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Scott Wagner: Welcome to “In the Event…”
Welcome everyone to my new blog. The purpose behind this blog is to discuss survival weapons, survival guns, survival tactics and survival strategies that you may find useful in terms of your being able to defend yourself, friends and loved ones, in the event of national or global calamities. These things are being prepared for by many of the U.S. population.
The popularity of this issue, as depicted by various television shows such as National Geographic’s Doomsday Preppers, continues to expand on many fronts. This is despite the fact that Doomsday Preppers seems to focus on people who either are eccentric, or whom are made to appear that way by the producers of the show.
In contrast, this blog is for people who are seriously looking at the weapons end of the disaster survival equation. This is an aspect that is not closely examined by the Doomsday Preppers show at times. When weapons are looked at, it appears to me some of the well-meaning prepper folks are making ill-advised choices in terms of firearms or less-lethal survival weapons. That's if they are giving serious thought to weapons in their plan at all.
And who am I to give advice? Well, I have been a cop for 32 years now. Ten years of that were spent working full time in undercover assignments and patrol, with 20 years being spent as a reserve deputy sheriff-working patrol, training and SWAT. For our SWAT team, I served as the assistant Team Leader and one of two snipers—the only reserve officer allowed in that position.
I am currently working as a reserve Police Sergeant in the Village of Baltimore, Ohio. I have been a certified police firearms instructor since 1986, and a defensive tactics instructor since 1990. I am also a certified baton, aerosol subject restraint, Taser and mob and riot control instructor.
Over the years I have had, and continue to have, access to an almost unlimited supply of testing and evaluation weapons and equipment for either department use, or for evaluations for the purposes of writing books and articles.
I am also fortunate to work with, and have work for me, some of the finest police instructors/officers on the planet-people whom I have no qualms asking for their opinion, or for an examination of my point of view in order to find if they think I am on the right track or not. You may not always agree with me, but please rest assured that I am trying to give you the best tactical advice I can, based on not only my own experience, but also based on the experience of others.
Where do we start probing this very large topic? By looking at how this specific topic area is entirely its own separate field – how we defend ourselves and loved ones in the most efficient and effective methods possible in the event of either localized or national scale disaster or uprising. Some of the reasons given by some very serious folks for a societal collapse are to me, a little far-fetched (please no hate messages, just listen for a minute) such as a volcano becoming active in Yellowstone, some sort of disastrous climate change or a shift in the Earth’s equator.
Other possibilities for collapse being suggested are more along my line of thinking. At a local level in the state of Ohio, disasters such as tornado, fire, blizzard and flood have always loomed, but occur usually without a lot of widespread (or at least reported) looting and lawlessness. At the national level, I, and interestingly enough a very large amount of fellow law enforcement officers, believe that economic collapse due to the conditions that are already wreaking havoc in Europe are likely to happen here. And if it happens here, I believe it will bring with it a host of civil disorder issues and lawlessness that were not seen with the Stock Market Crash in 1929 that caused the Great Depression and wasn’t overcome until we entered the Second World War.
The federal government apparently has had this same view for many years. It has been providing free, week-long training in mob and riot control in Alabama for every cop in the U.S. who wishes to attend. This was instituted at a time when most folks at the local LE community level were not anticipating massive civil disorder, or perhaps more apt, civil disobedience. But somebody in Washington was.
Why is there so much concern by so many that if we have another Great Depression, it will be accompanied by massive amounts of lawlessness, death and destruction? Why are so many of us, cop, civilian and soldier alike, taking such dramatic steps to safeguard against this type of eventuality when it didn’t happen during the Great Depression?
The answer is simple. Today we are living in a totally different, totally disarrayed society. Further we are saddled with a corrupt federal government that seems destined for failure as well. These United States, a nation that until very recently, was one built out of many. This nation is also no longer “One Nation under God.” God and the moral fabric of the people have been ripped out of the public square, and out of the hearts of the people.
If this wasn’t bad enough, our children have been taught in their public schools for many years that America is a horrible place, a place that has perpetrated great evil across the globe, a place that people shouldn’t hold allegiance to. The citizens have been divided into a multitude of separate groups with not only competing interests, but interests that cannot co-exist with each other.
Class warfare is rampant in this election cycle. We have lost the concepts that it is wrong to kill, steal and injure-and that idea that certain actions and activities that would never occurred in the recent past are not only acceptable, but also applauded. I firmly believe that this time, if the same collapse happens, people will not police themselves or support their neighbor. The local police will fade away like so much of the New Orleans Police Department did during Katrina. And this time, because our federal government is built upon a house of borrowed economic cards, it will crumble as well and chaos will likely rule.
Make no mistake. This is not the situation I wished to be contemplating at this stage in my life. I was looking forward to a nice retirement, period; writing and teaching as I wanted, and spending time with my wife and family.
I hope that so many others and I are horribly wrong, but I’m not betting on that. If you wish to, you are certainly free to. I am undertaking the mission of preparation.
