With the exception (arguably) of the emergency lighting most of the contents of the armory in my first post were oriented around defensive weaponry. That stuff is important to have as I believe that you shouldn’t bring a knife to a gun fight so to speak. Yet there is an entire class of purely defensive items that deserve an equally important slot in your closet, err survival armory.

Medical Supplies

This is by far the most critical thing to have. You should have several first aid kits in your home for general use and emergencies. I like to keep one in the kitchen with my emergency lighting stash and one in each bathroom. You also need to have at least one trauma kit that has the supplies to handle major injuries. This is even more important if you live in a rural setting or are in an area that takes a while for emergency services to arrive.

Rudy’s Tip: Be sure to customize the contents of your kits based on any special needs your family may have. For example, one of my kids has hemophilia so we try to keep blood clotting agents like Celox around. I would suggest having Celox in your trauma kit anyways but you get my point!

Communications Gear

There are two types of communications gear you want to have around. First, always have at least one charged cell phone in your armory to contact emergency services if you ever need to. You can’t rely on your land line being available if someone is breaking in, for example. Often the first thing a home invader will do is cut the phone line on the outside, disabling any automatic dialing that an alarm may do and preventing the residents from calling out.

Rudy’s Tip: Use an older cell phone for this. It doesn’t have to have service! Federal law mandates that every cell phone, whether it has service or not, must be able to dial 911. Be forewarned though that many phones will beep loudly or make another noticeable noise if you call 911. You may want to have one that doesn’t in order to avoid detection by a home invader if necessary.

The second type of communications gear you want to have is some basic two way radios. Ideally you’ll have a full on communications plan for your family, which I will post about in the future, but if not then you should have four handheld walkie-talkie style radios to aid in communication between family members.

Body Armor

Now this sounds a little paranoid, I know. But for any type of home invasion or civil disturbance type emergency it will be important to have body armor around. Modern body armor that is suitable for casual home use as opposed to every day military style use is relatively inexpensive and is actually readily concealable. The days of looking like a baseball umpire with an inflated chest protector under your shirt are gone.

Body armor isn’t intended to keep you safe when the rifle bullets are flying but you can get good stuff that will keep your torso relatively secure against most handgun rounds. We’ll talk about it in a bit more detail in the drilldown post.

Wrapping it up

Hopefully this post helps you understand that a properly outfitted survival armory not only includes weaponry but also defensive items as well. You shouldn’t consider your armory preparations complete until the above areas are also covered. Let me know in the comments if you have any questions!

Are you ready for this to happen in your front yard?

The first drilldown in my post series on the proper contents of a survival armory will address emergency lights.  If you haven’t read it, click here for the summary post.  Read it and come back for the rest!  Great, glad you’re back.  Let’s talk about lights!

Like I said in my summary post, you really need to have a broad variety of emergency lighting in your stash.  While there is something to be said for general use lighting solutions there are a few core tasks that require specialized gear.

Your General Use Lighting Stash

Ideally you’ll have a few different stash locations for general use lights.  You’ll want to have some flashlights and maybe a few candles located in a couple easily accessed locations around the house.  You’ll be glad that you did this if the power goes out instead of stumbling down two flights of stairs in the pitch black looking for that flashlight that little Johnny was playing with the other day.

I recommend having one central stash that has a camping style LED lantern, a couple of flashlights, and a number of long burning candles with matches or lighters stored safely nearby.  I usually put this stash in the kitchen.  I would also suggest having several stashes throughout the house that have two or three small (think 2x AA or D cell) flashlights that can be used to safely get at your central stash.

Rudy’s Tip: These flashlights should be el-cheapo things.  I bought a bunch of twin-pack 2xD-Cell lights at the local box store for about $5 per twin pack.  You don’t need anything fancy here since you aren’t going to be rappelling down a building or anything with the light.

