For years I’ve looked for some sort of training, some secret ninja mojo to spot the bad guys in a crowd. I mean, in lieu of decades of combat or police experience, how can a layman know what to look for in a crowd? How can we learn who’s a threat, how can we be better prepared, to ensure that we go home safe?
I’ve had some stress-based training (I’m a Krav Maga level 4 fighter, a blue belt) so I’d like to think that when shit goes down I’d at least partially keep my wits about me. But wouldn’t it be nice to be ready before the shit went down, and have your wits already sharpened?
Or let’s stick to civilian life, maybe you were about to get on an elevator with another person but got a funny feeling and took the stairs instead. Perhaps you were at the negotiating table and your counterpart’s body language tells you he’s not giving you the best deal. These all represent “Left of Bang” situations. In any event timeline, ‘Bang’ is the incident. The roadside bomb. The armed robbery. The mass shooting. Traditional military and law enforcement are trained to react after the bang. On a timeline, this is to the right of bang. But there are signs, behaviors, and even situational indicators to warn a perceptive person so they can be ready left bang, or before the incdident.
This is where the book Left of Bang by Patrick Van Horne and Jason A. Riley comes in. This book (see Amazon link in the right margin) is a fantastic read, and in my mind one of the closest things we have to Jedi mind tricks. It outlines different involuntary behaviors in all humans, and physical characteristics of surroundings, as well as indicators in the behavior of bystanders. This book is a building block to understanding what strangers around you may be thinking, when it’s a good time to get the Hell out of Dodge, and how to know the best way to get there. This article will be the first in a series of my explanations of the book. I will do my best to paraphrase the book and do it justice, but honestly if you’re interested at all in this just buy the book from Amazon (or your favorite bookstore) and learn it yourself. It will definitely take multiple reads to digest.
Left of Bang is based upon the Marines Combat Hunter program, developed at the request of General James Mattis (you may have heard of him) during the height of the Iraq insurgency around 2006 or so. American servicemen were being badly maimed and wounded by IEDs, and something had to be done. In the beginning, better body armor was developed and put into the field, armored vehicles such as Bradleys got upgrades. But these weren’t even enough to stand up to IEDs. Men had to be better prepared to notice attacks ahead of time, to react Left of Bang.
The first thing a person can do, even before learning about his enemy’s suspicious actions or paths of travel, is to change his mindset. Being prepared to react (or act)with lethality could mean the difference between life and death. Here they introduce Cooper’s Color Code.
Cooper’s Color Code
Cooper’s Color Code has four levels of awareness: White, Yellow, Orange, and Red.
Condition White means being unprepared and unready to take lethal action. A person in Condition White is in a low state of psychological awareness and physiological arousal. If attacked they will likely be the victim.
Condition Yellow means a person understands that his or her life is in danger and is therefore is psychologically prepared to do something about it. Remember my allusion to my Krav Maga training earlier? It is good stress-based training because even though it’s training it is more reality-based and a good instructor will put students in simulated stress situations, which will help them be psychologically prepared and ready to defend. It helped me reach Condition Yellow mentally. Once a thread is recognized, this person advances to Condition Orange.
Condition Orange is the mindset which a person is focused on a specific threat and is prepared to take action against it. Usually this person is in a lower state of psychological awareness than in Condition Yellow, but in a higher state of physiological arousal. This person is usually creating a plan for how to deal with the threat.
Condition Red is called “Lethal Mode” it is the psychological willingness to kill if circumstances warrant that action. Condition Red in military terms is being “in the fight” and executing the plans created in Condition Orange. This person is in a much lower state of awareness due to being focused on one specific threat and has a very high degree of physiological arousal. When a person is in this state his awareness of his physical surroundings dwindles further as his mental capacity is focused on the personal challenges of survival. Have you noticed how you rarely remember a fight? Or have you heard the term “fog of war”? This describes Condition Red.
The Marines have added a final color to this code called Condition Black. This is where the heart rate climbs to a level that is counterproductive – above 175 beats per minute. They can lose awareness of surroundings completely and can no longer cognitively process information. In short, they shut down.
Acting Left of Bang requires we remain in Condition Yellow normally. To say it another way, we must remain in Condition Yellow during our daily routine.
Part of staying in Condition Yellow is trusting our intuition. Intuition isn’t some black-magic ninja skill. Intuition is simply a person’s sense about a situation influenced by experience and knowledge.
How are Marines (or cops, or even YOU) supposed to be expected to make life or death decisions in split seconds, while simultaneously taking in stimuli from multiple sources? How can some people “size the situation up” very quickly, and react correctly within seconds? People with lots of experience (we’ll call them experts) often can react this way. Sometimes they are gang-bangers recruited right out of high school, or others from a more high-risk backgrounds. These people’s early life – sometimes even their very survival-depended upon reading situations quickly and sizing them up. In his book “Talent is Overrated“, Geoff Colvin points out studies that show that for amateurs, taking time to concentrate on a task made them perform the task better. (He studied golf putting) But for seasoned pros, forcing them to take time before putting actually made them perform worse. The deliberate action interfered with the muscle memory they’d developed over the years. Intuition works the same way. Use these techniques to practice staying Condition Yellow and eventually it will become second nature.
I hope this has been a good intro into the Left of Bang mindset and how it works.
