“Why are you going back?”
“Because they told me not to.”
“Sometimes if you want to know if the stove is hot the only way to find out is to touch it.”
Try not to get trapped in the dark in close, tight spaces.
“He was a guy who survived most things, and he was a guy who was rarely afraid. But he had known since his early boyhood that he was terrified of being trapped in the dark in a space too small to turn his giant frame. All his damp childhood nightmares had been about being closed into tight spaces.”
Confront your enemies.
Take things exactly as they come, for exactly what they are.
Analyze your fear; it’s probably not rational.
Turn your fear into aggression.
“You see something scary, you should stand up and step toward it, not away from it.
Instinctively, reflexively, in a raging fury.”
THINGS YOU’LL NEVER HEAR REACHER SAY
My knees are trembling and my hands are shaking.
“I’m not afraid of death, death’s afraid of me.”
It’s a part of life, missing the dead.
“People live and then they die, and as long as they do both things properly, there’s nothing much to regret.”
Life’s a bitch and then you die.
Soldiers contemplate death. They live with it, they accept it. They expect it. But deep down they want it to be fair.
“In his head Reacher had always known he would die. Every human does. But in his heart he had never really imagined it.”
The meaning of life is that it ends.
Get into their minds, think like them.
Try birthdays, wedding anniversaries, house numbers; these are the passwords most people use.
Most people can’t remember all their passwords. If you look, you can find where they’ve written them down.
Try two-digit prime numbers, or the number whose square root is the sum of its digits.
Watch the position of their fingers when keying in a code so you can copy it.
The perfect PIN:
“I’d probably write out my birthday, month, day, year, and find the nearest prime number. Actually that would be a problem, because there would be two equally close, one exactly seven less and one exactly seven more. So I guess I’d use the square root instead, rounded to three decimal places. Ignore the decimal point; that would give me six numbers, all different.”
“I like dogs. If I lived anywhere I’d have three or four.”
Don’t leave dogs out overnight in a place where there are mountain lions. That’s a sure way of having no dogs in the morning.
Remember, dogs are different from people, no free will, easily misled. But on reflection—not that different.
“You don’t buy a dog and bark yourself.”
Never show fear when facing fighting dogs.
Don’t run away from dogs, walk.
Dogs trained to attack will attack anything that moves—including you.
When confronted by two or more dogs, be aware that like people, dogs have a pecking order. With two dogs, one of them has to be superior to the other, and will attack first.
You can intimidate a dog and show him who’s boss by baring your teeth.
“You don’t throw my friends out of helicopters and live to tell the tale.”
Hit early, hit hard.
Stand with your back to the sun so that it’s in your enemy’s eyes.
Make the first shot count.
Get your retaliation in first; show them who they’re dealing with.
Say you’ll count to three—then throw your punch at two.
Never revive a guy who has just pulled a gun on you.
Train yourself to use aggression in the face of danger.
“Soon as he was neutralized, it was two against one. And I’ve never had a problem with those kind of odds.”
When confronted by two or more opponents, know that the one who does all the talking is the leader. Hit him first and hit him hard; then the others will think twice.
Cheat. The gentlemen who behaved decently aren’t there to train anybody. They are already dead.
“Then I cheated. Instead of counting three I headbutted him full in the face.”
If plan A doesn’t work, move on to plan B.
If you have to fight five guys, then identify the ringleader. Any five guys will have one ringleader, two enthusiastic followers, and two reluctant followers. Put the ringleader down, and both of the keen sidekicks, and it’s over. The reluctant pair just run for it. It never gets worse than three-on-one.
“Attacking me was like pushing open a forbidden door. What waited on the other side was his problem.”
Look at each opponent in turn. Serene self- confidence works wonders.
Try not to get into a fight when you’ve just put on clean clothes.
Stay alive, and see what the next minute brings.
Never get distracted from the job at hand.
Use the first precious second for the first precious blow. Fight, and win. Fight, and win.
Don’t think ahead—if you think about the aftermath, you usually don’t get that far.
“His eyes were closed, which made it not much of a fair fight, but those are always my favorite kind.”
Make the first shot count.
Look like you mean it, and people back off a lot.
FIGHTING TIPS
“He had no prejudice against fast food. Better than slow food, for a traveling man.”
Don’t eat before you go into an Army postmortem.
You need protein and fats and sugars, it doesn’t matter where they come from.
Eat when you can, because you never know when you will next get the chance.
Be friendly with the cookhouse detail.
“I’m a big guy … I need nutrition.”
Eat and plan.
Always eat a perfect breakfast: pancakes. Egg on the top, bacon on the side, plenty of syrup. And plenty of coffee.
Before a night of action and stress, go for empty calories, fats, and complex carbohydrates: pizza and soda.
“His threshold of culinary acceptability was very low, but right then he felt as if he might have been pushing at the bottom edge of his personal envelope.”