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You don’t have to buy into any woo-woo-ology or being “green” to reap the benefits of some of the concepts to come out of environmentally friendly growing methods and lifestyles. In fact, some once would have just been considered common sense. Stacking functions is one of those. Stacking functions is a quick term for the concept of planning things (elements) and areas (space) to perform the most services for us. It’s reusing things as many times as possible to get the most out of our inputs. In permaculture, we really like multi-purpose items (stacked functions) because they increase our efficient use of a space, decrease our labor, and make it easier to gain resiliency by having multiple items that perform each function. I’ll take this in two parts so I can be wordy. We’ll start with what stacking functions is and multi-function elements. Next time we’ll look at multi-function spaces.

Types of Stacking

When we talk about stacking functions we generally mean two things: a multi-function element or a multi-function space.

Within spacial stacking, we have things like silvopasture (livestock grazing on pasture beneath and in the alleys of trees, which can be for timber, firewood, fodder/forage leaves and branches, or a fruit or nut yield for humans or livestock). We also have things like companion planting, combined coop-greenhouse or greenhouse-home designs, total-system hutch-coop systems – anything with a great deal going on in one space.

Two types of stacking function include spacial stacking or multi-function spaces, like silvopasture to increase yield or a chicken moat to protect gardens and increase efficiency, and multi-function elements – each individual inside a system, like a particular plant or animal.

 

 

Multi-function elements are the individual things inside our systems that are capable of performing more than one job – an apple or locust tree, the fire from our thermal-mass heater and rocket stove, our coop with its roof and the way we arrange our bird fencing.

How we combine and site our various elements adds or detracts from their ability to maximize the efficiency of their multi-functionality. Creating redundant spaces and incorporating redundant-functioning elements increases diversity, which adds to the resilience and thus the stability of our systems and homestead.

Multi-Function Element – Pigs

Pigs have the ability to do more than turn my creek into a muddy wallow and turn broccoli into bacon. Joel Salatin reinvented the market for pigs.

I can also tweak his methods and make it just one stage. I can let them clear land (and run off predators) ahead of chickens. Chickens further till land, spread the pig manure, consume things they missed, and make my scrub woods a field ready for replanting a little bit faster. If I have relatively savvy chickens, I can arrange my pigs as a buffer between the poultry run or rabbit hutches and nearby woods or fields. Throw 3-5 pigs in a space, and even stupid domestic dogs will rethink crossing that lot to play with the fun feathered things. I’ve seen a coyote destroyed by a handful of five-month porkers, and it’s just not pretty.

I can also use them to create a no-rodent/canine/cat zone on the non-dog side of garden beds. Foraging pigs are pretty smart. Run a loose line at the top of a fence or between trees where the pigs’ hot line is, hang some bells or cans from the line, and slap it periodically as you toss in a squirrel tail and barely-keeper fish, entrails, bug-eaten produce, gophers, scraps – anything extra, they don’t care. Pavlov’s got nothing on pigs that discover goodies at the sound of a bell.

Happily, wild critters are pretty smart, too. I’ve seen raccoons change their mind when they hit the top line with a bell on it and hear those “feed me” squeals. On the other hand, I’ve also accidentally bumped an alarm line while already flailing for balance on loose leaves, which led to one of the scariest moments of my life. Pigs: double-edged swords.

Pigs would be one element in a system – any system. They’re

  • one of several food elements (garden, poultry x1-6, goats/sheep, rabbits),
  • one of potentially three brush removers (sheep, goats),
  • one of potentially two tillers (chickens),
  • one of potentially four garden/crop clean-up critters (chickens, goats, sheep)
  • one of potentially six alarm systems (guineas, dogs, chickens, geese, donkeys), and
  • one of potentially five guardian or protection systems for smaller livestock and gardens (dogs, large aggressive geese, donkeys, Winnie the Winchester or Kimmie the K98)
  • one of several manure contributors (any non-dog, non-cat)
  • one of several manure/compost spreaders for fields and garden areas (chickens, geese & ducks to lesser degree)

They potentially serve seven functions for me. Their characteristics mean that I need to haul them water and spend enough time dealing with them that I can safely enter the pen for the keepers and handle the raise-out(s), or I can spend more time and stick them in harnesses on leashes to forage other areas or just be more amenable to humans.

