Author of Be Ready for Anything and Build a Better Pantry on a Budget online course
It was this time last year when I decided I was going to go all-in with regard to learning survival skills and I signed up for Selco’s course in Croatia.
I joined with a group of five other ladies, and honestly, we had no idea what to expect. We were pretty nervous, to be quite honest, about flying halfway around the world to meet two guys whose articles and videos we’d seen. But we were all determined to take a step forward in our preparedness endeavors.
If you’re interested in taking the course this year, registration has just opened and you’ll save $350 by booking it this weekend. I hope that you’ll attend – I will be there and I’d LOVE to meet you!
Sometimes I think women can fall into the trap of feeling as though “survival skills” are more of a male-oriented thing. Some feel like prepping is their job, and survival is the job of their spouse.
I’m here to tell you that I sincerely feel that learning survival skills has completely changed my life. I took Selco’s course and haven’t stopped learning since.
The course changed everything.
Before I took Selco’s Urban Survival Course for Women, I was more of a prepper than a survivalist. My comfort level was dependent on how much food and toilet paper I had stocked to the rafters in my house. My plan was firmly bugging in. I had no intention whatsoever of leaving my home in an emergency unless it was something like a fire when staying would be suicidal.
Going to learn from Selco and Toby made me look at everything differently. All of us did a long, hard assessment of our plans and saw holes in them – sometimes gaping ones – that we couldn’t have known about before the course.
Honestly, the course is what gave me the confidence to follow my dreams of living a nomadic lifestyle and exploring Europe. This course is an adventure you need to have and I know it will change your life too.
Flexibility is the key to survival.
One of the major holes several of us found was a lack of flexibility. Everything – everything – was dependent on being able to stay at home with our stuff and hoping that nobody stronger came and took it away from us.
But in a real SHTF scenario, what you have is what you can defend. If you can’t defend the 10,000 cans of spam and the 300,000 rounds of armor-piercing ammo you have stacked in your basement, they won’t be yours for long. Are you honestly willing to fight to the death to keep your stuff? I’m not. Who’s going to take care of your family when all your stuff has been taken and you’re dead?
Don’t get me wrong. I strongly advise bugging in during many situations. Bad weather? Stay home. Civil unrest across town? Stay home. Power outage? Mudslide across the road? Nuclear attack? STAY HOME.
But if a stronger force – let’s say a group of 20 evil Darryl Dixons armed to the teeth – has hit every house in the neighborhood and ruthlessly murdered the homeowners? You’d be insane to think that you, your spouse, and your 12-year-old son could fight them off. That’s the time for Plan B, my friends.
Take what you can and get out.
You need way less than you think you do for bugging out.
If you’re like most preppers you have a gigantic bug-out kit in your vehicle that goes with you everywhere. I had one too. My old backpack weighed 35 pounds and I’m out of shape. And that’s not even counting the things I was thinking about tying onto my pack.
A bug out (or get home) situation is not the time for all your fancy prepper gadgets. The less you have to carry, the faster and more discreetly you can move. The course clearly shows you in a logical, methodical, well researched and presented manner that you will not use most of the things you’re carrying around. Those little camp stoves and sleeping bags and prepper meals? You aren’t camping. You’re getting the heck out of someplace dangerous. As well, we found that many of these things were utterly useless.
If you ever get to the point at which you have to bug out on foot, you need to face the reality that it is probably not going to be a comfortable experience. If you are bugging out on foot, things are bad. You’re not going to be the only desperate person out there.
You want to go light, simple, and multifunctional.
Every lady at the course dumped close to half of their bug-out gear and lightened their loads. I’m traveling around Europe with a kit that weighs 8 pounds and I feel much more confident than I did with my 35-pound mammoth bag.
Stealth is important.
I have to admit something rather embarrassing. Stealth never even crossed my mind before I went to Croatia. My kit was in a colorful bag. My hiking boots had reflective laces. I was going to tie and carabiner stuff to my backpack to bounce around as I bopped out of town.
In one of our first exercises, we got let out of a vehicle at an abandoned facility with about 10 buildings. We were told there was a threat facing us from a specific direction, and we would need to “take cover and get from where you are to Building 1.”
How the heck do you take cover when you don’t know where the shots are going to come from? Welcome to SHTF. You have to move stealthily. You have to blend into your location to the best of your ability. You have to be able to creep along to get from A to B instead of strolling down the promenade.
So your hunter-orange-blaze vest? Target. Your shoes with the white swoosh on the side? Target. Your monster-sized backpack with a sleeping roll and a water filter dangling off it? BIG target.
Sure, I still wear colors and cool shoes. But I have always, always got something to put on that will help me escape notice. I’ll pull a black hooded sweatshirt over my hot pink t-shirt. I’ll change from my cool motorcycle boots with the chains on the side into my solid black Nikes with black laces. I’ll ditch my sparkly purse for my black backpack. And then I’ll move from concealed place to concealed place, low and fast.
Understanding baseline.
During the course in Croatia, we talked a lot about “baseline.” How to read it, how to notice if it’s changed, how to blend in and be baseline.
