Avoid! Many of the "skills" presented are either outdated or laughably impractical. 50% of this stuff is just plain common sense, the other 50% reads like something out of a 1960's comic book. Examples:
Improvised Body Armor made from hardback books & ceramic tiles: ok, try this and have someone shoot you with anything larger than a pellet gun and get back to me with the results.
Improvised infrared light make from a flashlight and camera film: WTF! Camera film disappeared 15 yrs. ago, everything is digital now, sheesh!
My favorite -- How To Dispose of a Body. The recommended method is to bury the body vertically, head down, with two feet of back-fill. So ... if your stiff is 6 ft long and you add another two feet to that, you'll need to dig an eight foot hole. Try digging down to even 4 or 5-ft and see just how easy it is to throw dirt upward! At 7-ft. its practically impossible. There must be at least a 50 different EASIER ways to dispose of a body than this idiotic plan.
Escaping from a multi-story building using "multiple" bed sheets: Uh, typical hotel bed uses just two sheets, light blanket & heavy blanket. The heavy blanket is too bulky to tie knots, that gives you just three pieces to work with (maybe add pillow cases as well). All together, the best possible rope may stretch 15-ft. at best. A totally useless plan if you're on the 18th floor. Best bet: stay in single or two-story motels, avoid tall buildings if you have a need to escape through the window. Another approach: carry some short lengths of 1/2" rope (6-8 ft.) along with some customized hooks or grappling fixtures; the idea is to climb down the side of a building by hooking on to trim-work, window sills or other protrusions. You'll need some basic rock-climbing skills to do this -- sure beats using bed sheets!
Preventing hotel room invasion: If I think my hotel room might be invaded, why would I stay there? You can't stop a forced entry, only delay it for a few minutes at best.
Escaping an abduction: if your abducted, it's safe to assume your captors probably have done this before and are well-versed at tying up their victims so they cannot escape. What this book has to offer is next to useless. In the U.S. most abductions involve young women and children, people easy to controlled, escapes are rare. The best way to deal with an abduction is not get abducted in the first place!!! This involves the concept of "situational awareness" (which the author touches on but only briefly). The book should have covered more practical ideas on how to avoid abduction:
-- Children in general should never be placed in situations where they're alone in a public place for any length of time, especially shopping malls.
-- Teenage girls sans parents should travel in groups of 3-4 and stay inside stores or busy open spaces, avoid parking lots, walk along with other groups of people, stay away from curbs, be aware of vehicles that may be following them, walk out & around alleyways, If you don't like what's 50-ft. in front of you, cross over to the other side of the street or duck into a nearby store / business & ask for help. I know it's nigh on impossible trying to drill this into the head of a 14 yr. old, but every parent needs to do this. Take your kids out for a typical "safe" walk and practice, just like learning how to drive, teach them how to avoid potentially nasty situations.
Simple survival skills for the average adult:
-- Don't waste money on dumb "survival" books that are more likely to get you killed than save your life.
-- Be wary of writers who like to throw around titles like "Navy SEAL, Ret.". That always irks me, trading on the name as an advertising gimmick to sell more books! It's an insult to the service, in my opinion.
-- Avoid foreign travel, especially to anywhere in Europe, the UK,. Canada still ok but avoid Vancouver (used to be lovely place). Mexico? Not for a million dollars!
-- Avoid most major U.S. urban centers. If you have business there, always drive to your destinations or take a cab, avoid public transport if at all possible. Under NO conditions should one travel to Chicago, St. Louis, Boston, LA, Detroit or New Orleans -- just stay away from these places, they're all war zones. Surprisingly, New York City is still fairly safe during the day, but horribly expensive.
-- Avoid traveling by air; if you must, at least spend the extra coin and go first class. Travel light, no heavy carry on, just a small shoulder bag with essentials. Under no conditions fly with United Airlines, I'd rather take a stage coach pulled by oxen!
-- When walking in a strange public place, know what's 50-ft in front of you. See a bunch of kids "hanging out" at a corner, cross the street, go around, stick with crowds, avoid areas devoid of people. Preferably, walk with someone who knows the area, otherwise stay in your hotel room & watch reruns of Star Trek Voyager.
-- When driving in strange surroundings, know where in the Hell your going, get a GPS box for the car, never let your gas gauge drop below 1/4 full, have a number you can call for roadside help should you need it, carry a couple 2-liter bottles of emergency drinking water. The book covers some of this stuff, but misses too much.
-- Avoid being stranded in dark lonely dangerous places because your car broke down. Always keep your car in tip-top shape, especially prior to embarking on a long trip through suspect territory.
