What To Put In Your IFAK

it is Pride Month at the time of recording. That, of course, in the United States means that people are worried about being murdered by homophobic psychopaths. Unfortunately, so hmm, that is that is the world that we live in, and it shouldn't be. It's fucked up, and it hopefully won't be this way forever because you know, all these people are wrong and will die eventually and that will make the world better. But fingers crossed, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

we can, we can hope. I guess maybe they're raising a new generation of Turfs or whatever. I don't think the hopefully not, let's not. Yeah. So I just wanted to talk because I've seen a bunch of people online, like a lot of people who are in the like lgbt q I a community, or who are going to pride just being like oh fuck like it. Genuinely, I can see why people are very afraid right because violence

against queer people is at least seemingly increasing. I'm not going to give you training because this is a podcast and you can't learn first aid on a podcast, and you can't learn it on YouTube either. Really, I wanted to talk briefly about like supplies and then places to get training, because that is very important. I have bought my first ay kit that I used for work. I have quite a few that I used for work. Actually I don't like to repat them. And I know that

you have bought one that Jeffrey Bezos kindly sent you. Yes, exactly.

And whether or not this was a good first aid kit, I think we're going to find out today.

basic first aid. Right. In all of those cases, it's like make sure the person doesn't die immediately, and then get them to someone who is better trained than you so that they can help them more immen, which is like listen, if you are learning about medical stuff, on the podcast hosted by a guy who has a PhD

in mode European history. Then that that is what you are doing too, write like yes, and we're going to talk about that because you can for sure fock someone up if you if you go sort of outside of your scope of knowledge. And that is I understand the desire to help. That we have to help in the way that's most helpful, I guess, not do any harm. So yeah, let's go over. Let's let's go over I guess my first aid kit, and then we can we

can open yours and see what's the same and what's different. Right, So this is one because it's small and it fits in the small of my back, and if I really need to, I could just like wear a kind of baggy shirt and it wouldn't be too obvious. I also have one that fits around my ankle for times when I really don't want people to know I have it, but but I also want to have it. And then you can wear some sick flare jeans or something and people just think you're a trendy kind of guy. Yeah

they'll know. So yeah, in mind, it sort of goes on. It's one of your back and then you can pull it away, right, has a big old red handle. Just put it like that and it comes away. Yeah, it's nice. That's one thing I will say right off the bat is like, I've seen a number of people get hurt in a number of different situations. I've seen a number of people render first date, including myself, sometimes successfully, sometimes

sadly not successfully. And if you're if you have a big bag of shit and then you open your bag of shit and you're just throwing stuff everywhere, Stuff's falling on the ground, it you're that's not helpful, right, Like the things that will kill people that are preventable for

the most part in and like trauma injuries. Right, Like the stuff that we might see if we're going to a pride, if we're attending a protest, if we fucking work in a school in America, right is largely like like attention umothorax and a whole sucking chest wound and losing blood. And losing blood is I believe that the sort of most common preventable cause of death in in trauma injuries. So most of us is going to focus

around losing blood. And that's where tyber training called stop the bleed comes in right, I believe it's stop the Bleed dot org. You can google free stop the Bleed classes near me. I have previously posted a link to where you can put in your postcode, zip code and find free stop the Bleed training near you. And again that will cost you no money at all, cost you about half a day.

So what is in here for stopping the bleed? And I'm not going to teach you how to use it, because then what someone else does?

That is so this is called a combat application tornice. It's made by a company called North American Rescue. There are a few other ones that I would use. The other one I have, I think is the Softy Wide and I have some of the REVX med ratcheting tornicades as well. They use like a boa. If people have used ski boots or cycling shoes, they'll be familiar with a boa call. The one to buy is the one that you use when you do your training right, and

it's going to be a sam as another one. There's another. These are all the toniques you want to buy if you're sort of if you're confused about which one you used. The ones that are approved by the t trouble C It's a Committee on Tactical Casualty Care, Tactical Casualty something like that. Those guys have tested them extensively right to see which wants work, which wants to don't. It is this is not somewhere to save money that they they are about twenty three twenty five bucks. You find them

on sale, it's not. Yeah. I mean, if if that's a big expense for you, then I understand, uh, and it's it's okay not to have one if that's a big expense or to save up and wait like, that's okay. It's better than using an improvised tornic K. Right. So there there are not very many very good studies at least that I could find on improvised tornic K's someplaces still teaching improvised tornic K, like I I've taken a

