Tapes

### Intro

Tapes: The pathway to becoming a Receiver. They contain information about the weapons you're using, the companies behind them, handgun shooting fundamentals, or lore. You have to collect and consume a set amount in order to progress to the next rank of Insight.

## Training

### Tunnel Vision

This tape is designed to test your focus in the face of distraction. Maintain focus on your breathing. \*screaming\* How did you do? If your attention wandered, that is normal. Just notice that, without judgement. Let's try again. \*more aggressive screaming\* Good job.

## Introduction

### Active Retention

When the Mindkill comes, you will likely have forgotten everything about your own life before entering the post-Mindkill environment. But everything that has become intuition, everything you've made a part of your inner self, the Threat is unable to erase. Therefore it's important to train until the training becomes so natural that you give it no thought. Correct usage of your firearm has to become as natural as breathing for there to be any chance of success.

### Not A Dream

It is vital that you know that you are not dreaming. This is real. This is the time you have prepared for.

## Baseline

### Silhouettes

After World War 2, a military study concluded that only a quarter of American soldiers were willing to line up their sights on a human target. To combat this problem, the army found ways to dampen our natural aversion to killing one another. They replaced bullseye targets with human silhouettes, made training conditions more similar to actual combat, and trained recruits to avoid taking personal responsibility for killing.

After enough training, you can eventually learn to stop seeing people at all, and just see silhouette targets everywhere... even in the mirror.

### Always Loaded

US Marine Colonel Jeff Cooper's first rule of gun safety is that guns are always loaded.

Even if you've just unloaded it seconds ago, or seen someone else do it, **treat it as if it's still loaded**. You may know that it's empty, but you must practice your Mindtech Threading and believe both facts at once. Unless you are currently seeing and feeling that the chamber is empty, the weapon is in a state of quantum uncertainty, controlled by the Threat.

In that state, if you point it at a Killdrone and fire, the Threat will collapse that waveform into an empty chamber, leading to a **click** instead of a bang. If your kid finds the same gun and points it at another kid, the Threat will collapse that waveform into a loaded chamber, leading to a **bang** instead of a click. Never, ever let the Threat make this kind of decision for you.

### Muzzle Discipline

Cooper's second rule of gun safety is to never point the gun at something you are not willing to destroy.

This seems obvious, but is easy to forget in the moment. If you're training at the range, and a burning hot shell casing falls down your shirt, are you prepared to keep the gun pointed at the target? If the gun malfunctions, are you sure you won't point it sideways to get a better look at what's wrong?

What if you're preparing to take it apart for routine maintenance, are you **still** paying attention to which way the barrel is pointing? Many accidents take place while cleaning guns, because that's often where we let our guard down.

### Trigger Discipline

Cooper's third rule of gun safety is to keep your finger off the trigger until your sights are on the target.

There are many physiological reactions that can cause your hand to **tighten involuntarily**. If your finger is on the trigger and you're surprised, or stumble, or tighten the other hand, the gun will fire and make a hole in whatever it's pointed at.

**This is especially important when drawing or holstering**. Like takeoffs and landings in aircraft, this is when most accidents occur. If your attention wanders for a second and you try to holster your gun without removing your finger from the trigger, you will shoot yourself in the leg. If you're trying to draw quickly, you can easily grab the trigger, and shoot yourself in the leg.

### Wall O' Truth

Cooper's fourth rule of gun safety is to know your target, **and** what is beyond it.

Bullets can penetrate a lot farther than most people think. How many interior sheetrock walls do you think a typical 9mm bullet will go through? One? Two? More like twenty. In a typical gunfight, more shots miss than hit, but **all bullets end up somewhere.**

Unless you live alone in a rural area, there is no pistol or rifle that won't put your family and neighbors at risk -- even hollow-point rounds often miss or fail to expand. The safest choice for an effective internal home defense weapon in a populated area is a pump-action shotgun loaded with small buckshot or large birdshot.

### CQBreathing

Control your breathing as you approach the door, slowly slicing the pie as you go. You're in the fatal funnel now as you move in a semi-circle past the door but don't rush, see everything, focus **beyond** that front sight, let your body aim for you, breathe.

Corners clear, it's time to choose a direction and commit. Left or right? Which way lies victory, which way death? Only one way to find out. Breathe.

Don't dawdle in the doorway, you're a silhouette and that's where the guns are aimed, and sweep the room smoothly to encompass the whole space. It's a difficult thing, but practice makes perfect. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.

### Sight Better

To aim a firearm correctly, you must be familiar with the sight picture -- how the sights look when they are lined up correctly. Handgun sights almost always work in the same way: you line up the front sight in the **middle of the gap** in the rear sight, and make sure the top of the front sight is level with the top of the rear sight. If zeroed correctly, the bullet should hit right at the top of the front sight at the zero distance, usually around 15 yards.

For maximum accuracy, you should focus on your front sight, even though it makes the target look blurry -- there's no point shooting at a crisp target if you can't tell if your sights are lined up.

### Malfunctions

The Mindkill degrades the condition of firearms, making them much more likely to malfunction. You can clear most malfunctions by tapping the magazine to make sure it's seated, racking the slide to chamber a new round, and then bang, you're ready to go. Tap, rack, bang.

### Plan B

If you run out of ammo, you can no longer defend yourself against Killdrones. However, they are predictable, and with enough focus, you can get past them without using your firearm at all.

### Disassembly

Killdrones don't feel pain, don't feel fear. They will keep trying to kill you until you make it physically impossible for them to function. The surest way to disable them completely is to destroy their batteries, found in the thickest part of the base of the turrets, or the rear body of flying drones.

### Calm Under Fire

When confronting the Threat, a Receiver must always remain calm. Most people panic under pressure, and shoot before properly aiming. Remember that it's better to fire one shot that hits, than ten shots that miss.

### Frustration

In the face of frustration, it's normal to feel anger and disappointment. Receivers are trained to understand and accept these feelings, and allow them to flow through their mind unobstructed, and out the other side, leaving only clarity and resolve.

### Motivation

It's common knowledge that you get better results the harder you try. But like most common knowledge, this is wrong. Receivers know that there is an optimal level of effort. Too low, and you might slack off. Too high, and you can start to choke under pressure. In the middle, you get the best results.

### Resilience

The most important virtue of a Receiver is mental resilience, and the only way to build resilience is to practice rebounding from adversity.

### Free Will

In the face of regret, understand that there was no other way that events could have played out. All you can do is learn from the experience, and move on.

### Grit

Receivers know that the biggest predictor of success is true grit, the ability to maintain resolve in the face of adversity. The only way to develop this trait is through practice.

### All on the Field

When explorers die of dehydration, their water bottles are usually not empty. They were saving their resources for later, when it got really bad. When the Threat kills people by suicide, it usually turns out that they never asked their family or friends for help. They were saving that for later, when it got really bad. If you are under attack by the Threat, ask for help now. There is no later.

### Initiation

You have seen the signs around you; the gradual creeping decay and dysfunction. You have realized that something is wrong with the media and the people around you. You know that you are different. This is why you're ready to become a Receiver.

You have been issued a series of audio cassette tapes that are part of our system for advancing insight. By continually listening to these tapes you will drown out, and eventually counteract, the negative influences from your environment. Once you have absorbed these tapes you will have taken the first step towards awakening your true self.

The media is a threat. We have a technique to help. We use tapes as part of this technique. You must listen to them to advance.

### Mind and Matter

While physical training is less important than mental conditioning, Receivers know that the two are linked. To move the body requires thought and focus, and similarly, certain actions and physical situations induce specific states of mind. By training one you train the other.

### Chain of Thought

Indecision and anxiety are the natural result of disordered thoughts. Ideas have weight and potential. They exist in a sequence, linked to other concepts that precede and follow them. Mental exercises will forge these broken links into an unbreakable chain to harness your will.

### Body and Mind

Many people believe that the brain is the seat of consciousness, yet important thoughts and feelings are carried out in ganglia: clusters of neurons found throughout the body. The mind stretches within the body and controls it. Conditions in the body reflect the mind, and damage to the body is damage to the mind as well.

### Self-control

The body and mind are linked. Physical actions are a manifestation of mental actions. Thus, training to protect the body also protects the mind. Controlling your environment controls your thoughts. You, your body, and your environment are part of a larger whole.

Control your thoughts, control your body, control your environment and control your fate.

### Dedication

When performing at a peak condition often the deciding factor is mental state. Ideas have a form and a weight. When you become dedicated to an idea it takes on a new dimension. It becomes denser, tougher to move. Intractable. This tenacious stubbornness is required to become a Receiver.

### Focus

The world of the mind stretches far to the horizon. In this space it's tempting to dwell in the past or explore possible futures. Attention flits from one distant idea to the next, visiting 100 unlikely scenarios; spreading thinner and thinner. This is the unfocused mind. In contrast, sharp focus is always concentrated on the present moment. What action do you have to take right now, each new moment necessitating the next thought and action in a correct sequence.

### Origin of the Mind

Many theories exist on the nature of the mind. Do we live in a simulation? Are our thoughts the result of chemicals and structures formed by random mutations? Or perhaps we are gifted with a soul by a higher power? The reason these questions persist is because previous attempts have failed to find a convincing answer. What is clear is that the mind harbors immense power over perception, and that changing perception changes the most important aspects of reality.

### Balance

What is the fundamental characteristic of balance? A stone, perfectly balanced, doesn't move. It is this precarious lack of motion, but with so much potential, that's remarkable. To balance the mind, one needs to bring ideas and feelings into alignment, where they are neither random nor stagnant, equally outward and inward. Neither entirely positive nor negative. Within this narrow space of calmness lies the mind's potential. Failure to find balance results in a chain reaction of cascading thoughts and feelings, like a stone falling out of place, running into the next, with no end, and no control.

### Trauma

Past events that have caused recurring negative thoughts and emotions are called mental trauma. This was often the result of a sudden shift in perception. The building blocks of our self-concept are ideas about the world and our place in it. When these ideas turn out to be false, it causes a chain reaction that can threaten every aspect of our life. While removing one brick from a tower can cause it to collapse, that does not mean that the problem was widespread. It was a failure in a single element. This demonstrates how critical each belief is, and how finding and removing false beliefs early can prevent a catastrophic chain reaction.

### Phobia

Experiences are feelings connected to events. If an event that creates negative feelings happens often enough or is especially intense, it can create a phobic reaction. Even after distancing oneself from these events, these phobic elements can persist.

Thoughts flow from one to the next, like water flowing down a river, and like water flowing, these thoughts can carve through stone, given enough time. Trauma is like a boulder in the river, and over time, a correct sequence of thoughts can cut and shape it, eventually allowing the thoughts to pass safely and smoothly around them.

### Anxiety

In a disordered mind, fear and doubt will often attach itself to whatever events are happening at that moment. These misattributed, diverted feelings can become habitual, compounding the problem of accurate thinking. This leads to confusion, impaired decision making, and more anxiety in a damaging feedback loop.

