100 Deadly Skills: COMBAT EDITION: A Navy SEAL’s Guide to Crushing Your Enemy, Fighting for Your Life, and Embracing Your Inner Badass is New York Times best-selling author and former US Navy SEAL Clint Emerson’s third and most recent volume in the 100 Deadly Skills series. For those of you that may be unfamiliar with the series, each of the books provides techniques to make its readers more dangerous, should the need ever arise.
Clint Emerson on the series: “The first volume in the 100 Deadly Skills series delivered clandestine hacks designed to allow readers to escape and evade threats at home and abroad. The second book, my Survival Edition, provided a blueprint to surviving chaos, misadventures, and fatal disasters. Now, with the COMBAT EDITION, I’ve created the most comprehensive on-the-ground combatives manual ever assembled—traveling the country to learn the most effective combat techniques from some of the deadliest characters on Earth. The goal remains the same: allowing good people to defeat evil, fight for their lives, and survive another day.”
In putting together the COMBAT EDITION, Clint Emerson harvested from the skills of a diverse group of 16 top subject matter experts, ranging from the world of special operations to badass pro fighters, martial artists and outlaw bikers. They include, in chapter order, Tony Blauer, Tony Jeffries, Marcus Torgerson, Stephen K. Hayes, Zoltan Bathory, Joe Robaina, Brian Halliday, Jason Johnson, Rich Graham, Trevor Roe, Pat McNamara, John Lovell, Dom Raso, Greg Thompson, and Bill Rapier. The weaponry in the book is equally diverse, covering everything from handguns and edged weapons to improvised weapons and environmental factors.
Each of the techniques in the book draws on the unique skill sets of the carefully selected cadre of subject matter experts and is carefully broken down to its component parts step-by-step, following the basic five paragraph warning order (WARNO) format, in order to “radically improve your chances of coming out on top—whether you’re faced by an active shooter or coming toe to toe with a belligerent prick.”
The material is presented in a unique style that’s designed to make all of the techniques accessible to the reader. Not only are the techniques described in print with story board style explanatory illustrations, many of the skills also feature embedded QR (QR for Quick Response) matrix barcodes that allow you to access live-action skill video content. Simply scan the QE code with your smartphone (by putting it in camera mode) and you’ll automatically be directed to the video or see a drop-down link to click on. The step-by-step video content enables you to visualize and practice the skills in real-time, greatly enhancing the learning process. This approach is very helpful, especially for visual learners.
All of the skills presented in the book rely on no-nonsense combative techniques. The one hundred skills include:
- Weaponizing your non-violent posture
- Delivering damaging body strikes
- Accurately throwing a knife
- Quick drawing and shooting a handgun
- Tactically deceiving your enemy
- Surviving a multi-threat ambush
- Understanding non-lethal and lethal options
The book provides a plethora of useful techniques and presents them in an entertaining style. The first page of each of the chapters starts with the bio of the Badass (subject matter expert) and of a real-life Enemy, who also feature in the comic-book-style story board illustrations of the techniques presented in the chapter.
The book will not turn the reader into a combatives “expert.” No book can do that. What it will do is provide techniques that will serve as a foundation to get the reader thinking and provide a basis for further learning and training. To quote the late Bruce Lee, “Use only that which works, and take it from any place you can find it.” “Adapt what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own.”
Close combat is fluid and dynamic. Although there are some basic fundamentals, prearranged patterns and techniques are not adequate to dealing with changing situations. Keeping that in mind, Clint Emerson packs a lot of potentially life-saving skills into the COMBAT EDITION. It’s definitely well worth purchasing. The access to the live-action skill videos alone make it an outstanding value. Everyone will learn something from it.
The COMBAT EDITION was written by Clint Emerson in conjunction with H. Keith Melton. It was illustrated by Tom Mandrake. Brief bios are as follows:
Clint Emerson, a retired US Navy SEAL, spent twenty years conducting special ops all over the world while attached to SEAL Team Three, the National Security Agency (NSA), and a Special Mission Unit.
H. Keith Melton, a graduate of the US Naval Academy, is an intelligence historian and a specialist in clandestine technology, espionage, and tradecraft. Melton is the author of many spy books.
Tom Mandrake has created and illustrated books, comics and graphic novels for over 40 years. Some of the titles he has worked on include Batman, The Spectre, The Martian Manhunter, The Punisher, The New Mutants, The X-Files, Creeps, To Hell You Ride, and Kros: Hallowed Ground.
100 Deadly Skills COMBAT EDITION is available from Amazon in a Kindle Edition and in print (paperback) from Amazon and other book stores. For more about Clint Emerson or the his new book, go to clintemerson.com or follow him on Warrior Poet Society Network (WPSN), YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. The other books in the series are still available through Amazon.
Details
100 Deadly Skills COMBAT EDITION
Print Edition Length: 326 pages
Language: English.
Print Edition Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.74 x 8.25 inches.
Publication Date: 19 January 2021.
Publisher: Lioncrest Publishing.
ISBN: 978-1-5545-1886-2 Paperback; 978-1-5545-1885-3 Ebook.
Material Disclosure
I received this product as a courtesy from the manufacturer so I could test it and give my honest feedback. I am not bound by any written, verbal or implied contract to give this product a good review. All opinions are my own and are based off my personal experience with the product.
*The views and opinions expressed on this website are solely those of the original authors and contributors. These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of Spotter Up Magazine, the administrative staff, and/or any/all contributors to this site.
I think this is really good but it only scrapes the surface, there is a lot much more to understand if your preparing to defend yourself, and others depending on what your preparing for with this knowledge in mind. In public places its important to know where you have your back turned and its important to know the situation in order to control the outcome of it, with a gun to the head if the gun is on the safety catch and if it hasn’t clicked the gun is not loaded! And then create a distraction. Systema here is better, yet we must digress at this point, the OODA loop and situational awareness is a important skill regardless of training level first and foremost and learning pressure points can be learned on separate basis much faster to increase ones dialogue with another system. Furthermore ROSS can enhance one’s potential based on the use of any other system. To me the use one can find for the information here is individual to them….its more important to understand what to expect from a opponent and what to be prepared for when stook to linear systems. I would learn to fight first from my opponents perspective then plan according to my own. If you want to learn to fight learn according to the foe you want to defeat in sizeable fashion.