Woman's First Responder where they taught it. I've also seen one not work, and I will tell you that that's not an experience that I want to ever have again in my life, and I don't think it's one i'd like you all to share with me. So I would suggest if you're going to be using a tornic K, then then buying a cat is kind of the standard. I wouldn't buy it from Jeffrey Bezos because this Amazon dot com is a website that he owns, I believe, Yeah,

Space Cowboy Jeffrey. And so the reason why is that all of these different there are knockoffs, right, there are fakes of this. They go in different they go in the same bin from what I'm told, and then the person who's a picker just maybe grabs one, and sometimes you can end up with a fake. What can happen with a fake is the strap can break or the windless. So the windless is the guy that tightens it can break. Ah, Okay, either of those things is going to lead to the

tonic failing. Right, it's not going to apply enough pressure, and that's going to it could do a number of things, right, It could just fail to start the bleeding. Depending on if you've misidentified the bleeding. You could give someone a compartment syndrome or something. It's going to be very painful. It's going to be very painful anyway, and you'll learn that in your course which you're going to take. You're not gonna not going to just listen to me on

the podcast, thank you. And so you do want a real one, and so the easiest way to obtain a real one is to buy one from a reliable source Rescue Essentials, Chinook Medical and North American Rescuer or people who I've worked with. I'll say that Rescue is Eventual sent me a bunch of shit before I went on a work trip. They it was lots of it was outdated or the open box or something, and I was able to donate that to fixes and journalists I was working with. I thought that was very cool of them.

It's possible that you might put this on somebody. So you're at a pride event and there is something terrible happening, like a mass shooter, and you might be there for a while. Let's say you're in tech and all your cops are fucking cowards, and then unfortunately, if you were able to render aid someone and then you both of you were able to not get hurt any further, you could be there for a while, and then it would

be relevant what time the tornica is applied. Normally, you know, in the US, we would hope that you would have medical attention pretty quickly because you know, that threat would have been stopped and then EMS would be able to

provide help. But so that that's where the time thing comes in, right, And so you want to have a tiny sharpie when you have a tornic and you can get North American Rescue actually sell little tiny, half sized sharpies and I shove them in the pouch with the tornic ue and then there they are, and then you always have a sharpie. So we go inside there it is. Look at that. Okay, hey the little guy, Oh that's a cute. Yeah, isn't it gorgeous? Yeah? We love a

little guy. Here to credit card size sharpie. It's perfect. Yeah, yeah, for those who are not dannel exactly somewhat with a pinky sharpie and I'll.

ton of different pressure dressings. I like the Olays ones O. L A E. S That it doesn't hugely matter that those ones just have a little bit of gorse that you can pull out so you can pack a wound two And sometimes if you do so, if you get like a nice training, they might let you practice packing some wounds, so they might have like a little fake wound that you can pack and yeah, so that you'll learn a lot about like how to do that there and so those allowed some of the other ones don't.

But honestly, like sometimes they're called Israeli bandages. They will not like colonize Palestine if you you know, put them in you at first gate kit. But that's what this guy is, right, And sometimes they have a lot of packaging on, so you want to take them down to kind of the last layer of packaging. None of this shit is sterile, right, None of this stuff is. Again, it's not supposed to be in for a long time, so it's okay to have that like either just bear or in its first layer of packaging.

