Table of contents for October/November #63 2024 in RECOIL OFFGRID

1. Shotgun Make: Mossberg Model: 940 Pro Tactical Holosun Micro Dot Combo MSRP: $1,406 URL: mossberg.com 2. Chest Rig Make: 5.11 Tactical Model: Skyweight Survival Chest Pack (Sage Green) MSRP: $45 URL: 511tactical.com 3. Jacket Make: The Dread and Fear of Kings Model: Envoy MSRP: $3,000 URL: thedreadandfearofkings.com 4. Shoes Make: 5.11 Tactical Model: Foley Low MSRP: $75 URL: 511tactical.com 5. Binoculars Make: Riton Model: 5 Primal 10x42 MSRP: $650 URL: ritonoptics.com 6. Folding Knife Make: Benchmade Model: 940 Osborne (Black G10) MSRP: $230 URL: benchmade.com 7. Flashlight Make: SureFire Model: Stiletto Pro II MSRP: $379 URL: surefire.com 8. Belt Make: Mastermind Tactics Model: Specialist Pro MSRP: $35 (discontinued) URL: mastermindtactics.com 9. Holster Make: LAS Concealment Model: Saya 2.0 MSRP: $85 URL: lasconcealment.com 10. Pistol Make: Staccato Model: C2 (as…

The ability to make fire without being dependent on a lighter is a skill that captivates us. Being able to create such an essential source of heat, light, and comfort is an incredibly powerful feeling. For most people, starting a fire without a lighter or match seems imposing, but it’s not as difficult to achieve as you might think. With the right tools and a bit of practice, you’ll be cooking in no time. You might know these fire-starters as flint rods or fire steels — both misnomers, as they don’t contain either flint or steel — but they’re actually called ferrocerium rods, or ferro rods for short. Ferrocerium is a complex alloy made of cerium, lanthanum, and iron with smaller amounts of praseodymium, neodymium, and magnesium. When rapidly scraped,…

The human eye is an impressive thing. It contains two types of powerful photoreceptors — cone cells which can distinguish between approximately 10 million individual colors, and rod cells that are sensitive enough to respond to even a single photon of light. Its ciliary muscles are able to change focus up to 50 times per second, and experiments by scientists at MIT showed that the visual cortex can process and correctly identify images seen for as little as 13 milliseconds. However, human vision still has its limitations, even for those of us who don’t require corrective lenses. Unlike eagles, whose vision is sharp enough to track prey animals from two miles away, we can’t see much detail on small objects at great distances. Compared to many nocturnal species, our vision…

In June 2024, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) personnel identified more than 400 individuals from Central Asia who had crossed illegally into the United States via an ISIS-affiliated human trafficking network. As I write this, the whereabouts of at least 50 of these individuals are still unknown. Earlier that same month, eight men from Tajikistan were arrested in New York, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles — DHS says they were part of a completely different ISIS-affiliated network. In April, a 48-year-old Afghan man whose name was on the terrorist watchlist was found in San Antonio, Texas, having spent more than a year inside the U.S. And these incidents are not rare. In 2023, Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) encountered a total of 172 individuals on the watchlist who were attempting to…

“The FBI assesses that [Unmanned Aircraft Systems] will be used to facilitate an attack in the United States against a vulnerable target, such as a mass gathering … We have seen repeated and dedicated efforts to use UAS as weapons, not only by terrorist organizations, such as ISIS and Al-Qaeda, but also by transnational criminal organizations such as MS-13 and Mexican drug cartels, which may encourage use of this technique in the U.S. to conduct attacks.” – FBI Director Christopher Wray, address to the Senate Homeland Security Committee, 2017 The proliferation of drone warfare has reshaped battlefields around the world, from Syria to Ukraine and Myanmar to Gaza. There is no question that drones — often called unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) — have changed the way wars are fought. Inexpensive,…

To say we live in tumultuous times is an understatement. War rages across eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Several major economies teeter on the brink of collapse. And here in the U.S., division between Americans is running rampant. In recent months, more than 50 college campuses and dozens of cities across the U.S. have seen pro-Palestinian protests, many of which have escalated to violence as participants clashed with counter-protestors and law enforcement. The sudden spread of these protests has led politicians and pundits to claim that third-party agitators are coopting the movement and using it to deliberately fan the flames of unrest in an election year. Lending validity to these concerns, there’s a guide circulating the web which instructs these groups how to further exploit these feelings: the…

The Premise: In physical form, The Way is in Training is a large book, measuring 11 inches tall and 1-inch thick. Outwardly, it looks more like a technical manual than a book designed to guide aspects of your self-defense proficiency, and that’s likely by design. Once you open the cover, the size of the font and the spacing in paragraphs is also remarkably generous. All of these factors are not a mistake. They are designed for a specific purpose: to make the material as digestible as possible. As a U.S. Army Special Forces combat veteran, former nationally ranked martial arts competitor, and former operational supervisor for a major metropolitan SWAT team, Matthew Little is no stranger to passing along knowledge about firearms, tactics, and combatives. What he’s put together is…

Everyone knows that keeping your firearms secure is a wise thing to do, but what does “secure” actually mean? If you ask some antigun politician, they’ll tell you that no gun is truly secure unless it’s unloaded, disassembled into small pieces, and locked in a vault so secure that opening it requires a procedure similar to a nuclear missile launch authorization. But here in the real world, secure simply means readily accessible to those who should access it and inaccessible to those who shouldn’t. Under normal circumstances, this may mean preventing your young kids from having unsupervised access to your guns; in extreme cases, it can be used as a safeguard against intruders entering your home by force. As with all security measures, you need to start with a realistic…