Layering Your Urban SERE Kit

Another post from my old blog. Enjoy!

There are many different ways and places you can hide your counter custody kit on your person. Keeping your kit in a single bundle, or on a single lanyard worn around the neck, is the easiest way to integrate your kit into your EDC. The problem with this is that all of your eggs are in the one basket. If the bundle is found, you lose everything. A better option is to ‘layer’ your kit – that is to hide the different parts of your kit on different places on your body.

Here are some examples of how to layer your kit. This is not an exhaustive list of examples, but it should get you thinking about how and where you can hide things.

The hems of your jeans/pants.

Cut a small slit into the hem on the inside of the pants/jeans leg. This way the cut wont be seen from the outside. Now you can shove small items into the hem. Suggested items include bobby pins, handcuff shims, and diamond wire saws. Flexible items like kevlar cordage can also be inserted. I suggest that you tie one end of the kevlar cordage to a bobby pin or shim to make it easier to get it inside the hem.

The label of your jeans.

You can unpick some of the stitching so that you can hide small items under the label. Kevlar cordage is the preferred item to hide here as you can hide more here than in the hem. You can also hide handcuff keys and other items here. Handcuff keys tend to dig into your side if you wear your belt tight, and may be susceptible to frisk searches as they make the label bulge.

Duct tape/square band-aid hides.

Duct tape and large band-aids can be used to tape items such as handcuff keys, shims, button compasses, and NATO glow sticks between your shoulder blades, your pecs, or around your groin. You need to be really flexible to access things between your shoulder blades, and you may want to shave ‘down south’ if you hide things around your groin. Unless you're a masochist or something…

Boot/shoes laces.

Replace your boot/shoe laces with gutted paracord. Insert a drill bit or something similar into the end and then melt the end. This way you will end up with a hole in the end of the lace. You can hide anything from lock picks to bobby pins and shims using this method. Some lacing styles are better suited than others. You can also hide things under the laces by using small SERE wallets. [1]

Inside your pants.

Small cache tubes [2] and SERE wallets can be tied to the button above your fly with cordage. This allows them to be worn inside your pants. The E&E wallets can also be tied to your belt loops and worn under your belt or inside your pants/jeans at the back. Small cache tubes can hold anything you can fit inside them – shims, keys, lock picks, blades, bobby pins, needles, cordage, money, medicine, batteries, etc. SERE wallets are better suited for shims, handcuff keys, and small ceramic blades.

References/Links

[1] http://store.lawindustries.co.uk/product/micro-sere-pouch-xl
[2] http://www.oscardelta.co.uk/Go_Tubes.html