And that's something that immediately looking at mine, I basically have you know, small plastic baggies that I will hold up to James right now, small plastic baggies of just like a lot of loose shits, and it's just way too much stuff in here, I would say, of what I see in James's bag versus mine, I think I mean, first of all, there's stuff missing, Like there's no tournique

in here. There's a lot of different gauze things, and there's but there's you know, in mind, I have like seven hundred different bandages, and like there's aspirin in here, and like some things that feel like they're more for like a camping trip than they are really like handling a first aid scenario in which you need to save

someone's life. So one piece of advice that I'm getting from James as he shares this, is that you know, what's important to carry around is the stuff that is going to give you immediate access to the ability to save someone's life. So think about that as you are

like packing your bag. What I have here that I bought online, that I'm still glad that I have is basically a collection of a bunch of different miscellaneous first aid stuff rather than a very stripped down specific list of items that I can use to save someone's life in an emergency scenario.

like to have. If people are in a really bad way in front of you, it's not a fun time, and you get scared and you might panic. That's okay, that happens to everyone. People aren't supposed to see their shit, and if it, certainly, if it's your first time seeing, it's not unreasonable at all to freak out and not know what to do. You can just hold any of the ship up, say hey I have a tonic uit, Hey I have a pressure dressing, and someone who who's at that time is able to help can take that.

You know what they're doing, they can help. So it's totally fine just to have this shit. And if you don't know how to use it, you know, don't go beyond your scope of knowledge. But just you have that shit and you can provide it someone else, that's fine. So yeah, everything's in little elastic bands. I've got this stuff which is called quick clot We've talked a lot of the podcast recently about indigenous medical technologies. This is an example of one. Right. So it's using I think kalin.

There's some that use kalin, some that use something that came from crab shells. But this is this is an indigenous medical technology that now is sort of it's a bit it's been refined over time. This just contains a thing that stops it helps blood to clots, hemostatic agent. Right, So when you're packing a wound, you could use this first. This this would help with blood clotting. Right. It's also the type I have is detectable on X rays, which

helps a lot. There are some older types which are powders. Those of those are probably best avoided. And you want the gauze that is impregnated with the hemostatic agent if you can. This stuff got really pricey recently, Like I think the best price I've seen for this is thirty five bucks. Oh wow, So yeah, this guy is going to cost you the most.

some cases. Right, So that's the hemostetic gause. What else I've gotten here as a pair of trauma shares. That's just if you need to remove someone's clothing to access a wound, and that is kind of important. So for instance, I was doing a training once and I prefer to speak about those things. So like where a guy was presented to us with gunshot wound, and like, if you don't rip off his houses like this, you know, if

someone's been shot and you're there helping them. Again, like if if you're not comfortable doing this, you haven't done the training and don't be just ripping off strangers clothes. That's weird in general. Yeah, yeah, there comes a yes. Yeah. So like and they had this cool kind of thing around his leg that bled like he had like two wounds, sort of pumping out blood. It's like a cool kind

of bleeding simulator. So but yeah, bullets will do crazy ship and they'll go in one part of your leg and hit the bone abouts around and go out in fact the other. But they don't always travel in straight lines. They're not laser beams. So by exposing that wound, you can sometimes see the exit wound, and so you'll know that there are two wounds, right, Yeah, depending on how you're going to treat it. You know you're gonna pack it, you're going to put a torn key on it, but

that that will That's what these are for. You can also get things which are called like I think it's called a clothing knife. I actually keep one, yeah, into the belt of my plate carrier that I used to work, just so that it's like right here and it's the same place I keep my diving knife, so then I know it's there. And what it does is these are handy thing to have in your truck to Yes, yeah,

you've seen it. So it's a contained blade, right. I like this little chat because in addition to the contained blade, it has a little glass breaker.

the kind of thing that is super useful. I think everybody should have one in their car.

guy you can like whoop. So these are probably also cheaper and you won't end up using them as scissors and getting them blunt. So that is that is my little getting people's clothes off. And then the last one. I have a couple of burned dressings in here. That's just because so many people got burned in twenty twenty. Approached from me though, Yeah, would be so if someone shoots something out, you don't pick that ship up, don't. They just don't.

want vented chess seals. I was reading a study the other day. It's yes, you're the sort of greatest survivability and what you are doing with those is that this is for a sucking chest wounds. Not named that because it sucks, but it does. Yeah, yeah, but it is. This is for like, I guess, penetrating chest trauma. And what these these guys I bought in a pack of two. Hyphen are a good brand. I think Halo or another brand.

There are some knockoffs on on Amazon dot Com. They wouldn't buy just like again, it's probably worse pending a little bit extra. These are These are the ones that have gone through extensive testing that are issued to lots of militaries around the world. They're very flat, right, if you wanted to, you could distribute the ship about your person it's just going to be harder to get at it, and you're not going to remember which back pocket maybe you shut what in. These are very flat and very easy.