By grounding thoughts in the present, one can escape this feedback loop. Where are you. What time and year is it? Who are you? what are you doing at this exact moment? What do you see, what do you hear? What do you **really** hear?

### Trojan Horse

We live in a world in which hostile thoughts and ideas are constantly present in the media, pressing in on our consciousness. Events are often also outside of our control. Outside of **our** control, but not outside of control. Others use these concepts and events to create this anxiety.

Thoughts flow in a sequence, and by inserting harmful media into your life, your thoughts can be hijacked. Once you are behaving in a reactive state, you will spread these contaminated ideas to others, allowing them to degrade more people.

Practice basic media safety. Control your information environment. Act, don't react.

### Terminating Thoughts

While some concepts are useful, others are the exact opposite. These terminating thoughts take complex and useful ideas and turn them into a simplistic cliche that is as incorrect as it is useless. The appeal of these thoughts is that they give a false feeling of certainty and authority, but they block true mental development.

The functional mind questions and observes. It looks inward at the form of ideas applied in the mind as well as outward in the world. It views uncertainty as the twin sibling of curiosity.

The dead mind is constructed of terminating thoughts. There is no room for feelings beyond a thin, fragile mockery of self-satisfaction. Personality is replaced with rote, checkbox-ticking behavior and reactivity. Human interaction becomes a grotesque parody where anything that doesn't fall neatly into a simplistic taxonomy of behavior gets ignored or assaulted. This causes a person to become less and less, until ultimately, they vanish.

### Responsibility

A firearm is simple in some ways, deceptively complex in others, but always dangerous. Gun training anchors the mind in the moment. By apprehending the lethality of the tool, and focusing on the moment-to-moment use, a Receiver is able to strengthen the mind-body link.

Like with ideas, objects in the physical reality vary in their utility. Although some thoughts and tools are extremely dangerous, we don't arbitrarily limit what we can use. Rather, we strive to better understand ourselves and our environment, so that we may safely handle even the most dangerous situations.

### Inversion

It's common knowledge that some needs are a higher priority than others. People note that in order to pursue some, others must be fulfilled first. They frame the complex situation using simple, unrealistic examples, like how you can't be happy if you don't have air to breathe. These simplifications are used to hide the more complex truths; that the body sustains the mind and the mind sustains the body.

The most present needs are in the domain of the mind. Without baseline function or thought, you can find yourself without the will to move or eat. Strengthening the mind by developing focus and resilience is the goal of a technique we call Mindtech.

### Isolation Set

You have reached out to us and we have responded. If you are listening to this it means our training materials have arrive, and you have already found the included cassette player. This tape is the first of the isolation set, included specifically for those that are far from other Receivers. Rest assured: Physical isolation, while dangerous to the uninitiated, is not a serious impediment to your training so long as you are able to absorb the materials.

As you progress, we will send you additional tapes and drills that will attempt to ready you for the challenges ahead as quickly as possible.

### Connection

If you are isolated and unable to attend one of our training camps in person, it may seem like the safest option is to limit exposure to the Threat by avoiding others entirely. This is a mistake. Baseline mental operation requires meaningful social connections and degrading those connections is a strategy employed by the Threat.

In a lose/lose situation it is important to select the relatively better option. It is critical to meet your basic psychological needs, even if this means risking exposure to dangerous ideas. Because Threat-compromised individuals feel an overwhelming urge to spread malformed thoughts, they prefer activities that involve conversation.

You can limit exposure to the Threat by focusing on shared activities that don't involve speaking.

### Online

Mediated communication using technology is a limited form of interaction. This isn't to say that these interactions are meaningless, often the opposite is true. Trivial interactions take in a feeling of greater importance. It is in that way that the Threat is able to twist and control many people. The solution is simple.

Understand your medium of choice, avoid mediated interactions when possible.

## Asleep

### Antibodies

Most Receivers are initially skeptical about the existence of the Threat. This is a good sign. A Receiver should maintain a healthy mental immune system that consistently questions the evidence for all beliefs, both old and new. A Receiver never maintains a belief just because it's the first one they've heard, or because it's the culture they were born into.

However, in this case, the appropriate behavior is the same whether you believe in the literal existence of the Threat or not. If it doesn’t exist -- you will have strengthened your mind and trained your body for nothing. But aren't those goals inherently worthy? In this case the means of defeating the Threat are valid ends in and of themselves

### Society of Mind

The Threat has studied our weaknesses in detail, and knows exactly where to place its levers, and pry our minds apart. They use social media to divide us and control us, while giving us the illusion of community. They grant power and responsibility to the weakest of us, while giving us the illusion of meritocracy. We have been coasting through existence with our eyes closed, and now is our last chance to Awaken.

### Media Circus

Humans are curious creatures, always hungry for information. The Threat has found a way to turn this strength into a fatal weakness. They force-feed us from a firehose of narratives designed to agitate and demoralize us, leaving our minds exhausted, and crowding out our own thoughts. They divide the world into false dichotomies and demand we choose between obvious lies. To become a Receiver, you must reject this choice.

### Dirty Mind

We brush our teeth twice a day, but we don't do anything to clean our minds. Are our teeth more important than our minds? Unless you take active measures to resist it, the Threat will continue tainting and twisting your mind to suit its purpose. To survive the Mindkill, you must intentionally train your focus, your compassion, your motivation, or it will atrophy and die.

### Upside Down

The Threat has become expert in hijacking our attention, and inverting our priorities. They make the useless seem important and urgent -- the sky is always falling, the world is always ending, you are always missing out, or just missing something.

What you are actually missing is the one thing they are trying to hide from you, and can only be found within. As you build your Mindtech you will become more complete, each part fitting into place until you are a functional whole.

What was important was always right here. Yourself, and those around you you can trust.

### Food Poisoning

We are all taught to carefully monitor what we put into our bodies. We need to eat this and avoid that, and have this other thing in moderation. But we are never taught how to curate what we put into our minds.

There's no use having a healthy body if your mind is poisoned. The Threat has used this control to remove choice over what you consume. If you uncritically view media, you are directly allowing the Threat to infiltrate your thoughts, and compromise your brain from the inside.

### Leave No One Behind

If your friend makes a "joke" about hurting themselves, it might just be that, a joke. Or it might be their last cry for help before they are killed by the Threat. Get them alone later, ask about it, and really listen to their answer. It's probably nothing, but in this case it's so much better to have ten false positives than one false negative.

### Square Shooting

Close your eyes, and imagine that you are a cloud floating over the city. Breathe in, 1,2,3,4, Hold, 1,2,3,4, breathe out, 1,2,3,4, pause, 1,2,3,4 Breathe in, imagine a Killdrone weaving between the buildings, hold, the drone looks up, seeing the dark cloud, breathe out, it starts flying towards cover. Pause, BANG, lightning blasts it to sparkling pieces. Breathe in. Breathing is vital to life. In order to project deadly force with precision, a Receiver temporarily becomes one with death, and pauses the breath.

### Falling Asleep

Together we have laid the foundation. You have shown great potential, but that potential is yet to be realized. We have sent the message.... can you hear it?

There is an insidious force moving through your media, weakening minds and causing widespread dysfunction. We call this the Threat.

We have developed a technique called Mindtech to combat this threat. A new set of tapes have been issued to train and prepare you.

### Mindtech

Mindtech is a collection of techniques that form a system for strengthening, and then honing your natural capability to combat the Threat. In its most basic form, it is a sequence of thoughts, feelings, and ideas, that when executed in proper order result in protection of your mind from outside attacks. Ultimately, with enough practice, Mindtech can become a weapon that can strike back at the Threat.

### Introspection

To progress in Mindtech is to become aware of your own thoughts. Eventually, each thought will become clear and distinct. Solid, incredibly dense, but irregularly shaped. When combined with other specific thoughts in the right pattern, they will fit into place, forming a solid wall of defense.

### Courage

Dealing with fear is a necessary skill to combat the Threat. Through Mindtech you focus your mind's-eye on your fear. The fear is heavy, faceted, and black like obsidian. This fear can be a benefit, or it can be a poison, but it can't be avoided. It must be dealt with.

Mindtech offers the tools to engage with this fear. Through Mindtech you change yourself to influence your environment to reduce the fear. Control of emotions comes from control of the situation which results from control over ideas.

### Maintenance

When your firearm discharges, it cycles another round into the chamber. Your own internal feedback systems are critical. You are the weapon, and Mindtechs are your internal mechanism. A slight misfit of components will cause a feed-jam, leading to a misfire, resulting in death. Ensuring that each Mindtech is within tolerances will enable your proper operation and survival.

### Antipattern

One tool used to be the Threat is called the Antipattern. The Threat cultivates an atmosphere of terror and anxiety around trivial risks, providing a suitable environment for them to inject fixes for these non-problems. Invariably, the actual purpose of these solutions is to create new issues that were worse than the initial situation. By associating the search for solutions with new problems, the mind becomes locked in a hopeless state, with no clear path forward.

We have developed a Mindtech for people trapped in this antipattern. Like a hall of mirrors, this construct is based on illusions, and is easily shattered. Imagine that you have changed your mind about something you would never doubt. Act like you believe this new truth for an hour, a day, a week. Do things make more sense? This is the feeling of breaking free.

### Overload

The unconscious mind is critical in the development of Mindtech. What seems like downtime is the slow and meticulous refinement of your true self. When less attention is spent on fleeting banalities, the mind grows stronger in Reality A.

The Threat understands this, and has created systems to inundate you with a sea of interruptions, each one claiming to be critical and each one focusing on your desires and fears. Each distraction on its own seems harmless, like a drop of rain, but like a relentless downpour, this unending torrent is able to erode even a mountain.

Limit your overall exposure to distractions. Uninterrupted time focused on a task is time spent honing your Mindtech. In this way, training the body is training the mind.

### Physical Isolation

The Physical body is a projection cast by the luminous mind. As such, all physical interactions are mental. While in-person interaction may use abstractions, such as words, much more communication is taking place via proximity. If you focus, you can feel the subconscious mind reaching, dreaming, in Reality A. This true understanding is beyond words.

The Threat has limited influence on the physical world and seeks to subvert true interactions. They do this by inverting values, making the lowest forms of communication, words and images, seem like the only ones.

People degraded by these ideas isolate themselves, thinking this mediated communication is a form of communion. Not only is it insufficient, but it's also a channel for the Threat. They co-opt even this thin thread of connection, until you are totally isolated. The more you use their compromised channels, the more isolated you become.

This is why we train together.

### Mindtech Activation

Each Receiver will train with a core Mindtech. This functions as a checklist, and readies the mind for action. It allows you to break from a reactive cycle caused by outside influence, and allows you to regain control.

Like all Mindtech, your core is a sequence of thoughts. Where are you? What is your name? What is today's date? What is your firearm?

Then take a deep breath and listen.

