Tag Archives: history

Video – Medieval Surgery | Arrow Removal Techniques

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Merciful Crom….I knew the Middle Ages weren’t a walk in the park but, geez…

If the world really turns into a Stirling or Kunstler novel it may actually come to pulling arrows out of people. How did they do such things in years gone by? With an interesting array of horrific techniques:

Egads that looks horrible. And the guy leading the video looks more than a little creepily at home in this project. Someone go check that guys basement.

Realistically, I think that if anyone gets shot with a broadhead hunting arrow these days the odds are pretty good its gonna just punch right through. I’ve known more than a few elk hunters who tell me their arrows punch through both sides of an elk. Factor in a modern crossbow and, unless the point lodges in a bone, the bolt is just gonna whistle through.

Grisly business all around, that.

Revisiting Tappan

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For those of you who are unfamiliar with his works, Mel Tappan was one of the leading voices of survivalism back in the ’70s. His two most classic works are “Survival Guns” and “Tappan On Survival“. Like a lot of scribes on this topic, he appeared in various gun magazines as well as, from time to time, popping up in Soldier Of Fortune (remember them?).

Tappan’s opinions were based on the times he lived in. The US was facing inflation and unemployment, as well as a Cold War, when Tappan was doing his writings. As such, his worldview was predominantly of the economic collapse being the most likely catalyst of TEOTWAWKI, In typical 70’s survivalist fashion, Tappan’s work was long on guns and everything else got far less ink.

I’ve been re-reading his book, Tappan On Survival, and it’s interesting to see how dated it has become. You have to remember that at the time Tappan was hammering his typewriter there were no Glocks, .40 or 10mm, most AK’s were bringbacks from VietNam and finding ammo was unheard of, your only choice for .223/5.56 guns were AR15’s and Mini-14’s, revolvers ruled the cop world, and the ‘wondernine’ was still a good five years away from becoming a thing.

So, after re-reading Tappan, what seems like it would have been updated to reflect the modern times, had Tappan made it this far? I think that he might have moved from being a 1911 devotee to enrolling in the church of the double-stack 9mm. With the advent of bullet technology gains, the 9mm of today would far surpass the limited and limiting offerings of his day. Perhaps Tappan would have remained hidebound in his relation ship with the 1911 and the .45 AARP ACP cartridge, but at least the modern 1911’s would run out-of-the-box.

As far as rifles, Tappan disliked the .223 and preferred the .308. In his world, the only real choices in .308 were the HK91, the M1A and the BM59. Today we have the AR-10, SCAR, FAL, AK, and a few other platforms to choose from. Even if Tappan eschewed the .223 I would think he could have appreciated the ergonomics of the AR-15 and found one in .308 to be a ‘best of both worlds’ sort of thing.

Would Tappan have been a Glock guy? Maybe. Perhaps in .45. Or maybe he’d crunch the numbers and find that he preferred the .40 Smith for its increased capacity of .45, and for its heavier weight and larger diameter over the 9mm. Or maybe he’d have decided that the new crop of defensive 9mm ammo was so good that a 17-rd pistol was just what he wanted.

Tappan was also a subscriber to the Elmer Keith school of revolvers shooting big heavy bullets. And, while I am probably the worlds #1 .44 Special fan, I think that as a general purpose revolver, the .357 is a bit more practical. Oh sure, for claws and teeth its the .44 Mag in a revolver, but for day-to-day around the ranch or whatever I think a lighter weight .357 (L-frame or GP100) is pretty much ideal.

If you get a chance to read Survival Guns, Tappan recommended something along the lines of two dozen different guns for the ‘survivalist battery’. It was quite a gamut….22 revolvers, .38 snubbies, .45 Colt, .30-06 bolt guns, .308 battle rifles, .223 carbines, etc, etc. I’m a major gun nerd and even I think it was a bit excessive.

But, as I said, we are all products of our time. Despite being written over fifty years ago, Tappan’s books provide something that is still relevant even half a century after his death. While the choices of tangible things like guns and gear may be outdated or even obsolete, his attitude, mindset, and outlook remain just as important and just as valid today. He had the view that something bad was coming and that the prudent and wise man should prepare for it. Once you’ve that idea in your head, the rest of it….deciding what guns and gear….is really secondary.

