around you. I would be willing to bet that some of the patrons in the theater the night of the Aurora, Colo., shootings were so distracted that they figured the excessive and realistic shooting was part of another movie that was playing. With practice and vigilance, you can stay on top of your surroundings and extract yourself and those you care about from a potentially dangerous situation.

Lesson No. 8: Know Your Enemy

Much like modern warfare was outlined for situational awareness, the modern battle is not fought against a conventional enemy. Insurgents have infiltrated the military, police forces and governments of Iraq and Afghanistan while not wearing uniforms and hiding among women and children. Guerilla warfare is the enemy’s fighting style of choice, and who can blame them? Keeping a close group of friends and family members will result in an always reliable and trustworthy pool of people to lean on in difficult times. It is always important to stay alert and know who can be trusted and worked with.

Lesson No. 9: Know When To Flee And Know When To Fight

Some may say that only a coward will run away from a fight. But there is a big difference between staying to get killed and leaving a situation to regroup and come back a smarter and stronger fighter. If you find yourself in the middle of a disaster, it is also smart to make the safe move and survive rather than put on the tough act and never live to tell your story. This scenario has played out in recent disasters when citizens have ignored voluntary evacuation orders and lost their lives to stay and safeguard worldly possessions that can be replaced. Once a life is gone, it is not coming back.

Lesson No. 10: Never Fight Alone

There is a similarity between Rambo, Jason Bourne and Jack Bauer: They are all fictional characters, and none of them would ever be able to take on an army alone. There are historical accounts of service members who have completed heroic acts by themselves, but those are the exceptions and typically occur during small-scale skirmishes. When the going gets tough, put together a group of people you can rely on. This can be family members, friends, neighbors, or co-workers who can rely on you and, in turn, you can rely on them to help you survive. In the end, the lone wolf scenario is almost never going to be a successful scenario.

My experiences and time in military service have been invaluable to me, and I would not trade them for anything. But at the same time, it is not reasonable to expect everyone to have to endure the same challenges in life.

–Tom Miller

MASS VIOLENCE LINKED TO PRESCRIPTION PSYCHIATRIC MEDICATIONS – A RESOURCE PAGE (whatreallyhappened.com)

via http://whatreallyhappened.com

SSRI stories, an archive of case studies linking SSRI and other presciption psychiatric mnedications to acts of extreme violence, including mass shootings.

SSRI’s make things worse, Joan Mathews-Larson, PhD

Chris Greene “SSRI Drugs are responsible for School Massacre”

Fox News: Are SSRI Antidepressants Causing School Shootings? Broadcast before the gun-grabbers sent out word to blame the guns for violance.

Another FOX news story – Antidepressants and School Shootings, Suicide, Addiction.

Michael Moore: Are SSRI Antidepressant drugs causing School Shootings?

Making a Killing: The Untold Story of Psychotropic Drugging – Full Movie

Psychiatry: An Industry of Death (FULL VERSION)

The Marketing of Madness: The Truth About Psychotropic Drugs

FLASHBACK 2005 – Depression Facts and Stats They knew there was a problem in 2005!

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From SSRIstories above – List of school shootings known to be linked to SSRIs Eric Harris age 17 (first on Zoloft then Luvox) and Dylan Klebold aged 18 (Colombine school shooting in Littleton, Colorado), killed 12 students and 1 teacher, and wounded 23 others, before killing themselves. Klebold’s medical records have never been made available to the public.

Jeff Weise, age 16, had been prescribed 60 mg/day of Prozac (three times the average starting dose for adults!) when he shot his grandfather, his grandfather’s girlfriend and many fellow students at Red Lake, Minnesota. He then shot himself. 10 dead, 12 wounded.

Cory Baadsgaard, age 16, Wahluke (Washington state) High School, was on Paxil (which caused him to have hallucinations) when he took a rifle to his high school and held 23 classmates hostage. He has no memory of the event.

Chris Fetters, age 13, killed his favorite aunt while taking Prozac.

Christopher Pittman, age 12, murdered both his grandparents while taking Zoloft.

Mathew Miller, age 13, hung himself in his bedroom closet after taking Zoloft for 6 days.

Jarred Viktor, age 15, stabbed his grandmother 61 times after 5 days on Paxil.

Kip Kinkel, age 15, (on Prozac and Ritalin) shot his parents while they slept then went to school and opened fire killing 2 classmates and injuring 22 shortly after beginning Prozac treatment.

Luke Woodham, age 16 (Prozac) killed his mother and then killed two students, wounding six others.

A boy in Pocatello, ID (Zoloft) in 1998 had a Zoloft-induced seizure that caused an armed stand off at his school.

Michael Carneal (Ritalin), age 14, opened fire on students at a high school prayer meeting in West Paducah, Kentucky. Three teenagers were killed, five others were wounded..

A young man in Huntsville, Alabama (Ritalin) went psychotic chopping up his parents with an ax and also killing one sibling and almost murdering another.