If we ran the same analysis of ducks, we could see the same type of multi-function creature that provides:

  • Bug removal/pest reduction (direct garden patrol when nothing is overly small; there’s less waddle-waddle, smack-smack compaction with mulch)
  • Parasite reduction (ticks)
  • Eggs
  • Meat
  • Manure

Different animals provide fewer and more services. They all come with pro’s and con’s like size, noise, feed needs, water needs, human care, weather resistance, protection, and their ability to interact with other elements. Our needs, capabilities, and desires affect what might fit on our space and in our lives.

Ideally we also seek out the animals that let us cover each of our systems’ needs in multiple ways – redundancy to build resiliency, using stacked-function elements that each perform multiple services. It creates a complex web, but when we have complex webs, we’re nearly immune to losing a strand or two. It just doesn’t hurt us the way losing a link in a single chain would cripple our production and self-sufficiency.

Multi-Function Element – Tree

Another individual element would be a tree – super simple. We can take a produce tree like an apple or a “resource” tree like locust. Locust wouldn’t be my pick for being right next to a house, but if I had rabbits in a small lot, I might go for it.

Apples provide:

  • Fruit for fresh eating, preservation, cider (and regularly, easy-storing fruit)
  • Fruit for pectin (potentially)
  • Fruit for livestock feed (potentially – too rich for some)
  • Limbs & leaves for green feed (rabbits limited, goats, sheep, chickens)
  • Limb tips & leaves for tree hay (rabbits, goats, sheep, limited chickens & cattle)
  • Limb tips, fruit cores, & leaves for silage
  • Pruned branches for garden supports, chipping into mulch (don’t mulch berries with Rosaceae leaves), smoker chips, kindling & rocket stove fuel
  • Mid- to late-spring pollinator fodder

Two goats under tree, one on hind legs nibbling leaves

The locust provides:

  • Nitrogen for nearby plants (leaves, roots)
  • Limbs & leaves for green feed (rabbits limited, goats, sheep, chickens)
  • Limb tips & leaves for tree hay (rabbits, goats, sheep, limited chickens & cattle)
  • Limb tips, fruit cores, & leaves for silage
  • Limb tips & leaves for leaf mold (fertilizer & mulch) or shredded leaves for worm bins & compost
  • Pods for fodder (honey locust)
  • Branches for fencing & tool handles
  • Firewood & kindling
  • Pruned branches for garden supports, chipping into mulch, kindling & rocket stove fuel
  • Early- to late-spring pollinator fodder (neck-and-neck with sage for the best honey)

Both trees also have the potential to be shading a greenhouse, workshop, or home against summer’s blasts, or shading livestock coops or hutches, sheds, tractors, tie-outs, or pasture. They could also very easily shade a hammock or patio set, creating an outdoor living area, or make up part of the wall and “roof” of an outdoor cooking area.

Everything that goes for the apple also goes for most fruit trees and some nut trees. There are other livestock fodder/forage trees and things like aspen and maple that provide some to many of the same functions and services as the locust.

When worked into a guild with other plants (basically: companion planting on steroids), the apple and locust become part of a multi-function space, with some of the functions overlapping to create the same redundancy and resilience discussed with the livestock. It’s possible even in a small space by coppicing that locust (or replacing it with another, smaller N-fixing tree, or using N-fixing shrubs instead) and selecting dwarf and semi-dwarf trees.

Single-Element Replacements

Although we can get even more out of a space by combining multiple multi-function elements that work together or have similar needs, there are times when a simple solution still does wonders for us.

Thorny and dense shrubs can harden fences against livestock and intruders, create chokepoints, and serve as windbreaks while also providing a food or resource.

For example, fences and windows. It’s pretty common to have a foundation plant around homes, and living fences or using fences as trellises isn’t uncommon. It’s a pretty well-known trick to use a particularly uncomfortable shrub or bramble to create choke-points around property, make fences a little “harder”, and make it a little less likely that somebody just hops up and through our widow without us knowing. Defensive properties are one function. I totally accept aesthetic landscaping as a function.

