I am always looking to learn skills that can improve many facets of my life. A chief aspect of prepping I believe is to continually learn and increase your ability to survive. This education can come in many forms from training courses, real-life exposure, videos, lectures and books. For me though I don’t learn from books as well as I do with hands on exposure to the core aspects I am trying to learn. The more complicated the subject, the less likely I am going to learn from a book and at a certain point no matter how compelling the subject matter, if the book is too detailed I usually don’t finish.
I am sure this challenge hampers me from mastering a lot of concepts, but I can’t help how I was born so I try to learn in different ways to prevent my learning-handicap from getting in the way of acquiring skills or knowledge that could be crucial someday. Sometimes I find a source that seems to be a perfect fit for my learning style and 100 Deadly Skills by Clint Emerson fits the bill nicely.
Clint Emerson is a retired Navy SEAL who spent twenty years conducting special ops all over the world while attached to SEAL Teams (including the elite SEAL Team SIX) and the National Security Agency (NSA). Clint was able to use an array of practical skills he developed to protect himself while at home and abroad, he created Violent Nomad—a personal, non-kinetic capture/kill program cataloging the skills necessary to defend against any predator or crisis and his recent book 100 Deadly Skills puts much of that knowledge he obtained and created into the hands of everyday people like you and me.
Going back to my learning style, 100 Deadly Skills isn’t a technical manual. It isn’t a college level white paper on the various subjects Clint is discussing although I firmly believe that any Navy Seal receives so much more education and instruction than could ever be contained in 20 books. I am no Navy Seal though and 100 Deadly Skills is set up to share concepts in a compelling way that while not replacing professional training, still give the average person tons of useful information that could help you if you are confronted with many survival situations.
100 Deadly Skills that you never knew you needed
100 Deadly Skills takes the standpoint of a “Violent Nomad” who is characterized in the book as an operator working overseas under heavy cover. The book proceeds to share tactics that an operator could use in all aspects of what I would assume someone in that line of work would need to plan for.
- Mission Prep
- Infiltration
- Infrastructure Development
- Surveillance
- Access
- Collection
- Operational Actions
- Sanitization
- Exfiltration and Escape
Now you may be saying to yourself, “Why would I ever need to know what a Navy Seal operator working overseas in hostile environments would need to know?” and I admit that this book definitely has a target audience of people who find this type of skills or tactics fascinating. This book is not for Navy Seals or secret agents as I said before, it is for regular people and it easily shares information that even a regular Joe could use to protect their life.
Each skill or BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front) as Clint calls them is no more than a page or two and comes with excellent quality illustrations showing the finer points of each of the 100 deadly skills he tries to teach you. I found almost the entire book to be extremely interesting and I came away with a lot of new ideas that I could catalog in the back of my noggin for use potentially. I know I am never going to be working clandestine in the Middle East, but I can easily see the benefit of these skills in a SHTF event. Even if the world as we know it doesn’t end, there is still crime; there are still bad people and bad situations that you might face. A little knowledge sure helps and if these topics interest you, I am sure you will enjoy Clint’s 100 Deadly Skills.
by Pat Henry