Survival:Beyond the Bug-Out Bag

Fall Readiness For Smarter Self-Protection

• Bill Bateman • Season 8 • Episode 2

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First frost hit and we took the hint: it’s time to rethink not just jackets and batteries, but the way we prep, train, and carry ourselves through the season. We start with a fall gear audit—simple steps that pay off fast, like checking battery corrosion, rotating food, and pulling forgotten gadgets from the “oh yeah” drawer. From there we get practical about privacy with Faraday phone sleeves, weighing real‑world benefits in crowded spaces against the hype, and we share how to test them in a calm, rational way.

Lighting becomes an unsung hero. Today’s headlamps are lighter, USB‑powered, and red‑light capable, making them ideal for late dog walks, campsite tasks, and first aid when both hands must stay free. We talk through tradeoffs, including how to avoid spotlighting your face at distance, and why neck‑worn lights can be a smart alternative. Then we pivot to what really changes outcomes: time. The same patience that makes a great sauce makes durable skills. We walk through a safer path for new shooters and returning owners—non‑ballistic self‑defense, fundamentals of safe handling, and only then concealed carry law, holsters, and everyday decision‑making.

Along the way we explain why firearm fit matters more than brand hype, how range passes encourage consistent, perfect practice, and how to avoid locking in bad habits you picked up from well‑meaning advice at the bench. We emphasize avoidance and critical thinking as the highest form of self‑defense, and share how families can turn range time into real bonding and steady progress. If you’re upgrading your kit, starting your training, or gifting confidence to someone you care about, this conversation gives you a clear, humane roadmap to do it right.

If this resonates, subscribe, share with a friend who needs a smarter start, and leave a quick review to help others find the show. Tell us: what’s the first piece of gear or training you’re upgrading this season?

Class Information: Refuse to be a Victim Personal ProtectionTraining

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SPEAKER_00:

