S.O.P.s for Civilians Standard Operating Procedures for the Everyman

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S-O-P standard operating procedure.

You're probably familiar with this vernacular if you're in the military or you're a veteran.

But maybe not so much if you're a civilian.

How you handle certain situations, how you handle this part of your life, that part of your life.

That would be an SOP.

That's what we're going to talk about today. I'm probably going to cross-pollinate this on alpha male and gum fighter life because it's your main to both.

And to be honest with you, if you're paying attention to anything going on in the world as far as conflicts.

My opt-tempo is up. My primary bread-winning job is as a private security contractor.

So not only am I working my regular shifts, I'm also being assigned extra shifts.

It's a lot of work right now. So I'm going to probably put this out on both.

With that said, welcome to the podcast. Hopefully we keep God at the center, biblical, Judeo-Christian values and real world firsthand experience.

Military law enforcement, private security contracting.

And a bunch of other stuff, bio-bullet points in the show notes.

Blessed be the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war and fingers for battle.

Okay, so SOPs.

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SO and I kind of surprised me. SOPs, right? You as a civilian probably don't call it an SOP. You probably call it something like best practices or rule of thumb.

Yeah, I know where that comes from. I don't care. Rule of thumb. That's probably what you would call it.

Now, you probably think I'm going to start with, okay, your SOP for your truck gun is magazine inserted.

Empty chamber, bolt forward, ejection port cover closed, weapon on safe.

No, that's so far down the minutia.

I don't care really what condition your truck gun is in.

I'm going to talk about SOPs that really matter first. More important.

Read your Bible and pray in your daily life. This is exponentially so much more important than the other stuff we're going to talk about.

Read your Bible and pray.

These are important things in life. Whatever season in life you are, whatever age you are, wherever you are, whoever you are,

that should be pretty much a standard SOP. Read your Bible and pray.

If you feel like I'm lost in life, I don't know what I should be doing. I don't know which direction I should be going.

I don't know if I should do A or B or C or D.

I just don't feel like I have purpose or correction. All those things, right?

Don't complain about that stuff. If you haven't been reading your instruction manual,

God gave you an instruction manual for life. It's called the Bible, the word of God. Read it.

Also, pray. You should want a relationship with your creator, with the one who made you and loved you so much he died for you to save you.

What other relationship do you have in life where you don't talk to the person, whether it's your spouse or your kids or your father or a friend or you talk to them?

You want to have a conversation with them.

How much more than the one who made you and loved you and died for you and rose again?

Pray. Now, this is my suggestion. This is not a shell, but I suggest you pray and read your Bible before you get into the worldly stuff,

before you start messing around on your phone, before you get in your car and start driving, before you go places.

Before any of that stuff, right? My suggestion is you do this first.

Again, not a shell, but that's a really good example of an SOP. I wake up, I read my Bible,

unless it's like an emergency, I really have to go to the bathroom, then I'll go to the bathroom and read my Bible or whatever.

But a standard SOP, an SOP doesn't mean you never ever do anything else. It means it's your standard operating procedure.

Read your Bible and pray before you start doing other stuff, getting into your phone, getting into your car, that kind of stuff.

That should be a standard SOP.

Another one, let's talk about relationships stuff. If you were single, I would suggest an SOP of courting, not just casually dating,

casually dating is garbage. I did not grow up a Christian, I didn't become a Christian till later in life.

I thought that running around and chasing tail and, you know, pursuing women for casual things was going to make me happy and feel like a man.

It doesn't, it leaves you lonely in destitute and the more you get, the lonelier you feel and the more empty you feel.

Why? Because you're not supposed to be doing that. Courting, meaning pursuing a woman for the purpose of marriage.

So my suggestion for, and not a shout, but my suggestion for an SOP is courting.

If it's a girl that you would not marry, then do not pursue her.

And now there's a time and a place to go on dates to see if it's that kind of woman.

You may not know right away, but if she's just not going to be that kind of woman, why are you pursuing her?

You're wasting your time and her time. And it's not your time or her time. It's God's time.

So pursue a woman that you would actually marry courting as opposed to casually dating.

That would be a suggestion for an SOP if you're single.