We can boost those functions by selecting roses that produce copious hips, thorny shrubs like goji and some of the nostalgia berries, and bramble fruit like raspberry. In the case of raspberry, I not only get either a medicinal or a fruit, I get both. With a lot of them, I can also select harvest tips to use as fodder supplements for rabbits and goats. Raspberry and blackberry canes add a lot of flavor as a smoker wood.

Rubus – Blackberry ‘Loch Ness’

The Bio-Integrated Farm: A Revolutionary Permaculture-Based System Using Greenhouses, Ponds, Compost Piles, Aquaponics, Chickens, and More

Seaberry is a pain for humans, but chickens are happy to work for the berries. As a dense, spiky plant it makes a great living fence and it has the benefit of being a nitrogen fixer, so heavy-bearing plants placed alongside it can reap all kinds of benefits, from fertilizer to protection from deer and humans, to less wind.

We can replace our just-showy shrubs with vitamin-packed blueberries, honeyberries and aronia and still get explosions of color twice a year, but also get human and livestock food and increased pollinator presence by tailoring our plantings so there’s always something for them.

If we already have a patio bed or sidewalk we past nearly daily, that’s a great place to put our berries and greens that so quickly go from perfect to squishy or tough and bitter. We can easily intermingle them with our annual and perennial herbs and flowers to maintain a pretty space.

Using a bed near a house or building also allows us to quickly and easily attach porous lines to our downspouts or water barrel overflows, directing even short, light rains to water-needy plants like greens and tomatoes.

Plants, plants & more plants … always with the plants

In my defense, plants are the fastest, easiest way for absolutely everybody at every skill and scale to increase their resilience, and they tend to offer almost as many functions as a chicken – without the noise. However, we can stack functions with abiotic things as well.

If the bane of my existence is mowing and I have downhill spots in my yard that turn into swamps every time it rains, I can solve two of my problems by deep mulching uphill – using landscape fabric. The mulch not only limits how much I have to mow, it also slows, spreads, and absorbs some of the rain, increasing infiltration and requiring a little more rain to fall before I have to jump the Niagara on the way to my car or mail in the morning.

I can also deeply mulch a play area so I can still kick the kids out when it’s been raining. And if it’s deep enough, children and animals are less likely to break a bone when falling off a slide, swing or tree branch.

Either mulched area is also a non-muddy staging ground for repairs and projects, harvest sorting, training, and all kinds of gatherings.

My quad isn’t just for recreation. It’s not even just deer- or harvest-season transportation and hauling. My quad also has a hitch that turns it into a furrowing plow, disker, seed spreader, and winnowing rake.

A rocket stove and thermal-mass heater can heat my pot of water now, have a cavity and lid that acts like an earthbox/slow-cooker and a cabinet to serve as an old-school warming box, be shaped into a lounger, slowly dissipates and keeps my house nice and toasty, and with embedded plumbing can have additional water right there still hot or warm for a hand wash or a faster mug of tea. A coil of hose in a greenhouse ceiling can provide some of the same benefits.

Stacking Functions – Elements to Areas

We can tailor non-living things to provide more and less shade, take advantage of sun, wind and rain or protect from wind and rain, and we can make purchases with an eye to multi-functionality (like a kiddie pool that will double as water catchment, a chick brooder, or a tarp). However, usually when we talk about stacking functions, we’re talking about productive spaces as a primary goal. If you want to eat it, it’s usually a plant or animal.

Those plants and animals can do a lot of jobs for us even if we look at them as just individuals and spread them out across a conventional homesteading site plan. When we start combining them into groups and when we start cramming them into small spaces, we can gain a lot of benefits. We’ll look at some of the ways various plants and animals can benefit each other or us by sharing space in an article that deals specifically with multi-function areas and guilds.

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You don’t have to buy into any woo-woo-ology or being “green” to reap the benefits of some of the concepts to come out of environmentally friendly growing methods and lifestyles.

