Assault vs Sustainment vs Low-Vis Kit for Civilians

Alright, what you got? House is about 1,500 meters away. What's that in yards? Uh, divide by three and multiply by six. Don't worry about it. Listen, if we're going to do this right, right, we've got to make sure that we hit this appropriately. You brought the bangers, right? Yeah, only one, but it's airsoft. I hope it works. How many combatants? Dude, I don't know. You're the one with the ATAC. What does it say? No one's plugging anything in that. Like, I have to do that myself, or you have to. And we don't even have a server. Okay, what about intel? What intel? That's what we're here for. We are the recon. It's us! We're not the recon. We're supposed to be the hitters. We're supposed to be the bangers. We're supposed to be, like, the pipe layers. Yeah, so it's pipe hitters. Pipe layers and bangers is a totally different industry. I'm not familiar with that industry at all, but listen, if we don't hit this now, it's going to get dark. We're going to be out here all night long. I don't have any food. Actually, hey, can you text your wife? See if we can get some grubbies? Yeah, you know, now that you mention it, we don't have a good infill plan. We don't have a good exfil plan. We don't exactly have a good actions on target plan. We don't have any CASVAC or ISR to call. I've lost track of all of our three-letter acronyms, but we do have HOT, POCK, ETS. Regardless, food sounds great. Let's go get some grub, and then we'll come back to this whole thing, especially after it cools down a little bit. Sound good? Yeah, sounds good. Tell her to put it in for 145, not two minutes, because they tend to burn my mouth. There are three types of kit that guys basically build their entire personality around, and today we're going to go over the most popular three that you see in order of popularity and talk about which ones are actually the most ideal for your average, everyday civilian, like us, or LARPer. Now listen, this is not about having the right kit or the wrong kit. In fact, we think all of this is the right kit. I think all prepared Americans should be trained in all of these types of kit and the mentalities behind them that we're getting ready to talk about. This is, again, just a matter of priorities. So with that being said, we're going to hit direct action slash assault, sustainment, and low-vis kits. Let's start with the direct action or assault, which is the most popular one. Let's go. The DA kit, or direct action, as in you're doing a raid, a hostage rescue, or something like that. Now, why are we typically building kit just like this as a common civilian? This is the first thing that most people tend to think of. I think it has a couple of reasons, one of which is the coolest, best-funded guys that we see on Instagram and YouTube are the TACPs, they're the Rangers, MARSOC, NSW, DELTA, CAG. It's a long list of names, three-letter acronyms. But these guys are the best-funded and they have the coolest jobs, they're the fittest, they go through the most rigorous training, and then they put on gear like this. Now, on one hand, it's not a bad idea to go off of the best-funded units and then build your personal kit after them, as opposed to buying just a TAPS rig and then going with that. There's nothing wrong with that and we will get to sustainment, but our point is there's a lot of value in basing your personal kit off of a well-funded, top-tier unit. When you look at kit like this, you tend to see maybe two plates, front and back, a placard holding three mags, maybe a super cool Sangan watch and a pocket knife, and then a belt that has three pistol mags and a pistol, and hopefully good quality medical that's well-marked on body. But what do you not see? You're not seeing things like the training, the support elements, the intel, the training, the frags, the bangers, the SOPs that are set in line, the recon guys that have gone out and built target packages for these guys, ISR up ahead, thermal and night vision and drones, the medic, the breacher, the saw gunner, the grenadier. It's a long list of people that it takes for someone to just put this on and go do a very specialized role. And without all of those supporting elements, the guys who are doing those direct action missions probably would rethink and reconsider some of their kit as well as their SOPs when they don't have all of that supporting element that gives them the freedom to be fast and lightweight with, honestly, so little gear. It gets worse, though. Let's say that you have someone who is a tier one special ops delta operator who was a CQB god and did everything cool for years. Then they get out and they become a civilian. If you ask them to then step onto the battlefield with just this and operate the same way, they'd probably be rethinking some very serious SOPs because they don't have frags, they don't have bangs, they don't have dogs, they don't have teammates. Teammates is the most important part there. And they're lacking a lot of that support element that gives them the ability to then go do those crazy cool missions that you and I