Stand up. Walk to the middle of your living room. Close your eyes and turn off the lights in your head – imagine the power just cut. Now, without opening your eyes, point to where your nearest flashlight is. Then your nearest pair of shoes. Then your water. Then the exit you’d take if you heard glass break in the back of the house.
If you hesitated on any of those, you just failed the first drill in this article.
That’s the part that should bother you. You spend years building stockpiles, stacking gear, running scenarios in your head – and have never once tested whether the body and the mind you’re counting on actually work the way they think they do. The gear isn’t the question, you are.
The seven drills below come out of military observation training, Marine Corps doctrine, and old-school scout craft. Each one takes three minutes or less and will tell you something about yourself you didn’t want to know. And each one of these drills fixes a specific weakness that almost nobody bothers to train.
Do them honestly and don’t cheat. The point isn’t to feel good about yourself, but to find the cracks before the world finds them for you.
The Blackout Drill
Set a three-minute timer. Turn off every light in your house. Don’t use your phone screen, candles, nothing. From wherever you’re standing, you have to locate four things in order: a working flashlight, a full water container, your shoes, and the nearest exterior door you’d use if you had to leave fast.
Most of my friends failed this in under sixty seconds. They told me they either walk into furniture or can’t remember which drawer the flashlight is in. Half of them turn the lights back on by minute two and tell themselves it doesn’t count.
But it does.
I find this drill very important, which is why I made sure it’s at the top of the list so everyone would read it. A blackout is actually the most realistic SHTF scenario that could happen. It’s easy to take the grid for granted and say “I’ll do this drill tomorrow, or on the weekend”… but what we don’t understand is that a blackout can be caused by many things and can be very sudden. And then everything you prepared for can be in vain.
That’s why you need to understand what a blackout protocol is and what it entails. It will teach you everything you need to know about surviving in the dark. For more information, go here.
Kim’s Game
This one’s been used by snipers and scouts for over a century. It’s named after the Kipling novel where a boy is trained to memorize a tray of objects at a glance. The military still teaches it because observation under stress is one of the first things to go.
Have someone lay out fifteen random objects on a table – keys, a pen, a coin, a battery, whatever. Look at them for sixty seconds then walk away and wait two minutes. Now write down everything you saw – brand, color, position, orientation, all of it.
Most people remember nine or ten. The trained eye remembers all fifteen plus details you didn’t even notice you were seeing. The reason this matters is that in a crisis, you’ll need to describe a person, a vehicle, a license plate, a room you walked through once.
This drill, run twice a week, rewires how your eyes work in under a month.
The Cold Water Dexterity Test
Fill a bowl with ice water and then submerge your dominant hand for sixty seconds. Pull it out and immediately try three tasks: load a magazine, tie a bowline knot, light a match.
I bet you’ll fail at least one, probably even two.
This is my favorite drill because it kills the idea that your gear will save you. Fine motor skills disappear fast in cold weather, much faster than most people realize. There’s a huge gap between practicing a skill in a warm kitchen and trying to do it when your hands barely respond.
That gap can decide whether you make it through a winter night. Every cold-weather skill feels reliable until you test it while cold. Run this drill in November, before you ever need it for real.
The Three-Minute Pack
I know most of you don’t want to bug out – and honestly, that’s the right instinct. But in a wildfire, a chemical spill nearby, or a sudden evacuation order, you won’t have the luxury of choosing. You’ll need to run, and everything you need has to already be in one place.
Here’s the part nobody likes to talk about: you also need to be in shape when that moment comes. If you’re carrying a lot of extra weight, you won’t make it far with a loaded backpack. I’m not trying to offend anyone – I’m being straight with you because I care. Obesity is the number one health crisis in America right now, and a hurricane evacuation or a grid-down emergency doesn’t care how prepped your gear is if your body can’t carry it.
I’ll be honest – this is something I’ve struggled with myself. A few months back, a friend gave me a very interesting gift – a supplement formula that finally moved the needle for me. Nothing crazy, just something that gave me energy and helped me drop 21 lbs. in 60 days. I’m in a much better place now, and I figured I’d mention it in case anyone reading this is in the same boat I was. 👉 This is the one I’m talking about.
Now, here’s the drill: set a timer for three minutes and grab everything you’d need to survive seventy-two hours away from home, starting from scratch in your own house. It forces you to find out whether your bug-out setup actually works under pressure, or whether it only works in your head. And trust me, three minutes is generous. In a real event, you might have ninety seconds.
