 Hey everyone, Dylan Schumacher, Citadel Defense, and today we're gonna talk about tourniquets. In case you're watching this video and you're like, Dylan, I don't know how to put a tourniquet on, what do I do? Tourniquets are stupid simple, okay? I'm not a medical professional by any stretch of imagination, but even I can tell you how to put a tourniquet on, okay? Especially with the cats, you're just gonna put them as high and tight as you possibly can. So for demonstration purposes, I'm not gonna go all the way up to basically where my shoulder is, but that's where I would go, okay? I'm just gonna go here in the middle of my arm because it's a lot easier to show you. You're gonna pull that sucker as tight as you humanly can, okay? Wrap that around, so that's pretty tight there. Then you're gonna use your little windlass and you're gonna take out all of the slack that's left in that tourniquet. You're gonna go until it's painful, right there, that hurts, okay? Stuff that windlass in there, wrap the rest of the strap over the top. If you can, I take the rest of this thing, come over the top like that. I'll then check my pulse to make sure that I have no pulse in my arm. Yep, I have no pulse, so that I know the blood flow is obviously cut off because there's no pulse in my hand. From there, you can obviously remove the tourniquet and regain feeling in your arm. Stupid, simple. Practice with your tourniquet, okay? Practice doing that on your leg, practice doing it on your arm. You don't have to practice removing it because that can be a little more difficult, apparently. But practice putting the tourniquet on. If you ever need to, you're not fumbling with what to do. So, like many of you, I carry a tourniquet on my person most days, and then I definitely carry one on all my battle battle, right? This is a North American Rescue Cat Tourniquet, the official cat tourniquet, the one that was designed by North American Rescue and everything else is a copy, counterfeit, fake, whatever word you wanna use, right? They cost about 30 bucks. Pretty much wherever you're gonna find them, you're gonna pay between $27 and $32. That's pretty much it, 99 times out of 10, 99 times out of 100, it's gonna be about 30 bucks. So, you pay anything less than that, you might not be getting one, you pay anything more than that, there's no reason to do that, you might not be getting one either. North American Rescue, okay? The official cat tourniquet. This is most likely what you should carry when you want to save your life. I mean, like, there are other good tourniquets out there, like the soft T-wide or the ratcheting one, but the cat tourniquet, right? It's the standard, specifically because it's easier to put on one-handed. So, when you're carrying tourniquets to save your life, we're gonna go with the official real deal, okay? There's almost no reason not to in my opinion, especially because you only need like two or three, you know, you don't need to have 500. So, there's really no reason to not buy the real deal. This is a $6 tourniquet that I bought on Amazon. As you can see, it's almost identical to the real deal $30 one. I'm sure the materials are different, I'm sure there's all kinds of differences. I'm not gonna carry this primarily to save my life, although it does cut off blood flow. However, I did buy this for a very specific purpose, and that is practice. I bought this tourniquet to practice putting my tourniquet on. You should practice putting your tourniquets on. I bought several of these because when I teach classes and I want people to practice putting tourniquets on, I don't want to use my nice tourniquets. Can you buy official practice tourniquets for North American Rescue? Yes, they're just the same thing, they're just in blue, they still cost you $30. So, I just bought a cheap version for my practice versions. They'll still cut off blood flow, they're still gonna work. If this was the only thing I had and I had to stop blood flow and I use it, sure, of course, why not, right? But I'm not gonna bet my life on this in the same way that I'm not gonna bet my life on cheap ammo or a cheap holster or a cheap gun or whatever. You know what I mean, same line of thinking there for me. But these are fantastic for buying to practice. So, if you have some nice tourniquets, if you don't, get some. And if you do and you want to practice, just buy a $6, $7 cheap thing on Amazon and use that as your practice tourniquet. Then you preserve your nice tourniquet from wearing out and getting damage and getting torn and getting beaten up and whatever. And you can basically have this, you know, I don't know, most of the rest of your life. So, that's kind of my theory. That's how I'm gonna teach classes right now is I use all my cheapy practice tourniquets because I don't care what happens to them. And I preserve then the life of my good tourniquets. There's a line of theory that you should never use this except in real life and only use it once and then you're gonna have to get new ones because otherwise it destroys the fibers and it breaks down the tension and that's fine. I mean, if you're in that camp, I'm not super religious about that but if you're in that camp, that's great, you do you. But I will say, I will use my practice tourniquets to continue to aid in practicing. So this is just a public service announcement, buy those cheap counterfeit tourniquets and use them for practice. Do brave deeds and endure.