probably don't even want to subject ourselves to if anything does happen here at home. Next, it's worth stating that this kind of gear is what's marketed to pretty much all civilians. Whereas the United States of America is huge. It's huge. Bigger than China. And so we are all rocking, for the most part, a lot of the same gear. Now, some guys way up in the north may be packing more cold weather equipment and for good reason. But for the most part, a lot of us are rocking three mags and a plate carrier as the standard. So what is the standard for the average everyday civilian? Well, we're not advocating for a one specific standard for everyone because everyone is a different age, has different fitness levels, has different funding, has different levels of training, as well as the fact that a lot of you have specialty tools and knowledge that you can employ along with the kit. We're not talking about all of the other things like if you're a lineman, a drone operator, or a locksmith for a living. We're just trying to narrow down for a standard infantryman in MILSIM, National MILSIM game. What is it that's going to best fit your needs? So there are pros and cons to every kind of kit that you get. For this assault style kit, this is what most guys start out with. I know it's what me and Josh started out with when we first got into all this stuff. And it's not necessarily a mistake for this to be your starting point. But if we were to do it all over again, as civilians, we're not going on direct action missions. Like, we're just not. It's not happening. Even if, you know, the end of the world were to hit and everything were to hit the fan and civil war becomes a thing, more than likely what you're doing at most is going and scavenging and looking for things, right? And would this fit for that? Well, maybe. It is lightweight. It is compact. You are not set up to have a sustained firefight. But it's not exactly the best for everything. Now, with that being said, you look at Christian Craighead. You know, this is similar to the kit that he threw on, went into Nairobi, and shlacked a bunch of terrorists. That was awesome. But here stateside, you've got to really think about what if you were to run into an active shooter situation? Are you going to leave your wife and kids or your family to go run in and risk your life for someone else? That's a very noble cause. But have you thought through all the things that could potentially happen? How are you alerting authorities about what you're doing? How are you letting the higher-ups know what you're doing so you don't end up getting shot in the back by a SWAT team rolling in to do the job that you kind of try to do yourself? Or, you know, what about all the other guys that are trying to do the same thing you're doing? Other good guys trying to respond to an active shooter situation, and then you can't tell who's friendly and who's not. You could be very likely to shoot a good guy or get shot yourself. Look at us. Hey. Look at us. Huh? Look at us. Say it again. Look at us. There's a lot of things you have to think about, and I think a lot of people blow past that when they get their kit, they get their assault loadout, and they think that they're just ready for anything and that the moment anything pops off, they're throwing it on and they're going in. Like, it's not how it is. I'm going to do it. Kit like this in a lot of cases gives guys a false sense of superiority over scenarios that could unfold. I'm the Homelander, and I can do whatever. Guys, real quick, we're in the middle of a cornfield that can feed hundreds, potentially thousands of people. That's really cool, but what else is cool is these videos are all free. It's all free information, and that is thanks to our sponsors because, let's face it, YouTube doesn't like to monetize us, so these guys keep us going. First and foremost, we've got to talk about Modlite. I've been a huge Modlite fan since the day they came out. Basically, I have Modlite weapon lights on every single one of my rifles. I love the fact that you can just pick and choose what kind of light cap you want, what kind of head that you want, so you can choose the throw, the lumens, the candela. When Modlite first started several years ago, they really pushed the ball forward and innovated and pushed the entire light or weapon light industry much further on down the road so that we could get amazing weapon lights that are super durable, so check them out. Now, there's quite a few good night vision companies out there, but my favorite is Steel Industries. I've known those guys for a very long time. I have personal relationships with them. I know they're customer service guys, train and educate themselves very well on the equipment that they sell so that they can provide the best possible customer service, answer all your questions, even if you're not buying from them, and they have amazing prices and great shipping. It's my go-to for night vision, so check them out. I know that cornfield that Drew was just in looks really tall. It's not. He's just actually really short. Anyway, back to thanking our