You’ll discover how much of your setup only works in theory. The water filters are buried in a closet under winter coats. The first aid kit is in the garage. Spare ammo sits locked in a safe with a code you haven’t touched in eight months. Important documents are in a fireproof box too heavy to move alone. On paper, the whole system looks solid. Under a stopwatch, it falls apart fast.
The fix is to organize for speed, not storage:
- Keep essentials in one place.
- Store gear where you can reach it fast.
- Test safe codes and equipment regularly.
- Keep your grab-and-go setup light.
- Run the drill often and fix what slows you down.
The OODA Snapshot
Walk into any public space – a coffee shop, a gas station, a parking lot. Give yourself thirty seconds to observe. Then walk back out and answer four questions:
- Where’s the nearest exit that isn’t the main door?
- What’s the closest object I could use as an improvised weapon?
- Who in that room is the most likely threat, and why?
- What’s my fastest route to my vehicle if I had to leave right now?
This is John Boyd’s OODA loop compressed into a drill – Observe, Orient, Decide, Act. The Marines teach it. Pilots use it. It’s the framework behind every decision made under pressure, and the only way to make it instinct is to practice the first two steps until they’re automatic.
Run this drill three times a week in different environments. Within a month, you’ll do it without thinking every time you enter a new space. That’s the goal – not paranoia, not constant scanning, just background awareness that’s always running. The people who survive ambushes aren’t faster or stronger. They saw it half a second sooner.
The What’s-Behind-You Drill
Right where you’re sitting, without turning around, write down everything within twenty feet behind you. Furniture, exits, people, objects on shelves, what’s outside the window if there is one. Be specific, then turn around and check.
This is a situational awareness test, and almost everyone fails it the first time. That’s because your brain tunes out familiar surroundings to save energy – it stops paying close attention to things it has already seen a hundred times. That same shortcut is what makes your living room feel safe and comfortable, but it’s also what lets someone walk up behind you in a parking lot without you noticing until they speak.
The drill itself fixes the problem. Once you start practicing recall of what’s behind you, your brain stops filtering it out. Within a few weeks, you’ll register your surroundings the same way trained operators do – automatically, without effort, or looking like you’re scanning. That’s the version of awareness that actually works in public.
Why does this drill matter so much? Because the truth is, every American home is vulnerable – to burglary, assault, riots, and yes, even the kind of chaos a civil war could bring. I know it’s not comfortable to think about, but pretending your house is safe doesn’t make it so. This drill is one small piece of a much bigger puzzle.
And if you’re serious about taking your awareness to the next level, you’ll want a solid home defense plan in your corner. The one that inspired this article – and honestly, the best I’ve come across – is Guerrilla Home Defense. It’s built on decades of real-world experience, and it walks you through exactly how to keep your family safe in almost any situation, from a break-in on a quiet Tuesday to something far worse.
The Cooper Color Code Check-In
This one isn’t a physical drill, but a self-audit. Set a phone alarm to go off at six random times during the day. When it rings, what color were you just in?
The Cooper Color Code is Marine Corps doctrine. Four levels of awareness:
- White – oblivious, daydreaming, phone-locked
- Yellow – relaxed alertness, aware of surroundings
- Orange – something specific has your attention
- Red – active threat, committed response
Most civilians live in White and die surprised. Trained operators live in Yellow as a baseline.
When the alarm rings, were you in White or Yellow? In a parking lot, were you scanning or scrolling? In your kitchen, were you aware of who’s in the house or zoned out?
After a week of this, you’ll start noticing the times you drop into White – and you’ll start catching yourself before you do.
The shift from White to Yellow as a default state takes about three months of consistent self-checks. It’s the single most important mental change any prepper can make, and it costs nothing.
What These Drills Actually Train
These drills showed you where your cracks are. Final Survival Plan is what you do next.
It’s the roadmap I wish I’d had years ago – built by people who’ve spent decades figuring out what actually holds up when things go sideways. Awareness, defense, bug-out, food, water – all of it in one plan you can hand to your family and follow without guessing.
If even one drill rattled you today, that’s your signal. Read the Final Survival Plan here!
You may also like:
Military Items That Might Be Missing from Your Prepping Kit
17 Powerless Items to Stockpile for the Next Blackout (VIDEO)
Food Prepping Skills I Learned in the Military
Are You Ready for the Upcoming Food Crisis?
How to Prep as a Senior on a Budget
Read the full article here
