ambshes and more...

Taken from Tony Blauer's Blog:
Tony is on-point. Not much to add:

The Ambush
I get asked this all the time, “How do you defend against an ambush?”  My answer: “You can’t. That’s why it’s called “ambush”.  Yes, you can train to anticipate, intercept and weather an attack, but there is no magic style or technique to defend against the non-telegraphic ambush. If you can’t defend against the ambush then what do you do??

MOVE! GET OUT OF THE LINE OF ATTACK/AMBUSH

This isn’t Start Trek where people beam-down into your personal space.  In other words, there are always pre-contact cues. Getting off the X is about situational awareness.  It’s about being observant.  I wrote about this recently.  Bluntly folks…. get your head out of your @ss and off your cell phone when you are walking and driving (and I’d recommend the same thing when you’re at dinner in the company of other humans too).

NO AWARENESS = NO ABILITY TO COUNTER

If you lack awareness, your survival system cannot do its job properly. You make it even harder if you are fixated on a smartphone. When you are out and about; pay attention.

Let’s call a spade a spade: you can’t counter a perfect ambush and that’s precisely why it was called “an ambush”. When the intended victim intercepted or disengaged the assault, it was called an “attempted ambush”. This is important because it helps you start thinking about the bigger picture and what it really means to get to the left of an ambush.

VULNERABILITY ASSESSMENT & IMPROVING AWARENESS

How would you attack you? This is a neat concept.  It’s so simple. Spend some time thinking about when you could attack you. Is it walking down that alley daydreaming, not noticing the gang of hooligans approaching? Do you sit in your car checking emails unaware of people studying your routine? Follow yourself for a week and make notes of when you could sucker punch yourself, grab a purse, steal your car and you’ll be amazed at what you can learn about your situational awareness.  Now here’s the cool stuff. Doing this activates your reticular cortex, (Whenever you send a message to the reticular cortex, like “stay alert”, “look out for gangs”, it actually makes the change in your brain and you become more intensely aware and alert to your surroundings.  Scientifically speaking, “the reticular activating system helps mediate transitions from relaxed wakefulness to periods of high attention”.)

THE THREE D’s:

DETECT  (to avoid) DEFUSE (to de-escalate) DEFEND (to protect)
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“Action is faster than reaction; in-action is faster than action” -

If you’re having discussions with your martial arts pals on best moves or you’re searching YouTube for “counters for sucker punches” then you are already standing on the “X”.  Understand?  You completely missed detect & defuse. A lot of people get stuck in this trap, “What’s the best counter to XYZ?” The problem with this thinking is that to practice the counter you must practice the attack.  Therefore you always practice letting yourself get attacked in order to practice the counter. Interesting irony. But more importantly no one is working on avoidance and de-escalation. Accessing the skills honed in the gym gets even more unlikely when you consider that in a true ambush there is no consent and no awareness of the attack. In the real world, the hand is quicker than the eye and the hand is quicker than the brain. If you’re trying to figure out which style of martial arts is best then you don’t understand math, physics and physiology.

LET’S PLAY KOG!

What’s required to play?
1. A complacent victim with little situational awareness.
2. Douche-bags

The first pre-contact cue is typically a gang and a lone person. (Light bulb!?) Start there.  See a gang? Get to the left of the ambush as soon as you. You’re alone?  Find a buddy.

TIPS & TRICKS

1.Identify your routine and any opportunity you provide to ‘opportunistic douche-bags”. Change what they’re looking for and then you’re not “it”.

2.Walk with your own gang when you know you’re going through choke points.  E.g.: Leaving a restaurant alone?  Ask the manager for an escort. Same for underground parking lot.  Ask for an escort. Four eyes are better than two. There are lots of courageous bystanders and Good Samaritans near you, look for them.  (Also, how you ask will also influence their willingness to assist. Be honest and be smart.)

3.Walking solo in a subway, bus stop, etc.? Think about your next step.  Pause, assess, and scan.  FYI you do this every time you step off a side-walk (in other words it’s not a new behavior and it’s not a paranoid behavior). See #2 – practice the lost art of talking to another human – ask if they’d walk with you.

4.Keep your head up & eyes alert. Diffuse your vision.

5.Keep your hands free (yep no phone) *While this shit can happen anywhere, you know when its pseudo safe to have your phone out.

6.Trust your gut.  Reread my blog on the Economics of Violence for a review on ‘paying attention’

7.Err on the side of safety.  Even if you think something is about to happen immediately change your direction, make noise, create attention.  If you were wrong about the pre-contact cue (i.e. false alarm) the worst that happened is you are embarrassed. The alternative (ignoring the perceived threat) could be much worse.

8.If you’re driving and see someone walking into the kill zone, slow down and honk like an idiot (same if you’re on foot, yell). Don’t hesitate just do something (you’d want someone to do it for you!).  If you can roll down your window and shout, “the police will be here in a moment.  The cameras are recording this.” (Point to the pretend CCTV camera). Verbal deception is a great tool to create a mental distraction in the bad-guy’s mind. It creates doubt & hesitation, and it just might dissuade or divert the attack.  At a minimum it buys you time and allows you to shift psychological gears.

Just reading this has activated your reticular cortex and now you are safer than you were 10 minutes ago. :-)