The Warlord's Reading List, by Anarchonomicon
The Guide to Warfare in the 21st Century for Ghetto Operators, Regime Transition Teams, and Cartel General Staff
Disclaimer:
Under no circumstances do I advise or advocate non-compliance with or violation of any laws, codes, ethics, standing orders, product manufacturer instructions, papal bulls, party instructions, military orders, terms of service, Band Council bylaws, prison rules and regulations, Royal Navy Articles of War, revolutionary requisition orders, commandments of the Fuher, sayings of the comrade chairman, constitutional laws and rules of the mexican mafia, demands of Full Patch Angels, ancient rights of the Swiss Cantons, safety advice, best practices, ancient norms, common decencies, motherly advice, rules of thumb, or any other commandment of ANY Man/Woman/God or any who claim to be between or fail to mention they are between (through ignorance, malice, beneficence, or indifference), above, or below, including any governmental or non-governmental department, representative, or advisement.
The purpose of this piece is the amusement and refamiliarization of apex citizens possessing at least several military ranks, professional degrees, incredible judgement, extraordinary knowledge, and divinely inspired moral character against hypothetical illegitimate, tyrannical, or occupational regimes, militias, cartels, paramilitaries, death cults, and other forms of tyrannical criminal enterprises which no legitimate government, official, party elder, religious authority, revolutionary comrade, godfather, or community leader could ever worry about being confused with, and which will hopefully never grace the earth in any time or place EVER! Past, present, future, or extra-dimensionally.
Any and all tactics, historical claims, methods, personal opinions, Org Charts, and any other claim of a factual, moral, speculative, metaphysical, or epistemologically relevant nature or possible nature written herein or in linked documents related to combat, weapons, handling, criminal methods, trauma medicine, the use of or manufacture of explosives, and all other things a human, sub-human, god, alien, or chimera, or other blend, might do in the course of life, Including and ESPECIALLY related to the laws of warfare, near-war, peace, super-peace, utopia, and of the dead, on land, sea, air, space, cyber, extradimensional, psychic, and elsewhere, should be presumed inaccurate, dangerous, immoral, ill advised, illegal, warranty voiding, metaphysically perilous, and psychologically damaging. This applies ESPECIALLY if the works in question were published by the US, Canadian, British, German, French, Russian, Cuban, Chinese, Swiss, or Irish Established or Provisional Governments, however applies in equal effect if the works in question were written by one of their highly-trained warriors with an axe to grind, and especially if they have NO ill will, as well as to all other linked, referenced, or thought about works.
Under no circumstance do I advocate or advise any espionage, paramilitary activity, organization for self defense, direct actions, and any other pre-, near-, actual-, post-, ex-, or meta-political activity, including discussion amongst family, friends, acquaintances, the elderly, children, and brother crack fiends, and even the formation of private thoughts or subconscious musings not rising to the levels of thought but potentially posing risks of a counterrevolutionary, unholy, dangerously divine, chaotically arrounsing, and/or other perilous psychological nature.
Under no circumstances do I advise that any of these actions or any other actions be undertaken without the advisement of a Lawyer, Veteran, ATF certified demolitions expert, current Head of State, Tier 1 Special Forces Officer, at least 2 rivaled Intelligence agencies whereof one being from your own country, several professors of history, and a qualified religious, psychological, and/or people’s democratic advisor.
Under no circumstance do I advise or advocate that you treat this work as anything but strictly educational in the American sense of the word Ie. that you are meant to learn nothing, and certainly not to act, or fail to act, on the basis anything you learn; that Any knowledge gained by chance is shameful, reflects poorly on you, and you should keep it to yourself, trying to act as if you had not learnt it, until the day you die, or until such a time as proper consumption of psychiatric help, civic works, academic papers, religious instructions, hollywood films, party publications, sayings of the comrade chairman, and patriotic propaganda render you suitably forgetful. You naughty boy.
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Likewise under no circumstances do I advise or advocate compliance, or inaction, which has killed even more. Nor lack of individual judgement, initiative, virtue, valor, curiosity, confidence, and self-reliance.
Under no circumstances do I advise that you do less than what you judge necessary to save yourself and others.
All linked pdfs and works are presumed compliant with copyright law, please notify the hosting sites if this is not the case.
Also be sure to check out the Anarchonomicon Real Banned Books List:
Reading like a Warlord
If certain theories of mine play out, then over the next few decades 10s thousands, possibly millions of people around the world, will be gathering in Church Basements, Living Rooms, American legion halls, etc. And concluding, as we’ve already seen in miniature in North Carolina and hurricane struck areas: The government isn’t going to help them. Indeed it may be the problem or it may not even be able to help itself.
So what do you do without law, order, direction, or governance? As we’ve seen over the past, at least 500 years, from the english civil war, to the revolution, to the civil war to Weimar Germany… you form a paramilitary unit. You become your own deterrent.
(the hypothetical “you”, not advice)
How does one do that? How does modern warfare work? How does it work at the scale of what might be very unskilled, underfunded, and under-organized units that probably have very little training or experience.
Remember the vast majority of conflict zones in history, from ultra-low intensity gang wars, to high intensity civil wars like Syria, have been defined by large numbers of hastily assembled people, of many disjointed organizations and questionable loyalty across many MANY groups… You may not like it, that’s not ideal… But if you are not already in hyper-organized, vertically-integrated, highly resourced military, you are vastly more likely to wind up in some hastily assembled, untrained, barely even named paramilitary, militia, “volunteer force” or Freikorp, than you are to suddenly get experienced people giving you a months long education and organization…
And if you are reading this, it is very likely that you’d have to fill some role in the leadership of that group, or if you have mentors you’re fortunate enough to defer to, you probably will quickly have to study and fill gaps and take the lead on one or another specialized area because even trained senior veterans of modern militaries, with decades of experience will have massive gaps in their knowledge outside their narrow military occupational speciality, and will need people who have an entry level knowledge, and can self-direct research and specialization (Seriously this is the list of Army Occupational Codes… This is for ONE Branch of the US military)
“Familiarity” let alone Experience quickly becomes a scarce resource in any suitably disastrous era. Professional nation state militaries have regularly gotten to the point where men in their early 20s have achieved ranks of Lieutenant-Colonel to even General in the past 250 years.
Napoleon was 26 when he was given command of the Army of Italy and launched his first great campaign (Great video). And it isn’t unheard of for teenagers and even pre-teens to have wound up in charge of platoons or even company sized militia and guerilla elements in the various civil wars and resistance movements seen in Africa and the Eurasian continent in the past 100 years (Though teens becoming supreme commander, like Alexander or Gustavus Adolphus, hasn’t happened in the past 300 years).
So if things start popping off… And you’re both not ancient, not obese, and not stupid… You could have A WHOLE LOT of responsibility for a WHOLE LOT of people thrust upon you very quickly, with very little direction, and the entirety of modern warfare coming down upon you very fast.
Thankfully you have me. 😽
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Ever since I was a kid I’ve always been a dork for military manuals, spy-books, The Jolly-Rogers anarchist cookbook… I always loved the weird or asymmetric stuff. My favourite TV show as a kid was a Canadian True Crime series “Masterminds” that specifically focused on the weirdest most galaxy brained criminal operations in history.
And my god did I read a lot of random garbage.
There are tons and tons of military books that are basically zero information consumer garbage for teen and pre-teen boys… likewise tons of true crime, even supposedly hard nosed Organized Crime fiction, is a kind of leering fetishization of violence and decadent lifestyles instead of actually communicating how these criminal operations function as businesses and political units…
However I’ve come across a lot of real gold and some straight up meme material.
THE BEST BOOK IS THE ONE YOU READ. Sadly you may still have to dig through dry military manuals and padded bureaucratese to find some very current information… But I’ve worked very hard to weed it down to the readable best. Information is useless buried on a shelf at home or in an untouched PDF.
Given this fact: The two best types of military and preparedness books are:
Actual military manuals from the 60s-80s. These were from an era where it was expected the manuals would actually be read by soldiers, included lots of solid pictures and visual Aids (very important for complex physical tasks, but also pretty pictures) and were, to a large extent, put out before the era when these were just drowning in Bureaucratic double-talk, process nonsense, entire org chart chapters, and corporatese word count padding. It is truly tragic where technology has advanced and you need to read the new editions.
Even better: Books written by lone obsessive weirdos with unique experiences. Loompanic and Paladin Press classics. What the wise souls at the internet Archive stash under “Folksconomy”. If you find yourself reading something by a mysterious “Major [retired]” with an axe to grind and an asian wife, and a unique interpretation of the constitution… or a mysterious German writing from a Latin American or Southern African country in the 70s… or some aging autistic American punk who’d been through all the levels of juvie by age 15 in spite of his unnervingly high chemistry and SAT Grades. You know you’re in for a treat.
You may not set those books down with any more “Wisdom”… but you will certainly be more knowledgeable.
Sure some of them are entirely made up bullshit: my mastery of dark arts of Dim Mak, the legendary Death Touch, have not allowed me to rise up the ranks of the South-East Asian no-quarter mortal kombat death tournaments like Jean Claude Van Damme in Bloodsport…
But the US government gave them no end of legal troubles for their assassin manuals, and even that didn’t stop the US military from citing and recommending dozens upon dozens of Paladin Press books in their subsequent field Manuals. Even as the courts and department of justice were arguing the first amendment didn’t protect Paladin, the spooks were reading and studying them.
Once you strip away the 80s cheese and vague cash-in order by-flyer nonsense… when you get to the sparkling radioactive gems in the rough…
Well let’s just say that when Mike Pondsmith wrote the literary masterpieces that were the original Cyberpunk 2020 Manuals and included accurate wound ballistics, tactics, and developing military technology… He was drawing from a very rich and established tradition of mercenary trade publications, specialist books and mil/sport techno-futurism.
And now that we’re in the actual 2020s… Those neon dreams are becoming reality.
THe cyberpunk 80s vision of a world where Military, paramilitary, insurgency, espionage, organized crime, hooliganism, philosophy, and political dissent all merge in a kaleidoscope of Gibsonian information overload, culture war, and pure punk invention… at once dystopianly threatening and tantalizingly empowering. That future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed.
And a clear understanding of that future, a future that conventional military forces won’t and largely can’t comprehend, that’s an edge that even the smallest, least capable groups can have.
The next global military and political revolution is around the corner and it is very likely some of the people reading this could become the defining military, political, and financial figures of that era. they might even be able to afford to buy paid subscriptions to this blog… Hint, hint 👀).
ANYWAY… this reading list grew out of a personal list I was making for myself to keep my reading straight. Currently there are over 120 texts and videos listed and sorted into 22 topics.
Including:
I. Ethos
II. Individual Skills, Fighting, and Attitude
III. Insurgency and Guerrilla Warfare
-III.2: The Communist-Totalitarian Guerrilla Model
-III.3: The Euro-American Far-Right Model
-(Pending) III.4: The Islamic-Extremist Model
IV. Special Operations: Theory and Techniques
V. Crime, Espionage, Counter Intelligence, and Unconventional/Clandestine Operations
VI. Intelligence and Comms
VII. Digital OPSEC
VIII. Financing
IX. Infantry, and Unmounted Combat
X. Ground Mounted Operations and Vehicle Combat
XI. Warfare at the High Level: Understanding Modern Militaries, Strategies, and Operations
XII. Artillery
XIII. logistics
XIV. Precision Marksmanship, Advanced Sniper Skills, and Tactics
XV. Combat, and Survival Medicine
XVI. Survival and Specific Operational Environments
XVII. Amphibious Warfare
XVIII. Special Tactics and Insertions
XIX. CBRN Chemical Biological Radiological Nuclear
XX. Morale and Personnel Management
XXI. Modern Case Studies
XXII. Micro and Macro-Diplomacy: Profiting and Surviving Within and At The End of Conflict
These are arranged VAGUELY in the order that I think it’s relevant to learn them… But that’s going to vary massively from individual to individual, group to group, and situation to situation.
An already talented shooter might feel called to START with the most advanced books in the precision marksmanship section, a novice shooter who’s bought his first Ar-15 might find those works to be greek and start with the simpler works under individual skills… And someone might be reading this on a smuggled cell phone in prison and not bother with anything firearms related at all, skipping instead to the works on advanced lockpicking and penetration.
Likewise someone who’s already a scuba diver might be VERY interested in the 900 page military diving manual buried down under Special Tactics and insertions, whereas 95% of readers probably won’t click the link, even though it has the full PDF at the end of it.
Note: ALL the links are to the full PDF.
(those without links however you have to buy, or hunt down on the high seas)
However the vision is that by simply reading 1 of the books a week in order of relevance to their specific case and cause… an intelligent and motivated person could get themself to the level of knowledge if not competence of a historically average lieutenant within a year, and that by continuing that over the next year, both continuing the list, and digging through the bibliographies, they might become a person of minor historical significance with 2-3 years.
You might think that’s extremely ambitious and even presumptuous! “What!? You’re just going to read your way out the fact you never attended a service academy and have no military experience whatsoever? You think people are just going to autodidact their way onto the pages of world history like some Cyber-Autist Anarchist homeschool kid?”
I mean… that’s what several of the figures on this list did.
And they’ve conveniently written books about how they did it.
War, conflict, crime, and politics are all fields where committed amateurs have had extraordinary and terrifying impacts upon both the fields and history… Dig through the deadliest and most successful warriors, warlords, and tyrants of the past century and you will find a shocking percentage of the most important NEVER went through a service academy. Indeed one could even say the central challenge “Liberal Democracy” has given itself over the past 80ish years is how to prevent such figures from self-educating and rising again.
And judging by the handwringing about fascism and “Our Democracy” they don’t seem very convinced they’ve succeeded.
History wants to happen!
Sure Official militaries have produced even longer reading lists…. But they aren’t going to give you the straight magic I will. They’d have to resign their commissions if they tried.
Anyway tell me what you think I certainly haven’t read all of these,but I’ve browsed them enough to make a preliminary decision whether they should be included.
My personal favorites I’ve marked with three exclamation points !!!
And if you read all of them and can survive oral examination confirming as much, I’ll give you a CatGirl Themed merit badge and my personal letter of recommendation to any military or mercenary company anywhere on earth.
Some might say that’s priceless. some might say that’s worthless… but if we consult Ebay, I’m sure we’ll see that both estimations are correct.
It is amazing what a man will do for a piece of colored ribbon.
-Napoleon
Anyway do LIKE, comment and share, Have you read any of them? Share your opinions, reviews, and any recommendations you think we should also look at.
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Brief Note: The Temptation of “Further Research” as an alternative to action
Rare is the nation state level army that is actually prepared for the war it is about to fight, armies always prepare for the last war, and most don’t even do that.
But even rarer is the militia, self defense force, gang, smuggler, or warlord who is prepared for the war they are about to fight.
This is unavoidable. If you were actually suitably prepared, it would not be called a war, but a Coup D’Etat, or Glorious Revolution, If you were suitably prepared you would simply ascend your awaiting throne, whilst your outmaneuvered enemies simply bent the knee (this has actually happened dozens of times in history). Wars do not occur because one side is ready, prepared, fully knowledgeable about themselves, fully knowledgeable about the enemy, and fully cognisant of what they are doing… such a faction, per Sun Tzu, would not need to fear the outcome of 100 battles… Indeed they would not have to fight 100 battles, they would barely needs to fight one, Rather wars happen BECAUSE neither side is prepared, BECAUSE no one is suitably ready, and BECAUSE no one has a true mastery of the winning tactics.
The fundamental Art of War is that of MAKING DO. That is the logic of this list, if you had functional institutions, training, and time you would not need to use the fast and dirty booklist of a crazed internet CatGirl.
But for that reason I also want to remind you…Making do applies to your knowledge as well. Wars are won by those who show up. Many times it is much better to act early when you don’t quite know what you’re doing than wait til you’re sure and have already lost. Ignorance can be quite dangerous, but hesitation is fatal. Hesitation is especially dangerous when the answers are out there with just a little more research, a little more training, a little more consideration… such thoughts have doomed countless armies, generals, and causes in the past. Especially when you consider that as you prepare, so do your enemies… and they probably have better budgets and recruitment efforts as time goes on.
Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the just barely good enough. Using ignorance as an excuse for caution? That’s not the Paladin way.
If you let your knowledge of how little you know stop you from fighting for yourself and your cause… You’ll wind up ruled by idiots who can’t even conceive of how little they know. And what’s more, you’ll deserve to be ruled by them.
I. Ethos
The moral is to the physical as three is to one.
-Napoleon Bonaparte
The challenge of getting people to risk their lives for a cause, and more difficultly, end other people’s lives in the name of that cause, is maybe one of the most written about topics in human history… the entire field of political philosophy is one long challenge in attempting to get people to enforce some political vision or another.
Which is actually kinda weird because arguably in just the past 80ish years the problem has been largely solved… what for 1000s of years philosophers wrung their hands and puzzled over, terrorists and gangsters have now refined to an art. In this section I’d like to present a brief history of the most effective organizational ethos’s and core documents ever employed in the field of armed conflict and in the wider struggle of isolated small scale government of armed men.
The 1757 Articles of War [~3 Pages] (Consider comparing and contrasting The 1765 Articles as well)
British Royal NavyThe source code of the most effective fighting force in human history. In an age when it took months to get a simple message across oceans, they fought globe spanning wars and conquered the largest empire in human history.
Pay attention to the subtle balance of extreme standards for men and officers. Within the first year of the 1757 amending Admiral Byng was shot for “Failing to Do his Utmost” under Article VIII. These Articles were read aloud regularly on occasions, funerals, before crew addresses, and came to be seen as sacred aboard Navy Ships as the Anglican Religion that Article I designates the Captain chief representative of.
A fighting force with as clear, explicit and strongly enforced fundamentals and standards will inevitably be the match of far more numerous enemies.
Declaration of Independence [1776, 3 pages] and Articles of Confederation
[1778, 13 Pages]For all the fame the US Constitution has it was NOT the governing document of American revolution or the 13 colonies in rebellion. That was the Articles of Confederation, and for all the Americans who remember 1776 and carry their pocket constitutions, shockingly few actually read these original constitutional documents of the Revolution that were passed in the immediate aftermath of the Declaration of Independence, and under which the entire revolutionary war was fought.
Seriously read this and you’ll find some surprises and interesting implications most Americans would never think of… but most importantly you will see the ACTUAL ethos of the American revolution. Specifically how they went from a few complaining delegates to claim the sovereign power of life and death, to enforce their will and judgement of justice with no higher authority interceding and how they mutually agreed to reinforce these powers in each other.
IRA: Green Book [19 Pages] and Handbook for Volunteers of the Irish Republican Army [1956, 32 Pages]
Amazing Historical artifacts in the history of guerilla warfare and excellent primers on the correct attitude and organizational disposition any paramilitary group needs to achieve with regards to it’s internal moral clarity.
Any paramilitary group which claims the right to defend itself, enforce justice as it sees it, and exclude or choose any larger political entity it may or may not recognize, cannot afford internal moral confusion as to its legitimacy and ability to enforce itself upon those who violate its codes.
That might sound obvious, but even open uniformed militias with some official recognition or even state backing struggle with this. Hell official Nation state militaries often struggle with internal discipline and making soldiers comprehend their legal state…
Now imagine how much stronger the struggle is when the uniform is civilian clothing, and ordinary police and governance by a hostile force are still there?
Creating that moral clarity in the heart of volunteers, creating that shared doctrine, identity and life or death code… that’s what’s kept some version of the IRA operating for over 100 years, and judging by a recent documentary on “Narco-Paramilitaries” I just saw, they might last 100 more.Criminal Constitutions [2010, 37 Pages]
Peter Leeson and David SkarbekExcellent short paper on the LITTERAL WRITTEN constitutions used by street gangs and criminal cartels, that breaks down the phenomenon from a political economic perspective and contrasts it with historical examples from pirates to political institutions.
Skarbek would go onto write extensively on prison gangs specifically (see below) but this is the best quick primer on how criminals create complex political and moral orders to further their crimes.
!!! The Social Order of the Underworld: How Prison Gangs Govern the American Penal System
[2014, 248 Pages]
David SkarbekI remember reading this book in one sitting in my university library. Indeed my most popular article of all time is an unconventional review of it. But the whole work is incredible and one of the best deep dives into PURE criminal organizations, their logic, their structures, their written constitutions, and the logistics of creating enforceable strong, seemingly unbreakable political institutions with memberships as small as thousands, hundreds, or mere dozens.
Not only one of the best books on crime ever written, one of the best books on political institutions and organization. Compare and contrast the constitutions of California prison gangs with Royal Navy articles of War, the US Articles of Confederations, The IRA Green Book… when you can do this, you will understand what it takes to make small military units self governing.
Bonus Reading:
Legal Systems Very Different From Ours [2019, 366 Pages]
David Friedman (With Leeson and Skarbek)An Instant Libertarian/Anarcho-Capitalist classic.
Highly relevant for AnCaps, but even more so for would be Mercenary Captains and warlords. Friedman, Leeson, and Skarbek go through many of the weirdest legal orders to ever exist… an notably some of the most militant, including early Islam, Sagas era Iceland, the early Greek City States.
A Military/Paramilitary/criminals unit is everywhere and always a political and legal unit… and by unlocking some of the more unique and unusual incentive structures and modes of political dispute resolution and organization, such a hypothetical novel political order would be very well positioned to lead a revolution in tactics, methods, and doctrine as well.