An SOP suggestion if you're married, don't hang out with women one on one.

I guess it's like your mom or your sister, but you know what I'm saying? Don't hang out with women one on one if you're married.

That's not your wife. That's probably not cool.

It's probably not a good, that's probably a good SOP. Just don't do that.

Another good SOP would be don't text your exes, right?

You or her. That would be a good SOP.

And if you do make it a group message with your spouse in there with your wife in there, that's probably a good SOP.

I love your neighbor as yourself. You probably wouldn't want your wife texting her exes without your knowledge, right?

It just seems like a bad idea.

So a good SOP would be don't do that. Don't hang out with women one on one.

And don't text your exes or anything like that.

And if you do loop your wife into it or whatever it is, that would be an example of an SOP.

That would apply one for single one for married, you get the idea.

How about one for drinking?

This doesn't really apply to me because I don't drink and I got nothing against it theologically, right?

Jesus' first miracle was turning the water into wine. I'm not Mormon, right?

I got nothing theologically wrong with drinking.

On the other hand, I'm usually armed, right?

And I'm blessed to be a very good shooter. I've been, I don't say this is a brag.

I say I'm blessed to be a state pistol champion a few times over.

I kind of see that as my responsibility if I'm out anywhere to be armed, to protect myself and mostly others.

The world's a dangerous place.

How would I feel if I just, again, I shouldn't be drinking and armed?

So how would I feel if I was out drinking, having fun and there was a mass shooting or something?

And I was like, well, I probably could have stopped this, but I wanted to have a beer. That's just me.

But that's kind of my SOP. I know that doesn't apply to most people.

And I'm not saying it should apply to you.

But maybe an SOP would be, and this is just an example of an SOP, I'm not saying it's a shawl.

Maybe an SOP is, on work nights, you have a beer, right?

SOP, you have a beer on a work night. I'm not saying you can't drink, but maybe you have a beer on a work night.

That would be an example of an SOP where you apply some discipline.

You still can drink, but you're not getting smashed to the point where it's affecting your life.

All right, this will make you guys happy.

We'll start transitioning into more tactical stuff.

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EDC, everyday carry.

This is kind of an SOP, right? This you should have an SOP for your EDC.

I know that's a lot of acronyms. You should have a practice of carrying everyday carry gear.

You should have a practice of, okay, I'm going farther than the mailbox, I'm going to be armed.

And I've talked about EDC at nausea, but a quick rundown, I'm going to have a full-size fighting hand going on my hip like a man.

I'm going to have a reload, I'm going to have a flashlight, I'm going to have a good fighting knife.

I'm going to have my wallet, I'm going to have my phone, I'm going to have some kind of cordage.

I'm going to have a basic EDC if I go in your SOP would be, I'm going to have this if I go farther than the mailbox.

And again, it's an SOP. You can break this. If I'm going to get an MRI, I'm not going to have a gun on me.

But your standard SOP is, I'm going past the mailbox, I'm going to be carrying my EDC, my everyday carry.

We can expound on this, we can say, we can apply this to our survival bags.

And if you're listening to me for any like the time, you probably have survival bags.

Your, maybe your SOP is that I'm getting in my car, I'm going to have a survival bag with me.

Maybe you just have a regular EDC bag with supplemental gear in addition to your EDC, right?

I mean, extra battery pack, things like that we've talked about at nausea, some snacks.

You know, stainless steel water bottle, whatever.

Extra ammo, that's your EDC bag, turn a kit, which I actually have as part of my EDC, but you might want an extra one in your EDC bag.

Just your regular small EDC bag.

Like if I'm going anywhere on my car, I've at least got my EDC bag.

Then maybe you have an SOP, if I'm going more than 20 miles from home, I'm going to have a get home bag.

That will be a progression of EDC.

If I'm going on somewhere that might take me more than a day to get home, I'm going to have a bug out bag.

I guess anything could take you longer than day, but it's probable that it's almost certainly going to take you longer than a day if you don't have a vehicle.

Then you would transition to your bug out bag or your inch bag, whatever it is.

That would be an SOP.

If I go more than 20 miles, I need to have my get home bag because I want to get home.

