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Enemies Foreign and Domestic vs. Patriot Dawn

No, this isn’t the post you expected it to be. It’s not really about Matt Bracken’s Enemies Foreign and Domestic (EFAD) being better or worse than my Patriot Dawn (PD).

I am coming late to Bracken’s books. I finished EFAD on Christmas day. Quite simply, I loved it. What a great book! I couldn’t recommend it more. What I also liked was that Bracken’s background as a Navy SEAL is apparent in the book, and it also contains many great tactical tips. And sailboats

So, if you haven’t yet read it, read it.

EFAD

So what is the connection between EFAD and PD then? Well, I responded to a comment a little while back, about the difference between these books. PD is designed as a novel that is also a vehicle to demonstrate the tactical concepts that I lay out in ‘Contact! A Tactical Manual for Post collapse Survival’. ‘Contact!’ is designed to give you tactics that will help you survive in an SHTF ‘post-collapse’ environment, whether that is a natural disaster, or something more sinister such as a situation involving ‘enemies foreign and domestic’.

PD is set in a post-collapse environment overlain by government tyranny. It is a full civil war situation of resistance against tyranny. EFAD takes place prior to any total collapse and addresses the threat from overreaching government tyranny. It does so in an excellent manner.

Patriot Dawn: The Resistance Rises

And this leads me to what I really wanted to say; to discuss the continuum from freedom through tyranny towards collapse and a full SHTF environment. I often talk about this when I refer to ‘soft tyranny’ and ‘hardening tyranny’ and the soft tapping of the bureaucratic keyboards taking away your liberty, punctuated by the flashes of violence when SWAT raids go in.

I am concerned now about the hardening of tyranny and the loss of liberty. My books are designed for full-SHTF, however that ultimately comes about and whoever you end up needing to fight. Along that ‘tyranny continuum’ there is a matching ‘use of force’ continuum of appropriate responses. I think some of this is why we don’t take the ‘tacticool’ crowd with us: They are happy with two magazines for their carbine, because that is all they need to repel a home invasion. Right? Why would they need a Battle Belt and a patrol pack? Why do they need to learn small unit tactics (SUT)? This was discussed recently on the Chickens have had enough Blog HERE. It is a meme that I am always challenging.

EFAD is set pre-collapse, in a time of government tyranny. Full camo gear and your battle belt would not be appropriate. I have discussed this before when talking about ‘profile’ considerations. There is a time to be driving about in a low profile manner, there is a time to take to the woods and go full camo. This is why you need to have appropriate gear, for example for your bug-out, where you may need to pass through checkpoints etc. Concealed carry may be more appropriate, with a grab bag ready to go. Keep the full patrol gear in the trunk for when you get to the woods.

I think it is important to be clear about what we are discussing when we talk about appropriate responses. Some are only concerned about a current day self-defense scenario, such as with meeting three bad guys in an alleyway and taking them out rapidly with a concealed weapon. Some are concerned about that, but also want to be able to conduct effective SUT, patrol, ambush, raid etc in the coming SHTF environment. And don’t forget this: if you can do SUT, you can do it anywhere, even if your raid is carried out in jeans in a pre-collapse environment, so long as such use of force was called for.

Contact! A Tactical Manual for Post Collapse Survival

Live Hard.

Die Free.

Max

23 responses to “Enemies Foreign and Domestic vs. Patriot Dawn”

  1. For some of us, this has all long been obviously apparent. You’d think that it would be, but I guess some folks need to have it pointed out a bit. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Others though, have to have it spelled out for them letter by letter, and even then they don’t get it. Good post Max.
    Side note… I have LONG been a fan of the EFAD trilogy, and am also proud to call Matt a person friend.

    • Max I just got your book PD for Christmas and am just about done with it.
      You Have joined the trilogy of trifecta of Matt Bracken, James wesly rawls,Max velocity.
      Out standing book I have rapid fire and contact already. found a couple of minor typos too but its all good.
      Just pisses me off that i am not as well prepared as I should be. I will get my lazy butt motivated though.
      God Bless

  2. Excellent post! I’ve always thought of preparations as three phases: “pre-SHTF”, “post-SHTF” and the transition phase between the two.

  3. haha Max , you got me on the title.. that IS what I thought it was going to be :p

    As for the rest of your post I fully buy in to the continuum.
    its human nature that is driving centralization in an industrial society ( as well as all other ills).
    Eventually there will be a reset.
    there is not telling when it would be in 3 week during a powergrid callapse via virus.
    In a couple of months when a pandemic hits us that might be breaking out right now somewhere.