-- For personal protection, carry pepper spray (or equivalent) and a legal-length folding knife with a serrated edge, it's easier to conceal than a fixed blade. Ideally it'd be nice if you could find someone to teach you basic knife fighting skills, but those kinds of people are pretty rare, you'll have to settle for some decent videos instead. Practice basic moves over and over on a dummy (not me!). Look into other simple handheld weapons like clubs, batons and my personal favorite -- a small very sharp 2-lb camping hatchet.
-- Never carry a gun, guns are always legally problematic, especially when crossing state lines, you have to know ever-changing state gun laws forwards & backwards. If you feel the need to carry a gun to where you're going, then don't go there! In today's society all guns are considered evil as are those who own them. You cut off the end of your attackers nose with a knife that's ok, but if you SHOOT him in legal self-defense, YOU'RE the criminal! Guns can run out of ammo, they're mechanic devices than can break or become jammed. Knives and clubs can cause considerable damage but rarely instantaneous death as long as you avoid slashing the neck or deep stabs into the chest; in most cases your attacker will survive long enough to receive first aid. But a gun? It's just simply TOO easy to kill someone, even if you didn't mean to.
-- Money. When traveling any distance, carry a decent amount of cash ($1000 - $2000); carry it in at least two places on your person and keep a stash hidden somewhere in the car. Keep about $200 in small bills in your shirt pocket for easy spending money, don't flash the entire $2,000 wad at some biker bar! Credit cards can get lost or stolen and leave you in a bad spot. Keep your primary card at home and use a second card strictly for travel (hotel, gas). NEVER use your card at a restaurant or anyplace where it's out of sight, even for a few seconds.
Stealth travel. Credit cards leave a digital trail of every place you visited and when you were there. Most large chain hotels require a credit card at check-in or for reservations and, in some cases, even the license number of your car. Rig your car for sleeping, check out local state parks, truck stops, or other potentially safe places to spend the night in your car. Ideally, stay with a friend or relative. Never travel by commercial air, drive, take a bus (yuck!), or try the train (not sure if credit card / drivers license is required). Do not use traceable computing devices or cell phones; if you absolutely MUST use the internet, do so via a public wif-fi site and a disposable computer (bought out of town with cash). While in stealth-mode, do not access any sites or accounts uniquely associated with you ( like bank accounts, Facebook, Amazon etc.). Destroy the computer once you're finished with it, do not take it back home with you.
Some of this stuff was briefly touched on in the book but not in sufficient detail to be useful. Seriously, how many people really need to know how to dispose of a body? Those few pages could've been dedicated to helping people avoid abductions & muggings. $14 bucks wasted, this book is going into the incinerator, I'm too embarrassed to admit I actually bought it.
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Customer reviews
Nice Tease Lacking Much Useful Substance Because The Author Speaks From Experience
Reviewed in the United States on August 17, 2018
The writing style is easy to follow and absorb. It is abundantly clear that between the lines, real compelling, brutal, heroic stories live. But they remain between the lines so tight that the publisher and writing assistants are unaware.Of the one hundred skills discussed in the book, about half are immediately useful. Things like securing your hotel room, checking to see if your room or luggage has been disturbed, how to blend into your environment, simple things to do and not do to increase your personal security, listing of items you should carry with you at all times, making improvised body armor that works, and how to determine if you are being followed, are all useful skills that give you heightened situational awareness when traveling overseas or when other circumstances call for heightened alert.Most of the information, however, is not necessarily new information, or likely to ever be needed, they are all good bits of information that keep you in a good mindset, to be aware of your surroundings but it would be a full time labor to maintain.About thirty skills I would consider highly unlikely to ever use. I mean sure, if push comes to shove I can steal a small plane and probably take off fine, its the landing, and other complications that make it so unlikely. Many of these skills are useful if you are part of a trained team, not me, and can stay in place for extended periods of time. Some are simply fun to read about but will never be employed, like body disposal, the tried and true Molotov cocktail, using the rectum for short term storage, and waging your own small scale psychological war. About fifteen skills would require considerable practice and/or planning to become proficient at executing and planning for.And just to be clear, to me, much of the book reads like the bibliography of spy novel. There is no classified information in this book except for some very vague references to basic activities that may have or be part of a procedure or drill to help keep things in order and sequence to someone trained but outside of the complete drill or sequence they hold no significance. The copyright date on my copy is 2015, the technology discussed was available on the web with a little searching more than ten years prior to the publication and one of the methods of communication via the internet without plain text was being used by a friend fifteen years ago. I would like to see an updated version but I am afraid that is the limitation of the author and all similarly trained and skilled men. Once they learn a skill, even if it is a non-classified skill, they cannot talk about it, and they don't.
Reviewed in the United States on August 17, 2018
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