So there you go, that would be an example of an SOP.

Here we go. I'm going to slap you with one that might sting, but it's probably one of the most practical SOPs.

Do not let your gas tank stay below half.

Like it can get below half, but before you go home, make it an SOP.

And again, you can break this if there's an emergency. That's kind of the point.

But an SOP would be, don't go home with a gas tank less than half full.

And you could change this in bad times. You could say, I'm going to keep it to three quarter tanker better.

But I had to harp my wife on this for years. She's gotten a lot better at it, but don't drive home.

Like, I can make it. I might, you know, my gas might come home, but I can make it home into the next gas station.

What if that's the emergency? What if that's the time when somebody got shot or somebody broke their leg or, I mean, I live somewhere without self service.

So like, I probably not counting on an ambulance if they could even get to where I live in my cabin, which will be a dicey proposition anyway.

But in any just normal circumstances, keep your gas tank above half way.

It's just a good standard operating procedure. That's a good, easy one.

You're going to have to get gas anyway. It's not really costing you any more money, right?

Keep your gas tank at over half full. That's a SOP.

I think that everybody can apply. You can apply it to your teenage daughter, to your wife, to whomever.

Keep your gas tank above half full. And it's not one of these crazy prepper like the Illuminati.

You're going to come and turn you into a reptile.

Like it's just anybody can probably get on board and see the common sense of keeping your gas tank above half full.

So make that an SOP and make that a good way to like spread preparedness.

Like, hey, you don't maybe don't start off with you need an AR 15 with seven magazines and a chest rig and multi cam black.

Maybe start out with, hey, man, maybe keep your gas tank above half full.

It's a good standard operating procedure.

When I've implemented for years, I'm not saying I never break it. But in general, I try and keep my gas tank above half full.

That's a good SOP. You never know what's going to happen.

You never see the future emergencies are emergencies for a reason. They're unplanned.

They're generally short notice. So keeping your gas tank above half full.

Now, as far as SOPs go, if you fancy yourself a gun fighter, you should be dry firing.

Dry firing is as important or more important for skill building the live fire.

Obviously, you need to have a firearm. You need to fire it with actual ammunition.

Make sure it's zero. Make sure it's functions. But after that, dry firing is more important than live firing.

If you told me I was going to get in a shootout in a month and I could only dry fire or I could only live fire, I would dry fire.

Dry firing is more important because of my guns are already zeroed and I know they're reliable and I know how they shoot.

Many of the skills that are important are germane to gunfighting or other things shooting competition hunting.

They're better ironed out in dry fire than live fire. Top tier military guys, good shooters across the board.

They all have this in common. They all dry fire.

So your SOP make a part of your daily routine, except for Sabbath on Sabbath I rest.

But pretty much every other day, I dry fire.

And if I forget, I try and double down the next day. Have a dry fire session, whatever's germane to you.

And I hope you do carry a firearm on your hip of fighting handgun, then do some drills with that.

Now I think a big chunk of your practice should always be the fundamentals.

Stand, grip, sight alignment, sight picture, trigger control, breath control, follow through.

But also things like getting your gun out and on target quickly.

You're one handed shooting, your transitions from a strong hand only to weak hand only, all those kind of things.

I flash light techniques, all that stuff you can do dry fire.

So make a dry fire part of your daily routine, whatever your SOP is going to be, I'm going to do it.

When I get home, I'm going to do it after dinner.

I'm going to do it when I wake up before I get dressed.

I'm going to check and make sure my gun's unloaded.

And then once I get dressed, I'm going to check again and then I'm going to start dry firing.

For however long, however many reps, whatever your SOP, whatever you want that to be.

Dry fire, dry fire, dry fire.

That should be an SOP in your life.

Again, if you fancy yourself a gun fighter or you want to be a better shooter, dry fire.

Now, another one you might want to consider, whether your professional gun fighter or not,

you're just a regular, not just regular, but you're a civilian, you're not particularly.

Even in a dangerous line of work, I think you should just just common sense for most people.

Write your blood type on your boots if you're not the kind of man that wears boots and on your shoes.

But write your blood type somewhere fairly visible on your shoes.

