Civilian SERE training?

[blackwidowbracelets]

Anyone know if there's some good civilian SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape) training available? Has anyone taken this type of training (military or otherwise) and care to share their experience?

www.getcorded.com

[Geppato]

SERE is mainly for mental preparation on what to expect if you are captured or fall into enemy hands...
So I am not asking- why you would need this training as a civillian? But I think if you look into some of the corporate name brand companies that do tactical workshops, you might dig up something on SERE.
I never went to SERE, and to be honest I didn't want to go... I did do some "play in the water, this is what drowning feels like" type training for survival at sea.

[Kommander]

Given that significant parts of what happens at SERE school is classified I don't think these classes are available to "regular" people. Now the "Survival" part of Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape is available from a whole array of instructors depending on how hardcore you want to get and what areas you want to specialize in.

[MrFord]

Anyone know if there's some good civilian SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape) training available? Has anyone taken this type of training (military or otherwise) and care to share their experience?

No, Yes, No.

Resistance is 100% mental. It hurts but pain can be dealt with, apprehension or fear of the unknown is the difficult part, only the individual can determine when they are going to call it quits. Being stuffed into a footlocker with stones in the bottom is painful, the snakes that are thrown in are psychological. Add that on top of hunger and exhaustion and you start to get a good sense of "self". Escape, is simplistically , being completely aware of your situation with out attracting attention to yourself by obviously looking. Survival and escape can be practiced anytime, anywhere.

Mister

[Boondock]

There's probably a decent wilderness survival school in your region, wherever that is. Midwest School of Bushcraft, in Iowa, the Aboriginal Living School in Arizona, the Pathfinder School in Ohio, are some of the big names.

You could even go to Canada, I think Mors Kochanski still teaches. There's scads of courses, some better than others, caveat emptor. As for resistance and escape training, I gotta ask why? You could always read books by former POWs and draw on their experience.

[Mild Thang]

I'd wouldn't think there would be too many full-on SERE classes for civilians. The survival training could have been its own three week course, in my opinion. I'd have loved to have learned more and gotten to put it into practice more than I did. I remember the instructors at SERE talking about courses in the Midwest that basically sent you out into the wild for two weeks, but I can't remember the names of any of them let alone whether or not they were available for civilians. I would think there are regional classes for wilderness survival wherever you're at. Some of survival techniques are universal and a lot of them have to do with your environment.

Were you more interested in the Resistance training? That would be harder to find. If you were looking for Camp Mackall style, level C "High Risk", then I'm afraid you are probably going to have to go to selection or become a really good helicopter pilot.

[Chantrea]

All right, guys. Since I think it might be reasonable that someone else might ask this question (minus the political banter) I've split off the political posts (and responses to them) to the thread graveyard.

BWB, please follow our rules about politics. There are many places for you to discuss politics, but this is not one of them. If you have any questions about this policy, please feel free to PM me or any other moderator. If you hope to get business for your site, as well, I would advise at least attempting to respect the rules/culture here; it does not leave a favorable impression when you don't. Please consider this a friendly reminder to read the rules if you've not already. You're new, I like new people, I know that ZS's stance on politics discussion is a bit new for a survival site but now you know the policy.

[blackwidowbracelets]

Thank you to all who responded respectfully to my OP, and thank you to all the .mil guys for your service to our country.

[Qasim]

Blackwidow,

While chunks of SERE training are classified, large chunks are not, and you can find them (or rough equivalents) if you look. Of course, practice is the key.

There is civilian "SERE" training in some form. http://onpointtactical.com/ is one example. I can't vouch for it, but they've been around for a while, and the author Neil Strauss went through the training and described it in his book EMERGENCY, where he learns how to be a prepper.

Good luck,

Qasim

[MrFord]

A simple method of practice for the Resistance portion of the training, possibly E&E if you are smart.
During the fall months, go to a south Alabama bar about 9 to 11pm on a Saturday and yell GO GATORS!! After the first redneck som'bitch knocks the crap out of you, you get to make a decision, attempt to escape and evade or if the testosterone is running rampant, fight back, in which case 3-5 more are going to join the fray and kick the living shit out of you. If you are still living and conscious when all is said and done, if you get up and swing away...you have passed the resistance phase of sere.



Mister

[S.R. Stryker]

If you feel like you /need/ hardcore, disappear-into-the-woods survival training I would suggest you look into Tom Brown's school in NJ http://www.trackerschool.com/. I haven't been to this school personally but I've had training from people who have and suffice to say this is the real thing.

[chills1994]

it is all about mindset. To not panic.

It was a graduation requirement from the Air Force Academy, since by law at least 65% of each incoming class had to be pilot qualifed (PQ... Vision, no heart murmors).

we had enlisted instructors come down from Fairchild, but we had senior and junior cadets doing most of the instructing. Having a summer leadership position was also a graduation requirement.

I went through in the summer of 91.

The instructors told us once about some Air Force pilot who, supposedly, crash landed in some wilderness like Alaska or Idaho. Once he got the plane stopped, he popped the canopy, climbed out, took like two steps away from the plane, took out his .38 revolver and blew his brains out. There was an active logging road less than a mile from the crash site. Supposedly...

