Ever wonder how cops prevent scarring when torturing suspects with a stun gun? How about their use of a copying machine and cellophane tape to lay down fake fingerprint evidence? Topics covered include speed traps, evidence-tampering, illegal search and seizure, coerced confessions, entrapment, execution and “pro-active enforcement.” Includes footnotes, bibliography and index. HJ

Publisher: Loompanics
Paperback: 160 pages

Most explosives are very unstable substances, which of course is why they explode unexpectedly. Many types of external factors can lead to undesired and unplanned detonation, so attempting to work with any devices is always a very risky situation and should be approached with extreme care. This book purports to show how to make demolition-strength explosives. WARNING: One really should have extensive chemistry experience when trying to use this book to attempt any of these processes. This is an advanced book and I would question its techniques. Many of the acids used in the manufacture of these explosive compounds are highly dangerous and caustic and should be handled with extreme care. The reader who has never worked with separatory funnels, condensers, dangerous acids, formaldehyde compounds and temperature control and has little experience in laboratory safety procedures should stay away from this book. Sorry, use some common sense or you won’t have any senses left. One wonders how many times the author has really made these compounds and under what conditions. However, for the reader who wants to blow himself up, this is the book for you! MC

Publisher: Loompanics
Paperback: 126 pages
Illustrated

This small book is a bargain-basement buying guide bible for cheap land and houses which details how to search for cheap property in the United States and Canada. Includes up-to-date addresses of where to write and search, and samples of the types of letters that are effective when dealing with various bureaucracies. Excellent for beginners. It would be interesting to see more people form small cooperatives and start applying some of these strategies to acquiring property. Well written and simple to understand. MC

Publisher: Loompanics
Paperback: 146 pages

Beginning with the premise that schism is the fundamental human method for dealing with frictions within groups of people, the author outlines five approaches to founding your own country today: traditional sovereignty, ship under flag of convenience, litigation, vonu (or off-the-grid), and the model country (exists on paper only). Sovereignty without territory (such as the shadowy Knights of Malta), the necessity of the use of military force, internal organization and other questions are given a sobering Macchiavellian treatment. How To Start Your Own Country ultimately becomes a mind-expanding exercise in determining what constitutes a state with all of its potential ramifications. Most of the book is an exhaustive alphabetical listing of new-country attempts—compiled with the help of the International Micropatogical Society (the society for the study of small countries)—from “Antartica, Kingdom of West” to the “United Moorish Republic”— from the farcical to the righteously Randian. SS

Publisher: Loompanics
Paperback: 174 pages
Illustrated

Weapon construction behind razor-wire requires special techniques and strategies because of the unique demands of the prison environment. Luger details the many types of weapons that have been constructed by inmates—including knives and other edged weapons, prison-made guns, garrotes and choking instruments, blunt instruments and firebombs—and the ingenious hiding places prisoners find for their contraband. Objects as mundane as a toothbrush can be turned into a deadly shank. The book includes details about how attacks on prisoners are planned, information about escape, and description of how material is smuggled into secure facilities, often by members of the prison staff. Illustrated with close-up photographs of seized weapons constructed by convicts. MC

Publisher: Loompanics
Paperback: 83 pages
Illustrated

This how-to manual on interrogation includes the history and mythology of interrogation, the basics of effective interrogation, psychological factors and even an interrogator's ideal qualities. Discusses how to read tone of voice and body language, which can indicate lying, how to find the correct setting for an interrogation, and ways to establish rapport with a subject. Looks at confessions and cross examinations the way they really happen, the uses of deception in obtaining confessions, and getting around Miranda warnings. Covers technological aids to interrogation including both lie detectors and voice-stress analyzers—what they can and can't do and how they are actually used—as well as drugs and brainwashing. Includes the tools of the Gestapo and secret police, types of torture instruments, who makes a good torturer, and tactics for trying to survive torture. MC

Publisher: Loompanics
Paperback: 230 pages

Described by the author as an “exercise in speculative geography,” The Last Frontiers on Earth is also an examination of the lengths one might go to avoid paying rent and taxes. Hard-to-find possible homesteading sites are outlined: from the truly heroic, such as establishing a residence on a floating iceberg in the polar ice caps to the more prosaic, such as becoming a “bicycle nomad.” Discusses the pros and cons, for example, in the case of an underwater habitat: “There are some offsetting advantages of underwater living. It has been found that in a pressurized undersea habitat small cuts heal fully in 24 hours instead of a week. Beards hardly grow at all. There are no insect pests to bother with, and bad weather passes unnoticed above while conditions remain calm and serene in the depths.” SS

Publisher: Loompanics
Paperback: 125 pages
Illustrated

A “jailhouse lawyer” reads you your rights: “Law books are too dry and technical for most people to read, and that is why the average citizen never really learns what his rights are. It fits right into the plans of those captains of the System, the cops and the lawyers, because with citizens in the dark, they can do pretty much what they please without recriminations. This book aims to put a stop to that situation by laying out in plain English an up-to-date overview of the citizen’s legal rights against police activity.” Comes with its own Outlaw Ten Commandments, such as “Don’t Consent” and “Don’t Attract Attention.”

Publisher: Loompanics
Paperback: 336 pages

This book offers an abundance of technical information, yet not so much as to overwhelm the casual reader or novice computer user. What the author best describes is the tactical problem-solving enterprise with which hackers work. They root out weaknesses in systems, and rather than being defined by limitations, they learn to exploit these to their own uses and to their own ends. Sometimes those ends are sinister and sometimes not. There are two whole chapters on the art of social engineering, which is rather like hacking a human being. The hacker approaches his subject just as he would a computer—researching, analyzing, and then piercing through the chinks of peoples’ personal armor until they end up divulging some seemingly harmless detail which may just allow one to penetrate their computer systems. In this way hackers appears to be grifters par excellence, but the author paints them as romantic social rebels.
This is a great book on the mindset of those who watch and prey on people, whether they use computers to do so or not. The psychological profiles in the book are enough to scare any system operator into examining the necessity of updating computer systems. Though this book was published in 1994 (nearly a millennium ago by computer standards), the information is ever timely. Although computer technology such as firewalls can be developed, hackers, like other con men, have already cataloged and organized the human psyche, making it only a matter of time to overcome any new obstacles. MM

Publisher: Loompanics
Paperback: 205 pages
Illustrated

Reveals what a body is worth and how to sell it. “Harvest your body while you’re alive” is the theme—and “sell the leftovers” once you’ve croaked. How to make spare cash by signing off your organs, body fluids and bodily functions to science, and volunteering to be an experimental guinea pig. “When an organ donor dies, more than a million dollars’ worth of medical procedures are set in motion… Everybody profits from organ donation except the donor. But that’s about to change.” Outside the United States, your heart is worth up to $20,000. “A kidney fetches up to $50,000—and it’s legal to sell one in many countries… you can legally sell your blood, milk, sperm, hair, and other renewable resources… You can also make a living as a human guinea pig, renting your body to drug companies. It pays up to $100 a day, and this book lists over 150 test sites throughout the USA.” Remember, “every part of your body is of some use to someone.” GR

Publisher: Loompanics
Paperback: 168 pages
Illustrated