If you've ever lost a lot of blood, if you know what that's like, or been around a situation where other people need a lot of blood,

this can come in really handy if you're triaging, if you're doing stuff like that.

Having your blood type somewhere visible where somebody's searching, you will find it.

That was kind of a standard SOP in the military.

And I don't see any reason why it's not applicable to civilians, car accidents,

any kind of nasty accident where you lose a lot of blood.

But having your blood type on your footwear is probably a pretty good SOP.

Unless you're like super fancy three-piece suit, then you might want to write it somewhere else.

Because you're probably not going to mark up your shiny leather shoes.

But other than that, put your blood type on your footwear, just a simple common sense thing that you can do for an SOP.

Okay, another example of SOP would be medical.

I try and keep a medical kit like a good emergency medical kit in each one of our vehicles.

My wife's car and my truck, we keep a emergency medical kit like a good one with good trauma, emergency medical stuff in there in both vehicles.

Siscally, one of the most dangerous things, even if you're a professional gunfighter, one of the most dangerous things you're going to do is drive.

Driving is super dangerous. You don't think about it because you do it all the time.

But everybody's like, oh, bear defense, what caliber for bear defense? Is it 357 or should I, is that a pea shooter?

Should I go up to 44 mag for bear defense?

How about a medical kit in your vehicle?

Because you're way more likely to get into a nasty car accident or be around somebody else that gets in a nasty car accident where you have to render aid.

That's way exponentially more likely for just about anybody than a bear attack.

And I've had some nasty runs with bears. I spend a lot of time in the bush.

You're way more likely to have to deal with nasty car accidents.

Having a good emergency medical kit in each vehicle, you probably have one two in your bag and your bug out bag or whatever.

But having a good medical kit in each vehicle, that would be a good SOP medical kit.

I would even get the ones for your vehicle SOP before the one for your house, because if you're home, one of your vehicles is probably home, right?

And I guess unless you, unless you're a lot of people in one home and you're sharing one car, but probably a medical kit for each car that will be a good SOP.

That would be a good standard operating procedure.

Also, this doesn't really apply to me because, by God's grace, I'm on any medication.

But if you or a family member is on medication, you get whatever, you've resupply their medication every 30 days.

And it's an important medication they need, not just like something they want, but maybe keep a day's worth at least in each vehicle.

That way, if they go out and they get stranded somewhere or they didn't take their meds that day and they forgot, they have it in the vehicle.

Keep, keep, you know, if it's a Class III narcotic or something, probably keep a copy of their prescription with it in a bag.

So you don't just have, you know, white pills in a bag in your glove box, if you get pulled over, that might be a bad day as somebody that's a former cop.

But if you have a copy of their prescription or whatever, and you go what I'm saying, that might be a good SOP if they routinely drive the car that if they get stranded somewhere, they have, or they just left the house that day.

They're supposed to take it in the morning, they just forgot and they can't make it back home that day, they're not stuck without their meds.

Again, doesn't really apply to me and it would really depend on how important that medication is for them, but that might be a good SOP.

I'm not, the point of this episode is not to tell you what your SOP should be unless it's read your Bible and pray, but to give you examples of SOPs, you may want to implement and just start thinking about this and what does and doesn't apply to your life.

If you live in Canada, you have effectively been neutered by your government.

You can't walk around with your sword.

You can't have a hand gun on you.

Sorry, you're effectively neutered and you choose to live that way because you stay there.

But whatever does apply, whatever you can't have, then have that.

So obviously the EDC thing wouldn't apply to you, maybe a knife is the best thing you can do.

So if you get a radical jihad attack and they've got AKs, well, you've got a knife, so there's that.

It's better than nothing.

But again, take what applies to you or think about this as a system and make a SOP that applies to you in your life.

One that was attributed to Jeff Cooper and I think he came up with the color codes.

And SOP, you don't have to use the color codes, especially with other civilians, with your wife, with your kids, with your family, with your mag or whatever.

You can make up your own, if it's with kids, you can make up code words, make it fun.

You know, if you're not familiar with the color codes, it's like condition white is like basically you're asleep or you're just not paying attention at all.