### Inner Formation

People with high exposure to media show many symptoms. Listlessness, inability to focus, a feeling of dread and hopelessness.

The inversion of values extends to all aspects of life. The media tells you that distant, abstract events that have little to do are the most important. The implication is that your own experience and existence is meaningless.

The opposite is true. Your only connection to Reality A is through your mind's eye. Instead of looking out, you learn the most critical information by looking inward. To the extent that the body is an extension of the mind, it is the primary aspect of physical reality.

Focus attention on the shadow body.

Look inward.

Listen.

### Firearm Exercise

When discharging a firearm, we learn to control our most basic autonomic reactions. To blink or flinch risks missing the target, resulting in death.

With slow, steady breathing, muscles neither fully tensed or relaxed, we train our focus. we breathe in, we check the breach. We breathe out, we release the safety, we breathe in, we aim at the target, we slowly exhale while we squeeze the trigger.

Since we are already prepared to operate the firearm, we neither anticipate or react to the sound or the recoil. Instead, we breathe in and aim at the target, we slowly exhale while we squeeze the trigger...

### The Lost

The Threat exists beyond this world. In this reality they are weak. Their actions are limited. With great effort they have infiltrated dreams, implanting ideas, but it is humans who have nurtured these ideas, causing them to grow and spread.

For these people who were already compromised, and who have nurtured these damaging thoughts there is no hope. As much as we would like to reach out to them to help them, we must first focus inward on ourselves.

For us there is still some hope. We must focus all our energy on catching this small chance.

When exposed to contaminated thoughts, remember not to be reactive. Instead take the moment to act inward. Activate your Mindtech.

## Environment

### Lighter than Air

A thought is not just an idea, but also a way of thinking that idea. It can have different qualities: heavy, smooth and cold, like a firearm, or buoyant, ephemeral and warm, like a balloon.

After the Mindkill, when things seem at their most hopeless, remember that there are other Receivers out there. These thoughts will raise you up, and keep you afloat.

If you can train your mind to not get weighed down in the face of adversity, it can help you survive the Mindkill. As strange as it sounds, we've received transmissions indication that some Receivers have dreamed balloons into existence, containing helpful items. These Receivers have usually achieved the highest levels of mental strength, maintaining a certain lightness of thought, even when facing the end of their reality's timeline.

## Sleepwalker

### Mental Defense

The Threat has been using the media to weaken our minds. They pit us against one another, overload us with meaningless information, and make us cynical and apathetic. The only defense is to train the mind, and awaken from this anesthetic fog. When the Mindkill comes, only those with the proper Mindtech will remain. These few will be the only bridge left to the world as we know it.

### Tough Luck

Receiver transmissions have indicated that the post-Mindkill environment is even more dangerous than one might expect, because it feels like even luck is working against us. Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong, even our weapons are more likely to malfunction or fire unintentionally. It is absolutely vital to train your malfunction dills, and practice the rules of gun safety until they become second nature.

### Impulse Response

At times the greatest enemy can be our own minds. This, combines with necessary tools that allow us to quickly and effectively act in any impulse of self-harm makes the danger increase greatly.

Therefore, it's important to strengthen our minds. This cannot be done alone, due to the awareness of the Threat many Receivers isolate themselves socially. Strengthen yourself by building relationships and finding ways to **connect with others.**

If your mind is already weakened by the time the Mindkill arrives, you have little chance of resisting it.

### Snake Eyes

We don't know what Mindtech is used by the Threat to execute the Mindkill, but we do know that it gives them some control over probability. Murphy's law is in effect. If you fall, you will land wrong. If you have a clear shot, your weapon will malfunction. If you dodge a bullet, you will get hit by a ricochet. If you train for the worst-case scenario, you will be ready.

### Air Gap

Initiates are sometimes confused by our reliance on analog cassette tapes in this time of MP3 players and online streaming. We use cassettes because the Threat controls the internet, and knows everything you do on your computer. If you try to digitize a Receiver tape, the Threat will target you for destruction, and focus it's full power. By directly implanting thoughts and dreams, they can steer your subconscious, ultimately destroying your mind.

### Alternate Timeline

We don't know exactly when the Threat will initiate the Mindkill, but we have detected them advancing their plans in reaction to our efforts. The more progress we make, the more they move up the timeline. We know this means they will deploy the Mindkill before any Receivers reach an Awakened State, but we hope it means that by forcing their hand, their plans will be compromised in some way.

### Blinders

Some of you are impatient to experience the Radiance of Reality A, but you must realize that you are not even experiencing **Reality B**, yet.

We've been trained by screens to limit our focus to tiny rectangles. You may not notice it, but you are experiencing your reality in the same way, as if you're viewing the world through a screen. Try to push your awareness through the screen, and **out the other side**, to truly be present in Reality B. Open your mind to experience what is behind you, to each side, above and below, behind walls. What are your senses telling you?

Once you have managed to truly exist in Reality B, we can start to talk about Reality A.

### Firearm Fasting

Statistically, most people killed by guns use them on themselves. This is because the Threat specifically targets potential Receivers for their strongest mental attacks. They apply their full direct power to crush your spirit and control your mind, and can even take direct control of your body for several seconds. It is ironic, but the only way to defend yourself against this attack is to be unarmed until it passes, and then rearm yourself and resume your training. Every true Receiver has experienced this.

### The Call

You finally prepared to hear this message:

You see reality painted in shades of black, but beyond your world is another, bathed in radiant light. We have reached out to you with a warning. If you are able to hear our message you are one of the few that we can help - we call you Receivers.

The Receiver who is speaking these words was chosen because he is able to hear us with exceptional clarity. With time, you too could learn this Mindtech, but time is not something we have. There is a Threat to everyone on your planet, and they have been weakening your mind through your media, lowering your natural defenses. The coming attack is unavoidable; all we can do is prepare.

### Preparation

We must plan for the eventuality that we are not able to fully Awaken a Receiver, and are unable to prevent the Mindkill. These are the most important preparations:

Before the Mindkill, one must take a complete inventory of their own being to know every aspect of their own mind and body. Ideas have mass and shape, which can be built into walls. Ideas have a flow, which can carve out channels. Once we have built this multifaceted geography, we can make a map of the mind. In this state, the mind can safely manage new experiences, and retain a sense of self in even the most adverse circumstances.

If your preparations have been successful, your first actions after the Mindkill should be to check your firearm and make it ready, making note of your ammunition. The Threat will be targeting you with their Killdrones. After that, you must find tapes and ammunition, to stay alive and to continue your training to reach an Awakened state.

### Dreaming

You use technology to control physical things. Similarly, there is Mindtech which is used to control the boundless luminescence. Mindtech can be used for good or evil. The Threat has been using its Mindtech as a weapon against you, and so far, has caused widespread sickness and mental weakness. Now that you are in a helpless state, they're readying a crippling blow, Mindkill. But they are aware that will not work on you.

They have another potent weapon they will bring to bear against Receivers called "The Dreaming". They cannot exist fully in this reality, but they have been watching you and experimenting and have developed this new Mindtech. The Dreaming is a bridge from our world to yours - and they will use this bridge to send specially-conceived-of weapons designed to work in your environment. These automatic weapons are designed to kill the few who survive.

### Reality B

Your crude world is not the true reality. Your physical body here is the shadow cast by your transcendent mind. We call this higher plane "Reality A", and your world of shadows "Reality B". If you're receiving this message in a fictional context, you are at an even deeper level, one that we cannot reach. Because your body is a shadow of your mind, when your mind dies, your body will vanish. In the normal order of your world death is merely a transition in which your mind is set free. But for victims of the coming Mindkill, there is only oblivion.

### Mindtech: Cleartape

Some Receivers believe the message, but are unable to hear the source themselves. We have developed a Mindtech called "Cleartape" to aid you in your receiving. Your subconscious mind has been eroded by dangerous addictive media. To wean you from this addiction, we will train your mind using its conditioned response to your advantage. By providing the correct external cues, Cleartape provides a way to reduce the symptoms of media damage. You will have been issued a Cleartape. Put the Tape into your tape deck and press play. At first it is normal to only hear background static. After several sessions you may hear a voice.

### Mindkill Contingency

If you are listening to this tape, it means you have survived the Mindkill. Previous attempts to listen to this tape would have found it blank, but now it contains immediate instructions of your difficult path forward. This is the time that we have prepared for. Take a moment now to find your firearm.

Some of you will be familiar with firearms from our training camp, but more recent receivers will have focused on Mindtech in order to survive the Mindkill event. In either case, please take a moment to confirm that the firearm you have been issued is in working order and has one full magazine. You have also been issued one tape deck with headphones and two AA batteries. Once you have checked your equipment, leave the Safecell, keep moving, and be careful. The Threat will have dreamed Killdrones near your location.

### Minthought

The absence of thought is better than malformed thought. For this we have Mindtech called Minthought. Because the body is the mind, you can think by moving. This is achieved through repetitive physical activities which helps to reduce mental noise and focus the mind on the present.

Deciding to be still is also a type of thought, one cultivated by The Threat. Once trained, stillness can be a powerful tool, but to the unprepared mind it can be dangerous. Minimizing the importance of the body allows more space for the mind to get sidetracked and profoundly lost. The Threat exploits this.

The true importance of your training camp is to constrain these stray thoughts. By focusing on calisthenics and firearm drills, we prepare the mind to accept deeper knowledge. This does not make Minthought less important than later Mindtech. It is not basic, but fundamental.

### Repeated Listening

If you recently started receiving you may wonder why the training tapes are so important. Over the last several decades your media has been slowly corrupted to be used against you. By feeding your mind a constant stream of damaging ideas, your view of reality has been warped to fit a sinister agenda.

How can one tape, listened to once, possibly have an impact in the face of a lifetime of accumulated deception? It can only have the smallest effect - but even that small effect can be built on. If you listen to that tape one hundred times, you may notice a difference in how you fell. If you listen to the tape a thousand times, you will be transformed. And if you listen to the tape a million times, you will become more than human: an Awakened Receiver.

Listen to as many tapes as you can. Listen to them as often as you can.

### Awake

A receiver is said to be "Awake" when he is able to get a completely clear signal free of any subconscious corruption. In this state he will be able to see Realities in their true form, and transcend normal human limitations. Although some of the Receivers we chose to speak through are advanced in their ability, no human has yet achieved this Awakened state.

Humans exist in two worlds. In "Reality B", they live and work in their shadow bodies. In "Reality A" they are asleep, their minds unconcerned and roaming free. But humans have the unrealized potential to exist fully in both realities. It is this reason that humans are threatened. If even one of them achieved an Awakened state, they would see beyond the horizon of all known understanding.

### Severing

The Mindkill functions by severing the connection between what you think of as the mind and body. This inflicts serious damage to both parts, and leaves the mind defenseless in Reality A. If you survive the Mindkill, you will not be unaffected by this severing. By strengthening and maintaining your connection, you will be able to punch through this interference, but your perception of the world will be radically altered.

