Post
by teotwaki » Wed Apr 06, 2016 11:38 pm
Additional info from numerous reviews of the book "Doomsday Marauders"
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The premise of the book itself, “To hell with prepping, become a marauder and simply TAKE what you need from others!” really went against the grain for several reasons:
"The encouraging of taking by brute force the lawfully owned property of others denies every single principle the Republic was founded upon.
The presentation is strictly at the base level of human existence: The Law of the Jungle
The presentation contradicts itself with the author’s contention that rape is not permissible, but murder can be at times, but the taking of life while taking property lawfully owned by others is ok, if you think it’s necessary to supply your own team or send a ‘message’ to the location you’re attempting to extract ‘tribute’ from.
The book does not provide for any principles other than, ‘become an animal (except where the author’s particular values are in conflict) and live, or go home and become my or others prey.’ He sets the stage describing his belief that no defended location has ever held throughout history. In many ways, he’s correct, in others, he’s mistaken in that those who value living and have ‘precious cargo’ that must be defended, will do the things necessary to make the price to high for marauders to attack.
The author also seems to write from the premise that all NPT or Prepper types are self-interested, pussilananimous sissy boys that are easy to take, even when the NPT or defended location has well-trained and/or former military included.
While reading the book as objectively as possible, I was constantly reminded of the 1960 film, ‘The Magnificent Seven’ (based upon the book, The Seven Samurai), specifically, the bandit Tuco’s character, played by Eli Wallach, and his famous line, “If God didn’t want them sheared, he wouldn’t have made them sheep!” The author promotes and is trying to train the reader to become a WROL ‘Tuco’. Another similarity with the movie above is the author describes a point where he tries to get a former green beret to join him as a partner, much like the character ‘Tuco’ did with Yul Brenner and Steve McQueen’s characters during the intial negotiations. The author, just as Tuco did, fails to acknowledge that there might be ‘Seven Samurai’ at any one of the NPT/Prepper locations he wants to raid willing to see the fight through to the end…the marauder’s end, specifically.
Bottom line on this book?
I’m glad I read it because it gave me new impetus to kill any apathy I might have regarding PT, marksmanship, FIN (Finish It Now – AKA ‘Combatives’, and War to the Knife, Knife to the Hilt) and to get my own NPT’s training revved up. It’s not a pleasant book to read; some of his stories will upset gentler people you have in your NPT, but it’s still worth while to get an idea of what you’ll be up against. Looters and unorganized marauders are one thing; organized, trained, business-minded marauders are another. Use this book as a baseline for planning WROL operations and training to repel marauders; the descriptions in the book can be distilled into a very useful Plan of Instruction for the NPT trainer with little effort.
And make no mistake, those with no moral compass who like being parasites, will find much joy in this book, because it’s a street language training program tailored specificaly to and for them to learn to tyrannize peaceful people making the best of a SHTF scenario."
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Ex-CIA operative Kilkenny writes the book on surviving a post-apocalyptic event or fall of civilized society by becoming a professional Marauder. It describes, using fictionalized stories, how to take down farms, ranches and even large survivor colonies in order to survive, even thrive after the fall of civilized society.