Yellow is like the condition you should be, like you're kind of aware of your surroundings.

Orange is your more alert. There's a little bit of a heightened sense.

You get the idea, right? I'm not going to go all the way through all the color codes, but you have, you get the idea.

You can apply that, make it fun for your wife, kids, whatever.

Like vanilla is just, when everything's just fine, vanilla, everything's normal, whatever.

Strawberry is like, hey, we need to pay attention. Something is wrong here.

When you tell your kids strawberry, they need to like stay behind you, they need to hold your hand, they need to pay attention.

You know, head up, looking around.

You could like use this for a code when you're about to cross the street.

That way they get used to it if you have to do it for anything more serious.

And chocolate could be for something even more serious. You get the idea. I just, I don't care if it's cookies.

Or SpongeBob Squarepants characters, right? I'd have a hard time coming up with a bunch of those, but you get the idea.

Color codes of awareness. That's one you can apply for everybody. And actually, it was actually, I think, made four civilians.

So color codes, that could be a good SOP, have them for your family.

Another one, rally points. This should be a standard SOP for you and your family.

And you don't have to call it a rally point. You just call it a meetup point.

Obviously, your primary meetup point is probably where you live. But if something happens and you can't get home,

like I live in a blessed living cabin up in the mountains without service or anything else, I'll often travel for work.

But my wife and I have rally points where she knows if something goes bad, where to meet me. And we have SOPs, literal SOPs, like written out, handwritten and put on the fridge.

This happens to do this. If this happens, do that.

We have that. You should probably have rally points. You don't have to call it a rally point. You just say a meetup point.

This doesn't have to be a tactical thing. Schools have this, right? They probably do this all the time with fire drills at school.

If we hit this, everybody rallies here, most big buildings, if people work in office buildings.

Most people may not know it, but you do. It's part of the fire code. You probably have a meetup point somewhere.

You should have this in your own life.

If there's riding, looting, civil unrest and you're a little cul-de-sac in the suburbs, then your entire neighborhood is burning down and calms you down,

because they probably will be, because everybody will be trying to communicate at once, even if the grids still up.

Where are you and your wife and your kids going to meet up at? I don't know.

Your daughters at college, on their way home and your sons at middle school, and you and your wife work different places and nobody can communicate in your cul-de-sac zone fire.

It's not safe to go anywhere near your home. It's already burnt to the ground. Where do you guys meet up at?

You should probably have a rally point, and you should probably have an objective rally point or a fallback rally point.

These are just big terms. We're going to meet at Little Johnny's Little League field, where he played Little League when he was growing up.

Everybody knows where it is. Everybody went to his Little League games. We all know to meet up there in the dugout.

For some reason, we can't get there, because that's in the path of the problem. We have another rally point on the other side of town.

You get the idea. Rally points.

Normally, I do the tactical verse at the end.

Okay. Now, I usually do the tactical verse of the day at the end, but I'm going to wrap it up towards the landing of this.

Jesus said,

you shall not tempt the Lord your God, or another translation, you shall not put the Lord your God to the test.

I do believe that God will protect me. That doesn't give me carte blanche to do stupid, ridiculous things.

To put it to the extreme, I wouldn't be like, well, God will protect me, so I'm going to play Russian roulette.

You shall not put the Lord your God to the test. You get that, right? You get that concept.

A good standard operating procedure is don't go to stupid places with stupid people and do stupid things.

It's a good life principle there, and I didn't come up with that.

I heard that probably on the survival podcast a long time ago, but I don't think he came up with that.

I think he heard that somewhere, but don't go to stupid places with stupid people and do stupid things.

It's a good life lesson.

I'm not afraid to fight when I have to, but I'm also not going to go to a bar and walk up to dudes when they're half drunk or completely drunk and start poking them in the forehead.

So just think about that as a principle in your life.

And obviously we grow and wisdom. Hopefully we grow and wisdom as we get older.

But just think about this, whatever scene you're in, like, is this a wise choice? Is this what a wise person would do?

Am I being brave and is it a good thing or am I just, you know, testing?

So anyway, with that, guys, I appreciate you. I appreciate all that you do and have a blessed day.

I'll come back up.

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