Many years ago I had the privilege of meeting a fellow Backwoods Home contributor, Jeffrey Yago. I consider him a “thinking person’s survivalist instructor.”

Recognizing that most folks don’t carry guns, and those who do can’t all the time, AND that there are a whole lot of problems that a gun can’t solve, Yago wrote an outstanding article on a survival keychain back in 2009.  I’m not “techie” enough to be able to tell you what should be updated in the fifteen years since that article came out, or even if anything should, but the general value of what he has to say is timeless.

For my part, I might add a little Kubotan™ or D-Jammer™ self-defense stick to that keychain, but that’s about all I can offer.

Read it here.

29 COMMENTS

  1. I would add that Olight makes a tiny rechargeable keychain light that produces 150 lumens. I also wouldn’t worry about having to see your outside car door lock while you put your key in it these days.

    • Only item on my keychain heretofore is a standard dog tag, that could easily be sharpened into a blade, with name, SSN, blood type, and religion. Likely enough to at least help a finder to access help from the VA. All the above data could be put on some other survival items, I expect. Thumb drive, money, lights, blade, fire igniter, tweezers, scissors, mini Geiger counter, lip balm, pills, cough drops, etc., can all go in a very pocket-sized bag. Definitely potential lifesavers.

  2. I am officially part of a vulnerable population (76) and can’t even run away unless I am attacked by someone using a walker. Going hands on with a makeshift weapon is not a real option. So I will stick with my pistol and OC.

  3. M: your followers are aging and you may recall, “don’t mess with an old guy – he’ll just shoot you”. Old gals are much the same.
    P.S. Am attempting to rear a puppy, so lock me up, I need the rest.

    • Praying for your puppy, rest, and neighbors. I have a1-year male pup with maybe a year to go to maturity yet, Don’t let anyone tell you that Basset hounds don’t make good watchdogs. Born gun dogs. Also maybe the best tracking hunter types. Could track a toddler through a full blizzard. Make sure your pup has all the timely shots, especially all the Parvovirus. Happy 4 U, ma’am!

      • Bassets are the best, aren’t they? Second-best tracking nose in the domestic canine kingdom (bloodhound takes #1), but with short stubby legs so you don’t need a horse or ATV to follow them in the bush (unlike the long-legged bloodhound) — you can keep up on foot.

        And they are NOT shy about letting you know when something is “off”. You cannot miss the “Roorooroorooroow” when there’s a knock at the door or someone outside the window.

  4. I believe in a layered approach to everyday carry. As is well known, there are degrees of force that may be used (legally) to meet threats.

    I always have the option of using verbal warnings / commands. Like most people, I always carry a cell phone when I leave my home. However, these are communication options. I don’t consider them true force options.

    For actual force options, I am generally armed with either a small revolver or semi-automatic. However, you don’t want your only option to be the use lethal force. I believe strongly in having non-lethal options.

    My primary non-lethal option is a small can of pepper spray. I have had a fair amount of firearms training (including MAG-20, MAG-40, and MAG-Revolver) but, until recently, I had NO TRAINING in non-lethal self-defense. I have now taken a couple of courses to correct this deficiency.

    First, I took a course that covered the use of pepper-spray and some elementary training with a Kubotan. One problem with pepper-spray is that you need a minimum distance (say 4 or 5 feet) to use it. Otherwise, you will contaminate yourself with the spray. A range of about 5 to 12 feet is optimal for small canisters. What do you use at close range? The course, that I took, assumed that one would use a Kubotan to create enough space so that one could transition to the spray.

    To tell you the truth, I did not think much of the Kubotan. I am sure a trained fighter could use it very effectively. At my age (64), I have doubts that I could use it well. I also have a heavy keychain which could be used as a flail. I have my doubts about that too.

    In my State, one cannot carry an expandable baton unless one is a (a) law-enforcement officer, (b) security guard, or (c) is a civilian who is trained and certified in the use of the baton. So, I went and took a course to be trained and certified with the baton. I now carry an ASP P12 short baton as a “close-range” non-lethal tool. It is not as effective as the longer (say 21-inch) batons, but it can be easily carried in my strong-side hip pocket without drawing a lot of attention (unlike the bigger batons which must be belt-carried). I have more confidence in the ASP than in a Kubotan.

    On occasion, I carry other items (leatherman-macra, pocket knife, flashlight, etc.) but these items are optional. Since I always have my cell phone with me, I can use the flashlight app for emergency lighting.

