A note on purchasing both Contact and Rapid Fire

I’ve posted about this before, but I have had two comments on Amazon from someone buying both ‘Contact’ and ‘Rapid Fire’. I have put a note on the book description on Amazon but I can see how it is easily missed:

I do not recommend that you buy both the books, ‘Contact’ and ‘Rapid Fire’. They are simply designed for different audiences, not as sequels  The way it worked was that I wrote ‘Contact’ and then I had some demand for a tactical manual for close protection and combat operations, not preppers. I took the skeleton of ‘Contact’ and worked with it, removing prepping and collapse situations and adding some content relevant to more military/contractor style operations, mainly OCONUS based, including specific experiences from Iraq and Afghanistan.

This means that the broad basis of the tactics in the books remains the same. That makes me chuckle a little; when readers expected something super high speed from ‘Rapid Fire’ that was not covered in ‘Contact’, like super secret ninja skills or something  Basics are basics and that is all there really is. Just learn it and practice it and do it well, that will make you high speed. Complicating things does not work in combat or on high threat operations. KISS: Keep it Simple Stupid

(Which reminds me: “You can’t fix stupid,” one of my favorite sayings).

But I will say that although I call it ‘basics’ there are TTPs in there that most will not have heard of, simply because they are developed for specialist light infantry/SOF and close protection operations that even many/most military personnel will not have ever covered. Some of the tactics and advice is informed by my British SOF service, some from my time as a security contractor in Iraq and Afghanistan, some from my U.S. Army Reserve service. The books are an amalgam of training and experience designed to be made accessible and practical for the specific audiences

BTW: to reviewers who claim ‘Patriot Dawn’ comes from the Ranger handbook: I’ve never even read it! There is more to military TTPs and tactics than the Ranger handbook, and I come from a different pedigree. Although it is nice to have my knowledge and experiences validated against such a publication.