When it comes to things that are super useful in daily life, bed sheets rank right up there. In a world where we’d like to conserve energy, go as unnoticed as possible, or avoid stores, or when fresh resources just aren’t all that available, sheets go up even further on the usefulness scale. To be clear from the start, I’m not saying everybody should run out and buy multiple sets of brand-new bed sheets. For some uses, threadbare and worn are actually better. Used is always acceptable.

Tarps are best for some things, but tarps are also more expensive than old, used sheets we’d throw away or that we find for free or 10-50 cents each, and they tend to be larger to store. A cheap $5-10 tarp is usually about as vulnerable as a well-made used motel sheet, so if the moisture protection isn’t as much an issue and it’s a temp use, we may be able to save some money and space with sheets.

When the Sheet Hits the Fan: The advantage of bed sheets

One of the major repetitive advantages to sheets is that they’re lightweight. That means they’ll both wash and dry easily and pretty quickly, even in total off-grid situations. They’re also fairly compact, so it’s pretty easy to store them. They’re not heavy to carry. And of course, there’s the myriad uses an old bed sheet can offer us.

Uses for Bed sheets

Like any “must have” item, an internet search is going to return dozens of hits, some of them really, really good. This is the kind of area where Pinterest is worth its weight, too. I’ll stick to the less-artsy and more-practical uses here, but there’s still no way I’ll cover them all. It’s just to show some of the range so we can justify a trashcan filled with bags of sheets. I totally welcome other ideas and uses – it’ll only benefit everybody to share ideas.

Lining bedrolls – Lining a sleeping bag or bedroll with a sheet or two gives us hot-night options as well as keeps dust and sweat from hitting the thicker blankets and bag. The same applies to a “regular” bed – both under and atop the main covers, especially if there are pets. Sheets are much faster to wash and dry, especially on the move.

This also works for dogs beds, unless there’s a “nester” involved who likes to dig or root around in their spot before they lie down.

Lining furniture – I have pets, and a guy who thinks pets on furniture is normal, regardless of size or shedding seasons. I can switch out a couple of sheets on chairs and sofas, wash them, and hang them to dry in about the same time it takes me to vacuum and lint roll them. That’s especially nice if somebody drops by, because I can just flick sheets off and they have a clean place to sit besides an office chair and the kitchen table.

It also works for me. There are times I’m too sweaty to even consider padded furniture, but sometimes I’m just dusty or flecked with stuff when I’m hungry and want a break or to watch a show while I cool down or warm up. With sheets on my two rocking chairs and my squishier furniture, I don’t have to sit in the floor like a 1930s child.

Color coordinating by mood and season is just a bonus, as is catching all kinds of remotes and pocket detritus.

Plant covers – Keeping in some extra sheets can help extend our garden season, especially if we have unexpected cool weather. Thin, white or pale green sheets are best for extended use, but any color works for just overnight or for a day or two of cold weather. It’s best if they’re propped up above plants with some air space between the plants and sheets, but just covering them is enough to save tender seedlings and flowers in a lot of cases.

Heat sinks – We can use sheets to make dark curtains that absorb and hold onto more heat in winter without needing nails the way ad libbed tapestries from comforters do.

We can also fold them into 1-2’ rectangles several layers thick to lay right against our plant rows in early spring and autumn. They’ll help block some of the weeds and help protect against splash-up dirt, as well as help warm the soil, hold a little more moisture than bare earth, and protect the roots from frost a little more. Sheets aren’t going to last season after season, but not much does. If we’re only using them for a few days or weeks early and late, we can wash them and fold them back up, and protect them from the most damaging weather and extended bug attacks.

Image: An old bedsheet can be used to shade a baby or tractored livestock, or hung over a porch, used as window awnings and curtains, or spread like a tarp for even a few days or weeks to help beat blistering hot days.

Shade – Sheets aren’t going to last in the long run, but to break the heat for an afternoon, weekend, or even a particularly brutal heat wave, sheets are pretty nice for rigging as a shade cloth since they’re light enough to hang from clothesline, 550 cord, a lot of garden twines, duct tape, and household-level screws and nails. Without rivets, sheets are going to rip in high winds and after hanging soaked from rains and exposed to sun repeatedly, but I’ve had some last out most or all of the summer over rental porches in Arizona and Alabama. Folding the edges to double or triple before poking line, nails or hooks through them can help prevent some of the tearing.