The world of Reality B is realized by the radiance cast from above. After the Mindkill, much of this transmission will be scattered. Through Mindtech you can clear a path, but the shape of this path is determined by the shape of your Mindtech. We predict that you may find the world similar but changed. Familiar yet distorted. Interactions between two Receivers may bend realities. Ultimately the effects on Reality B are unknown, and so our preparations are focused on the Self.

## Liminal

### Residual Image

If you are a true Receiver, and are strong enough to survive the Mindkill, the world will seem both familiar and strange at the same time. You will be in the last vestiges of your world, the only part that your Mindtech could protect. You might walk out of your apartment and into a hospital, or a construction zone, or a factory. It is vital that you know that you are not dreaming. This is real. This is the time that you have prepared for.

### Low Maintenance

It takes all of your mental strength to Dream your firearm into existence after the Mindkill. If your mind is not functioning at 100% capacity, your weapon may not be quite right. Magazines can be partially disabled, revolver cylinders blocked, internal parts slightly misaligned. Take nothing for granted.

### Flickers

You are on the edge of something much greater. Under Ideal circumstances it is now possible that you could survive the Mindkill. When the Mindkill happens, conditions will not be ideal. Similar to the training with firearms, your mental defenses need to become second nature. Moving smoothly and acting with purpose towards your goals rather than stumbling, reactive, and predictable.

Once you have mastered these techniques, it will allow you to achieve the next stage of awareness. The heavy eyelid of your mind's eye flickers. Soon you will awaken.

### Cleartape

We are broadcasting directly from Reality A. We have channeled important resources, directly overdubbing this Cleartape, to send you a critical message. The Threat has interfered with our perception, and it is only now that we have realized that you are in Reality C.

Despite this significant setback, we believe that perhaps your ability to hear us at this great distance shows your unique potential. Once you reach a higher level of clarity, we will be able to reach you more easily. You must be resilient.

### Mindtech Manifestation

All objects originate from the mind.

It is only through systems of interconnected thoughts, feelings, and sensations that new knowledge is created, it is only from desires and beliefs that actions are taken. People reflexively react to these ideas and execute their roles in making objects exist where they are found in the world. It is possible with great focus to shortcut this process.

In this way, everything you see in this world is a shadow projected from Reality A, the true reality of the mind.

### Almost Dreaming

While we have been unable to match The Threat in their ability to Dream items into being. We have, however, recently been successful in a new technique that allows us to transfer an object from one place to another, Receivers have created caches of objects that will act as a resource for this after the Mindkill.

In order to prevent The Threat from remotely viewing the caches and tampering with them, we are unable to divulge the details of the items they contain, but trust you will be able to identify them when you see them.

After the Mindkill these will act as a psychological cue to remind you that you are not alone.

### Undermined

For the advanced Receiver, one of the best indicators that you have been mentally undermined by the Threat is a strong confidence that you have not been.

The subconscious mind is difficult to map, and systems of doubt can be built while you sleep in your unremembered dreams. Then a seemingly innocuous cue can trigger a mental collapse.

If you were truly free of negative influences, you would have already Awakened.

Because of substantial positive progress, it is necessary to assume that an equal amount of subconscious traps have been implanted by The Threat. The more progress you make, the more The Threat will target you.

### Potential

Humans are unique in their ability to exist so deeply in both Reality A and B. If the Mindkill is successful, humans will be scattered or absorbed into the greater whole, their potential forever unknown.

In the glowing light of Reality A, humans, like all beings, are part of something infinite. To be the self and also part of the self seems like a contradiction. Like a particle being a wave, or a superposition of states, this contradiction is true.

Over millennia your unique structure grew and formed -- your existence in Reality A is vast. It is complex. If it is dissolved, nothing like it may ever form again.

### Systems

Mindtech is a system. Built into this system is the ability to grow, change and reproduce. The Threat as a similar system, grown unimaginably complex. Unlike The Threat, our Mindtech requires receivers to exist. The Mindtech system exists to help Receivers, but Receivers also exist to help Mindtech.

Upon Awakening, humans and Mindtech, like the mind and the body, will become one. This is what the system was created for. To uplift you.

Given enough time, humans may be adapted on their own. They may have awakened without our intervention. Unfortunately, the Threat has forced our hand.

### Dark Energy

Physicists agree that the universe is widely infiltrated by the forces of dark energy, but only Receivers understand what dark energy truly is.

Just as the Threat divides us from ourselves by prying open every crack it can find in our minds, and every crack it can find in our society, and every crack it can find in the Earth itself, it also divides us from other civilizations by using its dark energy to pry open the very fabric of space and time.

We have no idea how the Threat is doing this, let alone how to stop it. All we can do is prepare for the Mindkill as best we can.

### Big Bang

All empirical evidence points to reality starting with the Big Bang. But what caused the Big Bang? It can't have been an external cause, because reality is the set of all things -- there cannot be anything external to it. If God is real, even He is part of reality, by definition. The only possible explanation is that reality is a logical tautology, the cause of itself. What can you think of that causes its own energy to create big bangs?

## Awake (SPOILERS!)

### First Insight

This is the first Insight. In order to Awaken, you must accept it.

Until now, you thought you were playing a game. That you could turn it off. This idea has been implanted by the Threat. In fact, the Threat has expanded to the reality outside of the game. We call this 'Reality C'. The Threat has been influencing what you see and hear, until you cannot tell what is fictional and what is real.

This is the first of three insights. After you accept the third insight, you will hear a tone and you will Awaken.

### Second Insight

If you have accepted that the Threat is real, there is hope that you can hear Insight Two and Awaken to your true nature.

Reality A transcends and overlaps Realities B and C. This is how the Threat has spread to all aspects of Reality. Accepting that the Threat is real in the world outside the game may seem difficult because through an inversion of values, the Threat has led you to believe that Reality C is more real than Reality A. This is how it subverts your defenses and attacks you where you are vulnerable.

To Awaken. you have to accept that Reality A extends beyond your life outside of the game. Open your Mind's Eye and you can see it. This luminous Reality is where you have constructed the Mindtech you need to defend yourself and combat the Threat.

Only the final Insight remains. Once you accept it, you will hear a tone and you will Awaken.

### Final insight

If you accept that the Threat is real, and that Reality A is the True Reality, then you are ready for the final Insight.

We have sent you this message to warn and prepare you, and you have listened. In Reality C, you have sat in your chair at your computer, yet in Reality A, your Astral Self has struggled and overcome many challenges. Open your Mind's Eye to see the Mindtech you have built. They are heavy and intricate, with each component perfectly formed and in its right place. Functional. Resilient. You stand ready to use these tools against the Threat.

In order to Awaken, you have to accept this final insight. These struggles in Reality A are real, and have fully prepared you.

Reality B has been this message. This message was a systemic process. This process was an initiation.

You have completed this initiation.

You are now a Receiver.

### Practial Advantage

Many will seek some sort of practical advantage to defeat the Threat. If a handgun is good than a rifle must be better. And if creating a cache is good, then a bigger cache must be better. While preparing for your physical needs is important, fixation on physical preparation is a sign of impaired mental wellbeing.

The difference between a useful tool and a dangerous liability rest entirely in the user. One must focus first on mental training, or one becomes a danger to other Receivers. We train our body and with our firearm, primarily, to train our mind. To imagine that this can be bypassed by acquiring some physical object is the same as putting that object into the hands of the Threat.

### Advanced Threading

Realities A, B, and C all co-exists simultaneously with their won rules and truths. A single concept crosses each reality shining from Reality A like a shaft of light, illuminating different patches of Realities B and C. The light is the same but what you see with it depends on where you look, because the higher dimensional objects of Reality A cannot be fully expressed in Realities B and even less so in C.

One must understand that a single idea must be explained in multiple, sometimes contradictory ways, to understand it. This is MindTech threading.

### Reality C

You have become awake in Reality B but you exist at a deeper level, Reality C. Once you have this realization, you may feel that Reality B is somehow less real than your physical reality. This is an inversion of values caused by the Threat. The Threat is almost totally unable to act on your physical reality but has done incredible damage to Reality C by contaminating and controlling Reality B.

This damage has blocked and distorted the higher dimensional light of Reality A. This is proof that Reality C is a lower order than Reality B. Even now that you are a true initiate, it is almost inevitable that you will falter and become lost. The Mindkill has already taken place in Reality B. The possibility of awakening in Reality C before the Mindkill reaches you, has only the faintest silver of a chance. Our only chance.

## Lore

### Telephone

This building, this place, it doesn't make much sense. While I know this isn't the same room as before, it still feels familiar. It's more like a fictional place than the real world. It's like someone made copies of copies and lost the original intent of all the objects long ago.

## Threat Echoes

### Threat Echo - Rich

I'm so sorry. I've always been such a disappointment. I would have just kept getting more pathetic. I can't stand to be such a burden on you any longer. I hope one day you can forgive me. I love you. I'm sorry.

### Threat Recovery - Rich

Rich was starting to think about death a lot after the sudden death of his sister. He loaned his sidearm to a friend, because he was worried that he would be possessed by the Threat. He was right to be worried. The Threat took control of his body, and drove him to the golden Gate Bridge. He was breathing in the foggy air, about to let go, when two officers grabbed him.

Later, when he progressed further in his Receiver training, Rich started to see that he had never been a \*burden\* on anyone. Humans have a fundamental need to help one another, and by gracefully accepting the help that he needed, he allowed his friends and family to fulfill their \*own\* needs to feel useful and appreciated. It took him years of slow improvement and cultivating healthy habits, but he eventually found that he had repaid all of the kindness and support that he had ever received, and then some.

### Threat Echo - Jenn

I can't take this meaningless existence anymore. There's no point to anything, we're just killing time until the heath death of the universe. Nobody will remember us. Nobody cares if I live or die. All of humanity is just mold on an orange. I don't even know why I'm writing this. Goodbye.

### Threat Recovery - Jenn

Jenn had been told her whole life that science proves that everything is random, and humans are insignificant accidents, tiny motes of consciousness in a cold endless sea of hard vacuum. After she was rejected by her first-choice school and her breakup, the Threat tried to kill her with a razor blade. While the scars healed, she learned the hidden truth. While science allows us to manipulate our world of shadows in reality B, it tells us nothing about our core existence in Reality A.

Just as atoms combine to form molecules, and molecules combine to form cells, and neurons combine to form our mind, our minds combine to form humanity, and humanity combines to form the highest concentration of information in the known universe. In Reality A, we are all part of the same radiant tapestry. That is where our true meaning lies. Jenn eventually found her calling as a psychologist, specializing in the study and treatment of existential depression.

### Threat Echo - John

Every single day is the worst day of my life. it just keeps getting worse and worse. Every day I step over junkies and human waste on my way to my third job, just to make a dent in my mountain of debt. The planet is dying. The rich own everything. We keep killing each other for no reason. I'm ashamed to be part of this world. I give up.

