In the spirit of Minimum Effective Dose comes Incremental Change Over Time. Large disruptive changes are often non-permanent and the outcome is unpredictable. The large change is an anomaly and reversion to the norm is often observed. Changes necessary cannot be maintained and are often resisted. Big changes very rarely can be put in place suddenly. Those that can come at extreme cost and are often rife with unintended consequences and side-effects with no ability to mitigate or control either. A better tactic is to bump the mean line with frequent, consistent, but small stresses and adjustments. These changes are more robust and often greater than a large sudden change. In the short term this is not satisfying. Actually better though, yes.

Consider a previous post I wrote on being a Renaissance Man, this is an expansion and implementation of that. How much time and effort is needed to get 80% command or mastery over a topic or ability? What weight is needed on the bar to get strong and how many workouts a week are necessary? How many cartridges are necessary per range trip to improve and how many trips a month are needed? How much analgesic is needed to dull the pain from all that training you’ve been doing? Generally the correct answer to all of these is the Minimum Effective Dose.

A reminder, I’m not an attorney. None of this is legal advice. Simply passing along my framework, previous experience, and training.

Did you know there is a whole WPS series for free on Church Security?

Much of what I go over here will be generally good security practices for a building that you control that must remain somewhat soft but is of high value or attention. I’m focusing this at churches because of the recent training course I attended and interest in this post from Greyman-WPS. Places of worship are an interesting exercise because the are expectations, culture, mission, and tradition that are not present somewhere like a sports event or concert.

Let me start by stating this: I write all of this as a detached outsider. I likely share more qualities with the opponent than the defenders. This allows me to remain detached from that it is a church service. This means I may cause offense and tread taboo topics unaware. What one chooses to implement, compromise on, or ignore is up to the security team of that place of worship. My interest in this topic at the moment is in assisting my church going friends with their security & safety ministries, and messing with bad guys. To me, church services are a regular event, at a defined location, venue controlled by the participants, that is also targeted because of the event occurring and people attending. I find myself allied with a lot of Christians of various denominations and I wish to aid as I can.

I was asked to attend an Active Shooter for Church Security course by some friends. They’re looking to up their church security game and I have agreed to help them based on my training and experience. The cost was pretty reasonable so it was a no-lose proposition. I get to see what is being taught, a bit of a refresher on security matters, and a few more reps running through scenarios and exercises. Certainly exposure to church specific concerns as I’ve yet to do anything related to that particular realm. The course was put on by Protect His House. The instructors were both very good, good guys, and certainly “got it” which immediately puts them ahead of a lot of training I’ve had. They had a good mindset of they were there to teach and correct, not demean or test. Again, different than most of the training I’ve had. Both of the trainers were law enforcement and I think had similar experiences to mine and decided to not fall into that trap. Good on them.

Let us discuss medkits. Just like your pack, the less stuff in the smallest area for the biggest capability is your goal. When buying or assembling a medkit people have this amazing capability to both under-prepare and over pack. The assembled kits that are for sale are partly at fault; the vast bulk are just terrible, mostly trying to put in lots of low value items to justify the cost. Let us then assume that you’ll be assembling your own.

Remember the goal here is to cover items that enable skills to allow you to stave off death long enough to reach definitive care. Anything else is for a booboo kit, and I suggest that being a separate section of the medkit or its own.

Originally when I wrote this it had a lot more biomed knowledge to justify the choices, and more the don’t bother. I’ve narrowed that down a lot. Need to be humble about what you can do even in the perfect, understand what you can do reasonably, and accept that sometimes you actually are mostly helpless.

I have lots of packs and have had lots of packs over the years. Generally in a given summer I’ll put on a hundred miles on trails in Montana. My packs actually get used for hours at a time carrying what I need for the day, and again the following week. Remember, a lot of the gear we’re pushed is fashion. The way it looks and brands; fashion. You’re not expected to actually use the thing, just wear it for a short time and look nice, signal on the Internet because you acquired the right brand, and go back to your keyboard. Concern yourself with how things work instead and actually use your stuff. I’m not taking this as a combat pack, but a hiking pack as in my opinion you’re more likely to use a hiking pack than fight in the revolution. I think many of the concerns relating to a hiking pack will also relate to combat/battle pack as you’ll likely be hiking gear many miles or needing to maintain agility while carrying your stuff.