Kill Or Get Killed: Riot Control Techniques, Manhandling, and Close Combat for Police and the Military [Hardcover]

Rex Applegate (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1976

This is the best and longest-selling book on close combat in history. Reprinted and in current use by the U.S. Marine Corps as an official training manual, it details methods of self-defense, offensive close combat, combat shooting and crowd-control techniques in riot situations. Colonel Rex Applegate is widely regarded as the father of modern close combat and combat shooting, and this book is considered the standard by which all other books on the subject are judged.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Col. Rex Applegate was universally recognized as America’s foremost authority on close combat with or without weapons.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 420 pages
• Publisher: Paladin Press; New Rev. and Enl. Ed edition (October 1976)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0873640845
• ISBN-13: 978-0873640848
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,241,392 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

104 of 107 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It's not about self-defense--it's a combat manual, July 7, 2005

By 

Alan D. Cranford (Salt Lake City, Utah USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Kill Or Get Killed: Riot Control Techniques, Manhandling, and Close Combat for Police and the Military (Hardcover)

"Kill or Get Killed" is not about self-defense. Rex Applegate wrote this book for offensive combat. In his chapter on handguns, Applegate wrote that there was no defending with the handgun-he trained his students to ATTACK first. The chapters on unarmed and improvised weapon fighting were about asymmetrical combat-your enemy might have a knife, and you had a chair. The sections on riot control may seem to have little bearing on personal defense; Applegate wrote "Riot Control Material and Techniques" during the turbulent 1960's.

"Kill or Get Killed" is history. It was cutting-edge stuff in 1943, and will still work today. I refer to "expert systems" and "idiot systems" for personal combat-the former will be very effective, but you need years of training (synthetic experience) under the guidance of a competent instructor and with full school facilities. "Idiot systems" have limited effectiveness, but within 40 hours or so of drilling with another student you will be an effective combatant. "Kill or Get Killed" is what I call an "idiot system" and it follows the KISS principle. If you think you can read a comic book and become a super ninja commando in less than fifteen minutes, reality will soon prove the error of your ways. On the other hand, if you read "Kill or Get Killed," then use it to produce a training program, then actually do the drills involved, within a few weeks of hard work you'll be more dangerous to an attacker than your attacker is to you. There are better methods of close quarter shooting with pistol and long gun-Rex Applegate produced a video on modern point shooting. A word about point shooting versus using the sights-you need to do both to be a competent shooter. For handgun shooting, if you lack the time and other resources to do it right, the "Kill or Get Killed" technique will work. The OSS sometimes had only an hour or two of firearms training for its agents before they were dropped behind enemy lines with a .32 automatic pistol for moral support. Just keep in mind that your effective range will be about ten feet-Applegate claims fifty feet for the handgun, but that is for someone who has first been trained in the traditional "target pistol" course to 50 yards, then put through the entire OSS shooting school. I corresponded with the late Colonel Applegate to clear up a few points about his pistol techniques, and I trained some of the Camp Doha Security Force officers in the point shooting techniques in addition to the standard FM 23-35 pistol course during five years on the Camp Doha security force. These shooters had been trained, but had trouble qualifying-and also were deficient in gun fighting skills. One of the firing tables took place at 7 meters-the officer was to draw his 9mm, rack the slide, and put 5 shots in the silhouette target in under 12 seconds. Most of the officers didn't manage to get their M9 pistol out and fire one shot (they would often accidentally engage the safety while racking the slide). After about 30 minutes of dry fire practice and "presentation drills" these security officers were able to draw from their M12 duty holsters and hit the target in about three seconds, finishing their five shots in under seven-still slow, but better. When starting with pistol in a "low ready" (pioneered by Sykes and Fairbairn and passed on to Applegate) they were able to respond and put two shots into the target almost immediately. The ITT training officer on the range was impressed, to say the least.

The techniques in "Kill or Get Killed" work. Some are not court-proof today. You have to drill to standard, and keep drilling. There are better products out there, but "Kill or Get Killed" will work okay. Point shooting is coming back as part of a competent handgunner's skill set. The hand-to-hand combat techniques work so long as you get in the best possible physical condition and maintain that, and you practice, practice, practice, and you act first when confronted with force. I have used "Kill or Get Killed" as a close combat training manual since 1973, a couple of years before enlisting in the US Marines.

