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  Mental Preparation & Use of Force

  A post-event situation is a survival situation. It is important to maintain a positive mental attitude and the will to survive and win. Post-event, there will be a huge dislocation of expectations and people will have to adapt to the new reality. Be open to that reality and don’t remain in denial.

  Decisions will have to be made and they may be hard ones, such as to stay at home or to go somewhere else. Specific to the content of this manual, you have to be ready to fight and to use lethal force if necessary. In a post event situation there is not the luxury of fanciful moral dilemmas; you are effectively in a self-defense situation and when presented with a threat of force, or lethal force, you must act proportionately to stop the threat, in order to protect yourself, your family and resources. There is no room for hesitation.

  For those who have never before been in a combat situation, you must mentally prepare yourself to be in combat. Reactions to combat situations will vary: we can exhibit the fight, freeze or flight responses. Denial is a problem; the dislocation of expectations leaves the individual in denial of the true situation and they are reluctant to act in a way that may have been alien to them pre-event. The law and rules of society can also act in a negative way: self-defense in a lawful society is fraught with legal dangers, and therefore in a pre-event society the law can create an inherent hesitation because the person does not want to risk committing an illegal act. Fear of legal situations can be a problem. All this could hang over post-event. A good way to visualize a use of force would be by the following self-defense principles:

   The force used must be reasonable under the circumstances.

   The force used must be proportional to the threat.

   Use force to stop the threat, but no further.

  A response using these principles to a violent threat including that of lethal force would be legally justifiable pre-event and during the down-slide when some law & order remains.

  Research and consider the law in your state in terms of the castle doctrine and whether or not there is a stand your ground law. These are all relevant pre-event and will also help justify your actions post-event, should there be an ultimate legal reckoning after a return to normality. However, consider alongside those principles that post-event your immediate concern is the survival of your group and there is no real time to consider the legal niceties.

  Be prepared to act appropriately in response to violence and take a course of action to STOP THE THREAT. Such an action would be justifiable, given that you can’t risk waiting and perhaps sustaining casualties and fatalities within your group. Don’t hesitate to ‘make sure it really is a lethal threat’ - there will likely be no law enforcement personnel coming round after the incident to decide whether you committed a crime or not. The important thing is to ensure the safety of yourself and your group, don’t take a risk with risk!

  When you go beyond stopping that threat, into vindictiveness and revenge, then you are overstepping the ‘reasonable man’ approach i.e. what would a reasonable man do under such a circumstance? Of course, to quip about it, what would a reasonable man/woman do in a post-event societal collapse? Get armed and prepared to defend his/her family!

  There is another legal issue here; that of ‘brandishing’. Brandishing your weapon is not allowed under most jurisdictions. What this means for a concealed carry permit holder is that the weapon must remain concealed at all times unless it has to come out and be used in response to a lethal threat. You can’t take out your weapon to ‘keep the peace’in response to what you perceive may be ramping up to a lethal threat. You would be brandishing, and brandishing is a crime.

  You can legally carry your loaded weapons openly in certain places, such as your property and place of work if allowed by your employer and if you are legally allowed to carry. In many jurisdictions, to legally carry a loaded weapon outside of these places it has to be carried as a concealed weapon with a concealed weapons permit. Some places will allow you to carry a handgun unloaded, as ‘open carry’, which is not brandishing. Others jurisdictions allow open carry of loaded weapons, such as handguns. Brandishing is getting the weapon out in such a way that someone can feel threatened by it (this is not a legal definition).

  So, research the law and permits in your home state. The point of this is that not only do you have to be careful and research the law pre-event, but the flip-side is that post-event we will likely be a lot less concerned about these issues and we may be carrying handguns, shotguns and rifles openly. Such an act is in itself a deterrent and can be useful - you will not appear to be a soft target. Thus, brandishing under these circumstances can be useful as part of an escalation of force continuum.

  Escalation of force is where you ramp up your actions as a response to a perceived threat. So long as you perceive it and feel threatened, you can escalate your response all the way up to the use of lethal force to stop a lethal threat. Escalation of force is not the same as rules of engagement; because we are not military i.e. we have not been deployed to engage in combat with the foreign enemies of the nation.

  Rather, we are acting in self-defense (including defense of others: our family/team) and as such we have the right to ramp up our response as a reaction to perceived aggression. Escalation of force is often described (U.S. Army) as ‘shout, show, shove, shoot’ (4 S’s) where you:

   Shout a warning

   Show your weapon

   Shove: use non-lethal, physical force

   Shoot: lethal force.

  However, shove comes a little bit too far up the scale and it would be better to have distance between yourself and the threat, so better would be shout (verbal warning), shove (non-lethal force to create stand-off), show (draw or raise weapons to show capability to use lethal force) and shoot (use lethal force).

