Coach's Story

From the Latin 'fossor' meaning digger. One that is primarily adapted to digging and which lives primarily (but not solely) underground. The honey badger being a prime example, and a model of our ethos- possessing thick skin, strength, and ferocious defensive abilities.  It is known to savagely and fearlessly attack almost any other species when escape is impossible.

We train to remain humble and 'gray' or 'underground' in our proficiencies and development, while able to immediately dig into ferocious, indignant counter-action when detection/avoidance and de-escalation has failed. Hone your response-ability.  How aligned is your physical structural balance so as to maximize your mobility, flexibility, stability, and thus response-ability? 

We also dig into our own relationship with fear, in both its psychological and physiological expressions. This is a practice not a terminus...

Ahanu is an Anishinaabe/Algonquin word meaning 'he laughs'. More about Coach Ahanu's roots here.

At The Fossorial Co., we often will use the term Self-Preservation as a catch all, to include self-protection and self-defense.  

Self-Protection, akin to how an advance team in asset or executive protection would build and modify a holistic protection package, would consist of you doing this for yourself. Being your own bodyguard. Data security, location and resource OPSEC, movement and pattern of life diversification and counter surveillance, situational noise, light, smoke, and scent discipline, and TECC/First aid are some aspects of Self-Protection. So is eating clean, exercise, seat belts, etc.

Self-Defense, is the mental, emotional, and physical capacity to detect, avoid, diffuse, and convert the neurochemical fear or stress spike from an immanent or in-progress threatening event or violent ambush to fuel a spontaneous and visualized choice of words, actions, or movements towards immediate safety.

Preparedness consists of personal and team development, training, testing, contingency planning, community building, and interdependence. Fitness, food, water, shelter, meds/antibiotics, commo, team/family/tribe, sanitation, security, resource replenishment and procurement, tool and tactics training, area of operations knowledge, PACE planning, etc... From planning your breakfast or route to work, up to a CasEvac under hostile engagement in a grid down situation under NODs or with absolutely nothing but flip flops, would fall under preparedness planning. The possibilities are endless, so don't get paralysis by analysis. What are the most likely 3-4 scenarios you foresee? Does prepping for one also prepare you for the others? Let's start there.

Studying under Coach Tony Blauer, who has been a trailblazer in fear management regarding violent encounters and the introduction of sudden stimulus for over four decades has helped tremendously. His KNOW FEAR® program, along with the groundbreaking practice of ECT (Emotional Climate Training), his Timeline of Violence roadmap and protocol, including deep, evidence-based analysis of the human startle-flinch response and 'flinch conversion', and defining 'The Fear Loop', to pressure testing and drilling 'Ballistic Micro Fights' have all created a deep well of resources for the modern chaos surfer to adapt scientifically rooted and proven means to better manage fear and to reduce the gap time between a stimulus and response. 

"Those who manage their fear manage to fight."- Coach Tony Blauer

One also needs to develop the 'animal', the 'state', or flip 'the switch'.  Listen to Urban Combatives founder Lee Morrison explain this concept here in this 6 minute audio: 

                                                             Building your BLITZKRIEG Battle Plan Dynamic 

Yes! While there is value in knowing basic first aid and BLS, Tactical Emergency Casualty Care is about trauma response. Many of you are firearms carriers, hunters, or otherwise involved with firearms. Probably all of you drive or ride in vehicles every day. How many of you carry, on your person a TQ and a blowout kit, and know how to use them? An arterial bleed can render you unconscious due to massive blood loss in less than 2 minutes, making your ability render self-aid impossible.

Are you well versed in the sMARCH-E algorithm which addresses traumatic injury priority of care protocols? Do you have the tools and materials needed to take action as your own first responder? TECC is not first aid, but first responder/self-rescue trauma care, to buy you time in advance of escalation to a higher level of care. 

Tactical Emergency Casualty Care is the civilian version of the military's Tactical Combat Casualty Care. 

The Fossorial Co. offers a primer to this knowledge and practice, but we do not offer certification. You will feel safer and more capable knowing how a TQ or wound packing gauze works, how a chest seal is used, and how to do a trauma sweep, BUT we are not providing medical advice. You assume all risk and liability should you apply time-buying trauma aid on anyone.  However, the Tennessee Good Samaritan law is a law that protects people from potential legal repercussions of helping others in need. The law applies to anyone giving aid in good faith without hopes of financial gain.

Can you afford NOT to prepare? What are the costs of your not ever coming home again? What are the costs of not having prepared to perpetuate the normalcy you and your loved ones depend on- food, water, meds, shelter, defensive capabilities, sanitation, communication, community, etc? How long before desperation, lawlessness, and savagery besets the ill or unprepared? 

Why not be on the other side of that continuum, do the best where you are, with what you've got, starting now and improving from there! The more of us we can scale up in preparedness, the less of 'them' there will be.

Many people initially enter into preparedness out of fear, go on Amazon and buy some 'gear' and 'survival food', maybe a case of water, and forget about it, as that 'yucky feeling' has passed. Again, preparedness is skill development, training, testing, contingency planning, community building, and interdependence. No one will find that on Amazon.

Everyone is on their own scale and comparing is far less useful than simply acting, evaluating, recalibrating, and continuing to act, within your own budget, timeline, locale, and comfort zone.

That said, I have shared this in the past in a few different iterations:

A household with less than a year+ of food, meds, water capability will be the most dangerous people around in a war/ collapse/grid down environment, and that will be about 90% of the population. Even if a lot expire in the first phase, their homes will be high risk, yet useless, scavenging opportunities as they are not prepared.

This is what I have been teaching for a long time:
Buy food! Grow food! Raise food! Store food!

Store water, have triple redundancy to procure, treat, and purify water with and without power. (distill, filter, iodine tabs, chlorine)
Have the knowledge and ability to manage human waste.
Have antibiotics, trauma first aid skills and resources, and the means to manage wounds long term without escalation to higher care (learn and practice basic first aid and above- TECC Tactical Emergency Casualty Care w/ sMARCH-E algorithm).
Have hand tools and skills and reps for defense, repair, food, etc
Have physical fitness and endurance as a priority.

Experience fasting.
Have situational awareness skills trained and drilled. Empty hand and improvised weapon self-defense (especially from abduction, mandatory skills for kids and ladies).
Have evacs and rally points known, trained, and drilled.
Sound, light, smoke, scent, and movement discipline understanding and practice.
Agreed upon rules of engagement with tribe/MAG, including lines of fire, and "friendly" ID and approach protocols
Agreed upon rationing plan with family, with group.
Delegation of labor and tasks plan.
Comms plans.
Have bug out plans known and drilled.
Drill at night, in bad weather, with simulated injuries, broken/lost gear.
Have known triggers- if A happens we do X. Consider - bad guys, fire, tornado, hurricane, flood, long term power outage, and rate and direction of approach.
Have separated party plans (if comms and power are offline while group is separated or away from primary location).
Have supply caches on bug out routes or rally locations, etc
Have paper maps of AO and routes. Know local topography and that on bug out routes.
Have working knowledge of walking distance water sources, caves, mines.
Have the ability to downsize from primary location to vehicle to foot, without need to repack or commit time.
Decide what is worth defending with your life and find consensus with team- food? location? people? etc
Share afterlife requests, and terminal injury/illness preferences.
Pray.
Endure.

All plans should be PACE fortified -
Primary
Alternate
Contingency
Emergency"