Andrew Golden, age 11, (Ritalin) and Mitchell Johnson, aged 14, (Ritalin) shot 15 people, killing four students, one teacher, and wounding 10 others.

TJ Solomon, age 15, (Ritalin) high school student in Conyers, Georgia opened fire on and wounded six of his class mates.

Rod Mathews, age 14, (Ritalin) beat a classmate to death with a bat.

James Wilson, age 19, (various psychiatric drugs) from Breenwood, South Carolina, took a .22 caliber revolver into an elementary school killing two young girls, and wounding seven other children and two teachers.

Elizabeth Bush, age 13, (Paxil) was responsible for a school shooting in Pennsylvania

Jason Hoffman (Effexor and Celexa) – school shooting in El Cajon, California

Jarred Viktor, age 15, (Paxil), after five days on Paxil he stabbed his grandmother 61 times.

Chris Shanahan, age 15 (Paxil) in Rigby, ID who out of the blue killed a woman.

Jeff Franklin (Prozac and Ritalin), Huntsville, AL, killed his parents as they came home from work using a sledge hammer, hatchet, butcher knife and mechanic’s file, then attacked his younger brothers and sister.

Neal Furrow (Prozac) in LA Jewish school shooting reported to have been court-ordered to be on Prozac along with several other medications.

Kevin Rider, age 14, was withdrawing from Prozac when he died from a gunshot wound to his head.

Initially it was ruled a suicide, but two years later, the investigation into his death was opened as a possible homicide. The prime suspect, also age 14, had been taking Zoloft and other SSRI antidepressants.

Alex Kim, age 13, hung himself shortly after his Lexapro prescription had been doubled.

Diane Routhier was prescribed Welbutrin for gallstone problems. Six days later, after suffering many adverse effects of the drug, she shot herself.

Billy Willkomm, an accomplished wrestler and a University of Florida student, was prescribed Prozac at the age of 17. His family found him dead of suicide – hanging from a tall ladder at the family’s Gulf Shore Boulevard home in July 2002.

Kara Jaye Anne Fuller-Otter, age 12, was on Paxil when she hung herself from a hook in her closet.

Kara’s parents said “…. the damn doctor wouldn’t take her off it and I asked him to when we went in on the second visit. I told him I thought she was having some sort of reaction to Paxil…”)

Gareth Christian, Vancouver, age 18, was on Paxil when he committed suicide in 2002, (Gareth’s father could not accept his son’s death and killed himself.)

Julie Woodward, age 17, was on Zoloft when she hung herself in her family’s detached garage.

Matthew Miller was 13 when he saw a psychiatrist because he was having difficulty at school. The psychiatrist gave him samples of Zoloft. Seven days later his mother found him dead, hanging by a belt from a laundry hook in his closet.

Kurt Danysh, age 18, and on Prozac, killed his father with a shotgun. He is now behind prison bars, and writes letters, trying to warn the world that SSRI drugs can kill.

Woody ____, age 37, committed suicide while in his 5th week of taking Zoloft. Shortly before his death his physician suggested doubling the dose of the drug. He had seen his physician only for insomnia. He had never been depressed, nor did he have any history of any mental illness symptoms.

A boy from Houston, age 10, shot and killed his father after his Prozac dosage was increased.

Hammad Memon, age 15, shot and killed a fellow middle school student. He had been diagnosed with ADHD and depression and was taking Zoloft and “other drugs for the conditions.”

Matti Saari, a 22-year-old culinary student, shot and killed 9 students and a teacher, and wounded another student, before killing himself. Saari was taking an SSRI and a benzodiazapine.

Steven Kazmierczak, age 27, shot and killed five people and wounded 21 others before killing himself in a Northern Illinois University auditorium. According to his girlfriend, he had recently been taking Prozac, Xanax and Ambien. Toxicology results showed that he still had trace amounts of Xanax in his system.

Finnish gunman Pekka-Eric Auvinen, age 18, had been taking antidepressants before he killed eight people and wounded a dozen more at Jokela High School – then he committed suicide.

Asa Coon from Cleveland, age 14, shot and wounded four before taking his own life. Court records show Coon was on Trazodone.

Jon Romano, age 16, on medication for depression, fired a shotgun at a teacher in his New York high school.

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CALL TO ACTION: The only way Americans are going to halt this latest gun-grabber attack on the Bill of Rights is to force the issue of SSRI-caused violence into the public eye. You, yes YOU need to forward all these articles about SSRIs and violence, and the fact that the Connecticut shooter was on these medications, to all your local media, all your family and friends, every public forum you can find, and especially to flood the offices of members of Congress (who already had hearings into this very problem). Right now that fancy software the government bought to fake thousands of online identities is cranked up into rock-and-roll, full-tilt, afterburner overdrive. Unless We The People match them post for post, fact for myth, the gun-grabbers will win through attrition. The first side to quit loses. PLEASE SPREAD ALL THESE STORIES ABOUT SSRI-VIOLENCE. Demand to know what medications the shooters were on.

More information here