sponsors. So, for those of you who didn't know, Avon has recently released a public store where you can actually buy what was previously considered the military gas mask and the SWAT gas mask. You can buy that and get it shipped to your door. Just like how food and water is a really big deal, breathing clean air and also potential health hazards that can happen down the road in life, that is a really big deal that affects not just your life today, but your life tomorrow as well. So, this is the C50 that takes a standard 40mm NATO threading available on their website. We have a link in the description as well as 100 concepts. So, if you guys are playing with light caps, I just realized that they have a silent option, which is their ruggedized version, and they don't make that clicking sound when you actually roll them over. Really nice upgrade, as well as things like hex caps or even scrim or chemlight holders. They offer a whole ton of different options, and they are a quality bunch of guys, so go check them out. Links are in the description for all of these brands. Let's get back to the video. We realized that some of you guys still don't know what we're talking about in terms of assault or direct action kits. So, this is exactly what we're talking about. You have a plate carrier with front and back plates, which is great. Typically, you have some sort of placard on the front that holds, like, three mags. That's all fine and dandy, but just know that the con to only having three mags is you only have three mags. This is not for, like, a huge firefight. You're going to run out of ammo very quickly. I am completely out of ammo. You'll also typically see some sort of dangler-like pouch right here, which is good for keeping extra medical or just, like, admin items in or airsoft bangers, whatever you want to call it. I know I run a fanny pack. This is another thing that you'll see a lot of times with, you know, the assault kit. Again, it's like, what are you putting in there? Well, medical for the average civilian. Yeah, we're not running, like, det cord or breachers or caps or any of that kind of stuff. So, other than medical, you could be putting multi-tools and red headlamp in there if you don't have some space on your plate carrier, but I like to still have, if I just run nothing but this plate carrier, I'm going to be able to do more than just shoot three mags worth. The other interesting thing that I see on a lot of guys' kit like this is they will have kit specific to bangers and frags, and it's like, wait, do you even have access to those? Here's a great example. And we'll talk about back panels too. A lot of guys will have zip-on or attached back panels or back, you know, little backpacks on their plate carrier. Now, this one's actually pretty interesting because it is designed for specific items. I don't know of any item that a civilian has access to that actually fits in there appropriately, right? Like, stuff like this is more for, like, bangers and team-based equipment. And that's kind of the point is that attachable things like that are for when you're working with a team, and all of the teammates know what is on everyone else's back. And when you're holding a gun, someone can come up behind you, pull it out, ready it for you, or deploy it for you. I mean, we're wearing them right now, but that's also because we MILSIM and LARP and stuff. But just keep in mind the how, just think about how realistic is it to have something like that. You cannot access that yourself. You have to put a backpack on that you can sling around and then get your stuff. And what happens when you put a backpack on top of all this? Yeah, exactly. If you're filling your back panel full of stuff, and then you go to utilize this in a civilian aspect and scavenge, and you find something and you put it in your backpack, you're just stacking from your back to your plate carrier, to your plates, maybe you have backers on the inside as well, to a back panel, and then finally your backpack. That's so much material. And if you're wearing something heavy in your backpack, it's brutal on your body. It's going to ride around and shift a ton. So back panels are super cool in their right place. In our gear organization or tactical stash video, Josh pointed out how everything that he needs for his helmet, he keeps on his helmet. The eye pro, the ears, the comms cables, he keeps it all packaged together. So when he grabs the helmet, he has everything he needs to use it and attach it. That's the one thing about plate carrier back panels that I do think is interesting, and that's why the one that I run is more like a big dump pouch, because I just keep other things in there that before I would put this on, I could open it up, take it out, take it out like a ball of clava, some extra medical, a fanny pack, put it on. So it kind of keeps a little bit of extra kit all together, but it's not something that I could access once I put it on. I would have to deploy it before I put on the pack. It's also worth noting that a lot of, a lot of the belts and belt systems that are coming out these days, they're