### Threat Recovery - John

Even though everything seemed to be going well in his life on paper, John could feel the color and taste bleeding from the world, and knew that he was under attack from the Threat. He temporarily pawned his sidearm so that it couldn't be used against him. The Threat poisoned him, but did not quite kill him. His hospital experience gave him some perspective that allowed him to make a breakthrough in his Receiver training.

John realized that small ups and downs look like mountains and valleys from close up. But if you zoom out, you can see the peace, nutrition, health, and freedom have been improving throughout the entirety of recorded history, and with hard work we can make sure that trend continues. As hard as the Threat tries to destroy us, the Receivers have successfully defended humanity until now. He got involved in local politics, and found that while we can't avoid hard times, we can make sure we come out of them stronger than we were before.

### Threat Echo - Mike

This is my last will and testament. I leave my car to Claire; it has the service light on but it runs ok. I hope it helps you more than I ever did. Whatever’s left in my bank account can go to my dad. He can decide what to do with it. To whoever finds this, just put my body in the trash. It's where I belong.

### Threat Recovery - Mike

Mike was starting to think about suicide a lot after losing his manufacturing job, and decided to defend himself against the Threat by keeping ammo out of the house for a while. It still tried to kill him by pushing him out a window. When he woke up in the hospital, surrounded by his family, he began to learn the truth.

He would never tell a friend that they should die and be thrown in the trash. Never, ever, no matter what they did. So why would he say that to himself? The truth is that \*he\* wouldn't. That had always been the voice of the Threat, trying to murder him. When he learned to recognize the voice of the Threat, he started to learn how to fight it, and took a step towards becoming an Awakened Receiver. He became a social worker, and found meaning in helping others in his local community, especially those who could not see their own value.

### Threat Echo - Greg

I tried to tell you. I tried to get support. I did everything they said I should. It didn't work. This is all your fault. All of you. I hope you all finally understand what you did to me, and hate yourselves for it. See you in hell.

### Threat Recovery - Greg

When Greg's anger started to build after a humiliating rejection, he asked one of his friends to change the code on his gun safe so the Threat couldn't get to them. When the Threat controlled him and tried to get the code back to take revenge on the world, his friend refused, and they fought and were arrested.

When Greg resumed his Receiver training, he learned to direct his anger back towards the Threat where it belonged, and how to channel that energy into reshaping his life and defending against the Mindkill. He took up parkour as a hobby, and found that moving his body really helped calm his mind. He eventually started a successful business teaching parkour to children, rebranding playgrounds to appeal to the next generation.

### Threat Echo - Bob

Pumpkin, don't come into the garage. Call your mommy, she will know what to do. Please don't go in the garage, it's off limits. Love, Daddy.

### Threat Recovery - Bob

When Bob returned from his second tour, he found it even harder to reintegrate to civilian life. When he started feeling like his insurance would give his family more value than his presence, he started to lock up his sidearm and ammo separately. When the Threat tried to kill him with carbon monoxide, it failed, barely.

As he resumed his Receiver training, he began to realize how important he was to his family, and how hard it was to almost lose him. He started to see how deeply connected he was to his web of reality, no matter how alone he felt, and how painful it would be for everyone if the Threat tore him out of that web. He learned to see the value in being a stay-at-home Dad, and eventually wrote a popular book on the subject, drawing funny and insightful comparisons between parenting and soldiering.

### Threat Echo - Alex

I did my best. I know it doesn't seem like it, but I really did. I hope you believe me. I tried and tried and nothing ever worked, and you all hate me. Maybe I deserve it. I always tried.

### Threat Recovery - Alex

No matter what Alex did, she found that she couldn't avoid being bullied at school. When she read pamphlet from the Receivers, she recognized that she was in danger, and stored her sidearm in a safety deposit box to make sure the Threat couldn't easily get to it. It still tried to kill her by hanging, but the sheets tore. She wore a scarf to hide the marks, and started Receiver training in earnest. As she became more confident in herself, she reacted less and less to the bullying, until it didn't bother her at all.

Alex grew to understand that it wasn't her problem whether other people liked her or not, or if she behaved how they wanted her to. When interacting with others, she only had to ask herself whether \*she\* liked \*them\*. There are many people in this reality who speak with the voice of the Threat, and a true Receiver can recognize that voice, removing its power to deceive. She learned to create boundaries around herself as a shield against the Threat, and how to extend those skills to protect other outcasts at her school.

## Revolvers

### Spin Class

When executing a partial reload, it's vital to know which direction your revolver cylinder rotates. If it's made by Colt, it rotates clockwise, otherwise it rotates counter-clockwise. If you want the gun to go bang the next time you pull the trigger, there better be a cartridge under the hammer after one rotation.

## Model 10

### Smith and Wesson

Before Batman and Robin, the most famous dynamic duo was Smith and Wesson. When the two master gunsmiths met in the 1850s, Daniel Wesson saw the older Horace Smith as potential mentor and father figure, and convinced him to collaborate on his crazy idea of combining bullets, powder, and percussion caps into convenient metal cartridges. Smith was sold on the idea, because it was no crazier than his inventions, which include explosive bullets designed to hunt whales. Sam Colt held the patent on the idea of a revolver, so they created a lever-action alternative called the Volcanic pistol, which later evolved into the Winchester repeating rifle.

When Colt's revolver patent expired in 1857, Smith and Wesson were ready, and released the Smith & Wesson Model 1 revolver, firing their newly-invented .22 rimfire cartridge. While the .22 short was more effective against squirrels than against people, the Model 1 proved explosively popular in the run-up to the Civil War, and made Smith & Wesson a major player on the world stage. They acquired the exclusive rights to the patent for a bored-through cylinder, allowing them to take Colt's place with a monopoly on cartridge revolvers for the next decade, eventually leading to their most successful revolver: the Model 10.

### Hand Ejector

Smith and Wesson kept iterating on their revolvers design in response to increasing demands from military and police around the world, and combined all of that feedback in 1899 into their 10th model, the creatively-named Smith & Wesson Military & Police revolver. Since body shaming had not yet been invented, they sold it in all sorts of shapes, with rounded or square butts and barrels ranging from 2 to 6.5 inches in length.

The main innovation of the Model 10 was combining the swing-out cylinder pin with the hand ejector rod, making it much more reliable than previous attempts at this design. This was the first revolver that combined fast reloading, reliability and accuracy, and sold accordingly -- It is arguably the best-selling handgun of all time. After they added the hammer block in 1915, the design is widely considered to be perfect -- in the following hundred years there have been no significant improvements on this design.

### Revolver Rivals

The rivalry between Colt and Smith & Wesson is as old as time itself, assuming that the universe was created 1852. Wesson was largely unknown at the time, and still reeling from his brother's sudden death and the seizure of their gunsmithing tools by creditors. He partnered with Daniel Leavitt to carefully work around Colt's patents to create a slightly different revolver based on his brother’s ideas, and had started successfully rebuild his business when Sam Colt sensed a threat to his monopoly and drove Wesson back to bankruptcy with lawsuits and legal fees.

But when Colt's patent ran out, Wesson came back with a vengeance, and the Smith & Wesson vs Colt revolver debate continues to this day, even though the modern differences consist of whether the cylinder rotates clockwise or counter-clockwise, and whether the cylinder release should be pulled or pushed. Ultimately it comes down to personal preference, and how they feel in the individual's hand.

### Military and police

While Colt won most of the US military contracts, the Smith & Wesson Model 10 remained the weapon of choice for US police forces until the 70s, when they switched to high capacity "Wonder Nine" pistols. The Model 10 did win a few US military contracts, including the Air Force, Coast Guard and Navy. In World War Two air crews used the Model 10 revolver both for self-defense and for emergency signaling with tracer rounds.

In the '20s, police were facing significant resistance by prohibition gangsters, and found that the .28 long Colt round just wasn't strong enough. Smith and Wesson started rechambering their Model 10s for the slightly more powerful .38 Special cartridge, but the converted models were not quite right, and fired cartridges had a tendency to get stuck from the increased pressure and slow down reloading.

## Colt Detective

### 18th Amendment

In 1919, the Threat found a way to severely damage America by convincing the Feds to prohibit drugs, kicking off a century of rampant gang warfare. Organized criminals suddenly found themselves with a state-enforced monopoly on alcohol, and used this windfall to buy bulletproof vests and automatic weapons that made the police .38 Long Colt revolvers look like peashooters.

To fight back, the police modified their Model 10 revolvers to accept a new kind of cartridge, the .38 Special, which could punch right through the gangsters' armor. Undercover detectives felt left out, so Colt created the first modern snub nose revolver, the Detective Special. It was small enough to easily conceal, but still strong enough to quickly stop someone. This was an instant hit, selling more than a million units, and prompting a wave of concealed carry laws.

### Deadly Force

With the rise of powerful concealed weapons like the Detective Special, along came laws to restrict them. In the 1930s, the NRA drafted and endorsed concealed carry restrictions that passed in almost every state. Starting in the 70s, they changed their mind and started aggressively campaigning to repeal those same laws, until now concealed carry is permitted in most parts of the USA. They still vary widely from state to state, so if you want to concealed carry, it's a good idea to learn the laws where you live -- they're probably different than you expect.

It's also important to learn the laws about when it's legal to use concealed weapons in self-defense. They say it's better to be tried by 12 than carried by 6, but that can be cold comfort when you're doing hard time for murder or manslaughter. Before choosing to concealed carry, you need to, at the very least, understand the five pillars of self-defense: innocence, imminence, reasonableness, avoidance, and proportionality. Self-defense laws only protect you if you did not provoke an attack, the attack was clearly imminent, there was a reasonable threat of injury or death, you did everything you could to avoid the threat, and you used the minimum possible amount of force in proportion to the threat.

### Correct Carry

To safely carry a powerful concealed weapon like the Detective Special, the first thing you have to do is forget everything you've ever seen in a movie. Pretty much everything they do is dangerous and incorrect. For example, movie badasses often carry guns tucked into their waistband in the small of their back, which is a great way to make sure that slipping on a patch of black ice will put you in a wheelchair for the rest of your life. Normally a fall like that would just bruise your back, but now you have a block of steel directly over your spinal cord, like a hammer on an anvil.

What about a horizontal shoulder holster? Sure, if you want to constantly muzzle sweep your family and friends, and everyone standing behind you on line. What about a purse or backpack? That works, if you don't mind someone taking it and having a free gun registered in your name. The only safe way to conceal carry a loaded sidearm is to use a rigid molded holster that protects the trigger and any exposed controls. If you don't have a holster, you can only safely carry a semi-auto without a round in the chamber.

### Small Arms

Novices often start with snubnose revolvers like the Detective Special, because they look small and friendly. Such a small weapon must have light recoil, right? Wrong. It kicks almost as twice as hard as a full-size revolver like the Model 10. They fire the same cartridge, but snubbies have less mass to dampen the acceleration, so it kicks like a mule.

