If you're ready for a zombie apocalypse, then you're ready for any emergency. emergency.cdc.gov
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Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Black Sweater Party

Okay, so on Saturday night at Penguicon we decided to check out the Black Sweater Party, which was participation in a hands-on SWAT team building. This was a blast as well. A Fallujah Marine came in and helped us. We spent two and a half hours of training on two-man and four-man team room clearing. Then we even got to throw mock flash bangs. We were shown the correct way to handle our guns, how to throw the flash bangs so they don't bounce back at us, and the proper way to enter and clear a room. They even trained us on four-person teams walking up and down stairs. It was a grueling two and a half hours.

Then it came time to put our training to use. Intelligence informed us that terrorists had taken over the second and third floor of the hotel we were in. It was our job to take them out without disturbing the hotel guests.

So we split our large group up into groups of four. I believe we had about three teams of four on each floor. My group was the last group to enter the second floor. It should have been a piece of cake considering two other teams had cleared the floor before we arrived.

However, that wasn't the case. Our team of four was taken out by the enemy behind us in a matter of moments. Two and a half hours of training and only five minutes in the field.

But it was fun. And in the end, the counter terrorists DID win. I can't wait to get back into the action next year.

Saturday, April 19, 2008

The Survival Game

Penguicon was this weekend and one of my favorite things to do there was to take a survival course on how to survive a zombie apocalypse. It was really interesting and prepared me for the worst. Some of the highlighted tips were:

* If it ambles along and has inarticulate speech, it's most likely a zombie.
* If it's a zombie, shoot it.
* If you aren't sure if it's a zombie, shoot it anyway. If it doesn't get back up right away, it was probably human. In this case, a whispered note of apology is necessary; however, most likely the wounded victim or dead human will now rise as the walking dead. Shoot it again!

And the best tip of all they gave us was:

* You don't have to outrun the zombies, you just have to outrun all your friends.

For more information on this very real threat, visit http://www.zombiehunters.org .

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Inquiring Minds Want to Know!

If you just found out you had one month to live, what would you do?