Their their giant stickers and you again when you do your training, will learn how to use them. But yeah, I would avoid like the rhino. I think Rhino is one of the brands on Amazon and stuff. Just get a hyphen is kind of the standard. There's an older type as well, but these hyphens are more common packed and they're preferred.

do want to keep that treasure. You do want to keep that casualty warm. This isn't going to really be enough on its own, quite honestly, like you to probably actively heat someone, but it's better than nothink. And it's again it's very small. Again, I've given tons of these out in various different situations that weren't like a casualty situation, so that they've a nice thing to have. You don't generally want to be packing shit just because it's a nice thing to have, and we'll get onto that. But

this again is very small. There's almost always face for it. So I include that. I also have a little source of light, like a little torch flashlight for American listeners, nice as h and that is there for being able to see things, which is very handy actually when you when you're trying to help someone who is bleeding. Another thing to include would be gloves. I have my gloves somewhere else on this belt, so they're not here, but medical gloves right, And again you'll probably learn this in

your course. But like a lot of people like to buy black ones. I don't know why cops wear black ones all the time, right, just make it's a little more difficult if you're doing a blood sweep, which is the thing you'll learn about in your class, so that it's actually quite hard to see like blood on black, especially in perfect Yeah, so blue tan something like that is kind of preferable.

The reason I do not have tampons in here as well, it's too far. I'm not a person who menIt rates, and even if I was, I wouldn't have my first aid kit. And technically because they are not very good at but they're terrible at dealing with like massive bleeding, right, massive hemorrhage, that's not what they're for. If people have familiar with what they are designed for. Like, the volume of blood is not the same as the volume you

see from terial bleed. Yeah yeah, yeah, believe me again, Like I've had the misfortune to see people die from blood loss, and like that is a lot of blood more and it's coming out fast, and you ain't stopping it with a tampon. It just kind of stopping someone who is better equipped from helping. So if you want to carry tampons and you want to have them available in case someone needs them, that is great, that's very kind of you. Put them in your car, put them

in your in your bag that you go around with. Please, but not don't confuse them with a trauma dressing because they are different things. Don't plan to improvise anything more broadly, right, Like it's just when we have excellent tools available that

designed for this job, just use them. And it's fine not to be able to get all this stuff at once, Right, you could spring for the chest seals first and then have a bit of money get the torn k that's fine, But like, yes, can you can you improvise a chess seal with some duct tape and a credit card or a CRISP packet in theory. Sure, but like these are like twelve bucks, so let's just let's just let's just get them if we can. And have people improvised tornic

k successfully with cravats? Yes? Have those failed and resulted in loss of life? You know? Yes? Like in some cases your belt isn't a tornic k right, it doesn't have a windless it's not going to get tight enough, it might snap. Have people used successfully, yes? Is there a twenty three dollars thing which works much more effectively? Yes? And it's a serious thing. It's fucking it's very real.

Like again speaking from experience, like this shit will affect you deeply, and you want to know that you did the best you could. So and if you can't afford any of this stuff, that's totally fine, Like just take your time and acquire it.

part point. Especially with something like this, consider that you are part of a community that can help people overall. Maybe it is not you, the individual listening to this episode right now that is like I'm going to go invest in all of these things because I will be the first aid person. Maybe there's someone you know who's already interested in this, and this is information that you can pass on to them should they be wanting to

invest in equipment like this. And another thing to think about in terms of why James is offering specific items is because think about a hobby that you like doing, Think about anything that you like doing a lot. You know you don't usually buy the cheapest version of the thing. And now this is not me, you know, necessarily advocating

for overspending or buying expensive things. You just want to buy stuff that lasts and that works well and that does the job because you know overall that stuff will last longer than anything that is cheaper in the immediate moment. I think people can say the same thing about things like work boots, about tools, about anything that to you

is worth investing your time in. So if this is something that you value, if being a first responder, or being that person who's there, if taking a stop the bleed course is something that's important to you, consider that these things are more than just like you know, good things to have on hand. They're an investment in your future and your interests. So just something to consider that. Like, while some of these things may, I mean, nothing sounds

outrageously expensive that you've said so far. I think the most expensive thing that you talked about was thirty five dollars in that range.