  For driving in vehicles, Iraq can be used as a good example: escalation of force would take the form of visible signs on the vehicles, then signals such as visible flags, and then the firing of pen-flares (mini-flares) followed by shots into the engine block and then the cab of the vehicle.

  The escalation of force measures were specifically designed to maintain stand-off (100 meters) between convoys and civilian vehicles due to the threat from suicide vehicle borne improvised explosive devices (SVBIED). The 4 S’s was more suited to dismounted operations.

  Whichever escalation you used, it is important to note that depending on the speed of the threat coming at you, you can skip steps and immediately ramp up to lethal force if the situation warrants it. So, what this really all says is that you should be able to escalate your response through a series of warnings towards the use of force or lethal force in order to stop the threat, and the level to which you will take this will depend on the nature of the perceived threat that develops.

  Hesitation and denial can be a big problem in a combat situation. There are recorded statistics of large numbers of soldiers in combat either not firing their weapons or firing them in the general direction of, but not specifically at, the enemy. People don’t want to kill. If you are a family unit and you are getting attacked, you have to kill or be killed. You have to run this over in your mind, and visualize it.

  Realistic training builds muscle memory and will help you do the right thing when the SHTF. A combat situation is traumatic and creates the fight, freeze or flight response. It creates fear; adrenalin and other chemicals will course through your body in response. What this does is make you lose your fine motor skills and give you tunnel vision. Training will help you act, and act in the right way: shoot, move and communicate.

  Your memory will play tricks and you probably won’t have a clear memory of what happened afterwards. You may also feel guilt, because in retrospect you realize that tunnel vision meant you did not see A, while you concentrated on B, while therefore C happened. Or maybe you could not get the tourniquet tightened around D’s leg, or get the stalled car started, because you had lost your fine motor skills. But you ar
e under a great deal of stress and you have to do the best you can under the circumstances. Train and visualize as much as you can to create the muscle and mental memory to help you do the right thing and not freeze.

  Try and train yourself in situations where you are creating muscle memory and the right response to a threat. You should be taking some action. It is one thing, for example, to witness and be a spectator to a fight outside of a bar, but when that guy gets in front of you, and his attention and aggression is focused on you, it is a different matter. What if you are a female confronted by an aggressive male?

  What can happen is the freeze response, the paralyzing result of the fear that is your body’s emotional response to the situation. You also can’t hide in denial – it is definitely happening and that guy is really in your face and threatening bodily harm. Try and train and visualize so you will respond in the right way to a threat situation; make fear your friend.

  A brave person is not one who is absent fear, but one who can continue, and act in the right way, while feeling the fear and controlling and overcoming it. There is also a certain refuge in action; thinking about and dwelling on possible threats beforehand can increase fearfulness unless you are doing it, as per this manual, in order to better prepare.

  Initially freezing when confronted is a problem, but once you start taking action the fear should slip into the background and you can concentrate on doing the right thing. Training and muscle memory can help with this; otherwise, how to know what is the right thing to do when a threat confronts you? If you have trained and mentally and physically prepared, you will have a set of drills and responses and so long as you can get past the hesitation stage and get into doing it, you will respond in the right way.

  Now, all of this does not advocate fighting or getting into trouble situations. Post-event medical care will be limited and anything that puts you at risk of death, wounding or disability will significantly negatively impact your, and that of your family who relies on you, chances of survival. The overriding principle when in a threat environment is AVOIDANCE. Mitigate the threat.

  This does not necessarily mean run at all times, if this means, for instance, abandoning essential shelter or supplies, but mitigate and avoid threat as much as possible. When the time comes to stand your ground, be prepared and do the right thing to stop the threat. Be prepared for the worst and hope for the best. AVOID trouble. Run away from a fight if you can. Hit the assailant hard and then run away if possible. You need to develop an attitude of controlled aggression.

  The good news is that violence can often solve a problem. However, you can’t go around like a crazy person all the time. Develop within you the capacity for aggression; you should be able to bring this out when required. Controlled aggression is closely related to the will to win and determination; it doesn’t necessarily mean ‘going crazy’ but that may be occasionally useful. Think of it as a slow burning anger and determination to triumph against the odds.

  False motivation and all that ‘hooaah’ stuff is really a bit silly; you can’t get all hyped up like you might before a game. False motivation and hooting and hollering will not get you far. You don’t know when or where you will experience enemy contact. Yes, it may be more obvious if you have pre-sighted the enemy, and you can think about mental preparation in the lead up to initiating contact. But what if you are on a long tiring convoy move, perhaps a group of a few families heading out to a safer location? What about after hours of being wet cold and hungry? What if suddenly something happens and you have to react?

  This is where the inner strength becomes apparent, the determination and will to win; turning it on. Getting together around the vehicles for a good old butt slapping pre-game hoot won’t do you any good eight mind-numbing hours on the road later. The quiet determined professional approach is far more effective.

