Your most powerful weapon doesn’t need batteries and never runs out of ammunition. What are the secrets of the professionals when it comes to recognition and rapid assessment of a developing threat? Even more effective, how can you see it, hear it and sense it coming?
Our society is divided into two groups: those who don’t care about or are unaware of the possibility something bad can happen to them and are unprepared to handle it, versus those who are aware and prepared if something bad does happen. Learning how to use your most powerful weapon places you in the latter group and prepares you by increasing your knowledge and decreasing your vulnerability.
Protection professionals will tell you that your mind is your most effective weapon. Knowing what to look for, how to look for it and what to do if you see a threat is paramount. In most situations, you can remain proactive and take preventative measures against a potential threat.
A threat refers to any range of behaviors that can result in both physical and psychological harm to oneself in the environment. This type of environmental interaction centers on harming another person, either physically or mentally.
Threat Identification
The most immediate tool we have on board for threat identification is our situational awareness. Environmentally speaking, situational awareness is knowing what goes on around you. Whether at home, in your car or on foot, applying good situational awareness eliminates such potential threats as being taken by surprise or placing yourself behind the action-reaction power curve of an undesired event occurring around you. As such, it can be used to control your environment.
Protection experts use situational awareness as a deterrent. When a predator knows that you are on to them, the element of surprise has been eliminated. This awareness deflates their motivation.
Situational awareness also keeps you informed of what your environment is telling you and a step ahead of events that are emerging around you. It keeps you connected to your surroundings and prepared. When effectively applied, situational awareness can be used to take control of your environment, act as a deterrent and make you a harder target.
Threat Indicators
If you are not aware of something, then that something is invisible to you.
What goes unseen can sometimes be the one thing that causes the biggest problem. Being able to identify a threat by using your situational awareness is what affords you the most time and opportunity to control that threat and formulate an immediate response to your environment that could save lives. Once a threat has been identified, this information can then be used to determine your best course of action. How can you do this?
The key to preventing a potential threat from developing into an active threat is to first identify threat indicators. Such indicators are often your only visible clues or observable pre-attack behaviors that something bad is about to happen. Some examples of threat indicators include body posture, eye contact and an intercept course.
Body Posture
How people carry themselves can be an indicator of their intentions. To a trained observer, how and where a person positions their body may indicate a potential threat.
In typical non-threatening situations, most people carry themselves calmly and without tension. They are usually standing “squarely” in front of you with both feet even with their shoulders, commonly referred to as a neutral position.
If you find their feet in a bladed position — with one of their feet set back or braced and with the other in front — this affords the attacker a tactical advantage in preparation for a physical strike or rapid aggressive movement.
Eye Contact
Eye contact is one of the earliest detectable indicators of a potential or developing threat. Normal people make normal eye contact. They look you in the eye — but not too intently.
Someone who intends you harm may look intently at you or start sizing you up. Known as giving you the “hairy eyeball”, this will look and feel different than normal eye contact.
Intercept Course
Normal people walk about with self-determination and specific purpose. They generally tend to their own business and are focused on shopping, running errands, or their movement to and from their car.
Should their attention shift to you and your movements, such as what you are doing or where you may be going, then this is a pre-attack indicator that should not be ignored.
If you accelerate your pace and they match or exceed your pace, then these are red flags that may very well indicate an intercept course to initiate an attack.
Conclusion
Although, they may sometimes be subtle, threat indicators can provide enough information for you to orient yourself to your surroundings, spot a potential threat, make your tactical decision based on updated information and then act on that decision. Threat indicators should be considered red flags and treated as such.
The Christmas season has become so many formal things that
seem so vapid and shallow. Reality is much deeper and more profound.
Our great nation was built by rugged individualists who bent the world to their will. These days, it seems populated by professional victims whose day jobs often orbit around self-flagellation and pity. As I didn’t want to miss that gravy train myself, today, I thought I’d lament my sordid state.
It’s tough being a Mississippian. Our firearms mortality rate is 28.6 per 100,000 people, while that of New York is 5.3. We rank 47th in literacy, though we did beat out Texas, California and New Mexico. We are the whipping boys for the entire country. Most of America, particularly those on the enlightened coasts, views us as unwashed shoeless hicks clinging dogmatically to our guns and God. Well, perhaps …
The reality is that if you subtract the 18 impoverished Delta counties, Mississippi is safe, literate and prosperous. Statistically speaking, we are about in the middle for all the good stuff. I grew up in the Delta, and that’s a column unto itself. However, central Mississippi is a simply delightful place. We are flush with industry, and we produce lyrically beautiful women. If your metric is burnt-down neighborhoods, our race relations are massively more cordial than those of the more enlightened states as well. We also have the nation’s friendliest folks.
Now, it is easy to make that claim. In the following instance, my sample size is admittedly just one. However, I am proud of my people, my state and my tribe. Here’s why.
Oxford, Mississippi, is a simply delightful place. Provided/Visit Oxford
Wise Life Choices
I recently met a gentleman in my medical clinic. He and I are about the same age, but he has made better life choices than I have. As a result, he and his wife had retired from their tech jobs in California and were looking for someplace else to settle. The astronomical taxes, rampant drugs, unfettered homelessness and general social justice insanity had driven him from his home of 27 years in search of something more sensible. He has plenty of company in that regard.