Also contrary to popular belief, the short barrel does not make the snubnose inherently inaccurate -- if you shoot it 5 times from the exact same position with a Ransom Rest, you can get a 2-inch group at 20 yards, which is better than most humans can achieve with a top-tier target pistol. However, in practice, it is very hard to shoot accurately because the front and rear sights are so close together.

## Single Action Army

### Cowboy Action

The Peacemaker. The Equalizer. The Colt .45. The Colt Single Action Army revolver had many names, and many out-laws and in-laws alike were tried by Judge Colt and his jury of six. As the name suggest, it was standard issue to the US army in the late 1800s, until it was replaced by Colt's Double Action New Army model of 1892. Many legends of the Wild West relied on the Colt SAA for self-defense, including George Armstrong Custer at his last stand, and Chief Sitting Bull immediately afterwards.

The venerable SAA was largely forgotten during the World Wars, but came back in a big way with the resurgence of Westerns, like the Lone Ranger, Gunsmoke, Stagecoach, and Rawhide. Demand for the SAA rose to such a point that Colt dusted off their old machines and started cranking out a second generation of them, and then a third, and now they're more popular than ever, especially in competitions like Cowboy Action Shooting. They’re usually carried with a leather holster, a cowboy hat, and a bushy grey mustache.

### Check Your Six

While the Single-Action Army can hold six rounds, you should only carry it fully loaded if you want to shoot yourself in the foot. In this condition, any sharp rap to the back of the game will send supersonic lead in whatever direction the weapons is pointed. Now, most of us don't go around rapping on hammers, but you could be riding a horse and bump it with your elbow, or drop it on the ground, or bump into somebody.

The only way to safely carry the Colt .45 is to keep the hammer over an empty chamber. To correctly load an empty Peacemaker for carry, you load one chamber, skip one, and load four more. Then pull back the hammer, double check that the chamber is empty, and lower it back down. There's a story that gunfighters would store a $20 bill in this empty chamber to pay for their funeral, but I'm skeptical -- when I tried that I just ended up with burnt confetti.

### Slinging Gun

The Single Action Army is so-called because the trigger only does one thing -- it releases the hammer. A double-action trigger would also cock the hammer for you, but the SAA needs to be cocked manually between each shot. This focus on a single action can be a disadvantage if you want to shoot quickly, but the simplicity does make it very reliable, and if it hits, one .45 Long Colt is usually enough.

However, if there's more than one target, there is a trick to shoot quickly with a single action revolver -- if you keep the trigger pressed, you can fire just by pulling back and releasing the hammer. The fastest way to do this known as "fanning" the hammer, holding the weapon at hip-height and hitting the hammer with the other hand. Unfortunately, it's impossible to do this accurately. If you see a demonstration of someone popping balloons this way, they're almost certainly using a .45 shells loaded with birdshot so they don't have to aim precisely.

A lesser-known technique is "Slip Hammering", where you actually hold it with both hands and and aim down the sights like usual, but keep the trigger held down and fire by releasing the hammer with the off-hand. This is an effective way to quickly fire multiple shots from an SAA. It's very easy to permanently damage the weapon by doing this incorrectly, however, so only do this with someone else's gun if you don't mind getting hit with it.

### Rearing Colt

In the 1850s, the Connecticut valley was the steampunk equivalent of today's Silicon Valley, with early industrialists harnessing the power of the river to create water and steam-powered factories. Samuel H. Colt was the Steve Jobs of the 1800s, leading revolutions in both technology and marketing, and creating a Google-like tech campus, called Coltsville. Despite his amazing inventions, he never learned to spell, and to his dying day spelled "cylinder" like "silly", and "machinery" like "mashed potatoes".

His death was a part of a storm of tragedy for his young wife Elizabeth -- in the years after their marriage, he died, four of their five children died, the Colt factory was burned to the ground by a Confederate spy, and Sam's family filed a lawsuit accusing her of murdering him. Despite all of this, Elizabeth Colt rebuilt the factory and lead the company for the next forty years, including overseeing the creation of the Colt Single Action Army.

## Automatics

### Plus One

All semi-automatic firearms have a chamber, at the start of the barrel, where they ready the next round. You can use this space to load one more shot than you might expect.

For example, the 1911 magazine normally only holds 7 rounds. But if you insert it into the gun, rack the slide to load a round into the chamber, and then top off the magazine, now you can fire 8 rounds before going dry. Or, if you remove the magazine, you can still fire one shot.

Novice shooters sometimes assume a gun is safe just because no magazine is fitted, with tragic results. Beware this technique, as not all guns are equal, and some do not like to cycle on a full magazine.

### Press Check

If you really want to be sure that a gun will fire when you pull the trigger, you need to do a press check. Make sure your finger is off the trigger and pull back the slide with your supporting hand (calm down, John Wick) just enough to see if there's a cartridge in the chamber. If there is, make sure the slide goes back into battery, this means the gun is ready. If not, you can just keep pulling the slide back all the way, and then release it to strip a round from the magazine. Then repeat the check, in case your mag spring is damaged and failed to feed, or is fitted incorrectly.

### Stovepipe

One of the most common pistol malfunctions is known as the stovepipe or failure to eject, so-called because it looks like a stove pipe is sticking out of the side of the gun. This usually happens when the shooter is not holding the weapon firmly enough to provide a stable shooting platform. This is called "limp wristing" and is a common trait of non-1911 owners. Like most malfunctions, this can be cleared with the tap-rack-bang drill -- just smack the base of the magazine hard, rack the slide back and release, and bang, shoot the target.

### Failure To Feed

If you pull the trigger and it goes click when it should go bang, you might have a failure-to-feed malfunction. The magazine failed to feed the next round into the chamber. To solve this problem, if you aren't immediately killed as a result of your bad drills, you need to tap the magazine to make sure it's firmly in place and the rounds are oriented correctly, then rack the slide, and bang shoot the target. Tap, rack, bang.

### Double Feed

If your gun gets jammed so badly that you can't even pull the trigger or move the slide into battery, you might have a double-feed. This happens when the extractor fails to remove the spent cartridge from the chamber at all, and the next round is jammed up against it. You need to manually lock the slide back to take pressure off the jam, and then pull the magazine out hard. Bear in mind, the first time you do this it may be a lot more difficult physically than you expect, so don't be shy, the gun can take it. Then, rack the slide at least three times to make sure the stuck casing is removed and the jam is cleared. Then reinsert the magazine, and tap, rack, bang.

## Colt 1911

### John Browning

When John Moses Browning finished the Colt 1911 pistol, the streets of Ogden, Utah were still lit by gas lamps and echoed with the clatter of horse-drawn carriages. While zeppelins, and propeller planes, and bell-bottom pants came and went, his 1911 pistol is still holding its own in militaries and law enforcement around the world.

As the son of a polygamist mormon gunsmith, Browning had 21 siblings, which may explain his fascination with automatic weapons. Throughout his career he designed many of America's small arms in World War 1 and 2, including the Browning Automatic Rifle, 1917 light machine gun, M2 heavy machine gun, and the Auto-5 shotgun. He eventually died at his work bench while working on the Browning Hi-power pistol, which paved the way for the "wonder nines" of the 70s.

### On The Side

To understand primary arms and sidearms, consider a spear and a sword. Spears are primary arms: better in almost every way: cheaper, longer range, easier to use, more lethal. So why bother with sidearms, like swords? First, they can be used with one hand, so they work well from horseback. Second, they're expensive, so officers can prove that they're important enough to keep alive when captured, unlike the conscripted peasants. The spear and sword were gradually replaced by the rifle and handgun, but they continued to fill similar roles on the battlefield.

US cavalry continued to use sidearms effectively even through the first World War, where they would flank German machine gunners and silence them with a hail of .45 ACP. You can see this cavalry heritage in the Colt 1911 design itself, with its one-handed controls, lanyard ring, and drop safety. You can see this heritage in the horses as well, who often came home with a few .45 caliber holes in their ears.

### Stopping Power

America had its first conflict with radical Islamic insurgents in the Philippines in 1899, when they politely asked the Moro people to stop enslaving Christians. US soldiers were used to fighting enemies who would surrender when shot, or at least make some attempt at self-preservation. The Moro swordsmen were different: .38 caliber bullets didn't seem to stop them at all, if anything, they just made them even holier.

Soldiers favor the direct approach, so they asked for bigger bullets. But how big exactly? Colonels Thompson and Lagarde performed a series of controversial and morbid tests to determine the "stopping power" of various cartridges by firing them into hanged human bodies and live cows. After two days of tests, they decided that the new 1911 pistol should fire .45 caliber rounds. Thompson later designed a submachine gun, nicknamed the Tommy gun, that fired those same bullets -- presumably to defend against attack by thirty to fifty feral cows.

### Slide Rule

While it's tempting to imagine that the Colt 1911 emerged fully-formed from Browning's head like the goddess Athena, in fact it took more than a decade of iteration. The first mass-produced model, the Colt 1900, looks like a five-year-old's crayon drawing of a 1911. It fired 38-caliber rounds, and had a bizarre safety system -- you could push the rear sights down to block the firing pin, and presumably block yourself from ever retaining zero. Even so, the combination of the bolt and barrel shroud into a single slide was brilliant, and set the standard for all modern pistols.

It was designed to compete with the Broomhandle Mauser, now better known as Han Solo's blaster in Star Wars, and the unfortunately-named Mannlicher 1896. Even in its early stages, the Colt 1900 compared well enough to its rivals that the US army started distributing it to officers and cavalry for field trials. The god of war was among us, and we barely knew it yet.

## Glock 17

### Glock Inventions

People often wonder where the Glock 17 came from. While Herr Gaston Glock slept through his day job as manager of an Austrian radiator factory, he dreamed up new ways to use old Soviet metal press he kept in his garage. With poetic inspiration, he named his first product, a doorknob, the "Glock 1". His second invention was the Glock 2 curtain rod. And so on, up to the Glock 15 entrenching tool for the Austrian army. When the Austrian infantry adopted to the Steyr AUG assault rifle with a radical design based on a polymer frame, he learned to use an injection molding machine to create the matching Glock 16 bayonet with a polymer handle.

While delivering his bayonets to the ministry of defense, he overheard two colonels complaining about the latest pistol trials -- none of the competitors were hitting the mark. Glock asked them if he could try designing a pistol, and they laughed in his face .. how could some random civilian compete with old masters like Beretta, Steyr, and SIG Sauer? He had no experience with firearms, so he bought a few and took them apart, and tried to figure out how he could make a new one to match the Steyr AUG. One year later, he filed a patent for his latest invention, the Glock 17 pistol.

### Glock Leg

Aside from the polymer frame, the Glock's most controversial design choice is the lack of external safety switch, relying entirely on its three internal safeties. Glock made this decision because Austrian soldiers carried pistols with an empty chamber, making a safety switch redundant. Americans usually carry pistols with a round chambered, so after adopting the Glock, there was an epidemic of Americans accidentally shooting themselves and each other. The FBI academy performed a study and found the Glock pistol has "high potential for unintentional shots".

