Imagine this:

Last thing that you remember is that you were standing with few of your friends in street, now you are laying on ground and looking around you and there is blood running next to your leg, there is something in your throat and it suffocates you, you are trying to remove it with your fingers but nothing comes out, you are trying to swallow it but it is of no help, you are trying to scream but nothing comes out of your mouth. And thing that scare you most is that you notice blood on your pants in groin region, and you think that all future fun is gone.

And then (thanks God) you pass out. Everything starts to hurt later.

This all happened long time ago, but I still remember everything like it is happened yesterday, or like it is happening everyday. I feel very sorry for those innocent killed people in Boston.

I feel sorry for wounded too. Even when they recover they will be wounded for the rest of their lives.

Few times people told me that my experiences are war experiences and they are not applicable to some future SHTF scenarios. Horrible event in Boston clearly shows that you do not need to be at war to have civil victims because of explosions.

I witnessed numerous explosions, blasts, detonations etc. And also I helped many bomb explosions victims, during war and later in emergency services. Unfortunately here carrying small bomb with you is not so unusual (even today). Its considered here weapon just like knife or gun and we have bombings in our area still every month.

So I have been with people immediately after the explosions and later too during the course of healing.

Also I helped lot of people to cope with psychological injuries that they sustained from similar events. And I suffered from that too.

Being at the scene of incident that involves many injured people will „hit“ you like a train, and even if you do not succumb to the widespread panic and start to help injured people it will require some kind of training and knowledge.

Never forget one thing: in any kind of incident your absolute priority is your safety. If you get hurt or killed you are not gonna help anybody. Always assess safety of scene.

Of course you are gonna help injured people in any way that you can, but in order to give as best help as you can you need to understand what actually happens with people with blast injuries.

Explosion and injuries from explosion can be divided into the three parts.

1 Phase

In first phase injuries are caused by the pressure wave of the blast. Injuries like pulmonary bleeding, pneumothorax, perforation of the gastrointestinal organs. The pressure just blasts your soft part inside.

Important thing too is that wave can cause severe damage or death without external signs of injury. Common injuries in first phase are also burns on the body area that are exposed to the side where explosion happened.

2 Phase

In this phase injuries occur from the flying pieces of glass, wood, stones metal etc. So you are gonna see lacerations, burns, fractures.

3 Phase

In this phase body of the victim is becoming missile and is thrown against object. So you can expect injuries at the point of impact. Usually trauma injuries and some bleeding, depends on where body lands on.

Now this three phases maybe look to you not important in terms of helping the victim, so you could say that injury is injury whatever phase it is.

It is not so simple, especially when specialised help is not so close, you need always to suspect the most serious injury until it is ruled out.

For example after some explosion you find man who looked perfectly OK, but actually he suffers some serious internal injuries from whom he can die in half hour without proper treatment. You can not help people with internal bleeding much but you can make them priority to get professional help. Transport them before transporting others and so on.

Some of the signs of internal bleeding can be:

• Pain and swelling (pain and swelling in the leg can be caused by fracture of thigh bone for example)
• Victim looses consciousness (internal bleeding in the brain)
• Abdominal pain can be sign of damaged internal organs and bleeding
• Disorientation of victim, dizziness and fainting

Most of these signs do not necessary need to be signs of internal bleeding, but point is for you as a man who want to help it is very important to always suspect worst case injury, let the professional medical services rule bad conditions out.

Don’t forget laws if they still exist

We are talking here mostly about time when there is no law, but still we need to mention (just in case) that you need to be familiar with laws in your area.

So in some countries you could end up in jail if you try to help victim and actually you do some harm (by mistake, or lack of knowledge…) in some other regions law is actually protecting you.

Level of knowledge

It is all up to you what kind of knowledge and skills you are gonna learn and use when SHTF. There is a system of course today so you can choose to go for first aid classes knowledge or EMT or you are gonna choose to learn what you think it is important to know.

Nobody says it is forbidden to you to go online and research how to stitch (sew) wounds or splint broken leg.

What to expect and how to act

Now we are coming to most important part of all this. You need to prepare yourself mentally to deal with injured , possibly dying people.