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As I said, the book is full of factual errors, terrible advice, and sociopathic ideas. Here's one of the most damning examples of why I believe he is not ex-CIA, not ex-Military, and not even particularly knowledgeable about firearms in general. He discusses firearms at some length. He highly recommends a couple of firearms that I personally would never think to run out and get (the guns and their ammo are not incredibly common compared to a million better, more available choices). My guess is that he just happens to own that pistol and that rifle, so he has some knowledge about it... so he'll speak to those guns because he doesn't know much about others. Again, just my opinion on those 2 he recommends. However, here's where it became absolutely clear that he does not have a military-level knowledge of firearms. He speaks several times about the M-16. He describes using the M-16 during raids and operations here and there throughout the book. Well, each time he referenced the type of cartridge that the M-16 fires, he says "22LR". You heard that right. In several spots throughout the book, he refers to the 22LR as the ammunition which is fired by an M-16. No, he didn't say "AR-15 chambered in 22LR" or anything like that. It was pretty clear he was talking about the standard military M-16, and he asserted that it shoots 22LR. It would be something like, "Once they surrendered, we told them we want a month's worth of food, a hundred gallons of water, and 5000 rounds of M-16 ammo. And sure enough, we got several boxes of rations, full water barrels, and a big crate of 22LR ammunition." I'm paraphrasing because I don't want to copy-and-paste directly. There were so many spots in this book that made me think, "I think this guy might be an enormous fraud." But the "22LR" parts are what sealed the deal for me. The author uses what is surely a moniker. That's probably wise, considering how most people feel about it when someone tries to claim military status and valor that they do not have. It's not my business to hold him accountable to his claims, but maybe somebody out there knows if something can be done about this.
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Based on his advise and anecdotes in the book he has no experiance assaulting a fixed location, conducting tactical recconaisance on a fixed site, and engaging in any type of deception campaign. I will not comment on his statements on being with any OGA but his stories read like somthing out of "Stony Man" or a Dick Marcinko "Red Cell" book. Some of his advise is useful, such as pistols are almost useless for anything other then in close self defense, but the rest of the book is only useful to see how he and people like him will try to raid a location for their tribute and how we can counter his attempts. The story he tells of the prepared position manned by former SF guys shows me that he has no understanding of how to defend a position, never talked to a guy in SF (They hate to be called "Green Berets."), or how soldiers are trained to respond to an attack. If I came upon a position guarded the way he described then that guy is the worst SF ODA member in the history of mankind and I would cut him loose. I once had a leader who told me "You learn from all people, smart and stupid alike" take this book with a grain of salt and use it to learn what not to do and if you encounter these tactics how to thwart them. Check this guy out on "Doomsday Preppers" season three, episode titled "We are the Marauders." He comes across as a guy who is faking it.
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But where it really gets flaky are the scenarios he presents, which are full of improbable assumptions and unconsidered questions:
In one of his fantasy scenarios, a prepper (and "former Green Beret") stalks him and shoots him in the chest with a .45 pistol. Luckily, 'Kilkenny' is wearing IIIa body armor and is bruised but uninjured. Lucky too that the Green Beret somehow didn't notice that bulky body armor and shoot him in the head! But you know how clueless those preppers are... and after all, it's 'Kilkenny' writing the script.
He imagines the folks in each prepper compound his marauders beseige as being torn by internal strife and dissention; while his own group of marauders happily obeys his every command. He imagines them as being both highly capable, and highly compliant to his orders. No strife or disagreement among his group! And if anyone does disagree, 'Kilkenny' will just shoot him in the head! Meanwhile, I suppose the others are just grinning and chuckling and shaking their heads: "That Kilkenny! Isn't he something!"
He imagines his group of marauders travelling merrily from conquest to conquest on horseback, stealing all they need. Since many of his scenarios are set in Colorado, one can't help but wonder: where do they spend the winter? And how will they keep shoes on their horses? But undoubtedly, that's no problem for 'Kilkenny': since this is all his fantasy anyway, no doubt he's contrived some awesome scenario to suit.
Reading his bio, we discover in fact that he currently lives in CO with his wife on a "sprawling ranch". As he spends most of the book describing how such ranches will be completely indefensible, one can't help but wonder what provisions he's made: what does *his* ranch look like? But he gives us no clue, even in the equally-worthless 'sequel' ('Defeating the Doomsday Marauders') which supposedly deals with just this problem; but in fact contains mostly repetitions of his egoistic bloviating from the first book, along with another fantasy scenario or two.
