First time to the site.
I've been doing the real prep work for about ten years. I am a recruiter and organizer for our local prep and BO team. The team consists of five active members and two associate members. Two of the five active members are geographically separated, but are active preppers. Four of us have military backgrounds and one is a full time law enforcement official.
As for me, I learned much of my skills from my father and my uncle, who both served in Korea and Vietnam, both as riflemen and then in other special jobs. I hail from New York, but make Texas my new home. Spent 20+ years in the military, tragically injured in my primary specialty code, I was medically boarded out of my primary field and into the medical field because of my knowledge of field and trauma medicine. I spent much of my time deployed and have two other AF specialty skills. I have three undergraduate degrees in the field of Biology, Asian Studies and History and two graduate degrees in the field of Public Health and Political Science. My primary focus is in Public Health was bioterrorism in a field of virology identification/response. I am well versed in NBC Conops and have been involved in developing many tech orders and procedures in the field of patient decontamination. I have been involved in several epidemiological outbreak investigations and at one time was offered the position of Director of Public Health and Bioterrorism response for a major metropolitan city. I have worked clinical nursing and I spent three years with the American Red Cross (responding as a lead agent into New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina because of my military skillsets and ability to work with emergency and military responders). As for additional military skills, I spent a majority of my military career also with Army and Marine units both in garrison and deployed to some interesting hotspots. I will not discuss those in an open forum, out of respect to my associates (some who are still active military), family and those that have fallen.
As for prep's, contact me for any ideas or comments. I am not an expert at anything, a little lesson my dad taught me, "eyes open, ears up and mouth shut". I will be happy to help where I can and if not will sure be able to find out something to direct you to the right area.
Lastly, my family is my rock. This is the one area strictly off-limits for conversation. I respect my wife immensely, since she is entirely responsible for my success in life. She is the rock and is my hero. Sorry, don't want to get to sappy, but unlike some wives who could not bare the stress of military deployments...she plugged along without me and raised some great children.