Some says that there are people who are born to stay cool in stressful environment, other say that training is key. I can say that after more that 20 years in medical field, including SHTF period that on some things you can not get used to and dying people is one of them.

What you can do with proper knowledge and training is to reduce the moments between shock and reaction, and to act how you are prepared (train).

Emotions and stress

Nature of emergencies are that they are stressful. Be ready to be overwhelmed by emotions and be ready to cope with stress.

Stress alone is huge topic, and you are gonna deal with some events even after 20 years, but important thing is to DEAL with it. Do not be alone with your problem.

Jay has background in psychology and has helped people with traumatic events here is his part on what everyone can do to help people after disaster, even without any training. I see these things also work every day in emergency situations at my job.

—–Jay about helping survivors in the acute aftermath of traumatic events—–

1. If you are safe, make sure other people and victims of the event feel safe as well. Tell them what happened and that they are safe now (and help is on the way if that’s the case). If necessary affirm the victim multiple times that they are safe now and the event is over. They just experienced something that was very hard to even imagine for them before and they need to come to terms with that. They will show all sorts of emotions, from anger to fear to depression and disbelief.

2. Make sure they are in a comfortable position. Do not make them move if they don’t want to, they might have injuries that you do not want to make worse. Let professionals take care of this unless you know what you are doing.

3. Talk to them in a calm voice and ask them neutral questions about what happened. What happened before the event and what lead to the event? Let them run through everything step by step. Ask specific questions and try not to get emotional in any way. This will calm them down and help them to understand what happened.

4. If you set off to find out more about friends or relatives of the victim who might have been also injured or killed, explain what you are going to do and that you will be back shortly. Give people the feeling you are there for them as good as possible.

5. Be honest about the information you share. If someone got killed say it in a compassionate way. Lying about this and then the victim finds out about it because the corpse of her relative gets carried away just means a deeper fall and loss of trust in you which can make the situation even worse (what else might be the wrong information? Am I really safe?….)

7. People after traumatic events sometimes act as if nothing happened. They might want to find transportation to get to where they planned on going to or call work to let them know they are late. This is normal because many people simply do not accept that what happened is part of their reality. Its a protection mechanism. If it doesn’t hurt the victim try to be supportive and borrow them your mobile phone or help them in any other way.

In general people can handle natural disasters best, while man-made disasters or violence is the worst because the fundamental trust in people is destroyed.

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Here is some personal advice from me.

I experienced many explosions, I mean very close explosions, not sure how many but it was way of living for year.. From hand grenades, tear gas grenades, mortars, tanks, howitzer, improvised bombs…

But all comes down to same. Jump down and pray to God, later you stand up, clear debris from hair and clothes, throw up maybe from smell and blast that shocked your organs and go on. If you survived, and without injuries. Only thing that changed over the time that we all (more or less) became numb to all of that, so we just care for everything less and less.

I describe how I transition from normal young man to this numb creature that just wants to survive in interviews in my survival course. I bleed from ears several times after the explosions. I hear poorly on my right ear for the rest of my life.

Events like mass killings, bombings and similar will change you completely, and you are not gonna be same anymore. Event alone is traumatic with injured people, screams, blood and all that, and there is few basic rules in helping the victims and helping yourself to cope with everything.

Listening

Sometimes listening to victim is gonna be only thing that you gonna be able to do. You can not „treat“ victim with listening only, but trust me to man who is in pain, great fear and uncertainty is he going to survive to have someone beside him makes a great difference. Maybe you are gonna find yourself in situation that man is dying, man who is total stranger to you, but he is gonna have only you for comfort.

Anger reactions

Because fear and shock, you can expect all kind of reactions from injured people, and very often that reaction gonna be angry one. Just be tolerant, that anger is not actually directed towards you.

Help yourself

After being involved with dealing to the victims of some catastrophic event you can also experience excess stress. It can be triggered by simple traumatic event or many of them. For someone it can be caused by watching a car accident for example.

Some of the symptoms of stress are: problems with concetration, irritability, anxiety, loss of sexual interest, nightmares etc.