You should consider having a flashlight for every member of the family.  It’s sounds like overkill but since you’re buying cheap you won’t spend too much and it makes the kids feel MUCH more secure when the lights go out.  If you’ve ever dealt with a panicked kid when the power is out and nobody can see then you’ll probably want to have two flashlights per child to avoid ever going through that again!

Your Armory Lantern

Lanterns are great because they light up an area nicely.  You can set it on the table or hang it off a hook and you get a good bit of area light.  You should already have one in your general use stash but I recommend having one in your armory too for redundancy.  I recommend buying the same model to keep it easy.

Make sure you buy battery powered lanterns, preferably with LED based bulbs.  Avoid any type of oil lantern for emergency usage. The last thing you need to be worrying about is the risk of fire.  And don’t forget replacement bulbs just in case!

Your Armory Spotlight

You must have a good high powered spotlight in your armory.  I’m talking about the bright stuff here.  These lights will throw a beam a long way and are particularly useful for looking around outside whether you’re looking out a window to gauge whether it’s safe or if you’re already outside and you’re looking around.  And since they are so darn bright you can use them to temporarily blind an assailant or intruder.

When buying a spotlight I recommend buying a rechargeable hand held unit.  Some of them come with a stand too, which is pretty neat.  You’re looking for at LEAST 3 million candlepower, I would personally prefer 7-10 million.  As with everything I recommend, you should buy at least two and stock spare bulbs.

Your Armory Flashlight

You need some higher quality flashlights in your armory.  You should always have one on your person, and have several on the shelf just in case.  These are intended for daily carry and use as well as for self and home defense situations and should be a higher quality, ideally with a metal case.  This flashlight is just like your pocket knife.  Always with you, period.

This is where you might want to spend a bit more money.  I don’t recommend going out and spending $100 on a flashlight, you can get fantastic lights for less than $30 a pop, even as low as $15.  You’re looking for smaller handheld LED flashlights, powered by 2 AA or 3 AAA batteries.  I prefer the kind that have a push button switch at the base to turn them on and off.  Avoid the twisty style on/off mechanism like the plague.  You should have one flashlight for every adult and teenager and at least four spares.  I don’t need to tell you about spare bulbs, do I?

Rudy’s Tip: I recommend against mounting your flashlight on your weapon.  I know there’s quite a few people out there that like to do that.  I don’t like it for two main reasons:

First, you need a more expensive and robust light that can take the shock and forces involved in firing a weapon.  That type of light is expensive and more prone to shock related failures.

Second, the whole purpose of a flashlight in a home or self defense situation is to identify the target and make sure you’re not being spooked by the neighbors dog Muffy or something.  If your light is mounted to your weapon then in order to identify your target you’re pointing the weapon at that target.  Huge safety risk and not one I’m willing to take.

Your Armory Utility Light

You need a few hands free type lights for general use.  For this type of application there’s nothing better than a headlamp, whether it attaches to the brim of a hat or it has its own dedicated headband.  They both have their tradeoffs.

If you get the hat clip style headlamp, they’re easy to use, easy to attach, and are pretty bright.  They shine at whatever you’re looking at for the most part and are overall a great product.  They usually have five LED lamps that throw a reasonably broad arc.

Headband mounted lamps are heavier, a bit more awkward to wear – especially if you have a hat on!  On the flip side, you can usually rotate them to change where they’re pointing so you’re not limited to light only where you’re looking.  Many of these lamps can be focused to provide flood lighting or spot lighting as well.

I recommend you have a couple of each.  They have different uses and one might be better than the other for a given task.  A simple rule of thumb if you can’t decide is to have one of each for each adult, and then add a few for spares.  Again, might be overkill but it’s better to have too many than not enough.

Rudy’s Tip: Add some smaller keyring style flashlights that take a single AAA battery to your armory!  Have one on every keyring and a few on the shelf.  You never know when it will come in handy!

Wrapping it all up

I’m not the gear junky type of guy who recommends the best and the most expensive product out there.  I think that there is tremendous value to be had out there and it’s better to have three cheaper lights than one expensive one.  Even if a cheaper one fails, you still have two left!