    The fact is that a firearm is not always the correct option for self-defense. You don’t want to spend decades in prison because you used a firearm (as your only option) and a jury decided that it was excessive force.

    Quote of the Day:

    “If you are a hammer, all the world looks like a nail.”

    I try to make sure that my Big Hammer (my firearm) is not my only self-defense option.

    • Years ago I learned a verbal reply to panhandlers (beggars). I either learned it from John Farnam, or Massad Ayoob. “I’m sorry sir, I cannot help you.”

      For less lethal options, which should keep you out of court, look into Byrna launchers.

      • I have read about the Byrna launchers. I have seen youtube videos. However, I don’t think that a Byrna would work for me for a couple of reasons:

        1) I carry concealed and, for most of the year, without a cover garment. The Byrna is the size of a service automatic and could not be easily carried, concealed, without a cover garment. The items I carry (compact revolver, small can pepper spray, ASP-12, etc.) are selected BECAUSE they can be concealed in a pocket and carried without the use of a cover garment.

        2) Since I also carry a firearm, I would be concerned that, in a crisis, I might confuse the Byrna with my actual firearm. You would think this would not happen but Officer Kim Potter is in prison for mixing up a taser with her service firearm during an arrest.

        I think that the Byrna would be an option for people in areas where regular carry is restricted and the climate is cold enough for wearing a cover garment year round.

  5. In the UK carrying a kubotan will get you put in prison. A flashlight or multitool on your keyring can be used the same way. It’s useful and legal.

    • @ nicholas kane – “….carrying a kubotan will get you put in prison.”

      We all understand that the left-wing Government, of the UK, wishes to make the population totally dependent upon the Government. Especially for security. Therefore, it practices a policy of forcing its population to be almost totally unarmed. This has two (practical) effects:

      1) It ensures that an armed population can NEVER challenge or undermine Government control.

      2) It has the practical effect of making the population almost helpless in the face of criminal attack.

      I would argue that items (1) and (2) are serious defects although I fully understand that, to a leftists, these items are features not bugs.

      Getting back to your main point (and setting aside ideology/worldview), is carrying a kubotan totally forbidden? My understanding is that only kubotans made with pointed ends are outlawed in the UK. What about kubotans that lack a sharp point? Ones that have flat ends or, else, have had the sharp point milled off?

      When I took my pepper spray/kubotan training class, I was provided with a kubotan with the sharp point milled flat. This was specifically done to make the device into more of a keychain and less of a weapon (i.e. to make it more acceptable to law-enforcement). Would the same modification work (legally) in the UK?

      I agree with your major point. Carrying a stout, kubatan-sized flashlight would be much more acceptable, from a legal point of view, and would not sacrifice functionality.

  6. I used a patent key ring connector. My motorcycle key was on one ring, my motorcycle trunk key on the other. The goal was to be able to disconnect and use the trunk key without killing the engine. And one day, when I arrived at work, the trunk key wasn’t there. Probably the good vibes managed somehow to unlock the connector on the way. Inventions may be good sometimes, but the KISS rule won’t let you down, ever.

  7. TN_MAN wrote:
    ‘My understanding is that only kubotans made with pointed ends are outlawed in the UK.’

    Carrying ANY weapon in a pubic place is illegal in the UK.
    A weapon is anything
    Made to be a weapon: e.g a knuckleduster.
    Adapted to be a weapon: e.g a sharpened umbrella tip.
    Intended to be a weapon: So if you are walking down the street with your non locking blade that’s under 3 inches in length. That’s perfectly legal. But you think ‘I could use that on a mugger’. You just committed a crime.

    This ‘thoughtcrime’ fits your ‘the leftists are after us’ world view TN_MAN.
    Shame the Prevention of Crime Act in 1953 was passed the Conservative government led by Winston Churchill as Prime Minister.

    • @ nicholas kane – “Intended to be a weapon: So if you are walking down the street with your non locking blade that’s under 3 inches in length. That’s perfectly legal. But you think ‘I could use that on a mugger’. You just committed a crime.”

      Under your listed “thought-crime” theory, then even a flashlight is forbidden if the stray thought that “I could use my flashlight like a yawara stick as a defense weapon” crosses your mind. If it does, then you become an instant criminal. Indeed, any thought of self-defense become a “thought-crime”. Which points out a comment that I made in a previous posting. The left is anti-self-defense because they want everybody and everything (including personal security) to be totally dependent upon the all-power State. The very definition of leftists pushing Statism.

      I don’t deny that your so-called Conservative governments are just about as bad as your leftist ones. Like our own RINO’s, they have collaborated with the Global Left to centralize government power and strip The People of their liberty.

