- Joined
- Mar 26, 2002
- Messages
- 4,940
Gloves have to be one of the least talked about survival necessities. I guess they are not glamorous enough.
When I am doing my normal thing the Bag of Evil goes everywhere with me. When I fly like I did to go to the Chicago Custom Knife Show or I am going to be dismounted say for a hike, gloves are one of the items that always get transferred to the bag I will be using. Privately and during my professional career I have always been phobic about injuring my eyes and hands. One of the major reasons is that after getting out of the army I worked for a short while doing security for a hospital in Baltimore that served as the regional hand trauma center. I saw just about every hand injury you can think of. Like I have discussed before there are only three ways of injuring the human body, burning, cutting or crushing. The hand, especially your strong hand is the most susceptible to these traumas.
It is not earth shattering news that we use our hands for everything, they are our first line of defense for everything from blocking a punch to falling on our faces. Our hands are used as a probe to survive our would. Is it hot, is it sharp etc.
Any hand trauma no matter how slight can have a massive effect on our survivability and effectiveness. This past weekend at a show, one of my friends pulled a Karambit from it's sheath...right across the first crease of his reaction side pointer finger. The result of the super sharp cut was a puddle of blood in his hand within about 30 seconds. Would this have stopped him during a life or death struggle with an attacker, probably not. But however sad to admit, most situations do not involve fast roping from the space shuttle whacking tango with your custom 1911. I cannot count the times that I have been unfortunate enough to be the first one to respond to show up on the scene of car crashes. These scenes are full of heat and sharp objects. If you try to free someone barehanded only to end up with say a serious laceration or evulsion to a finger on your strong hand, it does not matter how good your first aid kit or skills are, you may not be able to deploy them.
Whenever you know you are going to be exposing yourself to a situation that will likely involve exposure to heat or sharp edges stop for a minute and put on the gloves that should always be within arms reach. During incidents where you have time to respond a little voice inside your head should tell you to put gloves on, work/tactical gloves over rubber gloves are even better. This one small act using an inexpensive pair of gloves coupled with situational awareness can protect your effectiveness like few other things can.
It all comes down to incident survival without caring what the incident is. With mindset, training and tools you can survive anything.
When I am doing my normal thing the Bag of Evil goes everywhere with me. When I fly like I did to go to the Chicago Custom Knife Show or I am going to be dismounted say for a hike, gloves are one of the items that always get transferred to the bag I will be using. Privately and during my professional career I have always been phobic about injuring my eyes and hands. One of the major reasons is that after getting out of the army I worked for a short while doing security for a hospital in Baltimore that served as the regional hand trauma center. I saw just about every hand injury you can think of. Like I have discussed before there are only three ways of injuring the human body, burning, cutting or crushing. The hand, especially your strong hand is the most susceptible to these traumas.
It is not earth shattering news that we use our hands for everything, they are our first line of defense for everything from blocking a punch to falling on our faces. Our hands are used as a probe to survive our would. Is it hot, is it sharp etc.
Any hand trauma no matter how slight can have a massive effect on our survivability and effectiveness. This past weekend at a show, one of my friends pulled a Karambit from it's sheath...right across the first crease of his reaction side pointer finger. The result of the super sharp cut was a puddle of blood in his hand within about 30 seconds. Would this have stopped him during a life or death struggle with an attacker, probably not. But however sad to admit, most situations do not involve fast roping from the space shuttle whacking tango with your custom 1911. I cannot count the times that I have been unfortunate enough to be the first one to respond to show up on the scene of car crashes. These scenes are full of heat and sharp objects. If you try to free someone barehanded only to end up with say a serious laceration or evulsion to a finger on your strong hand, it does not matter how good your first aid kit or skills are, you may not be able to deploy them.
Whenever you know you are going to be exposing yourself to a situation that will likely involve exposure to heat or sharp edges stop for a minute and put on the gloves that should always be within arms reach. During incidents where you have time to respond a little voice inside your head should tell you to put gloves on, work/tactical gloves over rubber gloves are even better. This one small act using an inexpensive pair of gloves coupled with situational awareness can protect your effectiveness like few other things can.
It all comes down to incident survival without caring what the incident is. With mindset, training and tools you can survive anything.
