Brian M. Morris - The Green Beret Survival Guide: Advice on Situational Awareness, Personal Safety, Recognizing Threats, and Avoiding Terror and Crime

Copyright 2019 by Brian M. Morris

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Brian Peterson

All photos copyright the author unless otherwise noted.

Print ISBN: 978-1-5107-4075-4

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-4076-1

Printed in China

Dedication

I dedicate this book to my superhero wife AnnMarie, who kept by my side through an arduous military career, almost singlehandedly raised our children, nursed me back to health from the death grip of cancer, and comforted me on many a restless night when the blood-stained sands of war came to visit me in my sleep; I will always love you, angel.

Table of Contents

Foreword

Cork Graham, New York Times best-selling author of The Bamboo Chest

O ne thing is certain and that is that the age of innocence is long gone for the United States. Things that we once took for granted are now very close to the forefront of our everyday thoughts and actions. Remember when going on an airline flight was like going to the opera or walking down the red carpet? Travel and airline travel were momentous events. Long before I was born, people boarded trains and ships, elegantly dressed, with an entourage, traveling with months of clothes and other belongingsnot in small suitcases designed for overheads, with wheels that seem to pop off at the most inopportune time, but in full-sized chests made of wood and brass, made to last. When you boarded a plane in the pre-1970s, you were a movie star.

Then in 1968, the longest commercial hijacking for political purposes occurred, and the rest of the early 1970s was rife with these types of hijackings, so much so that major changes were made at airports. When you could once take hunting rifles and even handguns as personal carry-ons, firearms were now stowed in check-in luggage, and metal detectors and x-ray machines were installed at airport gates. Suddenly travel changed. So shocking then, these procedures are taken as normal operating procedures nowadays.

Travel took on a whole new quality that made many feel as if they were now navigating a world of threats and suspicions and violent people. Mind you, those types of peoplethose types of predatorswere always there. They will always be there. The question is what will you do to prepare yourself to understand the world in which we live, one that requires a level of awareness and willingness to do what must be done and that many, frankly, are not willing to do. This is stupid and nave in my view, as Im sure it is in the mind of Brian Morris, who has written an excellent guide to getting yourself squared away to face the many possible threats that can occur while traveling these days.

The gravity of having this understanding, this willingness to do what is necessary, and consequences of not doing so should not be taken lightlyall it takes is one incident of bodily harm to change or end your life.

Of course, all opinions are based subjectively on the thinkers formative environment. Many of us were brought up in a First World type of lifestyle, where we were offered the luxury of always having essential needs such as food, water, and shelter. This is not the case in so many locations around the world. Having worked in some real hell-holes, Im sure Brian and I share mutual understandings that, given the opportunity to be good, people will be so. Those arent the ones to be prepared for, other than to make sure their good nature is never ignored.

Sadly, in the places that President Trump once called shitholes, people arent often given that luxury, and will fight tooth and nail for anything of worth in their part of the worldand it breeds a very cynical and angry type of individual. Years in war zones have taught me that patriotic rhetoric is fine, but what really starts a populace picking up weapons and fighting uprisings is hunger. Its for this very reason that bread and circuses, or these days, free cell phones and food stamps has been so successful in placating a populace that only two hundred years earlier was willing to fight a revolution over a few words: taxation without representation.

Every once in a while, an environment creates a type of individual who will go further than a pickpocketing, or robbery, and falls into the classification of flat-out predatory psychopathic behavior. These types get pleasure from control, creating fear in others, and doing so by kidnapping and murder. Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy come immediately to mind, though there are so many more wicked and evil individuals over the centuries who might not have received the same amount of press, but outshine the former in their depravity. Its these kinds of individuals that teach us all that preparedness and being alert is not about being paranoid, that there are real monsters out there who are so willing to take someone out, if for just the sick and twisted pleasure of making someone suffer a tortured and horrific death.

Its these types, but also the various pickpockets, flim-flam men, and even natural disasters that make Brian Morriss new book, The Green Beret Survival Guide , timely and important. Within these pages youll see how an operator thinks and strategizes, and how you, with tactics for a variety of scenarios that include emergency response, dealing with crime, and knowing which rooms in a hotel are best for the safety of you and your loved ones, can counter them.

There are many books about thinking and planning like an operator sent to a foreign country to fight a variety of wars, but how practical is that information for the common man and woman, who are simply driving to another state to see a relative, or getting on a plane to attend a conference? What Brian Morris has done is take some very high level understandings of traveling while on certain kinds of deployments he would have gone on as a combat veteran of the US Armys Special Forces, and taken not only that training, but also the real life experience, and boiled it all down into palatable information bites that will educate and prepare the reader for just about any threat that the average reader could encounter.

I commend you on your book purchase, and I wish you a great experience learning information that anyone wanting to improve the security in their lives will gladly absorb.

Cork Graham

Bestselling author of The Bamboo Chest , and former team leader on the Discovery Channels 2015 hit series,
Treasure Quest: Snake Island .

Introduction

A fter more than seventeen years of war, the United States and its citizens remain vulnerable to a terrorist attack by a ruthless enemy intent on instilling fear and doubt into the hearts and minds of Americans both at home and abroad. Even without the possibility of terrorism, it is a dangerous world filled with criminals and thieves who have the potential to take our property or do us harm. It is imperative that Americans remain vigilant while still conducting their usual business and living their lives fully, either at home in the United States or while traveling abroad. Risk exists and can never be fully eradicated. However, by following the guidelines in this book, it is my honest hope that you may learn to recognize and mitigate the risks that do exist and to make yourself and your loved ones far safer in the process.