Dealing with stress (this has worked for me):

• Change your food habits. Avoid fatty foods, nicotine and alcohol
• Exercise.
• Relax. Try meditation or check what relaxing techniques are good for you
• Spend more time with your family and friends, talk to them and just go and include them in your stress problem solving.

This is what Jay and me think about this. The bomber from Boston is not only one who benefits from people being afraid. People who are scared are easier to control. Just dont let the bomber be a prepper…

Please share in comments what you think about Boston bombing and maybe also personal tips how to deal with traumatic events.

During SHTF I was jack of all trades. Resource gatherer, fighter and defender for my family and also just young man who wanted to enjoy life as good as possible in these problematic times.

In this and following articles I want to talk about different types of real survivalists. I dont want to judge here. If you have lived normal life you maybe only know glimpse of your survivor mindset. What kind of person you are when SHTF and you fight for survival. Important to know is that people show very different faces or mindsets when it comes to real survival.

Normal people like to think that everything can be solved with doing good, so they are trying to do good. Right now here it is not important are we talking about people who believe in God or not.

We all seen TV shows where preppers are showing their stuff, talking about their plans and things for time when SHTF.

I have seen lady, she is preparing for some possible scenario and showing her food storage and talk about her plans when SHTF. And she is storing whole lot of everything, much more than she and her family needs because as she explains there is gonna be whole lot of people who have lost everything and her plan is to help them.

I feel everything best for her, she is great person. Man who wants to help other people is good person, period.

But when SHTF she is going down. Sorry for being so “negative” but when people have to decide either they die or this nice lady for many answer is easy.

When SHTF things are upside down so it is not working like people imagined. We are all living our lives today aware that bad people exist, but that bad and evil kind is more or less (depending where we are living) controlled or locked away from the society. So we are actually not aware how many bad folks are around us. You might be living with one… yourself.

When SHTF I was rudely awaken from the illusion, actually my illusion was shattered to pieces when I saw what “normal” people did to just survive. So bad people will be around.

The bad man

I knew a guy before SHTF who was nobody. Ordinary worker from one of the industrial machine parts factory. Actually I did not really know him other from usually “hello” on the street, or football discussion sometimes in the neighborhood.

He lived alone, looked decent, and had a typical work and afterwards “coffee house / bar with friends” life. If someone asked me to describe him, I would say “just a guy from the neighborhood” or typical “normal dude”.

When SHTF, he emerged as one of the leader of local groups. And he was popular, he had something that make people want to follow him. Problem was that he had something that make bad kinds of people follow him. He was pretty much something like psychopath.

Murders, rape, robbing and everything else that goes with that was their way of life in that time. And to make things clear here I need to say that whenever I met him and his group out on the street I would go and hide even I knew him from his “former life” as normal guy.

This guy was now someone very different.

It was not a movie, I was prepared to confront them and fight only as a last option, but Batman was not living in the city in that time, even if he was there he probably would have given up so chances of superhero versus group of bag guys was not realistic.

How bad?

They liked to catch sometimes a guy and make him run over the open space where snipers were active, if the guy survived that (rarely) then they shoot at him. If he survived that shooting too, then he would live. He called that “God will decide are you going to live or die”.

Some people have certain type of charisma, and he had lot of it. When you add fact that he was bad, or evil if you like you got explosive combination. He was something like bad kind of hero, man who weak people want to follow. And they will obey his command. Also when you add fact that he provide security and food for them that counts too.

I was once in their nest, or headquarters if you like to call it like that. That was place like taken from weird fairy tales, or like some drug induced nightmare.

On the ceiling there is a big disco ball, on the wall there is a big target drawn with paint with holes from bullets. Some women were laying on the couch giggling, drunk or high watching at me.

On the floor in one corner one man was laying, I was not sure is he dead, drunk or just sleeping, I passed around him careful. I was “wearing” my “I do not care” look because in situation like that if you show fear you may find yourself in bad situation, for example guys could make practicing target out of you just for fun.

Also to look to bold was not good idea.

He was sitting in the bus seat taken from somewhere, and he had hat on his head, kind that you wear with tuxedo. If that all was movie that i was watching i would laugh a lot. But it was not a movie and I did not laugh.

