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Stories forged by experience. Lessons worth carrying home.

Author · Veteran · Instructor · Storyteller

David Burnell is a U.S. Air Force veteran, author, instructor, entrepreneur, humanitarian, and rescue professional. In 2002, he founded the Urban Warfare Center, where he trained law enforcement officers, military personnel, federal agents, security professionals, and civilians for a decade in self-defense, combatives, personal protection, and high-risk preparedness. His work has also taken him into disaster-response and humanitarian environments in Haiti, Japan, and Burma. Through his books and The David Burnell Podcast, he shares lessons on courage, service, preparedness, resilience, faith, leadership, and the experiences that shape us.

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DAVID BURNELL

A life shaped by service, adversity, preparation, and the people encountered along the way.

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David Burnell is a U.S. Air Force veteran, author, instructor, entrepreneur, humanitarian, and rescue professional whose life has been shaped by service, preparation, adversity, faith, and the people he has encountered along the way. He served more than ten years in the Air Force, earning the Meritorious Service Medal and the John Levitow Award, and later founded the ​Urban Warfare Center​, where he spent a decade training law enforcement officers, military personnel, federal agents, security professionals, and civilians in self-defense, combatives, personal protection, preparedness, and high-risk response.

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His work has also taken him into humanitarian and disaster-response environments in Haiti, Japan, and Burma, as well as into rescue, crisis-response, and field-training settings where the consequences of preparation, leadership, and decision-making are very real. Those experiences changed how he understood resilience and rescue, teaching him that some people need to be carried physically while others carry wounds no one else can see. A lifelong member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, David’s faith in Jesus Christ has become an increasingly important part of how he understands service, adversity, grace, and the responsibility to remember and help those who may feel lost, wounded, or forgotten.

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David Burnell writes about courage, preparedness, resilience, leadership, service, military history, and faith, drawing on a lifetime of rescue, teaching, humanitarian work, and lived experience. Through his books, ​The David Burnell Podcast​, and DavidBurnell.com, he shares stories forged by experience with one purpose in mind: to preserve what is worth remembering, strengthen others through what he has learned, and turn hard-earned lessons into something useful for the road ahead.

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The David Burnell Podcast

Real Stories. Stronger Tomorrow.

Real stories about courage, service, sacrifice, resilience, faith, leadership, survival, and the lessons people carry home from difficult experiences. Each episode draws from lived experience, history, rescue, humanitarian work, and the people whose choices reveal what matters when circumstances become hard.

David Burnell Books

Hard-Earned Lessons. Stories Worth Carrying Forward.

David Burnell’s books draw from decades of military service, training, rescue, humanitarian work, leadership, faith, and lived experience. From practical guides on survival, self-defense, strategy, and preparedness to personal reflections on service, adversity, grace, and resilience, each book serves the same purpose: to turn hard-earned experience into something useful and worth carrying forward.

TESTIMONIAL

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MENTOR, FRIEND AND EXAMPLE FOR MORE THAN A DECADE

"David Burnell has been my teacher, mentor, friend, and example for more than a decade. I have sat at his feet, learned, trained with him, and worked beside him. I have never met a man more fit for a life’s calling than David—and this is a calling. He was born to lead, born to teach, born to fight for what is noble and right, and born to be a force for good.
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He would charge into a fight or fire all alone, against all odds, to save an innocent stranger. He has done it. I would follow him anywhere. He has been one of the biggest inspirations and influences in my life as a husband and father, a professional businessman, a paramedic first responder, a front-line emergency medicine provider, a Search and Rescue team member, and a man of faith.
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If you are striving to be better, or if you have been tasked with helping others strive to be better, David Burnell can and will play a significant role in helping you accomplish your goals. I am a different, much better man because of him, and knowing him is a blessing beyond measure."
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— Corbin Allred

David Burnell is a U.S. Air Force veteran, author, instructor, entrepreneur, humanitarian, and rescue professional. In 2002, he founded the Urban Warfare Center, where he trained law enforcement officers, military personnel, federal agents, security professionals, and civilians for a decade in self-defense, combatives, personal protection, and high-risk preparedness. His work has also taken him into disaster-response and humanitarian environments in Haiti, Japan, and Burma. Through his books and The David Burnell Podcast, he shares lessons on courage, service, preparedness, resilience, faith, leadership, and the experiences that shape us.