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Hello James,

I’ve just finished reading the above book, and wanted to write to say how fascinating I found it. I came across your work because I have the great pleasure and honour of training with Jeth Randolph, who clearly thinks very highly of you. I believe he is an extraordinary teacher, and that what he teaches us is very rarely found, in the UK or elsewhere. 

I know I’m not the target audience for Thriving (being older and female), so I was really interested in your responses to his interview questions,  in his latest book, on older trainees, and issues specific to women. Thank you for that. 

I’m now going to go back through Thriving  and re-read in more detail. There seems to be a huge amount in it and I have the great good fortune of being able to look at some of the more relevant (to me) skills, tactics and responses with Jeth, to see which I can make work. I’ll take a look at some of the rest of your immense catalogue of work, too. 

All the best and thanks again,

Nicole

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Nicole, 

Hope my work is of some use to you. 

attached find an oral history and analysis of bad odds violence, which would include you in the demographic. 

Take care, 

james 

…

Hello James,

Thank you so much for sending When You’re Food. I’m not sure “enjoyed” is quite the right word, as it’s obviously quite a grim read, but very compelling, and hilarious in places. (And your description of trying to get a grip of Geno’s hairy bollocks in Thriving had me in tears of laughter). 

I work with tricky (some would say dangerous) horses and they teach you a whole load about situational awareness: they know they are food and are looking for danger around every corner. If you don’t want 600+kg of horse landing in your lap, you get good at looking out for the same “dangers” (often, a plastic bag flapping in a hedge) that they see. Working with Jeth has made me much more aware of the need to stay alert with humans: in spite of knowing what can and does and has happened, I had become lax. Getting older brings the very welcome and freeing gift of becoming less interesting to men, but the invisibility cloak only works in some settings. 

Anyway, thanks again, I really appreciate you taking the time to reply and to send me the .pdf, it’s very generous. It’s not that often you come across someone who really lives their thing (don’t want to say “passion”), and you clearly are one of those, as is Jeth.

Nicole

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Nicole, 

Glad Food was useful.

i just spent a month with a farrier in Missouri to learn about horses for a western I'm writing—I am terrified of equines!

Would much rather wrangle africans. 

Younger men lose interest in old men as challenges as well which helps.

Will use this as an article starter as well. 

attaching 1 of some 40 travel books i have written that are mostly unpublished and hopefully entertaining.

peace, 

james 

oh yes, and an old book on how ridiculous life was in Baltimore—2 why not, because i have a big ego and you actually read.

[How God Saved Mars, Narco Night Train and The GQ Mugging Inquest.]

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Considering Nicole’s situation as a seeker of serious survival lore and ability, is mark of the feral nexus of civilized downfall. In barbarism women are property who have to manage their survival as a kind of intelligent furniture that also does more active forms of work and have much social value and hence leverage for acquired third person protection, which includes the promise of vengeance, which modern women have actively disabled across most modern cultures, having farmed it out to the lie of police protection.

In civilization, one gradually develops the emasculation of men and masculation of women, to the point where most combat arts training is fantasy, women fantasizing about using bare hands and strenth-based weapons to combat, younger, larger, harder, faster attackers, enjoying a minimal of a 1-5 disadvantage.

Meanwhile, the men who are mostly absent from self-defense training venues, are either engaging in fad MMA training with slim correlating value to an armed encounter or mass attack-which are the only likely threats for men. Or, those men totally ignore practical survival training and focus on military combat with weapons that are illegal to use, and when used will generate a clash with or at minimal an abduction by actual military-grade mass combatants, such as a SWAT team.

Now that the weak corruption of civilization has fully set in, hyena men rise from among our shithole cities to attack women, children, elderly and small Asians, etc. I hope Nicole improves her survival chances while making provisions that such skills will not be needed—because they will probably fail on contact. A woman getting on in years is only at less risk of rape among non-blacks. Blacks love raping old ghost ladies. As for robbery and hate motivated attacks, packs of armed brown youths are to be expected. Against such a pack Jeth or I might stand a slim chance of only being injured while fighting back, but would most likely be maimed or killed while injuring or killing 1 or 2 of the pack.

Any woman is toast in that situation. So, for those women who have been placed by civilization in the position where men will not or are not allowed to protect or avenge them, who have taken it upon themselves to learn combat, you need to assess what types of combat you will not survive and then decide whether death or rape is more agreeable. The best reason for a woman to learn how to fight against men is to increase the chance that she will be killed rather than raped. Because half the time the savages will kill you after they rape you anyhow. This is why I carry an illegal knife, so that cops will kill me rather than arrest me, which, to me, is tantamount to rape.

I think that serious female self defense should focus on knife use, as even running away is not viable for most women, since their attackers are likely to be male youths.

I recommend that such a woman carry:

-1. slash and stab knife, fixed blade sheathed near or at the right hip,

-2. a belt buckle punch dagger

-3. an armor piercing hair pin

-4. a folding razor blade somewhere cunning

-5. a 5 inch combat knife in her purse

-6. a tactical pen clipped somewhere nifty

Yes, carry three to six of these, and an umbrella sword, because two men, both of whom would have a 5 to 1 to 10 to 1 advantage on you alone, are coming for you at the same time, together.

Thanks, Nicole, for reading, and recall that your best use for Jeth, in terms of any high risk situation you might find yourself in, would be to have him there as a bodyguard—even men do this routinely, that is men that can afford it.