Survival Team Building-- How To Prepare and What To Do

The basics of team building for preparation and survival: who do you want? How do you organize your neighborhood and work place. How do you prepare?

1. TEAM-BUILDING PREPARATION and SURVIVAL

2. For many of us, a ‘team’ is a no-brainer’. Our family is our survival team. For others, though, this is a decision: whether to try to make it on their own or join forces with others. There are advantages and disadvantages to a team, which also change depending on whether you have a mild, moderate or extreme emergency.

3. Advantages of a Team The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. You can’t be an expert on everything. Having an array of people who bring different, needed skills, is important. Some people just can’t handle being alone. Can you? Have you ever spent a night out in nature alone?

4. Advantages of a Team A sense of purpose. In combat, soldiers fight for each other, not for a cause. Being a member of a team can increase your motivation to get out of yourself and fight for the survival of those who you care about.

5. Advantages of a Team In an extreme emergency, long-term survival will eventually depend on team building. In this scenario you often won’t have much of a choice who you will ally with. Groups will form with different agendas. You have to evaluate your goals, and also whether you will be an asset to the team. What do you bring to the table?

6. Disadvantages of a Team You make a larger target. It is indeed better to run away rather than fight. Your running away is limited by the slowest member. The only soldier I had to remove my A-Team couldn’t keep up with us in the field, carrying our extremely heavy combat load. You are also more likely to be discovered in an extreme survival situation as part of a team.

7. Disadvantages of a Team You are letting others in on your survival plan. The lazy survivalist simply lets others prepare, then comes in and plunders. I’ve consulted with wealthy clients and always have to bring up my inverse rule of security: the more people you bring in to provide security, in an extreme situation where money will no longer be a factor, the more dangerous you have made your situation.

8. Disadvantages of a Team Will the other members of the team be prepared? If it’s your family, it’s your responsibility to get them ready since you’re reading this. Will the members of the team actually pull their weight? To wait until a survival situation to evaluate team-members is foolhardy.

9. Where To Find Survival Team Members Most likely it will be your family. Think about last Thanksgiving. Do you really want to huddle in a Bug Out Hide Site (BOHS) with those people? Joking. Not. In mild to moderate emergencies, you will want to gather your family and team members as quickly as possible.

10. Where To Find Survival Team Members Other places to find potential survival buddies: Your friends. From your job. Actually, you should quietly evaluate your co-workers anyway, because the percentage of time you spend at work is the percentage chance an emergency or natural disaster will strike while you are among them. On Nine-Eleven certain co-workers proved to be true life-savers. Hunting and garden clubs. Two extremes here, but each brings something to the table.

11. Who Do You Want? The first person many think of is someone who is ex-military. I even point out that you’d most likely want a Green Beret as your #1 choice, but remember, those are Special Forces; not your run of the mill military person. The majority of veterans, while they have some basic training, were support personnel, so you have to consider what their MOS- military occupation specialty— was.

12. Who Do You Want? Then there is the ‘prepper’. Unfortunately, too many people confuse owning a bunch of guns and stockpiling ammunition and food as ‘preparing’. As you can see in my preparation and survival guide, I give little mention to this topic. First, if firing guns comes into play, you are in, or just escalated into, an extreme emergency. The odds of a mild or moderate emergency are much, much higher and need to be prepared for first.

13. Who Do You Want? Simply owning guns doesn’t mean a person knows how to use them. Even hunters who use long guns may be great shots, but there’s a big difference when we’re talking Close Quarters Battle. The other issue with guns is you can only carry a couple. Unless you’re a “shooter”, someone whose full-time job is training on weapons, you can only be proficient on a couple of guns. It’s better to have two you know how to use than 40 sitting in your gun locker.

14. Who Do You Want? The most important attribute is someone who handles crisis well. Who doesn’t panic. Unless you’ve actually seen someone in an emergency, this is a hard quality to ascertain.

15. Who Do You Want? Focus on skill sets: Medical Law enforcement and military Leadership Survival Communications Engineering Weapons (both close quarters battle and hunting) Gardening, farming Ranching Electrical

16. Who Do You Want? Scavenging. This last one is a skill one rarely thinks of. In Survival, a key phase after a moderate to extreme emergency is scavenging. Not just scavenging (being able to find things), but also the ability to improvise. A MacGyver type of person, who can make something out of disparate parts. Who can find different uses for things. Interestingly, often woman are better at this than men because men tend to be linear thinkers. For a man the only way to get to B is from A. Women tend to be circular thinkers and they might think the best way to get to B from A, is to go to C and loop back. And often, it is.

17. Who Do You Want? A key decision that has to be made beforehand is a chain of command. Someone must be the leader. And so on, down to the last person, the minion, because every team needs a minion. Remember that survival leadership requires different traits than normal, civilian leadership. A key trait is the ability to make decisions while in crisis. The Donner Party was an example where a bad chain of command led to disaster.