My friend who brought me there introduce me to him and told him that I need MREs. That friend suppose to be something like my protection or something similar, but very soon I realized that I just like everyone else there were depending on his good will.

His first question to me was “are you going to her concert?” I was confused, then he showed me poster on the wall announcing some folk concert that happened year ago in some different world. I did not know what to say. He said ” I can get you tickets” And I said “OK thanks”.

Nobody smiles, some guy behind him were taken apart some machine gun and clean that with oil.

Anyway, we finished our deal, and I went home. While I went out he said “do not forget to pick up your tickets” with big fat smile.

I thought that he was crazy, but actually he was not crazy at all. He just had a big great time since SHTF, and enjoyed to terrify people to feel his power. He lived his dream where everything is allowed, where there is no punishment from society other then some other stronger and more wicked guy.

There is nothing deep and philosophical in that guy behavior and mindset. He was just a normal guy turned bad because he loved power and was in world without rules where he can play.

He lived on bad side and lived fast and evil life. He liked that SHTF situation, but SHTF did not create that guy, he was there all the time, his real character just waited for SHTF to come out and play.

After some time he ended up stabbed to death, and then burned. I also knew guy who did that and he was even worse than him.

Now this guy was not alone. When SHTF whole bunch of weird and sick folks emerged. Point is that you never know what kind of people living around you, or even with you. And to make things worse, as I said, this guy was something like “normal” guy before SHTF.

Besides those normal guys turned bad, there is a whole army of scum and criminals who are just waiting for SHTF to happen so they can go out and be something like small dictators.

You can be sure that they are perfectly prepared for that. They already living in their own version of criminal SHTF, with their rules. When real SHTF they gonna be ready for it, they just gonna jump out fully organized and ready to take over, go open, and be very mean.

I was surprised, I was like “why are so much mean and bad folks suddenly”. Answer is actually simple, bad people are all around us, some of them are aware of fact that they are bad like organized crime members, gangs etc. Others are gonna see SHTF like their chance to fulfill their secret wishes and indulge in power over others.

So no doubt once SHTF you run into bad man from time to time. More typical types of people who survived war in following articles and my course.

How do you expect will your local gang members or bad men be when SHTF?

After last post and the video about Homs in Syria I received some more questions about how it felt in city under siege. So today I share some details about this kind of chaotic urban warfare situation.

When SHTF there might not be army outside shooting at you, but there might be gangs who prey on you to get your supplies. Being under siege feels like someone takes the ground away you walked on.

Nothing is like it was before. When you defend your home you need to have mindset change. Home is not cozy secure place anymore. Home is the place you chose to defend yourself and loved ones. You will feel very different about place you used as defensive base forever.

To stay protected or to try to protect against firing and shelling required some skill, knowledge and in lot of the times good luck.

I can say that at the beginning people acted very brave, but on the other side that was not courage, it was more like lack of knowledge how easily man can be killed. People went out like kids with water pistols only that getting wet might be own blood or blood of friend on you.

So i watched few times how man attacking another guy who is hiding behind some cover. Attacker is just running towards the guy behind cover and constantly shooting. Other guy behind cover just leans forward for second, gets timing right, and kills the foolish attacker.

When you have bunch of civilians with lot of weapons, some strange situations can occur. Remember i am talking about people that most of them did not know too much about war, fighting, tactics and everything else.

We did not had some smart philosophy of street fighting, especially not in the beginning. But as the time goes some of the obvious things get figured, or learned if you like.

If somebody wanted to attack someone who is inside house, most usual way was to use RPG or hand greandes on some of the opennings to shock people inside and create some shrapnel flying around.

In some other situations (quite often) guys used human shields to get to the house, lot of guys get killed because they thought it is not OK to kill some poor prisoner in order to defend house.

Imagine that three bad guys come towards you and they push two older woman in front of them. Terrible situations. After some time most shot at everything that looked suspicious… no matter what.