Defensive Training Space – String line and weigh curtains with spare sticks and rocks, and create red-gun and airsoft reaction training courses. They’re inexpensive, faster to erect than OSB/plywood, they cost a fraction of stick construction, and they can be updated and renovated to keep experiences fresh. They can also be cut into truly man-sized targets for airsoft and paintball training. (Do not conduct live-fire drills with restricted visibility unless you have experience running live-fire drills with restricted visibility – that’s how idiots shoot each other.)



Sheets – especially thick, absorbent ones – can be turned into reusable paper towels, cleaning wipes, baby wipes, cloth pads, or hankies.

Health & Hygiene – We’ve all heard of boiling sheets for bandages. We can also cut them up to make hankies. We can go as sew-happy or KISS as we like to turn them into reusable bleach and Lysol cleaning wipes or baby wipes. They can make decent enough dusting cloths. Thicker and softer versions that are fairly absorbent can be turned into top and middle layers for cloth menstrual pads or diapers. We can use any of them to make “family” cloths (reusable adult baby wipes).

If we find multiple colors and patterns, we can color-coordinate by person for a lot of the hygiene uses, which might at least help with the knee jerk “eww” and “eek” factor.

Line floors – When there’s a sick or still-house training pet indoors, sometimes you just can’t get there fast enough. With carpets or old hardwood, this is a recipe for a lot of time on knees. My pets tend to avoid plastic (including training pads) or the cat plays with them, so folding sheets into quarters to stick in their usual areas and the runways leading to doors works far better for us.

Pine Sol and bleach are my friends, and they tend to make it all better. Instead of scrubbing on my knees, it’s a matter of wiping up the worst of it, then washing the sheets the same way I would a changing table cover, leaky diaper bedding, “accident” pants, and puked-on shirts and towels. One baby is very much like another when you love them, especially when the four-legged baby would kill, maim and die for the two-legged baby.

If it’s ugly or I’m rushed, since it’s a sheet that outlasted its mate or cost me $0.25-$1, I am more than willing to just throw that puppy away.

Lining the floors also has a great deal of use when it’s muddy and there’s a lot of foot traffic and no pre-built mudroom for dusty, sandy environments, snow and wet, and freshly tilled garden areas, especially when you’re dealing with poorly trained humans.

Sources for Bed sheets

There are lots of places we can get our hands on used bed sheets without necessarily outing ourselves as nut jobs. We can limit our “crazy” reaction by citing the camping, pet, and garden uses as our primary interest.

Image/Images: Used sheets picked up for free or at low cost can be re-manufactured and reused in all kinds of ways, to include clothing, which can be especially handy for families with growing children during a crisis.

In all cases, like free and low-cost buckets and windows and screens, the burden is on us. Other people have regular jobs and priorities. We cannot make contact once and expect them to both remember our request and keep our phone number, then declare it a dead and stupid idea. We have to check back. Weekly or twice monthly, not enough to be an annoyance, but enough to be that smiling sweetheart. Showing up in person works best in many cases, because a face, a respectful and pleasant tone, and a hand shake can still go far.

We can find used sheets from:

  • Salvation Army/Goodwill, etc. (they sometimes don’t accept linens, or don’t accept stained/ripped linens of any kind)
  • Lower-rent and independent motels (they eventually rotate worn and stained linens, and are less likely to brush you off or already have contracts like larger, mid-high level hotels)
  • Message boards for “want” ads – church and community halls, agricultural co-ops and Tractor Supply, and flea markets (ask first if it’s a member-driven location)

Usually you’ll need at least a manager. Most commonly an owner has to give their nod. Still, there’s nothing wrong with hitting up housekeeping ahead of time to find out how they handle worn linens or calling ahead to find out when owners will be available to talk to with the least disturbance. Second shift is always the busiest for hotels, so try to avoid harassing them between 1-11 p.m. In the case of donation centers, sometimes the sorters are happy to let you poke through the trash or to pile stuff beside the dumpster instead of in it.

Another use for old sheets: Divide living areas and sleeping quarters into separate spaces with easy-hanging privacy curtains. It can save some much-needed sanity during even a temporary crisis.

