Book Review - Without Rule of Law

Book: Without Rule of Law: Advanced Skills to Help You Survive by "Joe Nobody" (190 pages; 2012). (Amazon link here) (Barnes & Noble link here).

Overview: This book covers the skills and ideas related to scavenging following a wide-spread disaster resulting in the loss of the rule of law. About 1/4 of the book covers selecting, prioritizing, and training with your equipment, with special chapters on "the survival net" (using a net for various purposes) and weapons. The author next covers hiding, evasion and infiltration. The final portion of the book discuses specific tactics of scavenging, including a chapter on working in teams.

Impression: I had previously linked to a review of this book from the SHTF Blog, but decided to pick up a copy to look at myself.

While the tactics and skills set out in the book could be used to pilfer goods from other survivors of such a devastating disaster, that is not the intent of the author. The focus of the book is to scavenge food, medicine, and other essentials that has been abandoned from unoccupied buildings and facilities, after a major disaster in what may be hostile territory.

The author writes the book from the perspective of someone that has a rural retreat location, but, for one reason or another, needs to replenish food, medicine, or other critical supplies in an environment where government and other socio-economic systems have ceased to function. In other words, he envisions a national or global disaster with a long recovery time (more than 2 months) during which time functional government has ceased to exist and outside assistance is unavailable. So, if your preparations are geared toward the "standard" earthquake, flood, hurricane, tornado, etc., or even an Argentina type of long-term economic emergency, you may have the impression that this book is not for you. However, I think that this type of prepper is the one that would most benefit from this book.

If your preparations are geared for a long-term collapse of government, such as might follow an eruption of a super-volcano, a nuclear war, a pandemic on the scale of the Black Plague (while the Black Plague did not lead to a collapse of government then, I think something on that scale would certainly do so now), a civil war, etc., you probably have or plan on moving to a remote retreat. You have or plan on obtaining a large supply of food--a year or more. You similarly are probably storing a good quantity of the medicines you need and first aid supplies.

The author candidly admits in the book that there is going to be a limited time frame in which to engage in productive scavenging. In fact, he acknowledges and assumes that the "easy pickin's" are already gone, and that you will be scavenging secondary, less well known, sources of foods and medicines such as individual doctors offices, office break rooms, rail road cars, etc. Even those sources will "dry up" due to others scavenging.

Paradoxically, the prepper most likely to benefit from this book is the one that has prepared for a short to medium term emergency (< 2 months) but is faced with an emergency that is much longer and greater in scope. It is this type of prepper that will likely be running out of supplies during the window of opportunity to do meaningful scavenging. By the time the "hard core" prepper or survivalist needs to scavenge, the window of opportunity will probably be gone. The other issue is proximity. The short-to-medium term prepper will likely be in a better position to engage in scavenging versus the long-term prepper in an isolated retreat who has to cover long distances to get to a good location to scavenge.

This is not to say that the long-term prepper wouldn't benefit from this book. As the author acknowledges, the long-term prepper may lose his supplies for some reason and need to resort to scavenging.

My impression of the book is positive. It is well written and edited. For someone who enjoyed "Mad Max" and similar post-apocalypse stories as a kid, it is actually an entertaining read. But it has a lot of useful information on operating alone, using MOLLE equipment, using a camouflage net for everything from dragging supplies to use as a hammock.

Where I would fault the author is that he doesn't give enough specifics on some topics. For instance, he mentions the importance of learning military hand-signals when working in a group, but doesn't illustrate any of the hand signals. Since I have the book Light Infantry Tactics for Small Teams, which has an excellent description of hand signals, this is not a real issue for me, but it does mean getting another book or guide from somewhere. If you think that you would be operating in a small team while scavenging, I would recommend also purchasing the Light Infantry Tactics for Small Teams to use in conjunction with this book. And practice.

Another area that I would like to have had more information is actual instructions on how to penetrate the doors to a building or getting through other barriers.

Even ignoring the scavenging portion of the book, it does offer a lot of tips and instructions for escape and evasion, camouflage and hiding, that would be useful by itself.

Overall, a well-written book packed with good information. As indicated, I think this book has the most value for the short to medium term prepper "just in case."

Notable Points: As I wrote above, the book has a good introduction to using the MOLLE system, and the author writes a lot about the use of a net and the various uses it can be put to.

It is also notable that, while recommending carrying a battle rifle, the author discourages actually using weapons. He envisions scavenging operations as reconnaissance type operations--no one should ever know you where there. He does discuss what you will have to do, however, if you do need to defend your life.