Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
[ 10 ]
Since there is strength in numbers, the best defense for anybody is a strong community. In a
small, tight-knit community you will be able to share resources, skills, tools, and responsibilit-
ies, including watching each other's backsides. The well-armed lone wolf survivalist may
someday find himself relieved of his weapons and goods by a group of thugs that are tougher,
meaner, more plentiful in number, and better organized. After all, even the lone wolf has to
sleep sometimes! I am not one of those guys who look forward with gleeful anticipation for the
apocalypse to come so I can break out my guns and start shooting with wild abandon. I hope
the day never comes when I have to aim a gun at somebody, much less pull the trigger.
However, I do believe in being prepared, and that there is a good chance that many of us,
for one reason or another, will experience periods of time where “the rule of law” simply evap-
orates, at least locally. In that case, it will be ourselves, our friends, and our neighbors that we
must count on for protection, safety, and order. My intention in this chapter is to provide useful
advice and information, including basic “how-to” instruction sets that may one day save your
life, or the life of a friend or loved one.
Even though I grew up hunting and fishing in the Green Mountains of Vermont, I must ad-
mit that guns and ammo are not my forte. However, I do have several friends and relatives with
decades of practical experience on this subject, and they have been more than willing to bend
my ear, take me shooting, and contribute their expertise and opinions to improve this chapter.
Similarly, with only a little more than a year of martial-arts training under my belt, I don't
claim to be an expert at hand-to-hand combat. I owe a debt of gratitude to my friend Frank Fer-
ris, a highly respected sixth-degree black belt and martial-art/self-defense instructor who gra-
ciously shared his time, knowledge, and expertise to help turn the self-defense sections of this
chapter into a set of truly valuable practical “how-to” instructions.
This chapter covers the basics of self-defense. The first section discusses firearms, includ-
ing gun safety, selection, and maintenance. The second section begins with a general talk about
self-defense, followed by instructions on basic unarmed martial-arts-style self-defense tech-
niques to deal with specific situations.