Preparedness via Bed sheets

Some of the other uses for bed sheets in various condition include stocking them for clothing fabric, having plenty of extras on hand to limit rainy-day laundry, and hanging windows and doors with 3-4 overlapping layers to help with light discipline. They can also be used for animal and human towels, outdoor shower privacy curtains, and to hang for a DIY iPod or cell phone movie projector screen.

On the “daily” side, we can also turn them into tablecloths to cover our buckets and cases of stockpiled goodies or use them to make hook rugs and animal bedding. When we start accruing friends and relatives at our prepper palace, we can hang sheets as curtains to at least visually divide space (don’t knock it – high stress is a bad time to have fights break out because one person’s fidget is another person’s pet peeve; there’s a reason some of us take our glasses off in church and waiting rooms when somebody’s twitchy or acting up).

Bed sheets have lots of uses, with tons of crafty DIY out there for those interested. When it comes to preparedness, they offer so much potential for such a low cost and relatively tight storage space, they’re almost a shoe-in for a must-have list.

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When it comes to things that are super useful in daily life, bed sheets rank right up there. In a world where we’d like to conserve energy, go as unnoticed

 

While the investigation is still ongoing and the military has effectively placed a gag order on the personnel involved, some details are being released about the April 2 shooting.  A soldier (who will not be named in this article) killed three people and wounded 16 at his workplace at Ft. Hood, Texas before turning the gun on himself.

If you aren’t caught up on the incident, this recent article from the New York Daily News summarizes the incident quite well.

Here are a some important tactical considerations for anyone who wants to be better prepared for future active killer events:

1) The “Lockdown” or “Shelter in Place” Paradigm must change.

Read about what happened below:

“Sgt. First Class Danny Ferguson, a native of Mulberry, Fla., who had just returned from Afghanistan, died while trying to keep the shooter out of the room, Kristen Haley, also a soldier, told WTSP-TV in Tampa, Fla.

“He held that door shut because it wouldn’t lock,” said Haley, who was nearby when the shooting broke out. “It seems the doors would be bullet proof, but apparently they’re not. If he wasn’t the one standing there holding those doors closed, that shooter would have been able to get through and shoot everyone else.”

Numerous people ran to hide in a room that could not be locked and had no exits.  A brave soldier dies while physically holding the door closed with his body.  Does that remind you of any other similar happenings during an active killer event?  It should.  In 2007′s Virginia Tech massacre, Professor Liviu Librescu, died holding the door to his classroom closed in an identical manner.

While they idea of lockdown does have merit in some situations, hiding in a room with no exits and no way to be secured is a very poor defensive decision.  Fleeing or physically attacking the shooter would likely lead to better overall outcomes.

2) You will be on your own for a significant length of time.

Many police departments brag about their excellent response times in order to convince you to let them solve the problem.  Even if response time is good (one active shooter study showed an average police response time of three minutes), the response time merely describes the time between when the police get the call and when they arrive on scene.

The calls to police in these high stress environments are not immediate.  Some studies show that active shooting events are in progress for between four and six minutes before police even get the first call!  Once they arrive on scene, they have to enter the building (which may be barricaded) and find the shooter.  That takes more time.

Although response times were respectable in this incident, look how long it took to resolve:

“The MP arrived in the parking lot about four minutes after the first 911 call, and she began to look for the suspect with other law enforcement officers. A short time later, she saw the suspect. The shooting spree was over in about 15 or 20 minutes.”
– CNN
“Gray said the duration of the shooting from the first 911 call to the notification that the shooter was down was about eight minutes in length”

Even with the rapid response of a trained military police unit, it still took eight minutes from the time of the call until the killer was dead.  Add several more minutes before the call was even made and you find that the “four minute” response time turns into something more like 15 minutes.  That’s a long time when someone is trying to kill you.

Unless a police officer or armed citizen is already on scene, they won’t be getting there in time to stop the majority of the killing. You are truly on your own and responsible for your own safety.  Make intelligent choices.  You won’t likely be saved by the police.

3) Talking and negotiation should be a tactic of last resort when responding to an active killer.