18. Organizing Your Neighborhood and Workplace During natural disasters such as hurricane, flood, extreme weather, wild fire, etc. an organized neighborhood can be essential to survival.

19. Organizing Your Neighborhood and Workplace Inventory the neighborhood: Chain saws Winches Four wheel drive vehicles CB and other radios, including satellite Water purifying systems Where are all the gas meters and propane tanks? Who needs special help? Focus on the handicapped, the elderly, and children who might be home alone at periods of the day.

20. Organizing Your Neighborhood and Workplace Each household should have large placards made up with OKAY on one side and HELP on the other. Use fluorescent colored poster board available at your local supermarket. Have this stored near a front window under a rug. Display as needed.

21. Organizing Your Neighborhood and Workplace Determine where the neighborhood gathering site will be; in essence the neighborhood IRP. People should go there before trying to run around and rescue others. Organization saves time and lives. Have a contact list tree of who alerts who. This is a way of communicating so each person knows who they are responsible for contacting. There are events such as wildfires where this is life-saving.

22. Your primary team shelter will be a home. Pick the one that is most amendable to the survival requirements as laid out in this book. You should have a team IRP, ERP and BOHS. That’s Immediate Rally Point; Emergency Rally Point and Bug Out Hide Site

23. The BOHS is where everyone will link up once the aliens blow up the White House, the Empire State Building and the local Home Depot. Seriously, it is where the team will meet if the IRP and ERP are not viable. This is where your team gathers when things have hit the fan. The key to this Hide Site is it must be located in a hidden and relatively secure location. You must be able to put surveillance on this spot, so that if a team member is coerced into leading someone to this spot, you can see them, before they see you. More on BOHS in my survival guide.

24. Normally in covert operations when making a personal meeting, you would have a safe signal. However, in a survival situation, you don’t know who the first person arriving at the ERP or BOHS will be. What you need is a danger signal. A signal that someone who is coerced to give up the location and leads the bad guys to it, will emplace or remove so that others coming to the site will see in place, or not in place, whichever is decided upon, and know it’s not safe to approach.

25. Besides all the equipment and planning preparation listed in my guide, you should also conduct rehearsals as needed. At the very least, rehearse assembling at your IRP and ERP. Make sure everyone knows exactly where these are. Make sure they understand the route and an alternate route. Use your emergency route and go to the BOHS at least once.

26. If you have children, get the daycare or school’s emergency SOP and find out how they will act in time of crisis. Have plans for someone to pick up your children if you can’t make it. Schools have SOPs for many different events and you should have a copy of it. Coordinate an IRP near the school with your child.

27. The bottom line? Prepare. Prepare. Prepare. You cannot prepare after the fact.

28. Why I Wrote This Book Because of my family, particularly my grandsons. They had moved to San Diego and I started discussing earthquake and wildfire preparedness with my son. I knew from my Special Operations training and experience that there is a lot more to preparedness than most people realize and the available sources are confusing. It’s hard to figure out how to even get started, so I wrote it with that person in mind. From page one, a person is more prepared, and then the book builds on that.

29. I’ve done considerable survival training, taught survival, and have studied many manuals and books on the subject. Most are overwhelming or focused more on wilderness survival, rather than preparation. So I wrote this book to focus on what someone can do NOW. Also, I start with basics and most likely scenarios rather than going full apocalyptic, Zombie mode. My A-Team above 10,000 feet in winter on deployment

30. I am a former Green Beret who commanded an A-Team and was an Instructor/Writer for many years at the JFK Special Warfare Center and School, which trains Special Operations and includes the SERE School (Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape). I was part of the cadre who designed the new Special Forces Assessment and Selection Course (SFAS) and the Special Forces Qualification Course (Q-Course). I wrote this book for the civilian who needs to know where to begin and how to proceed in a time and cost-effective manner. I have been interviewed in the Wall Street Journal, NY Times, Forbes, Psychology Today, Sports Illustrated, the Discovery Channel, the SyFy Channel and more.

31. More Free Information I’ve put all the links to free apps, all gear mentioned and web pages on my web site at www.bobmayer.com Use the pop up from the image below on my site and scroll through for what you want. I update it constantly. There are also free books on my web site, updated daily.

32. New York Times bestselling author, is a graduate of West Point and former Green Beret. He’s had over 80 books published, including the #1 bestselling series Green Berets, Time Patrol, Area 51, and Atlantis. He’s sold over 5 million books. He was born in the Bronx and has traveled the world. He’s lived on an island off the east coast, an island off the west coast, in the Rocky Mountains, the Smoky Mountains and other places, including time in East Asia studying martial arts. They haven’t caught him yet. www.bobmayer.com