  For both unarmed self-defense type training and weapons training you should work at drills which are simple and concentrate on action and the right kind of action when fear is all you know at that moment. Concentrate on the correct initial reaction - the action that follows will get you over the potential for paralyzing fear and you will fall into the drills that you have trained, until it comes time to be able to think again and make the next plan or exit strategy.

  For unarmed self-defense, it’s not necessary to become a black belt at some martial art. Rather, train at something that is designed for practical self-defense and concentrate not so much on specific moves, but rather on reaction and response. Often some methods of training will have drills that teach this kind of instinctive response. The purpose of this is to allow you, when beset by the fear response, to instinctively take the right action.

  An example would be learning Filipino Kali or similar. This is used as an example because it allows you to train in defense against attack with stick, knife and empty hand. Now, what is important about this, or what to take away, is not for example those super-sexy moves that you learned the other night to defend against such and such angle knife attack. You forgot those already. The purpose is not to turn you into a snake-fast knife fighter. No, the important thing is that it teaches you muscle memory and an instinctive reaction. So, the result is that when someone comes at you, you will instinctively react by doing something useful, such as putting out a block to stop or redirect the strike.

  Something as simple as that will prevent you initially getting severely injured or concussed, allowing you the space to counter (disable them if possible) and then probably create space and get away. It is true that many people do not know what to do if assaulted. Fear overrides and they may freeze or crouch/cower, thus allowing the assailant to take advantage.

  Don’t feel the need to become a black belt, but train to react instinctively in defense. Learn some simple but violent counters. Strike at the eyes and groin. Learn how to punch, elbow, knee and kick so that you can deliver a violent counter assault on the assailant that will either incapacitate them, allow you to run, or get you the space for someone to help you or for you to draw a firearm. Try and not go to the ground, where you will be kicked and beaten to death by the assailant’s buddies, but consider learning how to get out of it if you do go there. No-one really wins a fight; expect to get injured and don’t be surprised if you do. Deal with the pain. Suck it up and drive on with the aim of getting your family or team out of there.

  If you are attacked with a knife, and you have to defend yourself empty handed, you are likely to be cut. Run away. Throw a chair and run away. Think about stand-off distances, cover and concealment in any kind of encounter. Statistically, if someone runs at you with a knife from anywhere within 20 feet, you will not be able to draw your handgun and engage them before they are on you. This leads to the need for situational awareness (more later). Be suspicious. A little bit of paranoia will go a long way.

  Post-event, question what the intent of others is. You may be in a barter situation, but is there anything suspicious about their behavior? Do they seem untrustworthy? Has one of their group begun circling? Think about posture (more later) and security (more later). If you are alert to your surroundings, mindful, then you will detect threats early and have a chance of avoiding them. If you are confident and alert, you will also deter potential assailants from choosing you as their victim. If you operate a buddy system, then you will never move around in groups of less than two, which will be a greater deterrent. Trust your intuition, don’t suppress what it is telling you, and act on the warning signs.

  Blog Post

  There Will Be No Theme Music:

  What is my point?

  It is this: 'IT' will never happen when you expect it to happen. Expect 'dislocation of expectations'. Expect surprise. Be aware of the danger of denial. You may be taking a dump over a cat hole out in the woods with your pants down around your ankles, when 'Contact!' is shouted. Snap it off and get going!

  I realize that I have run a couple of 'reality call' posts recently ('Reality Check: All the Gear No Idea' & 'SHTF Comb
at Casualty - Considerations & Realities') and to a certain extent they can be a little depressing. This post is also about getting a grip with reality, but if you keep reading, I aim to end it on a lighter note, with a little bit of morale [Note: this was a link to video].

  When you end up in combat for the first time, you will most likely not be in control of the situation. Combat is chaos, but it can be understood. You can 'read the battle' and the better trained you are the more you will be able to move past fear and panic to understanding.

  When "IT' does happen, expect to be surrounded by sudden violence. The crack, zip and whine of impacting enemy rounds. People may be hit, wounded, screaming.

  There will be no theme music. You will not all stand up in a line and advance on the enemy, like they do at the end of Hollywood movies. Notice how they always do that when the aliens are already on the run, with theme music, and it looks really cool?

  If you have never been in combat, never been under enemy fire, what can you do about this?

  You can do as much 'battle inoculation' as possible. This means realistic training, doing real drills, with live fire. You need to train as you will fight. You need to be as fit as you can be.

  When the day (or night) comes, you may be weakened by starvation, sickness, exhaustion. You need to develop an aggression and will to fight, a will to win. Otherwise, you will curl up and allow yourself to be killed. Don't believe me? Just wait and see how many will behave when SHTF happens.

  If you conduct realistic training, you will become more inoculated to the environment of combat. You will also train the right muscle memory to the stress response of 'fight, freeze or flight'. The repetitive training will develop muscle memory that will aid you in reacting in the right way. If you can get past the freeze and roll into the drill, then you are half-way to being alright.