If you read articles on this site for awhile, you’ll eventually see numerous pieces on tactics ranging from land navigation to patrolling, which is a good thing, since tactical skills are perishable in nature, and if not repeatedly reinforced, will be lost in time to the practitioner.

There’s another tactical foundation we all need to pay attention to: Primitive Adaptation Skills or PAS.

The reason is that when operating in a tactical environment with no supporting elements, i.e., supply lines, reinforcing units, or the ever famous “rear echelon”, all the “Gucci gear”, advanced weaponry and digi-flage in the world will not help you stay alive once your world turns to a cold, wet, barren place that you cannot rest and nourish your body. When it comes right down to it, the day may come that you find yourself in a position to choose between carrying food and water versus ammunition and weapons. After all, you can only carry so much in your ruck. Think about it: When’s the last time you carried a 100 pound ruck sack (not including web gear and primary weapon) on foot for more than an hour? 100 pounds of anything on your back can hurt you bad, even if you’re in good shape, after a long, long walk. So, since you can’t throw a chocolate nut roll at an enemy soldier (well, you could, but unless it was really old, it most likely wouldn’t have the desired effect as, say, a well placed rifle round); you need ammunition for your weapon. It’s obvious, right? So, trade-offs have to be made. You can carry so many rations and so many rounds in your ruck. One way to ensure you can come out on top of the trade-off situation is to ensure you know, and I mean really know, how to live off the land, or, as the title to this piece states, how to employ PAS.

What is PAS defined? Primitive Adaptation Skills are those skills, methods, and techniques that will enable the individual to survive in any environment with little to no support while still being able to effectively continue the mission (Charlie Mike).

That means you must still be functional. Not “sort of functional”. Effectively functional. That takes some doing when you are the only support you have.

When discussing PAS, the most important technique for anyone to possess is the right mindset. That is, “Win at ALL costs!” This mindset is common in folks who’ve found themselves in very ugly places going through very ugly circumstances that not only lived to tell about it, but seemed to actually thrive throughout the ordeal! That says something now, doesn’t it?

What’s your mindset? Only you know for sure, and if it’s not right for PAS, only you can change it to a winning perspective.

If you haven’t thought about it, rest assured that when the time comes that you find yourself in a situation marked by psychological torment brought about by miserable physical conditions (cold, wet, hot, hungry, sleepless, physical exhaustion), how you evaluate and face your situation while others around you are displaying behavior ranging from catatonic shock to weeping surrender to death will tell you exactly what your mindset happens to be. So, will you find yourself saying, “No way am I gonna die!” or will you set down, rock back and forth and wait for the nightmare to end (most likely from exposure or an enemy bullet)? I hope your choice will be the former, and the more able you are to employ PAS, the higher your probability will be of coming out of either the emergency survival or tactically deficient situation you’ve found yourself in.

While much of the information you can find in written or web form are centuries old and have been written, re-written, and re-re-written time and again, the best resource I’ve found for the individual minuteman is a small 5X7 manual called, “Six Ways In & Twelve Ways Out” by George W. Jasper. Mr. Jasper is a former US Army Ranger who began and currently is the Chief Instructor at the US Rescue and Special Operations Group headquartered in Missouri. His credentials are impeccable, and you may be surprised at some of the items included in his resume. If you’re interested (and you should be), you can get this manual for $13.50, post paid, through www.ravenswoodenterprises.com (a Michigan PAS school) . Personally, I believe it just may be the best money you’ve ever spent on a "how to" manual, but that’s for you to say. If you buy it and you don’t think you can use it, send it to me; I’ve got all sorts of folks I’d like to give a copy as a gift.

Subjects covered in the manual (and which, by the way, should be included in your group’s training regimen) include:

The list goes on, and the manual itself is very in-depth and underscores that not only should you know how to do these things, you must practice them if you hope to survive when “the day” ever comes!

So, now we’ve got a resource. What about training? Practice does make perfect, as the old saying goes. Infuse PAS into your regular training regimen. Until you’ve slept in a cocoon shelter and actually stayed warm and dry in cold & wet weather, you don’t really know you can do it.

Does that mean abandon marksmanship and tactics? Absolutely not!! As fun as PAS can be to practice, it should not imbalance your core training regimen, rather, balance it so that on a routine basis you learn and practice PAS just as you do with your rifle and group tactics. View all three as legs to a three-legged stool that you must sit on. Letting any one of the legs break through neglect will cause you to fall. It’s that simple…and complex.

See you in the field.