Anyway, if you haven’t read his books I’m sure there are online copies around you can view. They’re worth a read, especially Survival Guns, just for the step back fifty years to see what the survivalist of the day thought was necessary.

Roof Korea Birthday – ROK on, boys

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‘Tis the anniversary of that unique subset of Americans – the Roof Korean.

For those who don’t recall, or, like me, never get tired of hearing the story, the Roof Korean was the name given to the Korean shopkeepers who grabbed their thundertoys, climbed up on the roof of their business, and persuaded would-be trouble makers to go elsewhere.

It’s a fascinating and inspiring story. The moral of that story is that sometimes things go sideways to the point that an AR, plate carrier, and a half dozen of your best friends with AR’s and plate carriers is exactly what the doctor ordered.

Flashlight history sites

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As much as the field of guns has it’s wildly nerdy devotees who geek out on what might otherwise be considered ‘useless trivia’, the field is not alone in that. Case in point: flashlight nerds.

A posted about flashlights and a little bit about MagLite and, unsurprisingly, there are blogs out there dedicated to the history of such:

It’s a fascinating thing, to see how the technology and design have changed over the years. There have been very few advances in technology that trickled into the realm of survivlalism in such a pronounced way….the advent of LEDs and newer battery technologies have really made a tremendous sea change in flashlight options compared to the olden days of survivalism.

Both of those links are fascinating reading, doubly so if you have law enforcement experience. No doubt the KelLite’s bring back some memories for the long-retired cops.

 

Roof Korea 2022

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I missed it, but yesterday was the anniversary of the 1992 LA Loot-n-Scoot Championships… aka The LA Riots. This was the event that gave us the legendary Roof Koreans.

This was before the 1994 Assault Weapons ban, so there was a decent amount of non-neutered hardware around but there wasn’t the emphasis on tactical gear and accoutrements that we see nowadays. What would ‘Roof Korea 2022’ look like?

Well, first off, there’d be, IMHO, a metric crap-ton more AR-15s than were seen back in ’92. I also think youd see a lot more tactical vests, plate carriers, communications, and that sort of thing. I suspect there’d also have been a lot more small-unit activity than just a buncha guys lined up like Alamo defenders.

Although the Roof Koreans did a fabulous job, I maintain that the championship award for Defending His Business Against All Comers should go to gun dealer Harry Beckwith who used an M16, S&W76, shotgun, and revolver in a 105-round bullet party that turned a crash-n-grab gun store burglary into a statistical outlier.

But, thirty years ago the Roof Koreans created a name for themselves and,. I suspect, might have created enough of a legned to temper would-be rioters even today.

 

 

Operation Tracer

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Do you know what immurement is? Its a form of execution that has been seen sporadically up to the twentieth century. Succinctly, you seal someone up in a confined space and leave them to die. The stories I’ve read usually involve castles that have a condemned person thrown into a room and then the exits/entrances to the room are walled up. The person is left in the dark to die of thirst and hunger. I believe there are a couple tales in classic literature (Poe?) about someone being ‘walled up’ or ‘walled in’, in a similar manner.

But..those were unwilling participants. Could you imagine a circumstance under which you’d pick a half dozen men to volunteer to willingly be entombed in a concrete bunker…sealed in….with several years worth of supplies and the instructions that they remain sealed in until their jobs were done? Such is…Operation Tracer.

NATO had Gladio, the Nazis had Werewolf, and apparently the Brits has operation Tracer…a plan for some ‘stay behinds’ to, well, stay behind and monitor ship movements from the tactical advantage Gibraltar offered.

Turned out the plan was never activated because the Axis never took over Gibraltar. The secret bunker was sealed up and glossed over and disappeared from history and into legend. Until some spelunkers investigating rumours re-discovered it.

The concept is fascinating, of course. But what I’m more curious about is what you put on the shopping list when you’re pitting six guys into a sealed box for,at least, a year. This exercise is actually not much different than planning for a space mission or a submarine tour, I suppose. But, nonetheless, I find it fascinating and thought I would share.

We joke about bunkers around here, but it’s interesting to note that some people not only planned to make a hidden bunker but actually planned to be entombed within it like some sort of military Houdini-esque escape trick.