Well it got down to 28 degrees at my house last night, and if that's not a sure sign it's fall, I don't know what you're waiting for. It's time to change your gear over, and if you haven't done it, you're a little behind. And we've updated our website and I want to tell you all about that. So uh come on in and let's get things started. Hi everybody, I'm Bill Bateman, part of the team here at Refuse to be a Victim, personal Protection Training, and we're located in the Medford, White City area, 6800 Kershaw Road, where Kershaw and Corey come together in that rather annoying 20 mile an hour uh sharp turn. You can't miss it, you gotta slow down. So fall gear changeover leads to some interesting things, at least at my house. It's a time when I go through and update the clothing choices I have. So if it's going to be winter, I'm gonna want warmer clothing. I'm gonna check my batteries for signs of corrosion, I'm gonna check the pull dates, I'm gonna check to see that I didn't accidentally eat half of those granola bars when I got a feeding frenzy on a uh hike one afternoon. You get the idea. Make sure you're ready to go. And in going through my supplies, I don't know about you, but I have that drawer, I have that closet area full of stuff I bought to examine to talk about here on the program, and haven't used since. And change over time is a time for me to re-evaluate and rethink. Kind of like Thanksgiving. You gotta put up with uh Uncle You Know Who and uh the tinfoil hats, and yeah, uh there's all of that. And so it's time to rethink, reevaluate. So, a couple of examples of what I did. Looking in the oh yeah box, I discovered a Faraday case for my phone. If you don't know what that is, that's a uh little uh case in which you put your phone, which shields it both from EMP and being read by RFI units, uh remote uh interface units that will take your information. Now, I'm torn on this. I talk to 10 people, half thinks it's gobbledygook, some think it's happening every day. But I bought one and I tested it, and I didn't, you know, seem to lose any data. But now going out in shopping and going out in large crowded areas, more and more people are talking about let's just put the phone in the case. So I found it. I'm gonna be testing it, I'm gonna be reporting more and more on that. And if you have any thoughts, if you have any information or have it experienced, if you've got a real life example, I'd like to hear about it. The address is up front. So that's uh that's one of the things I found and putting into service. The other, and this is interesting, is it's called a headlamp. Well, duh. It's uh something you wear on your head and it's a light, and it is so you don't have to hold a flashlight. Well, I was pretty much against these the last time I talked about them because actually at a hundred yards wearing one of those, you have perfectly framed your face. And if you're in a uh critical situation, you don't want to be doing that. In a more realistic and hopefully calm situation, if you're up at the lake and you're setting up your campsite, it's just downright ideal. Now, in the last few years, they've gone from uh somewhat bulky and somewhat heavy to LED, uh so they're lighter, new long-use USB-powered batteries, so they are lighter. They even have motion sensitivity, so they'll come on when you need them, and they will do red light to keep your uh night vision, which can be very, very useful. They even have some you can wear around your neck, and this is uh kind of exciting. Uh my wife brought up, and I thank her for this. If you're ever involved in doing first aid or wound care, one of those lights is absolutely vital. You're gonna want your hands free and you're gonna want uh to be able to see clearly what you're doing, especially if you're trying to deal with bleeding uh or getting stuff out of a wound. Somebody's fallen off their bicycle and you're getting the gravel. Yeah. It's it's not fun, but it needs to be done, and it's important. Is that a rattlesnake or is that wood over there in that pile? Those type of things in a campsite or out in the woods or when you're going from point A to point B are really, really useful. 10 30, 11 o'clock, I'm out walking the dog. The dog has decided they want to start going off-road. Yeah. Not good enough to walk down the side of the street. They want to get up there on the grass, they want to get up there in the bushes. Is that a raccoon? Uh, you know the th situation with that. Part of it's controlling the dog, obviously, but part of it is uh seeing where you're going. So rethink your gear at gear change and reevaluate what your life is now versus when you bought it. I have some items that were I got uh 10 years ago because I've been doing this quite a long time, and now and then a full 10 years, especially when you're getting on to the uh into your 60s, 70s, and 80s, that 10 years is a lot of time. And is that product gonna work for you now as it did then? And look at your needs now. I look at if I'm going to evacuate, and the fire we had here in our area about four years ago totally changed my thinking on what you're going to need and how you should prepare to evacuate. We've talked about that many times. So uh look at your real life situation today. Think about it uh as you're getting ready for Thanksgiving and clearing out the spare bedroom if you're gonna have some company. Another thing is uh the use of your time. Now I'm known for making a spectacular spaghetti sauce. Now there's good stuff out there in jars, absolutely. It's good for a quick meal, um, and it uses almost the same stuff I do in my world-famous spaghetti sauce. But my secret, and I'll give you two of them. One is smoked Roma tomatoes. Give them about two hours on the smoker and uh slice them up and then begin your sauce process. Really makes it nice. And the other is time. I simmer my sauce for at least 24 hours, and that's the secret ingredient in a lot of things. Time. It's the same thing in training. And in thinking about the time we put into training and the work we do, led Phil and I to redesign uh our classes, how we present them, how we make them available to you, and we have rebuilt the website. Uh we have put on the front page when you come into the website, you're going to see uh a usual greeting message, and we're going to see the individual classes. So if you just want to take a class, please do. They're available, they're regularly scheduled. But if you're a new shooter, and that's what kind of sparked this, we had a new shooter, a person literally buying their first firearm. They wanted to buy the gun and then get their first concealed carry class and uh then start becoming a concealed carrier by the end of the month. I don't