THE INSIDE MAN
Some of you may be familiar with Robert Burns’ poem “To a Mouse” since one of its lines became the title of the Steinbeck novel Of Mice and Men. It tells of a farmer who inadvertently digs up a field mouse’s winter home with his plow and apologetically consoles the mouse as it trembles before him with fear. He ruminates on how the mouse, who instinctively burrowed to build a home for the winter, is now temporarily without shelter. His observation continues about how mice and men are alike in that their plans can often be disrupted without notice, but he’s somewhat envious that the mouse lives in the present. Meanwhile, humans often remain anchored to the regret of their past and look with apprehension and uncertainty about what the future holds.
Perhaps we can learn a bit from the survival reflexes this animal has honed, as well as its complete absence of self-pity. It’ll quickly rebuild its home, while a larger, more technologically advanced human would likely be an emotional wreck if his or her home were suddenly destroyed. When you spread that woe-is-me mentality across the entirety of a major metropolitan area, you quickly have a recipe for desperation — one that could’ve been avoided, had the right mindset been taught to those affected by the crisis.
Herein lies the ongoing struggle of the survival community and its purveyors. How do you convince the average fragile human of the value of preparation without sounding like some Chicken Little, the-sky-is-falling paranoiac? As it’s been said before, preparation is largely a matter of attitude and knowledge. What good are your supplies if you’ve never practiced with them in a realistic context with stressors and time constraints? Hardware will only get you so far if you don’t have the software to use it and remain level-headed when the moment of truth is upon you.
Tom Marshall has not only lived the lifestyle of preparation, but continues to study it and espouse his distilled brand of survival to those who need it. Whether it was as a U.S. Army Captain, overseas contractor, or as RECOIL OFFGRID’s newest editor, he believes in instilling people with both the confidence of self-sufficiency and the no-punches-pulled insight of using the right tools for the right job. We welcome Tom to the editor’s chair and wanted to pick his brain a bit more to understand his approach
