SHTF/WROL Loadout Considerations

There has been a request for me to look at some tactics for SHTF or WROL scenarios. I will get into that subject, but first I want to talk about the gear one might wanna get prepped with first. Once you understand and get your gear squared away, I think you will end up with a greater understanding of the tactics you will be employing in these hard times. This is mostly catered towards those who will be acting as the security element of a group or neighborhood in these crappy times.

SIMPLE IS BETTER

I understand that there is a desire for everyone to have everything they could ever need in case of the "WHAT IF" scenarios that they drum up in their heads. Perhaps Hollywood or the desire for a glorious fight poisons their ability to apply reason to their loadout. There is nothing glorious about blowing out your knees from humping too much crap or getting shwacked because you are not maneuverable enough or fast enough. My advice is to be realistic in the 'what if' argument based on things like time out, the mission, number of other personnel, support available, and the location you are working in. When conducting a neighborhood patrol, it may be a little overkill to carry more than four spare rifle mags, a compass, a pistol with several mags, survival kit, a weapon cleaning kit, and two canteens. You are just making your rounds around the area, right? In most cases, if you find yourself in some fight, you will be able to handle it with a rifle and a few mags before the cavalry arrives.

When it comes to doing reconnaissance in WROL scenarios, your principle mission is still to avoid detection by all means. Therefore, you carry enough to defend yourself, but not so much that you weight yourself down with body armor just because you want to stand and fight like they did in 'Lone Survivor'. There are no medals or accolades given for glory hounds. Living is the greatest reward you can hope for.

When it comes to carrying your gear, I recommend keeping it simple. Many people like modular systems like molle vests and such. I would reject that in favor of something like an LBV88 Enhanced. The mags are in prefixed positions and when you train on it, the location is all the same and all you have room for on the belt is the essentials. It somewhat pushes you towards simplicity. If you use a molle system, you tend to want to fill in the extra space with unnecessary crap, just because spartan rigs don't look as sexy. I get it, chicks did dudes that carry alot of baggage, haha. But your goal is efficiency as security personnel. Sexiness is a by-product of efficiency. If you keep it simple, you are keeping it sexy.

LEAVE BEHIND THE KITCHEN SINK

I know I sound like a relaxed person who doesn't care about anything. Perhaps I just sound ignorant to you who like to be prepared for anything. Be prepared of course, but I would encourage you to be less than stupid when you are selecting gear that you will be carrying into a fight. There are things you may want one or two men to carry in a group like zip cuffs, GPS, large medical kit, spotting scope, camera, etc. Some things are critical to mission success while other things are useless for the mission, such as zip cuffs on a recon patrol, a GPS on neighborhood security patrols, a camera on a raid, or a mess kit on any patrol when you can eat cold food. Be smart and leave the garbage at home.

UNIVERSAL BASIC LOADOUT

When you are thinking of a universal minimum loadout, you will need to keep in mind that the idea is that you have a baseline reference off which you will build off of depending on the type of patrol you are conducting. There are plenty of things I would recommend you have on you, no matter what you are doing. Here is a list of items I recommend:

2 spare rifle mags (5.56/.308)
1 spare pistol mag (2 for single stack pistols)
1 folding knife
1QT Water
1 400 calorie snack
1 small roll of waterproofed TP/ moist towelette from MREs
1 set of note gear (rite in the rain paper and pen set)
1 pair of gloves (flash resistant, tight fitting)
Medical gear (TQ, bandage, quik clot, gauze)
1 small tube of bug repellent/ sunscreen
1 small flashlight (250 lumens minimum)

​With this list, I am not saying that this is all, but this should be the bare minimum to build off of. As you can see above, it is not alot of gear, but it covers most needs. Most of this stuff will fit in pockets and in an ankle med kit. The rest could be put on a belt like the mags and the canteen. However, a hydration bladder would work too.

​Some things you do will require more ammo, while others will require more food than ammo. It just depends on what you are doing, and therefore it is important to have a baseline standard for your loadout that will help you stay armed and prepared for most encounters you will likely find yourself in when/if the grid goes down.

RECONNAISSANCE PATROL

Many times when we think of reconnaissance, we can't help but think of the LRRPs in vietnam who would be out for days behind enemy lines alone. Well, this may not quite be something you will be doing. I imagine we should be thinking more along the lines of checking and observing the neighborhoods adjacent to ours, looking into suspicious activity, or looking into possible resupply or looting areas.

Keep in mind that alot of the things the LRRP units learned will apply in WROL situations. You can't trust anyone to be friendly, and your goal is surveillance over combat. This means you need to focus on gear suitable for surveillance over getting all loaded with ammo like Rambo. You will need to defend yourself, but your main priority is silence and taking note at range or close up. Be ready for swift, silent, and boring. 

Whether you are doing a long range or short range patrol, my recommendation is to stick with a loadout that is simple and allows good freedom of movement, as well as good load distribution. This can be found in the old ALICE LBE system since there is less room on the belt and this encourages simplicity. I would not weigh myself down with anything more than soft armor under the vest, and I would make sure to set up my rig for staying on the move and leaving a low profile. This means having merely some ammo, a compass, knife, monocular, and some water(hydration bladder, canteens or both). Navigation, observation, and recording equipment should be within reach on the belt or in a pocket, and the rest of the gear can be in a buttpack or ruck(If going on an overnight or multi-day recon patrol). 