The survival and evasion part, from what I can rember, was all about land nav at night. We had three nights at the end where we were in 3 person teams. We would be at one partisan camp. The partisans would tell us the coordinates of the next partisan camp. We would pull out our map figure out where that next camp was, figure out a compass heading and a pace count. Then the bad guy aggressors would overrun the camp at dusk, and we would high tail it out of there. The lead guy would whip out the lensatic compass and get a heading, picking out a point. The other two guys in the team would keep their own pace counts.

There was one night when we were way WAY! over the pace count, so we thought maybe our heading was off just a bit and we blew right past our next partisan camp. Then we heard some other cadets stomping through the woods. We thought they were aggressors. Then some more cadets. So we were like "psst! You guys way over your pace count too?". Then we got a reply back "Yeah, you too?"

Anywhooo... It got real dark and cold out there at night in the mountains of Colorado. It seemed like they gave us plenty of time to get from A to B. Naturally, we would hole up and take a break and fall asleep. The shivering would be so bad we would wake up. Then we would get moving again which would warm us up.

The resistance part, meh, I don't feel like talking about that too much.

EDIT: i forgot to mention just how much food was on our minds the whole time. We would be in our 3 man teams holed up somewhere and be whispering back and forth what we were going to eat first when we got back.

We also absolutely stunk! Since it was right after desert storm/shield we didn't have any helicopter assets to fly us out of the mountains and back to the campus. We had to catch a grey hound style bus. I took the three steps up into the bus and about gagged! one of my canteens/canteen covers went missing while I napped on the way back. When went to turn our stuff in, I reported it missing and got dinged with a "5/5/Y", 5 demerits, 5 hours of tours , and restricted to the campus until I completed the tours. A tour is something available only on the weekends. You march around on the campus in your service dress, service cap, chin strap down, white gloves, and an M1 Garand rifle. Yeah, five hours of marching with a Garand at either left shoulder or right shoulder arms.

EDIT #2: i have intentionally left out some details above.

[Regulator]

OP, any particular aspect of SERE training interest you more than another? What part of the country are you in?

[blackwidowbracelets]

My original thought was to prepare for a bug out situation where I might possibly have to evade pursuers or escape captors. Similar to the way our soldiers might have to if they find themselves alone behind enemy lines or in a prison camp. Resisting torture isn't really a concern. More survival, evasion and escape.

www.getcorded.com

[blackwidowbracelets]

Oh, and I'm in Las Vegas

www.getcorded.com

[Regulator]

Got ya, should be fairly easy to find civi training in survival. E&E seems to be fairly well covered in Army TM's and such. Might be easy to self teach as a lot of it is knowledge as opposed to skills.

[Kutter_0311]

I can certainly see a market for this kind of training, I just can't imagine how thick the waiver would be

Lots of people want to be able to say they did SERE, but I doubt most of the people with the money to pay for it could hack it. Not that I did the shit, plain-jane grunts don't rate, and really don't know enough to be worth torturing. You can't spill what you don't know.

[chills1994]

Military ridge= don't walk near the top of a ridge and sihouette yourself. Be about2/3rds up the hill.

If you have to cross a road, trail, river, try to at bends or turns. If you have to cross on a straight section send just one person at a time.

The impression I left with is you would basically need a degree in botany to know which plants in your area would be safe to eat.

Let the jungle penetrator or basket ground itself before hopping on. Static electricity builds up on the outside of the helo and will zap the poo out of you.

[SOWMAS]

A pal of mine holds this kind of training in Florida. Byron is a former USAF SERE instructor and a heck of a nice guy. Go to his site and look for a course called Hocus Pocus.

http://www.byronkernssurvival.com/Courses.html

He's got a video of a recent course posted here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RMTVRxiL68&feature=youtu.be

[Rutice]

The sigma school is an advanced school for SERE training, it is a bit pricey but would be well worth it. You can catch a glimpse of sere on surviving the cut on discovery channel I think it is?

[ArmchairRacer]

You may want to look at onPoint Tactical (http://www.onpointtactical.com/default.aspx) they're based out of St. George, UT, so just a little up the road from you.

[IANMCDEVITT]

I can only tell you of my experience with "Onpoint Tactical" and it wasn't good. The lead instructor there, a dude, named "Kevin" has never been in the military and when I drove 800 friggin miles down there a buncha years ago.....................man, you would just not believe it, just not believe it......and I dragged a Fire/Paramedic with me that has been to several gun handling classes and is a Tac Medic.............I felt like a fool and in the first 20 minutes, stopped "Kevin" from talking, told Ryan I'd meet him in the car, stood up, went over to where Kevin was sitting on his couch, got right in his grill, and said, "You will refund the money to both of us for these so-called "classes" of yours......" The dude used to work at Apple computer and told me he learned about SERE from an Israeli soldier friend of his............

[jkr]

Ian was your dissatisfaction with his resume or with the 20 minutes of class that you experienced?

[afsere]

Great thread. I have been an AF SERE Specialist for 17 years now and feel that I have forgotten more skills than most will ever learn, and am pretty grateful for that. Also my wife is an ED PA-C, we are both triathletes and my 6 year old is a little Jiu Jitsu badass that practices clearing the house with his airsoft guns. I guess what I am trying to say is that I am ready to use these skills should the time arise.