When Practice Becomes Reality

I wrote an article the other day which covered the topic of hoarding knowledge with respect to prepping.  Imagine the dad/husband who might be the keeper of all prepping knowledge in the family, his wife and kids completely dependent on him.  He buys and stocks the preps, he trains with the weapons, he knows how to run the generator or the plan use a rocket stove to cook food if the grid goes down.  He is what some refer to as a single point of failure.  If he is not home or goes down everything else starts to fall to pieces.  In order to avoid this scenario the obvious solution is to include the family in the prepping process, teach and mentor others so that they become an asset rather than a helpless sheep.  I’ve always included my family in the prepping process and the other day it paid some nice dividends.

What I’m about to describe happened without my knowledge, I found out after the fact when my wife called me.  While nothing bad actually occurred this demonstrates how proper training and rehearsals gives someone (my wife) the confidence to execute a plan without the head of the family present (me).

Like many families we have an alarm system (cameras, motion sensors, door and window sensors, etc) as part of the protective layers which we use to secure our home.  That in mind my wife and daughter came home the other day and parked in the garage.  I should note that I was away from home at the time, at least a 1 hour drive .  Upon getting out of the car they heard the alarm beeping in a way which indicated that something was wrong.  When this happens it could be any number of things from a power outage to someone screwing with the alarm itself, it really is impossible to tell.

I’m sad to say that some people would have just walked into the house without a second thought.  “Ah, it’s probably nothing, I’ll just reset it.”  While it truly might not be anything, what if it WAS indeed something?  What if someone was hiding in an upstairs closet with a crowbar?  My wife is not one of those people who assumes the best and carries on.  In preparation for this we have gone through countless rehearsals at home, be it waking up in the middle of the night to a strange sound or coming into the home when something might be amiss.  She is no pro but we have gone over very simple room clearing techniques while utilizing our dogs to help detect strangers.

Let’s get back to the garage and the alarm.  The first thing my wife did was to cautiously open the door into the house and then open the door next to that in order to call our German Shepherd.  Of course she had her pistol in hand (Glock 26), a weapon which she has shot many times with me at the range.  With my German Shepherd leading the way she proceeded to clear every level of the home which included every room/closet.  Again don’t get confused and think she was deliberately pieing corners or doing dynamic entries into each room (flashbangs?).  However she did let the dog go first to see if he would alert to anything, followed his lead and made sure to also not get tunnel vision during the process.  Once the house was clear she gave me a call to tell me about it, I couldn’t have been more proud!

Here’s the deal, if 5 dudes with AK47’s were squatting in my bedroom waiting for someone would my wife have stood a chance?  Of course not, but hopefully my dog would have alerted quickly enough to give her time to make her way out of the home.  10 times out of 10 I would sacrifice one of our dogs so that one of our family could live, not preferable but a stark reality.  The point of this post is not to “what if” the situation to death but rather point out the fact that because of the training we have conducted together my wife was able to be proactive versus sitting back and waiting for me to come home.  When practice becomes reality are you and your family members ready to execute the plan?