Most of the fighting in the city was like shoot and hide, fight while moving, like fighting with shadows, they are everywhere and each shadow can kill you. You often fight people who you do not even see good, so to walk or run lightly was key. Often you do not see enemy and shoot at whatever. Sounds bad but in lot of the situations very good thing was to shoot at anything that looks even close to suspicious, and in most of the situation not even stop later to check.

You never know how well you hit. Just grab your stuff and move. Move… move. I remember that. Always on the run.

Psychology in urban warfare

Fear was one of the greatest ally of fighting, so if one of the group wanted to kill or expel other group from some street, position or building. Usual method was to talk to them for hours over the megaphone device. Maybe from this perspective looks ridiculous but if you listen for hours or days for one and same story how you are gonna be treated good if you surrender yourself, after some time lot of folks are gonna start to belive in that.

Or in other case you may listen for an hours what that guys gonna do to your family and you if you do not surrender youself.

Hard to imagine how wrong things can be

After watching video of Syria and people in Homs some memories came back. It was good that Jay visited me for making the survival course here and ask all those questions. Some dark memories hide deep inside of me. Not easy to get to them. But this is one that came back.

My friend got caught with his comrade in one house, actually two of them are left something like behind enemy lines, in basement of destroyed house. Enemy group, some 150-200 men was doing sweep trough that street, robbing, and killing civilians who had not time to run. He said to me that they spend two days in basement, covered with all kind of junk, watching outside trough small opening, few meters from opening was a corpse of girl, maybe 10 years old.

In order to see if somebody is coming to their basement, one of them needed to be constantly on that small opening, watching. He said he managed to watch atrocities that those people did to civilians and somehow push that deep inside his brain, over the time, to put these memories away. But to stare at dead kid, all the time, with her eyes wide open, blond hair, he almost lost his mind.

One of them had a pistol and few bullets, other one had a rifle , 30 bullets and homemade grenade (made from unexploded tank grenade).

They make agrement, if they see enemy is coming to the basement, they gonna fire everything and blow themselfs with that grenade. Nobody came in basement, burned house was not interesting for other guys. After two days enemy group just pulled back.

They survived war, both of them. One of them became drug addict, lived very fast few years and died from overdose.

Other man is still my friend, he is in mid 40ies, prepared, armed, strong, skilled. He have two kids, boy and girl, teenagers. Both of them know how to shoot, how to defend themselves.

I can only write here but reality is a whole different thing. Once things turn ugly, some things can feel so wrong they can not be understood or processed with normal mind.

Actually there is no way to deal with that, sometimes with friends we can speak about these things, sometimes we laugh, other times some of my friends are quiet for days, I do not know, I have periods like that too. I think none one of us is dealing too good with that, maybe pushing it away from time to time, I have for example some periods when I am too agressive, easy to explode, rarely, but I still have it.

While this site and my course is about urban survival I hope we all never have to go through this (again). But when time comes, I’m ready and you should be too.

Those scenes feel strangely familiar.

This short documentary shows many aspects. People queuing up for the few food that is left, makeshift hospital that does not work well and the human tragedy that comes with all this.

Often street fighting was very similar. Spray and pray. What you see after 2 minutes are civilians with guns. Not aware of risks and without much of a strategy. We have been like that in beginning too. After some time you figure out what to do and what not. What people there do is so dangerous because they underestimate angle of fire from attackers. Enemies have to get out of cover just a little bit to shoot people, while they have to move several meters to get back to some sort of cover. Crazy risk indeed.

You also see crowd dynamic. Who believes those people will ever give up fight? Nobody. They will win or die. What you see in video is that crowd is exctatic for fighting, for freedom, whatever.

What you do not see in video is what is going on in background. Maybe situation is not desperate enough yet, because this one bakery shop still operated, but if situation continues like that people will turn against each other. Team spirit was gone in second month after we got cut off from supplies and that is when pillaging, raping, torturing start to become common.

I hope someone ends this situation over there. I prepare for situation like this and when you watch this, this should be reminder that things like that can happen to you too, not just in far away country. People really wanting to kill each other looks same worldwide.

Here is another video from other side of things. Filmed by Syrian Army snipers.

If you have other videos / reports about situation over there feel free to share in comments.