If there is one area where Hollywood does a major disservice to self-defense, it is in the way it shows a firefight. Any material the hero or major villains decide to hide behind becomes invulnerable to bullets, whether it is a table, a car, or a wall in their home. The proper distinction between cover and concealment is lost on the part of the scriptwriters and action choreographers, and unfortunately as a result many preppers who watch their movies have some misconceptions too! If you were put in a position where you had to defend your home, food, and family from looters you wouldn’t want to rely on faulty TV tactics, so it is important to understand the real differences between cover and concealment.
What is the difference?
Concealment only hides you from the enemy. It doesn’t protect you from gunfire if they do spot you.
The names can give you some clue. Concealment is primarily able to hide you from prying eyes, keeping you from being specifically targeted in a firefight. However, if you tried to use concealment to protect yourself from stray rounds, you would turn into a lead depository pretty quickly. Cover, on the other hand is sufficient to protect you from enemy rounds winging their way towards you. It might also conceal you, but generally that benefit is secondary to the bullet protection offered. Furthermore, different kinds of cover protect from different levels of damage. A small caliber pistol round that hits you from a long range requires far weaker cover than a rifle round from point-blank range will.
The other key difference, and the one that most people tend to forget, is in how common they are. Concealment is almost constantly available in varying degrees, as every wall, piece of furniture, and tree could potentially hide you from the enemy. Obviously some means of concealment (such as a carefully designed ghillie suit) are better than others, but on the whole concealment is almost always at hand.
Cover protects you from bullets, and can also double as concealment in many cases.
Cover by contrast is rather rare in most settings. Most furniture, walls, cars and smaller trees are not sufficient cover for even small caliber rounds, and so diving behind them in a firefight would serve only to conceal your position rather than protecting it. To be very clear, this includes metal tables and even small vehicle engines depending on the round despite what a thousand TV shows and movies may have shown you.
In most homes, cover is almost nonexistent unless there are concrete walls in a basement or a steel door to hide behind. Outside, unless you live in a city or town which has buildings with thick concrete/brick walls or other solid structures, your best bet will be to prepare earthen defenses like a foxhole, preferably surrounded by sandbags as additional protection.
Common types of concealment and cover that you’re likely to come across in a disaster
In order to further help you to tell the difference between these two concepts, here is are lists of the common kinds of concealment and cover that you’re likely to come across. If you’re having trouble shaking off the preconceived notions that endless TV firefights have given you, these may prove particularly helpful. Note that many items that qualify as cover also function as concealment, but for clarity the items on the concealment list only hide, not protect.
- Tree limbs, leaves etc.
- Bushes and brush, including tall grass.
- Shadows and blinding light (if positioned so that the enemy has to stare into a floodlight or the sun in order to look at you).
- Opaque curtains.
- Drywall, wood, and other thin material walls.
- Piled clothes, blankets, leaves, and other materials.
- Small (under 2ft in diameter) trees.
- Vehicles, excepting reinforced doors on squadcars and particularly large engine blocks.
- Tables, desks, doors (excepting thick steel doors).
- Ghillie Suit.
- Window blinds and shutters.
- A corpse (even a particularly fat person will not stop most rounds)
- Thick stone, brick, or concrete walls/buildings.
- Large engine blocks.
- Thick (over 2ft in diameter) trees and stumps.
- Natural valleys, hills, holes, and craters from explosions.
- Earthwork defenses, including several rows of sandbags.
- A safe.
- A steel door.
- Piled rubble.
- Concrete walls in a basement.
- A freezer or refrigerator, assuming it is packed with food.
Make sure you know the difference between cover and concealment: it might just save your life in an emergency. – Prepared For That
Let us know what you think in the comments below. Can you think of any other common types of cover or concealment?
- DIY Home Defenses: Building a Stone Wall Without Mortar (thesurvivalplaceblog.com)
- Concealed Carry for the Petite Woman (thesurvivalplaceblog.com)
- How US Special Forces Would Secure Your Home When SHTF (thesurvivalplaceblog.com)