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Self Defense isn't what it used to be. Jiu jitsu has become mainstream. But what if you were to discover that no-gi training wasn't as realistic as you wished? Ruben Alverez traces a tale of growing up in the world of Jiu Jitsu, only to discover it wasn't all that he needed. ECQC or Extreme Close Quarters Concepts takes the idea of a violent encounter to a more personal level. It's no longer about how fast your concealed draw time is. Rather, Ruben illustrates how a lethal weapon changes the ...

What if the true LARP is the assumption that we can be credited as being part of the community without participation? When the term LARP (Live Action Role Playing) is used as an epitaph, it accuses the target of living in a fantasy. With analysis, we look at what it is that is considered dishonorable about so-called LARP-ing. What we find out is that many of us may be LARPing even if we're not running around in the woods in full kit with the boys. And it begs out another question: what would ...

Rudyard Kipling's poem "If" often finds home on the wall and in the minds of great men. It leads the reader through a series of character traits that make a man, opening with the line "If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too; "Throughout history, mankind has asked what it is that makes a man truly a ma...

There's more to being a warfighter than shooting. On the US Army webpage it is stated that the Ranger Battalions encompass the "Big 5 Philosophy" of Marksmanship, Physical Training, Medical Training, Small-Unit Tactics, and Mobility. Breaking down each of these, we look at what they might entail. In order to put to rest the cultural conversation in modern gun culture which pits one discipline of shooting against a profession, in this episode we walk through what the big 5 entails, and what mi...

The George Floyd Riots were a strange time. On the ground, the narrative level politics fell to the wayside. Information Warfare was not about which political party was effectively harnessing the energy of the street, but about if their house was going to be looted or burned down in the next few hours. We live in the post information age, were it's no longer about access to information that is bottlenecked by the limitations of the printing press, publishing houses, and newspapers, but our ab...

Which is better? To Bug Out or to Harden Your Position?Which is better? Train in Recce or CQB?Which is better? A DMR or a MK18?Which is better? 9mm or 45acp?These questions represent different decision that go awry when we attempt to answer them at the wrong level of analysis. There is a strange hope that, if it were to come to brass tacks, the good men would do what is right. Yet conversations like those presented above are seemingly less concerned good men doing what is right, but instead, ...