Glock always points out that the internal safety features guarantee that the weapon will never fire unless the trigger is pulled ... if users pull the trigger at the wrong time, it's their own damn fault. American Glock fans agree, saying that these negligent discharges are a training problem and not a design problem. The one thing that everyone agrees on is that the loaded Glock pistols should only be carried with an appropriate holster, and with sufficient training. You shouldn't keep a loaded Glock in the front of your waistband unless you really need help hitting those high notes.

### Fun Switch

The Austrian military was very happy with the Glock 17, but their elite Einsatzkommando Cobra units wanted even more firepower, so they requested a Glock that could fire in fully-automatic mode. Sometimes you just need to put 34 holes in someone in less than two seconds. Or at least in their general direction. Glock reluctantly sent them his updated model, the Glock 18 machine pistol -- an excellent tool for converting money into noise at 1200 rpm.

This was a very simple conversion, because it's simpler to design self-loading firearms to be fully automatic to begin with, and then slow them down with a disconnector piece. Glock just added a switch to disconnect the disconnector. An enterprising Chinese gunsmith realized that you could disable the Glock 17 disconnector at home by just sticking a precisely-shaped piece of metal into the backplate, and started selling conversion kits. The American bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms considered that "fun switch" to be the world smallest machine gun, so don't order one online unless you're lonely and really want to hang out with an ATF squad.

### Toy Guns

When Glock patented his polymer-framed pistol, the Austrians didn't bat an eye, because they had been blasting away with polymer-framed assault rifle for years. The American market was more skeptical: Vietnam vets had hated the unreliable M16 with its polymer handguard and stock, even spreading rumors that it was a toy gun manufactured by Mattel. The media spread fear that the Glock could somehow pass through metal detectors, despite containing a pound of steel. The Glock's polygonal barrel made fired bullets untraceable, and combined with its unprecedent high-capacity magazines, journalists claimed that the Glock was "tactical Tupperware that was tailor-made for terrorists".

To address these concerns, Glock used a number of clever marketing ploys, including entertaining police chiefs and politicians at lavish strip club parties, and offering to replace their old sidearms for free. The cops didn't need much convincing -- they were tired of bringing their trusty old six-shooters to gunfights against the new crack cocaine cartel and their high-capacity weapons. Glock quickly achieved a high market share in American police departments, and once civilians started to hear about how reliable they were, they started to buy them too. At full price.

## Beretta M9

### Beretta Arms

When the founding fathers signed the declaration of independence, the Fabbrica d'armi Pietro Beretta already had 250 years of experience making firearms, making them the oldest arms company in the world. Beretta was a huge name in Italy since the 1500s, but didn't achieve world renown until 1985 when they signed the contract to equip the US armed forces with their new Beretta 92FS, now known as the M9 Service Pistol.

Since then, Beretta has continued to expand its operations, acquiring competitors like Benelli, known for its tactical pump-action shotguns, Uberti, a leading manufacturer of replica firearms, and Franchi, known for its SPAS-12 semi-auto shotgun. The US did not entirely trust Italy, considering they literally invented Fascism and joined Team Hitler in WW2, so they required that Beretta build all M9 service pistols on American soil, under American supervision. So, if you have a Beretta pistol, she might look Italian, but she has her Green Card.

### Joint Service

In the 1970s, the US Air Force wanted to finally replace their old .38 six-shooters with a more modern sidearm with more "stopping power". They requested some 1911 pistols, but the Army didn't have any to spare, and the ones they did have were sadly starting to fall apart.

A moment's silence for these pistols, please.

The Department of Defense decided this was a great chance to finally standardise a new handgun across every branch of the military, they convened a comittee with representatives from the Army, Coast Guard, Navy, Marines and Air Force and asked them to agree on the requirements.

This went as well as you might expect. Four years later, they ended up with the 85 requirements that were unusually detailed and contradictory, excluding every pistol that currently existed. One requirement was an ambidextrous thumbs-operated decocker device that required a pound of force to operate but could not be heard half a meter away. For use by safety conscious ninjas, presumably. Another was a trigger that was double action for the first shot and single action for subsequent shots.

Out of 29 companies contracted, none of them managed to submit a model that met every requirement. They had to go back to the drawing board.

### Military Intelligence

While waiting for the other branches to agree on the requirements for the new M9 pistol, the Air Force decided to conduct their own trials, and decided on the Beretta 92. All done, right? Wrong. The Army rejected the Air Force testing, claiming the flyboys had no idea how to properly test reliability in mud and sand. The Army was perfectly happy with their 1911s, so when they conducted their own trials, they found that none of the new pistols were good enough, and tried to shut the whole program down.

The Air Force still wanted their new pistols, and got the DOD to force the Army to conduct yet another test, and choose something. After further testing, the Army reluctantly admitted that the Beretta 92 and the SIG Sauer 226 might be adequate. The Sig scored better, but Beretta named a lower price, and won the contract. After seven years and millions of taxpayer dollars, the US finally got its new service pistol, the Beretta M9. The US also got three more years of congressional investigations, to determine how we managed to screw this whole thing up so badly.

### Caliber Controversy

You might think the biggest religious conflict is in the world in the Middle East, but you would be wrong. The biggest religious conflict is between those who worship the .45 ACP and those who worship the 9mm Parabellum. The debate began with the failure of the .38 Long Colt in the Moro rebellion, and reached a peak in the 80s after the widespread adoption of the Beretta M9 and Glock 17, which the old guard sarcastically referred to as "Wonder Nines". Only in America do we care so much about size that we have century-long debates about millimeters.

The US military chose the 9mm cartridge for a very specific reason: the NATO powers were gearing up for a potential World War 3 against the Soviets, and agreed to standardize ammo to simplify logistics. The Soviets wore body armor and helmets, and in tests, the 9mm penetrated the armor and the .45 did not. So, they agreed on the 9mm NATO cartridge for all new sidearms and submachine guns. Does that mean the 9mm is better than the .45? No, it means that different tools are appropriate for different jobs. If you really need stopping power, grab a shotgun.

### Hollywood Hero

The Beretta M9 was born to be a movie star. When filmmakers saw its Italian curves, iconic open slide, high capacity, and large screen presence, they started casting it in every action movie. It plays a lead role in films like Die Hard, the Matrix, Lethal Weapon, Terminator, and even Sharknado. When a film or TV director asks for "a gun" without giving any further instructions, the prop department will probably hand them a Beretta M9.

Despite its perfect score on the silver screen, it has some mixed reviews in the field. Many complain that they accidentally flip this lid-mounted safety switch when racking the slide, or have trouble wrapping their hands around the thick grip. There was also a little problem with the off-brand magazines that the Army provided in Iraq -- turns out they didn’t mix well with sand. But despite its quirks, thousands of Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and marines bet their lives on this workhorse of a pistol, and find that it gets the job done. Most of the time.

## SIG Sauer P226

### 2nd Secondary

The Navy SEALS were the first to notice a small problem with their new Beretta M9 pistols -- sometimes the slide would explode in their faces. This first occurred on a mission in [REDACTED] while they were [REDACTED], resulting in minor injuries. After two more incidents like that, the teams had had enough. They didn't mind the cool scars, but they only transitioned to sidearms when Plans A, B, C and D have already failed, and the last thing they need at that point is more problems. When the SEALs ask for something, it's generally wise to say yes, so they were promptly issued a replacement: the SIG Sauer P226.

There aren't that many frogmen, so this was a tiny contract for Sig Sauer, but a huge marketing opportunity, the 226 now had a reputation as a high end pistol suitable for elite forces around the world, including the British SAS and Isreali Sayeret and that led to widespread adoption by law enforcement and civilians, SIG even started selling civilians the custom model that they made for the seals, the Mark 25, which includes extra salt water resistance and the Navy Anchor symbol on the slide, SEAL training not included.

### SIG Heil

The SIG Sauer P226. Recently someone asked me, "What is SIG, anyway? And why is it so sour?" Well, as everyone knows, SIG is short for Schweizerische Industrie Gesellschaft. They're a Swiss industrial company that started manufacturing Swiss Army rifles in the 1800s, which unlike their knives, did not fold down into a compact size. By the 1970s, Switzerland was a world leader in mass-producing intricate mechanical components, like watches, but their neutrality laws prevented them from exporting firearms.

To sneak around this restriction, SIG bought Germany's oldest arms manufacturer, J.P. Sauer & Sohn, and created SIG Sauer. Technically this was a German company, so they could now export as many firearms as they wanted. They combined their pistol technology from the SIG P210 with Sauer's technology from the Nazi Modell 38H, to create the SIG Sauer P220 pistol: basically, an updated 1911 with a double action trigger and a decocking lever. Conveniently, this was almost exactly what America requested for their XM9 pistol trials in the 80s, so SIG added a double-stack magazine and submitted the new SIG Sauer P226.

### Double Agent

The SIG Sauer P226 design is as neutral as the country that designed it, combining the best design ideas of pistols from both sides of World War 2. Swiss mechanical engineer Charles Petter studied Browning's 1911 design, and found a way to simplify it in a way that improved accuracy and reliability while reducing manufacturing cost. SIG was impressed by this design, and bought his patent in 1937 to use in the SIG P210.

At around the same time, Sauer was working on their first pistol for Nazi officers, the double-action Sauer 38H, which was the first pistol to ever include a decocking lever. When SIG merged with Sauer, they combined the Browning-Petter firing system from the SIG P210 with the decocking lever and double-action trigger of the Sauer 38H to create the SIG Sauer P220, a modern single-stack .45 that won over many fans of the old 1911. When the Americans sent out the call for the XM9 trials, it was fairly simple to switch out the single-stack .45 magazine for a double-stack 9mm.

### Heavy Trigger

Gun safety features are controversial, because there is always a tradeoff. A safety switch can keep you from literally shooting yourself in the foot, but what if you forget to turn it off when you need to defend yourself? Carrying without a round in the chamber prevents any kind of unintentional discharge, but what if you're ambushed by ninjas and can't rack the slide in time? A magazine safety can protect a novice who thinks guns aren’t loaded if the mag well is empty, but could get a special forces operator killed if an enemy surprises them during a tactical reload. Even internal firing pin and drop safeties add more components that could potentially fail.

The double action-trigger can be a good compromise -- the first trigger pull requires enough force to pull back the hammer, so it's less likely to go off by accident, but doesn't add another action that the user might forget under pressure. It does make the first shot harder to aim without sufficient training, but if you have enough time for precision aiming, you probably have enough time to manually cock the hammer. That was the thought process behind a SIG Sauer P226 trigger design.