It's exactly the same, It works just the same. If you need to use it, you can, but over time those things fatigue and that they're not designed for multiple uses. Have they been used multiple times? Yes? Do people wash them and wash the blood of them and use them again? Yes. It is again like we shouldn't plan for a sub optimal setting and what's already going to be a pretty fucking sub optimal moment. And talking of suboptimal stuff, Daniel, we have to start, yeah, to talk about Ronald Reagan.

So that's my bad.

can put in your zip code and find trainings. And then if I think about where I've got my training, it's through an organization called NOOLS National Outdoor Leadership School. So once you get past stop the bleed, you've got a couple of Like most community colleges will have an EMTB course EMT Basic. That's quite a commitment of your time, but you can learn a lot of very important things. It can be a career for you if you want it to be. Certainly it can be an adjunct to

other careers you want to do. If you want to work in the outdoors, if you can do an e m T B and then do a wilderness EMT that opens up a whole range of expeditions to you. So community college should be free. Most of those courses are free or very affordable, depending on where you are. Knowles's courses are not free, nor are they very affordable. That they are very expensive, but they are very good. Your

look or ARII probably puts them on. Knowles does have scholarships for people who are more marginalized from the outdoors, or they did last time I spoke to them, so those might be worth checking out. And then there are apps which will give you resources. Resources are not the same as training, right like training is knowing what to do,

it's not sometimes it's knowing where to look. But in situations like this, like you don't want to be on your phone for more advanced stuff, for stuff where you know you're you're you're doing care in the field, right if you're doing or you know, wilderness first responder, if you're trying to think times that I've done stuff with that one time I was climbing up a mountain and the big old rock fell on me. I had to split my leg and oh my god, what bleeding? Like, Yeah, yeah,

it's a good times. Don't yeah, don't don't watch out for rock full audience.

split second of it. That's wild. I'm glad, you're okay, Yeah, I'm fine, but yeah, you know, clearly here we are with that, right, especially.

other products are available foam sleeping mattress. You can use a hiking pole tent pole. Tentpoles are kind of nice because you can break them down into sections to get the right length, and then all you're using from your first aid kit is your it's your tape, right or I like ski straps. I touch everything in my life.

It's important to me with ski straps. So I love a ski strap and I had some ski straps, and you can just splint that bad boy with a couple of ski straps, a couple of tent poles back of the neck. You're not having a great day at that point. This is not the kind of medical care you'd hope for in a professional setting. But you know, if you've got that and you've got a crush, you can you can get yourself to a higher degree of care. So when we're doing stuff like that, I believe Knowles has

a Wilderness Medicine app. There's Deployed Medicine, which is a US military resource for field care, which can help to remind you of stuff that you've already trained on. It's not going to teach you to do stuff you shouldn't, just read about it on there and use it. And there's a new one called Goes Goes which literally launched like this week, Goes Health, which it's offline to It gives an offline data base of wilderness medicine and it

helps you kind of with diagnostic cues of stuff. So when you do your wilderness first responder, at least when I did it, someone must have had an ectopic pregnancy and had a very bad outcome, because they'll they'll ask you with all these questions like what could this be? What could this be? And like they want you to be able to know what an act topic pregnancy is so like, but there's like a sort of flow chart that you can follow right to help you be like

what is this is appendicitis what's going on here? So when? Because you probably won't remember every certainly if you take a woof of course and then two years later, you know you before you recertify it, like something happens, a lot could happen in two years, you won't have remembered

everything that you learned in your course. Right, So some of those apps are useful, but the most important thing the thing where you will learn to use all of the items in this I fat is stopped the bleed and it is free, and that is where everyone should start. They're not going to teach you how to use all the things. So if we bust open the bag that you got Daniel quickly, it's overstuffed.

trimming tape. There's also tweezers in here. I really this feels like for people who are in the wilderness and they get a splinter.