    Or when this country goes bankrupt and services and pensions will be curtailed just like now in Detroit , thats a mathematical certainty.
    Its just the WHEN that is tough to judge, could be decades still…

    That’s is why its important our kids learn the most marketable of hard skills that will be good in ANY future such as chemical engineering, medicine, mechanical engineering, Chemistry etc etc..(along with soldering of course)

  4. Wow, I just finished EFAD today. Great book as was PD. I agree with getting into a closer look at appropriate levels of force and or response to various levels of force, all depending on specifics of the current level of Civilization at the time. When you really think this stuff out it is not always as clear as you believe it will be.

  5. I agree with your notion of a continuum in the advance of tyranny. When I was in medical school we had professors who were “lumpers” and those who were “splitters”; respectively, those who would combine most conditions/diseases into very few broad categories, and those who ‘split’ categories into smaller units. Too many people fall into “binary” thinking: it is all or none. They have trouble seeing various areas of gray in the middle ground whether examining disease processes or political situations.

    This seems to be a great problem in the patriot / prepper community. Too many people can only conceive of a total apocalyptic scenario such as ‘The Road’, ‘Road Warrior’, or other EOTWAWKI. We may see a total societal breakdown, but we need to be trained mentally and physically for the middle ground events.

    You will see further progression and breakdown of society as you read the next two books in the EFAD series. The third is quite similar in setting to Patriot Dawn.

    I had a chat with a young man today about my experience with your class 2 weeks ago. We were discussing this very issue: the need for differing responses dependent on circumstances, but also how your approach to training will be useful in many different scenarios. Keep at it, and get the weather dialed in for the patrol class!

    • Couldn’t agree more. The lack of nuance leads to poorly adjusted TTP’s in many peoples minds.
      That’s one thing I liked about Max’s book it was always nuanced about the situation you might face.
      The real world is one of nuances and slow multi year progressions.
      One decades all seems well. but somehow things that people use dot take for granted isnt there anymore like walking the street at night safely, which went away in the 60’s.

      But everything is still (the new) “normal”.

      Suddenly its no longer taken for granted for highs schoolers to drive as the creeping increase in gas and insurance prices them out.
      But everything is “normal”.

      Unless you were aknown scumbag you used to be able ot argue with a police officer.. Now that will get you arrested for “obstructing justice” and cna ruin your career.

      But everything is “normal”

      next step might be a responsive healthcare system can no longer be taken for granted.
      But everything is still the (new) “normal”

      next might be 24/7 electricity can no longer be taken for granted…..

      it goes down step by step until suddenly you went from eveyrthing peachy to a new normal that includes rampant disease etc etc

      This is a process that has been going on form the heyday of the US which was (arguably) the turn from the 50’s to the 60’s to now in a slow slide.
      Some might argue it was later…like around 1970 but I think most of the tracks were set in place in the 60’s.

          • Incidentally, these slides not only dont need a black Swan event but are even in modern time not unprecedented.
            Take the slide that Somalia experienced from an almost Tier 2 country (reliable elecricity in cities, police, airports, improved raods, hospitals) to its current post apocalyptic wasteland status..
            Similiar in Haiti it was almost Tier 2 under Duvalier.
            Now its a post apocalptic wasteland that will NEVER have the resources on its own, to rebuild the infrastructure that was built back then.

            Our borderlands with Mexico are basically a pre apocalyptic wasteland also..

  6. They are both cautionary tales and later day fables about the ideological battle of good verses evil, of redemption, and of hope, about perseverance in the face of insurmountable odds. With the practical use of the concepts of small unit infantry tactics, intelligence, the burden of fighting the leviathan out-equipped and outnumbered, guerrilla networking, support, and overall strategy the partisan faces interwoven throughout a story about righteous human struggle.

    If you get the point both Max and Matt are conveying you would be hard pressed to find one is better than the other. Both guys tell the same story from different military perspectives. That in itself makes them worthy reads.

    There is everything to be said for tales about people who never give up no matter what and bring the fight to the enemy.
    About virtue and fighting to win.

    In a funny way when you read PD and EFAD trilogy you discover both authors write of common narrative’s that makes them companion stories.

    But what I like best about both, it is about tyrants comeuppance richly deserved and served by people who never say die.

  7. Point well taken. My main focus has been on near-to-mid-term scenarios for armed citizens. Max, Mosby and others have moved my focus out a bit to encompass more organized SUT. The point being you need to be well-rounded enough to be able to respond to each situation, in turn.

  8. I think outside of using car wheels and engine blocks for cover the SWAT fantasy camps never instruct RTR, am I right?

    Another weak spot is the SWAT fantasy camps being aligned with the DC based lobbying take our money outfits who came up the brilliant name of “Modern Sporting Rifle.” Which is the fucking stupidest idea of all time IMO.

    Vickers has stated he couldn’t understand why anyone would need SUT, hate to tell the guy if that is his logic train then the tyrannist turds could ask him why a civilian needs an AR or like to blow up ever increasing amounts of Southern Thunder or to knock down steel plates. Sport?