      However, while the so-called Conservatives seem to be natural quislings, it is the Left that really pushes to make George Orwell’s vision of the ultimate totalitarian State, thought-crime and all, a reality.

      I hope that there is enough “Red Blood” still left in America so that we will never follow the descending left-wing path taken by the UK and other socialist/communist Euro-States.

      • When TN_MAN refers to a “flashlight,” he means a “torch.” ; )

        Not all of Winston’s ideas were great. Gallipoli comes to mind. In hindsight, I would probably let Hitler and Stalin battle it out, and weaken each other. I would not support Stalin. But, maybe that was Roosevelt’s idea, not Winston’s. Roosevelt had people in his administration who liked the Soviet Union.

  8. @ Roger Willco – “Not all of Winston’s ideas were great.”

    The real problem is the “Career Politician” class of leadership. Most of the people, elected to office nowadays, are in the “Career Politician” class. This is true right across the political spectrum (Left-wing, Centrist, Right-wing, whatever).

    Since a “Career Politician” depends upon “Government” for his or her livelihood, he or she cannot help being biased in favor of more Government power. When one’s “Bread and cheese” (literally the food on their plate) depends upon their government job, then one cannot really do anything other than believe in Statism. One cannot help but have a Pro-government bias.

    I would expect that only about a quarter of the population (mainly hardcore, left-wing, socialist/communist types) truly believe in Statism. Everybody else values (to a greater or lesser degree) their individual liberties.

    However, our “Career Politician” class is probably (at least) three-quarters hardcore believers in Statism. Their career bias them in that direction.

    It therefore follows that one cannot have a true “Representative Republic” when the “Representatives” end up being selected from the “Career Politician” class. In effect, “Career Politicians” can NEVER truly represent the will of The People.

    So, the rise of our “Uni-Party” class of elite (and corrupt) political overlords is readily explained by the fact that they are almost entirely drawn from the “Career Politician” class.

    This was one mistake that the Founding Fathers made. They set up a beautiful and balanced Constitution but it has one fatal flaw. It did not contain any provisions to prevent people from making a career out of politics. The Founding Fathers should have included provisions, in the original draft, to set term limits on EVERY Executive and Legislative Office in the Federal Government. The goal being to prevent people from making a career out of politics. This would have allowed a continual “turnover” of politicians so that fresh representative, of The People, would always be in power rather than long-term crooks with a bias toward Statism and feathering their own nest.

    This omission, in our Constitution, may well prove to be its fatal flaw because it has allowed the formation of an elite “Career Politician” class of corrupt overlords who are, slowly but surely, destroying America from the top down.

    • It may be that the Founding Fathers thought the voters would be smart enough to vote out bad politicians, and keep good ones in there for a while. But Ben Franklin was right. He said when the voters learn they can vote themselves money out of the public treasury, they will vote for whichever politician promises them the most goodies.

      American voters were dumbed down a long time ago. I used to blame the Nineteenth Amendment (women voters in 1920), but I can’t. Woodrow Wilson was a bad President, and men, not women, voted for him in 1912 and again in 1916.

  9. Roger Wilco wrote:
    ‘I would probably let Hitler and Stalin battle it out, and weaken each other.’

    Great they were two loathsome individuals, running horrific regimes.

    BUT what if Hitler won? A nazi germany controlling an empire from the english channel to the pacific?
    Or what if Stalin won? Another vast enemy.
    I often wonder if part of the D Day motivation was to prevent a total Russian victory.
    The red army wouldn’t have stopped at Germany’s borders.

  10. nicholas kane,

    I pretty much agree. Although, Stalin did win a lot.

    I have often wondered if America could have taken George Washington’s advice to ” . . . avoid foreign entanglements . . .” and simply fought WWII defensively. That would mean we keep Japan away from Hawaii and Alaska, and let them have The Philippines. We do not go all the way to Japan, and we do not participate in the Normandy Invasion. We simply stay home and play defense, keeping our young men alive, like Switzerland.

    Germany was never a threat to us. There was a plan to fly a bomber on a one-way mission to bomb New York City, but they never did it. No outside force can conquer the 48 states. The land area is too vast.

    My isolationist ideas fall down if Nazi Germany was ever to develop the atomic bomb. They were about ten years behind The Manhattan Project, but I’m glad America developed The Bomb.

    Notice how we developed The Bomb with slide rules, not computers, in three years. How long has Iran been working on The Bomb, twenty years or more, with computers?