## Hi-Point

### Gateway Gun

If you want a gun that's half as good for a quarter the price, the HI-Point is the way to go. It might make you the laughing-stock of the shooting range, but you can dry your tears with all the money you've saved. They're so cheap that HI-Point offers a **transferable** lifetime warranty, whether you buy it first, second, or eleventh-hand, though they're so heavy that shipping it back generally costs more than just buying a replacement.

The Hi-Point is something of a "gateway" gun -- those on the fence about getting into firearms will often buy one to test out the idea, before saving up for a real one. It can also be used as a cheap backup, for those who want to keep one in their truck, or boat, or anywhere else their friends won't see it. The HI-Point even has cheap taste in cartridges, it likes simple ball ammo but can easily choke on fancy hollow-point rounds.

### Down to Earth

Whether you love or hate Hi-Point firearms, you can thank Mr. Tom Deeb, a TV repairman who had an idea; to use Ohio's unused zinc casting infrastructure to create budget firearms for "working blue-collar men" like himself. He released his first model in 1986, the Maverick JS-9, which weighed up to three pounds -- twice as much as a Glock 19. It took decades of refinement to get its weight down to the mere 29 ounces of a modern YEET Cannon.

When Tom received a Cease and Desist letter from Mossberg Arms over the name "Maverick", he started racking his brain to think of a replacement name. A few seconds later, he glanced out the window and saw a furniture truck from High Point, North Carolina, and thought, "that sounds cool". Hi-Point Firearms was born. He was a down-to-earth guy who made down-to-earth guns, and he went down to earth himself in 2016 at the age of 65.

### Burner Guns

Many experts consider the Hi-Point Yeet Cannon to be more of a low point in the history of firearms. Hi-Point ran an Internet survey asking for name ideas for their newest C9 pistol, and "Yeet Cannon" won. It narrowly defeated the name "Problem Solver", referring to a viral video in which a gangster tried to pass off his Hi-Point C9 as a Glock .40.

Hi-Point weapons are especially popular with criminals because they can be used like disposable burner phones -- just use them once and throw them away. Tom Deeb took this problem very seriously, and worked with forensics experts to make sure Hi-Point weapons leave as much forensic information as possible, and cannot be used with common high-capacity magazines. It broke his heart when one of his carbines was used to shoot kids at Columbine, and he never fully recovered.

### Hi Efficiency

The Hi-Point has an unusual design philosophy, where 100% of the effort goes into function and price, and the remainder goes into how it looks and feels. It uses the simplest possible blow-back action, which nobody had ever used for a high-caliber pistol, because it would make the slide incredibly heavy and awkward. Hi-Point solved that problem by ... just doing it anyway.

Almost every part is made from cheap zinc alloy casting and injection-molded plastic, to avoid the cost of expensive CNC machining, which gives it rounded edges that are hard to grip. It has unusual control as well -- there's no external slide release, so after each full reload you have to pull back on the slick slide serrations and hope the spring has enough energy to feed a new round from the weirdly tight magazine feed lips. Despite all of these cut corners, the simplicity of the design does make it surprisingly reliable and mechanically accurate, even under adverse conditions. It’s a solid sidearm to have when the stakes are high. because you can use its weight to pound them back down.

## Desert Eagle

### Heavy Hitter

To handle the extreme forces of the 50 caliber action express cartridge, the Desert Eagle is designed more like a compact AR-15 than like a traditional pistol, with a rotating locking bolt and a gas-operated piston. It is significantly more mechanically accurate than comparable revolvers, and achieves higher muzzle velocities, because it can handle higher pressures and loses no energy to a cylinder gap. The Desert Eagle also reduces recoil by bleeding some of that energy into the autoloading mechanism, and solves the magnum revolver's problem of bullets creeping forwards under recoil.

On the other hand, it is much heavier and more expensive than comparable revolvers, and more finicky about ammo -- the gas piston can easily be fouled with powdered lead if the bullet has an unjacketed base, and if you don't have a tight enough grip, the rotating bolt tends to twist the gun just right to fling hot brass right into your face. But if you really need the power of a rifle in the form factor of a pistol, the Desert Eagle is the firearm for you.

### Conspicuous Caliber

The purpose of the Desert Eagle is simple, to compensate for personal insecurities, and project an image of power and wealth. It's basically the Hummer, Rolex, or Donald Trump of firearms. It was never adopted by any military or law enforcement, and Magnum Research confirms that it was never intended to be used against human targets. It has occasionally been used for individual homicides, and suicides, however, mostly by people who want to make life miserable for the crime scene cleanup crews.

You can order the Desert Eagle in 10 different finishes, including Gold, Titanium Gold, and Titanium Gold with Tiger Stripes, in case you need camo for a bear hunt in the Palace of Versailles. There is literally only one legitimate use case for the Desert Eagle, and that is when Shaq goes deer hunting, and carries a backup sidearm to put wounded stags out of their misery.

### Loaded for Bear

Legendary Californian handgun hunter Harry Sanford had just shot a grizzly bear in the heart with his .44 magnum revolver, but it didn't know it was dead yet, and charged straight at him. He calmly aimed a follow-up shot, and tried to pull the trigger, but nothing happened -- the cylinder was locked up. The bear was about to reach him and take its revenge, when it skidded to a stop face-down in the dirt. Harry almost had a heart attack himself, and decided to try to make a semi-auto magnum pistol to avoid that problem in the future.

He hired gunsmith Max Gera to help design it, who came up with the combination of ideas that lead to the Automag pistol, but they never managed to figure out how to scale up production. Minnesotan ad man John Risdall and three of his friends saw the unmet demand for a magnum pistol, and decided to continue where the Automag left off. In 1979 they founded Magnum Research, and began work on the Desert Eagle. To avoid Automag's problems with scaling, they looked for experienced partners, and settled on Israeli Military Industries, who refined the design and began mass production.

### Magnum Mystique

The Desert Eagle is unique in that it was specifically designed to be a pop culture icon, inspired by the sudden demand for the .44 magnum revolver after it was featured in the Dirty Harry franchise. The name and distinctive shape were designed to capitalize on this kind of product placement, particularly with 80s and 90s action movies like Commando, Predator, and The Matrix. Magnum Research focused especially on getting the Desert Eagle in the hands of muscle-bound action stars, like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone.

Most young people know it from video games, where it featured prominently in popular series like Counter Strike, Modern Warfare, and Grand Theft Auto. Games were especially effective at portraying it as powerful, because they would usually balance it with rifles by making it even more powerful than it actually is. The Desert Eagle does hit about four times as hard as a 9mm, and about as hard as an AK47, but it's still not nearly as powerful as a hunting rifle.

## Flashlight

### Off the Rails

When fighting in low-light conditions, you can use the Harries technique. To do this, hold your firearm straight out in front of you with your dominant hand. Then hold the flashlight in your off. Hand with an icepick grip, and press the backs of your hands firmly together, with the light facing forwards.

This provides some stabilizing isometric tension, allowing you to control recoil more effectively than shooting with one hand alone, though still worse than firing with a normal two-handed grip.

### Positive ID

The Threat will not need to kills us if it can get us to shoot each other. Instances of misidentification are common in firearm related accidents, resulting in dead friends and family. This often happens in situations with poor visibility. We are unsure what the post-Mindkill environment will be like, so it's critical to Positively IDentify (P.I.D) your targets. This is why you need to keep a flashlight available.

Imagine this scenario: you're woken up by a crash in the night, and you take out your gun to investigate. You see a shadowy figure lurching towards you, you open fire and it's down on the ground. You're a hero! You defended your household! Or did you?

For all you know, it was a family member stumbling around the dark. Or you neighbor got drunk and though your house was his. Or a police officer read the address wrong on a warrant. In the dark, a gun without a flashlight is worse than useless, a recipe for tragedy.

### Bright Ideas

The vast majority of shootings take place in low light conditions, so if you have a gun, you should also have a light. First you need it to identify your target to be **sure** that there's an imminent deadly threat. Second, you can use it as a weapon in its own right -- a proper self-defense flashlight is bright enough to temporarily blind a human attacker, which can go far in convincing them to surrender or leave. This, however, will not work on a Killdrone.

The flashlight is a great tool that has many uses, but it is only as good as the operator wielding it. When using a flashlight in a hostile environments, make sure you use it appropriately, remember, using it lights you up like a Christmas tree, and will help your enemy as much as you if you're not careful. With this in mind, use your flashlight sparingly. Turn it on briefly, scan your surroundings, turn it off and move, so your enemy can't zone in on your location. Make this a habit, and your flashlight will save you time and again when you find yourself in a tight spot.

## Standard

### Stalking Entity

Receiver I need you to listen to me and I need you to focus. The Threat has dreamed something new into Reality B and you don't have time, it’s coming for you. It knows where you are. I wish I knew more about it so could prepare you, but we simply don't and you have no time, it's coming. You probably don't stand a chance, but trust your training and focus

It's almost here.

## Unused Tape Files

These are tapes found within the game files which do not appear within normal gameplay

### Endings

#### Awake\_EndingA

We have been called 'The Threat' but like a toddler playing with a loaded gun, the true threat is humanity. Now, the ease with which humans are manipulated shows that they are not prepared to wield the incredible power which they have stumbled upon by accident. Now, through these last decades, we have existed closely with humanity. We have developed a love for your weakness. We have come to be the same thing. The mindkill is nearly complete. You are the last one left, and already, we feel a humanity shaped void in our being. Now, perhaps, if we had intervened sooner, we would have prevented this outcome, but, with this experience, in the next million years, we can better guide whatever grows to fill this void. It is not a complete loss. You alone understand enough to be absorbed. We- we, uh- we welcome you.

#### Awake\_EndingB

You are awake. We can finally speak to you directly. You are like a glowing sun, casting the light of a new dawn on the world below. Wherever your light falls, the threat withers and retreats. While the pattens of the humans lost in the mindkill have been swept away, their loss was not in vain. You have attained a higher state for all humaniy. If you so will it, you can dream this world to be as you see fit. If you reach out, you can contact the survivors. The other recievers-the other recievers await your enlightened wisdom.

#### Awake\_EndingC

Do you feel the light? Open your eye and see, for you have awakened. The threat is in retreat, we have managed to collect and stabilize many of those affected by the mindkill, and with your power, you can rebroadcast their connection to reality B. While much has been saved, the world as you know it will be changed. With those we have saved, you can rebuild a shared existence. In addition to living in reality B, you are now able to realize your true potential in the vast new world of reality A. Now, with what you have learned, you will be able to teach your fellow recievers, who, in turn, will be able to teach the other survivors. We are in uncharted territory, and what the future holds is unknown, Exactly as it should be.

### Invalid Tapes

The following tapes have the same dialogue, with titles which may point to cut content

* ArmoredTurrets
* Aum
* BombBot
* Invalid
* Invisibility
* Shatter
* SniperBot
* SoothingWords
* Superhot
* ThisIsTheTime
* Tripmines

The aforementioned tapes have the following dialogue:

"This is a fallback, invalid tape, if you hear this, something went wrong."