“There’s a little nip in the air today…”

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Yeah, I bet that’s what they said eighty years ago.

The attack on Pearl Harbor had no parallel in US history until 9/11. Both events, on the surface, came out of nowhere and both reshaped the world afterwards. To me the biggest lesson learned is to not get into the mindset that ‘it cant happen’. It’s all happened before and it’ll all happen again. In just one morning, the entire trajectory of the world changes for decades to come. It can actually happen that fast. Mind-boggling when you think about it.

 

Erbswurst case scenario

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There has always been a need for compact forms of food that you could stuff in a pack for times when you were cut off from resupply and had to make do with only what you had on you, or what you could find locally. The Germans apparently approached this with erbswurst…a compressed ration of pea meal and other things that, when dissolved in a canteen cup full of hot water, allowed the user to make a soup. Personally, it seems rather unappealing to me but I suppose if your stuck in Stalingrad watching your comrades eat dead horses, it might not seem too bad.

Today, of course, we have MRE’s, freezedrieds, and even simple off-the-shelf soup products that are leaps and bounds ahead of the technology that brought us erbswurst. But… it’s an interesting concept. If a person had access to on of those consumer-grade freeze driers you could make some pretty impressive fare. Here are a couple videos on the subject:

It’s not too hard to imagine the plethora of items found in a modern supermarket that might lend themselves to this sort of thing. The trick is to keep the main principles as the fore: compactness, longevity, and nutrition.

This was actually addressed in a product that came out of WW2 …MPF…a fascinating product with a fascinating backstory: A nalgene bottle full of that stuff would probably duplicate (or exceed) the nutritional value of erbswurst and be a tad more versatile. That MPF, by the way, can be replicated at home.

For running out the door on your way to the boogaloo, a bag of a few days worth of freeze drieds takes virtually no weight and very little space. The more hidebound might go with a few tins of meat and that sort of thing. But wandering around a supermarket sometime, with a careful eye, might reveal some interesting choices for the ‘iron rations’ to keep in your gear. But…the Germans did it first, apparently.

Friday of Color

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Ok, so we’re in the post-Thanksgiving stage now. Now is the run-up to Christmas and then…the new year of 2021.

Media says that folks are staying home for the most part and that any Friday of Color of serious quantity is being done online. Works for me. I love online shopping. You youngsters may not remember it, but in the dark days before Al Gore invented the internet, if you wanted to shop through the mail you had to get a catalog. And the only way you even knew that there was a company you wanted a catalog from was to see their ad in a magazine or something. Then you’d send them a letter asking for a catalog, wait for them to receive the letter, they sent you a catalog, you waited to receive the catalog, you ordered from the catalog by sending them your order in the mail, wait for them to receive it, they ship it to you, wait for it to arrive, and then…finally…you got your cool survivalist geegaw. And then you’d find out it’s the wrong size/color/yield and have to send it back and the whole process would start over. Broadly, it could be a month from when you saw the company’s ad in the back of Soldier of Fortune to when you actually got your goodies.

Nowadays, I can literally….literally…have a plate and plate carrier on my doorstep in three days or less with one-click of my mouse. You kids have no idea how spoiled you are in terms of amazing choices and accessibility to quality survival gear. No idea.

I can be sitting at my desk watching YouTube and someone says “Hey, I bought a [Item] and have been testing it. Its awesome, you should get one!” and I can have one on order in less than a minute. How utterly amazing is that? There are people on this planet who have to walk five miles with a bucket on their head to get drinking water and I can order up a hundred pounds of ammo to be delivered to my door and I don’t even have to get out of my chair. I love this country!

Of course, there’s a drawback to all this – it’s easy…really, really easy…to spend money quickly and carelessly. I won’t say I have never had buyers remorse, but I’m much better at resource management than I used to be. Still..sometimes it’s an enormous relief when I go to order something and find hat I can’t because it’s out of stock.

So…while you’re doing your FOC shopping today think back to those dark days of survivalism where you actually had to slap a stamp on an envelope to order up your LL Baston underbarrel Mossberg 500 mount for your AR15. You kids have it so easy today.

“We’re all gonna buy.” No lie, this was an Actual Thing back in the ’80’s.