I have many of my own theories on this that exceed the scope of this list… but this is the kind of problem and dataset that should be considered by a hypothetical leader who doesn’t just want to match the greatest military/political organizations to ever exist… but to surpass them.
II. Individual Skills, Fighting, and Attitude
History is made by individuals.
Aces, madmen, Serial killers, smugglers, thieves, bombmakers, assassins, saints, and heroes have individually ended or saved hundreds of lives with their lone existence.
Never underestimate the effects that one unusually skilled or knowledgeable person can have on a situation… Nor the cumulative effect that having a group of people universally trained to general competence can achieve.
Sadly most of us have more experience observing lone brilliance that general competence (and this trend will almost certainly continue in any crisis or conflict) but just as you should never discount the individual never underestimate the effect that a general understanding of the basics can have across a team… if your group can somehow achieve that.
Put 'Em Down. Take 'Em Out!: Knife Fighting Techniques From Folsom Prison
[1988, 64 Pages]
Don PentecostVery simple short work. Out of date from the perspective of most martial arts. But that’s the point. There are endless books of “Combatives” and goofy old maneuvers out of a James Bond book, that when militaries published them, weren’t published because they worked, but because believing they worked made soldiers and spies more aggressive and less likely to be taken prisoner (one way or the other). Several of these developed into entire bullshit fields of fake martial arts. By contrast the one thing you can do that makes you 1000x more effective in a melee is just HAVE A KNIFE, and know how to use it, indeed have several. many of the best martial artists in the world not only consistently fail to disarm a knife attack in any force on force scenario, they regularly get stabbed 20, 30, 40, 60 times in under 20 seconds.
No, you are not better than a knife.
I’ll probably write my own “Anarchonomicon guide to shanking” at some point, but this is currently the best simplest guide to premeditatedly attacking an unarmed unsuspecting person with common or improvised hand implements with the intent to kill them. Not “Winning a knife fight”, not defense from a knife… But planning and executing a premeditated lethal attack on someone with a knife, and maybe/possibly what to look out for. That might sound really niche… Until you remember there are lots of unarmed populations around the world, with little to no access to firearms, for whom THAT’S IT. That’s the only way they’d have to resist tyranny… until they can daisy chain enough violence, extortion, and ruthlessness to access better weapons. A whole lot of prison-breaks and assassinations in history have been carried out with knifes and improvised shanks and all the assassinations of Ancient Rome and Greece were done this way. It’s a very worthwhile exercise to mentally work through what that means. Remember Unarmed combat, throwing fists, the dominance display, the dramatic display of action, and the duel of skills entailed, is not the basis of warfare…armed combat is. The use of almost immediately lethal mechanical tools to leverage force and rend the flesh of your opponents, ideally when their back is turned or they can’t resist. And most of warfare is the paranoia that comes with that.
And seriously watch this video👇
!!! TC 3-22.9 Rifle and Carbine [2016, 270 pages]
Department of the ArmyDepending on if you can own an AR-15 Pattern Rifle and whether or not you are American and all these accessories either are floating about, or will be in a few years, this will either be the single most useful rifle and familiarization book you read… or if you’re a thrice-cursed miserable Canadian like me, you’ll be stuck trying to piece together an equivalent base of knowledge for some Not-an-Ar maple-monstrosity like the “Kodiak Defense Wk180” or the “Crusader Templar”.
As I mentioned Military Manuals tend to be hit and miss for reading, but this may be one of the best technical rifle books I’ve ever come across. Alot of it is dry and INCREDIBLY specific: you aren’t going to get too much out of knowing all the buttons to operate the mil issue IR lasers and illuminators… But understanding the abilities and limitations of all those gadgets, and being able to judge your purchases by that standard, and expect that capability from opponents? That’s worth a very close skim, and is incredibly valuable to have as a reference.
It is not organized in terms of topic complexity or sophistication, which is a pet peeve of mine… you should start with universal marksmanship skills BEFORE you start teaching shooting under night vision… But every time I flip through it I learn something new. And eventually I’m going to take a weekend to just go through my rifle, find all the equivalents, and spend many hours cycling through all the firing positions and variants until it becomes muscle memory.
Would that something like this existed (or was translated) for every weapons platform.
The Modern Day Gunslinger: The Ultimate Handgun Training Manual
[2010, 466 Pages]
Don Mann (former Navy Seal)“The sidearm is for fighting your way back to the rifle you shouldn’t have set down”, or so generations of military wisdom would have you believe. Yet when you look at the stats, the weapon that has killed the most Americans in all of history, is the Handgun. And it’s not even close. Artillery? Rifles? Smoothbore muskets? Even wartime diseases like dysentery! Have not together, COMBINED across every conflict in history, killed as many Americans as the roughly 18,000 handgun murders (not counting suicides) every year in the US averaged out over the past century.
Artillery may be lord of the battlefield. But Concealment is king of armed conflict. And in an era when every potential witness has a cell phone with both Camera, 911, and twitter, and every store, and often streets intersections, have a dozen security cameras, and drones can be flying 24/7 with thermal cameras…
Being able to be armed, whilst appearing unarmed is invaluable. Indeed given the recent precedents of the various rules of engagement in Iraq and Afghanistan, whether they are visibly armed or not will make the difference between men going unnoticed and unmolested, or eating a missile from 10,000 feet.And once you’ve finished that you’ll want to read:
How to Make Disposable Silencers : A Complete Guide [1984, 90 Pages]
SH 21-76 Ranger Handbook [2011, 357 Pages]
United States Army, Ranger Training Brigade
Also: FM 3-05.70 Survival and FM 3-55.93 Long Range Unit Surveillance OperationsThere are a million different print and digital editions of this work. Here’s an older one with a higher res range reference in the back.
The Ranger Handbook is an institution at this point. Dating back to the revolutionary war and the first ranger unit, “Ranger School” has become (or maybe I should say “Was”) almost the finishing school for officers and anyone else who wants to advance in the US army. This is the backbone of Soldier’s Soldiering.
Which is why it’s kinda disappointing…
This is clearly a common stocking-stuffer for precocious 12 year old boys, and while yes it has a lot of neat little samples of skills and overviews of some advanced techniques… It both presumes that the Ranger has already consumed and learned lots of basic soldiering skills AND that all the more complex and detailed parts are being handled by officers or NCOs.
There’s lots of valuable info and The work itself recommends you also read FM 3-05.70 Survival and FM 3-55.93 Long Range Unit Surveillance Operations to get fully acquainted with SERE type stuff… which are both very strong. but even then it’s not what I’d recommend for intelligent motivated young boys to get them interested in fitness, outdoor camping, survival, shooting, etc.
If any of you have a book recommendation that would get a young boy invested and knowledgeable enough to do stuff like hike 40 miles a day, camp rough, go hunting, etc. Do recommend.
The best book is the one you read… And I just can’t imagine many people doing much more than skimming this one through.
SERE Update: Just buy your 12 year old Survival Evasion Resistance Escape (SERE) Operations It is a vastly more interesting and intensive deep dive into individual skills, survival, and will to fight, though doesn’t cover some of the tactics and stuff included in the ranger handbook
FM 21-75 Combat Skills of the Soldier [1984, 249 Pages]
Department of the ArmyGorgeously made Quick and dirty primer. Basically designed to teach a soldier a few unusual stuff they won’t or might not do immediately hands-on in an intake but that are very relevant to know out in the field. Some of it is evergreen useful (like the detailed guide on building a 2 man fire position, and how it upgrades with additional time), or personal hygiene and taking care of yourself in the field, and some of it is very niche to warfare in the distant past… I swear to God if you’re even telling your men to deploy a bangalore torpedo to cut razor wire under-fire, you really need to reexamine your life choices that lead to that point, likewise the sections on demolitions vary from universally applicable to remarkably niche. But for the most part a strong if non-systemic introduction to classic conventional soldiering skills. Any militia or unit that goes long enough should consider assembling something like this with their most commonly used skills.
Pair this with :
Combat Techniques: The Complete Soldier’s Guide To How Wars are Fought Today
[2013, 278 Pages]
Chris McNab & Martin J. Dougerty. “SAS and Elite Forces Guide”Wonderful readable little short overview. Lower on the list you’ll find Dunigan’s “How To Make War” which goes into every branch, every weapons system, and every service occupation that makes modern militaries work at a high level for wargamers and commentators…
This is analogous to that, but from an individual infantry-man’s eyes seeing those on the ground tactics. The Best Book is the one you read. And I found this eminently readable.
TC 3-25.26 (FM 3-25.26) Map Reading and Land Nav [2005, 288 Pages]
Department of the ArmyLand Nav is one of those skills that seems embarrassingly simple, but conceals an incredible technical depth. Once you’re navigating in low vis wilderness, through mountains, at night, trying to estimate ranges, or find buried or camouflaged positions or weapons caches, It adds up to an incredibly deep skillset… And whether or not gps coordinates are intuitive and visualizable for you or just random numbers, or whether you intuitively are able to visualize how the terrain will unfold… and more importantly how quickly you and your opponents can move within that space across minutes, hours and days. The the more that intuitively adds up with your tactical judgement within your head, the more insights and tactical reasoning you can do.
Napoleon famously had the travel times between European capitals by foot and horse memorized by age 16. Imagine how much much further he was able to think through any new piece of information on the fly because of that. Imagine being able to tell how many hours you had before your opponents would even know what you were doing?
The deeper you can get that deep mathematical visualization and measurement of space into second nature, the faster and more precisely you can think ahead, the less likely you are to meet with the kinds of land nav disasters that burn hours or entire operations, and the more likely you are to find weaknesses in your enemy’s movements as well as fleeting opportunities and brilliancies no one else would ever notice existed.
TM 31-210 Improvised Munitions Handbook [1969, 256 Pages]
Department of the Army
See also: Incendiaries TM 31 201 1An American childhood classic. Seriously, it had a guest appearance in Toy Story. Sure there are dozens upon dozens of these I could include, books on Homemade C4, The Poor Man’s RPG, or books on various kitchen mixtures, or even cute little 6 volume (vol 1, Vol 2, Vol 3, Vol 4, Vol 5, Vol 6) technical histories of improvised weapons and their employment in guerilla warfare, including chemical and biological weapons…
But it’s tradition that you start with the American Government’s own gift to 14 year old firebugs. The most prominent book the Feds ever published that they’ve gladly encouraged all their European vassals to ban.
Good old TM 31-210, dearest friend and worst hazard to problem children everywhere.
Ragnar’s big book of Homemade Weapons Ragnar's Big Book of Homemade Weapons: Building and Keeping Your Arsenal Secure
[1992, 202 Pages]
Ragnar Benson, Paladin PressPaladin Press classic. Covers everything from making and sourcing homemade Traps, Grenades, mortars, and weapon’s caches all the way up to running a major gun running operation… Isn’t that Over-Ambitious for just 200 pages? Wouldn’t that be Dangerous to embark upon with so little information? Aren’t homemade flamethrowers a serious risk for horrifying death via self-immolation? Maybe.
But using ignorance as an excuse for caution…. That’s not the Paladin way.
FM 5-15 Field Fortifications [1968, 131 Pages]
and FM 5-31 Booby Traps [1965, 130 pages]
Department of the ArmyThese two are prime examples of the gorgeous old-school Field Manuals the US army once produced. Intensely technical and tactical. Many of these techniques were nearly forgotten until the war in Ukraine proved that nearly everything covered is still current and effective.
The effectiveness of any unmounted and unarmored force on the defense is their ability to transform their terrain into an armored position even more durable than the strongest tank… And this is highly achievable with common hand tools and elbow grease.
FM 20-3 Camoflage, Concealment, and Decoys [2010, 98 Pages]
Department of the ArmyA sadly modern (and less readable) Field Manual… But DEADLY relevant.
The nature of camouflage, concealment, and decoys has changed MASSIVELY since the Vietnam days, and now requires a comprehensive understanding of the Electromagnetic spectrum from various types of electronic signals,to thermal radiation, to ir, and visible light.
Concealing fighting positions and vehicles now brings into question radar, heat signatures, electronic emissions, and optical devices of extreme precision… And you can just read how to defeat or trick all that in under 100 pages.
!!! FM 90-10-1 An Infantryman’s Guide To Urban Combat [1982, 288 Pages]
Department of the ArmyThis Field Manual is a work of art. The pinnacle of the classic army field manuals. I’ve read tabletop rpg manuals that were less visual, action packed, and readable.
This is also probably the most RELEVANT of the classic field manuals. Urban positions and cities are the great modern fortresses, the ability to prepare and layout urban fighting positions, tunnels (check out “The tunnels of Cu Chi” lower in the case studies section), and battle plans can allow much smaller and more poorly equipped forces to achieve massive force multiplications over better trained, equipped, and more numerous forces.
If you prepper types are talking about Defending your towns and homes from tyranny, but you aren’t looking into how you actually, you know, DEFEND your towns and homes…I’d recommend correcting that.
FM 21-11 First Aid for Soldiers [1989, 305 Pages]
Department of the ArmyYou can never learn enough first aid.
I suspect most people have gone through a swim class first aid or first aid for a job… and the actual instructions are constantly changing. I’ve taken like half a dozen first aid courses and just in my time they’ve changed CPR like a dozen times… How many chest compressions between mouth to mouth? Should you even do mouth to mouth or do the chest compressions? Did this study replicate? Etc.
But actual soldiering and wilderness First Aid is largely a different skill set, Stuff like building splints or stuffing bullet wounds on the expectation that you might have to hike it out across DAYS in a wounded state, most of the high level skills for that haven’t changed much, since after the world wars its been largely assumed an Air Medevac was always on hand.
Be sure to read the end on carrying procedures as well as chemical and radiological casualties… but probably ignore the sections on “Psychological Casualties”. America’s psychological doctrine has always been the worst in the world, incentivizes soldiers to infantilize and talk themselves into mental illness, and just destroys unit cohesion. Read: “Fighting Power” 109 on this list for a deep dive on the topic.
III. Insurgency and Guerrilla Warfare
The most powerful militaries in existence with the sharpest teeth ever to grace the earth have even longer, vulnerable, tails. Whether this be their logistical chains, their political systems, their economic bases, their administrative apparatus… Everything that makes a military possible is dependent on vast vulnerable webs of soff fragile and largely unguarded political and economic targets… And their most important and most vulnerable rear system, the perceived security they generate and the political legitimacy that comes with it, this cannot ever be truly secured.
Of course the guerillas and insurgents have their own challenges, the frustration and impotence of fighting an enemy you cannot see is nothing compared with the terror and impotence of fighting an enemy who need only see you to crush you, likewise whereas the logistics, legitimacy and solvency of a major military is hard to impossible to truly secure… the logistics, legitimacy, and solvency of a guerilla force is constant operational level struggle to maintain on a par with the most complex criminal and espionage operations.
It may be the case that the government is simply the strongest criminal enterprise in a given area… But that doesn’t make it any less a superhuman struggle to survive, let alone win, as the second strongest.
!!! Fry the Brain: the Art Of Urban Sniping and Its role in Modern Guerilla Warfare
[2008, 448 pages]
John WestThis is probably the best book on this list in terms of taking an ordinary person and quickly turning them into someone that’s geostrategically dangerous.
West goes through damned near every type of firearm you might have access to and in minute detail shows you how even the goofiest firearm can be used to cause complete societal havoc and breakdown of social order… Black powder smoothbores, single shot pistols, 22s, shotguns, zip guns… West’s study of the history of Guerilla sniper and terrorist campaigns is maybe the most horrifyingly expansive things I’ve ever read… less a “Sniper” specific book than a book on insurgent terror, it won’t make you an amazing shot, but It’d let you plan an entire insurgent campaign. This book would be maybe the most infamous work in history had it been written by any of the characters in the book rather than a retired US special forces sniper.
!!! Bandit Country: The IRA in South Armagh [2000, 579 Pages]
Toby HarndenThis book could literally go in 10 different sections on this list. The South Armagh section of the provisional IRA are not just man for man the best Guerillas I’ve ever read about, they’re amongst the best soldiers period. An opinion I’ve seen repeated from many British SAS they faced off against.
In the UNITED KINGDOM large sections of Northern Ireland for a decade+ were too dangerous for THE MILITARY to travel in armored vehicles and they were forced to run all their deployments and logistics via helicopter… Several of which were shot down. THIS WAS THE 90s!
But what really impresses me about this book is how much of these clandestine insurgent operations are now basically completely understood from a logistical perspective… The intense spying and surveillance of South Armagh suspects may not have won, but it give an incredible understanding of vast complex aspects of crime that I have never seen covered in any other books…Things like common racketeering and defrauding of government subsidies do not get investigated and covered in as extensive detail in any other book I know about, but here all these micro-logitistical, financial, and human resources parts of running an extended criminal enterprise are covered in glorious juicy detail… And these guys were probably running these schemes amongst the best and with the tightest OPSEC of any criminal enterprise in history. Amazing book.
!!! Modern Warfare: The French View of Counter Insurgency [1964, 131 Pages]
By Roger TrinquierThis is a “UNIQUE” book. This is as if Colonel Kurtz came back from Vietnam and wrote down his crazed theories of “The horror” only for it to get several international translations, and military press syndications before being dismissed and forgotten.
How often do you get a book written by a secret police torturer and man who tried to out-terrorize the terrorists? OK, That’s kind of an unfair description… but not inaccurate.
Roger Trinquier was at two of the greatest disasters of decolonization, the French pullout of Vietnam and Indo-china, and the French loss of Algeria… And my god does he have OPINIONS about what went wrong and how anticolonial marxist guerillas should be dealt with… Via Concentration camps, Torture, and the formation of counter-paramilitary death squads.
This may sound spiteful and evil, this may sound like the cruel desperation of a man who’s run out of ideas, empathy, and humanity… But actually Trinquier had quite the admiration and understanding of the insurgents he wants to hook up to jumper-cables. Again Kurtzian, but whereas Kurtz was driven to depression and madness by his conclusion, Trinquier has an unnerving optimism and can-do spirit.
I eventually need to write my own review of this book, all of them really… but whereas Kurtz tried to solve the problem of Vietnam with mysticism and venturing into the primal nature of war… Trinquier has this almost Hobbesian, hyper rationalist, 19th century english economists view… For him blowing up of markets, gang rapings of dissenter’s daughters, assassinations of children, knee-capping of shopkeepers who won’t pay up, these are all just chess moves his guerilla opponents are making to form positions… And torturing detainees, training counter-ethnic death squads, forcing suspect populations into concentration camps, and restricting food supplies to a bare subsistence… These are his counter-moves, all part of a cold economic game of constantly asking everyone in the society: “Which government do you feel you can disobey? The secret police or the terrorist assassins?”
Guerrillas In The Mist: Expanded and Updated [2011, 486 Pages]
R. P. Newman USMC, Paladin Press.A very recently updated 1997 Paladin Press survey of the history and theory of Guerilla Warfare.
"…most guerrilla-led rebellions fail miserably. So the questions that anyone who has an interest in rebellions (or expects to be involved in one) must ask are, why do they fail and how can a guerrilla movement succeed? The answers to these questions are the whole point of this remarkable book, which is the first truly practical, hard-hitting manual on how to establish, equip, train, and successfully employ a guerrilla unit. Make no mistake about it, Guerrillas in the Mist is the "bible" of guerrilla warfare.
Read this book from start to finish, study it, listen to the gunny's words of wisdom, and you will stand a much improved chance of coming away from the fight with the smell of victory on your uniform.”
-Lieutenant Colonel Robert K. Brown USAR (Ret) Publisher, Soldier of Fortune magazine
War of the Flea: The Classic Study of Guerilla Warfare [1965, 216 Pages]
Robert Taber
This is maybe the most famous high level theoretical treatment and survey of Guerilla warfare. Taber is a journalist, which is usually damning of most books (Its highly debatable if a single good book has ever won a pulitzer) however Taber is the rare shocking example of why Journalists were once held in esteem. With his book having extensive citations and research of the period. In this he was very fortunate to be writing in 1965 where the war in Vietnam and the beginning rumbles of North Ireland were both quite visible and documented, but not yet at the fever pitch or well into the slog of “inevitability” that simply destroys most works of reporting and history (amazing how no one ever thinks any of these things are “inevitable” until after they’ve already happened and they’ve read and seen the exact outcome repeat 1000 times in news and print… You get drunken gambling addicts, and jackpot winners insisting it was “inevitable” that they’d lose everything or that their chronic gambling would pay off… Why did they continue to gamble then? why did the Casinos let them bet on a sure thing? Well It was inevitable that they would… I can guarantee you if Gaza is emptied of the last Palestinian, or the Israeli state collapses within 24 hours, pieces will be published saying it was “Inevitable”).
But that’s why this is such a good case study, it was written exactly at the time these things weren’t inevitable, and like most guerilla movements these were still unfavored in any sane betting odds and countless possible outcome were still open in these most famous of examples.
Special Forces Guerilla Warfare Manual [1997, 212 Pages]
Scott Wimberly, Paladin Press.Yet another Paladin press book originally published in 1997 in which a Former US Special Forces trainer sets out to teach us… Purely for academic purposes…. how to form an armed Guerilla faction and overthrow “a” government. just a hypothetical government! Gee, I wonder what happened in the 90s that suddenly all these incredibly skilled and highly trained people felt the need to get all this info into public hands? Hmm…
But as the back of the book says, the job of army special forces like Wimberly was to teach and organize these guerilla movements so as to destabilize governments in countless scenarios. This is tried and tested stuff! skimming through Wimberly’s model of Guerilla action resembles the old school Communist model a bit more than hybrid narco-ideological models you now see from Mexico to Ireland to Afghanistan, but his understanding of the psychological and socio-political is second only to Trinquier. He summarizes the psychological/rational game of gaining ‘support’ incredibly well, especially how to coerce and awe, without explicitly threatening or coercing and thus destroying the possibility genuine ideological affection down the road. I’m very glad most criminals don’t read, so much of this is immediately applicable to creating extortion rackets.
Total Resistance: Swiss Army Guide Total Resistance: Swiss Army Guide To Guerrilla Warfare and Underground Operations
[1965, 186 ages]
Major H. von Dach Bern, Paladin Press.One of Paladin’s many translated foreign military manuals. This one is really nuts for being a full on Civilian/Insurgent guide to destroying economies and functional infrastructure with the goal of rendering a first world country completely non-functional, unproductive and un-occupiable by a foreign enemy (or domestic enemy)…. Produced by a nation-state level actor themselves, to destroy their own country, at the height of the cold war. The Swiss don’t mess around.
“If two enemies fight each other to the last—and this is always the case where an ideology is involved (religion is part of it) guerrilla warfare and civilian resistance will inevitably break out in the final phase.“The military expert who undervalues or even disregards guerrilla warfare makes a mistake since he does not take into consideration the strength of heart.
“The last, and admittedly, most cruel battle will be fought by civilians. It will be conducted under the fear of deportation, of execution, and concentration camps.
“We must and will win this battle since each Swiss male and female in particular believe in the innermost part of their hearts— even if they are too shy and sober in everyday life to admit or even speak about it—in the old, and yet very up-to-date saying:
Death rather than slavery!”
FM 3-24 Insurgencies and Counter Insurgencies [2014, 202 Pages]
Department of the ArmyAND
FMI 3-24.2 Tactics in Counterinsurgency [2009, 307 Pages]
Department of the ArmyThese two are the core US army counterinsurgency doctrines… You’ll notice the US lost the wars and influence in the countries where these doctrines where applied… You’ll also notice that unlike some other modern Field Manuals these don’t cite anything from Paladin press or indeed any islamic sources on guerilla warfare or terrorism, notably: The Management of Savagery: The Most Critical Stage Through Which the Umma Will Pass by Abu Bakr Naji was published before these two works were put out and was cited by neither.
And yet everything in these doctrines is well researched, thoughtfully put together, multi-disciplinary, militarily skilled, Professional… Militaries love professionalism. Do you know what the defining feature of a professional is?
A professional is a man who hasn’t been fired for embarrassing or contradicting his boss.
A professional, as opposed to an artist, doesn’t jeopardise his career in the pursuit qualities and ideals he becomes emotionally attached to and his bosses don’t share. A professional doesn’t cause political waves… a professional makes brave faces and responds with a can-do attitude when presented with impossible or contradictory objectives that his paymasters demand… There’s a reason the people who win Guerilla wars are rarely described as professional. Insurgent or counter-insurgent, they’re usually described as monsters and madmen… At best they’re thought to have screws loose, at worse their own governments tend to hate and fear them more than the enemy.
Yet these are incredibly valuable works, both for understanding how western militaries will fight insurgencies… and how they won’t/can’t escalate without hitting hard political considerations and the contradictions of post-45 Liberal Democracy.Edit: Added Reading:
The Seven Pillars of Wisdom - a Triumph [1926, 722 Pages]
Colonel T. E. Lawrence (of Arabia fame)
A shockingly earnest book. No other book on this list BEGINS with a frank account of the depraved sexual morality of the guerilla forces the author himself led… But such is Lawrence, in a theme only hinted at the slightest in the beloved film version, but which every audiobook and commentator I’ve encountered seems to draw out and emote uncomfortably long… leering even where Lawrence himself is embarrassed. Call me squeamish, but I couldn’t stand the audiobook of it, the “hot limbs” of arab boys, and “Raddled meat” of tribal “public women” is uncomfortable on the page, but intolerable when breathed into your ear by some 60 year-old englishman.
Which is a shame, because apart from this framing, which Lawrence himself tries to set aside (but generations of leftist commentators insist on drawing out), this is one of the best accounts of a successful guerilla campaign, by one of the principle leaders, who is classically educated, deeply knowledgeable of the histories, geopolitics, strategies, classical parallels, religions, cultures, diplomacy, implications, etc. in a campaign that immediately begets the downfall of the Ottoman empire and the geopolitics of the modern middle east.
Lawrence is the “Adam in the Garden” (well desert) of the entirety of the modern middle-east, and wrote one of the best accounts of any war ever. If you want to try gaining a deep understanding of the modern middle east and modern desert guerilla warfare… This is the origin point.
Insurgency and Guerrilla Warfare III.2: The Communist-Totalitarian Guerrilla Model
Totalitarian Guerilla warfare, of which the various Communist movements are the most prominent examples, is very unique in relation to every other mode of Guerilla Warfare. The Provisional IRA or Taliban may have maintained standing “Laws”, threats against informing, and even extortion rackets… Remember the essence of any sovereign militia, criminal org, insurgency, or plain government is the belief in their unshakeable right to enforce their codes and rules with lethal force on the level of a government, to the exclusion of any other government… However, not even prison gangs extend this to ALL personal property, labour, time, and economic activity, in theory they might require sworn members to be willing to do that in extremity… Communists however, and to a lesser extent other totalitarian Guerilla movements like ISIS, they Do this for all things and all people. Everywhere they can.
Thus the communist guerilla is not simply imposing a coercive regime that their law is higher and more lethal than that of the rivalled government… They are taking over and micromanaging all economic, social, agricultural, and personal activity such that any civilian falling under their power is now at minimum a Guerilla laborer, hideout keeper, funder, food providers, bed warmers, etc. (under threat of violence or worse)… and even trying to penetrate even the soul itself: those civilians are Students also, Lots of Reeducation to be done.
The Communist Guerilla implements coercive totalitarian political, economic, bodily, and spiritual control over every member of the population he can recruit or coerce. He implements Totalitarian Leninism, Maoism, Islam, as far as he can reach. Be that across his jail cell, his village, forest, or nation. Via a combination of old school French or Russian revolutionary Terror, and Terrorism in the modern sense of the word as well.
This is why communist Guerilla “support” is invariably so strong, and how they accumulate “Supporters” so quickly… they impose the paranoid totalitarian Jonestown-esque maoist society, where everyone is equal and free, and everyone who disagrees is either a traitor to be shot or in need of serious “education”. And they maintain this Even as the public still has to play act that nothing’s changed, that their stores still sell things, and maintain they’ve seen nothing to governmental patrols that occasionally come through town.
This is radically different from most other Guerrilla movements and worth understanding, indeed Trotsky did not even recognize normal, non-totalitarian, guerilla movements “Guerrillaism” (guerilla warfare in the traditional sense) as compatible with communism, calling it “anarchical petty-bourgeois spontaneity” and organized an “ideological struggle” against “guerillaism” within his revolutionary regiments… even as he celebrated the replacement of voluntary recruitment with compulsory recruitment more compatible with his vision of “centralization” and “discipline” (ie. the crushing of all personal bonds and modes of organizing outside the revolutionary hierarchy).
You might think this is a historical oddity or not relevant to you, but remember this is the most successful mode of warfighting and governance over the past 150 years in terms of winning civil wars and conquering countries… this is the apex predator you need to be afraid of and study, maybe even more so than Nuclear armed tier 1 powers, if we’re judging by body count.
Edit Added Reading: Banner of the People’s War, The Party’s Military Line [1970, 152 Pages]
General Vo Nguyen GiapAt the height of the Vietnam War the master of Communist Vietnam’s doctrine, victory, and Future Prime Minister lays out in explicit detail the nature of their strategy, and how they aim to achieve it. This is interesting in two senses: First the war was still ongoing, this is an active fighting doctrine… and while it was certainly censored and many details held back because of that, it’s also not infected by the spirit on Inevitability and hagiography that comes with writing after victory… This is what a successful Marxist Guerilla warfare theory and doctrine sounds like from within the fight.
Mao Tse-Tung on Guerrilla Warfare [1961, 128 Pages]
US Department of the Navy EditionThis is the book on cold war guerilla warfare. Maybe more terrorists, mass murderers, and genocidal maniacs have read this one book than any other. It is incredibly short (40 pages of this is US Navy commentary) and an amazing piece of history. You could find Maoist guerrillas in Africa, South America, and South Asia still employing these doctrines into the 2010s… Really timeless.
Guevara Guerrilla Warfare [1966, 177 Pages]
Che GuevaraAlong with Mao, this is maybe the most famous work ever published on Guerilla warfare I haven’t gotten to. I’ve always been meaning to read deeper on Guevara specifically because of his writing on Motorcycle travel, but have never gotten around to it. Skimming through this work you find the usual 20th century communist blend of euphemism with sometimes surprising frankness, as always pay particular attention to how Guevara funds his fighting.
150 Questions for a Guerrilla: The Man Who Trained Castro [1963, 52 Pages]
General Alberto BayoThis is any incredibly detailed technical account of just what the hell happens when Communist guerillas or red guards come into your community. How people are categorized, divided, and encouraged to surrender ever more of themselves into the cause. This is the process Trinquier describes from the Anti-communist counter-insurgent perspective but from the Guerilla communist’s internal understanding… And it’s quite unique.
His claim to have “trained Castro” is basically accurate in that Bayo was a generation older than the rest of the Cuban revolutionaries, and had already risen to the Rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the “republican” forces of the Spanish Civil War, and thus represents not only a neat insight into early “Decolonization” and cold War Guerilla conflict, but also acts as a bridge character between the Cold War and the earlier Communist revolutions and failed wars the shook pre-war Europe.
Trotsky Military Writings of Trotsky Vol 1, Vol 2, Vol 3, Vol 4, Vol 5 [1918-1923, 1000+ Pages]
You may not like it… But this is what peak performance looks like.
Trotsky was an unemployable, psychopathic, political radical, with zero military experience whatsoever, and who was only allowed to live via the persistent failure of every western government from Russia, to America, to France, to Canada, to Germany, to Finland… All failed to just kill him extrajudicially as a piece of human garbage and sexual degenerate like any alert border guard or decent citizen should have, and thus this walking human plague rat was allowed to continue to receive opportunities to affect the course of history and expose the general population to the irredeemable darkness of his diseased imagination…
JUST LIKE YOU! 😽
This is the Man who built the Red Army and won the Russian civil war… starting from a state where Russia in many respects no longer had an intact military. And he did it by reading obsessively, self-radicalizing, digging through ancient history, and then subjecting starving Russian conscripts to decimation for cowardice like Marius or Crassus.
Horrifying? Absolutely. Fascinating? Definitely. And an excellent look into the totalitarian mode of warfare and organization beginning from what was very close to scratch… If you can tolerate reading a verbose and language torturing Marxist true believer for 1000+ pages (every page of Trotsky I read the more I’m persuaded Roger Trinquier was right (see entry 20).
Read the words of the depraved military genius that God himself couldn’t stop… But one Georgian devil could.
(Edit) Added section:
Note: I also hope to add a “III.4, The Islamist model” at some point
Insurgency and Guerrilla Warfare III.3: The Euro-American Far-Right Model
People generally consider the far right terrorism of the 1990s through the 2010s as an ineffective and pointless failure… However…
The 9/11 attacks were the worst terrorist attacks in US history, killing 2,996. but when you divide that across the alleged 19 hijackers who died in the operation, this was only the second deadliest assailant-adjusted terror operation in US history with a kill:loss ratio of 157 to 1 (684 injured). 6 years earlier The Oklahoma city bombing killed 169 vastly more targeted people (A majority government employees), and the only assailant on the scene GOT AWAY… at least temporarily. Even if we count McVeigh’s subsequent execution, that’s still the deadliest kill/loss ratio (169:1) of any terrorist attack I can think of… Similarly dramatic ratios would appear in Brevik’s 2011 Norway Attacks (77 killed and 319 injured) and Tarrant’s Christchurch mosque shooting (51 dead, 89 Injured).
However whereas most people generally agree Brevik and Tarrant’s attacks had relatively little immediate effect (though some may argue their manifestos popularized their political ideas, “Great Replacement Theory” is now something right-wing politicians regularly endorse), there’s something of a consensus, at least on the mid-to-far American right, that McVeigh’s 1995 attack on Oklahoma City worked. (for better or worse)
Nothing approximating the Sieges of Waco or Ruby Ridge have occured since, and far from the increasingly violent and tyrannical push for gun control that was both feared and appeared inevitable in the early 90s, the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban was allowed to expire 10 years later in 2004, with even a majority of US states now allowing constitutional carry. Far from an ineffective nothing, McVeigh’s example seems to have terrified the US federal government into inaction and impotence. If this was what just the craziest guy with a handful of accomplices was able to do… what might the wider subculture become if pushed?
However, whatever one’s reading of events or theories as to why the anti-immigration terrorists by contrast had little effect (My theory: Government official don’t care about dead civilians, just dead government officials), or even if their effects were so little as they might appear (Contrast Norway with Sweden or New Zealand with Australia or Canada, and you might think those attacks made their governments quite a bit more cautious in their policies)… the underappreciated thing about these seemingly “Senseless” attacks is the actual depth of theory and political-doctrinal groundwork that has gone into them across decades of writings and dozens or maybe now hundreds of writer across Racist, Neo-Nazi, Anti-Immigrant, Libertarian, Ex-Military, Anti-Tax, Anti-Lockdown, and other right wing thinkers… Like it or not, this is a genuine paramilitary tradition and school of thought.
(see also Fry the Brain, Guerillas in the Myst, The Special Forces Guerilla Warfare Manual, and most things from Paladin Press from the 70s through the 2000s… While these are largely of an ideologically neutral framing and a more or less earned their deniability… these are all products of the American 2nd Amendment milieu and overlap the venn diagram of military theorists, gun enthusiasts, veterans, and political radicals)
The Turner Diaries [1978, 280 Pages]
&
Hunter [1989, 178 Pages]
William Luther Pierce (Writing as Andrew MacDonald)Pierce, a professor of physics, was maybe the most prominent white nationalist in America for 30+ years following the assassination of George Lincoln Rockwell (a death variously attributed by theorists to zionists, the FBI, or internal power-struggle…). The two works are fictional stories about an armed white nationalist terror campaign and revolution against and increasingly despotic US government… Fiction that lingers in extraordinary detail on the tactics, methods, and recipes that enable the terror campaigns. McVeigh was explicitly inspired by The Turner Diaries in his carrying out of the Oklahoma city bombings, and even travelled gun shows selling the book, not least by the final martyrdom in the third act.
Pierce’s prequel Hunter looks at the early days of the fictional terror group from The Turner Diaries focusing on emergent low level operational logistics, tactics, and ideological formation.
The Silent Brotherhood: The Chilling Inside Story of America's Violent, Anti-Government Militia Movement
[1989, 496 Pages]
Kevin Flynn, Gary GerhardtThis one is a work of “journalism” and thus all the caveats of Journalistic works apply… Indeed it’s been adapted into a fairly major movie coming before month’s end, so Flynn and Gerhardt certainly said nothing that would make it fall out of favour in the past 35 years…
But the story of “The Order” a White Nationalist Armed Robbery and Terrorist ring directly inspired by the Turner Diaries, and which may have funded the propagation of white nationalist culture on the internet (its speculated much of their missing loot was plowed directly back into recruitment and propaganda).
This is maybe one of the most important stories about the successes, and vulnerabilities of the White Nationalist model of organization, with founder Robert Jay Mathews initially wild success and sudden demise emphasizing both the shocking effectiveness of these type of orgs and their extreme vulnerabilities… which every subsequent right-extremist group and movement has attempted to mitigate in various ways.
Leaderless Resistance [1982, 5 Pages]
Louis BeamMaybe the most famous essay ever written on the theory and structure of Far-Right Extremism. Beam proposes a network of cells and lone wolves organized not by any command structure, but distributed ideological unity and consumption of ideas and doctrine.
Almost all the famous Far-Right attacks of the past 40 years have followed this model.
Siege - the Collected Writings of James Mason [various editions, 2023 “6(66) edition linked, 600 Pages]
Siege is madness even to the mad. Mason’s career, ranging from 1970s Neo-Nazism to The Order of Nine Angles, to Atomwaffen, to Post Atomwaffen bizzareness… is a study in American madness and the furthest ideological and aesthetic extremes. Nihilist-Nazism, Satanic-Nazism… And everything else, it’s actually hard to tell if his goal was a violent revolution of a thousand terrors, or if it was to launch a thousand punk and metal bands.
This is a man even Neo-Nazi terrorists disavow as too divisive, extreme, and off-putting to normal people… Which makes it kind-of awkward, even to non-nazi right, just how influential much of his work is and has been.
The work includes Mason’s writings and advocacy for terror and white nationalism across decades… and has even succeeded his inactivity, as subsequent actors have taken it on themselves to anonymously update and continue the ideas.
Unintended Consequences [1996, 749 Pages]
John RossEver since REASON magazine was infiltrated by left-hippies and libertine republican centrists, Libertarians have gotten a Bad (Good?) rap for being moderates and bootlickers who dare not offend the regime or advocate freedom and limited government whenever it might actually matter (such as when a war is being sold based on lies, or an outsider presidential candidate is being framed for treason, or totalitarianism is being implemented under the guise of public health), But this is not where the core tenants of the ideology (or its most fervent advocates) are or has ever been… Like all serious ideologies Libertarianism core axioms are violently seizing power, and identifying and targeting the ideology’s enemies, or if still weak, resisting enemy power at all extremity… People mostly associate this with “Libertarian Monarchist” Hans Herman Hoppe “Triple-H” and his landmark book “Democracy The God That Failed” as well as his more obscure, but relevant for our purposes, “The Private Production of Defense”.
However this view of government employees not simply as decent people in a corrupt system, but active willing participants in an illegitimate criminal conspiracy of extortion, theft, intimidation, and murder for which some, most, or even all of them are guilty in their private capacity as individuals and for which each of them can face (depending on who you ask, and their complicity) property confiscation, decades of hard labor, or execution? That’s an Idea that goes WAY back to the 70s and earlier… But Unintended Consequences John Ross’s 800 page fictionalized revolution via low-tech leaderless guerilla small-arms assassinations (see also Fry the Brain: the Art Of Urban Sniping and Its role in Modern Guerilla Warfare, Entry 18) is probably the most detailed deep dive into this most uncompromising vision of libertarian theory.
McVeigh loved it: “If people say The Turner Diaries was my Bible, Unintended Consequences would be my New Testament. I think Unintended Consequences is a better book. It might have changed my whole plan of operation if I'd read that one first.”
An Opinion he shared with 1st Libertarian Party Presidential Nominee John Hospers who in his lecture on the work compared it with Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged as one of the most important libertarian works of fiction ever produced:
The Meaning of Timothy McVeigh [September 2001, 12,000 Words]
Gore Vidal [Vanity Fair]One of the most prolific writers of the 20th century began a correspondence and friendship with McVeigh after his arrest that proceeded up to his execution in June 2001, then in September 2001 mere days before the only larger terrorist attack in US history, his massive 35 page super article on McVeigh dropped. This is an incredible piece of Americana, maybe the last artifact of the pre-9/11 world, and the budding incredulity and cultural reevaluation of the 90s war on “militias” and the various crimes and horrors of the US Agencies and Security state… again mere days before they were granted the largest blank cheque in human history.
An amazing look into a world before my time.
The Great Replacement [2019, 74 Pages]
Brenton Tarrant (The Christchurch Mosque Shooter)This is probably one of the most widely read and influential terrorist manifestos in history for 2 reasons:
1. Because it was subjected to an extreme international censorship attempt, where even possessing or reading a PDF of the work could and STILL DOES carry a criminal penalty in many european and commonwealth countries, including UP TO 14 YEARS IN NEW ZEALAND, with many people being arrested and sentenced to months or even years for having it, commiting PDF (don’t download the pdf if you’re in one of those countries). This of course created a Streisand Effect where many people who would never look for the work suddenly felt compelled to read it, and indeed… feeling the boot of tyrannical censorship… where much more more likely to be sympathetic than anyone would normally be to a killer of 50 innocent people.
2. Because it is breezily short at a mere 74 pages and is poetically readable. Not only has its very title become a mainstay of Right Wing discourse, I often see specific mantras and quotations “It’s the birthrates. It’s the birthrates. It’s the birthrates.” “Why won’t somebody do something? Why won’t somebody do something? Why don’t I do something?” Repeated in the most random and far flung comments on youtube, twitter, various online forums… On a few occasions I’ve heard people randomly quote it IRL… Even Mainstream presidential candidates and podcasters are openly declaring “The great replacement theory is not some grand right-wing conspiracy theory, but a basic statement of the Democratic Party’s platform”.
Put otherwise the Governments of New Zealand, Australia and elsewhere were probably correct in the fear that made them ban the manifesto… This is a political pamphlet who’s impact and “Marketing” rival the most extreme of the 20th century in terms of drama and effect.
The Shooter even went out of his way to try and mold the response to him, beginning the livestream of the attack saying “Remember kids to subscribe to PewDiePie” In the hopes that tech companies would deplatform and censor the wildly popular (if slightly controversial) streamer, thus radicalizing his 100 million strong audience of adolescent boys. even as he discusses tactics, there are layers of irony and playing potential readers and factions of society off against each other, you could teach a case-study course on Psychological Warfare just on Tarrant and his propaganda.
2083-A European Declaration of Independence [2011, 1515 Pages]
Anders BreivikBreivik’s Manifesto for the 2011 Norway Attacks is OFFENSIVELY long. Say what you will about him, but Trotsky produced 1000s of pages of military writings across YEARS of constant terrorist and military action, there’s enough historic importance there to warrant 1000s of pages. Breivik kills 77 in one day…and that’s supposed to entitle him to 1500 pages worth of our time!? An Atlas Shrugged or Clarissa length work?
His message was important enough to kill 77, but not important enough to edit!?
So this shouldn’t work, he should have burnt all the interest his attack generated… And yet people read it. Part of this was the prescience of his thinking, no one was really discussing Islamic immigration into Europe in 2011… but after the “Refugee” crisis of 2015 people really were, and part of it is just the clarity (if bizarreness) of his thought relative to the word-salad that most attackers (being actually mentally ill) put out. No one really latched onto his aesthetics, the Knight’s Templar imagery and branding never took off… but the amount of research into demographic statistics, sociological effects, and the academic policy-paper type work he put into the manifesto to make his case… I’ve seen this CITED as a source in various internet arguments.
And this obsessive detail also goes for the bomb making instructions, detailed plans for attacks on power plants, codification of the honors and a rankings of his hypothesized paramilitary order.
It is at once disturbing, and almost certainly a indictment of norwegian society, that such an intelligent, dedicated, and competent person had zero attachments and no career path that would prevent him from radicalizing and concluding this was necessary.
And people did find it persuasive… Tarrant claimed Breivik as a direct inspiration for his attacks and claims to have contacted people within Breiviks order (if it exists, remember psychological warfare) to bless his attack… So Breivik’s manifesto, despite its obscene length and mixed format, is amongst the most effective and dangerous of political writings: Those that inspire action.
IV. Special Operations: Theory and Techniques
Contrary to the name, gizmos, and mythology “Special Operations” is actually the oldest mode of warfare.
Thus my placing it before Conventional combat.
You can look at tribal bushmen, bedouin herders, Steppe Nomads, cattle rustlers, and bronze age sea-raiders and see the exact same tactical logic of Skirmishes, raids, infiltrations, exfiltrations, and escapes.
Look at modern thieves and bank-robbers and you see the exact same tactical logic that McRaven lays out in Spec Ops below… only carried out with some of the lowest budgets conceivable instead of the highest, and applied to some of the least secured locations instead of hardened fortresses.
What makes modern special operations unique is merely the extreme amounts of risk, skill, and budget employed to push their raids and sneaking to the limits of the physically and technologically possible.
Nothing however prevents the same logic from being carried out by the least skilled, broke, and technologically backwards forces of the world, so long as they’re willing to substitute risk, daring, unexpectedness, and judgement (of variable quality) for the 10s of millions and years of training tier one Special Forces pour into their operators…
Extraordinary funds, skills, brilliance, bravery, and stupidity each have their own unique ways of making the impossible possible.
Spec Ops: Case Studies in Special Operations Warfare: Theory and Practice
[1993, 619 Pages]
William H. McRaven, Navy Seal Captain [later Admiral]
Also released as the original Master’s Thesis: The Theory of Special OperationsA deep dive into several of the most famous special forces raids of all time, from the assault on Ebben Emanuel to the Entebbe Raid… (huh, odd how many people who advance so quickly have written glowing hagiographic histories of THAT raid…Remind me, who was the only blue team death in it? Hmm. Still a good book though.)
This work is unique however in that it explicitly focuses on the THEORY of special operations IE. How and why some Special forces raids succeed and others fail. And it makes a very impressive case, indeed it applies far beyond the field of special forces to things like assassination, robbery, theft, escapes… McRaven’s model of risk/time, rehearsal, and the moment of relative superiority is universally applicable to any scenario where you have an opponent who outguns you even locally. And the 8 case studies do an excellent job of breaking it down, highly recommend.
FM 31-20-5 Special Reconnaissance Tactics, Techniques, & Procedures For Special Forces
[1990, 224 Pages]
Department of the Army
Note: Chapters are scrambled proceeding 4, 3, 2, 1. No idea why. However entire work is present.Aside from being scrambled this is a surprisingly good presentation of what would otherwise be very awkwardly abstract concepts. While a lot of it is really only applicable to larger forces, there’s a good amount in here that’s applicable to any reconnaissance, criminal, or espionage operation if one doesn’t get bogged down in the decision matrices, bureaucratese, and process nonsense.
If you skip around and ignore the boring bits you’ll find real gems buried in this work.
FM 3-05.201….I feel as if I’m looking in a mirror? FM 3-05.201 Special Forces Unconventional Warfare Operations [2003, 296 Pages]
Department of the ArmyLOL! This is a work that tried painfully hard to pretend to be boring and another bureaucratic work of doctrine, but read ever so closely and skip ahead a bit, and you quickly realize that this is the core Green Beret doctrinal manual for training, equipping, and employing deniable insurgencies, terrorist groups, criminal factions, and warlords.
It’s the book about you!
As always pay special attention to the appendices as there’s some great stuff in there about long range line of sight comms and other very niche topics for jury-rigging capabilities where funds or equipment might not allow one to do things the expensive way.
Long range patrol operations. England. Long-Range Patrol Operations: Reconnaissance Combat and Special Operations
[1987, 328 Pages]
James England, Master Sergeant. Paladin Press.The Long Range Desert Group LRDG in WW2 was one of the earliest precedents of modern special forces, and yet the tactics and logic of ground based long range reconnaissance patrols have kinda weirdly disappeared from public consciousness… which is odd when you consider the light vehicles they used for these very impressive operations are now basically consumer goods that every American has in their garage.
There’s a recurring theme lower on this list that I think some version of an ultra-long range (1000 km plus) continent scale flash-raid employing consumer grade vehicles like technicals (modified pickup trucks), cars, and motorcycles, and the light equipment that will fit on them, Is going to rock world history at some point and redefine logistics and politics the same way horse archers out of Mongolia rocked the middle ages. And this work digs into that with a shocking amount of detail, and a shockingly good presentation. The fact the Military didn’t just pay England to produce this as a field manual is probably an indictment of the military’s relationship with its expert NCOs. Great stuff.
V. Crime, Espionage, Counter Intelligence, and Unconventional/Clandestine Operations
🎥👆Don’t Talk to the Police
and You Have The Right to Remain Innocent [2016, 144 Pages]
James DuaneThis is probably the book most likely to actually save your life from devastating consequences. 7-8% of Americans wind up with felony convictions over their lifetime, and knowing that you should SHUT UP and not talk to the police, And specifically the words you should use to do so with the least legal risk is something every child should learn at age 8 or 10, the same way I think every child should learn how to survive in the environment around them and in water (see books below.)
Probably one of the best videos you can watch, and one of the best books you can read to statistically improve your chances of not having your life destroyed.
"But what does this have to do with Conflict?"
Even the most high intensity, devastating conflict is dwarfed by the vast amounts of low intensity Civil tensions and troubles that surround it… WW2 was the biggest event in history… But the wide ripples of the war before, after and during affected vastly more people. Most people in 1943 weren’t on the eastern front… and most Americans were not drafted, But every Brazilian was living through the legal world that was Brazil in 1943 and every American was living through the FDR total economy of 1943…
Understanding the advice lawyers give to criminals and their own children in peacetime is going to be vastly more relevant deep into conflict than you can imagine.
Watch the Video, and watch the equivalent from lawyers in your own country or countries you visit (this is the Canadian version)
Running a Ring of Spies: Spycraft and Black Operations in the Real World of Espionage [1996, 212 pages]
Jefferson Mack, Paladin PressMovies are incredibly disingenuous about the nature of spies. James Bond not only doesn’t exist, his job doesn’t exist. Bond is a “OO ‘Double Oh’ Agent” a role that somehow overlaps Diplomat, Intelligence Officer, Special Operator, Undercover Police Officer, Active Uniformed Naval Commander, professional poker player, and intel asset… roles no one individual would ever do together.
The closest real life approximation to Bond is either an Interpol Officer or the British Equivalent of CIA Paramilitary officers… Ie. Those who hunt international arms traffickers and those who employ them.
Indeed the only role we don’t see Bond fulfill is the actual role of a core member of MI6 or CIA: Case Officer.
Believe it or not sneaking and manipulating your way into positions of importance in an enemy org is hard to impossible, it takes years for loyal careerists to do it… So instead intel agencies “Recruit” Read blackmail, bribe, and threaten, people who are already within the org into betraying their secrets.
The real life James Bond isn’t a super-soldier in a suit sneaking into a foreign government’s super base… He’s a Jeffery Epstein type blackmailing some desperate loser into doing it for him. Not a brave knight, but the devil who tempts them at the crossroads… And this book tells you how to be your own spymaster recruiting people, mining information, and exploiting it for your own private ends. And how to defend against that. Whether that be insider trading, corporate espionage, Organized crime, or creating a Humint intelligence network for your paramilitary movement.
This is the book most Organized Criminals probably should read but don’t. Real Paladin Press classic.
By Way of Deception [1990, 378 Pages]
Victor Ostrovsky and Claire HoyTell all account of a Mossad Case Officer who went rogue. This caused a massive stink in the 80s and, to the extent you believe it, is a shocking look at the nature of clandestine warfare, espionage, and crime by nation state level actors.
Famously several pages were ordered censored by an AMERICAN judge to protect the state of Israel (something that no judge has done even to protect the CIA or US government) before this was thrown out on review. My paper copy actually had 6 pages removed, of which 4 were subsequently re-added (they had already printed the book, so they just added a paper slip).
However as far as I know the linked file is completely unredacted including “allegations about the Mossad and the Beirut Marine bombing, American hostages in Lebanon, Iran-Contra, Andrew Young, etc.”
Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World’s Greatest Outlaw [2001, 304 Pages]
Mark Bowden
Pablo Escobar is one of the amazing moden case studies and oddities in the world of crime, war, espionage, geopolitics, business… Even the timing of his reign, overlapping with the end of the cold war, the fall of Noriega, Desert Storm, the rise of the “New World Order”. You look at cyberpunk literature in the early 90s and trendlines, and it becomes really clear that if just 1 US invasion had gone differently, or Escobar had successfully converted his money and violence to institutional political power, that that would have rippled out and profoundly altered the nature of global power. Pay especial attention to the partnerships between cartels, guerillas, death squads, and nation state actors. These would all be major factors in an American or European civil war.
quebec Hells Angel head Maurice “Mom” Boucher. Multi-billion dollar cartel mastermind who ordered the killing of hundreds. The Road to Hell: How the Biker Gangs Are Conquering Canada [2004, 416 Pages]
Julian Sher and William Marsden
It’s very hard to explain this to Americans and Europeans… But Canadian outlaw biker gangs, notably the Quebec Hells Angels, are probably the most organizationally sophisticated and impenetrably disciplined criminal groups outside Latin American drug cartels and the “Russian” Mafia… The next step up from them are state level intelligence services and national political parties, which I’ve seen several different theories about regarding their ties.
It’s a phenomenon that’s unique, and seemingly doesn’t translate to the US crime scene for some reason.
These are multi-billion dollar, hyper-violent, vertically integrated operations that in the late 90s carried out hundreds of targeted killings and bombings, and may have been responcible for the failure of Quebec’s separation attempt (their ties to the Canadian liberal party and CIA are much speculated)… And in subsequent episodes even targeted south American cartel heads in their own countries.
The closest analogy in terms of organization and structure is probably the Yakuza. Yet no one discusses it because Canada from 1980 to present has successfully branded as boring, and not as a clearing house for the world’s money laundering… but this is a very valuable case study to look into being so modern, North American, and tied into international crime and geopolitics.
This book came out at the peak of their rise and infamy and digs into the Quebec Biker Wars between the Hell’s Angels, Rock Machine, Outlaws, and Banditos, and how they slowly displaced and took the crowns of nearly every other criminal organization in the country and beyond.
Tactical Lock Picking: A Systemized Approach for Responding to Locked Obstacles During Emergencies
[2020, 438 Pages]A great book for anyone in the tactical, locksport, or preparedness space. Goes through all the common ways to pick, bypass, and break through locked obstacles. Lockpicking and locksport is an entire deep field, and this doesn’t get into things like alarms, safecracking or any of the really exotic stuff… but its a great all arounder for people who might have to breach or infiltrate past any variety of barriers.
Locks, Safes and Security: An International Police Reference [2nd Edition] (4,049 Pages; not a typo)
Marc Weber Tobias [2004; online leak of the controlled government version has updates to 2007]This is THE Reference book… I wish I could find something comparable for every subject on the list. This 2 volume 4,000 page labour of love is the master reference for lockpicking, safecracking, forced entry and alarms used by Locksmiths, Interpol, Federal investigators, and Intelligence agencies, on how locks, safes, and vaults are constructed. How they can be picked, how they can be cracked, how they can be destructively forced into… how the alarm systems work, how such break-ins are forensically investigated. Historical examples of such break-ins. Oh, and an entire history of locksmithing that the author includes out of love for his craft.
And while you currently can only buy the “Public” version of it in a massive 2 volume set from amazon for about 500 dollars, the more expansive “Locksmith” professional edition remains controlled, and the even more expansive “government” edition WOULD be controlled even more so available only to police and intel agencies… IF someone hadn’t leaked the 2007 controlled government version complete (with digital additions and updates included in the pdf) onto various torrent sites and dark libraries.
YOU CAN BUY OR DOWNLOAD THE BOOK that teaches you to breach safes and vaults like the highest level catburgalars and bank robbers who ever lived… as romanticized in your favourite crime movies like Heat, Die Hard, or the Dark Knight.
Of course this is cool as hell, and would almost deserve to be included on that basis alone, but the real value is this gives any militia, insurgency, guerilla force, intel operation, irregular element, antisocial individual, etc. The option and guide to expropriating funds and resources… The direct way.
You can just have this in your back pocket, or PDFs folder or on your bottom bookshelf… And that’s just an additional set of options and skills… an entire additional dimension of considerations that are now available to you.
VI. Intelligence and Comms
Perhaps the greatest challenge on the modern battlefield is knowing what is going on at all. While in theory a commander or team leader has access to more information than ever, even professional militaries with vast intelligence apparatuses often struggle to maintain situational awareness in the midst of a conflict and under the fog of war. Not just do to the guile and stealth of their enemy, but due to information overload and the sheer speed and quantity of data that both is available to them… and which can suddenly and ominously STOP, coming to them.
Now imagine a modern small militia whose loyalties almost certainly align with wider factions, but has its own interests,positions, and concerns. What happens when you don’t have a massive modern military intelligence apparatus, but simply your leadership whatever systems and people they can set up, and whatever can be gathered from public info, your own sensors, and your own contacts… Imagine being a small company sized militia in the middle-east at the moment somewhere within the mess of Gaza, Israel, the West Bank, Lebanon, and Syria… Now imagine the fears come true, a major regional war kicks off… And then suddenly the power goes out, the internet goes down, and all the Radio stations just repeat a test signal… Do you run to a bunker? Do you flee? How do you figure out what the hell is going on? How do you even know what’s going on beforehand? It’s not clear most politician and officers really understand that mess under normal conditions!? How are you to piece that all together and maintain that knowledge, even as the information is decaying instantly in what might be the start of WW3? How can you make decisions when suddenly information comes back and you are faced with 10,000 contradictory lies?
In the sheer chaos of future battlefields with things like mass supply chain attacks, Oct 7th, lightning wars, strategic nuclear weapons, special forces raids, no one reporting true damage or actual casualties, and the mass fracturing and multiplication of 1000s of micro-factions of 1000s of false loyalties, much of the struggle of intelligence won’t be uncovering secret plan or coups in foreknowledge… It’ll be understanding what’s happening at all before it’s over.
Sure you might look at Ukraine, Israel, Armenia-Azerbaijan now, not be able to make heads or tails of it and decide to wait for the book… but it the midst of a conflict? You can’t wait, or you’ll be a very pathetic footnote in that book.
🎥!!! Battle Tracking Basics [90 minutes] and Building an Intelligence Shop -A Primer [1 hour]
S2 UndergroundS2 Underground is maybe the best military intelligence and prepper follow out there today. His “Wire” is one of the best additions to your podcast roster you can have, and his analysis is always fascinating, frequently genius level, and certainly asking the right questions even if I occasionally disagree.
These two videos are excellent primers for building intelligence capabilities from a prepared citizen and volunteer defense group perspective. And his entire back catalog is deeply fascinating and lays out tons of capabilities and methods no other preppers are talking about.
S2 Underground is leading a revolution in how the prepared citizens think about what it is to be prepared and aware, and he has certainly revolutionized my thinking.
Adventures of a Despatch Rider [1915, 299 Pages]
Captain W. H. WatsonThe final, most secure, and most reliable way to send a message is via a runner in urban settings… Or for longer distances a rider. Which has been and continues to be revolutionized by the invention and improvement of the motorcycle.
I’m known as the motorcycle nerd, so I have to include this, but this is a core part of Comms everyone forgets and yet if you’re being jammed, or think your comms have been compromised, or have been blasted with EMP… you’ll be very glad to understand this. Modern Motorcycles on good roads can cover 100+km per hour, and over rough ground can rarely truly be stopped the way cars and trucks can. It might have a 1-2 hour delay over the longest stretches, but when you consider individual gun battles have lasted 4-12 hours… that’s not exactly the maddening delay you think it might be. And for stretches of mere 10s of kilometers, a motorcycle rider that takes 10-20 minutes might not even delay operations relative to the normal delays of orders and organization (Read entry 68 for a good example of Company level orders and delays)
Beyond that dispatch rider books are the only good detailed studies we have of Motorcycles in Warfare currently, and they tend to be written by people who , flying back and forth across the battlefield, often have impressive understandings of what’s actually happening in the battle… Check this one out and Check out “The Long Long Road to Victory: Diaries of an Infantry Dispatch Rider 1940-1946” for a WW2 account across several very different environments.
Guerilla Guide to Baofeng [2022, 156 Pages] and Guerilla Guide to Signals Intelligence [2023, 137 Pages]
NC ScoutAs with low cost consumer Drones, there’s been a less well noticed but no less important technological revolution in low cost consumer comms and radio that’s driving a lot of changes in how preppers and low level self defense types think and equip themselves.
For under $200 for 2, The Baofeng radio gives about a 5-10km range for comms depending on conditions. Which is great for not having to depend upon cellular networks and inherently tracked systems.
There are dozens of works on this, but NC Scout is largely considered to be the best/most prominent, and the focus on signals intelligence and electronic emissions is a massive concern you MUST be thinking about.
I know very little about radio, which is a truly damning character flaw, but there’s never been a better and more important time to look into it.
Oh and also radios can be easily jury-rigged to activate other systems… Flares, homebrew drones, detonators… every prepared person should have a passing familiarity, and any self-defense group an idea of how they’ll integrate them into their R&D.
Intelligence in War: Knowledge of the Enemy from Napoleon to Al Queada [2004, 432 Pages]
John KeeganKeegan is regarded as a landmark figure in the military history field, though a few of his works can be controversial and subject to debate, the ambition and scope of his writing is consistently impressive. This one is no different seeking to not only show the impact of Intelligence on history, but also it’s hard limits… that one cannot simply information their way out of conflict and combat, and that indeed decisive action undertaken without intel, or even on the basis if incorrect intelligence can often deliver decisive victories, whereas hesitation, even hesitation and delay that gains correct intelligence, can often lead to disaster.
This is highly relevant especially in the middle of such an expansive booklist… That decisive action, bravery in the face of uncertainty, and the sheer will to act are what wins conflicts… and additional information is only useful to the extent it enables this. Information overload and decision paralysis have destroyed more causes and broken more armies than all the deception, mistakes, and “unknown unknowns” ever have.
OSINT Techniques: Resources for Uncovering Online Information [2023, 550 Pages]
Michael BazzellIn the modern world Almost all the information that matters, that previous generations of commanders would kill hundreds for, that people like Alexander or Caesar could only dream of…. 99% of it is online. The challenge is finding it and understanding it.
We are endlessly producing information, endlessly collecting it, endlessly seeing the smoking gun most important tweet about the 2020 elections you’ve ever seen! And then losing it and instantly forgetting it. Watching reality itself get buried and ominously disappeared before our very eyes… even as we can occasionally feel the unnerving crawl of a million invisible eyes and spider legs ever so briefly touch us enough to notice their presence… Do they forget also? (actually yes, they have the same problem)
Of course we can’t see into the minds of intel agencies, fraudsters, foreign mafias, chinese cyber divisions and the like… But we can very quickly improve our own ability to draw that information out of its hiding places.
And good OSINT techniques are the first step to that… OSINT has gotten a bad wrap since the start of the ukraine war, basically half the institutional “OSINT” groups have been revealed to be carve outs and propaganda arms of some actual intel agency or other, with many of them turning out to have pretty blatantly manufactured false pieces as propaganda for their favoured armed factions’ Inevitable victory and look at how great this is, and don’t you want to share this so that your grandmother will vote to convert more billions into dead conscripts and 3rd worlders… War as youtube edutainment…
But the actual techniques, the actual process of you and your friends piecing together and tracking what is actually happening by gathering, uncovering and tracking publicly available info? If you could just do that efficiently, consistently, and wisely you’d be ahead of most of the intel agencies in the world.
OFFENSIVE INTELLIGENCE: 300 techniques, tools and tips to know everything about everyone, in business and elsewhere
[2023, 438 Pages]
Philippe Dylewski
Of course maybe even bigger than regular espionage, is corporate espionage… or that’s what I might say if there were actually a difference, there largely isn’t. For decades now nation states have used their intel agencies to do things as petty and obscene as try to steal trade secrets from other nations manufacturers, or to gain an upper hand in trade negotiations… And many corporations do exactly the same right back, and given that their own governments have failed to protect them from hostile nation state level actors, why shouldn’t they?
This is an especially good resource of common consumer level and unclassified methods that are ordinarily employed to gather information on companies, municipalities, wealthy families, spouses, public officials, ngos, criminal rivals… All the unnerving things that ordinary people don’t expect, yet are actually pressingly common, and is a much better introduction to “Tradecraft” than all the spybooks that try to mystify intel agencies as super-cool secret agents saving the world… instead of what they actually are: Wiretappers, bribers, blackmailers, burglars, and underwear drawer lookers.
Remember the entire game is efficiently gaining asymmetrical Information… and fat guys in C-suite have been doing that for years.
Social Engineering: The Science of Human Hacking [2018, 225 Pages]
Christopher Hadnagy
Hacking is obviously useful… but skill intensive, technical, beyond the scope of this work, and really hazardous (it can be very easy to track)… but one of the thing’s that is infinitely useful from this world and requires Zero programming ability is social engineering… You may not be able to hack past a password or hack a government database to gather (or change) information… But impersonate a cop into a telephone and some hapless administrator will gladly do it for you.
If you want to see how unnervingly effective this can be… watch the film Compliance for one of the most disturbing parables of social engineering.
Peter Wright, rogue british counter-intelligence agent Spycatcher: The Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer
[1987, 392 Pages]
Peter Wright
And
Spymaster: My Thirty-two Years in Intelligence and Espionage Against the West[2009, 480 Pages]
Oleg Kalugin
These two controversial and massive exposes on Soviet vs. British spy rings from the 50s to the 80s are excellent works for digging into a lot of the parts of espionage few hear about… Indeed large sections of public records related to the Spycatcher Saga are still classified, seemingly in violation of UK public record laws. So embarrassing and damning some it was. Spymaster especially goes into some truly insane stuff the KGB was able to pull off, to the point where they had senior moles and intel assets who were too good to use, and regularly had to come up with elaborate plans and schemes to parallel construct just where exactly they were getting their information from, so as to not burn the fact that several of the most senior people in the British government were on their payroll.
FM 2-0 Intelligence [2004, 211 Pages]
Department of the ArmyThis work is going to be dry, but is still very necessary for getting a comprehensive high level systems type understanding of intelligence. I know… I know. I’ve tried very hard to rescue you from bureaucratize, mil-abstractions, org charts… but intelligence especially is one of the fields where once you actually start organizing people and start trying to drawn up institutional level knowledge, institutional level opsec, institutional level comprehensive pictures (remember all the things I’ve said about information overload?) well once you get to that point and you have your little company sized independent self defense force… At that point You NEED someone who’s taking a systemic approach and is thinking about and cover ALL the bases…. not just the ones you and your buddies happened to be good or think was cool.
!!!ATP 2-01.3 Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield [2019, 228 Pages]
Department of the ArmyI cannot emphasize how painfully, unnervingly, disorientingly inscrutable modern warfare is at the actual point of combat. Individual soldiers very regularly lose track of everything that’s going on as soon as they hit cover and can no longer see where rounds are coming from… Remember the majority of weapons in modern warfare are LINE OF SIGHT, so if you can see the enemy you are either immediately putting rounds on them or they are putting rounds on you… now consider an individual semi or automatic rifle probably only reaches 300 to 600 meters whereas a vehicle mounted gun can reach 2000, 4000, 10,000 meters… if you can see enough that you’re getting a good picture of even the space itself, or even see something in the extreme distance it can probably put fire on you that you can’t put back… you’ll be largely blind, and deaf (guns are loud), and also you probably won’t be able to smell much through the gunpowder at the point of contact. If That’s how little info there can be and how pinholed an individual soldier can be, how does the poor commander keep track of what’s going on, and how does he communicate that?
Well you prepare in advance, you create divisions in the space, you prepare your men, you develop a language and scenarios within that, and you create a model and feedback loop of how information is going to be received, transmitted , processed, and acted upon… such that the commander, his direct reports and the men beneath them all basically understand how the battle will progress, the redundancies, what opportunities and risks might present themselves… If you’ve watched classic movies from the 80s or before, there’s usually a scene where they actually do this… the Back to the Future movies all have scenes like this… Imagine that but with worse models, better redundancy, more men copying things onto their pocket maps, and about a hundred different factors the commander has to consider before briefing everyone and actually creating the plan. This is the phase where most complex strategies and tactics actually play out, anything more complicated other that a react to contact (which has to be trained) a retreat (likewise, and where are you retreating to?) or deploying a heavy weapon (what do you have, where will it be?)… Anything more complex than the most basic orders has to be planned out and everyone briefed if you want it to be executed under fire. Good units can get more complex in their improvisation, and even they keep it simple… but if you’re commanding it, do you really think it’s a good unit?
VII. Digital OPSEC
If there’s two hard and fast rules of digital OPSEC I’d say it is
1: Always assume any digital device is a black box that’s actively spying on you, until you can confirm that it physically does not have those capabilities (dedicated not your phone, GPS devices, kestrels, ballistic calculators, radios, etc. Are invaluable for this)…
2: Never type out a google search, tweet, etc. that you wouldn’t want read in open court.
(”But Kulak” I hear you say, “You tweet and write the most insane shit I’ve ever read?” YES… And I’ve dedicated maybe cumulative 100s of hours to Free Speech political discussion, researching cases, and researching the incentives of various prosecutors, political actors, etc. I’m very confident that I could defend my online footprint in court, just as I’m very certain that your “Best ways to hide a body” google searches would hang you.
Also this project has given me the greatest excuse and smokescreen in history, you people would never even guess what I actually get up to, if anything (nothing while writing this obviously.)
But to ACTUALLY be secure you need to know the surveillance capabilities of your foes…
But if I were to give you a HEADLINE for your understanding:
EVEN AN AIRGAPPED NEVER-ONLINE COMPUTER CAN BE SPYING ON YOU.
If you read the summary of vault 7, the CIA has capabilities “Brutal Kangaroo” to extract information from air gapped computers via infected usb devices (when you then connect that USB back to an internet connected device it send the info to CIA), and to track an air gapped laptop, or device, location via the wifi networks and bluetooth devices that it pings and registers on, even if you never give permission to connect, when you see it register a network that you COULD connect, it has pinged it.
(Also old… but even if your phone is on airplane mode, all connections turned off (assuming that’s even a true turn off), it still records the gps data (and probably audio) and then just sends that to google or apple the second you reconnect.)
Buy Faraday bags and have you local phone/laptop repair guy actually physically disable the receivers on any device you want to use for fieldwork. Remember the only defense against digital surveillance, is physical removal.
Extreme Privacy: What it Takes to Disappear [2024, 590 Pages]
Michael BazzellBazzell was in FBI cyber crimes for decades and it sounds like actually worked on several advanced vigilante cases with the US Marshals, tracking major fugitives and some of the best hackers in the world… This is not a book on how to escape the Feds once you have them on you (he’s painfully explicit about that). RATHER it’s about how he helps stalker victims, celebrities, witness protection cases, etc. flee sophisticated non-state spying by say… A national newspaper, a major hostile NGO, a Cartel, a sadistic Ex Lover who also happens to be a police detective… Most everything in here is very applicable to avoiding entities that would not have the cooperation of major intelligence agencies, but damn near useless if that’s actually what you’re going up against. However, this is very useful for 1. Your own intelligence gathering efforts (if a dirty cop or the paparazzi can get this so can you) and two making it much more difficult for criminal and substate paramilitaries to track you… something highly relevant in all conflicts, many people in Northern Ireland would be alive today if they had known this stuff.
Wikileaks: Vault 7 (wikipedia page) [2017]
Also check out the works of Julian Assange, notably Cypherpunks and The Wikileaks Files: The World According to the US EmpireVault 7 was one of THE great revelations in the history of espionage and cyber security from an unknown CIA employee/contractor/other… And the capabilities it revealed are horrifying. As above:
EVEN AN AIRGAPPED NEVER-ONLINE COMPUTER CAN BE SPYING ON YOU.
But know that these capabilities are still ultimately limited by the physically possible. I eventually need to write a piece on how to properly air gap and fully hide your tracks from digital surveillance via tier 1 intel agencies, it certainly can be done, and with an clear simple to understand protocol, I think the average person of reasonable intelligence could do it (their record winning wars certainly does’’t point to omniscience on their part) but that’s a project for another day. For now just read this and take it in.
Permanent Record (Censored Content)[2019, 352 Pages]
Edward Snowden
The Autobiography of maybe the most impressive real life Cyberthriller Dissident/Superspies… Assange? Ulbricht? Mitnick? Weev? All of the famous super hackers were caught and imprisoned… Snowden set out to take on the entire security state head-on… And he’s still a free man!
Approximately 30 pages (see the link) were removed from the original in response to US lawsuits related to leaked confidential information, so the version you get may or may not include them, so i’ve included it.
This is an amazing piece of modern history to understand, as relevant now as ever.
VIII. Financing
The Sinews of war are infinite money.
-Cicero
This quote I always thought had a double meaning. Cicero can be read as lamenting the financial costs of war, that raising, training, equipping, maintaining, and deploying troops costs infinite money such that not even the Gods could ever truly afford it… OR Cicero can be read as lamenting the victorious generals of his time such a Julius Caesar, Pompey Magnus, Crassus, Mark Antony, Octavian/Augustus Caesar… That they all seem able to summon infinite funds as if their sword plunges into Gaul or Egypt caused gold to erupt forth like a geyser of oil (or well… slaves and grain).
It is the eternal condition of man and the relationship between politics and economics that the readiness for violence at once costs seemingly endless amounts of money (Ask me about night vision and optics), but that the application of violence generates equally extraordinary amounts (see the cash flow surrounding any of the wars in the past 30 years, hell see the cartels budgets).
Already we’ve seen in works on this list how criminal organizations, guerilla forces, militias, governments, and "Volunteer Self Defense Forces” generate extraordinary amounts of money by any blend of crime, “taxes”, “appropriations”, forfeitures, and the issuing of “currencies” and “bonds”…
But that’s only half the battle, my girlfriends have always looked at me incredulous when I’ve said this, but much harder than making money, is spending it. Sure a normal person’s annual salary can be blown through in a day of truly reckless spending, but once you start talking about big money, even the logistics of just spending the money itself becomes a nightmare, let alone tracking it and making sure it’s spent responsibly… Normal everyday millionaires and billionaires run into all kinds of trouble with this, now imagine what the struggle is like when international police forces, the global financial system, and often now the US military and intelligence services are trying to stop you.
Crime School: Money Laundering [2004, 244 Pages]
Chris MathersThis has Slow start, and has a digressing style that sort of detracts from the topic, but otherwise an excellent little book that serves as an strong introduction to the sheer variety and complexity of organized crime, financial regulations and money laundering.
Mathers spent close to 20 years in Royal Canadian Mounted Police undercover (Canadian equivalent of FBI) running high level money laundering operations as an intelligence front to nab senior international traffickers and large organized crime rings… Which is a vastly more complex and sophisticated police sting than I’ve really heard of elsewhere.
He has this very down to earth story telling style that contrasts heavily with the subject matter… but trust his experience and you’ll be shocked at the depth of some details.
This is incredibly valuable, especially for detailing a lot of fraud crimes, whose logistics I’d always found confusing.
Terrorism, Inc.: The Financing of Terrorism, Insurgency, and Irregular Warfare
[2015, 304 pages]
Colin ClarkeMost textbooks and financial trends books like this are complete garbage, full of bureaucratese and wordcount padding, the point of them not being to educate anyone but to act as a resume padder so that the person writing it can progress to a career in high fees consulting, or advance some political vision/buzzword which then can be cited in government or corporate documents saying whatever it is they want, but now from an outside third party. Then they can do whatever they wanted to do originally, and the author and their clique can get hired into figurehead roles of “leadership” or “advisors “ over the organization that are doing whatever it is the org wanted to do anyway.
This book is almost certainly doing all of that on some level (pay attention to any policy recommendations, or “best practices” and ask yourself how it will be used to consolidate institutional power, reinforce monopolies, and crush dissent)… but unlike most of those books this one actually deals with the subject matter in considerable detail, it even goes into Hawala networks which is so useful if you’re trying to start a network or famous Jewish banking clan, that I’m just going to pop s2 Underground’s video below, basically it allows an ongoing transfer of physical funds between people on a network, with only information being exchanged, and even then you can have pre-arranged agreements such that you could even go for extend periods without exchanging messages and still be transfering funds.The Crypto Launderers: Crime and Cryptocurrencies from the Dark Web to DeFi and Beyond
[2024, 303 Pages]
David CarlisleThe ideological, legal, and business battle around cryptocurrencies, money laundering, tax evasion, and the censorability of financial transactions is a fight that was going decades before bitcoin entered the scene (pre-bitcoin “digital money” schemes and finance are WILD case studies), and these battles will continue until either the nation state model itself collapses and we achieve Anarcho-Capitalism and an end to any democratic or government control, or until the final transaction and word is brought under total state control… Ei. Unless you’re a wide eyed fanatic like yours truly, expect the war on crypto-laundering to be a forever-war.
I’m not recommending this book because I respect Carlisle’s ideas or profession, indeed I’ve only skimmed it… it could be he’s very subtle… but my impression is he’s the type of total authoritarian, financial panopticon advocate most regulators and commentators are. Rather you should read this because this is probably the best cumulative history you’re going to get about the Evolution of crime, guerilla-economics, and freedom in the hard crypto grey and dark market world; from silkroad and the ideological darkmarkets, to Mount Gox and a million different exit scams, the rise of monero and other privacy coins, to Hansa market and all the subsequent ones, the slow move of more traditional organized crime into the space, wannacry and the rise of ransomware… and you’re going to get all of that from an AML (Anti-Money Laundering) perspective with all the adaptations in KYC (Know your client), tracking, the landmark legal cases, the adaptation in techniques… The complete Fed perspective.
If you’re buying crypto and thinking nothing can touch you, or looking to make hidden financial moves via cryptocurrencies… This is the book you should read, both for ideas and warnings.
Might review at some point.
Also Read "Bandit Country: The IRA in South Armagh” (entry 19) in Insurgency and Guerrilla Warfare for an awesome deep dive into tons of pettier or not as scrutinized forms of organized crime, and petty money laundering , that would normally never be discovered or written about… Except for the fact the men smuggling cattle and defrauding agricultural subsidies were also carrying out one of the deadliest Guerilla Sniper campaigns in history.
IX. Conventional Infantry, and Unmounted Combat
Fighting conventionally is both extraordinarily safe and extraordinarily dangerous. It is extraordinarily safe in that if you can achieve the normal principles of fire superiority, maneuverability, and combined arms, you can be very confident the outcome of battles against inferior troops will have minimal casualties: Even in pretty fast and dirty manners such as just having lots of ammo and several long barreled rifled you swap out as an alternative to a machine gun, employing green or untrained troops in a fixed firing position where they won’t have to think or exercise bravery , improvised explosives, guerilla “artillery” like rubber band, kinetic, or gunpowder molotov cocktail launchers or launchers of other explosives. Remember you (again, the hypothetical you, some guy 3 countries over fighting with Us Special Forces arms smuggling) don’t actually have to do conventional tactics well, professionally, or even with good equipment to achieve a level of fire superiority that you can go through dozens of engagements with minimal risk, often at quite an impressive tempo, relatively safely and with predictable casualties, just so long as the other guy is worse and not dug in to a prohibitive degree… however It is extraordinarily dangerous in that the second your opponent is better equipped, better trained, has better resources to call on, or has had the opportunity to prepare deep defenses, you can be very screwed very quickly.
This is the balancing act with conventional and unconventional tactics… you can get away with taking on stronger foes, even if they’re dug in, better equipped, and alert (for some value of alert) by using unconventional tactics surprize, individual stealth, disguise, hit and run tactics, (see Oct 7th), but if you get caught out you’re screwed… whereas with conventional tactics you can actually stand and fight, but that fight will be entirely determined by how well you actually fight (though if you prepared right you’ll probably have more luck trying to break off).
That should sound intuitive, and indeed a shocking amount of this IS intuitive… right up until shells start landing or something goes wrong, then you want a really explicit understanding.
!!! Infantry Combat: The Rifle Platoon
Colonel John F. AntalPart of Antals “Interactive Exercise” trilogy, a wonderful trio of books meant to simulate platoon and company level command decisions that’s part BRUTAL choose your own adventure book, and part excuse for a veteran combat arms commander and war scholar to get into polemics, hypotheticals, false lessons/institutional tunnel vision he wants to address. You can start with this one or with “Armor Attacks” (entry 63) which was published first, I read this one first and wrote a review of it a while back and I’d say it’s a book every prepper, armchair general, and enlisted man should read.
I thought I was hot shit until I read this and lead my troops to their deaths 5-8 times in a row… and for that reason I probably consider this one the best, because I personally learnt a TON from the experience.
I’ve become a massive Antal proponent, as you will see.
Marine Rifle Squad MCIP 3-10A.4i Marine Rifle Squad [2020, 296 pages]
US Marine CorpThis is a tight little work focused on 8-13 man Squads and individual 4 man fireteams. Now, the official doctrine and layout of squads and fireteams vary heavily by army and forces, some say the basic squad unit is 8 men, some 10, some 15, probably some communist group has said 20… and insurgent/guerilla groups go the opposite way for fear informants leaking on too many, so you get 2-4 man units that are expected to act entirely independently… and of course real pro-gamers can do one man sneaking missions entirely of their own innitiative no one else ever knows about and thus have a zero percent chance of informants or leaks… Unless of course they google too obviously “How to break into US Military bases?”.
But this tight little work is probably the best all around current work on small units tactics and skills you’re going to find, you can implement a lot of it pretty much immediately next time you LARP or goof-around with your friends, pay particular attention to the Brief appendix on Fieldcraft and particularly FOOTCARE. I cannot tell you how many times this has screwed me on long hikes and rucks, something every backpacker should read.
FM 3-21.8 The Infantry Rifle Platoon and Squad (602 pages)
Us Department of the Army [2008]This is a wider work focusing on the logic and tactics of 15-44 man elements composed of several underlying squads. It’s not a golden age Field Manual, but is an amazing all around deep dive into all aspects of Platoon level tactics, employment, logistics, sustainment, convoying, interactions with other elements, reaction to unconventional attacks and unconventional forces…
Infantry Attacks [1937, 340 Pages]
Field Marshal Erwin RommelThe Magnificent Bastard’s book.
This is THE evergreen book on modern warfare. Erwin Rommel’s deep dive into the most successful stalemate breaking tactics of WW1 is not only one of the most important books on WW1, but one of the most important books of WW2 and the entire corpus of modern warfare. You might think it’s out of date, and it certainly takes some imagination to picture how this would translate to the modern battlefield… but as figures like Colonel Antal are very keen to point out: Many of these types of battles, and employments of these tactics have simply not happened since the World Wars. Countless types of battles, types of problems, degrees of extremity and pieces of tactical logic lie buried in the Trenches of World War 1 and the Fields of World War 2, and Rommel is the man who was able to dig all those tactical insights out of the trenches and turn them into Victory in France and elsewhere.
I was shocked when a work this dated was suggested to me, I wouldn’t have thought of something this old when I started compiling this list, but it’s especially relevant when you consider that a lot of the limitations of early 20th century armies are going to be replicated at the level of militias and sub-state elements that won’t be able to use cell phones obviously for reasons of security, and which may be thrown back on artillery timetables, runners, and other dated technologies to maintain communications in the midst of battle.
If Patton can read it, so can you.
X. Ground Mounted Operations and Vehicle Combat
See Also: Adventures of a Despatch Rider (entry 44 on this list).
!!! Armored Attacks: The Tank Platoon [1991, 368 Pages]
Colonel John F. AntalAntal’s excellent sister novel to Infantry Combat in his “Interactive Exercise” trilogy. This one I got the second-best ending first try and probably learnt a lot less for my troubles than with Infantry Combat, however this is an amazing introduction to the fast dynamics of mounted combat. This work focuses specifically on a tank platoon with several other elements getting attached as you go, but much of the logic and tactics apply just as well to Technicals and light armored vehicles, once you mentally scale down the firepower and armor on hand (and scale up the speed and fuel range)… So while I expect very few people reading this will ever have 4 Abrams tanks and a whack of additional infantry fighting vehicles at their disposal, a lot of this applies equally well with light vehicles against lighter targets, assuming you don’t do anything stupid like try to rush entrenched positions with your Technicals. (though the Russians are doing this with motorcycles now… so maybe the ultra-light cavalry charge is back for good?)
TC 21-305-20 Manual for the Wheeled Vehicle Operator
[2016, 368 Pages; about 100 Useful pages]
US Department of the ArmyMost of this is just nagging that you should have gotten in drivers ed, truck-driver’s ed, and checklist procedures… However the back 100 pages of this included interesting pieces on vehicle camouflage (very important to understand, especially hiding vehicles from aircraft radar), convoy procedure, off-road driving, and vehicle recovery. So worth a skim if you’re doing anything hazardous.
FM 7-7j Mechanized Infantry Platoon and Squad [1987, 507 pages]
US Department of the ArmyAn absolutely gorgeous manual. Again one of those peak 80s old-school Field Manuals. Highly relevant to anyone who uses wheeled vehicles, or who wants to understand NATO mechanized infantry. You almost certainly are never going to actually get a platoon of Bradleys or other armored fighting vehicles, but this is very applicable to homebrew technicals and ordinary vehicle tactics with a grain of salt and a good dose of common sense.
Pay particular attention to the Appendices, tons of universally applicable info is buried back there.FM 31-23D Special Forces Mounted Operations [1999, 124 pages]
Department of the Army
This work is painfully thin, I wish it was about 4x longer. But this is the main doctrinal work on the employment of Light Vehicles, Motorcycles, ATVs, Humvees, and by extension Technicals and other modified civilian vehicles, as well as the logistics of Caching, camouflage considerations, infiltration and exfiltration… It’s painfully brief… but with this you can probably assemble quite the neet little internal doctrine for a light force by combining it with tactics found in other works on this list.
FM 3-20.98 Reconnaissance and Scout Platoon [2009, 622 Pages]
Department of the Army
This is a great text going into intense detail on the tactics and strategy of high speed, ultralight reconnaissance, scouting, and the skirmishing and screening actions that happen on the edges of armies. As I’ve mentioned with regards to special forces, in western armies these actions and tactics are usually employed by elite units who can be trusted to do high risk actions beyond the relative safety of the main force… however once you get into worse armies and guerilla forces these tactics become things that can be done by barely trained units because they don’t have a heavy weapons stand up and fight conventional force to reinforce them or any of those factors that gives conventional forces relative safety… what seems risky to a strong conventional force, becomes the most survivable option to a weak unconventional force… Thus we see wide raiding parties employing these tactics in North Africa and the Sahel region by technical and motorcycle equipped forces.
So far we haven’t seen these types of guerilla forces employ them with any extraordinary doctrine or complex tactics… but given this strategy is already working and straining the defacto post-imperial French Empire there, even with North African levels of organization, there’s good reason to think these type of units and tactics could be pushed vastly further if you combined them with current US reconnaissance platoon doctrine and special forces tactics. You go to war with the force you have… and a whole lot of people have light arms, pickup trucks and motorcycles.
TC 21-305-2 TRAINING PROGRAM FOR NIGHT VISION GOGGLE DRIVING OPERATIONS
[1998, 159 Pages]
Department of the ArmyNight Vision is a perennially painful topic for preppers and the like because even a single tube Monocular PSV will run you $3000-4000. And that’s the bare bones price of ENTRY! Once you start discussing binocular, thermals, Ir Illuminators, blackout switches on vehicles, how to go about equipping everyone in your group… suddenly you’re talking considerable amounts of cash. Maybe hundreds of thousands for a platoon sized element.
However this remains a highly relevant skillsets to have and NVG driving is one of the few ultra-high level skills on this list that I already know is being employed in the North American battlespace by the Mexican cartels to smuggle entire vehicles loaded with Cocaine and Fentanyl across the border, and then smuggle arms and cash back to Mexico… Here’s the two part video of the Gear head who bought one of these modified stealth trucks used at a DEA auction (Part 1, part 2)
XI. Warfare at the High Level: Understanding Modern Militaries and Operations
I reviewed your orders with the eagerness of a great novel.
-Napoleon to Marshal Berthier,
his Chief of Staff
!!!Combat Team: The Captain’s War [1998, 384 Pages]
Col. John F AntalThe third and final book in Antals’ “Interactive Exercise” series. This one I strongly recommend you read last after Infantry Combat and Armored Attacks higher up on this list, as obviously the role of a Captain in this one is more complex than a Lieutenant, and a good chunk of the fun if you read all three is seeing how much you do or don’t improve between them… This one I got the best ending within 1 mistake… Which I felt was an achievement, but I also felt kinda cheated in that you get way more from these books when you screw up and have to slog through a dozen different death scenarios and really hammering down why you’re an idiot who’s getting all his subordinates killed.
These exercises are really good at forcing you to think strategically and make decisions with incomplete information, and this one especially I think Antal’s polemic and speculative writing, really trying to hammer out what tactical leadership IS, and trying to throw the gauntlet to complacent habits and manners of thinking… He was really at the top of his game.
!!! How To Make War [2003, 672 Pages]
James F DunniganDunnigan is the war-nerd’s war-nerd and worked on maybe close to 100 wargames back in the era when those were only played by super-autists and actual military officers.
And this book is really REALLY unique. Arguably he might have been the only one who could write it. He went through every service branch, every unit type, every occupation, consideration, history, even weapons systems and laid out in 600 pages the best guide to the whole of modern warfare and how the entire thing works… as of 2003 publicly available information.
To get how nuts this is understand that most junior and mid level army OFFICERS probably don’t have the understanding of seapower and vice versa that he lays out. It’s a one of a kind work that probably won’t be repeated by anyone soon.
Next War: Reimagining How We Fight [Sept 28 2023, 399 Pages]
Col John F Antal
Yes. Another Antal book (there are 5 total on this list). This one I didn’t even realize existed until the list was nearly done. But this is a HIGHLY relevant one for our purposes because it’s focused on the realistic, near future sci-fi applications of the developments we’re already seeing. Notably the revolution in intelligence, and intelligence tempo resulting from the blend of AI and Drones. WITHIN 9 DAYS of him publishing this book the October 7th attacks happened, several of his predictions came true and the first documented cases of Israeli AI being used for target selection in their response was confirmed.
And this is the second time he’s done this. See his 2022 book in entry 75 below that predicted the course of the Russo-Ukraine war… which he again published less than a month before it began.
Antal publishing a new book is now my #1 leading indicator for a major war.
On Operations: Operational Art and Military Disciplines [2021, 256 Pages]
Brett A. Friedman
The rise of the general staff as the core institution of information processing, creation of orders, and decision ENABLEMENT (heaven help you the staff if actually making the decisions instead of a unitary commander) at speed and tempo was one of the decisive developments of the Napoleonic Wars… Napoleon elevated Berthier, his personal secretary, to the rank of Marshall of France, the running of this staff is so vital to his ability to do anything in the midst of war.
In this work Friedman follows the development of the General staff and the operational artform from Napoleon to the present, presenting a bit of an iconoclastic argument that the while the operational art itself is invaluable, the concept of “Military operations” and the Operational level of war (as distinct from and between the tactical and the strategic) is deeply flawed and has lead to a sort of dangerous detachment between the reality of command and the formation of objectives in most western countries.
FM 3-0 Operations FM 3-0 Operations [2022, 280 Pages]
and FM 3-06 Urban Operations
Department of the ArmyNow you may be asking yourself, after my disparaging of most current US field manuals and publications for their bureaucratese and org chart nonsense… How does all of THAT get translated to actual military action and command decisions that in spite of everything wrong and cumbersome beyond belief with the US military (not least that if you follow the chain of command upwards it suddenly fragments into hundreds of advisory groups, congress, generals, the white house, the president (now very distinct from the whitehouse), think tanks, various proxies for “Allies” who sell secrets to foreign adversaries… And about a million other agencies and points of influence. How does THAT, in spite of what looks like compete strategic and decision making incoherence, somehow translate that into military actions that, at least for now have been successful? Well these are the manuals that tell you how it’s done! Complete with case studies, core command concepts, information management, strategic doctrines… everything necessary for the army, to translate the madness of US government (or disregard said madness) and produce an actionable course of attack at the tempo of modern warfare is there, for the Army. There’s also about a million other docs on Joint operations, interagency stuff, NATO alliances… All the madness that accumulates in a military across 80+ years of hegemony.
Sure much of it is politically debateable, dated, and will probably be shown to be an artifact of a dying military paradigm during the next war or world crisis… But if you want to really understand the high level decision making and how the OODA loop of a military organization works, this is shockingly readable for what it is. and FM 3-06 Urban Operations translates that to maybe the most relevant setting for an guerilla or sub-state force/faction to consider in the modern world.
Edit: Added reading
The 4 Generations of Modern Warfare [2003, Short essay 3 pages] and The 4th Generation Warfare Handbook [2016, 118 Pages]
William S. Lind and LtCol Gregory A. Thiele
Lind is one of the great controversial modern military thinkers and his 4 generations of warfare is a very useful concept and an amazing historical framework… That you can already see breaking down when he posits it. Basically the theory tracks Western Warfare from the end of the 30 years war and the rise of the Westphalian State and the Convict Line-infantry formation of the 18th century (1st Gen), to the revolution of the 19th century you see first with the Napoleonic era, to the mass total war of world war 1 and the french timetable tactics (2nd Gen), to the high innitiative Maneuver warfare tactics you see pioneered by figures like Rommel and Wehrmacht officers in WW2 3rd Gen), and then 4th gen is the posited endpoint of the framework as insurgencies, state backed criminal groups, Narco-Terrorists, paramilitaries, guerilla movements, Private Military Contractors, etc. Start breaking the entire preconditions of Westphalian state competition which even led to the phenomenon of generations of warfare…
And then There is a positted 5th Generations of warfare where digital techniques, narrative control, psychological warfare, propaganda efforts, etc. become the defining moves by state and non-state actors to control warfare… If you wanted to be pedantic or do as most 5th Gen critics seem to do and treat speech as a military action, the act of writing this Reading List itself might be considered a “5th Generation warfare maneuver”. Then the Ukraine War happened and 2nd Gen Attritional Trench Warfare re-entered the world… Seemingly breaking the entire framework.
You’ll notice these generations keep getting faster and faster? 1st to 2nd gen took 100-200 years to transition, fairly cleanly, then 4th generation warfare to 5th takes only 10-20 years? Even as really primitive tactics come back? That’s the sign of a breaking framework.
Yet this is a great framework and history lesson of just how the nature of war and the relationship of the state, non-state, war, military, civilian, and paramilitary worlds all have evolved and interact.
I’m including S2 Underground’s video on 5th generation warfare from 2022 below, that hopefully across all of these you can start getting some ideas.
XII. Artillery
God favours the side with the best artillery.
-Napoleon Bonaparte
Any commander of any unit needs a strong understanding of Artillery. Artillery is the king of the battlefield and depending on the war is responcible for the MAJORITY of casualties. Even if your little militia or guerilla unit has ZERO access to artillery, you MUST understand it because it can be used against you… However access to artillery, or unconventional alternatives reaching 10s of miles is frighteningly more accessible than you might think.
On Gunnery: The Art and Science of Field Artillery from the Civil War to the Dawn of the 21st Century
[2009, 252 Pages]
Michael D. GriceGrice is a highly knowledgeable Artillery Officer, and while this book has a bibliography that includes dozens of US army field manuals for operating specific pieces, this survey book is more useful to the would be warlord for covering, not the “State of the art” but the dated and antiquated. Napoleon once wrote to a Junior Commander who complained about his shortage of artillery, that 10 years earlier Napoleon had travelled to a nearby town and seen several artillery pieces incorporated into a war memorial there, and that these could be quickly recommissioned by the Junior Officer… This worked!
In any conflict understanding and being able to deploy heavy weapons will be vital, whether they be state of the art, homebrew monstrosities, museum pieces, or repurposed oddities. and with sections on civil war artillery, arcing Machine-gun indirect fire, ww1 and 2 artillery and modern systems… Basically every conventional artillery capability is covered right down to understanding the math and how to use range tables and paper-artillery computers like Great-Granddad.
7 Seconds to Die: A Military Analysis of the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War and the Future of Warfighting
[Feb 3rd. 2022, 160 Pages]
Col [ret] John F. AntalIt’s long been observed that “prediction is very difficult, especially about the future”, however in this work John Antal (the interactive exercise guy) did something almost as impressive: he noticed the present.
Weeks before the “Special military operation” in Ukraine saw its first vehicle bog down in the mud, and months before the trench lines solidified… Before even the Canadian Truckers had their bank accounts frozen… “7 Seconds to Die” was published, and he laid out exactly how Various new military and consumer drones were revolutionizing the battlefield and how fast the kill-chain of intel gathering to getting hit had gotten, and how vulnerable this rendered even heavy armored vehicles.
You did not hear about the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War between Azerbaijan and Armenia because it happened between Sept 27th and Nov 10th 2020, the height of 2020 Election madness, but everything horrifying and unique about the Russo-Ukraine war happened there first… And Antal managed to recognize the significance, write a book, and publish it, with seemingly wild predictions based of this small war no one had heard of… in under 1 year and 3 months. And he was dramatically right.
This is part of why Antal is the only person with 4 entries on this list, and why I listed all 3 of his “interactive exercises”.
Col Antal has his finger on the pulse of modern high intensity warfare, and reading him is amongst the best ways to gain a feel for it.
Handbook of Model Rocketry Seventh Edition [2004, 388 pages]
G. Harry StineAs we are currently seeing in Gaza and Lebanon rocketry and missile tech are now the backbone of Guerilla artillery. Requiring far less prohibitive materials (artillery gun barrels are feat’s of metallurgy and challenge to source) to achieve often longer range, at the barrier of a higher unit cost compared to shells (but then few guerilla groups can source thousands of tons of shells anyway).
As far as I can tell there isn’t any great secret to developing your own rocket tech… It just takes interest, investment, and work. However even for kids in model rocket clubs, it is rewarding work: modern model rocket books and kits can get you to the level of late 19th early 20th century rocketry VERY quickly. This is a technology that had military applications dating back to the Napoleonic wars and even early medieval China. And 12 year old kids with a few books and testing surpass that early rocket artillery very quickly, and besieged guerillas in the middle-east achieve impressive results under far less ideal settings.
Once you read this continue with “Make: High-Power Rockets: Construction and Certification for Thousands of Feet and Beyond” by Westerfield.
XIII. logistics
“Amateurs talk tactics, professionals study logistics”-General Omar Bradley
Supplying War: Logistics From Wallenstein to Patton [1977, 421 Pages]
Martin van CreveldI’ve tried hard to avoid deep histories on this list. It’s eternally tempting to just tell you to read Caesar’s Gallic Wars, or the complete campaigns of Napoleon… But this is supposed to be about preparing for modern warfare, no correcting the Modern westerner’s lack of a basic education.
However this history is VERY necessary. Logistics is the real heart of all military considerations, the challenge of being “The Firstest with the mostest”. Indeed, many of the most devastatingly decisive battles in history have gone unsung and unnamed because one side didn’t manage to show up. Win 3 battles with few losses and you’re a genius… Win a 100 battles with no losses, and you’re a logistician.
”But we’re talking about a small militia or warlord sized faction… What does logistics have to do with that?”
Everything. And that’s why a HISTORY of logistics is so important, because a small militia element is unlikely to ever be in a position to airdrop special forces and air traffic controllers to prepare a runway for an airborne division… but you are almost certainly going to want to know how 19th century forces hauled artillery pieces on sleds,or the logic of staging areas, truck convoys, and fuel rationing.
Logistics in the Falklands War [2014, 310 Pages]
Kenneth L. PrivratskyDeep dive into one of the most insane campaigns and logistical feats in all of warfare. The long range war across thousands of kilometers of open water and remote Islands that were last in the news during the Shackleton expedition (check out Shakleton’s book “South”, another amazing book on logistics and leadership).
But wait? Why read up on a sea campaign? Even the most successful warlord isn’t going to have an Aircraft carrier?
Indeed, but that’s not why you’re reading this… you’re reading this because modern vehicles: trains, trucks, helicopters, cargo planes, motorcycles, small boats, etc. have fundamentally altered the nature logistics in ways we really don’t even understand militarily, so rarely have these systems been pushed to their most extreme possible limits.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, but some mad maxian warlord is going to figure out how to do a 2000-4000 km flash raid with maybe even a brigade sized element, over the course of a weekend (you can cover 2000+ km in a day over highway by hot swapping drivers), and that’s going to change history when it happens.
The freedom convoy already proved it was possible, in deep winter! Some madlad is eventually going to do it armed.
And studying the most complex example of the refueling logic, logistical staging, reaction to loss of helicopters, and countless other complications in one of the most complex locations and relatively recent real war case studies… That’s going to be invaluable.
Also checkout Naval Gazing’s series on the Falklands.
Falkland’s War The Soldier’s Load and The Mobility of A Nation
[1980, 138 Pages]
S. L. A. MarshallA book every backpacker should read.
The backbone of war remains the human backbone. The ability to carry 50+ lbs. of equipment the final 5, 10, or 40 miles to the very front of combat… And this is the classic study by an otherwise mixed officer and writer (see my piece on Rifle fire for why I think he and Grossman were completely wrong about the subject of “killing”)
This remains one of the best if not only deep dives into the logistical challenge of Rucking and it’s effect on soldiers, and is probably the most relevant to anything you as a prepper/warlord/criminal/volunteer will be doing…
As an Exercise: My advice when reading this is to imagine you’re planning to backpack 50 lbs of cocaine or other contraband across the wilderness of an international border (look up one near you) on your lonesome or with a buddy, and to also plan for how you would carry the equipment and other kit for scaling a border wall or crossing a river… How would you get to the border? how would you eventually get mobile again AFTER the border? Would you try to hop on a bus? Rent a car? Buy a bicycle or ebike? How would you get back home again after you’d sold off or stashed your contraband? Pick a major city in the other country you’d want to get ot for your sale of stash. What are the OPSEC considerations? Actually print of a map and try to plot it all out, there and back again undetected. Could you stay in hotels? They require a credit card, so you’ll be camping… do you have camping kit? How much does that weigh?
You’ll be surprised how much thinking through and planning these considerations in one exercise transfers to so many other things, and makes a lot of Marshall’s considerations more immediate.
The Soldier’s Load
XIV. Precision Marksmanship, Advanced Sniper Skills, and Tactics
Concealed Precision shooting is perhaps the greatest force multiplier on the modern battlefield. Whereas conventional armed conflict emphasizes VOLUME of fire, with many conflicts rising to the level of expending 50,000 or even 100,000 rounds per enemy kill (and the extraordinary logistical hurdles that come with that), sniping not only allows economy of shooting, it allows for consistent kills against foes who can lay down 1000s of times the volume of fire with a manageable risk to the skillful shooter.
Of course the reason this has not displaced conventional warfare or forced volume of fire tactics to a backburner, despite having shown a remarkable dominance since the napoleonic days when skirmishing riflemen consistently outperformed musketmen… is that it requires descent training, individual self-directed discipline, basic high school math, and, for all practical purposes, sufficient literacy to read technical manuals. Which combined are shockingly rare.
Sniping is the triangle of fieldcraft, marksmanship, and tactics. not only do you have to be a brilliant shot and maintainer of your rifle, able to land consistent hits with the first shot of the day on a cold rifle… you also need to be a great soldier or espionage operative able to independently maneuver and bend your environment to move unhidden to various hide sites without compromising yourself physically or informationally, and you have to be a great tactician able to predict and maneuver around your opponent, be that a enemy armor platoon or security convoy of black SUVs.
Of course one can overstate it, many a colonial government has been defeated by the cumulative effort of terrible snipers who missed 95% of the time… But that’s an excuse. You don’t want to be an Algerian or Iraqi sniper… you want to, atleast be capable, of glorious “Day of the Jackal” (the good one 1973) style perfection.
(I should also probably read the book it’s based on)
See also Fry the Brain: the Art Of Urban Sniping and It’s role in Modern Guerilla Warfare and Bandit Country: The IRA in South Armagh (one of the greatest guerilla sniper campaigns of all time) in Section 3: Insurgency and Guerilla Warfare this list.
Long Range Shooting Handbook: A Beginners Guide to Precision Rifle Shooting
Ryan M. ClecknerEvery shooter needs a dedicated book on precision long range rifle shooting. Understanding MOA and Mils, how to zero their rifles, how to account for holdovers, and the fundamentals of marksmanship are universally applicable… and then the advanced topics “What is a kestrel?”, “How do laser rangefinders work?”, “How do you prepare range cards?”, “How should you be tracking your shooting groupings in a range diary?”, “Is it impolite to adjust your sandbag in front of female shooters?”
The world of long range ballistics in majestic and arcane, and this is a great introduction.
The Ultimate Sniper: An Advanced Training Manual For Military and Police Snipers
[2006 Updated and Expanded, 587 Pages]
Maj. John L Plaster [Paladin Press]THE Sniper book. A shockingly comprehensive deep dive into precision marksmanship, ballistics, and tactics in both field armed combat as well as police and clandestine sniping, including even scoped pistol “sniping” at shorter ranges from concealed positions.
The amount of expertise that has gone into and reviewed all of this work shines off the page, with over 20 senior ranked officers and NCOs in the acknowledgements, and the whole thing has a shocking number of pictures and illustrations keeping incredibly readable. If you are into rifle shooting at all, this is a book to check out.!!!The Ultimate Sniper: The Video [1994, 90 minutes]:
FM 3-05.222 Special Forces Sniper Training and Employment [2003, 474 pages]
US Department of the ArmyNot one of the artwork army Field Manuals but still a highly readable overview of everything from fieldcraft to strategic deployment, and a good look into official tactics and doctrine, do not skip the appendices or Bibliography… For all the legal troubles the US Government gave Paladin Press back in the day, they sure do cite them a lot in their training manuals.
Also Consider: “The Official US Army Sniper Training and Operations Manual”(FM 3-22.10 /FM 23-10 / TC 3-22.10) It’s a very expansive and well presented consumer Amalgamation. I have the Pdf, but can’t link it like the others. On Amazon. (812 Pages)
XV. Combat, and Survival Medicine
This is probably the worst section of this list. General First Aid I’ve interacted with a fair bit, and I like to think I have some medical knowledge, I technically worked in the field and adjacent… but I’m painfully aware of my limitations here. The issue with prepper/combat medicine isn’t so much the information. Its getting it Efficiently… There are millions of medical textbooks, and millions of first aid books, and there are even lots of books on trauma medicine or even amature surgery where access to doctors could be days away, and there are books on combat medicine and medics… But what the hell is “Warlord Medicine” or “Guerilla medicine”? There aren’t any books on treating gunshot wound’s in your mom’s basement after a heists has gone wrong and you can’t go to the hospital… or at least none that I know of.
Indeed one could posit that if you’re running a larger element, our hypothetical warlord company, you basically need your own medical support and logistics… how do you arrange that?
I know Backpackers and Mountaineers often complain about the struggle of sourcing antibiotics, morphine, and other drugs western medical regulations heavily control, but are obviously potentially life saving when you’re on the edge of Everest… What are the books that deal with the process of overcoming that and assembling those kits?
If you know please share!
Update:
The Survival Medicine Handbook: A Guide for when Help is NOT on the Way
[2013, 408 Pages]
Joseph Alton MD and Amy Alton ARNP
This is tight guide that goes into full on survival SURGERY and preparedness, things like long term 3rd degree wound care, guerilla surgery, anesthetic, and even amputation. Real hardcore survival writing, deeply impressive work.
Ranger Medic Handbook [Many Editions]
Also consider pairing: Emergency War SurgeryThis is a painfully limited work, but excellent (and with a good references page to lots of other promising works) the ethos it tries to convey especially is invaluable. It goes through the stats of combat casualties and causes of death and lays out lots of processes, notably how to manage a CASEVAC, and a KIT LIST for advanced combat medical supplies, however it is painfully lacking in pictures and lots of basics. The ideal version of this book would be about 400 pages longer than it is… As is while there’s tons in here you aren’t going to get elsewhere, and you aren’t going to get the PRIORITIES of combat medicine elsewhere (No other medical textbook is going to remind you to return fire)… The ideal way to read this is probably with another medical textbook open beside it.
Where There Is no Doctor: A Village Healthcare Handbook [2010, 503 Pages)
David WernerThis book is deeply interesting, in that it’s intended for a survival situation where there are no doctors (promising), based on real world conditions of deprevation, disease, malnutrition, etc. (more promising), and it assumes it’s reader is a barely literate 3rd worlder (dear lord). So you get a book that will take you through all the diseases of exposure, malnutrition, and infected water, assuming that you have dozens of people depending on YOU as their primary healthcare provider, walk you through the steps of homemaking casts or delivering babies yourself… and then feels the need to remind you that you should not treat wounds by introducing animal dung into the body (read my article on this).
It’s basic, but I can guarantee that as a westerner you have not even heard of half this stuff. And most importantly it runs you through what happens when a crappy medical provider fucks up. Which not only is useful in survival situations where someone invariably will fuck up, but actually might help YOU dear westerner identify when your crappy foreign nurse or “doctor” who got a visa as a “skilled worker” fucks up YOUR healthcare, and no one at the hospital is telling you that THAT is the source of the complication because they don’t want to be sued or suffer reprisals for breaking rank.
Remember, the third world is only a flight away. And socialized health-care always reverts to the quality of the worst person in that society.
XVI. Survival and Specific Operational Environments
Everyone should be versed in 2-3 survival/operational environments of Desert, Jungle, Arctic, Mountain, and Amphibious. There is nowhere that doesn’t have one or two of these in some degree. Even a place like Iowa actually blends extreme cold and Desert condition when you look at the extremes of what the place gets, whereas states like Florida are very obviously blends of Jungle and Amphibious Conditions.
“You always fight in the rain”, or the equivalent (dust storm in the case of some deserts). That is to say, that the nature of survival and combat is such that you ARE going to be out and having to operate in the very worst conditions your region develops, and if you CAN’T, then you’re throwing your opponents massive advantages. Indeed given bad weather and rough conditions impose hard limits on your enemy and often impose hard limits on visibility and machinery, Timing your actions to coincide with the very worst conditions can actually be a very sound strategy to gain stealth and surprise… There’s no better time to sneak onto an enemy base or, as the denizens of New Orleans can tell you, rob a bank than in the midst of hurricane… but you have to be more capable than your quarry to thrive in that environment, it does no good to simply get your vehicle stuck within the enemy’s line of fire.
🎥Combat in Deep Snow and Extreme Cold [1950, 30 minutes]
US ArmySolid little oldschool video that quickly lays out the tactics, logic, camo, and survival skills for cold weather Ski Raiding.
🎥!!!A comprehensive look at the Canadian Army Sleep System [30 minutes]
Oshawa BushcraftAwesome little video about one of the best assemblages of kit ever given to soldiers and how soldiers and campers have modified, augmented, and repaired it over the years.
Starting from a waterproof Bivy sack, this sleep system is able to survive outside down to Minus 50 in the arctic and still have the soldier fight the next day… and there isn’t a secret, it’s just progressively combining more items that increase cold weather survivability, until it’s 8 items and 18 lbs. Then you just carry less of it when you aren’t going to the Arctic. From watching this you should basically understand how to assemble kit for your own equivalent all weather bivy shelter.
Arctic and Subarctic operations B-GG-302-002 Arctic and Sub-Arctic Operations, (Parts 1 & 2 Basic Cold Weather Training & Northern Operations Included)
[1982, 455 Pages]
Department of Defense CanadaThis is a great old-school field manual, and a set of skills a lot of American soldiers simply never get exposed to because almost all US military installations are in the south or southwest and get very light winters.
By contrast Canada, at least in theory… when they have budget, tries to have all soldiers cold weather qualified and tries to deploy everyone who’s in long enough to the arctic for a deep freeze exercise. These older guides especially are great because they assume you have way finnickier heavy oldschool kit, which not only gives you the right mindset and skills, but also gives you a good idea how to make out if you’re buying crappy kit or just surplus store odds and ends or whatever the hardware has when on a trip (Most important: always put garbage bags in your vallises and travel bags, don’t trust anything just cause it says “Waterproof”).
Valuable to anyone venturing into winter.
Jungle Operations FM 90-5 Jungle Operations [1982, 191 Pages]
Department of the ArmyAwe ya! Crank the Snake Eater. This is one of those gorgeous classic Field Manuals… Jungle warfare instruction from right after the Vietnam era.
Now, Jungles are far more expansive than you might think, sure a lot of definitions might confine them to the equatorial region… but read through briefly and I think you’ll struggle to tell me it doesn’t describe survival in Florida and the American gulf just as well, and a great deal of these skills apply just as well to water-logged temperate regions and rain-forests such as lakes, innsmouths, and river deltas, notable a lot of general forrest and un-powered small-boat skills are buried in this manual, which are useful anywhere the geography gets restrictive and you might have to water-insert (so the entire eastern half of North America).MCWP 3 35.6 Desert Operations [2004, 223 Pages]
Us Marine Corps
Crank the Teenage Dirtbag. This manual is from 2004, but it actually is almost as good as the classic Field Manuals. As with Jungle Operations I encourage you to stretch your imagination of what qualifies as desert. Sure North America has a lot of desert, but I can guarantee you the exact same types of tactical considerations, open terrain, and even heat casualties from lack of shade and water will crop up in places like North Dakota and Saskatchewan… especially if your tactical situation starts to degrade… Specifically a lot of the considerations that come with the fact that there are no or few tree lines and you might wind up in spots where observers or tank optics could see you from 5-15 kms away and start landing long range shots or artillery. A huge number of these skill are going to be relevant or partially relevant anywhere west of the Mississippi.
MCRP 12 10 A. 3 Mountain Leader’s Guide To Mountain Warfare Operations
[2018, 420 Pages]
US Marine CorpsThis is a great mountaineering book, though ideally paired with a civilian textbook focused more on self-directed study and entry to the hobby like “Mountaineering: The Freedom of the Hills” (several editions). However aside from readability and the assumption you are being responsibly trained by qualified responcible experts (always a dubious assumption), this is a great book… All the mountain climbing skill are covered in a way that even if they wouldn’t necessarily make you confident to do them undirected yourself the first time, you’d certainly be able to judge other books or any guides/friends you let take you out based on it… And all the tactical, operational, strategic, logistics, and survival considerations of mountain operations are covered in wonderful detail.
XVII. Amphibious Warfare
40% of people on Earth live within 100 miles of the coast, and once you extend that to 200 and add navigable waterways, it becomes something like 70-80%. And contrary to what one might naively think the nautical world has ALWAYS leant itself to private and substate interests exercising sovereignty. The logistical capacity and flexibility offered by common consumer boats dwarfs that of even wonders like the modern pickup, and unlike the modern pickup, boats are not dependent or bottled up by networks of state maintained roadways.
The smuggler and pirate have defined non-state military power since the mercenary “Sea People” defeated the bronze age civilizations as Immortalized in the Iliad… And to this day sea smugglers and pirates pose persistent challenges even to the might of the American empire.
If you live at all in the right areas, consider the irresistible calling:
Booze, Boats, and Billions: Smuggling Liquid Gold [1988, 332 Pages]
C. W. HuntThe long drug war of 1920 to Present has been the longest running and most comprehensive campaign of state vs. non-state warfare and sub-warfare In north American, and maybe even world history (it has surpassed the 100 years war)… And while there are a million case studies, this one of Canadian and American boat smugglers on the lakes and rivers of America’s northern borders is one of the ones it’d be very easy to miss, and which between drugs, guns, and people, has never truly ended… these stories may have had their zenith in the 20s and the rise of American organized crime and the many ties to major Canadian financial and political families… but to this day I’m constantly hearing about multi-million dollar smuggling rings flitting across the lakes, and in the narrow passes and islands of the St Lawrence.
MCRP 8-10B.6 Marine Corp Water Survival [2016, 118 Pages]
US Marine corpA Reference everyone who boats or does watersports should read. Goes through open water survival, water rescues, various water hazards, and fording rivers.
Is really a universal skillset. If you can swim at all this is a work you should probably visit at some point, and if you can’t swim you should learn and then visit this at some point.Boat Crew Handbook - Seamanship Fundamentals [2017, 313 Pages]
Boat Crew Handbook –Boat Operations [2017, 292 Pages]
Boat Crew Handbook -Navigating and Piloting [2021, 219 Pages]
United States Coast GuardMost all actual nautical warfare and enforcement that any normal person would think of as “What do navies and soldiers at sea… do?” Isn’t actually handled by the Navy, it’s handled by the Coast Guard.
The Navy’s resources are largely dedicated to grand strategic considerations having to do with Carrier Strike Groups and Nuclear Submarines… almost everything to do with interdicting small boats or patrolling waterways for threats smaller than nation states is done by the coast guard.
And all their fundamentals of seamanship and cruising are in here. Almost none of it’s “Tactical” or combat related, and a fair bit of it is stuff that’s more useful to have as a reference than stuff you need to know off hand (if you’re splicing ropes you can have the book out) but they’re wonderful all around boating references for creating highly self-reliant crews.
Chapman Piloting, Seamanship, and Small Boat Handling
Any EditionThere have been over 69 (nice) editions of this book from the 1920s to the 2020s, and has been one of the premiere boating references for that time. Keep your eyes peeled in used book stores and you’re bound to find a copy.
Boating, maintenance, navigation, raidos, sailing, the logistics of solo-cruising or long-term live-aboard… these are infinitely researchable topics. But an edition of Chapman is probably the best all around small boat reference.
FM 31-75 Riverine Warfare [1971, 176 Pages]
Department of the Army(Fortunate Son starts playing)
Riverine Warfare is probably the most interesting blend of land and sea warfare that’s just never discussed, and is so relevant to anyone on the east coast of the US, the gulf, Florida, the great lakes, the pacific northwest, the Alaskan Coast, the Maratimes, South-east asia, and wide swaths of the Mediterranean, Baltic, Agean, and more of Europe… This is THE doctrine and methodology for small boat warfare utilizing crafts about the size normal civilians have… And yet the most recent edition I can find is 1971.
If you own a boat or have ever hired a barge to bring stuff into a cottage or waterfront property, this book WILL be endlessly fascinating for you. And the seeming neglect the entire field has gotten will probably result in many surprises the second it’s revealed small militias with access to waterways naturally have VASTLY more logistical capacity than anyone anticipates.
Remember small boat warfare has been the domain of pirates, mercenaries, and sub-state sea raiders since 1100 bc. Discount this at your peril.
XVIII. Special Tactics and Insertions
Obviously lots of fancy military tactics: Helicopter Insertions, Skydiving, Deep Water Scuba Diving, long-range off-road motorcycle, etc. are all prohibitive for the Amatuer warlord to partake in. In terms of skill, cost, and risk these are quite awkward for the hobbyist, part-timer, prepper, and even the “professional” Merc/Smuggler/Criminal, to get into and develop capabilities for … However they’re not THAT prohibitive. Hell, I myself did long range adventure motorcycling, and clearly didn’t read enough beforehand, because I still have the scars and aches from that crash.
FM 20-11 Military Diving [1999, 944 pages]
Department of the ArmyYa that’s right. Full on Solid Snake shit right here. Diving long range and under ice.
Part of me is amazed this exists, and an even bigger part of me is amazed it’s declassified and online (though I suspect there’s a classified one on small underwater vehicles out there). This is an incredible technical manual and while I doubt 1 in 100 of my readers could get much if anything from it, I’m certain there are 1 or 2 amatuer Scuba Divers who will be deeply interested in this.
Obviously no one should attempt to Dive without having completed certified courses with a professional… However if it at all tickles your fancy, I’d strongly recommend looking into it, as I just checked and the courses around me are MULTIPLES cheaper than I would have imagined (I’m seeing entry level course for like $350). So that might be a new hobby I try out in the summer, and obviously that adds an entire nother dimension of mobility, stealth, and ways of thinking about both recreation, space, and tactical considerations.
That and it’s cool.FireForce: One Man’s War in the Rhodesian Light Infantry [1988, 514 Pages]
Chris CocksThe Case Study of Rhodesia is incredibly unique because while they were fighting a counter-insurgency war against Zimbabwean Marxist Guerillas… But they were also doing it under sanction, and thus had to source all their weapons and equipment under an international sanctions regime meant to ensure their loss… so in many respects they were playing both Counter-insurgent, and insurgent.
Yet in spite of this profoundly choked off situation, the backbone of their campaign was AIRBORNE Operations. Using old WW2 aircraft and commercial planes and helicopters they could smuggle in, and with that they were able to launch a campaign of highly sophisticated and devastating air assaults.
These are the parallels my mind makes when I hear about civilian and small private companies providing airlift relief in the “Cajun Airforce” to Hurricane Helene victims. It may not sound like something a small militia or volunteer defense group could do, but actually there are lots of people out there with various pilots licences and vehicles for whom forming an private Airborne militia or Air Cavalry Unit in the midst of a crisis would actually be pretty achievable.
FM 3-99 Airborne and Air Assault Operations [2015, 226 pages]
Department of the ArmyBelieve it or not MULTIPLE drug kingpins have now broken out of prisons from Canada to France in daring coordinated jail-break — guerilla helicopter air assault operations…
It’s not just the “Cajun Airforce” doing private relief efforts and whispers of Executive Outcomes and other mercenary groups in Africa where you can get away with anything… In first world countries, at maximum security installations and controlled airspaces guerilla Air operations are defining the modern unconventional battlespace.
The future is now old man. When you look at a cyberpunk movie or video game and the mad criminal decides to rescue his friends with a scifi airborne raid… THAT’s the present.
So of course you want to understand the actual logistics, organizational considerations, risks, limitations, and capabilities of air ground units… because even if you have no pilots, no aircraft, no money and can’t use these tactics, they can still be used against you.
XIX. CBRN Chemical Biological Radiological Nuclear
When it comes to CBRN, one of these things is not like the others.
Chemical and Biological weapons, despite the terror and operational headaches they can cause, are not in the same category as nuclear weapons. Chemical Weapons have been used in close to a dozen conflicts in the 20th century… And I’d be shocked if you could name half of them. Biological Weapons are considerably more devastating when employed against vulnerable populations who can’t access medical or hygienic resources… but despite the history of purposeful plague spreading, well poisoning, anthrax attacks, and the suspected US military use of biological weapons in the Korean war and invention/accidental (purposeful?) release of Lyme Disease (look it up)… they’re rare enough you’re almost guaranteed to HEAR about them being used elsewhere before encountering them, and from that to know what you’re encountering.
Nuclear Weapons however allow for geostrategic devastation, hitting large population centers potentially in unison, and have active doctrines to see them delivered to every major target, all at once… On a 10 to 20 minute notice. You’d have to be one of the Unluckiest unit in 100 years to encounter Chemical or Biological weapons without any prior warning or hint… You’d merely have to be alive to suddenly be dealing with nuclear war.
And you would probably be alive! Vastly more people are injured than die in a nuclear strike, it might kill 1 million, but you’re twice as likely to be one of the 2 million additional people injured in the immediate area, or even in a total war scenario one of the hundreds of millions domestically, and billions globally who’d be uninjured.
You and your family are 70+% likely to survive the first days of a nuclear war… but if you’re careless responding to warning signs or careless in the immediate aftermath you’re very likely to get horrible injuries that can leave you temporarily disabled, maimed for life, or kill you slowly and painfully, even as your family is now entirely dependent on YOU and each other… because state institutions can’t respond to mass casualty events measured in the millions.
Nuclear winter is largely a myth, none of the 2000+ detonated test nukes caused climate effects, nor the iraq oil field fires, nor the apocalyptic brush fires that occasionally blot out the Australian sky, nor the many firestorms that consumed cities in ww2.
Even the worst nuclear war is default survivable with a blend of luck and skill… and that’s very threatening to a lot of people because it means you actually have to read and think about about it.
🎥👆Nuclear Weapons Effects 101 [2022, 1 hour]
Us Defense VideosGreat little introductory lecture meant for Enlisted soldiers to dispel myths and familiarize them with the basics of how nuclear weapons behave and what soldiers are expected to do even as Nuclear Weapons are being used on the battlefield.
One of the things to learn from this is how… almost glibly, combat soldiers are supposed to treat the immediate aftermath of a nuclear weapons attack. Nuclear weapons are spooky, their effects are devastating and many are menacingly invisible, but they aren’t mysterious. Contrasted with biological weapons or a novel chemical weapon where the effects can be unknown and that uncertainty can cripple decision making, everything about Nuclear weapons is basically known, quantifiable, and measurable locally with relatively cheap consumer tools, or even improvised tools.🎥Nuclear 101: How Nuclear Bombs Work parts 1 and 2 [2013; 2 hours]
Belfer CenterGreat little lecture series that goes over the physics of Nuclear weapons and how they have developed, a little dry and a little more technical if you’re a bit rusty on your science classes… but a very tight and worthwhile summary. If you catch yourself confused watch Scott Manley’s longer series immediately below.
🎥Scott Manley’s “The Science of Nuclear Weapons”
Youtube seriesExcellent more detailed Youtube series that walks through the history of the development of Nuclear weapons from a great scientific and technical follow. Very detailed whilst remaining very easy to follow. Is probably easier to understand than “How Nuclear bombs work” for non-technical readers, but is longer.
🎥Nuclear Weapons Specialist: Jay Block [2022, 1 hour]
Canadian Prepper [interview]Excellent interview with a retired Airforce Lt. Colonel Missile Officer that goes into the risks and logic of a nuclear first strike and the possibility that a nuclear war could be lost within the first hour before it could escalate to total war. Contrary to most “Only winning move is not to play” talk… There are many MANY scenarios where failures of leadership and readiness can result in a strike in which the failing nation loses or suffers a crippling blow to their nuclear deterrent. With catastrophic consequences.
This is Especially relevant in light of the Escalations in the middle east where there are small nuclear and non-nuclear powers conspiring to cripple the nuclear deterrents their rivals.
The Effects of Nuclear Weapons The Effects of Nuclear Weapons 1977 Report [660 Pages]
Samuel Glasstone and Philip J. Dolan, United States Department of DefenseThis is THE Deep Dive on Nuclear Weapons covering every effect, estimate, and probability. Some version of this report has been published since the 1950s and US Military Service academies, and basically every other world service academy, have taught courses on it, often of the same title, to undergraduate officer candidates for almost 4 Generations now. I tried to find the more recent versions or the teaching version of the textbook… but all the teaching texts they give officer candidates are controlled, they wouldn’t even let me enter the west-point campus as a foreign tourist when I was there (well Canadian, according to them that was a grey area).
But this is it! Again Nukes are weird there are about 8-10 very different physical mechanisms by which you can actually be injured or killed by one, and they’re all just awkward enough to understand that it makes them scarilly “Unknown” to most modern people… but every single one of those risks is highly quantifiable and has been measured to an insane precision such that if you were an intelligent person and had read up on them extensively, and were uninjured… you could probably start measuring and guessing fairly exact kilo/mega-tonnages, radiation risks, and fallout drift patterns (if any) from just information you’d have on the ground… And this could an insane advantage over enemy forces or micro-political rivals and “allied” wars.
The Effects of Nuclear War
The Effects of Nuclear War [1979, 154 Pages]
Congress of the United States: Office of Technology AssessmentWhereas “The Effects of Nuclear Weapons” focuses on the immediate physical properties and impact of the weapons, this report focuses on the wider range risks and scenarios of nuclear exchange. Goes into less details and sociological/institutional complications than I’d like…. I really want a piece on just what the disaster relief scenario would look like or how/if vulnerable populations could be responded to… but most governments aren’t interested in putting those grim realities into writing. Not because it’d be hopeless or you couldn’t save people, but because they don’t want to describe American hospitals overwhelmed like the field hospitals of Stalingrad or now the hospitals of Gaza.
Nuclear War Survival Skills !!! Nuclear War Survival Skills [1987, 313 Pages]
Cresson H. KearneyThe last, best, civil defense book of the Cold War era. when there were 10x the Nuclear Weapons globally and the risk of Nuclear War was even higher than it is now at the most decisive part of the Russo-Ukraine/Russo-NATO War.
I intend to review this one it is such a unique and impressive work.
If you ever wondered how covert parts of your basement into a bomb shelter, how to avoid radiation sickness, how long fallout lasts, how to purify water if you were in the worst hit part of fallout drift, how to ventilate air without exposing yourself… This is the book for you. It ably dispels myths about nuclear war and its aftermath.
If you’re looking to purchase a hardcover copy look for the updated 2022 edition. (Useful to have given that in a war the internet would go down)[“] U.S. Armed Forces Nuclear, Biological And Chemical Survival Manual [“] [Quotation Marks]
[2003, 256 Pages]
Captain (Naval) Dick CouchDespite the name, this is a consumer Amalgam of several different US military publications and guides designed NOT for general Nuclear, Biological, or Chemical war from a soldier’s perspective… But limited Terrorist attacks, and was published in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, for civilians.
Of the Two, “Nuclear War Survival Skills” is by far the more important work and deals with a far more challenging survival scenario, but this includes far more specialized info on Decontamination and detection of Chemical and Biological threats, so good to pair.Weapons of mass destruction, what you should know : a citizen's guide to biological, chemical, and nuclear agents & weapons
[2004, 308 Pages]
Gladson I. NwannaReference work that lists all the common or suspected Chemical and Biological agents. Not one to necessarily read through entirely, but very useful to have backed up on a thumb drive or hard drive, so that if the web gets nuked, or the media just starts making things up, you have a reference for what Ricin, or Hemorrhagic Fever, or VX Nerve Gas, actually is and does.
doesn’t list too much WRT radiation although it does go lightly into natal radiation exposure, which in a crisis might be VERY relevant to the right person.
XX. Morale and Personnel Management
Contrary to a lot of mythology, the American Army largely sucks at managing its personnel, and it almost always has. Today you have infamous things related to wokeness, DEI, and women and minorities pushed into positions of leadership in intellectual, moral, physical, and spiritual states for which a white male Officer or NCO at any other point in history would be court martialed and shot…
But the thing is this is only the most recent mode of absolute degeneracy and collapse of cohesion the US military is in… before this they had the famous collapse of military discipline in Vietnam, and when your great grandfather was fighting through Normandy… They had the Individual Replacement System, an even more horrifying system for almost totally destroying units ability to cooperate and fight.
This isn’t just a “Don’t Do This”. These are case studies in how large cumbersome militaries and nations break down at the bureaucratic and social level, and lose cohesion and effectiveness as a result. If you wind up a small Warlord of a cohesive company sized element, there are going to be vanishingly few things where you’ll have an edge or better performance than a large vastly more capitalized Military, but if you understand these weaknesses, how large armies regularly shred any goodwill, comradery, or cohesiveness in their fighting forces… you can lean on that, you can apply pressure and purposefully exacerbate that. Or if they’re your ally or “ally” you can use that knowledge and this type of assessment to your advantage, or at least try to shield yourself from the consequences. Hell understand the ways in which the large militaries around you are screwing their troops and you might even get valuable HUMINT assets and informants out of it.
The Deserters: A Hidden History of World War 2 [2014, 400 Pages]
Charles Glass
The total number of American forces who deserted in World War 2 after exhausting unrelieved combat might have been in the hundreds of thousands depending on how you count. The horrors of the Individual Replacement System meant that the brutality of the fighting was matched by a “Meat Grinder” organizational culture in which men often did not even meet their platoon leaders and fireteam partners til they were at the front, and then they were not cycled… They’d stay at the front til they died, were wounded, or they reached Berlin. If you were wounded and recovered you were not even returned to the same unit but whichever other platoon had just had a death. Russians debate the accuracy of the opening scene of Enemy at the Gates, with green troops being moved to front like cattle… but it was shockingly analogous to the American treatment of their GIs.
So naturally conscripted men fighting beside strangers would desert in such inhuman conditions… And what have broken deserters always done in such conditions? They formed bandit gangs. For a decade+ after the end of WW2 the organized underworld of Paris, Rome, and the French and Italian countrysides were run by American deserters…
This would be a historical curiosity, aside from the fact that from Ukraine to Gaza we can see the fraying and breaking of conventional militaries with conscript armies and horrendous personnel management. It seems inevitable in the 21st century the sad and vicious role of the Deserter and deserter bands will be vitally important to understand… not least because they invariably start raiding and stealing from the very armies they once fought for… If you can induce this in your enemies, then their own soldiers can turn into your valuable assets.
!!!Fighting Power: German and U.S. Army Performance, 1939-1945 [1982, 224 Pages]
Martin Van CreveldThis is THE book on American ground forces underperformance in ww2 and the extraordinary German overperformance (The Wehrmacht was maybe the best army in history in terms of morale, discipline, and will to fight) Wilson digs through every statistic, and then every factor of training, deployment, and doctrine to try and capture why… And there’s a lot of differences between the two notably the replacement and psychological doctrine, and the fact tat they made sure soldiers served alongside their close regional and national cousins (lest Bavarians amid Saxons be excluded… Hyper-segregation) but the most obvious one that jumped out to me is that German officers were expected to remember and congratulate their men on their birthdays.
This is an old secret of leadership going back to when Napoleon or Alexander would remember and address individual soldiers across their entire campaign, often asking follow-up questions about their families 5 years later (I suspect they secretly kept notes of men they met and conversed with in various reviews), and the Germans implemented this their standard of leadership for normal officers… and not only that, they backed it up with institutional authority, low level commanders were given wide discretion in issuing leave for emergencies and other matters… Unlike the US then or now, it wasn’t an endless sequence of bureaucratic approvals, the commander who was going to suffer for the lack had discretion… Likewise there were a fair number of direct mechanism for HR type problems, that just on the face of it seem vasly better for the functioning of organizations than anything in the Post-war period… It’s a fascinating work, not just for those interested in war but for those interested in how organizations work.
If You Survive: From Normandy to the Battle of the Bulge to the End of World War II, One American Officer's Riveting True Story
[1987, 288 Pages]
George WilsonI’ve dumped on the WW2 Us army a lot in this segment… but this is the book you should read if you want to understand it inside and out, and how some talented infantry officers were able to make due and get performance out of their men in spite of being set up to fail institutionally tactically, and morally.
When Lt Wilson arrived at his platoon he’d had approximately 90 days of training… on July 12th he was the Fifth officer to command it, 4 previous ones having been wounded or killed since D-Day on June 6th. In just over 1 month this platoon had lost 4 officers and only 5 men of the original 40 who were still with the platoon. The rest having been killed wounded, gone missing or deserted.
And from there wilson was almost miraculous in that he made it to the end of WW2 unwounded and with his unit. Of those original 5 he met none did.
This is a story of incredible leadership under truly harrowing conditions, Wilson is an incredibly brave and tough soul… but this is real blood and guts war stories: entrails getting wrapped around tank treads and spilling their rotten innards causing wilson to vomit, only for enemy fire to cut down one of his men and force him to duck down into his own vomit… This is brutal, and Wilson is responcible for 40 lives at any moment, and cumulatively probably 100s across the entire campaign. This is the book on what exactly leadership can and does mean that they don’t want you to read.
McNamara’s Folly: The Use of Low-IQ Troops in the Vietnam War [2015, 256 Pages]
Hamilton GregoryBiological Intelligence matters in War… it matters very much (read my full piece). However, the Us government did not always agree, indeed it is largely still in denial. But at the height of the Vietnam war the denial of biological intelligence was taken to its most horrifying logical conclusion.
This is a book not just about one of the many horrifying failures of US personnel policies over the years, from ideological and bureaucratic delusion and corruption… but also about the most common and likely failure mode of any force that employs conscription, or which can no longer attract on the basis of merit or exclude on the most basic of standards…. Or heaven help you, promotes on the basis of nepotism and racial spoils.
One can look at Ukraine right now to see similar and even more horrifying degradations in the nature of personnel, and if one listens very closely one can hear whispers of the early signs of this happening in Israel.
The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free
[2024, 256 Pages]
Maj. Pete HegsethThis will be a controversial inclusion, both because it’s so recent, and the fact that as of writing President Elect Trump has just nominated the author for Secretary of Defense…
However taking everything with a fairly large grain of salt, this is still one of the primary texts on the current culture war in the US military, the recruiting crisis, and the crisis of morale, morality, and competence in the US military… It’s a work that’s deeply partisan of one side and almost certainly suspect and debatable in a lot of it’s claims… but then so are Caesar’s Commentaries on the Gallic Wars, and no one would say those works are unimportant to understanding that conflict. This is THE book on the ongoing sagas of "Liberal Democracy" and that system of government’s continual struggle to maintain anything resembling a ground fighting force.
I could recommend something similar about the Decayed state of the Canadian Military, or the Danish Military, or the Italian military… that those would be less immediately partisan to most readers… but there is a book exactly like this, written in the past 10 years, about Every. Single. Country. In NATO and the wider US orbit… and it’d be just as partisan a selection for the people from those countries, and this one is more important both because IT’S THE AMERICAN MILITARY, but also because unlike every other country we could look at, no one sane can (though many lobbyists will try to) argue that the problems with the US military result from a lack of funding… Whereas of course that is a major problem with most of NATO.
XXI. Case Studies
The Thorn and the Carnation Vol 1 & 2 [2004, 400 Pages]
Yahya Ibrahim Al-SinwarSinwar was of course the famed leader of Hamas and mastermind of the Oct 7th attacks who was recently killed in a combined tank and drone strike. The now famous video of his final moments (shot from the perspective of the drone that killed him) show him wounded and with one arm barely attached, trying to throw a piece of rubbish at the drone with his one good arm, him only retaining consciousness because of the tourniquet he managed to jury-rig from either copper or barbed wire. So this is the real shit from a real terrorist…
However when he wrote this work he was not yet the supreme resistance leader, instead he was merely “The Butcher of Khan Yunis” imprisoned for life for a series of of high profile killings of Informants within the Gaza strip (He was released eventually as part of a prisoner exchange).
It’s such a weird work. The work that was smuggled out of Israeli prison piecemeal is a barely fictionalized account of Sinwar’s life… before he was imprisoned at the age of 26. He had been imprisoned 16 years when he wrote the work, and would be imprisoned 7 more before he was released at 49… and he might well have assumed he was going to be imprisoned til he died when he wrote it… Yet there’s nothing about his imprisonment, it’s such a a narrowly focused work, Indeed I’m linking a review that feels the need to explain much of its context in 2004, before he was released and became the most wanted Guerilla on earth.
it focuses narrowly on both the grievances and history of Palestine, and his role in guerilla life outside before he was captured, though with hindsight you can see much of his gears turning as he develops and propagates a theory of how Palestinians and Gazans can win, whilst also hiding his plans behind the vaguest of hints…On Another Man's Wound: A Personal History of Ireland’s War of Independence
[1936, 336 Pages]
Ernie O'MalleyWhile the more Famous account of the Irish War of Independence is Tom Barry’s “Guerilla Days in the Ireland” and his account of leading flying columns. this one is really interesting for accounting the process of recruiting and organizing the original IRA, and deploying them to kill enemies… An often uncomfortable and insightful account of one of the most successful guerilla campaigns of all time.
Fangs of the Lone Wolf: Chechen Tactics in the Russian-Chechen Wars, 1994-2009
[2013,172 Pages]
Dodge Billingsley with Dr. Lester GrauThis is a VERY UNIQUE deep dive into guerilla tactics in basically as recent a conflict as you can get, in the form of interviews, vignettes, stories, and case studies of the men who carried out the attacks and tactics, against a Modern European country, in English… And it goes up to 2009.
We aren’t going to get anything like this from the insurgent’s perspective FOR DECADES from Iraq, Afghanistan, the Cartel Wars of Central America, or the Current conflagrations surrounding Israel.
85 Days in Slavyansk [2023, 353 Pages]
Alexander ZhuchkovskyThis is the story of the OTHER revolution in Ukraine in 2014, the rebellion of the Russian speaking Donbass region against the new revolutionary/US installed Government in Kiev and the start of the First Donbass war.
This is maybe the most recent, most immediate, most multifaceted example a recent small political and militia movement changing the course of history and surviving both against larger government but between great powers as well. this is modern Militia-Warlordism in the North American/European context, as up to date an example as we have.
SHTF Anthology: Survival Lessons of the Balkan Wars [2018, 149 Pages] and SHTF Survival Stories: Memories of the Balkan War [2020, 486 Pages]
Selco BegovicThis was a recommendation of my mother’s (Hi Mom!), Selco Begovic was a survivor on the ground of the siege of Sarajevo and has made a living acting as a subject matter expert on what SHTF survival scenarios and conditions are really like in extended warzones and times of starvation and genocide, as well as curating wider survival stories from the Balkan Wars for western audiences.
The Balkans war was well before my time, but it is insane that such a major conflict and genocide is immediate living memory in European countries, not something some guy in a nursing home was 18 for and didn’t really understand when it was happening, but Immediate experience such that the people who were full grown adults at the time are still fully functional adults now… and that just doesn’t penetrate the American imagination. I keep thinking that once Ukraine or Gaza ends there’s going to be a major awakening/realization of what just happened and airing of all the complicity… but now it seems more likely that even the immediate on the ground experience will be forgotten by the wider public, such that even preppers and people interested in the matter who were alive when it happened will need it explained to them by some rarified survivor… and even then just the bare facts of life on the ground, not the vast geopolitical entanglements and history.
Born Red: A Chronicle of the Cultural Revolution [1987, 416 Pages]
Yuan GaoA civil war that’s barely talked about (wonder why), this is maybe one of the most unique visions of societal breakdown and anarcho-tyranny in which many factions overspanning regime actively ENCOURAGED seemingly random militia formation, terror, war, conflict, and crimes against people and order… as a tactical move.
Remember how the Deep State of the US government basically sided with rioters in 2020, even as dozens of American cities burned? Imagine if that lasted for a decade and killed more than a million people.
This book may be disturbingly more relevant in the future than you might think.
The Tunnels of Cu Chi [1985, 340 Pages]
Tom Mangold and John PenycateTunnel warfare is huge right now because of the Tunnel fortresses in Ukraine, Gaza, and Lebanon and their demonstrated ability to just bog down and drain larger forces. The “Gaza Metro” was over 500 kms of tunnels at its height, Hezbollah might have even more, and there’s no reason to think we’re anywhere near the upper limit of what militaries are capable of producing (or atleast militaries that don’t have to deal with US building regulation).
But this book goes back to the first time tunnels stumped major militaries… And the most dramatic. 10 YEARS and 6 million tons of explosives (more than all of world war 2), and the US military wasn’t able to break the 80-130 km tunnel network that snakes from Saigon to the Cambodian border. Dug In pitch darkness with hand tools, these suffocatingly narrow corridors broke the US military at it’s height.
And no one really knows the story or talks about…the Case Study of case studies in the history of Guerilla Warfare.
King Rat [1963, 351 Pages]
James ClavellThis fictional work about a Japanese POW camp by the famed author of Shogun is far more relevant that it may appear. Clavell WAS a POW in the Indo-Pacific, and his semi-mythic story of a petty criminal, a lowly private, who winds up defacto running the prison camp through a combination of graft, smuggling, rackets, corruption, and blackmail is maybe one of the most important case studies in war lit for how non-state actors actually grab and attain power.
Here is the intersection of all we’ve studied so far… written by an author who actually saw all the petty schemes and human corruptions in one of the worst prison camps on earth…
XXII. Micro and Macro-Diplomacy: Profiting and Surviving Within and At The End of Conflict
The most dangerous time in any war is the end. Men have grown, had children, and died of old age in 30, 80, 90, even 100 years wars… A good forever war you might not even notice it happening. But peace? Peace has suddenly and horribly killed million on countless occasions.
France: The Tragic Years 1939-1947 [1955, 403 Pages]
Notice the dates. I’ve heard it said that the nation of France will never publish an official history of France in the Second World War, that so much of it is taboo and a national disgrace… And not in the cutesy “we should have been better to our Jews” way all the histories like to frame these questions. 100,000 French citizens were summarily executed as the Allies conquered France… including pre-war Prime Ministers, major politicians, and basically anyone the communists who populated the “French Resistance” (though they didn’t resist much, Nazis shot back, they mostly assassinated their domestic enemies) found to be targets of convenience. France, like Germany, had been on the brink of Civil War between the socialists and the right for much of the 1918-1939 period… and the allies invading France and arming the communist insurgents was the perfect opportunity for them to massacre their pre-war political enemies.
This is the real story of what happens when a nation’s internal political divisions play out across a disastrous war… how political scores are actually settled, and how countries actually restructure from one republic to another… and it is vastly different that your high-school history teacher would have had you believe… When a nation is conquered twice in 5 years, bad things happen. And these are the distasteful case studies you want to understand if you wind up in a conflict. Remember wars are largely survivable, individual wars have lasted centuries and just faded into the background of life almost unnoticed. Peace though? Peace will kill you.
Victims of Yalta: The Secret Betrayal of the Allies, 1944-1947 [1977, 520 Pages]
Nickolai Tolstoy
At the end of WW2 over 3 million fled Russian, Yugoslav, Ukrainian, Czech, and citizens of now communist occupied countries were in France Germany and western Europe… many of these had fled during the Russian civil war of the late 19teens and 20s and had spent most of their lives as emigres in their adopted countries…
And as part of the Yalta Agreement, the British and Americans loaded them, men, women and children, on cattle cars and sent them back to Russia, Yugoslavia and budding satellite states to be tortured, executed, or worked to death in gulags. This was the “liberation” of western Europe. This is what the communist guerillas in the French Resistance fought for… And that’s just the beginning of these sordid tales.
This is the book you need to read to understand how massive wars end, how ready you have to be to jump, how multifaceted your escape plans need to be, both fighters and civilians… and just how untrustworthy “liberation” “justice” and “Peace” truly are.
Amatures fear their enemies knocking in the night and telling them to grab their coat… professionals fear their Allies.
Sick from Freedom: African-American Illness and Suffering during the Civil War and Reconstruction
[2014, 280 Pages]
Jim DownsEmancipation, as any close reading of the history will tell you, was less a moral crusade or cause of the US Civil War than a weapon reached for to try and collapse the southern economy as the war dragged on… A weapon used with little regard to the people who’d actually be living its consequences. Somewhere between 10 and 30% of all African Americans then alive in the US died as a direct result of starvation, disease, and exposure brought on by emancipation and the collapse of the southern economy in the immediate aftermath of the civil war and through construction.
This is a highly relevant work for anyone wondering what happens to unprepared and poor populations which cannot provide for themselves in the midst of a war or social collapse. There exist now massive urban dependent and unworkable populations in much of America, and an even wider number of aging dependent populations across the West and Asia who rely on the continuity of the financial system and government welfare systems to fend for themselves. Even a weimar style currency, asset value, and pension collapse would probably kill millions in most western countries today.
Empires of Mud: Wars and Warlords in Afghanistan [2009, 320 Pages]
Antonio GiustozziThis book is a deep dive into case studies of a handful of Afghan warlords in the midst of the war and how they attempt to profit, gain power, prosper, and translate their ascending power and money into political legitimacy without winding up too tied to either the US, the Afghan National Government, or the Taliban given they have no idea who will wind up winning at this point.
Allegedly a lot of people found it hard to read due to all the foreign names, so this might be a work where you’d want to have a map or create a cheatsheet of characters as you go. Obviously the relevance of this work is incredible and these figures are good models for those of you reading this for how these networks and communities form, and how they prosper.
