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Beware Unscrupulous Book Dealers
By Kurt Saxon
Several years ago when I began getting a lot of publicity warning of
civilization coming apart, a particularly corrupt branch of the sucker-book field was
established. The "suckers" these books are directed at are those who know things
are bad and are getting worse.
To such book dealers as Delta/Desert, Paladin Press, Loompanics Unlimited and Butokukai,
those who would prepare for an uncertain future are fair game. They reasoned that since
this class of suckers was only fantasizing, it was all right to just feed those fantasies.
They needed no real knowledge, accuracy was unnecessary and any material which could be
passed off as secret, underground, classified or dangerous was sucker-bait. Books on
destructive devices are falsely advertised as CIA, Frankford Arsenal, real super stuff!
Most of their material on improvised weaponry is not CIA, etc., but simply from military
manuals.
Actually, I already have all the better material from the military manuals in the Poor
Man's James Bond series. What they advertise as real Terminator material is mostly what I
rejected as uninteresting or impractical in light of better methods. But this same
uninteresting, unimportant and impractical material can still be sold to suckers. Then
there is that material written by ignorant jerks who don't know their subjects and
couldn't sell their material to ethical publishers. But if it reads well to a child, the
suckers will buy it.
Other books, or booklets, as most of them really are, are just plain silly. Like Desert's
"Improvised Batteries and Detonating Devices." This is a hodgepodge of
impractical information, some even unrelated to the title. Page 2 has "GELS: Oil
Gelation in automobile engines causes permanent damage to moving parts due to oil
starvation. The most successful gelling agent among those tested is
N-coco-y-hydroxybutyramide. This substance can be added to the engine oil pre-synthesized,
or it can be formed in situ by the reaction between coco amine and butyrolactone.
"A Polyacrylamide gelling agent was used to completely gal an automobile engine
cooling system."
Why would the scientist who could understand that and get it, be messing with people's car
engines? I've never heard of it. But the clincher is that the stuff doesn't work before 18
or more hours.
The parts on batteries are extremely technical and require a much higher education in
chemistry and electronics than the line soldier or average man possesses. It was not
tailored for just anyone who can read, as books on anything improvised should be. In
short, unless you have a really good background in science and have access to materials
even I would find hard to get, the booklet is worthless.
Another example is "Improvised Munitions Black Book Vol. 3." Pages 13-15
describe a grenade made up of a short piece of pipe threaded on both ends and capped. It
is filled with dry potassium chlorate, sulphur and ball bearings and will explode on
impact. The reader is cautioned not to use it after five days. Bad!
When Sulphur is exposed to oxygen, molecules of sulfuric acid are formed which can explode
potassium chlorate. Pure sulphur doesn't react spontaneously with potassium chlorate.
Pure sulphur is that which has not been exposed to the air. Raw sulphur is burned and the
fumes are condensed in a large hood The "flowers of sulphur" are scraped off and
packaged airtight when meant for fireworks or explosives makers. They know it has not been
exposed to air. But how do you know the sulphur you are using has not been exposed to air
for who knows how long before being packaged as garden sulphur or for uses other than for
explosives?
It is still fine for gunpowder or most any fireworks not using dry potassium chlorate.
Still, you do not know if it is dangerous for a grenade, even if you have just opened the
package. The device is stupid and extremely dangerous to it's maker. At any rate, never
mix dry sulphur with dry potassium chlorate.
That book is filled with seemingly clever items but hard to get ingredients. It is
dangerous, impractical and filled with overly complicated processes.
Then there is Paladin's "Hit Man". I think the writer meant to discourage any
reader from actually hurting anyone. The main emphasis is on not getting caught, making
the hit man so paranoid and overly cautious that the job would never get done. If anyone
tries to kill me, I hope he goes by that book.
A real clunker is "The Anarchist Cookbook". It's author was a real anarchist and
just wanted to cause trouble. But he had no knowledge of the material. The book is a
mishmash of useless formulas and outdated weaponry. Also, he filled about half the book
with instructions for making drugs. Weapons and drugs don't mix and any reader would have
to be high on LSD to be stupid enough to shoot a molotov cocktail from a shotgun.
I read the silly book years ago and reasoned that if anyone could sell such trash I could
do better. So I wrote the Poor Man's James Bond. The rest is history.
Now for the Ninja books. Lies grown from myths. If you want to be a ninja warrior I'll
tell you what to do. Take off your shoes and socks, put a bag over your head and bounce
off your walls for at least an hour per session.
After a few sessions you will be as good at ninja as anyone who has ever depended on those
idiotic ninja books to learn martial arts.
You don't learn martial arts by reading. Get with a buddy and practice the moves and holds
of the Ju-Jitsu and the Army Marine hand-to-hand combat in PMJB 1 and U.S. Militia A few
week's practice in your spare time will make you more than a match for any undisciplined
punk you meet.