Then there's his stream-of-consciousness writing style, in which he takes himself as the supreme example of all that's right and good, and apparently assumes that every word coming out of his mouth will be inherently fascinating to the reader. *This* reader, at least, found just the opposite to be true: early-on, I got tired of his endless self-promotion, all the 'hot babes' he bedded, etc.
'Kilkenny' has given us his wish-fulfillment fantasy of a post-apocalyptic world in which he-- the fearless and revered commander-- leads his Robin Hood brigade of marauders-- each of whom is a model warrior, capable-but-obedient, merry-but-deadly, and ruthless-but-moral-- in escapade after escapade, in which they defeat the clueless preppers, share a few shots of Jack around the campfire, and ride off to the next great adventure. These imaginations might be interesting to his psychotherapist, but not to me; or to anyone else seriously grappling with the very real problems of self-defense in the world to come.
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Seems the writer is trying to piss off every one he meets. Book reads like a wannabe daydreamer who is probably a nerd with a street level imagination. He pretends to be an expert secret agent yet comes off with anecdotes that are ridiculously implausible, but always invoke a beautiful prostitute.
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I am not quite sure where to start when reviewing this book. This one star rating is not given lightly and I don't believe I have ever given someone a one star rating for written thoughts before. If it were possible, I would ask Amazon for my money back after reading it.
The authenticity which the author claims to have experienced is highly suspect. The author claims to have been selected by an alphabet agency to work as a covert operative, as well as maintaining a successful career as a traveling banker through Central America. His "experiences" are relayed to the reader via first person perspective with no regard to sentence structure and italics are (over) used for emphasis on points that the author wants to hit home with the reader. Rather than emphasis specific points, italics are used to say things like "BULLSH!T" and other pejoratives and it comes across the same way when kids first learn about swear words.
The author has several sentences throughout the book that make one doubt entirely that he has ever experienced firearms at all. In the last chapter, the author implores the reader with the following sage advice: "Keep that Glock cocked and locked!"
You can keep a Glock loaded and the author may be using a cutesy misnomer to say that you should always be prepared but Glock pistols are striker fired pistols that have no hammer. Additionally, you cannot keep them "locked" because there is no manual safety on a Glock. This is a term usually used to describe 1911 readiness attributed to gunfighter Col. Jeff Cooper. Condition One is A round chambered, full magazine in place, hammer cocked, safety on. This is what it means to be cocked and locked.
The author also gives contradictory advice to those engaged in firefights. The beginning of the book has the author giving a common knowledge platitude about pistols being poor tools for offensive striking and they should only be used to fight your way (back) to your rifle. Later in his novel-styled descriptions of offensive attacks, the author ditches his rifles for a Russian-Surplus uncommon (but not rare) caliber pistol; the Makarov. The Makarov is an okay pistol. A lot of them were circulated years back because of inexpensive prices and inexpensive ammo. It is hard but not impossible to find hollowpoint or 'defensive' ammo for them. Most models should an uncommon round called 9mm Makarov or 9x18mm PM. You may be thinking that you have heard of this round before and that it is very popular. What is the common 9mm round is actually 9x19mm. The reason why 9x18mm was invented: The Soviet military required that their ammunition should be incompatible with NATO firearms, so that in the event of armed conflict a foreign power would be unable to use captured Soviet ammunition supplies. 9×18mm Makarov ammunition uses a larger diameter bullet than other common 9mm rounds, measuring 9.27mm (0.365 in), compared with 9.017mm (0.355 inches) for 9mm Parabellum. After its introduction in 1951, the 9×18mm Makarov round spread throughout the militaries of Eastern Bloc nations.
I've spent more time on this review than what you should spend on this book. The advice is the same as what you see the 'bad' characters doing in post apocalyptic movies. The question asked is what are you willing to do is survive? You don't need this book for that.
The only thing I am inclined to believe is that the author did, at some point, work for the government. Most likely in customer service at the post office or at the DMV.
Last edited by
teotwaki on Wed May 11, 2016 10:59 am, edited 1 time in total.
