While we can’t train you using specific classified methods used by the U.S. military or intelligence, we can give you directives that can be applied to any possible hostile situation you encounter, before it unfolds or as it unfolds — should you be taken by surprise.
Meaning, you find yourself ambushed and outnumbered.
Let’s begin.
Mitigation, Preparation, Response And Recovery
Whether it is emergency planning or self defense, these four phases of planning can be used to assist you in making sure you are covered and ready to survive a critical incident. In our last article we covered these phases. In this one I would like to look at the Response aspect in more detail.
Response
It’s a beautiful night. You and your significant other are out for a walk under the stars. You talk and hold hands, everything is so wonderful. Wait! What is that uneasy feeling you just got in your stomach? Was that someone moving in the dark over to your right? Are there two of them?
Being aware of your surroundings you spot your escape route.
You analyze your physical readiness, assess your environment for weapons of opportunity, barriers, concealment, cover, anything that you can use to give you tactical advantage.
Is there anything handy you can use to defend yourself?
You reach into your pocket and feel the high intensity 200 lumen flashlight that you carry. With the other hand you remove your tactical folding knife from your belt.
Tactical Breathing To Control Adrenaline
Your adrenaline starts to kick in so you change your breathing to the tactical breathing you learned in self defense class last week.
You start moving toward the parking lot where there are lights and other people around.
Signal Your Team
You tell your partner to get her pepper spray out of her purse and to take her kubotan out. You tell her what you have observed and she replies she has already spotted them. She is just as prepared as you are because she attended the class as well and knows she can kick butt if she needs to.
Element Of Surprise
The perps move in closer. They think they are being stealthy and are going to surprise you. Boy, are they in for a lesson. You step away from your partner, moving about 6 feet to the rear and side. You keep moving towards the lights when a third perp you didn’t see steps out from behind a tree and blocks your way.
Strike First And Fast
Startled, you blind him with your light, kick his shin and knee him in the groin, you break his nose with your survival flashlight and smash his collar bone with the butt end of your knife then sweep his leg so he falls groaning on the ground.
Your partner has engaged perp number 2. You look over just in time to see him put his hands up in the air and scrunch his face up as he gets hit with a full blast of pepper spray, right in the eyes. She knows that may not be enough so she smashes her kubotan down onto his nose, shattering it, then drives her shin up between his legs.
Key Targets: Vision, Breathing, Mobility
You hear a forced exhale of breath as he bends forward just in time to meet her knee, straight to the solar plexus. Vision gone. Breath gone. Mobility hindered.
Perp number 3 isn’t that stupid, he looks at his friends and takes off the other way.
Stay In Control
Wow, you are shaking, breathing is fast and you are in shock. Did that just happen? You can’t remember exactly what you did, but it appears to have worked. Your partner is on her knees, she is crying, adrenaline is pumping. You need to move, breath deep, in through the nose, out through the mouth, nice and slow, there you go. Control you responses, breath, breath.
Domination
You won. You didn’t just survive, you dominated them. Surviving is not enough. Surviving often means you made it through something where at one point you were a victim. You are never a victim when it comes to self defense. You either win or you lose. Some people say there are no winners in a fight. That can be true when you are talking about fighting another person for ego gratification or some other insignificant reason. In a life and death situation you are absolutely a winner.
Attitude: Never Doubt Yourself
In self defense there is no second place, no consolation prize or metal. There is only one acceptable outcome.
Your attitude has to be one of perseverance, dominance and control. If for one second you give up or doubt yourself you could lose. Losing on the street may mean losing your life.
The first 72 hours after a disaster are the most critical for survival. Enter your email below to get a checklist of essential items you need in your 72 hour emergency get home bag…
Mental preparation, creating a tactical mindset, never accepting defeat; these are all necessary attributes that will help you to prevail in a violent confrontation.
Practice What You Train
A battle is won before it begins. If you utilize the four phases of emergency planning as described previously, if you train right and practice what you train, you will have a much better chance of winning. Besides, in any aspect of life, who wants to be a loser? Not me.
Self defense isn’t the only thing to consider. Surviving in populated, dangerous areas requires a wide range of urban survival skills.
In our next article we will look at how you can create a winning attitude and what a tactical mindset is. The physical skills are only a small aspect of learning how to protect yourself. They are the easiest. The rest is where you really have to work at it.
Until next time, be safe, be smart.
Our Top Posts About Self Defense
More Information about Hand to Hand and Unarmed Combat
Bruce Lee’s Self Defense: Deadly Strikes for the Street
Self Defense: Secrets from Krav Maga and Bruce Lee’s Jeet Kune Do
Reality Martial Arts: Immobilizing and Lethal Strikes of Special Forces
Hand to Hand Combat: How to Fight Like Jason Bourne
15 Self Defense Tactics that Can Save Your Life
The first 72 hours after a disaster are the most critical for survival. Enter your email below to get a checklist of essential items you need in your 72 hour emergency get home bag…
Why You Can Trust Us
Secrets of Survival has been around since 2002 (almost 20 years) and our survival knowledge is the real deal. We were writing and discussing survival and prepping before people even knew what the word “prepping” meant. We also preceded the trendiness of survival media nowadays… for example, we were arround before Bear Grylls filmed his first episode of Man vs Wild.Our contributors and writers over the years have included survival experts of all stripes – including a Green Beret Special Forces Medic, a former Navy SEAL, a leading survival instructor who’s been featured on National Geographic and PBS. Every article is either written or reviewed by someone who is an expert in either survivalism, prepping, or homesteading (or all three) and our goal is to be as practical and educational as possible.
While some of our writers and contributors use pseudonyms in order to protect their privacy (never a bad idea in these times where out of control surveillance is a growing problem), you can trust that everybody who gets to write for us has been vetted for their knowledge and passion when it comes to survival.
Click here to learn more about Secrets of Survival and our writers and contributors.
Leave a Reply