I carry 60 ft of 3/8" nylon rope and gloves on my BOB. If I were a student, I would throw it into the bottom of my book bag, and get both instruction and practice at rappeling.

Rappeling down cliffs have expedited my movement more than once. That, and to haul equipment up (mostly the sides of locks) is why I carry the line and the leather gloves.

My thoughts exactly...some rules, are meant to be broken.

If mister nutso blasts into your room and starts shooting, you will more than likely have time to do one of two things: Duck and cover, hoping that you will not be one of the targets, and CHARGE! Preferably a whole bunch of you charge at the same time, throwing books, etc, at him as you do. Sure, some will be hit, but not all, and I feel that is the best way to save the most lives. Lots of people get shot every day without dieing. You will not have time to dig out ropes or guns at the bottom of book bags, call 911, or plan amongst yourselves. Things will be happening NOW, and FAST.

Chances of having half of a room full of 19 year olds charge the badguy is probably slim, but I for one would rather be shot in the face fighting than in the back hiding...

But if you can hear it coming, and your walls are fairly tough, tip the desk over to use a weight leaning against the door, and the big guy (there is one in every room, and most of us are cranky) sits/leans against it to keep it from sliding. Makes it very hard to open the door.

And now two of my friends have community service hours with house keeping at my ala matter. They tested it last night it seems- a 60 pound desk + 150 pound skinny guy = a door that isn't going to open unless you torch it open or make an explosive breach. I'm not going to point out that while they might have blocked the door, it won't stop a bullet, but they both read about Horatius or the 300 when they were kids.

Of course, I might have wedged the desk in the corner so that if you apply leverage it jams against the wall, and pennied the door, but....

Double it and you might have a chance, but you're right, a hasty repel is a scary idea. I've broken paracord with a lot less than 550 pounds, at the knot.

For the bulk, 1" tubular webbing might be easier to handle and is certainly a LOT stronger.

Yep. And when you are half way down, some drauma queen or whiney emo who knows less than nothing grabs on and tries to follow you, not only do you get to deal with 9.8m/s/s, you also get to deal my friend, F=m*9.8m/s/s.

Yeah, if you are unfortunate enough to be in the first place the nutso psycho starts blasting people, it really won't matter if you have a holstered gun or if it is in the bottom of your gym bag. Once they have the drop on you, it is usually over before you can respond. I think one of Henry Fonda's characters was quoated as saying "don't ever draw on a man with his finger on the trigger". I would probably still try anyways, even if he is already blasting away, but the chances are not much better than if I had to go fishing for it at the bottom of a bag. Same goes for an orgainzed rush of the assailant. Unless you are in a group that is actually anticipating such an event and has planned for it ahead of time, there's really no hope of executing such an organized counter attack if the shooter has the element of surprise.

The bottom line is if you have the time there's lots you can do to improve your chances, and the best would be to retrieve your own firearm in time to bring it to bear against the unsuspecting nutso psycho. Those who successfully barricaded themselves into their classroom preventing the nutso from entering only mitigated the threat to themselves, and didn't do much to stop him from victimizing others less fortunate down the hall.

Even without a firearm, you could try and Macgyver something up that would have a chance of neutralizing or inhibiting the nutso from further aggression.

The only tools you're ever need:

1) Body: Get into excellent physical shape
2) Mind: Learn everything about the world around. How _everything_ works. Be like MacGyver.

For the rest. Improvise.

As a former marine and former coworker always said: "Improvise, Adapt and Overcome"

Of course, certain items you may carry could up your effectiveness in improvising:

- Multi-tool. MacGyver had the Swiss Army Knife. Les Stroud has the multi-tool. May not be as effective as a specialized knife, but a good tool in an urban environment. Most states don't have a problem with knives under 6 inches. I think it's to avoid people running around with large swords and daggers that are less personal as a pocket knife. Might have something to do with larger swords being able to remove limbs.
- Flashlight. Can see into areas that are obscured by other objects even in daylight. Ask any cop if they've ever used their flashlight during the day. Also, bright ones, like Surefires, could temporarily incapacitate someone. Conceal Carry Legal in all 50 states. Can possibly be used like a Kubaton. Maybe. Never used one, but, my Surefire is a little bit bigger.

I think if you search the forums you'll find these two items are the most carried. I can't think of anything else off the top of my head that would be extremely useful. Others will have ideas I'm sure.

I just took your advice and tried it. Muntner hitch over a medium/large pear biner plus about 6 wraps around the verticle part of the biner. Works ok.

But I wouldn't bet my life on it unless on fire or under fire.



Since you didn't ask I'll tell you anyway. I always thought if there was one thing I'd never do it would be to go off the end of the rope. I always kept track of where the rope was and tied a knot in the end. I was very safe.

One time I was rappelling from the same place with the same rope and the same huge tree as an anchor that I'd done several times before. People were climbing below, so instead of tossing the rope down, I left it flaked in a bag clipped to my harness and let it feed out of that as I went down. About 10 feet from the ground - ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZip - THUD! Hmmm... I'm still alive. What happened?

Turns out that before I had used a sling around the tree and tied the rope to that, but this time I took several wraps around the tree with the rope itself. That was enough to use up those critical few feet of rope. Dumb.

Once you wrapped the line around the spine of the biner you no longer had a Munter hitch; it may have still worked on rappell to some degree but it was not a Munter hitch once you added the wraps.

http://www.chockstone.org/TechTips/MunterHitch.htm

Glad you didn't get hurt when you fell. Some sort of friction backup either in front or behind of your belay device could prevent that.