“Sgt. Owens tried to verbally talk him down, and that’s when the shot was fired,” 

– LA Times

Negotiation has not had a very high success rate stopping active killers.  If you think that you’ll be able to “talk the killer down,” you are likely mistaken.  Talking should be the absolute last option, not the first.

4) Shooters tend to be prepared and will likely have significant quantities of ammunition.

The shooter here had a full sized S&W .45 pistol.  He fired at least 35 rounds.  That means at least two spare magazines and maybe as many as five, depending on the exact model of the gun.

“Gray said the alleged shooter fired an estimated 35 rounds of .45-caliber ammunition during the rampage.”

– NBC News

Think about that for a second…

What are your chances of winning a gunfight against a trained soldier armed with a full sized pistol and several spare magazines using the Ruger .380 (that you haven’t shot since last summer) in your back pocket?  The odds aren’t good.  If you want to be a player at this level of violence and carnage, you better have a “real” pistol and some good training.

That doesn’t mean that things are hopeless if your are unarmed or just have a “mouse gun.”  When the killer shoots that much, he must reload sometime.  This shooter likely reloaded at least twice.  Be able to recognize the signs of an unloaded weapon and be ready to ferociously close the distance and attack as soon as you see it.

5) The trend of mobile active shooters continues.

Read the comments below:

“Around 4 p.m., he walked into a command building and opened fire, then left, got in his car and began driving while still firing shots. He got out of his car and walked into another building, still shooting.”

– ABC News

One of the first recent active killer events where the suspect remained mobile using a car was the Santa Monica College shooting. The killer there confused police by driving away from the crime scenes and staying one step ahead of apprehension.

The killer at Ft. Hood used the same tactic.  I believe these shooters are modeling their tactics off of the highly successful mobile tactics used by the terrorists in the 2008 Mumbai, India attack.

Mobile killers make police response exponentially more difficult.  Cops responding to these events need to be alert for escaping suspects in vehicles as they approach the scene.  First line supervisors should prioritize roadblocks around the crime scene, both to ensure that ambulances and EMS vehicles can get to the scene, as well as to limit the killer’s escape opportunities.

6) The shooter may not have a gun in his hand.

 ”Within 15 minutes military police responded. Milley said a female officer confronted Lopez in a parking lot near the second building. He approached the officer but stopped about 20 feet from her and put his hands up. Then, Milley said, the gunman reached into his jacket and pulled out his weapon. As the officer opened fire, the man shot himself in the head.”

– LA Times

One of the consistent themes of active shooting events is that the killers study past incidents and adapt their tactics so as to perform better than their predecessors.  Killers now know that most police officers are trained to run to the sound of the gunfire and quickly engage the shooter. Having a gun in your hand while this happens can be hazardous to the murderer’s health!  This is one of the first times that I’ve seen an active killer conceal his weapon as he commits the crime or makes his escape.

If you are responding to an active shooter event, push your dispatchers for the best physical descriptions they can give.  If you are calling the police in an active killer massacre, pay extra attention to getting the killer’s description right.  Get age, sex, hair color, race, clothing description and direction of travel relayed to the dispatchers as quickly as possible.  This is critical information that needs to be shared with responding officers.  The killer may be walking (or driving) away from the scene normally and may not be actively killing innocent people on your arrival.

7) The killing stops as soon as the killer faces effective resistance.

We see it time and again.  As soon as the killer is confronted by someone intent on doing him harm, he either surrenders or shoots himself.  These killers aren’t looking for a fight.  They are looking for a body count.  Once they realize their killing spree is going to be thwarted, they give up…either by surrendering or killing themselves.

Resistance doesn’t have to be with a gun.  A significant portion of these killers are stopped when UNARMED citizens tackle them.  The resistance only has to be effective.  Whether that’s with your legally concealed firearm or your fists, the fastest way to end these killing is to aggressively fight back.

That single fact may be the most important take-away of this article.  Somehow, we need to encourage people to fight these madmen instead of cowering in bathrooms and under school desks.

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  While the investigation is still ongoing and the military has effectively placed a gag order on the personnel involved, some details are being released about the April 2 shooting.  A