​The other suggestion I have is to omit the inclusion of a pistol or at least carrying only one or two mags extra. There is no need to get too loaded up since if you are down to a pistol, you should be bailing out. If you have more than three people in your patrol, you are only increasing the likelihood of being spotted, but you may enjoy that support when you are compromised by less than friendly folks. But that does not change the principles of keeping your loadout simple and light. That is non-negotiable in my opinion.

NEIGHBORHOOD WATCH PATROL

If we look at things like security patrols, we may want to keep things simple as well. Depending on the shift times and the likelihood of hostilities, something like a chest rig would suffice with a full hydration backpack. The chest rig can hold plenty of ammo for a drawn out fight and you can hold other things you may need on shift like snacks in various other things. Even if you are only using a couple of pouches for rifle mags, the other pouches can be used well for water, radio, etc. The chest rig is quick to throw on and close to the chest to help prevent too much discomfort. An ALICE LBE would work well also, if not better.

​You could have a pistol on as well, but I would only carry one spare mag since two is kind of overdoing it if all your rifle ammo is gone and you are in your own backyard. Also, you may wanna consider staying in visible clothing for the peace of mind of the neighborhood residence. Nothing can make you look like a douche more than wearing multicam while just marching around on pavement. You are on fire watch, not about to do an ambush on the Vietcong.

SECURITY PATROL

A form of security patrol that you may have to conduct is if you are relocating a group of people. In this case, you may want to consider a few things. The number of people will be a factor in how much ammo you will need in order to hold security if the need arises. If you have a group of 5 people to cover the movement of 15 people, that should be good reason to go with no more than 4 magazines for the rifle and two spare mags for a pistol. Usually, this type of patrol will be to a known location, so you should have a pretty good sense of your location. However, a map never hurts in order to reference your location, if you have a long distance to move. You are most likely going to be good to keep your food and water to a minimum, but at least one person should have medical gear enough to treat several casualties from the group you are protecting in your movement. Everything from baby aspirin to TQs would be a good idea.

The other type of security patrol I can imagine being practical is a patrol to check outside your neighborhood. You will be looking out for signs of people coming and going. This will be more of a reconnaissance than anything. You won't want to take too much ammo, but perhaps things for inclement weather and some chow would be a good idea instead. If you are doing a security patrol around your neighborhood for more than a few hours, you may want to consider getting help. If you do make contact and trade fire with hostile people, your first priority should be to engage, then break contact. Hopefully shooting back with effective fire, instead of spray and pray, will dissuade them from following you. Also, you will need to have an evasion plan in case you have hostiles on your tail. With all that said, this is why you may want to have gear that allows speed and is a bit spartan. Speed will be your security in evasion, and evasion is typically your best option in this type of patrol.

AMBUSH OR RAID PATROL

In my opinion, this is the worst situation to be in if the grid goes down. Doing ambushes in WROL situations can make you a hero or a villain. The only time I see this could be rationally justified is if you have plenty of bodies that are proficient in weapons, tactics, camouflage, and are fit for the task. Doing ambush patrols may require humping alot of junk around for continually finding and stacking scumbag bodies. This means that you will finally be loading up and getting geared up to fight. You are looking for a fight, though the element of surprise is the key to victory whether you outnumber your enemy or not. You will have to conduct recons, plan an attack, and carry it out all in the field. Perhaps you will be ten or twenty miles away from home trying to discourage hostile scumbags, if not just wipe them out altogether.

An ambush patrol is probably the best opportunity to be a gear queer. My only recommendation is to stick to the essentials still. Remember that on ambush patrols, you are gonna be hunting, which requires periods of nonstop movement followed by boring hide positions to wait in an ambush or observe. This means you may want to have a hydration bladder pack on or have your canteens readily available. Keep in mind that you are going to be carrying your meals on you, so keep it simple and only take what you can carry and will be able to use. Discarding BS stuff like survival kits and too much extra will weigh you down when you need to evade or break contact with your gear on. Being the hunter in this case makes it to where body armor is up to the individual.

RAID PATROL

When it comes to conducting a rescue or raid, you may want to realize that speed is your security. You must be precise, punctual, and fast. The idea is to get in and out before the enemy can respond. Only engage the enemy long enough to get your objective complete. Whether it is conducting a raid to rescue hostages, liberate supplies, or destroy supplies used by the enemy, you must do it with speed, precision, and great surprise. Use suppressed weapons if you have them. Also, your raid element needs to be backed by a support element to protect your exfil. The raid requires much in terms of planning, but not too much gear. Leave the rain gear, weapons cleaning kit, and overnight crap at home. You are going in and getting out quick. If you want your support element to carry extra stuff in case of a Blackhawk Down situation, that is on you, but you are kinda screwed if that happens anyways. Such is the risk of being the aggressor.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

I think alot of people will find themselves a bit disappointed in how little stuff they actually need when going on these patrols. You won't need very much in terms of ammo, survival gear, etc. Unless you are on your own, you won't need a kitchen sink to survive a patrol. If you are out for days, things are pretty bad to where you are taking great risk to yourself and others in your group. The biggest concern I would have is whether the people on your security team are competent with their weapons and how well they can shoot, move, and communicate. As far as gear is concerned, practice conducting these patrols and you will get a better idea of the gear you really need and the things you can live without. Try to stay away from the 'WHAT IF' arguments. Be prepared, but going overboard will end up making you a liability. In the end it is all about balance.