To put it simply, baseline is the “normal” for where you are. If you’re at a concert, screaming and dancing in public is totally baseline. If you’re at the doctor’s office, not so much. If you are away from home, watch the locals. Are they emotive or more restrained? How are you dressed differently from them? What are the differences in your actions, mannerisms, etc.? You can hide in plain sight if you can master baseline wherever you happen to be.
As well, right before an event occurs, the baseline often changes. Maybe it’s the middle of summer and you see a dude sweating his butt off in a parka, looking around nervously. Is he baseline? Probably not. Maybe you are in a neighborhood with gang activity and all the mamas collect their children and bring them inside. They live there and might be aware that something is about to go down long before you do. But by watching them change the baseline, you, too have been alerted that it might be time to get the heck out.
I made 5 lifelong friends.
The women I met on this course quickly became some of my closest friends on the planet. You can’t spend a week together seeing the sites, having a drink and dinner at the end of the day, and going through the intense moments we did without bonding.
Over delicious Balkan cuisine, we found that we had so much in common from our pasts and we are all in contact regularly a year later. I know if you attend the course, you’ll meet lifelong friends, too. Cool chicks like us have to stick together!
It’s important to note that this is not some crazy experience that only GI Jane types will be able to accomplish. Our ages ranged from the early 40s to 60s. We had all sorts of body types and limitations. Bad backs, bad knees, post-surgery. We all still managed to rock the course.
Even prior to the course we had extensive contact and discussion preparing for the course and received regular guidance and advice from the Instructors in a private forum set up specifically for the course. This also greatly helped address any concerns we or our families had about us attending the course. In fact, several of the ladies made their travel plans through this forum so they could make the trip together, and several of the spouses were in touch with one another, too.
You can come and learn from Selco and Toby too.
If you are interested in increasing your survival skills so that you’re confident in nearly every setting, registration is now open for the 2020 Urban Survival Course for Women. This weekend, you’ll save about $350 off the regular price.
I’m going to be returning to take the course again and I’d love to meet you. So are a couple of the ladies who took the course last time around. It’s truly a lifechanging event and I can’t recommend it highly enough.
If you’re worried that you aren’t going to be able to physically handle the course, let me set your mind at ease. I had recently had abdominal surgery and couldn’t lift more than 10 pounds when I went. I also couldn’t bend over and touch my toes. I also got sick during the course with a bad cold. I still did fine but that’s part of the reason I want to take the course again – I want to do it when I’m not in the worst shape of my life.
It is based on what Toby calls a “self-select” model. You don’t have to participate in everything. If you’re worn out or you believe it is beyond your physical capabilities, it’s totally fine if you sit out an exercise. Nobody is going to think badly of you for doing so. Nobody is going to try and shame you for taking a step back. As Toby says, “You’ve got to train with the body you’re in.” So please don’t worry that you won’t be able to handle the course. If I can, you can.
If you have any questions about the course, please ask in the comments. If it’s a more personal question, you can email me at hello @ theorganicprepper dot com and put “Croatia Course” in the subject line. I’ll answer you ASAP. Feel free to ask me anything – I’m an open book with regard to this topic.
Here are some other articles I’ve written about what I learned at the course. Please note that while I’ve written extensively about the course nothing can come close to actual participation in the activities to truly understand and own the knowledge being presented.
The course is kept to a specifically small limited number of students so everyone receives personalized and individual feedback routinely throughout the course.
- Why I’m Going All the Way to Croatia for an Urban Survival Course
- I Survived an Urban Survival Course with SELCO
- The Difference Between Prepping and Survivalism (And Why You Need Both Skill Sets)
- The 6 Most Important Lessons I Learned from Selco’s Urban Survival Course
- You May Be Surprised What Survival Products Worked and What Didn’t
- What It’s Like to Spend a Week Learning About Survival from Selco
- This Is What’s in My International Travel Survival Kit
- Urban Navigation: How to Orient Yourself Quickly in a New City
I hope you decide to come. The first round in Zadar is on me!
Are there any match ups with preppers? I am retired and interested in meeting someone from Northern Idaho.
I don’t know of any groups. I always recommend meeting people with common interests, like gardening or outdoor sports. Then you can often build a preparedness relationship from that.
One thing I notice in a lot of training groups is that they have the wrong mindset.
It is one thing to train on being stealthy. That is a good thing.
But on the other hand, you should never be in a situation where you are forced into a single course of action, in the first place.
That is a losing scenario and you have already lost. You failed to prepare, to scout, to plan and find other options.
Never force yourself into a certain course of action. Find another way, plan better.
Never go where there are not at least 2 ways in and out of a building. Know them well.
Use the cover of darkness,( actually dusk is often best) and camo options, if you are in danger of snipers.
Low light makes for poor target identification and some night vision equipment will not work well at that time either.
There are always a lot of options, try not to use the same one twice. someone might have figured it out and will use it against you.
Most training courses take place during the day, but come SHTF, any smart individuals will be working at night. Which will change the game a whole lot, vs daylight operations.
There are urban combat training moves that only work if the area is well lit. But worthless if it is dark or poorly lit. Some combat range training teaches you to shoot from behind certain objects. Those same objects that in real life, would not stop a bullet and are poor choices of cover. If you fall into the mindset of choosing them for cover, it will probably get you killed.
No training is perfect, so take it for what ever you can learn from it, but do not rely to heavily upon it.
Learn from its mistakes and poor mindset.