really designed around competition, especially for some direct action guys. You're going to have a holster, maybe some chemlights, but if I am using chemlights, who am I marking doors for? A dump pouch and then some extra mags for my rifle and then pistol. If you typically look at what one would consider a war belt, you're not even carrying things like smoke grenades. Do you have bangers? Zip cuffs? Do you have extra batteries for your radio? Do you have extra batteries for your nods? There's so much more to carry, and if all we're doing is just putting on a lightweight pistol belt, you also have to consider the fact that this does, even just a small percentage, immobilize your hips a little bit. Pistols are super rad, and I think that every civilian should have more than one, but these aren't even issued to standard infantry, so keep that in mind as well. Pistol, it's OWB. In other words, like, it's over, right? So this whole attire is over. The moment you put stuff like this on, you're no longer just a random person on the street. You have become militarized. You have become a target. Now, maybe it's a target of people's attention, or maybe it's the target of someone's, you know, rifle or their optic. So the moment you put this stuff on, it's like you've just opened a door to bad things happening to you. If this is all you own, and if you've built out your first kit, or when you're building out your first kit, you want the full loadout, maybe you're going to a MILSIM event, and it makes sense for that. Like, it's okay to do that. But a loadout like this, for an average everyday person, in the real world, and let's just pretend like a horrible situation happens in America, this is still probably not an ideal look to go for. It's just my personal opinion. Yeah, there's one more piece that needs to be mentioned, which is the Call of Duty complex. So when I first got plates, I put them into a plate carrier and slapped them on, and there's that assumption that I can go out anywhere, be shot by someone, for a full mag, while I run and find cover, call my buddies and tell them in Warzone that I'm being shot, my plates are cracked, start stuffing more plates into my carrier, my health is going to regen and I'm going to be just fine, or maybe I'm just going to put a tourniquet on and be okay, and then they're going to show up and save the day. That's not how that works. That's not how it works. If you get shot in the plates with even a carbine, you may be breaking ribs. If it hits you somewhere near your heart or at your heart, your heart may stop. If you get hit in the back, you may have your spine crack. I can't feel my legs. There's a lot of my body showing where if I get hit in the arm or the leg, I have a 30 second timer to put a tourniquet on as I start to fade a little bit. So, putting armor on, adding weight, only three mags. Only three mags means that I can't move with a wall of bullets going down range. I don't have that kind of security. The weight of the body armor is slowing me down a little bit, and if I do get shot, I hope it's in the plates. We're not telling you this is a bad loadout. It's actually a pretty good starting point, but it is not the most, I would say, well thought out, matured version of what an average everyday person actually needs. Now, over the past couple of years, we've noticed that a lot of guys have been moving more towards the sustainment or the recon style kit, which is what you see us in right now. I think that's because a lot of people have started to think through that assault or DA style kit, and realized hey, CQB is not something that you want to get into if you can avoid it. I mean, even guys who are going and doing that kind of stuff professionally are oftentimes softening up a building before they even go into it. On top of the fact that they have tons of intel, hopefully, before they step foot into an area where they can easily get killed, even if they do all the right things. These are loadouts that allow someone to go out away from a supply chain, away from help, and live on their own for extended periods of time. They don't have resources. They have to bring their food, their water, their shelter, all that stuff with them to supply them and keep them going for a couple of days, sometimes weeks. And this starts to make sense why this is starting to become the second most popular option inside of the civilian industry. And as we know, that civilian industry both drives the military, in many cases, as well as takes information from the military. Being able to be self-sustaining without all this other support is very realistic because, let's be honest, who is coming to protect you? Who's coming to defend you? You don't have CASVAC, you don't have QRF to call, you don't have EXVIL plans, and so just being able to take care of yourself and survive alone, that's really the most realistic to begin with. And that's where sustainment starts to come from. The purpose for this is, think camping in the middle of potential wartime. You're going to have to defend yourself but also survive every single day on your own. So the