"Patriots" by JW Rawles

I have finally finished "Patriots" by James Wesley Rawles. I started reading it before a monthlong trip to NTC and my wife must have put it somewhere because I didn't find it again until yesterday (or I'm just getting a case of sometimers).

There is a lot of good to know tips found in the storyline, and those tips drive the storyline instead of the other way around. The writing is "clunky" at times, preachy at others, and yet well worth the time spent reading it. The book is divided into a "before, during, after" timeline and the equipment tips are divided into a "prepare, improvise, produce" format, and the paramilitary skills into a "train, fight, regroup" layout.

The only time I found obviously wrong information was from the NWO government representative who claimed "of the deaths by disease, more than sixty-five million were caused by the influenza pandemic that swept the eastern seaboard. Without antibiotics available, the disease simply ran rampant until there were no more hosts left to attack in the heavily populated regions."

Pretty much anyone who pays attention knows that you cannot treat viral diseases with antibiotics. At best you can treat them with classes of drugs that interfere with transcription, and prevent them with a vaccine. But antibiotics have as much to do with treating influenza as fish needing a football helmet. It is likely Rawles put that bit of wrongness in there on the part of the NWO official in order to display the depths of ignorance and ineptitude on the part of bureaucrats.

One important item that was hinted at that I know should have been spelled out more clearly, a quality watch that does not require a battery. There are several solar powered watches on the market as well as various mechanical offerings. You can tell soldiers because very few of us wear pretty watches, they are all big ugly and sturdy. Casio Gshock watches are a staple and standby. Older (and more well off) servicemen wear Tag Heuer, Citizen, Rolex, Bulova, or Omega dive watches. If you buy a mechanical watch, make sure that it has markers for seconds and a second hand.

It is largely impossible to conduct effective offensive operations without synchronization and the element of surprise, and a watch makes that possible. There are other ways to achieve synchronization, but they tend to ruin the element of surprise.

The biggest lesson to take away, if you take away nothing else from "Patriots" is that you can't survive a conflict alone. There is strength in numbers and power in cooperation.