    Notice how we got Hitler in 3 and 1/2 years, without satellites, but it took us 9 years to get Osama Bin Laden, with satellites.

    • Notice how we developed The Bomb with slide rules, not computers, in three years. How long has Iran been working on The Bomb, twenty years or more, with computers?

      And we put men on the moon using slide rules and using 3.14 for pi (read: we didn’t need savants who memorize pi to 100+ places; two decimal places was “good enough”).

      Notice how we got Hitler in 3 and 1/2 years, without satellites, but it took us 9 years to get Osama Bin Laden, with satellites.

      My conspiracy-theorist thought on this: I firmly believe we could have gotten OBL much earlier, probably within the first few years after 9/11, but the PTB sat on the intel until they needed a PR “win” (read: they waited until it was politically beneficial to take him out). I believe that because our intelligence community can predict and head off assassinations and attacks on us or our allies, just by listening to foreign whispers on the Dark Web and doing social network analyses to figure out who’s talking to whom. I find it unreasonable to believe they couldn’t figure out who was talking with OBL and extrapolate where he was located using those same tools, and simply use the satellites to confirm it.

  11. “It may be that the Founding Fathers thought the voters would be smart enough to vote out bad politicians…”

    Clearly, in today’s climate of mail-in ballots, loose election controls, 24/7/365 media propaganda, and indoctrination systems instead of education system, we cannot rely on voting, alone, to weed out the anti-American operatives and outright crooks. Something more is needed.

    I have a simple solution but I know that the political will to implement it is lacking. Nevertheless, it would be a big help to limit the havoc caused by the “Career Politician” Class. Here is my solution:

    We need a Constitutional Amendment that does the following:

    1) It requires mandatory retirement for any person, serving in the Executive or Legislative branches of Government after 20 years service. For the Judicial Branch of Government, the time limit would be 30 years. No exceptions and the 20 (or 30) years service is figured by ANY MIX of Federal service. For example, suppose one worked for 20 years as a post office mailman or even as a soldier in the military. After forced retirement after 20 years service, could this person now run for a seat in congress? The answer is NO. This individual has already put in 20 years of Federal Service. He or she is, therefore, precluded from holding ANY new position in the Executive or Legislative branches. However, if this person obtains a law degree and passes the BAR, then it is possible that he or she might obtain up to 10 years more employment in a Judicial Branch Position.

    In no case (or with any possible mix of service) could one serve longer than 30 years in any mix of Federal Government positions. Not even service as a private contractor would be permitted past the time limit.

    Even if one has less than 20 years service, one would still be precluded from running for an elected position IF winning that position would place one past the 20 year limit before the term in office expired. The 20 year limit is set in stone for executive and legislative positions. No exceptions permitted under ANY Circumstances.

    Such an amendment would not absolutely preclude one making a career in the Federal Government but it would greatly limit the length of such a career. One could not spend 50 years in Government, like Biden, and set up one’s own corrupt fiefdom.

    In other words, I suggest that (instead of term limits), we look to provisions for MANDATORY RETIREMENT to act as the limiting mechanism.

    Anyway, it is just a “Pipe Dream”. I have a better chance of winning the Powerball lottery than of seeing this kind of reform enacted!

  12. Granted, I carry a purse, but I pack a Streamlight AA flashlight, four spare batteries in a plastic case, a Swiss Army knife, cash, pens, a USB battery pack to charge my phone, a charging cable, a USB power cube, and a tape measure. I have used all of these things in the last month.

    • Ditto. My purse looks like a red toolbag. The traveling pistol lives in it until I get to a destination, then its on me.

      I have driving glasses, sun glasses, pepper spray, couple knives, chapstick, leatherman, few wadded up $20 bills stashed, etc etc etc.

      When I started working from home, I quickly grew weary of carrying crap in my pockets. Now it’s all in my man-purse.

      And yes, I am very secure in my masculinity. My purse could be pink with red and purple flowers and it would not change the facts about my extreme heterosexuality.

  13. I tire of hearing Brits complain about steak knives with no point, thought crimes, no firearms and the like.
    THEY VOTED FOR THE SKUM TRASH THAT MADE THE LAWS.
    AND, KEEP VOTING FOR THEM.
    SKREW ‘EM

  14. The USB stick? Nope.

    I have a hard enough time keeping my data secure when its all at my house.
    Not taking it on the road with me.

    Cell phone? Mine does not have any of my login info saved for any financial work. Tablet computers are so cheap now it’s silly to take my usernames and passwords out where they can be hacked.

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