gear that supports that is a lightweight rig as best as you can get. We're dropping armor and our ammo, speed, and teamwork is going to be that security. But if you are going to be out on the move, those three mags are not going to sustain even breaking contact more than once. So that's where we start to see six mags at a minimum, whereas Drew is carrying eight mags, which is a ton of firepower, despite the fact that we should have saws and grenadiers and all of that capability. One thing to remember though is that there is still the team element. Guys who wear this stuff professionally, they're not one-man shows. Granted, every one man has everything that they need to take care of themselves, but there's still specialty roles within that. That's where you have things like, it's not just a sustainment rig, you also have recon and more specialized gear like drones, thermal drones, binos, all sorts of stuff to be able to see people really far away and keep your distance from them, because again, you're not wearing plates. The object is not to get into a massive firefight. While it's still a bit more realistic than a CQB DA loadout, there's still a disconnect for the civilian because most civilians are not running around in teams. Granted, if wartime were to kick off, or civil unrest, this might become a little bit more popular, but... This is still one step in a better direction, but it does lack a few of the situations that I'm sure you're thinking of that would probably arise before or even during a massive international Nielsen game. Okay. Now one of the pros of kit like this is that, yes, you can carry more stuff with you, it does slow you down and make you slower, but because it's all stored in a giant pack, you can just take it off and hide it and stow it, and then you become very lightweight. You can extend out from there. And within this pack, I'm sure you guys, if you've watched our other videos, you've seen some of the stuff that we carry. I have a full sleep system. I have extra water bottles and Nalgenes. I have ways to treat and collect and purify more water. I have space to load up food or MREs or snacks. I also have a poncho and some rain gear as well as some extra batteries to power radios and the phone for ATAC, things like that. I also have a quick saw if we need to makeshift some shelter beyond or a little bit beefier than a poncho or a ranger diamond. Having a larger pack, it's going to lend itself really well to this kind of loadout because you can fill it up as much as you want or empty it out as much as you need and make it a little bit more compact. Now Josh's loadout is a little bit different. He's got extra stuff in there for more specific things like he's packing his drone in here as well as a few other things. Yeah, some items that could make it a little bit easier for me to shoot distance like a tripod that go along with an Arca Rail from this Ripcord Industries handguard. Food, water, same as Drew, a poncho and then apparel as well if it starts to get super wet and it's just torrential downpour in Tennessee. It's nice to be able to waterproof myself or some of my gear. It's also worth mentioning we're demoing fairly large loadouts. I know that some people scale up or down from this but at the end of the day, even if all you have is a plate carrier and you're able to fit six mags on there, you're able to put a good backpack on there, you're able to have a belt that can hold a little bit more weight or if you choose to just do an assault style backpack. If that can hold a sleep system, some food and water for you and that's all that you need and you can be very lightweight with less gear because you're comfortable out in the woods, that's awesome. We're not telling you that you have to go get a lot of everything or spend more money on something. If you can make less work and get the job done and survive and sustain, good on ya. The knowledge of knowing how to live off the land is going to serve you better than just carrying things in the long run. So is this a realistic kit? Yes and no. I think the common theme here is that regardless of where you start at, whether it's with your assault style loadout or this, they're still valuable. You still haven't done it wrong. Let's move into something that I think is actually way more applicable to the average everyday Joe and touch on re-prioritizing how we build kit in the first place. Okay, now we're on to the fun stuff. In our opinion, this is the least popular, most overlooked kit setup that is actually probably the most important to have and that is the low-vis setup. So, right now, me and Josh are both in low-vis setups and there's a lot of nuance to low-vis. Basically, you don't want to be seen. You don't want to be overt. You don't want to draw any attention and you can get away with that very easily but as you start to max out or armor up your low-vis carrier or your low-vis setup, it really starts to bring out some of the cons. So we're going to show you some of the pros, some of the cons and kind of like what can you get away with. I will say this, it's going to take a ton of