How to Use This Book
A field manual is not a book you admire. It is a book you run.
This one was built to be used three ways — pick whichever fits you.
Read it straight through. This is what I would recommend the first time. The book builds in layers, the way training does — each chapter sets the ground the next one stands on. Start at the Introduction and walk it in order. It is twenty-two short chapters; it will not take long.
Or jump to your problem. If something specific is gnawing at you — your accounts, your kids, the feeling that your phone owns you — go straight to that chapter. The table of contents is plain on purpose. Each chapter stands on its own well enough to help you today.
Or carry the cards. At the back of this book is a deck of Battle Drill Cards — the whole manual distilled to action, one card per chapter. Each card is a drill: what to do, in order, and why. Pull the card you need. Pin it by the router. Keep it in the truck. The cards are the book in your hand on an ordinary Tuesday.
A few things before you start.
The drills are the point. Every chapter ends in one. Reading the drill is not doing the drill. A book you only read changes nothing; a book you run changes your week. Do them.
Do not try to do it all in one night. One chapter, one drill, at a time. If you do nothing else this first week, do the drills in Chapters 4, 5, and 6 — your software, your devices, your keys. That is the largest share of your real risk, closed in a single evening.
If something is wrong right now — if you have been scammed, an account is in someone else’s hands, or a child is in trouble — do not start at the Introduction. Turn to Appendix D — If Something Just Happened. It is the emergency page. It is calm, and it is fast. Go there now; come back for the rest later.
And one promise — the same one the Introduction makes. This is not a doom book. Fear is useless, and we train it out. The posture of this whole manual is calm.
Begin there.
