I feel we’ve reached the point where we are, more or less, out of jail: restrictions are being relaxed, I am fully vaccinated, and I’m seeing many businesses doing away with mask requirements.
I originally started this as a diversion while we were all on home confinement. If you were locked in, what did you have that was better to do than watch weird old videos that popped up in my YouTube recommendations? Now, it seems like this…feature? recurring trope?…has gone beyond what originally motivated it. This seems like a good time to wrap it up.
Mostly. I’m holding a couple of things in reserve for days in the future. And if we’re hit by a new variant and have to lock ourselves in again, I reserve the right to restart this.
I have something special I want to post, as the final entry, and also as a tribute.
There have been a couple of incidents recently involving old guysfalling off boats into the water and dying.
I’m not making fun of them: mad props to these guys for being out there. But, as Lawrence put it: “Important safety tip: try not to fall off the boat.”
From the National Safety Council, circa 1972: “Find a Float”.
Bonus #1: in honor of the late Bobby Unser, “Hazards of Mountain Driving”.
Bonus #2: “Blasting Cap Danger” brought to you by the “Institute of Makers of Explosives” circa 1957.
I remember when I was young and reading “Boy’s Life”, every now and then they’d have a public service advertisement depicting various types of blasting caps and warning young Boy Scouts not to mess with them. My question was: why? Was there a real problem with people just leaving blasting caps lying around for kids to find?
This is absolutely true, and I have no argument with Mr. McNulty.
But it did get me thinking.
It has been (mumble mumble) years (soon to be mumble mumble plus one) since I was a Boy Scout. But my recollection of Boy Scout first aid training at the time (as well as the Red Cross first aid training I went through) was that: you should never ever ever use a tourniquet to stop bleeding.
Am I misremembering? Is there anyone else who was a Boy Scout back in the day, or took Red Cross first aid training, and remembers being told tourniquet = bad?
I know medical knowledge grows and changes. I remember the wisdom on snakebite treatment has changed over time as well. I’m just wondering when and why this changed.
This might be one of those discussions I need to have with some authority like Ambulance Driver over a couple-three beers if we’re ever in the same place at the same time.
One of the reasons this past weekend was so busy is that I got up brutally early Saturday morning and drove out to the KR Training facility (KR Training, official firearms trainer for WCD) to attend a “Stop the Bleed” class taught by Levi Nathan.
I know there are many gun bloggers who feel like: if you carry a gun, you should carry a tourniquet, too. I haven’t been doing that because:
I didn’t have the training.
I have heard a lot of horror stories about low quality knockoff tourniquets made of Chinesium. I wanted to make sure I knew what suppliers were reliable, and how to tell a counterfeit tourniquet from a real one, before I started spending money on putting together an emergency kit (or what people in the biz call an IFAK).
I also wanted to know what I should – and should not – put in my emergency kit.
Summarizing: I got exactly what I wanted out of Mr. Nathan and the course, and I heartily endorse this event and/or product.
And even though this was at KR Training, this isn’t just a gun thing, for all my foreign readers. People hurt themselves badly and suffer life threatening bleeding in all kinds of ways: car accidents, construction accidents, kitchen accidents…
I also heartily endorse the idea of taking an official “Stop the Bleed” course from someone, anyone. You’ll get hands-on practice with stuff, and hands-on practice is good.
That being said, today’s videos are all StB related. Some of this is for my own personal bookmarks, and some of this is for the benefit of my loyal readers who want the knowledge, but may not yet be able to step out and take a StB course.
Remember: Have gloves. Wear gloves. Nitrile is recommended.
This is a compressed (slightly over 15 minutes) version of the “Stop the Bleed” presentation.
Here’s a longer version (a little over an hour) with demos.
Again, these are not substitutes for taking a for real actual course from someone who knows what they are doing. But I know a lot of people still don’t feel like it is safe to go out and mingle in public, so this is better than a poke in the neck with a sharp stick.
And from North American Rescue, makers of the Combat Application Tourniquet (C-A-T), here’s how to apply one:
And from ITS Tactical, here’s a video on using the Israeli bandage:
Finally, by way of SkinnyMedic, “How to use your IFAK”.
Note that some of these channels talk about stuff other than trauma dressing, gauze (for packing) and the C-A-T: for example, chest seals.
The advice we got in class for using chest seals (and even more emphatically, chest decompression needles) was: don’t. Chest seals seem to show up in a lot of pre-packaged IFAKs, but as Mr. Nathan put it, this is not within your scope having taken just a “Stop the Bleed” course. This is the kind of thing that EMTs with higher level certifications do, not random hobos such as myself.
Also, if you get someone else’s blood on you: tell the responding medical people. We all know about HIPAA, right? Well, there’s a limited exception in the law: if you get someone’s blood on you, and it is documented, and it turns out that person has a blood-borne pathogen, you have a right to be informed of that as long as it is documented. You don’t have a right to know how and where they got it, just that they had it.
Now all I need to do is get my (stuff) together. I’m actually kind of surprised at how many of the companies selling IFAK pouches don’t make them in red. Condor is the only one I’ve found: 5.11 doesn’t, for sure.
The pouch should be the cheapest part of your kit, as long as it holds everything in place. But in a high stress emergency situation, I’m personally thinking “red = first aid”, and I want to be able to tell people “grab the red pouch”, not “grab the black pouch, no, the small black pouch, no, the other small black pouch, no, that’s the dark purple one, grab the black one…” Know what I mean, Vern?
I haven’t posted any survival videos in a bit, so when I ran across these, I thought they’d be good fodder. They give a slightly different perspective. Also, while this runs about an hour in total, it’s broken up into handy 15 minute chunks.
“SAS Escape, Evasion, Survival” with Barry Davies.
One thing that kind of surprises me is that there are a lot of disasters – serious disasters, causing major loss of life – that I’ve just simply never heard of until I stumbled across the relevant SFD episode. Mont Blanc Tunnel fire? Totally missed that one. Kaprun funicular disaster? How did I manage to miss that?
Interesting safety note: one of the talking heads on the Kaprun SFD episode made what I thought was a really profound point. Fire will always do the unexpected. Fire doesn’t necessarily behave in an intuitive way. 12 people survived at Kaprun because they ran downhill, towards and past the fire at the rear of the train. Which is counter-intuitive: why would you run towards the fire? Because: