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Survival Literature - Ninurta - 03-14-2020
I used to have a fairly massive library of survival literature - you know, manuals and "how to" books and such. Over time, and many moves, several of them got lost, and so my current collection is less than impressive.
However, we're in the computer age now! what used to take up 3 or 4 bookshelves can now be carried around in a pocket or on a key chain on a flash drive - the only catch is you need a "device" compatible with that flash drive to read them. A great many manuals have been converted to digital format, usually PDF, and can be had for the download bandwidth from any number of sites across the internet. Once you have them, and have them loaded onto a flash drive, you have them forever (assuming you have the foresight to back up the flash drive to somewhere safe, in case it too gets "lost in a move"!)
Recently, Mrs G. posted a video in of all places a Bigfoot thread that reminded me of some of my losses - it reminded me of a Ranger manual on Dismounted Patrolling that I had many, many years ago. Over the years, I had searched for it in my wanderings across the internet, but to no avail. There just didn't seem to be any electronic copies of it available. BUT - the recollection spurred by that video prompted me to search for it again, and this time I found it. I immediately downloaded it, and that download has been backed up in numerous places to preclude any further losses of it. It is called "ST 21-75-3 Dismounted Patrolling" and can be found at the link.
Another little book I had all those years ago that was invaluable was called "The Scout". It was written during WWII by an Australian named Ion Idriess, and was part of a series of pamphlets he wrote on guerrilla warfare during the dark days of the war when Australia was certain that a Japanese invasion was imminent, and that all Aussies would soon need to have a crash course in guerrilla tactics. Those books are over 70 years old now, hard to find, and still worth their weight in gold despite the passage of time. Technology changes, but people don't, and those books have all sorts of information that is as true today as it was 70 - or 700, or 7000 - years ago.
The series was called "The Australian Guerrilla Series", and had 6 volumes in it. Since I found that old Ranger Dismounted Patrolling manual, I decided to try my luck at replacing the Aussie Scout pamphlet as well. I was shocked to see it going for $50.00 and up if you could even find it at all (one place had it listed at nearly 300 bucks - for a paperback pamphlet!), which was disappointing - probably even more disappointing than being utterly unable to find it in an electronic format. I found ONE old used copy of it for $4.99 plus a nominal shipping fee in hard copy, so I scarfed that up while the getting was good. I'm torn as to whether to scan it and make an electronic file of it or not. The series seems to still be under an Australian copyright, and that is a problem in making an electronic copy of it. I'd like to get the entire series, but so far have only been able to locate"The Scout" and "The Sniper", the latter of which seems to only exist in the exorbitantly priced variety. The rest seem to have fallen off the face of the Earth - probably in a move...
Over time, I've managed to garner a huge collection of manuals of this sort, which I have collected on a flash drive. There are military manuals (which are all in the public domain, and therefore not really a problem), there are novels for when one gets bored and wants something to read (all of them of the "armageddon is coming" variety, however), there are ancient war treatises like Sun Tzu's "The Art of War", Miyamoto Musashi's "A Book of Five Rings", Che Guevara's "Guerrilla Warfare", etc. There are other books, more geared towards survival than warfare, because a soldier's gotta eat - books like the entire Foxfire series, "The Poor Man's James Bond", old cook books and "how to run a household on a shoestring for poor wives" books from the 1800's... just anything I thought might give an edge in a survival/societal collapse sort of situation.
I think the collection I've built up is running near 6 gigabytes now, and thousands of volumes, but it can all still be fitted on a small flash drive - an 8 GB drive that can be had for a couple of bucks at Walmart is sufficient. I recently bought a few of those small drives and made copies of my master copy to hand out to friends and relatives that I think may one day need it. In VA, they're trying to make that sort of activity illegal. This most recent session entertained a bill that would make it a felony to teach anyone how to protect themselves - they called it "paramilitary activity and conspiracy" in the bill. I don't know if it passed, and I don't care - no alleged "law" will stop me from teaching folks how to defend themselves if I think they need it. Self-defense is the most basic right of ANY organism, humans included, and they'll not stop me from exercising it, or teaching other folks how to.
This thread was created mostly as a place to collect links to such survival/military material, for future reference. You never know when you may need it, and it's better to have it and not need it than it is to need it and not have it, and I'm not getting any younger, so the day will come when I'm not around to teach it. When that day comes, folks will still have these links to the knowledge so they can learn even in my absence.
Feel free to add links to useful military manual (especially Small Unit/Ranger/Special Forces/Guerrilla Warfare manuals) or survival how-to book collections you may encounter in your travels across the internet. I'll add them myself as I run across them, but many hands make light the work.
Self-reliance is the American Way.
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RE: Survival Literature - Ninurta - 03-14-2020
A good starter kit:
https://archive.org/details/military-manuals
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RE: Survival Literature - Ninurta - 03-29-2020
More links:
https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/
https://survivalschool.us/survival-info/military-manuals-pdf/
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