    To end my rant I conclude that the SWAT fantasy camps are a weak link that the tyrannist turds will exploit on the trip down to WROL.

    • Well, some of the more “advanced” classes do touch on use of cover- although the whole “advanced” topic of how such classes are broken down bugs me, and may get “discussed” at a later date, not to mention what common sense dictates is really needed for a 2am home invasion vs. post-SHTF, but I digress….

      But yes most teach the “RRR” method- return fire, reload, return fire. :P

  9. “…EFAD is set pre-collapse, in a time of government tyranny. Full camo gear and your battle belt would not be appropriate. I have discussed this before when talking about ‘profile’ considerations. There is a time to be driving about in a low profile manner, there is a time to take to the woods and go full camo. This is why you need to have appropriate gear, for example for your bug-out, where you may need to pass through checkpoints etc. Concealed carry may be more appropriate, with a grab bag ready to go. Keep the full patrol gear in the trunk for when you get to the woods…..
    Some are concerned about that, but also want to be able to conduct effective SUT, patrol, ambush, raid etc in the coming SHTF environment….”

    This/ your final 2 paragraphs, is exactly what I was trying to say in that part about how all the different training methods work together with each other.
    In fact that sentence about ‘SUT in jeans’ is a lot how I would envision things, at least in the early stages (like EFAD #1) going down- almost a hybrid of “tactical” and “SUT” training.

    As far as the books go, keep reading- if you liked EFAD 1, you’re going to enjoy 2 and 3 as well. Without spoiling to much, #2 is a lot like #1 from a tactical perspective, and #3 starts in on a little bit more “active” operations, as the situation doesn’t improve with each book… You got to read them in order though. ;)

    I remember reading through these for the first time a few years back- it’s an odd feeling when you read something that a couple years previously you would have scoffed at and tossed aside as pure tinfoil, but now you can’t because you can see it starting to happen for real, and you know, as much as you want to say otherwise, that yes, “they” *would* indeed do such things….

    • You wrote:
      In fact that sentence about ‘SUT in jeans’ is a lot how I would envision things, at least in the early stages (like EFAD #1) going down- almost a hybrid of “tactical” and “SUT” training.

      • Well, I accidentally posted before I got to finish. I wanted to ask you on elaborate what you mean by ‘hybrid’ training. Being new at all of this, I appreciate what Max is teaching, but am unclear about what “tactical” elements you are referring to as being needed in the early phases.

        • Well, I’m not an expert by any means either, so what do I know…:P

          Hmm… maybe I shouldn’t have tacked “training” onto the last sentence- maybe skillset would have been a better term.
          What I sort of meant was more taking what Max said in the last paragraph about people concerned about current defensive scenarios (which is what the tactical training, imho, is geared 90% towards) BUT also wanting to have the skills to conduct SUT effectively, and I was thinking about how the EF&D storyline went (if you remember the last half of the book), as well as the idea that PD covered about individual pairs conducting smaller operations, but still able to come together and be well enough trained to form fullsize teams and conduct bigger operations, mixed with a little personal theory where all the aspects of training work together like individual gears to drive the machine, and so the “hybrid” idea sort of popped into my head and onto the keyboard…. lol
          Kind of like the inscription on the sword in Last Samurai- ‘warriors in which the old ways meet the new’ or such.
          Hope that makes a little more sense- sometimes what I’m thinking and typing gets mixed up. lol

        • If I may, I will take a pass at this.

          Max has addressed the continuum in the slide to tyranny. Concurrently, one should expect to see a road to war. This is a path that highlights key events on the slide to hard tyranny from the “other side”. Actions will coincide to include a range of responses from protests to the use of lethal force on both sides. However it takes place, we will not be be in a state of open warfare but may lead to such a state.

          As an example, let’s use a patrol to look at how this might take place. You would plan your patrol as if you were in open hostilities and plan just as thoroughly and in detail. Because you are not yet in open conflict, you would not wear camouflage clothing and face paint. Instead, you would dress like the people in the area – jeans and hiking boots, backpack, and a concealed sidearm if appropriate. You would want to have a camera to photograph your objective based on the requirements of your patrol plan.

          Your plan would include the tactical elements of a combat patrol. Your techniques and procedures would be based on the current situation. Essentially, you would use everything you learned in your patrolling course and apply that to your current situation.

          I am not sure this covers exactly what you asked. If not, I will clarify in a follow-up.

  10. I just finished the 3rd a couple weeks ago. 3 was the best, by far, when measured against my AO and possible environs. Being in a huge city, I need to consider the hordes of looters and marauders that might be on the path. But also being a desert southwest state, I see the rapid movement out of the city and into the mountains as something I’ll need to deal with. TTP’s for my AO include vast distances, desert, and rough mountains, but book three resonated the closest to my METTC.