Surviving Hostage Rescue Missions

When the lives of hostages are on the line, the soldiers of elite hostage-rescue units must act quickly and with skill. In a chaotic situation, soldiers must rely on their training, and each other, to save lives in danger. Take a look at how elite hostage-rescue units operate. Find out about the equipment that elite soldiers use and the training they must undergo. Learn about the different skills elite soldiers use, including: * fast-entry tactics through doors and windows using explosives. * building attacks using assault ladders and mountain-climbing techniques. * rescues from inside an aircraft. * negotiation techniques to calm a situation. * clues that tell when a terrorist is lying.

When the lives of hostages are on the line, the soldiers of elite hostage-rescue units must act quickly and with skill. In a chaotic situation, soldiers must rely on their training, and each other, to save lives in danger. Take a look at how elite hostage-rescue units operate. Find out about the equipment that elite soldiers use and the training they must undergo. Learn about the different skills elite soldiers use, including: • fast-entry tactics through doors and windows using explosives. • building attacks using assault ladders and mountain-climbing techniques. • rescues from inside an aircraft. • negotiation techniques to calm a situation. • clues that tell when a terrorist is lying.

When the lives of hostages are on the line, the soldiers of elite hostage-rescue units must act quickly and with skill. In a chaotic situation, soldiers must rely on their training, and each other, to save lives in danger. Take a look at how elite hostage-rescue units operate. Find out about the equipment that elite soldiers use and the training they must undergo. Learn about the different skills elite soldiers use, including: • fast-entry tactics through doors and windows using explosives. • building attacks using assault ladders and mountain-climbing techniques. • rescues from inside an aircraft. • negotiation techniques to calm a situation. • clues that tell when a terrorist is lying.

During a time of war, pilots face the risk of being shot down behind enemy lines and captured. For this reason, each pilot receives training to help him endure the stresses of captivity. During an interrogation, this training and the pilot's own strength and willpower are invaluable. This book discusses many of the techniques used to survive the experience of being in captivity. A captive pilot must be prepared to cope with boredom, resist interrogation, and work as a team with other prisoners. In addition, he must know how to go about escaping if he has the opportunity. Discover: • how some U.S. pilots in Vietnam coped with seven years of imprisonment. • how interrogators try to trick people into talking. • how interrogators are trained to detect lies. • survival techniques during escape. • tracking skills used by escaping pilots and the pursuing enemy.

In any survival situation, you need to know where you are and where you're heading. If you get lost, you'll waste valuable time and energy—time that could be spent getting to safety or getting help.

Written by a former hostage negotiator, Taken Hostage provides specific daily behavioral, situational, and long-term psychological strategies used successfully by hostages who survived months and years of mental and physical torture by terrorists, religious extremists, and criminal gangs. The book describes in detail the five stages of a hostage taking. Whether taken hostage for ransom, political leverage, or as a human shield, the book suggests what treatment the hostage can expect during each stage and how to best counter them. Taken Hostage describes how a hostage can moderate the physical and mental effects caused by physical tortures such as binding, suspension, beatings, starvation, and sexual assault and against mental tortures such as social deprivation, false executions, and brainwashing. The book identifies the mental hazards of depression, suicide, and barbed-wire psychosis and how to combat them. Particular strategies such as passive compliance and humanizing will instruct the hostage on how to apply recognized psychological strategies to the hostages advantage, and as such, play a more active role in their day-to-day physical treatment and sustain positive mental health. The book stresses safer travel planning as the most important strategy against being kidnapped in the first place. It details hotel security, insider accomplices, finding the right hotel and the right taxi, and how to use countersurveillance techniques to identify and thwart a potential kidnapping. The book coaches the hostages family and employers back home how to effectively manage the media and one another, thereby reducing the incidence of hostage and family PTSD and reintegrating a changed person back into their changed family. The detailed survival strategies will inspire a hostages will to live and sustain a familys hope. It is written for domestic and international travelers, UN and NGO volunteers, military personnel, and anyone in harms way.

'Captivating, a John le Carre-esque yarn' Telegraph 'A thoroughly good read' Michael Portillo, author of Portillo's Hidden History of Britain and presenter of Great British Railway Journeys 'A compelling story of courage, determination and skill' Terry Waite CBE, author of Taken on Trust The true story of a retired British army officer's private Somali-hostage rescue mission During the peak of the Somali piracy crisis, three ships - from Malaysia, Thailand and Taiwan - were hijacked and then abandoned to their fate by their employers, who lacked the money to pay ransoms. All would still be there, were it not for Colonel John Steed, a retired British military attaché, who launched his own private mission to free them. At 65, Colonel Steed was hardly an ideal saviour. With no experience in hostage negotiations and no money behind him, he had to raise the ransom cash from scratch, running the operation from his spare room and ferrying million-dollar ransom payments around in the boot of his car. Drawing on first-hand interviews, former chief foreign correspondent of The Sunday Telegraph, Colin Freeman, who has himself spent time held hostage by Somali pirates, takes readers on an inside track into the world of hostage negotiation and one man's heroic rescue mission.

Many people experience a natural disaster at some point in their lives. Whether it's a tornado powerful enough to tear a building apart or a wildfire destroying an entire forest in a matter of hours, it's important to know how to survive in these situations. Regardless of what kind of natural disaster you might encounter, you need to be prepared. Learn some of the ways in which elite soldiers around the world deal with these terrifying events. Discover how to tell when certain disasters are about to strike, as well as how to respond during and after the disaster. This includes: • what to do when a tidal wave is approaching. • how to prepare your home for floodwaters. • what to do if a forest fire traps you. • how to shield yourself from massive lava bombs released by volcanoes. • how to survive mudslides.

Elite soldiers must know how to survive in every environment, including if they're stranded on the harshest ocean. Special Forces units trained to survive at sea are some of the most knowledgeable people in the world when it comes to a survival situation in the ocean. In this book, you will learn some of the techniques these soldiers use to stay alive at sea. You can learn from their training and discover: • what to do when a shark attacks. • how to tell when a storm is coming. • how to swim so that you save energy. • how to signal for help in the middle of the ocean. • how to treat a jellyfish sting. • how to build a raft out of logs or saplings.