think that's a good idea. If you have no experience with firearms, you should get basic classes in firearms management first. You should learn protocols, trigger control, how to clear a jam, all the things that you need to do to safely operate a gun, and then look at advanced training. With that in mind, we've also come across individuals that are looking for good self-defense, but maybe they're not quite ready to go the gun route yet. Well, we understand that. So with those ideas in mind, you'll see on the uh right-hand side of the webpage, right hand side of the home page, the uh the packages. And these are designed especially for new shooters or for people who've been away from firearms for a good long time. If you put that thing in a drawer and haven't done anything for five to ten years, A, you're probably gonna need to clean it. Uh, but B, a lot of things have changed. There's new ammunition, there is new uh gear available, there are new laws and new rules. So you need to be up to date. This is serious stuff. If you're new or you're coming back to it from a long time, we have several classes I think you're gonna like. One is the non-ballistic class. It is for those who don't realize that you are carrying ten perfect self-defense weapons with you at all times. And it is ideal. It was designed for the women's class, and it's also designed, we've reworked it to make it perfect for couples, uh, for you and your partner to be able to use the tools you have. And I'm talking about your elbows, your fingers, your knees. Uh, it's not a martial arts class per se, but it uses a lot of the techniques used in martial arts. You have to remember these techniques were developed for individuals who were not big, burly, and heavy folks, so they had to learn how to use what they had effectively. We also have a new shooter class, and this is what I was talking about. If you've been away for a long time, or if you've just purchased a firearm, hopefully you've had a chance to take our new shooter class before you purchased because I see too many people who are getting a firearm, getting a gun that doesn't fit their hand. A large, dirty, hairy uh 44 on a on a petite, small woman or an elderly person. It's no not gonna work. It's you you will not be happy and have a positive, safe experience. Getting the wrong size gun is going to mean you will not shoot well, you may not shoot safely, and you're not going to enjoy it, and that means you're not going to practice, so you can master the skills that you need. The basic firearms class, and it teaches everything you're going to need to know. Some of the jargon, uh, operating your firearm, how to load, how to unload, uh, how to clean it. Uh, what about mom? Well, mom is my owner's manual, and if uh you haven't connected with mom, then you haven't done the work you need to do. There's a lot for a new gun owner to to learn, and that's what this class is all about. Then, of course, we have our concealed carry. And uh for a concealed carrier, I can tell you from personal experience. I'd been in firearms my entire life, but when I got my concealed carry, I got the permit. Now what? When can I use it? What are the rules uh concerning on my body, off my body, uh the different types of holsters? My god, I've not met a person in shooting who doesn't have a uh lettuce-sized box full of old holsters they've gone through. Uh they tried it, they didn't like it. They got the latest and the greatest. So the point being, the classes are packaged in a series, a logical series of events. And to make it a little a little better for you, we'll make sure they don't expire. You can buy and let's use the concealed carry. There's a concealed carry and the concealed carry mastery. Uh after that, you'll have a good understanding of how to legally and ethically carry your firearm to it safely, make good decisions. Uh, the big thing we like to stress is avoidance, because the best fight you're ever going to be in is the one you do not have. It's important that uh critical thinking, it's uh avoiding conflict. All these things are in different setups for you, and you are going to find that we've added, and you get anyone who gets a package, gets a range pass at the Rogue Valley Shooting Sports Association for you or for your family. And a family is you and your partner and under 18-year-old children in the home. That doesn't mean your brother Bob, uh nice guy, but uh this is immediate partners and progeny, is what I like to say. You, your partner, and under 18 kids in the home. Now, why is a shooter's pass the value? It means you're going to practice. And practice does not make perfect, it makes perfect practice. And what I mean by that is you're going to build in mistakes and practice them. Or get bad information and practice it. I have been involved personally. Uh, many years ago I was at a shooting range and an individual called me over and said, you know, when you when you hold a pistol, you you're holding it correctly in your right hand. I'm a right-handed shooter, but the left hand goes under the firearm, under, under the clip. You hold it in your cradle it like that. Well, no, that's not how you do it. But this individual was convinced and talked me into doing it, and I developed a bad habit. And I practiced that bad habit religiously, and it took me a while to get out of it. Now I'm using a proper two-handed grip. Practice is a key part between your lessons. I can tell you after working at the range for many, many years, seeing families come in and make the use of the range time to learn safe shooting skills and to learn father helping his son or mom helping her daughter get ready for a match or get ready for hunting. And the bonding that happens, the unifying uh force you've got in a family day at the range is really something somewhat amazing to see. Don't think about training in a hurry. Uh just because you can get a concealed carry under an hour doesn't mean you should. I have had individuals come to me and say, I took this class, it was only 45 minutes, and they had just purchased a firearm. Okay, now you have an inexperienced person carrying a gun. Not good. If you're looking at these packages for yourself, well, that's an excellent idea, and it is the holiday season. What better gift for yourself or a family member, or even a coworker that you know well at the office? Give them the gift of self-confidence. This is not a hobby. This is a lifestyle. Well, hopefully we've given you a lot to think about in this episode. We'll be back again soon. Hope you have an excellent holiday season. Be safe, and we'll see you at the range.

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Bill Bateman

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