creativity on your part to really pull it off well and there's so many variables to consider. There's also the question that needs to be followed. Why do we view it as the most important for civilians? Typically, chaos doesn't just explode. You don't generally wake up to all-out war Red Dawn style overnight. It typically has a domino effect where scenarios start to develop over time. We see the writing on the wall. Many of you can see some of what's going on right now with potential financial collapse. The border is not even a border anymore. There are so many issues going on that at least being able to protect and defend your home, even despite the fact that at least at the time of this filming, we're in the middle of an election year. We all know what happened in 2020 which was the summer of love with mostly peaceful protests and for those who were in or around cities who just wanted to go live their lives or protect their families, go out on a date and something goes wrong or go pick up their wife while there's a riot going on in downtown Portland. That's kind of my story. You're going to need to be able to, like Drew said, fly under the radar but still defend and protect. You're not on the offense as much as you are defending and trying to get away as best as possible. Now we keep saying the word loadout and typically with loadout a lot of us consider like, well, where's my rifle? Where's my nods? Where's my pistol? How many extra mags do I have? Think of it more like building out or plussing up your concealed carry. So I tend to just carry for the sake of comfort nothing more than a pistol that has a light and an optic on it. I'm not carrying extra mags but I might consider plussing up if I'm going into say Memphis. I may also consider adding an additional tourniquet. So I always carry at least one Snake Staff Systems. You can get creative and do things like take a cat tourniquet, undo the Velcro, wrap it around your ankle and pull your hands back down over it if you're not wearing shorts. And then the other big one is a handheld light. If it is dark or you're inside of a building simply turning that light on and telling someone, I see you and I know where you are, as well as the fact that they can't see you very well because you turn on a light. If you are doing those three things pistol, dry firing with it, medical, tourniquet, march algorithm with massive hemorrhaging, and a handheld light, you are worlds ahead of the majority. Majority? Majority. And from there you can start to plus up and build out capabilities like this backpack is ready to go in case this happens. If I need to add a plate carrier it's already in the backpack and it's ready to roll as well. I have more mags in there too, I have water filtration systems if need be, gas masks, night vision, so on and so forth. We'll show you kind of how some of that lays out for us specifically. Alright, so my LOVIS setup right now is pushing it to the max. In fact, I'm at the point where I'm probably becoming more visible because I'm trying to pack on and carry too much stuff. But this will give you an idea of how far you can take it, but keep in mind there's a lot of nuance. Like right now it is in the summer here in Tennessee. First of all, my clothing does not match what people in the summer are wearing. In the summer you're wearing shorts and short sleeve t-shirts, right? I would stand out like a sore thumb because I'm wearing a jacket. The reason I'm wearing a jacket is because it does a better job of hiding the plate carrier because it prints on my back if I don't have a jacket. Now I will say, if you're in a colder environment or the fall, hoodies are amazing because hoodies will when the hood is back, will actually cover the back of your plate as it's trying to bulge through your clothes. So it kind of masks it. Also, wearing a backpack helps a lot. But as I start to kind of take this stuff off, it really starts to show its weaknesses. Now I know a lot of you guys, you look at the clothes I'm wearing and you're like, oh that's a tactical dude. That's because you're watching this channel and we're all tactical dudes. But out here in middle Tennessee, this is how people dress. This is just normal. If I were to walk down the street wearing a flannel, blue jeans and Salomons, no one thinks tactical dude. That's just how people dress around here. You live in Seattle, you live in Portland, yeah you might need to dye your hair purple to blend in and wear a mask. But that's beside the point. That's how Josh used to dress all the time. Within the backpack, here's what I'm carrying. This is just a simple Vertex pack. You can use any kind of pack. Just don't wear a MOLLE backpack. Just wear something that looks somewhat normal. In here I can carry night vision. I have again, I said you're going to have to get creative with this stuff if you really want to max it out. I have a beanie that I've converted into a night vision cap basically. Using the Tracer Tactical I forgot what it's called. But it's basically the Tracer Tactical head harness system. I'll show you more about that later. I also have a larger