Survival of the whatever

Somewhere along the line in my 'net meanderings, I came across an article from Slate by journalist Sara Behunek, who recently took an "Urban Escape and Evade" course offered by onPoint Tactical.

In the course of the course Behunek learned to use a bobby-pin to pick her way out of handcuffs, "how to smash a car window without making a sound...and how to puncture the tires of a pursuit vehicle with homemade caltrops."

Living, as I do, in a city, this article piqued my interest.

Given that my life might one day depend on it, the first thing I had to do was look up the meaning of "caltrops", which - thanks to wikipedia - I now know is "an antipersonnel weapon made up of two or more sharp nails or spines arranged in such a manner that one of them always points upward from a stable base." (Girls of my era: a caltrops looks an awful lot like a jack - no, not a car jack, a jack-jack, the kind you use with the rubber ball to play jacks. I haven't taken the escape and evade course, but it looks to me that if you still have your little felt bag full of jacks, you can sharpen their round ends, and you'll have yourself a perfectly good set of caltrops. Could it be that I'm a natural survivalist or something?)

Anyway, the onPoint Tactical site is info- and action-packed.

The founder, Kevin Reeve, was at one point a trainer and coach at Apple. But forget about geek-dom. Technology ain't going save us. In fact, as the world-as-we-know-it disappears, the survivors will be those who can do a field amputation, operate a crossbow, and identify edible plants. (I can spot a dandelion. Does that count?)

OnPoint has an online store - which, I guess, will be in operation as long as there's still an Internet. Some of the stuff they're selling will be particularly useful once there's no longer an Internet - like some rugged survivor-type knives of the type you'll need in the post- Ginsu world. Forget "slicing that ham so thin, your in-laws will never come back". You'll be better off with an Alwood skinner, which I'm guessing offers more way to skin a cat (or a rat) than you'll need in this lifetime - even if this lifetime should somehow, fortuitously, last much longer. Which, for most of us city softies, is probably not going to the case.

The "Urban Gear" for sale on OnPoint strikes me as a bit sketchy, in terms of who might be looking to use it. The "Auto Jiggler set" promises the ability to "open many foreign and domestic autos and trucks." Sure, there may come the day when I'll want to Escape from Boston, and need to get into that Honda that's been abandoned around the corner. But, until then, other than a car thief or, I guess, a re-po man, who would need an "Auto Jiggler"?

Similarly, the "Escape from Custody" kit seems as if it would be most attractive to someone who's in police custody. Now, as we have learned just recently from the Professor Henry Gates situation, innocent folks can and do get taken into police custody. But, gee, if you're innocent and taken into custody, I'd say that the last thing you want to do is further antagonize the cop who put you there by trying to escape.

But, of course, I'm living in the naive world of the soon to be past. Come the coming era, who knows who'll be taking whom into custody. And if I do end up winning the lottery - as I plan on doing soon - I could find myself as a suddenly quite attractive kidnapping target.

Aside from selling stuff, and providing detail on their courses, onPoint has a nifty, no BS blog, too.

Unfortunately, the post on the "Heavy-Gauge Tactical Blowgun" is now password-protected. Need to know basis, only. Damn. I guess for now I'll just have to use my plastic straws.

There's also a forum, with topics like "post-apocayiptic  [sic] nomadicism", where folks debate whether it's time to invest in a pack donkey or not.

As for that apocayiptic typo. Get with it.  Bloggers and forum-posters live in a fast-paced world without time for niceties like spelling.

Besides, in the post-apocayiptic world, no one will give a rat's ass about whether there's an "a" in separate. (Note to onPoint: there are two.) Nor whether you "rappel" down a cliff, rather than "repel" down one.

Who cares? You'll want to be skinning that rat's ass, bub, and firing up the barbie for a little rat ass grill. (The pelt can be used for earmuffs.)

We'll need people who can bend caltrops in their bare hands, not snotty, effete, urban-ites who know how to spell.

Let's face it, if you're faced with having to make an urban escape, what would you rather have along? A back-pack stuffed with knives, Ginsu or other? Or a rolling Tumi suitcase with an abridged copy of the OED in it?

Here's hoping that I never find myself in this particular situation.