This man and his wife had narrowed their potential retirement spots down to Florida, South Carolina, and Oxford, Mississippi. As they now had both time and resources, they resolved to spend a month in each place before making a decision and buying a home. I asked how the competition was coming.
We modern Americans have veered way off from the original
meaning of Christmas. It’s really about friends, family, and faith.
‘Tis the Season …
This was early January. The man told me that on Christmas Eve, he had been in the checkout line at the local Walmart picking up some things to improvise Christmas in his hotel room with his wife. As the store was crowded, the stranger ahead of him in the line struck up a conversation just to pass the time (we often still do that here). Recognizing that his accent was “not from around here,” the local citizen asked his story. Hearing it, he inquired regarding my new friend’s Christmas plans.
When my buddy explained that he and his wife were intending a quiet holiday at the local Hampton Inn, the man said, “Nonsense. Here’s my address. We start at 6. I’ll see you there.”
With some trepidation, my California buddy and his wife took this stranger up on his offer and appeared as directed at 6 o’clock, not really knowing what to expect. He said the evening was simply delightful with three generations in attendance. There were stories, food, laughter and Jesus aplenty. As the evening wound down and they were disengaging, the man they met at Walmart then asked what their plans were for the following Christmas morning. When they admitted they had none, the local gentleman gave him his mom’s address and said lunch started at 11. He expected to see them there.
Lunch was typical Deep South soul food — sinfully delicious, though terribly unhealthy. My new friend said he and his wife had a simply magnificent time. He actually admitted that at the end of those two days, he knew more about these strangers he met in the checkout line at Walmart than he did about his neighbors beside whom he had lived for 27 years in California. Needless to say, Mississippi enjoyed a resounding lead in the competition for retirement destinations.
Mississippians are indeed literate. A few of us can actually write.
Ruminations
I was a soldier. I have lived all over the world. There is no finer place on the planet than my little piece of Mississippi. Taxes are low, real estate is still sort of affordable relative to the rest of America, and our churches are full. There are no extraneous gun laws, and a few of us are actually literate.
California’s Governor Gavin Newsom is quick to point out that his state is poised to become the fourth-largest economy in the world here directly. They’ll be beating out Germany to get there. Good for him. However, what good is money if you don’t know your neighbors? Mississippi is still what America used to be.
Santa Claus, wearing red shorts on a 90 degree day, visited a field hospital during the Guadalcanal campaign, 1942. He toured hospitals around the island in a Chevrolet captured from Japanese forces and gave out presents supplied by the Red Cross.
Ralph Morse/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The Allies’ first land campaign in the Pacific during World War II took place at Guadalcanal. The siege, led by U.S. Marines but involving every branch of the military, began on Aug. 7, 1942 and continued for about six months, until Japanese forces abandoned the island on Feb. 3, 1943.
Guadalcanal was an important early win for the Allies in World War II, but victory came at a high cost; 1,592 Americans were killed in action, another 4,183 were wounded and many more suffered from tropical diseases. On the Japanese side the toll was even greater, with 14,800 killed in action.
In Guadancanal, war was indeed hell. It’s something to keep in mind when viewing these photos of the joyful Christmas celebrations that the troops were able to muster on that remote and battle-torn island.
The pictures shot by LIFE staff photographer Ralph Morse ran in LIFE’s issue of March 1, 1943, when the campaign was over. The photos were part of a much larger story that was built around an excerpt from a book that would become a classic of war reporting, Guadalcanal Diary.
The Guadalcanal Christmas featured touches that American soldiers would have found familiar. A chaplain led midnight mass, a choir performed songs, and the troops were served a holiday meal that included turkey and pie.
Of course there were differences too. Santa was walking around in shorts because they were in the tropics and it was 90 degrees out. He wore a military helmet instead of a red stocking cap. The presents he distributed were provided by the Red Cross. The only family these soldiers could be with was the found family they had made with each other.
And if the energy in the photos is any indication, they were grateful for all of it.
American soldiers celebrating Christmas in Guadalcanal, 1942; one soldier held a sign with a message for Japanese prime minister Hideki Tojo.
Ralph Morse/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Santa Claus, wearing red shorts on a 90 degree day, visited a field hospital during the Guadalcanal campaign, 1942. He toured hospitals around the island in a Chevrolet captured from Japanese forces and gave out presents supplied by the Red Cross.
Ralph Morse/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Soldiers prepared turkeys to be cooked for a Christmas meal during the Guadalcanal campaign, 1942.
Ralph Morse/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
U.S. soldiers cut up mince pies in preparation for a Christmas celebration in Guadalcanal, 1942.
Ralph Morse/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
A church flag flew above the stars and stripes during Christmas celebrations for the American forces in Guadalcanal, 1942.
Ralph Morse/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
American soldiers celebrated midnight mass on Christmas eve in Guadalcanal, 1942.
Ralph Morse/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
A choir sang on Christmas eve in Guadalcanal, 1942; this group toured the island with Santa to perform for soldiers during the holiday.
Ralph Morse/Life Picture Collection Shutterstock
By that I mean we tried something like that with the 1917 S&W & the Colt New Service but that was over a 100 years ago. Now they are good pistols but it would not be my first choice when the brown sauce hits the fan.
So I am willing to bet that in oh say 10 years or so from now. The gun rags will be writing about it and wonder why it did not take off. So says the born again cynic.
What are your thoughts on this Dear Readers? Grumpy
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