One inadvertent by-product is that when I watch war movies, I can tell the difference between vintage techniques and modern-the modern techniques were used in movies such as "Saving Private Ryan." Be warned-realistic and intensive training may make willing suspension of disbelief difficult!

70 of 74 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not outdated! Desperately needed today, February 27, 2007

By 

Scott Burright (Laramie, WY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Kill Or Get Killed: Riot Control Techniques, Manhandling, and Close Combat for Police and the Military (Hardcover)

The review posted here by Alan D. Cranford touched on all the high points that I would mention and with an expertise that is quite beyond mine. I want to zero in on a fine point about the philosophy espoused in this book versus the "martial arts" mentality so prevalent today, particularly as it bears on unarmed defense against a man wielding a knife.

Another reviewer summed up what I call the "martial arts mentality" when he recommends studying Krav Maga to learn unarmed techniques for disarming a knife-wielding attacker. Where it says "Krav Maga," you may substitute the name of any fighting system, traditional or made-up, and there you have a statement that would fit into a discouragingly large number of martial arts books and schools.

I'll be blunt. For at least 99% of us, the phrase "knife disarm" is just crazy talk, and if you try such a thing in real life, you will probably die.

Assuming you are lucky enough to notice that a person is threatening you with a knife before he has stuck the knife in you, and assuming you are not at the moment pointing a weapon at him, your number one priority should be getting away from that knife so that he can't cut or stab you with it. Because if he starts doing that, you will probably die.

And at the risk of belaboring the obvious, if you go reaching for a guy's knife arm, he will almost certainly cut and stab you plenty, even if he's a complete punk out of his mind on booze or drugs. If you go near the knife, the knife will probably go in you. I hope that's clear enough.

What Applegate advises is decidedly not to grapple with the knife guy. Instead, he says to pick up a chair and use it lion-tamer style. That's excellent advice. Pick up anything-- a shovel, a bar stool, even a sturdy broom-- anything that'll brush knife boy back a little while you think about how to get some distance. You can yell for help, throw things, dodge behind furniture or cars, all to one end: keeping that knife out of you.

Applegate advises this kind of thing because he was advising men who might one day face a knife-wielding attacker, and he did not want them to get killed. Applegate's advice comes from the real world, not from a gym or a dojo or a competitive sport. Go to the bookstore, open a book on Krav Maga or any other book containing "knife disarms," look at the pictures, and think about that.

Are you a Navy SEAL or similar? Fine, if so, then feel free to break knife boy into small pieces with your bare hands. You know better than I do. But if the answer is "no, I am not a Navy SEAL," then the chances are good that you ought to take all those martial arts books with pictures of knife disarms in them and burn them. Better yet, give them to people you wouldn't mind seeing dead.

I can envision a scenario where I'm attacked with a knife and have no better choice than to twist the guy's arm. If that happens, then things have really gone to hell, and I am in deep, deep trouble. But I've been taught how to twist arms, and so I'll twist if I absolutely have to. What I will not do, ever, is call that a "knife disarm" or deliberately train myself to grapple with a knife wielder. If I'm ever in a gym or dojo, and another student squares off with me with a rubber knife, I'm picking up the nearest chair or stool and going for his tender parts. Because what you practice is what you'll do, and your mentality will one day be your reality.

That's what Applegate's work means to me, and I find that it's a refreshing antidote to the martial arts mindset for the 99% of us who are not full-time professional fighters.

33 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best book on real self-defence ever written, June 30, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Kill Or Get Killed: Riot Control Techniques, Manhandling, and Close Combat for Police and the Military (Hardcover)

Kill or Get Killed; In twenty-five years of study in the field of self-defence and combat I have never read a more concise and realistic work. Colonel Applegate is a man who has been there and done that. His unique insights and simple techniques are easy to read, follow, and understand, and they come, not from some Dojo or firearms compitition, but from years of service, both to his own country and others around the world. If you want to KNOW how to defend yourself, come what may, buy this book and memorize every page.