fanny which has tons of medical in it that I would never probably deploy this out in the middle of the street. But if something bad were to happen, I need to get in my car or pop around the corner. I could then take this stuff out, put it on, deal with the problem, or just get out of there. We're not going on the offensive. We're trying to get out of the situation. Which is why I also have an NH15 escape hood from Avon Protection. We've done a lot of content with this. We have CS'd and OC sprayed ourselves just to confirm that these do work really well. And they do. They're awesome. Check out our gas mask video if you want to see how these things operate. And then the back side we have a Flux Raider. Which I already have a concealed carry pistol, right? And it's a Glock. This is a Sig. There's already some problems there. But you can get away with stuff like this to give yourself a little bit more firepower, a little bit more stability. We did a whole video on whether or not a platform like this actually expands your capabilities. It does in some ways. You should check that out as well. But you can carry something like this or a very very very short rifle. The moment you start getting larger packs, larger backpacks, even if they look normal, it starts to draw attention and look weird. Because backpacks are typically about this size. Any bigger, people are going to be like, what is that? So once I take off the jacket, you'll start to see a little bit more lines in the plate carrier, right? Now granted, most people are completely oblivious. This goes back to printing with your handgun. How much are you printing with your plates if you've decided to armor up your low-vis setup? Well, it depends. This shirt is sized to fit me whenever I'm not wearing a plate carrier. So in all honesty, I should go out to Goodwill or hop on Poshmark and order some shirts that are one size up and keep it a little bit more billowy to cover up these lines and these edges. So one of the best low-vis plate carriers, in my opinion, that is capable of scaling, which is something that we're going to talk about right here at the end, is the CryEmbav LV, or LV Embav. You can find these online still, and basically, it's just a slick carrier that you can still up-armor. You can clip a placard into this, which this plate carrier, in my opinion, I've worn this for hundreds of hours, is one of the most comfortable plate carriers, and the fact that you can just hook some placards up into it, and it becomes a normal plate carrier, like you would see for the assault-style gear. It's pretty incredible. It's very versatile. It's probably one of my favorite purchases I've ever made. Now, with that being said, this is still maxing it out in terms of low-vis stuff, especially for summertime. It does not really work. Josh, on the other hand, has a much more realistic and effective low-vis setup. So I already showed you guys some of those key items that I carry. Along with that, I'm obviously going to have things like car keys, wallet, a folding knife, so on and so forth. So, under the flannel, which is the only level that I have to actually visually guard against my plates, I have 3810 plates on either side, which are pretty beefy. But flannels themselves, because there are lines and patterns, sometimes you can luck out where those lines are on your back. They don't allow other people to actually see, hey, that looks like a sharp line, which is probably a plate carrier. Next, I'm playing with this fancy VTAC belt, which has Velcro all around the inside. There's other companies that have done systems like this, but I have a tourniquet, I have combat gauze, and then I have three pistol mags, and the whole system is just Velcroed on over top of my concealed carry belt. Now, obviously, you could throw a handheld light in here, you may not be able to get an airsoft flashbang in there, but you don't have to put stuff in every single one of these pockets. If your goal is to actually hide and conceal even more, you may just be throwing one mag and one light in there and reducing how much you actually have. But tools like this, you can make stuff like this on your own, get creative. They do allow you to actually plus up. So the biggest thing that's worth noting is if I am ever doing something like this, my biggest priority, whether they're with me or not, is always my family. My biggest responsibility and duty is to them. So if I am moving my family, I want to be able to have at least medical. Not just a tourniquet, but even SAM splints to be able to stabilize an arm or a leg or a wrist. Stuff that goes beyond just, I have a tourniquet, I can save a life, is really valuable. On the inside of this Vertex bag, I have more medical, just a little bit of a plus up if need be. Now Drew demoed the NH15, which is a very compact, small escape hood. This is more of a heavy duty. This is a C50 with one filter and an extra. If you do need to go into a city while people are doing crazy stuff during crowd control, your goal isn't to stay there, but you do still need to be able to operate a vehicle or run or move yourself