Rudy’s Final Tip: I like to buy identical models in a given category.  The same model lantern, the same model spotlight, etc.  This lets me stock one kind of replacement bulb and I don’t have to worry about dealing with different kinds of bulbs.  Makes life so much easier…

Thanks for reading … let me know in the comments if you have any favorite lights you’d like to recommend to the rest of the readers!

The Survival Armory

There are several key components to a properly outfitted survival armory.  I use the term survival armory because while for the most part you won’t ever need to use or carry most of your weaponry on a daily basis, most of these are there for one reason:  as a tool to protect you, your loved ones, and the things that you need to survive (aka your preps).

That’s not to say that I don’t believe that you should carry a concealed weapon during your daily life if permits are available where you live.  On the contrary, I believe that everyone should strongly consider getting the appropriate training and carry the tools you may need to use to protect yourself and those who depend upon you.

Rudy’s Advice: If possible I would recommend obtaining a concealed carry permit even if you don’t intend to carry on a regular basis.  It makes logistics easier when going to the range, when buying firearms, and is a good thing to have ‘just in case’.

The properly outfitted survival armory is NOT limited to just firearms, despite what you might think at first glance.  There are a number of key components to your defensive preps that I’ll go over at a high level in this post.  Over the next couple days and weeks I’ll take each component and flesh it out into more detail and make specific recommendations from my personal experience.

A Secure Amory is a Safe Armory

This is a family oriented site and safety is a huge concern.  The security of your armory is the most important aspect of this preparation area!  It’s critical that dangerous items are kept safely locked up so that adults are the only ones who have access to them.

When children are at an appropriate age both physically and mentally then they should be trained in the use of various defensive items and at some point later on older children should be granted access to defensive items they are allowed to handle without supervision.

Be intelligent here and above all think safety.  Don’t forget to consider visitors and children that aren’t yours when planning on how to secure your armory.  When I drill down into details I’ll talk about my opinions on how each type of item should be secured.

Rudy’s Tip: I glossed over it above, but I want to really point out that you should not only consider the age of your child but also the mental maturity that child shows when deciding when to train a child how to use tools from your armory.  Every child is different and an arbitrary age number should not be the deciding factor here.

Emergency Lighting

The first thing you should consider in your armory is emergency lighting.  Ideally you should already have general use lighting such as candles, lanterns, and flashlights.  You should have a high powered spot light, several bright flashlights, and ideally a few hat mounted LED lights.  These items should be kept separate from your general use emergency lighting and are only to be used in case of a defensive emergency.

Non Lethal Weapons

Like the title says, this part of your armory is all about weapons that are generally considered non lethal.  Pepper spray, batons, tasers, and so on are the types of things that you’re considering here.  These are things that you should be carrying with you at all times when you are outside of the home and you should consider keeping them handy when you are home.  Generally speaking the only time these non lethal options are on the shelf is if they’re a spare or if it is inappropriate or inadvisable to carry them on your person.

Knives

Everyone should have several utility knives and generally speaking everyone should carry at least one whenever possible.  There are a ton of reasons why that I’ll go into when I drill down into detail, but for the time being, think several knives for various purposes.  I personally lean towards folders that you can get at any sporting goods store.  Don’t forget your sharpening kits!

Firearms and Ammunition

This is obviously what you think about when you hear the word Armory.  But as you can see from the rest of this post guns are just one part of the greater whole.  You need to consider a variety of different firearms and the ammunition to go with them.

I’ll talk specifics in the detail drill downs, but I’ll be going over my thoughts on defensive,  general purpose, and hunting weaponry. I’ll discuss both hand guns and long guns and my thoughts on ammunition requirements.

Wrapping it up

This is a contentious subject sometimes.  But I don’t want you to stick your head in the sand and ignore it because it’s scary or intimidating.  You must consider how you will defend you and yours if worse comes to worst.

Always remember that it’s obvious that life and limb are worth protecting but in a survival situation your preps are critical to survival and losing those can be a death sentence.