But if you want to go on to make martial arts a part of your life, you will have to join a
karate, kung-fu or tae-kwon-do school near you. In the real world of martial arts it is
instruction by a professional and practice, not fantasizing through books written for
suckers.
Then there are the detective books for super spies and secret squirrels. I challenge
anyone to find a real private investigator who got his start by reading even the best of
those books. If that is your interest, look up "Private Investigator" in your
phone book and visit a real private detective.
It is mainly drudgery, not really romantic and very down-to-earth. The person you talk to
will tell you the real way to become a detective and he may hire and train you if you are
needed. If he is a good guy, and he probably is, he will set you straight one way or the
other.
Then there are the lock-picking books. Think. If you want to get in someplace, isn't it
easier to kick in the door, break a panel, jimmy a window? Of course, your fantasy is to
pick a lock, enter and get valuable papers and leave without anyone knowing you were
there. How many books, how many sets of lock picks will you buy and how many hours of
practice on your own common locks will you waste learning this useless pursuit.
Several years ago I took a locksmithing course I saw advertised in Popular Mechanics. The
first lesson showed how to make a key for one of those locks made up of layers of metal.
The idea was to hold a blank key over a candle and cover it with soot. When the key was
pushed in the lock and twisted the insides would take off the soot at the right points.
After using a thin, flat file to file those places, the key would open the lock. It
worked.
The second lesson came with a practice lock and I learned about it but it was too
involved. Since I didn't really want to be a professional locksmith I sent the lessons
back, telling them I didn't want back what I had paid but I didn't want any more.
If you are serious and want to be a locksmith, get a professional course as I did. By the
time you have finished it you will be a locksmith. You can set yourself up or hire out to
an established locksmith. Other than this, it is just silliness.
Now about those revenge books. Some of the ideas are clever but too few are practical to
make the books worth their cost. You could get the same quality of practical jokes and
dirty tricks by inviting a few guys over to kill a keg of beer.
While researching my article on Clarence's visit to Washington I learned the glories of
Super-Glu. Treat your enemy's car and door locks to a squirt of liquid Super-Glu. Fifteen
seconds and the lock has to be replaced. Just think of the possibilities. And it is
available in most stores and supermarkets.
Choose your victim. While at work, find his car and Super-Glu his locks. Then while he is
deciding to break a window to crawl through or call someone to take a door off, you drive
to his home and Super-Glu his door locks.
This would be an awful way to treat a guy but you could turn his life around, undetected,
with one small tube of glue. A tube of such glue could also disrupt businesses of all
kinds as they couldn't open up in the morning.
For a pure practical joke with Super-Glu, follow your victim around until he sits down. Of
course, this would mean going with him to a bar for drinks or to a restaurant, or in the
office as you accompany him to his desk. Naturally, this would mean he is not a blood
enemy. Of course, you don't want him to make the connection of you being nearby when it
happened. But you've got fifteen seconds, remember?
A few seconds before you know he is going to sit down, squirt some Super-Glu on the seat.
It is thin and there wouldn't be enough of it for him to feel through his pants, maybe
even his shorts, to get up. Imagine and enjoy.
Super-Glu is terrible stuff. In Houston, a woman couldn't get the top off a tube she had
used. She put the cap in her mouth to hold it tight so she could twist it better. The tube
split and it squirted all over her lips. She had to go to the emergency ward where they
actually slit her lips open with a scalpel. Super-Glu is not be fooled with.
If you have any good practical jokes or dirty tricks you know would work and are not
complicated, send them in.
Getting back to the subject of bad books--the titles and categories I have listed are not
exceptions, they are typical. You are safest by not buying anything at all from dealers
who will sell such books, regardless of whatever else they sell. A Canadian who called
said he had bought a bunch of books from Paladin Press and was so angry and disappointed
he threw them away. I would have sent them back.
You ought to realize that the people who publish such trash don't care if the books are
inaccurate. They rely on your lack of understanding to make you think you just bought
something you were not ready for.
There are two reasons you may not understand a book you get from such dealers. The book
may be good but very technical. Of course, the ad for it leads you to believe it was
written just for you That is deceptive advertising.
You may buy the book and decide to study up on the subject later. It is unlikely but you
might. But what if the book was written by some phony who counts on you to think you are
too dumb to understand it, when actually, you do not understand it because it simply
doesn't make any sense? If you don't realize this, you may be in danger. This can come
about when you think you have what you need on a subject only to find out it is garbage
when you or your friends use it. That is too late.
Incidentally, if you find any errors in my works, I want to know about them. I will print the corrections here and also put the corrections in the next printing.