folks want to have that. Someone else can grab it off your motorbi I can use it if you've hurt yourself. But sure, I've seen that happen before. So yeah, that stuff is all very handy, it's all very nice. It can make you feel better, right, Like there's I imagine there's a ton of viberprofen and paracetamol and benadryl. All

that stuff is great. That stuff's super handy, right, And another thing I would add is some of that stuff can be life saving if you have an allergy, right, and you need to take something for that, Yeah, put that in your first aid kit because that's particular to you. Right. And if you if that's going to if you need an EpiPen, then have your EpiPen of course, right, you know, I'm sure you do. Anyway, if you have diabetes, have your gluca garden and some Sure, all of that stuff

is of course important. But in terms of like dealing with what we perceive to be an increased risk of like homophobic violence, which normally manifests itself as people getting shot in this country. Then the little scissors and their ABD pad, the band aids aren't what we need and they're just going to get in the way. So even if you have those, great keep them in the car. I gave tons of people band aids because they've got blisters in twenty twenty, right, because people are not familiar

with walking that far. Their boots sucked. People decided to wear heavy boots because they were worried. All understandable things. It's a lot of band aids, a lot of a lot of horseshoe plasters or of you know, like second skin. Great, happy to give you one of those things. I'll keep it in a different pocket though, right, So so I'm not you know, sorting pats of blister plasters if someone's been shot. And that's a good tip regardless of what you're doing, what you even if you're doing, you know,

you're bringing more stuff and more WEP. But it's great aspirin. I bet people need that sometimes, or iyeberprofiene if their knees hurting from walking a lot, Great pound that shit.

But like, don't that's not what we want. We don't want to be administering medicines really, certainly if we're not trying to do so after a trauma thing, because some of they pay medicines we might be taking might might inhibit blood clotting, right, So we don't want to be doing that before that person goes on too a higher

standard ca it's going to fucking suck for them. But like you're, the best you can do is stop that person dying or help someone else who's qualified to do that by just saying, hey, I have this stuff, and it's all pretty compact, you know, like I said, it's it's you know, the size of a paperback book, decent sized paperback books, something like that, and having it may

or may not be hopefully right. You just buy this thing and it sits around for a while, and eventually, if you've been having the tornicque in the sun for years and years, you want to replace it. The UV can cause them to decay. You can just put them inside a pouch. I've made all kinds of pouches for them. You can buy an expensive one on the internet, or you can just use a piece so a piece of nylon, which is what I do two rubber bands and put it inside your waistband of your thing. Many many such

solutions exist, But yeah, I would encourage everyone. I think I've said it's about twenty eight times to get training and not just to just go and do this. If you can't access that training straight away and you want to get the stuff where you look for training, that's fine. Just don't be doing stuff you don't know how to do, because you know someone might confuse out for someone who is qualified and is helping. And then if you don't know what you're doing and you make a mistake, and

that that could be worse than someone. If someone comes in and they're doing triage right, they're saying, who do we need to treat now? Who do we need to treat later? Who can't we help then? And they see you doing that, Okay, that person's covered that. You want to be sure that you're covering what you're doing. So yeah, just make sure you get the training. We're not trying to scare you into not going to things. Please don't feel afraid. I know it's very easy to feel afraid.

That's of course the goal of you know, most of these people, their ass is welded to their gaming chair, and they will never actually come into the streets and hurt you. They just stay stuff on Twitter dot com and like, you're fine. But it's very reasonable to be prudent. And certainly this is stuff I have in my truk, I have it in my bag, I have it in most places I go, and you know, you get used

to it. It's fine, and take it a course. And I'm on work trips and I try and leave lots of it with my colleagues who can't access it so easily in other countries. So yeah, I hope that's helpful for people. Mind. It's mind, Yeah, yeah, it is. It's it's and I look, I guess just to wrap up like you are not. I don't watch television really, Hugh Laurie, what's Hugh Lurry's deal house? Oh house? Yeah, or like some other super doctor, right, like you can't heal everyone.

Bad things happen, But it's just peace of mind and trying to do your best to help everyone. And that's relatively accessible and not too expensive. I think there's an IPAC fund which gives youse away for free as well, so cool. That's where we're looking in too. If that's if someone can find that, they can send it to me and I will post it. But yeah, it's a peace of mind and it's it's not too hard to get that training. So go out there and do that.