Excape!

Take a look at these.  Just ordinary pocket change, like you get from a thousand different purchases.  Or is it?

Penny for your thoughts?  Here's 48 cents worth of opinion.

Now take a look at this picture.  Same coins but something is significantly different. 

WTAF!

That’s right, the nickel has a blade.  It’s a very sharp blade.  It’s sold by Shomer-Tec.  I got mine from a good friend, Bob.

This is one of many products you’ll see aimed at people who travel in third world and failed countries.  In these locations kidnapping, abduction and murder are relatively common and quite anticipated.  FARC is a perfect example.  The great majority of their funding (even revolutionaries need to be paid) came from drug running and ransom kidnappings.  Having a hidden or non-detectable blade could be the difference between self-rescue and spending three years with an ear cut off while your family attempts to negotiate your release.

Think I’m blowing hot air up your skirt?  Check with your friends who travel to these countries for big companies.  They have hostage insurance and training for the traveler to look less like a target as well as special security.  Tell me again why you think you’re safe at Cozumel?

You don’t really use this blade.  It’s designed to help free yourself from cord or zip-tie imprisonment or as a last ditch effort to escape during the initial stage of an abduction or assault.

1986 was a very very rough year as witness the coins.

It does remind me of the devices invented by OSS and others to help Allied prisoners-of-war to escape.  I have a plastic copy of a lapel knife worn in a sheath sewn in jacket lapels or in coat sleeves.  The originals were metal and quite deadly.

Growing up in the 50s there were a lot of articles about these efforts.  I remember jacket buttons that would unscrew to reveal a simple compass.  When the Nazis caught on they made them with reverse threads so it was righty loosie, lefty tighty.  Uniforms were redesigned so simple alteration would make them resemble men’s suits and ballpoint pens containing an ink that would dye a re-tailored uniform to typical suit color.

I think you could drop this in the change bowl at any metal detector and it would pass.  You have to notice the dot between In and God 

Escape tools aren’t anything new.  Still, this is a very cool knife.