or help other people get out of the area. So having the ability to breathe, obviously, is a very big deal. Gas masks, huge win. I know they're a sponsor, but we actually value this quite a lot. And I know you guys are going to ask about the plate carrier. This one is from UARM. It's less than $100. It's very, very low viz, and it does an awesome job of actually just retaining the plates and then pulling it into you. There's not hardly any mesh on the backside, so it's almost as slim as you can get. I know there's new stuff on the market that comes out every single year, but considering that these are PESCO 3810 plates, it's doing an awesome job. Back in 2020, the way that they were tracking people that were actually throwing Molotov cocktails is they would find someone on a drone, link to their cell phone, and follow them home and go raid their home the next morning. Now, I know our people are not out there trying to instigate violence. They're trying to defend and protect their homes, but even having your cell phone around really bad areas can be a big problem. So, I don't have any comms associated with any of this stuff, and if I had to leave my phone, there's no way to communicate with others or my family. Drew, on the other hand, has one or two good considerations when it comes to retaining comms without a cell phone. You remember when I told you this is a very nuanced conversation? Well, that's because it is. They also track crowds based on who doesn't have a cell phone. Because everyone has a cell phone, and they can all be tracked, if you're the guy that doesn't have one, you become a target as well. Now, granted, I hope that anybody who is an opportunist doing anything horrible or deplorable is tracked and found. But if you are on the up-and-up, and if you're doing righteous things, or you're just trying to protect yourself, you don't have a lot to worry about unless the country gets to a point where politics have become so weaponized that just being a normal, everyday person trying to protect what is good, then we have a much bigger problem on our hands. But even just using a cell phone is probably a better option than something like a radio. In these pants, they've got a little radio pocket in them where you can carry something like this. Now, one of the things I see dudes do in their low-vis loadouts is they will have a radio-specific in-ear. It's something like you've seen in the movies. It hooks onto the back of their ear. Sometimes they're clear, so they're a little bit harder to see. But this stuff is like a dead giveaway. It does work well, and there's some cases where you should use it. But I just prefer to use a cell phone, man. I would just use a cell phone because everyone's on them. Everyone has them. You look normal when you're on the phone talking. You look like an oblivious bystander, and again, you're trying to blend in. You don't want to be out looking weird, so even just simple earbuds for an iPhone, signal app for text, that in and of itself is kind of a win. At the very beginning of this video, we told you guys that we were going to cover some of the most popular setups. This one that we just showed you isn't the least popular, and it's kind of strange because yes, we all have started building out loadouts based on direct action or assault-style loadouts. We've jumped into sustainment, but the truth of the matter is that for your average everyday person, if you start with the low-vis stuff, and you start with your concealed carry handgun, medical, and just carrying the basics, you can always scale up from there. I know money is a big issue these days, so being financially wise in your purchases is a big deal. If you start with what is most realistic, which you're most likely to have to use as things get worse in this country, it's the low-vis route. Then you can bump up to something like an MBAV, like an MBAV-LV, and that kind of carrier, while it is lower-vis, you can always scale that up to play a good role in your sustainment kit and even your assault-style kit. As far as what you should focus on the most, I think the assault-style gear and even some of the sustainment stuff has been very glamorized and romanticized in our culture, and I've fallen victim to that too all the time. It is cool, and it does work. There's nothing wrong with it, but if you can try and tweak your priorities to look at the things that you might actually come across as things start to cascade or the dominoes start to fall here, the low-vis route is going to be a winning play. At the end of the day, our priority is to take care of our family, so what's going to work the best for that? You're going to have to answer that yourself. In any case, guys, thank you so much for watching. We really appreciate your time and your support. Anything that you guys can do, whether it's sharing the video, commenting, liking, or subscribing, does help us. We also have a website where we sell merch, some slings, some of our favorite products, and there's always things being updated. We appreciate your support, and I hope you guys enjoyed this video. Oh, I saw you fly by!