Customer Reviews

Silent Death, Second Edition

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

SILENT DEATH does have some interesting stuff in it, but there also parts that I found a bit ridiculous.
The corrections to bad information in "The Poormans James Bond" are much appreciated, as are the little anecdotes that appear from time to time. However, some info is really off the wall. For example, one chapter includes instructions for delivering a poison from 1,000 feet above: Uncle Fester tells you that all you have to do is buy an issue of Popular Mechanics magazine, get the instructions for building a small airplane (using a VW Beetle engine), build it, join a club of pilots and learn how to fly the thing, find a location (not an airport) where you can take off and land without being noticed, build the little gas bomb, and drop it on your intended target! Why don't I just build a nuclear submarine while I'm at it?
Then there is another poison that he states is "really terrific, one of my favorites and very easy to make with all the ingredients readily available...EXCEPT ONE". Well, if one ingredient is unavailable, what good does the rest of the info do me?
There is also a short but interesting chapter on using hydrogen peroxide as a fire starter. Uncle Fester acknowledges that the drug store stuff is only 3% potent and you need more like 30% to do the job, but there is no info on how to distill it or whatever. Frustrating.
Pick this book up if you find a used one at a low price. Don't pay $20 for it.

An interesting read, but the availablity of his raw material is problematic. Carbon Tet these days requires EPA registration, and is for practical purposes unavailable. Metal (red) phosphorus is $1000 a gram and I could only find in 10g quantities.

The end of the book on naturally occuring poisons is more practical to my view.

For mystery writers like me, this is a wonderful resource; full of information that you can't find anywhere else. Granted, it isn't intended to be used in the real world! I expect bits and pieces of what I learned to stain the pages of my next book.

Got a pest problem? Call Uncle Fester! If you don't have this book, your library ain't complete!

On it's Revised and Expanded Second Edition, this most fascinating book tells it all. I'm a former special-operations officer with 16 years of service in my country's intelligence agency (something like a "mix" of CIA/FBI/Secret Service, now defunct), and I have done years of overseas "contractor" work... I've been in five major guerrilla wars (Angola, Mozambique, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Lebanon), and alt. I had previous experience with all kinds of land-warfare weapons, I once or twice wish to have some nasty Chem-Bio weapon to get rid . Old warriors never die (they only go to Hell to regroup), and I even ask some "insiders" on contrating me to work in Iraq, earlier this year, as a "security advisor", but they find me too fat & unfit to be of use in there... a close friend, former Royal Marine and veteran of Northern Ireland and Malvinas/Falklands, who lived in another big town here, go there, and now is doing what he was trained for... and alt. in all wars we once fought we can get any ammount of firearms, ammo, support weapons, you name it, there was a lack of high-explosives to we "Soldiers-of-Fortune". If I had this amazing book with me on "my wars" back in the '80's, I could do things in a better, faster, more funny way, if you can get what I'm talking about. I do not love these terrible weapons the way I love conventional ones, but they are the most capable weapons ever and they are at anyone's reach - of course with some experience in this field. If you want real weapons, this is the book for you. This book tells the most secret knowledge in a way it CAN be put into practice. Let me mention one George Magazine article (that can be viewed at www.unclefesterbooks.com, where a Dr. Patrick was quoted as saying that the publication of this book may constitute a threat to national security... and I must say that, if at anytime you must face conventional forces and you are outnumbered & outgunned, with the knowledge you can get from this book, if you put it into practice, you can WIN. Guess where that nut Japanese fanaticals get the recipe for Sarin used in the Tokyo attacks... yes, you can bet... Uncle Fester knows what he writes about - and knows a LOT. Thank you for this amazing book, Dr. Gozilla, the Tokyo-buster, as your friends call you!!!